La Ribaute: Transitive, It Transforms
Camille Morineau writes of the triumph of the feminine at Anselm Kiefer’s former studio-estate in Barjac, France, describing the site and its installations as a demonstration of women’s power, a meditation on inversion and permeability, and a reversal of the long invisibility of women in history and myth.
Now available
Gagosian Quarterly Summer 2022
The Summer 2022 issue of Gagosian Quarterly is now available, with two different covers—featuring Takashi Murakami’s 108 Bonnō MURAKAMI.FLOWERS (2022) and Andreas Gursky’s V & R II (2022).
Anselm Kiefer: Architect of Landscape and Cosmology
Jérôme Sans visits La Ribaute in Barjac, France, the vast studio-estate transformed by Anselm Kiefer over the course of decades. The labyrinthine site, now open to the public, stands as a total work of art, reflecting through its grounds, pavilions, and passageways major themes in Kiefer’s oeuvre: regeneration, mythology, memory, and more.
Hans Ulrich Obrist’s Questionnaire: Theaster Gates
In this ongoing series, curator Hans Ulrich Obrist has devised a set of thirty-seven questions that invite artists, authors, musicians, and other visionaries to address key elements of their lives and creative practices. Respondents are invited to make a selection from the larger questionnaire and to reply in as many or as few words as they desire. For this installment, we are honored to present the artist Theaster Gates, whose Serpentine Pavilion 2022 Black Chapel opened in London on June 10.
In Conversation
Toyo Ito, Marc Newson, and Koji Yanai
The Tokyo Toilet project has added twelve new public restrooms by renowned architects and designers to the city’s map since 2020, with five more scheduled to open in 2022. To learn more about the initiative, the Quarterly spoke with founder Koji Yanai and two of the participating designers, Toyo Ito and Marc Newson.
Story of the Editor
Fiona Alison Duncan profiles six literary editors who are changing the standards of publishing.
Memoirs of a Poltergeist: Part 1
The first installment of a short story by Venita Blackburn.
At the Edge
Chris Burden: Prelude to a Lost Performance
Michael Auping tells the Quarterly’s Alison McDonald about the preparations for a performance by Chris Burden at the Newport Harbor Art Museum in Southern California in 1974—and the event’s abrupt cancellation—providing a glimpse into the mindset of a young, aggressive, and ambitious artist in the early stages of his career.
Behind the Art
Louise Bonnet: Onslaught
Join Louise Bonnet in her Los Angeles studio as she works on new paintings ahead of her exhibition Onslaught, at Gagosian, Hong Kong.
Fashion and Art: Pieter Mulier
Pieter Mulier, creative director of Alaïa, presented his second collection for the legendary house in Paris in January 2022. After the presentation, Mulier spoke with Derek Blasberg about the show’s inspirations, including a series of ceramics by Pablo Picasso, and about his profound reverence for the intimacy and artistry of the atelier.
Alexandria Smith Selects
Alexandria Smith has curated a selection of films that have influenced her practice for many years, as part of a series copresented by Gagosian and Metrograph. The program, on view in the theater and online from May 20 to June 2, 2022, features cinema exploring themes of loneliness through the prism of the fantastical; notions of family through spirituality; and the deconstruction of narrative through the disruption and manipulation of time.
Regards de Setsuko
Join Setsuko on a tour of her exhibition at the Musée national des châteaux de Malmaison et Bois-Préau in Rueil-Malmaison, France, the former residence of Empress Joséphine. The video brings together the artist; Isabelle Tamisier-Vétois, chief curator, and Élisabeth Caude, director, Musée national des châteaux de Malmaison et Bois-Préau; and Benoît Astier de Villatte, cofounder of the atelier Astier de Villatte, Paris. They discuss the origins and development of the project, which is designed as a dialogue between Setsuko’s work and the decorative ceramics held in the museum’s collection.
Events & Announcements
Shop Takeover
Theaster Gates
June 10–July 2, 2022
Gagosian Shop, London
Theaster Gates is taking over the Gagosian Shop in London’s historic Burlington Arcade on the occasion of his 2022 Serpentine Pavilion, Black Chapel, and his exhibition at Gagosian, Basel, titled ASHEN. For the takeover, Gates created an immersive environment in which visitors may explore his wide-ranging practice.
The display includes wall and floor sculptures featuring a range of clay vessels—tea bowls, water jars, sake cups—forms that are foundational to Gates’s art making. Downstairs, the bottom floor of the Shop has been transformed into a reading room where visitors can browse a curated selection of books that have influenced the artist, with subjects ranging from urban planning and pottery to the Russian avant-garde. Two limited-edition vinyl records produced by Gates and his musical ensemble the Black Monks are also available.
Theaster Gates takeover at the Gagosian Shop, London, 2022. Artwork © Theaster Gates. Photo: Prudence Cuming Associates Ltd
Installation
Idee di pietra (Ideas of Stone)
Giuseppe Penone in Caracalla
June 7–October 30, 2022
Terme di Caracalla, Rome
www.coopculture.it
Four monumental bronze sculptures of trees by Giuseppe Penone—Idee di pietra, Olmo (2008), Idee di pietra, Ciliegio (2011), Triplice (2011), and ldentity (2019)—are installed in the former Olympic-size swimming pool of the Terme di Caracalla in Rome. Built in the early third century CE, these public baths occupy a vast area near the Palatine Hill in the center of the city and are defined by mighty walls, some up to 30 meters (almost 100 feet) high, and extensive and well-preserved mosaic floors. Installed among the ruins, Penone’s trees are in dialogue with the architecture of the past, inspiring reflection on humanity’s relationship with nature, space, and time.
