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    in Street Art

    “Ampelo” by Vittorio Valiante in Guardia Sanframondi, Italy

    Urban artist Vittorio Valiante shares his recent piece in Guardia Sanframondi, Campania, Italy. The mural entitled “Ampelo”, the personification of the grapevine and lover of Dionysus in Greek and Roman mythology. He was a satyr which fate was turning into a Constellation or the grape vine.Valiante’s art always expresses itself with the same quality as of a painted canvas. His subjects are full of realism and beauty. His portraits are usually characterized with intense gazes that makes the viewer wonder – who of the two is actually observing and who is only seeing. More

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    in Exhibitions

    A New Show at Selfridges Introduces an Internet-Addled Generation to the Op Art Pioneer Victor Vasarely (Yes, There Are NFTs Too)

    They may have been created decades ago, but Op Art pioneer Victor Vasarely’s dizzying geometric shapes and colorful graphics have never felt as relevant as they do now, in the age of digital art and NFTs. At least, that’s what an exhibition opening on Thursday at one of London’s biggest department stores strives to demonstrate.
    Running until March 31 at Selfridges, the show features a total of 55 works ranging from canvases to ceramics and tapestries. It marks the first display of work by the late French-Hungarian artist in the United Kingdom in more than 50 years.
    But the exhibition isn’t just about exposure—it’s also about raising money. Thirty-seven of the works—together with a series of freshly minted NFTs created by London-based NFT platform Substance—are available for sale. Proceeds will go toward the restoration of monumental works at the Fondation Vasarely Museum in Aix-en-Provence, France.
    The show also features a creative partnership with fashion brand Paco Rabanne, which will be launched in a new 2022 collection inspired by Vasarely’s art at the Oxford Street store.
    Victor Vasarely at Selfridges in London’s Oxford Street. Photo credit: Andrew Meredith and Selfridges.
    The exhibition strives to bring the legacy of the Op Art movement pioneer to life while introducing him to a younger audience, said Pierre Vasarely, president of Fondation Vasarely.
    “He wanted to promote art [through] architecture, urbanism, music, fashion, just like the way people think in recent years,” Vasarely told Artnet News. “He wanted to bring art to the city, to the streets, to everyone.”
    Pierre Vasarely said his grandfather originally created the works on view, including the geometric designs gracing the storefront, by hand, before the introduction of computers. “It was revolutionary,” he said. “The NFT trend today is heading toward this direction.”
    Victor Vasarely, Okta Cor (1973) Acrylic on canvas. Photo: Fabrice Lepeltier and Fondation Vasarely.
    The physical works available for sale, including 15 unique works and 20 silkscreen prints, originally belonged to French collectors. A total of 12 Vasarely NFTs attached to Vasarely’s monumental works at the foundation will be released, with the first batch of six going live on February 16 and the remaining six available on March 12. Each NFT can be purchased at the London store in person or online on Subtance’s platform (and can later be accessed in the metaverse, naturally). Prices have yet to be announced.
    Born in Pécs, Hungary, in 1906, Vasarely first studied medicine before venturing into painting. He moved to Paris in 1930 and began experimenting with Surrealism and Abstract Expressionism before developing his signature checkerboard paintings in the 1940s. He died at the age of 90 in 1997. He was the subject of a retrospective at Paris’s Centre Pompidou in 2019.
    Victor Vasarely, Bleu n° IIIV (1970-2009). Photo: Fabrice Lepeltier and Fondation Vasarely
    The artist built Fondation Vasarely between 1973 and 1976. It was declared a historic monument in 2013 and has annual attendance of around 100,000 visitors. The foundation is not the first to create NFTs based on a late artist’s work: Alphonse Mucha’s foundation debuted its own line of NFTs at the end of last year.
    Pierre Vasarely said he has “no idea” how much money the sales will raise, but he hopes the project will allow more people to see Vasarely’s art, particularly in a moment when travel and gathering indoors is difficult.
    “We make this exhibition at Selfridges with technology to show how contemporary his work still is today,” he said. “It is a good opportunity to imagine what Vasarely would’ve done if he had access to computers back then.”
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    in Exhibitions

