"Before Tomorrow" Exhibition @ Astrup Fearnley Museum, which celebrating its thirtieth anniversary in 2023

Before Tomorrow 

Astrup Fearnley Museum, Oslo

22 June - 8 October 2023

Børre Sæthre 

Installation view, My Private Sky, Astrup Fearnley Museet, 2001 

© Børre Sæthre. Photo: Tore H. Røyneland 

Astrup Fearnley Museum (Museet in Norwegian) is celebrating its thirtieth anniversary in 2023. To mark this significant milestone, the museum is undertaking an extensive exhibition titled Before Tomorrow featuring works from the Astrup Fearnley Collection, which fill the museum’s two buildings designed by Renzo Piano.

With more than 100 works on display, Before Tomorrow signals the character of the collection. Alongside recent acquisitions from the past three years, the exhibition will include both iconic and lesser-known works—reflective of the collection’s breadth and scope as well as its evolving identity. The past and the future of the Astrup Fearnley Museet is represented by the collection’s multiple thematic focuses, its surprising and often innovative inclusions, and the sense of curiosity that pervades it. And while several works have dominated the collection’s public perception, Before Tomorrow encourages new readings of these works by presenting them in dialogue with recent acquisitions, lesser-known objects, and major installations that have been restaged from the museum’s previous programming.

The evolving identity of the collection, and how it has been compiled since its founding in the late 1960s, was a catalyst for identifying two particular interpretative lenses that have been used to form this exhibition: the first lens is the notion of temporality. The fact that several works which were created and acquired earlier in the museum’s history, so clearly resonate with the aesthetic, social and political concerns of today, demonstrates how there is a timeless nerve in so many contemporary art works. This certainly rings true for Shirin Neshat’s Fervor from 2001, in which the artist responded to a shifting Iranian identity following the 1979 Islamic Revolution. As this seminal work is reinstalled today, it´s content challenges the perception of progress and asks important questions of our contemporary moment. The building of an art collection requires movement across varied geographic, intellectual and psychological fields, often gathering objects from distinct contexts and presenting them in close proximity to one another. Bringing these objects together, conceptually and materially, is thus a journey on the part of a collector or institution and forms a second interpretative lens. Thomas Struth’s The Art Institute of Chicago II and Nanjing Xi Lu, Shanghai, included in the exhibition, speaks to both of these lenses, at once pointing to distinct geographic, cultural and temporal contexts, while highlighting the very institution into which they are entangled.

Before Tomorrow includes the presentation of several major installations and video works from the Astrup Fearnley Collection. Børre Sæthre’s My Private Sky, first displayed at the museum in 2001 and recently acquired for the collection, was reconstructed. This large scale installation creates an environment that is both seductive and disturbing, drawing inspiration from the history of cinema and the genre of science fiction. Kara Walker’s massive mural THE SOVEREIGN CITIZENS SESQUICENTENNIAL CIVIL WAR CELEBRATION from 2013, was recreated in the museum’s main exhibition space, having recently entered the collection. Following the display of Wolfgang Tillmans’ Concorde Project (started in 1997) at the Museum of Modern Art in in New York in 2022 as part of his retrospective there, visitors is an opportunity to view a selection of works from this series. Additionally, Allora & Calzadilla’s major installation Clamor (2006), which includes a series of live sonic activations, is presented for the first time since 2009. Among a younger generation of artists, Helen Marten’s Orchids, or a hemispherical bottom (2013), first displayed at the 55th Venice Biennale, is featured in the show, as well as several artists based in Norway. These include Frida Orupabo, Michael Lo Presti and Walter Price.

Artists: Allora & Calzadilla, Janine Antoni, Synnøve Anker Aurdal, Michael Armitage, Vanessa Baird, Matthew Barney, Per Inge Bjørlo, Mark Bradford, Bjørn Carlsen, Paul Chan, Trisha Donnelly, Gardar Eide Einarsson, Nicole Eisenman, Ida Ekblad, Elmgreen & Dragset, Matias Faldbakken, Fischli & Weiss, Georgia Gardner Gray, Robert Gober, Nan Goldin, Félix González-Torres, Douglas Gordon, Gunnar S. Gundersen, Shilpa Gupta, Rachel Harrison, Mona Hatoum, Annika von Hausswolff, Damien Hirst, Sergej Jensen, Olav Christopher Jenssen, Rashid Johnson, Martin Kippenberger, R. B. Kitaj, Jeff Koons, Louise Lawler, Klara Lidén, Glenn Ligon, Mikael Lo Presti, Ibrahim Mahama, Helen Marten, Paul McCarthy, Julie Mehretu, Bjarne Melgaard, Eline Mugaas, Joar Nango, Bruce Nauman, Shirin Neshat, Ann Cathrin November Høibo, Albert Oehlen, Frida Orupabo, Laura Owens, Asal Peirovi, Raymond Pettibon, Sigmar Polke, Walter Price, Charles Ray, Jason Rhoades, Torbjørn Rødland, Cinga Samson, Cindy Sherman, Gedi Sibony, Josh Smith, Thomas Struth, Børre Sæthre, Wolfgang Tillmans, Fredrik Værslev, Kara Walker, Jeff Wall, Christopher Wool, Yang Fudong

Curated by Solveig Øvstebø, Executive Director and Chief Curator, and Owen Martin, Curator.

Astrup Fearnley Museet - AFM

Strandpromenaden 2, 0252 Oslo

www.afmuseet.no

Leila Spilman @ Simchowitz Pasadena - Lotsa Love Exhibition

Leila Spilman: Lotsa Love

Simchowitz Pasadena

June 8 – July 13, 2023

Simchowitz presents Lotsa Love by Leila Spilman (b. 1994 Santa Fe, New Mexico), who currently lives and works in Montana. It features nearly a dozen artworks that expand on the artist’s deeply felt, personal dialogue.

For the past decade, Leila Spilman has been in a relentless pursuit of artistic inquiry and innovation. She admits to having “few constants” in her life, “Being around a camera has been an important constant in my life, and that all started with my grandpa.” Alden Spilman (b. 1945, NY) is known to use uncommon technologies, such as some of the first color photocopiers and computer graphics, and the manipulation of printers and printing techniques. Spilman says, “He would just shoot his camera without looking through the viewfinder. He was all about chance and letting go. And that—and his whole attitude toward making art—has been a huge influence on me.”

Leila Spilman, who went into foster care at an early age, says that “making art has been an amazing way to reconnect with my family.” Leila Spilman’s grandfather taught her the importance of “play” in art making and the importance of life-as-art. Lotsa Love, in essence, is a love letter to him and his artistic practice. It began organically, with Leila Spilman coming across images in his studio, images that had been degraded by moisture, mold and light, images that had no plan for use. Leila Spilman applied various chemicals to each, pressing them between sheets of plexi, and letting them degrade further. That process produced a number of hazy, mysterious images that she later rescanned and printed. Some hint at backyard gardens and/or idyllic, dreamlike, organic worlds that mirror their biotic processes. These works are neither wholly abstract nor wholly representational, nor are they clearly photographs or paintings. They exist somewhere in between. For Leila Spilman, they can also be seen as portals into her past and future. They tap into the “deepest relationship of her life” as she describes her relationship to her grandfather, while representing a new phase of her art-making. While she has explored the idea of corrosion and toxicity in the past, it takes on even greater weight in this new body of work. As she says, the process of “throwing something toxic on something beautiful” can be read as a metaphor for some of the trauma that has haunted her family.

