Hugo Montoya, How ya like me now? (2019), via Art Observed

For the second installation of Upstate Art Weekend, the New Art Dealers Alliance (NADA) presented a collaborative exhibition at Foreland, a new contemporary arts campus in the Hudson River Valley. Co-organized by curator Jesse Greenberg of JAG Projects, NADA x Foreland showcased works from over 100 artists presented by 81 galleries, nonprofits and artist-run spaces selected through an open call. While celebrating the rich cultural legacy of the Hudson River Valley, Upstate Art Weekend aimed to cultivate community and collaboration in the wake of lockdown, as the art world begins to reopen. While exhibitors ranged from Dubai to Guatemala City to Bucharest, NADA x Foreland focused on artists from New York State, with particular attention to the Upstate region. The works were not displayed in booths, but rather arranged together within the newly restored Civil-War-era spaces of the Foreland campus on the bank of Catskill Creek. (more…)

Damien Hirst, Cherry Blossoms (Installation View), via Fondation Cartier

The flood of recent work on view by Damien Hirst suggests an artist in the midst of a bout of inspiration, pumping out a broad range of works that underscore his roving interests and consistency in vision across paintings, sculpture and photography. Yet his most recent series, Cherry Blossoms, on view at Fondation Cartier this summer, sees something of a step into a more contemplative mode, a point of reflection around which so many frenetically-charged recent works seem to orbit.  The exhibition presents 30 paintings chosen by the artist among the 107 canvases of the series, all large-format. (more…)

After a sit-down between the mayor of Amsterdam and the heirs of a Jewish owner of a Kandinsky work hanging in the the Stedelijk, the city has announced it will return the work to the family. “This is a historic injustice that is being put right,” says the family’s lawyer, Simon van der Sluijs. (more…)

Beijing’s UCCA Center for Contemporary Art will open a new location in the Sichuan province of Chengdu, the Art Newspaper reports.  “Chengdu is one of the most exciting and rapidly growing cities in China and we have been closely following its development and accomplishments in the arts in recent years,” says UCCA director and chief executive Philip Tinari.  (more…)

Johanna Burton has been named the new executive director of the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles. “MOCA’s artist-centered mission dovetails with my own commitment to creating platforms that foster artistic innovation and emphasize deep connections to audiences,” she says in a statement. “By pursuing these goals and supporting the efforts of MOCA’s team, I’m looking forward to extending the museum’s legacy while strengthening bonds both within the institution and with the public.” (more…)

The Art Newspaper reports on the increasingly strict restrictions on travel into Switzerland for Art Basel this year, and the increasing pressure to postpone or cancel the event.  (more…)

Gallerists Dominique Lévy, Brett Gorvy, Amalia Dayan and Jeanne Greenberg Rohatyn will join forces to create LGDR, a project working as a consortium to organize shows and represent artists. “We’ve been looking at ourselves in the mirror and trying to understand who we are and what is the best way to address our clients,” says Gorvy. “What is the business model that is appropriate? We don’t have to do everything, but we can do anything.” (more…)

The Banksy piece that shredded itself shortly after sale in 2018 will go back under the hammer at Sotheby’s, The Guardian reports, offered with a  £4-6m estimate.  (more…)

Matthew Wong, Untitled (2015), via Cheim & Read

Since his sudden death in 2019, the work of painter Matthew Wong has only grown in recognition and reputation, building on an impressively diverse and evocative approach to art-making that underscores the artist’s self-taught method and brilliant eye. This self-taught exploration of the artist’s work is at the core of a new show at Cheim & Read in Chelsea, where the artist’s Ink Drawings, some of his first ventures into painting, are currently on view. Running through September 11th, the show offers a look at Wong’s early output, and the germinal state of his vision as an artist.  (more…)

Gallerist David Kordansky and artist Mindy Shapero give W Magazine a tour of their Los Feliz home, showcasing their collection of art and furniture. “I think Dave would be happy if all the walls were white,” Shapero says. “He wants the art to sing, right? I want the art to sing too, but along with everything else.” (more…)

Cady Noland, The Clip-On Method (Installation View), via Art Observed

On view this summer in New York, artist Cady Noland has opened a show of new works at Galerie Buchholz in conjunction with a two volume publication of the artist’s work and writing, both of which are unified under the title The Clip-On Method. The show, offering a rare chance to see Noland’s work in person, continues her incisive and often confrontation exploration of violence and power in the American psyche, and its effects. (more…)

The Mayor of Amsterdam is in talks with the descendants of the former owner of a Kandinsky painting, who are seeking to reclaim the work from the Stedelijk. (more…)

