On View

A long-awaited public artwork by critically acclaimed artist David Hammons is finally on the verge of its official unveiling, and as workers complete the finishing touches on the installation, the piece can already be seen by eagle-eyed art lovers on the water’s edge across from New York’s Whitney Museum of American Art.
Seven years in the making, Day’s End (2021) will open to the public on Sunday, May 16, during a “community day” for the institution. Admission to the museum will be free from 10:30 a.m. to 6 p.m. Capacity is limited, but there will be family programming in outdoor spaces, as well as a bilingual kids’ activity guide to the new work.
David Hammons, Day’s End (2021) at the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York. Photo by Eileen Kinsella.
The permanent artwork takes the ghostly shape of the 325-foot-long, 52-foot-tall shed that formerly stood on Pier 52, off the Gansevoort Peninsula, the only remaining section of Manhattan’s old 13th Avenue. It is Hammons’s tribute to Gordon Matta-Clark (1943–1978), who in 1975 reclaimed the old abandoned shed as a work of art, using a blow torch to carve five holes into the structure’s walls to create a “sun and water temple.”
The city tried to sue Matta-Clark for the unauthorized artwork—also titled Day’s End—but ultimately dropped the charges. The building, which was in its latter years an illicit meeting place for the gay community, was later demolished.
Gordon Matta-Clark, Day’s End (Pier 52) (Exterior with Ice), 1975, created by slicing holes in the exterior of a shed on Manhattan’s Pier 52. Photo courtesy of the Estate of Gordon Matta-Clark, Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York.
Hammons pitched the idea to the Whitney in 2014 in an unconventional manner. Shortly after visiting the institution ahead of its public opening that year, the artist sent the museum a pencil sketch showing the outline of a building floating above the Hudson. He did not include a letter, only the caption “Monument to Gordon Matta-Clark” in block letters under the drawing.
“During his tour, while gazing out the west-facing windows toward the Hudson River, I had made an off-hand comment that artist Gordon Matta-Clark’s notorious and now legendary artwork entitled Day’s End (1975) was once located on the waterfront across the way,” Adam D. Weinberg, the museum’s  director, wrote in a recent essay on the Whitney website. “In retrospect, I now realize that Hammons was more captivated by the waterfront than by the museum’s magnificent fifth-floor galleries in which he stood.”
Yet the artist didn’t recreate the structure with the hefty girders that were used when it was first built in the 19th century.
“[Hammons] desired the frame to be as thin as possible so that it would appear like his sketch: evanescent, fugitive (in both senses of the word), and ephemeral, suspended in space,” Weinberg wrote.
The result is something of an apparition, becoming more or less visible depending on the weather and time of day.
A rendering of the new Hudson River Park on Gansevoort Peninsula, with David Hammons’s Day’s End. Image courtesy of James Corner Field Operations.
The Whitney has overseen the construction of Day’s End (2021), and will be responsible for its upkeep, but is donating the work to the Hudson River Park Trust as part of the terms of the Hudson River Park Act legislation that approved its creation.
There are plans to turn Gansevoort Peninsula into a park with picnic tables, kayak slips, a lawn, a sports field, and Manhattan’s first public beach, which will be located underneath Day’s End. Construction will begin this spring.
See more photos of the site under construction and renderings below.
David Hammons, Day’s End (2021) at the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York. Photo by Eileen Kinsella.
David Hammons, Day’s End (rendering). Image courtesy of Guy Nordenson and Associates.
A rendering of David Hammons’s homage to Gordon Matta-Clark Day’s End (rendering). Image courtesy of Guy Nordenson and Associates.
David Hammons, Day’s End (rendering). Image courtesy of Guy Nordenson and Associates.
David Hammons, Day’s End (rendering). Image courtesy of Guy Nordenson and Associates.
David Hammons, Day’s End (rendering). Image courtesy of Guy Nordenson and Associates.
David Hammons, Day’s End (rendering). Image courtesy of Guy Nordenson and Associates.
A rendering of the new Hudson River Park on Gansevoort Peninsula, with David Hammons’s Day’s End seen with Manhattan’s first public beach. Image courtesy of James Corner Field Operations.
