Daniel Arsham at Galerie Perrotin, via Art Basel
Following a hectic weekend of events and openings, today caps the final day of Art Basel Hong Kong, bringing strong sales and attendance at the sixth edition of the massive Asian market event. (more…)
Philip Taaffe, Choir (2014-2015), all photographs by Farzad Owrang, © Philip Taaffe; Courtesy of the artist and Luhring Augustine, New York
In his large-scale paintings on display at Luhring Augustine’s Bushwick Gallery, Philip Taaffe blends historical and cultural motifs in dizzying collages full of color and life. His exploration of shapes and designs spanning space and time draw on historical narratives to bring overlapping cultural archetypes into view.
Louise Bourgeois, Anatomy (1998), all images courtesy Galerie Lelong
On view at Galerie Lelong is an exhibition featuring graphic works, sketches and drawings made early the career of the late French-American artist and sculptor Louise Bourgeois (1911-2010), whose work often incorporated autobiographical elements.
Brad Troemel, Wall Mount for Vintage Furby Collection (2015), via Art Observed
For the past several years, The Jogging co-founder Brad Troemel has been pushing his focus on commodity consumption, appropriation and use to new highs. There were his works during a residency The Still House Group, vacuum-sealed fish and wild grasses on canvas that pushed notions of the still-life to a shockingly immediate result, not to mention his first show with Zach Feuer last year, when the artist showed a series of Semiotext(e) publications combined with organic raw beans and fake dreadlocks. For his second exhibition with the gallery, Troemel drives his work forward yet again, examining the palimpsestic ideologies of the art world from both inside and out. (more…)
Bill Viola, Transformation (Installation View), all images courtesy Farschou Foundation
On view at Farschou Foundation Beijing is a solo show by American video artist Bill Viola. Known for his large-scale, high definition, ultra slow-motion moving images, the artist has served as an innovator in the technological execution and exhibition of video art. His show in Beijing, titled Transformation will continue through March 22nd.
Aaron Curry, Vertical Wood Sculpture (2013), via Almine Rech
Just one week after The Armory Show closed its doors in New York, the sixth edition of Art Basel Hong Kong is preparing to open halfway around the world, with many familiar names vying to court collectors from Asia, Oceania and abroad. The fair, which shuffled its calendar this year in response to the Venice Biennale opening in early May, is presenting something of a scaled-back experience this year, running just three days from Sunday to Tuesday, but should nevertheless prove successful as one of Asia’s largest art fairs. (more…)
Francesca Woodman, I’m trying my hand at fashion photography (Installation View)
I’m trying my hand at fashion photography is the title of the current Francesca Woodman exhibition at Marian Goodman Gallery. Named after one of the many notes the artist inscribed on her photographs, the selection focuses on Woodman’s fashion photographs, a genre the artist worked on during her New York years between 1978 and 1980. The works are also notable in their oftentimes stark reflection of the final years of the RISD graduate who committed suicide in 1981 following severe depression, possessing elements from her signature photographic style against the backdrop of her own life. (more…)
Barbara Kruger Untitled (Business as usual) (1987), all images courtesy of Skarstedt Gallery
On view in London’s Skarstedt Gallery is an exhibition of early large-scale, black and white photographic works from artist Barbara Kruger, early entries in Kruger’s ongoing project to challenge the visual language and power structures of consumerist culture and print advertising, always under the understanding that her works will themselves enter the marketplace as commodities.
Daniel Buren, Au fur et à mesure, travaux in situ et situés (Bit by Bit: In Situ and Situated Works) (Installation View) (2015), all exhibition images via Kamel Mennour
Daniel Buren presents a new, in situ exhibition at Kamel Mennour this month, a show that demonstrates the form a gallery space lends to the art shown within it. Transforming the space itself into a part of his artwork, Buren instills in his work the tendency to guide the viewer’s perception and sense of location. (more…)
Charles Atlas, Terri’s Option (2015), all images are by Osman Can Yerebakan for Art Observed
Luhring Augustine is currently presenting The Waning of Justice, the gallery’s second collaboration with the pioneer video and sound artist Charles Atlas, following 2012’s The Illusion of Democracy at the gallery’s Bushwick location. One of the foremost experimentalists in multimedia, Atlas has pushed the limits of time-based art arguably more than any other artist, challenging the ephemeral natures of both performance and dance incorporated alongside his video work. In doing so, Atlas, not a performer himself per se, has collaborated with legendary names such as Leigh Bowery, Douglas Dunn, Michael Clark and most famously Merce Cunningham, whose partnership with Atlas resulted in video documentations of the late artist’s illustrious performances at levels that adopt further conceptual and contextual levels through Atlas’s frame. (more…)
Alec Soth, Woodville Farm Labor Camp, San Joaquin Valley, California (2013), all images via Sean Kelly
Alec Soth presents an exhibition of over 25 new black-and-white photographs at Sean Kelly, focusing his lens on small-town community events across America. Soth’s work has frequently delved into the modern day folklore of Americana throughout his career, capturing images that are at once familiar and spellbinding.
