Catherine Goodman @ Hauser & Wirth, NYC - 'Island' Exhibition

Catherine Goodman. Island 

Hauser & Wirth, New York

13 November – 20 December 2025 

Catherine Goodman

The ULAE Series, 2024

Monotype on Somerset paper

64.8 x 73.7 cm / 25 1/2 x 29 in

Photo: Sarah Muehlbauer

© Catherine Goodman

Courtesy the artist and Hauser & Wirth

Catherine Goodman at the ULAE Studio, November 2024

Photo: Jin Young Kim

© Catherine Goodman

Courtesy the artist and Hauser & Wirth

Hauser & Wirth presents its first exhibition dedicated to the prints of noted British artist Catherine Goodman. This body of monotypes named ‘The ULAE Series’ emerged from Goodman’s 2024 residency at Universal Limited Art Editions (ULAE) on Long Island, marking both her first major exploration of printmaking and an expansion of her aesthetic vocabulary. ‘Much of the new language that was evolving in the prints followed me home to the studio in London and was translated into paint,’ she wrote in reflection of the experience—a cross-pollination made visible in a new painting developed from this period, also on view in this exhibition.

Catherine Goodman joins a distinguished lineage of modern and contemporary artists who have expanded their practices through printmaking at ULAE. Among them, Grace Hartigan and Helen Frankenthaler stand out in particular as kindred spirits—artists who, like Goodman, were devoted passionately to daily drawing and guided by instinct. At ULAE, Catherine Goodman immersed herself in the unpredictable process of painting on and printing from copper plates. Working intuitively, she built up highly expressive, densely layered compositions, often laying down a black or grey calligraphic mark as starting point. Catherine Goodman sometimes carried works in progress home in the evening to adjust with an oil stick, forging an unorthodox dialogue between mediums. 

‘Almost everyone I knew in the world was asleep because of the time difference to London, so I spent the evenings alone, drawing into the prints that hadn’t worked out for me that day. It was an extraordinarily intense time navigating my inner landscape, having an opportunity to review my life back home. It seems a time of innocence now.’ — Catherine Goodman

Catherine Goodman

The ULAE Series, 2024

Monotype on En Tout Cas paper

64.8 x 73.7 cm / 25 1/2 x 29 in

Photo: Sarah Muehlbauer

© Catherine Goodman

Courtesy the artist and Hauser & Wirth

Catherine Goodman

The ULAE Series, 2024

Monotype on En Tout Cas paper

81.3 x 91.4 cm / 32 x 36 in

Photo: Thomas Barratt

© Catherine Goodman

Courtesy the artist and Hauser & Wirth

Catherine Goodman has long centered her practice on portraiture. Religious icons from her childhood left an early mark, and she often mentions seeing portraits even within her abstractions. This oscillation between figuration and abstraction—a constant in ‘The ULAE Series’—relies in part on the artist’s longstanding daily drawing practice, which she cites as the initial means of harnessing her sources of inspiration, which range from natural phenomena to film. One work on view in the exhibition depicts the titular boy from Andrei Tarkovsky’s movie ‘Ivan’s Childhood,’ gazing through a telescope, a dramatic yet intimate image. 

Each work, Catherine Goodman writes, whether figurative or abstract, is ‘layered with those memories of my time there, the light, urgency and sense of isolation—being cut off from the mainland of our lives while exploring the inner landscape.’ 

Artist Catherine Goodman

Born in London in 1961, Catherine Goodman CBE lives and works in London. Goodman studied at Camberwell School of Arts & Crafts, London, and the Royal Academy Schools, London, where she won the Royal Academy Gold Medal in 1987. Goodman’s lifelong commitment to social justice through education forms a critical aspect of her artistic identity and approach to making. In 2000, Goodman established The Royal Drawing School with HM King Charles III to deliver subsidized and free education to thousands of young and disadvantaged people in the UK. Today, she continues in her role as Founding Artistic Director and Academic Board Member. For many years, Catherine Goodman organized drawing classes for individuals dealing with homelessness and disabilities, and she continues to offer refuge classes to young people with mental health issues on a weekly basis. She is also the primary caregiver of her sister, Sophie, who was born with multiple health conditions and has always been a subject of Goodman’s practice. In 2014, Goodman was awarded Lieutenant of the Royal Victorian Order (LVO) for services to The Royal Drawing School, and Commander of the Order of British Empire (CBE) in 2024 for her services to art in the UK. Goodman has served as the Artist Trustee at The National Gallery, London since 2019. Her paintings are held in significant private and public collections including the National Portrait Gallery, the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge, The Rothschild Foundation, and the Royal Collection Trust.

HAUSER & WIRTH

443 West 18th Street, New York City

www.hauserwirth.com

Jeffrey Gibson @ Hauser & Wirth Paris - Exposition 'This is dedicated to the one I love'

Jeffrey Gibson 

This is dedicated to the one I love

Hauser & Wirth Paris

20 octobre – 20 décembre 2025

Jeffrey Gibson in the studio, 2025

© Jeffrey Gibson

Courtesy the artist and Hauser & Wirth

Photo: Emiliano Granado

La première exposition personnelle de l'artiste américain Jeffrey Gibson en France est actuellement présentée par la galerie Hauser & Wirth à Paris. Célébrant l’ampleur de la création de l’artiste, elle réunit trois nouveaux ensembles de peintures, du grand au petit format, ainsi que de nouvelles oeuvres issues de sa célèbre série de sacs de frappe, des parures suspendues, des peintures sur papier, toile et panneau perlé, et un groupe inédit de sculptures en céramique autoportantes en forme de têtes. Le titre de l’exposition, « This is dedicated to the one I love », convie à un appel d’empathie et de méditation sur nos façons d’agir et de créer en temps de crise. 

Depuis plus de trois décennies, Jeffrey Gibson développe une pratique interdisciplinaire nourrie par l’histoire américaine, autochtone et queer, tout en convoquant la musique populaire, la littérature et les récits de l’histoire de l’art. Son langage visuel distinctif embrasse un vaste panorama d’expressions culturelles et d’identités, assemblées de manière à la fois intime et résolument luxuriante. Les oeuvres exposées témoignent de sa sensibilité chromatique audacieuse et de son goût pour les motifs et l’abstraction, tout en s’inspirant de l’histoire des théories de la couleur et du concept de « psycho-prismatique », selon lequel la couleur, la lumière et les prismes ouvrent simultanément une multiplicité de perceptions. 

Jeffrey Gibson est le sixième artiste choisi pour la Genesis Facade Commission 2025 du Metropolitan Museum of Art de New York, pour laquelle il a réalisé quatre oeuvres exposées à l’extérieur historique du musée jusqu'au 9 juin 2026. Parmi ses projets en cours figurent une installation immersive au MASS MoCA (North Adams, Massachusetts), jusqu’en août 2026, ainsi qu’une installation au Kunsthaus Zürich (Suisse), jusqu’en décembre 2026, marquant sa première présentation dans un musée européen après son exposition personnelle au pavillon des États-Unis lors de la 60e Biennale di Venezia en Italie. 

