Exhibitions

Dealers, collectors, and art enthusiasts gathered in Poland last weekend for Warsaw Gallery Weekend which kicked off on September 29, an annual celebration of contemporary art organized by the city’s galleries. For its 11th edition, 33 galleries participated with 38 exhibitions in their gallery spaces and at offsite venues beyond. At the infamous Palace of Culture and Science, Raster Gallery presented the work of Oskar Dawicki and Gunia Nowik presented the work of Nicolas Grospierre in the Pniewski Villa, a modernist architectural gem. At Kino Iluzjon, a 1950s cinema, Hos Gallery and Propaganda Gallery collaborated on an exhibition of sculptor Norbert Delman. 
While the right-wing Law and Justice party continues to wreak havoc on the country’s esteemed contemporary art institutions—most recently ousting the longtime director of Muzeum Sztuki in Łódź following similar actions at Warsaw’s Zacheta Gallery and the Ujazdowski Castle Center for Contemporary Art in Warsaw—the capital’s private cultural sector is rapidly growing. Artists and curators are finding refuge in commercial galleries where they can present work without fear of censorship. Given this, it is unsurprising that many of the subjects that appeared throughout this year’s weekend were precisely those which the conservative government has been trying to quell, including women’s rights, LGBTQ+ issues, and how history is manipulated by those in power.
As Russia’s invasion of Ukraine escalates on the heels of Putin’s annexation of four Ukrainian provinces, it was hard not to notice the recurring references to central eastern Europe’s bloody and complicated past. Some galleries provided additional pamphlets translated into Ukrainian, acknowledging the millions of Ukrainian refugees who have settled in Poland since the start of the war earlier this year. In many ways, the gallery weekend felt like a safe haven from the current geopolitical reality of the region: a four-day celebration of the creativity and dialogue that can be generated in inclusive spaces. It also served as a reminder of all that may be lost if the right-wing government continues to chip away at Poland’s art and culture scene amid a chaotic political situation in Europe.
Below are five artists with stand-out exhibitions that resonated with the cultural moment.

Błażej Rusin
On view at Olszewski Gallery through October 28
Błażej Rusin at Olszewski Gallery. Courtesy the gallery and the artist. Photo: Małgorzata Starz.
Błażej Rusin creates kaleidoscopic frescos on the walls of abandoned buildings throughout East-Central Europe. Influenced by his origins in the eastern Poland as well the history of the many displaced peoples of this historically multiethnic region, Rusin carefully removes his works—sometimes with bits of plaster—and displays them as mobile wall hangings. At Olszewski Gallery, Rusin’s works are presented alongside the work of 90-year-old artist Wojciech Sadley, an important figure in the Polish School of Textiles from the same region who also painted on easily transportable materials including cloth and parchment. Ranging from €5,000 to €6,000 ($5,000 to $6,000), Rusin’s monumental works, which he describes as “post-graffiti,” are exuberant celebrations of pattern, shape, and color that nod to the medley of cultural influences and diversity of the eastern borderland region of Poland.

Karolina Grzywnowicz
On view at Jednostka Gallery through October 22
Karolina Grzywnowicz at Jednostka Gallery. Courtesy the gallery and the artist. Photo: Jednostka Gallery Archive.
Walking into Jednostka Gallery, the visitor is immediately struck by the smell of pine emanating from of a bundle of sticks suspended in the center of the small gallery. The installation is the work of Karolina Grzywnowicz, who in recent years has focused her research-based practice on how landscaping is used as a tool of ideology and power. In the installation (€12,500 ($12,500)) and collages (€1500—€3000 ($1,500—$3,000)) on view at Jednostka Gallery, Grzywnowicz focuses on the use of two different pine trees: the Scots pine (pinus sylvestris) which was used by Nazi Germans to camouflage the crematoria and gas chambers at Auschwitz and Birkenau, and the Jerusalem pine (pinus halepensis) planted by Zionists in Palestine to make the landscape resemble that of East-Central Europe. Grzywnowicz’s exhibition was awarded one of two prizes given during Warsaw Gallery Weekend by the ING Polish Art Foundation, selected by an international jury of six art professionals.

Karol Radziszewki
On view at BWA Warszawa through November 26
Karol Radziszewski at BWA Warszawa. Photo: Aga Sablinska.
