Eliana Willis

Ten days after the October 7 attack on Israel by Hamas, when the photographs of murder, torture, and kidnappings appeared all over the news and social media, artist Zoya Cherkassky posted her first artwork about the worst slaughter of Jews since the Holocaust.
Cherkassky, who immigrated to Israel in 1991 from the former Soviet Union, followed the grim toll in disbelief: 1,200 people murdered and 240 taken hostage.
“This was the only thing I could think about,” she said in an interview from her home in Ramat Gan, a suburb of Tel Aviv. “Normally my work is based on what I see, what’s around me. It was obvious that this would be the subject of my work.”
Now, the 12 mixed-media works on paper comprising Cherkassky’s “7 October 2023” series are installed at the Jewish Museum in New York as part of its expanded programming to address the war in the Middle East and its reverberations around the world.
One of the first initiatives by the Jewish Museum’s new director James Snyder, it will include installations and public talks, examining how artists respond to conflict and war through contemporary and historic lens. The show has arrived quickly for a major museum, opening on December 15, two months since Hamas’s attack.
Zoya Cherkassky, Bring Them Back Home (2023). Courtesy: Fort Gansevoort.
The project was key for Snyder, who took the reins of the Jewish Museum’s on November 1, encountering an art world (and world) divided over the war in the Middle East. “We felt it was important to demonstrate this kind of action through a cultural lens and to do it quickly,” Snyder said. He described Cherkassky’s series as “art activism.”
From the moment Snyder arrived, he set out plans to use the museum’s mandate—of exploring Jewish identity throughout history and across the global diaspora —to “realize a path to a brighter future and to find restorative pathways to the humanism that is the essence of our being,” he said in his first letter to the museum community.
“This shows how art responds to and resonates with things that happen. And we can see this in history. You can think of artists throughout time who’ve done it,” said Snyder. “You can see how Dadaism grew out of the chaos of World War I or abstraction grew out of the chaos of World War II.”
The Israel Museum, where Snyder served as director for 22 years, gave Cherkassky a solo exhibition in 2018. He was a fan and kept abreast of her work, visiting her solo show at the Fort Gansevoort gallery in New York earlier this year. So did Darsie Alexander, the museum’s chief curator.
Cherkassky created the series in Berlin, where she fled on October 9 with her 8-year-old daughter, leaving her mother and Nigerian-born husband behind in Israel. Modest in size (10-by-13 inches), the drawings were easy to transport and only needed to be framed for the installation.
Zoya Cherkassky, The Survivor, (2023). Courtesy: Fort Gansevoort.
“There were so many sirens and then you could hear the explosions,” the artist said. “My daughter was shaking all over. I didn’t know if there would be serious bombardment and decided to leave with her.”
Flames, blood, ashes, tears, screaming mouths, and tied hands appear in Cherkassky’s 12 haunting works, where frantic and forlorn figures are set against black backgrounds. She turned to the visual language of artists who depicted tragedy and war in the first half of the 20th century: Pablo Picasso, Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, and Max Beckman. She used pencils, watercolor, and wax crayons. “Somehow through these artists I was able to talk about this tragedy,” she said.
The early images of the atrocities at Kibbutz Be’eri made Cherkassky think of Guernica, one of Picasso’s most famous paintings, created following German bombing of the Basque town in 1937.
People look at Pablo Picasso’s Guernica (1937) at the Reina Sofia Museum. Photo by Denis Doyle/Getty Images.
Kidnapped Women shows a multi-generational group of weeping and scared women walking barefoot, their colorful dresses set against black background. The elderly woman in the center of the group has “A24102” tattooed on her arm, alluding to her concentration camp past.
The Terrorist Attack at Nova Music Festival depicts young women running through a field, dotted with blood, their hair blowing in the wind, eyes huge with fear—an antithesis to the static Surrealist maidens of Paul Delaux. That so many characters in her drawings are women is not accidental; Cherkassky specifically wanted to call attention to sexual violence against women, including young women, by Hamas. “As a woman and a mother of a girl,” she said. “This is the scariest thing I could imagine.”
Zoya Cherkassky, Kidnapped Women, (2023). Courtesy: Fort Gansevoort
Only one work, Kidnapped Children, depicts real people, Cherkassky said. At the time she made the work, 18 kids were thought to be kidnapped and she drew their faces to raise awareness for the “Bring Them Back Home” campaign, she said.
The museum wall text notes: “Later counts reveal that almost 40 children were abducted. Since Cherkassky created this work in October, many of these children have been released, but as of early December, over one hundred adults and children are still in captivity.”
“No drawing can compete with photography in terms of being graphic,” she said. “I am very grateful to the Jewish Museum for not being afraid to show this work at the time when a lot of organizations, even Jewish ones, are scared to present the Israeli perspective.”

