Exhibitions

For his latest project, actor James Franco is returning to the role of artist.
This month, Franco opens “Hollywood is Hell” at Galerie Gmurzynska in Zurich. The exhibition will debut a never-before-seen series of 28 wall-hanging assemblages and “objets d’art,” as a press release calls them, all created over the past two years. The opening date arrives just weeks after the debut of Hey Joe, the first U.S. release that Franco has starred in since allegations of misconduct forced his career into a hiatus in 2018.
Franco has made numerous artistic efforts over the years. His paintings of the late aughts and early 2010s easily evoke Jean-Michel Basquiat. In 2014, he re-staged Cindy Sherman’s “Untitled Film Stills” for a widely panned show at Pace. He painted $10 portraits for charity in 2016, collaborated by painting clay sewer pipes with his brother in 2017, and staged a multidisciplinary solo exhibition titled “The Dangerous Book Four Boys” at New York’s Clocktower Gallery in 2019, which New York Times critic Roberta Smith called “a confusing mix of the clueless and the halfway promising.”
Now, in “Hollywood is Hell,” Franco appears to channel Robert Rauschenberg—particularly the artist’s noted combines. It’s not Franco’s first exercise in amalgamation, however. His 2011 performance Collage, for instance, layered live acting with video projections. Franco’s career itself is a patchwork of different mediums and businesses—including his new punk-inspired streetwear label, Paly Hollywood.
James Franco, 2 Houses, 1 Castle (2022). Photo: Galerie Gmurzynska.
His artworks slated for Zurich consist of singular, collaged objects that contemplate life in Los Angeles, particularly through the lens of the pandemic. “The streets were empty, the posters damaged on the walls,” Franco recounted in a statement. “I lived at that time near the Hollywood cemetery, where so many stars are buried, and I was walking there. Dreamland had became for me a waste land.”
L.A. icons like helicopters and Disney characters pop up. In He Smelled So Bad (2022), Franco’s scrawl states the work’s titular phrase atop a photograph of a cop car perched ambiguously behind a civilian vehicle. No matter who “he” is to Franco, the piece conjures one of L.A.’s most heart-wrenching calling cards, its immense population of unhoused people.
James Franco, He Smelled So Bad (2022). Photo: Galerie Gmurzynska.
Franco’s recent years have proven bumpy. In 2019, he settled two lawsuits alleging he’d taken advantage of female pupils at his  Studio 4 acting school. “Hollywood is Hell,” however, marks Franco’s first art show since he finally admitted to wrongdoing on SiriusXM’s Jess Cagle Show in 2021. In a recent conversation with Variety, the actor discussed how cancellation shaped him. “Being told you’re bad is painful,” he said. “But ultimately that’s kind of what I needed to just stop going the way I was going.”
The collages in “Hollywood is Hell” seem to synthesize Franco’s many disparate components. The bit of Gucci paraphernalia in He Smelled So Bad, for instance, highlights his friendship with the Italian fashion house. Bright colors and gestural accents retain bits of his Basquiat knockoffs. Comic book heroes and readymade lockers evoke the fixation with male youth that defined “The Dangerous Book Four Boys.” The show’s press release noted that “Masculinity is devastated” in this series, “as one of the pillars of a decadent mass entertainment culture.” Perhaps through these constructions of decay, the artist has worked at understanding how, exactly, he became a man who had to change.
James Franco, This is what the World’s Greatest Navy Mom Looks Like (2022). Photo: Galerie Gmurzynska.
Franco even returned to touch up artworks he’d made at age 20 for this show. “Half of the series are therefore like double works: two works in one each time,” the release stated.
“It is really my young actor self being sort of repurposed and put in to the collages,” Franco added.
Gmurzynska has not responded to a request for comment regarding whether Franco’s tumultuous recent past provoked any pause ahead of his show. Additional questions remain. For example, has Franco’s soul searching helped him find his voice? And, will the art world grant him the acclaim he’s long pined after?
