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    in Exhibitions

    Brazilian Curator Adriano Pedrosa Will Helm the 2024 Venice Biennale, Making Him the First Latin American to Organize the Event

    Organizers of the Venice Biennale have announced that Brazilian curator Adriano Pedrosa will oversee the 60th International Art Exhibition, set to be held in 2024. In a pair of firsts, Pedrosa is both the first Latin American and the first from the Southern Hemisphere to curate the event.
    In a statement released by the goliath art festival on December 15, the board followed the suggestion of its president, Roberto Cicutto, in appointing Pedrosa, who is the current artistic director of the Museu de Arte de São Paulo. The Biennale’s dates have also been agreed upon, with the sprawling city-wide event set to run from April 20 to November 24, 2024.
    “Pedrosa is an esteemed curator and director known for competence and originality,” Cicutto said in a statement, “Now more than ever, La Biennale might address contemporary art not to provide a catalog of the existing, but to give form to contradictions, dialogues, and kinships.”
    Over the past two decades, Pedrosa has become a leading figure platforming and shaping Brazil’s contemporary art scene. From his position in São Paolo, he has curated solo shows dedicated to the likes of Tarsila do Amaral, Beatriz Milhazes, Wanda Pimentel, and Ione Saldanha. He led the Pampulha art museum in Belo Horizonte during the early 2000s and has considerable experience working on large art festivals, including the Istanbul Biennial, the San Juan Triennale, and the Shanghai Biennale.
    In December this year, he received the Audrey Irmas Award for Curatorial Excellence from Bard College’s Center for Curatorial Studies in recognition for creating the “Histórias” series, which spotlights under-recognized histories of art.
    “I am honored and humbled by this prestigious appointment,” Pedrosa said in a statement. “The Biennale is certainly the most important platform for contemporary art in the world, and it is an exciting challenge and a responsibility to embark on this project. I look forward to bringing artists to Venice and realizing their projects.”
    Central to Pedrosa’s appointment was a sense of continuity with Cicutto, noting that the decision grew out of the experience of working with Cecilia Alemani in 2022. “It is essential to build on what emerged from the previous exhibition to direct our next choice,” Cicutto said.
    In 2023, the Venice Biennale of Architecture will run from May 20 to November 26.

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    in Street Art

    Coverage: “Master and Commander” Solo Exhibition by Tania Marmolejo at Volery Gallery, Dubai, UAE

    Last December 8th, Volery Gallery opened Master and Commander, a solo exhibition by Swedish-Dominican artist Tania Marmolejo.Tania Marmolejo works primarily with painting, portraying her experience of womanhood through figures of women with ambiguous facial expressions. Flat surfaces, soft strokes, and vivid oil colours, are the main characteristics of her work. With a background in graphic design and illustration as well as academic training in Fine Arts. Her work is inspired by German and Flemish art of the Renaissance and Baroque eras, and the Figurative and Abstract German Expressionism. Influences of Scandinavian art are also apparent in her choice of colours and minimalist subject matter.For Master and Commander fourteen paintings are on show, dedicated to the bravery of Iranian women in their fight to break the old constraints that have trapped them in a particular place and cultural time. The works subtly investigates and portrays references that have been used historically to demonstrate women’s virtue or the lack of it.These symbols include ripe fruits, flowing hair, bare skin, and scenes of animal interactions. Women with stories pouring out of their eyes, delivering their emotions through their facial expressions, their figures are captured in fields and indoor spaces playing and questioning these motifs, representing resistance to pre-made fantasies of femininity and womanhood, making them the masters and commanders of their destiny.The exhibition will run until January 3, 2023 at Volery Gallery, DIFC, Dubai, UAE.Gallery hours: 2:00 PM – 7:00 PM.Schedule your visit here.Scroll down below for more photos of Master and Commander exhibition. More

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    in Exhibitions

    A Basquiat You Can Wear: The Late Artist’s Sisters Have Tapped 9 New York City Designers to Reimagine His Art as High Fashion

