All photos on site for Art Observed by Aubrey Roemer.

The Armory Show 2012 hosts 228 international exhibitors, “showing work that realizes the fair’s mission of innovation and discovery.” Split between Piers 92 and 94 on the west side of Midtown Manhattan, the show runs March 8–11, with several new programming initiatives and a re-designed floor plan added to the show’s fourteenth edition. Pier 94 is the larger exhibition hall, the Contemporary section featuring mainstay galleries Lisson Gallery, Sean Kelly, Victoria Miro, Kukje Gallery/Tina Kim Gallery, David Zwirner, Sprüth Magers, Gallery Hyundai, and Kaikai Kiki, among many others—including 19 invited Nordic galleries in the ‘Armory Focus’—while the Modern sector on Pier 92 is home to Marlborough Gallery, O’Hara Gallery, Inc., Pace Prints, Peter Findlay, and many more.

Ai Weiwei, Marble Cube at Lisson Gallery

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Doug Wheeler, SA MI 75 DZ NY 12 (2012). All images via David Zwirner.

At age 72, Doug Wheeler opens his first solo show in New York City at David Zwirner. A single site-specific installation, SA MI 75 DZ NY 12 challenges the finite perceptions of interior space, creating what some have called a visual “vacuum tube” in the gallery’s massive exhibition space.  Long regarded for his contributions to the “Light and Space” movement of the 1970s, the American artist works to remove the visual cues of a space, focusing instead on the materiality of light and the human perception thereof. Longing back to the days of his childhood, flying over the western desert with his father, Wheeler said in a recent interview with the New York Times, “When I was growing up, the sky was everything to me.”

Doug Wheeler, SA MI 75 DZ NY 12 (2012)

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‪‬VIP Art Fair set to open today for second year, including galleries Marian Goodman, Hauser & Wirth, and David Zwirner [AO Newslink]

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All installation views courtesy of David Zwirner.

David Zwirner is currently presenting Date Painting(s) in New York and 136 Other Cities, a collection of work by On Kawara that spans the 46-year series of paintings. Blending the personal with the historical, the artist’s work uses variations of sans serif fonts and hand-mixed colors to record the date on which he painted the canvas. Kawara consistently exudes a fascination with chronological time, exploring the human perception of its passing, and the nature of our relationship to it. By notching the passage of time and cataloging the procession of his physical life and travels, Kawara creates a body of work that not only testifies to the grand scope of the human life, but also creates a complex interaction with the idea of history—both of the self and of mankind—and the history of the future.

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Neo Rauch, Heilstätten (2011). All images via David Zwirner.

Wedding a definitively German identity with a surrealist perspective and an unmoored historical context, Neo Rauch’s current show of new work, Heilstätten at David Zwirner in New York, provides an intriguing view of an artist and country coming to terms with its own past. A frequently cited practitioner of hauntological symbolism, Rauch’s paintings are heavy with the weight of their own implications. Strangely distended figures culled directly from the history books of German art inhabit evocative and surreal scenes that blend Communist art propaganda with German history and a disambiguation of perspective. The result is a collection of paintings that are equally nostalgic and political, and occasionally tragic.
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Michaël Borremans, The Knives (2010)

Michaël Borremans: The Devil’s Dress is the artist’s fourth solo exhibition at David Zwirner in New York. Borremans’ art is heavily influenced by 18^th and 19^th century artists, including Édouard Manet and Diego Valázquez, and his painterly style recalls works from both the Romantic and Realist periods. “One of the reasons I consciously chose to work in painting is that you can’t use it only as a medium. It has this historical connotation, and either you want [that connotation] or you don’t want it. So if you paint, you should make use of that. It’s inherent to the medium, and it’s very important. If you don’t want it, take another medium. It’s as simple as that. Therefore this dialogue with other painting is to me very essential,” Borremans said in an interview in 2007.

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Installation view

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Allora & Calzadilla, Umbrella and Bell (2011), front; Anish Kapoor, Untitled (2011), behind. At Lisson Gallery, booth J1. All photos on site for Art Observed by Caroline Claisse.