“James Franco: Hollywood is Hell” will be at Galerie Gmurzynska, Paradeplatz 2, Zurich, February 17, 2025. More

On December 2, 1804, the great and good of Paris gathered in Notre-Dame Cathedral to witness the coronation of Napoleon Bonaparte and the birth of the French Empire. It’s a moment immortalized (and cunningly manipulated) in Jacques-Louis David’s monumental painting—and one that was top of mind at the launch of a virtual reality production centered on the life of the Little Corporal.
Two hundred and twenty years on from snatching the crown from Pope Pius VII and crowning himself (as well as his beloved Josephine), many aspects of Napoleon’s world linger in roads, sewer systems, legal codes, and higher education. Despite this legacy, military history seems the focus of “Napoleon, the Immersive Saga,” the V.R. experience that debuted at Paris’s Bank of France, an institution Napoleon himself established in 1800, one he would eventually grant a monopoly to print the French Franc.
Visitors can chat with Napoleon. Photo: courtesy Sandora.
It’s the first project from Sandora, a Paris-based company founded in 2024 that aims to create immersive experiences with a cultural emphasis. Here, it has worked with a committee of historians to make sure its product is accurate. In the nearly half hour-long experience, a computer-generated Napoleon guides visitors through some of the main events of his life—and of the early 19th century. Alongside the experience is a feature called “Bonjour Napoleon,” from Jumbo Mana, a French tech startup, which allows the visitor to converse with the Emperor courtesy of a customized A.I. generator.
“We aimed to reveal to the public how Napoleon himself crafted his own legend,” said Pierre Branda, a historian who has published widely on Napoleon. “Every element of the narrative was carefully studied and validated by the committee.”
Visitors can stand aboard an accurate model of a 19th-century ship. Photo: courtesy Sandora.
The visitor meets Napoleon at the low ebb of his long and turbulent career. The setting is a rainy afternoon on St. Helena, the speck of land in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean to which Britain banished Napoleon after defeating him at the Battle of Waterloo in 1815 (he would die on the island in 1821). Perhaps understandably given the isolation, Napoleon is happy for the company and to reminisce.
Designed to accommodate up to 10 people in a roughly 200-square-foot space, “Napoleon, the Immersive Saga” is free form, allowing visitors to wander and engage with the experience as they wish. Highlights include traveling to St. Helena by boat, standing amid the fog at the Battle of Austerlitz, and soaring above the Vendôme Column, which Napoleon had built as his very own Trajan Column to commemorate the 1805 battle.
Visitors can experience 1805’s Battle of Austerlitz. Photo: courtesy Sandora.
“We have taken on the triple challenge of achieving technical, artistic, and historical excellence to create the first immersive experience on Napoleon,” said Sandora founder Marin de Saint Chamas. “The intensity of the recreated events and the close connection with a universally known figure make this production both captivating and educational.”
The V.R. experience is due to travel to Brussels, Belgium, and Lille, France, in 2025, before returning to Paris. More

“I can’t breathe,” James Baldwin told his assistant Zeynep Oral back in 1961, “I have to look from the outside.” Outside meant Istanbul, the city to which the American writer and civil rights activist moved and stayed on and off for more than a decade—a little-known aspect of his otherwise extensively studied life.
According to Atesh M. Gundogdu, publishing editor of Artspeak NYC, Baldwin’s sojourn wasn’t driven by leisure or curiosity so much as the “need for a refuge—both from the racial tensions in the United States and the pressures of the time.” As a Black, gay man, Baldwin did not feel at home in his own country. But in Istanbul, a cultural melting pot ruled by a secular government at that time, he could be himself.
“Turkey,” he later declared, “saved my life!”
