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      ‘Harmony Is Never Symmetry’: The Curator of Fondation Beyeler’s Deeply Researched Mondrian Show on What Made the Artist Tick

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      Piet Mondrian—the Dutch painter synonymous with rigidly gridded abstractions—never used a ruler, it turns out. 
      That was one of numerous revelations highlighted by conservators at the Fondation Beyeler in Basel, Switzerland, who have concluded a multi-year research project that preceded a retrospective of the famed artist, which is on view now through October. 
      Mondrian “made marks at the edges, then very slowly painted these lines. They look precise but they are based on intuition,” said Ulf Kuster, who organized the exhibition. For the Dutch artist, painting was a “long process of looking, of composing, of erasing,” the curator explained. 
      The Neo-plasticist’s greatest hits abound with myriad right angles and intersecting lines, so it’s hard to believe that he didn’t use an aid. But Mondrian’s hesitance to using a ruler says more about his dogmatic—and often arduous—approach to art, Kuster pointed out. 
      Piet Mondrian, Composition With Yellow and Blue (1932). © Mondrian/Holtzman TrustPhoto: Robert Bayer, Basel.
      “I really learned that [Mondrian] was a painter who was always in control of what he did,” the curator said of his experience working on the show. “I didn’t realize how painstaking this process of painting must’ve been for him and how thoughtful he looked at things and how much he reflected on painting.” 
      “Mondrian Evolution” is the name of Kuster’s exhibition, which marks the 150th anniversary of the artist’s birth. It also doubles as a description of what viewers can expect at the Beyeler: a tip-to-toe survey of Mondrian’s career, beginning with his younger efforts in portraiture and landscape.
      Those early paintings, completed in the Netherlands just before and after the turn of the 19th century, don’t look like the ones for which he would later become known. But it’s also not hard to spot shared strands of DNA. See, for instance, his many studies of whirling windmills and multi-branched trees: it’s clear that, even then, the artist was trying to translate into oil paint the geometry that governs the world around us.
      “He was looking for harmony, but harmony is never symmetry,” Kuster said. “Harmony has to have tension over time.” 
      Piet Mondrian, Mill in Sunlight (1908). © 2022 Mondrian/Holtzman Trust. Photo: Kunstmuseum Den Haag.
      With exposure to painters like Picasso and Braque, and a multi-year stint in Paris, abstraction began to suffuse Mondrian’s canvases around 1911. His once-representational scenes of Dutch waterways dissolved into Cubist abstractions that, while still based in the lived world, prioritized form over content. 
      Within the next decade, he returned to the Netherlands, then went back to Paris. His loosely-painted cubes morphed into hard rectangles; his cool, fauvist-inspired palette was replaced by solid bands of color. The style that would come to be known as “De Stijl” was born.
      From classic figuration to cutting-edge abstraction, the full trajectory of Mondrian’s work on view at the Beyeler mirrors the evolution of modernism itself. However, the Dutch artist also shows us the importance of looking beyond that familiar story, Kuster pointed out. 
      “Mondrian is someone who teaches you a lot about painting,” said the curator, demonstrating his own affection for the artist. “The very art historical—and in many ways helpful—idea that modern art is a development from figuration to abstraction is okay, but it’s not really interesting to artists.”
      “For an artist,” Kuster went on, “It’s not important if it’s representational or non-representational, because it’s always abstract. It’s always abstract, because painting is abstraction.”
      See some of the highlights of “Mondrian Evolution” below:
      Piet Mondrian, No. VI / Composition No.II (1920). © 2021 Mondrian/Holtzman TrustPhoto: Tate.
      Piet Mondrian, The Red Cloud (1907). © 2022 Mondrian/Holtzman Trust. Photo: Kunstmuseum Den Haag.

      Piet Mondrian, Church Tower at Domburg (1911). © 2022 Mondrian/Holtzman TrustPhoto: Kunstmuseum Den Haag.
      Piet Mondrian, Windmill in the Evening (1917). © 2022 Mondrian/Holtzman Trust. Photo: Kunstmuseum Den Haag.
      Piet Mondrian, Woods Near Oele (1908). © 2022 Mondrian/Holtzman Trust. Photo: Kunstmuseum Den Haag.
      Piet Mondrian, Flowering Apple Tree (1912).© 2022 Mondrian/Holtzman TrustPhoto: Kunstmuseum Den Haag.
