James Meyer, a former studio assistant to Jasper Johns, has plead to selling a series of the unfinished works by the artist, and fraudulently covering his sales with false inventory. Meyer ultimately made over $3 million off the sales. “Meyer will now have to pay for that decision,” says US Attorney Preet Bharara. (more…)
Dan Graham, Hedge Two-Way Mirror Walkabout (2014), All Images Via Kelly Lee for Art Observed
The annual rooftop commission at The Metropolitan Museum of Art always manages to draw a crowd, whether it be Imran Quereshi’s bloody installation last year, or Tomás Saraceno’s vastly popular Cloud City. For this year’s Rooftop Commission at , the Met has sided with a more heritage artist, Dan Graham, working in conjunction with Swiss landscape architect Günther Vogt to create the work Hedge Two-Way Mirror Walkabout (2014). Graham, 71, known for his conceptual bent and exploration of multiple mediums, including drawing, painting, sculpture, photography, installation, and performance art, has long focused on how architecture directly impacts its occupants and shapes their experiences of looking, a strikingly perfect fit for the Met’s scenic view and unique location.
Marianne Boesky Gallery has announced a group of new directors taking over at both New York locations. Kristen Becker, who previously worked as Director at Luhring Augustine, will take over at Boesky’s Chelsea location, while the gallery’s new downtown space will be co-run by Kelly Woods and Veronica Levitt. “I’m thrilled to be expanding our dedicated and talented team with these new additions,” Boesky told Art Observed. “Kelly is a perfect fit to co-direct our new Lower East Side location with Veronica Levitt who will be moving there from Chelsea into her new role. Kristen brings a great depth of experience and energy to our Chelsea team. All three will surely augment our service to our artists and our clients in every way.” (more…)
The New york Times has published an interesting video piece this week, a 24-second stop-motion piece showcasing 156 wigs used by Cindy Sherman in her photographic work. The wigs were shot in Sherman’s New York studio by Leanne Shapton. (more…)
Marking an ambitious exchange between three New York galleries this summer, the exhibition Multiplicity is currently spread across the city’s varied arts communities for a three part show exploring the intersections of meanings, behaviors and interpretations of urban life around the globe. Taking up space at NURTUREart in Bushwick, the LES’s Invisible Exports and Mixed Greens in Chelsea, the exhibition culls work from artists in Tirana, Belfast, New Dehli, Tel Aviv, New York, and Hong Kong. (more…)
Thomas Slaughter, Boy Scout Jack Knife (2014), all images courtesy of The Drawing Center
On view at The Drawing Center in New York is a comprehensive group show including work by over 65 artists, curated by Lisa Sigal and organized by Heather Hart, Steffani Jemison, and Jina Valentine. Entitled The Intuitionists, the show explores themes and aesthetics of the database, and how collections of information “in flux” are organized.
