Gilbert & George, The World of Gilbert and George (still) (1981), all images courtesy Lehmann Maupin

On view at Lehmann Maupin New York is a group of films and “Living Sculptures” by the 1986 Turner Prize winners Gilbert & George. The exhibition is the artists’ fifth show with Lehmann Maupin, and represents a transitional link between their early pieces and their later, better known large-scale works.

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Marcel Duchamp, Bicycle Wheel (1916/64)  © Succession Marcel Duchamp / ADAGP, Paris / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York 2014. Courtesy Gagosian Gallery. Photo by Philippe Migeat

Cunningly installed just down the street from the monumental Jeff Koons retrospective at The Whitney Museum, Gagosian Gallery is currently presenting a small but impressive exhibition of Marcel Duchamp’s body of readymades, offering a nuanced historical counterpoint to some of the artist’s most distinguished predecessors. (more…)

Sigmar Polke, Plastik-Wannen (1964) via Kelly Lee for Art Observed

Sigmar Polke’s output was diverse to say the least.  Raised in the lean years following World War II in West Germany, the artist moved quickly from painting to photography to installation, film and back over his almost five decades of work, shifting his techniques and approaches with each subsequent piece.  Sharply critical and always challenging the nature of capitalist negotiation with the art world, his pieces cover a broad spectrum from overtly comical and self-aware to dark and brooding.

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Media artist Daniel Canogar follows in the footsteps of artists like JR, Ryan McGinley, and Tracey Emin as he takes the reins for the latest iteration of the Times Square Alliance series “Midnight Moment”, an initiative that seeks to promote creative content through the Square’s billboards and news kiosks.  Titled “Storming Times Square,” the installation is unique in the way it generates content; from July 24th to July 27th, Canogar will film willing passers-by as they crawl over a green-screen, creating footage which will then be displayed on the Square’s 47 screens each night in September. (more…)

Huma Bhabha, Untitled (2013 ), all images courtesy VeneKlasen/Werner

On view at VeneKlasen/Werner Berlin is a group of new works by Pakistan-born artist Huma Bhabha, marking her first solo exhibition in Berlin. The sculptures and collage drawings, which were created in 2013 while Bhabha was working as a resident artist at The American Academy in Berlin, will remain on view through July 26th.

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Last week, artist Cai Guo-Qiang floated a specially made ark, filled with stuffed animals, around Shanghai harbor, in an attempt to draw further attention to the port city’s heavily polluted waters.  “Not being dead leaves possibilities and space for imagination,” the artist said of his work, emphasizing the space between living and dead that his stuffed animals occupy. (more…)

Danh Vo, We The People (2010-2014) at Brooklyn Bridge Park

This summer, Vietnamese artist Danh Vo is paying his homage to the Statue of Liberty as a symbol of American legacy with a group of installations on view at City Hall Park and Brooklyn Bridge Park.  From May 17th to December 5th, the public will be able to see We The People, a life-sized replica of the Statue of Liberty separated into 250 copper parts that Vo created using the same processes used on the original statue. (more…)

A strange disagreement has arisen over the authenticity of a site-specific Damien Hirst spot painting, after a homeowner has attempted to remove the work from its location and sell it.  Jess Simpson purchased the home where the work was installed, and attempted to mount the piece on aluminum to resell it, but was met with a statement by Hirst’s Science LTD. which stated the work no longer could be considered authentic as Simpson did not own the certificate, and could not remove a site-specific work to profit from it: “The ownership of a wall painting in the series titled Wall Spots always resides with the owner of the Wall Spots signed certificate, which accompanies the art work.” (more…)

JR, Au Pantheon! via Andrea Nguyen for Art Observed

The 31-year-old French photographer and artist JR has completed an impressive installation for his global INSIDE OUT project, which allows participants to express themselves through photographing their own portraits and allowing JR to paste them in a new artistic statement.  The French artist started the project after he was awarded the TED prize in 2011, which gave him $1 million to make a world-inspiring idea to come to life.  Since then, INSIDE OUT has traveled across the country: California, New York, and Minnesota; and the globe: Italy, Brazil, Palestine, etc.  Now in Paris, JR has covered the floor, cupola, and dome of the Pantheon in Paris with 2,500 of his signature black and white portrait posters. (more…)

Pierre Huyghe, L’Expédition scintillante, Act III (Black Ice Stage) (2002), via Museum Ludwig

Working in collaboration with the Centre Pompidou Paris, the Museum Ludwig is showing a major retrospective of Pierre Huyghe, containing over 60 works and projects. When the exhibition was previously set up in Paris, Huyghe took the layout of the previous show, dedicated to Mike Kelley, and transformed it by moving and cutting walls inside the space. When the show moved to Cologne, he cut the pieces out of the walls of Pompidou and reassembled them in a sort of collage. This dissection and reassembly reflects Huyghe’s exploration of the reliance of art on time and specific events. The works he displays carry with them their own physical timelines. (more…)

Carlito Carvalhosa, Possibility Matters (detail), 2014

Carlito Carvalhosa’s works, similar to early Renaissance church paintings, have the potential to make viewers feel equally enclosed and daunted by scale. The artist’s installations look upon the viewers, asking their submission and surrender towards their magnitude in structure and constructive. Utilizing a broad range of materials in conjunction with his work’s scale and size, Carvalhosa’s practice includes wood, plaster, wax or glass in forms that seem challenging or exceedingly fragile to execute.  It’s this delicately immense style that Sonnabend Gallery is currently presenting with Possibility Matters, a two-room installation transforming wood columns into a room-sized piece in Carvalhosa’s hands. (more…)

