23/07/25

Summer Exhibition @ Flowers Gallery, London - "august (adj)"

august (adj)
Flowers Gallery, London
7 August – 30 August 2025

John Kirby Art
John Kirby 
In Another Country, 1998 
Oil on canvas, 92 x 71.5 cm
© John Kirby, courtesy of Flowers Gallery

Renny Tait Art
Renny Tait
 
London Pub - Blue Sky, 1997 
Oil on canvas, 122.5 x 163
© Renny Tait, courtesy of Flowers Gallery

Flowers Gallery presents august (adj), a group summer exhibition bringing together paintings and sculpture made between 1960 and 2005 by artists who have exhibited with the gallery over the past fifty years.

Featuring thirteen artists—Stephen Chambers RA, Bernard Cohen, Edward Dutkiewicz, Amanda Faulkner, Nicola Hicks, Derek Hirst, Lucy Jones, Michael Kidner RA, John Kirby, Tom Phillips RA, Jack Smith, Richard Smith, and Renny Tait—august (adj) is a vivid and wide-ranging presentation of colour, form, and feeling.

Jack Smith Art
Jack Smith 
Touching on Black, 1992 
Oil on canvas, 152.5 x 152.5 cm 
© Jack Smith, courtesy of Flowers Gallery

Through the dialogues formed between the artworks, the exhibition explores how artists visualise internal realities, whether emotional, psychological, or social. From Bernard Cohen’s painterly maps of thought to Amanda Faulkner’s layered expressions of identity, and from Jack Smith’s silent musical abstractions to Renny Tait’s dreamlike, geometric structures, each work gives form to the unseen.

Lucy Jones Art
Lucy Jones
 
The Boat, c.1989 
Oil on canvas, 175 x 213 cm 
© Lucy Jones, courtesy of Flowers Gallery

Stephen Chambers Art
Stephen Chambers
St. Just, 2005 
Oil on canvas, 40.5 x 35 cm 
© Stephen Chambers, courtesy of Flowers Gallery

Some artists take the self as subject, like Lucy Jones, whose bold colour and brushwork reflect how we see and are seen. John Kirby's quietly surreal figures explore the complexities of gender, religion, and sexuality, while Stephen Chambers’ curious cast of characters hover between worlds, playfully enigmatic yet psychologically charged.

Richard Smith Art
Richard Smith
Surface I, 2009 
Acrylic on canvas, 101.6 x 106.68 cm
© Richard Smith, courtesy of Flowers Gallery

Others, like Michael Kidner and Richard Smith, approach perception through structure and rhythm, using pattern, repetition, and scale to create sensory impact.

Nicola Hicks Art
Nicola Hicks
 
Maquette for Big Horse, 2002 
Bronze, 60 x 72 x 17 cm 
© Nicola Hicks, courtesy of Flowers Gallery

Sculptors Nicola Hicks and Edward Dutkiewicz bring two distinct approaches to form and feeling. la NicoHicks draws on the physicality and psychology of the animal world, creating vividly animated figures rendered in straw and plaster, and painstakingly cast into bronze. In contrast, Edward Dutkiewicz’s colourful, abstract shapes radiate joy and movement, underpinned by personal struggle.

Tom Phillips and Derek Hirst introduce ideas of place and memory through layered symbols and maps, Tom Phillips drawing from urban walks and daily life, Derek Hirst channelling global traditions and Native American art, as seen in Cherokee Paqueno, 1973.

august (adj) reflects on how we navigate the space between what is felt and what is seen, and how, across decades and practices, artists have found distinct and powerful ways to make those experiences visible.

FLOWERS GALLERY
21 Cork Street, London W1S 3LZ

22/07/25

Gabrielle Graessle @ Simchowitz Gallery, Pasadena - "True Romance" Exhibition

Gabrielle Graessle: True Romance 
Simchowitz Gallery, Pasadena 
July 26 – August 30, 2025 

Gabrielle Graessle
Gabrielle Graessle
24 hours of daytona ferrari, 2024 
Acrylic glitter and spray on canvas 
50.50h x 140.50w x 1.25d in 
128.27h x 356.87w x 3.18d cm
© Gabrielle Graessle, courtesy of Simchowitz Gallery

Simchowitz presents True Romance, a solo exhibition of new large-scale paintings by Swiss artist Gabrielle Graessle, at Hill House, Pasadena. 

Gabrielle Graessle lives and works in a small village in southern Spain, where her creative practice is deeply entwined with her daily life—her home, her studio, her dogs, and her inner world. Her paintings reflect this porous relationship between self and setting. Her home is not a retreat from the world, but a stage upon which her distinctive visual language comes to life. Often working across multiple larger-scale canvases at once, Gabrielle Graessle constructs her compositions through layers of memory and imagination. She doesn’t aim for literal depiction but seeks instead an emotional truth: a vivid evocation of the energy, glamour, and strangeness that memories can hold.

In True Romance, a series of automobiles takes center stage—sleek, stylized, and brimming with narrative. The works trace back to a childhood memory of her father’s best friend, Hans G., a flamboyant figure who drove a Mini Cooper for everyday use and a Ferrari and Lamborghini for everything else. Though the exact models have faded from memory, the impression remains. The cars are icons—not just of luxury, but of a time, a place, and a masculine mythos that shaped her early understanding of adulthood.

This memory unfolds into another: her father’s annual pilgrimages to the Geneva Auto Salon, returning home with stacks of glossy catalogs and previews of the year’s newest models. Gabrielle Graessle absorbed the visual culture that surrounded these events—the polished chrome, the theatrical presentation, the women in miniskirts with rehearsed smiles. Her painting Salon de Genève sans hôtesse, for example, critically and playfully reimagines these scenes by omitting the ubiquitous “hostess,” calling attention to the spectacle and its gendered constructions. 

Gabrielle Graessle’s interest in pop-cultural iconography—particularly cars like the Ford GT 40 and Ferrari Daytona—places her work in conversation with Pop Art’s fascination with consumer spectacle. But unlike Warhol’s mechanical detachment, Graessle’s paintings retain a hand-drawn urgency and personal resonance. Her use of acrylic, glitter, spray paint, and exaggerated proportions suggests a blend of Pop’s visual vernacular with the raw, instinctive energy of Art Brut and outsider traditions. 