    “King Pleasure,” a sprawling exhibition at Chelsea’s Starrett-Lehigh building that centers Jean-Michel Basquiat’s life through rare artifacts from his estate, has welcomed over 160,000 visitors since opening in April.
    The show is the first organized by Basquiat’s sisters Jeanine Heriveaux and Lisane Basquiat. It features re-creations of the artist’s childhood home and his storied studio apartment—and, as of December 7, a ready-to-wear apparel and accessories collection interpreting the artist’s work, designed by nine fashion talents for the show’s Those Who Dress Better program in partnership with Black Fashion Fair.
    Fresh twists across the limited-run capsule collection are on view in “King Pleasure” through December 15, with more accessible designs available for sale in the adjacent “King Pleasure” Emporium and on Black Fashion Fair’s website.
    Hanifa for the Those Who Dress Better program. Courtesy of “King Pleasure.”
    “The driving inspiration behind the Those Who Dress Better program was the estate’s desire to support these nine emerging fashion designers, artists, designers, and entrepreneurs,” Programming Director Anthony Konigbagbe told Artnet News. “Fashion was very important to Jean-Michel.”
    Black Fashion Fair worked with the estate of Jean-Michel Basquiat to curate New York-based Black designers on the rise: Theophilo, Brandon Blackwood, Hanifa, Who Decides War, Johnny Nelson, Bed on Water, Advisry, Homage Year, and Head of State. When “King Pleasure” opened, each designer was invited to explore the exhibition, to get inspired by Basquiat’s persona, and select which artworks to interpret.
    Bed On Water, an interdisciplinary art house that also specializes in graphic design, photography, and art, envisioned the artist’s harsh lines as soft dresses, sometimes with billowing folds. Lauded by the CFDA and Beyoncé alike, Hanifa made the artist’s timeless ‘Ideal’ logo look even newer, in a slinky yet sunny yellow bodysuit that melts into gentle tangles of thick yarn. The label Johnny Nelson contorted metal and stones into rings, echoing Basquiat’s crown motif.
    Shanel Campbell from Bed On Water for the Those Who Dress Better program. Courtesy of “King Pleasure.”
    What would the artist himself wear? Konigbagbe pointed to pieces by Keith Herron’s brand Advisry, including a mask, a layered and printed “King Pleasure” long-sleeve jersey, and printed jeans featuring Charles The First (1982), considering them “worthy of Jean-Michel’s own personal style.”
    “The jersey is a nod to Jean-Michel’s famously worn Wesleyan lacrosse practice jersey from his 1981 Art/new york interview with Marc H. Miller,” Konigbagbe wrote.
    A December 7 reception celebrated the designers’ one-week stint in “King Pleasure.” The entire exhibition will complete its run on January 1, 2023.
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    in Exhibitions

    ‘It’s My Damaged Rembrandt’: New Book Asserts a Downgraded Portrait of the Dutch Master Is the Real Deal

