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    in Exhibitions

    Awol Erizku’s Strange, Striking Photographs Will Grace Hundreds of Bus Shelters Across New York and Chicago—See Images Here

    As galleries and art institutions around the world begin to slowly reopen, we are spotlighting individual shows—online and IRL—that are worth your attention.

    “Awol Erizku: New Visions for Iris”Citywide in New York and Chicagothrough June 20, 2021

    What Public Art Fund says: “Awol Erizku’s distinctive visual language emerges from thoughtful, contemplative underpinnings into layered, colorful, and striking photographs. Erizku (b. 1988, Gondar, Ethiopia) has created a new body of 13 photographs for 350 JCDecaux bus shelters across New York City’s five boroughs and throughout Chicago. ‘New Visions for Iris’ marks Public Art Fund’s first simultaneous presentation in two cities, and first ever in Chicago.
    Growing up in the Bronx and influenced by its diverse milieu, Erizku’s approach to photography is informed by both contemporary life in the United States and global culture. In ‘New Visions for Iris,’ Erizku highlights the paradoxes of how hybrid identities are treated within American society. His bold and vibrant images contain evocative juxtapositions and compositions with highly saturated colors that call to mind the improvisational expressiveness and poetic nuance of his adopted forefathers: David Hammons, Sun Ra, Miles Davis, Kobe Bryant, Nas, and others.”
    Why it’s worth a look: In the midst of the confusion, sadness, and anxiety of 2020 on an international scale, artist Awol Erizku was managing a tectonic shift in his personal life: the birth of his first child, a daughter named Iris. The experience profoundly affected the photographer, who rose to superstardom with his dramatically lit, meticulously staged images that challenge historical Western narratives by re-framing them through contemporary arbiters of identity.
    Recalling early genre paintings and still lifes, Erizku’s tableaux feature a melange of icons and objects, including cowrie shells, African masks, Egyptian busts, colorful plastic toys, and Ethiopian letterforms, all references to aspects of personal and global identity, religion, nationality, and consumerism.
    “As a father, I think about how to raise a daughter in this world and explain cultural parameters and gray areas,” the artist said in a statement. “I want my daughter Iris to grow up with these images so they’re the norm for her.”
    Also included in the suite of photos are contemplative portraits, including one of Michael Brown Sr., pictured in profile and cast in shadow against a green backdrop. In another, a man is seen from behind wearing a Kobe Bryant jersey as he kneels in prayer on a small rug in a park. A great bird is perched on the seat of a motorcycle next to him. Birds occur frequently in the series, wings outstretched, either about to take off in flight, or just alit. These, like many aspects of the works in the show, serve as symbols of renewal and transformation.
    “With ‘New Visions for Iris,’ I want to reflect a less fixed, rigid, institutional understanding of the spaces we occupy,” Erizku says.
    What it looks like:

    Awol Erizku, Deep Shadow (Michael Brown Sr.) (2020). Commissioned by Public Art Fund. Courtesy of Awol Erizku.

    Awol Erizku, Letters for the Nigist (2020). Commissioned by Public Art Fund. Courtesy of Awol Erizku.

    Awol Erizku, Visions for the Nigist (2020) in Chicago. Photo: David C. Sampson, Courtesy of Public Art Fund, NY.

    Awol Erizku, 13 Months of Sunshine (2020). Commissioned by Public Art Fund. Courtesy of Awol Erizku.

    Awol Erizku, Park Match (2020) in New York. Photo: Nicholas Knight, Courtesy of Public Art Fund, NY.

    Awol Erizku, Zuhr (2020). Commissioned by Public Art Fund. Courtesy of Awol Erizku.

    Awol Erizku, Pharaoh Whispers (2020). Commissioned by Public Art Fund. Courtesy of Awol Erizku.

    Awol Erizku, Going Home (2020) in Chicago. Photo: David C. Sampson, Courtesy of Public Art Fund, NY.

    Awol Erizku, Arrival (2020) in New York. Photo: Nicholas Knight, Courtesy of Public Art Fund, NY.

