Rafaël Rozendaal @ MoMA, New York - "Light" An immersive Digital Artwork

Light: Rafaël Rozendaal 

MoMA, New York

Through September 1, 2025 

Rafaël Rozendaal 

Quadrant, 2023 

Digital animation using generative algorithm

Private collection

Rafaël Rozendaal 

Pages, 2023 

Digital animation using generative algorithm 

Variation 39: Erick and Mara Calderon Collection 

Rafaël Rozendaal 

Implosion, 2023 

Digital animation using generative algorithm 

Collection the artist

The Museum of Modern Art presents Light: Rafaël Rozendaal, an immersive digital artwork, on view on the Hyundai Card Digital Wall in MoMA’s Agnes Gund Garden Lobby. This is the last chance to view this installation that presents a selection of Rozendaal’s vibrant animated works, each sampled for two to three minutes. Each work originates as a storyboard sketched on paper, which is then translated into code of only a few kilobytes (the exhibition's total file size is 135 KB). The resulting final form is an autonomous website powered by that algorithm, generating the animation in real time. 

Rafaël Rozendaal 

Rooms, 2024 

Digital animation using generative algorithm 

Collection the artist

Rafaël Rozendaal 

Many Moment, 2018 

Digital animation using generative algorithm 

Collection Family Kolen

Rafaël Rozendaal (Dutch-Brazilian, born 1980) has been an innovator in the realm of Internet-based art since the early 2000s. He produces captivating animations that explore the aesthetic and conceptual possibilities of code, treating it as if it were paint. Rafaël Rozendaal has historically planned his websites to be robust enough to withstand the evolution of both software and hardware, and to be equally vivid at any screen resolution. The artworks adapt fluidly to any display, from a smartphone to the high-resolution LED screen in MoMA’s Agnes Gund Garden Lobby—which spans nearly 25 feet across. The result is a state of immersion so complete that it seems to merge with the physical world. Because Rafaël Rozendaal has chosen the Internet as his canvas, his works exist within the browser’s flat yet multidimensional digital landscape. For the same reason, these and all his works are accessible to all online through their URLs, even though they are held in private and public collections.

Rafaël Rozendaal 

Photomontage of the Gund Lobby featuring Flood, 2023 

Digital animation using generative algorithm 

Private collection 

Rafaël Rozendaal 

Photomontage of the Gund Lobby featuring 

Twisting and Turning, 2021 

Digital animation using generative algorithm 

Collection Russell Smith

Rafaël Rozendaal 

Photomontage of the Gund Lobby featuring Pages, 2023 

Digital animation using generative algorithm 

Variation 39: Erick and Mara Calderon Collection

“I imagine we will live in a world where there is no difference between a screen and any other surface,” said Rafaël Rozendaal. “I always wanted to make work that could be seen by anyone, anywhere, anytime. I wanted to create work that gives the viewer a feeling of possibility.”

“Rafaël’s digital artworks are lean, accessible, indestructible. They bend and adapt and never break. They are the ultimate example of the power that comes from lightness” says Paola Antonelli.

Light: Rafaël Rozendaal is organized by Paola Antonelli, Senior Curator, Department of Architecture and Design, and Director, Research and Development, and Amanda Forment, Curatorial Assistant, Department of Architecture and Design.

The Hyundai Card Digital Wall is a space for digital works and emerging technologies by contemporary artists.

MoMA - The Museum of Modern Art

11 West 53 Street, New York City

www.moma.org

Exhibition "beyond now. Editions" @ Kestner Gesellschaft, Hanover

beyond now. Editions

Kestner Gesellschaft, Hanover

December 7, 2024 - March 2, 2025

Artists:

Mathieu Kleyebe Abonnenc, Franz Ackermann, Rebecca Ackroyd, Nevin Aladağ, Lewis Baltz, Monika Baer, Thomas Bayrle, Bernhard und Anna Blume, Erik Bulatov, André Butzer, Katinka Bock, Armin Boehm, Cecily Brown, Fernando Bryce, Helen Cammock, Marc Camille Chaimowicz, Jake & Dinos Chapman, Louisa Clement, Ceal Floyer, FAMED, Rochelle Feinstein, Peter Fischli & David Weiss, FORT, Nan Goldin, Guerilla Girls, Gotthard Graubner, Diango Hernández, Camille Henrot, Roger Hiorns, Gary Hume, Bethan Huws, Monilola Olayemi Ilupeju, Olav Christopher Jenssen, Anna K.E., Alex Katz, Hassan Khan, Joachim Koester, Marlena Kudlicka, Rezi van Lankveld, Jochen Lempert, Kris Martin, Jakob Mattner, Rita McBride, Henri Michaux, Sarah Morris, Chris Ofili, Lucila Pacheco Dehne, Peter Piller, Joanna Piotrowska, Paula Rego, Michael Sailstorfer, Susanne Sachsse & Xiu Xiu, Vittorio Santoro, Yehudit Sasportas, Dana Schutz, Bettina Scholz, Marinella Senatore, Santiago Sierra, Roman Signer, Simon Starling, Florian Süssmayr, Sophie Taeuber-Arp, Hann Trier, The Institute of Queer Ecology, Tim Ulrichs, Ursula (Schultze-Bluhm), Ella Walker, Phoebe Washburn, Paloma Varga Weisz, James Welling, Christopher Williams, Samson Young, Heimo Zobernig, Thomas Zipp.

