Pace Gallery has announced plans for a new exhibition space in the South Korean city of Seoul, Art News reports. The gallery is the first of the major American blue-chip spaces to touch down in the city. (more…)
The Art Newspaper spotlights artist Doug Aitken’s installation in the California desert, on view starting this weekend; a mirrored ranch house titled Mirage. “I wanted to take the vernacular of a West Coast suburban home… and reduce it of any human contact or belongings so it became pure form,” Aitken says. “I wanted the form to have a dialogue with the surrounding environment.” (more…)
The Art Market Monitor does some interesting analysis on recent data released by Artprice this week, noting that the market may in fact not be slumping, but rather, broadening its distribution with an increasingly large number of galleries and players. (more…)
Questions over the provenance of a Gustav Klimt portrait have been resolved at Sotheby’s, allowing the sale of the painting to go forward during the auction house’s Modern and Impressionist Evening Sale tomorrow night in London. The work was contested after a previous owner said she lost the painting while cleaning her house, but the issue has since been resolved after a formal claim was not filed. (more…)
Thomas P. Campbell will step down from his directorship at The Met, the New York Times reports, after mounting internal pressure over Campbell’s ambitious expansion plans and the financial problems it has caused the institution. “I have decided to step down from my role as Director and CEO of The Metropolitan Museum of Art in order to pursue the next phase of my career,” Campbell said in a letter addressed to “Colleagues” today. “I couldn’t be more proud of The Met’s accomplishments during my tenure.” Met President Daniel H. Weiss will serve as interim CEO as the museum considers its options. (more…)
Following its inability to find a buyer to support its current insolvency, digital auction house Auctionata will close its doors, the company announced today. “All necessary steps were taken. In the end, however, investors did not come together to make sufficient funds available to operate the insolvent German company as a going concern,” says preliminary insolvency administrator Christian von Brockdorff. (more…)
Armory Show, via Armory Show
Returning once again to the spacious halls of Piers 92 and 94 on Manhattan’s West Side, the Armory Show will open its doors this week in New York City, bringing the landmark art fair back for its 23rd year. Marking its first year with former artnet head Benjamin Genocchio at the helm, the fair will continue its tradition of sales, talks, and projects spread across the piers, joined by an increasingly expansive series of events around the city at large.
Alex Katz, Vivien (2016), via Peter Blum
Sotheby’s beat expectations for the fourth quarter of 2016, posting a profit of $65.5 million. “We were cautiously optimistic in November, but as it turns out, the weight in that statement should have been on optimism,” Tad Smith said during the quarterly call with investors. “This quarter demonstrated that when the market stabilizes, let alone when it returns to its secular growth trajectory, our company is poised to capitalize on the upturn and do very well for our shareholders.” (more…)
The New Museum will partner with Nokia Bell Labs, providing NEW INC collaborators with resources and technology for their work in the museum’s incubator program. “The New Museum has long been at the forefront of art and technology; this partnership with a legendary research lab will help us continue to push boundaries of cultural expression and possibilities of interdisciplinary collaboration. The NEW INC community embraces an untapped demographic of practitioners,” says Lisa Phillips, Toby Devan Lewis Director of the New Museum. (more…)
The Wall Street Journal looks at the art market’s current state as it moves into a pair of auctions this week, noting the current challenges, and potential strategies auction houses are embracing to move beyond a struggling market. (more…)
Kader Attia, Reason’s Oxymorons (2015), via Art Observed
Currently on view at Lehmann Maupin’s Lower East Side exhibition space, a series of small cubicles stretch across the room, pulling the viewer through a banally labyrinthine series of pathways. The piece, by the Algerian-French artist Kader Attia, is accompanied by a series of televisions, each playing a video of a doctor or other professional in psychological treatment, medical history or ethnography, and each discussing the range of medical and cultural frameworks currently in play in both Europe and Africa. (more…)
Curator Paul Schimmel has parted ways with Hauser & Wirth’s Los Angeles location after a sudden announcement late this week, the LA Times reports. Schimmel, former chief curator at MoCA was a founding partner in the gallery’s Los Angeles location, which opened last year. “Going forward, Hauser & Wirth will continue building upon its longstanding, passionate commitment to Los Angeles with expanded programs, including an increasingly robust campaign of public events and community outreach activities, and an ever more dynamic schedule of exhibitions that celebrate our artists, and connections between California and the international scene,” Iwan Wirth said in a statement. (more…)
LAABF, via Art Observed
Returning to its annual haunt at the Geffen Contemporary at MoCA, the LA Art Book Fair’s fifth edition finds an event in full bloom, spreading across the building’s spacious confines with a broad look at the contemporary world of art books, editions, printmaking, zines, drawing, and even a smattering of DIY clothing design. Featuring over 300 artists and exhibitors, the show has become a major event for the city’s thriving young arts scene, bringing thousands of visitors to the city each year.
