‪‬Model, actress, and Cambridge art history graduate Lily Cole will become the host of a six-part television series Art Matters, in which she will meet with contemporary artists such as Gabriel Orozco, Christo and Tacita Dean.
[AO Newslink]
‪‬Chelsea-based David Zwirner gallery in New York seeks to open it first overseas space with a new location in London’s Mayfair. The London gallery will open November 2012, with an inaugural exhibition by Belgian painter Luc Tuymans. [AO Newslink]
Alec Soth, 2008_02zl0173 (2008)
Alec Soth threads a narrative of retreat, decay, and reclamation through the photos on display in Broken Manual at Sean Kelly Gallery. The exhibition traces Soth’s life as Lester B. Morrison, a character of Soth’s invention whom he incarnated from 2006–2010 while infiltrating isolated communities living life on the rural American fringe. The photos tell the story of Morrison’s retreat from civilization, depicting his passage from the squatters’ dens of urban decay to life among the “hermits and hippies, monks and survivalists” that become the subject of Soth’s lens. As he presses on, photos of strident, decrepit infrastructure imposed on pastoral landscapes give way to portraits of men who unsettlingly resemble the unforgiving locales they inhabit.
All photos on site for Art Observed by Aubrey Roemer.
The Armory Show 2012 hosts 228 international exhibitors, “showing work that realizes the fair’s mission of innovation and discovery.” Split between Piers 92 and 94 on the west side of Midtown Manhattan, the show runs March 8–11, with several new programming initiatives and a re-designed floor plan added to the show’s fourteenth edition. Pier 94 is the larger exhibition hall, the Contemporary section featuring mainstay galleries Lisson Gallery, Sean Kelly, Victoria Miro, Kukje Gallery/Tina Kim Gallery, David Zwirner, Sprüth Magers, Gallery Hyundai, and Kaikai Kiki, among many others—including 19 invited Nordic galleries in the ‘Armory Focus’—while the Modern sector on Pier 92 is home to Marlborough Gallery, O’Hara Gallery, Inc., Pace Prints, Peter Findlay, and many more.
Gearing up for a performance piece on the fourth floor. All images for Art Observed by Anna Mikaela Ekstrand.
The festive albeit politically charged atmosphere at the 2012 76th annual Whitney Biennial‘s pre-show event was practically interdependent, with the political climate not only informing the sentiments of viewers, but arguably the art itself. While protesters outside encouraged entering guests to “Occupy the Whitney,” antagonizing Sotheby’s and Deutsche Bank for withholding benefits from workers and developing financial strategies to benefit the ‘one percent,’ art indoors at the biennial also challenged artistic convention against the same political scale, with over 50 artists showing work.
‪‬Bushwick burgeons with artists and galleries paying low rent as the area may potentially become New York’s next gallery district, with Luhring Augustine’s new space possibly leading a migration from Chelsea [AO Newslink]
‪‬Miami condo developer Martin Margulies collateralizes $80 million loan for 24-story tower from U.S. Trust with 59 pieces of modern art including works by Jackson Pollock, Mark Rothko, Cy Twombly, and Jasper Johns [AO Newslink]
Terence Koh is now represented by Sean Kelly Gallery in New York [AO Newslink]
Serkan Özkaya, David (Inspired by Michelangelo) (2005). All photos on site for Art Observed by Samuel Sveen.
Istanbul-born artist Serkan Özkaya’s 30-foot golden foam sculpture, David (Inspired by Michelangelo) is parked outside Storefront for Art and Architecture in SoHo today at Kenmare and Centre Street. The sculpture will tour New York tomorrow, passing by the Armory Show, before its final destination of 21c Museum in Louisville, Kentucky. The work was shipped from Turkey, acquired by the American museum in 2011. Özkaya originally created it for the 9th International Istanbul Biennial in 2005, though it collapsed six days before the event began. After restoring the original, two additional copies were cast. The artist grew up producing small replicas of sculptures he was unable to actually see in person; the double-sized David also has no current plans to visit its original in Florence. At the Storefront for Art and Architecture tonight from 6:30 to 9:30 pm is a Manifesto Series presentation and discussion “on the topic of Double,”—doubling, replicating, copying—paneled by artists, architects, critics, historians and theorists, including MoMA PS1 and Art International Radio founder Alanna Heiss, among others.
Adrian Villar Rojas, A Person Loved Me (2012)
The New Museum debuts its second Triennial exhibition ‘The Ungovernables,’ a show dedicated to representing international artists, many of which are under 40 and have never been represented in the United States before. There are over 50 participants in the exhibition including 34 individual artists, multiple-artist groups, and a few temporary collectives. The exhibition begins in the back of the lobby, the rest distributed between four full floors, a stairwell, and the basement. Nearly every type of artistic media is represented, from sculpture, to painting, to video, to installations. The range of styles and philosophies is vast as well, including figuration, abstraction, and conceptual art.
