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 »

Ragen Moss, Senior Borrower (with Mezzanine Borrower) (2019), via Bridget Donahue

Currently on view at Bridget Donahue, artist Ragen Moss has hung an octet of peculiar hanging sculptures.  Referred to at points as “couples” and as “animals,” the show seems to take on the atmosphere of animals moving about an enclosure, watched closely by the viewer to glimpse moments of personality and persona. The works, on view through the end of the month, offer a particularly impressive chance to observe and explore the nature of viewing, and the concept of nature itself.    Read More »

Lothar Baumgarten, Tropenhäuser (Guayana), Conservatorie (Guayana) (1969-1972:2012), via Marian Goodman

Currently on view at Marian Goodman in New York, artist Lothar Baumgarten is the subject of a posthumous show focusing on a body of work he helped compile before his passing.  “The Early Years” focuses on the formative works that shaped his oeuvre, and functions as an homage to one of the most important German artists who influenced a subsequent generation, not to mention an artist who has worked with the gallery since the 1980’s.

Lothar Baumgarten, Kosmos (1968), via Marian Goodman

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Lee Bul, Perdu XX (2019), via Lehmann Maupin

On view through January 18th in New York, the South Korean artist Lee Bul presents a selection of new works unified under the title Interlude: Perdu at Lehmann Maupin, a solo presentation that  features recent mixed media paintings from the artist’s Perdu series that blend biomorphic and cybertronic forms, vividly yet delicately rendered in acrylic paint and mother of pearl.  The artist’s work, which incorporates these divergent forms into a new formal language, makes for an expressive wrinkle in her broader body of work. Read More »

Rachel Harrison, Hoarders (2012), via Whitney

Combining sculpture, readymades, drawing and a playful conceptual bent, artist Rachel Harrison’s work over the past 30 years has challenged easy readings of consumption, commercialism and modernity, imbuing her lumpy, peculiar objects with a sense of wry humor and situational irony.  Opening a major retrospective at The Whitney this winter, the artist’s work gets ample room to breathe, to striking result.    Read More »

Rashid Johnson, The Hikers (Installation View), via Art Observed

On view this fall in New York, Hauser & Wirth presents The Hikers, an exhibition of recent works by Rashid Johnson that unites ceramic tile mosaics, collaged paintings, and a large-scale sculpture that work together to address Johnson’s recurring interest in currents of anxiety and escapism created by the political and social turmoil felt across the United States and around the globe. Read More »

Jessi Reaves, Going Out in Style (Installation View), via Herald St

Currently on view at Herald St Gallery in London, the New York-based artist Jessi Reaves has opened a new show of work, ‘Going out in style,’ which marks a continued evolution in her practice and her second exhibition with the London space. Presenting works that are contradictory in their forms and perceived functions, often oscillating between sculpture and furniture while never quite fitting squarely into either category, the artist’s work underscores a particularly resonant series of concepts and conundrums in the landscape of the present. Read More »