Georg Baselitz, Glastrinker Beckmann (1981), All images via Osman Can Yerebakan for Art Observed.

The prolific German artist Georg Baselitz is the subject of Skarstedt’s current show with two series of paintings from the 1980’s.  Entitled Drinkers and Orange Eaters, the exhibition is composed of two series that the adept Neo-Expressionist created as a study on representation and pictorial narrative.  Accentuating the gallery’s minimal but elegant townhouse space, these vibrant paintings, emanating from Baselitz’s gestural brushstrokes fervidly reclaim the legacy of oil on canvas. (more…)

The New Museum has appointed Lauren Cornell, who recently co-curated the 2015 Triennial alongside artist Ryan Trecartin, as Curator and Associate Director, Technology Initiatives.  “Through her work at the New Museum and at Rhizome first, Lauren Cornell has been tracking the influence of technology on art and culture at large,” says Massimiliano Gioni, the Museum’s Artistic Director.  “In her new position, she will help the Museum take an even more active role in engaging with the present and the future.”  (more…)

The once rigid boundaries between commercial galleries and museum exhibitors are quickly diminishing today, The New York Times notes, as top galleries turn towards high profile museum curators to create historically and culturally resonant shows.  “I think galleries do it for prestige,” says John Elderfield, a former MoMA curator who has done independent work for Gagosian.  “It burnishes their image.  Of course, when one gallery does it, another one wants to do it.” (more…)

Richard Prince, Original (Installation View)

Richard Prince’s Original series is currently the subject of a new exhibition at Gagosian Gallery, nestled at the gallery’s Upper East Side bookstore showroom, and using Prince’s ‘arrangements’ of soft-core adult novels with artworks created for their covers, showing the next step in the artist’s fascination with collecting, ownership and presentation.  An ardent, perhaps even obsessive collector himself, Prince often mines and unfolds worn and sometimes clandestine images, not only from vintage pulps, which serve for the selection here, but also from copies of influential literary pieces, a pattern the artist has studied throughout his career of media appropriations.  A devoted member of a group of artists who started experimenting with appropriation in the ‘70’s, Prince usually employs minimal alteration to his subject matter; rearranging, editing and sometimes even rephotographing what already exists. (more…)

The Art Newspaper sits down with Guggenheim Director Richard Armstrong to discuss a range of issues with the Guggenheim’s ongoing expansion plans in Finland and Abu Dhabi, including pressures to improve labor conditions through the sub-contractors working on the project.  “These are all questions that come under sovereignty; I feel unequipped to answer them,” Armstrong says.  “I can state our position: we are in constant dialogue with TDIC and other intergovernmental agencies. It really is top of my mind.” (more…)

The Smithsonian has acquired the complete records of New York Gallery OK Harris, the renowned downtown dealers who helped launch the careers of Andy Warhol, Roy Lichtenstein, Robert Rauschenberg, and John Chamberlain, among others.  The collection of paperwork includes exhibition files, correspondence, and other documents from the career of Ivan and Marilynn Gelfmann Karp, the gallery owners. (more…)

Lee Ufan, (Installation View), via Bria Cole for Art Observed

If tranquility could serve as a physical construct, rather than a state of mind, then a state of calm could perhaps be considered as a reconditioning of vision, a way to perceive extended relations of time, material and space.  This sense of the perceptual retooling, and its effects, is one reading offered by Lee Ufan’s continuous series Relatum and Dialogue, the most recent version of which is currently on view at Pace Gallery.   The artist tends towards a relationship between philosophy and the objects he creates with artistic significance, in order to provoke subtle perceptual reconsiderations, as proposed in his writings and contributions to the Mono-ha school of artistic practice.

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Cecily Brown, The English Garden (Installation View), Rachel Williams for Art Observed

Currently at Maccarone Gallery are a set of intimately-sized canvases by painter Cecily Brown.  Aggressively captivating beyond their small boarders, the artist’s works here ignite a series of personal experiences as viewers stand inches away from canvases no more than 18 inches in height or width. Organized by novelist and art writer Jim Lewis, The English Garden contains garden scenes rather than traditional landscapes.  Sharp lines inside Brown’s expressionist marks create additional horizons that depict mysterious and often open-ended garden scenes. (more…)

Robert Motherwell. Opens (Installation View) All Images Courtesy Andrea Rosen Gallery.

