Pat Steir, domini (1990), via Art Observed

Stepping into Dominique Lévy gallery space, one is immediately greeted by the towering columns of paint that make up artist Pat Steir’s waterfall paintings.  Opening her first exhibition in London in twenty-eight years, the artist’s exhibition features fourteen works made over the corresponding decades, from 1990-2011.  Tracing consistent evolutions in her style and hand in conjunction with stylistic divergences and experiments, the survey engages in an ongoing dialogue over her interests in both control and abstraction. Read More »

William Kentridge, The Refusal of Time (2012), all images courtesy the artist via White Chapel Gallery.

Now through January 15th, Whitechapel Gallery in London is presenting a new exhibition of work by William Kentridge, one of South Africa’s pre-eminent artists. William Kentridge: Thick Time features six large-scale works created between 2003 and 2016, spanning a range of mediums and thematics that reflect Kentridge’s intense engagement with theories of time and relativity, the history of colonialism, and revolutionary politics. Read More »

Joel Shapiro, Untitled (1980), All images via Dominique Lévy.

Now through January 7th, Dominique Lévy is hosting the major first survey of early wood reliefs by American sculptor Joel Shapiro, an exhibition that seeks to demonstrate the trajectory and development of Shapiro’s career, while foregrounding his work with pieces from the late 1970’s and ultimately culminating in a recent body of room-sized sculptural assemblages.  The wood reliefs, presented alongside a new site-specific installation, trace a practice constantly in pursuit of uses of color and mass to shape perceptions of space while exploring individual material interactions.  This marks the first time the series of wood reliefs will be comprehensively surveyed.  Read More »

Paul McCarthy, White Snow Dwarf, Dopey (Affected Original) (2016), via Art Observed

Returning to his ongoing fascination with the iconography and commodification of the legend of Snow White, in conjunction with reprisals of varied other series from the past 15 years of his practice, Paul McCarthy’s newest exhibition at Hauser & Wirth is a flurry of both subject matter and materials.  Massive, flaking and chipping sculptures are spread throughout the gallery’s cavernous exhibition space, each one drawing on threads of both the historical and cultural in the American psyche.  Pulling from a wide range of works that define the artist’s sculptural practice (in conversation with his video and film productions), the show offers an expansive exploration of both his sense of humor, and his keen eye for commentary.

Paul McCarthy, Puppet (2005-2008), via Art Observed

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Kai Althoff, Untitled (2015), Courtesy the Cranford Collection, London © Kai Althoff

Situated atop the Museum of Modern Art, Kai Althoff’s current survey exhibition, and then leave me to the common swifts (und dann überlasst mich den Mauerseglern), first presents itself as an elaborate visual pun, turning the sixth floor of the museum into a veritable attic space for the artist’s body of watercolors, drawings and sculpture, each shown alongside other objects in an approach to the work that opens new, and often disturbing, narratives in the progression and aesthetic explorations in the artist’s career.

Kai Althoff, and then leave me to the common swifts (Installation View), Courtesy MoMA, Photograph © Kai Althoff

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Ai Weiwei, Roots and Branches at Lisson (Installation View), via Art Observed

Ai Weiwei has returned to New York City for the first time since the return of his passport from the Chinese government, opening a quartet of exhibitions across its urban expanses that offer a strikingly deep and varied series of perspectives into the artist’s practice over the past few years.  Spread out across both locations of the Mary Boone Gallery, in addition to a show at Lisson, and one at Jeffrey Deitch Projects, the artist’s selection of works presents a nuanced look at his ongoing investment in the defense and articulation of universal human rights, moving from China, to Syria, and beyond.

Ai Weiwei, Roots and Branches at Mary Boone (Installation View), via Art Observed

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Mike Kelley, Balanced by Mass and Personification (2001), all photos via Osman Can Yerebakan for Art Observed

One of the most influential American artists of the past 30 years, Mike Kelley‘s considerable body of work runs a long thread of intricately connected and often curiously diverse modes of working and creating, often creating internal exchanges and conversations that further the artist’s exploration of memory, time, and personal histories.  The late artist’s Memory Ware series has long stood as one of the less explored and understood series from his catalog, even though Kelley continued to make these works until close to his untimely passing in 2012.  Consisting of hundreds of different objects, the series manifests some of Kelley’s most fundamental thematic concerns through a reliance on bizarre fusions of kitsch, often drawing collective and personal memories, American folk art, consumerist tendencies, and pop culture into close proximity. Read More »

Ragnar Kjartansson, Scenes from Western Culture (2015), via Art Observed

Like much of his previous work, artist Ragnar Kjartansson’s latest exhibition at Luhring Augustine explores a variety of idyllic, everyday moments through a variety of mediums, and spread between the gallery’s two exhibition spaces.   The artist’s work on view in Chelsea draws his series Scenes from Western Culture and Architecture and Morality, while the artist’s work in Bushwick presents a new video piece World Light – The Life and Death of an Artist (2015).  Through an examination of broad themes and varied conceptual focuses, the exhibition draws on the artist’s ongoing interest in literature and pop culture, and their abilities to explore sensations of tranquility, joy and loss.

Ragnar Kjartansson, Architecture and Morality (2016), via Art Observed

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John Baldessari, Pollock/Benton: Same (2016), via Art Observed

For the past several years, artist John Baldessari has continued to mine a particular mode of textual and graphic interrelations.  Combining disparate systems of images, texts and manipulations on the surface of the work (all of which have become hallmarks of his approach respectively), his images in recent years have taken on a sense of theme and variation, exploring the varied interpretive contexts that seem to emerge out of his simple juxtapositions of form and language.  This almost procedural approach to the image continues in his most recent body of works, currently on view at Marian Goodman in New York.

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Salvatore Scarpitta, Untitled (1958), via Art Observed

The life and work of Salvatore Scarpitta is defined by the artist’s meandering relationships with his dual homelands.  Originally born in the United States, the artist would gain his education in Italy before fleeing the country’s fascist uprising during World War II, later returning after serving in the U.S. Navy’s “monuments men” project, which labored to capture and return looted art and artifacts to their rightful owners.  Remaining in Italy for several years after the war, he would pioneer his own brand of abstraction and conceptually-charged minimalism before returning to the States in 1958.   Read More »