La genèse des nouvelles oeuvres dans cette exposition réside dans une série de petites peintures évoquant des bijoux, inspirées par les recherches de Jeffrey Gibson sur les projections astrales et le psycho-prismatisme. Ces créations s’inscrivent dans l’histoire des études chromatiques du XVIIe siècle à nos jours, avec un intérêt particulier pour celles du XIXe siècle. Leurs compositions formelles combinent des diagrammes colorés et des références à l’abstraction autochtone et moderne. L’exploration du psycho-prismatisme par Jeffrey Gibson prend forme dans une série de grandes peintures « horizontales », dans lesquelles des motifs circulaires superposés produisent des assemblages polychromes oscillant entre paysages et étendues temporelles. A ces oeuvres s’ajoutent une sélection de toiles à cadre perlé plus grandes encore, aux couleurs extatiques. Malgré leur format imposant, les couches plurielles de pigments demeurent indéchiffrables : de subtils dégradés de teintes adoucissent les contrastes graphiques et laissent simultanément transparaître toutes les strates de la composition. 

Formé à la peinture, Jeffrey Gibson s’intéresse au processus et à la matérialité. Il puise des techniques sophistiquées et esthétiques culturelles dans diverses traditions artisanales : perlage, travail du cuir, matelassage, qu’il applique à des objets quotidiens et vernaculaires, créant ainsi des formes hybrides, ludiques et évocatrices qui échappent à toute catégorisation convenue. Cette approche se manifeste notamment dans les parures murales ornées de perles et de franges et les sacs de frappe présentés aux côtés des peintures. 

Référence aux tenues traditionnelles d’apparat autochtones, ces parures deviennent des outils conceptuels pour réfléchir au pouvoir transformateur de ce qui nous habille : comment le vêtement active le corps et inversement. Jeffrey Gibson les envisage comme des sculptures figuratives. Le rez-de-chaussée à double hauteur de la galerie presente des sacs de frappe ornés de perles et inscrits de phrases telles que « NEVER LET YOUR SPIRIT BEND » (« ne laisse jamais ton esprit faiblir ») ou « I WANT TO TAKE YOU HIGHER » (« je veux t’élever »). Comme les parures, ces sacs illustrent le détournement d’objets fonctionnels en ready-mades assistés. L’usage du langage reste au coeur de son travail, nourri par la culture populaire, l’expression de soi et une réflexion sur l’histoire humaine. Pour la première fois, Jeffrey Gibson présente également de nouvelles sculptures autonomes en céramique en forme de têtes, inspirées par son intérêt pour les têtes de poterie mississippiennes, une tradition précolombienne autochtone nord-américaine. 

HAUSER & WIRTH PARIS

26 bis rue François 1er, 75008 Paris

www.hauserwirth.com

Louise Bourgeois @ Hauser & Wirth NYC - 'Gathering Wool' Exhibition

Louise Bourgeois. Gathering Wool 

Hauser & Wirth New York 

6 November 2025 – 24 January 2026 

Over the course of her seven-decade career, Louise Bourgeois never privileged figuration over abstraction, any more than she favored one material over another, and yet her relationship to abstraction has been less well defined and understood, less easily situated within the main currents of postwar art.

Gathering Wool, explores the artist's complex relationship to abstraction through a series of late sculptures, reliefs and works on paper, many of which have never been exhibited before. These are installed alongside a selection of earlier works to illuminate the consistency of Bourgeois’s themes and her development of a symbolic abstract language. 

The exhibition takes its title from an enigmatic work Louise Bourgeois created in 1990. Gathering wool is an expression signifying rumination, daydreaming, letting the mind wander—a break from conscious, purposive thinking. This was the mental state in which Bourgeois worked as she experimented with forms and processes in her studio. She trusted the process by which these thought traces, fragments of dreams, idle speculations, hunches, fancies and intuitions coalesced into a form, but it remained mysterious even to her. The piece itself consists of seven wooden spheres arranged in a circle in front of a tall semicircular screen made up of four panels. ‘Gathering Wool’ (1990) is a precursor of her celebrated Cells in that it is both a sculpture and an environmental installation.

The exhibition begins on the first floor with the large installation ‘Twosome,’ (1991) in which a small tank on a track moves endlessly in and out of a larger tank. For Louise Bourgeois, this mechanism represented the mother-child relationship. The same gallery also features a video clip from her 1978 performance ‘A Fashion Show of Body Parts,’ in which the actress Suzan Cooper belts out the song, ‘She Abandoned Me,’ which addresses the fear of separation from the mother. This juxtaposition of works manifests how the same psychologically charged emotions which gave rise to Bourgeois’s more figurative works also underpin the formal devices in her more abstract works.

An iconography of things protruding out of other things prevails in many works on the ground floor. In ‘Untitled (With Hand)’ (1989) a child-like arm protrudes from a large sphere, in ‘Mamelles’ (1991) water spills from a long frieze of bronze breasts, in ‘Gathering Wool’ (1990) mushrooms grow out of the cracks and crevasses of the wooden spheres, and in ‘Le Défi II’ (1992) light emanates from glass elements meticulously arranged on the shelves of a metal cabinet. These works probe the boundary and the slippage between container and contained, past and present, the conscious realm with its rationality and order and the timelessness of the unconscious.

On the fifth floor, the works are predominantly abstract, consisting of vertical progressions and stacked forms. For Louise Bourgeois, stacking was an ordering action that attempted to impose regularity and predictability on the chaos of her emotions. Each formal device she deployed corresponded to an emotional or psychological state or impulse. Thus, the repetition and stacking of like elements signify obsession and compulsion. The precarious balance of top-heavy forms indicates fragility and instability. Interlocking forms are safeguards against the fear of abandonment that dogged Bourgeois throughout her life. Triangular forms are expressions of jealousy. The pathological roots of Bourgeois’s art generated a vocabulary of eccentric abstract forms. As the artist once wrote, ‘I am the author of my own world with its internal logic and with its value that no one can deny.’

Born in France in 1911, and working in America from 1938 until her death in 2010, Louise Bourgeois is recognized as one of the most important and influential artists of our time. For over seven decades, Bourgeois’s creative process was fueled by an introspective reality, often rooted in cathartic re-visitations of early childhood trauma and frank examinations of female sexuality. Articulated by recurrent motifs (including body parts, houses and spiders), personal symbolism and psychological release, the conceptual and stylistic complexity of Bourgeois’s oeuvre—employing a variety of genres, media and materials—plays upon the powers of association, memory, fantasy, and fear.

HAUSER & WIRTH 

542 West 22nd Street New York 10011

www.hauserwirth.com

Mary Heilmann @ Hauser & Wirth Zurich - Works on Paper

Mary Heilmann. Works on Paper 

Hauser & Wirth Zurich

26 September – 20 December 2025

Mary Heilmann

Tea Garden, 1984

Watercolor on paper, 76.2 x 55.9 cm / 30 x 22 in

Photo: Thomas Müller

© Mary Heilmann

Courtesy the artist, Hauser & Wirth and 303 Gallery, New York

Mary Heilmann

Untitled Watercolor Study, ca. 1986-1988

Watercolor and pencil on paper, 12.7 x 17.5 cm / 5 x 6 7/8 in

Photo: Thomas Müller

© Mary Heilmann

Courtesy the artist, Hauser & Wirth and 303 Gallery, New York

Mary Heilmann returns to Hauser & Wirth’s Zurich gallery on Limmatstrasse with an exhibition of more than 30 drawings made between 1975 and 2005. Expanding on the artist’s exhibition of works on paper, ‘Daydream Nation’, at Hauser & Wirth New York last year, this presentation continues the recent in-depth exploration into Heilmann’s long-standing drawing practice and coincides with the release of a new publication from Hauser & Wirth Publishers, ‘Mary Heilmann. Works on Paper: 1973 – 2019’. 

