Exhibitions

Kazakhstan is taking a second try at launching a pavilion during the Venice Biennale in April.
The plans were announced at an in-person press conference on Tuesday at the A. Kasteyev Museum of Arts in the city of Almaty, which has also been the site of bloody protests in recent weeks.
The pavilion’s new organizers are taking an optimistic tone in spite of ongoing social unrest. They have chosen art collective ORTA to represent the Central Asian country with a project inspired by the Almaty artist and polymath Sergey Kalmykov.
The 2019 pavilion was called off just two months before the opening of the 57th edition of the biennale in spring 2019. The cancelation—announced by officials over Facebook—caught the exhibition’s two hired organizers, curator Nadim Julien Samman and Roza Abenova, the former head of contemporary art at the National Museum, by surprise. (Samman was informed that he would not be paid for his work in the comments section.)
Meruyert Kaliyeva, the commissioner of this year’s Kazakhstan pavilion, told Artnet News that 2022 marks a “fresh start” for the country. “It’s hard to compare to previous years as it’s a completely different commissioning body for 2022, and our team had no involvement in the 2019 pavilion,” she said.
One of the biggest changes is that, this year, the commissioner will not accept funding from the government. Instead, the pavilion will receive support from the Saby Charitable Foundation, the Nurlan Smagulov Foundation, the clothing distributor G&G, and the Marusya Assaubayeva Foundation. The pavilion will maintain official support from Kazakhstan’s Culture Minister Dauren Abayev.
News of the new pavilion comes after a month of deadly protests, the largest uprising in the country’s 30-year history. In early January, what began as a peaceful demonstration against government corruption amid rising oil prices devolved into violence and reports of abuses by security forces; the Russian military was called in for “peacekeeping.”
The country’s Venice pick, the art collective ORTA, was founded in 2015 by director Rustem Begenov and actor Alexandra Morozova. They will consider the work of surrealist avant-garde artist and inventor Sergey Kalmykov who, despite dying in obscurity, was hugely influential to contemporary artists in and around Kazakhstan .
In a statement about the show, curators noted that Kalmykov’s oeuvre fits well with the theme of this year’s Biennale group exhibition, which is entitled “The Milk of Dreams” after a book by Surrealist painter Leonora Carrington.
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Matthew Wong was a voracious painter. After trying his hand at photography, poetry, and even Chinese scroll painting, the young artist began working with oil paint in 2013. Entirely self-taught, he created more than 1,000 works before his death in 2019, at the age of 35.
At the time of Wong’s death, he was building a formidable profile in the art world, but had never been the subject of a museum exhibition. That changes with “Blue View” at the Art Gallery of Ontario in the artist’s native Canada. The show (on through April 18, 2022) presents 40 of the roughly 60 works in Wong’s “Blue Series,” which the artist worked on from 2017 until his death.
The images are a symphony of indigo, turquoise, azure, and inky-black blues, all depicting quiet scenes that the artist said were gleaned from a trip he took with his mother to Sicily. There are long winding roads and intimate glimpses into darkened rooms. The compositions bring to mind Erik Satie’s Trois Gymnopédies—melancholy but also serene.
Like the variations of Satie’s minimalist piano pieces, Wong’s pictures are variations on a theme. The artist once said they are meant to “activate nostalgia, both personal and collective.” The presence of lone individuals, almost always without identifying features and rendered in blurred outline, underscores this effect.
In an essay for the show’s catalogue, former Guggenheim curator Nancy Spector describes Wong’s work as “Fauvist at heart with an overlay of pointillist patterning.”
His paintings, she writes, “are remarkable for the brilliance of their palettes.” Even when defined by their blueness, they manage to incorporate every shade and are punctuated at times with lilac, silvery white, vermillion, and peach.
Although Wong’s work has drawn comparisons to artists as varied as Edouard Vuillard and Yayoi Kusama, he was able to build a mood in paint that was entirely his own.
See more images from “Matthew Wong: Blue View,” below. “Matthew Wong: Blue View” is on view at the Art Gallery of Ontario through April 18, 2022. 
Matthew Wong, Meanwhile… (2018).© 2019 Matthew Wong Foundation/Artists Rights Society (ARS) New York. Image courtesy of Karma, New York.
Matthew Wong, A Dream (2019).© 2019 Matthew Wong Foundation/Artists Rights Society (ARS) New York. Image courtesy of Karma, New York.
Matthew Wong, Autumn Nocturne (2018).© 2019 Matthew Wong Foundation/Artists Rights Society (ARS) New York. Image courtesy of Karma, New York.