With beyond now. Editions, the Kestner Gesellschaft reflects on its exhibition history and the connection between artistic production and institutional work. This special exhibition includes both current and rediscovered limited-edition works, combining them with a series of related exhibition posters. A visual timeline traces the historical context of the works, their thematic connections to contemporary events, and their significance for the programmatic development of the Kestner Gesellschaft. Past and present intertwine in a vibrant dialogue that offers impetuses for future perspectives and makes the relationships between art, institutions, and society tangible.

The posters and limited-edition works refer to the diverse thematic exhibitions and projects that address societal and artistic questions of recent years: Tenderness (2022) focused on sensitivity and vulnerability, Anabasis (2023) explored movement and return, and Between Past and Future (2024) addresses Hannah Arendt’s thoughts on social responsibility and memory.

Since its founding in 1916, the Kestner Gesellschaft has collaborated closely with artists to release limited editions several times a year. These works form an essential part of its activities and significantly contribute to the accessibility, promotion, and visibility of contemporary art. beyond now. Editions not only offers the opportunity to explore the history of the institution’s exhibitions and limited-edition works but also to purchase these works.

In addition to historical works, the exhibition presents two new limited-edition works: Paloma Varga Weisz displays bronze sculptures from her series Wild People (2024), inspired by mythical and archetypal figures. And Monilola Olayemi Ilupeju presents her handmade book BloodLetter (2024), which interweaves personal stories in poems, essays and journal entries.

Environmental issues are an important concern for the Kestner Gesellschaft. The exhibition was designed for sustainability by using only existing interior equipment. This concept reflects a responsible approach to resource management and underscores the institution’s endeavor to address current challenges not only thematically but also practically.

Curator: Alexander Wilmschen

KESTNER GASELLSCHAFT

Goseriede 11, 30159 Hannover

www.kestnergesellschaft.de 

Paloma Varga Weisz @ Kestner Gesellschaft, Hanover - "Multiface" Exhibition

Paloma Varga Weisz: Multiface

Kestner Gesellschaft, Hanover

December 7, 2024 - March 2, 2025

Kestner Gesellschaft, Hanover

© Photographer: Ulrich Prigge

The exhibition Multiface is one of the most extensive presentations of works by Paloma Varga Weisz. It brings together her recent series of works with key pieces from over three decades, offering insight into her poetic and simultaneously subversive artistic practice. Her works—sculptures, watercolors, drawings, and installations—delve into existential questions about identity, memory, vulnerability, and transformation. Figures and forms oscillate between the familiar and the foreign, the corporeal and the narrative.

Trained as a wood sculptor, Paloma Varga Weisz deliberately breaks with the tradition of the craft. By mastering traditional techniques while simultaneously subverting them, she creates works that challenge classical notions of materiality and form. Her sculptures combine historical references with surreal elements, humorous disruptions, and subtle irony, impressively exploring the boundaries between artisanal precision and contemporary reflection.

A central focus of the exhibition is Wild People (1998—2024), a series of works ranging from small ceramic figures to monumental bronze sculptures. These hybrid beings, which combine human and animal traits, embody a deconstruction of gender roles and family ideals. They raise questions about isolation, community, and transitions from humans to nature. The sculpture Rug People (2011) plays a special role in this exhibition: Inspired by the story of the former railway station in Folkstone in England from which soldiers departed for battle during World War I, this work reflects on themes such as migration, loss, and the fragility of human stories. For Varga Weisz, this also becomes a quiet homage to her father, who had to flee from National Socialists-occupied Paris during World War II as a Jewish refugee. Rug People (2011) functions as a monument to the resilience and vulnerability of human experiences.

Multiface (2019), a multi-faced silver head that looks in all directions, symbolizes the fluid boundaries of the self and the constant changes of life. The multiheaded nature of her works invites viewers to understand identity not as a selfcontained unit, but as an open, evolving structure that sees breaks and transitions as essential components of being. Multiface reveals the complexity of the human—not as an ambivalence to be overcome, but as its essential strength.

Paloma Varga Weisz (b. 1966 in Mannheim) is a sculptor, graphic artist, and painter. After training as a wood sculptor from 1987 to 1990 in Garmisch- Partenkirchen, she studied under Tony Cragg and Gerhard Merz at the Staatliche Kunstakademie Düsseldorf from 1990 to 1998. Her works poetically and subversively engage with themes such as identity, memory, and transformation. Varga Weisz lives and works in Düsseldorf.

Curator: Alexander Wilmschen

KESTNER GASELLSCHAFT

Goseriede 11, 30159 Hannover

www.kestnergesellschaft.de

Monilola Olayemi Ilupeju @ Kestner Gesellschaft, Hanover - "BloodLetter" Exhibition

Monilola Olayemi Ilupeju

BloodLetter 

Kestner Gesellschaft, Hanover

December 7, 2024 - March 2, 2025

Monilola Olayemi Ilupeju 

V. & Blue Tree, 2024

Courtesy of the artist, PSM, Berlin and private collection

Monilola Olayemi Ilupeju 

Grandpa’s Balcony, 2024 

Courtesy the artist

Monilola Olayemi Ilupeju

„(No) Fear”, 2024

Courtesy the artist, PSM, Berlin, 

and The Yelmani Collection

“breeze blocks, bare toes, dripping water,

peeling turquoise, eyelet lace dancing on concrete.

morning prayers on the roof,

after-school tutoring on the balcony,

movie nights in the parlor.

oh man.

grandma buried in the backyard, next to the other wives,

drying clothes spread out across the lawn like a fleet of warm shadows.

to know you is to love you.”

