Patti Smith presents a public art installation in London’s Piccadilly Circus

January 5, 2021

Taking over the Piccadilly Lights advertising screen for two and half minutes every day at 20:21 GMT (8:21pm) from January 1 - 31 2021, Smith’s A New Year combines musical performance and poetry, transforming the 4k screen into a digital canvas. The presentation will feature two live pre-recorded events at midnight on New Year’s Eve and January 20, the date of the US presidential inauguration. The project is presented by Circa, a new platform presenting digital art in the public space established in 2020.

Art Düsseldorf announces postponement of the fair’s fourth edition

Originally expected to take place in November 2020 and then rescheduled to this April due to ongoing uncertainties surrounding the Covid-19 pandemic, the new dates are now expected to be announced in early 2021. The fair’s committee will be examining alternatives for next year together with exhibitors and partners.

Sotheby’s announces the sale of Christo and Jeanne-Claude’s private collection

December 18, 2020

Scheduled to be held in Paris on 17 February 2021, the auction of nearly 400 lots invites the world to step into the private sphere of the famed artistic couple, showcasing the range of their artistic inspirations, friendships with leading 20^th century artists, and the studio where Christo and Jeanne-Claude projected their artistic vision to the world. Additionally, the collection includes several works by Christo and Jeanne-Claude spanning their multi-decade practice, featuring many of their most well-known public projects, such as The Pont Neuf Wrapped, Project for Paris, and The Umbrellas, Joint Project for Japan and USA, as well as their famed Package and Store Front series from the 1960s.

Petzel announces representation of the Joyce Pensato Estate and dual exhibitions for January 2021

December 16, 2020

Born and raised in Brooklyn, New York, Joyce Pensato (1941–2019) lived and worked in Brooklyn her entire career except for a few months’ long stints in Europe in the late 1980s and early 1990s, particularly in Paris and in Verteuil. The artist credited her father, a Sicilian immigrant, as a great influence on her love of Pop culture, America and the arts, often times taking her and her brother Benedict to 42nd Street, the Statue of Liberty and other famous New York tourist sites to soak up the vibrancy of his adopted city. Pensato’s critical recognition came in the early 1990s, and her charcoal drawings were the first to gain attention. From January 15 through February 27, 2021, Petzel will present two solo exhibitions of the artist’s works at its Chelsea and Upper East Side galleries, which will include paintings, drawings, sculptures, and installation, some of which have never been exhibited before.

Fondation Cartier hosts The Tunis Diaries, a live-streamed concert by Emel

December 15, 2020

Presented within the context of the exhibition "Sarah Sze, Night into Day" on Friday 18 December at 9pm CET / 3pm EST on the Fondation‘s Facebook and Instagram channels, this concert is a unique opportunity to listen to this activist with a remarkable voice, perform for the first time in France, her latest album, at once highly personal and touching. In 2011, Emel‘s song "Kelmti Horra" [My word is free] became the anthem of the Tunisian revolution and later the Arab Spring. In 2015, she was invited to sing the song at the Nobel Peace Prize award ceremony.

Galerie Chantal Crousel releases Swear That You’ll Play, a book to celebrate the gallery‘s 40th anniversary

Published by Is-Land Édition and designed by Dune Lunel studio, Swear That You’ll Play, an extensive publication of over seven hundred pages, looks back at the history of the gallery, considered as a major actor in the contemporary art scene, both in France and abroad. The book opens with a double interview conducted by Philippe Vergne, director of the Serralves Foundation in Porto, first with Chantal Crousel, then with Niklas Svennung. Both talk about their conception of a gallerist’s work, their critical commitments, and their admiration for the artists they work with. These discussions are followed by a vast collection of images which features a very large part of the exhibitions that have taken place at Galerie Chantal Crousel.

Hauser & Wirth present a special online screening of ‘Philip Guston: A Life Lived’ (1981) to celebrate the artist‘s upcoming exhibition in St. Moritz

December 14, 2020

Filmed in 1971 at his Woodstock studio and during his 1980 retrospective at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, this iconic documentary provides an intimate look at the visionary American painter Philip Guston (1913-1980) as he speaks candidly about his philosophy of painting and the psychological motivation for his work. The film will be free to stream from Friday 18 to Sunday 20 December, 2020.

