Inevitable Figuration at the PECCI Center

Inevitable Figuration at the PECCI Center for Contemporary Art

A selection of painters from 1960s to the present. Painters draw upon the past while experimenting with present challenges to image-making. Curated by Marco Bazzini and David Ferri. Works by Richard Aldrich, Mamma Andersson, Helene Appel, Michael Bauer, Luca Bertolo, Joe Bradley, Peter Linde Busk, Pierpaolo Campanini, William Daniels, Avner Ben-Gal, Thomas Helbig, Merlin James, Rezi van Lankveld, Katy Moran, Marco Neri, Alessandro Pessoli, Tal R, and Matthias Weischer. On view from March 24 to July 8, 2013 at Pecci Center for Contemporary Art, Prato. Viale della Repubblica, 277. Text by Yanyan Huang and photograph by Marco Annunziata

Paddle 8 Holds Auction To Support Friends in Deed

Paddle 8 Holds Auction To Support Friends in Deed cecil_beaton

Virtual auction house Paddle 8 is currently holding a sale to support Friends In Deed. The sale includes a number of recognized artists and works from the Friends In Deed archive, including some stunning photographs by David Armstrong, Cecil Beaton, Robert Mapplethorpe, Bert Stern and more. Friends In Deed is a crisis center providing emotional and spiritual support for anyone with a diagnosis of HIV/AIDS, cancer or other life-threatening physical illnesses, any caregivers, family and friends of those who are ill, and anyone dealing with grief and bereavement. All of their services are free of charge. Bidding is now open and ends April 8th at 3pm EST (sign up or registernow to access bidding).

The Player at Museo Marini Marino

The Player (journey into contemporary passions) is a small selection comprising of international mid-career artists from the collection of Sandra and Giancarlo Bonollo. Comprising of philosophically intimate objects effused with the theme of travel. Globes positioned in a snail-shell whirl espouse many-worlds theories, as do photographs of allegorical space and time. Quietly haunting, the show is an orchestration of journeys and possibilities. This journey takes you across invisible borders, across separate timelines and back again. The Player will be on view until April 6 2013, at Museo Marini Marino, Piazza san Pancrazio, 50123 Florence, Italy. Text and photography by Yanyan Huang

Rita Ackermann's "Negative Muscle" at Hauser & Wirth

In Rita Ackermann's art, the systematic and the accidental are kept in a state of constant dialogue and debate. Balance and the effort to achieve it have become the main focus of her process, and a kind of magical flux has become both the subject and condition of her art. Nowhere is the alchemy of Ackermann's work more vivid than in the group of seventeen paintings made between the years of 2010 and 2013 and presented in Negative Muscle, the artist's first exhibition with Hauser & Wirth in New York, opening 5 March 2013.The exhibition takes its title from the very first painting Ackermann made following an intensive collaboration with filmmaker Harmony Korine on 'Shadow Fux', their 2010 exhibition of jointly-made collages at the Swiss Institute of Contemporary Art, New York NY. Negative Muscle will be on view until April 20. 2013 at Hauser & Wirth, 32 East 69th Street, New York. photographs by Annabel Graham

Reckless Project No. 1 With Oliver Osbourne @ Cura

Reckless_Project_With_Oliver_Osbourne_Cura

Cura is a magazine, publishing house, and project space. British artist Oliver Osborne shows his leafy paintings for Cura's inaugural basement show. Reckless Project No. 1 with Guest Oliver Osbourne will be on view until March 25, 2013 at Cura, via Ricciotti, 4, Rome. Text by Yanyan Huang and photograph by Marco Annunziata

Ai Wei Wei at Galeria Continua

Ai Wei Wei at Galeria Continua Yanyan Huang

Roundish and shiny, black porcelain glops rest contentedly on the floor in a corner of Galeria Continua. Aptly titled "Oil Spils", these glops tie in the ancient Chinese porcelain craft with the realities of dependence on fossil fuels for globalization. Oil dependency seeps into every aspect of our life, from food and transportation to entertainment and culture. With its need to consume natural resources at almost all levels of production, art is no exception. Ai Wei Wei's exhibition was on view at Galeria Continua in San Gimignano and ended on February 16. Photograph by Galeria Continua, text by Yanyan Huang

MARK MULRONEY @ Mixed Greens

Mixed Greens presents Mark Mulroney’s fifth solo exhibition with the gallery, entitled We're Never Getting Rescued With That Attitude. The drawings, carved wood panels, murals, and objects shows began with the simple vision of a man stranded on a desert island with a palm tree, two coconuts, and maybe a girl. While many people spent time in 2012 contemplating the Mayan calendar and mankind’s eventual demise, Mulroney turned his focus to the idea of paradise. Ageless one-liner jokes involving a man stranded on an island began to remind him of his own situation in the studio. The simple idea of the studio-as-island quickly gave way to a more complicated vision where the island is both an escape and a prison.We're Never Getting Rescued With That Attitude will on view until March 16, 2013 at Mixed Greens, 531 W. 26th Street, First Floor, New York, New York. Photographs by Austin McManus 

