Thomas Struth @ Galerie Max Hetzler, Berlin

Thomas Struth

Galerie Max Hetzler, Berlin

25 April – 21 June 2025

THOMAS STRUTH

Semi Submersible Rig, DSME Shipyard, 

Geoje Island 2007, 2007

© Thomas Struth 

Courtesy of Galerie Max Hetzler

Galerie Max Hetzler presents a solo exhibition of works by THOMAS STRUTH at Potsdamer Strasse 77-87 in Berlin. This exhibition offers visitors a new and, at times, surprising insight into Struth’s oeuvre over the past four decades.

Thomas Struth’s work is characterised by his long-term and careful pursuit of themes that revolve, in various guises, around the relationship between people and their environment. His photographs, which harmonise forms of documentation and contemplation, capture today’s society through images of cultural spaces, as well as the natural world, portraiture and places of industrial and technological innovation.

At the start of the exhibition, one of Struth’s most recent works, Hinakapoʻula, Hawaiʻi 2024, draws viewers into the depths of densely wooded Hawaiian mountain. On the gallery’s far wall, Semi Submersible Rig, DSME Shipyard, Geoje Island 2007 depicts an industrial megastructure on the southern coast of South Korea. Its monumental size and four mighty pillars are emphasised by the perspective of the steel colossus which stretches up to the upper edge of the picture.

The earliest portraits in the exhibition, taken in the 1980s, constitute some of the artist’s most rarely seen works. Thomas Struth has long been interested in the depiction of people, as exemplified in his celebrated Family Portraits, which convey the intricacies of family dynamics. By contrast, the portraits in this exhibition focus on the relationship between subject and photographer. They seek to capture the presence of the individual and thus make visible an incomprehensible yet universally recognisable facet of humanity.

Since the late 1980s, Thomas Struth has also explored the special relationship people have with works of art, and the places that house them. His Museum Photographs depict viewers confronting their own civilisation across the ages. In 2023, the artist spent several days at The Metropolitan Museum in New York, where he photographed visitors in front of Édouard Manet’s The Execution of Maximilian, 1867–1868 and Edgar Dégas’ The Bellelli Family, 1958–1967. In the resulting diptych, titled The Metropolitan Museum of Art (Diptych), New York 2023, Thomas Struth alludes to a historic connection between the two artists: following his death, Manet’s family cut up his painting to sell it in parts; the surviving fragments were later acquired by Degas, and were eventually reassembled in the late 1970s. Adding further layers to the work, Thomas Struth captures present-day museum visitors as they photograph the painting with their luminous smartphones. Spaces, times, cultures and attitudes are layered and combined, mediated via the artworks and their audience, and the viewer of the photograph.

The New Pictures from Paradise represented in this exhibition date from the early 2000s, the decade that saw a heightened awareness of the fragility and importance of the natural world. In these photographs, Struth aims to depict a diversity so dense that individual components are no longer identifiable to the human eye and an impression of inaccessibility prevails instead.

A similar experience is at play in Struth’s Nature & Politics photographs, initiated in 2007. In the present exhibition, these are represented through scenes from aerospace technology and nuclear fusion test centres. In Tokamak Asdex Upgrade Periphery, Max Planck Ipp, Garching 2009, a bewildering tangle of colour-coded wires conveys the unfathomable reality of advanced technology to the untrained eye. Its promise of future innovation remains abstract and intangible.

THOMAS STRUTH (b. 1954) lives and works in Berlin. Struth has exhibited his work at Galerie Max Hetzler on a regular basis since 1987. Major retrospectives were held at the Guggenheim Museum, Bilbao (2019) and the Haus der Kunst, Munich (2017). In 2016, his comprehensive solo exhibition Nature & Politics opened at the Museum Folkwang, Essen, before being presented at the Martin-Gropius-Bau, Berlin, the High Museum, Atlanta, the Moody Center for the Arts, Houston, and finally the Saint Louis Art Museum, Missouri. Other major solo exhibitions have taken place at international institutions including MAST Foundation, Bologna (2019); Aspen Art Museum (2018); The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (2014 and 2003); Kunsthaus Zürich; Museu Serralves, Porto and K20, Düsseldorf (all 2011); Museo del Prado, Madrid (2007); Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago (2003); Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; and Dallas Museum of Art (2002).

