Karen Kilimnik, The Cold Winter Lane, The Polish Countryside, A Delft Landscape (2013) via Sprüth Magers

Artist Karen Kilimnik returns to Sprüth Magers this month, showcasing her small-scale, painted appropriations, mixed with the influence of traditional Delftware.  Kilimnik’s work focuses on expressing her own views of openness and precision, elegance and humor through a variety of mediums, often creating site-specific projects that mimic 19th Century interiors and often incorporating the design and fashion of the era.  Her small paintings overlay found imagery with new landscapes and imagined scenarios, reinforcing the atmospheric effects of the painterly surface while maintaining the scale and shape of the landscape and her palette. (more…)

Yinka Shonibare MBE, Ballet God (Apollo) (2015)

Currently on view at James Cohan Gallery is Yinka Shonibare MBE’s new body of work, including exuberant, playful sculptures along with digital prints.  The UK-based Nigerian-born artist came into recognition with his hybrid sculptures, utilizing Dutch wax fabric, a textile material of complex patterns and tight allusions to colonialism due to its long, bureaucratic history of trade.  In his recent exhibition, Shonibare weighs on a broader issue compared to his familiar themes of colonialism, political supremacy and racial identity, looking at global climate changes and growing effects of these permutations throughout the world. (more…)

Yayoi Kusama, Obliteration Room (2002 – present), via Art Observed

Yayoi Kusama returns to New York City this summer at David Zwirner, bringing a new body of paintings, sculptures, and one of her popular, full-room installation pieces, all of which offers a nuanced look at the 86 year-old artist’s prolific output.

Yayoi Kusama, My Life (2014), via Art Observed

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Tony Oursler, EUC (2015), All images are by Osman Can Yerebakan for Art Observed.

The new body of work by acclaimed new media artist Tony Oursler is currently on view at Lehmann Maupin’s Chrystie street location. Aligned with his signature style of analyzing high technology and its idiosyncratic tone in correlation to the human body, Oursler delves into the limits of human expression in his new exhibition.  Although he was born in New York City, Oursler emerged in late 1970s along with a group of West Coast artists such as Mike Kelley and Jim Shaw after graduating from the California Institute of the Arts, where he studied under John Baldessari. (more…)

Mark Flood, Shrek Your Privilege (2015), via Art Observed

For years, Mark Flood has mined a specific aspect of the artistic vocabulary when it comes to pop culture, a sort of irreverent mirror that plays the often cloying imagery of advertising, corporate branding, and the Hollywood star machine against itself, often performed against the backdrop of more formally-oriented paintings and text-based works, a combination of styles that spreads the artist across a spectrum that seems to mix commentary with composition in any number of permutations. (more…)

Lisa Yuskavage, Bonfire (2013-2015), all images via Osman Can Yerebakan for Art Observed

In her fourth solo show with David Zwirner, Lisa Yuskavage furthers her now-signature style as a figurative painter, while moving towards new territories in both content and technique.  At the center of the show is Bonfire, a large diptych strikingly positioned facing the gallery entrance, and capturing the gaze of onlookers and passerby with its profound green tones and accentuated, yet oblique narrative.  Situated on opposite sides of the painting are two female nudes, sporting Yuskavage’s recognizable stylistic features, such as bulging abdomens and voluminous hair. (more…)

A selection of works by Fanny Allie, via Art Observed

Bushwick Open Studios has come and gone in the North Brooklyn arts hub, with another year of exhibitions and projects spread across the sprawling industrial landscapes of the borough closing to strong attendance.

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Dean Levin, Surface Support (Road Goes on Forever) (2015)

Marianne Boesky Gallery recently presented A Long, Narrow Mark, the gallery’s first collaboration with artist Dean Levin, at its Clinton street location.  Levin has enjoyed a growing recognition in recent years, proven by an impressive range of group exhibitions he has been included in the U.S. and Europe, as well as his debut solo at Upper East Side space of Robert Blumenthal last year. (more…)

Outside Fuchs Project Space During a previous Bushwick Open Studios

With another summer comes another edition of Bushwick Open Studios, the vastly popular arts open that brings a flood of visitors, artists and events to one of North Brooklyn’s strongest arts communities. (more…)

Tabor Robak, Drinking Bird (Season) (2015)

