WANAFOTO: 03/2025

08/03/25

Joe Overstreet: Taking Fligh @ The Menil Collection, Houston

Joe Overstreet: Taking Fligh

The Menil Collection, Houston

Through July 13, 2025

Joe Overstreet with his Flight Patterns, 1972

Courtesy of Menil Archives, The Menil Collection, Houston

Photo: Hickey-Robertson, Houston

Joe Overstreet: Taking Fligh

The Menil Collection, Houston

January 24 - July 13, 2025

Installation view. Photo by Lauren Marek

Courtesy of The Menil Collection, Houston

Joe Overstreet: Taking Fligh

The Menil Collection, Houston

January 24 - July 13, 2025

Installation view. Photo by Lauren Marek

Courtesy of The Menil Collection, Houston

The Menil Collection prsents Joe Overstreet: Taking Flight, an exhibition focused on the vibrant, politically charged abstract paintings created by pioneering artist JOE OVERSTREET (1933–2019). This presentation is organized chronologically and features Overstreet’s landmark Flight Pattern series of radially suspended paintings from the early 1970s, alongside crucial bodies of work that preceded and followed them. Taking Flight is the first major museum exhibition in nearly thirty years devoted to the work of this avant-garde artist.

Renowned for his innovative approach to nonrepresentational painting, Joe Overstreet stood at the forefront of artists who sought to intertwine abstraction and social politics. He made a significant contribution to postwar art, positioning abstraction as an expansive tool for exploring the idea of freedom and the Black experience in the United States.

“The Menil is proud to present Joe Overstreet: Taking Flight,” said Rebecca Rabinow, Director, The Menil Collection. “John and Dominique de Menil’s support of the artist began in the early 1970s when a painting was commissioned by him for an exhibition about the African American experience that the couple sponsored in Houston, Texas. Soon after, they purchased two of Overstreet’s Flight Pattern works and invited him back to Houston for a solo show. Now, some fifty years later, the Menil Collection looks forward to sharing his work with a new generation of visitors, both through this beautiful, thought-provoking exhibition, and the illustrated scholarly catalogue that provides fascinating insight and context for the appreciation of this artist’s work.”

In 1967, the artist began to build intricate, shaped canvas constructions, departing from the more representational style he had pursued in the early 1960s. In these works, Joe Overstreet combined new shapes and often matched the form of the underlying structure with geometric painted compositions. Justice, Faith, Hope, and Peace, 1968, is emblematic of this breakthrough, summoning references to current political events in a resolutely abstract language.

Joe Overstreet: Taking Fligh

The Menil Collection, Houston

January 24 - July 13, 2025

Installation view. Photo by Lauren Marek

Courtesy of The Menil Collection, Houston

Joe Overstreet: Taking Fligh

The Menil Collection, Houston

January 24 - July 13, 2025

Installation view. Photo by Sarah Hobson

Courtesy of The Menil Collection, Houston

Joe Overstreet’s best-known paintings, the Flight Patterns from 1970–1972, are central to the exhibition. To create these works, which the artist called “tent-like” and “nomadic,” he boldly applied brightly colored paint to unstretched canvases, which he suspended with taut ropes from the gallery’s floor, wall, and ceiling. The ropes were intended to evoke the brutal history of lynching in the United States, yet he also perceived these dynamic works as hopeful and redemptive. He described them as “birds in flight,” able to “take off, to lift up, rather than be held down.” In works like Free Direction, 1972, Joe Overstreet pushed the limits of the traditional medium of painting so that the piece appeared to leap off the wall, thus inaugurating a dynamic relationship between object, viewer, and architecture. This inventiveness was characteristic of his entire career.

Joe Overstreet: Taking Fligh

The Menil Collection, Houston

January 24 - July 13, 2025

Installation view. Photo by Sarah Hobson

Courtesy of The Menil Collection, Houston

In the 1990s, following an inspiring trip to Senegal and the House of Slaves memorial on Gorée Island, Joe Overstreet created a series of monumental abstractions that address the African diaspora and explore questions of inheritance and memory. He described the Senegal paintings as “personal, emotional examinations of my past, present and future.” Works such as Gorée, 1993, display the artist’s material experimentation, which gave the paintings a weathered, luminous translucency, evoking the country’s “drifting opaque dust” and “searing white sunlight.”

“We have been honored to work closely with the estate of Joe Overstreet to create this significant presentation of his work,” said Natalie Dupêcher, Associate Curator of Modern Art, The Menil Collection. “Overstreet’s formally adventurous, culturally engaged, and politically responsive abstract work brilliantly expands the canon of 20th century art.”

Joe Overstreet: Taking Flight includes key loans from United States museums and private collections, as well as major paintings from the estate that have rarely been on view. Curated by Natalie Dupêcher, Associate Curator of Modern Art, The Menil Collection, the exhibition will be accompanied by a fully illustrated catalogue with new scholarly texts and installation images from the exhibition, available in late spring.

JOE OVERSTREET (1933–2019)

Born in rural Conehatta, Mississippi, Joe Overstreet began his career in the California Bay Area in the early 1950s, taking classes at several arts colleges, exhibiting in local galleries and jazz clubs, and participating in the Beat scene. In 1958, he moved to New York, where he joined a vibrant community of young artists exploring the possibilities of nonrepresentational abstraction. In the late 1960s, Joe Overstreet began working with shaped canvases. By 1970, with the Flight Pattern works, he had let his painting leap off the wall. After this series, he continued to experiment with new approaches to painting, investigating its spatial and textural possibilities. Committed to the intersection of social activism and artistic practice, Joe Overstreet cofounded Kenkeleba House, an arts organization and gallery, in 1974 with his wife, curator and historian Corrine Jennings, and writer Samuel Floyd. Working until his last years, Joe Overstreet died in New York City in 2019.

THE MENIL COLLECTION

1533 Sul Ross St., Houston, TX 77006

www.menil.org

Joe Overstreet: Taking Fligh @ The Menil Collection, Houston , January 24 - July 13, 2025

07/03/25

Chico da Silva @ David Kordansky Gallery, Los Angeles - "Amazônico" Exhibition

Chico da Silva

Amazônico

David Kordansky Gallery, Los Angeles

March 13 - April 26, 2025

David Kordansky Gallery presents Amazônico, the first solo exhibition of CHICO DA SILVA’s work in Los Angeles.

