On View

The idea for a hit, two-venue summer group art show about the unlikely subject matter of boxing, with an all-star lineup of established and up-and-coming artists, was sparked by an idea that star artist Eric Fischl had a while ago. He thought about the boxer as a “metaphor” for the artist in the process of creativity, said chief curator Sara Cochran, who co-curated the exhibition with Fischl.
Little did he and his eventual fellow curators know what a rich vein they were about to mine. “I have to say, as a curator, I’ve never been involved in a show that revealed itself to be so deep within this topic,” said Cochran in a phone interview with Artnet News.
Installation view of “Strike Fast, Dance Lightly: Artists on Boxing,” at FLAG Art Foundation. Left: Rosalyn Drexler, In The Ring (2012). Center: Amoako Boafa, King (2021). Right: Rosalyn Drexler, Prize Fight (1997) Photo by Steven Probert.
The end result is “Strike Fast, Dance Lightly: Artists on Boxing,” which features 100 artworks spread across both The Church in Sag Harbor on Eastern Long Island (through September 3) and at the Flag Art Foundation, the nonprofit space in Chelsea founded by collector Glenn Fuhrman (through August 11). Fischl and his wife and fellow artist April Gornik acquired the historic former Methodist church in Sag Harbor several years ago and turned it into a center for artists and the community. They offer artist residencies, as well as public space for programs and exhibitions.
Installation view of “Strike Fast, Dance Lightly: Artists on Boxing” at the Flag Art Foundation. Photo by Steven Probert.
To give even a sampling of the star-power lineup: artists featured at the The Church include Derrick Adams, Diane Arbus, Zoe Buckman, Jim Campbell, Carroll Dunham, Fab 5 Freddy, Fischl himself, Barry Flanagan, Jeffrey Gibson, Lyle Ashton Harris, Howardena Pindell, and many more.
The Flag Art Foundation presentation includes John Ahearn, George Bellows, Amoako Boafo, Andrea Bowers, Katherine Bradford, Rosalyn Drexler, Chase Hall, Reggie Burrows Hodges, Ed Ruscha, and Carrie Mae Weems.
Cochran highlighted that among the focal points of The Church show is the parallel that runs between the boxer and the artistic struggle—and the question of what is worth fighting for. It may come as a surprise to some viewers, she noted, as to how many women artists are featured in the show because they have tackled the matter of boxing in their work.
“We discovered women artists using boxing as a shorthand for victimization or an idea of empowerment. The fact that the boxer was like a Schroedinger’s Cat… both a winner and a loser,” is a through line of the show, said Cochran.
The Flag Art Foundation immediately got on board after hearing about the idea, though its director Jonathan Rider put his own twist on the presentation in terms of a historical framework. This includes a selection of Roman artifacts, iconic 19th- and 20th-century images by Eadweard Muybridge, George Bellows, and some of the first moving images created by the Thomas Edison Company, he said.
“These are presented in dialogue with artworks by 30 contemporary artists, including newly commissioned pieces. Artists Caleb Hahne and Cheryl Pope, who were both amateur boxers, address the physicality inherent to the sport from their own experiences; other artists respond in metaphorical and poetic ways, such as Vincent Valdez’s suite of oil paintings that look at Muhammad Ali’s legacy by those who eulogized him at his funeral. What was most surprising in organizing the show was the various ways artists continue to reimagine and reinterpret the boxer and boxing, from a cultural symbol of agility, endurance, and physical strength, to the mythos, spectacle, and violence of the sport.”
Fischl took it even deeper when explaining his own inspiration and methodology. The artist said that it was actually the fact that he had reached a point in his creative life “where the nagging doubts were stronger rather than farther away. Do I have anything left? Can I go back out there again? What do I have to offer in terms of inspiring myself?”
This led him to meditate on two works specifically. The first was The Pugilist at Rest, one of the few remaining bronze sculptures from 3000 B.C.E., which he described as “a remarkable sculpture of a man of a certain age who has been a boxer all his life. He’s sitting down. His hands are wrapped and he’s sitting there looking over his shoulder. Is he hearing his name called out or is he having an internal conversation about whether he wants to go back out there or not?”
