WANAFOTO: sculptures

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01/11/25

Guan Xiao @ Kunsthalle Wien - 'Teenager' Exhibition

Guan Xiao: Teenager

Kunsthalle Wien

8 October 2025 – 11 January 2026

Guan Xiao

Jeanake, 2025

David Kordansky Gallery, Los Angeles/New York

Guan Xiao

Midhight Pancake, 2025

David Kordansky Gallery, Los Angeles/New York

Guan Xiao

Cyclemony, 2025

David Kordansky Gallery, Los Angeles/New York

Installation view Guan Xiao: Teenager,

Glitea, 2025, Kunsthalle Wien 2025

Photo by Markus Wörgötter

Kunsthalle Wien presents the first solo exhibition in Austria by Guan Xiao (b. 1983, Chongqing, China). Comprising an entirely new body of sculpture and painting, it takes what Guan Xiao describes as the ‘ambiguous life stage’ of the teenager as a starting point for works that reflect upon the currents, conflicts and absurdities of a society impacted by the values of capitalism and liberalism:

A teenager is typically thought to be impulsive, led by their intuition and open to possibilities, changes and uncertainty. They can be dramatic, riven with self-doubt. I see them as both challenging and conquering reality and these ideas echo through this body of work which has a lot to do with this conflicted state of change and uncertainty. – Guan Xiao

Installation view Guan Xiao: Teenager, Kunsthalle Wien 2025

David Kordansky Gallery, Los Angeles/New York

and Kraupa-Tuskany Zeidler, Berlin/Munich

Photo by Markus Wörgötter

Installation view Guan Xiao: Teenager,

Torso, 2025, Kunsthalle Wien 2025

Photo by Markus Wörgötter

Installation view Guan Xiao: Teenager,

Torso, 2025, Kunsthalle Wien 2025

Photo by Markus Wörgötter

A large, furry A-Frame structure bisects the space, creating a tunnel at the centre of the exhibition. Animated by light, it harbours a collection of cast aluminium objects including scaled-up items of cutlery, a moka pot and a series of enlarged eggs. Outside are a series of gnarled tree roots cast in brass, painted and appended with motorcycle parts and cartoon-like clouds of scribble. These anthropomorphic sculptures with mesh plates or antennae-like wands populate the space like a cast of characters. Two modular columns extend respectively pink and blue arms from aluminium, claw-like bases that resemble oversized bunches of bananas. On the walls, a triptych of panels simulates large, palette-shaped windows covered in a thick layer of paint.

Installation view Guan Xiao: Teenager,

The spent siesta, like a sun-dried memory, 2025; Raining, 2025;

Approaching Dust, 2025, Kunsthalle Wien 2025

David Kordansky Gallery, Los Angeles/New York

Photo by Markus Wörgötter

Guan Xiao

Raining, 2025

David Kordansky Gallery, Los Angeles/New York

Guan Xiao

Raining (detail), 2025

David Kordansky Gallery, Los Angeles/New York

Guan Xiao originally trained as a filmmaker before becoming known for creating sculpture that triggers an impulse for us to create our own narratives and tell stories about what we see. Earlier works resembled museological displays or photography studios that appeared to unite an eclectic selection of objects and images in one scheme. More recent sculpture refers to the Chinese custom of displaying polished tree roots in domestic settings. The practice of root carving dates back to the Warring States Period (474–221 BC), preserving the natural, given form of the wood. Its popularity over the centuries made it a symbol of economic wealth, while becoming a worn-out cultural cliché, denoting a lack of sophistication. In Guan Xiao’s work, the tree root becomes the basis of a singular, mythical creature in an ever-growing multitude of animal or human-like figures. Working with an array of elements – some meticulously hand-crafted, others mass produced – she references a broad range of cultural material that is defamiliarized and uncoupled from its associations to create an ambiguous, semi-fictional space and time.

