Exhibitions

Despite Russia’s ongoing attack on Ukraine, the Kyiv Biennial will return for its 5th edition this fall with a series of dispersed exhibitions hosted at six sites internationally. The program will start in Kyiv, Ukraine, and head to Vienna, Austria, in October. Further events are planned for Warsaw, Poland, and two more Ukrainian cities, Uzhhorod and Ivano-Frankivsk, before a final exhibition takes place in Berlin, Germany, in 2024.
It was not clear until recently whether going ahead with this year’s edition would be possible. “It’s one of the roles of the cultural realm to counter the logic of war, which also attacks everything that is civil by destroying cultural infrastructure,” Vasyl Cherepanyn, who organizes the biennial, told Artnet News. “This is a deliberate attack on our cultural identity. It’s very important to counter these genocidal intentions.”
The Kyiv Biennial was founded in 2015, partly in response to the 2014 Maidan Revolution, also known as the Revolution of Dignity, and Russia’s subsequent invasion of Crimea that same year. In the years since, the biennial has promoted art as a crucial but under-utilized means of activism, resistance, and political engagement, marking the centenary of the October Revolution in 2017, revisiting the Chernobyl disaster, the fall of the Berlin Wall in 2019, and, in 2021, spotlighting anti-fascist alliances across Europe.
This year’s edition will address the immediate aftershocks of war and displacement, as well as Russia’s historical and ongoing cultural attack on Ukraine’s land, people, and way of life. Due to its international sprawl and extended run, the biennial has been recast as a European “perennial” project that foregrounds the importance of international solidarity and unifies the Ukraine’s artistic community which is currently scattered across Europe.
Members of the public relax by the Dnipro River after the water receded due to the blowing up of the Kakhovka Dam by Russian occupiers on June 6, 2023. Photo by Ukrinform/NurPhoto via Getty Images.
In Kyiv, the Dovzhenko Centre will use its extensive film archive to present a discursive project about Ukraine’s Dnipro River, tracing its historical role in dividing Ukraine, its symbolic resonances in art and literature, and its recent weaponization through the devastating breach of the Kakhovka Dam by Russian forces in June.
Two more exhibitions will take place at the art gallery Asortymentna Kimnata in Ivano-Frankivsk and at the venue Sorry, No Rooms Available in Uzhhorod, both cities in western Ukraine that lie relatively far from the frontline. The venues emerged in their current form as a result of the war, offering emergency residencies for artists evacuated from more heavily bombarded areas. Artworks produced over the past 15 months will be exhibited with the hope of supporting these new initiatives and making them sustainable models long-term.
“The artists [exhibiting in the biennial] were not only seeking refuge, but also conditions to live and work while staying in Ukraine,” explained Cherepanyn. “This is a really unique social phenomenon, because these places are a melting pot for artists and curators from different regions and have become very productive sites for collaboration.”
Although it felt important that the biennial take place inside Ukraine “against all odds,” the situation remains unpredictable enough that the main part of the show will be hosted by the space tranzit.at in Vienna. A long-standing partner of the biennial, this fringe cultural hub helped set up Office Ukraine Vienna, an initiative that supported Ukrainian artists and curators who had fled the war. The exhibition will host around 30 or 40 artists from Ukraine and other countries.
“It is not just Ukrainian or Eastern European artists who have a lot to say about the war. It is important that Western artists respond” said Cherepanyn. “This is not just a local conflict between some Slavic nations. One of the purposes of this exhibition is to get an understanding that this is a major European war. How did a new fascist war in Europe become possible? The whole continent has to deeply rethink how ‘never again’ became possible again.”

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In 1939, and then again in 1964, Queens, New York played host to the World’s Fair, an international expo where countries came together to show off their achievements in technology and industry. This September, the borough will play host to a different event: The World’s UnFair. 
That’s the name of a new Creative Time-presented project by the collective New Red Order (NRO). With artworks, film screenings, and musical performances, the event will mimic the elaborate pageants of yore, albeit with a different agenda: to expose, in the group’s words, the United States as an “ongoing occupation of stolen Indigenous land.” 
