John Russell, Well (2021), via Bridget Donahue

Well, John Russell‘s new exhibition on view through this weekend at Bridget Donahue in New York consists of a single work, an 87 x 22 ft Vinyl print of “Hell,” as the gallery describes it, a sprawling digital collage that twists a range of horrifying graphics and symbols into a teeming mass of spectatorship. (more…)

Robert Grosvenor, Untitled (2019), via Paula Cooper

Exploring divergent production approaches and interlocking conceptual outputs, the current exhibition at Paul Cooper’s 26th street exhibition explores the work of Robert Grosvenor and David Novros, exploring the pair’s shared interests and many years of friendship.  Grosvenor, a sculptor, and Novros, a painter, met as members of the artists’ cooperative and gallery Park Place, a hotbed of avant-garde art in the 1960s. Contemporaries and mutual admirers of each other’s work, their shared sensitivity to architectural space and approach towards particular conditions for viewing art make for a unique show plan.  (more…)

Charles Ray, Clothes Pile (2020), via Matthew Marks

Pursuing a timely and intriguing exploration of the current contexts of confinement and isolation as expressed in our Covid-19 dominated world, Matthew Marks Gallery has opened a new show, Home Life, at its 523 West 24th Street. Featuring new works by Alex Da Corte, Robert Gober, and Charles Ray, all exhibited for the first time, together with earlier works by Nayland Blake, Nan Goldin, and Ken Price, among others, the show takes the domestic and the personal as a springboard for broader ideations around the expression of self and society in the most intimate environs.  (more…)

A piece in Art Newspaper details the recent trend towards creative agencies representing artists in pursuit of large-scale commissions and other projects. “We focus exclusively on building and actioning a bespoke strategy for each artist that we work with,” says Rebecca Davies of Southern & Partners. (more…)

The staff at Mass MOCA is pushing to unionize. “We don’t have specifics yet, but some of the things that have come up already are better pay, better COVID safety precautions [and] benefits like paid family leave and more flexible working situations,” says Amanda Tobin, the museum’s associate director of education. (more…)

The Paris Biennale is permanently discontinued, Art Newspaper reports. Once considered among the world’s most prestigious fairs, the event has folded to pursue new projects. (more…)

Jonathan Monk, Not Me, Me (Installation View)

Jonathan Monk’s investigations into memory, ephemera and artistic process emerge from his practice as an inveterate observer, participant and collector of both popular culture and conceptual art, a constant observer and documentarian whose works explore the wide ranges of history, politics, sociology and memory in a way that brings the viewer with him through a maze of references and touchpoints. In a new series of works on view at Lisson this month, particularly a set of collages entitled Exhibit Model Detail with Additional Information, Monk charts and revisits some of his own exhibition history using photographic evidence of previous solo shows, harking back to the first museum presentation featuring wallpaper of his own past work at Kunsthaus Baselland in 2016. (more…)

Following the announced closure of Metro Pictures, Cindy Sherman will head to Hauser & Wirth, Art News reports. “Cindy is already established in the history of modern and contemporary American art, thanks in no small measure to the extraordinary work of Janelle Reiring and Helene Winer of Metro Pictures, her gallery since the early 1980s. We are excited to build upon their achievements and to introduce the artist’s work to ever-broader audiences and new generations worldwide,” says Marc Payot. (more…)

Ai Weiwei has moved to Portugal, and is currently planning a large-scale sculptural tribute to Mikhail Gorbachev. “To this day we don’t see anyone like Gorbachev in China,” he says. “But if China doesn’t have political reform like what Gorbachev initiated, there will be no good result of China’s economic development.” (more…)

Metro Pictures will close by year’s end, the gallery has announced, ending its run as a major player in New York’s art market. “We have decided to announce this difficult decision far in advance of our closing in order to give the artists we represent and our staff time to pursue other options and to allow us to participate in their transitions,” the gallery said in a statement. (more…)

Etel Adnan, Horizon 8 (2020), via Lévy Gorvy

Currently on at Lévy Gorvy in Paris, the artist Etel Adnan has curated a selection of works in collaboration with Victoire de Pourtalès, centered around a poetic and nostalgic text by the artist. Exploring her movements between Lebanon, California, and France, the text, and the show at large considers the importance of physical and aesthetic displacements, using her own personal horizon, and the questions raised by such mutations as a way to explore broader questions of social and cultural dynamics. (more…)

