Glenn Kaino: Walking with a Tiger

Glenn Kaino: Walking with a Tiger, 540 West 25th Street, New York, NY 10001January 12–February24, 2024 Photography courtesy of Pace Gallery

New York – Pace is pleased to present an exhibition of new work by Glenn Kaino at its 540 West 25th Street gallery in New York. The exhibit opened on January 12 and will close on February 24, 2024. The show, titled Walking with a Tiger, marks Kaino’s first major exhibition with Pace since he joined the gallery’s program in 2021. The presentation will bring together 18 new artworks—including paintings, embroideries, and sculptures—created by the artist this year.

Known for his multidisciplinary, activist-minded practice and collaborative approach to art making, Kaino has explored a wide range of political, social, and environmental issues in his work across mediums. In his paintings, sculptures, installations, performances, films, and monumental public works, the artist examines the roles that empathy and subjectivity can play in dismantling oppressive power structures and effecting real change.

Don't Ruffle Feathers, 2023 MIXED MEDIA, cotton, thread, wood, and metal 36-1/2" × 20-3/4" × 2-1/2" (92.7 cm × 52.7 cm × 6.4 cm), frame 47-1/2" × 20-3/4" × 2- 1/2" (120.7 cm × 52.7 cm × 6.4 cm), overall, No. 90131, © Glenn Kaino, courtesy Pace Gallery

For his first full-scale exhibition with Pace, Kaino will show a selection of deeply personal works centering on his family history and identity as a Japanese-American. With new paintings, embroideries, and sculptures, the artist has, for the first time in his career, turned his gaze inward to his own history, memories, and experiences. Kaino’s decision to engage in this more intimate kind of storytelling—as opposed to the macro-scale social issues he has explored in much of his past work—evolved from Glenn Kaino: Aki’s Market, a multifaceted installation centering on his grandfather’s life in East LA, on view at the Japanese American National Museum in Los Angeles through January 28, 2024. Kaino’s upcoming show in New York addresses these personal concerns with the same rigor, inventiveness, and humor that has defined his approach to art making and scholarship.

Kabuto (Kangol), 2023 SCULPTURE bronze and fabric 10-3/4" × 14-13/16" × 12-3/8" (27.3 cm × 37.6 cm × 31.4 cm), overall No. 90139.01, © Glenn Kaino, courtesy Pace Gallery

Walking with a Tiger raises questions about the Asian-American diaspora, a subject that has been largely ignored in cultural production until very recently, as it relates to the past, present, and future alike. Based on original photography, Kaino’s portraits—including friends, musicians, and individuals he encountered on the streets of LA— are acts of visibility, bringing new representations of Asian-Americans into conversation with one another and foregrounding enactments of intergenerational communion within the exhibition. Through gestural processes of accumulation and erasure, Kaino uses his brushstrokes to partially obscure various features of the paintings’ subjects, suggesting a disruption or slippage in the fabric of time and a tension between the background and fore.

Where You From, 2023 MIXED MEDIA, cotton, thread, wood and metal 12-1/4" × 16" × 2-1/2" (31.1 cm × 40.6 cm × 6.4 cm), each frame, No. 90132, © Glenn Kaino, courtesy Pace Gallery

For the new embroidered works in the exhibition, the artist draws on the history of bunka shishu, Japanese punch embroidery that was popularized in the Japanese-American community during the postwar years as a kind of paint- by-numbers for fiber arts and served, for many, as a link to the past. Departing from the instructions within the kits as he has done in his previous 'Kitbash' works, Kaino has invented a new stitch that he utilizes alongside traditional methods. The threads in these works are long and loose, extending embroidered images of tigers, storks, and Kabuki figures well beyond the confines of the picture plane; in some cases, the artist sews images directly together. Japanese tigers are of particular interest to Kaino as symbolic meditations of a romanticized homeland, given that the creature has become part of Japanese iconography and mythology despite having never been indigenous to the country.

The exhibition will also include a selection of bronze sculptures based on kabuto, a type of helmet used by samurai. In Kaino’s hands, this traditional Japanese armor has been reinterpreted through a contemporary lens. Each of these works is an amalgamation of structures and styles—combining baseball caps or Kangols with futuristic, embellished forms that protrude into space, declaring their Asian-American history by incorporating distinctly American wares. Displayed atop wooden plinths, Kaino’s helmets will also feature decorated interiors composed of kimono fabrics and woven shoelaces from sneakers. These sculptures speak to the ways that the form and design of relics can endure through the ages, generating new meanings and connections by way of the artist's hand.

Glenn Kaino: Walking with a Tiger, 540 West 25th Street, New York, NY 10001January 12–February24, 2024 Photography courtesy of Pace Gallery

Kaino is the co-curator of the Hammer Museum’s forthcoming Pacific Standard Time exhibition Breath(e): Towards Climate and Social Justice, and his newly commissioned public works for LA’s 6th Street Park and MTA LAX Metro Connector will be unveiled in 2026 and 2024, respectively. Last year, he exhibited his large-scale installation Bridge (Raise Your Voice in Silence) (2021)—a work produced as part of his decade-long collaboration with Olympic track and field athlete Tommie Smith—at Pace’s gallery in New York. He also recently presented a long-term exhibition, In the Light of a Shadow, at MASS MoCA in North Adams, Massachusetts.

Glenn Kaino (b. 1972, Los Angeles, California) is known internationally for his expansive vision and activist-minded practice, which encompasses painting, sculpture, installation, performance, monumental public art, theatrical production, and feature film. Focusing on equity, social justice, and climate change, among other urgent topics, the artist’s work traces through lines among various art historical movements, including Arte Povera, Conceptualism, and performance art. A relentless optimist, Kaino creates work imbued with hope, revealing structures of power and domination and creating opportunities for direct action and progress, all rooted in the belief that cultural production can affect real change. Kaino often highlights the illusionistic and mesmeric effects of scientific and natural phenomena in his large-scale installations to explore notions of empathy and subjectivity and to bring legibility to the often-invisible forces that shape our world.

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.

Albano Afonso:Fora de Registro

Installation views: “Fora de Registro,” Casa Triângulo  São Paulo, Brazil, 2024, courtesy of Casa Triângulo  São Paulo, Brazil Photo Credit: Filipe Berndt

Casa Triângulo, with delight, presented to Fora de Registro, Albano Afonso's (1964, São Paulo, Brazil). His eleventh solo exhibition at the gallery opened on November 11, 2023, and will close on February the 3rd of, 2024.

Thoughts on Fora de Registro by Eder Chiodetto

Whenever we contemplate something, engaging with a specific object or subject, we do so out of a desire to internalize the significations and broader meanings of an occurrence, a landscape, a person, an object, a gesture, or even a work of art. These meanings are indeed broader, because when a certain referent appeals to a degree that we subject it to a more detailed visual scrutiny, it's not only the faculty of vision that we put into action for this prolonged moment. Within the duration of that moment, a co-relation between the self and the other is established, in which other senses are soon called into play.

We can infer that contemplating is a way of perceiving the target of our interest beyond its appearance. It is an adventure in which our sensory streams are enlisted to produce an enhanced sort of vision that is able to investigate, both thoroughly and gently, the interstices, nuances, and gaps of this referent that is drawing us to it. To a large extent, it is also a dialogic perceptive gaze, since to unveil the latent meanings of the other, or of something, we are necessarily also looking into ourselves, letting our mood, our intellect, and our unconscious react freely with this enjoyment.

O Sono 01, 2023 Inkjet printing on Hahnemühle Photo Rag Baryta paper Edition: unique + 3 + 1 PA 89 x 119 cm Courtesy Casa Triângulo, São Paulo Photographer Credit: Albano Afonso

Thus, all contemplation is also an enhanced mode of vision that takes place not only from the eyes outward, but also inward, into ourselves. When this circuit is put into operation, we are close to a meditative state.

Photography is the sphinx of a contemplation. A monument built by the effects of light striking a photosensitive surface, tasked with generating the simulacrum of a contemplation that the photographer believed should be made permanent. As researcher and photographer Boris Kossoy has said, a photograph reveals not the reality of the moment of capture, but a second reality, the reality of the two-dimensional printed surface, subject to being organically and symbolically altered in its temporal journey towards infinity.

Could, therefore, a photographic record give rise to the potential of the contemplative ecstasy that originated it? Or, could a photograph itself be the trigger of this enchantment, exchanging the experience of the lost instant for the contemplation of the very medium that contains it?

Still Life 02, 2023 Inkjet printing on Hahnemühle Photo Rag Baryta paper Edition: unique + 3 + 1 PA 40 x 48,5 cm Courtesy Casa Triângulo, São Paulo Photographer Credit: Albano Afonso

Thoughts like these arise when we observe the new photographic series by Albano Afonso. Fora de Registro [Out of Register] is created by means of technical and poetic strategies that generate a sort of illusory seismic shock where we seem to be seeing the photographed thing and not simply an image printed on a surface. The idea of photography as a window that magically dislodges us from our space-time is refuted in the artist’s metalinguistic proposal.

The artist overlays several images made in sequence and rearranges them so that the representation of the referent is “out of register,” which is printmaking jargon for when the several plates used for printing the various colors that form the image are not aligned, resulting in a blurred effect. This approach, along with other creative techniques, transforms the photographs, taking them beyond being merely passive camera reproductions.

By subjecting the images to this process, Albano Afonso seems to be echoing René Magritte’s iconic statement, in this case suggesting: This is not a bouquet of flowers, it is a photograph. By disrupting our mind's tendency to wander, preventing the illusion offered by photographic mimesis, the artist peels back the mirror-like play of the representational system, placing us in front of these photographs, which intentionally fail in their attempt to be a mirage.

A failure can also be the trigger that leads us to contemplation. If the sphinxes that appeal to me in these images are no longer the bouquet of flowers, the work of art, or a constellation, then what is it that keeps me connected to them?

Albano leads us to look at photographs as if they were... almost photographs. Bereft of the illusory mimetic game, of their power of mirage that brings us to past times and spaces, these photographs have no aim to lead us to any place beyond them. They are no longer merely a support, nor a passport.

Still Life 03, 2023 Inkjet printing on Hahnemühle, Photo Rag Baryta paper Edition: unique + 3 + 1 PA 52 x 62,5 cm, Courtesy Casa Triângulo, São Paulo Photographer Credit: Albano Afonso

The contemplation now takes place in the materiality of the photographic copy itself, and in Fora de Registro, these images seem imbued with an irrepressible desire to be a sculptural event. After all the strategies the artist set into motion, what remains before us is not the fabulous promise of photography, but rather its structure; the center of our speculation is no longer somewhere beyond it, it is the material medium itself.

In this operation, the image is no longer the promise of anything; it becomes an exposed fracture, a relic. We are therefore contemplating the failure of a promise, and thus, we are finally led to see the framework, the constitutive elements of a collapsed image, rather than an image as a whole.

Installation views: “Fora de Registro,” Casa Triângulo  São Paulo, Brazil, 2024, courtesy of Casa Triângulo  São Paulo, Brazil Photo Credit: Filipe Berndt

Fora de Registro marks Albano Afonso’s triumphant return to the entrails of the photographic, in his selfless project of speculating about the realm of technical images and the effects they have on our perception. In his career, the artist has already investigated the image-imagination dyad from various standpoints: projection, movement, the genesis that forms the image, the brightness that reveals even as it blinds, etc. Now, the artist is passionately engaged in the possibility of contemplating the raw language, photography in a state of suspension, self-analyzing its place in a world dominated by assertive algorithms that disorient us to the point where, for better or worse, realities and fables overlap, leaving no traces that would allow us to understand where and why they emerge before us. This clearly involves a timely political thrust, as the artist sounds an alert about the hypnotic effect of the nature of the photographic image.

Deactivating the illusion also contributes to a more critical and less dogmatic point of view. Albano unveils this possibility by presenting photography as a sovereign body vibrating intensely before our eyes. Photographs that begin and end in themselves. Monuments that have shed their false heroes.

For more information about the exhibit Out of Register and Other exhibitions at Casa Triângulo, please visit their website and follow the gallery on Instagram and Facebook. Casa Triângulo can also be found on Artsy.

ALIOUNE DIAGNE:SEEDE

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

For his very first exhibition at Galerie Templon’s Paris space, painter Alioune Diagne, who is representing his country on the Senegalese Pavilion at the Venice Biennale in 2024, is showing a selection of eight paintings on the theme of clandestine crossings at sea. The Templon Gallery is pleased to have this exhibition, which opened on January 6th and will close on the 24th of February this year.

Destination inconnue, 2023 Acrylique sur toile | Acrylic on canvas 100 × 130 cm — 39 1/4 × 51 1/4 in Photo © Adrien Millot

Alioune Diagne uses a technique he developed and has gradually perfected where small modules, which he calls “unconscious signs”, cluster together to form a coherent figurative mass. He uses a complex process based on these signs, reminiscent of forgotten calligraphy, to create dynamic paintings that depict daily life in Senegal as well as the everyday experiences of the African diaspora around the world.

For Seede, which means “the witness” in Wolof, Diagne spent several weeks visiting the Senegal coastline. His canvases echo the stories of local fisherman who, equipped only with a pirogue and a net to do their work, are seeing growing foreign industrialisation of the fishing business. As Alioune Diagne explains: “To survive, some of them have had to abandon their traditional skills and resort to the illegal practice of people smuggling.”

La désillusion d'une mère, 2024

Acrylique sur toile | Acrylic on canvas 100 × 130 cm — 39 1/4 × 51 1/4 in Photo © Adrien Millot

Rescapé, 2023

Acrylique sur toile | Acrylic on canvas 100 × 130 cm — 39 1/4 × 51 1/4 in Photo © Adrien Millot

Le Fantôme de la pirogue, 2024

Acrylique sur toile | Acrylic on canvas 90 × 70 cm — 35 1/2 × 27 1/2 in Photo © Adrien Millot

L'heure du sauvetage, 2023

Acrylique sur toile | Acrylic on canvas 150 × 250 cm — 59 × 98 1/2 in Photo © Adrien Millot

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

The deep blue colour and handful of fishing nets covering the walls and floor of the Paris space give the exhibition an immersive not to say dramatic feel. “These are subjects I want to talk about,” says the artisti. “Emigration is still a painful reality today. Up till now, people only envisaged living a successful life in Europe or the USA. I want to show the younger generations that it’s possible to have a future in Africa.”

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

Born in 1985 in Kaffrine, Senegal, Alioune Diagne lives and works in Senegal and France. After studying at the Dakar Ecole des Beaux-Arts in 2008, Alioune Diagne developed “figuro-abstro”, an imaginary script, universal language and intimate account of fragments of his private life in Dakar and on his travels. He is a  socially engaged artist, paving the way for a deep-seated exploration of the major challenges facing today's world: ecology, the place of women in society, racism, and the notions of transmission and heritage. His work has featured in a variety of solo and group exhibitions in Europe, Africa and Asia, including Sink or Swim at the 11th Dakar Biennale, Villa Spivey, Dakar, Senegal (2014), Itinéraire en Couleurs at Espace Jean Drevon, Saint-Jean-de-Bournay, France (2014), the off-site show at Art Basel, Switzerland (2017), Un nouveau regard,

Aosta, Italy (2017) and Ndox-Glint at the Rouen Musée des Beaux-Arts (2023).  His work has also been part of the national art collection of Senegal since 2019 and was exhibited at the national theatre in Dakar for the 2022 Dakar biennale. In April 2024, the artist will have the honour of representing his country on the Senegalese Pavilion at the 60th Art Biennale International Art Exhibition in Venice. He has been represented by Galerie Templon since 2022 and Seede will be his second solo exhibition with the gallery.

For more information about this exhibition and others, please visit the  Templon Gallery’s website here.

JANET CARDIFF& GEORGE BURES MILLER Ambient Jukebox & Other Stories

Ambient Jukebox, 2023 interactive jukebox with tracks of ambient guitar music composed by the artists © Janet Cardiff and George Bures Miller, courtesy Fraenkel Gallery, San Francisco, and Luhring Augustine, New York

Ambient Jukebox & Other Stories,  is an exhibition of new work by multidisciplinary artists Janet Cardiff and George Bures Miller at the Fraenkel Gallery. The exhibit opened On January 11th and featured a public reception with the artists that took place on Saturday, January 13, from 2-4 pm.. This will be the artists’ second solo exhibition with the gallery since 2018.  The exhibition closes on March 9, 2024.

Cosmic Disco, 2024 mirror balls, acrylic paint, rotating motors, DMX lights, chains & miscellaneous hardware © Janet Cardiff and George Bures Miller, courtesy Fraenkel Gallery, San Francisco, and Luhring Augustine, New York

Atmospheric, dreamlike, and theatrical, the duo’s work often explores how sound affects perception. In Cosmic Disco, tiny points of light reflected from altered mirrorballs fill a darkened room to create the illusion of slowly moving galaxies, accompanied by a soundtrack drawn from recordings of planets and moons made by NASA’s Voyager I and II. The piece immerses viewers in illusory reflections and otherworldly sounds, encouraging contemplation of the universe and humans’ place in it. In another room, Ambient Jukebox repurposes a familiar-looking 1960s jukebox. Rather than playing pop hits, it has been reprogrammed to spin drone-like tunes created by Bures Miller during the disorienting months of the global pandemic. As in many of their pieces, Cardiff and Bures Miller invite the viewer to activate the piece—selecting the tracks creates a singular experience of the work and transforms the iconic object into something unfamiliar and surprising.

