William Kentridge, More Sweetly Play the Dance (2015), via Art Observed
Artist William Kentridge is currently presenting a pair of multi-media film installations at Marian Goodman’s uptown New York location, drawing on parallels of death and life, utopia and decay, atrophy and entropy.
The LA Times profiles Thomas P. Campbell, and his tenure as Director of the Met, including his work on the Breuer Building project, and the difficult financial straits he was thrust into when he took the position in 2008. “It was by no means a slam dunk,” he says. “I spent the first six months of being director going through a contraction of the institution. We had to contract by 10%. And while we were doing that, we were trying to plan for the future.” (more…)
Yves Bouvier is the subject of a lengthy profile by the New Yorker this week, focusing not only on his history as head of the National Le Coultre freeport and his current conflicts with Dmitriy Rybolovlev, but also on the logistical systems that he oversees as the company’s owner. “To be invisible is the best way to make business,” he says. (more…)
The Temptation of St. Anthony, a work held in the collection of a Kansas City museum, and long attributed to the followers of Hieronymus Bosch, has been authenticated as a work of Dutch master himself after analysis in the Netherlands. “It’s the same painting, and all of a sudden you see it with more affection,” says Julián Zugazagoitia, director and CEO of the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art in Kansas City, which owns the work. “It’s like your child who just won the Nobel Prize. You love your child just as much, but you’re bragging more about it to your cousins and friends.” (more…)
The Louvre and the nation of Iran have negotiated a historic deal agreeing to shared exhibitions, and collaborations on publications, scientific visits and training sessions, as well as cooperation on archaeological digs. The agreement was signed during an Iranian diplomatic visit in Paris, at the Elysée Palace. (more…)
Continuing his show of solidarity with Syrivan refugees on the Greek isle of Lesbos, Ai Weiwei has posed in a photograph recreating the scene of a drowned Syrian child. “The image is haunting and represents the whole immigration crisis and the hopelessness of the people who have tried to escape their pasts for a better future,” says India Art Fair co-owner Sandy Angus. (more…)
Paramount Ranch, all photos via Art Observed
Nestled away in the Thousand Oaks town of Agoura Hils, the Paramount Ranch served as a film location for much of Hollywood’s elite, seeing Bob Hope, Cecil B. DeMille and Gary Cooper step on camera for iconic Westerns. Now, almost 90 years later, the Ranch (currently part of the National Parks system), the ranch has become the annual retreat from LA Art Week for the titular Paramount Ranch fair.
Janis Varelas at The Breeder (more…)
Thomas Eggerer, Waterworld (2015)
Tucked inside a single room at Petzel Gallery is Waterworld, a humbly scaled exhibition, yet impressively scaled work by New York-based, German artist Thomas Eggerer. The artist’s work has long been shown in this context, showing only a few works at a time in their enthrallingly large-scale dimensions that further the artist’s ongoing aesthetic tendencies and focus on each meditative, impressively detailed scenario.
Thomas Eggerer, Waterworld (detail) (2015) (more…)
Erwin Wurm, Butter (Fridge) (2015), via Thaddaeus Ropac
Erwin Wurm returns to Thaddaeus Ropac’s Paris Marais location this month for an exhibition of new works, continuing his bizarre and occasionally disturbing interpretations of the materials of everyday life, broken down and perverted by momentary inversions and surreal inflections of force. The show, titled Lost, enters further into the vocabulary of objects the Austrian artist has developed over the course of the past 20 years, narrowing his focus to the objects and landscapes of the domestic interior. (more…)
Outside of Art Los Angeles Contemporary at Barker Hangar, via Art Observed
Art Los Angeles Contemporary opened its doors this past evening at the Barker Hangar in Santa Monica, bringing the city’s art scene, as well as many from New York, London and further afield to the sunny haze of the California metropolis. The fair, which has seen increasingly high praise over the past years, saw strong attendance and packed aisles in the early hours as visitors occasionally paused to look towards the sound of planes taking off just overhead.
