Sarah Sze, Triple Point (Planetarium) (2013), All Images Via Kelly Lee for Art Observed

Just over a year ago, Sarah Sze brought her eye-catching assemblages to Italy as the U.S. representative to the 2013 Venice Biennale.  Puzzle-like contraptions snaked in and around the building façade, even allowing and supporting a huge boulder to balance on top of the pavilion’s roof.  A myriad of fake rocks, water bottles and other miscellaneous objects were scattered across the space, offering only a small taste of the deceptively hazardous mess that awaited visitors inside. It was widely praised  as a stand out work, and brought Sze to a new level in her artistic recognition. (more…)

Last week, artist Cai Guo-Qiang floated a specially made ark, filled with stuffed animals, around Shanghai harbor, in an attempt to draw further attention to the port city’s heavily polluted waters.  “Not being dead leaves possibilities and space for imagination,” the artist said of his work, emphasizing the space between living and dead that his stuffed animals occupy. (more…)

JR, Au Pantheon! via Andrea Nguyen for Art Observed

The 31-year-old French photographer and artist JR has completed an impressive installation for his global INSIDE OUT project, which allows participants to express themselves through photographing their own portraits and allowing JR to paste them in a new artistic statement.  The French artist started the project after he was awarded the TED prize in 2011, which gave him $1 million to make a world-inspiring idea to come to life.  Since then, INSIDE OUT has traveled across the country: California, New York, and Minnesota; and the globe: Italy, Brazil, Palestine, etc.  Now in Paris, JR has covered the floor, cupola, and dome of the Pantheon in Paris with 2,500 of his signature black and white portrait posters. (more…)

The New York Times has published a profile on Ryder Ripps, the net artist and designer who has worked on major branding campaigns and web design projects alongside his own online practice, including his role as the founder of image community Dump.FM and the viral WhoDat.Biz hoax, a website falsely attributed as a new project from Kanye West. (more…)

With Gemini G.E.L.‘s colorful “Art on Color” show that opened last month, Paul Kasmin Gallery‘s “Bloodflames Revisited” brings another exhibition in the Chelsea area that mixes up the traditional white-walled gallery space. This show is a “contemporary response” to the show “Bloodflames” that shook up the conventional gallery when it showed in New York’s Hugo Gallery in 1947.  “What interests me is how can we now together as a group of artists in the show trying to attempt to activate the floor, so the floor becomes as active viscerally active, formally acted as the wall, which is through a work of art…” Phong Bui, the show’s curator said. “Bloodflames Revisited” will be on view through August 15th in Paul Kasmin Gallery’s two spaces.

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Many of Vincent van Gogh‘s works have been in Arles, France for around a decade since the artist worked there, but due to absence of exhibition space, no one was able to see them. After a three-year remodeling project, the antiquated Hôtel Léautaud de Donines has been officially transformed into a modernized gallery that will contain and display van Gogh’s treasured works to the public. “There was no space like this in Arles before,” said Maja Hoffmann from the Fondation van Gogh. “We can host van Gogh at anytime now. This is what we really call the permanent home for van Gogh.”

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Matthew Barney is interviewed in The Guardian this week regarding River of Fundament, which premieres in London later this month. In the interview, Barney discusses his work with Norman Mailer, the public’s incredulous reception to the movie thus far, and Barney’s atypical, cinematic narrative style that will continue to carry out his reputation for producing ambitious works in the future. “It’s to do with the way my brain is wired,” he says. “It’s a type of slowness I have with regard to resolving things and connecting the dots. The specifics really come quite late. There is a willingness for the work to develop organically.”

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The most recent issue of Vanity Fair is causing a commotion in the art world this week, following its nude photograph of Jeff Koons exercising on a fitness machine.   “Koons, at 59, has already begun a strict exercise-and-diet regimen so that he will have a shot at working undiminished into his 80s, as Picasso did,” the article notes. (more…)

When the famous artist Lucian Freud died in 2011, he left behind assets of £95 million, none of which went to his daughter Lucy Freud nor her siblings. Allegedly enduring a difficult childhood with a detached father of multiple affairs, Lucy Freud still believes she is a rightful heir to the fortune and continues to speak up for her siblings,”I don’t believe Dad had it in him to be specifically derogatory to us as a group. I don’t believe he would have done it.”

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David Shrigely is interviewed in the Financial Times this week, as he prepares to open his specially commissioned installation at Sketch Restaurant in London.  In the interview, Shrigley discusses his choices for the restaurant, and his education as an environmental artist in Glasgow.  “I really enjoyed art school but I didn’t do very well,” he says. “They all thought I wasn’t taking it seriously, but I was. They just didn’t think I was a very talented artist.” (more…)

Gemini G.E.L. at Joni Moisant Weyl Gallery in Chelsea opened its “Art on Color” show this past Thursday, June 8th, a show that challenges the traditional white-walled gallery notion by introducing bold colors on its walls. A colorful palette of oranges, yellows, and greens backdrops artworks by represented artists: John Baldessari, Ann Hamilton, David Hockney, Ellsworth Kelly, Roy Lichtenstein, Brice Marden, Man Ray, Robert Rauschenberg, James Rosenquist and Joel Shapiro. “[David Hockney] pointed out to us that when you look at art on a white wall the first thing you see is the frame, but when you look at art on a wall with color, the first thing you see is the art,” Peter Stamberg, one of the gallery’s architects, explained at the opening.