      Piet Mondrian, Lozenge Composition with Eight Lines and Red/Picture No. III (1938). © Mondrian/Holtzman TrustPhoto: Robert Bayer, Basel.
      “Mondrian Evolution” is on view now through October 9, 2022 at the Fondation Beyeler in Basel, Switzerland.
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      Restorers Uncovered Stunning Renaissance-era Frescoes By Accident During Routine Repairs at the Prince’s Palace of Monaco

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      The Prince’s Palace of Monaco has just reopened to the public after a period of restoration, boasting a newly discovered series of frescoes that had been hidden from sight for centuries. 
      The wall paintings had been left untouched and it is not known why they were originally covered up. They are believed to have been painted by Genoese artists during the 16th century. This is due both to the style of the works as well as the lime-based plaster used, detected during a multispectral analysis. 
      “This discovery places the Grimaldi family and Palace of Monaco within a new art historical context as a Renaissance palace,” Said chief conservator-restorer Julia Greiner to Artnet News. “The discovery has ignited numerous research projects including conservation and sustainability which have been inspired through his sovereign highness, Prince Albert II’s interest and dedication to environmental issues. Furthermore it has brought together a pluridisciplinary team of approximately 40 specialists that have worked on this project for the last 8 years.”
      Hercules’ tenth labour: the Cattle of Geryon in the Galerie d’Hercule. © Photo Maël Voyer Gadin – Palais princier de Monaco.
      Restorers began routine repair work in 2013 but first realized there were new artistic treasures to uncover in 2015 when examining the lunettes and vaulted ceiling of a loggia in the courtyard. It had been repainted in the 19th century but images of Hercules’s twelve labors were found remaining underneath. 
      The cleaning process revealed richly skilled renderings of these scenes, allegorical figures, and decorative elements totalling some 600 meters squared.
      Frescoes have also come to light elsewhere in the palace. In the Chamber of Europe, previously named the Salon Matignon, an electrician accidentally began the process of uncovering a medallion painted on the ceiling that shows the mythological abduction of Europa by Jupiter. 
      Ceiling of the Chambre Louis XIII mid-restoration. © Photo Maël Voyer Gadin – Palais princier de Monaco.
      In 2020, a large scale fresco depicting Ulysses was also found in the Throne Room. 
      The official residence of the Sovereign Prince of Monaco, the palace was built as a fortress in 1191. In the 700 years since 1297, it has been home to the Grimaldi family, currently Prince Albert II. 
      An opening initially planned for April 2020 had to be delayed due to the pandemic. The palace and its trove of newly-discovered frescoes now remains open until October 15.
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      In Pictures: See Works by the Disabled Artists Reviving the Spirit of Dada at Museums Around the U.K. This Weekend

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      This Saturday, 31 artists will disrupt 30 museums across the UK with surreal interventions intended to honour the 102nd anniversary of the First International Dada Exhibition, staged in Berlin in 1920.
      All the artists taking part identify as d/Deaf, disabled or neurodivergent. The event has been organised by DASH, a disabled-led visual arts charity based in London, and funded £125,000 ($152,000) through the Ampersand Foundation Award.
      “We Are Invisible We Are Visible” was first concocted in 2020 as a response to the question of what the Dada movement would have been like if it had emerged during lockdown. Reviving the spirit of Dada aims to challenge assumptions about disabled people and explore ideas around accessibility, communication, and representation.
      The works planned are primarily performances, dance, and nonsensical happenings, and the venues taking part include Tate’s four locations in London, Liverpool, and St Ives, Turner Contemporary in Margate, the Hepworth Wakefield, the Arnolfini in Bristol, the Baltic Centre for Contemporary Art in Gateshead, Manchester Art Gallery, Ikon Gallery in Birmingham and Modern Art Oxford. 
      “We Are Invisible We Are Visible” takes place on July 2, 2022. Below, see more preview images of works by the participating artists.
      Tony Heaton, Great Britain From A Wheelchair (1995). Photo: Paul Kenny. Heaton will perform at the Baltic Centre for Contemporary Art, Gateshead.
      Andrea Mindel, Mea Culpa (2021). Photo: Vic Lentaigne. Mindel will perform at Towner Eastbourne.
      Aaron Williamson, Invisible Man. Photo: courtesy of DASH. Williamson will perform at Ikon Gallery, Birmingham.