Monilola Olayemi Ilupeju, 2024

BloodLetter is the first institutional solo exhibition by the Nigerian-American artist Monilola Olayemi Ilupeju. At its heart is the artist’s book of the same name, a handcrafted leather-bound work made specifically for the show at the Kestner Gesellschaft. This book forms the conceptual core of the exhibition and embodies key motifs that shape the artist’s practice: ancestry, memory, grief, healing, and the complex connection between individual and collective narratives.

Serving as much more than a collection of texts, BloodLetter functions as a personal archive. Poems, essays, letters, and journal entries address questions of identity, belonging, and migration: autobiographical reflections intertwine with universal themes including intergenerational trauma, resilience, familial ties, and cultural transformation. The book is presented in the exhibition within a specially designed installation made of clay elements called “breeze blocks,” inspired by the cement blocks used by her grandfather in the construction of his home. This pavilion creates an intimate space within the exhibition itself, both protective and porous, while also highlighting the artist’s book as both a physical and conceptual center of the exhibition.

The exhibition focuses on Monilola Olayemi Ilupeju’s large-scale paintings on leather and small sculptures made of birch, whose symbols and personal motifs expand the thematic range of the exhibition. Ilupeju combines painting, installations, and text in her practice, making visible the fractures and overlays of memory through unconventional media and surfaces modified with scratch marks and pyrographic techniques. Her works link personal and collective narratives, questioning traditional archiving while opening spaces where stories can be told in depth. In particular, the relationships with her family and thoughts on homeland and diaspora are a common thread throughout her works.

The title BloodLetter refers on one hand to the central role of blood as a metaphor in Ilupeju’s work. For the artist, blood signifies life, connection, trauma, and the transmission of stories. On the other hand, “Letter” points to recorded written and spoken language, asemic writing, the documentation and reshaping of narratives. Together, the interplay of these ideas creates an artistic concept that explores the relationship between body, language, and history.

Monilola Olayemi Ilupeju (b. 1996) is a multimedia artist and writer. In her paintings, texts, performances, and installations, she balances her own experiences of connection, violence, and healing with broader considerations of cultural distortions and identity. Monilola Olayemi Ilupeju lives and works in Berlin.

Curator: Alexander Wilmschen

KESTNER GASELLSCHAFT

Goseriede 11, 30159 Hannover

www.kestnergesellschaft.de

Exposition Modigliani / Zadkine @ Musée Zadkine, Paris - "Modigliani / Zadkine. Une amitié interrompue" - Présentation de l'exposition + catalogue

Modigliani / Zadkine

Une amitié interrompue

Musée Zadkine, Paris

14 novembre 2024 - 30 mars 2025

Amedeo Modigliani 

Cariatide, vers 1913-1914 

Dessin (graphite, lavis d’encre, pastel)

Paris, musée d’Art Moderne de Paris

Amedeo Modigliani 

La Bourguignonne, 1918 

Huile sur toile 

Collection particulière

Cette exposition au Musée Zadkine est la première à s’intéresser à une amitié artistique jamais explorée jusqu’alors, celle qui unit le sculpteur Ossip Zadkine au peintre Amedeo Modigliani. 

A travers près de 90 oeuvres, peintures, dessins, sculptures mais également documents et photographies d’époque, elle propose de suivre les parcours croisés de Modigliani et Zadkine, dans le contexte mouvementé et fécond du Montparnasse des années 1910 à 1920. Bénéficiant de prêts exceptionnels de grandes institutions - le Centre Pompidou, le musée de l’Orangerie, les musées de Milan, Rouen et Dijon - ainsi que de prêteurs privés, le parcours fait se confronter, comme au temps de leurs débuts artistiques, deux artistes majeurs des avant-gardes, et permet de renouer les fils d’une amitié interrompue. 

Ossip Zadkine rencontre Amedeo Modigliani en 1913 : les deux artistes, fraîchement débarqués à Paris, rêvent chacun de devenir sculpteurs et partagent alors le « temps des vaches maigres » comme l’écrira Zadkine dans ses souvenirs. Cette amitié, aussi brève que féconde sur le plan artistique, est interrompue par la Première Guerre mondiale. Modigliani abandonne la sculpture pour la peinture, sur le conseil de marchands. Zadkine s’engage comme brancardier en 1915, avant d’être gazé et d’entamer une longue convalescence. Les deux artistes se retrouvent brièvement au sortir de la guerre, avant que leurs voies ne divergent à nouveau. Modigliani connaît un succès croissant avec ses peintures, mais il meurt prématurément à 35 ans, en 1920, tandis que Zadkine entame une longue et fructueuse carrière de sculpteur. Zadkine n’oubliera pas Modigliani et conservera précieusement le portrait fait par son ancien camarade, dont la gloire posthume ne fait que croître, à tel point que « Modi » devient l’une des figures mythiques de l’art moderne. 

L'exposition se déroule en cinq parties :

Modigliani / Zadkine : des débuts à Paris sous le signe de la sculpture

L’exposition débute en présentant côte-à-côte une sélection d’œuvres de Modigliani et Zadkine réalisées entre leurs arrivées respectives à Paris – 1906 pour Modigliani, 1910 pour Zadkine – et les débuts de la Première Guerre mondiale. Lorsque Zadkine rencontre Modigliani en 1913, celui-ci s’adonne pleinement à la sculpture, depuis sa rencontre avec Brancusi en 1909. La parenté de leur quête artistique ne peut que rapprocher les deux artistes : tous deux veulent rompre avec l’esthétique académique et se tournent vers de nouveaux modèles, puisés dans l’Égypte ancienne, les arts khmers et africains. Modigliani cherche un type de visage idéal, à l’ovale accusé et aux yeux en amande dont Zadkine se souviendra encore dans les années 1920, lorsqu’il sculptera à son tour une magnifique série de têtes idéales. 