SIMCHOWITZ PASADENA

2785 E. Foothill Blvd., Pasadena, CA 91107

www.simchowitz.com

Howardena Pindell Exhibition @ IMMA, Dublin - "A Renewed Language"

Howardena Pindell: A Renewed Language 

IMMA, Dublin 

30 June – 30 October 2023 

IMMA (Irish Museum of Modern Art) presents the first solo exhibition in Ireland by renowned American artist HOWARDENA PINDELL. Pindell is an artist, activist, and educator working through the media of painting, drawing, print and video. Primarily an abstract painter, she emerged in the early 1970s in New York, making process-driven abstractions, embellishing the language of minimalism – of circles, grids and repetition – in a visibly laborious process of hole-punching, spraying, sewing, and numbering. The exhibition, titled A Renewed Language, is the largest presentation of her work in Europe to date.

Born in Philadelphia in 1943, Howardena Pindell began her career in the 1960s. Having studied painting at Boston and Yale Universities she became an Exhibition Assistant at the Museum of Modern Art in New York in 1967, rising to Associate Curator and Acting Director, and serving on the Byers Committee to investigate racial exclusion in museum acquisitions and exhibitions. She first exhibited her art in 1971, and was a founding member of A.I.R (Artists in Residence), the first women’s cooperative gallery in New York City. In 1979 she began teaching at the State University of New York, Stony Brook, where she is now a distinguished Professor of Art. She rose to prominence throughout the late 1970s and early 1980s, and had her first major solo exhibition at the Studio Museum, Harlem in 1986.

Trained as a figurative painter, Howardena Pindell began working abstractly in the 1960s. She started drawing and layering, a process that grew on its own and developed into the abstract works she is known for today. Her growing use of abstraction coincided with the famous “dematerialization” of the art object, the emergence of conceptual art as a movement that prioritized thought over form.

From the 1980s Howardena Pindell’s practice began to deal explicitly with issues of racism and discrimination, her work took on a more overtly political tenor, which anticipated the Black Lives Matter movement by thirty years. Pindell deals with issues including colonisation and enslavement, violence against indigenous populations, police brutality, the AIDS crisis and climate change.

Alongside paintings and works on paper, the exhibition includes two videos that frame her long career – Free, White and 21 (1980) and Rope/Fire/Water (2020). These works tackle the pervasiveness of racial inequality, drawing on Pindell’s own experiences and also on her collation of historical data relating to segregation, discrimination and race-based violence in America.

The exhibition includes new paintings fresh from Pindell’s studio, just shown in New York in 2022. These new works show Howardena Pindell circling back to some of her concerns of the early 1970s and 80s. These ‘cut and sewn’ canvases are a celebration of colour. Here Howardena Pindell expands on the scale of her paper pieces, bringing new depth and texture to her surfaces. The making of individual panels and sewing them together, is a novel and labour-intensive method of construction. The work is unstretched and pinned to the wall and harks back to her 1970s works in which she took canvas off the stretcher to create new shapes that speak of the form and function of the painted ground. These monumental works mark the artist’s return to the grid—a theme of particular interest to Pindell and other modern artists.

Howardena Pindell’s work encompasses her own story with abstraction joined to a sense of social and political urgency and an understanding that the pressures, prejudices and exclusions she faced as a black artist and a woman needed to be part of the subject of her art. 

Howardena Pindell considers her abstract paintings as “an intense relief, a kind of visual healing, so that you get some distance from what you’ve seen. Then you can have a more peaceful or critical way to acknowledge what you’ve seen. And it helps you maybe overcome some of those deadly emotions that come from being shocked. So I want people to see… It’s like using beauty as a healing element, and for me making them has a healing side to it.”

A Renewed Language had its origins in Howardena Pindell: A New Language, organised by the Fruitmarket, Edinburgh; in collaboration with Kettle’s Yard, Cambridge; and Spike Island, Bristol.

Howardena Pindell

Photo: Nathan Keay

© MCA Chicago

HOWARDENA PINDELL

Howardena Pindell, born in Philadelphia in 1943, began her career in the 1960s. Having studied art at Boston and Yale Universities she became an Exhibition Assistant at the Museum of Modern Art in New York in 1967, rising to Associate Curator and serving on the Byers Committee to investigate racial exclusion in museum acquisitions and exhibitions. She first exhibited her art in 1971, and was a founding member of A.I.R (Artists in Residence), the first women’s cooperative gallery in New York City. Resigning from MoMA in 1979, she became a professor in the Art Department at Stony Brook University, where she still teaches today.

She rose to prominence throughout the late 1970s and early 1980s, and had a major solo exhibition at the Studio Museum, Harlem in 1986. In 1992, Howardena Pindell: A Retrospective, her first solo touring exhibition, brought her art and writing together and in 1997, she published The Heart of the Question, an anthology of her written works. She was included in WACK! Art and the Feminist Revolution at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles in 2007; in We Wanted A Revolution: Black Radical Women, 1965–85 at the Brooklyn Museum, New York and Soul of a Nation: Art in the Age of Black Power at Tate both in 2017; and The Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago presented her first major US survey exhibition, Howardena Pindell: What Remains to be Seen in 2018. In 2020, an exhibition of new work at The Shed, New York showed recent work against the backdrop of the Black Lives Matter movement and growing international outrage at anti-Black state violence in the US and elsewhere, in the wake of the murder of George Floyd.

IMMA - IRISH MUSEUM OF MODERN ART

Royal Hospital Kilmainham, Dublin 8, D08 FW31

imma.ie

Larry Achiampong and David Blandy @ Wellcome Collection, London – Genetic Automata – Collaborative video works exhibition

Larry Achiampong and David Blandy

Genetic Automata

Wellcome Collection, London

8 June 2023 – 11 February 2024

Wellcome Collection presents ‘Genetic Automata’, a major exhibition of collaborative video works by artists Larry Achiampong and David Blandy, exploring race and identity in an age of avatars, videogames and ancestry DNA.  

The exhibition presents a series of four films exploring scientific racism – the false belief that there are innate differences and abilities between races. It will reflect on where deeply ingrained ideas about race come from and the role that science has played in shaping these perceptions. The series highlights how scientific racism is reproduced in contemporary society, from education to healthcare, science, politics and more.  

‘Genetic Automata’ at Wellcome Collection allows visitors for the first time to view the four video installations together, unpacking the relationship between science and race injustice through the artists’ lens. It premieres the latest work of the series ‘_GOD_MODE_’ (2023), a co-commission between Wellcome Collection, Black Cultural Archives (BCA), and Wellcome Connecting Science. 

Each film employs a spoken-word soundtrack and includes imagery drawn from contemporary videogames, in particular those with dystopian sci-fi plots that feature the misuse of genetic material. The series begins with ‘A Terrible Fiction’ (2019), which addresses the complex history of classification, categorisation and segregation. It references the history of the theory of evolution and highlights the figure of John Edmonstone, a formerly enslaved Black man living in Edinburgh, who taught Charles Darwin taxidermy – but whose contribution to science remains largely unacknowledged. 

The second film, ‘A Lament for Power’ (2020), investigates how science can be used to understand the world alongside its potential for commercial and political exploitation. It centres on Henrietta Lacks, a Black American woman, whose cells were taken without her knowledge and have been used to make world-changing discoveries such as mapping the human genome and the polio and Covid-19 vaccines. The film references ‘Resident Evil 5’, a controversial videogame centred on a bio-terrorist plot in West Africa. The game has been criticised for its portrayal of Black people as zombies designed to be killed repeatedly. The work questions whose voices are erased from society’s narratives, and in doing so, whose interests are served.

The third installation, ‘Dust to Data’ (2021), examines the colonial history of archaeology and contemporary parallels in the data mining of DNA and social media image banks. It cites a letter from American sociologist and civil rights activist W E B Du Bois in 1912 to Flinders Petrie, a British Egyptologist and one of the originators of modern archaeology. Petrie believed there was a direct correlation between skull size, race and intelligence, and used archaeology to justify colonialism. The film mixes CGI, videogame techniques and footage shot in the archaeology collection of the University of Liverpool to lay out the complex history of archaeology in establishing narratives of ‘self’ and ‘other’.  

