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    How the Kochi-Muziris Biennale Overcame Organizational Mayhem, Extreme Weather, and a Gatecrashing Horror Film Production to Finally Open

    On December 15, as I rushed to find a seat at the Cochin Club for William Kentridge’s lecture-performance Ursonate—part of the programming for the Kochi-Muziris Biennale (KMB)—a visitor from Goa called it the “non-biennale biennale.” Ironically, Ursonate, based on a 1932 Dadaist sound poem by Kurt Schwitters that uses nonsensical vocabulary, was precisely about this breakdown of meaning. At some point, Kentridge invited Indian musicians to join him—Naisha Nazar on vocals, Ashwin R on Chenda drum and Mani KJ on harmonium—but his emphatic gibberish drowned them out.
    In a similar vein, at the biennale’s main venue, Aspinwall House, the hammering and installing of works was at times indistinguishable from the percussive rhythms of Asim Waqif’s new commission, Improvise, a massive resonant bamboo sculpture installed outside that visitors could play with sticks
    The curator of KMB’s fifth edition, “In Our Veins Flow Ink and Fire,” is Singapore-based artist Shubigi Rao. In the only public art talk she gave in the lead-up to the opening now scheduled for December 23, Rao explained that song was a thread running through the biennale. “Here, song could be lament or joy. It could be humorous, snarky, or silly. As artists we are taught to take ourselves seriously and valorize our ideas. Here there’s anger, humor, embarrassment, cringe and it’s ok to have that messiness.”
    That messiness was unintentionally linked to the biennale’s postponement, announced just the night before it was originally due to open, on December 12. The spaces in Aspinwall especially felt under construction, with cables clustered away from puddles, uninstalled monitors and a small village of workers holding down the fort. 
    At the biennale’s main venue, Aspinwall House, Asim Waqif’s new commission, Improvise, is a massive, resonant, bamboo sculpture, that visitors can play with sticks.
    Amid the ruckus, I was drawn to the sparseness of Algerian artist Massinissa Selmani’s delicate, pastel-colored drawings and videos of miniature beings and floating architectures. All trees are potential enemies (2022) evokes states of suspension, repetition and hopelessness, like his animated bird on a Sisyphean quest to fly through a birdhouse while attached to a fence. 
    Yet there was a certain sense of utopia as well. “When Rao invited me, it was a relief,” Selmani said. “We are often put into a box as Africans, but I’m influenced by Belgian Surrealists and my work doesn’t really speak of colonization. I like to think of minimal gestures situated between comedy and tragedy.” 
    An uncanny parallel to this feeling could be found in the biennale. For those of us who traveled to see the exhibition, on a press tour sponsored by BMW, a supporter from the first edition, our disappointment was met with a seemingly lighthearted approach on the ground. Artists simply got on with things, surrounded by a rallying local community. 
    Being from a country where people had to take matters into their own hands if they wanted basic resources, like running water or 24-hour electricity, I’m familiar with this attitude. Yet unlike in Lebanon, the issues at the biennale are less about a failed state and more about institutional hierarchies and procedures. 
    The Communist government of Kerala, which has been an unwavering supporter of the artist-initiated biennale—established as a foundation by Kerala-born, Mumbai-based artists Bose Krishnamachari and Riyas Komu in 2011—currently provides the largest amount given to any cultural project in India, and almost a third of the biennale’s total budget—around $845,000 out of $2.7 million. But of this, only around $360,000 has actually been received in what an institutional director termed a “promise-to-pay” method.
    “It’s all just come to a head,” said Varun Gupta, director of the Chennai Photo Biennale, which has a space in KMB as part of the new Invitations programmes. “I arrived in September, and they were shooting a local-language movie for a famous actor [at Aspinwall]. When they finally got access to the venue, it was only a month ahead of launch day and they had 21 tonnes of debris to remove because of the film set that had to be torn down,” he said, adding that heavy rainfall in Kerala due to Cyclone Mandous (which hit nearby Tamil Nadu), only added to the infrastructure problems, including collapsing roofs at some heritage venues. “The rain was the straw that broke the camel’s back.” 
