Jake and Dinos Chapman are profiled in The Guardian this week, discussing their sprawling Hell installation, and the countless horrors occurring across its expanse of miniature figures, and the first draft of the work’s destruction in a massive warehouse fire.  “We heard the Momart warehouse was on fire and drove up to have a giggle because we thought it was full of other YBA art. Then we got a call saying Hell was in there,” Jake Chapman says.  “We just laughed: two years to make, two minutes to burn. A smart-assed journo phoned up and said: ‘Is it true that Hell is on fire?’ It was fantastic – like a work of art still in the process of being made, even as it burnt.” (more…)

This week, The Guardian looks at the fates of past years’ Serpentine Pavilion commissions, and their destinations after the work is taken down.  With most pavilions sold before they are installed, the article offers a look at the shifts in use and context as works appear in the gardens of Indian steel magnates, or used as a beachside restaurant in the Côte d’Azur in France. (more…)

In the Courtyard of Messe Basel

As the opening previews draw to a close in Basel today, the 46th edition of Switzerland’s massive art fair and exhibition is well underway, capping two initial days of strong sales and attendance during the VIP Previews that have set a brisk tone for the week’s proceedings. (more…)

Lucas Samaras, XYZ 1700 (2015), via Pace Gallery

On view at its 25th Street galleries, Pace is currently presenting Lucas Samaras’s exhibition Albums 2, featuring over 700 digitally enhanced photographs and a mirrored room installation.  Samaras’s exhibition showcases his continued exploration of manipulated imagery as a way of plumbing his own existence, this time playing through his autobiographical accounts with digital technologies. (more…)

Lee Ufan, (Installation View), via Bria Cole for Art Observed

If tranquility could serve as a physical construct, rather than a state of mind, then a state of calm could perhaps be considered as a reconditioning of vision, a way to perceive extended relations of time, material and space.  This sense of the perceptual retooling, and its effects, is one reading offered by Lee Ufan’s continuous series Relatum and Dialogue, the most recent version of which is currently on view at Pace Gallery.   The artist tends towards a relationship between philosophy and the objects he creates with artistic significance, in order to provoke subtle perceptual reconsiderations, as proposed in his writings and contributions to the Mono-ha school of artistic practice.

(more…)

Artist Bernar Venet’s Venet Foundation and Museum in Le Muy, France, is the subject of a New York Times profile this week, documenting the artist’s impressive collection of major American artists, including Donald Judd and Sol LeWitt, which the artist often secured through barters or purchases on “friend rates.”  “Our works had no commercial value,” Mr. Venet says of the works he often traded his own pieces for. “We produced more than we sold.” (more…)

Bloomberg looks at the popularity of Yayoi Kusama’s Infinity Rooms among collectors, and its prominence in a number of major museum collections, including the recently opened Garage Center in Moscow.  “Russians loved Kusama,” says collector Inga Rubenstein. “The work is easy to understand because it’s so beautiful.” (more…)

Dasha Zhukova’s long-awaited Garage Center for Contemporary Art has opened in Moscow’s Gorky Park, designed by architect Rem Koolhaas from a repurposed Soviet-era dining canteen.  “We are very happy to work on turning the almost-ruin of vremena goda into the new house for garage,’ says Koolhaas. “We were able, with our client and her team, to explore the qualities of generosity, dimension, openness, and transparency of the soviet wreckage and find new uses and interpretations for them.” (more…)

Climate change activists have concluded a 25-hour long protest against the Tate Modern’s sponsorship by British Petroleum, writing messages and critics on the Turbine Hall floor after facing down a potential use of police force that was not acted upon.  “It’s a back-down,” says Liberate Tate member and writer Mel Evans. “Maybe it’s a sign of how much the groundswell of public opinion has shifted that the Tate doesn’t feel like they can shut down this discussion.”

(more…)

Cecily Brown, The English Garden (Installation View), Rachel Williams for Art Observed

Currently at Maccarone Gallery are a set of intimately-sized canvases by painter Cecily Brown.  Aggressively captivating beyond their small boarders, the artist’s works here ignite a series of personal experiences as viewers stand inches away from canvases no more than 18 inches in height or width. Organized by novelist and art writer Jim Lewis, The English Garden contains garden scenes rather than traditional landscapes.  Sharp lines inside Brown’s expressionist marks create additional horizons that depict mysterious and often open-ended garden scenes. (more…)

Outside Art Basel, via Art Basel

The doors are set to open at Messeplatz in Basel, Switzerland this week, for the 46th edition of the Art Basel art fair, the massive fair exhibition that has come to define the early summer months in Europe.  Bringing the massively international scope of the world’s elite galleries, this year’s Art Basel promises another strong outing.  (more…)

An article in Bloomberg this week traces the path of stolen art from theft through to sale, accounting for the variations in strategy by thieves for maximizing returns on what are often considered unsellable works.  “Sometimes people don’t even recognize that the art’s gone missing” says Bonnie Magness-Gardiner, head of the FBI’s art-theft program. “It could be in a storage facility, or in the basement of someone’s house, and it can often be years before anyone notices it’s gone.”  (more…)

Artist Mark Bradford is profiled in the New Yorker this week, discussing his work, his early life growing up in Los Angeles, and his recent adventures into performance and stand-up comedy.  “I’d seen so many black male comics, with their untouchable heterosexual superiority,” he says. “I thought, well, why not do a piece where we shake that up a little bit?” (more…)

The Guardian notes the recent completion of two new European contemporary art spaces (The Garage Center in Moscow and the Fondazione Prada in Milan) designed by Rem Koolhaas, heralding what some consider a new era in the shape and strategy for cultural centers.  “If you want to change the world you also have to decide what you want to keep,” Koolhaas states.

