ART NEWS: Jan.02

“Moon Voyage” is the first dedicated presentation of works by Antiguan artist, writer, and polymath Frank Walter in Paris. Featuring paintings, works on paper, and a selection of ephemera related to the myriad manifestations of Walter’s intellectual and artistic lives, “Moon Voyage” showcases the development of the artist’s work as he shifted from the landscape genre to abstraction and back again, returning to certain vistas or motifs as a way of working through various ideas and compositional strategies. The works in this presentation speak to Walter’s romanticism; his individualistic, vividly colored, and intimately scaled compositions fuse abstract forms with scientific and celestial concepts or allusions to the wonders of the natural world. As Paca writes in her essay for the exhibition, “Walter’s abstract paintings contain symbolic meanings that often reference his life experiences and work in other areas such as historical accounts, music, and philosophical texts. For Walter, stepping away from visual references in the natural world to rely more on abstraction allowed him to paint his ‘feelings and visions’ as well as to transform ‘the invisible’ into the ‘aesthetic.’ Info: David Zwirner Gallery, 108, rue Vieille du Temple, Paris, Paris, Duration: 10/1-22/2/2025, Days & Hours: Tue-Sat 11:00-19:00, https://www.davidzwirner.com/

New prints by Bennett Miller are on show in Paris. An Academy Award–nominated director, Miller uses generative artificial intelligence (AI) systems to create imagery which he renders into pigment and gelatin silver prints. This practice emerged following his five-year immersion in a documentary filmmaking project that investigates how the forces of technological evolution are reshaping human experience. The film is yet to be released. In 2022 Miller was invited by OpenAI to beta-test an early version of DALL•E. He discovered the AI model to be a new medium with unfathomed potential. The resultant body of work introduces avant-garde implications of AI through the lens of a previous revolutionary invention—photography. Despite its resemblance to photographs from the nineteenth century into the twentieth, this body of work is not photography. Rather, it is an extended expedition into a new realm of art, made using a tool with unprecedented characteristics. The works are haunting, mysterious, and evocative. A girl is poised at the edge of a plank, suspended high over an abyss. A man in white trembles. Or dances? A woman lies beneath white blankets in a poetic study of stillness. Dreaming? Dead? The silhouette of a figure stands before a vast dead whale on the proscenium stage of a vacant theater. Each image is a world of contrasts—majestic, profane, grotesque, nostalgic—inviting contemplation and unease in equal measure. Info: Gagosian, 4 rue de Ponthieu, Paris, France, Duration: 15/1-22/2/2025, Days & Hours: Tue-Sat 10:30-18:30, https://gagosian.com/

Inspired by Emanuel Swedenborg’s journeys into the afterlife and renowned works “Heaven and Hell”, “Arcana Coelestia” and The “Principia”, Swedenborg pleasets to present the exhibition “Hereafter” by Simon Moretti. In exploring the enigmatic and mercurial figure of Emanuel Swedenborg through a range of themes, including correspondences, symbols, analogies, duality, transformation, the realms of heaven and hell, cosmology, divine truth and angelic conversations, the exhibition will examine the longstanding connections between art and esotericism. Diagrammatic works, which suggest or taxonomize symbolism, are one interface used to encounter the hereafter featured in the exhibition. The installation showcases new works by Moretti, alongside a diverse selection of works by guest artists. The exhibition also includes items from the Swedenborg House collection, including proto-surrealist drawings by James John Garth Wilkinson (1812–1899). With works by: Eileen Agar, Paul Becker, Alexandra Bircken, William Blake, Ithell Colquhoun, Haris Epaminonda, Paul Heber-Percy, Donna Huddleston, Derek Jarman, Linder, Goshka Macuga, David Noonan, Ben Rivers, Daniel Silver, Michael E. Smith, Pelle Swedlund, Joëlle Tuerlinckx, George Frederic Watts, James John Garth Wilkinson and items from the Swedenborg Collection. Info: The Swedenborg Society, Swedenborg House, 20-21 Bloomsbury Way, London, United Kingdom, Duration: 16/1-30/5/2025, Days & Hours: Mon-Fri 10:30-17:00, www.swedenborg.org.uk/

The exhibition “Shadow Dance” places Louise Nevelson’s iconic monochromatic sculptures in black and white in dialogue with her collages, including several rarely seen and never previously exhibited works, made in the 1970s and 1980s. The exhibition showcase two of Nevelson’s rare white-painted wood sculptures—”Study for the Chapel of the Good Shepherd” and the never-before-exhibited “Dawn’s Light” (both c.1975) among her signature black-painted wood sculptures, including the large-scale freestanding composition “Cascade- Perpendiculars XXX” (1980–1982). Nevelson’s compositions are based on a strict adherence to vertical and horizontal regularity. During the 1970s and 1980s, there was a significant development: Nevelson incorporated the diagonal into her vocabulary. A new, angular energy surfaced in many of the works she produced during this period, breaking the rules by which she traditionally composed her work. These late works shed new light on her evolving aesthetic, bringing into focus a series of remarkably productive years of her practice in which she experimented with a new vocabulary of robust, muscular, and often minimal forms while staying true to her lifelong investigations of materiality, shape, and shadow. Info: Curator: Arne Glimcher, Pace Gallery, 540 West 25th Street, New York, NY, USA, Duration: 17/1-1/3/2025, Days & Hours: Tue-Sat 10:00-18:00, www.pacegallery.com/

