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    Floral Sculptures Are in Bloom at Brooklyn’s Botanic Garden, Courtesy of French Artist Jean-Michel Othoniel

    It’s the season for glistening, metallic flowers to bloom in Brooklyn. Come to the Brooklyn Botanic Garden for the majesty of nature (and 12,000 different plants), stay for the French artist Jean-Michel Othoniel’s sublime floral sculpture exhibition.
    “The Flowers of Hypnosis” opened last month and runs until October 22. It consists of six site-specific pieces and took Othoniel a year to produce. Using his signature strands of hammered steel spheres, Othoniel conjured visions of lotus blossoms and a shiny rose. As per the title, it is meant to be a heady, thought-provoking experience, as well as a journey into Zen.
    Jean-Michel Othoniel’s “The Flowers of Hypnosis” at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden. Photo: Michelle Huynh. Courtesy of Dior.
    “Nature can be a source of inspiration, contemplation, and beauty,” the artist said in an audio introduction to the show. “It’s very important now as a goal to survive the world to escape reality or to build yourself strong enough to face reality—that’s the power of gardens. In general, my sculptures are here to enchant and to push this feeling of contemplation in a stronger way.”
    The enormity and materiality of the flora adds a surreal tinge to the paradisical surroundings, but at the heart of the project seems to be the artist’s goal to service his surroundings and pay homage to the ecology.
    Jean-Michel Othoniel’s sculpture Mirror Lotus in the Brooklyn Botanic Garden’s Lily Pool Terrace. Photo: Guillaume Ziccarelli. © Jean-Michel Othoniel / ADAGP, Paris & ARS, New York 2023.
    “Jean-Michel has a passion for gardens, flowers, and the natural world that reveals itself in his works for ‘The Flowers of Hypnosis,’ which respond to and enhance their garden settings,” said Adrian Benepe, president of the Brooklyn Botanic Garden.
    “The Flowers of Hypnosis” is sponsored by Dior as part of its Cultural Gardens initiative, which was formed to “maintain the intense links between creativity and the living world that forged the house’s identity.” A new Othoniel art piece created for the brand will be unveiled at a Dior-hosted event at the gardens on September 7.
    The artist Jean-Michel Othoniel. Photo: Guillaume Ziccarelli. Courtesy of the artist and Perrotin.
    Othoniel’s art style might be familiar from his iconic Palais-Royale metro station in Paris. He had a 2012 survey that stopped at the Centre Pompidou, Brooklyn Museum, and other institutions. He has a permanent installation at the Château de Versailles, a dramatic serpentine fountain emerging in the palace’s lush garden.
    The artist continues to be drawn to the natural world. “Gardens leave a great deal of space for the irrational, the inexplicable, the extravagant,” Othoniel said. “They are places of mystery, magic, and secrecy.”
    Three sculptures in Jean-Michel Othoniel’s “Gold Lotus” series in the Brooklyn Botanic Garden’s Japanese Hill and Pond Garden. Photo: Guillaume Ziccarelli. © Jean-Michel Othoniel / ADAGP, Paris & ARS, New York 2023.
    “The Flowers of Hypnosis” is on view at the Japanese Hill and Pond Garden, Fragrance Garden, and Lily Pool Terrace sections of the Brooklyn Botanic Garden.
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    A New Museum Show in London Delves Into the Troubling History of Medical Injustice Through a Series of Contemporary Films

