Outside Art Basel, via Art Observed
The works are hung, the location is set, and the doors will soon open on the 2014 edition of Art Basel’s flagship art fair in its namesake city, bringing an estimated $4 billion in art to the Swiss city alongside an enthusiastic flock of collectors, dealers, artists and visitors.
Paola Pivi, Titled to be determined (2014) at Galerie Perrotin (more…)
The New York Times notes an increased trend for galleries around the world to embrace unique exhibition spaces and showing rooms, favoring houses, industrial spaces and other new spaces over the traditional gallery.  “A house feels more exclusive and private than standing around in a gallery,†said Stuart Lochhead, the director of Daniel Katz Ltd., which recently set up shop in a 5-story townhouse in London . “Someone would feel comfortable in a space like this after stepping off a G5 from Los Angeles.†(more…)
Darren Bader at Andrew Kreps (Installation View), all images courtesy Andrew Kreps Gallery
Working at the intersection of installation, sculpture, and writing, Darren Bader’s newest exhibition at the Andrew Kreps Gallery forces viewers to question authorship as well as the relationships between creator, viewer, and object. The gallery describes the exhibition as being made up of three shows, distinct but occupying the same space: a show on the walls, Photographs I Like; a show on the floor, To Have and to Hold; and a show on a piece of paper at the front desk.
Marina Abramovic’s new performance 512 Hours opened yesterday at the Serpentine, with the artist granted free reign to enocunter visitors in the empty gallery space and do as she wishes.  “The idea is that the public are my material, and I am theirs,” she says. “I will open the gallery myself in the morning and close it at 6 p.m. with my key. I want to understand how I can be in the present moment, be with the public.†(more…)
Yves Klein, Painting of fire (1961), via Art Observed
Skarstedt Gallery has joined the crowd in Chelsea this month, opening its  new W. 21st Street space with a selection of unorthodox paintings by Yves Klein and Andy Warhol, created using human urine, oxidized metallic paints, water and fire.  Spread among the high-ceilinged rooms of the new space, the show welcomes an intuitive look into the pair’s interests not only in non-art materials and processes, but particularly those closest to the human condition.
Andy Warhol, Oxidation Painting (diptych) (1978), via Skarstedt (more…)
Artist Mélanie Matranga has been awarded the first annual Frieze Artist Award, a new prize that welcomes emerging artists to create an ambitious work for the Frieze London fair.  Matranga’s work will feature a set of videos “that follow a young artistic couple as they negotiate ‘freedom, success and the proper functioning of a couple.’ The episodes will be filmed during the construction of Frieze London in Regent’s Park, including a purpose-built café, which Matranga has designed for use by visitors.” (more…)
Mika Rottenberg, Bowls Balls Souls Holes (Bingo) (Installation View), via Osman Can Yerebakan
Mika Rottenberg’s artistic practice has long focused on the production methods and social schemes of contemporary work, orchestrating structurally perfect and visually playful videos in which actresses specifically cast for their physical looks twist the notion of productivity. Using meticulously planned and often vague plots, Rottenberg contemplates on the “nature” of making things in her videos, usually installed along with the pieces used in the production of the video.
Mika Rottenberg, Tsss Tsss Tsss (2014), via Osman Can Yerebakan (more…)
Lothar Baumgarten, Los Aristòcrates de la Selva y la Reina de Castilla (2011-2012), Courtesy of the artist and Marian Goodman
Currently on view at Marian Goodman Gallery is Los Aristòcrates de la Selva y la Reina de Castilla, a large scale exhibition by the renowned German conceptual artist Lothar Baumgarten. Known for his slide projections, site-specific installations and sound recordings in which he a range of different issues from international politics to institutionalization of the arts, Baumgarten is once again presenting a complex body of work at Marian Goodman Gallery. Carrying the idea of civilization into the core of his argument, the artist touches upon different representations of cultural identity and evolution of the mankind.