Lucas Blalock, M_M_M_M_M_ (Daisychain) (2020), via Eva Presenhuber

Open now at Galerie Eva Presenhuber’s New York exhibition space, artist Lucas Blalock has brought together a body of new works under the title Florida, 1989, marking his second solo exhibition with the gallery. Drawing on memory and trauma, Blalock’s work in the show explores his own history, and its traces appearing throughout his work.  (more…)

Jordan Kasey, Umbrella (2021), via Nicelle Beauchene

On view this month at Nicelle Beauchene in New York, painter Jordan Kasey has assembled a body of new works drawing lines through the melodramatic and the comical, playful and surreal paintings that draw on the artist’s sense of light and space, while exploring the act of gesture and tension.  (more…)

Kayode Ojo, Overdressed (Blush) (2018), via Martos

“What is the Lost & Found in art? Is there such a place? Is it a state of mind, of curiosity? Existing everywhere at all times? To occasion, over and again, a parallel with life, its flow? The tide comes in and the tide goes out, and what washes up randomly upon the shore? As many go about putting a lost year behind us, we wonder how to find our way back to ourselves, to one another, to those gone. Belongings. What belongs to us, and to whom do we belong? Can a gallery be thought of as a Lost & Found?” (more…)

LaToya Ruby Frazier has a piece in the NYT this week, showcasing new work and talking about her critical approach towards American culture. “I am showing these dark things about America because I love my country and countrymen,” she says. “When you love somebody, you tell them the truth. Even if it hurts.” (more…)

MoMA has covered up the name of late architect Philip Johnson on wall signs amid allegations of his fascist views. “To move forward with the exhibition thoughtfully, honoring the communities that the artists and their works represent, we feel it’s appropriate to respect the exhibition design suggestion and cover the signage with Johnson’s name outside the Architecture and Design galleries on an interim basis,” a MoMA spokesperson said. “To confront this matter, the Museum currently has underway a rigorous research initiative to explore in full the allegations against Johnson and gather all available information. This work is ongoing.” (more…)

Italy is looking to combat its crush of tourists in major cities by leasing works from the Uffizi in Florence to smaller museums and spaces around the country, CNN reports. “We already have over 3,000 works of art on display in the Uffizi — that’s enough,” Uffizi director Eike Schmidt says. (more…)

A piece in the New York Times this week notes the shifting relationships galleries are taking towards physical spaces, including the possibility that galleries may soon abandon their physical locales.“The question is whether galleries will continue to have space in London,” says Frieze’s Simon Fox. The organization has opened its own gallery space at No. 9 Cork Street that works with a range of galleries and dealers. “The answer to that, in time, might be ‘no.’”  (more…)

After a lengthy construction period, the new Munch Museum building in Oslo is preparing to open, the Architectural Digest reports. (more…)

The UK has announced that museums will not be able to reopen until Mid-May, a full month after shops and retail galleries.  “It just makes no sense,” says Rebecca Salter, the president of the Royal Academy of Arts . On the 12 April all the retail will open on Piccadilly and our gates will stay shut, I don’t get the logic of it frankly. It just doesn’t feel joined up to me … I’m angry.” (more…)

A piece in the NYT looks at the artists already thinking of the best way to commemorate those lost to the Covid-19 pandemic. “They want to recognize the deaths of those individuals, as well as to express a communal sense of shared loss and shared remembrance,” says geographer Avril Maddrell. (more…)

A major Paris scene painted by Vincent van Gogh and not yet seen in public since 1887 will go on view publicly this year, taking a tour of Europe before selling at Sotheby’s this May. “Very few paintings from Van Gogh’s Montmartre period remain in private hands – most are in the collections of prestigious museums around the world,” says Aurélie Vandevoorde of Sotheby’s. “The appearance on the market of a painting of this calibre, from such an iconic series, undoubtedly marks a major event.” (more…)

Rebecca Ackroyd, Breath Taking (2020), via Peres Projects

Artist Rebecca Ackroyd is interested in the twinned experiences of personal and collective memory, and how we reconcile their dissonance in our lives. Making a nuanced exploration of these ideas in concert with a unique fusion of concept and material, her new show, 100mph, her second exhibition at Peres Projects, Ackroyd architecturally intervenes in the space with semitransparent, plastic dividers, creating pods that isolate both the works and the viewer.  (more…)

A piece in the SCMP looks at the trend of independent curators and gallerists filling abandoned retail spaces with art in Hong Kong.  “You have to go through a lot to get funding, or be noticed by institutions and galleries. But there is this regenerative energy that exists here – we always find a way to work around things,” she says curator Eunice Tsang. (more…)