As exemplified by the triennial survey of rising Belgian artists and artists working in Belgium, “Un-Scene III”, Brussels is gaining attention as an emerging major art city in Europe. “A city of both commerce and creation”, Brussels provides a mix of local and international artists with a “fertile cultural laboratory” with affordable rents.  Russian-born American artist Marin Pinsky jokes, “I don’t want to be too big a booster of Brussels… I don’t’ want the whole world moving here.”

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The Hermitage Museum has announced plans to open a contemporary art outpost in Moscow, hinting at an attempt by the Russian city to become a contemporary art powerhouse.  “Rather than being perceived as a museum dealing only with the past, the Hermitage is pushing itself forward into the future from its powerful historical position,” says commissioned architect Hani Rashid of Asymptote Architecture said. “Our whole generation of architects looked to the Russian avant-garde of the early 20th century, which made such a powerful break to the past. We’re working within a tradition that we’re extending.” (more…)

A collection of Robert Ryman works from the recently shuttered Swiss exhibition space Hallen für Neue Kunst will travel to Dia Beacon late this year, The New York Times reports.  “There’s a very healthy conversation that’s going on right now in New York about painting,” says Dia Director Jessica Morgan said, “but Ryman often doesn’t seem to be a part of those conversations about experimental approaches to painting, where he’s played a big role. And it was very important for me to try to reinsert him into that discussion.” (more…)

Françoise Grossen, Five Rivers, 1974

Currently on view at Blum & Poe is the first survey of Swiss-born, New York-based artist Françoise Grossen, focusing on works the artist created between 1967 and 1991 using fiber, a material that has recently had something of a renaissance in contemporary practice.  The material, which served as a popular material during the experimental ventures of the late 1960’s art scene, saw Grossen, as well as her peers Eva Hesse, Sheila Hicks and Lenore Tawney utilizing the material in allegorical and often grandiose arrangements, culminating in 1969’s historically resonant MoMA exhibition Wall Hangings. (more…)

Michael Borremans, Black Mould / Pogo (2015), via Art Observed

Belgian painter Michael Borremans has long mined the aesthetic moorings of antiquity for his work, creating meticulously labored paintings that owe much to 17th and 18th century painterly technique.  Originally trained as a photographer, Borremans’s craft is tempered by a notable scholarly, contextual awareness, frequently using his mooring in the present day to offer the occasional critique or inversion of his historical inspirations.  Such is the case with the artist’s most recent body of work at David Zwirner’s 24 Grafton Street gallery in London, a series of dark, occasionally disturbing pieces that use the painter’s signature style to amplify their surrealist aspects.

Michael Borremans, Black Mould / The Badger’s Song (2015), via Art Observed

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Franz West, Lamp (2003), all photos by Osman Can Yerebakan for Art Observed

Marlborough Broome Street, the downtown, contemporary-focused outpost of Chelsea’s Marlborough Gallery, opened its doors for a summer group show titled Marlborough Lights this month. Curated by Leo Fitzpatrick, a newly appointed director at the gallery, the exhibition traces a loose interpretation of the lightbulb as a source of energy and an allegory for critical thinking, while exploring the potentialities for the lamp as a creative container for motives beyond mere furniture or utilitarian lighting.

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The artists exhibiting at the German Pavilion in Venice have erected a Greek flag in protest against their government’s harsh austerity measures taken against the Mediterranean nation, emblazoned with the word “Germoney.”  “We show our solidarity with the people in Greece and all other places suffering from austerity,” says artist Hito Steyerl.  “As cultural workers and artists we demand an end to austerity for health, culture, and education while public funding for banks and oligarchs seems unlimited.” (more…)

Ellsworth Kelly has released the first volume of his catalog raisonné, tracing his evolution towards the cut canvas abstraction that he built his career on.  “I was on the way, but it was too soon. I wasn’t able to just throw out everything,” he says of his early experiments. (more…)

The Guardian profiles painter Rachel Howard this week, Damien Hirst’s first assistant and spot painter, who is stepping into the spotlight on her own this year with her first UK public gallery solo exhibition.  “We were mates and he needed someone to paint spots, and I was waitressing and I didn’t want a proper job – so I ended up working for him to earn enough money to make my own work,” Howard says. “It was a very good symbiotic relationship.” (more…)

Albert Oehlen, Untitled (2005), via Art Observed

In terms of painterly invention, few can keep up with Albert Oehlen, the German artist whose relentless reinterpretation of the medium has made him one of the more intriguing, and often unpredictable, guardians of the form.  Moving effortlessly from visceral abstraction to coy installation work and back, few elements of visual culture have avoided his scope over the past 30 years.  This drive towards the investigation of the image, and its potentials in an increasingly mediated world, sits at the center of Oehlen’s New Museum retrospective this summer in New York, combining a carefully selected series of works that move from his early recognition during the 1980’s through to the present day. (more…)

In response to a court order compelling Danh Vo to create an “impressive” installation for collector Bert Kreuk, the artist has issued a letter to the collector telling him in no uncertain terms to “shove it.”  “This whole case is so bizarre it is unbelievable,” Kreuk has responded. (more…)

An article in the New York Times this week looks at the benefits of the thriving, community-focused art scene in Detroit, as well as the challenges artists in the city face.  “The thing I love about Detroit — if you want it done here, you have to do it,” says choreographer Marcus White. “You have to work.” (more…)