Raised in San Francisco and Los Angeles, Mary Heilmann (b. 1940) completed a degree in literature, before receiving her M.A. in ceramics and sculpture at the University of California, Berkeley. Only after moving to New York in 1968 did she begin to paint and in the early 1970s establish a drawing practice that continues to this day.  

Ranging from watercolor studies to paintings on paper in their own right, ‘Mary Heilmann. Works on Paper’ brings together a selection of rarely and never-before-seen drawings that fluctuate in scale and materiality. The exhibition is a celebration of Heilmann’s talent for translating complex images and ideas into deceptively simple geometric forms and abstract gestural marks.  

Mary Heilmann

Untitled Watercolor Study, ca. 1983-86

Watercolor and graphite on paper, 17.8 x 12.7 cm / 7 x 5 in

Photo: Genevieve Hanson

© Mary Heilmann

Courtesy the artist, Hauser & Wirth and 303 Gallery, New York

Mary Heilmann

Untitled Watercolor Study, ca. 1987-1989

Watercolor and pencil on paper, 27.9 x 21.6 cm / 11 x 8 1/2 in

Photo: Genevieve Hanson

© Mary Heilmann

Courtesy the artist, Hauser & Wirth and 303 Gallery, New York

Many of Heilmann’s most well-known and admired series – Fans, Chairs, Serapes, Grids – are represented in the installation as are drawings that have related works in important European museum collections. 'Untitled Watercolor Study' (ca. 1983 – 1986) is one of two drawings in the exhibition that are part of a series of works by Heilmann in tribute to the Dutch painter Piet Mondrian that includes ‘M.’ (1985), a painting in the collection of the Museum Kunstpalast. ‘Islands’, (1988), one of the larger watercolors on view, was made after ‘Laurens’ (1986), an oil on canvas in the collection of the De Pont Museum. 

The works on view not only demonstrate Heilmann’s work serially but also her tendency to revisit and reimagine certain arrangements of form and color. Made 15 years apart, ‘Broken Study’ (2005) is a recompilation of an early red, black and white composition, ‘Untitled Watercolor Study’ (ca. 1989) and Heilmann’s web imagery seen in ‘Blue Net’ (1991).  

As an artist known for working across mediums and for installations that playfully combine disparate works, the exhibition also includes a selection of ceramic ‘Spots’ and sculptural chairs.  

Mary Heilmann: Works on Paper, 1973–2019

Text by Alexis Lowry, Jo Applin, Ilana Savdie

Hauser & Wirth Publishers

English Paperback, 26 x 20 cm; 152pp

16 September (UK, ROW & US)

An in-depth study of Mary Heilmann’s mesmerizing works on paper that explores drawing as a form of daydreaming and memory-making for the influential abstract painter. 

Mary Heilmann’s works on paper are suffused with the same sensibility as her influential abstract paintings, a casual playfulness animating a rigorous attention to form and colour, resulting in joyful, evocative geometries. Their suggestive power reflects Heilmann’s process of what she calls ‘daydreaming’: a conjuring of the sights, sounds, and events of past and future travels, the cyclical nature of memory informing her return to various motifs across nearly five decades of work. Edited and with an introduction by curator Alexis Lowry, ‘Mary Heilmann: Works on Paper, 1973 – 2019’ includes an essay by art historian Jo Applin and a personal reflection by painter Ilana Savdie, all together offering a compelling account of this previously underexamined aspect of Heilmann’s practice. 

Artist Mary Heilman

Considered one of the preeminent contemporary Abstract painters, Mary Heilmann is best known for incorporating a fusion of personal and cultural influences and craft traditions into an artistic practice including paintings, ceramics, and furniture. 

Mary Heilmann is the subject of two major institutional exhibitions, ‘Mary Heilmann. Starry Night’ at Dia Beacon in Beacon NY and ‘Mary Heilmann. Water Way’ at Guild Hall in East Hampton, NY both close in October 2025. On view at the Whitney Museum of American Art until January 2026 is ‘Mary Heilmann: Long Line,’ a site-specific installation that celebrates the 10th anniversary of the opening of the Whitney Museum’s downtown building.  

Her work is included in many prominent international collections, such as those of the Museum of Modern Art, New York; Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; and Museum Ludwig, Cologne, Germany.

HAUSER & WIRTH ZURICH

Limmatstrasse 270, 8005 Zürich

www.hauserwirth.com

Koak, Ding Shilun, Cece Philips @ Hauser & Wirth London - "Interior Motives" Exhibition

Interior Motives

Koak, Ding Shilun, Cece Philips

Hauser & Wirth London

22 August – 20 September 2025

Enter interior worlds imagined by contemporary painters Koak, Ding Shilun and Cece Philips at Hauser & Wirth London. The exhibition explores how these artists engage with the interior both as a physical space and a psychological construct. Through distinct painterly vocabularies, each artist interrogates the architectural and domestic environments we inhabit, revealing how these frameworks shape our sense of self, memory and belonging. ‘Interior Motives’ is part of an ongoing initiative at Hauser & Wirth that champions emerging and mid-career artists beyond the gallery’s roster. Produced in collaboration with Union Pacific and Bernheim Gallery, this exhibition reflects a shared commitment to a sustainable arts ecosystem.

Depicting figures in dreamlike domestic interiors, Koak’s painting practice questions the societal expectations and roles of women within the home as well as the traditional portrayal of women by male artists. With a graphic aesthetic that borrows from Japanese and European animations, Koak uses familiar iconography of the home—windows, soft furnishings, flowerpots and vases—to build alternate interiors in which her figures are liberated and given agency. Her contemporary take on art historical depictions of domestic scenes is achieved through a vibrant color palette that blurs the distinction between the imagined and real, between inner and outer worlds, her female gaze highlighting both the emotional and physical experience of her figures.

Inhabiting imaginary worlds, the characters in Ding Shilun’s paintings are often an embodiment of the artist himself, the emotions he feels and the thoughts inside his mind. His worldbuilding relies on everyday objects found in domestic spaces to enable viewers to identify with the characters depicted and emotions evoked. With a style inspired by Japanese manga and traditional Chinese painting, the artist’s interiors include fantastical and mythological elements that question viewer’s perception of reality. Influenced by both global historical events, current affairs and his own experiences, Ding Shilun’s manifestation of his interior realm doubles up as a visual representation of the absurdity of daily life.