Currently on view at Team Gallery is a new body of works by Brooklyn-based artist Tabor Robak, the digitally-focused artist whose LCD video pieces mine the aesthetics and possibilities for interface design in the 21st century. Computer-generated graphics and lifestyle technologies doubtlessly strike as the main threads in Robak’s work, yet his spontaneous employment of ubiquitous cultural icons, and mundane components into his otherwise convoluted compositions expands the array of his statement. The artist’s use of oblique narratives, hinted at through lines of text and simple graphic juxtapositions, fall in line with the phantasmagorical, responding to the utilitarian aspect of high-tech elements, while suggesting a certain submission by the user, a transposition of their role into that of a passive viewer or consumer. (more…)

Thomas Houseago, Masks (Pentagon) (2015), via Art Observed

This summer, Rockefeller Center has launched a continuation of its partnership with the Public Art Fund, opening a new public work by British-born, Los Angeles-based artist Thomas Houseago.  The work, titled simply as Masks (Pentagon), the artist continues an investigation of spatial interactions that has defined his work over recent years. (more…)

Roni Horn, Gold Field (1980-82), via Sophie Kitching for Art Observed

Taking over the Punta Della Dogana for the dizzying months of the Biennale is Slip of the Tongue, a Danh Vo curated exhibition in collaboration with Palazzo Grassi and The Pinault Collection.  Slip of the Tongue features the work of 35 artists, including pieces from Felix Gonzalez- Torres, Andres Serrano, David Hammons, Sigmar Polke, David Wojnarowicz and the curator himself.  Working in conjunction with a large number of artists, the artist-run show is a first for the exhibition space. (more…)

Fotografica, all photos via Sabrina Wirth for Art Observed

Every two years during the first week of May, Bogotá, Colombia launches its Fotografica Bogotá, the biennial photography exhibition now in its 10th edition. “Bogotá is photographic,” says Gilma Suarez, the powerhouse curator and photographer who founded the event.  Indeed, from May 2nd to June 15th, the city turns itself into a public museum, with images of the artwork on display for anyone to enjoy, while hosting concurrent events at universities, galleries, museums, and foundations, also open to the public.  The event gives photography enthusiasts the chance to meet with the exhibiting photographers from around the world to either listen to their lectures or participate in portfolio reviews.  (more…)

Es Gibt Nichts Gutes (Installation View), courtesy of the artist and Galerie Max Hetzler, Berlin I Paris, photo: def-image.com

For his new exhibition, Es Gibt Nicht Gutes [There Is Not Good], artist Christoph Niemann has taken an incisive route through Germany’s tumultuous history with its creative class during WWII through the framework of author Erich Kästner’s work.  Celebrating the 40th anniversary of Kästner’s work Es gibt nicht Gutes außer: Man tut es [There is not good unless man makes it], Niemann has collaborated with the book’s original publishers to illustrate the book’s re-released edition, with these visual vignettes comprising Galerie Max Hetzler’s exhibition bearing the abbreviated name.

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Aurel Schmidt with a work from New Gods, via Art Observed

Recently, artist Aurel Schmidt launched another entry in her series of unexpected pop-up shows, bringing her uniquely visceral, surrealist drawings to an uninhabited apartment on St. Marks Place downtown.  It was a rough and ready affair, with works installed across the hauntingly empty rooms of the walk-up (one work was mounted near the kitchen sink, while another sat above the laundry machine), and a number of the artist’s friends on hand, making it feel more like a casual gathering than a gallery show.  In one room, guests were treated to an impromptu concert by Devonté Hynes (a.k.a. Blood Orange), while Schmidt welcomed guests and showed them around the space.

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Yang Fudong, The Light That I Feel 1 (2015) via Marian Goodman Gallery

Artist Yang Fudong is exhibiting his latest series of photographs at Marian Goodman’s Paris location.  Titled The Coloured Sky: New Women II, the exhibition incorporates two bodies of work as well as a high-definition colored video installation that continues his use of dream-like worlds and constructions of fantasy through the female body. (more…)

Rosy Keyser, Terrestrial Mime (2015), all images via Maccarone Gallery

The idea of a frame places a spatial limit on its painterly contents, a statement of intent that rules its exteriors as just that, outside space.  For her first show with Maccarone Gallery, Rosy Keyser takes that logic  to a deconstructive conclusion, presenting a body of works under the title The Hell Bitch that continues the discourse of painterly reduction.  While breaking away from the traditional frame, Keyser’s works allow for viewers to consider definitions of empathy, profanity and form through her patchwork assemblages, fixed to the classic signifier of the canvas stretcher.   (more…)

