Giuseppe Penone, Trattenere 6, 8, 12 anni di crescita (Continuerà a crescere tranne che in quel punto) (2004-2016), via Art Observed

Few artists in the contemporary discourse have continued to produce work with such unrelenting consistency and vitality as Giuseppe Penone, a member of the younger generation of Arte Povera artists who seems to almost ceaselessly produce new variations and explorations on the relationships between humanity and nature, body and space, presence and absence.  Often posing unique material interactions with the human body, the bodies of plants or trees, and the material formats that he places between them, Penone’s work mines a rich multitude of lyrical interactions and relations of form and process.

Giuseppe Penone, Indistinti confini (2012), via Art Observed

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Walter Robinson, The Eager Ones (1979), via Art Observed

Filling the open spaces of Jeffrey Deitch’s reopened space at 18 Wooster, Walter Robinson’s Paintings and Other Indulgences demonstrates the wide scope of the artist’s interest in consumerist desire.  A traveling retrospective first launched at the University Galleries of Illinois State University, Paintings and Other Indulgences features a range of Robinson’s work spanning from 1979 to 2014, each of which address a wide span of pop culture imagery, imagined in the artist’s distinctive hand, ranging from greeting card kittens to Vicks VapoRub.

Walter Robinson, Lotion (1984) via Art Observed

Robinson’s work elevates the kitsch by giving it a frame, yet also highlights the hedonism of contemporary culture.  His process, immortalizing the vulgar and unspoken fragments of American society, evident in particular with his passionate re-creations of pulp novels, renders alluring works as occupied with their power of attraction as they are with their subject matter.  Vibrant and aggressively romantic, the images of these works are saturated with color and posturing desire, a layered approach that speaks in part to his work as both an artist and critic.  After co-founding the magazine Art-Rite in the 70s, Robinson went on to be an editor of Art in America, and a founder of ArtNet.  A well-established writer as regards the New York art scene, Robinson’s editorial eye is evident in the self-awareness of his works.

Robinson’s use of images from popular culture explores the central themes of postmodern art. His reproductions of symbols such as the hamburger reflect only the emptiness of consumerist America, revealing a signifier that is, in many ways, constructed.  The subconscious desires that his work involves lack true substance, and instead reflect the base human wants that sit at the core of advertising iconography.  Robinson’s take on pop art allows the viewer to locate himself within the art, but through a detached, somewhat dehumanized subject, never spilling over into overt brand-centrism or easily read consumer imagery.

While drawing on some of the darker themes of postmodern art, Robinson’s work displays a playful attitude toward lowbrow aesthetics.  The retrospective features several of his spin paintings, which predate those of Damien Hirst by roughly 10 years.  Similar to the rest of the pieces in their bright color and kitschy quality, Robinson’s spin art offers another angle into the purpose of his work.  These examples of abstract painting reveal the artist’s lighthearted approach, which he describes, overall, as “an accident.” Paintings and Other Indulgences displays this same line of humor and context that Robinson rides throughout, invoking pulp, while equally satirizing and elevating the oddities of our consumer society.

Walter Robinson, Ugly Trap (1986) via Art Observed

— M. Donovan

Read More:
Walter Robinson: A Retrospective [Exhibition Site]
An Interview with Walter Robinson in Advance of his Retrospective at Deitch [OhioEdit]
A Man-About Downtown Gets His Due [New Yorker]

Alex Prager, Orchestra Center (Stage) (2016), via Lehman Maupin

Photographer Alex Prager has returned to Lehmann Maupin’s New York exhibition space at 201 Chrystie Street this month for an exhibition of new photographic works, executed in conjunction with the production for Prager’s new film piece, La Grande Sortie.  Continuing the artist’s investigations between the lines of performer and viewer, production and reception, her new works dwell on the act of public performance, and the intersecting emotions of anxiety, desire and frustration as they play out in her tightly choreographed and constructed scenes.

Alex Prager, La Grande Sortie (Installation View), via Lehman Maupin

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Marianne Vitale, Equipment (Installation View), via Art Observed

Marianne Vitale has joined Invisible-Exports this fall for her first exhibition with the downtown gallery, bringing a single installation of handmade torpedoes that plays on concepts of military machismo, violence, weaponization, and the underlying threads of handicraft and technology that unite these elements in the utilization and application of deadly force.  Looming over the viewer in the center of the gallery space, Equipment’s inverse pyramid translates the artist’s long fascination with technology and materiality into a strikingly immediate, and highly animated format.   (more…)

Lorna Simpson, Detroit (Ode to G.) (2016), via Art Observed

Lorna Simpson’s Salon 94 exhibition speaks volumes with only a few shades and a handful of images on view.  Echoing throughout the gallery space’s small confines, her skeletal, eerie patterns contribute to a cohesive vision throughout the exhibition.  Despite consisting of paintings of a variety of sizes and of a combination of media even across the surface of one piece, the artist displays a unity in terms of her finely tuned, yet free-roving style.  The pieces themselves display an amalgamation of printed photographs, playing against spatters and blots of ink against a gradually altered background, providing a formal and thematic unity despite its disparate visual cues. (more…)

