FIAC Grand Palais, photo courtesy We Want Contrast for Art Observed

FIAC, one of Europe’s main three art fairs, held its vernissage last night in Paris at the Grand Palais. Dealers saw strong blue chip sales, including an $8 million Joan Miro panting, despite concerns over France’s proposed increase in wealth taxes and a strong Frieze and Frieze Masters in London the week before.

Gilles Fuches, President Prix Marcel Duchamp

All photos by Tiphaine Popesco for Art Observed unless otherwise noted

The crowd at FIAC

FIAC has added more contemporary work from the second half of the 20th century in the last two years, attracting big collectors like Francois Pinault, Bernard Arnault, Alberto Mugrabi and Omer Koc.

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Lynda Benglis sculptures and Hans Hurting paintings at Cheim & Read’s booth at Frieze Masters. All photos by Caroline Claisse for Art Observed unless otherwise noted

Frieze Masters and Frieze London concluded on October 14th, with both fairs reporting solid sales on the high end. This year, there was a distinct focus on curated booths and curatorial projects and less of an overt feeling of commercialization. Frieze Masters in particular focused on serious connoisseurship and an academic approach, both of which translated into a successful fair for dealers.

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Toby Ziegler‘s The Cripples, image via Art Observed

Back in 2003 in Frieze’s first year, no major international art fair had ever been hosted in London before. Frieze Art Fair, organized by Matthew Slotover and Amanda Sharp, has helped take London from being a city without a focused art scene to its current state at the center of the European art market. Now in its tenth year, Frieze Art Fair in London’s Regent’s Park has seen around 60,000 visitors, with 264 dealers from 35 countries hoping to sell work (valuing an estimated  £230m) created by more than 2,400 artists within 175 of the world’s leading galleries.

An Aaron Young motorcycle burn out work at Massimo de Carlo in Milan, photo via Art Observed

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Hauser & Wirth announced that the opening date for its Chelsea location will be January 22, 2013 in the former Roxy building at 511 West 18th Street. The new space is 24,700 square feet of warehouse style exhibition space. The public opening will culminate a year of activities celebrating the gallery’s 20th anniversary. (more…)

Caro Niederer, Karen Blixen’s Garden (2006) All images courtesy Hauser & Wirth unless otherwise noted.

Until July 27, Hauser & Wirth Gallery hosts 18 paintings by the Swiss artist Caro Niederer. Consistent, engrossing movement synthesizes a wide variety of subject and scale. Niederer’s work since 1990 is presented in a ‘capsule survey’ in a skylit room towards the rear of the gallery. Sprinkled throughout this room are illustrations from the Kama Sutra in which a burgeoning fascination with narrative is apparent. These walls serve to acclimate the visitor to a stimulating use of color in Niederer’s larger-scale work.

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Louise Bourgeois, Untitled (2004). All photos on site by Art Observed.

The last of the throng at the first Frieze Art Fair on Randall’s Island in New York City petered out Monday afternoon yet, the most avid collectors simply shifted course to the remainder auction sales at Christie’s and Philips de Pury. Overall, gallerists at the fair appeared to be immensely pleased with the inaugural event, some booths claiming blowout sales, while others were content with merely executing reserve transactions.

John Ahearn casts a fairgoer in plaster as part of Frieze Projects

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Ron Mueck, Drift (2009). All images via Hauser & Wirth

Sculptor Ron Mueck‘s first show with Hauser & Wirth is on view now at the gallery’s Saville Row location in London. It is the artist’s first major solo exhibition in the city after more than a decade. Mueck is known for his brand of realism that might be considered graphic or grotesque, and habitually works with surprising scale to compound the power of the work. Mueck’s current show includes four sculptures that sharply contrast from each other, but share a poignant sense of the human condition.

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The artist Bharti Kher in front of A View of The Forest (2012). All photos on site for Art Observed by Aubrey Roemer.

