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

New York – Tim Garder at 303 Gallery Through August 13th, 2021

August 4th, 2021

Tim Gardner, Cali Poppy (2021), via 303 Gallery
Tim Gardner, Cali Poppy (2021), via 303 Gallery

Currently on view at 303 Gallery, artist Tim Gardner has brought forward an expressive body of new watercolors continuing his practice in depicting scenes that collectively form a vivid portrait of contemporary life. Drawing primarily on an extensive personal image archive, the artist’s use of photography as a point of departure elucidates the psychological realism of lived experiences. Read More »

New York – Iván Argote: “A Place for Us” at Perrotin Through August 13th, 2021

August 2nd, 2021

Iván Argote, Wild Flowers A Chest (2021), via Perrotin
Iván Argote, Wild Flowers: A Chest (2021), via Perrotin

For the last 15 years, Iván Argote has been investigating and creating interventions on public monuments from his home country of Colombia to his current home in France. Influenced by the 2020 global uprisings of a new generation of young social activists confronting systems of inequality, oppression, and racial hierarchy, Argote’s artistic works come through as poetic and political gestures. This body of work settles at Galerie Perrotin this month, as the artist will present six new bodies of work proposing alternatives for contested monuments within major historic cities, centering in particular on Bogota, New York and Paris.

Iván Argote, A Place for Us (Installation View), via Perrotin
Iván Argote, A Place for Us (Installation View), via Perrotin

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New York – Marlene McCarty: “Into the Weeds: Sex & Death” at Sikkema Jenkins & Co. Through July 30th, 2021

July 30th, 2021

Marlene McCarty, Into the Weeds Sex and Death (Installation View), via Sikkema Jenkins and Co.
Marlene McCarty, Into the Weeds: Sex and Death (Installation View), via Sikkema Jenkins and Co.

On view through the end of the month at Sikkema Jenkins & Co., artist Marlene McCarty has orchestrated an impressive multi-disciplinary installation, Into the Weeds: Sex & Death. Delving into the titular subject through a range of materials and works, the show centers on a selection of new, large-scale drawings as well as a set of gardens and composting structures spread across the gallery, including a dumpster-based garden installed outside the gallery.

Marlene McCarty, Into the Weeds Sex and Death (Installation View), via Sikkema Jenkins and Co.
Marlene McCarty, WEED: Our Lady of the Flowers (Aconitum) (2020-21), via Sikkema Jenkins and Co.

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New York – Tetsumi Kudo: “Metamorphosis” at Hauser & Wirth Through July 30th, 2021

July 28th, 2021

Tetsumi Kudo, Bonjour et Bonne Nuit (1963), via Hauser & Wirth
Tetsumi Kudo, Bonjour et Bonne Nuit (1963), via Hauser & Wirth

In a wide-ranging practice spanning four decades, postwar Japanese artist Tetsumi Kudo explored the effects of mass consumerism, the rise of technology, and ecological degradation on post-war society through satirical, critical, elaborately detailed and meticulously constructed environments that continue to exert a powerful influence on artists today. This framing serves as the central conceit of Metamorphosis, the artist’s first exhibition at Hauser & Wirth New York. Drawing in particular on the artist’s interest in transformation as a mode of personal and collective evolution, the show frames his work as a seeking of a way beyond the traps of Western Humanism, and exploring just how one might imagine a world beyond that of the modern. Read More »

East Hampton – Gabriel Orozco at kurimanzutto out east, Through July 25th, 2021

July 23rd, 2021

Gabriel Orozco, Installation View, via kurimanzutto
Gabriel Orozco, Installation View, via kurimanzutto

Currently on at kurimanzutto’s East Hampton exhibition space, the gallery has staged a small-scale show of works by the artist Gabriel Orozco. The artist, whose long explorations of geometric form and space in relation to both traditional art materials and reclaimed objects from the world around him, here presents a fitting summary of his recent practice in small-scale, but engaging outing. Read More »

