Matias Faldbakken, Untitled (2016), via Paula Cooper

Taking over Paula Cooper Gallery’s second floor exhibition space on W 21st Street, artist Matias Faldbakken is presenting a selection of new works, including a selection of sculptures from his Screen Overlaps series (2016) and FUEL SCULPTURES (2017), as well as an install of his piece THE INTERNET in the gallery’s vitrine space downstairs. On view through the end of the week, the show emphasizes Faldbakken’s unique engagement with history and politics through surreal arrangements of material. (more…)

Philippe Parreno (Installation View), via Gladstone

Taking over the exhibition spaces at Gladstone Gallery’s 24th Street locations, artist Philippe Parreno once again transforms the space into a roving systemic experiment, setting up varied inputs and explorations to contribute to a shifting sensory experience. Dwelling on notions of interrelated systems and interactions of various elements, Parreno’s work centers around his film Anywhen In a Time Colored Space (2019) and the systems set up to facilitate its exhibition. (more…)

Lucio Fontana, On the Threshold (Installation View), via Art Observed

Marking the first major U.S. survey of artist Lucio Fontana in more than forty years, The Met Breuer has assembled a landmark show of works from across the artist’s career, unpacking and reassembling disparate threads and conceptual projects from across the expanse of his work to arrive at a roving, exploratory picture of the artist, his career, and his work.  Widely known for his Cuts series, slashed paintings that became symbols of the postwar era, Fontana’s work moves in and out of easily framed conceptual projects, and here, his works are allowed to breathe and exchange their ideas, allowing the artist’s work to explore and underscore the depth of his intellectual explorations.

Lucio Fontana, On the Threshold (Installation View), via Art Observed (more…)

Zhang Yu at Pifo, via Art Basel

Opening its doors this past Wednesday at the Hong Kong Convention Center, the Art Basel fair franchise has once again left its mark on the Chinese metropolis, concluding the seventh edition with impressive results and a strong selection of works.  As is usually the case for the fair, impressive sales figures and strong attendance was the norm, signaling the fair’s continued impact on the Asian art circuit, and the broader landscape of the contemporary art market. (more…)

XU ZHEN®, The Glorious (Installation View), via Perrotin Hong Kong

Art Basel Hong Kong is squarely in the center of Asia’s international art scene, a major recurring event that has left its mark as an important touchpoint for artists, collectors and galleries in Asia and the broader Pacific Rim, connecting this already thriving scene with the galleries and artists of the Americas, Europe and Africa.  Tying together a broad range of locales outside the U.S./Europe market orbit, ABHK is an annual look to the East for much of the art world, tracing the region’s influence and contributions to the contemporary art landscape today. The Hong Kong show, held at the Hong Kong Convention and Exhibition Centre as an outcropping of the Art Basel fair franchise, features premier galleries from Asia and beyond, with half of the participating galleries based in Asia and Asia-Pacific. The show provides an in-depth overview of the region’s diversity through both historical material and cutting-edge works by established and emerging artists. (more…)

Zoe Leonard, Survey (Installation View), via Art Observed

It’s difficult to place the work of artist Zoe Leonard in any one box. Not only is she a roving polymath in her creative practices, her pieces frequently move between and through various disciplines and practices simultaneously. She’s known as a photographer and sculptor, yet in other modes her work relies on text and long-form writing, other times twisting these disciplines through the practice of photography. Yet these disciplines rarely remain isolated. Her sculptures present as moments frozen in time, built up elements and objects (including, ironically, large stacks of books), often described as cerebral and subdued, yet always carrying a distinct sense of power and duty that challenges the viewer to move beyond a moment of calm repose or frozen, distilled energy. (more…)

Jan-Ole Schiemann, Kavex 8 (2019), via Kasmin

Now on view at New York space Kasmin Gallery, artist Cologne-based artist Jan-Ole Schiemann is mounting a debut solo exhibition, bringing with him a collection of new paintings that see the artist continuing to revel in both gestural abstraction and the history of 20th-century animation, aspects that combine to imbue his work with a rare sense of kinetic energy. Half-formed, simultaneously disappearing and reappearing shapes suggest that somewhere amidst the lines, there are figures tumbling, colliding, or fighting obscured by clouds of smoke. As a result of Schiemann’s meticulous, layered application of charcoal, oilstick, ink and acrylic. (more…)

William Kentridge, Lexicon Medium Bronze (Cape Silver) (2018), via Marian Goodman