A rendering of the new Hudson River Park on Gansevoort Peninsula, with David Hammons’s Day’s End seen with Manhattan’s first public beach. Image courtesy of James Corner Field Operations.
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In the 1985 film Sesame Street Presents: Follow That Bird, Big Bird gets kidnapped by a traveling circus. Its owners paint him blue, cage him, and force him to sing the song “I’m So Blue” for their audience.
Thankfully, Big Bird seems to have made his escape in Alex Da Corte‘s new roof garden commission for the Metropolitan Museum of Art. He perches in all his feathered glory atop a crescent moon and clutches a ladder as he floats through space, balanced atop a fully functioning Alexander Calder-style mobile. The ladder suggests that he is not stranded, and that he has the ability to end his isolation.
“It’s a surrogate for where we are collectively at this moment, kind of contemplating a future and not knowing what we’re facing—really, a sense of vulnerability,” Shanay Jhaveri, the museum’s assistant curator of international Modern and contemporary art, told Artnet News. “It’s about this idea of looking out at new horizons.”
The sculpture, As Long as the Sun Lasts, is named for a Italo Calvino’s short story about intergalactic travelers searching for a planet to call home.
Alex Da Corte, As Long as the Sun Lasts for the 2021 Roof Garden Commission at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, installation view (detail). Photo by Hyla Skopitz, courtesy of the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
“Alex began the project at the height of the pandemic,” Jhaveri said. “He thought the work should speak to the future and also encapsulate our own sense of vulnerability and confronting uncertainty.”
The 40-year-old artist chose to paint Big Bird’s feathers blue not only because of the Sesame Street film, but also in reference to the Muppet’s Brazilian cousin, Garibaldo, who Da Corte watched as a child in Venezuela, as well as the color’s traditional associations with sadness.
The piece’s melancholic feel is offset with a sense of whimsy, with the base of the mobile built to look like the interlocking plastic walls of a Little Tykes Outdoor Activity Gym—another ’80s relic. It’s signed with Da Corte’s take on Calder’s signature monogram, and the number 69, in reference to the year of the moon landing, the first episode of Sesame Street, and when Da Corte’s father immigrated to the U.S.
Alex Da Corte, As Long as the Sun Lasts for the 2021 Roof Garden Commission at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, installation view (detail). Photo by Hyla Skopitz, courtesy of the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
“Alex wanted to touch upon the liveliness and the unpredictability that is so much at the heart of Calder’s practice, but also the playfulness,” Jhaveri said.
Fabricating the piece was a challenge, from producing Big Bird’s 7,000 individually placed aluminum feathers to achieving the perfect balance of the mobile, which spins gently in the breeze.
“It was very important that it had to move, but not be mechanized,” Jhaveri said. “It had to be something that  responded to the air currents and moved intermittently, because in life, things happen intermittently—it’s not instant.”
See more photos of the work below.
