On View

One of the best parts about summer art exhibitions is that many offer opportunities to spend time outdoors.
One of the season’s most exciting shows for this kind of escape—to take in beautiful artwork in an even more beautiful setting—is the Clark Institute’s “Ground/work,” which welcomes visitors to the sprawling grounds of the Berkshires-based museum in Williamstown, Massachusetts.
The show, the museum notes, highlights “a reverence for nature and a desire to further enliven the surrounding trails, pastures, and woods” of the property, and brings together bold, colorful installations from six contemporary female artists: Kelly Akashi, Nairy Baghramian, Jennie C. Jones, Analia Saban, Haegue Yang, and Eva LeWitt. All of the artists planned their works in response to sites they chose by hand, each of which are scattered about the Clark’s massive 140-acre campus. The works were also planned with the changing landscape—and visitors hoping to escape into the bucolic wilds of the Berkshires—in mind.
“Ground/work,” according to the museum, “highlights the balance between fragility and resilience that both nature and the passage of time reveal, while offering fresh experiences with every visit.” The works were conceived in part as a way to help visitors re-enter the world again, following a long year of isolation, and gently encourages them to re-engage with themes like the comforts of nature and community.
One of the most striking works in the show is perhaps Eva LeWitt’s Resin Towers (2020), which were assembled by the New York-based artist from tall pieces of colorful plastic in hues like fluorescent orange, yellow, and light aqua, and cast in layers of transparent resin. Together, the pieces create a pattern of expanding and contracting spheres as the viewer approaches the works or moves further away, depending on where they stand. The work was also planned to interact with particular elements of the landscape (including the sky, woods, grass, and light) and time of day, morphing as time passes, and seems to twirl more and more quickly as viewers approach it as if to “call them down the hill and beckon visitors to their site.”
The works, which in many ways celebrate the “purity of hue against an ever-shifting landscape,” according to the museum, will be on view until October 17. See images of the show below.
Eva LeWitt, “Resin Towers” (2020). Photo courtesy of the artist and VI, VII, Oslo. Photo: Thomas Clark.
A closeup of one of LeWitt’s “Resin Towers” (2020. Photo courtesy of the artist and VI, VII, Oslo. Photo: Thomas Clark.
LeWitt with her artwork. Photo courtesy Eva Lewitt.
A closeup of one of LeWitt’s “Resin Towers” (2020. Photo courtesy of the artist and VI, VII, Oslo. Photo: Thomas Clark.
One of LeWitt’s “Resin Towers” (2020. Photo courtesy of the artist and VI, VII, Oslo. Photo: Thomas Clark.
Eva LeWitt, “Resin Towers” (2020). Photo courtesy of the artist and VI, VII, Oslo. Photo: Thomas Clark.
Eva LeWitt, “Resin Towers” (2020). Photo courtesy of the artist and VI, VII, Oslo. Photo: Thomas Clark.
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It’s hard to think of an artist whose work is more visually pleasing than that of British artist Bridget Riley. The Op Art painter is known for her eye-catching canvases featuring geometric patterns, lines, and color arrangements that collectively pay homage to her favorite artist, the Pointillist Georges Seurat.
“The eye can travel over the surface in a way parallel to the way it moves over nature. It should feel caressed and soothed, experience frictions and ruptures, glide and drift,” she once said of her work. “One moment, there will be nothing to look at and the next second the canvas seems to refill, to be crowded with visual events.”
Bianca Jagger at “Bridget Riley: Past Into Present” at David Zwirner. Photo courtesy David Zwirner.
In one of summer’s boldest exhibitions, David Zwirner has presented “Past Into Present,” an exhibition of paintings by Riley that features works from the past two years. Together, they reference “the work of the past, both in her own practice and in the art of painting itself,” according to the gallery.
The exhibition features, among other works, an an extension of Riley’s “Measure for Measure” series, which includes the addition of a fourth color (turquoise), as well as a series of new “Measure for Measure Dark” paintings, which emphasizes deeper tones. The artworks are intended to “enrich the viewer’s enjoyment,” notes the gallery, “giving them something more to look at.”
The exhibition is on view now at David Zwirner’s Grafton Street gallery in London, and online here.
