Erwin Wurm, Butter (Fridge) (2015), via Thaddaeus Ropac

Erwin Wurm returns to Thaddaeus Ropac’s Paris Marais location this month for an exhibition of new works, continuing his bizarre and occasionally disturbing interpretations of the materials of everyday life, broken down and perverted by momentary inversions and surreal inflections of force.  The show, titled Lost, enters further into the vocabulary of objects the Austrian artist has developed over the course of the past 20 years, narrowing his focus to the objects and landscapes of the domestic interior.   Read More »

Marcel Dzama & Raymond Pettibon, Beware Diamond Dog (2016)

Forgetting the Hand, a novel collaboration between Marcel Dzama and Raymond Pettibon, is currently on view at David Zwirner Gallery.  The show pulls together two artists, who, though emerging from vastly different generations and backgrounds, share noted parallels in the conveyance of the ridicule of contemporary culture.  Even the exhibition title emphasizes the interconnectedness between the two artists’ practices, where distinction of authorship between the two evaporates. Both represented by David Zwirner since the 90’s, Pettibon and Dzama embarked on this collaboration in the summer of 2015 on the occasion of New York Art Book Fair, where David Zwirner Books presented a zine printed with many of these pieces. Read More »

Marianne Vitale, Beam Work (2016), via Art Observed

Venus Over Los Angeles has brought artist Marianne Vitale to exhibit in the West Coast for the first time this month, offering its ample exhibition spaces east of the river to the New York artist for a pair of monumental installations that continue her intuitive blend of simple sculptural gestures and massively-scaled material to open a space for reflection on force, structure and time.

Marianne Vitale, Thought Field (detail) (2016), via Art Observed Read More »

Sarah Meyohas at 303 Gallery (Installation View)

303 Gallery is hosting a special collaboration with New York based artist Sarah Meyohas, merging the inherently performative natures of two distinct terrains of art making and stock marketing.  Stemming from Mehoyas’s dual educational background in both business and fine arts, the Yale MFA graduate traded stocks on the New York Stock Exchange during the market’s operating hours for ten business days, affecting the value of these stocks.  Transferring their behavior into stark black and white drawings, Mehoyas transfers the market’s often erratic movements into the serene white cube. Read More »

Alexander Calder, Antennae with Red and Blue Dots (1953), © 2015 Calder Foundation, New York and DACS, London

Alexander Calder’s work as the originator of the mobile, and his free-flowing, languid techniques have long established him as a distinct pioneer of mid-20th Century sculpture.  His floating, kinetic sculptures and more grounded, static works were iconic elements of the post-war movements towards the abstract and expressive in sculptural practice.  Yet presentations and explorations of Calder’s work frequently obscure his early interest in the theatrical and performative, threads which were long instrumental to the artist’s practice, and to the development of much of his later work.  It’s these same threads that receive express emphasis in the Tate Modern’s Performing Sculpture, an exhibition of work culled from the length of Calder’s career, and which places his interests in performance, movement and time back into the proper context his later sculpture is so strongly rooted in.

Alexander Calder, Vertical Foliage (1941), Calder Foundation, New York © 2015 Calder Foundation, New York / DACS, London

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Lizzi Bougatsos, The King’s Virgin (2015), via Rae Wang for Art Observed

What does it mean to work? To what extent is play quantifiable as labor and vice versa? Such are the questions posed by Work Habits, the latest solo exhibition from artist Lizzi Bougatsos on view at James Fuentes.  Stepping into a space lit up in traffic light red on opening night, one quickly garners a Nietzschean sense of faith unfound, unraveling foundations and unsustained beliefs.  The room, minimally adorned with a dynamic installation of assemblages, depict these found and repurposed objects as inherently lazy. Read More »

Tauba Auerbach, Shadow Weave – Metamaterial/Slice Ray (2013) © Tauba Auerbach. Courtesy Paula Cooper Gallery, New York, Photo: Steven Probert

Tauba Auerbach’s work does much with its slight physical moorings.  Utilizing sparse, repeated patterns, meticulously executed sculptural objects and a nuanced eye for her selected materials and colors, Auerbach’s work creates delicate structural harmonies and ordered, meditative pieces that create a sense of calm despite their geometrically-complex, constantly evolving surfaces.  This method is executed to great effect in the artist’s just-opened exhibition at Paula Cooper’s 21st Street location, compiling selections from several ongoing series of the artist’s work, as well as new sculptural elements, a library of texts, and several new publications from Auerbach’s Diagonal Press publishing house, included in the gallery bookstore. Read More »

Elizabeth Peyton, Sea (Kristian) (2016), via Sadie Coles

Presenting a new body of paintings, including both landscapes and portraiture from her travels and experiences, Elizabeth Peyton opens a new body of work at Sadie Coles HQ in London, filling the gallery’s Davies Street location with her uniquely delicate watercolors, pencil drawings and oil compositions.  The show is Peyton’s seventh with the gallery in nearly twenty years, and marks a continuation of her recent practice and stylistic diversity.    Read More »

Anne Collier, May/Jun 2009 (Cindy Sherman, Mark Seliger) (2009), all photos via Osman Can Yerebakan for Art Observed

The Guggenheim’s Photo-Poetics: An Anthology, curated by Jennifer Blessing, senior photography curator at the museum, delves into methods utilized by artists to diverge from traditional notions of photography as a chronicle of tangible reality.  Such capturing of verité leaves the stage for investigation of process, material, and expression in works by ten contemporary photographers, spanning three floors at the museum’s side galleries, and guiding viewers through various sections containing selections of work by a single artist, among them Sara VanDerBeek, Erin Shirreff and Kathrin Sonntag to name a few. Read More »