Untitled Gallery and Zach Feuer will merge to form two similarly titled spaces sharing resources and artists in the L.E.S. this May, Art News reports.  The two spaces, Feuer/Mesler and Mesler/Feuer, continue previous collaborations, including 2013’s Jew York show, which was on view at both dealers’ respective spaces.  “It’s an interesting time for galleries on the Lower East Side,” says Untitled’s Joel Mesler says. “It’s become an establishment in and of itself.”  (more…)

The Metropolitan Museum of Art has named Daniel Weiss, the current head of Haverford College in Pennsylvania, as its new president and COO.  “The Met is a place that strives in everything it does to set a world standard, including its administration,” Weiss said of the opportunity. (more…)

Two separate directors for major UK museums have spoken out this week in the run-up to the country’s general elections, condemning current cultural funding cuts, and its effects, describing them as “severe.”  “Austerity is killing many local museums,” says David Anderson, director general of National Museum Wales.  “There is an urgent need for additional funding. The cultural funding model we have is failing.” (more…)

Daniel Buren, Au fur et à mesure, travaux in situ et situés (Bit by Bit: In Situ and Situated Works) (Installation View) (2015), all exhibition images via Kamel Mennour

Daniel Buren presents a new, in situ exhibition at Kamel Mennour this month, a show that demonstrates the form a gallery space lends to the art shown within it. Transforming the space itself into a part of his artwork, Buren instills in his work the tendency to guide the viewer’s perception and sense of location. (more…)

Charles Atlas, Terri’s Option (2015), all images are by Osman Can Yerebakan for Art Observed

Luhring Augustine is currently presenting The Waning of Justice, the gallery’s second collaboration with the pioneer video and sound artist Charles Atlas, following 2012’s The Illusion of Democracy at the gallery’s Bushwick location.  One of the foremost experimentalists in multimedia, Atlas has pushed the limits of time-based art arguably more than any other artist, challenging the ephemeral natures of both performance and dance incorporated alongside his video work. In doing so, Atlas, not a performer himself per se, has collaborated with legendary names such as Leigh Bowery, Douglas Dunn, Michael Clark and most famously Merce Cunningham, whose partnership with Atlas resulted in video documentations of the late artist’s illustrious performances at levels that adopt further conceptual and contextual levels through Atlas’s frame. (more…)

Lynda Benglis is interviewed this week in The Art Newspaper, as she opens an exhibition of works spanning her career at the Hepworth Wakefield.  “I’m excited because it’s a huge amount of works, 50 in all, and the works are educating me,” she says.  “They remind me of the baby steps that I first took and that you can’t just jump into ideas, you have to slowly develop them.” (more…)

Hans Ulrich Obrist is the subject of a recent interview in The Guardian this week, exploring his view of his work in terms of the long scope of history, his recent publishing endeavors, and his relentless work ethic.  “The film director Tarkovsky once lamented that in our society, ritual has disappeared,” Obrist says.  “He said we need to invent our own. I thought that was stimulating, and I have always tried to do that.” (more…)

A Mark Rothko painting from 1958 will lead Christie’s Contemporary and Post-War Auction in New York this coming May, the New York Times reports.  Estimated at $30 to $50 million, competition is expected to be fierce, and initial indications hint that the work may near the artist’s $87 Million record.  “There’s a perception that these kinds of paintings come and they come regularly, but in reality they’re becoming more and more rare,” says Christie’s Contemporary and Post-War Chairman Brett Gorvy. “The year 1958 was probably Rothko’s all-time high as a recognized artist.”  (more…)

The Wall Street Journal notes a growing trend towards participation in art funds, where a group of investors pool money to buy art, and split the profits from the work’s sale years later.  This method of investing dates back to 1904, when Paris-based financier André Level pooled a group of investors to buy a selection of classic works by Picasso, Matisse and others, selling them several years later at a major mark-up. (more…)