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It’s a tale that’s almost mythical. In 1987, an amusement park populated by rides and attractions created by the era’s leading artists landed in Hamburg, Germany, the brainchild of Austrian artist André Heller. There was an entrance archway designed by Sonia Delaunay, a carousel painted by Keith Haring, and to top it all off, a Ferris wheel dreamed up by Jean-Michel Basquiat. Dubbed Luna Luna, the fair only had a limited engagement in Germany, before its 30 pavilions were packed up and stashed in storage—left forgotten for nearly four decades. 
Enter Drake. Last year, the rapper’s entertainment company, DreamCrew, along with partners Something Special Studios and Charles Dorrance-King, announced plans to resurrect the amusement park, investing a reported $100 million. And lo, it has come to pass: “Luna Luna: Forgotten Fantasy” has opened in a 60,000-square-feet warehouse in Los Angeles, offering a recreation of the fantastical fairground with the original rides. 
Jean Michel-Basquiat’s painted Ferris wheel at Luna Luna in Hamburg, Germany, 1987. Photo: Sabina Sarnitz.
Patrons lining up outside Roy Lichtenstein’s Luna Luna Pavilion at Luna Luna in Hamburg, Germany, 1987. Photo: Sabina Sarnitz.
“What makes Luna Luna so special is these marquee names that were locked away in this art-historical secret,” Lumi Tan, the project’s curatorial director, told CBS News. “André Heller saw it as breaking down the boundaries between artists of different generations and disciplines. You have Keith Haring, young Pop artist, but then you also have Roy Lichtenstein, one of the founders of Pop art.” 
The venue is divided into two spaces, conjoined by Delauney’s geometrically painted arch, adorned by the original Luna Luna sign. The first area opens up with David Hockney’s cylindrical forest pavilion, Kenny Scharf’s polychromatic chair swing ride, and Heller’s inflatable structure, Dream Station. In the second space is a view of Basquiat’s Ferris wheel, as well as works by Joseph Beuys, Jim Whiting, and Monika GilSing. 
Installation view of “Luna Luna: Forgotten Fantasy,” featuring Keith Haring’s painted carousel and murals. Photo: Jeff McLane.
A number of these pavilions are accompanied by music. Salvador Dalí’s mirrored fun house, for example, is backed by a soundscape of Gregorian chants by Blue Chip Orchestra, while Roy Lichtenstein’s glass labyrinth is soundtracked by Philip Glass’s minimalist notes. Performers wandering the floor will also interact with visitors, adding to the carnival-esque vibe. 
Alas, due to the delicate condition of these works, not all of them can be ridden, though they remain operational. Visitors, however, are invited to walk through and around the attractions. 
Luna Luna art technicians assemble Jean-Michel Basquiat’s painted Ferris wheel at the Luna Luna warehouse, Los Angeles. © Estate of Jean-Michel Basquiat/licensed by Artestar , New York. Photo courtesy Luna Luna, LLC.
This new iteration of Luna Luna was more than a year in the making. After the works were transported from a storage facility in rural Texas to Los Angeles, a conservation team led by Rosa Lowinger and Joel Searles commenced unboxing and restoring the attractions. “It was very fun,” Searles said about cracking open the containers for the first time in decades. “We knew it was a Haring and you’re unwrapping it like a present.”
The revived fair will also include an exhibition of archival photos, videos, and other ephemera that trace Luna Luna’s journey from its original run to its recent assembly. 
In-progress assembly of Kenny Scharf’s painted chair swing ride at the Luna Luna warehouse, Los Angeles. Photo courtesy Luna Luna, LLC.
Back in the 1980s, Heller conceived of the original Luna Luna as a way to bring “art… to those who might not ordinarily seek it out in more predictable settings,” he said in a statement (Heller is not involved with the new project). It’s a prescient vision now fulfilled and expanded on by the abundance of Instagram-friendly, immersive art offerings—which the new Luna Luna now joins. 
And it’s only just getting started, according to Anthony Gonzales of the DreamCrew. “‘Luna Luna: Forgotten Fantasy’ is the first instalment,” he said in a statement, “of what will be a long-term project with a multifaceted approach exploring the world of art and its intersection with today’s modern world.” 
See more images from the exhibition below.
A performer in front of Sonia Delauney’s entrance archway at “Luna Luna: Forgotten Fantasy.” Photo: Sinna Nasseri.
Installation view of “Luna Luna: Forgotten Fantasy,” featuring Kenny Scharf’s painted chair swing ride. Photo: Joshua White.
Installation view of “Luna Luna: Forgotten Fantasy,” featuring Keith Haring’s painted carousel and David Hockney’s Enchanted Tree. Photo: Jeff McLane.
Installation view of “Luna Luna: Forgotten Fantasy,” featuring Salvador Dalí’s Dalidom. Photo: Joshua White.
Installation view of “Luna Luna: Forgotten Fantasy,” featuring Kenny Scharf’s painted swing chair ride and surrounding sculptures. Photo: Joshua White.
A couple being “wed” at André Heller’s Wedding Chapel at “Luna Luna: Forgotten Fantasy.” Photo: Sinna Nasseri.
Performers alongside Jean-Michel Basquiat’s painted Ferris wheel at “Luna Luna: Forgotten Fantasy.” Photo: Sarah Mathison.
“Luna Luna: Forgotten Fantasy” is on view at 1601 E 6th Street, Los Angeles, California, through Spring 2024.