Teenager returns to fundamental subjects such as food, clothing and shelter to address questions of progress and civilisation, tradition and spirituality that are central to the multi-faceted, playful and poetic work of Guan Xiao. The ‘conflicted state’ of the teenager is used as a metaphor for a society that the artist perceives to be suspended between ‘devotion and restraint’, needs and desires and ancient, philosophical, social and ethical values that are ‘in direct opposition’ to the economic system of capitalism:

China’s imperial history and Confucianism praise restraint suppress individuality. Yets imperial history and Confucianism praise restraint suppress individuality. Yets imperial history and Confucianism praise restraint suppress individuality. Yet subculture, independent cultures throughout history emphasise individuality […]. This contradiction is fundamentally between the philosophical systems of Asia and the economic system of capitalism – a conflict between two modes of thought […]. You might say captitalism is about 'construction', while Asian philosophy is about 'destruction.' – Guan Xiao

Guan Xiao

Photo: Mathilde Agius and Art Basel

Artist Guan Xiao Biography

Guan Xiao (b. 1983, Chongqing, China) has held solo exhibitions at Bonner Kunstverein; Contemporary Art Museum, St. Louis (both 2019); Kunsthalle Winterthur (2018); Jeu de Paume, Paris (2016); K11 Art Foundation, Shanghai and ICA, London (both 2016). Her work has also been exhibited at Start Museum, Shanghai (2024); Mudam Luxembourg (2023 and 2021); Museum Ludwig, Cologne (2023); Mercedes-Benz Museum, Stuttgart; Kunsthal Charlottenborg, Copenhagen (both 2022); the 34th Bienial de São Paulo; the 58th Belgrade Biennale (both 2021); X Museum Triennial; Kunstmuseum St. Gallen; Sharjah Art Foundation (all 2020); Triennale Kleinplastik Fellbach; Honolulu Biennial; Migros Museum, Zurich (all 2019); the 57th Venice Biennale; Julia Stoschek Collection, Berlin; M HKA Museum of Contemporary Art, Antwerp (all 2017); 9th Berlin Biennale; ZKM, Karlsruhe (both 2016) and the 13th Biennale de Lyon (2015). Her public art commissions include works for Skulpturenpark Köln (2020); Anyang Public Art Project (2019) and High Line, New York (2017). Guan Xiao lives and works in Beijing.

Publication: Kunsthalle Wien will publish an exhibition catalogue that will also be the first monograph on Guan Xiao. Published in English and German it includes new essays by Chelsea Qianxi Liu, curator at UCCA Center for Contemporary Art, Beijing and Sarah Johanna Theurer, curator at Haus der Kunst, Munich alongside an extensive interview between the artist and Michelle Cotton, Artistic Director Kunsthalle Wien.

KUNSTHALLE WIEN

Museumsquartier, Museumsplatz 1, 1070 Vienna

www.kunsthallewien.at

26/10/25

Daniel Arsham @ Perrotin Dubai - 'What Remains' Inaugural Exhibition of the New Gallery

Daniel Arsham

What Remains

Perrotin Dubai

October 30, 2025 – January 10, 2026

Daniel Arsham

Members of the Future, Cenote Exploration, 2024

Acrylic on canvas panel

Unframed: 121.9 × 147.3 × 5.7 cm | 48 × 58 × 2.25 in.

Framed: 110.5 × 134.6 × 5.7 cm | 43 1/2 × 53 1/2 × 2.25 in.

Photo: Guillaume Ziccarelli

Daniel Arsham

Audio Bonsai 003, 2025

Copper wire, wood, speakers

153 × 132.1 × 101.6 cm | 60 1/4 × 52 × 40 in

Perrotin Dubai presents a debut solo exhibition What Remains by American artist Daniel Arsham. This exhibition marks the first solo show since the opening of the Perrotin Dubai gallery. What Remains features several new series from Arsham's extensive practice, including sculpture, painting and drawing, and a new sound installation, focusing on themes of cultural memory, and the passage of time.

Daniel Arsham transforms the gallery into a sonic installation with his latest sculptural series of copper wrapped bonsai tree sculptures. Doubling as functional stereo speakers, these works will play ambient music throughout the exhibition. This new series pays homage to Japanese Zen Buddhist culture and Arsham’s past presentations of sand zen gardens, which he has exhibited around the world at the Lotte Museum, South Korea and the Musée Guimet, France, among others.

Daniel Arsham

Stairs in the Labyrinth, 2025

Sand. 72 × 44.5 × 45.7 cm | 28 3/8 × 17 1/2 × 18 in.