International collectors and art enthusiasts filled the Miami Beach Convention Center for the Wednesday preview of Art Basel Miami Beach 2011. While the maze of gallery booths could seem overwhelming, buyers were able to navigate through for a solid day of sales and works placed on reserve. Larger galleries such as Gagosian, David Zwirner, and Sprüth Magers sold several works and editions thereof. Speaking with Neil Wenman of Hauser & Wirth, “We’ve had a great response on the opening day. In particular for works by Thomas Houseago, Rashid Johnson, Paul McCarthy, Matthew Day Jackson, Richard Jackson—all works sold and all available editions.” Jenny Holzer’s new paintings at Sprüth Magers sold for upwards of $300,000, as well as Condos and Krugers at the booth. Lesser-known galleries were pleased to gain the exposure the fair offers; if not selling right away, interest was high and therefore also prospects for the remainder of the fair. Gallery Arratia Beer said the crowd was very engaged and informed, also saying, “The fair feels very international. It’s also good to see young internationals here too.” The newer Latin American presence was reportedly strong, both exhibiting and buying, as expected in Miami as opposed to the Frieze or FIAC fairs across the Atlantic earlier this year. Celebrities on hand included Julian Schnable, Eli Broad, Brett Rattner, Naomi Campbell, and Sean Combs/P. Diddy.

Larry Gagosian

Entrance D at the Miami Convention Center

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Will Ryman’s Roses being installed on Miami Beach. Image via The Art Newspaper.

Art Observed is on site for this year’s 10th edition of Art Basel Miami Beach which officially runs December 1–4, with previews and parties throughout the entire week beginning on Tuesday, November 29th. More than 260 galleries from around the world will be representing over 2,000 artists, not including the several satellite shows taking place simultaneously across Miami, including NADA, SCOPE, Pulse, and the original Art Miami—twelve years Basel’s senior. Attracting 46,000 visitors in 2010, the fair is expanding every year, with various collaborations and special additions celebrating its 10th. The Swiss-based Basel art fair installment in Miami has evolved into something that may have lost some of its innocence from its earlier days but in the end has become the definitive closing party for the art market’s year. There have been many previews and summaries of the fair, the following is our view of the week to come.

Hennessy Youngman, still from ART THOUGHTZ: Relational Aesthetics. Via Youtube.
Youngman will be speaking at NADA Deauville Beach Resort on Thursday at 5 pm.

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The Mound (2011), left. Triptych (2011), right.

Lisa Yuskavage is currently showing her third solo exhibition at David Zwirner Gallery. In a mix of early French Impressionism (a la Manet) and Dali-esque Surrealism, Yuskavage captures the languid, voluptuous figures of the female body through a feminist lens. The artist also takes on themes of landscape, time, and plot, in a way that extends her visual resonance.

Art Observed on site for the opening

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Charles Ledray, Bone Rocker (1995), with Robert Gober, Untitled (1984-88) (left) and Luc Tuymans, Plates (2011), right. All images Nicolas Linnert for Art Observed.

David Zwirner‘s summer exhibition, The House Without the Door, makes a curatorial departure from Emily Dickinson’s poem of a similar name. The works center around themes of interiority and domesticity, alluding to both the poet’s reclusive personality and her writing’s exploration of issues stemming from such a lifestyle, which moved past memories and objects towards intense introspection and deep-seated feelings of anxiety and trauma.

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Donald Judd, Untitled (Menziken 89-2) (1989). All images by Nicolas Linnert for Art Observed.

David Zwirner gallery, now exclusively representing the Judd Foundation, is currently showing a collection of works by Donald Judd originally part of a seminal 1989 exhibition. Including nine sculptures and three wall-mounted drawings, the grouping showcases pieces brought together from international public and private collections. On the last day of the show, the gallery will be holding free screenings of Marfa Voices (2010), a film by Rainer Judd about her father’s philosophy and work. Also shown will be The Artist’s Studio: Donald Judd (2010), a film by Michael Blackwood comprised of interviews with and footage of the artist. Screenings will be at 1pm, 3pm and 5pm on Saturday, June 25th.

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Yutaka Sone Little Manhattan (2007-2009) at David Zwirner Gallery – All images by Caroline Claisse for Art Observed

Art Observed remains on site in Basel, Switzerland for Art 42 Basel 2011.  The following is our second of the photosets of the main fair.  Stay tuned for more coverage of the main fair before the end of the week as well as profiles of the satellite exhibitions and events.

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Artist Wim Delvoye before one of his sculptures at Galerie Emmanuel Perrotin

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Installation view of Donald Judd’s “Progressions.” All images by Caroline Claisse for Art Observed.

