Bradley Kronz, Untitled (2015), via Rae Wang for Art Observed

Tucked away on the fourth floor of 134 Bowery, an understated yet impressive Federal-style building, LOMEX opened its doors late last month with minimal fanfare.  The space, operated by curator, writer and artist Alexander Shulan, takes its name from one of Robert Moses’s proposed Lower Manhattan Expressway plans, a strictly utilitarian concept which would have razed much of the area around the gallery’s home, and once served as the studio of Eva Hesse. (more…)

Robert Irwin is profiled in the New York Times this week, as the artist prepares to open his new permanent installation in Marfa, and reflects on the often challenging works he has executed in public space over the past several decades.  “With Bob’s work, I think there’s been a kind of laziness in the art world in terms of understanding exactly what he’s been doing,” says Jessica Morgan, the director of the Dia foundation. (more…)

Police have uncovered what they believe to be an art theft ring at the Fiumicino and Rome airports this month, where paintings sent through oversize baggage checks were stolen away from passengers.  “Dressed in the uniforms they normally wore to work in the airport, they easily convinced people that they were providing a genuine service and managed to dupe them,” the police said in a statement.  (more…)

Arts Council England Head Darren Henley has made a statement in The Guardian this week, pledging more attention and funding to the regions outside of London, and increasing funding for areas outside the city to 75% of total funding. “With nine offices around the country, the biggest of which is not in London, but in Manchester, we understand very clearly the many beneficial dividends that investment in arts and culture pays back to communities in all parts of England,” he writes. (more…)

The WSJ looks at a growing group of artists dealing with the fluid movements of immigrants and refugees internationally, and the increased focus on notions of identity and global politics that often underscore their work.  It’s one of the themes that are going to define the latter half of this century,” says London-based artist John Akomfrah. (more…)

An article in The Guardian this week makes the argument that the art market bubble so often discussed in 2015 has already burst, pointing to the considerably diminished sales totals in late 2015, often failing to meet their estimate despite several major record-setters, and a drop-off in new buyers.  “It feels like we hit the top in the first half of 2015,” says Todd Levin, director of art advisory the Levin Art Group. “We rang that bell and things have softened ever so slightly since. My guess is that we will see further tightening over 2016.” (more…)

Agathe Snow at The Journal, via Rae Wang for Art Observed

Agathe Snow’s current exhibition at The Journal in Williamsburg is a flurry of touchstones, compiling fragments of art history, domestic objects, knitted material, paint, and any number of accompanying materials to explore what the artist deems the full-length of human existence, an attempt at a totemic retelling of man’s relationship to the world around him.  Objects cluster and clump together, or are cast into heaps and piles spread across the spacious confines of the gallery.  The show, which continues the artist’s enigmatic approach towards sculpture, identity and its related historical contexts, is at times comic, and at others sobering, interrelating the artist’s personal life, themes of death and rebirth, and the always present backdrop of human culture.

Agathe Snow at The Journal, via Rae Wang for Art Observed (more…)

Alberto Burri, Grande sacco (Large Sack) (1952). Photo: Antonio Idini, Soprintendenza alla Galleria nazionale d’arte moderna e Contemporanea, Rome, courtesy Ministero dei Beni e le Attività Culturali e del Turismo

The chasm between experience and representation seeps through the full expanse of The Trauma of Painting, a major Alberto Burri retrospective at the Guggenheim, an ambitious exhibition that’s as much an exploration in process as it is an embodiment of wartime and its brutal demands on humanity. Born in 1915 in the Italian town of Città di Castello, Umbria, a region steeped in the grandeur of Renaissance art, Burri’s early years were overshadowed by both World Wars.  While beginning his career as a doctor, his capture by the British and his internment in Texas during WWII propelled him into painting.  Without a formal artistic education, Burri developed a practice stemming from his training as a physician, evoking elements of abjection and corporeal tactility. (more…)

The New York Times profiles The 14th Factory, a massive, $3 million installation and exhibition on Wall Street curated and presented by organizer Simon Birch.  “We’re going to splash down in New York,” he says.  “There’s a huge art system here going on already, which we’re not really part of, to be honest.  We’re kind of nobodies.” (more…)

The New York Times reviews the new, $160 million expansion and renovation of the Milwaukee Museum of Art, which adds new exhibition space as well as repairs and fixes to the institution’s older wings.  “People shouldn’t come to a museum just for the architecture, and this brings back the balance to the art,” says Director Dan Keegan.   (more…)

An Egyptian Government crackdown on dissent has resulted in the closure of one of Cairo’s most prominent international galleries, as well as two publishing houses, the New York Times reports.  Authorities raided Townhouse Gallery this week, seizing papers and computers, as President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi continues to monitor institutions receiving foreign funding he suspects of subversive action.  “They are scared of Jan. 25,” says Fatima Serag, the legal director for the Association of Free Thought and Expression, referring to the anniversary of last year’s uprising in the country. (more…)

