Olafur Eliasson at Tanya Bonakdar, via Art Observed

As the weather continues to heat up in New York City, galleries from around the globe have descended once again onto Randall’s Island in the northern reaches of the city, bringing scores of new works for the sixth edition of Frieze’s New York fair.  Marking the first week of an extremely busy month that sees dealers, collectors and the rest of the art world split between New York and Venice, the fair opened today as a first breath in a bustling series of events that nevertheless saw strong attendance and strong interest for the works on hand, with many dealers using the fair as an opportunity to capitalize on their artist’s presence at major exhibitions in the U.S., Italy, and elsewhere.

Thomas Kovachevich, Cool T (1981), via Callicoon Fine Arts

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Ernesto Burgos, Mancha (2017), all images via Kate Werble Gallery

Artist Ernesto Burgos is presenting seven new pieces for his third solo show with Kate Werble Gallery up through May 6th.  For the past five years, Burgos has continued to make organic, sculptural forms from fiberglass, which he then paints over using a range of materials including spray paint, charcoal, oil stick and lacquer, embellishing his pieces with an additional layer of gestural mark-making.  Here, Burgos continues his investigation of form and material while experimenting with the size and presentation of his work.
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Sophie Calle, Here Lie the Secrets of the Visitors of Green-Wood Cemetery (Installation View), via Lindsay LeBoyer for Art Observed

Sophie Calle’s work has long dealt with the shadows and specters of intimacy, delving into spaces and sites where the artist’s active engagement with both her subjects and viewers turns the corner from artistic interaction to less easily defined forms.  It’s a messy sense of shared space and time, one which the artist takes great care to reflect both her own engagement and the varied perceptions of her participants in equal measure, and one which feels all the more delicate and immediate as a result.  Read More »

Frieze New York, via Frieze

As the art world gears up for another busy month in both the U.S. and Europe, the Frieze New York art fair is preparing to touch down once again on Randall’s Island, just off the coastline of Manhattan.  The fair, which turns six this year, is once again returning its signature program of forward-thinking art and on-site projects that stands as one of the final market events before the art world moves into its slower summer months.

Sven Loven, OL Rebellion (2017), via Jan Kaps Read More »

Teresita Fernandez, Fire (America) (Installation View), via Art Observed

Teresita Fernández has long explored the intertwined relationships of humanity, natural phenomena, and the resulting expanses of landscape that emerge from the continued engagement of humanity with the world around us.  Her pieces mix creative inquiry with studied engagements with the environment.  “Landscape is about the history of people in places and how we position ourselves within those spaces,” she writes, emphasizing the human aspect of viewing and seeking to understand the spaces outside modern civilization in its relation to mankind.  This ongoing conceptual project takes on new wrinkles and points of entry in Fire (America), a show of new works currently on view at Lehmann Maupin’s downtown location this month. Read More »

Adrián Villar Rojas, The Theater of Disappearance (2017), via Art Observed

Spread across the rooftop garden at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Adrián Villar Rojas has brought a body of new sculptures to kick off this season’s Rooftop Commission project, part of an ongoing series inviting contemporary artists to create large-scale sculptural works on the concrete patio above the institution’s storied halls.  Drawing from the formal language of with the Met’s own holdings, Villar Rojas’s work joins previous installations by Cornelia Parker, Pierre Huyghe and Dan Graham, among others, exploring the museum’s site and history against the New York skyline. Read More »

Cy Twombly, (Installation View), via Art Observed

The Centre Pompidou’s unique architectural layout gives itself over to the work of Cy Twombly this spring, spreading the artist’s work on a line of sight that parallels his pieces with the expansive cityscape of the French capital in Gallery 1.  The expansive retrospective, which has already earned major plaudits, unfolds gradually against this backdrop, offering a bold exploration of the artist’s impressive and influential canon.  The comprehensive collection of paintings, sculptures and photographs spans Twombly’s full career, highlighting his wide breadth of artistic styles, media and subject matter, while exploring the evolution and elaboration of his craft over the course of his career.

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Marianne Vitale, Fat City (Installation View), via CFA

Now through April 22, the Contemporary Fine Arts Gallery in Berlin presents Fat City, a show of works by New York-based artist Marianne Vitale.  For her second exhibition at CFA, Vitale has constructed a series of sculptures that reflect critically and ironically upon American identity, industry, and the concept of the American Dream.  The title of the exhibition takes its name from a 1969 Leonard Gardner novel, in which the protagonist, an alcoholic and semi-retired boxer, drifts down the streets of Stockton, California encountering the melancholy sights of American progress along the way.  In Vitale’s work, symbols of a particularly nostalgic America (such as boxing and steel) appear in the gallery, and speak to the fictional, narrative quality of this national identity.  Read More »

Jeremy Moon, Signals (1967), via Art Observed

Artist Jeremy Moon had worked for a little over a decade when his life was tragically cut short by a motorcycle accident in 1973.  Yet the artist’s work during this short period, the subject of an exhibition at Luhring Augustine’s Bushwick location this month, offers a striking fusion of the era’s painterly and conceptual thematics, combining serialism, minimalism, shaped-canvas painting, colorfield painting and abstraction into a colorful and often commanding body of work.  The gallery, which recently announced its representation of Moon’s estate, presents an introduction of a practice that stands out for both its stylish fusion of techniques with a precise sense of both critical discourse and practiced technique. Read More »