    Awol Erizku, Going Home (2020) in Chicago. Photo: David C. Sampson, Courtesy of Public Art Fund, NY.

    Awol Erizku, Going Home (2020). Commissioned by Public Art Fund. Courtesy of Awol Erizku.

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    in Exhibitions

    A New teamLab Exhibition at One of the ‘Three Great Gardens’ of Japan Aims to Connect Visitors With the Bounties of Nature

    In these turbulent times, creativity and empathy are more necessary than ever to bridge divides and find solutions. Artnet News’s Art and Empathy Project is an ongoing investigation into how the art world can help enhance emotional intelligence, drawing insights and inspiration from creatives, thought leaders, and great works of art. 

    “teamLab: Digitized Kairakuen Garden”at Kairakuen Garden in Ibaraki, Japanthrough March 31
    What the collective says: “teamLab’s art project, ‘Digitized Nature,’ explores how nature can become art. The concept of the project is that non-material digital technology can turn nature into art without harming it. Humans cannot recognize time longer than their own lifespans. In other words, there is a boundary in our understanding of the long continuity of time.
    The forms and shapes of nature have been created over many years and have been molded by the interactions between people and nature. We can perceive this long duration of time in these shapes of nature themselves. By using the shapes, we believe we can explore the boundary in our perception of the long continuity of time.”
    Why it’s worth a look: Japan’s Kairakuen Garden, which is lauded as one of the three great gardens of Japan, was created in 1842 at the end of the Edo Period. The botanical park is built around a pond and boasts 3,000 plum trees of more than 100 varieties that explode into stunning blooms in the spring.
    In this already exquisite environment, experiential collective teamLab’s new installation plunges visitors into a multi-sensory experience that uses colored light to transform the garden into a mystical botanical wonderland.
    How it can be used as an empathy workout: Part of teamLab’s purpose is to help visitors experience the organic beauty of the natural world by enhancing their connection to it. Spending time in nature increases one’s spatial awareness, understanding for how actions can directly affect the world around, and learning things outside of one’s typical day-to-day. Nature truly is a metaphor for how to practice compassion and empathy toward other people and living things. Using colored lights that are responsive to the ebb and flow of a visitor’s presence, the collective uses technology as an innovative way to—literally—shine a light on the garden’s unique landscape.
    The art installation is sensitive to its inhabitants, and responds to them as individuals in order to create the most fulfilling experience. The exhibition only takes place at night, which enhances the dramatic lightscapes as they illuminate the centuries-old trees in various stages of bloom.
    What it looks like:

    teamLab, Life is Continuous Light – Plum Trees (2021). © teamLab. interactive digitized nature, sound: teamLab.

    teamLab, Life is Continuous Light – Plum Trees (2021). © teamLab. Interactive digitized nature, sound: teamLab.

    teamLab, Abstract and Concrete – Between Yin and Yang (2021). © teamLab. Interactive digitized nature, sound: teamLab.

    teamLab, Walk, Walk, Walk – Moso Bamboo Forest (2021). © teamLab. Interactive digital installation, endless, sound: Hideaki Takahashi. Voices: Yutaka Fukuoka, Yumiko Tanaka.

    teamLab, Ever Blossoming Life Tree -Giant Taro Cedar (2021). © teamLab. Digitized nature, sound: Hideaki Takahashi.

    teamLab, Enso in the Natural Spring – Togyokusen (2021). © teamLab. Digital installation, sound: Hideaki Takahashi.

    teamLab, Resonating Pine and Azalea (2021). © teamLab. Interactive digital installation, endless, sound: Hideaki Takahashi.

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    in Street Art

    “Corridors of Hope” by Sonny in Cape Town, South Africa

    Internationally renowned artist, Sonny, is known for using his creative voice to raise awareness for important environmental issues, with his latest mural shining a light on wildlife corridors as an innovative conservation approach that is bringing hope to the Cape leopard and other endangered wildlife.