    After a long and winding road, a painting depicting Dutch Golden Age master Rembrandt van Rijn is back on view in the Netherlands for the first time in more than five decades. The question of who actually painted Rembrandt in a Red Beret, however, remains unanswered.
    Last month, the picture went on display at the Escher in Het Paleis, a former royal palace in The Hague named for its collection of work by Dutch graphical artist M.C. Escher. Its presentation was timed to coincide with the publication of a new book, Rembrandt in a Red Beret: The Vanishings and Reappearances of a Self-Portrait, which details the surprising history of the artwork.
    The publication was commissioned by the picture’s current owner, Johann Eller. And writing it convinced the book’s author—art historian and Rembrandt expert Gary Schwartz—that the work is an autograph self portrait.
    “It was accepted unconditionally as a Rembrandt from 1823 to 1969,” he told the New York Times. “It’s a canonical image, and no one else painted those kinds of images. I simply don’t see why it would be doubted.” The painting depicts the master at around the age of 37.
    Dutch Rembrandt specialist Gary Schwartz poses next to Rembrandt in a Red Beret, either by Rembrandt van Rijn or his studio, at the Escher in Het Paleis in the Hague. (Photo by Bas Czerwinski/ANP/AFP via Getty Images).
    But as he began investigating the work’s checkered past at the behest of its current owner, Schwartz uncovered a twisting tale far more intriguing than a simple question of authorship.
    The first known record of the painting dates to 1823, when it was in the collection of King Willem II of the Netherlands. His son, Prince Hendrik, displayed it at the Het Paleis from 1850 to 1879. The canvas was inherited by Wilhelm Ernst, a German grand duke, who lent it to the Grand Ducal Museum, in Weimar, Germany, in 1909. There, it was stolen in a 1921 heist.
    It was a daring theft that involved scaling the building, climbing up a lightning rod, and entering through a window. At the time, a newspaper noted that the robbers had made off with a “world-famous self-portrait of the Dutch master, a work from his best period, painted one year later than the famous Night Watch in Amsterdam.”
    Later reports claimed that two men confessed to the burglary, but the painting was never recovered, despite a reward of 100,000 Deutsche Marks.
    From there, the trail went cold for over two decades, until 1945, when a woman named Anna Cunningham showed up at the Dayton Art Institute in Ohio and presented the painting to the museum’s director Siegfried Weng. He immediately recognized the stolen canvas—by then heavily damaged—and suspected it had been looted during World War II.
    Cunningham’s husband, a plumber named Leo Ernst, had told her a different story. He claimed that while visiting New York City in 1934, he got drunk with a group of German sailors and woke up to find three mysterious canvases in his hotel room the next morning. He said he had kept the Rembrandt in his closet ever since.
    After briefly exhibiting the picture at the Art Institute, Weng decided to turn it over to the Art Looting Investigation Unit in Washington, D.C., led by Charles Henry Sawyer, one of the Monuments Men who had worked to preserve and recover cultural heritage during the war. The government confiscated the work, and for 20 years it was housed at the National Gallery of Art in D.C.
    In 1965, President Lyndon B. Johnson decided it was high time that the U.S. returned artworks seized during the war. The government sent the portrait of Rembrandt to West Germany in 1967, with the painting eventually making its way back to an heir of Wilhelm Ernst, who sold it in 1983 to Eller. (Schwartz’s research involved combing through declassified government documents for mentions of the canvas.)
    Since a 1969 update to Abraham Bredius’s catalogue raisonné of Rembrandt’s work, Rembrandt in a Red Beret has been attributed to the Dutch master’s pupil Ferdinand Bol, or dismissed as the work of the artist’s studio—or even as a later copy.
    Schwartz believes that the poor condition of the work is negatively influencing experts’ opinions about the piece, which is now being shown publicly for the first time in 55 years.
    “It’s my damaged Rembrandt,” he said. “Because there’s so much missing and it has been painted over, it makes the wrong impression when you see it for the first time.”
    Should scholars come to agree with Schwartz’s assertion that it is a Rembrandt, its value would skyrocket.
    “Rembrandt Back in The Hague” is on view at the Escher in Het Paleis, Lange Voorhout 74, 2514 EH The Haag, Netherlands, until January 29, 2023.
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    in Street Art

    “Under the Skin” art by David de la Mano in the European Parliament in Brussels, Belgium

    David de la Mano was born in Salamanca in 1975, where he graduated in Fine Arts before focussing on Public Art for his PhD at the University of Valencia. From 1993 onward, De La Mano has worked extensively in urban public space, and developed his trademark style during numerous international projects. Relying predominantly on harsh contrasts of black and white, his reductive and increasingly emblematic paintings centre around narrative and symbolic figuration. David de la Mano is a contemporary artist known for his meticulous brushwork, his knack for large scale, almost systematic use of black and white, and his minimalist human silhouettes. With his original training in sculpture, he has focused his interest on public art, to which he has naturally and immediately integrated urban art, becoming one of the most important artists in this discipline.His work is made up of characters taken from great poetry that do not leave anyone indifferent. Through each piece, he works to transcribe his vision of the world around him, in the most personal and symbolic way possible. Between shadow and light, playing with shapes, contours and contrasts, David de la Mano gives birth to a world of perfect balance, where human beings and nature, always intrinsically linked, merge and then stand out, in perpetual motion. In addition, it stands out for its exploration of new spaces, supports and materials such as open or invisible spaces, permanent and ephemeral supports, and diverse materials such as urban furniture, or elements of nature.The Spanish artist with a very unique universe has nothing more to demonstrate of his virtuosity, and each of his frescoes around the world confirms it. For Mehdi Ben Cheikh, director of Galerie Itinerrance, “David de la Mano’s work is as relevant on the street as it is in galleries, and it retains all its power from one place to another”. The artist has developed numerous projects in Spain, Norway, Italy, Taiwan, the United States, Poland, England, France, Finland, Tunisia, Peru, Argentina, Brazil, Uruguay, Portugal, Holland, Germany, etc … and exhibits his works in private homes or in art galleries around the world. David de la Mano’s painting focuses primarily on the importance of social ties, primarily through the representation of human figures evolving in groups, often facing an obstacle or threat. Take advantage of the evocative power of silhouettes to stimulate the imagination of your viewers.The project “Under the Skin” was finished painting and mounting on December 5 on the third floor of the European Parliament in Brussels, created with MDF and assembled from different parts that generate scars in each of its limits.The work shows a growing sequence of confrontation and I accompany its presence with this poem by Miguel Hernández:“…For freedom I detach myself with bulletsof those who have rolled his statue through the mud.And I break free from my feet, from my arms,of my house, of everything.Because where some empty sockets dawn,she will put two stones of future lookand she will make new arms and new legs growin the cut meat.They will sprout winged sap without autumnrelics of my body that I lose in each wound.Because I am like the felled tree, what a sprout:because I still have life.”“Man Lurks” 1937-1939Miguel HernandezTake a look at more images below and check back with us soon for more updates. More

