Donald Judd , Untitled (1965). All images via  Sprüth Magers.

Currently on view at Sprüth Magers London is Working Papers: Donald Judd Drawings 1963–93. The show consists of 33 drawings made when Judd was creating exclusively three-dimensional objects, offering an extended insight into the artist’s work during this period. Judd is considered a central figure of Minimalism, and although he strongly rejected the association, his explorations of volume, space, and the elimination of the artist’s ‘hand’ were pioneering efforts for Minimalists. Judd abandoned painting to work with three-dimensional objects in 1963, exercising a vocabulary of forms that he had established such as “stacks,” “boxes,” and “progressions,” which focused on the relationship between the object, the viewer, and the environment.

Installation view

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Eva Rothschild, Natural Beauty (2009). All images courtesy of Kunstverein Hannover

Hot Touch is on now at Kunstverein Hannover, an exhibition dedicated to the work of artist Eva Rothschild, her first ever in Germany. Creating work that is both new and referential, the artist recalls the mid-20th century concept and tradition of Minimalism, and the fragile, ephemeral work by Eva Hesse. Utilizing a variety of materials including leather, Plexiglas, and wood, Kunstvereine Hannover claims Rothschild as one of the most important artists today working to confront and challenge the “formal aspects of sculpture.”

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Rudolf Stingel, Untitled (2011)

Luxembourg & Dayan‘s Grisaille explores the use of a generally monochromatic color palette in works spanning multiple centuries. The exhibition is divided between the gallery’s new space in London and the 77th Street location in New York; the show began in London in October, overlapping with the New York show throughout November and December. Both shows feature a variety of artists including Albrecht Durer, Alberto Giacometti, Pablo Picasso, and Andy Warhol. The New York gallery also shows new work by Richard Prince and John Currin.

Gerhard Richter, Grau (1974)

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Ellsworth Kelly, Orange Relief with Blue (2011). All Images via Matthew Marks.

American abstract painter and sculptor Ellsworth Kelly has unveiled a so-called ‘shop sign’ for the inaugural exhibition of the latest Matthew Marks Gallery in West Hollywood, California, while the gallery continues to maintain four spaces in New York City. The sign is a wide strip of painted black aluminum set across the top of the white stucco building (a converted garage, now 3,500 square feet). This is Kelly’s first major exhibition in Los Angeles after over a decade, and the showcase of Kelly’s paintings inside the gallery runs concurrently to his print retrospective at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA), which opened Sunday.

An outside view of the ‘shop sign’ (more…)

On January 24th, duo Francesco Vezzoli and designer Miuccia Prada team up with AMO, the research division of Rem Koolhaas’s architectural firm OMA, to transform Paris’ Palais d’Iéna into The 24 Hour Museum. The palace, which ordinarily houses France’s economical, social, and environmental councils, will instead be populated with high-end fantasy fashion and explorations of celebrity and sex. Known as a prankster of sorts, Vezzoli’s work often involves a certain kitchiness while perhaps masking a deeper political significance. In this exhibition, Vezzoli pays homage to the female figure in particular, featuring renditions of neo-classical sculptures outfitted with heads of “contemporary divas.” The museum is divided into three sections—historic, contemporary, and forgotten—with three segments of the 24 hour period as well: first a private dinner at 8:30 Tuesday evening, followed by an exclusive dance party, then opening to the public at 7 a.m. on Wednesday, before closing at 8:30 p.m.

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All installation views courtesy of David Zwirner.

David Zwirner is currently presenting Date Painting(s) in New York and 136 Other Cities, a collection of work by On Kawara that spans the 46-year series of paintings. Blending the personal with the historical, the artist’s work uses variations of sans serif fonts and hand-mixed colors to record the date on which he painted the canvas. Kawara consistently exudes a fascination with chronological time, exploring the human perception of its passing, and the nature of our relationship to it. By notching the passage of time and cataloging the procession of his physical life and travels, Kawara creates a body of work that not only testifies to the grand scope of the human life, but also creates a complex interaction with the idea of history—both of the self and of mankind—and the history of the future.

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Anselm Kiefer, Shevirat Ha-Kelim (2011). Metal shelves with approx. 40 lead books and broken glass. All images courtesy of the Tel Aviv Museum of Art.

To inaugurate the Herta and Paul Amir building of the Tel Aviv Museum of Art, German artist Anselm Kiefer has created a site specific exhibition in the 9,000 square foot special exhibition gallery. Shevirat Ha-Kelim (the breaking of the vessels) is a continuation of the artist’s exploration of Jewish tradition and mysticism, which the artist has been working with since the 1970s. Both older and more recent works, mostly from the artist’s private collection, will be on exhibition, including an array of painting, sculpture, woodcuts, and installation.

