Philippe Vandenberg, No Title (ca. 2007), via Art Observed

When the Belgian artist Philippe Vandenberg committed suicide at his Ghent home in 2009, he left behind an expansive body of work, including a drawing book that brims with semi-abstract watercolor sketches detailing the artist’s inner conflicts. Dedicated to the work Vandenberg created between 2006 and his death, Hauser & Wirth’s exhibition at its uptown space in New York aims to bring the legacy of the pioneer painter back to the New York art world’s attention. While Vandenberg left a significant footprint in his hometown during the European Neo-Expressionist movement of the 1980’s, he maintained a relatively low profile in the United States, with only a handful of solo exhibitions in the last three decades. This show, organized by Anthony Huberman, the director of San Francisco’s CCA Wattis Institute for Contemporary Art, expands throughout the gallery, bringing together a group of milestones from his last years that underscores his unique vision. (more…)

Meschac Gaba, Reflection Room Tent (2017), via Tanya Bonakdar

Working between Benin and the Netherlands during the course of the past 20 years, artist Meschac Gaba has forged a unique language for addressing and visualizing the varied effects and themes both driving and stemming from the rapid pace of globalization.  Utilizing a playful approach to environmental installation and sculpture, Gaba’s work frequently presents spaces and scenes drawing from the marketplace and the museum, the refugee camp or the modern office.  For his current solo exhibition at Tanya Bonakdar Gallery in New York, Gaba has installed his Reflection Room Tent piece, opening a space for dialogue and engagement between visitors inside the gallery space.

Meschac Gaba, Memoriale aux Refugies Noyees (Memorial for Drowned Refugees) (2016), via Tanya Bonakdar (more…)

Shannon Ebner, Will And Be Going To (2017), via Art Observed

Los Angeles-based artist Shannon Ebner has marked her first solo exhibition with Eva Presenhuber this month, taking over the gallery’s exhibition space at 39 Great Jones in New York with a series of photographs on aluminum that mark the artist’s continued engagement with temporality and space.  Spread across the gallery’s two floor layout, Ebner’s photographs confront the viewer with a series of reinterpreted engagements with the act of photographic production, pushing for meditations into the creative act and exhibition of her images.

Shannon Ebner, Signal Escapes (2017), via Art Observed

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Cerith Wyn Evans, S=U=T=R=A2 (2017), via Sophie Kitching for Art Observed

Mixing together sonic and visual systems of perception, artist Cerith Wyn Evans has opened an exhibition of new works at Marian Goodman’s Paris exhibition space, marking an expansion of the artist’s long-running interest in the gray area between speech and written text, sound and image.  Spread out across multiple floors in the gallery, the artist’s pieces delve into the functions behind cognition and spatial awareness, using familiar imagery and the written word to shape and disrupt the acts of reading, seeing and hearing.  (more…)

Lyric On a Battlefield (Installation View), Photos by David Regen. Courtesy Gladstone Gallery, New York and Brussels

“No one writes lyric on a battlefield. On a map stuck with arrows,” begins Quarto, a 2009 poem by the feminist author and essayist Adrienne Rich. Adopting its name from the metaphorical expression Rich uses in her poem’s first line, Gladstone Gallery’s summer group exhibition, Lyric on a Battlefield, seeks impressions of beauty inherent in the struggles and joys of everyday experience through the poetic and personal narrative of life. Organized by Miciah Hussey, the exhibition pairs established names such as Suzanne McClelland, Anne Collier, and Ellen Berkenblit with a younger generation of artists like Monique Mouton and Louisa Clement.

Lyric On a Battlefield (Installation View), Photos by David Regen. Courtesy Gladstone Gallery, New York and Brussels

The introspective and meditative nature of the lyric, in terms of offering a highly subjective interpretation of time and space, infuses each juxtaposition of collective human experiences, like loss, intimacy, and memory, with a sense of vivid and often urgent vitality.  Presented here, the show’s works turn this sense of humanity into a powerful rumination on modern society, and the varied experiences that undergird our negotiation with everyday existence.

The biggest discovery of the exhibition is f.marquespenteado, the gender-nonconforming pseudonym of the Brazilian artist Fernando Marques Penteado, who combines traditional embroidery methods with found objects and text to orchestrate installations brimming with complex narratives. Although the artist is an established name in his native country and in Europe, his presence in New York has remained somewhat limited, with the exception of his inclusion in the Jewish Museum’s 2015 group exhibition Orthodox, which had aptly focused on artists outside mainstream dynamics of the art world.

