Opening at Friedman Benda this week, the London-based artist Jonathan Trayte invites you into an alternate universe of bizarre but friendly furnishings. In his first US solo exhibition, Fruiting Habits, Trayte creates a world of his own, filled with idiosyncratic functional objects with multiple uses. With a background in fine arts as well as in food service and as a foundry worker, Trayte brings a sense of humor and a playful interest in texture to this collection.
Art News
The Guggenheim Museum hosts the premiere performance of "Primitive Games," a new work by artist Shaun Leonardo, on June 21, 2018. Commissioned as part of the Guggenheim Social Practice initiative, Primitive Games is followed on June 22 by a symposium investigating how artists and organizations can come together to forge unexpected and revelatory experiences for the public.
Trevor Paglen is an award-winning artist whose work blurs the lines between art, science and investigative journalism to construct unfamiliar and at times unsettling ways to see and interpret the world. Trevor Paglen: Sites Unseen is the first exhibition to present Paglen’s early photographic series alongside his recent sculptural objects and new work with artificial intelligence.
Now at the Seattle Art Museum, Double Exposure juxtaposes the work of iconic early American photographer Edward S. Curtis with contemporary Indigenous artists Marianne Nicolson, Tracy Rector and Will Wilson. Double Exposure contrasts Curtis’s haunting photos of a world he believed would soon be lost with current artistic expressions of Indigenous culture that’s very much alive.
Paul Kasmin Gallery is opening a summer group show this week fit for the solstice. On June 21st, SEED debuts. As its title implies, themes of fertility, the body, sexuality, and the natural world abound. Curated by Yvonne Force, the 29 artists in the show work with variations of these themes in a range of media and styles.
From his Mexico City studio, Damián Ortega recounts his early career as a cartoonist and his struggles to find Spanish-language resources on contemporary art as a young artist. Given the 1979 interview "Dialogues with Marcel Duchamp" by his colleague and mentor, Gabriel Orozco, Ortega was challenged to grasp the content in English. Ortega asked an artist friend to translate the book into Spanish and the process morphed the text’s original content into something else profound. "It’s beautiful because at the end it’s Duchamp completely out of context," says Ortega.
In September 2018, Sotheby’s London will celebrate one of the most extraordinary art world collaborations of our times: that of Damien Hirst and his unstoppable business manager, mentor and ‘partner in crime’, Frank Dunphy.
One of the most valuable illustrated books ever produced, a first edition of John James Audubon’s “The Birds of America,” went up for auction at Christie’s in New York, June 14th, and sold for USD $9,650,000. This is nearly $2 million more than when this particular copy had sold to American collector Carl Knobloch in 2012 for $7.9 million.
The Met Museum in New York is a treasure trove of art, filled with masterpieces of human creativity, but what if it *wasn't* organized geographically or by time period? Is there a better way?
Learn more about Civilizations on PBS and how you can watch: http://www.pbs.org/civilizations/home/
A pair of French gilt bronzes sailed past their pre-auction estimates to boost the final total from Heritage Auctions' Fine & Decorative Arts Including Estates Auction beyond $2 million.
