The Park Avenue Armory will play host to Martin Creed’s first U.S. retrospective this June, titled The Back Door.  The planned installation will take up both the Armory’s Wade Thompson Drill Hall, as well as a number of other spaces in the building.  Creed will also be presenting an installation of his Work No. 2630, UNDERSTANDING concurrently at Brooklyn Bridge Park.  A collaboration with Public Art Fund, the massive red neon piece will be viewable from both sides of the river.  (more…)

Art Basel has announced a new initiative, titled Art Basel Cities, which is targeted towards developing connections with local artistic communities worldwide, forging links between regional events and the flagship Art Basel fair events.  We are excited to bring our expertise and network to new partner cities, and to work with them to amplify their commitment to arts and culture,” says Patrick Foret, Director of Business Initiatives with Art Basel. (more…)

Sterling Ruby, Work Wear: Garment and Textile Archive 2008 – 2016 (Installation View), via Sprüth Magers

In 2008, Sterling Ruby designed his own work shirt and pants, a uniform of sorts, which he would wear over the course of each body of work that he created.  At the conclusion of each project, Ruby’s leftover materials are saved and incorporated into a new series of clothing pieces, ultimately reproducing the chemical treatments and techniques of each project as its own series of clothing pieces.  These works are currently on view for the first time at Sprüth Magers in London, part of his exhibition Work Wear.

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Damien Hirst is curating an exhibition of Jeff Koons works at his Newport Street Gallery, featuring more than 30 works from the range of the artist’s career.  “I believe art should be experienced by as many people as possible and I’ve felt guilty owning work that is stored away in boxes where no one can see it, so having a space where I can put on shows from the collection is a dream come true,” Hirst has said of his gallery. (more…)

The Wall Street Journal profiles a recent growth of San Francisco’s arts scene, charting a number of important projects that are cultivating a new generation of artists in the city.  Performance art space The Lab and Jessica Silverman Gallery are listed among the chief players. (more…)

CNN looks at the recent crop of new, private Chinese art museums, and the motivations behind the sudden explosion in construction.  “In a culture that has been suppressed for so long, when things start opening up, you’re liable to get a sort of burst of energy and momentum. This generation of private collectors in China, the big ones at least, they’ve had a couple of decades to make their fortunes and it’s natural they’re now spending it on artists and art collections,” says Aric Chen of the M+ Museum. (more…)

The Canadian government has earmarked a major cash injection for national arts organizations, including the CBC, and a near doubling of the Canada Council’s $182 million budget.  “It’s a game changer,” says Simon Brault, director and CEO of the Canada Council. “We can begin writing a new chapter on the artistic and cultural history of this country.” (more…)

Performance artist Ulay has announced his first performance in New York City in 30 years, breaking his long absence with a performance in Brooklyn this coming May during Frieze Week.  The work, titled Cutting Through the Clouds of Myth, will combine an “intimate happening, an experiential installation, a language of communication, a provoking exploration of dualities, a setting of madness and tranquility, mockery and admiration,” according to curator Mitra Khorasheh. (more…)

Anton Kern and Andrew Kreps are teaming up for a temporary, joint gallery in downtown San Francisco, joining Larry Gagosian across the street from the newly renovated SFMoMA.  The galleries will take up residence at the Minnesota Street Project, a recent real estate project featuring artist studios and exhibition space. (more…)

The Art Newspaper interviews Tracey Emin this week, as the artist discusses her recent marriage to a stone outside her studio in the south of France.  “It just means that at the moment I am not alone; somewhere on a hill facing the sea, there is a very beautiful ancient stone, and it’s not going anywhere,” she says.  “It will be there, waiting for me.” (more…)

With the slowing of the Asian economy, Reuters notes a distinct cooling-off of the secondary auction market. “Things were in a heated upward spiral for some time and there’s no question it has come off the boil,” says gallerist John Berwald. (more…)

The LA Times notes the sizable percentage of young visitors to The Broad Museum in downtown Los Angeles, and examines why millennial museum-goers might be drawn to the space in particular, with particular emphasis on the museum’s prominence on social media.  “I have a lot of artist friends and they’re all talking about it,” says on interviewee. “It’s pretty much what everyone’s been posting.”  (more…)

Mitchell-Innes & Nash is now representing artist Mary Kelly, whose work during the 1970’s was conceptual bedrock for the decade’s feminist art practice.  Kelly is concluding a Guggenheim fellowship for work researching shared threads of the London blitz, Paris’s 1968 student protests, and the dawn of the Arab Spring. (more…)

The Guardian interviews Ann Hirsch this week, as the artist opens an exhibition of her work at the Zabludowicz Collection in London, and discusses projects like her performance as a contestant on a VH1 reality dating program, and her views on the culture of digital video as a mode of positive female representation.  “I had these utopian notions that now women can broadcast ourselves instead of relying on TV and film, we can portray ourselves and this is going to be great for women and minorities – we get stereotyped all the time,” she says.  “But the reality of what happened isn’t what I thought.” (more…)

