Pat Steir, domini (1990), via Art Observed

Stepping into Dominique Lévy gallery space, one is immediately greeted by the towering columns of paint that make up artist Pat Steir’s waterfall paintings.  Opening her first exhibition in London in twenty-eight years, the artist’s exhibition features fourteen works made over the corresponding decades, from 1990-2011.  Tracing consistent evolutions in her style and hand in conjunction with stylistic divergences and experiments, the survey engages in an ongoing dialogue over her interests in both control and abstraction. (more…)

William Kentridge, The Refusal of Time (2012), all images courtesy the artist via White Chapel Gallery.

Now through January 15th, Whitechapel Gallery in London is presenting a new exhibition of work by William Kentridge, one of South Africa’s pre-eminent artists. William Kentridge: Thick Time features six large-scale works created between 2003 and 2016, spanning a range of mediums and thematics that reflect Kentridge’s intense engagement with theories of time and relativity, the history of colonialism, and revolutionary politics. (more…)

Joel Shapiro, Untitled (1980), All images via Dominique Lévy.

Now through January 7th, Dominique Lévy is hosting the major first survey of early wood reliefs by American sculptor Joel Shapiro, an exhibition that seeks to demonstrate the trajectory and development of Shapiro’s career, while foregrounding his work with pieces from the late 1970’s and ultimately culminating in a recent body of room-sized sculptural assemblages.  The wood reliefs, presented alongside a new site-specific installation, trace a practice constantly in pursuit of uses of color and mass to shape perceptions of space while exploring individual material interactions.  This marks the first time the series of wood reliefs will be comprehensively surveyed.  (more…)

Paul McCarthy, White Snow Dwarf, Dopey (Affected Original) (2016), via Art Observed

Returning to his ongoing fascination with the iconography and commodification of the legend of Snow White, in conjunction with reprisals of varied other series from the past 15 years of his practice, Paul McCarthy’s newest exhibition at Hauser & Wirth is a flurry of both subject matter and materials.  Massive, flaking and chipping sculptures are spread throughout the gallery’s cavernous exhibition space, each one drawing on threads of both the historical and cultural in the American psyche.  Pulling from a wide range of works that define the artist’s sculptural practice (in conversation with his video and film productions), the show offers an expansive exploration of both his sense of humor, and his keen eye for commentary.

Paul McCarthy, Puppet (2005-2008), via Art Observed

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Kai Althoff, Untitled (2015), Courtesy the Cranford Collection, London © Kai Althoff

Situated atop the Museum of Modern Art, Kai Althoff’s current survey exhibition, and then leave me to the common swifts (und dann überlasst mich den Mauerseglern), first presents itself as an elaborate visual pun, turning the sixth floor of the museum into a veritable attic space for the artist’s body of watercolors, drawings and sculpture, each shown alongside other objects in an approach to the work that opens new, and often disturbing, narratives in the progression and aesthetic explorations in the artist’s career.

Kai Althoff, and then leave me to the common swifts (Installation View), Courtesy MoMA, Photograph © Kai Althoff

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Ai Weiwei, Roots and Branches at Lisson (Installation View), via Art Observed

Ai Weiwei has returned to New York City for the first time since the return of his passport from the Chinese government, opening a quartet of exhibitions across its urban expanses that offer a strikingly deep and varied series of perspectives into the artist’s practice over the past few years.  Spread out across both locations of the Mary Boone Gallery, in addition to a show at Lisson, and one at Jeffrey Deitch Projects, the artist’s selection of works presents a nuanced look at his ongoing investment in the defense and articulation of universal human rights, moving from China, to Syria, and beyond.

Ai Weiwei, Roots and Branches at Mary Boone (Installation View), via Art Observed

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Mike Kelley, Balanced by Mass and Personification (2001), all photos via Osman Can Yerebakan for Art Observed

One of the most influential American artists of the past 30 years, Mike Kelley‘s considerable body of work runs a long thread of intricately connected and often curiously diverse modes of working and creating, often creating internal exchanges and conversations that further the artist’s exploration of memory, time, and personal histories.  The late artist’s Memory Ware series has long stood as one of the less explored and understood series from his catalog, even though Kelley continued to make these works until close to his untimely passing in 2012.  Consisting of hundreds of different objects, the series manifests some of Kelley’s most fundamental thematic concerns through a reliance on bizarre fusions of kitsch, often drawing collective and personal memories, American folk art, consumerist tendencies, and pop culture into close proximity. (more…)

Ragnar Kjartansson, Scenes from Western Culture (2015), via Art Observed

Like much of his previous work, artist Ragnar Kjartansson’s latest exhibition at Luhring Augustine explores a variety of idyllic, everyday moments through a variety of mediums, and spread between the gallery’s two exhibition spaces.   The artist’s work on view in Chelsea draws his series Scenes from Western Culture and Architecture and Morality, while the artist’s work in Bushwick presents a new video piece World Light – The Life and Death of an Artist (2015).  Through an examination of broad themes and varied conceptual focuses, the exhibition draws on the artist’s ongoing interest in literature and pop culture, and their abilities to explore sensations of tranquility, joy and loss.

