Kevin Beasley, Wood shed (on improvisation) (2022), via Art Observed

This month at Regen Projects, artist Kevin Beasley brings forward a selection of dynamic new works that marks his first solo gallery show in LA. With a multidisciplinary practice that incorporates sculpture, drawing, installation, sound, music, and performance, Beasley probes the material and cultural conditions that shape our perception of history. His ability to alchemize ordinary material—specifically personal artifacts and articles of clothing—into sculptures that are simultaneously transcendent and familiar has placed him at the vanguard of artistic and cultural thought. That practice continues here. Read More »

Celeste Rapone, Muscle for Hire (2022), via Marianne Boesky

On view at Marianne Boesky this month in New York, artist Celeste Rapone brings to bear a number of unique new canvases that underscore her investigation of painted space, and its ability to place itself directly between the imagined and the real. Marking Rapone’s first solo show with the gallery the artist continues to examine the potential of painting through the human form. Drawing inspiration from her native New Jersey, Rapone seeks to communicate both personal and collective feelings of anxiety, longing, and nostalgia experienced in contemporary life.

Celeste Rapone, Nightshade (Installation View), via Marianne Boesky

Rapone’s works focus on the figure, often centering on women protagonists whose bodies impossibly contort and twist up to the confines that Rapone creates within the painting, or at other times capturing a tender exchange between a pair of figures. Rapone produces her works without preliminary drawings, gradually building the compositions of her paintings through a dynamic interplay between scale, color, pattern, and the shapes of the human form. In the settings of her paintings, the artist populates the space with an array of allusions, pulling from art history, pop culture, autobiographical sources, and drawing influence from the stylized figuration introduced by the Chicago Imagists.

Celeste Rapone, Nightshade (Installation View), via Marianne Boesky

Celeste Rapone, Living Room (2022), via Marianne Boesky

Ranging in scale, each work within the show is unique and multifaceted in its development. At times, Rapone has a narrative in mind from which a thematic environment evolves for her characters to navigate. In others, the onset of a work is driven by formalist concerns, in which the artist begins with a unique color configuration or an abstract composition of shapes that then influence the formation of a painting’s scene. The resulting forms of her figures, whose bodies defy the rules of proportions and scale, are both undeniably present and vulnerable within the canvases. These forms and figures swirl throughout the space, turning into a careful balance of constructed image and observations of life. Delving into a space that exists between the artist’s eye and constructed world, here she turns the body into a site for the negotiation of memory, site, longing and history.

The show closes June 11th.

– D. Creahan

Read more:
Celeste Rapone: Nightshade [Exhibition Site]

Veronica Ryan, Along A Spectrum (Installation View) via Paula Cooper

On view this month, and corresponding with her work on view at the Whitney Biennial this summer, artist Veronica Ryan brings a body of new compositions to Paula Cooper this month, underscoring a unique and open-ended series of material dialogues that showcase the artist’s investigation and interpretation of the language of the modern day. Capping off a whirlwind two years including an impressive series of shows and her recent recognition with an OBE, the show at Paula Cooper offers a rare but concise look at the concerns and questions her work poses.  Read More »

Robert Rauschenberg, Untitled (Early Egyptian) (1973), via Gladstone

Marking an expansive exploration of Robert Rauschenberg’s sculptural output at the peak of his ability, Gladstone Gallery and the Robert Rauschenberg have collaborated on a series of shows exploring his Venetian and Early Egyptians series. Spread across Gladstone’s Chelsea galleries, this show reveals Rauschenberg’s significant place in helping to define the history of post-Minimalist sculpture, seeing beyond what others decided should be the limits of art. Rauschenberg’s career was defined by the longing for work that existed beyond simple distinctions of medium, form and genre, often using found objects and collages of material to create hybridized material sites. The Venetian and Early Egyptian series blur the line between sculpture and painting, between waste and conservation, and between everyday objects and artworks. Read More »

Richard Prince, Hoods (Installation View), all images via Art Observed

On view this month at Gagosian in Chelsea, artist Richard Prince has collected a body of work spanning over 30 years of practice, focusing in particular around his explorations of the iconography and imagery of American car culture. Titled Hoods, the show features a range of works that see Prince working with modified and customized car hoods, using their sculptural design as a point of entry for broader investigations of Americana, identity and time. Hoods will feature more than thirty works made over the span of twenty-five years, from 1988 through 2013, all personally selected by the artist for this exhibition, and which showcases loans from major institutions and private collections, including the Brant Foundation, New York and Greenwich, Connecticut; the Broad, Los Angeles; Colección Jumex, Mexico City; Glenstone, Potomac, Maryland; Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; Pinault Collection, Paris; and Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York; as well as from the collection of the artist.

Richard Prince, What’s What (1989)

Read More »

Nicole Eisenman, Maker’s Muck (2022)

Over the course of their career, the painter Nicole Eisenman has proved a master at the construction of new worlds, mixing together figurative rigor with an animated and expressive counter-world, arriving on a body of work that alternatives between lush, cartoonish bodies and meticulous depictions of close friends and sitters. For their first show at Hauser & Wirth in New York, the artist takes this mode to new heights, culling together an expansive range of sculpture, painting and drawing that underscores Eisenman’s ability to both reflect and refract reality in alternate measure. Read More »

Lauren Halsey, My Hope (2022)

Presenting a range of sculptural inventions, clusters of material, and incisive observations of the cultural landscape of the African-American experience, artist Lauren Halsey uses her work to imagine new possibilities for art, architecture, and community engagement. Combining found, fabricated, and handmade objects, her work maintains a sense of civic urgency and free flowing imagination, addressing crucial issues confronting Black people, queer populations, and the working class. This mode of work finds expressive footing in her new show at David Kordansky’s recently opened New York exhibition space, bringing together a range of work to create a shifting and colorful view of South Central LA.

Lauren Halsey, My Hope (detail) (2022)

Read More »

Ernesto Neto, Between Earth and Sky (Installation View), all images via Art Observed

Since the 1990s, Brazilian artist Ernesto Neto has created a distinct body of work that marks both an ongoing formal inquiry into space, volume, balance, and a deep engagement with sensuality, energy, and spirituality., all while elaborating on the neo-concrete and the history of Brazilian modernism. Incorporating organic shapes and materials that engage all five senses, his work draws on the history of Brazilian art and a close interaction with natural forms to create otherworldly and communally-experienced objects and spaces. Read More »

Olafur Eliasson at Tanya Bonakdar, all images via Art Observed

Returning this year to The Shed in New York City’s recently redeveloped Hudson Yards, the 2022 edition of Frieze New York is now open, with a range of shows and projects spread throughout the exhibition space that include ambitious solo projects, surveys of gallery rosters, and focused, historical presentations that underscore the fair’s place as both a site for discovery, and one of the premier selling events of the yearly art world calendar. With over 65 dealers on hand from New York and around the globe, the fair signals something of a scale-back from the sizable expanses of the versions held at Randalls Island, yet nevertheless presents a dynamic and immersive program.

Rob Pruitt at Massimo De Carlo

Read More »