‪‬KAWS tapped to create balloon for the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade, planning a 40 ft long version of his Companion character, and joining the ranks of Tom Otterness, Jeff Koons, Takashi Murakami, and Tim Burton, who have also participated in the ‘Blue Sky Gallery’ series

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Tom Sachs and Kanye West at the opening of SPACE PROGRAM: MARS. All photos on site for Art Observed by Elene Damenia.

Tom Sachs takes New York City to Mars in his new immersive installation at the Park Avenue Armory, SPACE PROGRAM: MARS, co-presented by Creative Time and the Armory. For four weeks, the artist and a crew of thirteen will enact various missions and rituals as if on Mars, albeit a world of faux space suits, space ships, and craters, constructed of plywood, found junk, and several trips to the hardware store. At Tuesday night’s opening preview, guests sipped ‘Astronaut Sunrise with Mars Salt Rim’ and ‘Vader Piss,’ including the likes of Kanye West, Julian Schnabel, Nate Lowman, and Hanna Liden, with Bill Powers manning the Indoctrination station. According to the press release, Sach’s work “provokes reflection on the haves and have-nots, utopian follies and dystopian realities, while asking barbed questions of modern creativity that relate to conception, production, consumption, and circulation.” One visitor remarked, “I wanted sand, red sand everywhere… but other than that, it’s great!”

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‪‬Rembrandt‘s ‘Portrait of the Artist’ on view at the Metropolitan Museum of Art through this Sunday, having traveled outside of Europe for the first time ever while the work’s London home Kenwood House undergoes renovations

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‪‬New York Botanical Garden to open new exhibition “Monet’s Garden” this Saturday, modeled after the artist’s Giverny estate by Tony Award-winning scenic designer Scott Pask

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‪‬Tracey Emin designs London Tube map to print 18 million editions, available in June through the 2012 Olympics, the 16th in a series by Art on the Underground initiative

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Do-Ho Suh, Reflection (2005–2011). Images via Leeum Samsung Museum of Art.

Korean-born multi-media artist Do-Ho Suh exhibits Home Within Home at the Leeum Samsung Museum of Art in Seoul, South Korea through June 3. The show assembles sculptural works produced over the last seven year years, which recreate interior and exterior spaces in fragile unions between skeletal metal armatures and diaphonous silk and polyester fabrics. Through his magnificent and acutely embellished domestic shells, Suh delivers fragile and impermanent representations that toy with our understanding of the home as physically and ideologically sacred and safe.

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‪‬The Guggenheim Museum announces mid-career retrospective of Dutch photographer Rineke Dijkstra to open June 29–October 28, 2012. The exhibition spans 20 years of work, featuring over 70 color photographs and five video installations, and is co-organized by the San Francisco Museum of Art, which displayed the show in February, 2012

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‪‬Mike Kelley‘s Artangel project, ‘Mobile Homestead’ to be screened at the Whitney Museum May 16–20. The video portion consists of three different hour-long videos documenting the replica of his childhood home traveling through Detroit

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Rita Ackermann, Fire By Days (2010–2012), installation view. All images via The Journal Gallery.

Since December of 2010, Hungarian painter Rita Ackermann has focused her work on a single subject, a solitary face in profile, explored through various permutations of red and blue. Now, five new works from her Fire By Days series can be seen on view at The Journal Gallery in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. Continually retreading the same territory, the Fire By Days series has received some harsh criticism, winked at by the artist and gallery by reprinting a harsh critique of some of her works from the website Hyperallergic in the show’s Press Release. Using only two primary colors, Ackermann stretches the limitations she imposes on her own work, exploring variations of texture, background, negative space, and shading to illustrate a consistently re-evaluative process at work in the creation of these paintings.