“I feel the animals, the jungles, the fantastic worlds, entering the phase of other worlds.”
—Chico da Silva, 1972

Over a prolific career spanning four decades, Chico da Silva devoted himself to depicting the celestial, otherworldly realms within his imagination. His work, which spans a rich and varied body of paintings, drawings, and performance, encapsulates a profound engagement with the intersection of personal mythology, cultural history, and collective creativity. Amazônico brings together exemplary paintings from the 1980s—an often-overlooked phase of Chico da Silva’s career—alongside works from the 1960s, offering a comprehensive look at his practice and insight into the evolution of his distinctive artistic vision.

Born in Alto Tejo, Brazil, Chico da Silva’s early years in the Amazon deeply influenced the development of his cosmology of fantastical creatures and environments. As a teenager, he moved to Pirambu with his mother. It was only a few years later that Swiss art critic Jean-Pierre Chabloz saw him drawing on some neighborhood buildings and quickly became a key supporter, launching Chico da Silva’s international career. By the early-to-mid 1960s, Chico da Silva had honed his unique style, working primarily on paper and depicting creatures—both real and imagined—in suspended states of conflict. The 1964 and 1966 works featured in this exhibition both feature stippled lines and dots that define his bichos (creatures). In the 1966 example, fish surrounding a tree share the same intricate patterns, dissolving the boundary between flora and fauna in Chico da Silva’s invented world.

Chico da Silva continued to garner significant attention, culminating with an invitation to participate in the 1966 Venice Biennale, where he received an honorable mention. A work from this pivotal year is included in Amazônico. The only painting in the original artist frame, this work offers critical insight into Chico da Silva’s process: the painting’s frame bears marks from the artist, who constantly wiped his brush onto the frame’s border to ensure precision in every stroke. His refined technique later became the foundation for the Pirambu School. Originally conceived as an arts workshop for children and local artisans to learn directly from Chico da Silva, the school quickly evolved into a collective. Members of the Pirambu School began to create their own works, expanding Chico da Silva’s visual language and contributing to a shared, imaginative universe.

Throughout his time teaching at Pirambu, Chico da Silva continuously reinterpreted and evolved his compositions. Two works from disparate parts of his practice, 1966 and 1981, exemplify this sustained reinterpretation. Both of these works feature a large, central fish surrounded by smaller ones swimming around its open mouth. In the earlier of the two paintings, an eel swims into the fish’s mouth, while in the later version, Chico da Silva replaces it with a slim fin extending from the fish’s head, subtly shifting the composition and drawing in the smaller fish. Moreover, Chico da Silva’s use of color and pattern shifts from a moody, dark tone in the 1966 work to a vibrant, eclectic style in the 1981 piece. Fifteen years apart, these works highlight Chico da Silva’s endless ability to reinvent his fantastical world and the characters that inhabit it.

Chico da Silva’s Venice Biennale recognition brought both fame and scrutiny to the Pirambu School. European audiences struggled to make sense of the school’s collective approach. Meanwhile, Chico da Silva’s worsening alcoholism led to extended inpatient treatment. While hospitalized, Chico da Silva continued to paint and by the late 1970s, he had returned to the studio. An untitled painting from 1980, created in the last few years of Chico’s life, presents a notable departure from his earlier style by omitting the patterned gradient backgrounds that had defined much of his previous work. Here, a vibrant grid serves as the backdrop for two dueling dragons. Each square is composed of creatures and scenes amassed throughout his decades-long body of work. The snakes, trees, birds, and fish familiar from his 1960s pieces are reimagined in smaller forms, subtly obscured by the dramatic presence of the two dragons. Through this grid, Chico da Silva synthesizes the rich cosmology he had developed over many years.

Chico da Silva’s deployment of Amazonian flora, fauna, and mythical iconography has had a lasting impact on international audiences. By presenting regional narratives on an international stage, Chico continues to play a key role in shaping the conversation around Latin American art, challenging conventional views and highlighting the relevance of art practices from outside traditional art centers in global movements.

CHICO DA SILVA (b. circa 1910, d. 1985) has been the subject of numerous solo exhibitions, including the major, traveling retrospective Chico da Silva e o ateliê do Pirambu, presented at the Pinacoteca de São Paulo (2023) and the Pinacoteca do Ceará (2023). Other solo exhibitions include Chico da Silva: Sacred Connection, Global Vision, Museu de Arte Sacra, São Paulo (2022); Chico da Silva – O Renascer 100 Anos, Espaço Cultural Correios, Fortaleza, Brazil (2010); Retrospectiva Chico da Silva: do delírio ao dilúvio, Espaço Cultural do Palácio da Abolição, Fortaleza, Brazil (1989). Group exhibitions include Uma história da arte brasileira, Museu de Arte Moderna, Rio de Janeiro (2024–2025); Patrimônios, Memórias, Artes e Ofícios, Museu da Cultura Cearense, Fortaleza, Brazil (2024); The Sacred in the Amazon, Centro Cultural Inclusartiz, Rio de Janeiro (2023); Fantaisies brésiliennes, Musée International d’Art naïf Anatole Jakovsky, Nice, France (2016); Brasileiro, Brasileiros, Museu Afro Brasil, São Paulo (2005); and 33rd Venice Biennale, Italy (1966). His work is in the permanent collections of Centre Pompidou, Paris; Tate, London; Pinacoteca de São Paulo; El Museo del Barrio, New York; Guggenheim Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates; Museu de Arte do Rio de Janeiro; and Fundacão Edson Queiroz, Fortaleza, Brazil.

DAVID KORDANSKY GALLERY LOS ANGELES

5130 W. Edgewood Pl., Los Angeles, CA 90019

www.davidkordanskygallery.com

Maia Cruz Palileo @ David Kordansky Gallery, Los Angeles - "SATOR ROTAS" Exhibition

Maia Cruz Palileo

SATOR ROTAS

David Kordansky Gallery, Los Angeles

March 13 - April 26, 2025

David Kordansky Gallery presents SATOR ROTAS, its first exhibition of new work by MAIA CRUZ PALILEO. The exhibition occupies two spaces at the gallery’s Los Angeles location, and includes paintings, ceramic sculptures, and works on paper, shedding light on the multi-faceted nature of the artist’s project and their poetic engagement with the Filipino diaspora.

