–>
Exhibition View, by Frank Stella, via L & M Gallery

Currently on view at L & M Gallery in New York is Frank Stella’s “Exotic Birds.” The exhibition features work the artist executed in 1975  in the form of twenty-eight graph paper drawings which he then converted into Foamcore maquettes.  In 1976, he transformed the maquettes into a series of large-scale aluminum reliefs known as “Exotic Birds.” According to renowned curator William Rubin, the series signaled a transition in Stella’s work, “that was radical on the levels of both method and pictorial language.”

More text and related links after the jump….

(more…)

Omer Fast’s Nostalgia III, 2009 – production still super 16mm film transferred to HD video running time: 32:48 minutes via Whitney Museum of American Art

Now on view at Postmasters Gallery and Whitney Museum of American Art are concurrent exhibitions by the iconoclastic video artist Omer Fast, known for his non-sequential cut ups of tragedy and humanity. Splicing disjunctive narratives of traumatized subjects – actual, staged or imitated – Fast’s dystopian imaginings shun aesthetic formality and evoke what truth lies in the ambiguity of storytelling. As highly interpretive mash ups collapsing space and time, his films recall the intimacy of reality and fantasy through mingling documentary and fictional styles.

Omer Fast’s Take a Deep Breath, 2008 – production still two channel HD video running time: 27:07 minutes

Chronicling the plight of the refugee, Omer Fast’s Nostalgia, showing at Whitney Museum of American Art, pinpoints feelings of longing and dislocation in a labyrinthian network of disparate ethnic voices. Tracing themes of displacement, war and loss through the recurrent motif of an animal trap, jumbled bits of dialogue and streams of overlaid images, Fast explores different permutations of cross-cultural encounters.

More images, text and related links after the jump… (more…)

Artur Zmijewski, “Powtorzenie” (Repetition), DVD, master DV, 2005 via Culture PL.

Currently on view at X Initiative as part of Phase 3 is a comprehensive solo exhibition of work by the controversial artist Artur Zmijewski.  It is easy to misunderstand and disprove of Zmijewski’s intentions, and easier to feel uncomfortable and conflicted by his video propositions.  This conclusive installation in a year-long experimental non-profit space marks a culmination of its mission to “inspire and challenge us to think about new possibilities for experiencing and producing contemporary art.”  Mr. Zmijewski reminds us that the experience of art can be as challenging as its production. The subject matter he explores is often heavy, the manner of delivery – raw, frank, often unedited – documentary.  The videos resemble an archive of a continuous social experiment where social situations, belief systems, reality and memory are test-driven for their endurance.

“80064”, DVD, master DV, 9’20”, 2004 via NY Times and Culture PL.

Zmijewski’s work is politically oriented as much as it is emotionally moving and complex. He acts as an activating agent by creating scenarios and situations in which initially passive and apathetic participants are galvanized and stirred, their actions documented and on view.

More text, images and related links after the jump…
(more…)

Emily Prince in front of her installation at the Saatchi Gallery, via the Guardian

An installation by Emily Prince, featuring graphite pencil miniature portraits of slain U.S. soldiers, is drawing additional attention to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan in the wake of President Obama’s decision to send 30,000 additional troops to bolster the mission in Central Asia. The installation, titled American Servicemen and Women Who Have Died in Iraq and Afghanistan (But Not Including the Wounded, nor the Iraqis, nor the Afghans, features almost 5,300 sketched portraits and is on display at the Saatchi Gallery in London through May 7th.

The 28 year old artist, only a few years out of Stanford and UC Berkeley but who already has participated in a Venice Biennale, was motivated to draw the portraits by her frustration following George W. Bush’s re-election in 2004. “I was feeling hopeless and frustrated, and I think I somehow needed to channel that energy,” Ms Prince expressed via Bloomberg. She was also quoted by the Daily Telegraph, saying that “I am disturbed about how easy it is to be disassociated from the war if like me you don’t have a relative who is involved.”  Based in San Francisco, she will continue to produce the drawings until the conflicts come to an end.