The architectural tropes characteristic of household settings, from windows and doorways to hallways and walls, act as visual framing devices in Cece Philips’ paintings. Radiant light is a hallmark of her practice, drawing viewers into the work and leading them through the interiors, yet they are never part of the scene, observing like a flaneur. Like paintings of everyday, domestic life from the Dutch Golden Age and by Félix Vallotton, a narrative is implied—one in which Cece Philips leaves the viewer to fill in the details, encouraged by their imagination and own inner worlds. The use of color adds a layer to the narrative by suggesting a psychological reading, reflecting the figures’ mood and internal realities, as well as that of the viewer. This exploration of interiority is at once about the subject and the viewer, observation and introspection.

ARTIST KOAK

Koak

Courtesy the artist and Union Pacific

Koak (b. 1981 in the US) is known for work that portrays the complex duality of identity and human nature through a mastery of the line which extends across drawing, painting and sculpture. Rendered with exquisite technique, her emotionally charged figures and landscapes are imbued with a profound agency and inner life. Her work challenges historical portrayals of femininity, depicting figures that shift between boldness and vulnerability, resisting fixed definition and embracing emotional depth. Regardless of subject, each piece is approached with the intimacy of portraiture, suggesting a metamorphic state—a dream of becoming something beyond the self: a body becoming a lake, a flower or a landscape. In this way, painting becomes an act of defiance—a feminist gesture that resists enclosure, imagining identity as something fluid.

Recent solo exhibitions include: ‘The Window Set,’ Charleston in Lewes, UK (2025); ‘Lake Marghrete,’ Perrotin, Paris, France (2024); ‘Letter to Myself (when the world is on fire),’ Altman Siegel, San Francisco CA (2023); ‘The Driver,’ Perrotin, Hong Kong (2022); ‘Return to Feeling,’ Altman Siegel, San Francisco CA (2020); and ‘Holding Breath,’ Union Pacific, London, UK (2019). Selected group exhibitions include: ‘Infinite Regresse: Mystical Abstraction from the Permanent Collection and Beyond,’ Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art, Kansas City MO (2024); ‘I’ve got a feeling,’ Musées d’Angers, Angers, France (2023); ‘I’m Stepping High, I’m Drifting, and There I Go Leaping,’ XIAO Museum, Rizhao, China (2022); ‘Familiars,’ Et. Al Gallery, San Francisco CA (2022); and ‘New Time: Art and Feminisms in the 21st Century,’ Berkeley Art Museum, Berkeley CA (2021), amongst others.

ARTIST DING SHILUN

Ding Shilun

Courtesy the artist and Bernheim Gallery 

Photo: Will Grundy

Ding Shilun (b. 1998 in Guangzhou, China; lives and works between London and Guangzhou) harnesses his heritage, current events and a global history of art to create large and detailed pictorial works depicting the absurdity of daily life. His unique concurrence of the mythological, the historical and the everyday allow the emergence of an imaginary world with a representation of himself within our seemingly homogenous society. Rooted in pictorial references such as Gustav Klimt or Kai Althoff intertwined with interpretations of Chinese literature—namely a collection of Chinese legends, translated as ‘In Search of the Supernatural,’ written between 220 – 589 AD—Shilun’s characters inhabit imaginary worlds that serve as allegories for human experience and emotion. The precision of the details is used to contrast the different textures found in the paintings, sometimes resembling watercolor, as well as playing on a combination of co-existing perspectives, which question the distinction between real and surreal.

His recent solo shows include ‘Janus’ at ICA Miami, Miami FL (2024); ‘Invites: Ding Shilun,’ Zabludowicz Collection, London, UK (2023); ‘Paradiso,’ Bernheim, Zurich, Switzerland (2022); and ‘Mirage,’ Bernheim, London, UK (2024). Shilun’s work is included in the permanent collections of The Institute of Contemporary Art, Miami FL; The Nancy A. Nasher and David J. Haemisegger Collection of Contemporary Art, Dallas TX; High Museum of Art, Atlanta GA; Rose Art Museum, Waltham MA; Guangdong Museum, Guangzhou, China; Albertina Museum, Vienna, Austria; Museu Inima De Paula, Below Horizonte, Brazil; Asymmetry Art Foundation, London, UK; and Dallas Museum of Art, Dallas TX, among others.

ARTIST CECE PHILIPS

Cece Philips

Courtesy the artist

Photo: Rory Langdon-Down

Cece Philips (b. 1996 in London, UK) is a London-based painter whose luminous compositions explore ideas of spectatorship and voyeurism. Embodying the role and spirit of the flaneur, or flâneuse, her works draw on a multitude of sources, from the archive, film stills, found imagery and memory she weaves together historical and contemporary influences to interrogate ideas of interiority, desire and loneliness. Framing is a recurring device in Philips’ paintings, though windows and doorways, barriers and veils are constructed to challenge an easy reading of her female protagonists. Palette, attention to light and space all lend psychological and narrative depth—details that lead us through and beyond the work and activate the viewer’s own imagination.

Cece Philips held her debut solo exhibition ‘I See in Colour’ at HOME in London, UK, in April 2021. Subsequent solo shows include ‘Between the Dog and the Wolf’ at ADA Contemporary, Accra, Ghana (2022); ‘The Night Has a Thousand Eyes,’ Peres Projects, Berlin, Germany (2022); ‘Walking the In-Between,’ Peres Projects, Seoul, South Korea (2023); and ‘Conversations Between Two,’ Peres Projects, Milan, Italy (2024). Recent group exhibitions include ‘The Painted Room,’ curated by Caroline Walker at GRIMM, Amsterdam, The Netherlands (2023); ‘Digestif,’ a two-person show with Hettie Inniss at Palazzo Monti, Brescia, Italy (2024); and ‘The Shed’ at Berntson and Bhattacharjee, London, UK (2025). Her most recent solo presentation, ‘The Wall: Cece Philips,’ was held at Almine Rech, Brussels, Belgium (2025). Cece Philips completed her MA in Painting at the Royal College of Art in 2023 and was awarded the Fribourg Philanthropies Prize the same year.

HAUSER & WIRTH LONDON

23 Savile Row, London W1S 2ET

www.hauserwirth.com

Niki de Saint Phalle & Jean Tinguely: Myths & Machines @ Hauser & Wirth Somerset

Niki de Saint Phalle & Jean Tinguely

Myths & Machines

Hauser & Wirth Somerset

17 May 2025 – 1 February 2026

Niki de Saint Phalle and Jean Tinguely 

in front of their home and studio ‘Auberge du Cheval Blanc,’ 

Essonne region, 3 March 1967

Harry Shunk and Shunk-Kender Photographs

Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles (2014.R.20) 