Bharti Kher‘s The hot winds that blow from the West showcases five variant pieces and is on view now at the East 69th Street location of Hauser & Wirth. On site for the show’s opening, the artist was born and educated in Britain, but moved to New Delhi, India in the early 1990s. The exhibition’s titular work is a large sculpture of stacked radiators, imported to Kher’s Indian studio from the United States over a period of six years. Stripped of their initial purpose as heaters, the ribbed design is dually linear and unnerving; repetitive carcasses pack the political implication of now-cold American heaters and suggest a recalibrating globalization with decreasing need for Western influence. More literally, ‘the hot wind that blows from the west’ is a reference to a summer wind called The Loo in Punjab. The region of Punjab is home to the northern border of India and Pakistan, a region fraught with conflict following post-colonial divisions.

Bharti Kher, The hot winds that blow from the West (2011)

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Rashid Johnson, The Sweet Science (2011). All images for Art Observed by E. Damenia.

Chicago-born multi-media artist Rashid Johnson brings Rumble, an exhibition of new works, to the Hauser & Wirth uptown gallery in New York City as a precursor to his upcoming solo exhibition at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago, opening this spring. Rumble is inspired by prizefight promoter Don King and takes its name from the legendary 1974 fight between Muhammad Ali and George Foreman, the Rumble in the Jungle. Hauser & Wirth’s Upper East Side townhouse is a fitting home for Johnson’s exhibition—the space was previously owned by King himself.

Installation view

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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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‪Hauser & Wirth plans new 15,000 square foot downtown New York location, expanding in addition to its current 2,500 square foot 69th street Upper East Side location [AO Newslink]

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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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Doug Aitken, Now (2011) at 303 Gallery NY. All photos for Art Observed by Caroline Claisse.

AO is on site in London for this week’s Frieze Art Fair. With 173 galleries selling an estimated $350 million worth of art, a level of anxiety pervades as the week’s results will be indicative of the overall international contemporary art market. Works like Christian Jankowski’s droll The Finest Art on Water and Michael Landy’s Credit Card Destroying Machine directly comment on the world economic state, while the overall demeanor remains upbeat, with art world moguls and A-list celebrities enjoying the festivities.

Michael Landy’s Credit Card Destroying Machine (2011), Thomas Dane Gallery

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Artist Zhang Enli with A Bunch of Balls (2009-2011). All photos on site for Art Observed by Jen Lindblad, unless otherwise noted.

Currently showing at Hauser & Wirth in New York is a new body of work by celebrated Chinese artist Zhang Enli. Comprised of twenty new paintings and one sculptural group, the story he tells is one of cultural relocation—namely, the artist’s move twenty years ago from a small provincial town in northern China to Shanghai, where he now lives and works. Wherever we go we carry objects—ordinary objects that remain present and constant in our lives. All of the objects Zhang depicts are real, found in and around his studio: empty cans, a carpet, an umbrella, pipes, metal and rope netting. Familiar enough to be accessible but reduced enough to be seductive, Zhang considers the objects carefully, stripping them to their essence. His quiet, subtle paintings bear almost no resemblance to the bold, political work of his Chinese contemporaries. “I want to strip the object to the bone,” he says, “just leave what it actually is. If you leave a glass on a table, it leaves a watermark. That mark is what I want to express.”

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Subodh Gupta, Untitled, 2011, oil on canvas. All images courtesy Hauser & Wirth.

Opening tonight at Hauser & Wirth New York is an ascetic new exhibition by Indian artist Subodh Gupta. The artist, who is often referred to as “The Damien Hirst of Delhi,” earned his nickname from a dazzling sculpture of a skull entitled Very Hungry God (2006). He is the leader of a group of Indian artists whom mega-curator Hans Ulrich Obrist frequently heralds as art world game-changers, and his works regularly fetch auction prices over 1 million USD.

In contrast to this glitzy reputation, “A glass of water” is shockingly subdued. The exhibition takes its name from a work in which a metal drinking cup rests atop a table, filled to the brim with fresh water. Its origin and constant replenishment remain a mystery. The tension created– that the cup may overflow at any moment, from a visitor’s step or breath– “serves up a rich metaphor for the almost unbearable tension between luxury and depletion, accumulation and deprivation, acquisition and exhaustion that are the daily diet of exploding international culture,” explains the exhibition statement.

