Caroline Coon & Francesca DiMattio: Snapdragons

Stephen Friedman Gallery presents Snapdragons, a two-person exhibition bringing together four decades of paintings by British artist Caroline Coon, alongside new ceramic sculptures by American artist Francesca DiMattio. The exhibition highlights the radical and rebellious ways in which both artists take on the histories and conventions of their mediums, using them as springboards to bend, modify, and challenge representations of women, femininity, and desire. 

Caroline Coon’s career has been defined by unbridled creativity, experimentation, and an unwavering commitment to challenging societal norms. Her journey includes fighting for the rights of women, drug offenders, and sex workers; documenting the London punk scene of the 1970s through photographs and interviews (she also managed the seminal punk band The Clash); and authoring several books, including the autobiographical Laid Bare – Diary – 1983–1984, which inspired her Brothel series. Throughout it all, she has remained dedicated to her painting practice. Although artistic recognition came later in life, she is now celebrated for her figurative paintings, which blend feminist revisionist histories with a distinctly contemporary urban vision.

In her painting Sunday Afternoon - Backgammon Players (1985), Coon creates a homage of Manet’s Olympia (1863) and Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres’ Grande Odalisque (1814), subverting the traditional male-female power dynamic by positioning the unclothed Adonis figure as the object of the viewer's gaze. Set in contemporary London, the painting reveals two reclining nudes at leisure, reveling in their freedom and erotic play. In other works, such as Self-Portrait with Model (1993), Coon places herself at the center. She portrays herself as an artist, pencil in hand, ready to draw her lover, who lies in a state of heightened sexual arousal. “This is a bold statement of my identity as an artist,” wrote Coon, “who has, both socially and sexually, transgressed the sexist restrictions imposed on women by respectable society. Not only am I naked, but I am standing beside my canvas before my model who is as elegantly erect as I am. There is no polite illusion here—rather a factual, liberatory contradiction to those in the past who have denied the power and purpose of female sexuality.”

Installation: Caroline Coon and Francesca DiMattio, 'Snapdragons', Stephen Friedman Gallery, New York (2025). Courtesy Stephen Friedman Gallery, London and New York. Photos by Grace Dodds.

In her 2005 painting Self-Portrait: In My Cock Hat, Coon appears naked and statuesque, wearing a crown of penises. Set against a black background, her name is emblazoned across the canvas like a marquee. She meets the viewer’s gaze with a look that is direct and confrontational. In Cunt (1999), a precursor to her 2005 self-portrait, she creates a theatrical stage set inspired by British Pop artist, Pauline Boty’s last extant painting, BUM (1966). “I decided to make a front/cunt sister painting to Boty’s back/bum as a celebration of women’s ‘sex’—the part of women’s anatomy most commonly derided as disgusting, forbidden and used as the worst of insults,” Coon explained. “Following Boty’s theme, I ‘staged’ my Cunt in an archaic temple of sexual pleasure and fecundity. In the pediment are two goddesses of Liberty, beside the birth shell of Venus. Above them is a wild English Dog rose, for love and romance. The torso is framed by two strips—Corinthian columns representing Vitruvian architectural principles that could be read as symbolising patriarchal masculinity, and beside them is a crush of roses to represent female sensuality.” 

Flowers take center stage in a series of still-life paintings created between 1988 and 2008. Paying homage to the floral works of Gluck (1895–1978), a pioneer of gender fluidity, Coon’s paintings similarly reject conventional femininity. Her compositions are animated, bold, theatrical, and unapologetically sensual.

New York-based artist Francesca DiMattio operates with a similarly insurgent spirit, dismantling traditional boundaries between high and low, art and craft, masculine and feminine, history and the present. Straddling the worlds of art, architecture, and design, DiMattio’s work is non-hierarchical, eclectic, and teeming with ideas. Her pedestal sculptures riff on 18th-century French Sèvres porcelain, German Meissen ware, English Staffordshire pottery, and Ming Dynasty vases, while her vertiginous Caryatid figures draw inspiration from the draped female columnar supports of the Acropolis. DiMattio’s work is a symphony of historical and cross-cultural references. “I examine difference in each piece by putting opposites in conversation with each other,” the artist explains. “Through the making of each piece, similarities begin to bridge the gap of difference, and it all becomes sewn into a new hybrid language. Cultural time and place, gender, beauty, and value become scrambled and presented on equal footing.” 

DiMattio takes her exploration further by incorporating everyday utilitarian items—detergent bottles, Chiquita banana boxes, sneakers, high-heeled shoes, and an old teddy bear—into her work. In a somewhat absurd reversal of mass production, she hand-sculpts and glazes each of these objects, then sutures them onto her more traditional ceramic forms. In sculptures such as Meissen Tide (2025) and Meissen Pump (2025), highly ornate porcelain vessels adorned with flower petals, rosettes, and floral vignettes take on Frankenstein-like proportions as they collide with a large Reebok high-top sneaker, bottles of cleaning spray, and a container of Tide. Each sculpture is punctured by wound-like fissures that contrast sharply with the delicate floral patterns spreading across the surfaces like a virus, even extending to the pedestals below. The result is a playful tension: sneakers transform into vessels, laces become ornamental details, and high art meets streetwear.

Francesca DiMattio, Attica Pump, 2025. Glaze on terracotta, glaze on terracotta pedestal, Sculpture: 88.9 x 50.8 x 45.7cm (35 x 20 x 18in) Pedestal: 91.4 x 34.9 x 34.9cm (36 x 13 3/4 x 13 3/4in). Copyright Francesca DiMattio. Courtesy the artist and Stephen Friedman Gallery, London and New York and Pippy Houldsworth, London. Photo by Karen Pearson.

In another pair of terracotta pedestal sculptures, the artist juxtaposes ancient Greek amphoras with contemporary fashion accessories. In Attica Pump (2025), a vessel inspired by Athenian red-figure pottery from the 6th century BCE becomes host to four precariously tall high-heeled shoes that push through and pierce its clay surface. Similarly, in Attica Cowboy (2025), an oversized cowboy boot adorned with depictions of gods and goddesses is grafted onto an amphora standing on a matching tiled base. The vessel appears to sag under the boot’s weight, resembling a deflated belly. By playing with the morphology and nomenclature of ceramic forms—such as the lip, neck, shoulder, mouth, and foot—DiMattio’s sculptures take on a humanoid quality, simultaneously adorned and disfigured by gender-coded, mass-market symbols of beauty.

Francesca DiMattio, Chiquita Caryatid, 2025. Glaze on porcelain and stoneware, 218.4 x 77.5 x 77.5cm (86 x 30 1/2 x 30 1/2in). Copyright Francesca DiMattio. Courtesy the artist and Stephen Friedman Gallery, London and New York and Pippy Houldsworth, London. Photo by Karen Pearson.

DiMattio’s two monumental porcelain sculptures, Chiquita Caryatid (2025) and Teddy Bear Caryatid (2022–25), represent the culmination of the artist’s madcap experimentation. In the first, a massive female figure rises from her base like Botticelli’s The Birth of Venus (c. 1485). Her body morphs and bulges with the imprint of cardboard boxes and plastic bottles adorned with blue floral patterns, barcodes, and Chiquita banana logos. Her companion, named for the teddy bear she stands on, appears as a hyper-ornamented conqueror dressed in a porcelain-mosaic bikini. DiMattio’s figures evoke warrior queens, clad in the armor of contemporary domesticity and transcultural hybridity.

Francesca DiMattio (b. 1981) is known for her dynamic approach to sculpture and painting, where she collapses boundaries between historical and contemporary influences. Her work weaves together an eclectic mix of references—ranging from English Rococo and Islamic Fritware to mass-produced kitsch and domestic patterns—blurring distinctions between high and low culture. In her sculptural practice, she transforms porcelain into unpredictable, fluid constructions, subverting the tradition of ceramics with an explosive sense of movement. Similarly, her paintings layer diverse visual languages, creating compositions that feel both intricate and unruly. DiMattio’s work has been exhibited internationally, and her sculptures are included in prominent public and private collections.

DiMattio has exhibited at Wellin Museum of Art (2022) and Art Omi, Ghent in New York (2019).

Caroline Coon (b. 1945) is a British painter whose vibrant figurative works challenge societal norms and patriarchal values. Deeply influenced by feminism and the politics of sexual liberation, her paintings reject binary notions of gender while celebrating subjects ranging from sex workers and intersex individuals to cityscapes and still lives. A pioneering figure in London’s counterculture, Coon has been a vocal advocate for women’s rights since the 1960s, co-founding the legal-aid organization Release and managing The Clash during the punk movement. Her distinctive style—characterized by crisp-edged lines and saturated color—draws inspiration from artists like Paul Cadmus and Tamara de Lempicka. Coon’s work has recently gained widespread institutional recognition, with pieces entering Tate’s permanent collection and featuring in major exhibitions, including Women in Revolt! touring the UK from Tate Britain.

This is Coon’s first significant exhibition in New York and coincides with her inclusion in the group show ‘Women in Revolt!’, touring the UK from Tate Britain, London. 

Stephen Friedman Gallery

Stephen Friedman Gallery is a contemporary art gallery that was founded in 1995 with a focus on representing exceptional artists from around the world. Since its inauguration, the gallery has been based in Mayfair, London. In October 2023, the gallery expanded and relocated to Cork Street. In November 2023, the gallery opened its first location outside the UK at 54 Franklin Street in Tribeca, New York.

For more information about Stephen Friedman Gallery, this exhibition, and others, please visit their site here. The gallery can also be found on Facebook and Instagram. The magazine did an interview with both artists which can be found here.

Catherine Goodman. Silent Music

Installation view, ‘Catherine Goodman. Silent Music,’ Hauser & Wirth New York, 22nd Street 30 January – 12 April 2025 © Catherine Goodman Courtesy the artist and Hauser & Wirth Photo: Sarah Muehlbauer

New York... The exhibition opened in January, ‘Catherine Goodman. Silent Music’ presents a series of new, large-scale paintings by the British artist, where her characteristically expressive brushwork yields animated surfaces that pulse with the dynamic energy of their making. For Goodman, the studio is a place of spiritual meditation. Each painting represents an act of intimate transmutation—a way for her to turn closely held memories and personal vulnerabilities into newfound stability. As the artist trustee at the National Gallery in London, Goodman has spent hours drawing from the collection and has developed a particular affinity for Old Master paintings, which she describes as her ‘only real teacher.’ Inspired by the intensity and drama of Renaissance masterworks by artists such as Titian and Veronese, and influenced by the poignantly psychological work of such groups as the London School, Goodman’s highly personal paintings transcend her individual experience, opening outward and inviting us in.

Catherine Goodman Lago 2024 Oil on linen 180 x 210 x 4 cm / 70 7/8 x 82 5/8 x 1 5/8 in © Catherine Goodman Courtesy the artist and Hauser & Wirth Photo: Eva Herzog

For decades Goodman has maintained a daily practice of drawing from observation. Through this she has\ constructed charged pathways between the physical world she observes and her own inner landscape. In these most recent abstractions, she often begins from landscapes and portraits that hold meaning for her. She then obscures these figurative grounds, building up evocative and densely layered compositions that invite sustained attention. ‘Lago’ (2024), a whirlwind of crimson, cobalt and lush green is one of many works named for a meaningful location or loved one whose spirit they embody. Other compositions, like the exuberant ‘Pahari Picnic’ (2024) or ‘Echo’ (2024)—monumental in scale and bursting with energy—give form to poignant memories. The substantial physical presence of these paintings, with their thick impasto and richly layered pigments, materialize intangible impressions of moments, places and people alike, as well as the psychological terrain encountered during the creative process itself. As the artist has confided to writer Jennifer Higgie, her artmaking ‘was never about problem solving. It’s about releasing something.’

Catherine Goodman Pahari Picnic 2024 Oil on linen 200 x 220 x 4 cm / 78 3/4 x 86 5/8 x 1 5/8 in © Catherine Goodman Courtesy the artist and Hauser & Wirth Photo: Eva Herzog

Though rooted in the personal, Goodman’s oeurve uses the intimate act of painting to address the expansive macrocosm of collective experience. Her paintings act as a form of silent communication, resonating beyond the written or spoken word. Persistently forward-looking, Goodman’s latest body of work continues her tireless pursuit of art’s unique capacity to nurture connection.

 Installation view, ‘Catherine Goodman. Silent Music,’ Hauser & Wirth New York, 22nd Street 30 January – 12 April 2025 © Catherine Goodman Courtesy the artist and Hauser & Wirth Photo: Sarah Muehlbauer

In conjunction with the exhibition, Hauser & Wirth Publishers will release ‘Catherine Goodman,’ a richly illustrated monograph focused on Goodman’s new paintings. Featuring an illuminating essay by writer and curator Jennifer Higgie, alongside revealing reflections from Goodman herself, this volume sheds light on how drawing and painting are inextricably intertwined in her deeply intuitive practice. On 1 February, Hauser & Wirth Publishers will celebrate the release with a conversation between Catherine Goodman and Lynne Tillman.

Catherine Goodman Echo 2024 Oil on linen 196 x 214 x 4 cm / 77 1/8 x 84 1/4 x 1 5/8 in © Catherine Goodman Courtesy the artist and Hauser & Wirth Photo: Eva Herzog

About the Artist

Born in London in 1961, Catherine Goodman CBE lives and works in London. Goodman studied at Camberwell School of Arts & Crafts and the Royal Academy Schools, London, where she won the Royal Academy Gold Medal in 1987. Goodman’s lifelong commitment to social justice through education forms a critical aspect of her artistic identity and approach to making. In 2000, Goodman established The Royal Drawing School with HM King Charles III to deliver subsidized and free education to thousands of young and disadvantaged people in the UK. Today, she continues in her role as Founding Artistic Director and Academic Board Member. For many years, Goodman corganized drawing classes for individuals dealing with homelessness and disabilities, and she continues to offer refuge classes to young people with mental health issues on a weekly basis. She is also the primary caregiver of her sister, Sophie, who was born with multiple health conditions and has always been a subject of Goodman’s practice. In 2014, Goodman was awarded Lieutenant of the Royal Victorian Order (LVO) for services to The Royal Drawing School, and Commander of the Order of British Empire (CBE) in 2024 for her services to art in the UK. Goodman has served as the Artist Trustee at The National Gallery, London since 2019. Her paintings are held in significant private and public collections internationally.

Carbon savings: The artwork in this exhibition was shipped by sea from the UK. Transporting by sea versus air resulted in a carbon saving equivalent to 20 economy flights between London and New York.

The exhibition opened on 30 January – and will conclude on 12 April 2025, at the Hauser & Wirth Hauser & Wirth New York, 22nd Street location. Please visit the Hauser & Wirth Gallery site for information about upcoming exhibitions. Also, follow the gallery on Instagram, Facebook,  X, and YouTube. The magazine highlighted the accompanying book with the same title, which can be found here.

Geppy Pisanelli: Hidden Lights

Exhibition Views, Geppy Pisanelli "Hidden Lights", GR gallery, 2025 , Courtesy the artist and GR gallery.

New York, NY – GR gallery is proud to announce the opening on February 14th of Hidden Lights, a solo exhibition by Italian visual artist Geppy Pisanelli. Building on the success of his 2023 group exhibition Dreaming Awake at GR gallery, Pisanelli's latest series emerges from both a narrative and compositional need to explore the dynamic interplay between nature and artifice. Specifically, the artist's interest was the visual formalization of works that contrast natural elements (like water beds, trees, mountains, and waterfalls) and artificial elements (such as minimal structures, shelter and artificial lighting). This juxtaposition highlights the relationship between nature and human-made artifice, placing artificial objects in unexpected natural settings.

Luminous Dusk - oil on linen - 2023-24 measures 45 x 60 x 1.5 inches Courtesy the artist and GR Gallery

These compositions trigger a sense of alienation both visually and intellectually, which is also reflected in the exhibition's title Hidden Lights, immediately presenting itself as an oxymoron: light, typically associated with visibility and illumination, is described as hidden, creating a contrast right in the title itself. These pieces generate a layered effect of visibility and obscurity, achieved by the artist through a carefully balanced pictorial composition of shapes, subjects, and content in relation to each other.

Regarding the contents, the theme of interplay between light and darkness was explored by the artist, not just as a retinal perception but also as a reflection of the human inner condition. Indeed, despite the references to nature in these paintings, the works can be interpreted as depicting an intimate state. They portray an external space that simultaneously mirrors an internal one, a space of human existence that is both conceptual and theatrical.

