Elmgreen & Dragset with Joanna Lumley All photos on site for Art Observed by Caroline Claisse.

This morning in London the newest commission for the Fourth Plinth in Trafalgar Square was officially unveiled. This year’s winning entry is titled Powerless Structures, Fig. 101, by Scandinavian artistic duo Elmgreen & Dragset. The bronze sculpture of a young boy atop a rocking horse stands four meters high, and joins the solemn company of Trafalgar Square’s other large-scale memorial statues—dedicated to King George IV and two famous generals respectively. A gentle pun on the tradition of the equestrian military monument, Powerless Structures, Fig. 101 playfully subverts notions of strength and power, instead celebrating their absence. Unlike most monuments, Elmgreen & Dragset’s child is not intended to commemorate history, but rather symbolizes a hope for the future, a fitting choice for one of London’s most famous public spaces as the city prepares to host the 2012 Olympics this Summer.

(more…)

Gardar Eide Einarsson, Untitled (Tear Gas Scatters Demonstrators) (2012). All images courtesy of Maureen Paley, London.

Maureen Paley hosts the Gardar Eide Einarsson‘s first ever solo exhibition in the UK. A Norwegian born artist, now living and working in both New York and Japan, Einarsson’s often text-based works come with a certain irreverence. His images, whether borrowed from the internet or history, comment on social structures both in and outside of the art world. The primarily black and white works in this exhibition touch upon themes of death, destruction, and the paradox of protest.

(more…)

‪‬Pablo Picasso to be played by Antonio Banderas in upcoming film covering the titular ’33 Days’ Picasso spent painting ‘Guernica’ mural in response to the Spanish Civil War [AO Newslink]

(more…)

Charles Atlas, 143652 (2011). Photos on site for Art Observed by Samuel Sveen.

American artist Charles Atlas projects three separate video installations in his first New York City solo show on the fresh walls of Luhring Augustine at the inaugural exhibition of the Chelsea gallery’s new 12,000 sq ft Bushwick space. A warehouse bought in 2010, the first blue-chip implant to the relatively far-out Brooklyn neighborhood hosted a mix of locals and Manhattanites at the opening, including MoMA PS1 director Klaus Biesenbach, critic couple Jerry Saltz and Roberta Smith, and Atlas’ past collaborator Marina Abramović. The artist’s scanning, swirling, viewer-enveloping works are numeral based—though limited to numbers one through six—in an attempt to create something that “would exist even if humans didn’t exist,” according to Gallerist NY. Gallerist Roland Augustine commented on the evening and the new gallery to Art Observed, “This is very exciting for all of us; a win-win situation, no, win-win-win!”

Gallerist Roland Augustine and MoMA PS1 director Klaus Biesenbach

(more…)

All photos on site for Art Observed by Elene Damenia.

French graffitist and clubster André Saraiva has set up shop inside Half Gallery for his first solo New York exhibition, having also shown at Colette, Palais de Tokyo, and Air de Paris. Bright yellow French letter boxes tagged with Saraiva’s signature “Mr. A” smiling face line one wall, love letters and colorful drawings cover the other in a loose salon style. The letter boxes were first painted in the streets of Paris—from whence they were shipped—with the artist making a few re-touches to the six boxes chosen for the New York show; Saraiva had attempted to paint every box he could there. The letters are “a somewhat anachronistic celebration of communication so closely tied to the romantic,” says the press release; watercolors of nostalgic letters impart the artist’s poetic side, some quoting Jacques Prévert or Henry Miller. Alternatively, dollar bill-based works elicit sex more graphically, one scripted, “In Pussy We Trust,” replacing George Washington’s center placement accordingly. Art Observed was fortunate enough to speak with Saraiva and gallerist Bill Powers in the following interview before the small Forsyth Street gallery earned a waiting line outside, Powers forced to turn away an additional news crew for lack of arm room.

(more…)

‪‬Edvard Munch’s “The Scream” to be auctioned at Sotheby’s New York on May 2nd by Norwegian businessman, estimated at over $80 million, the only one of four versions still held privately, with scheduled public viewings in London and NYC [AO Newslink]

(more…)

Marilyn Minter and Massimiliano Gioni at the opening. All photos on site for Art Observed by Rachel Willis and Samuel Sveen.

Maurizio Cattelan, who recently swore off his career as an artist, has taken a large step into the business side of the art world. The famed artist has teamed up with longtime friend and project partner—and notable curator—Massimiliano Gioni for a new exhibition space, Family Business. Located in the front of the Anna Kustera Gallery in Chelsea, at 520 West 21^st Street, Family Business is a small non-profit venue geared towards both the making and showing of conceptually and aesthetically experimental art. The inaugural show, appropriately titled “The Virgin Show,” consists of a group of artists whose work has never been exhibited in New York before. There are a few exceptions to the rule however, with established artists like Laurel Nakadate and Mika Rottenberg showing some of their earliest works. The show was curated by Marilyn Minter who, in line with the theme of the show, has referred to herself as a “Virgin Curator.” To top off the theme, the band The Virgins played a short acoustic set, with visitors shuffled out to make room in the small space.