    An image from the installation Out of Breath at the Chennai Photo Biennale.
    Further complicating the situation was the ongoing friction between property giant DLF and the local government over the government’s acquisition of Aspinwall, resulting in DLF locking up the venue and barring entry for 10 days through December 1. KMB eventually had to agree to pay rent on the space because negotiations between the co-owners had reached a stalemate. “We were stuck in between and kept thinking we would get it today or tomorrow,” Krishnamachari said. 
    Other logistical hurdles include the need to secure bank guarantees in order to ship and release artworks from customs, which now have to be made by nationalized banks instead of private ones, adding weeks to the process, and shipment costs that have increased post-pandemic. On top of that, there are longstanding systemic issues at KMB, including Komu’s resignation due to allegations of sexual harassment in 2018, accusations of unpaid labour, and a remote style of management. 
    “A lot of these pressures existed before but [the biennale organizers] have managed by sheer tenacity to get it just over the line or just under the line,” said gallerist Amrita Jhaveri, who has been brought on as a new trustee of the foundation. “But they cannot do it every time—people run out of energy and goodwill. At some point, something’s going to give. I think this has to be a moment of reckoning, where something new will emerge.”
    “Doing public art in India is very challenging, it’s hands-on,” Jhaveri added. “It’s very precarious, because the biennale is dependent on a temporary venue. Also, it’s one thing to have an international curator, and another for the team not to be on the ground all the time, which you need to run an event of this scale.”
    The sequence of events signal a volatile relationship that exists between artists and art institutions. More accountability and transparency are necessary, perhaps especially so in places where there is less cultural infrastructure and stable sources of funding. In KMB’s case, there was emergency fundraising and a major failure in communication. While there is a certain laissez-faire or guerrilla style of operation that can be seen as endemic to the region, it doesn’t have to be that way.
    “There is a rot in the art world,” Rao told me. “The work goes up because of volunteers and labor that is invisible.”
    Palani Kumar documented the unsafe conditions and deaths of sanitation workers in Tamil Nadu, in a comment on caste and government-enforced labor.
    The most extreme example of this was found in Gupta’s space, where Palani Kumar documented the unsafe conditions and deaths of sanitation workers in Tamil Nadu, in a comment on caste and government-enforced labor. “In these spaces, we can show challenging work that no one else will show,” Gupta said. “And the government is erudite enough not to interfere.” Gupta added: “I love that KMB has tried to bring the Global South together in this edition, which they haven’t done in the past, by sending invitations to other institutions.” 
    Nearby, the Kiran Museum of Art was invited to host the exhibition “Tangled Hierarchy 2,” organized by the artist Jitish Kallat, curator of KMB in 2014. The thoughtful show stems from a meeting between Mahatma Gandhi and Lord Mountbatten in 1947, before the controversial Partition of the subcontinent. Because he had taken a vow of silence, Gandhi communicated with Mountbatten by writing on the back of a series of envelopes. Alongside the show is Kallat’s installation, Covering Letter, which features the words Gandhi wrote to Hitler before World War II, dissolving in a waterfall of smoke.
    At Pepper House, Pakistani artist Seher Shah’s work felt like a very different comment on estrangement and the unseen. Simply wrought compositions, Notes from a City Unknown (2021) were odes to Delhi, with each screenprint combining abstract architectural forms with text. In City of Forgotten Languages, she writes about a solitary bird forgetting its own song, and needing “a memory to remember how to sing.” Back at Aspinwall, the late Madiha Aijaz’s vivid photographs documenting language, devotion and intimacy in Karachi, could be gleaned beneath polythene sheets. 
    Seher Shah, Notes from a City Unknown (close up), Kochi-Muziris Biennale 2022, Pepper House. Photo: Randhir Singh.
    “When I curated this biennale, I looked at artists that people might think of as raw, with an unfiltered approach to specific problems in regions that are nevertheless universally understood,” Rao said during her talk.
    KMB feels like a political necessity in a country with a Hindu majority rule and an antagonistic relationship to the arts. 