      Aaron Williamson, Hiding in 3D. Photo: courtesy of DASH. Williamson will perform at Ikon Gallery, Birmingham.
      Bel Pye, Cocoon. Photo: courtesy of DASH. Pye will perform at the Centre for Contemporary Art Derry~Londonderry.
      Anahita Harding, Are You Comfortable Yet?. Photo: courtesy of DASH. Harding will perform at Tate Modern, London.
      Nicola Woodham, Buffer performance detail at Cafe Oto, London, in 2021. Photo: courtesy of DASH. Woodham will perform at the Harris, Preston.
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      ‘It’s Important to Leave Something for the People of Venice’: Why Artist Bosco Sodi Is Letting Locals Take His Biennale Art Home

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      When the Venice Biennale closes in November, artworks from hundreds of artists will be packed up and shipped back to countries around the world. But a little piece of the contemporary-art circus that brings so many jet-setting art collectors to the Italian city will stay at the lagoon thanks to Bosco Sodi.
      That’s because the artist is giving away one of the artworks in his exhibition “Bosco Sodi: What Goes Around Comes Around.” Venetian residents will be able to take home the small 195 clay spheres that surround a giant one in Noi Siamo Uno, an interactive display on view beneath a Murano glass chandelier at the Palazzo Vendramin Grimani.
      “It’s very gracious, the biennale, in a way. People come, go around, and then boom, everything disappears,” Sodi told Artnet News. “I think it’s important to leave something for the people of Venice.”
      The artist sourced the clay for his sculptures in Oaxaca, just a few miles from Casa Wabi, Sodi’s studio and a nonprofit arts center that hosts an artists’ residency as well as programming for children. (He baked the clay spheres on improvised oven on the beach at the waterfront property.)
      Bosco Sodi, Noi Siamo Uno in “Bosco Sodi: What Goes Around Comes Around” at the Palazzo Vendramin Grimani, Venice. Photo by Laziz Hamani, courtesy of Kasmin, New York; Axel Verwoordt, Antwerp; and König, Berlin.
      During the show’s run, visitors are welcome to take a single sphere and roll it across the floor to create a space that changes slightly with each guest’s arrival. Each orb represents one of the world’s nation states, while the big one symbolizes humanity (the title means “We Are All One” in Italian.) The opportunity to take one home will come on the show’s last day.
      The gesture is in keeping with the exhibition’s themes of global trade, inspired by Venice’s centuries of history as a major sea power.
      The artist created new works for the show using cochineal, a red dye made from insects that he brought to Italy from his native Mexico. Sodi hadn’t done a project with cochineal in several years, and had to track down a new supplier for the pigment, which precolonial Mexicans used to paint Maya stelae and other monuments.
      Installation view of “Bosco Sodi: What Goes Around Comes Around” at the Palazzo Vendramin Grimani, Venice. Photo courtesy of Kasmin, New York; Axel Verwoordt, Antwerp; and König, Berlin.
      “It’s an insect that grows in the nopales cactus, and it’s a parasite,” he said of the bug. “The make a nest and the leaves get covered with white spots. The farmers scrape them off the leaves and put them in the sun to dry.”
      “What’s interesting about it is, depending on the batch, the color can change completely. It depends on the acidity of the insect. When the cochineal arrived here, it was embraced by all the classical painters of Europe. It doesn’t fade. It changed completely the approach to red and to color—and it came back to Mexico and there began to be classical painting in Mexico.”
      Adding another layer to the cultural exchange, Sodi set up a makeshift studio on the first floor of the palazzo in preparation for the show. He combined the red pigment with sawdust, wood, pulp, natural fibers, and glue to make his textured canvases.
      Installation view of “Bosco Sodi: What Goes Around Comes Around” at the Palazzo Vendramin Grimani, Venice. Photo by Laziz Hamani, courtesy of Kasmin, New York; Axel Verwoordt, Antwerp; and König, Berlin.
      At his waterfront studio in Red Hook, Brooklyn, the floor is encrusted with excess material that dripped off the edges of each painting, the colors from different works layered atop one another like some kind of manmade sedimentary rock.
      But in Venice, Sodi found excessive amounts of liquid seeping through the canvas, which was more loosely woven than what he is used to working worth.
      “I was afraid it would stain the marble floor, so I cleaned it up with the rest of the canvas that was left over, and I began to play with it,” Sodi said.