Bridget Riley, Intervals 12 (2021). Photo courtesy David Zwirner.
A close up of Bridget Riley, Intervals 12 (2021). Photo courtesy David Zwirner.
Installation view of Bridget Riley’s Measure for Measure Dark 2 and 3 (2019). Photo courtesy David Zwirner.
An installation view of Riley’s exhibition “Past into Present” at David Zwirner in London. Photo courtesy David Zwirner.
An installation view of Riley’s exhibition “Past into Present” at David Zwirner in London. Photo courtesy David Zwirner.
An installation view of Riley’s exhibition “Past into Present” at David Zwirner in London. Photo courtesy David Zwirner.
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Artist Jason Martin’s work has long captured the attention of viewers for the almost sculptural effect produced by the painter’s thick strokes of impasto. Each of his horizontal bands, which mimic the effect of canyon striations, challenge one’s perception of dimensionality by appearing to reach beyond the plane of the work itself. 
While Martin, who studied at Goldsmith’s College in London in the early 1990s, has in past exhibitions adhered to more neutral color palettes in order to emphasize his work’s textural scapes, he is exploring bold new territory now, as illustrated in his latest show, “Space, Light, Time” at Lisson Gallery Shanghai, which opened earlier this month and is on view through late August.
The work marks an exciting new chapter for the artist, who sought to return to the fundamentals of painting while in his studio in Portugal during much of 2020. It consists of a series of bold new shapes and bolder colors, partly inspired by Yves Klein and Lucio Fontana—two artists who played a key role in this shift for the artist.
In the space, Martin’s round works in oriental blue and cobalt violet assume center stage on the gallery’s first and second walls, while further back in the later rooms, one can see an ultramarine blue tondo followed by a series of neon pink and scarlet canvases. The works, the gallery notes, “illustrate the core of Martin’s practice, yet [also] depict the ever-evolving pursuit of an artist exploring new and unique ways to handle the medium and the scenes that emerge.”
In many ways, Martin’s hypnotic, colorful forms emit a more energetic, joyful sense of aliveness than his previous work, employing for the first time, too, mirrored surfaces using metallics like gold, silver, copper, and nickel in some of the works. All are meant to inspire, according to the gallery, “a desire to escape the melancholy and start anew.”
To view Martin’s works, check out images of the show below and on the gallery’s website. 
Installation view of Jason Martin’s “Space, Light, Time” at Lisson Gallery. Photo courtesy Lisson Gallery.
Installation view of Jason Martin’s “Space, Light, Time” at Lisson Gallery Shanghai. Photo courtesy Lisson Gallery.
James Martin, Untitled (Quinacridone scarlet) (2021). Photo courtesy Lisson Gallery.
Installation view of Jason Martin’s Untitled (Fluorescent pink / Titanium white) (2021). Photo courtesy Lisson Gallery.
A closeup of Jason Martin’s Untitled (Fluorescent flame red / Rosso laccato) (2021). Photo courtesy Lisson Gallery.
Jason Martin, Untitled (Ultramarine blue) (2021). Photo courtesy Lisson Gallery.
Jason Martin, Untitled (Ultramarine blue) (2021). Photo courtesy Lisson Gallery.
Jason Martin, Untitled (Cobalt violet) (2021). Photo courtesy Lisson Gallery.
Jason Martin, Untitled (Permanent red) (2021). Photo courtesy Lisson Gallery.
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Last week, as the streets of Chelsea were bathed in the golden light of early evening, a line wrapped around the block as creative types queued up to be admitted to the night’s hottest event. It wasn’t a restaurant or club, it was the opening of “Social Works,” a group exhibition at Gagosian’s West 24th Street gallery.
Curated by writer and newly appointed Gagosian director Antwaun Sargent, “Social Works” features art by Kenturah Davis, Theaster Gates, Titus Kaphar, Rick Lowe, Carrie Mae Weems, and others, all of whom in some way reflect on Black communities and social engagement.
“Given the last year of the pandemic and protest and the history in which Black artists operate, the work does more than just sit quietly on the wall,” Sargent told the New York Times.
Christie Neptune, Untitled (2021).© Christie Neptune. Courtesy of the artist and Grant Wahlquist Gallery, Portland, Maine, and Gagosian.
