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Gaetano Pesce Will Bring Inflatable Facade to Aspen
Known as a Postmodern rulebreaker whose work goes against the grain, Gaetano Pesce has remained steadfast in his risk-taking approach that blurs the boundaries between art, design, and architecture for decades. This outlook takes center stage in his first-ever facade intervention at the Aspen Art Museum next spring, where he will cover the entire edifice with a monumental inflatable structure that depicts the sun setting over a mountain landscape.
“For the Aspen Art Museum, I risked creating a kitschy image for the sake of replacing the building’s gridlike façade with a view that’s close to the one I admired during the memorable time I spent in Aspen, the first city I visited in the U.S. and a place to which I’ve returned with pleasure over the years,” Pesce says. His intervention, called My Dear Mountains, will complement a showcase of his sculptures and furniture pieces at the museum’s ground-floor galleries.
To celebrate the holiday season, Tiffany & Co. reveals a Basquiat-themed advent calendar.
The heritage American jeweler is giving the advent calendar a decidedly opulent twist. Shortly after debuting the About Love campaign starring Beyoncé and Jay-Z, the LVMH-owned house is partnering with the estate of Jean-Michel Basquiat to adapt the artist’s 1982 painting Equals Pi into a collectible holiday cabinet packed with gifts for Christmas and Hanukkah observers alike.
Ithaca approves a first-in-the-nation plan to decarbonize all 6,000 of its buildings by 2030.
In an effort to “address climate change, economic inequality, and racial injustice,” the Upstate New York college town is starting to retrofit its 6,000 buildings with renewable energy sources under its ambitious Green New Deal Plan that targets carbon neutrality by 2030. With $100 million from private equity firm Alturus, Ithaca is preparing to phase out natural gas–powered stoves, install rooftop solar panels, and introduce high-efficiency heat pumps sourced from the air and ground through its Efficiency Retrofit and Thermal Load Electrification Program.
The erstwhile Santa Monica Post Office reopens as Vito Schnabel’s newest art gallery.
Despite closing in 2013, the former Santa Monica Post Office has reopened as a temporary pop-up exhibition space for Vito Schnabel. The New York gallerist has transformed the Depression-era structure into a 15,000-square-foot arts space, which will be hosting an retrospective of painter Francesco Clemente’s large, colorful works replete with dream-like symbolism until January 16. It’s the Naples-born, New York–based artist’s first exhibition in Los Angeles in nearly two decades.
Chinese artist Badiucao is staging a show in Italy despite Beijing’s attempts to shut it down.
Badiucao’s latest exhibition “China Is (Not) Nearby” has opened at Museo di Santa Giulia in Brescia, Italy, despite the Chinese government’s repeated attempts to shut it down. The Chinese Embassy in Rome alleges the exhibition, which includes sculptures of Molotov cocktails and posters critiquing the Beijing Winter Olympics, was “full of anti-Chinese lies,” and that individual artworks “spread false information and mislead the understanding of the Italian people.” Brescia and the museum, however, refused to censor the work of the Chinese-Australian dissident, who once worked as an apprentice to Ai Weiwei and has been repeatedly targeted by Beijing.
MCH Group cancels this year’s Baselworld, leading to the exit of its managing director.
On the heels of Geneva Watch Days, MCH Group has decided to cancel the watch trade show Baselworld. In a statement, the company said it simply needed more time to relaunch the event, which was slated to take place in late March. The decision is the latest blow to the troubled MCH Group during the pandemic, which also saw the cancellation of several editions of Art Basel and several major watch brands pulled out of Baselworld in recent years. Managing director Michel Loris-Melikoff, who held the position since 2018, will exit the company as a result.
