Serpentine Galleries has announced a collaboration with Comme des Garçons to create a special unisex fragrance, inspired by the gallery’s location in Hyde Park, with a bottle designed by Tracey Emin.  “The result is a fresh, light, yet deceivingly complex, unisex scent composed of grass, leaves, pollen (galbanum, iris leaf), oxygene (aldehyde, ozone), asphalt (black musks, nutmeg), labdanum and smoked cedar with a little bit of pollution (benzoin, juniper wood, gaïac wood),” the gallery notes on its site. (more…)

The shortlist for the 2014 Turner Prize will be announced on May 7th at the Tate Britain.  The award, given annually to an artist born or working in Britain with an exceptionally outstanding exhibition in the past year, includes a £25,000 prize.  All of the shortlist nominees will be invited to show their work at the Turner Prize exhibition later this year. (more…)

Alice Workman, the newly appointed director of Hauser and Wirth’s Somerset Gallery location, is profiled in The Guardian this week, discussing her views on the unique countryside space it occupies, and how the space will operate once fully operational.  It’s really a combination of all the things the Wirths are passionate about,”  she says. “We want different audiences to engage in different ways – some might come for the garden, the restaurant or the exhibitions, but will hopefully discover other things while they’re here.” (more…)

The London Underground has released a new brochure and map for the Tube, featuring design by artist Rachel Whiteread.  The new map design features a series of holes on the front cover, offering snapshots of the routes listed inside.  “As a sculptor I cast empty spaces,”  Whiteread explained. “It therefore seemed appropriate to make some holes in London which theoretically could be filled up.” (more…)

Tauba Auerbach is interviewed in the Evening Standard this week, following the opening of her first solo exhibition in London at the ICA.  “I don’t think beauty and complexity are at odds,” she says.  “I feel that I’m more compelled to spend time with objects that I find seductive. I want to examine them and understand them.” (more…)

A trio of sculptures by Jake and Dinos Chapman are set to be installed at Hampstead Heath in London.  The rudimentary sculptures of a group of dinosaurs, titled The good the bad and the ugly, were previously installed at the Gherkin building.  Installed next month, they will constitute the largest piece of public art the park has seen since 2005, when Giancario Neri’s The Writer was placed on view.   (more…)

The shortlist for the BP Portrait Award has been announced, featuring works by Thomas Ganter, Richard Twose, and David Jon Kassman.  The nominees will be on view at London’s National Portrait Gallery from  June 26th to September 21st, with the winner announced just before the exhibition opens on June 24th. (more…)

Richard Deacon, Struck Dumb (1998), all images courtesy Tate Britain

Tate Britain is currently presenting an exhibition from Turner Prize-winning sculptor Richard Deacon, primarily composed of large works in wood, contorted steel, and highly glazed ceramics that explores the artist’s ongoing interest in the conflation of industrial, sculptural and art historical influences. The exhibition was curated by Clarrie Wallis, Curator of Modern & Contemporary British Art along with Sofia Karamani, Assistant Curator of Contemporary British Art, and is on view through April 27th.

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Tate Britain head Penelope Curtis is under attack this week by critic Waldemar Januszczak, who has called for the museum director to step down or be replaced, citing low attendance and a series of allegedly poor exhibition plans.  “I first noticed what an appalling exhibition-maker she was when she co-curated the Modern British Sculpture show at the Royal Academy in 2011,” Januszczak wrote. “It was, quite simply, one of the worst exhibitions I have ever seen. Subsequent shows at Tate Britain have continued the trend.” (more…)

A new venture has opened its doors in London, allowing interested buyers to purchase shares in art on view, and to take the work home to show for a fraction of each year.  Called My Art Invest, investors can buy shares in works for as little as $8, with share value determined by an artist’s market value, including works by Basquiat and Damien Hirst.  “We want to democratise art,” says Tom-David Bastok, My Art Invest’s 25-year-old founder. “For me, it’s very, very, very important that everybody can put a foot in the art market.” (more…)

The Guardian has published an imaginative profile on Marcel Duchamp, noting some of the artist’s quirks and passions, including his avid chess-playing, his daring transportation of his art materials out of Nazi Germany posing as a cheese vendor, and his takes on quickly produced artworks: “Quick art, that’s been the characteristic of the whole century from the cubists on, ” he once said.  “The speed that’s being used in space, in communications, is also being used in art. But things of great importance in art have always to be slowly produced.” (more…)

Haim Steinbach, basics (1986), All Images Courtesy Serpentine Gallery

The Serpentine Gallery in London is currently presenting once again the world is flat., an exhibition celebrating Haim Steinbach’s forty-year career as a multimedia artist. Born in Israel and living in New York, Steinbach has presented a distinctive artistic practice by redefining what ‘collecting’ is, arranging familiar daily objects in his own methods while attributing further content and ground, allow the artist to invite viewers into extended readings on what is visible, but also on what lies beneath the surface of the work. (more…)

He Xiangyu, Wisdom Tower (2012-2013), all images courtesy White Cube Bermondsey

At White Cube Berdmonsey’s North Galleries is the first UK exhibition of work by Chinese artist He Xiangyu, composed of installations and multimedia sculptures meant to express cultural and social concerns while maintaining an ongoing interest in the body and its place in exchanges between the two.

