Eliana Willis

The 2021 New Museum triennial—the fifth iteration of its signature exhibition of emerging artists—has been in the works since long before the pandemic. But its overarching theme, of tenacity in the face of hardship, will likely feel more relevant than ever when the show opens this fall, well over a year into the pandemic.
The museum announced today that the exhibition, co-organized by Margot Norton, a curator at the New Museum, and Jamillah James, senior curator at the Institute of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, is titled “Soft Water Hard Stone.” The name comes from a Brazilian proverb: Água mole em pedra dura, tanto bate até que fura (“Soft water on hard stone hits until it bores a hole”).
For the curators, it’s a metaphor for persistence: Even the most inexorable of materials change with time and energy. 
The 40 artists included in the show—a group that represents five continents and nearly all media—the proverb can, occasionally, be read more literally. The transfiguration of discordant materials and ideas will constitute a prominent theme in the exhibition, as will the use of outmoded models and artistic traditions.
“Their works exalt states of transformation, calling attention to the malleability of structures, porous and unstable surfaces, and the fluid and adaptable potential of both technological and organic media,” a statement on the triennial reads. 
Ambera Wellmann, UnTurning (2019). Courtesy of the artist and KTZ gallery, Berlin.
Though all of the artists were born after 1975, the curators say they didn’t look to birth dates for their definition of “emerging artists.”
“We decided that, instead of age, our parameter would be based on exposure,” James tells Artnet News, “so that artists we invited that had not yet had a major solo exhibition in a U.S. museum.” 
Norton and James began research for the Triennial in the summer 2018, logging nearly two year’s worth of travel and in-person studio visits before the pandemic necessitated some improvisation. “When we scheduled our travel, we were interested in visiting locations where it made a difference to be there physically, and in areas where artists are often underrepresented in international exhibitions,” James says, pointing to places such as North Africa, South Asia, and Eastern Europe.
Since then, the curators have “become quite accustomed to the Zoom studio visit, to say the least.” Norton says. “While there is a huge disadvantage to not seeing work in person, we actually found it to be quite efficient to continue our research remotely, particularly as we honed in on the show’s theme, and for the artists whose works we have had the opportunity to see in person prior.” 
Brandon Ndife, Modern Dilemma (2020). Courtesy of the artist and Bureau, New York.
“Soft Water Hard Stone,” is set to run from October 27, 2021 to January 23, 2022 at the New Museum. See the full list of participating artists below.

Haig Aivazian (b. 1980 Beirut, Lebanon; lives and works in Beirut, Lebanon)
Evgeny Antufiev (b. 1986 Kyzyl, Russia; lives and works in Moscow, Russia)
Alex Ayed (b. 1989 Strasbourg, France; lives and works in Brussels, Belgium, and Tunis, Tunisia)
Nadia Belerique (b. 1982 Mississauga, Ontario, Canada; lives and works in Toronto, Canada)
Hera Büyüktaşcıyan (b. 1984 Istanbul, Turkey; lives and works in Istanbul, Turkey) 
Tomás Díaz Cedeño (b. 1983 Mexico City, Mexico; lives and works in Mexico City, Mexico) 
Gabriel Chaile (b. 1985 San Miguel de Tucumán, Argentina; lives and works in Lisbon, Portugal)
Gaëlle Choisne (b. 1985 Cherbourg, France; lives and works in Paris, France)
Krista Clark (b. 1975 Burlington, VT, United States; lives and works in Atlanta, GA, United States) 
Kate Cooper (b. 1984, Liverpool, United Kingdom; lives and works in Amsterdam, the Netherlands) 
Cynthia Daignault (b. 1978 Baltimore, MD, United States; lives and works in Baltimore, MD, United States) 
Jes Fan (b. 1990 Toronto, Canada; lives and works in New York, NY, United States and Hong Kong)
Goutam Ghosh (b. 1979 Nabadwip, India; lives and works in Kolkata, India) 
Harry Gould Harvey IV (b. 1991 Fall River, MA, United States; lives and works in Fall River, MA, United States) 
Clara Ianni (b. 1987 São Paolo, Brazil; lives and works in São Paolo, Brazil)
Kahlil Robert Irving (b. 1992 San Diego, CA, United States; lives and works in St. Louis, MO, United States) 
Arturo Kameya (b. 1984 Lima, Peru; lives and works in Amsterdam, the Netherlands) 
