ART NEWS: Nov.01

The exhibition with works by Erica Rutherford marks the first UK survey of her work, following her inclusion in this year’s Venice Biennale. The show spans paintings and works on paper from the 1970s to the 1990s, with a particular emphasis on her later series, “The Human Comedy”. Exhibited are two significant earlier bodies of work from the 1970s: her self-portraits and abstract landscapes, both of which reflect Rutherford’s personal journey of transitioning and the impact of this experience on her evolving artistic practice. The self-portraits are characterised by faceless, abstracted figures set against bright, monochromatic fields. These works serve as visual meditations on the fluidity of gender identity, produced whilst Rutherford was undergoing her gender transition. Having lived most of her life as Eric Rutherford, she began her transition in the early 1970s after moving to Canada, culminating in gender reassignment surgery in 1976.  These self-portraits engage with themes of anonymity and transformation, presenting the artist as a figure in flux—depersonalised, faceless, and fragmented, yet saturated in bold, Pop Art colors. The artist’s abstract landscapes similarly explore themes of identity, but through the lens of external, rather than internal, environments. Info: Richard Saltoun Gallery, 41 Dover Street, London, United Kingdom, Duration: 12/11-21/12/2024, Days & Hours: Tue-Sat 10:00-18:00, www.richardsaltoun.com/

Chaouki Choukini presents his solo exhibition “Citadelles of today”. As a true engineer of wood Choukini manipulates his material into sensuality and circularity, bridging the gap between order (softness) and disorder (roughness). As a result, his sculptures express very indirect but nonetheless vivid symbolic force that can only be deciphered from clues such as the titles of his works. They often allude to a certain physical action or function without explicitly depicting it with common codes or images; rather, they invite us to a new realm of communication. Chaouki Choukini’s sculptures are complex objects, often described as sets of hybrid organic/mechanic, abstract/figurative, linear/non-linear shapes and volumes. They grab the attention of the viewer by making manifest multiple scales of surface in a kind of endless convergence of polarities—an open-ended experience, without a clear start or finish. Since the 1970s, rather than simply erecting a sculpture, Choukini has been mastering this way of displaying his plateau—a visual and conceptual horizon of accurately studied shapes and symbols—with a vibrant visual language that never feels outdated, expressing visual expansion, agility, and unrest. Info: Green Art Gallery, Alserkal Avenue – 8 – Warehouse 28 17th St, Dubai, United Arab Emirates, Duration: 14/11/2025-20/1/2025, Days & Hours: Mon-Sat 11:00-18:00, www.gagallery.com/

The exhibition “Being There: Photography in Arthur Erickson’s Early Travel Diaries” at CCA examines Arthur Erickson’s exchanges with people, places, landscapes, buildings, rituals, and ideas during his early travels in Europe and North Africa between 1950 and 1952, and in Asia in 1961. Drawing on a prescient understanding of site and environment, Erickson was convinced that architecture must be experienced to be understood. He knew that travel and the privilege of being present in different places would be a lifelong preoccupation and crucial to his continuing growth as an architect and thinker. Presented as a geographical and thematic reading, the exhibition is structured around two collections: Erickson’s letters to his family, teachers, colleagues, and friends; and photographs. Central to the exhibition is his correspondence from the 1961 trip to Japan, Cambodia, and Indonesia, which includes a series of letters to Gordon Webber, his former teacher and mentor. While Erickson’s physical presence in a place was crucial for him to comprehend the essence of a site and a building, photography and writing were forms of site annotations in his architectural practice. The photographs and letters produced during his travels constitute a vivid narrative of his experiences and itineraries and reveal discoveries and insights that reappeared in his architectural work, public presentations, and writings, contributing to a broader understanding of his architectural journey. Info: Curator: David Covo, Curatorial team: Laura Aparicio Llorente with Keamogetse Mosienyane, Ella Eßlinger, and Leonie Hartung, Canadian Centre for Architecture, 1920 rue Baile, Montréal, Québec, Canada, Duration: 15/11/2024-16/3/2025, Days & Hours: Wed & Fri0Sun 11:00-18:00, Thu 11:00-21:00, www.cca.qc.ca/