    Prince Charles Has Commissioned Seven Paintings of Holocaust Survivors to Serve as a ‘Guiding Light’ for Future Generations

    Prince Charles has commissioned seven leading artists to paint portraits of Holocaust survivors as a gesture of tribute to the aging generation. The portraits will be unveiled at the Buckingham Palace towards the end of this month.
    The established artists participating in the project include the most expensive living female artist Jenny Saville, BP Portrait Award-winner Clara Drummond, original member of the Young British Artists Stuart Pearson Wright, and painters Paul Benney, Peter Kuhfeld, Massimiliano Pironti, and Ishbel Myerscough, according to the BBC.
    “As the number of Holocaust survivors sadly but inevitably declines, my abiding hope is that this special collection will act as a further guiding light,” Prince Charles told the BBC, adding that the portraits will also serve as a reminder of “history’s darkest days.”
    Most of the Holocaust survivors featured in the portraits are more than 90 years old. They were imprisoned in concentration camps during their childhood years and are living in Britain as adults.
    The survivors depicted include Anita Lasker-Wallfisch, a 96-year-old musician from a German Jewish family who played in an orchestra of prisoners at the Auschwitz concentration camp, and was later held in the Bergen-Belsen camp in Germany. Her portrait was painted by Kuhfeld. Benney has painted Helen Aronson, 94, a survivor of the imprisonment of Jewish people in Nazi-occupied Poland’s Lodz ghetto.
    The paintings, which will be featured at the Queen’s Gallery at Buckingham Palace from January 27 to February 13, and the Palace of Holyroodhouse in Edinburgh from March 17 to June 6, are hoped to serve as a reminder of not just one of the darkest chapters in history, but also to show “humanity’s interconnectedness as we strive to create a better world for our children, grandchildren and generations as yet unborn,” Prince Charles said, adding that this world should be “one where hope is victorious over despair and love triumphs over hate.”
    The paintings will also be featured in a BBC Two documentary that will air on January 27 to mark Holocaust Memorial Day. It will include interviews with the survivors, who will share their experiences of events during the Nazi era.
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    in Street Art

    Latest Mural of Cloakwork in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia

    Graffiti artist Cloakwork recently worked on a mural in his home country Malaysia. The mural in collaboration with FoodPanda, a food and grocery delivery service app, is located at the facade of a restaurant in Kuala Lumpur. With Cloakwork’s vibrant and energetic illustration style, his work easily catches the attention of a casual observer anywhere.Born and raised in Kuala Lumpur, Cloakwork is a multidisciplinary creative who works as a graffiti artist as well as an illustrator. He has been painting around the globe for 10 years, with work consisting of both, small and large scale. His style is quirky, fun and colourful! Being a rebel, picking up spray cans as his creative weapon was the right choice and he is heavily influenced by street culture. He always wanted to paint something related to the environment and the surroundings. Most of the characters to in some ways, come alive, speak and be part of its surroundings while communicating and interacting with viewers.CLOAKWORK is basically separated into two parts; ‘cloak’ and ‘work’. Cloak means hidden, stealth and cloaking while work stands for movement. “I often do graffiti at night without being noticed. So it goes like this : plain concrete wall during the day, the wall gets ‘cloakwork-ed’ during the night and a colourful graffiti the day after.”Take a look below to view more of Cloakwork’s piece. ​ More

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    in Exhibitions

    18 Must-See Exhibitions in Europe in 2022, From a Duet Between Etel Adnan and Van Gogh to Francis Bacon’s Animal Paintings

    Europe’s art world will be bustling this year with a string of biennial exhibitions in the first half of 2022, beginning with curator Cecilia Alemani’s 59th Venice Biennale, which opens this April after being pushed back a year due to health restrictions. In June, documenta returns to Kassel, this time curated by Indonesian collective ruangrupa. But in and around these two landmark shows are many must-see exhibitions across Europe, from a major Hito Steyerl retrospective in the Netherlands to an exhibition in the U.K. dedicated to the textile works of Louise Bourgeois.

