Neo Rauch, Heillichtung (2014), via Art Observed
The newest show of work by Neo Rauch, on view at David Zwirner, is a fitting continuation of the German artist’s take on painting, combining surreal imagery with a vaguely familiar technique recalling the intertwined political and cultural history of his German homeland. (more…)
Andra Ursuta at ICA Miami (Installation View)
For those following the fractious events surrounding the schism between the Museum of Contemporary Art North Miami and the newly founded Institute of Contemporary Art this year, one had to wonder what the new space, located in Miami’s Design District, would bring forward for its first Miami Art Week. Without a permanent home, the ICA has taken up residence at the historic Moore Building, where it held its launch party Tuesday night. (more…)
Sam Durant, Proposal for White and Indian Dead Monument Transpositions, Washington D.C. (2005), via LACMA
After its entry to LACMA’s permanent collection in 2013, Sam Durant’s Proposal for White and Indian Dead Monument Transpositions, Washington D.C. is on view for the first time at its permanent home. Durant has always been strongly tied to the historical and social dynamics in America, and the artist’s ongoing work with the flux of history and spatial politics perhaps reached an apex with this installation. (more…)
E.V. Day, CatFight (2011-2014) via E.V. Day Studio
On view now at Mary Boone’s uptown gallery is the haunting sculpture series Semi-Feral by artist E.V. Day. The show centers around a large, site-specific sculptural piece comprised of multiple casts of saber-tooth tiger skeletons floating above the floor of the gallery space. Day’s work, often concerning sexuality and femininity, takes its point of departure here from the slang term “cat fight.” A phrase that typically robs a fight from any viciousness, Day returns the notion to its original, ferociously natural element.
A series of recently discovered cave paintings in Sulawesi, Indonesia have been dated as 35,000 years old, making them one of the oldest pieces of art ever found, and indicates that early art most likely originated on the African continent. “Our discovery on Sulawesi shows that cave art was made at opposite ends of the Pleistocene Eurasian world at about the same time, suggesting these practices have deeper origins, perhaps in Africa before our species left this continent and spread across the globe,” said archaeologist Dr. Maxime Aubert. (more…)
Bloomberg looks at the movement of Christopher Wool’s Apocalypse Now over the past years, tracing a history of owners that include François Pinault before selling last year for an astounding $26.4 million to a still unknown buyer. The story is an interesting look at the art market’s occasionally rapid escalations in price due to sudden demand, and the behind the scenes gossip that often accompanies the auction sale of iconic works. (more…)
Robert Gober, Untitled (2003-2005), via Art Observed
The long-awaited MoMA retrospective for Robert Gober begins in fitting fashiom. An immense, stripped-bare wall runs the length of the museum’s second floor outcropping, blocking off any view of the expansive installations inside, and capped with a single work near the entrance to the exhibition, the artist’s X-Pipe Playpen. The viewer never realizes, passing through the exhibition, that at one point they have found themselves on the inside of this imposing structure, staring at the camouflaged wallpaper and sink sculptures that define the artist’s ouvre. Ominous and surreal, the structure works perfectly in conjunction with the works on view, and offers a concise summary of the exhibition as a whole: a look at the full length of the artist’s prolific career, from his early paintings and sinks to his most demanding, complex environments, constantly examining and readdressing his emotionally potent take on abstraction. (more…)
The Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney Studio in Greenwich Village, the arts studio and salon that once served as the original home of the Whitney Museum, has been named a National Treasure by the National Trust, calling it “the cradle of the modern American art movement.” (more…)
Adel Abdessemed, Mon Enfant (2014)
Tel Aviv’s Dvir Gallery is currently presenting a new body of work by the controversial Algerian artist Adel Abdessemed. Known for his highly challenging assemblies of sculpture, video and installation, Abdessemed has not been hesitant to problematize the dynamics of politics, religion and social justice from various vantage points and perspectives. From gruesome footages of animal fights in Mexico to a giant twisted airplane, his art aims to thrill, shock and most importantly provoke. Far from subtlety, the London based artist delivers strongly vocal works of art, positioning himself as an anarchist and a rebel, with the intent of redefining the role of an artist in society. (more…)
Nick Cave, Sea Sick (2014), via Henry Murphy for Art Observed
Nick Cave and Jack Shainman Gallery have opened a pair of shows this fall, spanning the gallery’s two Chelsea locations on 20th and 24th street locations. Separately titled as Rescue and Made for Whites by Whites, the exhibitions articulate the artist’s familiar thematic concerns, addressing racial impositions and how they are reflected in everyday consumer culture. Cave delivers the prominent aspects of his practice, such as repurposing of found objects, assemblage of varying textures, and the performance of cultural rituals, with a somewhat stark hand, allowing a fierce critique to emerge from the works themselves. (more…)
