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 »

Marta Riniker-Radich, The Cartridge Box (2016), all photos via Osman Can Yerebakan for Art Observed

Marta Riniker-Radich’s U.S. solo debut at Swiss Institute opened a few days prior to presidential elections, a note that gives the show an increasingly ominous note in the wake of Donald Trump’s ascendancy on the back of a conservative, militaristic worldview.  Drawing on this culture of perceived oppression and the systems of resistance that stem from their, her works dismantle the safety and innocence of the American home, while problematizing notions of escapism, and the notions of artificiality attached to middle-class domesticity.  Featuring notes from American militia members documenting their testimonials about emergency supply goods, and combining these with a series of artifacts and objects playing on dual uses and pluralities of violence and utilitarianism, Every Home A Fortress Every Heart A Blossom brings the political separatism of these American subcultures to the fore.  “When I opened the box I was like a kid on Christmas morning. I looked over each and every piece checking for defects,” says an anonymous member about a uniform they received.  “I found none.” Read More »

Gina Malek, Transfer (2016), via Magic Beans

Painter Gina Malek’s new show, Underlinings, on view at Magic Beans Gallery in Berlin, is an exercise in essentialism.  The artist’s works, which draw on the fading mechanics of the human body, memory and movement, here take on a range of scenes and figures, each time drawing on juxtapositions of the body and space, and the points of conversation, transition or intermingling that stem from her approach to the canvas.

Gina Malek, Underlinings (Installation View), via Magic Beans    Read More »

Josef Albers, Grey Steps, Grey Scales, Grey Ladders (Exhibition View), via Art Observed

On view at the David Zwirner Gallery, Grey Steps, Grey Scales, Grey Ladders delves into Josef Albers’s life-long exploration of color, form and space, focusing in particular on his works in white, grey and black, and featuring a range of his most acclaimed square paintings, as well as other abstract works from the course of his career.  A highly influential artist in the abstract movements of the early 20th Century, his works, shown in an open conversation, demonstrate the process of creating through rhythm and gradation. Read More »

Thomas Schütte, Bronzefrau I (2000), via Art Observed

Profiling an enigmatic and often irreverent approach to both the human body and sculpture as a medium, Skarstedt has brought a series of works by Thomas Schütte to its Chelsea location.  A continuation of his Frauen series, the show combines a thorough selection of etchings with a small series of sculptures, exploring his craft as both a skilled draughtsman and studied artist in both the exploration and critique of the practice of sculpture, joining together works from the past two decades to draw new historical comparisons and conceptual linkages in the artist’s practice.

Thomas Schütte, Stahlfrau Nr. 4, (1999), via Art Observed

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Troy Brauntuch, Untitled (2016), via Petzel

Currently on view at Petzel Gallery’s Chelsea exhibition space, Texas-based painter Troy Brauntuch has executed a new series of paintings drawing on familiar themes and techniques in the exploration and elaboration of the image itself.  Continuing an interest in the modes of image production, and the networks of meaning these images ultimately engage with, the artist’s ghostly, ephemeral images draw on their own histories, and the shadowy modes of visualization that the artist has long embraced. Read More »