By Andrew Russeth 11/19/12 6:15pm

artists

charlesray-e1353362508977

Shoeless Ray: Charles Ray, Contemporary Art’s Most Obsessive Perfectionist, Has a New Show at Matthew Marks

A few years ago, Los Angeles–based artist Charles Ray had heart trouble that required surgery. After he recovered, one of his doctors told him that he should start walking as much as possible. “So I was taking these really long walks,” he told The Observer last week at the Matthew Marks Gallery in Chelsea, where an exhibition of his work has just gone on view. Every day, he said, he would find himself walking by the same bench at the corner of Wilshire Boulevard and Seventh Street, in Santa Monica, “and usually a homeless guy was on it, and I would talk to him and give him some money and stuff like that.” Read More

By Andrew Russeth 9/07/12 6:52pm

Don't Miss It!

Tony Smith, 'Untitled,' 1956. Concrete, 3 3/4 x 8 3/8 x 6 5/8 in. (© Tony Smith Estate / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / Courtesy Tony Smith Estate and Matthew Marks Gallery)

Tony Smith’s Untitled Concrete Sculpture at Matthew Marks

Last night, amid all of the mayhem of opening night in Chelsea, Matthew Marks’s smallest space on West 22nd Street, right next to 10th Avenue, was an oasis of calm at about a quarter to 8 p.m., perhaps because, looking through the gallery’s windows from the street, the display looked rather modest: just a few small sculptures sitting on podiums. Grander spectacles were on offer elsewhere. Read More

By Will Heinrich 2/21/12 5:31pm

Review

"17 Nov '62" (1962) by Anne Truit. (Courtesy Matthew Marks Gallery)

Transcendental Sublimation: ‘Anne Truitt: Drawings’ at Matthew Marks and ‘Happenings’ at the Pace Gallery

The late Anne Truitt, whose work is often associated with Minimalism, is best known for her freestanding, assertively self-effacing, brightly painted wooden pillars. Confronting and repossessing the history of sculpture and the nature of artistic ambition at a 90-degree angle, formally simple but psychologically complex to the point of opacity, they’re documents of a kind of transcendental sublimation. But the same quality illuminates the best of the several dozen drawings—pale graphite grids, saturated color fields, minimally figurative angles and lines—currently on view at Matthew Marks Gallery. Read More

By Andrew Russeth 10/04/11 6:00pm

GalleristNY in LA

Tim Nye's new gallery in Los Angeles, Nye+Brown. (Photo: Andrew Russeth)

The Best Coast: Will New York Dealers Succeed in Los Angeles?

“Hollywood is so much sexier than the art world,” Berlin-based art dealer Javier Peres was telling The Observer. “There’s much more hype, there’s more cash flowing at it. The art world in Los Angeles has always competed with Hollywood, and it’s always been a tough struggle.”

We were speaking with Mr. Peres in the convention center in downtown L.A. that last week housed the brand new art fair Art Platform Los Angeles, a venture of Merchandise Mart, the same company that owns New York’s Armory Show. It was the opening day of the fair, and Mr. Peres was exhibiting there; visitors were pouring through the doors at a steady clip. Meanwhile, the well-funded Getty Foundation was opening “Pacific Standard Time,” a series of exhibitions on postwar California art that spans scores of museums and commercial galleries and runs for the next six months.

It looked like art might be giving Hollywood a run for its money. Or, at least, that’s what a group of New York dealers setting up shop here are hoping. Read More

By Sarah Douglas 9/30/11 10:12am

new galleries

A rendering of the future Matthew Marks Gallery in West Hollywood with a facade embellished by Ellsworth Kelly. VIA NEW YORK TIMES

Musing On Marks’ New LA Space

At last! After a long wait we finally know the details of veteran New York art dealer Matthew Marks’ plans for a Los Angeles branch. For almost two years the news has been simmering away on the art world’s back burner, with no word from the Marks camp as to exact dates. We heard West Hollywood and — well, that was about the extent of it. We heard something about West Hollywood. And now, with the Art Platform fair opening in Los Angeles today, as well as all the “Pacific Standard Time” business — for those of you who have been living on the moon, that is a very very large exhibition devoted to California art — Mr. Marks has spoken. And in an unexpected venue, The New York Times. Read More