The Venice Biennale

With the first weeks of May upon us, so too comes the opening days of the Venice Biennale, as the 57th edition of the over a century-old art exhibition returns to the Italian city for another summer and Art Observed is in Venice to report on a broad and intriguing opening week of presentation.  Curated this year by Christine Macel, the chief curator at the Centre Pompidou, the fair’s title Viva Art Viva, traces a turn back from the intense political engagement of Okwui Enwezor’s 2015 Biennale, yet promises a no-less thorough look at the world during a particularly challenging era in history. (more…)

Jeppe Hein at 303 Gallery, via Art Observed

Following a solid four days of operation on Randall’s Island, Frieze New York closed this evening, bringing a conclusion to the first weeks of May’s busy art calendar, and setting the stage for major auctions coming shortly for the city.  The final hours today brought one last push of sales, as dealers rallied to wrap final talks with their clients, while other late guests walked the aisles looking for a hidden gem.   (more…)

Chéri Samba,”Complexe d’un enfant,” (2017), Magnin-A Gallery, Paris. Via Art Observed

Returning to New York City for its third edition, the 1:54 Art Fair touched down at Pioneer Works in Brooklyn’s Red Hook Neighborhood this weekend, bringing with it a wide range of works drawing from the fertile landscape of contemporary African art practice.  Founded by curator Touria El Glaoui several years ago as a companion fair to Frieze in London, the fair has since grown to encompass fairs on both sides of the Atlantic, serving as a vital mouthpiece for contemporary African art and artists from across the continent. (more…)

Julio Le Parc at Galeria Sur Puntada del Este, via Art Observed

Following the success of The European Fine Arts Fair’s (TEFAF) inaugural fair in October 2016, TEFAF New York debuts its sophomore fair dedicated to fine art, antiques, and design on May 4th at the Park Avenue Armory, with a particular focus on more contemporary pieces and artists. TEFAF New York Spring has its origins in Maastricht, Netherlands and was born out of exhibitors’ desire for the fair, which meticulously vets its artwork, to expand into the vibrant New York art world. Since 2016, TEFAF New York and Artvest have worked together in order to curate a fall and a spring show at the Park Avenue Armory. (more…)

Olafur Eliasson at Tanya Bonakdar, via Art Observed

As the weather continues to heat up in New York City, galleries from around the globe have descended once again onto Randall’s Island in the northern reaches of the city, bringing scores of new works for the sixth edition of Frieze’s New York fair.  Marking the first week of an extremely busy month that sees dealers, collectors and the rest of the art world split between New York and Venice, the fair opened today as a first breath in a bustling series of events that nevertheless saw strong attendance and strong interest for the works on hand, with many dealers using the fair as an opportunity to capitalize on their artist’s presence at major exhibitions in the U.S., Italy, and elsewhere.

Thomas Kovachevich, Cool T (1981), via Callicoon Fine Arts

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Ernesto Burgos, Mancha (2017), all images via Kate Werble Gallery

Artist Ernesto Burgos is presenting seven new pieces for his third solo show with Kate Werble Gallery up through May 6th.  For the past five years, Burgos has continued to make organic, sculptural forms from fiberglass, which he then paints over using a range of materials including spray paint, charcoal, oil stick and lacquer, embellishing his pieces with an additional layer of gestural mark-making.  Here, Burgos continues his investigation of form and material while experimenting with the size and presentation of his work.
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Sophie Calle, Here Lie the Secrets of the Visitors of Green-Wood Cemetery (Installation View), via Lindsay LeBoyer for Art Observed

Sophie Calle’s work has long dealt with the shadows and specters of intimacy, delving into spaces and sites where the artist’s active engagement with both her subjects and viewers turns the corner from artistic interaction to less easily defined forms.  It’s a messy sense of shared space and time, one which the artist takes great care to reflect both her own engagement and the varied perceptions of her participants in equal measure, and one which feels all the more delicate and immediate as a result.  (more…)

Frieze New York, via Frieze

As the art world gears up for another busy month in both the U.S. and Europe, the Frieze New York art fair is preparing to touch down once again on Randall’s Island, just off the coastline of Manhattan.  The fair, which turns six this year, is once again returning its signature program of forward-thinking art and on-site projects that stands as one of the final market events before the art world moves into its slower summer months.

