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20/11/25

We AmeRícans @ Claire Oliver Gallery, NYC - Exhibition Curated by Ruben Natal-San Miguel - A multivocal portrait of Puerto Rican identity and its diasporic reach

We AmeRícans

Claire Oliver Gallery, New York

Through January 3, 2026

Dave Ortiz

Gallo, 2025

Acrylic on Canvas, 24 x 24 inches | 60.96 x 60.96 cm

Dave Ortiz

Barnito Vicente, 2025

Acrylic on canvas, 24 x 24 inches | 60.96 x 60.96 cm

Claire Oliver Gallery presents We AmeRícans, a group exhibition curated by acclaimed photographer and curator Ruben Natal-San Miguel, on view through January 3, 2026. Opening during National Puerto Rican Heritage Month, the exhibition brings together multiple generations of Puerto Rican and Puerto Rican-descendant artists whose work reflects the history, resilience, and cultural contributions of the Puerto Rican community in New York City and beyond. The exhibition title is inspired by the celebrated 1985 poem AmeRícan by Tato Laviera, a pioneering Nuyorican poet whose work embraced cultural hybridity, identity, and pride. We AmeRícans features artists whose practices span painting, photography, sculpture, printmaking, textiles, and mixed media, creating a multivocal portrait of Puerto Rican identity and its diasporic reach.

“This exhibition is a celebration and an act of preservation, documenting the creativity, strength, and ongoing impact of Puerto Rican artists across generations,” says curator and artist Ruben Natal-San Miguel. “Through their work, we see not just personal narratives, but the collective story of migration, labor, resilience, and cultural pride.”

Claire Oliver adds, “We are honored to present this important exhibition during National Puerto Rican Heritage Month, continuing our mission to support artists whose work expands our understanding of history, identity, and community.”

Ruben Natal-San Miguel

Home Ruins, La Perla, Old San Juan, Puerto Rico, 2017

Huracán Architecture Series

Color serigraph/photo silkscreen on canvas, 24 x 36 in

Among the participating artists are internationally celebrated figures such as Carlos Betancourt, known for his performative installations staged worldwide, including a major takeover of South Beach during Art Basel Miami Beach 2024. James Cuebas is a member of the Rafael Tufiño Printmaking Workshop in East Harlem, under the direction of artist Nitza Tufiño, and a member of the Lower East Side Printshop. He is presently working and experimenting with the following techniques: gum bichromate, lithography, silkscreen, and monoprinting. Enoc Perez, a contemporary Puerto Rican Artist best known for his paintings and oil stick renditions of Modernist architecture, depicts his subject matter as a “witness” to historically relevant locations and events, while pioneering artist Nitza Tufiño, co-founder of El Museo del Barrio and Taller Boricua Printmaking Studio, grounds the exhibition in a lineage of cultural activism and institution building. Wanda Raimundi-Ortiz, an interdisciplinary Afro-Latinx artist whose practice draws from European portraiture, comics, performance, and folkloric traditions to confront race, trauma, and healing, has exhibited at major institutions including the Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery, Museo de Arte de Puerto Rico, and the Manifesta and Performa biennials.

Elsa María Meléndez

Milk, 2020

Canvas with silkscreen and embroidery, 96 x 81 x 15 in

Erica Morales

You're Gonna Lose The House, 2024

Spray paint, fabric collage and pencil on paper, 30 x 22 in

The exhibition also highlights artists who have been central to expanding the visual language of Puerto Rican identity. Textile artist Elsa María Meléndez, winner of the Smithsonian’s People’s Choice Award at American Portraiture Today, presents works that weave personal and political narratives. Erica Morales, recipient of the 2022 Rema Hort Mann Emerging Artist Grant, reflects on her dual role as educator and practicing artist in New York City. Painter Beatriz Williams, the youngest participant, bridges the divide between her Puerto Rican roots and her family in New York, evoking a poignant longing for the Island’s traditions and histories. Felix Plaza, meanwhile, makes his gallery debut, offering audiences the discovery of a fresh and urgent voice in printmaking and painting.

Anchoring the exhibition is the curatorial vision of Ruben Natal-San Miguel, an acclaimed photographer whose own works are housed in the Museum of Fine Arts Boston, Studio Museum of Harlem, and El Museo del Barrio. His perspective as both artist and cultural historian brings together these intergenerational practices to tell a story of migration, labor, resilience, and cultural pride.

