Franz Xaver Messerschmidt, The Yawner, 1771-83. Via DNAinfo

1736-1783: From Neoclassicism to Expressionism focuses on the “character heads” of sculptor Franz Xaver Messerschmidt, curated by Guilhem Scherf at the Neue Galerie until January 10th. One of the most relevant details to interpreting the artist during this later period is the curious fact that Messerschmidt made no differentiation between his earlier neoclassical busts (for which he gained initial acclaim) and the so-called character heads.  The latter began after Messerschmidt started to suffer from hallucinations and paranoia, featuring stripped-down, realistic renderings of a myriad of extreme facial expressions.  The artist arrived at such expressions by contorting his face in a mirror—yet it should be noted that though they bear his likeness, the resultant busts are not considered self-portraits.

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Detail, nude (xxx), 2010. All images courtesy Gladstone Gallery.

Currently on view at Gladstone Gallery is nude, an exhibition of cast wax sculptures by Ugo Rondinone. The seven life-size figures, which occupy the gallery in various moments of repose, are made from a mixture of wax and earth pigments. Rondinone’s work has been described as perverse and grotesque to pretty and breathlessly romantic; this exhibition seems to fit into the final category, reflecting on poignant expressions of the human condition.

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Alexis Rockman, Bridge 2006, Via Artnet

On view at Salomon Contemporary is Thunderdome, an exhibition of the work of Alexis Rockman running concurrently with the major retrospective of his work at the Smithsonian American Art Museum, A Fable for Tomorrow. While a direct comparison isn’t made outright by the Salomon, Thunderdome references George Miller’s 1985 Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome, a post apocalyptic action film starring Tina Turner and Mel Gibson. The Thunderdome in the film is “a sanctioned arena, where aggressive human behavior, a basic part of evolutionary history, can be played out without devastating consequences to the planet.” This is a useful reference with which to begin to explain Rockman’s work, which in fantastic detail imagines the world after centuries of human abuse, without the protection Miller’s Thunderdome would offer. The exhibition can also be seen as the gallery becoming Rockman’s Thunderdome, a space where the artist foretells of the dangers of human environmental cruelty, depicting the wreckage using scientific forecasting and hyperrealist painting technique.

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Thomas Struth, Semi Submersible Rig, DSME Shipyard, Geoje Island, 2007

Capturing scenes from several major Korean cities—including Pyongyang, the capital of North Korea—Thomas Struth‘s exhibition, Korea 2007-2010, draws attention to the dynamic relationship between humans and technological progress.  Highlighting construction sites and production lines, the show is held in the Gallery Hyundai.

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John Baldessari, Giacometti Variations, 2010. Via Vogue

With his newest show, Giacometti Variations, at the Prada Foundation in Milan, conceptual artist John Baldessari comments on the culture of fashion in a city known for its style. “There is currently a blurring of art and fashion. It is de rigueur that fashion models be extremely tall and thin,” says Baldessari. “Giacometti’s figures are the most emaciated and skinny sculptures that exist. Why not push that further?”

Via Very Cool

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Pablo Picasso, Portrait d’enfant: Paloma, 1952. Via Gagosian Gallery

Titled Important Paintings and Sculpture, Pablo Picasso‘s latest solo exhibition at the Gagosian Gallery on Madison Avenue is a diverse collection spanning roughly 20 years of his work.  Though without a professed exhibition theme, like the landmark Mosqueteros, the works mainly hail from his years spent in the south of France, sharing pieces with his recent London exhibition The Mediterranean Years (1945-1962).

Installation view

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Doug Aitken, House, 2010. Via Regen Projects

Regen Projects is currently exhibiting Doug Aitken’s recent work: House.  The work is both fiction and narrative—a duality that exists in much of his work.  The video of his parents sitting calmly face to face as their home is demolished around them and its surrounding installation of debris provides a dramatized element to an event that actually occurred in Aitken’s life.

Sex, 2010. Via NYT Magazine.