Installation view

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Anselm Kiefer, Merkaba (2011)

Anselm Kiefer presents his largest show in London yet, covering over 11,000 square feet of the new White Cube Bermondsey gallery, Il Mistero delle Cattedrali. With ties to Fulcanelli’s publication of the same name (published in 1926), the show explores his longtime fascination with alchemy and its processes, Kiefer bringing to light the mystical notions behind the pseudo-scientific procedure. “In the past the alchemists sped up this process with magical means. That was called magic,” Kiefer states. “As an artist I don’t do anything differently. I only accelerate the transformation that is already present in things. That is magic, as I understand it.”

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Ai Weiwei, Forever Bicycles (2012). All photos via Taipei Fine Arts Museum.

Ai Weiwei’s current exhibition and semi-retrospective at the Taipei Fine Arts Museum, Ai Weiwei, Absent, includes pieces dating back to 1983, including large-scale sculpture and a collection of 100 photographs divided into his two artistic phases—in the East Village, New York and in Beijing, China. “Whenever Ai had a spare moment he would fill it with pictures of the places he visited, people he met, the area he lived,” states the exhibition’s press release. This lends a feeling of immediacy and voyeurism to Ai’s photos, as the viewer is shown a glimpse of the artist’s life as he documents the lives of others.

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Ai Weiwei, Zhang Huan (1994)

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Roberto Matta, Untitled (1983). All images courtesy of The Pace Gallery.

The Pace Gallery’s Matta: a Centennial Celebration commemorates the life and work of the Chilean-born artist Roberto Matta. The exhibition was organized in collaboration with his children (he is the father of artist Gordon Matta-Clark) and concentrates on work created towards the end of his career. Born in 1911, Matta was a seminal figure in the art world, and his legacy and work continue to resonate. Matta: a Centennial Celebration features 14 paintings, many of which have never been viewed outside of Europe.

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Jeff Wall, Boxing (2011)

Jeff Wall’s latest solo show at the Marian Goodman Gallery, New Photographs, consists of seven large scale photographs and four smaller ones. Most made within the past two years, the works are a continuation on the neo-realistic, documentary style parameters the artist has been working within in recent years, reflecting various pieces of a collective cultural fabric that Wall weaves throughout his ouvre.

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Francis Picabia, Printemps (1942-43)

Currently being shown at Michael Werner Gallery in New York is an exhibition of the French surrealist/Dadaist painter Francis Picabia. The exhibition has a particular focus on the artists’ later works, during which he explored methods of painting beyond the conventional and expected of the time. While Picabia’s work stands alongside the exploratory French artists and thinkers of the early 20th century, it is also branded in his unique sensibilities, constantly changing and seemingly never satisfied.

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Billy Childish, Sibelius Among Saplings (2011). All images courtesy Lehmann Maupin gallery.

Lehmann Maupin in New York is currently presenting work by Billy Childish, a cult artist who has been an integral part of the contemporary cultural landscape for the past 35 years. Curated by Matthew Higgs of White Columns, the exhibition is appropriately christened I am the Billy Childish, presenting a series of the artist’s recent paintings alongside a selection of his copious musical and literary projects.

Billy Childish sings at his opening at Lehmann Maupin

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Gert and Uwe Tobias, Untitled (2011). All images courtesy of Maureen Paley, London.

The work of Gert and Uwe Tobias is currently on view at Maureen Paley, London. The identical twin brothers collaboratively create large scale woodcuts, mixed-media works, and ceramic sculptures. The artists draw from a multitude of inspirational sources to create pieces that are visually stunning and technically innovative, appearing at the same time both playful and haunting. Decorative patterns, bold colors, and textile qualities are visual characteristics ever present in their abstracted cartoon-like figures, heavily influenced by the Eastern European folk art of their homeland, Transylvania.

Installation View

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Andy Warhol, Shadows (1978-79), installation view. All photos via Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden.

Andy Warhol’s silkscreened series Shadows is on view now at Washington’s Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden. Shadows was created during the last decade of Warhol’s life and consists of 102 prints of shadows produced in his studio. The paintings are exhibited on an uninterrupted wall, providing a unique opportunity to view the series curving through the museum’s galleries. The Shadow series departs from Warhol’s usual pop style as he generated the shadows himself in his studio, creating abstract forms not normally seen in his work.

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Installation view. All photos on site for Art Observed by Caroline Claisse.

The Tate Modern‘s exhibition ‘Panorama,’ featuring the work of living German artist Gerhard Richter, will be coming to an end after thee months. The exhibition pays homage to Richter’s variant inspirations, spanning 50 years of work and 14 rooms, providing an all-encompassing display of his oeuvre. Works include photo-realist paintings, landscapes, cloud, squeegee, and history paintings, with less conventionally displayed glass and mirror constructions from the 1980s, as well as his first Color Chart from 1966. One noted work, the 20-meter-long Stroke (on Red) (1980) was developed from a photograph of a brush stroke. This is its first exhibition outside of Germany.

