Fischli/Weiss, Rat and Bear (Sleeping) (2008), via Art Observed
The Guggenheim has opened its doors to Swiss collaborative Fischli/Weiss for the retrospective show How to Work Better, exploring the pair’s lighthearted, often satirical manipulations of reality and art history through their unique modes of creation. (more…)
Qiu Xiaofei, Vortex (2015), all photos via Rui Tang for Art Observed
Double Pendulum, the first solo exhibition of Qiu Xiaofei in North America, is currently on view at Pace Gallery on 510 West 25th Street. Showcasing a group of new paintings, the exhibition presents the artist’s transition towards an abstract expression through a range of colors that complicate the relationships between foreground and background. (more…)
Hernan Bas, Champagne Corks Bobbed in the Pool That Morning, 2016
Bright Young Things is Lehmann Maupin’s ongoing exhibition for a new body of work by Detroit and Miami-based painter Hernan Bas.  Amongst the most particular and earnest contemporary figurative painters, Bas has established himself over the past years as a craftsman of distinctive visual narratives, in which the lavish and relentlessly indulgent daily life of western aristocracy meets the styles of mannerist painting, employing passionate color spectrums and surreal architectural forms. (more…)
Glenn Ligon, What We Said The Last Time (Installation View), all images are by Osman Can Yerebakan for Art Observed.
Artist Glenn Ligon has embarked on an ambitious exhibition schedule this spring, showing at both New York locations for Luhring Augustine this month.  The show, which closes next week, runs through a range of Ligon’s body of work.   What We Said The Last Time is the Chelsea leg of a two part exhibition, and sees the influential multimedia artist commemorating the literary work of James Baldwin, whose writings had tremendous impact on many other authors and artists. (more…)
Philippe Parreno, Li Yan, (2016). all images Courtesy Gladstone Gallery
IF THIS THEN ELSE marks French artist Philippe Parreno’s first exhibition with Gladstone Gallery, on view at two of the gallery’s New York spaces (21st and 64th street).  The shows are separate in theme and bodies of work, yet intricately connected, as Parreno continues his exploration of the exhibition as a temporal experience involving architecture, art and the public. (more…)
A set of Andy Warhol Campbell’s Soup Can prints have been stolen from the Springfield Art Museum in Missouri.  “There hasn’t been an incident in any recent history,” says spokesperson Cora Scott.  “We are constantly working on improving security measures and find it a challenging balance with keeping art accessible to the community. We appreciate the outpouring of support we are already receiving from our art patrons.” (more…)
Oscar Tuazon, Shelters (Installation View), All Photo credits: © Florian Kleinefenn
Courtesy of the artist and Galerie Chantal Crousel, Paris
Wordplay is the primary focus in Oscar Tuazon’s current exhibition at Chantal Crousel Gallery in Paris this month, pursuing a constantly folding, nebulous interpretation of concepts around reading, space, text and composition.  The show, Shelters, takes its title from the angular structures erected throughout the gallery, accompanied by wall-hangings and utilitarian sculptural works that offer multiple points of engagement and interaction with the viewer. (more…)
Joan Jonas, They Came to Us Without a Word II (2015), via Art Observed
This week, Joan Jonas returned to The Kitchen to present They Came to Us Without a Word,” a reprisal and reimagining of her work from the U.S. Pavilion at the Venice Biennale last year.  Working closely with a group of schoolchildren, and featuring a live score by her longtime collaborator Jason Moran, the show takes her initial project, and moves it closer towards a standalone stage production, dwelling on her interests in fragmented media, interrelated histories and meanings, and human understandings of the world.  (more…)
Anri Sala, Moth in B Flat (2015), via Art Observed
Spread across three floors at the New Museum, Anri Sala’s current career retrospective is an impressively deep, immersive offering; a lyrical, twisting series of pieces that investigate the phenomena of sound in its relations to cultural, institutional and technological containers.