The second work was a Pierre Bonnard self-portrait in which the artist portrays himself as a boxer, though it’s a painting in which he’s “clearly not a professional boxer,” as Fischl pointed out. “He’s posing as though he was willing to put up his dukes. He’s sort of feigning strength to himself looking in the mirror, this tough-guy stuff. It resonated with me, that pureness of perfection and beauty, the clarity of expression” that an artist is trying to communicate and deliver all of his life, but which can also be an “extraordinary burden. That’s what gave me the idea for the show.”
Here are a selection of highlights from the summer group shows.
Installation view of “Strike Fast, Dance Lightly: Artists on Boxing” at the Flag Art Foundation. Photo by Steven Probert.
Carrie Mae Weems, The Boxer (2012). Image courtesy the artist and Jack Shainman Gallery.
Amy Bravo, Congratulations Hero! (2023). Image courtesy the artist.
Installation view of “Strike Fast, Dance Lightly: Artists on Boxing” at FLAG Art Foundation. Photo by Steven Probert.
Installation view of “Strike Fast, Dance Lightly: Artists on Boxing,” at The Church in Sag Harbor. Photo by Gary Mamay
Installation view of “Strike Fast, Dance Lightly: Artists on Boxing,” at The Church in Sag Harbor. Photo by Gary Mamay
“Strike Fast, Dance Lightly” is on view through August 11 at the Flag Art Foundation in Chelsea, and through September 3 at The Church in Sag Harbour. It will next be presented at the Norton Museum of Art in West Palm Beach, Florida from fall 2024 to spring 2025.
Follow Artnet News on Facebook: Want to stay ahead of the art world? Subscribe to our newsletter to get the breaking news, eye-opening interviews, and incisive critical takes that drive the conversation forward. More

A new show at Fahey/Klein Gallery in Los Angeles will see Allen Ginsberg in dialogue with two distinct technologies: one of photography, which the late poet engaged with throughout the decades, and the other, entirely of our moment, A.I.  
Ginsberg acquired his first camera, a Kodak Retina, in 1953 and began avidly immortalizing his friends and lovers in pictures. He saw these pictures as “sacramental,” as he wrote in 1993’s Snapshot Poetics, a way of enshrining the spiritual gravitas of William S. Burroughs, say, or Jack Kerouac’s “exquisite… face and gestures.” 
“His photos just have that intimacy with deep reverence and admiration for his friends,” Peter Hale of the Allen Ginsberg Foundation told Artnet News, “which is a major component of his poetry: admiration of and reverence for humanity, a celebration.”
The exhibition, “Muses & Self: Photographs by Allen Ginsberg,” gathers such portraits of his Beat colleagues, including Kerouac, Peter Orlovsky, Neal Cassady, and Gregory Corso, captured candidly and spontaneously. But it also goes on to trace Ginsberg’s formal evolution as a photographer beyond this early interest.
Allen Ginsberg, Arthur Miller, William H. Gass, Hotel Royal Elevator, Copenhagen, November 1985. Photo: © Allen Ginsberg, courtesy of Fahey/Klein Gallery, Los Angeles.
In 1983, after years of dormancy, Ginsberg renewed his photographic practice by acquiring better equipment on the advice of Robert Frank and Berenice Abbott, and engaging in what he called “continuous reportage.”  
“He basically went from taking a roll or two a year to a roll or two every week!” said Hale. “This period through the late ’80s, I consider his richest, with almost every contact sheet producing something significant.” 
As his fame and friend circle grew, Ginsberg’s images from this era spanned styles and subjects. There’s a casual group shot at the 1990 Small Press Book Fair, a selfie snapped during an elevator ride with Arthur Miller, a street scene of Keith Haring leaving chalk art on a pavement, and a tender portrait of Patti Smith and Burroughs.
A number of Ginsberg’s photographs further feature his handwritten captions (a custom he picked up from Elsa Dorfman), which fill out the pictures’ contexts and narratives. They were “gems of hyper-compressed information,” said Hale, works of art in themselves that harken back to Ginsberg’s knack for poetic incision.  
As Ginsberg wrote in Snapshot Poetics: “In a sense, writing poems and taking pictures have been two discrete but very closely related activities.” 
Allen Ginsberg, Amiri Baraka with Jayne Cortez, Rashida Ismaili, and friends, Small Press Book Fair, December 2, 1990. Photo: © Allen Ginsberg, courtesy of Fahey/Klein Gallery, Los Angeles.
