The LA Times takes a look at the Menil Drawing Institute, set to open in 2017. The new museum, designed by Johnston Marklee & Associates, will sit at the southern edge of the Menil Campus, and boasts a number of striking features, including a thin, plate-steel roof and a special public space shaped by illusory curves in the shape of the building. (more…)
Keith Sonnier, Ba-O-Ba (1970), Caterina Verde, Keith Sonnier/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York
Pulling works from the beginning and current periods of the artist’s career, Pace Gallery is currently presenting two bodies of work by artist Keith Sonnier, showcasing an extended perspective on the artist’s work and its evolution. Working alongside fellow post-conceptual artists interested in the capabilities for light and lighting in installations and mounted works, Sonnier first embraced the use of neon in his pieces in the late 1960’s, using panes of glass and wrapped neon lighting to emphasize the interplays and gradual shadings of color caused by reflection and spacing. A number of seminal works from this period are exhibited here, including Ba-o-Ba V, and Neon Wrapping Incandescent, influential pieces that marked Sonnier’s newfound interest in the capabilities for light in a sculptural work. (more…)
The Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington, DC has announced that it will be taken over by the National Gallery of Art and George Washington University, part of a new plan for the longstanding arts institution. The plan would see the Corcoran School of Art and Design made part of George Washington University, with the University covering the millions of dollars in much-needed renovations. “There is no way to continue the Corcoran as we knew it or as we know it,” said Peggy Loar, interim director and president of the Corcoran. “That’s going to be the kernel of pain for some people.” (more…)
The Whitney Museum has loaned a pair of Cape Cod landscapes by Edward Hopper to the White House, where they have been installed in the Oval Office. “We are pleased and honored to lend two paintings by Edward Hopper—the artist with whom the Whitney Museum of American Art is most closely identified—to The White House for display in the Oval Office,” said Director Adam D. Weinberg. “We hope these beautiful Cape Cod landscapes will give great pleasure to President Obama and to all who see them.” (more…)
The New York Times profiles Anthony Elms this week, the co-curator of this year’s Whitney Biennial, set to open March 7th in New York, discussing the exhibition’s monumental reputation, and the almost equally considerable criticism it draws each outing. “I know someone’s not going to like the show, so I might as well just go forward and try to do it the way that seems right,” Elms says. “Anything I can do to put more artists in more people’s faces is something I’ll say yes to.” (more…)
Oldenburg and van Bruggen, Study, Soft Shuttlecock (1994). All Images Courtesy The Pace Gallery.
Now through February 22, Pace Gallery‘s 534 W. 25th Street location is hosting “Grounded”, an exhibition featuring floor-based sculpture by major figures in contemporary art. The show contains work produced from 1967 to 2013 that invite the viewers to experience a new perspective on sculptural forms. The artists that contribute to this show include works by Carl Andre, John Chamberlain, Tara Donovan, Tom Friedman, Tim Hawkinson, Maya Lin and others, focusing on the spatial interactions between art, the ground, and the viewer’s perception. (more…)
Looking Back / The 8th White Columns Annual (Installation View)
The White Columns Annual is open again this year, presenting a series of works centered around the title Looking Back. This year, curator Pati Hertling has been invited to select works based on her “personal experience of looking at art in New York” over the past year.
Lucy Dodd and Sergei Tcherepnin at The White Columns Annual, All Images via White Columns
An article in Bloomberg this week traces the current speculation over young artists and the art market, detailing the increasingly seen practice of flipping young artists quickly after purchasing them. Of particular note are the works of artists Lucien Smith and Oscar Murillo, whose works have seen increase of more than 3,000% in two years. (more…)
Artists David Shrigley and Hans Haacke have been announced as the 2015 and 2016 commissions for London’s Fourth Plinth sculpture project. Shrigley will install an enormous hand giving a thumbs up on the plinth in 2016, while Haacke will show a skeletal horse sculpture as next year’s piece. “What’s exciting for me is the opportunity to make something on a scale you couldn’t possibly imagine making yourself.” Shrigley says. (more…)
Part of artist Doug Aitken’s The Source series of art conversations, the artist speaks with Liz Glynn, talking about the artist’s approach to her immersive environments. “I think about functioning as somewhere between an architect and a scientist,” she says. “So I create the space and set up an experiment, but then I get out of the way and sort of see what happens.” (more…)
Frank Stella, The Big Flea Tower (2013), all images Courtesy Peter Freeman Inc.
On view at Peter Freeman, Inc. is a solo show of recent sculptures by Frank Stella, drawn mostly from his series Scarlatti K and Circus which were created using 3-D printing technology and metal pipes and rods. The exhibition will continue through February 22, 2014.