Now through June 20, Andrea Rosen Gallery will host a comprehensive exhibition of Robert Motherwell’s Open series, composed from 1967 through the 1970s, and set to coincide with the centennial of the artist’s birth.  This historical marker exemplifies the gallery’s ongoing commitment to looking to the recent past of contemporary art in order to expand upon trends currently emerging, and to trace the influence of major figures in the art world.  As the gallery’s press release states, “Opens not only allows us to compare these masterworks against the present-day focus on abstraction, but also encourages us to reconcile the breadth of Motherwell’s rigor and clarity.”  This comprehensive exhibition of one of the artist’s lesser-known series provides the opportunity to deepen public understanding of the legacy of Motherwell as an artist and a significant force in mid-twentieth century New York City.

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Yinka Shonibare MBE, Ballet God (Apollo) (2015)

Currently on view at James Cohan Gallery is Yinka Shonibare MBE’s new body of work, including exuberant, playful sculptures along with digital prints.  The UK-based Nigerian-born artist came into recognition with his hybrid sculptures, utilizing Dutch wax fabric, a textile material of complex patterns and tight allusions to colonialism due to its long, bureaucratic history of trade.  In his recent exhibition, Shonibare weighs on a broader issue compared to his familiar themes of colonialism, political supremacy and racial identity, looking at global climate changes and growing effects of these permutations throughout the world. (more…)

Amid a New York State Attorney’s investigation and the resignation of five board of trustee members at Cooper Union, the University’s embattled President Jamshed Bharucha has resigned.  Bharucha headed Cooper during its controversial decision to begin charging tuition, and has been the subject of numerous protest actions since.  He will take a position as visiting scholar at Harvard. (more…)

Tony Oursler, EUC (2015), All images are by Osman Can Yerebakan for Art Observed.

The new body of work by acclaimed new media artist Tony Oursler is currently on view at Lehmann Maupin’s Chrystie street location. Aligned with his signature style of analyzing high technology and its idiosyncratic tone in correlation to the human body, Oursler delves into the limits of human expression in his new exhibition.  Although he was born in New York City, Oursler emerged in late 1970s along with a group of West Coast artists such as Mike Kelley and Jim Shaw after graduating from the California Institute of the Arts, where he studied under John Baldessari. (more…)

Lisa Yuskavage, Bonfire (2013-2015), all images via Osman Can Yerebakan for Art Observed

In her fourth solo show with David Zwirner, Lisa Yuskavage furthers her now-signature style as a figurative painter, while moving towards new territories in both content and technique.  At the center of the show is Bonfire, a large diptych strikingly positioned facing the gallery entrance, and capturing the gaze of onlookers and passerby with its profound green tones and accentuated, yet oblique narrative.  Situated on opposite sides of the painting are two female nudes, sporting Yuskavage’s recognizable stylistic features, such as bulging abdomens and voluminous hair. (more…)

A selection of works by Fanny Allie, via Art Observed

Bushwick Open Studios has come and gone in the North Brooklyn arts hub, with another year of exhibitions and projects spread across the sprawling industrial landscapes of the borough closing to strong attendance.

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Dean Levin, Surface Support (Road Goes on Forever) (2015)

Marianne Boesky Gallery recently presented A Long, Narrow Mark, the gallery’s first collaboration with artist Dean Levin, at its Clinton street location.  Levin has enjoyed a growing recognition in recent years, proven by an impressive range of group exhibitions he has been included in the U.S. and Europe, as well as his debut solo at Upper East Side space of Robert Blumenthal last year. (more…)

MoMA has acquired several hundred photographs by artist August Sander from his series “People of the Twentieth Century,” the New York Times reports.  “His ambition is nothing less than to use photography to describe the people of the 20th century,” says Sarah Hermanson Meister, a MoMA photography curator.  “He is doing this through the German people, but it’s not limited in its intention to that.” (more…)

