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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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Luc Tuymans, The Shore (2014), All images courtesy David Zwirner Gallery London.

The Shore, a solo exhibition by Belgian artist Luc Tuymans is on view at the David Zwirner Gallery in London through April 2, a new body of work from the artist credited with helping the revival of painting in the early 1990s.  Since his early work, Tuymans has continued to produce compositions that interrogate and intervenes in the definition of this medium. He was one of the first artists to be represented by David Zwirner, joining the gallery in 1994, and The Shore marks his second solo exhibition in the space since Allo! marked the opening of the gallery’s first European location. (more…)

Virginia Overton, Untitled (2015 ), all images courtesy White Cube

On view in London at White Cube in Mason’s Yard is an exhibition of new large-scale minimalist sculptures by American artist Virginia Overton. The exhibition is Overton’s first in the UK.

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Allora & Calzadilla, Raptor’s Rapture (2012) all images courtesy Philadelphia Museum of Art

On view at the Philadelphia Museum of Art is an exhibition of recent work by Puerto Rico-based artists Jennifer Allora and Guillermo Calzadilla. Entitled Intervals, the projects on display allude to the notion of the interval: “the time between events, the measure between two points in space, or the range between musical notes.”

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Allora & Calzadilla, The Bell, The Digger, and the Tropical Pharmacy (2013), all images courtesy Lisson Gallery

Cross Section of a Revolution, on view at Lisson Gallery in London, brings together seven artists and pairs of artists whose work explores questions of trade, contested territory and trauma in a global context. These substantial themes are approached through a variety of mediums that speak to both individual and collective experiences in Central Asia, Pakistan, Kenya, Europe and the United States,opening lines of inquiry into aspects of cultural and political fragmentation, and reveals strategies for art and aesthetics in relation to cultural, geographic and religious division. This group exhibition does not shy away from inspiring or explicitly asking large questions about the nature of globalization and aesthetics. For instance: how is a modern understanding of culture, politics, and religion shaped or impacted by a continual flow of visual information?  (more…)

Subodh Gupta, This is not a fountain (2011), via Ross Maddux for Art Observed

Subodh Gupta’s most recent show at Hauser and Wirth is an exercise in the personal.  Long known for works combining the intensely personal with broader social constructs and ritualistic approaches to the art object, his current exhibition places an even more central focus on the intensely personal, communal relations life in India, and his emphasis on the unifying, material structures over which daily life proceeds. (more…)

Call and Response (Installation View)

Since its establishment at its Broome street location in 1994, Gavin Brown’s Enterprise has stood as one of the stables in the New York gallery scene, maintaining a distinct profile partially due to its non-Chelsea location and partially by its founder’s ubiquitous presence in the art world. Brown himself emerged in the 90’s as one of the young dealers in the then-booming market, and built himself into one of the world’s leading dealers, proven by his inclusion into The Guardian’s 2014 list of ‘the most powerful people in the art world’. (more…)

On Kawara, July 16th, 1969 (1969), via Art Observed

Taking On Kawara’s work at face value, one could imagine that the artist had been preparing for years for a career retrospective.  His near-endless stream of date paintings, accounting records for every book he read or person he met, and his series of postcards and maps are a record of the artist’s daily experience as he lived it, leaving behind a steady stream of locations, times and movements from each day of his life. (more…)

Jésus Rafael Soto, Ambivalencia en el espacio color no. 12 (1981) all photos via Galerie Perrotin

On view at Galerie Perrotin, both in Paris and in New York is a double exhibition dedicated to Venezuelen artist Jesús Rafael Soto, who lived from 1923-2005. Curated by Matthieu Poirer, the exhibition is comprised of around sixty works created between 1957 and 2003, drawn from the estate and from various institutions.  The title of the exhibition, Chronochrome, is meant to describe “the kinetic exploration of the monochrome,” a reference to the filmic production process that underscores the artist’s interest in multiple layers of carefully executed optics, creating a subtly shifting and alternating space within works for the viewer to discover. The eye’s movement back and forth, often between the two layers, the artist hoped, would produce a sense of visual vibration and a new perception of color.

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The New York Times profiles Edward Dolman, current head of Phillips, and his mission to turn the smaller auction house into a perennial competitor with Sotheby’s and Christie’s in the field of Contemporary Art.  “The trouble is the old business model services all collecting categories, and that puts stress on the cost base of these companies,” Dolman says.  “Christie’s and Sotheby’s are almost like institutions that are struggling to provide a broad range of services across tastes, age groups and art forms. This is difficult to sustain.” (more…)

Brendan Lynch, Not Quite Spring (2015), via Art Observed

The Still House Group has always presented something of the enigmatic in their works and performances, lifting objects and materials directly from the quotidian landscapes of modernity and refashioning them as something of a compositional element, or a compositional subject in their own right.  Take Brendan Lynch for example, the young painter whose work has embraced slurs and gobs of paint, concrete, and plastic water bottles as elements for surreal installations.  A certain commodity element dominates Lynch’s work, blended in with a certain material fascination with surfaces and textures. (more…)

Christian Marclay, Actions: Smak Squish Splsh (No 2) (2013), all images via White Cube

In his most recent  solo exhibition at the White Cube Bermondsey space, Christian Marclay presents a number of new works exploring the connection between image and sound, performance and artifact. From static onomatopoeias screen printed on canvas, to words racing around a video projection, to live performances within the gallery, Marclay explores the role of sound in art from numerous perspectives and forms, particularly in how they translate from one medium to the next. (more…)