Urs Fischer, Denominator (2020-2022), via Art Observed

Continuing his enigmatic and playful engagement with the languages of artistic production, pop culture and materiality, artist Urs Fischer returns to Gagosian in New York this month for a strikingly surreal and technologically-driven body of new works, unified under the title Denominator. Exploring concepts of data compilation and agglomeration, as well as the meanings that systems of organization and exhibition create, the show uses digital imagery as a structure of recontextualizing and complicating the act of creation and the understanding of an image.  (more…)

New York Art Book Fair (Installation), via Art Oserved

The leaves are changing in New York City, the fall equinox is on its way, and the time has once again come for the New York Art Book Fair to open yet again, kicking off its latest edition of a unique and energetic exhibition of young artists, publishers, writers and thinkers, each representing a small part of the national and international art publishing community.  Always free and open to the public, the event draws more than 35,000 individuals including book lovers, collectors, artists, and art world professionals each year.  (more…)

Anthea Hamilton at Thomas Dane, all images via Art Observed

As the chill of autumn washes over the British capital, another year of the Frieze London art fair has opened its doors, bringing with it a stream of sales and installations across its spacious halls that make for a fitting center to one of the city’s busiest art events. Opening in the midst of a challenging moment in British politics, the fair continued its role as a major staple of the fall art season, with impressive attendance and ample sales that seemed to ensure that the British art market was still showing its resiliency in the face of economic and political uncertainty.  (more…)

Cathy Wilkes (Installation View), via Ortuzar Projects

On this month at Ortuzar Projects in New York, artist Cathy Wilkes has orchestrated a subtle, yet incisive series of paintings, sculptures and readymades that continue her work in establishing tenuous and compelling narratives through delicate spatial arrangements. Marking her first show in New York since her her acclaimed solo exhibition at MoMA PS1 in 2017, this new installation combines subtle paintings, objects, and Wilkes’ characteristic papier-maÌ‚ché figures. Visions of landscapes and interiors from her childhood are often recognizable in the work, collapsing and reforming time and space repeatedly. Employing what the artist has called “hypostatic abstraction and intense social realism,” the exhibition conveys themes of separation, suffering, infancy, and fragility. (more…)

Lucy Bull, 17:50 (2022), via David Kordansky

On view this month at David Kordansky Gallery New York and artist Lucy Bull present Piper, her first solo exhibition in New York, featuring new paintings that underscore her use of resonant color, intensively worked vocabularies, and disorienting spatial experimentation. While Bull’s vision of abstraction takes shape on the canvas with abundant force, her approach is also notable for its insistent openness, which favors the creation of associative and narrative possibilities rather than the execution of pre-determined ideas regarding composition or any of the other constituent parts of painting.

Lucy Bull, Piper (Installation View), via David Kordansky

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Madsaki, Untitled (2022), via Perrotin

Over the course of the past decade, artist MADSAKI has achieved success as a painter exploring and undermining dichotomies between high and low art, good and bad taste, and the nature of both skill and precision in the act of painting. Drawing on visual resources that range from the classics throughout art history to newspaper images and pop culture icons, often embellished with spray paint applied with lose splatters and pools of color, the artist’s work often pulls at threads around the notion of painting as an “elevated” art form, instead using it as a jumping off point for broader conversations of image culture and production. For the artist’s most recent show at Galerie Perrotin in Shanghai, the artist takes a new approach, exploring landscape painting as a new mode of practice.  (more…)

Zoe Leonard, Untitled (2020/2022), via Hauser & Wirth

This fall in New York, Hauser & Wirth plays home to a selection of images culled from artist Zoe Leonard’s latest work Al río / To the River (2016 – 2022), a six-year undertaking in which the artist photographed the 1,200-mile stretch along the Rio Grande / Río Bravo that runs between Mexico and the United States and is used to demarcate the border. Using geographical landmarks and the political connotations drawn from them, the work is a subtle, yet commanding meditation on borders, landscapes, and the politics that develop from them. The full work, ‘Al río / To the River,’ encompassing hundreds of photographs, debuted at MUDAM, Luxembourg, in February, and will travel to the Musée d’Art Moderne, Paris this fall. Hauser & Wirth’s exhibition presents excerpts from this epic project for the first time in the United States. (more…)

Dan Colen, Woodworker (Violin) (2022), via Art Observed

On view this month at Gagosian Gallery, artist Dan Colen returns with a new body of paintings that continue, and complete, a series of Disney-inspired pieces that he first began in 2003, as well as pair of sculptures by the artist’s father, Sy. Titled Lover, Lover, Lover, the show draws on the aesthetics of classic animation stills to reflect on the presence and absence of the many “lovers” that come and go over the course of one’s life. The show, conceived of during another pivotal moment in the artist’s life, explores this perception in concert with ideas of tradition, influence, and the always-fraught American dream. (more…)

