Sherrie Levine, Pink SMEG Refrigerator and Renoir Nudes (2016), via Art Observed
Opening her first exhibition with David Zwirner in New York City, Sherrie Levine has taken over the 2nd floor of the gallery’s 20th Street Flagship, bringing a body of works that feels like a fitting first entry in her collaboration with Zwirner, while signaling new steps forward in her challenging and cerebral practice.
| Comments Off on New York – Sherrie Levine at David Zwirner Through April 2nd, 2016 | | 
Tony Cragg, Untitled (2015), all photos via Quincy Childs for Art Observed
The opening hours of Art Basel Hong Kong have come and gone at the Hong Kong Convention Center this week, as the Asian art world descending on South China’s bustling metropolis for the first hours of high-profile sales. The fair saw strong international attendance during the VIP Vernissage, with Brooklyn Museum Director Anne Pasternak, Tracey Emin, Cai Guo Qiang, Hans Ulrich Obrist and Julia Peyton-Jones all spotted walking the aisles of the fair during its opening day, as were Mariko Mori, Hernan Bas, and Owen Wilson. Read More »
| Comments Off on AO On-Site – Hong Kong: Art Basel Hong Kong at the Hong Kong Convention and Exhibition Center, March 22nd – 26th, 2016 | |
Michael Riedel, Untitled (Art Material_Lycaenops 90) (2015), all photos via Osman Can Yerebakan for Art Observed
Entering Michael Riedel’s current exhibition at David Zwirner, visitors encounter an intriguing spatial arrangement, composed of abstract patterns blanketing gallery walls. Pulled from art material supplier BLICK’s website, the text, distorted to illegibility, is abstracted from its informative ends and transformed into purely graphical patterns. Barely comprehensible through a closer inspection, words listing different dimensions for canvases, or describing various color charts are no longer usable. Distortion of this conversation between information and its raison d’être commonly emerges in Riedel’s practice, bringing this dialogue into a reversed cycle, in which function becomes infertile and surplus conveys aesthetic. Read More »
| Comments Off on New York — Michael Riedel Is On View at David Zwirner Through March 25, 2016 | |
Taryn Simon, Bratislava Declaration, Bratislava, Slovakia, August 3, 1968, Paperwork and the Will of Capital (2015) © Taryn Simon. Courtesy Gagosian Gallery
Last year at the Venice Biennale, Taryn Simon unveiled a body of new work under the title Paperwork and the Will of Capital, a selection of new photographs and assemblages documenting and photographing a series of bouquets that sat as centerpieces during the signing of various accords, treaties, and decrees worldwide. Taking a subdued path through corporate and pop gestures, the work’s simple presentation and concept carries a strong conceptual punch, deconstructing the political grandeur of often oppressive regime decisions. These works are now on view in New York, presented at Gagosian’s 24th Street Chelsea location.
Taryn Simon, Paperwork and the Will of Capital (Installation View), © Taryn Simon. Courtesy Gagosian Gallery. Photography by Robert McKeever
| Comments Off on New York – Taryn Simon: “Paperwork and the Will of Capital” at Gagosian Gallery Through March 26th, 2016 | |
Sterling Ruby, Work Wear: Garment and Textile Archive 2008 – 2016 (Installation View), via Sprüth Magers
In 2008, Sterling Ruby designed his own work shirt and pants, a uniform of sorts, which he would wear over the course of each body of work that he created. At the conclusion of each project, Ruby’s leftover materials are saved and incorporated into a new series of clothing pieces, ultimately reproducing the chemical treatments and techniques of each project as its own series of clothing pieces. These works are currently on view for the first time at Sprüth Magers in London, part of his exhibition Work Wear.