It’s apt, then, that “Muses & Self” will also unveil a series of poems that have been generated by an A.I. model trained on Ginsberg’s textual and visual output, including his poetry, prose, captions, and more than 400 photographs. 
The collection, titled “A Picture of My Mind: Poems Written by Allen Ginsberg’s Photographs,” has been developed in partnership with theVERSEverse, a Web3 poetry collective, and based on its member Ross Goodwin’s 2018 work, Word.Camera. It is supported by the Tezos Foundation and the Allen Ginsberg Estate.  
“It’s been exhilarating to see the resonances and associations that pop up between seemingly disparate words, images and moments,” theVERSEverse told Artnet News, “to see from a sort of aerial view how all the relationships and personal encounters and sacred moments captured in Ginsberg’s photographs may have filtered into or out of his writings.” 
Built from such a comprehensive ingestion of Ginsberg’s oeuvre, the generated works “speak to us from the past and invite us into the future,” the group added.
The algorithmically generated “Shared Reflections: A Snapshot,” for instance, created in response to Ginsberg’s image, Calcutta Self-Portrait with Peter Orlovsky, 1961, offers: “Who can capture / the fleeting essence / of such a moment, / fragments of the infinite?” 
Allen Ginsberg, Antler, Poet, Brooklyn Bridge, April 7, 1990. Photo: © Allen Ginsberg, courtesy of Fahey/Klein Gallery, Los Angeles.
For his part, Hale has found the A.I. poems “fascinating,” locating them in the tradition of Burroughs’s cut-up experiments. The Beat writers’ choice technique of automatic writing is also echoed in the generative form, theVERSEverse points out. 
While the A.I.-generated poems that make up “A Picture of My Mind” have been edited and curated to keep it “true to [Ginsberg’s] inimitable voice,” theVERSEverse plans to further evolve its generator to reduce the need for such human intervention. Those results are bound for a long-form series planned for the fall alongside generative platform fxhash. 
“We’re essentially turning Ginsberg’s historical photographs into poem machines that allow us not just to read his work but also to engage, interrogate, interact, and continuously create with it,” the collective said. “We’re activating these photos and equipping them to talk back, invite us in deeper, and maybe even reveal things we don’t already know or see.” 
“Muses & Self: Photographs by Allen Ginsberg” is on view at Fahey/Klein Gallery, 148 North La Brea, Los Angeles, August 10–September 23.

More Trending Stories:  
Archaeologists in the U.K. Are Using Ground-Penetrating Radar to Locate the 130-Year-Old Remains of a Legendary Performing Elephant 
The Company Behind the Wildly Popular ‘Immersive Van Gogh’ Experience Has Filed for Bankruptcy 
Drake Outs Himself as Buyer of Tupac Shakur’s Iconic Crown Ring, Sold for $1 Million at Sotheby’s 
Nefarious Data Collection Masking as Public Art? An A.I. Company Has Placed Mirrored Spheres Around the World in a Massive Eye-Scanning Project 
Three Ancient Roman Coins That Were Part of a Hoard Found in the U.K. Were Mysteriously Swapped With Other, More Valuable Coins 
Fast-Rising Artist Jeanine Brito’s Visceral Paintings Put a ‘Dark and Grotesque’ Spin on Fairy Tales 
Follow Artnet News on Facebook: Want to stay ahead of the art world? Subscribe to our newsletter to get the breaking news, eye-opening interviews, and incisive critical takes that drive the conversation forward. More

How have some legendary gallerists contributed to the making of art history? An exhibition at the PalaisPopulaire in Berlin is honoring the discerning eye of Rudolf Zwirner, one of the most influential art dealers of all time, on the occasion of his 90th birthday.
Born in Berlin on July 28, 1933, Zwirner and his then wife Ursula Reppin opened his eponymous gallery in Essen, Germany in 1959, quickly expanding to a second location in Cologne (formerly Kunstmarket Köln) in 1963. He is usually credited with having invented the art fair after co-founding Art Cologne with fellow dealer Hein Stünke and artnet’s founder Hans Neuendorf in 1967. Perhaps most impressive of all, Zwirner brought international attention to the German art scene at a time when it had been greatly diminished by the economic ruin of World War II, Nazi suppression of “degenerate” art, and the exodus of many well-established Jewish dealers.
