Michele Abeles, 10/28/19, 5:00PM (2020), via 47 Canal

Upon entering the doors of 47 Canal Gallery, one is immediately greeted by a strangely familiar, and oddly timely series of images.  Skeletal hands, ghoulish visages and ghostly figures dance across a series of photos, while other frames bear the image if close up novelty gravestones and other Halloween decorations.  One month out from Halloween, the exhibition, presented by artist Michele Abeles, turns these familiar features into a meditation on commercial iconographies, capitalism and the spiritual undertones that these systems draw on, always centering the body in these conversations on space and time, the body and mortality.   (more…)

Kelly Akashi, via Tanya Bonakdar

The fall art season is in full swing, at least in name, with galleries cautiously reopening, and a tense consideration for ways forward currently in the air, all serving as a fitting backdrop for the second iteration of Art Basel’s Online Viewing Room program.  Filling in for the cancelled Basel and Miami Beach editions of its fair program, the recently opened OVR:2020 invites a select group of artists and galleries to make up some lost ground in their seasonal calendar, and to offer works for sale, amplified by the fair’s global reach. (more…)

Carmen Herrera, Painting in Process (Installation View), via Lisson

Since her time in post-war Paris when she first developed her signature hard-edged style, painter Carmen Herrera has instilled a rigorous practice to create her distinctive body of work, culling together a range of various color structures and elusive geometric arrangements to arrive at her engaging and unique constructions.  Now, the artist is opening a show of recent works at Lisson, bearing the title Painting in Process, exploring her construction and exploration of her works before their final form.  (more…)

Sotheby’s is launching a new financial services division, with Alexander Klabin as Executive Chairman. A statement from Klabin emphasized his role as helping “to accelerate the future of authenticated asset-based finance.”  (more…)

The Guggenheim has received Maurizio Cattelan‘s iconic banana work Comedian, shown last year at Art Basel Miami Beach, as an anonymous gift.  “We are grateful recipients of the gift of ‘Comedian,’ a further demonstration of the artist’s deft connection to the history of modern art,” says museum director, Richard Armstrong. “Beyond which, it offers little stress to our storage.” (more…)

Gerhard Richter has created a series of impressive stained glass windows for Tholey Abbey in Germany. “Abstract art is not normally my thing,” says Abbot Mauritius Choriol. “But you don’t need to be an art expert to appreciate the qualities of these.” (more…)

LACMA has finally unveiled the gallery plans for its new, Peter Zumthor-designed building. “I did ask for and got something that would be very different,” says director Michael Govan. “I think it’s going to be absolutely sublime, but that’s for the public to see.” (more…)

Renée Green, Excerpts (Installation View), via Art Observed

Entering Bortolami Gallery for its first show of the fall season, one is immediately greeted by a flurry of color.  Bright   banners hang from the ceilings, adorned with dazzling fluorescent pairings that emphasize the fragments of text that dot each piece, and which find a fitting counterpoint in a ring of framed pieces encircling the gallery walls.   The pieces are the product of artist Renée Green, whose body of new works returns to an ongoing interest in the concept of color and language, text and space, perception and understanding.   Spanning the artist’s three decades of working with color’s polyvalent effects, the works in Excerpts manifest her open-ended questioning of invented yet established taxonomies, in order to play with and to displace designations that may seem to be known. (more…)

As the museum plans to reopen, the Guggenheim Museum has laid off 24 employees, with an additional 8 taking separation agreements. “The impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on the Guggenheim has been devastating to our finances,” said museum’s director, Richard Armstrong in a letter to employees. “I am deeply saddened to say that the museum will not have the ability to support our previous number of staff members.” (more…)

In the midst of COVID-19-related financial pressure, the Brooklyn Museum will sell off 12 works from its collection to fund maintaining the rest of its holdings. “We expect this consignment to generate considerable interest from collectors who will not only respond to the paintings’ great quality, but will also be reassured by their distinguished provenance,” says Joshua Glazer, Specialist of Old Master Paintings at Christie’s New York. (more…)

Cosima Von Bonin, HETERO (2020), via GAGA

Returning to Los Angeles for a second show with GAGA and her first in the gallery’s LA space, artist Cosima von Bonin has installed a body of new works, merging together her signature selections of pop cultural iconographies, material inversions and surreal interpolations of the gallery space, united under the title HETERO.  Using the gallery as a framework on which to explore and elaborate her unique formal investigations, the artist explores the idea of extended, and often distended, narrative flows.   (more…)

Banksy has lost a court case against a greeting card company this month, with the court putting the artist’s copyright at risk over his anonymity. “Banksy has chosen to remain anonymous and, for the most part, to paint graffiti on other people’s property without their permission, rather than to paint it on canvases or his own property,” the panel said. (more…)

