AO Art Observed™

Gary Hume, The Indifferent Owl (2011). All images courtesy of White Cube.

Gary Hume returns to London for his first exhibition in the city in four years with The Indifferent Owl at White Cube Gallery. Occupying both the Mason’s Yard and Hoxton Square locations, Hume presents a collection of paintings and sculpture that shows off his streamlined aesthetic. With a muted palette and naturalistic subject matter—representations of birds and flora are dominant—The Indifferent Owl is a study in subtlety.

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Marilyn Minter and Massimiliano Gioni at the opening. All photos on site for Art Observed by Rachel Willis and Samuel Sveen.

Maurizio Cattelan, who recently swore off his career as an artist, has taken a large step into the business side of the art world. The famed artist has teamed up with longtime friend and project partner—and notable curator—Massimiliano Gioni for a new exhibition space, Family Business. Located in the front of the Anna Kustera Gallery in Chelsea, at 520 West 21^st Street, Family Business is a small non-profit venue geared towards both the making and showing of conceptually and aesthetically experimental art. The inaugural show, appropriately titled “The Virgin Show,” consists of a group of artists whose work has never been exhibited in New York before. There are a few exceptions to the rule however, with established artists like Laurel Nakadate and Mika Rottenberg showing some of their earliest works. The show was curated by Marilyn Minter who, in line with the theme of the show, has referred to herself as a “Virgin Curator.” To top off the theme, the band The Virgins played a short acoustic set, with visitors shuffled out to make room in the small space.

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‪ ‬Former director of Deitch Projects Nicola Vassell, leaves director position at Pace Gallery after year and a half, Andrea Glimcher quoted as saying “It’s best for all that she is pursuing her own projects.” [AO Newslink]

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Lucio Fontana, Concetto Spaziale, Attese (1960)

Phillips de Pury & Company held the last of the Contemporary Art Evening Sales for this week in London on Thursday, bringing in a total of £5,695,550, just under their low estimate of £5,985,000. It is quite possible that they would have hit well above their high estimate had Robert Indiana‘s infamous LOVE sculpture not been pulled from the auction before it started, as it was estimated to bring in between £800,000–£1,200,000. The top seller from the auction was Lucio Fontana‘s Concetto Spaziale, Attese, which sold for the hammer price of £900,000—at the low end of the £1–£1.5 million estimate. The work was once owned by Andy Warhol, and is a quintessential example of the Spazialismo movement that Fontana founded, a movement that was among the first to emphasize the importance of performance as art.

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‪ Photographer Douglas Friedman’s ‘Ungovernables’ series captures the New Museum Triennial art and artists, including Canadian Julia Dault and her performative sheets of Plexiglas, Cambodian Gabriel Sierr and geometric frames, and Vietnam-based Propeller Group with “Television Commercial for Communism.”[AO Newslink]

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Rashid Johnson, The Sweet Science (2011). All images for Art Observed by E. Damenia.

Chicago-born multi-media artist Rashid Johnson brings Rumble, an exhibition of new works, to the Hauser & Wirth uptown gallery in New York City as a precursor to his upcoming solo exhibition at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago, opening this spring. Rumble is inspired by prizefight promoter Don King and takes its name from the legendary 1974 fight between Muhammad Ali and George Foreman, the Rumble in the Jungle. Hauser & Wirth’s Upper East Side townhouse is a fitting home for Johnson’s exhibition—the space was previously owned by King himself.

Installation view

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Abramović speaking at Art Basel Miami Beach in 2011 about the MoMA-related documentary, Marina: The Artist is Present. (Photo by Caroline Claisse via Art Observed)

This week, Serbian-born performance artist Marina Abramović signed on with Rotterdam-based architect Rem Koolhaus to redesign a historic community tennis club to house her Center for the Preservation of Performance Art (CPoPA) in Hudson, New York. As the name indicates, Abramović conceptualizes the creative space to exhibit long-term performance pieces, which may range from six hours to days on end. Visitors to the Hudson space will be seated in uniquely designed wheelchairs with desks, which can be wheeled to a set sleeping area if the performance piece goes on too long. In addition to the performance art center itself, Abramović is in discussions with Hudson’s local mayor to potentially build a new hotel for the art set. She told art patrons at The Core Club that she will need $8 million to fund the project.

The designated performance art center, via L Magazine

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‪ Gregory Crewdson’s “Brief Encounters” Trailer released, in anticipation of South by Southwest (SXSW) 2012, which runs from March 9th-18th. The documentary follows Crewdson’s photography-related journeys and conceptualizations. [AO Newslink]

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‪ Devon resident Damien Hirst is building 500 eco-friendly homes at Winsham Farm outside Ilfracombe, Devon, which rely on hidden wind turbines and photovoltaic solar panels. He owns 40 percent of the development’s land, as well his art studio and a local restaurant, and hopes to attract “young, creative people” to the new property. [AO Newslink]

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