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.

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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

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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.

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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.

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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 Workshop”. 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.

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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…)

Hieronymus Bosch, The Last Judgement (c. 1495-1505), via Quincy Childs for Art Observed

Half a millennium ago, Hieronymus Bosch walked across the market square of the small Dutch town of ‘s Hertogenbosch, taking the 100 yard walk to his studio, where he would paint the timeless, demonic, and captivating works that continue to fascinate people today. To commemorate the 500^th anniversary of his birth, the town’s Het Noordbrabants Museum has secured the majority of his works for what is arguably one of the most important exhibitions of our century, Hieronymus Bosch – Visions of Genius. Exploring the timeline of his oeuvre, viewers are able to revive his living genius, and therein the fantasies and chimeras he created with a timeless sense of wonder.

Hieronymus Bosch, The Wayfarer (c. 1500-1510), via Quincy Childs for Art Observed (more…)

Matias Faldbakken, Europe is Balding (2016), via Quincy Childs for Art Observed

Matias Faldbakken sits among a select group of artists working at a certain crux of politically-critical work and a unique sense of material-based composition.  Crossing signifiers from the domestic and lifestyle commodities with the rough elements of building construction (cement, tile, nylon rope), Faldbakken’s work investigates the application and representation of force, often with disturbing contextual undertones. This notion sits at the core of Europe is Balding, his new exhibition of work at Paul Cooper Gallery in Chelsea.

Matias Faldbakken, Tiled Dashboard #3 (2016), via Quincy Childs for Art Observed (more…)

Larry Bell, Lil’ Orphan Annie (1960), all photos via Art Observed

Hauser & Wirth is currently presenting work by American sculpture and installation artist, Larry Bell at its Upper East Side location in New York, compiling a series of historically resonant works in conjunction with some of the artist’s recent environmental installs.  The exhibition, titled From the ’60s, sees the acclaimed artist presenting a body of work representative of his career working among the neo-avant-garde that followed in the wake of New York abstraction, and which continued to push the limits of perceptual and conceptual definitions of art.    (more…)

Berlinde De Bruyckere, No Life Lost II (2015), all images via Osman Can Yerebakan for Art Observed.

No Life Lost is the title of Belgian artist Berlinde De Bruyckere’s current solo exhibition at Hauser & Wirth, half a decade after her last New York presentation at the gallery. Widely recognized in Europe for her emotionally challenging oeuvre, De Bruyckere employs spirited, commanding textures in resin, wax, textile and animal skin, placed alongside rugged industrial materials, delivering a haunting body of work that follows its audience outside the gallery space. (more…)

Erwin Wurm, One Minute Sculptures (Installation View), via Art Observed

Erwin Wurm’s One Minute Sculptures are a unique moment in the artist’s catalog, a comical application of the artist’s subversive wit.  Transferring his patently absurdist utilizations of domestic commodities and subjects onto the human form, the works take his nuanced eye for the more unique forms and signifiers mass production and late capitalism, and apply them towards an immediate interaction with the human body.  Through his works in the series, Wurm deconstructs use and value as essentially productive elements of consumption, and then turns the intersection of actor and object into an inherently useless situationism. (more…)

Karen Kilimnik, the adoration of the cats (2015), via 303 Gallery

In her eleventh exhibition with 303 Gallery, on view through March 26th, Karen Kilimnik returns to her historically-motivated sense of sarcasm and self-awareness, dissecting the convoluted theoretical foundations of contemporary art, in a trademark language that plays on, and resonates with, notions and concepts of kitsch.  Kilimnik’s uncompromising fascination with the imperviousness of pre-20th century European extravagance, and its depictions in the art of the era, as well as that of modernity, blossom through her own collage techniques here, combining flippant references with lush environs to create critically de-centered works.

