Sinead O’Dwyer, In Myself (Installation View), via Waves and Archives

Currently on view at New York’s Waves and Archives, artist Sinead O’Dwyer presents a selection of new works, returning to her nuanced silicone works alongside work created for an upcoming performance at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London.  The exhibition, which marks the artist’s first in New York, makes for an engaging entry in her body of work, and look at her intricate incorporation of human bodies and synthetic materials. (more…)

Michael A. Robinson, all images by Elisa Etrari for Art Observed

As The Armory Show returns to the Piers on the West Side of Manhattan, so too comes the annual opening of the SPRING/BREAK Art Show, the adventurous, curator-driven program that takes up space at a pop-up location for a week of compelling and unique exhibitions and projects.  (more…)

Bianca Beck at Rachel Uffner, all images via Art Observed

Kicking off the 11th year of operation, Independent NY has once again touched down at Spring Studios in Tribeca, once again opening the doors on its take on the presentation of an art fair.  Smaller in scale and more focused in terms of its gallery selections, the fair’s presentation feels more like a presentation of a series of small gallery shows run side-by-side, with ample space and a mellow browsing experience that draws strength from the fair’s invite-only exhibitor structure and immense glass windows, underscoring its reputation as a boutique event with impressive draw.

Clementine Keith-Roach at P•P•O•W

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Austin Lee at Jeffrey Deitch, all images via Art Observed

Considered among New York’s premier art fairs, and a leading cultural destination for discovering and collecting the world’s most important 20th- and 21st-century art, The Armory Show has long figured at the forefront of the city’s annual spring offerings for art exhibitions and shows.  With its first day of sales in the bag, the fair is once again showing why its impact and stature cannot be ignored. (more…)

Carla Accardi at Andrew Kreps and Bortolami, via Art Observed

The first entry in what’s sure to be a bustling week spanning the end of February and start of March in New York, the ADAA Art Show has opened its doors at the Park Ave armory again this week, offering an early start on the mass of exhibitors opening across the city in the days to come.  With its usual focus on tightly-curated programming and laser-focused booth concepts, the show once again offering an impressive opening note on the week, with packed hallways and excited buyers buzzing about the aisles.

Paul Fagerskiold at Peter Blum, via art Obsered

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Hank Willis Thomas, “People just like to look at me” (Spectrum IX) (variation without flash) (2019), via Kayne Griffin Corcoran

Currently on at LA heavyweight Kayne Griffin Corcoran, Hank Willis Thomas marks his first solo exhibition with the space with An All Colored Cast, an exploration of color theory, popular culture, the development of Pop Art, Color Field painting, Minimalism, and the Hollywood film industry. In this new body of work, Thomas examines the portrayals of gender, race, and identity through the lens of film, performance, and color motion pictures.

Hank Willis Thomas, “People just like to look at me” (Spectrum IX) (variation with flash) (2019), via Kayne Griffin Corcoran

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David Shrigley, Distractions (2018), via Stephen Friedman

As the winter months drags slowly to its conclusion, and the weather shifts into more temperate conditions, New York City will once again step into its role as a central hub of the contemporary art market, and the global art fair circuit, kicking off its string of fairs across the city.  Centering around the annual Armory Show Art Fair on the West Side, the week serves as one of the more important selling weeks of the first half of 2020. (more…)

Amy Sillman, The Shape of Shape (Installation View), all images via MoMA

The Museum of Modern Art announces a new installment of its Artist’s Choice series: The Shape of Shape by Amy Sillman. In this series, facilitated by the museum’s expanded gallery renovations, a contemporary artist organizes an installation drawn from the Museum’s collection. Recent participants include Peter Fischli (2018), David Hammons (2017), Trisha Donnelly (2012) and the architects Herzog & de Meuron (2006). For this new installment, the New York painter has collaborated with The Marlene Hess Curator Michelle Kuo and the Curatorial Assistant from the Department of Painting and Sculpture, Jenny Harris to present a packed install with a range of works in exchange with her own compositions.

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JR, The Chronicles of New York City (2019) all images via Brooklyn Museum

Currently on view at the Brooklyn Museum, artist JR inaugurates his first solo museum exhibition and first major North American exhibition, taking over the Main Hall of the museum with a show that traces the French artist’s artistic evolution, which began in the Parisian banlieue. His early photographic projects, such as Expo 2 Rue (2001-2004) and Portrait of a Generation (2004-2006), marked his start as a storyteller of his community, picturing graffiti artists and young people from the housing projects in the French capital. Giving voice to the marginalized, JR projects have always been collaborative ventures, involving the participants by allowing them to choose how they would like to be represented, both as individuals and as a group presented to the rest of the world. His works, often ephemeral art installation in public places, channel social change and inequalities and make him a true guerrilla street artist.

