A work by Santiago Sierra, 111 Constructions Made with 10 Modules and 10 Workers (2004). All images by Art Observed unless otherwise noted.
It is not an accident that La Monnaie Vivante (The Living Currency), a performance art event after Pierre Klossowski, is being staged, or rather, experienced in Berlin. A bold experiment in deconstructing reality and fiction, the piece finds its place in a time when much of contemporary debate revolves around performance and participation art, as well as the a re-evaluation of the market value of an art object. La Monnaie Vivante, presented by Pierre Bal-Blanc as part of the 6th Berlin Biennial for Contemporary Art at Hebbel am Ufer, is an evolving and infinitely complex project that can be best characterized by its attempt to deconstruct memory as an archive, and in exhibiting content in an open and unstable format. Expanding upon the long tradition of experiential and participation art of Futurism, Dada, The Situationist International, and Fluxus, La Monnaie Vivante aims to establish a dialogue between current and historical investigation of the body in the fine arts and to activate further exploration of the concept of the body within domains of music, dance, and theater. Thus, this particular section of the Biennale becomes an arena for the possible merging and emancipation of form.
Audiences gathered and shifted in response to the events taking place in and around the theater.
Kathy Grayson mid-smooch. Image courtesy Taylor Derwin for Art Observed.
Currently on view at the new art outfit, The Hole, on 104 Greene St. in Soho is “Not Quite Open for Business.” The show, which opened to much hype last night, runs until August 21st. The Hole is run by former directors at the legendary and now-closed Deitch Projects, Kathy Grayson and Meghan Coleman, in collaboration with former Executive Director at Deitch Projects, Suzanne Geiss. With the gallant goal of filling a hole in the downtown community, they are off to a running start.
The first exhibition is called “Not Quite Open for Business,” a conceptual group show of unfinished art, unfinished poems, and unfinished symphonies. The installation is designed by Taylor McKimens and the show includes over twenty artists from the community.
Left: Ben Jones, Unfinished Video, 2010, single channel DVD, edition of 5. Right: Kunle, Vomit, 2010, acrylic on canvas, 30 x 40 in.
More text, images, and an interview with Kathy Grayson after the jump…
Earlier this week at the New Museum, Rivane Neuenschwander’s first American museum retrospective, “A Day Like Any Other”, opened, finally giving the States the opportunity to view the internationally acclaimed work of this Brazilian-born artist. Art Observed was on site for the three-floor opening, which spans a decade of Neuenschwander’s refined and poetic presentations on how she understands the world.
–> Quilt by Alexandre da Cunha, and Six Billboards by Angus Fairhust, Art Basel. Image via Art Daily, AP Photo/Keystone/Georgios Kefalas.
Yesterday marked the end of the most highly-attended Art Basel to date. The 41st annual contemporary art fair boasted 306 galleries from 36 countries, and AO was on site to peruse the work of some 2,5000 artists. 62,500 dealers, collectors, curators, high-profile shoppers, artists, and art appreciators navigated installations, browsed gallery booths, mingled, and enjoyed the city of Basel. Artists, established and newcomers both, showcased works ranging from Polaroids to performance pieces, paintings to videos, sculptures to large-scale installations. A social and teeming affair with an obvious commercial edge, Basel’s sales were optimistic. Picasso, Warhol, Prince, Hirst, de Kooning, Pollock, and other similarly established artists reigned supreme as the focus of this year’s event. Franck Giraud, a New York dealer, spoke to the New York Times about the lack of prominently featured up-and-comers: “Is it because that’s what the market wants, or is it because dealers didn’t want to take risks? I think it was a bit of both.” Nonetheless, certain galleries used Basel as a platform to introduce new artists and show off their latest signings.
More text, images and related links after the jump… –> (more…)
Team Gallery Booth at Art Basel 2010, Image via Art Basel.
