In Conversation
ICP Talks
Jeff Wall and David Campany
Wednesday, December 8, 2021, 6pm EST
As part of ICP Talks, an online lecture series organized by the International Center of Photography in New York, Jeff Wall will be joined by David Campany, ICP’s managing director of programs, in a discussion about the artist’s practice. Wall will consider how his interest in scale and the beholder in the exhibition space shape his image making as he moves between documentary and more cinematographic pictures. To join the event, purchase tickets at buy.acmeticketing.com.
Jeff Wall, Approach, 2014 © Jeff Wall
Events
Screening
Kon Trubkovich Selects
December 10–19, 2021
Metrograph, New York
metrograph.com
Kon Trubkovich has curated a selection of films under the title of The Russians Love Their Children Too, as part of a series copresented by Gagosian and Metrograph in the theater and online. The program, comprising ten films, explores Russian and Eastern European cinema through various angles. From the documentaries of Sergei Loznitsa to quintessential masterpieces such as Andrei Tarkovsky’s Mirror (1975), the selected films contain elements key to Trubkovich’s life and art practice. To attend a screening, purchase tickets at metrograph.com.
Additionally, on December 18, Trubkovich will be in conversation with director Sergei Loznitsa following the screening of The Event.
Still from Mirror (1975), directed by Andrei Tarkovsky
In Conversation
The Films of Andy Warhol
John G. Hanhardt, Bruce Jenkins, Tom Kalin
Thursday, December 2, 2021, 7pm EST
To celebrate the publication of The Films of Andy Warhol Catalogue Raisonné, 1963–1965, Volume 2, the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, is hosting a conversation about Andy Warhol’s practice as a filmmaker. John G. Hanhardt, general editor of the catalogue raisonné, will be joined by film scholar Bruce Jenkins and filmmaker Tom Kalin, both contributors to the publication, to discuss the history of Warhol’s engagement with cinema and share insights into why Warhol’s films have been influential for generations of artists. To join the online event, register at whitney.zoom.us.
Andy Warhol, Blow Job, 1964 (still) © 2021 The Andy Warhol Museum, Pittsburgh, a museum of the Carnegie Institute. All rights reserved
Symposium
When New York looks at the School of Paris
Tuesday, November 30, 2021, 4–10am est (10am–4pm cet)
An online symposium will take place in conjunction with the exhibition Chaïm Soutine/Willem de Kooning, la peinture incarnée, currently on view at the Musée de l’Orangerie, Paris. At 4:30am est (10:30am cet) John Elderfield, chief curator emeritus of painting and sculpture at the Museum of Modern Art, New York, will speak with Claire Bernardi, chief curator of paintings at the Musée d’Orsay. The pair will discuss responses to the 1950 MoMA exhibition of Chaïm Soutine’s work as seen in Willem de Kooning’s paintings and in the writings of critic Clement Greenberg. To join the online event, register at www.musee-orangerie.fr.
Willem de Kooning, Woman, 1953, Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, DC © 2021 The Willem de Kooning Foundation/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York
Book Signing
Ottessa Moshfegh and Issy Wood
My New Novel / The down payment
Wednesday, December 8, 2021, 6:30–7:30pm
Gagosian Shop, 976 Madison, New York
Ottessa Moshfegh will sign copies of her book My New Novel, alongside Issy Wood, at the Gagosian Shop in New York. Matched with an artwork by Wood, in the form of a printed poster, Moshfegh’s acerbic story inaugurates Gagosian’s Picture Books, an imprint conceived by author Emma Cline and dedicated to publishing fiction by leading authors alongside contributions by celebrated contemporary artists. “Moshfegh and Wood share a gothic, spiky humor and an attunement to the darker currents of the world, the hidden realms where shame and desire intersect,” Cline observes. To join, register at eventbrite.com.
Ottessa Moshfegh, My New Novel / Issy Wood, The down payment (New York: Picture Books | Gagosian, 2021)
Public Installation
W1 Curates
Grace Wales Bonner
November 22–28, 2021
Flannels, London
www.w1curates.com
Work by Grace Wales Bonner is viewable twenty-four hours a day on a three-story building on Oxford Street in London, presented by W1 Curates. Bonner creates conceptual shrines to Black Atlantic style and history, stressing the ritualistic importance of learning about and connecting to one’s cultural roots. The installation also includes segments from a film Wales Bonner made in collaboration with Tyler Mitchell to celebrate the publication of A Magazine Curated by Grace Wales Bonner. Both artists currently have work on view in Social Works II at Gagosian, Grosvenor Hill, London.