Even today, names such as Wassily Kandinsky, Kazimir Malevich, or Piet Mondrian are predominantly associated with non-representational painting after World War I. Correcting this one-sided narrative is a key approach of the exhibition “We Will Go Right Up to the Sun. Female Pioneers of Geometric Abstraction”.  In reality, artists like Lyubov Popova, Sophie Taeuber-Arp, or Sonia Delaunay were pioneers in the development of a geometric-abstract visual language. From the 1940s onwards, artists such as Verena Loewensberg, Aurélie Nemours, or Vera Molnár decisively contributed to the advancement of non-representational art. Similar developments can be observed beyond the cultural centers of the Western world, for instance, in Central and Latin America. Here, among others, artists like Lygia Clark in Brazil, Lydi Prati in Argentina, or Loló Soldevilla in Cuba developed a unique constructive-abstract visual language. The exhibition shows female artists worldwide were actively involved in significant exhibitions throughout their lives, contributed to the theoretical discourse, left behind a unique oeuvre, and of-ten developed ideas more radically than their male counterparts. The Wilhelm-Hack-Museum aims to contribute to the revision of the male-dominated perspective on abstraction and the growing interest in recent years on the achievements of women artists in non-representational art from 1914 to the 1970s. Info: Wilhelm-Hack-Museum, Berliner Straße 23, Ludwigshafen am Rhein, Germany, Duration: 16/11/24-21/4/25, Days & Hours: Tue-Wed & Fri-Sun 10:00-18:00, Thu 11:00-20:00, www.wilhelmhack.museum/

The exhibition “Of Salt and Spirit: Black Quilters in the American South” showcases over 50 handmade and machine–stitched quilts from the Mississippi Museum of Art (MMA) permanent collection, spanning the 1960s to 2010, highlighting the rich and diverse heritage of Black quilters in the American South, including the Carolinas, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, and Tennessee. A hallmark of the installation is the inclusion of in-exhibition engagement spaces, designed to provide visitors and students with tactile opportunities to deepen their experience of the exhibition and its themes. Visitors will encounter quilts made from various fabrics including cotton, polyester, wool, and velvet. The choice of fabrics often reveals the decade in which the quilts were made, providing historical context. A long-held tradition in the Deep South, quilting began to lose popularity after World War II with advancements in large-scale production. In response, Mississippi Cultural Crossroads began an intergenerational program in 1978 to help younger generations learn about their complex cultural heritage. Associated ephemera in the exhibition include photographs from Freeman’s fieldwork and research along with oral histories from quilters and his other interviewees. Info: Mississippi Museum of Art, 380 South Lamar Street, Jackson, MS, USA, Duration: 16/11/2024-3/4/2025, Days & Hours: Tue-Sat 11:00-17:00, Sun 13:00-17:00, www.msmuseumart.org/

Jordan Watson’s solo exhibition “Octavia’s Butler” inaugurates R+V’s new gallery space in Milan. This is the first time that the artist will show his paintings in a dedicated exhibition, marking the official public debut of a visual artist who has already received widespread recognition for his work promoting access and dismantling barriers to the art world through his platform “Love Watts”. Largely self-taught, Watson has honed his craft through years of immersion in the art world. His paintings draw on Afrofuturism, a movement blending science fiction and Black culture to imagine a future of Black excellence and prosperity. Watson’s works portray Black men and especially women participating in activities such as cycling, skiing, and motorsports – fields that have historically seen limited Black participation.Jordan Watson offers a dynamic and energising showcase for Milan, reflecting the city’s international pulse that brings together art, fashion, industry and leisure pursuits – especially as the city begins its preparations for hosting the Winter Olympics in February 2026. The paintings in the exhibition blend the city’s stylish identity with a message that chimes with the potential of such international sporting events to bring people together, while also encapsulating the joy of active participation as expressed through the artist’s vibrant handling of paint. Info: Robilant+Voena Gallery, Via della Spiga 1, Milan, Italy, Duration: 20/11/2024-17/1/2025, Days & Hours: Mon-Fri 1/0:00-18:00, www.robilantvoena.com/

The exhibition “Widows of the Wind” furthers Olowska’s exploration of evocative artistic and curatorial practices. For this exhibition, Olowska stages a tableau vivant that weaves together reflections on fashion, commerce, painting, photography, and the atmospheric forces that shape these realms. Olowska’s multilayered practice—spanning painting, collage, sculpture, video, installation, and performance—is underscored by a curatorial methodology that treats the past, particularly the histories of female experience and perception, as her primary material. This critical, always female, gaze is shaped by the intricate connections between the locations tied to her muses, the settings of her exhibitions, and her personal experiences of living and working in Eastern Europe. Through these posthumous collaborations with women artists, Olowska gives texture and dimension to the broader histories that they share. Olowska has extended and reshaped the dialogue between her own work and that of Deborah Turbeville, first articulated in her 2023 exhibition, “Resonance”, at Kurimanzutto in Mexico City in collaboration with MUUS Collection. If “Resonance” communed with Turbeville’s work like fluid, wavering reverberations, the artistic conversation present in “Widows of the Wind” can be read through the refractive distortion of a sheet of European winter ice. Info: Pace Gallery. Quai des Bergues 15-17, Geneva, Switzerland, Duration: 21/11/2024-22/2/2025, Days & Hours: Tue-Sat 10:00-18:00, www.pacegallery.com/