Tracey Emin, Floating, (2012), via Galleria Lorcan O’Neill

Currently open in Rome, Galleria Lorcan O’Neill’s fourth presentation of Tracey Emin’s work is a mature, low-key, yet penetrating selection of the artist’s diverse practice, showcased in both of their spaces on Via Orti D’Aliberti.  Emin has recently been appointed Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE), as well as a professor of drawing at the Royal Academy (RA) along with Fiona Rae, making them the first two women to be elected into the academy.  Given her entrance into these exclusive circles as an official representative of British culture, the Italian location of this show offers an interesting reevaluation of Emin’s art.
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Paul Klee, Comedians’ Handbill (1938), via Metropolitan Museum of Art

On view at the Metropolitan Museum of Art through February 24, “Late Klee” presents a concentrated survey of the last fifteen years of Paul Klee’s life and career. The one-room exhibition consists largely of small-sized works on paper and cardboard, each representing a facet of the artist’s prolific oeuvre and wide-ranging interests. (more…)

Jim Shaw, Untitled (US Presidents), 2006, Courtesy of the artist and BALTIC Centre for Contemporary Art, Gateshead

The Baltic Centre in Gateshead is currently holding the first-ever retrospective of works by American Jim Shaw outside the United States. Including over one hundred works in a variety of media, from video and sculpture to paintings and installations, the show explores Shaw’s ongoing examination of American life, and his unique set of aesthetic signifiers at play throughout his career.

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Daniel Buren, “Electricity” at Petzel Gallery (Installation View) Photo by Elene Damenia

This January, Daniel Buren presents his third solo exhibition across two New York gallery venues; his work will be showcased at the Bortolami Gallery at 520 West Street and Petzel Gallery at 537 West 22^nd Street. The galleries will simultaneously exhibit works from the series Electricity, Paper, Vinyl – WORKS IN SITU & SITUATED WORKS. Bortolami is showing Buren’s recent works from 2012, while pieces from 1968 – 2012 will be on view at Petzel through February 16th.

Daniel Buren, Projection, travail in situ (2012) at Petzel Gallery, Photo by Elene Damenia

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Cyprien Gaillard, Artefacts (2011), via MoMA PS1

Over the past several years, French artist Cyprien Gaillard has created a body of work that negotiates the complex spatio-political, geographical and cultural maps of contemporary culture.  Continuously revisiting themes of decay, flux, erosion and conflict, his work picks through the saturated visual landscape of modernity, and exposes the interlocking mechanisms of destruction and creation at work, as well as the grey area between these polar states. (more…)

Fred Sandback, Untitled, (1977-2008), via David Zwirner

Currently on display at David Zwirner’s London Gallery is a matrix of acrylic yarn evoking an eerie experience that heightens the spectator’s spatial awareness. Across the gallery, colored and blackened fibre is stretched into 3D geometrical forms that carry an uncanny resemblance to a two-dimensional line drawing in mid air. The viewer is literally immersed into the surreal world of Fred Sandback as he challenges our perceptions of dimension and reality.

Fred Sandback, Untitled (four part vertical construction) (1988), via David Zwirner

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Sol LeWitt, Cut Torn Folded Ripped (Installation View), via James Cohan

A pioneering force in post-war American art, Sol LeWitt’s geometric explorations of space, image and meaning was foundational in the development of both the conceptual and minimalist schools of artistic practice.  Perhaps most famous for his “wall drawings,” the artist also explored a range of paper and sculptural techniques over the course of his career.

Sol LeWitt, A Square of Chicago without a Circle and Triangle (1979), via James Cohan

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Air de Pied-à-terre (Installation View), via Lisa Cooley

Walking into  Air de Pied-à-terre, the newest show on display at artist Lisa Cooley’s gallery, one is reminded of an otherworldly hotel lobby. With the help of fellow artist and curator Alan Reid, Cooley has created an “Air de-Pied-à-Terre” (an alternative living space, located away from one’s home). The gallery has numerous articles that evoke a nostalgic atmosphere within the show – mobiles that dance around the room, paintings that mimic children’s creations, and homely looking text juxtaposed against more classical looking portraiture. The entirety of the show is punctuated by stereotypically domestic constituents such as chairs and potted plants that engulf the viewer and invite them to make themselves at home. (more…)

Entrance to Hauser and Wirth’s second gallery in New York, where Martin Creed’s ‘Work No. 1461’ greets visitors

At 511 West 18th Street, in the 24,700 square feet that formerly housed the roller disco known as “The Roxy,” Hauser & Wirth have found their second home in New York. Maintaining their other location on the Upper East Side, the expansion to Chelsea is their fifth location worldwide, and celebrates an important landmark: the gallery’s twentieth anniversary. A hefty book of over 1,000 pages, edited by Hatje Cantz, accompanies the event: Hauser & Wirth 20 Years. The exhibition inaugurating the space could not be more fitting: a father-and-son collaboration which took place over that same twenty year period: Dieter and Björn Roth.

