Art News

An inside look at events and happenings in the contemporary art world.

Aaron Rothman, Wildflowers (PVGM1), 2015, inkjet print; 20 x 25". Courtesy the artist and Rick Wester Fine Art, New York.Signal Noise
The Cleveland Museum of Art presents a new exhibition, Signal Noise: Aaron Rothman, featuring a collection spanning 10 years of landscape studies of the American West. The exhibition delves into Rothman’s deep connection to the desert region and his use of digital photography and print media. Taking interest in the humbler sights, Rothman dedicated his focus to desert rocks and sky while adding an element of abstractionism through digital processing. Thirty-five of his photographs will be on view, some altered and some left as they were originally taken. Rothman’s exploration of the natural and artificial world will be on view February 15 to May 17.

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Willie Cole, Man Spirit Mask, 1999, triptych, photo etching printed in brown with embossing and hand coloring (left); screenprint with lemon juice and scorching (center); photo etching and color woodcut (right). Lee M. Friedman Fund. © Willie Cole.

Personal Space
Themes of race, gender, identity and the self are the main focuses of Personal Space: Self Portraits on Paper at Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. Through self-portraits, the exhibition questions if an image of one’s face can depict more than just physical appearance and delve deeper into the human experience. Dozens of works on paper featured in the exhibition explore this idea through straight-forward depictions of artists as well as more conceptual modes of expression. Works spanning the 20th century to modern day will be on view from February 8 to June 21, showcasing the evolution of the self-portrait and where the genre may be heading.

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Kerry James Marshall, Vignette (Wishing Well), 2010. © Kerry James Marshall. Courtesy the artist and Jack Shainman Gallery, New York.Making Community
Making Community: Prints From Brandywine Workshop and Archives, held by the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, explores the collaboration that printmaking enables between artists and printers. This partnership is highlighted in the exhibition through nearly 100 works, giving a look into 40 years of American printmaking and the evolution of mediums used throughout the years. Traditional and new methods are shown in the exhibition alongside works by lesser known artists. From February 1 through April 12, the layers of intimacy between the artist and printmaker will be pulled back and shown new light.

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The 2019 Frieze Los Angeles. Photo by Mark Blower. Courtesy Mark Blower/Frieze.

Frieze LA
The annual Frieze Los Angeles art fair will be returning to Paramount Studios on February 14 to 16, bringing together a vast collection of local and international contemporary art. Works by both emerging and established artists will be on view alongside a curated program of films, lectures and artists’ projects shown at the backlot movie set at Paramount. Sixty of the most significant galleries around the globe will be showcasing alongside independent artists, making for a memorable and culturally rich event.

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Gus Casely-Hayford. Courtesy the Victoria and Albert Museum, London.

Gus Casely-Hayford first director of V&A East
This past November, the Victoria and Albert Museum in London appointed Gus Casely-Hayford as the first director of its new outpost, V&A East. While the outpost—currently under construction in Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park—is expected to be completed in 2023, Casely-Hayford will be responsible for developing the creative strategy and programming for the five-story museum beginning this spring. The British curator, cultural historian and broadcaster currently serves as director of the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African Art in Washington, D.C.

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Viewers observe Pat Steir’s large-scale paintings during Pat Steir: Color Wheel.Color Wheel
Pat Steir: Color Wheel is the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden’s largest painting installation to date, covering the entire second floor of the Hirshhorn’s inner-circle galleries. The 400-foot space is dedicated to Steir’s 30 large-scale paintings, each one coming together to produce an immersive color wheel. The paintings feature pours of complementary colors over a monochrome background, continuing the artist’s signature style of meticulous brushwork and multiple layers of dripped paint. Steir’s techniques are inspired by harmony and nature rooted in Zen-Buddhist and Daoist ideologies, and the bright contrasts of the pieces offer an exploration of how a flat surface can be turned into a multidimensional, transcendent space.