Robert Rauschenberg, Untitled (Early Egyptian) (1973), via Gladstone

Marking an expansive exploration of Robert Rauschenberg’s sculptural output at the peak of his ability, Gladstone Gallery and the Robert Rauschenberg have collaborated on a series of shows exploring his Venetian and Early Egyptians series. Spread across Gladstone’s Chelsea galleries, this show reveals Rauschenberg’s significant place in helping to define the history of post-Minimalist sculpture, seeing beyond what others decided should be the limits of art. Rauschenberg’s career was defined by the longing for work that existed beyond simple distinctions of medium, form and genre, often using found objects and collages of material to create hybridized material sites. The Venetian and Early Egyptian series blur the line between sculpture and painting, between waste and conservation, and between everyday objects and artworks. (more…)

Elmgreen & Dragset, Prada Marfa (2005). Photography by Aleph Molinari for Art Observed.

Driving down the interminable Highway 90, one eventually hits upon Marfa, a remote West Texas town that materializes out of the vast expanse of desert landscape, flanked by distant red earth mountains and mesas on either side. The only harbinger of the town’s existence is the iconic—and no longer sarcastic—Prada Marfa store, an installation built by Elmgreen & Dragset some forty minutes outside of town. (more…)

Richard Prince, Hoods (Installation View), all images via Art Observed

On view this month at Gagosian in Chelsea, artist Richard Prince has collected a body of work spanning over 30 years of practice, focusing in particular around his explorations of the iconography and imagery of American car culture. Titled Hoods, the show features a range of works that see Prince working with modified and customized car hoods, using their sculptural design as a point of entry for broader investigations of Americana, identity and time. Hoods will feature more than thirty works made over the span of twenty-five years, from 1988 through 2013, all personally selected by the artist for this exhibition, and which showcases loans from major institutions and private collections, including the Brant Foundation, New York and Greenwich, Connecticut; the Broad, Los Angeles; Colección Jumex, Mexico City; Glenstone, Potomac, Maryland; Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; Pinault Collection, Paris; and Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York; as well as from the collection of the artist.

Richard Prince, What’s What (1989)

(more…)

Nicole Eisenman, Maker’s Muck (2022)

Over the course of their career, the painter Nicole Eisenman has proved a master at the construction of new worlds, mixing together figurative rigor with an animated and expressive counter-world, arriving on a body of work that alternatives between lush, cartoonish bodies and meticulous depictions of close friends and sitters. For their first show at Hauser & Wirth in New York, the artist takes this mode to new heights, culling together an expansive range of sculpture, painting and drawing that underscores Eisenman’s ability to both reflect and refract reality in alternate measure. (more…)

Lauren Halsey, My Hope (2022)

Presenting a range of sculptural inventions, clusters of material, and incisive observations of the cultural landscape of the African-American experience, artist Lauren Halsey uses her work to imagine new possibilities for art, architecture, and community engagement. Combining found, fabricated, and handmade objects, her work maintains a sense of civic urgency and free flowing imagination, addressing crucial issues confronting Black people, queer populations, and the working class. This mode of work finds expressive footing in her new show at David Kordansky’s recently opened New York exhibition space, bringing together a range of work to create a shifting and colorful view of South Central LA.

Lauren Halsey, My Hope (detail) (2022)

(more…)

Ernesto Neto, Between Earth and Sky (Installation View), all images via Art Observed

Since the 1990s, Brazilian artist Ernesto Neto has created a distinct body of work that marks both an ongoing formal inquiry into space, volume, balance, and a deep engagement with sensuality, energy, and spirituality., all while elaborating on the neo-concrete and the history of Brazilian modernism. Incorporating organic shapes and materials that engage all five senses, his work draws on the history of Brazilian art and a close interaction with natural forms to create otherworldly and communally-experienced objects and spaces. (more…)

A recently unearthed Michelangelo sketch, considered to be the artist’s first nude, has sold  at Christie’s Paris for a record 23 million euros ($24 million). “Michelangelo has decided to make the figure into something that corresponded more to his aesthetic by making him much more robust and monumental, while at the same time keeping the fragility of the figure, who is exposed and shivering” as he awaits baptism,” says Christie’s Old Masters expert Stijn Alsteens. (more…)

