Artist Marina Abramovic is interviewed in The Guardian this week, discussing her upcoming retrospective at The Serpentine, where the artist will freely wander the space of the gallery, and will allow visitors to come in and watch her. “It’s the public and me and nothing else,” she says. “I took the objects away. But the encounter, I’ve never done anything as radical as this. This is as immaterial as you can go.” (more…)
Laure Prouvost, From the Sky at Danspace Project, via Ian Douglas
Just last Friday, Danspace Project opened its doors at the historic St. Marks Church in the Bowery for a special performance by French-born artist Laure Prouvost. Titled From the Sky, the performance saw Prouvost exploring an invented history and interaction of her fictitious, conceptual artist grandfather, all through her signature blend of hyper-charged performance, video and imagery.
Laure Prouvost, From the Sky at Danspace Project, via Ian Douglas (more…)
Aki Sasamoto, Sunny in the Furnace, via Aki Sasamoto
Late this week, amid the hustle and bustle of Armory Week in New York, The Kitchen will open artist Aki Sasamoto’s newest performance, Sunny in the Furnace, running from March 6th to the 8th in the organization’s theatre space. Incorporating Sasamoto’s playful, intricate series of object-oriented encounters and reflections, the work will see her expand her practice onto a larger scale, incorporating the work of fellow artists Sam Ekwurtzel, Jessica Weinstein, Pau Atela, and Madeline Best, as well as live music by percussionist John Bollinger. taking Sasamoto’s recurring focus on memory and material to new levels of complexity.
Aki spoke with Art Observed this past week to preview her show, and talk a bit about her personal creative process. (more…)
Jonathan Meese, Selbstportrait mit eisernem Kreuz (2001), all images courtesy MdM
On view at the Museum der Moderne Münchsberg is a unique exhibition of paintings by contemporary German artist Jonathan Meese, whose works are mainly focused on controversial issues within contemporary German history.
Matthew Barney, River of Fundament (still) (2014), Courtesy BAM credit: Hugo Glendinning
Matthew Barney’s newest film, River of Fundament, is a spectacle, to say the least. Clocking in at just under 6-hours, the film is in turns a surreal voyage through the Egyptian afterlife, the American automotive industry, and the respective encounters of Barney and composer Jonathan Bepler’s with their various subjects, all turned inwards on the film’s own internal logic and unleashed in jarring blasts of viscera, atonal operatics and monumental, ritualistic performance happenings taking part in Detroit, Los Angeles and New York.
Matthew Barney, River of Fundament (still) (2014), Courtesy BAM credit: Hugo Glendinning (more…)
James Franco has written an op-ed piece in the New York Times this week, examining actor Shia Lebeouf’s recent performance piece in Los Angeles. Noting LeBeouf’s performance as a potential attempt to take back his public persona from the entertainment industry. “Any artist, regardless of his field, can experience distance between his true self and his public persona,” he writes. “But because film actors typically experience fame in greater measure, our personas can feel at the mercy of forces far beyond our control. Our rebellion against the hand that feeds us can instigate a frenzy of commentary that sets in motion a feedback loop: acting out, followed by negative publicity, followed by acting out in response to that publicity, followed by more publicity, and so on.” (more…)
Björn and Dieter Roth, Selbstturm (1994-2013), via HangarBiocca
HangarBicocca, Milan’s 12,000 square meter former industrial space turned gallery, is the perfect place for Björn and Dieter Roth’s Islands exhibition. The huge interactive installation, curated by HangarBicocca’s Artistic Advisor Vicente Todolà (the former Director of the Tate Modern in London), interacts with the space beautifully, creating a unique environment defined by the artists. Visitors are drawn into the artwork as they walk through the several “islands” created by groupings of work: walls of paintings and prints, sculptures, an installation of repurposed materials, musical instruments, furniture, screens and household items that visitors are encouraged to interact with, including the 131 screens of Dieter Roth’s well-known video diary, the floors from the artists’ studio, and their sculptures: Zuckerturm (Sugar Tower), 1994-2013 and Selbstturm (Self Tower), 1994-2013. (more…)