Exhibition Views, Geppy Pisanelli "Hidden Lights", GR gallery, 2025 Copyright James Welling Courtesy the artist and GR gallery.

These "threshold images" , like Pisanelli uses to call them, draw the viewers into a theatrical landscape, exploring human nature and societal conflicts. These narratives, oscillating between abandonment and hope, solitude and community, resonate deeply amid global challenges like pandemics, migrations, wars, and climate change.

"It is in fact emblematic that in my last series of works, the events that come to life depicted in the paintings visually quote the incipit that David H. Lawrence prophetically composed in 1928, " says Geppy Pisanelli. Reflecting on our tragic era, he adds, "Lawrence suggested resilience and new beginnings amidst devastation with his words: 'Ours is essentially a tragic age, so we refuse to take it tragically. The cataclysm has happened, we are among the ruins, we start to build up new little habitats, to have new little hopes. ' These words deeply resonate with me, encapsulating the spirit of renewal amidst tumults that I aim to capture in my work.

"

A hallmark of Pisanelli’s artistry lies in his creation of archetypal images. His paintings may initially appear as realistic depictions but gradually unveil layers of metaphorical and mental associations. These works act as conduits for contemplation, inviting viewers to delve into the expressive potential of painting as a medium for analyzing human existence and the multifaceted nature of reality.

Hidden Lights offers an immersive experience that challenges perceptions and inspires reflection. The exhibition will run through March 15, 2025.

Exhibition Details:

“Hidden Lights”

February 14 - March 15, 2025

Opening public reception: February 14

GR gallery

255 Bowery, NYC

Courtesy the artist and GR Gallery

About Geppy Pisanelli

Geppy Pisanelli (b. 1971) is an Italian visual artist who focuses on researching and exploring painting as a communication medium. Starting from his Italian Pictorial Cultural Identity, Pisanelli aims to constantly push and reformulate the boundaries of pictorial narration and formal composition. Through a dynamic interplay of tradition and innovation, he crafts a distinctive visual language that resonates with contemporary audiences. Solo exhibitions in the U.S. include: Chelsea West Gallery, New York, (2010), Kips Gallery, New York, (2011), (2013), Casa Italiana Zerrilli-Marimò at New York University (2015), Mizuma & Kips Gallery (2021). Solo exhibitions in Italy include: Royal Palace of Caserta, Caserta (2010), Galleria studio legale, Naples (2014) PAN Palazzo delle Arti Napoli (2016) Palazzo Ponte dei Pegni, Caserta, (2017). He lives and works between Naples and New York.

About GR gallery

Established in 2016 and located on the Bowery, downtown Manhattan, GR gallery contributes to the New York contemporary art scene as a partner to international artists and an artistic destination for visitors in New York City. The gallery is dedicated to showcasing multigenerational artists who explore various media with a dynamic approach to chromatic vibration and borderless figuration. With support from GR gallery, artworks across diverse media are featured in public events and collections. GR gallery began as a partner of Studio d’Arte GR, founded in Venice in 1979. Today, the gallery independently hosts an average of ten exhibitions annually and participates in several art fairs. By carving out its own path in New York, GR gallery invites artists to unfold their artistic expressions and supports them in expanding their work globally.

For more information about the exhibition, the GR gallery, and other exhibitions, please visit their site here. The gallery can also be found on Instagram and Artsy.

HENNING STRASSBURGER: KÖPFE

No pun intended, 2014

KÖNIG GALERIE is pleased to present KÖPFE (en: heads), the first solo exhibition for the gallery by Henning Strassburger, located in the Nave of St. Agnes. The exhibition includes new paintings and, for the first time, sculptures that powerfully embody Strassburger’s dynamic visual language. With bold colors and gestural compositions, the artist explores the multi-layered intersections of identity, media, and social narratives. His works offer lively commentary on today’s fluid existence.

Exhibition View: Henning Strassburger, Köpfe, 2025, Berlin, Nave, Photo by Roman März, Courtesy of the artist & KÖNIG GALERIE

Happy Happiness,2024.

A delight in the image is perhaps the most prominent feature of these new works: a playful exhilaration that turns away from pure abstraction and toward the flesh of painting, its figures, colors, and stories. Strassburger was initially praised as an abstract painter, but in recent years, his relationship to abstraction has become increasingly critical. As a result, Strassburger’s paintings engage with figuration, with specific formal allusions to German painters. He has a particular affinity for a genre popularized by Georg Baselitz, which the older painter calls “Heldenbilder” (hero paint- ings) – a cycle of works from the 1960s – which Strassburger refers to as the “Happy” series. With his “Happy” paintings, Strassburger reinvents himself as a figurative painter in the best German tradition and says “I” in an emphatic sens

Alphakenny, the artist’s doppelganger, appears in many of these works, a moniker that is designed to introduce a biographical anecdote in an ironic manner. When Strassburger ordered a coffee in a New York Starbucks, he – like everyone else – had to say his first name so that it could be written on his cup. However, the phonetic challenge of “Henning” proved too difficult for the Americans, and the employee wrote “Kenny” on the cup instead, which of course led to confusion on Strassburger’s part. “One Americano for Kenny! Kenny! Kenny!” Strassburger didn’t feel addressed, but then quickly realized: “Kenny, that’s me!” The extension to Alphakenny refers to the schoolyard-famous Alphakevin, a mocking name for the biggest loser in the class, or “a modern-day anti-hero”, according to Strassburger.

 Exhibition View: Henning Strassburger, Köpfe, 2025, Berlin, Nave, Photo by Roman März, Courtesy of the artist & KÖNIG GALERIE

Strassburger accepts that there can no longer be any heroes in the modern age, because a hero is someone like Aeneas, who founded the Roman Empire; or someone like Prometheus, who brought fire to mankind (against the will of the gods); or Odysseus, who carved out the eye of the Cyclops Polyphemus. The hero is someone who says “I” in an emphatic sense. He creates a new reality by violating an existing law in order to establish a new one. Heroes can only be defeated by other heroes or by the gods, but not by just anyone. With bourgeois society, however, which distributes sovereignty among many and binds it to a dense network of business relationships, the possibility of saying “I” in the emphatic sense is increasingly restricted. So, whoever plays the hero today is no longer condemned to an odyssey and is no longer shackled on the Caucasus by the gods. They simply die, or the police take them away.

Nevertheless, we are still left with two smaller forms of heroism in the classical sense: saying “I” and making art. Both are structurally related to heroism – at least if we understand it philosophically rather than in purely practical terms. For heroism is a special form of negation. The hero does what they want. In doing so, they sometimes break the law. But their actions create a new order – just like a revolutionary who destroys an existing state only to found a new one. The hero transforms their arbitrariness into a law and thereby bestows their actions with exemplary significance. What the hero enacts is law, It is very similar with works of art. They establish a reality and grant themselves a form of law

Großer liegender Kopf (Happy Alphakenny), 2024

But with the performative act of establishing the law, the hero also demonstrates what it means to be a human being and to say “I”. The hero is the human being par excellence. For just as establishing the law is a negation that produces a right by doing wrong, saying “I” is also a negation in which I distinguish myself from myself and relate to myself. I divide myself and then form a new unity with myself. Strassburger’s Starbucks scene demonstrates this performative act once again. “Kenny, that’s me!”

The exhibition opened on January 17th and will conclude on February 23rd, 2025. For more information about this exhibition and others, please visit the gallery’s site here. KÖNIG GALERIE can also be found on YouTube, Instagram, and Facebook. The magazine did an interview with Henning which can be found here.

CY TWOMBLY

Cy Twombly, 2025, installation view Artwork © Cy Twombly Foundation Photo: Maris Hutchinson Courtesy Gagosian

NEW YORK, —Gagosian is pleased to announce an exhibition of paintings, a sculpture, and works on paper by Cy Twombly. The presentation opened on January 23, 2025, across two floors of the galleries at 980 Madison Avenue. Organized in association with the Cy Twombly Foundation, it includes key bodies of work from 1968 through 1990, including pieces that have never been shown before and loans from the Twombly family.

The installation on the sixth floor features a series of paintings that Twombly made from 1968 through 1971, representing a more austere approach than do the canvases of the prior decade. Produced during the era of Minimalism and Conceptual art, these canvases have often been interpreted as “blackboards”—their gestural flux breaking down distinctions between painting, drawing, and writing.

Cy Twombly, Paesaggio, 1986, oil and acrylic on wood panel, 69 1/4 × 50 1/2 inches (175.7 × 128.1 cm) © Cy Twombly Foundation. Photo: Peter Schälchli

One work from 1968 features nested loops that cascade down and across the canvas. Inscriptions and numbers give the work a diagrammatic quality, while its dynamic composition recalls Leonardo da Vinci’s Deluge drawings (c. 1517–18). An untitled painting of nine panels from 1971 forms a sequence linked by accumulated diagonals and curves.

The installation on the fifth floor includes a series of verdant green paintings that Twombly made in Bassano in Teverina, Italy, from 1981 through 1986. Marking the artist’s exploration of color and the liquidity of paint, these layered, atmospheric works abstract elemental meetings of water, earth, and air. A group of these paintings is rendered on barbed quatrefoil panels, their format, palette, and evocation of landscapes echoing Rococo art.

Cy Twombly Untitled, 1985 Oil and acrylic on wood panel 71 1/2 × 71 1/2 inches (181.7 × 181.7 cm) © Cy Twombly Foundation Photo: Maris Hutchinson Courtesy Gagosian

Condottiero Testa di Cozzo (1987) refers to Titian’s portrait of the Grand Duke of Alba (c. 1570) with vibrant passages that paraphrase the Renaissance commander’s red sash, ruffled collar, and black armor. Twombly’s emblematic treatment of natural forms is furthered in a series of vibrant floral abstractions from the Souvenir of D’Arros series (1990), while a sculpture from 1983 exemplifies his engagement with materiality and gesture in three dimensions.

Cy Twombly Untitled (Souvenir of D’Arros), 1990 Acrylic on handmade paper 30 1/4 × 22 1/8 inches (76.7 × 56.1 cm) © Cy Twombly Foundation Photo: Maris Hutchinson Courtesy Gagosian

Five Day Wait at Jiayuguan (1980) is a suite of works on paper first exhibited at the 39th Biennale di Venezia and publicly reunited here for the first time in over forty years. Made in Rome, it was inspired by Twombly’s travels the previous year through Russia, Afghanistan, and Central Asia, and is titled after the city in northwestern China, on the edge of the Gobi Desert. Through gestural forms and poetic inscriptions, these works evoke observations of life, history, and culture in the desert landscape. The exhibition is accompanied by two Gagosian publications: an illustrated two-volume catalogue with essays by Suzanne Hudson and Jenny Saville, and a facsimile of the artist’s book of Five Day Wait at Jiayuguan, originally published by Gabriele Stocchi in 1981 for the Biennale di Venezia presentation.

Cy Twombly Untitled, 1971 Oil-based house paint and wax crayon on canvas 80 x 134 5/8 inches (203 x 342 cm) © Cy Twombly Foundation Photo: Maris Hutchinson Courtesy Gagosian

Cy Twombly was born in 1928 in Lexington, Virginia, and died in 2011 in Rome. Collections include the Museum of Modern Art, New York; Menil Collection, Houston; Centre Pompidou, Paris; Museum Brandhorst, Munich; Tate, London; and Louvre Abu Dhabi. Exhibitions include Cycles and Seasons, Tate Modern, London (2008, traveled to Guggenheim Bilbao, Spain, 2008–09; and Galleria Nazionale d’Arte Moderna e Contemporanea, Rome, 2009); The Natural World, Art Institute of Chicago (2009); Sensations of the Moment, Museum Moderner Kunst Stiftung Ludwig Wien, Vienna (2009); Paradise, Museo Jumex, Mexico City (2014, traveled to Ca’ Pesaro, Venice, 2015); Treatise on the Veil, Morgan Library and Museum, New York (2014–15); Centre Pompidou, Paris (2016–17); Making Past Present, J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles (2022, traveled to Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, 2023); and Morocco, 1952/1953, Musée Yves Saint Laurent Marrakech, Morocco. Twombly received numerous accolades during his lifetime, including the Praemium Imperiale, Tokyo (1996), and the Golden Lion award at the 49th Biennale di Venezia (2001). In 2010, Twombly’s permanent site-specific painting The Ceiling was unveiled in the Salle des Bronzes at the Musée du Louvre; on that occasion he was named Chevalier of the Légion d’honneur by the French government.

#CyTwombly

CY TWOMBLY exhibition opened on January 23 and will be on view until March 22, 2025 at the 980 Madison Avenue, New York location. There was an opening reception on Thursday, January 23, 6–8pm.

For more information about this exhibition and others presented by Gagosian please visit the gallery’s site here. The gallery can also be found on Pinterest, X, YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, and Artsy.

Jean-Michel Basquiat. Engadin

Bruno Bischofberger and Jean-Michel Basquiat ,Galerie BrunoBischofberger, Zurich, 1982© Galerie Bruno Bischofberger, Männedorf-Zurich, Switzerland.© Estate of Jean-Michel Basquiat. Licensed by Artestar, New York, Photo: Beth Phillips

Jean-Michel Basquiat / Andy Warhol / Francesco Clemente, In Bianco 1984 Acrylic, silkscreen, and pastel on canvas 122 x 168 cm / 48 x 66 1/8 in © Estate of Jean-Michel Basquiat. Licensed by Artestar, New York © Fundación Almine y Bernard Ruiz Picasso -- FABA -- 2024

Exploring various artistic motifs that combine the natural and cultural landscape of the Engadin with the metropolis of New York, Jean-Michel Basquiat’s first solo exhibition dedicated to the paintings he created in and inspired by his visits to Switzerland opens on 14 December at Hauser & Wirth St. Moritz. ‘Jean-Michel Basquiat. Engadin’ traces the renowned artist’s connections to the country, which began in 1982 with his first show at Galerie Bruno Bischofberger in Zurich, returning over a dozen times to St. Moritz, Zurich and Appenzell, as well as other places in Switzerland. The Engadin region in particular continued to fascinate Basquiat long after his return to New York, resulting in a body of work that captures his impressions of the Swiss Alpine landscape and culture through the lens of his highly distinctive and personal artistic language.

‘Jean-Michel Basquiat. Engadin’ will be accompanied by a catalog from Hauser & Wirth Publishers, featuring a foreword by Bruno Bischofberger and a text by Dr. Dr. Dieter Buchhart to give visitors a unique insight into this specific chapter of one of the most important artists of the 20th Century. The exhibition is supported by Dr. Dr. Dieter Buchhart and Dr. Anna Karina Hofbauer, internationally renowned curators and Basquiat experts.

All images: ‘Jean-Michel Basquiat. Engadin’ at Hauser & Wirth St. Moritz, until 29 March 2025. © Estate of Jean-Michel Basquiat. Licensed by Artestar, New York. Courtesy Hauser & Wirth. Photo: Stefan Altenburger Photography Zürich.

About the exhibition

Born in Brooklyn, New York in 1960 and coming of age in the downtown, post-punk artistic scene of the late 1970s and early 1980s, Basquiat drew on the diversity and intensity of New York City within his multi-disciplinary practice. His expressive paintings combined bold text and imagery from his expansive references across art, film, history and music, as well as his experiences of everyday racism as a young Black man in the US.

Jean-Michel Basquiat The Dutch Settlers 1982 Acrylic and oil stick on canvas 183 x 549 cm / 72 x 216 1/8 in © Estate of Jean-Michel Basquiat. Licensed by Artestar, New York Nicola Erni Collection. Photo: Reto Pedrini Photography

After his first exhibition with Galerie Bruno Bischofberger in 1982, the same year Basquiat became one of the youngest ever artists to participate at Documenta in Kassel, the influences of the disparate cultural landscapes of New York City and Switzerland began to take shape in his work, incorporating the motifs of ski lifts, fir trees, mountains and German phrases into his expansive visual lexicon. ‘From then on, Jean-Michel Basquiat often visited me in Switzerland, where he particularly liked it. About half a dozen times in Zurich and exactly seven times in St. Moritz, four of them in the summer’, says Bischofberger. Basquiat was captivated by the Engadin’s vast natural landscape, cultural history and the hospitality of the Bischofberger family. Perhaps what drew Basquiat most to this part of Switzerland was, as Dr. Dieter Buchhart writes, ‘the contrast between the pulsating life, the clubs, the street noise, and the breakneck speed of the metropolis New York and the ‘discovery of slowness’ in the unique, overwhelming landscape of the Engadin.’

