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.

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.

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Alfredo Jaar. "Muxima," 2006. Film still courtesy of the artist.

In this week’s first roundup of 2012, Louise Bourgeois’s art kicks off the new year in Qatar, Alfredo Jaar shows his love for African music and more.

• Alfredo Jaar presents Muxima, a film dedicated to the Angolan people and a direct result of the artist’s love for African music. The film is Jaar’s first and takes the form of five interpretations of local folk songs that have been edited into ten cantos covering the history of Angola. The film can be seen in Gallery 186 at The Art Institute of Chicago until April 15.

• Louise Bourgeois‘s art will kick off 2012 at the Qatar Museums Authority (QMA).  Louise Bourgeois: Conscious and Unconscious, the retrospective which is the first in the Gulf by the late American artist, will be held from January 20 to June 1 at the QMA Gallery in Katara.

• Mark Dion will create an on-site installation for the 75th anniversary of the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco.  This work will respond to the bridge as an icon, historic structure, and conceptual inspiration; objects will be fabricated to appear as though recovered from a deep sea wreck.  International Orange will open on Memorial Day weekend, May 26–28, as part of the kickoff to the 75th anniversary and will remain on view to the public free of charge through October 2012.

• James Turrell and Bruce Nauman have work on view in Phenomenal: California Light, Space, Surface at the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego.  The artists each make the visitor’s experience of light and other sensory phenomena under specific conditions the focus of their work. The show includes an immersive environment by Nauman and a light piece from Turrell’s Wedgework series.  This exhibition closes January 22.

• Kalup Linzy, Keltie Ferris, and Andrea Zittel contributed to Modern Painters magazine’s survey of 100 artists to watch.  The list is broad, international, and distinguished by the variety of approaches represented.

• Walton Ford is featured in Whitewall magazine’s Winter issue.  An excerpt from the Ford studio visit can be read online now.

• Next month a Cindy Sherman retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in NYC will showcase more than 180 photographs that trace the artist’s career from the mid 1970s to the present. Highlighted in the exhibition are in-depth presentations of her key series, including Untitled Film Stills (1977–80); her ornate history portraits (1989–90); and her larger-than-life society portraits (2008) that address the experience and representation of aging in the context of contemporary obsessions with youth and status.  The show will be on view February 26–June 11.

• In-Sight Evening: Doris Salcedo, a lecture by curator Mary Schneider Enriquez will examine the evolution of Doris Salcedo’s oeuvre since the 1980s, placing her chair, Untitled (2004–5), within the context of her constructed sculptures and installations, which are informed by sociopolitical circumstances in Colombia and beyond.  The talk will also consider Salcedo’s work in the broader context of contemporary sculpture.  The event will take place February 15, at 6pm.

James Franco, "The Dangerous Book Four Boys" at Peres Projects, Berlin. Installation View. Courtesy The Hollywood Reporter.

5. James Franco, how can we miss you if you won’t go away?  Back in 2009 Franco topped our list of entertainers moonlighting as artists when he wrote a book report on performance art and claimed that his guest star role on General Hospital would be his foray into the genre.  But since then, Art21 has facilitated his artistic growth, featuring his collaboration with Kalup Linzy in our New York Close Up series.  This year Franco even scored shows at Gagosian in Los Angeles and Peres Projects in Berlin.  He is even pursuing an MFA at RISD–concurrent with his PhD in English at Yale, because grad school is NBD right? With his penchant for meta, Franco unsurprisingly seems to be delving deeper into the realm of institutional critique.  He recently teamed up with art duo Praxis to launch the Museum of Non-Visible Art, selling non-existent works of art through Kickstarter.  Be careful if you visit the page—it might just blow your mind!

Phyllis Diller and Jeffrey Deitch in Diller's studio. Courtesy Paper Magazine.

4. Is there something funny about painting?  Groundbreaking female comedians Phyllis Diller and Joan Rivers both refuse to retire or quit their day jobs–and their weekend hobbies.  Both maintain avid studio practices alongside their continued comedy careers, despite mixed reviews. Ever self-deprecating, Rivers bemoaned, “not one person in 10 years has asked me for a painting, that’s how bad I am.”  Maybe Rivers just needs to stick it out a little longer, as the more senior Diller recently enjoyed some art world attention, scoring a studio visit from Jeffrey Deitch.  According to Paper Mag, Deitch even bought one of her paintings on the spot.  Not so surprising–as the producer of television’s first art reality show, Art Star, we wouldn’t expect Deitch to shy away from the often problematic intersection of art and celebrity.

Rosario Dawson's "Misting Vagina" at Burning Man 2011. Courtesy NBC Bay Area.

3. Rosario Dawson tried her hand at installation work—and feminist art?—creating a giant misting vagina at Burning Man this year.   Though yours truly attended–and worked for–the orgiastic art festival this year, I did not happen upon Dawson’s piece among the countless large-scale sculptures and interactive works installed around the Black Rock Desert.  But the buzz from those who did dive into the giant vulva and complimentary balls and sperm sculpture was pretty positive.  Looks like Rosario made her own grindhouse!