    I left Kochi a bit disheartened that I didn’t see the biennale in its entirety, although it’s not every day that collateral events take precedence. One example was the excellent work at the Student Biennale curated by seven artists, which has been running in parallel to KMB for several years and really gives visitors a sense of the concerns of the artists working in the country, from the agrarian revolts to the Dalit community, the lowest stratum of the traditional caste system. Being with without, curated by Suvani Suri at the Students Biennale, was especially memorable and relevant, looking at states of negation and new ways of listening. 
    If there’s anything that this edition of the biennale has revealed, it’s that artists don’t function autonomously and there’s an unspoken precarity that exists between ambitious art projects and the organizational structures around them.

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    An Interactive Online Exhibition Explores Ray Eames’s Indelible Impact on Midcentury American Design

    Despite public declarations made by Charles Eames defending the equal role his wife Ray played in shaping their shared practice, she was rarely given the credit she deserved. The Eames Institute of Infinite Curiosity—a recently established platform promoting the legacy of the historically significant design firm—has opened “Ray’s Hand,” an online exhibition that sheds new light on her vital contribution. Launched on December 15, this latest activation coincides with what would have been her 110th birthday.
    Incorporating everything from preliminary sketches and color samples to toys and everyday products from the 1940s through the 1980s, animated vignettes, and eloquent texts procured by noted scholar Pat Kirkham reveal the multitalented creative’s dynamic approach and her use of varied sources of inspiration to develop innovative concepts that revolutionized midcentury American design. 
    Items from Ray Eames’s office. Photo: Nicholas Calcott, courtesy of Eames Office, LLC.
    “Ray came to design from painting and Charles from architecture, which created a dynamic partnership,” said Llisa Demetrios, the Eames’s granddaughter, executor, and the show’s curator. “From their first project together, they both realized the importance of letting their designs evolve from their hands-on learning. The artifacts in this exhibit demonstrate Ray’s exploration of solving problems and iterating on the solutions.” 
    Much of what was selected for the exhibition came from the storied Eames Office in Venice, California. “As we have been unpacking the crates, opening drawers, and looking in boxes, we have been inventorying what we’ve found so far and making discoveries along the way,” Demetrios added. “The narratives for the exhibits evolved directly from highlighting Ray and Charles’ process through the archival material in the collection.” 
    Courtesy of Eames Office, LLC.
    A major through-line of the showcase is the prevalence of analog hand tools and common materials. Crayons, colored pencils, paints, rubber stamps, silver and gold foils, tissue paper, and marbleized paper join precision tools like scissors, X-acto knives, and magnifying glasses. Adorned in different iconographies, rulers of various lengths also feature prominently. Somehow, Ray always worked within the confines of these readily available components but was able to surpass their limitation by meticulously crafting miniature maquettes, many of which could fit inside the palm of her hand.  
    ​​“I loved how she did not look at an object in isolation but how an object related to everything around it,” Demetrios recalled. “Ray and Charles considered themselves tradespeople. For them, the design process was about addressing a need that they had noticed, or something that someone had come to them for.” The online exhibition does the important work of not just showcasing what they made but how they accomplished these feats. Many of their techniques are as prescient today as they were 60 to 40 years ago.
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    In Pictures: the Musée d’Orsay Presents Kehinde Wiley’s Fallen Figures Alongside the Historic Sculptures That Inspired Them

    Formerly a train station, the grand central nave of the Musée d’Orsay in Paris has retained its high ceilings and streaming natural light, making it the ideal exhibition space for historic sculptural masterpieces.
    Now, the familiar collection of traditional statues has been enlivened by American artist Kehinde Wiley’s twist on the classical European tradition. At the centre of the hall, a large-scale canvas of a woman wearing bright street clothing, hangs beside two monumental sculptures.
    These new works are an extension of the artist’s ongoing “DOWN” series which, since 2008, has reimagined famous depictions of fallen figures, such as Hans Holbein’s The Body of the Dead Christ in the Tomb (c. 1520), but using contemporary subjects. In this case, Wiley was specifically inspired by the museum’s marble statue Woman Bitten by a Serpent (1847) by the French sculptor Auguste Clésinger.
