Michaël Borremans, The Racer (2022), via David Zwirner

On view this month at David Zwirner in New York, the painter Michaël Borremans presents The Acrobat, an exhibition that continues the artist’s meticulous study of the history of painting and the structure and language of painterly composition.Taking place at the gallery’s 525 West 19th Street location in New York, this will be the artist’s seventh solo exhibition with the gallery and his first in New York since 2011.  (more…)

Spencer Sweeney at The Brant Foundation (Installation View)

Just opened this past weekend during the run of fairs over the course of the last week, The Brant Foundation Art Study center presents an exhibition of paintings and works on paper by Spencer Sweeney, the painter and artist whose rich, figurative compositions span a range of modes and practices, from show flyers to portraiture, abstractions to historical interpretations. (more…)

An Andy Warhol portrait of Marilyn Monroe sold for $195 Million last night at a Christie’s charity auction, making it the most expensive American work of art to sell at auction. “We did sell the most expensive painting of the 20th century,” says Christie’s specialist Alex Rotter. “This is a big achievement.” (more…)

The artist Matthew Wong gets a profile in the New Yorker this week, reviewing his work and untimely death at the age of 35.  “Something in me was pushed by an urge to visually reproduce the uncalculated, almost accidental slice of poetry in front of me,” the article quotes him. (more…)

Cornelia Parker has an interview in The Guardian this week, discussing her work, vision, and thoughts on changing her citizenship to Germany. “ I’m thinking of applying for German citizenship because I’m half German. I don’t like feeling not part of Europe,” she says. “I don’t want to be a little Englander.” (more…)

Leonora Carrington, The Chair: Daghda Tuatha dé Danann, 1955. All images courtesy of Aidan Chisholm for AO.

Surrealism and Magic: Enchanted Modernity marks the first major international exhibition focusing on Surrealist engagements with magic, alchemy and the occult. A two-part exhibition first on display at the Peggy Guggenheim Collection in Venice before traveling to Museum Barberini in Potsdam, Surrealism and Magic features approximately 60 works from more than 40 international museums and private collections. The exhibition coincides with the theme of the 59th Venice Biennale, The Milk of Dreams, which draws its title from the otherworldly book by Leonora Carrington, the English-born painter and storyteller whose work features prominently in both the Guggenheim show and the main exhibition of the Biennale. (more…)

Kenny Schachter at Allouche Benias

Taking over once again at Spring Studios in downtown Manhattan, the Independent Art Fair opened its doors this week on a string of new works, curated exhibitions and special projects that once again illustrated its place as a premier fair event in the city. Now over ten years old, the fair has proven itself as something of a special case in the presentation of an art fair.  Smaller in scale and more focused in terms of its gallery selections, the fair’s presentation feels more like a presentation of a series of small gallery shows run side-by-side.  Offering a more nuanced, mellow browsing experience in conjunction with the fair’s invite-only exhibitor structure and immense glass windows, the fair has built a reputation as a boutique event with impressive draw.

Anthony Olubunmi Akinbola at Night Gallery

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Mickey Lee at One Trick Pony, all images via Art Observed

This weekend marks a return of the New Art Dealers Alliance art fair to New York City, bringing with it a range of exploratory and expressive new work from emerging artists, smaller galleries and new projects. For those looking for new insights and fresh perspectives on contemporary art practice, its hard to ignore the call of the fair, which reprises its role as a central tentpole of a weekend of fairs, even as the city’s string of fairs has split up between several weeks this May. Set up in the sprawling Pier 36 complex on downtown Manhattan’s Eastern edge, the show is a dense pathway through the landscape of new art, mixing playful performance pieces, studied painting and anything in between, making the fair one of the more expansive and freewheeling events of the week. (more…)

Police are searching for a group of 5 people who stole a portfolio of photographs from Fergus McCafferty Gallery in Manhattan.  (more…)

Isamu Noguchi at Querini Stampalia

Continuing a string of curatorial outings during the run of the Venice Biennale, Danh Vo has once again popped up in the City of Bridges, this time with a show co-curated with Chiara Bertola. Drawing on his own work, executed in conversation with that of Isamu Noguchi and Park Seo-Bo, the show makes for a dynamic and shifting series of conversations, delving into perceptions of space and culture, power dynamics, architecture and form.

Isamu Noguchi at Querini Stampalia

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Louise Nevelson, Persistence (Installation View), via Art Observed

Operated during Venice Biennale as an official Collateral Event of the exhibition, and curated by Julia Bryan-Wilson, professor of modern and contemporary art at the University of California, Berkeley, the Procuratie Vecchie in Venice’s Piazza San Marco plays home to an expansive and expressive body of work by the American artist Louise Nevelson. Persistence, which marks the 60th anniversary of Nevelson’s representation of the United States in the American Pavilion at the Biennale Arte in 1962, it includes more than 60 works created by Nevelson between the 1950s and the 1980s.

Louise Nevelson, Persistence (Installation View), via Art Observed

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The Art Gallery of Ontario has contracted Selldorf Architects, Diamond Schmitt and Two Row Architect to lead the design phase of AGO Global Contemporary, the museum’s proposed expansion project. “A project with global impact requires an international perspective, grounded in this land and this city,” says Director and CEO Stephan Jost.  (more…)

Anish Kapoor (Installation View), via Art Observed

Marking a major retrospective including recent and new works going on view in conjunction with the opening of the Venice Biennale, Anish Kapoor is the subject of a new show at the Gallerie dell’Accademia in the Dorsoduro neighborhood of the city. Curated by Taco Dibbits, General Director of the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam, the show focuses on the artist’s investigations of perception and the body, space and time, it features a range of works drawing on his recent work with the hyper-black pigment Vantablack in pursuit of new experiments with “the void” and human experience.  (more…)

