Thomas Demand, Backyard (2014), via Matthew Marks
The artifice that drives Thomas Demand’s practice is simple, but the results are impressively commanding. Utilizing carefully cut and assembled cardboard pieces to create familiar images, scenes and spaces, the artist’s work carries an evocatively nostalgic aura, while emphasizing his own craft in the construction of the scene itself. (more…)
Joseph Beuys, Felt Suit (1970), via Art Observed
Beyond his most iconic performance works and sculptural environments, Joseph Beuys’s multiples constitute an entire aspect of the artist’s practice rarely seen as a complete series of works. While some of his more iconic small-scale works, including Capri Battery or Sled, as well as his prints and drawings have become iconic entries in the artist’s elusive, and often enigmatic creative history, the works have rarely been presented as a complete series. (more…)
Blinky Palermo, Wooster Street (1975), all images via David Zwirner
In collaboration with the Palermo Archive, David Zwirner presents an exhibition of rarely displayed works by Blinky Palermo at its 537 West 20th Street gallery. The works on display in this exhibition were made by the artist from 1973 to 1976, and range from objects to paintings and large-scale drawings. Following two years after David Zwirner’s exhibition of Palermo’s works on paper from 1976–1977, this show further explores the artist’s short but influential career, which is largely associated with abstraction, Minimalism, and Conceptual Art, but also extends beyond these realms. These pieces are being presented together for the first time since their installation in Heiner Friedrich, New York in 1974.
Blinky Palermo, Objekt mit Wasserwage (Object with Spirit Level, 1969–1973) (more…)
Daniel Keller, Stack 1 (2014), via Max Hetzler
Presenting a selection of artists working at the bleeding edge of social and economic critique, Max Hetzler’s exhibition Open Source: Art at the Eclipse of Capitalism easily clocks in as one of the season’s most unexpectedly energetic exhibitions. Curated by Lisa Schiff, Leslie Fritz and Eugenio Re Rebaudengo, and spread between the gallery’s Paris and Berlin locations, the show places post-capitalist theory and economic transition as its central conceit, examining the material and social costs of contemporary life within systems of capital exchange. Pulling from the works of writer Jeremy Rifkin, the exhibition explores a historical juncture at which the traditional modes of national economic and political systems are slowly giving way, and a new, digitally-accelerated model of consumption and distribution is swiftly establishing itself.
Open Source: Art at the Eclipse of Capitalism (Installation View – Paris), via Max Hetzler (more…)
Tomi Ungerer, All in One (Installation View)
The Drawing Center is currently honoring pioneer illustrator Tomi Ungerer, with an ambitious look at his expansive career of diverse themes and motifs. Born in Alsace shortly before World War II tore through Europe, Ungerer moved to New York in 1956, where he published his first series of works. Although his divergent artistic interests led him to compile a comprehensive oeuvre from advertisement campaigns for publications including the New York Times to graphically striking illustrations criticizing the politics of his time, Ungerer came to prominence in the U.S. as a children’s books author. His objection to this type of categorization eventually led him to move to Nova Scotia with his wife, later followed by another relocation to Ireland, where he currently resides. (more…)
Paul Chan, Sock N Tease (2013), via Art Observed
For a semi-retired artist, Paul Chan has been busy in past years. Following his step back from creating video and installation work in 2010, the artist dove headfirst into the world of publishing with Badlands Unlimited, an imprint responsible for a broad variety of works that have included Saddam Hussein’s On Democracy, and even a recent series of erotic works inspired by Olympia Press, the Paris-based smut peddlers that also published some of the Twentieth century’s most significant works of literature (Lolita and Henry Miller’s Rosy Crucifiction Trilogy).
This diversity of practice was what earned him the 2014 Hugo Boss Prize, one of the U.S.’s top honors, and an exhibition at The Guggenheim. Given his output over the past decade, the artist is presenting a new series of sculptures that combine his recent publishing ventures with his particular approach to ready-made, object-focused sculpture. (more…)
Gabriel Orozco, Cats and Watermelons (1992), all images courtesy MoCA Tokyo
Inner Cycles is an exhibition of new works and historically significant pieces by Mexican artist Gabriel Orozco, who has been an influential figure in the international contemporary art community since the early 90’s. Composed of found objects, photographs, and sculptures, the exhibition is meant to show a “universe in flux” as objects are constantly appropriated and re-appropriated for new uses.
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…)