Pablo Picasso, Femme au béret et aÌ€ la robe quadrillée (Marie-ThéreÌ€se Walter) (1937), via Sotheby’s

The first tests of the  Impressionist and Modern market for 2018 are now in the books, as Sotheby’s capped a brief but action-packed sale this evening in London, ultimately achieving a final of £118,932,000 despite a handful of unsold works.  There was little room for error in the 21-lot sale, which seemed primarily organized around several marquee works and a selection of works that garnered very little interest. (more…)

Pablo Picasso, Mousquetaire et nu assis (1967), via Christies

With a few brief wobbles, the first evening of two weeks of auctions in the British capital has concluded, bringing solid results and a final of £114,103,000 for Christie’s auction house this evening.  The sale saw most of its premiere works moving quickly over the course of the evening, with 11 works going unsold, including one of the sale’s lead lots, a Kees van Dongen portrait.

Edgar Degas, Dans les coulisses (1882-1885), via Christies

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Pablo Picasso, Femme au béret et aÌ€ la robe quadrillée (Marie-ThéreÌ€se Walter) (1937), via Sotheby’s

Marking the first major test of the secondary market for this 2018, the major auction houses are preparing to open their doors for a series of marquee evening sales in London this coming month.  Trying both the Impressionist/Modern and Post-War categories with top selections of works, the sales at Sotheby’s, Christie’s and Phillips will offer a look at just how strong the market is rebounding since a long stretch of inactivity and stagnancy. (more…)

Pierre Klossowski at Gladstone Gallery, Brussels (Installation View) all images Courtesy Gladstone Gallery, New York and Brussels Photography by David Regen

Unlike his younger brother Balthus, Pierre Klossowski rarely enjoyed critical and popular acclaim in Europe as an artist during his lifetime, receiving even less attention from scholars and curators in the United States. However, his expansive oeuvre in drawing, in addition to his work in literature and translation offers an uncharted window to the cultural progressions of 20th century Western culture, complemented by his impressive painted oeuvre. Gladstone Gallery’s Brussels location is currently presenting a selection of works on paper by the artist, dated to the ‘80s, when the artist had finally focused his attention solely around art making. Before his late venture into art, Klossowski wore many different hats in his early years, translating works by Wittgenstein, Kafka, Nietzsche, and most importantly de Sade, whose notorious novel The 120 Days of Sodom was reprinted in the ‘60s under his helm, and led to the creation of one of Pasolini’s most notorious filmic adaptations. (more…)

Fabio Mauri, Entartete Kunst (Degenerate Art) (1985), via Art Observed

Over the course of five decades, artist Fabio Mauri, worked across a broad range of media and formats, always focused around the visual languages and vocabulary of 20th Century political spheres, specifically in Europe.  Exploring the mechanics and visual exponents of varied ideological states and their attendant political movements, Mauri’s work was an often brutal condemnation of World War II, the rise of Fascism and the Holocaust, while simultaneously examining these events’ lingering echoes in the post-war landscape.  Mauri’s work gets a fascinating second look at his current Hauser & Wirth retrospective in New York, spreading his pieces across the spacious 22nd Street flagship location in an attempt to understand both his own meandering aesthetics, and the political situations they address.   (more…)

Sondra Perry at Bridget Donahue (Installation View), via Bridget Donahue

In Sondra Perry’s first solo exhibition at Bridget Donahue, the linked subjects of representation and ownership are taken to task. The gallery, with all walls painted “Rosco Chroma Key blue”, is sparsely inhabited by a few black metal structures and one projected video, a stark arrangement that focuses the viewer’s attention tightly on the few elements there. (more…)

Catherine Opie, Sheats-Goldstein #3 (2016), via Art Observed

Currently on view at Regen Projects in Los Angeles, Catherine Opie returns to her home city for a show of new works that present the city in all of its fascinating, and occasionally frightening nuances.  Continuing her photographic practice through a wide range of images and iconographies, the current show, The Modernist also features the artist’s debut filmic project.

Catherine Opie, The Modernist (Installation View), via Art Observed

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Thomas Nozkowski, Untitled (7-10) (1992), via Art Observed

“I like paintings that balance contradictions. I like paintings that look clear and simple at first glance and then sort of crumble under your gaze,” says painter, Thomas Nozkowski, the American painter whose work over the past several decades has spanned a range of styles and techniques, approaches and modes of seeing throughout his career. “And it’s even better if further looking enables you to put it together again, understand it in a new way.”  Such modes of seeing and making pictures is presented this month at Pace Gallery in New York, running throughout the artist’s 50+ year career as a striking, and refreshing survey of his practice. (more…)

LaToya Ruby Frazier, Andrea Holding her daughter Nephratitioustide the Social Network Banquet Hall (2016 / 2017), all images via Gavin Brown’s