Mario Ayala, Truck Stop (Installation View), via Jeffrey Deitch

On view this month at Jeffrey Deitch Gallery in New York, artist Mario Ayala brings Southern California’s Inland Empire to bear on the East Coast, ruminating and celebrating the landscape of California with a series of paintings and sculptures, including a truck stop chapel, tire shop and roadside billboard installed in the gallery to create the context for his new work. Ayala’s meticulously crafted paintings extend the American Pop tradition into the present, drawing on a unique combination of art historical and vernacular influences shaped through his own life experience. (more…)

Jill Mulleady, The Remedy (2022), via Gladstone

Continuing a body of work that mines peculiar tensions and surreal moments, artist Jill Mulleady presents a series of new works at Gladstone Gallery in New York this month. The artist, whose work fuses together memory and the imaginary in a range of permutations and versions, here exhibits an impressive selection of pieces that span her own aesthetic capacities as much as they do subject matter.  (more…)

Christina Quarles, Try n’ Pull tha Rains in on Me (2022), via Hauser & Wirth

Hauser & Wirth presents its first solo exhibition with Christina Quarles this fall at its New York exhibition space, bringing together a body of new works that continue the artist’s own investigations into the human form, human identity, and their constructions amidst the art historical and within the modern discourse of American and world culture. (more…)

Renee Cox, Springs WinterWonderland (2021), Image courtesy of Superposition Gallery

On view at Eastville Museum (Eastville Community Historical Society) is a group exhibition titled “Resilience,” honoring the Eastville Museum in Sag Harbor—an institution founded in the 1980s to preserve the history of Black and Indigenous people in the community. Curated by Storm Ascher, the exhibit brings together 21 contemporary artists who have been called to respond visually to the curatorial theme of resilience. The Eastville Museum is situated within the Sag Harbor Hills, Azurest, and Nineveh Subdivisions, (a.k.a SANS) region of Sag Harbor, one of the oldest Black communities of the Hamptons, established in the 1940s. The tight-knit coastline community of SANS, written about at length in Pulitzer Prize winning author Colson Whitehead’s autobiographical novel, Sag Harbor, was officially added to the National Register of Historic Places in 2019.
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Marco Pariani, ABANDONED TREE (2022), via Cheim & Read

This month, Cheim & Read presents Marco Pariani: Trees and Traditions, an exhibition of new paintings and drawings by the Brooklyn-based, Italian-born artist that marks his second show with the gallery. Citing Christmas trees and decorations as a secondhand reference point here, the show casts an ironic eye on the stress, materialism, and forced good cheer endemic to the holiday season, with Pariani focusing in particular on the inflatable decorations that bloom across suburban lawns and town squares as the holiday approaches. (more…)

Jorge Galindo, Camelia do Porto (2022), via Vito Schnabel

Vito Schnabel Gallery presents its first solo exhibition with noted Spanish artist Jorge Galindo this month, debuting a new suite of monumental flower paintings, that continue the artist’s ongoing exploration of flora and its representation in art across centuries and genres. Titled after the small, wild vervain plant characteristic of the artist’s hometown of Madrid, Galindo’s flowers simultaneously nod to the popular Spanish street celebrations of summer– the verbenas of Spain’s capital city reinvigorate centuries-old traditions through contemporary reinterpretation. Employing a vivacious palette, Galindo’s new painted bouquets burst through their frames, exploding with color beyond the antique wallpaper borders that surround them.

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Christian Boltanski, Animitas (Mères Mortes) (2017), via Marian Goodman

On view this fall in New York City, Marian Goodman will present Départ – Arrivée, a solo presentation by Christian Boltanski that marks the first exhibition in the United States of a number of recent works by the iconic French artist. Mostly conceived by Boltanski himself before his passing in July 2021, the show is an homage to his life and work, offering a lens into the metaphysical preoccupations that drove his artistic practice for over fifty years. The exhibition reflects Boltanski’s ability to suggest the passage of time and the precariousness of our existence as well as his powerful skill as a universal storyteller. Bringing together works from two different time periods, the exhibition demonstrates how the artist, throughout the years, had become more and more interested in creating parabolas beyond the materiality of his works. (more…)

(Portrait of the artist by Aleph Molinari for Art Observed)

Painter, sculptor, and multi-disciplinary artist Zhivago Duncan reinterprets the myths and archetypes of antiquity to construct an overarching story of the development of human consciousness. Blending mythology and elements of science fiction, he creates elaborate allegorical paintings, kinetic machines, and large-scale raku sculptures that together form his own cosmogony. Zhivago’s multi-ethnic background could be a clue to his desire to hybridize elements of different cultures: his mother escaped Syria to settle in the United States, and his father is of Danish descent. Zhivago’s upbringing was nomadic, taking him from Terre Haute, Indiana to Malta, Saudi Arabia, Berlin, and finally Mexico City, where he currently works and resides. Art Observed met Zhivago at his studio, where he walked us through the inner workings of his mythical worlds and landscapes. (more…)

