Eliana Willis

For the dissident theater director and visual artist Robert Wilson, a chair exists in space, not simply in its relationship to function or its beauty as an object—but also in how it’s experienced throughout memory and time.
While visiting his uncle in the New Mexican desert, eight-year-old Wilson took notice of the only chair in the house amid the spare surroundings and proclaimed, “That’s a beautiful chair.” His uncle later sent him the chair as a Christmas present. This simple wooden chair held great significance for the young Wilson, who was otherwise besieged by the ordinary presents of his Texas childhood: shotguns and cowboy boots. When he was 17 his uncle’s son wrote to him, “My father sent you this chair, and it’s mine, and I’d like it back.” He sent it back, yet there began a lifetime fascination with collecting chairs.
By the time Wilson was making plays at 27, the collector, playwright, choreographer, painter and sculptor took the opportunity to create his own chairs for his productions. He saw these chairs as having their own personalities—becoming characters on the stage along with the performers.
“Robert Wilson: Chairs, 1969–2011,” opening November 17 and running through January 14 at MDFG in Brooklyn, collects many of these characters in a career-spanning exhibit, showcasing the breadth of the 81-year-old’s poetic imagination and use of materials.
Some of Wilson’s characters as chairs embody real figures interpreted and transformed through his personal lens, like his Einstein Chairs (1976) of elongated metal pipes created for his 1976 collaboration with Philip Glass, “Einstein on the Beach,” or his heavy Queen Victoria Chairs (1974), made of wood, metal, odd angles, and adorned with car headlights for his opera in four acts, “A Letter to Queen Victoria.”
These works are beyond mere props, not only as characters within the performance, but also as sculptural objects that invite interpretation and contemplation—especially outside of their original context, presented on their own as they are here, now.
Robert Wilson. Hanging Chair (Freud), 1969/1991. Metal wire mesh.
Robert Wilson. Gilgamesh Chair (Pair), 1988. Wood, painted bandages.
Robert Wilson. The Meek Girl Chair, 1994. Wood, veneers, fur.

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What does a 19th-century weaving loom have to do with computer programming? In the eyes—and practice—of artist Beryl Korot, the answer is: a lot. In fact, the pioneering video artist makes the case for the Jacquard loom, invented in 1804, as the earliest computer because of its ability to program patterns using punch cards. A show on view now at Manhattan’s Bitforms Gallery titled “Rethinking Threads” charts the artist’s artistic journey in making the connections between art and technology.
The exhibition also references Korot’s earlier works, including her 2007 piece Babel: The Seven Minute Scroll. In an exclusive interview with Art21 filmed back in 2010, the artist discussed the work, which references the ancient text using contemporary technology.
“I guess I always had the attitude towards technology that the more intimate you are with the tools that you get, the more you can tell your story,” Korot explained. “And so I decided to make a scroll, in a sense, on the computer based on the Tower of Babel story.” Using letters of the alphabet, pictograms, and her own visual language, the artist creates her own narrative while probing the history of communication.
“For me as an artist, I’m interested, in a sense, in going beyond my personal expression to things that I’m personally drawn towards, that also tell my story,” the artist told Art21. “Which is my connectedness to other points in time. Past. Present. Old tools. New tools.”

Watch the video, which originally appeared as part of Art21’s series Extended Play, below. “Beryl Korot: Rethinking Threads” is on view at Bitforms Gallery through November 26, 2022.

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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.

