Jessica Stockholder. “Story of Angle #3,” 2013. Graphite and colored pencil on paper. 11 x 14 in. Courtesy the artist and Barbara Edwards Contemporary.

In this week’s roundup Jessica Stockholder explores drawing in multiple dimensions, Richard Serra presents early experiments with nontraditional materials, James Turrell delves into light, and much more.

• Jessica Stockholder has a solo exhibition at Barbara Edwards Contemporary (Toronto, Ontario). Jessica Stockholder explores the realm of two-dimensional composition and three-dimensional space, through the layering of color, found object and text. In the drawings included in this exhibition, the artist develops her own hieroglyph as a way of reading images. The show runs through June 8.

• Mika Rottenberg‘s new exhibition Sneeze to Squeeze features a series of works that together reveal an imaginative world full of surreal scenarios and claustrophobic settings. The exhibition is view at at Magasin 3 (Stockholm, Sweden) through June 2.

• Mike Kelley: Eternity is a Long Time is on view at HangarBicocca (Milan, Italy). The exhibition features Extracurricular Activity Projective Reconstruction #1 (A Domestic Scene) and Runway for Interactive DJ Event, two installations that constitute a fundamental turning point in Kelley‘s research, and the dawn of what was to be the late artists’s most prolific creative period. The show closes August 9.

• I, YOU, WE is at the Whitney Museum of Art (New York, NY) with works by Catherine Opie, Cindy Sherman, Kiki Smith, and Carrie Mae Weems, among others. The exhibition, drawn from the museum’s collection of works made in the eighties and early nineties, is on view through September 1.

• Richard Serra: Early Work is up at David Zwirner (New York, NY). Dating from 1966 to 1971, the works on view, drawn from museum and private collections, represent the beginning of Serra‘s experiments with nontraditional materials, such as vulcanized rubber, neon, lead, and steel. Also featured is a program of the artist’s films from the same period. The exhibition runs through June 15.

• Laurie Anderson’s From the Air is at the University of Michigan Museum of Art (Ann Arbor, MI). The installation consists of a clay sculpture with projected video that features a miniature version of Laurie Anderson telling a story, seated with her dog, Lolabelle. The exhibition builds from Lolabelle’s realization during a walk to the beach that she is prey for a group of turkey vultures. The work is on view through August 11.

Continue reading »

Mika Rottenberg. “Felicia from Tropical Breeze,” 2004. Courtesy the artist and Magasin 3, Stockholm.

In this week’s roundup, the Empire State travels to Rome with works by LaToya Ruby Frazier and Jeff Koons, Pierre Huyghe wins the Haftmann Prize, Laylah Ali’s Greenheads meet up in Minneapolis, several artists lecture about their work, and more.

• Shahzia Sikander ‘Parallax’ opens this week at Pilar Corrias Gallery (London). This is Sikander‘s second solo show with Pilar. The installation includes a new three-channel animation that will also be shown at the Sharjah Biennial in March 2013. Accompanying the animation are four large scale drawings and four smaller works on paper. On February 20, the gallery will present Writing with Drawing, a public conversation between the artist and Kate Macfarlane. Please RSVP as space is limited. The exhibition runs February 22–March 13.

• Maya Lin will give a talk at the Phoenix Art Museum (Arizona) as part of Contemporary Forum’s monthly lecture program, organized by the museum’s Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art, Sara Cochran. According to Cochran, it has been a priority of the museum to bring Lin to Phoenix. The event takes place on February 20.

• Laylah Ali: The Greenheads Series is now on view at the Weisman Art Museum (Minneapolis, MN). This is the first time the Greenheads series, created between 1996 and 2005, is being shown as a comprehensive body of work. Of the more than eighty gouache paintings in Ali‘s series, the exhibition presents forty-three that have been gathered from various collections. The show runs through May 12.

• Arturo Herrera has a new show opening this week at Linda Pace Foundation (San Antonio, TX). Arturo Herrera will feature works from the Foundation’s collection, and more recent works by the artist on loan from Sikkema Jenkins & Co. On February 21 at 6pm, the Foundation will present a conversation between Herrera and Artpace Executive Director Amada Cruz. The exhibition runs February 22–September 6.

• Pierre Huyghe has won this year’s Roswitha Haftmann Prize. Prizewinners are selected solely on the basis of the artistic significance and “outstanding quality” of their work, without regard to their personal circumstances (nationality, age, gender, etc). Huyghe will be fêted at an award ceremony at the Kunsthaus Zurich in May. Cindy Sherman was winner of last year’s Haftmann Prize.

• LaToya Ruby Frazier and Jeff Koons will exhibit work at the Palazzo delle Esposizioni (Rome) in the group exhibition Empire State, which explores how artists have reimagined urban life in New York City. Bringing together an intergenerational group of artists from the city’s five boroughs and suburban and exurban regions, some works on view are meditations on the city as a means of distributing power. The show runs April 23–July 21.

Continue reading »

Artist Mika Rottenberg in her Clinton Hill, Brooklyn, home. Production still from the series New York Close Up. © Art21, Inc. 2013. Cinematography by John Marton.

The latest New York Close Up film is now available for your viewing: Mika Rottenberg and the Amazing Invention Factory.

What are the stories we tell about objects? In this film, artist Mika Rottenberg considers a survey of her videos in which women work in factory-like settings to create handmade objects. Growing up in Israel, Rottenberg recalls not being exposed to commercials on television until she was a teenager; after moving to New York City, she encountered infomercials such as Ron Popeil‘s “set it and forget it” Showtime Rotisserie chicken oven. Fascinated by the stories surrounding these inventions, Rottenberg creates her own fabricated products as well as idiosyncratic fictions about the origins of objects. Populating her videos with women who have extreme physiques and who sell their services on the Internet—such as wrestling, squashing, and photo opportunities—Rottenberg’s imaginary factories are run by people who “own the means of production.” Throughout her videos Rottenberg draws the viewer’s attention to the architecture of the body and the psychological dimensions of labor and value. This New York Close Up film features Rottenberg’s works Tropical Breeze (2004), Mary’s Cherries (2004), Dough (2005–06), and Squeeze (2010).

Mika Rottenberg (b. 1976, Bueno Aires, Argentina; raised in Tel Aviv, Israel) lives and works in Brooklyn, New York.

Watch the full film below. Continue reading »