Blinky Palermo, To the People of New York City (1976), via Art Observed

One of his most iconic bodies of work, German artist Blinky Palermo’s To the People of New York City comes home this fall, placed on view at Dia: Chelsea.  Part of Palermo’s Metal Pictures series (or Metallbilder), the pieces reflect the artist at the peak of his abilities, and underscore his enduring contributions to the the landscape of the 20th Century avant-garde. (more…)

Agnes Martin, Affection (2001), From The Collection Of Laura Arrillaga-andreessen, © 2018 Estate Of Agnes Martin:artists Rights Society (Ars), New York

Having traveled from coast to coast for exhibition in New York City, Pace Gallery’s current show examined the shared aesthetic space of painter Agnes Martin and the meticulously crafted blankets of the Navajo (Diné) people of the American Southwest touches down for a striking last show of 2018.  The exhibition, which explores the shared use of parallel lines and tight grid-work in both the painter’s canvas and the blanket-maker’s loom, makes for a fascinating investigation of two aesthetically distinct visions that found their most compelling articulation amongst the landscape of the American desert. (more…)

Sarah Lucas, Au Naturel (Installation View), via Art Observed

One of the most eagerly-anticipated shows of 2018, artist Sarah Lucas has touched down at the New Museum, bringing with her an expansive body of works that runs the full expanse of her craft.  Curated by the New Museum’s artistic director, Massimiliano Gioni associate, Margot Norton, the show, Lucas’s first in an American institution, spans three floors and any number of aesthetic modes, moving from sculpture to photography, wallpaper to video in ways that both explore each object and twist the original historical contexts of their works (gallery shows, museums and her renowned Venice Biennale show from 2015 all get their due here) into new configurations. (more…)

Works by Adam Pendleton, via Eva Presenhuber

Exploring two distinct voices in the evolution of art practice over the past 20 years, Eva Presenhuber has brought a strikingly confrontational, challenging exhibition to New York City, showing a body of works by Adam Pendleton and Liam Gillick that works between each artist’s strengths, and mines an ever-shifting understanding of the world around them to motivate and elaborate their respective iconographies.  
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Dan Colen, The Trap (2016-2018), via Gagosian

Currently on view at Gagosian Gallery’s Beverly Hills location in Southern California. Dan Colen has pulled together a body of paintings that feel decidedly at home in a location so close to Hollywood.  His show of new works, High Noon, is a striking interrogation of corporate image production, shared memories, and the cognitive effects of modern commercial communication, all pulled together by their use of a distinct style of background painting utilized heavily in the classic Wile E. Coyote cartoons of the Warner Brothers’ cartoon universe.   (more…)

Ken Price, NeGrum (1994), via Matthew Marks

Currently on at Matthew Marks Gallery’s New York exhibition space, a body of small-scale works by American sculptor Ken Price dot the room, each drawing the visitor’s eye with a meticulously arranged series of loping curves, compellingly evocative forms and lumpy, surrealist modes of expression.  This range of pieces, underscoring Price’s intuitive knowledge of bronze and its potential sculptural capacities, makes for a colorful, striking break from the chilling cold and overcast days of December in the city.  (more…)

Ugo Rondinone at Eva Presenhuber, via Art Observed

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Myrlande Constant, via Art Observed

With the proceedings of Art Week Miami winding on, the halls at the Miami Beach Convention Center continue to draw massive crowds of both buyers and visitors, its luxe appointments and impressive stock of established blue chip works commanding big headlines and even bigger price tags. But across Biscayne Bay, the New Art Dealers Alliance had kicked off its annual take on the Miami Fair Week. NADA Miami, set up inside the Ice Palace Film Studios, puts itself forward as showcasing new art and to celebrating the rising talents from around the globe, exploring new or underexposed art that is not typical of the “art establishment,” by their words. NADA Miami is also the one of the only major American art fairs to be produced by a non-profit organization, and is recognized as a much needed alternative assembly of the world’s youngest and strongest art galleries dealing with emerging contemporary art.