AO is on site at Art Basel, Switzerland, where Wednesday marked the official, public opening of the international show. On the roster was an inaugural Conversation Series speech by Paul McCarthy, an Art Film at Stadtkino Basel, and an Artist’s Talk with Rodney Graham at Kunstmuseum. If the congenial and thronged atmosphere hadn’t tipped us off to the anticipation surrounding this year’s exhibitions, Tuesday’s sales would have been a clear indication.  A $15 million Picasso 1960 plaster maquette, Personnage, was snatched up immediately from Krugier Gallery by one of the VIP guests (an American collector) invited to Basel’s early opening, as was a line drawing by the same artist, one by Egon Schiele, and paintings by Max Ernst and Paul Klee. Sara Kay of the Geneva- and New York-based Kugier Gallery was unable to disclose the buyer of yesterday’s Picasso sale, but ten minutes after the purchase’s confirmation noted to Art Info that “[The] piece went to a very important collector with the best modern masters. This is museum-quality, not trophy-level. It’s a very serious piece.” Skarstedt Gallery also enjoyed a meritorious patronage yesterday, with sales including a Christopher Wool painting, Untitled, for $800,000, a Barbara Kruger photograph for $700,000, a Cindy Sherman piece for $500,000, and two works by George Condo: The Madman and The Colorful Banker, which fetched $375,000 and $225,000, respectively. Hufkens Gallery sold a Louise Bourgeois etching, A Baudelaire (#7), which the late artist completed several months before her death in May, for $650,000 to a European collector. Cheim & Read boasted a lucrative afternoon as well, with sales including a $2 million Joan Mitchell abstraction, a $125,000 Sam Francis drawing, a $100,000 Ghada Amer painting, Paradise, and a 28-strong Bourgeois watercolor series, Les Fleurs. Lisson Gallery sold two Anish Kapoor‘s for $742,000. Richard Prince‘s Student Nurse brought Gagosian $4.2 million, and Paul McCarthy’s bronze suites–Sneezy and Dopey–yielded Hauser & Wirth a combined total of $3 million. Blum & Poe sold a dyptich by Takashi Murakami for $1 million. White Cube reportedly sold six of Damien Hirst‘s new paintings, as well as Hirst’s “Memories of Love,†valued at $3.48 million. Lehmann Maupin sold two neon works by Tracey Emin, each for $74,000.
Damien Hirst, ““Memories of Love,†at White Cube’s booth, sold for $3.48 million. Image by Art Observed.
Art 41 Basel, entrance view. All images by Art Observed unless otherwise noted.
AO was on site yesterday at Art 41 Basel, Switzerland, to see the 56 installations exhibited by the eleventh Art Unlimited, a museum-like forum for sizable and high-priced pieces. Installations of established masters and up-and-comers alike are characteristically oversized this year, with six pieces taking up over 200 square meters. Despite the diversity of work, galleries, and featured artists, a distinct tonal resonance pervades Art Unlimited. The lustrous style favored by Art Unlimited’s formative years gives way to a bold, rustic minimalism. Although an intellectual understatement saturates this year’s Art Basel, Art Unlimited is hardly a quaint affair. Economists and art experts alike are predicting major acquisitions for the international art elite, with a Giacometti and a Bourgeois notably up for grabs.
Field, Ai Weiwei. Ming Dynasty-patterned Chinese ceramic structure in front Art 41 Basel’s entrance, with White Cube‘s Jay Jopling in the background, sitting at the fountain.
Art 41 Basel begins this week in Switzerland. The international art show, featuring approximately 300 galleries and 2,500 artists, coming from 30 countries and every continent, will take place from June 16 to June 20. Media include painting, drawing, sculpture, installation, photography, video, and editioned works. Over 60,000 gallerists, art collectors, art dealers, artists, curators, and reporters will flock to the banks of the Rhine, at the border between Switzerland, France, and Germany, to view the works of established masters and up-and-coming talents alike.
Video still from Episode 3, artwork by Renzo Martens
One of the highlights of the current Berlin Biennial is the work of a young Dutch artist – Renzo Martens. Titled Episode 3 (2008), Martens’s 90-minute video constitutes a challenging portrait of contemporary media and capitalist exploitative foundation that continues to run a deep division between North and South. Martens takes a candid, often tragically ironic, approach in exposing and criticizing First-World self-righteous image.
More text and related images after the jump… (more…)
Oranienplatz 17, Berlin – Kreuzberg. All images by Art Observed unless otherwise noted.
