The Soli Brug Gallery, based in Norway, lost a Rembrandt etching in the Norwegian postal system after using regular mail instead of paying for a courier or insurance. The 1658 etching, “Lieven Willemsz, van Coppenol, Writing-Master,” which the gallery had just purchased, was worth up to $8,600.
Ryan Gander – The Fallout of Living (Gallery View), Lisson Gallery
The work of Ryan Gander is an exercise in polysemy. The British sculptor continually explores concepts of loose association and interaction in his work, combining disparate elements to form complex relational narratives. Working in a diverse range of media that includes found objects, plexiglass, wood and marble, his pieces blend intimate symbolism with common artifacts, creating pieces rich in interpretive significance on any number of planes.
Talking Heads frontman and cycling advocate, David Byrne, has designed a set of alphabetically-inspired bike racks that are now installed outside the Brooklyn Academy of Music. A special “David Byrne alphabet” was developed due to the fact that normal rack elements do not allow for the creation of all letters. The racks currently spell out “pink crown” and “micro lip,” and BAM states that they “will reach out via social media to its audience and local community to solicit suggestions for additional letters and words to be used for the ever evolving installation.”
A plan to erect a statue of “1984” author George Orwell in front of BBC’s new Broadcasting House has been shot down by Mark Thompson, the company’s director general. Though Orwell worked as a journalist for BBC during the second World War, Thompson stated that the author is too left-wing a figure for the BBC to honor. The George Orwell Memorial Trust has raised more than £60,000 for the endeavor, and is now in talks with the city of Westminster in hopes to erect the statue close by.
Julian Opie – (Installation View), Lisson Gallery
Billed as “the largest single display of his practice to date,” Lisson Gallery is currently exhibiting a broad selection of works from British multi-media artist Julian Opie. Bending the artist’s fascinations with traditional portraiture and painting through his own aesthetic lens, the show continues Opie’s explorations of modern visual language and its relation to art history.
Antony Gormley – Still Standing Installation View, White Cube Gallery
Coming off a a major exhibition of work in Sao Paulo, Antony Gormley returns to the White Cube in Hoxton with a selection of works from the past two years, continuing his explorations into the displacement of human space through architectural practice.
Georg Baselitz, Stunde der Nachtigall (2012). All images via Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac
A new series of paintings by Georg Baselitz is on view at Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac in Salzburg through August 30. In Das Negativ, Baselitz paints from photographic negatives, resulting in a necessarily dark palette, with subjects obscured in their reversed portrayals– a step beyond the artist’s usual practice of painting his figures upside down. Though essentially painted from life, Baselitz subverts any realistic elements with his intense gentural abstraction, and tenebrous palette.
Beyoncé travels to the remote West Texas art town of Marfa.
The Hirschhorn Museum was closed temporarily after a security guard’s apparent suicide. The man was found with a self-inflicted gunshot wound in the lower level of the security guard’s locker room. Patrons were immediately evacuated, but had no exposure to the shooting scene.
Rob Pruitt’s chrome statue of Andy Warhol, which has been in Union Square since March of last year, will be traveling to Texas where it will be displayed in front of the Contemporary Art Museum Houston beginning next month, through the end of the year.
Titian, Diana and Actaeon (1556-1559)
A monumental figure of the Italian Renaissance, Titian was considered a master of color and figure whose vibrant works and striking subject matter cemented his reputation as the chief talent of the Venetian School of the 16th century. His series the Poesies represents this skill through a series of depictions of Ovid’s Metamorphosis, pushing the evocative nature of visual storytelling to its limits on canvas. Now, several of these works are being publicly shown again at the National Gallery in London.
Yet another monumental event The National Gallery is showing the Death of Actaeon, Diana and Actaeon (both based on the myth of Actaeon the hunter, who stumbled upon the bathing Goddess Diana, and was transformed into a stag, doomed to a savage death at the hands of his own hounds) , and the recently acquired Diana and Callisto. In addition, the museum has sought to tie the past with the present, commissioning a number of new works by Chris Ofili, Conrad Showcross and Mark Wallinger to be shown in conjunction with Titian’s classic pieces.