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    “For me, this Cape leopard is a symbol of hope, as people are waking up to new ways of approaching conservation that are less about fencing off wildlife in nature reserves, and more about adapting our world to allow animals and humans to safely and peacefully co-exist. We humans are not above nature, we are part of it.” – Sonny

    Sonny’s new mural, painted in Cape Town as part of the Baz-Art International Public Art, depicts a beautiful Cape leopard and responds to the festival theme of ‘100% Sustainable’. Leopards and other wildlife are being forced into ever smaller areas due to human encroachment on their natural territories. This has led to inbreeding, which can have detrimental long-term effects on the species ability to thrive (and even survive), as genetic diversity improves overall health and resilience.
    Through his beautifully detailed artwork, Sonny opens up a conversation around the development and use of wildlife corridors as a way to link nature reserves to other protected areas as a way to encourage genetic diversity within wildlife populations. 

    “The COVID-19 crisis has highlighted the unintended impacts that disrupting natural ecosystems can have on human health. Even more of a reason to work towards stitching together disjointed ecosystems for the sake of wildlife and humans alike!”

    Urban contemporary artist, Sonny has become most well-known for his majestic and intricate large-scale wildlife murals that are scattered across the globe.  His unique style of art blends realism with abstract colouring and has quickly seen him gain notoriety within the street art world.  His passion for using his creative voice to raise awareness for important societal and environmental issues has also built him a reputation for being an engaged artist, driven by a desire make an impact.
    He had created impactful murals in far-reaching places such as New York, London, Canada, Russia, Miami, Ireland, Amsterdam and South Africa.
    Scroll down below for more photos of “Corridors of Hope”. More

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    in Exhibitions

    A Group Exhibition in Upstate New York Examines Black Excellence in an Imperfect World—See Images Here

    “i.de.al.is.tic”Through April 3 at the University of Albany
    What the gallery says: “The University Art Museum, University at Albany, is pleased to present ‘i.de.al.is.tic,’ a new exhibition that features three rising Black artists and explores each artist’s acceptance of imperfection and their relationship to idealism.
    “Curated by Michael Mosby, ‘i.de.al.is.tic’ brings together the work of artists Anthony Olubunmi Akinbola, Sean Desiree, and Marcus Leslie Singleton. The exhibition explores each artist’s relationship to the concept of idealism—the unrealistic aim for perfection. Singleton deals with the everyday, while Akinbola abstracts the concept of a Black identity, and Desiree objectively describes the inherent beauty in public housing units. In each of these artist’s practices there is an acceptance of imperfection, and through this resolve a true picture of a complex Black narrative emerges.”

    Why it’s worth a look: In distinct and innovative ways, all three artists bring visual tropes and signifiers long associated with Black American life and identity under the microscope, juxtaposing joy and hardship in glimmering snapshots of day-to-day life.
    There are Akinbola’s collaged durags, which are a symbol of Black excellence and respectability within the community, but have been criminalized in the wider culture; Desiree’s tender (and sometimes claustrophobic) woodworked depictions of public housing, and the spirit of connection it provides; and Singleton’s highly emotive and sensitive paintings of figures living their lives as authentically as possible.
    “These are works that make you think,” Mosby says. “They require more looking. It may not be obvious at first why they are connected, or what they mean. But together, they weave a narrative that’s rooted in pursuing our highest selves and our dreams, all while contending with the imperfect contexts that inform our stories.”
    What it looks like:
    Anthony Akinbola, Camouflage #020 (Chorus) (2020). Photo courtesy of the artist.

    Anthony Akinbola, Chopped and Screwed #02 (2019). Photo courtesy of the artist.

    Marcus Leslie Singleton, Love Letter to the Dogon (2020). Photo courtesy the artist.

    Marcus Leslie Singleton, Guard at the Guggenheim (2019). Photo courtesy the artist.

    Marcus Leslie Singleton, Love Letter to the Dogon II (2020). Photo courtesy the artist.

    Sean Desiree, Marble Hill (2020). Photo courtesy the artist.

    Sean Desiree, Franklin (2019). Photo courtesy the artist.

    Sean Desiree, Greenwood Manor (2019). Photo courtesy the artist.