Artist Dieter Roth smokes a cigarette in Roth New York Bar.

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Maxwell Snow, Shroud V (2012), via Colette

Paris’s iconic Colette concept store is currently exhibiting new photographic works from artist Maxwell Snow, brother of the late Dash Snow. Monochromatic images feature French actress Rebecca Dayan and model Arizona Muse in a homage to 19th century Romanticism, fittingly titled after Lord Alfred Tennyson’s poem “The Lady of Shalott”. (more…)

Luc Tuymans, The Summer Is Over (Installation View), via David Zwirner

With a consistency that can almost be regarded as mechanical, 2013 marks another show by Belgian painter Luc Tuymans at David Zwirner in New York.  Since joining the gallery in 1994, the Belgian painter has held solo exhibitions in the gallery every two years, and is currently presenting a new series of thematically interwoven works that expound on his sparsely colored, figurative approach, titled The Summer is Over.

Luc Tuymans, Zoo (2011), via David Zwirner

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Black Cake, Installation view at 83 Grand Street, Courtesy of Team Gallery, New York

Black Cake at Team Gallery is a multi-generational group exhibition curated by Alex Gartenfeld, the young critic and curator whose former West Street Gallery project space was a notable new addition to the downtown art scene before it closed last summer. The exhibition takes its point of departure from the Gaelic spring ritual of Beltane (by way of scholar Roberto Calasso’s account in his 1994 book The Ruin of Kasch), during which a cake would be prepared and divided among members of a tribe. One piece would be covered in ash (hence the name “black cake”), and whomever chose this piece would be pushed into the Beltane bonfire, becoming a sacrificial casualty of the fertility holiday. The exhibition presents the diverse aesthetic iterations of “sweetness” and social identity in contemporary art, notions addressed dynamically across a variety of media through the works on view.

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Francesco Clemente, Mandala for Crusoe (Installation View), via Blain|Southern Gallery

For the first time in seven years, painter Francesco Clemente is having a show in London, titled “Mandala for Crusoe,” at Blain|Southern’s recently opened Hanover Square location. Born in Italy, Clemente divides his time between New York and Varanasi, a city on the banks of the Ganges River in northern India, and the works in this exhibition reflect this diverse international influence.

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Peter Burr, Special Effect (2012), Courtesy of Peter Burr

Over the course of his career, video artist Peter Burr has worn many hats; founding avant-garde animation label Cartune Xprez, playing and animating for the performance art duo Hooliganship, and working on a variety of video projects and installations around the globe.  His newest work, titled Special Effect, will hold its U.S. premiere at the Museum of Moving Image on Friday, January 18th.  Taking the eerie, haunting film Stalker by Russian filmmaker Andrei Tarkovsky as its jumping off point, the show is a multifaceted media presentation, incorporating music, live performance, projection, body mapping, and a selection of videos from contributors across the new media landscape.

Art Observed had the opportunity to speak with Burr about the show, his take on Stalker, and his approach to creating this ambitious work.

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Andy Kaufman “On Creating Reality”  (Installation View)

Revered for his vast wealth of original material and unique approach to performance, comedian and performance artist Andy Kaufman left an enduring legacy that challenged and transcended conventional assumptions of genre and presentation.  Frequently characterized as a comedian or “personality,” Kaufman’s work on television and in live performance frequently confounded and amazed his audience, and positioning him as a pioneer of new media performance and relational aesthetics.  His work in the 1970’s and 80’s before his death in 1984 included turns as an Elvis impersonator, “The Intergender Wrestling Champion of the World,” and even a foul-mouthed lounge singer named Tony Clifton. (more…)

David Shrigley, Signs (Installation View), via Anton Kern

Blending the mundane and the morbid with a healthy sense of humor and cultural subversion, David Shrigley has been producing his particular blend of cartoonish satire for over 20 years.  Trained as a sculptor, the artist has also produced a trove of ink drawings, animations and other projects that showcase his brand of wit and empathy, exploring neurosis, mortality, absurdity and even the art world itself. (more…)

Sol LeWitt, Wall Drawing #467. All images courtesy Galerie Marian Goodman.

