The Texas Department of Transportation has reached a decision to classify the Prada Marfa installation by Elmgreen and Dragset as a museum, thus saving it from a possible removal. “TxDOT appreciates and values the cultural significance of Prada Marfa, and we are happy to have found a win-win solution that keeps it in its current location,” said department deputy executive John Barton. (more…)
Richard Deacon, Alphabet S (2014), via Thaddaeus Ropac
Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac is currently presenting Alphabet, Sculptures and Dessins, an exhibition of artist Richard Deacon’s new body of work, combining sculpture with a series of works on paper. As an artist who defines himself as a fabricator rather than a sculptor, Deacon has always had an appetite for pushing the limits of production, constantly moving to new territories in material use throughout his career. Here, Deacon seems interested in extending beyond the physical, sculptural object itself, experimenting with exterior forms and approaches. (more…)
Just as Sotheby’s is preparing its first pop-up sale in Silicon Valley, rival Christie’s has also entered the fray, announcing a similar event in California focused on works by Roy Lichtenstein, Jasper Johns, and more, alongside works by young artists including Korakrit Arunanondchai. “While it is well known that the Bay Area is home to some of the most impressive collections in private hands, it has recently become evident that it is also one of the most robust emerging markets for art collecting with a growing group of young and new collectors,” says Christie’s Post-War specialist Charlie Adamski. (more…)
Kader Attia, Repair, Culture’s Agency (2014), via Art Observed
In light of its subject matter, the New Museum wastes no time in describing the challenges ahead of Here and Elsewhere, its current exhibition focusing on contemporary Arabic and Middle Eastern art. Taking its title from the 1976 Jean-Luc Godard documentary of the same name, the museum effectively poses the same questions that plagued Godard’s quasi-documentary on the Palestinian army. Faced with an inability to complete his statement on the complex social issues and the subsequent defeat of Palestine in the Six Days War, Godard instead sought a middle ground between the embattled nation and his French homeland. The film is spiked with cinema verité segments, abstract performance and experimental camerawork that ultimately places a considerable distance between the film and any sense of cohesive, authoritative statement. (more…)
Tate Liverpool has announced plans to open an exhibition focusing on the work of Andy Warhol this November, the first major solo exhibition of the artist’s work in Northern England. The expansive exhibition will include over 100 works from the artist’s career, and will also include a recreation of the Exploding Plastic Inevitable. (more…)
The Financial Times profiles the long-awaited opening of the Fondation Louis Vuitton in Paris’s Bois de Boulogne, the Frank Gehry-designed museum housing the renowned design house’s immense art collection. The article includes a number of notes from LVMH head Bernard Arnault on the Fondation’s approach to collection. “When we buy something it has to meet two conditions,” he says. “One is that I have to like it, the other is that Suzanne Page (the Fondation curator) should consider it something worth exhibiting in the Fondation Louis Vuitton. The Fondation’s collection focuses on the link between contemporary artists and the second part of the last century. So you see the evolution.” (more…)
German investigators have announced that they have found a landscape by Claude Monet hidden inside the suitcase of Cornelius Gurlitt, adding yet another work to the considerable selection of works he had stored away in his Munich apartment. Gurlitt had apparently tried to bring the work with him when he left for the hospital, which scholars are estimating was painted around 1864. (more…)
The Centre Pomidou has announced that it will be opening a temporary pop-up location next year in the Spanish city of Málaga, the home town of Pablo Picasso, and will bring a series of exhibitions of works from the Pompidou Collection to the city. In turn, Málaga will pay a fee of €2.1 million, which offsets the deficit currently faced by the Pompidou for its 2014 operating budget. “The current financial situation is pushing us to be creative in ways we did not have to be before,” said president Alain Seban. (more…)
Gerhard Richter, Wald (Forest), (2005), all images courtesy Fondation Beyeler
On view at Fondation Beyeler is the largest exhibition ever devoted to German painter Gerhard Richter, with an express focus on the artist’s reoccurring interests in series, cycles, and interior spaces, while also offering some of his most singularly iconic works. (more…)
The city of São Paulo is preparing for its 31st Bienal (Biennial) this month in Ibirapuera Park, and hopes for the event are high. The event boasts an international curator team, fronted by Charles Esche, director of the Van Abbemuseum in Eindhoven, and former curator for biennials in Gwangju (2002), Istanbul (2005), Riwaq, Palestine (2007 and 2009) and Ljubljana (2010), as well as an $11 million budget, marking a considerable step forward for the event. “I don’t think we need to once again announce that we’re going to reinvent the idea of the Bienal,” says Esche. “We need to make a really good Bienal. We need to make an event, an exhibition, an experience that touches people.” (more…)
French artist Bernar Venet has launched a new non-profit organization, The Venet Foundation will exhibit a collection of works the artist collected from close friends like Donald Judd, Yves Klein and Sol LeWitt under conditions that Vernet felt were ideal for exhibiting their works, including a subjective element to the foundation that fits quite well alongside the artist’s conceptual practice. (more…)
