uzomah ugwu 6/8/25 uzomah ugwu 6/8/25

Richard Learoyd with ceramicist Frances Palmer

RICHARD LEAROYD *Untitled Flowers (Day I)*, 2025 camera obscura Ilfochrome photograph © Richard Learoyd, courtesy Fraenkel Gallery, San Francisco

Fraenkel Gallery is pleased to present an exhibition of new and recent photographs by Richard Learoyd. Exploring classical subjects using exacting photographic techniques, Learoyd creates hyper-detailed works with enigmatic depths. Highlights include new studies of ancient trees printed on gessoed canvas and largescale views of the Grand Canyon. The show also features new still lifes, and marks the debut of photographs Learoyd made in collaboration with renowned ceramicist Frances Palmer. For the exhibition, Palmer created vessels based on drawings made by Learoyd, who in turn photographed the ceramics in his studio, overflowing with flowers in a reconsideration of Rococo styles. A public reception with Learoyd and Palmer will take place on Saturday, May 31, from 2-4pm, with a conversation between the artists at 2:30pm. During the opening, Palmer’s ceramic vases will feature arrangements by floral artist Morvarid Mossavar of La Lavande Floral Studio.

At the center of the exhibition are three monumental landscapes set in the English countryside, each depicting a massive, bare-branched tree. On view for the first time, the works are made using a process combining multiple layers of pigment printed onto hand-gessoed canvas. In each, a section of canvas is left raw, highlighting the differences in texture between materials and complicating the relationship between surface and photographic image. In part, the images draw inspiration from the work of 19th-century artists William Henry Fox Talbot, inventor of the salted paper and calotype processes, and English Romantic landscape painter John Constable, whose pencil sketches of willow trees have been a longtime interest of Learoyd’s.

RICHARD LEAROYD *Last Light,* 2023 chromogenic contact print © Richard Learoyd, courtesy Fraenkel Gallery, San Francisco

Learoyd takes a different approach to landscape in two color photographs made at Grand Canyon National Park in Arizona. “The Grand Canyon is of such a monumental scale it defies framing or pictorial selection,” Learoyd has noted. Undaunted, he brought his outsized, hand-built camera obscura to the park’s South rim and photographed into the last light of the day. The process yielded enormous negatives, measuring nearly 4 x 6 feet, from which he created highly detailed contact prints. The resulting photographs capture the vastness of the scene and the stark, muted colors of the landscape.

The exhibition also features work made in Learoyd’s London studio. Still lifes depict red, pink, and white poppies with vibrant or fading petals, and other natural elements. Often drawing on themes from Dutch Golden Age painting, the photographs capture the subtle sheen and iridescence of feathers or flowers, a focus on optical qualities also found in memento mori paintings. Precisely transcribing the various ways that light falls onto natural materials, Learoyd’s photographs emphasize the ambiguity between dead and living things and often refer back to the act of seeing. Some works include vintage glass eyeballs hidden among the stems of poppies, creating the unsettling suggestion that the viewer is in turn being watched.

RICHARD LEAROYD Untitled Flowers (Day 2), 2025 camera obscura Ilfochrome photograph © Richard Learoyd, courtesy Fraenkel Gallery, San Francisco

For works made in collaboration with Frances Palmer, Learoyd photographed lavish arrangements of tulips and other flowers housed in the ceramic vessel Palmer created from his sketches. In Learoyd’s photographs, flowers seem to erupt and tumble out of the white base. “Based on [Learoyd’s] measurements, I made the pieces in both a translucent bisque porcelain and low-fire earthenware with a matte white glaze so that he could choose which texture would work best for the photograph,” Palmer writes. These vessels will be on view along with the photographs and a selection of other ceramics made by Palmer for the show. “Continuing with these ideas, I have made additional pieces in both clay bodies, thinking about how my pots will have a conversation with Richard’s work in the gallery.”

RICHARD LEAROYD *Untitled Flowers (Day 3)*, 2025 camera obscura Ilfochrome photograph © Richard Learoyd, courtesy Fraenkel Gallery, San Francisco

RICHARD LEAROYD Tree near Lacock, 2025 multi-layered pigment print, hand-applied gesso on canvas © Richard Learoyd, courtesy Fraenkel Gallery, San Francisco

Richard Learoyd has been featured in solo exhibitions including The Silence of the Camera Obscura, a 2019 show at Fundación MAPFRE in Barcelona that traveled to Fotomuseum den Haag in the Netherlands. Other exhibition highlights include a solo show at the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles, which traveled to the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art in Kansas City, Missouri, and Dark Mirror, which took place at the Victoria & Albert Museum in London. Learoyd’s photographs are in the collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Museum of Modern Art, New York; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles; Centre Pompidou, Paris; Tate, London; Victoria & Albert Museum, London; National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa; and Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven, among others. A self-titled monograph was published in 2019 in connection with his Fundación MAPFRE exhibition, and Day for Night, a collection of portraits and still lifes, was published by Aperture in 2015.

A celebrated author, ceramist, gardener, and photographer, Frances Palmer trained as an art historian at Columbia University and for the past 38 years, has focused on the process of changing ideas into form in her functional work—handmade ceramics. Her work is represented in leading private craft and contemporary art collections around the world and has been exhibited and sold internationally including at Fotografiska, Neue Galerie, Object & Thing, and Wave Hill. Palmer has been featured in publications such as House & Garden, Neptune Papers, Vogue, and The World of Interiors. Her first book, Life in the Studio: Inspiration and Lessons on Creativity was published by Artisan in 2020. Her second book, Life with Flowers: Inspiration and Lessons from the Garden, is dedicated to the subject of flowers in her work and will be published in May 2025.

The exhibition opened on May 29th and will be on view until August 9, 2025. For more information about the exhibition, artists represented by the gallery, and other exhibitions, please visit the Fraenkel Gallery’s website..

uzomah ugwu 6/6/25 uzomah ugwu 6/6/25

PIERRE HUYGHE: In Imaginal

**Pierre Huyghe** *Annlee – UUmwelt*, 2018-2024 Deep image reconstruction, generated in real time, face recognition, sensors, brain wave sound Installation view, *In Imaginal*, Marian Goodman Gallery, New York, 2025 Courtesy of the artist and Marian Goodman Gallery Photo credit: Alex Yudzon

Marian Goodman New York is very pleased to announce an upcoming exhibition of Pierre Huyghe which opened on 6 May 2025. This will be the U.S. premiere of a selection of works seen in the groundbreaking exhibition Liminal at Punta della Dogana – Pinault Collection, Venice last year and now on view at Leeum Museum of Art in Seoul, Korea, through July.

Huyghe conceives exhibitions as fictions from which other modalities of reality, possible worlds and time could emerge, where subjectivities are formed, interact, learn, and evolve. His insightful exploration into a multidimensional and migrating self has been realized through a diverse array of dynamic works, including moving images, sound, living organisms, machine learning, and more. Over the past decade, Huyghe has questioned the relation between human and non-human, as well as the experience of time.

In the current exhibition, Huyghe explores the liminal state in which the human is radically de-centered, and an untamable inhuman or alternate subjectivity enables spectral conditions. These works continue his narrative and metaphysical approach to existence, seeking empathy with the impossible, listening to otherworlds. Opening a dialogue with a chimeric creature of his own making on how it may experience life, Huyghe reflects on our own constructs as hybrid creatures.

**Pierre Huyghe** *Camata*, 2024 Robotics driven by machine learning, self-directed film, edited in real time by self-learning algorithms, sound, sensors Installation view, *In Imaginal*, Marian Goodman Gallery, New York, 2025 Courtesy of the artist and Marian Goodman Gallery Photo credit: Alex Yudzon

The works and the exhibition, interwoven, are entities in endless motion, propagative, generative and responsive to imperceptible environments and to themselves, accepting uncertainty and contradiction. They escape known hierarchies of human constitution as a locus for subjectivity.

In the ground floor gallery, Annlee – UUmwelt, 2018-24, features mental images produced by a brain-computer interface as a person imagines Annlee – a fictional anime character whose voice opens No Ghost Just a Shell, 2000, an empty image calling for collective imagination to give her life. Becoming a mediated avatar of her former self in Annlee – UUmwelt, Annlee’s mental images and voices are affected by the environment which includes the physical presence of humans.

In the back of the transparent screen, are Mind’s Eye, 2021, comprised of three materialized artefacts of deep image reconstruction. Extracted from a person’s mind, they are mental images from Annlee – UUmwelt, 2018-24 and UUmwelt, 2018, aggregates of synthetic and biological matter.

**Pierre Huyghe** *Mind's Eye (M),* 2021 Materialized deep image reconstruction, synthetic and biological material aggregate 51 1/8 x 40 1/8 x 30 1/4 in. (130 x 102 x 77 cm) Installation view, *In Imaginal*, Marian Goodman Gallery, New York, 2025 Courtesy of the artist and Marian Goodman Gallery Photo credit: Alex Yudzon

In the adjacent room, Cosmoseeded, an embryonic form in a pod, adrift in space, is a previous work repurposed as a sign for a collaboration, set to unfold in the coming year. Since 2012, Ali Brivanlou, Head of the Laboratory of Stem Cell Biology and Synthetic Embryology at The Rockefeller University, and Huyghe have engaged in conversations on projects which include making human feathers, developing temporal chimeras, or a brain organoid made from cells of various humans. In their latest discussion, Brivanlou introduced a groundbreaking idea, which Huyghe began to expand upon, imagining the universe as an agriculture field where a human synthetic embryo is propagated, as seeds to grow us anew.

On the second floor are mumblings, at times a chorus. Idiom (2024) are membranes sensitive to another world that vocalize an enigmatic presence through an unknown and ineffable language, learned in real-time, throughout the exhibition. Idiom is a community of masks. As voices flow through them, together they become a quasi-subject, attempting to exist here and now. Over time, as they wander in space and collect imperceptible information, a language is invented, carrying with it the specters of past exhibitions.

The adjacent space features Camata, 2024, a self-directed film operated by a learning machine, a manifestation of an inhuman entity enacted upon by a set of robotic operators, performing a final rite of passage on a human skeleton found unburied in the Atacama Desert. As this enigmatic ritual unfolds live in front of us, we witness a transactional operation between a bodyless entity and a lifeless human body, a passage of life, a reincarnation. Camata’s live footage is the result of autonomous cameras decisions and is edited in real time. Sensors in the exhibition space capture a live human presence, disrupting its linearity.

**Pierre Huyghe** *Idiom*, 2024 Real time voice generated by Artificial Intelligence, golden LED screen masks Installation view, *In Imaginal*, Marian Goodman Gallery, New York, 2025 Courtesy of the artist and Marian Goodman Gallery Photo credit: Alex Yudzon

Recent exhibitions include Liminal, Leeum Museum of Art, Seoul, South Korea (2025); Liminal, Punta della Dogana – Pinault Collection, Venice (2024); Chimeras, EMMA Espoo Museum of Modern Art, Finland (2023), Pierre Huyghe, Bourse de Commerce – Pinault Collection, Paris (2023); Variants, Kistefos Museum, Jevnaker (2022), After UUmwelt, Luma Foundation, Arles (2021); UUmwelt, Serpentine Gallery, London (2018); The Roof Garden, Metropolitan Museum, New York (2015). In 2012 -2014, a major retrospective of Huyghe’s work traveled from the Centre Pompidou (France) to the Ludwig Museum (Germany) and to Los Angeles County Museum of Art (USA).

Huyghe has been the recipient of numerous awards including Grand Prix de la Fondation Simone et Cino Del Duca (2024); the Nasher Sculpture Prize (2017); the Kurt Schwitters Prize (2015); Roswitha Haftmann Preis Award (2013); the Smithsonian American Museum's Contemporary Artist Award (2010); the Hugo Boss Prize, Guggenheim Museum, New York (2002), and DAAD artist in residency, Berlin (1999-2000), amongst others.

Pierre Huyghe In Imaginal opened on 6 May and will be on view until 21 June 2025 at the Tribeca Gallery location at 385 Broadway, New York, NY 10013. For more information about the exhibit, please visit the Marian Goodman Gallery’s site. The gallery can be found on Instagram and Artsy, too.

uzomah ugwu 6/5/25 uzomah ugwu 6/5/25

JAPONISME → Cognitive Revolution: Learning from Hiroshige

TAKASHI MURAKAMI JAPONISME → Cognitive Revolution: Learning from Hiroshige, 2025, installation view Artwork © 2024–2025 Takashi Murakami/Kaikai Kiki Co., Ltd. All rights reserved Photo: Thomas Barratt Courtesy Gagosian

“In this exhibition I’m engaging in an artistic variety of backcrossing, the process by which one generation is made by crossing two different varieties, and in subsequent generations, one of the parent varieties is crossed back with the offspring.”

— Takashi Murakami

NEW YORK,—Gagosian is pleased to announce JAPONISME → Cognitive Revolution: Learning from Hiroshige, an exhibition of new and recent works by Takashi Murakami at 522 West 21st Street, New York. Extending Murakami’s interest in the copy—a theme he also explored in Mononoke Kyoto at the Kyoto City Kyocera Museum of Art and Japanese Art History à la Takashi Murakami at Gagosian London (both 2024)—the exhibition juxtaposes the artist’s reworkings of prints by Utagawa Hiroshige (1797–1858) with those of paintings by artists identified with the nineteenth-century tendency known as Japonisme.

**TAKASHI MURAKAMI** *Hiroshige’s 100 Famous Views of Edo: Japonisme Reconsidered—Ichigaya Hachiman Shrine*, 2024–25 Acrylic on canvas mounted on aluminum frame 14 1/2 x 9 1/2 inches (36.8 x 23.9 cm) © 2024–2025 Takashi Murakami/Kaikai Kiki Co., Ltd. All rights reserved Photo: Kei Okano Courtesy the artist and Gagosian

On view are 121 canvases that Murakami produced in response to Hiroshige’s series of ukiyo-e prints 100 Famous Views of Edo (1856–58), which captures life in a city on the precipice of change. Murakami’s interpretations, to which he has added elements of other ukiyo-e works alongside his own characters, were first shown alongside the historical prints at the Brooklyn Museum in 2024 and prompt consideration of Hiroshige’s influential worldview.

**TAKASHI MURAKAMI** *Hiroshige’s 100 Famous Views of Edo: Japonisme Reconsidered—Asakusa Ricefields and Torinomachi Festival*, 2024–25 Acrylic on canvas mounted on aluminum frame 39 3/8 x 25 5/8 inches (100 x 65 cm) © 2024–2025 Takashi Murakami/Kaikai Kiki Co., Ltd. All rights reserved Photo: Kei Okano Courtesy the artist and Gagosian

Also featured are Murakami’s new reworkings of European Impressionist and Post-Impressionist paintings that were also inspired by Japanese originals in the context of Japonisme, a movement in European art and design sparked by the reopening of Japan to global trade in 1853. The term, likely coined by critic Philippe Burty in 1872, denotes an aesthetic rediscovery that profoundly affected modern painting. Many Impressionist and Post-Impressionist artists were exposed to Japanese woodblock prints at the 1867 Paris Exposition Universelle. Struck by the works’ combination of realist subject matter with pictorial flatness, asymmetrical composition, and brilliant color, they began to explore related styles in their own painting. As a Japanese artist, Murakami reclaims these images to bring the process of influence full circle.

**TAKASHI MURAKAMI** *Hiroshige’s 100 Famous Views of Edo: Japonisme Reconsidered—Kinryūzan Temple, Asakusa*, 2024–25 Acrylic on canvas mounted on aluminum frame 137 7/8 x 89 5/8 inches (350 x 227.5 cm) © 2024–2025 Takashi Murakami/Kaikai Kiki Co., Ltd. All rights reserved Photo: Kei Okano Courtesy the artist and Gagosian

Among the works that Murakami interprets—alongside those of Hiroshige, Katsushika Hokusai, Hishikawa Morofusa, and Kitagawa Utamaro—is James McNeill Whistler’s Nocturne: Blue and Gold – Old Battersea Bridge (c. 1872–75). This image echoes the nocturnal subject and boldly cropped composition of Hiroshige’s Bamboo Yards, Kyobashi Bridge (1857); the flat color found in woodblock prints may also have prompted its restricted palette and simplified forms. Reportedly, Whistler discovered Japanese prints in a Chinese tearoom in London, an encounter whose cross- cultural essence encapsulates the initial emergence of Japonisme and its fascination to Murakami. Finally, several new paintings reflect on the origin of the French luxury fashion house Louis Vuitton’s logo in the traditional Japanese family crest or kamon, and its Damier (checkerboard) design in the Japanese Ichimatsu pattern.

**TAKASHI MURAKAMI** *Hiroshige’s 100 Famous Views of Edo: Japonisme Reconsidered—Suidō Bridge and Surugadai*, 2024–25 Acrylic on canvas mounted on aluminum frame 137 7/8 x 89 5/8 inches (350 x 227.5 cm) © 2024–2025 Takashi Murakami/Kaikai Kiki Co., Ltd. All rights reserved Photo: Kei Okano Courtesy the artist and Gagosian

An expanded version of Takashi Murakami: Stepping on the Tail of a Rainbow, a major exhibition that originated at The Broad, Los Angeles, in 2022, is on view at the Cleveland Museum of Art from May 25 to September 7, 2025.