    Towards the end of last year, the Wellcome Collection in London decided to close its 15-year-old “Medicine Man” display because it “perpetuate[d] a version of medical history that is based on racist, sexist, and ableist theories and language.” The museum, which predominantly displays medical artifacts, many of which were collected by 19th-century pharmaceutical entrepreneur Henry Wellcome, added that it was in the process of reconsidering “the point of museums.”
    With its new exhibition, “Genetic Automata,” the Wellcome Collection appears to be putting forward an alternative proposition for the role of the museum. The presentation features four recent films by the British-Ghanaian artist Larry Achiampong and his long-time collaborator David Blandy, another British artist who is white. Together, the pair explore the legacy of scientific racism and how its ideas still resurface in contemporary culture, technology, and healthcare.
    Installation view of “Genetic Automata” at the Wellcome Collection. Photo: Steve Pocock.
    The latest film in the series, _GOD_MODE_ (2023), was co-commissioned by the museum and the Black Cultural Archives (BCA). Its first half is a direct riposte to the disturbing ideas of Victorian scientist Francis Galton, who established eugenics as a scientific discipline at University College London. The second half, created using Unity, a 3D platform for video games, and littered with references to modern gaming culture, makes an analogy between the myth of genetic superiority and the use of cheat codes to play a video game in the invincible “God mode,” highlighting the comparative lack of agency of “non-player characters.”
    A display of related objects includes death masks used by the phrenologist Robert Noel to analyze the different skull measurements of criminals and intellectuals, a “pocket registrator” invented by Galton to secretly categorize people according to five types, and an eye color gauge used in the 1920s for an antisemitic study on the intelligence of Russian and Jewish school children living in London’s East End.
    Installation view of “Genetic Automata” at the Wellcome Collection. Photo: Steve Pocock.
    These items offer useful historical context to _GOD_MODE_, but the film in turn also gives a new and necessary context to these objects, pulling them out from the past in order to examine their influence on the present.
    A particularly successful film, A lament for power (2020), imagines the perspective of Henrietta Lacks, a Black woman who unwittingly became the source for the very first immortalized human cell line, known as HeLa, when her cancer cells were stored after a treatment in 1951. The cells were successfully cloned and sent out to researchers across the globe and have since contributed to many medical breakthroughs, including the development of a polio vaccine. Lacks’s family has objected to the non-consensual harvesting of her cells.
    Once more in the style of a video game, large, cell-like forms balloon out from buildings within a eerily dystopian setting. Against this backdrop, we hear Lacks’s imagined voice speak out: “Growing in labs, spliced, injected, and infected for the good of mankind. Your body, swollen to gargantuan form, pulsing, mutating, and splitting, again, and again, and again, as others’ hands manipulate and inspect you,” she says. “Powerless to end this zombie life of your flesh living way past your soul.”
    Still from Larry Achiampong and David Blandy, A lament for power (2020). Photo: © the Artists Commissioned by Art Exchange.
    “A fortune made of you, and your family has seen nothing, knew nothing for decades. And their genes, through yours, are now visible to all,” she continues. “These riches built on your back. The soil of your cells owned, leased out, and licensed by white men in suits. A legacy for their families. Medicines are made thanks to your body that are then denied to your brothers and sisters for the want of a few notes.”
    The final two films are A Terrible Fiction (2019), which tells the little known history of Darwin’s taxidermy teacher John Edmonstone, who was a freed slave, and Dust to Data (2021), which compares the colonial history of archaeology with the modern day practice of mining data to, once again, define people according to categories.
    As each film develops, it delves further into the wider social and cultural implications of scientific and medical injustices. The exhibition suggests that “the point of museums” like the Wellcome Collection may no longer be as custodians of a fixed past, confined within glass cases, but as facilitators of an ever-evolving conversation that welcomes new voices.
    “Genetic Automata” is on view at the Wellcome Collection, 183 Euston Road, London, through 11 February, 2024.
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    Women Artists and Collectors Are at the Fore of the Hamptons Art Scene. Here Are 6 Female-Focused Exhibitions to See Into September

    Summer may be coming to an end, but the Hamptons season is far from over—at least for the art scene. Women’s voices and narratives are stronger than ever out East, with several powerful shows curated by women artists and collectors which are spotlighting both overlooked makers and up-and-coming talents. Discover a multitude of inspiring and powerful perspectives with these six must-see shows, spanning photography, craft, furniture, sculpture, and more.  
     
    “Renée Cox: A Proof of Being”Guild Hall, through September 4 
    Installation image, ‘Renée Cox: A Proof of Being’, courtesy Guild Hall of East Hampton. Photo by Gary Mamay.
    Guild Hall is closing out its summer roster with a commanding retrospective of Jamaican-American artist Renée Cox. Over her 30-year career, she has become best known for her performative self-portraits and photographic tableaux in which Black women and men pose, reclaiming predominantly white art historical scenes. “The dramatic use of scale in Cox’s images is powerful, drawing you in or staring you down. A surprising, lesser-known narrative we encourage people to learn more about after seeing the exhibition is the series that depicts ‘Queen Nanny of the Maroons,’ the 18th-century female Jamaican national hero who defeated the British using guerilla warfare,” Andrea Grover, Guild Hall’s executive director, told Artnet News. 
    Another highlight is a new video installation, Soul Culture (2022). Grover says this piece represents a “new direction” for Cox. “The room features moving patterns of sacred geometry collaged from the arms, legs, and bodies of Cox’s models. The artist says it’s meant to stop you from thinking and ‘keep you in the moment,’” added Grover.  
    “Supernatural Beauty”Onna House, through September 5 
    Installation view “Supernatural Beauty” at Onna House, 2023. Photography by Memry Anderson / BFA.
    Last year, fashion designer and collector Lisa Perry opened Onna House, a restored modernist home in East Hampton, featuring a rotating mix of art and objects by female makers. “We reinvent ourselves with every show,” the multihyphenate tells Artnet News. This summer Onna House is showcasing six talents working across media ranging from fiber textiles to metal sculpture in a group show called “Supernatural Beauty.”  
    “LA-based artist Lisa Eisner turns jewelry into art, and Spanish artist Adriana Meunié uses materials she sources in Mallorca to create artistic clothing and art,” said Perry who aspires for the exhibition to expand the meaning of art. “I love the idea of bringing together six women artists from multiple disciplines and backgrounds to find in essence they all speak a similar language with the common goal of seeking beauty in the ordinary and the extraordinary.” 
     