(more…)

Robert Motherwell. Opens (Installation View) All Images Courtesy Andrea Rosen Gallery.

Now through June 20, Andrea Rosen Gallery will host a comprehensive exhibition of Robert Motherwell’s Open series, composed from 1967 through the 1970s, and set to coincide with the centennial of the artist’s birth.  This historical marker exemplifies the gallery’s ongoing commitment to looking to the recent past of contemporary art in order to expand upon trends currently emerging, and to trace the influence of major figures in the art world.  As the gallery’s press release states, “Opens not only allows us to compare these masterworks against the present-day focus on abstraction, but also encourages us to reconcile the breadth of Motherwell’s rigor and clarity.”  This comprehensive exhibition of one of the artist’s lesser-known series provides the opportunity to deepen public understanding of the legacy of Motherwell as an artist and a significant force in mid-twentieth century New York City.

(more…)

Maccarone Gallery is the latest New York gallery opening an exhibition space in Los Angeles, the New York Times reports.  The gallery will take up residence at 300 South Mission Road, a location that inspired gallerist Michele Maccarone.  “I saw the space and was very inspired by it,” she says. “The departure point was really the building.” (more…)

Karen Kilimnik, The Cold Winter Lane, The Polish Countryside, A Delft Landscape (2013) via Sprüth Magers

Artist Karen Kilimnik returns to Sprüth Magers this month, showcasing her small-scale, painted appropriations, mixed with the influence of traditional Delftware.  Kilimnik’s work focuses on expressing her own views of openness and precision, elegance and humor through a variety of mediums, often creating site-specific projects that mimic 19th Century interiors and often incorporating the design and fashion of the era.  Her small paintings overlay found imagery with new landscapes and imagined scenarios, reinforcing the atmospheric effects of the painterly surface while maintaining the scale and shape of the landscape and her palette. (more…)

Following the example of collectors seeking tax breaks for their donation of art works to museums, artists themselves are seeking more equitable tax treatment for donating works.  While collectors currently can claim fair market value for the works they donate, artists themselves can only write off the cost of materials.  “It seems to me there is a discrepancy in treatment there”, says Philippe Vergne, director of MOCA. “What’s extraordinary is that artists keep giving.”  (more…)

Yinka Shonibare MBE, Ballet God (Apollo) (2015)

Currently on view at James Cohan Gallery is Yinka Shonibare MBE’s new body of work, including exuberant, playful sculptures along with digital prints.  The UK-based Nigerian-born artist came into recognition with his hybrid sculptures, utilizing Dutch wax fabric, a textile material of complex patterns and tight allusions to colonialism due to its long, bureaucratic history of trade.  In his recent exhibition, Shonibare weighs on a broader issue compared to his familiar themes of colonialism, political supremacy and racial identity, looking at global climate changes and growing effects of these permutations throughout the world. (more…)

A Los Angeles Judge has rejected a lawsuit against the nation of Spain and the Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum in Madrid to return a Camille Pissarro taken from the Cassirer family through forced sale by Nazis in 1939.  The painting, Rue Saint-Honoré, Après-midi, Effet de Pluie, was subject to Spanish law, Judge John F. Walter ruled, and therefore could not be removed by his decision.  The family plans to appeal.  “Museums and governments around the world recognize the need to return Nazi-looted art to its rightful owners,” said Laura Brill, a lawyer for the Cassirer family. “Here, it is undisputed that the Pissarro was owned by the Cassirer family until it was stolen by the Nazis in 1939.” (more…)

Amid a New York State Attorney’s investigation and the resignation of five board of trustee members at Cooper Union, the University’s embattled President Jamshed Bharucha has resigned.  Bharucha headed Cooper during its controversial decision to begin charging tuition, and has been the subject of numerous protest actions since.  He will take a position as visiting scholar at Harvard. (more…)

Yayoi Kusama, Obliteration Room (2002 – present), via Art Observed

Yayoi Kusama returns to New York City this summer at David Zwirner, bringing a new body of paintings, sculptures, and one of her popular, full-room installation pieces, all of which offers a nuanced look at the 86 year-old artist’s prolific output.

Yayoi Kusama, My Life (2014), via Art Observed

(more…)

Tony Oursler, EUC (2015), All images are by Osman Can Yerebakan for Art Observed.

The new body of work by acclaimed new media artist Tony Oursler is currently on view at Lehmann Maupin’s Chrystie street location. Aligned with his signature style of analyzing high technology and its idiosyncratic tone in correlation to the human body, Oursler delves into the limits of human expression in his new exhibition.  Although he was born in New York City, Oursler emerged in late 1970s along with a group of West Coast artists such as Mike Kelley and Jim Shaw after graduating from the California Institute of the Arts, where he studied under John Baldessari. (more…)

A long-running investigation into the contested work Saul and David has resulting in the painting’s reattribution as the work of Rembrandt, an attribution that was previously denied in 1969.  “For eight years, a large team of international experts has contributed to the research. A wide range of trusted and innovative research techniques have been employed,” says Mauritshuis Museum Director Emilie Gordenker The result is significant: the Mauritshuis has one of its most famous Rembrandts back.”  (more…)