Katharina Grosse, Untitled (2016), via Art Observed

Opening her first exhibition with Gagosian since announcing her representation by the gallery last year, Katharina Grosse has brought a swirling, nuanced body of new works to the gallery’s 24th Street location in Chelsea this month, documenting her enigmatic approach to the painted canvas through a variety of approaches and forms.  Allowing varied layers and lines to intersect, overlap and combine, the artist’s gestural techniques, in conversation with her use of various technologies in the rendering of the canvas, create densely packed spaces of visual information.

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Anselm Kiefer, Walhalla (1992 – 2016), via White Cube

Walhalla, Anselm Kiefer’s latest exhibition at White Cube Gallery in Bermondsey, is a dark, thrilling, and sinister rendering of war and destruction. The show’s title, drawn from Norse mythology, and referring to the final resting place of slain heroes as they were received by King Odin, is scribbled in charcoal above the entrance. “Walhalla” or “final place of rest” is also the title of a neoclassical hall commissioned by Bavaria’s King Ludwig I in 1842, built to honor men of great repute.  Kiefer, for his part, honors not just historical figures, but found objects in tandem, marrying unreality with the show’s surreal juxtapositions: a bed sinks under the weight of a winged boulder; a lightening bolt strikes a bullet-hold wheelchair; a spiral staircase, adorned with rusted dresses, leads to an ambiguous destination.  Notions of mythology and reality are interwoven to provide an intriguing, albeit challenging, spectacle to behold. Read More »

Richard Serra, NJ-2 (2016), via Art Observed

Richard Serra’s works are nothing if not an experience; curving, twisting forms that wind the viewer through space, while taking an active hand on shaping the space itself.   Throughout the artist’s career, he has continued to create works that challenge conventional understanding of form, and re-conceptualize notions of gravity in play with his objects.  Working within this familiar domain, Serra is currently presenting three unique, large-scale steel sculptures at Gagosian Britannia Street, London. On view through March 10th, 2017 his new works highlight his mastery of material, and his unique ability to continually pursue a sense of creative vitality.  In some sense, his works here: NJ-2 (previously on view in New York), Rounds: Equal Weight, Unequal Measure, and Rotate, exist as portals of some sort, gateways into a repositioned experience of space, and the act of viewing work within a given series of physical constraints. Read More »

Lucio Fontana, Concetto Spaziale, Attesa (1964-1965), via Cardi Gallery

The return of Mexico City’s increasingly vital art week this February signals the first wave of 2017’s major fair events, as much of the world’s contemporary art world converges on the sprawling Mexican capital.  Centered around the large-scale Zona Maco fair and its smaller, younger sister fair Material at the Expo Reforma, the week offers a wide range of events and openings accompanying the market-focused proceedings. Read More »

Mark Leckey, The Universal Addressability of Dumb Things (2013), via Art Observed

British artist Mark Leckey has brought a dense, timely exhibition to bear on the second and third floors of MoMA PS1 this month, as the artist’s first comprehensive U.S. survey brings a range of perspectives on the pace and content of a digitized life.  Questioning and playfully subverting the varied symbolic systems and technological structures that facilitate the landscape of modern life, Leckey’s exhibition is a fitting opening note of 2017, challenging hierarchies of power and image-making in a time when the consistency and reliability of information has become an increasingly troubled subject.

Mark Leckey, GreenScreenRefrigerator (2008-2016), via Art Observed

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Henry Moore, Warrior with Shield (1953—1954), all images courtesy Hauser & Wirth

Taking a historically nuanced approach towards the vastly influential career of British sculptor Henry Moore, Hauser & Wirth is currently presenting an exhibition of early works on paper by the artist.  Exploring the artist’s graphic practice in the years directly following the end of WWII, the exhibition traces Moore’s ongoing engagement with the world of literature, and his engagement with the broader artistic spheres as he continued to hone and develop his practice.  Organized by the Henry Moore Foundation and curated by the artist’s daughter, Mary, the exhibition traces Moore’s impressive creative spirit, and the ever-shifting craft of an artist continuing to work through wartime. Read More »

Miguel Ángel Cárdenas, Green Couple (1966), via Kelly Lee for Art Observed

Spanning a wide range of pieces, including paintings, video, drawing and assemblages by the Colombian-Dutch artist Miguel Ángel Cárdenas, Andrea Rosen’s current exhibition offers a concise examination of the artist’s formal evolution and shifting compositional interests.  Born and raised in Colombia, the artist moved to Amsterdam during the early 1960’s, offering his own interpretation of the threads of pop and conceptual practice dominating the conversations of European practice during the era.   Read More »

Miles Coolidge, Coal Seam, Bergwerk Prosper-Haniel #3 (2013), via Peter Blum

A pairing of large photo works of coal mine walls with smaller photochemical pieces, Peter Blum’s exhibition of works by Miles Coolidge reinvigorates a dialogue around 20th century inquiries into chemistry, art production, and process imagery, presenting shared sensations of something physically visceral, all realized via inkjet pigment or liquid chemicals, realized in a manner evoking the sublime. Read More »

Jane Freilicher, Window (2011), via Art Observed

The city of New York has always served as a grand subject for artists, its towering skyline spreading its shadow over the Hudson and the minds of its resident artists.  At Derek Eller Gallery this month, three of these artists are the subject of an exhibition examining this same impact on their respective practices, framed in particular by the meditative oil paintings of Jane Freilicher.  The artist is joined by Daniel Heidkamp and Mira Dancy, both of whom offer their own interpretations of modern life, both in the city, and beyond.   Read More »

Hannah van Bart, Untitled (2016), via Art Observed

Hannah van Bart’s works serve as particularly intricate visual experiences, often twisting interior and exterior architectural forms around the human body (frequently female), presenting the human figure in a manner that subverts the canvas’s illusions of depth, and the human brain’s understanding of flat surfaces.  Her paintings, presented at Marianne Boesky this month, present themselves as something of a variation on theme as a result, allowing the viewer to trace the artist’s varied explorations of her subjects, and their varied relationships to the world around them.

Hannah van Bart, Untitled (2016), via Art Observed

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