While her subject matter is rooted in both pop culture and personal history, Gabrielle Graessle’s deeper project is an exploration of raw, intuitive expression—unfiltered by academic theory or aesthetic polish. There is a childlike (but never childish) spontaneity in her work: a deliberate return to freedom, where conventional rules dissolve. This spirit is echoed in her materials and occasional text, applied in ways that are both purposeful and instinctive. Vivid colors dominate, not to seduce, but to assert. Her canvases are expansive, immersing the viewer in a world that is at once intimate and strikingly universal. Each work feels less like a standalone image and more like a piece of a larger constellation—a story unfolding in nonlinear fragments. Viewers are encouraged to bring their own memories, projections, and associations into the work. Interpretation becomes a shared act, echoing the layered, open-ended nature of her compositions: ambiguous, playful, and charged with possibility.

True Romance captures the texture of a life filtered through decades of image-making. These are not documents of reality, but of feeling—records of what lingers rather than what occurred. The result is a world both strange and familiar, painted not from observation, but from what refuses to be forgotten.

SIMCHOWITZ HILL HOUSE
Pasadena, CA 91104
Visit by appointment

Douglas Knesse @ Simchowitz Gallery, Pasadena - "Harvest under the sun" Exhibition

Douglas Knesse 
Harvest under the sun 
Simchowitz Gallery, Pasadena
July 26 – August 30, 2025

Douglas Knesse Art
Douglas Knesse 
I think I saw a paradise, 2024 
Oil stick and acrylic painting on truck tarp. 
74h x 62w x 1.25d in / 187.96h x 157.48w x 3.18d cm
© Douglas Knesse, courtesy of Simchowitz Gallery 

Simchowitz presents Harvest under the sun, Douglas Knesse’s first solo exhibition at Hill House, Pasadena.

Harvest under the sun is a meditative exploration of discipline, devotion, and transformation. For Douglas Knesse, who lives and works in a coastal city along Brazil’s Atlantic Forest, painting is more than expression—it is a quiet, enduring practice and a form of spiritual communication. “Painting has always been a way for me to communicate what words could not reach,” he says. “It is in this quiet space that I connect with the spiritual field, accessing the divine to give thanks, to lay down my fears, to ask, and to speak new paths into existence.”

Knesse’s layered compositions resist finality. Built through repetition and reflection, they evolve, bearing traces of previous gestures. Working across acrylic, oil stick, spray paint, and pastel, he balances vibrant color and organic forms with generous use of negative space. Many works are painted on truck tarps—surfaces marked by use and history—which bring a grounded, corporeal quality to the paintings and deepen their relationship to labor, weathering, and renewal.

His imagery—leaf forms, rhythmic notations, and transient blooms—draws from the natural world but also points inward, toward an interior field of spiritual attunement. In works like TINHA UMA PALMEIRA NA PAISAGEM I, and the cloud drew my strength, this tension between external landscape and internal transformation becomes palpable.

Knesse’s practice resonates with multiple currents in art history. The gestural immediacy of his mark-making evokes Abstract Expressionism, while his use of modest materials and nontraditional supports—particularly in works like Window to paradise and Eruption and garden flowers—recalls the poetic materiality of Arte Povera. At the same time, his quiet emphasis on presence, perception, and process aligns him with Brazilian Neo-Concrete artists, whose works foregrounded sensorial experience and personal transformation.

Though rooted in a specific ecology, the exhibition speaks broadly to cycles of effort and emergence. Each piece carries the memory of what came before and the potential of what may come next. These works honor unseen labor: the slow accumulation of energy, gesture, and faith that precede visible change. Rather than seeking resolution, Douglas Knesse creates space for uncertainty, stillness, and spiritual inquiry. In this way, Harvest under the sun offers more than paintings—it provides a patient, reverent record of becoming.

SIMCHOWITZ HILL HOUSE
Pasadena, CA 91104
Visit by appointment

21/07/25

Raili Tang @ Galerie Forsblom, Helsinki

Raili Tang
Galerie Forsblom, Helsinki
August 22 – September 21, 2025

Raili Tang’s latest paintings literally capture interwoven layers of time. Originally created in 1996 for an exhibition at Lahti Art Museum, the first iterations were inspired by train rides between Helsinki and Lahti, as Raili Tang gazed out the window at passing fields, barns, and forests. Now, thirty years later, she has returned to these same canvases, using them as the foundation for new artistic explorations. For Tang, the painted surface—built up through countless layers of color and intricate detail—remains her enduring source of inspiration.

In this renewed body of work, expressive floral motifs once again emerge from Tang’s abstract backgrounds. Some of her blooms stand upright in vases; others sprout from the earth itself. Among them are radiant orchids, painted in the spirit of German Expressionist Emil Nolde (1867–1956), alongside humble dandelions pushing up through cracks in the pavement. The theme of time’s passage is deeply embedded not only in the imagery, but in the very making of the works—some of the smaller floral compositions are built on backgrounds that Tang painted during her student years at the Academy of Fine Arts.

A master colorist, Raili Tang weaves a universe of details born from the interplay of pigments. The best way to experience her work is slowly: the layers of paint are like quiet clues, scattered breadcrumbs that lead to small, meaningful revelations. Her droplets of paint, nuanced brushstrokes, and vibrant hues capture a wide emotional spectrum—mirroring life itself.

Raili Tang (b. 1950) has exhibited extensively both in Finland and abroad. Her work is held in several of Finland’s most prestigious collections, including the Museum of Contemporary Art Kiasma, the Sara Hildén Art Museum, the Wihuri and Saastamoinen Foundations, and HAM Helsinki Art Museum. Raili Tang was awarded the Pro Finlandia Medal in 2015.

GALERIE FORSBLOM
Yrjönkatu 22, 00120 Helsinki

Women, Football & Photography @ f³ – freiraum für fotografie, Berlin - "SHE CAN KICK IT! Women's Football and Photography" Exhibition

SHE CAN KICK IT!
Women's Football and Photography
f3 – freiraum für fotografie, Berlin
Through September 7, 2025 

Dewey Nicks
Dewey Nicks
Marta Vieira da Silva for The New York Times, 2009
© Dewey Nicks

Hy Money
Hy Money
1970s, England. Photographed by Hy Money
© Hy Money / Topfoto

Harriet Duffy
Harriet Duffy
From the series Football Came Home, 2022
© Harriet Duffy

An exhibition with works by: Caterina Barjau, Günther Bauer, Christophe Berlet, Thomas Böcker, Harriet Duffy, Laura Freigang, Johanna-Maria Fritz, Kai Heuser, Elliot James Kennedy, Alice Mann, Susan Meiselas, Hy Money, Dewey Nicks, Anja Niedringhaus, Cait Oppermann, David Ramos, Dana Rösiger, Josefine Seifert, Daniel Silva Yoshisato, Dorothea Tuch, Alexa Vachon, Viridiana, Anna Ziegler.