Thomas Struth’s works are in the collections of the Art Institute of Chicago; Centre Pompidou, Paris; Dallas Museum of Art; Hamburger Bahnhof, Berlin; Kunsthaus Zürich; Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, Humlebaek; The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Museum of Contemporary Art, MOCA, Los Angeles; Museum Ludwig, Cologne; Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reine Sofía, Madrid; National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo; Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York; Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam; The Museum of Modern Art, New York and Tate, London, among others.

GALERIE MAX HETZLER

Potsdamer Strasse 77-87, 10785 Berlin

www.maxhetzler.com

Leilah Babirye @ Galerie Max Hetzler, Berlin - Ekimyula Ekijjankunene (The Gorgeous Grotesque / Die prächtige Groteske) Exhibition

Leilah Babirye 

Ekimyula Ekijjankunene

(The Gorgeous Grotesque / 

Die prächtige Groteske)

Galerie Max Hetzler, Berlin

1 May – 28 June 2025

LEILAH BABIRYE 

Nakakeeto from the Kuchu Mutima (Heart) Clan, 2023–2024

© Leilah Babirye, courtesy of Galerie Max Hetzler, Berlin

Photo © Jonty Wilde

Galerie Max Hetzler, Berlin presents Ekimyula Ekijjankunene (The Gorgeous  Grotesque / Die prächtige Groteske), a solo exhibition of new works by LEILAH BABIRYE at Goethestrasse 2/3 and Bleibtreustrasse 15/16. This is the artist’s inaugural exhibition with the gallery.

Language and history form the basis of Leilah Babirye's work. Her sculptures and works on paper are characterised by the appropriation and reassignment of terms and categorisations. Her practice is influenced by her own biography, her experiences of homophobia around the world, and the anti-LGBTQ+ legislation in Uganda that forced her to flee to the USA. In her multidisciplinary practice, she uses metal, ceramics, found objects, and hand-carved or chain-sawed wood, incorporating elements of traditional West and Central African iconography into a contemporary context. Her sculptures present real or imagined portraits of the Queer community from the African continent as well as her new homeland, representing an ever-growing LGBTQ+ elective family. While she previously worked on her wooden sculptures using burning as a tool of manipulation, she now uses a variety of other techniques including nailing, assembling, weaving and polishing to focus on the materiality of the works, before adorning them with found materials.

The current exhibition presents new sculptures made from wood, glazed ceramic and bronze, as well as a set of drawings on paper. The title both refers to the ostracisation experienced by members of the LGBTQ+ community and highlights the beauty of this community and Babirye's work. The concept of the grotesque is of particular interest to the artist, not only for its art historical significance, but for the dualism it sets up between the repulsive and the beautiful. This juxtaposition is reflected in many details within the exhibition, from vibrant dripping glazes paired with used tyres, to smooth burnished wood paired with rusty found objects. Combined with larger-than-life organic forms which simultaneously intimidate and invite the viewer, all of these elements come together in what Leilah Babirye calls Ekimyula Ekijjankunene (The Gorgeous Grotesque / Die prächtige Groteske).

The sculptures range from a small group of figures to mask-like heads and faces, and monumental totems. The scale and presence of the works, which symbolically occupy the space around them, is an essential aspect of Babirye's artistic practice. Some of the heads are encircled by voluptuous collars, while other figures sport body or hair ornaments made from discarded bicycle parts, such as chains or tyres – a symbol for the artist of progress and movement. As a motif, the mask simultaneously references West African handicrafts, the style of which Leilah Babirye appropriates, and how LGBTQ+ people in Uganda must conceal their identity. For Babirye, transforming discarded objects into something beautiful is an expression of the resilience of the Queer community. Its members are referred to in the Luganda language by the derogatory term ebisiyaga, which describes the husk of the sugarcane which is usually thrown away. By deliberately repurposing neglected materials, Leilah Babirye reveals the beauty in the supposedly worthless. The set of works on paper in vibrant colours, entitled Kuchu Ndagamuntu (Queer Identity Card), shows individuals from Queer and Trans communities or drag artists who Babirye has noticed in everyday life, on the street or while travelling. She paints them from memory. The portraits function as alternative passport photos, in which freedom of expression and true identity can exist unprovoked.

In the gallery space at Bleibtreustrasse 15/16, the sculptures which form Abambowa (Royal Guard Who Protects the King), 2025, are lined up, side by side, on a plinth. Abambowa is the name for the highest guard in the traditional kingdom of Buganda. The titles of Babirye's works often refer to names from the Ugandan clan system of pre-colonial history, which are based on plants or animals. In this way, the artist creates a sense of belonging which celebrates the members of the Queer community. The coded term kuchu (‘queer’), which can be found in some of the titles, is here afforded a dignified meaning.