In addition to the central installation of House, the exhibition has several wall hangings, titled living words, that incorporate whole internal ecosystems. The piece SEX ruminates on a central fixture of human life and connects it to the natural world.

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Jasper Johns, Land’s End, 1979/1989. Via The Leo Castelli Gallery

Drawing Over, an exhibition of Jasper Johns drawings from the last four decades at the Castelli Gallery – of which many pieces have never been exhibited – closes on Saturday.  Chosen by the artist from across his lengthy career, the works are drawings over Johns’ own prints. For example, Land’s End, a monochromatic intaglio print from 1979 is drawn over in pastel, creating the work Land’s End, 1979/1989.  The collection sees the artist change the composition of the original while wrestling with his own iconography, sometimes decades later. Johns has drawn over a group of six of his renowned Flag prints, 1972/1994, illustrating the process of reinvention central to this exhibition.

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Carsten Höller, Soma, 2010. Courtesy Hamburger Bahnhof Museum für Gegenwart

Twelve reindeer, twenty-four canaries, eight mice, and two flies currently reside in Carsten Höller‘s new installation, Soma, in the Hamburger Bahnhof Museum of Contemporary Art in Berlin.  Höller’s fantasy land can also be your home for one night – for the price of 1,000 euros (stay includes a nighttime tour of the museum with a guard, as well as breakfast).

Carsten Höller, Soma, 2010. Courtesy Hamburger Bahnhof Museum für Gegenwart

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Mark Wallinger’s Sinema Amnesia, via the Financial Times

Sinema Amnesia, Mark Wallinger’s most recent work, was unveiled in October in the seaport town of Canakkale on the eastern coast of Turkey. Inside a rusted shipping container, footage constantly streams of the strait and its many ships, from exactly 24 hours prior. Titled Ulysses, the film brings attention to the commerce and history of millennia, while contemplating the period of a single day – a theme from Wallinger’s favorite novel of the same title by James Joyce.

Canakkale Strait, via Pbase

The piece is part of My City, a project which invites five artists from five European countries to produce installations in different Turkish cities. Intended to strengthen cultural ties between Turkey and the EU, Istanbul has been appointed a European Capital of Culture – a small gesture toward Turkey’s accession to the EU.

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Installation Shot, Jenny Holzer “Retro” at Skarstedt Gallery. All images courtesy Skarstedt Gallery and Jenny Holzer, member Artists Rights Society (ARS), NY.

Currently on view at Skarstedt Gallery, through December 18th, is Retro, an exhibition of truisms by Jenny Holzer. The exhibition, which is comprised of benches, plaques, painted signs, electronic LED signs and a sarcophagus, covers a decade of Holzer’s oeuvre from the late 1970’s to the late 1980’s. It aims to reintroduce the diverse use of media comprising Holzer’s historically iconographic works, as well as explore the use of text and language throughout the artist’s early career.

Installation shot, Jenny Holzer’s “Retro” at Skarstedt Gallery.

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Hiroshi Sugimoto – Lightning Fields 163, 2009 – © Hiroshi Sugimoto, Courtesy The Pace Gallery

For the first time since announcing their representation of artist Hiroshi Sugimoto, Pace Gallery at West 22^nd street presents an exhibition of the photographer and architect.  On view are two new 50-foot diptychs from his 2009-2010 “Lightning Field” series as well nine single “Lightning Field” photographs.   The middle gallery houses seven of the artist’s “Seascape” photographs from 1987-1996.

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Installation view, “Damien Hirst: Medicine Cabinets” at L&M Arts, New York. Courtesy of L&M Arts.

In case you missed Damien Hirst at last month’s Contemporary Art auctions (just one painting made it to an evening sale), there is still time to see eighteen of the artist’s Medicine Cabinets installed at L&M Arts in New York. The cabinets are exhibited along with a collection of Sex Pistols memorabilia that includes posters, prints, and t-shirts.

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John Currin, Mademoiselle, 2009. All images via Gagosian Gallery.