Jill Kroesen, The Original Lou and Walter Story, performance at The Kitchen, December 21—23, 1978. Courtesy the artist. Photograph by Robert Alexander
Currently on view at The Whitney Museum of American Art is Rituals of Rented Island: Object Theater, Loft Performance, and the New Psychodrama — Manhattan, 1970-1980, an ambitiously titled exhibition that focuses on the underground performance art circuits that made New York City a founding ground for the medium. Looking at a broad range of performers, exhibition spaces, practices and historical contexts, the exhibition is an intriguing look at the early days of performance, and its impacts on contemporary art. (more…)
The first episode of Ambiance Man, a project by artist Alix Lambert for MocaTV, has gone up on the Museum’s YouTube page, starring Fred Armisen as the titular superhero, with Jack Black and Jibz Cameron taking on the role of his nemeses “Unidentified Odor” and “Buzz Kill.” (more…)
The Life and Death of Marina Abramovic, Photo: Joan Marcus Courtesy Park Ave Armory
As the story goes, when artist Marina Abramovic came to legendary stage director Robert Wilson about helping him to stage her funeral onstage, the director only replied, “only if I can stage your life as well.” So begins the mythology behind The Life and Death of Marina Abramovic, the nearly three-hour long performance that just completed its first run of U.S. dates at the Park Avenue Armory in New York.
The Life and Death of Marina Abramovic, Photo: Joan Marcus Courtesy Park Ave Armory (more…)
Martin Creed performs at The Kitchen, via Art Observed
Martin Creed took the stage last week at the Kitchen last night for the first of three consecutive, part of his ongoing series of exhibitions in New York City that show the former Turner Prize winner at the top of his game, continuing his series of reductive, simplistic works with Work #1020, a performance piece that combine repeated gesture and dance, crass video and his own brand of buoyant, bizarre rock and roll. (more…)
Pablo Picasso, Tête d’homme, 1969, Acquavella Galleries, Art Basel Miami Beach 2013
As December begins, the art world prepares yet again for the grand spectacle of Art Basel Miami Beach, with its sprawling rows of booths and late-night parties that have defined it as the apex social event of the Art world’s calendar. Over 250 galleries will be at the main fair this year, alongside numerous public exhibitions, talks, performances and more. Art Observed will be on site in pursuit of coverage for the duration of the week.
Marcel Duchamp, 1935/41-1958, Francis M. Naumann Fine Art, Art Basel Miami Beach 2013
Architect Maya Lin and her husband, art dealer and collector Daniel Wolf, have purchased a former jail house in Yonkers, NY, with the intention of converting it into an arts space. The 10,000 square-foot space will include place for performances, lectures, and exhibitions of the couple’s large collection of works. “The jail offers enormous potential but the breathtaking view of the Palisades from the doorstep of the Hudson inspires a vision as unique and beautiful as the building itself,” Lin says. (more…)
Artist Ryan McNamara has been awarded the second edition of the Marshall McLaren Award at Performa 13. MEÆŽM: A Story Ballet About the Internet, was performed at the Connelly Theater this November, and won the honor of the fair’s most “innovative new work.” McNamara joins inaugural winner Ragnar Kjartansson for his work Bliss. (more…)
New Yorkers flocked to the Brooklyn Navy Yards on Sunday night for the long-rumored artRAVE party, celebrating the release of musician Lady Gaga’s newest album, ARTPOP, with a number of high-profile art pieces by Jeff Koons, Inez and Vinoodh, Marina Abramovic and Robert Wilson, among others, as well as a multimedia set by the pop star herself. (more…)
The Marina Abramovic Institute has announced its latest project; a 24-hour reading of the 2004 fantasy novel The City of Dreaming Books, by Walter Moers, set for November 23rd at the Basilica Hudson. This is Abramovic’s second entry in her marathon reading series, after an 8-hour reading of Stanislaw Lem’s Solaris. “The Basilica has a very dramatic and industrial atmosphere that calls for one-of-a-kind and extreme events like this marathon reading,” Basilica Hudson creative director Melissa Auf der Maur said. “Marina and her team dreamed up this event, and naturally we opened our doors to them.” (more…)
