Keith Sonnier, Chila (2016), via Art Observed

Continuing his work with Pace Gallery, Keith Sonnier has brought a series of both new and historical works to the gallery’s uptown exhibition space.  His fourth solo show with Pace, Ebo River and Early Works features a range of works pieces by the artist, tracing his continued use of light as a central medium. Sonnier, who works in Bridgehampton, has worked with neon and industrial materials for more than forty-five years, and brings a selection of his works sharing themes of movement and space to the gallery walls.

Keith Sonnier, Lit Circle Red with Etched Glass (1968), via Art Observed

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Stan VanDerBeek, Movie Mural (1968), via Art Observed

If there’s one distinct argument coming out of the Whitney’s expansive exhibition Dreamlands: Immersive Cinema and Art, it’s a reinforcement of the expression “the story’s in the telling.”  Drawing on a wide range of artists and collectives practicing in the late 20th Century and early 21st, the exhibition takes a decidedly narrative bent on increasingly pervasive communication technologies, and the cultural effects that these forms have left both on human interaction at large, and the art world itself.

Hito Steyerl, Factory of the Sun (2015), via Art Observed

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Ken Price, McLean (2004), all photos via Hauser & Wirth

Spanning the range of Ken Price’s career and formal interests in equal measure, Hauser & Wirth London is currently dedicating an expansive show to the American artist, from his early work in California on through a series of cups, vases and abstracted forms that underscore his relentless formal invention.  Shown in conjunction with the artist’s famously comical, graphic watercolor works, the show is an impressively deep survey of Price’s work and process.

Ken Price, Untitled (1986)

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Philip Guston, Alone (1971), all images via Osman Can Yerebakan for Art Observed

On view at Hauser & Wirth’s temporary 22nd street location, Laughter in the Dark compiles one hundred and eighty pieces created by artist Philip Guston between 1971 and 1975.  Working feverishly at his Woodstock studio in response to the highly contentious, corruption-filled presidency of Richard Nixon, the artist’s work carries exceeding resonance in the post-election landscape of American politics.  Opening just days before Donald Trump took the presidency, the show traces several connections and common threads between Guston’s era and our own, and offers a glimpse at how art and humor may sustain a nation struggling once again with its sense of identity. Read More »

Charles Long, SendingLadyMotherFrame1 (2016), courtesy the Artist and Tanya Bonakdar

Filling the ground floor exhibition space at Tanya Bonakdar with a series of six small-scale sculptures, artist Charles Long returns to the Chelsea gallery for their eleventh exhibition together.  Drawing delicate exchanges of space and form through Long’s careful selection of elements, the show offers a playful, intuitive exploration of sculptural technique, and the conventions that place these objects on view to the public. Read More »

Jean Tinguely, Ballet des pauvres (1961), all photos via Besiana Vathi for Art Observed

One of the pioneering artists in the concept of kinetics and movement in their works, Jean Tinguely is the subject of an expansive retrospective, Machine Spectacle, currently on view at Amsterdam’s Stedelijk Museum, charting the artist’s creative trajectory and body of work, and highlighting his fascination with movement and formal progression as the focus, rather than the means of his practice.  Using movement and change as modes of critical inquiry, the works on view underscore Tinguely’s understanding of the modern condition, examining capitalist spectacle and modern culture in conjunction with his work’s internal series of aesthetic decisions.

Jean Tinguely, Le Cyclop РLa T̻te, collaboration with Niki de Saint Phalle (1986)

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Michelle Grabner, Untitled (2016), via Art Observed

Artist Michelle Grabner has work on view at James Cohan Gallery in Chelsea this month, continuing the artist’s explorations of intersections between physical and social contexts for her chosen materials, and the resulting conversations between the contexts of fine art and the artist’s own life and practice. Read More »

John Currin, Newspaper Couple (2016), via Sadie Coles

Artist John Currin returns to the traditional forms of the marriage portrait for a new exhibition this month at Sadie Coles’s Davies Street exhibition space, bringing his uniquely vivd painterly techniques and often wry sense of humor to bear on a series of five new canvases.  Drawing on Currin’s long study of historical forms and context, the show continues the artist’s simultaneous study and subversion of the act of portraiture. Read More »

Wade Guyton, Untitled (2015), via Petzel

Marking an expansion and elaboration of his ongoing engagement with the materiality and phenomenology of digital media formats, Wade Guyton is presenting a series of inkjet printer-based works from late last year at Petzel Gallery this month.  Comprised of scanned and reprinted pages from the New York Times, Guyton’s body of new works reflects on both the commodity value and disposability of both images and their technologies in the modern landscape.   Read More »

Andy Warhol, Knives (1981-82), All images are by Osman Can Yerebakan for Art Observed

Nahmad Contemporary is currently presenting an impressive three-person exhibition at its Madison Ave exhibition space, contextualizing the work of both Christopher Wool and Wade Guyton through the artistic lens of Andy Warhol, making the latter artist’s impact all the more apparent in the work of the former two.  Combining the appropriation of existing imagery and the borrowed aesthetics of mainstream commercial imagery with a certain sense of spare visual arrangement, the show is a striking visual tour de force, connecting diverse focal points and concepts over a shared sense of composition and technique, especially in the sense of the gallery space as a transformational context. Read More »