Eliana Willis

More stories

  • 238 Shares179 Views

    in Exhibitions

    Here Are 6 of the Most Daring Design Exhibitions to See This Month—Think Chainsawed Furnishings and Giant Crystal Forms

    For design, like art, January is an important month. This is when top galleries and platforms around the world mount major shows, ringing in the new year on an optimistic note—and with unrestrained creativity.
    This month’s offerings are no different. Dive into this selection of six design exhibitions—spanning Milan, Italy to Portland, Ore.—that push the limits of experimentation and self-expression.

    Olga Engel and Sho Ota at Mia Karlova GalerieAmsterdam, Netherlands
    Installation view. Photo: Jeroen van der Spek, courtesy of Mia Karlova Galerie.
    In its ”Poetic Design” exhibition (through February 10), Amsterdam’s Mia Karlova Galerie contrasts the sensuality of Latvian talent Olga Engel and the minimalism of Netherlands-based Japanese designer Sho Ota.
    Engel’s ”Charlotte” furniture collection is an ode to the harmonious lines of French modernist Charlotte Perriand (who was closely associated with Le Corbusier), while Ota’s “Splint” series of wood-block chairs explores how certain universal forms, in different compositions, can better facilitate modularity and personalization.

    John Shea at HB381New York, United States
    John Shea. Courtesy of HB381 gallery.
    HB381 is the kunsthalle-style offshoot of the more established New York collectible design gallery Hostler Burrows. Since its inception last spring, HB381 has focused on showcasing interdisciplinary talents who attempt to free sculpture from limited definitions of art and design.
    American talent John Shea demonstrates this philosophy with the transcendent ceramic sculptures in his “standard, abstract” solo show—on view from January 13 to February 25. His abstract sculptures are defined by intersections, where smooth geometric planes are interrupted by rough spheres. Shea’s shapes take their cues from microscopic silica crystals and the palette from Japanese painter Sanzo Wada‘s 1932 book, A Dictionary of Color Combinations.

    Anne Libby and Philip Seibel at Magenta PlainsNew York, United States
    Anne Libby, These Days (2022). Polished cast aluminum. Courtesy of Magenta Plains.
    Philip Seibel. Courtesy of Magenta Plains.
    In New York’s Lower East Side from January 13 to February 25, Magenta Plains is showcasing new wall sculptures by Los Angeles-based Anne Libby that riff on domestic window blinds. Cast in polished aluminum, the intriguing works play with light and deflected reflection as they cascade against stark white backgrounds. 
    Berlin-based artist Philip Seibel’s “Gehäuse” exhibition runs concurrently at the gallery. Like Libby, Seibel challenges the perception of readily available construction materials and consumer products to create sculptural objects that serve as contemporary tombs, shrines, and ornate storage boxes. The works demonstrate his ability to satirize the typology of everyday items through meticulous craft techniques. He also distorts the pieces with engravings of agrarian scenes from the Middle Ages.

    Jake Clark at Albertz BendaNew York, United States
    Jake Clark, installation view. Courtesy of Albertz Benda.
    Poking fun at the commercial iconography of his adopted city of New York, Australian ceramicist Jake Clark debuts his latest psycho-geographic collection “Canal Street” at Albertz Benda gallery. Ceramic vessels, key chains, mugs, and plates are emblazoned with the likeness of the signs and logos he’s observed around town as a self-proclaimed outsider.
    This collection is a play on and elevation of the souvenirs that tourists can find on the very street where the gallery is located. The logos of recognizable haunts like Balthazar restaurant are joined by depictions of subway cars and ciphers.

    Makers at Caselli 11-12Milan, Italy
    Lewis Kemmenoe, Patchwork Cabinet. Cherry wood carcass and timber. Courtesy of Caselli 11-12.
    (Left) Arnaud Eubelen, Lander table light. Old glass cover, cut wine glass bottle, rusted steel sheet, etc. (Right) Arnaud Eubelen, One Time Chair. Clothes rack tubes, burned fabric, etc. Courtesy of Caselli 11-12.
    New Milanese platform Caselli 11-12 inaugurates its “Makers” series of shows with an exhibition dedicated to experimentation. Bringing together a whopping 29 avant-garde talents from across the globe, the showcase—on view through January 15—demonstrates how so many of today’s designers have taken it upon themselves to develop bespoke creative processes. Many are challenging the constraints of the design landscape by forging distinctly resourceful practices.
    While Belgian up-and-comer Arnaud Eubelen creates furniture out of discarded building materials he finds around construction sites, New York-based Katy Brett sets out to evoke the quality of broken porcelain objects in the surface of solid wood tables and chairs. Many of the works on view are as thought-provoking as they are visually enticing.

    Vince Skelly and Lynne Works Turner at Adams and OllmanPortland, Oregon
    Vince Skelly, Redwood Arch (2022) and assorted tables and chairs. Courtesy of Adams and Ollman.
    Back on the West Coast of the U.S., Portland gallery Adams and Ollman is closing out an exhibition featuring new sculptural works by woodworking savant Vince Skelly. Skelly has taken on the design world with his intuitive chainsaw and traditional hand-carved tables and chairs that evoke the ecology of the woods he sources from natural disaster sites.
    Among the primordial wood pieces, minimalist painter Lynne Woods Turner has placed wall art whose lines and nuanced colorations suggest what isn’t there. A similar pensiveness carries through from her works to Skelly’s organic forms, creating a tension between these two oeuvres. 
    Follow Artnet News on Facebook: Want to stay ahead of the art world? Subscribe to our newsletter to get the breaking news, eye-opening interviews, and incisive critical takes that drive the conversation forward. More

