Steven Parrino, Untitled (1991), all images courtesy Patrick Seguin

On-view through November 26^th, 2016, Galerie Patrick Seguin presents Olympia, in collaboration with New York-based gallery and bookstore Karma, one in a series of annual shows hosted by the gallery, entitled Carte Blanche, in which international galleries are invited to organize and curate exhibitions at the Paris space.  Drawing on a wide range of artists’ works on paper, the show features pieces by Wade Guyton, Sigmar Polke, Willem de Kooning, Louise Bourgeois, Pablo Picasso, and more. Read More »

Carmen Herrera, Green and Orange (1958), via Art Observed

Taking over the top floor of the Whitney this fall is Lines of Sight, an exhibition delving into the first thirty years of Cuban-born artist Carmen Herrera’s unique investigations into the color field, minimalist abstraction, and the practice of painting.  On view through 2017, it provides a fitting context for the artist’s ongoing body of work, which now reaches into its seventh decade. Read More »

GCC, Positive Pathways (+) Version II (2016), All images © GCC; Courtesy of the artists and Mitchell-Innes & Nash, NY Photo: Adam Reich

GCC, an art collective tapping on cultural and social implications of change in the Arab Gulf Region, last exhibited in New York in 2014, when MoMA PS1 opened the group’s first American solo exhibition, Achievements in Retrospective, followed by their inclusion in the New Museum exhibition Here and Elsewhere.  The collective, comprised of eight artist-“delegates,” all born or raised in the region, returns to the city for Positive Pathways (+) at Mitchell-Innes & Nash this month, presenting the show’s eponymous sculpture, originally exhibited at the DIS-curated Berlin Biennale this summer, alongside a group of sculptural reliefs created using Thermoforming techniques. Read More »

Gerhard Richter, A.B. Still (1986), final price: $33,987,500, via Sotheby’s

Concluding the last major week of auction sales before the end of a rollercoaster calendar year, Sotheby’s capped an impressively consistent sale of Post-War and Contemporary artworks last night in New York City, a 64-lot outing that saw the auction house continue to upend expectations in a week that has been defined by unexpected records and several marquee auction records.  The sale reached a final tally of $276,560,750, with 4 of 64 works unsold. Read More »

Tetsumi Kudo (Installation View), All images are by Osman Can Yerebakan for Art Observed.

Following three group exhibitions, contextualizing artist Tetsumi Kudo’s oeuvre in conversation with peers such as Paul Thek, Hannah Wilke, and Alina Szapocznikow, Andrea Rosen Gallery is currently presenting the third solo exhibition dedicated to the late Japanese artist.  Bridging his hometown and Europe through the course of his career, Kudo demonstrated a rare artistic vision and intellectual perspective that led his work to be regarded alongside that of Joseph Beuys, Yayoi Kusama, and Mike Kelley, one of the artist’s foremost admirers and an avid supporter of his work in the West.

Tetsumi Kudo, Portrait D’Artiste dans la Crise (1977)

Kudo, heavily influenced by the political turmoil and commercialist phenomena during the post-war era in both the East and the West, began his bird cage sculptures during the mid 1960’s, shortly after moving to Paris, and continued the series until the beginning of the ‘80’s.  Store-bought bird cages, in various sizes and colors, house an ample span of mundane and extraordinary objects and artifacts, each twisted through Kudoo’s uniquely enigmatic perspective and consumed by the intersection of narratives that take place within its barred confines.

Tetsumi Kudo (Installation View)

While Japan’s “anti-art” movement in the 1950’s ushered the artist to rebuff dominant art practicism and to experiment with banal and everyday materials, his tenure in Paris immersed his work in a conversation with the avant-garde experimentalism of the neo-Dada circles, in which he organized and performed happenings that blurred the separation between art and reality.

Tetsumi Kudo, Portrait of Artist in the Crisis (1978)

This same sense of attenuated reality persists here, as his sculptures, meticulously installed on pedestals throughout the exhibition space, pushes an engagement with consumer-grade objects en route to portrayal of socio-political and ideological milestones that shaped our understanding of the 20th century.  Western consumerism collides with perceptions of the body, while the historical introduction of such commercial goods to Japanese society remains a dominant narrative point on the surface in these multi-faceted sculptures.

Nevertheless, the scrutiny of European humanism and its impact on colonialism, war, and social alienation also present themselves, woven through the installation by inclusions of phalluses, bodily decay, and images of degradation, references to the cultural impact of the Vietnam War and a future governed by technological mastery.  These sculptures interpret the past and narrate the future through Kudo’s nuanced scope, encapsulating the dichotomies embedded in the human condition.

Tetsumi Kudo (Installation View)

Tetsumi Kudo is on view at Andrea Rosen Gallery through November 16, 2016.

— O.C. Yerebakan

Related Link:
Andrea Rosen Gallery [Exhibition Page]

Willem de Kooning, Untitled XXV (1977), which sets a new world record at $66,327,500  via Art Observed

New York City’s week of marquee auctions, and its seemingly unpredictable results, continued tonight, as Christie’s concluded its offering in the Post-War and Contemporary markets, an impressively strong and consistent sale that saw 7 of 61 lots going unsold to reach a final tally of $276,972,500. Read More »

Willem de Kooning, Untitled XXV (1977), via Christie’s

As the fall season moves towards December, the last major auction week of the year is set to kick off in New York, with a series of sales set to take place that will offer the last major barometer for the auction market’s health in a turbulent, and often unpredictable, year.  Beginning Monday, a series of both Impressionist/Modern and Contemporary Evening auctions will bring the last set of major works to the auction block in the U.S. before the market prepares for the holiday months.

Andy Warhol, Self-Portrait (Fright-Wig) (1986), via Sotheby’s

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Kerry James Marshall, Better Homes, Better Gardens (1994), all photos via Katerina Paitazoglu for Art Observed

The long-anticipated retrospective of the work of Kerry James Marshall has come to New York, opening its doors this week on an expansive and impressively selected body of works that spans the painter’s wide creative output and varied adventures in the painted form.  Ranging from cogently political abstraction and surrealist figuration through to studied depictions of everyday life or quietly executed self-portraits, the exhibition is a fascinating introduction and elaboration on Marshall’s artistic perspective.

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