Nigel Cooke, Stumpy’s Nights (2010). All images via Blum & Poe unless otherwise noted

British artist Nigel Cooke is currently showing at Blum & Poe in Los Angeles through February 12.  The installation spreads three galleries, displaying Cooke’s most recent sculptures and paintings, including his stunning triptych: Departure, upheld by the curators as the exhibition’s centerpiece.  The work continues to examine the artist’s interest in the surreal, perhaps this time with a touch of the sublime, some of the works recalling the hazy, perilous romance of Caspar David Friedrich.   

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Damien Hirst, For Heaven’s Sake (2008). Platinum, pink and white diamonds, 85 x 85 x 100 mm. © 2011 Damien Hirst and Hirst Holdings Ltd, DACS 2011

For the inauguration of the Gagosian Gallery‘s new Hong Kong exhibition space, Damien Hirst presents Forgotten Promises, a show displaying new paintings and sculpture by the artist. With these new works Hirst continues his existential interrogations of existence, death, beauty, and decay, including Butterfly Fact Paintings, a series of diamond studded cabinets, and a life-size human baby skull covered in diamonds. “Diamonds are about perfection and clarity and wealth and sex and death and immortality. They are a symbol of everything that’s eternal, but then they have a dark side as well,” says Hirst in the press release.

Artist Takashi Murakami at the exhibition, via Arrested Motion

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Slave Auction (1982) by Jean-Michel Basquiat, via Musee d’Art Moderne

Currently on view at the Musee d’Art Modern in Paris is a retrospective of the work American artist Jean-Michel Basquiat.  Featuring a hundred major pieces including paintings, drawings and objects from numerous collections and museums in the United States and Europe, the show marks the fiftieth anniversary of Basquiat’s death and is the first exhibition of such a scale of the artist’s work ever to be held in France. The exhibition offers the viewer a chronological view of the artist’s career and his influence on post-1980s art history.

Untitled (Fallen Angel) (1981) by Jean-Michel Basquiat, via Musee d’Art Moderne

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Cindy Sherman, Untitled, 2010. All images via Sprüth Magers

Dressed in anything from a faux-nude suit to a modest red gown, Cindy Sherman stares out from the walls of Sprüth Magers in London. The costumes and odd personas follow in Sherman’s usual tactics, but the large size and unframed wallpaper-like appearance are a step away from her past series. Stretching from floor to ceiling, her photographs dominate the gallery space with surreal characters standing guard over symmetric idyllic backgrounds.

Cindy Sherman, Untitled, 2010.

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Erwin Wurm, with his Big Suit (2010) – all photos by C. Claisse for Art Observed

Currently on view at Thaddeus Ropac Gallery in Paris are two shows: Drawings from 2000–2010 by Tom Sachs and Yes Biological by Erwin Wurm. Tom Sach’s fifth solo show at the gallery, this time he presents a symbolic group of works spanning the last decade of his oeuvre, referring to central themes in American culture and society. Elsewhere in the gallery, visitors can stumble upon Erwin Wurm’s massive sculptures. The Austrian artist’s works often rely upon viewer participation, occasionally even prompting spectators to add their own pose.

Tom Sachs with his McDonald’s Hamburger Prep (2009)

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All Installation views via Andrea Rosen Gallery

Amnesia at the Andrea Rosen Gallery brings together three ambitious projects: Felix Gonzalez-Torres’ “Untitled” (It’s Just a Matter of Time) from his Billboard series, 12 On Kawara canvases from the artist’s Today project, with each work representing a month of one year, and a video program over nine monitors curated by Rebecca Cleman and Josh Kline of Electronic Arts Intermix (EAI). The show attempts to bridge the gap between seemingly incongruous works through the very theme of discontinuity. Amnesia references the gaps in memory that extend to the fibers of culture, and, ultimately, the historical archive.

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No title, 1963, oil on canvas, 65 x 80 in.