Leilah Babirye's oeuvre unites tradition, history and personal experience into a universal connection. Her work gives visibility and dignity to marginalised communities, celebrating resilience and diversity. Past and progress are not in opposition: ‘I always say that if you forget your history, you don't know who you are and where you're going,’ the artist states. ‘I can't live in the present or look to the future without also looking back, and this back and forth is evident in my work.’ Grounded in her heritage, Leilah Babirye incorporates references into her practice and uses their artistic transformation as a means not just to survive, but to thrive and flourish.

[1] L. Babirye, in ‘Artist Leilah Babirye: “I want to help people feel a sense of belonging”’, Art Basel, 7 March 2024.

LEILAH BARBIRYE (b. 1985, Kampala, Uganda) lives and works in Brooklyn, New York. The artist’s work has been the subject of institutional solo exhibitions at the de Young Museum, San Francisco (2024–2025); and Yorkshire Sculpture Park, West Bretton (2024). Babirye's work has also been presented in group exhibitions, including the 60th International Art Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia; Sainsbury's Centre, Norwich (both 2024); Hammer Museum, Los Angeles; The Whitworth, The University of Manchester (both 2023); mumok, Vienna; The Africa Centre, London (both 2022); Coventry Biennial (2021); Hessel Museum of Art, Annandale-on-Hudson; Contemporary Arts Museum Houston; Bric, Brooklyn (all 2019); Trapholt Museum, Kolding (2016); and Kampala Art Biennale (2014).

Leilah Babirye's work is held in the collections of the Columbus Museum of Art; Hammer Museum, Los Angeles; Herbert Art Gallery & Museum, Coventry; Hessel Museum of Art, Bard College, Annandale-on-Hudson; mumok, Vienna; RISD Museum, Providence; Sainsbury Centre, Norwich; Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; and Xiao Museum of Contemporary Art, Shandong, among others. 

GALERIE MAX HETZLER

Goethestrasse 2/3 & Bleibtreustrasse 15/16, Berlin

www.maxhetzler.com

Sarah Crowner @ Galerie Max Hetzler, Paris "Tableaux en Laine, Pierres en Bronze" Exhibition

Sarah Crowner 

Tableaux en Laine, Pierres en Bronze 

Galerie Max Hetzler, Paris 

26 April – 21 June 2025

SARAH CROWNER

Black and Blues and Oranges, both 2024 (details) 

© Sarah Crowner

Galerie Max Hetzler, Paris, presents Tableaux en Laine, Pierres en Bronze, a solo exhibition by SARAH CROWNER, uniting a new series of embroideries, bronze sculptures and canvases. This is the artist’s inaugural exhibition with the gallery, and her first presentation in Paris.

Sarah Crowner is renowned for her investigations into colour, materiality and form. Her works, which span painting, sculpture, collage, tile installations and set design, invite a close engagement with the viewer. Subverting expectations of structure, texture and palette, they elicit new ways of slow and deliberate looking. For this exhibition, Sarah Crowner foregrounds abstract colour fields and juxtaposes hard and soft, reflective and absorbent, surfaces.

Five wool embroidered works from 2024 mark a new development in the artist’s practice. At first glance, they appear to be monochromatic canvases, each composed from a vibrating expanse of colour. Contemplated up close, however, they reveal themselves to be handmade objects, created stitch-by-stitch in snaking tendrils, from a varied range of hues. This subtle yet integral plurality is reflected in the titles of the works: Reds, Oranges, Blacks and Blues, Violets, and Whites. Under the changing, dappled light, one almost perceives the individual threads of wool as impasto brushstrokes, which take partial inspiration from Vincent Van Gogh’s Starry Night, 1889, as well as his paintings made in Saint-Rémy-de-Provence. The textured palette and swirling intensity of his canvases can be traced in the eddying surfaces of Crowner’s embroideries.

Collaboration plays a central role in Crowner’s practice. For the new ‘Tableaux en Laine’, she worked closely with a group of more than twenty embroiderers, based in Maine, USA. Ranging from school age to septuagenarians, they worked together to meticulously stitch each composition by hand over many days, based on ‘stitch map’ drawings created by the artist. These ‘maps’ are used as directional guides to translate colour and line into physical objects and ground the works within a formal painterly language. ‘It always goes back to painting’, the artist states.

