Mark Grotjahn, Pink Cosco (Installation View), All artworks © Mark Grotjahn. Courtesy the artist and Gagosian Gallery. Installation photography: Mike Bruce

Continuing his inquiries into the modes of perspective, constraint and repetition at play in the modes of contemporary art practice, Los Angeles-based painter Mark Grotjahn brings a new series of works to Gagosian Gallery in London, under the title Pink Cosco.  Reprising several of his previous forms, particularly his painted “mask” sculptures, executed in bronze and covered in varied layers and styles of paint, Grotjahn again insists upon the beauty and precision to be discovered in variations on a theme. (more…)

Keith Sonnier, Ba-O- Ba VI (1970), Copyright: Haeusler Contemporary Munich/Zurich Photograph: Wolfgang Stahl

Keith Sonnier‘s work has stood as a landmark voice in the development of abstract languages and explorations in the sculptural form, suspending neon lights over and across varied materials, from strips of cloth to reflective panes of glass, each time utilizing his materials’ internal consistencies to drive at nuanced explorations of light and space.  It should be telling then, that Whitechapel Gallery’s impressive exhibition focused on the artist takes up only three years of his career, examining his creative output from 1968 to 1970 as a foundational point in both his work, and the generation of artists around him. (more…)

Ed Ruscha at Gagosian Gallery, via Art Observed

Few artists have left the sort of impact Ed Ruscha has left on the field of small-press and art book publishing over the course of their career.  Ruscha, whose almost constant output of small books of photography, prints and other printed matter, has consistently redefined both the material and conceptual practice of book manufacturing since the 1960’s.  His early pieces in this medium, executed during the 1960’s and 70’s, helped to redefine its practice, shifting the artist’s book from a limited-edition, rare item, to a mass-produced and widely distributed object that was seen as a step towards the democratization of art through its scalable production.

Ed Ruscha at Gagosian Gallery, via Art Observed

(more…)

Vito Acconci, WHERE WE ARE NOW (WHO ARE WE ANYWAY?), 1976 (Installation View)

Continuing a consideration of its nearly half-century long history in New York City, MoMA PS1 is celebrating its fortieth anniversary with an exhibition dedicated to the early career of artist Vito Acconci, a pioneer of body and performance art in the United States during the 1960’s and 70’s that drove forward new concepts and perceptions of art practice while PS1 was similarly expanding the concept of the exhibition space.  WHERE WE ARE NOW (WHO ARE WE ANYWAY?), 1976 focuses on Acconci’s works from the late ‘60s and early ‘70s—the years that proceeded the opening of PS1 as an experimental, non-profit art center under the guidance of Alanna Heiss. (more…)

Liu Wentao, Untitled (2015), via White Cube

Taking over the full two-floor layout of White Cube’s Mason’s Yard exhibition space, the gallery’s summer exhibition the world is yours, as well as ours explores the richly diverse and energetic forms of Chinese painterly abstraction, considering its format beyond facile classifications as a corollary to Western technique.  Delving into the cultural histories and forms of Chinese painting over the past centuries, White Cube presents the abstraction of China’s current crop of artists as a deeper engagement wth a range of practices between modernism and more traditional approaches to the painterly surface.  The show places Taoist thought at its base, exploring how the appreciation of abstract form in Chinese culture more broadly has left the door open for diverse experiences and engagements with the canvas in the modern era. (more…)

A.R. Penck, Elektrischer Stuhl (1960), all photos via Osman Can Yerebakan

Climbing up the winding staircase of Michael Werner Gallery’s Upper East Side townhouse and entering the exhibition space, one is immediately faced with Elektrischer Stuhl (Electric Chair), a painting of a man being executed before a group of mourners.  The work, by Neo-Expressionist painter A.R. Penck, perhaps best embodies the artist’s combination of abrasive political gesture with his particular sense of aesthetic operation.  Early Works, on view at the gallery through September 3rd, outlines the body of Penck’s work in Dresden in the ‘60s and early ‘70s, when the influential artist suffered under the harsh social and political climate prevailing in East Germany.  It was during this period that the artist was the subject of an embargo by the government on his works, ultimately leading him to flee his hometown for Cologne, where he received a marked degree of critical and commercial acclaim.

A.R. Penck, Standart-Modell/CCCP-Studie (1972-73) (more…)

Danny Lyon, Crossing the Ohio River, Louisville, 1966 (1966), via Whitney Museum of American Art

Exhibited at a critical moment of heightened tensions regarding civil liberties in America, Danny Lyon’s retrospective exhibition transforms the Whitney’s fifth floor into a space for cultural reflection.  Set against a backdrop that confronts pertinent issues regarding violence, incarceration, and inequality, Lyon’s work chronicles a complex photographic history of the racial, social, and political issues that are currently challenging the United States anew in the 21st Century.  The serious tone of his work is met with the intimacy in which he engages with his subjects, offering a sense of hope while putting a deeply human face on subjects who are marginalized and oppressed. (more…)

