Joseph Kosuth, Agnosia, an Illuminated Ontology (Installation View), all photos via Osman Can Yerebakan for Art Observed

A preeminent member of the pioneering group of conceptual practitioners that sought to dissolve art making from declarations of objective emotion or feeling, Joseph Kosuth remains a marker stone for the reach and potential for Conceptual Art, still using his work to scrutinize the limits and definitions of contextual meaning, often removed from primarily aesthetic concerns, at age 70.  Agnosia, an Illuminated Ontology strikes the viewer as a large-scale installation orchestrated by Kosuth at Sean Kelly Gallery, where the artist, who splits his time between New York and London, is showing his first exhibition since 2011. (more…)

Rudolf Stingel (Installation View), Copyright the artist, courtesy Sadie Coles HQ, London

Italian artist Rudolf Stingel takes over both of Sadie Coles HQ’s locations in London this month, bringing with him a typically enigmatic body of work that combines the artist’s interests in the role, transformation and translation of the painted image, taken in conjunction with its relation to photographic context, time and the natural world. (more…)

Donald Judd, Untitled (1979), via Rae Wang for Art Observed

Over the course of his sculpting career, Cor-ten steel remained a consistent source of inspiration for Donald Judd, its variance in texture, hue and responsiveness to light offering the artist a malleable yet solid framework to continue his investigations in spatial interaction, light and time throughout his pieces.   Taking this material fascination as its starting point, David Zwirner is presenting a series of pieces from across the artist’s career, joined together by his use of Cor-ten, and underscoring the metal’s complementary characteristics when applied towards Judd’s aesthetic project. (more…)

Marina Abramovic and Igor Levit, Goldberg (2015), photo by Marco Anelli

Over the course of the past two years, Marina Abramovic’s work has shifted towards the meditative, and the participatory simultaneously, a seemingly dissonant set of parameters that have resulted in a range of peculiar performances experimenting with sensory deprivation, mediated experiences of space, and gentle brushes with the artist’s person, as she acts as a guide through her own created environments.  Her practice continues this month at the Park Avenue Armory, where the the artist has partnered with pianist Igor Levit for Goldberg, a meditative concert of J.S. Bach’s Goldberg Variations. (more…)

Nari Ward, We the People (2011), via Sophie Kitching for Art Observed

Positioned just off the MacArthur Causeway in downtown Miami, the Perez Art Museum stands as a striking icon of Miami’s new art world caché, and seems to be a favorite auxiliary stop among Art Basel fairgoers each December.  Its lush, airy Herzog de Meuron design and expansive gallery spaces host one of Art Week Miami’s more popular evening events with its annual commission performance.  This year, the museum has opened its doors to a series of impressive exhibitions during Miami Art Week, including a group exhibition titled Global Positioning Systems, and a retrospective dedicated to Jamaican-born artist Nari Ward.

Nari Ward, We the People (2011), detail, via Sophie Kitching for Art Observed

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Ai Weiwei, Free Speech Puzzle (2014), via Art Observed

It’s been a whirlwind year for Ai Weiwei, as the artist’s staunch opposition and fierce criticism to government censorship of his work and life brought both new challenges (the alleged bugging of his studio and the arrest of his lawyer and friend Pu Zhiqiang) and new victories, including relaxed limits on his ability to show in China, and ultimately, the return of his passport, allowing the artist to leave the country for the first time since his arrest in 2011.  This last event underscores the artist’s triumphant exhibition at the Royal Academy in London, where he has mounted an expanded version of his traveling solo exhibition, including a series of new works for the show. (more…)

Camille Henrot at Johann Konig, photos via Sophie Kitching, Andrea Nguyen and Rae Wang for Art Observed

The doors closed Sunday on the last hours of the Art Basel Miami Beach fair, bringing the season’s international calendar of fairs to a close after a long week of focused sales and openings in the sweltering, rain-soaked locales of Miami Beach.

Tracy Emin at Lehmann Maupin (more…)

Tony Tasset, Deer (2015)

Positioned outside of the Bass Museum of Art on Collins Ave between 21st and 22nd Street, Collins Park’s wide sidewalks and meandering pathways make for the perfect centralized location for Art Basel Miami Beach’s annual sculpture park, positioning a selection of 24 works across the park grounds for interested viewers and visitors.  This year’s selection continued the event’s annual public outreach with a group of works that included scrolling video pieces (Rikrit Tiravanija’s confounding traffic notifications screen) and massive neons (courtesy of Sylvie Fleury), positioned against hyperrealist sculpture (Tony Tasset’s massive Deer) and other minimalist pieces.

