Walter Swennen, Demasiadas Palabras (2017)  all images Copyright Walter Swennen Courtesy the artist and Gladstone Gallery, New York and Brussels.

In his third solo exhibition in New York, Belgian artist Walter Swennen delivers a broad range of takes on his text and poetry-based work, splashing doses of humor and introspection into each canvas spread across Gladstone Gallery, on which bright, cartoonish colors and existential subjectivities build a delicate, yet compelling balance. From the title bewtie (a riff on the word “beautiful” that also manages to sound Flemish), to Swennen’s utilization of language to problematize the banal, this exhibition chronicles his sense of absurdity embedded in mundane elements, and most particularly in language, as a crucial part of the ritual of the everyday. (more…)

Film Still. Image courtesy Sprüth Magers.

Now through December 22, Sprüth Magers Berlin presents Jon Rafman’s first solo exhibition with the gallery. Dream Journal ’16-’17 is an hour-long, freeform and loosely connected series of narratives examining the impact of technology on society and consciousness. Jon Rafman’s work examines the impact of technology and virtual reality on contemporary consciousness. He is recognized for his use of interdisciplinary and multi-medial forms, including various virtual platforms and online worlds, to critically explore the present moment. For this work, Rafman has designed an immersive viewing experience, complete with shag carpet and anthropomorphized sculptural seating.

Installation View. Image by Anna Corrigan for Art Observed.

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Gilbert & George, The General Jungle or Carrying on Sculpting (Installation View), all images courtesy Lévy Gorvy

Now through November 18, Lévy Gorvy’s London exhibition space is hosting The General Jungle or Carrying on Sculpting, a collection of seminal works by artist duo Gilbert & George. This show is comprised of 23 monumental, multi-panel pieces, one of the first manifestations of Gilbert & George’s ‘Art for All’ manifesto, and a landmark entry in their early collaborations, which began fifty years ago this month. This is the first exhibition in the United Kingdom to feature this body of work, first presented at the Sonnabend Gallery in New York in the early 1970’s. (more…)

Pat Steir, Little Red One (2016), all images via Osman Can Yerebakan for Art Observed

In ancient Greek, the word kairos defined the moment of opportunity to make a decision.  Kairos, which lends its name to New York-based painter Pat Steir’s current exhibition at Lévy Gorvy, encapsulates a Proustian interpretation of time that is subjective and cerebral, as opposed to a sequential grasp. Although they represent binary notions at first sight, chance and precision are two pivotal elements in Steir’s work, and given her decision to name her exhibition after a term associated with philosophy of time, she tends to perfect the balance between these two opposites. Created over the last two years, paintings at Steir’s first exhibition with the gallery after the Upper East Side powerhouse announced representation of her last year. (more…)

Stanley Whitney, Drawings (Installation View), via Art Observed

Lisson Gallery’s second New York location kicked off the fall art season this past week with a striking exhibition of drawings and small-scale works by Stanley Whitney, a charged entry in the season’s landscape of exhibitions that rings a powerful chord against the backdrop of the U.S.’s turbulent and increasingly violent, racially-tinged struggles.  Spread across the walls of the gallery’s small project space, the show is an impressive entry in the artist’s oeuvre, combining his energetic, colorful sensibilities with a more cutting socio-political and critical lens, one that brings his work into tight focus against the backdrop of current events. (more…)

Outside the Grand Palais, all photos via Andrea Nguyen for Art Observed

As Wednesday evening drags into the late night in Paris, the first day of FIAC has concluded, bringing with it a steady stream of sales and projects that once again places the French art fair at the center of the fall exhibition calendar. The city’s marquee art fair, FIAC opened to strong praise from its attendees, and a number of show-stopping works, arranged under the equally striking architecture of the Grand Palais.

FIAC, via Art Observed

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Pieter Schoolwerth, Privacy Settings #3 (2017), via Miguel Abreu

Returning to the French capital for another year of exhibitions inside the iconic expanses of the Grand Palais, the Foire International Art Contemporain, or FIAC, opens its doors today in Paris.  The fair, which has operated for over 44 years in the city, has undergone several facelifts over the course of its lifetime, with its most recent editions courting a healthy mix of contemporary and modern works alongside more classical and historical modes, making it one of the world’s more ambitiously curated programs.

Marguerite Humeau, Jonny’s Child (OH7B) (2014), via Clearing

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Trevor Paglen, A Study of Invisible Images (Installation View), via Art Observed

Drawing on the increasingly complex relationship between human relations, technological ascendency and the exercise of power that ultimately serves as a negotiating space between these two forces, Trevor Paglen’s work has repeatedly explored how the modern computer processor is ever more embroiled in the fabric of human decision-making and world-building. Having traveled the globe, and even fired a satellite into space to look down on it from outside its atmospheric confines, Paglen’s work delves into the physical architectures, and often otherworldly effects that the modern state of surveillance and speed renders on human understandings of time, space, and even our own perceptions of identity or self.