Alison Jacques Gallery now represents Carol Rhodes (1959–2018)

December 11, 2020

Carol Rhodes’s intense landscape paintings and drawings explore conceptions of ‘natural’ and ‘man-made’ environments and subtly redefine ideas of beauty and expression. The first project will be an exhibition of paintings and drawings from across Rhodes’s career and is scheduled to open in February 2021. Born in Edinburgh in 1959, Rhodes grew up in Serampore, India, where her father worked as a medic and a theology professor. In her teens, she relocated to the UK to complete her education, but continued to visit India into her twenties. This early experience of travel, and the complex feeling of belonging and displacement it provoked, would later prove formative in Rhodes’s art.

Fergus McCaffrey announces the death of Tatsuo Ikeda (1928–2020)

The acclaimed Japanese artist, whose career-long engagement with universal themes of conflict, nationalism, genesis, and transformation, inspired and emboldened an entire generation of Japanese artists, passed away last month at the age of ninety-two. Born in Saga Prefecture, Japan, in 1928, the course of Ikeda’s early life was dramatically altered by the ongoing intensity of World War II, culminating in his service as a kamikaze pilot at the age of fifteen. Spared by the ending of World War II, in 1948, Ikeda moved to Tokyo and attended Tama Art University where he became engaged in Taro Okamoto and Kiyoteru Hanada’s Avant-garde Art Study Group.

An exhibition of the artist’s work is currently on view, by appointment, in Tatsuo Ikeda & Philippe Parreno: Field Phase at Fergus McCaffrey in New York.

Pace Gallery launches an online charity exhibition in support of Nevelson Chapel

December 10, 2020

In 1977, Louise Nevelson was commissioned to design a chapel for Saint Peter’s Church in Midtown Manhattan. Nevelson herself called this space “an oasis of silence” from the hustle and bustle of New York.  Over the past two years, the Chapel has been undergoing extensive renovations to ensure the safekeeping of this peerless sculpture for future generations. As the "Renewing a Masterwork" fundraising campaign reaches its first major milestone with a foundational gift from Pace Gallery, Nevelson Chapel is embarking on a public drive to source donations from individual contributors to reach their $5.75 million goal. The gallery's online exhibition features three seminal collage works by Nevelson from the 1970s, on view until 30 December.

Tiwani Contemporary now represents Umar Rashid (Frohawk Two Feathers)

December 9, 2020

For the past seventeen years, artist Umar Rashid (Frohawk Two Feathers) has documented the complex, historical and episodic saga of a fictional world superpower – the Frenglish Empire. Across portraits, maps, flags, artefacts, vignettes and drawings and other visual remnants of an imagined empire and its multiple interactions, Rashid reveals pivotal events and the ever-changing fortunes of a lively array of protagonists, both elite and quotidian, all peculiar to a highly novel parallel universe. The artist was born in 1976 in Chicago, Illinois, and currently lives and works in Los Angeles, California.

galerie frank elbaz presents a Holiday Selection of works by gallery artists

December 8, 2020

Featuring works in a wide range of mediums, sizes and budgets, the seasonal selection can be viewed online and at the galleries in Paris and Dallas

A sculpture by Sheila Hicks to place on a bookshelf or above a fireplace; A TIME drawing by Mungo Thomson; A joyful Bernard Piffaretti painting; A poetic multilayered photograph by Tbilisi born Ketuta Alexi-Meskhishvili; A neon snowflake titled White Devil by Blair Thurman, A souvenir from Rock Creek by Davide Balula; A portrait of a skater in the streets of 1986 New York by Ari Marcopoulos; A storyboard drawing by William Leavitt; A small toner pigment work by Leo Chesneau; Or a sweet autoportrait by Madeleine Roger-Lacan... is what our Christmas dreams are made of. 

Dia Chelsea to reopen in April 2021 with new commissions by Lucy Raven

Following a two-year-long expansion and renovation, Dia Chelsea will reopen in April 2021 with an exhibition of newly commissioned work by American artist Lucy Raven. The culmination of a four-year engagement with Dia, Raven’s two installations will fill both galleries at Dia Chelsea. The expanded and upgraded space unites Dia’s three buildings on West 22nd Street.