Gundogdu is not just an editor. He also worked as the co-curator for “Turkey Saved My Life–Baldwin in Istanbul, 1961–1971,” a new exhibition at the Brooklyn Public Library’s Grand Lobby. It recounts Baldwin’s stay in Turkey by way of evocative, rarely-seen photographs taken by one of the many friends he made during his time abroad, an engineering student turned photographer-filmmaker named Sedat Pakay.
Baldwin sitting in a Triumph Herald on the Bosporus Ferry. Photo: Sedat Pakay.
Pakay was only 19 years old when he stumbled upon a newspaper article announcing the celebrated writer’s imminent arrival in Istanbul. The two ended up meeting through a mutual friend and quickly hit it off, so much so that Pakay went on to become Baldwin’s photographer, documenting his frequent tours around the city, interactions with locals, and partaking in popular tourist activities, like smoking hookah, drinking tea, and admiring mosques, all of which can be seen at the BPL exhibition.
“Sedat Pakay was not only an accomplished photographer,” said Gundogdu, “but also a close friend of Baldwin during his time in Turkey. Their friendship extended beyond the creative sphere—Baldwin even sponsored Pakay during the process of obtaining his Green Card in the United States. His photographs capture Baldwin in moments of intimacy, vulnerability, and joy. They reveal a side of Baldwin that often escapes his more public persona, showing his warmth, deep connections with friends, and his contemplative nature.”
Ted Russell, Bob Dylan talking to James Baldwin at the Emergency Civil Liberties Committee’s Bill of Rights Dinner. Courtesy of Ted Russell/Polaris/Steven Kasher Gallery.
Baldwin’s eventful social and artistic life did not slow down in Istanbul. He befriended Turkish writers, actors, and filmmakers, and helped them with their projects. He threw lavish parties for famous acquaintances visiting from America, including Don Cherry and Marlon Brando, while working on manuscripts including Another Country and The Fire Next Time.
“Turkey provided Baldwin with a unique vantage point to reflect on the struggles he wrote about,” added Gundogdu, “particularly the racial and social injustices in America. Being away from the immediate pressures of his homeland enabled him to see these issues with greater clarity. Moreover, Turkey’s own struggles with identity and modernity [Baldwin was nicknamed ‘Arab’] may have resonated with Baldwin, enriching his understanding of what it means to navigate multiple, often conflicting, identities.”
“Turkey Saved My Life–Baldwin in Istanbul, 1961–1971” is on view at the Brooklyn Public Library, 10 Grand Army PlazaBrooklyn, New York, through February 28, 2025 More

What exhibitions in 2024 helped define the art world chatter, for better or worse? We’ve selected a few that managed to hit a collective nerve or stir debate, sometimes perhaps revealing more about our current zeitgeist than the art on display.
A few highlights didn’t make the cut, like “The Harlem Renaissance and Transatlantic Modernism” at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, which was widely seen as an effort at rectifying a botched attempt in 1969 that famously did not include any art by African Americans. The Met’s second try was duly praised as a sign of overdue recognition for the artistic movement.
There was also the 15th Gwangju Biennale, which was something of a flop: it was called “disconcertingly vague,” by ArtReview, while Frieze agreed it, “quickly frays at its conceptual edges.” Other major exhibitions, like a Gustave Caillebotte show, “Painting Men” at the Musée d’Orsay, will head to the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles, and the Art Institute of Chicago next. The blockbuster was criticized in France for its gendered interpretation of the Impressionist artist’s work, while implying he may have been gay, so it will be interesting to see what American audiences think.
With that, here are a few others for your perusal.

“Surrealism” at the Centre Pompidou, ParisThrough January 13, 2025
Leonora Carrington, Green Tea (1942). © Digital image, The Museum of Modern Art, New York/Scala, Florence. © Adagp, Paris, 2024.
