Robert Rauschenberg, Buffalo II (1964), via Christie’s

The show previews, VIP openings and special presentations of the 58th Venice Biennale are now in the bag, and the art world has returned to business as usual this week, returning to New York for a string of auction sales that will offer a grounding take on the market, and a look at how the following weeks may have affected both single artists and the overall health of art world economics at the top of the market.

Amedeo Modigliani, Tete (1911-1912), via Christie’s (more…)

Adrian Ghenie, The Wall (2019), via Art Observed

Marking the 2019 seasonal opening of the Palazzo Mini gallery in Venice, artist Adrian Ghenie and Thaddaeus Ropac Gallery have brought a selection of new paintings to show in the space. Marking a new step in the artist’s continued exploration of the nuances of power, masculinity and politics in both the contemporary era and the annals of history, the new show stages a set of works notable for their portrayal of modern political crises, clashes of personality, and the framing of power.

Adrian Ghenie, Figure With Dog (2019), via Art Observed

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Arthur Jafa at the Venice Biennale, via Art Observed

The awards for the 58th Venice Biennale have been announced, with the Lithuanian Pavilion’s operatic beach installation taking home the Golden Lion for best exhibition, Arthur Jafa winning the Golden Lion for best artist in the main exhibition, and Jimmie Durham winning the Lifetime Achievement award.  A full list of awards is included below: (more…)

Martin Puryear, Liberty (Installation View), via Art Observed

Walking up the pathway to artist Martin Puryear’s installation at the US Pavilion of the Venice Biennale, one is greeted with a dazzling, and perhaps equally foreboding work. The piece, Swallowed Sun (Monstrance and Volute), stages an immense grate before the doors of the pavilion, a beautiful, carefully arranged grid that references sun streaming down, until one passes behind the work to see a black, serpentine form apparent “swallowing” the sun whole. (more…)

Cathy Wilkes, Untitled (2019), via Art Observed

Within the grand architecture of the British Pavilion at the Venice Biennale, artist Cathy Wilkes, born in Northern Ireland, has orchestrated a somber, quiet affair, moving the viewer through an occasionally disquieting, frequently challenging arrangement of narrative fragments and installation pieces that draw on the long echo chamber of history. Presenting an arrangement driven by both tension and reflection, the artist’s work is a particularly striking entry in what has been a consistently strong series of outings in recent years for the British Pavilion. (more…)

Renate Bertelmann at Austrian Pavilion, via Art Observed

As the crowds wound their way over from the crowded halls of the Arsenal, the Giardini, the second section of the Venice Biennale was underway in La Serenissima this morning. Flocks of visitors to the winding paths and green hills of the park, where the long-held exhibition spaces bearing the names of their countries are spread across . The environment gives a well-separated browsing experience, where each artist is provided carte blanche to realize their vision inside the space, often responding to architectural elements or working in direct opposition to the spaces themselves. (more…)

Tavares Strachan, via Art Observed

The wait is over, the previews are drawing to a close, and the Venice Biennale is preparing to open to the public this weekend, capping off a long few days of exhibitions and openings across the city.  The main show, May You Live in Interesting Times, curated by Hayward Director Ralph Rugoff, is a sprawling, ambitious show that follows in the tradition of the exhibition’s expansive take on the state of the world, the state of art, and the language of modernity.  Rugoff has taken this challenge up in impressive fashion, combining social awareness, technologically-progressive works and challenging thematics with great style and flair.

Anthea Hamilton, via Art Observed

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Venice, via Art Observed

With the summer months looming and the cities of Europe emerging from the gloom of the continent’s winter season, the month of May marks the opening of the the 58th edition of the Venice Biennale, the crown jewel of the art world’s circuit of international art exhibitions and curated projects. Having run for over one hundred years, the annual exhibition stands among the most important and iconic of shows, filling the Most Serene Republic and its winding streets and alleys with countless shows and projects alongside the main exhibitions at the Arsenale and Giardini. In just a week’s time, the fair will open its doors, and announce the prizes for its best pieces and artists, setting the stage for new artworld stars to blossom under the eye of its jury.