With his newest body of work, Karol Radziszewki (born 1980) continues his mission of highlighting just how many historic Polish cultural figures were non-heteronormative, a fact that is ignored and, at times, even erased by the right-wing government and conservative portions of the Polish population. In this series on view at BWA, Radziszewski focuses on the composer Karol Szymanowski, considering the musician’s lovers and characters from his operas and ballets. The paintings, which range in price from €1,800 to €10,000 ($1,800 to $10,000), were almost all sold out on the third day of the gallery weekend.
Radziszewski, whose ongoing research project The Queer Archives Institute documents the queer history of East-Central Europe, will be featured in the upcoming exhibition “To Be Seen: Queer Lives 1900-1950” at the Munich Documentation Centre for the History of National Socialism in Munich, Germany, which opens this week. His exhibition at BWA Warszawa was awarded the second prize given by the ING Polish Art Foundation.

Patryk Różycki
On view at Polana Institute through October 8
Patryk Różycki at Polana Institute. Photo: Aga Sablinska.
The autobiographical paintings of Patryk Różycki are striking in their intimacy, tackling uncomfortable subjects from his childhood including the difficulty of becoming close to his father and the inability of his family to openly grieve together following the death of his siblings. Różycki, who comes from a rural working class background, at times also addresses what can be seen as the elephant in the room of an otherwise inclusionary art weekend: how the Polish art world can be far from welcoming to those from outside of its cosmopolitan centers. Accompanying the exhibition is a diary of sorts, offering Różycki’s very personal reflections on each of the scenes he depicts in his paintings, which range from €1,800 to €4,400 ($1,800 to $4,400). 

Elka Krajewska (& KrajM)
On view at lokal_30 through December 2
Elka Krajewska at lokal_30. Courtesy the gallery and the artists. Photo: lokal_30.
Over the past two decades, Elka Krajewska collaborated on various art projects with her late mother Maria (who goes by the artistic name KrajM) during the latter’s struggle with the effects of Alzheimer’s Disease. Grappling with the loss of her mother’s ability to speak, Krajewska searched for new methods to communicate with her—together, they found a creative collaboration.
The exhibition features drawings and installations the two completed together as well as Dromoi Pros Matria, a new documentary video-collage featuring various snippets from the lives of both artists, including scenes in which they are creating some of the works on view at lokal_30. The exhibition is at times unsettling in its exposure of moments that are usually kept private, and raises the question of what can be gained through pulling the curtain far back on the process of losing loved ones.
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Twinning is in. From Gucci’s “Twinsburg” collection that just had 68 doubles walking the runway in Milan, to the white-hot market for Otis Kwame Kye Quaicoe’s twin figures, to the obsession with the eerie doppelgänger DNA uncovered by testing the twin stranger subjects found by Canadian photographer François Brunelle, it feels like doubles are everywhere.
So it is at Sid Motion Gallery in London, where eight artists have responded to a prompt to execute the same idea twice, and the two resulting versions of the show, “Same Same,” are hung in adjoining rooms.
Curated by gallery founder Sid Motion and artist and curator Rose Davey, the idea for the  group show stemmed from a lecture Davey gave at the Slade School of Fine Art in London on the art of repetitive making. Davey was inspired by a 17th-century double portrait of a pair of elaborately clothed women, The Cholmondeley Ladies, who appear to be identical at first glance, but on closer viewing are revealed to have many subtle differences. The works on view in the exhibition are also doubles, but instead of appearing identical, they all look quite different—but stemmed from an identical concept.
Installation view, “Same Same,” Sid Motion Gallery. Photo: courtesy of Tim Bowditch.
Of the 17th-century image that inspired the show, Rose Davey wrote in her exhibition text that “it is an immediately arresting image that illustrates how repetition can warrant a work iconic.” On the other hand, “the strategy of [making work] again is not always considered a positive move. Making something multiple times can be viewed as capitalizing on one’s success” and “an artist labeled as ‘successful’ can often be accused of cultivating a production line to meet demand.”
In the group show, artists are asked to return to the concept that inspired an earlier work and make it again—in a sort of collaboration with their past selves. Highlights of the exhibition include a pair of dark and mysterious works that dance between figuration and abstraction by recent Slade graduate Remi Ajani, and star artist Rose Wylie’s remixed polaroid camera.