  • 63 Shares169 Views

    in Street Art

    “Our Feelings” OKOKUME x CASETiFY

    CASETiFY, the global tech accessory brand loved by artists, Gen Z, and Hollywood celebrities announced its collaboration with Spanish artist Okokume in a capsule collection featuring Cosmic Girl, the character of her own creation in Los Angeles.CASETiFY is a brand and home to the first and largest platform for customized tech accessories. Created with the highest-quality materials and most cutting-edge designs, CASETiFY’s products empower self-expression by turning your personal electronics into highly designed, stylishly slim, drop-proof accessories. Known for tapping top artists, big celebrities and creatives for its Co-Lab program, CASETiFY gives brands and individuals the opportunity to share their unique visions with the world. With 18 retail shops and growing, CASETiFY Studio provides a one-stop, visual retail experience where customers can customize their accessories on the spot.Okokume, the pseudonym behind Laura Mas Hernandez, is best known for her iconic character. Cosmic Girl, the pink-haired spirit with turquoise skin is the universe’s messenger who emphasizes the importance of protecting the environment. She travels in space and tends to planets in need by restoring them to their former glory. Through her, Okokume has exhibited in Tokyo, UTOPIA (Ginza), REALITY (JPS Gallery, Tokyo), and other major cities worldwide such as K11 Art Space in Hong Kong.Okokume’s Lowbrow-inspired style of painting reflects the influence of Japanese manga, American cartoons and street culture. Her gleeful and colourful works transport the audience into the universe of Cosmic Girl and her companions, spreading positive messages they believe in. Okokume’s cheerful and positive style is met with much popularity, making her one of the fastest-growing contemporary artists.The name of the collection is “Our feelings”. Okokume wanted to represent all those childhoods affected by wars, where she appeared on TV as a metaphor for changing their roles. And where butterflies symbolize the lives that are lost at sea. She believes that as an artist, she needs to externalize what affects her most, positively or negatively.The Okokume x CASETiFY Collection includes several phone case designs featuring Cosmic Girl and Dino, and are available for iPhone and Android Models. A number of designs will also be available for AirPods cases, magsafe chargers, air tag holders and iPad cases. More

  • 200 Shares99 Views

    in Exhibitions

    Parallel Art Shows in London and Berlin Conjure Up Political Utopias… Using A.I. and Celebrity Deepfakes

    This will sound terribly jaded, but, in the spirit of honesty: artists Annika Kuhlmann and Christopher Kulendran Thomas presented two types of exhibitions I normally would have walked out of.
    On the first floor of their show at Berlin’s KW Institute for Contemporary Art is a political video documentary; on the second an all-too familiar Ab-Ex relaunch. So many biennials later, I’d rather read about a political uprising in a book by an anthropologist than hear about it from an artist. Abstract painting, for its part, can be enjoyable in a straightforward way, but, these days, it is often employed not because of what it is, but because of who made it. These kinds of encounters are often with art that doesn’t need to be art, but rather art that is promoted simply because it supplies a window onto a subject of importance.
    “Another World,” where the focus is on the Tamil Tigers, an ex-militant organization once based in northeastern Sri Lanka, is not that. Rather, Kulendran Thomas and Kuhlmann’s exhibition is so self-conscious as to what it means to think through and with art—and so forceful in that self-consciousness—you cannot help but be intrigued. And so I stayed; it stayed.
    Christopher Kulendran Thomas The Finesse (2022) in collaboration with Annika Kuhlmann. Installation view of the exhibition Christopher Kulendran Thomas. “Another World” at KW Institute for Contemporary Art, Berlin. Photo: Frank Sperling
    Kulendran Thomas, a Berlin-based artist of Tamil descent, alongside his German collaborator Kuhlmann, created “Another World” as two parallel exhibitions simultaneously on view at KW and the Institute of Contemporary Arts (ICA), London. Its central work, The Finesse, a newly commissioned video work, is projected onto a mirror, and facing it is another screen showing slow-panning footage from a forest planted by the Tamil Tigers. Sandwiched in between the two are the viewers, collapsing three image-situations into one. The video itself is based partly on early 1990s archive footage featuring a member of the group who speaks with other-worldly eloquence about the Western fictions of democracy and freedom. A democracy should allow us to choose between different systems, she says, but in the West, there is only one. Her wit and charisma are of a type made for political influencing; her TikTok would be irresistible—and this, partly, is what the work is about. 
    The narrative of Tamil Eelam’s independence movement (a proposed autonomous Tamil state that the Tamil Tigers were fighting for) is neatly slotted into the context of the media spectacle of OJ Simpson’s trial, which took place at the same time—so neatly that I am not sure which parts of the film are authentic, and which not. It is not so difficult to manufacture a VHS grain, recreate an old Yahoo search, nor, it turns out, render a deepfake of Kim Kardashian, who appears in The Finesse, though slower, more immovable, and perfectly mesmerizing. With the same eloquence as the young Tamil, and with reference both to her Armenian roots, and, indirectly, to her early adjacency to the media vertigo of the Simpson trial, Kardashian’s avatar argues that certain people are less prone to believe in the fictions of capitalist hegemony. Certain circumstances—such as that of the Tamils in Sri Lanka, we can infer—require you to be more realistic when it comes to how stories are fabricated as truth in newsrooms and on the internet.
    Christopher Kulendran Thomas The Finesse (2022) in collaboration with Annika Kuhlmann. Installation view of the exhibition Christopher Kulendran Thomas. “Another World”at KW Institute for Contemporary Art, Berlin2022. Photo: Frank Sperling
    In another segment of The Finesse, contemporary recordings follow another young Tamil investing in the legacy of the once-imagined Eelam state, now more than ten years lost. But the possibility of that history and its politics to become wearable as an identity for the young woman in the present is put into relief by a phone call she gets from an older friend or relative. It was a fantasy we had, says the voice on the other end of the line, who questions what it is that the younger generation expects to get out of identifying with it now. And the viewer— themselves caught inside the projection—wonders too.
    It is through such sober, whip-smart interjections that Kuhlmann and Kulendran Thomas consistently install self-consciousness into their narrative while smugly escaping the dangers of romanticism. What I like about the work is that it does not allow us to take its politics at face value; rather, it is laced with an irony that has generally not been tolerated in the art world since the DIS-curated Berlin Biennial in 2016 (where Kulendran Thomas also participated). There is a critical tension without which we would risk collapsing into the neo-essentialisms of post-truth. Eloquence, charisma, and charm, too, are art forms, which each cease to function as modes of manipulation once we accept them as such. In parallel, the extent to which these conversations and monologues are scripted, made deepfake, or not, likewise loses importance.
    Upstairs, Being Human, a video work from 2019, is screened on a translucent wall, dissecting the space. The rooms on either side of it are lined with the abstract paintings, which, it turns out, are generated by AI and executed by Kulendran Thomas’s studio, as are their sculptural counterparts. Climaxing like a pop song, the screen occasionally lights up to reveal the other side of the room. Art and modernism are part of the same ideological image circuit as Kardashian and Taylor Swift (whose deepfake reflects on the possibility of authenticity in Being Human) and the propaganda machines that would render the Tamil Tigers terrorist insurrectionists, or not. The theoretical implication is that we are completely immersed in the simulacrum, but it is also plain beautiful; as an experience, enchanting.
    Christopher Kulendran Thomas The Finesse (2022) in collaboration with Annika Kuhlmann. Installation view of the exhibition Christopher Kulendran Thomas. “Another World”at KW Institute for Contemporary Art, Berlin2022. Photo: Frank Sperling
    In The New York Times, critic Travis Diehl wrote about the London-chapter of the exhibition, a mirror of the KW show. “If Kulendran Thomas genuinely aims to offer new political possibilities, count me as a skeptic. If his goal is to ruin contemporary art, he just might,” he says. Here, Diehl refers to the zombie abstraction that is part of the installation of Being Human, and, perhaps, to the generally unplaceable morality of the tone. But this is far from a threat to contemporary art. Rather, after a summer where structure, relational aesthetics, and good intentions stood in for artworks at ruangrupa’s Documenta 15, “Another World” retains a medial self-consciousness that presents a hopeful glimpse for its future. The element of spectacle in both works—The Finesse peaks in an exhilarating rave scene—might have come across as cheap in its pop appeal, but it is precisely this hint of cynicism that makes both works at once disturbing and intelligent.
    In recent years, the discourse around politics and art has seen a loss of distinction between the sphere of representation and reality, taking, for instance, images for actions, depictions, or reflections on violence as that violence itself. But “Another World” does not let reality become subsumed by its image; instead, it asks the audience to continually observe the line between the two, even as it blurs. And the experience of sitting inside of Kuhlmann and Kulendran Thomas’s infinity mirror, oddly, makes you quite sure of what parts of reality that survive the spectacle of media and what truth rises to the surface of a deepfake. There is so much, in fact: the intelligence and humanity of the protagonists (real or not); the pleasure and fun of imagining another world, and in being surrounded by images of it; how political dreams and artful fictions can overlap in certain moments, and in others, crucially, diverge. And while you may not be able to spot the difference, you will feel it.
    “Another World” is on view through January 22, 2023, at the Institute for Contemporary Arts, London, and through January 15, 2023, at KW Institute for Contemporary Art, Berlin.
    Follow Artnet News on Facebook: Want to stay ahead of the art world? Subscribe to our newsletter to get the breaking news, eye-opening interviews, and incisive critical takes that drive the conversation forward. More

