Painter Chris Ofili is profiled in the New Yorker this week, in advance of the artist’s upcoming retrospective at the New Museum.  “Painting is a kind of pursuit, a hunt,” he says. “I think it’s more interesting when you can corral your subjects, instead of just going right to them. Enjoy and engage with the process—you want to keep going into the unknown, to the point where you don’t think about how long it’s going to take to get there.” (more…)

Allan McCollum, Collection of Thirty-Six Perfect Couples (2005-2014), via Art Observed

Now on view at Petzel Gallery is a solo exhibition of works by Los Angeles-born, New York-based artist Allan McCollum.  Entitled The Shapes Project, the purpose of the series on view was to design a system that would allow for the production of a single, unique shape for every person in the world, using rapid manufacturing technologies to produce infinite variations of shape and form. This exhibition will be McCollum’s sixth solo exhibition at Petzel.

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Bradford Young, Bynum Cutler (2014), via Art Observed

Founded in 1838, the Brooklyn community of Weeksville was a landmark moment in the history of African-American self-determination.    Just 11 years after the abolition of slavery in New York, Weeksville was founded by free Black landowners, a venture that grew to over 500 households and earned its citizens the right to vote.  As a social project, Weeksville’s impact is vastly significant, allowing a supportive, radical structure for its citizens to define and build their own system of economic and cultural stability.  Weeksville’s powerful history that sits at the center of Creative Time’s newest project, Funk, God, Jazz & Medicine, a series of collaborative on-site projects and initiatives incorporating the communal, radical mission of Weeksville and examining its presence in the contemporary landscape of Central Brooklyn. (more…)

The ADAA Art Show has announced the 72-gallery list for the 2015 edition of its fair, the longest running in the United States, running March 4 through March 8, 2015.  Exhibitions include a special booth dedicated to Nam June Paik at Carl Solway, and one for Wade Guyton at Petzel.  “The ADAA broke new ground when it created The Art Show in New York City 27 years ago,” adds Chairman, Adam Sheffer.  “Visitors from around the world are able to connect with our esteemed members, view extraordinary presentations and acquire exceptional works of art.” (more…)

Sotheby’s has unveiled a new plan to appeal to collectors and institutions on the West Coast, announcing a new plan that will bring $200 million worth of art on a tour of California, Oregon and Washington.  The tour of events will include an exhibition of Jasper Johns’s 1983 work Flag, which is a highlight of the auction house’s November sale in New York, estimated to sell for $15 to $20 million.  “Our focus is on the next generation of collectors, the new buyers who will become futures sellers,” says Sotheby’s West Coast head Andrea Fiuczynski. (more…)

Monika Sosnowska, Tower (2014), via Art Observed

Following the gallery’s exhibition of Sterling Ruby’s slurred, industrial run-off and massive assemblages earlier this summer, Hauser and Wirth New York returns for the first show of its fall season with a similarly inclined, yet considerably more restrained take on architectural and industrial forms.  This time, the work is Monika Sosnowska’s, and the subject is that of high architectural modernism, reinterpreting the forms and elements of “International Style” as developed and professed by landmark German architect Ludwig Mies van der Rohe.

Monika Sosnowska, Tower (2014), via Henry Murphy for Art Observed

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The Wall Street Journal interviews Jessica Morgan this week, the newly appointed director of New York’s Dia Foundation.  Morgan, who takes over for Philippe Vergne, recounts her earliest memories of art in her home, and some of her first ambitious projects, including a 2003 show at the Tate Modern.  “It was a bit of a grand failure, but we tried valiantly to make an exhibition that responded to the particular circumstances of Tate Modern and the notion of the museum as a public space.” (more…)

Lehmann Maupin New York has filed a $10 million Wrongful Eviction lawsuit against its Chelsea landlord, 293 Tenth Ave. Corp., run by Michael Silvermintz.  The suit claims that Silvermintz’s firm sent an eviction notice late last year, but failed to produce the demolition permit required by the lease.  Since then, the gallery claims that the landlord has “engaged in a systematic pattern of conduct that unreasonably interferes with and obstructs plaintiff’s use and occupancy of the subject premises.”  (more…)

Richard Prince’s recently executed series of prints, created using the actual photos of celebrities’ Instagram accounts, have been selling strongly in a private sale through Gagosian, the New York Post reports.  An unconfirmed report has priced the works at up to $100,000.   (more…)

Dan Colen, The Pastoral Symphony (2012), all images © Dan Colen, Courtesy Gagosian Gallery, Photography by Christopher Burke

On view currently at Gagosian New York is an exhibition of new paintings by American artist Dan Colen, which aims to question the nature of painterly practice, particularly focusing on the intersections of materials, chance and the interactions of these elements with the actual intent of the artist.  The Miracle paintings are based on Disney stills, particularly from Fantasia, famous for its pairing of musical compositions with animated sequences.  In similar form, the pieces on view walk a fine line between abstraction and representation, drawing on the audience’s collective memory of the film.

