Jamal Penjweny,  Saddam is Here (2010), via MoMA

Military engagement in Iraq over the last 30 years has had a unprecedented impact on contemporary culture and society, with American intervention  in the Gulf and Iraq Wars opening a debate on American values and beliefs, in turn influencing the work of artists around the world. Exploring this concept MoMA PS1 presents Theater of Operations: The Gulf Wars 1991-2011, a large-scale group exhibition analyzing the legacy of the U.S. military presence in the region. The exhibition spans four floors, including more than 250 works featuring over 80 artists and collectives, including thirty-six Iraqis and Kuwaitis.

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Noah Davis, Man with Alien and Shotgun (2008), all images via Art Observed

In the all-too-short run of his life as both an artist and organizer, Noah Davis was a larger than life energy.  He was a tireless advocate for black arts in Los Angeles, and a relentless energetic painter whose lush figurative style tied together signifiers and concepts from across the expanse of modern painting.  As curator and organizer at the Underground Museum, a black-owned-and-operated art space dedicated to the exhibition of museum-quality art in a culturally underserved African American and Latinx neighborhood, he was a central figure in advocating and advancing the work of his peers and predecessors, creating historical dialogues on the back of his own vision.   This energy serves as the underlying power of his current exhibition at David Zwirner in New York, where the late artist’s work is succinctly summarized and celebrated.

Noah Davis, 1975 (8) (2013)

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Hanne Darboven, Erdkunde I, II, III (1986), via Sprüth Magers

Currently on view at Sprüth Magers in Berlin, the gallery presents a selection of works by Hanne Darboven, the first solo exhibition of the artist’s work at the Berlin gallery.  Compiling her works Erdkunde I, II, III (Geography I, II, III) (1986) and (Süd-) Koreanischer Kalender / (South) Korean Calendar (1991), the exhibition marks the beginning of the gallery’s worldwide representation of the Darboven Estate.  Read More »

Jon Pylypchuk, Cast your empire on a kingdom of doubts (2019), via Petzel

On view in its Chelsea exhibition space, Petzel Gallery presents Waiting for the Next Nirvana, an exhibition of new paintings by Canada-born, Los Angeles-based artist Jon Pylypchuk. On view through the end of February, the show draws on his work as a musician, and as an artist, exploring concepts of nostalgia, anticipation, energy, confidence, and, foremost, seductive and rebellious emotion. Read More »

Fischli/Weiss, The Raft (1982/83), via Sprüth Magers

Currently on view at Sprüth Magers’s London exhibition space,  Should I paint a pirate ship on my car with an armed figure on it holding a decapitated head by the hair? marks the fifth exhibition by the pair of Swiss artists Peter Fischli and David Weiss at their London gallery. The exhibition presents a concise overview of the artists’ transformations of the commonplace in the form of three seminal works from throughout their collaborative career, a subtle investigation of their core themes in a minimal selection of pieces. Read More »

Hans Haacke, All Connected (Installation View), via New Museum

Artist Hans Haacke’s works, ranging from kinetic art to environmental art, conceptual art and institutional critique, culminates in his critiques of social and political systems, orchestrated in masterful form this winter at the New Museum.  The retrospective marks the first major American museum exhibition of Haacke’s career, focusing on the influence of the corporate world on contemporary art. Read More »

Kim Gordon, The Bonfire 2 (2019), via 303

Taking over the exhibition spaces at 303 Gallery’s Chelsea space this winter, Kim Gordon presents a body of new works that mix together a range of cultural vantage points and disparate iconographies through multi-media works, photographs and painted canvases.  Her second solo exhibition with the gallery, the show is a striking look at the artist’s nuanced and expansive oeuvre, one which has earned her increasing recognition in recent years.

Kim Gordon, Los Angeles June 6, 2019 (2019), via 303

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Mark Dion, Bureau of Censorship (1996/2019), via Art Observed

The year 2020 is being heralded as a crucial moment for society, a moment to respond to massive political upheaval and environmental crises. With immigration on the rise around the globe, and social tensions inflamed over crises of leadership at the heads of global superpowers, the world is at a crossroads. This concept sits at the core of Songs in the Dark, a group show currently on at Tanya Bonakdar that illustrates how artists deal with the world at its tipping point; how artists find beauty in the darkness of their own times, how they straddle the personal and political in their work, and how they make art as activism. Read More »

Issy Wood, Slouching towards the maxillofacial unit (2018), via JTT

Issy Wood’s paintings and sculptures carry a peculiar cultural charge, moments of collision and fusion that mark her objects with both the signifiers of the art historical and with the banal moments of daily life. For her current show, daughterproof at JTT in New York, the artist continues this process, putting forward a selection of works that seem to mark the passage of culture and time against the body itself.   Read More »

Ugo Rondinone, thanx 4 nothing (A Tribute to John Giorno) (Installation View), via Gladstone

When the poet John Giorno passed away late last year, he left behind a lifetime of artistic adventurism and exploration, a reputation for his tireless support of the arts and his energetic commitment to collaboration, connection and creativity.  It makes sense then, that one of the first shows to celebrate the artist since his passing would be a collaboration with his husband, artist Ugo Rondinone, at Gladstone Gallery.  Open now, the show features the artist’s captivating 2015 video piece thanx 4 nothing, Read More »