The exhibition draws historical grounding from the Great Migration of Puerto Ricans to New York City, a transformative wave beginning in the mid-20th century when hundreds of thousands migrated from Puerto Rico to the mainland. Factors such as economic hardship, increased job opportunities in New York, and the accessibility of air travel fueled this movement, making New York City the largest Puerto Rican cultural center outside of the island. By the mid-1960s, more than one million Puerto Ricans had settled in the United States, with the majority residing in New York City.

We AmeRícans also pays tribute to Puerto Rican women who were instrumental in the garment industry of New York City, particularly in the Lower East Side’s garment district, where their skill, creativity, and resilience shaped an industry and provided economic stability for their families and communities.

CLAIRE OLIVER GALLERY

2288 Adam Clayton Powell Jr. Boulevard, New York, NY 10030

www.claireoliver.com

18/11/25

'Small is Beautiful' Exhibition @ Flowers Gallery, London + Online - 43rd Edition Featuring 140 Artists

Small is Beautiful - 43rd Edition

Flowers Gallery, London + Online

21 November 2025 - 10 January 2026

Katie Mawson (b. 1963)

Colour Narratives, 2025

Vintage book cloth, 18 x 18 cm

Alexandra Baraitser (b. 1971)

By Lamp Light, 2025

Oil on board, 21.5 x 18 cm

Adam Taylor (b. 1979)

Circle, two, 2025

Oil on panel, 22.5 x 17 cm

Flowers Gallery presents the 43rd edition of their renowned Small is Beautiful exhibition, taking place at the Cork Street gallery and online. Established in 1974, Small is Beautiful invites selected contemporary artists from all disciplines to contribute works with a fixed economy of size, each piece measuring no more than 7 x 9 inches.

Heidrun Rathgeb (b. 1967)

Cocoon, 2020

Egg tempura on gesso panel, 24 x 18 cm

Ayumi Matsuba (b. 1977)

Towards Home, 2025

Acrylic on canvas, 20.3 x 20.3 cm

Unskilled Worker

Milo wears his Crown, 2025

Gouache, pastel, pen, ink and charcoal

on Fabriano paper, 21 x 16 cm

An occasion for artists to explore scale in relation to their own practice, since its inception the exhibition has provided a rare opportunity to showcase smaller pieces by internationally-recognised names and discover new talents.

Here is a small selection of other works featured in this exhibition:

Maria Koshenkova

Faun's Flesh 02, 2016

Blown sculpted glass, hand polished, 14 x 21 x 14 cm

Sheila Vollmer

Pezzo, 2025

Wood found Piano keys, hinges, paint, 20 x 19 x 21 cm

Terence Wilde

Devine, 2020

Ceramic and mixed media, 19 x 14 x 9 cm

Sarah Longworth-West

After Endless, 2025

Oil paint, oil pastel and spray paint

on pigmented gesso panel, 23 x 18 cm

Monique Lovering

Fleeting, 2025

Mixed media, 23 x 18 cm

Kristin Schnell

Birds on Stage 13A, 2022-2023

Photography Hahnemühlen Photo Rag Paper, 21 x 16 cm

Sue Kennington

Split, 2025

Oil on linen, 18.4 x 15.2 cm

Pippa Young

Threads of history that cling to me, 2025

Oil on cradled panel, 18 x 12.5 cm

Jennifer McRae

Boy Fish Kite, 2025

Oil on linen, 22.9 x 17.8 cm

Karolina Albricht

As Day is Equal Night, 2025

Oil on panel, 16 x 12 cm

Gill Rocca

REALM XVI, 2025

Oil on birch ply, 11 x 16 cm

Small is Beautiful features approximately 140 artists, with notable inclusions from Olivia Bax, Ken Currie, Helen Downie (Unskilled Worker), Elger Esser, Nigel Hall, Maggi Hambling, Claerwen James, Laurence Noga, and Tai Shan Schierenberg, amongst many more.