Street artist JR has unveiled his recent collaboration with the New York City Ballet, an expansive vinyl photograph of 80 dancers installed on the floor of the Koch Theatre’s marble promenade. The image, twisted to look like an enormous eye, is best viewed from higher up, in the cheaper seats of the theatre, and acts as something of an equalizing project for the space. “Now you’re inviting everyone to come up there,” the artist said. “And I like that, that it breaks boundaries — that anyone should be on any floor, it doesn’t matter.” (more…)
Ai Weiwei, Stacked (2002), Installation view Pérez Art Museum Miami Photo credit: Daniel Azoulay photography
The doors of Miami’s newly completed Perez Art Museum opened this past December with a landmark exhibition of works by Chinese artist and dissident Ai Weiwei, the first major international retrospective of the artist’s work. Charting the artist’s signature blend of irreverence, scale, architectural techniques and sculptural conceptualism, the exhibition is a remarkable introduction to Ai’s challenging and oftentimes difficult work, drawing on political aggression and irony to open dialogues on contemporary politics around the world.
Roxy Paine, Carcass (2013), via Kavi Gupta
Chicago’s Kavi Gupta Gallery is currently showcasing an immense sculptural project by New York-based artist Roxy Paine, a series of sizable wooden dioramas, carved into uncanny models of an unnamed fast-food restaurant, and a control room, filled with switches, faders and television screens.
Roxy Paine, Control Room (2013), via Kavi Gupta (more…)
Dana Schutz, Yawn 2 (2012), Courtesy Hepworth Wakefield Gallery
At The Hepworth Wakefield Gallery in Wakefield, West Yorkshire, England, is the first solo show in the UK for young artist Dana Schutz. Mostly made up of new paintings and drawings, the exhibition includes 20 vibrantly colored works depicting absurd, hypothetical situations.
Cultural Services of the French Embassy in the United States has announced a month-long visual arts festival to take place in April of this year, across 46 venues in New York City. The ART2 Festival “will consider issues prevalent in today’s patently global art world…with the goal of encouraging intellectual discourse between institutions, artists, scholars, students and the public,” the organization said in a statement. (more…)
Do Ho Suh, Specimen Series: 348 West 22nd Street, New York, NY 10011, Corridor, Radiator (2013), Courtesy Lehmann Maupin
On view at Lehmann Maupin Hong Kong is a solo exhibition by Korean artist Do Ho Suh, coinciding with his installation Home within Home at the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art in Seoul.
Sarah Lucas, NOB (Installation View), via Secession
Vienna’s Secession gallery is currently presenting a show of new work by artist Sarah Lucas, including a set of large-format sculptures, an immersive installation and a number of large scale photographs that fit well within Lucas’s well-established body of work. Exploring the political and psychological affects of various objects and sexual innuendoes, this time focused on the male genitalia, Lucas’s exhibition, titled Nob closes next week.
Gelatin, NOB (Installation View), via Secession (more…)
Artist Doug Aitken has announced a new collaborative project, The Source, examining the genesis and proliferation of ideas among some of the world’s most recognizable artists, musicians and thinkers, to be exhibited as Sundance Film Festival. Installed on the grounds of the film festival, the work will feature conversations with artists including Mike Kelley, Jack White, Jack Pierson, Jacques Herzog, James Turrell, Liz Glynn and many more. (more…)
Chinese-Indonesian collector Budi Tek is preparing to open his newly established Yuz Museum in Shanghai, showcasing a broad selection of contemporary Asian works from his collection. “I don’t have any say, it is done by the curator, who will select from the whole of the collection,” Tek says. “We are very careful to collect and exhibit the best works considered historical to Chinese contemporary art.” Tek says. (more…)
Sophie Calle, Le Major Davel (1994), via Galerie Perrotin
For her newest exhibition at Galerie Perrotin, Sophie Calle returns to themes of absence and presence, memory and “the real” through the exploration of three situations in which iconic artworks were stolen or destroyed, and the subtle emotional and structural fallout caused by the disappearance of iconic works by Rembrandt, Degas, and others.
Sophie Calle, Dérobés (Installation View), via Sophie Kitching for Art Observed (more…)
Reinard Mucha, Before the Wall Came Down (2008) and Lennep (2009), via Luhring Augustine
The first steps into Reinard Mucha’s show of new works at Luhring Augustine are something of a jarring affair. Enormous wall-mounted pieces, composed from steel beams, glass casings, and cracked wood blocks are stacked on top of each other in bizarre, serial constructions. In one work, a series of electric trains continually run through a series of stacked, oval tracks, running through metal pipes, joined by a series of boom boxes above the sculpture, all tuned to country music stations.
Reinard Mucha, Hidden Tracks (Installation View), via Luhring Augustine (more…)
Pierre Huyghe at Centre Pompidou, via Sophie Kitching for Art Observed
Referred to as “a major figure in the French and international art scene”, Pierre Huyghe, a poet of space and sculptor of time was exposed at the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris from September 25th 2013 to January 6th 2014. The exhibition was of retrospective nature, presenting 50 projects spanning over 20 years of Huyghe’s career.
Pierre Huyghe at Centre Pompidou, via Sophie Kitching for Art Observed (more…)
Elmgreen and Dragset, Tomorrow (Installation View) via Art Observed
Snaking through the hallways of the Victoria and Albert Museum’s London space is an immersive, illusory installation by Danish artists Elmgreen and Dragset, a multi-room piece realizing the home and studio of a fictional, disillusioned architect named Norman Swann.
Elmgreen and Dragset, Tomorrow (Installation View) Courtesy the Artists and Victoria Miro, London. © Elmgreen & Dragset. Photography: Anders Sune Berg (more…)
