ART NEWS:Oct.01
The exhibition “Painting on Paper, 1990–2002” features eighteen large-scale paintings on paper from the later part of Helen Frankenthaler’s career, many of which have never before been exhibited. The paintings in the exhibition reveal her exploration of the material and compositional possibilities of working on paper: new kinds of chromatic juxtapositions and painterly gestures, often set down on a smoother surface than canvas. Over her last decade of art making, painting on paper became Frankenthaler’s primary means of expression The paintings in the exhibition reveal her exploration of the material and compositional possibilities of working on paper: new kinds of chromatic juxtapositions and painterly gestures, often set down on a smoother surface than canvas. At several earlier moments in her career, Frankenthaler had added more visibly dense brushstrokes and applications of pigment to the revolutionary soak-stain technique she had pioneered in the early 1950s. This approach became a constant in her late compositions. After working directly on the floor during the first four decades of her career, she began painting on large, waist-high tabletops, a concession to her age; the turn to painting on paper also coincided with her increased activity in printmaking. Info: Gagosian, Via Francesco Crispi 16, Rome, Italy, Duration: 30/9-23/11/2024, Days & Hours: Tue-Sat 10:30-19:00, https://gagosian.com/
Presenting more than one hundred paintings, drawings, videos, artists’ books and photography, “DIKH OMARA” is the first comprehensive monographic exhibition of OMARA Mara Oláh in Switzerland. Soon after Omara began to paint in her early forties, she took programmatic decisions to create self-supporting environments. One was to apply her daughter’s favorite color in the foundational “Blue Series”. There, she depicts episodes from her life, reflecting on motherhood, childhood memories and precarious labor conditions. The scenes in these tableaus are tinted a personal, tender blue. An outspoken activist, she is of Roma origin herself and was born in Monor, Hungary. She challenged systemic exclusion, injustice and racism. She appeared on television and published in journals. By visiting prisons to talk to the inmates about the life of the Roma, Omara advocated for more inclusive (art) institutions. As an ongoing installation, Omara would collect works by befriended artists and show them in her place in Budapest. She declared that her home was the first museum dedicated to Roma artists. Omara’s work gained both national and international recognition. In 2007, she was featured at the first Roma Pavilion of the Venice Biennale and in 2022 her work was included in Documenta 15. Info: ETH Zurich, Stefano-Franscini-Platz 5, Zürich, Switzerland, Duration: 2/10-9/11/2024, Days & Hours: Mon–Fri 10:00-18:00, https://ethz.ch/
In “Sàlvati Salvàti”, Jacopo Benassi reframes the exhibition as an apparatus to question its visitors, preventing a detached stance. Choreographed by a chaotic barricade, the gallery space embodies the conflicted period we are inhabiting and underlines the impossibility of an outside. In Europe and among other examples, barricades propose echoes of the May 68 and the French Revolution, pivotal references to political imaginaries underpinning current social configurations. At the same time, its belligerent quality might also be understood as direct reference to ongoing conflicts in places such as Ukraine, Palestine or Sudan. Via its intrinsic configuration, the barricade also manifests as a marker of our contested societies, progressively defined by processes of fragmentation and polarization. While combining these readings, because of its gallery setting the barricade also voices questions related to the agency of art. Whereas Benassi might speak from a subjective point of view, his work engages with wide social issues, and, here in particular, connects with the generalised anger-driven, confused mindset of our present times. These works enhance the exhibition’s reverberations of our critical context: the hidden images manifesting simultaneously as lighthouses and hideouts of silenced, repressed forces, blocking the represented scenes to stimulate an imaginative interaction. Info: Francesca Minini Gallery, Via Massimiano, 25, Milan, Italy, Duration: 3/10-9/11/2024, Days & Hours: Tue-Sat 11:00-19:00, www.francescaminini.it/
“Cadogan Gallery: A Group Exhibition” is the largest group exhibition at Cadogan Gallery to date with new works by both established and emerging artists, illustrating the gallery’s commitment to contemporary abstraction. Unified by the artist-centred ethos and distinctive aesthetic, includes twenty-one of the artists within it’s roster. Celebrating the rich materiality of contemporary abstraction, the exhibition intertwines a captivating array of new works showcasing non- representational forms, material exploration, conceptual depth, and sustainable practices. From paintings using minimalist mark making, to sculpture in marble and glass, as well as work exploring abstract and surreal landscapes, the exhibition is grounded in abstract expressionism, redefined by modern interpretations.Centred upon a dialogue with artists who have grown with the gallery over the past decade alongside emerging and more established names, works on show include Deborah Tarr’s nuanced, contemplative paintings that explore internal and external landscapes, hovering on the boundary of figuration and abstraction to create a sense of completeness and tranquillity. Info: Curator: Freddie Burness, Cadogan Gallery, 7-9 Harriet St, London, United Kingdom, Duration: 3/10/2024-8/2/2025, Days & Hours: Tue-Fri 11:00=18:00, Sat 11:00-17:00, https://cadogangallery.com/
