Gabriel Orozco at kurimanzutto, Mexico City, 2024

The Vitruvian Man (c. 1487) is a study of the proportions of the human body inscribed within the absolute forms of a circle and a square, using metalpoint, pen and ink, with touches of watercolour on paper. One of Leonardo Da Vinci’s best-known works, the drawing is stored in the Gallerie dell’Accademia di Venezia in Italy, and only rarely exhibited due to its fragility as a work on paper.

Influenced by the theories of Roman architect Vitruvius in his treaty “De Architectura” (1st century BC), Da Vinci drew a male figure with his hands and feet touching the perimeter of a circle, his navel at its precise center. Another position is superimposed with his feet standing on the base of a square while his arms extend outwards, the area directly below the navel as the center of the square, per Da Vinci’s own findings.

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Sophie Kitching, Nocturne, 3A Gallery, all photos by Migle Staniskyte

For her latest exhibition on view at 3A Gallery, Sophie Kitching presents new paintings from her Nocturne series, a shadowy and dreamy companion to her Invisible Green series, started in 2019. Both the Nocturnes and the Invisible Green paintings incorporate images of bright flowers and leaves as their main subject matter, but the former is painted onto a background made of black ink mixed with Payne’s gray whereas the latter is on a white canvas. The contrast of both and indeed the title itself—Nocturne—alludes to the opposites representing night and day versions of one another, but moreover they tell a subtle tale of light versus shadow and express entirely different temperaments and moods.

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Roe Etheridge via Andrew Kreps

With the increasingly lively schedule of a spring art season in New York that feels like it’s finally finding its pacing again, attention and anticipation once again turns to the opening of this year’s edition of Frieze New York, set to open its doors in just a few days at its new home at The Shed. With the fair now nearing 10 years of operation in the city, this year’s edition should once again prove to be a strong note in the spring fair season.  (more…)

Gabriel Orozco, Spacetime

Third floor of the Gallery Building, 57th Street, between 5th and 6th Avenue, in a sinuous corridor, a discreet sign on one of the doors: SPACETIME. The faint lighting inside sets the tone.

An array of artworks is on view: floating sculptures, abstract paintings, a black suitcase facing a plasticine ball, a tree adorned with paper disks, large prints, small models including detergent caps and yogurt lids, a shoebox on a shelf, flying boomerangs, and a Japanese scroll greet the viewer in the first two rooms. The gallery is intimate, and the experience is total. Gabriel Orozco’s ongoing project is a secret which spreads from word of mouth to fortunate visitors and passersby. The show encapsulates 30 years of work masterfully staged in these tight quarters.

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“Lure” by Ruben Ortiz Torres at The Last Tenant (Photography by Aleph Molinari)

Known for taking over unique architectural spaces for their exhibitions, MASA is a nomadic art and design collective co-founded in Mexico City by Age Salajõe, Hector Esrawe, and Brian Thoreen in 2018. It has since evolved into a collaborative creative platform, each year presenting stellar exhibitions in different locations throughout  Mexico City, as well as Oaxaca and an upcoming show in New York City. Its itinerant nature allows MASA to play with space and architecture, form and function, and to cleverly present art in unique locations away from the confines of the traditional white-cube gallery space. MASA collaborates with artists, architects, and designers by challenging them to create functional works that blur the line between art and design.  What ties together the young and established artists at MASA’s exhibitions is a deeply-felt sense of Mexicanness: multi-faceted and complex, constantly changing but never unmoored from its vibrant history. Their exhibitions are related to the history of the site and are often meditations on time and memory, and how the spaces we inhabit serve as vessels for both. (more…)

Giorgio Griffa, Dittico lieve odulaato (1996), via Casey Kaplan

On view at Casey Kaplan this month in New York, the gallery has unified a series of works created by the Italian artist Giorgio Griffa, creating a near-past retrospective that explores the artist’s work over the last 20 years throguh a selection of seven paintings. This exhibition marks the fifth iteration in a series of exhibitions focusing on the artist’s practice by decade, continuing a conceptual exercise that has offered concise but attentive looks at his work over the course of his career. (more…)

Georgia Gardner Gray, Gustav (Tired) (2021), via Sadie Coles

On view this month at Sadie Coles’ Kingly Street location, the gallery has compiled a range of works in both two and three dimensions that deal with the body and space, politics and class, race and identity, all through a range of approaches and executions. Drawing together work by Natalie Ball, Kevin Beasley, Georgia Gardner Gray, Tau Lewis, Jonathan Lyndon Chase, Simphiwe Ndzube, Agata SÅ‚owak and Frieda Toranzo Jaeger, the show brings together a range of perspectives that make for an engaging, enervating project.

