Thomas Demand, Backyard (2014), via Matthew Marks
The artifice that drives Thomas Demand’s practice is simple, but the results are impressively commanding. Utilizing carefully cut and assembled cardboard pieces to create familiar images, scenes and spaces, the artist’s work carries an evocatively nostalgic aura, while emphasizing his own craft in the construction of the scene itself. (more…)
Harmony Korine, Fex Chex (2014), all images Courtesy Gagosian Gallery
Currently on view at Gagosian Beverly Hills is a group of new paintings by American film director, producer, screenwriter, author, and artist Harmony Korine. Although he is primarily working within the mediums of film and writing, Korine has recently begun publicly displaying his works, immense, swirling compositions composed in a variety of techniques and palettes.
Paramount Ranch 2, via Art Observed
Tucked away in the mountain ranges outside of Santa Monica, the Paramount Ranch is a relic of the Golden Age of the Hollywood studio system, a massive film set and town used to shoot Westerns. It’s just this history that makes the landscape a fittingly Californian location to stage an art fair. Now in its sophomore year, Paramount Ranch offers a unique take on the fair experience: galleries and artists are invited to participate, steering away from any formal application process, and the selection of works often leans towards the more imaginative and immediate.
Haciencda at Paramount Ranch 2, via Art Observed (more…)
Preparations are already underway for the second edition of Los Angeles’s Pacific Standard Time exhibition in 2017, which will focus specifically on Latin American art, and which is turning to South and Central American arts institutions for leadership in planning the event. “By nature, the breadth of this topic requires bringing in more people. With PST: LA/LA, we thought we had the unique opportunity to strengthen the connections between research communities in Los Angeles and Latin America,” says Joan Weinstein, deputy director of the Getty Foundation. (more…)
With two art fairs this January, Los Angeles is making a play as one a global city for fine art, preparing to open Art LA in two weeks, and Art Los Angeles Contemporary later this month. “In the short span of six years, Art Los Angeles Contemporary has managed to turn an otherwise anti-art-fair town into a place where both emerging and established galleries from around the world can connect with an important West Coast audience,” says art attorney Joshua Roth. (more…)
Nine works valued at $10 million, and stolen less than a decade ago have been recovered in Los Angeles, the LA Times reports. The works, stolen from an Encino home in 2008, included Marc Chagall’s Les Paysans, and Diego Rivera’s Mexican Peasant. Federal authorities arrested Raul Espinoza in connection with the theft. (more…)
The Art Los Angeles Contemporary Fair will open its doors once again in late January, and has released its exhibitor list this week for the sixth edition of the fair. Attendees among the 60 gallery list include The Hole, CANADA, Standard (Oslo), and Francois Ghebaly. (more…)
The inaugural Los Angeles edition of Paris’s FIAC art fair has been pushed back to 2016 in an effort to give galleries more time to prepare for the event. “FIAC has listened to the recommendations of its participants to modify the launch of its Los Angeles endeavor to provide both organizers and galleries sufficient time for optimal preparation,” the organization said in a statement. (more…)
Ryan Trecartin and Lizzie Fitch, Still from untitled work in progress (2014), via Regen Projects
Ryan Trecartin and Lizzie Fitch have enjoyed one of the more distinctive artistic collaborations in recent history, creating bizarre viewing platforms, caves, stadium seating and other eerily familiar arrangements in the service of immersive film-viewing environments, some of which is currently on view at the duo’s first exhibition at Regen Projects in Los Angeles. Combining a set of Trecartin and Fitch’s bizarrely evocative sculptures with films and installations, the show welcomes a deep investigation into the pair’s practice, both as solo artists and in collaboration. (more…)
Hollywood film and television producer Jerry Perenchio has announced a major gift of works to LACMA, including works by Pablo Picasso, Fernand Leger and René Magritte, that totals upwards of $500 million in value. “We live in a modern city and modernism has shaped our everyday life, and to tell the story of late 19th century art and the birth of modernism is an incredible thing for LACMA,” says LACMA Director Michael Govan. (more…)
Sterling Ruby, SP288 (2014), Courtesy Sterling Ruby Studio and Gagosian Gallery.