  • 188 Shares199 Views

    in Exhibitions

    A New Show of Contemporary Mexican Design Explores the Explosive Scene on Its Own Terms

    Mexican art, architecture, and design have long garnered attention, more so in recent years as the country’s capital has emerged as a cultural agora for Latin America, if not the wider world. The renewed interest, however, has the potential to bring with it certain stereotypes. For many, Mexican design consists of thick woven tapestries, bright geometric patterns, and the use of natural fibers like rattan—items we might expect to find in a touristy market.
    With the “Everything Here Is Volcanic” show, running January 12 to February 18 at New York gallery Friedman Benda, curator Mario Ballesteros has set out to challenge those cliches. He’s borrowed the metaphor of volcanoes from Swiss architect Hannes Meyer’s observations of Mexico’s eruptive creative scene in the 1940s to reveal that such categorical thinking does little to encompass the full scope of its contemporary output. Residing in Mexico City for over a decade, Meyer (formerly the director of Bauhaus Dessau) aimed to counteract how certain forces overlook undefinable talents to maintain easily packaged images.
    Tezontle, Vernacular Kitchen (2022). Copper, volcanic rock, concrete. Photo: Lucas Cantu, courtesy of Friedman Benda and Tezontle.
    “There is something about Mexico that makes it impossible to categorize neatly,” Ballesteros told Artnet News. “The show is a small attempt to contain this flowing, vibrant, chaotic energy that transcends professional or typological concerns. Are these works by artists or designers? Is this furniture or sculpture? Are these objects speaking to the past, to the present, or the future? Where do they all meet? Where do they all point to?” 
    Andrés Souto, cHaRcO Lamp (2022). Courtesy of Friedman Benda and Pedro Reyes.
    In the exhibition, while art and architecture studio Tezontle reinterprets a suite of age-old cooking devices using volcanic rock in Vernacular Kitchen, fashion designer and artist Bárbara Sánchez Kane crafts her Body fillers and plastified diet (2022) bucket seats out of leather and pinewood. Pedro Reyes’s organicist Volcanic Table is literally made out of hardened lava. Amorphous figurines abound in Tony Mascarena and Ángela Esteban’s ceramics. In keeping with the rebellious theme of the exhibition, Andrés Souto’s cHaRcO Lamp riffs on Italian architect and designer Achille Castiglioni‘s iconic Arco luminaire.
    Bárbara Sánchez-Kane, Body fillers and plastified diet (2022). Photo: Daniel Kukla, courtesy of Friedman Benda and Bárbara Sánchez-Kane.
    Other noted exhibitors include renowned architect Frida Escobedo; rising talent Fernando Laposse; sculptor Lorena Ancona; ceramicist Alejandro García; fashion polymath Víctor Barragán; and young artists Allan Villavicencio, Tony Macarena, and Wendy Cabrera Rubio.
    Frida Escobedo, Creek Chair (2022). Photo: Studio C129, courtesy of Friedman Benda and Frida Escobedo.
    What curator Mario Ballesteros is demonstrating is that there is as much sophisticated conceptual ideations, material transmutation, and personal expression enacted through various creative disciplines in Mexico as there is in the United States and Europe, not that those scenes should be the rock against which all else is measured.
    Fernando Laposse, Feliz Navidad (2022). Cactus wood and thorns, stained beech wood, 3D printed eco-resin, patinated steel. Courtesy of Friedman Benda and Fernando Laposse.
    Follow Artnet News on Facebook: Want to stay ahead of the art world? Subscribe to our newsletter to get the breaking news, eye-opening interviews, and incisive critical takes that drive the conversation forward. More