    “Women Choose Women”Exhibition The Barn, through September 9 
    Installation view “Women Choose Women” 2023. Photography by Eric Striffler.
    In Bridgehampton, three powerhouse women have teamed up to present the work of female artists and designers spanning the 1950s to today. Christine Berry and Martha Campbell, co-founders of Berry Campbell (a gallery known for its promotion of overlooked artists, particularly women of Abstract Expressionism) have joined Elena Frampton, principal of Frampton Co. at the designer’s gallery space, Exhibition The Barn. “Set within a converted 1910 barn turned gallery, ‘Women Choose Women’ presents historical and contemporary paintings, sculpture, collectible design, and our own furniture line, all within an unconventional living room setting,” said Frampton. 
    “Women Choose Women” is named after the landmark exhibition held at the New York Cultural Center in 1973, which was also curated by a committee of women artists. Fifty years later, Frampton, Berry, and Campbell believe more progress needs to be made, and have, thus, brought together works, ranging from a rare work on paper by Elaine de Kooning to contemporary sculpture and furniture by Swiss-born, Los Angeles-based Carmen D’Apollonio, presented in collaboration with Friedman Benda. 
     
    “(Mostly) Women (Mostly) Abstract”Eric Firestone Gallery, through September 17 
    Judy Pfaff, Great Glasses (1988). Courtesy of Eric Firestone Gallery.
    This August Eric Firestone Gallery is presenting a two-part exhibition across its East Hampton and New York City locations. The Hamptons iteration of “(Mostly) Women (Mostly) Abstract” features a cross-generational group of 22 experimental post-war artists, often on the fringes of the mainstream art world. “The show delves into the works of contemporary artists and their predecessors, who practiced abstract art and explored otherness in this genre—themes such as ethnicity, race, gender, and sexual orientation, which are as relevant now as ever,” gallerist and curator Eric Firestone told Artnet News. Though the artists are separated by time and experiences, their “intensely graphic work and saturated colors” form a cohesive narrative.  
    Firestone says a can’t-miss work is American artist Judy Pfaff’s kaleidoscopic 1988 sculpture, Great Glasses. “Her work is highly fresh and relevant…you’ll want to explore the sculpture’s many facets and the story it tells,” he added. Among the other artists featured are Kennedy Yanko, best known for shaping paint skin into sculpture, and Pollock-Krasner Foundation Award recipient, Nina Yankowitz, whose sculpture, often made using handicraft techniques, challenges the notion of “women’s work.”  
     
    “Change Agents: Women Collectors Shaping the Art World”Southampton Art Center, through September 30 
    Installation view “Change Agents: Women Collectors Shaping the Art World” 2023. Courtesy of Southhampton Arts Center.
    In celebration of its 10th anniversary, the Southampton Arts Center has staged a pioneering show bringing together 14 women collectors, as prestigious as Agnes Gund, Beth Rudin DeWoody, Lisa Perry, and Mickalene Thomas. SAC’s Executive Director, Christina Mossaides Strassfield, says it was founding board co-chair Simone Levinson who came up with the concept, which had surprisingly never been explored to this extent. “Historically and today, female collectors make a huge difference in the art world through their philanthropy and support of artists,” said Mossaides Strassfield, calling to mind Abigail Rockefeller, Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney, and Peggy Guggenheim. “The women whose collections are featured in ‘Change Agents’ continue to carry that torch.” 
    Rather than be divided into sections by collectors, the works are interspersed, so that the “presentation lets each work speak for itself,” added Mossaides Strassfield. “The synergy among the results creates a beautiful dialogue that helps one to rethink the art historical cannon.” Artists in the exhibition range from heavy hitters, including Andy Warhol, Mark Bradford, and Lorna Simpson, to quickly rising talents, such as Michaela Yearwood Dan, Tala Madani, and Becky Suss. 
     
    “Two Pieces in the Shape of a Pear: A Group Exhibition Curated by Pat Steir” Hauser & Wirth, through September 30 
    Angel Otero, Splintered (2019)© Angel Otero. Courtesy the artist and Hauser & Wirth Photo: Matthew Herrmann
    Southampton’s most invigorating exhibition this summer has been curated by none other than Pat Steir, who has paired works across medium and genre. “Something magical often comes from inviting a great artist to curate a show of works by other artists they admire…Pat Steir approached the assignment as a way to reveal some surprising affinities between eight wonderful artists across several generations—people we might otherwise never have imagined together in the same way,” Madeline Warren, senior director at Hauser & Wirth, told Artnet News. “It took a painter to recognize the shared gestures, forms, and methods, the connections that lie within and underneath the contrasts. The show is full of delights because Pat’s provocative pairings tease out these sorts of unexpected connections.” 
    For the show, Steir paired one of her electric drip paintings from 1993 with Rashid Johnson’s Surrender Painting “Pouring” (2023), a chromatically subdued, yet haunting iteration of his “Anxious Men” works. The other pairings include Cindy Sherman and Mickalene Thomas, Rita Ackermann and Avery Singer, and Mary Heilmann and Martha Tuttle. 
    Also while visiting Hauser & Wirth’s Southampton gallery, don’t miss “Jane Yang: D’Haene / earthbound,” presenting the Brooklyn-based artist’s experimental, highly textured ceramics, inspired by her South Korean heritage and Moon Jars. 
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    Japanese Artist Tetsuya Ishida Dreamed of Having a Solo Show in New York Before His Untimely Death. Two Decades Later, Gagosian Is Honoring His Wish