‘Panorama’ gallery view, with curator Mark Godfrey

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Sanford Biggers, Chesire (2008)

The art of Sanford Biggers is a pastiche of cultural signifiers, stacking symbols and tropes from the African-American experience together for a wide contextual palette of juxtapositions. Such is the nature of Blossom, seeing its Brooklyn debut as part of Sanford Biggers: Sweet Funk—An Introspective at the Brooklyn Museum. Referencing lynchings, Buddhist enlightenment, and the artist’s musical identity, all while making conscious aesthetic and situational ties to the early 20th century landscapes of the American West, the poetic piece functions as an example of Biggers’ densely multi-cultural work that speaks to both broad senses of American identity and the artist’s own personal experience.

Sanford Biggers, Blossom (2007)

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Josef Albers, Homage to the Square (1957). All images courtesy of Galleria Civica di Modena.

Currently on display at the Galleria Civica di Modena is the first retrospective exhibition held in Italy dedicated to the artist, designer, and teacher, Joseph Albers. The large scale retrospective takes up both exhibition spaces within the Galleria Civica to display a survey of Albers’ legacy.

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Piotr UklaÅ„ski, Untitled (Better than Truth) (2011)

Polish-born artist Piotr UklaÅ„ski is currently showing Midsummer Night’s Dream on the Caribbean island of St. Barthélemy, a Gagosian Gallery exhibition hosted by the Eden Rock Gallery. The opening reception took place over the holidays on December 29th, though the work has been on view since December 21st, and is up through January 31st. Art Observed was on site to visit the exhibition, which is positioned in likely the most iconic hotel on the island, the Eden Rock. St. Barths swells with international travelers from around the world through the New Year’s holiday and boasts likely the largest collection of mega-yachts on the planet during this time, as such, this pop up exhibition of UklaÅ„ski works in this location was well timed and positioned by Gagosian Gallery. UklaÅ„ski works in a variety of mediums, including sculpture, photography, performance, and film, directing and producing his first feature-length in 2006. Midsummer Night’s Dream showcases the artist’s new ‘pottery paintings,’ three-dimensional compositions of assorted ceramics, paying homage to various themes and artists of post-war Poland, as well as his grandmother. “My grandmother did hard labor in a ceramic factory in Communist Poland. This St Barths exhibition would be her Midsummer Night’s Dream,” UklaÅ„ski states in the press release.

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Eden Rock Hotel

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JR, The Wrinkles of the City, Los Angeles 2010 (2011). All images courtesy of Galerie Perrotin.

Urban artist and 2011 TED prize recipient JR, who eschews the title “street artist,” comes to Galerie Perrotin in Paris with Encrages, his first major solo exhibition. In addition to new works, the show includes several previously seen plastered on city walls worldwide—those of Rio de Janeiro, Nairobi, Shanghai, and Los Angeles, among others. “After displaying his work in the biggest museum of the world, the walls of the cities, JR faces the walls of the gallery,” states the exhibition’s press release. The artist also transformed the gallery itself, covering the entrance with a two-story strained and staring eyeball, framed by wiry eyebrows and leathery skin.

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Outside view of Galerie Perrotin, Paris

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Cecily Brown, The Green, Green Grass of Home (2010). All Images via Gagosian Gallery.

Gagosian Gallery in Rome is currently exhibiting a series of paintings by New York-based, London-born artist Cecily Brown. The exhibit examines the human experience, captured in lavish colors, radical abstractions, and voluptuous forms. Brown brings a rich history of painting to her work,  as she channels everything from the sensuality of Rubens to the expressionism of Willem de Kooning.

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All photos by Caroline Claisse for Art Observed

The work of Daniel Buren has, for over 40 years, sought to explore the relationship of art and space, using his trademark striped painting technique as a method to emphasize the engagement between art, exhibition space and the viewer.  His current show One Thing To Another, Situated Works at the Lisson Gallery in London, continues this dialogue, exhibiting a number of brightly-colored works that incorporate Buren’s technique into new mediums.

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Eva Rothschild, Blackout (2007) All images courtesy of 303 Gallery.

Eva Rothschild‘s latest exhibition is her second at 303 Gallery, titled The Heart of a Thousand Petalled Lotus. The main white room is peppered with matte black objects and looming sculptures, focusing on the form of the line and simplistic silhouettes of shape. Crudely structured objects are precisely wrapped and woven with red and white, while a series of totem pole-like columns huddle together. Also included in the show are brighter, more psychedelic paintings, a distinct difference from her sharply calm sculptures.

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Leonardo da Vinci, St. Jerome (circa 1482). Image via the Vatican Museum.

The National Gallery‘s Leonardo da Vinci: Painter at the Court of Milan brings together the most comprehensive display of surviving paintings and drawings by the artist to date, as only a small number of da Vinci’s works remain accounted for. While da Vinci’s interests included painting and sculpture, anatomy, engineering, and music, the National Gallery defines the scope of the show to drawings and paintings dated primarily within the 1480s and 1490s—the period in which da Vinci was the court painter to the Duke of Milan, Ludovico Sforza.

Leonardo da Vinci, Portrait of Cecilia Gallerani: Lady with an Ermine (1489–1490). Image via the Czartoryski Museum.

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