In her self-titled solo debut at Gavin Brown’s Enterprise, artist LaToya Ruby Frazier illustrates an American landscape where dualities intertwine, marring the boundaries separating joy from despair or abundance from nothingness. Her depictions of secluded interiors, occupied by domestic clutters and family histories translate into stories of struggle, while barren deserts under the California sun encapsulate human ardor. Spanning her two decade photographic practice, Frazier’s three-floor presentation at the gallery’s spacious Harlem location introduces one series on each floor. Complimented by the accents of the building’s previous life as a brewery, the photographer’s black and white gelatin silver prints explore dichotomies of public and private, meditating on the role of the camera lens as a witness of our profound and collective moments, be those experienced firsthand or communally mediated. (more…)

Louise Nevelson, Dawn’s Presence – Three (1975), via Art Observed

Spread across the rooms of Pace Gallery’s West 24th Street location, Louise Nevelson’s iconic wood sculptures draw the viewer through various geometric planes, familiar cultural forms and intriguing variations on a theme.  The artist’s work has hung in the walls of Pace over 20 times in the past 50 years, and returns here with a particular focus on her pieces from the late 1950’s onwards, a point where her particular artistic voice was beginning to fully develop.   (more…)

Zach Bruder, Edening On (2017), courtesy Magenta Plains.

There is little doubt that Zach Bruder is seriously invested in space; both the tangible area delimited by the stretcher and the real and imagined places rendered on the canvas are of utmost importance to the Cleveland-born painter. The eight works included in Edening On, Bruder’s first solo exhibition at Magenta Plains in New York, flaunt the artist’s ability to render different spatial dimensions, finding a humorous irony and cohesive unity in their discordance. (more…)

Rita Ackermann, Hip Shot (2016-2017), via Marlborough Contemporary

Body Matters, currently on view at Marlborough Contemporary is a two piece art exhibition featuring the work of Rita Ackermann and Carol Rama. The juxtaposition of each artist’s works, which mine brusque gestures and varied approaches to the construction of the art object, creates a dialogue between the two artists, and an almost maniac motion of ideas and eras. The composition of each work inhabits a space amid the figurative and the abstract, where human form disappears and reappears with flashes of color and movement. The concordance of imagery of psychosexual fantasies, dark distortions and transgressive glitches initiates a conversation that honors and liberates the beauty of the female form. (more…)

Thrush Holmes at Beers London, via Art Observed

For early entries in the art world’s annual calendar of art fairs, exhibitions and selling events, few can compare with the proceedings of Zona Maco during Mexico City’s annual art week.  Now in its 15th year, the landmark fair for much of Latin American has grown even larger, expanding to host 170 galleries from around the globe within the confines of the Centro Banamex in the city, offering a program of 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.

Marco Maggi at Pierro Achtugarry, via Art Observed

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Heimo Zobernig, Untitled (2017). All images courtesy Petzel Gallery.

Now through February 17, Petzel Gallery is currently hosting a pair of shows by Heimo Zobernig. Chess painting, on view at the gallery’s Chelsea location, recasts and re-creates the artist’s previous show at the MIT List Visual Arts Center in Cambridge, MA. Through an emphasis on the gallery’s architecture and spatial arrangements in each show, Zobernig facilitates a confrontation with the constructed, theatrical experience of visiting an art exhibition.

Heimo Zobernig, nework (Installation View)

Heimo Zobernig, Untitled (2017)

In chess painting, a show on view at the gallery’s 18th Street location, the artist makes use of discreet installations to draw visitor’s attention to the act of viewing. His large-scale, primed monochrome canvasses hang atop rolls of black photography paper. This black-and-white palette remains consistent throughout the exhibition, with repurposed mobile podiums adorned with cozy, black-and-white checkered faux-fur blankets. These platforms resemble daybeds, inviting visitors to relax and remain in the space of the gallery, furnishing the exhibition space with the promise of comfort and leisure.

Heimo Zobernig, Chess Painting (Installation View)

Concurrently, more work by Zobernig will be exhibited at the gallery’s Upper East Side location through February 24. In nework, the artist exhibits nine new text paintings. Since 1986, Zobernig has used the sans serif typeface in his catalog and poster designs. In 1993, for a group exhibition, Zobernig subdivided the letters of the show’s title (REAL) into four fields using orange, brown, gray, black, and white in reference to Robert Indiana’s LOVE paintings. One year later, the REAL pictures were produced in the same colors. Eventually, Zobernig extended the color scale of the REAL images and began to incorporate the German word EGAL (“whatever”) into this work with lettering. In these, new works, the words EGAL and REAL overlap to fill the canvas and essentially interrupt and cancel each other out. The words are written into and on top of one another, thus their meaning disappears.

