Frieze London, via Art Observed

Frieze London returns to Regent’s Park this week, bringing with it its reputation for presenting the best of international contemporary art by emerging and established artists, and its signature program of dynamic commissions, talks and films, all unified under the fair’s bespoke tent design at the heart of the British capital.  Opening Wednesday, the fair will offer a unique look at the state of the British art market, and that of the EU more broadly, while providing a platform for artists in Europe and abroad to explore and express new concepts and ideas in art practice. Read More »

Jeff Koons, Cracked Egg (Blue) (1994-2006), via Christie’s

With the opening of the doors for this year’s edition of Frieze London, the opening notes of the fall auction season can’t be far behind.  This week, the major auction houses will get their chance to make a mark on the fall calendar, launching a series of Post-War and Contemporary Evening Sales that will see a number of marquee works trade hands, and offer a first perspective on just how the auction houses are responding to a particularly turbulent global political picture.  As London braces for an increasingly cloudy Brexit outlook, the market conditions in the capital could definitely be better, but tricky economics have been bucked by eager buyers in the past, and the series of works on hand this year could in fact do well to staunch the bleeding caused by a border between the UK and EU that seems to be getting harder by the minute.   Read More »

Danny Lyon, Wanderer (still) (2017), via Gavin Brown’s

In 1970, photographer and filmmaker Danny Lyon left his home in New York City, and moved out to the small village of Llanito, New Mexico, in the Rio Grande Valley, north of Albuquerque. Shortly after arriving, he began making photographs and films of his neighbors, their children, and the local labor force, all undocumented workers from Mexico. Years later, Lyon is still working in the regions of New Mexico and Arizona, exploring the tightly-knit communities of migrant laborers and their families from a directly engaged perspective.   Read More »

Antoine Catala, Puzzle Piece 1 (2017), via Marlborough Contemporary

Currently on at Marlborough Contemporary’s newest location in London, artist Antoine Catala’s new work  brings together both new and existing works to form a kinetic installation, exploring emojis and text messages and the effects of new communication technologies on society.  Catala, whose work is invested in the intriguing cultural effects and aesthetic possibilities of the new language and modes of meaning that have emerged from widespread digital communication technologies, here orchestrates an ever-evolving, uniquely arranged body of works that change and move in the same way that language itself seems to online.

Antoine Catala, I Am Here For You (Sock Orange) (2018), via Marlborough Contemporary

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B. Wurtz, Octave (2018), via Metro Pictures

Over the past few decades, B. Wurtz’s work has mined a striking juxtaposition of materials and symbols, mixing together domestic objects, quotidian references and various spatial interruptions designed to work at the fabric of the object itself.  This month, the artist has returned to Metro Pictures for a show of new works, continuing this mode of practice on an engaging scale. Read More »

Installation view. All images via Gagosian Gallery.

In Urs Fischer’s latest exhibition at Gagosian’s Davies street gallery in London, the artist has created a life-sized wax model of Russian collector Dasha Zhukova. This is the next installment in a series made by the artist in which art-world figures are converted into giant candles and then burned slowly, until they are reduced to wax drippings. Previously making works of artists Julian Schnabel and Rudolf Stingel, and dealer Bruno Bischofsberger. Though Zhukova requested she be the next art figure turned wax candle, Fischer hesitated because, up until this point, he has only portrayed men. Ultimately, however, on Monday, September 10^th, the wick at the top of the wax figure of Dasha Zhukova’s head was lit, and will continue to burn until the sculpture is reduced to a puddle of melted wax, coinciding with the show’s closing on November 3^rd. Read More »

Urs Fischer, PLAY with Choreography by Madeline Hollander (Installation View), via Art Observed

Over the past several years, few artists have moved so effortlessly across media and concepts like Urs Fischer.  From kaleidoscopic, cartoonish abstractions to surreal sculptural assemblages on to patient, gradual evolutions of form and space on canvas, his work perhaps best characterized by its willingness to never stay in one place for too long.  This relentless invention finds a new outlet in PLAY, a new sculptural work at Gagosian Gallery in New York, created in collaboration with Madeline Hollander. Read More »

NY Art Book Fair, via At Observed

As the fall equinox comes and goes, the New York Art Book Fair has once again come to New York City, opening its doors at MoMA PS1 for the thirteenth annual edition of what has become one of the city’s most unique and energetic exhibitions of young artists, publishers, writers and thinkers, each representing a small part of the national and international art publishing community.  Free and open to the public, the event draws more than 35,000 individuals including book lovers, collectors, artists, and art world professionals each year.  Read More »

Ellen Berkenblit, Untitled (2018), via Anton Kern

The Clock Unlocked is the first exhibition to spanning over four decades in the life and work of New York painter Ellen Berkenblit, on now at Anton Kern.  Running through a range of expressive and often enigmatic arrangements, the exhibition presents a roving and exploratory walk through Berkenblit’s practice, tracing evolutions and ongoing interests through any number of touchstones and points of entry.  Arranged instinctually and without chronology, The Clock Unlocked is just that, a diary of paintings and drawings reveals the artist’s idiosyncratic ‘alphabet’— the core of her visual language presented in the same idiosyncratic attitude towards time and space. Read More »

Cy Twombly, Untitled (1967), via Levy Gorvy

If you follow Brett Gorvy on Instagram, it’s immediately apparent that the Lévy Gorvy partner is a master of narrative, spinning long, anecdotal tomes around the images and artworks that he posts in his feed.  Gorvy’s vision and passion for art, and for the stories that surround each of the works that passes through his lens, is almost unparalleled anywhere in the art world, and his move in the past few years towards a gallery position should come as no surprise.  Yet Gorvy has plenty more tricks up his sleeve, and his most recent venture, a curated exhibition at his gallery, showcases just how deep his care and skill towards his profession go. Read More »