The new commission ‘_GOD_MODE_’ (2023) is a reflection on the legacy of Francis Galton, the notable Victorian scientist who established eugenics as a scientific discipline at UCL (University College London) in 1904. The film considers the roots and implications of scientific racism, exploring how traces of eugenic practices have left their mark across society today, from education to medicine and politics, while presenting hopes for an alternative future. 

In ‘_GOD_MODE_’, David Blandy and Larry Achiampong present the history of eugenics and explore its present-day legacy in philosophical, poetic and polemic terms. Filmed in two halves, the first is voiced by Blandy, who is white and middle class, born in London, of English heritage. He alludes to intelligence tests, racist and sexist discrimination, and the systemic use of sterilisation across the world, all under the guise of objective science. His poignant testimony is layered upon footage from UCL’s Science Collections and features some of the instruments Galton used to measure and categorise people, a selection of which are displayed alongside the film.  

In the second half of the film, Larry Achiampong, who is Black and working class, born in London of Ghanaian heritage and living in Essex, delivers a lyrical yet powerful account that questions the limits of empathy in the struggle against injustice, suggesting that what is needed is not simply solidarity but real change, which would necessitate the demolition of generations of privilege. This part of the film visually invites the viewers into an immersive videogame environment following a large spider as it travels through different landscapes – a reference to the West African folklore legend of Anansi, a shapeshifting demigod, who changes form to achieve their aims. 

Created using Unreal engine, a 3D computer-graphics engine commonly used to create videogames, and part of David Blandy and Larry Achiampong’s artistic practice, ‘_GOD_MODE_’ contains multiple references to videogames, including its title, which is a cheat code that makes a player invincible and, in this work, alludes to the idea of playing God and the myth of genetic superiority.  

Larry Achiampong lives and works in London and Essex, and David Blandy lives and works in London and Brighton. Their collaborative practice is brought together by friendship, and their shared interest in popular culture and the postcolonial condition. ‘Genetic Automata’ is the third series they have developed together since 2018; their presentation at Wellcome Collection is their first museum exhibition as a duo.  

‘_GOD_MODE_’ will feature as part of an exhibition at the Black Cultural Archives in London from October 2023.

Larry Achiampong Biography

Larry Achiampong (b. 1984, UK, British Ghanaian) employs film, still imagery, aural and visual archives, live performance, objects and sound to explore ideas surrounding class, gender, cross-cultural and digital identity. With works that examine his communal and personal heritage – in particular the intersection between popular culture and the residues of colonisation, Achiampong crate-digs the vaults of history. These investigations examine constructions of ‘the self’ through the activity of splicing the audible and visual materials of personal and interpersonal archives, offering multiple perspectives that reveal the deeply entrenched inequalities in contemporary society. 

Larry Achiampong recently shot his BAFTA-longlisted first feature and most ambitious film to date, ‘Wayfinder’, which was distributed by Verve Pictures for cinematic release across the UK in July 2022 and is available on DVD and major streaming platforms. Larry Achiampong has presented projects nationally and globally, with recent solo exhibitions including ‘Wayfinder’, Turner Contemporary/MK Gallery/BALTIC Centre for Contemporary Art, Margate, Milton Keynes, Gateshead (2022–2023); ‘Relic Traveller: Where You and I Come From, We Know That We Are Not Here Forever’, Phi Foundation for Contemporary Art, Montreal (2021); ‘Beyond the Substrata’, curated by Norman Rosenthal, Copperfield Gallery at Frieze Focus, 12 Piccadilly Arcade, London (2020); ‘When the Sky Falls’, John Hansard Gallery, Southampton (2020); ‘Pan African Flag For The Relic Travellers Alliance’ and ‘Relic Traveller, Phase 1, 019’, Ghent (2019); ‘Dividednation’, Primary, Nottingham (2019). Recent projects include commissions with The Line, London; the Liverpool Biennial 2021 and Art on the Underground, roundel designs and a permanent sculptural intervention for Transport for London’s Westminster Underground Station, London (2019 and 2022). 

He is represented by Copperfield Gallery, London. His films are distributed by LUX, London. 

www.larryachiampong.co.uk

David Blandy Biography

David Blandy (b. 1976, lives and works in Brighton) makes work that slips between performance and video, digital and analogue, investigating the stories and cultural forces that inform and influence our lives. Collaboration is central to his practice, examining communal and personal heritage and interdependence. With research spanning multiple forms of archive, from fandoms to the archive of the body, historic texts to academic libraries, archaeology and ecological theory, Twitch streams and film archives, David Blandy weaves poetic works that explore the complexities of the contemporary subject.

‘Atomic Light’ at John Hansard Gallery, 2023, was David Blandy’s most ambitious solo project to date. Featuring four new films, it builds upon his interest in history, the legacy of empire and the climate crisis. He has exhibited and performed at venues nationally and worldwide, with solo shows at Towner Gallery, Eastbourne; John Hansard Gallery, Southampton; Focal Point Gallery, Southend-on-Sea; The Baltic, Gateshead; Turner Contemporary, Margate; Spike Island, Bristol; The Exchange, Newlyn; Künstlerhaus Stuttgart, Germany. David Blandy has also exhibited in museums internationally including at Art Tower Mito, Tokyo; Kiasma Contemporary Art Museum, Helsinki; Tate Modern, London; and MoMA PS1, New York. Most recently he has undertaken a residency at Delfina Foundation, London, as part of ‘The Politics of Food’ programme, where he explored his familial link to colonial food production and its legacy of agriculture as a tool to consolidate authority through the creation of a new collaborative world-building game, ‘Gathering Storm’.   

He is represented by Seventeen Gallery, London. His films are distributed by LUX, London. 

www.davidblandy.co.uk

Larry Achiampong and David Blandy Joint biography

In Larry Achiampong (b. 1984) and David Blandy’s (b. 1976) collaborative practice, they share an interest in popular culture and the post-colonial position. They examine communal and personal heritage and wider issues of empathy, race and power, through film, performance, and socially engaged practice.  

Their work has been shown both within the UK and abroad, including Tate Modern, London; Centre D’Art Contemporain Meymac, France; The Baltic, Gateshead; Art Exchange, Colchester; Yorkshire Sculpture Park, Wakefield; Fact, Liverpool; GHMP Prague City Gallery, Czech Republic; Centre Pompidou Metz, France. In 2018 they were nominated for the Film London Jarman Award. They have a major upcoming public art commission for University College London’s new campus in the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park, UCL East, in summer 2023.  

Their joint practice is represented by Copperfield, London and Seventeen, London. Their films are distributed by LUX, London. 

WELLCOME COLLECTION

183 Euston Road, London NW1 2BE 

www.wellcomecollection.org

Abstraction @ Sponder Gallery, Boca Raton - A selection

Abstraction: A Selection

Sponder Gallery, Boca Raton

June 23 – July 30, 2023

Sponder Gallery presents a selection of abstract works by artist Dan Christensen, Stanley Boxer, Natvar Bhavsar, Kikuo Saito, Jack Roth, Paul Jenkins, Ernest Trova, Doug Ohlson, Richmond Burton, and Larry Zox.

"We felt the moral crisis of a world in shambles, a world destroyed by a great depression and a fierce World War, and it was impossible at that time to paint the kind of paintings that we were doing—flowers, reclining nudes, and people playing the cello."

—Barnett Newman

Following the dominant Abstract Expressionist wave of post-WWII, which decried realism in favor of non-representational forms, the second generation Abstract Expressionists presented here pointed the way forward. Famously declaring that painting had exhausted its possibilities, the medium’s progression was pushed to a potential end in the late 1950s by influential critic Clement Greenberg. This second generation was determined to continue with less concern over expressions of inner angst like their predecessors. They acknowledged the innovation of Abstract Expressionism by employing methods such as all-over composition, the emphasis on the flatness of the canvas, and the bold use of color dips (drips?) and splashes.