Founded by artists Adam and Zack Khalil (who are both Ojibway, Sault Ste. Marie Tribe of Chippewa Indians) and Jackson Polys (Tlingit), New Red Order identifies itself as a “public secret society composed of networks of informants and accomplices dedicated to rechanneling desires for indigeneity towards the expansion of Indigenous futures.” That may be a mouthful, but the group’s central message is pointedly uncomplicated: “Give it back.”  
New Red Order. Courtesy of the artists.
For NRO, the phrase is a call to action: return all land to the peoples who were forcibly displaced from it by settler colonialists. Through its larger, ongoing research project—also called Give It Back—the group investigates and promotes real-life instances where this exchange has voluntarily taken place.  
“New Red Order’s whole work is about harnessing people’s desire for indigeneity—to co-opt it, to appropriate it, to assume it,” said Creative Time curator Diya Vij, who is organizing The World’s UnFair with the collective. NRO’s goal, she went on, is to “take that desire and turn it toward a pathway for [transforming] settlers into accomplices in the return of all indigenous land and life.” 
“They say ‘Give it back’ instead of ‘land back’ because it is something that we can all do. It is a giving and not a taking. It’s being in community together,” Vij added.
Among other attractions, The World’s UnFair will feature an installation of hundreds of tribal flags, signposts indicating the site’s proximity to present day locations of diasporic Lenape communities, and a large-scale video sculpture—titled Fort Freedumb—enwrapped in various forms of fencing. At the center of the fair will be Dexter and Sinister (2023), an animatronic talking tree and beaver that chat with each other about issues of land and the concept of private property. 
An illustrative map for New Red Order’s upcoming The World’s UnFair project. Courtesy of NRO and Creative Time.
That NRO would be interested in the World’s Fairs make sense. With its expos, the U.S. has a troubling history of exploiting indigenous and other minority communities to prop up its own imperialist ideologies. The Chicago World’s Fair of 1893, for instance, barred people of color from participating in the event’s central “White City” section. The St. Louis iteration of 1904 put Filipinos and Native Americans on display to demonstrate “uncivilized” cultures. 
“In a time where the future appears bleak or non-existent, giving it back offers a bright path forward, a way for us to survive an apocalypse together,” NRO said in a joint statement. “The landmass here is enormous. And its ecological capacity to sustain life is immense if we care for these resources correctly. You can have a place. But first things first: Give it back.”   
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For years, artist Sterling Wells has made the urban waterways of Los Angeles an extension of his studio, drawn to the interplay of nature and the manmade, marine life and the detritus that inevitably collects in these oft-overlooked corners of the city.
“I’ve never wanted to just paint seamless nature,” Wells told Artnet News. “I always want there to be the contrast between the soft fluid marks of nature and the hard edges and geometric shapes of architecture and graphic design.”
Last month, in pursuit of that vision, Wells was out on Ballona Creek in Playa Vista on the city’s West Side. He was hard at work finishing the construction of a somewhat ramshackle floating studio where he planned to create work for his current solo show, “A New Flood,” at Los Angeles’s Night Gallery. Then, he heard the helicopter overhead.
Local news outlet FOX 11 had caught wind of the unusual vessel floating in the waterway thanks to Reddit, and a reporter was coming to investigate concerns that the art project was a homeless encampment.
Sterling Wells working in Ballona Creek, Los Angeles. Photo by Nik Massey, courtesy of Night Gallery, Los Angeles.
“I got a book from the library about how to build homemade house boats. The base has these beams in a grid that are supported by rain barrels that kind of act as pontoons. I bought them from this Mediterranean import company in Gardena and they’re actually barrels for pepperoncini,” Wells said. “I had been building it for three weeks, and had just brought all of my stuff there to start painting.”
The goal was to use the raft to store his art supplies, but also to anchor in a fixed position so Wells could capture a single view over multiple days as the weather and water conditions changed.
The watercraft also had bird blinds, to help the artist observe the local water fowl without disturbing them. And yes, he probably would have slept there sometimes, to help avoid the 40- to 90-minute drive back home to Highland Park, 15 miles away.
