Displaying items by tag: installation

American artist Jeff Koons, who is best known for his reproductions of banal objects, has had a monumental year. In addition to a major installation (which closed last month) at 30 Rockefeller Plaza in New York, Koons is the subject of a retrospective at the Whitney Museum of American Art -- the institution’s final exhibit before moving to its new location in the Meatpacking District. The exhibition has been so popular, that the Whitney will stay open for 36 hours before the landmark retrospective closes on October 19. After its run at the Whitney, the Koons retrospective will head to the Centre Pompidou in Paris, where it will coincide with a display of works at the Musée du Louvre that will include examples of the artist’s “Balloon Rabbit,” “Balloon Swan,” and “Balloon Monkey” sculptures.

Beyond the museum world, the Koons craze is now spilling into New York’s fall auction season.

The enormous face emerging on the Mall in Washington is laid out on six acres of open space next to the Reflecting Pool and just west of the National World War II Memorial. Although workers were still constructing the image last week, using dark potting soil on a background of lighter-colored sand, an eye and the nose and chin of a young man were already clearly visible from high in the Washington Monument.

From ground level, Jorge Rodríguez-Gerada’s “Out of Many, One” looks like an eccentric landscaping project; but from the windows of the obelisk, more than 500 feet above the Mall, the work reveals an attractive young man in three-quarter profile, seeming to stare through a large gap formed by trees.

The Royal Academy of Arts presents the first major retrospective of Anselm Kiefer’s work to be held in the UK. Considered to be one of the most important artists of his generation, the exhibition spans over forty years from Kiefer’s early career to the present time, bringing together artwork from international private and public collections. The exhibition has been arranged chronologically, presenting the epic scale of his artwork and the breadth of media he has used throughout his career, including painting, sculpture, photography and installation. Kiefer has also created a number of works conceived specifically for the Royal Academy’s Main Galleries, showcasing his continued interest in seeking new challenges and producing ever more ambitious artwork.

Get ready for a new public installation. A monumental sculpture featuring the animal heads of the traditional Chinese zodiac will be unveiled on September 17 outside the Adler Planetarium. “Circle of Animals/Zodiac Heads: Bronze” is by Ai Weiwei, a leading figure in the contemporary art world and China’s most outspoken political artist.

China considers Weiwei such a threat to its national security that they revoked his passport several years ago, and he is not allowed to leave the country.

The Texas Department of Transportation has reached an agreement with the foundation Ballroom Marfa to preserve Elmgreen & Dragset’s iconic conceptual installation “Prada Marfa.” Ballroom Marfa, a non-profit organization that doubles as a contemporary cultural arts space, has been battling to preserve the sculpture for nearly a year. The government threatened to shut down the life-size replica of a Prada store, which stands on a deserted stretch of West Texas highway, because it could be considered an illegal roadside advertisement under state law.

To resolve the problem, Ballroom Marfa decided to lease the land underneath “Prada Marfa” and register the site as an art museum. Elmgreen & Dragset’s building will be the museum’s sole art exhibit.

Brooke Kamin Rapaport, the curator who shepherded an art world set piece in Madison Square Park on Friday, called what was being installed “the great levitating sculpture.”

The sculpture was “Points of View” and consisted of three extremely tall, extremely heavy pieces, but none of them rose from the ground and floated magically through the air. There were no David Blaine maneuvers, no seemingly impossible sleight of hand.

YBA Douglas Gordon is set to collaborate with pianist Hélène Grimaud on a large-scale commissioned piece that will debut in the Park Avenue Armory’s 55,000-square-foot drill hall on December 10 and run through January 4. A “monumental installation and performance piece” titled “tears become … streams become … ,” the piece is inspired by water and brings a giant pool of the stuff into the armory.  Grimaud is set to activate the space with nighttime performances of water-inspired works by composers including Debussy, Ravel, and Liszt from December 9 through 21, while a player piano will play during the day.

Damien Hirst’s first solo exhibition in Sweden opens on 29 August, at McCabe Fine Art in Stockholm. Known for producing art that breaks boundaries and explores the relationships between art, science, religion, death and beauty, Hirst has developed a wide-ranging artistic practice that includes installation, sculpture, painting and drawing. In the twenty-six years since he emerged as a leading member of the Young British Artists (YBA) movement with ‘Freeze’, the seminal exhibition curated by Hirst in 1988, the artist has risen to international fame with iconic works that include the shark suspended in formaldehyde ("The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living," 1991) and the diamond-encrusted skull ("For the Love of God," 2007). Painting has also remained an important aspect of Hirst’s practice with prolific series including the "Spot Paintings," "Spin Paintings" and the "Kaleidoscopes"; in which vibrantly colored butterfly wings are arranged in intricate patterns and stuck into household gloss paint.

In 2008 Hirst created a series of one hundred and fifty "Psalm" paintings, each named after an Old Testament psalm.

The city is in the process of installing eight temporary sculptures, most at locations up and down the lakefront, according to Mayor Rahm Emanuel's office.

While the mayor's office announced the installations "are coming to neighborhoods across Chicago," seven of the eight are going up near the lake.

Three sculptures have been installed, according to officials: 'Untitled, 2013' by Christopher Wool, at Buckingham Plaza North; 'Nature’s Clock' by Robert Lobe, at the intersection of McFetridge and Museum drives on the Museum Campus; and Lobe's 'Eastern Hophornbeam,' at Diversey Harbor.

The inaugural installation of a biennial art exhibition, performances by Ronald K. Brown’s Evidence dance company, and a screening of Gia Coppola’s film “Palo Alto,” with a live performance of its score by Devonté Hynes are among the highlights of the fall season at BRIC House, the multimedia arts center in Brooklyn.

The art exhibition, BRIC Biennial: Volume 1, Downtown Edition, will include works by more than two dozen artists, including pieces built of found objects (particularly copies of The Village Voice) by Scherezade Garcia, paintings by Vince Contarino and large-scale works on paper by Ruby Onyinyechi Amanze. The exhibition opens on Sept. 20 and is to run through Dec. 14.