The artist’s ability to infuse emotion, sensuality and soul to everyday objects allows him to marry domesticity with sexuality, while his texts add a sense of vivacity and character to his often mundane materials. The embroidery he accentuates and defamiliarizes his arbitrary objects which stems from a dedication to a practice that has been traditionally associated with feminine labor. In one of the installations, two pairs of clogs are placed in front of a wooden rake and dried flowers, standing in for a pair of absent bodies of two male lovers whose relationship is recounted through an imaginary interview conducted with one of them.

Lyric On a Battlefield (Installation View), Photos by David Regen. Courtesy Gladstone Gallery, New York and Brussels

Lyric On a Battlefield (Installation View), Photos by David Regen. Courtesy Gladstone Gallery, New York and Brussels

By contrast, Suzanne McClelland’s large scale double-sided painting Reg Park and the Hard Gainers exemplifies the Brooklyn-based painter’s decades-long investigation of text, data, and image culture through the lens of American ideals such as success, fame, and class. What appear on the surface as tempestuous and fervent abstract paintings, emanating from loose hand gestures, encapsulate her research and analysis-heavy process regarding facts prevalent in our society, such as male privilege and unjust distribution of opportunity. Adorned with slightly abstracted letters and names, McClelland’s abstract paintings further the artist’s interpretation of information as a fluctuating entity through their double-sided natures that offer alternative paths to same ends.

This sense of text and movement, experience and action, running throughout the show makes for an intriguing engagement with intersections of text and the life it describes. Lyric on a Battlefield is on view at Gladstone Gallery through July 28, 2017.

— O.C. Yerebakan

Read more:
Gladstone Gallery [Exhibition Page]

Harumi Yamaguchi, Fight Mode (1976) via Art Observed

Tucked in the back room of Bridget Donahue‘s Bowery exhibition space lies Project Native Informant’s contribution to the itinerant exhibition project CONDO: Harumi Yamaguchi’s first US solo exhibition. Yamaguchi, a commercial artist active from the 1970’s onwards, is an expert air-brusher. Not unlike fellow artist and commercial illustrator Hajime Sorayama, her illustrations portray human figures in an idealized setting: perfect lighting, unblemished skin, and gleaming white teeth, a sense of almost unnerving beauty amplified by their provocative poses and minimalist backdrops.

Harumi Yamaguchi at Project Native Informant Hosted by Bridget Donahue, via Bridget Donahue

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Alex Israel, Pelican (2017), via Almine Rech

Marking a new stage in his engagement with the cultural landscape and natural phenomena of the California coastline, Alex Israel returns to Almine Rech’s Paris location this month, presenting his aptly titled solo exhibition, Summer 2.  Drawn from the artist’s work on his forthcoming feature-length film, SPF-18, Israel has created a series of aluminum and acrylic wetsuit sculptures, text-based pieces, and an extremely detailed pelican sculpture, each presenting its own twist on the familiar iconography of the beach environments he has so often used as source material. (more…)

Lisa Yuskavage, Déjà Vu (2017) via Art Observed

On view at David Zwirner Gallery‘s London exhibition space, now through July 28th, is a new series of new paintings by Lisa Yuskavage.  Often associated with the re-emergence of figuration in contemporary painting, Yuskavage’s work is noted for its psychedelic, colorfully vibrant style, and its often sexually-charged subject matter. Her paintings embody a unique genre of portraiture—a blending of imagined and contemporary subjects set against classical tropes and icons of human sexuality. In this series, Yuskavage draws upon the world of American hippies, where slinky, bodacious women lounge about and cavort with semi-nude men. It is worth noting that while the hyper-sexualized women remain the dominant characters, the inclusion of men in her work is a fairly new departure for Yuskavage. (more…)

Louise Lawler, Life After (Faces), (2006/2007), via Art Observed

The Museum of Modern Art has opened the first New York museum survey of the work of Louise Lawler, moving throughout a broad range of the American artist’s conceptual exercises and investigations into the power dynamics and aesthetic underpinnings of the art world at large.  Running from the artist’s early photographic investigations and her explorations into the presentation, representation, and, as she titles it “re-presentation,” of various works and images from the expanse of modern art history, the exhibition is a bold reflection on the artist’s work throughout the past 40 years, as well as a rumination on the continued role of the museum as a site for the understanding of the field’s history more broadly. (more…)