Daniel Arsham also unveils a new suite of works relating to his recent Labyrinth series. Composed in cast sand, Arsham’s Stairs in a Labyrinth draws influence from artists like M.C. Escher and Renee Magritte’s maze-like works to create a sculptural double portrait. From head-on the work appears as a portrait bust of a sitter, transforming in the profile view into a maze of architectural levels and stairwells. Alongside the sculpture, Daniel Arsham presents a stilllife painting of another labyrinth bust and a selection of charcoal prepatory drawings. In this series, Daniel Arsham beckons viewers to navigate intricate compositions, suggesting an interplay of layers and pathways reminiscent of archeological sites where the past reveals itself in unexpected ways.

Alongside these new series, Daniel Arsham expands his decades-long project of “Fictional Archaeology,” where the artist examines objects from the twentieth century that are containers for collective cultural memory. Cast in his signature materials of geologic crystals and pigmented hydrostone, patinated bronze, and fiberglass, Daniel Arsham presents objects like a Rolling Stone magazine eroded with pink quartz crystals, a NY Yankees hat that appears to be emerging out of the architecture of the wall, and a bronze scaled replica of a 1985 DMC Delorean car - immortalized in the film Back to the Future.

Daniel Arsham has spent over twenty years cultivating an artistic universe that challenges conventional perceptions of time and reality. His works often evoke a sense of nostalgia and imaginative exploration, encouraging viewers to reflect on our collective history and the artifacts that shape our cultural identity.

Artist Daniel Arsham Biography

Born in Cleveland, Ohio, in 1980, New York based artist Daniel Arsham’s work explores the fields of fine art, architecture, performance, design and film. Raised in Miami, Daniel Arsham attended the Cooper Union in New York City where he received the Gelman Trust Fellowship Award in 2003. Soon thereafter Daniel Arsham toured worldwide with the Merce Cunningham Dance Company as the company’s stage designer. The experience led to an ongoing collaborative practice which continues as Arsham works with world renowned artists, musicians, designers, and brands including Moët & Chandon, Tiffany’s, Porsche and Dior, among others. In 2021 Arsham was appoint ed the role of creative director of the Cleveland Cavaliers, becoming the first ever fine artist to hold a position of this nature.

Arsham’s uchronic aesthetics revolves around his concept of fictional archaeology. Working in a multitude of disciplines he creates and crystallizes ambiguous in-between spaces and situations, and stages what he refers to as future relics of the present. Always iconic, most of the objects that he turns into stone refer to the late 20th century or millennial era, when technological obsolescence unprecedentedly accelerated along with the digital dematerialization of our world. While the present, the future and the past poetically collide in his haunted yet playful visions between romanticism and pop art, Arsham also experiments with the timelessness of certain symbols and gestures across cultures.

Daniel Arsham has presented solo exhibitions at the Lotte Art Museum in Seoul, South Korea; Sculpture Center, Cleveland, Ohio; Orange County Museum of Art, Costa Mesa and the Petersen Automobile Museum, Los Angeles, California; Yorkshire Sculpture Park, Leeds, U.K.; Musée Guimet, Paris and MAMO Cité Radieuse Arts Center, Marseille, France; UCCA Center for Contemporary Art, Dune, Beidaihe, and HOW Museum, Shanghai, China; MOCO Museum London and Amsterdam; Contemporary Arts Center Cincinnati, Ohio; and the High Museum of Art in Atlanta, Georgia, among others.His work has been presented at MoMA PS1, The New Museum and LongHouse Reserve in New York, Norton Museum in Palm Beach, The Athens Biennale in Athens; Musée Fenaille in Rodez, La Defense in Paris, and Carré d’Art de Nîmes in France, and SCAD Museum of Art in Savannah, Georgia, among others.

Arsham’s works are in the public collections of Blanton Museum of Art, Texas; Centre Pompidou, Paris; Georgia Museum of Art, Athens; ICA Miami, Florida; Musée Guimet, Paris; National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, Australia; National Museum of Qatar, Doha; Pérez Art Museum Miami (PAMM), Florida; Rhode Island School of Design (RISD); and the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis.