Ragnar Kjartansson, Architecture and Morality (2016), via Art Observed

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John Baldessari, Pollock/Benton: Same (2016), via Art Observed

For the past several years, artist John Baldessari has continued to mine a particular mode of textual and graphic interrelations.  Combining disparate systems of images, texts and manipulations on the surface of the work (all of which have become hallmarks of his approach respectively), his images in recent years have taken on a sense of theme and variation, exploring the varied interpretive contexts that seem to emerge out of his simple juxtapositions of form and language.  This almost procedural approach to the image continues in his most recent body of works, currently on view at Marian Goodman in New York.

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Salvatore Scarpitta, Untitled (1958), via Art Observed

The life and work of Salvatore Scarpitta is defined by the artist’s meandering relationships with his dual homelands.  Originally born in the United States, the artist would gain his education in Italy before fleeing the country’s fascist uprising during World War II, later returning after serving in the U.S. Navy’s “monuments men” project, which labored to capture and return looted art and artifacts to their rightful owners.  Remaining in Italy for several years after the war, he would pioneer his own brand of abstraction and conceptually-charged minimalism before returning to the States in 1958.   (more…)

Marta Riniker-Radich, The Cartridge Box (2016), all photos via Osman Can Yerebakan for Art Observed

Marta Riniker-Radich’s U.S. solo debut at Swiss Institute opened a few days prior to presidential elections, a note that gives the show an increasingly ominous note in the wake of Donald Trump’s ascendancy on the back of a conservative, militaristic worldview.  Drawing on this culture of perceived oppression and the systems of resistance that stem from their, her works dismantle the safety and innocence of the American home, while problematizing notions of escapism, and the notions of artificiality attached to middle-class domesticity.  Featuring notes from American militia members documenting their testimonials about emergency supply goods, and combining these with a series of artifacts and objects playing on dual uses and pluralities of violence and utilitarianism, Every Home A Fortress Every Heart A Blossom brings the political separatism of these American subcultures to the fore.  “When I opened the box I was like a kid on Christmas morning. I looked over each and every piece checking for defects,” says an anonymous member about a uniform they received.  “I found none.” (more…)

Gina Malek, Transfer (2016), via Magic Beans

Painter Gina Malek’s new show, Underlinings, on view at Magic Beans Gallery in Berlin, is an exercise in essentialism.  The artist’s works, which draw on the fading mechanics of the human body, memory and movement, here take on a range of scenes and figures, each time drawing on juxtapositions of the body and space, and the points of conversation, transition or intermingling that stem from her approach to the canvas.

Gina Malek, Underlinings (Installation View), via Magic Beans    (more…)

Josef Albers, Grey Steps, Grey Scales, Grey Ladders (Exhibition View), via Art Observed

On view at the David Zwirner Gallery, Grey Steps, Grey Scales, Grey Ladders delves into Josef Albers’s life-long exploration of color, form and space, focusing in particular on his works in white, grey and black, and featuring a range of his most acclaimed square paintings, as well as other abstract works from the course of his career.  A highly influential artist in the abstract movements of the early 20th Century, his works, shown in an open conversation, demonstrate the process of creating through rhythm and gradation. (more…)

Thomas Schütte, Bronzefrau I (2000), via Art Observed

Profiling an enigmatic and often irreverent approach to both the human body and sculpture as a medium, Skarstedt has brought a series of works by Thomas Schütte to its Chelsea location.  A continuation of his Frauen series, the show combines a thorough selection of etchings with a small series of sculptures, exploring his craft as both a skilled draughtsman and studied artist in both the exploration and critique of the practice of sculpture, joining together works from the past two decades to draw new historical comparisons and conceptual linkages in the artist’s practice.

Thomas Schütte, Stahlfrau Nr. 4, (1999), via Art Observed

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Troy Brauntuch, Untitled (2016), via Petzel

Currently on view at Petzel Gallery’s Chelsea exhibition space, Texas-based painter Troy Brauntuch has executed a new series of paintings drawing on familiar themes and techniques in the exploration and elaboration of the image itself.  Continuing an interest in the modes of image production, and the networks of meaning these images ultimately engage with, the artist’s ghostly, ephemeral images draw on their own histories, and the shadowy modes of visualization that the artist has long embraced. (more…)