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    in Exhibitions

    A Louisville Museum Is Staging a Show About Breonna Taylor With Help From Amy Sherald and Theaster Gates

    The Speed Art Museum in Louisville, Kentucky, will reflect on the death of Breonna Taylor—who was shot by police in the city a year ago next month—in a new exhibition.   
    The title of the show, “Promise, Witness, Remembrance,” came from Taylor’s mom, Tamika Palmer. 
    “Early in the exhibition planning process, I had a conversation with Ms. Palmer, where I asked her to share what this exhibition meant to her and her daughter’s legacy,” says Allison Glenn, who guest curated the show. “From her response, I developed this three-word title that spoke to the spirit of her reply.”
    Details about who—or what—will be included in the show have not yet been announced, but it will open across five galleries at the museum on April 7. Entry to the exhibition will be free thanks to a grant from the Ford Foundation. 
    Curator Allison Glenn. Courtesy of the Speed Art Museum.

    Stephen Reily, the Speed’s director, approached Glenn, who is an associate curator at Crystal Bridges in Arkansas, about the show last fall. 
    “We slowly started to think about how our museum, which is deeply committed to using art to serve the whole community, could respond,” Reily says. “What is the role of an art museum in serving a city and trauma? We had to ask ourselves the question: how would a museum even try to get this right?” 
    In talking to colleagues and peers, Glenn’s name came up quickly, Reily says, noting that she’d previously worked with Theaster Gates’s Dorchester Projects in Chicago and Prospect New Orleans. “She’s someone who has deep experience working with great artists in response to real events in real places,” he says.
    For this effort, Glenn convened a group of artists, scholars, and other experts to advise on curatorial decisions for the show. “I sought their consult on everything,” she recalls. “Everything.” 
    Gates, who reinstalled the Cleveland gazebo where Tamir Rice was shot as a memorial in Chicago, was Glenn’s first call. Then came, in no particular order, artists Amy Sherald (who painted Taylor for the cover of Vanity Fair) and Hank Willis Thomas; multidisciplinary filmmaker and curator Jon-Sesrie Goff; art historian Allison K. Young; art strategist Mecca Brooks; art administrator La Keisha Leek, a cousin of Trayvon Martin; and retired military officer Raymond Green, who is a cousin of the late Alton Sterling. 
    The Speed Art Museum in Louisville, Kentucky.

    Together, they make up the show’s advisory panel, a group that Glenn likens to a “board of directors for the curatorial framework.” 
    “These people really helped shape the truth of this all, which is that what happened is part of a national conversation,” Glenn says. “I really tried to make sure I was positioning myself in concert and conversation with many voices that I admire and respect before I brought any ideas to the museum or the local community.”
    This, she added, was done out of “respect for the subject and respect for the year that Louisville had last year—and continues to have.”
    Meanwhile, the Speed’s community engagement strategist, Toya Northington, convened a steering committee of Louisville artists, activists, mental health professionals, and other community members who serve as advisors on a local level.
    “A museum like ours should never live in isolation from what’s going on in the city,” Reily says. “The killing of Breonna Taylor and the year of protests changed the course of our city. At the Speed, because we believe that great art and artists can help the city, we were hungry… to find a way to address it.”
    “Promise, Witness, Remembrance” will be on view from April 7 through June 6, 2021 at the Speed Art Museum in Louisville, Kentucky.
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    in Street Art

    “The Stranger” and “INTR3PID” by Felipe Pantone

    During 2020, Spanish artist Felipe Pantone painted a supercar and a Carbon Club aircraft: The Stranger’ and ‘INTR3PID’. And now, it’s time for them to meet each other!

    Photo credit: @davidacedo

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    “As an artist, I want to represent my times, and when I look at it… I see speed, transformation, dynamism”– Felipe Pantone

    Photo credit: @davidacedo

    The digital world and how we consume it has decisively modified the way we perceive the world: speed and dynamism are present nowadays in different ways in our lives.
    The vitality of Pantone’s work is in being a meditation of a present “way of seeing”: Glitch, iridescence, dynamics, distortion: the play of lights and color ranges that Pantone carries out takes us to reflect on the visuality of new languages. The interaction between these new encoded graphic languages ​​takes place due to the new technological processes and modern machines.

