Kudzanai Violet Hwami at Tyburn for 1:54 Art Fair, via Art Observed

With Frieze London commanding such expansive attention across the European art world each year, the fair’s annual occurrence has opened the door to an increasingly large pool of satellite fairs and supplementary exhibitions, turning the week into a packed series of openings and fairs spread throughout the British capital. This year, Frieze Art Week was no different, as the 1:54 Art Fair and Sunday Art Fair  its doors for another year in the city. Read More »

Francis Bacon, Head with Raised Arm (1955), via Christie’s

The week of auction sales in London concluded Friday evening, as both Phillips and Christie’s held their Contemporary and 20th Century Evening Sales, achieving modest results that did little to bolster a distinctly quiet sale the night prior at Sotheby’s.  For those looking for a strong confirmation of the market’s strength in a turbulent political climate worldwide, the sale offered little in the way of stability, with some top lots failing to find a buyer, while others just managed to sell at estimate.

Adrian Ghenie, The Collector 4 (2009), via Phillips

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Do Ho Suh at Victoria Miro, via Art Observed

On a cloudy Wednesday morning in London’s Regent’s Park, the doors opened on this year’s edition of the Frieze art fair, marking the latest edition of an event that has long billed itself as the premiere at event in the British capital.  This year’s opening continued to show why, as strong sales and an increasingly attentive approach towards curating and showing works made for an immersive and nuanced whole. Read More »

Cy Twombly, Untitled (1962), via Sothebys

After closing out the second day of proceedings across town at Regent’s Park yesterday, collectors and dealers flocked to Sotheby’s London for the first of the week’s Contemporary and Post-War Evening Sales.  Held in conjunction with the cutting edge works on view at Frieze London this week, the sale at Sotheby’s seemed to offer something of a moment of reflection for the contemporary market, looking back at some of the masters of the 20th Century, while also offering buyers a chance to bring them home. Read More »

Francis Bacon, Study of Red Pope 1962. 2nd Version 1971 (1971), via Christie’s

Making its stamp on Frieze auction week in London, the big auction houses are planning a string of major Contemporary and Post-War Evening Sales in the coming weeks, marking the first time the secondary market will be tested in the second half of 2017.  With sales at Christie’s, Sotheby’s and Phillips packed into a pair of evenings in the British capital, the first days of October should offer an interesting look at how the market has continued to respond to turbulent world events, unstable buying patterns, and the demanding pace of the current market schedule.

Andreas Gursky, Los Angeles (1999), via Phillips

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Frieze London, via Art Observed

The flagship event of London’s bustling art week, Frieze London opens this week at Regent’s Park, opening the month of October with one of the fall’s largest art fair events around the globe. Bringing over 160 galleries from around the globe to the fair’s grounds, the fair will turn 15 years old this year, looking back on its run as an increasingly vital part of the international art circuit, and one of the main players in the shifting landscape of the art market’s move towards more temporary, globally distributed events. Read More »

Amy Yao, Foreign Investments (Good Ramen) (2017), via Art Observed

For the last several years, the artists represented by 47 Canal have stood at the forefront of contemporary sculpture. It is easy to see the influence of artists like Josh Kline, Anicka Yi, and Amy Yao when looking at the work of younger artists exhibiting at galleries like Hotel Art Pavilion and Real Fine Arts, and their investigations of materials inextricable from the landscape of modernity makes them a distinctly notable entry in the evolution of New York’s arts history.  Amy Yao, who splits her time between Los Angeles and New York, brings her work back to 47 Canal this month with her new exhibition, Weeds of Indifference. Though Yao has had solo exhibitions in Los Angeles, Oslo, and Paris within the last two years, Weeds… is her first solo show in NYC since 2013. In that interval, Yao’s work has lost none of its bite, but that is not to say that things are still the same.

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Hélio Oiticica, P15 Parangolé Cape 11, I Embody Revolt (P15 Parangolé Capa 11, Eu Incorporo a Revolta) worn by Nildo of Mangueira, 1967. Courtesy of César and Claudio Oiticica, Rio de Janeiro. © César and Claudio Oiticica. Photograph by Claudio Oiticica

One of the most innovative artists and thinkers of the past century, Hélio Oiticica is currently being honored with an in-depth survey that breaks down key moments and artistic endeavors from the artist’s short but impressive career at the Whitney Museum of American Art. From his early days as part of the Neo-Concrete movement in his native Brazil to his time in New York’s East Village during the 1970s’, Oiticica’s inventive practice unfolds in sequences and segments throughout To Organize a Delirium, offering the audience a nuanced and participatory experience that exceeds traditional limits of art viewing experience, a point that strengthens his own conceptual engagement with art itself. Read More »

Pierre Huyghe, After ALife Ahead (2017), via Art Observed

Placing monumental works and nuanced environmental engagements across the city of Münster once each decade, the Skulptur Projekte touched down in the city again this summer,  spreading its wings over the German city for its fifth edition. Offering yet another take on the massively-scaled European art festivals, biennials and other curated events, Münster’s entry in this summer’s calendar is noteworthy in its engagement with the city itself. Embracing the location-sensitive capabilities of sculpture and public art, Skulptur Projekte welcomes meditations on what art might be capable of when inserted into the fabric of daily life, presenting a city where nuanced, conceptually-rich pieces of art can be encountered and experienced at almost any turn. Read More »

Andeas Schulze, Vacanze 15 (2016)

While today painting may often present draw critique as something of an exhausted genre, Cologne-based painter Andreas Schulze‘s surreal arrangements of bodies in space always manage to serve up a convincing protest.  This contrarian approach is perhaps best seen at Team Gallery where Schulze has arranged a series of smoky, slender depictions of beachgoers, bearing the apropos title Vacanze 365. Focusing particularly on torsos and pelvises, the painter captures vacationers sporting different types of beach attire in catchy patterns and bright colors, carrying smoke dispensers emerging as puffy clouds from belt-like stripes on waistlines. The gallery walls—covered in bright blue with traceable painterly gestures—bear an efficiently immersive installation, playing each work’s spry bodies against the soaring walls, with works hanging in untraditional angles in proximities to the ceiling. Read More »