Armand Doré, Nude, Smoking and Reclining (c. 1860-65)

The French Exit group show brought to life by the curatorial eye of Mattias Vendelmans invites a dialogue between artists and their muses, considering just what happens when one skips the farewell in search of something more enticing after dark. How does the basic notion of privacy and vulnerability continue to pique our curiosity? Spanning works from oil paintings and sculptures to pen and paper, from Baudelairean Paris to the suburbs of 1930s Stockholm, an ongoing exploration of organic tenderness and bestiality in human nature unfolds.

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“To approach this new chapter differently, instead of viewing it as a carte blanche, we embraced the challenge of considering the many existing peripheral elements while exploring the centre as a void,” begins Minsuk Cho: this year’s chosen designer of the annual Serpentine Pavilion. With a background in hospitality, commercial and visual art projects across South Korea, Mass Studio’s founder brings a layered understanding of human interaction with one’s environment to this year’s installation.

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Night Post, ROCI Mexico (1985)

From April 24 to August 3, 2024, Thaddaeus Ropac’s Ely House in London hosts an exhibition of rarely shown works by the late Robert Rauschenberg. This is the first gallery survey of the Rauschenberg Overseas Culture Interchange (ROCI) project since it ended in 1991.
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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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Movimento dos Artistas Huni Kuin at Venice Biennale 2024

The 60th International Art Exhibition, known as the Venice Biennale, is set to run from April 20 to November 24, 2024. This year’s theme, “Stranieri Ovunque” or “Foreigners Everywhere,” is curated by Adriano Pedrosa, marking a significant milestone as the first South American curator of the Biennale Arte. The event is hosted at Venice’s historic Giardini and Arsenale venues, which have been central to the Biennale since its earliest editions. The theme explores the concepts of intersectionality, displacement, and the reevaluation of geographical margins in the art world.  (more…)

Gabriel Orozco at kurimanzutto, Mexico City, 2024

The Vitruvian Man (c. 1487) is a study of the proportions of the human body inscribed within the absolute forms of a circle and a square, using metalpoint, pen and ink, with touches of watercolour on paper. One of Leonardo Da Vinci’s best-known works, the drawing is stored in the Gallerie dell’Accademia di Venezia in Italy, and only rarely exhibited due to its fragility as a work on paper.

Influenced by the theories of Roman architect Vitruvius in his treaty “De Architectura” (1st century BC), Da Vinci drew a male figure with his hands and feet touching the perimeter of a circle, his navel at its precise center. Another position is superimposed with his feet standing on the base of a square while his arms extend outwards, the area directly below the navel as the center of the square, per Da Vinci’s own findings.

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Yoko Ono at Tate Modern

“Yoko Ono: Music of the Mind” exhibition at Tate Modern, is on until September 1st and is an expansive journey through Yoko Ono’s artistic legacy, blending music, installations, photography, and interactive performance art. This landmark showcase, the UK’s most extensive collection of Ono’s work, spans her groundbreaking contributions from the early 1950s to today, highlighting her role as a pioneer in avant-garde art circles worldwide.
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Koons at Skarstedt

From 1st March to 25th May 2024, Skarstedt’s London Gallery presents a solo exhibition featuring the work of American artist Jeff Koons. The show includes five mural-sized paintings crafted between 2001 and 2013 drawn from Koons’ series: Easyfun-Ethereal, Antiquity, and Popeye. (more…)

Tomas Saraceno at Tanya Bonakdar

At Tanya Bonakdar Gallery in Los Angeles, “Live(s) on Air” is on from February 24 to May 4, 2024, featuring new works by Tomás Saraceno. This exhibit explores the theme of eco-social interdependence with a collection that includes sculpture, works on paper, and film. It aims to engage viewers in thinking about the impact of humans on the environment and paths toward coexistence on Earth. (more…)

Frieze LA 2024 at Santa Monica Airport

AO was on the ground at the fifth edition of Frieze Los Angeles, held from February 29th to March 3rd, 2024, at Santa Monica Airport, which brought together over 95 galleries exhibiting contemporary art from various regions, showcasing the city’s role in the global art landscape.  (more…)

Izumi Kato at Perrotin

AO is on-site at Perrotin, which inaugurated its new Los Angeles gallery with an exhibition featuring Japanese artist Izumi Kato, running from February 28 to March 23, 2024. Kato’s work, known for incorporating elements of both ancient traditions and modern themes, aligns with Los Angeles’s landscape, which includes both natural and urban environments. The artist’s figures, created in his Tokyo studio, are displayed in a setting that reflects the coexistence of contrasting elements, a theme prevalent in Kato’s art.

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Anahuacalli Museum Mexico City

AO was on-site at ZONAMACO Arte Contemporáneo, the largest art fair in Latin America, which celebrated its 20th anniversary from February 7-11th, 2024. Initially launched in 2002 by Zélika García, the fair soon relocated from Monterrey to Centro Citibanamex in Mexico City where it holds four events annually. Since its inception, ZONAMACO has expanded to feature 208 exhibitors from 25 countries, displaying a diverse range of artworks, from modern and contemporary, to design, to an estate section.