    Photo credit: @davidacedo

    Photo credit: @davidacedo

    Photo credit: @davidacedo

    Over a year ago, Felipe Pantone, Joan Escribá, and Joan Comas got together to plan the construction of the INTR3PID, a Carbon Cub which is the highest performance adventure aircraft in the world. Lightweight and powerful, the INTR3PID livery designed by Felipe Pantone seems to enhance the dynamic properties of the classic Piper Super Cub, an American light aircraft first built in 1938, on which the Carbon Cub is based.
    Felipe Pantone created a bespoke design, a glove-like fit in this classic that intensifies the sense of speed and dynamism.

    Check out below for more images of Pantone’s project.

    Photo credit: SuperFuerteStudio

    Photo credit: SuperFuerteStudio

    Photo credit: SuperFuerteStudio

    Photo credit: SuperFuerteStudio

    Photo credit: SuperFuerteStudio More

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    in Exhibitions

    Why the Curators of the Gwangju Biennial Are Quarantining for Weeks (and Working Overtime) to Mount a Show Almost No One Can Visit

    Angelo Plessas was doing plank pose in the narrow space between the foot of his bed and the hotel wall. Several of his quilted sculptures were spread out beneath him to soften the hard floor. Hotel staff dropped off warm meals several times a day.
    “It is sort of like a residency,” the Greek artist told me over a WhatsApp call on day seven of his 14-day quarantine in an 18-square-meter room in Seoul. (The artist had been uploading the footage to Instagram as a kind of performative ritual.) Following his stay, Plessas planned to head to a sacred mountain to meet the South Korean shaman Dodam, with whom he is collaborating for the 13th Gwangju Biennial.
    Production still from John Gerrard Mirror Pavilion: Leaf Work (Derrigimlagh) (2019). Courtesy of the artist.

    It’s not exactly how Plessas imagined he would return to South Korea after an initial trip there in late 2019. Back then, a large group of international artists, shepherded by artistic directors Defne Ayas and Natasha Ginwala, went on a series of site visits ahead of the esteemed exhibition—Asia’s largest and oldest. At the time, the virus was perhaps already somewhere in the world, but it was nowhere near their imaginations.
    Since then, Gwangju’s organizers have had to delay, adapt, rethink, and rework to accommodate a constantly shifting public-health situation. After two postponements, the biennial is preparing, finally, to open on April 1. (South Korea has been praised for its response to the pandemic; its most recent seven-day case count came in at under 500.)
    Yet the opening will look very different from the buzzy biennials of previous years. Of the 69 participating artists (who are responsible for 41 new commissions), only four individuals—including a two-person collective—were able to travel to South Korea to install their works in situ. 
    Natasha Ginwala (R) and Defne Ayas (L). Photo: Victoria Tomaschko.

    The challenges posed by the lockdown era have rushed the biennial circuit into a future that many were already discussing. Had the daring, female-led show in South Korea intended to be a spectacle reminiscent of biennials past, it likely would have been rendered moot by the pandemic.  
    But neither Ayas nor Ginwala wanted to continue with “this machine of biennials,” as Ayas put it. Instead, they sought to offer an antidote to it, by exploring spirituality, resistance, and community healing. The events of 2020 gave those themes a new sense of urgency.
    “We were ready to debunk the biennial format and stretch it, but we did not know we would be stretching it this much,” Ayas said with a laugh from her own room a few floors above Plessas. “The cracks we were looking into just got deeper.”
    Video still from Theo Eshetu’s, Ghostdance (2020). Courtesy of the artist.