“When we started what became Art Cologne, there were just six of us who sold contemporary art, so it was really a risk,” Zwirner told Artnet News in 2021. “There was very little interest in contemporary art at that time. Now, there are 3,000 galleries in Germany that focus on it.”
In 1992, he retired as an active gallerist but his son David Zwirner, who was born in 1964, has become an art market giant with galleries in New York, London, Hong Kong, and Paris.
Bringing together some 80 works from the Deutsche Bank Collection, other private collections and museums, the show tells Zwirner’s life story and demonstrates his celebrated ability to spot talented artists in the early stages of their careers and support them in becoming successes.
Over decades, he worked with many of the biggest names in modern and contemporary art whose works are in this survey, including Louise Bourgeois, Cy Twombly, Andy Warhol, Jasper Johns, Georg Baselitz, Joseph Beuys, Gerhard Richter, and David Hockney. A few standout examples from the more distant past include those by Tiepolo, Dürer, and Gaspare Diziani.
See a handful of works from the exhibition below.
Henri Rousseau, The sign as a painter (1903-10). Photo: Alistair Overbruck, © Courtesy Sammlung Zander.
Matija Skurjeni, Surprise Visit (1958–61). Photo: Alistair Overbruck, courtesy Sammlung Zander.
Astrid Klein, Untitled (I hermetically locked a man in the room) (1980). Photo: Timo Ohler, © Astrid Klein, courtesy the artist and Sprüth Magers.
Michael Müller, Epiclesis (2022) from the series “Hades.” Photo: Mathias Schormann, © Studio Michael Müller.
Gerhard Richter, Bomber (1963). Photo: © Gerhard Richter 2023.
Gaspare Diziani, Cane and Abel (early 18th century). Photo: Lea Gryze.
“A Life in Pictures: A Portrait of Seeing for Rudolf Zwirner” is on view at the PalaisPopulaire by Deutsche Bank, Unter den Linden 5, Berlin, through August 14.

More Trending Stories:  
A Sculptor’s Lawsuit Against Kevin Costner Over Artwork She Created for His Planned Luxury Resort Will Finally Go to Trial 
Creepily, the Woody Allen Romp ‘Vicky Cristina Barcelona’ Channels the Book That Outed Picasso’s Treatment of Women 
JTT, the New York Gallery Known for Minting Star Artists, Is Closing After More Than a Decade 
The British Library Has Discovered Scandalous Details Censored From the Official Account of Elizabeth I’s Reign 
Whether Painting Indoors or Out, Canadian Artist Keiran Brennan Hinton Imbues His Serial Studies With Intimacy and Devotional Intensity 
This Bonkers ‘Whale House’ in California, Inspired by Antoni Gaudí’s Architectural Whimsy, Comes to the Surface for $3.3 Million 
How the Many Dilemmas of Hannah Gadsby’s Anti-Picasso Show Feed Our Contemporary Cultural Doom Loop 
Researchers Have Found Hidden Details in Ancient Egyptian Paintings Using Portable Chemical Imaging Technology 
Follow Artnet News on Facebook: Want to stay ahead of the art world? Subscribe to our newsletter to get the breaking news, eye-opening interviews, and incisive critical takes that drive the conversation forward. More

A new exhibition with nearly 100 paintings by Claude Monet spotlights the artist’s trips to the French Riviera beginning with the first visit with his friend Pierre-Auguste Renoir in 1883.
The show, titled “Monet in Full Light,” was curated by Marianne Mathieu and is on view at Grimaldi Forum Monaco, a conference center in the sovereign city state along the French Riviera. Three years in the making with the support of the Musée Marmottan Monet in Paris, it coincides with the 140th anniversary of Monet’s first visit to Monte Carlo and the Riviera.
Monet, then middle-aged, began traveling extensively after death of his first wife, Camille, in 1879. He was invited by Renoir on a trip to the Riviera in December 1883. Their first stop after visiting Paul Cezanne in L’Estaque was Monaco, a place Monet called “the most beautiful spot on the entire Riviera.” The Impressionist painter made two pieces during this first visit that he never exhibited in Paris, as he was then without renown, Mathieu told the news outlet Monaco Life.