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Elizabeth Orr, House (2017), via Bodega

In the back room of Bodega, a new video by Elizabeth Orr began with one word: “HERE,” a coy move to set the location before her projected video lit up with a full sentence that manages to double back on the grandiosity of its previous line: “There is no spectacle to be revealed.”  This statement, taken in conjunction with the artist’s minimalist sculptures arranged around the front room, sets a terse, self-critical tone for Orr’s new exhibition, Our Hallway is Surrounded, a show that makes much of the act of both creating space, and dispensing with that same space’s contextual aura. (more…)

Thomas Eggerer, Todd (Installation View), all images courtesy the artist and Petzel Gallery

For the artist’s sixth solo exhibition at the gallery, New York’s Petzel Gallery is presenting nine new paintings by Thomas Eggerer, introducing an innovative figuration to the artist’s already established practice in meticulous depictions of the everyday. Each of the three large-scale works, as well as the six smaller canvases feature an elevated street view in which an industrial manhole cover is the focal point. In the larger works, the cool metal lids stand alone, while in the remaining, and arguably more engrossing paintings, they are accompanied by objects and figures that enact situations on and around them. (more…)

Kara Walker, Dredging the Quagmire (Bottomless Pit) (2017), via Art Observed

“How many ways can a person say racism is the real bread and butter of our American mythology, and in how many ways will the racists among our countrymen act out their Turner Diaries race war fantasy combination Nazi Germany and Antebellum South…” poses Kara Walker in the statement for her current exhibition at Sikkema Jenkins.  The artist’s work, returning to the gallery after a lengthy absence, is presented at the height of its power and intensity, here focusing on the repeating narratives and cycles of violence against the black body that have plagued the United States since its birth. (more…)

Amanda Ross-Ho, Untitled Timepiece (Coca-Cola) (2017), via Art Observed

In some regards, size has always mattered to Amanda Ross-Ho. It’s hard to even recall a show of hers in which she hasn’t taken a common object and enlarged it to an uncommon size. In her 2012 show at MOCA’s Pacific Design Center, Teeny Tiny Woman, Ross-Ho even went so far as to create an oversize photo enlarger, underscoring her impressive sense of both scale and formal wit. With several years of practice under her belt since then, however, Ross-Ho’s simple enlargements have seemed to evolve quite considerably, perhaps best exemplified by My Pen is Huge, Ross-Ho’s new exhibition at Mitchell-Innes & Nash, which sees her adding to own work’s discourse by including life size objects alongside her oversized sculptures. (more…)

Kudzanai Violet Hwami at Tyburn for 1:54 Art Fair, via Art Observed

With Frieze London commanding such expansive attention across the European art world each year, the fair’s annual occurrence has opened the door to an increasingly large pool of satellite fairs and supplementary exhibitions, turning the week into a packed series of openings and fairs spread throughout the British capital. This year, Frieze Art Week was no different, as the 1:54 Art Fair and Sunday Art Fair  its doors for another year in the city. (more…)

Francis Bacon, Head with Raised Arm (1955), via Christie’s

The week of auction sales in London concluded Friday evening, as both Phillips and Christie’s held their Contemporary and 20th Century Evening Sales, achieving modest results that did little to bolster a distinctly quiet sale the night prior at Sotheby’s.  For those looking for a strong confirmation of the market’s strength in a turbulent political climate worldwide, the sale offered little in the way of stability, with some top lots failing to find a buyer, while others just managed to sell at estimate.

Adrian Ghenie, The Collector 4 (2009), via Phillips

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Do Ho Suh at Victoria Miro, via Art Observed

On a cloudy Wednesday morning in London’s Regent’s Park, the doors opened on this year’s edition of the Frieze art fair, marking the latest edition of an event that has long billed itself as the premiere at event in the British capital.  This year’s opening continued to show why, as strong sales and an increasingly attentive approach towards curating and showing works made for an immersive and nuanced whole. (more…)

Cy Twombly, Untitled (1962), via Sothebys

After closing out the second day of proceedings across town at Regent’s Park yesterday, collectors and dealers flocked to Sotheby’s London for the first of the week’s Contemporary and Post-War Evening Sales.  Held in conjunction with the cutting edge works on view at Frieze London this week, the sale at Sotheby’s seemed to offer something of a moment of reflection for the contemporary market, looking back at some of the masters of the 20th Century, while also offering buyers a chance to bring them home. (more…)

Francis Bacon, Study of Red Pope 1962. 2nd Version 1971 (1971), via Christie’s

Making its stamp on Frieze auction week in London, the big auction houses are planning a string of major Contemporary and Post-War Evening Sales in the coming weeks, marking the first time the secondary market will be tested in the second half of 2017.  With sales at Christie’s, Sotheby’s and Phillips packed into a pair of evenings in the British capital, the first days of October should offer an interesting look at how the market has continued to respond to turbulent world events, unstable buying patterns, and the demanding pace of the current market schedule.