    Hive Mind
    The biennial, titled “Minds Rising, Spirits Tuning,” comes at a moment when loss, grief, and separation are globally felt. And so the duo has gravitated toward two seemingly disparate themes: shamanism, a dominant form of spirituality in South Korea, and technology. A form of cosmic gravitas pulses through the exhibition’s preamble of essays, talks, and online programming.
    The surreality of the enterprise was clear from conversations with a number of participants who traveled to Gwangju for the opening. All were performance artists whose works could not be presented remotely. Plessas, who came from Athens, shared his hotel wall with Canadian conceptual artist Judy Radul. They would see each other for brief moments when they picked up their food in the hall.
    The show’s co-curator Defne Ayas, meanwhile, was in her room on video calls with Ginwala, who was already on the ground helping to install the show. It will be set across four locations over a now-shortened four weeks: a historic theater, a sacred mountain, a classical biennial hall, and the Gwangju National Museum. One could consider the Internet the fifth, unplanned venue.
    Still from Judy Radul’s Good Night Vision (2013). Courtesy the artist.

    Artists in Quarantine
    For the artists who did travel to Gwangju, the mandated pause was surprisingly welcome. “There is something special about stopping just before you make an artwork and waiting for two weeks, having the time to just keep thinking about it,” Radul said. 
    Ahead of the trip, she worked closely with two South Korean musicians on her eerily prescient commission. With help from Gina Hwang, who plays a geomungo (a plucked guitar-like instrument), and Hannah Kim (who plays the more percussive janggu drum and gong), Radul created a psychedelic, folkloric soundscape that she plans to record live inside a historic theater. 
    To film it, she long ago decided to use heat-tracking cameras—a medium she began exploring in 2013—that will record the heat imprints created by the musicians. Another camera will be pointed at the audience, should there be one come April. There is, of course, a certain irony to preparing this work in a world where free movement is contingent upon body temperature. (Radul was having her temperature taken at the hotel every few hours.)
    “Proximity, touching, creating sound in a room together—all of this has shifted,” she said. “The questions around biennials, where we just drop in and drop out, have been posed for years now. It does make you wonder what you will do for art. We are finding out right now what artists actually bring to a scenario when they show up or don’t show up.”
    ∞OS Session, 2019, V.A.C. Foundation, photo: Marco Franceschin.

    Participation in the show has been challenging even for artists who could not show up in person. Korakrit Arunanondchai’s new video, Songs for Dying, reflects on his own losses this past year, including the death of his grandfather. It pairs footage drawn from pro-democracy protests in Thailand (where Arunanondchai moved from New York at the beginning of the pandemic) and the 1948 Jeju Island massacre in South Korea with the minutiae that comes from witnessing the death of a loved one. His incisive editing—moving between surrealism, the news cycle, and a very personal narrative—feels fluid and familiar after the past year.
    The artist directed the South Korea portion of the video—which captures a shaman conducting a ritual for the dead on Jeju Island—remotely after it became clear he would be unable to travel. “It was hard,” he said. “I work with hidden narratives to begin with. And often, the thing that pulls you in is not what you can find on the internet.” (The film’s second chapter, Songs for the Living, will be shown at the Migros Museum in Zurich in September.)
    Video still from Korakrit Arunanondchai, Songs for Dying (2021). Courtesy the artist

    The Future Forum
    While the biennial plays an important role in the region—it was created to process and memorialize the Gwangju Uprising in 1980—attendance will necessarily be limited. Then, there is the so-called art world to consider. The traveling band of curators, writers, collectors, and art dealers that would normally attend will also be in absentia. Even the participating curators and artists will have packed up and left.
    That’s where the fifth venue, the online forum, comes in. Artists have generously shared their processes and created new online commissions. The catalogue chronicles a year-long conversation that was once meant for Gwangju, but which has now become more global. 
    Ayas spoke of a “mad loyalty” that the artists and curators have for one another and for the project. All that matters, she says, is that it “installs itself” in people’s minds in some important way. “Small is beautiful, and more meaningful,” she added. 
    Emo de Medeiros, Kaleta/Kaleta (2016). Courtesy of theartist.

    Her conviction begs the question: how much did we really see of these massive shows when we were running around previews trying to take it all in? Perhaps the slow and virtual drip of “Spirits Rising, Minds Tuning” offers a teachable moment. Maybe we do not need to see the whole in order to be touched by a part. 
    “This biennial was prophetic, in a way, because it was predicting the penetration of the virtual and this post-human feeling of virtuality,” Plessas said from his hotel room. “It will be interesting to see how it will be remembered.”