Two artists that installed a guerrilla art exhibition in the stairwell of the Whitney this weekend have been slapped with a lifetime ban by the museum.  “It’s just exploring different sites, contexts, and receptions, and exploring the viewers since the viewers are what activated the sites,” says Ki Smith, one of those caught deinstalling the work. (more…)

Tom Sachs is profiled in the Wall Street Journal this week, discussing his recent work on a Tea House for the Noguchi Museum.  “I’m not a tea master in a traditional sense, though I’m a master in this environment because it’s a clear expression of my history of making stuff,” he says. (more…)

Phyllida Barlow is on the shortlist for the Hepworth prize, joining Helen Marten and David Medalla for the prestigious UK sculpture award.  “Without doubt, it will be a thrilling experience to exhibit at the Hepworth Wakefield and to take into consideration its dynamic architecture which has sculpture very much in mind,” she says. (more…)

Phillips has announced a trio of Mark Bradford compositions will lead its May Contemporary Auctions in New York.  “Phillips is honored to have been entrusted with the sale of this collection, led by these three fantastic Mark Bradford paintings,” says Jean-Paul Engelen, Phillips Worldwide Head of Contemporary Art.  “In recent years, Bradford has emerged as one of the foremost contemporary artists of his generation. This powerful group of works not only demonstrates the artist’s tremendous technical skill, but also the depth of his subject matter. He’s truly a contemporary master.” (more…)

A joint collaboration between The J. Paul Getty Trust in Los Angeles and the Netherlands Institute for Conservation, Arts and Science (NICAS) will see the two museums engage in the development of new archival and conservation technology.  “We want to continue moving the field forward. By identifying where we want to be in the future, we can design a course of research and development to get there,” Getty President James Cuno says. “This joint effort helps us chart that course.” (more…)

Yutaka Sone, Hong Kong (2015), via David Zwirner

Art Basel is preparing to launch the first of its 2016 fair editions this week, as its international clientele touches down in the Chinese port of Hong Kong for the 4th year of the fair under the global fair franchise’s supervision.  Following last year’s impressive success and broad attendance, the fair will look to repeat its strong showing.  The challenges will be notable this year, however, in the face of slowing economic growth, and a diminished buyer pool following last year’s economic ups and downs.  Yet wealthy buyers seem to proliferate in China despite decreased confidence, seeking efficient ways to move investment out of the country’s currency during this unstable market period. (more…)

John Baldessari at Sprüth Magers, via Thisbe Gensler for Art Observed

Sprüth Magers, the German gallery with outposts in Cologne, Berlin and London, has opened its inaugural Los Angeles exhibition with a show of new works by John Baldessari.  Located across the street from LACMA on Wilshire’s Miracle Mile, the new gallery boasts two floors of paintings, its street-facing windows covered in Baldessari’s iconic scrawl, “I will not make any more boring art.”  The sixteen works in the show do not disappoint, showcasing the artist’s trademark conceptual wit in a series of works emblematizing his interest in visual and textual modes of communication, artistic authorship and the notion of absence.  Having worked across a vast range of media and styles he states descends from Duchamp, Baldessari continues to explore the agency of the viewer in finding and defining meaning in his pieces.

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Eduardo Navarro, Five minutes ago (2015), All photos via Osman Can Yerebakan for Art Observed

Since unveiling its new expansion and renovated architecture in 2014, SculptureCenter has been embarking on a series of compelling, and conceptually unorthodox exhibitions, repurposing the building’s structural challenges and unique layout into an equally unique curatorial advantage.  The Eccentrics, organized by the staff curator Ruba Katrib, is the most recent example of such efforts at matching the space’s rugged industrial façade with distinctive aesthetic trends and aesthetic sensibilities in contemporary art.  Introducing eight international artists working in a variety of media, the exhibition stems from German Marxist theorist Walter Benjamin’s observations on the circus as a platform for societal norms and a performance of fabricated others. (more…)

Damián Ortega, Paisaje 2 (2016), and Gabriel Orozco, Blind Signs (2013) via Sophie Kitching for Art Observed

The collective exhibition “xylañynu. taller de los viernes” curated by Guillermo Santamarina, brings together recent works by five artist friends and close collaborators: Gabriel Orozco, Abraham Cruzvillegas, Damián Ortega, Gabriel Kuri and Dr. Lakra. Thirty years ago they started meeting at Gabriel Orozco’s house in Ttlalplan to create a kind of alternative art school which became their “Friday Workshop”. Hosted between 1987 and 1992 by a then 25-year-old Orozco slightly older than his peers, the workshop embodied an experimental meeting place, which allowed each of them to investigate and progressively give form to their own artistic language. The latent synergy and embedded connections between their creative processes is for the first time displayed at their Mexican Gallery Kurimanzutto.

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The First Division Appellate Court has ruled that Christie’s must pay out over $700,000 in damages to Madison Avenue Gallery Chowaiki & Co over damages to its artworks stored at the auction house’s Red Hook facility during Hurricane Sandy, the NY Post reports. “I am pleased with the decision,” says attorney Eliot Greenberg, who represents the gallery. (more…)