Oscar Murillo, manifestation (2020-2022), via Gagosian

This summer at its Grosvenor Hill, London location, Gagosian presents To Bend the Ear of the Outer World: Conversations on contemporary abstract painting, an exhibition of new and recent works by more than forty artists from the Americas, United Kingdom, and Germany. The exhibition has been organized by guest curator Gary Garrels, who, in collaboration with the artists, has selected a single painting by each, with most works presented here for the first time. This is Gagosian’s first exhibition to be sited across its two galleries in Mayfair, at Grosvenor Hill and Davies Street. (more…)

Bob Thompson, An Allegory (1964), via 52 Walker

Marking its seventh exhibition downtown, 52 Walker has opened So let us all be citizens, an exhibition devoted to the short but fruitful career of Bob Thompson. Spotlighting the artist’s jazz-influenced style and consideration for color, line, and figuration—developed during a period when abstraction was the dominant trend in American art—this intimate exhibition pays homage to the friction Thompson generated between his proximity to and deviation from cited and canonical sources.

Bob Thompson, So let us all be citizens (Installation View), via 52 Walker

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Jordan Wolfson, Untitled (2020), via Gagosian

Opening in conjunction with the hustle and bustle of fair week in Basel, artist Jordan Wolfson presents a selection of works at Gagosian that continue his incisive and often wry investigations of violence, pop culture, and constructions of identity. Pairing painted-over photographs of the late John Fitzgerald Kennedy Jr. with decals bearing the graphic image of a red rose and the forbidding slogan “Describing how a dog was slaughtered,” Wolfson juxtaposes and mischievously negates potent signifiers of optimism, infallibility, and love.

Jordan Wolfson, Untitled (2020), via Gagosian

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Uri Aran, I’m a Restaurant (Installation View), via Andrew Kreps

On view this month at Andrew Kreps in New York, artist Uri Aran opens a presentation of new works united under the enigmatic title I’m a Restaurant. Exploring pluralities of voice, modalities of form, and a perspective on narrative and the artist that invites vagaries and unclear frameworks.Aran leaves exposed the threads of the mysterious, unstable process by which parts turn to wholes, drawing on traditions of assemblage, ready-made, and process art to create works that are ambiguous and ever-shifting, changing with each viewer, with each viewing. (more…)

The Met is training a group of military officers to work at saving historical artifacts and artworks in Ukraine. “The weaponization of art history,” says Alison Hokanson, associate curator of European paintings, “is the weaponization of objects but also the weaponization of the stories that are told through these objects.” (more…)

The last portrait by Gustav Klimt goes to auction next month, anticipated to fetch upwards of £65 million. “Many of those works, certainly the portraits for which he is best known, were commissions,” says Helena Newman, Sotheby’s worldwide head of impressionist and modern art.”This, though, is something completely different – a technical tour de force, full of boundary-pushing experimentation, as well as a heartfelt ode to absolute beauty.” (more…)

Brett Littman is leaving his post as head of the Noguchi Museum, Artforum reports. “On behalf of the board of Trustees, we would like to extend our gratitude to Brett for his contributions to the museum,” said board cochairs Spencer Bailey and Susan Kessler. “Brett leaves the Museum in a strong position. We wish him great success in his future endeavors.” (more…)

Maurizio Cattelan won his  copyright infringement lawsuit this week after accusations by another artist claiming Cattelan plagiarized his work involving a taped-up banana. “To find otherwise would further limit the already finite number of ways in which a banana may be legally taped to a wall without infringing on Morford’s work,” said U.S. District Judge Robert Scola. (more…)

The U.S. will rejoin UNESCO and pay back dues, the Associated Press reports. “It’s a historic moment for UNESCO,” says UNESCO director general, Audrey Azoulay. “It’s also an important day for multilateralism.″ (more…)

Alice Neel at Victoria Miro, all images via Art Observed

Once again opening in the early weeks of summer in the Swiss city of Basel, the Art Basel art fair kicked off its opening previews early this week, with crowds flocking to the Messe Basel for another week of works on view, films, talks, and other projects. Preparing for its public opening with an expansive offering of works from European galleries and those further afield, the fair continues its reputation as a flagship for the international fair brand, with over 200 leading galleries and more than 4,000 artists from five continents.