Movements such as Hard-edge Painting, Colorfield Painting, and Lyrical Abstraction arose as a response not only to the previous generation, but to the aloof aesthetic nature of Minimalism and Conceptualism in the 1960s and 70s. The artists featured in this selection can be categorized under the umbrella of Lyrical Abstraction, which moved towards more sensuous and romantic abstractions that sought to reinvigorate a painterly tradition in American art. It is characterized by intuitive and loose paint handling as seen in the work of Natvar Bhavsar, who employs loose pigments in an aleatory fashion on his canvases, to staining processes, as seen in the smoky translucent canvases of Kikuo Saito. Less beholden to a progressive narrative of art, this second generation kept painting alive, and celebrates the allure of color and shape.

SPONDER GALLERY

The Boca Raton, 501 E Camino Real, Boca Raton, FL 33432

www.spondergallery.com

Tomona Matsukawa @ Flowers Gallery, Hong Kong - Mirror | 鏡

Tomona Matsukawa 

Mirror | 鏡

Flowers Gallery, Hong Kong

8 June - 15 July 2023

TOMONA MATSUKAWA

My mom said that I shouldn't do that because I'm a girl (detail), 2023

100 x 65.2 cm, Oil on linen mounted on panel

© Tomona Matsukawa, courtesy of Flowers Gallery

TOMONA MATSUKAWA

I'm not sure if I'm jealous or just feeling lonely, but still, 2023

130.3 x 130.3 cm, Oil on linen mounted on panel

© Tomona Matsukawa, courtesy of Flowers Gallery

Flowers Gallery presents a solo exhibition Mirror by TOMONA MATSUKAWA, her first exhibition in Hong Kong.

The title implies that parents expect their children to mimic their behaviour, like a reflection in the mirror. The exhibition showcases a new series of intertextually-linked photographs and paintings, depicting the changing nature of family relationships, especially the complexities of motherhood and daughterhood, while questioning the meaning of face-to-face meeting in contemporary society.

Tomona Matsukawa interviewed a number of women who reunited with their families for the first time after living apart for a while, sparking conversations at cafes, bakeries, offices or homes. The resulting hyper-realistic paintings are often titled with colloquial phrases extracted from the conversations and restructured with beautiful but banal scenes of life. The artist demonstrates the remnants of everyday life and gestures on the glossy surface of canvas, telling a universal story with missing plots, through the combination of titles, paintings and photographs. The painting titled "My mom said that I shouldn't do that because I am a girl" portrays a scene of a woman kissing a mannequin. After a long time of not seeing each other, her mother still holds the traditional view on gender and sexuality, criticising her way of living.

The artworks in the exhibition resemble a collection of short stories, each piece containing a different narrative about reuniting with family after a long time apart. While communication through messaging and social media is possible, it is significantly different from meeting in person. Tomona Matsukawa reveals the paradoxical nature of family relationships as time goes by. "I'm not sure if I'm jealous or just feeling lonely, but still" discusses the ambiguity of being a mother and a woman. The interviewed woman is bewildered by her mother enjoying the life without her. The scene is at her mother's home where they were drinking and talking. The table runner that separates the wine glasses symbolizes the estrangement between them, yearning for closer distance, yet far away from each other. Tomona Matsukawa says: "My work is to transform what was a story of an individual into a story of society as a whole, and to reveal the image of us living in this era."

About TOMONA MATSUKAWA

Tomona Matsukawa (b.1987) was born in Aichi, Japan and is currently based in Kyoto. She graduated with a B.A. in Oil Painting from Tama Art University in 2011. Her work has been exhibited at the National Art Center (Tokyo, 2013), Ohara Museum of Art (Okayama, 2016), Mori Art Museum (Tokyo, 2016), Yuka Tsuruno Gallery (Tokyo, 2019), Haku Gallery (Kyoto, 2019), Powerlong Museum (Shanghai, 2022), N&A Art Site, Tokyo (2022), and Museum of Modern Art (Ibaraki, 2022). She was the recipient of the Fukuzawa Ichiro award (2011) and the 25th Holbein Scholarship (2010). In 2017 she was a finalist for the well-regarded Asian Art Award. Her work is in the collections of Ohara Museum of Art, Okayama; the Takahashi Ryutaro collection; Mori Art Museum, Tokyo; and the Pigozzi collection. 

FLOWERS GALLERY

49 Tung Street, Sheung Wan, Hong Kong

www.flowersgallery.com

Song Dong Exhibition @ Pace Gallery, NYC - ROUND

Song Dong: ROUND

Pace Gallery, New York 

July 14 – August 19, 2023 

SONG DONG 

Zou Ma Deng (Spinning Lanterns) (detail), 2022-2023 

© Song Dong, courtesy Pace Gallery

Pace presents Song Dong's latest series of works at its 540 West 25th Street gallery in New York, marking the artist’s first overseas solo exhibition since the COVID-19 pandemic. Titled Song Dong: ROUND, this exhibition focuses on Song’s practice over the past three years, placing ancient Chinese philosophy in a contemporary context and offering new understandings of ideas that figure prominently in his work.

Song Dong, who is one of the most important figures of the Conceptual art movement in China, blurs the boundaries between art and life in his interdisciplinary practice spanning painting, sculpture, performance, installation, and film. Song specializes in borrowing familiar, everyday objects and images as part of his artistic explorations. His open and highly speculative approach to art making lends his work a distinctive lightness that has earned him international attention and acclaim.

In his exhibition with Pace in New York, the artist uses the shape of the circle, which has rich meaning in traditional Chinese philosophy, as a central visual element. The new series Da Cheng Ruo Que, which translates to "the highest perfection is like imperfection," takes its title from ancient Chinese philosopher Lao Tzu's seminal text Tao Te Ching. In these works, small-scale window frames are assembled into sculptures that forge nearly perfect circles, while still retaining zigzag notches at their edges.

Song Dong began the Da Cheng Ruo Que series in 2020, when, stranded in his studio due to the pandemic lockdown, he decided to make a gift for his daughter. The artist gathered the materials left over from the production of his previous series Usefulness of Uselessness, which was made from discarded construction waste produced during China's urban renewal process. The artist’s decision to reuse the leftovers of these discarded materials echoes the installation he created with his mother, Waste Not, which is his most internationally recognized work—it was exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art in New York in 2009 and has since traveled to institutions in several other countries, including the Barbican Centre in London.

Using his mother's values and philosophies surrounding the preservation of seemingly useless objects to create a special work for his daughter, the artist continued to explore and experiment during the long hours of lockdown. Inevitably, he incorporated his experiences and feelings from the past three years into his process so that the work gradually took on its own form, expanding from a single piece into a new and complete series.

In Pace’s gallery space, this series of circular sculptures of various sizes are scattered on the walls like clusters of stars in the universe or cells in a microscopic view. The windows in these sculptures do not provide access to the outside world, but rather reflect the scenes before them, leaving illusionistic impressions on their colorful stained- glass surfaces. The title of the work alludes to Eastern philosophical speculation: what people perceive as perfection may be imperfect, while this seemingly deficient state can lead to more possibilities and a greater sense of completeness, which is the message the artist decided to share with his daughter.

Continuing its focus on the circle, the exhibition also features the light installation series Zou Ma Deng (Spinning Lanterns) and the sculptural work Thousand Hands, both of which were created in the past year. The artist created his first iteration of Zou Ma Deng during a four-month residency in London in 2000, using traditional moving-image techniques to represent his relationship with the environment and his imprint on urban spaces. In this latest work, Song’s bodily presence is erased, leaving the viewer with only the world around the artist as seen and documented from his own perspective over the last three years.