Monet returned alone in 1884 and in 1888, visiting Monte-Carlo, Roquebrune, Bordighera and Antibes. He made his famous paintings showing views of the fort in Antibes in all seasons from Salis Beach during his final visit.
Around 60 little-seen works Monet made during this era were shown at the Kimbell Art Museum in Fort Worth, Texas, in 1997.
This is seemingly the first time such a volume of these works has been shown near where he painted them and 23 of them are being exhibited for the first time, according to a news release.
“Monet’s work is very coherent. From his youth in Le Havre, to the last paintings in Giverny, the painter does not try to paint a motif, but rather a moment. Monet does not paint a landscape, but an atmosphere,” Matthieu said in a statement.
The exhibition also reveals new understandings about Monet during this era, including precisely where he put his easels and on which visit his paintings were painted.
Mathieu said Monet painted with “maturity” in his Riviera series, made between 1883 and 1888.
“Monet discovers himself as the painter of the series,” she said, adding, “Let’s not ask what Monet paints but rather when he paints it. Let’s not look for a motif but for a moment.”
See more images from the exhibition below.
Claude Monet, The Rowing Boat (1887). Photo courtesy of Grimaldi Forum Monaco/Musée Marmottan Monet, Paris.
Installation view of “Monet in Full Light.” Photo courtesy of Grimaldi Forum Monaco.
Installation view of “Monet in Full Light.” Photo courtesy of Grimaldi Forum Monaco.
Installation view of “Monet in Full Light.” Photo courtesy of Grimaldi Forum Monaco.
Installation view. Claude Monet, Villas at Bordighera (1884). Photo courtesy of Musée d’Orsay, Dist. RMN-Grand Palais/Patrice Schmidt.
Claude Monet, Agapanthes (1914-1917). Photo courtesy of Grimaldi Forum Monaco/Musée Marmottan Monet, Paris.
“Monet In Full Light” is on view at the Grimaldi Forum Monaco, 10 Av. Princesse Grace, Monaco, through September 3.
Follow Artnet News on Facebook: Want to stay ahead of the art world? Subscribe to our newsletter to get the breaking news, eye-opening interviews, and incisive critical takes that drive the conversation forward. More

Derrick Adams’s long-running traveling show “Sanctuary”—first exhibited at the Museum of Art and Design in New York City in 2018—has opened at the Charles H. Wright Museum of African American History in Detroit, Michigan.
The body of work, on view through September 10, began with Adams wanting to create a tribute to Victor Hugo Green, a New York mailman, and his wife Alma Duke for their accomplishments in creating the annual The Negro Motorist Green Book. The annual travel guide, published from 1936 to 1966 during the Jim Crow era, provided Black travelers with a list of businesses across the country that served Black patrons.
Adams praised Green for “connecting patrons with Black business owners” around the country during the Jim Crow era with “innovation and problem-solving.”
“It was very important to see someone who took an initiative in a tumultuous time in history when violence and oppression were existing all around Black Americans,” Adams said while discussing his two years of research into the topic before his body of work was completed.
“Mr. Green and his wife Alma decided to create possibility through a publication that will connect people as a counter-response to the conditions of society at the time. For me as an artist, I was excited about responding to that history.”
Installation view of “Derrick Adams: Sanctuary” at the Charles H. Wright Museum of African American History, 2023. Photo courtesy of the Wright Museum.
The works in “Sanctuary” include large-scale sculptures as well as mixed-media collages and assemblages on wood panels. The collages use pages from the Green Book and other documents, while some pieces feature visual recreations of the locations listed in the travel guide, which served as refuges for Black Americans.
The artist also studied Black migration from the South to the North over time and particularly was inspired by Jacob Lawrence’s Migration Series “and the mapping around that.” Adams said his work was inspired by Jacobs’ formal aesthetic and color palette, as well as the visual culture at the time.
“The issue of Black travel is something that is continuous because it is something that is still challenging depending on what part of the country you go to,” Adams said. “The exhibition was really acknowledging the Black traveler, centering them as a primary subject in the work.”
At the exhibition’s wrap at the Wright, Adams will be debuting new work at “Come As You Are,” his first show with Gagosian, on September 14. The exhibition will feature his new portraits and vignettes centered on the Black figure, whether real or imagined, and incorporating materials such as textiles.