Protesting the contentious new proposal by the German government to limit international sales of valuable and historical works from German collections, Georg Baselitz has announced he is withdrawing his works from German museums in protest.  The move comes on the heels harsh criticism from a number of high-profile German artists, including Gerhard Richter. (more…)

David Hockney is interviewed in The Guardian this week, discussing his recent practice using digital technology and his lifestyle in Los Angeles.  “It’s a reasonably sophisticated city down the hill,” he says. “It’s very nice. It’s home, really. But I’m not that interested in what’s happening outside. I like my way of life. I just work.” (more…)

London’s Royal Academy has launched a Kickstarter page to fund the £100,000 installation of Ai Weiwei’s Trees at the museum’s London courtyard.  “It is an experiment and a gamble, but a sensible one,” says Tim Marlow, the RA’s artistic director. “If it comes off, brilliant; if not then it was worth trying.” (more…)

Germany’s Cultural Minister is pushing to pass a new law that will strictly limit the international sale of works deemed of particularly high cultural value, as well as potential fakes and illegally sold antiques, particularly works valued over €150,000 ($164,000) and/or older than 50 years.  The proposal has seen staunch opposition from a number of artists, including Gerhard Richter.  “No one has the right to tell me what I do with my images,” the artist said this week. (more…)

Lynda Benglis, Bounty, Amber Waves, and Fruited Plane (2014) via Storm King Art Center

As summer reaches its zenith in New York, countless outdoor exhibitions and special public projects have sprung up across the city and region, encouraging visitors to take a more intrepid stance towards the art world.  Continuing its annual series of special exhibitions, the Storm King Art Center in New Windsor, NY has invited New York artist Lynda Benglis to take full advantage of its sprawling Catskills property, bringing a number of her organically-inspired cast sculptures to investigate the picturesque environs upstate.  With 12 outdoor sculptures and an additional 15 on view inside the museum galleries, Benglis’s exhibition is a striking look at the artist’s aesthetic interests over the past 15 years, as she increasingly incorporated notions of public, urban space and natural phenomena into her dizzyingly complex sculptural assemblages. (more…)

Summer Group Show (Installation View), via Marian Goodman

The group exhibition at Marian Goodman Gallery revives an excitement for the accomplishments of formal, conceptual and technical art practices during the mid to late 20th century, presenting a lively exhibition that groups together an overlapping group of six prolific artists: Sol LeWitt, Gerhard Richter, Fred Sandback, Anne Truitt, John McCracken and Lawrence Weiner, one is privy to the continuing reverberations of works that defined both minimalist and conceptual techniques in contemporary art practice, often passing from one school to the other while redefining notions of structure, method, dimensionality, and form.  Stoic in its midtown location, the exhibition presents an impressive collection of conceptual and minimalist classics, offering continuing pivots and critically advanced methodological expectations of non-referential visual forms.

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Oscar-winning director Laura Poitras, who recently collaborated with Ai Weiwei, has filed suit against U.S. Security Agencies, demanding the release of records documenting the six years that she experienced long searches, questionings, and security screenings at U.S. and international airports. “I’m filing this lawsuit because the government uses the U.S. border to bypass the rule of law. This simply should not be tolerated in a democracy,” she says. “I am also filing this suit in support of the countless other less high-profile people who have also been subjected to years of Kafkaesque harassment at the borders. We have a right to know how this system works and why we are targeted.” (more…)

Noah Horowitz, who has served as Executive Director of The Armory Show since 2011, has announced that he is accepting a position as Director Americas for Art Basel, placing him in charge of the Miami Beach edition of the fair.  “The Americas have been a leading center in the art world for many decades, and the region continues to show distinctive and ongoing growth in many different countries,” Horowitz says. “I look forward to working with collectors and arts institutions throughout the two continents – from Canada to South America, and across the entirety of the United States – in an effort to bring the fair in Miami Beach to ever-greater heights.” (more…)

An article in Crain’s Business reports that the Museum of Modern Art is the loudest museum in New York City, following a series of impromptu tests at New York’s most prominent museums. The Frick clocks in as New York’s quietest museum. “The Whitney constantly has helicopters outside—you won’t necessarily hear them, but that noise will come through the glass,” says Alan Fierstein, founder of Acoustilog, a New York acoustical consulting firm. “You can’t hear specifics — ‘Oh, that’s a helicopter, that’s a 737, that’s a truck,’ because by the time it makes it to your ears, it’s mixed up and just sounds like an overall din.” (more…)

Artist Shepard Fairey has turned himself in in Detroit over the arrest warrant for his vandalism in the city.  He is accused of over $9,000 in damages to properties.  “Can’t talk about anything,” Fairey said in a short comment following his arrest in Los Angeles last week. (more…)

Artist Tania Bruguera, following the return of her passport, has been named the first artist-in-residence in the New York City Mayor’s Office of Immigrant Affairs (MOIA), in part of an effort to bring more attention to the benefits for immigrants in the city, and in the ownership of a City ID Card. “This project provides a unique opportunity to enhance the notion of art as a useful tool to materialize a vision of a more inclusive society,” Bruguera says. “I’m excited to explore new ways of collaborating with New York’s immigrant communities to make a real impact on the lives of city residents.” (more…)

Despite fierce protests from researchers, curators and museum heads, the Louvre is pushing forward with its decision to move 250,000 artworks and artifacts to a new storage facility north of the city, in Liévin, a move that many say will cripple research attempts in the capital.  “A museum without its reserves is like a plane without engines: it looks all beautiful and glittering, but it won’t move,” says an open letter from 42 of the museum’s 45 curators. (more…)