Installation view: Bjarne Melgaard “A New Novel” at Luxembourg & Dayan, New York. All images by Jennifer Lindblad for Art Observed unless otherwise noted.

The door of Luxembourg & Dayan’s historic townhouse on Upper East Side—the second most narrow in New York City— opens to a visual assault: sequined dolls wearing Proenza Schouler-designed evening gowns and Pink Panther figurines perch atop neon-colored piles of books just narrow enough to snake through, violent sexual vignettes are played out by clay figures, and 1970s-style wallpaper and overlapping area rugs serves as a rough-and-tumble backdrop. All comprise Bjarne Melgaard’s twisted vision for “A New Novel.”

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Rudolf Stingel – Untitled (2012), courtesy The Gagosian Gallery

In 2007, as part of his mid-career retrospective shows at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago and the Whitney Museum in New York, Italian artist Rudolf Stingel installed several massive sheets of aluminum-faced insulation material, inviting gallery-goers to inscribe their own messages, images and writings into the delicate face of the originally pristine walls.  The result was a long expanse of graffitied surfaces, a testament to the exhibition’s existence as much as it was a record of its visitors.

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John Cage – Dereau (#11) (1982), courtesy The National Academy Museum

Over the course of his lifetime, composer, writer and theorist John Cage made immense and lasting contributions to modernist and post-modernist avant-garde thought, challenging traditional conceptions of music, sound, noise and arrangement, and blazing a path for young composers in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.  However, the artist also was a prolific painter, creating a vast body of watercolors, prints and drawings, and ultimately influcing, and collaborating with, many artists in the 50s and 60s.  These works are the focus of a new exhibition at the National Academy Museum in New York City, celebrating what would be Cage’s 100th birthday.

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Daniel Turner – Installation View (2012) courtesy Journal Gallery West

New York-based artist Daniel Turner creates installations at the nexus of the organic and synthetic, a quirky combination of elements that underlines the environmental interactions of man and nature, and resultant breakdowns in symbol and understanding which results from their increasing distance.  As part of the first show at The Journal Gallery’s new location in Brooklyn, Turner is exhibiting two recent works exploring the complex interactions of objects and environments created by man’s bizarre contemporary relationship to science, chemistry, consumption and natural processes.

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Gabriel Orozco is profiled in the Wall Street Journal, as his show, Asterisms, opens tonight at the Guggenheim. The show contains photographs and sculptural vignettes of thousands of pieces of debris collected by the artist from the wildlife reserve Isla Arena in Mexico and from Pier 40 in Manhattan. “It’s amazing how the nature, and the accident, and the sand, the elements make them look very—they’re very suggestive of things you know,” he said.

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John Baldessari, Eggs and Sausage (2012). All images courtesy Marian Goodman

On view through November 21st, 2012 at the Marian Goodman Gallery is Double Play, John Baldessari’s newest series of paintings that draws from art historical and popular culture resources to once again arrive at new meaning through the reconfiguration of disparate parts.

John Baldessari, Feelings (2012).

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Installation view, Tatsu Nishi, Discovering Columbus

All photos by Elene Damenia for Art Observed

Through November 18th, New Yorkers and visitors to the city will be able to see what mayor Bloomberg calls “one of the icons of our city,” within the setting of a living room designed by Japanese artist Tatzu Nishi. (more…)

Chris Ofili, installation view(2012) courtesyVictoria Miro/The National Gallery

Chris Ofili’s latest collection of works  on display at Victoria Miro in London are actually intended for use as backdrops for a collaborative piece that involved The Royal Opera House, The Royal Ballet and the National Gallery. The project, involving artists, choreographers and dancers, depicts scenes from Ovid’s Metamorphosis that were in turn been recreated by Titian in a trilogy of paintings recounting stories of Diana and Actaeon, Diana and Callisto and The Death of Actaeon.

The narratives recall Diana’s nude encounter with Actaeon upon which she turns him into a deer and he is consequently killed by his fellow hunters; the revelation that Callisto, one of Diana’s nymphs who is sworn to chastity, is impregnated by the god Jupiter and subsequently banished; and finally a depiction of Actaeon’s gory death.

Chris Ofili, Stag (2012) courtesy Victoria Miro/The National Gallery

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The artist – Erwin Wurm, Am I a House? at CAC Málaga

The first major exhibition in Spain of the work of Austrian artist Erwin Wurm is now on view at El Centro de Arte Contemporáneo de Málaga. The exhibition consists of video, sculpture and large-scale installation, including quotidian objects and buildings deformed so extremely that they remain almost unrecognizable. Wurm’s work addresses media saturation in contemporary society and exaggerated values, as well as political scandals and human rights.