Hardly any sport is as emotionally charged as football—especially women's football. It has been ridiculed, it has been banned. Even the German Football Association (DFB) wanted to protect women from this “rough sport” and, in 1955, prohibited its affiliated clubs from offering women's football, stating: “In the struggle for the ball, feminine grace is lost.” It wasn't until 1970 that the association lifted the ban. Today, women’s football is celebrated—almost everywhere in the world. Players like Megan Rapinoe from the USA have become icons, fighting for equality and against the sexualization of women's bodies. They are role models for girls and effective ambassadors for advertising. Yet, there are still major disparities compared to the men's game—whether in opportunities to play or in compensation.

In honor of the UEFA Women's EURO 2025 in Switzerland, SHE CAN KICK IT! brings women's football into visual focus: from artistic photo series by renowned photographers such as Susan Meiselas, a member of the prestigious Magnum Photos agency, to personal snapshots from national team player Laura Freigang. The exhibition explores the complex history of women's football and highlights the many challenges surrounding the topic.

Anja Niedringhaus
Anja Niedringhaus
Germany's Kerstin Garefrekes (18), Annike Krahn (5) 
fight for the ball with Brazil's Tania (4) and Renata Costa (5) 
during their final match at
the 2007 FIFA Women's World Cup soccer tournament 
in Shanghai, China, Sunday, Sept. 30, 2007 
© AP Photo/Anja Niedringhaus

Anja Niedringhaus, world-renowned for her images from war and crisis zones, photographed the jubilant women’s national football team led by captain Birgit Prinz at the FIFA Women’s World Cup 2007. Her images capture the tension, focus, and will to win felt by both teams. 

Susan Meiselas
Susan Meiselas
Stretch exercise before training session, 
National female soccer team, San Diego, California, 1998 
© Susan Meiselas / Magnum Photos

In 1998, Susan Meiselas documented the training of the U.S. women’s national team in San Diego, creating a series of touching behind-the-scenes photos. Stars like Brandi Chastain and Briana Scurry, whose names are now spoken with reverence by young players, appear in these intimate settings. 

Elliot James Kennedy
Elliot James Kennedy
Leah Williamson for British GQ, 2022
© Elliot James Kennedy

Dorothea Tuch
Dorothea Tuch
Türkiyemspor, Berlin, 2025
© Dorothea Tuch

Laura Freigang
Laura Freigang
Selfportrait, Paris, 2024
© Laura Freigang

A glimpse into the life of a current national player is offered by Laura Freigang of Eintracht Frankfurt. She always has her Leica camera with her—on the team bus, at training, or at the after-show party. Young, unconventional, and with a distinctive style, she documents her own life and that of her teammates. 

Cait Oppermann
Cait Oppermann
Megan Rapinoe for TIME 100, 2020
© Cait Oppermann

The photographs by Cait Oppermann, who shot the U.S. women’s soccer team for the TIME Magazine cover in 2019, mark a turning point in the players’ public image—from ridiculed outsiders to international icons and role models. 

For the anniversary issue of 11 Freunde magazine in 2025, Anna Ziegler portrayed the feminist and antifascist fan club Nutria Bande, which supports women’s football in Frankfurt. Personal stories from the Global South are told through the series by award-winning 

Daniel Silva Yoshisato
Daniel Silva Yoshisato
From the series Women Soccer Player from the Sky, 2004

Johanna-Maria Fritz
Johanna-Maria Fritz
From the series Testimony for Change, Sudan, 2021
© Johanna-Maria Fritz / Agentur Ostkreuz / ARTCO Gallery

Alexa Vachon
Alexa Vachon
Juhi, from the Series Wundergirl, 2017
© Alexa Vachon

German photographer Johanna-Maria Fritz, who accompanied a team in Sudan, and Alexa Vachon, who visited girls in India at home: despite social pressure, they remain devoted to their passion for football and proudly pose in their jerseys.

The world’s first women’s football team, the British Ladies, was founded in 1894 by Nettie Honeyball. Today, over 130 years later, women’s football has entered the public consciousness—yet as an emancipatory act, it remains as vital and relevant as ever.

The exhbition was curated by Nadine Barth and Katharina Mouratidi.

f³ – freiraum für fotografie
Prinzessinnenstrasse 30, 10969 Berlin

SHE CAN KICK IT! Women's Football and Photography
f³ – freiraum für fotografie, Berlin, June 27 — September 7, 2025

20/07/25

Stephan Balkenhol @ Galerie Forsblom, Helsinki

Stephan Balkenhol
Galerie Forsblom, Helsinki 
August 22 – September 21, 2025

The minimalist sculptures of German artist Stephan Balkenhol radiate a quiet, archaic power. Though his figures often assume formal poses and wear expressionless faces, they are anything but detached. Instead, they convey a restrained yet compelling intensity. Balkenhol’s primary focus is the human condition—whether his subjects are actual people or animals dressed in human clothing, they serve as reflections of humanity. He deliberately preserves the visible marks of his carving tools, giving each figure a tactile roughness that underscores its vulnerability. Sculpted from a single block of wood—typically soft poplar or Douglas fir—each work embraces natural cracks and coarse textures, foregrounding the imperfections that define what it means to be human.

Stephan Balkenhol is widely recognized as one of today’s foremost contemporary sculptors. In the early 1980s, he broke away from the dominant abstract and conceptual art movements of the time, turning instead toward figurative expression. Since then, the human form—and the existential questions it evokes—has remained central to his practice. While clearly representational, Balkenhol’s works resist literal interpretation, inviting viewers into open-ended encounters.