JAPONISME → Cognitive Revolution: Learning from Hiroshige is the latest exhibition by Takashi Murakami.. The exhibition opened on May 8 with an opening reception that was held from 6 to 8 pm. The exhibition will close on July 11, 2025, and is at the Gagosian, New York location at 522 West 21st Street, New York. For Takashi Murakami’s biographical information and exhibition history, please visit here. For more information about the artists represented by Gagosian and other exhibitions at the gallery, please visit the gallery’s site here. The gallery can also be found on Pinterest, X, YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, and Artsy.For Takashi Murakami’s biographical information and exhibition history, please visit gagosian.com.

uzomah ugwu 6/4/25 uzomah ugwu 6/4/25

Picasso: Tête-à-tête

**PABLO PICASSO** *Portrait de Femme (Marie-Thérèse)*, 1936 Pencil, watercolor, and pastel on paper 13 3/8 x 10 1/8 inches (34 x 25.5 cm) © 2025 Estate of Pablo Picasso / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York Photo: Sandra Pointet Courtesy Gagosian

“You see me here, and yet I’ve already changed, I’m already elsewhere.”

— Pablo Picasso, 1963

**PABLO PICASSO** *Portrait de Femme au Béret Rouge (Marie-Thérèse)*, 1937 Oil on canvas 13 3/4 x 10 5/8 inches (35 x 27 cm) © 2025 Estate of Pablo Picasso / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York Photo: Sandra Pointet Courtesy Gagosian

NEW YORK,—Gagosian is pleased to announce Picasso: Tête-à-tête, presented in partnership with the artist’s daughter Paloma Picasso. Offering a unique opportunity to view over fifty rarely seen paintings, sculptures, and drawings from the full span of the artist’s career—1896 to 1972—the exhibition will include nearly a dozen works that are being exhibited publicly for the very first time and others that have not been shown for decades. Drawn largely from Picasso’s estate,

**PABLO PICASSO** *Tête de Femme*, 1957 Cut and painted sheet metal 32 3/8 x 13 x 18 1/8 inches (82 x 33 x 46 cm) © 2025 Estate of Pablo Picasso / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York Photo: Sandra Pointet Courtesy Gagosian

Picasso: Tête-à-tête opened on April 18 and is the final exhibition to be held at Gagosian’s flagship 980 Madison Avenue gallery. Gagosian and Paloma Picasso to Present Picasso: Tête-à-tête in New York Featuring Works from the Artist’s Estate, Including Several Never Before Exhibited. More than Fifty Paintings, Sculptures, and Drawings from 1896 to 1972 Will Be on View Beginning April 18, 2025

**PABLO PICASSO** *Femme au Béret Bleu Assise dans un Fauteuil Gris, Manches Rouges (Marie-Thérèse)*, 1937 Oil on canvas 39 3/8 x 31 1/2 inches (100 x 80 cm) © 2025 Estate of Pablo Picasso / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York Photo: Sandra Pointet Courtesy Gagosian

“I have been fortunate to present more than twenty exhibitions dedicated to Pablo Picasso throughout my career, and it seems only fitting that a blockbuster show of the artist’s work should close out our time at 980 Madison. It is incredibly exciting to partner with Paloma on her first major international exhibition, and to bring to light so many works that have never been shown before..”

— Larry Gagosian

“I was delighted when Larry suggested we work together on a significant exhibition. Showing my father’s work as he wanted it to be seen—in conversation across subjects and periods—is a fitting tribute to his legacy. A number of the works we selected haven’t been seen since my father had them in his studio and to have them reunited with important examples from other collections will be a very special event.”

— Paloma Picasso

**PABLO PICASSO** *Femme au Vase de Houx (Marie-Thérèse)*, 1937 Oil and charcoal on canvas 28 3/4 x 23 5/8 inches (73 x 60 cm) © 2025 Estate of Pablo Picasso / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York Photo: Sandra Pointet Courtesy Gagosian

Records exist of two exhibitions that Picasso installed himself, the first being his 1932 retrospective at Galeries Georges Petit, Paris. On that occasion, rather than attempting to prove an academic thesis or arrange a strictly chronological presentation, he hung works of different eras and styles together, facilitating a conversation between them. In the same spirit, Picasso: Tête-à-tête juxtaposes paintings, sculptures, and drawings by the protean artist, encouraging viewers to discover new personal connections and continuities. The exhibition will include masterpieces from Picasso’s own collection, alongside works from other prominent sources. Gagosian is publishing a fully illustrated catalogue of the exhibition featuring a conversation between Paloma Picasso and artist Peter Doig. A translation of a contemporaneous article by Eric Tériade on Picasso’s 1932 Paris installation is also included.

**PABLO PICASSO** *Tête de femme bleu*, 1948–49 Terra-cotta 14 5/8 x 9 1/2 x 11 7/8 inches (37 x 24 x 30 cm) © 2025 Estate of Pablo Picasso / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York Photo: Sandra Pointet Courtesy Gagosian

Picasso: Tête-a-tête, in collaboration with Paloma Picasso, opened on April 18th and will be on view until July 3, 2025, at the Gagosian, New York location at 980 Madison Avenue, New York. For Pablo Picasso’s biographical information and exhibition history, please visit here. More information about the artists represented by Gagosian and other exhibitions at the gallery, please visit the gallery’s site here. The gallery can also be found on Pinterest, X, YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, and Artsy.

uzomah ugwu 6/1/25 uzomah ugwu 6/1/25

Willem de Kooning: Endless Painting

NEW YORK, A—Gagosian is pleased to present Willem de Kooning: Endless Painting, which opened on April 15 at 555 West 24th Street. The exhibition is organized with the support of The Willem de Kooning Foundation and curated by Cecilia Alemani, director and chief curator of High Line Art. It comprises paintings dating from 1944 through 1986 and two sculptures: Clamdigger (1972), and the monumental Standing Figure (1969–84). This will be the first presentation at the newly renovated Chelsea gallery and follows Willem de Kooning and Italy, a significant presentation of paintings, sculptures, and drawings at the Gallerie dell’Accademia in Venice last summer.

**WILLEM DE KOONING** *Woman as Landscape*, 1954-1955 Oil and charcoal on canvas 65 1/2 x 49 3/8 inches (166.3 x 125.4 cm) © 2025 The Willem de Kooning Foundation/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York Photo: Maris Hutchinson Courtesy Gagosian

A pioneering figure of the postwar era, de Kooning probed the expressive potential of color, line, and space and continuously challenged the boundaries between figuration and abstraction. Through the considered placement of late paintings including Untitled V (1982), on loan from the Museumof Modern Art, New York, and Untitled XIX (1984) among works of the preceding decades, the exhibition foregrounds visual motifs that recurred throughout de Kooning’s career. This arrangement reflects Alemani’s close investigation of the 1980s paintings through which she identified an expansive repertoire of human forms—elbows, knees, mouths, eyes—that can be traced as far back as the artist’s works of the 1930s and 1940s that drew on Cubism and Surrealism.

**WILLEM DE KOONING** *Suburb in Havana*, 1958 Oil on canvas 80 1/4 x 70 3/8 inches (203.8 x 178.8 cm) © 2025 The Willem de Kooning Foundation/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York Photo: Owen Conway Courtesy Gagosian

In Montauk II (1969), flesh-toned biomorphic shapes dance in and out of focus, while profiles and limbs appear amid the slippery brushstrokes of . . . Whose Name Was Writ in Water (1975), on loan from the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York. In Untitled XIV (1986), the exhibition’s latest work, undulating arms extend energetically across the canvas, mirroring the outspread limbs of Standing Figure, a monumental bronze sculpture on view indoors for the first time in nearly three decades.

**WILLEM DE KOONING** *Untitled X*, 1985 Oil on canvas 70 x 80 inches (177.8 x 203.2 cm) © 2025 The Willem de Kooning Foundation/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York Photo: Maris Hutchinson Courtesy Gagosian

De Kooning often reworked his canvases, reincorporating passages from earlier compositions by tracing shapes he wanted to preserve onto vellum, and even changing their orientation multiple times during their gestation. It was through revisiting and revising his compositions that he developed a consistent but flexible vocabulary of colors and gestures rooted in figuration. “A restless explorer of the canvas, de Kooning never stopped interrogating the possibilities of what painting could be,” Alemani notes. “As a curator, it is deeply rewarding to grapple with the constant process of artistic reinvention and self-interrogation that animates his creative trajectory, especially through closer examination of his late works.” The exhibition’s title, Endless Painting, references this enduring, ever-evolving visual language and the artist’s professed decision to “just stop” rather than formally finish paintings, perhaps seeking a more expansive definition of the medium itself.

**WILLEM DE KOONING** *Untitled XIX*, 1984 Oil on canvas 80 x 70 inches (203.2 x 177.8 cm) © 2025 The Willem de Kooning Foundation/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York Photo: Maris Hutchinson Courtesy Gagosian

Endless Painting is the sixth solo exhibition of de Kooning’s work presented by Gagosian, with the first organized in 1987. It is accompanied by a fully illustrated catalogue featuring essays by Cecilia Alemani and John Elderfield, curator of de Kooning: A Retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art,New York (2011–12). On May 15, Alemani will moderate a conversation exploring the continued impact of de Kooning’s paintings and working methods on artists today.

#WillemdeKooning

Cecilia Alemani curated Endless Painting. There was an opening reception: Tuesday, April 15, 6–8 pm The exhibition opened on April 15 and will run until June 14, 2025, at the 555 West 24th Street, New York location. For Willem de Kooning’s biographical information and exhibition history, please visit here. For more information about the artists represented by Gagosian and other exhibitions at the gallery, please visit the gallery’s site here. The gallery can also be found on Pinterest, X, YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, and Artsy.

uzomah ugwu 6/1/25 uzomah ugwu 6/1/25

Failure as Fuel: On Berbrain’s Embrace of the Uncertain

Tang Contemporary Art proudly presents Berbrain's first solo exhibition in Bangkok, Failure as Fuel: On Berbrain's Embrace of the Uncertain. Working primarily with oil, pigment sticks, solid markers, and spray on canvas, Berbrain constructs fragmented, open-ended narratives that privilege process over resolution. His works function not as definitive statements, but as moments suspended within an ongoing, evolving story. By capturing scenes that resemble the aftermath or midpoint of a battlefield, Berbrain leaves viewers questioning: what happened? What's next? Has something failed, or succeeded? The artist refuses to offer clear outcomes, instead inviting the audience to participate in redefining what success or failure might mean.

**anctuary of Dreams** | 200 x 200 cm | Mixed media on canvas | 2025

In a culture that celebrates clarity and completion, failure remains one of the most radical ideas for an artist to explore. We're conditioned to view failure as a fall, a flaw, a deviation from the ideal. But what if failure is not the opposite of success, but its necessary companion? What if that detour is where the real work begins? Berbrain does not treat failure as defeat but frames it as possibility. His practice begins with questions: What does it mean to face fear head-on? What happens when we lean into uncertainty, rather than escape it? His paintings carry the quiet, charged energy of risk—not the dramatic kind that demands attention, but the everyday courage to continue without knowing the outcome.

Installation View: Failure as Fuel: On Berbrain’s Embrace of the Uncertain, 26 April - 1 June 2025, Tang Contemporary Art Bangkok Photo Courtesy of Tang Contemporary Art Bangkok

This exhibition collapses the binary between failure and success. Berbrain's visual language, rich with dreamlike symbols, dynamic gestures, and bodies mid-metamorphosis, suggests that to be alive is to be in flux. Nothing is settled. Every failure carries the seed of a new direction, a new question, a new possibility. Far from a collapse, failure becomes a space of rehearsal, invention, and play. In Berbrain's universe, falling short is a strategy, not a setback. It is in the friction of effort—the slips, the doubts, the internal monsters—that something real takes shape. Fear runs parallel throughout these works, not cast aside or conquered, but absorbed into the process. Fear becomes material: a starting point rather than a stop sign. Whether exploring internal struggles or fantastical worlds where danger and joy intertwine, Berbrain treats fear as a source of momentum rather than paralysis.

**Break the Chain (Anything is Possible)** | 100 x 100 cm | Mixed media on canvas | 2024

This is not an exhibition about overcoming failure. It's about staying with it long enough to understand what it reveals. It's about embracing the uncertain not in spite of its difficulty, but because of it. Berbrain's work speaks to a shared condition in contemporary life: the demand to appear confident, composed, and perpetually successful. His art cuts through that illusion, creating space for the unspoken—fear of falling, the weight of trying again, and the strength it takes to risk vulnerability in public. The paintings offer not just reflection, but invitation. They suggest that failure might not be something to avoid but something to move toward. That within conscious, wholehearted failure lies a form of freedom that conventional success cannot provide. Berbrain's art offers space: to feel, to question, to fall and get up again. In this, the work does not merely represent failure—it reclaims it.

Courtsey of Artist and Tang Contemporary Art

About the Artist

Bernandi Desanda (Berbrain)
b.1996, Tangerang, Indonesia

Bernandi Desanda or Berbrain was graduated from Indonesian Institute of The Arts, Yogyakarta, Faculty of Design, Department of Visual Communication Design in 2021.

Since 2015, Bernandi has chosen to focus on visual arts, particularly painting. After graduating, Bernandi decided to pursue a career as a full time artist and currently lived in Yogyakarta.

He is also recognized as Berbrain. He is an artist whose creative journey is rooted in imagination, The name "Berbrain" encapsulates the notion of "Bernandi's thoughts," elegantly combining 'Ber' and 'Brain’. An undeniable passion for animals, monsters, and all things uncanny courses through Berbrain's creative veins.

This fervor consistently finds its expression in the art he produces today, a majority of which draws inspiration from these captivating realms. Notably, the enchanting universe of cartoon characters also contributes to the tapestry of his creations. It's within this artistic landscape that Bernandi skillfully weaves together the essence of monsters, animals, and animated personas, breathing life into a symphony of new and captivating species.

About Tang Contemporary Art

Since its founding in Bangkok in 1997, Tang Contemporary Art has opened 8 spaces in Beijing, Hong Kong, Bangkok, Seoul and Singapore to promote the development of experimental art in different regions. In the past 27 years, Tang Contemporary Art has organized groundbreaking exhibitions in its gallery spaces, and also cooperated with important art institutions in China and abroad to accomplish outstanding art projects. The gallery strives to initiate dialogue between artists, curators, collectors and institutions working both locally and internationally. A roster of groundbreaking exhibitions has earned Tang Contemporary Art internationally renowned recognition, establishing its status as a pioneer of the contemporary art scene in Asia.

As one of China’s most influential contemporary art platforms, Tang Contemporary Art maintains a high standard of exhibition programming. Tang Contemporary Art represents or collaborates with leading figures in international contemporary art, including Ai Weiwei, Huang Yongping, Shen Yuan, Zhu Jinshi, Chen Danqing, Liu Qinghe, Liu Xiaodong, Chen Shaoxiong, Wang Yuping, Shen Ling, Shen Liang, Wu Yi, Xia Xiaowan, He Duoling, Mao Xuhui, Wang Huangsheng, Yang Jiechang, Tan Ping, Wang Du，Yan Lei, Yue Minjun, Wang Jianwei, Yangjiang Group, Zheng Guogu, Lin Yilin, Sun Yuan&Peng Yu, Qin Ga, Wang Qingsong, Yin Zhaoyang, Feng Yan, Guo Wei, Chen Wenbo, Ling Jian, Qin Qi, Yang Yong, Peng Wei, He An, Zhao Zhao, Xu Qu, Chen Yujun, Chen Yufan, Xue Feng, Cai Lei, Li Qing, Wang Sishun, Xu Xiaoguo, Lí Wei, Liu Yujia, Wu Wei, Yang Bodu, You Yong, Li Erpeng, Jade Ching-yuk Ng, Michelangelo Pistoletto, Adel Abdessemed, Niki de Saint Phalle, AES+F , Michael Zelehosk, Jonas Burgert, Christian Lemmerz, Michael Kvium, Sakarin Krue-On, Rirkrit Tiravanija, Natee Utarit, Kitti Narod, Gongkan, Entang Wiharso, Heri Dono, Nam June Paik, Park Seungmo, Jae Yong Kim, Diren Lee, Dinh Q. Lê, Rodel Tapaya, Jigger Cruz, Ayka Go, Raffy Napay, H.H.Lim, Etsu Egami, etc.

This exhibition opened on April 26th and ends on June 1st 2025. There was an opening reception on April 26that 4 pm.

For more information about this exhibition and others at Tang Contemporary Art, please visit their site here. The gallery can also be found on Facebook, Artsy, Instagram, anf YouTube.

uzomah ugwu 5/31/25 uzomah ugwu 5/31/25

Jim Shaw: Drawings

JIM SHAW Drawings, 2025, installation view Artwork © Jim Shaw Photo: Maris Hutchinson Courtesy Gagosian

“Whatever it is, the way you tell your story online can make all the difference.”

— Jim Shaw

NEW YORK, Gagosian is pleased to announce an exhibition of drawings by Jim Shaw at Park & 75, New York. Made between 2012 and 2024, the works find the artist continuing his journey through the maelstrom of American society, taking inspiration from such sources as vintage advertisements and borrowing from the aesthetics of comic books and album covers. They feature images of complex forms such as trees and hair; references to popular culture and counterculture; surreal representations of the artist’s dreams; and allusions to bizarre religious cults and political conspiracies.

