Global contemporary art events and news observed from New York City. Suggestion? Email us.

Los Angeles – Morten Skrødr Lund: “Mustang” at LTD Gallery Through March 3rd, 2016

March 1st, 2016

Morten Skrøder Lund, Untitled (2016), via Art Observed
Morten Skrøder Lund, Untitled (2016), via Art Observed

LTD Gallery is presenting the first U.S. Exhibition of painter Morten Skrøder Lund’s paintings on Polyethylene Vinyl Acetate (PEVA), dwelling on notions of time, composition and the interaction of paint and ground. Read More »

AO Preview – New York: Armory Week, March 1st – 6th, 2016

March 1st, 2016

Michael Riedel, Untitled (Description Field Art Material rer), (2015), via David Zwirner
Michael Riedel, Untitled (Description Field “Art Material”; rer), (2015), via David Zwirner

Set to open this week, the Armory Show is returning to New York City for its 22nd year, setting off the dense selection of exhibitions, fairs, parties and programs of Armory Week 2016.  With a number of shifts in location and scheduling for this year’s selection of events, the week should see a new face on familiar proceedings. Read More »

London – “The Calder Prize 2005-2015” at Pace Gallery through March 5th, 2016

February 29th, 2016

Calder_Exhibition_Pace
The Calder Prize 2005-2015 (Installation View)

The Calder Prize 2005-2015, now on view at Pace Gallery in London, explores the influence of artist Alexander Calder in relation to the work of six contemporary artists, each of whom were awarded a prize in the former’s name.  Now through March 5, the five winners of the Calder Prize to date are featured in conversation with Calder’s own work.  The artists awarded the Calder Prize are seen to be continuing Calder’s legacy by imagining new and innovative directions for sculpture, among them Tara Donovan (2005), Žilvinas Kempinas (2007), Tomás Saraceno (2009), Rachel Harrison (2011), Daren Bader (2013), and Haroon Mirza (2015). Working in impressively divergent media, the artists are united by their common vision to push the limits of material through variations on space and time in their work, a point that unifies them with Calder’s vision.   Read More »

New York – Richard Aldrich: “Time Stopped, Time Started” at Gladstone Gallery Through March 5th, 2016

February 28th, 2016

Richard Aldrich, Untitled (2014-2015), via Rae Wang for Art Observed
Richard Aldrich, Untitled (2014-2015), via Rae Wang for Art Observed

Richard Aldrich‘s wide-ranging stylistic and conceptual practice over the past twenty-plus years has spanned any number of formats, from sparse abstraction to minimalist exercises in process painting, often subverting these established schools through momentary inflections of wit and comic interpretation.  Yet at the core of Aldrich’s practice is an effort to push beyond mere stylistic variation and a good sense humor, often using his practice and its shifting material grounds to explore a wide range of both techniques in image-making, as well as processes in each work’s construction on an intuitive level.

Richard Aldrich, Time Stopped, Time Started (Installation View), via Rae Wang for Art Observed
Richard Aldrich, Time Stopped, Time Started (Installation View), via Rae Wang for Art Observed

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New York – Doug Wheeler: “Encasements” at David Zwirner Through March 5th, 2016

February 27th, 2016

Doug Wheeler, Untitled (1969/2014), via David Zwirner © 2016 Doug Wheeler
Doug Wheeler, Untitled (1969/2014), via David Zwirner © 2016 Doug Wheeler

The work of Doug Wheeler is an exercise in embodiment and space, perhaps more so than many of his Light and Space compatriots.  Rather than merely exploring the sensations of seeing and perceiving space, Wheeler pushes beyond this sense of expanded optics and its cognitive effects, often exploring how this sense of space is reflected onto broader sensations of the body.  Encasements, the third solo exhibition by Wheeler in collaboration with David Zwirner, continues this work, showing a body of smaller-scale works that work in a strikingly harmonious series of interactions throughout the gallery. Read More »

Los Angeles – Dansaekhwa and Minimalism at Blum & Poe Through March 12th, 2016

February 26th, 2016

Lee Ufan, From Line No 800117 (1980), via Art Observed
Lee Ufan, From Line No. 800117 (1980), all photos via Art Observed

Blum & Poe’s close ties to the history and proliferation of Asian art in the United States cannot be ignored, having advocated for and built a market around Japanese and Korean artists like Takashi Murakami and Lee Ufan during the 1990’s.  Since then, the gallery has become an inextricable link between the continents, a point explored in the gallery’s most recent exhibition, Dansaekhwa and Minimalism, currently on view at the gallery’s Culver City location.

