Artist Olafur Eliasson has unveiled a new project in Copenhagen, Denmark, an immense installation featuring 112 tons of ice.  Ice Watch, created in conjunction with geologist Minik Rosing, to commemorate the Fifth Assessment Report on the Climate, a drastic report on the rapidly changing state of the global atmosphere. “I hope that people will touch the inland ice on City Hall Square and be touched by it,” said Eliasson. (more…)

Outside the Frieze Fair, via Art Observed

As Wednesday winds down, the 2014 edition of Frieze London is well underway, starting another fair off with strong sales and impressive attendance.  As the VIP preview opened, a number of prominent celebrities could be seen browsing the aisles.  Famed German footballer Michael Ballack was seen wandering the aisles, as was writer Salman Rushdie, joining MOCA’s new director Philip Vergne and his DIA successor Jessica Morgan.

Erwin Wurm, via Andrea Nguyen for Art (more…)

In the run-up to Frieze Art Week, Lisson Gallery has installed a series of posters on the walls of the London Tube station near Regent’s Park, featuring texts designed by artists Ryan Gander and Cory Arcangel.  The work is part of a broader series of projects by Arcangel, Gander and Joyce Pensato at the fair who “are intervening and disrupting the [Frieze] stand through installation, performance and collaboration—manipulating how the public interact with works and staff members, who will be sporting custom-made shoes, suits and other wearable works of art,” according to the gallery press release. (more…)

Marina Abramovic publicly reached out to director Lars Von Trier this week, telling the director that she wishes to work with him on an upcoming project.  “You really bring the actors on the edge of complete nervous breakdowns,” she says. “Because I am a performance artist, I understand very well what you are doing.”  (more…)

Mike Bouchet, Cloud Nymph (reading) (2014), via Peres Projects

The images of Mike Bouchet have long identified with notions of the cinematic.  Whether it’s the artist’s simple paintings executed with his own home-brewed adaptation of Diet Coke, or his ongoing execution of celebrity-inspired jacuzzis, concepts of luxury, commodity and pop culture ideologies find themselves at a bizarre, yet often commanding, intersection.   (more…)

Roxy Paine, Checkpoint (2014), via Henry Murphy for Art Observed

Roxy Paine makes work that can perhaps only be described as a challenge: large-scale carved wood sculptures capturing the most banal and unimposing scenes of contemporary American life.  Executed with a painstaking hand, the intense verisimilitude of his scenes and objects takes on a surrealist edge, oscillating between stark realism and its material grounding. (more…)

Parisian Taxidermy specialist Peyrolle has announced a collaboration with Damien Hirst.  Titled Signification (Hope, Immortality and Death in Paris, Now and Then), the “Cabinet of Curiosities” includes stuffed birds and insects, alongside a selection of cleaning products.  “From the Surrealists to now, artists have come to Deyrolle not only to be inspired, but also to have a relationship with le vivant — the living — and the collapse of the living,” says Deyrolle’s owner Prince Louis Albert de Broglie.  (more…)

BBC 4 has launched a series of new station identifiers, created by British artists.  The short clips include work by 2013 Turner Prize winner Laure Prouvost, 2014 Turner Prize nominee James Richards, film-maker John Smith, and Sebastian Buerkner, and follow a perceived attempt at the BBC to embrace more arts-minded programming and content. (more…)

A new participatory work by Rikrit Tiravanija has been installed at the Leeum Samsung Museum of Art in Seoul.  The work, titled Demo Station No. 5, is an open stage installed inside the museum, allowing for performances, relaxation and iteration between guests, artists and members of the institution. “I want people to move around like they are in their daily life. Part of my interest is always to break down the distance between what we think of as art or high art and what we do in our daily life,” Tiravanija says. (more…)

As Detroit’s “grand bargain” draws nearer to realization, The New York Times notes that parts of the deal for the city’s exit from bankruptcy may in fact be illegal.  This news comes as a lending company, Art Capital, has offered the city $3 billion in aid using the city’s art collection as collateral, an offer that the city has yet to respond to.  “The museum is owned by the city, and the city is, in fact, in bankruptcy. That asset lawfully should be available to assist in the plan of exit,” said Ian Peck, Art Capital’s chief executive. “But we also believe that this art is a national treasure and should be preserved as such.” (more…)

Lygia Clark (Installation View), via Art Observed

The Abandonment of Art is an ambitious name for an exhibition at MoMA, even if the work happens to be the medium-pushing sculptures and objects of Brazilian artist Lygia Clark, who over the course of her career constantly sought new modes of encounter, interpretation and perception in the space of art.  Clark’s long-anticipated MoMA retrospective, taking up half of the museum’s top floor, welcomes this expansion, moving through the artist’s career from her early canvases to her later innovations in sculpture and performance. (more…)