    More than two decades ago, when Tetsuya Ishida was still a young emerging artist in Japan, he was already dreaming big. He had his eyes set on New York, wishing that he would one day have his solo exhibition in the center of the contemporary art world. He was preparing himself, saving money from a part-time job and learning English when he was not painting.
    Ishida’s dream, however, did not materialize prior to his untimely death in 2005 at the age of 31 due to a train accident. But that was not the end of his story: This fall, the late Japanese artist’s wish will come true next month when Gagosian opens “Tetsuya Ishida: My Anxious Self” at its 555 West 24th Street space in New York on September 12.
    Featuring more than 80 works, the exhibition, curated by Cecilia Alemani, is set to be the artist’s largest show outside of his native Japan. The gallery is also now representing Ishida globally in association with the artist’s estate, Artnet News can exclusively reveal.
    Tetsuya Ishida, Exercise Equipment (1997). © Tetsuya Ishida Estate. Photo: Rob McKeever. Courtesy Gagosian.
    “In getting to know the family over the past several years, we learned that an exhibition in New York was Tetsuya’s greatest artistic ambition, and we are incredibly honored to present his paintings in New York on the 50th anniversary of his birth,” Nick Simunovic, senior director of Gagosian in Asia, told Artnet News.
    Born in Yaizu, Japan, in 1973, Ishida grew up as part of the country’s “lost generation,” a term referring to those who graduated during the 1990s and 2000s in a period of recession. During his short-lived artist career, Ishida created about 200 works. The sentiment of loss and despair experienced among this generation during a decade marred by high unemployment and high suicide rates can be felt in Ishida’s poignant paintings and graphic works.
    Often meticulously detailed, Ishida’s paintings depict expressionless or sad faces of young men, their human bodies merged with objects surrounding them, including plastic bags, airplanes, buildings, broken satellites, machine parts, and animals like crabs and seahorses. At times, his human figures appear nearly lifeless in his paintings, lying on a conveyor belt or arriving as packaged goods.
    Critics in Japan relate Ishida’s work with the country’s dominating manga and anime culture, but at the same time, this “convergence” with objects can also be understood as a visualization of the psychological survival mechanism needed during a repressive time.
    “At first, it was a self-portrait. I tried to make myself—my weak self, my pitiful self, my anxious self—into a joke or something funny that could be laughed at… It was sometimes seen as a parody or satire referring to contemporary people. As I continued to think about this, I expanded it to include consumers, city-dwellers, workers, and the Japanese people,” the artist was quoted in a statement.
    Ishida’s works were exhibited and collected in some parts of Asia but they did not get to travel beyond the region until November 2013, when Gagosian held a solo exhibition of the artist at its Hong Kong space, the artist’s first outside of Japan.
    Tetsuya Ishida c. 1995 © Tetsuya Ishida Estate. Courtesy the artist and Gagosian
    Recalling the organization of the exhibition, Simunovic, who was leading the gallery’s Hong Kong operation at the time, was first introduced to the artist’s enigmatic paintings through a Hong Kong collector more than 12 years ago. “I was immediately taken with the work and showed it to Larry [Gagosian], who was equally captivated,” Simunovic said. “We both agreed that it would be interesting to present an exhibition and, as we didn’t know the family at the time, we began making plans to mount a show of work from the secondary market. We secured great loans from collectors across Asia.”
    The 2013 Hong Kong exhibition became a turning point for Ishida’s art. Jessica Morgan, a curator at the Tate at the time, saw the show and subsequently included the artist in the 2014 edition of Gwangju Biennale, when she served as its artistic director. “Okwui Enwezor, who was on the Gwangju jury at the time, was fascinated by Ishida and the power of his work, and, in turn, featured the artist in his exhibition for the 56th Venice Biennale in 2015,” Simunovic noted. And then, Reina Sofia’s curatorial team saw the Venice show and subsequently offered Ishida’s family a solo show at the museum in Madrid in 2019.
    In between, the artist’s relatives became aware of the growing reputation of his work and reached out to Simunovic. “We slowly began building a relationship and we were given works for sale, which we placed in esteemed collections around the world,” he said.
    Tetsuya Ishida, Refuel Meal (1996) © Tetsuya Ishida Estate. Courtesy the artist, Shizuoka Prefectural Museum of Art, and Gagosian.
    The gallery and the artist’s family were initially working on a show in New York, which was stalled due to the Covid-19 lockdowns. “We believe in his work and feel it’s extremely important that it be seen and understood in the West,” Simunovic said. The 80 works to be featured in the New York show represent nearly half of Ishida’s entire body of work. Some of them are on loan from the collection of the Shizuoka Prefectural Museum of Art, which is located in the artist’s home town in Japan, as well as other private collections. Others are from the estate and will be available for sale, but Simunovic declined to reveal exactly how many works and the price range.
    Simunovic is confident the show will resonate with an audience in the West. Ishida’s art, which addresses the themes of disconnection, alienation, and despair, are universal and highly relevant to the current times, he added.
    “We live in a pluralistic art world where there are countless western collectors who enjoy collecting Asian contemporary art, just as there are countless Asian collectors who are avidly collecting western contemporary art,” he said.