David Zwirner has brought on former Gavin Brown Director Kyla McMillan as director, focusing on sales and artist management. “At Gavin Brown’s Enterprise I worked with so many artists who will forever inform how I think,” she says. (more…)

Christie’s is selling Picasso’s Femme dans un fauteuil (1941) as the leading lot in its merged 20th/21st Century sale this October, with the lead lot tapped to fetch $20 million–$30 million. “By turns anguished and lyrical, aggressive and despondent, the works all share an urgency, making them as much expressions of Picasso’s state of mind as portraits of Dora,” says Conor Jordan, Christie’s deputy chairman of Impressionist and modern art. “Sequestered in the cool light and pressing angles of the attic space, Dora is depicted on a grand scale as proud and unbending, an image of stately defiance, a modern Marianne.” (more…)

Dealer Max Levai has filed suit against his former colleagues at Marlborough Gallery, alleging a scheme to discredit him and take over his personal Instagram account. “The Company and defendants Bergman and Plutschow’s defamatory statements have harmed [Levai] by causing, among other things, third parties to refuse to engage in any new business dealings with plaintiff, lost revenue and profits, increased expenses, legal fees, and costs expended to mitigate the impact of the Company and defendants Bergman and Plutschow’s dishonesty,” the suit reads.  (more…)

Damien Hirst and Fondazione Prada are launching a round of print sales to benefit an international nonprofit dedicated to providing free access to educational, economic, and healthcare opportunities to children. “COVID-19 has been devastating for many people and families all over the world and lockdown has been really difficult, but especially difficult for children who haven’t been able to go to school,” Hirst said in a statement. “I wanted to find a way to raise money to help children from disadvantaged backgrounds who have been most affected by school closures and the support they provide.” (more…)

Erich Marx, a collector whose holdings stand as the basis of the Hamburger Bahnhof museum of Modern art has died at the age of 99. “Without him, the Hamburger Bahnhof would not exist,” says Hermann Parzinger, the president of the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation. “Erich Marx was a great man who was also modest. He undertook everything with great passion—including his love of art and collecting.” (more…)

The FIAC Art Fair has been cancelled after a spike in Coronavirus cases in Paris.  “Despite its deep determination to organize FIAC–this unique rendez-vous bringing together specialists in the field of modern and contemporary art—in 2020, and its efforts to overcome the difficulties caused by the health crisis, the fair is not in a position to organize an event that meets the legitimate expectations of its exhibitors,” said the organizers, who are refunding all fees already paid by exhibitors.  (more…)

Researchers are laser-scanning the city of Venice to create a digital replica, as rising floods threaten the city.  (more…)

Joe Thompson is leaving his 32-year directorship of MASS MoCA.  “After more than three decades as director, it is high time for me to step away from day-to-day management of the museum, focusing for the next year on transition planning, institutional advancement, and capacity-building,” Thompson said in a statement. “While we’ve achieved much over the past few decades, there remains programmatic innovation, still to come.” (more…)

Christie’s is preparing its first sales after merging its Contemporary and Modern departments for October, leading with a $25 million Cezanne. “We’re giving consignors and buyer multiple opportunities this fall to buy at auction,” Alex Rotter, Christie’s Chairman of Postwar and Contemporary Art in New York says. “These collectors are happily making use of a wide range of platforms, they are buying works across categories, and they certainly are not glued to the conventional auction schedule.” (more…)

A who punched a £20 million Picasso last year at the Tate Modern will face 18 months in prison.  “I have concluded without hesitation the impact upon the public and the gravity of this offense, together with the need to deter others from this form of conduct requires the imposition of an immediate custodial sentence,” said Judge Jeremy Donne in the sentencing. (more…)

The Whitney Museum of American Art has canceled an upcoming exhibition following controversy over its decision to include work purchased during a fundraiser for racial justice charities, a move that drew criticism over its perceived capitalization on the work of artists of color without compensating them directly.  The museum is facing additional criticism over pulling the show instead of paying artists.   “Instead of canceling, they should actually pay us for the full price of our work and hold the exhibition instead of cowering in the face of everyone calling them out,” says artist Dana Scruggs. (more…)

Lisa Alvarado, Thalweg (Installation View), via Bridget Donahue

Drawing on the shifting conceptions of political geography and economy, the work of Lisa Alvarado mines a certain point of friction between western art history and other modes of visual expression, using historical frameworks and objects to populate her work with subtle but enduring critiques of capitalism and colonialism.  Alvarado’s paintings operate as stage sets, artworks, and ritual objects simultaneously, often targeting a certain sense of meditative, considered reflection while looking, and using this space to incorporate new historical tropes into the work.

Lisa Alvarado, Thalweg (Installation View), via Bridget Donahue

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