Tino Sehgal, Installation view, 2012, courtesy Tate Modern

The Turbine hall has been home to the Unilever series and currently welcomes its thirteenth commission in the form of These Associations by Tino Sehgal. Despite Sehgal being the thirteenth artist to exhibit as part of the series, he far from blends into the crowd of his predecessors. Sehgal gives the inaugural ‘Live Art’ performance of Unilever coinciding with the Olympics as part of London 2012.

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Walead Beshty, Installation View, 2012, courtesy Roldophe Janssen

Walead Beshty’s second solo show with Gaelerie Roldophe Janssen is entitled Diapositives, after the medium he used to construct his images.  Since 2006 Beshty’s work has been comprised of experimental photography whereby he explores different effects on underdeveloped film.

Diapositives is an installation that takes the form of what appears to be a futuristic office space. Desks and other seemingly aesthetic furnishings are replaced with copper surrogates that have had the developed film experiments printed on them; their purpose however is not to serve as a visual element, but to be a fully-functioning room component within the space (i.e. a table that is fit for purpose). The interaction with the visitors and the works within the exhibit is implicit to the work itself – in fact Beshty does not acknowledge his works as art forms until this interaction takes place.

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Edvard Munch’s The Scream goes on view today at MoMA with extra security measures. Ann Temkin, the chief curator of painting and sculpture, is expecting huge crowds. “The Scream is really a household word, a household image, and from the time it was made, that was true,” Temkin said. “It’s somehow so startling and so odd that it caught people’s imagination”. Of the four versions made, two have been stolen and recovered. (more…)

Robert Rauschenberg Foundation We The People via Art Observed

Curator Alison Gingeras and artist Jonathan Horowitz have teamed up to organize an exhibition at the Robert Rauschenberg Foundation’s new project space in Chelsea which coincides with the upcoming election. Using the famous opening words of the constitution as a framework, We the People explores identity politics and creates a vision of the American demographic that both embodies and contests the categories that politicians and pollsters have used to divvy up the American population in recent years.

Norman Rockwell, courtesy Norman Rockwell Museum Collection ©1943 SEPS

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Leo Villareal is installing his BUCKYBALL light sculpture (an homage to Buckminster Fuller) in Madison Square Park. The piece is a honeycomb-shaped, 20-foot-tall interactive structure with changing colors. The work will be on view from October 25, 2012 through February 2013. (more…)

Lucas Samaras, photo by Art Observed

Pace inaugurated its new Chelsea gallery space at 508 West 25th Street on September 28th with a show of new works by artist Lucas Samaras. XYZ is comprised of four series of works created between 2010-2012. Twenty works, each a unique formal exploration of color, space and abstract patterning, announce the latest stage of evolution in his investigation of material manipulation, splicing reality through formal deconstruction and digital adulteration to offer a vibrant virtual universe.

Lucas Samaras, XYZ 0927 (Razor Cut) 2012

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Gallerist Adam Lindemann and artist Peter Coffin, photo by Art Observed

Peter Coffin’s first solo show in New York City in four years, A,E,I,O,U, is on view through November 2nd at Venus Over Manhattan Gallery at 980 Madison Avenue.

Prepared in just three months, the show features several large scale sculptures: an iconic Warholian larger-than-life dog, a skeletal wooden hand forming the “ok” symbol (reminding us of Nauman’s hand series, where each hand makes a sign whose meaning changes depending upon context), to a panel holding spools and spools of satin ribbons of various widths and colors.

Peter Coffin, Untitled (Dog) (2012). All photos by Ryann Donnelly for Art Observed

There are also several unassuming additions one might only find from reading the show’s checklist: a marble slab installed at the entry of the gallery and planter boxes which are hung outside the open windows.  A round speaker mounted to a stand near the middle of the gallery– a piece labeled Untitled (Pet Store)— also fills the space with sounds of birds, dogs, and bubbling fish tanks.

Art Observed recently sat down with Coffin to discuss the nature of the work, which he identifies as “Idea Art”.

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Robert Irwin - Dotting the i’s & Crossing the t’s: Part II (2012), Courtesy Pace Gallery

A pioneer of the Light and Space movement in 1960s Los Angeles, Robert Irwin made monumental contributions to the conceptual art practice, bringing considerations of interrelation, perception, condition and experience into the broader art lexicon.  Continuing an ongoing exploration of Irwin’s 40-year career, the Pace Gallery in New York is currently hosting a large-scale exhibition of new works.

Robert Irwin –Dotting the i’s  & Crossing the t’s: Part I (2012), Courtesy Pace Gallery (more…)

Stray Light Grey opening at Marlborough Chelsea. All photos by Ryann Donnelly for Art Observed unless otherwise noted.

