Embarking on a range of highbrow pastiches drawing from 1950’s Americana, flashy cars and bright colors, painter David Salle continues to reinvent his unique sense of the postmodern, and the craft of painting in the contemporary era, taking over Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac’s Paris Marais exhibition space.  Working through a series of paintings on canvas and paper, the show welcomes a renewed perspective on Salle’s combinations of culture, color and gesture. (more…)

Sigmar Polke, Untitled (1985), via Michael Werner

Marking a timely overlap with the artist’s February 13th birthday, Michael Werner Gallery is currently showing a series of paintings from Sigmar Polke’s Pour series, delving into the artist’s relentlessly inventive and exploratory approach to the canvas.  Primarily focused around works from the later years of the artist’s career, particularly the late 1990’s, the gallery exhibition also welcomes a deeper engagement with time, offering several early works drawing on techniques that Polke would later expand on, underlining his expansive and often self-reflective inclinations towards his own body of work.

Sigmar Polke, Pour Paintings on Paper (Installation View), via Michael Werner

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Gustav Klimt,  Bauerngarten (Blumengarten) (1907), via Sotheby’s

Moving away out of the depths of winter and towards the spring market rush, Sotheby’s and Christie’s will kick off their respective sales of Surrealist, Impressionist and Modern works this coming week, marking the first major auctions of 2017, and signaling the first real test of a market dealt the lion’s share of uncertainty in the past six months.  Taking place in London, the week’s sales will offer a first look at how recent shakeups at both auction houses, and attempts to broaden their respective scopes, will fare with works on the block.

Paul Gauguin, Te Fare (La maison) (1892), via Christie’s

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John Armleder, Jasmine West (2017). All images courtesy David Kodansky Gallery.

Now through February 25, the David Kordansky Gallery in Los Angeles hosts new work by Swiss artist John Armleder. This is the artist’s first show in the city in over 15 years and presents an array of wall paintings, several types of painting on canvas, and “installation-based gestures made in response to the overall effect produced by the other objects”, according to the press release. The show coincides with another exhibition of Armleder’s work in New York City at the Almine Rech Gallery. (more…)

Francis Kéré’s design for the Serpentine, via The Guardian

The Serpentine Galleries will host architect Diébédo Francis Kéré (founder and head of Kéré Architecture) as this year’s Serpentine Pavilion designer, making the architect the first African designer invited to work with the British Institution’s annual project.  Kéré, who splits his time between Berlin and his home city of Gando in Burkino Faso, has created a massive elevated canopy, much like the stretching branches of a tree, under which the Serpentine will host its annual series of talks, performances and other events.   (more…)

Jean-Luc Moulène (Installation View), via Art Observed

To walk through Jean-Luc Moulène’s retrospective at The Centre Pompidou is to traverse through a wasteland of fossils and discarded matter, a history of repurposed and spliced objects placed into an ever-evolving series of dialogues and interactions.  Giving off subtle senses of a dystopian, simulated future, the artist’s sculptures play on a suspended sense of reality, often challenging its role as constructed object or sourced material that plays on a rupture between past, present and future, disrupting easy legibility while staging a site where these divergent sensations are allowed to co-exist. (more…)

Aline Kominsky-Crumb and R. Crumb, Drawn Together (Installation View)

Drawn Together, a decade-spanning look at the collaborative work of the cartoonist husband and wife Aline Kominsky-Crumb and R. Crumb, offers a well-timed opportunity for lovers of the graphic arts at David Zwirner, coinciding with the opening of the New Museum’s Raymond Petitibon retrospective A Pen of All Work.  Although they were individually prominent artists in the graphic arts scene during the course of their careers, Aline and Robert delivered a unique visual and intellectual body of work that both drew on their marriage in the early ‘70s. Later gathered in a series titled Aline and Bob’s Dirty Laundry Comics, which debuted in 1974, the couple’s ongoing collaboration is a statement on marriage, partnership, and dependency, as well as on sexuality and gender roles of the society they lived and worked within. (more…)

Adrian Ghenie, Rest During the Flight into Egypt (2016), via Art Observed

Drawing on a wide range of works from the artist’s recent practice, Pace Gallery is presenting a series of new paintings by Adrian Ghenie, drawing on the artist’s unique approach to both the construction of his canvases, and the position his work takes in its relation to broader timeline of European painting and political history.

Adrian Ghenie, Degenerate Art (2016), via Art Observed

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Louise Bourgeois UNTITLED (detail) (1998-2014), Suite of 8 Holograms © The Easton Foundation/Licensed by VAGA, NY.