Currently on view at Galerie Vedovi in Brussels is “Progressions,” a fresh look at the work of seminal American sculptor Donald Judd. The exhibition focuses on Judd’s use of mathematical algorithms to create geometrical progressions. These systems are non-representational tools that offers viewers a neutral way to view the works. With the object autonomous, the focus turns to the wall and its relation to the object.

Judd is also the subject of another concurrent exhibition at David Zwirner Gallery, which opened during New York Gallery Week. It is a restaging of Judd’s 1989 exhibition at the Staatliche Kunsthalle in Baden-Baden, Germany.

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Marcel Dzama, Polytropos of Many Turns (2009), installation view. All photos by D. Terna, Art Observed.

Canadian-born artist Marcel Dzama debuts his latest film, “A Game of Chess” in his sixth solo exhibition at David Zwirner. The exhibition Behind Every Curtain is on view through March 19, and the three-tiered exhibition of drawings, dioramas, and motorized sculptures provide both a prelude to Dzama’s film as well as a record of the artistic process behind it. And while Dzama’s work has always been characterized by a fairy-tale like violence, both “A Game of Chess” and the pieces leading up to it seem to take a much darker and sinister turn than do Dzama’s previous exhibitions.

Installation view of the film, A Game of Chess.

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The Fair’s logo, via VIPArtFair.com

Contemporary art buyers and admirers, many undoubtedly slippered in the comfort of their own homes, logged in for the opening of the VIP Art Fair on Saturday at 8:00AM (EST).  The online Fair was three years in the making, but until Saturday the website consisted of little more than a list of participating galleries and organizations, a brief overview, and a promotional video. Though the galleries had also been publicizing featured works to be offered and screenshots of their virtual booths, those not lucky enough to attend the fair’s opening party were still gripped with curiosity about the kind of experience the site would offer.

Zoomed in on Neo Rauch’s Haus de Lehrers, 2003 (est. over $1 million), via VIP Art Fair

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Luc Tuymans, Speech, 2010. All images via David Zwirner Gallery.

In a series of new paintings entitled Corporate, Belgian artist Luc Tuymans explores the social implications and troubling consequences of corporations and corporate identities. Tracing the origins of modern industry back to the dissolution of medieval feudalism, Tuymans addresses the mechanisms by which these entities shape contemporary culture. Through the visual vocabulary of corporate life, ranging from workplace lighting conditions to iconographies of trade and marketing, Tuymans distills the essential formal qualities of this phenomenon’s historical impact.

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Luc Tuymans, Fortis, 2010.

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John McCracken, New Works in Bronze and Steel, image courtesy of the artist and David Zwirner

David Zwirner is currently presenting a new body of work by Californian artist John McCracken. McCracken first gained international recognition with his monochromatic geometries placed between flat surfaces and three-dimensional objects. In the present exhibition, he addresses the gallery space as a whole, allowing its architecture and light to participate fully in the installation. In the first room, three bronze planks lean against the wall, in an apparent departure from the materiality of his previous works in fiberglass and resin, while continuing to work in his signature format – the narrow, rectangular, monochromatic panel. Their shiny, reflective surfaces introduce the exhibition’s key motifs, inserting them into a dialogue, both formally and conceptually, with the four free-standing stainless-steel sculptures in the adjacent room: Star, Infinite, Dimension and Electron.

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Dan Flavin, untitled (to Barry, Mike, Chuck and Leonard), 1972-1975. All images by Art Observed.

The current exhibition of early works by Dan Flavin at Paula Cooper Gallery offers a concise exploration into the artist’s experiments with the effect of colored light on architectural space. A 1960s minimalist, Flavin’s works realize the infinite possibilities inherent in the simple gesture of a florescent light in a gallery, which, despite a limited vocabulary, create varied optical and experiential situations. Flavin’s works confound the way that art is viewed by testing the limitations of opticality while stressing color as a medium in its own right. Instead of the viewer looking at a two dimensional object with painted colors, Flavin brings the color to the viewer, aggressively inserting his color combinations into the viewer’s eyes. That is, instead of the art reflecting color, it is emitting the color as light. If the purpose of art is to look, to see, to contemplate a visual object, then Flavin’s art frustrates this standard notion by making it difficult to look directly at the art object itself. This difficulty of viewing the art object directly causes the viewer to notice the effect of light and color on objects, thereby implicating the architectural space within the work. The works thereby occupy every part of the room, using the unusable spaces of a gallery–the corners and the floors, spaces incapable of displaying artworks.