The Jean-Michel Basquiat work from the collection of Japanese billionaire Yusaku Maezawa had a strong return to auction last night at Phillips, where it achieved $85 Million, part of a total sale of  $224.9 million, the highest in the company’s history.  (more…)

Olafur Eliasson at Tanya Bonakdar, all images via Art Observed

Returning this year to The Shed in New York City’s recently redeveloped Hudson Yards, the 2022 edition of Frieze New York is now open, with a range of shows and projects spread throughout the exhibition space that include ambitious solo projects, surveys of gallery rosters, and focused, historical presentations that underscore the fair’s place as both a site for discovery, and one of the premier selling events of the yearly art world calendar. With over 65 dealers on hand from New York and around the globe, the fair signals something of a scale-back from the sizable expanses of the versions held at Randalls Island, yet nevertheless presents a dynamic and immersive program.

Rob Pruitt at Massimo De Carlo

(more…)

Roe Etheridge via Andrew Kreps

With the increasingly lively schedule of a spring art season in New York that feels like it’s finally finding its pacing again, attention and anticipation once again turns to the opening of this year’s edition of Frieze New York, set to open its doors in just a few days at its new home at The Shed. With the fair now nearing 10 years of operation in the city, this year’s edition should once again prove to be a strong note in the spring fair season.  (more…)

The Independent Art Fair will launch a new fair in September this year that will focus on 20th Century Works. “Over the years, there has been a shift, with next-generation dealers showing a more diverse group of artists and territories, geographically, socially, politically,” says Independent director Elizabeth Dee. “They are looking forward and looking back, saying, ‘We need to have a canon that looks like our program.’” (more…)

The second leg of Sotheby’s sale of works from the collection of real estate magnate Harry Macklowe and his ex-wife Linda Macklowe has netted $246.1 million, bringing the total sale price for the collection to a record $922 million, with fees. “Either art is one of the few assets that seem to have a good immunological protection against recession, or inflation is much stronger than we think,” says specialist Loic Gouzer. “The art market feels very close to the spare parts market — good works are hard to find and very expensive.” (more…)

Gabriel Orozco, Spacetime

Third floor of the Gallery Building, 57th Street, between 5th and 6th Avenue, in a sinuous corridor, a discreet sign on one of the doors: SPACETIME. The faint lighting inside sets the tone.

An array of artworks is on view: floating sculptures, abstract paintings, a black suitcase facing a plasticine ball, a tree adorned with paper disks, large prints, small models including detergent caps and yogurt lids, a shoebox on a shelf, flying boomerangs, and a Japanese scroll greet the viewer in the first two rooms. The gallery is intimate, and the experience is total. Gabriel Orozco’s ongoing project is a secret which spreads from word of mouth to fortunate visitors and passersby. The show encapsulates 30 years of work masterfully staged in these tight quarters.

(more…)

Joseph Beuys, Untitled, 1954. All images courtesy of Aidan Chisholm for AO.

Alongside the 59th Venice Biennale, Palazzo Cini presents a retrospective exhibition dedicated to Joseph Beuys, the acclaimed German-born artist, teacher and theorist. Curated by Luca Massimo Barbero, director of the Fondazione Giorgio Cini Institute of Art History, and presented in conjunction with Thaddaeus Ropac gallery, Joseph Beuys: Fine-limbed is displayed on the second floor of the Campo San Vio, the museum and former home containing the historic art collection of Italian patron Vittorio Cini (1885-1977). Featuring thirty eight works with particular attention to Beuys’s early artistic development and drawings, this solo-exhibition explores his engagement with the body as a malleable conceptual and formal framework. (more…)

Josh Sperling, To Be Titled (2022), via Galerie Perrotin

Marking a new iteration of his continued engagement with color, geometry and form, the New York outpost of Galerie Perrotin presents Daydream, a solo exhibition by artist Josh Sperling, organized across three floors of the gallery’s New York space, and on view April 28th through June 11th. The exhibition, Sperling’s largest, marks a return to key motifs in the artist’s practice, developed over the course of the last decade and re-articulated by Sperling in this new body of work. Additionally, in Daydream, the Ithaca-based painter will debut a new series, continuing his investigation into the material possibilities of color and form.