Installation view, “Same Same,” Sid Motion Gallery. Photo: courtesy of Tim Bowditch.
The other artists who responded to the exhibition’s prompt are Gabriele Beveridge, Rose Davey, Mary Ramsden, Genevieve Stevens, Tessa Whitehead, and Gary Woodley. 
“Arguably, all artists attempt the same thing again and again; a continuous quest for visual solutions born from restless curiosity,” Motion and Davey said in a statement. “‘Same Same’ aims to highlight the productivity of process, since it is the artist’s failure to reach an enduring conclusion that keeps them making.”
“Same Same” is on view through October 22 at Sid Motion Gallery, London. 
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Eliza Douglas is smiling—but nothing feels particularly funny.
What you see is more of an animal grin, the tensed jaw and bared teeth of a creature that is scared or threatened. The eerie expression appears in a two-channel work displayed within a small, bunker-like room that punctuates Anne Imhof’s new solo show at the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam, serving as the crescendo of the German artist’s foreboding new project, “Youth.”
One of this show’s organizers, curator Beatrix Ruf, had been planning the show for Moscow’s Garage Museum; “Youth” was set to open in April there as a co-production between the Garage, the Hartwig Art Foundation of the Netherlands, and the Stedlijk, where it was meant to stop at a later date. Simultaneous shows at Imhof’s galleries, at Buchholz in New York and Spruth Magers London this fall, would serve to amplify Imhof’s voice further.
But plans changed. Imhof and a local team had been shooting new films around Moscow when the war broke out in late February. Two days later, the Garage called off all of its programming. “We all knew there were tanks around Ukraine but many of us believed in the power of diplomacy,” noted Imhof during opening remarks on Thursday, September 29.
Ruf, who had been working with the Garage on strategy and programming, added that the lead-up to the war was a time when she and other art professionals were coming to grips with the “limits of soft power.” The hard power and reality of war slammed the brakes on all that.
Installation view of Anne Imhof’s “Youth.” Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam co-presented with Hartwig Art Foundation. Photo: Peter Tijhuis
The war marked, too, a sharp end to a decade-long evolution of cultural ties, a time when the art world grew cozy with Russian institutions. Deep pockets in Moscow allowed for ambitious artistic projects. New institutions sprang up as art hubs, including the Garage Museum, which opened in 2008 with funds from Russian art collectors Dasha Zhukova and Roman Abramovich. Now, Abramovich are on sanctions lists, blacklisted by much of the art industry.
Anne Imhof The ride (2022) Stedelijik Museum.
The snuffed-out first life of Imhof’s show in Russia that never came to be lingers like a ghost in the exhibition at the Stedelijk, which includes those films shot in Moscow. They’re interspersed within a layered, labyrinthian, anxiety-inducing installation that gamifies exhibition space and art viewing. Viewers wander between gym lockers, stacked car tires, and industrial water vats built into a maze of dead ends and closed-off rooms. In other areas, you find Red Bull cans on mattresses. Glass paintings, with key scratches and graffiti, lean subtly against the walls.
Installation view of Anne Imhof’s “Youth.” Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam co-presented with Hartwig Art Foundation. Photo: Peter Tijhuis
Most notably of all, there are no in-situ live performers here. It took time for the Stedelijk to embrace this turn, given that live performances had become the most immediately recognizable (and ticket-driving) aspect of Imhof’s work. The art public has come to be familiar with the select group of performance artists who populate Imhof’s entropic scenography (indeed, Douglas has become a star herself), their characteristic expressions conveying something between boredom and muted threat. Recent exhibitions at the Palais de Tokyo and the Tate were packed, frenzied spectacles.
Surely, some visitors will be disappointed to have missed out on a social media moment when they come to the Stedelijk. But the absence feels here like a natural next step for Imhof—even a brave one for an artist who seems keen to more deeply probe her macro themes of death, sex, fear, and anticipation. Rhein Wolf, director of the Stedelijk museum called the transformation an “extremely important development” for Imhof. The quiet in the galleries feels both unsettling and purposeful. 