A group of artists including Jeff Koons, Catherine Opie, and Carrie Mae Weems are contributing to the Water Tank Project this summer, a public art installation that will place various artists’ work on water tanks around New York.  “Water is our most challenged but taken-for-granted resource. It’s all around us but virtually invisible,†curatorial team member Neville Wakefield says. “By drawing attention to the water tanks, we hope to alert the world to the wastage of our most precious commodity.†(more…)
Anicka Yi, Washing Away of Wrongs (2014), via Kelly Lee for Art Observed
The works at Anicka Yi’s Divorce, which was on view at 47 Canal until Sunday June 8th, felt like something of a series of scenarios: moments of banal chores, sexual trysts and social interaction that work together to create a sense of disjointed narrative.  Incorporating many of the art world’s currently popular tropes, particularly household materials and industrial approaches to display and mounting, Yi turned her objects towards a particularly personal subject: that of divorce. (more…)
Art Basel has announced its selections for the Parcours section of the Swiss fair, installing public works by, Darren Bader, Pierre Bismuth, Ryan Gander, and more.  The show will consist of 15 site-specific projects installed around the city, and will also include Seth Price’s audio work 8-4 9-5 10-6 11-7, an eight-hour dance track meant played around Basel. (more…)
The Guggenheim officially opened its call for design entries for its Helsinki Museum outpost yesterday, judged by a staff of architects, museum employees and  and politicians, including jury chair Mark Wigley, the Professor and Dean of the Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation at Columbia University; Ritva Viljanen, the Deputy Mayor, City of Helsinki; and Nancy Spector, Deputy Director and Chief Curator of the Guggenheim Foundation.  “This competition promises to be extremely exciting,” says jury member Erkki Leppävuori, President and CEO of VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland. “The site, which is rich and varied as a cultural and environmental setting, poses potentially productive technical challenges to architects and structural engineers, who also must address the high expectations and lively opinions of our citizens.” (more…)
Pierre Soulages, Peinture 175 X 222 Cm, 23 Mai 2013, via Art Observed
Held in high regard in his home country of France, and throughout much of continental Europe, the work of Pierre Soulages has never really achieved the same stature in the United States, despite his formal ties to the particularly American strains abstract expressionism and minimalism that have populated his work over the past sixty years.  But it’s that same lack of recognition that Dominique Lévy and Emmanuel Perrotin are looking to change this spring, bringing a selection of the artist’s most recent work, and some of his most classic canvases to show at the pair’s uptown exhibition spaces.
Pierre Soulages, Peinture 202 X 159 Cm, 18 Octobre 1967, via Art Observed (more…)
The Guardian reports on Gallery A, a little known and just recently refurbished exhibition space located inside London’s National Gallery, where a number of masterworks not normally shown in the main rooms are kept for public viewing.  The new exhibition spaces in Gallery A have been drastically reworked, allowing visitors a more relaxed, expansive viewing atmosphere. (more…)
The colorful, shifting glasswork of Andrew Erdos
The annual festivities surrounding Bushwick Open Studios seem to get bigger each year, and 2014 was no exception, as the yearly summer art open wrapped its eighth year of open artist studios, new gallery shows, and a freshly inaugurated art fair in the heart of one of Brooklyn’s hotbeds for creative talent.
Seren Morey at 56 Bogart (more…)
Last July, the Tate Modern opened its doors for a special exhibition that went beyond the set norms and techniques of exhibition planning. Meschac Gaba’s Museum of Contemporary African Art was a special project expanding twenty years of work across two continents, accumulated and exhibited in the rooms of the London museum. Composed of twelve different spaces, the large-scale exhibition was an outcome of Gaba’s investigation of the arts in African countries while questioning the often problematic affair between African art and the decision makers of the art dynamic and markets of the West.
Continuing some of these thematics, Gaba is currently presenting his latest body of work at Tanya Bonakdar Gallery. As the title Exchange Market suggests, the content of the exhibition is distinguishably opinionated  regarding the global economic structures and the imbalance of labor against income for the vast majority of societies around the world. Hailing from Benin, Gaba has lived and worked in The Netherlands, and seizes on the issues surrounding the unfair distribution of wealth and the exploitation of the less privileged from a Non-Western point of view. This duality also ties to other oppositions such as First World versus Third World or Developed versus Underdeveloped, suggesting a breakdown of the separation between the powerful and the weak.
Downstairs at Bonakdar, Ten marketplace stands showcasing a wide range of symbolic objects  (hand tools, cotton balls, cacao beans, outdated or currently popular mobile phones) and banknotes from different countries attached onto umbrellas. Titled Bureau d’Exchange (Exchange Office), the ten-table installation presents devalued or still in use African currencies printed with multiple zeros, as well as certain Western banknotes with many fewer zeros. Reduced to sheets of paper hanging from the salvaged umbrellas, these banknotes make visually potent statements on the problematic connection between labor and income while discussing the disadvantaged political and economical structures around the globe, given no shade under these bare umbrellas.
Also on display on the first floor is a group of coin banks hung on the gallery walls. With their shapes inspired by famous bank logos or culturally potent figures, these banks do not serve for the common purpose of collecting money for charity or personal use; however they stand out as the silent emblems of a collectively desired utopian reality, ideally stemming from individual contributions.
