As the white-tipped tents return to London’s Regent’s Park, Frieze London ’25 marks its twenty-second year—one that lands squarely on all four legs. And, like everything in this city, it has surprised everyone involved. Working alongside London-based studio A Studio Between, this year’s fair has spotlighted contemporary artists through curated sections like Artist-to-Artist and Echoes in the Present.
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As the white-tipped tents return to London’s Regent’s Park, Frieze London ’25 marks its twenty-second year—one that lands squarely on all four legs. And, like everything in this city, it has surprised everyone involved. Working alongside London-based studio A Studio Between, this year’s fair has spotlighted contemporary artists through curated sections like Artist-to-Artist and Echoes in the Present.
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On October 1st, 2025, Saatchi Yates unveiled an exhibition by conceptual artist Marina Abramović at their St. James gallery in London. The show revisits the ephemeral, transforming two of Abramović’s performance videos — ‘Blue Period’ and ‘Red Period’ — into a collection of 1,200 monochromatic stills.
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The Armory Show 2025 opened with a renewed sense of purpose, marking the arrival of New York’s fall art season with a fair that feels less like spectacle and more like a global conversation. Over 230 galleries from more than 30 countries converge at the Javits Center. The fair was divided into seven sections: Galleries, Solos, Focus, focusing on artists and galleries from the American South, Function, a new section for 2025 curated by Ebony L. Haynes which explores the intersection of art and design, Presents, spotlighting emerging galleries no more than ten years old, Platform, showcasing large scale sculpture and installations, and Not-For-Profit.
Anne Imhof, the German artist known for her large-scale, immersive performance pieces, returned to New York after nearly ten years with Doom: House of Hope, her largest show to date. Curated by Klaus Biesenbach and running for a week at The Park Avenue Armory, Doom brought together a cast of nearly sixty actors, dancers, and musicians into a three-hour marathon performance loosely based on Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet. Here, however, the story was told in reverse—beginning with the doomed lovers’ suicide and culminating with their first encounter—set not in Verona but in an unplaceable dreamscape of American youth.
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Julian Schnabel at Pace Gallery, all images by Hannah Zhang for Art Observed
The 21st edition of ZonaMACO, Latin America’s foremost art fair, opened Wednesday to a distinctly energized atmosphere, marking what many participants noted as the strongest opening day in recent years. The fair’s yearly evolution reflects Mexico City’s solidified position as a vital node in contemporary art’s global circulation, with significant sales and institutional presence marking the first day. Surrounding the fair, satellite events filled the city with activity, from exhibition openings to performances and parties.
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Armand Doré, Nude, Smoking and Reclining (c. 1860-65)
The French Exit group show brought to life by the curatorial eye of Mattias Vendelmans invites a dialogue between artists and their muses, considering just what happens when one skips the farewell in search of something more enticing after dark. How does the basic notion of privacy and vulnerability continue to pique our curiosity? Spanning works from oil paintings and sculptures to pen and paper, from Baudelairean Paris to the suburbs of 1930s Stockholm, an ongoing exploration of organic tenderness and bestiality in human nature unfolds.
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“To approach this new chapter differently, instead of viewing it as a carte blanche, we embraced the challenge of considering the many existing peripheral elements while exploring the centre as a void,” begins Minsuk Cho: this year’s chosen designer of the annual Serpentine Pavilion. With a background in hospitality, commercial and visual art projects across South Korea, Mass Studio’s founder brings a layered understanding of human interaction with one’s environment to this year’s installation.
Art Basel, the premier international art fair, returned to its namesake city of Basel, Switzerland, from June 13 to June 16, 2024. Known as the cornerstone of the global art calendar, Art Basel in Basel once again brought together the best of the contemporary art world, featuring an unparalleled array of galleries, artworks, and immersive experiences.
Chronos, the latest solo exhibition of works by the painter Maria Kreyn opened during the inaugural week of the 60th Venice Biennale, showcasing a series of ten new large-scale paintings. Set against the backdrop of the historic St. George’s Anglican Church in Venice, the paintings depict brooding tempests – the proverbial meeting of sky and sea at once turbulent and serene. Influenced by mythology and the sublime, Kreyn’s works are meditations on the fantastic forces of the natural world, as well as humanity’s inextricable entwinement with it. The storied church setting heightens the sense of the mystical and transcendent, turning each painting into a kind of altarpiece that invites prolonged contemplation.
“BURTYNSKY: Extraction/Abstraction” will occupy Saatchi’s Kings Road Gallery from February 14, 2024 – May 6, 2024. The expansive exhibition, curated by Marc Mayers – former Director of the National Gallery of Canada and Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal – features a striking collection of 13 murals, 92 60×80 images, AI installation and a presentation of the immersive film: In the Wake of Progress (2022). Heralded as one of the most significant shows of this year, it delves into themes of ecology and the Anthropocene, marking the most extensive showcases of Burtynsky’s career. Over the last four decades, Edward Burtynsky has documented the environmental impacts of large-scale industry, working from cranes, planes and more recently with the use of drones he has captured the scenes of a planet altered by industry. The captivating images prompt viewers to ponder the beauty amidst environmental degradation.
