Petra Cortright ‘Niki Lucy Lola Viola’ (Installation View), all images courtesy of Jeff McLane

Currently at The Depart Foundation is NIKI, LUCY, LOLA, VIOLA, a solo exhibition by Los Angeles based artist Petra Cortright, curated by Paul Young. Brightly illuminating the pitch black walls of The Depart Foundation, Cortright presents a series of works that delve into the imaginative depths of the internet-literate modern mind.  Video and animation are approached with careful attention to composition, transforming them into fully immersive presentations that function in both time and space.  As Cortright pushes the limitations of her compositions, she also familiarizes viewers with videos, digital paintings, and flash animations that utilize the aesthetic and landscape of the digital. (more…)

Jean-Michel Basquiat The Unknown Notebooks (Installation View)

Currently on view at the Brooklyn Museum is Basquiat The Unknown Notebooks, the first major exhibition of the writings and sketches from Jean-Michel-Basquiat’s’ rarely seen personal archives. Without a doubt one of the most influential artists of 1980’s Neo-Expressionism, Basquiat worked with music, poetry, and  graffiti before finally arriving at painting. Tagging the walls of downtown New York, Basquiat and his friend Al Diaz presented socially conscious graffiti under the tag name SAMO.  Straying from the visual attributes of popular graffiti, these tags were often full of sayings, quotes and poems in plain script that replaced graffiti’s showmanship with intellectual thought.  Navigating viewers into the personal thoughts of Basquiat with two video documentations and many rarely seen paintings,The Unknown Notebooks is a satisfying mixture of both seeing and reading.

Jean-Michel Basquiat The Unknown Notebooks (Installation View)

Basquiat’s cultural plurality and vivid paintings begin with the socially investigative phrases, symbols and thoughts on these carefully curated pages.  Each of the 160 pages in the exhibition hold a single composition, with blank pages framing the words to a strong effect.  Intent on speaking with political and socio-economic strength, corporate symbols, quotations, crowns, skeletons and teepees hang above words, and at the end of sentences, altering these everyday phrases, while visual techniques, suggesting dichotomies in familiar linguistic comprehension, open more room for unique interpretation.

Jean-Michel Basquiat The Unknown Notebooks (Installation View)

Accompanying the notebooks are a series of paintings that possess a freedom and fearlessness directly related to the artist’s graffiti background.  Words fill the canvas from top to bottom, transforming text into texture and letters back into gestural marks.  Acting as much as a carrier of language as a layer of paint, Basquiat’s words successfully  imported graffiti’s aesthetic energy and social awareness into the white cubes of the art world. The anonymous foundations of his early craft embrace this energetic freedom, vandalism, and self-expression that have come to define youth culture. A contributing figure in the impact of the practice in contemporary art proper, Basquiat’s dedicated approach to symbols and lettering transform this anonymous art form into a new format inside his burgeoning artistic repertoire. 

Jean-Michel Basquiat The Unknown Notebooks (Installation View)

Jean-Michel Basquiat The Unknown Notebooks (Installation View)

The Unknown Notebooks reveals  the underlying elements that made expression a larger concern for Basquiat than fitting into the previously determined aesthetic standards of high art. The primitive and socially aware foundations that have defined his work, and kept its impact almost thirty years later are here at Brooklyn Museum in an almost elemental form, on display through August 23rd.

— R.Williams

Read more:
“Basquiat: The Unknown Notebooks” at Brooklyn Museum [Exhibition Site]
“Review: Jean-Michel Basquiat’s ‘Unknown Notebooks’ at the Brooklyn Museum” [New York Times]
“‘Basquiat: The Unknown Notebooks’ Gives a Window Into Basquiat’s Mind At Its Most Relaxed” [Forbes]

Will Boone, RID (2015), via Art Observed

David Kordansky Gallery is currently presenting Flat World a group show organized by Karma New York, an exhibition of familiar objects rendered in conceptually minimal fashions, cohesively utilizing form as content while transforming formal aesthetic style into subject and material.  Flat World includes works by Richard Artschwager, Tauba Auerbach, Will Boone, Jeff Elrod, Robert Grosvenor, Peter Halley, Lee Lozano, John Mason, and Charlotte Posenensko. Combining the work of artists both young and old, the exhibition spans the years of the 1960’s  through the 1980’s and on to the early 2010’s.  (more…)