    The 13th Gwangju Biennale is on view from April 1 to May 9.
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    in Exhibitions

    A New Exhibition at David Zwirner Explores the Vital Similarities Between Two Titans of Modernism: Josef Albers and Giorgi Morandi

    In these turbulent times, creativity and empathy are more necessary than ever to bridge divides and find solutions. Artnet News’s Art and Empathy Project is an ongoing investigation into how the art world can help enhance emotional intelligence, drawing insights and inspiration from creatives, thought leaders, and great works of art. 

    “Albers and Morandi: Never Finished”at David Zwirner, New Yorkthrough April 3
    What the gallery says: “Both [Josef] Albers and [Giorgio] Morandi are best known for their decades-long elaborations of singular motifs: From 1950 until his death in 1976, Albers employed his nested square format to experiment with endless chromatic combinations and perceptual effects, while Morandi, in his intimate still lifes and occasional landscapes, engaged viewers’ perceptual understanding and memory of everyday objects and spaces.
    ‘Albers and Morandi: Never Finished’ will put each artist’s distinctive treatment of color, shape, form, morphology, and seriality in dialogue. Looking specifically at the stunning palettes of Morandi’s celebrated tabletop still lifes depicting humble vessels and vases and Albers’s seminal ‘Homage to the Square’ series, the exhibition will elucidate how the two artists’ careful daily acts of duration and devotion allowed each to highlight the essence of color and the endless possibilities of their respective visual motifs.”
    Why it’s worth a look: Albers and Morandi, contemporaries born two years apart, diverged in many ways. While Albers focused, especially at the end of his life, on a proto-postmodern exploration of relationships, stressing that all things are affected by their context, Morandi brooded over still lifes and landscapes, somehow managing to capture the anxieties of the 20th century in seemingly quiet forms.
    Both artists were concerned with color especially, and each one used it as a structuring and restricting element: Albers in his sometimes brash juxtapositions of blocks of pigment, Morandi in his more subtle, often monochrome palette. This show reveals the underlying mechanics that drove the artists in their differing yet crucially overlapping pursuits. Beyond that, the exhibition also reveals the emotional intelligence of two artists who figured out ways to be enormously emotive without using expressive marks.
    How it can be used as an empathy workout: Both artists believed in cultivating observational powers to better understand the world around them. As Morandi once noted: “One can travel the world and see nothing. To achieve understanding, it is necessary not to see many things, but to look hard at what you do see.” And for Albers, the interactions between a work’s materials allowed the development of what he called “visual empathy.”
    “Respect the other material, or color—or your neighbor,” he told his students.
    Make sure to take time to look at each work carefully, noticing how the artists captured light, shadow, and their objects’ relationships to the spaces in which they sit. A sense of lonely beauty runs through Morandi’s 1947 work Fiora, for example, while Albers’s 1954 Study to Homage to the Square captures a kinetic kind of energy in bright, warm-toned hues.
    What it looks like: 
    Giorgio Morandi, Natura morta (Still Life) (1957). © Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York/SIAE, Rome. Courtesy David Zwirner.

    Giorgio Morandi, Natura morta (Still Life) (1953). © Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York/SIAE, Rome. Courtesy David Zwirner.

    Giorgio Morandi, Fiori (Flowers) (1947). © Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York/SIAE, Rome. Courtesy David Zwirner.

    Josef Albers, Study to Homage to the Square (1973). © The Josef and Anni Albers Foundation / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. Courtesy The Josef and Anni Albers Foundation and David Zwirner.

    Josef Albers, Study to Homage to the Square (1973). © The Josef and Anni Albers Foundation / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. Courtesy The Josef and Anni Albers Foundation and David Zwirner.

    Josef Albers, Study to Homage to the Square (1973). © The Josef and Anni Albers Foundation / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. Courtesy The Josef and Anni Albers Foundation and David Zwirner.

    Josef Albers, Study to Homage to the Square (1954). © The Josef and Anni Albers Foundation / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. Courtesy The Josef and Anni Albers Foundation and David Zwirner.

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