The Guardian reports on the legal fallout surrounding the installation of two white flags on the Brooklyn Bridge by a pair of German artists. Matthias Wermke and Mischa Leinkauf installed the flags a month ago, gaining considerable attention by both the NYPD and the national media before slipping out of the country several days later. “We knew that the piece in all probability would prevent us from ever returning to the States,” Wermke and Leinkauf said in an email interview with the Guardian. “However, it always was clear that we would claim responsibility. From a legal standpoint it might not seem logical, but for us this is the very purpose of the piece. I must admit that it was a very hard decision to make.” (more…)
Performance artist Istvan Kantor was arrested yesterday at the Whitney Museum‘s Jeff Koons exhibition, after he splashed his own blood on the wall of the space, and signed the name “Monty Cantsin” on the wall, a nom de plume for artists involved in the Canadian “Neoist” movement. Kantor has a history of vandalizing major exhibitions, and was actually awarded a Governor General’s Award by the Canadian government for his work. (more…)
The lawsuit between Ronald Perelman and Larry Gagosian is still underway, with Perelman launching a subpoena demanding information on Gagosian’s previous deals with Columbian collector José Mugrabi. Perelman maintains that the work in question, a Cy Twombly allegedly sold to Mugrabi before Perelman bought it for $10.5 million, was part of a scheme to manipulate the price, while Gagosian is also charging that he lost money on the deal. (more…)
The Whitney Museum will keep its doors open on Mondays next month, providing visitors an extra day to visit the vast Jeff Koons retrospective before the institution closes its uptown space for its move to the Meatpacking District. The new hours are in effect until the exhibition closes on October 19th. (more…)
Sarah Sze, Triple Point (Planetarium) (2013), All Images Via Kelly Lee for Art Observed
Just over a year ago, Sarah Sze brought her eye-catching assemblages to Italy as the U.S. representative to the 2013 Venice Biennale. Puzzle-like contraptions snaked in and around the building façade, even allowing and supporting a huge boulder to balance on top of the pavilion’s roof. A myriad of fake rocks, water bottles and other miscellaneous objects were scattered across the space, offering only a small taste of the deceptively hazardous mess that awaited visitors inside. It was widely praised as a stand out work, and brought Sze to a new level in her artistic recognition. (more…)
Giulio Paolini, Autoritratto (Self-Portrait) (1968), Courtesy of Dominique Lévy Gallery and Courtesy Archivio Giulio Paolini, Turin
Hypothesis for an Exhibition, a survey show paying homage to the work of conceptual artist Giulio Paolini is open at Dominique Lévy on Madison Avenue through August 16. In addition to Paolini himself, the exhibition features the work of Richard Aldrich, Harold Ancart, Sebastian Black, Kerstin Brätsch, Guyton/Walker, KAYA, Charles Mayton, Seth Price, Josh Smith, R.H. Quaytman, Antek Walczak and Viola YeÅŸiltaç. Additionally, Studio Manuel Raeder has designed an accompanying publication, which incidentally coincides with London’s Whitechapel Gallery retrospective Giulio Paolini:To Be or Not to Be. (more…)
Team Gallery is planning to open a space in Los Angeles on September 14th, 2014. The new space, called Team Bungalow, will be the third iteration of the Team Gallery and the first outside of New York City. The gallery will be based in a small bungalow and garage on Windward Avenue in the Venice neighborhood and will be open on Fridays, Saturdays, and Sundays. Team Bungalow’s inaugural show will be called “tl;dr” and feature work by Cory Arcangel. (more…)
The New York Times notes the differing approaches to the internet embraced by local museums, studying the Brooklyn Museum and The Met’s outreach programs and online exhibition supplements in an attempt to understand how modern museums are moving online. “Most of the people who are interested in art aren’t going to get on a plane and come here,” says Met chief digital officer Sree Sreenivasan. “It would be great if they came. But it’s O.K. if what we’re doing is reaching them in just a digital way.” (more…)
Artist Ryan McGinness’s public street sign commission for New York City has seen widespread enthusiasm in the past few days since its initial installation, with most of the first set of signs disappearing within hours. “When I caught one of the first few disappearing, I was mildly amused,” McGinness says. But when he realized the majority had gone missing, “It felt a little more aggressive. It made me just plain angry.” (more…)
Ai Weiwei at Brooklyn Museum, via Art Observed
Chinese artist and dissident Ai Weiwei’s 2012 survey exhibition “According to What?” has made its way to the Brooklyn Museum after showings at the Mori Art Museum in Tokyo, the Hirshhorn Museum in Washington D.C. and the Perez Art Museum in Miami. This blockbuster show is the artist’s first major international retrospective, and one which aims to bring together his ideals about life and art, which inescapably lead him to reflect on the nature of contemporary, and especially Chinese, politics. A balance that is often so hard to achieve through aesthetic means, the exhibition reveals Ai’s poignant installation work, which allows the viewer a rare experience into his world. The Brooklyn Museum show is enhanced by two installation pieces completed in 2013: S.A.C.R.E.D., exhibited at the Venice Biennale last year, and Ye Haiyan’s Belongings, a new piece installed specially in New York. (more…)
A viewer looking at Max Beckmann’s Departure (1932-1933), All Images via Kelly Lee for Art Observed
As much as it was an act of overt political action, the 1937 exhibition Entartete Kunst (Degenerate Art) in Munich marked a pivotal juncture in German art. Intended as an outright attack on the careers of artists like Emil Nolde, Marc Chagall, Paul Klee, Wassily Kandinsky, Georg Grosz and many more, the original exhibition crammed hundreds of works together for a mocking, derision-filled critique of the perversions and mistakes of the modernist practice.