Heimo Zobernig, Untitled (2017)

Zobernig’s work is situated within the impact of Modernism and emphasizes a questioning of the institutional mechanisms that contribute to the exhibition of artwork. Through an emphasis on the structure of the exhibition space, including the light, architecture, and structure of the gallery, Zobernig presents a holistic but subtly challenging experience of encountering the art work in the structure of the museum.

Zobernig was born in Austria in 1958. He has exhibited widely and in various international institutions, including solo shows in Cologne, Sweden, at the Reina Sofia in Madrid, the Kunsthaus Graz, and two solo exhibitions at the Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian in Lisbon. His work was presented in the Austrian pavilion at the Venice Biennale. He lives and works in Vienna.

— A. Corrigan

Related Links:
Exhibition Page [Petzel Gallery]

Women’s History Museum, OTMA’s Body (Installation View), All images courtesy of Gavin Brown’s Enterprise.

Now through February 25, the Women’s History Museum presents OTMA’s Body, their first solo show at Gavin Brown’s Enterprise. Women’s History Museum, established in 2014, is the moniker of Amanda McGowen and Mattie Rivka Barringer, who often work in close collaboration with friends and other artists. The group typically combines performance, image making, and clothing design in their work, and recently began to incorporate sculpture, music, and video as well. This exhibition, on view through the end of the month, features clothing, jewelry, prints, and sculptural pieces. (more…)

David Maljkovic, Alterity Line (2002-2017), via Metro Pictures

Continuing his interest in reconfigured and re-appropriated sculpture and painting that runs throughout the length of his career, Croatian-born artist David Maljkovic has returned to his New York exhibition space, Metro Pictures, for a show of new works.  The exhibition, titled Alterity Line, is a fitting summary of much of his earlier work, transforming pieces  from various stages of his practice into new ones to obfuscate hierarchies between media and artworks, and considering the relationship between art’s autonomy and its formal developments. (more…)

Robin Rhode, Black Friday – 1 Billion (2016)  all images Courtesy the artist and Lehmann Maupin, New York and Hong Kong.

Utilizing socially-engaged practice and urbanism to reflect on prevalent socio-political climates, artist Robin Rhode is known for his work in photography and film, chronicling everyday life through cityscapes and urban architecture. His current exhibition at Lehmann Maupin aligns with his work about the post-apartheid South Africa.  In this show, however, the territory he looks to for inspiration is the Middle East. After spending time in the region on the occasion of his exhibition at the Tel Aviv Museum of Art, Rhode witnessed the dynamics between Israelis and Palestinians in terms of power, opportunity, and freedom, and sought to represent these situations here. (more…)

Terry Adkins, Akhenaten (2013) all images courtes of the Estate of Terry Adkins, New York. © The Estate of Terry Adkins

Soon after Lévy Gorvy announced representation of Terry Adkins’ estate, the gallery has opened its first solo exhibition, The Smooth, The Cut, and The Assembled, dedicated to the late artist’s multimedia work spanning various decades. With his unexpected passing in early 2014, Adkins left behind an expansive body of work, focused primarily around sculpture, while meditating on the medium’s relation to ephemerality and sound. Known for his interest in musical scores and physicality, the artist captured immateriality on three dimensional levels, with mundane objects placed in often unfamiliar forms. This focused selection of works, organized by Adkins’ long-term collaborator Charles Gaines, assembles works from different eras to demonstrate the artist’s commitment to narratives that ran throughout his practice, including socio-political topics in addition to artistic methods. Doing justice to its title, the exhibition manifests tactility, rupture and composure, encapsulating both Adkins’ interest in manual production and utilization of surfaces for poetic language. (more…)

Jamian Juliano-Villani, October, 2018 (2018), via Art Observed

Over the last several years, few young painters have continued to present work as consistently engaging, imaginative and original as Jamian Juliano-Villlani.  Twisting a range of iconographies and approaches to modern painting through an endlessly shifting hall of mirrors, the artist’s works are exuberant outings and explorations of just where surrealism can take us in the 21st Century.  Moving from ventures through the styles of 20th Century studio cartoons and graphic arts on to early computer graphics, bloated hyperrealism and back, the artist’s work always leaves space for a nuanced interest in how reality shapes itself from its contingent parts, and how one can explore the landscape of the world around us through its varied images and iconographies.   (more…)

Genieve Figgis, Happy Accidents of the Swing (2018), via Almine Rech

Part of the challenge of the current exhibition of work on view by painter Genieve Figgis on view at Almine Rech’s Paris location lies in the deciphering of her press release.  With only a single paragraph on the genesis and economic boon caused by the “Monster Jesus” phenomenon (in which a woman’s disastrous restoration of a fresco depicting the Christ in the North of Spain became the city’ main tourist draw), the show makes Figgis’s paintings a bit more confounding.  For an artist whose body of work consists of deconstructed, loosely rendered interpretations of Rococo and Classical masterpieces, the comparison is a strange one.  Are we being led to understand Figgis’s work as a degradation of these works?  Is she presenting them as an economically-motivated path away from such classic images?

