Sanford Biggers and the contemporary Mandala (2012). Emory Visual Arts Gallery. Photo by the author.

As part of Contemporary Mandala: New Audiences, New Forms, Emory University’s Visual Arts Gallery (Atlanta) is hosting a series of interesting events and exhibitions, including (with Art Papers Live!) An Evening with Sanford Biggers on March 21 and an Artist Peer Learning Session on March 22. The exhibit merges contemporary art and the mandala as a form of artistic expression and a tool for transformation and balance. The exhibit is curated by Visual Arts chair Julia Kjelgaard in conversation with author Jacquelynn Baas to dialogue with the Michael C. Carlos Museum’s Mandala: Sacred Circle in Tibetan Buddhism. Mandala of the B-Bodhisattva II by artist Sanford Biggers and David Ellis forms the centerpiece of the gallery, providing a dynamic space for performance.

Artist and gallery director Lisa Alembik notes that the traditional Mandala, a two-dimensional circular painting drawn with colored sand, represents a temple blueprint for a Buddhist or Hindu deity who resides at the center of the structure. This work is used as an aid in meditation, acting as a guide in one’s search for enlightenment. My first experience watching the creation of a Mandala was with the Venerable Tenzin Yignyen at the Massachusetts College of Art and Design (Boston). This included daily meditations and a dismantling ceremony, where the sand Mandala was swept away and the sand poured into the Fens nearby. The lesson I learned from Tenzin was the realization of impermanence of life. With Biggers’ floor piece I pondered the contingency and ephemerality of performance. Prior to Biggers’ talk we convened in the gallery to watch breakdancing and step performances by Emory students. The dance floor was also used for Emory professor Anna Leo’s modern dance class.

Continue reading »

Computer rendering for Mystery Circle: Explosion Event for The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, 2012. Courtesy Cai Studio.

In this week’s roundup, Cai Guo-Qiang plans a close encounter, several artists’ works are best in show at AICA, Jenny Holzer and Kiki Smith are in Fashion Moda, Glenn Ligon’s work is reviewed, and much more.

• Cai Guo-Qiang is planning to have a close encounter of the third kind at MOCA’s Geffen Contemporary. For the site-specific Mystery Circle: Explosion Event for the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles the artist will set off three stages of explosions to kick-off a show that will continue on a theme he’s been long exploring: the possibility of life in outer space. This event will take place on April 7.

• Sarah Sze, Ursula von Rydingsvard, Lari Pittman, and Ai Weiwei and Glenn Ligon (upcoming Season 6 artists) will receive awards from the Art Critics’ Association (AICA). Sze’s Still Life with Landscape (Model for a Habitat) and Ai’s Circle of Animals/Zodiac Heads won Best Project in a Public Space. Ursula von Rydingsvard: Sculpture 1991-2009 won Best Show in a Non-Profit Gallery or Space. Lari Pittman: New Paintings and Orangerie won Best Show in a Commercial Gallery Nationally. Glenn Ligon: AMERICA won Best Monographic Museum Show in New York. Awards will be presented at a ceremony at the Asia Society in NYC on April 2.

• Jenny Holzer and Kiki Smith among several other artists have work on view at the Neuberger Museum of Art of Purchase College (NY). The Fashion Moda Stores, 1982, Selections from Documenta 7 is an exhibition of approximately thirty small sculptures, wearable art, and ephemera that were made in multiples and sold in the Fashion Moda “stores” at Documenta 7, the modern and contemporary art exhibition held periodically in Kassel, Germany. The exhibition will be on view through May 6, 2012.

• William Kentridge: Five Themes explores the key themes of William Kentridge’s career from the 80s until today and is on view at the Australian Centre for the Moving Image (ACMI). The show includes the artist’s direction of The Magic Flute and the animated films he developed for a 2010 production of Dmitri Shostakovich’s The Nose at the Metropolitan Opera in New York. There are 60 works on display ranging from animations, drawings and prints to theatre models, sculptures and books. This exhibition closes May 27. Continue reading »

Allora & Calzadilla. "Body in Flight (Delta)," 2011. U.S. Pavilion, 54th International Art Exhibition, presented by the Indianapolis Museum of Art. Photo by Andrew Bordwin.

In this week’s roundup, work by Allora & Calzadilla takes flight, William Kentridge is honored, Kalup Linzy gets rid of____, William Wegman projects Weimaraners, and more.