Installation view of Anne Imhof’s “Youth.” Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam co-presented with Hartwig Art Foundation. Photo: Peter Tijhuis
Instead of incarnated in-person spectacle, Imhof makes avatar versions of Douglas the work’s protagonist, her image flickering around the space in scattered videos. Watching footage of Douglas walking away through a landscape of snowy ruins filmed in Moscow is poignant, and feels symbolic—this may indeed be the last artwork made by an international artist on-site Russia for a long time.
Another protagonist of this show is sound itself. In collaborations with Imhof, German rapper Ufo361 and Venezuelan musician Arca created scores that haunt the space. Elsewhere, a Renaissance song from 1553 on the theme of guilt and redemption is heard. 
A lurking sense of violence is everywhere here, something we have come to know Imhof for—that uneasy feeling that the next moment might bring anything. Being able to deliver that cinematic tension, even without on-site performers, is proof of Imhof’s brilliance. But the power of “Youth” is also in how it remains a vessel empty enough that one can fill it in with one’s own projections. The missing bodies, the occasional barrage of sound, the sense of lost time, the search for an exit—all of that echoes with the calamitous feeling of war drumming away in the background.
“Youth” by Anne Imhof opens to the public on October 1 at the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam.
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Ghost is back. Launched in 2018 by Akapol Op Sudasna and Korakrit Arunanondchai, the hotly watched experimental art and performance triennial is set to return to Bangkok for its first post-pandemic edition next month, this time helmed by curator Christina Li and with the title “Live Without Dead Time.”
Technically, the new edition is called “Ghost 2565,” with the number referencing this year’s date in the Buddhist calendar. As for its title, it’s a translation of a poetic graffiti from May ’68 in Paris: “vivre sans temps mort.”
Ghost 2565 will feature moving-image works from thirteen artists including Emily Wardill, Diane Severin Nguyen, and Wu Tsang with Tosh Basco. It is set to debut brand new films from Chantana Tiprachart and Tulapop Saenjaroen, and feature a program of live performances by the likes of Koki Tanaka, Orawan Arunrak, Pan Daijing, and Rabih Mroué (with Hito Steyerl).
“It feels more like a festival than an exhibition in certain ways,” Arunanondchai told Artnet News.
Ghost transpires across seven dispersed locations, including Bangkok CityCity Gallery, Jim Thompson Art Center, and Nova Contemporary. Baan Trok Tua Ngork will serve as the event’s central hub, hosting gatherings, public programming, and something called Wendy’s Wok World, “an alter-ego, character-driven culinary project,” per the release, “in residence throughout Ghost with a special menu of wok-based dishes.”
Wu Tsang, The show is over (2020). Produced by Schauspielhaus Zürich, Co-Commissioned by Lafayette Foundation. Courtesy of the artist and Galerie Isabella Bortolozzi, Berlin.
Notably, though the show will have informational pamphlets on hand, no works throughout Ghost will be accompanied by wall text. This is a way of rejecting the notion the typical Western format of art, where “there’s something to get, or not get,” according to Arunanondchai.
Instead, the artist-founder has been working since the first Ghost in 2018 to cultivate a program where twelve local hosts who’ve studied and discussed this edition’s content facilitate dialogue in the “Host Program,” dispensing critical information about the works on view for attendees in weekly public programs. Arunanondchai considers these hosts like mediums—literally channeling Ghost.
Still from Meriem Bennani, Life on the CAPS, 2022. Courtesy the artist; CLEARING, New York/Brussels; and François Ghebaly, Los Angeles/New York
“A lot of people who have come as attendees or to perform also naturally end up becoming a part of it,” Arunanondchai said.
Li, the director of Spring Workshop in Hong Kong, visited Ghost’s final day in 2018, and says she was inspired. “I had no idea what to expect and was struck by the spirit of hospitality and generosity,” she told Artnet News. “You can really sense that the festival not only was conceived for, but also struck a nerve with the local young artistic community who were really receptive and excited to explore and be immersed in the works on view.” She added that she hopes the festival “can be a model in rethinking ideas of engagement and commitment” well beyond Bangkok.
For “Live Without Dead Time,” her curatorial strategy started with an extended research trip after travel restrictions loosened late last year, visiting Thailand and elsewhere. “I was drawn to [Thai artists] Tulapop Saenjaroen, Orawan Arunrak, and Chantana Tiprachat’s practice as filmmakers, as well as their unique way of storytelling,” she said, explaining her process. “For other regional and international artists, I was careful to highlight practices, struggles, or subject matters that can resonate with local audiences [in Bangkok].”