Grace Wales Bonner’s digital art installation for the façade of Flannels, London, 2021. Artwork © Grace Wales Bonner. Photo: courtesy W1 Curates
Tour
Arakawa
Waiting Voices
Thursday, December 9, 2021, 11am EST (5pm CET)
Join the Reversible Destiny Foundation for a virtual tour of the exhibition Arakawa: Waiting Voices with Ignacio Adriasola, assistant professor in the Department of Art History, Visual Art, and Theory at the University of British Columbia. On view at Gagosian, Basel, through January 22, the exhibition features works on canvas and paper made by Arakawa between 1964 and 1984. The artist was one of the earliest international pioneers of Conceptual art, and a founding member of the Japanese avant-garde collective Neo Dada. To join the online event, register at us02web.zoom.us.
Arakawa, Sketches for “An Anatomy of the Signified or If . . .” (Part 1 and 2) No. 5, 1974–75 © 2021 Estate of Madeline Gins. Reproduced with permission of the Estate of Madeline Gins. Photo: Rob McKeever
Announcements
Launch
Giuseppe Penone Website
Giuseppe Penone has launched a website, giuseppepenone.com, offering an in-depth overview of his career to audiences everywhere. The bilingual (English/Italian) site features hundreds of works made over five decades—including many in major public collections and from the artist’s personal collection—which are searchable both chronologically and thematically. Designed and developed by Wiedner Studio, the site also contains extensive biographical information, writings by the artist, and a news section.
View of Giuseppe Penone’s website, giuseppepenone.com
Launch
Picture Books
In December 2021, Gagosian will launch Picture Books, an imprint dedicated to publishing fiction by leading authors alongside contributions by celebrated contemporary artists. The series, conceived by Emma Cline, author of Daddy (2020), pairs each writer with an artist, who is given carte blanche to produce an image in conversation with the text. Book and image—in the form of a printed poster—are packaged together in limited hardcover editions designed by Peter Mendelsund, author, designer, and creative director of The Atlantic.
Left: Percival Everett, Grand Canyon, Inc. / Richard Prince, Untitled (Original Cowboy) (New York: Picture Books | Gagosian, 2021). Right: Ottessa Moshfegh, My New Novel / Issy Wood, The down payment (New York: Picture Books | Gagosian, 2021)
Playlist
Edmund de Waal
In the Studio
On the occasion of his Artist Spotlight, Edmund de Waal has created a playlist of music he listens to in his studio. Ranging in genre from contemporary classical to rock, electronic, and African folk, the selection features composers and musicians such as Philip Glass, Talking Heads, LCD Soundsystem, and Michael Kiwanuka. The twenty-three tracks are synthy, expansive, rhythmically hypnotic, or just generally dreamy—sharing a meditative quality with de Waal’s visual artwork.
Edmund de Waal’s studio, London, 2014. Artwork © Edmund de Waal. Photo: Hélène Binet
Video
Edmund de Waal Introduces “Letters to Camondo”
In this video, Edmund de Waal introduces his new book, Letters to Camondo (2021). The book consists of a sequence of haunting imaginary letters from de Waal to Count Moïse de Camondo, the owner of a Parisian palace turned into a memorial for his son, who died in World War I. The Camondo family lived a few doors away from de Waal’s forebears, the Ephrussis. Both families were collectors and part of Belle Époque Parisian high society. Both were also targets of antisemitism. De Waal describes the particular resonance of this home, now the Musée Nissim de Camondo, as a “house for a lost family” and discusses his need to write this story.
Still from “Edmund de Waal Introduces ‘Letters to Camondo’”
Initiative
Edmund de Waal: The Hare with Amber Eyes
Eine STADT. Ein BUCH.
In November 2021, 100,000 copies of Der Hase mit den Bernsteinaugen, the German edition of Edmund de Waal’s family memoir The Hare with Amber Eyes (2010), will be given away across Vienna as part of Eine STADT. Ein BUCH (One City. One Book). The initiative, where one book is selected, printed, and distributed for free, began in 2002 and takes place in Vienna every year.