Gift of the Roy Lichtenstein Foundation in Memory 

of Harry Shunk and Janos Kender 

@ J. Paul Getty Trust

Courtesy Niki Charitable Art Foundation and Hauser & Wirth 

Niki de Saint Phalle and Jean Tinguely

Nana dansant (Nana mobile), 1976

Painted polyester, iron stand with electric motor

by Jean Tinguely

43.5 x 20 x 14 cm / 17 1/8 x 7 7/8 x 5 1/2 in

© 2025 NIKI CHARITABLE ART FOUNDATION

All rights reserved

Courtesy Niki Charitable Art Foundation and Hauser & Wirth 

Niki de Saint Phalle and Jean Tinguely

La Grande Tête, 1988

Painted polyester, electrical system

225 x 225 x 140 cm / 88 5/8 x 88 5/8 x 55 1/8 in

Photo: Laurent Condominas

© 2025 NIKI CHARITABLE ART FOUNDATION

All rights reserved

Courtesy Niki Charitable Art Foundation and Hauser & Wirth 

‘We couldn’t sit down together without creating something new, conjuring up dreams.’—Niki de Saint Phalle, ‘A little of my story with you Jean’ (1996)

Niki de Saint Phalle (1930 – 2002) and Jean Tinguely (1925 – 1991) are reunited in a major site-wide takeover at Hauser & Wirth Somerset in collaboration with the Niki Charitable Art Foundation. The first exhibition dedicated to both artists in the UK illustrates Saint Phalle and Tinguely’s visionary artistic output and enduring creative collaboration over three decades. Two emblematic figures of contemporary art, Niki de Saint Phalle and Jean Tinguely defied conventional artmaking and were fuelled with rebellion, in both life and art. The exhibition features unseen works on paper and art décor by Niki de Saint Phalle, alongside her Shooting Paintings and monumental open-air sculptures. Iconic kinetic machines by Jean Tinguely range from the 1950s to the final year of his life, in addition to multifaceted collaborative works made by the duo throughout the 1980s. 

The Bourgeois Gallery introduces the artists’ distinct visual language, production methods and social commentary that developed in parallel, and through collaboration, over the course of their careers. The Tinguely works within this space are exemplary of his sculptural practice as research, exploring art based on movement, chance, relative speed and sound. His ‘anti-machines’ feel more relevant now than ever before, constructed from scrap metal and an assemblage of found materials, designed to highlight the flaws of modern technology and society’s displacement of humanity. Overlooking these works stands Saint Phalle’s ‘Big Lady (black)’ (1968/1995). By 1965, Saint Phalle began to introduce polyester to create more voluptuous dancing figures that could be displayed in public parks and other outdoor locations, as seen in ‘Les Trois Graces’ (1995 – 2003) that is presented in the farmyard in Somerset. 

The Rhoades Gallery features Saint Phalle’s first functional sculptures, made for the film ‘Un Reve plus long que la nuit’ (1976). The film was written, directed and acted by Saint Phalle, alongside Tinguely and her daughter Laura Duke. Art and life were interchangeable in Saint Phalle’s universe and the decorative elements for the film, such as thrones, tables and mirrors, instigated a sustained interest in making art to be lived with, which resulted in larger-scale immersive projects. It was Saint Phalle’s passion for fantasy and mythology that contributed to Tinguely’s monumental sculptural work, ‘Le Cyclop’ (1969 – 1994), in the forest of Milly-la-Forêt, France, a project of boundless action between artists and a dream of utopia. A mutual source of inspiration can be seen in ‘Le Grande Tête’ (1988), a union of Tinguely’s robust mechanical base with Saint Phalle’s mysterious abstract face as a silent observer, a motif she began developing from the 1970s, in response to multiple realities and dream states that can exist simultaneously. Skating amongst the gold furniture is ‘Patineuse’ (c. 1967), from her most famous and recognizable series, the Nanas. Saint Phalle’s army of brightly colored Nanas interrogate the various roles of women, often liberated from tradition and radiating energy and vitality.

The Pigsty Gallery pays homage to Saint Phalle’s Shooting Paintings, which began in 1961 against a backdrop of political violence and unrest in France. Saint Phalle fired a rifle at canvases or low reliefs resembling altars or effigies, often exploding bags of hidden paint across the work’s surface. The process of creation was a paradoxical destructive act, utilizing sensations of violence and demolition to promote a sense of renewal and catharsis for the artist and the viewer. The performative action was both inward-looking, demonstrating Saint Phalle’s regaining of control and strength over a strict Catholic upbringing and abusive father but, at the same time, responding to the period in which they were made, and bursting with rage at institutional forces and masculinist values. Tinguely was a primary supporter of these works and his own auto-exploding sculptures and incendiarism in art shared this adventurous spirit and eagerness to challenge artistic norms. 

The Workshop Gallery presents an intimate collection of drawings and works on paper by Saint Phalle, many of which reflect on her relationship with Tinguely and the creative stability and trust they provided for one another. The repetition of birds, snakes, dragons and mythical creatures appear frequently in Saint Phalle’s writings and sculptural work, drawing from the symbolic language of African, preColumbian and eastern cultures. Birds are often believed to be messengers from one world to the next, representing complete freedom and immortal reinvention. In addition to independent works by Tinguely, including ‘Radio Sculpture’ (1961), ‘IBM’ (1960) and Rocker III (1963), stands a final collaborative work, ‘Pallas Athéna (le chariot)’ (1989) that relates to the seventh card in the Tarot which appears in Saint Phalle’s Tarot Garden in Garavicchio, Italy. 

Saint Phalle’s extraordinary combination of architecture, the enchantment of nature, and the spiritual world is integral throughout her practice, most notably in her ambitious vision for the Tarot Garden. This is prominent across the open-air presentation in Somerset, including ‘The Prophet’ (1990), ‘Tête de mort I’ (1988), ‘Le Poète et sa Muse (1999) and ‘Les Trois Graces’ (1995 – 2003), alongside Tinguely’s ‘Fountain III’ (1963), a large motor-driven fountain on display in the Rhoades Gallery lobby that is activated throughout the summer. 

Jean Tinguely and Niki de Saint Phalle

back from the Cyclop, La Commanderie,

Dannemois, France, 1973

Photo: Laurent Condominas

© Laurent Condominas

Courtesy Niki Charitable Art Foundation and Hauser & Wirth 

Niki de Saint Phalle and Jean Tinguely met and started working together in Paris, France in the late 1950s and were married in 1971. The pair forged an extraordinary personal and artistic relationship that continued to renew itself across multiple projects until Tinguely’s death in 1991, when Saint Phalle took over stewardship of his works until she died a decade later. The artists’ legacy and work are continued through the work of Niki Charitable Art Foundation and Museum Tinguely in Basel, Switzerland. The basis for the collection at the Museum Tinguely was provided by Niki de Saint Phalle’s donation of 52 sculptures from the Estate of Jean Tinguely, alongside many letters, graphics and archives. 