Modigliani / Zadkine : Une amitié interrompue (1918-1920)

Dessins et portraits peints de Modigliani, accompagnés d’une magnifique sélection de gouaches de Zadkine, illustrent ici les chemins divergents qu’empruntent Zadkine et Modigliani au sortir de la Première Guerre mondiale. La guerre met un terme brutal à l’amitié des deux artistes. Trop fragile pour s’engager, Modigliani est réformé et renonce définitivement à la sculpture, sur le conseil de son marchand Paul Guillaume. Zadkine s’engage dans la Légion étrangère : affecté à l’ambulance russe en 1915 comme brancardier, il est gazé en 1916, puis définitivement réformé en octobre 1917. Les chemins des deux artistes se croisent à nouveau brièvement à la fin de la guerre, avant la mort prématurée de Modigliani en janvier 1920. 

A Montparnasse, les affinités électives

Un magnifique ensemble de « portraits d’amitié » dessinés par Modigliani, met en scène les « Montparnos » que Zadkine et Modigliani fréquentèrent tous deux au temps de leur amitié, tels Max Jacob, Chana Orloff ou André Salmon. Modigliani était en effet célèbre pour les portraits qu’il croquait rapidement, à la terrasse des cafés, en échange d’un verre ou d’un café, ou simplement en gage d’amitié et de reconnaissance. Le portrait qu’il fit de Zadkine, l’un des chefs-d’œuvre de la collection, s’inscrit indubitablement dans cette veine et constitue l’un des fleurons de l’ensemble.

Zadkine et le mythe Modigliani

Ici, documents, films et photographies, témoignent de l’ampleur du « mythe Modigliani » et montrent la part active prise par Zadkine dans l’édification de la légende. La mort de Modigliani, emporté par une méningite tuberculeuse le 24 janvier 1920, constitue un traumatisme pour la communauté d’artistes installés à Montparnasse. Dès les années 1920, la légende s’empare de cet artiste au destin tragique. Ceux qui l’ont connu et admiré de son vivant, livrent tour à tour leur témoignage.

Zadkine ne fait pas exception : dès 1930, le sculpteur évoque son ami dans un numéro spécial dédié à Modigliani. Dans ses souvenirs, publiés un an après sa mort en 1967, Zadkine brosse un éloquent portrait, haut en couleurs, de « Modi » et apporte ainsi sa pierre à l’édification de la légende du « prince de Montparnasse ».

Pour évoquer cette amitié artistique, le plasticien Ange Leccia a choisi de réaliser un film, intitulé Adelia, Zadkine et Modigliani. Il met en scène une adolescente d’aujourd’hui en train de regarder des portraits photographiques des deux artistes, dont les images fantasmatiques se superposent et s’estompent, en écho à la légende qui entoure les deux artistes. 

Des extraits d’une émission de 1963 avec Blaise Cendrars et Ossip Zadkine évoquant leur jeunesse avec Modigliani viennent enrichir cette partie illustrant le mythe. 

Un temple pour l’humanité

Avec sa scénographie volontairement immersive et spectaculaire, la dernière partie met en scène le rapport qu’entretinrent chacun des deux artistes à l’architecture et au sacré, à travers le motif du Temple. Les têtes sculptées par Modigliani dans les années 1910 sont en effet conçues comme un ensemble décoratif devant s’intégrer dans un spectaculaire « temple de volupté » soutenu par des « colonnes de tendresse » (comme l’écrivait le marchand Paul Guillaume) qu’auraient symbolisé de souples femmes-cariatides. Ce motif de la cariatide, inlassablement dessiné par Modigliani est également repris à maintes reprises par Zadkine et donne lieu à certains chefs-d’œuvre du sculpteur, dont la réputation avant-guerre tient largement à ses grands bois sculptés, avatars modernes des divinités antiques. 

Modigliani / Zadkine vu par les artistes d’aujourd’hui

Afin d’ancrer le dialogue entre Modigliani et Zadkine dans l’actualité artistique, trois artistes ont été invités à contribuer au catalogue : Giuseppe Penone, qui possède dans sa collection personnelle une Cariatide attribuée à Modigliani, ainsi qu’Ange Leccia et Ivan Messac. 

COMMISSARIAT DE L'EXPOSITION

Cécilie Champy-Vinas, conservatrice en chef du patrimoine, directrice du musée Zadkine

Thierry Dufrêne, professeur d’histoire de l’art contemporain à l’Université Paris Nanterre

Avec la collaboration d’Anne-Cécile Moheng, attachée de conservation au musée Zadkine

LE CATALOGUE DE L'EXPOSITION

Modigliani Zadkine

Une amitié interrompue

Edité par le Musée Zadkine et Paris Musées

L’ouvrage met l’accent sur l’amitié de deux artistes qui se sont croisés et influencés réciproquement dans le contexte mouvementé et fécond du Montparnasse des années 1910-1920, et prolonge cette évocation jusqu’à nos jours, par le regard de trois artistes contemporains. Sous la direction de Cécilie Champy-Vinas et Thierry Dufrêne. Avec les contributions de Diederik Bakhuÿs, Cécilie Champy-Vinas, Thierry Dufrêne, Flavio Fergonzi, Véronique Gautherin, Ange Leccia, Ivan Messac, Marianne Le Morvan, Maureen Murphy, Anne-Cécile Moheng, Giuseppe Penone. 16 x 24 cm, relié, 160 pages, 130 illustrations : 30 €

