After several years of petitioning, Jeff Koons has been granted approval to gut a pair of houses the artist purchased at 11 and 13 E. 67th St, and to combine them into a colossal mansion. “It must be nice to not only be an artist but to be your own Medici,” comments one local renter. (more…)
A public art collaboration between the Whitney Museum and the Highline will debut work by Alex Katz on the façade of 95 Horatio Street, just south of the elevated park. The work, titled Katherine and Elizabeth, will remain on view for 8 to 12 months. (more…)
Ragnar Kjartansson, Me and My Mother (2010), via Art Observed
When The New Museum opened its doors for its spring season last month, curator Massimo Gioni noted subtle threads of comparison in the pieces on view. Meant to be a concise yet meticulous look into a series of individual works or focuses from a disparate group of artists, the series of exhibitions currently on view play on a series of common threads, incorporating mixes of sound and music, documentary, performance and history from artists Camille Henrot, Hannah Sawtell, David Horvitz, Jeanine Oleson and Roberto Cuoghi, arranged in a way that perhaps makes best sense to address as a singular experience the artists’ works, shared themes, and interests.
Hannah Sawtell, ACCUMULATOR (2014), via Art Observed (more…)
Sterling Ruby, ACTS/SOME RISE SOME REST (2014), via Hauser and Wirth
Hauser and Wirth’s current show of works by Sterling Ruby is something of a grab-bag, incorporating a wide swath of the artist’s current practice in sculpture, assemblage and collage spread across the gallery’s vast 18th Street exhibition space. The large-scale and commanding physicality of the works is offered ample room for viewers to circle and consider, but Ruby doesn’t’ waste the space on a small set of works either. Sculptures and hanging works take up almost every square inch of the gallery, arranged in close proximity. It’s easy to miss one work or another, caught up in the commanding presence of a third nearby.
Sterling Ruby, SUNRISE SUNSET (Installation View), via Hauser and Wirth (more…)
Sophie Calle, Rachel, Monique (2014), all photos by Emily Heinz for Art Observed
Since May 9th until June 25th this year, the Episcopal Church of the Heavenly Rest, in conjunction with Paula Cooper Gallery, has been transformed into a gateway that marries the universality of sacred space and the experience of life and death through the singular exploration of a specific life. Artist Sophie Calle is known for her deeply emotional work and propensity for crossing the boundaries of personal and social space in a way that is successful in its dramatic and often controversial appeal to the human condition. “Rachel, Monique” may be one of her strongest works in this vein to date.
Tim Barber, Relations (Installation View), via Art Observed
In his most recent body of work, Tim Barber captures everyday moments and splits them open to reveal the complex interactions within. On display at Capricious 88, Relations invites the viewer to relate to the universality of the seemingly unrelated, yet similarly impactful, images.
Tim Barber, Relations courtesy Capricious (more…)
Heman Chong, Mrs. Dalloway (2014), via Art Observed
On view at P! in New York is two-person exhibition featuring works by Elaine Lustig Cohen and Heman Chong, in which the artists curate and commission works from each other. The exhibition emphasizes the concept of holding multiple roles within creative work. Both Lustig Cohen (b. 1927) and Chong (b. 1977) have worked in a variety of different positions and roles in the art world, including artist, designer, curator, dealer, and writer, and hold a mutual respect for each other’s work. For the exhibition, this respect played out in the gallery as Chong selected works from Lustig Cohen’s body of paintings, while Cohen commissioned Chong to create nine new pieces within his ongoing series of imagined designs for book jackets.
Lee Bul, Via Negativa II (2012), via Art Observed
On view at Lehmann Maupin in New York is an exhibition of works by South Korean artist Lee Bul, exploring “the intrinsic tension within utopian idealism,” and composed of sculptural works and large-scale installations. Addressing humanity’s vision of an ideal future, the works focus on formal, architectural, and theoretical concepts, moving away from her former focus on the human form and into a consideration of the larger human environment.
Walton Ford, Windsor, May 1829 (2014), via Art Observed
On view at Paul Kasmin Gallery in New York is a series of watercolors by Walton Ford, exploring the iconography of traditional natural history painting, while focusing on encounters between human culture and the natural world, and featuring for the first time words written in the margins from Ford’s imagined perspective of the animal subjects.
Lisson Gallery announced this morning that it will be building a new, 8,500 square-foot gallery space underneath the Highline on 24th Street in the Chelsea neighborhood of New York City, bringing the London-based gallery to Manhattan for the first time. The space will be led by Alex Logsdail. (more…)
Guillermo Kuitca, Untitled (2013), all images courtesy Sperone Westwater
On view at Sperone Westwater in New York, NY is an exhibition of new works by Argentinean painter Guillermo Kuitca, featuring large scale works with a concept of fragmentation and fractured forms, including a painted, room-like structure visitors can pass freely in and out of. The exhibition will continue through June 21st, 2014.
Guillermo Kuitca, This Way (Installation View) (more…)
Hanna Liden, Let it Go (2014), all images courtesy of the artist and Maccarone, New York
Currently on display at Maccarone in New York is a group of new photographic works by Swedish artist Hanna Liden. Entitled I hope these ruin a perfectly bad day, the series of still life photos repurpose her urban leitmotifs as makeshift vases for brightly colored flowers. The exhibition will continue through June 21, 2014.