Artist William Kentridge will bring a massive wall installation to the banks of the Tiber River in Rome later this year, part of a commission by the Maxxi Museum.  The work, Triumphs and Laments, will depict scenes from Rome’s 2,000 year history through wall murals, made by removing layers of pollution from the river embankment.  As smog continues to accumulate in the city, the work will slowly disappear. (more…)

Kara Walker, A Subtlety (2014) all images via Osman Can Yerebakan for Art Observed

Since her debut at The Drawing Center in 1994, Kara Walker has been one of the most prolific American artists of African descent, delivering an ambitious oeuvre on the politics of race, gender and identity. As with contemporaries such as Lorna Simpson and Mickalene Thomas, who address similar subject matter, the artist has continuously mined history to reveal the untold micro-histories of those that are neglected and enslaved, reflecting on the representation of Black history in the U.S. and abroad. Her infamous cut-paper silhouettes narrating the stories of anguish and abuse in African-American history have earned the California-born, New York based artist a singular position in the contemporary art dialogue.

Kara Walker, A Subtlety (2014) (more…)

Rockaway! Festival, photo via Art Observed

The art world decamped to the Far Rockaways this weekend, as MoMA PS1 initiated its new public arts festival at the increasingly popular Queens beachfront.  Sponsored by the Jamaica Bay-Rockaway Parks Conservancy (JBRPC) to celebrate the reopening of Fort Tilden, as well as to benefit the ongoing recovery of the area following the immense damages wreaked by Hurricane Sandy in 2012, the event included exhibitions, performances and an after-party at the Rockaway Beach Surf Club.

James Franco Reads Walt Whitman during Rockaway! Festival, via Art Observed (more…)

Hy-Fi, the winning project in MoMA PS1‘s Young Architects Program, is set to open at the museum’s Queens campus this Friday, June 27th.  Created by design firm The Living, the installation uses biodegradable materials, and once set, actually grows over the course of its installation.   (more…)

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]

A public art collaboration between the Whitney Museum and the Highline will debut work by Alex Katz on the façade of 95 Horatio Street, just south of the elevated park.   The work, titled Katherine and Elizabeth, will remain on view for 8 to 12 months. (more…)

Ragnar Kjartansson, Me and My Mother (2010), via Art Observed

When The New Museum opened its doors for its spring season last month, curator Massimo Gioni noted subtle threads of comparison in the pieces on view.  Meant to be a concise yet meticulous look into a series of individual works or focuses from a disparate group of artists, the series of exhibitions currently on view play on a series of common threads, incorporating mixes of sound and music, documentary, performance and history from artists Camille Henrot, Hannah Sawtell, David Horvitz, Jeanine Oleson and Roberto Cuoghi, arranged in a way that perhaps makes best sense to address as a singular experience the artists’ works, shared themes, and interests.

Hannah Sawtell, ACCUMULATOR (2014), via Art Observed (more…)

Zhang Wan, Artificial Rock at Art Unlimited photo by Art Observed

As Sunday winds down, the 2014 edition of Art Basel in Switzerland is drawing to a close, concluding another week that saw the small Swiss city at the center of the art world for one dizzying week of sales, projects and installations.  The wealth of collectors, dealers and curators saw dealers bringing big-ticket works to the table across the board, and the steady stream of sales for blue-chip works and high priced works continued well beyond the VIP days early last week.

Andra Ursuta, Orthodoctrinator at Art Unlimited (more…)

Thomas Hirschhorn, Flamme Èternelle (Installation View), via Flamme Eternelle Website

“I am interested in the ‘too much’, doing too much, giving too much, putting too much of an effort into something. Wastefulness as a tool or a weapon’ says Thomas Hirschhorn about his practice. The Swiss-born artist’s new exhibition, Flame Èternelle in Palais de Tokyo in Paris is the indisputable proof of this effort of presenting the ‘too much’.

Thomas Hirschhorn, Flamme Èternelle (Installation View), via Palais de Tokyo (more…)

Ilya & Emilia Kabakov, L’Ètrange Cité (Strange City), via Art Observed

In 2010, Christian Boltanski spread piles of clothes reaching to fifty tons around the interior of Grand Palais. Three years before Boltanski, Anselm Kiefer brought in cement and metal along with dust and debris into this patriarchal symbol of French industrial awakening. Richard Serra, Daniel Buren and Anish Kapoor are among the other superstar artists who have marked their signatures in this historical building in response to France Ministry of Culture’s annual Monumenta project, which invites an artist to create a new body of work to be exhibited inside the impressive architecture of Grand Palais. On view through June 22nd is this year’s commission L’Ètrange Cité (Strange City) by Ilya and Emilia Kabakov, arguably Russia’s most celebrated names in contemporary art.

Ilya & Emilia Kabakov, L’Ètrange Cité (Strange City), via Art Observed (more…)

Ai Weiwei is set to launch a new project in Poland next month, consisting of three pits filled with broken crockery and covered over.  Installed in Brodno Sculpture Park, the hidden crockery are replicas of vases from a previous project made in 2005.  “In reaching out to the history of this precious object, Ai was interested in the fetishisation of certain artefacts and their complex history encapsulated in the colonial logistics of robbery and appropriation,” says park curator Sebastian Cichocki. (more…)

Guillermo Kuitca, Untitled (2013), all images courtesy Sperone Westwater

On view at Sperone Westwater in New York, NY is an exhibition of new works by Argentinean painter Guillermo Kuitca, featuring large scale works with a concept of fragmentation and fractured forms, including a painted, room-like structure visitors can pass freely in and out of. The exhibition will continue through June 21st, 2014.

Guillermo Kuitca, This Way (Installation View) (more…)