Karen Kilimnik (Installation View), via 303 Gallery

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Albert Oehlen (Installation View) All images Courtesy the Gagosian Gallery

In his work, German artist Albert Oehlen concerns himself with illustrating and exploring the process of painting itself.  From the early 1980’s on, he has combined tenants of figurative and abstract practice in reaction to the Neo-Expressionist trends in painting during the time, eventually Oehlen turning his experiments with various mediums and modes of painting more fully towards abstract painting.  Oehlen frequently approaches painting through a set of restrictions he imposes upon himself: to work at a deliberately slow pace, with only one color, or with unfamiliar or non-typical tools (his fingers, brushes, collage, and in this instance, aluminum-panels instead of canvas).  With a new series of works at Gagosian’s Grosvenor Hill location in London, Oehlen reveals a series of works drawing on digital processes incorporated into the act of painting, continuing certain explorations he began with line painting during the 1990’s, and reflecting his ongoing concerns with constantly testing the boundaries of the medium and its relation to broader modes of production.

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Daniel Richter, Flowers of Romance (2015), all photos courtesy Thaddaeus Ropac

Now through March 12^th, Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac Salzburg presents a solo exhibition of Daniel Richter’s new work, Half-Naked Truth, a collection of two separate groups of paintings produced in parallel over the course of the last two years.  Richter’s first experimentation with oil crayons, the show sees an intriguing new movement for the artist, lending his figures an almost crude demarcation or delineation of space in relation to each other. Though the themes of closeness and movement remain consistent with Richter’s earlier works, there is a quality of abstraction in these series that pushes towards testing the boundaries of the act of painting, as well as the artist’s signature use of bright colors and stark contrast from form to form that further his project in each series. (more…)

Frank Stella at the joint Marianne Boesky and Dominique Lévy Booth, via Art Observed

Returning to its home at the Park Avenue Armory, the ADAA Art Show opened its doors this past weekend for another year of sales and specially-focused exhibitions, offering a more curatorial take on the Armory Week fair show.  Dealing almost exclusively in curated booths or solo artist exhibitions, the fair’s manageable layout and sharply delineated booths offered an adventurous walk for the interested fairgoer, dropping historical perspective or new aesthetic links between artists and movements. (more…)

Hernán Rivera, Ernesto Burgos, Alberto Borea, The Visible Hand (2016), installation view, via 67

Since opening in the fall of 2015 the artist-run basement space of 67 Ludlow has been host to a number of shows, screenings, poetry sessions and discussions. The current show, The Visible Hand, brings together work by three young artists currently based in New York. Each exhibits his own  transformation of common, everyday materials and situations in efforts to forge a rift in typical systems of image-making, use and production. (more…)

Jean-Marie Appriou at Clearing, via Art Observed

Over the past several years, the Independent NY art fair has grown by leaps and bounds into something of a legitimate contender for the prime attention and customers of Armory Week.  Its impressive curatorial focus, relaxed atmosphere and intuitive layout has earned it a reputation that fits well alongside its manageable scale, and relatively easy accessibility for interested visitors.  This year sees the fair doubling down on its best qualities as it moves downtown to Spring Studios on Varick in TriBeCa, a marked upgrade that brings the best of the fair’s previous iterations to bear on its increasingly competitive stature.

Nate Lowman at Maccarone, via Art Observed (more…)

Christian Jankowski, Retrospektive (Installation View), all photos courtesy CFA Berlin

The work of Christian Jankowski involves various social and artistic practices, a comingling of actions in which the visual product is often only a single aspect of the larger work.  Randomly encountered bystanders become co-conspirators in his spectacle, often interrogating modes of modern communication and interaction.   Timed to coincide with the Berlin Film Festival, the Berlinale 2016, the first-time collaboration between the gallery and Berlin-based Jankowski, the exhibition is presented as a retrospective and features predominantly cinematic work produced by the artist. (more…)

Caroline Wells Chandler, via Art Observed

Situated above the 8^th Avenue Post Office just outside of Chelsea and across the street from Madison Square Garden, the SPRING/BREAK Art Show easily takes the distinction of Armory Week’s most peculiar locale. Yet the hallways and offices of Moynihan Station make for an optimal site considering the event’s curator-focused, freewheeling vision and often unpredictable projects, a combination that has established SPRING/BREAK as one of Armory Week’s main events.

David B.Smith, Extruded Daydream, via Art Observed

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