FLOWERS GALLERY

21 Cork Street, London W1S 3LZ

www.flowersgallery.com

09/11/25

Nordic noir @ British Museum, London - Works on paper from Edvard Munch to Mamma Andersson

Nordic noir: Works on paper from Edvard Munch to Mamma Andersson

British Museum, London

9 October 2025 – 22 March 2026

Mamma Andersson

The Fallow Deer, 2016

Handprinted colour woodcut on rice paper

Reproduced by permission of the artist

Fatima Moallim

Källa, 2021

Marker pen, oil crayon and graphite

Reproduced by permission of the artist

Olafur Eliasson

Don't look to the horizon, 2024

Watercolour and glacial ice

Courtesy of the artist and i8 Gallery, Reykjavik

The British Museum presents around 150 works from 100 different artists in an exhibition celebrating graphic works on paper from the Nordic region.

Nordic noir: works on paper from Edvard Munch to Mamma Andersson is the culmination of a five-year programme dedicated to building the Museum's collection of post-war Nordic artwork.

Jennifer Ramkalawon, Curator of Modern and Contemporary Nordic Graphic Art said: 'This project was a five-year voyage of discovery. These countries have so much creativity to offer with contemporary artists exploring themes of nature, the environment, identity and heritage. The artists in the show are well-known in their home countries, but this exhibition aims to showcase the incredible array of talent from the Nordic lands to a wider UK and international audience – many of them are on display for the first time.'

John Savio

Suopan (Lasso), c.1928-1934

Woodcut

Henrik Finne

Fiskere, 1942

Colour woodcut

Reproduced by permission of the artist's estate

Showcasing one of the best collections of Nordic art outside the region, the exhibition aims to provide a welcome and stimulating insight into the distinctive art originating there.

Although Scandinavia is sometimes viewed by outsiders as a homogenous entity, the exhibition highlights individual characteristics and complexities within the various Nordic countries, as well as exploring universal and overarching themes. It also questions the definition of Nordic art and what it means to be a Nordic artist through work by artists who have immigrated to and emigrated from the region.

Edvard Munch

The Old Fisherman, 1897

Woodcut on Japan paper

One of the most well-known artists to emerge from Scandinavia is expressionist Edvard Munch. Two of Munch's woodcut prints are featured at the beginning of the exhibition. Following a chronological narrative, it explores how the graphic arts flourished and evolved after his death in 1944. Prints and drawings from 1945 to the present day highlight how the region's artists continue to develop Munch's creative legacy of emotional intensity and artistic inventiveness.

Lea Ignatius

Soutaja, 1981

Colour etching

Reproduced by permission of the artist's estate

Per Kirkeby

Untitled, 2016

Monotype in green, yellow and black ink

Reproduced by permission of the artist's estate

Vanessa Baird

My Mother, 2019

Watercolour

Reproduced by permission of the artist

Key themes throughout the exhibition are nature and the vital urgency to preserve the environment of the fjords, mountains and forests unique to the region. The artworks on display also delve into the worlds of Norse myth, inner struggles with mental health, post-war angst and the threat of the Cold War, feminism and the rights of the Indigenous Sámi people.

Yuichiro Sato

In the Air III, 2019

Graphite, mineral pigment, acrylic paint

Reproduced by permission of the artist

John Kørner

Understanding the Impact of Architecture 12, 2020

Colour lithograph

Reproduced by permission of the artist

Vibeke Slyngstad

Shuafat II, 2023

Watercolour

Reproduced by permission of the artist

The landmark collecting project, supported by a substantial grant from charitable organisation AKO Foundation, resulted in the acquisition by the British Museum of almost 400 works by artists from Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway and Sweden. It has added to the many Nordic prints purchased by the Museum in the 1990s.

As well as Edvard Munch and Mamma Andersson, featured artists include Olafur Eliasson, John Savio, Vanessa Baird, Yuichiro Sato, Fatima Moallim, John Kørner and many more.

Xerxes Mazda, Director of Collections said: 'It has been almost 30 years since the British Museum devoted a show to Nordic graphic art. Thanks to the generosity of AKO Foundation, we have been able to build one of the best collections of Nordic art outside the region, investing in and exploring how artists such as Mamma Andersson have developed the legacy of an artist like Edvard Munch. Nordic noir and the collecting strategy behind it showcases the British Museum's commitment to acquiring works for the nation, preserving the work of both up-and-coming and established artists for future generations.'