Alex Da Corte, As Long as the Sun Lasts for the 2021 Roof Garden Commission at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, installation view. Photo by Anna-Marie Kellen, courtesy of the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Alex Da Corte, As Long as the Sun Lasts for the 2021 Roof Garden Commission at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, installation view. Photo by Anna-Marie Kellen, courtesy of the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Alex Da Corte, As Long as the Sun Lasts for the 2021 Roof Garden Commission at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, installation view (detail). Photo by Anna-Marie Kellen, courtesy of the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Alex Da Corte, As Long as the Sun Lasts for the 2021 Roof Garden Commission at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, installation view (detail). Photo by Hyla Skopitz, courtesy of the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Alex Da Corte, As Long as the Sun Lasts for the 2021 Roof Garden Commission at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, installation view. Photo by Anna-Marie Kellen, courtesy of the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Alex Da Corte, As Long as the Sun Lasts for the 2021 Roof Garden Commission at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, installation view (detail). Photo by Hyla Skopitz, courtesy of the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Alex Da Corte, As Long as the Sun Lasts for the 2021 Roof Garden Commission at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, installation view (detail). Photo by Hyla Skopitz, courtesy of the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Alex Da Corte, As Long as the Sun Lasts for the 2021 Roof Garden Commission at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, installation view. Photo by Anna-Marie Kellen, courtesy of the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Alex Da Corte, As Long as the Sun Lasts for the 2021 Roof Garden Commission at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, installation view (detail). Photo by Hyla Skopitz, courtesy of the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Alex Da Corte, As Long as the Sun Lasts for the 2021 Roof Garden Commission at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, installation view. Photo by Hyla Skopitz, courtesy of the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Alex Da Corte, As Long as the Sun Lasts for the 2021 Roof Garden Commission at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, installation view (detail). Photo by Hyla Skopitz, courtesy of the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Alex Da Corte, As Long as the Sun Lasts for the 2021 Roof Garden Commission at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, installation view (detail). Photo by Anna-Marie Kellen, courtesy of the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Alex Da Corte, As Long as the Sun Lasts for the 2021 Roof Garden Commission at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, installation view (detail). Photo by Anna-Marie Kellen, courtesy of the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Alex Da Corte, As Long as the Sun Lasts for the 2021 Roof Garden Commission at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, installation view. Photo by Anna-Marie Kellen, courtesy of the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Alex Da Corte, As Long as the Sun Lasts for the 2021 Roof Garden Commission at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, installation view (detail). Photo by Anna-Marie Kellen, courtesy of the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Alex Da Corte, As Long as the Sun Lasts for the 2021 Roof Garden Commission at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, installation view. Photo by Hyla Skopitz, courtesy of the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Alex Da Corte, As Long as the Sun Lasts for the 2021 Roof Garden Commission at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, installation view (detail). Photo by Hyla Skopitz, courtesy of the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
“The Roof Garden Commission: Alex Da Corte, As Long as the Sun Lasts” is on view at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1000 Fifth Avenue, New York, April 16–October 31, 2021. 
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When artist and filmmaker Lynn Hershman Leeson was five months into her pregnancy in 1965, she developed breathing problems stemming from cardiomyopathy, and was forced to finish out her nine months confined to the hospital, living inside an oxygen tank. Spending most of her days alone in the hospital, the artist became acutely aware of her fragile state.
“When you are experiencing the threat of death, you become so aware of time,” Leeson says in an exclusive interview with Art21 as part of the New York Close Up series, “that’s really a gift, to become so sick early in my life.”
In the interview, which premiered as part of the tenth season of Art21’s show Art in the Twenty First Century, Leeson recounts her early work in the 1960s and ’70s, and how it was inspired by her health problems.
During her recovery, Leeson took a night course in wax casting at UCLA, where she began creating casts of her own face. As her breathing improved, she decided to add a sound element to the resulting works. “When you’re so isolated, you hear more,” she tells Art21. Ultimately, the wax sculptures featured both sounds of the artist’s breathing and dialogue.
When the artist was invited to show in a group exhibition at UCLA, she included a selection of the talking wax sculptures, which proved unnerving to observers. “Within two days, the museum closed the show. They said ‘Media isn’t art.’ ‘Sound isn’t art.’”
Production still from the Art21 “Extended Play” film, “Lynn Hershman Leeson: Drawing Breath.” © Art21, Inc. 2021.
But that institutional rejection actually prompted Leeson to keep working. She describes the experience as “the best thing that happened to me,” adding, “the cultural experience of having your voice suppressed has made having a voice really important to what I do.”
In June 2021, the New Museum in Manhattan will present the first solo museum exhibition of the artist’s wide-ranging video and sound work in “Lynn Hershman Leeson: Twisted.”

Watch the video, which originally appeared as part of Art21’s New York Close Up series, below. The brand new 10th season of the show is available now at Art21.org. The artist’s solo exhibition, “Lynn Hershman Leeson: Twisted” will be on view at the New Museum from June 2021.
[embedded content]
This is an installment of “Art on Video,” a collaboration between Artnet News and Art21 that brings you clips of newsmaking artists. A new series of the nonprofit Art21’s flagship series Art in the Twenty-First Century is available now on PBS. Catch all episodes of other series like New York Close Up and Extended Play and learn about the organization’s educational programs at Art21.org.