Chris Daze Ellis, Is This Seat Taken? (2020), via PPOW

On view this month in New York, P·P·O·W has compiled a body of new works by Christopher “Daze” Ellis, the longtime graffiti writer and painter who came up among a new generation of taggers who began their work during the late 1970’s, and who would be among those who earned early recognition by the New York gallery scene during the 1980’s. Combining a selection of significant works from the 1980s and early 1990s with a series of new paintings and sculptures, Give It All You Got chronicles a lifelong dedication to portraying the lifeforce of New York City and commemorating those who were a part of what it once was. (more…)

Heidi Bucher, Untitled (c. 1954) Photographed by Enrico FIorese.

With the Venice Biennale recently closing, only a few exhibitions remain on view in the city. Fortunately, for those who choose to visit this month, there is an exhibition at ALMA ZEVI featuring works by Heidi Bucher. Entitled Sublime Geometry, the show offers moments for discovery just as Venice harbors a wintry magic: in the quiet, crepuscular afternoon hours you arrive to this tucked away gallery space to find walls glowing with mother of pearl pigment.

Born in the Swiss town of Winterthur, Bucher studied textile design under Max Bill at the School of Applied Art in Zurich where she made silk collages that are enchanting for their varying degrees of precision and inexactitude. One work hangs in a corner of the gallery and invites closer inspection; illuminated from certain angles, it gives off a subtle luster redolent of a Vija Celmins Night Sky.

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Jim Dine at Ben Brown, via Art Observed

Closing its doors this evening, the week of sales at Art Basel Miami Beach has kicked off, capping off a strong week for galleries in South Florida, and a strong opportunity to close out the year with a flourish.  Commanding a roster of over 200 galleries from around the world, the marquee event of the fall market season in the U.S., and one of the biggest social events of the art world calendar has gotten underway, with thousands flocking to the sun and sand of the Florida metropolis. (more…)

Saskia Noor van Imhof, #+40.00 (Installation View), via Art Observed

Making for the artist’s first solo exhibition in New York City, artist Saskia Noor van Imhoff has orchestrated a captivating, otherworldly environment in the basement of Grimm Gallery downtown. The artist, who frequently works with ideas of “hidden” or obfuscated practices and points of origin for her work, here creates a space that defies easy categorization, instead challenging the viewer to pass through the spaces and observe the works, coaxing a narrative out of their beguiling arrangements. (more…)

Nathalie Djurberg & Hans Berg, One Last Trip To The Underworld (Installlation View), via Tanya Bonakdar

Marking their first exhibition in New York in over 5 years, the artist duo of Nathalie Djurberg and Hans Berg have touched down in New York City for an expansive solo exhibition at Tanya Bonakdar’s expansive Chelsea exhibition space. The show, which marks the world premiere of four new video works, continues the pair’s collaborative vision and surreal landscapes, which explore the shadows of human subconsciousness. Using sculpture, stop-motion film, sound, and immersive installation the artists construct narratives that speak to emotional tension, confliction, sexual impulse, and violence.

The show is rife with dark humor and absurdity. Large-scale flower sculptures dot the floors of the space, each accented with a range of grotesque details and bizarre creatures flitting across their surfaces in mid-pollination. Countered by immense, full-wall videos, these pieces seem to create the landscape against which this action on-screen plays out. The gallery becomes a playing field for the subconscious, hints of tension and violence, desire and sexual aggression, all writ large on the walls as these sculptures translate that same energy into three dimensional space.

Nathalie Djurberg & Hans Berg, One Last Trip To The Underworld (Installlation View), via Tanya Bonakdar

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Matthew Barney, Embrasure (Installation View), via Gladstone Gallery

Artist Matthew Barney’s victory lap continues after the 2018 release of his latest film Redoubt, a wolf hunt in Idaho’s rugged Sawtooth Mountains that continues the artist’s ongoing preoccupation with landscape as both setting and subject. For his current show in New York, on view at Gladstone Gallery, the artist presents a set of new drawings, etchings, and sculpture that draw from the film, and expand on its allegorical and cosmological themes. (more…)

Charlap Hyman & Herrero, Shell Lamp I, Moulded plastic, and Astrologia Zodiac Black Natural Abaca Round Rug, Hemp, 2018; Chiarastella Cattana, Dune, Jacquard woven textile, 2019; Yali, Vignole Table, Glass top, iron base, 2019. © Annie Schlecter.

Currently on view for the week at 109 Thompson Street is the pop-up exhibition ‘Conversation Piece: Design is Dead’, a shoebox of a gallery space that designer Adam Charlap Hyman has dramatically transformed into an underwater grotto. The eponymous title of the show is the frequent tagline of Enzo Mari, a maverick Italian designer highly critical of modern design with a host of catechisms to prove it. He attributes the solipsism of design—namely, its death—as ‘the overlaying of icons without any reference to history… In most cases the essence becomes a confusing mess, created without logic.’ (more…)

Sadie Benning, Blow Up #26 (2018), via Kaufman Repetto

Returning to the French capital for another year of exhibitions inside the iconic expanses of the Grand Palais, the Foire International Art Contemporain, or FIAC, opens its doors today in Paris.  The fair, which has operated for over 45 years in the city, has undergone several facelifts over the course of its lifetime, with its most recent editions courting a healthy mix of contemporary and modern works alongside more classical and historical modes, making it one of the world’s more ambitiously curated programs. (more…)

