Damien Hirst, Fact Paintings and Fact Sculptures (Installation View), via Gagosian

Kicking off the run of Damien Hirst projects at Gagosian’s London space on Britannia Street, the latest iteration, Fact Paintings and Fact Sculptures presents Hirst as artist and curator, presenting this deeply personal series of work through his own eyes, and exploring a diverse range of subjects and concepts that have run through the series and subjects of the artist’s career. Balanced in the middle of a perpetual confrontation between the contrasting systems of belief that define human existence, from common trust in medicine to the seduction of consumerism, Hirst’s work feels particularly timely in the midst of the ongoing challenges and trauma of Covid-19.  Read More »

Pedro Reyes, Tlali (Installation View), via Lisson

Pedro Reyes returns to Lisson Gallery in New York this month with Tlali, an impressively dense and exploratory exhibition that a new series of sculptures and works on paper drawn from the language and symbols of Pre-Columbian civilizations. Drawing on the history and social economies of the Aztec language Nahuatl, the show turns a local historical and linguistic thread into a broader reflection on the state of the world and the broader political and social landscape of modernity.  Read More »

Agnes Martin, The Distillation of Color (Installation View), via Art Observed

Marking the most recent in its exhibitions from the estate of Agnes Martin, Pace Gallery’s The Distillation of Color delves back into the artist’s tightly-honed minimalism to explore her nuanced investigations of color, allowing subtle bands and hints at varied shades to pervade her works. For Martin, painting was defined by an ongoing exploration of its capacity to express a vision of beauty born of intuitive inspiration. In this most recent show, the gallery takes this concept and pushes it into the very notion of color as sensation.  Read More »

Rachel Libeskind at Signs and symbols, via Art Observed

After a year off, the New Art Dealers Alliance has relaunched its ongoing New York exhibition project, the third edition of NADA House, returning to Governors Island with 66 galleries, non-profits, artist-run spaces, and curators, presenting over 100 artists. The collaborative, public exhibition, now open and running through to August, continues in an expanded format, with gallery presentations in over 50 rooms in three neighboring turn-of-the-century colonial revival buildings.

Ken Grimes at Ricco/Maresca Gallery via Art Observed

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Wangechi Mutu (Installation View), via Gladstone

Entering Gladstone Gallery in New York, artist Wangechi Mutu’s surreal, serpentine sculptures greet the viewer with a mixture of minimalist, elegant beauty and unnerving, otherworldly poise, somewhere between lyrical, classical sculpture and the surreal forms of H.R. Giger. Drawing upon her sculptural practice, a core aspect of her work, this installation brings to life otherworldly alternatives to the systemic modes of representation portrayed throughout global traditions in art. Through an incisive re-examination of relations between the body, the natural world, and social forces, the works in this exhibition represent a new kind of hybridized humanity and iconography through the artist’s intuitive and forward-thinking eye.

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Rashid Johnson at Hauser & Wirth, via Art Observed

Over a year since the last iteration of the Frieze art fair took place in Los Angeles, and coming down on the other side of the turbulence of the last year under the Covid-19 pandemic, Frieze New York has touched down at The Shed on Manhattan’s West Side, a re-entry into the annual run of blue-chip events that have been few and far between, or confined to an online edition for the last year. Here, with an abundance of caution and a range of measures put in place to limit the number of attendees in the space at a given time, the fair still made something of a return to its old form.  Read More »

Mathieu Malouf at House of Gaga, via Art Observed

It’s been a challenge to imagine the same art world in the wake of Covid-19. Even as spaces start to reopen and events prepare for their first outings in over a year, the needed precautions and considerations have made for both questions and reinventions of just what a massive show or fair might look like. Enter the 2021 edition of Zona Maco, a notably reduced affair by comparison with previous years, the exhibition has spread out across a series of galleries and temporary in Mexico City, allowing for a more engaged approach towards the city while cutting back on the large-crowds of the usual Banamex crush.  Read More »

Simon Denny, Mine (2021), via Petzel

Currently on at Petzel Gallery in New York, artist Simon Denny has launched a new body of work under the title Mine. The product of a multi-year project exploring themes of technology, labor, and humanity’s relationship with the earth, Mine touches down in New York in a fitting time for consideration, as Amazon workers contend with failed unionization efforts, cryptocurrency once again dominates the news cycle and we move further into the post-digital landscape. Read More »

Arghavan Khosravi, On Being a Woman (2021), via Rachel Uffner

Curently on at Rachel Uffner in New York, artist Arghavan Khosravi’s marks her first solo exhibition at the gallery with an impressive selection of new works building upon previous explorations of techniques taken from historical painting genres — such the use of stacked perspective in Persian miniature painting — while also incorporating new sculptural and three-dimensional elements that further emphasize qualities of illusion and artifice. Titled In Between Places, the show is a striking introduction to the artist’s work. Read More »

Peter Hujar, Ray Johnson (1975), via David Zwirner

Marking an ambitious exploration into the work of the enigmatic and expansive practice of Ray Johnson, David Zwirner has opened a show focused in particular on the artist’s collages and drawings from the the 1950s through the 1990s, focusing on Johnson as a seminal and influentially queer artist as well as on his recurring fandoms and obsessions. Showcasing the artist’s work within an array of archival materials from his friends and collaborators, the show presents Johnson’s work as part of a broader constellation of artists working during the post-war contemporary movement. Read More »