The Smithsonian Institution is reportedly in talks to build an expansion in London’s Olympic Park, a project that would become part of Mayor Boris Johnson’s plan to build a massive cultural center on the grounds of the 2o12 Olympics.  “The mayor has made clear his ambitions for Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park with a view that it becomes home to a range of prestigious higher education, cultural and technological institutions,” said Johnson’s spokesperson. (more…)

Tara Donovan, Untitled (2014) via Art Observed

The geometric, visually imaginative work of Tara Donovan takes its inspiration from simple movements, simple gestures elevated by their repetition and internal harmony.  Her work finds its form through the interaction of its elements, the spatial and compositional considerations of her materials, placed in close proximity and allowed to engage in a conversation between each singular element and the final form these pieces ultimately create.

Tara Donovan, Untitled (2014) via Art Observed

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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…)

The Washington Post is selling off its art collection, and allowing employees to have first choice at a discounted sales rate.  The collection includes a number of local artists as well as works by Alex Katz and other major figures.  “We wanted to do this as a farewell gesture to Post employees and to give corporate and newspaper employees an opportunity to own artworks they have enjoyed and loved,” said Rima Calderon, vice president for communications and external relations at Graham Holdings. (more…)

Pierre Huyghe, L’Expédition scintillante, Act III (Black Ice Stage) (2002), via Museum Ludwig

Working in collaboration with the Centre Pompidou Paris, the Museum Ludwig is showing a major retrospective of Pierre Huyghe, containing over 60 works and projects. When the exhibition was previously set up in Paris, Huyghe took the layout of the previous show, dedicated to Mike Kelley, and transformed it by moving and cutting walls inside the space. When the show moved to Cologne, he cut the pieces out of the walls of Pompidou and reassembled them in a sort of collage. This dissection and reassembly reflects Huyghe’s exploration of the reliance of art on time and specific events. The works he displays carry with them their own physical timelines. (more…)

Josh Kolbo, Untitled (2013), all photos via Emily Heinz for Art Observed

There was a vibrant buzz around Hauser & Wirth in Chelsea as one of the gallery’s smaller exhibition space filled in for the opening of the group show Fixed Variable, featuring the work of Lucas Blalock, Ethan Greenbaum, John Houck, Matt Keegan, Josh Kolbo, Kate Steciw, Chris Wiley and Letha Wilson, and examining the relationship between the nature of the photograph, the nature of the object, and the intersection between the two.

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The Rauschenberg Foundation has launched a competition for young curators, inviting proposals for exhibitions using works from the Foundation’s extensive collection.  Winners will be selected by a panel of judges, including curator John Elderfield and artist Shirin Neshat. (more…)

Richard Long, Four Ways (2014), all images courtesy Lisson Gallery

Richard Long’s first solo exhibition at Lisson Gallery in over three decades brings together photographs, text, and natural elements as records of his walks in England, Switzerland, and Antarctica. Working in conjunction with the materials and forces that make up his surroundings, Long brings the fruits of his lone experiences in nature to the imaginations of a gallery audience. Long made his reputation in the 1970s with his sculptures born of days-long walks to remote locations, acting as bridges between natural design and human creation. His present exhibition reveals his persistence in investigating the themes that run through his lifelong body of work. (more…)

Artist William Kentridge will bring a massive wall installation to the banks of the Tiber River in Rome later this year, part of a commission by the Maxxi Museum.  The work, Triumphs and Laments, will depict scenes from Rome’s 2,000 year history through wall murals, made by removing layers of pollution from the river embankment.  As smog continues to accumulate in the city, the work will slowly disappear. (more…)

The “Art Everywhere US” project, which will cover billboards, bus stops and other public spaces with art, is set to get underway this August, with 58 works to go on display after a public vote.  Edward Hopper’s 1942 Nighthawks was the leading vote-getter, and will join works by Ed Ruscha and Cindy Sherman, among others.  The project begins August 4th in Times Square, when digital billboards will display all the works. (more…)

Hy-Fi, the winning project in MoMA PS1‘s Young Architects Program, is set to open at the museum’s Queens campus this Friday, June 27th.  Created by design firm The Living, the installation uses biodegradable materials, and once set, actually grows over the course of its installation.   (more…)

Peter Coffin, LIVING (Installation View), via Art Observed

Given the recent string of shows and events opening at Red Bull Studios’ New York location in Chelsea, one has to wonder just who the energy drink brand has recruited to curate it’s well-appointed space. From the recent DISown concept store to Peter Coffin’s just-opened “Living” installation, the selection of works seem wholly of a similar focus and artistic project. (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…)