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Subodh Gupta, Et tu, Duchamp? (2009/10). All images via Hauser & Wirth

Taking root this spring in Piccadilly’s Southwood Gardens is Subodh Gupta’s tributary appropriation Et tu, Duchamp?, a larger than life black-bronze sculpture of the artist’s reinterpretation of the Mona Lisa. Gupta is well known for reworking common aesthetic tropes, in the past having made sculptures of steel utensils and visually referenced the stars of the Western contemporary art market (particularly Damien Hirst). In this instance, Gupta plays with early Modernist art history by injecting Marcel Duchamp’s L.H.O.O.Q. with a monumental three-dimensionality.

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Berlinde De Bruyckere, Into One-Another I To P.P.P. (2010). All images via Hauser & Wirth

Berlinde De Bruyckere does not hold back when it comes to her art. The human form in her exhibition “Into One-Another To P.P.P.” at Hauser & Wirth is exposed in a series of sculptures expertly rendered in wax. Through experimentation with individuality and mortality, De Bruyckere draws the viewer into her sculptures’ struggle. Also on display are a number of recent works on paper done in watercolor and ink. The exhibition is dedicated to Pier Paolo Pasolini, Italian filmmaker, painter, and poet.

Berlinde De Bruyckere, Into One-Another I To P.P.P. (2010)

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Martin Creed, Mothers (2010). Via Time Out London

Martin Creed’s Mothers at Hauser & Wirth nearly beats viewers over the head with his exploration of relationships. The centerpiece, a huge sculpture bearing the same title as the exhibition, bears the word “MOTHERS” in neon above the heads of the audience. Creed is also releasing a new single and music video, Thinking/Not Thinking, at this show.

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No title, 1963, oil on canvas, 65 x 80 in.

New York in the 1960s and early 1970s held no shortage of female artists making a name for themselves: Louise Bourgeois, Eva Hesse, Lee Bontecou, Joan Jonas, Yayoi Kusama, Jo Baer, and Agnes Martin, among others.  These names ring familiar in our ears, and almost all have had well-earned retrospectives throughout the following decades. But there is one name we do not often see—Lee Lozano.  The new exhibition at Hauser & Wirth sheds light on Lozano’s practice, a legacy shrouded in dramatic acts of rebuff.

The artist, photographed in 1963 by Hollis Frampton

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Exterior View of Sperone Westwater, 257 Bowery, NYC, image courtesy of Dezeen.

Sperone Westwater opened the doors of its new gallery space on Wednesday, September 22nd, 2010. A retrospective of Guillermo Kuitca’s work was chosen as the Bowery location’s inaugural show. The gallery has a longstanding relationship with the Argentinean artist, whose work is inspired by the study of architecture, theater, and cartography. This is his eighth solo show at Sperone Westwater. “Guillermo Kuitca: Paintings 2008-2010 & Le Sacre 1992” consists of recent paintings, which developed from his famous 2007 series with which he represented Argentina at the Venice Biennale, and the important 1992 installation Le Sacre.

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Above: Karen Kilimnik, Me Corner of Haight & Ashbury, 1966, 1998.
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Below: Joseph Cornell, Untitled, c. 1953.
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Image courtesy of the Artists, 303 Gallery New York and Sprueth Magers Gallery Berlin London.

Currently on view at Sprueth Magers London is “Something Beautiful,” a collaborative show by American artists Joseph Cornell and Karen Kilimnik. Curated by Todd Levin, the exhibition features paintings, collages, and mixed-media installations that reflect the influence of the Romantic-era ballet on both artists.

Joseph Cornell (1903-1972) was an American artist known for pioneering the art of assemblage. Created from found objects, Cornell’s boxes often read like three-dimensional Surrealist paintings. He admired the work of Max Ernst and Rene Magritte, but claimed to have found their work to be too dark.  His work was also inspired heavily by his beliefs in Christian Science, which he adopted in his early twenties. He never received formal training as an artist, but was influenced by American Transcendentalist poetry and French Symbolist painters, such as Mallarme and Nerval. Another motif of his work, 19th century European ballet dancers, comes to life in this exhibition.