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Museums are generally secure spaces, hermetically sealed off from the outside world and its fluctuating temperature, humidity, and light—not to mention its winds, rains, and wandering birds.
But the Danish–Icelandic artist Olafur Eliasson has removed those barriers in an ambitious new project at the Fondation Beyeler in Basel.
For the project, titled Life, Eliasson has flooded the museum’s outdoor pond, letting it flow inside by having the institution’s exterior glass facade removed.
The museum, now only a shell, is left open to the elements—and it is also open to visitors around the clock, day and night, until July.
The artwork “is never the same and it will continue to transform throughout the duration of the exhibition,” Sam Keller, the director of the Fondation Beyeler, told Artnet News.
“What is surprising is the great variations of emotions, reflections, and interactions of visitors… The [health] crisis has revealed new layers of meaning and has made obvious how strongly our lives are entangled with other humans and non-humans alike.”
The show (which features uranine, a non-toxic dye and compound the artist first used in 1998, when he poured it into various rivers) looks a bit like a wet reinterpretation of the artist’s acclaimed exhibition at the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art in Denmark in 2014, where he redrew the museum by installing a stoney riverbed inside.
In Basel, a breeze blows through Renzo Piano’s building from the museum’s gardens, as dwarf water lilies, shellflowers, and water ferns float in bright green water throughout the space.
After a year in which much of the Western art world spent its time living behind screens, the shows offers a visceral experience to those who can attend.
But it also gives those still mostly engaging with art online—such as this writer—a chance to see the show by way of five live-streams.
By blending the boundaries between the virtual and the actual, Eliasson said the exhibition becomes more visibly entangled with the world: “This entanglement is our way of being.”
See more images of the show below.
Olafur Eliasson, Life (2021). Installation view: Fondation Beyeler, Riehen/Basel, (2021). Courtesy of the artist; neugerriemschneider, Berlin; Tanya Bonakdar Gallery, New York / Los Angeles. © 2021 Olafur Eliasson. Photo: Pati Grabowicz
Olafur Eliasson, Life (2021). Installation view: Fondation Beyeler, Riehen/Basel, (2021). Courtesy of the artist; neugerriemschneider, Berlin; Tanya Bonakdar Gallery, New York / Los Angeles. © 2021 Olafur Eliasson. Photo: Pati Grabowicz
Olafur Eliasson, Life (2021). Installation view: Fondation Beyeler, Riehen/Basel, (2021). Courtesy of the artist; neugerriemschneider, Berlin; Tanya Bonakdar Gallery, New York / Los Angeles. © 2021 Olafur Eliasson. Photo: Mark Niedermann.
Olafur Eliasson, Life (2021). Installation view: Fondation Beyeler, Riehen/Basel, (2021). Courtesy of the artist; neugerriemschneider, Berlin; Tanya Bonakdar Gallery, New York / Los Angeles. © 2021 Olafur Eliasson. Photo: Pati Grabowicz
Olafur Eliasson, Life (2021). Installation view: Fondation Beyeler, Riehen/Basel, (2021). Courtesy of the artist; neugerriemschneider, Berlin; Tanya Bonakdar Gallery, New York / Los Angeles. © 2021 Olafur Eliasson. Photo: Pati Grabowicz
Olafur Eliasson, Life (2021). Installation view: Fondation Beyeler, Riehen/Basel, (2021). Courtesy of the artist; neugerriemschneider, Berlin; Tanya Bonakdar Gallery, New York / Los Angeles. © 2021 Olafur Eliasson. Photo: Pati Grabowicz
Olafur Eliasson, Life (2021). Installation view: Fondation Beyeler, Riehen/Basel, (2021). Courtesy of the artist; neugerriemschneider, Berlin; Tanya Bonakdar Gallery, New York / Los Angeles. © 2021 Olafur Eliasson. Photo: Mark Niedermann.
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Why bright colors? Why geometric forms? What is beauty? 
These are all questions that painter Loie Hollowell poses to herself and strives to answer with her work, which is (of course) all of those things: brightly colored, geometric, and handsome.