Erwin Wurm, Am I a House? at CAC Málaga

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Arturo Vega, Photo Booth Self Portraits (ca. 1974). Courtesy Arturo Vega

Come Closer: Art Around the Bowery 1969-1989 at the New Museum presents ephemera, artwork, films, and performance footage of twenty artists that lived or worked in the Bowery over the course of two decades.  The exhibition documents the influence of the neighborhood on artists during a time when the area was notoriously derelict and neglected.

Coleen Fitzgibbon installing the exhibition “Income and Wealth”. Courtesy Coleen Fitzgibbon

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Pablo Picasso – The Maids of Homer (1957), courtesy The Guggenheim Museum

Pablo Picasso, whose relentless explorations of form, representation and perspective fundamentally shifted the art world as one of the defining minds of the 20th century avant-garde.  Moving among a broad variety of approaches, techniques and media, the Spanish painter and sculptor created a vast body of work that defined him as a singular talent and powerful voice for years to come.  Now, the Guggenheim Museum in New York City is exhibitinf a massive exhibition of Picasso works, focusing on the black and white works.

Pablo Picasso – Woman Ironing (La repasseuse), Bateau-Lavoir, Paris, spring 1904,  courtesy The Guggenheim Museum
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Fischli / Weiss, DÜNNWANDIGE RÖHRE AUS TON, LIEGEND, 2012, courtesy of Sprueth Magers

Peter Fischli and David Weiss currently have an exhibition at the Sprueth Magers gallery in London, which displays somber overtones coinciding with Weiss’ untimely death in April of this year.

An array of clean-cut unfired clay and industrial-looking rubber has been meticulously molded and scrupulously carved to mimic everyday objects of construction in the form of “walls, corners and tubes”. The works, executed between 2010 and 2012, and are connected to the group of works that the artists displayed at the 54th Venice Biennial in 2011. The clean, particular presentation of the scaled objects on virgin white plinths is a visual departure from earlier works.

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Anish Kapoor, Installation view 2012, courtesy Lisson Gallery

Anish Kapoor’s current exhibition at the Lisson Gallery is a major exhibition of new works. Occupying both the gallery’s spaces on Bell Street, London, the exhibition marks 30 years of Lisson Gallery working together with the Turner-prize winning artist and provides a thorough examination of Kapoor’s most recent work.

Anish Kapoor, Installation view 2012, courtesy Lisson Gallery

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The Bloomberg Commission: Giuseppe Penone Whitechapel Gallery, Installation View, Photo: David Parry / PA Wire, all photos courtesy of Whitechapel Gallery

Work by Italian artist Giuseppe Penone is being highlighted at two locations in London(although not an organized collaboration), the longer of which will remain until August 2013. Spazio di Luce, created by Giuseppe Penone  for the Bloomberg Commission, opened at the Whitechapel Gallery in London on September 5th and will remain installed until August of next year, while Intersecting Gaze/Sguardo Incrociato is taking place currently at Gagosian Gallery at Davies Street London and will remain until November 27th, 2012. The works continue along themes Penone has been exploring throughout his 40-year long career, this time specifically exhibiting the idea that, in Penone’s words, “The stretching of a branch through space in search of light has the same structure as a glance.”

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The Drawing Center is set to open next week with a postponment date of Wednesday November 7th in its new space across the street at 35 Wooster with three shows: Guillermo Kuitca: Diarios, José António Suárez Londoño: The Yearbooks and In Deed: Certificates of Authenticity in Art. (more…)

Joseph Kosuth, Neon, 1965

All images courtesy MACRO Rome.

MACRO, the Museum of Contemporary Art of Rome, has filled its expansive Enel Hall with close to 70 illuminated works for its show Neon: the Luminous Matter of Art.  An exhibition dedicated solely to the use of neon, the show brings together 50 artists who have worked with the medium in contemporary practice. The sculptures, installations and textual works lay the art-historical framework for conceptual practice based on semiotics while also (more literally) paying homage to the medium’s origins as material for signage.

Delving into the past 50 years, on view are works by Dan Flavin, Joseph Kosuth, Tracy Emin, and Jason Rhoades, Pier Paolo Calzolari, Maurizio Cattelan, Spencer Finch, Dan Flavin, Claire Fontaine, Piero Golia, Douglas Gordon, Alfredo Jaar, Gyula Kosice, Mario Merz, François Morellet, Bruce Nauman and Keith Sonnier, among many others.

