Despite pending legal challenges to its construction, artist Christo has begun the preparation process for his “Over the River” project, an ambitious installation that will drape almost 6 miles of silver fabric over the Arkansas River in Colorado.  The artist has started clearing railroad tracks along the project’s route, and taking efforts to minimize effects on the area’s bighorn sheep population.  While official construction was supposed to begin next month, challenges to permits have made the official start date uncertain.  “I don’t consider it a pause,” Christo said. “It’s part of the dynamics of the project.”

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Christian Marclay’s film The Clock, recently closed its one month run at the Museum of Modern Art this week, drawing a record 40,000 visitors to the museum.  The number of visitors exceeds the combined counts for The Clock’s two prior New York screenings.  The winner of the Golden Lion at the 2011 Venice Biennale, Marclay’s film literally tells time, using shots of  various clocks from the full range of film history to compile a full 24-hour viewing experience. (more…)

Performance artist Terence Koh has announced that he is currently working on an opera to premiere at the new Thaddeus Ropac complex on the outskirts of Paris.  The work will be done in collaboration with composers from the Philharmonie de Paris, and follows in the footsteps of Marina Abramovic, who debuted her own opera last year in Madrid. (more…)

In what will become a permanent installation, artist Xavier Veilhan has installed his sculpture of Jean-Marc Bustamante a few steps from the Museum of Modern Art.  The piece sits at the entranceway for RXR Realty, the company that commissioned its installation, and was created with the use of three-dimensional scanning technology and stainless steel construction.

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Romanian authorities have arrested three men suspected of the theft of seven paintings by Pablo Picasso, Henri Matisse, Paul Gaugin, and others from a Rotterdam museum.  The paintings were stolen last October in an overnight break-in. While the works have yet to be recovered, police believe that they are hidden in an undisclosed location in Romania.   (more…)

Richard Deacon, Four by Four (2012), via Marian Goodman

Marian Goodman is currently presenting a selection of new works by Welsh sculptor Richard Deacon, documenting the artist’s ongoing interest in form and surface through a variety of both hung and freestanding sculptures.  Composed of both wood and metal works, Deacon’s pieces on view explore the implications of texture on the form and presentation of the work, and the dissonances in volume and presence that result. (more…)

Some 350 engravings by Romantic era poet and artist William Blake have been discovered in the library of the University of Manchester.  A team of student and faculty researches uncovered the prints after an extensive, two-year search through the library’s archives.  According to library archivist Stella Halkyard:  “The students had some specialist training in identifying prints from David Morris at the Whitworth Art Gallery before hunting through the collection. They found out we actually had a huge number of commercial engravings by Blake.” (more…)

Painter Jean-Michel Basquiat’s tribute to his favorite writer, William Burroughs, titled Five Fish Series will be on the auction block at Sotheby’s February 12th Contemporary Arts sale. The work is estimated to sell from £4.25 million to £6.25 million.  “Basquiat is the blue chip artist of the moment,” said Sotheby’s contemporary specialist Alex Branczik. “He is recognised today in perhaps the same way he recognized Burroughs in the 1980s as someone who was streets ahead of his time – Basquiat is the artist who everybody wants at the moment so we have high hopes of it doing well at auction.” (more…)

A federal judge has decided in favor of sculptor Robert Indiana in a case that claimed the artist had renounced work he had previously authenticated.  Dealer Joao Tovar, who brought the suit, had purchased a series of works attributed to Indiana, and was about to sell them at auction when the artist stepped in to renounce the works as his.  The court ruled that the works were in fact created by Indiana’s longtime associate, John Gilbert. (more…)

Vik Muniz, Pictures of Magazine 2 (Installation View), via Galeria Elba Benítez

Currently on view at Galeria Elba Benítez in Madrid, Pictures of Magazine 2 is a solo show for Brazilian artist Vik Muniz.  The works in this exhibition are created using Muniz’s unique collage process, combining magazine images to recreate the works of famous artists, all while incorporating his own artistic bent. He then takes photographs of his finished collages, enlarges them, and prints them to create the finished piece. (more…)

Enoc Pérez, “The Good Days” (Installation View)

Enoc Pérez’s second solo exhibition at Acquavella Galleries marks the artist’s first foray into sculpture. Having developed a refined hand-printing technique on canvas (involving a laborious process of transferring pigment onto paper using a series of impressions), Pérez now delves into three-dimensionality.  Titled “The Good Days,” this exhibition marries the artist’s choice medium of brushless painting with sculpture, showing a strong progression for his oeuvre.

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Former curator for the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, Sir Roy Strong has called British art galleries and museums to task for presenting exhibitions avoiding criticism of British policy.  The harsh words come as the V&A gears up for an exhibition on David Bowie.  He says: “I always saw the role of director as primarily to lift people to paradise and to give them information and delight – and then, at another moment, claw them, so they were absolutely shocked and they were made to think about what was going on around them.”