    Georgia O’Keeffe Fondation Beyeler, BaselJanuary 23–May 22
    Oriental Poppies (1927), Georgia O’Keeffe. Sammlung des Frederick R. Weisman Art Museum at the University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, Ankauf, 1937. 
© Georgia O’Keeffe Museum / 2021, ProLitteris, Zurich.
    “One rarely takes the time to really see a flower. I have painted it big enough so that others would see what I would see,” said Georgia O’Keeffe in early 1926. Visitors at Fondation Beyeler will have five months to see first-hand what the artist, who died in 1986, saw through an in-depth survey of this key figure of modern American art. The exhibition, the first of its kind in Switzerland in almost two decades, will showcase important works by O’Keeffe spanning six decades.

    Hito Steyerl: “I Will Survive”Stedelijk Museum, AmsterdamJanuary 29–June 12
    Hito Steyerl, SocialSim (2020). Courtesy the artist, Andrew Kreps Gallery, New York and Esther Schipper, Berlin. © VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn, 2021. Film still © Hito Steyerl

    “I Will Survive,” Steyerl’s largest-ever retrospective exhibition in the Netherlands, will span the German artist’s career, from her video works made in the early 1990s to her architectural installations that have become predominant in the last decade. Rein Wolfs, director Stedelijk Museum, called it a “sweeping overview” that will bring together 20 major loaned works from “each phase of Hito Steyerl’s artistic practice,” including a few early works that are in the Stedelijk collection.

    Francis Bacon: Man and BeastRoyal Academy, LondonJanuary 29–April 17
    Francis Bacon, Head VI (1949). Arts Council Collection, Southbank Centre, London. © The Estate of Francis Bacon. All rights reserved, DACS/Artimage 2021. Photo by Prudence Cuming Associates Ltd.
    The RA will hold a large-scale exhibition on the 20th-century Irish painter, focused on his visceral works depicting animals. The son of a horse breeder, Francis Bacon’s lifelong fascination with fauna shaped his approach to the human figure. It is sometimes hard to discern whether his abstracted creations—riddled with anxiety and bursting with deep instinctual drive—portray a human or a beast. The exhibition includes 45 paintings spanning 50 years, from his early paintings of biomorphic creatures from the 1930s and ’40s to a trio of works about bullfighting from 1969—the latter are shown together for the first time next to his final work, a study of a bull, painted in 1991.

    Louise Bourgeois: The Woven ChildHayward Gallery, LondonFebruary 9–May 15
    Louise Bourgeois, The Good Mother (2003). Detail. © The Easton Foundation/VAGA at ARS, NY and DACS, London 2021. Photo by Christopher Burke.
    This major retrospective of the renowned French artist will focus exclusively on Bourgeois’s late career turn to sculptures made using domestic textiles and fabrics. More than 90 works spanning the mid-1990s to her death in 2010 will be presented, revisiting many of the subjects that preoccupied the artist throughout her storied career. Topics including identity, sexuality, and family relationships are explored in “The Woven Child,” as well as her spider motifs and figurative sculptures of female bodies. All told, the survey hopes to address broader themes of reparation and memory, and explore what the artist called “the magic power of the needle… to repair the damage.”

    Revolusi! Indonesia IndependentRijksmuseum, AmsterdamFebruary 11–June 5
    Affiche met opschrift ‘Perlawanan seloeroeh rakjat pokok kemenang revolusi (1945-1949). Museum Bronbeek
    Indonesia was one of the trailblazing nations in the fight for decolonisation, and an exhibition in Amsterdam, co-curated by Dutch and Indonesian curators, explores the former Dutch colony’s road to independence between 1945 and 1949. More than 200 objects are on view, threaded throughout experiences shared from 20 individuals who witnessed the revolution in some way, from varying locations and political standpoints.

