Fresh off the easel! 4 new works available through Mondo Fine Art. "I approach the canvas to capture not only the likeness of the subject but also their essence.  As I paint their face I think about that specific person almost as though I am having a conversation with them. Some of the portraits are serious and straightforward, others are light hearted and playful, most are somewhere in between. Each one of these paintings is a one-day exercise.  They are sketches that allow me freedom to try different approaches, processes, and techniques.  The paintings are left incomplete to symbolize that they are part of a larger whole." - Zachary Proctor If you haven't already had a chance to - watch Zachary in the video below complete one of these paintings in one night! Join Zachary as he takes you into his studio and his creative process. For more information on these new paintings by Zachary, CLICK HERE

• England’s northeastern region of Teesside has been internationally recognized for embracing and commissioning large-scale public art. The newly unveiled Anish Kapoor sculpture entitled Temenos in the city of Middlesbrough is the first of five monumental works that will be installed in Teesside cities over the next decade. Upon completion, each piece will undoubtedly be in contention for the title of biggest public artwork in the world. Read more about the project here. • The Hamburger Kunsthall in Germany is home to an exhibition of David Tremlett work called “Drawing Rooms: Wall Drawings for the Gallery of Contemporary Art.” Tremlett, a Turner Prize-nominated British artist, here creates geometric and architectural forms in colored pastel crayon directly on the museum walls, but samples of his photography and works on paper are also on view until October 31. Head to e-flux for further information. • Eight paintings by preeminent School of London artists will hit the Sotheby’s auction block on June 28, giving collectors a rare chance to purchase post-war British art. Works like Frank Aurbach’s Mornington Crescent – Summer Morning and Lucian Freud’s Memory of London are expected to collectively sell for more than £3 million. For full descriptions of works go to Art Knowledge News. • The Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art has announced three new trustees: English diamond tycoon Laurence Graff, NYC real estate developer Edward J. Minskoff, and Wells Fargo executive Charles L. Conlan II - LaTimes.

• American Expressionist painter Lester Johnson died on the 30 of May in Westhampton, N.Y., his son Anthony has confirmed. He was 91 years old. Johnson was known for his bold figurative style, which has been variously described as “the poetry of congestion” and as having “an attitude of interrogation and anxiety.” Go to the New York Times website for more info on Johnson’s life and work. • Sales figures for Sotheby’s early June auctions of impressionist, modern and contemporary art reached €31.3 million, surpassing rival Christie’s late May auctions of post-war and contemporary art, which made a mere €7.58 million. Picasso’s Le Repos du Sculpteur, an ink-and-wash on paper work, was the highest selling lot, fetching €3.64m. For more information go to The Art Newspaper. • The Fondation Beyeler in Basel, Switzerland will host the exhibition “Felix Gonzalez-Torres: Specific Objects without Specific Form” until August 29. The show has a different take on the idea of “retrospective” – at each venue, the exhibition will be re-installed halfway through its duration by a different invited artist, a curatorial move that mirrors the themes of transience and fragility found in the work of Gonzalez-Torres. Head to e-flux for further information. • Jeff Koons is the artist behind the 17th BMW Art Car, a powerfully psychedelic M3 GT2 that was unveiled at the Centre Pompidou in Paris on June 1. Koons is the newest in a prestigious line of artists like Lichtenstein and Warhol who collaborated with BMW on the project in the past. The car will race at the 24 Hours of Le Mans in France on June 12-13. Click here to learn more.

In this latest artist video profile, we get a unique opportunity to see Zachary Proctor's studio, hear him talk about his work,  and watch him complete a painting from start to finish in just one night!

Stay tuned for new available works, fresh off the easel, by Zachary to be posted on the website soon! If you would like a sneak peek before they are posted online, please email us at info@mondofineart.com or sign up on our contact page and check Zachary's name.

Special thanks to Miaken Christensen, the film maker, for doing a  fantastic job on this video, as with our other videos. For more info on Zachary, click HERE

• The Magazzino del Sale in Venice is home the exhibition “Louise Bourgeois. The Fabric Works,” the last show the artist actively participated in before her death on May 31. In addition to a piece from the giant steel spider series, Bourgeois’ lesser known collage and assemblage work and pseudo-sculptural “fabric drawings” will be featured. Read more at Art Knowledge News. • With the nearly $1.75 billion cost of this month’s Fifa World Cup in South Africa, the country’s arts communities have taken a blow as the budget for the National Arts Council was reduced from $3.7 to a meager $1.8 million. “Artists have had to shelve their plans and feel let down at a crucial time when we should be highlighting the uniqueness of our culture,” said one Cape Town gallery director. The full article is available on The Art Newspaper website. • Iranian artist and filmmaker Daryush Shokof, a “harsh critic” of the government ideologies in his home country, has been missing for 14 days. The longtime Berlin resident was last seen on May 24 boarding a train from Cologne to Paris. Associates have voiced fears that the Iranian regime might be responsible. More at ArtForum. • Each year, Missouri’s Laumeier Sculpture Park features St. Louis-area artists in its Kranzberg Exhibition Series. This year’s showcase is devoted to artist Brandon Anschultz, and is entitled “Stick Around for Joy.” Anshultz describes his work as “an intersection of painting and sculpture,” responding to the rurally domestic setting of the Laumeier estate. Check out e-flux for more.