Jean-Michel Basquiat Big Snow 1984 Oil, acrylic, felt-tip pen and oilstick on canvas 168 x 151.5 cm / 66 1/8 x 59 5/8 in © Estate of Jean-Michel Basquiat. Licensed by Artestar, New York Private Collection

One of the earliest works on view in the exhibition is the monumental painting ‘The Dutch Settlers’ from 1982. Composed of nine canvases, the painting is a prime example of Basquiat’s innovative approach of marrying William S. Burroughs’ ‘cut-up’ technique with a method akin to sampling technology used in hip hop. The montage of nine canvas panels enabled Basquiat to assemble, combine and recombine different image fields – creating a multi-layered work that emanates a visual rhythm described as an ‘Eye Rap’ by art historian Robert Storr. The artist paints powerful motifs which reference the African Diaspora and slavery (evoked through words such NUBIA and TOBACCO) alongside images of the Engadin, depicting fir trees, a mountain road, as well as an ibex, the heraldic animal of the canton of Graubünden and native to the region. This mountain iconography can also be seen in the playful works ‘Skifahrer (Skier)’ and ‘See (Lake)’ on view in the exhibition. The former depicts a comic-like figure on a bright red background and the latter the local landscape at night, both painted in St. Moritz a year later. These works were part of a series that Basquiat made for a dinner with collectors in Bischofberger’s ‘hunting lodge’ as the artist called it, meaning the family’s home in St. Moritz. Beside photographs of the Engadin by Albert Steiner, there was no modern art hanging in the dining room that season.

Jean-Michel Basquiat, Brook Bartlett and Bruno Bischofbergerat the Cresta Klubhaus in St. Moritz on January 30, 1983 Photo: Christina Bischofberger© Galerie Bruno Bischofberger, Männedorf-Zurich, Switzerland

In the winter of 1983/1984, during one of Basquiat’s visits to the Engadin, Bischofberger and the artist began discussing the idea for a collaboration between Basquiat, Andy Warhol and Francesco Clemente. The three artists each created four paintings and a drawing, which were subsequently transported between them to complete. ‘In Bianco’ (1983) showcases the clearly distinguishable artistic contributions from all three, demonstrating how each artist reacted respectfully to the parameters of the others. As Buchhart notes, ‘the cornerstone for this important collaboration was laid in St. Moritz’, marking a turning point in Basquiat’s artistic practice and proving Switzerland to be of great historical significance for the artist in more ways than one.

Integrating the immediate world around him with his varied encyclopaedic knowledge, ‘Big Snow’ (1984) sees Basquiat once again processing his impressions of the Engadin in conjunction with themes relating to race and Black history, combining motifs of the Swiss mountains, snow and skiing with the Berlin Olympic Games of 1936 and Jesse Owens’ win of four gold medals. In 1985, Basquiat would go on to be part of a group show at the Segantini Museum in St. Moritz, showcasing his work ‘See (Lake)’ (1983) in an exhibition titled ‘The Engadine in Painting’. The latest body of work on view includes a group of monochrome paintings titled ‘To Repel Ghosts’ which Basquiat created in 1986 during his time in Zurich and St. Moritz, exploring themes of emptiness as well as spirituality in relation to the African Diaspora. Musing on what kept drawing the artist back to Switzerland, Buchhart writes, ‘For Basquiat, the Engadin meant work, inspiration, friendship, and rest and relaxation, all at the same time.’

The exhibition opened on December 14th of 2024 and will conclude on March 29, 2025, at the Hauser & Wirth St. Moritz Via Serlas 22 7500 St. Moritz Gallery location. The gallery’s hours: Tuesday – Sunday, 11 am – 7 pm. Please visit the Hauser & Wirth Gallery site for information about upcoming exhibitions. Also, follow the gallery on Instagram, Facebook,  X, and YouTube. The magazine highlighted the accompanying book with the same title, which can be found here.

GERARD & KELLY: Bardo

GERARD & KELLY E for Eileen, 2023 (film still) 4K video, color, sound; 22 min. Edition of 3 plus 1 artist's proof Copyright Gerard & Kelly Courtesy the artists and Marian Goodman Gallery

Marian Goodman Gallery Paris is pleased to announce the first major exhibition in Paris devoted to the work of Gerard & Kelly. Entitled Bardo, the exhibition features new sets of works by the duo that collectively illustrate the hybridity and multidisciplinarity of their practice, which is rooted in an ongoing investigation of history, architecture and sexuality. The exhibition is imagined as a time-based and multi-sensory experience, and the title, inspired by Tibetan Buddhism, refers to the transitional state between death and rebirth, during which consciousness undergoes profound changes. Through the evocation of three saintly historical figures, openly or symbolically queer, Gerard & Kelly create a space for reflection and resonance between past and present, shadow and light, the profane and the sacred.

GERARD & KELLY Défense de rire, 2025 Lamp (Pailla Wall Lamp, design by Eileen Gray, 1927), bulb, stencil, acrylic, illumination program Dimensions variable Lamp: 4 3/4 x 3 3/8 in. (12 x 8.5 cm) Edition of 3 plus 1 artist's proofs Copyright Gerard & Kelly Courtesy the artists and Marian Goodman Gallery Photo credit: Rebecca Fanuele

Eileen Gray (1878-1976), a Paris-based Irish architect and designer, was the author of a fundamental work of architectural modernism: villa E-1027, built in the bay of Roquebrune-Cap-Martin. Completed in 1929, the villa is one of France's three national monuments of the modern era, and the only one built by a woman. Inspired by the layout and volumes of an ocean liner, the house's vast windows open onto the sky and the Mediterranean.

GERARD & KELLY Glyphs VII, 2024 Monotype silkscreen and gold leaf on metallic paper Image: 11 1/4 x 18 7/8 in. (28.5 x 48 cm)
Frame: 15 5/8 x 23 5/8 x 2 in. (39.6 x 60 x 5 cm) Copyright Gerard & Kelly Courtesy the artists and Marian Goodman Gallery Photo credit: Rebecca Fanuele

A self-taught architect, Gray meticulously designed every detail of E-1027, including the furniture within the villa, to create a functional living space. Upon entering the gallery, the flickering of Défense de rire, 2025, which combines the Pailla lamp with a stencil conceived by Gray for E-1027, guides visitors to the lower level for the start of the film. Downstairs the 22-minute film E for Eileen, 2023, shot entirely in situ, is shown every half- hour. A seating module renders the negative space of the solarium in the villa’s garden, and is covered in cork— a material frequently used by Gray. The Pailla lamp reappears in Solarium ensoleillé, 2025, to illuminate a wall- mounted scaled model of this sunbathing platform constructed from layers of mat board.

Exhibition Views, Gerard & Kelly: Bardo, Galerie Marian Goodman, Paris, 2025 Copyright Gerard & Kelly Courtesy the artists and Marian Goodman Gallery Photo credit: Rebecca Fanuele

The film—part visual essay, part speculative fiction—magnifies Gray's talent by emphasizing the living dimension of her architecture, which is designed to facilitate the circulation of bodies and natural light. As in Gerard & Kelly's previous films, E for Eileen questions the ways of living and moving in a given construction by featuring historical characters linked to the site: Eileen Gray (played by Nikki Amuka-Bird), and two of her lovers, architect and critic Jean Badovici (played by Colin Bates) and the famous music-hall singer Damia (Flora Fischbach). With this film, Gerard & Kelly subtly evoke the inner life and social world of Eileen Gray, an openly bisexual woman, who frequented the pre-war Parisian lesbian literary circle and launched her own design gallery in Paris in 1922 under a male pseudonym. From her limited personal archive, Gerard & Kelly have designed four light boxes; Portrait Recto/Verso, Monsieur Gray, Eclipse, and Souvenir (after a photograph by Eileen Gray), 2025 are fragments of memory and clues that lend new insight to Gray’s elusive personality.

GERARD & KELLY Solarium ensoleillé, 2025 Mat board (passe-partout), lamp (Pailla Wall Lamp, design by Eileen Gray, 1927), bulb, acrylic, illumination program 14 1/8 x 18 1/2 x 2 3/8 in. (36 x 47 x 6 cm) Copyright Gerard & Kelly Courtesy the artists and Marian Goodman Gallery Photo credit: Rebecca Fanuele

In the gallery's vaulted space, another forgotten artist, Francesco di Stefano, known as Pesellino (1422-1457), emerges from the shadows. Like Eileen Grey, Pesellino was prolific during his lifetime, receiving commissions from the Medici in Florence and collaborating with the leading painters of his time. He died prematurely of the plague at the age of 35. Gerard & Kelly’s sculpture Glory Hole, 2025, inspired by Pesellino's painting of St. Francis of Assisi receiving the stigmata now in the collection of the Louvre Museum, transforms the space into a postmodern sanctuary. The saint, wearing his cassock, half-reclines on the floor; a mirror ball has penetrated his flesh and replaced his head. An emblematic symbol of the disco era, this ball bridges the gap between the worlds of nightlife and the sacred, and its perpetual spinning evokes the wandering of the bardo.

GERARD & KELLY Souvenir (after a photograph by Eileen Gray), 2025 Transparency, gouache, light box Hand-painted print: 5 3/4 x 8 1/2 in. (14.5 x 21.5 cm) Frame: 12 x 14 3/4 x 1 3/8 in. (30.6 x 37.6 x 3.4 cm) Copyright Gerard & Kelly Courtesy the artists and Marian Goodman Gallery Photo credit: Rebecca Fanuele

The final chapter of the exhibition unfolds in the gallery's showroom, with new works that enter into a subtle dialogue with Julius Eastman (1940-1990), a queer, black American composer active in New York in the 1970s and 80s. In the Glyphs series, Gerard & Kelly applied fragments of musical notation onto silk screened images of dancers, captured in glyph-like gestures and shimmering like holograms. Reminiscent of medieval illuminated manuscripts, the artists’ process of pressing gold leaf is an act of devotion: a transcription of Eastman’s handwritten score for Gay Guerrilla (1979). Gerard & Kelly’s engagement with his oeuvre, which was largely lost at the time of his premature death, dates back several years. His music featured in their film Panorama , 2021, shot in the Bourse de Commerce in Paris, and in their performance Gay Guerrilla, 2023, created at the Centre Pompidou. In new large-format works rendered in silkscreen, stencil and neon, Pompidou Pulse, 2025 and Disco Saint, 2025, the artists integrate images of the emblematic architecture of the Centre Pompidou with disco dancers captured in ecstatic states. Gerard & Kelly transform the dancer into a saintly figure, evoking a bardo in which the sacred and the profane cohabitate and where buildings and bodies dissolve.

GERARD & KELLY Pompidou Pulse, 2025 Silkscreen, acrylic and neon on canvas 59 x 86 5/8 in. (150 x 220 cm) Copyright Gerard & Kelly Courtesy the artists and Marian Goodman Gallery Photo credit: Rebecca Fanuele

The cycle of three films made by Gerard & Kelly in emblematic architectural sites in France—Bright Hours at Le Corbusier's Cité Radieuse in Marseille, Panorama at the Bourse de Commerce in Paris and E For Eileen at villa E-1027—will be broadcast on February 9 on France 2 and available for streaming for a limited time on France.tv.

GERARD & KELLY Glory Hole, 2025 (DETAIL) Polyester resin cast, automobile paint, gold leaf; disco ball, chain, motor Dimensions variable
Sculpture: 69 3/4 x 48 3/8 x 30 1/4 in. (177 x 123 x 77 cm) Copyright Gerard & Kelly Courtesy the artists and Marian Goodman Gallery Photo credit: Rebecca Fanuele

American artists based in Paris since 2018, Gerard & Kelly have collaborated for two decades on performance, film/video, and installation, among other formats. Having collectively studied ballet, visual art, literature, and gender studies, Gerard & Kelly use conceptual strategies in art to examine broader themes of memory and history, sexuality and subjectivity. Their questions are often set against a particular architectural space, pushing the related sociocultural and political precedents of the site into an open engagement with their work. Brennan Gerard was born in Ohio in 1978, and Ryan Kelly was born in Pennsylvania in 1979. They were Van Lier Fellows of the Whitney Museum Independent Study Program and graduated with MFAs from the Interdisciplinary Studio at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) in 2013. Ruins, their first solo show in a European\ institution, was presented at Carré d'Art - Musée d'art contemporain de Nîmes in 2022-2023. Solo exhibitions and performances of their work have been presented by Fondation Maeght, Saint-Paul de Vence (2024), Centre Pompidou, Paris (2023), MAMCO, Geneva (2020), MOCA, Los Angeles (2020), Festival d’Automne, Paris (2017 and 2019), The Getty Museum, Los Angeles (2019), Pioneer Works, New York (2018), Palais de Tokyo, Paris (2016), New Museum, New York (2014), and The Kitchen, New York (2014).

GERARD & KELLY Disco Saint, 2025 Silkscreen and neon on Dibond aluminum 39 3/8 x 78 3/4 in. (100 x 200 cm) Copyright Gerard & Kelly Courtesy the artists and Marian Goodman Gallery Photo credit: Rebecca Fanuele

They participated in the 2023 NGV Triennial at the National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, the 2017 and 2023 Chicago Architecture Biennial, and the 2014 Made in L.A. Biennial at the Hammer Museum, Los Angeles. Their work has been included in group exhibitions at Collection Lambert, Avignon (2024), FRAC Franche- Comté, Besançon (2022), High Line, New York (2023), and Solomon R. Guggenheim, New York (2015), among others. Gerard & Kelly have received numerous awards and grants, including the VIA Art Fund (2024), Mondes nouveaux program of the French Ministry of Culture (2023), Graham Foundation (2014), and Art Matters (2013). Their works are held in the permanent collections of Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York; LACMA – Los Angeles County Museum of Art; Hammer Museum, Los Angeles; FRAC Franche- Comté, Besançon; Carré d'Art, Nîmes; and National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne.

Marian Goodman Gallery champions the work of artists who stand among the most influential of our time and represents over five generations of diverse thought and practice. The Gallery’s exhibition program, characterized by its caliber and rigor, provides international platforms for its artists to showcase their work, foster vital dialogues with new audiences, and advance their practices within nonprofit and institutional realms. Established in New York City in 1977, Marian Goodman Gallery gained prominence early in its trajectory for introducing the work of seminal European artists to American audiences. Today, through its exhibition spaces in New York, Los Angeles, and Paris, the Gallery maintains its global focus, representing some 50 artists working in the U.S. and internationally.

The exhibition opened on 17 January and will be on view until 8 March 2025 at the Marian Goodman’s location in Paris at 79 & 66 rue du Temple, 75003. For more information about the exhibit, please visit the Marian Goodman Gallery’s site. The gallery can be found on Instagram and Artsy, too.

The Monster

Huma Bhabha Untitled, 2024 WORK ON PAPERink, pastel, acrylic, charcoal, and collage on paper53-1/2" × 52"(135.9 cm × 132.1 cm)Framed: 59 1/8 x 57 5/8 x 2 1/4inches (150.2 x 146.4 x 5.7 cm)© Huma Bhabha, courtesy the artist and David Kordansky Gallery

Los Angeles – Pace is pleased to present The Monster, an exhibition curated by artist Robert Nava, at its Los Angeles gallery. The exhibition opened on February 1  and will be on view until March 22, 2025, this presentation will bring together paintings, sculptures, and works on paper by an intergenerational group of artists—including several LA-based artists—within and beyond the gallery’s program and will coincide with this year’s edition of Frieze Los Angeles.

 The Monster Curated by Robert Nava 1201 South La Brea Avenue, Los Angeles, CA 90019 February 1 – March 22, 2025 Photography courtesy Pace Gallery

Inspired in part by Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, this exhibition, organized by Nava in collaboration with Pace’s Chief Curator Oliver Shultz, will celebrate monstrous bodies and fabulations of monstrosity in contemporary art—not the everyday monsters of waking life, but rather the fantasy monster, the monster of childhood, the mythical beast, the shapeless creature of the unconscious. This monster is a pre-image, an inchoate nightmare, a being neither human nor animal with the power to both terrify and enamor.

The Monster Curated by Robert Nava 1201 South La Brea Avenue, Los Angeles, CA 90019 February 1 – March 22, 2025 Photography courtesy Pace Gallery

The Monster will feature works by Huma Bhabha, Louise Bourgeois, Willem de Kooning, Jean Dubuffet, Nicole Eisenman, Ficre Ghebreyesus, Thomas Houseago, Rashid Johnson, Li Hei Di, Robert Longo, Tala Madani, Paul McCarthy, Ugo Rondinone, Lucas Samaras, Peter Saul, Cindy Sherman, Kiki Smith, and Paul Thek, alongside other significant figures of the 20th and 21st centuries. With a focus on modern and contemporary figuration, the show will reflect Nava’s sensibility and include work by Nava himself, as well as other contemporary and emerging painters. A special presentation of works by Thek will anchor the exhibition.