While Thousand Hands is forged from a discarded object, it is intended to be placed behind a statue of the Buddha Guanyin, whose thousand hands form a disc in a radial pattern of eyes, symbolizing the gods' care for the mortal world. In stark contrast to the purity of a perfectly crafted industrial product, this piece contains many black lines that were created during the firing process and are meant to be removed by the glaze factory. These randomly generated black textures shimmer with a mysterious aura that attracted the artist and, in some ways, coincided with his thinking on Da Cheng Ruo Que. Laying the vertical panel flat, the artist allows the eyes of the Bodhisattva, which originally overlooked the world, to become the object of the viewer’s gaze. At the same time, this work invites viewers to look at each other in a new way, evoking a contemplative experience and new realization.

SONG DONG's (b. 1966, Beijing) conceptual practice emerged from the avant-garde and experimental arts community in China, engaging with various forms of media including installation, performance, video, painting, and sculpture. His performances in the mid- and late 1990s positioned him as a major figure in the burgeoning contemporary art scene in Beijing, which often serves as the setting for his reflections. Song is one of the founding members of Polit-Sheer-Form Office (2005–), a multi-disciplinary art group centered on collective ideals and practices as a means of commentary on the political, spiritual, and cultural aspects of life in China.

PACE

540 West 25th Street, New York

www.pacegallery.com

Christina Quarles @ Hauser & Wirth Menorca – Come In From An Endless Place

Christina Quarles 

Come In From An Endless Place

Hauser & Wirth Menorca

17 June – 29 October 2023

CHRISTINA QUARLES

(And Tell Me Today’s Not Today), 2023

Acrylic on canvas

127 x 132.1 x 5.1 cm / 50 x 52 x 2 in

© Christina Quarles

Courtesy the artist, Hauser & Wirth, and Pilar Corrias, London

Photo: Fredrik Nilsen

CHRISTINA QUARLES

It’s Been 7 Hours, 2023

Acrylic on paper

85.7 x 66.7 x 3.8 cm 33 3/4 x 26 1/4 x 1 1/2 in (framed)

© Christina Quarles

Courtesy the artist, Hauser & Wirth, and Pilar Corrias, London

Photo: Fredrik Nilsen

CHRISTINA QUARLES

Wish We’d Grown Up on tha Same, Advice, 2023

Ink on paper

39.4 x 54.6 x 3.8 cm / 15 1/2 x 21 1/2 x 1 1/2 in (framed)

© Christina Quarles

Courtesy the artist, Hauser & Wirth, and Pilar Corrias, London

Photo: Fredrik Nilsen

Los Angeles-based artist Christina Quarles unveils new paintings and works on paper at Hauser & Wirth Menorca. ‘Come In From An Endless Place,’ her first exhibition in Spain, coincides with a major presentation at Hamburger Bahnhof in Berlin and follows her participation in last year’s celebrated exhibition ‘The Milk Of Dreams’ at the Venice Biennale.

Christina Quarles’ critically acclaimed canvases and drawings display fragmented, polymorphous bodies embedded in rich, textural patterns—a singular approach to figuration, unique to the artist’s visual rhetoric and her fascination with the subject of bodily experience. Tangled arms and legs transform across her paintings, while perspectival planes bisect bodies, simultaneously grounding and dislocating them in space. In her initial approach to the canvas, Quarles begins by making marks that evolve into line drawings of human forms and body parts. She then photographs the work and uses Adobe Illustrator to draw the backgrounds and structures that ultimately surround the figures. In a reversal of the conventional layering of a composition, Quarles’ figures precede and even dictate the environment that they come to inhabit.

As a queer, cis-gendered woman born to a Black father and a white mother, Christina Quarles has described her position of engagement with the world as ‘multiply situated,’ an experience of embodiment reflected in her sui generis art. The intersection of Quarles’ figures and planes analogize the imagined and prescribed boundaries of identity. Vibrant magentas, blues, greens, and yellows serve not as a means of describing reality but as a way of actively resisting the viewer’s instinct to assign binary classifications to the figures such as male or female, white or Black, abstract or representational.

Christina Quarles’ contemplation of identity is illustrated by the large paintings on view in ‘Come In From An Endless Place,’ where multiple patterns, figures, and planes shift and collapse. Fixed only by the limits of Quarles’ arm span, the architectural features of her tableaux approach three-dimensionality. ‘Lift Yew Up, I Wanna Lift Yew Up, I Wanna’ portrays a suite of appendages –entwined arms and protruding legs on an aerial plane– that appear to alternately defy and submit to gravity. There is an endless looping in Quarles’ composition, reflected in other works, such as, ‘(And Tell Me Today’s Not Today).’ Here ghostly figures appear spread across gradient planes. These knotted extremities seem tied to a centrifugal force, pulling arms, ears, and legs inwards, as figures attempt to reach the boundaries of the canvas. Foregrounded are two touching fingers that evoke Michelangelo’s canonical fresco in the Sistine Chapel. Freed from the collapse of body parts, they reach toward one another as God’s hand reached for Adam’s.

Pursuant themes of combat, support, and restraint can be seen in a new suite of mesmerizing acrylic paintings on paper, a technique Christina Quarles exhibits publicly for the first time. Rendered by the span of Quarles’ wrist movement, bodies merge, overlap, squirm, and lean into one another through movements that give way to multiple readings. In ‘Wrestlin’’ Quarles portrays bodies in what could be a playful or more contentious encounter, whereas in ‘Restin’’ a form emerging from a brilliant brushstroke appears to either grow or collapse between two tall flowers. Again, figures appear twisted and curled—perhaps they provide support and order to one another, or perhaps they are bound in a more chaotic situation. As Christina Quarles’ exhibition title, ‘Come In From An Endless Place,’ suggests, this body of work continues to explore the cyclical nature of escape, return, and ongoingness. Beauty and monotony, struggle and ease – the limitations and possibilities of confinement continue to be paramount in this body of work.

In addition to the paintings on canvas and paper, ‘Come In From An Endless Place’ features Christina Quarles’ fine-line drawings, where figures are often accompanied by phrases written into the composition, evoking the artists’ interest in language’s potential to create and disrupt meaning. The sentences, written in a mixture of slang and phonetic spelling, draw from a wide range of references; overheard phrases, poetry, or pop songs, such as ‘Hallelujah’ by Leonard Cohen, or ‘Self Control’ by Frank Ocean. In ‘Wish We’d Grown Up on tha Same Advice’ Quarles writes Ocean’s lyrics into a serene scene with figures that recline and embrace. In ‘Just Got Caught Up in Myself’ the title is written next to a contorting body, attempting to break free from the confines of two dimensions.

Drawing is a key principle in Christina Quarles’ work as she began the practice at the age of 12, attending life drawing classes after school. As an adult, Quarles has continued to hone this practice. ‘Figure drawing is this weird thing where you can’t just acquire the skill and be done with it. It’s like working out at the gym, you have to keep maintaining it. When I go to the painting, I’m not referring to sketches. I’m referring to this ongoing practice of drawing.’

For her exhibition in Menorca ‘Come In From An Endless Place,’ Christina Quarles continues to synthesise the study of drawing, experimental painting techniques, and digital technology, resulting in a unique and compelling approach to figuration which situates the artist as a vanguard of contemporary painting. 

About the artist

CHRISTINA QUARLES (b. 1985) is a Los Angeles-based artist, whose practice works to dismantle assumptions and ingrained beliefs surrounding identity and the human figure. Born in Chicago and raised by her mother in Los Angeles, Christina Quarles took art classes from an early age. She developed a solid foundation for a lifelong drawing practice through after-school programs and figure drawing classes at the Los Angeles County High School for the Arts.

In 2007, Christina Quarles graduated from Hampshire College with dual BA degrees in Philosophy and Studio Art, then trained and worked in the field of graphic design. As her immersion in the visual arts progressed, she became well versed in and influenced by Marlene Dumas, Leonora Carrington, Jack Whitten, David Hockney, and Philip Guston. Seeking a vehicle for expressing the feelings and experiences language alone cannot articulate, Christina Quarles went on to attend Yale University, where she received her MFA in 2016. She participated in an intensive artist residency at the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture that same year.