Yael Bartana’s solo exhibition “utopia now!” features the Italian premiere of an audiovisual installation, project “Light to the Nations”. The exhibition represents a further advancement in Bartana’s visionary journey of exploring the interplay between utopia and dystopia. It continues her in-depth investigation into humanity’s capacity for hope, the potential redemption of our species, and the preservation of the world that sustains us. The exhibition features Bartana’s new video work, “Mir Zaynen Dor!” (2024_, commissioned by the Jewish-Brazilian art space Casa do Povo, prominently positioned as the first auspicious step of the entire utopian journey of the exhibition. This work is primarily based on the relationship between the sung word and the collective choreography of a choir, between past and present, between memory and “pre-enactment.” Bartana brings together two groups from two different Brazilian diasporas: Coral Tradição, a choir whose origins trace back to the now-destroyed Yiddishland (transnational Jewish territory that extended in Eastern Europe and defined itself through the use of the Yiddish language), and Ilú Obá De Min, an Afro-Brazilian street music ensemble whose production draws from Candomblé culture and the Maroon communities (quilombo). Info: Galleria Raffaella Cortese, Via Stradella 7, Milan, Italy, Duration: 4/10-23/12/2024, Days & Hours: Tue-Sat 10:00-13:00 & 14:30-19:00, https://raffaellacortese.com/
Neil Beloufa is an artist whose polymorphous practice spans sculpture, installations, and social and collective experiments. In a constant flirtation with failure, his work insistently interrogates the art field: its institutions and formats, its capacities and limitations. His critical stances, experimental openness, and ongoing search for alternative solutions have led him to explore the digital world and the novel forms of community that coalesce there. For his exhibition “Humanities”, Beloufa considers the power of individual storytelling in building large-scale propaganda while riffing on the gamification of society and the trend of immersive art experiences. A custom, interactive multimedia system guides each visitor through the process of becoming the center of their own success story, creating a company, a cult, a political party. Beloufa’s existing piece “Global Agreement” (2018) examines modern warfare discourse through the vantage point of its direct personnel since Beloufa conducted lengthy interviews with soldiers stationed around the world, extracting from their testimonies a characterization of war that resists accounts from Hollywood or the army itself. The two pieces merge in a dialogue (or cacophony) which uncannily reflects our current moment’s tension between extreme individualism and global discord. Info: Kunsthalle Basel, Steinenberg 7, Basel, Switzerland, Duration: 4/10/2024-9/1/2025, Days & Hours: Tue-Wed, Fri 11:00-18:00, Thu 11:00-20:30, Sat-Sun 11:00-17:00, www.kunsthallebasel.ch/
In the exhibition “It’s Beautiful When the Spirits Arrive” the work ofTobias Spichtig provides an overview of his motifs and interests from recent years. Viewers will encounter figurative paintings of Giacometti-like figures standing closely together. These figures are reminiscent of his sculptural work, in which he uses cloth soaked in epoxy to form thin silhouettes of ghost-like figures, seen not only in exhibitions but also in every flagship store of Balenciaga worldwide. The work features Spichtig’s well-known narrow face, drawn by time, alien-like, framed by glowing lights reminiscent of famous photos of dressing rooms in Broadway theaters. This is followed by two large paintings: one of a seated figure and another of a reclining figure on an abstract background of various colors. It is unclear where these figures are located, perhaps somewhere in the ether. At the same time, their pose and posture recall classical paintings. However, they could evoke entirely different references. Spichtig doesn’t quote old masters; rather, he works through a canon and defines his own language. Where we feel a sense of recognition, we lose the reference again in the next second. Info: Tao Art, 8F, No.79-1, Zhouzi St. Neihu dist.Taipei City, Taiwan, Duration: 5/10-30/11/2024, Days & Hours: Tue-Sat 11:00-19:00, https://taoartspace.com/
