John Knight, Work, in situ, Galerie NEU:MD72:Gladstone Gallery (2013)

One of Berlin’s most notable galleries, Galerie Neu, is Gladstone Gallery’s guest for this summer, presenting a reflection from the German capital’s vibrant contemporary art scene. Known for its avant-garde art spaces and affordable living conditions for emerging artists, Berlin has been one of the most influential cities for the European art scene, and the selection at Gladstone Gallery, mainly focusing on the notion of place and displacement, gives the opportunity to catch up with the city’s recent art trends. (more…)

Christie’s will auction Manet’s iconic Le Printemps (1881) this fall at its Impressionist and Modern sale in New York, the New York Times announced today.  The 1881 portrait has remained in the same family for over a century, and is estimated at $25 to $35 million.  “We’ve given museums advance notice,” says Impressionist and Modern Director Adrien Meyer. (more…)

Ville Andersson, Reflection, All images courtesy RARE Gallery

Now through August 7, Rare Gallery is presenting Fin(n)ish: Fresh contemporary art from Finland. This group exhibition features work from six emerging Finnish artists—Ville Andersson, Hanna Kanto, Katri Mononen, Aleksi Tammi, Timo Vaittinen, and Ea Vasko. The work presented here is stylistically wide reaching and employs a variety of mediums and techniques, speaking to the vitality of the Finnish art world.

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Mayor Bill de Blasio’s proposed Municipal ID card plan has added benefits from the city’s art museums.  A plan currently underway with the Mayor’s office would offer free membership at The Met to card holders, and shows the city’s reliance on the impact these institutions have on the city.  “The city’s coming to us and saying, ‘Will you help solve this?’ ” said Susan Lacerte, executive director of the Queens Botanical Garden. “It recognizes that we have great constituencies, we have reach in the communities.” (more…)

Marcel Duchamp, Bicycle Wheel (1916/64)  © Succession Marcel Duchamp / ADAGP, Paris / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York 2014. Courtesy Gagosian Gallery. Photo by Philippe Migeat

Cunningly installed just down the street from the monumental Jeff Koons retrospective at The Whitney Museum, Gagosian Gallery is currently presenting a small but impressive exhibition of Marcel Duchamp’s body of readymades, offering a nuanced historical counterpoint to some of the artist’s most distinguished predecessors. (more…)

Sigmar Polke, Plastik-Wannen (1964) via Kelly Lee for Art Observed

Sigmar Polke’s output was diverse to say the least.  Raised in the lean years following World War II in West Germany, the artist moved quickly from painting to photography to installation, film and back over his almost five decades of work, shifting his techniques and approaches with each subsequent piece.  Sharply critical and always challenging the nature of capitalist negotiation with the art world, his pieces cover a broad spectrum from overtly comical and self-aware to dark and brooding.

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Media artist Daniel Canogar follows in the footsteps of artists like JR, Ryan McGinley, and Tracey Emin as he takes the reins for the latest iteration of the Times Square Alliance series “Midnight Moment”, an initiative that seeks to promote creative content through the Square’s billboards and news kiosks.  Titled “Storming Times Square,” the installation is unique in the way it generates content; from July 24th to July 27th, Canogar will film willing passers-by as they crawl over a green-screen, creating footage which will then be displayed on the Square’s 47 screens each night in September. (more…)

The new 5th avenue home for The Museum for African Art was planned as an elegant and impressive addition to Museum Mile and a cultural contender to neighbors such as the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Neue Galerie. Unfortunately, the planned move and expansion have been fraught with budgeting and funding problems, forcing the museum to downsize its dream and echoing the struggle faced by many smaller art institutions. (more…)

A Machinery for Living at the Petzel Gallery, installation view, via Art Observed

On view at Petzel Gallery is a group exhibition organized by Walead Beshty entitled “A Machinery for Living.” Composed of over 100 photographs, drawings, paintings, sculptural and installation works, the exhibition approaches a concept of embracing the subversive within everyday life.

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Carl Andre at The Paula Cooper Gallery, via Art Observed

On view at The Paula Cooper Gallery in New York is an exhibition of major sculptures by Carl Andre from a period ranging over thirty years. The exhibition coincides with the artist’s retrospective at Dia:Beacon, which is the first survey of Carl Andre’s entire body of work by a museum in North America since 1980.

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Danh Vo, We The People (2010-2014) at Brooklyn Bridge Park

This summer, Vietnamese artist Danh Vo is paying his homage to the Statue of Liberty as a symbol of American legacy with a group of installations on view at City Hall Park and Brooklyn Bridge Park.  From May 17th to December 5th, the public will be able to see We The People, a life-sized replica of the Statue of Liberty separated into 250 copper parts that Vo created using the same processes used on the original statue. (more…)

Roman Signer, Flasche (Bottle) (2007)

The summer season means a few things for the art world: beach installations, special projects in the Hamptons, and of course, group shows. During the hot summer months many galleries are presenting selections of works by different artists through various thematic ideas, giving gallery goers the opportunity to discover new readings between different artists’ works.  Among these galleries is Koenig & Clinton, hosting Fixing a Hole, a group exhibition investigating the notion of “fixing” in both meanings: mending what is broken and securing what is unstable. The tightly-curated selection focuses on a niche concept, making the occasionally challenging group show tradition an appealing one. Works in various mediums articulate the instincts of correction and stabilization of a dysfunctional case, arguing for the sensation of readjustment. (more…)

The New Museum has promoted curator Massimiliano Gioni to the position of Artistic Director, putting him at the forefront of the institution’s short-term and long-term planning. “Widely recognized as one of the most influential and admired curators working today, Massimiliano represents the New Museum around the world at major art events and through his lectures at many international venues,” says Director Lisa Phillips.