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Turns out, Daniel Arsham, the artist whose celebrated eroded sculptures have paved the way to high-profile collaborations, is also a low-key photographer. And we’ll get an eyeful next year, when Arsham unveils his decades-spanning archive of photographs for the first time. 
On view at Fotografiska New York from March 22 through mid-June 2024, “Daniel Arsham: Phases” will bring together a selection from the artist’s private photo archive, which numbers in the thousands. Featured here are about 25 images that the artist has shot over the years—of nocturnal cityscapes, views from airplanes, rare birds, centuries-old ruins—illustrating how photography has shaped his sculptural practice.  
“Daniel sees the world by both what is there, but also by what is not: negative space becomes subject matter. In his photographs, abstracted figures, skylines and natural elements are reduced to black silhouettes,” said Amanda Hajjar, the director of exhibitions at Fotografiska New York, over email. “Scale is another recurring theme: aerial views, images of space, the stars, the moon.” 
The photographs will be on view alongside a few of Arsham’s key sculptures, highlighting how his preoccupation with negative space, scale, and trompe l’œil has played out across mediums.
The artist Daniel Arsham. Photo: @danielarsham via Instagram
Arsham received his first camera at the age of 10 and would go on to develop a habit of photographing his family, travel, and other life experiences. “Photography was the first thing I made that I felt could be a piece of art,” he told Whitewall in 2015. “Before I made paintings, before sculptures—anything, really—it was photography.” 
Over the years, the artist has held on to his early cameras, including his first Pentax K1000, and amassed other vintage photographic and film equipment to immortalize them in his sculptures. His “Future Relic” and “Crystal Relic” series features various models, from Polaroid to Nikon to Hasselblad, their clay and cast resin bodies purposefully weathered.  
“Photography has always been in the background of Daniel’s career, informing—subconsciously or consciously—his other artistic practices,” Hajjar added. “It is quite revealing to see what he takes pictures of, what interests him, what he keeps coming back to. This exhibition feels like you’re getting an insider view into what piques Daniel’s creative interests.” 
“Phases” will be accompanied by the release of Daniel Arsham Photography, the first book to document his photographic practice. 
Arsham, in the meantime, just dropped his latest collaboration with Tiffany & Co., for which he designed an eroded Venus of Arles bust in bronze to hold the jeweler’s T1 bracelet. The release follows the serial collaborator’s many other partnerships with brands not limited to Hot Wheels, Moët & Chandon, Porsche, Pokémon, Hublot, and Ikea. About 30 of his sculptures are currently on view at “Score and Sound” at the Sculpture Center in his hometown of Cleveland. 

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Every December, the art world returns from Art Basel Miami Beach with a new lineup of rising star artists who caught their attention during the week. This year, at the city’s Museum of Contemporary Art, North Miami, Detroit-based artist Jamea Richmond-Edwards’s solo show, “Ancient Future,” wowed crowds early in the week with her inventive application of Afrofuturist aesthetics to American history. 
“I’m really fascinated with history, but particularly I’m fascinated by mythos,” Richmond-Edwards explained of the work on view. The artist created each work herself with no assistance, with the idea that this “self-torture” would create an intuitive visual aesthetic that is signature to her narrative voice. “Since time is cyclical, that means I can create the future. So, I want to pull out some of the myths of the past into my future.”
Among those symbols are dragons, comets, clouds, and other celestial images that are drawn or painted in phosphorescent bright colors. The largest piece in the show is a diptych titled Lullaby for Shooting Star (2023), which tells the story of the Shawnee chief Tecumseh, who died near Detroit in Windsor, Canada.
“Since I’ve moved back to Detroit, I see so many streets named after him,” said Richmond-Edwards. “His nickname was shooting star. There’s a mythos that talks about his brother who was a shaman, who was able to conjure a dragon.”
In the piece, the dragon wraps around a starry sky to nestle protectively over a self-portrait of Richmond-Edwards on one end of the piece, and her son on the other. “I’ve just been obsessively drawing dragons,” she said of her time back in Detroit. “Then I started to notice them in the architecture all around town.” 
Adeze Wilford, a curator at the museum, noted that Richmond-Edwards brings a new perspective into the current trend of Afrofuturism in fine art. “‘Ancient Future’ presents an opportunity to explore the concept of radical imagination and the possibility of reconfiguring a future released from the confines of racial and gender binaries,” she said. “In developing this exhibition with Jamea, it was important that the show is a reflection of these complexities.”
Other works in the show delve deep into America’s past, exploring the folkloric narratives that emerged during the War of 1812 as well as the discovery and colonization of America. Richmond-Edwards also brings contemporary events into the mix, such as the Vatican’s rejection of the Doctrine of Discovery earlier this year, which was a signal that the Catholic Church acknowledged how colonialism wiped out Indigenous populations; as well as imagery of the 9/11 attacks, Emmett Till, and Beyoncé’s history-making Renaissance tour. 
A still from Jamea Richmond-Edwards’s video installation Ancient Future (2023) at MOCA North Miami. Photo by Zachary Balber.
Though the wall pieces are the talk of the show, perhaps the piece de resistance is the three-channel video work titled Ancient Future (2023), which follows a former drum major from the HBCU Jackson State University alongside Atlanta’s Dancing Dolls and features an original score made by the artist’s son. “The drum major represents dragons dancing in the cosmos,” Richmond-Edwards explained.
Looking back over the total body of work, Richmond-Edwards said with a sense of satisfaction: “This process has really been about writing myself as the heroine of my own story. There’s escapism and there’s world-building, but it’s really about getting comfortable with seeing myself as my own savior.”
“Jamea Richmond-Edwards: Ancient Future” is on view at the Museum of Contemporary Art, North Miami, 770 NE 125th St, North Miami, Florida, through March 17, 2024.