    Rachel Jones: Say CheeeeeseChisenhale GalleryMarch 12–June 12
    Rachel Jones, Production Image (2021). Commissioned and produced by Chisenhale Gallery. Courtesy of the artist.
    For the rising market star’s first institutional solo, “Say Cheeeeese,” Rachel Jones will present a newly commissioned work at Chisenhale Gallery. Jones is also producing a new body of oil pastels and oil stick paintings on canvas and paper, building on previous work that explore the motif of obscured teeth and mouth parts—these abstracted forms she creates symbolize entry points into the inner self.

    Carrie Mae Weems: The Evidence of Things NotSeenWürttembergischer Kunstverein, StuttgartMarch 12–July 3
    Carrie Mae Weems, Constructing History (Mourning), (2008). © Carrie Mae Weems. Courtesy of the artist, Jack Shainman Gallery, New York

    The name of U.S. artist Carrie Mae Weems’s upcoming show in Stuttgart, set to be one of her most comprehensive institutional shows yet in Europe, borrows its title from a book by writer James Baldwin. The exhibition will feature 40 groups of works, including photographs, videos, and an immersive installation that is being conceived for the show. Weems is also creating a new photo series called “Monuments” that deals with the hot-button issue of colonialism and public memorials.

    Donatello: the RenaissancePalazzo Strozzi and Museo del Bargello, FlorenceMarch 19–July 31
    Donatello, Madonna col Bambino (Madonna Pazzi) c.1420-1425. Photo Antje Voigt
    Billed as a once-in-a-lifetime show, this exhibition of work by 14th century Renaissance master Donatello seeks to illustrate his legacy and influence. Curated by Francesco Caglioti, the joint presentation between Palazzo Strozzi and the Musei del Bargello will place sculptor’s work in context with other Italian Renaissance masters such as Brunelleschi, Masaccio, Andrea Mantegna, Giovanni Bellini, Raphael, and Michelangelo.

    Gaudí (1852-1926)Musee d’Orsay, ParisApril 12—July 17
    Gaudì Mirror. Courtesy Musée d’Orsay
    This exhibition, a rare celebration of the iconic Spanish architect and designer, takes a deep dive into what he and his workshop produced out of Catalonia at a time of great upheaval in Spain. Using the lens of space and colour and including drawings, models, and furniture, the show will guide the visitor through his amazing creations—from parks to churches and, of course, the Sagrada Familia church.

    Barbara KrugerNeue Nationalgalerie, BerlinApril 29–August 28
    Barbara Kruger, Untitled (Forever) (2017). Installation view, Sprüth Magers, Berlin, 2017–18. Amorepacific Museum of Art (APMA), Seoul. Photo by Timo Ohler and courtesy of Sprüth Magers.
    The newly reopened Neue Nationalgalerie in Berlin, an exquisite museum of contemporary and modern art designed by Mies van der Rohe that will now be headed up by Klaus Biesenbach, will see Kruger install a new text installation for its main floor. Out of respect for the design of van der Rohe, Kruger will leave key parts of the building untouched (which is not her usual way). From outside the glassed-in museum, passersby might not even see the show, which only becomes fully revealed once inside the space.