• Allora & Calzadilla‘s Body in Flight (Delta) is on view at the Indianapolis Museum of Art. The exhibit begins with a full-scale wooden reproduction of an elite business-class airline seat. In lieu of a balance beam, a female gymnast uses the sculpture to perform a live, extensive routine. The work was first presented last year as part of the Venice Biennale and will run at IMA through April 22.

• William Kentridge has won this year’s prestigious Dan David Prize. The Dan David Foundation grants the $1 million prizes in three categories — past, present and future — for scientific, technological and cultural accomplishments. The prize, named after philanthropist Dan David, who died last year, is administered from Tel Aviv University.

• Kalup Linzy‘s Melody Set Me Free Episode 3 entitled Get Rid of____, is featured on actor James Franco’s website. Linzy also participated in a new Huffington Post video series entitled The Moment I Knew I Wanted to Become an Artist.

• Jenny Holzer: ENDGAME is at the Skarstedt Gallery (NYC). This exhibition features paintings by Jenny Holzer in which the artist uses redacted U.S. government documents where little text is legible. These documents became the grounds for the new paintings that allude to the Suprematist works of Kazimir Malevich. This show will run until April 7.

• Do-Ho Suh‘s Karma is on view at the Sydney and Walda Besthoff Sculpture Garden in City Park (New Orleans). This 23-foot stainless steel sculpture features a male figure surmounted by a seemingly endless chain of alter egos, rising into the sky like a silver spinal column. The string of figures is faceted like a gem stone, lending a glittering digital effect to the tower. Each iteration of the man is holding his hands over the eyes of the man who precedes him.

• Charles Atlas’s Joints 4tet for Ensemble installation is at the University of Michigan Institute for the Humanities in Ann Arbor. The exhibition consists of ten video monitors set on stands of varying heights. Video loops successively focus on various parts of the human body to capture Merce Cunningham’s unique style of movement, form and gesture. Ambient sounds by John Cage, Cunningham’s longtime companion and collaborator, accompany the videos. This work is on view through March 31.

• William Wegman’s latest video Flo Flow was projected onto the exterior of the Everson Museum of Art. Wegman created the two minutes and 30 seconds long video for the Urban Video Project, a multimedia public art initiative of Light Work and Syracuse University that operates several electronic exhibition sites along the Connective Corridor in Syracuse, NY. Flo Flow can be viewed from dusk to 11p.m, Thursdays through Sundays. It continues through May 27.

Sarah Sze. "Finding a Home Fixed Points," 2012. Mudam Luxembourg, Courtesy of the artist and Victoria Miro Gallery, London. Photo: Andres Lejona.

In this week’s roundup, Sarah Sze finds a home for everyday objects, several artists’ work at Whitney Biennial 2012, Cindy Sherman’s MoMA retrospective and more.

• Sarah Sze, featured in the upcoming Season 6 of Art in the Twenty-First Century and chosen for Venice Biennale 2013, currently has work at Mudam Luxembourg (Luxembourg). Fixed Points Finding a Home is a site-specific installation for which the artists utilizes everyday objects such as tea bags, water bottles, light bulbs, and electric fans. Mudam invited Sze to make a new installation for their Pavilion and her work is on view through September 16. The following video has been posted online.

• Charles Atlas, LaToya Ruby Frazier, Mike Kelley and several other artists have work on display at the Whitney Biennial 2012, which is dedicated to Kelley (1954-2012). This is the first Whitney Biennial in which nearly a full floor of the Museum has been given over to a changing season of performances, events, and residencies.  In the following video Frazier discusses her work in the exhibition, focusing on her self-portraits in the Homebody Series (2010). This work is on view through May 27.

 

• Cindy Sherman has a landmark retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art (NYC) that includes more than 170 photographs tracing the artist’s career from the mid 1970s to the present. In conjunction with the show, the artist has selected films from MoMA’s collection, which will be screened in MoMA’s theaters during the course of the exhibition. This work is on view until June 11.

• Do-Ho Suh‘s “giant tornado of piggybacked men” is currently on view at the Academic Instructional Center at Western Washington University (Bellingham, WA). Cause & Effect is a vast ceiling installation made up of densely hung strands connected to thousands of colorful figures stacked atop one another. The work “metaphorically places the individual within an intricate web of destiny and fate.”

• Robert Adams, Robert Bechtle and Ewan Gibbs have an exhibition at the Timothy Taylor Gallery (London). This exhibition highlights works that create deeply personal yet iconic images of America. Photography is at the core of the exhibition – although Adams is the only photographer – and Adams’s selected works include a series of 1970s black and white photographs that document developing urbanization in Denver, CO. The show closes March 24.

