Mark Manders, Room with Unfired Clay Figures (2015), via Rae Wang for Art Observed

There’s a distinct narrative arc running throughout the work of Mark Manders, albeit one that’s noticeably obtuse.  Utilizing familiar materials, forms and techniques throughout his work, the artist transposes materials into a conversation with architectural space and time, often winding explorations of the art historical and explorations of human affect into his enigmatic sculptures and installations.  For the artist’s new exhibition at Tanya Bonakdar, the artist returns to his notion of “self-portrait as building,” weaving his personal histories and aesthetic interests into a sprawling installation and series of sculptures that poses challenging questions on the body, force, and art practice in general.

Mark Manders, Dry Figure on Chair (2015), via Rae Wang for Art Observed (more…)

Joseph Kosuth, Agnosia, an Illuminated Ontology (Installation View), all photos via Osman Can Yerebakan for Art Observed

A preeminent member of the pioneering group of conceptual practitioners that sought to dissolve art making from declarations of objective emotion or feeling, Joseph Kosuth remains a marker stone for the reach and potential for Conceptual Art, still using his work to scrutinize the limits and definitions of contextual meaning, often removed from primarily aesthetic concerns, at age 70.  Agnosia, an Illuminated Ontology strikes the viewer as a large-scale installation orchestrated by Kosuth at Sean Kelly Gallery, where the artist, who splits his time between New York and London, is showing his first exhibition since 2011. (more…)

James Turrell’s Meeting, one of MoMA PS1‘s permanent installations, will reopen this summer, Klaus Biesenbach announced this week.  The reopening after an extensive renovation will ring in the 40th anniversary of the opening of PS1.   (more…)

Critic Adrian Searle has released his list of 2015’s best shows, topped by the Whitney’s triumphant reopening exhibition America is Hard to See, noting the exhibition’s tasteful use of its museum archives and curatorial muscle.  “There is a lesson here for Tate Britain, which this year lost and gained a director. With its relentless historical timeline, the display of Tate’s permanent collection – and particularly of art since 1900 – is more than hard to see, let alone look at.” he writes. “Much remains in storage. The enormous resources of the gallery’s collection could be used to tell multiple stories, just as the Whitney is now able to do. This was both my museum – and my show – of the year.” (more…)

About 5% of Sotheby’s employees have taken the auction house up on its buyout offer, according to records filed with the SEC Monday, the NYT reports.  The buyout was part of an effort by the company to “achieve both the efficiencies from which our organization would benefit, as well as create enhanced professional development and leadership opportunities for those who will steer Sotheby’s into the future,” according to CEO Tad Smith. (more…)

Rudolf Stingel (Installation View), Copyright the artist, courtesy Sadie Coles HQ, London

Italian artist Rudolf Stingel takes over both of Sadie Coles HQ’s locations in London this month, bringing with him a typically enigmatic body of work that combines the artist’s interests in the role, transformation and translation of the painted image, taken in conjunction with its relation to photographic context, time and the natural world. (more…)

Photographer Mitchel Gray has filed a lawsuit against Jeff Koons in Federal Court this week, alleging that the artist used one of this photographs from a Gordon’s Gin advertisment for the work I Could Go For Something Gordon’s without permission or compensation.  The work would later sell for $2.04 million at Phillips.  “We are aware of the allegations and are confident that Phillips has no liability in this matter,” an auction house spokesperson said. (more…)

Artist Ed Ruscha has donated a collection of 18 new print works to the collection of the Tate Modern, and has promised to continue donating works from new series moving forward. “This is a rare and generous commitment, not to mention a wonderful Christmas present to the whole nation,” says the Tate’s Nicholas Serota. “These works on paper will be a wonderful resource for future exhbitions here in the UK.” (more…)

The Financial Times looks at the increasing number of private, collector-operated museums worldwide, and the appeal for collectors to have dedicated space to show their work. “If I didn’t have the museum, a lot of artists probably wouldn’t be interested [in selling to me]. They wouldn’t give me their best pieces,” says collector Harald Falckenberg. “This way I’m not buying them for myself. I don’t feel I really own them. In any case I have a certain responsibility to Germany.” (more…)

Donald Judd, Untitled (1979), via Rae Wang for Art Observed

Over the course of his sculpting career, Cor-ten steel remained a consistent source of inspiration for Donald Judd, its variance in texture, hue and responsiveness to light offering the artist a malleable yet solid framework to continue his investigations in spatial interaction, light and time throughout his pieces.   Taking this material fascination as its starting point, David Zwirner is presenting a series of pieces from across the artist’s career, joined together by his use of Cor-ten, and underscoring the metal’s complementary characteristics when applied towards Judd’s aesthetic project. (more…)

London’s Old Masters auctions marked a continued struggle in the market this week, as Christie’s failed to meet its low estimate of £12.7m, while Sotheby’s just barely met estimate at £8m, with numerous passed lots in both sales. (more…)

Following a string of performances in collaboration with Luke Turner and Nastja Säde Rönkkö, including one where he watched every film he acted in over the course of his career in succession, actor Shia LeBeouf sits down with The Guardian this week to discuss his vision, and his interest in performance art. “Why does a goat jump?” says LaBeouf. “There’s an animalistic urge to express love that I can’t express in film. I felt limited after coming out of Transformers. Or all the stuff I’d done with Steven Spielberg, not to pooh-pooh those films, but you have no creative control.” (more…)