    “Meriem Bennani: Life on the CAPS”Nottingham Contemporary, NottinghamMay 7–September 4
    Meriem Bennani, Party on the CAPS (still), 2018–19, eight-channel video installation, 30 min. Courtesy the artist and Clearing, New York & Brussels.
    For the Moroccan artist’s largest solo exhibition in the U.K. to date, Bennani will show her eight-channel video installation Party on the CAPS (2018/19) alongside a newly-commissioned sequel. The films track the movements of inhabitants of a fictional island called CAPS in the middle of the Atlantic ocean across three generations—it is an internment camp for refugees and migrants hoping to head to Europe or North America, an isolated island that has become a bustling megalopolis. A new work will be premiered during the show, a sequel to this earlier piece, moving forward the artist’s fascination with displacement and biotechnology, and unpacking themes of privacy, protest, and public gathering.
    Etel AdnanVan Gogh Museum, AmsterdamMay 20–September 4
    “Le poids du monde” exhibition from 2016 by Etel Adnan at the Serpentine Gallery. Photo: Tristan Fewings/Getty Images for Serpentine Galleries.
    The Van Gogh Museum will present the first retrospective of work by Etel Adnan since her death at age 96 in November 2021, as well as her first major exhibition ever in the Netherlands. The acclaimed, Beirut-born artist and writer was known for her vivid abstracted landscapes. The Dutch exhibition will consider the overlap in Adnan and van Gogh’s art practices—their mutual fascination with color and nature, but also poetic language—by showing paintings and literary works by both artists side-by-side.

    A Century of the Artist’s Studio 1920–2020Whitechapel Gallery, LondonFebruary 17–May 29
    Lisa Brice Untitled (2019). Courtesy © Lisa Brice Courtesy the artist; Stephen Friedman Gallery, London; Salon 94, New York; and Goodman Gallery, South Africa. Katrin Bellinger Collection
    The artists’ studio is an endless source of fascination. A Century of the Artist’s Studio follows three years of research led by outgoing Whitechapel Gallery Director Iwona Blazwick. This ambitious show will chart the history of the studio and include 100 works by 80 artists across the globe, with art by Francis Bacon, Louise Bourgeois, Pablo Picasso, Lisa Brice, and Kerry James Marshall to be included.

    Anish KapoorGallerie dell’AccademiaApril 20—October 9
    Anish Kapoor Black Within Me (2021). Photo Dave Morgan © Anish Kapoor. All rights reserved SIAE, 2021
    Curated by director of the Rijksmuseum Taco Dibbits, this retrospective of Kapoor promises to be one of 2022’s blockbusters. “It is a huge honour to be invited to engage with the collections at the Gallerie dell’Accademia in Venice; perhaps one of the finest collections of classical painting anywhere in the world,” said Kapoor. “All art must engage with what went before.” His unmistakable works will sit alongside the existing collection.

    “The Milk of Dreams”The Venice BiennaleApril 23—November 27
    Venice’s Basilica of San Maria de Salute and a gondolier at sunset. Photo by Michel Baret/Gamma-Rapho via Getty Images.
    We have waited long enough! The postponed Venice Biennale of 2020 looks like it is finally happening. “Under the increasingly invasive pressure of technology, the boundaries between bodies and objects have been utterly transformed, bringing about profound mutations that remap subjectivities, hierarchies, and anatomies,” reads the statement from curator Cecelia Alemani. The central exhibition will be based around The Milk of Dreams, a book by surrealist artist Leonora Carrington.

    Tony Cokes: ”Some Munich Moments 1937-1972″Haus der Kunst, MunichJune 10–October 23
    Tony Cokes. Photo: Stan Narten
    Tony Cokes will have his first solo exhibition at Munich’s historic Haus der Kunst this summer, in a collaboration with Kunstverein München nearby. Cokes plans to present newly commissioned works called ”Some Munich Moments 1937-1972″ that will be presented at both institutions and in the public spaces between them. Cokes’s video essays, which are often text-based, focus on the African American experience, racism, and capitalism.

    ‘I Call It Art’National Museum, OsloJune 11, 2022
    Oslo’s new National Museum. Photo: Borre Hostland.
    The National Museum in Oslo is set to be Scandinavia’s biggest art institution when it opens this June. Featuring more than 150 artists and collectives, “I Call It Art” is one of the inaugural exhibitions of the long-awaited Norwegian institution. The show takes stock of contemporary art in Norway, while asking the age-old question of “What is good art?”. It answers this by featuring recent works from Norway, ranging from paintings and installations to video works that were selected via open call.

