With his early influence in the Conceptual Art movement, and with the written word having established a popular presence in Contemporary Art (Barbara Kruger, Jenny Holtzer and Tracy Emin to name a few), Lawrence Weiner’s continuing contributions are as vital today as they have ever been.

Open now through March 28, 2010, are two European exhibitions by Weiner. BAK (Utrecht, Netherlands) presents Dicht Bij, a solo exhibit that continues FORMER WEST, the institution’s long-term research and educational initiative commemorating the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall by exploring the impacts the event has had on the arts in the Western half of Germany. An edition, produced in a limited number of 300, is on sale at BAK for €8.

Simultaneously, the Castellón Center for Contemporary Art is hosting Weiner’s Under the Sun, comprised of a new exhibit and permanent public sculpture in the city’s El Pinar park.

Ai Yamaguchi opens Kiyu, a solo installation of new works at Mizuma Art Gallery, Tokyo (Ichigaya Tamachi location), this Wednesday, Feb. 10. Here, we present images from her installation with the gallery during the 2009 Art Fair Tokyo.

(All Images © Ninyu Works)

Ai Yamaguchi – Kiyu
Feb. 10 – March 10
Mizuma Art Gallery
2F Kagura Bldg., 3-13
Ichigayatamachi Shinjuku-ku, Tokyo 162-0843

Kiki Smith - Soujourn opens Feb. 12 at The Brooklyn Museum (NY) The site specific installation loosely follows the life cycle of a a woman artist, reaching beyond the autobiographical, drawing on a variety of universal experiences, such as birth and death, religion, mythology, spirituality, and inspiration.

The show is a bit of a departure for Smith, who is widely know for her sculptural work. In an interview with NY1, she reflected, “Primarily, this is a drawing show, which is really an exciting opportunity for me, because I rarely have that chance to just show graphic work. And it’s sort of punctuated a little bit by sculpture but the sculpture is to just ground the room or something like that and the pieces are more like in some other realm or something like that…you make works and they’re all autonomous works, but they all also have the opportunity to be dynamic and play with one another and be in relationship to one another. And so each time you install something, it’s like making theatre in a way and so each part become, has its own, maybe like agency or something like that. Each part becomes active and alive, but the story as a whole then emerges out of that.”

Kiki Smith – Sojourn
Feb. 12 – Sept. 12 2010
Brooklyn Museum
200 Eastern Parkway
Brooklyn, NY 11238

This past September SFMOMA announced it had reached an initial agreement to house the collection of GAP founders, Doris and Donald Fisher (Mr. Fisher past away days after the announcement). While early reports speculated a 25 year arangement, exact terms were not revealed until late last week.

Eclipsing initial estimates, SFMOMA will become the official home of the Fisher collection for the next  100 years. The museum also announced that an additional $250 million in endowment funds have been raised (largely a result of donations from the Fisher family, trustees and museum chairman, Charles Schwab), and that a new wing would be built to house the 1,100+ piece collection which currently resides in GAP corporate headquarters.

Donald Fisher at Gap headquarters (Image: Mike Kane/The San Francisco Chronicle)

The century long partnership will kick off June 25, when the museum opens Calder to Warhol: Introducing the Fisher Collection. The exhibit, part of SFMOMA’s ongoing 75th anniversary celebration, is slated to feature some 160 pieces from the Fisher’s astounding contemporary art collection, including works by Ellsworth Kelly, Gerhard Richter, Roy Lichtenstein, Richard Serra, Dan Flavin, Philip Guston, Lee Krasner, Joan Mitchell, Frank Stella, Cy Twombly, Willem de Kooning, Richard Diebenkorn, and Brice Marden to name a few.

David Hockney – Interior With Sun and Dog. (Image © David Hockney/Doris And Donald Fisher Collection, via SFGate)

Brice Marden – The Sisters, 1991-93. (Image © Brice Marden/Artists Rights Society/Doris & Donald Fisher Collection, via MuseumViews)

More at the Wall Street Journal, SF Gate and LA Times

Shepard Fairey’s museum survey makes it third stop, opening at the Contemporary Arts Center of Cincinnati on Saturday, Feb. 20. The artist was first shown at CAC in 2004, as part of the Beautiful Losers group exhibition. A free public reception will take place the night of Feb. 19, with Fairey doubling as dj.  As with the previous installments at the Boston ICA and Andy Warhol Museum of Pittsburgh, CAC store will be offering a limited edition print, created exclusively for the Contemporary Arts Center.