On view at Gagosian Gallery’s Madison Avenue venue is an exhibition of new and recent paintings by John Currin. Best known for his provocative, realist pictures inspired by Old Master works and vintage Danish pornography, Currin has expanded his figural repertory of female nudes to include satirical aristocratic portraits and mannerist re-imaginings of advertisements from Cosmopolitan.

John Currin, The Dogwood Thieves, 2010.

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Edward Hopper, Seven A.M., 1948. All images via the Whitney.

Modern Life: Edward Hopper and His Time, which opened last month at the Whitney Museum, presents roughly 85 works by the artist and his most immediate American contemporaries. Tracing Hopper’s singular vision of American realism over more than six decades, the exhibition stages a selection of paintings from their permanent collection (with several exceptions) in the context of works by members of the Ashcan school, the Precisionists, Social Realists, and others who examined modern urban and rural life in the first half of the twentieth century. Through comparisons of Hopper’s formal approach and social interests with those of the artists working nearest to him, the show reveals both conceptual intersections and stylistic distinctions between it’s titular master and his diverse peer group.

Edward Hopper, Early Sunday Morning, 1930.

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Luc Tuymans, Speech, 2010. All images via David Zwirner Gallery.

In a series of new paintings entitled Corporate, Belgian artist Luc Tuymans explores the social implications and troubling consequences of corporations and corporate identities. Tracing the origins of modern industry back to the dissolution of medieval feudalism, Tuymans addresses the mechanisms by which these entities shape contemporary culture. Through the visual vocabulary of corporate life, ranging from workplace lighting conditions to iconographies of trade and marketing, Tuymans distills the essential formal qualities of this phenomenon’s historical impact.

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Luc Tuymans, Fortis, 2010.

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Joseph Beuys, Stripes from the House of the Shaman, 1964-1972. All images via Kunstsammlung NRW.

My objects are to be seen as stimulants for the transformation of the idea of sculpture…or about art in general. They should provoke thoughts about what art can be and how the concept of sculpting can be extended to the invisible materials used by everyone. – Joseph Beuys

As part of the Düsseldorf Quadriennale 2010, the Kunstsammelung am Grabbeplatz and Schmela Haus present “Joseph Beuys. Parallel Processes.” The two-part exhibition, which opened September 11, 2010, will remain on view through January 2011, culminating in a symposium on the life and work of the influential and enigmatic Social Sculptor.

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All installation photos courtesy of Galerie Jérôme de Noirmont.

On view in Paris at the Galerie Jérôme de Noirmont through Saturday, November 20 is Jeff Koons‘ “Popeye Sculpture.” The exhibition marks the artist’s third solo show in France, held at the same venue as his first in the country in 1997. Combining images and motifs from the popular cartoon strip with brightly-colored inflatable animals and assorted pool toys, Koons constructs an elaborate network of references, ranging from icons of mainstream culture to art historical iconography.

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These Days (2008-2009) by Damien Hirst, via Gagosian Gallery

Currently on view at the Gagosian Gallery (Davies Street) in London is “Poisons + Remedies:” an exhibition of new paintings by Damien Hirst, in which the artist explores the opposition between life and death through binaries of color and scale. In these works, Hirst expands upon his now-iconic use of the skull, represented starkly here in black and white, contrasting it with colorful, detailed images of scattered pills, which also reflect his ongoing interest in pharmacological motifs.

Passover (2008-2009) by Damien Hirst, via Gagosian Gallery

Pay the Debt to Nature (2010) by Kaws, via Galerie Perrotin

Currently on view at the Galerie Perrotin in Paris is New York- based artist Kaws‘ “Pay the Debt to Nature.” The exhibition reveals a collection of nine paintings, five grisailles, and three monumental sculptures in fiberglass of his fetish personalities, including “Companion,” a pirate skull on the body of Micky Mouse and “Accomplice,” replicating the head of a rabbit.

Blackout (2010) by Kaws, via Galerie Perrotin

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