Zhang Yu at Pifo, via Art Basel

Opening its doors this past Wednesday at the Hong Kong Convention Center, the Art Basel fair franchise has once again left its mark on the Chinese metropolis, concluding the seventh edition with impressive results and a strong selection of works.  As is usually the case for the fair, impressive sales figures and strong attendance was the norm, signaling the fair’s continued impact on the Asian art circuit, and the broader landscape of the contemporary art market. Read More »

XU ZHEN®, The Glorious (Installation View), via Perrotin Hong Kong

Art Basel Hong Kong is squarely in the center of Asia’s international art scene, a major recurring event that has left its mark as an important touchpoint for artists, collectors and galleries in Asia and the broader Pacific Rim, connecting this already thriving scene with the galleries and artists of the Americas, Europe and Africa.  Tying together a broad range of locales outside the U.S./Europe market orbit, ABHK is an annual look to the East for much of the art world, tracing the region’s influence and contributions to the contemporary art landscape today. The Hong Kong show, held at the Hong Kong Convention and Exhibition Centre as an outcropping of the Art Basel fair franchise, features premier galleries from Asia and beyond, with half of the participating galleries based in Asia and Asia-Pacific. The show provides an in-depth overview of the region’s diversity through both historical material and cutting-edge works by established and emerging artists. Read More »

Zoe Leonard, Survey (Installation View), via Art Observed

It’s difficult to place the work of artist Zoe Leonard in any one box. Not only is she a roving polymath in her creative practices, her pieces frequently move between and through various disciplines and practices simultaneously. She’s known as a photographer and sculptor, yet in other modes her work relies on text and long-form writing, other times twisting these disciplines through the practice of photography. Yet these disciplines rarely remain isolated. Her sculptures present as moments frozen in time, built up elements and objects (including, ironically, large stacks of books), often described as cerebral and subdued, yet always carrying a distinct sense of power and duty that challenges the viewer to move beyond a moment of calm repose or frozen, distilled energy. Read More »

Jan-Ole Schiemann, Kavex 8 (2019), via Kasmin

Now on view at New York space Kasmin Gallery, artist Cologne-based artist Jan-Ole Schiemann is mounting a debut solo exhibition, bringing with him a collection of new paintings that see the artist continuing to revel in both gestural abstraction and the history of 20th-century animation, aspects that combine to imbue his work with a rare sense of kinetic energy. Half-formed, simultaneously disappearing and reappearing shapes suggest that somewhere amidst the lines, there are figures tumbling, colliding, or fighting obscured by clouds of smoke. As a result of Schiemann’s meticulous, layered application of charcoal, oilstick, ink and acrylic. Read More »

William Kentridge, Lexicon Medium Bronze (Cape Silver) (2018), via Marian Goodman

Currently on in New York City Marian Goodman Gallery has tapped artist William Kentridge to present a series of new works in film, drawing and sculpture, uniting materials from three major performance projects that have been in the works over the past two years. The show, Let Us Try for Once, brings together materials from The Head & the Load, a theatrical tour de force co-composed by Philip Miller and Thuthuka Sibisi and recently shown at the New York Armory in December 2018, as well as a celebrated production of Alban Berg’s opera Wozzeck, which Kentridge directed for the Salzburg opera festival in 2017 (and coming to The Metropolitan Opera in 2019-2020), as well as Ursonate, a performance of Kurt Schwitters’ 1932 sound poem of the same title, presented at Performa Biennial New York. Read More »

Angel Otero, Splintered (2019), via Lehmann Maupin

Currently on view at Lehmann Maupin, artist Angel Otero’s Milagros, marks a new trajectory for the artist, a series of recent, large-scale tapestry-like oil paintings that hang entirely free from a stretcher bar and which twist and pull the notion of the composed canvas through a series of rigorous conceptual and formal exercises. Working with the history of painterly abstraction and the fusions of sculptural and painterly form that have wound through this history, the artist’s works draw on a mixture of collage and composition. Read More »

Yukinori Yanagi, Ground Transposition (1987/2019), via Blum & Poe

Currently on view at the Blum & Poe flagship in Los Angeles, the gallery has taken on a particularly compelling and eye-opening investigation of the landscape of Japanese Contemporary Art during the 1980’s and 90’s.  Curated by Mika Yoshitake, Parergon is a striking look at the history and culture of the nation as it experienced a turbulent period of economic boom and bust, and sought to work through the cultural, political and historical traumas of the decades before.   Read More »

Ian Cheng, BOB (Detail), via Gladstone

Currently on view at Gladstone Gallery’s New York City gallery, artist Ian Cheng is giving the world premiere of his new work BOB (Bag of Beliefs), the first of a series of artificial lifeforms created by the artist.  BOB is presented as an evolving, chimeric serpent, twisting and moving on-screen in a manner that sees him both learning from, and failing in, his new digital environment.  Long a devotee of simulations and learning environments, BOB advances Cheng’s use of these modes to focus on one’s capacity to deal with surprise: the subjective difference between expectations and perception. Read More »

Alexis Smith at Garth Greenan, via Art Observed

Marking its 10th anniversary this year, the Independent NY Art Fair has proven itself as something of a special case in the presentation of an art fair.  Smaller in scale and more focused in terms of its gallery selections, the fair’s presentation feels more like a presentation of a series of small gallery shows run side-by-side.  Offering a more nuanced, mellow browsing experience in conjunction with the fair’s invite-only exhibitor structure and immense glass windows, the fair has built a reputation as a boutique event with impressive draw, with this 10th year only driving that appeal home. Read More »