    That work is directly quoted in Wiley’s painting Women Bitten by a Serpent (Mamadou Gueye), which focuses instead on the Senegalese athlete Mamadou Gueye, depicted in a yellow Louis Vuitton top, blue jeans and white sneakers.
    Each of Wiley’s subjects are laid down or, in the case of An Archeology of Silence, dropping from the seat of a horse in an inversion of the majesty we have come to expect of traditional equestrian portraiture. These poses might suggest calm repose—or violence and death.
    “Whilst playing with the stereotypes of Western painting and sculpture, Kehinde Wiley carries an up-to-date message concerning the violence of contemporary society,” said Christophe Leribault, president of the Musée d’Orsay and the Musée de l’Orangerie, in a statement. “I wanted to display these works as an actual strand of those collections at the Musée d’Orsay that have been such an inspiration to him and of which he offers a fascinating rereading.”
    Born in 1977, Wiley is known for his reinvention of art historical tropes and conventions to center contemporary Black subjects and experiences. The exhibition is an extension of his concurrent show at the Fondazione Giorgio Cini in Venice. See images of the installation below.
    “Kehinde Wiley” is on view at the Musée d’Orsay in Paris, through January 8, 2023.
    Woman Bitten by a Serpent (1847), by Auguste Clésinger at the Musée D’Orsay. Photo by DeAgostini/Getty Images.
    Installation view of “Kehinde Wiley” at the Musée d’Orsay in Paris. Photo: © Musée d’Orsay, Dist. RMN-Grand Palais / Sophie Crépy.
    Installation view of “Kehinde Wiley” at the Musée d’Orsay in Paris. Photo: © Musée d’Orsay, Dist. RMN-Grand Palais / Sophie Crépy.
    Installation view of “Kehinde Wiley” at the Musée d’Orsay in Paris. Photo: © Musée d’Orsay, Dist. RMN-Grand Palais / Sophie Crépy.
    Installation view of “Kehinde Wiley” at the Musée d’Orsay in Paris. Photo: © Musée d’Orsay, Dist. RMN-Grand Palais / Sophie Crépy.
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    ‘Unsung Heroes’: A Show of Remarkable Designs Recognizes the Contributions Made by 14 California Women Artists

    Twenty-five items form the colorful, tactile, and often humorous work of 14 women designers, both known and obscure, in the “Born Too Tall: California Women Designers, Postwar to Postmodern” exhibition at R & Company in Tribeca, New York.
    “Southern California was a hotbed of creativity,” said Evan Snyderman, co-owner of R & Company and co-curator of the show with James Zemaitis, the company’s Director of Museum Relations. “And we thought, why not focus on unsung heroes—in particular the women who are often left out of the conversation, and are not in history books—and give them the credit they are due?”
    Wendy Maruyama, Mickey Mackintosh. Photo: Joe Kramm, courtesy of R & Company.
    The show sheds overdue light on novel approaches by women experimenting with traditional processes and materials. A curved plywood sculpture by Ray Eames—newly reissued in a limited edition—is instantly recognizable, while animal-shaped furniture by Pamela Weir-Quiton comes as more of a delightful discovery. While still in college, Wendy Maruyama used then-verboten particle board, instead of wood, and car paint to create her Mickey Mackintosh chair (1981), which is today recognized as one of the earliest and most iconic examples of postmodern furniture. Arlene Fisch, in the early 1980s, incorporated sewing techniques to create unique pieces of gold and silver jewelry.
    Arline Fisch, Floating Square brooch and bracelet. Courtesy of R & Company.
    “This is something we have been championing for 25 years as a gallery, and is now finding its place in the contemporary design and art world,” said Snyderman. “We see this coming together of all these practices, and hierarchies breaking down between fine art, craft, sculpture, and design.”
    The title of the show comes from a chapter title in Fifth Chinese Daughter, a bestselling memoir by Jade Snow Wong, whose pottery is featured in the exhibition. It refers to the writer’s dim marriage prospects but also typifies the “biology is destiny” trope that hampered the careers of so many female artists.