New research confirming the painting Moulin d’Alphonse as the work of Van Gogh has led to its exhibition for the first time in 100 years, The Guardian reports.  The piece, identified by a series of small numbers on the back of the work (traced to Van Gogh’s sister in law, Johanna), will be unveiled at TEFAF Maastricht, and is for sale for around $10 million.  “Johanna was left with the life’s work of this artist, her brother-in-law who, in theory, she had mixed emotions about. But she set about trying to build a legacy for him,” says lead researcher and art dealer James Roundell.  “She could have just burned the lot because, at that point, Van Gogh had no real market.” (more…)

Alec Soth, Woodville Farm Labor Camp, San Joaquin Valley, California (2013), all images via Sean Kelly

Alec Soth presents an exhibition of over 25 new black-and-white photographs at Sean Kelly, focusing his lens on small-town community events across America. Soth’s work has frequently delved into the modern day folklore of Americana throughout his career, capturing images that are at once familiar and spellbinding.

Alec Soth, Brian. Williston, North Dakota (2012) (more…)

Rita Ackermann, Burn Up in Heaven 2014, all images courtesy Hauser & Wirth

On view at Hauser & Wirth Zürich is an exhibition of paintings on chalkboard by Hungarian-American artist Rita Ackermann, representing a step further into the artist’s investigation into the deconstructive process, presenting a series of many images which seem to have been repeatedly executed and expunged by erasure or weathering. The exhibition will remain on view through March 14th.

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Adam Parker Smith at SPRING/BREAK, via Art Observed

Heavy snow beat down the doors at SPRING/BREAK art show during Armory Week, now in its fourth iteration and housed in the wood-paneled third and fourth office floors of Skylight at Moynihan Station, a unique space that makes for a fitting continuation of the fair’s imaginative, distinct style.  The curator-driven show has more more than doubled in size since last year’s public/private-themed exhibition at St. Patrick’s Old Cathedral School in Nolita, SPRING/BREAK’s home for the past several years. The number of participating curators also rose from 39 to 97, bringing an increased number of artists as well, from 100 to over 300 people for 2015.

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Constantin Brancusi, via Art Observed

Set up across town, fittingly enough, in the Park Avenue Armory, the ADAA Art Show offers a yearly counterpoint to the bright lights and dizzying stream of booths that occasionally plagues its cross-town sister on Piers and 94, incorporating a more carefully curated emphasis into the art fair booth format, and encouraging a certain degree of adventurousness among the attendant galleries. (more…)

Mark Flood at Peres Projects,  via Art Observed

Taking up the full 4 floors of Center 548 in Chelsea, the Independent NY fair returns for another year of its annual exhibition offering a slightly smaller, more cohesive take on the fair experience. (more…)

The artist roster for the 2015 edition of the Venice Biennale has been announced, featuring a diverse group of artists selected by curator Okwui Enwezor, and featuring Marlene Dumas, Theaster Gates, e-Flux Magazine, and and many others , as well as a special theatrical performance directed by Kara Walker, and a marathon reading of all three volumes of Marx’s Das Kapital.  “Here, Das Kapital will serve as a kind of Oratorio that will be continuously read live, throughout the exhibition’s seven months’ duration,” the curator says. (more…)

A recent chemistry study by scientists at the University of Antwerp has uncovered evidence showing that the paintings of Vincent Van Gogh have slowly but surely been changing colors over the course of a century due to a rare lead pigment used for red paints that gradually fades when exposed to light.  “Normally, the idea is these paintings are there for a hundred years, or five hundred years, and they’re static – nothing really changes,” says researcher Koen Janssens. “But the opposite is actually true when you look in detail.” (more…)

Critic Jerry Saltz has reportedly been banned from Facebook, over what he says were complaints received by the website over Classical and Renaissance images he had posted featuring gruesome and sexualized scenes.  “It’s a cumulative thing,” Mr. Saltz says.  “The posts are called sexist, misogynistic and abusive, and then I’m called sexist misogynistic and abusive.” (more…)

A self-portrait attributed to Van Dyck has been reconfirmed as a work by the master painter, after a study of the work uncovered a gold watch that was the property of the artist himself.  The work is currently held at the Minneapolis Institute of Arts, Minnesota, and was confirmed by four separate experts on the painter.  It is considered particularly relevant as it was a work the artist had intended to complete as his ideal portrait, and was documented as an etching for his book Iconography. (more…)

