Installation Views

Works Exhibited

About

Prototypology explores research and development in the work of thirty contemporary artists, tracing the evolution from idea to finished artwork through drawings, archives, maquettes, and bricolage. In doing so the exhibition establishes a typology of diverse drafts.

The studio is a liminal zone for sourcing, modifying, and testing. Derived from the Italian word schizzare (to splash), a “sketch” represents the initial impulse from mind to hand, the developmental process whereby form begins to emerge. In the laboratory of the studio, bricolage is often used as an instinctual method in the construction of prototypes.

The exhibition includes new works and archival material from Michael Heizer, Takashi Murakami, Albert Oehlen, and Robert Therrien, among other artists. Studies for sculptures by Dan Graham, Claes Oldenburg, Tatiana Trouvé, and Rachel Whiteread reveal moments of process that lead to epiphanies. Monumental, civic, everyday, and otherworldly gestures are visible in a range of preparatory drawings and proposals.

These varied forms represent important instants of mutation via trial and error—in essence, the risk of experimentation that typifies the artist’s quest. Through sketches both graphic and sculptural, the process behind each artist’s production finds form.

Featuring works by Vladimir Arkhipov, Richard Artschwager, Nina Beier, Will Boone, Mike Bouchet, Chris Burden, Jason Dodge, Aleksandra Domanović, Dan Graham, Loris Gréaud, Michael Heizer, Carsten Höller, Thomas Houseago, Allan McCollum, Takashi Murakami, Albert Oehlen, Claes Oldenburg, Steven Parrino, Giuseppe Penone, Kirsten Pieroth, Ry Rocklen, Nancy Rubins, Arcangelo Sassolino, David Smith, Rudolf Stingel, Robert Therrien, Mungo Thomson, Tatiana Trouvé, Cy Twombly, and Rachel Whiteread.

Rachel Whiteread: … And the Animals Were Sold

Rachel Whiteread: … And the Animals Were Sold

An installation by Rachel Whiteread in the Palazzo della Ragione, Bergamo, Italy, commissioned by Galleria d’Arte Moderna e Contemporanea di Bergamo and cocurated by Lorenzo Giusti and Sara Fumagalli, opened in June of 2023 and ran into the fall. Conceived in relation to the city, the architecture of the site, and the history of the region, it comprised sixty sculptures made with local types of stone. Fumagalli writes on the exhibition and architect Luca Cipelletti speaks with Whiteread.

Around and Around and Around: Federico Campagna and Carsten Höller

Around and Around and Around: Federico Campagna and Carsten Höller

Philosopher Federico Campagna and artist Carsten Höller came together, on the heels of Höller’s exhibition Clocks in Paris, to consider the measurement of time, the problem with fun, and the fine line between mysticism and nihilism.

Gagosian Quarterly Winter 2022

Now available
Gagosian Quarterly Winter 2022

The Winter 2022 issue of Gagosian Quarterly is now available, featuring Anna Weyant’s Two Eileens (2022) on its cover.

Rachel Whiteread: Shy Sculpture

Rachel Whiteread: Shy Sculpture

On the occasion of the unveiling of her latest Shy Sculpture, in Kunisaki, Japan, Rachel Whiteread joined curator and art historian Fumio Nanjo for a conversation about this ongoing series.They address the origins of these sculptures and the details of each project.

Gagosian Quarterly Fall 2022

Now available
Gagosian Quarterly Fall 2022

The Fall 2022 issue of Gagosian Quarterly is now available, featuring Jordan Wolfson’s House with Face (2017) on its cover.

Tatiana Trouvé: Le grand atlas de la désorientation

Tatiana Trouvé: Le grand atlas de la désorientation

In this video, Tatiana Trouvé provides an overview of her latest installation, presented at the Centre Pompidou, Paris. The exhibition, whose title translates to The Great Atlas of Disorientation, includes a selection of drawings and sculptures that create fantastical landscapes where reality engages in infinite exchanges with its doubles.

Cy Twombly: Imperfect Paradise

Cy Twombly: Imperfect Paradise

Eleonora Di Erasmo, cocurator of Un/veiled: Cy Twombly, Music, Inspirations, a program of concerts, video screenings, and works by Cy Twombly at the Fondazione Nicola Del Roscio, Rome, reflects on the resonances and networks of inspiration between the artist and music. The program was the result of an extensive three-year study, done at the behest of Nicola Del Roscio in the Rome and Gaeta offices of the Cy Twombly Foundation, intended to collect, document, and preserve compositions by musicians around the world who have been inspired by Twombly’s work, or to establish an artistic dialogue with them.

