Gilbert & George, The General Jungle or Carrying on Sculpting (Installation View), all images courtesy Lévy Gorvy

Now through November 18, Lévy Gorvy’s London exhibition space is hosting The General Jungle or Carrying on Sculpting, a collection of seminal works by artist duo Gilbert & George. This show is comprised of 23 monumental, multi-panel pieces, one of the first manifestations of Gilbert & George’s ‘Art for All’ manifesto, and a landmark entry in their early collaborations, which began fifty years ago this month. This is the first exhibition in the United Kingdom to feature this body of work, first presented at the Sonnabend Gallery in New York in the early 1970’s. Read More »

Pat Steir, Little Red One (2016), all images via Osman Can Yerebakan for Art Observed

In ancient Greek, the word kairos defined the moment of opportunity to make a decision.  Kairos, which lends its name to New York-based painter Pat Steir’s current exhibition at Lévy Gorvy, encapsulates a Proustian interpretation of time that is subjective and cerebral, as opposed to a sequential grasp. Although they represent binary notions at first sight, chance and precision are two pivotal elements in Steir’s work, and given her decision to name her exhibition after a term associated with philosophy of time, she tends to perfect the balance between these two opposites. Created over the last two years, paintings at Steir’s first exhibition with the gallery after the Upper East Side powerhouse announced representation of her last year. Read More »

Stanley Whitney, Drawings (Installation View), via Art Observed

Lisson Gallery’s second New York location kicked off the fall art season this past week with a striking exhibition of drawings and small-scale works by Stanley Whitney, a charged entry in the season’s landscape of exhibitions that rings a powerful chord against the backdrop of the U.S.’s turbulent and increasingly violent, racially-tinged struggles.  Spread across the walls of the gallery’s small project space, the show is an impressive entry in the artist’s oeuvre, combining his energetic, colorful sensibilities with a more cutting socio-political and critical lens, one that brings his work into tight focus against the backdrop of current events. Read More »

Outside the Grand Palais, all photos via Andrea Nguyen for Art Observed

As Wednesday evening drags into the late night in Paris, the first day of FIAC has concluded, bringing with it a steady stream of sales and projects that once again places the French art fair at the center of the fall exhibition calendar. The city’s marquee art fair, FIAC opened to strong praise from its attendees, and a number of show-stopping works, arranged under the equally striking architecture of the Grand Palais.

FIAC, via Art Observed

Read More »

Pieter Schoolwerth, Privacy Settings #3 (2017), via Miguel Abreu

Returning to the French capital for another year of exhibitions inside the iconic expanses of the Grand Palais, the Foire International Art Contemporain, or FIAC, opens its doors today in Paris.  The fair, which has operated for over 44 years in the city, has undergone several facelifts over the course of its lifetime, with its most recent editions courting a healthy mix of contemporary and modern works alongside more classical and historical modes, making it one of the world’s more ambitiously curated programs.

Marguerite Humeau, Jonny’s Child (OH7B) (2014), via Clearing

Read More »

Trevor Paglen, A Study of Invisible Images (Installation View), via Art Observed

Drawing on the increasingly complex relationship between human relations, technological ascendency and the exercise of power that ultimately serves as a negotiating space between these two forces, Trevor Paglen’s work has repeatedly explored how the modern computer processor is ever more embroiled in the fabric of human decision-making and world-building. Having traveled the globe, and even fired a satellite into space to look down on it from outside its atmospheric confines, Paglen’s work delves into the physical architectures, and often otherworldly effects that the modern state of surveillance and speed renders on human understandings of time, space, and even our own perceptions of identity or self.

Read More »

Elizabeth Orr, House (2017), via Bodega

In the back room of Bodega, a new video by Elizabeth Orr began with one word: “HERE,” a coy move to set the location before her projected video lit up with a full sentence that manages to double back on the grandiosity of its previous line: “There is no spectacle to be revealed.”  This statement, taken in conjunction with the artist’s minimalist sculptures arranged around the front room, sets a terse, self-critical tone for Orr’s new exhibition, Our Hallway is Surrounded, a show that makes much of the act of both creating space, and dispensing with that same space’s contextual aura. Read More »

Thomas Eggerer, Todd (Installation View), all images courtesy the artist and Petzel Gallery

For the artist’s sixth solo exhibition at the gallery, New York’s Petzel Gallery is presenting nine new paintings by Thomas Eggerer, introducing an innovative figuration to the artist’s already established practice in meticulous depictions of the everyday. Each of the three large-scale works, as well as the six smaller canvases feature an elevated street view in which an industrial manhole cover is the focal point. In the larger works, the cool metal lids stand alone, while in the remaining, and arguably more engrossing paintings, they are accompanied by objects and figures that enact situations on and around them. Read More »

Kara Walker, Dredging the Quagmire (Bottomless Pit) (2017), via Art Observed

“How many ways can a person say racism is the real bread and butter of our American mythology, and in how many ways will the racists among our countrymen act out their Turner Diaries race war fantasy combination Nazi Germany and Antebellum South…” poses Kara Walker in the statement for her current exhibition at Sikkema Jenkins.  The artist’s work, returning to the gallery after a lengthy absence, is presented at the height of its power and intensity, here focusing on the repeating narratives and cycles of violence against the black body that have plagued the United States since its birth. Read More »

Amanda Ross-Ho, Untitled Timepiece (Coca-Cola) (2017), via Art Observed

In some regards, size has always mattered to Amanda Ross-Ho. It’s hard to even recall a show of hers in which she hasn’t taken a common object and enlarged it to an uncommon size. In her 2012 show at MOCA’s Pacific Design Center, Teeny Tiny Woman, Ross-Ho even went so far as to create an oversize photo enlarger, underscoring her impressive sense of both scale and formal wit. With several years of practice under her belt since then, however, Ross-Ho’s simple enlargements have seemed to evolve quite considerably, perhaps best exemplified by My Pen is Huge, Ross-Ho’s new exhibition at Mitchell-Innes & Nash, which sees her adding to own work’s discourse by including life size objects alongside her oversized sculptures. Read More »