Outside View, Art Basel 2013, Photograph Courtesy of Art Basel

The city of Basel, situated at the border between Switzerland, France and Germany, will be transformed into a contemporary arts hub this week for the 44th annual Art Basel. Anticipating record attendence, the fair will look to top its record of over 65,000 visitors at the marathon art event this year.  With over 300 top galleries from all over the world flocking to the city to display over 4,000 artists’ work, the fair is commonly referred to as the “Olympics of the art world.”  and features a similarly brimming schedule of events and claustrophobic crowds of eager spectators. Each day boasts its own full agenda, including film screenings, artist talks, and performances, and joined by the vast number of peripheral art exhibitions and events hosted by cultural institutions of Basel throughout the entire region, held in obscure and romantic venues amidst the Swiss lakes and mountains.

Olafur Eliasson, Untitled (2003), Courtesy of Art Basel

(more…)

Mike Kelley, Eternity is a Long Time (Installation View), Photo by Agostino Osio Courtesy Fondazione HangarBicocca, Milan All Mike Kelley works © Estate of Mike Kelley  

Running in tandem with this summer’s Venice Biennale, Milan’s HangarBicocca is currently presenting a selection of works by the late American conceptual master Mike Kelley, culling together a series of sculptures, installations and video from the last few years of his life, alongside several of his earlier notable conceptual pieces.

Mike Kelley, Eternity is a Long Time (Installation View), Photo by Agostino Osio Courtesy Fondazione HangarBicocca, Milan All Mike Kelley works © Estate of Mike Kelley   (more…)

Billed as the world’s largest art exhibition, the newly announced Art Everywhere project will turn billboards and poster sites around the United Kingdom into exhibition spaces for works from the national collection.  The project is curated in part by the British public, who will vote on their favorite works from a curated shortlist.  Damien Hirst has offered a work for exhibition, and is a vocal supporter of the project.  “Art is for everyone, and everyone who has access to it will benefit from it. This project is amazing and gives the public a voice and an opportunity to choose what they want to see on their streets.“  He says. (more…)

Gert&Uwe Tobias, Untitled (2012), © photo Alistair Overbruck, Cologne/Gert & Uwe Tobias/VG. Bildkunst, Bonn via Whitechapel Gallery

Whitechapel Gallery is currently hosting a major exhibition of work by Romanian-born twins Gert and Uwe Tobias, showcasing the brothers’ work and its abilities to challenge the distinctions between fine art and craft with their collaboratively created woodcuts, sculptures, collages and typewriter drawings.  Their multi-genre works from 2008 to the present are organized into a site-specific installation for the gallery, and showcase their broad, nuanced skill set in a global context.

Gert & Uwe Tobias (Installation View), via Whitechapel Gallery

(more…)

British Pavilion (Installation view) 2013

With the impressively well-stocked selection of pavilions at this year’s Biennale, the United Kingdom has turned to Turner Prize-winning artist Jeremy Deller to represent the country, presenting a complexly layered thematic exhibition titled English Magic.  Best known for his restaging of the miners’ strike battle of Orgreave in 2001, his 2009 road trip though America with a car wrecked by a bomb in Iraq, and his 2012 touring bounce house version of Stonehenge, Deller has brought his controversial, political resumé to bear on the largest stage for his country’s creative reputation, creating a visually aggressive criticism of modern wealth.

Jeremy Deller, St. Helier on Fire 2017, British Pavilion 2013

(more…)

Alexander Calder, Calder After the War (Installation View), courtesy of Pace London

Currently on view at Pace Gallery London, from April 19th through June 7th, is an exhibition of over fifty works by Alexander Calder, created between 1945 and 1949, one of his most well-known periods during which he pioneered many of his sculptural abstractions through movement in three dimensions, particularly via his mobiles and stabiles.

(more…)

Rudolf Stingel, Untitled (Franz West) 2011, (Installation View) (2013)

Rudolf Stingel, the Italian-born, New York-based artist, is currently presenting an installation covering the entire of the Palazzo Grassi, the regal Venetian estate of billionaire  collector François Pinault. The exhibition is curated by the artist himself in partnership with Elena Geuna, the former director of Sotheby’s Europe. The project was designed specifically for the 3-story, 5,000 square meter building located on the Grand Canal in Venice. What’s more, the exhibition marks the first time the entire museum has been devoted to a single artist.