There’s still time to catch the expansive, traveling “Surrealism” show on its Paris leg, where the movement originated. This trailblazing exhibition, which changes drastically as it travels—it began at the Royal Museum of Fine Arts in Brussels, and heads to Madrid, Hamburg, and Philadelphia next—is a celebration of the movement’s centennial. It also feeds into conversations around several evolving contemporary developments across the art world, including an awakened appreciation for women Surrealist artists, such as Leonora Carrington, who has been setting auction records; as well as new interest in overlooked artists from Latin America; and lastly, a now widespread understanding that art history must been seen as a more pluralistic and global constellation of activity, rather than simply centering on Europe and America.
Curator Marie Sarré told Artnet the show is meant to feature “Surrealism in all of its diversity,” which also includes iconic greats. Notably, readers will recognize René Magritte’s L’empire des Lumières on loan from Brussels. It is one of a handful of variations the artist painted of the hauntingly beautiful light and shadow cast by a residential streetlamp, which set a $121.2 million auction record in November. Leading up to the sale, its display in Brussels and Paris museums could not have hurt.

“Flight into Egypt: Black Artists and Ancient Egypt, 1876–Now” at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New YorkThrough February 17, 2025
Fred Wilson, Grey Area (Brown Version) (1993). Photo courtesy of Metropolitan Museum of Art.
The Met’s current exhibit highlights almost 200 years of Black cultural production inspired by ancient Egypt. “It’s a noteworthy celebration that feels uncharacteristic—if not unheard of—at this institutional scale,” wrote Journey Streams for Artnet, adding the museum’s endeavor “imbues the space with an authenticity that is above all else deeply comforting.”
But the show nevertheless poses other unresolved questions by evoking controversial claims that classical Egypt was a Black civilization. The exhibition is not actually about archaeological history, but rather, the cultural impact of ancient Egypt on Black artists, though it directly references the heritage claim with featured items that have backed it, like a copy of Martin Bernal’s Black Athena: The Afroasiatic Roots of Classical Civilization (1987). The “bombshell” book sparked heated debate in the 1980s and 1990s, as New York Times critic Jason Farago pointed out. Ultimately, he argued the show “dances around an answer” to its core question: “Just how malleable is the classical tradition, and how free are you to play with history?” Egypt was a rich source of classical ennoblement to African Americans, as the show illustrates, “but inventing classical origins… was no innocent undertaking in the 20th century,” added Farago.
In the catalog, curator Akili Tommasino actually makes a distinction between a Black embrace of an ancient empire and its rulers, where the Black form of classicism is about liberation, rather than oppression. “Might there be other routes to freedom, perhaps less gilded ones, that do not place such a premium on origins and lineage?” Farago asked. It’s a question that would have to be put to all groups, including other minorities, who understandably seek redemption from a painful past.

“Foreigners Everywhere,” the 60th Venice BiennaleApril 20–November 24, 2024
“Bambus” by Brazilian artist Ione Saldanha in the central pavilion during the pre-opening of the Venice Biennale art show, on April 16, 2024 in Venice. Photo: Gabriel Bouys / AFP via Getty Images.
“I think it will be remembered well,” wrote Ben Davis in the first of a three-part essay for Artnet. Such large art events can be a mixed bag, but overall, it appears to have mustered a fair degree of approval, despite Davis reporting, “opinion has ranged from airy affirmation to fiery dismissal of the show as the latest crime of political correctness against taste.” There was certainly some fire. The New York Times called it, “at best a missed opportunity, and at worst something like a tragedy.” And Dean Kissick’s controversial cover essay for Harper’s described it as “a nostalgic turn to history and a fascination with identity, rendered in familiar forms.” He dug further, criticizing nearly a decade of biennials for exhibiting “recycled junk, traditional craft, and folk art.”
