With Dasha Zhukova’s Garage Center for Contemporary Art set to open on June 12th in Moscow, the museum has released a video offering a preview of both its impressive architecture and its world-class collection, including a colorful mural unearthed during renovations of the site, previously a Soviet-era restaurant. (more…)
Art Basel’s Popular large-scale installation section, Unlimited, has released a 74-artist roster for its upcoming edition next month in Switzerland, including work by Martin Creed, Olafur Eliasson, Jeppe Hein, Robert Irwin, and many more. (more…)
Francis Bacon, Seated Woman (1961), via Phillips
The Phillips Contemporary Evening sale has concluded, bringing to a close a week full of fireworks and smashed records with a relatively lackluster sales event that saw several impressive sales, countered by a number of less than exceptional performances. Of the sale’s 71 lots, 14 went unsold, and few others managed to surpass high estimates, bringing the final sales tally to a respectable $97,100,000. (more…)
Golden Lion for Best Pavilion amongst Rene Gabri and Ayreen Anastas, When counting loses its sense (2015), via Sophie Kitching for Art Observed
In 1915, during the clashes of WWI, the Ottoman Empire set out on a path of systemic destruction of its Armenian subjects, massacring male Armenians or forcing them into conscripted labor, while leading women, children and the infirm on arduous death marches off into the Syrian desert. The brutal and politically contentious genocide killed, on estimate, up to 1.5 million citizens, and stands as one of the Twentieth Century’s most horrific episodes of war. Even so, the political body of Turkey still refuses to acknowledge the term genocide in relation to these war crimes, and the historical scars of the killings run through the distributed population of the Armenian diaspora worldwide. (more…)
Painter Zeng Fanzhi is the subject of a video profile on Nowness this week, shot in Paris and exploring his work and stance towards creating. “An artist should follow his heart, create, then keep moving,” he says. “If you keep repeating yourself than that’s a waste of the artistic life.” (more…)
The Shortlist for the 2015 Turner Prize has been announced, featuring a diverse body of artists and practices that diverges wildly from last year’s heavily video and film-centric affair. The 2015 Prize exhibition will be staged this year at the Tramway arts venue in Glasgow. The Turner Prize, a £25,000 award, is Britain’s most prominent recognition in the arts, and this year will go to either London artist Bonnie Camplin, German-born artist Nicole Wermers, London-based arts collective Assemble (which adopted an abandoned housing estate and converted it into a new community space), or artist Janice Kerbel. Working in a wide variety of media, social practice and community milieu factor heavily into the pieces on view this year.
The Turner Prize exhibition will open this October in Glasgow. (more…)
W Magazine takes a look inside the home of Frieze director Victoria Siddall and her partner, gallerist François Chantala this week, just in time for the opening of the organization’s New York edition. “Our work and social lives are totally continuous and intertwined,”Siddall says. “But when we’re in the same city, it means that at least we get to see each other in the evenings. The art lot always knows how to put on a great party.” (more…)
Céleste Boursier-Mougenot, Rêvolutions (2015), French Pavilion, via Sophie Kitching for Art Observed
Running concurrently with the Central Pavilion’s curated exhibition, the respective National Pavilions on view at the Giardini and Arsenale are one of Venice’s defining aspects. Featuring important solo exhibitions for both emerging and career artists, carefully-curated group shows and special projects, each pavilion’s focus allows the international perspective of the Biennale to truly take shape. (more…)
Bloomberg takes a look at the vast number of fairs and auctions taking place this month, and the growing move by these sellers to diversify as the art fair model matures. “The best collectors don’t just buy contemporary art,” said Michael Plummer, whose New York-based consultancy Artvest Partners owns the Spring Masters fair. “They might have Renaissance painting and antiquities and modern art.” (more…)
The endlessly prolific Hans Ulrich Obrist has a new book out this week, titled Lives of the Artists, Lives of the Architects, tracing a series of the artist’s ongoing conversations with artists and designers over the course of his career, including pieces with David Hockney and Marina Abramovic. (more…)
An article in The Guardian looks at the current art community in Los Angeles, and asks if perhaps the Californian metropolis now offers better opportunities for artists than New York City’s vaunted art scene. There’s a lot of people helping each other out here,” says artist David Flores. “And there’s a lot more room to play with, more elbow room.” (more…)
London’s Royal Academy of Art has unveiled a £50 million expansion plan that will link the institution’s two buildings in the British capital’s Mayfair district. “You will be able to go from an exhibition in Burlington House to a lecture in Burlington Gardens through the vaults of the building,” says Sir David Chipperfield, who designed the project. “You will see the cast corridors, you will see where the schools have been all this time. It’s a small amount of architecture for a profound result.” (more…)
Cecily Brown is profiled in New York Magazine this week, as the artist opens an exhibition of new work at Maccarone Gallery in the West Village, smaller works that mark a shift in her career after ending her relationship with Gagosian Gallery. “People would see them and say, ‘Are they studies for the big ones?’” Brown says. “I joked that the big ones had become studies for the small ones. The big ones seemed very fast and loose, and the small ones were very neurotic. There was a while I called them ‘The Neurotic Paintings.’ They were so intense, very painterly, the paint got thicker. You have to believe the viewer has a more intimate relationship because you have to get up close.” (more…)
