Works Exhibited
About
What haunts the digital cul-de-sacs of the twenty-first century is not so much the past as all the lost futures that the twentieth century taught us to anticipate.
—Mark Fisher
Gagosian is pleased to present Haunted Realism, a group exhibition featuring the work of more than thirty artists including Meleko Mokgosi, Ed Ruscha, Jenny Saville, and Tatiana Trouvé. Haunted Realism takes its title in part from hauntology, a term coined by Jacques Derrida in his 1993 book Specters of Marx to characterize what he considered the tendency of Marxism to “haunt Western society from beyond the grave.” Derrida’s concept has been explored in a broader cultural context, denoting a state of historical overlap and disjunction—“the past inside the present”—that resonates through fields ranging from anthropology and philosophy to film, electronic music, and visual art. The idea is notably explored by cultural critic Mark Fisher in his books Capitalist Realism (2009) and The Weird and the Eerie (2016).
Haunted Realism’s specific focus is a sense that the aspirations of modernity are now “lost futures”—perceptible only as ghostlike traces of their original formulations. It examines some of the ways in which artists have approached this condition by confronting the accelerated flow of images in contemporary media culture, and the proliferation of “non-places” that we increasingly inhabit. These artists’ work also conveys a feeling that the apparent documentary “truths” of realism can no longer be believed, even as wild conspiracy theories gain influential traction. Our conception of the future is now haunted, even revoked, by a volatile present. Haunted Realism situates these visions within a historical context, showing how our strange present was anticipated by earlier projects.
#HauntedRealism
Artists
Richard Artschwager
Hans Bellmer
Louise Bonnet
Glenn Brown
Chris Burden
Dan Colen
Colin Crumplin
John Currin
Urs Fischer
Llyn Foulkes
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Douglas Gordon: To Sing
On the occasion of Douglas Gordon: All I need is a little bit of everything, an exhibition in London, curator Adam Szymczyk recounts his experiences with Gordon’s work across nearly three decades, noting the continuities and evolutions.
Jeff Wall: In the Domain of Likeness
The Fondation Beyeler, Riehen/Basel, has staged a comprehensive Jeff Wall exhibition including more than fifty works spanning five decades. Here, Barry Schwabsky reflects on the enduring power of and mystery in Wall’s photography.
Nostalgia and Apocalypse
In conjunction with My Anxious Self, the most comprehensive survey of paintings by the late Tetsuya Ishida (1973–2005) to have been staged outside of Japan and the first-ever exhibition of his work in New York, Gagosian hosted a panel discussion. Here, Alexandra Munroe, senior curator at large, Global Arts, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum and Foundation, and Tomiko Yoda, Takashima Professor of Japanese Humanities at Harvard University, delve into the societal context in which Ishida developed his work, in a conversation moderated by exhibition curator Cecilia Alemani.
A Flat on Rue Victor-Considerant
Lee Miller and Tanja Ramm’s friendship took them from New York to Paris and back, in front of and behind many cameras, and into the Surrealist avant-garde. Here, Gagosian director Richard Calvocoressi speaks with Ramm’s daughter, art historian Margit Rowell, about discovering her mother’s early life, her memories of Miller, and the collaborative work of photographers and models.
In Conversation
Louise Bonnet and Stefanie Hessler
Gagosian hosted a conversation between Louise Bonnet and Stefanie Hessler, director of Swiss Institute, New York, inside 30 Ghosts, the artist’s exhibition of new paintings at Gagosian, New York. The pair explores the work’s recurring themes—the cycles of life, continuity and the future, and death—and discuss how the conceptual and pictorial structures Bonnet borrows from seventeenth-century Dutch still-life painting converge to form a metaphor for hard labor, basic animal urges, and the things we often try, but fail, to hide.
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.
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Program
On Land/On Vanishing Land
A Day of Music in “Haunted Realism”
Tuesday, July 19, 2022, 10:30am–6:15pm
Gagosian, Grosvenor Hill, London
Join Gagosian for a daylong music program played on Brian Eno’s Turntable (2021), an acrylic record player fitted with LED lights that cycle through different color combinations, inside the exhibition Haunted Realism at Gagosian, Grosvenor Hill, London. Taking the show as a departure point, the lineup will feature twelve recordings, including Eno’s Ambient 4: On Land (1982) and On Vanishing Land (2013), an audio essay assembled by the late Mark Fisher and writer Justin Barton. The program, which also includes musical selections by artists in the exhibition, evokes the lost futures of Marxist ideology by exploring the uncanny “non-places” of late capitalism, a strategy that Fisher also applied in his critical writing. The event is free and open to the public.
Brian Eno’s Turntable (2021) playing his album Ambient 4: On Land (1982). Artwork © Brian Eno, courtesy Paul Stolper, London. Photo: Angela Moore