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The construction of a new corporate campus for corporate giant LG Electronics is raising concerns from The Metropolitan Museum of Art for its potential to intrude on the scenic view of northern Manhattan’s Cloisters Museum.  The site, which was donated by John D. Rockefeller, is renowned for its pristine views of the Hudson River Palisades, and LG’s proposed construction would obscure a portion of the famous scenery.  “I don’t think they’d been aware of the larger context, the historic context, the geographic context,” said Rockefeller’s grandson, Larry. “I think LG really wants to do the right thing, and I’m hopeful that will lead them to redesign it.”   (more…)

Black Cake, Installation view at 83 Grand Street, Courtesy of Team Gallery, New York

Black Cake at Team Gallery is a multi-generational group exhibition curated by Alex Gartenfeld, the young critic and curator whose former West Street Gallery project space was a notable new addition to the downtown art scene before it closed last summer. The exhibition takes its point of departure from the Gaelic spring ritual of Beltane (by way of scholar Roberto Calasso’s account in his 1994 book The Ruin of Kasch), during which a cake would be prepared and divided among members of a tribe. One piece would be covered in ash (hence the name “black cake”), and whomever chose this piece would be pushed into the Beltane bonfire, becoming a sacrificial casualty of the fertility holiday. The exhibition presents the diverse aesthetic iterations of “sweetness” and social identity in contemporary art, notions addressed dynamically across a variety of media through the works on view.

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New York magazine builds a portrait, with quotes from those such as Richard Serra, of the enigmatic yet indisputably influential top art dealer Larry Gagosian.  The article focuses on Gagosian’s role in the Warhol market in relation to the Mugrabi family; the recent artist defections Gagosian’s gallery has incurred, among them Damien Hirst and Yayoi Kusama; and the recent Perelman and Cowles lawsuits, respectively. “Gagosian’s rise over the past 25 years, concurrent with the development of modern Wall Street, certainly shares a strand of its philosophical double-helix with the hedge-fund approach to investing. The idea is to leave as little to chance—or, in his case, taste—as possible in order to put a value of his own choosing on his assets.”
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Francesco Clemente, Mandala for Crusoe (Installation View), via Blain|Southern Gallery

For the first time in seven years, painter Francesco Clemente is having a show in London, titled “Mandala for Crusoe,” at Blain|Southern’s recently opened Hanover Square location. Born in Italy, Clemente divides his time between New York and Varanasi, a city on the banks of the Ganges River in northern India, and the works in this exhibition reflect this diverse international influence.

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Filmed in 1968, Andy Warhol’s “San Diego Surf” spent years locked away before finally seeing a screening at 2011’s Art Basel Miami Beach.  The film, shot by Warhol and his manager/assistant Paul Morrissey, had sat unfinished until 1995, when the Warhol Foundation commissioned Paul Morrissey to complete a final cut.  The film will finally see a public release this month at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City, on view from January 23 to the 28th. (more…)

Dealer Christopher D’Amelio, formerly of Paula Cooper Gallery and his own space in the Chelsea neighborhood of Manhattan, has announced that he will be closing his gallery to join the expanding gallery network of David Zwirner.  Mr. D’Amelio will be positioned at the gallery’s 20th Street space in New York City.  “Chris brings a lot of experience and knowledge, especially when it comes to Minimalism.” Said Zwirner in an interview with the New York Times. (more…)

On February 5th, Sotheby’s will offer Salvador Dali’s portrait of international socialite Mona Bismarck as part of their Modern Art auction.  The painting will look to follow the recent spike in auction prices for Dali’s work, and is forecasted to sell at $2.41 to $3.21 million.  Samuel Valette, a specialist at Sotheby’s, calls the estimate for “Portrait of Mrs. Harrison Williams” “a fair estimate that leaves room for excitement.” (more…)

Wolfgang Tillmans, Exhibition View, via Moderna Museet Stockholm

20 years of photographic works by Wolfgang Tillmans, the first photographer ever to win the Turner Prize, are currently on view at Moderna Museet, comprising his first major show in Sweden.

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Jonas Mekas, Jonas Mekas (Installation View), Via Serpentine Gallery

Lithuanian-American artist Jonas Mekas has worn many hats over his sixty-plus year career. Emigrating to the United States after his imprisonment in labor camps during World War II, Mekas began creating films that embraced a diaristic approach to documenting the events of his own life, but were informed by his active participation in the New York avant-garde film scene of the 1950’s. (more…)

Andrea Mary Marshall, Gia Condo (Installation View) – All photos by Elene Damenia for Art Observed unless otherwise noted.

Blending fashion photography, performance, video and painting, the second solo exhibition by artist Andrea Mary Marshall explores the artist’s alter ego – the drag-embracing, Mona Lisa-fixated painter Gia Condo.  Across 13 canvases and a series of photographs, the artist explores issues of gender and identity that surround the famous painting of the smiling woman, re-imagining them in the style of predominantly male contemporary artists like Keith Haring, Francis Bacon, and Marcel Duchamp.

Andrea Mary Marshall, Gia Condo (Installation View)

Art Observed spoke with Marshall at the opening of her exhibition at Allegra LaViola Gallery about the character of Gia Condo, and her motivations for the exhibition.

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Larry Gagosian responded yesterday to a lawsuit by client Ronald O Perelman over money lost in the exchange of 11 works valued at over $45 million, including an unfinished Jeff Koons sculpture, a Cy Twombly painting, and a sculpture by Richard Serra. In a series of papers filed this week in New York State Supreme Court, Gagosian claims that he had lost money in the transactions, and that Perelman’s claims were “frivolous.” (more…)

Olafur Eliasson, The volcano series, (2012), via neugerriemschneider

Olafur Eliasson, in his sixth solo show at neugerriemschneider Berlin, exhibits new work portraying Iceland, his familial homeland. His new photographic series captures the country’s infamous natural features, and through these stunning images transports the viewer into the scale and physicality of the Icelandic landscape. (more…)