Xavier Hufkens presents… Clarissa Dalrymple →

Called “the most aristocratic bohemian on New York’s contemporary art scene” by the New York Times, known for an ability to “pinpoint who and what in art will matter next”, influential New York curator Clarissa Dalrymple shows no signs of slowing down.

Ryan Sullivan. Courtesy: the artist and Maccarone, NY

In her latest curatorial project, Luther Price displays unearthed slides, 87 year-old Alfred Lesliedigitally rearranges his own paintings, and Tommy Hartung presents eerie moving images inspired by cultural relics as diverse as Anna Karenina and the Gnostic gospels. Jay Heikes’s ‘Drawn and Quartered’ is a collection of 18 tools, while his minimal ‘Fields’ is constructed with the help of Purpurissum, a mixture originally used by ceramicists in Pompeii, made up of Murex, Indigo, and Madder. Murex has its own fascinating history; more expensive than gold by the gram, the dye is extracted from a rare Mediterranean mollusc and was used to signify royalty in the time of Pliny the Elder.

The chosen pieces work well within Hufkens gallery, supporting one another rather than dominating the space, but the highlight is undoubtedly Ryan Sullivan’s experiment in naturally occurring phenomena – sedimentation, rust, and cracking – resulting in a topographical surface reminiscent of a military landscape.

Brie Ruais’s ‘Circle Game’ is also a standout piece. Ruais pushed 350 pounds of clay in a circle until its starting point was imperceptible and the colours had spread and blended. It’s a kind of ‘Drawing Restraint’ à la Matthew Barney, in which momentum is hindered. Rather than ceramics, Ruais uses the clay to explore both its and her own limitations. Her other piece, ‘Five Ways Out from Center’, is a glittery-grey explosion, lying on the ground as if a marker on a map. Both pieces take this demarcation of territory as a starting point.

Brie Ruais: Circle Game. Courtesy: the Artist and Nicole Klagsbrun, NY

Along with six American artists, Dalrymple has selected British artist Sarah Lucas to exhibit her new work. Well-known for her avant-garde and occasionally confrontational output, Lucas uses her lively sculptures to explore misogyny and exploitation as expressed by the language of consumer culture. Rather than working with typical materials, Lucas’s mobile sculptures make use of everyday, seemingly unremarkable objects with which we are in perpetual engagement, like garden furniture, tights, and buckets. Originally created for the Britten studio at Snape Maltings, their friendly humanoid shapes warm the space and lighten the mood.

Friederike von Rauch’s Sleeping Beauties in Antwerp →

The exhibition by Berlin-based German photographer Friederike von Rauch is a departure from her usual, primarily monochrome images of everything from industrial estates in Rotterdam to fin-de-siècle Brussels architecture. This new collection in Antwerp’s Fifty One Fine Art Photography gallery sets out to reveal the structural purity of the empty gallery and its lonely artwork.

People hunger for the inside story, be it the details of shady backroom political dealing, scandalous celebrity gossip, or just what some neighbour said about another neighbour’s wallpaper/garden/dog. In the same vein, art-aficionados adore the studio visit, in which they’re offered a glimpse of the behind-the-scenes life of the artist and the art they create. Jill Krementz’s 1999 collection of images from writers’ desks is a perfect example, drawing as it does on this longing to be a part of art in its earliest days of conception, making our bond with the finished piece more intimate.

This urge finds a different expression in the psyche of the exhibition-goer, who fantasises about falling asleep in a gallery and waking up in the middle of the night to wander its empty halls, alone with the art.

Friederike von Rauch’s new project does just this, giving attendees a glimpse into the artwork’s hidden world. Her ongoing series of photographs capture well-known pieces in their undisturbed, after-hours life. It’s the first project of this sort that von Rauch has embarked upon, and the photography remains rooted in a structural focus on the space itself, rather than objects within it. A self-proclaimed sunlight-phobe – “I try to avoid the sun” – the images are also notable for a sparing use of cool-toned colour.

Von Rauch, originally trained as a silversmith, studied industrial design and later worked as a location scout for film. This personal take on behind-the-scenes subjects allows viewers to trade their role as ‘voyeur’ for ‘insider’.