• Richard Tuttle‘s and several other artists’ works are on display at the Parasol Unit Foundation for Contemporary Art (London). Lines of Thought explores the work of fifteen contemporary artists who either use line in creative and challenging ways or in whose finished work line has become a prominent element. Tuttle’s works evolve out of a radical reduction of this visual element. The exhibition runs until May 13.

• Shahzia Sikander represents the contemporary part of Gifts of the Sultan: The Arts of Giving at the Islamic Courts at the Museum of Islamic Art (Doha, Qatar). This traveling international exhibition explores Islamic art through the universal tradition of gift-giving. Sikander was invited to create work that draws inspiration from her own cultural tradition and to produce new work interpreting the theme of Gifts of the Sultan. This exhibition makes its third appearance March 19 – June 2.

Charles Atlas. "The Illusion of Democracy," 2012. Installation view. Photo courtesy Luhring Augustine Bushwick.

In this week’s roundup, Charles Atlas projects videos with numbers and grids, Rashid Johnson is honored, Sarah Sze to represent the U.S. at the 2013 Venice Biennale, Mike Kelley is honored in LA, Maya Lin re-creates nature, Jessica Stockholder will create a Chicago color jam, a Barry McGee cocktail drink in Miami (!), and more.

• Charles Atlas has a new exhibition at Luhring Augustine Project Space in the Bushwick neighborhood of Brooklyn. The Illusion of Democracy features video installations and projections that combine mathematical and diagrammatic images with art historical precedents to create moving vistas of floating numbers and grids. This work is on view until May 20. A user-generated video posted online documents the show:

• Mark Bradford is at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art through June 17 and at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts through May 27. This is Bradford‘s first major museum survey of paintings, sculptures, and multimedia works to be presented on the West Coast. The selection of works captures the development of the artist’s sensibility, from modest-sized canvases to monumental public projects, and from purely formal investigations of material to engagement with sociopolitical questions.

• Rashid Johnson had been named a winner of the 2012 David C. Driskell prize by the High Museum of Art in Atlanta. The prize is annually presented to an artist who is “in the beginning or middle of his or her career whose work makes an original and important contribution to the field of African-American art or art history. Continue reading »

John Baldessari. "Brain/Cloud (with Seascape and Palm Tree)," 1250 Prospect Street, La Jolla, CA. Photo courtesy of The La Jolla Community Foundation.

In this week’s roundup, Ann Hamilton and John Baldessari create murals in La Jolla, Martin Puryear honored at the White House, Walton Ford to speak in Connecticut, Tim Hawkinson explores the human body, Laylah Ali draws from conversations, and more.

• Ann Hamilton has been commissioned to create a mural later this year as part of the Murals of La Jolla (CA), a beautification and arts enhancement project sponsored by The La Jolla Community Foundation. The Foundation has funded the installation of murals on private buildings throughout the city — all by contemporary artists of note, selected by committee. Brain/Cloud, a mural by John Baldessari, was put up last October.

• Martin Puryear was honored with a National Medal of Arts at the White House. The medals are the highest government honors given to scholars, writers, artists, and entertainers. Honorees receive the award for their “contribution to a greater understanding of human nature and the human condition.”

• Carrie Mae Weems‘s work is included in Black Women in Art and the Stories They Tell at the Museum of Art and Archeology (Columbia, MO). This exhibition explores the stories embodied in art created by black women, as well as the narratives expressed and symbolized in artworks portraying black women created by artists of differing races and genders. Weems’s photographs contain the words “Grabbing, Snatching, Blink and You Be Gone” that are juxtaposed between photos of former slave holding cells in Senegal. The show closes April 29.

• Walton Ford will speak at Lyme Academy of Fine Arts in Old Lyme, Connecticut on Tuesday, Feb. 21, at 7pm in the lecture hall at the College.  The lecture is free and all are welcome, but reservations are required as seating is limited.

• The Cindy Sherman: Becoming feature in New York Magazine highlights the upcoming retrospective of Cindy Sherman’s work that opens at the Museum of Modern Art (NYC) on February 26 and will run until June 11.

• Janine Antoni is part of the group exhibition, Into the Mix at the Kentucky Museum of Art and Craft (Louisville). The show explores materiality and how the complexities of cultural stereotypes take on new meanings in a Caribbean context. The creation of this artwork is influenced by the economic opportunity presented through tourism, yet also represents how visitors’ interests can be taken out of context. The exhibition is on view until April 14.