Andreas Gursky, Los Angeles (1999), via Phillips

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Frieze London, via Art Observed

The flagship event of London’s bustling art week, Frieze London opens this week at Regent’s Park, opening the month of October with one of the fall’s largest art fair events around the globe. Bringing over 160 galleries from around the globe to the fair’s grounds, the fair will turn 15 years old this year, looking back on its run as an increasingly vital part of the international art circuit, and one of the main players in the shifting landscape of the art market’s move towards more temporary, globally distributed events. (more…)

Amy Yao, Foreign Investments (Good Ramen) (2017), via Art Observed

For the last several years, the artists represented by 47 Canal have stood at the forefront of contemporary sculpture. It is easy to see the influence of artists like Josh Kline, Anicka Yi, and Amy Yao when looking at the work of younger artists exhibiting at galleries like Hotel Art Pavilion and Real Fine Arts, and their investigations of materials inextricable from the landscape of modernity makes them a distinctly notable entry in the evolution of New York’s arts history.  Amy Yao, who splits her time between Los Angeles and New York, brings her work back to 47 Canal this month with her new exhibition, Weeds of Indifference. Though Yao has had solo exhibitions in Los Angeles, Oslo, and Paris within the last two years, Weeds… is her first solo show in NYC since 2013. In that interval, Yao’s work has lost none of its bite, but that is not to say that things are still the same.

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Hélio Oiticica, P15 Parangolé Cape 11, I Embody Revolt (P15 Parangolé Capa 11, Eu Incorporo a Revolta) worn by Nildo of Mangueira, 1967. Courtesy of César and Claudio Oiticica, Rio de Janeiro. © César and Claudio Oiticica. Photograph by Claudio Oiticica

One of the most innovative artists and thinkers of the past century, Hélio Oiticica is currently being honored with an in-depth survey that breaks down key moments and artistic endeavors from the artist’s short but impressive career at the Whitney Museum of American Art. From his early days as part of the Neo-Concrete movement in his native Brazil to his time in New York’s East Village during the 1970s’, Oiticica’s inventive practice unfolds in sequences and segments throughout To Organize a Delirium, offering the audience a nuanced and participatory experience that exceeds traditional limits of art viewing experience, a point that strengthens his own conceptual engagement with art itself. (more…)

Pierre Huyghe, After ALife Ahead (2017), via Art Observed

Placing monumental works and nuanced environmental engagements across the city of Münster once each decade, the Skulptur Projekte touched down in the city again this summer,  spreading its wings over the German city for its fifth edition. Offering yet another take on the massively-scaled European art festivals, biennials and other curated events, Münster’s entry in this summer’s calendar is noteworthy in its engagement with the city itself. Embracing the location-sensitive capabilities of sculpture and public art, Skulptur Projekte welcomes meditations on what art might be capable of when inserted into the fabric of daily life, presenting a city where nuanced, conceptually-rich pieces of art can be encountered and experienced at almost any turn. (more…)

Andeas Schulze, Vacanze 15 (2016)

While today painting may often present draw critique as something of an exhausted genre, Cologne-based painter Andreas Schulze‘s surreal arrangements of bodies in space always manage to serve up a convincing protest.  This contrarian approach is perhaps best seen at Team Gallery where Schulze has arranged a series of smoky, slender depictions of beachgoers, bearing the apropos title Vacanze 365. Focusing particularly on torsos and pelvises, the painter captures vacationers sporting different types of beach attire in catchy patterns and bright colors, carrying smoke dispensers emerging as puffy clouds from belt-like stripes on waistlines. The gallery walls—covered in bright blue with traceable painterly gestures—bear an efficiently immersive installation, playing each work’s spry bodies against the soaring walls, with works hanging in untraditional angles in proximities to the ceiling. (more…)

Joanne Carson, via Art Observed

As the month of September nears its conclusion, the 11th year of Bushwick Open Studios returned to Brooklyn this past weekend, with artists around the neighborhood opening the doors to their project studios, galleries, rehearsal spaces and even their homes to intrepid viewers. Presenting a broad look at the city’s young and practicing artists in their native environment, this year offered a series of surprises and strong works that once again underscored the fair’s reputation as a first-hand look at the Bushwick art scene in close focus. (more…)

NYABF, via Art Observed

Opening its doors once again this Thursday evening at MoMA PS1, the 2017 NY Art Book Fair got underway with a bang, marking its 12th edition with a new selection of exhibitors, shows, projects and installations that have made the fair a compelling part of the fall art calendar. Inviting well over over 350 booksellers, antiquarians, artists, institutions, and independent publishers from twenty-eight countries to the event, this year’s edition of NYABF continued its engaging work connecting both small press publishers, artists and zine-makers with a broader network of special interest publishers from across the spectrum of both art and writing.

NYABF, via Art Observed

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