Galerie Marian Goodman in Paris is hosting an exhibition of Sol LeWitt’s wall drawings and other work, through January 26th. LeWitt, credited as the father of conceptual minimalism, has been widely exhibited internationally since 1965. The work of this American-born artist encompasses a variety of mediums and styles. Pyramides is a series of wall drawings conceived between the years of 1985-1994. Four floor-to ceiling geometric shapes etched directly onto the walls of the gallery represent some of LeWitt’s most recognizable and iconic work.

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Ferdinand Hodler, The Dents du Midi from Champéry (1916) Courtesy Neue Gallery

Over the course of his lifetime, Swiss painter Ferdinand Hodler moved among a variety of subjects and approaches, from audacious works of symbolism, to sweeping landscapes, to a vigorous body of portraiture.  This expansive oeuvre is currently on view at New York City’s Neue Gallery in “View to Infinity,” showcasing the diversity and unique perspectives running through Hodler’s work.  The show is presented in conjunction with the Fondation Beyeler, Basel, where it will show from January 27 to May 26, 2013

Ferdinand Hodler, Two Women in Flowers (1901-1902) Courtesy Neue Gallery

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Barnaby Furnas, Jonah in the belly of the Whale (2012) courtesy Marianne Boesky

Visceral and dynamic, the canvases of American graffiti artist and painter Barnaby Furnas ripple with a kinetic energy.  Filling his paintings with evocative imagery, explosive movement and the near-omnipresent splatters of blood that has become one of his calling cards, Furnas has culled a reputation for his unique take on culture and history.

Barnaby Furnas, The Gutter #2 (2012) courtesy Marianne Boesky

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Installation view of Ann Hamilton, “the event of a thread”, all photos by James Ewing and courtesy of The Park Avenue Armory

American artist Ann Hamilton is widely recognized for her large-scale immersive multimedia installations, touching upon themes of collective consciousness, space and labor. Her current installation, “the event of a thread” commissioned by and on view at The Park Avenue Armory in New York, does not fall short. (more…)

Two exhibitions will celebrate the seminal Armory Show of 1913 this year, “The New Spirit: American Art in the Armory Show, 1913”, which opens at the Montclair Art Museum in New Jersey on the exact day of the centennial anniversary; and “The Armory Show at 100”, at the New York Historical Society in the fall. The original show, organized by Walt Kuhn and Arthur B. Davies, was so shocking to American audiences that “…in Chicago, art students felt so threatened that they burned Brancusi and Matisse in effigy, a scene that a German expressionist might have done justice to – except that there was no German expressionism in the show.” (more…)

Gillian Wearing, Self Portrait at 17 Years Old (2003). All images courtesy Maureen Paley.

On view through January 6^th at Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen, Düsseldorf is a survey of Gillian Wearing’s film and photographs. The 1997 Turner Prize recipient’s work explores the relationship between one’s public and private personas, and the difference between reality and fiction.

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William Kentridge, Installation View (2012), courtesy The Tate Modern

I Am Not Me, the Horse Is Not Mine by William Kentridge, consists of six individual projections juxtaposed against various walls of the Tanks in the Tate Modern. The projections cumulatively comprise a narrative that depicts the story of The Nose (1837), by Nikolai Gogol, whereby a spiteful nose departs itself from its owner’s face, tries to leave the city and is consequently arrested. However despite this, one morning when the owner wakes up, he finds his nose has returned.

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A fan clip of M.I.A. performing Paper Planes at the Kochi-Muziris Biennale – click to watch

12/12/12 at 12:00 opened the first-ever Indian Biennial, held in the South Indian city of Kochi, Kerala, 30 kilometers from the historic Muziris islands. Twenty-three of the eighty-two showcased artists in the Biennale are native to the state, with more than forty from India. The remaining artists come from all over the world, including Ai Weiwei (China), Ernesto Neto (Brazil), Cyprien Gaillard (France), and Wangechi Mutu (Kenya) among others. Musician M.I.A., whose family is originally Sri Lankan, inaugurated the showcase with her own Indian performing debut, additionally contributing her own hologram-based artworks to be viewed throughout the exhibitions. Modeled after the Venice Biennale, Kochi-Muziris runs for three months, through March 13th, 2013. (more…)