PERROTIN DUBAI

DIFC, Gate Village, Building 5, Unit 1, Podium Level, Dubai

www.perrotin.com

22/10/25

Anish Kapoor @ Jewish Museum, NYC - 'Early Works' Exhibition

Anish Kapoor: Early Works

Jewish Museum, New York

October 24, 2025 - February 1, 2026

The Jewish Museum presents the first American museum exhibition to focus solely on the formative early work of renowned artist Anish Kapoor. These rarely seen works include Kapoor’s striking pigment sculptures, together with works on paper and sketchbooks. Anish Kapoor: Early Works reveals the experimental proclivities of a trailblazing artist at the beginning of his career. The exhibition opens concurrently with the Jewish Museum’s inauguration of its newly transformed collection galleries and learning center.

Born in Mumbai (1954) and following a time in Israel in the early 1970s, Anish Kapoor moved to England to study art. Since his first solo exhibition in 1980, he has gone on to become one of the most internationally recognizable artists working today. His distinctive sculptural idiom, which first emerges in these early works, brought a radically new voice to British art and then to the international stage. Drawing on an engagement with Conceptual art and Minimalism, his early work was suffused with his unique approach to materiality and presence. Through some 55 works on view, including a selection of recent sculpture, the exhibition foregrounds the artist’s early and ongoing investigations of the boundaries of sculpture, color, and form.

“The Jewish Museum has a long tradition of presenting contemporary art as part of its ongoing commitment to exploring the narrative of shared humanity worldwide, together with the rich diversity of the global Jewish experience,” said James S. Snyder, Helen Goldsmith Menschel Director. “Anish Kapoor: Early Works reinforces this mission by exploring the boundary-pushing practice of one of the most influential artists of our time, while also highlighting themes of ritual, perception, and the power of materiality that resonate across the diversity of world cultures and histories.”

Early Works presents Kapoor’s pigment sculptures in richly hued and evocative groupings that seduce and confound with their uncanny combinations of cleanly articulated forms with delicate and unstable surfaces of loose pigment that migrates across floors and walls. The exhibition also explores how formal vocabularies and perceptual concerns present in Kapoor’s early sculptures connect to his later work. On view are also select examples of Kapoor’s more recent sculptures created with Vantablack, a nanotechnological substance that absorbs nearly all light. Presented together, these sculptures showcase the artist’s masterful play with perception, drawing on the psychic effects of color—and its absence—as well as the allure of objects that appear to defy their own material nature.

Also on view is a selection of Kapoor’s early drawings and gouaches. Intimately scaled, these works depict surreal, gestural, and subtly irregular forms, offering an aesthetic counterbalance to the formally austere sculptures where virtually all traces of the artist’s hand have been erased.

“These extraordinary early works are virtually unknown to American audiences and represent a side of Kapoor that will be revelatory,” said Darsie Alexander, Senior Deputy Director and Susan and Elihu Rose Chief Curator. “Our show offers a rare glimpse into Kapoor’s process of pairing of color and form to explore the spiritual, psychic, and physical possibilities of sculpture. A keen eye towards the placement of objects transforms how they are perceived by viewers and foretells a future making environmental works on a much larger scale. We are thrilled to be organizing this effort in collaboration with the artist.”

Artist Anish Kapoor

Anish Kapoor is recognized internationally as one of today’s leading contemporary artists, renowned for sculptural works that are adventures in form and in engagement public space.

Kapoor’s work has been exhibited worldwide, with recent solo exhibitions at Cidade Matarazzo, São Paulo, Brazil (2024); Liverpool Cathedral, UK (2024); ARKEN Museum of Contemporary Art, Ishøj, Denmark (2024); and Palazzo Strozzi, Florence, Italy (2023-24), among others. Large scale public projects by Kapoor include Cloud Gate (2004) in Millennium Park, Chicago, USA; Dismemberment Site I (2003–2009), Kaipara Bay, New Zealand; Turning the World Upside Down (2010), The Israel Museum, Jerusalem; and Ark Nova (2013), the world’s first inflatable concert hall in Japan.

Anish Kapoor represented Britain at the 44th Venice Biennale in 1990 with Void Field (1989), for which he was awarded the Premio Duemila for Best Young Artist and won the Turner Prize in 1991. He was awarded a CBE in 2003 and a Knighthood in 2013 for services to visual arts.

