Artist Ryan McNamara will bring his 2013 Performa Commission to Miami Beach this year for Art Basel’s U.S. fair.  The piece, MEÆŽM 4 Miami: A Story Ballet About the Internet, explores notions of information conveyance and data clutter.  “I saw Ryan’s stunning performance at the Performa Biennale in New York last November and was astounded by the way in which MEÆŽM redefines the audience experience,” says Director Marc Spiegler, “making physical the virtual experience of link-clicking, and simultaneously incorporating many decades and styles of dance.”  (more…)

Peter Brant has announced the focus of his newest exhibition at the Connecticut-based Brant Foundation Art Study Center, which will center around the works of Cady Noland, Larry Clark, Richard Prince and Christopher Wool.  Deliverance, as the show is titled, will open November 10th, and will feature work from 1970 through 1997.  “It’s when they were really exploring the same kind of themes, and when they each produced some of their best work,” Mr. Brant says. (more…)

Steve McQueen, Ashes (2014), all images courtesy of the artist and Thomas Dane Gallery

On view currently at Thomas Dane Gallery are two new works from Steve McQueen, together making up an exhibition entitled Ashes. The first is an immersive projection with sound and the second is a new sculptural work entitled Broken Column, both produced in 2014.

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Mario Merz, Pyramid (1997-2000), via Pace Gallery

With auctions this week in London centered around the post-war Italian landscape, Pace Gallery has culled together an exhibition of works of artist Mario Merz, featuring a series of sculptural and painted works that illustrate the artist’s broad conceptual scope and his varying interests in the nature of architecture, materiality and space.

Mario Merz (Installation), via Art Observed (more…)

Stephen Shore at 303 Gallery (Installation View)

Since the early 70’s Stephen Shore has been photographing narratives that never fully reveal their endings, positioning his camera somewhere between a noncommittal viewer and a localized resident of the space he shoots. His current exhibition at 303 Gallery adds another phase to the pioneer photographer’s career, stretching out into two controversial territories, series of work that coincides with the bitter political and social turmoil of their politics: photographs documenting the current state of the Israeli-Palestinian border on the West Bank, and the lives of Ukranian Holocaust survivors. (more…)

Duane Hanson, Baton Twirler (1971), all images courtesy Sotheby’s

On view at S|2, Sotheby’s Contemporary Art Gallery in London, is a selection of sculptures from American artist Duane Hanson’s most important series of works, the artist’s fiercely evocative and startlingly realistic images of “Middle Americans.” The show marks Hanson’s first exhibition in London in fifteen years, and will remain on view through November 7th.

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Marina Abramović, Tree (1972), all images courtesy Lisson Gallery

On view at Lisson Gallery in London is a exhibition entitled White Space from Yugoslavian artist Marina Abramović, featuring many works which have never been exhibited before, including two important sound pieces and unseen video documentation of seminal performances. The exhibition will remain on view through November 1st.

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Karel Appel, Big Bird Flying Over the City (1951), all images courtesy Blum & Poe

Dutch painter Karel Appel was born in Amsterdam in 1921, and worked in Europe for much of his life, passing away less than a decade ago at the age of 85. During the time of the German occupation, Appel studied at the Rijksakademie in Amsterdam and eventually left home due to his parents’ disapproval of his decision to be a painter. Perhaps as a result, Appel’s career can’t be defined by any singular characteristic other than discontinuity, and an interest in opposing expectations of normality.

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Marina Abramovic is the subject of another profile this week, this time in Wall Street Journal, where the performance artist discusses her life’s work, her thoughts on retirement, and her piece Generator.  “It’s quite radical,” she says. “It could totally fail, but the real failure would be if I stop believing in myself, that I can do it.” (more…)

DIS has announced the release of a new book, celebrating the oft-maligned form of the #artselfie, and featuring a selection of viewers capturing themselves alongside iconic artworks using their smartphones.  The book, available from boutique press Jean Boîte Editions, is available for €19. (more…)

Nathalie Djurberg & Hans Berg, Gas, Solid, Liquid (Soap) (2014), all images courtesy Lisson Gallery

On view at Lisson Gallery in London is a new series of works by Swedish video and installation artist Nathalie Djurberg accompanied by soundtracks made by Swedish producer and performer Hans Berg. The works will remain on view through November 1st. (more…)

Artist Urs Fischer has reportedly been wed to actress and designer Tara Subkoff this week, during a private dinner ceremony at Soho restaurant Navy. (more…)