Andre D Tyson Riverside, CA Date of Death: April 22, 2007 by Emily Prince, via Saatchi Gallery, via Saatchi Gallery

more images text and links after the jump…

(more…)

An installation view of Kusama’s ‘I want to Live Forever’ exhibit in Milan

Currently showing at Padiglione d’Arte Contemporanea in Milan is an exhibition by Japanese artist Yayoi Kusama, entitled ‘I Want to Live Forever.’  The show focuses on the artist’ s figurative paintings, large-scale sculpture and installations from the last decade, along with more formative drawings from the 50’s and 60’s.  Also on show is ‘Narcissus Garden,’  a sculptural installation consisting of an interactive environment of 1,500 mirror balls mounted in a field.  The work was first exhibited at the 33rd Biennale di Venezia in 1966– breaking away  from the usual ‘covert commercial aspects’ of the Biennale, Kusama, (known for her talent in merchandising), dressed in a traditional Japanese Kimono and sold each mirror ball for 1,200 lire on the lawns of the Italian Pavilion. More than forty years later, the installation piece now comes to Milan for the first time. Qualities of Kusama’s work are driven by a mental illness (hallucinations and obsessive thoughts) that the artist has struggled with since childhood. Her art often reveals an obsession  for filling spaces with repetitive, identical patterns. Early on in her career, she began covering surfaces with the polka-dots that would eventually become the trademark of her work. These fields of polka-dots, or ‘infinity nets,’ were drawn directly from her hallucinations. “These strange, uncanny things…drove me half into madness for many years,” the artist has said. “The only way to free myself from them was to control them myself–by reproducing them on paper…”

Kusama’s interactive ‘Narcissus Garden,’ consists of 1500 mirror balls. 2009, Via Design Boom

More text, images and related after the jump…

(more…)

View of the exhibition “Considering Henry” (2010)

Now showing at Galerie Emmanuel Perrotin in Paris is a look at the Miami-based artist Hernan Bas, unprecedented in France. The exhibition, entitled “Considering Henry,” is on view through March 13, 2010 and borrows new works from major collections belonging to the Museum of Modern Art, the Whitney, MOCA (both Los Angeles and Miami), The Rubell Family Collection, The Saatchi Collection, SFMOMA and the Hirshhorn. Tracing prevalent themes of solitude and reflection in Bas’s romantically-inflected oeuvre, the exhibition follows the artist’s steadfast inspiration in nineteenth-century literature and painting.

Hernan Bas’s The landmark (or the laser point) 2009
Acrylic and airbrush on linen over panel
4 x 5 feet / 122 x 152,5 cm

More images, text and related links after the jump… (more…)

With only two weeks left in the exhibition, all of Stockholm was out to see “Dalí Dalí featuring Francesco Vezzoli” at Moderna Museet. The exhibition presents a retrospective of Salvador Dali, as well as his influence on contemporary artist Francesco Vezzoli. According to the exhibition’ curator, John Peter Nilsson, the show “examines the role of the artist in today’s celebrity-obsessed society, and of these two artists’ disingenuous relationship with mass media and power.” At once, it puts Dali’s oeuvre in a contemporary context and creates a historical perspective through which Vezzoli’s work may be understood.

for more story and relevant links after the jump…

(more…)

Nikolaevsky Hall, via State Hermitage Museum

Currently on view at the State Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg is a collaborative project between the renowned London based Saatchi Gallery and the initiative “Hermitage 20/21” titled “Newspeak: British Art Now.”  The exhibition features works by British artists that recently gained recognition in the United Kingdom through their alliance with Charles Saatchi. The exhibition at the State Hermitage is their international debut.

Steven Claydon

More text, images and related links after the jump…

(more…)

Cyprien Gaillard’s Cities of Gold and Mirrors (2009)

Currently on view  is the first exhibition of iconoclastic French artist Cyprien Gaillard (b. 1980) to be shown at Sprueth Magers Berlin. Comprised of the 16mm film Cities of Gold and Mirrors (2009) and the photographic works Geographical Analogies (2006-2009), the exhibition follows Gaillard’s concern with the controlled and shimmering demolition of natural and man-made monuments.

