Diana Thater, Science, Fiction (2014), via Art Observed

Diana Thater’s new exhibition on view at David Zwirner’s 19th Street Exhibition is an exercise in restraint.  Consisting of a pair of video compositions and a monumental structure in a light-saturated installation piece, the artist moves towards an experience of space, both in an immediate and more figurative sense, that engages the magnitude of human experience on both macro and micro scales. (more…)

Takashi Murakami is featured in Nowness’s ongoing artist profile series this week, discussing his recent show at Gagosian Gallery in New York, and the inspiration behind his new works.  “For me, (the works) look like 25 years ago,” Murakami says, “with the crazy economy and then the crash.”
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Pipilotti Rist, Worry Will Vanish Horizon (video still)  (2014), All images Courtesy of the artist, Hauser & Wirth and Luhring Augustine New York.

One of the most seminal names in video art, Pipilotti Rist is presenting a new body of work at Hauser & Wirth’s two Britain locations. The Swiss born artist, who emerged in the rapidly developing field of video art during the 80’s with her infamous video I’m Not The Girl Who Misses Much, has presented an ambitious oeuvre throughout the years, reflecting on issues related to the body, gender and technology. In doing so, she has blended various mediums and structures that are challenging to consider under one practice, each one holding onto a distinct atmosphere set in what could be considered an alternate reality. (more…)

Artist Paul Chan has been awarded the 2014 Hugo Boss Prize, the biennial award given by the Guggenheim Museum which carries a $100,000 prize as well as an exhibition at the museum.  “Paul’s protean ability to work across multiple platforms from his videos to his more elegiac light pieces and community-based performances is what particularly stood out,” Nancy Spector, the Guggenheim’s deputy director and chief curator told the New York Times. (more…)

Mickalene Thomas is on Nowness this week, talking about her recent film profiling the life of her late moth, Happy Birthday to a Beautiful Woman.   “It allowed me to look at her not only as a subject—as my muse—but as a person. I really tried to understand her world, her own sexuality and femininity and beauty,” Thomas says. (more…)

Ryan Trecartin and Lizzie Fitch, Still from untitled work in progress  (2014), via Regen Projects

Ryan Trecartin and Lizzie Fitch have enjoyed one of the more distinctive artistic collaborations in recent history, creating bizarre viewing platforms, caves, stadium seating and other eerily familiar arrangements in the service of immersive film-viewing environments, some of which is currently on view at the duo’s first exhibition at Regen Projects in Los Angeles.  Combining a set of Trecartin and Fitch’s bizarrely evocative sculptures with films and installations, the show welcomes a deep investigation into the pair’s practice, both as solo artists and in collaboration. (more…)

Gillian Wearing, We Are Here (2014), all images courtesy Maureen Paley

On view at Maureen Paley is a solo exhibition of single-screen video work by Turner Prize-winner Gillian Wearing. Entitled We Are Here, the artist’s 6th at the London gallery.  The exhibition is conceptually inspired by American poet Edgar Lee Master’s book Spoon River Anthology (1915), in which the people who lived by the titular waterway rise up from the grave and talk about their lives and memories.  Wearing, who grew up in the town of Sandwell, bases her video on people from the West Midlands speaking as if they have returned from the grave.

Gillian Wearing (Installation View)

We Are Here premiered in the UK at The New Art Gallery Walsall and in the US at Regen Projects, Los Angeles, and the work here centers around the production and conceptual planning of the piece, including a series of photographs taken around Sandwell, and other pieces of research.  While the show is rather sparse, the exhibition is a welcome investigation into Wearing’s personal history, giving the area around her home town a certain agency to represent itself while also addressing the conditions and histories that help to define her own life and work.

Gillian Wearing (Installation View)

In her series of photographs, Signs that say what you want them to say and not Signs that say what someone else wants you to say, she allows her subjects the ability to express themselves on a series of white placards, with the results running from tender moments of self-honesty to hackneyed expressions about world peace.  Taken as a whole, Wearing’s brand of cultural realism uncovers the the anxiety of her environment and the occasionally fraught contract between the artist and her subjects, occasionally breaking down or leaning into pop culture formats.