Stray Light Grey is a full gallery installation on view at Marlborough Chelsea by artist collaborators, Justin Lowe and Jonah Freeman. Equal parts creation and destruction, a series of rooms has been gutted and destroyed in order for the viewer to pass through a maze of the artists’ apocalyptic scenery. The torn walls, fluorescent horror-film lighting and the glut of strange objects such as crystals, antique dentist chairs and 1980s movie posters all make up the experience.

Freeman Lowe installation courtesy Marlborough Chelsea

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FIAC Grand Palais, photo courtesy We Want Contrast for Art Observed

FIAC, one of Europe’s main three art fairs, held its vernissage last night in Paris at the Grand Palais. Dealers saw strong blue chip sales, including an $8 million Joan Miro panting, despite concerns over France’s proposed increase in wealth taxes and a strong Frieze and Frieze Masters in London the week before.

Gilles Fuches, President Prix Marcel Duchamp

All photos by Tiphaine Popesco for Art Observed unless otherwise noted

The crowd at FIAC

FIAC has added more contemporary work from the second half of the 20th century in the last two years, attracting big collectors like Francois Pinault, Bernard Arnault, Alberto Mugrabi and Omer Koc.

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Grand Palais, courtesy FIAC

FIAC, or the 39th International Contemporary Art Fair, will open tomorrow (Thursday) in Paris, with a VIP preview today, with 184 galleries exhibiting at the Grand Palais, and this year utilizing the restored Salon d’Honneur as well, which lies at the center of the structure. As in past years, galleries will exhibit sculpture at the Tuilieries Garden nearby. Approximately 65,000 visitors are expected to attend.

Tuilieries Garden courtesy FIAC (more…)

Thomas Hirschhorn, Concordia Concordia (2012), installation view. All images courtesy of Gladstone Gallery

Visitors to Gladstone Gallery can re-live the wreckage of the marooned Costa Concordia cruise ship that made headlines in January through the lens of Thomas Hirschhorn’s scrutinizing eye. Concordia, Concordia, on view through October 20th, is the artist’s reproduction of the overturned ship’s casino based on photos and video of the wreckage.

Video of “Concordia, Concordia” on Site at Gladstone Gallery

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Mr. – Give Me Your Wings – Think Different (2012), Courtesy Lehmann Maupin

Japanese artist Mr. has a remarkable ability for blurring the lines of contemporary culture.  Using the forms and imagery of the potent manga, otaku and kawaii subcultures of his homeland, the artist turns the lens towards the Japanese identity, highlighting what these icons say about the national culture.  On now, Lehmann Maupin gallery in New York City is presenting a large-scale installation by the artist that incorporates these works into a broad statement on the the emotionally frustrated climate of Japan after a year of economic stagnation and natural disaster. (more…)

Elmgreen & Dragset, The Stag, 2012, courtesy Victoria Miro

Elmgreen & Dragset’s Harvest is a unique twin exhibition divided into two coexisting halves, presented on the upstairs and downstairs of the Victoria Miro gallery in London.

The lower half of the gallery presents a banal, almost “mock tranquillity”, exhibiting sheets of paint that have been carefully peeled from notorious art galleries from all over the world and are named retroactively. The works both pay homage to the galleries’ ability to facilitate the work, yet simultaneously mock the uniformity and pedantic nature of art culture. The installation on this floor plays on the irony of a modern art exhibition space: consistent, precise, conforming; yet the works that lie within are anything but.

To reinforce the subliminal jest upon which Elmgreen & Dragset have built their career, the upstairs of the installation is completely paradoxical to the work from which it ascends. What can only be described as a barn awaits the unaware viewer, the immediate submergence of hay forcing him to interact with the installation.

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Josef Albers, Color Study for White Line Square, Courtesy The Morgan Library & Museum

Now on view at the Morgan Library & Museum are German-born American artist and educator Josef Albers’ studies and sketches for his most well-known series of work, Homage to the Square. Approximately eighty oil sketches on paper show Albers’ artistic process, thoughts and reasoning behind the iconic paintings.

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Toby Ziegler‘s The Cripples, image via Art Observed

Back in 2003 in Frieze’s first year, no major international art fair had ever been hosted in London before. Frieze Art Fair, organized by Matthew Slotover and Amanda Sharp, has helped take London from being a city without a focused art scene to its current state at the center of the European art market. Now in its tenth year, Frieze Art Fair in London’s Regent’s Park has seen around 60,000 visitors, with 264 dealers from 35 countries hoping to sell work (valuing an estimated  £230m) created by more than 2,400 artists within 175 of the world’s leading galleries.

An Aaron Young motorcycle burn out work at Massimo de Carlo in Milan, photo via Art Observed

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Image: Sand of the Cosmic Desert in Every Direction, James Rosenquist, 2012. Art © James Rosenquist / Licensed by VAGA, New York, NY.