  • 238 Shares159 Views

    in Exhibitions

    German Artist Julian Rosefeldt’s New Film Weaves 2,000 Years’ Worth of Cultural History Into a Commentary on Capitalist Greed

    Park Avenue Armory has housed many masterpieces and Euphoria (not related to the drug-fueled HBO hit) is one of them. The feature-length film by artist Julian Rosefeldt, which opened November 2022, is a cinematic feat confronting global consumerism, class, privilege, and the failures of contemporary society.
    The work encompasses five theatrical vignettes, the first featuring actor Giancarlo Esposito (who many will recognize from Breaking Bad) as a cabdriver waxing poetic to a mostly non-responsive passenger on their way to the Brooklyn Navy Yard. While the scenes that follow feel very “New York,” they also encapsulate a world that merges parts of the city with fantasy in the vein of Terry Gilliam’s 12 Monkeys.
    Julian Rosefeldt’s Euphoria at Park Avenue Armory, 2022. Photo: Nicholas Knight. Courtesy of Park Avenue Armory.
    Shown on 24 screens in the round, the installation has three components: the feature film, a 360-degree perspective of the Brooklyn Youth Chorus shown to scale and in “real time,” and five additional screens, each containing a drummer. The drummers accompany the Brooklyn Youth Chorus whose voices fill the hall in harmony with music composed by Samy Moussa. The result is as jarring as it is soothing.
    Looping throughout the duration of the exhibition, Euphoria is a commentary on the institution and neighborhood where it is housed, not stated but implied as the topic of wealth and class run throughout. The film is an enigma of sorts, a high-budget tour de force utilizing Shakespearean-style soliloquies and didactics. At one point, as Esposito’s passenger (also played by Esposito himself) walks away from the cab, he murmurs, “Remember: We are but dust and shadow,” quoting Roman poet Horace.
    Film still from Euphoria, 2022. © Julian Rosefeldt.
    Rosefeldt is the mastermind behind the screenplay, but is quick to not take credit.
    “The credit for the writing doesn’t go to me, but to the more than 100 writers that contributed texts which were assembled into the text collages in Euphoria,” he said. “Creating a project on a topic as general as greed or capitalism is obviously ambitious, if not presumptuous, and the sheer amount of sources to be considered and books to be read was a bottomless pit.”
    The chosen texts come from such notables as Ayn Rand, Plato, Aldous Huxley, Jean-Paul Sartre, Barack Obama, the Rolling Stones (from the band’s “You Can’t Always Get What You Want”), and even Snoop Dogg (from “Gin and Juice”). All of these texts are expertly woven together in correlation with cinematography to create something entirely new.
    The result is uncanny, as certain phrases are recognizable but completely removed from any familiar context. Rosefeldt works within his own container, inventing a world untethered to time or self-consciousness.
    Julian Rosefeldt’s Euphoria at Park Avenue Armory, 2022. Photo: Nicholas Knight. Courtesy of Park Avenue Armory.
    “What helped structuring the text fragments once they were selected was that they needed to be speakable and performable in a convincing manner following a stream-of-thought,” added Rosefeldt, “which makes the viewer forget that these texts originate in various epochs within 2,000 years of cultural history.”
    Euphoria echoes the desperation felt by Willy Loman from Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman, the seamless visual weaving of The Clock (2010) by Christian Marclay, and a series of live performances at Matthew Barney’s studio several years ago.
    Rosefeldt made a splash in 2015 when his video installation, Manifesto, starring Cate Blanchett, was screened at Park Avenue Armory (it has since been adapted into a feature film). On the two works, he added, “Comparable to the characters in Manifesto, the actors in Euphoria are more like vessels for universal ideas than real-shaped characters.”
    Euphoria is on view at Park Avenue Armory through January 8, 2023.
    Follow Artnet News on Facebook: Want to stay ahead of the art world? Subscribe to our newsletter to get the breaking news, eye-opening interviews, and incisive critical takes that drive the conversation forward. More

  • 300 Shares159 Views

    in Exhibitions

    8 Essential Shows to See Around the World in 2023, From a Fresh Look at Alexander McQueen’s Genius to the Louvre’s Treasures of Love

    There’s more art to see beyond the United States and Europe, and we’ve rounded up some of the most exciting shows debuting in the new year. From a spotlight on female designers to a survey of the Belle Epoque in South Korea, here’s what we have our eye on around the world in 2023.

    “Undercurrent: The New Future of Japanese Contemporary Art”Powerlong Art Museum, Shanghaithrough January 29, 2023
    Courtesy of the Powerlong Art Museum.
    Described as “a concentrated display of the new generation of Japanese artists in China,” this show features around 100 artworks by 16 emerging and established Japanese contemporary artists. The group came of age in the 1990s, and is often associated with the country’s “Lost 20 years,” when Japan’s economy cratered.

    “MMCA Lee Kun-hee Collection: Monet, Picasso, and the Masters of the Belle Epoque”National Museum of Modern & Contemporary Art, Gwacheon, South Koreathrough February 26, 2023
    Camille Pissarro, The Cereal Market in Pontoise (1893). Courtesy of the Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, South Korea.
    Nearly 100 works donated to the museum by the heirs of late Samsung chairman Lee Kun-hee are on view in this sprawling exhibition focused on luminaries of Paris’s “Belle Epoque.” The show is divided into four sections: “Pissarro and Gauguin, Two Masters in Paris Who Met as Mentor and Mentee”; “Monet, Renoir, and Picasso, Masters Who Blossomed through Friendship and Respect”; “Picasso, Miró, and Dalí, Spanish Painters in Paris”; and “Picasso and Chagall, Masters Who Captured Beautiful Moments in Life.”