Sterling Wells’s sketches of the raft and its bird blinds. Photo by Nik Massey, courtesy of Night Gallery, Los Angeles.
They say no publicity is bad publicity, but the news story caught the eye of government officials. The next morning, officials from L.A. County Public Works arrived, damaged the raft pulling it out of the water, and forced Wells to apply for a permit for his waterborne studio. (The exhibition’s title is taken from the subject line of the city’s emailed response to Wells’s application, which read “A New flood—access Permit has been CREATED.”)
Unfortunately, however, the city put the kibosh on the project. Wells never got a concrete reason why, but he suspects an angry local—who claimed to own the property and disapproved of the raft—played a role.
“In one of my last conversations with L.A. County Public Works, I was told that according to the county code, people are not allowed to be in the flood control channel. I said, ‘you know, I’ve been painting at the site for a long time with no problem. Why can’t I just continue doing what I’ve been doing?’” Wells recalled. “And she said, ‘well, we weren’t paying attention to you—but now that we are, you’re not allowed to be there.’”
Sterling Wells’s worksite in Ballona Creek, Los Angeles. Photo by Nik Massey, courtesy of Night Gallery, Los Angeles.
Nevertheless, the artist continued to create on site sans barge, transporting it to the gallery, where it is now the centerpiece of his solo show. (The hope is to eventually have a permit approved and get it back on the water.)
“The drama with the raft kind of was a big distraction from my actual paintings,” Wells said.
To finish the body of work in time for the opening, Wells got a nearby motel room for five nights, wading into Ballona Creek each day to paint.
Sterling Wells’s raft on view in “Sterling Wells: A New Flood” at Night Gallery, Los Angeles. Photo courtesy of Night Gallery, Los Angeles.
“I chose this site because it’s neglected and unmaintained. It’s not a nature preserve that’s cleaned up. There’s a bird’s nest right next to drifts of litter and garbage, and there’s dead birds and the seagull that has a fishing lure stuck in its leg,” he said. “I like painting the trash—the water bottles and accumulation of things that are floating by. Old bicycles and shopping carts and all these things that are on the bottom of the creek that are covered in barnacles and mussels.”
The resulting works are Well’s largest paintings to date, painted not only en plein air, but while standing in the contaminated waterway. Each one captures the view of the surrounding salt marsh, but also peering into the shallows.
Sterling Wells’s sketches of his worksite in Ballona Creek, Los Angeles. Photo by Nik Massey, courtesy of Night Gallery, Los Angeles.
“They’re about the transition of looking down at the water where it’s transparent, to looking across the water as it becomes an opaque surface. I’m looking through the water, at light hitting objects at the bottom of the creek, at light hitting the surface of the water, and at things floating inside the water column,” Wells said.
That includes both the litter and the aquatic life that flows in and out of the creek with the ebb and flow of the rising and falling waters.
“I got really into the tide and the marine ecosystem. It’s two miles from the ocean, and there’s kelp and seaweed and crabs and mussels and birds,” the artist added.
With the raft out of commission, Wells worked instead with the smaller floating easels he had previously built using plastic bottles and milk jugs.
A Sterling Wells painting being created on a floating easel in Ballona Creek, Los Angeles. Photo by Nik Massey, courtesy of Night Gallery, Los Angeles.
“To paint from observation, your head has to stay in the same position. And so the floating easel allowed me to work large, moving the paper around my body and up and down into the water,” Wells explained. “But getting these pieces of paper to stay upright out in the middle of the water in the wind is incredibly challenging. I mean, everything’s constantly blowing over and floating away.”
Through that process, the creek becomes not only the subject of the work, but a physical part of the painting. The artist even mixes his watercolor pigment powders with the creek waters, allowing the process to manifest itself on the page as mud and algae splash onto the surface.
“It’s depicting water,” Wells said, “but it also is water.”
See more photos of the exhibition and the artist at work below.
Sterling Wells working in Ballona Creek, Los Angeles. Photo by Nik Massey, courtesy of Night Gallery, Los Angeles.
Sterling Wells working in Ballona Creek, Los Angeles. Photo by Nik Massey, courtesy of Night Gallery, Los Angeles.