Urs Fischer, officeguy (2016), via Art Observed
Entering Gagosian’s fifth floor exhibition space on the Upper East Side, one is greeted with something of an exercise in phenomenological affect.  Smelling faintly of bacon (the artist stipulated that several slices must be cooked in the gallery space each morning), the space is adorned with sweeping brushstrokes on each of the walls, and topped with a series of aluminum panels, bearing cartoon icons twisted into abstract geometric arrangements.  The result is a twisting, surreal environment that feels as surreal as it looks. (more…)
Robert Rauschenberg, Tablet Series (1974)
Currently on view at Luxembourg and Dayan, the group exhibition In The Making seeks to shed light on the often overlooked, yet crucial creative dialogue between the artist and their assistant or assistants in the studio.  Organized by Tamar Margalit, the exhibition, which runs through April 16th, unfolds in a manner similar to a family tree, connecting infamous or remote dots in New York art scene after the 1950’s through shared studio spaces, practices, and the informal education process that often occurs in the relationship between artist and their hired team. (more…)
Adam McEwen, Harvest (Installation View), via Art Observed
Embarking on winding pathways through the landscape of modernity, Adam McEwen’s work frequently dwells on the structures and representations of cognition, discovery and intellectual unraveling, mixing consumer objects, banal materials and re-inscriptions of symbolic systems to create interconnected bodies of work that are as mysteriously compelling as they are varied. (more…)
Renowned architect Dame Zaha Hadid has passed away at the age of 65.  Hadid has been a foundational voice of contemporary architecture over the course of the early 21st Century, including London’s Olympic Aquatic Centre, the Guangzhou Opera House, and the MAXXI in Rome.  (more…)
Carroll Dunham, Mound A (1991-1992), via Art Observed
Flexing his curatorial muscle at both Skarstedt Gallery locations in New York, David Salle has compiled an intriguing collection of recent paintings by a vastly diverse group of artists, and examines their shared interests in the grounds of abstract painting: formal concerns of size, scale and focus, in combination with the compositional elements of color, contrast and hue. (more…)
Sherrie Levine, Pink SMEG Refrigerator and Renoir Nudes (2016), via Art Observed
Opening her first exhibition with David Zwirner in New York City, Sherrie Levine has taken over the 2nd floor of the gallery’s 20th Street Flagship, bringing a body of works that feels like a fitting first entry in her collaboration with Zwirner, while signaling new steps forward in her challenging and cerebral practice.
Tony Cragg, Untitled (2015), all photos via Quincy Childs for Art Observed
The opening hours of Art Basel Hong Kong have come and gone at the Hong Kong Convention Center this week, as the Asian art world descending on South China’s bustling metropolis for the first hours of high-profile sales. The fair saw strong international attendance during the VIP Vernissage, with Brooklyn Museum Director Anne Pasternak, Tracey Emin, Cai Guo Qiang, Hans Ulrich Obrist and Julia Peyton-Jones all spotted walking the aisles of the fair during its opening day, as were Mariko Mori, Hernan Bas, and Owen Wilson. (more…)
Michael Riedel, Untitled (Art Material_Lycaenops 90) (2015), all photos via Osman Can Yerebakan for Art Observed
Entering Michael Riedel’s current exhibition at David Zwirner, visitors encounter an intriguing  spatial arrangement, composed of abstract patterns blanketing gallery walls.  Pulled from art material supplier BLICK’s website, the text, distorted to illegibility, is abstracted from its informative ends and transformed into purely graphical patterns.  Barely comprehensible through a closer inspection, words listing different dimensions for canvases, or describing various color charts are no longer usable.  Distortion of this conversation between information and its raison d’être commonly emerges in Riedel’s practice, bringing this dialogue into a reversed cycle, in which function becomes infertile and surplus conveys aesthetic. (more…)
Taryn Simon, Bratislava Declaration, Bratislava, Slovakia, August 3, 1968, Paperwork and the Will of Capital (2015) © Taryn Simon. Courtesy Gagosian Gallery
Last year at the Venice Biennale, Taryn Simon unveiled a body of new work under the title Paperwork and the Will of Capital, a selection of new photographs and assemblages documenting and photographing a series of bouquets that sat as centerpieces during the signing of various accords, treaties, and decrees worldwide.  Taking a subdued path through corporate and pop gestures, the work’s simple presentation and concept carries a strong conceptual punch, deconstructing the political grandeur of often oppressive regime decisions.  These works are now on view in New York, presented at Gagosian’s 24th Street Chelsea location.
