Modern art is full of determined characters. The ones who find success are visionary, changing the face of the contemporary art scene. Marina Abramović‘s exhibition at the Royal Academy marks the first retrospective of a female artist in the institution’s 255 years. The exhibition is one of the largest, occupying the academy’s previously unused rooms. While it was initially planned for September 2020, due to Covid-19 it was postponed numerous times. During this period Abramović suffered an embolism which prevented her from performing in the show as initially planned. It’s an unfortunate reality for an artist who is usually so generous with herself as a performer. Read More »

Cover images courtesy of Ola Wilk via Maria Kreyn; and Ellen Frances.

For its first artist-on-artist interview, Art Observed sat down with New York-based painter Maria Kreyn and multidisciplinary artist and performer Ellen Frances to talk about their individual practices and their collaboration for the opening of Kreyn’s solo show Untune a String at The Hole in Tribeca earlier this month. In their conversation with Art Observed, the two artists discuss the importance of multidisciplinary collaboration, the enduring resonance of classical artistic and literary forms, and their visions for the future. Read More »

Henry Taylor, I Got Brothers All Ova The World But They Forget We’re Related (2023), via Hauser & Wirth

Marking its inaugural outing at its new Paris exhibition space, Hauser & Wirth looks west to the work of critically acclaimed Los Angeles artist Henry Taylor, whose major career survey arrives at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York on 4 October 2023 and will remain on view through January 2024. Taylor’s exhibition in Paris, the artist’s first prominent show in France, comprises a wide range of over 30 paintings, sculptures and works on paper encompassing the remarkable breadth of his practice. Read More »

Alex Israel, Self-Portrait (Palette) (2023)

Alex Israel returns to Almine Rech in Paris this fall for his fifth solo show with the gallery, adding a new perspective and mode of interpretation to the understanding and recontextualization of Pablo Picasso on the 50^th  anniversary of the artist’s death. Treating the artist’s life and work as a fitting jumping-off point for continued explorations of the intersections of art and pop culture, of image and practice, or even of ego vs. landscape, Israel turns his attention to another aspect of Picasso’s legacy: La Californie.

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Wade Guyton, Galerie Matthiesen, Ausstellung, Edouard Manet, 1928, 6. Februar bis 18. März, Vol. II (2022), via Chantal Crousel

Opening in Paris during the run of Art Basel’s Paris+ art fair, Galerie Chantal Crousel has opened a solo show of works on paper by artist Wade Guyton, marking the artist’s first foray into lithography. Mining the intersections of digital graphics and analog printing, long a juxtaposition and source of both tension and inspiration in the artist’s work, the show features a range of sourced material from printed matter.  Read More »

Tony Matelli, Displacement Map 2 (2023), via Andréhn-Schiptjenko

Andréhn-Schiptjenko Paris presents Displacement Map this fall, a new solo exhibition with New York-based artist Tony Matelli. The exhibition, the 8th with the gallery and the second one in Paris, will feature recent works shown for the first time, among these, a life-sized self-portrait and a series of Arrangements, polychrome bronze bouquets of inverted flowers as well as a number of paintings, the first time the artist has shown in this medium.

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