Artist Ryan Trecartin’s installation and video work B: Settings has been purchased by the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles, marking the artist’s first entry into a museum collection in the Southern California city.  “At the risk of oversimplification, his art could be said to combine the retinal extravagance of much 1980s art with the political awareness of the ’90s and the inclusiveness and technological savvy of the post millennium.”  Says Holland Cotter of the NY Times. (more…)

Jon Kessler, The Web (Installation View), via Swiss Institute

Overwhelming in its degree of sensory immersion, Jon Kessler’s hypnotic new installation, The Web is currently on view at Swiss Institute in New York.  Welcoming new perspectives into the participatory nature of the Internet, and the endless variations of image and sight that result from an information-centered society, the artist creates a powerfully immersive work that commands the viewer’s full attention. (more…)

Artist David Hockney’s first multi-channel video work, The Jugglers, June 24th 2012 (2012) will have its American debut next month at The Whitney Museum. Depicting a set of jugglers moving against a blue and white backdrop, the video employs 18 separate channels of video, using intense lighting to alter perceptions of depth and space.  “In this new video installation David Hockney surprises us once again, exploring how multiple perspectives can transform our experience of the moving image. Hockney mines the histories of cinema and painting through the lens of technology, to create a new way of seeing.” said curator Chrissie Ilessaid. (more…)

Charles Atlas, Glacier (2013), courtesy of Vilma Gold, London.

The American-born Charles Atlas has been a pioneer in the fields of dance, theater, and performance on video. In his career he has worked with world renowned artists such as Marina Abramovic, Leigh Bowery, Michael Clark, Merce Cunnigham, Diamanda Galas, Antony and the Johnsons, and Yvonne Rainer.  In a current collaboration with South London Gallery and Bloomberg SPACE, Atlas presents Glacier, a 360-degree multi channel video installation consisting of original, found and manipulated images. (more…)

Anthony McCall, Face to Face (2013), via Sean Kelly Gallery

Anthony McCall’s body of work is punctuated by decades of silence.  Withdrawing from the art world in the late 1970’s after a number of promising exhibitions and installations around the globe, the artist completely ceased his artistic production until 2003, when he began experimenting with digital film projectors.  10 years later, the artist is presenting Face to Face at Sean Kelly Gallery, showing two works from the opposite ends of the artist’s career.

Anthony McCall, Face to Face (2013), via Sean Kelly Gallery

(more…)

The Opening for Doug Aitken, 100 YRS, Courtesy of 303 Gallery

Working across a broad body of media and techniques, including photography, sculpture, video, installation, sound art and architectural interventions, Los Angeles-based artist Doug Aitken’s work frequently explores concepts of rhythm, repetition and duration, exploring interrelations between time, memory and space and the subsequent fluctuations of meaning and understanding caused by their interactions.  His work has been ehxibited in a variety of institutions and contexts, including his enormous Song1 installation on the outside of the Hirshhorn Museum in Washington, DC, as well as his upcoming video art installation at the Seattle Art Museum.

Doug Aitken, MORE (Shattered Pour) (2013), Courtesy of 303 Gallery

(more…)

The Guardian has posted a video interview with conceptual artist Simon Starling, showing the artist in the midst of production for Phantom Ride, an 8-minute video that explores the ongoing history of the Duveen Galleries of the Tate.  “The idea is to create a sort of historical collapse, so as to tell the story of the space in 8 minutes of film, to take artworks that have been shown here over a very long period of time, and to force them to coexist in the space.” (more…)

Ragnar Kjartansson, The Visitors (Installation View) via Luhring Augustine, New York

Luhring Augustine is currently exhibiting “The Visitors,” a nine-channel video installation by artist Ragnar Kjartansson, a musician and artist living and working in the Icelandic capital of Reykjavik.  As a member of the group Trabant, Kjartansson pushes the boundaries between electronic rock and performance while working in multiple media formats, focusing primarily on various aspects of performance. (more…)

Art Club 2000, Untitled (Conran’s I) (1993), Courtesy of The New Museum

Experimental Jet Set, Trash and No Star, on view now at The New Museum, is a look 20 years into the not-so-distant-past, using 1993 (and the works produced and shown within that calendar year) as a critical reflection point into recent art history and practice.