Christina Quarles has been the recipient of several awards and grants. She was the inaugural recipient of the 2019 Pérez Art Museum Miami Prize, in 2017 she received the Rema Hort Mann Foundation Emerging Artist Grant, and in 2015 she received the Robert Schoelkopf Fellowship at Yale University and participated in the Fountainhead Residency in 2017. In 2022, Christina Quarles’s work was featured in ‘The Milk of Dreams,’ the 59th International Art Exhibition at La Biennale di Venezia, curated by Cecilia Alemani and in ‘manifesto of fragility,’ the main exhibition of the 16th Lyon Biennale of Contemporary Art, curated by Sam Bardaouil and Till Fellrath.

HAUSER & WIRTH MENORCA

Isla del Rey (Illa del Rei)

Mahon, Menorca

Balearic Islands, Spain

www.hauserwirth.com

Exposition Animaux Fantastiques @ Musée du Louvre-Lens

Animaux Fantastiques

Musée du Louvre-Lens

27 septembre 2023 - 15 janvier 2024

Jean Gargot 

Grande Goule, 1677 

DRAC Nouvelle-Aquitaine / CRMH site de Poitiers, 

en dépôt au Musée Sainte-Croix, Poitiers 

Dragons, griffons, sphinx, licornes, phénix… Présents depuis l’Antiquité, les animaux fantastiques peuplent les moindres recoins de notre monde contemporain, des films et dessins animés aux objets du quotidien. Tour à tour images de terreur ou d’admiration, expression de notre inconscient camouflé ou de nos angoisses, ces créatures souvent hybrides portent en elles une ambiguïté fondamentale. Qui sont-elles ? D’où viennent-elles ? Que signifient-elles ?

Elles partagent avec la faune réelle un pouvoir de fascination sur l’être humain. On leur confère une proximité avec la nature, une sauvagerie mêlée de sagesse. Ce ne sont pas pour autant des animaux comme les autres. Ils s’en distinguent par leur apparence. Gigantesque, démesuré, difforme, leur corps adopte les caractéristiques de plusieurs animaux : corps de cheval et ailes d’oiseaux, aigle à tête de lion…

Cette physionomie extraordinaire reflète des pouvoirs surnaturels. Les animaux fantastiques incarnent les forces élémentaires de la nature : eaux tempétueuses, rafales colériques, mais aussi ruisseaux tranquilles, terre nourricière. Ils représentent leur immensité, leur violence, leur beauté et leurs éclats. Certains possèdent un visage, des mains ou des jambes, qui les rattachent au monde des humains tout en évoquant distance et dangerosité.

Riche de près de 250 oeuvres – sculpture, peinture, objets d’art mais aussi cinéma et musique –, de l’Antiquité à nos jours, l’exposition propose un voyage à travers le temps et l’espace pour raconter l’histoire des plus célèbres de ces animaux à travers leurs légendes, leurs pouvoirs et leur habitat. Elle questionne nos rapports passionnés à ces êtres dont la présence irréelle semble plus que jamais nécessaire.

Le parcours explore, de façon thématique, les différentes facettes de nos rapports aux créatures fantastiques. L’exposition démarre par un retour aux origines de ces animaux imaginaires, qui émergent dès la Préhistoire et incarnent les terreurs sacrées des humains face au vertige de la nature. Dès l’Antiquité, ils sont au coeur de combats fondateurs qui représentent, sous différentes formes, la lutte de forces opposées, notamment celles du bien contre le mal. Outre leur apparence étrange et souvent hybride, les animaux fantastiques ont souvent pour caractéristique principale d’être magiques : ils protègent les peuples et souverains, et veillent sur la frontière entre le monde des vivants et celui des morts. Le dragon occupe une place à part dans cet écosystème : son apparence fluctue selon les siècles et les civilisations, avant d’être progressivement codifiée dans l’art européen puis dans les arts visuels de la culture populaire. Vivant aux marges du réel, les animaux fantastiques contribuent également à incarner une autre forme de société possible. Imprégnant aujourd’hui plus que jamais la pop culture et la fantasy, ces monstres de la nuit des temps nous interrogent quant à nos peurs et nos aspirations, et un besoin de ré-enchantement du monde.

Commissaire générale :

Hélène Bouillon, conservatrice en chef du patrimoine, directrice de la conservation, des expositions et des éditions du Louvre-Lens

Commissaires associées :

Jeanne-Thérèse Bontinck, cheffe de Projet Patrimoine, Ville d’art et d’histoire, Périgueux

Caroline Tureck, chargée de recherches et de documentation, Louvre-Lens

Assistées de Yaël Pignol, médiateur Patrimoine & Jardins - Référent scientifique, Cité des Electriciens, Bruay-la-Buissière

Scénographie : Mathis Boucher, architecte-scénographe, Louvre-Lens

MUSEE DU LOUVRE-LENS

99 rue Paul Bert, 62300 Lens

www.louvrelens.fr

RA Schools Show 2023 @ Royal Academy of Arts, London

RA Schools Show 2023 

Royal Academy of Arts, London

8 June – 25 June 2023

Elinor Stanley 

Lurcher, 2022 

Oil on canvas, 180x220cm (diptych). 

Courtesy of the artist

Rachel Hobkirk 

Too Much Haha, Very Soon Boohoo, 2022 

Oil on linen, 120 x 160cm 

Courtesy of the artist

Mary Stephenson 

Deep Pool, 2022 

Oil on canvas, 90 x 200cm. 

Image courtesy of Tom Carter

The RA Schools Show 2023 presents the work of 14 contemporary artists graduating from the Royal Academy Schools this year: Motunrayo Akinola, Nancy Allen, Daria Blum, Max Boyla, Daniel Davies, Enej Gala, Anna Higgins, Rachel Hobkirk, Clark Keatley, Louis Morlæ, Thirza Smith, Elinor Stanley, Mary Stephenson and Oliver Tirré.

The exhibition marks the public culmination of an intensive period of study that encourages experimental and discursive approaches to artmaking. Through 14 individual presentations, the exhibition explores different perspectives of the world through its diverse forms, materials, stories, and politics. It includes a wide range of media from sculpture, painting and print to performance, installation and moving image.

Artwork on display include large-scale paintings where the figure in the foreground creates a sense of vertigo, a digital manipulation and animation that brings sculptures to life, a gigantic hanging mobile made from wood pulp, music-influenced performances that make and break multiple selves, and a purring sculpture that permeates the space. The exhibition is showing across the Royal Academy: in the North West Corner of Burlington Gardens, The Jillian and Arthur M. Sackler Wing of Galleries, the Weston Studio and the Ronald and Rita McAulay Gallery.

Clark Keatley 

Untitled, 2023 

Carbon pencil on paper. 66 x 44 cm. 

Courtesy of the artist

Daria Blum 

Circumbendibus Vol. 1, 2022 

Live performance, 25 min. 

Courtesy of the artist

Nancy Allen 

Stickpool, 2022 

Foil platters, sticks, 142 x 110 x 30 cm. 

Courtesy of the artist

The Royal Academy Schools is an independent school of contemporary art that offers up to 17 artists each year the opportunity to participate in a free, three-year, postgraduate programme. Founded in 1769, the RA Schools remains independent to this day. This independence enables the postgraduate programme to constantly adapt to the individual needs of each student. Discussion and debate is fuelled by a variety of lectures, artist talks, group critiques and tutorials given by leading contemporary artists, Royal Academicians, critics, writers and theorists. Graduates of the RA Schools include Rebecca Ackroyd, Michael Armitage RA, Lynette Yiadom-Boakye, Rachel Jones, Eddie Peake, Anthony Caro RA, JMW Turner and William Blake. The Keeper of the Royal Academy is Cathie Pilkington RA.