Tabita Rezaire’s solo exhibition “Calabash Nebula” brings together two newly-produced installations: “Des/Astres” and “Omi: Yemoja Temple” (2024). “Des/Astres” inspired by the ‘tukisipan’ buildings of the Wayana, with their ‘malawana’ (house sky). These are meeting places for assemblies, celebrations, exchange, transference and collaboration. The video installation – which is projected on the underside of the carbet’s roof as a digital sky – delves into Amazonian astronomical traditions and French Guiana’s strategic position amid global space challenges, encompassing both terrestrial and extraterrestrial realms. “OMI: Yemoja Temple” is an immersive installation dedicated to the Orisha Yemoya, mother spir”it of rivers and oceans, symbol of the origin and perpetuity of life. This explores the intersection of biology and spirituality, focusing on water as its main motif. It is the result of a research trip to Tanzania undertaken by the four collaborators to study the flora and fauna of the coral reefs and the ecosystem of Lake Tanganyika. The alignment of biology, ecology, spirituality and architecture offers new perspectives on aquatic dimensions and the origin of life. Info: Curator: Chus Martínez, Museo Nacional Thyssen-Bornemisza, Paseo del Prado, 8, Madrid, Spain, Duration: 8/10/2024-112/1/2025, Days & Hours: Mon 23:00-26:00, Tue-Fri & Sun 10:00-19, Sat 10:00-21:00, https://tba21.org/
Rober Longo presents his solo exhibition “Searchers” at two galleries in London. Each presentation includes a new “Combine” (monumental, five-panel multimedia wall works that return to the artist’s 1981-89 series of the same name_ in addition to a large-scale charcoal drawing, a small graphite drawing, and a film. By rupturing and reassembling the symbols of a collective cultural mythology, these works advance Longo’s long-standing investigation into the relationship between the individual to society. Informed by Soviet film director Sergei Eisenstein’s theory of montage and John Berger’s influential text “Ways of Seeing” (1972), “Searchers” grew out of Longo’s desire for his charcoal drawings to be and do more. For the exhibitions he has revisited his “Combines”, which he envisions as a tool in which to overcome the visual and conceptual limitations of two-dimensional images. Referring to Robert Rauschenberg’s earlier series of the same name, these large-scale, three-dimensional works bring together a range of materials (such as paint, stone, plaster, cast bronze, glass) and media (such as sculpture, drawing, film, photography) in a single work. The disparate parts are arranged in the way that Longo believes we encounter the world: as a bombardment of images and information that pervade our environment and consciousness. Info: Thaddaeus Ropac Gallery, Ely House, London, 37 Dover Street, London, United Kingdom, Duration: 8/10-20/11/2024, Days & Hours: Tue-Sat: 10:00-18:00, https://ropac.net/ & Pace Gallery, 5 Hanover Square, London, United Kingdom, Duration: 9/10-9/11/2024, Days & Hours: Tue-Sat 10:00-18:00, www.pacegallery.com/
In the paintings of her solo exhibition “Who’s Afraid of the Big Bad Wolves?”, Anna Weyant infuses elements of autobiography with the symbolic wit, portentous mood, and refined technique. Weyant’s precisely rendered figure paintings and portraits undercut their subjects’ attempts at composure with gestures of tragicomic awkwardness, while her crystalline still-life compositions lend everyday objects a similarly unsettling and oneiric tinge, their muted palette contributing a reflective ambience. The six new paintings that comprise the exhibition retain this mood in atmospheric scenarios of distance and isolation. In “Girl in Window” (2024), the subject’s breasts are glimpsed through a small window, her head and shoulders covered by a fabric blind. A vine curls around the edge of the portal, one heart-shaped leaf shielding the left nipple like a fig leaf on a classical statue. There is a surreal charge to such semiotic shifts and withdrawals that is consistent with the fairy-tale reference of the exhibition’s title, and that resonates with Weyant’s previous works, especially eerie depictions of dollhouses such as “House Exterior” (2023). Info: Gagosian, 17–19 Davies Street, London, United Kingdom, Duration: 8/10-20/12/2024, Days & Hours: Tue-Sat 10:00-18:00, https://gagosian.com/
Platforms Project – Independent Art Fair is celebrating its 12th anniversary. The Platforms Project is an institution that supports artists, in an art fair where they themselves communicate and present their work, through collaboration and synergy. What excites, not only the art critics and journalists, but also the art lovers and all the other visitors, is the freshness and vitality of the artworks and the participation of artists from more and more countries every year. This year Platforms Project 2024 will be presented in the building of the Tobacco Factory with workshops, performances, talks and presentations by the participating groups. A very important part of the Platforms project is the KIDS LAB educational programme for children aged 4-16, the parallel programme Open Studios programme, which for the seventh consecutive year will showcase student work and specially designed projects from the workshops of the Athens School of Fine Arts and four parallel solo exhibitions by artists from platforms participating in the main programme. Info: Directors: Artemis Potamianou and Michalis Argyrou, Artistic Director: Artemis Potamianou, Platforms Project– Independent Art Fair 2024, Tobacco Factory Lenorman 218, Athens, Greece, Duration: 10-13/10/2024, Days & Hours: Thu (10/10) 18:00-22:30, Fri-Sun (11-3/10) 12:00-21:00, Entrance with ID card, Admission: free, www.platformsproject.com