Banksy recently traveled to the war-torn Gaza Strip, where the artist has created a new series of works, documented on his website.  Pieces include an immense kitten drawn on the wall of a demolished building, and a crying figure inside the doorway of another leveled site, both documented in a video made during the artist’s time in Palestine.   (more…)

The Armory Show 2015, via Sophie Kitching for Art Observed

The doors are open and the 2015 edition of The Armory Show in New York is underway, kicking off the first major fair week in NY this spring.  Collectors and artists wound throughout the booths, perusing the works on sale and chatting with dealers.  Director George Lucas could be seen examining several works, as was Maurizio Cattelan, both of whom seem to be enjoying their respective retirements. (more…)

A collection of more than 200 prints by Jim Dine have been gifted to the British Museum, The Guardian reports.  “It is very exciting,” said Museum Curator of Modern Prints, Stephen Coppel.  “It was a very generous offer, given that he has made over a thousand prints.  Choosing was fun. It took some time and there was a lot of backing and forthing, but it is a really great group of things.” (more…)

Sarah Sze, Still Life with Desk (2013-2015), via Victoria Miro

Through the month of March, the Victoria Miro Gallery will host a solo exhibition by the artist Sarah Sze that spans all of the gallery’s London exhibition spaces. This is Sze’s third solo exhibition with the gallery and the artist’s first time she has shown in Europe since the Venice Biennale in 2013. (more…)

Rashid Johnson, Smile (Installation View) all images courtesy Hauser & Wirth London

Hauser & Wirth‘s London space is currently presenting Smile, a new body of work by the New York-based artist Rashid Johnson. Known for his hybrid creations blending photography, sculpture and painting, Johnson had his breakthrough with the Thelma Golden-curated Freestyle show at The Studio Museum in Harlem in 2001. Johnson’s star has been on the rise since, the subject of solo shows in prestigious institutions such as Sculpture Center in New York, and the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago.

Rashid Johnson, Smile (Installation View)

His current show at Hauser Wirth London, where Johnson is showing for the first time, continues  the 2011 Hugo Boss Prize finalist’s central themes, while finding its inspiration in the titular photograph by Elliot Erwitt. Portraying an African-American boy with a big smile on his face and a gun that he is holding at his temple, this intense black and white photograph covers the walls of the exhibition space, while a large steel structure, serving as a base for various objects from house plants to brass objects, is positioned in the middle.  Of these objects located on the grid-shaped structure, entitled Fatherhood, is also a series of books, including Bill Cosby’s memoir of the same name.  Drawing a notable potency due to the controversy around Cosby’s recent sexual assault allegations, this memoir represents Johnson’s long time interest in the comedian as a patriarchal figure and a symbol of American middle-class values.

Rashid Johnson, Smile (Installation View)

Additionally, shea butter, a material that Johnson has previously employed for his works, serves here as the main ingredient to various busts that are also positioned on this steel structure. Elements that encompass the nature of African diaspora and the African-American experience abound in Johnson’s intricately constituted composition, narrating an expansive history through entities that seem purposely mundane and silent.

Rashid Johnson, Smile (Installation View)

Johnson’s ability to attribute further content to otherwise mute materials has helped him become one of the key figures of the ‘post-black art movement’, and this exhibition at Hauser & Wirth emphasizes the artist’s interest in his core materials, among which bronze is the most common.  Aside from assemblies of mixed objects, bronze panels hung onto the walls contrast the image of the boy holding a gun with their abstract gestures.  Black soap, another material Johnson constantly returns to, appears on these panels, constituting what Johnson calls a “memorialization” of the creative process.

Rashid Johnson: Smile Is On View at Hauser & Wirth Through March 7, 2015.

Rashid Johnson, If It’s Magic (2014)

All images are Courtesy of the artist and Hauser & Wirth Photo by Alex Delfanne

— O.C. Yerebakan

Related Link:
Hauser & Wirth [Exhibition Page]