(more…)

Song Dong, Facing the Wall (1999), via PACE Gallery

On view at both of Pace Gallery’s New York exhibition spaces is an exhibition of work by Chinese artist Song Dong, compiling the artist’s recent work from dOCUMENTA 13 and the Kiev Biennial, as well as older work.

Song Dong, Doing Nothing Mountains (2011-2012), via PACE Gallery (more…)

Cyprien Gaillard, Artefacts (2011), via MoMA PS1

Over the past several years, French artist Cyprien Gaillard has created a body of work that negotiates the complex spatio-political, geographical and cultural maps of contemporary culture.  Continuously revisiting themes of decay, flux, erosion and conflict, his work picks through the saturated visual landscape of modernity, and exposes the interlocking mechanisms of destruction and creation at work, as well as the grey area between these polar states. (more…)

The Office for Contemporary Art Norway has announced that it will send a special exhibition to Venice this year, titled Beware of the Holy Whore: Edvard Munch and the Dilemma of Emancipation.  Featuring several rare works by Edvard Munch and a newly commissioned film by Lene Berg, the exhibition will explore the dichotomy of freedom and isolation found in the state of emancipation, and will take place from 31 May to 22 September 2013 at Galleria di Piazza San Marco of Fondazione Bevilacqua La Masa. (more…)

Andrea Mary Marshall, Gia Condo (Installation View) – All photos by Elene Damenia for Art Observed unless otherwise noted.

Blending fashion photography, performance, video and painting, the second solo exhibition by artist Andrea Mary Marshall explores the artist’s alter ego – the drag-embracing, Mona Lisa-fixated painter Gia Condo.  Across 13 canvases and a series of photographs, the artist explores issues of gender and identity that surround the famous painting of the smiling woman, re-imagining them in the style of predominantly male contemporary artists like Keith Haring, Francis Bacon, and Marcel Duchamp.

Andrea Mary Marshall, Gia Condo (Installation View)

Art Observed spoke with Marshall at the opening of her exhibition at Allegra LaViola Gallery about the character of Gia Condo, and her motivations for the exhibition.

(more…)

Alex Hubbard, Bent Paintings (Installation View), Courtesy of Galerie Eva Presenhuber

Bent (Why Horses Paint), is a selection  of new works by multimedia artist Alex Hubbard, and his first solo show with Galerie Eva Presenhuber in the gallery’s Löwenbräu complex exhibition space. Hubbard’s paintings move beyond the medium’s traditional two dimensional form, bending into shapes and structures which often seek complete autonomy from the wall.

(more…)

Yoko Ono – To The Light (Installation View), Serpentine Gallery

As part of the London 2012 festival, The Serpentine Gallery has invited international art icon and activist Yoko Ono to exhibit a major retrospective of her work. Spanning the artist’s 50 year career, the exhibition covers both classic and newer works, including Smile, Ono’s large-scale participatory video project.

(more…)

Lehmann Maupin’s “Friends with Benefits,” installation view. All photography by M. Peralta for Art Observed unless otherwise noted.

“Friends with Benefits,” Lehmann Maupin‘s summer group show on view at their location at 201 Chrystie Street, is a correspondence between generations that reveals the concerns of each. The gallery asked five of their artists–Tony Oursler, Angel Otero, Tim Rollins, Mickalene Thomas, and Nari Ward–to ­­request work from young artists they would like to support. Curated by Carla Camacho and Drew Moody, the result is an appealing disjunction of artistic histories, showing contemporary artists engaged with the concerns of a former generation while also reflecting on the artistic currents of their own time. The exhibition’s starting point, as described in the press release, is the notion of “the gallery community as a fertile space,” which takes a positive stance on the white cube as a place where older artists can encourage the work of younger artists.

(more…)