Al Taylor, Breakman (1978), via Art Observed

Artist Al Taylor’s body of works is recognized in particular for its swirling accumulations of material, assemblages of plexiglass, hula hoops, broomsticks, drips of paint and other contents built into self-contained systems.  Yet the artist’s work in this mode emerged from a prior decade dedicated almost exclusively to painting, where many of Taylor’s formal interests and approaches to space first began to develop.  Explored through a range of early canvases dated from 1971 to 1980, David Zwirner’s current exhibition at 537 West 20th Street in New York offers an intriguing entry into the artist’s early canon. Read More »

Sue Williams, Chicken Leg in Yellow (2017), via 303 Gallery

Currently on view at 303 Gallery, Sue Williams has brought a new body of paintings continuing her exploration of history and memory through the abstraction of both form and the painterly canon.  The exhibition, devoted to a handful of paintings and collages that trace the artist’s precise, and often humorously incisive approach to the American past, in conjunction with an incisive look at its impact on the female body.   Read More »

Jack Whitten, Black Monolith X, Birth of Muhammad Ali (2016), images via Osman Can Yerebakan for Art Observed

Artist Jack Whitten has opened an exhibition of new work in New York this spring at Hauser & Wirth, his first show with the gallery since joining its roster last year.  Presenting pieces from the last two years of practice, Whitten’s work, on view at the gallery’s temporary 22nd Street location, continues his exploration of the canvas as a site for engagement with the material consistency and visual expressivity of paint in a manner that often eludes easy classification as abstraction or minimalist technique.

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Joe Bradley, Out Joy (2017), via Art Observed

Currently on at Gagosian Beverly Hills, artist Joe Bradley is presenting a body of new works, continuing the artist’s complex and occasionally irreverent visual language through a wide range of formats and materials.  Marking the gallery’s most recent entry in its annual Oscars Weekend exhibition series, the exhibition is the artist’s first solo show with the gallery in Los Angeles, a fitting introduction to his work that draws widely from his recent output.

Joe Bradley, Eric’s Hair (Installation View), via Art Observed

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Ryan McGinley, Dash (Manhattan Bridge) (2000), via Team Gallery

Over nearly two decades, photographer Ryan McGinley has explored the deep emotional character and vivid energy of American youth, capturing its subcultures, heroes and creative communities in moments of joy and exuberance, desire and rebellion.  This long engagement with the broad cultural underground of the United States has seen the artist build a striking and diverse oeuvre, one which receives a well-deserved reflection in the artist’s most recent show at Team Gallery, Early, a survey of the artist’s work between 1999 and 2003.

Ryan McGinley, Early (Installation View), via Team Gallery

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August Sander, Untitled (Group for Sherrie Levine Composed by Gerd Sander in 2012), all photos by Osman Can Yerebakan for Art Observed

Currently occupying the top floors at Hauser & Wirth’s temporary 22nd Street space, Serialities provides the viewer with an ample range of works adopting visual repetition in photography, sculpture, and drawing as a manifestation and elaboration of their conceptual and narrative crux.  Organized with French art dealer Oliver Renaud-Clément, the exhibition finds its source of inspiration in August Sander’s decades-spanning photography project People of the 20th Century, a massive collection of 600 photographs in which Sanders chronicled German daily life through images of individuals of his home country between the 1910’s and the beginning of the 1950’s.  While Sanders sub-categorized his collection based on occupation or social class, People Who Came to My Door, one of his more personal and intimate groupings, anchor this group exhibition.  Through Sanders’s mellow, balanced approach to his subjects, he captures poses of deliberation and vulnerability, exposing their inner selves for the artist’s lens and viewer’s eyes.  His interest in depicting various social and economic groups in Germany before and after World War II delivers an inquisitive social landscape overall. Read More »

Jimmie Durham, At The Center of the World (Installation View), via Art Observed

For nearly fifty years, artist Jimmie Durham has worked at a unique junction of material and focus, exploring the modern world through his haphazard material sensibility.  Compiling works from broken planks of wood, reclaimed oil drums, signs, blown glass and other objects, the artist’s assemblages delve into the modern landscape, repositioning one’s perspective on the landscape of modernity, and the often challenging disconnects between human progress and the day to day world.  Currently presenting a survey of his work at the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles, the artist gives the viewer a moment to catch up to the times, bringing together a range of interests in history and politics that constantly undergird his approach to his work.

Jimmie Durham, Homage to David Hammons (1997), via Art Observed

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