MUSÉE ZADKINE, PARIS

100 bis, rue d’Assas - 75006 Paris

zadkine.paris.fr

Draw Them In, Paint Them Out: Trenton Doyle Hancock Confronts Philip Guston @ Jewish Museum, New York

Draw Them In, Paint Them Out 

Trenton Doyle Hancock Confronts Philip Guston

Jewish Museum, New York

Through March 30, 2025

TRENTON DOYLE HANCOCK

"Schlep and Screw, Knowledge Rental Pawn Exchange Service," 2017 

Acrylic and mixed media on canvas, 

60 x 60 x 6 in. (152.4 x 152.4 x 15.2 cm) 

Collection of Hedy Fischer and Randy Shull, 

Asheville, North Carolina

Draw Them In, Paint Them Out: Trenton Doyle Hancock Confronts Philip Guston examines Philip Guston’s seminal influence on Trenton Doyle Hancock and both artists’ shared commitment to investigating the legacy of white supremacism in the United States. The exhibition presents the the work of painter PHILIP GUSTON (American, b. Canada 1913–1980), the child of Jewish immigrants from Odessa (present-day Ukraine), and TRENTON DOYLE HANCOCK (American, b. 1974), a leading Black contemporary artist based in Houston, Texas, in dialogue for the first time. The exhibition explores resonant connections between their work and the role that artists play in the pursuit of social justice.

Organized by the Jewish Museum, the exhibition features key works by Philip Guston including his now iconic, late satirical Ku Klux Klan paintings in dialogue with major works Trenton Doyle Hancock created in response to his inspirational mentor, highlighting their parallel thematic explorations of the nature of evil, self-representation, otherness, and art activism. Foregrounding works that depict the Klan, the exhibition demonstrates how both artists engage with and at times even inhabit these hateful figures to explore their own identities and more broadly examine systems of institutionalized power and their feelings of complicity within them. Yet, despite the difficult subject matter and at times violent imagery presented in their work, both Hancock and Guston share an ability to conquer the pain and emotion of their art through humor that is both dark and undeniable, engaging with their shared embrace of the visual language of comics.

Philip Guston, whose early social realist and abstract work ultimately evolved into an idiosyncratic form of social satire, is now one of the most revered painters of the twentieth century. Significant examples of Guston’s buffoonish Klansmen paintings and drawings from the late 1960s and early 1970s, selected by Hancock, will be a centerpiece of the exhibition. Guston’s cartoonish style was used to defy the Klan’s bigotry as racial tensions roiled America—tensions that continue to resonate with renewed urgency today. Guston also used the hooded figure as an alter-ego wrestling with his Jewish identity and his assimilation into American culture. This phenomenon is illustrated especially in Guston’s masterful The Studio (1969), which depicts the artist as a Klansman painting a self-portrait, acknowledging his own complicity with white supremacy. 

For the eclectic artist, cartoonist, and illustrator Trenton Doyle Hancock, Guston’s work has been a consistent source of inspiration for nearly 30 years. His collaged psychedelic canvases similarly draw on the language of comics to challenge and comment upon the American condition. The exhibition includes Hancock’s surreal graphic memoir that interweaves Guston’s biography with his own family tree and reports of Klan activity in the United States, past and present. Titled Epidemic! Presents: Step and Screw! (2014), the series has since developed into a substantial body of work in which Hancock’s long-standing avatar, a Black superhero named Torpedoboy, meets and engages with Guston’s Klan-hooded alter-ego. Through this series, Hancock confronts his artistic forefather and examines their respective motivations for grappling with white supremacism in their art.

Draw Them In, Paint Them Out builds upon the Jewish Museum’s ongoing commitment to exploring contemporary art in real time, providing a platform for each new generation of artists. The Museum also shares a foundational history with Guston’s work including the artist’s solo exhibition in 1966, just before the emergence of his late Klan imagery, and his seminal role in Action/Abstraction: Pollock, de Kooning, and American Art, 1940-1976 on view in 2008. The current exhibition joins a fall program at the Museum that tells complex stories from multiple points of view to spark dialogue around how society engages with and learns from historical narratives. By addressing complex and often painful histories, these stories offer opportunities to create a sense of unity around shared experiences and inspire hopeful paths toward the future.

The exhibition is organized in four thematic sections:

Co-Conspirators

The first section examines Guston’s and Hancock’s first forays into Klan imagery, produced in their young adulthoods. This gallery includes Guston’s Drawing for Conspirators (1930), a troubling image of the aftermath of a lynching that speaks to the toll of white supremacy in the United States. Guston’s mural of another lynching scene (c. 1931), painted for the John Reed Club to commemorate the plight of the Scottsboro Boys, is presented in facsimile form, as the original work was destroyed by the Los Angeles police and the KKK.

Guston’s early, politically motivated works will be presented alongside Hancock’s representations of Loid, a fictitious ghost of a 1950s Black sharecropper who appears as half Klansman, half Klan victim, conceived by the artist around the time of his discovery of Guston’s work in the mid-1990s. This harbinger of vengeance, portrayed with a white sheet and noose and wielding a hammer of justice, first emerged in a photographic self-portrait (Properties of the Hammer, 1994) by Hancock at the age of 19, and has recurred in various iterations in drawings (Judgment #2, 2000), cartoons, and paintings (Coloration Coronation, 2016) to the present day.