HAUSER & WIRTH SOMERSET

Durslade Farm, Dropping Lane

Bruton, Somerset BA10 0NL

www.hauserwirth.com

Ed Clark: Paint is the Subject @ Hauser & Wirth Zurich - Exhibition Curated by Tanya Barson

Ed Clark: Paint is the Subject

Hauser & Wirth Zurich

13 June – 13 September 2025

Ed Clark in his studio, early 2000s

© The Estate of Ed Clark

Courtesy the Estate and Hauser & Wirth

Ed Clark in Paris, 1954

© The Estate of Ed Clark

Courtesy the Estate and Hauser & Wirth

Ed Clark

Untitled, ca. 1968

Acrylic on shaped canvas

294 x 408.3 x 4.1 cm / 115 3/4 x 160 3/4 x 1 5/8 in

Photo: Fredrik Nilsen

© The Estate of Ed Clark

Courtesy the Estate and Hauser & Wirth

Ed Clark

Untitled, 2002

Acrylic on canvas

170.2 x 239.1 cm / 67 x 94 1/8 in

Photo: Sarah Muehlbauer

© The Estate of Ed Clark

Courtesy the Estate and Hauser & Wirth

Hauser & Wirth Zurich, Limmatstrasse presents ‘Ed Clark. Paint is the Subject,’ the first solo exhibition in Switzerland dedicated to this pioneering American abstractionist. Curated by Tanya Barson in close collaboration with the artist’s estate, the exhibition brings together key works spanning seven decades, offering a comprehensive overview of Clark’s groundbreaking practice. The exhibition features a broad selection of his dynamic large-scale paintings and works on paper, as well as early works and an example of his use of the shaped canvas. The presentation is complemented by archival photographs and documents that provide biographical and historical context, tracing the evolution of his innovative approach and lasting impact on modern painting

Ed Clark remained under-acknowledged for much of his career, but he received late recognition in his lifetime, a recognition that continues to grow. A member of the New York School, Ed Clark contributed towards redefining abstraction in the 1950s with two characteristic features—the deployment of the shaped canvas, and his unconventional use of a household broom to create sweeping, gestural compositions—the show’s title coming from a quote by the artist indicating the centrality of his medium to his work. Stylistically, his work bridges the physicality and spontaneity of Abstract Expressionism with the structured clarity of hard-edged abstraction, cementing his significance in postwar painting.

Born in New Orleans in 1926 and educated in Chicago and Paris, he travelled widely throughout his career, each location, its light and palette, impacting his work. Ed Clark maintained close ties to Europe, living between New York and Paris from the 1960s onward. His aesthetic was shaped by the influence of European artists such as Nicolas de Staël and Pierre Soulages, while his artistic and intellectual circles included Joan Mitchell, Barbara Chase-Riboud, Beauford Delaney, Jack Whitten and James Baldwin, among others.

Ed Clark’s early work was figurative, exemplified in the Zurich exhibition by ‘Standing Woman at the Chair’ (1949–50), before shifting toward abstraction in the early 1950s. During his time in Paris, he explored abstract form. His painting ‘Untitled’ (1954) encapsulates this early period. Immersed in the French contemporary art scene, Ed Clark came to believe that the true essence of painting lies not in realistic representation, but in the expressive application of paint, explored for its own sake: ‘I began to believe […] that the real truth is in the stroke. For me, it is large, bold strokes that do not refer distinctly to seen nature. The paint is the subject. The motions of the strokes give the work life. This began to enter into my paintings in a very personal way.’

Back in New York, Ed Clark continued to innovate. In 1956, he began exploring shaped canvases and supports, which can be considered one of the earliest investigations within American abstract modernism, predating the shaped works of Frank Stella, Ellsworth Kelly, Al Loving and Sam Gilliam. He later experimented with oval canvases, first conceived during a stay at Joan Mitchell’s house in Vétheuil, France, in 1968. Works on view in Zurich such as ‘Untitled’ (1970) and ‘Silver Stripes’ (1972) reflect this development, the ellipse motif and the oval support in his work aimed at expanding the field of vision, enhancing the immersive qualities of the canvas.

Ed Clark

Untitled (Acrylic #1 from the series Louisiana), 1978

Acrylic on canvas

168.9 x 233.7 x 1.9 cm / 66 1/2 x 92 x 3/4 in

Photo: Matt Grubb

© The Estate of Ed Clark

Courtesy the Estate and Hauser & Wirth

Clark’s use of the broom began in Paris and evolved significantly in New York. By the mid-1960s, he was laying his canvases on the floor and using large brooms to deliver sweeping horizontal strokes that captured speed and motion. His gestural language and ever greater emphasis on the brushstroke became central to his practice. A key highlight of the show is ‘Untitled (Acrylic #1 from the series Louisiana)’ (1978), where Ed Clark uses acrylics to capture the palette of the landscape of the Southern United States. Dividing the canvas into three sections—evoking earth, air, and water—he applied paint with broom, brush, and by hand, translating these environmental elements into abstract form. His choice of colors, ranging through pinks, blues, and beiges, deepens the specific sense of atmosphere evoking the landscape of his early childhood, and his return there to teach at Louisiana State University in the late 1970s.

Ed Clark

Untitled, ca. 1990s

Acrylic on canvas

139.1 x 179.1 cm / 54 3/4 x 70 1/2 in

Photo: Sarah Muehlbauer

© The Estate of Ed Clark

Courtesy the Estate and Hauser & Wirth

As the 1980s progressed, Ed Clark began exploring a new compositional approach he termed his tubular paintings, first seen in the series of ‘Broken Rainbow’ works. These supplanted the structures of narrow horizontal lines he employed in the previous decade, with curved strokes that introduced a suggestion of rotation as in ‘Untitled’ (ca. 1990s). In later works such as ‘Untitled’ (2002), Ed Clark continues this exploration through broad, sweeping gestures and a looser, more fluid structure that became characteristic of his later style.

The Zurich exhibition provides a rare opportunity to experience the full scope of Clark’s practice, placing him in relation to diverse histories of abstraction and highlighting the enduring relevance of his work. It emphasizes how for Ed Clark abstract art represented a greater truth than any realist depiction of the world and that for him ‘paint is the subject.’

Several works by Ed Clark are also currently on view at the Centre Pompidou in Paris as part of the exhibition ‘Paris Noir: Artistic circulations and anti-colonial resistance, 1950 – 2000’ at the Centre Pompidou (19 March – 30 June 2025), which explores the presence of black artists in France. His inclusion highlights the important African American diaspora working in Paris and the long-standing influence of Europe on his practice, situating his work within broader transatlantic narratives.

HAUSER & WIRTH ZURICH

Limmatstrasse 270, 8005 Zurich

www.hauserwirth.com

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Michael Rosenfeld Gallery, New York, January 11 – March 8, 2014

Cindy Sherman. The Women @ Hauser & Wirth Menorca

Cindy Sherman. The Women

Hauser & Wirth Menorca

23 June – 26 October 2025

Cindy Sherman

Untitled #566

2016

Dye sublimation metal print

121.9 x 128.3 cm / 48 x 50 1/2 in

© Cindy Sherman

Courtesy the artist and Hauser & Wirth

Cindy Sherman

Untitled Film Still #6

1977

Gelatin silver print

25.4 x 20.3 cm / 10 x 8 in

© Cindy Sherman

Courtesy the artist and Hauser & Wirth

Cindy Sherman is globally renowned for her exploration of identity and gender through the performance of meticulously observed personas for the camera. For her first solo exhibition in Spain in over two decades, ‘Cindy Sherman. The Women’ features a selection of the artist’s most iconic bodies of work, dating from the 1970s to 2010s, emphasising how Sherman revolutionized the role of the camera in artistic practice.