Lucas Samaras Untitled, January 6, 1985 PAINTING acrylic on canvas36" × 24" (91.4 cm × 61 cm) 38-1/8" ×26" × 1-5/8" (96.8 cm × 66 cm × 4.1cm), framed ©Lucas Samaras, courtesy Pace Gallery

Populated by a cast of hybrid and chimaeric bodies, at once mythic and everyday, Nava’s paintings and drawings navigate the space between the raw and the refined. Often imbued with a sense of philosophical and psychological charge, his figures suggest a dark, contemplative, and existential mood despite their vibrancy, liveliness, and humor. Nava takes inspiration for his distinctive lexicon of characters and forms from a diverse range of sources, from ancient art to mythology and religion to horror films, science fiction, video games, and cartoons.

The Monster Curated by Robert Nava 1201 South La Brea Avenue, Los Angeles, CA 90019 February 1 – March 22, 2025 Photography courtesy Pace Gallery

Many of the artists in The Monster have impacted Nava’s point of view. Trafficking in the language of the uncanny and the grotesque, the figures that proliferate in these works are formless monstrosities of the imagination. Horrifying as they may be, they help us understand that a monster might, in the end, be the most human being of all.

A full artist list and further programming details will be announced in due course.

Pace is a leading international art gallery representing some of the most influential contemporary artists and estates from the past century, holding decades-long relationships with Alexander Calder, Jean Dubuffet, Barbara Hepworth, Agnes Martin, Louise Nevelson, and Mark Rothko. Pace enjoys a unique U.S. heritage spanning East and West coasts through its early support of artists central to the Abstract Expressionist and Light and Space movements.

Since its founding by Arne Glimcher in 1960, Pace has developed a distinguished legacy as an artist-first gallery that mounts seminal historical and contemporary exhibitions. Under the current leadership of CEO Marc Glimcher, Pace continues to support its artists and share their visionary work with audiences worldwide by remaining at the forefront of innovation. Now in its seventh decade, the gallery advances its mission through a robust global program— comprising exhibitions, artist projects, public installations, institutional collaborations, performances, and interdisciplinary projects. Pace has a legacy in art bookmaking and has published over five hundred titles in close collaboration with artists, with a focus on original scholarship and on introducing new voices to the art historical canon.

Today, Pace has seven locations worldwide, including European footholds in London and Geneva as well as Berlin, where the gallery established an office in 2023. Pace maintains two galleries in New York—its headquarters at 540 West 25th Street, which welcomed almost 120,000 visitors and programmed 20 shows in its first six months, and an adjacent 8,000 sq. ft. exhibition space at 510 West 25th Street. Pace’s long and pioneering history in California includes a gallery in Palo Alto, which was open from 2016 to 2022. Pace’s engagement with Silicon Valley’s technology industry has had a lasting impact on the gallery at a global level, accelerating its initiatives connecting art and technology as well as its work with experiential artists. Pace consolidated its West Coast activity through its flagship in Los Angeles, which opened in 2022. Pace was one of the first international galleries to establish outposts in Asia, where it operates permanent gallery spaces in Hong Kong and Seoul, along with an office and viewing room in Beijing. In spring 2024, Pace will open its first gallery space in Japan in Tokyo’s new Azabudai Hills development.

For more information about this exhibition and others, please visit the Pace Gallery’s website here. Pace Gallery can be found on Instagram and Artsy, too.

WON JU LIM: An Artificial Place

Installation Views: An Artificial Place, Sidecar Gallery, December 14, 2024-February 8, 2025 Photo Credit: Ed Mumford

Sidecar is pleased to present An Artificial Place, a presentation of new and recent works by 2024 Guggenheim Fellow Won Ju Lim, organized in collaboration with Parapet/Real Humans, St. Louis.

The title of this exhibition sets the scene for the audience in a seemingly straightforward manner. Galleries, it reminds us, are unnatural places, reserved for artifice. But there is more to those words, which in fact derive from literature, specifically the writings of Marcel Proust. They are resumed inside via a series of “magic lanterns” that Won Ju Lim has produced over the past three years, and which form the bulk of this show. When their titles are read in sequence, the textual fragment is rounded out:

Installation Views: An Artificial Place, Sidecar Gallery, December 14, 2024-February 8, 2025 Photo Credit: Ed Mumford

That sense of the complexity of the Bois de Boulogne which made it an artificial place and, in the zoological or mythological sense of the word, a Garden, I captured again, this year, as I crossed it on my way to Trianon, on one of those mornings, early in November, when in Paris, if we stay indoors, being so near and yet prevented from witnessing the transformation scene of autumn, which is drawing so rapidly to a close without our assistance, we feel a regret for the fallen leaves that becomes a fever, and may even keep us awake at night.

Installation Views: An Artificial Place, Sidecar Gallery, December 14, 2024-February 8, 2025 Photo Credit: Ed Mumford

This meandering sentence comes from the novel Swann’s Way (1913), the first volume of Proust’s In Search of Lost Time. A monumental feat of remembrance, it looms large over the proceedings, plunging every work on view into the febrile uncertainty of the past tense. Arranged on gently rotating platforms are items of various sorts—handmade architectural models, hobby kit renditions of environmental details, and a wide assortment of domestic bric-a-brac gleaned from thrift-stores, swap meets, and estate sales—all pertaining to episodes from Proust’s grand adventure in introspection. Accordingly, one could say that these are things summoned from another time, infused with a mental atmosphere, perhaps mere figments of reverie. And yet, unlike the words that appear on the author’s pages and are so readily translatable into thought, these things constitute a phenomenal reality, available to our eyes here and now. Moreover, raked by the light of the small desk lamps at their side, they gain an uncanny sense of agency, projecting past their given form as shadows and reflections—images.

“In Casting II (2023), a 39-minute single-channel video also featured in the show, a voice-over narrator once again takes us to the novelistic scene of a garden. This work could be slotted into the “making of” category. In it, we observe Lim working on one of her shadow-play lightboxes, a genre she began exploring in 2003. An example hangs on the opposite wall, dominated by Man Ray’s famous portrait of Proust on his deathbed. One might wonder if he is still dreaming of his childhood; the video suggests as much. Throughout, the lights flicker on and off. At the extreme, a white screen suddenly turns black, but which is more full or empty from the perspective of memory? Hands move small objects across a tabletop stage where, caught up in a play of brightness and obscurity, they occasionally lock into virtual tableaux, only to again decompose into the stuff they actually are. In the drawn-out finale, which amounts to a kind of credit sequence, each “takes a bow.” These diverse things, already so steeped in memory and storytelling, double down on their illusionistic aspect, effectively representing “themselves” as imaginary entities, the flora and fauna of an artificial place.”

— Jan Tumlir

 Installation Views: An Artificial Place, Sidecar Gallery, December 14, 2024-February 8, 2025 Photo Credit: Ed Mumford

Won Ju Lim is a recipient of the 2024 Guggenheim Fellowship. Lim’s work has been exhibited worldwide in 40+ solo and 70+ group exhibitions, including those at the Elzig Museum, Istanbul; University Galleries, California State University, Sacramento; Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; San Jose Museum of Art, San Jose; the High Museum of Art, Atlanta; Yerba Buena Art Center, San Francisco; the St. Louis Art Museum, St. Louis; the Hood Museum of Art, Hanover; the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; Kunsthalle Detroit, Detroit; the Vancouver Art Gallery, Vancouver; the Hammer Museum, Los Angeles; the Museum of Art, Seoul; the Ullens Center for Contemporary Art, Beijing; Schirn Kunsthalle, Frankfurt; DA2 Domus Artium, Salamanca; Wexner Center for the Arts, Columbus; ZKM Museum fur Neue Kunst, Karlsruhe; Wilhelm-Hack-Museum, Ludwigshafen; Museum Haus Ester, Krefeld; Museum der Moderne, Salzurg; the Museum of Contemporary Art, North Miami; Casino Luxemboug – Forum d’Art Contemporain, Luxembourg; Museum für Gegenwartskunst, Siegen; and Kunstlerhaus Bethanien, Berlin. Her biennale exhibitions include the International Incheon Women Artists’ Biennale; Architecture, Art, and Landscape Biennial of the Canaries; the Gwangju Biennale; Snapshot: New Art from Los Angeles, the Hammer Museum; and the Müenster Sculpture Biennale. Her work is included in international public collections such as those of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art; Manetti Shrem Museum of Art, Davis; Elzig Collection, Istanbul; Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; San Jose Museum of Art; the Hammer Museum, Los Angeles; the High Museum of Art, Atlanta; M+, Hong Kong; Guy & Myriam Ullens Foundation, Orsières, Switzerland; La Colección Jumex, Mexico City; and the Vancouver Art Gallery among others. She is the recipient of numerous grants and fellowships including the 2016 C.O.L.A. Individual Artist Fellowship, the Henry L. and Natalie E. Freund Fellowship, the Creative Capacity Fund, the Tribeca Film Institute Media Arts Fellowship (funded by the Rockefeller Foundation), the Korea Arts Foundation for Visual Arts Grant, and the California Community Foundation Fellowship for Visual Artists.

This exhibition opened on December 14, 2024 and will be on view until February 8, 2025 There was an opening reception: Saturday, December 14, 6-8PM, featuring a DJ set by KCHUNG's Godspeed Radio (Jan Tumlir, Eric Wesley, Erica Redling)

For more information about this exhibition and more please visit Sidecar Gallery site here.

Richard Misrach: CARGO

Richard Misrach, Cargo Ships (February 26, 2024 6:13 am), 2024 PIGMENT pigment print mounted on Dibond 60" × 80" (152.4 cm × 203.2 cm), image, paper, and mount 62-1/2" × 83" × 3" (158.8 cm × 210.8 cm × 7.6 cm), frame (approx.) signed, titled, dated and numbered verso in ink on label affixed verso on mount © Richard Misrach, courtesy Pace Gallery

New York – Pace is pleased to present an exhibition of recent photographs by Richard Misrach at its 540 West 25th Street gallery in New York. On view from January 17 to March 1, 2025, this will be the first presentation devoted to CARGO, a body of work that Misrach began in 2021 during the COVID-19 pandemic. During the last week of the show, advance copies of CARGO (Aperture, May 2025) will be available to view at the gallery. Pace hosted a talk between the artist and Sarah Meister, Executive Director of Aperture.

Richard Misrach, Cargo Ships (January 18, 2024 10:18 am), 2024 PIGMENT pigment print mounted on Dibond 60" × 80" (152.4 cm × 203.2 cm), image, paper, and mount 62-1/2" × 83" × 3" (158.8 cm × 210.8 cm × 7.6 cm), frame (approx.) signed, titled, dated and numbered verso in ink on label affixed verso on mount© Richard Misrach, courtesy Pace Gallery

Misrach is known for his poignant, large-scale color images that lean into social, political, and environmental issues while also engaging with the history of photography. In his radiant, contemplative works, Misrach—who is based in California—often examines the destructive impact of human interaction with the natural world. His works have examined man-made fires and floods, nuclear test sites, and animal burial pits in the American West; the petrochemical corridor in Louisiana; the landscape of the US-Mexico border; as well as more lyrical subjects like San Francisco’s iconic Golden Gate Bridge and his recent hydrofoil surfer series in Hawaii.

 Richard Misrach: CARGO 540 West 25th Street, New York, NY 10001 January 17 – March 1, 2025 Photography courtesy Pace Gallery

Harkening back to his Golden Gate Bridge series—which the artist produced from his front porch over the course of four years beginning in 1997—CARGO centers on the light, water, and weather of the San Francisco Bay. He began creating this body of work in 2021 amid the pandemic and its attendant lockdowns. Captured at different times of day from a single location in San Francisco, these photographs speak to his enduring interest in bearing witness to the world around him from a singular vantage point over the course of months or years.

Richard Misrach Cargo Ships (December 16, 2023 9:11 am), 2023 pigment print mounted to Dibond 60" × 80" (152.4 cm × 203.2 cm), image, paper, and mount 62-1/2" × 82" × 3" (158.8 cm × 208.3 cm × 7.6 cm), frame Edition 3 of 5, Edition of 5 + 1 AP © Richard Misrach, courtesy Pace Gallery

In a statement, Misrach describes this series as a meditation on and celebration of the setting of the San Francisco Bay. With these works, he also contemplates the design, function, and history of the ships in the bay, and all of the thousands of workers implied in the images.

“Behind these ships, there is a remarkable—if invisible—global workforce that builds them, and inhabits them, that packs and unloads them, that maneuvers them over oceans and canals, sometimes in dangerous situations, toward their eventual berths,” Misrach writes. “Along with the extraordinary achievement and value these cargo ships symbolize, they also represent the complex, challenging side of our critical, intertwined, international commerce. In this historical moment, they allude to the threat that is global warming.”

Richard Misrach, Cargo Ships (January 13, 2022 5:25 pm), 2022 PIGMENT pigment print mounted on Dibond 60" × 80" (152.4 cm × 203.2 cm), image, paper, and mount 62-1/2" × 83" × 3" (158.8 cm × 210.8 cm × 7.6 cm), frame (approx.) signed, titled, dated and numbered verso in ink on label affixed verso on mount. © Richard Misrach, courtesy Pace Gallery

Richard Misrach (b. 1949, Los Angeles, California) is considered one of the most influential photographers of his generation, instrumental in pioneering the use of color photography and large-scale format in the 1970s. He graduated from the University of California, Berkeley, in 1971 with a BA in Psychology. For over 50 years, Misrach has photographed the dynamic landscape of the American West through an environmentally aware and politically astute lens. His visually seductive, large-scale color vistas powerfully document the devastating ecological effects of human intervention, industrial development, nuclear testing and petrochemical pollution on the natural world. His best known and ongoing epic series, Desert Cantos, comprises 40 distinct but related groups of pictures that explore the complex conjunction between mankind and nature. Otherworldly images of desert seas, rock formations, and clouds are juxtaposed with unsettling scenes of desert fires, nuclear test sites, and animal burial pits. Recent chapters capture the highly charged political climate following the 2016 US presidential election through photographs of spray-painted graffiti messages scrawled on abandoned buildings and remote rocky outcroppings in desolate areas of the Desert Southwest.

Other bodies of work include Golden Gate, a careful study of times of day, weather, and light around San Francisco’s famed bridge; On the Beach, aerial views of individuals and groups against a backdrop of water and sand; Notations, ravishing landscapes and seascapes in a reversed color spectrum; Destroy This Memory, a haunting document shot with a 4-megapixel pocket camera of graffiti found in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina; and Petrochemical America, an in-depth examination of petrochemical pollution along the Mississippi River produced in collaboration with landscape architect Kate Orff.

Pace is a leading international art gallery representing some of the most influential contemporary artists and estates from the past century, holding decades-long relationships with Alexander Calder, Jean Dubuffet, Barbara Hepworth, Agnes Martin, Louise Nevelson, and Mark Rothko. Pace enjoys a unique U.S. heritage spanning East and West coasts through its early support of artists central to the Abstract Expressionist and Light and Space movements.

Since its founding by Arne Glimcher in 1960, Pace has developed a distinguished legacy as an artist-first gallery that mounts seminal historical and contemporary exhibitions. Under the current leadership of CEO Marc Glimcher, Pace continues to support its artists and share their visionary work with audiences worldwide by remaining at the forefront of innovation. Now in its seventh decade, the gallery advances its mission through a robust global program— comprising exhibitions, artist projects, public installations, institutional collaborations, performances, and interdisciplinary projects. Pace has a legacy in art bookmaking and has published over five hundred titles in close collaboration with artists, with a focus on original scholarship and on introducing new voices to the art historical canon.

Today, Pace has seven locations worldwide, including European footholds in London and Geneva as well as Berlin, where the gallery established an office in 2023. Pace maintains two galleries in New York—its headquarters at 540 West 25th Street, which welcomed almost 120,000 visitors and programmed 20 shows in its first six months, and an adjacent 8,000 sq. ft. exhibition space at 510 West 25th Street. Pace’s long and pioneering history in California includes a gallery in Palo Alto, which was open from 2016 to 2022. Pace’s engagement with Silicon Valley’s technology industry has had a lasting impact on the gallery at a global level, accelerating its initiatives connecting art and technology as well as its work with experiential artists. Pace consolidated its West Coast activity through its flagship in Los Angeles, which opened in 2022. Pace was one of the first international galleries to establish outposts in Asia, where it operates permanent gallery spaces in Hong Kong and Seoul, along with an office and viewing room in Beijing. In spring 2024, Pace will open its first gallery space in Japan in Tokyo’s new Azabudai Hills development.