Rudolf Stingel, Rudolf Stingel (Installation View) (2013)

(more…)

The Hirshhorn Museum’s proposed “Seasonal Inflatable Sculpture Project,” informally referred to as “the Bubble,” has been officially decided against, after years of debate and wrangling over its installation on the museum’s property on the National Mall.  The news comes shortly after Hirshhorn director Richard Koshalek announced his decision to resign after a split vote on the Bubble several weeks ago.  “If the board were more together and if we were seeing more results of that, then we might have made a different decision,” Smithsonian Undersecretary Richard Kurin said. “Because it’s divided, it makes it hard to move forward.” (more…)

To commemorate the 150^th anniversary of the Tube, Art on the Underground has invited 15 innovative contemporary artists from across the globe to produce limited-edition posters. Each image will present a different perspective on the London Tube, and hence create a vibrant narrative of the world’s first underground network. Artists involved include Gillian Wearing, Sarah Lucas and Wolfgang Tillmans. (more…)

David Pappaceno, Psychic Birth (Installation view,2013), at English Kills Gallery.

This past weekend, locals, gallerists, collectors and other art enthusiasts flocked to Bushwick, Brooklyn for the seventh-annual Bushwick Open Studios, organized by nonprofit community group Arts in Bushwick. With over 550 spaces participating, many with more artists than one, it was impossible to see everything, even for the most dogged observer. Art turned out at every corner—in galleries, art studios, apartments, bars/restaurants, shops and event spaces— in this rapidly-developing district with a concentration of studios and gallery spaces that rivals Chelsea.

M. Henry Jones, Jim Jarmusch (2013) at Microscope Gallery

(more…)

Bashir Makhou, Giardino Occupato (Installation View) (2013) All photos by Sophie Kitching for Art Observed

Otherwise Occupied is an exhibition of Palestinian artists organized by al Hoash, a Palestinian art organization based in Jerusalem, as part of the 55^th International Art Exhibition at Venice Biennale 2013. The show is one of 48 Collateral Events hosted around the city. The exhibition features the work of two prominent, internationally renowned artists: Bashir Makhoul and Aissa Deebi. Makhoul is the head of the Winchester School of Art, England, while Deebi is a founding member of ArteEast, a Brooklyn-based organization that supports Middle Eastern art and culture. Both have exhibited work at the Elga Wimmer Gallery in Manhattan, and mainly work with photography. In the past, both have addressed the themes of diaspora, exile and, more broadly, Palestinian politics, unsurprising given that both artists were born inside the 1948 borders of Palestine, and have since immigrated to become citizens of other states. Currently, they are working in the globalized art world, exemplified by Massimiliano Gioni’s Central Pavilion, The Encyclopedic Palace. Nevertheless, the artists still consider themselves Palestinian, underlining the complex political identities of modernity Gioni expressed in his press conference.

Bashir Makhou, Giardino Occupato (Installation View) (2013)

(more…)

Damien Hirst, Death or Glory (2001)

In conjunction with the events and exhibitions of the 55th Venice Biennale this summer, Le Stanze del Vetro (“Rooms for Glass”), the joint project by La Fondazione Giorgio Cini and Pentagram Siftung, is currently presenting Fragile?, an exhibition dedicated to the presence and use of glass in contemporary art.  Perhaps one of the more interesting conceits for a Biennale exhibition, the show on the Venetian island of San Giorgio Maggiore looks at glass as an aesthetic and and figurative medium in current practice, featuring works by Ai Weiwei, Marcel Duchamp, Pipliotti Rist, Joseph Beuys, and many more.

(more…)

101 Spring Street, the New York Residence of artist Donald Judd, opened its schedule today for small public tours, offering visitors a firsthand look at the artist’s distinct views on design, lifestyle, and creativity, through his meticulous and elegantly simple renovation of the former industrial space.  “I’ve never built anything on new land,” Judd once wrote. (more…)

British artist David Shrigley has chosen an unlikely subject for his sculptural commission outside the Bayerischer Hof Hotel in Munich: Michael Jackson’s pet chimpanzee, Bubbles.  Standing near a fan monument to Jackson, Shrigley’s sculpture will aim to bring attention to Bubbles’s currently unfunded care in Florida. “Michael Jackson’s will made no provision for the care of Bubbles, yet the Estate of Michael Jackson still claims ownership of him. It costs $20,000 US a year to care for each of the 30 apes at the sanctuary and whilst some Michael Jackson fans have donated money to the cause there is still a massive shortfall in funding. Apes live almost as long as humans, so the cost of lifetime care for the apes will run into many millions.”  The press release on the website claims. (more…)