The artist, who gave birth to her second child during the pandemic, spoke to Art21 in an exclusive interview as part of the “New York Close Up” series about how her painting was changed by her pregnancy.
“My work is an expression of my core sensuality,” Hollowell said. “I’m a body experiencing desire, experiencing pleasure… It is sensual and needy and dirty and expressive.” 
In the video, Hollowell describes the experience of choosing to have an abortion in her late 20s, and the tumult of conflicting emotions and the bodily transformation.
Production still from the Art21 “New York Close Up” film, “Loie Hollowell’s Transcendent Bodies.” © Art21, Inc. 2021.
As a child, Hollowell grew up in the midst of the Light and Space movement in California, where artists were invested in using light to manipulate environments and perceptions.
Those influences come to bear in Hollowell’s work, though she manages to conjure the same effects on a canvas instead of in the wider world.
“What I love about having a painting that, in reality, is a sculpture, is that it changes within each context, within each space that it’s hung,” she says.
“There’s always that hunting, that searching for a light-filled experience,” she tells Art21.
Watch the video, which originally appeared as part of Art21’s New York Close Up series, below. The brand new 10th season of the show is available now at Art21.org. 
[embedded content]
This is an installment of “Art on Video,” a collaboration between Artnet News and Art21 that brings you clips of newsmaking artists. A new series of the nonprofit Art21’s flagship series Art in the Twenty-First Century is available now on PBS. Catch all episodes of other series like New York Close Up and Extended Play and learn about the organization’s educational programs at Art21.org.
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Yoko Ono is bringing her famed Wish Tree to the Smithsonian’s Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in Washington, D.C.—but with a virtual twist for the age of social distancing.
The interactive artwork typically allows viewers to write their wishes for the future of humanity on small slips of paper and hang them from the branches of trees planted by the Japanese artist in places around the world.
In 2007, Ono gifted a dogwood tree, titled Wish Tree for Washington, D.C., to the Hirshhorn, and it “blooms” with museum goers’ wishes each summer. (The rest of the year, Ono asks that you whisper your wish to the tree.)
This year, art lovers are invited to share photographs of their handwritten wishes with the museum via Instagram under the hashtags #WishTreeDC and #YokoOno. Hirshhorn staff will then transfer as many wishes as possible to paper tags, sharing photographs of the installation on social media as it grows.
As always, the wishes will be harvested at the end of the season, and buried on Videy Island in Iceland, at the foot of Ono’s installation Imagine Peace Tower, a memorial dedicated to her late husband, John Lennon.
Yoko Ono, Wish Tree for Washington, DC (2007), installed at the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C. Photo by Andy DelGiudice.
“We are honored to partner with Yoko Ono to share her timeless message of peace,” Hirshhorn director Melissa Chiu said in a statement. “The past year has challenged the Hirshhorn to translate the power of artworks including Wish Tree for Washington, D.C. for online audiences… . We’ll continue to invite global audiences to connect through modern art in meaningful ways until we can be together in person once again.”
The museum has also created instructions for making your own Wish Tree at home. To date, the Hirshhorn has collected over 100,000 wishes for the project, which has had more than a million participants worldwide.
See some of the wishes submitted to this year’s Wish Tree at the Hirshhorn below.
Hiroshi Sugimoto’s wish for Yoko Ono’s Wish Tree for Washington, DC (2007). Written on Japanese rice paper, it reads, “Peace and mind (or heart),” with two stamps by the artist. Photo courtesy of the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Smithsonian.
Ugo Rondinone’s wish for Yoko Ono’s Wish Tree for Washington, DC (2007). Photo courtesy of the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Smithsonian.
Ken Lum’s wish for Yoko Ono’s Wish Tree for Washington, DC (2007). Photo courtesy of the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Smithsonian.
Byron Kim’s wish for Yoko Ono’s Wish Tree for Washington, DC (2007). Photo courtesy of the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Smithsonian.
Liz Larner’s wish for Yoko Ono’s Wish Tree for Washington, DC (2007). Photo courtesy of the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Smithsonian.
