Abstract Explorations

Albert Oehlen in conversation with Max Dax.

For Art Basel 2025, the fair has commissioned Katharina Grosse to create CHOIR, a large-scale, site-responsive painting for the Messeplatz Project. The curator for the project, Natalia Grabowska, met with Grosse in her studio in Berlin ahead of the work’s creation to talk through the process; Grosse’s approach to the specifics of the Messeplatz’s architecture; and the importance of unscripted encounters.

From her Judenplatz Holocaust Memorial in Vienna to her casting of George Orwell’s World War II office at the BBC, Rachel Whiteread has long engaged with the emotional and historical complexities of addressing deeply troubling moments in human history through art. This month, Whiteread will debut a new work for the inaugural exhibition at the Goodwood Art Foundation in Sussex, England.

On the occasion of Willem de Kooning: Endless Painting, curated by Cecilia Alemani and comprising paintings from 1944 through 1986 and two sculptures, the Quarterly revisits a conversation between Albert Oehlen and John Corbett from 2013. The pair reflect on de Kooning’s late work and its lasting influence on them.

Jenny Saville reflects on Cy Twombly’s poetic engagement with the world, with time and tension, and with growth in this excerpt from her Marion Barthelme Lecture, presented at the Menil Collection, Houston, in 2024.

Gagosian and Museo di Palazzo Grimani, Venice, hosted a conversation between Rick Lowe; Dieter Roelstraete, curator of Neubauer Collegium for Culture and Society at the University of Chicago; and Abigail Winograd, commissioner and curator of the United States Pavilion at the 60th Biennale di Venezia. The trio discuss the exhibition The Arch within the Arc in the context of Lowe’s overall practice, as well as Gagosian’s recently published monograph on the artist.

The Warp of Time celebrates a hundred years of shared history between the Old Carpet Factory, a historical mansion located on the Greek island of Hydra, and Soutzoglou Carpets. Here, Salomé Gómez-Upegui interviews curator Ekaterina Juskowski about Helen Marden’s woven works within the context of the exhibition, touching upon themes of history, memory, and creative expression.

John Elderfield and Lauren Mahony of Gagosian speak with the National Gallery of Art’s Harry Cooper about the new and expanded version of Elderfield’s 1989 monograph on Helen Frankenthaler that Gagosian, in collaboration with the Helen Frankenthaler Foundation, will publish this summer. The conversation traces Elderfield’s long interest in Frankenthaler’s work—from his time as a young curator at the Museum of Modern Art, New York, to the present—and reveals some of the new perspectives and discoveries awaiting readers.

In tandem with the 60th Biennale di Venezia, the city’s Gallerie dell’Accademia is featuring the exhibition Willem de Kooning and Italy, an in-depth examination of the artist’s time in Italy and of the influence of that experience on his work. On September 20 of last year, the curators of the exhibition, the American Gary Garrels and the Italian Mario Codognato, engaged in a lengthy conversation about the exhibition for a press conference at the museum. An edited transcript of that conversation is published below for the first time.

Jon Copes asks, What can Black History Month mean in the year 2024? He looks to a selection of scholars and artists for the answer.