Born in Mumbai, India in 1954, Anish Kapoor lives and works in London and Venice, Italy. He studied at Hornsey College of Art, London, followed by postgraduate studies at Chelsea School of Art, London.

This exhibition is organized by the Jewish Museum’s Senior Deputy Director and Susan and Elihu Rose Chief Curator Darsie Alexander and Leon Levy Associate Curator Shira Backer, in close collaboration with the artist and his studio.

JEWISH MUSEUM, NEW YORK

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

thejewishmuseum.org

Previous Exhibition on Wanafoto:

Ben Shahn, On Nonconformity, May 23 — October 12, 2025

18/10/25

Ruth Asawa: A Retrospective @ MoMA - The Museum of Modern Art, New York

Ruth Asawa: A Retrospective

MoMA, The Museum of Modern Art, New York

October 19, 2025 – February 7, 2026

Installation view of Ruth Asawa: A Retrospective

on view at The Museum of Modern Art

from October 19, 2025, through February 7, 2026

The Museum of Modern Art, New York

Photo by Jonathan Dorado

Installation view of Ruth Asawa: A Retrospective

on view at The Museum of Modern Art

from October 19, 2025, through February 7, 2026

The Museum of Modern Art, New York

Photo by Jonathan Dorado

Installation view of Ruth Asawa: A Retrospective

on view at The Museum of Modern Art

from October 19, 2025, through February 7, 2026

The Museum of Modern Art, New York

Photo by Jonathan Dorado

The Museum of Modern Art presents Ruth Asawa: A Retrospective, the first major museum exhibition to fully consider every aspect of the artist’s expansive, groundbreaking practice, on view in the Steven and Alexandra Cohen Center for Special Exhibitions. Coinciding with the centennial of the artist’s birth, the exhibition includes some 300 objects that highlight the core values of experimentation and interconnectedness pervading all dimensions of Asawa’s practice. The retrospective spans the six decades of Asawa’s ambitious career, presenting a range of her work across mediums, including wire sculptures, bronze casts, paper folds, paintings, and a comprehensive body of works on paper. Artworks are accompanied by a rich array of archival materials—photographs, documents, and ephemera—that illuminate her public commissions, art advocacy, and meaningful, lasting relationships with members of her community. The exhibition follows a loose chronological arc, interwoven with thematic sections elaborating on the artist’s inspirations and methods.

“What’s exceptional about Asawa’s practice is the multiplicity of her artistic pursuits and the marvelous ability to turn the simplest things into subjects of lifelong creative contemplation,” said Cara Manes. “The exhibition aims to offer multiple points of entry into her work, reflecting what Asawa described as the ‘total act’ of artmaking.”

Ruth Asawa at Ruth Asawa: A Retrospective View,

San Francisco Museum of Art, 1973

Photograph by Laurence Cuneo

Ruth Asawa (1926–2013) was born in Norwalk, California, and raised on a farm. In the wake of Executive Order 9066 signed in 1942, the teenage Asawa and her family were unlawfully incarcerated in war relocation camps along with thousands of people of Japanese descent. After the end of World War II, Asawa enrolled in the experimental Black Mountain College near Asheville, North Carolina, where she explored the artistic possibilities of ordinary materials. There, she developed a technique for looping wire informed by Mexican wire basketry, which she had observed firsthand as a student volunteer in Toluca. This invention would lead to her most consequential contribution to abstract sculpture in the 20th century: a radical body of suspended, intricate looped-wire sculptures. The exhibition begins with a selection of works from her time at Black Mountain College, including explorations of materials, color, and shape in drawings, collages, and prints such as Untitled (BMC.145, BMC Laundry Stamp) (c. 1948–49).