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The city of Miami Beach is in a full-on embrace of public art with several initiatives unveiled recently at the start of Miami Art Week.
City officials including tourism and culture director Lissette García Arrogante, Commissioner Laura Dominguez, and city manager Alina Hudak, were on hand on December 5 for the unveiling of Adora Vanessa Athena Fantasia (2023). The newly-commissioned art installation by Brazilian collective Assume Vivid Astro Focus (AVAF) honors drag culture at a crucial time, given the recent efforts by Governor Ron DeSantis to ban drag performances in Florida.
“We must defend drag. Stop criminalizing drag,” said artist and AVAF member Eli Sudbrack at the unveiling. “Drag performers are goddesses of our contemporary world. Their performances provide inclusive, warm, positive, nonjudgmental, open, and energetic content for everyone, including people who are not in the queer community.”
“The core goal of our projects and this installation in general has always been to provide a sense of freedom, liberation, and self-expression to the viewers,” he added.
Miami city manager Alina T. Hudak with Eli Sudbrack of Assume Vivid Astro Focus. Photo courtesy of City of Miami Beach
The five double-sided banners on aluminum are suspended up high on Espanola Way at the intersection of Washington Avenue in South Beach. Thanks to the cooperation of respective nearby landlords, the public private initiative is now in its third iteration. The AVAF art honors and incorporates details from local drag icons—bedazzled glittery eyes, nails, lips, wigs, furs, and jewelry—including Adora, Athena Dion, Carla Croqueta, Fantasia Royale, Juice Love Dion, Lady Paraiso, Persephone Von Lips, Power Infiniti, The Regina Black, Tiffany Fantasia, and TP Lords.
Drag performer Tiffany Fantasia at the unveiling of Adora Vaness Athena Fantasia (2023) by Assume Vivid Astro Focus in Miami Beach. Image courtesy the city of Miami Beach.
Tiffany Fantasia was also on hand to deliver thanks and remarks about the new work. “Please continue to support drag and support art. Without art, the world is boring,” said Fantasia as they discussed the importance of drag to the fabric of Miami nightlife.
Espanola Way in South Beach. Image courtesy of City of Miami Beach
During her remarks, Commissioner Dominguez noted that Española Way was initially an artist colony. Calling the overhead AVAF art installation “spectacular,” she added: “I’m an ally of the LGTBQ community and this work speaks wonders to our diversity that we have in Miami Beach.”
Hudak thanked the AVAF collective, adding, “I want to take the opportunity to commend the artist for his message, for his joyful, for his heart, and for everything that this installation represents to us and a city that really speaks to the message behind this beautiful installation.”
Adora Vanessa Athena Fantasia will remain on view through February 2024. 
Meanwhile, across the city, Miami continued the latest iteration of its “No Vacancy” art initiative that places site-specific art projects and installation at 12 Miami Beach hotels through December 14.
The juried art competition, presented in collaboration with the city’s visitor and convention authority (MBVCA) supports mostly local artists by providing each with $10,000 to create their installation at the respective hotel. Artists are selected from a call for submissions issued by the city.
Among the participating hotels, Riviera Suites in South Beach hosted Carola Bravo’s projected titled Yield to Immigrants.
A complete listing of the “No Vacancy” projects and hotel locations can be found here.
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It’s a beautiful day in Los Angeles when I reach Jónsi over Zoom. Standing on the balcony of his apartment, the musician and artist spins his camera around to show me his view of the city, its perennially deep blue skies foregrounded by palm trees. “It’s nice and sunny,” he informs me, with some understatement. 
The scene is the antithesis to Jónsi’s native Iceland—with its “darkness and depression”—and perhaps a marked contrast to the music and art he’s turned out. As the frontman of art-rock band Sigur Rós, he’s shepherded haunting, almost hermetic, soundscapes, tinged with his otherworldly voice and cello-bowed guitar. And as an artist, he’s crafted environments meant to envelop viewers, transporting them to spheres not always sunlit. 
His move to L.A. about eight years ago, he told me, hasn’t really shifted his perspective or approach to art-making: “When I first came to L.A., I could never understand working in windowless studios that are like black boxes. But now, I understand that you have to isolate yourself from paradise.” 