Film still of Cyprien Gaillard’s Cities of Gold and Mirrors (2009)

As an artist, “interested in things failing, in the beauty of failure, and the fall in general,” Gaillard has sought to map the human imprint on architecture and geography by vandalizing historical landmarks and receptacles of memory, then slowly retracting his hand from the course of the destruction. Describing his art as “post-entropic – in pursuit of the big moment after the chaos,” the artist has documented in sculpture, painting, etching, photography, video, performance and large scale, public interventions, cataclysmic shifts that engulf time and hasten modern ruins.

More text, images and related links after the jump…

(more…)

Inside the Bruce High Quality Foundation University exhibition at Susan Inglett gallery. 2009, Via Susan Inglett.

Currently showing at Susan Inglett is an exhibition by members of the artist collective Bruce High Quality Foundation. The artist group, which  consists of five anonymous Bruces– all graduates of Cooper Union– launched their own free and unaccredited ‘University’ in September of 2009. Admission to the school is granted through peer-recommendation and lessons in areas such as ‘metaphor manipulation’ are offered. The current exhibition, entitled the ‘Bruce High Quality Foundation University,’ (B.H.Q.F.U.), marks the end of the group’s  ‘University’ semester and displays work that speaks on behalf of the school’s curriculum and studied themes. The show also explores project plans for the school’s future. Perhaps the most critical issues addressed are those pertaining to the ‘over commercialization’ and ‘market-driven’ nature of the contemporary art school system.

Part of the Bruce High Quality Foundation University exhibition at Susan Inglett gallery. 2009, Via Susan Inglett. It’s been said that the five anonymous Bruces “guard their anonymity fiercely.”

More text, images and related links after the jump…

(more…)

Isa Genzken’s Wind II (Michael Jackson) (2009)
plastic foil, colour prints on paper, mirror foil, spray paint, perspex, tape, metal
174 x 230 cm

Currently on view at Galerie Daniel Buchholz through January 30, and running concurrently with an exhibition at Gallery Neugerriemschneider also in Berlin, is a collection of new works by the German artist Isa Genzken (b. 1948). Displaying provocative sculptures and collages blending paper, metal, paint, fabric and ceramics, the exhibition is the artist’s ninth solo show at the gallery since 1987.

Installation view of Isa Genzken’s Wind (2009)

Embodying the artist’s idiomatic style of arranging chintzy, ready-made materials, Wind constitutes a series of textured, totemic structures replete with fanciful juxtapositions. While the sculptures exude playful irony in their myriad associations, the artist’s saturated approach also levels a more serious critique at our contemporary society fueled by excessive consumerist urges.

More images, text and related links after the jump… (more…)

Hell 63 Years B.C. (2009), by Jake and Dinos Chapman, via Contemporary Fine Arts Berlin

Currently on view at Contemporary Fine Arts in Berlin is ‘Shitrospective’, the gallery’s first solo show by Jake and Dinos Chapman. In this exhibition the Chapman brothers recreate the most important sculptures and installations from their career together in miniature format made in cardboard and poster paint.

More text and related links after the jump….

(more…)

Alex Katz’s Fashion 2 (2008)

Now on view at the Museum Kurhaus Kleve through February 21 is the exhibition, An American Way of Seeing, including over 40 works from 1957-2008 by the American painter Alex Katz (b. 1927) and encompassing the artist’s breadth of skill and influence in the genre of figurative painting.  Realized in cooperation with the Sara Hilden Art Museum, Tampere, Finland, and the Musee de Grenoble, France (and following a recent exhibition at the Thaddaeus Ropac Gallery in Paris showcasing the artist’s fashion studies), An American Way of Seeing will trace Katz’s contribution to the disciplines of portraiture and landscape through canvases of striking luminosity and spirit.