The most recent issue of Vanity Fair is causing a commotion in the art world this week, following its nude photograph of Jeff Koons exercising on a fitness machine. “Koons, at 59, has already begun a strict exercise-and-diet regimen so that he will have a shot at working undiminished into his 80s, as Picasso did,” the article notes. (more…)
The Telegraph takes a look inside the former home of late artist Louise Bourgeois, which will be reopened as a research center and exhibition space next year, and which was the site of the artist’s legendary work ethic. “She would stay up for three days in a row, hyper,” says her former assistant Jerry Gorovoy. “We tried different sleeping pills, nothing worked. My days would start at ten, and sometimes she’d been sitting there since six waiting for me. ‘You’re late’ she’d say, in the black skirt and shirt she wore every day.” (more…)
Glenn Brown, Cactus Land (2012), via Osman Can Yerebakan
In his first solo show in New York in seven years, Glenn Brown delivers a large scale body of work, focusing on sculptural works besides his widely recognized paintings. Palatially spread across Gagosian Gallery’s twenty-first street location with an array of exuberant colors, Brown’s selection of artistic references in this exhibition include nods to Rococo, Baroque and Mannerist techniques, alongside the likes of Frank Auerbach and Pieter Bruegel. (more…)
Jayson Musson, Sculptural Allegory for a Specific Cultural Sphere (2014), via Osman Yerebakan
Jayson Musson first came into prominence with his online personality Hennessy Youngman, a character commenting on different topics related to art from a wry perspective, while satirizing the clichés of the art world and the hip-hop culture at the same time. Played by Musson himself for his Youtube series Art Thoughtz, Hennessy Youngman can be seen comparing the dance style of Yvon Rainer to the moves in A-Ha’s Take On Me video or flirting with Carolee Schneemann. Similar to Musson’s articles for his short-lived column Black Like Me on Philadelphia Weekly, his online persona/alter ego Hennessy Youngman is an outpost of the artist’s investigation of racial stereotypes and the making of sub-cultures in today’s society. (more…)
Newly released documents in a civil court case against Ann Freedman have shown that one of the forged Jackson Pollock paintings purchased by the former Knoedler Gallery director herself had misspelled that name of the artist as “Pollok.” “Freedman, Knoedler and their so-called ‘experts’ claim not to have seen forgeries even when it was literally (mis)spelled out for them,” lawyer John Cahill quipped in an email to the New York Times. (more…)
Richard Prince, Cheese & Crackers (2008), via Art Observed
Showing for the first time since Richard Prince settled his lawsuit with photographer Patrick Cariou over several of the source photographs, Gagosian’s uptown location is currently presenting Canal Zone, the series of photo and paint collages that sat at the center of the legal dispute for the first time since 2008. (more…)
Darren Bader at Andrew Kreps (Installation View), all images courtesy Andrew Kreps Gallery
Working at the intersection of installation, sculpture, and writing, Darren Bader’s newest exhibition at the Andrew Kreps Gallery forces viewers to question authorship as well as the relationships between creator, viewer, and object. The gallery describes the exhibition as being made up of three shows, distinct but occupying the same space: a show on the walls, Photographs I Like; a show on the floor, To Have and to Hold; and a show on a piece of paper at the front desk.
The New York Times has published a profile on Jeff Koons, in the run-up to the artist’s landmark retrospective at the Whitney, particularly noting the difficulties that the artist’s monumental works are posing for the museum’s limited space. “It’s the perfect storm of difficulties,” said Scott Rothkopf, the Whitney’s associate director of programs. “There are the sheer physical demands of the objects themselves, their high values and the fragile materials, to say nothing of the cliffhanger of waiting for works that have been in production for years.” (more…)
Martin Kippenberger, ab in die Ecke und Schäm Dich (Martin, Into the Corner, You Should be Ashamed of Yourself) (1989) via Osman Can Yerebakan
Paris was where the artists that planted the roots of Modernism in late 19th century. New York on the other hand emerged in the middle of 20th century as the destination for a large group of international artists as well as those from all around the United States who expanded notions of material and practice as the 20th century waned. Today, cities like Berlin, Tokyo and Sao Paulo are some of the top centers for artists to create and be a part of a community. No Problem: Cologne/New York 1984-1989, a group show currently on view at David Zwirner, is presenting a transatlantic approach to the 80’s art scene through the works of twenty-two artists from Germany and the United States. Underlying the dense creative vibrance of Cologne on one side of the Atlantic and New York on the other side, the exhibition presents a concentrated look at the productive interaction between the two cities, bringing together notable names that shaped the artistic nature of the era. (more…)
The Frick Collection has announced an ambitious expansion plan that will add a new six-story wing to the Upper East Side space. The new wing will include a a new rooftop garden, and 60,000 square feet of new exhibition space, totaling 50 percent more room for short-term exhibitions and 24 percent more for a permanent art collection. (more…)
Jean-Michel Basquiat, Untitled (Just Sour) (1982), By Kent Pell from The Schorr Family Collection © The Estate Of Jean-Michel Basquiat, ADAGP, Paris/ARS, New York 2014
Now through June 13, the Acquavella Gallery is hosting an exhibition entirely dedicated to Jean-Michel Basquiat’s works on paper. The show, curated by Fred Hoffman, includes 22 drawings and one painting from the collection of Herbert and Lenore Schorr, a pair of Basquiat’s earliest collectors and friends, and dedicated predominantly to the artist’s works on paper, revealing a range and complexity few associate with Basquiat’s work.
Jean-Michel Basquiat, Unttitled (1981), By Kent Pell from The Schorr Family Collection © The Estate Of Jean-Michel Basquiat, ADAGP, Paris/ARS, New York 2014
A group of artists including Jeff Koons, Catherine Opie, and Carrie Mae Weems are contributing to the Water Tank Project this summer, a public art installation that will place various artists’ work on water tanks around New York. “Water is our most challenged but taken-for-granted resource. It’s all around us but virtually invisible,” curatorial team member Neville Wakefield says. “By drawing attention to the water tanks, we hope to alert the world to the wastage of our most precious commodity.” (more…)