Olga Balema, Computer (2021), via Camden Art Center

On now at Camden Art Center in London, Computer marks Olga Balema’s first solo exhibition in the UK, centered around a single flat sculpture, created in her studio and the surrounding streets in New York, and consisting of a large digital print of a domestic carpet repeated in a grid-like arrangement, manipulated first through the ‘banner buzz’ digital printing interface and later with different movements and incisions. The work is minimal in the most explicit sense, a series of flat panels attempting to present space as an abstraction with the most limited means possible.  (more…)

Korakrit Arunanondchai, Workshop for Peace/Cry Pan Cry (2018), via Clearing

Marking a particularly expansive approach, Clearing Gallery has invited a massive list of artists to fill the gallery’s expansive Bushwick exhibition space. Bringing together an expansive range of the gallery’s artist in a conversation around modern practices, aesthetics and concepts. Moving across a series of sculptural and painterly iterations that create a colorful and expressive whole, the show makes for a refreshing and exploratory take on the summer group show. (more…)

The Galaxy Song (Installation View), via David Kordansky

On view this month at David Kordansky, the collaborative fashion project Online Cermaics and artist Matthew Brannon have joined together to present The Galaxy Song, a show that treats the motifs, cosmic mindfulness, and countercultural narratives associated with the Grateful Dead as springboards for open experimentation with material and concept. While the 1960s-era, psychedelic origins of the Dead—as well as the band’s propensity for inspiring its fans to reinterpret its densely interwoven iconographies—provide the show’s major conceptual through lines, the show equally explores the possibilities of screen-prints and fashion as vectors for complex aesthetic concepts.

Matthew Brannon, San Francisco Owes/Owns/Sold Me (2021), via David Kordansky

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Artist Julien Nguyen has an interview this month in the New York Times, discussing his work and how video games like Starcraft informed his practice. “You’re building your empire and conquering different parts of the world or space,” he says. “I wanted to become a concept artist who designs all the characters and spaceships and buildings.” (more…)

Robert Nava (Installation View), via Art Observed

It’s been something of a blitz of work since Robert Nava joined Pace Gallery last year, with the artist now marking his second show in as many years with gallery out at its East Hampton outpost. The artist, presenting new work created this year, continues a body of work the explores his outlandish assemblages of bodies in space, creating bizarre visual mandalas designed to both immerse and confront the viewer.  (more…)

Chuck Close, Self-Portrait (No Glasses) (2016), via Art Observed

Artist Chuck Close, a pioneer of the postmodern and contemporary portraitist, has passed away at the age of 81. A defining voice in the landscape of New York’s post-war art scene, the artist leaves behind a legacy of work that mixed together an insightful use of photorealist technique and subtle commentary on its construction to create an influential body of work. (more…)

Darren Bader, Mundi 56 (2021),via Sadie Coles

This summer at Sadie Coles HQ in London, the humorous and incisive work of artist Darren Bader comes back to the UK for his fourth solo show with the gallery. Through a range of media – sculpture, Augmented Reality (AR), mural, photography and posters – the artist continues to distill and defamiliarize the concept of the ‘art object’. (more…)

Artist Lee Young-chul is the first name tapped to represent South Korea at next year’s Venice Biennale.“It is not known whether more artists will join the Korean Pavilion. It is up to the artistic director,” an official said. “But it is rare for a single artist to represent the pavilion.”
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Artist Barbara Kruger has an interview on Art Newspaper this week, discussing her work, projects, and the current zeitgeist.  “Thank God I’m an artist and not an internet or TikTok or movie star,” she says. “Any time I go to a gala, all those people are fighting to get on the red carpet, but the photographers don’t give a flying fuck about artists.” (more…)

Louise Bourgeois (Installation View), via Galerie Karsten Greve

Louise Bourgeois could be the artist who most drew on her personal experience and trauma to fuel her work, using her work and emotions as equal sounding boards towards each other, and creating a complex, dense body of work. Using art as a therapy product, she gave shape to her emotions and developed a corpus of themes and motifs through her sculptures, drawings, multiples and paintings. At this show of works at Galerie Karsten Greve in St. Moritz, this work gets a nuanced and attentive look.  (more…)

As U.S. troops leave Afghanistan, and the country prepares for the rise of the Taliban, museums and collections are bracing for threats to their collections.  “We didn’t expect this to happen so quickly,” said Noor Agha Noori, head of Afghanistan’s Institute of Archaeology in Kabul.  (more…)

Eliza Douglas, Orgy of the Sick (Installation View), via Overduin

Painter Eliza Douglas has opened a show of new work in Los Angeles this month, a selection of paintings spread throughout Overduin and Co. that explore the convergences of pop graphics and commercial materiality, rendering a series of swirling, kaleidoscopic commentaries on cartoons and their subcultures.  (more…)