Carsten Höller, Double Carousel with Zöllner Stripes. Image via Enel Contemporanea.

Well-known Belgian artist Carsten Höller is the recipient of the 2011 Enel Contemporanea Award. Now in its fifth year, the Enel Contemporanea is sponsored by the Italian power company Enel, also sponsor to the 54^th Venice Biennale. In an effort to explore the connections between energy, a lifeline for contemporary society, and current art production, Enel annually commissions an original work that takes on themes around power and energy. Höller, oft associated with what Nicolas Bourriaud coined as Relational Aesthetics in the 1990s, contributed Double Carousel with Zöllner Stripes, now on view at the Museum of Contemporary Art Rome (MACRO). Selected by a committee of curators from around the world, past projects have included The Butterfly House by Dutch duo Bik Van der Pol (2010), an open-air installation on Tiber Island by US artist Doug Aitken (2009), and a lunar eclipse by Canadian artist Angela Bulloch above the Arc Pacis (2007).

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‪‬Shea Hembrey single-handedly fabricates biennial art book of 100 made-up artists in 2 years as a work of “satire and reverence,” the project titled ‘Seek: 100 artists in 2011’ [AO Newslink]

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‪‬Tate Triennial 2012 cancelled due to questionable success, the museum instead reviewing the programme and focusing on the Tate Britain Millbank project [AO Newslink]

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‪‬Metropolitan Museum of Art collaborates with Google Goggles to recognize over 76,000 works through mobile app, “yet another milestone in our effort to provide global access to our collections.” [AO Newslink]

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Installation view of Uta Barth at Tanya Bonakdar Gallery. All images via Tanya Bonakdar.

In her current solo exhibition at Tanya Bonakdar Gallery, the German-born and Los Angeles-based photographer Uta Barth presents works from her recent partner projects, …and to draw a bright white line with light (previously shown in her 2011 solo exhibition at The Art Institute of Chicago) and Compositions of Light on White. Both series carry the themes of atmospheric flux, the passage of time, and ephemerality that have come to characterize Barth’s practice. Long recognized for her rigorous examination of the conventions of photography and the poetics of visual perception, Barth takes on the role of the observer at the window in these most recent series.

Uta Barth, …and to draw a bright white line with light (Untitled 11.2) (2011)

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‪‬Richard Serra’s 80-foot sculpture, titled ‘7,’ unveiled at MIA Park inauguration on grounds of Islamic Museum of Art in Doha, Qatar [AO Newslink]

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George Condo, Purple Compression (2011). All images via Skarstedt Gallery.

George Condo is currently showing eleven new works from his ongoing series Drawing Paintings at the Skarstedt Gallery in New York. Combining techniques of spontaneous drawing and more calculated painting, the series blends charcoal lines with pastel acrylics in Condo’s signature figurations. The large colorful canvases are busy with eyes and teeth, bowties and breasts, with the series-within-a-series, Compressions, leaving small stretches of blank canvas outside the compressed scenes. Condo says of the series, “They are about freedom of line and color and blur the distinction between drawing and painting. They are about beauty and horror walking hand in hand. They are about improvisation on the human figure and it’s consciousness.”

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Shepard Fairey designs cover of Time Magazine 2011 Person of the Year: The Protestor (with Ai WeiWei as runner up) [AO Newslink]

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‪‬Tracey Emin appointed Professor of Drawing at Royal Academy Schools in London; Emin “excited to be teaching again” [AO Newslink]

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Ugo Rondinone, ERSTERJUNIZWEITAUSENDUNDELF (2011). All images courtesy of Almine Rech Gallery.

New Horizon is the sixth solo exhibition by Swiss artist Ugo Rondinone at Almine Rech Gallery Brussels. For the first time since 1997 the artist’s iconic “horizon paintings” are being presented along with a series of watercolors. The now New York-based multi-media artist has continually questioned the relationship between viewer and artwork as well as the role of the artist and his place in the world. This series of works offer an entry point into the artist’s personal meditations around these inquiries while challenging the notion of public versus private domains.

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‪Damien Hirst interviewed before his show of ‬300 spot paintings in 11 Gagosian galleries “‘What would be more appealing … to have made the Mona Lisa painting itself or have made the merchandising possibilities — putting a postcard on everyone’s walls all over the world? Both are brilliant, but in a way I would probably prefer the postcards” [AO Newslink]

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‪‬Tracey Emin to sell limited edition prints and works out of new east London shop, Tracey International [AO Newslink]

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Designer Adam Kimmel and Leelee Sobieski commission artist Dan Attoe for short film ‘Dan Attoe Makes a Painting’ featuring battle scene with a sasquatch [AO Newslink]

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‪‬London Tate’s partnership with BP Oil up for review in 2012: renewal protested by petition of 8,000 while Tate trustees defend good that has come from BP contributions [AO Newslink]

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Nan Goldin, Swan-like embrace, Paris (2010). All images courtesy of Matthew Marks Gallery.

Nan Goldin: Scopophilia at Matthew Marks Gallery is the artist’s first exhibition in New York since 2007. Scopophilia, referring to the love of looking, contemplates Goldin’s images gathered from throughout her career, presenting them alongside recent photos shot at the Musée de Louvre. Her unprecedented after-hours access to the Louvre’s collections gave rise to new pairings and new interpretations of older work, as well as a 25-minute slide show.