Jeppe Hein, All We Need Is Inside (Installation View), all photos via Art Observed

Currently on view at 303 Gallery, All We Need is Inside continues Jeppe Hein’s unique combination of reflective, sculptural and painterly works, investigating the powerful and playful combination of art and personal dialogue. The new show is a strong presentation of the artist’s approach to the act of interaction and the phenomenology of viewing art, and plays on notions of calming minimalism while incorporating immersive, challenging works throughout. (more…)

David Shrigley at Anton Kern Gallery (Installation View)

An ‘Open’ sign outside David Shrigley’s new exhibition at Anton Kern Gallery greets visitors, announcing that the gallery is ready for business. In his sixth solo show with the gallery, the Glasgow-based artist brings together seventy-eight drawings, along with two sculptural pieces and a video.  Coming in two different sizes, these ink and acrylic drawings on paper deliver the artist’s signature, whimsical technique, putting him in a distinct place in today’s art world.

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Jimmie Durham, On The Island of Burano Women Make Lace Hopefully (2015), all photos by Sophie Kitching for Art Observed

The American-born artist and poet Jimmie Durham presents a site-specific project entitled Venice: Object, Work and Tourism at the Fondazione Querini Stampalia during the 56th Venice Biennale. The exhibition features a series of subtle yet vibrant sculptures, which incite our perception of commonplace objects and everyday materials. Stone, glass, brick, wood, water, words, gold, leather, paper, metal, shell, and plastic are thus collected, displaced and assembled by the artist, distilling a new physical language.

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Nina Beier, Female Nude (2015), all images via Art Observed

Metro Pictures’s airy gallery is currently open to artist Nina Beier’s plotted sculptures that map the conceptual revisions of objects and their representation. Interposing sculptural still lives with flattened three-dimensional picture hangings, the artist presents crisply-laundered down comforters and jackets, flattened as a backdrop for wigs and fashionable ties, while nearby, burrowed coconut forms perched on lush soil.  In another room, gigantic stemware houses familiar objects, introduced by the gallery as an effort in problematizing representation and depiction.

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Elmgreen & Dragset, Past Tomorrow (Installation View)

Currently on view at Galerie Perrotin is Past Tomorrow, Elmgreen & Dragset’s second installment of their ongoing tale focused on the life and loves of imagined architect Norman Swann.  The project that, in its core, is an unrealized play by the Berlin-based Scandinavian duo, had its inception at the Victoria & Albert Museum in 2013 exhibition, titled Tomorrow, turning the museum’s galleries into Mr. Swann’s residence.  The narrative resumes as their protagonist migrates to a studio apartment in New York’s Upper East Side neighborhood, after he consumes his entire family inheritance and vacates his London house in South Kensington. (more…)

Josh Reames at Johannes Vogt, all photos via Art Observed

NADA New York returned to the edge of the Lower East Side, drawing a diverse, hip crowd to the Basketball City complex. Free in price, NADA once again brought high-quality exhibitors and young artists, combining art from regional and international galleries alongside NYC Downtown heavy hitters.  This year’s preview event was an engaging alternative to the bright lights and high prices of Frieze. Embodying the social, communal nature of the city’s young arts scene, NADA’s Preview day was filled with with conversation, friendly jokes and familial reunions.  Maintaining the lightness of art openings opposed to the serious air of sales oriented art fairs, the galleries, their friends and artists will spend this weekend sipping drinks out of plastic cups while a roster of interdisciplinary performances, conversations and events take place. (more…)

Galeria Franco Noero, via Art Observed

The doors are open on Frieze New York, marking the early days of the summer art season with a major art event up the East River on Randall’s Island.  Returning for its fourth year, the fair has come into its own as a dedicated staple in the New York Art Calendar, and its presentation this year seems to echo it, with a stripped back tent design that seemed to stretch out much longer than in previous years, but distilled the experience down to only three rows of booths, with the occasional inlet allowing for an enjoyable wander through the space.  The VIP opening launched Wednesday morning for a quiet preview where a number of major collectors and celebrities strolled the aisles, among them Neil Patrick Harris, Mike Meyers, Uma Thurman, Leonardo DiCaprio and Richard Gere and François Pinault. (more…)