Pack Up Your Troubles, 2024 gramophone horn, suitcase, electronics, audio accompanied by artists certificate © Janet Cardiff and George Bures Miller, courtesy Fraenkel Gallery, San Francisco, and Luhring Augustine, New York.

 A range of more intimate works populate the third gallery. Combining paintings, found materials, soundtracks, and audio musings, these works explore the ways in which narrative, music, and sound influence the viewer’s interpretation of visual elements. Playful sculptural collages, made in part from studio scraps left over from earlier works, are inspired by constructivist ideas. In one, a collage made from rough wooden shapes, pieces of torn paper, and a tuft of blonde hair spins on a round pedestal as speakers play a hypnotic soundtrack of layered voices. Other works juxtapose moody oil paintings with fragments of found text, exploring the power of words even when inaudible.

Suitcase theater, 2000-23 mixed media & air-dry clay, suitcase, smart phone, charger, clamp, wooden shelf © Janet Cardiff and George Bures Miller, courtesy Fraenkel Gallery, San Francisco, and Luhring Augustine, New York

Suitcases appear in several works. A vintage suitcase is transformed into a theater, replete with curiously crafted doll-like characters and a range of scenarios that play on a small screen facing the ‘stage.’ Another suitcase is modified with a gramophone speaker through which Cardiff’s dreamlike voice quavers the World War I marching song Pack Up Your Troubles in Your Old Kit Bag, and Smile, Smile, Smile by George and Felix Powell, a song which in time has been sung by forces on all sides of many conflicts.

Dream Vacuum, 2021 mixed media with sound & electronics © Janet Cardiff and George Bures Miller, courtesy Fraenkel Gallery, San Francisco, and Luhring Augustine, New York

Janet Cardiff and George Bures Miller recently opened the Cardiff Miller Art Warehouse in Enderby, British Columbia, a venue that showcases their immersive large-scale installations. The Killing Machine, an automated installation inspired in part by Franz Kafka’s story In the Penal Colony, is featured in the exhibition Kafka: 1924 at Villa Stuck in Munich, Germany, on view until February 11, 2024. Their solo survey exhibition Dream Machines was recently on view at Museum Tinguely in Basel, Switzerland, following its premiere at Lehmbruck Museum in Duisburg, Germany. The exhibition was organized in honor of the Wilhelm Lehmbruck Prize, which was awarded to the pair in 2020. Cardiff’s celebrated sound sculpture Forty-Part Motet is on view in ongoing exhibitions at the National Gallery of Canada in Ottawa, and Inhotim in Brumadinho, Brazil.

Doppler Dance, 2023 mixed media, electronics, audio, motor, battery, wooden pedestal accompanied by artists certificate © Janet Cardiff and George Bures Miller, courtesy Fraenkel Gallery, San Francisco, and Luhring Augustine, New York

Their work has been shown in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; MoMA PS1, New York; National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa; Nelson Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, Missouri; Moderna Museet, Stockholm; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; and Tate Modern, London, among many others. Their work is in the collections of public institutions, including the Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.; Dallas Museum of Art, Dallas, Texas; Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, D.C.; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, and others. In 2011 they received Germany’s Käthe Kollwitz Prize, and in 2001, represented Canada at the 49th Venice Biennale, for which they received the Premio Speciale and the Benesse Prize.

For more information about this exhibition or others, please visit the Fraenkel Gallery’s website.

MOCA Focus: Eddie Rodolfo Aparicio

Installation view of MOCA Focus: Eddie Rodolfo Aparicio, November 12, 2023–June 16, 2024 at The Geffen Contemporary at MOCA. Courtesy of The Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA). Photo by Jeff McLane.

LOS ANGELES—The Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA)  presented MOCA Focus: Eddie Rodolfo Aparicio on November 12, 2023, and will conclude on June 16, 2024, at The Geffen Contemporary at MOCA. This is the first solo museum exhibition for Los Angeles–based artist Eddie Rodolfo Aparicio (b. 1990, Los Angeles), the exhibition explores Aparicio’s engagements with the Salvadoran communities in which he was raised, his formal experimentation with natural materials–including rubber, amber, glass, and clay–and his approach to social justice as a form of ecological justice.

MOCA Focus: Eddie Rodolfo Aparicio features artworks dating from 2016 to the present and includes the debut of three new sculptures specially commissioned for The Geffen Contemporary. Organized by Curator Anna Katz with Curatorial Assistant Anastasia Kahn, the exhibition marks the relaunch of the MOCA Focus series, which presents an artist’s first solo museum show in Los Angeles and centers on new or discrete bodies of work.

“We are delighted to relaunch the museum’s esteemed MOCA Focus series with an ambitious exhibition highlighting key elements of Eddie Rodolfo Aparicio’s prolific practice, which often explores the interconnections between Central America and Los Angeles,” said Johanna Burton, The Maurice Marciano Director. “Between the 1990s and mid-2000s, the historic MOCA Focus exhibition program was central to MOCA’s mission to champion the art of our time and our identity as the only artist-founded museum in L.A. We are thrilled to reaffirm our dedication to providing artists with vital opportunities to collaborate with curators, exhibition specialists, and educators in the development, presentation, and interpretation of their work. With his ceaselessly imaginative and ambitious approach, Aparicio embodies the essence of Los Angeles, his birthplace, and brings forth a distinctive and original perspective at this auspicious stage in his career.”

For this MOCA Focus presentation, Aparicio debuted three sculptures commissioned by MOCA and installed throughout a 3,500-square-foot gallery at The Geffen Contemporary. Two are primarily composed of prefossilized amber, a naturally occurring tree resin, and extend Aparicio’s project of reckoning his art with his heritage in the context of Salvadoran Civil War (1979–92) and the subsequent mass migration of Central American refugees to Los Angeles. Sepultura de semillas (Epitafio para la tumba de Adolfo Báez Bone), 2021– 23, resembles amber boulders embedded with sundry objects Aparicio gathered from the neighborhoods in Los Angeles— cigarettes, car parts, dishware, twigs, leaves, and other bits of flotsam and jetsam—as well as archival documents related to the Central American solidarity movement. The site-specific installation 601ft2 para El Playon / 601 sq. ft. for El Playon (2023) will be created by pouring liquid amber onto the floor, where it will solidify into a shape evoking El Salvador’s El Playon lava field. The work also includes facsimiles of documents from the nonprofit Central American Resource Center (CARECEN).

“Aparicio deploys a wide range of natural materials and found objects to give shape to lived experiences of diaspora and solidarity often left out of the official historical record,” said Katz. “Deeply rooted in the visual and cultural character of Los Angeles, Aparicio’s work creates counter-archives of the communities he grew up in and implores us to consider the most critical issues of our city and our moment–from political speech to the immigration crisis–according to long arcs of nature and history.”

Detail of prefossilized amber embedded with found objects, which will be used in a new artwork specially commissioned by MOCA. Courtesy of the artist and Commonwealth and Council, Los Angeles and Mexico City, © Eddie Rodolfo Aparicio. Photo by Paul Salveson.

Detail of prefossilized amber embedded with found objects, which will be used in a new artwork specially commissioned by MOCA. Courtesy of the artist and Commonwealth and Council, Los Angeles and Mexico City, © Eddie Rodolfo Aparicio. Photo by Paul Salveson.

Installation view of MOCA Focus: Eddie Rodolfo Aparicio, November 12, 2023–June 16, 2024 at The Geffen Contemporary at MOCA. Courtesy of The Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA). Photo by Jeff McLane.

The foundation of Aparicio’s practice is “total material non-neutrality,” which the artist initially realized through his Caucho (Rubber) series (2016–ongoing). MOCA Focus: Eddie Rodolfo Aparicio showcases a range of Caucho works, in which Aparicio casts the trunks of Los Angeles trees, frequently the ficus, slated for removal in rubber— the internal fluids of the Castilla elastica, a species native to El Salvador. The resulting impressions are textured with residual bark, exhaust particles, and graffiti marks. The casts couple with collages of found clothing and ephemera from the Pico-Union, Highland Park, and Westlake neighborhoods of Los Angeles, and are embellished with painted references to the presence and expression of the Central American diaspora in popular culture and the built environment. In this body of work, Aparicio invokes rubber’s history as a vital pre-Hispanic Indigenous technology and its status as a material of imperialist trade, giving shape to immigrant communities’ connections to land and place. At the core of Aparicio’s practice is a commitment to the cultural and scientific knowledge of often marginalized and even vilified Central American immigrant communities, making MOCA’s location in downtown Los Angeles, the heart of the Salvadoran diaspora, particularly resonant. MOCA Focus: Eddie Rodolfo Aparicio is accompanied by a fully illustrated publication featuring approximately thirty full-color plates and an essay by Katz, which situates Aparicio’s work within art history and social discourses of the present day. The catalogue is designed by Polymode Studio and inaugurates the Nimoy Emerging Artists.

Publication Series (Nimoy Series), which provides artists with a crucial publishing opportunity at a breakthrough moment in their careers. The Nimoy Series is made possible thanks to generous support from Susan Bay Nimoy and her late husband, Leonard Nimoy, through the Nimoy Fund for Emerging Artists.

MOCA Focus: Eddie Rodolfo Aparicio is organized by Anna Katz, Curator, with Anastasia Kahn, Curatorial Assistant, The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles.

Support for MOCA Focus: Eddie Rodolfo Aparicio as of November 9, 2023: Major support is provided by Nora McNeely Hurley and Manitou Fund and the MOCA Environmental Council.

Additional support is provided by the Sherman Family Foundation and

Exhibitions at MOCA are supported by the MOCA Fund for Exhibitions with generous funding provided by Jordan S. Goodman + The Goodman Family Foundation and The Earl and Shirley Greif Foundation.

Publication support is provided by the Nimoy Fund for Emerging Artists.

The carbon emissions from this exhibition have been measured and reduced as a part of MOCA’s climate commitment. Support provided by the MOCA Environmental Council.

ABOUT EDDIE RODOLFO APARICIO

Eddie Rodolfo Aparicio (b. 1990, Los Angeles; lives and works in Los Angeles) received an MFA from Yale University in 2016 and a BA from Bard College in 2012. His work has been featured in solo exhibitions at Los Angeles State Historic Park, Clockshop (2021); Commonwealth and Council, Los Angeles (2020); Páramo, Guadalajara (2019); The Mistake Room, Los Angeles (2018); and Green Gallery, New Haven, CT (2016). He has been included in group exhibitions at the Clark Art Institute, Williamstown, Massachusetts (2023); Denver Art Museum (2022); Hessel Museum of Art, Annandale-on-Hudson, New York (2022); Hauser & Wirth, New York and Los Angeles (2022); American Academy of Arts and Letters, New York (2022); Hammer Museum, Los Angeles (2021); El Museo del Barrio, New York (2021); Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, Bentonville, Arkansas (2020); Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions (2019); Anonymous Gallery, Mexico City (2018); Smack Mellon, Brooklyn (2017); and Abrons Art Center, New York (2016) among others. Aparicio is a recipient of a Nancy Graves Grant for Visual Artists (2021); Alonzo David Fellowship (2018); California Community Foundation Fellowship for Visual Artists (2018); Schell Center for International Human Rights Fellowship, Yale University (2015); National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship, Virginia Center for the Creative Arts (2014); Elizabeth Murray and Sol LeWitt Studio Arts Award, Bard College (2012). He attended the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture in 2016. Aparicio’s work is in the collections of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art and the Hammer Museum, Los Angeles.

ABOUT MOCA FOCUS

Between 1992 and 1999, Focus exhibitions offered an important platform for artists to present their work in their first solo museum presentation in Los Angeles. Dedicated to exhibitions of distinct bodies of work in a broad range of media, the series featured a roster of distinguished local and international artists, including Renée Green (1993), Franz West (1994), Felix Gonzalez-Torres (1994), Hiroshi Sugimoto (1994), Margaret Honda (1994–95), Toba Khedoori (1997), Catherine Opie (1997–98), and Jorge Pardo (1998). In the mid-2000s, the refreshed MOCA Focus series shifted to feature primarily emerging Los Angeles–based artists, presenting the first L.A. museum solo exhibitions for Eric Wesley (2006), Lecia Dole-Recio (2006), Alexandra Grant (2007), and Sterling Ruby (2008).

With its return in 2023, MOCA Focus revives its mission of giving artists at the forefront of contemporary art their first museum presentation in Los Angeles and acknowledges the global dialogue to which Los Angeles actively participates and contributes. Featured artists work closely with MOCA’s Curatorial and Exhibition teams to develop new work or present recent work, receiving support to produce and contextualize their practice. Each exhibition is accompanied by a monographic catalogue, which documents the artist’s work and includes a discursive essay written by the curator.

ABOUT THE MUSEUM OF CONTEMPORARY ART

Founded in 1979, MOCA is the defining museum of contemporary art. In a relatively short period of time, MOCA has achieved astonishing growth; a world-class permanent collection of more than 8,000 objects, international in scope and among the finest in the world; hallmark education programs that are widely emulated; award-winning publications that present original scholarship; groundbreaking monographic, touring, and thematic exhibitions of international repute that survey the art of our time; and cutting-edge engagement with modes of new media production. MOCA is a not-for-profit institution that relies on a variety of funding sources for its activities.

Museum Admission: General admission to MOCA is free courtesy of Carolyn Clark Powers. Special exhibitions at MOCA are $18 for adults, $10 for students with ID and seniors (+65), and free for children under twelve and jurors with ID. Special exhibitions are free every Thursday from 5pm to 8pm. MOCA members always receive free admission to special exhibitions.   Together Thursdays courtesy of Cliff and Mandy Einstein. Admission to MOCA Focus: Eddie Rodolfo Aparicio is free courtesy of. Carolyn Clark Powers.

More Information: For 24-hour information on current exhibitions, education programs, and special events, call 213-626-6222 or access MOCA online here.

Only the Young: Experimental Art in Korea, 1960s–1970s

Lee Kun-Yong, Logic of Hand, 1975/2018. Four chromogenic prints, each 33 7/16 × 33 7/16 in. (85 × 85 cm); edition 1 of 2. Leeum Museum of Art, Seoul. © Lee Kun-Yong. Photos: Courtesy the artist

On September 1, 2023, The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum presented Only the Young: Experimental Art in Korea, 1960s–1970s, the first North American museum exhibition dedicated to Korean Experimental art (silheom misul) and its artists, whose radical approach to materials and process produced some of the most significant avant-garde practices of the twentieth century. This historic presentation examined artistic production from an era of remarkable transformation in Korea. 

 The exhibit was on view from September 1, 2023, through January 7, 2024, where the historic presentation examined the artistic production from an era of remarkable transformation in South Korea, when young artists who came of age in the decades following the Korean War reflected and responded to the changing socioeconomic, political, and material conditions that accompanied the nation’s rapid urbanization and modernization. The exhibition is centered on a network of key artists, including Ha Chong-Hyun, Jung Kangja, Kim Kulim, Lee Kang-So, Lee Kun-Yong, Lee Seung-taek, and Sung Neung Kyung, who, in addition to creating boundary-pushing works of art, pursued exhibitions, performances, publications, and public seminars, often under the rubric of self-organized collectives. Porous in nature, groups such as the Korean Avant Garde Association, Space and Time, and the Fourth Group, as well as nationwide exhibition platforms such as the Daegu Contemporary Art Festival and international biennials, provided fertile grounds for innovative – and often provocative – practices that broke definitively with those of their predecessors. While the artists never formally announced a movement, the term “Experimental art” was first historicized in a landmark publication by Kim Mikyung based on her doctoral dissertation Experimental Art and Society in 1960s and 1970s Korea (2000), which has since propelled a reexamination of this influential but understudied group of artists. 

Visual Sense I, II, 1968

Kang Kukjin, Neon and stainless steel, each 110 1/4 × 18 1/8 × 18 1/8 in. (280 × 46 × 46 cm). National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Korea. © Kang Kukjin Estate. Photo: © Hwang Yangja, courtesy National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Korea

The Meaning of 1/24 Second, 1969

Kim Kulim, Color 16 mm film, silent, 9 min., 14 sec.; edition 2 of 8. Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, Gift of the artist 2020.11. © Kim Kulim. Photo: Courtesy the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York

[Sung Neung Kyung, 세계전도, 世界顚倒, An Upside-Down Map of the World, 1974]

Lee Seung Jio, Nucleus F-G-999, 1970.

Oil on canvas, 63 3/4 × 63 3/4 in. (162 × 162 cm). The Museum of Modern Art, New York Committee on Painting and Sculpture Funds and gift of Richard Roth, Kukje Art and Culture Foundation, and Miyoung Lee. © Lee Seung Jio. Photo: © The Museum of Modern Art, licensed by SCALA / Art Resource, New York

 Installation view, Only the Young: Experimental Art in Korea, 1960s–1970s, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, September 1, 2023–January 7, 2024. Photo: Ariel Ione Williams © Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation.

Only the Young: Experimental Art in Korea, 1960s–1970s, is thematically sequenced and featured approximately eighty works across various mediums, including painting, sculpture, ceramics, photography, video, installation, and film, most of which were presented for the first time to an international audience. It offered visitors an unprecedented opportunity to experience the creativity and breadth of this generation of Korean artists, illustrating how they harnessed the power of contemporary visual languages to explore pressing issues shaped by an authoritarian state at home and a globalizing world beyond. 