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Madeline Hollander, Heads/Tails: Walker & Broadway 1 (2020), all images via Bortolami

Marking her first exhibition with Bortolami Gallery in New York, artist Madeline Hollander presents an ambitious and enigmatic new installation at the gallery’s small-scale space at 55 Walker in Tribeca, titled Heads/Tails. Primarily known for her work in choreography, performance and dance, Hollander’s work here is her first major solo exhibition without human actors. The installation consists of hundreds of used automobile headlights and taillights, drawing on local contexts and systemic interventions to turn Hollander’s interest in both human agency and technological networks, and the feedback systems that dictate and reshape the behavior of both. (more…)

Andrea Bowers, Ecofeminist Sycamore Branches: Women Have Always Thought Like Mountains (2019), all images via Andrew Kreps

Currently on view at Andrew Kreps Gallery in New York, artist Andrea Bowers presents Think of Our Future, a show of new sculpture and wall-mounted works that continue her engagement with online movements, the cultural zeitgeist, and possible expressions of new social modes and possible futures.  Bowers, whose work of late has mined the cultural upheaval and power of the #MeToo movement, here turns in particular to the protests around the Dakota Access Pipeline, and the confrontations between the company building the line and the Standing Rock Sioux tribe that has fought to prevent its construction on tribal lands.

Andrea Bowers, Think of Our Future (Installation View)

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Nicolas Party, Portrait with Snakes (2019)

Currently on view at Hauser & Wirth’s Los Angeles exhibition space, the Swiss artist Nicolas Party has inaugurated his representation with the gallery, opening up an impressively arranged exhibition of new works just in time for the bustle of Frieze Week in the Californian metropolis. Born in Lausanne, Party’s figurative technique has earned him critical admiration for his familiar yet unsettling landscapes, portraits, and still lifes, celebrating and challenging conventions of representational painting, taste, and form. (more…)

Jonathan Paul

Continuing its own intriguing and honed perspective on booth its surroundings in Los Angeles and on the model of the art fair, SPRING/BREAK has once again touched down in the City of Angels, launching a supplementary event that offers an ample supply of artists and galleries presenting in a concept that stands as a stark contrast to the traditional fair model.   (more…)

Korakrit Arunanondchai at Clearing, all images via Art Observed

As Frieze opens up shop for the week on the West Coast, the bevy of satellite fairs and event openings are underway across the city.  One particular highlight, and also a second-time event for Frieze Week, Felix LA, the joint effort of collector Dean Valentine and dealers Al and Mills Morán, has returned to the rooms and public spaces of the iconic Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel in Los Angeles for the week.  One of the more compelling fair entries of the week, the work’s program, which sees gallerists taking over rooms in the hotel, allows a unique mixture of intimate exhibitions and adventurous concepts that felt well-suited to the well-heeled patrons of the contemporary art market, both looking for a good piece of work and a unique experience shopping for it.   (more…)

Lorna Simpson, all images via Art Observed

As the early hours of the second Frieze Los Angeles Art Fair draw to a close this evening, and the sun sets over the Pacific, the fair seems to have once again hammered home its vital engagement with the city, and with its thriving art scene, launching another strong event spread across the grounds of the Paramount Studios.   With strong sales reported and an energetic atmosphere across the fair, it would seem that the small-scale and focused approach of the fair had once again seen the fair brand making its case as an arbiter of thoughtful, curated approaches towards the market and its participants.

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Jeff Koons via Almine Rech

Opening for its second year in the Californian sprawl of Los Angeles, the Frieze Art Fair returns for a second year under the sunny skies of the Golden State.  Taking its place once again at Paramount Studios, the fair has quickly planted its flag as a major part of the early weeks of the annual fair calendar, and has become the flagship fair in the run up to the Armory Show in New York next month.  (more…)

 
Ai Weiwei at Lisson Gallery, all photos via Anfisa Vrubel for Art Observed

Zona Maco has opened the doors for its 17th year this week, celebrating the milestone event today with the first day of its VIP preview yesterday at the Centro Banamex.  Offering a look at the stature of the fair in relation to the burgeoning artistic community in Mexico City in relation to the art and artists flying in from around the globe, the fair’s dynamic program included conferences with international guests, a section with specialized publications and editorials, and the widest program of parallel activities with exhibitions at the most outstanding galleries and museums in the country. (more…)