To coincide with the exhibition, a beautifully illustrated catalogue, Nordic noir: works on paper from Edvard Munch to Mamma Andersson, written by Jennifer Ramkalawon, was published by the British Museum Press in October 2025. Paperback, £35, ISBN 9780714136509

BRITISH MUSEUM, LONDON

www.britishmuseum.org

31/10/25

Adolph Gottlieb and Kim Whanki @ Pace Gallery, Seoul - 'The Language of Abstraction, The Universe of Emotion' Exhibition

The Language of Abstraction, The Universe of Emotion

Adolph Gottlieb and Kim Whanki

Pace Gallery, Seoul

October 31, 2025 – January 10, 2026

Kim Whanki

Untitled, 1967

Oil on canvas, 177 x 127 cm

Pace presents The Language of Abstraction, The Universe of Emotion, a pair of exhibitions of works by American Abstract Expressionist Adolph Gottlieb and pioneering Korean painter Kim Whanki, at its Seoul gallery. On view across two floors of the gallery, these dual presentations—organized in collaboration with the Adolph and Esther Gottlieb Foundation and the Whanki Foundation—offer viewers an opportunity to witness how two 20th century figures with different cultural and philosophical backgrounds visualized their unique perspectives and forged a universal language through abstraction.

Gottlieb’s paintings fuse intuitive shapes with bold color fields to visualize emotion and the unconscious, while Kim’s canvases employ repeated dots and refined chromatic structures to evoke an Eastern sense of meditation and cosmic order. Deeply moved by his first encounter with Gottlieb’s work in the U.S. Pavilion at the São Paulo Biennale in 1963, Kim Whanki subsequently relocated to New York, where he embarked on one of the most intense periods of his career. Immersed in the city’s dynamic art scene, he gradually eliminated figurative references from his work, refining his language into dots, lines, and planes. His restrained compositions and luminous fields of meticulously placed dots evoke skies, seas, and constellations, transforming time and space into poetic abstractions. His celebrated Dot Paintings series, completed during these years, played a key role in the introduction of Korean Modernism to the global stage. Pace’s exhibition of Kim’s work from the late 1960s to the early 1970s focuses on the development of his Dot Paintings from structural compositions using crosses and quadrants (Sibjagudo).

A central figure of the New York School alongside Jackson Pollock and Mark Rothko, Adolph Gottlieb was at the vanguard of American Abstract Expressionism. His Pictographs of the 1940s used an all-over grid structure and invented symbols to give form to the unconscious, and in the 1950s he developed his signature Burst series: paintings that juxtapose a floating orb with explosive brushwork. These compositions dramatize the tensions between order and chaos, color, and form, inviting universal and intuitive responses rather than prescribing narrative meaning. Pace’s presentation in Seoul includes a selection of works produced by Adolph Gottlieb during the 1960s and 1970s, including the large-scale painting Expanding (1962), along with canvases from his Imaginary Landscapes series, which utilize the form of landscape painting to include unlimited perception.

Though their practices were rooted in distinct cultural contexts, Kim and Gottlieb are connected by a shared pursuit of universality—using color, symbol, and structure to explore humanity, the cosmos, and the realm of emotion. The Language of Abstraction, The Universe of Emotion is conceived as a dialogue, where the visual and emotional resonances between their works illuminate the boundless possibilities of abstraction and its enduring significance in art history.

Adolph Gottlieb (b. 1903, New York; d. 1974, New York) is recognized as a key figure of the New York School. Initially informed by Italian Renaissance painting, Impressionism, and the European avant-garde, Gottlieb became an advocate of abstraction from the 1930s onward, notably organizing the protest of an exhibition at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, in 1950, for which he and a group of fellow artists became known as the Irascibles. Producing paintings, drawings, prints, sculpture, and tapestries, Adolph Gottlieb developed an aesthetic vocabulary from Jungian theory, underpinned by aspects of automatism, primitivism, and Surrealism. He continued to refine these stylistic means throughout his career, pursuing images that evoke an immediate and visceral impact on the viewer, through his series of Pictographs, Imaginary Landscapes, and Bursts.

Kim Whanki (b. 1913, Jeollanam-do, Korea; d. 1974, New York) is recognized as one of the pioneers of abstract modernism in South Korea during the twentieth century. The artist studied at Nihon University, Tokyo, from 1933 to 1936, a period during which he began exploring abstraction. From 1946 to 1950, he served as a professor in the Department of Western Painting at Seoul National University, and from 1952 to 1955 as professor and dean of the Department of Western Painting at Hongik University, Seoul. He was appointed as President of the Fine Arts Association in 1963.