Taryn Simon, Paperwork and the Will of Capital (Installation View), © Taryn Simon. Courtesy Gagosian Gallery. Photography by Robert McKeever
Sterling Ruby, Work Wear: Garment and Textile Archive 2008 – 2016 (Installation View), via Sprüth Magers
In 2008, Sterling Ruby designed his own work shirt and pants, a uniform of sorts, which he would wear over the course of each body of work that he created.  At the conclusion of each project, Ruby’s leftover materials are saved and incorporated into a new series of clothing pieces, ultimately reproducing the chemical treatments and techniques of each project as its own series of clothing pieces.  These works are currently on view for the first time at Sprüth Magers in London, part of his exhibition Work Wear.
Yutaka Sone, Hong Kong (2015), via David Zwirner
Art Basel is preparing to launch the first of its 2016 fair editions this week, as its international clientele touches down in the Chinese port of Hong Kong for the 4th year of the fair under the global fair franchise’s supervision.  Following last year’s impressive success and broad attendance, the fair will look to repeat its strong showing.  The challenges will be notable this year, however, in the face of slowing economic growth, and a diminished buyer pool following last year’s economic ups and downs.  Yet wealthy buyers seem to proliferate in China despite decreased confidence, seeking efficient ways to move investment out of the country’s currency during this unstable market period. (more…)
John Baldessari at Sprüth Magers, via Thisbe Gensler for Art Observed
Sprüth Magers, the German gallery with outposts in Cologne, Berlin and London, has opened its inaugural Los Angeles exhibition with a show of new works by John Baldessari.  Located across the street from LACMA on Wilshire’s Miracle Mile, the new gallery boasts two floors of paintings, its street-facing windows covered in Baldessari’s iconic scrawl, “I will not make any more boring art.”  The sixteen works in the show do not disappoint, showcasing the artist’s trademark conceptual wit in a series of works emblematizing his interest in visual and textual modes of communication, artistic authorship and the notion of absence.  Having worked across a vast range of media and styles he states descends from Duchamp, Baldessari continues to explore the agency of the viewer in finding and defining meaning in his pieces.
Eduardo Navarro, Five minutes ago (2015), All photos via Osman Can Yerebakan for Art Observed
Since unveiling its new expansion and renovated architecture in 2014, SculptureCenter has been embarking on a series of compelling, and conceptually unorthodox exhibitions, repurposing the building’s structural challenges and unique layout into an equally unique curatorial advantage.  The Eccentrics, organized by the staff curator Ruba Katrib, is the most recent example of such efforts at matching the space’s rugged industrial façade with distinctive aesthetic trends and aesthetic sensibilities in contemporary art.  Introducing eight international artists working in a variety of media, the exhibition stems from German Marxist theorist Walter Benjamin’s observations on the circus as a platform for societal norms and a performance of fabricated others. (more…)
Damián Ortega, Paisaje 2 (2016), and Gabriel Orozco, Blind Signs (2013) via Sophie Kitching for Art Observed
The collective exhibition “xylañynu. taller de los viernes†curated by Guillermo Santamarina, brings together recent works by five artist friends and close collaborators: Gabriel Orozco, Abraham Cruzvillegas, Damián Ortega, Gabriel Kuri and Dr. Lakra. Thirty years ago they started meeting at Gabriel Orozco’s house in Ttlalplan to create a kind of alternative art school which became their “Friday Workshopâ€. Hosted between 1987 and 1992 by a then 25-year-old Orozco slightly older than his peers, the workshop embodied an experimental meeting place, which allowed each of them to investigate and progressively give form to their own artistic language. The latent synergy and embedded connections between their creative processes is for the first time displayed at their Mexican Gallery Kurimanzutto.
Karla Black, Ways Appear (2016), via David Zwirner
In her second exhibition at David Zwirner, Scottish artist Karla Black takes over the gallery’s 525 West 19th street location to orchestrate a body of work that smoothly maneuvers through rigid conceptions of medium or genres.  In her previous exhibition in 2014, Black executed a carpet-like installation of bath bombs, nail polish, Sellotape and powder paint, infusing an otherworldly, ephemeral aura into the gallery’s white cube architecture through its lyrical presence.  Here, she presents another floor install, employing familiar everyday objects alongside artistically pertinent materials. The work, Includes Use, utilizes toilet paper collected from different parts of the globe, each manufactured in different shades and hues. Akin to budding flowers, the folds of toilet paper in their assorted hues pierce through earthy, plaster powder and paint, channeling a sort of surreal, utopian topography. (more…)