Jónsi’s new works, now on view at Tanya Bonakdar Gallery in L.A., don’t stray far from that black box. Chief among them is Vox (2023), an installation that invites viewers to sit in a darkened room, leavened only by thin LED screens displaying minimalistic visualizations of light frequencies and the sound of Jónsi’s own singing voice. Sort of: the artist’s vocalizations have also been pitched down, reversed, stretched, synthesized, and sampled with help from A.I.—all the better to probe the essence of the human voice. 
Jónsi, Vox (2023). Courtesy the artist and Tanya Bonakdar Gallery, New York / Los Angeles.
“The voice is the most primitive and most beautiful instrument there is. That mid-range frequency of, like, 1,000 hertz is the clearest to people. I just wanted to celebrate that,” he explained of the work. “Basically, every sound in the installation is made by the human voice, or it’s only my voice… egomaniac.” (Jónsi, by the way, has a sense of humor.) 
Voice, in fact, serves as a through line for his other pieces—if not the production of sound, then the act of listening. Silent Sigh (2023) is a matrix of 100 speakers that variously vibrate and rebound as direct currents and a subtle drone weave through them. Meanwhile, Var (2023) presents a ceiling-hung blanket threaded with thousands of tiny directional speakers, which emit ASMR-like sounds of dripping, shuffling, and crinkling.
Jónsi, Var (2023). Courtesy the artist and Tanya Bonakdar Gallery, New York / Los Angeles.
The latter, Jónsi said, was meant to evoke a “safe place.” Under its canopy, visitors listening to the gentle soundscape can imagine themselves by a crackling fire, maybe, or hearing rain on a roof. “When you put these sounds together, it’s comforting,” he added, “but it’s also kind of creepy.” 
Realizing these pieces was also a technical venture. Jónsi credited creative engineer Damon Dorsey for building the LED screens for Vox and the speaker web for Silent Sigh (Dark); and recalled how he and his boyfriend spent hours upon hours hand-soldering speakers and wires into Var. But perhaps one the most critical aspect of these pieces, while similarly scientific, remains unseen: scent. 
Jónsi, Var (2023) (detail). Courtesy the artist and Tanya Bonakdar Gallery, New York / Los Angeles.
For about a decade, Jónsi has involved himself in perfumery, attempting to distill what he called “good breathable perfume,” while creating scents for his artworks. Var, for instance, is accompanied by the warm smell of freshly cut grass and rain, and Vox sports a more earthy fragrance with notes of vetiver grass (his favorite scent) and root-based essential oils.
In his telling, the aromatic arts remain his one relentless pursuit: “I think perfumery is the ultimate, most depressing thing that is out there. It’s a bottomless pit of disappointment. You do hundreds and hundreds of experiments and nothing works. It is extremely hard, probably the hardest thing I’ve done in my life.” 
But for an artist with a broader project of immersion, scent, along with sight and sound, have been indispensable. His 2021 work Hrafntinna (Obsidian), a tribute to Reykajik’s Fagradalsfjall volcano, brought together a wall of 200 speakers, choral arrangements, and the smell of fossilized amber. Earlier this year, FLÓÐ (2023), unveiled at the National Nordic Museum in Seattle, paired field recordings with the scent of seaweed within a foggy environment.
Creating these artworks, said Jónsi, who was admitted into but never attended art school, has been far more challenging than his work in music. There are the endlessly practical elements of art, for one, from how one realizes a piece to the matter of storing or shipping it. For another, the unspoken communication between the members of Sigur Rós, he added, translates differently in his art practice. 
“Coming from a musical background, you let everything just flow through you and then magic happens,” he explained. “But art is the opposite. Everything is really conceptualized and has to have some genius idea behind it. But it’s also made me think a lot about the stuff I’m doing, which is interesting to me.” 
Jónsi, Silent Sigh (Dark) (2023) (detail). Courtesy the artist and Tanya Bonakdar Gallery, New York / Los Angeles.
Still, he acknowledged that his roots in music have shaped the direction of his art, fueling his desire to bring the “invisible magic” of a live show, with its sound and light elements, to the gallery. “You want to enhance people’s senses. You want to trigger something and make them feel more,” he said. 
It’s an experience that Jónsi himself is not immune to. 
“With an artwork like Vox, with 52 speakers, it’s like surround sound. This is hard to experience when you play live music,” he said. “So, this gallery thing has really helped me to enjoy that experience of just being immersed in audio and sound. It’s a different output.” 
“Jónsi: Vox” is on view at Tanya Bonakdar Gallery, 1010 N Highland Avenue, Los Angeles, California, through February 3, 2024. 