While making her recent embroideries, Sarah Crowner was looking closely at the work of Richard Serra, from his early steel slabs to his black, monochrome drawings. Ostensibly simple, the drawings reveal what Sarah Crowner describes as ‘this heavy working, made gesture by gesture’ from thick oil sticks. Similarly, despite first appearances, his weighty and dense sculptures are speckled with patina, embedding within them a sense of passing time. Whether cast, stitched or sewn, this inherent slipperiness between expectation, perception and reality lies at the heart of Crowner’s practice.

In response to the wool paintings, Crowner’s ‘Pierres en Bronze’ sculptures are displayed almost as if they are onlookers, their highly polished surfaces reflecting spills and splashes of colour from the lush wool works. As the viewer moves through the exhibition, the bronze surfaces activate, generating new abstractions which are constantly in flux. Hard, heavy and solid, the sculptures are simultaneously ephemeral, as light, time and transience permeate their shifting surfaces. These Stone sculptures, as their titles insinuate, are based on small stones that Sarah Crowner has collected over the years from Rincon Beach in California, near where she grew up. With their natural holes and pockmarks, the stones resemble small Modernist sculptures, transformed here from their once matte and lightweight forms into enlarged and shiny bronzes.

In her sewn canvases, exhibited in the gallery space in Paris, Sarah Crowner melds order and spontaneity. Working according to a process she describes as ‘slow, fast, slow, fast, instinctual versus methodical’, she draws inspiration from elements of nature as much as art history. In Skyline (Blues) and Seafloor (Greens), both 2025, the shapes echo one another, leaving the viewer with a lingering feeling of déjà vu. First, the paintings appear as familiar fields of drawn lines, forms and colours; it is only from up close that one sees their inherent structure: cut fragments carefully sutured to form a greater whole.

Emphasising the act of transformation in her work, Crowner’s hard sculptures, soft textured embroideries, and cut and sewn canvases each encapsulate something of their opposite, encouraging the viewer to contemplate the yin-yang dualities of the everyday.

SARAH CROWNER (b. 1974, Philadelphia) lives and works in Brooklyn, New York. The artist’s work has been presented in institutional solo exhibitions including SCAD Museum of Art, Savannah (2025); The Chinati Foundation, Marfa (2022–2024); Hill Art Foundation, New York; Pulitzer Arts Foundation, St. Louis (both 2023–2024); Auroras and Casa de Vidro, Instituto Bardi, São Paulo (2023); Museo Amparo, Puebla (2022–2023); KMAC Contemporary Art Museum, Louisville (2018–2019); and MASS MoCA, North Adams (2016–2017). Sarah Crowner’s works are in the collections of major international institutions including the Art Institute of Chicago; Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburg; The Contemporary Austin; Dallas Museum of Art; Los Angeles County Museum of Art; Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art, North Adams; The Museum of Modern Art, New York; Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York; and Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, among others.

GALERIE MAX HETZLER, PARIS

46 rue du Temple, 75004 Paris

www.maxhetzler.com

Sergey Kononov @ Galerie Max Hetzler, Berlin

Sergey Kononov

Galerie Max Hetzler, Berlin

1 May – 4 June 2025

Galerie Max Hetzler presents an exhibition of ten paintings by SERGEY KONONOV at Bleibtreustrasse 45 in Berlin. This is the artist’s first solo exhibition with the gallery.

In his intimate portraits, Ukrainian painter Sergey Kononov captures quiet moments of solitude or togetherness. Light-drenched and pooled in grainy, ochre tones, Kononov’s canvases exude a tenderness and familiarity reminiscent of a bygone era, thus probing the conventions of realist painting. ‘It’s important for me to capture a luminosity. I want to recreate the look of old films – that grain, that warm light – which I’ve loved my whole life,’ the artist explains. [1]

In the present exhibition, three closely cropped portraits depict faces obscured by cascading locks of golden hair. Subsumed in their inner selves, eyes closed or cast downward in martyr-like poses, Kononov’s subjects are imbued with the immediacy of photographic snapshots and the timelessness of ancient frescoes.