In the works on view Shaw details scenarios from the domestic to the fantastical, often combining elements of both. “Most of these drawings,” he explains, “involve nostalgia for advertising images from a period when the single image was staged and fetishized.” Study for “Rinse Cycle” (2012)—one of two works in color in the exhibition—was derived from a 1950s washing machine ad and portrays the wraithlike abstracted forms of clothing dancing around a central agitator.A number of drawings feature trees. Study for “God Didn’t Make the Little Green Apples” (2023) originated in a visit that Shaw made to Kentucky, where he noticed a tree in the same “pose” as 1940s photograph of a woman performing, in the artist’s words, a “Spanish Dance.” Study for “Spinning Man and the Tower” (2023) presents another fusion of human and plant; in this case, the pose of the former is derived from Shaw’s characteristically weird dream image of a man in a church being lifted aloft by an octopus. And images of hair crop up in works such as Study for “Sweater Couple” (2017), which concocts a 1960s-style promotion featuring a man and his Nancy Sinatra–esque partner clad in matching jumpers that finally merge with one another in a wiglike mass of curls.

**JIM SHAW** *Study for "The Bride Stripped Bare"*, 2016 Pencil on paper 24 x 19 inches (61 x 48.3 cm) © Jim Shaw Photo: Ed Mumford Courtesy Gagosian

Finally, several works see Shaw explore a fascination with the relationship between written language and psychedelic aesthetics. Study for “The Souls of Aliens” (2024), for example, was sparked by a dream in which a cross between one of Edgar Degas’s young dancers and a figure by Dutch painter Jan Toorop appears within a sinuous swirl of lettering.

**Jim Shaw**, *Study for "God Didn't Make the Little Green Apples"*, 2023, Pencil on paper, 24 x 19 inches (61 x 48.3 cm) © Jim Shaw Photo: Ed Mumford Courtesy Gagosian

The artist was in conversation with Tony Oursler at the gallery on Saturday, May 3, at 3pm. Moderated by Gagosian director Jessica Beck, the conversation will focus on Shaw’s practice of dream drawing and on drawing in general as a consistent aspect of his work, the two artists’ shared interest in spiritual and religious histories and propaganda, and their time as students at CalArts in the late 1970s

For Jim Shaw’s biographical information and exhibition history, please visit here. For more information about the artists represented by Gagosian and other exhibitions at the gallery, please visit the gallery’s site here. The gallery can also be found on Pinterest, X, YouTube, Facebook,Instagram, and Artsy.

uzomah ugwu 5/23/25 uzomah ugwu 5/23/25

NAZANIN POUYANDEH: BENEATH THE FABRIC OF THE WORLD

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

Galerie Templon is proud to present the first exhibition in Belgium of talented Iranian painter Nazanin Pouyandeh. The show, an ambitious foray into her creative universe, centres on fifteen canvases in varying formats primarily created between 2024 and 2025. All works engage with the central theme of her practice: painting as a means of expressing pleasure and emancipation.

“Beneath the Fabric of the World” positions painting as an act of fulfilment, liberation and, consequently, resistance. “Painting is the supreme act, an act of total and joyful freedom, an act that will outlive humanity, a means of combating the power of living beings by transcending them,” explains Nazanin Pouyandeh. The new series features a range of female figures, active participants in scenes that are as complex as they are ambiguous. Her characters emerge within carefully arranged settings, from ruined cities to painters’ studios and hushed living rooms. The compositions are marked by a profusion of vibrant colours, with visually captivating motifs - floral, geometric or tribal. Unexpected symbols are juxtaposed as religious icons rub shoulders with African masks, the gleaming blades of daggers, human skulls and art books, their pages left carelessly open. Draped materials and rugs reveal a world full of meaning.

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

Nazanin Pouyandeh’s practice is deeply rooted in her personal history – she was forced to flee Iran at the age of 18 after the politically motivated murder of her father – and inspired by the experience of living in exile as well as centuries of global art history. Influences that flourish in the form of the sort of remarkable mises en abyme reminiscent of the Flemish School and European surrealism. There are references to Shungas, the famous Japanese erotic prints, as well as the works of Matisse and Bonnard. The realistic scenes devised by the artist gradually move away from all tangible veracity. She takes the viewer on a dreamlike, sensory journey that functions as an exploration of the mechanisms of survival and resistance in these uncertain times.

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

Born in Teheran in 1981, Nazanin Pouyandeh was admitted to the École des Beaux-Arts of Paris in 2000 where she joined painter Pat Andrea’s studio. Her technical virtuosity takes the veristic dimension of her painting to new heights, without, however, inviting in hyperrealism. Nazanin Pouyandeh draws on all available sources of imagery at a time when the boundaries between the arts and different eras and cultures have become permeable. These convergences, such as the way she plays with disproportionate figures, create a sense of formal strangeness that is strongly redolent of dreams. Nazanin Pouyandeh interrogates collective representations of women, as well as themes of eroticism and violence.

Installation Views: Nazanin Pouyandeh: Beneath the Fabric of the World © Courtesy of the artist and TEMPLON, Paris - Brussels - New York

Her work has been shown in a variety of solo and group exhibitions, including at the Musée Paul Valéry, Sète (2025), Centre d’Art La Malmaison, Cannes (2025), Fondation GGL, Montpellier (2024), Belgrade City Museum, Serbia (2024), MO.CO Montpellier Contemporain (2023), Fondation d’Entreprise Francès, Senlis (2023), Galerie Municipale Julio Gonzalez, Arcueil (2022), Musée du Quai Branly – Jacques Chirac, Paris (2021), Fondation Salomon, Annecy (2020), Le Suquet des Artistes, Cannes (2019), Centre d’Art Contemporain, Meymac (2018), acentmetresducentredumonde contemporary art centre, Perpignan (2017) and Centre Art & Culture, Cotonou, Benin (2017). She has won numerous awards, such as the Fabbrica Culturale Casell’ar te, Venaco, Corsica (2020), Prix Spécial Erro as part of the Antoine Marin prize (2008) and Prix Spécial Erro as part of the Antoine Marin prize (2003). Her work recently entered the collections of the Musée National d’Art Moderne Centre Pompidou Paris and MOCO Montpellier Contemporain.

Nazanin Pouyandeh: Beneath the Fabric of the World opened on 23 April and will be on view until 21 June 2025 at the TEMPLON BRUSSELS location. For more information about the exhibit, please visit Templon’s site.

uzomah ugwu 5/22/25 uzomah ugwu 5/22/25

Kings and Queens of Africa: Forms and Figures of Power

Abu Dhabi, UAE 2025 Louvre Abu Dhabi has unveiled its first exhibition of the year, Kings and Queens of Africa: Forms and Figures of Power, marking a milestone as the first exhibition of its kind in the UAE and the region dedicated to African art. Inaugurated by H.E. Shaikh Shakhboot bin Nayhan Al Nahyan, Minister of State; The Honorable Minister of Art, Culture, Tourism, and the Creative Economy of Nigeria, Hon. Hannatu Musa Musawa; H.E. Noura Al Kaabi, Minister of State; and H.E. Mohamed Khalifa Al Mubarak, Chairman of Louvre Abu Dhabi, this groundbreaking exhibition is presented in partnership with Musée du quai Branly-Jacques Chirac and France Muséums, with the support of HONOR as the exhibition's official partner and Valrhona as the exhibition sponsor.

Anthropomorphic mask Baule, Côte d’lvoire, Bouaké region 19th centuryWood, pigment© musée du quai Branly -Jacques Chirac, photo Patrick Gries, Bruno Descoings

Open until 8 June 2025, the exhibition celebrates Africa's rich history, creativity, and cultural legacy from the 11th to the 21st centuries, and highlights its vitality in contemporary art. Visitors can explore an extraordinary collection of royal portraits, sculptures, ceremonial objects, and textiles, discovering the enduring connection between art, power, and identity across the African continent.

The exhibition is curated by three curators in ancient and contemporary African art: Hélène Joubert, Exhibition General Curator, General Curator, Head of the African Collections at the Musée du quai Branly – Jacques Chirac, Paris; El Hadji Malick Ndiaye, Associate Curator, Head of the Museums Department and Curator of the Musée Théodore Monod d’Art Africain, Institut Fondamental d’Afrique Noire – Cheikh Anta Diop (IFAN-Cheikh Anta Diop), Dakar; and Cindy Olohou, Associate Curator, Head of Collections at the Regional Collection of Contemporary Art, Île-de-France, and Independent Art Critic. Support was provided by Louvre Abu Dhabi Curatorial team, represented by Mariam AlDhaheri, Curatorial Assistant at Louvre Abu Dhabi.

The showcase features over 350 objects from West, Central, Southern and East Africa, including intricately crafted royal attire and spiritually significant figures, highlighting the exceptional skill of artisans while offering deeper insight into the continent’s rich and diverse heritage.

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Installation Views: Kings and Queens of Africa: Forms and Figures of Power ©Department of Culture and Tourism–Abu Dhabi. Photo: Ismail Noor/Seeing Things

Kings and Queens of Africa evokes the concept of kingdoms while exploring diverse expressions of power. Spanning empires, kingdoms, city-states, chiefdoms, and figures from divine rulers to heroic leaders, it highlights the many dimensions of power and influence in African history.

H.E. Mohamed Khalifa Al Mubarak, Chairman of Louvre Abu Dhabi, said: “Kings and Queens of Africa offers a remarkable glimpse into the lives of Africa’s revered rulers. Its extraordinary curatorial vision reveals how their cultural legacies continue to inspire contemporary African art and culture and beyond, reflecting Louvre Abu Dhabi’s mission to share universal stories through art. In Abu Dhabi, we view cultural history in all its richness, spotlighting diverse forms of creative expression from cultures around the globe. I hope that visitors are inspired and enriched by these treasures that tell such compelling stories.”

Manuel Rabaté, Director of Louvre Abu Dhabi, said: “In line with our commitment to presenting pivotal moments in the history of art, Kings and Queens of Africa: Forms and Figures of Power offers a profound exploration of Africa’s rich artistic heritage. Africa, as the cradle of humanity and a continent with rich and diverse traditions, has long been a source of resilience and creative expression. By shedding light on its enduring legacy, this exhibition resonates with our mission to engage diverse audiences by presenting stories that transcend boundaries and connect cultures. Louvre Abu Dhabi is honoured to present this exceptional exhibition, thanks to Musée du quai Branly-Jacques Chirac and the invaluable contributions of the curators, lenders, and partners.”

Emmanuel Kasarhérou, President of the Musée du quai Branly – Jacques Chirac, said: “Kings and Queens of Africa’ explores the intricate notion of power through works from the collections of the Musée du Quai Branly-Jacques Chirac and numerous African museums. Enriched with contemporary references, the exhibition is a thousand-year journey that pays tribute to the creative force of an entire continent. Above and beyond the narrative, I salute the approach: a multi-vocal project embodied by a shared curatorship, Kings and Queens of Africa was conceived in a spirit of fertile cooperation. I am also delighted by the forthcoming symposium ‘Encounters & Connections: African Museums Today & Tomorrow,’ which will bring together representatives from museums across Africa and further demonstrating the links that have been forged and this open, horizontal working method. I am pleased that this exhibition will further strengthen the relationship between the Musée du Quai Branly - Jacques Chirac and the Louvre Abu Dhabi in their shared ambition to promote our heritage and the knowledge it reveals.”

The exhibition is divided into three sections, each exploring the art and power of Africa's great kingdoms. West Africa highlights the artistic legacies of Ife, Benin, Akan, Yoruba, and Danhomè, showcasing exquisite sculptures, royal regalia, and art’s role in shaping power and identity. Central Africa features the Kongo, Luba and Teke kingdoms, with ceremonial objects and imagery reflecting the connection between art, spirituality, and leadership. Southern and Eastern Africa spotlights the Zulu and Ethiopian kingdoms, presenting artefacts that celebrate the region’s rich artistic traditions. The journey concludes with an African Pop Art section, featuring contemporary comics and video games.

Hélène Joubert, Exhibition General Curator, General Curator, Head of the African Collections at Musée du quai Branly – Jacques Chirac, said: “Kings and Queens of Africa: Forms and Figures of Power grew out of my reflections on objects of power and the pursuit of a universal theme. Drawing on the collections of the Musée du quai Branly – Jacques Chirac with numerous exceptional masterpieces lent for the first time and recent targeted acquisitions, I envisioned an expansive exhibition introducing African art from the 11th century to today. Spanning all major regions of sub-Saharan Africa, it explores interconnected themes, highlighting the notions of excellence and beauty in service of power. In addition to the collections of the Musée du quai Branly, we collaborated with other international institutions, particularly in Africa, and to private lenders.”

She added: “This exhibition is a collective achievement, with two associate curators joining me in this exceptional project – El Hadj Malick Ndiaye and Cindy Olohou. They have enriched the exhibition’s historical narrative with contemporary insights, deepening its exploration of royalty through a dialogue between past and present. Additionally, Mariam AlDhaheri, Curatorial Assistant at Louvre Abu Dhabi, contributed by exploring local resources. The input and insights of everyone involved have woven a vibrant and unique project that I hope will inspire admiration, surprise, and curiosity in the Emirati public towards the arts of this continent.”

Dr. Guilhem André, Scientific Curatorial & Collection Management Director, commented: “Bringing Kings and Queens of Africa: Forms and Figures of Power to the UAE represents a significant milestone in broadening the spectrum of art history presented in our exhibitions and honouring Africa’s extraordinary cultural legacy. This exhibition provides audiences with a rare opportunity to delve into the pivotal role of African art in shaping concepts of leadership, identity, and power over centuries. From regal artefacts to contemporary masterpieces, the remarkable works on display illuminate the richness and global influence of African artistry. We are also happy to host the forthcoming symposium, African Museums Today and Tomorrow, which will bring together thought leaders from African and international museums, providing an unprecedented platform for exchange between these institutions and an ideal opportunity to take stock of their current situation.”

Crowned head of Queen Oluwo Nigeria, Ife, Wunmonije-Nigeria14th to 15th centuryBrass with zinc content©musée du quai Branly –Jacques Chirac, photographie Hughes Duboi

Highlights of the objects on loan include Crowned head of Queen Oluwo, Ife, Nigeria (14th/15th century); Royal shoes gilded with leaf, Baule, Côte d'Ivoire; Akan chair, Côte d'Ivoire/Ghana; Akatahounto drum, Fon, Benin; Okuyi anthropomorphic mask, Punu, Gabon; Nkisi nkondi magical zoomorphic figurine, Kongo, Congo, and Lefem statue, Bangwa, Cameroon. Contemporary artworks include Mali, a Treasure by Abdoulaye Konaté, and Eddy Kamuanga Ilunga’s painted skins of electronic circuits, amongst others.

The influence of Islam on the African continent is reflected through significant artworks on display, including: A Koran Manuscript with accompanying cases (late 19th to early 20th century), a Koranic Tablet (pre-1972), and a contemporary artwork by Louis Barthélémy and Tarek El Safty of Mansa Musa in Hajj depicting Mansa Musa’s 14th-century pilgrimage to Mecca on a cotton tapestry, symbolising the Mali ruler’s profound legacy.

Louvre Abu Dhabi also presents a significant new acquisition, Fluctuating Throne by renowned Mozambican artist Gonçalo Mabunda. Crafted from decommissioned weapons from Mozambique’s civil war (1976–1992), this powerful sculpture transforms instruments of conflict into a symbol of resilience, hope, and the transformative power of art. With its anthropomorphic design and mask-like face, the throne reflects the duality of human struggle and strength, enriching the exhibition’s narrative of history, identity, and creativity in African art.

The exhibition brings together a diverse collection, combining works from Louvre Abu Dhabi’s permanent collection with pieces loaned by prestigious international institutions from Nigeria, Senegal, Côte d'Ivoire, South Africa, and France. Notable contributions from UAE-based institutions, including Guggenheim Abu Dhabi and Sharjah Art Foundation, further enrich the showcase. This collaboration of local and global partnerships creates a dynamic tapestry of African art, highlighting its cultural richness and global connections.

Laurance Li, General Manager, HONOR GCC, said: “We are honoured to partner with Louvre Abu Dhabi on this remarkable exhibition. This collaboration reflects our dedication to fostering innovation and creativity, not only through technology but also by supporting cultural and artistic initiatives that inspire and unite communities. Our partnership with Louvre Abu Dhabi is a true testament to this commitment.”

Cultural and Educational Programme

A rich cultural and educational programme will accompany Kings and Queens of Africa: Forms and Figures of Power, offering an array of events:

· A symposium: From 28 to 30 January, Louvre Abu Dhabi hosted a three-day symposium, featuring over 23 speakers from the African continent and bringing together over 30 international institutions from across four continents. This event will explore key topics such as shifting museum narratives, renewed approaches to collections management, shared international collaborations, and the role of youth in shaping the future of museums in Africa. This symposium, commissioned by Louvre Abu Dhabi and produced by France Muséums, offers a dynamic platform for dialogue, innovation, and cultural exchange between museum professionals worldwide.

· The Coffee Festival: From 14 to 16 February, coffee lovers were invited to explore the cultural ties between Africa and the Arabian Peninsula through coffee traditions at Louvre Abu Dhabi Park. Visitors will enjoy live Ethiopian and local coffee ceremonies, enriched with storytelling. The festival will also feature Fables from the Land that Stood Still, a contemporary dance performance that connects audiences to Nama culture through storytelling and movement.