David Hockney is the subject of an interview in The Guardian this week, revisiting his life among movie stars and artists during the 1960’s, contrasted with his intense work ethic. “I thought I was a hedonist at the time, but when I look back I was always working,” he says. “I am always working. I work every day. I never give parties; I never gave them.” (more…)
A number of artists are voicing their concern over the Frick’s proposed expansion plan, which would eliminate a garden by the British designer Russell Page. “As professionals working in the art world,” says an open letter signed by Chuck Close, Rachel Feinstein, Lisa Yuskavage, and Frank Stella, among others, “we strongly believe that the Frick’s effectiveness as a display space lies in its intimacy. Replacing the hall and garden with an institutional 106-foot tower will indeed destroy the famed Frick experience for artists and art lovers around the world.” (more…)
The Iranian government has adopted a new policy using billboards in Tehran to exhibit classic works of art rather than the usual consumer products and political slogans. “It’s pretty exciting. It’s wonderful to see billboard ads of laundry machines or big corporate banks being replaced by a Rembrandt or a Cézanne or a Picasso, what better than that?” says journalist Sadra Mohaqeq. “For 10 days, people have time off from the usual billboard ads just promoting consumerism. It is going to affect people’s visual taste in a positive manner.” (more…)
Bloomberg is reporting that Wang Zhongjun, the Chinese movie executive of Huayi Brothers Media Corp. is the buyer of Picasso’s Femme au Chignon dans un Fauteuili, which sold for $29.9 million at Sotheby’s this week. The purchase is somewhat ironic, given that the sellers were members of Hollywood’s film production dynasty, the Goldwyn family. “I first fell in love with the painting and then I fell in love with its story,” Wang said after the sale. “I can see not only Pablo Picasso’s genius, but also Samuel Goldwyn Sr.’s creative vision.” (more…)
Adrian Piper, Everything #21 (2010-2013)
The awards for the 56th Venice Biennale have been announced, with the Armenian National Pavilion taking home the Golden Lion for best exhibition, Adrian Piper winning the Golden Lion for best artist in the main exhibition, and El Anatsui winning the Lifetime Achievement award. A full list of awards is included below: (more…)
New York Magazine has an article charting the friendship between Andy Warhol and Jean-Michel Basquiat, through the lens of a soon to open play depicting their famous collaborations. “Andy fulfilled a father figure role for Jean. Jean was very bright and very childlike at the same time. He was a big kid in a way,” says playwright Calvin Levels. (more…)
At the entrance to the Biennale’s Central Pavilion, via Sophie Kitching for Art Observed
The Central Pavilion in Venice’s Giardini is the second site for All the World’s Futures, the main curatorial project around which the Biennale centers itself. Featuring another series of artists spread out inside the exhibition space’s remarkable white facade, the exhibition continues its investigation of debris and late capitalism through a more playful, yet equally critical set of works from its counterpart at the Arsenale. (more…)
Peter Doig, Rain in the Port of Spain (White Oak) (2015), all photos by Sophie Kitching for Art Observed
Venetian Ettore Tito was one of the first stars of the Venice Biennale at its inception, presenting his work in almost every one of the early exhibitions through at 1920. The artist’s colorful compositions often tinged with a slightly surreal, impressionist edge, were a prize of the Italian state in the early decades of the twentieth century, and often filled rooms during the first exhibitions in the city.
It’s a fitting parallel then, that the Scottish-born Peter Doig would be tapped for an exhibit at the former home of the artist, and current location of the Fondazione Bevilacqua La Masa. Presenting a body of new works, including fourteen paintings and an additional six large-scale canvases, the exhibition’s intimate locale and rich history offers a strong parallel for Doig’s own interpretive and illusory meditations on modernity, memory and fantasy.
Jenny Holzer, I was called (2013), via Art Observed
Running in conjunction with the events of the Biennale, and fittingly tying itself to themes of political action and structural instability, Venice’s Museo Correr is opening a new exhibition of works by the artist Jenny Holzer, focusing on the artist’s recent explorations into the aesthetic underpinnings of U.S. interrogation policy, declassified military and governmental documents, and other visual devices of the political war machine. Titled War Paintings, the exhibition is a welcome examination of the artist’s most recent body of work, a stark departure from previous practice that still feels appropriate in the context of her career. (more…)
Cy Twombly, Paesaggio (1986), via Sophie Kitching for Art Observed
Undeniably one the greatest artists of 20th century, Cy Twombly‘s work is currently on display at the Ca’ Pesaro International Gallery in Venice, offering an in-depth look at the American artist, and his long residence in Italy. Combining work from Twombly’s last series produced in 2011, an early painting on wood from 1951, and sculptural work from late in his career, this show delivers on its promise of a look at the artist’s career, while avoiding the demands of an exhaustive survey of his practice. (more…)
Ibrahim Mahama, Out of Bounds (2015), via Sophie Kitching for Art Observed
The first open hours have come and gone in the City of Bridges today, and the 56th edition of the Venice Biennale, All the World’s Futures is now open. Welcoming 89 different countries to exhibit in the city, with 29 in the Arsenale, 31 in the Central Pavilion, and an additional 29 spread across in the City itself, the exhibition is a monumental affair, with a number of auxiliary events, openings and parties.