AO was on site at the park, and captured this photoset from the install.

Athena Papadopoulos, Two Serious(ly) (young) Women, (Hubba Hubba Trouba and Ouchy Waa Waa Mama) (2015) (more…)

The Granby Four Estates, via Assemble

The 2015 Turner Prize has been announced, with the 18-member London-based architectural collective Assemble taking home the £25,000 prize for its ambitious redesign and assistance in socially re-engineering a series of derelict residences in the Liverpool neighborhood of Toxteth.  The award was presented this evening at the Tramway in Glasgow. (more…)

Charles Harlan at JTT, photos via Sophie Kitching and Andrea Nguyen for Art Observed

Moving down the beach from the Deauville to the Fontainebleau Hotel this year, the 2015 edition of NADA seems to be making moves in every way to establish the fair brand beyond the more fraternal, relaxed atmosphere that came to define its previous years in Miami Beach.  Taking up space in the hotel’s “Sparkle Ballroom,” the fair offered expanded space for both exhibitors and browsers, but still held some of the Deauville’s retro charm, as pictures of Frank Sinatra dotted one entrance.

John McAllister at James Fuentes

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Julie Schenkelberg at SiTE:LAB

Positioned south of the Convention Center at 10^th and Ocean Dr., the Untitled Art Fair returns to its prime beach real estate this year, bringing with it another year of tightly-curated booths, installations and special projects. It’s a refreshing change of pace from the bustle of ABMB, complemented by the fair’s signature tent design, which boasts wide aisles and spacious booth for exhibitors that gave the exhibition a distinctly relaxed air, while offering ample light to emphasize the works on view.

Dominique Petrin at Galerie Antoine Ertaskiran

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Roy Lichtenstein at Gagosian Gallery

The doors opened this morning on the 14^th edition of Art Basel Miami Beach, as the VIP Preview saw collectors, dealers and artists flocking to the Miami Beach Convention Center for another year. The fair, which this year boasts a sizable 267 exhibitors spread across the Convention Center’s sprawling floor plan, saw strong early attendance, and sightings of Eli Broad and Melissa Chiu wandering the fair in the early hours, while advisors and consultants sped past, locked in negotiations. (more…)

Work by Pawel Althamer at Unrealism, via Rae Wang for Art Observed

With the Miami Beach Convention Center opening its doors this morning, the early arrivals to Art Basel Miami Beach decamped to Miami proper this past evening for a series of openings and exhibitions in the city’s thriving Design District. Spread across a several block radius, the neighborhood’s simultaneous hosting of the ICA Miami’s temporary installation space (which opened just one year ago during Miami Art Week 2014), the joint Larry Gagosian/Jeffrey Deitch exhibition, and a number of other projects made it a central location for the first major night of Art Week Events. (more…)

Greater New York at MoMA PS1, all photos via Sophie Kitching for Art Observed

America is Hard to See, the Whitney recently proclaimed, opening the doors on a space that made the city around it part of its exhibition program.  For the most recent iteration of MoMA PS1’s Greater New York exhibition, the museum and its curators attempt a similar program, turning to the artists living and working in and around New York to present a deep, nuanced exploration of life in the metropolis. (more…)

Wolfgang Tillmans, Freischwimmer 229 (2012), via Regen Projects

As the month of December approaches for the art world, attention turns once again to Miami Beach, as the 14th American edition of Art Basel brings its only U.S. franchise back to the Miami Beach Convention Center, along with 267 galleries from around the globe, a strong selection of talks, events and projects, as well the numerous satellite fairs, one-off exhibitions, and of course, the parties up and down Collins Ave and the surrounding areas. (more…)

Teresita Fernández, Viñales (Reclining Nude) (2015), Rae Wang for Art Observed

Conceptual artist Teresita Fernández continues her incisive investigations into the connections between the subterranean and the cosmos, materialization and transcendence in her new solo exhibition, on view at Lehmann Maupin in New York.  Fernández’s work often focuses on the transformation of unconventional materials into malleable forms, imbuing them simulataneously with a human narrative and historical geography. Here, the artist draws in on the uncanny semblance between the interiors of malachite mineral rocks originating from the Democratic Republic of Congo, and the karstic landscape of the Viñales Valley in rural Cuba.