(more…)

‪‬Former director of Deitch Projects Nicola Vassell, leaves director position at Pace Gallery after year and a half, Andrea Glimcher quoted as saying “It’s best for all that she is pursuing her own projects.” [AO Newslink]

(more…)

Lucio Fontana, Concetto Spaziale, Attese (1960)

Phillips de Pury & Company held the last of the Contemporary Art Evening Sales for this week in London on Thursday, bringing in a total of £5,695,550, just under their low estimate of £5,985,000. It is quite possible that they would have hit well above their high estimate had Robert Indiana‘s infamous LOVE sculpture not been pulled from the auction before it started, as it was estimated to bring in between £800,000–£1,200,000. The top seller from the auction was Lucio Fontana‘s Concetto Spaziale, Attese, which sold for the hammer price of £900,000—at the low end of the £1–£1.5 million estimate. The work was once owned by Andy Warhol, and is a quintessential example of the Spazialismo movement that Fontana founded, a movement that was among the first to emphasize the importance of performance as art.

(more…)

‪ Photographer Douglas Friedman’s ‘Ungovernables’ series captures the New Museum Triennial art and artists, including Canadian Julia Dault and her performative sheets of Plexiglas, Cambodian Gabriel Sierr and geometric frames, and Vietnam-based Propeller Group with “Television Commercial for Communism.”[AO Newslink]

(more…)

Abramović speaking at Art Basel Miami Beach in 2011 about the MoMA-related documentary, Marina: The Artist is Present. (Photo by Caroline Claisse via Art Observed)

This week, Serbian-born performance artist Marina Abramović signed on with Rotterdam-based architect Rem Koolhaus to redesign a historic community tennis club to house her Center for the Preservation of Performance Art (CPoPA) in Hudson, New York. As the name indicates, Abramović conceptualizes the creative space to exhibit long-term performance pieces, which may range from six hours to days on end. Visitors to the Hudson space will be seated in uniquely designed wheelchairs with desks, which can be wheeled to a set sleeping area if the performance piece goes on too long. In addition to the performance art center itself, Abramović is in discussions with Hudson’s local mayor to potentially build a new hotel for the art set. She told art patrons at The Core Club that she will need $8 million to fund the project.

The designated performance art center, via L Magazine

(more…)

‪Gregory Crewdson’s “Brief Encounters” Trailer released, in anticipation of South by Southwest (SXSW) 2012, which runs from March 9th-18th. The documentary follows Crewdson’s photography-related journeys and conceptualizations. [AO Newslink]

(more…)

‪Devon resident Damien Hirst is building 500 eco-friendly homes at Winsham Farm outside Ilfracombe, Devon, which rely on hidden wind turbines and photovoltaic solar panels. He owns 40 percent of the development’s land, as well his art studio and a local restaurant, and hopes to attract “young, creative people” to the new property. [AO Newslink]

(more…)

‪Street artists Shepard Fairey, Ron English, Robbie Conal and Kenny Scharf will lend their voices and likenesses to Fox’s ‘The Simpsons’ characters in, “Exit Though the Kwik-E-Mart,” a play on the Banksy’s street-art documentary “Exit Through the Gift Shop.” In the episode airing March 4th, Bart Simpson plasters posters of Homer’s face around Springfield, and Shepard Fairey offers Bart a solo gallery show. [AO Newslink]

(more…)

Street view of Cyprien Gaillard mural (2012). Via Sprueth Magers.

Situated at the top of Culver City’s gallery row where Venice and La Cienega meet is an automotive garage with a new mural of Caspar David Friedrich‘s tombstone epitaph, the work of Berlin-based artist Cyprien Gaillard, commissioned by the Triple A public art project. Next door in a former muffler shop is François Ghebaly Gallery, one of many galleries along this stretch of Los Angeles road, which houses some of the most important gallery spaces in the city and is also one of the most heavily trafficked by commuters.  The outside wall of this former muffler shop-turned-gallery is now the site of Gaillard’s mural, which is the second of eight projects meant to be realized over the next two years by Triple A, a public art project began by Fançois Ghebaly, Emma Gray, Al Moran (co-founder of OHWOW Gallery), Justin Beal, Flora Wiegmann, and Drew Heitzler (Wiegmann and Heitzler also being co-proprietors of Mandrake Bar, the hip Culver City art bar).

(more…)

‪Australian Timothy Potts has been appointed curator of the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles. Fellow director Michael Brand, onetime director at the Getty, has taken a position at Sydney’s Art Gallery of New South Wales. [AO Newslink]

(more…)

‪ James Franco’s “Rabbit Bandini Productions” releases the trailer for the Kalup Linzy series “Melody Set Me Free” [AO Newslink]

(more…)

‪ British Airways, with direction by Tracey Emin, plans to decorate at least eight airplanes with a dove motif for London’s 2012 Olympic Games, in keeping with the Olympic theme of setting doves free, with the designs to debut in April. [AO Newslink]

(more…)

‪Late painter Cy Twombly and his American advisers allegedly evaded $38.8 million in Italian tax on approximately 40 paintings sold from 2005 to 2009. Although Twombly’s eldest son Alessandro was due to receive $150 million in cash via the Cy Twombly Foundation in New York, funds were seized and cannot be released until the legal battles clear [AO Newslink]

(more…)

‪Gerhard Richter Painting trailer is released: “To talk about painting is not only difficult but perhaps pointless too, because you can only express in words what words are capable of expressing.” [AO Newslink]

(more…)

‪‬Jerry Saltz exalts upcoming Cindy Sherman retrospective at MoMA, offering “four pointers to the unconvinced” [AO Newslink]

(more…)

‪President Obama awarded the National Medal of Arts and National Humanities Medal today, with painter Will Barnet and sculptor Martin Puryear among the recipients. [AO Newslink]

(more…)