On the occasion of this presentation, a series of special performances were re-staged in the exhibition’s galleries: Lee Kun-Yong’s Snail’s Gallop took place during October 13–14; Sung Neung Kyung’s Reading Newspapers, which took place during November 17–18; and Kim Kulim’s From Creation to Extinction, took place during December 1–2. 

The exhibition was accompanied by a full-color scholarly publication, the first in the English language on Experimental art, with contributions by Cho Soojin, art historian; Joan Kee, Professor of Art History, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor; Yoon Jin-sup, artist, curator and critic; and curators Kyung An and Kang Soojung. In addition to incisive new scholarship and lavish photography of works drawn from public and private collections across the globe, the volume also brought together translations of articles, artist manifestos, and other primary sources that offer a firsthand perspective on the ideas then shaping artistic discourse in South Korea. 

Only the Young: Experimental Art in Korea, 1960s–1970s was co-organized by the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, and the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Korea. The exhibition is cocurated by Kyung An, Associate Curator, Asian Art, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum and Foundation, New York, and Kang Soojung, Senior Curator, National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Korea. The exhibition will open at the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Korea, on May 26 and close on July 16, 2023. It will 

Support 

Lead support for Only the Young: Experimental Art in Korea, 1960s–1970s was provided by the Samsung Foundation of Culture. 

The Leadership Committee for this exhibition is gratefully acknowledged for its support, with special thanks to Jae Won Chey, KoRICA, Kahng Foundation, Mimi O. Kim, Kukje Art & Culture Foundation, Gay-Young Cho and Christopher Chiu, Dow Kim Family Foundation, Tina Kim Gallery, Miyoung Lee and Neil Simpkins, Lehmann Maupin, Cindy and Howard Rachofsky, Yang Won Sun Foundation, Boris Yeung, Alyssa Yoon, and those who wish to remain anonymous. 

Support was also generously provided by The E. Rhodes and Leona B. Carpenter Foundation, The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Korea Arts Management Service, The Kate Cassidy Foundation, The W.L.S. Spencer Foundation, and Byucksan Cultural Foundation. 

Funding was also provided by the Korea Foundation.

Additional funding was provided by the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum’s Asian Art Circle. 

About the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation 

The Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation was established in 1937 and is dedicated to promoting the understanding and appreciation of modern and contemporary art through exhibitions, education programs, research initiatives, and publications. The international constellation of museums includes the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York; the Peggy Guggenheim Collection, Venice; the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao; and the future Guggenheim Abu Dhabi. An architectural icon and “temple of spirit” where radical art and architecture meet, the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum is now among a group of eight Frank Lloyd Wright structures in the United States recently designated as a UNESCO World Heritage site.

To learn more about the museum and past, current and future exhibits and the Guggenheim’s activities around the world, visit here. 

JEAN-MICHEL ALBEROLA The Kings of Nothing and the Years 1965-1966-1967

Courtesy de l’ar.ste et TEMPLON, Paris —Brussels — New York / Droits réservés © ADAGP, 2023

Jean-Michel Alberola marks his return to the City of Light with a protean exhibition that takes us on different journeys with its combination of new painted walls, canvases and works on paper.

We encounter the irresistible Rois de Rien [Kings of Nothing, Émeutes de Watts [Watts Riots], Tatlin and other abstraction works, which adorn the walls of the ground floor, plunging the visitor headfirst into the artist’s poetic, engaged and humorous universe. Hanging side by side, Alberola’s works form a series of philosophical puzzles questioning the perspective of artists and their role in society.

Vladimir Tatlin III, 2023 Huile sur toile | Oil on canvas 146 × 89 × 3 cm — 57 1/2 × 35 × 1 1/4 in. Photo: Adrien Millot

The basement continues the exploration the artist initiated in Brussels in March 2023 with 1965-1966-1967. “A turning point heralding the explosiveness of politics in the 1970s,” explains the artist. “Those three years still had a sense of freedom, before money began to infiltrate the artistic domains of the music and film industries in the late 1960s. People realised that counter-culture could be sold. That’s when everything changed.”

Toutes les images / All images : © Courtesy de l’ar.ste et TEMPLON, Paris —Brussels — New York / Droits réservés © ADAGP, 2023

Alberola has spent around two years gathering, annotating, rubbing out and re-writing in charcoal or blue and ochre pastel a multitude of information about this era. These drawings, hang shoulder to shoulder, build bridges with the present.

Born in 1953 in Saïda, Algeria, Jean-Michel Alberola lives and works in Paris. He made a name for himself in the early 1980s with a practice combining conceptual art and figurative painting. He has been represented by gallery Templon since 1982. His work has been shown in numerous solo exhibitions, including at the Louvre (2005), Bibliothèque Nationale de France (2009), Maison Hermès de Tokyo (2009), Frac Picardie in Amiens (2012), Palais de Tokyo (2016) and the Louvre's Centre Dominique-Vivant Denon (2018). It has also featured in several group exhibitions, such as Light House at the Fondation Boghossian in Brussels (2021) and Ex Africa at Paris' Musée du Quai Branly (2021). In September 2021, the Institut Mémoires de l’Edition Contemporaine (IMEC) gave the artist carte blanche and presented the results, centring on Franz Kafka, at the Abbaye d’Ardenne in Caen. Since January 2024, Centre Pompidou-Metz has presented his work in the group exhibition Lacan, l’Exposition, Quand l’Art Rencontre la Psychanalyse.

The exhibition opened on the 6th of January of this year and will conclude on the 24th of February. For more information about this exhibit and other exhibits at the Templon Gallery, please visit their website here. Also, find the Gallery on Instagram and Artsy.

Paul Pfeiffer: Prologue to the Story of the Birth of Freedom

Courtesy of MOCA and © Paul Pfeiffer. Courtesy the artist

LOS ANGELES—The Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA) proudly opened on November the 12th of last year. Paul Pfeiffer: Prologue to the Story of the Birth of Freedom, the multidisciplinary artist’s first U.S. retrospective. From era-defining early videos to recent, genre-breaking works in photography, installation, and sculpture, the exhibition brings together more than thirty works spanning Pfeiffer’s career, establishing him as one of today's most influential artists. The exhibition is on view at The Geffen Contemporary at MOCA from November 12, 2023, to June 16, 2024. Paul Pfeiffer: Prologue to the Story of the Birth of Freedom is 1 organized by MOCA Chief Curator & Director of Curatorial Affairs Clara Kim and Curatorial Assistant Paula Kroll.  The exhibit closes June 16th of 2024

“It is a great pleasure to organize Paul’s first U.S. retrospective at MOCA, where The Geffen Contemporary spaces will provide a dramatic backdrop for his mesmerizing art and allow audiences to move from intimate viewings of his work to grand, immersive encounters for the first time,” said Kim. “Fundamentally, Pfeiffer gets at the undercurrents of what holds contemporary society together–our collective desires, fears, and sense of belonging. MOCA’s rich history of embracing innovative contemporary art and its commitment to fostering dialogues that resonate with the pulse of our times make it the ideal venue to present Pfeiffer’s thought-provoking explorations of modern society.”

Widely regarded as a pioneer of video art in the digital era, Pfeiffer (b. 1966, Honolulu; lives in New York) examines how media creates spectacle in sports and entertainment and its subtle but powerful impact on our experiences of belonging and difference. Meticulously taking video footage apart frame-by-frame and subjecting it to digital erasure, repetition, and looping, Pfeiffer’s earliest works influenced generations of contemporary artists in his wake. Such simple techniques revealed critical but subtle features inherent to the production of images and the construction of collective memory, while reflecting the artist’s longstanding interest in the mechanics of movie-making. The exhibition title, Prologue to the Story of the Birth of Freedom, is drawn from a critical moment in American media history: Cecil B. DeMille’s opening remarks introducing his epic religious drama, The Ten Commandments, the most expensive film ever made at the time of its release in 1956.

The Long Count (Rumble in the Jungle) , 2001 Standard-definition video (color, silent; 2:51 minutes), painted 5.6-inch LCD monitor, and metal armature 6 x 7 x 36 in. (15.2 x 17.8 x 91.4 cm) © Paul Pfeiffer. Courtesy the artist; Paula Cooper Gallery, New York; carlier | gebauer, Berlin/Madrid; Perrotin; and Thomas Dane Gallery, London Photo: Luke A. Walker

“Paul’s work has a global reach and gives us a profound sense of the technological landscape we live in. Yet Los Angeles offers an ideal setting for this long-awaited, ambitious exhibition of Paul’s work,” said Johanna Burton, The Maurice Marciano Director of MOCA. “Occupying more than 20,000 square feet at The Geffen Contemporary at MOCA and set in the entertainment capital of the world, a city singularly poised to create–and manipulate–dreams, symbols, and mythologies, this show will have deep resonance here.”

Pfeiffer’s quintessential LCD video pieces will anchor Prologue to the Story of the Birth of Freedom. Iconic basketball games are the starting points for Fragments of the Crucifixion (After Francis Bacon) (1999) and John 3:16 (2000), while Muhammed Ali’s most famous boxing matches are featured in the trilogy of works titled The Long Count (2000–01). The exhibition also features the artist’s long-duration and live-feed video works and immersive video and architectural installations, such as The Saints (2007), an audio-visual recreation of the 1966 World Cup Final between England and West Germany, and Vitruvian Figure (2008), a room-size model of a million-seat arena inspired by the Sydney Olympic stadium.

Justin Bieber Head, 2018 Gmelina wood and paint 16 1/4 x 8 1/8 x 8 3/4 in. (41.3 x 20.6 x 22.2 cm) © Paul Pfeiffer. Courtesy the artist and Thomas Dane Gallery, London Photo: Ben Westoby

For this retrospective, MOCA commissioned Pfeiffer to expand on his Incarnator series (2018–ongoing). The artist worked in collaboration with “encarnadores” (from the Latin word meaning ‘“to make into flesh”), sculptors in the Philippines, Spain and Mexico who are known for their production of santos, nearly-life-size wood carvings of cultural and religious figures that are used in Catholic churches and private homes. These works were modeled after Justin Bieber and transform the pop star—who had recently declared himself a born-again Christian—into a contemporary embodiment of Jesus Christ. The production of these sculptures traces colonial trade routes that date back to the sixteenth-century, illuminating the labor and artistry behind centuries-old religious traditions and their ties to the history of global networks that continue into the present day.

Red Green Blue, 2022

Single-channel video (color, surround sound; 31:23 minutes) Dimensions variable Installation view: Red Green Blue, Paula Cooper Gallery, November 12, 2022 – January 12, 2023

© Paul Pfeiffer. Courtesy of the artist and Paula Cooper Gallery, New York Photo: Steven Probert

Three Figures in a Room, 2015–18

Two-channel digital video with four audio channels (color, sound; 48:00 minutes) and acoustic foam Dimensions variable

Installation view, Paul Pfeiffer, Paula Cooper Gallery, October 13 – December 17, 2016.

© Paul Pfeiffer. Courtesy the artist and Paula Cooper Gallery, New York

Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse (30), 2015

Fujiflex digital C-print 48 x 70 in. (121.9 x 177.8 cm) © Paul Pfeiffer.

Courtesy the artist;Paula Cooper Gallery, New York; carlier | gebauer, Berlin/Madrid; Perrotin; and Thomas Dane Gallery, London

Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse (17), 2004-2018

Matte C-print 72 x 57 5/8 in. (182.9 x 146.4 cm)

© Paul Pfeiffer. Courtesy the artist; Paula Cooper Gallery, New York; carlier | gebauer, Berlin/Madrid; Perrotin; and Thomas Dane Gallery, London

Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse (07), 2002

Digital duraflex print 48 x 60 in. (121.9 x 152.4 cm)

© Paul Pfeiffer. Courtesy the artist; Paula Cooper Gallery, New York; carlier | gebauer, Berlin/Madrid; Perrotin; and Thomas Dane Gallery, London

Vitruvian Figure (detail) 2008

cast resin, aluminum, and acrylic, 110 1/4 x 315 x 315 in. (280 x 800.1 x 800.1 cm).

© Paul Pfeiffer. Courtesy of the artist; Paula Cooper Gallery, New York; carlier | gebauer, Berlin/Madrid; Perrotin; and Thomas Dane Gallery, London. Photo: Christian Capurro

Cross Hall, 2008

Wall-recessed mixed media diorama, peephole, and live-video-feed projection 158 x 210 x 78 in. (401.3 x 533.4 x 198.1 cm)

Installation view: Paul Pfeiffer, carlier | gebauer September 9 – October 11, 2008.

© Paul Pfeiffer. Courtesy the artist and carlier | gebauer, Berlin/Madrid Photo: Bernd Borchardt

Morning After the Deluge (still), 2003

Video projection (color, silent) 21:03 minutes

© Paul Pfeiffer. Courtesy the artist; Paula Cooper Gallery, New York; carlier | gebauer, Berlin/Madrid; Perrotin; and Thomas Dane Gallery, London

Fragment of a Crucifixion (After Francis Bacon) (still), 1999

Video installation (color, silent, 0:05 minutes looped), with projector and mounting arm 20 x 5 x 20 in. (50.8 x 12.7 x 50.8 cm) (overall)

© Paul Pfeiffer. Courtesy the artist; Paula Cooper Gallery, New York; carlier | gebauer, Berlin/Madrid; Perrotin; and Thomas Dane Gallery, London

Installation view of Paul Pfeiffer: Prologue to the Story of the Birth of Freedom, November 12, 2023–June 16, 2024 at The Geffen Contemporary at MOCA. Courtesy of The Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA). Photo by Zak Kelley

MOCA’s presentation brings together Pfeiffer’s immersive, large-scale pieces and many of his smaller scale works for the first time in the U.S.. In close collaboration with the artist, Büro Koray Duman Architecture has developed an innovative, site-specific design for the exhibition that capitalizes on the cavernous warehouse space of The Geffen Contemporary at MOCA and the artist’s longstanding interest in the highly fabricated and labor intensive process of Hollywood filmmaking. Paul Pfeiffer: Prologue to the Story of the Birth of Freedom is accompanied by a full-color monographic catalogue co-published by the museum and MACK, with new scholarship and critical readings of Pfeiffer’s work that offer a much-needed overview of the artist’s impact and influence. The monograph includes contributions by Lawrence Chua, Tom Gunning, Julie Mehretu, Marian Pastor Roces, and Chanon Kenji Praepipatmongkol. Available Spring 2024, the catalogue will also include documentation of Pfeiffer’s installation at The Geffen Contemporary at MOCA.

 ABOUT THE ARTIST

Paul Pfeiffer was born in Honolulu, Hawaii, and spent his teenage years in the Philippines. Museum solo shows and projects include Inhotim Institute, Brazil, 2018; Bellas Artes Outpost, Manila, 2018; Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, 2017; Honolulu Museum of Art, 2016; Museum of Contemporary Art and Design, Manila, 2015; Artangel, London, 2014; Blanton Museum of Art, Austin, 2012; Sammlung Goetz, Munich, 2011; and Hamburger Bahnhof – Nationalgalerie der Gegenwart, Berlin, 2009. Pfeiffer has presented work in major international exhibitions, most recently the Performa Biennial and the Honolulu Biennial in 2019 and the Toronto Biennial and Seoul Mediacity Biennale in 2022. The artist lives and works in New York City. Paul Pfeiffer: Prologue to the Story of the Birth of Freedom is organized by Clara Kim, Chief Curator & Director of Curatorial Affairs, and Paula Kroll, Curatorial Assistant, The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles. Lead support is provided by The Eli and Edythe Broad Foundation and The Aileen Getty Foundation. Major support is provided by MOCA Projects Council in honor of Mandy Einstein, and Jamie and Robert Soros. Generous support is provided by [Paula Cooper Gallery and PERROTIN

Additional support is provided by Jam Acuzar and Christopher Ax, carlier | gebauer (Berlin/Madrid), Marcel Crespo, Thomas Dane Gallery, Eder-Zobel de Ayala Family, Jill and Peter Kraus, Elaine Forsgate Marden, Amy and John Phelan, Anton Ramos, Maria Taniguchi, and Fernando Zobel de Ayala. Supporters of the exhibition catalogue include The Katherine S. Marmor Award and the Blue Rider Group at Morgan Stanley. Exhibitions at MOCA are supported by the MOCA Fund for Exhibitions with generous funding provided by Jordan S. Goodman + The Goodman Family Foundation and The Earl and Shirley Greif Foundation. The carbon emissions from this exhibition have been measured and reduced as a part of MOCA’s climate commitment. Support provided by the MOCA Environmental Council.

ABOUT THE MUSEUM OF CONTEMPORARY ART (MOCA)

Founded in 1979, MOCA is the defining museum of contemporary art. In a relatively short period of time, MOCA has achieved astonishing growth; a world-class collection of nearly 8,000 objects, international in scope with deep holdings in Los Angeles art; hallmark education programs that are widely emulated; award-winning publications that present original scholarship; groundbreaking monographic, touring, and thematic exhibitions of international repute that survey the art of our time; and cutting-edge engagement with new modes of media production. MOCA is a not-for-profit institution that relies on a variety of funding sources for its activities.

For more information about this exhibit and other exhibits, please visit the MOCA website here.