Maia Palileo looks at their own Filipino heritage to better understand the routes by which their family arrived in the United States, but also as a way of entering into deeper communication with their own psychological and imaginative responses to the contemporary world. In each phase of Palileo’s work, they give shape to otherwise invisible forces that animate landscapes, drive historical change, and enrich—and complicate—human lives.

SATOR ROTAS features work Maia Palileo has made since their visit to the Philippines at the beginning of 2024, when they were able to have firsthand experiences of environments that, as someone born in the US, they had predominantly encountered through archival documentation and secondhand family accounts. A whole new set of sense impressions has therefore transformed the raw material available to them on both conscious and unconscious levels, lending increased physicality to a practice already notable for its attunement to the sculptural qualities of paint.

Such impressions are not limited, however, to the visual or even the tactile. They also include more intuitive perceptions that arose when Maia Palileo was able to connect myths, legends, and folklore shared by their family with the natural landscapes of the Philippines, resulting in an expanded, multi-dimensional sense of place. Several paintings are informed by time spent around Mount Banahaw, a slumbering volcano long considered a holy pilgrimage site in the Philippines. Maia Palileo renders images of dense forest scenes, root systems, and branching forms of trees, providing opportunities for intricate layering and the creation of suggestive, mystery-laden openings where the unruliness of life bursts forth, seemingly of its own accord.

The exhibition’s palindromic title draws attention to ideas of reflection and mirroring that appear throughout the works on view. In the horizontally oriented work, Like a Shadow That Cannot Walk (2025), Maia Palileo bisects the painting so that when viewed in one direction, orange and pink swaths appear as water atop which a boat is floating. When viewed in the other direction, however, the orange and pink become a sunset sky, with its boat and figures reflected in the dark waters beneath. Similarly, the painting Revir (2024), whose title is the word “river” spelled backwards, draws connections to sinister ideas of the “upside down world” as it relates to colonialism, prompting the viewer to interrogate what it is they’re seeing and to not be easily fooled by a first impression.

In Springtime Again (2024), a monumental diptych, Maia Palileo establishes an optical rhythm in which vertical striations create an effect akin to double vision. Like vintage stereo cards, Palileo creates two nearly identical spliced landscapes that, when presented side-by-side, allude to a third, imagined landscape. This work also exemplifies the ways in which collage, as a process and typology, influences Palileo’s approach to image-making. Here, a repeated pattern of dark, tree-like vertical impressions approximates the negative space that results when cutting out strips of paper. Springtime Again, like several other works on view, pulls imagery directly from postcards—objects that have historically represented, or misrepresented, faraway places from a colonially skewed perspective. Postcards and stereo cards have an inherent relationship to both image and experience, which makes them an ideal reference for Maia Palileo, whose work considers the motivations behind historic documentation and image-making, just as much as they consider the physical embodiments of one’s senses.

Understanding the invisible, like travel or other sensorial events, plays a large part in Palileo’s project, prompting questions around what experiences are invisible and what can be rendered visible. As a whole, the works in this exhibition offer a parallel understanding from both lived accounts—touching trees, walking down a street you’ve mostly seen in photos—and flattened images in an archive. It’s through this parallel approach that Maia Palileo creates paintings that appear mirrored, spliced, or otherwise bifurcated to approximate the experience of understanding a place and people through indirect methods, thereby gaining a closer understanding of their own family history and of themself.

MAIA CRUZ PALILEO (b. 1979, Chicago) has been the subject of solo exhibitions at Cummer Museum, Jacksonville, Florida (2023); Kimball Art Center, Park City, Utah (2022); Wattis Institute for Contemporary Arts, San Francisco (2021); and American University Museum at the Katzen Arts Center, Washington, D.C. (2019), among others. Recent group exhibitions include Spirit House, Cantor Arts Center at Stanford University (2024); Seven Rooms and a Garden, Moderna Museet, Skeppsholmen, Stockholm (2023); Spirit in the Land, Nasher Museum of Art at Duke University, Durham, North Carolina (2023); The Outwin: American Portrait Today, Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery, Washington, D.C. (2022); A Point Stretched: Views on Time, San José Museum of Art, California (2022); and Our Blue Planet: Global Visions of Water, Seattle Art Museum (2022), among many others. Their work is in the permanent collections of institutions including the Cummer Museum, Jacksonville, Florida; San José Museum of Art, California; TANG Art Foundation, Hong Kong; Fredriksen Collection, National Museum, Oslo, Norway; Nasher Museum of Art at Duke University, Durham, North Carolina; Speed Art Museum, Louisville, Kentucky; and Chapman University, Orange, California. Palileo lives and works in Brooklyn, New York.

DAVID KORDANSKY GALLERY LOS ANGELES

5130 W. Edgewood Pl., Los Angeles, CA 90019

www.davidkordanskygallery.com

Sanna Kannisto @ Helsinki Contemporary - "Gestures" Photography Exhibition

Sanna Kannisto: Gestures

Helsinki Contemporary

14 March - 6 April 2025

SANNA KANNISTO

Sunflower, 2023

Pigment ink print

120 x 90 cm, edition of 7

Further option: 81 x 61 cm

SANNA KANNISTO

Preening

SANNA KANNISTO

Oriolus oriolus

Sanna Kannisto’s latest exhibition explores the gestures and unique personalities of birds through photography. Her avian photography is distinctive for her unusual technique of constructing field studios in natural settings. While shooting, she is attuned to the birds’ gestures, postures, and expressive presence. “Certain moments make photography meaningful to me, such as when a bird chirps, flutters its wings, grooms itself, cleans its beak, cranes its neck, competes for a place on the perch, peers at me with a certain look in its eye, or nestles up against a companion,” describes the artist.

Sanna Kannisto’s art engages in commentary with the history of portraiture, the still life genre, and traditions of scientific representation. Her photographs are the combined outcome of meticulous planning, surprise and chance. Some of her compositions are ‘hand-crafted’, combining multiple images or different moments in time. The thing that has always intrigued her about photography is the tension between reality and photographic representation. In the final stages of creating an image, Sanna Kannisto describes herself as striving to strike a balance between the natural and the artificial, or “constructs of naturalness”. “When I compose an image, I also construct a narrative, and the viewer then completes the story in their imagination,” says the artist.