    “McQueen: Mind, Mythos, Muse“National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, Australiathrough April 16, 2023
    A selection of Alexander McQueen’s designs featured in “Mind, Mythos, Muse.” Courtesy of the National Gallery of Victoria.
    Fashion designer Alexander McQueen remains a source of endless discussion, even more than 12 years after his death in 2010. The exhibition features artwork drawn from the collections of the National Gallery and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art displayed alongside McQueen’s own designs “that help to illuminate the interdisciplinary impulse that defined his career.”

    “Egon Schiele from the Collection of the Leopold Museum–Young Genius in Vienna 1900”Tokyo Metropolitan Art Museum, JapanJanuary 26–April 9, 2023
    Egon Schiele, Self-Portrait with Chinese Lantern Plant (1912). Courtesy of the Tokyo Metropolitan Art Museum & the Leopold Art Museum.
    After three decades, the work of Egon Schiele is returning to Tokyo in this exhibition tracing “the dramatic life of a genius who died too young.” The show features 50 artworks by Schiele accompanied by some 120 works by other Viennese artists, including Gustav Klimt, Oskar Kokoschka, and Richard Gerstl, to tell a comprehensive story of fin-de-siècle Viennese art.

    “Liu Kuo-sung: Experimentation as Method“National Gallery SingaporeJanuary 13–November 26, 2023
    Liu Kuo-Sung, The Earth, Our Home (B) (2004). Courtesy of Christie’s Images, Ltd.
    The forthcoming exhibition will be the largest show dedicated to Chinese artist Liu Kuo-Sung by a public Singaporean institution, with more than 60 paintings and 150 of the artist’s personal objects. Best known for his expressive ink paintings, Kuo-Sung helped to modernize the practice with his “Space” series, which incorporates photographs of the Earth taken by U.S. astronauts on the Apollo 8 mission in 1968.

    “Painting Love in the Louvre Collections“National Art Center, TokyoMarch 1–June 12, 2023
    François Gérard, Cupid and Psyche (1767). Photo © RMN-Grand Palais (Musée du Louvre) /Tony Querrec / distributed by AMF-DNPartcom.

    Art aficionados certainly love the Louvre, but this expansive show in Japan’s capital city delves into love at the Louvre—specifically 74 paintings from the legendary Paris museum’s collection that display amorousness in classical European art ranging from the chaste to the blush-worthy. Go with your special someone, or maybe meet them there.

    “Parall(elles): A History of Women in Design”Montreal Museum of Fine ArtsFebruary 18–May 28, 2023
    Dorothy Hafner, Fred Flintstone, Flash Gordon and Marie Antoinette coffee service (form); Blue Loop with Headdress (decoration), (1984). MMFA, Liliane and David M. Stewart Collection. Photo Annie Fafard.
    Designs by American and Canadian women are the subject of this sprawling exhibition, organized in collaboration with the Stewart Program for Modern Design. Objects from the mid-19th century through today highlight the breadth of styles and media that female designers made while marginalized in social, political, and personal settings. The Montreal Museum of Fine Arts (MMFA) has also commissioned ceramicist Molly Hatch to create a giant mosaic of 198 hand-painted plates that will take over the exhibition pavilion.

    “Ningiukulu Teevee: Chronicles for the Curious“National Gallery of OntarioOpens January 14, 2023
    Ningiukulu Teevee, Shaman Revealed (2007). © Ningiukulu Teevee, courtesy Dorset Fine Arts. 2008/17.
    Kinngait (Cape Dorset)-based Ningiukulu Teevee is a graphic artist whose work first debuted at the National Gallery of Ontario only two years ago. Her “bold color, unique perspectives, and meticulous graphic style” have cemented her as a favorite among collectors.
    Follow Artnet News on Facebook: Want to stay ahead of the art world? Subscribe to our newsletter to get the breaking news, eye-opening interviews, and incisive critical takes that drive the conversation forward. More

  • 288 Shares109 Views

    in Exhibitions

    17 Shows to See in Europe in 2023, From a Survey of Yayoi Kusama’s Inflatables to the Largest Showcase of Vermeer’s Work Yet

    This year may lack big headliners like Documenta and the Venice Biennale, but there is certainly no shortage of showstoppers. We scoured institutional programs across the continent and selected 17 shows set to open between January and June that we think will be the talks of the town.
    LuYang Vibratory Field Kunsthalle Basel, BaselJanuary 20—May 21, 2023
    LuYang, Digital Descending, ARoS, Aarhus, 2021. Exhibition view. Courtesy LuYang and Société, Berlin.
    Set to be the visionary Shanghai-born artist’s first show in Switzerland, “Vibratory Field,” will feature a range of LuYang’s signature body of work, which ranges from video animation, avatars, and video games. The show, according to organizers, is “a spectacular computer-generated cosmos”—given it much more deserved space than the artist’s work received at the Venice Biennale this year, where it was tucked away in a corner.
    “Topics such as our lives, desires, and the limitations and functions of our bodies are relevant to every living person. This allows me to go beyond the limits of my identity to think freely on a higher level, in a larger universe. Any human being can understand my works,” the artist told Artnet News.
    —Vivienne Chow
    Rudolf Levy: “Work in Exile”Palazzo Pitti, FlorenceJanuary 24—April 30, 2023
    Rudolf F. Levy, Fiamma (Flame) (1942). Courtesy Uffizi Galleries.
    I came across the tragic story of Rudolf Levy when I visited a paradigm-shifting exhibition that explored the history of Documenta (the world-famous German exhibition). Part of that show focused on the German-Jewish painter, who died in Auschwitz; this exhibition revealed that before Levy was deported from Florence, where he had been in exile, he would likely have come into contact with Documenta co-founder Werner Haftmann, who was a Nazi and temporarily stationed there. Levy, like many Jewish artists who were murdered in the Holocaust, were later pushed out of postwar German history by people like Haftmann, who did not want to draw more attention to Germany’s war crimes, especially if they were also complicit in them. Levy was excluded from the first Documenta, though he had been on preliminary lists.
    It is especially poignant that the Uffizi’s Palazzo Pitti is not far from where Levy spent his last months. The institution will present the first monographic exhibition dedicated to the artist; it will also include Flame, an acquisition the museum made in January, which was created while he lived in hiding in Florence in 1942.
    —Kate Brown