Giuseppe Penone À La Tourette

Giuseppe Penone À La Tourette

Le Couvent Sainte-Marie de La Tourette, in Éveux, France, is both an active Dominican priory and the last building designed by Le Corbusier. As a result, the priory, completed in 1961, is a center both religious and architectural, a site of spiritual significance and a magnetic draw for artists, writers, architects, and others. This fall, at the invitation of Frère Marc Chauveau, Giuseppe Penone will be exhibiting a selection of existing sculptures at La Tourette alongside new work directly inspired by the context and materials of the building. Here, Penone and Frère Chauveau discuss the power and peculiarities of the space, as well as the artwork that will be exhibited there.

A City in the Ocean of Time

A City in the Ocean of Time

Michael Heizer’s City, an artwork over fifty years in the making, opened to the public this fall. To celebrate this momentous occasion, we are honored to publish the late Dave Hickey’s report on his visit to the City.

Cy Twombly: Making Past Present

Cy Twombly: Making Past Present

In 2020, the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, announced their plan for a survey of Cy Twombly’s artwork alongside selections from their permanent ancient Greek and Roman collection. The survey was postponed due to the lockdowns necessitated by the coronavirus pandemic, but was revived in 2022 with a presentation at the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles from August 2 through October 30. In 2023, the exhibition will arrive at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. The curator for the exhibition, Christine Kondoleon, and Kate Nesin, author of Cy Twombly’s Things (2014) and advisor for the show, speak with Gagosian director Mark Francis about the origin of the exhibition and the aesthetic and poetic resonances that give the show its title: Making Past Present.

Brutalisten: An Interview with Carsten Höller

Brutalisten: An Interview with Carsten Höller

This spring, Carsten Höller launched Brutalisten, a new restaurant concept in Stockholm and the latest embodiment of his long-term culinary and artistic project called the Brutalist Kitchen. The twenty-eight-seat restaurant features a menu overseen by chef Stefan Eriksson that adheres to three classifications: “semi-brutalist” dishes (using oil or minimal ingredients), “brutalist” dishes (using salt and water), and “orthodox-brutalist” dishes (no additional ingredients). For the Quarterly, Höller speaks with Gagosian directors Serena Cattaneo Adorno and Mark Francis about this terminology, the importance of experimentation, and the fortuitous side effects of brutalist cuisine.

American Artist, Yayoi Shionoiri, and Sydney Stutterheim on Poetic Practical: The Unrealized Work of Chris Burden

In Conversation
American Artist, Yayoi Shionoiri, and Sydney Stutterheim on Poetic Practical: The Unrealized Work of Chris Burden

Join Gagosian to celebrate the publication of Poetic Practical: The Unrealized Work of Chris Burden with a conversation between American Artist, Yayoi Shionoiri, and Sydney Stutterheim presented at the Kitchen, New York. Considering the book’s sustained examination of sixty-seven projects that remained incomplete at the time of Burden’s death in 2015, the trio discuss the various ways that an artist’s work and legacy live on beyond their lifetime.

Chris Burden: Prelude to a Lost Performance

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.

Takashi Murakami and RTFKT: An Arrow through History

Takashi Murakami and RTFKT: An Arrow through History

Bridging the digital and the physical realms, the three-part presentation of paintings and sculptures that make up Takashi Murakami: An Arrow through History at Gagosian, New York, builds on the ongoing collaboration between the artist and RTFKT Studios. Here, Murakami and the RTFKT team explain the collaborative process, the necessity of cognitive revolution, the metaverse, and the future of art to the Quarterly’s Wyatt Allgeier.

Gagosian Quarterly Summer 2022

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).

Tatiana Trouvé and Jean-Michel Geneste

In Conversation
Tatiana Trouvé and Jean-Michel Geneste

Tatiana Trouvé speaks with Jean-Michel Geneste, archaeologist and curator, about the paradoxes of her practice: absence and presence, the ancient and the contemporary, the natural and the human-made.

Chris Burden: Poetic Practical

Chris Burden: Poetic Practical

A new publication exploring the work that Chris Burden conceived but left unrealized delves into his archive to present sixty-seven visionary projects that reveal the aspirations of this formidable artist. The book’s editors, Sydney Stutterheim and Andie Trainer, discuss its development with Yayoi Shionoiri, executive director of the Chris Burden Estate.

Say Goodbye, Catullus, to the Shores of Asia Minor

Say Goodbye, Catullus, to the Shores of Asia Minor

Thierry Greub tracks the literary references in Cy Twomblys epic painting of 1994.

Tatiana Trouvé: The Residents

Tatiana Trouvé: The Residents

Tatiana Trouvé discusses her installation The Residents (2021), commissioned by Artangel for the exhibition Afterness on Orford Ness, a former military testing site in Suffolk, England

Tatiana Trouvé: In the Studio

Behind the Art
Tatiana Trouvé: In the Studio

Join the artist in her studio as she speaks about her new series of drawings, From March to May. Trouvé describes the genesis of the project and the essential role its creation played in keeping her connected with the outside world during the difficult months of pandemic-related lockdown.