Declared ‘one of the most interesting artists to emerge in this century’ by Roberta Smith, Sterling Ruby has become one of the major fixtures among West Coast artists after leaving the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena in 2005. The L.A. based artist, who is known for his large scale ceramic or bronze sculptures and ambitious installations challenging the limits of artistic production (his first exhibition with Hauser & Wirth was on view in Chelsea this spring after the artist joined the gallery roster), is presenting VIVIDS, his spray paint works on canvas at Gagosian Hong Kong. This exhibition is another addition to Ruby’s recent series of projects in Asia, which started with an exhibition at Taka Ishii Gallery in Tokyo, and will continue with the Gwangju and Taipei biennials, alongside an upcoming exhibition at the Ullens Center in Beijing. (more…)
Ed Ruscha is featured on NOWNESS today, part of the publication’s Getting There series, in which artists take an interviewer on a drive through a certain area. For this edition, Ruscha drove interviewer Matthew Donaldson through his home city of Los Angeles, charting the shifting landscapes and sounds of the California city. “More than the changes of Los Angeles, I notice when things don’t change,” he says. (more…)
Sotheby’s has unveiled a new plan to appeal to collectors and institutions on the West Coast, announcing a new plan that will bring $200 million worth of art on a tour of California, Oregon and Washington. The tour of events will include an exhibition of Jasper Johns’s 1983 work Flag, which is a highlight of the auction house’s November sale in New York, estimated to sell for $15 to $20 million. “Our focus is on the next generation of collectors, the new buyers who will become futures sellers,” says Sotheby’s West Coast head Andrea Fiuczynski. (more…)
Ai Weiwei is preparing to open his newest exhibition of work at the former Alcatraz Prison this week, made possible through the efforts of dealer Cheryl Haines and her For-Site Foundation, a project that seeks to install specially focused works in unique environments. “We are addressing issues of human rights, freedom of expression, the role of creative individuals in addressing these issues, and the role that communication plays in creating a just society,” Haines says. (more…)
Sprüth Magers Gallery has purchased a 14,000 square foot building in West Hollywood this week, signaling the gallery’s intent to open a new exhibition space in Los Angeles, directly across the street from LACMA. “It’s an artist’s city,” says Philomene Magers. “It’s the cultural and intellectual climate of the city that really excites us. And while we already have collectors in the region, we are hoping to meet many more.” (more…)
Pierre Hyghe is profiled in the New York Times this week, previewing the artist’s long awaited retrospective at LACMA, and noting the demanding focus Huyghe’s work often requires of curators, in particular his pieces incorporating live animals and actors. “We have meetings just to talk about the living elements, which isn’t something that usually happens to you as a curator,” says organizer Jarrett Gregory. (more…)
Robert Irwin, #3 x 6’D Four Fold (2013-14)
Galerie Thomas Zander in Cologne is currently presenting seven new works by California Light and Space pioneer Robert Irwin, which use direct and generated light as the source medium to deliver a subtle yet striking aura inside the gallery space. As is common in Irwin’s practice, the artist specially designed the pieces on view to work in tandem with the architecture of the gallery, making the harmony of their glowing light with the space surrounding them all the more vivid and charged. Each work contains vertical fluorescent tubes in varying colors, effectively deconstructing the borders of art making and its dimensions in terms of suggesting unconventional layers in the frame of an artwork. (more…)
Team Gallery is planning to open a space in Los Angeles on September 14th, 2014. The new space, called Team Bungalow, will be the third iteration of the Team Gallery and the first outside of New York City. The gallery will be based in a small bungalow and garage on Windward Avenue in the Venice neighborhood and will be open on Fridays, Saturdays, and Sundays. Team Bungalow’s inaugural show will be called “tl;dr” and feature work by Cory Arcangel. (more…)
Stephen Prina, Detail of Monochrome Painting: A Posterior Prototype: Average Size (1994), all images courtesy Patrick Painter
Patrick Painter Gallery in Los Angeles is currently hosting an impressively selected group show, culling artists from the past 30 years of practice entitled Titans of the Stratosphere, and featuring six artists: Rodney Graham, Mike Kelley, Paul McCarthy, Stephen Prina, Christopher Wool, and Andrea Zittel.
Albert Oehlen, Untitled (2012), all images courtesy Gagosian Gallery
On view at Gagosian Beverly Hills is an exhibition of recent large scale paintings by German artist Albert Oehlen, showcasing the artist’s continued interests in both abstract painterly gesture and the intersections of modernity with the act of painting. The exhibition will remain on view through July 18, 2014.
SFMoMA is reportedly close to reaching its $610 Million Fundraising goal, Bloomberg reports this week. The campaign, which is seeking funding for its new museum construction that will double the space for the space’s collection and will add several million to its endowment, has already reached 94% of its goal. “In 1995, we were the pioneers when SOMA was pretty run-down, and the tech boom followed us,” says director Neal Benezra “Our expansion will solidify the neighborhood as a cultural hub.” (more…)
MOCA is drawing criticism this week, following the loan of a Frank Stella painting to a Culver City art gallery, which many have called a conflict of interest. The work Ctesiphon I, was loaned to Honor Fraser Gallery with approval of the Acquisition and Collection Committee. “MOCA is committed to loan artworks to encourage public enjoyment of objects,” MOCA said in an official statement. “MOCA lends to commercial art galleries only on a case-by-case basis.” (more…)
Jay DeFeo, White Shadow (1972), via Osman Can Yerebakan
Jay DeFeo’s most seminal work in her career took eight years to be completed and weighs more than two thousand pounds. A monumental embodiment of extreme orientation to detail and experimentalism, this work of DeFeo has been the artist’s most recognized part of her oeuvre, but a year after her retrospective at The Whitney, the legacy of Jay DeFeo is growing in New York City, as Mitchell-Innes & Nash presents a body of fifty works spanning the years 1965-89.
Jay DeFeo, Tuxedo Junction (1965-74) via Osman Can Yerebakan (more…)
San Francisco real estate mogul Luke Brugnara has been charged with mail fraud following the aborted purchase of $11 million in works by Willem de Kooning, Edgar Degas, Joan Miró, and Pablo Picasso. Brugnara reportedly purchased the works from a New York dealer with the intent of opening a museum, but never paid for the artworks, claiming he had received them as a gift. When the dealer accompanied the works to California for delivery, she was astonished to find that the address he had given was not inhabited. “Brugnara instructed the delivery personnel to leave the crates in his garage. The art dealer had never before seen anyone request art of such value to be placed in a garage,” writes FBI special agent Jeremy Desor. (more…)