    Documenta FifteenVarious Locations, KasselJune 18–September 25
    © documenta fifteen 2022
    Documenta will be helmed by ruangrupa, a collective of artists and creatives from Jakarta, Indonesia. The concept of lumbung, meaning “rice barn” in Indonesian and referring to crops stored as a common resource for future use, drives the exhibition. “For documenta fifteen, we will focus on art practices that depend on accumulations of value in time, knowledge, and dissemination. How can we invest in those types of practices? What does investment mean?” Already, the curators are thinking differently about what an exhibition should do for the public: they announced their first artist list in a local magazine that benefits the homeless.

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    in Exhibitions

    Meet Rachel Jones, an Ascendant Painter Whose Consuming Paintings Have Captivated Viewers in London and Collectors Worldwide

    Standing in front of a painting by Rachel Jones is akin to letting her take you on a journey around her emotional landscape, with her skillful use of color and composition as your guide.
    One of the artist’s focuses is Black interiority, accessed somewhat literally through her frequent inclusion of mouths and teeth. Sometimes these elements are visible and sometimes they are submerged: In works like lick your teeth, so they clutch (2021)—currently featured in the Hayward Gallery’s survey of contemporary painting, “Mixing It Up”—the teeth and mouth morph into hills, rocks, valleys, and mountains. Circles and flowers might represent grills, but they could also be trees and waterfalls, such is the ‘magic eye’ effect of Jones’s work. Unique and seductive, her abstractions manage to convey the infinite psychological landscape that exists within a person’s self.
    “I love the idea that you can make artwork from a place of feeling, and that’s enough of a reason to make something, because I think that’s the truth of it,” she explained. “Anything that’s produced, it comes from some sort of desire or a need, and all of those things are emotional and physical reactions in our body.”
    Jones appeared in an autumn 2020 group show at Thaddaeus Ropac alongside Alvaro Barrington, Mandy El-Sayegh, and Dona Nelson. Ropac signed her shortly thereafter, and institutional and collector attention followed, resulting in an intense demand for her work over the past two years. Another 30-year-old artist might be overwhelmed by so swift a rise, but the Jones has remained focused on forging a life best suited to making work.
    Rachel Jones SMIIILLLLEEEE (2021). Photo Eva Herzog Courtesy Thaddeaus Ropac
    Her evolving practice is on view in “SMIIILLLLEEEE,” on view at Ropac’s London gallery through February 5, taking over the majority of the large space. The show is a combination of paintings of all sizes, some on stretched canvas and some hung straight onto the wall, ranging from a few inches to meters in size.
    The large-scale works for which Jones is known are present, as are some riffs on her practice to break up the formality of the gallery space. Upstairs, there is an intervention on a wall, with the words “Son Shine” written across either side. One work is a sticker on the floor and others are placed at varying heights, some very low on the wall, drawing viewers in, encouraging them to immerse themselves in the work. You are encouraged to bend down, lean back and step up to the paintings, creating a conversation between the work and the viewer.
    “I am very interested in placing my history and my relationship to painting within the work, she said to Artnet News. “It’s really meaningful to have people to interrogate those ideas and to think about them. There have been so many Black intellectual writers and poets who have talked about these things for such a long time, and it’s great to be able to feel as if I’m contributing to that conversation.”
    Rachel Jones SMIIILLLLEEEE (2021). Photo Eva Herzog Courtesy Thaddeaus Ropac
    Jones graduated from the internationally renowned Glasgow School of Art in 2013 and went on to complete her master’s at the Royal Academy of Arts in London. There she attracted the attention of, among others, Chisenhale director Zoé Whitley, who has tapped Jones for the forthcoming solo show, “Say Cheese,” in March 2022.