Tabor Robak, Drinking Bird (Season) (2015)

Currently on view at Team Gallery is a new body of works by Brooklyn-based artist Tabor Robak, the digitally-focused artist whose LCD video pieces mine the aesthetics and possibilities for interface design in the 21st century. Computer-generated graphics and lifestyle technologies doubtlessly strike as the main threads in Robak’s work, yet his spontaneous employment of ubiquitous cultural icons, and mundane components into his otherwise convoluted compositions expands the array of his statement. The artist’s use of oblique narratives, hinted at through lines of text and simple graphic juxtapositions, fall in line with the phantasmagorical, responding to the utilitarian aspect of high-tech elements, while suggesting a certain submission by the user, a transposition of their role into that of a passive viewer or consumer. (more…)

Thomas Houseago, Masks (Pentagon) (2015), via Art Observed

This summer, Rockefeller Center has launched a continuation of its partnership with the Public Art Fund, opening a new public work by British-born, Los Angeles-based artist Thomas Houseago.  The work, titled simply as Masks (Pentagon), the artist continues an investigation of spatial interactions that has defined his work over recent years. (more…)

Jasper Johns’s Foundation for Contemporary Arts has opened a new project space, Other Room, next to its Meatpacking District Offices, providing space for curated shows focused on young and emerging artists.  “We’re not really set up to be a gallery—we have regular office hours except for the occasional Saturday—but the idea was to do something artist-centric,” says executive director Stacy Stark. (more…)

Aurel Schmidt with a work from New Gods, via Art Observed

Recently, artist Aurel Schmidt launched another entry in her series of unexpected pop-up shows, bringing her uniquely visceral, surrealist drawings to an uninhabited apartment on St. Marks Place downtown.  It was a rough and ready affair, with works installed across the hauntingly empty rooms of the walk-up (one work was mounted near the kitchen sink, while another sat above the laundry machine), and a number of the artist’s friends on hand, making it feel more like a casual gathering than a gallery show.  In one room, guests were treated to an impromptu concert by Devonté Hynes (a.k.a. Blood Orange), while Schmidt welcomed guests and showed them around the space.

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Rosy Keyser, Terrestrial Mime (2015), all images via Maccarone Gallery

The idea of a frame places a spatial limit on its painterly contents, a statement of intent that rules its exteriors as just that, outside space.  For her first show with Maccarone Gallery, Rosy Keyser takes that logic  to a deconstructive conclusion, presenting a body of works under the title The Hell Bitch that continues the discourse of painterly reduction.  While breaking away from the traditional frame, Keyser’s works allow for viewers to consider definitions of empathy, profanity and form through her patchwork assemblages, fixed to the classic signifier of the canvas stretcher.   (more…)

After 30 years working with Mary Boone, Eric Fischl is parting ways with the gallery, the Art Newspaper reports.  “Right now, Eric says he wants to concentrate on his work, not be affiliated with a gallery. We respect that and will continue to have a good relationship with him,” says Ron Warren, director and partner at Mary Boone. “I think he has decided that the art world and the market have changed so much that he wants to concentrate on making his work, and distance himself from being represented by a gallery.” (more…)

The Museum of Modern Art has announced plans for a major retrospective focused on the work of Donald Judd, set to open in 2017, organized by Chief Curator Ann Temkin.  “Half a century after Judd established himself as a leading figure of his time, his legacy demands to be considered anew,” said Ms. Temkin. “The show will cover the entire arc of Judd’s career, including not only quintessential objects from the 1960s and 1970s, but also works made before he arrived at his iconic formal vocabulary, and selections from the remarkable developments of the 1980s.” (more…)

The Whitney has named Scott Rothkopf, the man behind last year’s Jeff Koons retrospective, as the institution’s new chief curator, taking over for Donna De Salvo as she assumes the new position of deputy director.  “Now that the institution has grown, we need more firepower at the top,” says President Adam Weinberg said, adding: “I wouldn’t say so much that it’s a generational change but it is about bringing that next generation into the curatorial and programmatic leadership.” (more…)