Sophie Kitching, Untitled (Plume) (2019), via Kiosk

Known for its shop selling a range of meticulously curated and enigmatic products, the online platform Kiosk has traveled widely, orchestrating various projects and pop-ups, not to mention an inclusion in MoMA PS1’s Greater New York show that spotlighted its daring vision and unique approach to the fine lines traditional distinctions between shop and art gallery, product and art object.  (more…)

Cindy Sherman, Untitled #603 (2019), via Metro Pictures

As the summer weather fades slowly into the dim light and changing leaves of autumn in London, the art world once again gears up for the annual return of Frieze to Regent’s Park this week, bringing with it its reputation for presenting the best of international contemporary art by emerging and established artists, and its signature program of dynamic commissions, talks and films, all unified under the fair’s bespoke tent design at the heart of the British capital.  Opening Wednesday with its VIP previews, the fair will offer a unique look at the state of the British art market, and that of the EU more broadly, while providing a platform for artists in Europe and abroad to explore and express new concepts and ideas in art practice. (more…)

Alex Katz, Blue Umbrella I (1972), via Phillips

Opening alongside the bustling aisles of Frieze London this week, the Contemporary Art Market will give a test of its secondary branch in the British capital this week. Kicking off a trio of auctions at the major auction houses, this week should provide ample chance for bidders to show just how confident they are on the current state of Britain, its place in the European art market, and how Brexit might have changed those forecasts. With a hard deadline of October 31st looming, this week should provide ample evidence of just how buyers are feeling with major changes just over the horizon. (more…)

Liz Glynn, To Write (2016/2017), via Paula Cooper

Over the course of the last few years, artist Liz Glynn has explored techniques in the production and presentation of technological objects and tools, seeking to explore and understand how disparate pieces and parts of a cultural milieu, particularly the tools used to construct, them, might provide a richer understanding of the culture itself. A sort of self-styled archaeological proposition, Technological Tools, as Glynn calls them, take center-stage at her current exhibition at Paula Cooper in New York, now on view through October 12th. (more…)

Graphzine Exhibit, via Art Observed

The leaves are slowly beginning to change in New York City, the fall equinox is on its way, and like clockwork, the time has once again come for the New York Art Book Fair to set up shop inside the halls and yards of MoMA PS1, kicking off its fourteenth annual edition of a unique and energetic exhibition of young artists, publishers, writers and thinkers, each representing a small part of the national and international art publishing community.  Always free and open to the public, the event draws more than 35,000 individuals including book lovers, collectors, artists, and art world professionals each year. (more…)

Judith Hopf, Tongue as a Wall Piece (2019), via Metro Pictures

Taking over the ground floor of Metro Pictures Gallery for her first exhibition with the space, the Berlin-based artist Judith Hopf has orchestrated a range of works drawing on surreal juxtapositions of space and material, narrative and image that marks a strong opening to the fall season. Comprised of three different sculptural series–Walls, Tongues, and Pears–the works on view further Hopf’s practice of employing everyday construction materials and common manufacturing processes to investigate the social dynamics of the contemporary built environment and its influence on human behavior. (more…)

Elaine Cameron-Weir, it thought you were someone else it thought you were me bounded by strings in the distorted phases of a topological superfluid a mysterious density half-speed vortices and long walls (2019), via JTT

On view this month at JTT Gallery in downtown Manhattan, artist Elaine Cameron-Weir has orchestrated a taut but conceptually nuanced exhibition, continuing her exploration of varied sculptural tropes, studied investigations of materiality and scale, and subtle, evolving narrative forms that hint at the artist’s rigorous process and abilities.

Elaine Cameron-Weir, it thought you were someone else it thought you were me bounded by strings in the distorted phases of a topological superfluid a mysterious density half-speed vortices and long walls (detail) (2019), via JTT (more…)

Roe Ethridge, Nathalie with Hot Dog and Flag (2014), via Andrew Kreps

Currently on view at Andrew Kreps’s new 22 Cortlandt Alley exhibition space in the thriving TriBeCa arts district, photographer Roe Ethridge has opened a show of new works continuing his unique approach to the construction of the portrait, winding together strange environmental elements, a broad range of characters, and cultural milieu that act to disrupt and reshape the understanding of any one framing.

Roe Ethridge, Sanctuary 2 (Installation View), via Andrew Kreps

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John Giorno, Do the Undone (Installation View), via Sperone Westwater

Opened this month at Sperone Westwater, celebrated poet and artist John Giorno has unleashed a selection of new sculptural works, canvases and other pieces centered around his ongoing explorations of language, energy and space. Having lived and worked on The Bowery for over 50 years, the show marks something of a return home for the artist, emphasizing his presence on the famed street while also emphatically marking his a renewed vivaciousness in his work. (more…)