Ringo Starr with "Face and Flowers." Courtesy Gallery 319.

2. Each Beatle has been known to make his own visual art, but Ringo Starr is the only one to venture into the realm of New Media, having exhibited his computer generated paintings since the 1990s.  Represented by LA’s own Gallery 319, which specializes in leveraging the cultural capital of rock stars such as Grace Slick and Ronnie Wood to sell their art, this year Starr decided to think outside the white gallery box, creating a piece of public art.  Ringo dedicated the statue—a colorful gun tied in a knot—to John Lennon, unveiling it on the 31^st anniversary of his death.  Inspired by Carl Fredrik Reuterswärd’s bronze “Knotted Gun” sculpture, the piece was commissioned by the Non-Violence Project Foundation and will tour schools around the United Kingdom, as part of a program advocating nonviolence.  Starr’s background in computer-generated painting came in handy when creating the slightly nauseating psychedelic design for the sculpture. Starr divulges, “I just did my artwork on my iPad, put it on my computer and transferred it onto paper with the outline of the gun.”  Though this might suggest a lack of aesthetic rigor in his process,  we still have to give props to Ringo for using channeling the loss of his friend and band mate into a strong message.  Reflecting on Lennon’s death, Starr recalls “they called and said, ‘John’s been killed. He’s been shot and he’s dead’…It was a bad day. But it was a bad day because someone took one of these and shot John.”

Jenni "JWOWW" Farley of Jersey Shore. Courtesy Gawker.

1. Jersey Shore’s Jwoww was recently outed by Gawker as a onetime artist.  The gossip blog uncovered a website from her bohemian college days as an art major, featuring charcoal drawings and acrylic still lives that range from pseudo-pop art (Family Guy of course) to academic figure drawing.  Gawker says their favorite is her still life of “a beach towel, stuffed animal, detergent container, and two empty bottles of booze.”  But how can you ignore her naked body covered in multicolored paint?  Move over Yves Klein!

Cai Guo-Qiang, Fallen Blossoms: Explosion Project (2009), Philadelphia Art since the Mid-20th Century, Room 410. Photo courtesy the artist and Phaidon.

In this week’s roundup Yinka Shonibare MBE discusses post-Colonial Britain, John Baldessari talks about graffiti and street art, Barbara Kruger explores the game of chess, works by Barry McGee and Fred Wilson are at the center of controversies, and more.

• Yinka Shonibare MBE will talk about the history and cultural legacy of post-colonial Britain this week at The Human Rights Action Centre (London).  This is part of Inviva’s Significant Voices program.  The event will take place Wednesday, October 19, 6:30pm.

• Cai Guo-Qiang‘s work is part of The Art Museum, a unique collection of the world’s important and influential art works, curated by a team of over 100 global art experts, from Phaidon houses – in one place.  This imaginary museum is actually a book.

• Barbara Kruger is exhibiting work at The World Chess Hall of Fame, a cultural venue that showcases art, history, science and sports through the lens of chess.  Untitled (Do you feel comfortable losing?) is one of several pieces that demonstrate an integration of chess that goes beyond the visual, incorporating elements of play or strategy that invite the viewer to reflect on the game’s intricate operations.  This show on view until February 12, 2012.

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Beryl Korot. "Video — Text/Weave/Line," 2011. Photo courtesy the artist and Jaffe-Friede Gallery.

In this week’s roundup Beryl Korot prints and weaves video, Jenny Holzer is honored, artists explore being American, several others celebrate creating art in Los Angeles, and more.

• Beryl Korot‘s exhibition, Video — Text/Weave/Line, is on view at Jaffe-Friede Gallery in the Hopkins Center for the Arts (Hanover, NH).  Video, print and weaving are all connected through the fundamental unit of the line, and it is this theme that resonates throughout her works at the gallery.  Korot’s use of various mediums also marks the passage of time, from the days of traditional weaving to our current of use modern visual technology.  This exhibition closes December 4.

• Mark Bradford, Carrie Mae Weems, Kerry James Marshall, Kara Walker, Rashid Johnson, Kalup Linzy, and others have work on display in 30 Americans that recently opened at the Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington D.C.  More than 70 paintings, sculptures, videos, photographs, and drawings comprise the exhibition, which is on view until February 12, 2012.

• James Turrell unveiled a new landmark for the Bay Adelaide Centre in Toronto.  At the top of the building an extension of the glass skin beyond the rooftop becomes a series of “sails” that gives the building profile a distinctive identity. The lobby features a chapel of art inside its front lobby by Turrell.  Tall glass pieces display shifting tapestries of light–polyphonic compositions of color and movement.

• Jenny Holzer is one of three honorees slated to receive a National Arts Award.  Americans for the Arts will present the awards October 17 at a gala dinner in New York City.  Holzer will be honored for outstanding contributions to the arts.

• Julie Mehretu‘s latest work is at The Davison Art Center at Wesleyan University as part of the traveling exhibition Excavations: The Prints of Julie Mehretu.  This is the first comprehensive exhibition of prints produced by the artist thus far in her career. Accompanying the show is a 44-page color catalog with plates of the prints and an essay by Siri Engberg, curator at the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis.  The work is on view until December 11.

