The New York Times Magazine publishes an interview with Matthew Barney, leading up to the premiere of the artist’s River of Fundament at BAM this week, discussing the artist’s inspiration, and his time with writer Norman Mailer, on whose death much of the film is based.  “When Mailer said to me that I should really read “Ancient Evenings,” I thought, Wow, this is so much like the beginning of “Cremaster 3.” I’ve already done this.” (more…)

Stan Douglas, Luanda-Kinshasa (Installation view), all images courtesy David Zwirmer

Currently on view at David Zwirmer’s 533 West 19th Street location is the debut of a new film by Stan Douglas entitled Luanda-Kinhshasa, featuring a reconstruction of the famed Columbia 30th Street studio, where some of the most iconic recordings of the twentieth century were originally produced. The film will be on view at the gallery through February 22, 2014.

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With artist Doug Aitken’s The Source series of creative dialogues has opened at Sundance Film Festival, he sat down with New York Times Magazine to discuss the work, his recent Station to Station project, and his ideas of creative immediacy.  “I see it as trying to reduce and reduce and reduce,” he says. “Bringing things back to a candid and immediate conversation between two people. Having something that has very little filtration, that is not reprocessed by a critic and is not repurposed through the filter of cultural history.” (more…)

Artist Doug Aitken has announced a new collaborative project, The Source, examining the genesis and proliferation of ideas among some of the world’s most recognizable artists, musicians and thinkers, to be exhibited as Sundance Film Festival.  Installed on the grounds of the film festival, the work will feature conversations with artists including Mike Kelley, Jack White, Jack Pierson, Jacques Herzog, James Turrell, Liz Glynn and many more.   (more…)

A Long Island art thief, who was captured in a sting operation filmed for reality show Brooklyn DA, says that the reality show has evidence that would clear his name.  After his arrest for stealing a number of works, including a Picasso etching, Vega’s car was searched, where he claims evidence exonerating him was located, but the footage of the search is being withheld by CBS.  “Up until his arrest, Vega didn’t believe that there was anything wrong or illegal with this arrangement,” his lawyer Timothy Parlatore said. (more…)

Filmmaker and Video Artist Steve McQueen is profiled in The Guardian this week, talking about his inspirations, his childhood dyslexia, and his personal reflections on the history of slavery.  “All I remember feeling was a real sense of shame and embarrassment about it,” he says. “We can deal with the second world war and the Holocaust and so forth and what not, but this side of history, maybe because it was so hideous, people just do not want to see. People do not want to engage.” (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…)

Drawing on a long history of interplay between contemporary art and comedy, MOCA’s online television station, MOCA.Tv has announced Ambiance Man, a new comedy series that will air on the channel, featuring appearances by Fred Armisen, Jack Black, and Jibz Cameron.  “Ambiance Man is a series about a super hero who fixes what we really need fixed in our day-to-day lives. While most super heroes are focused on preventing the end of the world, Ambiance Man is focused on transforming the moments that feel like the end of the world.”  Says creator Alix Lambert. (more…)

Former Turner Prize winner Steve McQueen is included on the shortlist of Hugo Boss Prize finalists, alongside Camille Henrot, this year’s Venice Biennale Silver Lion winner for most promising new artist, Charline Von Heyl, and several others.  The winner will receive a $100,000 prize, as well as an exhibition at the Guggenheim. (more…)

Artist Marina Abramovic will be the subject of a 3-D portrait by artist Matthu Placek, set to be unveiled next month at the Art Basel Miami Beach fair.  Featuring Abramovic, standing in the center of her currently under-construction arts center in the Hudson, the work will screen at the”Jewel Box” pavilion in Wynwood, and will screen for free, every fifteen minutes from 6PM to late in the evening.  “I originally wanted it to be from dusk until dawn,” Placek says, “but we’ll probably have to shut it down a little earlier — maybe 3am.” (more…)

Yayoi Kusama, Infinity Mirrored Room – The Souls of Millions of Light Years Away (2013), via Daniel Creahan for Art Observed

One may recall the final room of The Whitney’s sprawling retrospective of Japanese artist Yayoi Kusama last year, stacked floor to ceiling with bold, brightly colored canvases.  Flourishing tentacles, patterns of eyes and teeth, cartoonish faces and swirling animalistic forms dominated the work, all delivered with a wide-eyed enthusiasm that made them hard to ignore.

Yayoi Kusama, My Heart (2013), via David Zwirner (more…)

Mike Kelley. Deodorized Central Mass with Satellites (1991/1999), © Estate of Mike Kelley. Images courtesy of Perry Rubenstein Gallery, Los Angeles. Photography Joshua White JWPictures.com

It’s hard to decide just where to begin with the monumental Mike Kelley retrospective currently on view at MoMA Ps1.  The blockbuster exhibition takes up all four floors of the museum, and spans his full career, from his early video and performance work through to some of the last installations and pieces he made before he tragically took his own life in 2012 at the age of 58.  All of his immediately recognizable works are on view, including Deodorized Central Mass with Satellites, his Kandor series (recreating the miniature home city of the Superman mythology), and his sprawling masterwork, Day is Done from 2005-2006, all brilliant entries in Kelley’s signature inquiries into the American mythos.