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This weekend, 96 artist-designed globes will be installed at the heart of London in Trafalgar Square, to raise awareness about the history of the transatlantic slave trade in the U.K., as part of the nationwide project, The World Reimagined.
The public will be able to view the globes—designed by creatives including the project’s founding artist, Yinka Shonibare—from November 19–20, and then bid on them in an online auction held by Bonhams online only now from November 17 through November 25. Proceeds are going to The World Reimagined’s learning program, the artists, and the establishment of a grant-making program for racial justice projects and organization.
“The core mission of The World Reimagined is to engage the public to learn about the impact of the Transatlantic Trade in Enslaved Africans,” Ashley Shaw Scott Adjaye, artistic director of The World Reimagined, told Artnet News. “To have a public exhibition in Trafalgar Square, in the heart of the capital where so many people can interact with these glorious works, is incredibly exciting.”
More than 100 globes were commissioned via an open call judged by Shaw Scott Adjaye, who is also head of global research at her husband’s architecture firm Adjaye Associates; artist Chris Ofili; Zoé Whitley, director of the Chisenhale Gallery; Matthew Smith, director of the Centre for the Study of the Legacies of British Slavery at UCL; and Renée Mussai, senior curator and head of curatorial and collections at Autograph, a London-based arts charity.
A selection of globes which are going on view in Trafalgar Square. Photo: courtesy the World Reimagined.
The sculptures were decorated by African diaspora artists from across the U.K., as well as a number from the Caribbean. Among those who contributed designs include Julianknxx, who has an exhibition at the Barbican Curve in 2023, Godfried Donkor, Phoebe Boswell, and Alison Turner. All of them have drawn on their personal experience with Britain’s history with slavery, and how it has impacted people of all backgrounds and races living in the U.K. today.
“The World Reimagined is an important opportunity to reflect on the importance of our diversity and to shine a light on our collective stories that too often remain untold,” said the Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan. “We must remember the millions who suffered due to the Transatlantic slave trade and the impact this has had on generations of Black communities.”
Godfried Donkor, Race. Photo: courtesy the World Reimagined.
Many of the globes have already been shown in cities around the U.K. since August. Each has a QR code on its base that takes visitors to a website, where they can learn more about the issues and histories raised in the artwork.
“This is a deeply powerful moment. We believe in an idea of patriotism that says we are strong and courageous enough to look at our shared past and present honestly, so we can create a better future—together,” said the project’s co-founder Michelle Gayle. “It’s not Black history—it’s all of our history.”
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Visitors to “Magdalena Abakanowicz: Every Tangle of Thread and Rope” at the Tate Modern in London will find themselves dwarfed as they move between vast, free-hanging structures that challenge our traditional notions of sculpture and textile art. 
Their warmly colored, ragged surfaces have been achieved by weaving together organic materials like sisal plant, horsehair, and hemp rope into complex and ambiguous 3D fiber installations known as “Abakans.”
“It is from fiber that all living organisms are built, the tissue of plants, leaves and ourselves,” Abakanowicz once said. “Our nerves, our genetic code, the canals of our veins, our muscles. We are fibrous structures.” 
Audiences will learn how Abakanowicz started out making painted textiles in the 1950s and watch as her practice evolved over the 1960s and ’70s, when she transitioned to building suspended forms on a monumental scale.
Their radical nature is all the more striking for the artist’s distance from many of the major hubs of the art world. Born in 1930, she grew up in the rural Polish countryside and later, during the war, her family became part of the resistance while she worked as a nurse’s aid at the remarkably young age of 14. Afterward, Abakanowicz became an artist under an oppressive Communist regime and struggled against the odds to build an internationally recognized career. 
Abakanowicz is also known today for Agora, a crowded group of headless figures permanently installed in Chicago’s Grant Park, and War Games, large structures made from trees in the style of military equipment. One of the works from this latter series, Anasta (1989), is displayed in the exhibition alongside the Abakans.
“Magdalena Abakanowicz: Every Tangle of Thread and Rope” is on show at Tate Modern until May 21, 2023. See works in the show below.
Installation view of “Magdalena Abakanowicz: Every Tangle of Thread and Rope” is on show at Tate Modern until May 21, 2023. Photo courtesy of Tate Modern.
Installation view of “Magdalena Abakanowicz: Every Tangle of Thread and Rope” is on show at Tate Modern until May 21, 2023. Photo courtesy of Tate Modern.
Installation view of “Magdalena Abakanowicz: Every Tangle of Thread and Rope” is on show at Tate Modern until May 21, 2023. Photo courtesy of Tate Modern.
Installation view of “Magdalena Abakanowicz: Every Tangle of Thread and Rope” is on show at Tate Modern until May 21, 2023. Photo courtesy of Tate Modern.
Installation view of “Magdalena Abakanowicz: Every Tangle of Thread and Rope” is on show at Tate Modern until May 21, 2023. Photo courtesy of Tate Modern.
Installation view of “Magdalena Abakanowicz: Every Tangle of Thread and Rope” is on show at Tate Modern until May 21, 2023. Photo courtesy of Tate Modern.
Magdalena Abakanowicz, Brown Textile 21 (1963). Photo courtesy of Tate Modern; © Fundacja Marty Magdaleny Abakanowicz Kosmowskiej iJana Kosmowskiego, Warsaw.
Photograph of Magdalena Abakanowicz at work in 1966. Photo: © Estate of Marek Holzman.

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The boom in immersive art shows has seen some of the world’s best-loved masterpieces reimagined on the largest scale, and toured to audiences worldwide. The focus so far has been on historical works, with artists such as Vincent Van Gogh, Gustav Klimt and Frida Kahlo among the most popular subjects. 
David Hockney may now be one of the first living artists to get the same treatment for a new show, “Bigger & Closer (not smaller and further away)” opening early next year in London. 
Installation of David Hockney’s Gregory Swimming Los Angeles March 31st 1982 at “David Hockney: Bigger & Closer (not smaller & further away),” an immersive art experience at Lightroom in King’s Cross, London. Photo: courtesy of Lightroom, ©David Hockney.
Hockney has been able to take the reins and direct this new immersive journey, inviting visitors into some of his most renowned paintings, from the swimming pools he painted during his years in California to the vast canyons he captured in the American West.
Photographs and polaroid collages will also be used to tell visitors about the artist’s life, transporting audiences between Yorkshire, where Hockney is from, to Los Angeles, where he moved to in the 1960s, and Normandy in southern France, where he now lives. 
These insights and many more will stretch across six themed chapters, which are set against commentary from Hockney and a custom score by the American composer Nico Muhly.
Installation of The Arrival of Spring in Woldgate, East Yorkshire in 2011 (twentyeleven) (1998) at “David Hockney: Bigger & Closer (not smaller & further away),” an immersive art experience at Lightroom in King’s Cross, London. Photo: courtesy of Lightroom; © David Hockney.
“The world is very, very beautiful if you look at it, but most people don’t look very much,” Hockney muses in one voice-over. “They scan the ground in front of them so they can walk, they don’t really look at things incredibly well, with an intensity. I do.”
Three years in the making, this mega production won’t be the first time Hockney has kept an eye on tech trends and adapted his painting practice to new media. He began using computer software to draw as early as the 1980s and, since 2009, he has regularly exhibited portraits, landscapes and still-lifes that were made on an iPad.
David Hockney viewing the model box containing an immersive view of his work August 2021, Landscape with Shadows. Photo: Mark Grimmer, © David Hockney.
The show will open in Lightroom, a new four-story exhibition space for immersive experiences in the creative district of Kings Cross, organized by the London Theatre Company and 59 Productions. “David Hockney: Bigger & Closer (not smaller and further away)” runs from January 25 to April 23, 2023 and tickets are now on sale at £25 ($30) for adults and £15 ($18) for students.
London is also home to Frameless, another venue for experiential art forms that opened in Marble Arch in September. The arrival of Lightroom suggests that the immersive art craze shows no sign of disappearing, following major investment in this fast growing sector.
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