Of the circuit of international biennials, Berlin’s event remains one of the most unpredictable and fresh contemporary art forums around. Opening to the general public on June 11th, the Kathrin Rhomberg-curated Berlin Biennal is titled: what is waiting out there. The exhibition cites its crux in the ambiguity of reality, space, and time: out there. Spreading its reach across six venues–4 in Kreuzberg district, 2 in Mitte)–the Biennial unfolds into an artistic treasure hunt, both in terms of the pieces it presents, and in the unusual environments Rhomberg has selected for the exhibitions. Berlin’s eclectic atmosphere serves as a natural complement to the aesthetics and emotions of the show.
Sprawling across the 2nd floor Oranienplatz 17 gallery is a work by Marcus Geiger, titled Kommune. Image via Welt.de
Half Gallery, opening reception. Image by ArtObserved.
AO was on site June 8th for the opening of “A Ways A Way,” the new exhibition at Half Gallery. Curated by Meredith Darrow and Devendra Banhart, A Ways A Way offers synoptic views of work by artists Scott Campbell, William Eadon, Kevin Long, Megan Marrin, Keegan McHargue, Fabrizio Moretti, Angeline Rivas, Adam Tullie, and Banhart himself. Coming from various corners of the artistic field, these men and women form a motley roster of familiar names: in addition to be being creators of fine art, Campbell is a renowned tattoo artist, Eadon is a deisgner, Long skateboards and plays guitar, Moretti is the drummer for The Strokes and Little Joy, Rivas and Tullie co-own Cavern Collection, Banhart is a singer-songwriter, Marrin works in mixed-media, and McHargue choreographs. In attendance last night were Cynthia Rowley, Kathy Grayson, and a repletion of artists, gallerists, friends, and passerby. Viewers spilled jocundly onto the surrounding sidewalk, chatting and enjoying a lovely night outside of the diminutive, buzzing gallery.
Anonymous Portrait, Fabrizio Moretti, 2010. Image by Oskar Proctor for ArtObserved.
Text, images, words form the artists, and an interview after the jump… (more…)
Installation view, “Stranger Than Fiction.” All photographs by Keith Lew.
Last Friday, June 4th, ArtObserved was on site for the opening of “Stranger than Fiction,” the MFA thesis show of photography students of the Yale University School of Art. Curated by the co-founders of Helac & Wirth Art Advisory Soraja Helac and Sabrina Wirthand, the show is hosted at artist-run gallery space 25CPW on the Upper West Side. The opening was packed with dealers, collectors, and art students alike. The MFA program is directed by Tod Papageorge and taught by artists Gregory Crewdson and Richard Benson. The nine graduates come from eclectic backgrounds and are working with diverse subjects and distinctive styles.
Artist Paul RamÃrez Jonas at the Key to the City kiosk in Times Square – all images by Lucy Kissel for ArtObserved
Together with the public arts organization Creative Time, New York-based artist Paul RamÃrez Jonas has reinvented the civic honor of bestowing a “Key to the City” for one of the summer’s most exciting public art programs. Through June 27, 25,000 custom-made keys will be exchanged between everyday citizens in a bestowal ceremony at the Key to the City kiosk located at the heart of Times Square – catapulting a citywide exploration of secret doors, community gardens, graveyards and hidden deposit boxes at over 20 sites throughout the five boroughs of New York City. Mayor Bloomberg – who normally awards the ceremonial key to distinguished heroes and esteemed visitors – received the first one yesterday. “Every day, millions of New Yorkers and visitors from around the world interact with one another in every neighborhood” Bloomberg said, noting how the project “celebrates those interactions by helping bring a tradition typically reserved for special occasions to our everyday lives. The keys….will provide New Yorkers with a new way to experience some of our cultural organizations, city landmarks and small businesses.†Participants are encouraged to share their photos of the project on the Key to the CityFlickr Page – a special prize from DKNY and a Creative Time book will be awarded to every person who takes a photo of themselves at all of the sites. Information on public hours, a map of the various sites and how to get to the kiosk can be found on the Key to the City website.
More images and a round-up of related links after the jump…. (more…)
Conrad Shawcross, The Nervous System (Inverted), 2010. Organized and presented by the Pace Gallery. Installed at The Sculpture Garden, 590 Madison Avenue. May 10 – July 10, 2010. Wood, metal, acrylic chord, and mechanical system. Installation dimensions variable. Image via ArtObserved.