Mike Kelley, Mike Kelley as The Banana Man (1981), © Estate of Mike Kelley Photo: Jim McHugh (more…)

Fashion site Just One Eye has teamed up with artist Nate Lowman to produce several one-of-a-kind pairs of Converse Chuck Taylors, emphasizing the artist’s ongoing love of the classic sneaker.  21 pairs of shoes will be created, as well as a limited edition run of 500 pairs reproduced from one of the designs.  The collaboration also features several video pieces by director and cinematographer Joe Pytka, inspired by the shoes. (more…)

Jon Rafman, I am alone but not lonely, (2013), via Zach Feuer

The artist Jon Rafman continually explores processes of archiving and history-making, storytelling and expression online, trawling the deeper recesses of gaming and message board communities to explore how these groups express senses of their own identities, their own mythologies, and their own senses of being.  It’s this sense of recording and presentation that marks Rafman’s current show at Zach Feuer, which sees the artist examining the shared sense of history and presentation for various communities through written dialogues, amateur film, and image.

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All photos by Caroline Claisse for ArtObserved.

The last visitors have filtered out, the gallerists have begun packing up and preparing sold works for buyers, and another year of the Frieze London Art Fair  has concluded, following another action-packed week of new works, special commissions, sales, auctions and openings that once again placed London at the center of the contemporary art world’s cross hairs.

Work by Pierre Huyghe at Esther Schipper (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…)

Continuing her flirtations with the world of contemporary art, Lady Gaga has reportedly recruited Robert Wilson to create a video portrait of her.  Wilson will also direct the Marina Abramovic opera The Life and Death of Marina Abramovic this winter at The Armory.  “I’ve been obsessing over stuff from the ’70s like performance art theater. Especially because I’m working with Robert Wilson, who’s doing the lighting and the set for the VMAs. He’s a theatrical legend!”  Gaga said in a recent interview. (more…)

The New York Times profiles artist Omer Fast during the final stages of the artist’s newest video project, set to premiere in two weeks at Frieze Art Fair in London.  Examining the impact of pornography on the psyche, Fast’s work will be included in the Arratia, Beer booth.  “I can show it as nasty as it gets, or I can pull back,” Fast says. “It would be totally hypocritical to clean it up.” (more…)

Josh Kline, Forever 27 (2013), Courtesy 47 Canal

Quality of Life is Josh Kline’s first solo exhibition since 2011, and directly follows his having organized this summer’s high-profile Pro-Bio group show at MoMA PS1. The exhibition acts as something of a statement of intent for the New York artist and deals with themes increasingly familiar within Kline’s growing body of work, looking at the commodification of identity and youth, alongside the forging of new, posthuman understandings of the body.

Josh Kline, Quality of Life (Installation View), via Sasha Patkin for Art Observed (more…)

Artist Tacita Dean was recently interviewed by The Guardian, profiling the artist’s fascination with Robert Smithson’s Spiral Jetty, her interactions with writer JG Ballard over the work, and the resulting video work she is currently exhibiting  at Frith Street Gallery in London, alongside a series of postcards depicting the changing German city of Kassel.  “What you see here no longer exists.”  She says. (more…)

Erika Vogt, Stranger Debris Roll Roll Roll (2013), Courtesy New Museum, New York Photo: Benoit Pailley

The back room in the New Museum lobby is currently draped with hanging anchors, plaster molds,  and other myriad items, a bizarre assemblage of pieces and materials that forces visitors to duck their heads and tread cautiously as they move through the narrow room.  This installation, newly created for the museum by artist Erika Vogt, is Stranger Debris Roll Roll Roll, a surreal video and sculptural piece that playfully toys with the raw materialism of the works on view.

Erika Vogt, Stranger Debris Roll Roll Roll (2013), Courtesy New Museum, New York Photo: Benoit Pailley (more…)

Ellen Gallagher, Don’t Axe Me (Installation View), Courtesy New Museum, New York. Photo: Benoit Pailley

Currently occupying multiple floors of the New Museum is a series of works by artist Ellen Gallagher, a painter and multimedia artist whose work is layered and deeply informed by contemporary and historical references, not only from modern art historic and literary canons but also politics, popular culture and sub-cultures such as Black Power and Detroit Techno.  Represented by two major galleries, Gagosian and Hauser & Wirth, Gallagher’s intellectually conversant work has tantalized critics and collectors alike for the past 20 years.

Ellen Gallagher, Watery Ecstatic (2001-2005), Courtesy New Museum, New York. Photo: Benoit Pailley (more…)

Lorna Simpson, Chess (2013), via Jeu de Paume

Lorna Simpson (b.1960, Brooklyn, New York) is an African-American artist, working across multiple media, often focusing on photography.  After completing studies at University of California-San Diego and the School of Visual Arts, New York, Simpson achieved recognition in the mid-1980s.  In an era of avid multiculturalism, her work explored themes of racial stereotyping, ethnicity and gender, placing her at the forefront of females and ethnic minorities gaining recognition in the art world.  She was also the first female of color to participate in the Venice Art Biennale (1990).

Lorna Simpson, Wigs (1994-2006), via Jeu de Paume (more…)

The Nordic Choice hotel chain, in a statement against sex trafficking and exploitation, has begun replacing the pornographic channels on its PayTV system with contemporary art.  Led by owner Peter Stordalen, the hotel has included video works on each TV, including Sam Taylor-Wood’s Still Life from 2001.  “Art is important to me, but hotel art has always had a bad reputation – cheap paintings that match the sofas and so on,” said Stordalen. “I wanted to redefine hotel art to be something unique.” (more…)