New York in the 1960s and early 1970s held no shortage of female artists making a name for themselves: Louise Bourgeois, Eva Hesse, Lee Bontecou, Joan Jonas, Yayoi Kusama, Jo Baer, and Agnes Martin, among others.  These names ring familiar in our ears, and almost all have had well-earned retrospectives throughout the following decades. But there is one name we do not often see—Lee Lozano.  The new exhibition at Hauser & Wirth sheds light on Lozano’s practice, a legacy shrouded in dramatic acts of rebuff.

The artist, photographed in 1963 by Hollis Frampton

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Installation image, all photos by Caroline Claisse for Art Observed unless otherwise noted

Currently on view at the Palais de Toyko is Fresh Hell, a group exhibition curated by British-born New York-based artist Adam McEwen.  Shedding a bit of dark humor on the city of Paris, McEwen brings together medieval sculpture and conceptual work from artists long forgotten as well as contemporary artists, pondering just what sort of position and creative endeavors an artist can make in today’s world. The works deal with morbidity, decay, and notions of ‘the end,’ making Death the principle theme.

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Barbara Kruger, Circus (2010). All photos © Schirn Kunsthalle Frankfurt 2010, Norbert Miguletz

Barbara Kruger’s Circus installation covers the rotunda of the Schirn Kunsthalle in Frankfurt through January 30. With her unmistakable aesthetic and poignant use of language, Kruger interferes with the traditional manner in which information is transmitted through the museum institution.  Her commitment to dismantling clichés and pervasive stereotypes through the use of monumental text makes her work both politically relevant and visually arresting.

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North Gallery installation view. All photos via Marian Goodman Gallery

Conceptual artist Lawrence Weiner has placed text and curves upon walls and floors in his exhibition Gyroscopically Speaking, showing now at the Marian Goodman Gallery. The gyroscope as an object is problematic and unpresentable as a whole; one thing while it is still, a fascinating phenomenon of physics once spinning. Filling the North and South Galleries and the North Gallery Viewing Room, Weiner explores relationships between language and materials, humans and objects; the artist questions simultaneous realities of society and economics, forcing the viewer to engage an entirely new mentality.

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Taken from the Wind and Bolted to the Ground, (2009)

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Subodh Gupta, Spill, 2007, and Still Steal Steel #1, 2007. All photos via Saatchi Gallery unless otherwise noted

For the first time in France, Tri Postal art space presents 60 works by 28 artists from the collection of London’s Saatchi Gallery, showcasing contemporary Chinese, South Asian, and Middle Eastern artists with works in all media.  Dealer Charles Saatchi has been a pioneer in the acquisition of contemporary Asian Art, aptly naming the exhibition after the ancient trade route between Europe and Asia. Tri Postal is located in Lille, a one hour train ride from Paris.

Zhang Huan, Ash Head No. 1, 2007

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Barbara Kruger, Past / Present / Future (2010). Via The Citrus Report

Closed since 2003, the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam has partially reopened with an innovative program of exhibitions, lectures, performances and workshops titled The Temporary Stedelijk. Taking Place is a group show highlighting the museum’s permanent collection, showcasing exciting recent acquisitions and also featuring new site specific work, such as Barbara Kruger‘s Past / Present / Future (2010). Ann Goldstein, recently named director of the Stedelijk and former senior curator of the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles, organized the program after complications prevented the Stedelijk from re-opening as planned in Fall 2010.

Roman Ondak, Measuring the Universe (2007), Via Uapmarker

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Isa Genzken, Mona Isa III (Elefant), 2010. All images via Galerie Chantal Crousel

In her Mona Isa exhibit at the Chantal Crousel, Isa Genzken draws on iconic historical images and common modern objects to create a collection of works that bring a new relevance to both the monumental and the everyday. Taking from the concept of objective abstraction, even in her sculptures, Genzken’s work brings the surface meaning of an image or object into question.