Cristina Iglesias : ELLIPSIS

The Pavilion of Dreams (Elliptical Galaxy), 2016 Braided iron wire, steel cables, colored light and shadow 52 screens (22 horizontal, 30 vertical) 96 1/2 x 385 7/8 x 200 3/4 in. (245 x 980 x 510 cm) (overall variable) 72 x 47 1/4 in. (183 x 120 cm) (each screen) (18020) Courtesy of the artist and Marian Goodman Gallery Photo credit: Brica Wilcox

Marian Goodman Gallery is presenting the  solo exhibition by Cristina Iglesias in their Los Angeles space. The exhibition features a large-scale installation alongside new sculptures and works on paper and on copper. The exhibit opened on the 18th of November of 2023 and will close on the 27th of January of this year. The exhibition had an opening reception on Saturday the 18th of  November  of last year that was held from.  5-7 pm

Throughout Cristina Iglesias’s career, she has defined a unique sculptural vocabulary, building immersive and experiential environments that combine Minimalist sensitivity to form complex narrative constructions to create thresholds and portals to the temporal and the imaginary.

Continuing her use of non-traditional materials, such as language, water and sound—as highlighted in recent important public projects in New York, Spain, and Houston—the works reinforce the notion of a living landscape. Iglesias’ trellised pavilions evoke imaginary interspaces, while the sculptures on view merge her interest in phreatic zones and the subterranean with outer space.

The Pavilion of Dreams (Elliptical Galaxy), 2016 Braided iron wire, steel cables, colored light and shadow 52 screens 96 1/2 x 385 7/8 x 200 3/4 in. (245 x 980 x 510 cm) (overall variable) Installation view, “Cristina Iglesias: ELLIPSIS,” Marian Goodman Gallery, Los Angeles, 2023-2024 Courtesy of the artist and Marian Goodman Gallery Photo credit: Brica Wilcox

On view in the Main Gallery is The Pavillion of Dreams (Elliptical Galaxy), 2011-2016, shown for the first time in the United States. A suspended structure constructed from lattice screens, or ‘celosias,’ the work resembles a labyrinthine passageway. Comprised of 52 vertical and horizontal screens, it is made from iron braided wire, forming a filigreed chamber that the viewer can enter. The canopied ceiling and walls unveil fragments of text excerpted from Stanislaw Lem’s cult classic 1961 novel, Solaris. The inscriptions allow a viewer to ‘read’ the sculpture, entering a fictive space that materializes as an elliptical and enigmatic realm through language. Purple light throws shadows on the walls and floor of the room, dematerializing and rematerializing the sculptural support. The distinctive effect of the colored space recalls German Expressionist films in its use of mise-en-scene and illusionistic devices to reflect emotional states and societal anxieties.

Just as the sentient ocean planet, that gives Solaris its title, serves as a symbol of the incomprehensible other, the installation is a visual analog for the experience of the intangible and the way it manifests for the viewer, transforming in shifting spaces of light and shadow.

Turbulence, 2023, is a vortex-like bronze wall sculpture that evokes both movement and stasis, or a slow churning of forces. Here, the eye alights upon the center of the swirl, or “storm,” implicating the viewer within the imaged maelstrom. The title makes references to, as per the artist, “violent or unsteady movement”; a “state of conflict or confusion” but also recalls the generative force of chaos, as a “physical process by which energy throughout the universe is generated.” Both the physical world (oceans and cosmos) and inner life (cerebral states) are bound to cycles of turbulence.

The passage from outer space to earth, or the collision of two different worlds, is brought to life most directly with Lunar Meteorite (Littoral), 2023, a large-scale bronze work which rests on the floor, an organic bas relief rock form with water running inside, reinforcing the geology of time.

Entwined V, 2017 Cast aluminum patinated and policarbonated with pigment 124 x 254 x 6 in. (315 x 645.2 x 15.2 cm)
(20709) Courtesy of the artist and Marian Goodman Gallery Photo credit: Brica Wilcox

Entwined V (2017), created from cast aluminum patinated and policarbonated with pigment, is composed of several mural pieces that seem to grow from the ground along the walls. Reminding us that life lies under everything we stand upon, the pieces invade the walls, like dense invasive vegetation, aggressive hybrids of industry and nature.

A new series of monotypes, Cave Studies, 2022, silkscreen and acid on copper, materially reflect the concept of encounters. The series emerge from the artist’s project Hondalea, 2021, a permanent artwork located within an abandoned lighthouse on a small Spanish island in the bay of San Sebastián. These works contrast the ephemerality of nature with materials that are, conversely, solid and stable.

The Shore and the Sea, 2023

Gouache and ink on inkjet print
Paper: 47 1/4 x 31 1/2 in. (120 x 80 cm) Frame: 50 x 34 1/2 x 2 in. (127 x 87.6 x 5.1 cm) (28022)

Sea Cave Study II, 2023

Acid, wax and silkscreen on copper 39 3/8 x 78 3/4 in. (100 x 200 cm) (27730)

Sea Cave Study I, 2023

Acid, wax and silkscreen on copper
39 1/2 x 79 1/2 x 1 in. (100.3 x 201.9 x 2.5 cm) (27729)

Lunar Meteorite (Littoral), 2023

Bronze, hydraulic mechanism and water 39 x 66 x 55 in. (99.1 x 167.6 x 139.7 cm) (27616)

The Shore and the Sea, 2023

Gouache and ink on inkjet print
Paper: 31 1/2 x 47 1/4 in. (80 x 120 cm) Frame: 34 1/2 x 50 x 2 in. (87.6 x 127 x 5.1 cm) (28021)

The Shore and the Sea, 2023

Gouache and ink on inkjet print
Paper: 47 1/4 x 31 1/2 in. (120 x 80 cm) Frame: 50 x 34 1/2 x 2 in. (127 x 87.6 x 5.1 cm) (27732)

The Shore and the Sea, 2023

Gouache and ink on inkjet print
Paper: 31 1/2 x 47 1/4 in. (80 x 120 cm) Frame: 34 1/2 x 50 x 2 in. (87.6 x 127 x 5.1 cm) (27731)

Courtesy of the artist and Marian Goodman Gallery Photo credit: Brica Wilcox

This exhibition follows a series of major public projects by the artist including Wet Labyrinth (with Spontaneous Landscape), 2022, at the Royal Academy of Arts, London; Hondalea (Marine Abyss), 2021, an installation at Lighthouse at Santa Clara Island in San Sebastian, Spain, which transformed a defunct lighthouse into a vertiginous sculptural environment sunk into the island's bedrock; Landscape and Memory, her 2022 site-specific installation at Madison Square Park, New York, consisting of five pools featuring underground bronze reliefs embedded into the oval lawn, tracing an ancient stream that once flowed there, and Inner Landscape (the lithosphere, the roots, the water), 2020, commissioned by the Museum of Fine Arts Houston, in which a basin made up of a bronze labyrinth of roots and coastal rocks, which recalls tidal pools and becomes, in the artist’s words, “a portal to the underground, to the nature of the Earth, and to the strata of memory.”

Additional notable public commissions over the past decade include Sea Cave (Entrance) in Malta, 2021; Desde lo subterráneo (From the Underground) at the Botin Centre, Santander, 2017; The Ionosphere (A Place of Silent Storms) at the Norman Foster Foundation, Madrid, Spain, 2017; Forgotten Streams at Bloomberg Headquarters, London (2017) and Tres Aguas, Torre del Agua, in Toledo, Spain, 2014; Gates-Passage at the Museo del Prado, Madrid, Spain, 2006 and Deep Fountain at the entrance of the Museum of Fine Arts, Antwerp, Belgium, 2006.

Turbulence, 2023, Bronze 98 3/8 x 98 3/8 x 45 1/4 in. (250 x 250 x 115 cm) Installation view, “Cristina Iglesias: ELLIPSIS,” Marian Goodman Gallery, Los Angeles, 2023-2024, Courtesy of the artist and Marian Goodman Gallery, Photo credit: Brica Wilcox

About Cristina Iglesias

Cristina Iglesias was born in San Sebastián, Spain in November 1956. She currently lives and works in Torrelodones, Madrid. In 2020 she was recipient of the Royal Architecture Prize, Royal Academy, London. Her work has been shown recently in solo exhibitions at Frederick Meijer Gardens and Sculpture Park, Grand Rapids, MI, 2023; Royal Academy, London, 2022; Centro Botín, Santander, Spain, 2018; Musée de Grenoble, France, 2016 and 2022; BOZAR, Centre for Fine Arts, Brussels, Belgium, 2014; in a large retrospective at the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Madrid, Spain, 2013; and at Casa França, Rio de Janeiro, 2013; and Pinacoteca, Sao Paulo, 2008. Earlier solo shows have been exhibited at the Fondazione Arnaldo Pomodoro, Milan, 2009; Ludwig Museum, Cologne, 2006; Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin, 2003; Whitechapel Gallery, London, 2003; Museu Serralves, Fundaçao Serralves, Oporto, 2002; Guggenheim Bilbao, Spain, 1998 and Guggenheim New York, 1997. Iglesias has participated in a number of international exhibitions and has represented Spain at the 1986 and 1993 Venice Biennales and at the Sydney Biennale in 2012.

About Marian Goodman Gallery Los Angeles

Located in Hollywood near Highland Corridor, at Seward Street off Santa Monica Boulevard, Marian Goodman Gallery Los Angeles was inaugurated in September 2023.

For more information about this exhibition or others at the gallery, please visit the Marian Goodman Gallery website.

Martine Stig : Close Encounters

Installation views: “Close Encounters ” Marlborough Gallery., Madrid, 2023, Courtesy of the artist and Marlborough Gallery.

The exhibition Close Encounters brings together a selection of new works by Dutch artist Martine Stig that explore other spectral sensitivities. The work delves into visual realms that are invisible to the (human) naked eye but can be seen by machines and animals. Leveraging technology’s ability to re-imagine, the boundaries between humans and nature slowly shift, and we are encouraged to explore our environment, of which we are an indelible part, and expand our concept of reality.

We live in a post-optic world. Human vision is decentralized as (sole) base for knowledge production to make room for the nonhuman (machines, animals, plants). Yet, our worldview is based on optical information (“seeing is believing”!), and our visual culture leans heavily on old habits: affirming the human spectrum as the norm and celebrating the indexical qualities of the image.

Courtesy of the artist and Marlborough Gallery

The post-optic, as Carolyn L. Kane coins it, is an extension ànd a challenge of vision rooted in optics. It's through algorithmic imagery that we gain the ability to see beyond our own visual limits. This expansion of perception allows us to step beyond a human-centric viewpoint to embrace wavelengths visible to machines and other species. One of the most vivid examples of this post-optic or algorithmic realm is the use of digital infrared technology. It transcodes invisible data into our visible world, expanding our visual territory. In contexts such as military strategies and facial recognition, digital infrared serves not only to make the invisible visible but also to guide decision-making processes, silently participating in the invisible conversation that shapes our world. The memetic relationship of the optical world doesn’t exist in the postoptic; the relationship between the real world and its representation is constantly shaped by data and algorithmic processes. Digital infrared and ultraviolet images act as conduits, offering us reinterpretations of an unseen universe.

The post-optic invites us to expand our parameters of normality and opens doors to the extrasensory. It can contribute to a shared and interconnected reality that fosters interactions between all entities - be they machines, humans or other entities.

Installation views: “Close Encounters ” Marlborough Gallery., Madrid, 2023, Photo Credit: Fotogasull. Courtesy of Marlborough Gallery

The exhibit opened on November the 30th, where Martine Stig traveled to Barcelona to attend the opening at Galería Marlborough between November 28th and December 3rd, 2023. The exhibit will conclude on February  10th, 2024.

For more information, please visit the Galería Marlborough website.

calor COLOR

calor COLOR

SOLO SHOW: Anish Kapoor

DUO: Bridget Riley, Adrien Lucca

DUO: Lucas Simões, Blanca Muñoz

GRAPHICS: Herbert Bayer, Piero Dorazio, Beverly Pepper, Jesús Rafael Soto

Marlborough Madrid presents a project developed in different spatial modules and whose axis gravitates around the role played by color in the works of nine international artists. The exhibit opened on the 25th  of November this year.

Although these works are diverse in content and structure, each one uses color to claim its space through its “vivacity”, an expression used by Goethe to refer to the fact that refined people avoided bright colors in their clothes and objects and seemed inclined to banish them altogether. He went so far as to assert that only savage nations, uneducated people, and children retain a taste for vivid colors. Walter Benjamin also wrote about the child’s relationship to color by differentiating their perception of color from that of the adult: he even suggested that the latter understood color as a layer superimposed on matter, to such an extent that they regarded it as a deceptive cloak. Perhaps this deception could be linked to the names of synthetic colors that create a phantasmagorical and ethereal aura, makingit is difficult to imagine a color by its name alone. Far from being misleading, the vivacity of the colors of the works in this exhibition is symptomatic of the fact that calor [heat] and color, following the free etymological relationship of Isidore of Seville, are fundamentally composed of the same matter.

Floraisons de lumière, Étude Nº2:Rose a L'or, 2023

vidriera, 51 x 70 cm

Magenta and Yellow, 2002

serigrafía, ed. de 75, 109 x 75 cm

Installation views: “calor COLOR,” Galería de arte Marlborough Madrid, Spain, 2023, courtesy of Galería de arte Marlborough Photo Credit: Roberto Ruiz

To equate calor with color moves us away from a retinal approach and brings us closer to a bodily activity common to spaces of fantastic vivacity in which color is presented in a lively manner. Defending such a sense of color does not mean to state categorically that color is this or that. In order to avoid something as common in color theory as the tendency to relate shades of color to everyday objects or materials, thus blurring their true chromatic singularity, we have chosen to favor abstraction in the selection of the works. The aim is to examine the postulates of the artists present in this exhibition in relation to color, rather than favoring figuration.

The first selection of works will establish a conversation within the field of Op- art between Bridget Riley (UK, 1931) and the scientist and artist Adrien Lucca

(France, 1983). The latter specializes in the study of color with works that play with the spectrum of light to produce visual effects. His practice seeks to challenge the idea that vision is synonymous with knowledge: his works explore the limits of visual perception. Riley’s perspective, on the other hand, makes use of flat colors that play with allusions to a new landscape. The artist challenges the viewer in subtle and provocative visual experiments through optical calculation and regularities of line and color combinations. Although they belong to different generations, the plastic exercises of both artists converge in their willingness to serve scientific studies.

A second space presents a solo exhibition of the graphic work of Anish Kapoor (India, 1954) which explores in a chromatic way a mystical mood, a ceremonial and ritualistic impulse. Through his works we will try to take in his specific use of color by means of opposites to create shadows.

In addition to these proposals, there is a group exhibition with graphic works by Herbert Bayer (Austria, 1900 - United States, 1985), Piero Dorazio (Italy, 1927 - 2005), Beverly Pepper (United States, 1922 - India, 2020) and Jesús Rafael Soto (Venezuela, 1923 - France, 2005) from a specific period: 1966 to 1975. These years represent the true creative ferment around color: one of the main events was the arrival of color in television in the mid-sixties. In the artistic sphere, marked by Clement Greenberg’s defense of the reflexive flatness of color field painting, which eventually led artists to dematerialize the object, many movements and styles with color as a central impulse gained strength: pop art, optical art and minimalism are good examples.

Finally, a dialogue will be presented between the sculptors Lucas Simões (Brazil, 1980) and Blanca Muñoz (Spain, 1963), with pieces in which color is manifested through electrolysis, an electrochemical process that changes the color of metals. The Spanish sculptor works with metal and achieves iridescent results; the Brazilian, trained in architecture and urbanism, imagines forms that allow him to explore the material. Two generations united in the use of electricity as a means of tracing the change of color and its evocations.

Artist Bio:

Anish Kapoor

Anish Kapoor. Courtesy of Adam Berry

Anish Kapoor (India, 1954) is one of Britain's most celebrated artists and is considered one of the most influential sculptors of his generation. Although his artistic training took place in the UK, his work continues to draw on the richness and depth of Indian history and culture, in combination with other mythologies of the ancient world, such as Egyptian, Greek and Roman, as well as aspects of modernity.

His graphic work is characterized by the representation and transformation of hallucinatory qualities with unique and vivid colors, sometimes involving pure gradations around simple, squared or circular shapes; he also creates rich and suggestive explorations whose origins and meaning are appealing, but almost never literal or obvious.

Horizon Shadow, Untitled 03, 2010, aguafuerte, ed. de 35, 65 x 49 cm

His recent solo exhibitions include those held at: Fundación Proa, Buenos Aires; Museum of the Central Academy of Fine Arts and Imperial Ancestral Temple, Beijing; CorpArtes, Santiago de Chile; Museo Serralves, Porto; Public Art Fund, Brooklyn; MAST Foundation, Bologna; Museo Universitario Arte Contemporáneo, Mexico City; Château de Versailles; and The Jewish Museum and Tolerance Center, Moscow. His work is present in the permanent collections of the most important cultural institutions in the world, such as: Tate Gallery, London; MoMA, New York; Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Madrid; Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam; Fundación Banco Santander; Museo Guggenheim Bilbao; and Fundación “la Caixa”, just to mention a few.

