Anne Imhof, the German artist known for her large-scale, immersive performance pieces, returned to New York after nearly ten years with Doom: House of Hope, her largest show to date. Curated by Klaus Biesenbach and running for a week at The Park Avenue Armory, Doom brought together a cast of nearly sixty actors, dancers, and musicians into a three-hour marathon performance loosely based on Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet. Here, however, the story was told in reverse—beginning with the doomed lovers’ suicide and culminating with their first encounter—set not in Verona but in an unplaceable dreamscape of American youth.

Chronos, the latest solo exhibition of works by the painter Maria Kreyn opened during the inaugural week of the 60th Venice Biennale, showcasing a series of ten new large-scale paintings. Set against the backdrop of the historic St. George’s Anglican Church in Venice, the paintings depict brooding tempests – the proverbial meeting of sky and sea at once turbulent and serene. Influenced by mythology and the sublime, Kreyn’s works are meditations on the fantastic forces of the natural world, as well as humanity’s inextricable entwinement with it. The storied church setting heightens the sense of the mystical and transcendent, turning each painting into a kind of altarpiece that invites prolonged contemplation.

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Cover images courtesy of Ola Wilk via Maria Kreyn; and Ellen Frances.

For its first artist-on-artist interview, Art Observed sat down with New York-based painter Maria Kreyn and multidisciplinary artist and performer Ellen Frances to talk about their individual practices and their collaboration for the opening of Kreyn’s solo show Untune a String at The Hole in Tribeca earlier this month. In their conversation with Art Observed, the two artists discuss the importance of multidisciplinary collaboration, the enduring resonance of classical artistic and literary forms, and their visions for the future. (more…)

All Photography by Aleph Molinari for Art Observed

Through her multi-media sculptures and large-scale installations, Polish-German artist Alicja Kwade explores natural and social systems and the underlying structures of reality. Her precise and technically complex works are physical representations of order, scale, and systems that extend from the subatomic to the celestial. Integrating physics and mathematics into her formal language, Kwade creates ethereal – and almost improbable – spatial compositions.

Art Observed sat down with Kwade to talk about her formative experience growing up in Germany at the cusp of political upheaval, the philosophical approach to her work, and her latest exhibition Silent Matter at OMR in Mexico City. In the minimal, brutalist space of the gallery, Kwade created a delicate universe entirely of her own. (more…)

Portrait of the artist by Aleph Molinari for Art Observed.

Israeli-Colombian visual artist Orly Anan mixes elements of theater, dance, performance, and costume design into surrealist neo-kitsch compositions. She recently premiered her first short film Ein Sof during Mexico City’s art week Zona MACO, in partnership with MATERIA and Mubi. Anan describes the film as a ‘Kabbalistic circus’ that blends elements of carnival, kabuki, and sacred numerology into an explosion of colors and symbolism. Art Observed caught up with the artist to talk about her film, her practice, and the esoteric sources of her creative inspiration. (more…)

(Portrait of the artist by Aleph Molinari for Art Observed)

Painter, sculptor, and multi-disciplinary artist Zhivago Duncan reinterprets the myths and archetypes of antiquity to construct an overarching story of the development of human consciousness. Blending mythology and elements of science fiction, he creates elaborate allegorical paintings, kinetic machines, and large-scale raku sculptures that together form his own cosmogony. Zhivago’s multi-ethnic background could be a clue to his desire to hybridize elements of different cultures: his mother escaped Syria to settle in the United States, and his father is of Danish descent. Zhivago’s upbringing was nomadic, taking him from Terre Haute, Indiana to Malta, Saudi Arabia, Berlin, and finally Mexico City, where he currently works and resides. Art Observed met Zhivago at his studio, where he walked us through the inner workings of his mythical worlds and landscapes. (more…)

Anne Imhof, Avatar (Installation View), all images by Aleph Molinari for Art Observed.

Continuing her experimentation with spatial arrangement and irreverent institutional takeovers, Anne Imhof has transformed the uptown gallery space of Galerie Buchholz for her new exhibition, Avatar. A simulacra of an institution of learning, the exhibition plunges the viewer into an alternate universe that embodies the industrialized cut-and-paste production of knowledge and identity. The exhibit  an avatar for these spaces of socialization, and a representation of the avatars people adopt while navigating  them. Presenting physical signifiers in opposition to surreal juxtapositions of other works, the show explores the role of space in the production of power, sites of cultural socialization, and its interrelations to social constructs.  (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…)

“Lure” by Ruben Ortiz Torres at The Last Tenant (Photography by Aleph Molinari)

Known for taking over unique architectural spaces for their exhibitions, MASA is a nomadic art and design collective co-founded in Mexico City by Age Salajõe, Hector Esrawe, and Brian Thoreen in 2018. It has since evolved into a collaborative creative platform, each year presenting stellar exhibitions in different locations throughout  Mexico City, as well as Oaxaca and an upcoming show in New York City. Its itinerant nature allows MASA to play with space and architecture, form and function, and to cleverly present art in unique locations away from the confines of the traditional white-cube gallery space. MASA collaborates with artists, architects, and designers by challenging them to create functional works that blur the line between art and design.  What ties together the young and established artists at MASA’s exhibitions is a deeply-felt sense of Mexicanness: multi-faceted and complex, constantly changing but never unmoored from its vibrant history. Their exhibitions are related to the history of the site and are often meditations on time and memory, and how the spaces we inhabit serve as vessels for both. (more…)

Pedro Coronal, Galeria de Arte Mexicano, all images by Anfisa Vrubel for Art Observed

The post-pandemic edition of ZonaMACO, the largest art fair in Latin America, came back this year with a revitalized and vibrant energy. Its location, Mexico City, has become a focal point in the art world and a haven for artists looking for creative possibilities. The Art Week brought together a dynamic assortment of art world insiders—emerging galleries and established cultural institutions, young artists and designers, and the usual cool kids on the scene. Surrounding the fair, the satellite events were bursting with activity, from gallery and museum openings to performances and parties, and the classic lunches at Contramar. (more…)