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Jennifer Bornstein, Left Hiking Boot (2015), via Rae Wang for Art Observed

Jennifer Bornstein’s work has consistently dealt with the notion of obsolescence. This month, at Gavin Brown’s Enterprise, the artist continues this pseudo-forensic body of work, that records the legacy of her father, a scientist specializing in collagen research.  Through her most recent body of work, Bornstein turns her father into the subject of study, evoking his presence and his work through a mixed-media installation of works on paper, plaster sculptures and film projection.

Jennifer Bornstein, Extension Cord (2015), via Rae Wang for Art Observed

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Huma Bhabha, Untitled (2015), all photos courtesy Clearing Brussels

New York-based artist Huma Bhabha is holding an exhibition of new work at Clearing Brussels, continuing her focus on found materials and their negotiations with the experiences and memories  of the cultural and historical past.  This series, including works on paper, photo-collage, and sculpture, references modern human construction from urban landscapes to utopian architecture to figure-based monuments. The artist’s work explores the different environmental relationships that have occurred over time and continue to linger in contemporary society, occasionally indicating a certain fusion of divergent materials that have been produced in Bhabha’s studio as the artist studies a more intimate understanding of modern debris. (more…)

Martin Puryear, Face Down (2008)

The Morgan Library & Museum is hosting Multiple Dimensions, an exhibition featuring seventy drawings Martin Puryear has produced over the course of his decades spanning career, accompanied by a selection of medium size sculptural work.  Set to travel to the Art Institute of Chicago and later to the Smithsonian American Art Museum, the exhibition sheds light on another thread in the artist’s grandiose practice as he prepares for his upcoming Madison Square Park Commission in 2016. (more…)

2015:1947 (Installation View), all photos via Equity Gallery

Founded in 1947 by a group of over 160 prominent American artists, among them Thomas Hart Benton, Philip Guston, Edward Hopper, Louise Nevelson and Jacob Lawrence, Artists Equity was formed to advocate for artists’ rights and provide collective resources for economic, legal and health benefits. Following WWII and the end of the WPA Federal Art Projects, amid a political climate growing more conservative and reactionary, artist Yasuo Kuniyoshi began to discuss with other American artists, primarily in New York and Woodstock, the idea of a collective advocacy organization. (more…)

Oscar Murillo, Lucky Dip (2015), via Rae Wang for Art Observed

Continuing his process of intricate, labor-intensive installations and performances, Oscar Murillo has set up shop at the Alexander Hamilton Custom House on Bowling Green, bringing his new work, Lucky Dip.  The performance, which places a series of laborers at the service of his own aesthetic and political interests, sees the artist reprising his interests in national identity, globalized labor and their exchange with the world of contemporary art. (more…)

Brant Foundation

Dash Snow’s work came of age during the dark years following 9/11 in New York City, a time when paranoia, violence and empire had written themselves large against the American consciousness.  Turning this dark, visceral atmosphere back outwards in his body of sculptures, installations, photographs and other works, Snow’s pieces demanded attention as much as his behavior did, part of a downtown ensemble of artists including Dan Colen, Ryan McGinley, Nate Lowman, Hanna Liden, and others, each of whom brought their own take on urban grit and anarchic living to their work. (more…)

Juliana Huxtable, There Are Certain Facts that Cannot Be Disputed (2015), all photos via Rae Wang for Art Observed

Last Friday, MoMA played home to artist Juliana Huxtable’s There Are Certain Facts that Cannot Be Disputed, one of the marquee performance works commissioned this year for the Performa 15 biennial.  The sold-out set of performances, set in the museum theatre, featured a slew of the transgender writer, artist, DJ and promoter’s (whose recurring event ShockValue played home to the performance afterparty) compatriots and collaborators, winding its way through notions of parallel histories, white-washed narratives, and the ubiquity of digital technologies, all turned through the artist’s unique poetic and aesthetic inclinations. (more…)

Jesper Just and FOS, in the shadow/ of a spectacle/ is the view of the crowd (Installation View), all photos via Rae Wang for Art Observed

Part of this year’s Performa proceedings, attendees at Danish artist Jesper Just’s performance In the shadow/ of a spectacle/ is the view of the crowd, found themselves suddenly guided up to the 43rd floor of a towering Financial District skyscraper, the downtown home of Time, Inc. on Liberty Street.  There, in an empty office floor, abstracted from the usual goings-on in the city’s bustling hub of banking and investment, a series of works presented themselves, continuing the artist’s investigations of structure and function, related to the movements of the modern urban context.

Jesper Just and FOS, in the shadow/ of a spectacle/ is the view of the crowd (Installation View) (more…)