Adam Szymczyk, the Chief Curator and Director at Kunsthalle Basel has been named as lead Curator for documenta 14, set to take place in Kassel from June 10th, to September 17th, 2017. “I am convinced that Szymczyk, a ground-breaking and idiosyncratic curator of art, will add new highlights to documenta,” says Minister of State Eva Kühne-Hörmann. (more…)
The New Yorker has published an in-depth profile on dealer David Zwirner, taking time at the Art Basel fair earlier this year to watch him in action as he sells his works, while offering interesting perspectives on the current state of the art world. “One of the reasons there’s so much talk about money is that it’s so much easier to talk about than the art,” he says. (more…)
Water leaking caused by one of the largest storms to hit Abu Dhabi in 30 years has forced the closure of the second day of the Abu Dhabi Art Fair this weekend, leaving dealers scrambling to protect and maintain works inside the fair’s UAE Pavilion. “Whether the exhibitors have a claim for this on the fair organisers will depend on the terms of the contract between them,” says Christopher Bentley of AXA Art Insurance, although claims have yet to be made. (more…)
Artist Ryan McNamara has been awarded the second edition of the Marshall McLaren Award at Performa 13. MEÆŽM: A Story Ballet About the Internet, was performed at the Connelly Theater this November, and won the honor of the fair’s most “innovative new work.” McNamara joins inaugural winner Ragnar Kjartansson for his work Bliss. (more…)
Lee Ufan, Dialogue (2013), all photos via Sophie Kitching for Art Observed unless otherwise noted
The work of Lee Ufan takes pleasure in simplicity. Utilizing simple, geometrically-influenced forms, the artist walks a line between the classic theories and demands of post-war minimalism, and more nuanced, organic approach to the forms and materials of the everyday.
Lee Ufan, La peinture ensevelie…. (2013) (more…)
Artist Ryan McGinley is profiled in the New York Times, discussing the group of young protégés he has surrounded himself with at his downtown New York studio. “In a way, it’s a curriculum, as I can give people advice because I’ve been through it,” he said. “I was the first person to get attention within my crew, and I wanted people to share the success that I was enjoying. (more…)
The recent Sotheby’s auction of jewels designed by sculptor Alexander Calder broke all estimates at auction last week, selling for the total of $8 million, far beyond the works’ estimated $1.5 million price tag. “This is a major development in the market for artists’ jewellery,” says specialist dealer Louisa Guinness. (more…)
Francesco Vezzoli, Galleria Vezzoli (Installation View), Courtesy MAXXI Rome
MAXXI in Rome this weekend closed the exhibition of Galleria Vezzoli, a gallery cum timeline of Francesco Vezzoli’s artistic career, and a self-created tribute to the artist, beginning from his embroideries in the 1990s and continuing to his more recent video works and sculptures made of marble. The exhibition was part of a larger exhibition entitled The Trinity, Galleria Vezzoli and was the first in a three-part project, Vezzoli in three different locations: at MoMA PS1 in New York and MOCA in Los Angeles. The works in the exhibition at MAXXI mimiced a 19th century museum aesthetic, but were placed within the contemporary architectural context of the gallery space, designed by architect Zaha Hadid.
Vogue Magazine’s Genevieve Bahrenburg writes on a chance encounter with artist Chuck Close, and the artist’s process of capturing her on film for a painting, and the artist’s impressive perceptual capacities. “I know from years of experience how the incremental units of the grid will fall on an image.” Close tells her. (more…)
Painter David Hockney’s iPad influenced works are the subject of a short piece in Wired Magazine, describing the artist’s influences from Warhol to 19th century French painting. Part of the artist’s broader interest in new media and potentials for composition, the works feature Hockney’s signature combination of vibrant colors and quick, steady strokes. (more…)
A Nazi-instituted law from 1938 is complicating the situation in the return of the works discovered in the Munich apartment of Cornelius Gurlitt, the New York Times reports. Allowing the government to seize non-German or Jewish artworks deemed “degenerate,” the law is still on the books, and has made it more difficult for German and European museums which previously had work removed from its collection. “The legal situation is relatively obvious and clear,” said Wolfgang Büche, of the Moritzburg Foundation in Halle. “With art taken from Jewish collectors, there are sometimes legal or at least moral circumstances under which they can seek to have their works restituted. We can only seek to buy them back.” (more…)
The New York Times profiles Adam Szymczyk, the current curator of Kunsthalle Basel, examining his current contributions to contemporary art, and some of the groundbreaking work he has done in the past years. “He is able to identify what is happening in the zeitgeist,” said Iwona Blazwick of Whitechapel Gallery, “to have his finger on the pulse and create the intellectual framework within which to understand it.” (more…)
Isa Genzken spoke with the New York Times recently, discussing her current retrospective at MoMA, her long career, and the public reception of her art. “I think my work is very difficult to understand. Sometimes people do and sometimes they don’t. I can’t do much about that.” (more…)
After 20 years on the podium for Sotheby’s, Chief of Contemporary Art and auctioneer Tobias Meyer has announced that he will be leaving his position in order to pursue work as a private dealer. Mr. Meyer has been on the stand for some of the auction house’s most significant sales, including the record sale of Andy Warhol’s Car Crash painting earlier this month. “Contemporary art has become a little too much like ‘American Idol,'” he told said. “We’re an overvisualized culture, and young artists can find themselves with a real career only six months after starting to paint.”