Adam Pendleton, Untitled (code poem) (2016), via Public Art Fund

The Public Art Fund’s The Language of Things, inspired by Walter Benjamin’s 1916 essay On Language as Such and on the Language of Man, takes on a challenging prompt this summer, seeking to communicate with the public through works that utilize language and linguistic themes in one of the most congested and sonically dense spaces in the city, just outside of City Hall downtown.  Benjamin’s assertion that “there is no event or thing in either animate or inanimate nature that does not in some way partake in language” further deepens this show’s proposed dialogue, looking at complexities of language as a utilitarian, communicative tool, to emphasize Benjamin’s conclusion that “it is in the nature of each one to to communicate its mental contents.” (more…)

Cao Fei, Whose Utopia (2006), courtesy MoMA PS1

Currently on view at MoMA PS1, Cao Fei presents her first ever solo museum exhibition in the United States.  The artist’s practice, while rooted in video, performance and photography, takes on a sort of ever-shifting, fluid mode of inquiry into the modes of reality and fantasy in the 21st Century, underscoring human desire’s inextricable links with its economic and material bounds.  Presented here, the show’s slowly unfolding range of interests, from bizarre diorama work to her several year engagement with Second Life, to a series of intuitive and empathetic portraits of modern subcultures, traces the Chinese artist’s ability to navigate multiple modes of understanding and existence in the face of an increasingly mechanized modernity.

Cao Fei, RMB City: A Second Life City Planning (2007-2011), Courtesy MoMA PS1

(more…)

Quick Light (Installation View), all images courtesy Serpentine Gallery

Quick Light, an exhibition of recent paintings by American artist Alex Katz has taken over the Serpentine Galleries in London this summer, showcasing the artist’s expressive range and signature style through September 11th, 2016.  The exhibition centers in particular on Katz’s landscape paintings or “environmental landscapes,” which seek to envelope the viewer in a single encounter with the sublime.  Large-scale canvasses, often depicting human and natural forms, fill the gallery space, a particularly well-selected body of work that addresses both the artist’s long history and the unique grounds of the Serpentine itself (more…)

Keith Sonnier, Ba-O-Ba Fluorescent (1970), via Art Observed

Celebrating the forty year history of its residency at the school building in Long Island City, MoMA PS1 has launched an impressively expansive exhibition reflecting on the history and continued vitality of the alternative art spaces movement in both its impact on the history of 20th Century art, as well as its resonance in the field today.  Culling together a diversely focused but attentively arranged group of artists, FORTY presents a series of studies on the voices of the 1970’s New York art community, and its broader connections to the changing face of contemporary art during the era. (more…)

Marco Barrera, Gaze (Exchange Rate) (2016), via Art Observed

The current group show at Moran Bondaroff is a swirling, surreal exercise in sculptural gesture, compiling a trio of uniquely-motivated artists whose works play on the intersection of materials, contexts, and conceptions of the human body.  The show, which brings together new works by artists Agathe Snow and Marco Barrera in conjunction with a series of historical works by the Irvine, CA-based artist George Herms, emphasizes connections in the capability for everyday objects to escape their quotidian bounds by way of addition and juxtaposition.

Eternal at Moran Bondaroff (Installation View), via Art Observed

(more…)

Ken Price, Tubby (2011), via Art Observed

Continuing a series of exhibitions devoted to the estate of Ken Price, Matthew Marks Gallery’s dual exhibition spaces in West Hollywood are currently showing a selection of works spanning the West Coast artist’s long and industrious career, ranging from black and white interiors to his signature sculptural inventions.  Echoing a similar curatorial focus from the last show of Price’s work in New York, the two-gallery exhibition pairs similar forms and images across media, ultimately tracing a line through the broad range of interests and series of reinventions that Price took over the course of his career.

(more…)

Bas Jan Ader, Fall 2, Amsterdam (1970), via Simon Lee

Shown in conjunction with the recently closed exhibition at Metro Pictures in New York, London’s Simon Lee Gallery is currently showing a selection of landmark video works and photographs by Dutch conceptual pioneer Bas Jan Ader, whose short career ended 40 years ago this year.  Memorializing the artist across this series of pieces, the show underscores Ader’s ability to function along multiple theoretical lines and historical modes at once. (more…)

Shahryar Nashat at Made in LA (Installation View), via Art Observed

Currently on view at Los Angeles’s Hammer Museum, the third Made in L.A. Biennial is exploring the broad experiences and voices of the city’s thriving arts community, culling together a body of work running from digital subversions to more concretely conceptual work, each time underscoring ideas of interconnected and related experiences of the Southern Californian experience.  With a subtitle written by poet Aram Saroyan, the show is intent on exploring concepts of expanded work, where the contributions and performances of those on view spill over into the city, and state, more broadly. (more…)

Jenny Holzer/Lady Pink, Trust visions that don’t feature buckets of blood (1983-84), via Art Observed

Taking its own unique turn on the group exhibition, Sprüth Magers is currently showing a powerful two-floor exhibition devoted to the female artists on its roster, examining their shared interests in political and institutional critique, and explorations of the art object’s role in relation to the gallery.  Culling together a series of seminal works from Cindy Sherman, Jenny Holzer, Barbara Kruger, Louise Lawler and Rosemarie Trockel, the exhibition is a well-executed work of its in, ultimately welcoming unforeseen material and political connections among this group of artists. (more…)

