Alvaro Barrington at Blum & Poe, all images via Art Observed

After several weeks of fairs in San Francisco and Mexico City, marking the early notes in another year of busy contemporary art fairs around the globe, Frieze Los Angeles, one of the premier events of the early year, has once again opened in the sprawling California metropolis, this year setting up shop amid the gleaming sun and striking expanses of the Santa Monica Airport. Taking place for the first time at this location (previously known as a former site for the Art Los Angeles Contemporary fair), the fair expands to feature more than 120 galleries, including new specialists in 20th-century art, alongside restaurants and Frieze Projects spread across the multiple sites. Read More »

Portrait of the artist by Aleph Molinari for Art Observed.

Israeli-Colombian visual artist Orly Anan mixes elements of theater, dance, performance, and costume design into surrealist neo-kitsch compositions. She recently premiered her first short film Ein Sof during Mexico City’s art week Zona MACO, in partnership with MATERIA and Mubi. Anan describes the film as a ‘Kabbalistic circus’ that blends elements of carnival, kabuki, and sacred numerology into an explosion of colors and symbolism. Art Observed caught up with the artist to talk about her film, her practice, and the esoteric sources of her creative inspiration. Read More »

Michael Williams, Paired Puzzle 1 (Frog/Farm) (2020), via David Kordansky

On view this winter in LA, and open for extended hours during the run of Frieze Los Angeles this week, artists Huma Bhabha and Michael Williams are part of a dual artist show at David Kordansky, featuring new sculptures and works on paper by Bhabha, and new paintings and drawings by Williams. Read More »

Jose Davila at Galeria OMR, all images by Hannah Zhang for Art Observed

Zona Maco has once again opened for its doors for a week of sales and shows in the sprawling metropolis of Mexico City. The fair, which has built a reputation for both its international curation and ist reflection of the thriving artistic community in Mexico City, here returns to the expanses of the Centro Banamex for its 19th year. This year’s edition marked a continuation of a fair that has long prided itself on the scale and strength of its inclusions, with particular focus paid to the art and artists of Latin America in relation to the rest of the international art market. 

Yoan Capote at Galleria Continua

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Alicja Kwade, Silent Matter (Installation View), via OMR

Artist Alicja Kwade has opened a new show this week during the run of Zona Maco in Mexico City at Galeria OMR, continuing a body of work that uses philosophy and natural phenomena as a means to explore the human condition. Marking her first solo exhibition in Mexico, Silent Matter, Kwade employs the notion of thought experiments, a tool commonly used in science and philosophy as a means to explore concepts and phenomena that are difficult or almost impossible to explain. In the tradition of Schrödinger’s cat or Plato’s Allegory of the Cave, Kwade creates physical manifestations of thought experiments meant to stimulate discussion as well as question the limits of our ability to understand and ultimately control reality. Read More »

Nairy Baghramian, modèle vivant (Installation View), via kurimanzutto

On view this month, and opening in tandem with the run of exhibitions and projects during Zona Maco, Mexico City’s kurimanzutto presents new work by artist Nairy Baghramian, exploring a range of histories and modes of studio practice converging on the notion and form of the human body. Titled modèle vivant, the title refers to the practice of drawing, painting, or sculpting the human figure from a live model; that is, from a person who strikes, assumes, holds a given pose in service to an artist’s act of composition. Read More »

Jonathan Lyndon Chase, Now I’m home, lips that know my name (Installation View), via Sadie Coles HQ

Marking their first solo exhibition in the UK, artist Jonathan Lyndon Chase opens a new show Now I’m home, lips that know my name, at Sadie Coles HQ, making for an explorative, domestic installation that embraces the Black Queer experience of love, sexuality, subjectivity and identity; and the profound depth of the capacity for intimacy and pleasure in both public and private spaces, that remain central to their practice. Read More »

Marlon Mullen, Untitled (2021), via JTT

JTT presents its fourth solo show with artist Marlon Mullen this month, continuing an ongoing collaboration with a new selection of colorful abstracted works that underscore the artist’s engaging, expressive hand. Collectively, the works on view span just over 25 years and include some of his earliest, never before shown paintings from the late 1990s as well as his newest works from the past several years.  Read More »

Stefan Bondell, Dark Marks (Installation View), via Vito Schnabel

On this month in New York City, Vito Schnabel Gallery welcomes artist Stefan Bondell to show Dark Marks, a selection of new works from the artistthe New York poet and artist’s most recent series of paintings – a dramatic series of monumentally scaled works executed in an obsidian palette, with deep, compounded layers of classical and contemporary imagery used to explore the turbulent sociopolitical condition of the United States today. Read More »

Karen Kilimnik, friends in the woods (2010), via Sprüth Magers

Marking an intriguing engagement with the language and history of drawing, Sprüth Magers is currently presenting The Kingdom of the Renaissance, an exhibition of works by Karen Kilimnik and her old master predecessors, curated by Mireille Mosler. Inspired by a variety of sources, from old masters to present day, Kilimnik conjoins components while constructing her own universe. From depictions of royal menageries of the Renaissance through public figures’ pooches, the artist filters her inner imaginary world through source material procured from books and museum exhibitions. Read More »