The exhibition opened on January 17th and will be on view until  March 1, 2025, at Pace Gallery 510 West 25th Street in New York. For more information about this exhibition and others, please visit the Pace Gallery’s website here. Pace Gallery can be found on Instagram and Artsy, too.

Jorge Macchi: False Autumn

Jorge Macchi False Autumn 2024 exhibition view Galleria Continua San Gimignano Courtesy: the artist and GALLERIA CONTINUA Photographer: Ela Bialkowska, OKNO Studio

GALLERIA CONTINUA, with great pleasure,  hosted  a new solo exhibition by Jorge Macchi titled “False Autumn.” The work of the Argentine artist is positioned precisely at the turning point between two opposites, in that grey area between the real form and the fictitious form of reality. In a world where art serves as a bridge between the tangible and the intangible, Macchi’s work testifies to the power of visual expression, chance, and the enduring influence of personal experiences. His art captures the ephemeral and the transient, inviting us to reflect on the fragile boundaries that define our existence. The exhibition opened on September 14 .2024, and concluded on January 26th, 2025. There was an opening reception on September the 14th. 

Jorge Macchi False Autumn 2024 exhibition view Galleria Continua San Gimignano Courtesy: the artist and GALLERIA CONTINUA Photographer: Ela Bialkowska, OKNO Studio

The sculptures of various sizes, watercolors, oil paintings, and installations in this exhibition recreate the conditions for a new paradoxical reality that, through the assertion of artifice, upends our certainties and infiltrates the folds of consciousness. “Paradox is the suspension of meaning. It is one form of humor. It is one of Borges’ favorite tools. It is the word that defines much of what I do. The archer and the arrow, Zeno of Elea’s aporia, the scene where an arrow aimed at a target never reaches it because the distance between them is infinitely divisible, it is a paradox that has been with me forever” says the artist.

“False Autumn” is the work that gives its name to the exhibition by Macchi in San Gimignano. In one corner of the gallery, over a thousand leaves are scattered across the floor. As the title (“False Autumn”) suggests, these are not real autumn leaves: they are not yellow or red but green. Each one has a unique shape resembling a puzzle piece. A closer look reveals that these puzzle pieces are made from real leaves, each carefully cut out. This process disrupts the usual harmony between the natural shape of a leaf and its veins, prompting the observer to wonder what possible image could emerge from assembling all the puzzle pieces. Furthermore, ‘false autumn’ is also a term that was coined this summer to describe a phenomenon affecting various parts of Great Britain and many European countries, including Italy: due to severe drought and intense heatwaves, nature has gone into survival mode, bringing forward the autumn foliage by several months. Reddened, dry leaves on the ground, branches already almost bare, and increasingly arid soil have characterized numerous forest landscapes, raising widespread concern.

Jorge Macchi A perfect dream 2024 cotton fabric 150 x 200 cm / 59.05 x 78.74 in 2024 tessuto di cotone 150 x 200 cm Courtesy: the artist and GALLERIA CONTINUA

Jorge Macchi’s work creates powerful visual fictions; his pieces are artifacts that explore the functioning of vision and perception. “Rorschach #1” and “Rorschach #2” are site- specific murals painted in the corners of a room in the gallery. They immediately evoke the symmetrical images of Hermann Rorschach’s famous psychodiagnostic test. However, the figures Macchi creates on the wall are not the result of a mere overlay; there is no actual transfer of form and color from one side to another. Instead, the artist makes these images using two symmetrical paper stencils. What remains is the suggestion of a sheet, walls that seem like folded papers, leaving us with the unsettling feeling that the stable and enduring walls of the building could suddenly bend and change their structure. The play between reality and artifice reappears in “Dos banderas” where one element of the diptych consists of four sheets from the same notepad, while the other is made of sheets from different pads. The ribbon, which seems to hold the sheets together, is painted with watercolor and tempera. In “Déjà vu” Macchi intervenes with a restoration and polishing operation on half of a table that has been exposed to the sun and elements for two years. The final assembly is two parts the one exposed outdoors and the one preserved in the studio creating a fictitious and artificial unity. “Confesión” is a cardboard box from a 50-inch Smart TV with all sides carved into a repeated cross pattern, resembling the perforated metal of confessionals. The box no longer contains any object; the perforation has transformed it into a visual tool that offers a fragmented view of its interior and what lies behind it.

Between 1864 and 1933, thousands of glass bottles were thrown into the sea, each containing a document that recorded the exact time and place where the bottle was released into the ocean. This was an experiment to study surface marine currents. In Jorge Macchi’s series “Drift Bottles” the bottles are made of plastic, similar to those widely used by major distributors for mineral water and various beverages. Instead of a message, the artist places a miniature sailing ship, specially crafted by an artisan in Buenos Aires. Macchi’s bottles stimulate our imagination, evoking striking images: the messages in bottles - romantic, scientific, or playful - that have traversed seas and history over time; the world enclosed in a plastic bubble; the hands of an artisan crafting precious objects; and the growing plastic islands in our planet’s oceans.

About the artist:

Jorge Macchi was born in Buenos Aires in 1963, where he lives and works. He won the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship in 2001 and has exhibited at numerous international institutions. Notable solo exhibitions include: Diaspora, Galleria Continua, San Gimignano (2022); The Submerged Cathedral, Musée Cantonal des Beaux-Arts, Lausanne, Switzerland (2020); Portal, Galleria Continua Habana, Cuba (2019); Der Zauberberg, Quartz Studio, Turin (2018); Perspectiva, MALBA, Museo de Arte Latinoamericano Buenos Aires (2016) and CA2M, Centro de Arte 2 de Mayo, Madrid (2017); Lampo, NC ARTE, Bogotá (2015); Prestidigitador, Contemporary Art Universi-ty Museum (MUAC), Mexico (2014); Container, Kunstmuseum Lucerne, Switzerland (2013); Music Stand Still, SMAK, Ghent, Belgium (2011). In 2005, Macchi represented Argentina at the 51st Venice Biennale. His works are included in major international collections such as the Tate Modern (London), MoMA (New York), MUSAC, Museo de Arte Contemporáneo (León), CGAC, Centro Galego de Arte Contemporáneo (Santiago de Compostela), Fundación Arco (Spain), MUHKA (Antwerp), SMAK (Ghent), MAMAC Musée d’Art Moderne et d’Art Contemporain (Nice), and Fundación Banco de la Nación Argentina (Buenos Aires).

About the gallery :

Founded in 1990 in San Gimignano, Italy, GALLERIA CONTINUA has expanded its locations to Beijing, Les Moulins, Havana, São Paulo, Rome, Paris and Dubai.

GALLERIA CONTINUA represents a desire for continuity between times and a desire to write a current history. Thanks to its investment in forgotten and unconventional sites, the gallery has always chosen unexpected locations, developing a strong identity and an original positioning in over thirty years of activity. The home of Galleria Continua, an ex-cinema, it has hosted many prolific exhibitions and installations over the last 34 years. It is a unique and exciting space for artists and the gallery to have to consider when planning and executing exhibitions.

GALLERIA CONTINUA / San Gimignano

Via del Castello 11, 53037 San Gimignano (SI)

+39 0577 943134 | sangimignano@

From Monday to Sunday: 10 AM–1 PM | 2 PM–7 PM;

Starting from 03.11, from Monday to Sunday:

10 AM–1 PM | 2 PM–6 PM

For more information about this exhibition and others at Galleria Continua please visit their site here. Galleria Continua can also be found on Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, YouTube, and Artsy.

BORIS MIKHAILOV: Refracted Times

Installation view, “Refracted Time,” Marian Goodman Gallery, New York, 2025 Courtesy of the artist and Marian Goodman Gallery Photo credit: Alex Yudzon

Marian Goodman Gallery is very pleased to announce the exhibition of works by the acclaimed Ukrainian photographer Boris Mikhailov which opened on 10 January and will be on view through 22 February 2025.

Known for his groundbreaking photographic practice which combines his interest in cinema, documentary, per- performance, and writing, Mikhailov has been an inventive, tender but uncompromising witness to the changing fate of his native Ukraine and the consequent experiences of war and displacement. The exhibition explores his rethinking and reworking of the photographic image by including two video works – one from the late ‘60s-‘70s, Yesterday’s Sandwich, and the most recent, Our Time is Our Burden, 2024 – as well as showcasing three iconic photographic series from the ‘80s and ‘90s. One of the most acclaimed photographers of the former USSR, he represented Ukraine at the Venice Biennale in 2007, and debuted his work in the United States with a solo presentation at MoMA in 2011.

 Our Time is Our Burden, 2024 (Video still) Video, color, silent; 8 min. 28 sec. Installation view, “Refracted Time,”Marian Goodman Gallery, 2025
Courtesy of the artist and Marian Goodman Gallery Photo credit: Alex Yudzon

Mikhailov was born in 1938 in Kharkhiv, Ukraine, and has spent his life living between Kharkhiv and Berlin. Educated as an engineer, he encountered photography as an art form quite by chance. Through his raw pictures which offer an unequivocal critique of everyday life, he has represented the collective unconscious of Ukraine for over five decades. His embrace of social truths often involves the incorporation of deliberate accidents in his image construction to allow the abject to surface. His work is known also for specific aesthetic innovations, such as hand coloration as part of his conceptual practice, and the superimposition of images as a metaphor for the duality of Soviet life, as first seen in Yesterday’s Sandwich (1960s-70s).

Alongside the videos, three seminal sets of photographs will be presented, taken between 1986-1993, which reflect on the changing conditions and inevitable contradictions of Ukrainian life. Operating in a society in which pre- scribed portrayals of idealized Soviet life were part of the era, these pictures represent the complex scrutiny, irony, and dissent that Mikhailov brought to his work. From the mid eighties, operating behind the ideological façade of the times, just as ‘glasnost’ was on the horizon, to the social upheavals that followed the downfall of the Soviet Union in 1991, he seeks to represent everyday humanity, questioning legacies of heroic identity.

Boris Mikhailov At Dusk, 1993 Chromogenic Print 19 3/4 x 43 1/4 in. (50 x 110 cm) Courtesy of the artist and Marian Goodman Gallery Photo credit: Alex Yudzon

The earliest of the series on view is a set of black & white works, Salt Lake, 1986, in which we see bathers around a body of water in Southern Ukraine, recalling as Mikhailov says, ‘times gone by post-revolution, where seemingly, like in the 1920’s and 1930’s people bathed naked, believing in the healing properties of waters.’ This everyday portrayal of a lakeside idyll, with people mingling and socializing in regenerative spirit, actually depict the ‘underside of a proselytized utopia’ taking place against an industrial landscape with a factory looming in the distance, that was known to pollute the waters with waste. “It seemed to be the quintessence of the life of an average person in the Soviet context; despite the atrocious, polluted, humane environment, the people were relaxed, calm and happy … families, old men, and women lying down like odalisques or Greek statues.”

Installation view, “Refracted Time,” Marian Goodman Gallery, New York, 2025 Courtesy of the artist and Marian Goodman Gallery Photo credit: Alex Yudzon

By the Ground, 1991, a series made five years later, was created the same year as the fall of the Soviet Union. Through a horizon camera that featured a panoramic point of view on his subjects in a novel sepia tone, a destitute reality emerged, reflecting life of the people at ‘ground level.’ Shot from hip height, solitary figures are captured against an urban landscape, leaving the easy idyll behind. Having depicted subjects in a purposefully nostalgic manner through sepia tones, Mikhailov writes of these images: “Things were beginning to fall apart, the country was breaking up. This was life beyond the collapse. This series begins with a photo of a man lying on the ground… Suddenly I thought of Maxim Gorky’s play “The Lower Depths,” and this inspired the title of the series.”

Boris Mikhailov Salt Lake, 1986 Photograph Frame: 30 1/4 x 41 1/4 x 1 1/4 in. (76.8 x 104.8 x 3.2 cm) Mat window: 21 1/2 x 32 1/2 in. (54.6 x 82.5 cm)
Courtesy of the artist and Marian Goodman Gallery Photo credit: Alex Yudzon

Two years later, Mikhailov continued his experiment with color, returning to the street with his series At Dusk, 1993. Evoking memory and war, At Dusk continues to document a worsening condition in Ukraine, following independence and collapse of the USSR. Using a horizon panoramic camera again, the images are hand-colored cobalt blue, recalling a complex beauty but also the foreboding of the night sky, which Mikhailov remembers having fled as a young boy from ‘sirens, searchlights, and bombs’ in 1941 Kharkhiv, during the advance of World War II. Mikhailov writes, “Blue for me is the color of the blockade, hunger and war.”

In his documentation of Soviet life, there’s an underlying tone of dark humor, which serves a means to subvert the status quo, and as commentary to denote the failure of the prevailing systems of communism and capitalism. The narrative that he captures is in stark contrast to the reality and expectation from society and its government, then and especially now, in light of current events.

Boris Mikhailov Salt Lake, 1986 Photograph Frame: 30 1/4 x 41 1/4 x 1 1/4 in. (76.8 x 104.8 x 3.2 cm) Mat window: 21 1/2 x 32 1/2 in. (54.6 x 82.5 cm)
Courtesy of the artist and Marian Goodman Gallery Photo credit: Alex Yudzon

In 1971, Mikhailov co-founded the Vremya group, an underground art collective exploring experimental forms of photographic techniques and methods, which later formed the basis of the Kharkiv School of Photography. He was the head of the photography department of Panorama, the Ukrainian Union of Experimental Photography, from 1987 until 1991. His work was included in the Carnegie International in 1991; and his series By the Ground was included in a show of New Photography that same year at MoMA in 1993. In 1993, he spent a year in Berlin, sponsored by the German Academic Exchange Organisation (DAAD). He was a visiting professor at Harvard University in 2000 and a professor at the Leipzig Academy in 2002-2003.

Mikhailov has received many prestigious awards, including the Coutts Contemporary Art Award (1996), the Al- bert Renger-Patzsch Prize (1997), the Goslarer Kaiserring Award (2015), the Hasselblad Foundation International Award in Photography (2000), the Deutsche Börse Photography Foundation Prize (2001). In 2000, his book “Case History” won the prize for best photography book at the Rencontres Internationales de la Photographie in Arles, France, and the Kraszna Krausz Book Award in London. In 2021, his slideshow installation Temptation of Death (2017-2019) was awarded the Shevchenko National Prize, the first official recognition of Mikhailov’s work in Ukraine.

Boris Mikhailov By the Ground, 1991 Gelatin silver print, photomontage, toned Mat: 8 1/4 x 26 in. (21 x 66 cm) Sheet: 7 3/4 x 11 3/4 in. (19.7 x 29.8 cm) [each] Courtesy of the artist and Marian Goodman Gallery Photo credit: Alex Yudzon

Mikhailov’s work has been shown in numerous solo exhibitions at such institutions as the Ukrainian Pavilion\ at Venice Biennale (2007 and 2017), Tate Modern, London (2010), MoMA, New York (2011), Berlinische Galerie (2012), Sprengel Museum, Hannover (2013), PinchukArtCentre, Kyiv (2019), Staatliche Kunsthalle, Baden- Baden (2020), Maison Européenne de la Photographie, Paris (2022), Palazzo Esposizioni, Rome (2023), and Fotomuseum Den Haag, The Hague (2024), and the Royal Danish Library, Copenhagen (2024).

Marian Goodman Gallery champions the work of artists who stand among the most influential of our time and represents over five generations of diverse thought and practice. The Gallery’s exhibition program, characterized by its caliber and rigor, provides international platforms for its artists to showcase their work, foster vital dialogues with new audiences, and advance their practices within nonprofit and institutional realms. Established in New York City in 1977, Marian Goodman Gallery gained prominence early in its trajectory for introducing the work of seminal European artists to American audiences. Today, through its exhibition spaces in New York, Los Angeles, and Paris, the Gallery maintains its global focus, representing some 50 artists working in the U.S. and internationally.

This exhibition had an opening reception on the tenth of January that was held from six to eight pm. The exhibition will end on the 22nd of February at the Marian Goodman’s location in Paris at 79 & 66 rue du Temple, 75003. For more information about the exhibit, please visit the Marian Goodman Gallery’s site. The gallery can be found on Instagram and Artsy, too.