Laurie Kang (b. 1985 Toronto, Canada; lives and works in Toronto, Canada)  
Bronwyn Katz (b. 1993 Kimberly, South Africa; lives and works in Cape Town, South Africa) 
Ann Greene Kelly (b. 1988 New York, NY, United States; lives and works in Los Angeles, CA, United States)
Kang Seung Lee (b. 1978 Seoul, South Korea; lives and works in Los Angeles, CA, United States) 
Amy Lien and Enzo Camacho (b. 1987 Dallas, TX, United States; lives and works in New York, NY, United States) and (b. 1985 Manila, Philippines; lives and works in Berlin, Germany) 
Tanya Lukin Linklater (Alutiiq) (b. 1976 Kodiak, AK, United States; lives and works in North Bay, Ontario, Canada)
Angelika Loderer (b. 1984 Feldbach, Austria; lives and works in Vienna, Austria)
Sandra Mujinga (b. 1989 Goma, Democratic Republic of the Congo; lives and works in Oslo, Norway and Berlin, Germany)
Gabriela Mureb (b. 1985 Rio de Janeiro, Brazil; lives and works in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil)
Brandon Ndife (b. 1991 Hammond, IN, United States; lives and works in Brooklyn, NY, United States)
Erin Jane Nelson (b. 1989 Neenah, WI, United States; lives and works in Atlanta, GA, United States) 
Jeneen Frei Njootli (Vuntut Gwitchin) (b. 1988 Whitehorse, Yukon, Canada; lives and works in Vancouver, Canada)
Ima-Abasi Okon (b. 1981 London, United Kingdom; lives and works in London, United Kingdom and Amsterdam, the Netherlands)
Christina Pataialii (b. 1988 Auckland, New Zealand; lives and works in Wellington, New Zealand)
Thao Nguyen Phan (b. 1987 Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam; lives and works in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam)
Nickola Pottinger (b. 1986 Kingston, Jamaica; lives and works in New York, NY, United States)
Rose Salane (b. 1992 New York, NY, United States; lives and works in New York, NY, United States)
Blair Saxon-Hill (b. 1979 Eugene, OR, United States; lives and works in Portland, OR, United States)
Samara Scott (b. 1984 London, United Kingdom; lives and works in London, United Kingdom)
Amalie Smith (b. 1985 Copenhagen, Denmark; lives and works in Copenhagen, Denmark)
Iris Touliatou (b. 1981 Athens, Greece; lives and works in Athens, Greece) 
Ambera Wellmann (b. 1982 Lunenberg, Nova Scotia, Canada; lives and works in New York, NY, United States)
Yu Ji (b. 1985 Shanghai, China; lives and works in Shanghai, China)

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“Alice Neel: People Come First”at the Metropolitan Museum of Artthrough August 1

What the museum says: “‘Alice Neel: People Come First’ is the first museum retrospective in New York of American artist Alice Neel (1900–1984) in 20 years. This ambitious survey positions Neel as one of the century’s most radical painters, a champion of social justice whose longstanding commitment to humanist principles inspired her life as well as her art, as demonstrated in the approximately one hundred paintings, drawings, and watercolors that will appear in the Met’s survey.
Images of activists demonstrating against fascism and racism appear alongside paintings of impoverished victims of the Great Depression, as well as portraits of Neel’s neighbors in Spanish Harlem, leaders from a wide range of political organizations, queer artists and performers, and members of New York’s global diaspora. The exhibition also highlights Neel’s erotic watercolors and pastels from the 1930s, her depictions of mothers, and her paintings of nude figures (some of them visibly pregnant), all of whose candor and irreverence are without precedent in the history of Western art.”
Why it’s worth a look: For a long time, art historians weren’t quite sure what to do with Alice Neel. She painted representational pictures of everyday people in an era when abstraction was king and figuration was widely considered finished. She worked in New York, where finding space in an art world dominated by the outsize influence of the Jackson Pollock and Willem de Kooning was difficult. And she was a woman, which made it that much harder to find recognition.
But the past few years have seen a renewed surge of interest in her work. A sterling exhibition at David Zwirner in New York curated by writer Hilton Als in 2017 brought Neel to fresh audiences, and that show’s catalogue extended the exhibition’s reach beyond its closing date. Now, with this full career survey at the Met, she finally finds a permanent place in the Western canon as a forerunner to the representational painters who dominate today’s headlines.