Matthew Wong, Last Summer in Santa Monica (2017), via Sarah Cohen for Art Observed

Drawing on a continuous engagement with the poetics of the horizon and its recurring presence across the history of contemporary painting, Cheim & Read has opened its summer group exhibition, The Horizontal.  Culling together a diverse group of artists from the past eighty years of artistic practice, the show is an investigation and reflection on the horizon as a motif weaving its way throughout varied investigations of modern art-making.  Photography, painting, drawing and print-making each make their presence felt throughout the exhibition, inviting a deep perspective on how the skyline, and its attendant impact on the viewer’s perception, has continued to inspire artist’s work into the modern day.

Louise Fishman, Bitter Herb (1988), via Sarah Cohen for Art Observed

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Edward Quinn, Picasso wearing a bull’s head intended for bullfighter’s training, La Californie, Cannes (1959), courtesy of Gagosian

A true Spaniard at heart, Pablo Picasso had a great affinity for bullfighting. With a keen appreciation for the sport, it proved to be a continuous theme throughout his work. Picasso’s oeuvre is riddled with symbolism as well as direct pictorial representations of bulls, matadors and the mythological minotaur— the half-man, half-beast that so piqued Picasso’s interest. Minotaurs and Matadors, on view at Gagosian’s Grosvenor Hill gallery space through August 25th, a show expertly curated by Sir John Patrick Richardson, celebrates Picasso’s passion and link to both his traditional Spanish roots and the mythological landscapes that so inspired him in turn. (more…)

Roni Horn, Water Double v.3 (2013-2015), via Ondine Charlesworth for Art Observed

Currently on view at Hauser & Wirth’s recently opened exhibition space on 22nd Street, artist Roni Horn is presenting a quartet of new bodies of work, running through the artist’s broad and often adventurous approach to her chosen media.  Ranging from, drawing and painting through to sculpture, photography and conceptual work, Horn’s practice is on full view here, always centering back on questions of perception, representation, identity and memory.  Deconstructing both linguistic systems and visual cues, Horn’s new pieces continue her subtly exploratory and phenomenologically resonant practice. (more…)

Hanne Darboven, Kulturgeschichte 1880–1983 (1980-1983) (detail), via Art Observed

The Dia Art Foundation has opened a dialogue between the work of Kishio Suga and Hanne Darboven at its Chelsea exhibition space this winter, a discourse over decades and continents, time frames and objects through conceptual engagements with each artist’s respective local and social contexts.  Compiling Darboven’s expansive piece Kulturgeschichte 1880–1983 (Cultural History 1880–1983, 1980–83) in conversation with a series of Suga’s historical and recent works, the pair of shows delve into the act of addressing and working with history, in exchange with the inherently material practice of making art.

Kishio Suga, Law of Halted Space (2016) via Art Observed    (more…)

Marguerite Humeau, Riddles (Installation view), via Art Observed

French artist Marguerite Humeau is showing new works at Clearing Gallery this summer, marking a continued engagement with processes of deep historical research and engagement with varied mythological traditions in her work, the new exhibition draws particular interest from the myth of the Sphinx, investigating the creature as a fitting metaphorical subject and thematic for the landscape of modernity.  Here, Humeau takes on the state of modern surveillance, translating the Sphinx into a fitting metaphor for the modern technological landscape, and a convenient point of connection between the massive communicative power of modern tech and the mythic power of Greek civilization. (more…)

Anselm Kiefer, The Painter’s Studio (2016), via Art Observed

Artist Anselm Kiefer returns to New York this month, bringing with him a dense and wide-ranging body of oil paintings, books, watercolors and assemblages to the expansive halls of Gagosian’s Chelsea exhibition space.  Marking a continued engagement with the process and materiality of painting, rather than a direct engagement with a selected end subject or image, the artist’s works here reflect his continued interest in the alchemical potentials for painting, and the broad vocabulary he has developed over the course of his career. (more…)

Serpentine Pavilion, via Iwan Baan for Serpentine Galleries

The move into summer months in the city of London brings with it the opening of a new Serpentine Pavilion commission, the ongoing architectural program in Hyde Park which sees architects from around the globe submitting groundbreaking and adventurous designs for the museum’s temporary outdoor structure.  Used as an open-air locale for talks, screenings, performances and other parts of the Serpentine’s summer programming, the pavilion is one of the enduring projects of the institution. (more…)

Alexander Calder, Portrait for Joan Miró. Private Collection; 2017 Calder Foundation, New York/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York; Successió Miró, via Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York, via ADAGP, Paris 2017.