PACE SEOUL

267 Itaewon-ro, Yongsan-gu, Seoul

www.pacegallery.com

24/10/25

ringl + pit @ Robert Mann Gallery, NYC - Grete Stern + Ellen Auebach Photography Exhibition

ringl + pit

Robert Mann Gallery, New York

October 23 - December 6, 2025

At the height of the Weimar Republic, an artist duo experimented with gender roles and consumer culture, subverting a commercial world dominated by cheerful faces and brightly illustrated pages. They photographed wigs, mannequins, and merchandise in unorthodox still lives, tapping into Berlin’s vibrant, avant-garde spirit. Their work transcended traditional advertising, highlighting touch, texture, and enigma. Their name: ringl + pit.

Robert Mann Gallery presents ringl + pit, an exhibition featuring rare studio photographs alongside an exceptionally limited-edition portfolio of the duo’s life work—much of which has been rarely exhibited to the public.

ringl + pit were the childhood nicknames of Grete Stern (ringl) and Ellen Auerbach (pit). Both trained under Walter Peterhans, the pioneering photography instructor at the Bauhaus, who emphasized precision, formal clarity, and graphic design. In 1930, Stern and Auerbach founded their Berlin-based studio, ringl + pit, blending avant-garde experimentation with commercial portraiture and advertising. Their work emerged during a period of increasing independence for women in Germany, both socially and artistically.

Their photographs challenged conventional advertising norms through striking, surreal, and meticulously composed images. Working collaboratively, the women alternated roles behind the camera and on set, constantly refining each shot until it felt just right. The studio quickly gained a reputation as one of Germany’s most innovative, producing crisp, compelling images that merged modernist aesthetics with subversive wit. Their work was widely recognized, earning international awards and appearing in influential publications such as Die Gebrauchsgraphik and Cahiers d’Art.

Among their most iconic works is Komol Haircoloring Advertisement, an advertisement for hair dye that disrupts traditional beauty standards with artificial hair, a paper cutout silhouette, and metallic mesh. In the Güldenring Cigarettes Advertisemen, they defy convention by omitting both the pack and the hand, instead focusing on a single cigarette protruding from a cellophane wrapper. Their textile commission for Maratti captures a seam running down a luxurious swath of fabric—eschewing the expected female model and instead emphasizing craftsmanship and tactile detail.

The exhibition also includes two rare self-portraits. In pit with Veil, Ellen Auerbach is shown in a stylized headpiece, her sideways glance withheld from the viewer, hinting at the portrait as a form of disguise. In contrast, Grete Stern appears in a tight close-up, her bespectacled face framed with intense, inward focus. Together, these portraits reveal the duo’s deep artistic dialogue—an exploration of selfhood, queerness, and mutual expression. Their work captures the intellectual and creative energy of Weimar-era Germany, a time of extraordinary cultural ferment that was tragically cut short by the rise of the Nazi regime. As progressive Jewish women, both Grete Stern and Ellen Auerbach were forced to flee the country in the early 1930s.

Ellen Auerbach eventually settled in New York; Grete Stern made her home in Buenos Aires. Though continents apart, the two remained lifelong friends. In 1985, they co-published Fotografie ringl + pit, a carefully designed portfolio that echoed the aesthetic and material choices of their early 1930s studio work.

Taken together, their photographs illuminate how Ellen Auerbach and Grete Stern not only participated in, but helped define the avant-garde spirit of their time. Through humor, experimentation, and a refusal to conform to prescribed gender roles, they carved out a bold new space for visual expression. Their work endures as a testament to photography’s power to question representation, defy convention, and assert identity.

The exhibition ringl + pit is presented in conjunction with Yale University of Art Gallery’s The Shared New Vision of ringl + pit, on view through December 7, 2025.

ROBERT MANN GALLERY

508 West 26th Street, New York, NY 10001

robertmann.com

20/10/25

Brand X Editions: Innovation in Screenprinting @ Philadelphia Art Museum

Brand X Editions: Innovation in Screenprinting

Philadelphia Art Museum

Through November 16, 2025

Adam Pendleton (b. 1984)

Untitled (Who is Queen), 2020

Enamel screenprint and graphite pigment

Sheet: 64 × 49 inches (162.6 × 124.5 cm)

Gift of Brand X Editions, New York, 105-2024-19

Adam Pendleton (b. 1984)

Untitled (Figure and Malcolm X), 2020

Enamel screenprint and graphite pigment

Sheet: 64 × 49 inches (162.6 × 124.5 cm)

