This fall MOCA in Los Angeles will play home to the traveling exhibition focusing on the work of Matthew Barney, as well as a screening of the artist’s most recent film River of Fundament, marking the only time the show will take place on U.S. soil. “I thought it should be seen in America,” says MOCA head Philippe Vergne. (more…)
Untitled Gallery and Zach Feuer will merge to form two similarly titled spaces sharing resources and artists in the L.E.S. this May, Art News reports. The two spaces, Feuer/Mesler and Mesler/Feuer, continue previous collaborations, including 2013’s Jew York show, which was on view at both dealers’ respective spaces. “It’s an interesting time for galleries on the Lower East Side,” says Untitled’s Joel Mesler says. “It’s become an establishment in and of itself.” (more…)
Lynda Benglis is interviewed this week in The Art Newspaper, as she opens an exhibition of works spanning her career at the Hepworth Wakefield. “I’m excited because it’s a huge amount of works, 50 in all, and the works are educating me,” she says. “They remind me of the baby steps that I first took and that you can’t just jump into ideas, you have to slowly develop them.” (more…)
Rita Ackermann, Burn Up in Heaven 2014, all images courtesy Hauser & Wirth
On view at Hauser & Wirth Zürich is an exhibition of paintings on chalkboard by Hungarian-American artist Rita Ackermann, representing a step further into the artist’s investigation into the deconstructive process, presenting a series of many images which seem to have been repeatedly executed and expunged by erasure or weathering. The exhibition will remain on view through March 14th.
Adam Parker Smith at SPRING/BREAK, via Art Observed
Heavy snow beat down the doors at SPRING/BREAK art show during Armory Week, now in its fourth iteration and housed in the wood-paneled third and fourth office floors of Skylight at Moynihan Station, a unique space that makes for a fitting continuation of the fair’s imaginative, distinct style. The curator-driven show has more more than doubled in size since last year’s public/private-themed exhibition at St. Patrick’s Old Cathedral School in Nolita, SPRING/BREAK’s home for the past several years. The number of participating curators also rose from 39 to 97, bringing an increased number of artists as well, from 100 to over 300 people for 2015.
Constantin Brancusi, via Art Observed
Set up across town, fittingly enough, in the Park Avenue Armory, the ADAA Art Show offers a yearly counterpoint to the bright lights and dizzying stream of booths that occasionally plagues its cross-town sister on Piers and 94, incorporating a more carefully curated emphasis into the art fair booth format, and encouraging a certain degree of adventurousness among the attendant galleries. (more…)
Mark Flood at Peres Projects, via Art Observed
Taking up the full 4 floors of Center 548 in Chelsea, the Independent NY fair returns for another year of its annual exhibition offering a slightly smaller, more cohesive take on the fair experience. (more…)
The artist roster for the 2015 edition of the Venice Biennale has been announced, featuring a diverse group of artists selected by curator Okwui Enwezor, and featuring Marlene Dumas, Theaster Gates, e-Flux Magazine, and and many others , as well as a special theatrical performance directed by Kara Walker, and a marathon reading of all three volumes of Marx’s Das Kapital. “Here, Das Kapital will serve as a kind of Oratorio that will be continuously read live, throughout the exhibition’s seven months’ duration,” the curator says. (more…)
Critic Jerry Saltz has reportedly been banned from Facebook, over what he says were complaints received by the website over Classical and Renaissance images he had posted featuring gruesome and sexualized scenes. “It’s a cumulative thing,” Mr. Saltz says. “The posts are called sexist, misogynistic and abusive, and then I’m called sexist misogynistic and abusive.” (more…)
The Armory Show 2015, via Sophie Kitching for Art Observed
The doors are open and the 2015 edition of The Armory Show in New York is underway, kicking off the first major fair week in NY this spring. Collectors and artists wound throughout the booths, perusing the works on sale and chatting with dealers. Director George Lucas could be seen examining several works, as was Maurizio Cattelan, both of whom seem to be enjoying their respective retirements. (more…)
A collection of more than 200 prints by Jim Dine have been gifted to the British Museum, The Guardian reports. “It is very exciting,” said Museum Curator of Modern Prints, Stephen Coppel. “It was a very generous offer, given that he has made over a thousand prints. Choosing was fun. It took some time and there was a lot of backing and forthing, but it is a really great group of things.” (more…)
Nancy Graves, Camouflage Series #4 (1971), all images are by Osman Can Yerebakan for Art Observed
Currently on view at Mitchell-Innes & Nash is a select body of work by artist Nancy Graves, focused around the late artist’s New York-based Foundation, and which promise an expansive look at the pioneer Conceptualist’s bright career before and after her passing in 1995, including a Whitney retrospective that marked her as the first female artist to have a solo retrospective under museum’s roof. (more…)
Anish Kapoor, Monochrome (Garnet) (2014), via Art Observed
On view at Regen Projects is an exhibition of recent sculptures by the Bombay-born, London-based artist Anish Kapoor. The series focuses on terrestrial forms made from resin and earth contrasted, with two of the artist’s signature, mirror-surfaced works.