Matthew Wong, Blue Night (2018). © 2019 Matthew Wong Foundation/Artists Rights Society (ARS) New York. Image courtesy of Karma, New York.
Matthew Wong, Untitled (2018). © 2019 Matthew Wong Foundation/Artists Rights Society (ARS) New York. Image courtesy of Karma, New York.
Matthew Wong, Starry Night (2019). © 2019 Matthew Wong Foundation/Artists Rights Society (ARS) New York. Image courtesy of Karma, New York.
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The Whitney Biennial, one of the most closely watched—and fiercely debated—exhibitions in America, has revealed the lineup for its next edition, which opens in April. The 63-strong list of artists and collectives chosen by curators David Breslin and Adrienne Edwards encompasses three generations and suggests that the first pandemic-era iteration of the show will have a decidedly conceptual and interdisciplinary bent.
In addition to the participants, the curators have also revealed the show’s title: “Quiet as It’s Kept.” The colloquial term—invoked in the work of novelist Toni Morrison, jazz drummer Max Roach, and artist David Hammons—usually precedes a statement that is traditionally left unsaid.
The show, originally due to open in 2021, was pushed back one year. It will now run from April 6 through September 5, 2022.
Coco Fusco, still from Your Eyes Will Be An Empty Word (2021). Image courtesy the artist and Alexander Gray Associates, New York.
The show will continue its tradition of questioning what it means to be an “American artist,” placing special emphasis on creators from Mexico, specifically Ciudad Juárez and Tijuana, First Nations artists in Canada, and artists born outside of North America.
While the Whitney Biennial has sometimes served to introduce a slate of new talent, this edition is decidedly intergenerational. The oldest artist is Puerto Rican choreographer Awilda Sterling-Duprey, born in 1946; the youngest is Mexican artist Andrew Roberts, born in 1995, whose work draws on technology used in war and the entertainment industry.
This year’s biennial will also integrate performance and film into the galleries, placing it on equal footing with the rest of the work rather than siloing it in separate programs. The curators promise that the show will evolve throughout its run, and that its two main floors are designed to act as counterpoints: one, a contained, dark labyrinth; the other, open and light-filled.
Whitney Curators Adrienne Edwards and David Breslin. Photo by Bryan Derballa.
“We began planning for this exhibition, originally slated to open in 2021, almost a year before the 2020 election, before the pandemic and shutdown with their reeling effects, before the uprisings demanding racial justice and before the questioning of institutions and their structures,” the curators said in a statement. “While many of these underlying conditions are not new, their overlapping, intensity, and sheer ubiquity created a context in which past, present, and future folded into one another. We’ve organized the exhibition to reflect these precarious and improvised times.”
Here is the full list of artists participating:
Lisa AlvaradoBorn 1982 in San Antonio, TXLives in Chicago, IL
Harold AncartBorn 1980 in Brussels, BelgiumLives in New York, NY
Mónica ArreolaBorn 1976 in Tijuana, MexicoLives in Tijuana, Mexico
Emily BarkerBorn 1992 in San Diego, CALives in Los Angeles, CA
Yto BarradaBorn 1971 in Paris, FranceLives in Brooklyn, NY, and Tangier, Morocco
Rebecca BelmoreBorn 1960 in Upsala, CanadaLives in Vancouver, CanadaAnishinaabe
Jonathan BergerBorn 1980 in New York, NYLives in New York, NY, and Glover, VT
Nayland BlakeBorn 1960 in New York, NYLives in Brooklyn and Queens, NY
Cassandra PressFounded 2016 by Kandis Williams
Theresa Hak Kyung ChaBorn 1951 in Busan, South KoreaDied 1982 in New York, NY
Raven ChaconBorn 1977 in Fort Defiance, Navajo NationLives in Albuquerque, NMDiné
Leidy ChurchmanBorn 1979 in Villanova, PALives in New York, NY, and West Tremont, ME
