Caroline Larsen at The Hole NYC, all images by Anfisa Vrubel for Art Observed

Taking over the Centro Citibanamex for another year of exhibitions, the Zona Maco art fair opened this week to packed crowds and enthusiastic response. The fair, which marks its 18th year this year, has continued to grow and evolve since its early years, and this year’s edition was no different, with a strong list of exhibitors that made the excitement of a full edition after several years of challenges posed by Covid-19 all the more palpable. Aisles were packed for much of the early hours of the fair, with gallerists and museum directors, collectors and advisors weaving through each booth.  (more…)

Tomás Saraceno gets a NYT profile this week, as he prepares to open a show of work at The Shed. “He’s not afraid of scale,” says close friend Olafur Eliasson told me. “Ten meters, 20 meters, 30 meters — it doesn’t matter. He could scale things up easily. The other thing was how to work together. As architects, there is a division of labor. As soon as you’re not good at something, you find someone who is and have him do it, asking when you don’t know how to solve it. An artist goes down into the hyperlocal. A great architect is able to take a helicopter view.” (more…)

Kimberly Drew has joined Pace Gallery as Associate Director. “I am thrilled by the opportunity to join Pace’s team,” she says. “Over the course of my career, I’ve always been driven by opportunities to work alongside artists and in support of bringing new audiences to the world of contemporary art. Pace is a space that is vast in its offerings and always adapting and innovating. I look forward to the many lessons I will learn during this next chapter.” (more…)

Zhivago Duncan, Shield of Thought (2019 – 2020), via Zhivago Duncan

Rachel Whiteread, Untitled (November) (2020), via Gagosian

As winter coasts into the early weeks of February, the art world returns once more to the sprawling Mexico City metropolis for another year of art week, centered around the proceedings at Zona Maco Art Fair, and the surrounding areas. With Mexico City’s stature growing each year as a central hub of the global arts community, the week once again promises a range of impressive shows and openings alongside the thriving sales events at the main fair. (more…)

Damien Hirst has been accused of forgery by the English artist and writer Joe Machine, who claims the artist ripped off his own cherry blossom paintings. “I saw Hirst’s cherry blossom paintings and, for a moment, I thought I was looking at my own paintings,” Machine says. “I was doing my cherry blossom paintings years before his.”  (more…)

A piece in Vanity Fair reports on a recently uncovered ring centered around creating forged George Condo drawings.“George is a celebrated, world-famous artist, and it is unfortunate but unsurprising that an artist of his caliber would be the subject of attempts to benefit from his success in an illegitimate way,” says Cristopher Canizares, partner at Hauser & Wirth. (more…)

A study by the U.S. Treasury has ruled that further regulation around money laundering in the art world is not needed. “We have found that while certain aspects of the high-value art market are vulnerable to money laundering, it’s often the case that there are larger underlying issues at play, like the abuse of shell companies or the participation of complicit professionals, so we are tackling those first,” says senior overseeing official Scott Rembrandt. (more…)

Pavilions (Installation View), via Lisson

Marking a particularly unique investigation of modern sculptural and installation practice, Lisson Gallery is currently hosting Pavilions at its New York space, presenting a group of artists who engage with various forms and concepts surrounding the use of pavilions, ranging from physically-realized structures to designs conceived as ideas or sketches. Though the works in the exhibition vary in medium and scale, all are centered around the interaction with the viewer, together creating an environment that explores individual memory, identity and experience. (more…)

Cecelia Alemani speaks with Art News this week, discussing her curatorial vision for the 2022 Venice Biennale. “I love the idea of overcoming the centrality of man and then becoming earth, becoming machine, becoming nature. These are certainly the leitmotifs of the show,” she says.  (more…)

Pace Gallery has merged with Kayne Griffin, and will open a flagship in Los Angeles. “Los Angeles has always been magnet for artists, and its position as a center for world-class contemporary art has been growing stronger,” says Pace president and chief executive Marc Glimcher. “For the past five years Maggie and Bill have been our de facto partners in LA. After some serious conversations, we decided to make that partnership official. Besides running our Los Angeles operation, Maggie and Bill will be an integral part of our global team as we continue to reimagine and reinvent Pace for the future.” (more…)

Artist Theaster Gates gives The Guardian a preview of his Serpentine Gallery Pavilion design, set to open this summer. “Coming out of Covid, I thought how nice it would be to have a place of quietude,” he says. “It’s a place for people to be with their thoughts and rest, a sacred chapel where you can sit and be reflective. It should give you the ability to touch your inside self.” (more…)

Bill Lynch, No Title [Bird on Branch and Three Plates] (n.d.), via The Approach

On view now at The Approach in London, the gallery has assembled an exhibition of paintings and drawings, never shown until now, by the late American artist Bill Lynch (1960-2013) united under the title I am a Bird from Heaven’s Garden. Born in Albuquerque, New Mexico, Lynch immersed himself in making drawings and paintings for over three decades, creating lyrical, expressive gestures on salvaged plywood that would mix abstraction and concrete iconographies in striking ways.

