Amy Lincoln at Sperone Westwater, via Art Observed

As the art world gradually returns to the pace and flow of the days before the chaos of the Covid-19 outbreak, the ADAA Art Show returns to New York for another iteration of its curation-first focus and studied, engaged relationships between exhibitors and artists. This year, liberated from the usual hustle and bustle of the weeks around the Armory Show, the fair offered an even stronger draw, welcoming a casual, meandering pace, with its gentle lighting and wide aisles, making for a more relaxed and exploratory atmosphere.The result, as last year, was a packed few days of the fair, as scores of New York collectors, dealers and art lovers came out in force.

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The Vancouver Art Gallery has received a $100 million gift from the Audain Foundation in support of a new building in downtown Vancouver. “The new Vancouver Art Gallery — from its conception and design — will reflect a Coast Salish worldview,” says Vancouver Art Gallery Elder-in-residence and art and design consultant Skwetsimeltxw Willard ‘Buddy’ Joseph.

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Mark Rothko, Untitled (1968), via Pace

Marking the first exhibition at its new London gallery, Pace has brought out a striking body of works by Mark Rothko, focusing in particular on the artist’s output during the final years of his life, specifically smaller works on paper that have rarely been seen in public, and which will serve as the first dedicated to the artist’s paper-based practice (more…)

A piece in the Art Newspaper notes that in the growing field of NFT art, women make up only 16% of the market.  (more…)

The Boijmans Museum in Rotterdam will soon open The Depot, a large-scale archive and storage site for the museum that will put its full collection on view to the public. “You’ll go through the collection like you would visit a library looking for a book and finding three others,” said Sjarel Ex, the museum’s joint director. “We also decided to take private collectors, to give private collectors opportunities to work with us in the same building. So you see when you go around and you see the floors, you will meet with several collections that enjoy a collaboration with the museum.” (more…)

Alicia Keys and her husband, producer Swizz Beatz, give a tour of their La Jolla, California mansion, and their extensive art collection to Architectural Digest. “The interiors don’t in any way shout; they’re simple and timeless,” says interior designer Kelly Behun. “It was never going to be about trying to upstage the natural surroundings, the architecture, or the art.” (more…)

An official at the State Hermitage in St. Petersburg broke the nose of a visitor this weekend after the guest tried to enter the museum through an exit. “The employee who committed the offense fully admits his guilt and is sorry for his excessively emotional actions,” a statement reads. “He explains it by the general state of nervousness connected to the pandemic and its influence on life, including the museum’s new regime of work.” (more…)

Sarah Sze, Crisscross (2021), via Victoria Miro

Sarah Sze brings a new body of works to Victoria Miro in London this week, continuing her meticulous and studied treatment of the painted canvas across a selection of densely layered new works. The show, which opened this past month, brings an expanded sense of Sze’s work as a painter, and an elaboration of her already well-documented interest in intense visual fields, using her concept of the image in constant generation, evolution and degradation as a centerpiece of this show. (more…)

As world leaders meet in Glasgow for the UN Climate Change Conference, Jenny Holzer is projecting the words of activist Greta Thunberg onto the walls of the Tate Modern in London. “If not now, then when,” the piece reads. (more…)

Anne Imhof, Natures Mortes (Installation View), via Aleph Molinari for Art Observed

German multi-disciplinary artist Anne Imhof creates environments that integrate painting, drawing, video, sculpture, and performance amidst large-scale architectural installations. Following the success of her previous exhibitions, including the performance Faust, for which she won the Golden Lion at the Venice Biennale in 2017, Imhof takes over the Palais de Tokyo for her latest exhibition, Natures Mortes. This sprawling and multifaceted show is a meditation on the transience of time, on life and death, youth and desire. The ensemble of works in the exhibition echoes themes present in her previous body of work, reflecting an aestheticization of postmodern ennui in Imhof’s singular, dark, post-punk aesthetic. Going beyond the temporality of a vanitas or a memento mori, the show enters into a jarring dystopian connotation, creating a space where nature has literally died, and was replaced by a landscape of metal and glass, by a cold materiality and a dark sense of foreboding.

Anne Imhof, Natures Mortes (Installation View), via Aleph Molinari for Art Observed

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Jules de Balincourt, Old lost Horse (2021), via Praz-Delavallade

On view this month at Praz-Delavallade in Paris, the gallery presents The Greek Garden, a groups how show drawing on the writings of Friedrich Nietzsche’s The Gay Science, and using its tenants to explore notions of vanity, politics, spirituality and science. “The Greeks were superficial – out of profundity,” the text reads. “And isn’t it precisely what we are coming back to? – we spiritual adventurers, who have scaled the highest and most dangerous peak of today’s thought and looked round from up there, looked down from up there. Aren’t we, then, precisely, Greeks?”  (more…)

Tatiana Trouvé, March 23rd, The New York Times, USA; Le Soir, Belgium from the series From March to May (2020), via Gagosian

On view this month at Gagosian’s uptown exhibition space in New York, the gallery is presenting a never-before-seen body of work by Tatiana Trouvé produced in direct response to the pandemic era, drawing on the contemporary landscape to create a series of works that both trace time and reflect on the chaos of the past year. At the beginning of the COVID-19 quarantine in March 2020, Trouvé, isolated in Paris, began a series of daily drawings using inkjet-printed reproductions of various international newspaper front pages as her starting point. As the pandemic marched on, spreading instability and uncertainty throughout the world, Trouvé continued to work ever more methodically in graphite, ink, and linseed oil.