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Continuing its ongoing series of artist collaborations, New York streetwear brand Supreme has announced a capsule collection incorporating the work of Raymond Pettibon.  The Californian artist will lend his work to a pair of skateboard decks, a hooded work jacket, a hooded sweatshirt, and two tee-shirts.   (more…)

Brooklyn Museum Director Arnold Lehman has announced that he will step down from his position at the museum next year, closing out 17 years at the helm of the borough’s chief art museum.  “This has been something I have been thinking about for a while,” Mr. Lehman told the New York Times. “I turned three score and 10 this summer. It’s time.” (more…)

Dia Art Foundation has announced Jessica Morgan (curator of international art at London’s Tate Modern) will take over for Philippe Vergne as director of the New York arts organization.  Morgan has a challenging road ahead of her, including stalled plans for Dia to build a new museum for its collection between Chelsea and the Meatpacking District, and will seek to negotiate the demands of such a space with the foundation’s longstanding commitment to living artists.  “It has to be a relationship that’s relevant to the current moment,” she says. “It can’t rest on a notion of its past.” (more…)

Larry Gagosian is expanding beyond his art empire, collaborating with world-renowned sushi chef Masa Takayama to open Kappo Masa, a new sushi restaurant below the gallerist’s 980 Madison location.   “It’s a different kind of partnership than what I’m used to,” Gagosian says. “I don’t have partners in business. But this is Masa’s vision and Masa’s talent. My job is to listen and learn.” (more…)

The Wall Street Journal profiles curator Okwui Enwezor this week, the head of next year’s Venice Biennale, tracing his early move from Nigeria to New York City, and his monumental impact on the global state of contemporary art today.  “The art world was very Eurocentric and very westerncentric, and it needed strong curators to change it,” says Els van der Plas, the general director of the Dutch National Opera & Ballet.  “Enwezor positioned several projects in a very strong way, which gave a different view of the world and different views on the history of post-colonialism, of what Africa contributed to the world’s development and of how different countries in Africa are positioned in the world debate.” (more…)

Piet Mondrian, Composition with Yellow, Blue and Red (1937-42) © 2014 Mondrian/Holtzman Trust c/p HCR International

Running in tandem with the Turner Contemporary in Margate’s expansive Piet Mondrian retrospective, the Tate Liverpool is currently exhibiting an immersive exhibition focusing on the Dutch artist’s creative process and physical locales. (more…)

Rene Ricard, The Archaic Smile (1978)

An artist embracing multiple formats, genres and techniques, Rene Ricard was born into a troubled family in Boston in 1946. Before he was eighteen years old, Ricard had already moved to New York, and immersed himself in its vibrant Downtown scene, appearing in many of Andy Warhol’s films, and becoming a regular in the artist’s “Factory.”  Referred to as ‘the George Sanders of the Lower East Side, the Rex Reed of the art world’ by Warhol, Ricard emerged as a highly influential art critic in the early 80’s, playing major a role in launching the careers of artists such as Julian Schnabel, Francesco Vezzoli, Keith Haring and Jean-Michel Basquiat, whose graffiti works were compared to the wall paintings in Pompeii by Ricard in his famous Artforum essay The Radiant Child. (more…)

James Turrell’s Meeting, permanently installed at MoMA PS1 in Long Island City, is currently closed, as the museum seeks out a strategy for its restoration.  Commissioned in the late 1970’s, the work has remained opened to the public for over 40 years, but needs touch-ups to the walls, flooring and benches surrounding the open air in the middle of the space.  “We are going to get it back as close as we can to the original state, but we want it to be easier to maintain and use less power,” Turrell has said. (more…)

After much discussion, Pablo Picasso’s famed Le Tricorne will leave its place in the lobby of the Four Seasons New York this Sunday, traveling to a new home at the New York Historical Society.  In the meantime, the Hotel is encouraging visitors to come and see the work one final time.  “We’ll enjoy it and give it the standing ovation it deserves after nearly six decades as the backdrop of wild parties and quiet moments when families celebrate life’s milestones,” says Four Seasons co-owner Julian Niccolini.  “Everyone is welcome to stop in and see it before it leaves.” (more…)

Former auction house leader Simon de Pury is returning to the art world this month, with his first gallery show since leaving Phillips de Pury & Company (now Phillips) in 2012.  The exhibition, at Venus Over Manhattan, is titled Fire!, and features primarily ceramic and glass sculpture.  “It’s interesting to note that in the middle of a technological revolution, there is this strong resurgence of ceramics and glass, but also textiles,” de Pury says. (more…)

This November 17th, HBO will premiere a documentary focusing on Banksy’s monthlog “residency” in New York City, titled Banksy Does New York.  Taking footage uploaded by viewers experiencing the artist’s work firsthand, director Chris Moukarbel has cut together a full-length film, which he calls “a city holding a mirror back up to the artist.” (more…)

David Salle, Fooling with Your Hair (1985), via Skarstedt

The Skarstedt Gallery continues its series of summer group exhibitions in Chelsea this month, presenting another series of works by artists sharing common interests in production, appropriation and the potential for painting after the advent of widely distributed photographic technologies.  The exhibition, featuring work by Martin Kippenberger, George Condo, Richard Prince, David Salle and Albert Oehlen, is spread across the two rooms of the Skarstedt space on 21st Street, offering ample space to pass back and forth between the monumental canvases, and examine the various artist’s techniques and formal interests. (more…)

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Nancy Rubins, Our Friend Fluid Metal (2014)

Nancy Rubins has not been hesitant about creating mammoth works of art, as seen in her first public installation at a shopping center in Illinois in 1981 or her 1995 installation of salvaged airplanes at MoMA.  Exhibiting objects collected from thrift stores and and secondhand shops, the artist’s sculptural assemblages are charged with an eclectic energy.  Televisions, planes, surfboards, heaters and mattresses are just a few source materials transformed into complex structures, charged with tangible energy and an inexplicable resistance to gravity.  (more…)

Anne Collier, Developing Tray #2 (2009)

In the winter of 2012, a gigantic human eye was gazed out intently on Chelsea and the Hudson River from the High Line billboard on 18th street. The billboard installation, Developing Tray #2, belonged to Anne Collier, an artist known for her appropriation based photographs culling a wide range of printed media from popular culture, suggesting a reinterpretation of otherwise neglected statements. Utilizing minimalistic techniques and a neutral white surface as a background, Collier photographs album covers, commercials, magazine pages or calendars, revealing the subtle ideological undertones related to feminism, consumerism and gender politics. (more…)