    “I first saw Rachel working in a different register when she was still a student at the RA schools and was thinking through what a language of her own might be,” Whitley told Artnet News. “It’s been so exciting to see how assured she’s been in finding a visual language that allows her to express so many of the very nuanced themes that she’s interested in. She has this very urgent sense of finding herself within the glare of what it means to be a painter today.”
    This evolution is an artist is key for Jones, who starts each new work with the body of painting that came before. “I am really excited to see the way the work develops over the years, because I look at the practice as having longevity,” Jones told Artnet News over Zoom. “And to become clearer over the years, because each body of work relates to one another.”
    Rachel Jones SMIIILLLLEEEE (2021). Photo Eva Herzog Courtesy Thaddeaus Ropac
    Jones works in oil sticks, and her process both is physical and emotional, tied together with an intuitive sense for composition and balance. “Every painting pretty much involves all of the colors on the spectrum,” Jones explained. “It’s very important that there is a sense of balance and that there are moments where the eye can rest. There have to be periods within the painting where the movement allows you to linger or to pause, so that it’s not constantly like an onslaught.”
    Her mark-making, although layered and complex, has a sense of immediacy that makes it highly legible. In some places the strokes are frenetic and in others they are layered and blended, there is sense of experimentation; Jones is getting to know her palette, and seeing the progression is exciting.
    “The colors can be forceful, or they can be muted, they can inquire, or they can be seductive, or violent, or harsh,” Jones said. “Using color becomes like a form of communication.” In these moments, Jones is not only communicating with the viewer, but also with herself: “All of those things operating together is something that happens through making the work with a sense of following my nose and listening to my intuition, then waiting for a point to feel like the painting has enough and it holds itself together.”
    Rachel Jones SMIIILLLLEEEE (2021). Photo Eva Herzog Courtesy Thaddeaus Ropac
    “People are drawn to the way she communicates through color and a visual lexicon that hovers in between the concrete and the enigmatic,” her gallerist, Thaddaeus Ropac, told Artnet News. “There’s an intensity of joy and complexity in her works that instantly captivates and holds you in their thrall long after.” He has placed her paintings in such institutions as the ICA Miami; the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; Tate; Hepworth Wakefield, the Towner Art Gallery; and the U.K. Arts Council collection—“and this was before she painted the works that are now on view in her current exhibition at our London gallery,” he added.
    The waiting list for the works on view is long, according to Diane Abela, a director at advisory Gurr Johns, due to the quality of Jones’s work—but also smart management from Ropac.
    “Personally, I just thought, wow, this is something completely different, something that you haven’t seen in the art world,” Abela told Artnet News. She cited the institutional interest in her work, coupled with its affordability—prices are high but are not inflatedfigures around €30,000 have been mentioned.
    Jones herself is focused on the long game. A passionate gardener, she also makes music and has “only painted in silence once when my batteries ran out.” She plays CDs and takes herself off the grid while listening to whole albums, enjoying making art to a complete body of work, as opposed to a streaming online. She wants a quiet life, but one centered around art, and she is currently completing a teaching qualification, which she sees as a practice to accompany a life of making. This pared-back approach is what allows her to channel herself so completely into these complicated and consuming works.
    “I’m excited to see the narrative develop and the form that that takes visually, how that shifts,” she said, “but I’m also looking forward to being able to work with people in a collaborative manner, because painting is a very solitary practice. I’m really looking forward to having the opportunity to build relationships through making work.”
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    in Street Art