Beijing Stories: Sculptures by Liu Shiming and Photographs by Lois Conner

Exhibition Views, Beijing Stories: Sculptures by Liu Shiming and Photographs by Lois Conner Liu Shiming Art Gallery,  New York, 2025 Copyright Lois Conner, Liu Shiming, Courtesy the artist and Liu Shiming Art Gallery

The Liu Shiming Art Gallery is pleased to announce Beijing Stories: Sculptures by Liu Shiming and Photographs by Lois Conner, the exhibition opened on January 16 and will be on view through March 21, 2025. This exhibition brings together two unique perspectives on Beijing, pairing of Liu Shiming’s evocative sculptures with of Lois Conner’s panoramic photographs. Together, their works offer a compelling narrative of a city in transition, reflecting its resilience, evolution, and the enduring spirit of its people.

Liu Shiming’s sculptures, created primarily from the 1980s until his passing in 2010, chronicle Beijing’s transformation from the early years of New China to the 2008 Olympics. His works capture the city's journey from post-revolution challenges to economic reform and rapid development, portraying the lives of ordinary people navigating these changes. Liu’s art highlights the resilience of rural communities adapting to urban life while striving to preserve their traditions as Beijing grew into China’s political and cultural center. His sculptures convey a sense of hope, particularly those depicting the younger generation, which he created after his family settled in Beijing.

Liu Shiming Cutting Through Mountains to Bring in Water, 1958 Bronze 34 x 37.5 x 18

Lois Conner, who has visited China almost annually since 1984, offers an external yet deeply personal perspective through her panoramic photographs. Using a large-format 7” x 17” banquet camera, she captures Beijing’s landscapes and intimate moments with extraordinary clarity and detail. This exhibition features her images of Beijing’s evolving cityscape from the 1980s to today, spanning iconic landmarks such as the 18th-century Summer Palace to contemporary millennial architecture. Conner’s work explores the delicate balance between modernity and tradition, offering a rich visual narrative of the city’s history and cultural transformation.

Exhibition Views, Beijing Stories: Sculptures by Liu Shiming and Photographs by Lois Conner Liu Shiming Art Gallery,  New York, 2025 Copyright Lois Conner, Liu Shiming, Courtesy the artist and Liu Shiming Art Gallery

Together, Liu’s sculptures and Conner’s photographs present a multifaceted exploration of Beijing’s past and present, inviting audiences to experience the city’s dynamic spirit through their artistic lenses.

About Liu Shiming Art Gallery

Located in the center of Manhattan, just steps from the 42nd Street New York Public Library, the Liu Shiming Art Gallery is dedicated to showcasing the works of renowned sculptor Liu Shiming. Through solo exhibitions and curated group shows, the gallery highlights Liu’s sculptures and drawings alongside works by artists who share or draw inspiration from similar artistic traditions. Beyond exhibitions, the gallery serves as a space for cultural and artistic programs, hosting events that foster dialogue and engagement with diverse creative communities.

About Liu Shiming

Liu Shiming (1926–2010) was a pioneering Chinese sculptor whose work bridged traditional Chinese art and modernist influences. A graduate of the Central Academy of Fine Arts (CAFA) in Beijing, he was among the first generation of sculptors trained in the People’s Republic of China. Liu’s early works, including Measuring Land (1950), gained national and international recognition, but he later chose to live and work in rural China, drawing inspiration from local traditions and daily life to develop his signature humanist style.

Working primarily in ceramics, Liu Shiming created sculptures that reflect a deep connection to his cultural heritage and a sensitivity to human experience. His works have been exhibited internationally, including in United States, and Canada, and China. In 2018, CAFA established the Liu Shiming Sculpture Museum, and in 2024, the Liu Shiming Art Gallery opened in Manhattan to celebrate his legacy.

About Lois Conner

Lois Conner is a New York-based photographer renowned for her panoramic “portraits” of landscapes and urban environments, particularly her decades-long documentation of Beijing. Using a large-format 7” x 17” banquet camera, she captures sweeping vistas and intricate details, offering a nuanced perspective on the city’s transformation since her first visit in 1984 during a Guggenheim Fellowship. Conner’s work juxtaposes Beijing’s rapid modernization with its enduring cultural heritage, creating a dialogue between the past and present. Her photographs are featured in prominent collections, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the British Museum, showcasing her ability to reveal the profound beauty and complexity of her subjects.

For more information about this exhibition and the foundation, please visit the site here. The gallery and foundation can also be found on Instagram and Facebook.

JAMES WELLING: Thought objects, Italy and France

Exhibition Views, James Welling: Thought Objects, Italy and France, Galerie Marian Goodman, Paris, 2025 Copyright James Welling Courtesy the artist and Marian Goodman Gallery Photo credit: Rebecca Fanuele

Marian Goodman Gallery is pleased to present the third exhibition of work by James Welling in Paris. An artist widely acclaimed for his unclassifiable approach to photography, Welling has worked with the materiality of the medium since 1975. After using a wide array of analog photographic processes, Welling turned to digital technologies in 1998. His Thought Objects, 2023-24, whose title is borrowed from Barbara Ess and Glenn Branca’s anthology of photographs published in 1987, embodies his evolving quest for discovery. New Thought Objects photographs made recently in Italy are presented at 79 rue du Temple, and at 66 rue du Temple, three Thought Objects from 2023 are hung with his 2009 series devoted to the Maison de verre, an iconic glass and steel domestic building built by architect Pierre Chareau in Paris in the late 1920s.

JAMES WELLING Artichoke, Rome, 2024 UV – curable ink on Dibond alumin 28 x 42 x 1 5/8 in. (71.1 x 106.8 x 4.1 cm) Edition of 5 plus 2 artist’s proofs Copyright James Welling Courtesy the artist and Marian Goodman Gallery

On the ground floor of the gallery, Welling’s new photographs, made in the spring of 2024 during a month-long residency at the American Academy in Rome, encompass a myriad of themes. The images deliberately elude classification or typology and recall his Light Sources series (1992-2001) where Welling explored several subjects. Detailed or partial views of recognizable buildings, such as the MAXXI Museum, the Church of Sant’Agnese in Agone, Rome, or the arcades of the Pinacoteca di Brera, Milan, accentuate uncommon attributes within the architecture. The mathematical order of the tessellated paving stones in the Piazza Navona, or the Fibonacci spirals found in photographs of artichoke and zucchini flowers provide a visual analogue to the underlying mathematical basis of digital photography, or photo numérique, numerical photographs.

JAMES WELLING Arches, Milan, 2024 UV – curable ink on Dibond alumin 42 x 63 3/8 x 1 7/8 in. (106.6 x 161 x 4.8 cm) Edition of 5 plus 2 artist’s proofs Copyright James Welling Courtesy the artist and Marian Goodman Gallery

As Welling explains: “To my mind, Thought Objects are images whose meanings detach from the photograph’s nominal subject to suggest multiple readings.” The massive wooden door of Michelangelo's studio for example, can alternate from being either an ordinary entryway or a pulsating network of colorful afterimages hovering at the doors of perception. In Thought Objects Welling uses a digital variation of 70’s “equidensity processing” that had its origin in analog photography. Similar to solarization or posterization, this process consists of combining positive and negative images to change the visual texture and color of the image. Thought Objects are UV prints, an innovative digital printing process that affixes pigment permanently to thin aluminum panels. These panels are hung using an “frame” designed by the artist that creates the effect of the work floating off the wall.

Exhibition Views, James Welling: Thought Objects, Italy and France, Galerie Marian Goodman, Paris, 2025 Copyright James Welling Courtesy the artist and Marian Goodman Gallery Photo credit: Rebecca Fanuele

At 66 rue du Temple, three 2023 Thought Objects depict quintessential French architectural elements: the circular staircase in Le Corbusier's Villa Savoye, entrance columns of Claude-Nicolas Ledoux's Saline Royale d'Arc-et-Senans and a half-painted typical Parisian door. For Staircase, Villa Savoye, 2022, Welling photographed a sheet of paper coated with blue and orange ink, and digitally superimposed it over a view of the villa's spiral staircase. For Royal Salt-Works, Arc-et-Senans, 2023, Welling further extends the equidensity process to exaggerate the contours of the columns, thereby generating a bas-relief effect reminiscent of the outlines in a Herge’s Tintin cartoon.

A selection of Welling's earliest digital color transformations can also be found in 66 rue du Temple. The Maison de verre, an architectural landmark built between 1928 and 1931 in the 7th arrondissement of Paris for Doctor Jean Dalsace, is transformed in an interplay between artificial color, metal and glass, where all three elements form a creative dialogue. Welling over saturated certain areas of the fifteen photographs in the series and altered light and shadow in others. These interventions create a visual experience in which the architecture is both subject and material for transformation.

JAMES WELLING Paris Door, 2017/2023 UV-curable ink on Dibond aluminum 63 3/8 x 42 x 1 7/8 in. (161 x 106.6 x 4.8 cm) Edition of 5 plus 2 artist's proofs Copyright James Welling Courtesy the artist and Marian Goodman Gallery

The gallery held an artist’s talk by James Welling, Saturday January 18 at 5 pm at the gallery, 79 rue du Temple. His presentation was followed by a conversation with Simon Baker, director of the MEP, Maison Européenne de la Photographie in Paris. Admission is free upon reservation.

James Welling was born in Hartford (Connecticut), USA, in 1951. He lives and works in New York. He studied fine art at Carnegie-Mellon University and modern dance at the University of Pittsburgh before obtaining his MFA from the California Institute of the Arts (CalArts) in 1974. Welling was a professor in the Department of Art at the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA) from 1994 to 2016 where he ran the Photography Area. Since 2012, he has been a lecturer with the status of Professor at Princeton University in New Jersey. In 2014, he received the Infinity Award from the International Center of Photography in New York and in 2016 the Award of Excellence from the Julius Shulman Institute at Woodbury University in California.

JAMES WELLING Bike, Rome, 2024 UV – curable ink on Dibond alumin 42 x 63 3/8 x 1 7/8 in. (106.6 x 161 X 4.8 cm) Edition of 5 plus 2 artist’s proofs Copyright James Welling Courtesy the artist and Marian Goodman Gallery

Welling's protean photographic work has been the subject of numerous solo exhibitions since the late 1970s. In 2017, Metamorphosis, a major retrospective of his work, was presented in Europe at the Stedelijk Museum voor Aktuele Kunst (S.M.A.K.) in Ghent, Belgium, and at the Kunstforum in Vienna, Austria. Recent exhibitions include Dark Matter, combining his work with that of Thomas Ruff, at the Kunsthalle Bielefeld, Germany (2022), Cento at the Musée des Arts Contemporains du Grand Hornu (MACS), Hornu, Belgium (2021), Choreograph at the George Eastman Museum, Rochester, New York (2020), Monograph, at the Cincinnati Art Museum and the Hammer Museum, Los Angeles (2013), Autograph at the Fotomuseum Winterthur, Switzerland and Mind on Fire at the MK Gallery, Milton Keynes, England, the Centro Galego de Arte Contemporánea, Santiago de Compostela, Spain and the Contemporary Art Gallery, Vancouver, Canada (2012). Recent group exhibitions include Reverberations at the Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA), Los Angeles (2024); Medardo Rosso Inventing Modern Sculpture, at Mumok in Vienna, Austria (2024); Epreuves de la matière at the Bibliothèque nationale de France (BNF) in Paris (2023); True Pictures? Contemporary Photography from Canada & The USA at the Sprengel Museum Hannover in Germany (2021), In Focus: Platinum Photographs, at the Getty Center in Los Angeles (2020).

Marian Goodman Gallery champions the work of artists who stand among the most influential of our time and represents over five generations of diverse thought and practice. The Gallery’s exhibition program, characterized by its caliber and rigor, provides international platforms for its artists to showcase their work, foster vital dialogues with new audiences, and advance their practices within nonprofit and institutional realms. Established in New York City in 1977, Marian Goodman Gallery gained prominence early in its trajectory for introducing the work of seminal European artists to American audiences. Today, through its exhibition spaces in New York, Los Angeles, and Paris, the Gallery maintains its global focus, representing some 50 artists working in the U.S. and internationally.

The exhibition opened on 17 January and will be on view until 8 March 2025 at the Marian Goodman’s location in Paris at 79 & 66 rue du Temple, 75003. For more information about the exhibit, please visit the Marian Goodman Gallery’s site. The gallery can be found on Instagram and Artsy, too.

HERVÉ DI ROSAIDOLES ET TRESORS/IDOLS AND TREASURES

Toutes les images / All images: © Courtesy of the artist and TEMPLON, Paris - Brussels - New York

Galerie Templon is delighted to present its first show of the striking work of Hervé Di Rosa, one of the founding artists of the Figuration Libre movement.

Originally from Sète in southern France, Hervé Di Rosa has gradually forged an artistic path inspired by popular culture, animated film and comic books.  His work, infused with curiosity and innovation, has found expression through fruitful collaborations with various artisans from around the world. It has manifested in a vast array of techniques, ranging from acrylic on canvas to sculpture, egg tempera and gold leaf on wood, alongside painting on azulejos.

 Toutes les images / All images: © Courtesy of the artist and TEMPLON, Paris - Brussels - New York

With “Idols and Treasures”, Hervé di Rosa showcases his journey as a painter over the past five years. The exhibition features a series of around a dozen of medium-sized and large-format paintings created between 2020 and 2024. The artist pays tribute to nearly four centuries of cultural explorations which have shaped history, drawing from the rich traditions of painting, sculpture, music and literature. Each canvas invites visitors to immerse themselves in Di Rosa’s lavish and deceptively naive world.

HERVÉ DI ROSA TOTAL GOLD SHOW, 2024 Acrylique sur toile | Acrylic on canvas 170 × 207 cm — 67 × 81 1/2 in Courtoisie de l'artiste et Templon, Paris – Bruxelles - New York | Courtesy of the artist and Templon, Paris – Brussels - New York Photo © Tanguy Beurdeley

 Rejecting all sense of hierarchy, the artist's canvases evoke Christopher Colombus’ majestic caravels, Jules Verne's mysterious abysses, the imposing Mayan temples of Chichen Itza and the sumptuous sarcophagi of the most illustrious of Egyptian pharaohs. These complex compositions, situated at the edge of surrealism, unveil hybrid characters, ranging from historical figures to endearing four-eyed monsters and nurturing mother earth figures made of bricks. Di Rosa’s enchanting microcosms thus establish a playful and constructive dialogue between the fine arts, applied arts, outsider art and cultivated art, as well as between Western and non-Western art. With this work Di Rosa, a dazzlingly unique artist, reveals a vision of art without borders, transcending cultural genres and geographical origins, effectively abolishing any hierarchy that values high culture over low culture.

HERVÉ DI ROSA LE PARADIS DES CHASSEURS, 2024 Acrylique sur toile | Acrylic on canvas 108.5 × 201 cm — 42 3/4 × 79 1/4 in Courtoisie de l'artiste et Templon, Paris – Bruxelles - New York | Courtesy of the artist and Templon, Paris – Brussels - New York Photo © Tanguy Beurdeley

Born in 1959, Hervé Di Rosa lives and works between Lisbon, Paris and Sète.  A student at the École Nationale Supérieure des Arts Décoratifs in Paris, Hervé Di Rosa began selling his paintings in 1979. At just 20 years old, he was already exhibiting in Paris, Amsterdam and New York. In 1981 he co-founded the art movement Figuration Libre, as named by the artist Ben. This group, which included Robert Combas, Rémi Blanchard and François Boisrond, echoed other marginalized forms of international expressions, from Neo-expressionism and New Fauves in Germany to the Transavantgarde in Italy and even Bad Painting in the United States.

Since 1981 his work has appeared in over 200 solo exhibitions and is included in major public and private collections in Europe, the USA and Asia. Recent solo and group exhibitions in France include shows at La Maison Rouge, Paris (2016), La Piscine - Musée d’Art et d’Industrie André-Diligent, Roubaix (2018), Musée de Valence (2022) and Musée National d’Art Moderne - Centre Pompidou, Paris (2024). The Musée des Civilisations de l'Europe et de la Méditerranée in Marseilles (MUCEM) will hold a solo exhibition in March 2025.

A pioneer and champion of the concept of “Modest Art”, Di Rosa founded the Musée International des Arts Modestes (MIAM) in 2000 in Sète. The museum exhibits a wide range of artists from all over the world and creates shows that question the boundaries of contemporary art.  Hervé Di Rosa has been a member of the Académie des Beaux-Arts since 2022.