Neel spent many of her years in New York, and as the Met puts it, the city was “her most faithful subject.” She had a deep sense for its characters, their idiosyncrasies and mannerisms, and a reverence for difference, plurality, and individuality. Not unlike contemporary artists like Amy Sherald or Salman Toor, she was able to connect with her sitters’ identities and to draw out their complexities while still maintaining a relatively simple yet vibrant painterly mark.
“For me, people come first,” Neel said in 1950. “I have tried to assert the dignity and eternal importance of the human being.” That’s the best lesson anyone can draw from the show—especially these days, when empathy is at once more necessary and rarer than ever.
What it looks like:
Alice Neel, Mercedes Arroyo (1952). © The Estate of Alice Neel.
Alice Neel, Linda Nochlin and Daisy (1973). © The Estate of Alice Neel.
Alice Neel, James Farmer (1964). © The Estate of Alice Neel.
Alice Neel, Margaret Evans Pregnant (1978). © The Estate of Alice Neel.
Alice Neel, Jackie Curtis and Ritta Redd (1970). © The Estate of Alice Neel.
Alice Neel, Andy Warhol (1970). © The Estate of Alice Neel.
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Last year, a firestorm of controversy ignited when four leading international museums postponed a long-awaited Philip Guston retrospective over concerns that the artist’s paintings of hooded Klansmen needed additional contextualization in light of the heightened racial tensions following the summer’s Black Lives Matter protests.
Now, New York’s Hauser & Wirth gallery, which represents the artist’s estate, has taken it upon itself to spotlight those challenging works in “Philip Guston, 1969–1979,” a show dedicated to the final decade of his career.
“The timing for ‘Philip Guston: 1969–1979’ is urgent because of the art’s relevance to our cultural context today,” Marc Payot, the gallery’s president, told Artnet News in an email.
“The racial reckoning and widespread calls for social justice that have rightly brought so many Americans into the streets over the past couple years—particularly since the murders of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and too many others—echo the context in which Guston made these late works.”
The gallery says the show was not organized in response to the controversial postponement.
When it opens in September, the exhibition will focus on the painter’s late-in-life embrace of figuration after he helped pioneer Abstract Expressionism as a first generation painter of the New York School.
Film still of Philip Guston in his Woodstock studio, summer 1971. From footage by Michael Blackwood Productions. ©The Estate of Philip Guston, courtesy the Estate and Hauser & Wirth.
Critics initially lambasted Guston’s change of direction, which involved an unlikely combination of deliberately cartoon-like figures and the dark subject matter of systemic racism. But the works spoke to the insidious yet banal way that evil pervades US society. In these intimate, confessional paintings, both the artist and the viewer become complicit in a long history of racial injustice.
“In his last decade, Guston achieved a visual language to express his lifelong outrage over inhumanity, bigotry, cruelty, and injustice everywhere,” Payot said.
Originally, Guston’s museum retrospective was set to open at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., on June 7, 2020. The show was pushed back for a year due to the pandemic, before organizers announced that it would open in 2024 to give curators time to reassess the presentation.
Following a widespread backlash and cries of censorship, the exhibition’s four organizing institutions opted for a 2022 opening date.
Philip Guston, Back View II (1978). ©The Estate of Philip Guston, courtesy the Estate and Hauser & Wirth, private collection.
“Yes, these are challenging works with painful imagery that calls to mind deep traumas,” Payot said. “But at the gallery, the paintings will speak for the themselves. Guston’s take on the human condition and his voice for social justice are by now manifest.”
The Hauser & Wirth exhibition is set to include works that have never been exhibited before, with loans from museums and private collections. The show “will be complemented by robust public programs and critical writings that give significant context to the work and bring the artist’s ideas and images into the center of contemporary discourse,” Payot added.
The gallery has represented the Guston estate since 2015, and has presented a series of shows covering different periods in the artist’s career, including his late abstract work and satirical Richard Nixon drawings.
“We devoted one exhibition called ‘Resilience’ to a single year in Guston’s career—1971—when he moved to Europe in the wake of critical excoriation of his new figurative paintings at the now infamous Marlborough Gallery exhibition in New York in 1970,” Payot said. “We’ve always planned to organize a show focused on the paintings that made his Marlborough exhibition such a scandal, yet propelled Guston toward the most powerful decade of his career.”
“Philip Guston, 1969–1979” will be on view at Hauser & Wirth, 542 West 22nd Street, New York, September 9–October 30, 2021.
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