Lucas Simões

Lucas Simoes. Courtesy of the artis

The exploration of material as a form of expression in the work of Lucas Simões (Brazil, 1980) is an investigation that aims to sustain the artistic object with meaning. His training as an architect, in which technique and poetics are deeply interrelated, offers the keys to understanding his artistic production. Painting, cartography, books, photography, steel, and paper are common objects in his practice. Simões finds his means of expression in daily experimentation with materials and technical knowledge, as in his recent concrete sculptures and installations, a reflection of his research into brutalist architecture and the failure of its utopian sense.

dormente 22, 2023, acero carbono galvanizado, 73 x 34 x 17 cm

Simões has exhibited at cultural institutions around the world such as: ARCO Madrid; Casa Triângulo in São Paulo; Blouin Division in New York; Arsenal Contemporary Art in Montreal; Oscar Niemeyer Museum in Curitiba; CAAC in Seville; Museum of Contemporary Art in São Paulo; Zacheta National Gallery in Warsaw; Astrup Fearnley Museum in Oslo; Itochu Aoyam Art Square in Tokyo; and Maison Européenne de la Photographie in Paris. His work is present in numerous collections such as: Museu de Arte do Rio de Janeiro; Museu de Arte Contemporânea da cidade de São Paulo; Coleção ITAÚ de fotografia brasileira de São Paulo; Blanton Museum of Art de Austin; Centro Cultural São Paulo; Instituto Figueiredo Ferraz de Ribeirão Preto; and Fundación Kablanc de Otazu; among others.

Blanca Muñoz

Blanca Muñoz. Courtesy ©Sergio Moya

Blanca Muñoz (Madrid, 1963) graduated in Fine Arts at the Complutense University of Madrid and throughout her career has received scholarships from the Italian Government at the Calcografia Nazionale, the Royal Academy of Spain in Rome and the Directorate of Foreign Relations of Mexico. She has received, among other awards, the National Engraving Prize in 1999 and is a member of the Real Academia de Bellas Artes de San Fernando. Among her best-known monumental sculptures are the sculptural trio GORGONAS and the LUSTRAL fountain in the Plaza de España in Madrid; Altiva, in the Masaveu Foundation in Madrid; Talismán in Banca March, Madrid; Géminis, in Norman Foster’s Cepsa Tower, Madrid; Panta rei, in Málaga; Eclíptica, in the Palacio de Congresos in Badajoz; and Perseidas II, in the Parque de la Curva de Elorrieta, in Bilbao.

Romboidal. 2021. Acero inoxidable. 70 x 56 x 28 cm

Her work has been exhibited individually on several occasions at the Marlborough Gallery in New York, Madrid and Barcelona; at the Real Academia de Bellas Artes de San Fernando in Madrid; at Galerie MiniMasterpiece, Paris; at the Sala Alcalá 31 in Madrid; and at the International Biennial of Graphic Arts in Ljubljana, among others. In addition, her work has been exhibited at the Biblioteca Nacional, the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, the Museo Nacional del Prado, the Fundación Enaire, the Fundación Juan March, the Museo Würth, and the National Museum of Women in the Arts in Washington, among many other cultural institutions.

Her work is present in numerous art collections: Banco de España, Biblioteca Nacional, Colección Würth Alemania, Fundación Bancaja, Fundación María Cristina Masaveu Peterson, La Quinta Colorada in Mexico City, Museo de Bellas Artes de Álava, and Museo Nacional del Prado, among others.

Adrien Lucca

Adrien Lucca. Photo Leslie Artamonow.

Adrien Lucca (France, 1983) studied visual arts at the École de Recherche Graphique in Brussels, where he experimented with various media, including drawing on Steinbach paper. There followed an intense period of research and study of the theories of physicists and chemists such as Michel-Eugène Chevreul, Hermann von Helmholtz, Ogden Rood, Georges Roque, Françoise Viénot and Mark D. Fairchild for their recent research in the science of color.

Adrien Lucca’s interest in optical mixing led him to produce scientific drawings which he called Études. In 2010 and 2011 he continued his research at the Department of the Jan van Eyck Academy in Maastricht, and in 2014 he learned computer coding to create more complex drawings. Entirely handmade, he generated his drawings using algorithms that he designed himself based on a set of deterministic rules.

Entrelacs quisicristallins, 2016, vidriera, 60 x 192 x 5 cm

In 2019 he received a grant from the Belgian National Fund for Scientific Research to develop white light synthesizers and integrate the use of artificial light into his work. His experience with glass began in 2015, when he entered a competition organized by Bruxelles Mobilité for which he created a set of fourteen backlit stained-glass windows for the Place d’Armes metro station in Montreal. Since then, glass has become one of his favorite materials.

Adrien Lucca teaches at the Ecole Nationale Supérieure des Arts Visuels de La Cambre in Brussels. He is currently continuing his research on the complex relationship between color and light. In 2023, Lucca held his first monographic exhibition in a contemporary art museum, at the BPS22 in Charleroi, Belgium. Since 2015 he has produced monumental works in Belgium, Canada, Italy, and the Netherlands.

Bridget Riley

Bridget Riley. Photo Credit: Christian Wickler

Bridget Riley (UK, 1931) studied at Goldsmiths College and the Royal College of Art with Peter Blake and Frank Auerbach. The work of Jackson Pollock and futurism stimulated the development of what would become her signature style, Op Art, as well as her studies of pointillism and the black and white geometry of Italian Romanesque architecture. Throughout her career, her graphic work, produced by means of silkscreen printing, has sometimes anticipated her pictorial work and at other times mirrored it. Her geometric compositions seem to be full of optical effects, created with the utmost precision so that the viewer experiences both comfort and conflict.

Her work has been exhibited in international museums such as: MoMA, New York; Venice Biennale, where she won the International Painting Prize, the first woman artist to do so; Musée d’Art Moderne, Paris; National Gallery, London; National Gallery, Prague; Kunsthalle, Nuremberg; and Tate Modern, London. In addition, her work can be found in public collections around the world, including: Centre Pompidou, Paris; Dallas Museum of Art; Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; MoMA, New York; Staatsgalerie, Stuttgart; and Tate Modern, London, among many others.

Herbert Bayer

Herbert Bayer

Herbert Bayer (Austria, 1900 - United States, 1985) was a graphic designer, typographer, painter, photographer, sculptor, art director, environmental and interior designer, and architect who, using the technique of collage and photomontage, combined different images and forms on a plane that was no longer that of traditional photography, but constituted a “new reality”. The result of his work are intriguing pieces with multiple readings that evoke dadaism and surrealism.

Bayer studied at the Artists’ Cologne in Darmstadt, where he became interested in Walter Gropius’s Bauhaus manifesto. He attended the Bauhaus in Weimar, where he studied with masters such as Wassily Kandinsky, Paul Klee and László Moholy-Nagy, and was probably the most talented typographer of those who passed through the German school, although his work also encompasses painting and, above all, photographic collage. At the Bauhaus, Bayer developed a sharp visual style and adopted a sans serif (grotesque) font used in lower case for all the Bauhaus publications he designed. In 1928, Bayer left the Bauhaus to become art director of the Berlin office of Vogue magazine.

Afterglow, 1975, serigrafía, ed. de 50, 81.3 x 81.3 cm.jpg

In 1937 he set sail for the United States and from then on introduced the avant-garde of European design to North America. Bayer’s work has been exhibited at: Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris; Harvard Art Museums; MoMA, New York; ARCO Center for Visual Art, Los Angeles; and Germanisches Nationalmuseum, Nuremberg. His work is included in prominent public and private collections such as: MIT List Visual Arts Center, Whitney Museum, Guggenheim Museum, and MoMA, New York City, among many others. Bayer is also noted for monumental works such as the Mill Creek Canyon Earthworks, an environmental sculpture located in Kent, Washington.

Piero Dorazio

Piero Dorazio (Italy, 1927 - 2005) studied architecture and in the late 1940s became active in various artistic and literary circles where he met Jean Arp, Georges Braque, Sonia Delaunay, Le Corbusier, Gino Severini, Antoine Pevsner, and Georges Vantongerloo and came into contact with the School of Paris, constructivism and Italian futurism. Dorazio rediscovered the art of Giacomo Balla, who became a major influence, and became active in design, silkscreen printing and furniture design. In 1950, a visit to Paris led him to collaborate with several fellow artists in the organization of a remarkable avant-garde cooperative gallery, L’Age d’Or. While travelling in Europe and visiting New York, Dorazio developed his color-based artistic approach which, a decade later, would consolidate his international fame with works primarily concerned with color field studies and lyrical abstraction.

Fragments Frontales, 1966, litografía, ed. de 90, 63.5 x 88.9 cm

In 1953, Dorazio travelled to the United States and presented his first solo exhibitions at the Wittenborn One-Wall Gallery and the Rose Fried Gallery in New York. Dorazio exhibited at the Musée d’Art Moderne in Paris, the Albright-Knox Art Gallery in Buffalo and the Galleria Nazionale d’Arte Moderna e Contemporanea in Rome. He also participated in important international exhibitions, such as the Venice Biennale, where he exhibited in 1960, 1966 and 1988. In the following years he received private and public commissions, such as the creation of mosaics in underground stations throughout Rome.

His work is present in important collections such as: MoMA, New York; Tate Gallery, London; Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris; Peggy Guggenheim Collection, Venice; Galleria Nazionale d’Arte Moderna e Contemporanea, Rome; Museo del Novecento, Milan; Galleria Civica d’Arte Moderna e Contemporanea, Turin; National Gallery of Art, Washington; Hirshorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington; Art Institute of Chicago; and Fine Arts Museums, San Francisco.

Beverly Pepper

Bevery Pepper, Courtesy Marlborough Gallery London

Beverly Pepper (United States, 1922 - Italy, 2020) began her training as a painter with Fernand Léger and André Lhote in Paris. After a trip to the temple of Angkor Wat in Cambodia, she also turned to sculpture and, together with David Smith and Alexander Calder, participated in the historic exhibition Sculture Nella Cittá in the city of Spoleto. In addition to a lifetime of gallery exhibitions, she has had numerous solo shows in museums, including MoMA, New York; Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo; Brooklyn Museum; San Francisco Museum of Art; and Ara Pacis, Rome. She is also known for her land-art works and monumental iron sculptures in the United States, Europe, and Asia. Before her death in 2020, she completed work on Beverly Pepper Park, the world’s first monothematic park of contemporary sculpture.

Blue, Silver and Yellow, 1968, repetición de papel collage con impresión, ed. de 60, 49.2 x 70.8 cm

Pepper’s works are present in major museums around the world, including: Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris; Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.; Dallas Museum of Art; Galleria Nazionale d’Arte Moderna, Rome; Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, D.C., the Metropolitan Museum in New York, the MACBA in Barcelona, Spain; the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago; the Museum of Modern Art in Sapporo, Japan; the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis; the IVAM in Valencia, Spain; and the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York.

Jesús Rafael Soto

Jesus Rafael Soto. Foto Raphael Gaillarde.

Jesús Rafael Soto’s (Venezuela, 1923 - France, 2005) quest for aesthetic representation of the immaterial and general rejection of figurative and traditional geometric form not only led to a prolific career marked by ingenuity and success, but also to the presentation of an entirely new and interactive experience for the viewer of his kinetic works. Trained at the Escuela de Artes Plásticas y Artes Aplicadas in Caracas, Soto found his formative inspiration in the Parisian avant-garde of the 1950s, moving to Paris and interacting with Jean Tinguely, Victor Vasarely, Yaacov Agam and many others associated with the Salon des Realités and the Galerie Denise René. He would also claim the optical artists Kazimir Malevich, Yves Klein and Piet Mondrian as vital to his creative process because of their complete disregard for the “object” in favor of an exploration and materialization of the ephemeral, such as Malevich’s White on White.

Soto rebelled against the limitations of two- and three-dimensionality, as well as color theory, and succeeded in creating his own stylistic methodology, involving the viewer through a mixture of media, shifting pictorial planes, scale, and color.

He has recently had solo exhibitions at: Louis Vuitton Beijing Culture and Art Space in Beijing, Centro Cultural BOD in Caracas; Hispanic Society Museum & Library in New York; and the Villa Datris Foundation in Paris.

Numerous works by Jesús Rafael Soto are in the collections of: MoMA, New York; Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York; Tate Gallery, London; Stadelijk Museum, Amsterdam; Museum Boymans-van Beuningen, Rotterdam; Royal Museum of Fine Arts, Belgium; Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes, Buenos Aires; Musée d'Art Moderne, Paris; and Hara Museum of Contemporary Art, Tokyo.

The exhibit will conclude on the 27th of January next year. Please visit the Gallery’s website for more information.

Spike Lee: Creative Sources

Spike Lee, 2023. (Photo:©JamelShabazz)

The Brooklyn Museum Presents a Major Exhibition Exploring the Creative Sources of Celebrated Filmmaker Spike Lee.

Spike Lee: Creative Sources is an immersive installation that takes visitors into Lee’s world, revealing the people, places, and ideas that have inspired his incisive storytelling

The Brooklyn Museum is proud to present Spike Lee: Creative Sources, a rare glimpseinto the world of Spike Lee (born Atlanta, Georgia, 1957; raised in Brooklyn, New York), one of the most influential and prolific American directors, who has transformed the landscape of contemporary cinema and the art of filmmaking. Through an immersive installation of objects that have been touchpoints in his creative process, visitors will discover the sources of inspiration that have fueled Lee’s work. Organized around themes of Black American history and culture, Brooklyn, sports, music, cinema history, and family, the exhibition draws connections between the people, places, and ideas behind his creative endeavors. It also marks Brooklyn’s first major exhibition on Lee, an artist whose persona is synonymous with the borough.

Spike Lee as Mookie in Do the Right Thing (Spike Lee, 1989, 120 min.). (Photo: © David C. Lee)

Lee is best known for his work in film, having directed, written, and produced numerous movies, commercials, music videos, and recorded plays over the past forty years. His personal collection, also formed over decades and previously on view in the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures’ exhibition Director’s Inspiration: Spike Lee (2021–22), mirrors the themes that recur in his filmmaking. The Brooklyn Museum’s exhibition offers visitors a new lens through which to understand how Lee’s lifelong interests have intersected and impacted his productions. It is organized by Kimberli Gant, Curator, Modern and Contemporary Art, with Indira A. Abiskaroon, Curatorial Assistant, Modern and Contemporary Art, Brooklyn Museum.

“Spike Lee: Creative Sources offers a fresh perspective on a cultural icon, focusing on the individuals and influences that have shaped Spike Lee’s body of work, which is so well known today,” says Gant. “By making Lee’s collection accessible to the public, this showcase celebrates his legacy while honoring his deep connection to Brooklyn, a place that has been an integral part of his storytelling.”

4 Little Girls , (Forever Free) 1997.

Michael Ray Charles (born 1967) Acrylic, latex, copper on plywood. Collection of Spike Lee and Tonya Lewis Lee. (Photo: Courtesy of the artist)

Bamboozled (Forever Free)

Michael Ray Charles (born 1967) 1997. Acrylic, latex, copper on paper. Collection of Spike Lee and Tonya Lewis Lee. (Photo: Courtesy of the artist)

James Van Der Zee (1886–1983). Barefoot Prophet , 1929.

Gelatin silver print. Collection of Spike Lee and Tonya Lewis Lee. © James Van Der Zee Archive, The Metropolitan Museum of Art. (Photo: Courtesy of Swann Auction Galleries)

Portrait of Toni Morrison circa 1993

Tim Okamura (born 1968)., 2020. Oil, graphite on canvas. Collection of Spike Lee and Tonya Lewis Lee. © Tim Okamura (Photo: Courtesy of the artist)

Set Dressing from Do the Right Thing , 1989.

Collection of Spike Lee and Tonya Lewis Lee. (Photo by Joshua White. © 2023 Academy Museum Foundation)

Gucci (founded 1921). Tuxedo, 2020. Nike (founded 1964). "Kobe IX Elite" Sneakers, 2020. Collection of Spike Lee and Tonya Lewis Lee. (Photo by Joshua White. © 2023 Academy Museum Foundation)

America the Beautiful , 1960.

Norman Lewis (1909-1979). Oil on canvas. Collection of Spike Lee and Tonya Lewis Lee. © Estate of Norman Lewis. (Photo: Courtesy of Michael Rosenfeld Gallery LLC, New York, NY)

Behind the scenes of Crooklyn

Spike Lee, 1994, 115 min.). (Photo: © David C. Lee)

 Installation view, Spike Lee: Creative Sources: Brooklyn Museum, October 7, 2023-February4, 2024. (Photo: Paula Abreu Pita, Danny Perez))

More than 350 objects represent the wide range of mediums that have inspired Lee, such as historical photographs, paintings, album covers, movie posters, letters, first-edition books, costumes, and film memorabilia (many of which are autographed and signed to the director). They are organized thematically in seven sections, each of which features a clip from one of his groundbreaking films. Shown throughout the exhibition are works by prominent Black American artists, including Kehinde Wiley, Deborah Roberts, Elizabeth Catlett, Michael Ray Charles, Gordon Parks, and James Van Der Zee. Also on view are depictions of Black American and African figures across a spectrum of disciplines, such as Nelson Mandela, Barack Obama, Shirley Chisholm, Angela Davis, Toni Morrison, Ella Fitzgerald, Billie Holiday, Malcolm X, Jacob Lawrence, Gwendolyn Knight, Joe Louis, Jack Johnson, Michael Jordan, and Prince—all of whom have made an impact on Lee.

Known for creating complicated and often controversial depictions of Black Americans, Lee is strongly influenced by Black American history and culture, which is highlighted in a primary section of the exhibition. Michael Ray Charles’s satirical artwork Bamboozled (1997) depicts a dartboard with the face of a Black American winking and smiling widely, despite the deep wound cleaved into the figure’s head. Representing the racist stereotyping of Black Americans, the painting helped inspire Lee’s provocative film Bamboozled (2000), a critique of minstrelsy and blackface. Other objects in the section, such as images of Harlem and of public figures Lena Horne, Jacob Lawrence, and James Baldwin, weave a narrative about self-expression, community, and activists who condemned segregation and sought to build a better world.