Gillian Wearing (Installation View)

Wearing won the Turner Prize in 1997 and was awarded an OBE in 2011.  We Are Here was made possible by the Outset Contemporary Art Fund and the Art Fund with support from Maureen Paley, Shaun Regen and Tanya Bonakdar. The exhibition will remain on view at Maureen Paley through November 16, 2014.

Gillian Wearing, We Are Here (2014)

— E. Baker

Related Links:
Exhibition Page [Maureen Paley]

Nam June Paik, Reclining Buddha (1994), via Art Observed

Nam June Paik’s ongoing retrospective, Becoming Robot at the Asia Society is considerably minimal in execution.  The exhibition takes up only a few small rooms in the uptown museum, including a full room dedicated to his (color feedback work) and another dedicated to his continued collaborations with cellist Charlotte Moorman.  But the selection of works on view make up for their spare arrangement with their depth and multi-textual possibilities, not to mention their strong correlations to the tech-centered art of the present day. (more…)

Steve McQueen, Ashes (2014), all images courtesy of the artist and Thomas Dane Gallery

On view currently at Thomas Dane Gallery are two new works from Steve McQueen, together making up an exhibition entitled Ashes. The first is an immersive projection with sound and the second is a new sculptural work entitled Broken Column, both produced in 2014.

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Pierre Huyghe, IN. BORDER. DEEP. (2014), video still © Pierre Huyghe Courtesy of the artist, Hauser & Wirth, London and Anna Lena Films

Boldly distorting otherwise rigid phenomena, Pierre Huyghe has ambitiously orchestrated and staged alternative recreations of the daily and the mundane. For his current show at Hauser & Wirth’s London location, the Paris-born artist is covering the gallery space with his unfamiliar narratives, which emerge from more familiar territory. IN. BORDER. DEEP. invites the viewers into a hub of various experiments and observations, merging various mediums with science and art history itself.

Pierre Huyghe, IN. BORDER. DEEP. (Installation View) Hauser & Wirth London, 2014, © Pierre Huyghe Courtesy of the artist, Hauser & Wirth, London Photo: Hugo Glendinning (more…)

Marcel Dzama, Une Danse des Bouffons (still) (2013), via Art Observed

Marcel Dzama’s latest film, Une Danse des Bouffons (A Jester’s Dance) (2013), is on view now at David Zwirner’s 525 and 533 West 19th Street spaces, marking the premier showing of the film in the United States.  The exhibition, featuring a number of collaborations and multi-media projects, includes a 7-inch vinyl release of the film’s soundtrack, with haunting, largely instrumental music by members of the band Arcade Fire.

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In anticipation of its new show focusing on the life and work of the Marquis de Sade, The Musée d’Orsay in Paris has reportedly commissioned a promotional video by David Freymond and Florent Michel in which models simulate an orgiastic gathering spelling out “SADE” on the floor of the space.   (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…)

Adel Abdessemed, Mon Enfant (2014)

Tel Aviv’s Dvir Gallery is currently presenting a new body of work by the controversial Algerian artist Adel Abdessemed. Known for his highly challenging assemblies of sculpture, video and installation, Abdessemed has not been hesitant to problematize the dynamics of politics, religion and social justice from various vantage points and perspectives.  From gruesome footages of animal fights in Mexico to a giant twisted airplane, his art aims to thrill, shock and most importantly provoke. Far from subtlety, the London based artist delivers strongly vocal works of art, positioning himself as an anarchist and a rebel, with the intent of redefining the role of an artist in society. (more…)

Bradford Young, Bynum Cutler (2014), via Art Observed

Founded in 1838, the Brooklyn community of Weeksville was a landmark moment in the history of African-American self-determination.    Just 11 years after the abolition of slavery in New York, Weeksville was founded by free Black landowners, a venture that grew to over 500 households and earned its citizens the right to vote.  As a social project, Weeksville’s impact is vastly significant, allowing a supportive, radical structure for its citizens to define and build their own system of economic and cultural stability.  Weeksville’s powerful history that sits at the center of Creative Time’s newest project, Funk, God, Jazz & Medicine, a series of collaborative on-site projects and initiatives incorporating the communal, radical mission of Weeksville and examining its presence in the contemporary landscape of Central Brooklyn. (more…)