Richard Serra’s Shift, a series of zigzagging wall structures built along the changing elevations of the field it moves through, has been designated as a cultural heritage site in North Toronto.  Voted through by the township council of King City, Ontario, the work was the subject of fierce and ongoing debate, finally pushed through by a group of concerned citizens called “Friends of Shift.”  “It is especially gratifying that it was the result of the initiative of a group of private citizens who care about art.”  Mr. Serra commented. (more…)

Ai Weiwei, S.A.C.R.E.D. (Installation View inside steel diorama) (2013)

Since his 2011 detention for alleged tax evasion by the Chinese government, artist and political dissident Ai Weiwei has taken the world by storm, with exhibitions and retrospectives around the world, alongside documentary profiles, constant press coverage, and a notably enigmatic heavy metal album.  His ubiquity in the artworld, set in contrast to his physical restriction from leaving China, is clear, and consistent at the 55th Venice Biennale, where the artist is holding two separate solo installations.

Ai Weiwei, S.A.C.R.E.D. (Installation View) (2013)

Ai Weiwei, Straight (Installation View) (2008-2012) (more…)

The British Council, which is overseeing Jeremy Deller’s Great Britain pavilion at the Venice Biennale, has removed a banner from the exhibition, which reads “Prince Harry Kills Me,” after concerns that the message may provoke attacks on British troops in the Middle East.  “We asked Jeremy to reconsider the banner and poster … on the grounds that it could potentially be misconstrued in environments where the British army is currently deployed and perceived to be disrespectful of those who had lost their lives,” a British Council spokesman said. (more…)

Outside the 55th Venice Biennale

The press preview for the 55th edition of the Venice Biennale, the international art world’s largest stage, kicked off this week, sprawling across the narrow alleyways and watery causeways of the Italian city.  Art Observed was on site to cover the opening ceremonies, and has this selection of pictures documenting the first day of the fair.

The Opening Reception, with Paolo Barata and Massimo Gioni (more…)

Ellsworth Kelly, Singular Forms (Installation View), courtesy of Mnuchin Gallery

From Sculpture on the Wall at the Barnes Foundation to the Museum of Modern Art’s Chatham Series, the work of artist Ellsworth Kelly is being celebrated across the East Coast this spring. Until June 1, the Mnuchin Gallery in New York will join in on the event, hosting Kelly’s ongoing Singular Forms series, which has spanned most of hist career, from 1966-2009.  A retrospective of Kelly’s emblematic abstract paintings, the show is curated by the artist himself, presenting his personal take on this broad body of work.

(more…)

Capitalizing on the platform of the Venice Biennale, artist Ai Weiwei has created six dioramas depicting the events of his 81 day detention under the Chinese communist state, which will be on view at Zuecca Project Space, running concurrently with the festival.  The half-scale works were created in Beijing, and secretly transported to Venice, showing the psychological torment of confinement and constant surveillance.  “Can political art still be good art?” Ai says.  “Those questions have been around for too long. People are not used to connecting art to daily struggle, but rather use high aesthetics, or so-called high aesthetics, to try to separate or purify humans’ emotions from the real world.” (more…)

The Venice Biennale

Every two years, the floating city of Venice floods with with the multitudes of art visitors, customers, gallerists and exhibitions that are all a part of the Venice Biennale. This year, marking the 55^th edition of the world’s largest art fair, sees the continuation of an event that first began in 1896. Between June 1^st and November 24^th over 300,000 visitors will travel to Venice for the expansive installations of exhibitions of work from artists in 88 nations, at both official and fringe sites. Art Observed will be on-site this week, with photos from variety of events around the city.

(null)

Artist James Turrell recently spoke with the Financial Times as he prepares for his three museum retrospective at LACMA, the Guggenheim Museum, and the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, as well as a solo show at LA’s Kayne Griffin Corcoran space. The artist is still vigorously involved in his Roden Crater Project, as well as his early career in Los Angeles. “I would describe Los Angeles as actually not having taste. In New York there’s taste. But you have to remember that taste is censorship. It’s a form of restriction.” In Los Angeles, he said, “there wasn’t any party line so you could do what you wanted.”

(null)

Donald Judd at LACMA (Installation View), courtesy of LACMA

On view alongside LACMA’s permanent modern and contemporary collection is a peripheral gallery highlighting a selection of works by artist Donald Judd. Focusing on several of various mediums, the brief show revisits Judd’s focus on simplified geometric forms and the space created around his simple objects.

(more…)

In a recent magazine interview with Vanity Fair, YBA veteran Tracey Emin has called out critics for judging her work much more harshly than her male counterparts.  She also discussed Roman Standard, her recent project for Petrosino Square in New York that placed a single bird on top of a 13 foot pole. “What I’m saying through the piece is that strength isn’t always about being big.”  She says. (more…)