From the early 2000s, Marc Bauer has developed an artistic repertoire with a focus on drawing, wall installation, film and most recently paintings. Using large groups of works, central themes around cultural and historical developments and our collective, social and political heritage are unraveled in a mosaic-like manner. Bauer’s works are like narratives, which can be followed without difficulty thanks to his characteristic, very precise drawing style. Since 2019, the palette, previously almost exclusively reduced to black and white, has been expanded through the increasing use of colorful oil paint and chalk. The result is pictorial spaces of strong color intensity and radiance that underscore the narrative component so inherent in Bauer’s works. In his solo exhibition “L’Avènement, January 2025” unveils over thirty new works, combining drawings on paper, paintings with surprising silhouettes, and an immersive sound installation created in collaboration with Thomas Kuratli, aka Pyrit. Through portraits imbued with vulnerability, landscapes at the boundary between reality and dream, and intimate scenes steeped in palpable melancholy, Bauer continues his exploration of memory and resistance, drawing from historical testimonies to question the contemporary era. The exhibition invites viewers to rediscover his artistic language, where color flourishes more than ever, while traversing a universe where introspection and engagement intertwine. Info: Galerie Peter Kilchmann, 11-13 rue des Arquebusiers, Paris, France, Duration : 17/1-8/3/2024, Days & Hours: Tue-Fri 11:00-19 :00, www.peterkilchmann.com/

Tjebbe Beekman’s series titled “Symbiosis” is about the painters who have inspired him most: influences ranging from Jasper Johns to Max Beckmann, Pablo Picasso and Max Ernst. He incorporates elements of these artists’ oeuvres into his own new bold and colorful paintings, overflowing with both material and visual content. While previous works dealt with themes of a dystopian society in Beekman’s visions of fragmented architectonical structures, this new body of work is part of an ongoing series depicting whole and complete environments celebrating the act of painting itself. Composed over the course of several months, each work is made up of multiple visual and textural cues. Thick swathes of acrylic and emulsion, often combined with grit or sand, are heavily applied to each surface, giving sculptural weight to his figures, landscapes and interiors. Replete with art historical allusions, Beekman compounds imagery culled from various generations of his peers and artistic progenitors, paying homage to the wide-ranging traditions of his medium. Info: GRIMM Gallery, Keizersgracht 241, Amsterdam, The Netherlands, Duration: 17/1-8/3/2025, Days & Hours: Tue-Sat 11:00-18:00, https://grimmgallery.com/

In “Verdigris”, Paul Graham explores life’s impermanence through portraits of in dividuals gazing thoughtfully at the horizon, aware of time passing. These portraits are paired with images of cherry blossoms. However, the blossoms in Graham’s photographs are distorted, corrupted by the digital camera’s failure to capture their motion in the wind. Using an ultra-resolution mode, Graham’s camera creates a series of “failed” images, which, despite their flaws, convey a unique beauty and serve as a metaphor for the intersection of nature, technology, and transience. All the photos were taken in a New Jersey park where Graham has worked for seven years, a place offering a panoramic view of the post-industrial landscape, with Newark and its airport in the distance. Visitors often pause to contemplate this vast horizon, regardless of the season. Verdigris, the green oxidation that forms on weathered copper, marks the culmination of a twelve-year sequence of works by Paul Graham exploring the transience of life and the inevitability of mortality. This exhibition completes a loose trilogy of works that began with “Does Yellow Run Forever?” (2010-14), which captured intimate moments with his partner, framed by Irish rainbows and gold shops, followed by “Mother” (2018-19), a poignant and tender series documenting his mother in her final year. “Verdigris” brings this progression full circle, juxtaposing images of people gazing into the horizon with ethereal photographs of cherry blossoms—symbols of fleeting beauty and the passage of time. Info: carlier | Gebauer Gallery, Markgrafenstraße 67, Berlin, Germany, Duration: 18/1-22/2/2025, Days & Hours: Tue-Sat 11:00-18:00, www.carliergebauer.com/

“From Solingen to the Orient” is the title of the exhibition with works by Bettina Heinen-Ayech at Kunstverein Coburg e.V. Bettina Heinen-Ayech from Solingen attracted attention as early as the age of 18 when she was allowed to participate in the first major international art exhibition of the young Federal Republic of Germany. The plein-air painter developed a very unique watercolour style and, after extensive travels throughout Europe and an extended stay in Egypt, settled in Algeria. A life like something out of a novel—devoted entirely to painting and international understanding. Bettina Heinen-Ayech was the daughter of the journalist and poet Hanns Heinen and Erna Heinen-Steinhoff, who held her art and literature salon in the houses of the Black House artists’ colony. It was here that Bettina met her most important teacher and mentor, the painter Erwin Bowien. She remained close to him throughout her life and undertook numerous art trips with him throughout Europe. After training at the art academies of Cologne, Munich and Copenhagen, a stay of several months in Luxor, Egypt, led to an awakening that brought her closer to the desert and the light of the Orient. In 1963, the painter moved to her Algerian husband, the builder Abdelhamid Ayech, in his home town of Guelma.Until her death in 2020, Algeria and Solingen alternated as the centre of her life. Info: Kunstverein Coburg e.V., Park 4a, Leopoldstraße, Coburg, Germany, Duration: 25/1-11/5/2025, Days & Hours: Wed-Fri 15:00-18:00,Sat 14:00-17:00, Sun 11:00-17:00, www.kunstverein-coburg.de/