Kwon Young-woo, Untitled (1982), via Art Observed
Kwon Young-woo, Untitled (1982), via Art Observed Read More »

New York – Eddie Martinez: “Salmon Eye” at Mitchell-Innes and Nash Through March 5th, 2016

February 25th, 2016

Eddie Martinez, Restartation (2015), via Art Observed
Eddie Martinez, Restartation (2015), via Art Observed

Brooklyn-based painter Eddie Martinez had charted a particularly unique course for himself in recent years, exploring both expressly abstracted compositions and their relationships to more rigid, serial processes in both painting and sculpture.  Trained as both a draftsman and painter, the artist’s dual experience in both meticulously planned composition and free-roving expressionism floats to the surface in his first exhibition with Mitchell-Innes & Nash, on view now at the gallery’s Chelsea location. Read More »

Berlin – “Dreaming Mirrors Dreaming Screens” at Sprüth Magers Through April 2nd, 2016

February 24th, 2016

Dreaming Mirrors Dreaming Screens (Installation view), via Sprüth Magers
Dreaming Mirrors Dreaming Screens (Installation view), via Sprüth Magers

For the most recent new exhibition in Berlin, Sprüth Magers has brought together work from thirteen artists under the title Dreaming Mirrors Dreaming Screens.  Curated by Goodroom and Johannes Fricke Waldthausen, the exhibition features works by Lizzie Fitch/Ryan Trecartin, Andy Hope 1930, Oliver Laric, Jon Rafman, and Andro Wekua, among others.  Intended to navigate visitors through the intersecting narratives within the realm of surrealist animation, abstraction and the ideas of “New Materialism” as expressed through the greater logistics of the world wide web, the exhibition references the notion of the screen as a critical tool of the conscious and unconscious, as well as a surface for projections of communication and technological abstraction.   Read More »

Los Angeles – “Histories of a Vanishing Present: A Prologue” at The Mistake Room, Through February 20th, 2016

February 20th, 2016

Aleksandra Domanovic, Turbo Sculpture, 2010-13, Courtesy The Mistake Room
Aleksandra Domanovic, Turbo Sculpture, (2010-13), all photos courtesy The Mistake Room

The Mistake Room Los Angeles presents Histories of a Vanishing Present: A Prologue, the second chapter in a series of four exhibitions, featured as part of a long-term research initiative launched by the space. This multiyear project spotlights the experience of millennial generation artists from the Global South who, through a lens of postmemory, explore the media through which the past is transmitted across time and space. The exhibition investigates how traumatic histories play out in the practices of contemporary artists, often whose experience of these histories is indirect—inherited through the images, narratives and objects of preceding generations. Curated by Cesar Garcia and Kris Kuramitsu, A Prologue features video pieces from four artists situated in non-western cultures, chronicling both events, relations and practices not typically included in the art historical canon.    In animating the enduring consequences of colonization, nationalism, ethnic wars, globalization and the legacy of racism, these artists engage in a complex meditation on their cultural heritage and identity politics, and embrace history as a site of reflection and reinvention.

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New York – Chris Burden: “Bridges” at Gagosian Park & 75 Through February, 20, 2016 and “Buddha’s Fingers” at Gagosian Gallery Madison Ave Through March 12th, 2016

February 19th, 2016

Chris Burden, Buddha's Fingers (2014-15)
Chris Burden, Buddha’s Fingers (2014-15), all images via Osman Can Yerebakan for Art Observed

Spanning two uptown locations of Gagosian Gallery is a series of recent works by the late artist Chris Burden, who passed away last year at age of sixty-nine soon after his large scale New Museum retrospective. Burden, who started his career with avant-garde performances that played a significant role in furthering body art on a global scale, alongside his other American peers Vito Acconci and Bruce Nauman, then shifted towards idea-based practice later in his career.  Challenging in terms of execution rather than physical fortitude, these projects Burden undertook emphasized a concretized, material practice. Read More »