Sean Scully, Landline Bloom (2016), via Art Observed

Timothy Taylor Gallery’s Mayfair exhibition space has compiled a series of Sean Scully’s monumental abstract paintings, recent works that tower above the viewer while engaging them with deep, meditative arrangements of color.  Shown in conjunction with a collection of sketches, notes, letters and diary entries, the show’s expansive focus offers a rare look into the Irish painter’s psychological and conceptual investment in his works.  The series, Landline, has been ongoing since 2013, and continues to offer the artist an opportunity to refine and reshape his approach to the canvas through a narrow, yet endlessly inventive engagement with the power of mark-making, and the purity of delineation between linear planes, both explored through the expressive capacity of color. (more…)

Ernesto Neto, The Serpent’s Energy Gave Birth To Humanity (Installation View), via Art Observed

Filling the main exhibition space at Tanya Bonakdar Gallery with another of his signature, finger-crocheted structures, artist Ernesto Neto has opened a new show in New York, reprising past works with this material and technique applied towards varied explorations of the spiritual, sexual, and communal in a single architectural space.  The show, which uses the Old Testament myth of temptation and expulsion from the Garden of Eden, to extend and explore the space of the human body as metaphor for both the tale’s moral implications, and contemporary explorations of social space. (more…)

Arthur Jafa, Love is the Message, The Message is Death (2016), via Art Observed

Arthur Jafa’s current video installation, on view at Gavin Brown’s Enterprise in west Harlem, is at once joyous and tragic, celebratory and rebellious.  Bearing the title Love is the Message, the Message is Death, it makes reference not only to Philadelphia act MFSB’s classic disco tune “Love Is The Message,” but also to “Love is the Plan and the Plan is Death,” a short story by Alice Sheldon, better known by her pen name of James Tiptree Jr., or Raccoona Sheldon.  The work, played alongside Kanye West’s caustic and meditative “Ultralight Beam,” from his latest album, presents a fusion of images, music, and theory, ultimately presenting a striking vision of the black experience in the 21st Century. (more…)

Julia Wachtel, Acceleration of Similarity (1983), via Art Observed

Revisiting Anne Livet’s original 1980’s exhibition Infotainment, Every Future has a Price: 30 Years after Infotainment at Elizabeth Dee opens a dialogue into the ongoing relevance of the themes and subjects first explored over thirty years ago.  The exhibition, which re-exhibits 11 of the works originally on view from the first show of predominantly East Village artists, dwells on social and philosophical interests that echo much of 1960’s Conceptualism, placing emphasis on the conveyance of ideas over aesthetic interests.

Every Future Has a Price (Installation View), via Art Observed

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Carol Bove, Daphne and Apollo (2016), via Art Observed

Marking her first exhibition with David Zwirner in New York since joining the gallery, Carol Bove has brought a body of new works to the gallery’s 19th Street location, marking a continuation and expansion of her unique sculptural language refined through a series of references and touchstones pulled from the language of modern sculpture.   (more…)

Helen Marten, Brood and Bitter Pass (2016), via Art Observed

Helen Marten, the Macclesfield-born, London-based sculptor known for her disjointed, endlessly inventive configurations of materials, has taken home the 2016 Turner Prize, the second major award that the artist has won in the past month.  Marten, who takes home a£25,000 purse for the award, was selected from a pool of artists including Anthea Hamilton, Michael Dean, and Josephine Pryde.

Helen Marten, via W Magazine

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Denise Kupferschmidt at Halsey McKay, via Art Observed

Walking through the doors of the Deauville Hotel and Resort, a sense of familiarity is in the air, with NADA Miami Beach returning to its old stomping grounds in North Beach.  Maintaining the same familial atmosphere and adventurous spirit that keeps the fair among the more popular of the week, this year’s edition (its 14th total) is particularly strong, with a renewed focus on painting alongside a series of more striking projects and pieces. (more…)

Art Basel Miami Beach, via Art Observed

After a first evening of parties in both Miami proper and Miami Beach, the main event of Miami Art Week, Art Basel Miami Beach, has opened its doors at the Miami Beach Convention Center, bringing with it another round of special projects, talks, and other installations alongside the more traditional booths.  The 15th edition of the fair, which draws 269 galleries from a total of 29 countries from around the globe, was clearly feeling some tightness from a slower market, with shorter lines for the VIP Preview today, and less of a rush towards premiere works, but strong sales seemed to continue throughout the day, revealing a buyer pool that seems more invested than feverish.

Toiletpaper for Fondation Beyeler, via Art Observed

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Untitled Art Fair, via Art Observed

Spread across the sandy vistas just off Miami Beach’s iconic Ocean Drive, Untitled Art Fair opened its doors this week for the 5th annual edition of its fair during Miami Art Week. Recognized for a curator-first mentality and a focused, yet exploratory tone, the fair’s early hours offered a striking first look at the caliber and diversity of works on view in Miami this week. The fair, has hit its stride with this year’s offering, bringing a group of exhibitors that push distinctly cohesive threads and perspectives over the course of the fair, even as each offers a singular perspective on their chosen media or discourse. (more…)