Dis, January 9, 2008 (2019), via Project Native Informant

The New York collective Dis has long reveled in a mixture of the politically-incisive and the socially-mischievous, putting further a body of work that dwells on revolution and change, modes of sociality in the digital age, and the mass-media phenomena that populate the world around us. After a year in which the group moved back into online publishing, embracing a “pivot to video,” trumpeted by social media giant Facebook (which, ironically, was later revealed to be based on a false premise), the collective has opened a show in London at Project Native Informant, compiling a range of recent works that explore the idea of the 2008 economic crisis as a missed opportunity for economic revolution. Read More »

Berta Fischer (Installation View), via James Fuentes

Marking his second exhibition with the Berlin-based painter, James Fuentes’s current exhibition of works by Berta Fischer brings a summery energy to downtown, a selection of brightly-colored, technically impressive arrangements that underscore the artist’s abilities in the sculptural medium. Read More »

Elizabeth Murray, DuckWabbit (1992), via Pace Gallery

The work of American painter Elizabeth Murray gets its first UK exhibition this summer in London, with Camden Arts Centre showcasing an impressive selection of the artist’s work from across her multifaceted career. Documenting Murray’s continued engagement with the languages of abstraction and conceptualism, the artist’s work delves into various iterations of painterly expression, from studies in violent action to nuanced investigations of the canvas as a form and medium in and of itself. Read More »

Peter Saville, Blue Monday (1983), via Sprueth Magers

Culling together a selection of works that chart the landscape of British art as it moved through the landscape of industrial collapse through the neoliberal ascendancy of the 1980’s and into the 1990’s, Sprüth Magers is currently presenting New Order: Art, Product, Image 1976 – 1995 at its London exhibition space. The exhibition originates from a discussion about the cultural status and art historical positioning of one of Peter Saville’s best-known works for Factory Records made in the early 1980s, an object that helped in blurring the boundaries between art, design, pop and product. Read More »

Simone Fattal, Works and Days (Installation View), via Art Observed

On view through the end of August, MoMA PS1 is presenting the first solo museum exhibition in the United States of the work of Simone Fattal. The Lebanese-American artist whose commanding body of work weaves together disparate elements and sources to create new stories and concepts. The show brings together over 200 works created over the last 50 years, featuring abstract and figurative ceramic sculptures, paintings, watercolors, and collages that draw from a range of sources including war narratives, landscape painting, ancient history, mythology, and Sufi poetry to explore the impact of displacement as well as the politics of archeology and excavation.

Simone Fattal, Works and Days (Installation View), via Art Observed

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Ronnie Tjampitjinpa, Tarkulnga (1988) Ronnie Tjampitjinpa , © Copyright Agency. Licensed by Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York, 2019 Photo: Rob McKeever, Courtesy Gagosian

Following up on the much-praised New York exhibition documenting the leading painters from the Central and Western Desert regions of Australia, Gagosian’s Los Angeles exhibition space has pulled together a second iteration of Desert Painters of Australia, a strikingly powerful show documenting the indigenous art traditions of the country.
In the late 1960s, the Australian government moved several communities from the Western Desert region—primarily Pintupi, Luritja, Warlpiri, and Arrernte peoples—to the Papunya settlement, about 150 miles south of Alice Springs in the Northern Territory, a forced displacement that simultaneously centered the Indigenous Australian art community around a centralized hub where artists would gather to create murals works on canvas, and other forms drawing on ceremonial decorations and sand art. The result was a transposition of historically-resonant modes to the physical media of contemporary art and which has since presented a new outlet and opportunity for Papunya Tula artists to reexamine the imagery and present their culture to outsiders through transcendental visual codes. Read More »