Tony CokesBorn 1956 in Richmond, VALives in Providence, RI
Jacky ConnollyBorn 1990 in New York, NYLives in Brooklyn, NY
Matt ConnorsBorn 1973 in Chicago, ILLives in New York, NY, and Los Angeles, CA
Alex Da CorteBorn 1980 in Camden, NJLives in Philadelphia, PA
Aria DeanBorn 1993 in Los Angeles, CALives in New York, NY
Danielle DeanBorn 1982 in Huntsville, ALLives in Los Angeles and San Diego, CA
Jane DicksonBorn 1952 in Chicago, ILLives in New York, NY
Buck EllisonBorn 1987 in San Francisco, CALives in Los Angeles, CA
Alia FaridBorn 1985 in Kuwait City, KuwaitLives in San Juan, PR, and Kuwait City, Kuwait
Coco FuscoBorn 1960 in New York, NYLives in Brooklyn, NY
Ellen GallagherBorn 1965 in Providence, RILives in Rotterdam, Netherlands, and Brooklyn, NY
A Gathering of the Tribes /Steve CannonFounded 1991Steve Cannon: Born 1935 in New Orleans, LADied 2019 in New York, NY
Cy GavinBorn 1985 in Pittsburgh, PALives in New York State
Adam GordonBorn 1986 in Minneapolis, MNLives in Jersey City, NJ
Renée GreenBorn 1959 in Cleveland, OHLives in Somerville, MA, and New York, NY
Pao Houa HerBorn 1982 in LaosLives in Blaine, MN
EJ HillBorn 1985 in Los Angeles, CALives in Los Angeles, CA
Alfredo JaarBorn 1956 in Santiago, ChileLives in New York, NY
Rindon Johnson Born 1990 in San Francisco, CALives in Berlin, Germany
Ivy Kwan Arce and Julie TolentinoIvy Kwan Arce: Born 1965 in Salinas, CALives in New York, NYJulie Tolentino: Born 1964 in San Francisco, CALives in Joshua Tree, CA
Ralph LemonBorn 1952 in Cincinnati, OHLives in Brooklyn, NY
Duane LinklaterBorn 1976 in Treaty 9 Territory (Northern Ontario, Canada)Lives in North Bay, Canada (Robinson Huron Treaty Territory)Omaskêko Ininiwak
James LittleBorn 1952 in Memphis, TNLives in New York, NY
Rick LoweBorn 1961 in rural AlabamaLives in Houston, TX
Daniel Joseph MartinezBorn 1957 in Los Angeles, CALives in Los Angeles, CA, and Paris, France
Dave McKenzieBorn 1977 in Kingston, JamaicaLives in Brooklyn, NY
Rodney McMillianBorn 1969 in Columbia, SCLives in Los Angeles, CA
Na MiraBorn 1982 in Lawrence, KS, on Kickapoo, Osage, Kansa, and Sioux landsLives in Los Angeles, CA, on Tongva, Gabrielino, Kizh, and Chumash lands
Alejandro “Luperca” MoralesBorn 1990 in Ciudad Juárez, MexicoLives in Monterrey, Mexico
Moved by the MotionFounded 2016 by Wu Tsang and Tosh Basco
Terence NanceBorn 1982 in Dallas, TXLives in America
Woody De OthelloBorn 1991 in Miami, FLLives in Oakland, CA
Adam PendletonBorn 1984 in Richmond, VALives in New York, NY
N. H. PritchardBorn 1939 in New York, NYDied 1996 in eastern Pennsylvania
Lucy RavenBorn 1977 in Tucson, AZLives in New York, NY
Charles RayBorn 1953 in Chicago, ILLives in Los Angeles, CA
Jason RhoadesBorn 1965 in Newcastle, CADied 2006 in Los Angeles, CA
Andrew RobertsBorn 1995 in Tijuana, MexicoLives in Mexico City and Tijuana, Mexico
Guadalupe RosalesBorn 1980 in Redwood City, CALives in Los Angeles, CA
Veronica RyanBorn 1956 in Plymouth, MontserratLives in London, United Kingdom, and New York, NY
Rose SalaneBorn 1992 in New York, NYLives in Queens, NY
Michael E. SmithBorn 1977 in Detroit, MILives in Providence, RI
Sable Elyse SmithBorn 1986 in Los Angeles, CALives in New York, NY
Awilda Sterling-DupreyBorn 1947 in San Juan, PRLives in San Juan, PR
Rayyane TabetBorn 1983 in Beirut, LebanonLives in Beirut, Lebanon, and San Francisco, CA
Denyse ThomasosBorn 1964 in Port of Spain, Trinidad and TobagoDied 2012 in New York, NY
Trinh T. Minh-haBorn in Hanoi, VietnamLives in Berkeley, CA
WangShuiBorn 1986 in USALives in New York, NY
Eric WesleyBorn 1973 in Los Angeles, CALives in Los Angeles, CA
Dyani White HawkBorn 1976 in Madison, WILives in Minneapolis, MNSičangu Lakota
Kandis WilliamsBorn 1985 in Baltimore, MDLives in Los Angeles, CA and Brooklyn, NY
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Thierry Mugler, the French fashion designer who married camp, couture, steampunk, science fiction, and S&M, all with his trademark sensuality, died on Sunday, January 23, age 73.