Michael Williams at Karma, via Art Observed
Ren Hang, via Art Info
Chinese photographer Ren Hang, known for his bold style and provocative nude images, has passed away at the age of 29 of an apparent suicide. Hang was a self-taught photographer who drew frequent controversy in his home country for his unapologetic depictions of both male and female models, and had previously been arrested a number of times over his work.
Work by Ren Hang, via CNN
Embarking on a range of highbrow pastiches drawing from 1950’s Americana, flashy cars and bright colors, painter David Salle continues to reinvent his unique sense of the postmodern, and the craft of painting in the contemporary era, taking over Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac’s Paris Marais exhibition space. Working through a series of paintings on canvas and paper, the show welcomes a renewed perspective on Salle’s combinations of culture, color and gesture. (more…)
The LA Times reports on the closure of PSSST, a non-profit arts space in Boyle Heights that shuttered after repeated protests from local anti-gentrification activists. While our closure might be applauded by some, it is not a victory for civil discourse and coalition building,” the gallery said in a statement. (more…)
Francis Bacon’s triptych portrait of his lover George Dyer is set to go to auction for the first time at Christie’s in New York this May, carrying an estimate of $50m. “George Dyer is to Bacon what Dora Maar was to Picasso,” Loic Gouzer says of the artist’s longtime muse. “He is arguably the most important model of the second half of the 20th century, because Dyer’s persona as well and physical traits acted as a catalyst for Bacon’s pictorial breakthroughs.”
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The John S. and James L. Knight Foundation has established a $200,000 matching grant to the Perez Art Museum in Miami, intended to benefit the museum’s already existent fund for work made by African American artists. “We are proud to be a museum with a collection that is reflective of our diverse Miami community,” said director Franklin Sirmans. (more…)
Bloomberg has a piece on Dmitriy Rybolovlev’s art collection this week, after the collector lost a reported $100 million on sales in the past months. The piece notes Rybolovlev’s aggressive buying as a cause of these losses, as he seeks to unload a number of works acquired at record prices, while the collector points to the immense prices as further evidence of the damages caused by his purchases through dealer Yves Bouvier. “The gulf between Christie’s estimates and the original purchase prices of the works is a further illustration of the unprecedented scale and audacity of the fraud that the plaintiffs allege was perpetrated by Mr. Bouvier,” says Sergey Chernitsyn, a representative of the Rybolovlev Family Office. (more…)
Marlborough Chelsea has renamed itself as Marlborough Contemporary, consolidating with another London gallery in the network of family exhibition spaces to become a transatlantic project. “This expansion opens up an exciting opportunity for connecting with new artists and expanding our audience,” says Director Max Levai. (more…)
The Venice Biennale is posting videos each day to its website, profiling the 120 artists showing in its exhibition this summer through their work and interviews. (more…)
The Marciano Art Foundation has set May 25th as its official opening day, the LA Times reports. “We could not be more excited to welcome the public into our new art space, and to share our love, obsession and curiosity of contemporary art with visitors,” founder Maurice Marciano says. “We hope you will be just as excited when you discover Marciano Art Foundation.” (more…)
Art News spotlights artist collective Studio Drift, which will levitate a concrete block at the Armory Show next week in New York. “It’s straightforward, but of course, it’s not simple,” the group says. “Concrete is something we completely rely on. The whole world is built on concrete, and the concrete block symbolizes the main building element of our world.” (more…)
Julian Schnabel is profiled in the New York Times this week, as the artist gives the paper a look at his recent work in preparation for upcoming shows in Aspen and New York. “Do you know who the mayor of the town was when Van Gogh lived in Arles? Do you know who the president of the republic was? I don’t know,” he says. “But we know Van Gogh was there — a guy who was mistreated by everybody, and now there are souvenir shops selling posters of his paintings. It’s interesting that someone involved just in the process of putting paint on a canvas would have this resounding ripple effect over the years.” (more…)