    Mohammed Sami: “The Point 0”Camden Art Center, LondonJanuary 27–  May 28, 2023
    Mohammed Sami, The Praying Room (2021). Courtesy the artist and Camden Art Center.
    I discovered Sami’s work when it was included in 2021 in the Hayward Gallery’s excellent survey of painting today, “Mixing It Up,” and it stood out among 31 of today’s painting stars. The Iraqi-born artist is now getting his first institutional solo in the U.K., which will showcase his unsettling large-scale paintings that draw from his own memories living under Saddam Hussein’s regime in Baghdad and subsequent refugee experience in Sweden. The troubling works, devoid of people, present eerie and uncanny visions of neglected interiors, overwhelming cityscapes, and everyday objects whose heft lies in what isn’t rather than what is depicted.
    —Naomi Rea

    “Klimt. Inspired by Van Gogh, Rodin, Matisse…”Belvedere, ViennaFebruary 3—May 29, 2023
    Gustav Klimt, Johanna Staude (1917/1918). Photo: Johannes Stoll. Courtesy Belvedere, Wien.
    In 2015, the Belvedere in Vienna and the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam embarked on a collaborative journey with an aim to find out which works might have influenced the Viennese modern artist Gustav Klimt, in order to trace exactly how modern art arrived in Vienna at the turn of the century. From major exhibitions to smaller private collections, researchers have been digging deep into history and references to retrace the footsteps of Klimt. This 2023 exhibition should be a fascinating result of this joint research project; it is set to include about 90 paintings, drawings, and sculptures from Klimt alongside works by artists such as Monet, Rodin, van Gogh, and Matisse, who all inspired him. The exhibition marks the 300th anniversary of the Belvedere.
    —V.C.

    Action, Gesture, Paint: Women Artists and Global Abstraction 1940-70Whitechapel Gallery, LondonFebruary 9–May 7, 2023
    Elaine de Kooning, The Bull (1959). Photo courtesy The Levett Collection © EdeK Trust.
    Even as artists like Joan Mitchell, Lee Krasner, Helen Frankenthaler and Elaine de Kooning have become major household names, the idea of an “action” painter making bold gestures on canvas still carries frustratingly white, male connotations. This major survey of 150 works by 80 artists will not only place under-recognized women at the center of the Abstract Expressionist movement, but it is set to push far beyond the confines of the New York scene, to bring to light the practices of women working globally, including Wook-kyung Choi in South Korea, Mozambican-born Italian artist Bertina Lopes, Ukrainian-born American painter Janet Sobel, Argentinian artist Marta Minujín, and Iranian painter Behjat Sadr. The exhibition’s scope proves that, from the 1940s onwards, radical notions of free expression and materiality inspired artists worldwide.
    —Jo Lawson-Tancred

    The Morgan Stanley Exhibition: Peter DoigThe Courtauld Gallery, LondonFebruary 10—May 29
    Peter Doig, 2022. Courtesy The Courtauld. Photo: Fergus Carmichael.
    This major exhibition, set to feature a range of new and recent works by the acclaimed painter Peter Doig, is the Courtauld’s first solo show of a contemporary artist since the London institution reopened in November 2021 following a major refurbishment. But it also marks a new chapter of the 1959-born artist’s creative journey: artworks on show will include paintings and works on paper that Doig created since he moved back from his longtime home of Trinidad to London in 2021. The exhibition will also highlight the artist’s work as a draughtsman and printmaker by showcasing a series of new drawings and prints.
    —V.C.
    VermeerRijksmuseum, AmsterdamFebruary 10—June 4
    Vermeer, Girl with a Pearl Earring (1664–67), Mauritshuis, The Hague, bequest of Arnoldus Andries des Tombe, The Hague.
    Arguably one of the most exciting exhibitions in 2023 for not just art lovers but also the general public, this rare exhibition has been billed as the largest showcase of Johannes Vermeer. It is set to bring together at least 28 iconic paintings by the Dutch master from all over the world under one roof; Girl Interrupted at Her Music, Officer and Laughing Girl, and Mistress and Maid are on loan from the Frick Collection, New York, will be shown for the first time together outside of New York in a century. They join The Girl with a Pearl Earring, on loan from Mauritshuis, The Hague, and four masterpieces from the collection of Rijksmuseum. Fingers crossed that climate activists can leave such important cultural treasure alone.
    —V.C.
    Alice Neel: Hot Off The GriddleBarbican, LondonFebruary 16—May 21, 2023
    Alice Neel, Phillip Bonosky (1948). Photo by Ben Davis.
    One of the greats of American art is getting due recognition across the pond with her largest U.K. exhibition yet. Though both Alice Neel’s expressionistic figurative style and her interest in too often overlooked subjects – including activists, queer performers and pregnant women – may be fashionable today, when Neel was working in New York during the early to mid 20th century her practice was easily overshadowed by prevailing interests in modernist movements. Her dignified portrayals of people she encountered in everyday life offer a unique record of people that were otherwise pushed to the fringes of mainstream society and history. Neel’s life in Greenwich Village and later Spanish Harlem, as well as her staunchly communist politics, are also brought to life through letters and photographs. 
    –J.L.
    Martin Wong: “Malicious Mischief”KW Institute for Contemporary Art, BerlinFebruary 25—May 14, 2023
    Martin Wong, Tell My Troubles to the Eight Ball (Eureka), (1978–81). Courtesy of the Martin Wong Foundation and P.P.O.W, New York © Martin Wong Foundation
    The brilliance of the work of American-Chinese artist Martin Wong, who died in 1999, is hard to overstate—and he is, not unlike Michel Majerus, deeply beloved by many artists I know. Yet it seems that art history is still beginning to come to know the vast breadth of Wong’s relevance and his densely packed paintings, which plot queerness, marginal communities, and social realities against landscapes of gentrification.
    That Wong is under-discovered is especially true in Europe, where the artist is only now getting a comprehensive, touring retrospective. “Malicious Mischief” spans his beginnings in late 1960s California, his most famous period of painting (and living in) New York in 1980s, and culminates with his last works made before his death from an AIDS. It will head to the Camden Arts Center (July 7—September 17, 2023) and then to the Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam, (November 2023—February 2024).
    —K.B.