His death was announced by House of Mugler, his eponymous brand.
After declining invitations for several retrospectives, Mugler agreed to a 2019 show, “Thierry Mugler, Couturissime,” at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts. The traveling exhibition is now on view at the Musée des Arts Décoratifs in Paris through April.
Anniversaire des 20 ans collection, Haute couture fall/winter 1995-1996 © Patrice Stable, courtesy of the Musée des Arts Décoratifs.
When it first opened in Montreal in 2019, it coincided with the designer’s return to public life.
At that year’s Grammy awards, rapper Cardi B donned the Mugler’s “Venus” gown (from his 1995/1996 collection), with her pale pink torso surrounded by petals, the rest of the gown encased in black.
At that same year’s Met Gala, Kim Kardashian, who often mined the Mugler archives, appeared on the red carpet in the first new Mugler-made wear in 20 years: a one-of-a-kind latex corset dress dripping in crystals that took eight months to complete.
The exhibition traces Mugler’s career and myriad roles within the art and fashion worlds. (Before he founded his brand in 1974, he created stage costumes for Macbeth, directed films and a music video, published books of photography, and was even a dancer.)
Les Insectes collection, haute couture spring/summer 1997. © Patrice Stable, courtesy of the Musée des Arts Décoratifs.
Organized, like an opera, into multiple acts, the show touches on the milestones of his career: from his heyday in the 1980s (when his trademark “Glamazon” design, with its exaggerated silhouette and torpedo-like bustier, defined pop culture); to his more fantastical collections of the 1990s, when he drew inspiration from insects, birds, nymphs, and, in one case, cyborgs.
In addition to Cardi B and Kim Kardashian, Mugler found a new audience with pop stars including Lady Gaga and Beyoncé, who hired him to design the looks for her 2009 I Am… world tour.
French fashion designer Thierry Mugler. (Photo: Britta Pedersen/DPA/AFP via Getty Images.)
“Fashion is still a great tool, because it’s a three-dimensional art,” he told Women’s Wear Daily in 2019. “It’s the most feral form of art, in the best sense of the word, meaning that it touches on the human, and that’s interesting.”
See images from the exhibition below.
‘Thierry Mugler : Couturissime’ exhibition at the Musee des Arts Decoratifs in Paris. (Photo by CHRISTOPHE ARCHAMBAULT/AFP via Getty Images)
‘Thierry Mugler : Couturissime’ exhibition at the Musee des Arts Decoratifs in Paris. (Photo by CHRISTOPHE ARCHAMBAULT/AFP via Getty Images)
‘Thierry Mugler : Couturissime’ exhibition at the Musee des Arts Decoratifs in Paris. (Photo by CHRISTOPHE ARCHAMBAULT/AFP via Getty Images)
‘Thierry Mugler : Couturissime’ exhibition at the Musee des Arts Decoratifs in Paris. (Photo by CHRISTOPHE ARCHAMBAULT/AFP via Getty Images)
‘Thierry Mugler : Couturissime’ exhibition at the Musee des Arts Decoratifs in Paris. (Photo by CHRISTOPHE ARCHAMBAULT/AFP via Getty Images)
‘Thierry Mugler : Couturissime’ exhibition at the Musee des Arts Decoratifs in Paris. (Photo by CHRISTOPHE ARCHAMBAULT/AFP via Getty Images)
‘Thierry Mugler : Couturissime’ exhibition at the Musee des Arts Decoratifs in Paris. (Photo by CHRISTOPHE ARCHAMBAULT/AFP via Getty Images)
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In a 2014 article for New York magazine, critic Jerry Saltz described Artforum‘s ads as “the porn of the art world.” The glossy promotions comprised around 70 percent of the magazine’s pages. But these weren’t your typical ethereal, aspirational ads for perfume or jewelry. These are ads for art, after all.
Artforum ads are often confrontational, cheeky, even raunchy. They are designed to start a conversation—and some have even earned their own places in art history.
The Brooklyn-based Gallery 98, which specializes in art-world ephemera like announcement cards and gallery posters, recently got ahold of a cache of old Artforum magazines, from which they culled some of the most interesting and emblematic ads over the decades. Now available online to peruse or purchase is a wide swathe from 1970 to 2010 that feature portraits of artists.