As The Art Newspaper celebrates its 25th anniversary, the paper reflects on the troubled times in contrast with the years following the end of the Cold War, and looks back at some of this year’s defining events, from the destruction of monuments and sites by ISIL to Ai Weiwei’s returned visa. (more…)

The Washington Post takes a tour of La Fabrica del Arte Cubano, a warehouse space repurposed as a nightclub and arts venue in Havana’s Vedado neighborhood.  The space is run by musician and artist X Alfonso, who operates it as a community space, giving him a certain degree of autonomy.   (more…)

University of Amsterdam art scholar Frans Grijzenhout is claiming that he has discovered the location of Vermeer’s Little Street painting, placing it in the upscale Vlamingstraat in Delft.   (more…)

Tufts University is reportedly taking over the Museum of Fine Arts Boston’s Art School, the Boston Globe reports.  The deal, effective June 30th, will allow the school’s 700-plus students to become part of Tufts, and will give operational responsibility to the University. “I think it will be more attractive to fine arts students,” says Tufts president Anthony P. Monaco. “The university can offer a lot more to them than the museum school standing on its own.” (more…)

The New York Art, Antique & Jewelry Show has reportedly lost its location at the Park Avenue Armory, part of a push by the institution towards a focus on live programming and events.  “What they’re saying is, they want to push all these shows out of the Park Avenue Armory. The goal is only to have performances,” says fair owner Scott Diament.  “It was a major shock to me.” (NYP)
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Artist Ai Weiwei recently visited refugees living on the Greek island of Lesbos this month, sharing photos and video documenting their precarious existence, and pleading for more international aid to help them in their attempts to enter Europe.   (more…)

Peter Doig, Horse and Rider (2014)

Following his solo exhibition at Fondazione Bevilacqua La Masa that coincided with the 56th Venice Biennale, Peter Doig is the subject of an exhibition at Michael Werner‘s Upper East Side townhouse with his new body of work.  Featuring works from the artist’s Italian debut, the selection of pieces at the gallery includes works Doig created in 2015, reflecting the Trinidad-based artist’s most recent artistic endeavors, and an expansion of his increasingly fluid and expressive hand. (more…)

Alex Israel is featured in the Brooklyn Rail this week, offering his take on the necessity and/or benefits of continued study at art schools for young practitioners.  “All too often, unsure of oneself, seeking the approval of a favorite professor or influential visiting artist, and/or succumbing to the brand of insecurity that only art schools can breed, an art student will sacrifice what was once the original vision for what he or she thinks the critique—faculty and peers—would prefer the work to be,” he writes. (more…)

The Art News profiles LOMEX, a new gallery by curator Alexander Shulan, based out of the former studio of Eva Hesse.  “I was in here, and it felt like an artist might have been here, and I looked up the address, and decided this was the space,” he says. (more…)

Jenny Holzer is collaborating with Google to create an app commemorating HIV/AIDS victims, made in conjunction with her installation for the NYC AIDS Memorial.  “Excerpts from Song of Myself by Walt Whitman will be the text on the granite paving stones. The Whitman poem is a beauty from a man in full and glad possession of his body,” Holzer said. “The app should add content from visitors and from other authors—I’m thinking a lot about David Wojnarowicz, for example—for a rich mix.” (more…)

Ellsworth Kelly, Curves on White (Four Panels) (2012), via Art Observed

Ellsworth Kelly, a pioneer of 20th Century abstraction and an early voice in the development of color field painting and cut-canvas work, has passed away at the age of 92.

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The New York Times looks at the history of the Middle Eastern art magazine Bidoun, which has traced a unique voice in contemporary art discourse over the past 11 years.  “Our vision of the Mideast extends to India, it extends to L.A. It certainly doesn’t fulfill the expectations of the ‘Clash of Civilizations’ vision that’s so pervasive,” says Senior Editor Negar Azimi. (more…)

Dominique Gonzales-Foerster, Exotourisme (néon) (2002-2013), all photos via Daphné Mookherjee for Art Observed

The work of Dominique Gonzales-Foerster often combines media, spatial arrangements and video within the prism of time to explore links and lines of intersection between literature, film, architecture and music.  For her retrospective at the Centre Pompidou, she takes over the Galerie Sud as a spatial timeline, superimposing temporal strata to create an installation that serves as both a retrospective and forward-looking journey into the body of her work, questioning the viewer on fragmented identities and fictions, notions of inside and outside or absence and presence, and even the idea of time travel. (more…)