Sarah Anne Johnsons’s wish for Yoko Ono’s Wish Tree for Washington, DC (2007). Photo courtesy of the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Smithsonian.
Michelle Stuart’s wish for Yoko Ono’s Wish Tree for Washington, DC (2007). Photo courtesy of the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Smithsonian.
“Yoko Ono: Wish Tree for Washington, DC” will be on view virtually and in person at the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Independence Ave SW &, 7th St SW, in Washington, D.C., April 15–31, 2021.
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The UK’s long winter lockdown is finally being eased.
From April 12, galleries and other businesses deemed “non-essential” (huff!) have been permitted to reopen their doors. By now, London is well-versed in the art of reopening. Most galleries require visitors to book ahead, and social distancing, mandatory mask-wearing, and crowd-control measures will be in place to keep the public safe.
Alas, visitors will have to wait until May 19 to return to museums. In the meantime, here are nine gallery shows we are looking forward to seeing.

“Charles Gaines: Multiples of Nature, Trees, and Faces”Hauser & WirthThrough May 1
Charles Gaines’s show at Hauser & Wirth in London. Photo by Alex Delfanne. ©Charles Gaines Courtesy the artist and Hauser & Wirth.
For his first solo exhibition in the UK, conceptual artist Charles Gaines (who we spoke to earlier this year) is presenting two new bodies of Plexiglas gridworks at Hauser & Wirth. His “Numbers and Trees” works continue a series Gaines began in 1986, and “Numbers and Faces,” a set of new pictures, plot and overlay gridded portraits of people who identify as multiracial.
“Charles Gaines: Multiples of Nature, Trees, and Faces,” Hauser & Wirth, 23 Savile Row, London

“Ryan Driscoll: Holst”Soft OpeningApril 14 through May 22
Ryan Driscoll, Uranus(2020). Courtesy the artist and Soft Opening, London. Photography Theo Christelis.
Ryan Driscoll has created a series of oil-on-wood paintings responding to the English composer Gustav Holst’s early 20th-century seven-movement orchestral suite, “The Planets.” Each movement of the suite is named after a planet of the solar system and its corresponding astrological character. Rendered as enigmatic and romantic characters or landscapes, Driscoll’s interpretations are infused with queer sensuality and androgyny, giving a refreshing injection of queer energy into classical subjects.
“Ryan Driscoll: Holst,” Soft Opening, 6 Minerva Street, London

“Sam McKinniss: Country Western”Almine RechApril 15 through May 22
Sam McKinniss, Dolly Parton with kitten (2021). © Sam McKinniss. Courtesy of the Artist and Almine Rech. Photo: Dan Bradica.
The US artist Sam McKinniss is showing new paintings of celebrity subjects, honing in on the world of popular country music. Included are portraits of Shania Twain, Tammy Wynette, and a picture of Dolly Parton cuddling a kitten. “It seems like the entire planet loves Parton, which terrifies me,” the artist writes. “What scares me is the enormous task of entertaining so many people, while also taking on the unilateral scrutiny of worldwide love or obsession.”
“Sam McKinniss: Country Western,” Almine Rech, Broadbent House, London

“Ed Fornieles: Associations”Carlos/IshikawaApril 17 Through May 22
An image from Ed Fornieles’s show, “Associations.” Courtesy Carlos/ Ishikawa.
Ed Fornieles used internet search tools to create this new series, which knits together images based on formal and conceptual associations. The artist likens the trance-like mental state required for his process to the “flow state” social media companies aim to create to keep users hooked and suggestible. The presentation probes the mysteries of the psyche and individual and collective subjectivities, and will probably resonate with you if you’ve accidentally spent untold hours buried in TikTok scroll holes during lockdown.
“Ed Fornieles: Associations,” Carlos/Ishikawa, Unit 4, 88 Mile End Road, London

“Sanya Kantarovsky & Camille Blatrix: Will-o’-the-wisp”Modern ArtApril 23 through May 22
Hermann Hendrich, The Will o’ the Wisp and the Snake (1823).