Jean-Michel Basquiat, Hannibal (1982), via Sotheby’s

The Sotheby’s Contemporary and Post-War Evening Sale closed out a weekend of unexpectedly strong and enthusiastic sales in London this week, continuing both a solid week of sales at Frieze London as well as a series of impressive sales at both Christie’s and Phillips in the past days.  Adding its own mark to the week’s proceedings, the auction house saw strong results for its first major offering of the fall season, tallying a final result £47,953,000 with 3 of the 34 lots going unsold. (more…)

Adrian Ghenie, Nickelodeon (2008), via Christie’s

Continuing the week’s unexpectedly strong auction results, Christie’s cinched up its entry in Frieze Week’s series of Contemporary Evening sales tonight in London, capping a 42-lot offering with a sale of brisk and enthusiastic bidding that ultimately pushed the sale to impressively strong results given the glut of sales and works on offer this week.  Only 2 works went unsold over the course of the main sale, with 1 lot withdrawn to bring a final of £34,266,000, followed by a less impressive Italian sale that still managed to achieve £18,680,250 in its own right after a number of passes and underbid lots.

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Frieze London, via Art Observed

The doors are open and the 2016 edition of Frieze London is now underway, bringing a wide range of works and artists to bear on the fairgrounds at Regent’s Park in the northern part of the city.  With its VIP Preview concluding today, the fair made its first big push of sales alongside the kick-off for a number of its projects and performance works, which conclude this Sunday.

Samara Golden at Canada Gallery, via Art Observed

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David Shrigley, Really Good at Trafalgar Square, via Art Observed

Towering over London’s Trafalgar Square, David Shrigley’s Really Good has made its appearance atop one of the most coveted spaces for public art in the city of London, bringing with it the artist’s signature brand of irreverent and multivalent humor that leaves any number of interpretive avenues open for the everyday viewer.  Several years in the making, the work, an immense thumbs-up with a comically long thumb jutting up from the base of the sculpture, comes at a time when London’s position of global prominence seems in need of some healthy optimism, a note that Shrigley’s sculpture offers in ample (albeit strangely amplified) doses. (more…)

Vanessa Albury, Arctic, Future Relics (Glacier Ice) (2016), via Art Observed

The 2016 Edition of Bushwick Open Studios took place this weekend, continuing the event’s series of studio tours, special exhibitions and openings in the longtime artistic hotbed of Bushwick, and showcasing the neighborhood’s impressive density of artists spread across its blocks.

Fred Holland, Untitled (2002), via Art Observed

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Andy Warhol, 20 Pink Maos (1979), via Phillips

Complementing the offering of new works across town at Regent’s Park, Phillips London has opened a week of auctions around Frieze Week, closing out its 30-lot sale this evening with a consistent sale, seeing 6 of the evening’s 30 lots go unsold to reach a final tally of £17,867,750. (more…)

Ugo Rondinone, the sun at 4pm (Installation View), via Art Observed

Ugo Rondinone returns to Gladstone Gallery this fall for an exhibition of recent works, culling together a body of works that mark the artist’s engagement with the natural world through four separate series of work.  Bearing the names of various natural forces, Rondinone’s mountain, sun, waterfall, and cloud pieces capture a particular vantage point in modern humanity’s engagement with the world around it.

Ugo Rondinone, the sun at 4pm (Installation View), via Art Observed

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Jean-Michel Basquiat, Hannibal (1982), via Sotheby’s

With the opening days of Frieze London also come the opening forays into the secondary market for the fall calendar for the British capital, with Phillips, Sotheby’s and Christie’s each trying their hand at a market that has seen distinctly turbulent, albeit occasionally impressive results for what many are calling a sales slump.  Coming off a sluggish summer with an above expectations at Phillips’ New, Now, Next sale of young artists in the past weeks, market spectators and the odd speculator are watching the Contemporary Evening Sales closely this week.

Rudolf Stingel, Untitled (2007), via Phillips

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Mona Hatoum, Electrified (variable II) (2014), via White Cube

Drawing gallerists, collectors and artists from the UK, Europe, and even further afield, Frieze London is set to open its doors this week for the fourteenth edition of the market calendar staple, and the first since the summer’s Brexit vote drew a line in the sand between the UK and the rest of Europe.  Considering early assurances by gallerists, many seem to think that the UK’s pending break may not bode as poorly for the country’s role as an international market capital as initially thought, but the proof will be in the pudding at Frieze, where the number eager buyers will serve as the real bellwether for a market that has already seen its share of struggles this year.

Martin Soto Clemente, Frenetic Gossamer (2016), via Frieze

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Ai Weiwei, Iron Tree Trunk (2015), via Max Hetzler

Bringing a body of less frequently seen works from the past several years to Paris for his first solo exhibition in the city, Ai Weiwei continues his global tour de force after regaining his passport last year, opening a show at Max Hetzler this month.  Capturing the artist’s continued engagement with both the material and socio-political histories of China, the show features a carefully selected, yet broadly applicable series of pieces that offer a fitting counterpoint to the artist’s major museum exhibition currently on view in Athens.

