Robert Morris, via NYT

Artist Robert Morris, a defining voice of American conceptualism, and a contributing force in the development of an American post-war avant-garde, has passed away at the age of 87. The artist, who embraced a complex and ever-shifting series of investigations into the production, elaboration and understanding of both the art object and its function in both exhibition and broader cultural modes, passed away after a battle with pneumonia.  

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Peter Halley, Unseen Paintings (Installation View), via Sophie Kitching for Art Observed

During the years 1992 to 2002, Peter Halley’s paintings were rarely seen in New York City — during that entire ten-year span there was only one exhibition of his paintings in the city. The artist, whose body of work helped to define a return to abstract, painterly language in the New York avant-garde during the 1980’s, was noticeably absent, a note that often leaves his work somewhat divorced from some of the other artists living and working during that era. Now, an exhibition at Sperone Westwater aims to reintroduce the artist’s work from that era to the city, culling together a body of eight works that emphasize his aesthetic interests during the period, and continuing his exploration of geometric and geographic forms. (more…)

Installation View. All images via Art Observed.

Nairy Baghramian’s third solo exhibition at Galerie Buchholz in Berlin is on view at the gallery through November 17, 2018. It is accompanied by a publication produced alongside Déformation Professionelle. This exhibition, shown over the last two years at SMAK, Ghent, and the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, was originally conceived as a retrospective. However, the artist decided to modify this approach and instead construct a show around new pieces that refer back to earlier ones. At Galerie Buchholz, many of these self-reflexive pieces are on view in the gallery’s first floor exhibition space. (more…)

Edward Hopper, Chop Suey (1929), Final Price: $95,937,500, via Christie’s

Following an unsteady outing this past Sunday, Christie’s has turned on a dime with this evening’s special sale of works from the collection of Barney Ebsworth, capping off a 42-lot sale with a strong final result of $317,801,250, leaving only a few works unsold (5 of 42 lots) and a number of major world auction records left broken (at least 10 records in total before the sale reached its conclusion). (more…)

Rene Magritte, The Pleasure Principle (1937) Final Price: $26,830,500, via Sotheby’s

The first batch of sales for New York’s bustling auction week have come to a close, as Christie’s and Sotheby’s capped their Impressionist and Modern Evening Sales in New York.  Both sales seemed to rock back and forth between major milestones and less impressive results, as buyers seemed tentative to pursue large trophy works or pieces boasting higher estimates.   (more…)

Petra Cortright, Platinum Blonde Black Knight (Installation View), all images via Anna Corrigan for Art Observed.

On view through November 17, Société presents Petra Cortright’s Platinum Blonde Black Night. The Los Angeles-based artist is known for her early works of webcam self-portrait videos posted to her YouTube account. Recently, Cortright has incorporated works in painting, sculpture, and video into her practice. This is the artist’s third exhibition with the gallery. (more…)

Edward Hopper, Chop Suey (1929), via Christie’s

This next week, New York City will see a string of Modern and Contemporary Auctions take place at the major auction houses, following up a tense season of political uncertainty in the U.S. with a series of sales that may offer a referendum on the nation’s current economic climate.  With a number of special sales joining the traditional major evening sales, the week should offer an intriguing picture of just how healthy the market is, or perhaps how daring its collectors are feeling. (more…)

Tania Bruguera at Tate Modern (Installation View), via Art Observed

Cuban artist and activist Tania Bruguera has been tapped for the most recent commission project at Tate Modern, which opened this past October during Frieze Week. The piece, which unifies disparate social threads under the museum roof, is a striking moment for the artist under the shadow of the nation’s Brexit negotiations. (more…)

General Idea, Untitled (AIDS with Cockroaches) (1989), all images via Maureen Paley

Now through November 11th, 2018, Maureen Paley in London is presenting AA Bronson + General Idea, an exhibition marking fifty years since AA Bronson, Felix Partz and Jorge Zontal met in 1968 and formed the collective General Idea. The Canadian collective is known for producing over 100 solo exhibitions, as well as countless group shows and temporary public art projects. For the years of 1969-1994 they lived and worked together, creating a “living artwork of their being together” and working through various surfaces or ‘host’ media for their ideas and engagement with punk, queer theory, ad AIDS activism. (more…)