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Zach Martin at Fisher Parrish, via Art Observed

For the last few years, NADA has been instrumental in pushing new strategies and concepts for the exhibition and presentation of work in a fair context, exploring alternatives and options to the large-scale fair model in a market environment that has proved increasingly challenging for smaller art spaces.  Enter NADA House, an opportunity for NADA members to stage a group show in an intimate and unusual setting on Governors Island.  The organization’s second off-site exhibition on Governors Island, the show features 45 artists from NADA Member galleries and non-profits in a new, expanded format across 34 rooms in three historic, turn-of-the-century Colonial Revival houses. With only one or two artists on display in each room, NADA House reflects the camaraderie intrinsic to NADA’s mission, and exemplifies the organization’s adaptive approach to finding new models to present work from its community. (more…)

Richard Hughes, via Art Observed

With the bustling, distributed selection of fairs and exhibition programs spread around New York City over the course of the week, it’s hard to imagine another iteration of the art fair model making a mark on Frieze Week in New York. Yet that’s just what the Object & Thing Fair aims to do, taking over the raw industrial halls of 99 Scott on the borders of Bushwick, East Williamsburg and Ridgewood aims to do. The fair, founded by former Frieze Artistic Director Abby Bangser, is an intriguing reimagining of the art fair, a sort of junior TEFAF that unites art objects, design pieces, furniture and other work under an open-format exhibition plan. Rather than providing the galleries participating with booths, the objects offered are arranged about the space, the result being an imminently browsable, engaging experience. What’s more, the fair is based around a commission model, experimenting with ways to make fairs more affordable and flexible.

Peter Shire via Art Observed

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Jaume Plensa at Richard Gray, via Art Observed

Marking its newest iteration on Randall’s Island, Frieze New York opened its doors on its VIP Preview today, welcoming a string of collectors, gallerists and artists winding their way over bridges or up the East River by Ferry this morning. The fair opened its doors on the early hours of its first preview day Wednesday, offering an opportunity for collectors and dealers to take a first stroll through the fair without the bustling crowds of the later fair days.  Celebrating its eighth year on Randall’s Island, the fair’s early previews saw a first look at a fair that has come into its own as an anchor of New York’s already packed art scene, and which has become a much-anticipated first hint of the summer months in the city. (more…)

Inka Essenhigh, Untitled (2019), via Kavi Gupta

With the increasingly packed schedule of the spring art season in New York, attention and anticipation once again turns to the opening of this year’s edition of Frieze New York, set to open its doors in just a few days at its annual haunt at Randall’s Island. This year, as the fair reaches its eighth edition, some adjustments and tweaks to the schedule will look to expand the fair’s offerings and appeal in an increasingly crowded circuit. (more…)

Raqib Shaw, Lament on Narscissus to Icarus (2017-2018), via Art Observed

For pure opulence, it’s hard to match the canvases of artist Raqib Shaw. Pulling together disparate traditions in Indian and Western portraiture and epic painting, the artist’s work mines each historical mode in pursuit of a lush, swirling iconography that simultaneously entrances the viewer and overwhelms them with visual excess, a negotiation of forms that encourages a lingering consideration of each work. (more…)

                                      Alec Soth, Simone. Los Angeles, 2017 (2017), Via Art Observed

Currently on view at Sean Kelly’s spacious Chelsea exhibition space, photographer Alec Soth is presenting a body of new works. Comprised of recent large-scale color portraits and images of interiors, the exhibition, “I Know How Furiously Your Heart Is Beating,” focuses on Soth’s depiction of the individual, posing questions about what these images reveal about both the sitter and photographer. (more…)

Alicja Kwade, MatterMotion (2019), via 303 Gallery

Working with concepts of nature, science, philosophy and perception, artist Alicja Kwade’s work draws on complex fusions of phenomena, space and architecture, using these formats to question and explore the natural world alongside humanity’s participation in it. Drawing on reflective elements, spatial inversions and peculiar material juxtapositions, the artist has become renowned for her ability to challenge our most basic logical assumptions. (more…)

Vincent Fecteau, Chorus #1 (1994), via Matthew Marks

Currently on view at Matthew Marks’s spacious West 22nd Street location, a trio of artists, Lutz Bacher, Nayland Blake and Vincent Fecteau (who also takes on curator duties here) have collaborated on a striking and unique investigation of time and history. Meant to serve in part as a re-creation of Fecteau’s first solo exhibition, the show twists a series of diverse narratives and conceptual ties among the artists into a unique interpretation of the past. (more…)

Sheer Presence: Monumental Paintings By Robert Motherwell (Installation View), via Kasmin Gallery