Installation view of Ruth Asawa: A Retrospective

on view at The Museum of Modern Art

from October 19, 2025, through February 7, 2026

The Museum of Modern Art, New York

Photo by Jonathan Dorado

Installation view of Ruth Asawa: A Retrospective

on view at The Museum of Modern Art

from October 19, 2025, through February 7, 2026

The Museum of Modern Art, New York

Photo by Jonathan Dorado

Ruth Asawa continued her material experimentation in wire and paper following her 1949 move to San Francisco, the city that would be the center of her artistic activities for the rest of her life, and where she established a tightly knit family and community. Shortly after her arrival there, she articulated the key motifs and shapes in her looped wire forms in works like Untitled (S.535, Hanging Five-Lobed Continuous Form within a Form with Spheres in the First and Fourth Lobes and a Teardrop Form in the Third Lobe) (1951), on view in the exhibition. She also expanded her range of techniques in drawing, printmaking, and paperfolding, while taking on various commercial design commissions and exhibiting regularly at the Peridot Gallery in New York. In the early 1960s, Ruth Asawa discovered a new method of working with wire by tying and splaying it in ways that evoke organic structures, as seen in works like Untitled (S.390, Hanging Tied-Wire, Double-Sided, Center-Tied, Multi-Branched Form with Curly Ends) (1963).

Ruth Asawa

Untitled (S.390 Hanging Tied-Wire, Double-Sided, Center-Tied,

Multi-Branched Form with Curly Ends), 1963

Copper wire. 20 × 20 × 20 in. (50.8 × 50.8 × 50.8 cm)

Black Mountain College Museum + Arts Center,

Gift of Rita Newman

Installation view of Ruth Asawa: A Retrospective

on view at The Museum of Modern Art

from October 19, 2025, through February 7, 2026

The Museum of Modern Art, New York

Photo by Jonathan Dorado

Ruth Asawa

Poppy, 1965

Lithograph. 30 1∕16 × 20 9∕16 in. (76.4 × 52.2 cm)

Publisher and printer: Tamarind Lithography Workshop, Los Angeles

Edition: proof outside the edition of 20

The Museum of Modern Art, New York,

Gift of Kleiner, Bell & Co., 1967

Ruth Asawa continued to experiment with natural forms during a residency at the Tamarind Lithography Workshop in Los Angeles in 1965, where she produced a portfolio of diverse, formally rigorous and experimental prints. Drawing from MoMA’s collection, a concentration of works from this portfolio are included in the exhibition, many of which are on view for the first time.

Parallel to her artistic experimentation, Ruth Asawa dedicated herself to her lifelong quest to integrate arts education and practice. One of Asawa’s most transformative projects was the Alvarado Arts Workshop, which started as a grassroots initiative and grew to a momentous movement that embedded vital arts-education programming in San Francisco Bay Area public school systems. Galleries in the exhibition feature archival material related to Asawa’s civic engagement, teaching practice and numerous collaborative public art projects, including Japanese American Internment Memorial (1994) commissioned by the city of San José. Focus on Asawa’s visionary pedagogy extends to the exhibition’s public programming.

Ruth Asawa

Untitled (PF.293, Bouquet from Anni Albers), early 1990s

Ink on paper. 40 × 26 in. (101.6 × 66 cm)

Private collection

A final gallery in the exhibition highlights the last decades of Asawa’s life, which were marked by a renewed dedication to a daily drawing practice. Ruth Asawa tenderly documented her surroundings, paying particular attention to the botanical forms around her, as seen in works such as Untitled (PF.293, Bouquet from Anni Albers) (early 1990s).

Ruth Asawa: A Retrospectiveis an exhibition partnership between the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA) and The Museum of Modern Art, New York (MoMA). The exhibition is organized by Cara Manes, Associate Curator, Department of Painting and Sculpture, MoMA and Janet Bishop, Thomas Weisel Family Chief Curator and Curator of Painting and Sculpture, SFMOMA; with Dominika Tylcz, Curatorial Assistant, Department of Painting and Sculpture, MoMA; and Marin Sarvé-Tarr, Assistant Curator, and William Hernández Luege, Curatorial Associate, Painting and Sculpture, SFMOMA.

The exhibition was on view at SFMOMA (April 4 – September 2, 2025). After its presentation at MoMA, it will travel to Guggenheim Museum Bilbao, Spain (March 20 – September 13, 2026); and Fondation Beyeler, Riehen/Basel, Switzerland (October 18, 2026 – January 24, 2027).

MoMA - The Museum of Modern Art, New York

www.moma.org

02/10/25

Sean Scully @ Bucerius Kunst Forum, Hamburg - 'Stories' Retrospective Exhibition

Sean Scully. Stories

Bucerius Kunst Forum, Hamburg

27 June - 2 November 2025

Sean Scully in Sean Scully. Stories,