Dan Flavin, untitled (to Barry, Mike, Chuck and Leonard), 1972-1975.

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Art 41 Basel, entrance view. All images by Art Observed unless otherwise noted.

AO was on site yesterday at Art 41 Basel, Switzerland, to see the 56 installations exhibited by the eleventh Art Unlimited, a museum-like forum for sizable and high-priced pieces. Installations of established masters and up-and-comers alike are characteristically oversized this year, with six pieces taking up over 200 square meters.  Despite the diversity of work, galleries, and featured artists, a distinct tonal resonance pervades Art Unlimited.  The lustrous style favored by Art Unlimited’s formative years gives way to a bold, rustic minimalism.  Although an intellectual understatement saturates this year’s Art Basel, Art Unlimited is hardly a quaint affair.  Economists and art experts alike are predicting major acquisitions for the international art elite, with a Giacometti and a Bourgeois notably up for grabs.

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In an attempt to encourage the public to visit gallery exhibits, Casey Kaplan, David Zwirner, Friedrich Petzel, and other gallerists organized the first ever New York Gallery Week occurring this weekend from May 7-10th 2010. The event brings together fifty galleries and non profit organizations, spanning Chelsea, Midtown, SoHo, the Lower East Side, and the Upper East Side. In addition to the galleries remaining open for extended late hours and on Mondays, the events program includes numerous free lectures, performances, book signings, panel discussions, and gallery tours with prominent art historians and gallerists.  Art Observed will be on site to selectively cover the happenings.

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Marlene Dumas in front of self-portrait The Sleep of Reason, 2009, press preview for Against the Wall

Marlene Dumas’ practice is two-fold: on one hand conveying politically potent messages that are more often than not critical, and on the other being deeply concerned with the surface, aesthetic potential of paint.  One is forced to question whether these seemingly disparate objectives marry well at all or compliment each other? However the tension between the two are played out, and resolved in the artist’s exciting first solo exhibition at David Zwirner, through April 24.

Marlene Dumas, The Wall, 2009.

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“zycles 3075” (2009), part of the new show of Thomas Ruff’s works at David Zwirner Gallery.

The David Zwirner Gallery is currently showing Thomas Ruff’s sixth solo exhibition at the gallery. On view are two new series by the artist, whose photography has explored landscape, the nude, portraiture and even architecture through appropriated, computer-generated, and traditional images. “zycles” and “cassini,” at David Zwirner through March 13, draw in patrons as they notice the details that yield a snowballing structural complexity.

Thomas Ruff, “cassini 26” (2009), at David Zwirner.

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The Raising of Lazarus, 2007 (David Zwirner Gallery)

Chris Ofili’s familiar hits are brought together with his more mature recent works for the first time in a mid-career survey at the Tate Britain, London, through 16 May 2010. The collective effect of the show is a kaleidoscope of wild humor, brilliant color and raw energy. What is striking about the exhibition is its unique position within the growing contemporary canon: firstly, Ofili is unusual as a painter in a conceptual era, and, secondly, he is intensely concerned with the aesthetic. The paintings in this exhibition are richly ornamented; their surfaces are imaginatively constructed from such incongruous materials as elephant dung (Ofili’s signature), map pins and glitter. The paintings are structural and highly tactile, and the viewing experience is a sensory event. This perhaps most evident in The Upper Room, a collaboration with the architect David Adjaye to design an independent and enclosed viewing space. The audience is guided down a barely lit corridor into a dim, yet glittering chamber that enhances the spiritually of viewing paintings which reference both the Christian and Hindu faiths.

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The Nominal Three (to William of Ockham) (1963) by Dan Flavin, via David Zwirner

Now on view at David Zwirner in New York is the city’s biggest Dan Flavin show in over a decade.  Last month the gallery announced that it would have exclusive rights over the Estate of the New York minimalist who died in 1996.  Series and Progressions opens at David Zwirner’s West 19th Street complex in Chelsea on November 5th. Curated by Tiffany Bell, the exhibit reveals Flavin’s use of progressives and serial structures which the artist incorporated throughout his career.

Press Release [David Zwirner]
David Zwirner to Hold First Dan Flavin Exhibition: Series and Progressions [Artdaily]
Recalling Flavin [NY Times]
David Zwirner Planning New York’s Biggest Dan Flavin Show in Over a Decade [The L Magazine]
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