Alec Soth, Brian. Williston, North Dakota (2012) (more…)
Rita Ackermann, Burn Up in Heaven 2014, all images courtesy Hauser & Wirth
On view at Hauser & Wirth Zürich is an exhibition of paintings on chalkboard by Hungarian-American artist Rita Ackermann, representing a step further into the artist’s investigation into the deconstructive process, presenting a series of many images which seem to have been repeatedly executed and expunged by erasure or weathering. The exhibition will remain on view through March 14th.
Adam Parker Smith at SPRING/BREAK, via Art Observed
Heavy snow beat down the doors at SPRING/BREAK art show during Armory Week, now in its fourth iteration and housed in the wood-paneled third and fourth office floors of Skylight at Moynihan Station, a unique space that makes for a fitting continuation of the fair’s imaginative, distinct style. The curator-driven show has more more than doubled in size since last year’s public/private-themed exhibition at St. Patrick’s Old Cathedral School in Nolita, SPRING/BREAK’s home for the past several years. The number of participating curators also rose from 39 to 97, bringing an increased number of artists as well, from 100 to over 300 people for 2015.
Constantin Brancusi, via Art Observed
Set up across town, fittingly enough, in the Park Avenue Armory, the ADAA Art Show offers a yearly counterpoint to the bright lights and dizzying stream of booths that occasionally plagues its cross-town sister on Piers and 94, incorporating a more carefully curated emphasis into the art fair booth format, and encouraging a certain degree of adventurousness among the attendant galleries. (more…)
Mark Flood at Peres Projects, via Art Observed
Taking up the full 4 floors of Center 548 in Chelsea, the Independent NY fair returns for another year of its annual exhibition offering a slightly smaller, more cohesive take on the fair experience. (more…)
The Armory Show 2015, via Sophie Kitching for Art Observed
The doors are open and the 2015 edition of The Armory Show in New York is underway, kicking off the first major fair week in NY this spring. Collectors and artists wound throughout the booths, perusing the works on sale and chatting with dealers. Director George Lucas could be seen examining several works, as was Maurizio Cattelan, both of whom seem to be enjoying their respective retirements. (more…)
Sarah Sze, Still Life with Desk (2013-2015), via Victoria Miro
Through the month of March, the Victoria Miro Gallery will host a solo exhibition by the artist Sarah Sze that spans all of the gallery’s London exhibition spaces. This is Sze’s third solo exhibition with the gallery and the artist’s first time she has shown in Europe since the Venice Biennale in 2013. (more…)
Rashid Johnson, Smile (Installation View) all images courtesy Hauser & Wirth London
Hauser & Wirth‘s London space is currently presenting Smile, a new body of work by the New York-based artist Rashid Johnson. Known for his hybrid creations blending photography, sculpture and painting, Johnson had his breakthrough with the Thelma Golden-curated Freestyle show at The Studio Museum in Harlem in 2001. Johnson’s star has been on the rise since, the subject of solo shows in prestigious institutions such as Sculpture Center in New York, and the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago.
Rashid Johnson, Smile (Installation View)
His current show at Hauser Wirth London, where Johnson is showing for the first time, continues the 2011 Hugo Boss Prize finalist’s central themes, while finding its inspiration in the titular photograph by Elliot Erwitt. Portraying an African-American boy with a big smile on his face and a gun that he is holding at his temple, this intense black and white photograph covers the walls of the exhibition space, while a large steel structure, serving as a base for various objects from house plants to brass objects, is positioned in the middle. Of these objects located on the grid-shaped structure, entitled Fatherhood, is also a series of books, including Bill Cosby’s memoir of the same name. Drawing a notable potency due to the controversy around Cosby’s recent sexual assault allegations, this memoir represents Johnson’s long time interest in the comedian as a patriarchal figure and a symbol of American middle-class values.