The Oslo city council in Norway has approved a proposal for a new Munch Museum design on the city waterfront, created by firm Herreros.  The process in building the museum has moved slowly over the past years, with a number of critics challenging the tilting, “Lambda” design.  A vote on zoning is due to take place in November. (more…)

Prince Albert of Monaco is inaugurating a new Francis Bacon Foundation in the small European country, combining over 2,000 artworks, photographs, works on paper, and working documents, as well as the artist’s furniture and rug designs.  Bacon lived in Monaco for several years in the 1940’s, before moving several years later.  “We’ve discovered that Bacon started painting on the unprimed side of the canvas after losing all of his money in the Monaco Casino,” said collector and foundation founder Majid Boustany, “and as you know, this became one of the trademarks of his style!” (more…)

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After five years of renovations, delays and even the replacement of former head Anne Baldassari, the Pablo Picasso Museum in Paris’s Marais District has reopened to strong reviews and even stronger attendance.  “There is a lot of fluidity,” says new director Laurent Le Bon. “One can move around much more easily than before, one has a freedom which goes well with the spirit and the works of Picasso.” (more…)

Artist Marina Abramovic is interviewed in the New York Observer this week, offering additional insight into her new exhibition Generator at Sean Kelly.  “If you deprive two senses, you achieve this kind of experience of the world,” she says. “If you don’t see and don’t hear but you can feel and touch, you achieve this consciousness. We have to develop this—I know that every human being has the potential to develop it. If you change the consciousness, you can change the world.” (more…)

Artist Olafur Eliasson has unveiled a new project in Copenhagen, Denmark, an immense installation featuring 112 tons of ice.  Ice Watch, created in conjunction with geologist Minik Rosing, to commemorate the Fifth Assessment Report on the Climate, a drastic report on the rapidly changing state of the global atmosphere. “I hope that people will touch the inland ice on City Hall Square and be touched by it,” said Eliasson. (more…)

Hans Haacke, the conceptually elusive artist who has for years defied many of the commercial practices of the contemporary art world, is opening a new show at Paula Cooper this month, allowing viewers a look at the artist’s challenging work and personal politics, including a maquette design for the artist’s upcoming Fourth Plinth Commission next year in London. “I’ve always been interested in systems and how they work, and at a certain point you understand that political and social systems are part of that, too, that they can’t be escaped,” he says.  (more…)

The New York Times reports on the recent increase in attempts by museums around New York to increase its focus on digital elements in the presentation of exhibitions and installations, fusing strong curatorship with immersive digital engagement projects.   “You want the way people live their lives to happen in the museum,” says Carrie Rebora Barratt, the Met’s deputy director for collections and administration. (more…)

The New York Post reports on a recent suit filed against former Andy Warhol bodyguard Agusto Bugarin, accusing him of stealing of painting from the artist, and hiding it away for 30 years before trying to sell it in the past year.  “There is no indication that Warhol did or would have given his bodyguard a painting valued at the time in the hundreds of thousands of dollars — several multiples of Bugarin’s annual salary,” the Manhattan Supreme Court filing by The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts says. (more…)

The New York Times profiles the increased efforts by Christie’s to build its online sales platform, including a new focus on online only auctions.  “The main objective here is the acquisition of new clients,” said Steven P. Murphy, Christie’s Chief Executive. “We’re building our online business the old-fashioned way, brick by brick.” (more…)

E.V. Day, CatFight (2011-2014) via E.V. Day Studio

On view now at Mary Boone’s uptown gallery is the haunting sculpture series Semi-Feral by artist E.V. Day. The show centers around a large, site-specific sculptural piece comprised of multiple casts of saber-tooth tiger skeletons floating above the floor of the gallery space.  Day’s work, often concerning sexuality and femininity, takes its point of departure here from the slang term “cat fight.”  A phrase that typically robs a fight from any viciousness, Day returns the notion to its original, ferociously natural element.

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A new conservation approach is being used to return Mark Rothko’s badly damaged Harvard Murals series to public view, works that have sat in storage for years to avoid any additional damage to their already badly faded surfaces.  Using a series of colored light projections, the works will restore portions of the surface that had faded from view.  “Where’s the line between what is Rothko and what is the projection?” says Mary Schneider Enriquez, the museum’s associate curator of modern and contemporary art. “What is the original work of art when you project light on it? Is it the same work of art? As a teaching museum within Harvard, that’s the kind of discussion we want to generate.”  (more…)