    Pamela Weir-Quiton, unicorn rocker and moose rocker. Photo: Tiffany Smith Studio, courtesy of R & Company.
    Some of the participants in the show had felt held back because they were doing something new. “There were no galleries around for me,” said Pamela Weir-Quiton, who, conversely, didn’t lack for commissions in her frenzy of creation fresh out of college (where she was the lone woman woodworker). It took close to a half century for a museum—in this case, LACMA, in 2019—to come around to acquiring one of her pieces, which is also featured in “Born Too Tall,” the figurative Georgie girl dresser and chair in a mix of walnut, birch and ebony. “My stuff never fit in to the brown woodworking of the ’60s,” said Weir-Quiton. “It was animated. It had eyes. It connects with you.”
    California being a state larger than many countries, the geographic peg of the show doesn’t conjure any visual through-line. There’s a boho earthiness to some of the pottery and textile pieces from the 1970s, countered by the lyric midcentury elegance of Greta Magnusson Grossman’s double cone lamp of the late 1940s. Some artists acknowledge inspiration from the sunlight, openness, diversity, and “energy” of the West Coast. More than half of the artists are not from the state, but worked, studied, or taught there, and remain associated with it.
    Cheryl R. Riley, Brush Strokes Cigarette Table 1 (Gold). Courtesy of R & Company.
    “I love the brightness, the light there,” said Cheryl R. Riley, a Texas native who lived and worked for two decades in San Francisco before settling on the East Coast. She has two cigarette tables in the show (a throwback to the time when a diminutive piece of furniture was designated for that activity). They easily double as stand-alone sculptures. She likens the medium to a sketch pad, or accessories, saying that their small size and low material cost allow for endless experimentation with shapes, colors, and finishes. “California is gold country, with the gold rushes, and there’s also the silver, with the Mexican culture.” She added, “I don’t have a fear of bling.”
    The show, on view through January 27, 2023, at 64 White Street, also features work by Evelyn Ackerman, Claire Falkenstein, Trude Guermonprez, Merry Renk, June Schwarcz, Kay Sekimachi, and Marguerite Wildenhain.
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    An Istanbul-Based Furniture Studio Revives an Ancient Turkish Knotted-Wood Technique for a New York Audience

    “When designing the Oblong collection, the goal was to match the simplistic, bulky, and rounded forms with striking materials,” said Sanayi313 co-founder Enis Karavil. Imperfectly shaped stools, consoles, coffee, side, and dining tables comprise the collection stemming from an intelligent use of knotted mazel and burl wood. Crafted by carpenters using thousand-year-old techniques specific to Istanbul, the pieces are available through New York gallery Love House.
    Burl wood was popular in the Art Deco and Hollywood Regency movements of the 1920s and ’30s and again in the 1970s. Collected for its luxurious appearance, heavy weight, and aesthetic moodiness, the intricately knotted wood is again seeing a resurgence today as it crops up in architectural fit-outs and furniture designs.
    Stools from the Oblong collection. Courtesy of Sanayi313 studio.
    Sanayi313 got its start in fashion but now develops everything from interiors to home accessories. With residential design as its main market, the firm operates out of the rapidly transforming, post-industrial Ataturk Oto Sanayi Sitesi district in Istanbul. Within this dramatic setting, the firm is focusing more and more on creating contemporary high-craft pieces in rich woods that hark back to European and Middle Eastern antiques—a vast collection Enis has amassed over the years.
    Though unmistakably bold in appearance, Sanayi313‘s Oblong collection is intended for a myriad of interiors. The new pieces—unified by a formal vocabulary of monumental planes, neotenic details, and bowed edges—are as much a celebration of contemporary sculptural design as they are an ode to Istanbul, a city of contrasts. For Karavil and his brother Amir, Oblong is a chance to demonstrate their ‘maximalist expression in minimalist form’ ethos.