Alex Katz’s Coleman Pond (2008)

More text, images and related links after the jump…

(more…)

Eberhard Schrammen, “Maskottchen (Mascot)” (c. 1924), in “Bauhaus 1919-1933” at MoMA. Bauhaus-Archiv Berlin Photo: Gunter Lepkowski © Estate Eberhard Schrammen

Complementing the Maholy-Nagy exhibition in Frankfurt showing at Shirn Kunsthalle through February 7, 2010, New York’s Museum of Modern Art is celebrating the early-20th century Bauhaus collective in a show which runs in the Joan and Preston Robert Tisch Gallery through January 25, 2010. This presentation of the highly influential German school comprises 400 works, many of which have never before been exhibited publicly in the United States. Drawn from both private and public collections, including 80 works from MoMA’s holdings, the show also features 150 pieces from the three German Bauhaus collections, Bauhaus-Archiv Berlin, Stiftung Bauhaus Dessau, and Klassik Stiftung Weimar. The exhibition comes to MoMA after an earlier version at Berlin’s Martin-Gropius Bau, which showed from July 22 to October 4, 2009.

Vasily Kandinsky, “Schwarze Form (Black form)” (1923), via MoMA. Private collection. Courtesy Neue Galerie New York. Photo: Jeffrey Sturges © 2009 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / ADAGP, Paris

more images and story after the jump…
(more…)

Raymond Pettibon, No Title (As he enlarged)

Raymond Pettibon brings a collection of new and early works to Sadie Coles HQ in London through January 9th. A prolific artist who has exhibited hundreds of times over a span of decades, the exhibition will convey interesting juxtapositions throughout his aesthetic formation.

more images, text and links after the jump…

(more…)

László Maholy-Nagy, via Maholy-Nagy Foundation

On the occasion of the 90^th anniversary of the foundation of the Bauhaus, Schirn Kunsthalle Frankfurt hosts an inclusive retrospective of László Maholy-Nagy (1895–1946). The exhibition features 170 paintings, photographs, photograms, sculptures and films, presenting the legacy of the renowned photographer, designer and Bauhaus professor in its remarkable diversity.  The exhibition’s centerpieces are the artist’s Raum der Gegenwart (Room of Today), Maholy-Nagy’s progressive spatial design that brings together many of the artist’s ideas and is recreated for the first time, and Light Space Modulator, one of earliest kinetic artworks to rely on electrical power. 

More text, images and related links after the jump…

(more…)

Pile Up Life No.2 (2008) by Tatsuo Miyajima, via Lisson Gallery

Currently on view at the Lisson Gallery in London are new works by Japanese artist Tatsuo Miyajima. For over twenty years Miyajima has created installations by using LED digital counting devices which continually count from 1-9 or backwards but never employ zero. They seemingly seek to establish a definitive rhythm at once repetitive and experiential, similar to the passing of time. Tatsuo ‘s new work continues to combine  performance with the architecture while also examining the development of life and the effects of large-scale natural disasters.

More text and related links after the jump….

(more…)

Frank Auerbach, “Summer Building Site,” 1952, Via NYTimes. For Auerbach, building sites became pictorial motifs.

Currently showing at Courtauld Gallery in London is an exhibition of paintings and sketches by German-born British artist Frank Auerbach. The work captures London’s wounded infrastructure after World War II and the rebuilding that went on throughout the city from the 1950’s into the early 60’s.  Fascinated by scenes of deconstructed materials and bomb sites in the aftermath of the war– which destroyed  some 80,000 buildings in the city– Auerbach documented London’s physical recovery through sketches and paintings that he reworked for months at a time, creating built-up, painted surfaces of over an inch. The exhibition brings the complete series of fourteen building site paintings together along with several, rarely seen oil sketches. The collection stands as some of the most significant painting in post-war Britain, representing a profound response to the wounded, post-war landscape. Ladders, cranes, scaffolding, steel frames–all wonders of construction sites and symbols of modernity–provided Auerbach with a plethora of lines to work with, and they materialize through his paintings into abstract and highly tangible structures that emphasize chaos.