Conrad Shawcross: The Nervous System (Inverted) is an evolutionary piece that combines art and invention, a sculpture that completes itself as the audience looks on. At 590 Madison Avenue, New York, 162 multicolored bobbins suspend 50 feet in the air, feeding rope into motorized contraptions.  The inconspicuously gradual weaving and intertwining, set against the glassy atrium ceiling, occurs at multiple levels of the piece. The ropes combine in groups of three until one entity remains: a thick, colorfully woven rope that hangs to the floor, where it passes through a pulley and coils finally in a heap. The complex machinery will ultimately produce one sturdy, 1,7000-foot braided rope, which will be cut into pieces and sold at the exhibition’s close.
Conrad Shawcross, The Nervous System (Inverted), 2010.
On Wednesday night, AOL inc. kicked-off their 25th Anniversary celebrations in New York with an intimate ceremony at the New Museum to launch Project on Creativity – a new initiative spearheaded by a series of portraits of the innovators and creatives photographed by American artist Chuck Close – a select few, including images Dalai Lama, segway inventor Dean Kamen, artist Kara Walker, director Gus Van Sant and the actress Claire Danes, were displayed in the Seventh-Floor Sky Room at the Museum which was packed with the members of the New York society world including Andy and Kate Spade, Lisa Anastos, Genevieve Jones, Jennifer Missoni, Will Cotton, Waris Ahlualia, Glenn O’Brien, Bill Powers and AOL CEO Tim Armstrong. The ground floor of the museum was dedicated to a high-tech display of original artwork by four artists from around the world who are part of a larger group of 41 young artists who are to be featured on AOL’s homepage as well as AOLArtists.com – a new destination where users can learn more about how AOL is using creative expression across their sites and the artists who created involved. In addition to these initiatives, AOL representatives used the evening as an opportunity to announce plans for 25 for 25 – a scholarship program, which will grant 25 $25,000 scholarships to tomorrow’s journalists, artists, illustrators, chefs, producers, videographers, and editors. The evening continued for guests who headed a few blocks north to the Bowery hotel for the official after party which was headlined by an intimate performance John Legend.
French Kiss, 2009, Mia Westerlund Roosen, Park Avenue Mall. Image by Art Observed.
Mia Westerlund Roosen’s stucco and foam sculptures landscape the Park Avenue Malls between 52nd and 54th Street, New York City. Presented by the Betty Cunningham Gallery and the New York City Department of Parks & Recreation, the exhibition features new works Juggler, Baritone, and French Kiss. Sensual lines, soft textures, and elegantly cast shadows juxtaposed with towering buildings, such as the Seagram and the Citigroup headquarters, add a sense of vulnerability and calm to these bustling streets.
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Christian Boltanski’s “No Man’s Land” at Park Avenue Armory. Image by Art Observed.
AO was on site at the Park Avenue Armory’s second annual commission, which is showing until June 13. Â This year’s installment features Christian Boltanski, in an ambitious new work that fills the 55,000 square-foot Drill Hall. Â It’s called “No Man’s Land,” and it involves clothing, metal cranes, and the amplified sounds of its visitors’ beating hearts.
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Walk-through of Christian Boltanski’s “No Man’s Land” at Park Avenue Armory. Image by Art Observed.
More images, video, and story after the jump… –> (more…)
In a recent discussion with writer Jonathan Lethem at Cooper Union, Patti Smith was asked if it was possible for young artists to come to New York City and find the path to stardom that she did. In response, Smith told the crowd, “New York has closed itself off to the young and the struggling.” On Sunday, May 23, PS1 MoMA opened the third iteration of its quinquennial celebration of emerging artists who live and work in New York – Greater New York – which will run through October 20, 2010. This year’s show features some 68 artists which marks a steep fall from the 160 artists in the 2005 edition, perhaps adding some truth to Smith’s words.