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    The Haas Brothers Take Their Fantastical Creatures to Shanghai in the Designs’ First Appearance in China

    For over a decade, Niki and Simon Haas have upended the worlds of art and design with their bonkers biomorphic objects. This month, they bring their freewheeling fantasia to Gallery All in Shanghai, where the twins—who live and work in Los Angeles—are exhibiting a series of never-before-seen tapestries, mirrors, and fuzzy furniture items.
    The three-part exhibition is organized into a dream-sequence of rooms: “Theater of Fantasy,” “Looking Glass and Paths,” and “Storyteller.” The overarching aim is to transport the viewer to the strange yet serene moonlit landscape evoked by the French composer Claude Debussy, whose piano piece Clair de Lune, takes its title from the eerie, 19th-century poem by Paul Verlaine.
    Haas Brothers, Chaise Lurman. Brass, faux fur. Courtesy of Gallery All Shanghai.
    In the first room, “Theatre of Fantasy,” curator Duffy Du has created a space that is part frozen dreamscape and part snow-hotel lobby. Handcrafted objects belonging to the brothers’ ongoing “Beasts” and “Drippy Ghost” series are displayed on marshmallow-like plinths, as well as tables and stools with molten bronze limbs. An orange, horned chaise lounge titled Chaise Lurman and a purple faux-fur caterpillar with brass lips titled Bench in the Cogs stand motionless—although you get the sense that this bizarre tableau springs to life the moment your back is turned.
    Haas Brothers, Reach-able Moment L. Cast bronze, LED light. Courtesy of Gallery All Shanghai.
    Moving through, Looking Glass and Paths is a display of mirrors from the Haas’s ongoing “Zoidberg” series—a collection of lumpen bronze mirrors that look like portals to another realm and willfully blur the distinction between art and design.
    Grouped together under the title “Storyteller” is the brothers’ collection of silk and wool tapestries. A new medium for the dexterous twins, the series of childlike wall hangings depict the Californian landscape and are directly inspired by their burgeoning fascination with nostalgia and innocence.
    Haas Brothers, Cause and Reflect (detail). Cast bronze, peach mirror. Courtesy of Gallery All Shanghai.
    “I think we are honing our ability to create fantasy,” Niki said in a recent interview. “It’s definitely supposed to take you back to childhood, and it’s meant to free you from preconceived stereotypes or rules in how you interact with the world and yourself.”
    While some of the pieces in “Clair de Lune” are unique, many of the objects are editions, which will delight those keen to add to their own menagerie of Haas critters. Early patronage from the actor Tobey Maguire, and continued support from high-profile clientele, has ensured that the work of the Haas Brothers has been in demand since they first established their studio in 2010.
    Two tapestries in “Clair de Lune.” Courtesy of Gallery All Shanghai.
    In 2021, the Haas Brothers beast Biggy Stardust—a two-legged, yeti-like sculpture crafted from purple faux fur and bronze—fetched $225,000 at a charitable auction held at Christie’s in New York, nearly double its low estimate.
    Meanwhile, their ongoing collaboration with the homeware brand L’Objet provides an entry point for those at the start of their collecting career. Surely there’s space on everyone’s table for a £330 ($402) pair of brass salt and pepper shakers?
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    Brazilian Curator Adriano Pedrosa Will Helm the 2024 Venice Biennale, Making Him the First Latin American to Organize the Event

    Organizers of the Venice Biennale have announced that Brazilian curator Adriano Pedrosa will oversee the 60th International Art Exhibition, set to be held in 2024. In a pair of firsts, Pedrosa is both the first Latin American and the first from the Southern Hemisphere to curate the event.
    In a statement released by the goliath art festival on December 15, the board followed the suggestion of its president, Roberto Cicutto, in appointing Pedrosa, who is the current artistic director of the Museu de Arte de São Paulo. The Biennale’s dates have also been agreed upon, with the sprawling city-wide event set to run from April 20 to November 24, 2024.
    “Pedrosa is an esteemed curator and director known for competence and originality,” Cicutto said in a statement, “Now more than ever, La Biennale might address contemporary art not to provide a catalog of the existing, but to give form to contradictions, dialogues, and kinships.”