Masquerave: On 15 February, guests were invited to an unforgettable Masquerave, headlined by DJ Black Coffee, with an opening act by his son, Sona. The Masquerave will be a fusion of classical masquerade and the artist’s blend of house, African percussions, and electronic music. In collaboration with the DCT Abu Dhabi Events Bureau, the event features stunning masks designed by artist Zak Ové, alongside captivating performances like the Espresso Martini Acrobat, Coffee Cup Roly Poly, and dynamic dancers, offering a mesmerising blend of music and art.

· Community activities: A diverse range of educational activities for adults, families, and youth will be offered, including family weekends and guided tours to provide deeper insights into the exhibition.

For the first time ever, Louvre Abu Dhabi Park transformed into an outdoor gallery, featuring Black Starliner, a 12-metre monumental totem by British-Trinidadian artist Zak Ové. This striking contemporary artwork explores themes of the African diaspora, Afrofuturism, multiculturalism, and globalisation, reflecting the complexity and interconnectedness of identity.

At night, visitors were able to see stunning projections against the museum architecture with vibrant geometric African patterns known as ‘Projection of Harmony,’ created by the renowned South African artist, Dr. Esther Mahlangu.

The Kings and Queens of Africa: Forms and Figures of Power catalogue is available in Arabic, English, and French at the museum’s boutique.

Created by an exceptional agreement between the governments of Abu Dhabi and France, Louvre Abu Dhabi was designed by Jean Nouvel and opened on Saadiyat Island in November 2017. The museum is inspired by traditional Islamic architecture, and its monumental dome creates a rain of light effect and a unique social space that brings people together.

Louvre Abu Dhabi celebrates the universal creativity of mankind and invites audiences to see humanity in a new light. Through its innovative curatorial approach, the museum focuses on building understanding across cultures: through stories of human creativity that transcend civilisations, geographies, and times.

The museum’s growing collection is unparalleled in the region and spans thousands of years of human history, including prehistoric tools, artefacts, religious texts, iconic paintings, and contemporary artworks. The permanent collection is supplemented by rotating loans from 19 French partner institutions and regional and international museums.

Louvre Abu Dhabi is a testing ground for new ideas in a globalized world and champions new generations of cultural leaders. Its international exhibitions, programming, and Children’s Museum are inclusive platforms that connect communities and offer enjoyment for all.

ABOUT MUSÉE DU QUAI BRANLY

The musée du quai Branly - Jacques Chirac is dedicated to the arts and civilisations of Africa, Asia, Oceania and the Americas. Designed by the architect Jean Nouvel, the building has become an iconic signature of Paris’ heritage, just a stone’s throw from the Eiffel Tower. Since its opening in 2006, the museum welcomes some 1.3 million visitors from all continents every year.

With 370,000 objects, 700,000 images, and over 200,000 reference works, its collection is one of the largest in the world and includes many masterpieces. A testament to human genius and the life of societies, these pieces are of major cultural and scientific interest. The many scientific, cultural and technical activities run by the establishment in partnership with the countries its collections originate from contribute to the study, conservation and circulation of works, thus encouraging the spread of knowledge to a broad audience, both in France and internationally. At the same time, a rich and multi-annual programme allows visitors to discover or add to their knowledge of non-European arts and societies.

Permanent and temporary exhibitions, concerts, performances, readings and conferences all play their part in making the musée du quai Branly – Jacques Chirac a living forum for culture where cultures meet every day in dialogue.

For more information about musée du quai Branly, please visit here.

ABOUT FRANCE MUSÉUMS

Following the intergovernmental agreement between France and the Emirates of Abu Dhabi signed in 2007, France Muséums, a cultural consulting and engineering agency, was created to work towards the creation of Louvre Abu Dhabi and support the project in all its dimensions (strategic, scientific, cultural, building, human resources).

Since the opening of the UAE museum in 2017, France Muséums continues to support Louvre Abu Dhabi in four main fields of activity: the management and coordination of loans from French museums for the permanent galleries of the museum, the organisation and production of international exhibitions, training of teams and a wide range of consultancy and auditing assignments in all areas of museum management.

France Muséums mobilises its teams based in Paris and Abu Dhabi and a network of 18 major French cultural institutions and museum partners: Musée du Louvre, Centre national d’art et de culture – Georges Pompidou, Musées d’Orsay et de l’Orangerie, Bibliothèque nationale de France, Musée du quai Branly-Jacques Chirac, Réunion des Musées Nationaux et du Grand Palais (RMN-GP), Château de Versailles, Musée national des arts asiatiques-Guimet, Musée de Cluny – musée national du Moyen-Âge, École du Louvre, Musée des Arts Décoratifs (MAD), Musée d’Archéologie nationale – Saint-Germain en Laye, Musée Rodin, Domaine national de Chambord, OPPIC (Opérateur du patrimoine et des projets immobiliers de la culture), Musée de l’Armée, Institut National du Patrimoine and Centre de Recherche et de Restauration des Musées de France (C2RMF).

For more information about France Muséums, please visit the site here.

About HONOR

HONOR is a leading global provider of smart devices. It is dedicated to becoming a global iconic technology brand and creating a new intelligent world for everyone through its powerful products and services. With an unwavering focus on R&D, it is committed to developing technology that empowers people around the globe to go beyond, giving them the freedom to achieve and do more. Offering a range of high-quality smartphones, tablets, laptops, and wearables to suit every budget, HONOR’s portfolio of innovative, premium, and reliable products enables people to become a better version of themselves.  

About Valrhona

Valrhona has been a partner to flavor professionals since 1922 and a pioneer in setting the standard in the world of chocolate. Today, it defines itself as a company whose mission - “together, let’s do good things with good food” - expresses the strength of its commitment. Together with its colleagues, chefs and cocoa growers, Valrhona imagines the best of chocolate to create a fair and sustainable cocoa industry and inspire gastronomy that tastes good, looks good, and does good.

Every day, Valrhona is driven by a determination to build direct, long-term relationships with producers, seek out chocolate’s next innovation, and share expertise. Valrhona works with chefs to support skills and craftsmanship, guiding them on their quest for a unique identity by constantly pushing back creativity’s boundaries.

In January 2020, Valrhona became a B Corporation®. The company is proud to have been awarded this demanding label for the second time in January 2024. It rewards the world’s most ethically conscious companies, all of which combine economic performance with social and environmental responsibility. This distinction is a recognition of “Live Long”, the company’s sustainable development strategy shaped by our desire to co-construct a model that would have a positive impact on producers, employees, flavor professionals, and everyone who loves chocolate.

Choosing Valrhona means making a commitment to ethical chocolate. 100% of our cocoa beans are traced back to our producers, so you know exactly where they come from, who harvested them, and that they were produced in the right conditions. Choosing Valrhona means choosing chocolate that respects people and the planet.

For more information about Valrhona, please visit here.

ABOUT THE DEPARTMENT OF CULTURE AND TOURISM – ABU DHABI

The Department of Culture and Tourism–Abu Dhabi (DCT Abu Dhabi) drives the sustainable growth of Abu Dhabi’s culture and tourism sectors and its creative industries, fuels economic progress and helps achieve Abu Dhabi’s wider global ambitions. By working in partnership with the organisations that define the emirate’s position as a leading international destination, DCT Abu Dhabi strives to unite the ecosystem around a shared vision of the emirate’s potential, coordinate effort and investment, deliver innovative solutions, and use the best tools, policies, and systems to support the culture and tourism industries.

DCT Abu Dhabi’s vision is defined by the emirate’s people, heritage, and landscape. We work to enhance Abu Dhabi’s status as a place of authenticity, innovation, and unparalleled experiences, represented by its living traditions of hospitality, pioneering initiatives, and creative thought.

ABOUT SAADIYAT CULTURAL DISTRICT

Home to Louvre Abu Dhabi, Berklee Abu Dhabi, Manarat Al Saadiyat, Abrahamic Family House and the soon-to-open Zayed National Museum, teamLab Phenomena Abu Dhabi, Guggenheim Abu Dhabi and Natural History Museum Abu Dhabi, Saadiyat Cultural District is one of the greatest concentrations of cultural institutions.

Saadiyat Cultural District is a global platform, emanating from a rich cultural heritage, celebrating traditions, and advancing equitable culture. It is an embodiment of empowerment, showcasing museums, collections, and narratives that support the region’s heritage while promoting a diverse global cultural landscape.

Saadiyat Cultural District is a testament to Abu Dhabi's commitment to preserving heritage while embracing a forward-looking vision. The District invites the world to engage with diverse cultures, fostering dialogue exchange, and offers a global cultural space that supports the region and the global South.

For more information about the exhibition and others, please visit here. The museum can also be found on YouTube, X, Instagram, and Facebook.

uzomah ugwu 5/20/25 uzomah ugwu 5/20/25

Daniel Kukla: Thanatosis (Playing Dead)

(Gowanus, Brooklyn, NY)— The Empty Circle presents Thanatosis (Playing Dead), a solo exhibition by multidisciplinary artist Daniel Kukla, marking his second exhibition with the gallery. The show brings together recent photographic and sculptural works that explore the fragile tension between preservation and loss, examining how aesthetic, scientific, and museological practices attempt to contain nature's transience. Informed by Kukla's background in biology, the exhibition reflects his ongoing engagement with the visual strategies used to capture, classify, and arrest natural phenomena.

Rooted in fieldwork and archival research, Kukla’s practice considers the archive, the specimen, and the image as charged sites where systems of observation collide with acts of disappearance. Images of extinct specimens and archival traces, made within a natural history collection, encapsulate this dynamic: remnants that mark presence through absence. This conceptual tension recurs throughout the exhibition, where the aesthetics of containment—pins, specimen cards, and photographic stillness—are interrogated for their complicity in both revelation and erasure.

In several camera-less photographic works, Kukla pierces and folds the paper, embedding fragments of black coral and burning holes through photographs. Photogram moiré patterns and marbling techniques introduce additional visual ruptures, destabilizing the image plane and inviting viewers to navigate an unstable field. A sculptural work made of marbled hog intestine, once used in preservation practices, confronts the viewer with both visceral materiality and ornamental beauty, embodying the exhibition’s central inquiry: How do we hold what is always slipping away?

Installation view: Daniel Kukla: Thanatosis (Playing Dead), The Empty Circle Gallery, New York, 2025.

A cyanotype exposed on a found blanket using stones as masks extends Kukla's exploration of elemental processes. The resulting image captures the environment’s touch not through depiction, but through direct impression, registering presence by way of absence. Nearby, a self-portrait shrouded in black velvet and cradling the skull of an endangered Siberian tiger offers a meditation on visibility and authority. The figure is nearly invisible, subsumed beneath fabric while the relic gleams with taxonomic clarity, complicating hierarchies between subject and object.

Throughout the exhibition, paper marbling recurs as both medium and metaphor. Once used to embellish scientific folios, it becomes a resistance to fixed classification, its fluid, non-repeating forms standing in contrast to the rigidity of Victorian damask patterns etched onto butterfly specimens. This juxtaposition merges scientific display with decorative imperialism. Here, beauty and taxonomy are historically entangled, exposing the aesthetics of power embedded in collection practices.

Installation view: Daniel Kukla: Thanatosis (Playing Dead), The Empty Circle Gallery, New York, 2025.

Kukla crafts a visual language centered on fragility, interference, and the impossibility of preservation without transformation. Folding, burning, piercing, and painting are not only formal gestures, but interpretive tactics echoing his belief that attempts to hold on to what is in flux inevitably leave their own marks. Rather than seek restoration, Thanatosis (Playing Dead) acknowledges the layered consequences of loss, offering a quiet meditation on what remains and what refuses to be contained.

About the Artist

Daniel Kukla (b. 1983) is a visual artist whose work spans installation, sculpture, video, and image-making. Kukla's work has been exhibited at Aperture Foundation, The International Center of Photography, The National Art Gallery of the Bahamas, RISD Museum of Art, Masin Museo de Art de Sinaloa, Williams College Museum of Art, among others. His work has been featured in the New Yorker Magazine, The New York Times, Time Magazine, Wall Street Journal, Wallpaper Magazine, Juxtapoz, Granta Magazine, Guernica Magazine, The Washington Post, and others. Kukla is a graduate of the International Center of Photography’s program in Documentary Photography and Photojournalism. Prior to his photographic education, he attended the University of Toronto and received an Honours Bachelors of Science in Biology and Evolutionary Ecology.

About The Empty Circle

The Empty Circle, located at 499 3rd Ave in Gowanus, Brooklyn, is a contemporary art gallery dedicated to showcasing emerging artists in their first solo exhibitions in New York City. Focused on fostering creativity, conversation, and bold experimentation, the gallery aims to be a cornerstone of the vibrant Gowanus art scene.

The exhibition opened on April 26 of this year and had an opening reception on the same day. The exhibition will close on May 31, 2025. For more information about this exhibition and others at The Empty Circle, please visit their site here; the gallery can also be found on Instagram here. The magazine did an interview with Daniel which can be found here.

uzomah ugwu 5/17/25 uzomah ugwu 5/17/25

Tarek Atoui Improvisation in 10 Days

Exhibition view, Tarek Atoui “Improvisation in 10 Days” Pirelli HangarBicocca, Milan, 2025 Courtesy the artist and Pirelli HangarBicocca, Milan Photo Rasa Juskeviciute

Tarek Atoui Improvisation in 10 Days Curated by Lucia Aspesi, opened on Wednesday, February 5, 2025 there was a Press preview on Tuesday, February 4, 2025 the exhibition will run until July 20, 2025

From February 6 to July 20, 2025, Pirelli HangarBicocca will present "Improvisation in 10 Days", the first solo exhibition in Italy by artist and electro-acoustic composer Tarek Atoui. Focusing on sound, his research expands on the acoustic medium provoking physical and mental responses in the public, stimulating activities of perception, experience and knowledge. Through installations, complex acoustic environments, and collaborative performances, Tarek Atoui experiments around the concept of listening, and pursues an artistic research that originates from different geographical, historical, and social contexts.

Tarek Atoui *Waters' Witness* (detail), 2020-23 Exhibition view, Kunsthaus Bregenz, 2024 Courtesy the artist Photo: Agota Lukyte © Kunsthaus Bregenz, 2024

Known for his distinctive approach to music, Tarek Atoui (Beirut, Lebanon, 1980; lives and works in Paris) investigates the acoustic properties of elements such as water, air, stone, and bronze and the ways in which they absorb sound and return it with unexpected nuances. This process initiates forms of aggregation and curiosity in the visitors, who are asked to play an active, participatory role.

The sonic environments created by the ensemble of the works present in the space suggest possible\ listening experiences and stimulate non-traditional learning processes.

Tarek Atoui The Rain, *Rotating String Drum*, 2023 (detail) Mixed media installation Installation view, Art Sonje Center, Seoul, 2023 Courtesy the artist, Vitamin Creative Space © Ahina

After an education in music, Atoui began by exploring the properties of sound through performance, and later expanded his research into the spatiality of objects in relation to the artistic context. Throughout his career, he has collaborated with composers and artisans from various countries to invent and produce instruments with a strong sculptural imprint, combining a wide range of materials and skills. Using electronic devices and software, the artist reflects on contemporary social and political realities, revealing the importance of music and new technologies as dimensions of expression and identity. Educational values and social relations are constitutive aspects of Atoui's practice, which often involves collaborations with various local communities and invites visitors to interact and experience his multi-sensory environments.

"Improvisation in 10 Days", curated by Lucia Aspesi, is the title of Tarek Atoui's exhibition. "In Milan, my proposal is an homage to improvisation", explains the artist. Borrowing a specific term from the lexicon of music, Atoui explores the potential of composition in space, bringing the material, sculptural, architectural and relational qualities of the works into dialogue with the immaterial nature of sound and its reverberation in bodies and things. Using the Shed as a large blank canvas, the artist rearranges and recomposes works from one of his previous exhibitions, starting from the identity of the space (a place of production) and the time coordinates (the days on which the artist will set up the exhibition) and using them to "improvise" movements, harmonies, and tunings to create a collective experience in a sonic environment. This is the first time that Atoui has conceived an exhibition as an actual device capable of evolving and materializing over time in a given situation, creating a dynamic relationship between space, instruments, and people. The true potential of the project lies in its "dynamic" status, in its openness to chance.

Tarek Atoui *Souffle Continu*, 2024 Exhibition view, Kunsthaus Bregenz, 2024 Photo: Markus Tretter Courtesy the artist © Tarek Atoui, Kunsthaus Bregenz

As the artist explains, "There is no loop, there is no beginning and end in the sense of a musical composition or structure that starts and ends. There's a cycle that is always transforming, and a relationship between instruments that is always changing"

Tarek Atoui's works are conceived as constantly evolving projects that change over time and adapt to the different contexts in which they are presented. The artist is often inspired by past works that are reimagined, resulting in a different poetic experience and sensibility with each reworking. His research always begins with an acoustic paradigm that is experimented with through activities such as workshops with local communities of artisans, researchers, or musicians, and then leads to the production of sculptures and installations that invite a meditative and multi-sensory approach. In his work, sound takes on material qualities and, in addition to being heard, it can be transmitted and perceived through vibration, mechanical stress on a surface, or tactile experience. The exhibition presents three bodies of work, harmoniously displayed in space and in dialogue with natural light.

