Hieronymus Bosch, The Last Judgement (c. 1495-1505), via Quincy Childs for Art Observed

Half a millennium ago, Hieronymus Bosch walked across the market square of the small Dutch town of ‘s Hertogenbosch, taking the 100 yard walk to his studio, where he would paint the timeless, demonic, and captivating works that continue to fascinate people today. To commemorate the 500^th anniversary of his birth, the town’s Het Noordbrabants Museum has secured the majority of his works for what is arguably one of the most important exhibitions of our century, Hieronymus Bosch – Visions of Genius. Exploring the timeline of his oeuvre, viewers are able to revive his living genius, and therein the fantasies and chimeras he created with a timeless sense of wonder.

Hieronymus Bosch, The Wayfarer (c. 1500-1510), via Quincy Childs for Art Observed Read More »

Matias Faldbakken, Europe is Balding (2016), via Quincy Childs for Art Observed

Matias Faldbakken sits among a select group of artists working at a certain crux of politically-critical work and a unique sense of material-based composition.  Crossing signifiers from the domestic and lifestyle commodities with the rough elements of building construction (cement, tile, nylon rope), Faldbakken’s work investigates the application and representation of force, often with disturbing contextual undertones. This notion sits at the core of Europe is Balding, his new exhibition of work at Paul Cooper Gallery in Chelsea.

Matias Faldbakken, Tiled Dashboard #3 (2016), via Quincy Childs for Art Observed Read More »

Larry Bell, Lil’ Orphan Annie (1960), all photos via Art Observed

Hauser & Wirth is currently presenting work by American sculpture and installation artist, Larry Bell at its Upper East Side location in New York, compiling a series of historically resonant works in conjunction with some of the artist’s recent environmental installs.  The exhibition, titled From the ’60s, sees the acclaimed artist presenting a body of work representative of his career working among the neo-avant-garde that followed in the wake of New York abstraction, and which continued to push the limits of perceptual and conceptual definitions of art.    Read More »

Erwin Wurm, One Minute Sculptures (Installation View), via Art Observed

Erwin Wurm’s One Minute Sculptures are a unique moment in the artist’s catalog, a comical application of the artist’s subversive wit.  Transferring his patently absurdist utilizations of domestic commodities and subjects onto the human form, the works take his nuanced eye for the more unique forms and signifiers mass production and late capitalism, and apply them towards an immediate interaction with the human body.  Through his works in the series, Wurm deconstructs use and value as essentially productive elements of consumption, and then turns the intersection of actor and object into an inherently useless situationism. Read More »

Karen Kilimnik, the adoration of the cats (2015), via 303 Gallery

In her eleventh exhibition with 303 Gallery, on view through March 26th, Karen Kilimnik returns to her historically-motivated sense of sarcasm and self-awareness, dissecting the convoluted theoretical foundations of contemporary art, in a trademark language that plays on, and resonates with, notions and concepts of kitsch.  Kilimnik’s uncompromising fascination with the imperviousness of pre-20th century European extravagance, and its depictions in the art of the era, as well as that of modernity, blossom through her own collage techniques here, combining flippant references with lush environs to create critically de-centered works.

Karen Kilimnik (Installation View), via 303 Gallery

Read More »

Albert Oehlen (Installation View) All images Courtesy the Gagosian Gallery

In his work, German artist Albert Oehlen concerns himself with illustrating and exploring the process of painting itself.  From the early 1980’s on, he has combined tenants of figurative and abstract practice in reaction to the Neo-Expressionist trends in painting during the time, eventually Oehlen turning his experiments with various mediums and modes of painting more fully towards abstract painting.  Oehlen frequently approaches painting through a set of restrictions he imposes upon himself: to work at a deliberately slow pace, with only one color, or with unfamiliar or non-typical tools (his fingers, brushes, collage, and in this instance, aluminum-panels instead of canvas).  With a new series of works at Gagosian’s Grosvenor Hill location in London, Oehlen reveals a series of works drawing on digital processes incorporated into the act of painting, continuing certain explorations he began with line painting during the 1990’s, and reflecting his ongoing concerns with constantly testing the boundaries of the medium and its relation to broader modes of production.

Read More »

Daniel Richter, Flowers of Romance (2015), all photos courtesy Thaddaeus Ropac

Now through March 12^th, Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac Salzburg presents a solo exhibition of Daniel Richter’s new work, Half-Naked Truth, a collection of two separate groups of paintings produced in parallel over the course of the last two years.  Richter’s first experimentation with oil crayons, the show sees an intriguing new movement for the artist, lending his figures an almost crude demarcation or delineation of space in relation to each other. Though the themes of closeness and movement remain consistent with Richter’s earlier works, there is a quality of abstraction in these series that pushes towards testing the boundaries of the act of painting, as well as the artist’s signature use of bright colors and stark contrast from form to form that further his project in each series. Read More »

Frank Stella at the joint Marianne Boesky and Dominique Lévy Booth, via Art Observed

Returning to its home at the Park Avenue Armory, the ADAA Art Show opened its doors this past weekend for another year of sales and specially-focused exhibitions, offering a more curatorial take on the Armory Week fair show.  Dealing almost exclusively in curated booths or solo artist exhibitions, the fair’s manageable layout and sharply delineated booths offered an adventurous walk for the interested fairgoer, dropping historical perspective or new aesthetic links between artists and movements. Read More »

Hernán Rivera, Ernesto Burgos, Alberto Borea, The Visible Hand (2016), installation view, via 67

Since opening in the fall of 2015 the artist-run basement space of 67 Ludlow has been host to a number of shows, screenings, poetry sessions and discussions. The current show, The Visible Hand, brings together work by three young artists currently based in New York. Each exhibits his own  transformation of common, everyday materials and situations in efforts to forge a rift in typical systems of image-making, use and production. Read More »