A rightwing group in Israel has drawn criticism for attacks on Israeli artists and writers, who they have accused of being “infiltrators inside [Israeli] culture.” “Every time publicly elected officials in the state of Israel try to undertake the task they were given in the most democratic and legitimate way by the people,” says Matan Peleg, the head of the group, “we encounter an automatic smear campaign by ‘people of culture’ who try to paint themselves as enlightened, as progressive and as ‘knowing better’ than the public.” (more…)
Pyotr Pavlensky, the Russian dissident and artist who last year set fire to the doors of the Federal Security Service in Moscow, has reportedly been sent to Serbsky State Scientific Center for Social and Forensic Psychiatry for evaluation. The center has a reputation for diagnosing political activists as insane during the Soviet era. “The Investigative Committee wants to demonstrate that I am crazy,” Pavlensky said in an interview several months ago. “And to show their own craziness, I do what they want, but my way.” (more…)
Jean Dubuffet will be the subject of a two floor exhibition at the Acquavella Gallery later this Spring, the New York Times reports. “A lot of people don’t realize how good he is,” says curator Mark Rosenthal. “We’re hoping this will change that.” (more…)
The Indonesian capital of Jakarta is set to open its first international contemporary art museum, Museum MACAN, in 2017. It is being funded by businessman and collector Haryanto Adikoesoemo. “I want the Museum MACAN to develop and advance the understanding of Indonesians about art and the appreciation of art,” he says. “I also want this museum to help cross-pollinate exchanges with Indonesia and the world, to provide a platform for Indonesian art internationally and to bring international art to Indonesia.” (more…)
The Wall Street Journal’s Kelly Crow diagnoses the symptoms of the market’s “cooling off” this week, pointing to falling oil prices and unsteady stock prices as deleterious to buying confidence. “We’ve been hoping for a slight correction to bring some sanity to this market,” says Suzanne Gyorgy, head of Citi Private Bank Art Advisory and Finance. “The way prices were climbing, the whole thing was starting to feel artificial.” (more…)
A survey released this week by the city’s Cultural Affairs Department shows that New York City’s cultural sector fails to match the diversity of the city populace. “When it comes to making sure that every resident has an equal opportunity to contribute to this extraordinary cultural community, we need to lead by example,” Mayor de Blasio says. “This survey will help us find ways to foster a creative sector that opens doors for every New Yorker, regardless of their background.” (more…)
Erwin Wurm is interviewed in The New York Times this week, as he prepares to open a show of his One Minute Sculptures at the MAK Centre’s Schindler House this week. “What I like here is the minimal, nearly Japanese structure,” Wurm says. “He was escaping a powerful social structure in Austria, and my work also deals with questions of freedom: freedom of choice, free will, economic dependence.” (more…)
Hauser and Wirth, Massimo de Carlo and Andrea Rosen are partnering together to present a trio of shows focused on the work of Felix Gonzalez-Torres, organized by artists Roni Horn and Julie Ault. “Our engagement with Gonzalez-Torres’s work focuses on the essence and function of particular forms integral to his practice, distinct from curatorial modes often applied to his work that use a ‘one of these and one of that’ method to present a multiplicity of forms,” the artists said. (more…)
Marcel Dzama & Raymond Pettibon, Beware Diamond Dog (2016)
Forgetting the Hand, a novel collaboration between Marcel Dzama and Raymond Pettibon, is currently on view at David Zwirner Gallery. The show pulls together two artists, who, though emerging from vastly different generations and backgrounds, share noted parallels in the conveyance of the ridicule of contemporary culture. Even the exhibition title emphasizes the interconnectedness between the two artists’ practices, where distinction of authorship between the two evaporates. Both represented by David Zwirner since the 90’s, Pettibon and Dzama embarked on this collaboration in the summer of 2015 on the occasion of New York Art Book Fair, where David Zwirner Books presented a zine printed with many of these pieces. (more…)
Marianne Vitale, Beam Work (2016), via Art Observed
Venus Over Los Angeles has brought artist Marianne Vitale to exhibit in the West Coast for the first time this month, offering its ample exhibition spaces east of the river to the New York artist for a pair of monumental installations that continue her intuitive blend of simple sculptural gestures and massively-scaled material to open a space for reflection on force, structure and time.
Marianne Vitale, Thought Field (detail) (2016), via Art Observed (more…)
The Tate Modern has set the opening date for its new expansion at June 17th, announcing that its new space will launch with an exhibition of work by Louise Bourgeois. (more…)
Thornton Dial, the African American artist whose vivid brand of sculptural abstraction and assemblage earned the artist a place in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art at the Met, passed away this week at the age of 87 in his McCalla, Alabama home. “I’d never seen any artist’s works,” Mr. Dial said in 1997. “I can’t copy off anybody because it’s something I do my own self.” (more…)
Ai Weiwei has pulled his work form exhibitions in Denmark in protest over the country’s controversial new law allowing authorities to seize valuables from refugees. “I am very shocked about yesterday’s news that the Danish government has decided to seize refugees’ private property,” he wrote in an open letter to ARoS Aarhus Art Museum, where he is currently showing work. “As a result of this regrettable decision, I must withdraw from your exhibition ‘A New Dynasty.Created In China’ to express my protest of the Danish governments’ decision. Please accept my regrets and thank you for your long-term support. I apologize for the inconvenience caused,” the artist wrote. (more…)