A Brooklyn icon, Lee has centered the borough and other New York City locales in many of his films, and he has collected and preserved artifacts from Brooklyn’s rich history. In turn, the exhibition examines the ways that Brooklyn has shaped Lee creatively. The section about Brooklyn presents photographs by David Lee (Spike Lee’s younger brother) and Tseng Kwong Chi; movie posters; and set dressings and props from Lee’s Brooklyn- based films, such as Do the Right Thing (1989) and She’s Gotta Have It (1986). These works are displayed alongside banners and posters for Lee’s Brooklyn-based film company 40 Acres and a Mule, named after the broken promise that the U.S. government made to formerly enslaved people at the end of the Civil War.

Spike Lee as Mars Blackmon from She’s Gotta Have It (Spike Lee, 1986, 84 min.). (Photo: © David C. Lee)

Lee’s collection also contains numerous works that celebrate the historical feats of Black athletes. On view in the sports section is a commissioned painting by Kehinde Wiley that honors the legacy of Brooklyn Dodgers player Jackie Robinson, the first Black American to play in Major League Baseball in the modern era. Also exhibited are tennis rackets that belonged to Arthur Ashe, the first Black American to win three Grand Slam singles titles, and Serena Williams, one of the greatest tennis players in history. In addition, the section features David Levinthal’s photographs of notable moments in sports history, starring toy figures of such heroes as Michael Jordan and Willie Mays.

Known for collaborating with renowned jazz musicians and hip-hop artists, Lee centers music as a distinctive component of his films. His love for music and musicals was passed down from his mother, Jacquelyn Shelton Lee, who frequently took him to musicals and plays, and his late father, Bill Lee, a jazz musician who wrote the score for several of his films. The section about music includes portraits of early to mid-twentieth-century musical luminaries, such as Gordon Parks’s photograph of composer Aaron Copland and James J. Kriegsmann’s photograph of Frank Sinatra. These works are displayed alongside instruments once owned by legendary musicians, such as Prince’s “Love Symbol” guitar and a saxophone signed by Branford Marsalis, who collaborated on the soundtrack for Mo’ Better Blues (1990).

Though he developed a distinct visual language and technique, Lee would not have become the creative powerhouse that he is today without the profound influence of other important filmmakers. The cinema history section presents photographs and vintage posters of films by his predecessors and contemporaries, such as Japanese director Akira Kurosawa and Italian director Federico Fellini, showcasing the range of work that inspires Lee.

Patrick Martinez (born 1980). Fight the Power (Chuck D) , 2018. Neon, Plexiglas. © Patrick Martinez. Collection of Spike Lee and Tonya Lewis Lee. (Photo: Michael Underwood. Courtesy of the artist and Charlie James Gallery, Los Angeles)

As seen since his earliest works, Lee makes films that are inherently political, often examining the everyday lives of Black Americans and the systemic inequities they contend with.

In the section on politics, World War II and Vietnam War propaganda posters featuring stereotypical imagery of Black American soldiers are displayed alongside posters of Lee’s Miracle at St. Anna (2008) and Da 5 Bloods (2020). Both films spotlight the treatment of Black American soldiers and emphasize the hypocrisy of making them fight alongside white counterparts and for the United States.

Behind the scenes of Crooklyn (Spike Lee, 1994, 115 min.). (Photo: © David C. Lee)

The notion of family, which has been important for Lee both on- and off-screen, forms a final section of the exhibition. Here, visitors will see photographic portraits of Lee and his siblings, parents, and grandparents, as well as artistic depictions of family by Elizabeth Catlett and William H. Johnson. Additional works on view include portraits of the actors, designers, writers, musicians, and other colleagues who have become part of Lee’s professional family and helped him realize his artistic vision through the decades. Spike Lee: Creative Sources is organized by Kimberli Gant, Curator, Modern and Contemporary Art, with Indira A. Abiskaroon, Curatorial Assistant, Modern and Contemporary Art, Brooklyn Museum.

Leadership support for this exhibition is provided by the Ford Foundation.

Major support is provided by Rolex.

The Brooklyn Museum gives special thanks to the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures, especially Dara Jaffe, Associate Curator.

The exhibit opened on the 7th of October with an artist reception. The exhibit will close—next year in February on the 4th. Please visit the Brooklyn Museum’s site for more information about the exhibit. The Museum can also be found on Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, and Facebook.

Magritte + Warhol By Duane Michals

Credit for image: © Duane Michals. Courtesy of DC Moore Gallery, New York.

Photographer Duane Michals turns his eye on the legendary artists René Magritte and Andy Warhol in this exhibition of early portraits. Known for his surreal sequences and witty storytelling across media, Michals’s portraits of other artists turn the tables upon his subjects by adopting elements of their characteristic visual styles. Among the many artists photographed by Michals over his six-decade long career, Michals particularly sought out Magritte and Warhol as subjects. The exhibition will feature nearly forty portraits of Warhol and twenty portraits of Magritte, alongside over twenty portraits of other major 20th century artists. These two series reimagine these mythological artists on Michals’s own terms, capturing at once the illusory image of the artist and the person beneath.

Duane Michals first took portraits of Andy Warhol in 1958, and continued to photograph him throughout the artists’ friendship. They met while Warhol was working as a commercial artist and connected over their shared experiences growing up in Pittsburgh. The 1958 portraits capture this moment of transition from working in advertising to establishing himself as Andy Warhol, the artist and personality. The subsequent portraits taken over the years illuminate Warhol’s constant self-reinvention. Michals comments, “he’s transcended being a mere artist, he’s a phenomenon. Andy was phenomenal. And he still is, and he will get stronger as time goes on.”

Andy Warhol (Laying on Papers), c. 1958 Signed lower middle; editioned lower right Gelatin silver print 14 7/8 x 22 1/4 inches (image); 20 x 24 inches (paper size) Edition 1/5

In August, 1965, Duane Michals arrived at René Magritte’s home in Brussels to take the famous surrealist’s portrait. Michals made the connection through a friend of a friend and had no idea what to expect from the painter who was a large influence on his own photographs. Michals’s photographs refract Magritte and his space through his own engagement with Magritte’s art. He writes, “what so engaged me in Magritte’s work was its ability to perplex. In his world, I could not be sure of anything.” The portraits convey the surrealist sense of humor shared by the two artists, using double exposures and other techniques to perplex the eye. Magritte is dressed in a dark suit and bowler hat, “the familiar Magritte man” of his paintings.

Magritte with Easel, 1965 Signed lower middle; editioned lower right Gelatin silver print 15 1/8 x 22 1/2 inches (image); 20 x 24 inches (paper size) Edition 1/5

Michals’ portraits of other artists, including Marcel Duchamp, David Hockney, Alice Neel, Louise Nevelson, and Robert Rauschenberg, will be shown alongside these two series. Each image speaks to the particularities of the sitter, channeling the aura of their work while maintaining his own idiosyncratic vision.

Andy Warhol (Skyline), c. 1980

Signed lower middle; editioned lower right
Gelatin silver print
15 1/4 x 22 1/4 inches (image); 20 x 24 inches (paper size)
Edition 1/5

Andy Warhol (Covering Face), c. 1958

Signed and editioned lower middle; initialed, titled and dated on verso
Gelatin silver print
6 5/8 x 10 inches (image); 11 x 14 inches (paper)
AP IV/V

Andy Warhol (In Front of Campbell's Soup Art), c. 1962

Signed and editioned lower middle
Gelatin silver print
12 5/8 x 8 1/4 inches (image); 11 x 14 inches (paper)
Edition 8/25

Andy Warhol Contact Sheet (A), c. 1958

Signed and editioned lower right
Gelatin silver print
18 7/8 x 20 3/4 inches (image); 20 x 24 inches (paper size)
Edition 1/5

Bedroom with Nude Painting, 1965

Signed, titled, and editioned
Gelatin silver print
6 3/4 x 10 inches (image); 11 x 14 inches (paper)
Edition 3/25

Magritte Asleep, 1965

Signed, titled, and editioned
Gelatin silver print
6 3/4 x 9 7/8 inches (image); 11 x 14 inches (paper)
Edition 16/25

Magritte with Hat, 1965

Signed lower middle; editioned lower right
Gelatin silver print
14 1/2 x 22 inches (image); 20 x 24 inches (paper size)
Edition 1/5

Oldenburg, 1970

Signed, titled, and editioned
Gelatin silver print
6 5/8 x 10 inches (image); 11 x 14 inches (paper)
Edition 7/25

Rene and Georgette Holding Hands Behind a Tree, 1965

Signed, titled, and editioned
Gelatin silver print
6 5/8 x 9 7/8 inches (image); 11 x 14 inches (paper)
Edition 6/25

Willem de Kooning, 1985

Signed, titled and editioned lower middle
Gelatin silver print with hand-applied text
6 5/8 x 10 inches (image); 11 x 14 inches (paper)
Edition 10/25

Credit for all images: © Duane Michals. Courtesy of DC Moore Gallery, New York.

Duane Michals (b. 1932, McKeesport, PA) first made significant, creative innovations in the field of photography during the 1960s. In an era heavily influenced by photojournalism, Michals manipulated the medium to communicate narratives. Over the past five decades, Michals’ work has been exhibited extensively in the United States and abroad. The Museum of Modern Art, New York, hosted Michals’ first solo exhibition in 1970. In 2008, Michals celebrated his 50th anniversary as a photographer with a retrospective exhibition at the Thessaloniki Museum of Photography, Greece, and the Scavi Scaligeri in Verona, Italy. In 2019, The Morgan Library and Museum in New York exhibited a career retrospective of Michals' work, The Illusions of the Photographer: Duane Michals at the Morgan. The recent touring exhibition, Duane Michals: The Portraitist, originated at DC Moore Gallery in 2015 and traveled to The Crocker Museum of Art, Sacramento, CA (2018-2019), The Fenimore Art Museum, Cooperstown, NY (2019), The Lowe Art Museum, Miami, FL (2021), Hasselblad Center, Gothenburg, Sweden (2022), University of Richmond Museums, Richmond, VA (2022), and The Finnish Museum of Photography, Helsinki, Finland (2023). Over forty monographs of Michals’ work have been published, including Storyteller: Duane Michals (2014), Duane Michals: Empty New York (2018), and, most recently, Texas (2022).

Over forty monographs of Michals’ work have been published, including Storyteller: Duane Michals (2014), Duane Michals: Empty New York (2018), and, most recently, Texas (2022).

An opening reception with the Artist was held on November 16 from  6 to 8 pm. The exhibit will close on December 21, 2023

For more information about this exhibit, please contact the  DC Moore Gallery.

Oluseye Black Exodus: Summer Departure

courtesy of Hayden Phipps/Southern Guild

Southern Guild presents Black Exodus: Summer Departure, a solo exhibition of new works by Nigerian-Canadian artist Oluseye, opening on 23 November (until 25 January). Spanning sculpture, installation, and photography created over the past five years, the exhibition weaves the artist’s personal narrative, trans-Atlantic journeys, and artistic evolution into a broader exploration of historical and contemporary Black life.  

Oluseye re-animates found objects and detritus collected from his travels – which he terms “diasporic debris” – to trace Blackness through its multifaceted migrations and manifestations. Black Exodus: Summer Departure is a journey to finding self and forging an artistic identity rooted in play, honesty, travel, and research. “I am coming into self within this broader examination of Black ancestry, migration, spirituality, aesthetics, and visual culture. What's my journey within these larger, universal themes of Blackness? What is my contribution?” 

Over the past year, Oluseye’s artistic practice has seen him moving between New York, Toronto, Lagos and Cape Town, where he spent a two-month stay at the GUILD Residency earlier this year. In the months prior to his exhibition, he returned to the city, setting up a makeshift studio on the second floor of a warehouse in the heart of Cape Town’s bustling harbour. Amidst the grit and industrial atmosphere, the arrival of goods and people mirrors his peripatetic practice of collecting and working with objects sourced from across the African diaspora, many of which have arrived in Cape Town via this port.  

Installation views: “An Order of Being,” Southern Guild, Cape Town, 2023, courtesy of Hayden Phipps/Southern Guild

Working at a long white trestle table, strewn with an array of objects in varying shades of black – car parts, rubber debris, electrical scrap, domestic items, synthetic hair – the artist invokes the role of the “nganga” (spiritual worker in traditional Kongo religion), imbuing his everyday relics with the mystical, transforming his finds into “eminado” (the Yoruba word for good luck charm).  

“Eminado are objects of pleasure and protection, they are re-imaginations of the talismans that Africans – past and present – carried for protection as they embarked on both forced and voluntary journeys across the Atlantic,” he says.   

One of two expansive works in the show, the Eminado Series will comprise an installation of over 100 palm-sized talismans, their dark shapes and subtle textures contrasting sharply against the white wall. Amongst these are a baby’s pacifier with a nail driven through its base and a switchblade comb with plastic teeth on one end and a sharp metal épée on the other. Oluseye’s talismans embody both solace and danger, carrying an intriguing aura of sensuality. The tension and interplay of seemingly dichotomous ideas is prevalent throughout his practice – Christianity and indigenous African beliefs, vulnerability and strength, spirituality and sexuality.  

At the heart of this exhibition is the installation Patra (Mothership) –  a womb, the hull of a ship, or a carriage. Oluseye draws inspiration from the Jamaican Dancehall star Patra, one of his earliest memories of Black female empowerment, as he contemplates the symbolism of a ship as a woman. The installation consists of a large sensuous body of hair nestling a porcelain cowrie shell, and anchored by a large rock. This work attempts to highlight the contributions of Black women in the artist’s life and across intellectual and physical realms throughout history.  

Through the creation of Black Exodus, the artist sought to explore and honour everyday African ingenuity. He turned to the streets and villages he visited in Nigeria, Ivory Coast, Senegal, South Africa, Kenya and elsewhere to learn from and work alongside the artisans he met – hair braiders and barbers, cobblers, basket weavers, vulcanizers and rubber recyclers, horticulturists and welders.  

His chosen materials – hair, rubber, cotton, cowrie shells and mirrors – are often a medium through which to reimagine the diasporic debris. “These are loaded materials that carry with them brutal histories of enslavement and colonial conquest, oppression and pillaging but are reclaimed anew as symbols of power, resilience and good omen. I like the tension of working with them, repositioning them to give new meaning and significance,” Oluseye notes. 

Black Exodus: Summer Departure centres on the transforming and repurposing of discarded items, crafting these fragments into sources of joy, play and protection. As he assembles these disparate pieces into meaningful objects, Oluseye simultaneously rebuilds his own sense of wholeness in a new form. /END 

Installation views: “An Order of Being,” Southern Guild, Cape Town, 2023, courtesy of Hayden Phipps/Southern Guild

ABOUT THE ARTIST

Oluseye is a Nigerian-Canadian artist. Born in London in 1986, the artist spent his childhood years in Lagos, Nigeria before moving to Canada.  

Using “diasporic debris” — a term he coined to describe the artifacts, discarded materials and found objects he collects from his trans-Atlantic travels — Oluseye explores Black being across themes. These transformational objects are recast into sculpture, performance and photography. Their explorations invoke Oluseye’s personal narratives and travels within a broader examination of Black and Diasporic cultures, migration and spiritual traditions. The talismans in his Eminado series physically trace and embody the transgenerational movement of the Black diaspora.  

Across his practice, he embraces the notion of Blackness as divine, fluid and unfixed; unbound by time, space, and geographies. As such his work blends the ancestral with the contemporary, the traditional with the modern, the physical with the spiritual, the new with the old and the past with the future.  

Oluseye has a Bachelor of Commerce from McGill University, Montreal, and a Master of Science in Entrepreneurship from Bayes Business School, London, UK. He has exhibited at the Albright-Knox Museum, Buffalo (2022), Museum of Contemporary Art Toronto (2021), Agnes Etherington Art Center, Queen’s University, Kingston (2021) and the Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto (2015). His first public art commission, Black Ark, installed in Toronto’s Ashbridges Bay Park, explores Canada’s role in the Trans-Atlantic slave trade. 

Oluseye was an artist-in-residence at the GUILD Residency in Cape Town in early 2023, and has presented his work with Southern Guild at the Investec Cape Town Art Fair and Expo Chicago. 

ABOUT SOUTHERN GUILD 

Established in 2008 by Trevyn and Julian McGowan, Southern Guild represents contemporary artists from Africa and its diaspora. With a focus on Africa’s rich tradition of utilitarian and ritualistic art, the gallery’s programme furthers the continent’s contribution to global art movements. Southern Guild’s artists explore the preservation of culture, spirituality, identity, ancestral knowledge, and ecology within our current landscape. Their work has been acquired by the Metropolitan Museum of Art, LACMA, Philadelphia Museum of Art, Pérez Art Museum, Mint Museum, Harn Museum, Denver Art Museum, Vitra Museum, Design Museum Gent and National Gallery of Victoria. Since 2018, the gallery has collaborated with BMW South Africa on a year-round programme of meaningful activations that promote artist development and propel their careers. Located in Cape Town, Southern Guild will expand internationally with a 5,000 sqft space opening in Melrose Hill, Los Angeles in February 2024. 

For more information about this exhibit, please visit the Southern Guild website.