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The temperature has officially dipped to frosty digits, and the streets smell perpetually of pine needles and roasted chestnuts—it is, after all, the most wonderful time of the year. For many people, the weeks leading up to the new year marks an ideal time to take a vacation and reflect on the last 12 months. Jet-setters typically fall into two camps: those who flock to warmer climes, and those who double down on the magic of winter and set off to chase the snow. While many visitors to the mountain towns that serve as arctic playgrounds for winter sports enthusiasts, some prefer to be swathed in warm corduroys than to carve through it on a blue-bird morning.
Luckily, many of the world-renown mountain towns and ski resorts are also home to world-class art museums and galleries, proving that there is something for everyone at these alpine retreats. Below, we’ve rounded up some of the most exciting art exhibitions now on view at these snowy resort destinations.

Aspen, Colorado
“Issy Wood in the Company of Fernando Botero” at the Aspen Art MuseumDecember 14, 2023–February 4, 2024
Issy Wood, Issy Wood, Tasting it all (2023). © Issy Wood 2023, courtesy the artist; Carlos/Ishikawa, London; and Michael Werner Gallery, New York. Photographer: Damian Griffiths.
The Aspen Art Museum is the crown jewel of the mountain town’s art scene, centrally located in the heart of the city—and while it’s best known as the host of the ArtCrush Gala in August, it is a year-round destination for contemporary art exhibitions and events. Designed by Pritzker Prize-winner Shigeru Ban, the distinctive wooden-lattice-wrapped exterior plays into Ban’s description of the institution: “Because the museum doesn’t have collections, there are many different exhibitions—it’s like a basket, you can put anything you like inside.”
This December, a new painting by contemporary star Issy Wood debuts at the museum alongside work by the late Colombian painter Fernando Botero. The juxtaposition, accompanied by a new text by Wood, is the most recent iteration in a series of artist-led presentations titled “Lover’s Discourse” that draws connections between contemporary work and often unexpected companion pieces. Previous iterations featured artists Zeinab Saleh, Chase Hall, Ulala Imai, and Guglielmo Castelli.

David Yarrow at Casterline | Goodman
David Yarrow, J-Bar. Courtesy of the artist and Casterline Goodman Gallery.
Founded in 2011, Casterline | Goodman gallery is a mainstay of both contemporary and Post-War art in the mountain town. With locations in the heart of downtown and at the five-star Little Nell Hotel, the gallery features a rotating cycle of thoughtfully-curated exhibitions and an extensive inventory of artists including Alex Katz, Frank Stella, Tom Wesselmann, and Helen Frankenthaler, and represents artists including Alexander Höller, Seth Fiifi Afful, Tyler Shields, and David Yarrow.
An exhibition of Yarrow’s striking black-and-white photographs is on view now, displaying the artist’s fantastical narrative images. Deftly capturing subjects including both Hollywood actors and celebrities as well as wildlife and landscapes. While seemingly disparate subjects themes, Yarrow’s lens captures the grace and stately bearing that is shared by practiced performers and great wild animals. Highlights include J-Bar, a cinematic image that conjures the spirit of the famed saloon-style bar at the Jerome Hotel and Snow Monster, in which snow-dusted bison confront the viewer with fierce elegance.

Taos, New Mexico
“Harwood 100” at the Harwood Museum of ArtThrough January 28, 2024
Installation view of the Agnes Martin Gallery at the Harwood Museum of Art of the University of New Mexico. © Agnes Martin Foundation, NY / Artist Rights Society (ARS) New York. Courtesy of the Harwood Museum of Art.
The town of Taos, New Mexico is both a historic destination and one brimming with youthful energy. Located in the north-central region of New Mexico in the heart of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains, its name, which translates to “(place of) red willows” is shared with the nearby Native American Taos Pueblo, one of the oldest communities within the United States. In 1915, six artists banded together to form the Taos Society of Artists, and the town has remained a cultural hub drawing such luminaries as Ansel Adams, Georgia O’Keeffe, Alfred Stieglitz, Dennis Hopper, Ken Price, and Judy Chicago.
The Harwood Museum of Art at the University of New Mexico is celebrating 100 years since artists and philanthropists Burt and Lucy Harwood established their eponymous foundation, which they envisioned as a “Salon of the Southwest” that could rival the artistic communities in New York and Paris. In addition to the scores of works on loan to honor the centennial, the permanent collection remains a must-see for all visitors. One particular highlight is the Agnes Martin Gallery, featuring seven paintings by the acclaimed abstract artist who lived and worked in Taos until her death in 2004. The bespoke room is more akin to a chapel than a white-cube art gallery, with four Donald Judd-designed benches arranged beneath the museum’s oculus to encourage contemplation and reflection, while basking in the serene beauty of Martin’s masterpieces.

“Lowe Fehn: Waters of Ours” at the ValleyThrough January 6, 2024
Lowe Fehn, Orbiting Breath to Body (2023). Courtesy of the artist and the Valley.
After stints at Kasmin in New York and as a curator and art advisor in Denver, veteran curator Ari Myers moved to Taos and opened the contemporary art space the Valley. In the few years since its debut, it has emerged as a distinctive and leading voice within the artistic community, and recently moved into a new space, a large 100-year-old adobe building. On view now through January 6, 2024 is “Waters of Ours,” an exhibition of new works on paper by Richmond, Virginia-based artist Lowe Fehn. The theme of water runs throughout the works, as both a metaphor and a physical presence that invites both looking deeper and further beyond. The works have a hazy, dreamlike quality, as if depicting a scene conjured from memory, sun-dappled and mid-movement.

