Kehinde Wiley, Arms of Hugo von Hohenlanderberg as Bishop of Constance with Angel Supporters (2014)

The Brooklyn Museum is hosting a mid-career retrospective of Kehinde Wiley, the L.A.-born and New York-based artist known for his juxtapositions of contemporary youth through the lens of a classical notion of aesthetic. Wiley’s mostly street-cast models, sporting untouched urban attires, replace the highly familiar figures of classic European paintings that generally exclude people of color.  Wiley consequently redeems what is missing from the canon of Western art in his intricately detailed oils on canvas, yet pays homage to Old Masters such as Velásquez or Ingres. Maintaining some distinct elements such as outfits and posture, his models, mostly young males of African descent, do not simply recreate what was already done centuries ago, but also reclaim a collectively missing part of their history. (more…)

A crane crashed onto the roof of the Dallas Museum of Art this week, just missing a Mark Di Suvero sculpture atop the institution. The south end of the space are currently closed for repairs, while the rest of the building remains open. (more…)

Ryder Ripps, Alone Together (Installation View), via Art Observed

The New York-based artist and designer Ryder Ripps capped his first solo gallery show with Postmasters earlier this year, and has spent the past two months in residency at the Red Bull Studios, where his current show, Alone Together, has turned the space into a self-reflexive digital laboratory, complete with test subjects, flickering hardware, and its own, occasionally fractured ideologies. (more…)

Artist Cao Fei is interviewed in the New York Times today, underlining her work in recent years, and her move to Beijing from Guangzhou in 2006.  “In the beginning I felt like I couldn’t connect to the city,” she says.  “A lot of artists from southern China have that feeling when they come here. Take, for example, my husband, who is a Singaporean artist. For him to come here, the whole history and context is different. It’s not that easy.” (more…)

Curator Piper Marshall is profiled in W Magazine this week, as she begins her run of exhibitions in conjunction with Mary Boone Gallery, and documents her ongoing focus on female artists.  “I love female artists so much that someone recently called me an ‘international womanizer,’” Marshall jokes. (more…)

Karl Holmqvist, Here’s Good Looking @U Kid (Installation View), via Art Observed

The current exhibition at Gavin Brown’s West Village exhibition space is abrasive, to say the least.  Focused around the life and work of Karl Holmqvist, the three room exhibition is adorned with the artist’s goading vitriol towards New York real estate, gay culture, social media, the art world “star machine,” and what seems to be anything else that crosses his mind, combined with immense, industrial sculptures composed from the letters in words like “Fuck,” “Punk” and “Like.” (more…)

An article in The Economist this week revisits the frequently noted boom in the art market, taking an extended perspective on the practices of private sales, institutional investment and consulting over the past thirty years.  “People buy art when they’re confident about their future wealth,” says economist Clare McAndrew. (more…)

Anish Kapoor has contributed to Artforum’s “500 Words” section this week, describing his recent work with the pigment Vantablack, and its capabilities for absorbing light to create a sense of infinite depth on a flat surface.  “I’m absolutely sure that to make new art, you have to make new space,” he writes.  “Malevich’s black square doesn’t just make a proposition about non-images or black as an image; it suggests that space works in a different way than previously conceived.” (more…)

An article this week in the Financial Times forecasts a “grim” outlook for UK Museums in the face of harsh budget cuts and austerity measures.  Those in the field note that while museums seem to be at a stronger state than ever within the British Nation, operational budget cuts threaten to hamper continued development and harm future plans.  “Museums are ironically better than ever before, better presented, better run and in better condition,” says  Stephen Deuchar, chief executive of the Art Fund.  “It’s just at the point where we ought to be reaping all the benefit from that investment that revenue funding is being cut back at a worrying pace.” (more…)

Rudolf Stingel, (Installation View), all images courtesy Gagosian Hong Kong

On view at Gagosian Hong Kong is an exhibition of recent paintings by Rudolf Stingel, representing the Italian artist’s first major exhibition of work in Asia. Exploring the nature of memory and the relationship between artwork and artist, Stingel continues expanding the vocabulary of painting with this series of work.

