Art Basel Miami Beach VIP Preview Entrance, all photos on site for Art Observed by Erica Schwartzberg

On Wednesday, December 5th, 2012, Art Basel Miami Beach hosted its 11th annual VIP Preview at the Miami Beach Convention Center. Organizers claim Art Basel Miami has surpassed its Swiss sister Art Basel in size and popularity, though it has yet to surpass attendance figures (62,500 people in 2010). This year, 680 galleries competed to show at Art Basel Miami and 257 were selected. More than 2,000 artists are represented and attendance is expected to top last year’s 55,000 figure. Though definitive sales reports are difficult to pin down (Art Basel Miami never releases official records), $2.5 billion worth of art was on offer in 2011, and several galleries reported record sales. VIP guests include business magnates Steve Wynn, who purchased a Roy Lichtenstein, and Eli Broad, who purchased a Jeff Koons sculpture. Newsprint mogul Peter Brant gave Owen Wilson a tour, and Will Ferrell ceded the stage to his wife Viveca, who sits on the board of the Los Angeles County Museum. Also spotted: Sean “Puffy” Combs purchasing an Ivan Navarro sculpture, Diane von Furstenberg, comedian/actress Chelsea Handler, and music mogul Russell Simmons. The following is a photoset from the 2012 Art Basel Miami Beach VIP Preview.

Jesús Rafael Soto, Cubo de Roma, Galeria Elvira Gonzalez

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All photos on site for Art Observed by Erica Schwartzberg

UNTITLED. art fair is celebrating their first year at Art Basel Miami. Under the art direction of New York-based curator Omar Lopez-Chahoud, a beachfront pavilion was designed by architecture firm K/R (John Keenen and Terence Riley) to house a collection of international works by contemporary artists presented by 50 invited galleries. The space aims to emphasize the viewer’s experience  while creating context for the works. “It is about creating a conversation,” says Lopez-Chahoud, “and thereby offering collectors a sense of discovery, diversity, and quality with an international perspective.” UNTITLED. is open through Sunday, December 9th.

Paco Cao, mid-session of a seance, Eternal Rest at (Art) Amalgamated

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Chuck Close, Installation View, Courtesy of Pace Gallery

Pace Gallery in New York is home to Chuck Close’s first gallery show in the city since 2009. The gallery has represented Close since 1977. This latest exhibition features some of the artist’s newest pieces such as Cindy (2012) (a portrait of photographer Cindy Sherman) along with some of Close’s older works. (more…)

Art Basel Miami Beach 2011 photo by ArtObserved

Despite the large number of exhibitors from New York who are in recovery from Hurricane Sandy, almost  every Chelsea gallery scheduled to exhibit will be at this year’s 11th edition of Art Basel Miami Beach week. Events begin as early as today, Monday, December 3rd and run through Sunday, December 9th. Exhibitors and artists are preparing for a flurry of activity, with a multitude of fairs, some old, some new; public installations, exhibitions, collaborations and of course, parties centering around the Delano, The W, Soho Beach House, The Deauville, The Raleigh, The Standard and others. Check out the detailed schedule of events below.

Visionaire Magazine party at Delano Hotel 2011 photo by ArtObserved

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Exhibition view, Joseph Beuys, Iphigenie, Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac, all photos via Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac

Curated by Jörg Schellmann, director of Edition Schellmann, the first exhibition shown in the new performing arts-dedicated space within Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac Paris Pantin, is a collection of works by renowned German artist Joseph Beuys. The exhibition, entitled Iphigenie, inaugurated Thaddeus Ropac’s massive new space in the suburbs of Paris on October 17th, 2012 and will continue through January 27th, 2013.

Exhibition view, Joseph Beuys, Iphigenie, Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac

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Yingmei Duan, “Happy Yingmei,” 2011/2012, Art of Change, photo by Linda Nylind, all images courtesy Southbank Centre London

The first major exhibition to focus on contemporary installation and performance art from China, “Art of Change: New Directions from China” opened September 7th at the Southbank Centre in London. The exhibition traces the artistic development of a selection of some of the most innovative artists from  China, spanning in time from the 1980s until today.

Chen Zhen, “Purification Room,” 2000/2012, Art of Change, photo by Linda Nylind

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Maurizio Cattelan, “Catttelan,” 1994, neon, 90 x 47 x 3.5; 40 x 40 x 3.5, Courtesy Collezione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo

On September 25th 2012, the Whitechapel Gallery in London opened a special exhibition composed of works from the Collection Sandretto Re Rebaudengo, one of the most prominent private collections in Europe. The gallery’s year-long series, Think Twice, is divided into four parts, the first of which is dedicated to works of Maurizio Cattelan – many of which have not been seen in the UK for over 20 years – on display until December 2nd, 2012.

