Tate Liverpool has announced plans to open an exhibition focusing on the work of Andy Warhol this November, the first major solo exhibition of the artist’s work in Northern England. The expansive exhibition will include over 100 works from the artist’s career, and will also include a recreation of the Exploding Plastic Inevitable. (more…)
Pierre Hyghe is profiled in the New York Times this week, previewing the artist’s long awaited retrospective at LACMA, and noting the demanding focus Huyghe’s work often requires of curators, in particular his pieces incorporating live animals and actors. “We have meetings just to talk about the living elements, which isn’t something that usually happens to you as a curator,” says organizer Jarrett Gregory. (more…)
Ai Weiwei is currently under house arrest in Beijing, but that hasn’t stopped the artist from planning and overseeing the installation of his largest UK exhibition to date at Blenheim Palace. Ai has had a 3-D digital model of the space created, and has used it to plot out the placement of works meticulously without leaving his home. “In the beginning, we sent him photographs and detailed plans, but he’s an absolute perfectionist and every inch of where works are placed matters to him. So in the end we lasered all the rooms to make the model for him,” says Lord Edward Spencer-Churchill said. (more…)
Anne Collier, Developing Tray #2 (2009)
In the winter of 2012, a gigantic human eye was gazed out intently on Chelsea and the Hudson River from the High Line billboard on 18th street. The billboard installation, Developing Tray #2, belonged to Anne Collier, an artist known for her appropriation based photographs culling a wide range of printed media from popular culture, suggesting a reinterpretation of otherwise neglected statements. Utilizing minimalistic techniques and a neutral white surface as a background, Collier photographs album covers, commercials, magazine pages or calendars, revealing the subtle ideological undertones related to feminism, consumerism and gender politics. (more…)
Zhang Huan, Shanxi Door No. 49 (2206), all images courtesy Pace Chesa Büsin
Pace Gallery has taken up space at Chesa Büsin in the Swiss town of Suoz this summer for a retrospective of works by Chinese artist Zhang Huan. Known for his especially visceral brand of performance art and his equally meticulous and exacting documentations, this exhibition primarily focuses on some of Zhang’s lesser known paintings, photography and works on paper. (more…)
Giulio Paolini, Young Man Looking at Lorenzo Lotto (1967)
Arte Povera, meaning ‘poor art’ in Italian, contained a profound criticism towards commodification and consumeristic production. Among its key figures stands Giulio Paolini, who was invited to Arte Povera’s first exhibition by art historian Germano Celant. But Paolini also occupies a separate position in terms of focusing on a noticeably historical examination of the artistic state in turn. Related to his critical approach towards production dynamics in art, Paolini on the other hand has been investigating the duality between the seer and the seen, questioning the exchange not only between the artwork and the viewer but also between the subject matter and the artist. (more…)
Marlene Dumas is profiled in the New York Times this week as she prepares for a major career retrospective at the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam, and reviews her ongoing investigations of history, painting and her take on her success as a female artist. “It’s not that I don’t want to be known,” she says, but “I want the other women artists to do well, and then I’ll be pleased to do well.” (more…)
Lucio Fontana, Scultura astratta (1934), all images courtesy Museum d’Art Moderne
On view at Museum D’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris is an retrospective exhibition of Italian painter Lucio Fontana, who was known as one of the the primary founders of Spatialism, and was long known for his association with the Arte Povera movement. The exhibition will continue through August 24th. (more…)
The Whitney Museum will keep its doors open on Mondays next month, providing visitors an extra day to visit the vast Jeff Koons retrospective before the institution closes its uptown space for its move to the Meatpacking District. The new hours are in effect until the exhibition closes on October 19th. (more…)
Barbara Kruger (Installation View), all images courtesy Modern Art Oxford
On view at Modern Art Oxford through August 31st is a major solo exhibition of recent work by American conceptual artist Barbara Kruger. Kruger, who is best known for her paste-up works, black-and-white photographs with declarative phrases in bold letters laid on top, has created a site-specific architectural wrap of the museum’s Upper gallery space in a similar style.