Linda Goode Bryant, founder of the gallery Just Above Midtown and Project EATS, an urban farming organization, grew vegetables in the gallery and a video made in collaboration with architect Elizabeth Diller titled Are we really that different? (2021).
Theaster Gates, meanwhile, pays homage to DJ Frankie Knuckles, the “Godfather of house music” and an icon of the Black and queer music scenes of the 1980s. Rick Lowe, founder of the Project Row Houses organization in Texas, presents a new series of works documenting the Tulsa Race Massacre.
See more images of the show below.
“Social Works,” installation view, 2021. Artworks © artists. Photo: Rob McKeever. Courtesy Gagosian.
Alexandria Smith, Iterations of a galaxy beyond the pedestal, (2021). © Alexandria Smith. Photo: Prudence Cuming Associates. Courtesy the artist and Gagosian.
“Social Works,” installation view, 2021. Artworks © artists. Photo: Rob McKeever. Courtesy Gagosian.
Carrie Mae Weems, The British Museum (2006–). © Carrie Mae Weems. Courtesy of the artist and Jack Shainman Gallery, New York and Gagosian.
Rick Lowe, Black Wall Street Journey #5 (2021). © Rick Lowe Studio. Photo: Thomas Dubrock. Courtesy of the artist and Gagosian.
“Social Works,” installation view, 2021. Artworks © artists. Photo: Rob McKeever. Courtesy Gagosian.
Lauren Halsey, black history wall of respect (II) (2021). © Lauren Halsey. Photo: Rob McKeever. Courtesy of the artist, David Kordansky Gallery, and Gagosian.
Kenturah Davis, the bodily effect of a color (sam) (2021). © Kenturah Davis. Photo: Fredrik Nilsen Studio. Courtesy of the artist, Matthew Brown Los Angeles, and Gagosian.
Theaster Gates, A Song for Frankie (2017–21). © Theaster Gates. Photo: Rob McKeever. Courtesy Gaosian.
“Social Works,” installation view, 2021. Artworks © artists. Photo: Rob McKeever. Courtesy Gagosian.
“Social Works” is on view through August 13 at Gagosian, 555 West 24th Street. 
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In 1883, Vincent Van Gogh gave a friend a book about French peasants. More than 135 years later, researchers discovered that the novel contained another present, too: a handmade bookmark, featuring a series of early sketches by the Dutch artist. 
Made when the artist was still in his late 20s, the three drawings are laid out on a single strip of paper. Each depicts a single figure—perhaps peasants inspired by those in the book.
Now, for the first time, the drawings are on public view in “Here to Stay,” an exhibition at the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam that’s comprised of artworks and other artifacts that have entered the institution’s collection over the past decade. 
“Relatively very few drawings from Van Gogh’s early period survive, although we know he must have made hundreds,” Teio Meedendorp, a senior researcher at the museum, said in a statement. “Small informal sketches like these—they are really tiny—are even more scarce, and practically limited to letter sketches.”
Meedendorp added that the drawings were likely completed at the end of 1881 when the artist was living in his parents’ village, Etten. The strip, the researcher went on, “gives an idea of Van Gogh’s quick scribbling capacities, and the item as such is a rare tangible witness of his reading habits: a personalized bookmarker.”
Three recently-discovered sketches made by Vincent Van Gogh circa 1881. Courtesy of the Van Gogh Museum.
The drawings were found in a copy of Histoire d’un Paysan, an illustrated novel about the French Revolution told through the perspective of a peasant, according to Martin Bailey, a Van Gogh specialist who first reported the news in The Art Newspaper. Van Gogh gave the book to fellow Dutch artist Anthon van Rappard in 1883.
“I do think you’ll find the Erckmann-Chatrian beautiful,” Van Gogh wrote in a missive to van Rappard that same year, referring to the book’s authors, Emile Erckmann and Alexandre Chatrian.
After van Rappard died in 1892, the book was passed on to his wife. It stayed with her family for generations, until 2019, when it was sold to the Van Gogh Museum.
“The drawings date from the early months of Van Gogh’s serious efforts to become an artist,”  Bailey told Artnet News in an email. “They are sketchy and slightly crude works, but are nevertheless highly revealing. They emphasize his interest in depicting the human figure and his interest in the lives of the peasants in the village where his parents were living.”