According to the press release, this year’s show – overseen by P.S.1 director Klaus Biesenbach, Museum of Modern Art drawings curator Connie Butler, and P.S.1 curatorial adviser Neville Wakefield – will center “largely on the process of creation and the generative nature of the artist’s studio.” Leading up to the opening of Greater New York, artists including Franklin Evans, Dani Leventhal, and Kalup Linzy utilized PS1 as studio space to create new work on-site. This sort of artistic production will be ongoing throughout the exhibition in locations like the Boiler Room, where Whitney Biennialist Aki Sasamoto has invited the artist Saul Melman to collaborate. The Bruce High Quality Foundation also engages with this notion with their commission to develop an “art pedestal exchange program,†a seemingly minimal installation that groups beautifully refined new “art pedestals†that will be offered to art schools in exchange for their old worn pedestals. Over the course of the exhibition what began as a pristine white installation will transform into an amalgam of used exhibition furniture.
Conrad Ventur’s “This Is My Life (Shirley Bassey)”
More text, videos, related links and a full photo story after the jump…
Claude Monet “Le pont japonaisâ€, 1918-24. Oil on canvas, 35 x 39 1/2 inches, (89 x 100 cm). W.1924, MM 5091. Musee Marmatton Monet, Paris. Photo courtesy Gagosian Gallery.
Erase from your mind what you knew about waterlilies. Currently on view at Gagosian Gallery’s location on 522 West 21st Street is Claude Monet: Late Works. Straying from the artist’s better-known pastel-infused palette, the exhibition brings together 27 late canvasses with bold hues and scintillating color combinations. Many of these paintings were never exhibited in the artist’s lifetime, and some remained hidden as recently as the 1950s. Beautifully curated by Monet scholar Paul Hayes Tucker, this exhibition follows in the line of museum-quality shows the Gagosian has mounted in recent years. The gallery’s walls, transformed into elegant lavenders and greys, serve as the perfect backdrop for these exquisitely raw landscapes.
Country Life, Jack Pierson (2010) goes under the hammer at White Columns Live Benefit Auction, 2010. All photos by Oskar Proctor for ArtObserved.
The generosity was very evident on Saturday, May 15, when a crowd of artists, collectors and other art-world regulars packed into White Columns‘ West Village headquarters for the not-for-profit’s Annual Benefit Auction. Organized by the gallery to benefit their ongoing mission to support and expose emerging artists, the evening showcased a live auction that included work by long-time supporters of the gallery such as Anne Collier, Peter Doig, Adam McEwen, Rob Pruitt and Rirkrit Tiravanija. The live portion of the sale was complimented by a silent auction of work donated by coveted artists David Byrne, Spencer Sweeney, Andy Coolquitt and Joan Jonas, alongside contributions from newcomers such as Amy Yao and Ned Vena.
The top lots from the evening’s live auction were Peter Doig’s Musicians of the British Empire, a painting dedicated to his long-time friend Billy Childish, which sold for $62,000, and Mary Heilmann’sFor Malcolm, another of the night’s music-inspired lots, which earned $22,000. Other highlights in the live sale included Wade Guyton’sUntitled, one of the sale’s lots to incorporate a record sleeve, fetched $9,500 and Anne Collier’s photograph of two copies of Norman Mailer’s book ‘Marilyn’ on her studio floor raised $19,000. The remainder of the evening was given over to the silent auction, during which time attendees can jot their bidder numbers on clipboards next to works. The works that generated the most frenzied competition in this section were the contributions of Andy Coolquit, Shio Kusaka, and Tauba Auerbach. White Columns’ famous xerox prints – 11†x 8 ½†prints produced in signed editions of 50 copies – saw great competition, most notable in this category were Ann Craven’sHeart of Gold, Adam McEwen’s Unisex and Elizabeth Peyton’s Flaubert in Egypt (After Delacroix). Another work to be picked up through the silent auction was Nigel Cooke’stitle, (2007-08) which was purchased for $6,800, approximately $4,000 over its estimated retail value.