Amy Sillman, Landline (Installation View), via Camden Arts Cenre

Perhaps one of the most distinctive voices in contemporary American painting, artist Amy Sillman has relentlessly and repeatedly pushed her own style towards the furthest reaches of her capacity, always in an attempt to interrogate and re-evaluate the language and practice of painting against the backdrop of modern history and the attendant shifts from analog to digital technologies and labor processes.  Based in New York, the artist has opened her first major solo institutional show in the UK this fall, an ambitious and expansive walk through her work at the Camden Arts Centre in North London.   (more…)

Ajay Kurian, Nine Flags (Installation View), via Art Observed

Artist Ajay Kurian returns to 47 Canal Gallery for a show of new works this month, delving into the recent American political landscape, and the fraught politics of identity, interiority and authenticity that have dominated the political discourse in the past years.  Responding in particular to the near-constant presentation and proliferation of the American flag in the language and iconography of a resurgent American nationalism, Kurian has created his own series of flags, fragmented transformations of this same language to explore new possibilities for an American populace.  

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Georg Baselitz, The Orange Eater VI (1981), via Art Observed

Gallerie Thaddeus Ropac London is currently offering a museum-quality show of ground-breaking inverted paintings, drawings and sculptures by Georg Baselitz, tracing the artist’s shift to a freer, more expressionistic use of paint and of color, while still staging works of startling intensity and solemn power. The exhibition presents seminal works from each of the series Baseliz developed during the 1980s such as Orangenesser, Strandbilder and Trinker, as well as works on paper from the era evoking religious icons, drawings from the Strandbilder series, and untitled figure sketches. Standing alongside his paintings, the show’s deep array of archival works establish the evolution of his personal iconography across media. (more…)

Kerry James Marshall, Untitled (Morning) (2018), via Art Observed

It’s been a good few years for Kerry James Marshall.  The Chicago-based painter opened his landmark show at The Met Breuer, a critically-lauded exhibition that toured the U.S. and earned the artist an impressive response from both viewers and critics.  Now, the artist turns his attention towards a body of new paintings, the first new series produced since the Mastry exhibition, for a new show at David Zwirner’s exhibition location in London.  (more…)

Julie Mehretu, SEXTANT (Installation View), via White Cube

Moving through a range of historical and aesthetic modes of exploration for her most recent exhibition at White Cube in London, artist Julie Mehretu has offered a new fold in an already complex and multilayered body of work.  Her new exhibition, which opened just this past month, brings together a diverse and challenging arrangement of pieces that sees the artist mining contemporary image archives and newspaper headlines for her grounding material, a mode that moves beyond her prior practice and into new ground.  (more…)

Paul Mpagi Sepuya, Mirror Study (0X5A1237) (2017), via Matthew Marks

Matthew Marks Los Angeles has given over its West Hollywood exhibition space to a striking group show, exploring a younger generation of artists under the name Positioner.  The show takes its name from work by exhibiting artist Julia Phillips, and, much in the same way that the artist explores institutional power and discrimination in her own works, this exhibition focuses on the the manner in which artists today are currently focusing on depictions, representations, or consolidations of the individual within the modern field of art practice.   (more…)

Chelsea Culprit (Installation View) all images via Queer Thoughts

For her second solo show at Queer Thoughts, Mexico-City based American artist Chelsea Culprit presents a body of new work which expands upon her exploration of female representation in the visual arts, one which aims to dismantle the typically male view point of our Western art history. (more…)

Carmen Herrera, Estructuras (Installation View), via Art Observed

Entering Lisson Gallery’s 24th Street New York space, visitors are greeted with a vibrant, colorful arrangement of works, geometric forms mounted on walls, arranged along the floor, and in some cases, even propped up on tables, creating the impression of momentary voids in the perception of the gallery space, or even that of the viewer’s own visual field.  The show is the first ever large-scale presentation of Cuban-American artist Carmen Herrera’s Estrcuturas works, and underscores the artist’s ongoing contributions to the languages of minimalism and conceptualism. (more…)