Sven Loven, OL Rebellion (2017), via Jan Kaps (more…)

Teresita Fernandez, Fire (America) (Installation View), via Art Observed

Teresita Fernández has long explored the intertwined relationships of humanity, natural phenomena, and the resulting expanses of landscape that emerge from the continued engagement of humanity with the world around us.  Her pieces mix creative inquiry with studied engagements with the environment.  “Landscape is about the history of people in places and how we position ourselves within those spaces,” she writes, emphasizing the human aspect of viewing and seeking to understand the spaces outside modern civilization in its relation to mankind.  This ongoing conceptual project takes on new wrinkles and points of entry in Fire (America), a show of new works currently on view at Lehmann Maupin’s downtown location this month. (more…)

Adrián Villar Rojas, The Theater of Disappearance (2017), via Art Observed

Spread across the rooftop garden at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Adrián Villar Rojas has brought a body of new sculptures to kick off this season’s Rooftop Commission project, part of an ongoing series inviting contemporary artists to create large-scale sculptural works on the concrete patio above the institution’s storied halls.  Drawing from the formal language of with the Met’s own holdings, Villar Rojas’s work joins previous installations by Cornelia Parker, Pierre Huyghe and Dan Graham, among others, exploring the museum’s site and history against the New York skyline. (more…)

Cy Twombly, (Installation View), via Art Observed

The Centre Pompidou’s unique architectural layout gives itself over to the work of Cy Twombly this spring, spreading the artist’s work on a line of sight that parallels his pieces with the expansive cityscape of the French capital in Gallery 1.  The expansive retrospective, which has already earned major plaudits, unfolds gradually against this backdrop, offering a bold exploration of the artist’s impressive and influential canon.  The comprehensive collection of paintings, sculptures and photographs spans Twombly’s full career, highlighting his wide breadth of artistic styles, media and subject matter, while exploring the evolution and elaboration of his craft over the course of his career.

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Marianne Vitale, Fat City (Installation View), via CFA

Now through April 22, the Contemporary Fine Arts Gallery in Berlin presents Fat City, a show of works by New York-based artist Marianne Vitale.  For her second exhibition at CFA, Vitale has constructed a series of sculptures that reflect critically and ironically upon American identity, industry, and the concept of the American Dream.  The title of the exhibition takes its name from a 1969 Leonard Gardner novel, in which the protagonist, an alcoholic and semi-retired boxer, drifts down the streets of Stockton, California encountering the melancholy sights of American progress along the way.  In Vitale’s work, symbols of a particularly nostalgic America (such as boxing and steel) appear in the gallery, and speak to the fictional, narrative quality of this national identity.  (more…)

Jeremy Moon, Signals (1967), via Art Observed

Artist Jeremy Moon had worked for a little over a decade when his life was tragically cut short by a motorcycle accident in 1973.  Yet the artist’s work during this short period, the subject of an exhibition at Luhring Augustine’s Bushwick location this month, offers a striking fusion of the era’s painterly and conceptual thematics, combining serialism, minimalism, shaped-canvas painting, colorfield painting and abstraction into a colorful and often commanding body of work.  The gallery, which recently announced its representation of Moon’s estate, presents an introduction of a practice that stands out for both its stylish fusion of techniques with a precise sense of both critical discourse and practiced technique. (more…)

Al Taylor, Breakman (1978), via Art Observed

Artist Al Taylor’s body of works is recognized in particular for its swirling accumulations of material, assemblages of plexiglass, hula hoops, broomsticks, drips of paint and other contents built into self-contained systems.  Yet the artist’s work in this mode emerged from a prior decade dedicated almost exclusively to painting, where many of Taylor’s formal interests and approaches to space first began to develop.  Explored through a range of early canvases dated from 1971 to 1980, David Zwirner’s current exhibition at 537 West 20th Street in New York offers an intriguing entry into the artist’s early canon. (more…)

Sue Williams, Chicken Leg in Yellow (2017), via 303 Gallery

Currently on view at 303 Gallery, Sue Williams has brought a new body of paintings continuing her exploration of history and memory through the abstraction of both form and the painterly canon.  The exhibition, devoted to a handful of paintings and collages that trace the artist’s precise, and often humorously incisive approach to the American past, in conjunction with an incisive look at its impact on the female body.   (more…)

Vija Celmins, Night Sky #20 (2000-2016), all photos via Matthew Marks Gallery

It’s been almost seven years since New York has seen a Vija Celmins show.  Often working in small scales, Celmins has been painting realistic impressions of nature and man-made objects since the 1960’s. Known to take years to finish a painting, Celmins’s relentless pursuit of her work sees the artist often trying to rework pieces even after they have been hung.  The New York show is worth the wait, however, with Celmins presenting a beautiful group of new paintings, drawings, objects, and prints with Matthew Marks Gallery, on view through April 22nd.

  
Vija Celmins (Installation View)

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Jack Whitten, Black Monolith X, Birth of Muhammad Ali (2016), images via Osman Can Yerebakan for Art Observed

Artist Jack Whitten has opened an exhibition of new work in New York this spring at Hauser & Wirth, his first show with the gallery since joining its roster last year.  Presenting pieces from the last two years of practice, Whitten’s work, on view at the gallery’s temporary 22nd Street location, continues his exploration of the canvas as a site for engagement with the material consistency and visual expressivity of paint in a manner that often eludes easy classification as abstraction or minimalist technique.