Maurizio Cattelan, “Bidibidobidiboo,” 1996, Taxidermied squirrel, ceramic, Formica, wood, paint and steel, Courtesy Collezione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo

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Charles Ray – Installation View, courtesy Matthew Marks Gallery

The works of Charles Ray consistently sit at the intersections of the commercial, the human and the industrial, exploring our increasingly intertwined relationships with the imagery and machinery through which we engage with the world every day. Matthew Marks Gallery is currently showing three new works by renowned American sculptor Charles Ray, continuing the artist’s ongoing explorations of the human body and its interactions with the contemporary industrial world.   (more…)

Franz Ackermann, Walking South (2012), courtesy Faena Arts Center

Before installing the site-specific Walking South at Faena Arts Center in Buenos Aires, Franz Ackermann walked, trained, biked and bussed across the city for two months. Once, he took the train to the outskirts of the city and walked the same distance back, all part of his psychogeographical plan to map the city.

The result is a 260-square-meter (equal to ten highway billboards) multi-layered, 25-panel installation bursting with Ackermann’s emotional response to the landscape, dirt, people and air of Buenos Aires. Black and white photographs of buildings, cars, and street corners are a somber base for bright, unexpected shapes that extend from a busy center node, which is a tangle of red, blue, and grey tentacles growing from jellyfish-like bodies. These irregular bodies float among and encircle photos of reality, both connecting and confusing the viewer.

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Ryan Gander, Imaginez l’Imaginaire, installation detail 2012, All images courtesy Palais de Tokyo

Ryan Gander‘s Esperluette, the first exhibition in the Palais de Tokyo‘s series “biboliothèque d’artiste,” explores and interprets the concept of the ampersand (&) as a symbol of the network of connections made by the human mind when solving a puzzle. Through a variety of images of everyday objects, sound installations, and books, Gander invites viewers to create their own stories based on the reactions and associations which occur in their own minds.

Ryan Gander, Imaginez l’Imaginaire, installation detail 2012

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Wayne Thiebaud, Cafe Cart (2012),courtesy Acquavella Galleries

Wayne Thiebaud’s most recent retrospective is currently on view at the Acquavella Galleries in New York. The exhibition is organized into different rooms under the simple headings, ‘places, people and things’, which express the fundamentals of his landscapes, figures and still lifes.

Wayne Thiebaud, Two Kneeling Figures (1966) , courtesy Acquavella Galleries (more…)

Richard Artschwager – Exclamation Point (Chartreuse) (2008), courtesy The Whitney Museum

As the work of Richard Artschwager dances in and out of familiarity, taking the commonplace forms of our everyday existence, the artist reshapes them into something foreign – just outside of the viewer’s descriptive vocabulary.  Now, after four decades of work in sculpture, painting and drawing, Artschwager’s work is the subject of a large-scale retrospective at the Whitney Museum in New York City. (more…)

Roy Lichtenstein, Oh, Jeff… I love you, too… but.., 1964, courtesy Tate Modern

The Tate Modern is holding a retrospective of work by master of Pop Art, Roy Lichtenstein, which consists of 127 works and runs through May 2013. The exhibition, the first major one since the artist’s death in 1997,  is said to attract more visitors than Damien Hirst’s 2012 show that brought people from all over the world through the doors of the Tate.

Lichtenstein was born in 1923 and passed away in 1997; he was considered to be the founder of Pop Art along with other preeminent artists such as Andy Warhol. His signature comic-book-inspired works that are brought to life with Ben-Day dots were the beginning of art based on popular culture. Images adopted from the media were rearranged and juxtaposed with unrelated material to relate to contemporary life.

Image: Roy Lichtenstein, Whaam!  (1963), via Tate Modern

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Liam Gillick, Installation View – Rest area racks 1-3, (2011), courtesy Air de Paris

Currently held within Air de Paris are two simultaneous complimentary exhibitions. Liam Gillick is responsible for a series of works entitled Sit in the Machine, which features two contradictory films detailing a glamorized yet banal setting regarding the mechanics of car manufacture. Intertwined with the exhibition is a relaxation area that mimics the workers’ rest areas at the factory. Gillick thus constructs a social act, relying on the spectators’ interactions, creating a nonobjectual relational experience.

Liam Gillick, Installation View, (2012), courtesy Air de Paris

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Bernadette Corporation – Still From Get Rid of Yourself (2003), Via Artists Space

Over the past decade and a half, the loosely defined art collective of Bernadette Corporation has moved from underground fashion line and party promoter, to film producer, to editor and publisher of a variety of magazines, books and novels. It is currently based in New York as a collaborative with three principal members, Bernadette Van-Huy, John Kelsey and Antek Walczak. Challenging contemporary creative identities and consumer politics, the group has time and again subverted the traditional practices of art and art exhibition.