While visiting Japan a few years ago, Sanya Kantarovsky developed an edition of traditional Ukiyo-e woodblock prints together with the Adachi Hanga Institute of Printmaking, and Camille Blatrix has created Corian frames embedded with handcrafted wood marquetry pieces responding to the prints they encase.
“Sanya Kantarovsky & Camille Blatrix: Will-o’-the-wisp,” Modern Art, 7 Bury Street, London

“Allez La France!”Saatchi YatesThrough May 26
Paintings by Mathieu Julien, Jin Angdoo, Kevin Pinsembert and Hams Klemens at Saatchi Yates Gallery. Image courtesy of Saatchi Yates © Justin Piperger, 2021.
A collective of emerging French artists has come together for “Allez La France!” the second exhibition at the new Cork Street space run by Phoebe Saatchi Yates and her husband Arthur Yates. The show brings together Hams Klemens, Jin Angdoo, Mathieu Julien, and Kevin Pinsembert, who are used to creating work in the streets of Paris and Marseille, rather than on large-scale canvases at a tony Mayfair gallery. The gallerists say they wanted to highlight the work’s resonance with Abstract Expressionism, and its departure from typical French street art.
“Allez la France!” Saatchi Yates, 6 Cork Street, London

“Agnès V. par Jenna G”Sim SmithMay 1 through May 29
Jenna Gribbon, You want me to pose nude (2021). Courtesy Sim Smith.
The US painter Jenna Gribbon has taken inspiration from the late French artist and director Agnès Varda’s 1988 portrait of Jane Birkin (Jane B. par Agnès V) for her latest solo outing at Sim Smith. The artist has played on Varda’s habits of inserting documentary moments into fictional films, and has made a series of figurative paintings of her friends gathered together to watch Varda’s films projected onto the wall.
“Agnès V. par Jenna G,” Sim Smith, 30 Old Burlington Street, London

“An Infinity of Traces”Lisson GalleryThrough June 5
“An Infinity of Traces” at Lisson Gallery, London. © The artists, courtesy Lisson Gallery.
This group exhibition curated by Ekow Eshun spotlights 11 Black artists based in the UK whose work probes questions of race, history, being, and belonging. Featuring artists Ayo Akingbade, Ufuoma Essi, Liz Gre, and others, the show reflects on the Black Lives Matter protests and their relation to the nation’s imperial history. The show also includes an online component developed by the participating artists.
“Infinity of Traces,” Lisson Gallery, 27 Bell Street, London.

“Rachel Whiteread: Internal Objects” at GagosianThrough June 6
“Rachel Whiteread: Internal Objects,” installation view, 2021. © Rachel Whiteread. Photo by Prudence Cuming Associates, courtesy Gagosian.
In her latest show, Whiteread presents new works created during lockdown, including two halting sculptures that revisit her early plaster cast rooms. Called Poltergeist and Doppelgänger, the haunting cabin-like structures have been constructed from found wood and metal painted ghostly white (rather than cast in her usual process) and evoke catastrophic events like natural disasters, or perhaps the frustrations of a lockdown that went on a little too long.
“Rachel Whiteread: Internal Objects,” Gagosian, 20 Grosvenor Hill, London
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After a year spent largely inside, New Yorkers have a joyful gift awaiting them at the New York Botanical Garden. The Japanese artist Yayoi Kusama’s mirrored orbs, bold polka dots, and signature pumpkins are being unveiled after a year’s delay amid the seasonal rebirth that is early spring, surrounded by blossoming daffodils and cherry trees.
“People are just itching to be outdoors and to see something cultural again,” Nicholas Lechi, the garden’s senior director of communications, told Artnet News.
The exhibition, “Kusama: Cosmic Infinity,” functions as a celebratory reminder that despite the struggles of the past year—and rightly maligned editorials to the contrary—this city is still here, and still has so much to offer. After the long, dark winter, it’s not only the art show we need, but the art show we deserve.
Yayoi Kusama, Narcissus Garden (1966/2021) at the New York Botanical Garden. Photo by Sarah Cascone.
Unlike her wildly popular museum exhibitions, where visitors queue for hours for the chance to spend 30 seconds inside one of Kusama’s mirrored “infinity rooms,” most of the art here can be experienced outdoors without long lines, making it ideal for the age of social distancing.