Andrea Kvas CAMPO @ Museo Marino Marini

Thin, uniform slabs of painted wood lean against the corners of Museo Marino Marini's Sacello (underground Chapel). Splotches of vibrant and saturated colors betray the skill of a lackadaisical fence painter who couldn't be bothered to finish his work. Or maybe he decided to import his leftovers. Applications of paint have been built up in layers and each fragment stands on its own as a sliver of a painting, each hinting at their individual grand potential. At eye level, a section laid diagonally between two walls blocks passage and demands attention. The impressions of paint create an interchangeable visual rhythm. Though immobile, the slabs emanate stoicism in their collective involvement: "United we stand, divided we fall", they seem to say. In the adjacent altar room where thick polyurethane and wooden branches have been piled up on a windowsill, we're left no choice but to imagine a post-catastrophic world - one where vestiges of culture are kept on hand only for fuel and heating purposes. Unable to afford the luxury of optimism in our time of economic turmoil, where historic buildings have been sold off to banks and museums have shuttered their doors for the lack of resources, Kvas's sculptures map out a desolate landscape. At least we're given the choice to rid ourselves of the remnants or participate in regeneration. Andrea Kvas's Campo, curated by Barbara Casavecchia, will be on view until April 6, 2013 at Museo Marino Marini, Piazza di San Pancrazio, Florence, Italy. Text and photography by Yanyan Huang 

Adel Abdessemed Le Vase Abominable

hjub_AdelAbdessemedAdelAbdessemedJesuisinnocent2012DigitalCprint230x177cmCourtesytheartistandDavidZwirner

David Zwirner presents an exhibition of new works by Adel Abdessemed, on view at their recently opened London gallery. Le Vase Abominable is the artist’s third solo show with David Zwirner since joining the gallery in 2008. Across a wide range of media, Abdessemed transforms well-known materials and imagery into charged artistic declarations. The artist pulls freely from myriad sources—personal, historical, social, and political—to create a visual language that is simultaneously rich and economical, sensitive and controversial, radical and mundane. Le Vase Abominable will be on view from February 22, 2013 to March 30, 2013 atDavid Zwirner, 24 Grafton Street, London, UK

Solo exhibition by Jake & Dinos Chapman "Chicken"

Solo_exhibition_by_Jake_Dinos_Chapman_Chicken

The PinchukArtCentre (Kyiv, Ukraine) presents the first solo exhibition of Jake & Dinos Chapman in Ukraine titled Chicken. At the center of the exhibition stands the major new installation entitled, The Sum of all Evil (2013) that forms a synthesized reflection upon the central themes such as the Holocaust, violence, and death. Alongside this, the exhibition will include a number of iconic works by the Chapman brothers whose sharp subversive humour and unbridled aggression provokes controversy and questions moral contemporary taboos. Chicken will be on view until April 21, 2013 at The PinchukArtCentre, Baseina St, 2, Kiev, Київська, Ukraine

NYC 1993: Experimental Jet Set, Trash and No Star

Centering on 1993, the exhibition is conceived as a time capsule, an experiment in collective memory that attempts to capture a specific moment at the intersection of art, pop culture, and politics. The social and economic landscape of the early ’90s was a cultural turning point both nationally and globally. Conflict in Europe, attempts at peace in the Middle East, the AIDS crisis, national debates on health care, gun control, and gay rights, and caustic partisan politics were both the background and source material for a number of younger artists who first came to prominence in 1993. This exhibition brings together a range of iconic and lesser-known artworks that serve as both artifacts from a pivotal moment in the New York art world and as key markers in the cultural history of the city. On view now until May 26, 2013 at The New Museum, 235 Bowery New York, NY. 

Quadri da una Collezione @ Sensus

A selection of work curated by Claudio Cosma and Pier Luigi Iazzi. Artists include Tracy Emin, Fabrizio Corneli, Alighiero Boetti, James Lee Byars, Han Bing, and others. Available by appointment or on Saturday evenings from 6-8. On view until Feb 28 2013 at Sensus, Viale Gramsci, 42. Florence, Italy. Text and photography by Yanyan Huang 

Jean-Michel Basquiat @ Gagosian Gallery

gagosian_basquiat

Featuring over fifty works from public and private collections, the exhibition spans Basquiat’s brief but meteoric career, which ended with his death at the age of twenty-seven. Thirty years after Larry Gagosian first presented his work in Los Angeles, twenty years after the first posthumous survey at the Whitney Museum of American Art (1992–93), and eight years after the Brooklyn Museum of Art retrospective (2005), viewers will have a fresh opportunity to consider Basquiat’s central role in his artistic generation as a lightning rod and a bridge between cultures. On view until April 6, 2013 at Gagosian Gallery, 555 West 24th Street New York, NY