Stephan Balkenhol (b. 1957) studied at the Hochschule für bildende Künste in Hamburg and has served as a professor at the Akademie für Bildende Künste in Karlsruhe since 1992. His sculptures are held in major international collections, including the Peggy Guggenheim Collection in Venice, the Staatliche Museen in Berlin, Kunsthalle Hamburg, the Museum für Moderne Kunst in Frankfurt, and the Art Institute of Chicago. He lives and works in Karlsruhe, Kassel, and Berlin, as well as in Meisenthal, France.

GALERIE FORSBLOM
Yrjönkatu 22, 00120 Helsinki

Polaroids @ Helmut Newton Foundation, Museum for Photography, Berlin

Polaroids
Helmut Newton Foundation, Museum for Photography, Berlin
Extended through August 17, 2025

The Helmut Newton Foundation in Berlin presents a group exhibition, Polaroids. This showcase features works by Helmut Newton alongside numerous other photographers.

Helmut Newton Polaroid
Helmut Newton
Italian Vogue, Monte Carlo 2003 (SX-70)
© Helmut Newton Foundation

Helmut Newton Polaroid
Helmut Newton
Amica, Milan 1982 (Polacolor)
© Helmut Newton Foundation

Helmut Newton Polaroid Cindy Crawford
Helmut Newton
Cindy Crawford, American Vogue, Monte Carlo 1991 (Polacolor)
© Helmut Newton Foundation

Helmut Newton Polaroid Yves Saint Laurent
Helmut Newton
French Vogue, Yves Saint Laurent, Paris 1977 (Polacolor)
© Helmut Newton Foundation

With works by Jean-François Bauret, Michael Belenky, Mario de Biasi, Jim Bengston, Philippe Blache, Thorsten Brinkmann, Diana Blok/Marlo Broekmans, Lawrie Brown, Francesco Carbone, Elisabetta Catalano, Lucien Clergue, Share Corsaut, Barbara Crane, Davé, Alma Davenport, Jean-Claude Dewolf, Judith Eglington, Stephan Erfurt, Nathan Farb, Sandi Fellman, Franco Fontana, Klaus Frahm, Toto Frima, Verena von Gagern, Maurizio Galimberti, Luigi Ghirri, Ralph Gibson, Leonard Gittleman, Hans Hansen, Erich Hartmann, Charles Johnstone, Peter C. Jones, Tamarra Kaida, Sachiko Kuru, Edgar Lissel, Anne Mealhie, Sally Mann, Sheila Metzner, Nino Migliori, Tom Millea, Arno Rafael Minkkinen, Mark Morrisroe, Floris Neusüss, Arnold Newman, Helmut Newton, Werner Pawlok, Martha Pearson, Gérard Pétremand, Marike Schuurman, Stephen Shore, Jeanloup Sieff, Pola Sieverding, Neal Slavin, Christer Strömholm, Karin Székessy, Oliviero Toscani, Ulay, William Wegman, Mario Eugen Wyrwinski.

Jeanloup Sieff Self-portrait
Jeanloup Sieff
Self-portrait on car, 1977 (Polaroid T665)
© Jeanloup Sieff, Courtesy OstLicht Collection, Vienna

The Polaroid process revolutionized photography in the 1960s. Those who have used Polaroid cameras often recall the distinctive smell of the developing emulsion and the magic of watching an image materialize instantly. Depending on the camera model, some prints developed automatically, while others required the application of a chemical coating to fix the image. In this sense, Polaroids can be seen as a precursor to today’s digital photography – not in technical terms, but because of their immediate accessibility.

Polaroids are generally regarded as unique prints. This pioneering technology attracted enthusiastic users worldwide and in nearly all photographic genres – landscape, still life, portraits, fashion, and nude photography. Helmut Newton was particularly captivated by Polaroid photography, using a variety of Polaroid cameras and instant film backs, which replaced the roll film cassettes in his medium-format cameras. From the 1960s until his death in 2004, Helmut Newton relied on Polaroids primarily to prepare for fashion shoots. These instant photographs served as visual sketches, helping to test lighting conditions and refine his compositions. Despite their role as preparatory studies, Newton dedicated a book to these images in 1992, followed by a second book published posthumously in 2011. Some of Newton’s Polaroids, signed as standalone works, have since become highly prized on the art market.

Judith Eglinton Polaroid
Judith Eglington
Masked Woman, 1973 (SX-70 Polaroid)
© Judith Eglington, Courtesy OstLicht Collection, Vienna

Alma Davenport Polaroid
Alma Davenport
Warwick, Rhode Island, 1978 (Polaroid T 808)
© Alma Davenport, Courtesy OstLicht Collection, Vienna

Steven Shore Polaroid
Steven Shore
Ohne Titel, 1980 (Polaroid T 808)
© Steven Shore, courtesy Courtesy OstLicht Collection, Vienna

The archive of the Helmut Newton Foundation in Berlin holds hundreds of Newton’s original Polaroids. A carefully chosen selection from this collection has been curated and accompanied by enlargements of select works. The photographs are arranged roughly chronologically rather than by genre, but they reveal Newton’s extensive use of Polaroid cameras across all areas of his work over several decades. The exhibition is like peering into the sketchbook of one of the most influential photographers of the 20th century. It invites visitors to envision Newton’s creative process, from initial concepts to finals images.

Sandy Fellman Polaroid
Sandy Fellman
Trophy, Tokio, 1984 (Polacolor 20 x 24)
© Sandy Fellman, Courtesy OstLicht Collection, Vienna

William Wegman Polaroid
William Wegman
Ohne Titel, 1988 (Polacolor 20 x 24)
© William Wegman, Courtesy OstLicht Collection, Vienna

In this group exhibition, Newton’s Polaroids are showcased alongside works by 60 additional photographers, including selections from the extensive Polaroid collection of OstLicht in Vienna. Curator Matthias Harder had full freedom to draw from this historic archive, which was saved from auction in 2010 by Peter Coeln, founder of WestLicht Vienna, following Polaroid’s bankruptcy. This international collection, stored at the Polaroid company for more than 20 years, comprises approximately 4,400 works by 800 photographers and has since been reestablished as a vital resource.

The Berlin exhibition highlights a wide variety of Polaroid processes and formats – SX-70, Polacolor 20 x 24, FP-100, and Polaroid T808 – as well as experimental treatments of individual prints and larger tableaux. 

Pola Sieverding Polaroid
Pola Sieverding
Valet #54, 2014 (Integralfilm / Polaroid) 
© Pola Sieverding

German artist Pola Sieverding is represented by her small-format SX-70 Polaroid series Valet, which features close-up views of male wrestlers. 