The first group of works, WITHIN (2013-ongoing), is one of the artist's longest running projects, stemming from a workshop Atoui designed and led with a community of deaf people. In these works, the artist searches for a method to perceive sound in a sensorial, visual, and performative dimension. Drawing on his background as an educator, he reflects on the act of listening and reinterprets musical sound as a language of learning. From this series of works, the exhibition includes the Souffle Continu group, consisting of Organ Within (2022), a sculpture that reinvents the traditional organ and its performative, spatial, and perceptual characteristics, and the more recent Wind House #1 and #2 (2023-24), two "wind rooms" accessible to visitors, who can experience through their bodies the sound produced by a flow of air compressed and shaped by the transparent structure. The second corpus, Waters' Witness (2020-23), stems from research conducted in collaboration with musician and composer Eric La Casa in various ports, including Athens, Abu Dhabi, Beirut, Istanbul, Porto, Sydney, and Singapore. Experimenting with different technologies such as underwater and environmental microphones, Atoui recorded the sounds of these non-places that were once the beating heart of cities. For the version at Pirelli HangarBicocca, the artist displays several marbles from the city of Athens, now used in the restoration of ancient Greek temples.

The Rain (2023-24), one of the artist's lesser-known bodies of work, is dedicated to rain. Characterized by sophisticated forms and materials such as wood, rope, and bronze, the work is inspired by traditional Korean drum-making techniques and the craft of ceramics and paper. Atoui explores multiple sound compositions through the use of technological devices associated with the four elements—earth, water, fire, and wind—in a process that transforms the cycle of energy into new instruments and stimulates different listening experiences. As the artist reveals, "The four elements here play a fundamental role, they are the performers, and they are, I would say, at the forefront of bringing this piece to life and making it come together".

Tarek Atoui Portrait Photo: Miro Kuzmanovic © Tarek Atoui, Kunsthaus Bregenz, 2024

The artist

Tarek Atoui has exhibited his work at many leading institutions, including Museo Nacional Thyssen- Bornemisza and TBA21 Thyssen-Bornemisza Art Contemporary, Madrid (the exhibition will open on February 18, 2025); Kunsthaus, Bregenz, S.M.A.K., Ghent (2024); Art Sonje Center, Seoul, Museum of Contemporary Art MCA, Sydney, Institut d'art contemporain - Villeurbanne/Rhône-Alpes (2023); The Contemporary Austin, Texas, FLAG Art Foundation, New York, Museo Serralves, Porto, MUDAM, Luxembourg (2022); Fridericianum, Kassel (2020); NTU Centre for Contemporary Art Singapore, Kunstenfestivaldesarts, Brussels (2017); Bergen Assembly (2016); Berkeley Art Museum, Pacific Film Archive (2015); Fondation Louis Vuitton, Paris (2014). In addition, Atoui has presented his performances at Sharjah Art Foundation (2020); Palazzo Grassi - Punta della Dogana - Fondazione Pinault, Venice (2019); Para Site, Hong Kong; Museo d'Arte Contemporanea Castello di Rivoli, Turin (2017); Tate Modern, London (2016); Serpentine Gallery, London (2012); Performa 11, New York (2011).

His major group exhibitions include: Taipei Biennial (2023); Istanbul Biennial (2022); Bourse de Commerce - Pinault Collection, Paris, Gwangju Biennial (2021); the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, Venice Biennale, Schirn Kunsthalle, Frankfurt (2019); Garage Museum of Contemporary Art, Moscow (2018); Fondazione Prada, Ca' Corner della Regina, Venice (2014); documenta, Kassel (2012); New Museum of Contemporary Art, New York, the Mediacity Biennial, Seoul, Haus Der Kunst, Munich (2010); Sharjah Biennial (2009).

Catalog

The exhibition is accompanied by a monograph published by Marsilio Editori. Through a poetic visual narrative, the volume will present the exhibition at Pirelli HangarBicocca and the artist's previous solo exhibitions at three international institutions: Kunsthaus Bregenz, S.M.A.K Gent (2024), and Institut d'art contemporain—Villeurbanne/Rhône-Alpes (2023). The book, designed by Goda Budvytyte, is the result of a collaboration between these four European institutions and will include a critical essay by curator Ute Meta Bauer that examines Atoui's practice. In addition to the catalog, it will be realized a vinyl set featuring recordings of Atoui's instruments activated by a number of international musicians, including Jad Atuoi, Nicolas Becker, Laure Boer, Gobu Drab, Susanna Gartmayer, Charbel Haber, Mazen Kerbaj, Eric La Casa, Boris Shershenkov, DJ Snif, and Ziúr.

Pirelli HangarBicocca

Pirelli HangarBicocca is a non-profit foundation dedicated to producing and promoting contemporary art. It was conceived and is supported by Pirelli. Established in 2004, Pirelli HangarBicocca has become a benchmark institution for the international art community, local public and region. It is a museum that is free of charge, accessible and open, and a place for experimentation, research and dissemination, where art is a point of reflection on the most topical themes of contemporary culture and society.

It caters to a broad and diverse public with a programme of major solo exhibitions by both Italian and international artists, a multi-disciplinary program of accompanying events and in-depth discussions, theoretical and informational publications, and educational courses. A team of museum facilitators is on hand at all times to help the public connect with the art. Vicente Todolí has been the foundation’s artistic director since 2012.

Situated in a former industrial building, once a locomotive manufacturing facility, Pirelli HangarBicocca occupies 15,000 square metres, making it one of the largest single-level exhibition spaces in Europe. This vast area comprises the Shed and Navate spaces, which are used for temporary exhibitions, and the permanent display of Anselm Kiefer’s The Seven Heavenly Palaces 2004-2015. This monumental installation with seven reinforced concrete towers has become one of the most iconic works in Milan. While since 2010 La Sequenza (1971-1981), a work by sculptor Fausto Melotti, has been located in the outdoor garden at the entrance of Pirelli HangarBicocca.

The building also houses a number of services for the public: a spacious entrance with reception area, facilities for educational activities, space for conferences and meetings, bookshop and bistro with a charming outdoor area.

For more information about this exhibition and others at Pirelli HangarBicocca please visit their site here. Pirelli can also be found on Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, Spotify, and Pinterest.

uzomah ugwu 5/12/25 uzomah ugwu 5/12/25

Leiko Ikemura: Talk to the sky, seeking light

“The uncertainty of our time brings many questions, but also possibilities. The female figures initiate new life, holding it in their arms and in their body as a part of themselves”

Leiko Ikemura *Genesis, 2015* Tempera on jute 190.2 x 290.2 x 6.4 cm 74 7/8 x 114 1/4 x 2 1/2 in © Leiko Ikemura, Courtesy Lisson Gallery

Lisson is pleased to host Leiko Ikemura’s first exhibition with the gallery, featuring many of the themes present in her work over the past 30 years, including a wide range of media from paintings in tempera to bronze figures and glass forms. The installation revolves around a central, three-and-a-half metre rabbit/woman figure, known as Usagi Janus (2025). This hand-sculpted and hand-patinated, protective spirit – part-bunny, part-bodhisattva of compassion – provides respite from the outside world in her conical-shaped bodily enclosure, the tiny punctures in her mothering skirt creating an internal universe of projected stars. The giant’s two faces – one staring forward, the other looking backwards – refer to the many alter egos and avatars that appear throughout Ikemura’s oeuvre, some of which can be seen in the smaller bronze pieces and crystal heads. The Janus-faced figure represents less of an either/or dialectic than a it does state of in-betweenness, one she seeks to explore through her anthropomorphic creatures and objects, or else in the spaces that dwell neither in light nor dark, neither in good nor evil, but rather in a twilit dusk and a zone of uncertainty.

Leiko Ikemura *Sleep, 2010/2024* Patinated bronze 41.9 x 79.1 x 52.4 cm 16 1/2 x 31 1/8 x 20 5/8 in © Leiko Ikemura, Courtesy Lisson Gallery

The Usagi is a recurring motif that Ikemura recalls from a childhood game to locate the shadowy features of a rabbit on the surface of the moon, but first appeared as a character in her practice following the Tōhoku earthquake and associated Fukushima nuclear accident of 2011. Witnessing reports from afar of devastation for both the Japanese population and its natural habitats, including subsequent birth defects in animals, the artist envisaged this mythical Usagi acting both as a messenger for the kami (gods) and as a container for universal suffering, resilience and renewal. A precursor can be seen in a smaller-scale bronze from 1990, titled Hasen-Frau or Hare-Woman, revealing how Ikemura’s creatures have endured and survived many decades, while the German title points to the decision, relatively early on in her career, to settle and make work in Europe.

Exhibition view of ‘Leiko Ikemura: Talk to the sky, seeking light’ at Lisson Gallery, New York, 1 May – 1 August 2025 © Leiko Ikemura, Courtesy Lisson Gallery

Framing the shrine-like form of Usagi Janus is a trio of fantastical landscapes depicting a bucolic, forest scene, which might also depict the very origins of life on our planet. Among the mountainsides and wooded pastures are reclining figures or hidden faces, either fused indelibly with the land or haunting its borders through skeletal or skull-like apparitions. In one of Ikemura’s poems, entitled Transfiguration, she writes: “I’ve seen it / everything changes / people turn into rocks / into mountains / into oceans.” A figure in repose is also captured vividly in Sleeping Figure in Red (1997/2012), in which a young female is face down, with head in hands, perhaps in distress or, as the title suggests, at rest.

Ikemura’s recurring cast of young girls can be found variously recumbent, strident, floating, crying, laughing. Here a duo of Brave Girls(2022), one in pink with a cat, one in orange with a wedding veil, flank a third, Pièta in Cherry Red (2024), also cradling a cat or baby, with a pair of hypnotizing eyes blazing back at the viewer. At once powerful and confrontational, but also vulnerable and naive, Ikemura again finds a subtler path between these extremes for her fearsome adolescents, the pigments soaking through and infusing the raw jute canvas with their glowing, glowering presence. Whether as psychological portraits of moods or alternate, hybrid beings, these singular objects by Ikemura amount to an impressive act of world building and longevity.

Leiko Ikemura *Cat, 2020* Cast glass 20 x 27 x 17 cm 7 7/8 x 10 5/8 x 6 3/4 in © Leiko Ikemura, Courtesy Lisson Gallery

About the artist

Since the 1980s, Leiko Ikemura has explored themes of transition, cross-culturalism, collective responsibility, and sexuality, emancipating the feminine body from its position in history and mainstream contemporary culture by challenging artistic conventions and disrupting social norms. The internationally recognized artist seamlessly shifts between luminous, otherworldly and often monumental oil paintings, introspective drawings and watercolours, glazed terracotta sculptures, glass and ceramics.

Focusing on the transient innocence of childhood, Ikemura’s female spirits are defiant and independent, yet fragile and ethereal, almost ghost-like, bestowing the spirits with a composite power to exist within multiple worlds, between dreaming and waking states. Fusing Eastern and Western art – conceiving a realm inspired by East Asian sansuiga painting traditions, old Japanese masters, surrealism, post-war abstraction, and the revival of figurative painting in the 1980s – Ikemura’s spiritual works are imbued with a raw and tender presence that highlights the intimate relationship between human, animal, plant, mineral forms, and cosmology.

Leiko Ikemura (イケムラレイコ, 池村玲子, Ikemura Reiko) was born in Tsu, Mie Prefecture, Japan and is based in Berlin. She studied at the Osaka University of Foreign Studies from 1970–1972, followed by the Escuela Superior de Bellas Artes de Santa Isabel de Hungría, Seville, Spain from 1973–1978. In 1979, Ikemura moved to Zurich to pursue a career as an artist. In 1991, Ikemura became a professor of painting at the Universität der Künste in Berlin. Since 2014, she has held a professorship at the Joshibi University of Art and Design near Tokyo.

A major survey exhibition by Leiko Ikemura, ‘Motherscapes’, takes place at the Albertina, Vienna, Austria November 21 – February 8, 2026. She has exhibited in numerous solo exhibitions internationally, including Kunsthalle Emden, Germany (2024-25) HEREDIUM in South Korea (2024), Georg Kolbe Museum Berlin (2023), Feuerle Collection, Berlin (2023), Museum de Fundatie, Zwolle, Netherlands (2023), Museo de Arte de Zapopan, Guadalajara, Mexico (2023), Being Art Museum, Shanghai (2023), Museum für Asiatische Kunst, Berlin (2022 & 2012), Sainsbury Centre for Visual Arts, Norwich (2021), CAC La Ciutat de les Arts i les Ciències Valencia (2021), Stiftung St. Matthäus, Berlin (2020), The National Art Center, Tokyo (2019), Kunstmuseum Basel (2019 & 1987), and Nordiska Akvarellmuseet Skarhamn (2019).

About Lisson Gallery

Lisson Gallery is one of the most influential and longest-running international contemporary art galleries in the world. Today the gallery supports and promotes the work of more than 70 international artists across spaces in London, New York, Los Angeles, Shanghai and Beijing. Established in 1967 by Nicholas Logsdail, Lisson Gallery pioneered the early careers of important Minimal and Conceptual artists such as Art & Language, Carl Andre, Daniel Buren, Donald Judd, John Latham, Sol LeWitt, Richard Long and Robert Ryman among many others. It still works with many of these artists and others of that generation, from Carmen Herrera and Olga de Amaral to Hélio Oiticica and Lee Ufan. In its second decade the gallery introduced significant British sculptors to the public for the first time, including Tony Cragg, Richard Deacon, Anish Kapoor, Shirazeh Houshiary and Julian Opie. Since 2000, the gallery has gone on to represent many more leading international artists such as Marina Abramović, Ai Weiwei, John Akomfrah, Liu Xiaodong, Otobong Nkanga, Pedro Reyes, Sean Scully, Hiroshi Sugimoto and Wael Shawky. It is also responsible for raising the international profile of a younger generation of artists including Dana Awartani, Cory Arcangel, Garrett Bradley, Ryan Gander, Josh Kline, Hugh Hayden, Haroon Mirza, Laure Prouvost and Cheyney Thompson.

The exhibition opened on May 1 and will be on view until August 1, 2025, at the NYC location at 508 West 24th Street. For more information about this exhibition and others, please visit the Lisson Gallery here. The gallery can also be found on Facebook, YouTube, and Instagram.

uzomah ugwu 5/11/25 uzomah ugwu 5/11/25

Carmen Herrera: The Paris Years 1948 –1953

From 1948 to 1953, Carmen Herrera lived in Paris, immersing herself in the city’s dynamic postwar artistic community while frequently traveling to New York and Havana. This period marked a decisive shift in her practice, as she moved from biomorphic forms and fevered, gestural compositions to the rigorous geometric abstraction that would define her career for the next seven decades. A new exhibition at Lisson New York, Carmen Herrera: The Paris Years, 1948 - 1953—the most comprehensive presentation of her work from this period to-date— examines a young artist deep in experimentation, subsuming the seismic influences of many colliding midcentury art movements, in order to develop her own breakthrough language of painting.

Carmen Herrera Conquete de l'air, 1950 Acrylic on canvas 75.9 x 117.2 x 2.2 cm 29 7/8 x 46 1/8 x 7/8 in © Carmen Herrera, Courtesy Lisson Gallery

Herrera’s years in Paris were a time of creative freedom and intellectual exchange, particularly through her participation in exhibitions such as the Salon des Réalités Nouvelles, where she exhibited alongside other prominent figures such as Theo van Doesburg, Max Bill, and Piet Mondrian, as well as younger artists associated with Venezuela’s Los Disidentes, Brazil’s Concretists, and Argentina’s Grupo Madi. The city exposed her to key modernist movements such as Bauhaus and Russian Suprematism, which deeply influenced the shift toward her own uniquely minimal language. During her time in Paris, Herrera began employing shaped canvases while also becoming a pioneer in solvent-based acrylics, a material still novel in postwar Europe. Notably, an important work from this period, Iberic (1949), is currently the oldest work in the permanent collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art to use this particular medium, a fact that was discovered through scientific analysis by the museum in 2021.

Key works on view include Way (1950), an early example of the hard-edged, dichromatic abstraction that would later become her signature. The painting’s four symmetrical ochre-colored triangles against a black background prefigure later masterpieces such as Black and White (1952) in the permanent collection of the Museum of Modern Art. Another major work from this period, Thrust (1950), exemplifies Herrera’s precision and spatial tension, featuring a striking white dart slashing across a cobalt blue ground. The work, both in its palette and bold linear composition, foreshadows Herrera’s future direction while also underscoring her approach to painting as object. This idea is further emphasized by the use of an artist-made frame, which was intended to prevent a buyer from re-framing the work. This concept evolves in subsequent pieces where she allowed her compositions to wrap about the edges, transforming them into fully three-dimensional forms.

Exhibition view of ‘Carmen Herrera: The Paris Years, 1948 – 1953’ at Lisson Gallery, New York, 1 May – 1 August 2025 © Carmen Herrera, Courtesy Lisson Gallery

Herrera’s Habana Series marks a pivotal moment in the artist’s development, showcasing her experimentation with gestural abstraction and Informalism during a brief stay in New York in 1950, as argued by Roxane Ilias in her essay, “Carmen Herrera and the Paris School.” Created in response to transnational developments in Abstract Expressionism, these works contrast with the structured geometric compositions of her Paris paintings. Like others from this series, Conquete de l'air (1950) features spontaneous brushstrokes, unruly lines, amorphous forms, and vibrant colors applied without Herrera’s typical preparatory sketches. Modest in scale, the paintings emphasize a tactile graphic quality with thick, rough surfaces. Named after her first solo exhibition at Havana’s Lyceum and Lawn Tennis Club (December 1950 - January 1951), the series reflects Herrera’s synthesis of Tachisme and Expressionism, blending the gestural techniques of Hans Hartung with those of Jackson Pollock.