    General IdeaThe Stedelijk, AmsterdamMarch–July, 2023
    Installation view, “General Idea,” June 3 to November 20, 2022, National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa. © General Idea. Photo: NGC.
    I’ve always been a fan of gallows humor. The surprisingly tight gap between levity and hopelessness can be an effective space in which to broach difficult subjects, and to express unwieldy emotions. So, following its opening at the National Gallery of Canada, I’m excited that this retrospective of General Idea is coming to Europe.
    The Stedelijk will lend its spotlight to the collective, made up of Canadian artists Felix Partz, Jorge Xontal, and AA Bronson, who were active under the moniker between 1969 and 1994. The exhibition is the most comprehensive retrospective on the trio to date, and charts the group’s witty and eccentric output through more than 200 works. From major installations such as the 1987 AIDS sculpture, which riffs on Robert Indiana’s “LOVE” motif—both Xontal and Partz contracted HIV in the 1980s—to archival materials, publications, painting, and sculpture, the exhibition showcases the group’s playful commentary and critique on mass media, consumer culture, social inequality, queerness, and the art economy, tracing its impact on both their own moment and milieu.
    —N.R.

    ‘Reaching for the Stars. From Maurizio Cattelan to Lynette Yiadom-Boakye’Palazzo Strozzi, FlorenceMarch 4–June 18, 2023
    Lynette Yiadom-Boayke, Switcher (2013). Photo courtesy of Sandretto Re Rebaudengo Collection.
    Since opening her non-profit foundation in 1995 in the northern Italian city of Turin, the mega-collector Patrizia Sandretto Re Rebaudengo has overseen and continued to grow one of the country’s most prestigious public collections, expanding to Madrid in 2017. Now, the historic Palazzo Strozzi in Florence will be the stage for a selection of highlights from her collection—a first show of its kind. It will include some of the biggest names in contemporary art, including Maurizio Cattelan—the boundary-pushing artist known internationally for Comedian, a banana taped to a wall at 2019’s Art Basel Miami Beach, South African artist William Kentridge, and painter Lynette Yiadom-Boakye, as well as major YBA art stars like Damien Hirst and Sarah Lucas.
    —J.L

    Souls Grown Deep like the Rivers: Black Artists from the American SouthRoyal Academy of Arts, LondonMarch 17–June 18, 2023
    Ralph Griffin, Eagle (1988). Souls Grown Deep Foundation, Atlanta. © ARS, NY and DACS, London 2022. Photo by Stephen Pitkin/Pitkin Studio.
    Taking its name from a Langston Hughes poem, this show tells the stories of Black artists working in the American South, including names that have received major acclaim in recent years like Thornton Dial, Lonnie Holley, Nellie Mae Rowe, and Purvis Young. Many of these artists were self-taught, and their experimental practices frequently combined craft traditions, passed down through generations, with found materials to address pressing subjects, such as the relentless persecution and systemic racism faced by Black communities in the South. Interwoven with these are works that record the joys and hardships of everyday life. The show has been organized by the Atlanta-based Souls Grown Deep Foundation, which promotes Black artists from the South and seeks to support their local communities. 
    —J.L.
    Michel Majerus: “Sinnmachine”Mudam Luxembourg, LuxembourgMarch 31—October 1, 2023
    Michel Majerus, ca. 2001. © Edith Majerus, 2022. Courtesy of the Michel Majerus Estate and Neugerriemschneider, Berlin.
    Last year was, officially, the year of Michel Majerus. It marked the 20th anniversary of the artist’s untimely death with shows all over Germany and at the ICA Miami, timed to Art Basel Miami Beach. Interest in the artist, whose estate and archive has been carefully preserved since his death, is booming. Despite the flurry of shows, one essential exhibition is still to come, at at the MUDAM in Luxembourg, which is Majerus’s home country. “Sinnmachine,” which means sense machine in German, will feature early paintings by Majerus and rarely seen archival material, including notebooks, his collection of books and magazines, and recorded VHS tapes—the aim is to build a full picture of how Majerus viewed (and sensed) the world around him.
    —K.B.

    ICÔNESPinault Collection, Punta della Dogana, VeniceApril 2—November 26, 2023
    Maurizio Cattelan, La Nona Ora (1999). Pinault Collection. Installation view: “Maurizio Cattelan,” Palazzo Reale, Sala delle Cariatidi, 24 September – 24 October 2010, Milan, Italy. Photo by Zeno Zotti.
    Look, it’s always fun to see what’s in a billionaire’s private collection. This exhibition of works from François Pinault’s treasure trove will explore the theme of “icons,” both in the sense of the word’s Greek etymology, which defines an icon as an “image” or “likeness” and a term to designate religious paintings. Works by artists from Maurizio Cattelan to Arthur Jafa and Agnes Martin will be on view in the thematically grouped exhibition, which aims to consider both the fragility and the power of these kinds of images. The Venetian setting is apt for iconoclasm, and I’ll call that as good an excuse as any to make a trip to La Serenissima.
    —N.R.