What, ultimately, was at stake in the biennial? Though it focused on the Global South, “it is more about a kind of metaphor for what is farthest from power,” Davis wrote. Yet Adriano Pedrosa’s vision of global art history can be “murky,” particularly regarding an unbalanced selection of non-Western artists in the Padiglione Centrale Giardini building, Davis observed. “Is the geographic skew a statement about where significant movements happened? Is it a catalogue of Pedrosa’s likes? … It’s not clear!” Ultimately, Davis suggested Pedrosa may have “flipped” art history, but not necessarily expanded it, and this analysis rings true. The show “wants to dissent from ‘Westernization’ in terms of historic associations with industry, design, and the machine… flipping a system that over-valued proximity to Europe and the United States and downplayed local and craft associations as backwards,” he added. We can expect to see more of said “flipping,” but let’s hope it comes with that promised expansion.

Group show with changing title at Fondation Beyeler, BaselMay 19–August 11, 2024
Installation view, Fondation Beyeler, Riehen/Basel, 2024 © Rudolf Stingel; Succession Alberto Giacometti; The Estate of Francis Bacon; 2024, ProLitteris, Zürich Photo: Mark Niedermann
This mysterious, experimental group show was the talk of the art world after it descended on Basel for its namesake June fair. Even the exhibition’s title kept changing, from things like “Dance with Daemons” and “Cloud Chronicles,” to “The Richness of Going Slowly.” A press release gave few indications of what was on view, which was also the point. “It is both over-stuffed with ideas and coyly under-explained—seemingly because the idea is to throw you off balance,” wrote Ben Davis for Artnet.
So what was the show? A constantly changing exhibition. Artworks in several rooms were moved around and rehung in front of visitors, often in totally unorthodox ways—frames touching frames. In other rooms, where installations were not constantly shuffled, sculptures were placed just opposite paintings or other sculptures, as if they were looking at each other. One favorite was a life-sized Alberto Giacometti figure staring at a Francis Bacon triptych. “Almost everything here challenges the audience to try to inhabit the museum in some kind of fresh way, engaging the senses as well as the brain,” Davis wrote.
Many also wondered whether the show had introduced an entirely new way of exhibiting art, but Davis noted the project—curated by seven artists and curators (Sam Keller, Hans Ulrich Obrist, Precious Okoyomon, Philippe Parreno, to name a few)—is also a “throwback to the ‘relational aesthetics’ moment that brought some of the bigger artists here to fame.” Still, “for my money, the loose-limbed 2000s vibe feels suddenly fresh again,” he said.

“Sargent and Fashion” at Tate Britain, LondonFebruary 22–7 July 2024
Installation view of “Sargent and Fashion” at Tate Britain showing La Carmencita (c. 1890). Photo: Larina Fernandes, © Tate.
This Tate exhibition aimed to shed new light on John Singer Sargent’s sumptuous portraits of late Victorian and Edwardian British society dressed in all their finery, by emphasizing fashion as central to the artist’s practice. But, to put it mildly, it fell flat with some critics. “This is a horrible exhibition,” began Jonathan Jones in his review for the Guardian. He wrote that the painter was interested in his subjects as “players in a social world,” and that he depicted them “in a way that is startling, modern and so truthful it hurts… But was he, above all, a painter of fashion, as this show claims? No way—what on earth are they talking about?” Worse, he said the exhibition’s display of clothes matching the paintings, reduces the artist to “a relic with no relevance.” Ouch. If you thought it couldn’t get worse, there’s also this headline from The Telegraph: “Tate Britain: confirms suspicions that Sargent is superficial.”
Of course, others said the show offered insights into Sargent’s eye for detail in fashion, which he used as a narrative tool for his striking, life-sized portraits. “Walking through the galleries, one feels almost like they are stepping into a century-old conversation between fully sentient figures,” wrote Jo Lawson-Tancred for Artnet. “Though some critics have struggled to understand the crucial role that fashion plays in constructing identity, its significance was obvious to Sargent and many of his sitters.” Indeed: the artist supposedly once said, he was both a “painter and a dressmaker.” More

In the early 1970s, the pioneer generation of graffiti writers from A-One to Zephyr were making their presence known on New York’s streets and subways. Theirs were wild, energetic styles that caught the ire of the authorities—but more significantly, they also captured the eye of gallerists and fellow artists. In time, it’s the latter group that would fix graffiti as an art form (and then, art market juggernaut), transplanting it from the urban jungle into the white cube.