The Gallery of Everything announces Camden Art Centre Instagram takeover

December 4, 2020

Starting from today (4 December), and continuing for the next four days, The Gallery of Everything is broadcasting a temporary takeover of the Camden Art Centre Instagram account in support of - and inspired by - The Botanical Mind. The Gallery will be sharing exclusive posts and stories, presenting such artists as Emery Blagdon, Marian Spore Bush, Minnie Evans, Guo Fengyi, Anna Hackel, Hector Hyppolite, Hilma af Klint, Josef Kotzian, Emma Kunz, Paul Laffoley, František Pecka, Janet Sobel, Scottie Wilson, Adolf Wölfli, Anna Zemánková and Henriette Zéphir.

Simon Lee Gallery announces representation of German artist Werner Büttner

December 2, 2020

Werner Büttner is renowned for drawing out deeper layers of meaning from quotidian life that at first glance seem banal. His canvases and collages depict a tragi-comic reality, confronting social norms with both irony and satire, while retaining a firm grip on the history of painting.

Work by Büttner will be on view in the gallery’s upcoming OVR: Miami presentation this December. Simon Lee Gallery’s first exhibition of Büttner’s work will take place at the London gallery in March 2021.

Gagosian and Jeffrey Deitch present The Future, the sixth in a series of annual thematic exhibitions

December 1, 2020

Previously staged at the historic Moore Building in the Miami Design District, this year the collaborative project will be hosted on a new stand-alone website, live from 30 November 2020 to 9 January 2021. The Future dares to speculate on what the coming years may have in store. Given the heightened political, economic, and environmental uncertainties of our current moment, this undertaking could hardly be more complex.

Marian Goodman Gallery to host a webinar on John Baldessari‘s Catalogue Raisonné

Taking place on Thursday 10 December at 1pm PST / 4pm EST / 9pm GMT, the conversation will feature panelists David Salle, Artist; Hannah Higgins, Art Historian/Professor, Intermedia & Avant-Garde Art and Culture, University of Illinois at Chicago; David Platzker, Art Historian & Curator/President, Specific Object and Simon Johnston Graphic Designer/Professor, Graphic Design, ArtCenter College of Design, Pasadena, moderated by Patrick Pardo, Editor, John Baldessari Catalogue Raisonné

South London Gallery announces new dates for Bloomberg New Contemporaries 2020

November 27, 2020

The annual open submission exhibition returns to the SLG for the third consecutive edition, and is set to open on 13 January 2021. With over fifteen hundred applications each year from emerging artists, the show offers a preview of some of the most exciting practices of the next generation. This year’s panel of guest selectors are internationally renowned artists Alexandre da Cunha, Anthea Hamilton and Linder.

The artists selected for Bloomberg New Contemporaries 2020 are: Sangbum Ahn, Ned Armstrong, Paul Barlow, Alexandre Canonico, Chen Si-zuo, Nicole Coson, Gabriella Davies, Lúcás Dillon, Ufuoma Essi, Jake Grewal, Clara Hastrup, Nimmi Hutnik, Lily Kemp, Maria Mahfooz, Zethu Zizwe Ruby Maseko, Rene Matić, Cat McClay and Éiméar McClay, Liam Mertens, Edwin Mingard, Kimie Minobe, Karabo Monareng, Pablo Paillole, Jung Min Park, Anne Carney Raines, Anika Roach, Jung Yun Roh, Shamica Ruddock, Sophie Ruigrok, Kirsty Sim, Anna-Rose Stefatou, Orfeo O’Leary Tagiuri, Giorgio van Meerwijk, Ahren Warner, Ashleigh Williams and Charlie Yetton.

Alison Jacques Gallery announces representation of Sophie Barber

November 26, 2020

Born in 1996 in St Leonards-on-Sea and working in the nearby town of Hastings, Sophie Barber is a painter who draws directly from the world around her, reproducing natural and man-made visual fragments in an attempt to preserve and process their forms. Gathering and positioning tents, birds, dens and word games on monumental block-colour canvases, she creates surreal, folk-like compositions that are less depictions of her native Sussex coast than distillations of the impression it leaves. Barber’s debut exhibition will open in London in September 2021.

Il Ponte Casa d‘Aste publishes catalogues ahead of the upcoming Modern and Contemporary Art sales

November 25, 2020

Taking place on 15 and 16 December 2020, the auctions will kick off with works by Italian modern masters including Alighiero Boetti, Enrico Castellani and Paolo Scheggi, as well as iconic pieces by Karel Appel, Sam Francis and Hans Hartung. Highlights from the 16 December auction include Andy Warhol‘s 1975 "Ladies and Gentlemen" silkscreens and contemporary art by Banksy, Agostino Bonalumi and Gabriel Orozco.