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Hannah Hoch, Roma (1925). Via Focus.de

Chaos and Classicism: Art in France, Italy, and Germany, 1918-1936, currently on at the Guggenheim, is more history lesson than study of art object.  A mix of known artists with the unknown, names like Hannah Hoch, Picasso and the  little remembered Amleto Cataldi (whose third Google result is someone’s Facebook profile) are shown contextualized within this period of political transformation.  Curated by Kenneth E. Silver—author of Esprit de Corps: The Art of the Parisian Avant-Garde and the First World War, 1914-1925, which is considered an authority on interwar modernism—Chaos and Classicism offers an illustration of how art can just as easily support, as it does challenge, institutional power. Traveling up the Guggenheim’s ramp, the exhibition lays bare the changing sentiment of the period—from a reliance on the order and beauty of Classicism after the horrors of the first world war to fascism’s adoption of those same classical themes for world take over.

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Michelangelo Pistoletto, Mappamondo (Globe), 1966-1968. Via NY Times

Prior to being encased in the metal cage above, Michelangelo Pistoletto‘s solid newspaper Globe was rolled through the streets of Philadelphia as a recreation of the artist’s first ‘walking sculpture.’ Using mirrors, public performance, and sculptures like the newspaper ball, the Italian artist includes his audience as a core function of his work.  Spanning his early years, from 1956-1974, From One to Many at the Philadelphia Museum of Art captures the evolution of Pistoletto’s participatory art with over 100 works, from the Mirroring Paintings, Minus Objects, and Rags, to various footage of Happening-esque enactments by his acting troup Lo Zoo, with a portion also devoted to his all inclusive art-community Citadellarte which he founded in 1998.

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Philippe Parreno, Invisibleboy, 2010. Via Serpentine Gallery

“I’m best known for my film about Zidane, which showed a super-visible body. After making that it seemed a good idea to make films about someone who doesn’t exist, at least not on paper.” In the Guardian, Philippe Parreno is referring to his most recent video, Invisibleboy currently on view at the Serpentine Gallery. The film depicts the imaginary reality of a young illegal alien in New York’s Chinatown, with the creatures that inhabit the boy’s mind scratched onto the film stock.  Along with three other short video pieces, Invisibleboy is part of Parreno’s highly choreographed exhibition at the Serpentine, which, despite their highly disparate content, are conjoined by Parreno’s use of the exhibition space as an experiential medium. From a Thai compound to Robert Kennedy’s funeral ride, Parreno’s work is highly specific and seemingly unrelated, yet his consideration of time and sequence with regard to the viewer’s experience are the central themes in his body of work. The concept of viewer perception also exists within the narrative of much of his work.

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Photo credit Joshua White courtesy of L&M Arts

L&M Arts in Venice Beach presents Willem de Kooning: Figure & Light, a collection of drawings and paintings spanning the artist’s first involvement in the Abstract Expressionist movement of the 1950s to the end of his career in the 1980s.  The exhibition is divided into two galleries with the first displaying relatively small-scale works from de Kooning‘s iconic Women series.  The second room showcases the artist’s later abstract paintings realized between 1980 and 1985.

Willem de Kooning Two Women II, c. 1952. Photo credit Joshua White courtesy of L&M Arts

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Roy Lichtenstein, I Know How You Must Feel, Brad!, 1963. Via Albertina

Roy Lichtenstein’s work has long been considered key in defining American pop art, and the three recent exhibitions in New York speak to how much of an audience he can draw in.  The exhibition at the Morgan Library & Museum highlights Lichtenstein’s pop art beginnings: 55 large-scale, black-and-white drawings done in the 1960s.  Together on display for the first time, these drawings give some insight on how Lichtenstein developed his style of using Benday dots to simulate commercial reproduction, and his subject matter of appropriated comic strips and advertisements. Organized by curator Isabelle Dervaux, the exhibition will move to The Albertina in Vienna, Austria from January 27 to May 15, 2011.