SANNA KANNISTO

Garrulus glandarius

pigment ink-print maple frame, museum glass

1/7 - 61 x 81 cm

SANNA KANNISTO

Asio otus

The exhibition’s title, Gestures, reflects the artist’s interest in the relationships between birds and their means of communication. A Japanese study published last year revealed that birds communicate using symbolic gestures. The Japanese Tit (Parus minor) flutters its wings in a particular way to signal an invitation for its mate to enter the nest first, suggesting that birds understand abstract messages on a level previously unrecognized by humans. Another study has revealed that the male starling is able to anticipate its mate’s specific appetites and bring the female the exact treats she desires. Birds are scientifically proven to have highly developed social skills. Studies even suggest that birds might possess a ‘theory of mind’, as they appear to be capable of making a distinction between their own mental states and those of others.

SANNA KANNISTO

Sanna Kannisto has been photographing birds in Finland and around the world for over a decade, offering her unique insights on the acceleration of environmental change. The past ten years have seen a drastic decline in bird populations all over the world, including Finland. The crested tit – the species portrayed in one of Kannisto’s diptychs – was formerly an endangered species, but is now on the critically endangered list. In her recent works, Sanna Kannisto has expanded her avian menagerie to challenging new species such as crows, owls, woodpeckers, hawks, bee-eaters and swallows. During her field work, she collaborates with ornithologists and bird ringers. She has received permission for her projects from the Finnish Centre for Economic Development, Transport and the Environment. The birds featured in Gestures were photographed in Finland and Italy.

HELSINKI CONTEMPORARY

Bulevardi 10, 00120 Helsinki

helsinkicontemporary.com

Ivan Morley @ David Kordansky Gallery, NYC - "Tragegedy, [sic]" Exhibition

Ivan Morley: Tragegedy, [sic]

David Kordansky Gallery, New York

March 6 - April 26, 2025

David Kordansky Gallery presents Tragegedy, [sic], a solo exhibition of new works by Ivan Morley.

Ivan Morley has continued to build on a decades-old typology where form, color, and material layer to create paintings that are as much object as they are rendered image. Each piece is produced by painting an underlayer in watercolor and slowly building onto the canvas with thread, focusing on small, embroidery-ring-sized sections at a time, so that the completed work isn’t revealed to the artist until the end of the embroidery process. Looking therefore becomes secondary to the act of building or constructing an image on a micro scale.

Inspired by the title of a Bee Gees song, Tragegedy, [sic] alludes to the way a musician may elongate or alter the pronunciation of a word to better match the rhythm of a song, and so too can a painter modify an image to better meet the needs of a composition. In this sense, painting, or the creation of a visual image, is flexible in the way a written narrative or other methods of storytelling can’t be. Language and narrative are consistent elements in Morley’s work, whether through the inclusion of letter-like forms such as those present in Tehachepi, [sic] (2024), or by grouping the artworks with serialized titles. Ivan Morley continues to develop what he calls a “narrative baggage,” where each work is building onto the last and therefore, the meaning behind each painting gets multiplied over time.

While Ivan Morley has a deep understanding of painting as a discipline, he’s able to engage in more rigorous and physical production methods that exist outside of two-dimensional space. By prioritizing seemingly “lower” materials such as thread and reverse glass painting, his paintings enter into conversation with more sculptural and conceptual practices, bridging a gap between the constructed and the depicted.

Even in his more traditional compositions, experimentation remains at the core of Morley’s project. Tragegedy, [sic] (2024), from which the exhibition gets its name, is featured alongside several studies created by Morley. Each of the four studies was produced using the same elaborate methods as Morley’s other artworks, prompting questions about what constitutes an artwork and how to confront the hierarchy that may exist between things that would be considered studies versus completed paintings. For Morley’s practice in particular, the development and presentation of an image over time is crucial to his own understanding of the meaning behind a work.

Some of Morley’s most radical works in this exhibition are also his most conventional. Tehachepi, [sic], A True Tale (2024), for example, depicts two distinguishable figures situated amongst the rippled marks and textured swaths of color for which Morley has become known. The work also incorporates x’s, arrows, and other remnant notes the artist has left for himself throughout the production process. Morley opts to incorporate these notes into the artwork because of the additive nature of embroidery, where once thread is added, it can’t easily be edited or removed. Even in more abstract versions from the same series, like Tehachepi, [sic], (After Cappiello) (2024), Morley utilizes the same scale and vertical orientation commonly associated with portraiture to not only connect this work to others in the series, but also to a larger art historical lineage of portraiture. Throughout the exhibition, Morley’s paintings highlight how an image can hold a story or multiple histories on a single plane, and how those histories are connected to the history of painting as a whole. Like language, the paintings on view are strung together in such a way that it requires multiple works, created over many years, to provide the necessary context.

IVAN MORLEY (b. 1966, Burbank, California) has been the subject of solo exhibitions at venues including David Kordansky Gallery, Los Angeles (2022); Bortolami Gallery, New York (2021 and 2016) and Kimmerich Galerie, Berlin (2014). Group exhibitions include Abstract America Today, Saatchi Gallery, London (2014); Painting Expanded, Tanya Bonakdar Gallery, New York (2011); The Artist’s Museum, Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles (2010); DAS GESPINST, Die Sammlung Schürmann zu Besuch im Museum Abteiberg, Museum Abteiberg, Mönchengladbach, Germany (2009); Imagination Becomes Reality, Part IV: Borrowed Images, Sammlung Goetz, Munich (2006); and Painting in Tongues, Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles (2006). His work is in the permanent collections of institutions including Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen (K21), Düsseldorf, Germany; Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; and University Museum of Contemporary Art at the Fine Arts Center, University of Massachusetts Amherst. In 2020, the first comprehensive monograph dedicated to Morley was published by David Kordansky Gallery and Bortolami Gallery. Morley lives and works in Los Angeles and Big Sur, California.