Georg Baselitz at Palazzo Grimani, via Art Observed

On view as part of the broader offering of works surrounding the Venice Biennale this summer, painter Georg Baselitz has brought forth a body of new and recent works to bear on the halls of the Museo Palazzo Grimani, continuing a long and fruitful series of shows and projects in the city. Baselitz, who previously was the subject of a major retrospective at the Gallerie dell’Accademia during the last Biennale in 2019, here continues his recent adventures into bright colors, abstracted brushstrokes, and new iterations of his familiar formats and images.  (more…)

Gian Maria Tosatti at the Italian Pavilion

Spread between the Arsenale and Giardini, the second half the Venice Biennale’s usual run of exhibitions, the National Pavilions, have now opened, with a range of concepts and interests contending for viewers’ attention alongside the fair’s main show. Serving as a central draw in the exhibition, and a chance to elaborate and expand on the concepts and ideas of the Biennale itself, the National Pavilions offer a fresh series of perspectives to build on and elaborate the themes developed.

Zineb Sedira at the French Pavilion

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Sonia Boyce, Feeling Her Way (Installation View), via Art Observed

With the history-making announcement of the Golden Lions on Saturday, Sonia Boyce‘s work took center stage for the night in the art world, with her British Pavilion work Feeling Her Way earning the nod for best National Pavilion at this year’s Venice Biennale. The work, which draws on a series of shifting, evolving audio and video pieces, is a powerful meditation on expression and collective experience in an increasingly challenging era.

Sonia Boyce, Feeling Her Way (Installation View), via Art Observed

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Simone Leigh, Sovereignty (Installation View), via Art Observed

On view amidst the bustling landscape of the Venice Biennale’s Giardini pavilion, artist Simone Leigh has transformed the U.S. Pavilion, covering its surface with a thatched roof and situating one of her iconic sculptural arrangements outside. The show, which features a new body of work made for the show, continues her interest in performativity and affect, drawing on the artist’s expansive practice to explore the construction of Black femme subjectivity.

Simone Leigh, Sovereignty (Installation View), via Art Observed

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Stanley Whitney at Palazzo Tiepolo Passi, via Art Observed

Amid the bustle of the Biennale in Venice this week, artist Stanley Whitney brings a series of works made during the 1990’s in Italy, a tribute and ode to the country that here finds its voice spread across the Noble Floor of the sixteenth century Palazzo Tiepolo Passi, located along the central stretch of the Grand Canal.

Stanley Whitney at Palazzo Tiepolo Passi, via Art Observed

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Sonia Boyce, Feeling Her Way, featuring Errollyn Wallen, Jacqui Dankworth, Poppy Ajudha and Tanita Tikaram. Photo: Cristiano Corte © British Council

The awards for the 59th Edition of the Venice Biennale have been announced, with artist Sonia Boyce taking home the Golden Lion for the Best National Pavilion, while Simone Leigh took the Golden Lion for participation in the Main Exhibition. This is the first time in Biennale history that both of the top awards at the event were won by black women.  (more…)

Marguerite Humeau, all images via Art Observed

Spread between above the green lawns and trees of Venice’s Giardini, and the winding streets and canals of the Arsenale nearby, the Venice Biennale’s Central Pavilion has opened its doors for its Vernissage event, kicking off the 59th annual edition of the exhibition, and welcoming visitors to its first open viewings before it opens to the public this coming Saturday. Curated by Cecelia Alemani, Director & Chief Curator of High Line Art, the show draws on the book by surrealist Leonora Carrington, where “life is constantly re-envisioned through the prism of the imagination.” Here, Alemani invites a series of artists to imagine new worlds, visualize and pose them throughout the exhibition sites.

Katharina Fritsch

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Venice, via Art Observed

For the first time since 2019, the Venice Biennale will open amidst the waterways and winding streets of the lagoon city, with the 59th edition of the event returning to its position of prominence. The crown jewel of the art world’s circuit of international art exhibitions and curated projects, with over 100 years of history behind it, the return of the exhibition sees the Most Serene Republic filled with countless shows and projects alongside the main exhibitions at the Arsenale and Giardini.

Cecilia Alemani, via the curator (more…)

Joe Bradley, Nothing Ever Happened (2022), via Petzel

On view this month at Petzel Gallery, artist Joe Bradley touches down for a show of new works that underscore the artist’s continued evolution and exploration of a certain type of wide-eyed abstraction, balancing color, stroke and structure through a range of vivid fields of paint. Marking his first solo show with the gallery since leaving Gagosian last year, Bhoga Marga, roughly translated from Sanskirt as “the enduring path of experience,” showcases the artist’ on a new plane of gesture and composition here.

Joe Bradley, Bhoga Marga (Installation View), via Petzel

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Fiona Connor, Closed Down Clubs, Hop Louie (2020), via Chateau Shatto

On view this month at Château Shatto in Los Angeles, the gallery presents Fiona Connor’s first solo exhibition at the gallery, My muse is my memory, an archive of Closed Down Clubs. Presented as a quite literal archive of closed spaces, vacant sites of cultural memory, the show makes much of the landscape of Los Angeles, introducing and removing works from the show over the course of its staging.

Fiona Connor, Closed Down Clubs, Once Upon a Page (2020), via Chateau Shatto
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Alvaro Barrington, The Rose That Grew from Concrete: Frank Miller Batman LA (2022), via Blum and Poe

On view this month at Blum & Poe’s Los Angeles exhibition space, artist Alvaro Barrington presents a powerful, challenging show dedicated to the music and culture of Los Angeles and New York during the 1990’s. Bearing the title 91–98 jfk–lax border, the show presents itself as an expression of joy and hope, and a tribute to the thriving hip-hop culture of both cities during the decade.  (more…)