K-K Kan I Help You?

This next section features a selection of significant late Klansmen paintings and drawings by Guston, including The Studio (1969) and Riding Around (1969). These works represent Guston’s renewed exploration of the Klan, an exercise in both social satire and self-condemnation, following a resurgence of Klan activity in response to the advancements made by the civil rights movement in the United States.

This section also features Hancock’s Epidemic! Presents: Step and Screw! (2014), the graphic series created by Hancock “as a kind of one-liner: what would happen if my alter-ego Torpedoboy met Philip Guston’s alter-ego, the Klansman?” Step and Screw! marks the first time Hancock dealt explicitly with his and his family’s personal ties to America’s haunted past. In 30 black-and-white panels, Hancock contrasts the dark comedy of his comic strip with a fantastical timeline that blends Guston’s and Hancock’s life stories and delves into their generational traumas.

Conception and Execution

The third section of the exhibition focuses on Hancock’s paintings that grew out of Step and Screw! The majority of these mixed media works, which fuse image and text and recombine elements from the original comic book, focus on the “pregnant” moment of exchange between the Klansman and Torpedoboy. In each new iteration, the characters engage in a dubious handoff, with the hooded figure offering the skeptical superhero an object associated with wisdom, be it a lightbulb, an apple, or a head. Works on view include Step and Screw: The Star of Code Switching (2020) from the Jewish Museum’s collection, in which the Klansman offers a talisman so powerful that Torpedoboy’s racial transformation is instantaneous and Lights Out (2023), in which Torpedoboy ends his tenuous affinity with the Klansman, enacting a symbolic patricide.

The Ladder of Coincidence

The final section of the exhibition serves as a coda to the presentation with a single pair of monumental paintings, Guston’s The Ladder (1978) and Hancock’s The Former and the Ladder or Ascension and a Cinchin' (2012). These works illustrate the “umbilical connection” that Hancock has described feeling toward his predecessor, and how Guston’s influence and imagery have subconsciously found their way into many facets of Hancock’s work.

This exhibition is organized by Rebecca Shaykin, Curator, The Jewish Museum, in partnership with Trenton Doyle Hancock. 

A lavishly illustrated companion volume, co-published with Yale University Press and designed by the award-winning firm Morcos Key, features a lead essay by curator Rebecca Shaykin, with additional contributions by Trenton Doyle Hancock, the veteran curator and noted Black American art scholar Valerie Cassel Oliver, and the celebrated American Jewish comic artist Art Spiegelman. The texts offer multiple perspectives on the current political moment and the ways in which art, popular comics, personal narrative, and humor can deepen our understanding of Black and Jewish experiences in the United States. The book is available worldwide. 

JEWISH MUSEUM, NEW YORK

1109 5th Avenue at 92nd Street, New York, NY 10128

thejewishmuseum.org

Related posts: 

Philip Guston. Singularities, Hauser & Wirth Zurich , 7 June – 7 September 2024 

Philip Guston Now, National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC, March 2 – August 27, 2023 

Philip Guston - Late Paintings, Peder Lund, Oslo , September 20 - November 8, 2014 

Philip Guston: Works on Paper, The Morgan Library & Museum, New York, May 2 - August 31, 2008

Philip Guston: Mind and Matter, McKee Gallery, New York, November 11 - December 23, 2003

Draw Them In, Paint Them Out: Trenton Doyle Hancock Confronts Philip Guston

Jewish Museum, New York - November 8, 2024 - March 30, 2025

Movements Toward Freedom @ MCA Denver

Movements Toward Freedom 

Museum of Contemporary Art Denver 

September 20, 2024 - February 2, 2025

Kambui Olujimi 

Props, 2023 

Watercolour, ink, graphite on paper 

Courtesy of the artist and Audrey Yvette Washington

The Museum of Contemporary Art Denver (MCA Denver) presents Movements Toward Freedom. The exhibition explores the power, possibility and vulnerability of bodily movement in contemporary life.

Linking physical and social definitions of movement, Movements Toward Freedom examines how the articulation of our bodies, collectively and singularly, informs and shapes a vital society. Showcasing recent work and new commissions that span genres of performance, sculpture, video, painting and installation, the exhibition considers the ways that physical movement plays an integral role in exercising personal and collective agency as a means for community-building, civic change and liberation, as well as serving as an antidote to strife and a vehicle for healing and care. 

Exhibiting artists: Sadie Barnette, Ben Coleman, Elena Dahn, Karon Davis, Brendan Fernandes, Geovanna Gonzalez, EJ Hill, Karlo Andrei Ibarra, tara jae, Steffani Jemison, Liz Magic Laser, Carolyn Lazard, Francisco Masó, Senga Nengudi, Kambui Olujimi, Ronny Quevedo, Eric-Paul Riege, Davina Semo, Laura Shill, Naama Tsabar and Cosmo Whyte.