Sterling Wells working in Ballona Creek, Los Angeles. Photo by Nik Massey, courtesy of Night Gallery, Los Angeles.
Sterling Wells working in Ballona Creek, Los Angeles. Photo by Nik Massey, courtesy of Night Gallery, Los Angeles.
Sterling Wells working in Ballona Creek, Los Angeles. Photo by Nik Massey, courtesy of Night Gallery, Los Angeles.
Sterling Wells’s worksite in Ballona Creek, Los Angeles. Photo by Nik Massey, courtesy of Night Gallery, Los Angeles.
Installation view of “Sterling Wells: A New Flood” at Night Gallery, Los Angeles. Photo courtesy of Night Gallery, Los Angeles.
Sterling Wells’s raft on view in “Sterling Wells: A New Flood” at Night Gallery, Los Angeles. Photo courtesy of Night Gallery, Los Angeles.
“Sterling Wells: A New Flood” is on view at Night Gallery, 2050 Imperial Street, Los Angeles, California, through September 9.
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Celebrated for their iconic structures such as London’s Tate Modern, Beijing’s National Stadium (also known as the Bird’s Nest), Hamburg’s Elbphilharmonie, and San Francisco’s De Young Museum, the duo of Herzog & de Meuron are comfortably ensconced at the vanguard of contemporary design. The Swiss architects, who were awarded the Pritzker Prize in 2001, have pushed forward the architectural avant-garde through deconstructivist designs and innovative use of materials and geometries.
Founded by Jacques Herzog and Pierre de Meuron in Basel over 40 years ago, the architectural practice is now a sprawling international enterprise with five senior partners and over 600 employees working on (mostly, but not exclusively) large-scale projects—museums, hospitals, skyscrapers, and arenas—in nearly every corner of the globe. 
Herzog & de Meuron, Elbphilharmonie Hamburg. Photo © Iwan Baan. Courtesy of Royal Academy of Arts.
Now, the Royal Academy of Arts in London will house an exhibition showcasing their most ambitious projects. Launching July 14, and in close collaboration with the architects, the exhibition unfolds in three distinct galleries. The first gallery brings a large portion of their “Kabinett”—an open storage and research area—from Basel to London. Around 400 objects, ranging from scale models to photographs and even augmented reality experiences, will be displayed on wood shelves for visitors to peruse.
Herzog & de Meuron, extension of the Stadtcasino Basel. Photo © Ruedi Walti. Courtesy of Royal Academy of Arts.
Research material from the duo’s better known projects are highlighted in this first gallery. For Tate Modern, Herzog & de Meuron repurposed the Bankside Power Station into a kind of vertical city. Their Elbphilharmonie project in Hamburg was informed by three archetypal spaces: the ancient Greek amphitheater, a sports arena, and a modern festival tent. The National Stadium in Beijing—conceived as a large public art sculpture—marked their first collaboration with artist Ai Weiwei, while the Lincoln Road project saw the architects reinvent an ordinary parking garage in Miami as open-air retail spaces and residences.
The second gallery space assumes the form of a screening room. A central screen presents an edit of a new film, Rehab, created by filmmakers Bêka & Lemoine. It offers an intimate look at the daily life of their groundbreaking REHAB Clinic for Neurorehabilitation and Paraplegiology in Basel from the perspective of patients undergoing treatment, charting patients’ interactions with the structure at various stages of recovery.
Herzog & de Meuron, REHAB Basel. Photo © Katalin Deér. Courtesy of Royal Academy of Arts.
The third and final space focuses on a real project currently in development, the Universitäts-Kinderspital Zürich (University Children’s Hospital in Zurich), which came out of a competition in 2012 to redefine hospital architecture and healing spaces. The main feature of this room is an augmented reality mock-up of a patient’s room, rendered at full scale, delivering a near-tangible recreation of a humanized hospital environment. Visitors can virtually step inside a hospital room and observe 360-degree views of the streets, gardens, and public spaces ahead of the hospital’s completion in 2024.
“Herzog & de Meuron” is on view at the Royal Academy of Arts, 6 Burlington Gardens, London, W1S 3ET, from July 14 to October 15, 2023.

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