Sol LeWitt, Wall Drawing #1271 Scribbles 12 (2007), all photos via Quincy Childs for Art Observed

The Drawing Center in New York is currently presenting selections from the collection of Sol LeWitt, offering a glimpse into the creative inspirations of one of the Post-War era’s central figures.  Showcasing an array of memorabilia and art including Japanese woodblock prints, hand-colored tourist photographs, and letters from his contemporaries, the show traces a lifetime of intellectual exchange and exploration by the pioneer of minimalist and conceptual practice. (more…)

Laszlo Moholy-Nagy, 19 (1921), via Art Observed

The Guggenheim Museum has opened its doors on an expansive exhibition of work by Laszlo Moholy-Nagy, exploring the Bauhaus member’s impressive contributions to the development of 20th Century Modernism. Combining his explorations in sculpture, painting, film, photography and even installation, the exhibition places the artist’s enthusiasm for technological progress into conversation with the present day. (more…)

 

Tracey Emin, Resting, 2015 gouache on paper 8.78 x 11.89 inches Photo © George Darrell. © Tracey Emin. All rights reserved, DACS 2016. Courtesy of Lehmann Maupin.

Stone Love defines a definitive next step for Tracey Emin, the already prolific artist whose now-three-decade long career has delivered a particular example of artistic sincerity and introspection throughout a wide range of artistic forms and formats.  Constantly returning to her own ambitious urge for self-discovery and contemplation, Emin’s body of work translates pristine and emphatic human instincts through her own intuitive lens. Referring to the first sentence in David Bowie’s 1972 song Soul Love, the exhibition considers alternate possibilities for love—arguably the most complex yet by far the most undertaken subject in art and literature.

Tracey Emin, Another way to Think of You, 2015 embroidered calico 89.76 x 90.94 inches Photo © George Darrell. © Tracey Emin. All rights reserved, DACS 2016. Courtesy of Lehmann Maupin.

 

Tracey Emin, You were here like the ground underneath my feet, 2016 acrylic on canvas 60.24 x 83.86 inches Photo © George Darrell. © Tracey Emin. All rights reserved, DACS 2016. Courtesy of Lehmann Maupin.

As the news in the run-up to this exhibition often dwelled on, Emin recently married a stone near her coastal studio (a scene depicted in one of her pieces), which she sees as a permanent object that will serve as a source of eternal fortitude. “Being in love with a stone is monumental”, Emin has said, walking through the exhibition of her signature neon texts, gouache on paper drawings and bronze sculptures, as well as some embroidery.  Stone renders a land of possibilities where loving singlehandedly nourishes its subject, unrestrained by societal or physical norms for desire.  As much as humanistic and philosophical, Emin’s narrative for the exhibition conveys her personal journey and her current emotional map as an artist and human being.

Tracey Emin: Stone Love Installation view, Lehmann Maupin, Photo © George Darrell. © Tracey Emin. All rights reserved, DACS 2016. Courtesy of Lehmann Maupin.

Emin, stripping the restraints and impositions of physical love between two parties, approaches the phenomenon as an endeavor and, to some degree, a duty, waiting to be fulfilled.  Loving to love, as its own virtue, celebrated by David Bowie, leads Emin’s work towards an elimination of a desired object of affection.  Yet at the same time, the stone, appears in its original definition, as well as allegorizing transcendence beyond what is tactile and mundane.

Tracey Emin: Stone Love Installation view, Lehmann Maupin Photo © George Darrell. © Tracey Emin. All rights reserved, DACS 2016. Courtesy of Lehmann Maupin.

Reading Just Let Me Love You in Emin’s own handwriting, the namesake neon piece is in conversation with bronze sculpture of an abstracted female figure, with her vulva facing the artist’s declaration of unrequited love, as if building an ephemeral bound between words and images both catering to her acclimation to an inner journey rather than an externalized ideal. Channeling one of her most iconic works, Everyone I’ve Slept With (1963-95), the show also includes a series of embroidered illustrations of female forms, which Emin appliqués mostly based on photographs of her nude self in various positions.  Tying the meticulous process of knitting with equally determined efforts invested in carnal infatuation and self-awareness, these large scale calicos deepen the dialogue around the mediative and eventually fruitful state of embarking on a journey—be it embroidering or falling in love.