• Vocabularies Revitalized: Ellen Gallagher and Rammellzee inPrintin’ features work by Ellen Gallagher whose work is included in the exhibition Printin’ at the Museum of Modern Art (NYC). In this series of 60 works, Gallagher takes preexisting printed material—from newspaper articles about the Harlem riots to advertisements from black lifestyle magazines of the 1930s to the 1970s—as her source material.  The show closes May 14.

• Laylah Ali: Note Drawings at John Michael Kohler Arts Center (Sheboygan, WI) presents works by Laylah Ali that link drawing, language and writing. In this show Ali takes inspiration from snippets of overheard conversations, media sound bites, and her own thoughts collected on scraps of paper. These snippets are organized into numerical lists and some are hand written and arranged with attention to rhythm and syntax. This work is on view through April 1.

• Matthew Barney and Raymond Pettibon have work in Houdini: Art & Magic at the Madison Museum of Contemporary Art (Madison, WI). The show includes work by contemporary artists who have been influenced by Houdini, as well as historic photographs; dramatic Art Nouveau-era posters and broadsides; theater ephemera; and archival and silent films illuminating Houdini’s role as a world-famous celebrity who commanded a mass audience in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. This work in on view through May 13.

• Mark Bradford talks about Diana Ross for a Los Angeles Times music blog, Ledisi, Questlove, Mark Bradford pay tribute to Diana Ross. Bradford and other artists were interviewed about how they were influenced by Ross, the magnitude of the effect of her music on popular culture, and how her work and work ethic has inspired them individually.

• Mary Heilmann Visions, Waves and Roads will soon be on view at Hauser & Wirth (London). The show will present a large group of new paintings by Mary Heilmann as well as ceramic sculpture and furniture. Ceramic tiles put up alongside the artist’s paintings will dot the gallery walls to mimic the color palettes of the paintings and enhance the physical properties of the work. The exhibition will run from February 23 – April 5.

• Tim Hawkinson is in a three-person show, Death and Life of an Object, at Edward Cella Art + Architecture (Los Angeles).  Hawkinson explores the human body (his own) in portraits made from sculpted foam and found eyeglasses; sculptural work that is an enlargement of his actual footprint; and an enlargement of his fingers posed in an unusual position.  The exhibition is on view through March 31.

• Shana Moulton was selected as one of Smack Mellon’s 2012 Studio Artists. The program provides artists working in all visual arts media a free private studio space accessible 24/7 and a $5,000 fellowship (dependent upon funding).

KAWS (Brian Donnelly). "Silent City,"2011. Photo courtesy High Museum of Art.

I recently attended an event with Brian Donnelly, aka KAWS, who joined Michael Rooks, the High Museum of Art’s Wieland Family Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art, to talk about the current show KAWS: Down Time. During the conversation, KAWS took Rooks and the audience on a trip back in time, covering his progression from doing graffiti tags and pieces on walls, to billboard/bus shelter/phone booth advertisements, toys, large canvases and public works. KAWS had a early interest in urban art and communication–i.e., as a skateboarder and budding illustrator traveling the streets of Jersey City and NYC and reading the information around him as he passed through. The theme of “passing through” is often conveyed in Donnelly’s work. For example, a large sculpture from his Companion series, called Companion Passing Through, is sitting in the piazza near the entrance to the museum.

KAWS (Brian Donnelly). Installing "Companion Passing Through" at the High Museum of Art in 2011. Photo courtesy BAPE Nerd.

In the early years, KAWS was exploring parts of the city while receiving a mobile, visual and commercial art education. Rooks noted that the experience must have been like sensory overload. Indeed, many of the artist’s paintings are an explosion of simple visual elements that overlap and interlock on the picture plane in complex ways. Skateboarding through different neighborhoods and using different subway stops as destination points to create art enabled KAWS to learn more about graffiti in city space. Donnelly himself refers to this in the talk:

You start to think about different areas or missed areas or opportunities.  You think more about the world we live in and how you can be part of it.