Josh Sperling, To Be Titled (2022), via Galerie Perrotin

(more…)

Michaël Borremans, The Racer (2022), via David Zwirner

On view this month at David Zwirner in New York, the painter Michaël Borremans presents The Acrobat, an exhibition that continues the artist’s meticulous study of the history of painting and the structure and language of painterly composition.Taking place at the gallery’s 525 West 19th Street location in New York, this will be the artist’s seventh solo exhibition with the gallery and his first in New York since 2011.  (more…)

Spencer Sweeney at The Brant Foundation (Installation View)

Just opened this past weekend during the run of fairs over the course of the last week, The Brant Foundation Art Study center presents an exhibition of paintings and works on paper by Spencer Sweeney, the painter and artist whose rich, figurative compositions span a range of modes and practices, from show flyers to portraiture, abstractions to historical interpretations. (more…)

An Andy Warhol portrait of Marilyn Monroe sold for $195 Million last night at a Christie’s charity auction, making it the most expensive American work of art to sell at auction. “We did sell the most expensive painting of the 20th century,” says Christie’s specialist Alex Rotter. “This is a big achievement.” (more…)

The artist Matthew Wong gets a profile in the New Yorker this week, reviewing his work and untimely death at the age of 35.  “Something in me was pushed by an urge to visually reproduce the uncalculated, almost accidental slice of poetry in front of me,” the article quotes him. (more…)

Cornelia Parker has an interview in The Guardian this week, discussing her work, vision, and thoughts on changing her citizenship to Germany. ” I’m thinking of applying for German citizenship because I’m half German. I don’t like feeling not part of Europe,” she says. “I don’t want to be a little Englander.” (more…)

Leonora Carrington, The Chair: Daghda Tuatha dé Danann, 1955. All images courtesy of Aidan Chisholm for AO.

Surrealism and Magic: Enchanted Modernity marks the first major international exhibition focusing on Surrealist engagements with magic, alchemy and the occult. A two-part exhibition first on display at the Peggy Guggenheim Collection in Venice before traveling to Museum Barberini in Potsdam, Surrealism and Magic features approximately 60 works from more than 40 international museums and private collections. The exhibition coincides with the theme of the 59th Venice Biennale, The Milk of Dreams, which draws its title from the otherworldly book by Leonora Carrington, the English-born painter and storyteller whose work features prominently in both the Guggenheim show and the main exhibition of the Biennale. (more…)

Kenny Schachter at Allouche Benias

Taking over once again at Spring Studios in downtown Manhattan, the Independent Art Fair opened its doors this week on a string of new works, curated exhibitions and special projects that once again illustrated its place as a premier fair event in the city. Now over ten years old, the fair has proven itself as something of a special case in the presentation of an art fair.  Smaller in scale and more focused in terms of its gallery selections, the fair’s presentation feels more like a presentation of a series of small gallery shows run side-by-side.  Offering a more nuanced, mellow browsing experience in conjunction with the fair’s invite-only exhibitor structure and immense glass windows, the fair has built a reputation as a boutique event with impressive draw.

Anthony Olubunmi Akinbola at Night Gallery

(more…)

Mickey Lee at One Trick Pony, all images via Art Observed

This weekend marks a return of the New Art Dealers Alliance art fair to New York City, bringing with it a range of exploratory and expressive new work from emerging artists, smaller galleries and new projects. For those looking for new insights and fresh perspectives on contemporary art practice, its hard to ignore the call of the fair, which reprises its role as a central tentpole of a weekend of fairs, even as the city’s string of fairs has split up between several weeks this May. Set up in the sprawling Pier 36 complex on downtown Manhattan’s Eastern edge, the show is a dense pathway through the landscape of new art, mixing playful performance pieces, studied painting and anything in between, making the fair one of the more expansive and freewheeling events of the week. (more…)

Police are searching for a group of 5 people who stole a portfolio of photographs from Fergus McCafferty Gallery in Manhattan.  (more…)