Sun Valley, Idaho
“Sightings” at the Sun Valley Museum of ArtThrough January 4, 2024
Esther Pearl Watson, “An Exercise in Unselfish Love”, 2022.
Over the last few years, individuals have been nudged, rather forcefully, to reassess their relationship with the natural world. Worldwide isolation measures prevented extensive travel, and the challenge of remaining in one place became an opportunity to reevaluate our most immediate surroundings. The impetus for “Sightings” arose with the understanding that many artists began to look to the night sky as a source of comfort and inspiration—a beautiful and comforting constant in a time of upheaval.
The Sun Valley Museum of Art is uniquely located at the edge of the iconic Central Idaho Dark Sky Reserve—a 1,415-square-mile area designated by the International Dark Sky Association for its breathtaking open views of the Milky Way in all its glory. Regulations prevent excess light sources from diminishing optimal views of the stars that draw photographers and stargazers from around the world, and musings about the existence of extraterrestrial life forms abound. The artists in “Sightings” each address the night sky individually, as both a source of mystery and logic.

“Deck the Walls” at Gilman ContemporaryThrough January 24, 2024
Ellie Davies, Seascapes Triptych 3: Birch. Courtesy of the artist and Gilman Contemporary.
The fine art gallery located in the resort community of Sun Valley is celebrating the season with its annual group exhibition, fittingly titled “Deck the Walls.” A wide range of works in media including painting, photography, and collage show the breadth of range within the gallery’s dynamic artist roster.
Ellie Davies is a Dorset-based photographer who trains her lens on the majesty of the natural world, particularly the forests in Dorset and Hampshire in southern England. In Seascapes Triptych 3: Birch, the swirls of light surrounding the pine tree native to the U.K. could be read as either stars twinkling in a dark night sky, or the reflection of light on water.

The Engadin Valley and Gstaad, Switzerland
“Gerhard Richter: Engadin” at Nietzsche-Haus, the Segantini Museum, and Hauser & Wirth St. MoritzDecember 16, 2023–April 13, 2024
Gerhard Richter, St. Moritz (1992). © Gerhard Richter 2023.
Nestled deep within the Engadin Valley, the Swiss town of St. Moritz is world renown as a playground for the rich and famous for good reason. Boasting stunning natural beauty in the glaciers and snow-capped mountains that surround it, as well as a wealth of luxury boutiques and world-class hotels, it’s an ideal venue for both serious winter sports enthusiasts and snow bunnies more interested in the après ski scene. Off piste, the city fondly known as the “Top of the World” is home to world-class art galleries, including Vito Schnabel Gallery and Hauser & Wirth; plus a slew of historic and contemporary museums.
The picturesque setting—which has been featured in multiple James Bond films including Goldfinger and The Spy Who Loved Me, and more recently served as the hideaway for Maurizio Gucci in the 2001 film The House of Gucci—is also the inspiration for a suite of works by acclaimed German artist Gerhard Richter, who is being feted with a trio of exhibitions in and around St. Moritz. More than 70 works on loan from museums and private collections have been reunited as a singular body of work made over the course of 30 years, during which time the artist frequently visited the lakes and mountains of the area.

“Abstract Explorations: 100 Years on Paper” at Gagosian in GstaadDecember 20, 2023–January 25, 2024
Wassily Kandinsky, Réciproque (1935). Courtesy of Gagosian Gallery.
Another city known for its upscale offerings is of course, Gstaad, located in the Bernese Oberland region of the Swiss Alps. Dubbed simply “The Place” by Time magazine in the 1960s, Gstaad enjoys a rosy reputation bolstered by regular visitors including Madonna, Valentino, Grace Kelly, and Princess Diana. It is also a destination for eminent art worlders like collector and LUMA Foundation founder Maja Hoffman, art historian Oiver Berggruen, and the late modern artist Balthus.
Naturally, mega-gallery Gagosian has an outpost in the chic Alpine town. A new exhibition opening on December 20 is “Abstract Explorations: 100 Years on Paper,” which tracks the evolution of abstraction over the course of of the early 20th century through today. Work by artists including Wassily Kandinsky, Cy Twombly, Helen Frankenthaler, and Albert Oehlen chart the enduring appeal of abstraction.
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When I first visited Tbilisi, Georgia, in winter 2018, I was taken to meet Lika Kacharava, and in her small apartment we drank local natural wine, ate homemade fare, and viewed many paintings, drawings, and notebooks by her late brother Karlo Kacharava. His art—renderings of brooding people in desolate places, often captioned with aphorisms, poems, and dedications in Georgian and German—hung on nearly every vertical surface, sat stacked up on the floor, or were arranged in bookshelves. His boldly lined and hued work was everywhere, and all of it was powerful. It was astounding.
The apartment remains a time capsule of an incredibly prolific artistic output in a country that, when Kacharava was alive, was asserting its independent identity from the crumbling Soviet Union (the Georgian civil war ran from 1991 to 1993). The artist died of an aneurism at age 30 in 1994, but he’d already feverishly produced thousands of paintings and works on paper.
He was also a cultural critic, poet, editor, educator, and spearhead of two of Georgia’s avant-garde art collectives. The Cold War art-world polymath struck a nerve just as the globe’s tense postwar geopolitical balances were dramatically shifting. Yet, with the exception of a solo gallery show in New York in 1998 and a group exhibition at Metro Pictures in 2017, his work remained largely unknown outside his home country.