More recently, graffiti and street art has had a revival in popular culture and in the art world, as seen in exhibitions such as MOCA Los Angeles’s Art in the Streets (which I wrote about on the Art21 blog in April 2011), and MoMA’s Looking at Music 3.0. Events such as the Re-Bomonti Street Art Festival in Istanbul, and the work of the Boa Mistura collective in Spain show the global reach of graffiti. However, when KAWS was passing through urban neighborhoods in the 1990s, graffiti was still mostly underground. Growing up at that time, with a historical knowledge of graffiti and access to city walls and trains, had a tremendous influence on the direction KAWS took. He became a part of local and international communities of artists who were often collaborating and trading photos of their work. During the talk, the artist spoke about first wanting his graffiti to reach people in a four-block vicinity, while Rooks noted that his train pieces could also be viewed as moving exhibitions that hundreds, maybe thousands could see.

Continue reading »

Andrea Zittel. A-Z Wagon Station customized by Caroline Castaño at A-Z West (2005). Photo courtesy the artist.

In this week’s roundup Andrea Zittel explores the topography of the desert landscape, Ann Hamilton deals with expressions of the body, Collier Schorr collages images of Brasilia, we see several videos of artists at work, and more.

• Andrea Zittel‘s Lay of My Land explores the artist’s utopian experiments in living – i.e. “ideas related to A-Z West” that feature work made since 2003, including several Wagon Stations and a commissioned sculptural installation in the form of a dramatic topographical figuration of the landscape that surrounds the desert A-Z West site.  This exhibition at the BALTIC Centre for Contemporary Art (Gateshead Quays, UK) is on view until May 20.

• Ann Hamilton‘s installations are on view at Colgate University’s Picker Art Gallery (Hamilton, NY).  Recto/Verso: Video by Ann Hamilton will examine concepts that deal with gesture, the senses and the body, voice and language, time and duration, and history and community. Videos will be juxtaposed with pinhole images — some taken from within the artist’s mouth — and some made on the Colgate campus by members of the Colgate staff and student body.  The show closes April 3.

• Kerry James Marshall‘s work is on view as part of African-American Art from the Permanent Collection at the Mobile Museum of Art (Mobile, Alabama), an expansive collection of work by African American artists that includes one in charcoal by Marshall, UNTITLED (Portrait of a Black Woman).  The exhibition closes April 8.

• Art Talk with Kara Walker features an interview with Kara Walker by Paulette Beete for the National Endowment for the Arts’ Art Works program.

• Mark your calendars now: Alfredo Jaar and a host of other renowned artists have been selected for RAY Fotografieprojekte’s MAKING HISTORY, a show that focuses on artistic reflection of public images – i.e. different views of historical events that are understood as extended forms of presenting history, as well as subjective images of the past that convey independent ideas on the creation of history.  This exhibition will take place in Frankfurt, Germany and it will be on view April 20 – July 8.

• Collier Schorr‘s Y-3 Spring/Summer 2012 campaign features portraits that are collaged with xeroxes of archival Brasilia, to “suggest a delicate balance between the body and the many ways it is contained.”

• Watch Do-Ho Suh‘s Fallen Star, a three-quarter-sized version of a house from Providence, R.I. perched atop Jacobs Hall at the University of California San Diego.

 

• Mark Bradford was interviewed as part of the Wexner Center’s 20th anniversary of its Artist Residency Awards.  The video can be viewed below.

• Ursula von Rydingsvard‘s Sculpture installation-in-progress is documented in a video by MOCA Cleveland.  The show closes March 31.

Mike Kelley: 1954-2012. Kandor 10 A (Grotto) at Gagosian Gallery (2011). Photo courtesy Fredrik Nilsen, Gagosian Gallery.

In this week’s roundup we remember Mike Kelley,  Bruce Nauman inverts the mirror, Eleanor Antin revisits her part work, Judy Pfaff shows smaller work, Louise Bourgeois’ writings are unveiled, Laurie Anderson performs in a room, and more.

• This week we remember Mike Kelley.  The Los Angeles Times’ Culture Monster blog post, Mike Kelley: A game-changer for the art world, includes photos and a general overview of Kelley’s work over the years.

• Bruce Nauman‘s work will be on view in The Inverted Mirror: Art from the Collections of ”la Caixa” Foundation and MACBA at the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao. In this show, the image of a mirror is a metaphor for the processes of accumulation, transfer and interference that are a fundamental part of the birth and development of all art collections. In connection with its title, the show highlights two contemporary art collections that represent the most significant tendencies and movements spanning the second half of the twentieth century to the present.  The exhibition will run January 31 – September 2.

• Eleanor Antin is featured in the Los Angeles Times’ PST: Eleanor Antin revisits Before the Revolution.  The article highlights a new version of Before the Revolution, a signature work that Antin first performed in 1979 at New York’s Kitchen Center for Video, Music, and Dance, playing all the parts with the aid of several nearly life-size Masonite cut-outs that she manipulated onstage.