Throughout the course of her fifty-year career, artist Louise Bourgeois has experimented with a broad span of media, while remaining primarily focused around her foundational sculptural works and works on paper.  That broad range of work is offered a new wrinkle in Holograms, a recently concluded exhibition at Cheim & Read that brings together a body of work never been shown in its entirety in the Chelsea exhibition space’s intimate rear gallery.  Offering a profound elaboration on the artist’s less-known approaches to her work, the show documents Bourgeois’s dialogue with the New York-based fine arts holographic studio C-Projects, resulting in eight holographic photographs blanketed with an alluring red tone, which granted the artist the potential to orchestrate her contemplative, often surreal techniques in this unexpected, yet fertile, medium.

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Boris Lurie, Adieu Amerique (1959-1960), part of the show’s “Inventing Downtown,” section all images via Shannon Viola for Art Observed

Nestled within the heart of Greenwich Village, New York University’s Grey Gallery is showcasing works from a selection of artist-run galleries in the surrounding neighborhoods over the early post-war years of 1952 to 1965.  The exhibition, which encompasses two floors of gallery space, illuminates the period in the New York art scene in which Pop Art and Minimalism were gradually overtaking the influence and impact of Abstract Expressionism. Pieces from eclipsed artists, such as women and artists of color, come to the forefront in particular here, exploring both the experimental approaches and the outcomes of a cooperatively-run sphere of downtown art, and the often overshadowed artists that were a cornerstone of New York’s cultural ascendancy during the era. (more…)

Koak at AlterSpace, via Art Observed

Taking over the spacious halls of the Expo Reforma once again (the first time in the same location as a previous edition), the Material Art Fair opened its doors this Thursday to strong attendance and interest from collectors and attendees.  Embracing an expanded floor plan for the fair without increasing its gallery count, this year’s edition of Material was distinctly walkable, as larger booths meant more space for ambitious pieces and multi-artist selections, a choice that only strengthened the show’s appeal.

Sangree at Yautepec, via Art Observed

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Willem de Kooning, Door to the River (1960), via Art Observed

Embarking on their first exhibition under their shared gallery name, Dominique Lévy and Brett Gorvy’s new Gorvy Lévy Gallery has opened 2017 with a bang, bringing together a landmark body of paintings by two masters of the medium, Zao Wou-Ki and Willem de Kooning.  Drawing from each artist’s unique gestural abilities and continually inventive bodies of work over the course of their evolution, the show is a major achievement for the gallery, including several major museum loans that underscores Gorvy’s impact on the gallery’s already strong programming.

Zao Wou-Ki, Untitled (1949), via Art Observed

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Wolfgang Tillmans, Eleanor / Lutz, portrait, (2016), Regen Projects. All photos via Art Observed.

As the doors of the Centro Citibanamex opened today in Mexico City, Zona Maco rolled into its 14th edition, bringing a surge in exhibitions, films, and programs to the proceedings of the yearly art fair event in the Mexican capital.  Welcoming galleries from around the globe, the fair’s early-year scheduling offered something of a kick-off to the year’s market events, while offering an indication of current market strength, as well as a spotlight on the Latin American art circuit.

Pedro Reyes at Lisson, via Art Observed

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Katharina Grosse, Untitled (2016), via Art Observed

Opening her first exhibition with Gagosian since announcing her representation by the gallery last year, Katharina Grosse has brought a swirling, nuanced body of new works to the gallery’s 24th Street location in Chelsea this month, documenting her enigmatic approach to the painted canvas through a variety of approaches and forms.  Allowing varied layers and lines to intersect, overlap and combine, the artist’s gestural techniques, in conversation with her use of various technologies in the rendering of the canvas, create densely packed spaces of visual information.

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Anselm Kiefer, Walhalla (1992 – 2016), via White Cube

Walhalla, Anselm Kiefer’s latest exhibition at White Cube Gallery in Bermondsey, is a dark, thrilling, and sinister rendering of war and destruction. The show’s title, drawn from Norse mythology, and referring to the final resting place of slain heroes as they were received by King Odin, is scribbled in charcoal above the entrance. “Walhalla” or “final place of rest” is also the title of a neoclassical hall commissioned by Bavaria’s King Ludwig I in 1842, built to honor men of great repute.  Kiefer, for his part, honors not just historical figures, but found objects in tandem, marrying unreality with the show’s surreal juxtapositions: a bed sinks under the weight of a winged boulder; a lightening bolt strikes a bullet-hold wheelchair; a spiral staircase, adorned with rusted dresses, leads to an ambiguous destination.  Notions of mythology and reality are interwoven to provide an intriguing, albeit challenging, spectacle to behold. (more…)

Richard Serra, NJ-2 (2016), via Art Observed

Richard Serra’s works are nothing if not an experience; curving, twisting forms that wind the viewer through space, while taking an active hand on shaping the space itself.   Throughout the artist’s career, he has continued to create works that challenge conventional understanding of form, and re-conceptualize notions of gravity in play with his objects.  Working within this familiar domain, Serra is currently presenting three unique, large-scale steel sculptures at Gagosian Britannia Street, London. On view through March 10th, 2017 his new works highlight his mastery of material, and his unique ability to continually pursue a sense of creative vitality.  In some sense, his works here: NJ-2 (previously on view in New York), Rounds: Equal Weight, Unequal Measure, and Rotate, exist as portals of some sort, gateways into a repositioned experience of space, and the act of viewing work within a given series of physical constraints. (more…)

