Ellsworth Kelly, Curves on White (Four Panels) (2012), via Art Observed

Ellsworth Kelly, a pioneer of 20th Century abstraction and an early voice in the development of color field painting and cut-canvas work, has passed away at the age of 92.

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Dominique Gonzales-Foerster, Exotourisme (néon) (2002-2013), all photos via Daphné Mookherjee for Art Observed

The work of Dominique Gonzales-Foerster often combines media, spatial arrangements and video within the prism of time to explore links and lines of intersection between literature, film, architecture and music.  For her retrospective at the Centre Pompidou, she takes over the Galerie Sud as a spatial timeline, superimposing temporal strata to create an installation that serves as both a retrospective and forward-looking journey into the body of her work, questioning the viewer on fragmented identities and fictions, notions of inside and outside or absence and presence, and even the idea of time travel. Read More »

Fabio Mauri, Oscuramento (Darkening) (1975), all photos via Art Observed

Fabio Mauri’s work is defined by trauma.  The Italian artist spent his early years growing up alongside the rise of the Italian Fascist Party.  His childhood was defined by the images of war and violence, not merely through the scope of WWII, but in the violent political structures of the era that sent his family and countrymen to war.  In his maturity, the late artist frequently returned to the sites and encounters with the images and iconography of that era in the Italian Nation, staging sculptural environments that placed domestic signifiers and human actors into contact with the objects of war: uniforms, helmets, weapons and scenes of twisted metal or military planning.

Fabio Mauri, Picnic o Il buon soldato (Picnic or The Good Soldier) (Installation View) (1998)

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Asad Raza with work by Jordan Wolfson, Jessica Dickinson and bedsheets from his childhood selected by Rachel Rose, via Art Observed

“Hey, I’m Asad,”  Asad Raza greets the viewer at the ground floor of his apartment building on Spring Street, before leading them up the stairs to his modest one-bedroom.  Over the past month, Raza has brought a number of visitors through the space for Home Show, a group exhibition of site-specific and performative works that he compiled from a close group of friends, including Tino Seghal, Camille Henrot, Rachel Rose and many more, guiding them through the show with an enthusiastic flair that intertwines his own personal history and life with the work of his friends and collaborators.

A heart pump loaned to the artist from his father, via Art Observed

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Tom Sachs, Crawler (2003), all photos via Andrea Nguyen for Art Observed

The group exhibition Space Age, which closed yesterday at Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac in Paris-Pantin, took up all four of the gallery’s spacious halls to examine historical and commissioned works by twenty contemporary artists, drawing on the astrological, the exploratory, and the untapped potential of outer space.  The artworks on view explored one of humanity’s most archaic collective dreams: the conquest of the skies and the immersion in the cosmos.

James Rosenquist, An Intrinsic Existence (2015), via Art Observed Read More »

A CNN article looks at the factors causing astronomical jumps in price in the art market recently, and the extended efforts of the auction houses to entice buyers.  “You bring as many people as you can into the headquarters through dinners and cocktail parties, and your global specialists center there and try to sell the work,” says Lisa Dennison, Chairman of Sotheby’s North and South America. Read More »

Brice Marden, Eastern Moss (2012-2015)

Brice Marden is the subject of a solo exhibition that spans three all three 22nd street locations for Matthew Marks Gallery, unveiling a new body of paintings and drawings that continue a number of the artist’s ongoing interests with the narrative potential for color.  The works on view here possess a demure yet captivating appeal, underlining the New York-based artist’s continued interest in the intersections of 20th Century abstraction, broader art histories, and the use of color-field composition in varying applications. Read More »

Jeff Koons, Gazing Ball (Fragonard Young Girl Playing with her Dog) (2014-2015)

Challenging the established notion of history as linear entity, art history often manifests itself as an intergenerational pattern, embedding variant heterogenous theories, movements and phenomena onto compound structures, while just as often disregarding its most sound chronological hierarchies. Jeff Koons, whose current exhibition at Gagosian Gallery continues his entries in his series of Gazing Ball works, takes this opportunity to scrutinize the constellation of art history, drawing his own threads and theories through a diverse and complexly interrelated series of works. Read More »

Mark Bradford, Deimos (2015)

Over the past several years, Mark Bradford has had something of a meteoric rise in the art world, garnering impressive recognition, critically and commercially for his exhilarating painterly style and vivid shifts in form and technique . Committed to creating uncompromisingly grandiose and ambitious works of art, Bradford has been the subject of rightfully increasing acclaim, most recently proven by his solo exhibition Scorched Earth at the Hammer Museum in his hometown Los Angeles, and his recent commission for a massive installation to accompany his upcoming retrospective at the Hirshhorn Museum in Washington, DC. Read More »

George Baselitz, Untitled (2015), via Rae Wang for Art Observed

Intertwining his own personal artistic process with distinct threads of historical reference, wry humor and disparate aesthetic threads, Georg Baselitz is currently on view at Gagosian Gallery’s 980 Madison space for a small exhibition of new works, positioning the artist’s drawings and watercolors as a “visitation,” as the artist terms it, by Japanese ukiyo-e master Katsushika Hokusai.

Georg Baselitz, Visit from Hokuskai (Installation View)

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