      He formed the canvases, now dyed deep red, into small bundles and left them to dry. The result was a group of simple but beautiful sculptures shaped like roses—a form that, serendipitously, echoed the rows of ornamental rosettes that adorn the ceiling in the room where they are now on display in Venice.
      Installation view of “Bosco Sodi: What Goes Around Comes Around” at the Palazzo Vendramin Grimani, Venice. Photo by Laziz Hamani, courtesy of Kasmin, New York; Axel Verwoordt, Antwerp; and König, Berlin.
      There are also new works made during lockdown at Casi Wabi. During a trip to the local fruit and vegetable market, Sodi became intrigued by the sack cloths used to transport food and began using them as makeshift canvases. He ransacked a storeroom full of materials left behind by former residents, finding tubes of oil paint and using them to mark the sacks with simple red, black, and orange circles.
      Installed in the palazzo courtyard are a set of sculptures made from volcanic rocks, coated in a fiery red glaze that recalls their origins as molten lava. The series grew out of boredom a decade ago, while Sodi was in Guadalajara fabricating an edition of individually crafted ceramic decanters he was making for 1800 Tequila.
      “I had nothing to do while I was waiting for them to dry. I said to the owner of the factory, ‘What happens if we put a rock in the kiln and we glaze it?’” Sodi recalled.
      Installation view of “Bosco Sodi: What Goes Around Comes Around” at the Palazzo Vendramin Grimani, Venice. Photo by Laziz Hamani, courtesy of Kasmin, New York; Axel Verwoordt, Antwerp; and König, Berlin.
      At first, the factory owner was worried the rock might explode. Then, a salesperson stopped by selling molcajetes, a Mexican mortar and pestle traditionally made from volcanic rock. If he used a rock that had already been fire tested, Sodi realized, it was unlikely the kiln would be in any danger.
      Soon, he was leading an expedition to the Ceboruco volcano, about two and a half hours outside the city, in search of raw materials for his experiment.
      “We went the Mexican way, not with a crane—with two donkeys and 10 guys,” Sodi said. “I call it rock hunting. I pick the rocks that I like, I clean them, and I do the glazing. I respect the form of the rock totally.”
      Installation view of “Bosco Sodi: What Goes Around Comes Around” at the Palazzo Vendramin Grimani, Venice. Photo courtesy of Kasmin, New York; Axel Verwoordt, Antwerp; and König, Berlin.
      The result is a fusion of art and geology. Sometimes, the rocks did still shatter in the heat of the kiln, revealing the raw insides—an accident that Sodi embraced.
      Inside the palazzo, works have been installed amid the historic decor. The Grimani family owned the home from 1517 to 1959, and the original interior remains largely intact, with neoclassical frescoes, damask wall coverings, ornate tapestries, and terrazzo floors.
      There’s even a collection of decorative fans, which Sodi has cheekily augmented with contemporary fans bought in Mexico and in Venice that he’s painted to match his other works in the exhibition.
      Installation view of “Bosco Sodi: What Goes Around Comes Around” at the Palazzo Vendramin Grimani, Venice. Photo courtesy of Kasmin, New York; Axel Verwoordt, Antwerp; and König, Berlin.
      Curated by Daniela Ferretti and Dakin Hart, the show is the first contemporary art exhibition at the palazzo, which opened to the public in 2021 and is operated by the Fondazione dell’Albero d’Oro.
      On the ground floor are more clay works: another giant sphere, cracked towers of large cubes, and a neatly stacked pile of bricks. The sculptures sit just beyond the doors that open out onto the Venetian canal, where deliveries would have been historically made to the home and its residents.
      Installation view of “Bosco Sodi: What Goes Around Comes Around” at the Palazzo Vendramin Grimani, Venice. Photo by Laziz Hamani, courtesy of Kasmin, New York; Axel Verwoordt, Antwerp; and König, Berlin.
      “We wanted to present the works as if they were unique goods coming from America—these red paintings that maybe were found in the Amazon, these clay cubes that were part of a pyramid discovery,” Sodi said.
      But he also believes that these works have a universal quality.
      “Clay has been part of the evolution of man. If you go to a museum in Rome or Egypt or Korea of India or Peru, the first figurines are all very similar, because it’s the essence of man,” Sodi said. “Clay is in our DNA.”
      “Bosco Sodi: What Goes Around Comes Around” is on view at the Palazzo Vendramin Grimani, San Polo, 2033, 30125 Venice, April 23–November 27, 2022.