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    A Major Isa Genzken Retrospective in Berlin Brings a Rare Clarity to What Makes Her Ingenious, Risk-Taking Art So Vital

    It starts with a pink rose, astounding in its towering scale and vaguely threatening—each thorn on the stem is about the size of a butcher’s knife. This monumental steel flower seems as if it is finally at home in the surreal and weird context around the Neue Nationalgalerie in Berlin, where everything is a bit idiosyncratic. The iconic museum is where Isa Genzken is subject of a smartly styled exhibition to mark her 75th birthday called “75/75,” on view until the date of her birthday, November 27.
    An unbridled beauty and a sense of precarity radiate from the German artist’s sculptures once you get past Pink Rose and inside the Mies van der Rohe-designed museum. Like Pink Rose, the Berlin-based artist, who by now one has attained cult status as one of the most important voices in her cohort, works with contradictions. Materials and forms clash and bang together. But the brilliance of Genkzen is the confidence and sensitivity of the medley—it all just works.
    Exhibition view “Isa Genzken. 75/75”, New National Gallery, 2023. Photo: National Gallery – National Museums in Berlin / Jens Ziehe. Courtesy Buchholz Gallery. © VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2023
    Curated by Klaus Biesenbach and Lisa Botti, the show, as its title suggests, consists of 75 works on loan from private and public collections, including from the collections of friends of the artist including artists Wolfgang Tillmans and Katharina Grosse, who are also both based in Berlin. “75/75” touches on every key chapter of Genzken’s career, which has been long, multifaceted, and as of late rockier as she has opened up about struggles with alcohol and bipolar disorder. The artist has been unwell lately, too; Given this, she was unable to participate personally in the exhibition, which Biesenbach and Botti framed instead as a gift to her.
    A few days after the opening, Biesenbach posted on Instagram that Genzken did, in the end, make it to see the show. In either case, the show is also a gift to whomever comes to see it in Berlin and wants to understand exactly what makes Genzken essential to contemporary art. The fact that one can simply turn their head left to right and survey the breadth of her career is a unique benefit of this building’s main floor, which is without walls or blind spots.
    Exhibition view “Isa Genzken. 75/75”, New National Gallery, 2023. Photo: National Gallery – National Museums in Berlin / Jens Ziehe. Courtesy Buchholz Gallery. © VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2023
    The transparent building also involves the city beyond it, which is chaotically postmodern—not unlike Genzken’s sculptures. The works here echo a city, arranged in a grid plan that you can walk through as if strolling the avenues of Genzken’s psyche. In one sculpture there is a picture of the artist and Gerhard Richter, to whom she was married for many years. One floor below, just by chance it seems, is a landmark show of Richter—a very different kind of artist bent around measured perfection, unlike Genzken—who just permanently loaned 100 works to the museum.
    The modernity of the Neue Nationalgalerie’s jewel-box architecture is a perfect place for the studied chaos of Genzken because it represents her artistic foil—the strictures of modernism. The show also plots out just how Genkzen arrived at this pursuit. It begins with her minimal “ellipsoids” and “hyperbolos,” long and elegant structures that lie on the floor. Then, Genzken’s works jump into the vertical space, into tall standing responses to them in works like Diana. Then, her work begins to spread outwards with works like X from 1992, a see-through box made of epoxy resin that glistens in the afternoon light.
    Exhibition view “Isa Genzken. 75/75,” New National Gallery, 2023. Pictured: NOFRETETE – THE ORIGINAL, (2012). (Private collection Rhineland). Photo: National Gallery – National Museums in Berlin / Jens Ziehe. Courtesy Buchholz Gallery. © VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2023
    From there it spirals in fits of genius, into works that are like sieves for the by-products of consumerism and western society. Mies, from 2008, is one such work. It seems like it was made to be where it is right now, dangling from the ceiling with a Barcelona chair and pink hula hoops in the suspension scheme—the very same types of Mies van der Rohe-designed seats on which tourists sit on at the other side of the museum looking at their Google Maps. New Buildings for Berlin from 2005, speaks to the random postmodern nature of Berlin, post-war, poking reference to German modernists like van der Rohe. Then, nearby, Genzken’s disturbingly to-the-point disembodied airplane windows leave you with a lurking sense of death.   
    For Genzken, as for many Berlin artists, this prime spot in the Neue Nationalgalerie is the stuff of dreams. But a show on this level for such an icon is also something special to the public. Laid out chronologically, “75/75” gives you a gorgeously clear way to enter into Genzken’s work, a practice the artist said herself can be hard to understand. And, despite the incredible value of some of these pieces, nothing here is cordoned off behind insurance ropes or motion-sensitive alarms, or constrained to the taming backdrop of a white cube, like zoo animals. At Neue Nationalgalerie, they run free.
    ‘75/75’ is on view at the Neue Nationalgalerie, Berlin until November 27, 2023. See more images of the show below.
    Exhibition view “Isa Genzken. 75/75”, New National Gallery, 2023. Photo: National Gallery – National Museums in Berlin / Jens Ziehe. Courtesy Buchholz Gallery. © VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2023
    Isa Genzken, Schauspieler (Actor), (2013). Private collection Rhineland. Courtesy Galerie Buchholz/VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2023
    Exhibition view “Isa Genzken. 75/75”, New National Gallery, 2023 pictured: DER JUNGE GEWICHTHEBER, (2004) Photo: National Gallery – National Museums in Berlin / Jens Ziehe. Courtesy Galerie Buchholz © VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2023
    Exhibition view “Isa Genzken. 75/75”, New National Gallery, 2023. Pictured: UNTITLED, (2015); SCHAUSPIELER II, 6, (2014) (Courtesy Galerie Buchholz, Hauser & Wirth, David Zwirner); LEONARDO, (2017) (Private collection); NOFRETETE, (2015). (Collection su.benz, Stuttgart). Photo: National Gallery – National Museums in Berlin / Jens Ziehe. Courtesy Galerie Buchholz © VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2023
    Exhibition view “Isa Genzken. 75/75”, New National Gallery, 2023. Photo: National Gallery – National Museums in Berlin / Jens Ziehe Courtesy Buchholz Gallery © VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2023
    Exhibition view “Isa Genzken. 75/75”, New National Gallery, 2023. Photo: National Gallery – National Museums in Berlin / Jens Ziehe Courtesy Buchholz Gallery © VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2023
    Exhibition view “Isa Genzken. 75/75”, New National Gallery, 2023. Photo: National Gallery – National Museums in Berlin / Jens Ziehe Courtesy Buchholz Gallery © VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2023