Gift of Brand X Editions, New York, 105-2024-20

Chuck Close

Self Portrait, 2017

Screenprint in ninety-one colors

Sheet: 69 × 57 3/4 inches (175.3 × 146.7 cm)

Gift of Brand X Editions, New York, 2023, x21994(10)

The Philadelphia Art Museum presents Brand X Editions: Innovation in Screenprinting, the first exhibition to spotlight four decades of collaborations between the Brand X printmaking workshop and a diverse roster of contemporary artists. On view through November 16, 2025, the exhibition features more than 80 screenprints by Helen Frankenthaler, Rashid Johnson, Alex Katz, Tschabalala Self, and Mickalene Thomas, among many others.

The exhibition celebrates the transformative gift of the Brand X Editions Archive to the Philadelphia Art Museum, presenting a selection from the over 400 screenprints given by master printer and founder Robert Blanton. Since establishing the workshop in 1979, Blanton and his team of skilled printers, chromists, and specialists have worked in collaboration with an impressive list of artists to push screenprinting techniques to meet the artists’ varied styles and expressive ambitions. The body of work from Brooklyn-based Brand X builds significantly on the museum’s extensive holdings of historical screenprints, adding major contemporary examples of traditional and experimental techniques. The Philadelphia Art Museum now holds one of the most comprehensive collections of screenprints along with essential archives related to the medium’s history and evolution from commercial tool to vibrant fine-art technique.

Emmanuel Taku

Entanglement, 2022

Screenprint, printed in twenty-three colors

with collage elements

Sheet: 60 × 40 1/4 inches (152.4 × 102.2 cm)

Gift of Brand X Editions, New York, 2023, 2023- 191-32

Emmanuel Taku

Got You, 2022

Screenprint, printed in twenty-seven colors

with collage elements

Sheet: 60 × 40 1/4 inches (152.4 × 102.2 cm)

Gift of Brand X Editions, New York, 2023, 2023- 191-33

“It is an honor to be the chosen home for Brand X’s magnificent collection of prints, said Sasha Suda, the George D. Widener Director and CEO of the Philadelphia Art Museum. “As expert printmakers, internationally renowned for their craft, Brand X are the true leaders in this field. For a museum like the Philadelphia Museum of Art, with such a rich and dedicated history in printmaking, it is a privilege for us to have this opportunity to welcome our visitors to experience and enjoy this generous gift.”

Deborah Kass

OY/YO, 2011

Two screenprints, printed in three colors on paper board

Framed: 21 1/2 × 20 inches (54.6 × 50.8 cm)

Gift of Brand X Editions, New York, 2023, x22034a,b

Deborah Kass (b. 1952)

Nobody Puts Baby in the Corner, 2022

Silkscreen, printed in seven colors on Coventry Rag paper

Sheet: 57 × 57 inches (144.8 × 144.8 cm)

Gift of Brand X Editions, New York, 2023-191-4

On view throughout the galleries are the results of Brand X’s dynamic collaborations across four decades of work. Together, the prints reveal the remarkable versatility of screenprinting. In the first gallery, for instance, works by Rashid Johnson, Deborah Kass, Adam Pendleton, and Mickalene Thomas demonstrate the medium’s ability to mimic the richness of paint layers, render a photographic precision, and produce variegated textures and surfaces. These artists expand the technical boundaries of screenprint in their exploration of themes relating to belonging, memory, and self-definition. From the dense, painterly urgency of Rashid Johnson’s Untitled Anxious Red to the layered intricacy of Mickalene Thomas’s November 1977, each work here shows how, at the Brand X workshop, screenprinting can be stretched, challenged, and transformed in response to an artist’s creative impulses.

Troy Michie

Doubling, 2019

Screenprint, Framed: 40 × 30 inches (101.6 × 76.2 cm)

Gift of Brand X Editions, New York, 2023, x22005(6)

Emily Mae Smith

Poetry (Toy in Blood), 2022

Screenprint, printed in forty-seven colors

Sheet: 60 × 45 1/2 inches (152.4 × 115.6 cm)

Gift of Brand X Editions, New York, 2024, 105- 2024-30(11)

The exhibition also addresses themes relating to text and language, pattern and decoration, graphic illusion, and landscape and figuration. Eight progressive proofs of Vija Celmins’s Ocean Surface offer a rare view onto the screenprinting process. From print to print, visitors can see how the image was formed cumulatively—by the sequential printing of individual screens, each bearing a single layer of ink. In final form, Celmins’s image materializes through sixteen applications of nuanced grays—an additive and subtle process apt for rendering the depth and detail of the ocean. Throughout the exhibition, equal emphasis is given to the pictorial and the material. Brand X Editions shines light on the technical procedures and the many roles—beyond that of the artist—that are vital to the production of screenprints.

