The Iconoclasts: Part 1
The first installment of a four-part story cycle by Anne Boyer.
Now available
Gagosian Quarterly Winter 2020
The Winter 2020 issue of Gagosian Quarterly is now available, featuring Jenny Saville’s Prism (2020) on its cover.
Leaders in the Arts: Italy Edition
We invited Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev to select two outstanding arts professionals to join her in a conversation about their career trajectories, current projects, and goals for the future.
Ewa Juszkiewicz: In vain her feet in sparkling laces glow
The artist elaborates on the creation of her first solo exhibition in New York.
Miranda July on Nichols Canyon
A new short film and essay by Miranda July, inspired by David Hockney’s painting Nichols Canyon (1980).
Meleko Mokgosi: Democratic Intuition
Meleko Mokgosi writes about his eight-chapter painting cycle Democratic Intuition (2013–20), an epic of southern African life and folklore, on view at Gagosian in London in his first solo exhibition in the United Kingdom and Europe. Introduction by Louise Neri.
Edmund de Waal: some winter pots
Join the artist in his ceramics studio as he describes the impetus behind his exhibition in London and the importance of touch in the creation of these new works.
Living Death
As part of “New Interiorities,” a supplement guest edited by Alison M. Gingeras and Jamieson Webster for the Winter 2020 issue of the Quarterly, Jacqueline Rose writes powerfully and soberly on the future of feminism in the time of covid.
Murakami on Ceramics
Takashi Murakami writes about his commitment to the work of Japanese ceramic artists associated with the seikatsu kōgei, or lifestyle crafts, movement.
In Conversation
Takashi Murakami and Hans Ulrich Obrist
Hans Ulrich Obrist interviews the artist on the occasion of his 2012 exhibition Takashi Murakami: Flowers & Skulls at Gagosian, Hong Kong.
NXTHVN
NXTHVN is a new national arts model that empowers emerging artists and curators of color through education and access. Through intergenerational mentorship, professional development, and cross-sector collaboration, NXTHVN accelerates professional careers in the arts. Join Titus Kaphar and Jason Price on a tour of the organization’s headquarters in New Haven, Connecticut. They discuss the founding and vision for this singular arts space.
The Iconoclasts: Part 4
The final installment of a four-part story cycle by Anne Boyer.
Events & Announcements
In Conversation
Theaster Gates
Thelma Golden
Monday, January 25, 2021, 6:30pm EST
Gagosian and the Studio Museum in Harlem are pleased to present Theaster Gates in conversation with Thelma Golden, director and chief curator of the Studio Museum in Harlem, New York. This event marks the closing of Black Vessel, Gates’s first-ever solo exhibition in New York, which opened to the public on October 10, 2020, at Gagosian, 555 West 24th Street. The speakers will be introduced by Gagosian director Louise Neri. To join, register at eventbrite.com.
Theaster Gates (left). Photo: Sara Pooley. Thelma Golden (right). Photo: Julie Skarratt
Performance
A space to be
A musical celebration of Edmund de Waal’s “library of exile”
Friday, January 29, 2021, 1–2:30pm EST (6–7:30pm GMT)
Join musician, composer, and television presenter Soumik Datta for an evening of performances to mark the closing of Edmund de Waal’s installation library of exile at the British Museum in London, before the books move to their permanent home at the University of Mosul in Iraq. The event will feature original musical responses to the work by Datta, singer-songwriter Amahla, UK-born rubab virtuoso Shaphwat Simab, and Tasmanian-British saxophonist Yasmin Ogilvie, as well as readings by de Waal and other acclaimed guest writers. To watch the live event, visit the British Museum’s YouTube channel.
Edmund de Waal, library of exile, 2019–20, installation view, British Museum, London, 2020–21 © Edmund de Waal. Photo: Hélène Binet
Tour
Vera Lutter
Museum in the Camera
Friday, January 29, 2021, 3–4pm EST
Join Los Angeles County Museum of Art director Michael Govan and the museum’s associate curator of contemporary art Jennifer King for an insightful conversation and tour of the exhibition Vera Lutter: Museum in the Camera. Between February 2017 and January 2019, Lutter documented LACMA using a camera obscura, creating photographs that examine the museum’s exterior architecture, gallery interiors, and permanent collection. Museum in the Camera features the compelling photographs made during this two-year residency. To watch the live event, RSVP at lacma.org.