Ai Weiwei (Installation View), via Max Hetzler

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Sara VanDerBeek, Labryinth (2016), via Art Observed

Sara VanDerBeek’s work has long operated at the intersections of process and practice, history and modernity, as the artist allows her investigation of chosen images and art forms to bleed into the image itself.  This mode of practice, pulling diverse material interests into a linear mode of production,  welcomes a nuanced and often multifaceted approach to the cultural and historical contexts of her subject matter, a focus that sits at the center of the artist’s current solo show at Metro Pictures.

Sara VanDerBeek, Pieced Quilts, Wrapped Forms (Installation View), via Art Observed

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Ryan Gander, I Be… (x) (2016), via Art Observed

Ryan Gander has opened his first exhibition at Lisson Gallery’s new New York City outpost, spreading his work through a small but tightly selected body of pieces underlining the artist’s enigmatic material interests in play with his uniquely British sense of humor.  In one corner, a piece called I’m never coming back to New York shows a £20 note slowly twisting and pushing its way out of a hole in the wall, playing on dual jokes about fleshing out new coats of plaster with crumpled paper and the commercial core of the gallery environment.

Ryan Gander, Mr. Modern Classical Conceptualist (Dramaturgical framework for structure and stability) (2016), via Art Observed

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Donald Moffett, Lot 040616 (cobalt and pecans) (2016)

Spanning Marianne Boesky Gallery’s two adjacent Chelsea locations, including the recently-opened space at 507 W. 24th Street, any fallow field, a show of recent work by seminal New York artist Donald Moffett’s investigates some of the reoccurring themes in his multi-media practice.  Moffett’s work emerged in the midst of a New York art scene that, during the ‘80s, was dealing with the debilitating impact of AIDS, a point that made tremendous impact on his complex practice. Moffet’s work sees gender and identity politics explored through oblique, yet elegant, gestures, while remaining heavily invested in representation of form, texture and paint. (more…)

Dolores (Installation View), via Art Observed

The current exhibition at Team Gallery, Dolores, captures a series of disjointed, often confounding narrative arcs, and places them into close conversation through each piece’s respective architectural and spatial implications.  Drawing on the various trappings and appointments of modern domesticity, the show, curated by Todd von Ammon, twists familiar forms and functions through a variety of technical and visual alterations.

Max Hooper Schneider, Dielectrix I: Division Electrophorus (2016), via Art Observed

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Andrea Zittel (Installation View), via Art Observed

Taking over Andrea Rosen’s main Chelsea exhibition space on 24th Street, artist Andrea Zittel is showing a body of new works exploring not only the intertwined concepts of abstracted sculpture and utilitarian object that informs her object-based practice, but equally delving into the experience of space in relation to each piece.  Showing a series of works on view in multiple places simultaneously, Zittel’s practice realizes a distinctly indeterminate space between landscapes and contexts of use. (more…)

Madeline Hollander, Drill (2016), via Art Observed

Signal Gallery kicks off its fall season this month with a pair of exhibitions by artist Madeline Hollander and Aidan Koch, an enigmatic combination of formal interests and performative translations of material split between two rooms in the gallery’s Bushwick exhibition space.  Drawing from varied takes on illustration, movement and conveyance of information, the show’s connecting threads are distinctly understated, welcoming the viewer to consider each show’s work in its relation to material, cultural moorings, and each show’s internal systems of objects and actors.

Aidan Koch, Iris (Installation View), via Art Observed

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Jessica Stockholder, The Guests All Crowded Into the Dining Room (Installation View), via Art Observed

In The Guests All Crowded Into the Dining Room, Jessica Stockholder’s scattered arrangements of sculptural elements play with assumed boundaries to become a fluid meditation on space.  Through a variety of materials and forms, Stockholder avoids overtly breaking down traditional artistic lines, so much as she highlights that they have never truly existed at all.  Here, in her third show at Mitchell-Innes & Nash, Stockholder adds new dimension to her longstanding interest in intersection and continues to define the multifaceted significance of surface and structure.

Jessica Stockholder, Security Detail [JS 688] (2016), via Art Observed

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Martin Kippenberger, Ohne Titel (Aus der Serie ‘Fred the Frog’) (1990), via Art Observed

Skarstedt Gallery’s 79th Street town house takes a cunning turn on the rule of threes this month, as the space shows a minimal, yet nuanced exhibition focusing on German painting.  Culling together three works each from a trio of post-war innovators (Albert Oehlen, Georg Baselitz and Martin Kippenberger), the gallery allows a subtly arranged, yet distinctly felt series of interconnected themes and formal investigations over the course of the exhibition.   (more…)

Jonas Wood, Rosy in my Room with His Cat (2016), via Art Observed

Taking over both rooms at Anton Kern’s Chelsea exhibition space, LA painter Jonas Wood has brought a well-rounded and entertaining series of new paintings, which chart the artist’s continually playful and inventive approach to figuration.  Mixing together abstract signifiers with a cool, even-handed approach to the world around him, Wood’s pieces here are an exceptional entry in the discourse of modern painting.

Jonas Wood, The Bat/Bar Mitzvah Weekend (2016), via Art Observed

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