Bruce Nauman, Raw/War, 1970, MACRO Rome.

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Theaster Gates - Raising Goliath (2012), courtesy White Cube Gallery

The work of Theaster Gates addresses social engagement using shared images of American life as a way to challenge cultural norms and to subvert singular readings of American history.  White Cube Bermondsey is hosting a major installation by the Chicago-based artist, entitled “My Labor is My Protest.”  Blending the cultural, social and personal, the show is a bold statement on the roles of identity and meaning in the construction of history and art history.

Theaster Gates - My Labor Is My Protest (Installation View) (2012), courtesy White Cube Gallery (more…)

Adel Abdessemed, Coup de tête [based on Zinédine Zidane] 2012, courtesy Centre Pompidou

Adel Abdessemed’s exhibition, Je Suis Innocent,  at the Centre Pompidou in Paris showcases work from 1990-2012, which spans the majority of Abdessemed’s artistic career. Born in born 1971 in Constantine, Algeria, Abdessemed often makes reference to violent histories and the taboos of modern culture with shocking and jarring imagery that he creates through a variety of media.

Adel Abdessemed, Je Suis Innocent, courtesy Centre Pompidou

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Franz West, Untitled, 2011 courtesy Gagosian Gallery

The Gagosian Gallery is currently exhibiting what can only be described as a eulogy of works that embodies the life of the late Franz West, who sadly passed away early this summer in July 2012.

A sea of freestanding, ambiguous, figurines adorn the gallery, doused in multicolored luminescent paint. Light-hearted sculptures interact with viewers, inspiring feelings of elation and freedom. Surreal structures almost wrap around onlookers in a fairytale-like setting.

Franz West, Installation view, 2011 courtesy Gagosian Gallery

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Image: Christian Jankowski, Monument to the Bourgeois Working Class, 2012

All images courtesy Klosterfelde Gallery

Now on view at Berlin’s Klosterfelde Gallery is German contemporary multimedia artist Christian Jankowski‘s  Monument to the Bourgeois Working Class: a video projection, photo series, and large-scale sculpture, which explore tensions between social classes and the use of mass media as a political instrument. Though, while political on the surface, the works are also said to represent the struggles of the individual artist.

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Matthew Barney‘s nearly four story replica of Norman Mailer’s home  is floating down the East River for a project called “River of Fundament”.  The artist is working on a film that takes Mailer’s 1983 novel “Ancient Evenings,” as its departure on a floating monument.  The cast includes Paul Giamatti, Maggie Gyllenhaal and scenes include gold-streaked zombies, Mailer’s son slicing open a cow carcass to find a surprise fetus, and a gold 1979 Trans Am disinterred from Newton Creek. (more…)

Michelangelo Pistoletto, Exhibition view, 2012 courtesy Linnea West

Michelangelo Pistoletto invites us to complete his latest artworks in the Simon Lee Gallery with images of ourselves. This is his second exhibition in the gallery (entitled Lavoro), of his ‘mirror works’, which are constructed of reflected stainless steel so the final product is forced to change every time someone enters into close proximity of the work.

Lavoro is Italian for ‘work’ ; the mirror medium is superimposed with silk screened prints of construction materials and elements of a building site. The entire gallery floor is interspersed with thematic elements such as erratically placed ladders and stacks of crates which, in turn, interact with the mirrored images exhibited around the room, changing what can be viewed while the spectator is in motion.

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Luc Tuymans, Allo!-Technicolor (2012), Courtesy David Zwirner

A show of Luc Tuymans featuring his latest series entitled Allo!, inaugurated the new David Zwirner Gallery in Mayfair on October 4th. To further heighten the significance of such an occasion, this is Tuymans’ first London show since 2004 at the Tate Modern.

Luc Tuymans, Allo!, peaches– (2012)  Courtesy David Zwirner

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Image: Doug Aitken, Tilda Swinton in The Source, 2012, via Sky Arts Ignition

American artist Doug Aitken has his first public installation in the UK entitled The Source, which asks a variety of leading arts practitioners questions about where their creative ideas come from. Viewers can watch video conversations with artists such as Tilda Swinton, Jack Pierson, Jack White, and Mike Kelley, projected inside a temporary structure on Liverpool’s historic Albert Dock built in collaboration with renowned British architect David Adjaye.

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