Work on the vital restoration and renewal project for the RA Schools is currently underway and is due for completion in spring 2024. Designed by David Chipperfield Architects, together with conservation specialists Julian Harrap Architects, the project will preserve the heritage of the RA Schools and create state-of-the-art facilities in order to ensure the RA School’s position as one of the leading art schools in the UK. Whilst the renewal project is taking place, the students’ studios have temporarily moved to other spaces across the Royal Academy’s buildings.

Thirza Smith 

Urine Deflector, 2022, 

Steel and emulsion. Pair of sculptures, each 90 x 110 x 60cm 

Courtesy of the artist

Oliver Tirré 

texture piece, 2022

Perspex and glue

Courtesy of the artist

Enej Gala 

Leashes, 2017-2023 

Oil on wood, wood flour, cellulosis, wire, thread, variable size. 

Installation view at TJ Boulting 2023. 

Photo credit: Tom Carter

Max Boyla 

Ain't No Sunshine, 2022 

Ink and Velvet on Satin, 190 x 130cm 

Courtesy of Sim Smith, London

Cathie Pilkington RA, Keeper of the Royal Academy, said: ‘It has been a huge privilege to share the journey with the class of 2023 - to witness their deepening critical awareness and material ambition.’

Brian Griffiths RA, Senior Lecturer at the RA Schools and artist, said: ‘This is an exceptional group of artists making significant art for now and the future.’

ROYAL ACADEMY OF ARTS, LONDON

www.royalacademy.org.uk

Exposition Basquiat. The Modena Paintings @ Fondation Beyeler, Riehen/Bâle

Basquiat. The Modena Paintings

Fondation Beyeler, Riehen/Bâle

11 juin – 27 août 2023

13 ans après la grande rétrospective qu’elle avait consacrée à Jean-Michel Basquiat, la Fondation Beyeler accueille une nouvelle fois l’œuvre de l’artiste new-yorkais. Elle présentera les « Modena Paintings », huit toiles de grand format que Jean-Michel Basquiat a peintes en 1982 dans la ville italienne de Modène pour un projet d’exposition qui n’a finalement jamais vu le jour. Plus de 40 ans plus tard, la Fondation Beyeler réunit pour la première fois ces chefs-d’œuvre, aujourd’hui détenus dans des collections privées aux États-Unis, en Asie et en Suisse, parmi eux plusieurs des œuvres les plus célèbres et les plus chères de Jean-Michel Basquiat.

Jean-Michel Basquiat (1960–1988) compte parmi les artistes majeurs du XXe siècle finissant. Au début des années 1980, il accède en peu de temps à une notoriété internationale, alors que la peinture figurative connaît une renaissance. Jean-Michel Basquiat, une des personnalités les plus magnétiques du monde de l’art, débute dans l’underground new-yorkais en tant que poète graffeur et musicien avant de se consacrer pleinement à l’art. Sa peinture hautement expressive et débordante d’énergie lui vaut rapidement l’admiration du milieu. Âgé de seulement 21 ans, il est le plus jeune artiste invité à participer à la Documenta 7 qui se tient à Kassel en été 1982. Encouragé par Andy Warhol, il devient une véritable célébrité artistique, fêtée dans le monde entier. Fils d’un père haïtien et d’une mère dont les parents venaient de Porto Rico, il est le premier artiste noir à percer dans un milieu artistique dominé par des protagonistes blancs·ches. Outre Andy Warhol, Jean-Michel Basquiat collabore avec Keith Haring, Francesco Clemente, Debbie Harry et d’autres artistes et musicien·ne·s. Jusqu’à son décès soudain en août 1988, il produit en moins d’une décennie un vaste œuvre comptant plus de 1’000 tableaux et objets ainsi que 3’000 œuvres sur papier.

Après l’âge d’or de l’art conceptuel et de l’art minimal dans les années 1960 et 1970, Jean-Michel Basquiat parvient à imposer un nouveau langage visuel figuratif et expressif. Ses oeuvres, peuplées de personnages évoquant ceux des bandes dessinées, de silhouettes de squelettes, d’objets étranges du quotidien et de slogans poétiques sont puissantes et somptueusement colorées. Elles font converger des motifs issus de la culture pop et de l’histoire culturelle, entre autres des domaines de la musique et du sport, ainsi que des thèmes politiques et économiques, pour aboutir à des commentaires critiques de la société de consommation et de l’injustice sociale, en particulier du racisme.

La première exposition personnelle de Basquiat se tient en 1981 à la Galleria d’Arte Emilio Mazzoli à Modène, à l’époque encore sous le pseudonyme SAMO© qu’il inscrivait à la bombe aérosol sur les wagons et les parois du métro new-yorkais et qui datait de sa collaboration avec le graffeur Al Diaz. Le jeune artiste avait capté l’attention du galeriste italien Emilio Mazzoli quelques mois auparavant dans l’exposition collective « New York / New Wave » organisée par Diego Cortez au P.S. 1 Contemporary Art Center (aujourd’hui MoMA PS1) à Long Island City. Emilio Mazzoli avait alors mis à la disposition de Jean-Michel Basquiat un espace de travail et du matériel pour lui permettre de créer de nouvelles oeuvres. Au début de l’été 1982, à l’invitation de Mazzoli, Jean-Michel Basquiat retourne à Modène pour sa première exposition européenne sous son vrai nom.

À Modène, Emilio Mazzoli dispose d’un entrepôt qui sert aux artistes de passage pour travailler. Ainsi, plusieurs années durant Mario Schifano séjourne régulièrement à Modène pour y peindre. Lorsque Jean-Michel Basquiat arrive, il tombe sur plusieurs reliquats du travail de Schifano : outre des tableaux achevés, il trouve aussi des toiles apprêtées et des toiles vierges. Attiré par leurs dimensions exceptionnelles, il les utilise pour ses propres tableaux. Il produit ainsi un groupe d’oeuvres de chacune plus de deux mètres sur quatre, plus grandes que et différentes de tout ce qu’il avait peint jusque là. En apposant l’indication « Modena » et sa signature au dos des toiles, il les désigne comme un groupe d’oeuvres cohérent.

Mais des désaccords opposent les galeristes Annina Nosei, qui représente Jean-Michel Basquiat à New York depuis fin 1981, et Emilio Mazzoli, entraînant l’abandon du projet d’exposition à Modène. Dans une interview accordée au New York Times en 1985, Jean-Michel Basquiat revient sur son deuxième séjour à Modène et exprime sa frustration : « Ils ont organisé les choses de telle manière que je doive produire huit tableaux en une semaine », et il compare son travail dans l’entrepôt à « une usine, une usine malsaine. J’ai détesté. » Au final, Mazzoli règle Jean-Michel Basquiat pour les oeuvres produites et l’artiste retourne à New York.

Les huit tableaux peints à Modène trouvent finalement de nouveaux propriétaires par l’entremise d’Annina Nosei : Bruno Bischofberger en acquiert quatre (Profit I, Boy and Dog in a Johnnypump, Untitled [Woman with Roman Torso (Venus)], The Guilt of Gold Teeth) et les autres passent dans diverses collections à l’international. Aujourd’hui, les huit toiles se trouvent dans différentes collections particulières aux États-Unis, en Asie et en Suisse. Certaines d’entre elles se sont recroisées dans le cadre de rétrospectives, d’autres n’ont que rarement été montrées en public. Le projet de la Galleria d’Arte Emilio Mazzoli n’a pas encore fait l’objet de recherches et de mises en lumière approfondies. Et pourtant, non seulement les tableaux produits à Modène figurent parmi les plus importants de l’oeuvre de Basquiat et les oeuvres les plus chères de tout l’art contemporain, mais le projet d’exposition finalement abandonné constitue lui aussi un événement particulier dans la carrière de l’artiste. Pour la première fois, les tableaux de Modène seront bientôt réunis au sein d’une présentation unique à la Fondation Beyeler – 40 ans plus tard, le projet d’exposition est ainsi enfin réalisé.