In contrast, Italian artist Maurizio Galimberti is known for his monumental Polaroid mosaics, a physically demanding process in which he obsessively circles his subject – whether a person, a building, or a flower – capturing tiny details in individual images. He later assembles these fragments into unified compositions that appear three-dimensionally unfolded.

Marike Schuurman Polaroid
Marike Schuurman
aus der Serie Toxic (Bergheider See PH 3), 2022
(SX-70 / Inkjet-Print) 
© Marike Schuurman, Courtesy Dorothée Nilsson Gallery

Two series by Dutch artist-photographer Marike Schuurman also explore experimental techniques, featuring inkjet print enlargements derived from SX-70 Polaroids. Toxic examines the lignite mining area in the Lausitz, south of Berlin, where coal extraction has left craters filled with highly acidic water. Schuurman photographed these artificial lakes using a Polaroid camera and developed the SX-70 prints in the lakes’ low-PH water, dramatically altering their colors. In her second series, Expired, the colors of long-expired Polaroid film merge into one another, creating a distinctive interplay.

Charles Johnstone Polaroid
Charles Johnstone
Lea, South Salem, New York, 2021 (FP-100c Polaroid)
© Charles Johnstone

New York City-based photographer Charles Johnstone produces small-format Polaroid publications at irregular intervals, each presenting a self-contained photographic narrative. Some projects, such as those centered on Monica Vitti, are captured as camera views from a screen and later bound into books. Other series, like Escape, involve collaboration with live models and were photographed en plein air at locations like a swimming pool in upstate New York. These projects result in unique artist’s books, some of which include C-prints of the Polaroids as special editions. A selection of these books is on view in a central display case within the exhibition.

Sheila Metzner Polaroid
Sheila Metzner
Michal, Mermaid, 1980 (Polacolor)
© Sheila Metzner

American photographer Sheila Metzner, known for her timeless and sensitive portraits, still lifes, and nudes – produced as Fresson prints – has previously exhibited her work at the Helmut Newton Foundation. Now, for the first time, her Polaroids are being presented. Drawn from the Newtons’ personal collection, these instant images provide insight into Metzner’s creative process, revealing her use of Polaroids as compositional studies – a technique similar to Helmut Newton’s approach.

HELMUT NEWTON FOUNDATION
MUSEUM FOR PHOTOGRAPHY
Jebensstrasse 2, 10623 Berlin

Maurizio Galimberti: Polaroid Mosaics Exhibition @ Venice, Le Stanze della Fotografia / The Rooms of Photography, Venice

Maurizio Galimberti 
tra Polaroid/Ready Made e le Lezioni Americane di Italo Calvino 
on Polaroid/Ready Made and Italo Calvino's American Lessons
Le Stanze della Fotografia / 
The Rooms of Photography, Venice 
Through 10 August 2025

Maurizio Galimberti Polaroid
MAURIZIO GALIMBERTI
Charlotte Gainsburg 
Polaroid plate, 50 x 50 cm, 2003 
By Maurizio Galimberti/Photomovie

Maurizio Galimberti Polaroid
MAURIZIO GALIMBERTI
Isabella Rossellini 
Polaroid plate, 2003, 50 x 60 cm 
By Maurizio Galimberti/ Photomovie

Maurizio Galimberti Polaroid
MAURIZIO GALIMBERTI
Johnny Depp 
Polaroid plate, 2015, 50 x 60 cm 
By Maurizio Galimberti/Photomovie

Le Stanze della Fotografia / The Rooms of Photography presents the exhibition Maurizio Galimberti tra Polaroid/Ready Made e le Lezioni Americane di Italo Calvino [Maurizio Galimberti on Polaroid/Ready Made and Italo Calvino's American Lessons], curated by Denis Curti, organised by Marsilio Arte and Fondazione Giorgio Cini.

Internationally known for his portraits of celebrities like Lady Gaga, Robert De Niro, Johnny Depp and Umberto Eco, and for having published books and staged site-specific exhibitions on New York, Paris, Milan, Rome and Venice, Maurizio Galimberti presents some of his most iconic Polaroid mosaics in Venice – including Johnny Depp, Barbara Bouchet and Angelica Huston – alongside more recent works, some of them previously unseen, such as those dedicated to Taylor Swift.

Maurizio Galimberti (Como, 1956) in 1983 began to use the Polaroid camera almost exclusively, appreciating it for the immediacy of its results and the possibility of “manipulation”. With it he creates photographic mosaics, the artistic form for which he is best known. His expressive language mixes a sensitivity to the contemporary image with influences derived from the historical avant-gardes - Futurism and Cubism for shapes and spirit, Surrealism and Dadaism for modes.
As Denis Curti observes, «his works do not set out to reproduce reality faithfully, but are the product of an investigation of the visible, an operation of breaking down the world that finds its ideal instrument in photography. Galimberti takes inspiration from David Hockney’s photographic collages and is guided in his research by such illustrious models as the Futurist works of Umberto Boccioni or Marcel Duchamp’s Nude Descending a Staircase, No. 2, inspired in turn by Etienne-Jules Marey breakdown of movement» (D. Curti, Capire la fotografia contemporanea, Marsilio 2020).
Maurizio Galimberti Polaroid
MAURIZIO GALIMBERTI
Messico (4)
Polaroid plate, 2002, 40 x 50cm 
By Maurizio Galimberti/Archivio M.G. - N.308

Maurizio Galimberti Polaroid
MAURIZIO GALIMBERTI
New York Studio n. 10 
Polaroid plate, 2024, 31 x 66 cm 
By Maurizio Galimberti/Angelos Dimitriou

Maurizio Galimberti Polaroid
MAURIZIO GALIMBERTI
Taylor Swift (1) 
Polaroid plate, 2024, 50 x 54 cm
By Maurizio Galimberti/Luchi Collection

The exhibition is divided into six sections: Cenacolo, History, Sport, Portraits, Taylor Swift and Places, each of which presents a different facet of his work and his approach to photography. His creations, characterised by a multifaceted and fragmented vision of reality, are taken apart and put back together as in a mosaic, offering a profound reflection on perception and on the multiplicity of viewpoints.