“It’s a refreshing experience since we don’t normally see art that way. You go from one gallery to the next,” curator Mika Yoshitake said at the exhibition’s press preview. “Kusama’s work really enhances the botanical landscape.”
Yayoi Kusama, Ascension of Polka Dots on the Trees (2002/2021) at the New York Botanical Garden. Photo by Sarah Cascone.
The setting is a fitting one for the artist, who grew up in a seed nursery, and for whom flowers are a recurring motif.
“There’s a very visceral connection to nature that you see in her forms,” Yoshitake said.
Yayoi Kusama around age 10. Photo courtesy of the artist.
The garden was forced to pare back on its indoor exhibition plans because of the pandemic, so only the first floor library space is in use, showcasing a limited selection of paintings and sculptures.
But there’s plenty to see outdoors. Greeting visitors at the entrance fountain is the smiling sun sculpture I Want to Fly to the Universe (2020), while the fabric-wrapped trees of Ascension of Polka Dots on the Trees (2002/2021) line the path in front of the library.
Yayoi Kusama in Flower Obsession. Photo by Yuzuke Miyazake ©Yayoi Kusama 2021.
Outside the conservatory stands the monumental Dancing Pumpkin (2020), a bronze sculpture that combines the artist’s love of tentacles and pumpkins. And one of artist’s most famous works, the shiny steel orbs of Narcissus Garden (1966/2021), is installed in the Native Plant Garden, floating in the shallow waters like a sea of tiny globes.
Those four Kusama artworks are on view to all visitors, but the indoor works, including those in the conservatory and library, will require a special galleries ticket, priced at $35 for adults. (General grounds admission is $25.)
Later in the season, health regulations permitting, the show will add one final piece, Infinity Mirrored Room—Illusion Inside the Heart (2020), which features colored glass and natural light. Guests will be required to purchase a separate ticket for access.
Yayoi Kusama, Pumpkins Screaming About Love Beyond Infinity (2017). Collection of the artist.Photo courtesy of Ota Fine Arts and David Zwirner.
Weekend dates are already sold out through June 30, but the show is on view through Halloween, providing ample opportunity to visit despite capacity restrictions.
And for those who looking for an extra helping of Kusama—or who can’t snag a ticket to the gardens yet—New York gallery David Benrimon Fine Art is opening a show of the artist’s prints next week.
But the garden, with the interplay of the sun and breeze and flowers, undoubtedly offers a unique way to experience Kusama’s work.
“This exhibition will be great to see as the seasons change,” Leshi said. “So now you’re seeing spring, then you’ll see summer, then you’ll see the fall and there’ll be different things like the Kiku, the Japanese chrysanthemums.”
See more photos from the show below.
Yayoi Kusama, Dancing Pumpkin (2020) at the New York Botanical Garden. Collection of the artist. Photo by Robert Benson Photography, courtesy of Ota Fine Arts and David Zwirner.
Yayoi Kusama, My Soul Blooms Forever (2019) at the New York Botanical Garden. Collection of the artist. Photo by Robert Benson Photography, courtesy of Ota Fine Arts and David Zwirner.
Yayoi Kusama, Starry Pumpkin at the New York Botanical Garden. Photo by Sarah Cascone.
Yayoi Kusama, Narcissus Garden (1966/2021) at the New York Botanical Garden. Collection of the artist. Photo by Robert Benson Photography, courtesy of Ota Fine Arts and David Zwirner.
Yayoi Kusama, Life (2015) at the New York Botanical Garden. Collection of the artist. Photo by Robert Benson Photography, courtesy of Ota Fine Arts and David Zwirner.
Flower paintings by Yayoi Kusama at the New York Botanical Garden. Photo by Sarah Cascone.
“Kusama: Cosmic Nature” is on view at the New York Botanical Garden, Southern Boulevard, Bronx, April 10–October 31, 2021.
“Yayoi Kusama: Infinity” is on view at David Benrimon Fine Art, the Fuller Building, 41 East 57th Street, 2nd Floor, New York, April 15–May 27, 2021. 
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