The exhibition includes the groundbreaking Untitled Films Stills (1977 – 1980), through which Sherman came to widespread attention as one of the ‘Pictures Generation’ artists who gained prominence in the 1970s and ‘80s responding to the age of mass media and celebrity. This pivotal series will be juxtaposed with Sherman’s large-format portrayals of film stars, starlets, society women and fashionistas from various series made over subsequent decades, addressing the layered presentation and public perception of femininity.  One of the central galleries will be dedicated to the Bus Riders and Murder Mystery series, and other early works that pre-date the Film Stills, not publicly displayed until 2000, illustrating Sherman’s detailed observations of American society and the starting point for themes and methods that were to develop throughout her career. The range of works on view offer a rare presentation of Sherman’s enduring concern with the interaction between female roles and images, and the gaze(s) to which women are relentlessly subjected. Through her work she points to the way women exist in society as an image of themselves.

‘Cindy Sherman. The Women’ takes its title from the 1936 all-female hit play by Clare Boothe Luce, a merciless ensemble piece about women’s interactions with women, of their own and different classes, and of different appearances. Twice made into feature films (1939 and 2008), it is exemplary of the genre of classical Hollywood ‘women’s film’ around which feminist film theory was formed. Moreover, not only the characters in her play but Boothe Luce herself is representative of the multifarious kinds of femininities explored by Cindy Sherman. As the 20th-century cult of fame and celebrity has transitioned into the 21st-century context of influencers and social media stars, Sherman’s deconstructions of gender, wealth and privilege remain of acute relevance. Sherman’s work reveals to us the degree to which we all construct and perform our identities; each iteration of her performance is a new and unique character. Through these images she has become the leading exponent of the subgenre which combines performance with photography, drawing our attention to the fact that identity is complex, constructed and performed.

The layers of media are important in this picture of complexity; the role of film, fashion, magazines and classical portrait photography is part of the subject matter. In the Ominous Landscape images from 2010, elaborately dressed female figures stand against vast and inhospitable landscapes. The figures seem eerily displaced, digitally superimposed on island landscapes shot on Capri, Stromboli, Iceland and Shelter Island, New York; now they are shown on an island within an island, Illa del Rei in Menorca. This series of photographs evolved from an editorial project for Pop magazine, featuring clothes and accessories chosen by Cindy Sherman from the Chanel archives. The garments range from 1920s haute couture designed by Coco Chanel herself to contemporary creations by Karl Lagerfeld. The sumptuous costumes create a striking contrast with the bleak intensity of the surrounding landscapes, whilst the female figures loom larger than the surrounding natural world in a reversal of the Romantic hierarchy.

Cindy Sherman

Untitled #550

2010/2012

Chromogenic color print

153 x 302.3 cm / 60 1/4 x 119 in

© Cindy Sherman

Courtesy the artist and Hauser & Wirth

It was from this project that the Flappers series developed from 2016 to 2018, focusing on the young women who challenged social norms and fashions in the 1920s as a form of empowerment, emancipation and radical modernity, some emulating Hollywood stars, who pose in glamorous attire with heavy and stylised makeup. The series also addresses aging; however, the protagonists are shown decades from their heyday seemingly unaware they are past their prime. Nevertheless, Sherman’s depictions seem more nuanced and sympathetic than the harsh image of Norma Desmond, the archetypal deluded silent-era actress in Sunset Boulevard. 

Cindy Sherman had previously worked on series addressing women of social standing and the aging process, works from which feature in the exhibition. These include one of the exceptionally grandiose Society Portraits from 2008, in which Cindy Sherman introduced ornate frames and experimented with a green screen to create fantasy environments for women of the upper echelons of society. Such backdrops heighten the isolation of the characters Cindy Sherman portrays and focus attention on the heavily made-up women absorbed by their wealth and status. She later adopted the personas of socialites and fashionistas in a commission for Harper’s Bazaar in 2016, making a series of images of women in designer clothes and accessories, within various landscape settings. In these works, she experimented with multiple exposures to duplicate the women depicted, suggesting a fractured and unstable sense of identity.

A selection of the iconic Untitled Film Stills sits at the centre of the exhibition, a series of black-and-white photographs originally conceived as a group of imaginary film stills from a single actress’s career. Inspired by 1950s and ‘60s Hollywood, film noir, B movies and European art-house films, Sherman’s plethora of invented characters and scenarios imitated the style of production shots used by movie studios to publicize their films. The images are evocative of certain character types and genres, but always intentionally ambiguous, leaving room for the viewer to imagine their own narratives, and even insert themselves into the work.

Pre-dating the Film Stills, are works from Sherman’s Bus Riders and Murder Mystery series, both created in 1976, and a selection of the Line Up images, made in 1977, all while she was still a student at Buffalo State College in upstate New York. Highlighting the foundations of Sherman’s conceptual thinking, the ‘Bus Riders’ embody a range of cultural stereotypes and everyday personalities across American society, harnessing poses, clothes and facial expressions that bring familiar characters to life. In contrast, the ‘Murder Mystery’ and ‘Line Up’ series have a decided staginess and overt theatricality, and even a deliberate melodrama, to the characters and poses. In some, the act of photographing is made visible through the capturing of the cable-release and the marks on the studio floor; here, Sherman is pointing to her medium and exposing her process as part of the act of creation. In these very early series Sherman was working through the process of adopting different personas and merging the role of photographer, model and storyteller. 

Throughout her career, Sherman’s relentless focus on the diversity of womanhood emphasises the play of difference rather than sameness within gender categories, making the idea of womanhood expansive rather than restrictive.

Cindy Sherman

Untitled Film Still #24

1978

Gelatin silver print

20.3 x 25.4 cm / 8 x 10 in

© Cindy Sherman

Courtesy the artist and Hauser & Wirth

Cindy Sherman

Untitled (the actress at the murder scene)

1976/2000

Gelatin silver print

25.4 x 20.3 cm / 10 x 8 in

© Cindy Sherman

Courtesy the artist and Hauser & Wirth

ARTIST CINDY SHERMAN

Born in 1954 in Glen Ridge NJ, Cindy Sherman lives and works in New York NY. Her groundbreaking work has interrogated themes around representation and identity in contemporary media for over four decades. Coming to prominence in the late 1970s with the Pictures Generation group—alongside artists such as Sherrie Levine, Richard Prince and Louise Lawler—Sherman first turned her attention to photography at Buffalo State College where she studied art in the early 1970s. Utilising prosthetics, theatrical effects, photographic techniques and digital technologies, she has channelled and reconstructed familiar personas known to the collective psyche, often in unsettling ways, and has explored the more grotesque aspects of humanity through the lens of horror and the abject.

Recent solo exhibitions include FOMU Fotomuseum Antwerp, ‘Cindy Sherman. Anti-Fashion’, Antwerp, Belgium (2024); Museum of Cycladic Art, ‘Cindy Sherman at Cycladic: Early Works’, Athens, Greece (2024); Photo Elysée, ‘Cindy Sherman’, Lausanne, Switzerland (2024); Espace Louis Vuitton Seoul, ‘Cindy Sherman. On Stage – Part II’, Seoul, Korea (2024); The Serralves Foundation, ‘Cindy Sherman. Metamorphosis’, Porto, Portugal (2022); National Portrait Gallery, ‘Cindy Sherman’, London, UK (2010), Fondation Louis Vuitton, ‘Cindy Sherman’, Paris, France (2010).