    “Lil’ Heroes” NFT Collection by Edgar Plans

    Spanish contemporary visual artist Edgar Plans teamed up with Curatible and Exile Content Studio to create his very first digital collection entitled “Lil’ Heroes“. Lil’ Heroes is a unique and never-seen-before NFT collection inspired from all Edgar’s past and current work.7,777 UNIQUE NFTS200+ ATTRIBUTES50 LEGENDARY NFTSEdgar Plans drew entirely by hand the attributes and unique NFTs, then we worked together with Misha Made Studio to create the 3D designs and generate all the NFTs.FROM PAPER, THROUGH CANVAS, TO THE METAVERSE!Edgar Plans (born 1977, Madrid)  is a painter from a very young age, he quickly developed his Faux Naïf style, delivering pure artistic expression in childlike art pieces. His vivid and raw cartoons glean elements from the works of american icons Jean-Michel Basquiat and Keith Haring.Innocent as they may seem, his minimalist mouseeared subjects are a vessel to raise awareness on heavy socio-political issues such as gender violence, racism and climate change.His signature character, Artist Hero, represents the youth’s reckless, playful and bold way of living that Plans never gave up on.Phase 1 – Mint of Lil’ Heroes NFT Collection
will be in January 2022.Check out below for a preview of “Lil’ Heroes” NFT Collection. To learn more about the collection you can check www.lilheroes.io and follow their Instagram page @lilheroesNFT. More

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    in Exhibitions

    Georgia O’Keeffe Was an Accomplished Photographer, Too. A New Exhibition Focuses on Her Work in the Medium for the First Time

    Georgia O’Keeffe was surrounded by photography for most of her life, and yet her own efforts in the medium have largely gone unstudied.
    But now, the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston (MFAH) is debuting “Georgia O’Keeffe, Photographer,” the first exhibition devoted to the pioneering modernist’s photographic work. Nearly 100 pictures make up the show, most black and white and all culled from a recently rediscovered archive.
    Though she was a casual camera lover in her early decades, O’Keeffe’s marriage to photographer and gallerist Alfred Stieglitz in 1924 found her immersed in the medium like never before. She posed in hundreds of Stieglitz’s portraits, helped make and mount his prints, and even assisted in the design of his shows.
    But it wasn’t until the mid-1940s, after the death of her husband, that O’Keeffe began seriously making photographs of her own. Studying with photographer Todd Webb, she found herself turning a lens toward her surroundings in northern New Mexico—often capturing chemically the same subjects she painted years before.
    Georgia O’Keeffe, Forbidding Canyon, Glen Canyon (September 1964). © Georgia O’KeeffeMuseum.
    It’s not hard to tell that O’Keeffe was the eye behind the images—and not just because the majority of them feature the same beloved New Mexican landscapes and flora that populate her paintings. Her signature sense of composition is there, too. You can recognize it in the way she photographs the bodily curves of riverbeds and adobe homes, or in her fascination with the long, graphic shadows that dramatize the desert every morning and afternoon. Her ability to capture nature’s feminine grace remains unparalleled.
    After the show’s run in Texas, it will head to the Addison Gallery of American Art in Andover, Massachusetts. There, when the exhibition opens in February of next year, it will do so alongside two other presentations meant to contextualize O’Keeffe’s photographs: “Arthur Wesley Dow: Nearest to the Divine,” which brings together the work of O’Keeffe’s influential mentor in New York; and “’What Next?’: Camera Work and 291 Magazine,” a collection of images from two seminal photography journals compiled to offer a snapshot of the artistic scene surrounding her and Stieglitz.
    See more examples of O’Keeffe’s photography below.
    Georgia O’Keeffe, Big Sage (Artemisia tridentata) (1957). © Georgia O’Keeffe Museum.
    Georgia O’Keeffe, Ladder against Wall (1961). © Georgia O’Keeffe Museum.
    Georgia O’Keeffe, Waiʻanapanapa Black Sand Beach (March 1939). © Georgia O’Keeffe Museum.
    Georgia O’Keeffe, Road from Abiquiú (1959–66). © Georgia O’Keeffe Museum.
    Georgia O’Keeffe, Garage Vigas and Studio Door (July 1956). © 2022 Georgia O’Keeffe Museum / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York.
    Georgia O’Keeffe, Chama River (1957–63). © Georgia O’Keeffe Museum.
    Georgia O’Keeffe, Ladder against Studio Wall in Snow (1959–60). © Georgia O’Keeffe Museum.
    Georgia O’Keeffe, Skull, Ghost Ranch (1961–72). © Georgia O’Keeffe Museum.
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