Arturo Herrera. Detail from "Chicago" (2012). © Arturo Herrera. Courtesy Corbett vs. Dempsey.
In this week’s roundup, Arturo Herrera presents a series; a Jeff Koons retrospective; Laurie Anderson and Cindy Sherman are honored; and more.
- Arturo Herrera opened a show of collages at Corbett vs. Dempsey (Chicago). Series features groups of related collages ranging from diptychs to ten-piece works, each cluster of work providing a different vantage on the nature of a series as a theme. Series is presented simultaneously in three different galleries: Corbett vs Dempsey, Thomas Dane Gallery (London), and Sikkema Jenkins & Co. (NYC). The Corbett vs. Dempsey show closes June 23.
- Jeff Koons‘s retrospective is on view at Fondation Beyeler (Basel). The show focuses on three central series of works: New, Banality and Celebration – which represent crucial stages in Koons’s development and lead to the nucleus of his thinking and creative activity. The New comprises the ready-made-like cleaning appliances of his early period, symbols of newness and purity. This work is on view through September 2.
[youtube:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BIaJpo7HTUU]
- Cao Fei: Simulus at Surrey Art Gallery (Vancouver) features work by Cao Fei. The show includes an interactive game environment and two films constructed from “real” events that have taken place in the simulated online environment Second Life. Apocalypse Tomorrow depicts an expansive seascape where the viewer-player, as a stoic, surfboarding monk, must avoid obstacles made up of familiar architectural forms and monuments from China’s recent past. Videos from the RMB City are composed of montaged scenes from a fictional city collaged from existing cities in turn-of-the-millennium China. The exhibition closes June 10.
- Mark Dion has brought his vision to the Explorers Club (NYC) for Phantoms of the Clark Expedition. Dion was commissioned to create the new work as part of the Institute’s commemoration of the centennial of the 1912 publication of Through Shên-kan: The Account of the Clark Expedition in North China, 1908–9. The installation consists of a series of dioramas and sculptures representing objects and specimens that would have been used or collected during expeditions that occurred in that era. This work is on view through August 3.
- Hiroshi Sugimoto’s current exhibition at the Pace Gallery (Beijing) features gelatin silver prints that elegantly demonstrate the value Sugimoto places on the technical aspects of photography. Through a keen understanding of the nuances of silver-print making, he captures the medium’s full potential for tonal richness in his seemingly infinite palette of blacks, whites, and grays. This, his first solo exhibition in China, closes July 7.
- Cindy Sherman was recently awarded the Roswitha Haftmann Swiss Prize. The Roswitha Haftmann jury awarded Sherman for being, next to Andy Warhol, the most important representative of film and photographic introspection. Since 2001, the Haftmann Prize has been awarded each year by the Roswitha Haftmann Foundation to “a living artist who has created a work of outstanding quality” according to the foundation’s press release.
- Laurie Anderson has been named Inaugural Distinguished Artist in Residence at EMPAC (Troy, NY). The residency provides Anderson with wide access to space, technology, and support for creative experimentation, but just as important, brings the artist into ongoing dialogue with students and faculty at the nation’s oldest technological university.
- Laurie Anderson: BOAT at Vito Schnabel (NYC) is the first exhibition of Laurie Anderson‘s series of paintings that bring the scale of the theater onto the canvas. The show also includes a video installation, From the Air, in which Anderson has created a three-dimensional holographic reality. A series of drawings titled Lolabelle in the Bardo depicts the forty-nine day transition described in The Tibetan Book of the Dead as the period between death and rebirth. The show closes June 23.
- Carrie Mae Weems is collaborating with pianist Geri Allen on a multimedia installation for Celebrate Brooklyn! (NYC). This event is one of New York City’s longest running, free, outdoor performing arts festivals and was launched in 1979 as a catalyst for a Brooklyn performing arts scene and to bring people back into Prospect Park after years of neglect. The festival will take place June 5 – August 11.
- Mark your calendars now for LaToya Ruby Frazier: A Haunted Capital at the Brooklyn Museum (NYC). The show will contain more than 40 snapshots by LaToya Ruby Frazier that feature the artist’s family and the city of Braddock in Pennsylvania where she grew up. The exhibition will run from June 29 – October 31.
- Laylah Ali: The Greenheads Series at Williams College Museum of Art (Williamstown, MA) will feature over forty of Laylah Ali’s Greenheads created between 1996 and 2005. According to the Museum’s website, these gouache-on-paper works “chronicle the development of her dramatis personae—thin, round-headed two-dimensional beings of indeterminate sex and race—who anticipate, respond to, or enact unseen power struggles.” The exhibition will run August 18 – November 25.