A new exhibition at the Museum of the City of New York (MCNY) revisits exactly this moment of graffiti’s evolution. At “Above Ground: Art from the Martin Wong Graffiti Collection,” you’ll find works by some of the field’s key players—Keith Haring, Lady Pink, Rammellzee, Haze, Futura 2000, Tracy 168—created not on a city wall or subway door, but on canvas. It’s a major turning point, reckons curator Sean Corcoran, during which the artists more than met the moment.
“These young people had real ambitions to make work in a more traditional setting,” he told me during a walk-through of the exhibition. “Sometimes it carried that same energy that happened on the streets. Sometimes it transformed and became something totally different.”
Installation view of “Above Ground” at the Museum of the City of New York. Photo courtesy of MCNY.
To capture what Corcoran described as “a real serious turn by some of these young people to create something real and permanent,” the exhibition opens with artifacts marking graffiti’s move into the mainstream. There’s a May 1974 Esquire cover story written by Norman Mailer (“The Faith of Graffiti”) and a flurry of flyers announcing various graffiti showcases at galleries (Lee Quiñones at Barbara Gladstone in 1982, Haring at Shafrazi Gallery in 1987, and so on).
But of course, it’s the canvases that are the main draw for transmuting an ephemeral form into something far more enduring. A handful have been pulled from the collection of Martin Wong, the painter and collector whose avid amassing of graffiti works led to his founding of the Museum of American Graffiti in the East Village in 1989. In 1994, prior to his premature death, Wong gifted his 300-strong collection to the MCNY. The bulk of these holdings are on view in its traveling show “City as Canvas” (also organized by Corcoran), which opened in 2014 and is currently on view at the Hunter Museum in Tennessee.
Keith (Dez) Grayson, Kaygee (ca. 1985). Photo courtesy of the Museum of the City of New York.
For “Above Ground,” some previously unseen gems from Wong’s trove have been unrolled—literally—for the first time in decades. There’s Delta 2’s astounding 1984 work, large and earth-toned but for some blinding white spray-paint sparkles, which was newly cleaned and stretched for the show. A ca. 1985 Kaygee tag on canvas by Dez, aka Keith Grayson or DJ Kay Slay, also gets a rare outing, as does a Haring monograph featuring doodles by the late artist and his frequent collaborator LA II.
Installation view of “Above Ground” at the Museum of the City of New York. Photo courtesy of MCNY.
What’s notable, Corcoran pointed out, was the sheer breadth of techniques that the artists deployed across their canvases. While sticking with their choice tool, the aerosol can, they nonetheless devised methods to variously achieve bold strokes, splatters, and wispy lines. Stan 153’s creation of a crinkled-paper effect using an airbrush, in particular, is spectacular.
“Today, artists have their spray paint manufactured specifically for their use,” he said. “But these guys only had maybe four or four different kinds of cans, and they had to figure out how to get the desired effect through a lot of experimentation and practice.”
Stan 153, Green Krinkle in Stereo (1983). Photo courtesy of the Museum of the City of New York.
Most poignantly, the exhibition acutely reflects the positive effect of patronage—specifically Wong’s—on the nascent art form. Wong’s support did not stop at snapping up these canvases; his presence is woven through their back stories. You get a sense of it in a documentary, filmed by Charlie Ahearn of Wild Style fame, that screens in the gallery: in it, archival interviews with Wong are interspersed with contemporary footage of artists including Daze and Quiñones discussing their time with Wong and the works he collected.
Lee Quiñones, Breakfast at Baychester (ca. 1980). Photo courtesy of the Museum of the City of New York.