‪‬Tate Modern purchases 8 million hand-crafted porcelain sunflower seeds by Ai Weiwei, the ten tons are nearly one-tenth of the total 100 million seeds from original Tate Turbine Hall Unilever installation, price undisclosed [AO Newslink]
‪‬Charles Long to install ‘Pet Sounds,’ colorful railing-sculptures in Madison Square Park this summer, “As one pets the blobs, a wide range of sounds are triggered and are coming from within the bodies of the forms.” [AO Newslink]
‪‬The Wall Street Journal discusses techniques to manage art investments and options to bequeath with minimal tax and inheritance issues [AO Newslink]
‪ ‪The upcoming Christie’s Old Masters Sale in London in July has an overall value of $30 million, with A Bust of a Man in a Gorget and Cap (1626-27) at an estimate of $19 million alone. In a bid to attract new collectors, Christie’s will send the Old Masters on a promotional tour through Doha, Moscow, Hong Kong, Amsterdam and New York. [AO Newslink]
Moto (1963). All photos on site for Art Observed by Elene Damenia.
John Chamberlain: Choices opened at the Guggenheim on February 24th, and will remain on view through May 13th, after which it will travel to Bilbao, Spain. Chamberlain was preparing for the current Guggenheim retrospective from his studio in Shelter Island when he passed away this December, aged 84. Although the exhibition officially began to coordinate in 2010, Senior Curator Susan Davidson told the press conference that the idea had been brewing for over a decade. The museum currently showcases almost 100 works from a lifetime of aesthetic development, garnered from private collections in America and Europe, as well as more recent works by the artist before his death.
‪ ‪T magazine features the art collective Still House, a Red Hook, Brooklyn based art collective that is home to eight artists, a residency program, and a gallery. The group, mostly under 25, is on a gradual rise in profile as seen in the success of the show “Riffraff” at this year’s Art Basel Miami Beach. [AO Newslink]
‪‬The New York Times surveys the behind-the-scenes legal policies of the art authentication and insurance world, using the Knoedler Gallery’s forgery of Jackson Pollock, Robert Motherwell, and Willem de Koonig, the deterioration of Matisse’s colors, an elbow accident with a private Picasso, and the re-appropriation lawsuit against Richard Prince to examine how to best protect a collection from fraud or damage.
[AO Newslink]
‪‬In his first interview in 10 years, White Cube founder and renowned art mogul Jay Jopling addresses his ability to walk the line of ‘privilege and populism.’ He explains to the Financial Times: “I always liked to collide the establishment with the avant-garde.”
[AO Newslink]
‪‬Suspected financial turmoil related to illegal endowment raiding begets turnover at MOCA, with the chief operating officer, fundraising director and a trustee chairman leaving the museum within the last three months, each remaining in the posts less than a year. Jeffrey Deitch, MOCA’s director since 2010, is reportedly struggling to fix the endowment issues that ended in 2008. The current fiscal year has a projected deficit until its closing on June 30th. [AO Newslink]
‪‬Sotheby’s had its most second-most profitable year ever in 2011 at $5.8-billion, nearing its own record of $6.2 billion in 2007. They out-profited Christie’s by one tenth of a billion dollars this year, and increased from $4.8 billion in 2010. However, due to European turmoil, the most recent quarter suffered an 11.0% drop in auction-related revenue. [AO Newslink]
The work of Mexican muralist Diego Rivera (1886-1957) is showcased on MoMA‘s second floor through May 14th. The exhibition’s opening on November 13th coincided with Occupy Wall Street protests in Zuccotti Park, allowing the originally leftist murals to resonate with a contemporary, politicized audience. The murals, which have not been shown since their first presentation 80 years ago, are accompanied by drawings and related archival paraphernalia. A concurrent catalogue with essays by curator Leah Dickerman is also associated.
Diego Rivera, Frozen Assets (1931-1932). All Images Courtesy of MoMA Interactive.
‪‬Simon de Pury is subject of Sucklord doll, as part of Lot 158 at Phillips de Pury’s contemporary auction next week [AO Newslink]
‪‬Santigold painted by Kehinde Wiley for her The Master of My Make-Believe album cover, wearing Alexander Wang. This is Kehinde Wiley’s first female subject, based on Portrait of Sir Banastre Tarleton (1782) by Sir Joshua Reynolds. The album is out May 1st. [AO Newslink]
‪‬Artist Michael Heizer’s 340-ton boulder is the centerpiece for the Los Angeles County Museum of Art’s “Levitated Mass” exhibition. It traveled through Ontario California on Thursday in a special truck for the second stop of its 105-mile journey from Riverside to LACMA. Street signs and obstacles were moved for its journey. [AO Newslink]