Tracey Emin: Stone Love is on view at Lehmann Maupin through June 18, 2016.

Tracey Emin during the walkthrough of her exhibiton Stone Love at Lehmann Maupin, Photo: Osman Can Yerebakan

— O.C. Yerebakan

Related Links:
Lehmann Maupin [Exhibition Page]
W Magazine [Tracey Emin Talks Her Past and Marrying a Stone (Literally)]

Tony Cragg, Hardliner (2013), via Thaddaeus Ropac

British sculptor Tony Cragg has brought a series of 25 new sculptural works to Thaddaeus Ropac’s Paris Pantin Gallery, showcasing the artist’s impressive range of skills in steel, bronze, wood, fiberglass, and even stone.  The show, which capitalizes on his major exhibition at St. Petersburg’s State Hermitage Museum, underscores Cragg’s relentless material and sculptural explorations, and offers a continuation of more recent work to counterpoint the more historical thread found in the Russian exhibition. (more…)

Gert & Uwe Tobias. Untitled (2016) via CFA Berlin

Now through June 11, CFA Berlin presents a series of new work from Gert & Uwe Tobias, drawing from a rich tapestry of visual and historical references, including Dutch florals, contemporary painting and medieval art forms, where surrealism meets prehistory. The twin brothers, born in Brasov, Romania and now working in Cologne, center their work in large part on their Romanian heritage, weaving together this legacy with graphic design, and modern abstraction.  Horror and the grotesque are frequent themes of the brothers’ work, revealing an easy linked forged between the hybrid forms found in Surrealism and those featured in myth and legend.   (more…)

Anish Kapoor, She Wolf (2016), via Art Observed

Currently at Gladstone Gallery’s Chelsea locations, artist Anish Kapoor has brought a selection of recent works for Today You Will Be in Paradise, an exhibition that showcases the artist’s particular application of sculptural language towards revealing inquiries of perception, memory, and the body itself.  Exercising his practice across a broad framework of wall-mounted and free-standing arrangements of visceral, often hyper-realistic pieces, Kapoor’s pieces turn extremely personal moments into opportunities to explore broad human themes.

Anish Kapoor, Three Internal Objects (2013-2015), via Art Observed

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Jenny Saville, Ebb and Flow (2015) © Jenny Saville. Photograph by Ashmolean Museum Photo Studio

Jenny Saville is known for her large-scale oil paintings of bodies in flux, and associated with flesh in all its forms: living, dead, young, old, human and animal. There is a fascination with the mass, weight, and transmutability of the body that runs throughout Saville’s impressive and applauded career, and now, Gagosian’s London space is presenting Erota, an exhibition of new drawings by the artist that equally represent a continuation of themes, questioning of previous work, and a departure into new territory. (more…)

Cindy Sherman, Untitled (2016), via Art Observed

Currently on view at Metro Pictures, Cindy Sherman has installed a series of new photographs, portraits that mark her first new body of work in five years. The pieces, exploring more nuanced cultural frameworks at play in Hollywood image production, feel like a fitting conclusion to a long-running body of work, while expanding Sherman’s critical dialogue with the image through a studious selection of figures and contexts.

Cindy Sherman, Untitled (2016), via Art Observed

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Gerhard Richter, 940-6 Abstraktes Bild (2015), via Art Observed

Gerhard Richter has returned to New York City this month, opening a diverse exhibition of new works at Marian Goodman Gallery, including a continuation of his Abstraktes Bild and Aladin series, alongside a new group of abstract drawings. (more…)

Ken Price, The Beautiful West (2005), via Art Observed

It’s not difficult to recognize a piece by Ken Price.  The artist’s fluid, winding sculptures and objects signal a high point of West Coast sculpture during the post-war era, an incorporation and reworking of Bay Area Funk priorities with the artist’s own sensibilities.  These influences and ideas are on view at Matthew Marks Gallery this month, as the artist exhibits a series of drawings from the early 1990’s. (more…)