“Just like the work that happens at Brand X, this exhibition and its catalogue were thoroughly collaborative endeavors, said Louis Marchesano, curator of the exhibition and the Marion Boulton “Kippy” Stroud Deputy Director of Curatorial Affairs and Conservation. “The addition of the Brand X Editions Archive, which will continue to grow as the studio produces more editions, goes a long way toward building an authoritative resource on screenprinting at the museum.”

Tschabalala Self (b. 1990)

Homebodies – All American 1, 2022

Monoprint, fabric collage, pigment wash,

hand coloring, and enamel silkscreen

Sheet (each): 24 × 18 inches (61 × 45.7 cm)

Gift of Brand X Editions, New York, 2023-191-29a,b

Tschabalala Self (b. 1990)

Homebodies – All American 1, 2022

Monoprint, fabric collage, pigment wash,

hand coloring, and enamel silkscreen

Sheet (each): 24 × 18 inches (61 × 45.7 cm)

Gift of Brand X Editions, New York, 2023-191-29a,b

Rashid Johnson

Seascape, 2023

Screenprint, printed in nine colors, with hand,

applied navy acrylic mixture

Gift of Brand X Editions, New York, 2023, 105-2024-9

Rashid Johnson

Untitled Large Mosaic, 2025

Screenprint, framed: 61 X 105 inches (1 154.9x 266.7 cm)

Gift of Brand X Editions, New York, 2023, x 22005(5)

Extending the exhibition beyond the gallery space, Rashid Johnson’s Untitled (Large Mosaic), 2025, is displayed in the museum’s Forum Balcony. For over three years, Rashid Johnson and his collaborators at Brand X developed this spectacular 293-color print, combining traditional screenprinting techniques—visible in the flat passages of bold color—with unconventional materials, including wood veneer, mirrored mylar, and cast paper oyster shells. Inspired by Johnson’s low-relief wall mosaics composed of innumerable tile fragments and other bits of material, this project captures Brand X’s enduring commitment to pursuing new levels of technical innovation and experimentation.

Brand X Editions: Innovation in Screenprinting is accompanied by a richly illustrated catalogue featuring essays by Philadelphia Art Museum curators and paper conservators, an interview with Robert Blanton and David DeSanctis of Brand X, a technical glossary related to the history and technique of screenprint, and an inventory of the archive held by Philadelphia Art Museum.

The exhibition is curated by Louis Marchesano, the Marion Boulton “Kippy” Stroud Deputy Director of Cultural Affairs and Conservation, with Em Dombrovskaya, the Suzanne Andrée Curatorial Fellow; Laurel Garber, the Park Family Associate Curator of Prints and Drawings; and Emily Friedman, the Allen and Kelli Questrom Assistant Curator of Prints and Drawings at the Dallas Museum of Art.

A series of exhibitions by Brand X collaborators including Rashid Johnson and Joel Mesler will be shown at the Philadelphia Art Museum through 2028.

PHILADELPHIA ART MUSEUM

Morgan, Korman, and Field Galleries

2600 Benjamin Franklin Parkway, Philadelphia, PA 19130

www.visitpham.org

16/10/25

Kids ! Between Representation and Reality @ Bucerius Kunst Forum, Hamburg

Kids ! Between Representation and Reality

Bucerius Kunst Forum, Hamburg

28 November 2025 - 6 April 2026

Caspar Netscher

A Portrait of Two Boys, ca. 1680 - 1683

Collection Bob Haboldt, Amsterdam

Jens Juel

Countess Eleonora Sophie Bille Brahe, Née Rantzau,

with her Eldest Son Henrik, 1799

Private collection

Friedrich Seidenstücker

In His Father’s Estate, ca. 1950

Pinakothek der Moderne, Munich,

Ann and Jürgen Wilde Foundation

The exhibition Kids! Between Representation and Reality at the Bucerius Kunst Forum is dedicated to the representation of children in art from the 16th to the 21st century. Six chapters approach the subject from different perspectives and show not only paintings but also photographs, works on paper, prints, media art and sculptures.