Tamara de Lempicka, Portrait de Marjorie Ferry (1932), final price: £16,280,000, via Christie’s

With the UK now into its first days of Brexit, attention turned to London this week for a string of Impressionist, Modern and Surrealist Sales that looked to take the first test of the market.  Considering the results this week, a path forward seems uneasy but possible, as mixed results between the auction houses made for a series of compelling auctions and unpredictable results (more…)

Robert Grosvenor, Untitled (2020), via Karma

Artist Robert Grosvenor could perhaps best be described as an artist invested in space.  His interests rely not only on how the object exists within it, but equally how the space around an object twists and responds, moves and carves up space.  His sculptures capture a similar idea, pulling the viewer through their specific materiality and unconventional formal language that at one point might incorporate a distinct industrial materiality, while at others moving into a hard-edged, classic minimalism.  Each of the elements of this historical movement’s conceptual interests are there: heft and weight, density, scale, and even color, yet Grosvenor, more and more over the past years particularly, seems to take these principles and turn them towards the everyday, mining the language of the world around him to find new ways to ask similar questions . For his third show at Karma in New York, Grosvenor continues this particular interest in the realm between space and object, presenting a room-sized sculpture that the artist refers to as a “block of water,” as well as a collection of found and variously altered models of aircraft, watercraft, and automobiles.

Robert Grosvenor, Untitled (2020), via Karma (more…)

David Hockney, The Splash (1966), via Sotheby’s

As the first batch of major art fairs gets underway in North America, the secondary market turns its attention to Frieze London this week, as the first test of its health gets underway in the British capital. Kicking off two weeks of auctions at the major auction houses, there should be ample chance for bidders to show just how confident they are on the current state of Britain, its place in the European art market, and how Brexit might have changed those forecasts. With Impressionist and Modern Sales scheduled for this week, and a trio of Contemporary and 20th Century Sales next, the month of February should be an intriguing bellwether for the coming months, and perhaps for 2020 more broadly.

Ed Ruscha, God Knows Where (2014), via Phillips

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Erwin Wurm, Urinal (2011/2019), via Lehmann Maupin

Currently on view at Lehmann Maupin in New York, artist Erwin Wurm brings forward a new body of work that marks an expansion and elaboration on his already precise and peculiar style of sculpture. Titled Yes Biological, the show utilized biological effects and elements to create a new series that pushes the boundaries of sculpture ever further. (more…)

Jamal Penjweny,  Saddam is Here (2010), via MoMA

Military engagement in Iraq over the last 30 years has had a unprecedented impact on contemporary culture and society, with American intervention  in the Gulf and Iraq Wars opening a debate on American values and beliefs, in turn influencing the work of artists around the world. Exploring this concept MoMA PS1 presents Theater of Operations: The Gulf Wars 1991-2011, a large-scale group exhibition analyzing the legacy of the U.S. military presence in the region. The exhibition spans four floors, including more than 250 works featuring over 80 artists and collectives, including thirty-six Iraqis and Kuwaitis.

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Noah Davis, Man with Alien and Shotgun (2008), all images via Art Observed

In the all-too-short run of his life as both an artist and organizer, Noah Davis was a larger than life energy.  He was a tireless advocate for black arts in Los Angeles, and a relentless energetic painter whose lush figurative style tied together signifiers and concepts from across the expanse of modern painting.  As curator and organizer at the Underground Museum, a black-owned-and-operated art space dedicated to the exhibition of museum-quality art in a culturally underserved African American and Latinx neighborhood, he was a central figure in advocating and advancing the work of his peers and predecessors, creating historical dialogues on the back of his own vision.   This energy serves as the underlying power of his current exhibition at David Zwirner in New York, where the late artist’s work is succinctly summarized and celebrated.

Noah Davis, 1975 (8) (2013)

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Hanne Darboven, Erdkunde I, II, III (1986), via Sprüth Magers

Currently on view at Sprüth Magers in Berlin, the gallery presents a selection of works by Hanne Darboven, the first solo exhibition of the artist’s work at the Berlin gallery.  Compiling her works Erdkunde I, II, III (Geography I, II, III) (1986) and (Süd-) Koreanischer Kalender / (South) Korean Calendar (1991), the exhibition marks the beginning of the gallery’s worldwide representation of the Darboven Estate.  (more…)