DAVID KORDANSKY GALLERY NEW YORK

520 W. 20th St., New York, NY 10011

www.davidkordanskygallery.com

Carlos Motta @ MACBA, Barcelona - Exhibition "Pleas of Resistance"

Carlos Motta. Pleas of Resistance

MACBA, Barcelona

21 February – 26 October 2025

CARLOS MOTTA

Untitled Self-Portrait, #4, 2019

Pleas of Resistance is the first major European museum exhibition dedicated to Colombian artist CARLOS MOTTA (Bogota, 1978). A resident of New York for many years, the artist began his career in the 1990s and is an important figure in contemporary art. The artist’s work can only be understood through his commitment to social and political movements, specifically the politics of gender identity and sexuality and, above all, his staunch commitment to giving voice to dissident expressions in the face of dominant normative discourses. This point permeates all of his work, which pivots on two dialogical axes: intersectionality and queerness.

The MACBA exhibition acknowledges the relevance of Motta’s projects and discourses on issues of violence, domination, religion and politics. It does so with pieces that address discrimination in increasingly conservative political environments (such as in the United States), the plight of undocumented immigrants around the world, and Latin American decolonization projects.

Pleas of Resistance covers more than twenty-five years of the artist’s practice, in which his early explorations of photographic self-portraiture are exhibited alongside his most recent performances and video installations. The exhibition focuses on the rigor of Motta’s artistic research, on his continuous questioning of the archive – its violence and silencing, its fears and desires. Motta’s work challenges the imposition of Eurocentric epistemologies – from the time of the conquest and colonial period in the Americas to the present day – and considers the legacy of religion as a perpetrator and disruptive vehicle of coloniality.

Pleas of Resistance provides a unique opportunity for an in-depth look at Motta’s work and some of the pieces that have made him an important reference for both artistic and political activism, such as We Who Feel Differently (2012), which addresses the LGTBI+ movement; Legacy (2019), which reflects upon the impact of AIDS; Air of Life (2023), a collaborative multimedia installation that examines experiences of marginalization and the intersectional repercussions of colonialism; the installation When I Leave This World (2022), which shows the performance of a person who adopts an animal aesthetic; and Nefandus (2013), a video trilogy that investigates pre-Hispanic and colonial homoeroticism, one of which is part of the MACBA collection.

Alongside the exhibition, the museum hosts a new edition of La Internacional Queer/Cuir: a series of debates, lectures, live art, music and performance presented at MACBA, coordinated by the public programmes area. The past and present HIV/AIDS pandemic will be the common thread, with a focus on Global South perspectives. A publication compiling the contributions of the eight previous editions of La Internacional Queer as well as this new edition will be published upon the exhibition’s conclusion.

Carlos Motta. Pleas of Resistance is curated by Agustín Pérez-Rubio in collaboration with María Berríos.

MACBA

Museu d'Art Contemporani de Barcelona

Museum of Contemporary Art of Barcelona

Plaça dels Àngels, 1, Ciutat Vella, 08001 Barcelona

www.macba.cat

06/03/25

Saul Leiter @ Foam, Amsterdam - Retrospective Exhibition "An Unfinished World"

Saul Leiter

An Unfinished World

Foam, Amsterdam

Until 20 April 2025

SAUL LEITER

Harlem, 1960

“Photographs are often treated as important moments, but really they are fragments and souvenirs of an unfinished world.” – Saul Leiter

Foam presents a major retrospective exhibition of the celebrated American artist SAUL LEITER (1923–2013). Saul Leiter is seen as one of the most important photographers of the 1950’s in the United States, and a pioneer of colour photography. This exhibition brings together over 200 works, consisting of photography, both black-and-white and colour, as well as his abstract paintings. His eclectic oeuvre reveals a practice using shadow, light, and reflections to craft layered compositions.

For nearly sixty years, Saul Leiter photographed daily, capturing everyday moments of New York City life. With various techniques and mediums, and the use of telephoto lenses, Saul Leiter would enhance the painterly quality of his images and transform seemingly mundane street scenes into visual poetry. New York, a symbol of modernity in the 1950s, became the backdrop for Leiter’s aesthetic discoveries.

By shooting in the rain and snow, and using windows and other reflective surfaces, he created abstract images. A red umbrella, a green traffic light, or the yellow flash of a passing taxi add an unexpected play of colour to his photographs. In the 1940s and 1950s, Saul Leiter was virtually the only non-commercial photographer to work in colour. The use of aged or damaged film allowed him to include surprising compositions with shifts in light and colour. Once lost to obscurity, his work was rediscovered in the mid 2010s for its ground-breaking role in the emergence of colour photography.

Saul Leiter was a self-taught photographer whose strong sense of curiosity made him a lifelong student. He maintained his experimental and spontaneous approach throughout his career, which is evident in both his street photography and fashion work.

Upon his death in 2013, Saul Leiter left behind a remarkable collection of approximately 15,000 black-and-white prints, at least 40,000 colour slides, a similar number of black-and-white negatives and over 4000 paintings, only a handful of which have been seen publicly. The exhibition An Unfinished World offers visitors the chance to admire the endless poetry of Saul Leiter’s artistic practice through his paintings, photography and unique view on the world around him.

SAUL LEITER (1923–2013) began painting and photographing in his teenage years, gaining an early recognition for his paintings. After moving to New York in 1946, he turned to photography as a profession while continuing to paint. His abstract forms and groundbreaking compositions possess a painterly quality that distinguishes them from the works of other photographers of that era. His work significantly contributed to the emergence of what is now known as the New York School of photography.

In 1957, he began working for major publications like Esquire and Harper’s Bazaar, balancing his commercial success with his personal passion for street photography in his Manhattan neighborhood. Saul Leiter's groundbreaking work in colour photography gained widespread acclaim with the release of his first book, Early Color (2006). By the time of his death in 2013, Saul Leiter had achieved international recognition, with his work featured in numerous museum exhibitions and publications worldwide.

The exhibition is organised in collaboration with Les Rencontres d'Arles and diChroma photography and curated by Anne Morin.

