Antony Gormley to confront Hong Kong’s raw nerves by placing sculptures on its rooftops

Just over a year ago, thousands of pro-democracy protesters took over Hong Kong’s busiest thoroughfares. This month, 31 life-sized naked bodies made by Antony Gormley fr om cast iron and fibreglass will infiltrate the skyline, overlooking some of the same streets. The arrival of the British artist’s Event Horizon, which is due to be unveiled […]

Ai Weiwei’s Tree Installation At The Royal Academy

“Ai’s trees are made from parts of dead trees that are brought down from the mountains of southern China and sold in the markets of Jingdezhen, Jiangxi province. Ai transports these to his studio in Beijing where they are made into trees. As he says, “it’s just like trying to imagine what the tree looked […]

Artlyst Podcast: Tim Marlow And Adrian Locke Discuss Ai Weiwei At The RA

Artlyst recently attended the press view of the Royal Academy of Arts’ landmark exhibition of the Honorary Royal Academician, Ai Weiwei. Where the chief curators of this outstanding show, Tim Marlow, and Adrian Locke were kind enough to give Artlyst – and a host of other journalists – a tour of Ai Weiwei’s impressive retrospective. […]

Artlyst Photo Special: Ai Weiwei At The Royal Academy Of Arts

The Royal Academy of Arts is currently presenting a landmark exhibition of the Honorary Royal Academician, Ai Weiwei. Although Ai is one of China’s leading contemporary artists, his work has not been seen extensively in Britain and the Royal Academy is presenting the first major institutional survey of his artistic output. The exhibition includes significant […]

Right Wing Politician Says Anish Kapoor ‘Has Declared War on France’

Anish Kapoor had no idea what he was getting into when he accepted the invitation to install artworks in the gardens of Versailles. On September 30, right wing politician Fabien Bouglé, a local councilman, published an article on the website of Nouvel Observateur in which he claims that the artist “has declared war on France” […]

The New Vancouver Art Gallery: A Generous Building

When the Vancouver Art Gallery revealed their conceptual design for a new building earlier this week, it was evidently a far cry from their current neoclassical courthouse.  Gone are the ionic columns, ornate marble and porticos; instead, Swiss architectural firm Herzog and de Meuron has developed a soaring, wood-wrapped structure with boxy levels that recalls West Coast […]

Anish Kapoor Forced by French Court to Remove Anti-Semitic Vandalism from Versailles Sculpture

Anish Kapoor returns to Versailles tomorrow, September 22, to commence his artistic intervention on the sculpture Dirty Corner, which has been vandalized three times since its installation in the gradens of Versailles in June. But the artist, who initially announced that he would leave the massive steel artwork untouched after it had been smeared with anti-semitic […]

The New Broad Museum Brings LA Lots of Blue-Chip Art and a Few Surprises

The wait is over. After a 15-month delay, ballooning costs, and lawsuits, the Broad Museum is finally set to open this Sunday in downtown Los Angeles. The new 120,000 square foot institution houses the postwar and contemporary art collection of Eli and Edythe Broad. For the past four decades, the couple has had an outsized […]

Royal Academician Ai Weiwei Opens Landmark Survey At Royal Academy Of Arts

The Royal Academy of Arts will present a landmark exhibition of the Honorary Royal Academician, Ai Weiwei. Although Ai is one of China’s leading contemporary artists, his work has not been seen extensively in Britain and the Royal Academy will present the first major institutional survey of his artistic output. The exhibition will include significant […]

Ai Weiwei review – momentous and moving

Three-thousand porcelain river crabs clamber over one another in a great red, green and white sprawl of twitching legs and claws. Porcelain sunflower seeds are one thing, crabs another. Good thing they’re not quite real. This is but one small moment in the largest show Ai Weiwei has held in Britain. Not exactly a retrospective, […]

The road to Ai Weiwei

Having settled in at the RA, Marlow is about to launch his first major exhibition: the work of Ai Weiwei, the Chinese dissident artist who was imprisoned without charge in 2011 and released on condition that he should give up his passport. A thorn in the Chinese government’s side for two decades, he has made […]

Anish Kapoor must reconsider – Dirty Corner should be cleaned

Public art often gets scarred by battles over its meaning or right to exist, but the vandals who daubed antisemitic graffiti on his sculpture are idiots who picked the wrong target. Anish Kapoor, it turns out, is not only a brilliant artist but a brave one. Faced with an antisemitic attack on his open-air sculpture […]

See These Awe-Inspiring James Turrell Works Around Europe You Probably Didn’t Know Existed

James Turrell’s work is as instantly recognizable as it is undefinable, existing somewhere between land art, light art, sculpture, and installation. Turrell has been exploring the nature of light and space since the 1960s, and in that time has created works all over the world from Yucatan to Japan, not to mention his yet-unfinished opus […]

Daniel Buren on his Career, Luxury Collaborations, And Why he “Hated” the Venice Biennale

At 77 years old, Daniel Buren has lost none of his disruptive streak and continues to talk frankly.  Throughout his career, Buren has challenged the viewer’s concept of space with his in-situ works. In 1971, in the Guggenheim Museum, he controversially installed a 66 x 32 ft. canvas banner with his signature vertical stripes, which […]

The Broad’s Big Debut

LOS ANGELES – Eli Broad is a man with a reputation for getting things done. After building two Fortune 500 companies from the ground up, he transferred his drive to philanthropy about fifteen years ago; his achievements have since included almost single-handedly creating a cultural centre for downtown Los Angeles, including its monumental anchor – the Frank […]

Theaster Gate’s Ambitious New Chicago Arts Centre

In October 2012, Chicago-based artist Theaster Gates bought a 70,000-square-foot building from the City of Chicago. Constructed in 1923, the building was previously Stony Island Trust & Savings Bank, located between Chicago’s Greater Grand Crossing and South Shore neighborhoods. The city was ready to demolish it; Gates couldn’t let it go. The cost for this fixer-upper, […]

100 Antony Gormley Bodies Take Over Fort in Florence

Brunelleschi’s Dome, the architectural marvel that is in Florence’s Piazza del Duomo, may be one of the most breathtaking sights you’ll ever encounter. Staging an art exhibition that can successfully compete with a view of that iconic building is a tall order, but Antony Gormley‘s current show, “Human” is up to the challenge. Perched on a hill overlooking […]

Australian gambling millionaire acquires acclaimed oil installation

Richard Wilson’s 20:50 work will leave the Saatchi Gallery in London, and head for David Walsh’s museum in Tasmania—but may go on a world tour first. The Australian collector David Walsh has bought the oil installation 20:50 by the UK sculptor Richard Wilson, one of the most talked about art interventions of the past 25 […]

7 Influential Installation Artworks You Should Know

Bursting out of the frame and off the pedestal, installation art has proven to be one of the most vital artistic innovations of the past century. Its practitioners—including Robert Smithson, Mike Kelley, and Yayoi Kusama—appreciate its anything-goes sensibility and relative absence of historical baggage. Individual installations may take the form of architectural interventions, taxonomic collections, or large-scale […]