The images are almost always manipulated at the development stage, exerting pressure with simple tools – like pens and wooden sticks – directly onto the surface of the support, or assembled into mosaic-like compositions, in which each photograph contributes to the formation of an end result able to create a spectacular overall vision.
«His technical inventions, manipulations, ready-mades and mosaics – Denis Curti still observes – are none other than the metaphor for a transversal language that does not pass through the filter of rationality, and, precisely for this reason, becomes emotion. In every one of his photos there is a precise gesturality, a visual act that finds its synthesis inside the definition of «Instant Artist», invented by Maurizio himself to describe his production, because, when he decided to transform his youthful passion into a profession, he chose the Instamatic camera as his ideal instrument. In his hands, this medium goes beyond the purely descriptive detail, through a procedure that is calculated and always oriented towards the transfiguration of the visible».
Le Stanze della Fotografia 
The Rooms of Photography
Venice, Island of San Giorgio Maggiore

Maurizio Galimberti tra Polaroid/Ready Made e le Lezioni Americane di Italo Calvino
Maurizio Galimberti on Polaroid/Ready Made and Italo Calvino's American Lessons
Le Stanze della Fotografia / The Rooms of Photography, Venice, 10 April – 10 August 2025

18/07/25

Aldrich Box: Jantsankhorol Erdenebayar and Koyolzintli @ Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum, Ridgefield

Aldrich Box: Jantsankhorol Erdenebayar and Koyolzintli
Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum, Ridgefield
July 9, 2025 - September 30, 2026

Jantsankhorol Erdenebayar
Jantsankhorol Erdenebayar 
Objects In Mirror Are Closer Than They Are, 2021. 
Courtesy of the artist

Koyolzintli Art
Koyolzintli 
Whistling Jar, 2025 
Courtesy of the artist

The Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum presents the 2025 Aldrich Box. Inaugurated in 2021, the Aldrich Box is an ongoing annual series featuring a year-long traveling exhibition housed in a box, available for loan to the public free of charge. For this series, the Museum commissions artists to create participatory objects meant to be handled and to travel beyond the boundaries of its walls. This year’s edition features two artists: Mongolia-based artist Jantsankhorol Erdenebayar, which has debuted in July, followed by Kingston, NY-based artist Koyolzintli in September. Their contributions are on view for an entire year..

In past years, the public has been invited to take the Aldrich Box home to engage with the contents in varied environments. This year, for the first time, the Aldrich Box is sited on the Museum’s campus for the public to interact with en plein air. Visitors accesses the Aldrich Box by checking in at the Museum’s Front Desk during open hours to obtain a key and instruction guide.

Artist Jantsankhorol Erdenebayar

Jantsankhorol Erdenebayar has created Channeling our human energy for the journey ahead, 2025, an object he describes as a “travel kit,” featuring a copper outer shell adorned with imagery of human ears and an interior outfitted with faux fur, a mirror, and goat horns. Erdenebayar’s practice spans sculpture, video and performance, drawing from Mongolian mythology and exploring themes of resistance, protection, and survival. For the Aldrich Box, Erdenebayar focused on the concept of nomadism—a foundation of Mongolian culture and ancestral traditions—symbolizing a profound connection to the natural world. By transforming the museum visitor into a traveler, Erdenebayar’s object has been reimagined as a “treasure purse,” shrine, or shamanistic tool. Equipped with a handle to suggest its portability, its reflective copper surface alludes to Mongolia’s significant copper industry. The goat horns inside evoke movement, strength, and protection, while the mirror serves not only as a tool for self-reflection, but also as a symbolic portal to the spirit realm.

Jantsankhorol Erdenebayar (b. 1992, Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia) earned a BA from City University of New York, Hunter College in 2015 and an MFA from the University of California, Los Angeles in 2019. His works have been shown in numerous locations globally including BLUM, Los Angeles in 2020; Frieze, New York in 2020; Half Gallery, New York in 2021; Art Basel Miami Beach in 2021; Red Ger Creative Space, Arts Council of Mongolia, Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia in 2022; Art Basel Hong Kong in 2024; Lkham Gallery, Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia in 2024. In 2019, Jantsankhorol Erdenebayar represented Mongolia at the 58th Venice Biennale.

Artist Koyolzintli 

Koyolzintli’s practice encompasses sculptures, drawings, photographs, performance, and video. Born in New York and raised between the Pacific coast and the Andean mountains of Ecuador, Koyolzintli’s research into pre-American sound instruments has influenced her objetos sonoros – Sound Objects, which she believes hold and carry forward ancestral memory, ritual, and storytelling about the land and indigenous wisdom. For the Aldrich Box, Koyolzintli has created Whistling Jar, 2025, a work activated by water. “Its resonance,” she explains, “will connect the latitude of The Aldrich to that of our celestial super star, the Sun.” Whistling Jar will be accompanied by instructions on how to play it, as well as a brief meditation to be performed before activation. For the artist, this work is deeply connected to the land, the position of the Sun over the Museum’s Sculpture Garden, and the birds singing in the trees, carrying both ceremonial significance and site-specific resonance.

Koyolzintli (b. 1983, New York, NY) lives and works in Ulster County, New York. Nominated for the Prix Pictet in 2019 and 2023, her work has been exhibited at the National Portrait Gallery in Washington, D.C.; the United Nations, New York, NY; the Parrish Art Museum, Water Mill, NY; Princeton University, Princeton, NJ; Aperture Foundation, New York, NY; and Paris Photo, France. She has had two solo exhibitions at Miyako Yoshinaga Gallery, New York, NY; a solo exhibition at Leila Greiche, New York, NY; and was included in Flow States – LA TRIENAL 2024 at El Museo del Barrio, New York, NY. Koyolzintli has performed at venues including the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY; Wave Hill, Bronx, NY; Socrates Sculpture Park, Queens, NY; the Brooklyn Museum, New York, the Queens Museum, New York; Performance Space, New York, NY; Dia Chelsea, New York, NY; and Ann Street Gallery, Newburgh, NY. Koyoltzintli has taught at California Institute of the Arts, School of Visual Arts, International Center of Photography, and the City University of New York. She has received multiple awards and fellowships including at the Musée du Quai Branly, Paris; New York Foundation for the Arts; We Women; the Latinx Artist Fellowship by the US Latinx Art Forum (USLAF); and most recently the Anonymous Was a Woman award. Her first monograph, Other Stories, was published in 2017 by Autograph ABP.