Also on view at Hauser & Wirth Menorca:

Mika Rottenberg. Vibrant Matter

Through 26 October 2025

HAUSER & WIRTH MENORCA

Illa del Rei, Mahon, Menorca, Balearic Islands, Spain

www.hauserwirth.com

Mika Rottenberg @ Hauser & Wirth Menorca - "Vibrant Matter" Exhibition

Mika Rottenberg. Vibrant Matter

Hauser & Wirth Menorca

Through 26 October 2025

Mika Rottenberg

Lampshare (with plant 2)

2025

Milled reclaimed household plastic and plant

Lighting component: resin and electric hardware

40.6 x 35.6 x 30.5 cm / 16 x 14 x 12 in

© Mika Rottenberg

Courtesy the artist and Hauser & Wirth

Mika Rottenberg

Lampshare (bx 1.4)

2025

Milled reclaimed household plastic and plant

Lighting component: resin and electric hardware

91.4 x 83.8 x 86.4 cm / 36 x 33 x 34 in

© Mika Rottenberg

Courtesy the artist and Hauser & Wirth

Mika Rottenberg

Cosmic Generator (Loaded #2) (Video Still)

2017/2018

Single channel video installation, sound, color; 26:36 min

Dimensions variable

© Mika Rottenberg

Courtesy the artist and Hauser & Wirth

For decades Mika Rottenberg has addressed our relationship with capitalist systems of production and labor, realizing a labyrinth of disparate worlds through seductive multidimensional works. She draws attention to the absurdity of our global situation, harnessing imagery that is simultaneously pleasurable and troubling, blurring facts with fiction, the natural with the artificial.

Mika Rottenberg’s first solo exhibition in Spain features the celebrated video installations, ‘Cosmic Generator’ (2017) and ‘Spaghetti Blockchain’ (2019), alongside her latest Lampshares (2024-2025), carved from bittersweet vines and reclaimed plastic. Perhaps the best introduction to Rottenberg’s oeuvre, the surreal and subversive ‘Cosmic Generator’ explores globalization, labor and spectacle, juxtaposing existing real-world industry with Rottenberg’s own, often unexpected, manufacturing systems. Mika Rottenberg illustrates the absurdity of humanity’s rampant production and consumption. The distinction between fantasy architecture and real space is blurred as Rottenberg collapses the distance between seemingly disconnected locations—filmed on-site at a market for plastic goods in Yiwu, China and at the border between Mexico and California—while mixing them with elements of magical realism shot in a studio and objects displaced within the installation itself.

Mika Rottenberg

Spaghetti Blockchain (Video Still)

2019

4k video installation with 7.1 surround sound, 

color; 18:15 min

Dimensions variable

© Mika Rottenberg

Courtesy the artist and Hauser & Wirth

Similarly, in ‘Spaghetti Blockchain,’ the viewer travels through a universe of incongruous scenarios that evoke a range of sensory reactions: footage of vibrant ASMR performances, Siberian Tuvan throat singers, the CERN antimatter factory and a mechanical harvester on a potato farm coalesce and meld. Running throughout is a concern with how humans manipulate matter and their relationship with the material world. ‘I am interested in these human-made systems where the starting point is to have no clue what is really going on and to try to impose a certain logic on things, and the madness of that,’ Mika Rottenberg explains. The title refers to blockchain technology, which allows for data to be governed by its own perpetual movement within a cluster of computers rather than being owned or controlled by a single entity. Like a blockchain, Mika Rottenberg merges images and sounds to create fast-shifting connections between a diverse range of sources that weave themselves together with no resolution as the artist excavates and examines systems of production, commerce and control.

In her exploration of humanity’s paradoxical attraction to toxicity, Mika Rottenberg has reframed the artist studio as an incubator for the regenerative production of her Lampshares, a series of functional sculptures that she began in 2023. Working alongside Inner City Green Team and Gary Dusek in New York, Mika Rottenberg combines carved bittersweet vines that choke forests in Upstate New York with reclaimed plastic that has been mined and extracted as a natural resource and is now re-molded into ‘urban gemstones.’ The natural and the artificial blend together, with Rottenberg’s processing of the plastic recasting its smooth, shiny surfaces into imperfect, handmade-looking forms. Sharing the seductive but unsettling combination of lyricism and wit that characterizes the artist’s practice, the Lampshares bring the concerns with capitalist systems of production that Mika Rottenberg has previously animated primarily through metaphorical and conceptual works into the sculptural space. Imbued with new meaning and value through regenerative systems of creation, these otherwise toxic and invasive materials are transformed into unique lamps that propose a creative alternative to current, extractive systems of mass production and consumption.

Alongside the Lampshares, Mika Rottenberg presents a selection of recent drawings that echo the concerns of her film, installation and sculptural output through a unique vocabulary of recurring symbols and icons. Bodily features such as human limbs and fingerprints harmonize with the organic, oddly sexual forms of the Lampshares and gesture towards the concern with the non-normative women’s bodies and the role of female labor in Rottenberg’s film works. Allusions to circularity, meanwhile, parallel both the circular systems that organize her films and the focus on sustainable production methods. Running throughout Rottenberg’s playful oeuvre and its synthesis of absurd, disparate parts are interconnected themes of appropriation, distortion and reinvention, production, consumption and hyper-capitalism that highlight both our endless difference from one another and the network of commodities and actions that bind us together.

Artist Mika Rottenberg

Argentina-born, New York-based artist Mika Rottenberg is devoted to a rigorous practice that combines film, architectural installation and sculpture to explore ideas of labor and production in our contemporary hyper-capitalist world. Her solo exhibition ‘Antimatter Factory’ is currently on view at Kunst Haus Wien, Austria until 10 August 2025, having traveled from the Musée Tinguely in Basel, Switzerland (2024). ‘Queer Ecology’ at Lehmbruck Museum, Germany is on view from 27 September 2025 – 22 February 2026. Other recent European solo presentations include the Louisiana Museum in Humlebæk, Denmark (2021) and the premiere of her first feature-length film ‘REMOTE’ (2022), co-created with Mahyad Tousi and commissioned by Artangel, United Kingdom; the Louisiana Museum, Humlebæk; and Moderna Museet, Stockholm, at Tate Modern, London in 2022. ‘Installations II: Video from the Guggenheim Collections’ was on view at Guggenheim Bilbao from 2009 – 2010. Mika Rottenberg was the recipient of the 2019 Kurt Schwitters Prize, which recognizes artists who have made a significant contribution to the field of contemporary art. In 2018, she was winner of the Smithsonian American Art Museum’s James Dicke Contemporary Art Prize, which recognizes an artist younger than 50 who has produced a significant body of work and consistently demonstrates exceptional creativity.

HAUSER & WIRTH MENORCA

Illa del Rei, Mahon, Menorca, Balearic Islands, Spain

www.hauserwirth.com

Mika Rottenberg. Vibrant Matter

Hauser & Wirth Menorca, 10 May – 26 October 2025