Tom Wesselmann, Sunset Nude with Big Palm Tree (2004), via Art Observed

Mitchell-Innes and Nash has opened its doors on a broad, yet impressive career retrospective of the work of Tom Wesselmann, the iconic pop painter whose renditions of mass commodities, American landscapes and the human form defined him as one of the most original voices coming out of the Post-War landscape.  Perhaps best known for his large, shaped canvases depicting lipstick-clad mouths breathing out cigarette smoke, Wesselmann’s interests in painterly technique and the American subject were constantly evolving over the course of his career, even as some of his formal containers and pictorial content remained the same.

Tom Wesselmann, Interior #2 (1964), via Art Observed

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Luc Tuymans, Murky Water (2015), via Art Observed

Luc Tuymans works at the tenuous grasp of the image on reality, exploiting momentary glimmers, flashes of light, and seconds of spatial repose, all executed through his signature, muted color palette in an attempt to delve even deeper into the slight seconds that constitute his subject matter.  Here, at his new show with David Zwirner, the artist has turned towards themes of decay and isolation, lending his already staid pieces an increased degree of melancholy. (more…)

Philip Guston, Untitled (1958), via Art Observed

In one of the season’s more historically resonant offerings, Hauser and Wirth has opened its 18^th Street Gallery to a rare exhibition of Philip Guston’s 1950’s abstractions, collected as a presentation of his impressive output as a member of the New York School. Exploring the artist’s varied investigations of the canvas and mark in tandem, the show presents Guston’s work as a fascinating historical progression towards his more honed, expressive figuration of the late 1960’s and onward.

Philip Guston, Painter, 1957-1967 (Installation View), via Art Observed

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Isa Genzken, Mach Dich hübsch! (Installation View), via Art Observed

Isa Genzken is one of Germany’s most notable contemporary artists. Born in 1948, her work spans sculpture, installation, film, photography, collage, and painting, and she has continued to drive the German arts community forward with an inventive approach to digital media and created computer-designed sculptures that dates to the 1970’s.  Drawing on influences of American minimalism and conceptual art, alongside pop art, Genzken’s ready-mades and mannequin-based works also enter into conversation with Dadaist and Surrealist influences. (more…)

Friedrich Kunath, My Loneliness Shines (Installation View) all photos via Daphné Mookherjee for Art Observed

This past month, VNH Gallery opened German artist Friedrich Kunath‘s first solo exhibition in France.  Titled My Loneliness Shines, the artist’s new paintings, drawings, and neons contributed to an installation specially conceived for the space, exploring themes of melancholy, existentialism, loneliness and romance. Blending cultural codes and histories of composition, while mixing various narrative worlds and historical epochs with pop forms and kitsch, the show further cemented Kunath’s already unique approach towards free-ranging inventiveness.

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Lucas Blalock, An Other Shadow (2014-2016), via Art Observed

Artist Lucas Blalock’s Low Comedy is currently on view at Ramiken Crucible on the Lower East Side, weaving digital and traditional photography into a hybridized form to create surreal and often comedic images and prints.

Lucas Blalock, Low Comedy (Installation View), via Ramiken Crucible (more…)

Richard Tuttle, Red Dots, Deep Maroon Over Green (1986), via Art Observed

If there’s one thing to be said for Richard Tuttle’s work, there’s at least 26.  That’s the argument Pace Gallery is making with its newest exhibition of the artist’s work, which compiles 26 works from his 50-year career into a single gallery show, offering a unique opportunity to re-evaluate both Tuttle’s continuous and consistent output alongside his focused approach to art-making. (more…)

Robert Longo, Bullet Hole in Window (Detail), All Images courtesy Galerie Thaddeus Ropac

Now through May 22nd, 2016, Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac in Paris is hosting Luminous Discontent, an exhibition of new work by American artist Robert Longo. Spanning three floors of the gallery’s Marais exhibition space, Longo is presenting a series of large-scale charcoal drawings and sculpture, constructed by the artist specifically for this space. This new work follows from Longo’s production of large-scale monochromatic, photorealist compositions, engaging with historical and political themes in new ways. (more…)