Nathan Hylden, via Art Observed

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Daniel Buren at Bortolami, via Art Observed

The doors have opened at the Miami Beach Convention Center yet again for another December sales event at Art Basel Miami Beach, as collectors, dealers and artists flock to its cavernous halls and pack its renovated structure for several days of sales and showings.  The fair’s place as the final major sales event of the year always seems to bring a last flutter of enthusiasm before the last weeks of December give dealers a chance to catch their breath, and this year was no exception, with collectors packing into the queue early in the morning for a first crack at the event’s VIP opening.   (more…)

Art Basel Miami Beach, via Miami New Times

Another year come and gone, another sojourn for the global art community to the southern tip of Florida for a week of fairs, exhibitions and parties on the streets of Miami and Miami Beach, all centered around the sprawling US hub of the Art Basel fair franchise, and spreading out across the city’s streets and parks, boardwalks and beaches.

Liz Larner, via Regen Projects

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Peter Halley, Unseen Paintings (Installation View), via Sophie Kitching for Art Observed

During the years 1992 to 2002, Peter Halley’s paintings were rarely seen in New York City — during that entire ten-year span there was only one exhibition of his paintings in the city. The artist, whose body of work helped to define a return to abstract, painterly language in the New York avant-garde during the 1980’s, was noticeably absent, a note that often leaves his work somewhat divorced from some of the other artists living and working during that era. Now, an exhibition at Sperone Westwater aims to reintroduce the artist’s work from that era to the city, culling together a body of eight works that emphasize his aesthetic interests during the period, and continuing his exploration of geometric and geographic forms. (more…)

Installation View. All images via Art Observed.

Nairy Baghramian’s third solo exhibition at Galerie Buchholz in Berlin is on view at the gallery through November 17, 2018. It is accompanied by a publication produced alongside Déformation Professionelle. This exhibition, shown over the last two years at SMAK, Ghent, and the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, was originally conceived as a retrospective. However, the artist decided to modify this approach and instead construct a show around new pieces that refer back to earlier ones. At Galerie Buchholz, many of these self-reflexive pieces are on view in the gallery’s first floor exhibition space. (more…)

Edward Hopper, Chop Suey (1929), Final Price: $95,937,500, via Christie’s

Following an unsteady outing this past Sunday, Christie’s has turned on a dime with this evening’s special sale of works from the collection of Barney Ebsworth, capping off a 42-lot sale with a strong final result of $317,801,250, leaving only a few works unsold (5 of 42 lots) and a number of major world auction records left broken (at least 10 records in total before the sale reached its conclusion). (more…)

Rene Magritte, The Pleasure Principle (1937) Final Price: $26,830,500, via Sotheby’s

The first batch of sales for New York’s bustling auction week have come to a close, as Christie’s and Sotheby’s capped their Impressionist and Modern Evening Sales in New York.  Both sales seemed to rock back and forth between major milestones and less impressive results, as buyers seemed tentative to pursue large trophy works or pieces boasting higher estimates.   (more…)

Petra Cortright, Platinum Blonde Black Knight (Installation View), all images via Anna Corrigan for Art Observed.

On view through November 17, Société presents Petra Cortright’s Platinum Blonde Black Night. The Los Angeles-based artist is known for her early works of webcam self-portrait videos posted to her YouTube account. Recently, Cortright has incorporated works in painting, sculpture, and video into her practice. This is the artist’s third exhibition with the gallery. (more…)

Edward Hopper, Chop Suey (1929), via Christie’s

This next week, New York City will see a string of Modern and Contemporary Auctions take place at the major auction houses, following up a tense season of political uncertainty in the U.S. with a series of sales that may offer a referendum on the nation’s current economic climate.  With a number of special sales joining the traditional major evening sales, the week should offer an intriguing picture of just how healthy the market is, or perhaps how daring its collectors are feeling. (more…)