The exhibition also features Early Dynasty (1953), the largest painting from this period, which demonstrates Herrera’s ambition and evolving style. In this work, she layers multiple colors and geometric forms, referencing motifs from earlier paintings to create a composition in constant motion. The deep blue, mushroom-like form at the top left echoes a similar shape in other canvasses from this period including Logique Coloree No. 5 (1949) and The King in Jail, 1948 both on view in this exhibition. This tendency to revisit and refine geometric forms would become a hallmark of her later work, reinforcing her relentless pursuit of visual clarity and balance.

Carmen Herrera *Way, 1950* Acrylic on Burlap 99.4 x 84.1 x 2.9 cm 39 1/8 x 33 1/8 x 1 1/8 in © Carmen Herrera, Courtesy Lisson Gallery

Herrera’s move back to New York in September 1953 presented challenges, as the art world’s gender and racial biases delayed her recognition. However, the radical developments of her Paris period laid the foundation for the rigorously precise, minimalist works that would define her later career. This exhibition builds on recent institutional recognition of Herrera’s artistic contributions during this period, including her inclusion in Women in Abstraction (Centre Pompidou, 2021–22) and Americans in Paris (Grey Art Museum, 2024). It also precedes Both Sides of the Line: Carmen Herrera and Leon Polk Smith, a major touring museum show curated by Dana Miller, who also curated Carmen Herrera: Lines of Sight at the Whitney Museum of American Art in 2016.

About the artist

Carmen Herrera was born in Havana, Cuba in 1915. She moved frequently between France and Cuba throughout the 1930s and 1940s; having started studying architecture at the Universidad de La Habana, Havana (1938–39), she trained at the Art Students League, New York (1942– 43), before exhibiting five times at the Salon des Réalités Nouvelles, Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris, France (1949–53). She settled in New York in 1954, where she lived and worked until her death in 2022. Herrera’s work was the subject of a large-scale survey, Carmen Herrera: Lines of Sight, at the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York (2016), which travelled to the Wexner Center for the Arts, Columbus (2017) and Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen (K20), Düsseldorf (2017–2018). Herrera premiered her Estructuras Monumentales, massive aluminium structures largely conceived in the 1960s and 1970s, at City Hall Park in New York City in 2019, organised by the Public Art Fund. Herrera’s large-scale mural, Verde, que te quiero verde (2020) was unveiled at the Blanton Museum of Art in Austin in May of 2023 as part of the museum’s grounds redesign. In March of 2024, an exhibition focusing on the last fifteen years Herrera's output opened at SITE Santa Fe, NM. Herrera's work was featured in Adriano Pedrosa's exhibition Straniere Ovunque - Foreigners Everywhere at the 60th International Art Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia, 20 April - 24 November, 2024.

Herrera’s work is in numerous public and private collections including the National Gallery of Art, Washington DC; the Museum of Modern Art, New York; the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; the Tate Collection, London; Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen (K20), Düsseldorf; the Guggenheim Abu Dhabi; El Museo del Barrio, New York; the Hirshhorn Museum, Washington DC; the Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington DC; the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis; the Museum of Fine Arts Boston; the Pérez Art Museum, Miami; Crystal Bridges Museum of Art, Bentonville; the Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland; the Blanton Museum of Art, Austin; and the Morgan Library & Museum, New York.

About Lisson Gallery

The exhibition opened on May 1 and will be on view until August 1, 2025, at the NYC location at 508 West 24th Street. The opening was held on May 1st and was held from 6 – 8 pm. For more information about this exhibition and others, please visit the Lisson Gallery here. The gallery can also be found on Facebook, YouTube, and Instagram.

uzomah ugwu 5/10/25 uzomah ugwu 5/10/25

Yukinori Yanagi: ICARUS

Yukinori Yanag *The World Flag Ant Farm,* 1990 Ants, colored sand, plastic boxes, plastic tubes, plastic pipes, monitors 180 boxes, 24 x 30 cm (each) Installation view, Benesse House Museum, Naoshima, Kagawa, Japan, 2008 Photo YANAGI STUDIO Collection of Benesse Holdings, Inc., Okayama

ICARUS opened on March 27 and will be on view until July 27, 2025, at Pirelli HangarBicocca they are pleased to present "ICARUS", the first major anthological exhibition in Europe dedicated to the art of Yukinori Yanagi, with a wide selection of key works from the 1990s and 2000s, as well as more recent works. Visitors will experience the unpredictable trajectories created by the Japanese artist. Yanagi will recontextualize some of his most significant and monumental installations in the former industrial spaces of Pirelli HangarBicocca, offering insights that are more relevant than ever on issues of nationalism, governance mechanisms, and the paradoxical aspects of contemporary societies.

Yukinori Yanagi (Fukuoka, 1959) lives and works on the Japanese island of Momoshima, far from the public eye, despite being one of the most influential contemporary Japanese artists. In 1993, he was invited to his first international exhibition, the 45th Venice Biennale, where he presented hundred eighty colored sand flags that crumbled day by day due to the unremitting work of thousands of live ants. Now, after thirty-two years, Yanagi returns to Italy with a major exhibition.

Known for exploring complex issues of sovereignty, globalization, and borders through large-scale, site-specific installations, the artist often delves into Japanese history whilst confronting universal themes of nationalism, the impact of modernization and technology on society. His modus operandi evokes the intricate systems of symbolic imagery and preconceived notions of political and national oppression, challenging their immobility and dissolving them into organic forms that are inherently mutable.

Yukinori Yanagi Atomic Clouds over Ground Zero (Left) From the Ground, Hiroshima, 8:30 am, August 6, 1945 (Right) From the Sky, Hiroshima, 8:30 am, August 6, 1945 Cyanotype exposed by the sun of 8:30 am, August 6, 2024, 2024 Installation view, Pirelli HangarBicocca, Milan, 2025 ©YANAGI STUDIO Courtesy the artist and Pirelli HangarBicocca, Milan Photo Agostino Osio

From 1988 to 1990 Yanagi studied at the Yale University where he was a student of Vito Acconci and Frank Gehry and, in this period, he was struck by conceptual art. He then left the United States in the 2000s to return to Japan where he continued developing his artistic practice whilst maintaining "wandering as a permanent position" as a recurring idea. This paradox evokes a sense of constant movement and change – often suggested in his work by the employment of organic and living materials – at the same time, this is contrasted against the permanence and stability of fixed, seemingly unchanging symbolic images.

"ICARUS" is the title of Yukinori Yanagi's exhibition, curated by Vicente Todolí and Fiammetta Griccioli, which brings together a series of site-specific, immersive works that chronicle the artist's career in the Navate and Cubo spaces of Pirelli HangarBicocca. The title evokes the Greek myth of Icarus and Daedalus which serves as a cautionary message as well as an invitation to reflect upon human arrogance born from overconfidence in technology. By getting too close to the sun (which the artist understands as a metaphor for nuclear energy), Icarus becomes responsible for his own downfall. The exhibition narrative presents visitors with a constant duality, establishing a dialogue between past and present, destruction and rebirth, reality and fantasy, matter and symbolism, movement and permanence. The idea of transcending physical boundaries, represented by elements such as containers, barrels and other objects used in transportation systems, becomes a metaphor for global interconnectedness.

Yukinori Yanagi *Banzai Container,* 2025 (detail) Installation view, Pirelli HangarBicocca, Milan, 2025 ©YANAGI STUDIO Courtesy the artist and Pirelli HangarBicocca, Milan Photo Agostino Osio

Some of Yanagi's provocative multimedia works are inspired by pop icons that shaped the collective imagination and global consciousness of the 1960s. The characters of Godzilla and Ultraman, emblems that emerge from the fusion of popular culture and industry, appear in works such as Banzai Container (2025), on view in the Pirelli HangarBicocca exhibition. Yanagi remembers, “[When I was a child] I loved TV shows and movies with the special effects of the time, such as Ultra- Q, Ultraman and Godzilla. These shows dealt with issues such as nuclear radiation, environmental pollution, the right to self-defense, and discrimination, and they had a strong effect on my subconscious mind as a boy.” Another integral part of Yanagi’s work is the reference to major landmark events, such as the bombing of Hiroshima. The atomic bomb, which has left an indelible and tragic mark on the historical memory of Japan and the world, is recreated in the form of an iron replica entitled Absolute Dud (2007). In this material form, the bomb no longer has the potential to destroy, but is presented as a physical reminder of the consequences of war and the abuse of power in the name of progress.

Yukinori Yanagi *Project God-Zilla Onomichi U3*, 2017 Mixed media, scraps from a demolished house, mirrors, acrylic, video, sound Installation view, Nishigosho Prefectural Warehouse No.3, Hiroshima, Japan, 2017 Photo YANAGI STUDIO

The exhibition opened with the work Project God-zilla 2025 - The Revenant from “ El Mare Pacificum" (2025). The large eye of Godzilla, a monster created and empowered by nuclear energy, is projected amidst an accumulation of debris and discarded objects, pieces of steel, wood, machine parts and sandbags. Recalling the pop character from Japanese cinema, the work refers to the environmental impact caused using nuclear weapons, creating a post-apocalyptic scenario that evokes a sense of mass destruction and emphasizes the vulnerability of nature and humanity. This monumental work is in dialogue with Article 9 (1994), composed of several neon structures scattered in the exhibition space that switch on and off intermittently. Visitors are encouraged to assemble words, phrases, and fragments in Japanese, distinguished by a vivid red color, which, when correctly arranged, recreate the text of Article 9 of the Japanese Constitution. In this clause which aspires to international peace, the renunciation of war and the use of force as means of resolving disputes with other nations are declared absolute and perpetual.

Yukinori Yanagi *Icarus Container 2025,* 2025 (detail) Installation view, Pirelli HangarBicocca, Milan, 2025 ©YANAGI STUDIO Courtesy the artist and Pirelli HangarBicocca, Milan Photo Agostino Osio

The central space of the Navate is filled with the monumental labyrinth of Icarus Container 2025 (2025), composed of several container modules and connected to a tower positioned outside the building, allowing natural light to enter. Visitors will be able to walk through this labyrinth, where they will encounter verses from the renowned poet Yukio Mishima’s poem “Icarus” – taken from his autobiographical essay “Sun and Steel” (1968) – engraved on mirrors that create a constant play of reflections. Inspired by the ancient Greek myth of Daedalus and Icarus, like the title of the exhibition, the immersive experience explores the consequences of human hybris and obsession with technological progress, leaving visitors with a sense of disorientation.

Yukinori Yanagi *Hinomaru Illumination 2025,* 2025 Installation view, Pirelli HangarBicocca, Milan, 2025 ©YANAGI STUDIO Courtesy the artist and Pirelli HangarBicocca, Milan Photo Agostino Osio

The exhibition tour continues with Hinomaru Illumination 2025 (2025), which reproduces the Japanese flag in a neon installation reflected in a body of water. The symbol of hinomaru, which literally means “circle of the sun”, spreads out in the liquid. In this way, the artist once again introduces a dynamic, changing component with the aim of challenging the stability of the symbol itself.

Yukinori Yanagi *The World Flag Ant Farm 2025,* 2025 Installation view, Pirelli HangarBicocca, Milan, 2025 ©YANAGI STUDIO Courtesy the artist and Pirelli HangarBicocca, Milan Photo Agostino Osio

Finally, the Cubo hosts the well-known work The World Flag Ant Farm 2025 (2025), which received international recognition when it was awarded the “Aperto 93” prize at the 45th Venice Biennale. The work is composed of two hundred flags representing the 193 states recognized by the United Nations and 7 non-UN members such as Taiwan, Tibet, and Palestine. The flags are made of colored sand meticulously placed in transparent Plexiglas boxes. The boxes are connected by plastic tubes, in which thousands of ants create paths by carrying grains of sand from one box to another, slowly dissolving the borders and the flags themselves as symbols of national identity. The path of the ants ironically exposes the fragility of these symbols, transforming their static forms into an enormous, active “ant farm”, as the title of the work suggests.

The artist

Yukinori Yanagi has exhibited his work at many leading institutions, including Tsunagi Museum, Kumamoto (2019); Bank-ART 1929, Tokyo (2016); Inujima Art House Project, Okayama (2010); Inujima Seirensho Art Museum, Okayama (2008); Fukuoka Art Museum (2005); Hiroshima City Museum of Contemporary Art (2000); University Art Gallery, University of California, Irvine (1998); Chisenhale Gallery, London, Beaver College Art Gallery, Philadelphia, Fabric Workshop and Museum, Philadelphia (1997); Capp Street Project, San Francisco (1996); Queens Museum of Art, New York, Kirin Plaza Osaka, Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art, Hartford, University Art Museum, University of California at Santa Barbara (1995); Naoshima Contemporary Art Museum, Japan (1992); Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions – LACE (1991). His work has also been included in numerous group exhibitions, such as Setouchi Triennale, Japan (2022); Diriyah Contemporary Art Biennale, Saudi Arabia (2021); 21. Biennale of Sydney (2018); Yokohama Triennale, Japan (2017); Busan Biennale, South Korea (2016); Liverpool Biennial (2012); Fukuoka Triennale, Japan, Gwangju Biennale (2002); Whitney Biennial, New York (2000); Biennale de Lyon (1997); Asia-Pacific Triennial, Brisbane (1996); Nagoya International Biennial, Japan; Venice Biennale (1993).

Large-scale projects in Japan

Beginning in the 2000s, Yanagi began to distance himself from the market mechanisms that govern contemporary art, as he recalls “I became disturbed by the commercialization of contemporary art. […] I felt there was something insidious about the American economy, which was expanding rapidly while the gap between rich and poor grew wider, so I closed my studio in San Francisco and pulled out of the United States”. He then returned to Japan to devote himself to long-term, large-scalev projects on a number of islands south of the Japanese peninsula: his goal was to transform them entirely into works of art. The artist creates works that have a decisive, real impact on the society that receives them, distancing himself from the mechanisms of the art system and focusing on the needs of the context in which he works. As he explains, “the guiding concept is an encounter with the everyday lives of the island people, who live in a landscape that includes art as well as the traditional gods. The overall aim is a revitalization of the community.” The artist’s fascination with inaccessible and geographically remote areas had already led him to develop a site-specific project on Alcatraz Island, the famous U.S. prison off the coast of San Francisco, in 1996. There, Yanagi created several installations that explored the definition of boundaries and the understanding of space as a process of identity creation.

The artist has developed large-scale public art projects that aim to breathe new life into abandoned spaces. One of the most ambitious is the Inujima Seirensho Art Museum, a former copper refinery that the artist transformed into a museum powered by renewable energy in 2008. The building houses several of his permanent installations on Inujima, Okayama, an island that was otherwise destined to become a landfill of industrial waste.

In 2012, Yukinori Yanagi founded Art Base Momoshima, an art center on the small island of Momoshima in the middle of the Seto Inland Sea, where the artist currently resides. Here, he has renovated and transformed a former 1950s middle school and cinema into a contemporary art museum, exhibiting his works alongside those of other artists he admires.

Major project underway in Korea

In 2025, Yukinori Yanagi's project called the Anjwa-Do Project will be developed on the island of Anjwa, Korea. It involves the opening of a floating museum dedicated to the artist's work, designed by YANAGI + ART BASE, a collaborative team lead by Yanagi. Architecture and art come together in this project, which involves the creation of seven floating cubes of different sizes, representing both the islands of the Jeollanam-Do Province and the number of continents on Earth. The works, linked to the history of the Korean peninsula, will create a dreamlike and disorienting environment where space and time dissolve into reflections in the water.

Catalog

The exhibition is accompanied by a monograph published by Marsilio Editori. The volume explores the recurring themes that have shaped Yukinori Yanagi's career and delves deeper into the influences and evolution of his practice throughout his career. The volume includes essays by international scholars and critics, including curator Mami Kataoka and art historian Reiko Tomii, as well as a conversation between Yanagi and Vicente Todolí and Fiammetta Griccioli, curators of the exhibition at Pirelli HangarBicocca. The book will also contain for the first time an overview of the most ambitious architectural projects realized by the artist between 2008 until today. The works on display will also be accompanied by detailed fact sheets written by scholars and enriched with a selection of historical images.

Pirelli HangarBicocca

For more information about this exhibition and others at Pirelli HangarBicocca please visit their site here. Pirelli can also be found on Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, Spotify, and Pinterest.

uzomah ugwu 5/8/25 uzomah ugwu 5/8/25

Carolee Schneemann

Lisson Gallery is pleased to announce its first exhibition with Carolee Schneemann (1939–2019), one of the boldest and most influential artists of the twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, whose foundation has been represented by the gallery since October of last year. This inaugural show also marks the artist’s first solo exhibition in Los Angeles. Known for her groundbreaking and multidisciplinary practice, which spanned six decades, Schneemann challenged societal and artistic conventions by using her own body and diverse media to address issues of sexual expression, gender, politics, and war.