Aldrich Box is organized by Director of Education Namulen Bayarsaihan and Diana Bowes Chief Curator Amy Smith-Stewart.

THE ALDRICH CONTEMPORARY ART MUSEUM
258 Main Street, Ridgefield, CT 06877

Guy Du Toit @ Everard Read, Johannesburg - "Hare Necessities" Exhibition of Bronze Sculptures

Guy Du Toit: Hare Necessities
Everard Read, Johannesburg
August 14 – September 27, 2025

Everard Read presents Hare Necessities, a new body of work by celebrated South African sculptor Guy du Toit. In this latest collection of bronze sculptures, Du Toit’s long-eared companions return not just to delight but to reflect—on love, connection, solitude, and the rituals of everyday life.

The hare, under Du Toit’s subtle and humorous hand, has long served as a mirror for our humanity. Whether curled over in thought, slow-dancing under the stars, jogging with purpose, or simply sipping wine, each figure distils a moment of presence—anchored in bronze, yet light in spirit. These hares don’t simply move through the world, they inhabit it, fully.

Some embrace, others recline in silence, one checks its phone, and another gazes at the moon. What links them is not narrative but mood, a shared sense of introspection, tenderness, and quiet joy. In a time when attention is scarce and stillness rare, Guy Du Toit offers an invitation to notice the small gestures, the pauses between actions, the beauty in simply being.

The works echo the artist’s signature style — expressive, tactile, and full of character — while offering something new: an intimacy that feels both personal and universal. As always, Du Toit’s hares are not merely animals; they are surrogates, stand-ins, and story-holders, inviting us to see ourselves in them.

Hare Necessities continues Du Toit’s longstanding exploration of form, play, and the liminal spaces of life, presenting a cast of bronze characters who, in their stillness, speak volumes.

EVERARD READ JOHANNESBURG 
6 Jellicoe Avenue, Rosebank, Johannesburg, 2196

Suzanne Jackson: What Is Love - Retrospective Exhibition @ SFMOMA, San Francisco + Walker Art Center, Minneapolis + Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

Suzanne Jackson: What Is Love
SFMOMA, San Francisco 
September 27, 2025 – March 1, 2026 
Walker Art Center, Minneapolis
May 14 – August 23, 2026
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
September 26, 2026 – February 7, 2027

Suzanne Jackson - Wind and Water
SUZANNE JACKSON 
Wind and Water, 1975
The Museum of Modern Art, New York, 
acquired through the generosity of the Modern Women’s Fund, 
Alice and Tom Tisch, Anne and Joel Ehrenkranz, 
Marie-Josée and Henry R. Kravis, Michael S. Ovitz, 
Ronnie F. Heyman, and Pamela J. Joyner and Alfred J. Giuffrida 
© Suzanne Jackson, courtesy Ortuzar, New York
Photo: Ruben Diaz

The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA) announces the first major museum retrospective devoted to the full breadth of the work of painter Suzanne Jackson, on view from September 27, 2025, to March 1, 2026. Developed in close collaboration with the artist, Suzanne Jackson: What Is Love celebrates Jackson’s groundbreaking artistic vision through more than 80 lyrical paintings and drawings from the 1960s to the present that explore her use of color, light and structure to expand the parameters of painting and illuminate the persistence of peace, love and beauty.

Debuting at SFMOMA and co-organized with the Walker Art Center, this comprehensive survey spans six decades, from Jackson’s early ethereal compositions on canvas that layer luminous washes of paint and depict figures intertwined with nature to recent three-dimensional paintings that suspend acrylic paint midair. SFMOMA will also premiere a new large-scale commission by the artist, inspired by her longstanding close observations of the natural world. Looking at influences beyond the artist’s studio, What Is Love examines how Jackson’s paintings have been informed by her experiences as a dancer, poet and theater designer, as well as her collaborations with radical artist communities.

Following its presentation at SFMOMA, the exhibition will travel to the Walker Art Center (May 14–August 23, 2026) and Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (September 26, 2026–February 7, 2027).
“Suzanne Jackson: What Is Love promises to be a groundbreaking exhibition, bringing much-deserved attention to Jackson’s achievements as an influential painter who has created awe-inspiring compositions informed by her deep respect for ancestral traditions and the natural world,” said Christopher Bedford, SFMOMA Helen and Charles Schwab Director. “In the sixth decade of her career, Jackson continues to innovate by extending paint into three dimensions and embedding it with found materials to reflect on personal and cultural histories.”

“Suzanne Jackson’s life has been driven by an insistent search for creative freedom and a bohemian spirit that is indebted to the San Francisco ethos in which she was raised,” said Jenny Gheith, curator of the exhibition and SFMOMA Curator and Interim Head of Painting and Sculpture. “What Is Love captures the curiosity, wonder and resilience of Jackson’s life’s work, which is marked by adventurous experimentation, a dedication to supporting other artists and a persistent belief in the connection between all living things.”
SUZANNE JACKSON: WHAT IS LOVE - EXHIBITION OVERVIEW
For decades, my figurative forms and challenged shapes have pushed paint beyond the expected. With intentional reflective layers and floating luminous pigment, my work pursues alternative ways of seeing and interpreting spatial relationships of historical events, the lives of Black, Indigenous, and all global people, existing as “environmental abstractions” of our world.

Suzanne Jackson, 2025
Suzanne Jackson was born in 1944 in St. Louis and shortly thereafter moved with her family to San Francisco, where she would spend the first eight years of her childhood. Her family relocated to Fairbanks, Alaska, in 1952, and the remote natural landscape inspired her to learn to paint. In 1961, Jackson returned to San Francisco and spent her formative college years among the bohemian counterculture, studying art and theater at San Francisco State University and dancing with the Pacific Ballet. In 1967 she moved to Los Angeles, where she studied drawing with artist Charles White and became part of a radical artist community.