According to Adams, this new body of work synthesizes ideas previously explored in his practice “in a way that is more seamless and layered formally and conceptually” than in the past.
“I think this particular body of work, beyond all others, fully utilized various color palettes spread across that are uniquely executed for individual works versus the series overall,” he said. “This particular body of work is my best work to date. I am excited to have it exhibited with Gagosian and I am looking forward to my new relationship with the gallery.”
See more images from “Sanctuary” below.
Derrick Adams. Upscale and or Lowbrow. Photo courtesy of Derrick Adams Studio LLC
Derrick Adams. There’s More Than One Beauty School.. Photo courtesy of Derrick Adams Studio LLC
Installation view of “Derrick Adams: Sanctuary” at the Charles H. Wright Museum of African American History, 2023. Photo courtesy of the Wright Museum.
Installation view of “Derrick Adams: Sanctuary” at the Charles H. Wright Museum of African American History, 2023. Photo courtesy of the Wright Museum.
Installation view of “Derrick Adams: Sanctuary” at the Charles H. Wright Museum of African American History, 2023. Photo courtesy of the Wright Museum.
Installation view of “Derrick Adams: Sanctuary” at the Charles H. Wright Museum of African American History, 2023. Photo courtesy of the Wright Museum.
Installation view of “Derrick Adams: Sanctuary” at the Charles H. Wright Museum of African American History, 2023. Photo courtesy of the Wright Museum.
“Derrick Adams: Sanctuary” is on view at the Charles H. Wright Museum of African American History, 315 E Warren Ave, Detroit, through September 10.

More Trending Stories:  
A Sculptor’s Lawsuit Against Kevin Costner Over Artwork She Created for His Planned Luxury Resort Will Finally Go to Trial 
Creepily, the Woody Allen Romp ‘Vicky Cristina Barcelona’ Channels the Book That Outed Picasso’s Treatment of Women 
JTT, the New York Gallery Known for Minting Star Artists, Is Closing After More Than a Decade 
The British Library Has Discovered Scandalous Details Censored From the Official Account of Elizabeth I’s Reign 
Whether Painting Indoors or Out, Canadian Artist Keiran Brennan Hinton Imbues His Serial Studies With Intimacy and Devotional Intensity 
This Bonkers ‘Whale House’ in California, Inspired by Antoni Gaudí’s Architectural Whimsy, Comes to the Surface for $3.3 Million 
How the Many Dilemmas of Hannah Gadsby’s Anti-Picasso Show Feed Our Contemporary Cultural Doom Loop 
Researchers Have Found Hidden Details in Ancient Egyptian Paintings Using Portable Chemical Imaging Technology 
Follow Artnet News on Facebook: Want to stay ahead of the art world? Subscribe to our newsletter to get the breaking news, eye-opening interviews, and incisive critical takes that drive the conversation forward. More

The South Korean artist Mire Lee has been made a name for herself in recent years due to her penchant for making audiences squirm. At the Venice Biennale last year, she appeared in the main exhibition with Endless House: Holes and Drips (2022), a monumental installation in which ceramics in the shape of entangled entrails were strewn across a frame of scaffolding and routinely doused in a thick red glaze. The work was strangely gory and, whether viewers liked it or not, they couldn’t look away.
The Seoul-born, Amsterdam-based 34-year-old has now opened her first institutional solo show in the U.S. at the New Museum in Manhattan. With walls made of torn fabric drenched in liquid clay and the air thickened by a steam machine, she has turned the 4th floor gallery into a dank, mud-colored stage for a series of new kinetic sculptures. These strange contraptions blend mechanical elements—pumps, motors, steel rods, and hoses—with fabric and cement forms that appear messily organic but are somehow too bizarre to not be manmade.
In one annexed corner, a crudely formed fountain flows with murky water that is pumped in at the side before swirling around a cement basin and draining away. Suspended from the ceiling is a grotesque bundle of bulging masses held together with ropes in a style vaguely reminiscent of shibari. Together, these rattling, animatronic beings create an unsettling, ever-changing immersive realm. Visitors are invited to have peculiar, bodily experience, that is, if they can stomach it.
Check out views of the exhibition below.