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Photo from Untitled website

Untitled Art Fair revisited its Miami Beach location, again on the beach just off Ocean Drive.  The fair opened on Wednesday the 6th of December and concluded on Sunday the 10th. The fair featured curated presentations, live events, artist performances, and more. This edition hosted 160 exhibitors from 38 countries, showcasing works by nearly 600 artists. The programming encompassed artist projects, performances, and panel discussions as part of the Untitled Art Podcast, with an emphasis on digital innovation and inclusivity.

Annie Duncan, Johansson Projects, Untitled Miami 2023  (more…)

AO on site at NADA Miami 2023, here with Harkawik

NADA Miami 2023, the 21st edition of the art fair presented by the New Art Dealers Alliance, showcased a diverse array of galleries from over 50 cities globally, including more than 85 NADA members and 34 first-time exhibitors. The fair was held at Ice Palace Studios and featured a variety of art forms, from traditional to mixed media, reflecting on contemporary societal themes, identity, and the human condition.  (more…)

Hernan Bas’s “The Conceptualists” series at the Bass Museum in Miami Beach presents a unique exploration into themes of queerness, desire, the occult, and the absurd. The series, inspired by the unusual hobbies and activities people took up during the pandemic, features fictitious conceptual artists performing eccentric behaviors. This approach offers a perspective on the boundaries and perceptions of conceptual art, questioning the very definition of artistic expression.
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Art Basel Miami Beach 2023 is currently taking place from December 8 to December 10, 2023, at the Miami Beach Convention Center. This edition features 277 international galleries, with a notable presence from North and Latin America, including 25 galleries participating for the first time. The event includes different sectors such as the Meridians, dedicated to large-scale artworks, and the Kabinett, with curated installations. Additionally, the Conversations program offers live debates on art and culture, with a focus on Latin America. The fair also collaborates with various institutions and collections for events across Miami Beach.  (more…)

Modern art is full of determined characters. The ones who find success are visionary, changing the face of the contemporary art scene. Marina Abramović‘s exhibition at the Royal Academy marks the first retrospective of a female artist in the institution’s 255 years. The exhibition is one of the largest, occupying the academy’s previously unused rooms. While it was initially planned for September 2020, due to Covid-19 it was postponed numerous times. During this period Abramović suffered an embolism which prevented her from performing in the show as initially planned. It’s an unfortunate reality for an artist who is usually so generous with herself as a performer. (more…)

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…)

Henry Taylor, I Got Brothers All Ova The World But They Forget We’re Related (2023), via Hauser & Wirth

Marking its inaugural outing at its new Paris exhibition space, Hauser & Wirth looks west to the work of critically acclaimed Los Angeles artist Henry Taylor, whose major career survey arrives at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York on 4 October 2023 and will remain on view through January 2024. Taylor’s exhibition in Paris, the artist’s first prominent show in France, comprises a wide range of over 30 paintings, sculptures and works on paper encompassing the remarkable breadth of his practice. (more…)

Alex Israel, Self-Portrait (Palette) (2023)

Alex Israel returns to Almine Rech in Paris this fall for his fifth solo show with the gallery, adding a new perspective and mode of interpretation to the understanding and recontextualization of Pablo Picasso on the 50^th  anniversary of the artist’s death. Treating the artist’s life and work as a fitting jumping-off point for continued explorations of the intersections of art and pop culture, of image and practice, or even of ego vs. landscape, Israel turns his attention to another aspect of Picasso’s legacy: La Californie.

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Wade Guyton, Galerie Matthiesen, Ausstellung, Edouard Manet, 1928, 6. Februar bis 18. März, Vol. II (2022), via Chantal Crousel

Opening in Paris during the run of Art Basel’s Paris+ art fair, Galerie Chantal Crousel has opened a solo show of works on paper by artist Wade Guyton, marking the artist’s first foray into lithography. Mining the intersections of digital graphics and analog printing, long a juxtaposition and source of both tension and inspiration in the artist’s work, the show features a range of sourced material from printed matter.  (more…)

Tony Matelli, Displacement Map 2 (2023), via Andréhn-Schiptjenko

Andréhn-Schiptjenko Paris presents Displacement Map this fall, a new solo exhibition with New York-based artist Tony Matelli. The exhibition, the 8th with the gallery and the second one in Paris, will feature recent works shown for the first time, among these, a life-sized self-portrait and a series of Arrangements, polychrome bronze bouquets of inverted flowers as well as a number of paintings, the first time the artist has shown in this medium.

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Michael Dean, Four Fuck Sakes (Installation View), via Andrew Kreps

Michael Dean’s idiosyncratic work draws on language in its wildest sense. Often based on his own writing, Dean broadens what we understand to be the written word into a manifestation of semiotics and typographical abstractions—such as emoticons and logos that morph into three dimensional glyphs. Regularly deploying accessible materials, Dean draws out new language with which the forms themselves are at once a personal vernacular, and a physical configuration. The transitional movement from word-to-image-to-being becomes an amalgamation of symmetrical and physical intimacy. (more…)