Philippe Parreno, Danny La Rue,  H {N)Y P N(Y} OSIS

The Park Avenue Armory has opened its doors this summer to Paris-based artist Philippe Parreno’s largest U.S. installation to date, H {N)Y P N(Y} OSIS, a symphony of events unfolding in scripted and random sequences that constantly blend and transform in shape and context, tuning the entire space as a series of interlocking events.  Sharing authorship, Parreno avidly collaborates with performance artist Tino Sehgal, artist Pierre Hughye and pianist Mikhail Ruby, giving Parreno the role of both artist and director.  (more…)

Cecily Brown, The English Garden (Installation View), Rachel Williams for Art Observed

Currently at Maccarone Gallery are a set of intimately-sized canvases by painter Cecily Brown.  Aggressively captivating beyond their small boarders, the artist’s works here ignite a series of personal experiences as viewers stand inches away from canvases no more than 18 inches in height or width. Organized by novelist and art writer Jim Lewis, The English Garden contains garden scenes rather than traditional landscapes.  Sharp lines inside Brown’s expressionist marks create additional horizons that depict mysterious and often open-ended garden scenes. (more…)

Roni Horn, Gold Field (1980-82), via Sophie Kitching for Art Observed

Taking over the Punta Della Dogana for the dizzying months of the Biennale is Slip of the Tongue, a Danh Vo curated exhibition in collaboration with Palazzo Grassi and The Pinault Collection.  Slip of the Tongue features the work of 35 artists, including pieces from Felix Gonzalez- Torres, Andres Serrano, David Hammons, Sigmar Polke, David Wojnarowicz and the curator himself.  Working in conjunction with a large number of artists, the artist-run show is a first for the exhibition space. (more…)

Jeppe Hein, All We Need Is Inside (Installation View), all photos via Art Observed

Currently on view at 303 Gallery, All We Need is Inside continues Jeppe Hein’s unique combination of reflective, sculptural and painterly works, investigating the powerful and playful combination of art and personal dialogue. The new show is a strong presentation of the artist’s approach to the act of interaction and the phenomenology of viewing art, and plays on notions of calming minimalism while incorporating immersive, challenging works throughout. (more…)

Josh Reames at Johannes Vogt, all photos via Art Observed

NADA New York returned to the edge of the Lower East Side, drawing a diverse, hip crowd to the Basketball City complex. Free in price, NADA once again brought high-quality exhibitors and young artists, combining art from regional and international galleries alongside NYC Downtown heavy hitters.  This year’s preview event was an engaging alternative to the bright lights and high prices of Frieze. Embodying the social, communal nature of the city’s young arts scene, NADA’s Preview day was filled with with conversation, friendly jokes and familial reunions.  Maintaining the lightness of art openings opposed to the serious air of sales oriented art fairs, the galleries, their friends and artists will spend this weekend sipping drinks out of plastic cups while a roster of interdisciplinary performances, conversations and events take place. (more…)

Cy Twombly, Paesaggio (1986), via Sophie Kitching for Art Observed

Undeniably one the greatest artists of 20th century, Cy Twombly‘s work is currently on display at the Ca’ Pesaro International Gallery in Venice, offering an in-depth look at the American artist, and his long residence in Italy.  Combining work from Twombly’s last series produced in 2011, an early painting on wood from 1951, and sculptural work from late in his career, this show delivers on its promise of a look at the artist’s career, while avoiding the demands of an exhaustive survey of his practice.  (more…)

Charline Von Heyl Untitled (1995)

Petzel Gallery is currently inaugurating its new uptown location with early works from contemporary abstract painter Charline Von Heyl. Considered one of the leading female contemporary abstract painters, the New York based artist, known for an eclectic style which admires both the natural and the constructed.  Serving as a window into the painter’s early work and artistic roots, Düsseldorf: Paintings from the early 90’s is a collection of paintings never before shown in the U.S. Shown in Cologne and Munich during 1991 and 1995, these paintings posses a bold approach to abstraction, with their provocative aesthetic strength and impressive historical awareness.  In light of a past show with Petzel in September of 2013, this exhibition provides insight into some of the deeply rooted artistic practices that are still present in Von Heyl’s current works, combining heavy use of illustration and abstraction to powerful effect. (more…)

David Wojnarowicz, Cal (Factory Face), 1984

The group show is an undeniable part of the New York art world’s summer repertoire, dabbling in different styles and scenes while blending together the works of artists ranging from the young to the historical, emerging to the iconic. Among the early entries into the spring group show calendar is Debris currently on view at James Fuentes Gallery in the Lower East Side. This show is packed with familiar, utilitarian, and recognizable objects, many of which can be easily found in the vibrantly fluid New York urban landscape. (more…)