Rashid Johnson, Smile (Installation View)
Additionally, shea butter, a material that Johnson has previously employed for his works, serves here as the main ingredient to various busts that are also positioned on this steel structure. Elements that encompass the nature of African diaspora and the African-American experience abound in Johnson’s intricately constituted composition, narrating an expansive history through entities that seem purposely mundane and silent.
Rashid Johnson, Smile (Installation View)
Johnson’s ability to attribute further content to otherwise mute materials has helped him become one of the key figures of the ‘post-black art movement’, and this exhibition at Hauser & Wirth emphasizes the artist’s interest in his core materials, among which bronze is the most common. Aside from assemblies of mixed objects, bronze panels hung onto the walls contrast the image of the boy holding a gun with their abstract gestures. Black soap, another material Johnson constantly returns to, appears on these panels, constituting what Johnson calls a “memorialization” of the creative process.
Rashid Johnson: Smile Is On View at Hauser & Wirth Through March 7, 2015.
Rashid Johnson, If It’s Magic (2014)
All images are Courtesy of the artist and Hauser & Wirth Photo by Alex Delfanne
— O.C. Yerebakan
Related Link:
Hauser & Wirth [Exhibition Page]
Francesco Vezzoli, Teatro Romano, all images courtesy MoMA PS1
On view at MoMA PS1 in New York is an exhibition of 5 new works by Francesco Vezzoli – ancient Roman busts painted in the manner in which they were probably originally decorated. Entitled Teatro Romano,” the exhibition, which saw delays after a church Vezzoli had intended to export to the country was blocked by customs, will continue through March 9th, 2015.
Nancy Graves, Camouflage Series #4 (1971), all images are by Osman Can Yerebakan for Art Observed
Currently on view at Mitchell-Innes & Nash is a select body of work by artist Nancy Graves, focused around the late artist’s New York-based Foundation, and which promise an expansive look at the pioneer Conceptualist’s bright career before and after her passing in 1995, including a Whitney retrospective that marked her as the first female artist to have a solo retrospective under museum’s roof. (more…)
Anish Kapoor, Monochrome (Garnet) (2014), via Art Observed
On view at Regen Projects is an exhibition of recent sculptures by the Bombay-born, London-based artist Anish Kapoor. The series focuses on terrestrial forms made from resin and earth contrasted, with two of the artist’s signature, mirror-surfaced works.
The Armory Show, via The Armory Show
The first week of March signals another year for Armory Week in New York City, as locations around the city prepare for the annual influx of galleries, artists and collectors that mark the first major art fair events in New York City for 2015. Building on the Armory Show’s increasingly popular public stature, week offers a wide range of events for both collectors and visitors alike. (more…)
Frank Benson, Juliana, via Art Observed
If the New Museum Triennial is to be believed, 2015 might in fact be the year that artists put the pervasive notions of “cyber-dread” to death in the contemporary discourse. Curated by Ryan Trecartin and New Museum Curator (and former Rhizome head) Lauren Cornell, the exhibition combines aspirational commodities, linguistic play and digital microcosms into a fascinatingly deep exhibition, one that feels particularly appropriate as the 21st century turns 15. (more…)
Bjarne Melgaard, The Casual Pleasure of Disappointment (Installation View), all images courtesy Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac
On view at Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac’s location in the Parisian neighborhood of Marais is the first solo exhibition from the controversial, yet highly respected Norwegian painter Bjarne Melgaard. Entitled The Casual Pleasure of Disappointment, The exhibition is a collaborative effort confronting themes inspired by French film director Catherine Breillat. Known for confronting taboos and shocking audiences into self-reflection, Melgaard takes his cues for his new exhibition exhibition from Breillat, whom he has elevated to the role of a mythical figure. The works in this exhibition center around the 2014 film Abuse of Weakness, and take a shared interest in the beauty industry’s manipulation and domination of perceptions and judgments of others as a generator of profit and cultural currency.