With Gemini G.E.L.‘s colorful “Art on Color” show that opened last month, Paul Kasmin Gallery‘s “Bloodflames Revisited” brings another exhibition in the Chelsea area that mixes up the traditional white-walled gallery space. This show is a “contemporary response” to the show “Bloodflames” that shook up the conventional gallery when it showed in New York’s Hugo Gallery in 1947.  “What interests me is how can we now together as a group of artists in the show trying to attempt to activate the floor, so the floor becomes as active viscerally active, formally acted as the wall, which is through a work of art…” Phong Bui, the show’s curator said. “Bloodflames Revisited” will be on view through August 15th in Paul Kasmin Gallery’s two spaces.

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A lawsuit seeking to block the takeover of the Corcoran Gallery of Art has been filed in D.C., brought forth by a group of museum donors, students, and faculty, saying the takeover would go against the institution’s 1869 deed.  The suit also complains that the institution suffered from “self-dealing, conflicts of interest, hiring unqualified management and profligate spending on consultants whose advice was ultimately ignored.” (more…)

The court case between relatives of Peggy Guggenheim and the Guggenheim Foundation has been decided in favor of the museum.  The ruling was issued in a Paris courtroom this week, giving the museum free reign to show art as it deems fitting at the collector’s Venice palazzo.  “The Foundation is proud to have faithfully carried out the wishes of Peggy Guggenheim for more than thirty years by preserving her collection intact in the Palazzo Venier dei Leoni, restoring and maintaining the Palazzo as a public museum and contributing to the knowledge of modern and contemporary art in Italy,” the Guggenheim said in a statement. (more…)

The Shaped Canvas Revisited (Installation View), via Luxembourg and Dayan

On view at Luexembourg & Dayan in New York City is an exhibition focusing on painted works with a non-rectangular canvas. In 1964, The Shaped Canvas was an exhibition held at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, curated by Lawrence Alloway, revealing the desire to overthrow existing aesthetic hierarchies. The current exhibition revisits this 1964 exhibition, featuring more than two dozen works connecting the postwar history of the genre to present day use of the shaped canvas.

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Tracey Emin, My Bed, via Christie’s

The sales have ended on Christie’s Contemporary Evening Auction in London, following a lengthy 75-lot sale that brought in a final sales tally of $170,537,894.  The evening was marked by moderates sales on most lots, often falling within sales estimates, with a few surprises scattered throughout the evening’s offerings. (more…)

Rockaway! Festival, photo via Art Observed

The art world decamped to the Far Rockaways this weekend, as MoMA PS1 initiated its new public arts festival at the increasingly popular Queens beachfront.  Sponsored by the Jamaica Bay-Rockaway Parks Conservancy (JBRPC) to celebrate the reopening of Fort Tilden, as well as to benefit the ongoing recovery of the area following the immense damages wreaked by Hurricane Sandy in 2012, the event included exhibitions, performances and an after-party at the Rockaway Beach Surf Club.

James Franco Reads Walt Whitman during Rockaway! Festival, via Art Observed (more…)

The “Art Everywhere US” project, which will cover billboards, bus stops and other public spaces with art, is set to get underway this August, with 58 works to go on display after a public vote.  Edward Hopper’s 1942 Nighthawks was the leading vote-getter, and will join works by Ed Ruscha and Cindy Sherman, among others.  The project begins August 4th in Times Square, when digital billboards will display all the works. (more…)

A trove of artworks valued at over $4.5 million has been discovered in Brazil, hidden away in shipping crates sent over from the United States.  The works, among them pieces by contemporary artists Os Gemeos and Sergio de Camargo were among the possessions of a Brazilian woman who authorities believe was seeking to avoid export taxes. (more…)

The opening of Manifesta 10 in St. Petersburg has offered many artists the platform for protesting Russia’s increasingly aggressive stance against LGBT citizens.  The exhibition sees a number of works speaking candidly about sexuality, including Marlene Dumas’s gallery of gay men who made major contributions to world history.  “This is probably the gayest show I have done,” Wolfgang Tillmans tells the Guardian. (more…)

Sotheby’s has announced that it will be auctioning off the estate of collectors Paul and Bunny Mellon, including a number of impressive artworks by Mark Rothko and Richard Diebenkorn from the couple’s extensive collection.  Proceeds from the auction will benefit the Gerald B. Lambert Foundation. (more…)

The New York Times notes Margate as a growing destination for artists and art lovers on the British Isles, made possible by a new high-speed rail link and thriving artistic community.  “The town has picked up, and that’s the best thing,” said John Cripps of the Dreamland Trust. “We lost our way a little bit, but people are starting to come back.” (more…)

W Magazine has published a power list of 60 luminary artists, collectors, gallerists and other art world leaders, including among them, Michael Slotover and Amanda Sharp (co-founders of Frieze Art Fair), Larry Gagosian, and Kara Walker.  “The weirdest thing I get all the time is ‘I thought you’d be shorter,'” Walker says. “I think it’s because I put a lot of small, childlike bodies in my work: not-quite-to-scale caricatures enacting terrible power games. Some folks see the figures and assume they’re based on me.” (more…)

Francis Bacon, Three Studies for Portrait of George Dyer, via Sotheby’s

The sales have closed at Sotheby’s and another week of Contemporary Art Sales are underway in London.  The evening’s sales performed well above estimate, bringing in a final sales tally of $159 million for 51 of the 59 available lots. (more…)

A recent Financial Times article notes the continually shifting state of the contemporary art market, and the changes in gallery representation, points of sale, and dominant art buying countries that are currently shaking up the art world and in correlation, notes the skyrocketing rents felt by many galleries in hot art neighborhoods like New York’s Chelsea and Mayfair in London.  (more…)

After several years of petitioning, Jeff Koons has been granted approval to gut a pair of houses the artist purchased at 11 and 13 E. 67th St, and to combine them into a colossal mansion.  “It must be nice to not only be an artist but to be your own Medici,” comments one local renter. (more…)

Francis Bacon, Study for Head of Lucian Freud, at Christie’s

Following the Impressionist and Modern sales in London last week, the British arms of the major auction houses will open their doors once again for a series of Contemporary sales this week, bringing the spring art season to a close with one last set of high-profile sales evenings.