For more information about Hervé’s artwork and his exhibition, please visit Templon’s site. The gallery can also be found on Instagram, artnet, Facebook, YouTube, and Artsy. An interview with Hervé with the magazine can be found here.

McArthur Binion Rawness Dancing : With Intellect

Visual:Ear(Sound Grammar), 2024 graphite, ink, paintstick and paper on board 213.4 × 213.4 × 5.5 cm, 84 × 84 × 2 1⁄8 in. Courtesy the Artist and Xavier Hufkens, Brussels

Rawness Dancing: With Intellect is an exhibition dedicated to the pioneering work of American artist McArthur Binion (b. 1946, Mississippi). Curated by Anne Pontégnie, it showcases the development of Binion’s work over the course of the last 15 years. Different series are brought together for the first time, divided into three themes across three floors. Highlights include a rare early work from 1985, together with a series of DNA works, the never previously exhibited Haints series (2014) and a group of six new Visual: Ear paintings (2023-24). McArthur Binion’s work blends elements of minimalism and conceptualism with autobiographical and cultural narratives, resulting in paintings and drawings that are both visually compelling and emotionally resonant. Over the years, his art has evolved through changes in technique, theme, and the exploration of personal and historical memory. The title alludes to the harmony between emotional and physical labour, as described by the artist: “my intellect and rawness are dancing together”.

Visual: Ear, 2023 ink, paper and paintstick on board 182.9 × 121.9 × 5.5 cm, 72 × 48 × 2 1⁄8 in. Courtesy the Artist and Xavier Hufkens, Brussels

The exhibition opens with McArthur Binion’s latest paintings in the Visual:Ear series, a tribute to Jazz records of particular significance to the artist. The series comprises of 12 paintings in total, half of which are exhibited here for the first time. The first room includes, for example, Visual: Ear (Maestro Duke), a tribute to Duke Ellington, and Visual:Ear (Unit Structures), honouring Cecil Taylor’s album. They are bordered with photographs of the musicians repeated alongside the edges of the paintings, a framing device reminiscent of quilts. The Visual:Ear paintings are a continuation of Binion’s exploration of music and visual abstraction, dating back to his time at the Cranbrook Academy of Art. It was here that he created Drawn Symphony:in:Sane Minor, a hand-drawn piece on musical manuscript paper, in 1971. Binion introduced the ‘visual ear’ concept in his 1973 graduation thesis represents his first attempt to visualize music. The current Visual: Ear series began in 2021, with each painting built on a collaged base of musical scores. He calls this layer, which varies from series to series, the ‘underconscious’. Using oil sticks, Binion creates dense, repetitive markings that form geometric patterns and grids, partially hiding the initial imagery. This interplay of concealment and revelation invites viewers to explore the music-inspired and personal narratives within the artwork. Born in Mississippi, the birthplace of the blues, Binion was immersed in a cultural milieu that valued rhythm, improvisation and storytelling --qualities that still reverberate through his work. Within the gridded compositions, he combines methodical, dynamic structures with layering techniques, similar to the rhythms and improvisation of blues and jazz. Binion uses music as a source of creativity and a way of analysing the structure and emotions in his work. The lighter variants of the series are displayed on the floor below.

Haints, 2014 paint stick, and wax crayon on board 116.8 × 162.6 × 6.8 cm, 46 × 64 × 3 in. Courtesy the Artist and Xavier Hufkens, Brussels

The Haints series (2014) in the adjacent rooms consists of ten works that explore the artist’s Mississippi roots and Southern upbringing. Haint is an alternate spelling of ‘haunt’, a term used by African-Americans to describe ghosts or restless spirits. McArthur Binion elaborates: “They involve reverse maps of Mississippi, and are an extension of the DNA:Studies. They are larger self- portraits about who I am and how I live all the information is there. These works are specifically about me. They are about my involvement with haints and Mississippi... Haints are about people that you knew that are dead so the ghosts are real. It’s really emotional with the work.” In a break with his typical practice, the Haints are devoid of an underconscious. He continues: “I associate the haints with the legend of people down South crawling out of their skin; I’ve been looking for haints all of my life. The haints swirl around all of the maltreatment that has happened in Mississippi for centuries and centuries the lynchings, the rape, the regular straight up murders, etc. My father worked seven days a week and made $7.32 per week. So I know what haints are.”

dna:sepia:xiii, 2016 paintstick, ink and paper on board 121.9 × 101.6 × 5.3 cm, 48 × 40 × 2 1⁄8 in. Courtesy the Artist and Xavier Hufkens, Brussels

A selection of the artist’s DNA:Studies are shown on the first floor, alongside smaller format works from both the Hand:Work and Visual:Ear series. Colour, autobiography and technique are key focal points in this display. Binion’s DNA:Studies, a subset of the broader DNA series, is a cornerstone of his practice. Central to this body of work is Binion’s replication of his old address and telephone book as the underconscious, a uniquely private artefact that encapsulates years of relationships, connections and memories. With its handwritten entries and worn pages, the book is a literal and symbolic repository of his life experiences. He says: “Each day for the months I painted those, I relived every day of my life because of all of those names.” The names and numbers, partially obscured by layers of oil stick or crayon, are visible upon close examination, adding a narrative layer to the otherwise austere, minimalist grids. The repetitive mark-making, a hallmark of Binion’s practice, recalls the meditative labour of memory and identity formation. It also evokes the physicality and discipline of his early life, spent working on a farm in rural Mississippi.

Sketch (Looking for Grey):For: Three Movements of Sunlight, 2014 paintstick, ink and paper on board 121.9 × 81.3 × 5.7 cm 48 × 32 × 2 1⁄4 in. Courtesy the Artist and Xavier Hufkens, Brussels

This contemplative yet physically demanding process also transforms the grid into a tangible record of the artist’s presence. His gestures both conceal and reveal, creating a dynamic tension that reflects the complexity of memory and identity. Binion’s works are thus defined by the proportions of his body, such as hand span and arm length, as well as his physical agility. In the series Hand:Work, Binion makes this connection explicit by incorporating images of his own hand into the underconscious. By foregrounding the physical nature of his practice, Binion challenges the impersonal, mechanical associations of abstraction and minimalism. His art becomes a testament to the interplay between the intellectual and the corporeal, the personal and the universal. Through this embodied approach, Binion transforms the act of making art into a profound exploration of what it means to inhabit a body and a history. He creates works that are as much about the process of becoming as they are about the final form.

Portrait by Pasquate Abbattista

McArthur Binion lives and works in Chicago. His works were featured prominently in the 57th Venice Biennale, VIVA ARTE VIVA. Solo exhibitions of his work have been organised at Peter Marino Art Foundation, Southampton, NY, USA (2024); Museo Novecento, Florence, Italy (2020); the Cranbrook Art Museum, Bloomfield Hills, MI (2018); the Contemporary Art Museum, Houston, TX (2012). Binion’s work is in numerous public and private collections and his most recent venture is the Modern Ancient Brown Foundation that provides funding and workspaces to help young visual artists and writers of

colour find their voices.

The exhibition opened on January 16 and will be on view until March 8th, 2025. For more information about this exhibition and others, please visit Xavier Hufken’s site here.  The gallery can also be found on Instagram, Facebook, and YouTube.

Louise Nevelson: ShadowDance

Louise Nevelson: Shadow Dance 540 West 25th Street, New York, NY 10001 January 17 – March 1, 2025 Photography courtesy Pace Gallery

New York – Celebrating its 62-year history with Louise Nevelson, Pace is pleased to present Louise Nevelson: Shadow Dance, a major exhibition of Nevelson’s late works, curated by gallery founder Arne Glimcher, at its 540 West 25th Street location in New York. The exhibition opened on January and will be on view until March 1, 2025, this show will place Nevelson’s iconic monochromatic sculptures in black and white in dialogue with her collages—including several rarely seen and never previously exhibited masterworks—made in the 1970s and 1980s.

Like Mondrian’s, Nevelson’s compositions are based on a strict adherence to vertical and horizontal regularity. During the 1970s and 1980s, there was a significant development: Nevelson incorporated the diagonal into her vocabulary. A new, angular energy surfaced in many of the works she produced during this period, breaking the rules by which she traditionally composed her work.

Louise Nevelson, Study for the Chapel of the Good Shepherd, c. 1975 SCULPTURE wood painted white 90-1/2" × 36" × 24" (229.9 cm × 91.4 cm × 61 cm) overall 48-1/4" × 7-1/4" × 13" (122.6 cm × 18.4 cm × 33 cm), hanging element 90-1/2" × 11" × 13" (229.9 cm × 27.9 cm × 33 cm), column © Louise Nevelson / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York.

These late works shed new light on her evolving aesthetic, bringing into focus a series of remarkably productive years of her practice in which she experimented with a new vocabulary of robust, muscular, and often minimal forms while staying true to her lifelong investigations of materiality, shape, and shadow.

Rooted in the legacies of Cubism and Constructivism, Nevelson’s artworks were widely celebrated during her lifetime for incorporating unexpected combinations of materials and forms. As part of her distinctive approach to abstraction, the artist often explored the myriad possibilities of collage—a technique she transposed into sculpture by means of compartmentalized elements and forms liberated from everyday meaning. Nevelson’s use of the collage aesthetic was formalist. Her art of scavenging and her affinity for the materiality of wood are linked to her personal life and her remarkable story.

Louise Nevelson, Dawn's Light, c.1975 SCULPTURE wood painted white 106" × 63" × 55" (269.2 cm × 160 cm × 139.7 cm)© Louise Nevelson / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York.

Since Nevelson’s death there has been a series of radical re-appraisals of her work, especially as new frameworks and dialogues in art history have emerged in recent years. The gallery’s upcoming presentation in New York coincides with a global upswell of interest in her work, which is underscored by a forthcoming retrospective of the artist organized by the Centre Pompidou-Metz in France, opening to the public in fall 2025. This past year, Nevelson was honored in memoriam at the Art Students League’s annual gala in New York—the artist was an alumna of the institution—and in 2022, a sprawling exhibition of her work, Louise Nevelson: Persistence—curated by Julia Bryan- Wilson, Columbia University professor and author of Louise Nevelson’s Sculpture: Drag, Color, Join, Face (Yale University Press, 2023)—was presented as an official collateral event of the 59th Venice Biennale, and her work was also included in the main exhibition curated by Cecilia Alemani.

Louise Nevelson, Artillery Landscape, c. 1985 SCULPTURE wood painted black 57" × 152" × 107" (144.8 cm × 386.1 cm × 271.8 cm)© Louise Nevelson / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York.

Pace presented its first solo show of work by Nevelson in 1961 in Boston, and it has represented the artist—with whom the gallery’s Founder and Chairman Arne Glimcher maintained a decades-long friendship—since 1963. Early in their relationship, Nevelson took the young Glimcher under her wing, introducing him to all of the most important Abstract Expressionist artists and bringing him into the fold of the New York art world. Later, in the 1970s and 1980s, Glimcher helped Nevelson achieve a new level of international recognition, supporting her in the production of numerous large-scale public commissions around the United States and the world. Opening at the beginning of Pace’s 65th anniversary year, this forthcoming Nevelson exhibition reflects the artist’s enduring and deeply personal relationship with Glimcher, and her indelible place in the gallery's history and its ethos today.

Louise Nevelson: Shadow Dance 540 West 25th Street, New York, NY 10001 January 17 – March 1, 2025 Photography courtesy Pace Gallery

Louise Nevelson: Shadow Dance will showcase two of Nevelson’s rare white-painted wood sculptures—Study for the Chapel of the Good Shepherd and the never-before-exhibited Dawn’s Light, both created circa 1975—among her signature black-painted wood sculptures, including the large-scale freestanding composition Cascade- Perpendiculars XXX (1980–1982). Nevelson specifically spoke about the relationship of her black and white works to the perceptual thresholds of dawn and dusk, the liminal, transitional, and indiscernible moments between day and night. Harkening back to her famed large-scale, all-white sculptural installation Dawn’s Wedding Feast (1959)— which was presented at the Museum of Modern Art as a single installation before being split into separate parts— Dawn’s Light speaks to the ways that Nevelson’s later expressions were guided by the project of transformation and transfiguration that energized her practice for more than four decades.

Louise Nevelson, Cascade-Perpendiculars XXX, 1980-1982 SCULPTURE wood painted black 94-1/2" × 38-1/2" × 21-1/2" (240 cm × 97.8 cm × 54.6 cm) © Louise Nevelson / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York.

The gallery’s presentation will also feature Artillery Landscape (ca.1985), a single sculpture consisting of a group of individual floor-based elements, which was exhibited for the first time as part of Louise Nevelson. Persistence in Venice in 2022. Never before seen in the United States, this sculptural installation comprises reclaimed wooden artillery boxes found, reconstructed, and painted black by Nevelson in the last few years of her life. The hinged box- like elements of Artillery Landscape refer back to Nevelson’s psychologically charged Dream House series of the early 1970s, yet the title of the work derives from the origin of the boxes themselves, scavenged and repurposed artillery containers for artillery. Of her interest in reclaimed materials, she once said, “I wanted to show that wood picked up on the street can turn to gold.”

Louise Nevelson: Shadow Dance 540 West 25th Street, New York, NY 10001 January 17 – March 1, 2025 Photography courtesy Pace Gallery

Highlights in the exhibition include three wall-mounted works from the Mirror Shadows series of magisterial wall reliefs, one of the last bodies of work that Nevelson produced and among her most innovative. Alongside these important late sculptures, a selection of Nevelson’s collages attest to her intensely personal and private mode of expression, which she kept mostly secret during her lifetime. In the economy of Nevelson’s studio, the collage works emerged simultaneously with her monochromatic sculptures as extensions of the same creative gesture. Providing a new avenue for explorations of color, light, shadow, reflection, and line, these works incorporate combinations of metallic foil, cardboard, sandpaper, tape, wood, spray paint, printed paper, and newspaper. Tearing and re- combining traces of the past to produce a raw, unfiltered beauty, Nevelson developed an aesthetic of fragmentation and reassembly in her collages that animated the spirit of all her work.

Portrait of Louise Nevelson: © The Estate of Pedro E. Guerrero

Louise Nevelson (b. 1899, Kiev; d. 1988, New York), a leading sculptor of the 20th century, pioneered site-specific and installation art. She is best known for her monumental sculptures composed of discarded furniture and wooden elements found near her New York City studio. Nevelson arranged these elements into nested, box-like structures, she would then paint them in monochromatic black, white, or gold—transforming disparate elements into a unified structure. She also experimented with bronze, terracotta, and Plexiglas, eventually moving into the realm of collage, works on paper, and public art. With her compositions, Nevelson explored the relational possibilities of sculpture, summing up the objectification of the external world into a personal landscape. Although her practice is situated in lineage with Cubism and Constructivism, her sense of space and interest in the transcendence of the object reveal an affinity with Abstract Expressionism.

Nevelson has been the subject of over 70 one-artist exhibitions, including over ten traveling exhibitions, held at institutions worldwide including The Jewish Museum, New York (1965, 2007); Whitney Museum of American Art, New York (1967, 1970, 1980, 1987, 1998, 2018); Moderna Museet, Stockholm (1973, 2017); Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York (1986); and Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris (1997). Recent exhibitions include Louise Nevelson In L.A.: Tamarind Workshop Lithographs From the 1960s, Los Angeles County Museum of Art (2015); Reflections: Louise Nevelson, 1967, Rose Art Museum, Waltham, Massachusetts (2017); The Fourth Dimension, San José Museum of Art, California (2017); The Face in the Moon, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York (2018); Louise Nevelson, Institute of Contemporary Art, Miami (2019–2020); Louise Nevelson: Sculptor of Shadows / Skyggernes Skulptør, Kunsten Museum of Modern Art, Aalborg, Denmark (2020–2021); Louise Nevelson: Dawn to Dusk, Farnsworth Art Museum, Rockland, Maine (2023–2024); and The World Outside: Louise Nevelson at Midcentury, Amon Carter Museum of American Art, Fort Worth, Texas (2023–2024). Nevelson’s work is held in over 140 public collections worldwide including The Aldrich Museum of Contemporary Art, Ridgefield, Connecticut; The Art Institute of Chicago; Brooklyn Museum, New York; Dallas Museum of Art, Texas; Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York; Los Angeles County Museum of Art; The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; and Tate, London, among many others.

Pace is a leading international art gallery representing some of the most influential contemporary artists and estates from the past century, holding decades-long relationships with Alexander Calder, Jean Dubuffet, Barbara Hepworth, Agnes Martin, Louise Nevelson, and Mark Rothko. Pace enjoys a unique U.S. heritage spanning East and West coasts through its early support of artists central to the Abstract Expressionist and Light and Space movements.

