Mike Kelley, Kandors (Installation View), via Venus Over Manhattan

Venus Over Manhattan is currently presenting a curated review of Mike Kelley’s work in the Kandor series this month, exploring the artist’s work and research into the comic book mythology of Superman, the implications of his origin story, and the broader cultural and psychological frameworks that this story works within and through.  Selecting four of the artist’s works in the series, the show takes a meditative, focused perspective on Kelley’s expansive body of work. Read More »

Liz Glynn, Untitled (after Balzac, with Burgher) (2014), via Art Observed

Spread across two rooms at Paula Cooper’s 21st Street exhibition space, artist Liz Glynn has installed an enigmatic series of sculptures, ranging in form and scale while playing on distinct threads of classical art history, and on the mechanical processes underlying these works.  Continuing a thread of the artist’s practice drawing on critical examinations of the art object, its historical contexts, and the aura conferred on it as a result, the exhibition is a striking, and occasionally comical, examination of function and form in both modern and historical practice. Read More »

Zoe Barcza, Fidelio (2016), via Art Observed

Team Gallery has opened 2017 with a commanding group exhibition, The Love Object, a show curated by Tom Brewer that draws on the writings of Roland Barthes to frame a body of works exploring love and the act of love through a more objective lens, delving into relations of bodies, texts and language as a mode of investigating not only the state of emotional attraction, but equally the frameworks we use to understand these forms. Read More »

Omer Fast, Still from August (2016), All images via Martin-Gropius-Bau.

Now through March 12th, the Martin-Gropius Bau presents the first large solo exhibition of the work of Omer Fast, compiling seven of the artist’s projects from the course of his career, including CNN Concatenated (2000), Looking Pretty for God (after G.W.) (2008), 5000 Feet is the Best (2011), Continuity (2012), Everything that Rises Must Converge (2013), Spring (2016), and a new piece entitled August (2016).  Fast’s art straddles the border between fiction and fact, probing the concept of reality created by one’s own personal narratives versus that created by media or collective narratives, often allowing the two poles to co-mingle and blur together. Read More »

Anthony Caro, Terminus (2013), via Art Observed

In the early years of his career, Anthony Caro worked on a series of twisting, enigmatic depictions of human and animal figures, works that owed much to the spatial interrogations of Picasso and the broader canon of 20th Century European abstraction.  The works are impressive in their understanding of the gestural and conceptual operations of the era’s avant-garde, but for Caro’s career, served in part as a starting point for his own engagement with space, not only on paper or canvas, but in three dimensions.  This engagement with the dual acts of perception and depiction, sight and operation, takes center stage at Mitchell-Innes & Nash this month, as the late artist’s final sculptures are shown alongside some of his first drawings and paintings, a rare opportunity to appreciate the range of evolution the artist reached during the course of his prolific career.

Anthony Caro, First Drawings Last Sculptures (Installation View), via Art Observed  Read More »

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 »