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Yayoi Kusama has earned the hyperbolic title of the “world’s most popular artist” following the release of Art Newspaper’s annual survey.  “Kusama is the only one of our artists who sells on every continent.  “She’s very rare in that she has this kind of credibility within the art world establishment, but she also has a very broad popular appeal,” says Glenn Scott Wright, co-director of Victoria Miro. (more…)

The Dia Art Foundation has acquired composer LaMonte Young and Marian Zazeela’s famous Dream House installation for its permanent collection, and will recreate the work at its 545 West 22nd Street Chelsea location this summer and fall from June 17 through Oct. 24.    They’ve made this incredible contribution to music that I think is still very underappreciated nationally and even internationally,” says Dia head Jessica Morgan.  “He should be understood as a John Cage of our era.” (more…)

The thieves behind the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum have been identified, according to a report by Breitbart.  The career criminals George Reissfelder and Lenny DiMuzio were named as the perpetrators by anonymous sources within the FBI, which had recently been reinvestigating the case.  Reissfelder had previously been represented by Senator John Kerry during his days of private defense practice for a murder conviction, which was overturned.  “I don’t know if those paintings ended up on eBay,” Kerry once joked, “but they’re not on my wall!” (more…)

Tate Britain director Penelope Curtis will leave her position at the museum after five years at the helm of the museum that have been marked by criticism and occasionally turbulent personnel changes.  She will move to be the first international director of the Calouste Gulbenkian Museum in Lisbon.  “I want to keep all that is good about the museum, which I admire deeply, while developing ways in which it can make more of its context and position,” she says, “especially in relation to the neighboring Modern Art Centre, and more widely.” (more…)

Alicja Kwade, Something absent, whose presence was expected (2015), via Johann König

A narrative surrealism infuses the work of Alicja Kwade.  Works depict objects in the midst of transformation, moments of fusion, transposition and alteration of forms or materials that give the viewer the impression that time may in fact be standing still, if only for a moment.  This sense of momentary pause is on view at the artist’s most recent solo exhibition at Johann König in Berlin, where the artist is presenting a body of new work under the title Something absent, whose presence was expected. (more…)

The Guggenheim has appointed two new trustees to its board this week, Artforum reports.  Valentino D. Carlotti, a Senior Partner at Goldman Sachs, and private investor David Shuman will join the museum leadership, both of whom have worked with the museum in the past as collectors and supporters of recent acquisitions. (more…)

A Munich court ruled in favor of the Kunstmuseum Bern’s claim to the trove of Cornelius Gurlitt this past week, rejecting the suit by Gurlitt’s cousin Uta Werner.  Even so, the situation remains mostly unresolved, as the Task Force appointed to sort the provenance of the works have only returned a handful of findings, and several works are already under legal contention. (more…)

Tracey Emin’s My Bed has gone back on view at the Tate Modern, following the work’s record-setting auction sale last year for £2.2 Million.  “I always admired the honesty of Tracey, but I bought My Bed because it is a metaphor for life, where troubles begin and logics die,” says its new owner, Count Christian Duerckheim. (more…)

Plans for a New York outpost of the Andy Warhol Museum have reportedly been abandoned, according to the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.  “Despite the efforts of both the museum and the developers, an internal study of business and other operational considerations led the museum to this decision,” Director Eric Shiner said in a statement. (more…)

Bloomberg Business has published strong praise for the LA outpost of Gavin Brown’s Enterprise this week, calling it “what might be the most interesting gallery in Los Angeles right now.”  The article notes the 356 S. Mission Road location’s laid-back atmosphere and welcoming refreshments, alongside its impressive curatorial vision as major components to its success and inviting nature. (more…)

The Japanese city of Saitama, just north of Tokyo, has announced that will launch its own triennale next year, headed by director Takashi Serizawa, who formerly led nomadic exhibition space P3.  “Cities are not just accumulations of buildings and roads, but rather a composite of human endeavor, history, and culture that develops over time,” says Serizawa.  “I envision the Saitama Triennale as a kind of “soft urbanism” — a social experiment intended to breathe some creativity into the workings of this city, as a nucleus of culture and art.” (more…)

Marianne Boesky is expanding to the Colorado enclave of Aspen, where a group of newly renovated museums, new galleries and pop-ups have made the resort town into a new hotspot for the U.S. arts community.  “Our plan is to be able to invite artists to spend time in Aspen to experience the outdoor life,” Boesky says. (more…)

Andrew Kuo, Oops (2/9/15) (2015)

Marlborough Chelsea and its second location on Broome street recently hosted a two-man show featuring the work of Andrew Kuo and Scott Reeder.  Entitled It Gets Beta, this ambitious selection stems from a subdued affinity Kuo and Reeder share in their artistic practice, combining Kuo’s juxtapositions of sharp-edged abstract structures and humorously mundane charts with Reeder’s equally, if not less, witty lists of random topics, a comical one-two punch that plays on various constructions of the art historical as a fertile ground for playful subversion. (more…)

The Helen Frankenthaler Foundation has given a $5 Million gift to Vermont’s Bennington College, which the artist graduated from in 1949.  “Helen‘s education at Bennington was critical to shaping her sensibility as a young artist, nurturing a spirit of risk-taking, experimentation, and inquiry that formed the basis of her creative process,” says Clifford Ross, chairman of the Helen Frankenthaler Foundation. “The foundation is delighted to be making this gift.”

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