Vija Celmins. “Untitled (Web 3),” 2002. 1-color photogravure/aquatint/drypoint. Courtesy the artist and McKenzie Fine Art, New York, NY.
In this week’s roundup Vija Celmins is cast in a web, Ellen Gallagher covers a glossy, Ai Weiwei drops his first music album, Carrie Mae Weems arrives in Cleveland, and more.
- Vija Celmins is included in a group exhibition at McKenzie Fine Art (New York, NY). Reticulate explores the work of artists who employ various types of reticulation or imagery of webs and nets. The show includes Celmins’s print of a gossamer-fine spiderweb that, according to the press release, “conveys uniqueness and visual complexity, strength as well as vulnerability.” Reticulate is on view through August 17.
- Ellen Gallagher‘s work covers the summer issue of TATE ETC., the magazine of Tate Modern (London, UK). The Tate’s large-scale exhibition Ellen Gallagher: AxME (not to be confused with Ellen Gallagher: Don’t Axe Me now up at the New Museum in New York) is on view through September 1, 2013. In the magazine, artist Theaster Gates comments on Gallagher’s work.
- Ai Weiwei has released his first music album The Divine Comedy, which includes the single “Dumbass” about his 2011 detention in China. The full album has five other songs in which Ai comments on his experience and reflects on China’s current conditions.
- Ai Weiwei‘s bronze sculpture, Circle of Animals/Zodiac Heads, was unveiled in the reflecting pool of Nathan Phillips Square in front of Toronto City Hall. The installation, which will be in place until September 22, precedes the Art Gallery of Ontario’s presentation of Ai Weiwei: According to What?, which opens August 17.
- El Anatsui was interviewed for the Weekend Review in Gulf News. He speaks with Jyoti Kalsi about his show at Guggenheim Abu Dhabi, where his piece Earth’s Skin is held in the permanent collection.
- Carrie Mae Weems has a solo exhibition at the Cleveland Art Museum. Carrie Mae Weems: Three Decades of Photography and Video features selections from the 1980s and early 1990s that explore constructions of identity; historical events and disempowerment; and the role of place in the artist’s examinations of racism, slavery, and imperialism. The show opens June 30 and closes September 29.
- Yinka Shonibare MBE was interviewed for the British publication The Voice Online. In “Art Master: Yinka Shonibare MBE” the artist discusses why he decided to get involved with the show African Masters, and why he doesn’t think himself part of the Young British Artists (YBAs).
- Josephine Halvorson‘s students at Princeton University have partnered with the Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory (PPPL) on a unique art project. Halvorson and her students spent weeks painting objects such as metal beams and grates and an old telephone booth. The resulting artworks will be on display over the summer in a gallery at the laboratory. Read more about this cross-departmental collaboration on the PPPL website.