Genieve Figgis, Wish You Were Here (Installation View), via Almine Rech

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Mark Verabioff, Concerned Women For America Rim Glue Pour Cultural Confinement Rundowns Pool Side (2017) (detail), all images by Osman Can Yerebakan for Art Observed

Entering Mark Verabioff’s first exhibition with Team Gallery, the audience encounters expansive, full-wall images of entertainment industry figures symbolizing generations of American pop culture, such as the controversial photos of child actress and model Brooke Shields, iconic fashion editor Diana Vreeland (photographed by Francesco Scavullo), and teen heartthrob Nick Jonas. Known for his image and text based practice in which he cross-references words and pictures in relation to their abundant presence and status in visual culture, Verabioff mines the archives of art history, feminism, gender politics, and pop. The L.A.-based artist’s riff on language and pictures stems from his exhibition title, TEARS, brewing two distinct meanings and pronunciations of the word “tear” in contextual and performative levels. Other words with versatile meanings and utterances, such as “rim” and “pour” extend his play on language.

Mark Verabioff, TEARS at Team Gallery (Installation View)

The act of ripping off a page, and the drops shed by the eye encapsulate two avenues Verabioff takes with the word “tear” throughout the exhibition. Conveyed through tear drops adorning various eyes are notions of guilt, shame, and redemption; they appear around the eyes of many celebrity photos amassed by the artist, both in wall-spanning vinyl decals and small prints off of magazine pages. The vast collection of photographs shows woman celebrities at the prime of their careers include Grace Jones, Cher, Madonna, Candy Darling, and Diane Ross, with the word “ANTIFA” reading on the top left corner of each image.

Mark Verabioff, TEARS at Team Gallery (Installation View)

Although “antifa” calls to mind political activism and vocal opposition, the artist’s appropriation of the word in the company of glamorous celebrity photography furthers his approach to language as a social phenomenon and political tool. Either posing for Scavullo’s lens or featured in an anonymous magazine, these women, among which are also unknown models, overall constitute a transcendental aura within the gallery as they stare into our eyes with glamour and confidence. Yet they challenge the limitations and expectations imposed by the society and media due to age, sexuality, and their career.

Mark Verabioff, Concerned Women Rundowns Poolside (2017)

The artist utilizes a torn piece of tape to create the typical paisley pattern or a rectangular shape at the edges of these famous eyes. Strength and vulnerability, two opposites embedded in the act of crying, complicate these figures’ recognition in society as icons and victims, recalling Warhol’s use of Marilyn Monroe and Elizabeth Taylor photographs. The performative gesture of ripping “things,” pages or tapes in this case, imbue an archivist but also anarchist nature to Varabioff’s process, which expands to his mixed-media acrylic paintings blending various pictorial and textual traits onto canvas.

Mark Verabioff: TEARS is on view at Team Gallery through March 3, 2018.

Mark Verabioff, TEARS at Team Gallery (Installation View)

—O.C. Yerebakan

Related Link:
Team Gallery [Exhibition Page]

Stephen Shore, New York, New York, May 20, 2017 (2017), via Art Observed

Few photographers have left such an enduring impact on the practice of contemporary photography, and arguably on the state of contemporary art making as Stephen Shore.  Exploring a mix of taut, close cropped examinations of modern civilization alongside the varied textures and scenes that marks its intermingling with natural environments and varied foreign agents, Shore’s interest in the present condition is frequently bound up in a series of variations and interpretations along shared themes.  Working in series with varied materials and cameras, his work is ever-shifting and precise in its statements, making him an endlessly compelling artist to view. (more…)

Tom Wesselmann, Still Life #59 (1972), via Art Observed

Dwelling on a unique body of work in artist Tom Wesselmann’s expansive oeuvre, Gagosian Gallery in New York is currently presenting a series of the artist’s monumentally-scaled “Standing Still-Lifes,” a series of works that saw the artist explore past practices and themes in his work, while embracing a scattered, varied approach towards his own imagery.  On view through the end of February, Wesselmann’s work in series presents a unique opportunity to dive deeper into the artist’s relentlessly innovative vision and interests in the language of American consumerism.   (more…)

Petrit Halilaj, Abetare (Fluturat) (Installation View), via Kamel Mennour

Currently on view at Kamel Mennour in Paris, artist Petrit Halilaj has brought a nuanced body of works that explore the constitution of both history and society through its youngest members.  Exploring the phenomena of early childhood, the various cultural touchstones and worlds created from young minds, and their analogs in the world around them, Halilaj’s work is a striking and empathetic exploration of both violence and youth, memory and time. (more…)