Shortly after Van Gogh mailed the book, van Rappard visited him in the Dutch town of Nuenen. There, Van Gogh sketched a portrait of his friend—the largest such drawing he’s believed to have made. 
However, the duo’s friendship dissolved shortly thereafter, when van Rappard criticized Van Gogh’s 1885 lithograph of The Potato Eaters. Angered by the perceived betrayal, Van Gogh sliced the portrait he had made of van Rappard in half. Today, only the top register of the drawing remains. 
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We have art for the eyes and music for the ears, but what about about creative stimuli for our sense of smell?
A new show at Phillips auction house in Paris is addressing this question through a new show of olfactory sculptures by six artists, including Joana Vasconcelos and Adel Abdessemed, which incorporate uniquely created fragrances by perfumers.
“Profile By” is the fruit of an exploration by fragrance expert Diane Thalheimer, who invited each artist to team up with a perfumer to develop a fragrance and embed it into an artwork. She shared her idea with the fragrance production company International Flavors and Fragrances (IFF), which agreed to pair six of its perfumers with the artists selected by Thalheimer. Strangely, Vasconcelos is the only woman artist included in the project. Thalheimer later approached Phillips, which offered to host the exhibition in its venue.
“I chose artists who have strong personalities and a distinctive approach towards making art because that means their olfactory identity will be stronger,” Thalheimer told Artnet News. She then interviewed each artist to unravel their “olfactory identity” before matching each of them with an IFF perfumer.
Joana Vasconcelos. Photo: Kyla Rosselli.
Vasconcelos conveys in her scent, titled Lança, her interest in well-being and yoga. Her collaborator, perfumer Anne Flipo, sought to translate the seven chakras into an incense-based fragrance, which is diffused via Vasconcelos’s small, cross-shaped white ceramics decorated with brightly colored crochet.
“We had Zoom meetings every week to discuss the fragrance and we met in Paris so I could understand the world of fragrances [by visiting the IFF laboratory],” Vasconcelos, who represented Portugal at the 2013 Venice Biennale, said of the collaboration.
The experience of incorporating the sense of smell into her work has led Vasconcelos, who has exhibited monumental works at the Château de Versailles and the Bon Marché department store, to contemplate sculpture differently. “Normally my pieces are very large and occupy a space. Here, the sculptures are small and it is the fragrance that fills the volume of the space instead,” she said. Vasconcelos intends to incorporate scent-filled sculptures into her exhibition at the chapel Sainte-Chapelle de Vincennes in France next year.
The exhibition also highlights the importance of smell at a time when many people are losing it. “My cousin is one of many people who lost his sense of smell after contracting COVID-19,” Vasconcelos said.
Pablo Reinoso. Photo: Kyla Rosselli.
Meanwhile, French-Argentine artist Pablo Reinoso, who has designed fragrance bottles in the past, collaborated with perfumer Domitille Michalon Bertier to develop a fresh, woody scent that is diffused through the enamel part of his spiraling wooden sculpture, Rocking Me.
“I’ve worked on creating fragrances for Givenchy but this is the first time that I’ve developed something about my own taste and not strategically for the consumer,” Reinoso said. “My concept is that rocking the sculpture activates the fragrance.”
The most sensual piece is perhaps Abdessemed’s Noli me tangere—a ball containing an oriental rose fragrance balanced under a ceramic-and-plaster white sculpture of a woman’s foot. “When he smelled the rose [note], he immediately thought of a woman’s foot and envisioned seeing a woman that he can’t reach,” perfumer Paul Guerlain explained.
Adel Abdessamed Photo: Kyla Rosselli.
French sculptor and designer Hubert Le Gall is so enthusiastic about the project that he included his fragrance-embedded pieces in his current exhibition “Greek Fantasy” at Villa Kérylos in the south of France. He worked with Jean-Christophe Hérault on the aromatic fragrance inspired by the Greek god of wine, Dionysus, which is diffused through a vase pierced by a branch with glass beads.
Each sculpture is produced in an edition of 15 to 50, with prices ranging from €4,000 to €14,000 ($4,800 to $16,900).
“Profile By” is on view at Phillips, 46 Rue du Bac, 75007 Paris, until June 24, 2021.