Currently on in New York City Marian Goodman Gallery has tapped artist William Kentridge to present a series of new works in film, drawing and sculpture, uniting materials from three major performance projects that have been in the works over the past two years. The show, Let Us Try for Once, brings together materials from The Head & the Load, a theatrical tour de force co-composed by Philip Miller and Thuthuka Sibisi and recently shown at the New York Armory in December 2018, as well as a celebrated production of Alban Berg’s opera Wozzeck, which Kentridge directed for the Salzburg opera festival in 2017 (and coming to The Metropolitan Opera in 2019-2020), as well as Ursonate, a performance of Kurt Schwitters’ 1932 sound poem of the same title, presented at Performa Biennial New York. (more…)

Angel Otero, Splintered (2019), via Lehmann Maupin

Currently on view at Lehmann Maupin, artist Angel Otero’s Milagros, marks a new trajectory for the artist, a series of recent, large-scale tapestry-like oil paintings that hang entirely free from a stretcher bar and which twist and pull the notion of the composed canvas through a series of rigorous conceptual and formal exercises. Working with the history of painterly abstraction and the fusions of sculptural and painterly form that have wound through this history, the artist’s works draw on a mixture of collage and composition. (more…)

Yukinori Yanagi, Ground Transposition (1987/2019), via Blum & Poe

Currently on view at the Blum & Poe flagship in Los Angeles, the gallery has taken on a particularly compelling and eye-opening investigation of the landscape of Japanese Contemporary Art during the 1980’s and 90’s.  Curated by Mika Yoshitake, Parergon is a striking look at the history and culture of the nation as it experienced a turbulent period of economic boom and bust, and sought to work through the cultural, political and historical traumas of the decades before.   (more…)

Ian Cheng, BOB (Detail), via Gladstone

Currently on view at Gladstone Gallery’s New York City gallery, artist Ian Cheng is giving the world premiere of his new work BOB (Bag of Beliefs), the first of a series of artificial lifeforms created by the artist.  BOB is presented as an evolving, chimeric serpent, twisting and moving on-screen in a manner that sees him both learning from, and failing in, his new digital environment.  Long a devotee of simulations and learning environments, BOB advances Cheng’s use of these modes to focus on one’s capacity to deal with surprise: the subjective difference between expectations and perception. (more…)

David B. Smith, via Art Observed

With the annual return of The Armory Show to the Piers on the West Side of Manhattan, so too comes the annual opening of the SPRING/BREAK Art Show, the adventurous, curator-driven program that takes up space at a pop-up location for a week of compelling and unique exhibitions and projects.  The fair’s playful reputation and emphasis on young artists and curators welcomed a striking intersection of styles and practices, yet one that seemed to frequently play on witty inversion or twists on the banal.  Given the size and scale of the proceedings around it, SPRING/BREAK has edged out an impressive niche for itself among the bustle of Armory Week, a space where exploration and adventurousness seem to win out over the sales-focused proceedings of its bigger sister fairs around New York. One can only hope that this sense of the unexpected continues to sit at the core of its mission, offering a refreshing respite from the all too familiar fair fatigue of the week. (more…)

Alexis Smith at Garth Greenan, via Art Observed

Marking its 10th anniversary this year, the Independent NY Art Fair has proven itself as something of a special case in the presentation of an art fair.  Smaller in scale and more focused in terms of its gallery selections, the fair’s presentation feels more like a presentation of a series of small gallery shows run side-by-side.  Offering a more nuanced, mellow browsing experience in conjunction with the fair’s invite-only exhibitor structure and immense glass windows, the fair has built a reputation as a boutique event with impressive draw, with this 10th year only driving that appeal home. (more…)

David Hockney, Henry Geldzahler and Christopher Scott (1969), via Christie’s

Following a marathon week of openings and shows between New York and London, the first major Contemporary Evening Sales of 2019 are in the bag, with a trio of sales closing out the week in London with a market picture that seemed relatively strong.  No doubt clouded in some part by the uncertainty of the impending Brexit, the week’s sales still managed to achieve some impressive figures and strong sell-through rates, keeping the uncertainty of the following months alive in the British capital.

Jean-Michel Basquiat, Apex (1986), via Sotheby’s (more…)

Carolee Schneeman, via Artist

Artist Carolee Schneemann, the artist whose work relentlessly challenged and reframed cultural discourses and taboos around sex, identity and gender, has died at the age of 79.

Portrait Partials, via Artist

Born in Philadelphia, Schneemann studied at Bard in New York, and would continually challenge assumptions regarding her gender as an artist, including a suspension from the school over painting nude self-portraits.  Schneeman would still graduate, and would move to New York, where she became involved in the city’s experimental arts scene.  Exploring performance works, she would challenge the viewer’s engagement with the female body, famously pulling a reel of text from her vagina to read aloud in public for her work Interior Scroll, while another performance, Up to and Including Her Limits suspended her naked from the ceiling of a gallery, swinging about to mark the walls with crayon.