London – Yayoi Kusama: “I Want Your Tears to Flow with the Words I Wrote” at Victoria Miro Through July 31st, 2021

July 22nd, 2021

Yayoi Kusama, I Want Your Tears to Flow with the Words I Wrote (Installation View), via Victoria Miro
Yayoi Kusama, I Want Your Tears to Flow with the Words I Wrote (Installation View), via Victoria Miro

Throughout her career, Yayoi Kusama has developed a unique and diverse body of highly personal work that connects themes around the natural world, human cognition, and personal mythology. Continuing to address the twin themes of cosmic infinity and personal obsession, the works in this exhibition are testament to an artist at the height of her powers. Marking her first show in several years at Victoria Miro in London, the exhibition showcases Kusama’s relentless drive to express the most abstract of personal feelings.

Yayoi Kusama, On Hearing the Sunset Afterglow’s Message of Love, My Heart Shed Tears (2021), via Victoria Miro
Yayoi Kusama, On Hearing the Sunset Afterglow’s Message of Love, My Heart Shed Tears (2021), via Victoria Miro

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RIP – Christian Boltanski, French Conceptual Artist, Passes Away Afed 76

July 17th, 2021

Christian Boltanski, via Marian Goodman
Christian Boltanski, via Marian Goodman

The French conceptual artist Christian Boltanski has passed away at the age of 76, his gallery announced this week. The artist, whose work long explored the notion of absence and trauma in the face of death and violence, politics and memory, leaves behind a legacy of works that challenge the progression of history at human scale, rendering physical traces and concrete representations of lives lost, bodies now absent, and spaces haunted by past events.  Read More »

New York – “Wish” at Metro Pictures Through July 30th, 2021

July 15th, 2021

Jean Genet, Un Chant D’Amour (film still) (1950), via Metro Pictures
Jean Genet, Un Chant D’Amour (film still) (1950), via Metro Pictures

On now at Metro Pictures, a group show featuring the work of Reza Abdoh, Jean Genet, Nash Glynn, Torbjørn Rødland, Elliot Reed, Heji Shin, and Nora Turato, takes on an engaging notion of the dream, drawing on Freudian psychology and philosophy to explore the idea of wishes, imagined landscapes and distorted impulses as the landscape of the repressed and the taboo, a show that unfolds like a dream in its own right, and which poses its images as a set of tableaus in which the viewer is welcome to find fragments of themselves. Read More »

New York – David Smith: “Follow My Path” at Hauser & Wirth Through July 30th, 2021

July 8th, 2021

David Smith, Follow My Path (Installation View), via Hauser and Wirth
David Smith, Follow My Path (Installation View), via Hauser and Wirth

In a 1952 lecture at the Detroit Institute of Arts, sculptor David Smith described the inspiration behind one of his recent sculptures, saying “My wish is that you travel by perception the path which I traveled in creating it. That same wish goes for the rest of my work.” Welcoming the viewer to follow that same path, Hauser & Wirth is currently presenting a body of the artist’s work at its uptown exhibition space in New York, inviting viewers to explore the artistic processes by which Smith reshaped sculpture’s form and function, embarking on new terrain in the field of abstraction. Read More »

New York – Shirazeh Houshiary: “Pneuma” at Lisson Gallery Through July 31st, 2021

July 8th, 2021

Shirazeh Houshiary, Pneuma (Installation View), via Lisson
Shirazeh Houshiary, Pneuma (Installation View), via Lisson

For the artist’s 13th exhibition with Lisson Gallery, and her first at the gallery’s Cork Street location, artist Shirazeh Houshiary is  a new body of work, the first in over a decade to exclusively focus on the artist’s paintings. Unified under the title Pneuma, the show brings together a body of works that mine both haptic and optic illusions, filling the surface of each work with a palpable energy drawn from the artist’s careful study of kinetics. Read More »