That relationship is further drawn out in one of the show’s most striking pieces, Quiñones’s Breakfast at Baychester (ca. 1980). A pencil composition, it delicately details the inner machinery of two subway trains, with two apartment blocks rising in the background. The artist had filled in some areas with color but, according to Corcoran, was encouraged by Wong to stop and leave it unfinished, allowing his meticulous draftsmanship to stand out.
Installation view of “Above Ground” at the Museum of the City of New York. Photo courtesy of MCNY.
As meaningful is another work by Crash, titled Broken Wings (1990). A striking presence in the gallery, the assemblage is dynamic with a bold, Pop art aesthetic and affixed with shards of painted wood. Crash created the piece as part of an artwork swap with Wong, but the pair never got around to it before the latter’s passing. It has remained wrapped up in storage, until now.
“He’s like, ‘I’ve held it for him ever since, and I’ve never brought it out, or done anything with it,’” Corcoran recalled Crash telling him of the painting, “‘but this is the right reason to show it.’”
“Above Ground: Art from the Martin Wong Graffiti Collection” is on view at the Museum of the City of New York, 1220 5th Avenue, New York, New York, November 22, 2024–August 10, 2025. More

Albertz Benda is hosting a new star at their glitzy Los Angeles home, behind Chateau Marmont. Through February 1, 2025, the gallery is sharing an exhibition of eight abstract landscapes by renowned Aṉangu singer and painter Zaachariaha Fielding. The eponymous presentation marks the first-ever U.S. solo show by Fielding, who’s best known around the world as the voice of Electric Fields, the pop-techno duo that brought Australian Aboriginal language to Eurovision for the first time this past May.
At the rate Fielding’s painting practice is progressing, however, singing may not remain his number one claim to fame.
Zaachariaha Fielding performing with Electric Fields at the Eurovision Song Contest in Malmo, Sweden, 2024. Photo: Jessica GOW / TT News Agency / AFP via Getty Images.
Fielding got into music long before he became a painter, as a child growing up amidst the disenfranchised desert of Central Australia’s Anangu Pitjantjatjara Yankunytjatjara (APY) Lands. He transcended his tiny Mimili community in a big way during 2011, when his X Factor audition wowed judges and audience members alike. He and keyboardist Michael Ross went on to form Electric Fields in 2015.
Years ago, Fielding was readying himself for a trip to America to further his music career. Then, lockdowns intervened. “I had nothing to do, like everybody else in the world,” Fielding told me over the phone. “I produced work after work after work, and then I had an elder offer me a solo exhibition. I was like, ‘what is a solo exhibition?’”
“I became very comfortable and happy as a visual artist, and I approached the visual world the way I approach the music industry—just being nothing but heart and curiosity,” he continued.
“Zaachariaha Fielding” on view at Albertz Benda. Photo: Photo: Julian Calero.
By Fall 2022, Fielding had a solo show of looming, dense abstractions with Brisbane’s buzzy Jan Murphy Gallery. The following spring, he won the prestigious $50,000 Wynne Prize, awarded annually for either the best landscape painting of Australian scenery, or the best figure sculpture by an Australian artist. Eventually, Fielding linked up with Albertz Benda via a mutual collector.
The paintings across his eponymous U.S. debut are part of the ongoing series that constitutes Fielding’s entire practice. His abstract, bold gestures jump off the linen they’re painted on straight away. Fielding himself compared his compositional process to instinctual choreography. “I don’t want to become anything; I just want it to be something,” he said. The artist often employs actual iconography, like the serpent he placed on a bridal gown during a collaboration with cult Aussie fashion house Romance Was Born this fall. Here, however, flashes of figuration tend to resolve back into pareidolia—even if the silhouettes of eyeballs remain persistent.
Moments of intense detail do actually emerge in this show, though—further complicating viewers’ attempts to determine what they’re really looking at. Each one of the works on view features wavy lines comprised of small, dense text all drawing from intergenerational aboriginal songs that bear wisdom about the environment and beyond.