    Over the past two decades, Pedrosa has become a leading figure platforming and shaping Brazil’s contemporary art scene. From his position in São Paolo, he has curated solo shows dedicated to the likes of Tarsila do Amaral, Beatriz Milhazes, Wanda Pimentel, and Ione Saldanha. He led the Pampulha art museum in Belo Horizonte during the early 2000s and has considerable experience working on large art festivals, including the Istanbul Biennial, the San Juan Triennale, and the Shanghai Biennale.
    In December this year, he received the Audrey Irmas Award for Curatorial Excellence from Bard College’s Center for Curatorial Studies in recognition for creating the “Histórias” series, which spotlights under-recognized histories of art.
    “I am honored and humbled by this prestigious appointment,” Pedrosa said in a statement. “The Biennale is certainly the most important platform for contemporary art in the world, and it is an exciting challenge and a responsibility to embark on this project. I look forward to bringing artists to Venice and realizing their projects.”
    Central to Pedrosa’s appointment was a sense of continuity with Cicutto, noting that the decision grew out of the experience of working with Cecilia Alemani in 2022. “It is essential to build on what emerged from the previous exhibition to direct our next choice,” Cicutto said.
    In 2023, the Venice Biennale of Architecture will run from May 20 to November 26.

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    A Basquiat You Can Wear: The Late Artist’s Sisters Have Tapped 9 New York City Designers to Reimagine His Art as High Fashion

    “King Pleasure,” a sprawling exhibition at Chelsea’s Starrett-Lehigh building that centers Jean-Michel Basquiat’s life through rare artifacts from his estate, has welcomed over 160,000 visitors since opening in April.
    The show is the first organized by Basquiat’s sisters Jeanine Heriveaux and Lisane Basquiat. It features re-creations of the artist’s childhood home and his storied studio apartment—and, as of December 7, a ready-to-wear apparel and accessories collection interpreting the artist’s work, designed by nine fashion talents for the show’s Those Who Dress Better program in partnership with Black Fashion Fair.
    Fresh twists across the limited-run capsule collection are on view in “King Pleasure” through December 15, with more accessible designs available for sale in the adjacent “King Pleasure” Emporium and on Black Fashion Fair’s website.
    Hanifa for the Those Who Dress Better program. Courtesy of “King Pleasure.”
    “The driving inspiration behind the Those Who Dress Better program was the estate’s desire to support these nine emerging fashion designers, artists, designers, and entrepreneurs,” Programming Director Anthony Konigbagbe told Artnet News. “Fashion was very important to Jean-Michel.”
    Black Fashion Fair worked with the estate of Jean-Michel Basquiat to curate New York-based Black designers on the rise: Theophilo, Brandon Blackwood, Hanifa, Who Decides War, Johnny Nelson, Bed on Water, Advisry, Homage Year, and Head of State. When “King Pleasure” opened, each designer was invited to explore the exhibition, to get inspired by Basquiat’s persona, and select which artworks to interpret.
    Bed On Water, an interdisciplinary art house that also specializes in graphic design, photography, and art, envisioned the artist’s harsh lines as soft dresses, sometimes with billowing folds. Lauded by the CFDA and Beyoncé alike, Hanifa made the artist’s timeless ‘Ideal’ logo look even newer, in a slinky yet sunny yellow bodysuit that melts into gentle tangles of thick yarn. The label Johnny Nelson contorted metal and stones into rings, echoing Basquiat’s crown motif.
    Shanel Campbell from Bed On Water for the Those Who Dress Better program. Courtesy of “King Pleasure.”
    What would the artist himself wear? Konigbagbe pointed to pieces by Keith Herron’s brand Advisry, including a mask, a layered and printed “King Pleasure” long-sleeve jersey, and printed jeans featuring Charles The First (1982), considering them “worthy of Jean-Michel’s own personal style.”
    “The jersey is a nod to Jean-Michel’s famously worn Wesleyan lacrosse practice jersey from his 1981 Art/new york interview with Marc H. Miller,” Konigbagbe wrote.
    A December 7 reception celebrated the designers’ one-week stint in “King Pleasure.” The entire exhibition will complete its run on January 1, 2023.
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