Manyaku Mashilo: An Order of Being

 courtesy of Hayden Phipps/Southern Guild

The question in these textures is not ‘How did we get here?’ but ‘How will we survive here?’. ‘Here’ as in now, tomorrow, after, freedom – how will we be?  We have all known to look to tomorrow in the pit of night before dawn breaks the sky’s surface. Abanye baye ngale, abanye ba wele - but today these textures ask: ‘So far, dear traveller, how have you found your way? How does it feel to be here, how will we know when we get there?’ - Julie Nxadi 

Southern Guild is pleased to present An Order of Being, the gallery’s first solo exhibition by South African artist Manyaku Mashilo, opening 23 November 2023 (until 25 January 2024). The new body of figurative paintings navigate and construct an imaginative future realm. This abstracted plane – expansive in its capacity to heal, liberate and reinvent – is occupied by a collective of fluid, dreamlike figures.  

Mashilo’s practice acts as a vehicle for sense-making; her canvases stand as liminal spaces for synthesising elements of her religious upbringing, ancestral heritage, both real and invented myth, folklore, science fiction, music and sourced archival photographic images. An Order of Being is a gentle confrontation with the multiplicity of the artist’s past, present and future facets of selfhood.  

Though her work is rooted in the historically charged mode of portraiture, Mashilo regards her paintings as abstractions. Ethnographic photography from the 19th and early 20th centuries disseminated distorted representations of the depicted bodies, with each subject diminished through the colonial eye of Eurocentricism. Mashilo’s figures have been crafted anew, free of projection or historical reduction. “I invent characters,” she states, “I have had to create these subjects from scratch – make skin tones, plan similarities, consider race, exaggerate features – blank my slate while contending with the reality that I cannot unsee or un-know.”  

These subjects hold a self-actualised power. Their gaze pierces through the onlooker, defiantly seeking some future horizon line. Their bodies have been transformed into genderless, undefined vessels. They are uncontained, able to expand and disintegrate. Each figure blooms forth from an abstracted liminality, their forms migrating through and beyond lines that appear to contour and cloak a celestial landscape.  

Installation views: “An Order of Being,” Southern Guild, Cape Town, 2023, courtesy of Hayden Phipps/Southern Guild

Music is a vital means to the languaging of Mashilo’s practice. The making of the exhibition’s works was deeply informed by the undulating frequencies of Blues, African gospel, spoken word and free jazz. These sounds invite ritual and a meditative space for free movement. It is this somatic experience, in its spontaneity and distinct capacity to change course, that inspires the flowing contours of Mashilo’s repeated line work. Multiple readings of these contour patterns are possible: the spiralling patterns of human fingerprints, ripples emanating from a central impact point, and the structural co-ordinates of yet-to-be-discovered clusters of stars.  

“There are other worlds they have not told you of” has become a welcome mantra for the artist. The phrase was spoken by American composer, musician and poet Sun Ra (1914-1993), who recounted an epiphanic encounter with otherworldly beings following a space journey he said took place in Alabama in 1936. His resulting life-long catalogue of music – a joyful, cosmic cacophony of electronic jazz – would retrospectively be defined as a pioneering influence of Afrofuturism. Akin to the Astro-Black mythology of Sun Ra’s musical language, Mashilo’s paintings traverse a peripheral alternate space, blending the real and unreal, correcting the burdensome weight of historical injustices with the lightness and hope of what may still be yet to come.   

Installation views: “An Order of Being,” Southern Guild, Cape Town, 2023, courtesy of Hayden Phipps/Southern Guild

The exhibition presents a new multi-panelled triptych, comprising three large-scale arch-shaped canvases. Beyond its associations with religious architecture, the arch becomes a visual metaphor for liminal movement: a simultaneous conduit for exiting and entering. The recurring use of red ochre in this body of work connotes clay, blood and the traditional ointment of “imbola”, a thick paste of burnt earth pigment applied to the faces of Xhosa women and newly initiated youth.  

An Order of Being resists singular compartmentalization of the self and the cultural practices that have come to define and inform Mashilo’s unfolding sense of the world. Her subjects shapeshift between hybridised identities to welcome an alternative understanding of how a person comes into being. This future world does not repress or shame this complexity; it welcomes and holds expansive space for an evolving and indefinable multiplicity.  

ABOUT THE ARTIST

Manyaku Mashilo is a Cape Town-based artist whose multidimensional practice encompasses mixed-media painting, drawing, and collage. Born in Limpopo in 1991, she addresses themes of spiritual identity, memory, ancestry, community and belonging.  

Mashilo draws on inspiration from photographic archives to build expansive scenes where imagined representatives of Blackness migrate through abstract liminal spaces. These scenes act as celestial cartographies, connecting the depicted Black figures through a felt mutuality of heritage, spirituality, shared ritual and intent. These migratory figures, forever moving between and through, are driven by an energetic pull toward a new vanguard where purpose and representation can be renegotiated.  

Mashilo’s figures are drawn from family photographs, historical imagery depicting various experiences of Black lives and portraits of people from her own community. In this way, Mashilo enmeshes the contemporary and historical as a form of interdimensional mapping. Lineage and memory, both collective and personalised, conflate in this unknown world. Her vast cosmological landscapes offer a multiverse of imagined futures, weaving together place and space, charting a rich and diverse tradition of African spirituality and identity.  

Mashilo’s  solo exhibition at Southern Guild, An Order of Being, in 2023 follows solos at 99 Loop Gallery in Cape Town and the Klein Karoo National Arts Festival, both in 2020. Southern Guild has presented her work at The Armory Show in New York, Expo Chicago and the Investec Cape Town Art Fair. 

Her work was recently included in Spectrum: On Color and Contemporary Art at the Museum of the African Diaspora in San Francisco, Africa Supernova at Kunsthal KAdE in Amersfoort, The Netherlands, and Rites of Passage at Gagosian, London. Mashilo has also participated in exhibitions at the African Artists Foundation in Lagos, the Javett Centre in Pretoria, Art X Lagos with SMO Contemporary and Unit London. Her work forms part of the Shulting Art Collection, Tiroche Deleon Collection, and The Suzie Wong Collection as well as private collections in the United Kingdom, Nigeria, Korea and United States.  

ABOUT SOUTHERN GUILD 

Established in 2008 by Trevyn and Julian McGowan, Southern Guild represents contemporary artists from Africa and its diaspora. With a focus on Africa’s rich tradition of utilitarian and ritualistic art, the gallery’s programme furthers the continent’s contribution to global art movements. Southern Guild’s artists explore the preservation of culture, spirituality, identity, ancestral knowledge, and ecology within our current landscape. Their work has been acquired by the Metropolitan Museum of Art, LACMA, Philadelphia Museum of Art, Pérez Art Museum, Mint Museum, Harn Museum, Denver Art Museum, Vitra Museum, Design Museum Gent and National Gallery of Victoria. Since 2018, the gallery has collaborated with BMW South Africa on a year-round programme of meaningful activations that promote artist development and propel their careers. Located in Cape Town, Southern Guild will expand internationally with a 5,000 sqft space opening in Melrose Hill, Los Angeles in February 2024. 

For more information about this exhibit please visit the Southern Guild website.

Rineke Dijkstra Night Watching and Pictures from the Archive

Kolobrzeg, Poland, July 27, 1992, 2023 Archival inkjet print Image: 59 x 46 7/8 in. (150 x 119 cm) Courtesy of the artist and Marian Goodman Gallery Copyright: Rineke Dijkstra

Marian Goodman Gallery is pleased to present a new exhibition of Rineke Dijkstra. The exhibition will include the East Coast premiere of Night Watching (2019), a three-channel video installation commissioned and first shown at the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam in 2019. Dijkstra will also present a selection of never before-seen works following a two-year period of revisiting her archive. These include new pictures from her Beach Portrait series, as well as selected portraits that span a decade created in locations all over the world. Both Night Watching and the new photographs show the diverse ways in which people connect to each other, to the camera, to art and to the viewer.

Night Watching (2019), a three-channel video installation, features 14 groups of people observing and speaking in front of Rembrandt's iconic painting The Night Watch (1642). These conversations vary from visual descriptions to conjectures on the circumstances in which the painting was created. A group of Dutch schoolgirls discuss whether Rembrandt gave the only woman in the painting the face of his wife Saskia; Japanese businessmen consider the painting’s potential for tourism; and a group of young artists discuss what it must feel like to make such an incomparable masterpiece. The scenes in the video are sequenced to explore the different ways a viewer might relate to a painting and its subject. The first groups speculate about what they are seeing: for instance, a dog painted in a vague manner, or an illuminated girl. They are followed by groups who link similar observations to their own personal lives, making comparisons between past and current society. The final groups examine the painting within an art historical context.

Installation views: “Night Watching and Pictures from the Archive,” Marian Goodman Gallery, New York, 2023 Courtesy of the artist and Marian Goodman Gallery Copyright: Rineke Dijkstra Photo credit: Alex Yudzon

Dijkstra was given unprecedented access to film Night Watching in the Rijksmuseum's Gallery of Honour, after closing time, over the course of six evenings. She filmed directly in front of Rembrandt’s The Night Watch, so that the participants would have a personal and close encounter with the painting. When exhibited at the Rijksmuseum, Night Watching was installed in a room adjacent to The Night Watch, offering visitors an opportunity to revisit the painting. In a broader context, Dijkstra’s Night Watching offers us the occasion to engage in and reflect on the conversational and social nature of people in a discursive relationship to art and history, and to consider the importance of storytelling in the creation of meaning, culture and history. These subjects were similarly explored in Dijkstra’s 2009 video installation I See a Woman Crying which features British schoolchildren looking at and discussing Picasso’s painting The Weeping Woman (1937) at Tate Liverpool.

Installation views: “Night Watching and Pictures from the Archive,” Marian Goodman Gallery, New York, 2023 Courtesy of the artist and Marian Goodman Gallery Copyright: Rineke Dijkstra Photo credit: Alex Yudzon

While the Beach Portraits that Dijkstra exhibited earlier in her career often focused on young people as autonomous subjects, the works in this new exhibition focus on connection. The duos and groups in these works have been captured all over the world, from the beaches of Poland, the United States, and the 1 Citing text by Hans den Hartog Jager on the work Night Watching Netherlands, to various locations in Ghana, the UK, and Ukraine. In these pictures Dijkstra raises the question of how the bond between people becomes visible - which can be through a subtle resemblance in appearance, a similarity in bodily attitude towards the camera, the casual holding of two hands, or even through a strikingly large difference between the characters. All photos in this exhibition invite the viewer to consider the ways in which human beings can forge identity and potency through their connection to each other. Precisely because of her exceptional eye for detail and the gestures unique to each individual, and her great sense of human relationships and emotions, these portraits shine a special light on the power of Rineke Dijkstra's unique oeuvre.

Rineke Dijkstra was trained at the Gerrit Rietveld Academie, Amsterdam. Her first solo exhibition took place in 1984 at de Moor in Amsterdam. Dijkstra's photographs have appeared in numerous international exhibitions, including the 1997 and 2001 Venice Biennale, the 1998 Bienal de São Paulo, Turin's Biennale Internationale di Fotografia in 1999 and the 2003 International Center for Photography's Triennial of Photography and Video in New York; Manifesta 10, St. Petersburg (2014); ICA, Boston in 2019; Barbican Art Gallery, London (2020); The Getty Museum, Los Angeles (2022).

Solo exhibitions of her work have been shown at Maison Européenne de la Photographie (MEP), Paris (2023); Timken Museum, San Diego (2022); Lehmbruck Museum in Duisburg (2022); Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam (2019) de Pont, Tilburg, the Netherlands (2018); Sprengel Museum, Hannover (2018), Louisiana Museum of Art, Denmark (2017); Hasselblad Center, Gothenberg (2017); National Gallery of Art, Washington D.C. (2016); San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco, and Guggenheim Museum, New York (2012); Tate Liverpool (2010), Fotomuseum Winterthur, Switzerland, Jeu de Paume, Paris and Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam (2005-6), and the Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago (2001). She is the recipient of a number of awards, including the Spectrum Internationaler Preis für Fotografie der Stiftung Niedersachsen (2018), the Hasselblad Foundation International Award (2017), Citibank Private Bank Photography Prize – now Deutsche Börse Photography Prize – (1998), Werner Mantz Award (1994). Please join us at the opening reception on Tuesday, October 31st, from 6-8 pm.

The exhibit opened on October 31st with a reception and will close on the 20th of December of this year. For more information please visit the Marian Goodman Gallery’s website.

ANTOINE ROEGIERS «La brûlure de l’éveil»

The Masks, 2023 Oil on canvas, 130 × 162 cm

Belgian artist Antoine Roegiers is coming to Galerie Templon this autumn with the solo exhibition La Brûlure de l’Éveil/Burning Awakening. A series of seventeen oils on canvas centre on an exploration of a world in transition where nature reclaims what is hers.

Antoine Roegiers discovered the works of the masters of the Flemish School, from Peter Brueghel to Jérôme Bosch, as a student at the Paris École des Beaux-Arts. Fascinated by their highly distinctive vision of narrative, perspective, viewpoint, staging and time, Antoine Roegiers conjures up different universes, poetic, dreamlike, sometimes even humorous, resulting in tableaux that resemble the animation films he has become skilled in making.

Since 2018, Antoine Roegiers has been reflecting and working on a “visual narrative” project: a series of paintings which together tell a single story over several years. Humour, solemnity and poetry rub shoulders, offering us food for thought about today’s world as well as the chance to laugh at ourselves.

La Brûlure de l’Éveil plunges the visitor headfirst into an almost apocalyptic world. Gigantic flames, reflecting the climate emergency, set the sky ablaze above desolate landscapes criss-crossed by skeletons on their cart, tirelessly gathering the masks abandoned by reckless humans. They fight over this precious booty with a pack of determined dogs and some mischievous crows.

Antoine Roegiers subverts the codes of the traditional hunting scene: here the object of the hunt is artifice. It symbolises the world of appearances that humans have built. The masks have fallen. Thoughtlessness is a thing of the past. We can no longer close our eyes to the consequences of our actions. Tomorrow’s problems are here.

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

“My canvases are a space open to the imagination and to interpretation of all possibilities. I want to explore a world that doesn’t exist and bring it to life with my brush and my pigments dipped in oil, to make it plausible with dreamscapes that form a visual narrative. It’s an ongoing dream, the paintings are interlinked and follow on from each other to form a coherent whole, as I see it: an open narrative thread, chronologically changeable and endless.”

Born in 1980 in Belgium, Antoine Roegiers lives and works in Paris. He fuses his knowledge of classic painting with contemporary animation techniques. Putting technology and his talent for drawing to good use, he breathes life into fantastical characters typical of the Flemish masters, taking liberties with them and inventing stories that never stay still.

His work has been shown in a range of solo exhibitions, including at the Noordbrabant Museum in Hertogenbosch, Netherlands, Palais des Beaux-Arts in Lille, France, in 2012 and Botanique in Brussels in 2013. His art has also featured in numerous group exhibitions, including at the Frissiras Museum in Athens (2003), Fondation d’Entreprise Ricard in Paris (2009), Kulturhuset Museum in Stockholm (2012), Petit Palais in Paris (2013), Palais Pisztory in Slovakia (2013), Paço das Artes in Sao Paulo (2013), Albertina Museum in Vienna (2013), Fonds d’art contemporain de la ville et du canton de Genève (2013), Bruce Museum in Greenwich, USA (2015), Palacio Bellas Artes and Museo Nacional de Antropologia in Mexico City (2018), Palais des Beaux-Arts in Brussels (2019), Cité de la musique Philharmonie in Paris (2021) and MO.CO in Montpellier (2023). It is also included in the Fonds d’Art Contemporain de la Ville de Genève and Collections du Ministère de la Communauté Française de Belgique.  Antoine Roegiers has won several prizes, including the Molière de la Création Visuelle (2020) and Prize Foundation Roger Bataille (2007).

The exhibition will open on November 9th and will close on December 23rd of this year. For more information about the exhibition, please visit the Templon website.

Steve McQueen’s Sunshine State

Sunshine State, 2022 HD video, front and back continuous projection; 30 min. 1 sec. Installation, Marian Goodman Gallery, Los Angeles, 2023 Courtesy of the artist and Marian Goodman Gallery © Steve McQueen Photo credit: Fredrik Nilsen Studio

Marian Goodman Gallery has inaugurated its Los Angeles gallery with a solo exhibition dedicated to artist and filmmaker Steve McQueen. The exhibition features recent works, including the U.S. premiere of the immersive video installation Sunshine State (2022). As Cora Gilroy-Ware has written in her extensive essay, “In the Dead of the Light: Steve McQueen’s ‘Sunshine State’,” in the 2022 exhibition catalogue for Pirelli HangarBicocca:

“Sunshine State is a work of oral history, an autobiographical revelation ... that explores race, identity, racial categorization and stereotypes. McQueen’s story of his West Indian father as an agricultural laborer in Florida is layered over scenes from the 1927 film, The Jazz Singer. If a father’s memory of the 1950s, relayed by his son in the twenty first century, was already an unexpected voiceover for the comparatively archaic film footage on screen, the moment of collision between these two ... adds an extra degree of dissonance. His use of negative footage in Sunshine State works to expose the artificiality of the categories ‘black’ and ‘white’ when applied to human forms.