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      In Pictures: See Grayson Perry’s Irreverent Tapestries, Which Tap Into British Class Anxiety, on View in Salisbury Cathedral

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      Six colourful and richly detailed tapestries by British artist Grayson Perry have been installed in the nave of Salisbury Cathedral in the west of England. The group, titled “The Vanity of Small Differences,” has already toured the country, but this is the first time they have been staged in a church setting.
      The works, each measuring four meters by two meters, were inspired by William Hogarth’s narrative painting series, specifically The Rake’s Progress (1734) which follows the rise and fall of the debaucherous Tom Rakewell. The 18th-century artist typically used these paintings to make biting social commentary about pretensions and class.
      Here, Perry’s protagonist Tim Rakewell explores upward mobility in the present day, using a cast of characters based on people the artist encountered while traveling to various regions of the UK for a TV program.
      “Rich in colour and content, it is Perry’s acutely observed attention to detail which draws you in,” said curator Beth Hughes. “I’m sure we all have moments of familiarity as we look through this tableau of English life and see that mug we have at home and ask ourselves, which social class do I belong to?”
      References to classical and religious art can be found in the paintings, including to Giovanni Bellini’s The Agony in the Garden and Andrea Mantegna’s The Adoration of the Cage Fighters.
      “The Vanity of Small Differences” runs until September 25 2022. See images of the installation below. 
      Installation view of Grayson Perry’s tapestry series “The Vanity of Small Differences” in Salisbury Cathedral. Photo: Finnbarr Webster.
      Installation view of Grayson Perry’s tapestry series “The Vanity of Small Differences” in Salisbury Cathedral. Photo: Finnbarr Webster. Courtesy of Salisbury Cathedral.
      Installation view of Grayson Perry’s tapestry series “The Vanity of Small Differences” in Salisbury Cathedral. Photo: Finnbarr Webster.
      Installation view of Grayson Perry’s tapestry series “The Vanity of Small Differences” in Salisbury Cathedral. Photo: Finnbarr Webster. Courtesy of Salisbury Cathedral.
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      In Pictures: A New Show at the Getty Museum Explores How Medieval Art Has Inspired Pop Culture, From Brothers Grimm to Game of Thrones

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      As current circumstances draw comparisons to medieval times, the Getty Museum presents “The Fantasy of the Middle Ages,” an exhibition that pairs illuminated manuscripts dating back to the 1200s with modern relics inspired by the era, from Brothers Grimm to Lord of the Rings. 
      The show presents nine manuscripts alongside objects on loan from the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, UCLA, even the Getty’s own staffers (think: Beanie Babies, Dungeons & Dragons). One prayer book circa 1450, for example, is echoed in Eyvind Earle’s concept art for Disney’s Sleeping Beauty (1959).
      The juxtapositions reveal just how much medieval times—and the epic adventures of heroism, romance, and magic we associate with them—have saturated American culture, and the hazy bounds between fact and fantasy that exist in popular (mis)understandings of the Middle Ages.  
      “This exhibition aims to tell a visual story about how these elements appear in medieval examples, and how they have been changed over time and layered with new cultural and social meaning to result in our modern version of what constituted the Middle Ages,” Getty assistant curator Larisa Grollemond told Artnet News.
      Unknown Franco-Flemish, A Dragon (ca. 1270). Courtesy of the Getty Museum.
      The idea for the show began with a 2014 social media initiative titled “Getty of Thrones,” which recapped HBO’s Game of Thrones episodes with imagery from the museum’s singular collection of medieval manuscripts. The Getty first began collecting in the category in 1983 to help bridge the “chronological gap between the antiquities and Renaissance paintings that Getty himself had collected,” according to Grollemond.
      The social media initiative evolved into Instagram videos “addressing audience questions about links between the ‘real’ Middle Ages and the medieval-inspired world presented in the show,” Grollemond said. Obviously, there weren’t really dragons back then, but even the architecture of medieval-inspired media comes from a self-referential culture resembling Orientalism. “The Fantasy of the Middle Ages” exhibits a 1879 photo called “Stairway of Christ Church,” for instance, that bears striking resemblance to the entrance at Hogwarts. “This was probably not something the filmmakers looked directly at,” Grollemond told the L.A. Times.
      “The Fantasy of the Middle Ages” continues that conversation over two galleries and six sections—a story of storytelling, rooted in mesmerizing drawings of painstakingly preserved tempera, ink, and, of course, gold leaf.