There are many moments during Sheer Presence: Monumental Paintings by Robert Motherwell, a show of large-scale works by the American master, where one feels inundated with color and line. The artist’s works, either towering over the viewer or stretch across the walls of Kasmin Gallery’s flagship space, are unified under a fitting show title: their magnificent presence often captivates the viewer and pulls them deeper into the space of the canvas, even in the show’s most minimalist approaches to surface. (more…)

LAABF, via Printed Matter

This past weekend, Los Angeles residents and visitors from far afield flocked to the City of Angels for the annual opening of Printed Matter’s LA Art Book Fair (LAABF) the West Coast companion fair to the NY Art Book Fair.  Marking a unique and wide-ranging look at the current status of art publishing and printed material.  Free and open to the public, the fair has built a reputation as a leading international gathering for the distribution of artists’ books, celebrating the full breadth of the art publishing community.

Jeffrey Cheung, via Art Observed

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Jean-Michel Othoniel, Oracles (Installation View), Photo: Claire Dorn © Jean-Michel Othoniel / ADAGP, Paris, 2019 Courtesy of the artist & Perrotin.

Entering the Paris location of Galerie Perrotin, the viewer is greeted with a series of dazzling sculptures, jagged agglomerations of shining blocks that appear to glow with a colorful energy, spreading across the floor of one room, while in another, dotting the walls, each appearing to emit a gentle, flame-like glow. The works, new pieces by the artist Jean-Michel Othoniel, are a striking elaboration of the artist’s work, continuing his exploration of space and light as innately tied to their generating materials. (more…)

Austin Lee, Feels Good (Installation View), via Art Observed

Part of a young crop of digital natives exploring convergences between physical and digital art practices, artist Austin Lee’s work feels particularly vivid and important. While earlier generations of artists began their careers sketching on paper, Lee began by using Photoshop and other digital tools to sketch on his computer. His work combines the latest image making technologies with traditional artistic processes. He uses the airbrush and the paintbrush to create luminous paintings that evoke both the light of a computer screen and the bold coloration of color field painting. (more…)

Jessi Reaves, Red eyelashes (2019), via Art Observed

On view currently at New York space Bridget Donahue, artist Jessi Reaves has returned to her uniquely inventive turn on sculpture. The show, which draws on the shared languages of design, interior space, domestic languages and the possibilities of these elements to work in tandem, presents a series of floor sculptures and hanging works, investigating and reposing questions of varied histories of making, and how they ultimately converge, twist, and reform. (more…)

Arakawa, Diagrams of the Imagination (Installation View), via Art Observed

A founding member of the Japanese avant-garde collective Neo Dadaism Organizers, the artist Arakawa long described himself as an “eternal outsider” and an “abstractionist of the distant future.”  Pulling together a range of elements in contemporary practice, the artist mixed rigorous geometric arrangements with abstract painting and elements of collage, always focused around explorations of the workings of human consciousness, diagrammatic representation, and epistemology.  The artist’s work is currently the subject of a show at Gagosian’s Madison Avenue complex, examining the period in which Arakawa explored a varied body of work in two dimensions, using paint, ink, graphite, and assemblage on canvas and paper, always pursuing multi-layered systems of meaning and understanding that drove at the heart of the human condition.

Arakawa, Diagrams of the Imagination (Installation View), via Art Observed

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Friedrich Kunath, All Your Fears Trapped Inside (2019), via JTT

Presented at its New York exhibition space, JTT Gallery has tapped Los Angeles-based artist Friedrich Kunath for All Your Fears Trapped Inside, a solo show documenting the artist’s ongoing experimentation with modes of understanding and collective memory, articulated through collections of material and his own works. Kunath, known for frequently mixing modes and working between a wide range of materials and approaches, has here settled on large-scale installation as the framework around which to explore the materiality and meaning within his own life. (more…)

Elad Lassry, Untitled (Boots, Caps) (2018), via 303 Gallery

Currently on view at 303 Gallery in New York, artist Elad Lassry brings a selection of new photographs and sculptures that continue his aesthetic project exploring the construction, distribution and consumption of images, often through the willful subversion or deconstruction of the image’s functions, contexts and framings. The show, on view through the weekend, compiles a broad range of recent projects and ideas from the artist, each delving into different modes of exploring and re-creating the space of the image. (more…)