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John Baldessari, Double Play: Eggs and Sausage (2012), Courtesy of Champagne Holdings, LLC © John Baldessari
On view at Garage Moscow, co-curated by Garage’s new Chief Curator Kate Fowle and International Advisor Hans Ulrich Obrist, 1+1=1 is the first exhibition of work by John Baldessari in Russia. The exhibition is a compilation of Baldessari’s most recent series of paintings, exploring the relationship between text and image in visual art.
Brothers Jake and Dinos Chapman are the subject of the Financial Times’ ongoing “Lunch with the FT” series, talking about their early work, and response to criticism that their work has scarcely changed in the past years. “But it’s the same criticism you could level at Mark Rothko,” The brothers collectively ask. “Is it imperative for the artist to be novel?” (more…)
Donald Judd, Untitled (DSS 216) (1970), via Daniel Creahan for Art Observed
Currently on view at Mnuchin Gallery’s uptown location is a two-floor exhibition focusing exclusively on the stack sculptures of the late Donald Judd, one of the defining voices of New York minimalism in the 1970’s and beyond.
Donald Judd, Untitled (DSS 154) (1968), via Mnuchin Gallery (more…)
Richard Serra, Inside Out (detail) (2013), via Daniel Creahan for Art Observed
Rounding out a gallery year that included exhibitions by Jeff Koons, Basquiat and more, Gagosian Gallery has opened the doors to both its Chelsea locations for a major showing of new work by Richard Serra, including an enormous new torqued steel structure, Inside Out in its 21st Street location, and a series of smaller, albeit no less impressive works at the gallery’s 24th Street space.
Richard Serra, Grief and Reason (for Walter) (2013) © Richard Serra. Courtesy Gagosian Gallery. Photograph by Robert McKeever (more…)
The controversial “Playboy Marfa” sculpture previously on view along U.S. route 90, has been dismantled, and will be placed on view at the Dallas Contemporary. The move comes after heated protest over the piece, opposed by Marfa residents for its attempt to turn the town into a space for art-driven marketing and promotion. “We are happy this has been resolved and that Texans will still get to enjoy this piece of art,” said Veronica Beyer, spokeswoman for the Texas Department of Transportation. (more…)
Museo Jumex, the long-anticipated home of the Jumex Collection, opened its doors yesterday with a major opening event that drew art world celebrities, collectors and curators from around the world to the Mexico City suburb of Polanco. Established by food and juice magnate Eugenio López, the Jumex Collection is considered the largest private contemporary arts collection in Latin America, and features works by Tacita Dean, Sarah Lucas, Donald Judd, Olafur Eliasson, Gabriel Orozco, Damien Hirst, Robert Gober, Andy Warhol and Bruce Nauman to name a few. (more…)
The New York Times reports on the private life of German collector Cornelius Gurlitt, whose huge trove of Nazi-looted art, including works by Otto Dix and Pablo Picasso, left him leading a secluded existence in his Munich flat. “There is nothing I have loved more in my life than my pictures,” he said. (more…)
Last week, in the midst of auction week hustle and bustle, Creative Time held its annual fall gala at Williamsburg’s Output Nightclub, bringing together a varied group of artists, musicians, designers and nightlife mainstays for an event celebrating the size and diversity of New York’s current creative community.
Creative Time Fall Ball, via Art Observed Staff (more…)
Dia Fall Gala, atmosphere (during Matmos commission). All images courtesy Dia Art Foundation.
Last Monday’s Dia Art Foundation Fall Gala was a striking affair. Video projections, sound, light-play, chatter, and music gave the cavernous venue its mystical feel, all accompanied by a commission by experimental electronic music duo Matmos, whose performance was reminiscent of a spiritual journey. Even so, the full series of events and installations fell in line with the framework of minimal and progressive art that the Dia Art Foundation specializes in bringing to the public through an array of different channels.
Dinner, atmosphere. (more…)
The Independent reports on the history of artist Jeff Koons, noting his time as a Wall Street commodities trader, and the artist’s immense market popularity, underscored this week by the sale of his Balloon Dog sculpture for $58 million. The article notes the rising of wealth of the “new asset class,” and the appeal of Koons’ sculptures to collectors with a ” large deficit of social and cultural capital.” (more…)