David Salle, Fooling with Your Hair (1985), via Skarstedt
The Skarstedt Gallery continues its series of summer group exhibitions in Chelsea this month, presenting another series of works by artists sharing common interests in production, appropriation and the potential for painting after the advent of widely distributed photographic technologies. The exhibition, featuring work by Martin Kippenberger, George Condo, Richard Prince, David Salle and Albert Oehlen, is spread across the two rooms of the Skarstedt space on 21st Street, offering ample space to pass back and forth between the monumental canvases, and examine the various artist’s techniques and formal interests. (more…)
Ai Weiwei is currently under house arrest in Beijing, but that hasn’t stopped the artist from planning and overseeing the installation of his largest UK exhibition to date at Blenheim Palace. Ai has had a 3-D digital model of the space created, and has used it to plot out the placement of works meticulously without leaving his home. “In the beginning, we sent him photographs and detailed plans, but he’s an absolute perfectionist and every inch of where works are placed matters to him. So in the end we lasered all the rooms to make the model for him,” says Lord Edward Spencer-Churchill said. (more…)
Lee Yong-woo, President of Korea’s Gwangju Biennial and one of the exhibition’s founders, has resigned from his post after a painting by arist Hong Seong-dam, depicting Korean president Park Geun-hye attacked by victims of the MV Sewol disaster, was removed from an exhibition at the Gwangju Museum, causing a major uproar and the withdrawal of several artists from the show. “I am taking full responsibility for what happened,” Yong-woo said. (more…)
Galleria d’Arte Moderna di Roma Capitale, Rome’s contemporary and modern art museum, is planning a new extension of the institution, which will feature works exclusively on loan from its next door neighbor, the Gagosian Gallery. The museum is also planning an outdoor exhibition space that will feature sculptures by artists like Jeff Koons and Franz West. (more…)
The Whitney Museum will keep its doors open on Mondays next month, providing visitors an extra day to visit the vast Jeff Koons retrospective before the institution closes its uptown space for its move to the Meatpacking District. The new hours are in effect until the exhibition closes on October 19th. (more…)
A New York businessman has called for the boycott of a Cai Guo-Qiang exhibition in Aspen, due to the artist’s use of tortoises with iPads strapped to their backs. Andy Sabin, a member of the Turtle Conservancy board, has claimed that the work is deleterious to the tortoises’ health, although museum officials claim that the rescued turtles are under close watch by veterinarians. (more…)
Henri Matisse, Memory of Oceania, (1952-1953) via Museum of Modern Art
Currently on view at London’s Tate Modern, Henri Matisse’s vivid cut-outs reveal the final chapter in Matisse’s career: when he began ‘carving into color’, as the artist was known to describe his spectacular cut-outs, a vastly divergent and fascinating point in the artist’s career.
The New York Times reports that Brooklyn Bridge Park will play host to the third annual Photoville, a fair that will present 60 photography exhibitions in repurposed shipping containers. The fair, which goes from September 18th to the 28th, is the brain-child of United Photo Industries, a photography cooperative based in Brooklyn that is known for their installation “The Fence”, which will also be included in the exhibition. In addition to the shows, Photoville will feature talks, panels, and presentations from artists and authors as well as food and drink venues. (more…)
The Metropolitan Museum of Art will present an exhibition in the fall featuring major cubist works, including pieces by artists such as Georges Braque, Fernand Leger, and Pablo Picasso. The 79 artworks that will be exhibited in the show were donated to the Met last springby Leonard Lauder. The show will be the first time that Lauder’s gift, which is valued at over $1 billion, will be exhibited as a whole; it will run from October 20th to February 16th, 2015.
Mickalene Thomas, Carla (2014), via Lehmann Maupin
Tête de Femme, a show of new work by artist Mickalene Thomas at Lehmann Maupin, places the exploitation and regulation of the female form at its center, exploring the female figure and visage through eight large-scale portraits. Making use of screen-printing, collage, and candy-colored swatches of fabric, Thomas creates and re-creates the elements of a face in order to deconstruct a coherence presumed and projected into measurements of personhood. Through bold geometric and material choices, Thomas approaches the question of identity as an problem to be solved through a concentrated treatment of each element, much in the same nature of Picasso’s work of the same name.
Mickalene Thomas, Tête de Femme (Installation View), via Lehmann Maupin (more…)
In May or June of next year London might finally play host to Damien Hirst’s new venture, an exhibition space built to house his considerable collection of contemporary art. In the works since 2012, the South London space plans to feature a restaurant and office space alongside six separate galleries filled with pieces by artists such as Jeff Koons, Francis Bacon, and, of course, Hirst himself. (more…)
Goldsmith’s London has announced plans to build a public art gallery on the University’s South London campus, repurposing the old water tanks of the Laurie Grove Baths. To raise funds, the institution is asking many former pupils for donations and works to auction in support of the project, including Sarah Lucas, Damien Hirst and Antony Gormley. (more…)