Installation view, Idee di pietra (Ideas of Stone): Giuseppe Penone in Caracalla, Baths of Caracalla, Rome, June 7–October 30, 2022. Artwork © Giuseppe Penone/2022 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York/ADAGP, Paris. Photo: Pepi Marchetti Franchi
Screening
Nam June Paik’s Radical Fun
Thursday, June 30, 2022, 7:30pm
Anthology Film Archives, New York
anthologyfilmarchives.org
Join us for a video program that brings together a selection of Nam June Paik’s analog video works along with Internet-era works by artists including Ilana Harris-Babou, Frank Heath, Maggie Lee, Guthrie Lonergan, LoVid, and Martine Syms. The selection is curated by Rebecca Cleman, executive director at Electronic Arts Intermix (EAI), and copresented by Anthology Film Archives, EAI, and Gagosian, on the occasion of Art in Process, a two-part survey of works by Paik at Gagosian, New York.
Since the early 1960s, Paik’s prescient thinking about how artists can exploit television and computer technology has resonated through generations, particularly with regard to his mischievous opposition to industry conformity. His strongly held belief in the radical potential of fun, and his understanding of technological innovation as nurturing artistic innovation, have remained relevant through profound changes in communication platforms. To attend the event, purchase tickets at ticketing.uswest.veezi.com.
Nam June Paik, Edited for Television, 1975 (still) © Nam June Paik Estate. Photo: courtesy Electronic Arts Intermix
Honor
Wall of Oil Barrels—The Iron Curtain
Sixty-Year Anniversary Celebration
Monday, June 27, 2022, 9pm
rue Visconti, Paris
On the evening of June 27, 1962, Christo and Jeanne-Claude installed Wall of Oil Barrels—The Iron Curtain, closing the historic rue Visconti with eighty-nine barrels. The 4.2-meter-high barricade blocked one of narrowest streets in Paris for eight hours, obstructing most of the traffic through the Left Bank. To celebrate the sixty-year anniversary of the work, the city of Paris is closing the street and visitors on-site will be able to activate an augmented-reality animation of the barrels. The event is free and open to the public.
Christo and Jeanne-Claude’s Wall of Oil Barrels—The Iron Curtain (1961–62) on rue Visconti, Paris, June 27, 1962. Artwork © Christo and Jeanne-Claude Foundation. Photo: Jean-Dominique Lajoux
Museum Exhibitions
Opening Today
Virgil Abloh
“Figures of Speech”
July 1, 2022–January 29, 2023
Brooklyn Museum, New York
www.brooklynmuseum.org
Virgil Abloh pioneered a practice that cuts across mediums and connects visual artists, musicians, graphic designers, fashion designers, and architects. This exhibition, which originated at the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, offers an in-depth look at defining highlights of Abloh’s career and includes a program of cross-disciplinary offerings that mirror the artist’s range of interests. The Brooklyn Museum presentation, which includes never-before-seen objects from Abloh’s archive and a social sculpture drawing on his background in architecture, is organized by Gagosian director Antwaun Sargent.
Takashi Murakami and Virgil Abloh, “TIMES: FLAMES”, 2018 ©︎ Virgil Abloh and ©︎ Takashi Murakami. Photo: Josh White
Opening Today
John Currin in
Pictus Porrectus: Reconsidering the Full Length Portrait
July 1–October 2, 2022
Isaac Bell House, Newport, Rhode Island
www.artandnewport.org
After more than a century of falling out of fashion, the full-length, life-size portrait—which originally served as an ostentatious display of power and wealth that reinforced aristocratic and ecclesiastical hierarchies—has undergone a radical paradigm shift in recent decades. Contemporary artists have breathed new life into this old-fashioned genre by reinvigorating it with new subjects outside of passé Anglo-European power structures. This exhibition of full-length portraiture, curated by Alison Gingeras and Dodie Kazanjian, is a collaboration between Art & Newport and the Preservation Society of Newport County. Work by John Currin is included.
John Currin, Sunflower, 2021 © John Currin
Opening this Week
Stanley Whitney in
Sensory Poetics: Collecting Abstraction
July 8–October 17, 2022
Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York
www.guggenheim.org
Sensory Poetics: Collecting Abstraction brings together highlights from the museum’s growing collection of contemporary art. Acquired over the past ten years, and shown at the museum for the first time, this selection of artworks reflects developments in painting, sculpture, and video from the 1960s to today that manifest in a turn toward gesture as a response to the constraint of Minimalism. Evident in the exhibited works is an appeal to the human hand, whether through the tactility of materials or the gestural marks that comprise the compositions. Work by Stanley Whitney is included.
Stanley Whitney, Untitled, 1997, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York © Stanley Whitney. Photo: Allison Chipak
Closing this Week
Sarah Sze in
Narrative Terrain: Landscape as Storytelling
Through July 3, 2022
Fabric Workshop and Museum, Philadelphia
fabricworkshopandmuseum.org
Landscape has been an ever-present source of artistic inspiration for centuries. Artists often depict their surroundings not just as they are but as representations of identity, power, or markers of time. Drawn from the museum’s collection, the works on display in Narrative Terrain employ landscape—urban and bucolic, representational and abstract—to examine its complexities, challenge our assumptions, and perhaps expand our own understanding of how we relate to the world around us. Work by Sarah Sze is included.
Sarah Sze, Four Rocks, 2014 © Sarah Sze