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Mary Obering, Works from 1972 – 2003 (Installation View), via Bortolami

This month at Bortolami Gallery, the work of artist Mary Obering takes center stage. Surveying Obering’s prolific output from 1972 to 2003, the exhibition focuses on the artist’s singular approach to Minimalism and geometric abstraction, spanning both floors of the gallery, with the Upstairs dedicated to artworks from the 1970s, a nod to the artist’s SoHo studio in which she took residency in 1971. (more…)

A group of artists in Berlin are protesting the use of the public Tempelhof Park as the site of private exhibitions. “The city should decide what happens there, and this really wasn’t a democratic decision,” says photographer Tobias Zielony. “I think the main question is: how did this two-year contract come into being?” (more…)

The Robert Rauschenberg Foundation is launching an ambitious multivolume catalogue raisonné for its namesake artist, available online and free for all to access. “There is this kind of messiness to Rauschenberg’s career, and we didn’t want to artificially clean it up,” says Julie Blaut, senior director of curatorial affairs at the organization. (more…)

President Biden has reversed the prior rule on public art commissions for public buildings put in place by President Donald Trump, which had stipulated that only “historically significant Americans or events of American historical significance or illustrate the ideals upon which our Nation was founded,” could be considered. (more…)

Petra Cortright, YAMAHA CDRW-4260T_vampire erotica archives TYPOGRAPHY MICROSOFT (2021), via Foxy Production

On view this month at Foxy Production, the gallery has assembled a show of new works by the artist Petra Cortright, marking her third solo exhibition with the gallery. Presenting images framed as “distillations” of the imagery that dominates our every day, this  new series of digital paintings uses Angel Wing Clematis, a white narrow-petalled climbing-vine flower—thought to symbolize knowledge and aspiration—as its central motif. (more…)

A piece in the NYT notes the Uffizi Gallery’s new focus on contemporary art. “The Uffizi very rarely in the past had contemporary art exhibitions,” says director Eike Schmidt. “It was seen as intruding on these sacred halls.” (more…)

Frieze Los Angeles has cancelled a public sculpture show in Beverly Hills Park amid shipping delays and labor shortages caused by Covid-19. “We have determined that we do not have sufficient artworks to realize a full-scale public-sculpture installation,” fair spokesperson Belinda Bowring says. (more…)

Rose Wylie, Battle in Heaven (Film Notes) (2008), via Zabludowicz Collection

Currently on view this month at the Zabludowicz Collection, a selection of the institution’s holdings are presented as a look at the progression and evolution of figuration in modern practice. The Stand-Ins brings together 19 artists who deploy autobiographical elements and a cast of imagined characters in the construction of their paintings and narratives, and maps lines of influence across generations, featuring seminal figures alongside important new voices. (more…)

Christie’s has an impressive Lucian Freud portrait of his former lover Janey Longman for its March sales in London, expected to fetch between £10 million–£15 million ($13.4 million–$20 million). “The dexterous handling of the paint sumptuously brings every detail of the sitter’s body into sharp focus,” Katharine Arnold, head of postwar and contemporary art at Christie’s Europe, said in a statement. “The gentle framing of her pose within the composition seems to invite the viewer closer still, a witness to this moment of contemplation.” (more…)

Art Basel will delay the opening of its Hong Kong fair until May following a recent surge in Covid cases.  “We believe shifting the fair to May is the right decision given the current development of the pandemic and its impact on international travel restrictions,” says Adeline Ooi, Art Basel’s Director Asia. “By taking the decision early, our aim is to support our galleries in advance planning for their 2021 programs. We very much look forward to hosting our show in May next year and to welcoming gallerists, collectors, and art lovers back to Hong Kong at that time.” (more…)

Vito Schnabel has purchased the Chelsea exhibition space that he has been renting. “It’s an incredible space with amazing light. The artists love it and embrace it as well,” he says. “Chelsea has always been a special neighborhood for me, and I’m happy to be a part of its fabric.” (more…)

Giorgio Griffa, Dittico lieve odulaato (1996), via Casey Kaplan

On view at Casey Kaplan this month in New York, the gallery has unified a series of works created by the Italian artist Giorgio Griffa, creating a near-past retrospective that explores the artist’s work over the last 20 years throguh a selection of seven paintings. This exhibition marks the fifth iteration in a series of exhibitions focusing on the artist’s practice by decade, continuing a conceptual exercise that has offered concise but attentive looks at his work over the course of his career. (more…)