Donald Fisher, the founder of Gap clothing, is preparing to unveil a sizable portion of his collection publicly for the first time next month at Paris’s Grand Palais. The collection of 20th century works will be shown next year at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, which is currently undergoing major renovations to prepare for it. “I think we will have more works by artists including Richter and Calder on view at one time than anywhere else in the world,” says curator Gary Garrels. (more…)
The Guardian traces the career of Richard Diebenkorn, and his frequent oscillations between abstract figuration and more concrete landscapes during his lifetime in California and New Mexico. The article comes in conjunction with Diebenkorn’s recently opened exhibition at the Royal Academy of the Arts. “I want painting to be difficult to do,” he once stated, revealing his commitment to pushing his work into new territory. (more…)
Marina Abramovic is in Bloomberg this week, reviewing her current market value, and the difficulties in selling her works despite her immense recognition as an artist. “There is this contradiction,” says Abramovic. “I’m very high on every art list or whatever, but as for market value, I’m less than any mediocre, how do you call it, young art.” (more…)
Frank Benson, Juliana, via Art Observed
If the New Museum Triennial is to be believed, 2015 might in fact be the year that artists put the pervasive notions of “cyber-dread” to death in the contemporary discourse. Curated by Ryan Trecartin and New Museum Curator (and former Rhizome head) Lauren Cornell, the exhibition combines aspirational commodities, linguistic play and digital microcosms into a fascinatingly deep exhibition, one that feels particularly appropriate as the 21st century turns 15. (more…)
Luc Tuymans, The Shore (2014), All images courtesy David Zwirner Gallery London.
The Shore, a solo exhibition by Belgian artist Luc Tuymans is on view at the David Zwirner Gallery in London through April 2, a new body of work from the artist credited with helping the revival of painting in the early 1990s. Since his early work, Tuymans has continued to produce compositions that interrogate and intervenes in the definition of this medium. He was one of the first artists to be represented by David Zwirner, joining the gallery in 1994, and The Shore marks his second solo exhibition in the space since Allo! marked the opening of the gallery’s first European location. (more…)
Virginia Overton, Untitled (2015 ), all images courtesy White Cube
On view in London at White Cube in Mason’s Yard is an exhibition of new large-scale minimalist sculptures by American artist Virginia Overton. The exhibition is Overton’s first in the UK.
The Museo Jumex in Mexico City is facing criticism after canceling an exhibition on the work of Hermann Nitsch, the Vienna Actionist painter whose frequent use of blood and animal viscera led to the institution calling off the show. “This is a different kind of shocking,” Nitsch said. “They wasted a lot of money. They wasted my time. I was very, very sad.” (more…)
The Telegraph profiles the immense demands that the month of March place on art dealers and gallerists each year, with three major fairs (TEFAF, The Armory Show and Art Basel Hong Kong) sending them on a tour to cater to buyers around the globe. “Fairs are a necessary evil,” says dealer Ben Brown. “I prefer the quieter contemplation of the gallery, but I sell more at fairs, and I make more contacts.” (more…)
Allora & Calzadilla, Raptor’s Rapture (2012) all images courtesy Philadelphia Museum of Art
On view at the Philadelphia Museum of Art is an exhibition of recent work by Puerto Rico-based artists Jennifer Allora and Guillermo Calzadilla. Entitled Intervals, the projects on display allude to the notion of the interval: “the time between events, the measure between two points in space, or the range between musical notes.”
The Guardian traces the controversy surrounding Constantin Brancusi’s The Wisdom of the Earth, a sculpture that has long sat at the forefront of the Romanian consciousness as a national treasure, but which is currently being put up for sale by its owners. “The truth is that it is an iconic sculpture for Romanians; it’s an iconic image that is present in all the books about our national identity. The state used it a lot in its cultural propaganda and transformed it into an icon of the Romanian soul,” says Alexandru Baldea, managing partner of auction house Artmark, which is selling the piece. (more…)
Allora & Calzadilla, The Bell, The Digger, and the Tropical Pharmacy (2013), all images courtesy Lisson Gallery
Cross Section of a Revolution, on view at Lisson Gallery in London, brings together seven artists and pairs of artists whose work explores questions of trade, contested territory and trauma in a global context. These substantial themes are approached through a variety of mediums that speak to both individual and collective experiences in Central Asia, Pakistan, Kenya, Europe and the United States,opening lines of inquiry into aspects of cultural and political fragmentation, and reveals strategies for art and aesthetics in relation to cultural, geographic and religious division. This group exhibition does not shy away from inspiring or explicitly asking large questions about the nature of globalization and aesthetics. For instance: how is a modern understanding of culture, politics, and religion shaped or impacted by a continual flow of visual information? (more…)