Spending much of his career exploring cultural and political themes, James Rosenquist takes an introspective approach in his show Multiverse You Are, I Am at Acquavella Galleries through October 13th.  Deeply affected by the brush fire that destroyed his Florida studio and personal collection in August 2009, the event acts as a catalyst for the exhibition. “There is no geometry in fire, only wildness and no logic,” states Rosenquist, whose works on display reflect a fascination with time, space, and chaos.

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Image:  Peter Doig, Painting for Wall Painters (Prosperity P.o.S.), 2010-2012, Courtesy Michael Werner Gallery

In the inauguration of Michael Werner Gallery’s new location, an exhibition of new works by Turner Prize nominee and Wolfgang Hahn Prize recipient Peter Doig opened on September 27th (his first solo exhibition in London since 2008) at 22 Upper Brook Street in Mayfair, London.

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Image: Richard Tuttle, Systems, VIII-XII (Installation View), Courtesy Pace Gallery

Richard Tuttle’s series of “Systems” sculptures is an ongoing project, an attempt at expanding the physical scope of Tuttle’s past sculptural works, while striving to maintain a sense of intimacy throughout.  Assembled out of wood, cloth, metal, wool and Styrofoam, Tuttle’s sculptures constantly play with the familiarity of the subject matter, tweaking familiar shapes and textures with flourishes of the surreal to create a startlingly fresh visual language.  (more…)

Image: Installation shot, Tim Noble & Sue Webster, “Wild Mood Swings,” 2009-10 - Nihilistic Optimistic, all images courtesy of the artists and Blain|Southern, Photographer: Peter Mallet

After the private viewing this evening in London, Nihilistic Optimistic, a sculptural illustration of oppositional and complementary forces by Tim Noble & Sue Webster – their first major solo exhibition in London since 2006 – will open to the public on October 10th  at Blain Southern Gallery in London’s Hanover Square. Six large-scale sculptures constructed from wood scraps and other discarded materials, “fracturing things up – splintering things. So the mind has to wander in a different way…” continues the artists’ “investigation of self-portraiture.”

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Image: Ai Weiwei: According to What? Installation View: Coca Cola Vase, New York Photographs, Moon Chest, Courtesy The Hirshhorn

The first U.S. survey of the work of Ai Weiwei (Chinese, b. Beijing, 1957) opened on October 7th at the Smithsonian’s Hirshhorn Museum in Washington, D.C. It takes its inspiration from a 2009 exhibition at Tokyo’s Mori Art Museum, but has been adapted for U.S. audiences  incorporating the artist’s re-examination of the work in the context of his personal experiences over the past few years.

Image: Ai Weiwei Courtesy The Washington Post

Mr. Ai, 55, has personally experienced many changes since 2009: he was detained for 81 days last year and was found guilty of tax evasion in China, owing $2.4 million in fines. The Chinese government shut down his business and has not allowed him to leave the country, which prevented him from attending the opening for his retrospective in Washington.

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Image: Frieze London Courtesy Frieze

Exhibitors are gearing up for the tenth edition of Frieze London, which takes place in London’s Regent’s Park from October 11–14th. The fair kicks off with a vernissage on the evening of Wednesday, October 10th, once again housed in a temporary structure designed by architects Carmody Groarke.

Although mostly composed of UK and US galleries (almost exclusively from London and New York) account for 45% of the main fair, fair organizers are broadening the scope this year, with new sections and exhibitors from 35 countries, making it the most international event to date organized by Frieze.

Image: Mona Hatoum, KAPANCIK, 2012 Courtesy White Cube Gallery

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Image: Eleanor Antin – 100 Boots Facing the Sea, Del Mar, California. February 9, 1971, 2:00 p.m. (1971-1973), via Brooklyn Museum

In 1973, art critic and curator Lucy R. Lippard published Six Years, a defining book that catalogued and described the emerging field of conceptual art during the years 1967-1972.  Widely read and referenced as a fundamental exploration into Conceptual Art and the new aesthetic vocabulary that it contributed to the artistic lexicon, Lippard’s book has become an iconic document in the shifting artistic focuses of the 20th and 21st century.

The Brooklyn Museum has opened the door for a new reading of Lippard’s fundamental text, assembling a a vast array of artists championed in her writing. The exhibition provides a vantage point for understanding how Lippard’s perceptive thesis opened the door to new approaches in curating, engagement and criticism.

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Image: Alex Katz, White Roses I, 2011, courtesy Timothy Taylor Gallery

Now in its final week at Timothy Taylor Gallery in London is a new series of portraits and still lifes by 84-year-old American artist Alex Katz. The exhibition is comprised of large-scale portraits of family and friends and still lifes of flowers that he bought from street vendors near his New York studio.

Image: Installation view, courtesy Timothy Taylor Gallery

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