Carolee Schneemann *Pixels Escaping T.V*., 1987 Paint and crayon on paper 58.4 x 88.9 cm 23 x 35 in © Carolee Schneemann Foundation, Courtesy Lisson Gallery

The exhibition focuses on Schneemann’s work two decades into her career, centering on a unique multimedia installation engendered by a dream she had while visiting Los Angeles in the summer of 1985. In the dream, Schneemann envisioned round, rock-like shapes reminiscent of Monet’s Water Lillies, floating in the distance. The resulting piece, Video Rocks (1987), shown at Lisson for the first time in its entirety, consists of 180 discs, each roughly the size and shape of a cow dung pat, spread across the floor in a shallow mound. At the head of this mound, five video monitors have been arranged in a row. Each screen plays staggered filmed scenes that allude to the preceding sculptural landscape — footage of people and animals crossing the rocks. Building on the self-reflexive explorations of embodiment and personal narrative she had established in her early 8mm and 16mm films such as Fuses (1965), Plumb Line (1968–71) and Kitch’s Last Meal (1973–76), Video Rocks marks a pivotal moment in Schneemann’s practice. This immersive, multifaceted work was last exhibited in the United States nearly thirty years ago during her solo show Carolee Schneemann: Up to and Including Her Limits at the New Museum in New York.

Carolee Schneemann Untitled, 1981 Watercolor on paper Each: 35.6 x 43.2 cm Each: 14 x 17 in © Carolee Schneemann Foundation, Courtesy Lisson Gallery

Alongside this installation, the exhibition includes a series of drawings that Schneemann simultaneously created to document the imagery and possible configurations of Video Rocks—expressive sketches in paint, crayon, and marker that capture the artist’s sources and methods. A selection of these works, including a 31 ½-foot-wide painting of pink and yellow floral forms that hangs horizontally on the adjacent wall—a reference to the water lilies in Schneemann’s dream—is also on display. Framing the entire assemblage in the gallery are five acrylic light rods suspended from the ceiling, illuminating the rocks below and adding another layer of lyricism to this ‘dream/vision’ space, as the artist described it.

Carolee Schneemann *Video Rocks as Column*, 1989 Watercolor, marker, and crayon on paper Un-Folded 106.7 x 129.5 cm Un-Folded 42 x 51 in © Carolee Schneemann Foundation, Courtesy Lisson Gallery

The exhibition also features works from Schneemann’s Lebanon Series (1981–1999), including Souvenir of...Tyre... Sidon...Damour (for Bruce McP.) (1982), a tactile collaged painting that blends and abstracts personal and political imagery to address the violence of the Lebanese Civil War and its aftermath. The Dust Paintings (1983–86), also part of the Lebanon Series, are abstract compositions that incorporate circuit boards, silkscreened images, nails, glass particles, ash, and other materials. These works reflect Schneemann’s long-standing engagement with political atrocities, such as her protest film Viet-Flakes (1965), connecting to her early experiments with painting and collage in the 1950s and 1960s. The Dust Paintings reinforce her deep material exploration, with rag paper surfaces layered with paint, string, vegetable dye, and glass.

Exhibition view of ‘Carolee Schneemann’ at Lisson, Gallery Los Angeles, 11 April – 24 May 2025 © Carolee Schneemann Foundation, Courtesy Lisson Gallery

If Video Rocks was Schneemann’s early attempt to merge her video works with sculpture, the Dust Paintings represent another instance of her desire to fuse and disrupt artistic mediums. Just as her early investigations aimed to break free from static, traditional forms, these later works reflect her continued efforts to create a dynamic and unfolding artistic oeuvre.

About the artist

Carolee Schneemann (1939–2019) employed various artistic media and objects to develop a rich and influential body of work concerning politics, narrative, sexuality and the representation of women in art and society. Emerging from experimental film, dance, poetry, Fluxus, Happenings and environments, the artist’s early painting, collage, assemblage and box constructions were partly an effort to free artistic practice from the static object. Incorporating her nude body into performances extended that investigation into the liberation of the female image. Known for her legendary, visceral and taboo performances, including Meat Joy (1964), Up to and Including Her Limits (1973–76), and Interior Scroll (1975), Schneemann paved the way for generations of feminist artists. She documented her performances using film, created kinetic painting-sculptures and video art on such diverse topics as gender, eroticism, desire, disasters and war.

Schneemann received her BA from Bard College, Annandale-On-Hudson, NY and an MFA from the University of Illinois, Urbana, IL. Recent selected solo exhibitions include body-house: Dialogues between Carolee Schneemann, Diego Bianchi and Márcia Falcão, Pivô, São Paulo, Brazil (2024); Carolee Schneemann: Body Politics, Barbican Art Gallery, London, UK (2022); After Carolee: Tender and Fierce/Carolee’s Room, Artpace, San Antonio, TX, USA (2021); Paint Like I Move (Precarious), les Abattoirs, Toulouse, France (2017); and Kinetic Painting, Museum der Moderne Salzburg, Austria (2015); Museum für Moderne Kunst, Frankfurt, Germany (2017); MoMA P.S.1 (2017). In 2017, she was awarded the Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement at the 57th International Art Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia, Venice, Italy.

About Lisson Gallery

Lisson Gallery is one of the most influential and longest-running international contemporary art galleries in the world. Today the gallery supports and promotes the work of more than 60 international artists across spaces in London, New York, Los Angeles, Shanghai and Beijing. Established in1967 by Nicholas Logsdail, Lisson Gallery pioneered the early careers of important Minimal and Conceptual artists, such as Art & Language, Carl Andre, Daniel Buren, Donald Judd, John Latham, Sol LeWitt, Richard Long and Robert Ryman among many others. It still works with many of these artists as well as others of that generation from Carmen Herrera to the renowned estate of Leon Polk Smith. In its second decade the gallery introduced significant British sculptors to the public for the first time, including Tony Cragg, Richard Deacon, Anish Kapoor, Shirazeh Houshiary and Julian Opie. Since 2000, the gallery has gone on to represent many more leading international artists such as Marina Abramović, Ai Weiwei, John Akomfrah, Susan Hiller, Tatsuo Miyajima and Sean Scully. It is also responsible for raising the international profile of a younger generation of artists led by Cory Arcangel, Ryan Gander, Van Hanos, Hugh Hayden, Haroon Mirza, Laure Prouvost, Pedro Reyes, Wael Shawky and Cheyney Thompson.

The exhibition opened on April 11th and will run through to the 24th of May at the Los Angeles location. For more information about this exhibition and others, please visit the Lisson Gallery here. The gallery can also be found on Facebook, YouTube, and Instagram.

uzomah ugwu 5/7/25 uzomah ugwu 5/7/25

Collection in Focus: The Reach of Faith Ringgold

Tschabalala Self, Sprewell, 2020. Acrylic paint, denim jeans, fabric, painted paper, newsprint, wood block print, transfer print with gel medium, felt-tip pen, and thread on canvas 84 1/8 ×72 1/4 ×2 1/4 in.(213.7 ×183.5 ×5.7 cm). Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, Gift, Galerie Eva Presenhuber, Zurich and New York, and the artist2021.3© Tschabalala Self.Photo: Hyla Skopitz

(NEW YORK, NY) The Guggenheim New York presents the Collection in Focus exhibition centering one of the most important works by the renowned artist, writer, and activist Faith Ringgold. The Reach of Faith Ringgold will spotlight Woman on a Bridge #1 of 5: Tar Beach (1988), the first in a series of five monumental quilts that tells the story of a young girl who soars from her Harlem rooftop, celebrating her own freedom and self-possession. Looking to one key work, the exhibition explores Ringgold’s critical position in the canon of art history, building off the modernists who preceded her, and inspiring those who followed.

Marking the Guggenheim’s first presentation of Woman on a Bridge #1 of 5: Tar Beach (1988), The Reach of Faith Ringgold will investigate her artistic forerunners and the lasting impact she has had on subsequent generations of artists. Tar Beach will be contextualized within the broader narrative of modern and contemporary art through works from the Guggenheim New York’s collection and the Peggy Guggenheim Collection. The exhibition will include pieces by modernists such as Marc Chagall, Jacob Lawrence, and Pablo Picasso, who preceded or were contemporaries of Ringgold, and contemporary American artists such as Sanford Biggers, Tschabalala Self, Mickalene Thomas, and Carrie Mae Weems whose work reflects her legacy.

Jacob Lawrence, Tragedy and Comedy,1952. Tempera on masonite,24 ×30 in.(61 ×76.2 cm).Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, Gift, Elizabeth R. and Michael M. Rea Collection2023.45 © 2025 Artist Rights Society(ARS), New York. Photo: Ariel Ione Williams

“Ringgold left an indelible imprint on the art world through her practice and activism,” states Naomi Beckwith, Deputy Director and Jennifer and David Stockman Chief Curator, “and she also activated millions of children’s imaginations through her contributions as an author. The Guggenheim New York is utterly thrilled to center one of Ringgold’s iconic artworks, which was the subject of one of her award-winning books, in an exhibition that is sure to delight our visitors of every age.”

Another highlight of this exhibition is a painting by Jacob Lawrence, Tragedy and Comedy (1952), the first work by the artist acquired by the Guggenheim and one of the earliest modernist works by a Black artist in its collection. This exhibition marks its debut at the Guggenheim.

Ringgold is known for her distinctive artistic technique that blends a variety of media and styles, most famously through her “story quilts.” She often combines painting, fabric, and quilting, resulting in a unique fusion of fine art and craft. Ringgold paints her scenes onto large, quilted canvases using bold colors, intricate patterns, and layered textures. The quilts themselves are not only visually striking but are deeply symbolic, reflecting the African American tradition of storytelling through fabric. The process involves hand stitching and sewing, a craft historically associated with women and often tied to cultural heritage, which Ringgold reinvents to explore themes about race, identity, gender, and history.

Sanford Biggers, *Poly*, 2023.Antique quilt and fabric,90 ×51 ×6 1/2 in.(228.6 ×129.5 ×16.5 cm).Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, Purchased with funds contributed by the Young Collectors Council and the International Directors’ Council, with additional funds contributed by an anonymous donor 2023.87© Studio Sanford Biggers. Courtesy of the artist and Marianne Boesky Gallery, New York and Aspen.Photo: Ariel Ione Williams

In addition to quilting, Ringgold employs painting and collage, incorporating text and imagery to narrate ends. Her style draws from both folk art and modernist traditions, bringing together abstraction with figurative elements. Ringgold’s work is influenced by her desire to merge art with activism, offering social commentary on issues like civil rights, feminism, and the African American experience. This blend of techniques allows her to create powerful visual statements that engage viewers both emotionally and intellectually. In

The Reach of Faith Ringgold, visitors will have the opportunity to see the museum’s permanent collection, speaking to Ringgold’s unique position in the history of American art.

Photo: Faith Ringgold, *Woman on a Bridge #1 of 5: Tar Beach*, 1988. Acrylic paint, canvas, printed fabric, ink, and thread, 74 5/8 × 68 1/2 in.(189.5 × 174 cm). Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York Gift, Mr. and Mrs. Gus and Judith Leiber 88.3620 © 2025 Anyone Can Fly Foundation/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. Photo: Ariel Ione Williams

This exhibition is the third installment in a new exhibition series, Collection in Focus. The series is part of a reinvigorated effort to make the Guggenheim’s world-renowned holdings more accessible to the public.

The Reach of Faith Ringgold is organized by Naomi Beckwith, Deputy Director and Jennifer and David Stockman Chief Curator.

About Faith Ringgold

(b. 1930, New York; d. 2024, Englewood, New Jersey) earned a bachelor’s degree from City College of the City University of New York in 1955 and a master’s degree from City College in 1959. Her artwork resides in over fifty prominent public collections, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Museum of Modern Art, New York; Brooklyn Museum, New York; Philadelphia Museum of Art; Smithsonian Institute of Art, Washington, DC; Baltimore Museum of Art; High Museum of Art, Atlanta; Newark Museum; Art Institute of Chicago; and St. Louis Art Museum. Her achievements as an artist, teacher, author, and activist have been recognized with numerous honors, including the National Endowment for the Arts awards in sculpture and in painting; a John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship; an NAACP Image Award; a Caldecott Honor; a Peace Corps Award bestowed by former President Barack Obama; and 16 honorary doctorates.

Support

Visionary support for Collection in Focus is provided by Aleksandra Janke and Andrew McCormack.

The Leadership Committee for The Reach of Faith Ringgold is gratefully acknowledged for its generosity, with special thanks to Laura Clifford.

About the Guggenheim New York

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 Guggenheim New York; the Peggy Guggenheim Collection, Venice; Guggenheim Bilbao; and the future Guggenheim Abu Dhabi. An architectural icon and “temple of spirit” where radical art and architecture meet, the Guggenheim New York is now among a group of eight Frank Lloyd Wright structures in the United States recently designated as a UNESCO World Heritage site.

The Exhibition: Collection in Focus: The Reach of Faith Ringgold will be at the Guggenheim New York location at 1071 Fifth Avenue, New York, Tower Level 4, Mapplethorpe Gallery, and will open May 9 through September 14, 2025. To learn more about the museum, this exhibit, past exhibits, current exhibits, upcoming exhibits, and the Guggenheim’s activities around the world, visit here. The museum can also be found on YouTube, TikTok, X, Facebook and Instagram.

uzomah ugwu 4/29/25 uzomah ugwu 4/29/25

Claudia Doring Baez: My Brother's Mind

Installation view of Claudia Doring Baez: My Brother's Mind at Friedrich Pontone New York, 2025. Courtesy of Friedrich Pontone, New York

Friedrichs Pontone announces solo exhibition, My Brother’s Mind, featuring a series of paintings by Claudia Doring Baez. Friedrichs Pontone is pleased to present My Brother ' s Mind, Claudia Doring Baez 's first exhibition with the gallery. Inspired by the 1975 Italian film The Night Porter and her late Brother ' s photography, Doring Baez portrays expressionistic mastery and provocative sequences. The exhibition will open on April 4th, 2025, and will be on view through May 3rd, 2025.

**Claudia Doring Baez** My Brother's Mind, Night Porter, "Sighing", 2024 Oil on canvas 18 x 24 in45.7 x 61 cm

With the lust of hopeless romantics, we pursue the dead, trying to enter from all angles, seeking the meaning and message that would make the kaleidoscopic truth of their lives stand still enough that we could hold it to our chests and breathe easy.

**Claudia Doring Baez** My Brother's Mind, *Paris*, 2024 Oil on canvas 11 x 16 in 27.9 x 40.6 cm

Doring Baez and her brother not only shared a common past but a collaborative relationship that flourished until his untimely death in 2016. Together they explored the act of capturing life, not only through the films they produced and directed as a team, but in their individual work, as painter and photographer.

Every Sunday at the tender ages of ten and twelve the Dorings sat with their parents at the screening room of the Cineteca National (National Movie theater) Torta de los guajolotes (a pulled pork sandwich) and Coca-Cola in hand, taking in the classic cinema of their time. Watching the work of Godard, Passolini, Fellini, Antonioni, and Cavani imprinted the indelible visual stamp that marked the siblings, teaching them the power of the visual and impressing their young minds with the aesthetics they would return to again and again.

**Claudia Doring Baez** My Brother's Mind, *Night Porter, Genevieve Liberté II*, 2024 Oil on canvas 60 x 60 in 152.4 x 152.4 cm

My Brother ' s Mind reunites the artist with her desire to know her brother more deeply than anyone can ever know another person. She wishes to discover, in his death, the drive that led him to capture the female figure in an aesthetic very akin to many of the women from the films they saw in that cinema. The title stuns us with its quixotic flare: how can anyone enter anyone else ' s mind? Yet death propels us to try to do just that.

**Claudia Doring Baez,** My Brother's Mind I, 2024 Oil on canvas 18 x 18 in 45.7 x 45.7 cm

This is Friedrichs Pontone’s third exhibition of 2025, and will run alongside Kristi Kongi’s solo presentation, Twilight in the Garden.

About Friedrichs Pontone

Friedrichs Pontone was established in 2022, opening its flagship gallery at 273 Church Street in the historic Tribeca gallery district, directly across from Barnett Newman Triangle. The gallery is dedicated to showcasing a diverse range of contemporary art, representing artists from Europe, Korea, and the United States. Its program reflects a commitment to both emerging and established talents, fostering cross-cultural artistic dialogue. Friedrichs Pontone is led by founders Martin Friedrichs and Domenic Pontone, who bring a combined 40 years of experience to the gallery. Martin Friedrichs previously served as director at two prestigious international galleries, while Domenic Pontone is the founder of Pontone Gallery London and the director of The Albemarle Gallery London.

For more information about this exhibition and others at Friedrich Pontone, please visit their site here. The gallery can also be found on Instagram and Artsy.

uzomah ugwu 4/27/25 uzomah ugwu 4/27/25

REZA ARAMESH: Fragment of the Self

Reza Aramesh, *Action 172: Study of the Head as Cultural Artifact, 2016 - 2025*, pigment print on Hahnemuhle photo rag Baryta paper (315 gsm), 69 1/8” x 57”

Night Gallery is delighted to present Fragment of the Self, an exhibition of new work by Reza Aramesh. The artist will exhibit four new series across various materials and processes. This is Aramesh’s debut solo exhibition in Los Angeles and with the gallery, following our co-presentation, with Dastan Gallery, of his 2023 sculpture Site of the Fall: Study of the Renaissance Garden, Action 182: At 01:01 pm Saturday 03 Feb 1968 at Armory Off-site, New York, NY (2023).