Fausto Melotti, The Deserted City (Installation View), via Art Observed

Currently on view at Hauser & Wirth’s expansive 22nd Street location in New York, a body of work by the Italian master Fausto Melotti spreads across the upper floors, a snaking, intricate series of pathways that draw the viewer into an intimate, almost theatrical relationship to the works on view. Presenting a series of varied scenes and arrangements of the artist’s delicate, surreal formal arrangements, the show is an exemplary demonstration of Melotti’s capacities to create other worlds and new sensations within the gallery. (more…)

Pope.L, Rebuilding the Monument (chicago version/the vitrine problem/one of three) (2007), via Mitchell-Innes & Nash

Currently on at both of Mitchell-Innes & Nash’s New York locations, artist Pope.L presents an exploration of various projects both current at historical at its Chelsea exhibition space and uptown gallery.  Pope.L’s practice often focuses on the uncertain but productive space between differences in language, class, race, and gender to create works that simultaneously enlist, mock and re-write convention. For Pope.L this gap is where ignorance, the unknown, or the unintended collides with human meaning and, even hubris to create fresh tensions around authenticity, self and icon. (more…)

Pierre Huyghe, UUmwelt (Installation View), Installation view, Serpentine Gallery, London, (3 October 2018 – 10 February 2019). Copyright Ola Rindal. Courtesy of the artist and Serpentine Galleries

Artist Pierre Huyghe is known for his complex immersive ecosystems, creating impressive arrangements of space and material that incorporate living organisms, active agents and forces that gradually transform or reactivate the gallery in which its placed.  For his new exhibition at The Serpentine Gallery in the UK, which opened during Frieze London this past month, the artist has turned the museum into a porous and contingent environment, housing different forms of cognition, emerging intelligence, biological reproduction and instinctual behaviors. (more…)

Olafur Eliasson, Straight Back (2018), via Art Observed

Tanya Bonakdar Gallery is currently presenting Olafur Eliasson: The speed of your attention, the first solo exhibition dedicated to Eliasson at the gallery’s recently inaugurated Los Angeles location. The phrase “the speed of your attention” was introduced to Eliasson by Joe Dumit, an anthropologist at UC Davis who conducted a movement experiment during a workshop at Eliasson’s Berlin studio this summer. Dumit learned the phrase from Nita Little—one of the pioneers of contact improvisation, a contemporary dance technique in which movements arise through contact between two or more dancers—in the form of the instruction to “move at the speed of your attention.” (more…)

Xavier Veilhan at Perrotin, via Andrea Nguyen for Art Observed

Spread out along the spacious aisles and picturesque dome of the Grand Palais in Paris, the Foire internationale d’art contemporain, also known as FIAC, has returned once again for another year of sales in the French capital.  With Wednesday evening slowly dragging into the late hours, the fair’s VIP opening is now concluded, once again garnering strong praise and enthusiastic response from its attendees.  This year, the list of galleries brings together exhibitors from 25 countries, marking its 45th edition with a fitting reflection of its storied history, one echoed by the prestigious locale of the Grand Palais.  With an exacting selection of modern art, contemporary art, and design galleries, among the most emblematic of the international scene, the fair’s opening hours once again underscored its vitality in the modern fair circuit. 

Alicja Kwade at 303, via Andrea Nguyen for Art Observed (more…)

Ugo Rondinone, drifting clouds (Installation View), via Sam Covern for Art Observed.

Currently on view at Gladstone Gallery, artist Ugo Rondinone has opened a show work that spans a broad range of his creative output over several years.  Mixing together his practice in installation, sculpture, drawing and performance, the show sees Rondinone reanimating commonplace objects—such as tree branches or window frames—in his signature approach towards the Neo-Romantic. (more…)

Ivy Haldeman, Chartreuse Suit (2018), all images courtesy Downs and Ross

Ivy Haldeman’s body of new paintings, on view currently at Downs and Ross, have a distinctly playful quality, poetic and energetic while referencing surrealist twists on the everyday.  The current show, on now through October 21st, presents itself as a playful update on prior work, filling the canvas with the same colorful, enthusiastic energy.  (more…)