Video Still. Æther, 2021, Shuang Li. Courtesy Peres Projects
When Arunanondchai launched Ghost, he envisioned three total editions, spaced three years apart. The inclusion of an outside curator in Ghost 2565 marks one planned stage in the event’s natural evolution. Ideally, Arunanondchai would like the Bangkok scene to center the next round.
His ambitions go beyond that, too. He envisions Ghost as an alternative type of space—building a zone between the consumer space of Bangkok’s modern malls and the sacred space of its ancient temples. “It’s about spending time,” Arunanondchai explained, “not necessarily about looking at something.”
“Ghost 2565: Live Without Dead Time” takes place in venues throughout Bangkok, October 12-November 13, 2022.
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Over four nights and three days, upwards of 10,000 visitors flowed through Bentonville, Arkansas to attend the inaugural edition of FORMAT. Event producers describe the flashy new affair as a blend of “art, music, and technology.” If this year’s iteration is a reliable indication, what that means is a heady cocktail of cyborg art, NFT interventions, and other high-production performances. 
Home to the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, Bentonville has, over the last decade, gained momentum as a site of interest on the art world’s radar. (The Momentary, the Museum’s contemporary art-focused satellite that opened in 2020, is currently host to a riveting set of works by the likes of Kara Walker, Xaviera Simmons, and Lucy Raven.) That this town of 50,000 is now also home to a recurring, internationally oriented festival indicates a sustained interest on the city’s part to continue attracting economic growth via cultural tourism. 
Getting to the festival entailed a short rideshare north of downtown Bentonville, followed by a walk along a paved road which can be significantly shortened by any of the independently run bike carriages or golf carts zipping back and forth. (Shuttle buses and bicycles were, incidentally, the only other modes of transportation available to visitors; parking was not an option.)
At the end of the trail, past the festival gates, FORMAT’s venues sprawled out across a 250-acre expanse of the Runway Group’s backcountry airstrip, luring in visitors with flashy lights and endless waves of musical programming. 
The event was anchored by two traditional concert stages, where the likes of Nile Rogers, Beach House, and Herbie Hancock held court. Peppered around and beyond these performance spaces were smaller, selfie-friendly installations—not unlike those found at comparable festivals like Coachella—that formed an immersive theme park of “Big Fun Art.” Noteworthy among these were ASSUME VIVID ASTRO FOCUS’s Smokey, which served as a stage for English rapper and DJ Shygirl’s crowd-pleasing concert, and a version of James Tapscott’s Arc ZERO: Eclipse sculpture, which doubled as a misting station for festival-goers seeking relief from the end-of-summer heat. 
Doug Aitken’s New Horizon (2019) at FORMAT Festival. Image: Rain Embuscado
According to Mafalda Millies, one of the festival’s curators, the idea behind FORMAT started to take shape as early as 2018. In collaboration with co-curators Roya Sachs, Elizabeth Edelman, and Charles Attal (co-founder of the concert promoter C3 Presents), the team’s search for a venue gained traction following a conversation with Olivia Walton, the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art’s director, along with her husband, Tom (grandson of Walmart founder Sam Walton), and brother-in-law, Steuart.
“It was Olivia Walton who began the conversation,” Millies said in a phone interview, later remarking on Walton’s knowledge of both the visual arts and of the town (“which they’re hoping to grow, culturally speaking”) as being instrumental to realizing the event.
The Bizarre Bazaar, one of the curatorial initiatives designed to include local artists and producers, offered a mix of services like food trucks and specialty merchant tables in a dedicated area. But while local participation on the vendors’ side opened up some opportunities, the price for visitors was, for many, still out of reach. Day passes for general admission started at $125, a number that soared to $2,500 for a three-day “Platinum” VIP pass. 
Jacolby Satterwhite’s PAT (2022) being performed at FORMAT Festival. Image by Rain Embuscado.