Exhibition view of “Mire Lee: Black Sun” at the New Museum until September 17, 2023. Photo: Dario Lasagni, courtesy New Museum.
Exhibition view of “Mire Lee: Black Sun” at the New Museum until September 17, 2023. Photo: Dario Lasagni, courtesy New Museum.
Exhibition view of “Mire Lee: Black Sun” at the New Museum until September 17, 2023. Photo: Dario Lasagni, courtesy New Museum.
Exhibition view of “Mire Lee: Black Sun” at the New Museum until September 17, 2023. Photo: Dario Lasagni, courtesy New Museum.
Exhibition view of “Mire Lee: Black Sun” at the New Museum until September 17, 2023. Photo: Dario Lasagni, courtesy New Museum.
Exhibition view of “Mire Lee: Black Sun” at the New Museum until September 17, 2023. Photo: Dario Lasagni, courtesy New Museum.
“Mire Lee: Black Sun” is on view at the New Museum, 235 Bowery, New York, through September 17.
Follow Artnet News on Facebook: Want to stay ahead of the art world? Subscribe to our newsletter to get the breaking news, eye-opening interviews, and incisive critical takes that drive the conversation forward. More

Smack in the middle of Gagosian Beverly Hills right now is a 12-foot cube, its front-facing sides looping snippets upon snippets of moving images. It’s a relentless yet riveting parade of pictures; one moment, we get shots of summer—blue skies, kids by pools—and the next, various images of cats. They speak to a shared human consciousness, containing as they do familiar scenes, and having been pulled from a common source: television commercials. 
Titled Denominator, the work is the latest from Urs Fischer, the Swiss artist whose profound fascination with objects and artifacts has been well-exercised across his practice. His new piece, he said, emerged from his enduring interest in TV advertising and how it has shaped our perceptions. 
“In a way, commercials replace the entire imagery we have,” Fischer told Artnet News. “They create this giant vocabulary. It’s not even our imagery anymore. Our brains are filled with images and memories that are not ours.” 
Installation view of Urs Fischer, Denominator (2023). © Urs Fischer. Photo: Jeff McLane. Courtesy Gagosian.
If that sounds slightly bleak, Fischer is not bothered. Denominator is less concerned about passing comment on cultural or mass consumption than capturing what the artist called the “experience of being exposed to these non-images.” 
Work on the cube began in 2020, when Fischer and his team of collaborators started sourcing TV commercials around the world (notably via YouTube), gathering them manually as there is no library or archive that collects these ads. The heavy lifting of sorting and making sense of this aggregated content, though, was left to a machine-learning model, the same one Fischer used for his 2018 work, PLAY. 
The A.I. was trained to deconstruct these commercials, grouping and sequencing their discrete shots by color and motif (like burgers, say, or cars). These visuals are then displayed in dynamic layers, based on preset variables, across LED screens installed on the sides of Fischer’s towering cube.
As expected with machine intelligence, the resulting “motion patterns,” in the artist’s words, offered some interesting constellations of images, but also drew some inexplicable connections.
Installation view of Urs Fischer, Denominator (2023). © Urs Fischer. Photo: Jeff McLane. Courtesy Gagosian.
“With everything you create, some of it is good, some of it is not so good—it just keeps on churning,” he said of the A.I., further likening the model to an “alien landing on the planet and trying to understand the structure that underlays whatever it’s exposed to.” 
In some ways, Denominator presents a spiritual successor to Fischer’s “CHAOƧ” series (2021) of digital sculptures, which juxtaposed miscellaneous objects, from eggs to chairs to parkas, in surprising ways. His new work travels down a similar path in attempting to locate humanity in the artifacts it’s produced and will ultimately leave behind.  
“It’s pretty crazy,” he noted, “the amount of technology and invention that goes into the simplest things.” 
For the viewers of Denominator—his “visual experience essay”—Fischer is hoping to offer new, sweeping ways of gazing into our collective media and human landscape. It won’t always make for the most serene of experiences, however.  
“What’s interesting is most people are used to seeing edited content, so they might come in and say, ‘What am I seeing now? Why are you showing me such a mess?’” Fischer said.
“But,” he added, “I don’t mind this chaotic part.” 
“Urs Fischer: Denominator” is on view at Gagosian, 456 N. Camden Dr, Beverly Hills, through September 16.