A. Döblin (1992). Courtesy of Karlo Kacharava Estate
That is changing. The London-based gallery Modern Art began working with the estate in 2021. This month, the first solo museum exhibition of the artist’s oeuvre outside Georgia opened at S.M.A.K. contemporary art museum in Ghent, Belgium, in part orchestrated by Kacharava’s estate, which is overseen by Lika Kacharava.
The show, titled “Sentimental Traveller,” in a nod to the artist’s desired and actual travels, exhibits 150 of the artist’s works. There are paintings, drawings, sketchbooks, diaries, and ephemera, from photographs and documentary films to album covers and cassettes from the artist’s collection. (I recognized one painting, Mouchette, 1992, from Lika’s wall). The pieces follow the threads of the artist’s production from about 1988 to 1994, in part referring to his sojourns to Spain, Germany, and Russia; most of all, they at last introduce this remarkable body of work to a western European public.
The show opens with a large-scale painting of a bemedaled military general in a yellow uniform—with rough outlines and bold brushstrokes, the figure appears on a blank background as if he’s striding and giving orders. Called General, Für Helena (1988), the piece is dedicated to “Helena” in large letters (Kachavara spent a short time in the Russian military in Siberia; his work was often dedicated to women he knew and loved, but also to inspirational people he didn’t know, like critic Susan Sontag, German filmmaker Rainer Werner Fassbinder, or playwright Bertolt Brecht).
Photo by Dirk Pauwels, Courtesy S.M.A.K.
Other works depict universal topics, but also deeply private interactions, that concerned the artist—ideas, books, places, politics, but above all, people—by way of oversize, sharp-featured heads and often distorted bodies painted in blazing colors like cobalt blue, red, and yellow, but at times also in muted grays (that yellow prevails in so many early works, I was told, was because not all pigments were always available in Cold War Georgia). Some works tend toward hyperrealism, while others evoke the stylized figurations of Ernst Ludwig Kirschner, Max Beckmann, or the political critique of George Grosz—German Neo-expressionists who painted street scenes, satirical cartoons, and portraits in the early 20th century.
Cityscapes show structures that resemble Socialist apartment blocks, bleak industrial buildings, like Factory (1988), or a concrete-heavy corner in Milan (Marino Sironi (1992) is a reference to Italian Futurist Mario Sironi). There are portraits of friends, family, lovers. Helena shows up again as a nude, gazing straight back at the viewer; elsewhere, famous figures, like a small-format, solitary portrait of Endy Warhol (1991), exude a certain melancholy.
Anarchist’s Dream (1992). Courtesy the Estate of Karlo Kacharava, Tbilisi, and Modern Art, London
Kachavara often highlighted his era’s power structures: in stark reds and blues, Wir Sind Das Volk (in German, “we are the people,” one of the early slogans of demonstrators against the German Democratic Republic’s government in 1989) shows stern-faced young people seemingly clashing with authorities. And in a series of works on paper labelled “Erased portraits of politicians,” a blacked-out face of Soviet politicians appears on one side of each page, a sketch of a figure or scene on the other. A handful of the artist’s poems appear in Georgian and English on the walls. “This is how Sunday ends in a proletarian ballerina’s sleep” is an especially evocative line, capturing the ennui of late-Soviet-era communism, but also reminding us that the precarity of art and artists transcends time and space.
Kacharava’s works are deeply narrative—some canvasses even function as storyboards, separated into scenes like the grid of cityscapes, abstractions, and portraits in Stars of Cold War (1991). But Kacharava’s narratives are not linear: the sketchbooks and diaries on display seamlessly combine the visual and textual as if he were hyperlinking his thoughts long before digital hyperlinks existed. The show is an excerpt of a vast archive of networked thinking produced in a politically uncertain time, not entirely unlike our current one. After the estate gained notable gallery representation during the pandemic, interest in the work rose further as war broke out in Ukraine: the greater region’s tensions are of course ongoing and Kacharava’s oeuvre is a multilayered glimpse into one part of post-Soviet art history’s earliest chapter.
Irena Popiashvili, a Tbilisi art-world catalyst and the person who’d originally taken me to dine with Lika Kacharava in that jam-packed Tbilisi apartment, told me after the Ghent opening that today’s Georgian art students see Kacharava as an icon, tattooing his words or images on their skin and avidly reading his writings. Older local artists joke that Kacharava is more alive than they are. He was a generation’s bard, guiding Georgian art back to itself, at the same time as forging a way forward for it to enter the outside world. Now, his own work finally has.
Karlo Kacharava “Sentimental Traveller” is on view until April 14, 2024.

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