FOAM - AMSTERDAM

Keizersgracht 609, 1017 DS Amsterdam

www.foam.org

Saul Leiter: An Unfinished World

FOAM, Amsterdam

24 January 2025 – 20 April 2025

Hauser & Wirth @ LOPF 2025 - London Original Print Fair - New releases, modern and contemporary highlights - Artists + Artworks

Hauser & Wirth @ Booth S9

London Original Print Fair 2025

20 — 23 March 2025

Thomas J Price

Rood Boy (Untitled 2), 2024

Aluminum, 24ct gold leaf, walnut, acrylic

Ed. of 10 + 2 AP

70 x 50 x 9.5 cm / 27 1/2 x 19 5/8 x 3 3/4 inches

Plate: 65 x 45 x 0.5 cm / 25 5/8 x 17 3/4 x 1/4 in

Shelf: 9.5 x 50 x 6.8 cm / 3 3/4 x 19 5/8 x 2 5/8 in

Courtesy the artist & Hauser & Wirth

Photo: Eva Herzog

Rashid Johnson

Untitled (Surrender), 2023

9-color silkscreen resist with hand-applied pigment

Co-published by Hauser & Wirth and Brand X Editions

Ed. of 51 + 15 AP

121.9 x 165.1 cm / 48 x 65 in

Courtesy the artist and Hauser & Wirth

Photo: Sarah Muehlbauer

Nicole Eisenman

Bar, 2012

Nine-color lithograph

AP 2/2, Ed. of 25 + 2 AP

78.1 x 59.7 cm / 30 3/4 x 23 1/2 in

Courtesy the artist, Hauser & Wirth and Jungle Press Editions

Photo: Sarah Muehlbauer

Hauser & Wirth returns to London Original Print Fair for the 40th anniversary with an exceptional selection of works reflecting the gallery’s commitment to prints and editions. Featuring works by both contemporary and modern artists from the gallery’s roster, the booth highlights the importance of printmaking to the artists’ multifaceted practices and celebrates the collaborations between artists and master printers. The fair presentation complements the gallery’s ongoing work with printmaking, which is headquartered in a dedicated Editions space on 18th Street in New York.

Hauser & Wirth @ LOPF 2025: New releases and contemporary highlights

US artist Rashid Johnson debuts ‘Untitled (Surrender)’ (2023), a large silk screenprint which has been newly released by Hauser & Wirth and Brand X Editions. Part of the artist’s Surrender series, the large print features ghostly white faces which trace the development of his renowned Anxious Men series. The presentation also brings to London for the first time a selection of Henry Taylor’s etchings, first shown at the gallery’s editions space in New York earlier this year, including the self-portrait ‘Fade to Black, I Did Not Pay the Electric Bill’ and still life ‘I Love Looking at You’ (2024).

Henry Taylor

I Love Looking at You, 2024

Color sugarlift aquatint

Ed. of 35 + 12 AP

123.2 x 106.7 cm / 48 1/2 x 42 in

Courtesy the artist and Hauser & Wirth

Photo: Sarah Muehlbauer

William Kentridge

I Look In The Mirror, I Know What I Need, 2024

Lithograph on handmade Korean paper

Ed. of 26 + 4 AP + 4 PP + 1 Archives + 1 BNF 128 x 168 cm /

50 3/8 x 66 1/8 in

Photo: Nicolas Brasseur

Other major highlights include William Kentridge’s lithograph on handmade Korean paper ‘I Look In The Mirror, I Know What I Need’ (2024), featuring iconic motifs from the artist’s practice, such as the coffee pot. London-based artist Thomas J Price also debuts ‘Rood Boy (Untitled 2)’ (2024), which revisits an earlier print made in 2019 using 24ct gold leaf of a fictional character whose unflinching gaze meets directly with the viewer’s. Also based in London, artist Sonia Boyce’s ‘She is Benevolent’ (2024) takes inspiration from her latest video work ‘Benevolence’, a project for Palazzo della Ragione in Italy which examines traditional Italian folksongs as a powerful form of social commentary.

The booth also features recent prints by contemporary artists, including a delicate copperplate etching by London-based artist Anj Smith from 2022 titled ‘Misleading, Like Lace,’ a selection of hardground etchings from George Condo and ‘Bar,’ a nine-colour lithograph print by Nicole Eisenman from 2012 made with Jungle Press Editions.

Hauser & Wirth @ LOPF 2025: Historical modern masterworks

Philip Guston

Rug, 1981

Lithograph

AP 4/11, Ed. of 50 + 11 AP

49.5 x 73.7 cm / 19 1/2 x 29 in

Courtesy the Estate and Hauser & Wirth

Photo: Sarah Muehlbauer

Complementing the gallery’s contemporary offering, the booth highlights historic works by modern masters. Philip Guston’s ‘Rug’ (1980) depicts the groundbreaking figurative style which defines the artist’s late works and the recurring symbolic motif of shoes. The booth also includes a selection of prints by Takesada Matsutani from the 1960s – 1970s—during which time he worked at Atelier 17 in Paris, Stanley William Hayter’s printmaking studio. Additional 20th-century highlights include prints by Dieter Roth, Günther Förg and Eduardo Chillida.

HAUSER & WIRTH

www.hauserwirth.com

Zdenek Sykora @ Galerie Zdenek Sklenar, Prague - "Colour Gardens" Exhibition

Zdeněk Sýkora – Colour Gardens

Galerie Zdeněk Sklenář, Prague

Through 12 April 2025

The exhibition Colour Gardens recalls one of the significant stages of the artistic development of the painter ZDENEK SYKORA (1920–2011) who is primarily know as the author of structures and lines. Galerie Zdeněk Sklenář is exhibiting the painter‘ cycle Gardens which includes the collection of artworks from 1959–1961. The paintings illustrate the artist’s transition from a realistic depiction of nature towards abstract compositions which later evolved into structures. According to Pavel Kappel, an art historian, this rather short period of three years forms “a fundamental turning point in Sýkora’s artwork”. Henri Matisse whom he got to know when visiting the Hermitage Museum in Saint Petersburg in 1959 affected the artist’s shift towards Fauvist painting. In the catalogue, which was published on the occasion of Zdeněk Sýkora’s 90th anniversary, Pavel Kappel observes: “We call the direct outcome of the Matisse’s lesson, the series of coloured paintings, the Gardens on the basis of the prevailing motif, even if we can include some paintings which he had begun before the crucial trip... or even paintings with a different motif altogether – Tree, Autumn Forest...”

The author of the exhibition, Lenka Sýkorová, the wife and collaborator of the artist, who is the closest to Zdeněk Sýkora’s artwork, selected more than thirty artworks for the exhibition in Galerie Zdeněk Sklenář. Besides paintings from private collections, there are some on loan from Galerie Benedikta Rejta in Louny, National Gallery in Prague and two of them were loaned by a private collector in Munich. At the exhibition, of which architect is Josef Pleskot, there are artworks the artist considered crucial such as Black Garden (1958), Garden (1959), Autumn Forest (1960), two paintings called Blue Garden (1959 and 1960), Garden (with a Square) (1960), Garden/Composition (1961).

