Guillermo Kuitca in front of his work at The Drawing Center, photo by H. Hannig for ArtObserved

Argentinian painter Guillermo Kuitca has, for the past several decades, continued to explore the visual aesthetic of organization, the varied architectural and illustrative lines at the heart of the maps, floor plans and aerial views, abstracting these images into his own personal artistic language.  The record becomes a personal interpretation, and vice versa.

Guillermo Kuitca at The Drawing Center photo by Cathy Carver

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Charles Ray – Installation View, courtesy Matthew Marks Gallery

The works of Charles Ray consistently sit at the intersections of the commercial, the human and the industrial, exploring our increasingly intertwined relationships with the imagery and machinery through which we engage with the world every day. Matthew Marks Gallery is currently showing three new works by renowned American sculptor Charles Ray, continuing the artist’s ongoing explorations of the human body and its interactions with the contemporary industrial world.   (more…)

John Cage – Dereau (#11) (1982), courtesy The National Academy Museum

Over the course of his lifetime, composer, writer and theorist John Cage made immense and lasting contributions to modernist and post-modernist avant-garde thought, challenging traditional conceptions of music, sound, noise and arrangement, and blazing a path for young composers in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.  However, the artist also was a prolific painter, creating a vast body of watercolors, prints and drawings, and ultimately influcing, and collaborating with, many artists in the 50s and 60s.  These works are the focus of a new exhibition at the National Academy Museum in New York City, celebrating what would be Cage’s 100th birthday.

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Image: Richard Tuttle, Systems, VIII-XII (Installation View), Courtesy Pace Gallery

Richard Tuttle’s series of “Systems” sculptures is an ongoing project, an attempt at expanding the physical scope of Tuttle’s past sculptural works, while striving to maintain a sense of intimacy throughout.  Assembled out of wood, cloth, metal, wool and Styrofoam, Tuttle’s sculptures constantly play with the familiarity of the subject matter, tweaking familiar shapes and textures with flourishes of the surreal to create a startlingly fresh visual language.  (more…)

Through the band Sigur Rós’s recent Mystery Film Experiment, artists have been able to use songs from their album and make their own music videos. The most recent was created for “Varúö” by Ryan McGinley, featuring the streets of New York City through McGinley’s vision.  McGinley says of the video, “This piece is my poem to New York City.  I wanted to bring a childhood innocence to the streets, through a character whose own light and wonder effects the world around her.  I’m always interested in an atmosphere where dreams and reality mingle on equal terms.”

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 Gardar Eide Einarsson – Sorry If I Got It Wrong, But Something Definitely Isn’t Right (Gallery View)

Currently on view at the Team Gallery’s space on Grand Street New York City is an exhibition of new work by Gardar Eide Einarsson, showcasing the Norwegian’s multidisciplinary scope, and confrontational approach to exhibition.  In this most recent show, Sorry If I Got It Wrong, But Something Definitely Isn’t Right, the artist explores the intricately connected systems of political dissent currently at play on the global stage.

 Gardar Eide Einarsson – Untitled 1969 (2012)

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The New York Times explores the changes and trends currently facing curators by looking into Independent Curators International’s popular 10-day training program in New York City. Addressing the mechanics of this fast-growing professional phenomenon, the program boasts a faculty of notables in New York’s museum and nonprofit organization sector, and facilitates networking among its participants.

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Installation view, Jorge Pardo, 2010. All images via Friedrich Petzel Gallery.

Friedrich Petzel Gallery, New York City, presents a new installation by Jorge Pardo, a porous maze furnished with images from the internet.  Pardo’s structures form narrow passageways through which observers must walk, an action reminiscent of negotiating library stacks.  Observers navigate an amalgamation of memories and images, taking in landscapes, monuments, and faces out of context.  The curving nature of the piece and the carefully cataloged bank of information lend the gallery a cerebral nature.

More text and images after the jump…

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