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    in Exhibitions

    Gego Is Finally Getting Her Due as an Innovator of Kinetic Art in a Guggenheim Retrospective. Here’s What You Need to Know About the Venezuelan Artist

    Whether or not you know the life and work German-Venezuelan artist Gego (1912–1994) may depend on where in the world you call home. The deeply influential artist—best known for her conceptual and elegant wire sculptures—has routinely been hailed as one of the most influential figures of post-war Latin American art. In the United States, particularly, however, her recognition has been slow-coming when compared to the fame of her contemporaries. “Gego: Measuring Infinity” at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, the artist’s first major museum retrospective in the United States since 2005, aims to rectify this discrepancy and introduce Gego’s work to a broader American audience. On view through September 10, 2023, the exhibition presents a simultaneously chronological and thematic survey of her work and practice, offering insight into her distinctive approach to abstraction and influential artistic innovation.
    Installation view of “Gego: Measuring Infinity” (2023). Photo: David Heald. © Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation, New York.

    Who was Gego?
    Born Gertrude Louise Goldschmidt to a secular Jewish family in Hamburg, Germany, in 1912, Gego (a sobriquet used throughout her career using the first two letters of her first and last name) did not begin her career as an artist. She studied at the University at Stuttgart (formerly the Technische Hochschule Stuttgart) under German architect Paul Bonatz, earning a degree in architecture and engineering in 1938. While at university, she was exposed to a variety of art and design movements and trends including those produced by the Staatliches Bauhaus, the leading school and eponymous architectural style that flourished in the interwar period.
    During this time, Gego was witness to the Nazi party’s ascension to power, the dramatic rise of antisemitism, and Adolf Hitler’s appointment as Chancellor of Germany. Increasingly throughout the 1930s, anti-Jewish laws and legislative persecution of Jews made remaining in Germany untenable. Gego’s German citizenship was nullified in 1935, and the same year as she graduated the German Reich Ministry of Interior began formally restricting the freedom of movement of Jewish people. Compelled to leave the country, many of Gego’s family members were able to flee to England, however, she was unable to obtain an English visa. Instead, in 1939, she immigrated to Venezuela, where she established herself in the capital city of Caracas.
    Unfamiliar with the country, culture, and language, coupled with the fact that she was a woman and nonnational, Gego’s opportunities were often few and far between. Regardless, she was able to use her educational background to undertake work as a freelance architect and designer for several firms. At one such firm in 1940, she met urban planner Ernst Gunz. The pair were married that same year, and they went on to have two children. For a brief period, they operated a furniture studio and shop for which Gego worked as a designer. In 1948, however, Gego returned to working on architectural projects, and in 1951 the couple separated. The following year, Gego met graphic designer Gerd Leufert, with whom she would spend the rest of her life. Coinciding with this, Gego left her architecture practice behind and devoted herself to making art.
    Installation view of “Gego: Measuring Infinity” (2023). Photo: David Heald. © Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation, New York.