More Trending Stories:  
Nefarious Data Collection Masking as Public Art? An A.I. Company Has Placed Mirrored Spheres Around the World in a Massive Eye-Scanning Project 
A $3 Thrift Store Vase Turns Out to Be a Japanese Cloisonné Masterpiece That Could Rake in More Than $13,000 at Auction 
Is the World Ready for the Chameleonic, Virtuosic Legacy of Artist Juan Pablo Echeverri? Here’s His Story 
Building a Rare Book Collection? Gagosian Has Launched a New Curatorial Service to Help Jumpstart Your Library 
The Remnants of a Bronze Age Ceremony Have Been Discovered at a Construction Site for a Rocket Launch Pad in the U.K. 
‘It Took Forever to Get to Those Pinks’: Here’s How the Set Design Team Behind ‘Barbie’ Brought the Doll’s World to Vibrant Life 
Looking for a Smart Beach Read? Here Are 15 of the Most Gripping New Art-World Books to Crack Open This Summer
Follow Artnet News on Facebook: Want to stay ahead of the art world? Subscribe to our newsletter to get the breaking news, eye-opening interviews, and incisive critical takes that drive the conversation forward. More

Hearing people describe their dreams can be boring, but what if those nighttime escapades were eerily similar to your own? Common themes include running late, being chased, befriending celebrities, or suddenly falling, but do these reveal something about our subconscious selves? A new art project halfdream.org invites users to connect with those who have similar dreams and find out.
The participatory project was first dreamt up by artist Doreen Chan in 2020, in response to the anxiety-inducing, isolating effects of the pandemic as well as political upheaval in her hometown of Hong Kong and Black Lives Matter protests across the globe. “During this time I had extremely intense and vivid dreams every night,” she told Artnet News.
“Dreams aren’t the product of our decisions and efforts, but something personal we can’t control. People who may vehemently disagree with each other on social or ethical issues when awake could dream similarly. Would finding out that their opposition has the same dream change their perspective?”
Halfdream consists not only of a website that invites submissions but also of interactive workshops and a small exhibition of previously shared dreams at Para Site, the leading contemporary art space in Hong Kong, which runs through July 30.
Users logging dreams online are first invited to reflect on their memories during a short meditative exercise before answering a few simple questions like “were you yourself?” and “were there any other characters?” After describing the dream in more detail, users can attach photos, videos or audio clips that are relevant to the dream or even draw an illustration of what happened.
The website promises to anonymously match the user with any other dreamer that shares a similar dream using A.I. If both users are happy to proceed, they will be invited to take part in daily exercises that will reveal any shared experiences or perspectives that may have led to their subconscious to have the same midnight musings. Finally, the users will be given the option to reveal their true identity and perhaps even forge a real life connection with their “dreamate.”
“Dreams contain a lot of deep feelings; they can unfold deep meanings while not limited by country borders, languages, or skin color, and by sharing them anonymously, people can be linked by something deeper,” said Chan. “These initial exchanges may evolve into a comfortable channel for self-expression and peer support.”
More Trending Stories:  
Nefarious Data Collection Masking as Public Art? An A.I. Company Has Placed Mirrored Spheres Around the World in a Massive Eye-Scanning Project 
A $3 Thrift Store Vase Turns Out to Be a Japanese Cloisonné Masterpiece That Could Rake in More Than $13,000 at Auction 
Is the World Ready for the Chameleonic, Virtuosic Legacy of Artist Juan Pablo Echeverri? Here’s His Story 
Building a Rare Book Collection? Gagosian Has Launched a New Curatorial Service to Help Jumpstart Your Library 
The Remnants of a Bronze Age Ceremony Have Been Discovered at a Construction Site for a Rocket Launch Pad in the U.K. 
‘It Took Forever to Get to Those Pinks’: Here’s How the Set Design Team Behind ‘Barbie’ Brought the Doll’s World to Vibrant Life 
Looking for a Smart Beach Read? Here Are 15 of the Most Gripping New Art-World Books to Crack Open This Summer 
 
Follow Artnet News on Facebook: Want to stay ahead of the art world? Subscribe to our newsletter to get the breaking news, eye-opening interviews, and incisive critical takes that drive the conversation forward. More