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‪‬Video: ‘A Brief History of John Baldessari‘ commissioned by LACMA for their first annual “Art + Film Gala” and narrated by Tom Waits spans the artist’s entire oeuvre, as well as his daily life in the studio, including his internet password and dog, Giotto

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‪‬Rob Pruitt‘s life-size sculpture of Andy Warhol to remain at Union Square through the summer, the installment’s second extension due to popular demand

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‪‬Videos: Tom Sachs and crew readies for SPACE PROGRAM: MARS at Park Avenue Armory, May 16–June 17 immersive installation

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‪‬Turner Prize winning artist Jeremy Deller, who recently created an inflatable, bouncy Stonehenge sculpture, to represent Britain at Venice Biennale 2013, joining the ranks of Lucian Freud, Anish Kapoor, Tracy Emin, and 2011’s Mike Nelson as UK representatives

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Alighiero Boetti, Mappa (1971–72). All images via Tate Modern

Alighiero Boetti‘s retrospective, Game Plan is on view at London’s Tate Modern through May 27. Considered a pioneer of Italy’s Arte Povera movement in the 1960s, Boetti sought to transcend the traditional limits of high art. His efforts produced a broad mix of media, aligned by simple materials and often playful concepts, resonant in the title of the show. Tapestry, sculpture, painting, and carefully assembled collages made of parcels and postage comprise some of the varied array of  work from his career spanning nearly three decades.

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Kenny Scharf, Americana (2012). All photos courtesy Honor Fraser.

Hodgepodge aptly describes the nature of Kenny Scharf’s current solo exhibition, on view now at Honor Fraser.  Since the 1980s, Scharf has created realms of fantasy fueled by his fascination with television, nature, and outer space that are manifested in all of his work. Hodgepodge is thoroughly imbued with this funfair, while the critical undertones that are present in all of his paintings seep closer to the surface.

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‪‬Chuck Close commissioned to create $1 million installation at 86th Street stop for future Second Avenue subway line, the work to include as many as 12 separate mosaics of artists Close has photographed

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‪‬Collectors Michael Hort and wife Susan discuss with Forbes their collecting style, which includes works by Richard Prince, Marlene Dumas, Lisa Yuskavage, Cindy Sherman, Kehinde Wiley, and John Currin, as well as their Rema Hort Mann Foundation

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‪‬NY Magazine debates the new home of late pharmaceutical magnate Albert Barnes’ ‘smorgasbord’ collection in downtown Philadelphia, arranged under Barnes’ strict trust stipulations

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‪‬Tom Sachs launches NIKECraft website and apparel line in conjunction with upcoming Space Program: MARS project at Park Avenue Armory opening May 16, “We choose to go to Mars not because it is easy, but because it is hard. Because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills”

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‪‬New Oslo museum Astrup Fearnley Museum of Modern Art damaged by fire today, staff and artwork by artists including Warhol, Hirst, Prince, Sherman, and Koons remain safe. Scheduled to open in September this year, the extent and cause of fire is unclear at this point

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‪‬Ai Weiwei is one of three awarded the Václav Havel Prize in Norway for Creative Dissent this week. Sponsored in part by Sergey Brin of Google and Peter Thiel, the award is intended to single out activists who highlight “the power of the powerless.”

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‪‬The Anish Kapoor-designed ArcelorMittal Orbit Tower was unveiled on Friday. Rising at 376 feet over the Olympic Stadium in East London, it is 72 feet higher than the Statue of liberty, and the tallest tower in Britain. The artist, the steel company ArcelorMittal, and city of London officials hope that the ‘awkward’ structure will boost the Eastern part of the city’s economy.

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Jean-Michel Basquiat’s, Untitled (1981). Image courtesy of Phillips de Pury.

The Contemporary Art Evening Sale at Phillips de Pury marked the last auction of the May season in New York. At the start, the salesroom was filled with lively energy among the crowd, with collectors mingling, including a Mugrabi brother. This show came after a record breaking fortnight of auctions and fairs within the art world. Coming down to the final sale, it was apparent that the buying was beginning to slow. Still, Phillips de Pury achieved a solid total sale of $86.8 million, which fell within their anticipated estimate of $75–110 million.

Before the Contemporary Evening Sale begins. Photo By Aubrey Roemer for Art Observed.

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‪‬Man Ray collection of 4,500 works valued at $20m currently housed with the artist’s extended family in a Long Island auto-body shop

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