Calder/Miró: Constellations, on view through June 30, 2017, presents the work of Alexander Calder and Joan Miró at Pace Gallery and Acquavella Galleries, respectively, a two-venue exhibition aiming to present the distinct bodies of work and complementary concepts shared between the two artists while they were separated on either side of the Atlantic during World War II.  Presenting approximately 60 sculptures, paintings, and works on paper, the show presents a dialogue highlighting formal, social and political concerns informing the processes of both artists at a distinct conceptual and aesthetic high point for both their careers. (more…)

Andy Warhol, Self-Portrait (1963-64), final price: £6,008,750, via Sotheby’s

Marking its entry in London’s final week of major evening auctions for the first half of 2017, Sotheby’s closed a small, 41-lot proceeding this evening in its Contemporary department, running through its offered works with impressive results and  steady bidding  that ultimately brought home a final total sales figure of £62,325,750 for the sale.  Bounding through its lots, leaving only works unsold, the sale offered a high note for the contemporary market’s continued strength.    (more…)

Anne Imhof, Faust (2017), via Art Observed

Images capture. They calcify. Within space and time, images appear to sustain a frozen existence with a kind of false grace that suppresses the perpetual change and motion that could be posed as all that which, for lack of a more concise term, is not the image itself.  The dialectic between motion and image, fluidity and representation, is the central conflict of Faust, Anne Imhof’s Golden Lion-winning performance for the German Pavillion at the 57th Venice Biennale. (more…)

Daniel Buren, To Align: works in situ 2017 (Installation View), via Bortolami Gallery

On view through the end of the week, Bortolami Gallery is currently presenting its fourth exhibition of work by Daniel Buren, taking place in the gallery’s new Tribeca location.  Buren’s rich and varied career has been the subject of major museum exhibitions worldwide, and here, in the gallery’s spacious location at 39 Walker Street, turns towards the architectural character of the newly inaugurated space.  His works here draw on space, position and perspective to transform the space with his bright colors and filtered light. (more…)

Wassily Kandinsky, Bild mit weissen Linien (1913), via Sotheby’s

Holding court with a short but well-appointed pair of sales in London, Sotheby’s kicked off a week of auctions in the British capital, closing its Impressionist and Modern Evening sale with a string of impressive figures and a new auction record for Wassily Kandinsky at £33 million, ultimately bringing a final sales figure of £127,945,750.  The night also saw a short curated sale, “Actual Size” precede the evening’s main event, which saw mixed results and a £20,931,250 final tally for its offering.

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Ellsworth Kelly, Diptych: Green Blue (2015), via Art Observed

Since the passing of Ellsworth Kelly in December of 2015, the exhibition of the artists’s final works has made for a sort of bittersweet anticipation. The show could be seen as a grand farewell to an artist who changed the landscape of American painting several times over during the course of his career, each time delving deeper into his clean, almost rhythmic approach to the shaped canvas that filled its confines with rich bounties of color.  Presented this month at Matthew Marks, the artist’s last body of work does not disappoint, and the series of pieces, culled from past sketches and concepts or completely new ideas, feels like a fitting look at the furthest points of the artist’s exploration before he laid down his brush for the last time.  (more…)

Georg Baselitz, Descente (Exhibition view). All images courtesy the artist and Galerie Thaddeus Ropac

On now through the first of July, Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac is presenting a body of new works by German artist Georg Baselitz in its spacious Paris Pantin exhibition galleries.  The show, titled Descente, brings together a set of new paintings and works on paper that concern the concept of aging and that of the “late work” in the career and life of an artist. (more…)

Felix Gonzalez-Torres (Installation View), via Art Observed

Reflecting on the landmark career and tragically short life of artist Felix Gonzalez-Torres, David Zwirner has opened its first exhibition dedicated to his work.  Zwirner has partnered with Andrea Rosen to jointly represent the artist’s estate worldwide, a move that promises increasingly broad exposure and support for his vision and canon. (more…)