Tania Bruguera at Tate Modern (Installation View), via Art Observed

Cuban artist and activist Tania Bruguera has been tapped for the most recent commission project at Tate Modern, which opened this past October during Frieze Week. The piece, which unifies disparate social threads under the museum roof, is a striking moment for the artist under the shadow of the nation’s Brexit negotiations. (more…)

General Idea, Untitled (AIDS with Cockroaches) (1989), all images via Maureen Paley

Now through November 11th, 2018, Maureen Paley in London is presenting AA Bronson + General Idea, an exhibition marking fifty years since AA Bronson, Felix Partz and Jorge Zontal met in 1968 and formed the collective General Idea. The Canadian collective is known for producing over 100 solo exhibitions, as well as countless group shows and temporary public art projects. For the years of 1969-1994 they lived and worked together, creating a “living artwork of their being together” and working through various surfaces or ‘host’ media for their ideas and engagement with punk, queer theory, ad AIDS activism. (more…)

Amy Sillman, Landline (Installation View), via Camden Arts Cenre

Perhaps one of the most distinctive voices in contemporary American painting, artist Amy Sillman has relentlessly and repeatedly pushed her own style towards the furthest reaches of her capacity, always in an attempt to interrogate and re-evaluate the language and practice of painting against the backdrop of modern history and the attendant shifts from analog to digital technologies and labor processes.  Based in New York, the artist has opened her first major solo institutional show in the UK this fall, an ambitious and expansive walk through her work at the Camden Arts Centre in North London.   (more…)

Ajay Kurian, Nine Flags (Installation View), via Art Observed

Artist Ajay Kurian returns to 47 Canal Gallery for a show of new works this month, delving into the recent American political landscape, and the fraught politics of identity, interiority and authenticity that have dominated the political discourse in the past years.  Responding in particular to the near-constant presentation and proliferation of the American flag in the language and iconography of a resurgent American nationalism, Kurian has created his own series of flags, fragmented transformations of this same language to explore new possibilities for an American populace.  

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Georg Baselitz, The Orange Eater VI (1981), via Art Observed

Gallerie Thaddeus Ropac London is currently offering a museum-quality show of ground-breaking inverted paintings, drawings and sculptures by Georg Baselitz, tracing the artist’s shift to a freer, more expressionistic use of paint and of color, while still staging works of startling intensity and solemn power. The exhibition presents seminal works from each of the series Baseliz developed during the 1980s such as Orangenesser, Strandbilder and Trinker, as well as works on paper from the era evoking religious icons, drawings from the Strandbilder series, and untitled figure sketches. Standing alongside his paintings, the show’s deep array of archival works establish the evolution of his personal iconography across media. (more…)

Kerry James Marshall, Untitled (Morning) (2018), via Art Observed

It’s been a good few years for Kerry James Marshall.  The Chicago-based painter opened his landmark show at The Met Breuer, a critically-lauded exhibition that toured the U.S. and earned the artist an impressive response from both viewers and critics.  Now, the artist turns his attention towards a body of new paintings, the first new series produced since the Mastry exhibition, for a new show at David Zwirner’s exhibition location in London.  (more…)

Julie Mehretu, SEXTANT (Installation View), via White Cube

Moving through a range of historical and aesthetic modes of exploration for her most recent exhibition at White Cube in London, artist Julie Mehretu has offered a new fold in an already complex and multilayered body of work.  Her new exhibition, which opened just this past month, brings together a diverse and challenging arrangement of pieces that sees the artist mining contemporary image archives and newspaper headlines for her grounding material, a mode that moves beyond her prior practice and into new ground.  (more…)

Paul Mpagi Sepuya, Mirror Study (0X5A1237) (2017), via Matthew Marks

Matthew Marks Los Angeles has given over its West Hollywood exhibition space to a striking group show, exploring a younger generation of artists under the name Positioner.  The show takes its name from work by exhibiting artist Julia Phillips, and, much in the same way that the artist explores institutional power and discrimination in her own works, this exhibition focuses on the the manner in which artists today are currently focusing on depictions, representations, or consolidations of the individual within the modern field of art practice.   (more…)