Thomas J. Lax, an associate curator in the Department of Media and Performance Art at the Museum of Modern Art, sits down this week with Tom Finkelpearl, commissioner of the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, to discuss the impact and influence of artist David Hammons, as well as Finklepearl’s work with the artist on Outside Insight, a show Hammons and Finklepearl organized at the Clocktower Gallery. “I’m not sure what image people have of David, but he’s incredibly hardworking, and he’s a perfectionist; sometimes it seems like he wants to hide the labor,” Finklepearl says. “His process is also, perhaps unsurprisingly, quite improvisational.” (more…)

The Center for Persecuted Art, an institution focusing on works labeled “degenerate art” by the Nazi Party, among them Emil Nolde and Kurt Schwitters, opened this week inside the Kunstmuseum Solingen. Much of the work still bears markings from Nazi handling, including red marks and tags. (more…)

The New York Times reports on a Caravaggio painting, stolen in 1969, which is back on view as a multi-layer digital copy. Nativity With St. Francis and St. Lawrence was unveiled this weekend in the Palermo oratory it was originally stolen from. The duplication was made primarily using past slide photographs and some plate-glass negatives, making the task all the more impressive. (more…)

Marina Abramovic and Igor Levit, Goldberg (2015), photo by Marco Anelli

Over the course of the past two years, Marina Abramovic’s work has shifted towards the meditative, and the participatory simultaneously, a seemingly dissonant set of parameters that have resulted in a range of peculiar performances experimenting with sensory deprivation, mediated experiences of space, and gentle brushes with the artist’s person, as she acts as a guide through her own created environments.  Her practice continues this month at the Park Avenue Armory, where the the artist has partnered with pianist Igor Levit for Goldberg, a meditative concert of J.S. Bach’s Goldberg Variations. (more…)

Nari Ward, We the People (2011), via Sophie Kitching for Art Observed

Positioned just off the MacArthur Causeway in downtown Miami, the Perez Art Museum stands as a striking icon of Miami’s new art world caché, and seems to be a favorite auxiliary stop among Art Basel fairgoers each December.  Its lush, airy Herzog de Meuron design and expansive gallery spaces host one of Art Week Miami’s more popular evening events with its annual commission performance.  This year, the museum has opened its doors to a series of impressive exhibitions during Miami Art Week, including a group exhibition titled Global Positioning Systems, and a retrospective dedicated to Jamaican-born artist Nari Ward.

Nari Ward, We the People (2011), detail, via Sophie Kitching for Art Observed

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Artist Cynthia Daignault burned one of her own paintings during the Art Basel proceedings last week, initiating a new series of works which are intended to be destroyed.  “The idea was that all pieces will eventually be destroyed,” Daignault says.  “Everything will die eventually. These just announce the date of their destruction, which in some ways is a proactive role on the painting’s part by choosing the date that it will leave the world.”  (more…)

Both Almine Rech and White Cube Gallery are planning on opening New York outposts, the Art News reports.  Almine Rech is eyeing a “project space” proposal on the Upper East Side, while White Cube is still looking for space. (more…)

The New York Review of Books has published an essay by writer Colm Tóibín on the late work of Francis Bacon, taken from the artist’s catalog for his exhibition at Gagosian in New York this fall.  “There is a restlessness here that we also find in Beethoven’s late chamber music—a feeling that Bacon might begin again, that he is searching for some way to make images that he knows will only be possible for artists of the future, if they are even possible at all,” Tóibín writes. (more…)

The New York Times Style section has an article this week on the fashionable, yet functional, footwear choices of gallerists at this year’s Art Basel Miami Beach.  “A few years ago, there was this thing that everyone was wearing sneakers to try to look cool,” dealer Sean Kelly recalls.  “I think sneakers are fine for installation, but British men pay a lot of attention to footwear; and I think when you are trying to stand on a booth for hours and look elegant for clients, you need a shoe. Sneakers don’t cut it.” (more…)

An article penned by NASDAQ staff this week warns of increasing speculation in the current art market, and points to signs that a cool-off is on the way.  “The art market has grown dramatically in the past decade. It’s great for artists and museums. But tastes change and the market changes. [Art] valuations right now are very high. We are going to see a cooling-off period,” says Dan Desmond, head of the Blue Rider Group of Morgan Stanley Wealth Management. (more…)

Thelma Golden is interviewed in Artsy this week, reflecting on her early life in Queens, and her work on some of The Whitney’s major exhibitions during the early 1990’s.  “What I did know,” she says, “was that I was existing in a very singular position. I knew who I was; I knew who I was in that place; I knew what that meant. I felt a great sense of responsibility because I was there.  I knew what it meant to be in the room, and I also knew what it meant to have my shot at something.” (more…)

A French court has reversed a decision against Max Ernst scholar Werner Spies, who was previously fined for authenticating what was ultimately proven to be a fake by art forger Wolfgang Beltracchi.  “The author of a catalogue raisonné who expresses an opinion outside of a determined transaction cannot be charged with a responsibility equivalent to that of an expert consulted in the context of a sale,” the court stated in its decision. (more…)