Elmgreen & Dragset, Van Gogh’s Ear (2016), Courtesy of the artists and K11 Art Foundation, Galerie Perrotin, Galleria Massimo de Carlo and Victoria Miro  Gallery Photo: Jason Wyche, Courtesy Public Art Fund, NY

This month, the Public Art Fund unveiled Van Gogh’s Ear, the organization’s ambitious collaboration with artist duo Elmgreen & Dragset.  Presented to the public on a fittingly drizzly wet April morning (considering the sculpture’s subject matter), the completely drained pool recalls those of 1950’s Los Angeles.   The impressive 354-inch high sculpture, designed and crafted by the duo in the form of an ear, makes explicit reference to Van Gogh, whose dismembered ear has been the subject of various speculations in art history, stands on the hectic corner of 5th avenue, showing off its intricately detailed aqua blue interior, stainless steel ladder, glowing lights and accompanying diving board.  (more…)

Tom Sachs, Waiting Arbor (2014), via Art Observed

For the first time in the museum’s history, an artist other than Isamu Noguchi will present work for the Noguchi Museum, as Tom Sachs brings his Tea Ceremony installation to the museum for its 30th Anniversary.  Sachs, who previously worked on other sprawling, conceptually-unified installation projects like Space Program 2.0: MARS, and Hello Kitty Nativity, here turns his interests towards chanoyu, the traditional Japanese tea ceremony.  Complete with a tea house, tools, and a garden, the exhibit features all the pieces necessary for the ceremony, each time realized through Sachs’s unique formal perspective.  Among the items incorporated within the installation include a bronze bonsai tree made by wielding together over 3,600 individual parts, a full koi pond complete with living orange and gray fish, wooden and metal gates, a full tea house, and many other structures made of everyday objects.

Tom Sachs, Pond Berm (2016), via Art Observed

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David Hammons, Untitled (2014), via Art Observed

When it was announced that Mnuchin Gallery would host an exhibition of artist David Hammons’s work this year, anticipation was understandably high.  The reclusive artist’s work is rarely given this expansive stage for historical examination and the contextual impact of his work.  Spread out across the gallery’s two-floor townhouse exhibition space, Five Decades examines just that, Hammons’s expansive and formally elusive career working at a unique juncture of the avant-garde. (more…)

Jessi Reaves, Muscle Chair (Laying down to talk) (2016), via Art Observed

Artist Jessi Reaves takes Bridget Donahue Gallery into the summer months with her show of new work, transposing the styles and forms of high design into the framework of fine art, and examining the interplay of languages that results.  Having opened in early April, the exhibition, comprised of vividly executed furniture, shelving and cabinets, “suitable for use,” as the press release states, sees Reaves pushing her chosen forms towards new territories, substituting hard angles and flat planes for loping, curving lines, or inverting the often concealed material elements of each form. (more…)

The Modigliani Sells, via Art Observed

After a long week of sales that has seen both ups and downs for the two main auction houses, Christie’s has concluded its week with a consistently solid Impressionist and Modern sale, with 7 of the 54 lots at auction going unsold for a final tally of $141,532,000.   The auction house saw its momentary stumbles over the course of the sale, with several pieces falling well below estimate, and a few high-profile lots going unsold.  Even so, Christie’s managed to keep the bids moving, and keep works selling, a point that surely is not lost on those watching Sotheby’s occasionally disheartening sale earlier this week. (more…)

Mike Cooter, MacGuffin: some archetypes towards a definition (2016)

Swiss Institute’s Fade In: Int. Art Gallery-Day is a group exhibition featuring an ambitious array of contemporary artists, including Cindy Sherman, Allan McCollum, Christian Marclay, Dora Budor and Jamian Juliano-Villani, interpreting the ubiquitous relationship of moving images to the field of visual art. Comprised mostly of commissioned works, the exhibition transforms the gallery’s spacious interior into a vigorous stage, expanding outwards from the gallery entrance towards a deep corner of the storage room on the lower level. (more…)