George Grosz, Portrait of the Writer Max Herrmann-Neisse (1925)
Liz Cohen, Hood (2006), via Marianne Boesky
The city of Detroit seems to be popping up frequently on the art world radar as of late. While the ongoing bankruptcy crisis in the Motor City threatens to place the Detroit Institute of Arts’s vast collection on the auction block, a new generation of young artists has swarmed to the midwestern metropolis, lured by cheap rents and a the freedom to explore their work in earnest. Taking this renewed interest in Detroit as its starting point, Marianne Boesky and Marlborough Chelsea have teamed up on a summer show of works and artifacts exploring the creative and economic history of the embattled powerhouse of American industry.
Another Look at Detroit at Marlborough Chelsea (Installation View), via Marlborough Chelsea (more…)
Sarah Ortmeyer, Sankt Petersburg Paradox (2014)
Among the decision-making factors in set expanse of time, risk plays a crucial part. Simply described as the potential of losing an owned value upon a taken action, the risk element occupies a noticeable part in economic, social and political dynamics, aside from striking as a noteworthy reality to consider for individuals in the daily routine. The St. Petersburg Paradox, a group show on view at Swiss Institute through August 17th, observes this broad topic through a determined perspective, suggesting an alternative reading based on the reflection of risk elements in artworks.
The St. Petersbug Paradox (Installation View) (more…)
Scott Benzel, Counterfeit Nike ‘Heaven’s Gate’ SB Dunks (2011) Photo by Joerg Lohse
For the past several years, Arizona-born, L.A.-based artist Scott Benzel has been mining the mundane objects of capitalism and its reflection in the cultural agenda through his assemblage and display-based works, challenging the designated meanings of everyday objects as they enter into dialogue with each other. Approaching simple and mostly utilitarian commodities as reflections of their collective or individualist identities, Benzel decodes dismissed or undiscovered subtleties in contemporary culture, and allows unspoken connections to come to the fore. (more…)
Andy Freeberg, Two Palms (2011) (Mel Mochner, Eizabeth Peyton, Armory Show), all images courtesy Andrea Meislin Gallery
On view at Andrea Meislin Gallery is Andy Freeberg’s second solo exhibition at the gallery, a series of photographic works that mark the continuation of his investigation into the intersections between art, commerce and personality. Entitled Art Fare, Freeberg’s newest show targets the moments of banality inherent in the blue-chip world of major international art fairs.
A collection of photographs formerly owned by the late Howard Stein will head to auction later this year at Sotheby’s New York, in what may be one of the largest sales in the medium ever. The presale estimates range from $13 million to $20 million for a group of works that include prints from Alfred Stieglitz, Man Ray and Irving Penn. (more…)
Mickalene Thomas, Carla (2014), via Lehmann Maupin
Tête de Femme, a show of new work by artist Mickalene Thomas at Lehmann Maupin, places the exploitation and regulation of the female form at its center, exploring the female figure and visage through eight large-scale portraits. Making use of screen-printing, collage, and candy-colored swatches of fabric, Thomas creates and re-creates the elements of a face in order to deconstruct a coherence presumed and projected into measurements of personhood. Through bold geometric and material choices, Thomas approaches the question of identity as an problem to be solved through a concentrated treatment of each element, much in the same nature of Picasso’s work of the same name.
Mickalene Thomas, Tête de Femme (Installation View), via Lehmann Maupin (more…)
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.