• Allan McCollum, Bruce Nauman, Eleanor Antin, John Baldessari, Vija Celmins, and several other artists are in Pacific Standard Time: Art in L.A. 1945-1980 which officially launched at The Getty Center in Los Angeles.  The opening party at MOCA LA featured a wall of Black Flag concert flyers, drawn by Raymond Pettibon.  Multiple exhibitions document the emergence of Los Angeles as an international nexus of contemporary art after World War II. It culminates in a series of over forty concurrent exhibitions across Southern California.

Andrea Zittel,“Pattern of Habit,” installation view, Sprüth Magers Berlin, 2011.

In this week’s roundup, Cao Fei in Istanbul, Fred Wilson works in paper, Iñigo Manglano-Ovalle edits a ritual, and more.

• Cao Fei will be featured at the Kurye Video and Digital Arts Festival in Istanbul, Turkey.  This event will take place September 9 – 23 at the Yapı Endüstri Merkezi (YEM), a building with a new edition dedicated to video games. Structured around a main exhibition entitled “Space Invaders,” the festival will also include screenings, seminars, workshops and live performances and examine the boundaries between real life and the world of video games.

• Fred Wilson’s work is featured in the exhibition paper at the Bradbury Gallery in the ASU Fowler Center.  All pieces in this exhibition demonstrate art that has been published by the Brodsky Center over the past 10 years.  The show runs until September 28.

• Iñigo Manglano-Ovalle’s Always After (the Glass House) will be presented at the Urban Video Project (Syracuse, NY) later this fall.  Always After focuses on broken glass accumulated after the windows of a Mies-designed structure were smashed by the architect’s  grandson as part of a ceremony. Manglano-Ovalle edits out all clear reference to this ritual, leaving the viewer with a “dream-like sequence in which well-shod anonymous masses eternally exit and equally anonymous custodians endlessly move in to sweep up the crystalline debris of modernism.”  This work is on view November 3 – December 31.

• Eleanor Antin and others will moderate a Regional Art Survey at Art San Diego Contemporary Art Fair.  This event will take the pulse of San Diego’s visual arts community and examine the role local artists and institutions play within the region as well as the broader, national scene. This conversation will take place on September 3, 5pm – 6pm.

• Hiroshi Sugimoto’s Lightening Fields and Photogenic Drawings is on view during the 2011 Edinburgh International Festival which celebrates the influence of the arts and cultures of Asia. These collections reflect aspects of Sugimoto’s interest in combining art with science, experimental photography, and the links between photography and time.  The exhibition closes on September 25.

• Laurie Anderson will bring her show, Delusions, to Usine C (Montreal), October 4 to 6. This solo piece was described in the London Times as “A questioning multimedia essay on the cosmos, coupled with an elegy for unconditional love.”

• Kalup Linzy’s and composer Luciano Chessa ‘s Heavenly Act preceded three performances of the Four Saints, an “opera installation” at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts’ Novellus Theater (San Francisco).

• There’s still time to catch Andrea Zittel at Sprüth Magers Berlin for Pattern of Habit, an exhibition of new work by Zittel.  The artist’s work examines how “psychological structures, thought systems and beliefs are manifested as physical objects” in the world that people create around themselves. This includes patterns and systems that are bound to habits, schedules and rules.  The exhibition closes September 10.

Do-Ho Suh, "Fallen Star 1/5," 2009. Courtesy the artist.

In this week’s roundup, Do-Ho Suh explores the memory of spaces, Carrie Mae Weems poses African American beauty, Louise Bourgeois’s spider tours Europe, a James Turrell retrospective in Russia, and more.

• Do-Ho Suh will present a series of works that reflect the artist’s ongoing exploration of cultural displacement and the co-existence of cultural identities, as well as the perception of our surroundings and how one constructs a memory of a space.  Home Within Home at Lehmann Maupin Gallery (NYC) presents ongoing projects that Suh began including replicas of his childhood home in Korea.  The exhibition will be on view on view September 8 – October 22.

• Carrie Mae Weems will have work on view in Posing Beauty in African American Culture an exhibition to explore the contested ways in which African and African American beauty have been represented in historical and contemporary contexts through a diverse range of media including photography, film, video, fashion, advertising, and other forms of popular culture such as music and the Internet.  This show will take place at the USC Fischer Museum of Art (Los Angeles) from September 7 – December 3.

• James Turrell has a retrospective on view at The Garage Center for Contemporary Culture (Moscow).  It is Turrell’s first solo exhibition in Russia and features fifteen works completed throughout his forty-year career. Turrell’s works challenge not only visual perception, but also the other senses, as visitors are required to interact with the installations and sculptures.  This show is on view until August 21.

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Art21′s newest documentary series, New York Close Up, just premiered its 10th film in its first installment. More film are forthcoming in the fall. In honor of this milestone, we’ve created a visual map of the inaugural ten. Mouse over an image for a link to the full film. Enjoy!