• The corporate contemporary art collection of the failed Lehman Brothers bank will be put on the Sotheby’s auction block on September 25. More than 400 works by contemporary artists such as Damien Hirst and John Currin will be sold to help pay off creditors. The “provocative collection” is expected to fetch upwards of $10 million. Read the full story here. • A legal battle is set to begin on August 2 between London art dealer Michael Hue-Williams and artist James Turrell. The lawsuit includes damages claims for “lost commissions,” and embroilment over the “grey books,” that establish authenticity for each Turrell artwork. Read more at The Art Newspaper. • English painter Rackstraw Downes, famous for his photorealistic landscapes and urban scenes, will be featured in three exhibitions this summer – two in New York and one in Connecticut – “providing a multifaceted glimpse into a lifetime of intellectually grounded and meticulous work and its place in the history of art.” Check out e-flux for further descriptions of the shows. • The Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in Washington will mount a retrospective of French artist Yves Klein called “Yves Klein: With the Void, Full Powers,” through September 12. The exhibition features Klein’s famous monochromes, selections of his “Anthropometry” paintings, as well as early watercolor and photographic work. Head to The New York Times website for the full review.

• New York’s Drawing Center presents two exhibitions devoted to American artist Dorothea Tanning, respectively titled “A Dialogue Between Visual Art and Performance” and “Early Designs for the Stage.” Tanning’s merging of visual art with performance, dance, and costume design are the focus. For more information go to e-flux. • Russian collector Aslan Chekhoev and his wife Irina are opening St. Petersburg’s first private art museum on June 4, after spending five years assembling their collection of Soviet underground and Russian contemporary art. “Around 70% of our collection is comprised of important Moscow artists whose works are not well represented in our local museums,” says Chekhoev. Read more here. • Los Angeles Times Art Critic Christopher Knight has two simple solutions for the low attendance at the Museum of Contemporary Art: changing operating hours to accommodate the city's more nocturnal population, and abandoning general admission fees. Go to the LA Times website to read his convincing argument. In addition, a retrospective of late actor Dennis Hopper’s art and photography will be the inaugural exhibition for the new director of the MoCA, Jeffrey Deitch. • A mural by British street artist Banksy was taken off display at a non-profit gallery in Detroit after threats of defacement and destruction. The work is a seven by eight foot, 1,500-pound section of cinderblock wall that was found at an abandoned car factory and removed by a group of local artists. Find out more at ArtForum.

• Artist Louise Bourgeois died today in Manhattan at 98 years old. Born in Paris in 1911, she “gained fame only late in a long career,” with the recent sculptural spider Maman being among her best-known work. For more information go to the New York Times website. • Experimental film is the subject of the exhibition “Celluloid. Cameraless Film” at the Schirn museum in Frankfurt. 21 artists explore techniques of direct image creation on film stock, using processes like painting, scratching, and chemical manipulation to create colorfully abstract animations (see picture). Visit e-flux to read more. • The Whitney Museum of American Art was open for 24 hours a day last week from Wednesday until Friday at 11:59 pm. Conceptual artist Michael Asher designed the all-night collection of tours, performance art and museum going. Click here for the article. • A retrospective of 16 works by American artist Alice Neel from 1940 to 1978 is now on display at the L.A. Louver gallery in Venice, California. Neel’s striking portraiture and bohemian acquaintances earned her a spot on a FBI watch list in the 1950s. Read the full review of the show here. • Kurt Jackson’s expressionist paintings of England’s Glastonbury music festival are being auctioned in an original fund-raising effort for Greenpeace. Jackson is the festival’s artist-in-residence, and his pictures include both landscapes and performances by Glastonbury acts like Radiohead. Check out Art Knowledge News to learn more.

• “Greater New York” is the title of the new exhibition at the MoMA P.S. 1 in Queens. Recent works from 68 emerging artists reveal a prevalence of performance, durational, and video art within the New York contemporary scene, and there is an “inexplicable optimism” that permeates the assortment of work. Article featured in The New York Times. • The third edition of Hong Kong’s Art HK10 saw thousands of visitors flock to the city’s Exhibition Centre on Wednesday to view Asia’s “leading showcase for international Modern and Contemporary Art.”  More than 150 galleries from 29 countries presented works geared towards beginning art collectors and veterans alike. Head to The Art Newspaper for a full review. • After more than ten years of preparation, Rome will open the doors of its new National Museum of XXI Century Arts – MAXXI – to the public on May 30. The building was designed by Iraqi-born Zaha Hadid, the first woman to receive the Nobel Pritzker Prize in global architecture. Click here for more information. • Two exhibitions now on view at Germany’s Kunstmuseum Wolfsberg jointly explore the influence of Austrian philosopher-architect Rudolf Steiner has had upon modernist art and culture. Fifteen contemporary artists will present their take on Steiner’s esoteric, transcendentalist ideas. Read more at e-flux.

• In a unanimous vote on Tuesday, the board of the Whitney Museum of American Art decided to begin construction on a new building in Manhattan’s meatpacking district. With no room to expand at the institution’s uptown location, the new Whitney will expand the size and scope of the museum. For more information visit Art Forum. • The 26th annual Art Amsterdam exhibition takes place May 26-30 and features a multinational collection of artists and exhibitors. Different programs will cater to specific interests and demographics, such as “No Holds Barred,” an unrestricted section sure to include a wide range of theme and media, and “Club C,” an invite-only selection of artistic debates, lectures and auctions. Read more at the Art Amsterdam website. • A federal judge has denied an injunction made by Miami art collector Craig Robins against New York gallerist David Zwirner regarding a painting by artist Marlene Dumas. The judge proclaimed Robins’ breach of confidentiality lawsuit “unwarranted.” For more information about the case, visit The Art Newspaper. • Edinburgh’s Jupiter Artland, a recent addition to the UK contemporary art scene, has announced four new site-specific sculptural commissions for its 80-acre grounds. Works by Cornelia Parker, Nathan Coley, and Jim Lambie – all short-listed for the Turner Prize – will be unveiled this month. Click here to learn more.