Bernadette Corporation – Only She Could Be Other (2011), courtesy Artists Space (more…)

Annegret Soltau (b. 1946), NY Faces, chirurgische Operationen, 2001-2002, 51 x 51 cm, photo restitching, © Annegret Soltau

A series of paintings by Francis Bacon curated into dialogue with 5 internationally-acclaimed contemporary artists (Swedish Nathalie Djurberg, Romanian Adrian Ghenie, Italian Arcangelo Sassolino, Japanese Chiharu Shiota, and German Annegret Soltau) opened at the Centre for Contemporary Culture Strozzina (CCCS) in Florence, Italy on October 5th, 2012 and will remain on view until the end of January 2013.

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Art by Offenders, “Wasted!,” HMP Channings Wood,  James Wood Silver Award for Oil or Acrylics, all images courtesy of the Koestler Trust

The selection made by British artist Sarah Lucas for Southbank Centre’s annual “Art by Offenders, Secure Patients, and Detainees” exhibition challenges stereotypes and gives a voice to the imprisoned. This display of visual art, film, music, and writing by prisoners, which opened September 20th and will run through November 25th, is presented in a partnership with the Kosteler Trust (the UK’s best-known prison arts charity) and Southbank Centre.

Art By Offenders, “Fun to Do,” HMP Blantyre House, Htein Lin & Vicky Bowman Highly Commended Award for Oil or Acrylic

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Andreas Gursky – Katar, (2012), courtesy Museum Kunstpalast Düsseldorf

On now at Museum Kunstpalast in Düsseldorf, Germany is a selection of works from photographer Andreas Gursky, showcasing the artist’s continued practice at the forefront of the digital photography landscape. (more…)

Martha Roesler is hosting her Garage Sale at MoMA, starting today. Although it is not intended to be a performance piece, the artist stated that “It’s not symbolic activity. It’s real activity. Like most things, it has symbolic dimensions. But it is what it is.” (more…)

Carte Blanche (Installation View), courtesy Galerie Seguin and Paula Cooper Gallery

Each year, Galerie Patrick Seguin in Paris opens its doors to international galleries of note from the United States, Europe, and the rest of the world.  With no limits or constraints placed upon the guest curators, “Carte Blanche” allows a broad international audience exposure not only to great works from around the world, but also a taste of the various curatorial approaches and personal idioms of each invited gallery.

Bruce Conner – CROSSROADS (1976), courtesy Galerie Seguin and Paula Cooper Gallery

This year, the invitation was extended to Paula Cooper Gallery in New York City, who chose a selection of artists from their early years as the first art gallery in the Soho neighborhood of Manhattan.  First opened in 1968, the gallery has continued to grow with its hometown, now recognized as one of the premier art spaces in the city.

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Liliana Porter (right) and Ana Tiscornia, photo by ArtObserved

The following an interview with Liliana Porter, November 14th, 2012, by Anna Mikaela Ekstrand for Art Observed:

As Liliana Porter received me in her West Village pied-a-terre for our interview, she asks, “hablas español?” The apartment is light, airy and sparsely decorated with objects such as a Claes Oldenburg pretzel on a shelf and a Richard Artschwager exclamation mark on a wall. As we walk to the window, Porter points out highlights of the view; the Chrysler building to the left and perhaps of more interest the rooftops and a garden beneath, belonging to Donna Karan “where she throws crazy parties”. Looking down it feels like we are on the balcony of a theater.

Liliana Porter, Man with Axe, 2011 courtesy Hosfelt Gallery New York and Pinta

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Joseph Beuys, I like America and America likes Me, 1974, courtesy MMOMA

Appeal for an Alternative is a manifesto of the late Joseph Beuys’ works and the first and thus far most comprehensive retrospective of his to be shown in Russia. It features excerpts from his Marx series, the collection fromThe Institute for Foreign Cultural Relations, The Van der Grinten collection, the Joseph Beuys Archive and the Joseph Beuys Media Archive.  It has been curated by Eugen Blume, a major Joseph Beuys specialist and Head of the Nationalgalerie im Hamburger Bahnhof − Museum für Gegenwart, Berlin. The title for the show is based around his 1950s Western Man project, which incorporated elements of World War II in which Beuys himself was enlisted as a soldier.

Joseph Beuys, 1983, courtesy MMOMA

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Richard Prince, Installation View, 2012 courtesy Gagosian Gallery

Richard Prince’s Four Saturdays offers blackened, collaged six pack rings and text paintings that recall movie openings. The solid black of the text paintings on the simplistic white backdrop echoes the more simplistic atmosphere, contradicting his earlier, more colorful works that paradoxically seem to emphasize the glamour and allure of Hollywood.

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Alex Israel, Thirty exhibition at Almine Rech (announcement)

Work by Los Angeles-based American artist Alex Israel is being showcased in the Almine Rech Gallery Paris this month in an exhibition entitled Thirty, harking back to his Berlin exhibition which occurred exactly one year ago at Peres Projects in Kreuzberg, Berlin, and also to his installation at the Utah Museum of Contemporary Art in Salt Lake City this summer.

Alex Israel, Thirty & Property, courtesy Almine Rech
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