Oliver Croy and Oliver Elser, The 387 Houses of Peter Fritz (1916-1992), Insurance Clerk from Vienna’ (1993-2008), via Art Observed

Curated by Massimiliano Gioni, Natalie Bell, Helga Christoffersen and Margot Norton, The Keeper is an ambitious group exhibition for which the New Museum has reserved its three floors and lobby. Covering a broad chronological and geographical span, the works in this exhibition investigate one of the quintessential human instincts, that of preservation and collection.  The ingrained urge to keep what is present for later, with all it stands for, imbues the works on view, presenting visitors with a wealth of perspectives on this human inclination, and its equally varied results.

Olga Fröbe Kapteyn, Untitled (ca. 1927-34), via Art Observed

(more…)

The Female Gaze, Part Two: Women Look at Men (Installation View) feat. Louise Bourgeois, Filette (Sweeter Version) (1968-99) and Diane Arbus, Young couple on a bench in Washington Square Park, N.Y.C. (1965) via Art Observed

Cheim & Read is currently presenting the second installment of the gallery’s The Female Gaze series which had its inception with 2009’s Women Look at Women.  In the succeeding episode, on view through September 2nd, the female eye remains the object, but its subject switches to men, forming a full circle subversion on the male-centric narrative of art history. Placed as the subject, men—dressed or stripped, confident or meek, benevolent or distant—fill in the role of the objectified model, triggering the question of how influential the gender of its author is for interpreting an artwork.  The exhibition aims to investigate whether knowing these works, and their origins, impacts the viewer’s reading of each respective work. (more…)

Daniel Richter, yet to come (2016), via Art Observed

Regen Projects in Los Angeles has lowered the walls in its spacious Hollywood gallery for an impressively selected show of new works by German painter Daniel Richter, who brings his unique formal approach and interest in the twisting shapes of the human form  to bear on a series of colorful abstractions.

Daniel Richter, a competition in sensitivity (2016), via Art Observed

(more…)

Meg Webster, Concave Room for Bees (2016)

Coinciding with Socrates Sculpture Park’s thirtieth anniversary this summer, LANDMARK brings together an exhibition featuring projects by Meg Webster, Hank Willis Thomas, Brendan Fernandes and Abigail DeVille, among others, for a show that both reflects on the park’s history, and projects each artist’s own vision onto its open expanse.  The park’s evolution from a landfill and illegal wasteland to an exhibition site with strong emphasis on three-dimensional works was spearheaded by Mark di Suvero, whose studio still resides alongside the park at the point where Astoria meets the East River.  The outdoor museum benefits from its unique ambiance and the history of its neighborhood, presenting works that interact with nature, sunlight and the local community. (more…)

Shio Kusaka, (Installation View), via Art Observed

Blum and Poe in Los Angeles is currently hosting an exhibition of new works by artist Shio Kusaka, her second solo exhibition with the gallery.  Culling together a broad selection of ceramics ranging from pottery to small figurative totems, the exhibition examines shifting concepts of rhythm and tone as the viewer moves through the exhibition.   (more…)

Pia Camil, Bust Mask Sulphur (2016), via Art Observed

Taking over the townhouse exhibition space of Blum & Poe on Manhattan’s Upper East Side, Pia Camil is currently showing a series of new sculptural works, with show titled Slats, skins and shop fittings.  Mining the vocabulary and iconography of commodity production and the performance of capitalism within social interactions or group participation, the exhibition pays express homage to the Copper paintings of Frank Stella, while suspending the post-war master’s work in a broader hierarchy of industrial manufacturing and material sources.

Pia Camil, Slats, skins and shop fittings (Installation View), via Art Observed

(more…)

I Talk with the Spirits (Installation View), via Art Observed

Spanning both exhibition spaces in its expanded West 24th Street home, Marianne Boesky has opened a new show of works exploring the potency of sculpture and painting, ranging from self-taught artistry through to powerful, yet nuanced meditations on the act of creating as a spiritual force in and of itself.  Drawing its title, I Talk with the Spirits, from a piece by the famous jazz saxophonist Rahsaan Roland Kirk, the show mimics Kirk’s multifarious approach to the creation and execution of his artistic vision, drawing on contemporary modes and materials in conjunction with a deep-rooted, and highly studied perspective on ancient forms and practices. (more…)

Nan Goldin, Heart-Shaped Bruise, New York City (1980), via Art Observed

Few bodies of work have left an impact on the development of photography in the way that Nan Goldin’s Ballad of Sexual Dependency did when it was first presented.  The ever-evolving compilation of photographs from Goldin’s life and travels between New York, Boston, Berlin, and elsewhere shows both fragility and joy, lust and love, life and death through a deeply personal focal point, as Goldin placed her own friends and familiars before the camera, and then reflected them back towards themselves during a series of slideshow performances in which she projected the images in a series to gallery audiences.

(more…)