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Joe Bradley, Out Joy (2017), via Art Observed

Currently on at Gagosian Beverly Hills, artist Joe Bradley is presenting a body of new works, continuing the artist’s complex and occasionally irreverent visual language through a wide range of formats and materials.  Marking the gallery’s most recent entry in its annual Oscars Weekend exhibition series, the exhibition is the artist’s first solo show with the gallery in Los Angeles, a fitting introduction to his work that draws widely from his recent output.

Joe Bradley, Eric’s Hair (Installation View), via Art Observed

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Ryan McGinley, Dash (Manhattan Bridge) (2000), via Team Gallery

Over nearly two decades, photographer Ryan McGinley has explored the deep emotional character and vivid energy of American youth, capturing its subcultures, heroes and creative communities in moments of joy and exuberance, desire and rebellion.  This long engagement with the broad cultural underground of the United States has seen the artist build a striking and diverse oeuvre, one which receives a well-deserved reflection in the artist’s most recent show at Team Gallery, Early, a survey of the artist’s work between 1999 and 2003.

Ryan McGinley, Early (Installation View), via Team Gallery

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August Sander, Untitled (Group for Sherrie Levine Composed by Gerd Sander in 2012), all photos by Osman Can Yerebakan for Art Observed

Currently occupying the top floors at Hauser & Wirth’s temporary 22nd Street space, Serialities provides the viewer with an ample range of works adopting visual repetition in photography, sculpture, and drawing as a manifestation and elaboration of their conceptual and narrative crux.  Organized with French art dealer Oliver Renaud-Clément, the exhibition finds its source of inspiration in August Sander’s decades-spanning photography project People of the 20th Century, a massive collection of 600 photographs in which Sanders chronicled German daily life through images of individuals of his home country between the 1910’s and the beginning of the 1950’s.  While Sanders sub-categorized his collection based on occupation or social class, People Who Came to My Door, one of his more personal and intimate groupings, anchor this group exhibition.  Through Sanders’s mellow, balanced approach to his subjects, he captures poses of deliberation and vulnerability, exposing their inner selves for the artist’s lens and viewer’s eyes.  His interest in depicting various social and economic groups in Germany before and after World War II delivers an inquisitive social landscape overall. (more…)

Jimmie Durham, At The Center of the World (Installation View), via Art Observed

For nearly fifty years, artist Jimmie Durham has worked at a unique junction of material and focus, exploring the modern world through his haphazard material sensibility.  Compiling works from broken planks of wood, reclaimed oil drums, signs, blown glass and other objects, the artist’s assemblages delve into the modern landscape, repositioning one’s perspective on the landscape of modernity, and the often challenging disconnects between human progress and the day to day world.  Currently presenting a survey of his work at the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles, the artist gives the viewer a moment to catch up to the times, bringing together a range of interests in history and politics that constantly undergird his approach to his work.

Jimmie Durham, Homage to David Hammons (1997), via Art Observed

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Alice Neel, Anselmo (1962), via Art Observed

Drawing on painter Alice Neel’s longtime residence in the northern reaches of Manhattan, David Zwirner is currently presenting a body of paintings by Alice Neel, curated by author and critic Hilton Als, and exploring Neel’s longtime practice in portraiture.  Encouraging an exploration of visual art history and politics, social commentary and painterly craft, the exhibition is a striking exploration of the artist’s work in all of its nuance and power.   (more…)

Ron Nagle, Glorious Assemblage (2016), via Art Observed

Ron Nagle’s miniature sculptures function in part as narrative fragments, scenes and situations held in time and added a certain sense of life and energy by their imaginative, curving forms or remarkably evocative relations of space.  Some conjure the effect of domestic scenes, others a moment of geological rupture, while others present themselves as somewhere between the two, always emphasizing the artist’s patient craft and attention to detail that has made his connections with fellow West Coast artists like Ken Price all the more apparent.  Nagle returns to Los Angeles this spring for a show with Matthew Marks Gallery, bringing a new body of sculptures and drawings created over the course of 2016, once again illustrating these elements in play with his ever-growing body of work. (more…)

Bjarne Melgaard, The Casual Pleasure of Disappointment, 2017. Photography by Andre Herrero. Courtesy of Red Bull Arts New York.

For its inaugural exhibition as Red Bull Arts, the multi-purpose art venue in Chelsea has opened its doors for Bjarne Melgaard’s immersive reenactment of a clothing store, titled The Casual Pleasure of Disappointment, and furthering the artist’s already well-documented engagements with pop culture, fashion and personal subjectivities over the course of his body of multimedia works.  The Norwegian artist, who has enjoyed tremendous recognition in the U.S. in recent years, especially his psychedelic installation at the 2014 Whitney Biennial, has brought his own fashion line, which had its European debut at the Astrup Fearnley Museum in Oslo last November, to New York.   (more…)