Lucio Fontana, Concetto Spaziale, Attesa (1964-1965), via Cardi Gallery

The return of Mexico City’s increasingly vital art week this February signals the first wave of 2017’s major fair events, as much of the world’s contemporary art world converges on the sprawling Mexican capital.  Centered around the large-scale Zona Maco fair and its smaller, younger sister fair Material at the Expo Reforma, the week offers a wide range of events and openings accompanying the market-focused proceedings. (more…)

Mark Leckey, The Universal Addressability of Dumb Things (2013), via Art Observed

British artist Mark Leckey has brought a dense, timely exhibition to bear on the second and third floors of MoMA PS1 this month, as the artist’s first comprehensive U.S. survey brings a range of perspectives on the pace and content of a digitized life.  Questioning and playfully subverting the varied symbolic systems and technological structures that facilitate the landscape of modern life, Leckey’s exhibition is a fitting opening note of 2017, challenging hierarchies of power and image-making in a time when the consistency and reliability of information has become an increasingly troubled subject.

Mark Leckey, GreenScreenRefrigerator (2008-2016), via Art Observed

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Henry Moore, Warrior with Shield (1953—1954), all images courtesy Hauser & Wirth

Taking a historically nuanced approach towards the vastly influential career of British sculptor Henry Moore, Hauser & Wirth is currently presenting an exhibition of early works on paper by the artist.  Exploring the artist’s graphic practice in the years directly following the end of WWII, the exhibition traces Moore’s ongoing engagement with the world of literature, and his engagement with the broader artistic spheres as he continued to hone and develop his practice.  Organized by the Henry Moore Foundation and curated by the artist’s daughter, Mary, the exhibition traces Moore’s impressive creative spirit, and the ever-shifting craft of an artist continuing to work through wartime. (more…)

Miguel Ángel Cárdenas, Green Couple (1966), via Kelly Lee for Art Observed

Spanning a wide range of pieces, including paintings, video, drawing and assemblages by the Colombian-Dutch artist Miguel Ángel Cárdenas, Andrea Rosen’s current exhibition offers a concise examination of the artist’s formal evolution and shifting compositional interests.  Born and raised in Colombia, the artist moved to Amsterdam during the early 1960’s, offering his own interpretation of the threads of pop and conceptual practice dominating the conversations of European practice during the era.   (more…)

Miles Coolidge, Coal Seam, Bergwerk Prosper-Haniel #3 (2013), via Peter Blum

A pairing of large photo works of coal mine walls with smaller photochemical pieces, Peter Blum’s exhibition of works by Miles Coolidge reinvigorates a dialogue around 20th century inquiries into chemistry, art production, and process imagery, presenting shared sensations of something physically visceral, all realized via inkjet pigment or liquid chemicals, realized in a manner evoking the sublime. (more…)

Jane Freilicher, Window (2011), via Art Observed

The city of New York has always served as a grand subject for artists, its towering skyline spreading its shadow over the Hudson and the minds of its resident artists.  At Derek Eller Gallery this month, three of these artists are the subject of an exhibition examining this same impact on their respective practices, framed in particular by the meditative oil paintings of Jane Freilicher.  The artist is joined by Daniel Heidkamp and Mira Dancy, both of whom offer their own interpretations of modern life, both in the city, and beyond.   (more…)

Hannah van Bart, Untitled (2016), via Art Observed

Hannah van Bart’s works serve as particularly intricate visual experiences, often twisting interior and exterior architectural forms around the human body (frequently female), presenting the human figure in a manner that subverts the canvas’s illusions of depth, and the human brain’s understanding of flat surfaces.  Her paintings, presented at Marianne Boesky this month, present themselves as something of a variation on theme as a result, allowing the viewer to trace the artist’s varied explorations of her subjects, and their varied relationships to the world around them.

Hannah van Bart, Untitled (2016), via Art Observed

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Matt Johnson, Drywall #2 (Grape Hyacinth M560-3) (2016), via 303 Gallery

Spread out across the floor of 303‘s exhibition on West 21st Street, a wide, often enigmatic series of seemingly cast-off objects sit atop small plinths.  Ranging from crumbled pizza and avocado boxes to stacked bags of concrete to immense towers of interlocking slabs, the sculptures are part of a new series by Los Angeles-based artist Matt Johnson, using the flexible and expressive capacities of wood to create works that vary in their notes of the hyperreal, pathetic and ephemeral in relation to the world around them.  Taking this intersection of historical and cultural reference points as a rich space for operation, the artist’s work conjures a wide range of interpretations and readings through minimal effort.

Matt Johnson, Untitled (4 Stacked Tape Rolls) (2016), via 303 Gallery (more…)