    Line, Form, and Space
    Undoubtedly greatly influenced by her professional and educational background in architecture, Gego’s oeuvre is an enduring testament to her exploration and mastery of line, form, and space. Some of the artist’s earliest works, many of which took inspiration from the natural landscape of Venezuela, illustrate her immediate interest in the formal elements of artmaking and familiarity with prevailing artistic trends of the time, including geometric abstraction. Featured on the first ramp of the Guggenheim exhibition, her watercolor, tempera, and gouache paintings feature vibrant, lush vignettes and her first experimentations with variable composition techniques. Also included are early prints and ink drawings, showing a burgeoning fascination with the possibilities of line—predecessors to the three-dimensional works she commenced making in 1956.
    Compared to the airy, kinetic sculptures Gego later became recognized for, the early series of sculptures from the 1950s and ’60s on view are visually (and presumably literally) heavy. Largely comprised of painted iron rods and bars, these early sculptures exemplify the artist’s preoccupation with the interaction of line and space, and an ongoing investigation into the possibilities of different geometric forms. Shapes ranging from squares to tetrahedra, comprised of repeating metal lines, overlap, merge, and stagger and space, offering a different visual understanding of composition based on perspective.
    Both sculpture and printmaking remained stalwart facets of Gego’s practice, and the evolution of her work can be traced through her use of line. Initially favoring parallel lines in repetition, as she further explored their potential for interacting with space and form, her lines began to intersect and be overlaid in increasingly complex manners—both in her two- and three-dimensional work.
    Gego (Gertrud Goldschmidt), Sin título (Tamarind 1848B) (Untitled [Tamarind 1848B]), 1966. Colección Fundación Gego, Caracas. © Fundación Gego. Photo: Carlos Germán Rojas. Courtesy of Archivo Fundación Gego.

    Tamarind Studio, “Drawing Without Paper,” and “Reticulárea”
    In both 1963 and 1966, Gego was invited to the Tamarind Lithography Workshop in Los Angeles, where she assumed a comprehensive exploration of the print medium, which resulted in some of her most significant print works. Examples of her experiments into various printmaking techniques, including engraving, etching, lithography, and even embossing, highlight her mastery, as well as exhibit her refined and disciplined approach to color and composition. The Tamarind period prints further emphasize her meticulous investigations into line and shape within the confines of the medium.
    In 1969, there was a pivotal shift in Gego’s work, when she moved away from parallel lines to what she termed “reticuláreas,” reticular shapes that resembled nets or structures comprised of nets in her two-dimensional work. This shift soon appeared in her sculptural work as well and subsequently led her to use lighter, more easily manipulated materials such as wire (rather than iron or steel rods or bars). The change in approach is made manifest in pieces from her largest sculpture series, produced between 1976 and 1988, “Dibujos sin papel (Drawings Without Paper).” Here, wire took the place of drawn line, and with each handwoven sculpture hung in proximity from a wall, the wire resembles graphite or ink, and further light cast on the works casts shadows that add another dimension to the work. In a piece from 1985 within the Guggenheim exhibition, the addition of a thin line of red along the edge of the wire grid brings to mind standard graph paper, with a warped addition of gridded wire mimicking a volumetric drawing.
    Gego (Gertrud Goldschmidt), Dibujo sin papel (Drawing without Paper) (1985). Private collection. Photo: Barbara Brändli. © Fundación Gego.
    Foremost in her use of “reticuláreas,” her hanging sculptures made up of interwoven and repeated webs of wire capture her pursuit of line, form, and space most succinctly, and are widely considered Gego’s most famous works. From comparatively simple and petite constructions to large scale, room-spanning installations, these sculptures have a penchant for moving with the ambient air within the spaces they are exhibited. Within Gego’s body of “reticuláreas” sculptures, the artist created various individual series inspired by nature—recalling the influence of nature seen in her earliest paintings—such as Troncos (Trunks) and Bichos (bugs).
    Gego (Gertrude Goldschmidt), Tronco n°5 (Trunk No. 5) (1976). Private collection. © Fundación Gego. Photo: Tomas R. DuBrock. Courtesy of the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston.

    Gego’s Enduring Legacy
    Considering Gego’s work and practice within the art historical canon, her career and practice can be recognized as an indispensable facet of 20th-century art. Though just over a decade his junior, her work and innovation within the realm of kinetic art are in many ways a formal counterpart to and furtherance of Alexander Calder’s iconic hanging mobiles. Within the context of 20th-century South American art, her experimentations with kinetic sculpture can be seen echoed in work as Brazillian artist Lygia Clark’s reticulated “Bicho (Critter),” or fellow Venezuelan artist Jesús Rafael Soto and Alejandro Otero, emphasizing the importance of the formal aims she pursued in her practice. Though she received widespread acclaim in her lifetime and has maintained name recognition throughout much of the world, her life and oeuvre are primed for renewed recognition in the United States.
    “Gego: Measuring Infinity” is on view at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum through September 10, 2023.
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    in Street Art