Karon Davis 

Overture, 2023 

Plaster, steel, glass eyes, tulle, crown, and ice pack

Courtesy the artist and Salon 94

© Karon Davis

Karon Davis 

Overture, 2023 

Plaster, steel, glass eyes, tulle, crown, and ice pack

Courtesy the artist and Salon 94

© Karon Davis

Karon Davis (b. 1977, Reno, Nevada) creates sculptures and multimedia installations that touch on issues of history, race, and violence in the United States, using materials as varied as plaster strips, chicken wire, glass, and readymade objects. Drawing on her background in theater and film, Davis creates haunting tableaux inhabited by protagonists both historical and imagined. The figures are created using the artist’s unique plaster method, amalgamations of life-size casts taken from friends and family as well as her own body. The material reflects her longtime interest in ancient Egyptian mummification practices, using wrapping to memorialize different bodies and their complex histories. 

 

Cosmo Whyte, Portrait

Photography: Barret Lybbert

Cosmo Whyte 

Wading in the Wake, 2020 

Beaded curtains, paint. 

Courtesy of the artist and Anat Ebgi, Los Angeles / New York 

Photography: Barret Lybbert 

Cosmo Whyte 

Wading in the Wake (detail), 2020 

Beaded curtains, paint. 

Courtesy of the artist and Anat Ebgi, Los Angeles / New York 

Photography: Barret Lybbert 

Cosmo Whyte (b. 1982, St. Andrew, Jamaica) employs drawing, sculpture, and photography to explore the intersections of race, nationalism, and displacement. His large scale drawings pose the celebratory body of Jamaican and diasporic communities in states of jubilation. His figures, adorned with gold leaf and black glitter, defy their colonial past, tearing it from their bodies through unbridled dance.

“Movements Toward Freedom considers questions about how we move - and move together - in the year 2024,” said exhibition curator Leilani Lynch. “Emerging from the disconnectedness of the pandemic era, the exhibition aims to ground viewers in their physical bodies, creating a dynamic space activated by performances and programs, while also inviting active participation from museum visitors.”

Time-based programming is core to the framework of Movements. The selected artists engender expanded notions of performance and movement into the artworks on view in the exhibition, over half of which will be activated during monthly programming of live activations, performances, and participatory events. This exhibition hosts the most accompanying programs of any project MCA Denver has organized to-date.

Sadie Barnette 

Mirror Bar, 2022 

Neon, vinyl on mirror plexiglas in arched frame, 

holographic vinyl upholstery, and glitter Plexiglas

Collection Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, 

T. B. Walker Acquisition Fund, 2024

Photo courtesy the artist and Jessica Silverman, San Francisco

Photo: Phillip Maisel

Sadie Barnette 

Mirror Bar, 2022 

Neon, vinyl on mirror plexiglas in arched frame, 

holographic vinyl upholstery, and glitter Plexiglas

Collection Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, 

T. B. Walker Acquisition Fund, 2024

Photo courtesy the artist and Jessica Silverman, San Francisco

Photo: Phillip Maisel

Sadie Barnette 

Mirror Bar, 2022 

Neon, vinyl on mirror plexiglas in arched frame, 

holographic vinyl upholstery, and glitter Plexiglas

Collection Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, 

T. B. Walker Acquisition Fund, 2024

Photo courtesy the artist and Jessica Silverman, San Francisco

Photo: Phillip Maisel

Sadie Barnette 

Eagle Creek I, 2021 

Archival pigment print photograph 

with overlaid rhinestones 

Courtesy the artist and Jessica Silverman, San Francisco 

Photo: John Wilson White

Sadie Barnette 

Eagle Creek I, 2021 

Archival pigment print photograph 

with overlaid rhinestones 

Courtesy the artist and Jessica Silverman, San Francisco 

Photo: John Wilson White

EJ Hill 

Heartline, 2022 

Wood, acrylic, and neon. 51 x 26 x 138 inches

Courtesy the artist and François Ghebaly 

EJ Hill 

joy studies (never ever giving up), 2022 

Acrylic and crayon on wood panel. 40 x 30 inches 

Courtesy the artist and François Ghebaly

EJ Hill 

joy studies (triple rainbow), 2022 

Acrylic and crayon on wood panel. 40 x 30 inches

Collection of Daniel Sager and Brian McCarthy 

EJ Hill 

joy studies (lift), 2022 

Acrylic and crayon on wood panel. 40 x 30 inches 

Courtesy the artist and François Ghebaly

EJ Hill is an artist born, raised, and based in South Central, Los Angeles. François Ghebaly said: "Widely recognized for his durational performance-based practice, Hill is equally accomplished in installation and object-based work. Grounded in lived experience, Hill’s recent paintings and sculptural installations center possibilities of healing, considering joy as a critical component of social equity".

Many artists in the exhibition – including Sadie Barnette, EJ Hill, Kambui Olujimi and tara jae – look to historical examples of radical spaces of gathering and togetherness in order to find inspiration and perspective, while other works by GeoVanna Gonzalez and Naama Tsabar act as platforms and structures that foster self-empowerment and creative expression. 

The strength, vulnerability and resilience of the body are explored in many artworks in the exhibition, including examples by Karlo Andrei Ibarra, Liz Magic Laser, Ronny Quevedo, and Laura Shill. These artists borrow tropes, aesthetics and techniques from the athletic and fitness industries to investigate and critique contemporary wellness culture while asking us to think about what “fitness” means, especially when confronted with threats to social and political health. 

Elena Dahn

Cámara, 2016 

Still from filmed performance 

Courtesy the artist

Elena Dahn 

Brutas, 2021

Performance, at Arte BA Fair

Courtesy the artist. 