      “There’s a very complex interweaving of fantasy and history in these contemporary takes on the Middle Ages,” Grollemond said. “The ‘medieval’ world that fantasy stories present has the power to shape our view of the historical Middle Ages as well, and so continues to be hugely relevant for artists, creators, and audiences today.”

      Below, see more cultural comparisons from “The Fantasy of the Middle Ages,” on view at the Getty Museum through September 11, 2022.
      Julia Margaret Cameron, The Parting of Sir Lancelot and Queen Guinevere (1875). Courtesy of the Getty Museum.
      C. Hertel, Stolzenfels Castle (1878). Courtesy of the Getty Museum.
      Loyset Liédet & Pol Fruit, The Battle Between Arnault de Lorraine and His Wife Lydia (1467-72). Courtesy of the Getty Museum.
      Master of Guillebert de Mets, Saint George and the Dragon, (ca.1450-55). Courtesy of the Getty Museum.
      Unknown Silesian, The Battle of Liegnitz and Scenes from the Life of Saint Hedwig (1353). Courtesy of the Getty Museum.
      Unknown English, Constellation Diagrams (1200s). Courtesy of the Getty Museum.
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      Bill Fontana Recorded the Vibrations of Church Bells Inside Fire-Damaged Notre Dame. Now, He’s Taking His Sound Installation on Tour

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      Sirens wail in the distance and horns honk, a piano plays a quiet melody, and church bells ring. The sounds that wash over you in Bill Fontana’s “Silent Echoes” installation at the Villa Albertine in New York this weekend are the city noises “heard” by the bells of Notre Dame, Paris’s historic cathedral. 
      The Bay Area artist was allowed the rare opportunity to enter the fire-damaged building earlier this year to install accelerometers on the church’s 10 bronze bells, starting with the largest and oldest, known as Emmanuel. These allow him to record the bells’ vibrations, which they continue to emit even when not actively ringing, in response to their environment. 
      Working with technicians at the Institut de Recherche et Coordination Acoustique/Musique (IRCAM), which is linked to the Centre Pompidou in Paris, Fontana is able to make these recordings audible to human ears. 
      “The personality changes with the weather and the time of day,” Fontana said. “During normal business hours in Paris, Notre Dame is a construction site. So, the bells will hear the construction. When it is the late afternoon or evening, you sometimes have a street musician with a boombox in front of the cathedral. Early in the morning in Paris, I hear birds in the bell tower.”
      Installation view of Bill Fontana’s “Silent Echoes : Notre-Dame 2022” at the Centre Pompidou, June 8–July 2, 2022. Photo: courtesy of the artist.
      He has been live streaming the results in a sound installation now on view at the Pompidou, and is bringing the work to New York for two days (June 25-26), where he will also be showing videos taken from high up in Notre Dame’s towers. The aim is to get other institutions interested in presenting the piece. 
      “With a live-streaming artwork, it would be possible to set up spontaneous pop-up exhibitions anywhere,” Fontana said. He is now working with the French telecommunications giant Orange to explore whether the fiber option network they installed in the bell tower to transmit the audio signals from the bells would also be capable of supporting live cameras. 
      “The bells are acting basically like acoustic mirrors. They’re reacting to life around Notre Dame,” Fontana said. “At the Centre Pompidou, you don’t need a video element—you’ve got the best view in the world there. But when you’re at a museum, thousands of miles away, it would be interesting to have that kind of live view.”
      [embedded content]Fontana is already bringing the work to Istanbul, where he has a solo show at the Arter gallery, and to the Ars Electronica festival in Linz, Austria. The Louvre Abu Dhabi has also shown interest in presenting the piece, he said, and he hopes a New York institution will pick it up as well. 
      On Friday, Fontana is previewing the installation to a group of art world guests at the Villa Albertine, the French government’s cultural space in Manhattan, just down the street from the Metropolitan Museum of Art. The work will remain on view to the public through the weekend, transmitting the sounds of Paris in real time. “The sounds of the bells are not altered in any way,” Fontana said. “Their placement and movement in the space creates the composition.”
      Bill Fontana in Notre Dame’s bell tower, underneath the largest and oldest bell, named Emmanuel. Photo courtesy of the artist.