So, how was the art? Each of the participating visual artists engaged the space with their signature approaches. Maurizio Cattelan’s TOILETPAPER MAGAZINE, for example, opted to embody the “artist-as-set-designer” role, transforming a barn into a platformed dance hall for an installation titled Drag Me to the Disco. Justin Lowe and Jonah Freeman, meanwhile, built a hybrid speakeasy-cum-performance-venue titled Next Door, which they constructed using repurposed doors from porta-johns and a variety of counter-cultural ephemera.
Artist Nick Cave (currently the subject of a major retrospective at the Museum of Contemporary Arts Chicago), participated in the festivities, contributing a selection of his Soundsuits (1992–present) which dancers activated during musical acts by artists like the Flaming Lips and Seun Kuti & Egypt 80. Nancy Baker Cahill, who presented a number of NFT artworks at the Solana House venue (sponsored by the eponymous blockchain), captivated passersby with amorphous digital renderings displayed on floor-to-ceiling digital screens.
Jacolby Satterwhite chose the occasion to debut PAT, a new performance piece developed in partnership with Performa. He remarked that the event’s production quality was of the highest quality. “I was attracted to the lineup,” Satterwhite admitted to Artnet News, adding that FORMAT also provided a good testing ground for the new “tone” of his work.
Neil Harbisson channeling a NASA livestream at FORMAT Festival. Image by Rain Embuscado.
Artist Neil Harbisson answered FORMAT’s call to present his “space concert” for the first time to a U.S. audience. Largely known for his advocacy of the cyborg art movement—he has an antenna implanted in his skull—Harbisson’s contribution to FORMAT involved connecting to the NASA International Space Station, and translating the signals he received into a musical composition. This Bentonville performance of a work which Harbisson had previously only delivered in European cities stood as an example of what was possible in a technologically decentralized art world.
“The composition is created by the cosmos,” Harbisson told Artnet News. “There is no separation between artwork and artist. Art is everywhere.”
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Ice, baby, there’s a Pavement exhibition coming to New York. 
This week, the seminal band announced the arrival of “Pavements 1933-2022: A Pavement Museum,” a four-day-long pop-up that coincides with its slate of sold-out shows at Brooklyn’s Kings Theater later this month. (The “1933” of the show’s title is a reference to the group’s debut EP, “Slay Tracks 1933-1969,” which was actually released in 1989.)
Billed—in the indie outfit’s signature brand of slacker savant humor—as an “international museum exhibition,” the show will bring together artifacts and archival material spanning Pavement’s 30-plus year history.
On view will be “previously unseen imagery, artwork and ephemera, commendations and commemorations,” as well as “rumored relics of the band’s real and imagined history,” according to the project’s website. “Exclusive merchandise and classic museum souvenirs” will also be available for purchase.
Following its run in New York, the Pavement Museum will make stops in London and Toyko before ultimately landing in the band’s hometown of Stockton, California, where it will go on permanent display. 
The exhibition “completes a circle for one of the most celebrated and deliberated bands in modern music and helps redefine a secret history performed in plain sight,” an announcement reads. 

On the occasion of its four sold-out concerts at Brooklyn’s Kings Theatre, the rock band Pavement will unveil an international museum exhibition, Pavements 1933-2022: A Pavement Museum pic.twitter.com/YhrBgY1x0i
— PAVEMENT (@pavement_band) September 26, 2022

What that “secret history” refers to is unclear. Probably nothing, as the pop-up’s description reads like a sardonic send-up of the sensationalized, “Behind the Music”–style editorialization of similar shows, like the Rolling Stones’ “Exhibitionism,” for instance. Then again, the tension of a band mocking indie fame while reluctantly embracing it has always been at the heart of Pavement’s charm.  
A representative for the group didn’t immediately respond to Artnet News’s request for more details about what visitors can expect, but Variety reported that the event is, at least, real, and not another ironic joke. 
Incidentally, another museum plays a foundational role in Pavement’s history: the group’s frontman and drummer, Stephen Malkmus and Steve West, were working as security guards at the Whitney Museum of American Art when they recorded their first album, “Slanted and Enchanted,” in 1991.
Pavement, which officially disbanded in 2000, is currently out on the road for a long-awaited—and repeatedly-delayed—reunion tour, the group’s first since 2010.
“Pavements 1933-2022” will be on view September 29–October 2 at 475 Greenwich Street in New York.