Frank Stella, Gobba, zoppa e collorto (1985), from “Frank Stella: A Retrospective” (2015-2016) at the Whitney Museum.
The art world mourns the loss of pioneering artist, Frank Stella (1936-2024), who was known for working with a myriad of mediums, including painting, sculpture and printmaking. He was, and continues to be, one of the most influential figures of contemporary art. His way of reinventing and reinterpreting artistic mediums defined him as a visionary, unable to be easily corralled or categorized by his chosen industry.
Wide shot of David Zwirner booth at Frieze NY 2024, featuring a dual show of various works by Nate Lowman and Franz West.
After selling out in 2023, Frieze returns to The Shed in Manhattan for the 2024 installment of their annual Art Fair, spanning May 1 – 5, 2024. Bringing together the world’s leading galleries to showcase ambitious solo, group and themed presentations by pioneering artists, Frieze NY offers the opportunity to not only discover up-and-coming talent, but to also engage with the who’s who of the art world.
Movimento dos Artistas Huni Kuin at Venice Biennale 2024
The 60th International Art Exhibition, known as the Venice Biennale, is set to run from April 20 to November 24, 2024. This year’s theme, “Stranieri Ovunque” or “Foreigners Everywhere,” is curated by Adriano Pedrosa, marking a significant milestone as the first South American curator of the Biennale Arte. The event is hosted at Venice’s historic Giardini and Arsenale venues, which have been central to the Biennale since its earliest editions. The theme explores the concepts of intersectionality, displacement, and the reevaluation of geographical margins in the art world. (more…)
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The Vitruvian Man (c. 1487) is a study of the proportions of the human body inscribed within the absolute forms of a circle and a square, using metalpoint, pen and ink, with touches of watercolour on paper. One of Leonardo Da Vinci’s best-known works, the drawing is stored in the Gallerie dell’Accademia di Venezia in Italy, and only rarely exhibited due to its fragility as a work on paper.
Influenced by the theories of Roman architect Vitruvius in his treaty “De Architectura” (1st century BC), Da Vinci drew a male figure with his hands and feet touching the perimeter of a circle, his navel at its precise center. Another position is superimposed with his feet standing on the base of a square while his arms extend outwards, the area directly below the navel as the center of the square, per Da Vinci’s own findings.
“Yoko Ono: Music of the Mind” exhibition at Tate Modern, is on until September 1st and is an expansive journey through Yoko Ono’s artistic legacy, blending music, installations, photography, and interactive performance art. This landmark showcase, the UK’s most extensive collection of Ono’s work, spans her groundbreaking contributions from the early 1950s to today, highlighting her role as a pioneer in avant-garde art circles worldwide. (more…)
From 1st March to 25th May 2024, Skarstedt’s London Gallery presents a solo exhibition featuring the work of American artist Jeff Koons. The show includes five mural-sized paintings crafted between 2001 and 2013 drawn from Koons’ series: Easyfun-Ethereal, Antiquity, and Popeye. (more…)
At Tanya Bonakdar Gallery in Los Angeles, “Live(s) on Air” is on from February 24 to May 4, 2024, featuring new works by Tomás Saraceno. This exhibit explores the theme of eco-social interdependence with a collection that includes sculpture, works on paper, and film. It aims to engage viewers in thinking about the impact of humans on the environment and paths toward coexistence on Earth.(more…)
AO was on the ground at the fifth edition of Frieze Los Angeles, held from February 29th to March 3rd, 2024, at Santa Monica Airport, which brought together over 95 galleries exhibiting contemporary art from various regions, showcasing the city’s role in the global art landscape. (more…)
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AO is on-site at Perrotin, which inaugurated its new Los Angeles gallery with an exhibition featuring Japanese artist Izumi Kato, running from February 28 to March 23, 2024. Kato’s work, known for incorporating elements of both ancient traditions and modern themes, aligns with Los Angeles’s landscape, which includes both natural and urban environments. The artist’s figures, created in his Tokyo studio, are displayed in a setting that reflects the coexistence of contrasting elements, a theme prevalent in Kato’s art.
AO was on-site at ZONAMACO Arte Contemporáneo, the largest art fair in Latin America, which celebrated its 20th anniversary from February 7-11th, 2024. Initially launched in 2002 by Zélika GarcÃa, the fair soon relocated from Monterrey to Centro Citibanamex in Mexico City where it holds four events annually. Since its inception, ZONAMACO has expanded to feature 208 exhibitors from 25 countries, displaying a diverse range of artworks, from modern and contemporary, to design, to an estate section.