Elena Dahn,

Pendiente, 2024

Performance at PROA21, 2022 

Courtesy the artist

Elena Dahn 

Pendiente, 2024 

Performance at PROA21, 2022

Courtesy the artist

Elena Dahn

Courtesy of the artist

Elena Dahn was born in Buenos Aires in 1980, where she currently lives and works. She graduated with a degree in Communication studies. She continued to study visual arts at the University of Buenos Aires, as well as in workshops and discussion spaces of prominent artists from Buenos Aires. Between 2009 and 2010 she completed the Universidad Di Tella Program for artists, under the mentorship of Jorge Macchi. In 2010 she won first prize in the Curriculm 0 Competition at the Ruth Benzacar Gallery. In 2011 she obtained a scholarship from the MNSEN Foundation and completed a postgraduate program at the sculpture department of the Royal College of Arts, London. She exhibited her work at art galleries, museums and art spaces in Buenos Aires, New York, Brazil and London.

Other artists like Senga Nengudi and Elena Dahn, foreground the experience of motherhood and birth through their works, highlighting the inherent elasticity and memory of skin. 

Movements Toward Freedom features newly commissioned installation and performance works by Brendan Fernandes and Steffani Jemison. 

Brendan Fernandes 

Ballet Kink, 2019 

Live performance, lighting, staging and DJ set 

Courtesy the artist

Commissioned by the Guggenheim Museum, "Ballet Kink" combines the vocabulary of Ballet and S&M bondage. Dancers collaborate with rope masters to challenge their endurance and expand their repertoire. The work explores metaphors for: how do we find new freedoms within social and political restraints?

Brendan Fernandes 

Contract and Release, 2019 

Live performance and choreography for (3) dancers, scaffolding, 

costuming, edition of (6) custom rocking chairs 

Courtesy the artist

Commissioned by The Isamu Noguchi Museum, "Contract and Release" responds to the collaborations between sculptor, Isamu Noguchi and choreographer, Martha Graham. New sculptures by Brendan Fernandes and objects from the Noguchi collection are activated by performers and a Graham-referencing choreography.

Brendan Fernandes 

The Master and Form II, 2019 

Performance/Installation 

Image courtesy of the Whitney Museum of American Art 

Exhibition design in collaboration with  Norman Kelley

The second iteration of the Master and Form was staged for the 2019 Whitney Biennial. Master and Form explores the dynamics of mastery and discipline as embodied by ballet. The sculptural installation—comprising five structures that he calls “devices,” ten hanging ropes, and a central cage—is animated at times by a group of dancers. Both assisting and encumbering the performers, the minimalist objects enable poses that test their endurance in overt displays of physical tension and self-control.

Brendan Fernandes 

Free Fall, for Camera, 2020 

Digital. Duration: 13:47 minutes 

Courtesy the artist

Free Fall is a large-scale, multimedia dance and video installation. Initiated by a Canada Council for the Arts, Special Projects, Canada 150 Grant, Free Fall explores the falling body as a metaphor for queer politics. The first phase of the project was Free Fall, for Camera, a film. Featuring a team of (16) dancers; a unique choreography in collaboration with Toronto’s Hit & Run Dance Productions; and an original soundtrack by Experimental Sound.

Brendan Fernandes 

72 Seasons, 2021

Performance

Courtesy the artist

72 Seasons engages with ballet history to envision the same passages of time demarcated by seasons for the twenty-first-century. Initiating the project in the Lurie Garden within the City of Chicago’s Millennium Park, the movement-based piece brings together a group of dancers in acts of utilitarian choreography. Departing from a Western vision of phases, where the division of all perceptible change in our environment is collapsed into four categorical types, Brendan Fernandes encourages a deeper observation of humans’ relationship to the natural world.

Brendan Fernandes

Photograph by Kevin Penczak

Brendan Fernandes’ project manifests as a hybrid of sculpture, sound, a space for performances choreographed by Fernandes, and a platform for Denver’s dance community. The installation resembles the construction of a dance studio, incorporating the museum’s ergonomic “sprung” floor, in addition to familiar elements like barres and mirrors regularly used by dancers during class and rehearsal in preparation for performances. These practical forms are reimagined by Brendan Fernandes to invite professionals, enthusiasts, and interested visitors to move within the space. Etched mirrors adorning the walls and vinyl patterns on the floor provide scores that performers and visitors alike can follow. Additionally, the space is available for local dancers and companies to use for rehearsal. By offering the installation as accessible and open, Brendan Fernandes aims to address the scarcity of studio and performance space regularly experienced throughout the dance community.

Steffani Jemison 

Bound, 2024 

HD video, color, sound. Duration 20:22 min. 

Courtesy the artist and Greene Naftali, New York

Steffani Jemison 

Bound, 2024 

HD video, color, sound. Duration 20:22 min. 

Courtesy the artist and Greene Naftali, New York

Steffani Jemison 

Bound, 2024 

HD video, color, sound. Duration 20:22 min. 

Courtesy the artist and Greene Naftali, New York

Steffani Jemison’s commission builds from her intensive research into the politics of flight as they relate to Black liberation efforts. Her installation combines drawing, a recycled cyclorama (theater backdrop) to produce the effect of distance, and her video "Bound" (2024) to allude to the revolutionary and liberatory potential of physical movement. Steffani Jemison also stages a performance in the form of a play, titled "Flight Theater", at the museum’s satellite space, The Holiday, as an interdisciplinary meditation on untethering ourselves from earth; floating,drifting, and soaring; and the unexpected limitations of an omniscient point of view.

MUSEUM OF CONTEMPORARY ART DENVER

1485 Delgany St., Denver, CO 80202

mcadenver.org