Rob Pruitt – Holy Crap (2012), The Fireplace Project
Continuing in their six year mission to bring noteworthy contemporary art to the Hamptons, The Fireplace Project has opened its doors to New York gallerist and curator Michele Maccarone. Focusing on a crop of New Yorkers, Maccarone has included works by Nate Lowman, Piotr Urlanski, Rob Pruitt and Dan Colen. Titled “Holy Crap,” the show examines each artist’s practice of using scrap, detritus and trash in their work.
Two famous Spanish directors, Carlos Saura and Fernando Colomo, will release two films featuring different aspects of Picasso’s life. One will focus on the painting of Guernica, and the other will explore how Picasso became wrapped up in the theft of the Mona Lisa back in 1911. Carlos Saura’s Guernica film will star Antonio Banderas as Picasso and Gwyneth Paltrow as Dora Maar, Picasso’s mistress.
Artist Wes Lang has designed the cover for the the Grateful Dead’s newest box set, Spring 1990, a famous year of concerts for the iconic rock band.
Henry Wyndham, chairman of Sotheby’s UK, was in a grouse hunting accident in Scotland where he was shot in the arm, throat, and face, sustaining 52 lead pellet wounds overall. Wyndham is expected to fully recover. Wyndham closed the most expensive work at auction, a Giacometti, in 2010. ‘Henry was very lucky – if he had not been wearing glasses he would have been blinded.’
In “I was Jeff Koons’s Studio Serf” John Powers talks about his time working for Jeff Koons on the Celebration Series, as a studio assistant in 1995, casting light on the system behind production top works of contemporary art at auction. “The goal was to hand-fashion a flat, seamless surface that appeared to have been manufactured by machine, which meant there could be no visible brush strokes, no blending, no mistakes.”
Bruce Nauman, One Hundred Fish Fountain, via Gagosian
Bruce Nauman’s body of work has long incorporated elements of identity, the potentials of art and the artist, and an interplay between himself and the viewer. These aspects converge in his One Hundred Fish Fountain (2005), on view at Gagosian’s Madison Avenue headquarters.
Paul Signac’s great granddaughter recently filed a lawsuit requesting that his painting, In the Time of Harmony be moved to the Musée d’Orsay for safekeeping because it was vandalized in its current location, Montreuil’s town hall, in December of last year.
With the recent redevelopment of the Löwenbräukunst art complex, a long time gathering place for aritsts, Zurich asserts itself as a city for contemporary culture and art in the twenty-first century.
Jake and Dinos Chapman have created an effigy of Hitler as part of part of the Grundy Art Gallery’s Adventureland Golf exhibition, which features art works as holes on an imaginary golf course. The work has stirred up a debate, causing those on the Board of Deputies of British Jews to call the work “tasteless.” Known for their controversial work, the gallery described the Chapman Brothers’ piece as “the powerful image of the Nazi regime within the context of holiday fun and in doing so making reference to the British wartime spirit of making humour at the Fuhrer’s expense.”
Liquid Rarity Exchange, formed in response to the increasing value of artwork and collectibles, aims to offer investors a chance buy and sell shares of art, creating a way for new buyers to join the art market in fractional parts.
Gardar Eide Einarsson – Infinite Crisis (2012), Home Alone Gallery – Photos by D. Creahan
Tucked away on Franklin Street at the edge of TriBeCa, Home Alone Gallery sits with its artwork exposed to the street. Taking cues from well-regarded venues like Maurizio Cattelan’s Wrong Gallery, the exhibition space turns the street itself into a gallery, easily accessible by any pedestrian. Conceived by artists Nate Lowman, Hanna Liden and Leo Fitzpatrick, the Home Alone Gallery takes joy in simplicity, showing a single piece from its small storefront window.
Gardar Eide Einarsson – (2012), Home Alone Gallery
Erwin Wurm – Big Kastenmann (2012), The Standard, High Line
Austrian surrealist Erwin Wurm has a penchant for exploring the detritus of our everyday lives, taking common objects and distorting their forms, sizes and positions to create absurd commentaries on modern existence. Creating bizarre portraits of our commodities and ourselves, Wurm challenges the conventions of contemporary consumer culture.