Sam Keller, directeur de la Fondation Beyeler, explique : « Tous les ‹ Modena Paintings › se trouvent aujourd’hui dans des collections privées. Certains d’entre eux ont été donnés à voir dans le cadre d’expositions consacrées à Basquiat, mais jamais encore ils n’avaient figuré ensemble et côte à côte dans une même présentation ainsi que l’avait prévu Basquiat à l’origine. Grâce à notre bonne collaboration de longue date avec la famille Basquiat et les collectionneurs de Basquiat, nous sommes parvenus à réunir toutes les oeuvres et à rattraper ainsi un moment d’histoire de l’art. »

Les « Modena Paintings » partagent plusieurs caractéristiques en termes de motif et de style : les huit tableaux sont tous dominés par une figure monumentale, souvent noire, sur fond de larges traits de pinceau à la gestuelle expressive. Untitled (Angel) et Untitled (Devil), opérant comme un quasi diptyque, donnent à voir les figures titulaires d’un ange et d’un démon sous forme de portraits en buste, les deux bras levés – posture pouvant être comprise aussi bien comme implorante que triomphante, et qui non seulement se répète dans d’autres images du cycle mais apparaît de manière récurrente dans l’oeuvre de Jean-Michel Basquiat. Le squelette suggéré à coups de traits horizontaux sommaires dans Untitled (Devil) de même que le crâne aux orbites et aux cavités nasales profondes caractérisent également les figures dans Boy and Dog in a Johnnypump et The Field Next to the Other Road. Parmi les autres signes distinctifs des personnages de Jean-Michel Basquiat figure un ornement placé au-dessus de leur tête, parfois auréole et parfois couronne d’épines, qui apparaît également dans Untitled (Woman with Roman Torso [Venus]) et Profit I. Comparées aux autres oeuvres du groupe, ces deux dernières présentent tout comme The Guilt of Gold Teeth une plus grande densité des « griffonnages » si typiques de Basquiat. The Guilt of Gold Teeth, avec ses mots cryptiques, ses combinaisons de chiffres et ses symboles de dollar, préfigure déjà certaines évolutions plus tardives de l’oeuvre de l’artiste. Avec Untitled (Cowparts), qui donne à voir une vache plus grande que nature aux énormes yeux ronds, le cycle se boucle dans la mesure où les épais traits de pinceau blancs utilisés pour accentuer le corps noir dans Untitled (Angel) soulignent ici les contours de l’animal.

À l’exception des deux tableaux Profit I et The Guilt of Gold Teeth, dans lesquels la combinaison d’acrylique, de peinture aérosol et de crayon à l’huile établit un dialogue avec le dessin, le groupe d’oeuvres met l’accent sur le geste pictural. Le collage visuel d’images et de mots habituellement si typique du travail de Jean-Michel Basquiat n’apparaît que peu dans les oeuvres réalisées à Modène. Dans l’ensemble, le répertoire de Modène est moins morcelé et se concentre sur des compositions plus vastes et expansives. Le corps humain et animal y occupe le premier plan. Contrairement aux oeuvres antérieures, celles de Modène ne donnent pas à voir d’impressions des rues de la grande ville. On retrouve dans plusieurs des huit toiles les mêmes tonalités, ainsi dans les vastes fonds plats, de même que l’utilisation semblable et répétée de traits de pinceau rouge écarlate pour appuyer les figures représentées. Basquiat avait pour habitude de travailler sur plusieurs toiles en parallèle car les différentes couches de couleur avaient besoin de temps pour sécher.

L’exposition est placée sous le commissariat conjoint de Sam Keller, directeur de la Fondation Beyeler, et d’Iris Hasler, Associate Curator à la Fondation Beyeler.

Jean-Michel Basquiat

The Modena Paintings

Hatje Cantz Verlag

Un catalogue a été publié au Hatje Cantz Verlag, Berlin, en allemand et en anglais, retraçant le développement du concept d’exposition initial jusqu’à son abandon en 1982 et consacrant un court texte à chacun des tableaux créés à Modène. Il comprend des textes de Dieter Buchhart, Iris Hasler, Fiona Hesse, Michiko Kono, Regula Moser, Demetrio Paparoni et Jordana Moore Saggese.

FONDATION BEYELER

Baselstrasse 77, CH-4125 Riehen

www.fondationbeyeler.ch

Collins Obijiaku @ Luce Gallery, Turin - Traces of Me

Collins Obijiaku: Traces of Me 

Luce Gallery, Turin 

May 4 - June 30, 2023 

Luce Gallery presents Traces of Me, the first solo exhibition for COLLINS OBIJIAKU with the gallery. On view are series of new portrait paintings - all with his signature meandering charcoal line-work.

Collins Obijiaku is a Nigerian-based painter who uses the tradition of portraiture to examine the depths, truths, and complexities of humanity. In each work, the artist paints quiet, composed figures, with expressive gazes, to directly engage the viewer. To further strengthen the allure and intimacy, Collins Obijiaku draws a winding line—with no detectable beginning or end—that weaves throughout the sitter’s face and skin reminiscent of ‘mapping’ each person’s life journey. Together, the paintings in Traces of Me encourage viewers to contemplate the individuality of each person, as well as their distinct contribution to the diversity and complexity of the human experience.

This exhibition brings together a collection of portraits of people the artist has known since childhood. As the title Traces of Me hints, the paintings conceal a small element of the artist’s connection between him and each kindred spirit on view, a sentiment Collins Obijiaku felt after working on the series. In every elegant composition, he observes an old friend, memorializing their likeness, and thoughtfully records their inner conviction of strength, hope, positivity, and intelligence. Although usually indifferent to incorporating symbolism into his work, his use of ochre yellow, in many of the paintings, references the artist’s nostalgic connection to the hue from childhood. He recalled that all the brightest students were selected for the yellow group — a color he still associates with intelligence to this day. While aesthetically pleasing, the true strength of Collins Obijiaku’s work is how he marries observations of each sitter’s distinct mannerisms and expressions, with his meditative charcoal line work, to gently guide the viewer to see more deeply and encourage profound empathy.

In Portrait of Gladys (woman in blue dress) we see an elegant, young Nigerian woman donning a periwinkle blue dress. In a pale yellow room, she sits with her arms pressing downward, shifting her weight slightly left while leaning ever-so-slightly forward toward us, meeting our gaze directly. There’s a brief pause in her expression — her eyes slightly squinting— as if she’s examining us, rather than the other way around.

Her demeanor is calm and poised, while simultaneously exuding an inner confidence. For Collins Obijiaku this confidence is particularly important to emphasize with his female sitters, as he seeks to change common misconceptions of women, and instead emphasize their power. Meandering throughout her face, across her chest, and cascading down each arm, Collins Obijiaku’s signature charcoal lines create visual pathways for the viewer to explore. Working much like fingerprints or wrinkles, the lines identify her, as well as all the twists and turns of life. She knows who she is, where she’s been, and where she aspires to be.

COLLINS OBIJIAKU (b.1995) is a Nigerian-based visual artist working in portraiture. A self-taught painting and drawing artist, Collins Obijiaku creates alluring portraits of individuals from his home country. In each work captivating gazes and skin permeated with charcoal line work resembling topographic maps, foster a deeper understanding of both the individual, and ultimately humanity as a whole. In 2019, Collins Obijiaku was an artist-in-residence at Black Rock Senegal, the multidisciplinary residency program founded by artist Kehinde Wiley in Dakar, Senegal. Collins Obijiaku’s works have been also exhibited at the Museum of African Diaspora in San Francisco and the National Gallery of Arts in Enugu in Nigeria. His international exhibitions throughout Africa, Europe, and the United States include a solo show with Roberts Projects in Los Angeles, California. Additionally, his work has been acquired by numerous private collections and public institutions, including the Dallas Museum of Art in Dallas, Texas.

LUCE GALLERY

Largo Montebello, 40, 10124 Torino

www.lucegallery.com