Since its founding by Arne Glimcher in 1960, Pace has developed a distinguished legacy as an artist-first gallery that mounts seminal historical and contemporary exhibitions. Under the current leadership of CEO Marc Glimcher, Pace continues to support its artists and share their visionary work with audiences worldwide by remaining at the forefront of innovation. Now in its seventh decade, the gallery advances its mission through a robust global program— comprising exhibitions, artist projects, public installations, institutional collaborations, performances, and interdisciplinary projects. Pace has a legacy in art bookmaking and has published over five hundred titles in close collaboration with artists, with a focus on original scholarship and on introducing new voices to the art historical canon.

Today, Pace has seven locations worldwide, including European footholds in London and Geneva as well as Berlin, where the gallery established an office in 2023. Pace maintains two galleries in New York—its headquarters at 540 West 25th Street, which welcomed almost 120,000 visitors and programmed 20 shows in its first six months, and an adjacent 8,000 sq. ft. exhibition space at 510 West 25th Street. Pace’s long and pioneering history in California includes a gallery in Palo Alto, which was open from 2016 to 2022. Pace’s engagement with Silicon Valley’s technology industry has had a lasting impact on the gallery at a global level, accelerating its initiatives connecting art and technology as well as its work with experiential artists. Pace consolidated its West Coast activity through its flagship in Los Angeles, which opened in 2022. Pace was one of the first international galleries to establish outposts in Asia, where it operates permanent gallery spaces in Hong Kong and Seoul, along with an office and viewing room in Beijing. In spring 2024, Pace will open its first gallery space in Japan in Tokyo’s new Azabudai Hills development.

The exhibition opened on January 17th and will be on view until  March 1, 2025, at Pace Gallery 510 West 25th Street in New York. For more information about this exhibition and others, please visit the Pace Gallery’s website here. Pace Gallery can be found on Instagram and Artsy, too.

Allan Wexler : Probably True

Installation view. Courtesy of the artist and Jane Lombard Gallery. Photo credit: Adam Reich

Jane Lombard Gallery is pleased to present Probably True, Allan Wexler’s debut solo exhibition with the gallery. For nearly fifty years, Wexler has created work informed by his architectural background and education. He produces functional absurdities that interrogate distinctions between human activity and the built environment. Wexler’s sculptures, drawings, and photographs represent subtle, unexpected spaces where interventions are fostered. The exhibition opened on January 17th and will run until  - March 8th.

Courtesy of the artist and Jane Lombard Gallery

Utilizing pedagogy and the manipulation of materials, Wexler’s practice often draws on the conceptual spirit of the Fluxus movement, blending humor with intellectual rigor. By blurring the lines between the functional and the absurd, the practical and the philosophical, his work challenges us to reconsider our habits and rituals. In Wexler’s universe, everyday items such as chairs, coffee cups, or utensils become mediators of social interaction, re-constructed to connect and merge. In the sculptures Interchange, Extruded Dinnerware, and Light Table, the artist explores the ways in which ordinary, domestic objects act as catalysts for alternate modes of sitting, dining, or conversing.

Installation view. Courtesy of the artist and Jane Lombard Gallery. Photo credit: Adam Reich

Wexler's work additionally reimagines objects drawn from nature. In Reframing Nature, a curved tree branch is straightened through the meticulous insertion of wood wedges, a human intervention in sculptural and photographical form. The exploration of the cyclical nature of objects and their meanings continues in Burnt Chair / Charcoal Drawing; a charred wooden chair, from which its charcoal is used to draw an image of the same chair on paper. This act of transformation, the chair becoming both object and medium, highlights Wexler’s practice as an exercise in recontextualization.

Installation view. Courtesy of the artist and Jane Lombard Gallery. Photo credit: Adam Reich

The exhibition introduces a new series of handworked images that blend elements of sculpture and photography to depict what the artist calls “landscape interventions. ” These two-dimensional works are fabricated scenes that challenge the realities of photography and drawing, incorporating recurring motifs found throughout Wexler’s work such as the cone structure, seen in both Speakers and Cones of Vision. Altogether, the works in Probably True capture Wexler’s ability to expose the conceptual world that informs our lived experiences, question the conditions of its construction, and purposefully turn it on its head.

About Allan Wexler

Allan Wexler (b. 1949) was an early member of the group of architects and artists who questioned the perceived divide between art and the design disciplines in the late 1960s. They called themselves Non-architects or Paper Architects. In 2017, Lars Müller published Absurd Thinking: Between Art and Design, a book on Wexler’s work and creative process. The book features projects developed across the artist’s career that mediate the gap between fine and applied art using the mediums of architecture, sculpture, photography, painting, and drawing.

Wexler earned his Bachelor of Fine Arts (1971) and his Bachelor of Architecture (1972) from RISD and his Master of Architecture from Pratt Institute (1976). He is a recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship (2016), a Fellow of the American Academy in Rome, and a winner of both a Chrysler Award for Design Innovation and the Henry J. Leir Prize from the Jewish Museum. He has executed and collaborated on public art commissions at several locations, including Hudson River Park at 29th Street (2006), Atlantic Terminal, Long Island Railroad (2009), and Pratt Institute (2008, 2012), among many others. Wexler has exhibited nationally and internationally, including at La Arsenale, Biennale Architettura, Venice, IT; The Contemporary Jewish Museum, San Francisco, CA; Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, Chicago, IL; Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, MN; Mattress Factory, Pittsburgh, PA; Parrish Art Museum, Southampton, NY; San Francisco Museum of Art, San Francisco, CA; Karl Ernst Osthaus Museum, Hagen, GE; De Cordova Museum and Sculpture Park, Lincoln, MA; The Jewish Museum, New York, NY; among many others. Wexler currently teaches at Pratt Institute, Brooklyn.

About Jane Lombard Gallery

Jane Lombard Gallery was founded in New York in 1995 as Lombard-Freid Projects. Currently located in TriBeCa, the gallery has maintained its commitment to the work of emerging, mid-career, and established contemporary artists working across media and disciplines. The gallery continues to showcase an international roster of artists who tend toward cultural commentary and the exploration of contemporary socio-political climates.

For more information about this exhibition at the Jane Lombard Gallery, please visit their website here. The gallery can also be found on Facebook and Instagram. The magazine conducted and interview with Allan which can be found here.

David Altmejd: Prélude pour un nouvel ordre mondial

Photo Credit : Thomas Merle

In Prélude pour un nouvel ordre mondial, Canadian artist David Altmejd unveils a body of new sculptures and drawings. For the first time in his career, Altmejd combines these two mediums, exploring their connections and revealing how past and new ideas in his work come together. As the title implies, this exhibition marks the beginning of fresh trajectories in Altmejd’s ever-evolving artistic realm. From the celestial heavens to the depths of the earth, the natural world is the lifeblood of David Altmejd’s oeuvre. In his new sculptures, Altmejd introduces an expanded pantheon of hybrid, anthropomorphic beings that allude to the multi- faceted power of animals in various cultures and belief systems. The works are rich in symbolism and evoke a transcendent quality that surpasses the boundaries of the physical world. Rams, an orca, snakes, a panther, birds, rabbits and swans have all made their way into the oeuvre, serving as metaphors and companions since time immemorial, with their wisdom often pointing the way to spiritual enlightenment. Consider, for instance, the Bible, the Koran, the Dhammapada, the Analects of Confucius, or Aesop’s fables.

Installation View: David Altmejd Prélude pour un nouvel ordre mondial, 22 November 2024 —8 February 2025 courtesy Xavier Hufkens and Allard Bovenberg

Among the variety of animals Altmejd explores, swans take centre stage in his new body of work. The swans have metamorphosised into musical instruments, through which the artist draws parallels between nature and music, highlighting their shared qualities of order and disorder. The seven colours of the instrument’s keys here are not coincidental, symbolising various references across different eras and cultures1. In numerology, seven represents the union of the spiritual (3) and material (4) worlds, while in music, there are seven notes in a musical scale. Conversely, the figures playing swan instruments wear helmets that conceal their vision, suggesting a sense of detachment from their surroundings. The idea that they might hail from another dimension is further supported by the presence of space-time grids in the artist’s drawings. It is also worth noting that, human eyes— which Altmejd once emphasised or even replicated—have now vanished, along with any reference to the artist himself. In these new works, the focus moves from self- portraiture to visored beings.

Altmejd’s fused forms evoke metamorphosis, growth and decay, and often visualize transformation processes. Animals and humans frequently mutate, as in Nocturne no 1, where human hands mould the whale’s flesh, a creature that features in many ancient mythologies. The unctuous, carbon-like matter of the body is akin to the prima materia, which is the primitive formless base of all matter, similar to chaos, the quintessence or aether. This sculpture seems to embody the regenerative force of nature, with a cosmic egg embedded in its back and a diamond–carbon in a different state–illuminating the world. It can be read as a metaphor for the splendour and enigma of the cosmos. Other enigmatic beings emerge, like the figure Ève, with its shimmering and venomous green face, evocative of witches, ogres, goblins and trolls. This green also resembles the iridescent colour of scarab beetles, revered in Ancient Egypt—creatures that also find their way into the artist’s drawings. Blending reality and imagination, Altmejd often employs myths and legends to explore nature. These allusions tap into ancient human perceptions of nature as a powerful and unpredictable force.

Le don, 2024.

The intertwining of humans and animals also echoes the ideas of the Swiss psychoanalyst Carl Jung (1875-1961), who held that animals are exalted beings, or the ‘sacred’ part of a person’s mind. He believed that they were much closer to a secret, natural order than humans, and thus nearer to the ‘absolute knowledge’ of the unconscious. Unlike people, who are bound by moral constructs of good and evil, animals adhere to natural laws, which Jung considered a form of superiority. He explored how our ‘animal nature’ could serve as a psychic source of renewal and wholeness.

These themes are reflected in the artist’s mixed-media drawings, which are neither preparatory studies nor working sketches. The matrixes reference space-time grid distortions and the theory of special relativity, while also invoking, in another sense, the transfer techniques of classical sculpture. But by virtue of being hand- drawn, the grids are imperfect. At times, they are punctured, caught in a vortex or distorted, creating glitches in the space-time continuum. The images in the drawings are fantastical and uncanny, arcane and vivid. Cryptic, undecipherable symbols represent the ‘language of the unconscious’.

L’accord universel, 2024.

Altmejd’s work, through its synthesis of seemingly opposing elements, reveals a deep interconnectedness between nature and the human form, life and death. The tension between organic and synthetic forms creates a dynamic that blurs the line between nature and artifice, evoking a sense of “unsettling familiarity”—a haunting blend of the known and unknown. In this paradoxical realm, the ordinary world is transformed, inviting us to reconsider our perceptions of reality.

David Altmejd (b. 1974, Montreal, Canada) lives and works in Los Angeles. His work was the subject of a major survey exhibition entitled Flux at the Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris, France which travelled to the MUDAM in Luxembourg and the Musée d’Art Contemporain de Montréal, Canada (2014-15). In 2007, he represented Canada at the 57th Venice Biennale. Public collections include Museum of Modern Art, New York; Whitney Museum, New York; Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York; National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa; Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; Long Museum, Shanghai; and MUDAM, Luxembourg, among others.

1 _ It is both a lucky number and a prime one; there are seven days of the week, each named after a different ancient god or planet; Shakespeare wrote about the seven stages of life; the lunar cycle lasts around seven days; and breaking a mirror is said to bring seven years of misfortune. There are seven energy centres, or chakras, each associated with a distinct shade, just as there are seven colours in a rainbow.

For more information about this exhibition and others, please visit Xavier Hufkens’s site here.  The gallery can also be found on Instagram, Facebook, and YouTube.

BODY BUILDINGS BY ANTONY GORMLEY

Body Buildings, exhibition views, Galleria Continua / Beijing, 2024, Courtesy: the artist and GALLERIA CONTINUA, Copyright: © the Artist, Photographer: Huang Shaoli

Galleria Continua is pleased to present ‘Body Buildings’, Antony Gormley’s third solo exhibition at the 798 Art District in Beijing following ‘Another Singularity’ (2009) and ‘Host’ (2016). ‘Body Buildings’ interrogates our species’ relationship to the built environment, an increasingly high-rise world we rarely escape. In a significant group of recent sculptures and drawings, Gormley uses clay and iron, two ubiquitous materials of the built world, ‘to think and feel the body in this condition’. 

Body Buildings, exhibition views, Galleria Continua / Beijing, 2024, Courtesy: the artist and GALLERIA CONTINUA, Copyright: © the Artist, Photographer: Huang Shaoli

The central work in the exhibition, Resting Place II, conjures a dense labyrinthine terrain that viewers are invited to enter and navigate. This field of 132 life-size bodies, each built from fired clay bricks stacked atop one another, investigates the body at rest as our primary dwelling place. For the artist, the brick is a ‘physical pixel’ that plays an important role in Chinese culture.

Constructed in different orthogonal yet precarious positions, the bodies evoke a range of conditions, from splayed relaxation to foetal self-protection. When viewed from the gallery’s first and second-floor balconies, the interplay between moving visitors and horizontal clay bodies creates a dynamic field in which the particularity of subjective experience is at work.

Body Buildings, exhibition views, Galleria Continua / Beijing, 2024, Courtesy: the artist and GALLERIA CONTINUA, Copyright: © the Artist, Photographer: Huang Shaoli

As Gormley has said: ‘Resting Place II evokes the human body’s relationship to the ground, the surface of the earth. It refers to two very different kinds of abandonment: the relaxed abandonment of the body on the beach, the place to which we return in childhood play and relaxation, and another, that of the migrant who has either forcibly or freely sought a new home. What at first looks like a chaotic display of building materials might resolve into the model of a city and further resolve into the invitation to empathise with the body as a place of indwelling, some evoking states of deep relaxation and contentment, others of retreat and defence.’ 

Body Buildings, exhibition views, Galleria Continua / Beijing, 2024, Courtesy: the artist and GALLERIA CONTINUA, Copyright: © the Artist, Photographer: Huang Shaoli

Accompanying Resting Place II are sculptures cast in iron, such as Circuit and Ally, which explore parallels between urban infrastructure—roads, electrical circuits, plumbing—and human relationships. Circuit transforms these networks into a circulatory system shared by two bodies, while Ally uses stacks of massive cast iron blocks to test how two bodies can find mutual stability through a shared centre of gravity. These explorations of proximity and intimacy ask to what extent the urban environment shapes and mirrors human connections.

On either side of Circuit are Short and Shame, two works that treat the body as an independent energy field in which the body veers from its centre of gravity, purposefully avoiding the stability associated with statues of power. In a series of tight knots, Shame identifies places of tension within the body—ankles, knees, pelvis, head and hands—while Short escapes the bounding condition of the skin as the iron lines move from inside the body to beyond its apparent surface.

Body Buildings, exhibition views, Galleria Continua / Beijing, 2024, Courtesy: the artist and GALLERIA CONTINUA, Copyright: © the Artist, Photographer: Huang Shaoli

On the gallery’s top floor, Rule III and Buttress transform body space into latticed scaffolding, familiar to us in the skeletons of contemporary high-rise architecture. In doing so, the works materialise the way that having made a world, it now makes us. The two rusting bodies are placed directly against the walls, implicating the architectural context and making visitors aware of their relationship to the built environment. 

Body Buildings, exhibition views, Galleria Continua / Beijing, 2024, Courtesy: the artist and GALLERIA CONTINUA, Copyright: © the Artist, Photographer: Huang Shaoli

The sculptures are accompanied by a series of drawings. Singularity X and Event VII evoke the luminous beginnings of astral matter. They are complemented by a series of layered ‘Lux’ drawings that refer to apertures or sources of light glimpsed from within interiors. Other drawings made using inkcap mushroom ink as well as carbon and casein examine darkness as experienced inside the body and in proximity to another. 

‘Body Buildings’ is an interrogation of the state of our species. Gormley offers these sculptures as diagnostic tools to examine our present condition.

Body Buildings, exhibition views, Galleria Continua / Beijing, 2024, Courtesy: the artist and GALLERIA CONTINUA, Copyright: © the Artist, Photographer: Huang Shaoli

The exhibition opened on November 14, 2024, and will close on April 15, 2025, at the Galleria’s location Beijing,798 Art Dst. 2 Jiuxianqiao Rd. Chaoyang Dst, Beijing. For more information about this exhibition and others at Galleria Continua please visit their site here. Galleria Continua can also be found on Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, YouTube, and Artsy.