Meat Joy, via Artist

Schneemann would continue to make challenging and confrontational work throughout her career, ultimately receiving the Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement at the Venice Biennale in 2017.  “I think I’m stubborn. In the beginning, I had no precedent for being valued,” she told the Guardian in 2015. “Everything that came from a woman’s experience was considered trivial. I wasn’t sure if my work would shift that paradigm or not, but I had to try.”

Pascale Marthine Tayou, via Art Observed

Considered among New York’s premier art fairs, and a leading cultural destination for discovering and collecting the world’s most important 20th- and 21st-century art, The Armory Show has long figured at the forefront of the city’s annual spring offerings for art exhibitions and shows.  This year, the fair has once again touched down in New York, bringing with it its annual  presentations by leading international galleries, innovative artist commissions and dynamic public programs. (more…)

Jim Shaw, The Potato Family (2018), via Metro Pictures

Currently on view at Metro Pictures, artist Jim Shaw returns to New York with a series of five new paintings, united under the name The Family Romance.  Continuing the artist’s penchant for blending personal, political, and surreal narratives, the show traces Shaw’s interests in behavioral psychology and themes surrounding the family unit. (more…)

Alighiero Boetti, Per Nuovi Desideri (1988), via Repetto

As the winter months drags slowly to its conclusion, and the weather shifts into more temperate conditions, New York City will once again step into its role as a central hub of the contemporary art market, and the global art fair circuit, kicking off its string of fairs across the city.  Centering around the annual Armory Show Art Fair on the West Side, the week serves as one of the more important selling weeks of the first half of 2019. (more…)

Seth Price at Petzel, via Art Observed

Marking the first entry in the busy weeks of March in New York, the ADAA Art Show opened its doors this week, putting a few days between its own fair and the mass of exhibitors opening their doors in the coming days.  The first week of March is always a packed one for gallerists and artists, with the usual string of exhibitions and openings coupled with the ever-growing number of art fairs taking up space across the city during Armory Art Week.  With that in mind, the ADAA’s attempts at putting some space between its event and the rest of March’s bustling pace has made it a fitting first entry, a considered, careful staging that sets the tone for the days to come. (more…)

Josephine Meckseper, Scene VI (Installation View), via Art Observed

Few artists have continued to explore the overlapping languages of commerce, visual art and the attendant formats of culture that lay somewhere between the two in the same manner as Josephine Meckseper.  Frequently incorporating the languages of commercial display in conjunction with references to film and painting, her works are confounding arrangements of both corporeal bodies and abstracted agents, each contending for the viewer’s attention in strange, often foreign ways. For her current show, on view at Timothy Taylor in New York, the artist brings a set from her own film, PELLEA[S]. (more…)

Paul Signac, Le Port au soleil couchant, Opus 236 (Saint-Tropez) (1892), Final Price: £19,501,250 via Christie’s

Over the course of the last two evenings in London, the major auction houses rounded out an uneven, occasionally disappointing series of sales in the British capital, casting some doubts over the prolonged strength of the Impressionist and Modernist market in the UK, EU and beyond.  Missing out on major fireworks at both houses, save for a few auction records already anticipated to fall, the evening sales at Sotheby’s and Christie’s have posed some hard questions regarding the market’s current health, and just how markets are responding to an increasingly foggy Brexit picture.

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Claude Monet, Le Palais Ducal (1908), via Sotheby’s

With the month of February drawing to a close, the major auction houses are gearing up for their first real test of the year, with a string of auctions set to take place over the course of the following weeks in London.  Marking major sales for both the Impressionist/Modern and Post-War/Contemporary categories, the next two weeks should offer some perspective on how the secondary market is faring in relation to what seems to be an energetic but slightly smaller fair circuit. (more…)

Ella Kruglyanskaya, Doll on Lilac Background (2018), via Art Observed

Latvian-born painter Ella Kruglyanskaya brings her stylized depictions of female figures to New York this month, presenting a show of new paintings at Gavin Brown’s spacious Harlem gallery space. The show, dwelling on her restlessly inventive and stylistically diverse body of work, has installed the artist’s range of portraits and scenes depicting women’s bodies and social contexts through a range of varied lenses. (more…)

Marlene Dumas, James Baldwin (2014), all images via Art Observed

Delving into the life and work of the monumental American writer James Baldwin, Hilton Als has taken another turn as a curator at David Zwirner Gallery, mounting an exhibition that both explores and critiques the artist’s career, and his complicated relationship to the political landscape and social conflicts of the United States. The show, following up on Als’s exploration of the work of Alice Neel, is a nuanced review of Baldwin’s connections between Paris and New York and its diverse art scenes, in conjunction with his own aesthetic longings beyond that of his writing. (more…)