Weekly Roundup

Where in the world are Art21 artists?

• In Germany — where the Berlin Wall fell 20 years ago today — a new suite of paintings by Season 5 artist Julie Mehretu is on view at the Deutsche Guggenheim. This specially commissioned body of work, titled Grey Area, evokes the “psychogeography” of the city of Berlin and its past, raising matters of erasure, decay, and liminality. A number of programs will be held throughout the exhibition, including a lecture by culture journalist and author Magdalena Kroener; and a commissioned concert by Jochen Neurath based on Mehretu’s new paintings. Get the complete schedule here.

• Also in Berlin, an exhibition of works by John Baldessari (Season 5) will open at Sprüth Magers Gallery on November 20. In Hands And/Or Feet (Part Two) Baldessari takes these extremities as his focus in five large-scale diptychs of found photographs or media images, characteristically painted over and colored in by the artist.

• In London, Stephen Friedman Gallery is displaying works by Season 5 artist Yinka Shonibare. Several “meaty” images of Shonibare’s new photographic and sculptural series, which is based on both Arthur Miller’s protagonist Willy Loman, and an early photograph of a fatal car crash, are available on the gallery’s website.

• Circling around to California, beginning November 14 new paintings by Jeff Koons (Season 5) will be on display at Gagosian Gallery Beverly Hills. “At first glance,” reads the press release, “the works may seem abstract and gestural, but at the same time they are embedded in the traditions of figurative  painting. The brush strokes, which are photorealistic in their application, are actually fake brush strokes in the style of Roy Lichtenstein.” On view through January 9, 2010.

• Down in Atlanta, Trenton Doyle Hancock (Season 2) will deliver a lecture at the Savannah College of Art and Design (SCAD) as part of their inaugural deFINE ART festival, which celebrates the SCAD School of Fine Arts. The event takes place on November 11 at 7 pm.

• Here in New York there’s a lot happening as usual: On November 12 Stitches opens at Leila Taghinia-Milani Heller Gallery in  midtown. This large group exhibition, curated by Beth Rudin DeWoody, will feature works by Louise Bourgeois (Season 2) and Kiki Smith (Season 2) among others.

• Opening that same day at Paul Kasmin Gallery (in the Chelsea art district) is an exhibition of new paintings by Walton Ford (Season 2). Works on view include In The Island, a painting conjuring the paranoia that caused Tasmanian settlers to hunt thylacines into extinction in the 20th century. The show continues through December 23.

• And last but not least, the exhibition Roni Horn aka Roni Horn at the Whitney Museum of American Art has been reviewed by Roberta Smith of the New York Times. She writes of Horn (Season 3): “She has expanded the art of drawing with works that swing dramatically between intimate and monumental. Her method involves splicing two or more smaller sheets with nearly identical images into a single very large one — a process that cannily combines carving, cartography and quilting. In breathtaking photographs she has documented the terrain, shoreline and geothermal wonders of Iceland, whose strange, isolated beauty is one of the mainstays of her art.” Read the entire piece here.