The exhibition includes works by Tizian, Anthonis van Dyck, Oskar Kokoschka, Paula Modersohn-Becker, Nobuyoshi Araki, Thomas Lawrence, Joshua Reynolds, Rineke Dijkstra, Judith Leyster, Christoph Amberger, Gerhard Richter and many more.

The multifaceted nature of the exhibition illuminates the diverse perspectives and functions of children's pictures over the centuries. Whether as a symbol of power and domination, as an expression of compassion or as snapshots of happy and sad childhoods: The depictions bear witness to the changing understanding of childhood over the centuries and at the same time illustrate the significance phase of life.

Tizian Vecellio

Double Portrait of Guidobaldo II della Rovere,

Duke of Urbino (1514–1574), and His Son,

Francesco Maria II (1549–1631), 1555

Loaned courtesy of The Klesch Collection

Nicolas Maes

Portrait of a Boy as Adonis, ca. 1670

Joshua Reynolds

Master Crewe as Henry VIII, ca. 1775

Tate Gallery, London, Lent from a Private Collection 2009

The topic of images of children reflects the values and norms of a society and their changes in a special way. Images of children can be used to draw conclusions about social structures and power relations. Origin, status, and sometimes gender play an important role here. At the same time, over the centuries, social groups have influenced each other in the staging of their children and adapted their own representations in the process. How children are shown today is therefore linked to the reception of images of children from earlier times.

The exhibition reveals such cross-references and influences from the past to the present day and also identifies recurring patterns. The exhibition thus begins with a presentation of depictions of Madonna, in which the ideas of mother-child relationships and their influence up to the present day become clear. The father, on the other hand, usually fades into the background. Only when it comes to presenting the progenitor of the family do fathers proudly and consciously show themselves at the side of their young offspring. Until modern times, intimate father-child images were a rarity.

Created in aristocratic circles around 1500, the child portrait was intended to underpin the continuity and claim to power. Against this backdrop, portraits were often created showing the successors to the throne in armor as small adults. In this way, they were prepared for the future role of general and ruler. A playful variant is the portrait historié, in which the children were depicted as ancient gods, for example. Daughters were depicted at a very young age for reasons of marriage policy. Through strategic marriage promises and early marriages, it was possible to expand one's own political influence and territorial power. In the course of the 16th century, the upper classes also portrayed their children, albeit less elaborately. In the 17th century, however, the representative and extravagant portrait of a child became increasingly popular in wider society.

Philipp Otto Runge

Portrait of Luise Perthes, 1805

Klassik Stiftung Weimar, Museums

Henri Martin

Young Peasant Girl in the Sunshine, 1890

John Stanton Ward

The Newspaper Boys, ca. 1960

Rineke Dijkstra

Julia, Amsterdam, 7 March 2022, 2022

Mauritshuis, Koninklijk Kabinet van Schilderijen, The Hague

In the 17th century in particular, Dutch and Spanish genre painters took up the motif of poor children, which still lives on today. The artists were not necessarily interested in taking a socially critical stance. It is not uncommon for children in financially disadvantaged, often precarious life situations to have a smile written all over their faces. Child labor was not fundamentally rejected either. It was seen as a positive contribution that children could make to the family income. Photographs illustrate how differently children grow up globally and structurally to this day. For many children, the street and not the nursery is the place where they come together, interact socially and play together. How the depiction of children has changed over the centuries is made particularly clear in the exhibition by the works of deceased adolescents. In the past, portraits of deceased children were the only means of preserving their memory. Today, commemoration takes place in a different way - for example through lifelike photographs that show children in happy life situations.

The most serious change, which testifies to a different conception and definition of childhood, took place at the end of the 17th century and in the 18th century. Children were now allowed their own development - as close to nature as possible and away from the adult world. The children's room also became increasingly important, and toys and special children's literature were regarded as fundamental elements of its furnishings. The theme of “being a child” is still one of the most popular pictorial themes in the visual arts today: Trying things out, pushing oneself to the limits, drawing, playing and togetherness are characteristic of the most important phase of a person's life.

BUCERIUS KUNST FORUM

Alter Wall 12, 20457 Hamburg

www.buceriuskunstforum.de