| Comments Off on London – Sterling Ruby: “Work Wear: Garment and Textile Archive 2008 – 2016” at Sprüth Magers Through April 9th, 2016 | |
Yutaka Sone, Hong Kong (2015), via David Zwirner
Art Basel is preparing to launch the first of its 2016 fair editions this week, as its international clientele touches down in the Chinese port of Hong Kong for the 4th year of the fair under the global fair franchise’s supervision. Following last year’s impressive success and broad attendance, the fair will look to repeat its strong showing. The challenges will be notable this year, however, in the face of slowing economic growth, and a diminished buyer pool following last year’s economic ups and downs. Yet wealthy buyers seem to proliferate in China despite decreased confidence, seeking efficient ways to move investment out of the country’s currency during this unstable market period. Read More »
| 1 Comment » | |
John Baldessari at Sprüth Magers, via Thisbe Gensler for Art Observed
Sprüth Magers, the German gallery with outposts in Cologne, Berlin and London, has opened its inaugural Los Angeles exhibition with a show of new works by John Baldessari. Located across the street from LACMA on Wilshire’s Miracle Mile, the new gallery boasts two floors of paintings, its street-facing windows covered in Baldessari’s iconic scrawl, “I will not make any more boring art.” The sixteen works in the show do not disappoint, showcasing the artist’s trademark conceptual wit in a series of works emblematizing his interest in visual and textual modes of communication, artistic authorship and the notion of absence. Having worked across a vast range of media and styles he states descends from Duchamp, Baldessari continues to explore the agency of the viewer in finding and defining meaning in his pieces.
| Comments Off on Los Angeles – John Baldessari at Sprüth Magers Through April 9th, 2016 | |
Eduardo Navarro, Five minutes ago (2015), All photos via Osman Can Yerebakan for Art Observed
Since unveiling its new expansion and renovated architecture in 2014, SculptureCenter has been embarking on a series of compelling, and conceptually unorthodox exhibitions, repurposing the building’s structural challenges and unique layout into an equally unique curatorial advantage. The Eccentrics, organized by the staff curator Ruba Katrib, is the most recent example of such efforts at matching the space’s rugged industrial façade with distinctive aesthetic trends and aesthetic sensibilities in contemporary art. Introducing eight international artists working in a variety of media, the exhibition stems from German Marxist theorist Walter Benjamin’s observations on the circus as a platform for societal norms and a performance of fabricated others. Read More »
| Comments Off on New York – “The Eccentrics” at SculptureCenter Through April 4th, 2016 | |
Damián Ortega, Paisaje 2 (2016), and Gabriel Orozco, Blind Signs (2013) via Sophie Kitching for Art Observed
The collective exhibition “xylañynu. taller de los viernes” curated by Guillermo Santamarina, brings together recent works by five artist friends and close collaborators: Gabriel Orozco, Abraham Cruzvillegas, Damián Ortega, Gabriel Kuri and Dr. Lakra. Thirty years ago they started meeting at Gabriel Orozco’s house in Ttlalplan to create a kind of alternative art school which became their “Friday Workshop”. Hosted between 1987 and 1992 by a then 25-year-old Orozco slightly older than his peers, the workshop embodied an experimental meeting place, which allowed each of them to investigate and progressively give form to their own artistic language. The latent synergy and embedded connections between their creative processes is for the first time displayed at their Mexican Gallery Kurimanzutto.
| Comments Off on Mexico City — “xylañynu. taller de los viernes.” Gabriel Orozco, Abraham Cruzvillegas, Damián Ortega, Gabriel Kuri and Dr. Lakra at Kurimanzutto Through March 17th, 2016 | |
Karla Black, Ways Appear (2016), via David Zwirner
In her second exhibition at David Zwirner, Scottish artist Karla Black takes over the gallery’s 525 West 19th street location to orchestrate a body of work that smoothly maneuvers through rigid conceptions of medium or genres. In her previous exhibition in 2014, Black executed a carpet-like installation of bath bombs, nail polish, Sellotape and powder paint, infusing an otherworldly, ephemeral aura into the gallery’s white cube architecture through its lyrical presence. Here, she presents another floor install, employing familiar everyday objects alongside artistically pertinent materials. The work, Includes Use, utilizes toilet paper collected from different parts of the globe, each manufactured in different shades and hues. Akin to budding flowers, the folds of toilet paper in their assorted hues pierce through earthy, plaster powder and paint, channeling a sort of surreal, utopian topography. Read More »
| Comments Off on New York — Karla Black at David Zwirner Through March 26th, 2016 | |