Edmund de Waal, Der Hase mit den Bernsteinaugen (Vienna: echo media buchverlag | echo medienhaus ges.m.b.h., 2021)
Award
Nancy Rubins
Artists’ Legacy Foundation Artist Award
Nancy Rubins has won the Artists’ Legacy Foundation (ALF) Artist Award for 2021. Since 2007, ALF has recognized and honored the accomplishments of an outstanding visual artist whose primary medium is painting or sculpture. Each year ten artists are nominated for the ALF Artist Award by five anonymous nominators selected by the board, and a jury of three peers makes the final selection. Juror Mary Ceruti, executive director of the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, noted that Rubins “brings an expansive and experimental approach to monumental sculptures that inspire wonder while also being genuinely grounded in our lived experience and material world.”
Nancy Rubins, Mattresses and Cakes, 1993, installation view, 45th Biennale di Venezia © Nancy Rubins
Museum Exhibitions
Opening this Week
Andreas Gursky in
Electro: Von Kraftwerk bis Techno
December 9, 2021–May 15, 2022
Kunstpalast Düsseldorf, Germany
www.kunstpalast.de
This exhibition, whose title translates to Electro: From Kraftwerk to Techno, examines the history of electronic music and its interconnections with art. Through more than five hundred works, including musical instruments, self-made sound generators, photographs, audio clips, videos, and graphic design, the diverse field of “electronic” music is explored from a variety of perspectives. Work by Andreas Gursky is included.
Andreas Gursky, May Day III, 1998 © Andreas Gursky/VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn, Germany, 2021
Closing this Week
Titus Kaphar in
The Black Index
Through December 11, 2021
Art Galleries at Black Studies, University of Texas at Austin
www.galleriesatut.org
The artists featured in The Black Index build upon the tradition of Black self-representation as an antidote to colonialist images. Using drawing, performance, printmaking, sculpture, and digital technology to transform the recorded image, they question our reliance on photography as a privileged source for documentary objectivity and understanding. Their works offer an alternative practice—a Black index—that serves as a finding aid for information about Black subjects, but also challenges viewers’ desire for classification. This exhibition originated at the Contemporary Arts Center Gallery, University of California, Irvine. Work by Titus Kaphar is included.
Titus Kaphar and Reginald Dwayne Betts, Redaction (San Francisco), 2020 © Titus Kaphar and Reginald Dwayne Betts. Photo: Christopher Gardner
Just Opened
Hao Liang in
The 10th Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art (APT10)
Through April 25, 2022
Queensland Art Gallery and Gallery of Modern Art, Brisbane, Australia
www.qagoma.qld.gov.au
For its tenth edition, Queensland Art Gallery and Gallery of Modern Art’s Asia Pacific Triennial looks to the future of art and the world we inhabit together. The Triennial includes sixty-nine projects—from large-scale installations and immersive multimedia artworks to sculpture, textiles, paintings, photography, and video—with new and recent work by emerging and established artists and collectives from thirty countries. Work by Hao Liang is included.
Hao Liang, The Chase of Apollo, Act I, 2021 © Hao Liang. Photo: Yang Chao Studio
On View
Aesthetics
Collection of Qiao Zhibing
Through December 19, 2021
Tank Shanghai
www.tankshanghai.com
Qiao Zhibing, contemporary art collector and founder of Tank Shanghai, has selected works from his private collection by twelve Chinese and international contemporary artists for this exhibition, which explores the inspiration art brings to the public from a visual perspective. Work by Theaster Gates and Thomas Houseago is included.
Installation view, Aesthetics: Collection of Qiao Zhibing, Tank Shanghai, March 19–October 11, 2021. Artwork, left: © Thomas Houseago; center and right: © Theaster Gates. Photo: courtesy Tank Shanghai
On View
Rick Lowe in
Toward Common Cause: Art, Social Change, and the MacArthur Fellows Program at 40
Through December 19, 2021
Various locations in Chicago
towardcommoncause.org
Organized by the Smart Museum of Art at the University of Chicago in collaboration with more than two dozen partner organizations across the city, Toward Common Cause is a multi-venue exhibition exploring the extent to which certain resources—air, land, water, and even culture—can be held in common. Raising questions about inclusion, exclusion, ownership, and rights of access, the exhibition considers art’s vital role in society as a call to vigilance, a way to bear witness, and a potential act of resistance. Presented on the fortieth anniversary of the MacArthur Fellows Program, Toward Common Cause employs the Fellows Program as an “intellectual commons” and features work by twenty-nine artists who have been named Fellows since the program’s founding in 1981, including Rick Lowe. For the exhibition, Lowe has created his first Chicago-based social sculpture, Black Wall Street Journey, a three-part citywide project that pays tribute to the building of Black wealth, using public art to tell stories from the journeys of Black communities in Chicago and beyond.