Tatiana Trouvé, April 3rd, The Star, Kenya, from the series From March to May (2020) via Gagosian

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Not Vital at Alma Zevi (Installation View)

On view at ALMA ZEVI through November 6 is SNOW & WATER & ICE by Swiss artist Not Vital. As Vital’s first solo exhibition at the Venice gallery, it coincides with the artist’s solo show in Andrea Palladio’s Abbazia di San Giorgio Maggiore, organized by the Benedicti Claustra Onlus, on the occasion of this year’s Architecture Biennale.

Not Vital at Alma Zevi (Installation View)

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The Whitney will transfer a large collection of Andy Warhol’s cinema works to MoMA as part of an ambitious research effort. “The Whitney’s ongoing efforts to document, research and study Warhol’s remarkable film works—along with the preservation and digitisation initiatives of the MoMA and the Andy Warhol Museum—have brought them to a wider audience,” says Whitney head Adam Weinberg. (more…)

Paul Thek, Untitled (Meat Piece with Chair) (1966), via Alexander and Bonin

Offering a rare opportunity to view a series of resonant historical works by artist Paul Thek, Alexander and Bonin is currently presenting a selection of works by the artist that span a range of pieces from the 1960’s into the later years of his career. Exploring the artist’s evolving aesthetic concerns and range of media and techniques, the show presents Thek’s work in relation to changing societal contexts and political situations.  (more…)

Six people have been arrested in the Spanish city of Valencia over a series of forged works attributed to Goya and other artists. “[The group’s] methods were as simple as placing a small piece of paper over a signature to swap it for another one, reusing both sides of a canvas, and imitating cracked paint by burning the canvas with a blowtorch,” the government said in a statement. (more…)

Jeff Koons gives an interview to Wallpaper magazine this week, as he invites the publication into his home and holds court on a range of subjects. “I started making art as a young kid and would always draw and paint, and I never knew what art was,” he says. “When I was in art school and learned about art history, I started to realize how it connects all the human disciplines. When I graduated from art school and started to really focus on my work, there were moments I would create things that were so powerful to me that they would overtake me physically.” (more…)

Sam Moyer, Ester (2021), via Kayne Griffin Corcoran

Artist Sam Moyer brings a body of new works to bear on Kayne Griffin Corcoran this month, continuing her investigations into scale, balance, and weight, with particular attention to the physical experience of space and the effects of natural light. (more…)

The UK is looking into ways of limiting the number of students signing up for education in the arts, a report in the Guardian notes, with an intent on reducing the number of students taking on large loans for historically lower-paying jobs. “They would like to control numbers in specific subjects. The Treasury is particularly obsessed with negative return in creative arts subjects,” says one source. (more…)

Alicja Kwade, Day Density (Installation View), via kamel mennour

On view this month, and just in time for the proceedings of FIAC, kamel mennour gallery opens a show of new work by artist Alicja Kwade, underscoring the artist’s continued exploration of time, space, chemistry, geology and biology. Through a range of sculptures, hanging works and floor installations, the artist explores the materials of physical reality, oftentimes seeking to use each one as a way to look beyond the whole. (more…)

Robert Mangold, Pace Gallery, all images by Aidan Chisholm for Art Observed

Having concluded opening hours yesterday at the Grand Palais Éphémère, a temporary installation erected at the foot of the Eiffel Tower, FIAC opened its doors to the public today, beginning a run of days at the site that once more bring contemporary and modern art to the French capital.  The first outing of the fair since it shuttered last year during Covid-19, and the first since Brexit was fully implemented, this year’s edition saw the Parisian event taking on a new role at the forefront of the European art market.

Gary Simmons, Hauser and Wirth

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A group of artists including Henry Taylor and Peter Doig speak to the New York Times this week about the work of painter Bob Thompson. “I loved Bob’s work right away,” Taylor says. “I think I stumbled on him in a bookstore. I was like, ‘Damn, how come they didn’t tell me?’ It was like a jewel. I was ecstatic. He just hit hard right away.” (more…)

Mark Grotjahn, Untitled (Backcountry Capri 54.37) (2021), via Blum & Poe

Mark Grotjahn brings a body of new work to bear at Blum & Poe this month, continuing the artist’s expressive exploration of the potentials for abstraction and gesture. Bringing a series of paintings unified under the title Backcountry, the artist’s work continues to explore a range of geometric iterations and variations on canvas.  (more…)

Paula Cooper Gallery now represents the estate of artist, musician and filmmaker Terry Adkins. “It is my profound pleasure to continue collaborating with the Estate of Terry Adkins and to bring the artist’s complex and groundbreaking work to a wider audience,” says partner Alexis Johnson. (more…)