Installation view, Vera Lutter: Museum in the Camera, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, March 29–August 9, 2020. Artwork © Vera Lutter. Photo: © Museum Associates/LACMA
In Conversation
Giuseppe Penone
Hans Ulrich Obrist
Tuesday, January 26, 2021, 1pm EST
Join Gagosian for a conversation between Giuseppe Penone and Hans Ulrich Obrist, artistic director of the Serpentine Galleries, London. The pair will discuss the artist’s practice, which is deeply engaged with nature and time, as well as his outdoor installation in San Francisco. Two large-scale bronze sculptures cast from trees—La logica del vegetale (The Logic of the Vegetal) (2012) and Idee di pietra (Ideas of Stone) (2004)—are dramatically installed in Fort Mason’s Great Meadow, overlooking San Francisco Bay and the Golden Gate Bridge, through March 28, 2021. To join, register at eventbrite.com.
Giuseppe Penone, Idee di pietra (Ideas of Stone), 2004, installation view, Fort Mason, San Francisco, 2019–2021 © Giuseppe Penone/2021 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York/ADAGP, Paris. Photo: Matthew Millman
Museum Exhibitions
Opening this Week
Chris Burden in
Climate Changing: On Artists, Institutions, and the Social Environment
January 30–May 9, 2021
Wexner Center for the Arts, Ohio State University, Columbus
wexarts.org
Climate Changing foregrounds contemporary artists’ engagement with social issues and shaping institutions—an engagement that has become all the more critical during the entwined health crises of systemic racism and COVID-19. Together the works in the exhibition encourage a collective reimagining of our social environment. In addition to presenting nine commissioned works, the exhibition restages a work commissioned for the Center’s inaugural year: Chris Burden’s Wexner Castle (1990). By adding battlements to the brick sections of the building’s deconstructivist design (a reference to the Armory that once stood on its site), the late artist’s work encourages visitors to reflect on the role museums play in today’s society.
Chris Burden, Wexner Castle, 1990/2020 © Chris Burden/Licensed by The Chris Burden Estate and Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York
Opening this Week
Theaster Gates in
Lost and Looking
January 30–June 5, 2021
Lubeznik Center for the Arts, Michigan City, Indiana
www.lubeznikcenter.org
Considering how place and loss affect us all, the artists included in Lost and Looking confront the reality of our pasts and our futures. Places from our collective and personal histories help define who we are even as they remain fluid in our mind’s eyes. The exhibiting artists consistently explore how true or fictionalized memories can be, and how accurate or inaccurate recorded history truly is. The ever-shifting landscape, filled with false histories, be they personal or historical, drives these artists in their quest for higher meaning. Work by Theaster Gates is included.
Theaster Gates, Whyte Hole, 2010 © Theaster Gates
Closing this Week
Taryn Simon in
Measure Your Existence
Through January 24, 2021
Rubin Museum of Art, New York
rubinmuseum.org
Measure Your Existence questions and expands the Buddhist concept of impermanence through artworks by six contemporary artists who explore duration, survival, memory, fate, history, loss, disappearance, and reappearance. Work by Taryn Simon is included.
Taryn Simon, Chapter XIV, 2011, from the series A Living Man Declared Dead and Other Chapters I–XVIII, 2008–11 © Taryn Simon
Closing this Week
Soleils noirs
Through January 25, 2021
Musée du Louvre-Lens, France
www.louvrelens.fr
This sensory exhibition, whose title translates to Black Suns, offers a fresh perspective on the color black, which has been endowed with a multitude of symbolic meanings in Western art from antiquity to the present day. The exhibition features nearly 180 works, intermingling periods and disciplines, and spanning painting, fashion, the decorative arts, the moving image, and installations. Work by Douglas Gordon, Simon Hantaï, and Damien Hirst is included.
Simon Hantaï, Etude I, suite pour Pierre Reverdy, 1969 © Archives Simon Hantaï/ADAGP, Paris, 2020. Photo: Claude Gaspari