“Construction of One New Change Street,” behind St Paul’s Cathedral in 1965, Via NYTimes

More text, images and related links after the jump…

(more…)

John Baldessari’s Cast/Crutch/Ring (2009)

Currently showing at Sprüth Magers Berlin through January 16 is an exhibition of new work by the highly influential American artist, John Baldessari (b. 1931), entitled Hands And/Or Feet (Part Two). The exhibition, coinciding with a major retrospective at Tate Modern in London (which opened in October 2009 and will travel to MACBA, Barcelona; LACMA, Los Angeles and the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York through 2011 after terminating in January 2010), gathers ten large-scale works continuing the artist’s exploit of the body’s expressive potential across a range of diverse media and conceptual means.

John Baldessari’s Arrow/Glass/Duck (2009)

more images, text and links after the jump…

(more…)

Damien Hirst at the opening of his 2009 Moscow show via Snob

On December 17, an exhibition of Damien Hirst‘s project “The Dead” opened at Triumph Gallery in Moscow, Russia. “The Dead” is a series of thirty colored foil-block prints on paper, exploring one of Hirst’s favorite motifs – the human skull.  The exhibition is a joint project of Triumph Gallery and ABSOLUT Vodka.

Skulls on display via Popsop

More text, images and related links after the jump…

(more…)

Diego Rodriguez de Silva y Velazquez, “Portrait of a Man,” 1630. Via The Met

Currently showing at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York is an exhibition of works by the great Spanish painter Diego Rodriguez de Silva y Velázquez.  The heart of the exhibition features a newly identified painting by the artist.  Formerly ascribed to his workshop, the work was only recently re-attributed to the master himself after an incredibly revealing cleaning and restorative process.  Prior to the conservation, the painting was distorted by “degraded varnish” and “discolored restoration,” obscuring significant qualities of the work.  The new attribution represents a fascinating kind of case study regarding altering critical opinion surrounding the origin of a work and changes in its identification.  The painting is exhibited amongst other works by the Spanish artist, to whom fewer than 120 paintings are known to exist.

Diego Rodriguez de Silva y Velázquez, “Portrait of a Man,” (Detail of face and hair) Via The Met The subjects identity remains in question.

More text, images and related links after the jump…

(more…)

“Mobile Matrix” in situ at the Mexico City Library where the work was installed in 2006. Via NY Times

On Tuesday evening of December 15th, in the smaller of the two Titus theaters at the Museum of Modern Art, Ann Temkin enthusiastically beckoned Gabriel Orozco to take the stage. The premise of the followed conversation was, of course, the recently opened retrospective of Orozco’s lifetime body of work. At 47, the Mexican artist seemed grave and stoic in his words, although that may have been the fatigue of several weeks of preparation for the launch of the exhibition taking a toll.

Behind the Scenes: Gabriel Orozco. The artist talks about his long evolving relationship with the Museum of Modern Art and the experience of participating in a retrospective exhibition. Via MoMA

More images, text and links after the jump…

(more…)

All images via Galerie Eva Presenhuber
Exhibition view of Eva Rothschild’s Natural Beauty (2009)

Now showing at the Galerie Eva Presenhuber is an exhibition of Eva Rothschild‘s latest sculptural labyrinths and forms. A celebrated British artisan, exercising mastery in materials ranging from resin, ceramics, leather, wood and found objects, Rothschild brings her second show to the Presenhuber gallery, invoking themes of spirituality through the tension of tactile elements.

Detail of Eva Rothschild’s Natural Beauty (2009)

more images and links after the jump…

(more…)

–>
Rulai (2008-2009), by Zhang Huan, via PaceWildenstein

Currently on view at PaceWildenstein in New York is Zhang Huan’s “Neither Coming Nor Going.” The artist’s second show at PaceWildenstein; this exhibition emphasizes the artist’s ongoing exploration of what it means to be human through tradition, historical associations and personal experience. The show will feature a monumental ash Buddha, Rulai (2008-2009) and also a series of unique large-scale works on paper.

More text and related links after the jump….

(more…)