The Financial Times interviews painter Anselm Kiefer in his studio this week, discussing his ongoing approach to Germany’s turbulent history, his upcoming show at the Royal Academy in London, and his own relationship to his work. “You cannot avoid beauty in a work of art,” he says. “You can take the most terrible subject and automatically it becomes beautiful. What is sure is that I could never do art about Auschwitz. It is impossible because the subject is too big.” (more…)
An article in The Wall Street Journal explores the eventful life (and afterlife) of Rudolf Bauer, a little-known early 20th century painter. A contemporary of artists such as Paul Klee and Vasily Kandinsky, the German-born Bauer explored the new movement of abstraction, creating innovative works with the support of patron Solomon R. Guggenheim. Bauer’s work, which had already been exhibited at the MoMA in the 1930s, was meant to feature prominently in the Guggenheim Museum as the core of the collection. In the 1940s, however, Bauer and Guggenheim suffered a falling-out, and Bauer renounced painting while his work went into storage at the museum. The article reports that, after over six decades of near-obscurity, Bauer will feature in upcoming shows by the German Consulate General and at Sotheby’s in addition to a documentary film and an Off-Broadway play. (more…)
Liz Cohen, Hood (2006), via Marianne Boesky
The city of Detroit seems to be popping up frequently on the art world radar as of late. While the ongoing bankruptcy crisis in the Motor City threatens to place the Detroit Institute of Arts’s vast collection on the auction block, a new generation of young artists has swarmed to the midwestern metropolis, lured by cheap rents and a the freedom to explore their work in earnest. Taking this renewed interest in Detroit as its starting point, Marianne Boesky and Marlborough Chelsea have teamed up on a summer show of works and artifacts exploring the creative and economic history of the embattled powerhouse of American industry.
Another Look at Detroit at Marlborough Chelsea (Installation View), via Marlborough Chelsea (more…)
“Born in the Bronx”, Installation View. All photos Anna Corrigan for Art Observed.
Now through August 1, Gavin Brown’s Enterprise is presenting a trio of diverse works by Oliver Payne & Nick Relph, a video piece by the gallerist himself, and an exhibit of Afrika Bambaataa’s record collection surveying of the roots of hip-hop in the Bronx. The exhibits speak to the process of emptying shelves and opening closets, placing the material details that one collects over a lifetime on view. In equal measure, the works illustrate a history, at once intimately personal and indicative of the larger movement of time and material legacy.
Francis Bacon, Study for a Pope III, (1961), Photograph: © The Estate of Francis Bacon.
In Homage, on view at Skarstedt London through August 8th, takes as its focus six paintings that embody the elements of inheritance and inspiration that sits at the heart of all creative practice. Francis Bacon, George Condo, Martin Kippenberger, Sigmar Polke, Richard Prince, and Andy Warhol are the featured artists. Each work was chosen for the strong ties it reveals to a predecessor, reflecting the styles or borrowing as subjects the master painters Velázquez, Picasso, Baselitz, Ernst, Goya, Munch, and de Chirico. Relationship is explored both as a stylistic approach and an inevitability of the creative process. (more…)
Jenny Savile, Untitled (2014), all images courtesy Gagosian London
On display at Gagosian Gallery in London is a series of monumental oil paintings by Jenny Saville, focusing on the materiality of the human body. The works are large in scale and extremely detailed, and some of the works have taken up to 7 years to complete. The exhibition will be on view through July 26th at Gagosian London.
Three artists in Germany have used the fat from Joseph Beuys‘ work Fettecke (1982) to distill their own liquor, and to serve it to visitors during a performance. The performers, professor of art in Bremen Markus Löffler and artists Andree Korpys and Dieter Schmal, combined the fat with blue pigment from a Yves Klein work, and created a home distilled drink. “The taste is reminiscent of Parmesan,” says Löffler. (more…)
Adrian Ghenie, Darwin and the Satyr (2014) ©Adrian Ghenie Courtesy of The Pace Gallery
Tempestuous, chaotic and captivating are only a few of the many attributions to describe the delirious colors and harmonics of Adrian Ghenie. Born and raised in Romania, the thirty-seven year old artist often experiments with the set techniques of painting through extensions and variations of narrative, conveying eerie tales of decay and disarray throughout his works. On view at Pace Gallery in London until July 25th is Ghenie’s most recent body of work, featuring nine oil on linen paintings and a large-scale room installation, reflecting the artist’s approach to the roots of Western ideology and the impact of intellectual thinking. (more…)
The Shaped Canvas Revisited (Installation View), via Luxembourg and Dayan
On view at Luexembourg & Dayan in New York City is an exhibition focusing on painted works with a non-rectangular canvas. In 1964, The Shaped Canvas was an exhibition held at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, curated by Lawrence Alloway, revealing the desire to overthrow existing aesthetic hierarchies. The current exhibition revisits this 1964 exhibition, featuring more than two dozen works connecting the postwar history of the genre to present day use of the shaped canvas.