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Larry Clark, Knoxville (homage to Brad Renfro) (2011) all images via Osman Can Yerebakan

Currently on view at Luhring Augustine is a career spanning exhibition of Larry Clark, one of the most vocal representatives of the American youth since the early 60’s. Tulsa, the inspiration and the namesake of his infamous photography book, is where Clark began experimenting with photography at an early age with his mother’s camera, using his circle of friends as his object of interest.  Clark started to document the suburban lifestyle through the lens of a generation engaged with drug use, underage sex and violence. Adding further weight to the already graphic nature of his subject matter, the rawness and the honesty of Clark’s perspective as an insider’s point of view has marked him as one of the foremost voices in American photography. (more…)

MoMA PS1 Curator Christopher Lew has been hired on at the Whitney Museum as the institution’s new associate curator.  Lew has earned a reputation for groundbreaking shows of young and rising artists, and his group shows at PS1 had earned considerable praise.  “The Whitney is enjoying an exciting time of growth and I am thrilled and honored to join the museum as it prepares to return downtown,” he said in a statement. (more…)

Eddie Martinez, Untitled (2013), via Art Observed

Based in Williamsburg, The Journal has carved out a unique path for itself in the contemporary discourse, representing a group of young artists that share a particular interest in the capacity for intersections of painting, printmaking, and conceptual practice.  Sharing techniques rooted in repetition, abstracted figuration, humor, and an occasionally visceral approach to the painterly mark, the artists embraced by The Journal have come to represent a markedly cohesive school of practice in New York over the past years. (more…)

On Kawara, 5 Feb. 2006

Artist On Kawara, whose ongoing artistic project involved the painting of each day of his life, has passed away at the age of 81.

Born in 1933 in Japan, Kawara worked in Tokyo until 1965, when he moved to New York City.  Shortly after arriving, Kawara began his famous “date paintings” series, painting the calendar date for each day of his life, meticulously recording the passage of his life on canvas through a simple, tracing of dates and time.  His absurdist, heavily conceptual bent opened a new engagement with the processes of time and context in art, making him an unlikely air to the work of early Dadaists like Duchamp and Magritte. (more…)

Ed Ruscha, Periods (2013), all images courtesy Gagosian Gallery

On view at Gagosian Gallery in New York is a survey of prints and rarely seen photographs produced by Ed Ruscha from 1959 until the present. The exhibition was organized by Gagosian’s director Bob Monk, and will remain on view through July 11, 2014.

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The New York Times has published a by-the-numbers review of the recently opened Jeff Koons retrospective at the Whitney, charting the show’s contents in figures and facts, like the heaviest work (Gorilla, which weights 15,000 pounds), the number of gallons of water in his Equilibrium series (117 and 1/2), and the number of shipments to deliver all of the works (75). (more…)

The Wall Street Journal reports on the growing impact and popularity of the Hudson region in Upstate New York as an arts destination.  “It’s a little bit of Bushwick mixed with the Upper East Side,” said Joel Mesler, who opened Retrospective on Hudson with Zach Feuer this year. (more…)

Official opening of ‘Jeff Koons: A Retrospective’ at The Whitney Museum of American Art, Images via Kelly Lee for Art Observed

After months of hushed tones and starstruck reports on the scale, cost and ambition of Jeff Koons’s career retrospective at The Whitney, the doors have opened at the museum for its last exhibition before the long-held 75th and Madison building is abandoned for its new Meatpacking District headquarters.  As indicated, the show has indeed pulled out the stops for Koons, with a combination of new works and classic pieces.

Jeff Koons, Amore (1988)

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The Shaped Canvas Revisited (Installation View), via Luxembourg and Dayan

On view at Luexembourg & Dayan in New York City is an exhibition focusing on painted works with a non-rectangular canvas. In 1964, The Shaped Canvas was an exhibition held at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, curated by Lawrence Alloway, revealing the desire to overthrow existing aesthetic hierarchies. The current exhibition revisits this 1964 exhibition, featuring more than two dozen works connecting the postwar history of the genre to present day use of the shaped canvas.

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Rockaway! Festival, photo via Art Observed

The art world decamped to the Far Rockaways this weekend, as MoMA PS1 initiated its new public arts festival at the increasingly popular Queens beachfront.  Sponsored by the Jamaica Bay-Rockaway Parks Conservancy (JBRPC) to celebrate the reopening of Fort Tilden, as well as to benefit the ongoing recovery of the area following the immense damages wreaked by Hurricane Sandy in 2012, the event included exhibitions, performances and an after-party at the Rockaway Beach Surf Club.

James Franco Reads Walt Whitman during Rockaway! Festival, via Art Observed (more…)

Sotheby’s has announced that it will be auctioning off the estate of collectors Paul and Bunny Mellon, including a number of impressive artworks by Mark Rothko and Richard Diebenkorn from the couple’s extensive collection.  Proceeds from the auction will benefit the Gerald B. Lambert Foundation. (more…)