Similarly, Karen Kilimnik’s work redeploys discreet objects in a quest for the romantic sublime. Theater and stagecraft have figured strongly in her installations, and her use of particular materials suggests the influence of Cornell. Often making direct references to Degas and other Impressionist painters, Kilimnik’s subjects occupy a nineteenth-century world: one of mystery, drama, and romance.

Anthony Byrt, in his review for Art Forum, refers to Levin’s conceptual approach here as a “bold curatorial statement,” suggesting that the premise upon which the two artists are connected is a precarious one. However, “Ballet aside,” says Byrt, “tangible links do emerge, such as theatricality, quiet spectacle, and ideas of feminine beauty, which both artists explore.”

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Karen Kilimnik, Paris Opera Rats, 1993. Image credited as above.

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Team Gallery Booth at Art Basel 2010, Image via Art Basel.

AO is on site at Art Basel, Switzerland, where Wednesday marked the official, public opening of the international show.  On the roster was an inaugural Conversation Series speech by Paul McCarthy, an Art Film at Stadtkino Basel, and an Artist’s Talk with Rodney Graham at Kunstmuseum.  If the congenial and thronged atmosphere hadn’t tipped us off to the anticipation surrounding this year’s exhibitions, Tuesday’s sales would have been a clear indication.   A $15 million Picasso 1960 plaster maquette, Personnage, was snatched up immediately from Krugier Gallery by one of the VIP guests (an American collector) invited to Basel’s early opening, as was a line drawing by the same artist, one by Egon Schiele, and paintings by Max Ernst and Paul Klee. Sara Kay of the Geneva- and New York-based Kugier Gallery was unable to disclose the buyer of yesterday’s Picasso sale, but ten minutes after the purchase’s confirmation noted to Art Info that “[The] piece went to a very important collector with the best modern masters.  This is museum-quality, not trophy-level. It’s a very serious piece.” Skarstedt Gallery also enjoyed a  meritorious patronage yesterday, with sales including a Christopher Wool painting, Untitled, for $800,000, a Barbara Kruger photograph for $700,000, a Cindy Sherman piece for $500,000, and two works by George Condo: The Madman and The Colorful Banker, which fetched $375,000 and $225,000, respectively.  Hufkens Gallery sold a Louise Bourgeois etching, A Baudelaire (#7), which the late artist completed several months before her death in May, for $650,000 to a European collector.  Cheim & Read boasted a lucrative afternoon as well, with sales including a $2 million Joan Mitchell abstraction, a $125,000 Sam Francis drawing, a $100,000 Ghada Amer painting, Paradise, and a 28-strong Bourgeois watercolor series, Les Fleurs.  Lisson Gallery sold two Anish Kapoor‘s for $742,000.  Richard Prince‘s Student Nurse brought Gagosian $4.2 million, and Paul McCarthy’s bronze suites–Sneezy and Dopey–yielded Hauser & Wirth a combined total of $3 million. Blum & Poe sold a dyptich by Takashi Murakami for $1 million. White Cube reportedly sold six of Damien Hirst‘s new paintings, as well as Hirst’s “Memories of Love,” valued at $3.48 million. Lehmann Maupin sold two neon works by Tracey Emin, each for $74,000.

Damien Hirst, ““Memories of Love,” at White Cube’s booth, sold for $3.48 million. Image by Art Observed.

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All photographs by Oskar Proctor for ArtObserved

Currently on view at Hauser & Wirth New York is “Else,” the first exhibition in the United States devoted exclusively to the drawings of Roni Horn.  The show, composed of six new large-scale works up to eight by ten feet in size, will remain on view through June 19, 2010 at 32 East 69th Street.

The new works lend themselves to multiple viewing angles: from far away they appear as densely-packed thumbprints and dissipating hearts. A closer look reveals involved diagrams reminiscent of tesselations and multiplying cells. The heavily textured images are composed of cut paper, red painted lines, and the artist’s fractured pencil notes. Ever aware of the material, the stamp of the paper manufacturer feature prominently on the outer edges of several works. The intricacy and density of the compositions are contrasted with the artist’s simple, large scrawled signature, which floats, relaxed, detached from the rest in a sea of oaktag.

Björk at Friday night’s opening

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