    Helen Bur in Boulogne-sur-Mer, France

    UK based artist Helen Bur has just completed a new painting in Boulogne-Sur-Mer, France. Entitled “Shift of the centre” the mural, approx 12x9mt, was painted for the Boulogne-Sur-Mer street art project organised by Amziane Abid. With a strong connotation linked to the concept of motherhood and revaluation of one’s ego, a mother draws a new center around her child, to signify new boundaries of one’s love and one’s perspective.Through her art, Helen Bur shows that beauty can be a catalyst for change, inspiring individuals to take action and make a positive impact on the world around them. Each piece tells a story, encapsulating the essence of the neighborhood it inhabits. Her murals often reflect the history, culture, and aspirations of the community, forging a connection between the art and its surroundings. This ability to bridge the gap between art and life is what makes Helen Bur’s work so magnetic. Her unique blend of creativity, storytelling, and social consciousness has redefined the boundaries of art, showing that the streets can be both a canvas and a stage for meaningful expression. With every stroke of her brush and every splash of color, she unveils the soul of the city, inviting us all to look deeper, think harder, and embrace the beauty that surrounds us, even in the most unexpected of places. Take a look at more images below and check back with us soon for more updates. More

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    in Exhibitions

    Photographers Recreate Old Master Paintings in Witty and Profound Ways in a New Show at a Princeton University Art Gallery

    Knowingly or not, every artist references the history of their craft eventually. Some do it to situate their own work in the lineage of greats, others to question the monolithic canon.  
    Recently opened at the Princeton University Art Museum’s gallery Art on Hulfish is an exhibition of lens-based artists who look to Leonardo, Van Eyck, and other Old Masters for material. Their strategies and intents vary but ultimately lead to the same comforting truth.  
    If this sounds like homework, it’s not. The show, like the last gasps of summer vacation alongside which it arrives, is light and warm. The art historical easter eggs are there for the nerds, but so is Vik Muniz’s charming 1999 photograph of the Mona Lisa recreated, in Warholian fashion, with peanut butter and jelly. You don’t need a PhD to appreciate what the artist is doing with that picture.  
    Vik Muniz, Double Mona Lisa (Peanut Butter and Jelly) (1999). © Vik Muniz.
    “Some of the art is serious. But I hope people come and laugh,” said Ronni Baer, the Princeton curator who organized the show. For her and the museum, the show checks several boxes. It’s historical but also contemporary, educational but enjoyable. It’s legible, and it also serves to remind visitors of the museum’s programming while its main building is being reconstructed on campus.  
    (David Adjaye, the Ghanaian/British architect recently accused of sexual harassment and assault, designed the new Princeton University Art Museum. Though Adjaye has stepped away from numerous projects in light of the allegations, Princeton has said that the museum is too deep into construction for the school to distance itself from him now. The new museum is expected to open in 2025.) 
    Ori Gersht, Pomegranate (Off Balance) (2006). Courtesy of the artist.
    The exhibition, Baer said, points to the past but feels like the present. “The idea of searching for identity is something embedded in a lot of this work—and it’s as relevant then as today,” she said, referring to works like Yasumasa Morimura’s Daughter of Art History (Princess A) (1990), for which the older male artist recast himself as the young female subject of Diego Velázquez’s Portrait of the Infanta Margarita Aged Five (1956), and Nina Katchadourian’s “Flemish Style” self-portraits made in an airplane bathroom.  
    As with these stately Renaissance portraits, the still-life is a popular point of departure in the show. Included are pictures of bouquets by Sharon Core, who painstakingly grows her own horticultural specimens, and Bas Meeuws, who pulls examples from his personal library of floral photographs and reassembles them digitally.  
    A 2006 video by Ori Gersht recreates Juan Sánchez Cotán’s Quince, Cabbage, Melon, and Cucumber (circa 1600) with pomegranate substituted in—a symbol of the violence that defined the artist’s childhood in Tel Aviv. (In Hebrew, the word for “pomegranate” also means “grenade.”) Gersht also layers on a reference to Harold Edgerton as a slow-motion bullet pierces the pomegranate halfway through.
    Jeanette May, NY Tech Vanitas: Dot Matrix (2018). Courtesy of the artist.
    Nearby, Jeanette May’s NY Tech Vanitas: Dot Matrix (2018) nods to the eponymous genre of still-life paintings popularized by the Dutch in the 17th century, which employed objects of pleasure to remind viewers that our time on this mortal coil is limited and shouldn’t be wasted on indulgences. But instead of the decadent snacks and emptied wine carafes favored by Golden Agers like Willem Claesz Heda, May has filled her frame with pieces of outmoded, obsolescent tech: flip-phones, a CD-ROM, a printer that uses—gasp—perforated paper. 
    “All of it adds up to nothing, both then and now,” Baer said, somewhat jokingly, before putting a bead on the central idea of the show. “These themes,” she went on, “are centuries old. They’re human concerns about identity and the fleetingness of life and about how we choose to live.” 
    “Art about Art: Contemporary Photographers Look at Old Master Paintings” is on view August 19 through November 5, 2023, at the Princeton University Art Museum’s Art on Hulfish gallery. 
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