Ellen Gallagher, Don’t Axe Me (Installation View), Courtesy New Museum, New York. Photo: Benoit Pailley

Currently occupying multiple floors of the New Museum is a series of works by artist Ellen Gallagher, a painter and multimedia artist whose work is layered and deeply informed by contemporary and historical references, not only from modern art historic and literary canons but also politics, popular culture and sub-cultures such as Black Power and Detroit Techno.  Represented by two major galleries, Gagosian and Hauser & Wirth, Gallagher’s intellectually conversant work has tantalized critics and collectors alike for the past 20 years.

Ellen Gallagher, Watery Ecstatic (2001-2005), Courtesy New Museum, New York. Photo: Benoit Pailley (more…)

Artist Chris Burden, whose upcoming retrospective at the New Museum this fall will fill all five floors of the institution, will also bring a series of works to the space’s exterior.  Burden will install a pair of 36-foot skyscraper structures (Two Skyscrapers) on the roof of the museum, as well as Ghost Ship, an automated, double bowed boat that will circle the building’s facade.  The exhibition will be the first major retrospective for Burden in New York, and opens on October 2nd. (more…)

Frieze Magazine is currently running an interview with Massimiliano Gioni, the New Museum Curator who is currently preparing for the opening of The Encyclopedic Palace at this year’s 55th Venice Biennale.  In the interview, the curator discusses his practice, and his plans for the upcoming opening of the Biennale this summer. (more…)

Russian billionaire Leonid Mikhelson has joined the board of trustees at The New Museum, mirroring the increasing number of international members on Museum boards across the U.S.  “As art is thriving in so many centers, it is imperative to have an active group of supporters with diverse perspectives and deep connections to these communities.”  Said New Museum director Lisa Phillips. (more…)

Massimiliano Gioni, the 39-year old director of special exhibitions at the New Museum in New York, sat down with the Wall Street Journal recently to discuss his upcoming position as the youngest curator for the Venice Biennale in one hundred years, his history of innovative exhibitions, and his inclusive take on conceptual and contemporary art.  “We need to remind ourselves that contemporary art is first of all a form of conceptual gymnastics, in which we learn to coexist with what we don’t understand,” he says. (more…)

Rosemarie Trockel: A Cosmos, all images courtesy New Museum

The New Museum, in collaboration with the Museo Nacional de Arte Reina Sofia, presents the illuminating and expansive world of Rosemarie Trockel. Lynn Cooke, former deputy director and chief curator at Reina Sofia, worked with Trockel to imagine a world that is very much Trockel’s without being Trockel-centric: her lumpy sculptures and smooth, linear woolworks are shown with a massive preserved lobster and other natural artifacts; her videos and installations abide just a level above the orangutan Tilda’s three paintings; 18th century naturalist Maria Sybilla Merian‘s precise watercolors hang near the self-taught Judith Scott‘s frenetically wrapped yarn sculptures. (more…)

Arturo Vega, Photo Booth Self Portraits (ca. 1974). Courtesy Arturo Vega

Come Closer: Art Around the Bowery 1969-1989 at the New Museum presents ephemera, artwork, films, and performance footage of twenty artists that lived or worked in the Bowery over the course of two decades.  The exhibition documents the influence of the neighborhood on artists during a time when the area was notoriously derelict and neglected.

Coleen Fitzgibbon installing the exhibition “Income and Wealth”. Courtesy Coleen Fitzgibbon

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‪‬New Museum names curators of third Generational Triennial to be held in 2015: Lauren Cornell, Adjunct Curator at New Museum and leaving her seven-year post as Executive Director of Rhizome; and artist and filmmaker Ryan Trecartin

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‪‬New Museum-based Rhizome to hold third “Seven on Seven” conference, pairing artists with “technologists” in one-day one-on-one brainstorming sessions, the results of which to be unveiled at Saturday, April 14, at the New Museum [AO Newslink]

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Adrian Villar Rojas, A Person Loved Me (2012)

The New Museum debuts its second Triennial exhibition ‘The Ungovernables,’ a show dedicated to representing international artists, many of which are under 40 and have never been represented in the United States before. There are over 50 participants in the exhibition including 34 individual artists, multiple-artist groups, and a few temporary collectives. The exhibition begins in the back of the lobby, the rest distributed between four full floors, a stairwell, and the basement. Nearly every type of artistic media is represented, from sculpture, to painting, to video, to installations. The range of styles and philosophies is vast as well, including figuration, abstraction, and conceptual art.

Curator Eungie Joo with ‘The Ungovernables’ artists

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Murakami sculpture at Ego (2011) press conference, via QMA facebook

The Qatar Museums Authority (QMA) presents Murakami – Ego at the Museum of Islamic Art‘s detached Al Riwaq hall in Doha as Japanese artist Takashi Murakami‘s first solo show in the Middle East. Introducing Japanese contemporary art and animation style to a broader audience, the QMA has also published an illustrated catalog on Ego with commentary by Takashi Murakami, curator Massimiliano Gioni, and photo-documentation of the site. For Ego—referencing the retrospective’s psychological emphasis—Murakami designed sculptural pedestals, a 100-meter wall painting, and a digital animated circus tent to double as an indoor cinema. The retrospective features fifteen years’ worth of 60 works, most of which are on loan from both public and private international collections, although some art is new. Viewers entering the hall are greeted by an oversize inflatable self-portrait to personify the explained internal mindset.