In other compositions, Sergey Kononov presents lingering glimpses of domestic solitude. A girl falls asleep in the study of an Italian palazzo, slumped over an open book. In another painting, she languidly rests her head on an ornate chair, seemingly caught in a moment of melancholy, the tiled floor beneath her providing a mosaic backdrop. Set in these anachronistic interiors, the contemporary body takes on a distinct ethereal quality, as though suspended in time and place.

Kononov’s subjects are intimate by nature: they usually depict people he is close to, photographed and later eternalised in paint. In one work, a man rests in his companion’s lap, his arms slung around her upper body. In another, a couple sprawls across a sumptuous orange sofa, a vintage rug slipping out from under their bare bodies and onto the wooden floor. As enigmatic as they are exposed, these paintings radiate with raw vulnerability. Rendered against a flat swathe of vivid ochre, a solitary sitter confronts the viewer’s gaze in another composition. With fists raised, he displays his gold-ringed fingers.

Carnal, bold and nostalgic, Kononov’s paintings offer searing tributes to youth in a time of socio-political turbulence. In his depictions, Sergey Kononov is meticulous, as attuned to posture as he is to drapery and pattern. Each surface is rendered with care, built up from diminutive marks and haloed in a golden light that speaks to the artist’s varied influences – from Impressionism to Lucian Freud, Andrew Wyeth and Sandro Botticelli. At once haunting and familiar, fleeting and timeless, Kononov’s portraits unlock something of his protagonists’ inner lives, imbuing the quotidian with a new – and needed – sensuality. 

[1] S. Kononov, ‘Sergey Kononov doesn’t like to be rushed’, Plaster Magazine, October 2024. 

SERGEY KONONOV (b. 1994, Odesa, Ukraine) lives and works in Paris, France. The artist’s work has been the subject of institutional solo exhibitions at Théâtre National de La Criée, Marseille (2020); Ukraine National Art Museum, Kiev (2015); and Museum of Modern Art, Odesa (2014). Kononov’s works are in the public collections of Fondation Francès, Clichy / Senlis; and Museum of Modern Art, Odesa.

GALERIE MAX HETSLER

Bleibtreustrasse 45, Berlin

www.maxhetzler.com

Zhang Wei @ Galerie Max Hetzler, Paris

Zhang Wei

Galerie Max Hetzler, Paris

6 février - 13 mars 2021

ZHANG WEI 

Z-AC2018, 2020 

Oil on linen

200 x 180 cm.; 78 3/4 x 70 7/8 in.

Photo: Yang Chao Photography Beijing

Pour sa première exposition à Paris et la seconde à la galerie Max Hetzler, ZHANG WEI, l’une des figures de proue de la peinture abstraire chinoise, a sélectionné douze peintures et deux huiles sure papier aquarelle réalisées entre 2016 et 2020. L’artiste offre un aperçu de son travail récent empreint de l’influence de l’Action Painting qu’il découvre dans les années 80, marquant un tournant dans sa pratique, et l’incitant à rompre définitivement avec la figuration.

Zhang Wei confronte le spectateur à des toiles souvent monumentales, composées de coups de pinceaux aux couleurs vives et contrastées, suscitant une émotion intense et ajoutant une conscience corporelle à son œuvre. Comme l’évoque C. S. Chinnery « Il y a une énergie violente dans de nombreuses peintures récentes de Zhang Wei, mais ce n’est pas l’élément central. C’est plutôt ce qui sert d’intermédiaire à l’énergie essentielle. Malgré tout le contraste impétueux des couleurs et de la texture, ce qui définit vraiment le travail de Zhang Wei, c’est un sentiment d’équilibre » *.

Sentiment également présent dans trois peintures aux formats plus modestes et aux tonalités plus douces. Composées de touches de bleu, de blanc et de rose, elles semblent dessiner des pétales flottant dans l’eau offrant un apaisement au regard et l’interrogeant sur un possible retour à la figuration. Enfin, deux huiles sur papier aquarelle aux tons vert d’eau sont également présentées. La peinture céladon est versée sur la surface du papier transformant ainsi la couleur en des formes diaphanes, évocatrices de la tentative de prendre une profonde inspiration - à la fois fragile et pénétrante, elles rappellent l’importance de la spiritualité du « Qi » dans le travail de l’artiste.