White Columns Director, Matthew Higgs, commands the impressive sale of Peter Doig’s Musicians of the British Empire, Peter Doig (2010) Retail value: $25,000+ Price Realized: $62,000
More images and video of live auctions after the jump….. (more…)
Fueled by 22 choice works from the collection of the embattled CNET founder Halsey Minor, which sold for $21.1 million, Phillips de Pury & Company’s evening sale last night wrapped-up a hugely successful week of contemporary art auctions in New York. Overall, the boutique-sized auction house sold 58 of the 74 lots on offer for a grand total of $37.9 million. Unlike its uptown rivals, Phillips saw no lots make over $5 million with only seven exceeding the $1 million mark. Nevertheless, the result is superior to the auction house’s last Contemporary evening sale in New York in November 2009, when they managed to bring in only $7,099,250. While a few familiar faces featured in the crowd, including Miami collector Donald Rubell and the fashion mogul Marc Jacobs, most of the action was dominated by anonymous telephone bidders – with the majority of winning bids being taken by Michaela de Pury and Michael McGinnis, head of Phillips’s contemporary art department worldwide.
In March this year Halsey Minor was instructed by a court order to give up dozens of artworks to satisfy a $21.6 million delinquent loan to ML Private Finance L.L.C., an affiliate of Bank of America’s Merrill Lynch. While last night’s sales may cover the majority of this payment, Minor is also under a court order to pay Sotheby’s a further $6.64 million in a dispute over three artworks he had purchased at auction and later refused to pay for. Meanwhile, in the state of California, a trial is underway on issues between him and Christie’s auction house. More works from Minor’s collection are coming on the block at Phillips today and on June 9.
More images, related links and a full round-up of the sale after the jump…. (more…)
Untitled, Maurizio Cattelan (2001) Estimate: $3–4 million Price Realized: $7.9 million
Last night, Sotheby’s confirmed the art market’s return to form as 50 of the 53 lots on offer sold at its Contemporary art sale. Tallying $189,969,000 in sales, well over the house’s $162 million pre-sale estimate, 39 works fetched more than one million dollars, with two selling for more than $30 million, and seven making more than $5 million. Further to this, the sale achieved the two top lots achieved so far at New York’s Contemporary sales week, surpassing Christie’s sale of Jasper Johns Flag for $29 million on Tuesday night – Andy Warhol’sSelf-Portrait more than doubled its high estimate to sell for $32,562,500, and an UntitledMark Rothko painting from 1961 soared over the high estimate to sell for $31,442,500.
Anne Truitt, Pith 1969. Courtesy of Matthew Marks Gallery.
Currently on view at Matthew Marks Gallery are sixteen sculptures by Anne Truitt (1921-2004), marking the first time her works have been shown in New York in twenty years. At first glance, the sculptures appear to align with the Minimalist ethos of Donald Judd, Robert Morris, and Mel Bochner, and indeed, Truitt was championed by Clement Greenberg in the sixties. However, unlike the industrial methods of the Minimalists, her sculptures are hand-made investigations of color as a sensation, and how color relates to the sculptural presence. Truitt explained that her “idea was not to get rid of life but to keep it and to see what it is.”
Jasper Johns’ Flag from the estate of author Michael Crichton fetched a record $28.6 million
Last night Christie’s delivered a top result of $231,907,000 in its New York contemporary-art evening sale, easily hurdling the pre-sale estimate of $142.9 – 207.4 million and making it Christie’s biggest New York contemporary sale since May 2008, which totaled $331.4 million. This remarkable total was powered by a trove of 31 choice works from the estate of Michael Crichton, the author of bestselling science-fiction thrillers like Jurassic Park, who died of throat cancer in 2008. In total the Crichton sale fetched a handsome $93.3 million – exceeding pre-sale expectations by $23.7 million, making it one of the most successful single-owner sales ever. The group’s top performer was Jasper JohnsFlag (est. $10 – 15 million) which sold to New York dealer Michael Altman for $23.7 million.Fifty-one of the evening’s 79 works offered sold for over one million dollars, and of those, 5 cracked the 10 million dollar mark. Remarkably, only five lots went unsold, or six percent by lot and a tiny two percent by value; 5 artist records were set.The geographic breakdown of buyers according to lots sold saw the United States take the lead with 74% of works going to Americans – unsurprising giving the depth of bidding witnessed in the sales room. Europe accounted for 21 percent of the sales and 0% went to Asian buyers – in complete contrast to last week’s sales of Impressionist and Modern art which were dominated by the Asian market.
Bidders squeezed into a packed salesroom last night at Christie’s – many being forced to stand.
More images, text and related links after the jump….. (more…)