It should come as little surprise that Jeffrey Deitch will also make good on taking over representation for Fairey shortly before accepting the position as the new director of LA MOCA. – Word is expect a solo show this April.

Shepard Fairey – Supply and Demand
Contemporary Arts Center of Cincinnati
Feb. 20 – August 22
44 E. 6th Street
Cincinnati, OH 45202

A new quarterly report from ArtTactic announces that the researchfirm’s Confidence Indicator for US and European contemporary art markets has significantly rebounded since reaching a low point in November 2008. The Indicator now stands 4% higher than the autumn 2007 reading, shortly after the first signs ofthe credit crisis emerged. However, while short term analysis seems hopeful, sustainability remains uncertain.  47% of industry professionals surveyed believe the market has already rebounded, or is likely to do so within a year. On a positive note for collectors, speculation risk remains subdued, with no signals that speculators are returning to the market.

The full report may be purchased from the ArtTactic website.

Around the turn of the century 20th century, the U.S. embarked down a road of increasingly restrictive immigration policies, including the Chinese Exclusion (1882) and Emergency Quota Acts (1921, 1924). Such foreign policy effectively stifled the influx of immigrants, while appeasing growing nativist concerns. Included here was the Gentleman’s Agreement (1907), a mutual arrangement whereby the U.S. would not extend such restrictions to Japan, as long as the island empire agreed to cut off all further emigration to the U.S.  And while the goal was partly to cool relations between the two nations, competing imperialistic hungers eventually reignited tensions that sparked the Pacific front of the Second World War. By 1942 FDR had signed Executive Order 9066, forcibly relocating over 100,000 Japanese-Americans to internment camps. It was only in 1988 that the federal government acknowledged the prejudice of its past policy, paying over $1.5 billion in reparations.

With In Case You’re Lost, Tomokazu Matsuyama not only works towards reconciling the cultural tensions of his own Japanese-American identity, but addresses larger issues of nationalism and global relations. Here is a complex mix of autobiographical and socio-political commentary.

Surrounded by new paintings are the show’s centerpieces – two large-scale sculptures that contemplate notions of cultural heritage and nationalism, flip-flopping symbols of American and Asian identity. Wherever I Am, a life-size reworking of Frederick Remington’s Bronco Buster, recasts the famed late 19th century American sculpture with a Japanese-pop sensibility, replacing the iconic cowboy rider with a Playmobil character. Chogen, based off the original 13th century Japanese treasure,  substitutes the praying monk’s prayer beads for beer cans and cigarette butts, and his original meditative state, for a glazed-over drunken one.

Speaking of the new sculpture, Matsu notes, “I wanted to keep that rigourous, very expressionistic feature but flip to an American context, so what I did was I made him an alchoholic – like a drunk man in a sports bar…From a distance, he looks somewhat fanatic like its original. Close up, you’ll see his eye focus is gone and he’s just drunk. The eyes are actual glass eyes, made of gold leaf inside with the addition of my painting color scheme of neon pink and dark brown. The sculpture looks aged and few centuries old but the material used to paint it looks like 70s auto paint…[colliding] aged with the contemporary art material.”

Tomokazu Matsuyama - In Case You’re Lost
Frey Norris Gallery
456 Geary Street
San Francisco, CA 94102

This week, master of his own hype, Mr. Brainwash opens his first New York show in 15,000 of trendy downtown Meat Packing District real estate. With invites delivered and location already revealed for the private preview this Thursday, expect plenty of  hype to disseminate prior to the general opening on Sunday, Feb. 14.

We’ll let you be the judge.

When the hammer came down at $92.5 million ($104 million with fees) this past Wednesday evening, Alberto Giacometti’s Walking Man I broke the world record for a single work of art sold at auction. The six foot bronze eclipsed initial estimates of aprox. $19 million – $29 million, and was offered as part of Sotheby’s London Impressionist and Modern Art Evening Sale after being consigned by the German Dresdner Bank. The monumental sale breaks the previous record, which was set in 2004 when Picasso’s Boy With a Pipe sold (view lot record) at the auction house in New York for $104.1 million.

Seminal works by KAWS finally make an appearance in a high-end auction format with Phillips de Pury’s upcoming London  Day Sale of Contemporary Art. After a multi-year drought at auction of this level, KAWS artwork will be offered to the public on February 13. With an estimate of £10,000-15,000 or $16,300-$24,500, the market for the artist will indeed be in the spotlight. There are two lots available, one consisting of a two-piece set of ’skull’ canvases; the other of baby photographs, disrupted with other signature characters by the artist.