Lenka Sýkorová emphasises that the paintings from the Gardens cycle represent the culmination of Sýkora’s landscape work from the 1950s and that they are the proof of his colourist talent and at the same time, they form the confirmation of his further heading towards abstraction and the condition for finding his own way.

GALERIE ZDENEK SKLENAR - PRAGUE

Schönkirch Palace - Mikulandská 7, Prague 1 – New Town

www.zdeneksklenar.cz

Zdeněk Sýkora – Colour Gardens

Galerie Zdeněk Sklenář, Prague

4 February - 12 April 2025

Milan Dobes @ Olomouc Museum of Art - "A Celebration of Colour, Light and Movement" Exhibition - About the Artist + Artworks

Milan Dobeš

A Celebration of Colour, Light and Movement

Olomouc Museum of Art

March 20 - September 7, 2025

Milan Dobeš

Target, 1960

Vertical Lights, h 67 x w 51 cm

Milan Dobeš

Waves, 1960

Painting matt oil, sololite, 125 x 186 cm

A retrospective exhibition of Milan Dobeš (*1929), a pioneer of global kinetic and constructivist art, will be presented by the Olomouc Museum of Art (Czechia). Visitors will gain a deep insight into the life and work of this artist, who exhibited alongside art icons such as Warhol, Vasarely, Anuszkiewicz, and many others. Through his creations, Dobeš transcended the borders of former Czechoslovakia and became a respected figure within the global avant-garde movement.

The path to becoming an internationally recognized artist was not easy for the native of Přerov (Czechia), who spent most of his ninety-five years life in Slovakia. While studying at the Academy of Fine Arts in Bratislava, Slovakia (1951–1956), he faced challenges due to his "capitalist background" and was only able to continue his studies with the support of Professor Ján Mudroch. A pivotal moment and turning point in his career came with his three-month stay in France, which he was able to undertake by means of a sham marriage application. During this time, he came into contact with modern art while earning a living by painting street scenes.

Milan Dobeš

Optical Relief – Triptych, 1964

Vertical Lights, h 67 x w 51 cm

Milan Dobeš

Optical Relief, Untitled, 1964

Metal, mixed media. H 55,5 x W 43,5 cm

Milan Dobeš

Pulsing Rhythm, 1965

Glass, metal, electric motor, 61 x 77 x 297 cm

Milan Dobeš

Movement of Light in Space IV, 1968

Metal, electric motor, bulb, 78x 40x195 cm

MILAN DOBES: FROM WENCESLAS SQUARE TO INTERNATIONAL FAME

In 1966, he received an invitation to exhibit at the House of Czechoslovak-Soviet Friendship in Prague, a bastion of socialist realism, which paradoxically became his breakthrough into the world of art. The exhibition of light and kinetic objects in the attractive space at Wenceslas Square, originally planned as a "protest action," attracted 56,000 visitors. It also caught the attention of prominent international theorists, including Frank Popper and Udo Kultermann, who recognized Dobeš as a key figure in kinetic art and op art. Frank Popper subsequently invited Dobeš to the Kunst–Licht–Kunst exhibition in Eindhoven, the first post-war exhibition of its kind in the world.

After that, Dobeš's works travelled to prestigious world exhibitions – Documenta 4 in Kassel (1968), EXPO '70 in Osaka, and the Biennale in Montevideo in 1969, where he received the First Prize for kinetic sculpture. Alongside Victor Vasarely, Andy Warhol, Edward Kienholz, and Martial Rayss, he was invited to Helsinki for the Ars 69 exhibition, which showcased sixty of the best contemporary artists from around the world. “I don't know how I got there, but I was there,” Milan Dobeš recalled nearly half a century later for a documentary film by the Olomouc Museum of Art. “And you know, it didn't strike me at the time at all. I thought I belonged there. In retrospect, I admire myself for I got there,” Milan Dobeš laughs as he reflects on those memories. His position among the key figures of global constructivism was affirmed in 2013 by his participation in the prestigious exhibition “Dynamo. A Century of Light and Movement in Art 1913-2013” at the Grand Palais in Paris, which recapped a century of kinetic art. From former Czechoslovakia, only František Kupka and Milan Dobeš were selected for this exhibition.

One of the highlights of Dobeš's career was his collaboration in 1971 with the American Wind Symphony Orchestra in the USA, where he contributed to the creation of a monumental light-kinetic object synchronized with the music of prominent composers such as Krzysztof Penderecki and Toshiro Mayuzumi.

Milan Dobeš

Movement of Structure V, 1986

Milan Dobeš

Untitled, 1991

Milan Dobeš

The Great Rotation I, 1992

MILAN DOBES: LIGHT, MOVEMENT, AND RHYTHM – A UNIQUE AESTHETIC

Milan Dobeš is like an equilibrist working with light and movement, he is the creator of precise op art graphics as well as extensive spatial kinetic objects. He is a refined illusionist and a colourful minimalist, whose rational approach results in works that astonishingly evoke emotional responses. Through his creations, he transforms the reality of space, drawing the viewers in with pulsating works that transport them to other worlds.

Among approximately 180 works, eighteen are by other significant global figures of constructivism and kineticism, allowing viewers to compare Dobeš's work with leading representatives in this field of visual art. “This is a unique opportunity to discover the work of an artist whose creations continue to resonate with both experts and the general public,” says curator Gina Renotière. “The exhibition was made possible due to the welcoming approach to loans from not only major state galleries but also private institutions and collectors,” explains Gina Renotière, noting that the exhibition will also feature objects and graphics from Dobeš's generous donation to the collection of the Olomouc Museum of Art.

Curators: Gina Renotière, Ivan Jančár

OLOMOUC MUSEUM OF ART

MUZEUM UMĚNÍ OLOMOUC

Denisova 47, 771 11, Olomouc

www.muo.cz

Edvard Munch: Technically Speaking @ Harvard Art Museums, Cambridge

Edvard Munch: Technically Speaking

Harvard Art Museums, Cambridge

March 7 - July 27, 2025

EDVARD MUNCH

Two Human Beings (The Lonely Ones), 1894

Etching and drypoint

Harvard Art Museums/Fogg Museum,

The Philip and Lynn Straus Collection, 2023.559

EDVARD MUNCH

Two Human Beings (The Lonely Ones), 1899

Woodcut, printed in four colors of ink

Harvard Art Museums/Fogg Museum,

The Philip and Lynn Straus Collection, 2023.602

EDVARD MUNCH

Two Human Beings (The Lonely Ones), 1906–8.