Francesco Clemente at Vito Schnabel, all images via Art Observed

Over the last several years, the Independent Art Fair has built a name for itself as a dynamic and focused exhibition project, culling together small selections of exhibitors that emphasize curation and focus over the sprawling aisles of mega fairs and blue-chip magnets. This year, the fair has launched a new offering for the run of The Armory Show further uptown, titled Independent 20th Century. The show, focusing in on historically-resonant works, makes for a striking new offering during Armory Week, and a fitting continuation of the fair’s well-established focus. (more…)

Macon Reed, via Art Observed

The first chills of September are in the air in New York, temperatures are cooling again, and, like clockwork, another art season is now underway, kicked off once again by the opening of the Armory Show and its satellite fairs in New York City. That means that, once again, the night before the fair is the domain of Spring/Break Art Show, the curator-first, project oriented fair that brings together a range of expressive and imaginative works under a broad curatorial banner. Leaving ample space for exploration and investigation, the fair is a perennial highlight, and, now in its 10th year, seems to have hit its stride.

Noah Kloster, via Art Observed

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Matthew Wong,  (2106), via Cheim & Read

On view this month at Cheim & Read, the late Matthew Wong is the subject of a targeted, curatorially minded show dwelling on a body of bright, colorful works the artist produced during a 2016 stay in Los Angeles. This is Wong’s second solo exhibition at the gallery, which follows Matthew Wong: Footprints in the Wind, Ink Drawings 2013–2017 (May 5–September 3, 2021), a suite of works that charted the artist’s exploration of ink wash on rice paper, materials traditional to Chinese landscape painting, some of which he began while living in Hong Kong and working in Zhongshan, China.  (more…)

Hans Josephsohn at Max Hetzler, all photos by Art Observed

With the first notes of fall drifting into the air, and August fading into September, attention turns this week to the South Korean capital of Seoul, where Frieze has opened the latest expansion of its burgeoning art fair franchise, running this weekend. The new fair, led by Frieze Seoul Director Patrick Lee, features over 110 galleries, with a strong focus on Asia alongside a range of galleries from 20 countries. The fair marks the continuation of several years of growth for Frieze, which has added expansions in LA, New York and now Seoul in several years of quick development.

Park Seo-Bo at White Cube

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Leslie Hewitt, Riffs on Real Time with Ground (Deep Reflection) (2021), via Anton Kern

On view this summer at Anton Kern Gallery in New York, Photographic Pictures arranges a body of work drawing on photography and the possibility for expanded senses of perception and representation through the medium. Curated by artist Anne Collier, the show culls together a range of works including pieces by the artist, Luigi Ghirri, Jack Pierson, and Jiro Takamatsu, whose 1972-73 series provides the central inspiration for the show. (more…)

Sabine Moritz, Lair I (2022), via Marian Goodman

On view this summer at Marian Goodman, a solo exhibition by Sabine Moritz brings forth a suite of new large-scale paintings and works on paper. The exhibition, the artist’s first presentation in the New York gallery, follows three previous exhibitions held at Galerie Marian Goodman, Paris. The presentation will be comprised of a new series of abstract paintings and new intimately scaled workson paper, all from 2021-2022. This vibrant, abstract terrain is presented in conjunction with four select representational works. This new body of work can be seen as the next chapter in Moritz’s phenomenological practice –– acts of deep looking that seek to understand the world.

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Samantha Vernon, Vacant Lots (2015-2022), via Canada

This month at Canada, the gallery presents a group show titled SUMMER Nights, featuring work by Addoley Dzegede, Julia Haft-Candell, Gi (Ginny) Huo, Abigail Lucien, Carly Mandel, Mary Manning, Lee Relvas, Beverly Semmes, Fin Simonetti, Hanae Utamura, Sam Vernon, Rachel Eulena Williams, and Kristine Woods. Exploring a range of works that oscillate between various fragments of architecture, the show draws on artists using memory and experience to create works meditating on world building, family, and the abstractions of daily life. (more…)

Francheska Alcantara, Tiger Jaw IV (2022), via Lehmann Maupin

On view this month at Lehmann Maupin in New York, the gallery welcomes New York City-based artist Teresita Fernández to curate a group show for the summer season, bringing together works by Francheska Alcántara, Carolina Caycedo, Adriana Corral, David Antonio Cruz, Kira Dominguez Hultgren, Leslie Martinez, Glendalys Medina, Jeffrey Meris, and Esteban Ramón Pérez. Engaging various degrees of abstraction, the works in the show are united by each artist’s focus on materiality, process, and tactility.  (more…)