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‪ Photographer Douglas Friedman’s ‘Ungovernables’ series captures the New Museum Triennial art and artists, including Canadian Julia Dault and her performative sheets of Plexiglas, Cambodian Gabriel Sierr and geometric frames, and Vietnam-based Propeller Group with “Television Commercial for Communism.”[AO Newslink]

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‪‬New Museum Associate Director Massimiliano Gioni appointed Director of Visual Arts for the 55th Venice Biennale in 2013, the youngest director in 110 years at age 39 [AO Newslink]

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‪‬New Museum announces spring exhibition schedule (May through August) featuring focused solo presentations by Phyllida Barlow, Tacita Dean, Nathalie Djurberg, Klara Lidé [AO Newslink]

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Sliding down with canvas mat in Carsten Höller’s Untitled (Slide), 2011. All photos on site for Art Observed by Nicholas Wirth.

Carsten Höller‘s 40-foot-high, 102-foot-long transparent metal slide—a “pneumatic mailing system”—awaits the daring visitor at the top floor of the New Museum. Surveying eighteen years of the artist’s work, The Experience exhibition is organized “experientially,” as opposed to chronologically, moving from a low-speed mirrored carousel down the slide to realistic albeit neon animal sculptures, disorienting architectural interventions, a sensory deprivation pool, and the artist’s simple yet highly effective upside-down goggles. The series of interactive environments function like science experiments, designed “to explore the limits of human sensorial perception and logic through carefully controlled participatory experiences,” as the exhibition’s press release explains.

Installation view, fourth floor.

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‪‬Carsten Höller installs 102 foot slide, “a happiness-producing machine,” through the floors of the New Museum for his upcoming retrospective [AO Newslink]

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A video projection on the facade of the New Museum on Bowery by Flash:Light – All photos by Ilhan Kim for Art Observed unless noted

The New Museum’s “Festival of Ideas for the New City,” took place from May 4th- 8th, 2011 off the Bowery, in downtown Manhattan. Promoting the ideas of community, diversity, collaboration, dialogue, and change, this effort was carried by several institutions, including universities, grassroots groups, museums, arts oriented spaces, businesses, and the city. The festival, by delivering many conferences, shows, and street performances, created a very unique and somewhat mesmerizing ambiance to the neighborhood, as it was temporarily transformed into an exhilarating forum of expression, where the simultaneous manifestations of different artistic ideals and perspectives, derived into a multitude of individual and collective experiences, for both participants and audiences.

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The Streetfest on Bowery

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Founded by the New Museum, the Festival of Ideas for the New City is a collaborative program which embodies the Lower East Side’s re-invention as a cultural hub and alternative to chic Chelsea. During the four-day long effort, innovative ideas, fresh talent and some familiar faces will be showcased with a mix of street festivities, panel discussions and gallery projects.

The changing Lower East Side freflected in an 1984 issue of New York Magazine.

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Stock, Ryder Ripps (2011).

The crowd on the New Museum’s 7th floor at Rhizome’s 15th anniversary benefit party.

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New Museum Spring Gala After Party 2011

Art Observed was on site at the New Museum‘s annual Spring Gala After Party in the financial district on April 6th. More than 40 floors above Manhattan, the room was a mixture of art world insiders, socialites and fans, including Hope Atherton, Urs Fischer, John Waters, Gavin Brown and Jen Brill, with music by DJs Harley and Cassie and a performance by the band Hess is More.

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George Condo, Homeless Harlequins (2004). Via New Museum

Over eighty paintings and sculptures fill two floors of the New Museum with a survey of George Condo’s work from the past thirty years, the opening drawing celebrities like Marc Jacobs and Kanye West, for whom Condo recently painted an album cover. The characters in Condo’s portraits maintain a human quality despite their oversized ears and exaggerated expressions. He attributes his ability to draw up absurd yet empathetic portraits to his mimicry of classic techniques—careful color choice, appropriate brush strokes. Through his impeccable technique, he has gained a follower: Eneas Capalbo is marking his tenth year of copying Condo’s work. His exhibit, a token of how much he admires the artist’s work, opened at the Half Gallery the same day as Condo’s.

Installation view. Via New York Times

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Detail, nude (xxx), 2010. All images courtesy Gladstone Gallery.

Currently on view at Gladstone Gallery is nude, an exhibition of cast wax sculptures by Ugo Rondinone. The seven life-size figures, which occupy the gallery in various moments of repose, are made from a mixture of wax and earth pigments. Rondinone’s work has been described as perverse and grotesque to pretty and breathlessly romantic; this exhibition seems to fit into the final category, reflecting on poignant expressions of the human condition.

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Exit Art Founders Papo Colo and Jeanette Ingberman at Exit Art, 578 Broadway, Manhattan, 1986. Courtesy of Exit Art

Exit Art’s Alternative Histories attempts to assess the inception and development of “alternative” art spaces in New York since the 1960s. The show presents various forms of documentary and archival material drawn from more than 130 organizations and collective experiences which have, from this establishment’s perspective, shaped  the cultural topography of the city over the past 50 years, informing and inspiring generations of artists and practitioners.

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All installation views courtesy Exit Art

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