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A life-sized marble skull that has for centuries sat in plain sight at a German castle turns out to actually be the work of artist Gian Lorenzo Bernini.
The skull, sculpted from white Carrara marble, was on display at Schloss Pillnitz, a palace south of Dresden until curator Claudia Kryza-Gersch had it sent to the State Art Collections of Dresden for restoration. There, she and other researchers puzzled over its origin. 
“Everybody had the same reaction to it,” Kryza-Gersch told the Art Newspaper. “We were standing around a table, looking at it. The question of course was—who made it? And since it has Roman provenance, someone jokingly said ‘maybe it’s a Bernini?’”
In fact, further research revealed that the skull was indeed made by the Italian master for Pope Alexander VII in the mid-17th century. “Our jokes were proven right,” the curator said.
Gian Lorenzo Bernini, Skull (1655). © SKD. Photo: Oliver Killig.
The skull went on view under the artist’s name for the first time today in “Bernini, the Pope and Death,” an exhibition at the State Art Collections.
Kryza-Gersch and her team found that, just days after being appointed, in 1655, Alexander VII—who was born Fabio Chigi—commissioned Bernini to make both the marble skull and a lead sarcophagus. The objects, morbid reminders of death’s close presence, would live on the Pope’s desk and under his bed. 
They soon proved prophetic: A year later, a plague hit Italy, killing hundreds of thousands of people across the country. Rome, however, was among the least impacted cities as Alexander VII ordered a series of effective restrictions that will surely sound familiar today: quarantines, masks, and lockdowns. 
Guido Ubaldo Abbatini, Pope Alexander VII with Bernini’s skull (1655-56). © Art Collection of the Sovereign Order of Malta, Rome. Photo: Nicusor Floroaica.
Following Alexander VII’s death in 1667, the skull remained in the Chigi family’s collection until 1728, when it was purchased along with a trove of 164 other antique sculptures and four contemporary artworks, by Augustus the Strong. It was thereafter transferred to Dresden. 
Also included in the the current Dresden exhibition is a 1655-56 portrait of Alexander VII, shown with his hand atop the skull, painted by Bernini’s pupil Guido Ubaldo Abbatini.
“Bernini, the Pope and Death” is on view at the State Art Collections of Dresden now through September 5, 2021.
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After more than a year working in isolation, Sean Scully decided to go in the opposite direction. He swung open the doors of his studio to invite art lovers in. The Irish-American artist’s latest exhibition, “12 Black Windows,” takes place in two parts—at Lisson Gallery’s space on 24th Street and Scully’s own Chelsea workspace. (Visits can be scheduled here). 
Inside the studio, one encounters The 12 (2020), a 12-panel grouping of new paintings in his ongoing “Landline” series. They range from joyous to somber in their tones and seem to echo the range of emotions felt over the past year, from tragedy to jubilation and relief.
Though these works still engage the alternating bands of color that have defined “Landline” series since Scully began it over 20 years ago, they are rooted in the experiences of the global pandemic, quarantine, Black Lives Matter protests, and mass uncertainty that Scully experienced firsthand in New York. In the studio, the works occupy their own room and act almost like sentries at a fortified structure or pillars in a temple, conferring a sense of gravity in opposition to the unpredictability of the outside world. 
“The world in which we live, the existential threat from COVID, and the environmental problems we face have influenced me greatly in my art,” the artist said in a statement.
In the gallery, the exhibition continues with Dark Windows (2020), a suite of five works created at the height of the pandemic. Here, Scully introduces a new element, the seemingly sinister black square—an allusion to Malevich’s 1915 Black Box. The shape—which evokes censors, stunned silence, and even “Blackout Tuesday” Instagram posts—represents a departure for Scully, whose work normally calls to mind open landscapes and horizon lines.
“There is no doubt that they are a response to the pandemic and to what mankind has been doing to nature,” Scully said. “What really strikes me as tragic is that what is a relief for nature is a torment for us. And what is a pleasure for us is a torment for nature. That seems to be the conundrum that we’ve got ourselves into.”
See the installation of “12 Black Windows” and get an inside look at the show below.

“Sean Scully: 12 Black Windows” is on view at Lisson Gallery through June 18, 2021.
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