The resulting images are a delightful time capsule of different decades in the art market: there’s a then-considerably-less-successful Ed Ruscha in bed with two women, shot by Jerry McMillan in 1967; Judy Chicago’s debut both in Artforum and the broader art world under her new name, in 1970; and an ad for a show of then 25-year-old Dash Snow at Peres Projects two years before he died.
See more selections from Gallery 98 below.
Ed Ruscha, Wedding Announcement (Ed Ruscha Says Goodbye to College Joys), Artforum Advertisement, 1967. Courtesy online Gallery 98.
Absolut Vodka, Nam June Paik, Absolut Paik, Artforum Advertisement, 2002. Courtesy online Gallery 98.
Cindy Sherman, A Play of Selves, Artforum Advertisement, Metro Pictures, 2006. Courtesy online Gallery 98.
Matthew Barney, Cremaster 5, Artforum Advertisement, Barbara Gladstone Gallery, 1997. Courtesy online Gallery 98.
Dash Snow, Artforum Advertisement, Peres Projects Los Angeles, Artforum Advertisement, 2007. Courtesy online Gallery 98.
Judy Chicago, One Woman Show, Artforum Advertisement, Jack Glenn Gallery (California), 1970. Courtesy Gallery 98 online.
Kara Walker, Sikkema Jenkins & Co, Artforum Advertisement, 2006. Courtesy online Gallery 98.
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Even authors who create elaborate fictional landscapes need directions sometimes. That much is clear in “Mapping Fiction,” a new exhibition at the Huntington Library, Art Museum, and Botanical Gardens in California, which examines the ways authors and cartographers have mapped out fantastical worlds both like and unlike our own. 
The show coincides with the centennial of James Joyce’s opus, Ulysses, and sure enough, several relics related to the book—including a first edition copy, a typescript draft of one of its chapters, and various intaglio prints of Dublin as described by the author—are on display. 
But it wasn’t just the anniversary of Joyce’s novel that inspired the show, explained Karla Nielsen, the Huntington’s curator of literary collections who organized the effort.
“Joyce adamantly did not want Ulysses published with a schema, a map of Dublin, any type of explanation really,” Nielsen said in a statement. “His resistance provoked me to think about how maps function when inset into a print novel. How do they influence how readers imagine the narrative?”
Octavia E. Butler, Map of Acorn from notes for Parable of the Talents (ca. 1994). © Octavia E. Butler. Courtesy of The Huntington Library, Art Museum, and Botanical Gardens.
Some 70 items gathered from the museum’s collection offer viewers answers to the curator’s prompt. Among the highlights are elaborate maps that accompanied early editions of J. R. R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings trilogy, Robert Louis Stevenson’s Treasure Island and Kidnapped, and George R. R. Martin’s A Game of Thrones. Meanwhile, Octavia E. Butler’s hand-drawn—and unpublished—diagrams of her own imagined landscapes provide a peek into her processes of writing Parable of the Talents and Parable of the Trickster (which was never published).
There are plenty of treats for rare book fans, such as early editions of Miguel de Cervantes’s El Ingenioso Hidalgo Don Quixote de la Mancha (The Ingenious Gentleman Don Quixote of La Mancha), Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels, and Jules Verne’s Around the World in 80 Days. The latter is presented next to a vintage board game inspired by Nellie Bly, a journalist who herself circumnavigated the world following the publication of Verne’s novel. (It only took her 72 days).
See more images from “Mapping Fiction” below.
Map from front endpapers to The Odyssey of Homer (1935). © Oxford University Press, Inc. Courtesy of The Huntington Library, Art Museum, and Botanical Gardens.
D.W. Kellogg & Co., The Open Country of a Woman’s Heart (1833-42). © Nancy and Henry Rosin Collection. Courtesy of The Huntington Library, Art Museum, and Botanical Gardens.
Map from Ludvig Holbergs Nicolai Klimii iter svbterranevm (1741). © The Huntington Library, Art Museum, and Botanical Gardens.
David Lilburn, “The Quays” from In medias res (2006). © David Lilburn, 2021. Courtesy of The Huntington Library, Art Museum, and Botanical Gardens.
A map from Robert Louis Stevenson’s Treasure Island (1883). Courtesy of The Huntington Library, Art Museum, and Botanical Gardens.
McLoughlin Bros., “Round the World with Nellie Bly” (1890). Courtesy of Jay T. Last and The Huntington Library, Art Museum, and Botanical Gardens.
“Mapping Fiction” is on view through May 2 at the Huntington Library, Art Museum, and Botanical Gardens in San Marino, California.
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