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…)
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…)
Bridget Riley, About Yellow (2013-2014) via David Zwirner London
Whether black and white stripes contrast with each other in bewildering harmony, or vividly sharp colors calmly line-up to soothe the eye, there exists an exquisite charm in Bridget Riley’s entrancing canvases. Starting her career in the late 50’s after graduating from London’s famed Goldsmith’s College, Riley experimented with Pointillism and Abstraction while working as an illustrator. What she would be widely recognized for later in her career, however, were her optical works, which emerged as result of her fascination with Futurism, Constructivism and Minimalism. Focusing on the artist’s colorful stripe paintings from 1961 to the present on a large scale, Bridget Riley: The Stripe Paintings 1961-2014 at David Zwirner’s London location marks Riley’s largest survey since her 2003 retrospective at Tate London. (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…)
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…)
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.
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…)
The Guardian profiles downtown art icon Dan Colen, in the run-up to the artist’s retrospective at The Brant Foundation, which opens this week, reappraising the artist’s career in terms of his material and technical concerns. “I’m trying to equalise the world to say there is no high and low,” Colen says. “People have often thought I was fucking with them when really I was just trying to share that sentiment.” (more…)
Austrian painter Maria Lassnig has passed away at the age of 94.
Born in 1919, Lassnig’s career spanned over 50 years, and her work traces a long and intricate relationship with the history of painting and abstraction, moving from her abstract experessionist works in the 1950’s to her pioneering style of vivid color and dramatic self-portraiture, often utilizing visceral body positions and frank, revealing depictions of herself. “Her art meant everything to her and she sacrificed herself, family, relationships… she an extremely focused and extreme personality that way,” dealer Iwan Wirth told ArtInfo. “She was very headstrong, very critical of photography, fighting photography her whole life and she had no mercy when it came other painters.”
Sigmar Polke, Untitled (Heron) (1966), via Michael Werner
Presented for the first time in almost twenty years, Sigmar Polke’s works on paper are currently installed at Michael Werner Gallery. Including a number drawings that have never been exhibited before, Sigmar Polke: Early Works on Paper suggests a distinctive look at the German master’s less known drawings, ink compositions and sketched out ideas, through a collection of nearly a hundred works created by the artist in the 1960’s. (more…)
Artist Joan Jonas will represent the United States at the Venice Biennale next year, the New York Times reports. The pioneering video and performance artist was selected by the State Department’s bureau of educational and cultural affairs, and will create a site-specific work at the U.S. pavilion. “Joan has been a visionary for such a long time,’’ says Paul C. Ha, the director of the M.I.T. List Visual Arts Center, and commissioner of the exhibition. “Yet she hasn’t had much exposure in Venice.’’ (more…)
Heidi Bucher, Untitled (Herrenzimmer), (undated) via Osman Can Yerebakan
Known for her ongoing focus on the relationship between the body and architectural space, the late Heidi Bucker is being commemorated with an exhibition at the Swiss Institute. The exhibition, running through May 11th at the gallery’s SoHo space, stands out being the first solo exhibition of the artist in the United States in more than forty years.
Heidi Bucher, Untitled (9 Objects), (1972-1987), Courtesy Migros Museum für Gegenwartskunst, Zürich (more…)
Hannah Höch, Staatshäupter (Heads of State) (1930), all images courtesy Whitechapel Gallery
Over 100 works from major international collections by Dada artist Hannah Höch have been compiled for the first major exhibition of her work in Britain, on view at Whitechapel Gallery through March 23, 2014. Best known for helping originate 20th century photomontage, Höch first gained attention during the Berlin Dada movement of the 1920s in Weimar Germany, cutting out images from fashion magazines and placing them together to create comical social commentaries. Athough many of her colleagues have been given more attention in traditional written art history, Höch was recognized – albeit reluctantly – by better known artists such as George Grosz, Theo van Doesburg, Piet Mondrian, and Kurt Schwitters.
Kazimir Malevich, Mystic Suprematism (red cross on black circle) (1920-1922), via New York Times
Kazimir Malevich’s impact on the early-Twentieth century Russian avant-garde is difficult to ignore. Pushing forward the “new art,” he pioneered early minimalist practices and pushed the rupture of modernist art almost simultaneously with the Cubist deconstructions happening further west. But it was Malevich that ultimately took these same processes to new abstractions, and perhaps what could be considered their limit, rendering pure geometric forms in contrasting, minimal explorations of color and space, ultimately developing the language that would come to define much of Twentieth century fine art.
Kazimir Malevich And The Russian Avant-Garde (Installation View), Via Stedelijk Museum Photo: Gert Jan van Rooij (more…)