    Sarah BernhardtPetit Palais, ParisApril 14–August 27, 2023
    Georges Clairin, Portrait de Sarah Bernhardt (1876). Photo courtesy of Petit Palais.
    One of the original celebrities whose talent, glamor and intrigue inspired a cult following and enthralled an entire generation, Sarah Bernhardt was a symbol of her era in Paris. A new show celebrates the centenary of her death, bringing together almost 400 items that retell her exciting life story, both as a stage persona – through costumes, posters and paintings – and as a woman at the center of a wide network of prominent artists and intellectuals – through photographs, personal belongings and even her own artworks. Among the highlights is a resplendent portrait of the actress aged 32 by her friend Georges Clairin. 
    —J.L.

    Liverpool Biennial, uMoya: “The Sacred Return of Lost Things”Various locations, LiverpoolJune 10–September 17, 2023
    Nicholas Galanin, Never Forget (2021). Courtesy the artist. Photo by Lance Gerber.
    The 12th edition of the Liverpool Biennial, which has been named after an isiZulu-language word meaning spirit, breath, air, climate and wind, will be centered around ancestral and Indigenous forms of knowledge, wisdom and healing. Curated by Khanyisile Mbongwa, more than 30 artists and collectives, from Brook Andrew (who directed the 2020 Sydney Biennial) to Julien Creuzet (who will represent France in the 2024 Venice Biennale) will respond to the theme.
    —N.R.
    Yayoi Kusama: You, Me and the BalloonsFactory International, ManchesterJune 29—August 28, 2023
    Yayoi Kusama and Dots Obsession, (1996-2011). Installation view at The Watari Museum of Contemporary Art, Tokyo. © YAYOI KUSAMA. Courtesy of Ota Fine Arts, Victoria Miro and David Zwirner.
    “You, Me and the Balloons,” the first major immersive exhibition dedicated to the celebrated Japanese artist’s inflatable works, will be a major curtain raiser for Factory International, the highly anticipated new cultural landmark to open in Manchester in the U.K. in June.
    Spanning 143,698 square feet, the new space, designed by the award-winning architecture firm OMA, is the largest publicly funded national cultural project to open in the U.K. since the Tate Modern in 2000. The new Kusama show is set to feature works more than 33 feet tall that trace the artist’s practice in inflatable art —this promises to be a major attraction for art lovers and general public alike.
    —V.C.

    More Trending Stories:
    The Art World Is Actually Not Very Creative About What It Values. What Would It Take to Change That?
    ‘It’s My Damaged Rembrandt’: New Book Asserts a Downgraded Portrait of the Dutch Master Is the Real Deal
    Introducing the 2022 Burns Halperin Report
    Possibly the Oldest Pair of Levi’s Jeans, Salvaged From an 1857 Shipwreck, Just Auctioned for a Deep-Pocketed $114,000
    Mr. Brainwash, Made Famous in the Banksy Documentary, Opens His Own Art Museum Where Guests Enter Through the Gift Shop
    Click Here to See Our Latest Artnet Auctions, Live Now
    Follow Artnet News on Facebook: Want to stay ahead of the art world? Subscribe to our newsletter to get the breaking news, eye-opening interviews, and incisive critical takes that drive the conversation forward. More

  • 200 Shares109 Views

    in Exhibitions

    ‘Beauty Can Be Subversive’: Watch Artist Firelei Báez Reclaim Dominican Folklore in Her Richly Layered Paintings

    An immersive sculptural installation at the Momentary in Arkansas will offer visitors an unusual opportunity: to travel through time and space. The expansive work by Firelei Báez reimagines the ruins of Sans-Souci Palace in Haiti as though they were emerging out of the Atlantic Ocean, with the vastness of the sky and seas evoked by hanging blue tarps and a mural. The work is not only visually stunning, but explores the history of cultural exchanges between Europe, Africa, and the Americas.
    In an April 2021 conversation with Art21, Báez likewise addressed the colonial history of the Caribbean, but this time on the more manageable scale of the canvas, opening up about her experiences growing up in the Dominican Republic and her extensive interest in the region’s past and rich folklore.
    “I remember always making,” she said of her childhood. “When I was six, other kids would have me draw out these very fancy ‘mariquitas’ [paper dolls] for them. I would have these elaborate ball gowns. They would always have very intricate hair. I was always dealing with the body.”
    “One of the first reasons that I wanted to work on these paintings,” she said, referring to a series of botanical-based canvases she was filmed working on, “was looking at some of the first scientific illustrations of flora and fauna from the New World.” In particular, she referenced the scientific methods of Swedish botanist Carl Linnaeus: “So much of his work was sheer nonsense. It equated the New World Black and brown body with bestiality.”
    Instead, Báez found inspiration in the misunderstood female creature Ciguapa, found in Dominican mythology. “The Ciguapa is this trickster figure. She is a seductress. Someone will be lured by her and then be completely lost and never seen again,” she said. “In reading my paintings of Ciguapas, I’m asking the viewer to come to terms with their own feelings around a woman’s body.”
    “The normative tone of the story is these are wanton female creatures. They’re hypersexual and they derail culture. The understory is they are highly independent, they’re self-possessed, and they feel deeply,” she said of her preferred interpretation. “So who wouldn’t want to be that?”
    In reframing such narratives, Báez continues to uncover new ways to “shift ideas of power.” “In that process, you shift the world around you,” she added. “That’s where beauty can be subversive.”
    Watch the video, which originally appeared as part of Art21’s series New York Close Up below. “Firelei Báez” is going on view through July 16, 2023 at the Momentary in Arkansas. 

    [embedded content]

    This is an installment of “Art on Video,” a collaboration between Artnet News and Art21 that brings you clips of news-making artists. A new season of the nonprofit Art21’s flagship series Art in the Twenty-First Century is available now on PBS. Catch all episodes of other series, like New York Close Up and Extended Play, and learn about the organization’s educational programs at Art21.org.
    Follow Artnet News on Facebook: Want to stay ahead of the art world? Subscribe to our newsletter to get the breaking news, eye-opening interviews, and incisive critical takes that drive the conversation forward. More