Marina Abramović’s opera, The Life and Death of Marina Abramović, is set to open this December 12th in The Park Armory’s spacious Drill Hall. Staged by Robert Wilson, the show includes performances by Abramović, playing herself and her mother, and also features performances by Willem Dafoe and Antony. The show has already garnered an overwhelmingly positive critical response at each of its previous performances, and marks the first time the work will be performed int he US. (more…)
The New York Times profiles the upcoming release of Steve McQueen’s 12 Years a Slave, and the recent panel discussion the filmmaker and artist gave with writer Nelson George and fellow artist Kara Walker, discussing the influences for the film, and its place as a historical perspective on slavery. “There’s a uniquely American exuberance for violence or an exuberance for getting ahead in the world and making a name for themselves. I’m talking about the sort of plantation class that fought for the entrenchment of the slave system,” Walker notes. “That’s not something that can be overlooked when you think about the mythology of what it means to be an American, that one can become a self-made man if one is white and male and able.” (more…)
Another Magazine has released an exclusive documentary and interview with artist Doug Aitken, following the conclusion of Aitken’s impressively expansive Station to Station project. “We wanted to create a language that is more nomadic and less materialistic and really empowering for the creators and the audience” Aitken says. (more…)
Chris Burden, Shoot, (1971), Performance at F Space, Santa Ana, California November 19, 1971
The New Museum’s Extreme Measures, a career retrospective of the work of Chris Burden, begins modestly: an orange flatbed truck sits in the museum’s ground floor exhibition space, holding a 1 ton block of steel on its mounted crane. Silent and imposing , the work hints at Burden’s preoccupation with scale and weight, his focus on material scale and industrial affect.
Chris Burden, Ghost Ship (2005), Courtesy the artist and Gagosian Gallery (more…)
Further extending its commitment to live performance work and new media, the Tate Modern has announced plans for additional performance space inside its museum spaces, as well as a website for the broadcasting of performance works live around the world. “It’s a completely new thing.” Says Dutch artist Nicoline van Harskamp. (more…)
Artist Ai Weiwei, whose scale model recreations of his 2011 incarceration at this year’s Venice Biennale won him critical accolades, has spoken on his ordeal in a recent interview with Salon. Recounting his experiences with his interrogators, Weiwei recounts conversations in which he began to teach his captors about conceptual art, Dadaism and protest. “I explained art to them and then many times they said to me, ‘Weiwei, why whenever we talk about art and concepts do you get so excited that you keep talking? And why when we talk about facts, you say, ‘I don’t know’?’ But I say, ‘You know, I like to talk about art, and it makes me joyful and when I get to talk about art and explain I get very high spirits.’” He says.
The 2012 Turner Prize nominee formerly known Spartacus Chetwynd has undergone another identity change, documenting the process in The Guardian this week. Originally named Alalia Cichosz before changing her name in 2006, the artist has yet again changed her name to Marvin Gaye Chetwynd, in honor of the deceased soul singer. “For the last six months or so, I’ve been thinking about changing my name again – this time to Marvin Gaye Chetwynd. Again, it’s a good experiment. It could work like a shield, or a spell. In the end I just thought: ‘I’m going to try it, because nothing matters very much.'” She writes. (more…)
A flash mob in Oslo, led by artist Marina Abramovic was shut down this week, following noise complaints. The performance, done in tribute to painter Edvard Munch, involved a group of over 300 participants “releasing their emotions by screaming,” as Abramovic said. The sound startled several local residents, who in turn called the police. “We received four or five reports,” said police spokesperson Ola Kroken. “But now it’s over.” (more…)