Peter Doig, Country-Rock (Wing-Mirror) via Sotheby’s  (more…)

Antony Gormley has created a special architectural installation for The Beaumont Hotel in London, using his trademark figuration to create an illusive luxury hotel suite.  Titled Room, the suite is modeled after one of Gormley’s squatting figures, and contains a full luxury apartment inside, which has also been meticulously shaped by the artist.  “Shutters over the window provide total blackout and very subliminal levels of light allow me to sculpt darkness itself,” Gormley says. “My ambition for this work is that it should confront the monumental with the most personal, intimate experience.” (more…)

Vienna’s Generali Foundation is closing after 19 years in the Austrian capital.  The space has hosted shows by Isa Genzken, Dan Graham, Gordon Matta-Clark, and Martha Rosler over its lifespan, and boasts one of the nation’s most prominent art collections, which will be placed on loan to Salzburg’s Museum der Moderne Kunst.

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Hy-Fi, the winning project in MoMA PS1‘s Young Architects Program, is set to open at the museum’s Queens campus this Friday, June 27th.  Created by design firm The Living, the installation uses biodegradable materials, and once set, actually grows over the course of its installation.   (more…)

Peter Doig’s Country-Rock (Wing-Mirror) will hit the auction block for the first time next week at Sotheby’s in London, and is estimated to bring in $15 million.  The work, part of Doig’s Country-Rock series, depicts a view of the mysterious, rainbow clad tunnel in Canada from the passenger seat of a car. (more…)

Court proceedings regarding the lawsuit filed by members of the Robert Rauschenberg Trust, demanding they receive up to $60 million in compensation for their work maintaining the foundation, are nearing their conclusion.  The plaintiffs claim that their work has grown the value of the Rauschenberg estate, and they should be paid accordingly. (more…)

Architect Peter Zumthor has altered his plans for the expansion of the LACMA campus, taking into account its close proximity to the La Brea Tar Pits, and instead has shifted the design to snake around the museum campus, avoiding the pits altogether.  “The original design would have severely impacted six of the nine active tar pits,” said Jane Pisano, director of the Los Angeles Natural History Museum, which oversees the tar pits. “We are so pleased, I do believe this design direction preserves and protects the tar pits.” (more…)

Hiroshi Sugimoto, Manatee (1994), All images courtesy Pace Gallery

On view from May 9th until June 28th at Pace New York is an exhibition of seventeen large-format photographs by Japanese artist Hiroshi Sugimoto from his most recent body of work. Entitled Still Life, the display gives a prime example of Sugimoto’s mastery of formally composed and exacting photography and printing processes.  Sugimoto has worked in a variety of approaches to still-life and architectural photography over the past years including old American movie palaces, drive-ins, and other structured works. He also formed an architectural practice himself in Tokyo, after receiving many requests to design structures such as restaurants and art museums.

Hiroshi Sugimoto, Still Life (Installation View)

Sugimoto compares the medium of photography as a record-making process to the fossilization process in nature – a moment suspended in time. His Polar Bear (1976) was the first photograph from his Diorama series, and many of the earlier silver gelatin prints also depict animals.  The works are surreal, black and white images of dioramas he photographed in natural history museums, playing on the distorted perspective of “nature” that humans believe to be true. Although the photographs appear to be realistic nature landscapes, they are actually artifically constructed, staged recreations of natural environments on display in museums. Many of the works are representations of animals, but no humans appear in any of the images – in a way, depicting a divide between humans and the natural environment.

Hiroshi Sugimoto, Still Life (Installation View)

The result of Sugimoto’s pieces is at times quite jarring, particularly in works where the separation between recreated environment and museum space suddenly comes into focus.  In several scenes, a notable line can be detected where a museum diorama gives way to painted display, and animals suspended in mid-action are placed in close proximity to a painted counterpart.  The result is a sudden realization of the meticulous placement of each object in the image, not by Sugimoto, but rather the institution which is striving to frame the diorama as a moment of authentic animal behavior.  The diorama, in turn, becomes as much an aesthetic project as it is an archival one, turning the intersection of scientific research and creative impulses into a definitive focal point.

Hiroshi Sugimoto, Still Life (Installation View)

The exhibition Hiroshi Sugimoto: Still Life is accompanied by a fully illustrated catalogue,Hiroshi Sugimoto: Dioramas, and the display will remain on view at Pace New York through June 28, 2014.

Hiroshi Sugimoto, Polar Bear (1976)

Hiroshi Sugimoto, Still Life (Installation View)

—E. Baker

Related Links:
Exhibition Page [Pace]

Kurt Schwitters, Ja – Was? – Bild (1920), via Christie’s

The Impressionist and Modern Evening Sales concluded Tuesday evening, capping a pair of sales that saw impressive prices on a number of works without pushing any major new records for artists at auction.  (more…)