“Zaachariaha Fielding” on view at Albertz Benda. Photo: Photo: Julian Calero.
Through abstraction, Fielding hopes to portray internal and external landscapes at once. “How do they work as a collaboration?” he asked.
“We’re very powerful creatures, but we limit what we can and cannot do, and that’s the most frustrating thing about this whole experience of being a human,” the artist continued. “You do have a sense of, ‘I am not having the full experience with this life.’” Individuals are constrained by the monotonous expectations of marriage and mortgages, and populations remain restrained from their rightful lands. Layers of personal, collective, and historical pain radiate from these paintings. Their lush purple-magenta palettes evoke both juicy fruits and bruises.
Given Fielding’s velocity as an artist this past year, it’s tempting to bet whether singing or painting will win out over the next one. But, the two mediums are more likely to deepen each other in a sort of symbiosis moving forward.
“Zaachariaha Fielding” is on view at Albertz Benda Los Angeles, 8260 Marmont Lane, Los Angeles, California, through February 1, 2025. More

One of the most viral artworks of 2024 will return to its Tasmanian home, following a short period of being mothballed after losing a discrimination court case.
That’s right, artist Kirsha Kaechele’s Ladies Lounge, which captivated audiences and made headlines all over the globe, is going back on view at the Museum of Old and New Art in Tasmania, just in time for the holidays.
The performance-installation work consists of a luxe parlor where men exist only to serve the needs of women as they lounge, snack on canapés, and and sip champagne, all as a playful commentary on a long history of discrimination in the other direction. Precious artworks hang on the walls, including supposedly priceless Picassos from the artist’s grandmother’s collection (later revealed as fakes created just for the installation).
Kirsha Kaechele and a male butler. Courtesy Museum of Old and New Art.
It was on uncontroversial view since 2020 at the museum, founded by Kaechele’s husband, David Walsh, (she refers to herself as the institution’s “first lady”), until March 2024, when one Jason Lau of New South Wales took issue and filed a discrimination complaint with the local Anti-Discrimination Commissioner at the Tasmanian Civil and Administrative Tribunal. A judge decided against the museum and the artist in April, ruling that the lounge must admit men or close; they appealed to the Supreme Court of Tasmania, in Hobart.
While awaiting the high court’s decision, Kaechele slyly exploited a clause in the lower court’s judgement that said men could reasonably be excluded from a ladies’ restroom, temporarily moving the “Picassos” and other artifacts into a women’s bathroom.
But ultimately the Supreme Court decided in favor of the artist in September, writing in his judgement that the work gave women “a rare glimpse of what it is like to be advantaged.”
Kirsha Kaechele celebrates the verdict of the Tasmanian Supreme Court. Photo: Jesse Hunniford, courtesy Museum of Old and New Art, Hobart, Tasmania.
According to press materials, “Entry for ladies, and exclusion for men, is included as part of the museum entry ticket.”
“Welcome back, ladies,” says Kaechele in press materials. “Through the court case, the Ladies Lounge has transcended the art museum and come to life. People from all over the world have been invited to contemplate the experiences of women throughout history and today. It is time to celebrate in the place where it all began—with the dedicated adoration of our butlers and copious amounts of champagne to toast this incredible chapter!”
New artworks will be on display, along with some surprise programming and a performance by artist Betty Grumble. 
If you can’t make it to Tasmania but want to experience the scent of victory, you’re in luck—Kaechele is also releasing a commemorative, limited edition fragrance, dubbed The Verdict, with the punning tagline “for the lady who appeals.”
Men who are just dying to experience the lounge can apply via the museum’s app, The O, to be one of the servants. 
Here’s your chance, Mr. Lau! 
Ladies Lounge will be on view at the Museum of Old and New Art, 655 Main Rd, Berriedale, Tasmania,, Australia, from December 19, 2024, to January 13, 2025. More