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Angolan millionaire Rui Costa Reis has reportedly made a offer to purchase the nation of Portugal’s collection of works by Joan Miró, making a 44 million euro offer for the collection of 85 paintings.  The works were previously made for sale in February, but the offering was canceled after strong protests in Portugal. Barring a sale, the works will reportedly be on the auction block at Christie’s in London this June. (more…)

A pair of paintings by Gaugin and Bonnard, stolen from a London collector in 1970, have resurfaced in the home of an Italian autoworker, the Guardian reports.  The pieces were purchased at auction in 1975 for a sum of 45,000 lira (€39 or £32, equal to £300 today), and sat in the kitchen of his home for many years, before the owner’s son noticed a similarity between the works and other Impressionist masterpieces.  “The worker, it seems clear, didn’t know what they were,” says Mariano Mossa, commander of the Italian heritage police. (more…)

The Financial Times writes on trends towards collectives, collaboration and cooperation in the contemporary art world, examining the practice of the Triangle Network, White Columns and How to Work Together, a recent project which challenges various fine artists to work in collaboration to respond in ways as to how artists may operate collectively.  “We have been very open that this has been a challenging process,” says Polly Staple of Chisenhale Gallery, who helped earn funding for the new project. “It took us six months just to come up with a Memorandum of Understanding.” (more…)

James Turrell, Sensing Thought (2005), via Pace

Following his massive, three-museum retrospective last summer, artist James Turrell returns to the gallery circuit this spring, with a selection of recent works on view at Pace Gallery’s London location in Burlington Gardens.  The show offers a continuation of Turrell’s interest in light as a mediator of space, using LED lights to create shifting, intriguing alterations of depth in a closed room.

James Turrell, Recent Works (Installation View), via Pace (more…)

George Condo, Standing Bather (2013), via Skarstedt

On view at Skarstedt Gallery in London are a series of ink on paper drawings by George Condo, combining styles and techniques from different modes of painting, often subverting, but always focused around the commonly accepted conventions of the portrait.

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Georg Baselitz, Untitled (2013), all images courtesy Gagosian Gallery

On view at Gagosian London is an exhibition of recent works by German painter Georg Baselitz, focusing the artist’s distinct style through a series of paintings focused on the self-portrait, while paying direct homage to the gestural figures of Willem de Kooning. The exhibition will remain on view through March 29, 2014.

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Hans Ulrich Obrist has published an essay in The Guardian this week, discussing the current state of curatorial practice, and the importance he sees for curators in contemporary arts.  “When I became a curator,” he writes, “I wanted to be helpful to artists. I think of my work as that of a catalyst – and sparring partner.” (more…)

George Condo, Constellation Portrait (2013), via Simon Lee

In the middle of 2013, George Condo fell ill with legionnaire’s disease and triple pneumonia, a combination of illnesses that left the prolific artist at death’s door.  Traveling between Berlin, London and New York, the artist’s demanding schedule finally got the best of him, placing him in the hospital for several weeks recovering.  It was during this time that Condo painted the works currently on view at Simon Lee gallery, a suite of paintings that see the artist branching ever further into his particular approach to portraiture and abstraction.

George Condo, Headspace (Installation View), via Simon Lee (more…)

Chilean architect Smiljan Radic has won the competition to design the 2014 Serpentine Pavilion in London’s Hyde Park, set to open June 26th.  Radic’s design, resembling a series of large stones and pillars, will be semi-translucent, and will host a number of events and site-specific projects.  “Radic is a key protagonist of an amazing architectural explosion in Chile,” the Serpentine said in the statement. “While enigmatically archaic, in the tradition of romantic follies, Radic’s designs for the Pavilion also look excitingly futuristic, appearing like an alien space pod that has come to rest on a Neolithic site.” (more…)

The New York Times delves into the work and life of Oscar Murillo, charting the artist’s meteoric rise over the past two years, and his current popularity on the market.  “I came to this by simply working,” Murillo says. “It’s the market, and that has nothing to do with me. I’m just trying to keep things normal. I’ve had to live below my means for so long that I’m keeping it that way.” (more…)

Glenn Ligon is interviewed in The Independent this week, as the artist prepares to open a new show at Thomas Dane Gallery in London, and recounts an experience meeting President Barack Obama, in which the president told the artist he owned several of Ligon’s works.  “I thought to myself, ‘the President of the United States knows what’s in his house,'” he says. “It’s not just decoration. He looks at it and knows when it’s not there. It was touching to realize that visual art is an integral part of his and his family’s life. It’s not just window dressing, not something you have to talk about because people expect you to. It was a really great way to meet him.” (more…)