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Jennifer Allora & Guillermo Calzadilla, Stop, Repair, Prepare: Variations on “Ode to Joy” for a Prepared Piano, 2010. Via Initart Magazine

Jennifer Allora and Guillermo Calzadilla’s Stop, Repair, Prepare: Variations on “Ode to Joy” for a Prepared Piano (2008) is the MoMA’s current installment in their Performance Exhibition Series. The duo prepared a Bechstein baby grand by cutting a hole through the center of the piano, rendering two octaves unusable. The pianist stands in the space and leans over the front of the piano to play the keyboard upside down and backwards. While playing the Fourth Movement of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony, commonly known as “Ode to Joy,” the pianist walks the wheeled piano around the performance space.

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Ai Weiwei and his sunflower seeds in the Turbine Hall of the Tate Modern, via NY Times

Currently on view in the Tate Modern’s Turbine Hall is Sunflower Seeds (2010) a work by Chinese artist and political activist Ai Weiwei for the 11th commission in the Unilever Series.  The work is made up of a millions of small hand-crafted porcelain works each sculpted and painted uniquely by Chinese specialists working in workshops in the small town of Jingdezhen. Hundreds of skilled hands worked together to produce the 100 million sunflower seeds poured into the Turbine Hall’s vast space.

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Sunflower Seeds (2010) by Ai Weiwei , via Tate Modern

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Paul Thek, Technological Reliquaries, 1964-66. Via Tumblr

The most surprising thing about Thek perhaps, was his age. Of Andy Warhol’s generation, he is more theoretically aligned with the sincere art of David Wojnarowicz, who was twenty odd years his junior. Diver: A Retrospective manages to be a comprehensive overview of his work and his position in art history as well as a heartfelt look at his life and continuing influence, despite the absence of many seminal pieces which are no longer in existence. Thek is certainly a case of an artist before his time and perhaps is one who is altogether difficult to categorize.

Paul Thek, Technological Reliquaries, 1964-66. Via Un Regard Lubrique

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Hanna Liden, Untitled (Deli Bag Self Portrait), 2010. All images via Salon 94

New York based artists and long-time friends Hanna Liden and Nate Lowman are teaming up for the first time at Salon 94, through January 12.  The pieces made separately, a dialogue is created by the artist-chosen pairings of their work. Both artists leaning toward the morose, Lowman variously depicts gravestones and bodies, while Liden photographs melting candles or masked friends with flames. Lowman’s ongoing investigations of the smiley face–with its hidden layers of meaning and irony–also make an appearance; Liden plays off of it as well, perhaps suffocating beneath the happy (though upside down) iconic plastic bags.

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Takashi Murakami at Gagosian Gallery Rome, Installation View, via Gagosian Gallery

Currently on view at Gagosian Gallery in Rome are two epic paintings by renowned Japanese artist Takashi Murakami. Dragon in Clouds- Red Mutation (2010) and Dragon in Clouds- Indigo Blue (2010) each comprise of nine panels, measure eighteen meters in length and depart from the artist’s usual technicolor palette to revert to more traditional Japanese influences.  Cloud and Dragon paintings are known as UnryÅ«zu and were great influences for the 18th century Japanese artist Soga Shōhaku who has been a source of artistic inspiration for Murakami.

Dragon in Clouds- Red Mutation (2010) by Takashi Murakami, via Gagosian Gallery

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Lucas Samaras, Pose 0314, 2009-2010. All photos via Pace Gallery

Known for his ‘unrepentent ego,’ Lucas Samaras departs from his usual narcissism in Poses / Born Actors at the Pace Gallery until December 24th. Taking digital photographs of art world luminaries—from artists like Jasper Johns to big-name curators and collectors—Samaras reworks them with Photoshop. The artist aims for drama, using the software not to improve the images, but rather highlight rawness and emotion via shadows and color. Lighting the photo from below, and asking his subjects to wear glasses, Samaras creates mysterious, often demonic renderings of friends and peers. Unsure of the reactions of both the viewers and the photos’ subjects, small bottles of vodka were included with subjects’ invitations—for pre-show consumption.

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