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

Erika Verzutti: “Churros and Rain” at Andrew Kreps Through October 29th, 2022

October 20th, 2022

Erika Verzutti, Churros and Rain (Installation View), via Andrew Kreps
Erika Verzutti, Churros and Rain (Installation View), via Andrew Kreps

Tactile in its approach, Erika Verzutti’s practice rests between sculpture and painting, drawing on a wide range of references from nature to popular culture. Shapes derived from fruits or vegetables recur alongside familiar objects, self-referential gestures, and images culled from social media to form a new vernacular. Firmly rooted in studio practice, Verzutti’s work revels in its process and explores how disparate ideas and perceptions take on a physical form. For her most recent exhibition at Andrew Kreps in New York, the artist continues that mode over a range of materials and approaches.  Read More »

New York – Claudio Parmiggiani at Bortolami Gallery Through October 29th, 2022

October 20th, 2022

Claudio Parmiggiani, Untitled (2022), via Bortolami
Claudio Parmiggiani, Untitled (2022), via Bortolami

On view this month at Bortolami Gallery in New York, artist Claudio Parmiggiani has installed a body of new work that continues his enigmatic and materially-oriented approach through a range of new canvases. Utilizing simple operations of fire and ash posed against a stark white canvas, Parmiggiani’s work in the show makes the most of the most simple of operations to create lyrically rich subject matter.

Claudio Parmiggiani, Untitled (2022), via Bortolami
Claudio Parmiggiani, Untitled (2022), via Bortolami

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AO On-Site – Art Basel Paris+ at the Grand Palais Éphémère, October 20th-23rd, 2022

October 19th, 2022

Jack Pierson at Regen
Jack Pierson at Regen, all images via Art Observed

With the fall months pressing on, the annual fair stretch between London and Paris is an annual event, with galleries shuttling between the two European capitals for the usual run of art fairs. But this year, with FIAC sitting out on a 2022 edition, Art Basel has filled a gap in the annual fair offerings, opening the first run of a new fair, Paris+ at the Grand Palais Éphémère from Thursday, October 20 to Sunday, October 23, 2022. Bringing together 156 leading French and international galleries for this first program, the fair continues its reputation for exceptional artworks across all media – from painting and sculpture to photography and digital works. Read More »

New York – Mary Heilmann: “Daydream” at 303 Gallery Through October 29th, 2022

October 17th, 2022

Mary Heilmann, Glassy Wall (2020), via 303 Gallery
Mary Heilmann, Glassy Wall (2020), via 303 Gallery

A California native, Mary Heilmann has been gazing out at the ocean since the age of three, and this fascination with the landscape and climate of her home state continues in her work to this day. Across Heilmann’s surfaces, waves swiftly build in one canvas before crashing over into the next. This notion sits at the center of Heilmann’s current show, Daydream, on view at 303 Gallery in New York. Read More »

New York – Urs Fischer: “Denominator” at Gagosian Through October 15th, 2022

October 14th, 2022

Urs Fischer, Denominator (2020-2022), via Art Observed
Urs Fischer, Denominator (2020-2022), via Art Observed

Continuing his enigmatic and playful engagement with the languages of artistic production, pop culture and materiality, artist Urs Fischer returns to Gagosian in New York this month for a strikingly surreal and technologically-driven body of new works, unified under the title Denominator. Exploring concepts of data compilation and agglomeration, as well as the meanings that systems of organization and exhibition create, the show uses digital imagery as a structure of recontextualizing and complicating the act of creation and the understanding of an image.  Read More »

AO On-Site: New York Art Book Fair, Presented by Printed Matter at 548 W 22nd St, October 13th-16th, 2022

October 13th, 2022

New York Art Book Fair (Installation), via Art Oserved
New York Art Book Fair (Installation), via Art Oserved

The leaves are changing in New York City, the fall equinox is on its way, and the time has once again come for the New York Art Book Fair to open yet again, kicking off its latest edition of a unique and energetic exhibition of young artists, publishers, writers and thinkers, each representing a small part of the national and international art publishing community.  Always free and open to the public, the event draws more than 35,000 individuals including book lovers, collectors, artists, and art world professionals each year.  Read More »

AO On-Site: Frieze London 2022 at Regent’s Park, October 12th -16th, 2022

October 12th, 2022

Anthea Hamilton at Thomas Dane
Anthea Hamilton at Thomas Dane, all images via Art Observed

As the chill of autumn washes over the British capital, another year of the Frieze London art fair has opened its doors, bringing with it a stream of sales and installations across its spacious halls that make for a fitting center to one of the city’s busiest art events. Opening in the midst of a challenging moment in British politics, the fair continued its role as a major staple of the fall art season, with impressive attendance and ample sales that seemed to ensure that the British art market was still showing its resiliency in the face of economic and political uncertainty.  Read More »

New York – Cathy Wilkes at Ortuzar Projects Through October 22nd, 2022

October 11th, 2022

Cathy Wilkes (Installation View), via Ortuzar Projects
Cathy Wilkes (Installation View), via Ortuzar Projects

On this month at Ortuzar Projects in New York, artist Cathy Wilkes has orchestrated a subtle, yet incisive series of paintings, sculptures and readymades that continue her work in establishing tenuous and compelling narratives through delicate spatial arrangements. Marking her first show in New York since her her acclaimed solo exhibition at MoMA PS1 in 2017, this new installation combines subtle paintings, objects, and Wilkes’ characteristic papier-maÌ‚ché figures. Visions of landscapes and interiors from her childhood are often recognizable in the work, collapsing and reforming time and space repeatedly. Employing what the artist has called “hypostatic abstraction and intense social realism,” the exhibition conveys themes of separation, suffering, infancy, and fragility. Read More »

New York – Lucy Bull: “Piper” at David Kordansky Through October 15th, 2022

October 10th, 2022

Lucy Bull, 17:50 (2022), via David Kordansky
Lucy Bull, 17:50 (2022), via David Kordansky

On view this month at David Kordansky Gallery New York and artist Lucy Bull present Piper, her first solo exhibition in New York, featuring new paintings that underscore her use of resonant color, intensively worked vocabularies, and disorienting spatial experimentation. While Bull’s vision of abstraction takes shape on the canvas with abundant force, her approach is also notable for its insistent openness, which favors the creation of associative and narrative possibilities rather than the execution of pre-determined ideas regarding composition or any of the other constituent parts of painting.

Lucy Bull, Piper (Installation View), via David Kordansky
Lucy Bull, Piper (Installation View), via David Kordansky

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Shanghai – Madsaki: “The Night is Long that Never Finds the Day” at Galerie Perrotin Through October 22nd, 2022

October 7th, 2022

Madsaki, Untitled (2022), via Perrotin
Madsaki, Untitled (2022), via Perrotin

Over the course of the past decade, artist MADSAKI has achieved success as a painter exploring and undermining dichotomies between high and low art, good and bad taste, and the nature of both skill and precision in the act of painting. Drawing on visual resources that range from the classics throughout art history to newspaper images and pop culture icons, often embellished with spray paint applied with lose splatters and pools of color, the artist’s work often pulls at threads around the notion of painting as an “elevated” art form, instead using it as a jumping off point for broader conversations of image culture and production. For the artist’s most recent show at Galerie Perrotin in Shanghai, the artist takes a new approach, exploring landscape painting as a new mode of practice.  Read More »