Oil on canvas

Harvard Art Museums/Busch-Reisinger Museum,

The Philip and Lynn Straus Collection, 2023.551

The Harvard Art Museums present an exhibition of works by Edvard Munch that examines the artist’s innovative techniques and the recurring themes across his paintings, woodcuts, lithographs, etchings, and combination prints. Highlighting the collaborative partnership between curatorial and conservation experts at the museums, the exhibition reveals new and ongoing technical research into Munch’s practice and shares recent discoveries about his materials and highly experimental methods.

The exhibition showcases 70 works, primarily from the Harvard Art Museums collections. Thanks to a transformative gift from Philip A. and Lynn G. Straus, the museums now house one of the largest and most significant collections of artwork by Munch in the United States—a collection that is also distinctive for its technical variety. Key loans from the Munch Museum in Oslo include two paintings and eight examples of the artist’s materials used for printmaking, seven of which have never before been on display in the United States.

Norwegian artist Edvard Munch (1863–1944) is well known for his innovative experiments in painting and printmaking. He often rendered the same subject matter in both mediums—repeatedly over decades—to investigate their distinctive possibilities. His highly expressive work deals with psychological themes of isolation, separation, anxiety, illness, and death, but also attraction and love. Technically Speaking explores Munch’s fascination with materiality, uncovers new avenues for thinking about his work, and delves into his unconventional techniques and the various themes he returned to again and again over many years.

“This exhibition showcases an exciting selection of Munch’s paintings and prints from a career that spanned more than 60 years,” said Elizabeth M. Rudy. “We are thrilled to present his work through a lens that is perfect for a university museum—one that reinforces our teaching and research mission—by sharing the results of our recent investigations into his techniques and materials.”

The exhibition begins with several iterations of Two Human Beings (The Lonely Ones), depicting a man and a woman standing at a shoreline, side by side yet isolated from one another. First painted by Munch in 1892 (a work later destroyed in an accident at sea), the motif is repeated in an etching from 1894 that depicts the original painting and five subsequent woodcuts that Munch produced between 1899 and 1917. The prints reveal the various intriguing woodcut and etching techniques the artist utilized and also show how he manipulated his jigsaw woodblocks to print different parts of a single work in different colors. They are displayed in the exhibition with the original steel-faced copperplate and jigsaw woodblock that were used to produce the prints. Two paintings on display continue the motif: the artist’s 1906–8 version from the Busch-Reisinger Museum’s collection is based on his woodcuts, and a later (final) version from around 1935, on loan from the Munch Museum, reverts to the composition of the couple used by Munch in his 1892 painting.

“Two Human Beings (The Lonely Ones) remains one of Munch’s most well-known subjects, and we are extremely fortunate to be able to trace his engagement with it over a period of more than 40 years and through nine works in our collections, supplemented by the generous loan of his last painting of the motif and two related matrices from the Munch Museum,” said Lynette Roth. “Together, they demonstrate the close relationship between painting and printmaking in Munch’s practice, his dedication to certain motifs over time, and his embrace of chance effects.”

Several other groupings highlight additional recurring themes in Munch’s work and how he experimented with their representation. Three woodcuts from the Woman’s Head against the Shore series show how Munch selectively printed his jigsaw woodblocks, omitting one of the pieces (the water) in one of the impressions. Four prints from The Kiss series—an etching and three woodcuts—portray a couple embracing in front of different backgrounds. Prints from Melancholy I and Melancholy III, on display with a rare example of Melancholy II, which Munch printed himself with his small hand-crank press, are shown with five of the artist’s original carved woodblocks. Four variations of Vampire II demonstrate how Munch sometimes combined lithographs with hand coloring and used woodblocks to add color as well. Also on display are three versions of Man’s Head in Woman’s Hair, including one used by Munch as a poster advertising an exhibition of his work at Diorama Hall in Kristiania (now Oslo).

Over the last several months, the works in the exhibition from Harvard’s collections have undergone technical study, including pigment analysis, selective treatments such as cleaning and varnish removal, and most of the prints were rematted and reframed. The painting Two Human Beings (1906–8) was varnished at some point in its history, which is not consistent with Munch’s practice of leaving his canvases without a unified glossy surface; this varnish has been removed. Train Smoke (1910) needed paint stabilization and cleaning to remove atmospheric grime, and Winter in Kragerø (1915) had its varnish removed to reveal a more vibrant snowy scene. This work was carried out by staff from the Straus Center for Conservation and Technical Studies, including Ellen Davis, Associate Paintings Conservator; Abby Schleicher, Assistant Paper Conservator; and Kate Smith, Senior Conservator of Paintings and Head of the Paintings Lab, and their findings are presented in the exhibition. Additionally, all six paintings on display from Harvard’s collections were reframed with new, historically accurate frames.

“Munch’s deep experimentations in painting and printmaking meant that he was constantly reworking his canvases and layering many different types of print techniques, which can become complicated to describe,” said Peter Murphy. “As research was underway and our conservators and curatorial team were deciphering how he created many of his works, I set out to break down the technical terms we were using in a friendly, digestible way. We hope that visitors will find the glossary useful, not only in the exhibition, but as something that can be kept and referenced beyond the show.”

The exhibition is curated by Elizabeth M. Rudy, Carl A. Weyerhaeuser Curator of Prints, and Lynette Roth, Daimler Curator of the Busch-Reisinger Museum; with Peter Murphy, Stefan Engelhorn Curatorial Fellow in the Busch-Reisinger Museum. This is the first major presentation at Harvard to examine Munch’s techniques and materials through the lens of the Strauses’ collection in 30 years, following the 1983 exhibition and publication Edvard Munch: Master Printmaker (organized by Charles W. Haxthausen and written by Elizabeth Prelinger) and Norma S. Steinberg’s 1995 exhibition and catalogue Munch in Color.

HARVARD ART MUSEUMS

32 Quincy Street, Cambridge, MA 02138

harvardartmuseums.org