The argument on collectiveness and global unity continues on the second floor where viewers are presented with four foosball tables, each made in Benin. Visually recalling the original Western pastime, the tables differ with their uncommon arrangements regarding the execution of the game. The soccer tables Gaba presents include players dressed in uniforms of different nations and players of markedly different races as opposed to generic and neutral players.
As components of a unitary operation, all connected to each other, players on these soccer tables stand out as the embodiments of current economical and social structures planned according to different goals and strategies. In one, for instance, a smiling, American flag-clad team is pitted against one bearing a uniform of pan-African identity.  The oppositions are striking.  From a more optimistic point of view, these players emphasize the artist’s statement on a utopian collective agenda that is solely accessible through a global awakening and realization.
Meschac Gaba: Exchange Market is on view at Tanya Bonakdar Gallery through June 7th, 2014.
— O.C. Yerebakan
Related Links:
Tanya Bonakdar Gallery [Exhibition Page]
Tate Modern [Exhibition Page]
Mark Flood, Available Nasdaq Symbol (Installation View), via Art Observed
Few artists are prepared to plumb the depths and egoistic state of the art market, image culture and corporate personhood the way Mark Flood has for the past decades. Â Time and again, the artist’s occasionally crass, bold-faced techniques and assemblages of mass-media signifiers toys with the spectacle of consumption, mocking both advertisements and political symbolism as bound up in a state of image-consumption. Â It’s this dichotomy, writ large against the backdrop of the art market that defines his current show of work at Zach Feuer in New York. (more…)
The Wall Street Journal takes an early look inside the New York home of Lousie Bourgeois, set to reopen next year as an art research center, exhibition space, and sculpture garden.  Filled with drawings and notes on the walls, yellowing paper and notes, the space is an indication of Bourgeois close affinity for working from home.  “It’s decrepit splendor,” says her longtime assistant Jerry Gorovoy. (more…)
As Jeff Koons prepares to open his major retrospective at the Whitney next month, the artist will also be installing Split-Rocker, his cartoonish, monumental flower sculpture at Rockefeller Center on June 25th, two days before the show opens.  “We couldn’t do any topiary at the Whitney, because there wasn’t any space,†Koons told the New York Times. (more…)
Wolfgang Tillmans, Eastern Woodlands Room (2014), Photo: Anders Sune Berg Courtesy Galerie Buchholz, Berlin/Cologne, Maureen Paley, London, David Zwirner, New York
The 8th edition of the Berlin Biennale has opened its doors, taking up space within the Haus am Waldsee and Museum Dahlem, the KW Institute for Contemporary Art, as well as a number of satellite events, projects and talks spread across Berlin, running through the beginning of August.  Curated by Juan Gaitán, the exhibition this year features an explicit look at the nature of images in contemporary society, in their proliferation, reception and interpretation.
Tonel, Commerce (2014), Photo: Anders Sune Berg; Courtesy Tonel (more…)
Charles Saatchi will offer Tracey Emin’s iconic My Bed piece for sale this July at Christie’s in London.  The work, which Saatchi bought for £150,000 in 2000, is estimated to sell between £800,000 and £1.2m, a price which Emin  is “philosophical” about.  “It’s still my bed. I love it,†the artist says. (more…)
Giuseppe Penone, Scrigno (2007), all images courtesy Gagosian Gallery
On view at Gagosian London is an exhibition of Giuseppe Penone’s large scale works from 2006-2008 as well as some more recent pieces. Entitled Circling, the exhibition includes 2 major works, Scrigno (Casket), 2007, and Sigillo (Seal), 2008, depicting the structure of trees, specifically: “the tree as a being that memorializes the feats of its existence†The display will remain on view through May 31, 2014.
Bill Viola is profiled in The Guardian this week, following the opening of his new long-term installation, Martyrs at St. Paul’s Cathedral in London, featuring videos of people engulfed in frames or hung upside down.   “These people are left for dead and don’t expect to live,” Viola says. “That’s all I’ll say.” (more…)
Miroslaw Balka, We Still Need (2014), all images courtesy The Freud Museum
On view at The Freud Museum in London is a special exhibition from contemporary Polish sculptor and video artist Miroslaw Balka, featuring a series of installations referring to the period from 1938, when Sigmund Freud moved to London from Vienna to avoid Nazi persecution, until 1942, when four of his five sisters died in concentration camps. Densely layering Freud, Wagner and the Holocaust in equal measure, the measured and immersive installation will remain on view through May 25.