• Judy Pfaff: Recent Work at the Bruno David Gallery (St. Louis) showcases some of Judy Pfaff’s smaller work in her first St. Louis solo exhibition since 1989.  Combining several kinds of media and methods of art-making, Pfaff redefines the capacities of what art can be. A catalogue with essays by Buzz Spector and Kara Gordon accompanies the exhibit. A video of the Judy Pfaff exhibition is also online.

Continue reading »

Kiki Smith. Blue Moon III, 2011. Cast 1 of 3. © Kiki Smith/ Courtesy The Pace Gallery Photo courtesy of Melissa Christy / Walla Walla Foundry.

In this week’s roundup Kiki Smith explores interdependence, Paul McCarthy delves into expressionism, Laurie Anderson sees the future, Cindy Sherman deals with fiction/depiction, and more.

• Visionary Sugar: Works by Kiki Smith will be on view at the Neuberger Museum of Art of Purchase College (NY).  The exhibition includes new large-scale drawings, collages, tapestries, multi-colored gilded reliefs, and metal sculpture. In this work, Kiki Smith explores the interdependence of all living things, “representing and embracing the vitality of an animistic, spiritually-charged universe”. The show will run February 4 – May 6.

• L.A. RAW: Abject Expressionism in Los Angeles, 1945-1980, From Rico Lebrun to Paul McCarthy is part of the Getty Foundation’s initiative Pacific Standard Time: Art in L.A. 1945–1980 that traces the distinctive aesthetic of figurative expressionism from the end of World War II to the present. The Pasadena Museum of California Art show includes Paul McCarthy‘s work and demonstrates the ongoing relevance of expressionism as a primary approach to art making.  This exhibition closes May 20.

• Tommy Hartung & Uri Aran reflects the two artists’ years of exchange and collaboration, revealing their parallel interests in storytelling and varied notions of desire, sentimentality, and sadness. The exhibition is accompanied by a published conversation between Hartung and Aran. This show takes place at White Flag Projects (St. Louis) and closes February 18.

• Kerry James Marshall‘s Black Night Falling: Black holes and constellations will soon be on view at the Monique Meloche Gallery (Chicago).  This work is part of the gallery’s on the wall series, a rotation of projects viewed from the street through floor to ceiling windows. This series is intended to engage the community and challenge the white cube notion of viewing.  Marshall’s work will be on view February 4 – May 12.

• Laurie Anderson was interviewed in the January 2012 issue of Believer magazine about her vision of art in the future.  Anderson sees a future in which “[w]e’ll be able to be in the present more effectively” and no longer need to make art or have museums, say five thousand years from now. Anderson raises interesting questions for artists: Will art still be made in the future? If so, what will it look like?

• John Baldessari: Class Assignments, (Optional) features student works that are responses to a series of notes/instructions provided by John Baldessari, who first used them in 1970, when he was a professor at California Institute of the Arts (Cal Arts).  The project and exhibition reflect Baldessari’s ongoing interest in pedagogical and conceptual approaches to art making.  This show is at the CCA Wattis Institute for Contemporary Arts and closes March 31.

• Cindy Sherman‘s work is on view in Blind Cut at the Marlborough Chelsea (NYC).  This group exhibition spans several generations and addresses questions regarding identity, authorship, originality and reality.  The work includes diverse notions of fiction and depiction and will close on February 18.

• Yinka Shonibare MBE will be exhibiting at the James Cohan Gallery (NYC) with a multi-part exhibition of new sculptures, photographs and the premiere of a new film.  Shonibare’s Addio del Passato explores the concept of destiny as it relates to themes of desire, yearning, love, power and sexual repression.  This exhibition will run February 16 – March 24.

• Vija Celmins, upcoming Season 6 artist Ai Weiwei, and 53 other artists have work in Lifelike, an international group exhibition at the Walker Art Center (Minneapolis) that features artists “variously using scale, unusual materials, and sly contextual devices to reveal the manner in which their subjects’ “authenticity” is manufactured.”  The show will run from February 25 – May 27.

• Mark your calendars for the Barry McGee retrospective exhibition at the University of California’s Berkley Art Museum.  This show will celebrate over 20 years of work from McGee.  Sponsor the Andy Warhol Foundation donated $100,000 to the event, which is a testament to McGee’s work. This exhibition will run August 23 – December 9.