John Baldessari, Your Name in Lights (2014), via Andrea Nguyen for Art Observed

Artist John Baldessari has brought his popular Your Name in Lights piece to Paris, allowing 100,000 people to submit their name in hopes of seeing it emblazoned on the façade of the Monnaie de Paris, shining out on the Seine between the Pont Neuf and Pont des Arts. (more…)

Kader Attia, Repair, Culture’s Agency (2014), via Art Observed

In light of its subject matter, the New Museum wastes no time in describing the challenges ahead of Here and Elsewhere, its current exhibition focusing on contemporary Arabic and Middle Eastern art.  Taking its title from the 1976 Jean-Luc Godard documentary of the same name, the museum effectively poses the same questions that plagued Godard’s quasi-documentary on the Palestinian army.  Faced with an inability to complete his statement on the complex social issues and the subsequent defeat of Palestine in the Six Days War, Godard instead sought a middle ground between the embattled nation and his French homeland.  The film is spiked with cinema verité segments, abstract performance and experimental camerawork that ultimately places a considerable distance between the film and any sense of cohesive, authoritative statement. (more…)

Artist Yayoi Kusama is interviewed in The Telegraph this week, in the run-up to the artist’s show of new work at Victoria Miro next month.  In the article, the artist discusses her life between Japan and New York, and her reasons for moving to New York in the late 1950’s.  “Japan was a very feudalistic society and I felt I wanted to live more freely,” Kusama notes. “So I decided to go to America. I thought lots of people were making beautiful images in America… It was a very interesting society to me, especially the younger generation. Everyone seemed to try really hard to find their own way.” (more…)

Jeremy Deller, English Magic (2012),  All images courtesy of Hirschhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden.

Jeremy Deller’s English Magic has come to the United States this summer.   The artist’s video and installation work, created specifically for the British Pavilion at the 2013 Venice Biennale, addresses British society and politics through a complexly intertwined mythology and cultural iconography.  It’s the latest participant in the Hirschhorn’s Directions series, an on-going program which has been running since 1979, and which has seen the likes of Tacita Dean, Juan Munoz and Pipilotti Rist bringing works to the Hirshhorn, aiming to engage with emerging and established artists showcasing both new and old works. (more…)

The New york Times has published an interesting video piece this week, a 24-second stop-motion piece showcasing 156 wigs used by Cindy Sherman in her photographic work.  The wigs were shot in Sherman’s New York studio by Leanne Shapton.  (more…)

As part of new project titled “After Dark”, the Tate Britain will deploy four remote-controlled robots throughout its galleries for five nights beginning September 13th. The public will be able to watch live-stream footage on the Tate’s website as the camera-equipped robots roam the museum’s collection, which includes works by David Hockney, Lucian Freud, and Henry Moore, for five hours each night. Since the robots choose new operators every few minutes, some viewers might get the chance to control the feed and see their favorite artworks in the empty galleries. (more…)

Yusuke Suga, Mediator (2013), Courtesy of Friedman Benda and the artists

The inarguable force of nature and its fearful destructive impact hit Japan in March 2011 during the Fukushima nuclear meltdown, afflicting millions of lives and causing billions of damage. The number one earthquake in terms of strength in the history of Japan and the fifth in world records, and its resulting tsunami left the coast of Japan reeling from its physical and psychological damage, particularly after the meltdown of three plants at Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant.  Aside from the massive physical devastation it caused, the catastrophe carried charged memories and impacts to those who witnessed the disaster, either first-hand or indirectly. (more…)

Gilbert & George, The World of Gilbert and George (still) (1981), all images courtesy Lehmann Maupin

On view at Lehmann Maupin New York is a group of films and “Living Sculptures” by the 1986 Turner Prize winners Gilbert & George. The exhibition is the artists’ fifth show with Lehmann Maupin, and represents a transitional link between their early pieces and their later, better known large-scale works.

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“Born in the Bronx”, Installation View. All photos Anna Corrigan for Art Observed.

Now through August 1, Gavin Brown’s Enterprise is presenting a trio of diverse works by Oliver Payne & Nick Relph, a video piece by the gallerist himself, and an exhibit of Afrika Bambaataa’s record collection surveying of the roots of hip-hop in the Bronx.  The exhibits speak to the process of emptying shelves and opening closets, placing the material details that one collects over a lifetime on view. In equal measure, the works illustrate a history, at once intimately personal and indicative of the larger movement of time and material legacy.

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