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Spencer Sweeney at Gavin Brown’s enterprise. All photos on site for Art Observed by Samuel Sveen.

Alongside owning and operating the well-known downtown venue Santo’s Party House, Spencer Sweeney divides his time among music, visual arts, and event promotion. Accordingly, his current show at Gavin Brown’s enterprise, The Pharaoh’s Lounge, explores the intersection of these interests, with a show that blurs the lines between art installation, night club, and, quite literally, a hookah lounge. Dara Friedman also presents separately a black and white film, The Dancer, in an additional space of the gallery.

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‪‬Doug Aitken to illuminate Hirshhorn Museum in Washington, DC with 360-Degree “Liquid Architecture” Projection This Spring [AO Newslink]

Read article via Art Daily

Anish Kapoor announced as the label designer for Chateau Mouton Rothschild 2009.  Mouton has commissioned a different artist to produce its label every year since 1945, including Picasso, Andy Warhol, Chagall, Joan Miró, Salvador Dali and Francis Bacon. [AO Newslink]

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Tom Sachs, James Brown’s Hair Products (2009). All images via Tom Sachs.

The press release for Work, Tom Sachs’ current show at Sperone Westwater Gallery begins with quotes from both himself and soul pioneer James Brown on the word itself. It’s a fitting introduction for Sachs, who has continually explored the nature of “work” in contemporary art through pop art tropes of “readymade” objects by emphasizing the handmade nature of the piece, or occasionally by simulating it, bringing dialogues on authorship and originality to the forefront. For this show, Sachs takes major cues from the Godfather of Soul, commonly nicknamed “The Hardest Working Man in Show Business,” enshrining Brown through his own worldly possessions. These repurposed artifacts range from sculptures of his hair dryer, replicas of his hair products, and a piece called James Brown’s Last Supper: a TV Dinner tray housed in a television cum road-case that blends Brown’s demise with the inescapable nature of his legacy.

Tom Sachs, Cinderblock (2011)

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Neo Rauch, Heilstätten (2011). All images via David Zwirner.

Wedding a definitively German identity with a surrealist perspective and an unmoored historical context, Neo Rauch’s current show of new work, Heilstätten at David Zwirner in New York, provides an intriguing view of an artist and country coming to terms with its own past. A frequently cited practitioner of hauntological symbolism, Rauch’s paintings are heavy with the weight of their own implications. Strangely distended figures culled directly from the history books of German art inhabit evocative and surreal scenes that blend Communist art propaganda with German history and a disambiguation of perspective. The result is a collection of paintings that are equally nostalgic and political, and occasionally tragic.
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‪‬Walton Ford discusses Audubon and human-animal relations in studio interview [AO Newslink]

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Michaël Borremans, The Knives (2010)

Michaël Borremans: The Devil’s Dress is the artist’s fourth solo exhibition at David Zwirner in New York. Borremans’ art is heavily influenced by 18^th and 19^th century artists, including Édouard Manet and Diego Valázquez, and his painterly style recalls works from both the Romantic and Realist periods. “One of the reasons I consciously chose to work in painting is that you can’t use it only as a medium. It has this historical connotation, and either you want [that connotation] or you don’t want it. So if you paint, you should make use of that. It’s inherent to the medium, and it’s very important. If you don’t want it, take another medium. It’s as simple as that. Therefore this dialogue with other painting is to me very essential,” Borremans said in an interview in 2007.

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Installation view

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Allora & Calzadilla, Under Discussion (2005); still. All images courtesy the artist and Lisson Gallery.

Collaborative duo Jennifer Allora and Guillermo Calzadilla’s interdisciplinary body of work permeates the realms of sculpture, photography, video, social interventions, and performance, engaging with both art and activism. Now at Lisson Gallery in London is “Vieques Videos 2003–2010,” three video works addressing the island of Vieques, shown together for the first time. From 1941 until 2003 Vieques, an island off the coast of Puerto Rico, was occupied by the US Military and used as a weapons testing range. A grassroots civil disobedience campaign, led by inhabitants of Vieques, gained international support and led to the eventual evacuation of the military, though environmental and political concerns remain largely unresolved. Informed by and engaging with weighty political, historical, and social issues, Allora & Calzadilla often employ the absurd, creating a more approachable framework for confronting overwhelming material.

Allora & Calzadilla, Half Mast\Full Mast (2010); still.

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Diego Rodriguez de Silva y Velazquez, Portrait of a Gentleman, 1631-34, via Bonhams.com

A newly discovered portrait by the famed 17th century Spanish painter Diego Velazquez sold at Bonhams in London yesterday for £3 million, or $4.7 million. The sum represented nearly half of the earnings at Bonhams’ Old Master Paintings sale. The painting was brought to Bonhams’ Oxford location in 2010 as part of a group of paintings by the 19th century British artist Matthew Shepperson. Questions about the painting’s attribution led to an investigation of the portrait by both in-house and outside experts. The Velazquez attribution was aided by the use of x-ray technology. The painting is one of only about 100 works by the artist known to exist, very few of which are in private hands. The painting sold for $4.7 million, reportedly to an American buyer.

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