Suzanne Jackson - What I Love Publication
SUZANNE JACKSON 
Cover of Suzanne Jackson’s publication 
What I Love: Paintings, Poetry, and a Drawing, 1972 
© Suzanne Jackson, courtesy Ortuzar, New York

From 1968 to 1970, she ran Gallery 32, a self-funded exhibition space, out of her Los Angeles studio. At Gallery 32, Betye Saar and Senga Nengudi were among the artists featured in The Sapphire Show: You’ve Come A Long Way Baby (1970), credited as the first survey of African American women artists in Los Angeles. What Is Love brings together several artworks originally shown at Gallery 32 by Saar, Nengudi, David Hammons, Timothy Washington, Dan Concholar, John Outterbridge and Emory Douglas, among others, and will surface new research on its exhibition history. Jackson has reflected, “Gallery 32 functioned as a meeting space for its members to question history, culture and risky improvisations.”

In 1971, Suzanne Jackson gave birth to her son, a major life event that sparked tremendous creative growth. The following year, she self-published her first book of poems and paintings, titled What I Love. More than 50 years later, the title for Jackson’s retrospective turns “What I Love” to “What Is Love,” a provocation that broadens the understanding of the creativity that Jackson has pursued throughout her career.

Organized chronologically, Suzanne Jackson: What Is Love begins with Jackson’s first mature paintings and drawings that she made during the late 1960s and the early 1970s, many of which are the largest she has made to date. In these paintings, Suzanne Jackson treats acrylic paint like watercolor by setting down layers of washy pigment to create an ethereal, translucent quality. Depicting images from her dreams, Jackson’s lyrical symbolism often includes animals, plants, hearts and hands that communicate human connections to nature, universal love and unity. Jackson’s deep respect for ecology, continual study of dance and movement, and belief in her ancestors’ integration with the natural world can be seen in her most ambitious painting on canvas, In A Black Man’s Garden (1973), a large-scale triptych. Suzanne Jackson exhibited these early paintings at Ankrum Gallery, an important Los Angeles space for African American artists, along with Brockman gallery and Heritage Gallery.

Outside of the studio, Suzanne Jackson continued her advocacy for other artists, bringing together nearly 180 artists for the 1972 Black Expo in San Francisco. She also served alongside Ruth Asawa, Noah Purifoy, Gary Snyder and Peter Coyote on the California Arts Council (formed in 1976) and helped secure funding for public artworks through the Comprehensive Employment and Training Act (CETA), including two of her own murals, Wind (1978) and Spirit (1977–79).

In the 1980s, Suzanne Jackson moved between Los Angeles, the small mountain town of Idyllwild, California, and the San Francisco Bay Area. In Idyllwild, where she taught painting and dance, she created small-scale studies of leaves, trees and the mountains that surrounded her. This section of the exhibition brings together rarely seen paintings, works on paper and handmade books. After the unexpected death of her father in 1981, she began El Paradiso (1981–84)—a quintessential composition from this period—named after the bird of paradise, a symbol of freedom for the artist.

Suzanne Jackson stretched her artistic practice further when she earned an MFA in design at Yale University in 1990 and continued to work full-time designing costumes and sets for the theater. With limited resources and time for her studio practice, she began to experiment with leftover scenic Bogus paper (thick sheets of paper that cover the floor when sets are painted). Jackson’s paintings on this material often feature sculptural textures, a darker palette and rougher edges, with forms that bridge abstraction and figuration, as in Sapphire & Tunis (2010–11).

In 1996, Suzanne Jackson moved to Savannah, Georgia, where she continues to live and work. The charged Southern landscape prompted Jackson to further research her ancestral history and to work again in nature, often bringing her students from the Savannah College of Art and Design to sketch in locations with histories significant to enslavement. During this time, she began creating otherworldly paintings that suspend acrylic paint in midair, embedding the surfaces with personal ephemera and various found and sourced materials. These awe-inspiring, three-dimensional paintings are the most experimental of her career, with a focus on structure, light and the environment that relate to her background in theater and dance. Crossing Ebenezer (2017), which includes red netting from fire log bags that suggests both spilled blood and a distressed flag, memorializes a Civil War–era massacre of emancipated African Americans who were drowned in Ebenezer Creek, a tributary of the Savannah River.

Suzanne Jackson - Hers and His
SUZANNE JACKSON 
Hers and His, 2018 
San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, purchase, by 
exchange, through a gift of Peggy Guggenheim 
© Suzanne Jackson, courtesy Ortuzar, New York
Photo: Timothy Doyon

Jackson’s recent paintings also convey reflections on spirituality and aspects of her autobiography. Hers and His (2018), one of her most personal paintings, is dedicated to her parents and incorporates “his and hers” pillowcases and segments of her mother’s quilt block patterns. Created nearly 10 years after her mother’s passing, this work was inspired by a lecture by artist Faith Ringgold, who said that if your mother left unfinished quilts, it is your responsibility to complete them.

The exhibition concludes with ¿What Feeds Us? (2025), a new commission that reflects on the global environmental crisis. This large-scale installation, integrating organic materials such as moss and tree bark with plastic and trash, is built around a central sculptural component. Additional hanging elements combine acrylic paint with found materials, such as African fabric scraps, Indian sari curtains, Korean and Japanese papers. Addressing themes of migration and improvisation, this new work honors connections that exist across all living things.

SUZANNE JACKSON: WHAT IS LOVE - PUBLICATION

The exhibition will be accompanied by a richly illustrated catalogue that charts the full arc of Jackson’s life and multifaceted artistic vision. This 272-page monograph published by SFMOMA in association with Princeton University Press is edited by Jenny Gheith and includes essays and contributions by Kellie Jones, Paulina Pobocha, Tiffany E. Barber, Taylor Jasper, Molly Garfinkel and Jodi Waynberg, Taylor Renee Aldridge, and Meredith George Van Dyke. Jackson’s voice features prominently in a series of dialogues with fellow artists Senga Nengudi, Betye Saar, Fred Eversley and Richard Mayhew and a conversation about her process and new commission with SFMOMA paintings conservator Jennifer Hickey.

SUZANNE JACKSON: WHAT IS LOVE - CURATORS

Suzanne Jackson: What Is Love is co-organized by the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis. The exhibition is curated by Jenny Gheith, Curator and Interim Head of Painting and Sculpture at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, with Taylor Jasper, Susan and Rob White Assistant Curator, Visual Art at the Walker Art Center. Curatorial support is provided by Auriel Garza, curatorial assistant, San Francisco Museum of Art, and Laurel Rand-Lewis, curatorial fellow, Visual Arts, Walker Art Center.

SFMOMA 
SAN FRANCISCO MUSEUM OF MODERN ART
151 Third Street, San Francisco, CA 94103