Sunshine State, 2022 HD video, front and back continuous projection; 30 min. 1 sec. Installation, Marian Goodman Gallery, Los Angeles, 2023 Courtesy of the artist and Marian Goodman Gallery © Steve McQueen Photo credit: Fredrik Nilsen Studio

The voiceover in Sunshine State reveals that trauma can be a force that binds, a cord tying one generation to the next with an ineffable tightness. By the end, McQueen and the 1927 film character appear to have something vital in common; their reverse responses to their fathers’ pain and the trappings of their identities turn them into negative and positive images of one another.

Throughout the film, the sun serves as the connective tissue between the past and the present, and serves as a symbol of the changing landscapes of history and identity that McQueen explores in his work.”

Sunshine State was originally commissioned for the International Film Festival Rotterdam 2022 and made possible with the support of the Municipality of Rotterdam, Stichting Droom en Daad, Rotterdam Festivals, and Nederlands Filmfonds. Film footage courtesy of Warner Bros.

Moonlit, 2016 2 marble rocks and silver leaf 15 3/4 x 35 3/4 x 23 5/8 in. (40 x 90.8 x 60 cm) 17 3/4 x 35 3/4 x 31 1/2 in. (45.1 x 90.8 x 80 cm) Installation, Marian Goodman Gallery, Los Angeles, 2023 Courtesy of the artist and Marian Goodman Gallery © Steve McQueen Photo credit: Fredrik Nilsen Studio

About Steve McQueen

Steve McQueen (1969 - ) is an artist and filmmaker whose work explores universal themes, often addressing painful and challenging histories. Recognized internationally as one of the most important artists of his generation, Steve McQueen exposes the fragility of the human condition in his practice. Awarded the Turner Prize in 1999, McQueen has had his artwork presented at some of the most significant venues and museums around the world. His work has been featured in Documenta (1997 and 2002). He represented Great Britain at the 53rd Venice Biennale in 2009, and was selected several times for the Venice Biennale (2003, 2007, 2013, and 2015). Solo exhibitions of his work have been held at the Art Institute of Chicago (2012);

Schaulager, Basel (2013); Whitworth Art Gallery, Manchester (2017); The Museum of Modern Art, New York (2017); Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston (2017). In 2019 he presented YEAR 3 at Tate Britain and had a major solo exhibition at Tate Modern in 2020, which toured to Pirelli HangarBicocca, Milan, in 2022. In April/May 2023, he presented Grenfell at the Serpentine South Gallery, London, and in May 2024, McQueen will create an immersive installation exploring light and sound at Dia Beacon, accompanied by a presentation of Sunshine State at Dia Chelsea in September 2024. The new commission will subsequently travel to Schaulager, Basel Münchenstein, in June 2025.

McQueen has directed four feature films. His first, Hunger (2008), was awarded the Caméra d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival, and his third, 12 Years a Slave (2013), received the Golden Globe, Oscar, and BAFTA awards for best picture in 2014. In 2020, he made Small Axe, an anthology of five films about London’s West Indian community and, in 2021, Uprising, a 3- part documentary with James Rogan about the New Cross Fire in London in 1981. His most recent film, Occupied City, a portrait of Nazi and modern-day Amsterdam, debuted at Cannes in May 2023 and will be shown at the upcoming New York Film Festival. McQueen is currently in post-production on Blitz, a new feature about the Second World War.

McQueen was named an Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) in 2002 and a Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in 2011. He was knighted in the 2020 New Year Honors list. McQueen was born in West London and is based in London and Amsterdam.

Sunshine State, 2022 HD video, front and back continuous projection; 30 min. 1 sec. Installation, Marian Goodman Gallery, Los Angeles, 2023 Courtesy of the artist and Marian Goodman Gallery © Steve McQueen Photo credit: Fredrik Nilsen Studio

About Marian Goodman Gallery Los Angeles

Located in Hollywood near the Highland Corridor, at North Hudson Avenue off Santa Monica Boulevard, Marian Goodman Gallery Los Angeles comprises a 13,000-square-foot facility, featuring 5,000 square feet of flexible, skylit galleries as well as a landscaped garden, viewing rooms, office space, and dedicated parking. The Gallery was designed by the L.A.- based architectural firm Johnston Marklee, acclaimed internationally for their cultural buildings and adaptive reuse projects.

The exhibit opened on September 23rd with an opening reception and will close on the  4th of  November.

For more information about the exhibit, please visit the Marian Goodman Gallery’s site. The gallery can be found on Instagram and Artsy, too.

Andy Warhol Three Times Out

Andy Warhol, Self-Portrait, 1966. Silkscreened synthetic polymer paint and enamel, pencil and ballpoint pen on six canvas panels. Framed, each: 58.4 x 58.4 x 3.2 cm. Accession Number: B-WARH-2P98.16. 1-.6. The Eli and Edythe L. Broad Collection. ©The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Inc. / ARS New York / IVARO Dublin, 2023

Hugh Lane Gallery and Dublin City Council announce Ireland's largest ever Andy Warhol exhibition - the first to open in 25 years.

Andy Warhol Three Times Out will run until January 28th, 2024 and will feature more than 250 works including the iconic Campbell's Soup Cans and Marilyn Monroe.

Dublin, IRELAND: A unique exhibition of Andy Warhol’s paintings, prints, photographs, films, and installations will open at Hugh Lane Gallery in October, showcasing the artist’s extraordinary range of artworks produced over four decades.

Andy Warhol Three Times Out has been five years in the making and includes more than 250 works on loan from museums and private collections in the US, Canada, Europe, and the Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh. The exhibition is curated by Barbara Dawson, Director of Hugh Lane Gallery and Michael Dempsey, Head of Exhibitions, and it is the most exciting show in the arts calendar this year.

Andy Warhol is, without a doubt, one of the most important and recognizable artists of the 20th century. He devised new ways of image making, experimenting with multiple images silkscreened on canvas, printing, photography, film, publishing, advertising, performance, video and television. Combining these mediums, Warhol challenged conventional canons in art, dismissing traditional distinctions between fine art and popular culture.

Andy Warhol, Campbell's Soup I: Tomato (II.46), AP edition E/Z, 1968, screenprint, 35 x 23 in. Collection of the Jordan Schnitzer Family Foundation. Image: Strode Photographic. © The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Inc. / ARS New York / IVARO Dublin, 2023

A broad range of Warhol’s work has been selected for the exhibition in Dublin, from the iconic Campbell's Soup Cans, Flowers, Marilyn Monroe, Elizabeth Taylor, Jackie Kennedy and Chairman Mao, to his observations on identity and mortality in his multiple self-portraits, skulls, electric chairs and avant garde films Empire, Sleep, Kiss and Outer and Inner Space. In addition, visitors to the exhibition will experience Warhol's immersive Silver Clouds sculpture.

Unique to the exhibition will be a section focusing on the work and collaborations both Andy Warhol and Francis Bacon had with acclaimed US artist and photographer Peter Beard, provoking new thinking on the status of these two titans of the 20th century.

According to the Lord Mayor of Dublin, Daithí de Róiste:

"As the newly elected Lord Mayor of Dublin, I am delighted to announce details of Andy Warhol Three Times Out. This will no doubt be one of the best exhibitions of the year, one that residents of the city should now mark in their diaries.

“Dublin City Council and the team at Hugh Lane Gallery deserve great praise for the achievement of producing such a prestigious exhibition for our city. Today's news will generate excitement not just amongst Irish audiences but will attract international visitors to Dublin to see a Warhol exhibition on this scale".

Andy Warhol, Mao, 1972. Acrylic, oil and silkscreen on canvas, 208 × 163 cm. Suñol Soler Collection, Barcelona. ©The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Inc. / ARS New York / IVARO Dublin, 2023

According to Barbara Dawson, Director of Hugh Lane Gallery:

"Hugh Lane Gallery is delighted to present Andy Warhol Three Times Out. This exhibition shows how Warhol utterly changed the way the world experiences art. His work explored the relationship between artistic expression and the flourishing consumer culture of the 1960s, new technology and celebrity status, as well as mortality, in a diverse body of works that underpins his artistic genius.

“As society navigates the age of social media and surveillance capitalism – how our data is being captured and monetized- it is impossible to overlook Warhol’s prescient vision so relevant to us today."

 Installation view Hugh Lane Gallery. Photography by Denis Mortell 2023.

About Andy Warhol (1928-1986)

Andy Warhol was born in Pittsburgh in 1928 to immigrant parents from Slovakia. He moved to New York in 1949, where he became one of America’s leading commercial artists. By the early 1960s he had moved into the field of fine art and was exhibiting his Pop Art paintings in New York and Los Angeles. He set up the legendary Silver Factory in the 1960s – a melting pot of creativity - and from here he promoted the rock band, The Velvet Underground. Visitors included the likes of Lou Reed, Bob Dylan, Truman Capote, Marcel Duchamp, Salvador Dali, Edie Sedgwick, Brigid Berlin, and Jane Holzer.

Despite a near fatal shooting in 1968, Warhol continued to be enormously prolific. During the 1970s and ‘80s. Over the course of a 40-year-long career, Andy Warhol transformed contemporary art. The power of his work comes from its concentration on fundamental human themes – the beauty and glamour of youth, fame, material culture, the passing of time, and the ever presence of death.

Andy Warhol, Flowers, 1964. Silkscreen on canvas, 60 × 60 cm. AW-0004 F(a). The Sonnabend Homem Collection. ©The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Inc. / ARS New York / IVARO Dublin, 2023

About Hugh Lane Gallery

Hugh Lane Gallery is one of Ireland’s leading museums of modern art located on Parnell Street in Dublin’s city centre. First opened in 1908 by Sir Hugh Lane as the Municipal Gallery of Modern Art, the gallery houses one of Ireland’s most exciting collections of modern and contemporary Irish and international art.

The gallery is also home to Harry Clarke’s celebrated stained-glass masterpieces, The Eve of Saint Agnes and Mr. Gilhooley, a panel from the Geneva Window originally commissioned by the Government of Ireland for the League of Nations building in Geneva.

In 1998, Francis Bacon’s famous studio was donated to Hugh Lane Gallery by the artist’s heir, John Edwards, and Brian Clarke, executor of Bacon’s Estate. Hugh Lane Gallery relocated the studio piece by piece from 7 Reece Mews, London to the gallery where it is now permanently on display, preserved exactly as it was.

The establishment of the gallery was one of the most important events in the birth of Modern Ireland and the gallery proudly displays famous Irish personalities in portraiture including W.B Yeats, and Augusta, Lady Gregory, who, with W.B. Yeats, was a founder of the Abbey Theatre, John Millington Synge and AE. Political figures in portraiture include Michael Collins, Eamon De Valera, Edward Carson, and John Redmond

Sir Hugh Lane (1875-1915) was a celebrated art dealer, collector, exhibitor, and gallery director, acknowledged for establishing the Hugh Lane Gallery, the first known public gallery of modern art in the world. He is best known for the impressionist pictures he collected by Renoir, Manet, Degas, Monet, Daumier, Pissarro, and Morisot. He tragically died on the ill-fated Lusitania in 1915 and his legendary support of the visual arts in Ireland continues to be celebrated today.

Andy Warhol, Marilyn Monroe (Marilyn), (II.31), AP edition C/Z, 1967, screenprint 36 x 36 in. Collection of the Jordan Schnitzer Family Foundation. Image: Aaron Wessling Photography. © The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Inc. / ARS New York / IVARO Dublin, 2023

Exhibition information:

Dates: October 6th, 2023, to January 28th, 2024

Venue: Hugh Lane Gallery, Parnell Square North, Dublin 1, D01F2X9, Ireland

Admission: This is a ticketed exhibition with further details to follow.

Tickets will be on sale from Monday 14th August.

For more information and updates, please visit the official website here.

Katharina Grosse: The Bedroom

KATHARINA GROSSE The Bedroom, 2023 acrylic on different surfaces overall dimensions variable bed: 120 x 170 x 220 cm.; 47 1/4 x 66 7/8 x 86 5/8 in. canvas 1: 260 x 550 cm.; 102 3/8 x 216 1/2 in. canvas 2: 370 x 170 cm.; 145 5/8 x 66 7/8 in. canvas 3: 110 x 90 cm.; 43 1/4 x 35 3/8 in. Photo: Thomas Lannes

Galerie Max Hetzler is pleased to present The Bedroom, a solo exhibition of Katharina Grosse at 46 & 57 rue du Temple in Paris. This is the artist’s second solo exhibition with the gallery, following her solo exhibition Spectrum without Traces in Berlin in the spring of 2023. With the installation The Bedroom, Katharina Grosse returns to a key moment in her artistic practice. It was in 2004 that Grosse painted over her bedroom in Düsseldorf with spray paint, covering the bed including pillow and blanket, the furniture, the floor, the clothes lying on it, a pair of headphones, boxes, books, and walls. In an interview, the artist recounted:

'Yes, my bed was the first thing that I sprayed over; then the other elements accrued, which introduced a narrative structure and posed primal questions. The bed is indeed a totally archetypal piece – everyone knows what it is, what happens when one lies down, when one dreams. For this work, I identified a very specific elemental situation that we all know and share.’

 ©  Katharina Grosse und VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn, 2023 / Courtesy Galerie Max Hetzler Berlin | Paris | London. Photo: Thomas Lannes.

Das Bett, 2004, was a turning point, at once a destruction and a new beginning. The tailored suit, for example, which had been sprayed over, could now no longer be worn. At the same time, however, the space underwent a strange transformation. While objects have appeared in pictures since the beginnings of art, they now became the support and surface of a form of painting that was carried out on their backs. The act of painting, performed by Grosse in one sweep, left its mark as a current of energy. The spray gun replaced the brush. Both are among the painting tools regularly used by Grosse.

Katharina Grosse's painting has since continued to evolve: from the large installation at the 56th Venice Biennale in 2011 to Asphalt and Hair in Aarhus in 2017. If the history of painting were told along the metaphors of ‘window' and ‘door’, Grosse's works would be part of the latter. The difference lies in the perceptual standpoint. When we look at a window, we are faced with a different place from which we remain separate, regardless of whether we see a detail of the landscape or if its view is obscured by blinds. If, on the other hand, you face a door, you can grasp the possibility of crossing over or entering something else.

“Isn’t that the essence of the bed, too? This place where we sleep, dream or simply toss and turn dreamlessly has long written history. In the 19th century, the court painter Adolph von Menzel drew his unmade bed in chalk, and more than a hundred years later Robert Rauschenberg painted on the quilted coverlet of his bed. In Katharina Grosse's work, the paint has spread from the bed and thus forms a new surface. It is not the first time that a new idea has arisen from this place. After all, where did the American writer Edith Wharton, the first woman to be awarded the Pulitzer Prize, write? In bed.”

Julia Voss

Katharina Grosse (born 1961 in Freiburg im Breisgau) lives and works in Berlin and New Zealand.

Her recent exhibitions and on-site paintings include Katharina Grosse Studio Paintings, 1988–2022: Returns, Revisions, Inventions at Kunstmuseum Bern (2023) and at Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum, St. Louis (2022); Canyon (permanent from 2022) and Splinter (2022) both at Fondation Louis Vuitton, Paris; Apollo, Apollo, at Espace Louis Vuitton, Venice (collateral event of 59th Venice Biennale, 2022); Chill Seeping from the Walls Gets between Us at HAM Helsinki Art Museum (2021); Shutter Splinter at Helsinki Biennial (2021); Is It You? at Baltimore Museum of Art (2020); It Wasn’t Us at Hamburger Bahnhof–Museum für Gegenwart–Berlin (2020); the two-person show

Mural: Jackson Pollock | Katharina Grosse at Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (2019); chi K11 art space, Guangzhou, China (2019); The Horse Trotted Another Couple of Meters, Then It Stopped at

Carriageworks, Sydney (2018); Wunderbild at National Gallery Prague (2018); Mumbling Mud at chi K11 art museum, Shanghai (2018); Asphalt Air and Hair at ARoS Triennial, Aarhus, Denmark (2017); This Drove My Mother Up the Wall at South London Gallery (2017); Katharina Grosse at Museum Frieder Burda, Baden-Baden, Germany (2016); Rockaway for MoMA PS1’s Rockaway! program, Fort Tilden, New York (2016); yes no why later at Garage Museum of Contemporary Art, Moscow (2015); Seven Hours, Eight Rooms, Three Tress at Museum Wiesbaden, Germany (2015); Untitled Trumpet for the 56th Venice Biennale (2015); and psychylustro for Mural Arts

Program Philadelphia (2014). Museum collections include Albertina, Vienna; Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo; ARKEN Museum for Moderne Kunst, Copenhagen; Baltimore Museum of Art; Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris; Fondation Louis Vuitton, Paris; Istanbul Modern; K21– Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen, Düsseldorf; Kunsthaus Zürich; Kunstmuseum Bern; Kunstmuseum Bonn; Lenbachhaus, Munich; Magasin III, Stockholm; MARe–Muzeul de Artă Recentă, Bucharest; MAXXI– Museo nazionale delle arti del XXI secolo, Rome; Milwaukee Art Museum; Museum Azman, Jakarta; Museum of Modern Art, New York; Nasher Sculpture Center, Dallas; Pérez Art Museum Miami; Queensland Art Gallery & Gallery of Modern Art (QAGOMA), Brisbane; Saarland Museum – Moderne Galerie, Saarbrücken;Serralves Museum of Contemporary Art, Porto; and Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, as well as the Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum, Washington University in St. Louis.

The opening was Friday the 8th and was held from 6 – 8 pm, the exhibit will close on October 21st of this year. For more information about Katharina Grosse’s exhibit please visit Galerie Max Hetzler's site here.