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    in Exhibitions

    An Artist Has Transformed an Abandoned Las Vegas Gas Station Into a Neon Oasis in the Desert

    Revelers escaping regular life in Las Vegas still can’t fill their tank at the abandoned gas station on Fremont Street, but its sight alone will transport them. Digital artist Abigail Dougherty, better known by her art name Neon Saltwater, recently re-envisioned the 1930s relic, traveling from Seattle to Sin City this September to complete her ten-day install just in time for the city’s annual Life Is Beautiful Festival.
    The revamp came at the request of local creative firm JustKids, which has handled the festival’s art curation since 2013. “I have always seen this structure abandoned,” JustKids director Charlotte Dutoit told Artnet News. “Previously it was a gas station, then a repair shop, and even a taco drive-through.”
    Now, it’s a technicolor portal to simpler times titled Mystery Cruise 1990, in reference to Neon Saltwater’s birth year and “a feeling of surrendering and trusting the beautiful unplanned experiences that are around the corner,” the artist told JustKids. Authentic neon gleams from the overhang that once shielded gas pumps. Dougherty’s stage name crowns a single column painted atop the multicolored gradient that wraps the building proper.
    A digital work by Neon Saltwater. Courtesy of JustKids.
    The structure’s actual owner wasn’t involved, which meant the artist couldn’t set up a psychedelic minimart inside. Instead, magenta lights at once sensual and ominous illuminate the silhouettes of tropical plants against appropriately fogged windows.
    If you’re still curious what’s inside, look no further than Neon Saltwater’s digital oeuvre. The artist, who’s also created IRL pop-ups for Barneys and hairclips for cult company Chunks, discovered 3D modeling while studying interior design. “I was too much of a designer to be a traditional artist and too much of an artist to be a traditional interior designer,” she told JustKids. “I always loved rooms and would rearrange my furniture as a kid by myself.”
    Thus, most know Neon Saltwater for her digital scenes of ATM machines, malls, and offices rendered in neon tones—and entirely bereft of people. “The energy that exists in spaces feels spiritual to me and is my biggest muse,” she has remarked. Mystery Cruise 1990 marks her first time working with real neon.
    Neon Saltwater, Mystery Cruise 1990. Courtesy of JustKids.
    “In an era where many artists go from the physical to the digital space, we thought it would be interesting to actually export Neon Saltwater’s cyber wonders into a non-virtual art experience,” Dutoit said in a statement.
    “I see Mystery Cruise 1990 as a nostalgic reinterpretation by the artist of the vintage neon pieces and tourist extravaganzas still visible in the old Vegas, but with new energy,” she told Artnet News. “I hope this artwork will spark curiosity and slow down the passerby, inviting them to escape for a moment in a weird glowing time travel.”
    The portal is on view indefinitely. Don’t miss it the next time you’re on the lam from reality.
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    The Career of Willy Guhl, Creator of the Iconic ‘Shell Seat,’ Gets Another Look With an Exhibition in Zürich