      He has previously described the sounds of Paris reverberating through the bells as the “spirit” of Notre Dame, showing that the historic church, which was devastated by fire in 2019, is a survivor. “It’s alive and well,” Fontana said, “and it’s ongoing.” 
      His contract with Notre Dame allows his recording equipment to remain installed in the church through to the end of its restoration. Which means he will be able to hear the church as it returns to bustling activity. 
      “I’ve spent so many hours of my recent life listening to these bells,” Fontana added. “It’s this very beautiful, almost mystical sound.”
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      Gallery Weekend Beijing Returns After Pandemic Delays, With International Dealers Hatching Scrappy Solutions to Get Around Travel Restrictions

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      Gallery Weekend Beijing returns this weekend after nearly a month’s delay due to Covid restrictions in the Chinese capital, making it the first major in-person cultural event in China this year. Featuring a stellar line-up of more than 40 thematic exhibitions, by both local and international commercial galleries as well as non-profit organizations, the week-long event aims to bring audiences back after a difficult first half of 2022.
      “The first half of the year has been a great challenge to local galleries, and people have high expectations of this year’s edition since it is the first main cultural event taking place physically,” said Amber Yifei Wang, director of Gallery Weekend Beijing, during an online press conference. “We hope this can be a great reboot of the local art scene.”
      Running from this Friday, June 24, through July 3, with the first three days (June 24 to 26) serving as VIP previews, this year’s edition features exhibitions revolving around the theme of “Sharing.” There are 30 galleries and five non-profit institutions in the main sector, a rise from the last couple of years. as well as seven international galleries featured in the “Visiting Sector.”
      Chen Shuxia, Eastward (2022). Courtesy of the artist and Asia Art Center.
      Female artists are in the spotlight this year, with several galleries presenting works by women artists. Beijing Commune presents a solo show of paintings by the Xi’an-born, Beijing-based artist Liang Yuanwei (b. 1977). And at the Asia Art Center, Chen Shuxia (b. 1963) reflects the helplessness and depression experienced during the pandemic through a new body of work on canvas. Tabula Rasa Gallery has a group show of paintings by eight European female artists, while White Space presents the Beijing-born Liu Shiyuan (b. 1985), who works with photography, video, stage performance and installations.
      This year also features the first collaboration among Beijing’s non-profit institutions, which are staging thematic exhibitions. Held at the 798 Art Center, the show “Crosstalk” is curated by four young curators—Beijing Inside-Out Art Museum’s Wenlong Huang and Yichuan Zhang, as well as Neil Zhang and Jiashu Zou from UCCA Center for Contemporary Art. It features works by more than 20 artists represented by galleries in Gallery Weekend Beijing’s main sector.
      International dealers Pilar Corrias, Galerie Chantal Crousel, Gladstone Gallery, Balice Hertling, Kiang Malingue, Timothy Taylor, and Almine Rech are participating in the event’s visiting sector, presenting shows in temporary spaces with local staff. Among them, Chantal Crousel, Timothy Taylor, and Almine Rech are making their debut at Gallery Weekend Beijing.
      Andrea Marie Breiling, Emma (2022). Courtesy of the artist and Almine Rech. Photo: Adam Reich Photography.
      Despite the stringent Covid restrictions and hard lockdown across the country, galleries are confident in Chinese collectors’ buying power, particularly those from a younger generation. Star-maker gallerist Almine Rech, who is presenting abstract paintings by the New York-based Andrea Marie Breiling—the artist’s debut show in China—said demand for works by the artist has been going strong, and Chinese buyers have been very active internationally.
      “We have galleries in Paris, London, Brussels, and New York, and Chinese collectors are buying from each of them,” Rech said during the virtual press conference. “They are buying internationally. The young and active collectors in China are tastemakers, and they are an important force for the global art scene.”
      Despite the high hopes, Wang admitted that organizing this year’s Gallery Weekend Beijing has not been easy, as the pandemic situation in China keeps changing, and restrictions take a very localized approach to meet the country’s ongoing dynamic zero-Covid policy.
      But the show will go on. Last year’s edition saw a record-breaking attendance of 199,000 visitors, despite Covid restrictions, but setting a new record this year isn’t a priority for the event’s organizers.
      “We have to adhere to the restrictions by maintaining control over the attendance, with allocated time slots. We also adopted a hybrid format for those who cannot join us in person. We just have to be flexible and be agile in terms of organization and planning,” Wang said. “Visitors’ safety is our priority.”
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