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In a desire to combine art and science, artist Diemut Strebe has created a copy of Vincent van Gogh’s ear by using living cells of the great-great-grandson of Van Gogh’s brother.  The newly created ear is currently on display at The Centre for Art and Media in Karlsruhe, Germany, and is planned to be shown in New York next year.

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As art theft market experts gather at a three day symposium at New York University from June 4-6 to discuss the 3rd largest crime enterprise in the world, Bloomberg Television notes the current $6 billion value of the art theft market, in relation to the $200 billion global art market. Cases of art thefts costing hundreds of millions of dollars date back to 1990, with daring attempts dotting the history books. “I’ve heard stories of a helicopter coming and zooming down and taking statues out of a garden,” Steel reports.

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David Shrigley is interviewed in The Guardian this week, discussing his early years as an artist, his approach to his recent Sketch Restaurant commission, and his response to not winning the Turner Prize last year.  “It’s like, the day after they announced the winner of the Turner prize,” he says. “I’d had a bad back and the day afterwards my back got better like that.” (more…)

President François Hollande is set to inaugurate the first Pierre Soulages museum this week, established near the artist’s hometown in the South of France.  “One of the objectives of the museum is to present a variety of works but also a fluid aspect [of Soulages’s canon],” says historian and chief museum curator Benoit Decron says. “I’ll turn to a network of collectors and [will make] acquisitions backed by public and private bodies.”  (more…)

Vladimir Umanets, the 2012 vandal of Mark Rothko’s mural Black on Maroon, has published an editorial in The Guardian, expressing regret for his actions but remaining committed to the principles of his conceptual practice Yellowism.  “It doesn’t matter how important one believes one’s ideas to be, nor how genuine one’s intentions are,” he writes.  “It is unacceptable to deface someone’s property without permission. What I did was selfish. My act has hurt many art enthusiasts and I deeply regret it.” (more…)

Sterling Ruby is interviewed in the New York Times this week, following the opening of the artist’s new show at Hauser and Wirth.  “When you look at what I do,” he says, “it’s schizophrenic to the point where it should never have a market. With my work, you can’t be like, “Well, we can plug this into what’s happening in the market because it looks like the last series.” (more…)

Ai Weiwei’s name and works have been removed from a show of Chinese contemporary art in Shanghai, following government pressure over his inclusion.  “We were not really a party to this,” says Uli Sigg, the Swiss collector and organizer of the show. “In the end it was the Power Station and the cultural bureau. In the end we said we must accept. We don’t understand but we must accept that his works will not be in there.” (more…)

Opening Ceremony has unveiled its collection of designs influenced by Rene Magritte, featuring a full line of apparel and footwear branded with the artist’s signature surrealist exercises.  The capsule collection was launched during London Fashion Week, and will be available starting in May 2014. (more…)

The Museum of Contemporary Art has announced that artists Catherine Opie, John Baldessari and Barbara Kruger are all returning to their positions on the museum’s Board of Trustees.  The artists had previously left their posts over friction with then-director Jeffrey Deitch’s vision for MOCA.  Painter Mark Grotjahn has also been elected to a fourth artist seat on the board, previously occupied by Ed Ruscha.  “I’m very excited about the prospects for MOCA with Philippe leading us and I want to be supportive,” John Baldessari said in a statement. (more…)

Emmanuel Perrotin is profiled in W Magazine this month, underlining the gallerist’s penchant for risk-taking, and his adventurous spirit in regards to his relationship with his artists.  “There are a lot of dealers in Europe who just want to complain,” Perrotin says. “I’m rather positive and energetic. But it’s true that the bigger you get, the more you start to worry and to ask yourself how well you’re really doing.” (more…)

The New York Times has a published a preview piece on next week’s opening for the Whitney Biennial, which will open concurrently with Armory Week next Friday.  The 77th edition of the event will be the last in the Whitney’s current home before it moves to its new location in the Meatpacking District, and features the collaborative vision of three separate curators, each of which are occupying a single floor of the museum.  “It’s as if you’re on your laptop and have three windows open,” said Stuart Comer, one of the curators and the head of media and performance at MoMA. “It’s not a collaboration but a conversation, a dialogue.” (more…)

Sol Lewitt, Horizontal Progression #6 (1991), via Daniel Creahan for Art Observed

Sol Lewitt, considered by many as the founding father of conceptual modernism, is regarded as one of the most influential artists of the last half of the 20^th century. The cube, as a “grammatical device” from which Lewitt’s work often develops speaks to his ambition to reduce art to its essentials, and approach the relationship between artistic creation and the mechanization of thought.  Lewitt is also known for his large-scale two and three-dimensional works, particularly his wall drawings executed in 1968. In these wall drawings, predetermined line-making procedures and formulas typically associated with commercial production were enlisted in the installation of this work across galleries. (more…)

The New York Times writes on the efforts of Crystal Bridges Museum to establish itself as a leading contemporary arts institution, and the planning underway for a show of young and underestimated artists from around the United States.  “There have been times over the past few months,” said Don Bacigalupi, an employee of the museum currently leading the hunt. “When I wake up and literally have no idea what city I’m in.” (more…)