    Famous for concepts like Shell Seat and Loop Rocking Chair, among other furnishings, luminaires, and accessories, the late Willy Guhl was a strong proponent of simplicity—what for many is a hallmark of Swiss design. The prolific talent was known for saying design must “achieve the most with the minimum effort.”
    And yet the task of perfecting a unified shape that is as aesthetically pleasing as it is functional, or engineering the armature of a chair so that it uses as few connections as possible, is no small feat. Works like Flower Box (1954) or his circulatory bathtub design of 1956 are emblematic of this enduring philosophy. The comprehensive “Willy Guhl — Thinking with Your Hands” show currently on view at the Museum für Gestaltung in Zürich seeks to uncover what made this 20th-century master tick. 
    Willy Guhl’s Circulatory Bathtub compared with conventional bathtubs (1956). Illustration: Willy Bärtschi, courtesy of Museum für Gestaltung Zurich, © Heirs of Willy Guhl.
    Possessing an appreciation for rationalism, as well as an inherent understanding of people’s needs, Guhl (1915-2004) was a pioneer of ergonomics, accessibility, and durability. The designer was an early proponent of hands-on learning and experimentation. The idea that to truly comprehend a problem, or gain implicit skills, one has to physically engage with the material and form of a potential solution, and not rely on a drawing board. As an instructor at the Zürich School of Art and Craft, Guhl required his students to make physical models and work directly with craftspeople, an approach that has again become a virtue in the industry, and perhaps its saving grace.
    The designer was one of the first to develop flat-pack furniture during and soon after World War II. These affordable, easily transportable designs were instrumental in helping to rebuild war-torn Europe, especially when materials were scarce. Throughout the 20th century, Guhl adapted to changing movements and rapidly advancing technologies yet always held true to his fundamentals. 
    Willy Guhl, Garden Chair (1954). Photo: U. Romito and I. Šuta, courtesy of Museum für Gestaltung Zurich, © Heirs of Willy Guhl.
    The exhibition—on view from December 19, 2022, through March 28, 2023—delves deep into extensive archival research conducted by the Swiss National Science Foundation, along with a slew of original designs, drawings, maquettes, and photographs from Guhl’s estate. Part of the showcase, a 1985 film includes testimonials from former students—such as Robert Haussmann, Carmen Greutmann, and Alois Rasser—who went on to establish their own successful practices. Immersive displays conceived by design students from the University of Art and Design in Lausanne provide further insight into his creative process. Visitors can even experience Guhl’s iconic Shell Seat for themselves.
    Willy Guhl on a Bench Chair (ca. 1960). Photo: Bill W. Guhl, courtesy of Museum für Gestaltung Zurich, © Heirs of Willy Guhl.
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    Furniture Works by Jorge Zalszupin, Master of Brazilian Modern Architecture, Go on View at Sean Kelly Los Angeles

    The current exhibition “Zalszupin 100” at Sean Kelly Gallery in Los Angeles celebrates the furniture works of late Polish-Brazilian designer Jorge Zalszupin on what would have been his centenary on earth. A pioneer of Brazilian modernism, Zalszupin died in 2020, two years before turning 100.
    Many of Zalszupin’s pieces on display have been procured from private collections. Over the last two years, the gallery painstakingly sourced the custom furniture he made for offices and homes across Brazil between the late 1950s and early ’70s. Some pieces belonged to Zalszupin’s loved ones, like the Ina armchair, which he made for (and named after) his sister. 
    Zalszupin worked as both a furniture designer and an architect, ran one of the largest furniture factories in Brazil, and in his later years explored painting. His oeuvre is connected by his use of sensuous lines, a modernist sensibility, and an affinity for working with nontraditional materials and woods native to Brazil. His work contains references to both global design trends and his own experiences, such as Tea Trolley, a bar cart inspired by the baby strollers he saw growing up in Poland. 
    Jorge Zalszupin, Tea Trolley (ca. 1960s). Brazilian jacaranda, rosewood, metal. Courtesy of Sean Kelly Gallery.
    Jorge Zalszupin was born in Warsaw, Poland, in 1922. In 1949, he made his way to Brazil, where he fell in love with the landscape and the architecture, and lived the rest of his life, becoming one of the definitive designers of Brazilian modernism.
    His foray into furniture design began soon after he launched his architecture practice in Brazil in 1951. Clients began requesting pieces to match the aesthetic of their buildings and Zalszupin was ready to meet their demand. In 1959, he created his first work of furniture—Poltrona Dinamarquesa, or Danish Chair. The seat’s curved wood frame and modern Scandinavian sensibility set the tone for Zalszupin’s prolific career. That same year he founded the L’Atelier, a carpentry firm that grew into one of Brazil’s largest furniture manufacturers.
    Installation view, “Zalszupin 100.” Photo: Brica Wilcox, courtesy of Sean Kelly Gallery.
    Zalszupin thought creatively about materials and techniques. Early on he developed a signature patchwork rosewood pattern that allowed him to use leftovers from other productions. He would cover the surface of a piece of furniture with rectangular scraps of rosewood in various shades and patterns.
    While Zalszupin is known for his use of native Brazilian woods like jacaranda, rosewood, and ironwood, he also researched and experimented with new machinery and technologies throughout his career, including his plastic laminate series. His innovative use of materials paved the way for the modernism movement that characterized Brazilian design in the decades to come.
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