Danielle Orchard at Perrotin

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The Albright-Knox Gallery has reopened in Buffalo after a long renovation and rehang of its collection. The opening show featured its permanent collection prominently to showcase the new space designed by OMA. (more…)

A Dutch Supreme Court has ordered museum artifacts borrowed from Crimea returned to Ukraine, maintaining the works are part of the nation’s cultural heritage. (more…)

Channel 4 in the UK is facing criticism after emails pointed to warnings that a work attributed to Banksy and sold for £250,000 was being billed as not genuine by another company. (more…)

Hannah Gadsby’s Picasso show at the Brooklyn Museum has already seen impressive attendance, up 51 percent over the weekend before, the New York Times reports. (more…)

Yayoi Kusama, I Spend Each Day Embracing Flowers (2023), via David Zwirner

On this month, I Spend Each Day Embracing Flowers,  brings together a body of new of works by Japanese artist Yayoi Kusama at David Zwirner featuring new paintings and sculptures elaborating on her signature motifs of pumpkins and flowers, and a new Infinity Mirror Room. Presented across the gallery’s 519, 525, and 533 West 19th Street locations in New York, this will mark ten years since Kusama’s first solo show with David Zwirner in 2013 and will be one of her largest gallery exhibitions to date. (more…)

Hernan Bas, Conceptual artist #23 (Popsicle stick sculptor; a purist, he consumes his materials in devotion to his craft, leading to his inevitable last work) (2023), via Lehmann Maupin

Lehmann Maupin presents the latest works by Hernan Bas this summer; The Conceptualists: Vol. II, an exhibition of new work that continues a project begun in 2021. Bas is best known for his narratively rich scenes that feature a wide-range of references spanning art and literature, popular culture, kitsch, the occult, religion, and mythology. Across his works, Bas seeks to defamiliarize everyday experience through humor, revealing the surreal and absurd lurking beneath the mundane. In the Conceptualists series, Bas marries his personal appreciation of conceptual artists with his ongoing exploration of eccentricity.  (more…)

Luc Tuymans, Smiley (2022), via David Zwirner

Open this month at David Zwirner Gallery’s  537 West 20th Street location in New York, Belgian artist Luc Tuymans presents a selection of new works that marks his seventeenth show with the gallery. Mining a hazy, liminal technique that results in works that defy easy categorization, Tuymans continues the exploration of the act of seeing, and reflecting that image in his work.  (more…)

Kehinde Wiley, Portrait of Daniel Paiol López (2023), via Sean Kelly

Sean Kelly in New York presents a body of new works by painter Kehinde Wiley this month, inviting the artist to showcase a series of paintings that continue his interpretation of the western canon and its politics of representation and perspective. Informed by Wiley’s focus on the evolution of Black culture globally, the show draws on the artist’s recent visits to Cuba, and explores the phenomenon of the carnivalesque in Western culture. Referencing a diverse range of artists, the circus, and the power of street performance and dance, the HAVANA paintings focus on the circus as a site of disruption for the rational mind and circus performers who embrace a dynamic and vibrant way of living and being in the world.

Kehinde Wiley, Misahel Hernández Study (2023), via Sean Kelly

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Emily Ludwig Shaffer, Mary (2023), via Galerie Pact

This month in Paris, artist Emily Ludwig Shaffer presents a body of new works at Galerie Pact that continue an expressive and iterative approach to the language and canon of art history, interpreting and recontextualizing classical signifiers as a colorful and densely layered series of canvases. Using the work as a space to reclaim the woman’s body from the male gaze, her pieces draw on human form and its relation to history to create new modes and representations.  (more…)