Hiroshi Sugimoto, Manatee (1994), All images courtesy Pace Gallery
On view from May 9th until June 28th at Pace New York is an exhibition of seventeen large-format photographs by Japanese artist Hiroshi Sugimoto from his most recent body of work. Entitled Still Life, the display gives a prime example of Sugimoto’s mastery of formally composed and exacting photography and printing processes. Sugimoto has worked in a variety of approaches to still-life and architectural photography over the past years including old American movie palaces, drive-ins, and other structured works. He also formed an architectural practice himself in Tokyo, after receiving many requests to design structures such as restaurants and art museums.
Hiroshi Sugimoto, Still Life (Installation View)
Sugimoto compares the medium of photography as a record-making process to the fossilization process in nature – a moment suspended in time. His Polar Bear (1976) was the first photograph from his Diorama series, and many of the earlier silver gelatin prints also depict animals. The works are surreal, black and white images of dioramas he photographed in natural history museums, playing on the distorted perspective of “nature” that humans believe to be true. Although the photographs appear to be realistic nature landscapes, they are actually artifically constructed, staged recreations of natural environments on display in museums. Many of the works are representations of animals, but no humans appear in any of the images – in a way, depicting a divide between humans and the natural environment.
Hiroshi Sugimoto, Still Life (Installation View)
The result of Sugimoto’s pieces is at times quite jarring, particularly in works where the separation between recreated environment and museum space suddenly comes into focus. In several scenes, a notable line can be detected where a museum diorama gives way to painted display, and animals suspended in mid-action are placed in close proximity to a painted counterpart. The result is a sudden realization of the meticulous placement of each object in the image, not by Sugimoto, but rather the institution which is striving to frame the diorama as a moment of authentic animal behavior. The diorama, in turn, becomes as much an aesthetic project as it is an archival one, turning the intersection of scientific research and creative impulses into a definitive focal point.
Hiroshi Sugimoto, Still Life (Installation View)
The exhibition Hiroshi Sugimoto: Still Life is accompanied by a fully illustrated catalogue,Hiroshi Sugimoto: Dioramas, and the display will remain on view at Pace New York through June 28, 2014.
Hiroshi Sugimoto, Polar Bear (1976)
Hiroshi Sugimoto, Still Life (Installation View)
—E. Baker
Related Links:
Exhibition Page [Pace]
Martin Kippenberger, ab in die Ecke und Schäm Dich (Martin, Into the Corner, You Should be Ashamed of Yourself) (1989) via Osman Can Yerebakan
Paris was where the artists that planted the roots of Modernism in late 19th century. New York on the other hand emerged in the middle of 20th century as the destination for a large group of international artists as well as those from all around the United States who expanded notions of material and practice as the 20th century waned. Today, cities like Berlin, Tokyo and Sao Paulo are some of the top centers for artists to create and be a part of a community. No Problem: Cologne/New York 1984-1989, a group show currently on view at David Zwirner, is presenting a transatlantic approach to the 80’s art scene through the works of twenty-two artists from Germany and the United States. Underlying the dense creative vibrance of Cologne on one side of the Atlantic and New York on the other side, the exhibition presents a concentrated look at the productive interaction between the two cities, bringing together notable names that shaped the artistic nature of the era. (more…)
President François Hollande is set to inaugurate the first Pierre Soulages museum this week, established near the artist’s hometown in the South of France. “One of the objectives of the museum is to present a variety of works but also a fluid aspect [of Soulages’s canon],” says historian and chief museum curator Benoit Decron says. “I’ll turn to a network of collectors and [will make] acquisitions backed by public and private bodies.” (more…)
Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster, Ludwig II (M.2062) (2013), via Art Observed
Currently on view at 303 Gallery is French born artist Dominique Gonzales-Foerster’s exhibition, euqinimod & costumes. Being the artist’s first collaboration with the Chelsea gallery, the exhibition stands out as Gonzales-Foerster’s autobiographical investigation using clothes from her own wardrobe.
Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster, Euqinimod & Costumes (Installation View), via Art Observed (more…)
The New York Times looks at the results of returning treasured art works to their countries of origin, and examines the varying levels of prominence or neglect these works often reach once returned. “It’s not the same with music, it’s not the same with film, it’s not the same with literature — but when it comes to physical objects,” says J. Paul Getty Trust President James B. Cuno, “these things are kept as evidence of a proud past, as defined by the nation-state government.” (more…)