ZHANG WEI est né en 1952 à Beijing où il vit et travaille. A la fin des années 70, Zhang a travaillé pour le Northern Kun Opera à Beijing. De 1986 à 2005 il vit aux Etats-Unis. Son travail a été exposé dans des institutions internationales dont plus récemment à la M + Sigg Collection, Hong Kong (2016); Beijing Minsheng Art Museum, Beijing (2015); Deichtorhallen, Hamburg (2014); Asia Society, Hong Kong (2013); China Institute Gallery, New York (2011); Yuan Art Museum, Beijing (2010) and CaixaForum, Barcelone (2008). Son travail est présent dans les collections publiques de M + Museum of Visual Culture, Sigg Collection, Hong Kong et de l’Art Institute of Chicago.

*C. S. Chinnery, ‘A colourful dissonance: On the paintings of Zhang Wei’, in Zhang Wei, exh. cat., Berlin: Galerie Max Hetzler and Holzwarth Publications, 2017, p. 29

GALERIE MAX HETZLER

57 rue du Temple, 75004 Paris

www.maxhetzler.com

Celeste Dupuy-Spencer @ Galerie Max Hetzler, Berlin - But the Clouds Never Hung So Low Before

Celeste Dupuy-Spencer

But the Clouds Never Hung So Low Before

Galerie Max Hetzler, Berlin

Through 9 January 2021 

CELESTE DUPUY-SPENCER

There’ll Be Nobody Hiding

(When That Rough God Goes Riding), 2020

Photo: def image, Courtesy Galerie Max Hetzler

Galerie Max Hetzler presents the solo exhibition But the Clouds Never Hung So Low Before with recent paintings by CELESTE DUPUY-SPENCER at Goethestraße 2/3 in Berlin. This is the artist’s first solo exhibition outside of the USA, and with the gallery.

Celeste Dupuy-Spencer creates blistering paintings, loaded with a complex mix of iconography, drawn from the real and the imaginary. The artist grapples with urgent and fundamental issues through the symbolic and at times historical nature of its subjects. Both unflinching and empathic, Dupuy-Spencer gives life to arresting compositions that can be bleak and troubling, at times softer and endearing, in which the worldly and the extraordinary, the holy and the base, merge to present a multitude of possible meanings and narratives.

The paintings exhibited at Galerie Max Hetzler are filled with rich, hyper-narratives which do not cohere into one style, or iconographic concern. Pulling the viewer in different directions, the works form a fragmented, challenging panorama, speaking of humanity in all its duality and contradiction, as it relates to religion, politics, or nature. Moving between the literal and the existential — tensions vital in Celeste Dupuy-Spencer’s practice — the works provide an immediate and powerful emotional impact on the viewer, as they come together to explore a range of feelings, from love and hope, to fear, loss, and pain.

There is a strong religious theme running through the exhibition — a subject which has come to the fore of Celeste Dupuy-Spencer’s interrogation of contemporary experience, in recent years. Included are depictions of Christ and significant places tied to his figure and history such as the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem and the Messiah’s presumed tomb site nearby. As such, they seek to generate an open discussion around beliefs surrounding the divine, and how they constitute the foundations of our society.

Further works include apocalyptic scenes, such as a seascape in the aftermath of a devastating oil spill, with towering pillars of smoke and birds shown migrating away, and a monstruous volcanic eruption, with glowing lava spills engulfing an entire city. Linking to current affairs, these works hold a mirror up to the viewer, reflecting a society going up in flames. They are lucid and heart-breaking observations, which, devoid of excessive pathos or sentimentalism, reveal Celeste Dupuy-Spencer’s painting as an existential act, in a world slouching towards oblivion.

CELESTE DUPUY-SPENCER (*1979, New York City) lives and works in Los Angeles. Dupuy-Spencer was awarded the Yale Norfolk Painting Fellowship in 2006. The artist's work has been the subject of several exhibitions in renowned institutions like the Hammer Museum, Los Angeles (2018); Whitney Museum, New York (2017); Samek Art Museum, Bucknell University, Lewisburg (2016); Institut of Contemporary Art (ICA), Boston and Museum 52, New York (both 2011); Museo Tamayo Arte Contemporáneo, Mexico City and San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco (both 2010); MoMA PS1, New York and Bronx Museum (both 2008); as well as Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions (LACE), Los Angeles (2007). Works by Celeste Dupuy-Spencer are in the collections of the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; Los Angeles County Museum of Art; Hammer Museum, Los Angeles; and Whitney Museum of American Art, New York.

GALERIE MAX HETZLER

Goethestraße 2/3, 10623 Berlin-Charlottenburg

www.maxhetzler.com