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Steve Martin has been back in the headlines of late, thanks to his leading role in the hit Hulu comedy Only Murders in the Building. But he also has a star turn this fall at the National Arts Club in New York, which is presenting a small but striking exhibition of Indigenous Australian art from the actor’s personal collection.
Titled “Selections from Australia’s Western Desert: From the Collection of Steve Martin and Anne Stringfield,” the show features six works from among the 50 or so contemporary paintings by Indigenous Australian artists that Martin has purchased with his wife since 2015.
The couple’s passion for this still rather obscure area of contemporary art got its start at Salon 94 on the Upper East Side, which at the time was presenting the first U.S. solo show for Warlimpirrnga Tjapaltjarri. Martin read about the show in the New York Times, and was immediately intrigued. “I got on my bicycle, and I went down, and I bought one,” he told Artnet News.
Bill Whiskey Tjapaltjarri, Rockholes and Country Near the Olgas (2008). Collection of Steve Martin and Anne Stringfield.
Martin, of course, had been collecting for years, starting out with a James Gale Tyler seascape he picked up at an antique store for $500 at age 21 and still owns; today, he estimated, it has dipped in value to $300. (Martin’s next acquisition, a print by Ed Ruscha of the Hollywood sign, has probably fared better over the years.)
The love affair with Indigenous Australian art, however, was something of a slow burn for Martin and Stringfield.
“We hung it, we loved it, but we didn’t really think about it for a few years. But there is a whole culture around these paintings, and slowly, through osmosis, I began to learn more and more,” he said. “The history of Indigenous painting only goes back to about 1970—before that it was sand painting, wall painting, carving, and this was the first time these images could be set down in a permanent way.”
Making lasting, portable works that could be sold was transformative for the Indigenous art community—and brought something brand new to the art world, a movement that became known as Desert Painting.
“I think it’s such a fascinating story,” Martin said. He also appreciated collecting in an area where there wasn’t a huge amount of established scholarship.
“It’s fun to have something to study, to try to understand, to apply your critical eye to without any outside pressure,” he added. “There’s not a lot of promotion about [these] artists. You just have to find it out yourself.”
Slowly but surely, Martin began buying more and more Indigenous art, even traveling with Stringfield to Australia. (Though they didn’t make it to the Outback, they visited a center where working artists create their paintings.)
Carlene West, Tjitjitji. Collection of Steve Martin and Anne Stringfield.
They also met Indigenous artist Yukultji Napangati when she visited New York a few years ago and had her over to dinner.
“She made my daughter a family member, which was quite an honor, and I played the banjo,” Martin said. “Yukultji is quite a historical figure. She was one of the Pintupi Nine, and came in from the Outback when she was 13—had never seen a white man, had never seen a car—and then became a notable painter.”
As Martin and Stringfield’s holdings in Indigenous art grew, so too did their desire to show them to the world. To start, Martin staged a small show at the Uovo storage facility in Queens for friends and family.
Word got out. Next came an outing at Gagosian—nothing for sale, of course—that showed in both New York and Los Angeles, and an exhibition at the Australian counsel residence in New York. (That showed paired Martin’s collection with works owned by John Wilkerson, whose collection focuses on smaller, earlier works on board, before Indigenous artists got access to canvases.)
These days, Martin and Stringfield are winding down their active collecting.
“Our indigenous art collection is pretty dense—there’s not much left to acquire. Right now, we are just having fun moving works around,” Martin said. “I love to rotate things. Every time you move a picture, it’s like getting a new picture. You see it anew.”
And of course, he loves seeing his collection on the walls of the National Arts Club, which is currently presenting works by Tjapaltjarri, Bill Whiskey Tjapaltjarri, Timo Hogan, Carlene West, and Doreen Reid Nakamarra.
“It’s an unpredictable melange of pictures. There’s some later ones—Timo Hogan is very contemporary,” Martin said, adding that “in the Australian Indigenous art world, a 50 year old is considered a young painter.” Hogan is 49.
“I’d like people to be able to see the National Arts Club show because it’s very, very unusual,” he added. “And I hope they have the same experience I did—I had never seen anything like it before.”
“Selections From Australia’s Western Desert From the Collection of Steve Martin and Anne Stringfield” is on view at the National Arts Club, 15 Gramercy Park South, New York, New York, September 12–October 27, 2022. 
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