Aramesh challenges representations of the subjected body within historical, cultural, and political contexts. He deconstructs scenes of violence from media coverage of international conflicts that span the mid-20th century through today. His approach critically examines race, class, and sexuality while engaging with the Western art historical canon: Goya, José de Ribera, Andrea Mantegna, and Caravaggio are particular influences.

Reza Aramesh, *Fragments of the Self Action 505: At 9:45 pm Thursday 10 April 2008*, 2025, carved and hand polished marble, 16 x 48 3/8 x 33 1/8 in (40.6 x 122.9 x 84.1 cm)

In collaboration with non-professional models, Aramesh reenacts carefully selected source materials as he transforms journalistic imagery into new forms. By stripping away overt markers of war, he displaces his subjects from the immediate realities of conflict. A resulting tension between empathy and cruelty underscores the body's transformation into mythology.

Fragment of the Self introduces four distinct series: Study of the Head as Cultural Artefacts (photographs of plaster heads alongside a bronze sculpture), Study of Color as Colonial Delight (embroideries on silk), Study for Fragment of the Self (drawings on paper that serve as meditative studies on the fragmented body), and Fragment of the Self (three marble sculptures).

Reza Aramesh, *Action 229: Study for pink after Rudolf Ernst ‘Arab Smoking a Nargilah’*, 2025, embroidery on satin, 144 7/8 x 55 7/8 in (368 x 142 cm)

In each of these series, Aramesh delves into the literal and metaphorical meanings of sculptural fragments. He challenges traditional notions of wholeness and identity, highlighting resilience and adaptability. His works invite reflections on how meaning and beauty persist even in imperfection.

In Study of Color as Colonial Delight, Aramesh selects specific hues from historical Orientalist paintings, first translating them into drawings based on reportage images and then rendering them as hand-stitched embroidery figures on silk.

Installation View Reza Aramesh: Fragment of the Self, 2276 E. 16th Street, Los Angeles, California 90021, April 11 — June 28, 2025 Photography courtesy Reza Aramesh and Night Gallery.

Through these material and conceptual investigations, Fragment of the Self bridges the personal and the collective, the historical and the contemporary. Aramesh says: “I’m in dialogue with artists and atrocities of the past, excavating history as I construct alternate narratives.”

Please visit Night Gallery's site here for more information about this exhibition and others. An online viewing of the exhibtion can also be found here. The magazine also interviewed Aramesh, which can be found here.

uzomah ugwu 4/24/25 uzomah ugwu 4/24/25

Robert Indiana : The Source, 1959–1969

Insallation Image of Robert Indiana, The Source, 1959–1969. Courtesy of Kasmin, New York. Photo by Charlie Rubin._3.jpg

Insallation Image of Robert Indiana, The Source, 1959–1969. Courtesy of Kasmin, New York. Photo by Charlie Rubin._2.jpg

Installation view of Robert Indiana: The Source 1959–1969 at Kasmin, New York, 2025. Courtesy of Kasmin, New York. Photo by Charlie Rubin.

Robert Indiana The Source, 1959–1969 Kasmin presented Robert Indiana: The Source, 1959–1969, a focused survey of the transformative decade in which Indiana established his unique artistic language, achieving wide recognition and cementing his place as an icon of American art. Featuring 20 works drawn exclusively from the artist’s personal collection as endowed by Indiana to the Star of Hope Foundation, the exhibition included an example from the artist’s first edition of LOVE sculptures, conceived in 1966 and executed between 1966–1968, and a vitrine display of archival materials including some of the artist’s journals. This exhibition marks Kasmin’s first collaboration with the Star of Hope Foundation, which was established by the artist in his lifetime, and the gallery’s eighth solo exhibition of work by Indiana since 2003. Robert Indiana: The Source, 1959–1969 was on view at 509 West 27th Street, New York, from February 27–March 29, 2025

Insallation Image of Robert Indiana, The Source, 1959–1969. Courtesy of Kasmin, New York. Photo by Victoria Loeb._8.jpg

Insallation Image of Robert Indiana, The Source, 1959–1969. Courtesy of Kasmin, New York. Photo by Victoria Loeb._7.jpg

Insallation Image of Robert Indiana, The Source, 1959–1969. Courtesy of Kasmin, New York. Photo by Victoria Loeb._6.jpg

Insallation Image of Robert Indiana, The Source, 1959–1969. Courtesy of Kasmin, New York. Photo by Victoria Loeb._5.jpg

Installation view of Robert Indiana: The Source 1959–1969 at Kasmin, New York, 2025. Courtesy of Kasmin, New York. Photo by Victoria Loeb

Robert Indiana: The Source, 1959–1969 chronicled the Minimalist origins of Indiana’s signature use of signs, symbols, words and numbers. Pairing canonical works with those rarely seen by the public, the exhibition provided a deeper understanding of Indiana as an artist whose output remains emblematic of American culture. The paintings on view demonstrate the personal iconography the artist ascribed to his artwork: as his peers withdrew from the aesthetics of self-expression, Indiana embarked on a career-defining inquiry into the power of symbols to represent meaning. Organized thematically, the exhibition also charted Indiana’s influential depictions of words and numbers in bold colors through his early abstractions, reflections on his personal history and the stages of life, and the poetic inevitability of transcendence—a return to the source.

**Robert Indiana** *The Big Four*, 1963 oil on canvas 85 1/8 x 84 1/2 inches 216.2 x 214.6 cm Artwork © Star of Hope Foundation, Vinalhaven, Maine Photo: Kasmin, New York

The selection of works on view demonstrated the emergence and progression of the artist’s distinct visual language, drawing formal and historical throughlines across significant bodies of work. Early abstractions including Source I (1959) and Source Egg(1959) anchor the exhibition and propose a guiding framework to consider Indiana’s personal, spiritual, and visual reflections. Both of these paintings feature an oval in flattened pictorial space, employing the emerging language of hard-edge painting and an expressive use of color and form to nod to Indiana’s close friends and neighbors on Coenties Slip in lower Manhattan, where Indiana worked near artists Ellsworth Kelly, Jack Youngerman, Agnes Martin, James Rosenquist, and others between 1957 and 1965. Subtle allusions to those close to the artist would recur over the next decade as Indiana developed his unique approach to painting.

**Robert Indiana** *Source I*, 1959 oil on Homasote 46 3/8 x 61 7/8 inches 117.6 x 157.2 cm Artwork © Star of Hope Foundation, Vinalhaven, Maine Photo: Kasmin, New York

Circles, which Indiana introduced to his paintings and sculptures alongside ovals, proliferate across the exhibition works. The abstract triptych Ra(c. 1960–61) demonstrates Indiana’s early arrangement of particular numbers of orbs to create abstract compositions, while its titular reference to the Egyptian sun god indicates an interest in ancient mythology. Through the decade, Indiana would adopt the circular format to extrapolate upon his own biography: the diptych Mother and Father (1963–66) pictures the artist’s parents within two circles, as if seen through a pair of binoculars. Reflecting on their lives and deaths, the artist described the work in an accompanying artist statement as essential to his celebrated American Dream series (1961–2001). He exhibited the painting extensively from 1964 onward including in the 1967 São Paulo Biennial and in his traveling institutional retrospectives of 1968, 1977, 1982, and 2013.

**Robert Indiana***Mother and Father*, 1963-66oil on canvas70 x 60 inches, each panel 177.8 x 152.4Artwork © The Robert Indiana Legacy Initiative / Artists Rights Society (ARS), NY Photo: Kasmin, New York

The circle visualizes the cyclical nature of life, a subject that Indiana explored in his compositions, incorporating numbers. Indiana’s famed Cardinal Numbers(1966), from which the 24-inch Cardinal Nine was on view, encapsulates his notion that each of the ten numerals signifies a stage of life—beginning with one for birth and ending with zero for transcendence. He often assigned color combinations to his numbers, famously describing the union of red, blue and green as a memory of seeing the red and green signage of Phillips 66—the petroleum company where his father worked—against an open sky. The Big Four (1963) exemplifies Indiana’s inclination to pair colors with numbers according to their placement in the life cycle, with four signaling the developmental phase of adolescence. For this work, Indiana selected the cautionary colors of red and yellow—alluding to the railroad signage his paternal grandfather followed while driving trains for the Pennsylvania Railroad—to picture the numeral “4” rotating over each of four panels arranged in a diamond.

**Robert Indiana** *LOVE,* 1967 oil on canvas 36 x 36 inches 91.4 x 91.4 cm Artwork © The Robert Indiana Legacy Initiative / Artists Rights Society (ARS), NY Photo: Kasmin, NewYork

The self-referential quality of The Big Four extends to a semiotic inquiry of the power of symbols to represent meaning. After discovering a trove of nineteenth-century packaging stencils in 1960, Indiana began incorporating words and numbers in his paintings, spearheading the adoption of commercial advertisement as a language of art. LIP(1960–61), an early example of a single word painting, features the title word’s yellow letters at the center of two intersecting orbs, whose contours suggestively form a pair of red lips. Unraveling the distinction between sign and symbol, the composition suggests a kiss, a universal bodily expression of love. Nearby, the only artist proof of Indiana’s first LOVE sculpture (1966–68), standing 12 inches tall in hand-cut aluminum, paired with a red, blue, and green LOVE painting (1967

**Robert Indiana** *The Gift* *(Easel)*, 1960 oil on canvas 40 x 36 inches 101.6 x 91.4 cm Artwork © The Robert Indiana Legacy Initiative / Artists Rights Society (ARS), NY Photo: Kasmin, New York

Unique paintings made in preparation for distinguished mid-1960s print projects were featured, documenting milestones in the artist’s life and career while underscoring the diaristic quality of the works on view. These include Robert Indiana, New Art, Stable New York (1964), revealing the artist’s working method behind his celebrated practice as a printmaker. This painting served as the basis for a poster advertising Indiana’s second solo exhibition at the Stable Gallery in New York, where The Big Four and an early state of Mother and Fatherwere featured. The exhibition opened with a concert of music from the opera The Mother of Us All (1947), composed by Virgil Thomson to a libretto by Gertrude Stein; Indiana later designed the sets and costumes for the opera at Walker Art Center in 1967.

Robert Indiana: The Source, 1959–1969 is presented in dialogue with Pace Gallery’s upcoming exhibition Robert Indiana: The American Dream, opening May 9 at 540 West 25th Street, New York. The Star of Hope Foundation, in collaboration with Kasmin Gallery, and The Robert Indiana Legacy Initiative, represented by Pace Gallery, have developed these distinct exhibitions in parallel to explore different aspects of Indiana’s artistic output and offer a diverse set of perspectives on the most formative decade of his career.

**Robert Indiana** *Hallelujah (Jesus Saves)*, 1969 oil on canvas 60 x 50 1/4 inches 152.4 x 127.5 cm Artwork © Star of Hope Foundation, Vinalhaven, Maine Photo: Kasmin, New York

About Robert Indiana

One of the preeminent figures in American art since the 1960s, Robert Indiana (1928–2018) played a central role in the development of assemblage art, hard-edge painting, and Pop art. Indiana, a self-proclaimed “American painter of signs,” created a highly original body of work that explores American identity, personal history, and the power of abstraction and language, establishing an important legacy that resonates in the work of many contemporary artists who make the written word a central element of their oeuvre. His work continues to resonate through contemporary art and popular culture worldwide. Indiana’s artwork has been featured in numerous solo and group exhibitions around the world, and his works are in the permanent collections of important museums such as the Museum of Modern Art and the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York; the National Gallery of Art, the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, and the Smithsonian Museum of American Art in Washington, D.C.; the Albright-Knox Art Gallery in Buffalo, New York; Tate Modern, London, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; the Menil Collection in Houston; the Currier Museum of Art, Manchester, New Hampshire; the Museum Ludwig in Cologne, Germany; the Van Abbe museum in Eindhoven, the Netherlands; MUMOK (Museum Moderner Kunst Stiftung Ludwig Wien) in Vienna, Austria; the Art Museum of Ontario in Toronto; and the Israel Museum in Jerusalem. He has also been included in numerous international publications and is the subject of a number of monographs.

About the Star of Hope Foundation

The Star of Hope Foundation is a non-profit organization founded by American artist Robert Indiana in 2016. Its mission is to support artists and cultural initiatives in Maine and on the island of Vinalhaven, where Indiana lived in the historic Star of Hope building for 40 years. As an artist-endowed foundation, the Star of Hope Foundation’s activities are overseen by a Board of Directors whose philanthropic priority includes promoting visual arts in the State of Maine and the community of Vinalhaven. The Star of Hope Foundation will collaborate with other Maine-based entities to promote the visual arts and support working artists, while partnering with the Archives of American Art to assemble and organize Indiana’s personal and professional papers, memorabilia, and photographs.

About The Robert Indiana Legacy Initiative

The Robert Indiana Legacy Initiative, represented worldwide by Pace Gallery, is the leading entity dedicated to the advancement of the artist’s work and is also responsible for The Robert Indiana Catalogue Raisonné, which is available online and can be found at www.robertindiana.com

For more information about Robert’s artwork and his legacy, please visit here. Star of Hope Foundation information can be found here. Information about the Kasmin Gallery can be found here. The gallery can also be found on Facebook and Instagram.

uzomah ugwu 4/13/25 uzomah ugwu 4/13/25

Rebecca Ward: vector specter

Peter Blum Gallery is pleased to present vector specter, an exhibition of new works by Brooklyn-based artist, Rebecca Ward. This marks the artist’s second solo exhibition with the gallery. The exhibition which opened on April 5, with an opening reception from 4–6 p.m., and will run through May 31, 2025, at 176 Grand Street, New York, NY.

Rebecca Ward's practice merges painting, sculpture, and craft by physically deconstructing and reassembling canvases to create geometrically grounded works. By exposing the multidimensional nature of painting and its constituent parts, Ward creates a spatial play of harmonious forms and color interactions that explore the relationship between the mathematical and the natural world. In her latest series, Ward delves into the complex interplay between transparency and the spectral presence of the abstract. Through a manipulation of reassembled materials and viscous gradients, the artist explores spectrums—both literal and metaphorical—where shadow and form transcend their physical boundaries. The work invites viewers to contemplate the delicate nature of perception, blurring the lines between the tangible and the ethereal. Ghostly silhouettes, fragmented and elusive, emerge from the translucency of unwoven canvas, embodying the shifting forms that shape understanding of reality.

Each of the ten works in the exhibition incorporate both hard-edged and curving forms that emerge from rectangular canvas planes, with varying scales, tonalities, and configurations. The shapes originate as digital drawings within a mathematical space—a vector that can be infinitely large or small—before being enclosed within the confines of stretcher bars. This initial step of creating sketches involves layering dissected forms and diverse shades that persist in the final handcrafted, sculptural objects.

The titles add layers of associations as in Ward’s two largest works to date, soft landing and sea creature, that required a highly physical approach in construction and washes of color. In hunger and hunger II, geometric sections of canvas are hand-dyed and painted in a spectrum of pinks and maroons, evoking wider associations of tone. A signature of Ward’s practice over the past decade has included taking fabric apart by removing the weft to create a new and transparent image. Particularly prevalent in open secret, yet present in each of the works is unraveled canvas that both exposes and obscures the underlying stretcher bars.

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Installation view, Rebecca Ward: vector specter, April 5, 2025 – May 31, 2025, Peter Blum Gallery, New York. Photo: Courtesy of the artist and Peter Blum Gallery

The woven canvas can be understood as a physical representation of a mathematical grid, where the warp and weft create a regular pattern of squares and rectangles, a visual reflection of geometric order. As a queer identified person, Ward combines curving lines and axis to demonstrate that masculinity and femininity are not fixed, binary concepts, but are dynamic, evolving, and context dependent. In this way, the grid becomes a representation of the slippage between forms that can be viewed as bodies, vessels, graphs, or purely geometric outlines. Through these methods, Ward communicates the presence of what shapes cannot be fully grasped, offering a meditation on the nature of being, absence, and spaces in between.

Rebecca Ward (b. 1984, Waco, TX) lives and works in Brooklyn, NY. She earned a BA at the University of Texas, Austin, TX (2006) and an MFA at the School of the Visual Arts, New York, NY (2012). Institutional exhibitions include Rebecca Ward: distance to venus, SITE Santa Fe, Santa Fe, NM (2022); Fresh Faces from the Rachofsky Collection, Site 131, Dallas, TX (2021); Over & Over, Columbia College, Chicago, IL (2018); Rebecca Ward, The FLAG Art Foundation, New York, NY (2017); Eastwing Biennial: Artificial Realities, The Courtauld Institute of Art, London, UK (2016); Making & Unmaking, Camden Art Centre, London, UK (2016); The Tim Sayer Bequest, The Hepworth Wakefield, West Yorkshire, United Kingdom (2016); Linear Abstraction, Savannah College of Art and Design, Savannah, GA (2015); Rebecca Ward: indulgences, Exchiesetta, Polignano a Mare, Italy (2015). Residencies include Shandaken: Storm King Art Center, New Windsor, NY (2016) and Atelier Alighiero Boetti, Todi, Italy (2013).

For more information about this exhibtion and others please visit the Peter Blum Gallery’s website here. The magazine did an interview with Ward which can be found here.