Rick Lowe, Black Wall Street Journey, 2018–, installation view, Smart Museum of Art, University of Chicago, 2021 © Rick Lowe Studio. Photo: Michael Tropea
On View
Sterling Ruby
Through December 19, 2021
Galleria Doria Pamphilj, Rome
www.doriapamphilj.it
In a rare occasion, work by Sterling Ruby will be installed in the Toletta di Venere of the Galleria Doria Pamphilj museum in Rome, a repository of old master paintings housed in the private palazzo of one of Italy’s longest-established collecting families, in conjunction with the artist’s exhibition at Gagosian, Rome. The Doria Pamphilj collection includes Diego Velázquez’s Portrait of Pope Innocent X (1650), which famously inspired several reinterpretations by Francis Bacon. Ruby will exhibit a painting created especially for this presentation, WIDW. CRASH CULTURE. (2021), as well as a ceramic sculpture, BONNET (7483) (2020).
Installation view, Sterling Ruby, Galleria Doria Pamphilj, Rome, November 20–December 19, 2021. Artwork © Sterling Ruby. Photo: Matteo D'Eletto M3 Studio
On View
Urs Fischer
Through December 31, 2021
Bourse de Commerce, Paris
www.pinaultcollection.com
Urs Fischer’s Untitled (2011) is being presented in the rotunda of the newly renovated Bourse de Commerce. Fischer has reconceived the sculpture to suit the scale of the space, whose Belle Epoque architecture has been redesigned by architect Tadao Ando. The work consists of a group of larger-than-life candles—replicas of Giambologna’s sixteenth-century Mannerist masterpiece The Rape of the Sabine Women; Fischer’s longtime friend, artist Rudolf Stingel; and an assortment of chairs—that are lit and melt down over the course of the exhibition.
Installation view, Urs Fischer, Bourse de Commerce, Paris, May 22–December 31, 2021. Artwork © Urs Fischer
On View
Portals
Through December 31, 2021
NEON, Athens
neon.org.gr
Portals brings together fifty-nine artists from twenty-seven countries in the newly renovated spaces of the former Public Tobacco Factory, now the Hellenic Parliament Library and Printing House. Inspired by writer Arundhati Roy’s conception of the COVID-19 pandemic as a “portal, a gateway between one world and the next,” the exhibition aims to investigate the new reality revealed through the prism of change and disruption. Work by Ed Ruscha and Adriana Varejão is included.
Ed Ruscha, No Son Open Book, 2003 © Ed Ruscha
On View
Rudolf Stingel
Through December 31, 2021
Bourse de Commerce, Paris
www.pinaultcollection.com
The Bourse de Commerce presents three portraits by Rudolf Stingel as part of its inaugural series of exhibitions. The first depicts art dealer Paula Cooper, an indefatigable pioneer and defender of the avant-garde; the second shows his friend Franz West; and the last portrays the German Expressionist painter Ernst Ludwig Kirchner dressed in a soldier’s uniform. Based on small-format photographs that the artist dramatically enlarges without erasing the graininess, blurring, or evidence of wear and tear, these images are faithfully transposed via Stingel’s meticulous painting.
Installation view, Rudolf Stingel, Bourse de Commerce, Paris, May 22–December 31, 2021. Artwork © Rudolf Stingel
On View
Damien Hirst
Cherry Blossoms
Through January 2, 2022
Fondation Cartier pour l’art contemporain, Paris
www.fondationcartier.com
Cherry Blossoms, Damien Hirst’s first museum exhibition in France, reinterprets the traditional subject of landscape painting with playful irony. In this series Hirst combines thick brushstrokes and elements of gestural painting, referencing Impressionism, Pointillism, and Action painting. The monumental canvases, which are entirely covered in dense bright colors, envelop the viewer in a vast floral landscape moving between figuration and abstraction.
Damien Hirst, Renewal Blossom, 2018 © Damien Hirst and Science Ltd. All rights reserved, DACS 2021. Photo: Prudence Cuming Associates
On View
Picasso-Rodin
Through January 2, 2022
Musée national Picasso–Paris and Musée Rodin, Paris
www.museepicassoparis.fr
Held simultaneously at two Parisian institutions, this exhibition offers a unique encounter between the works of Pablo Picasso and Auguste Rodin, two artists whose formal inventions marked a decisive turning point in modern art. Picasso-Rodin highlights unexpected convergences in their creative processes and explores their common practice of working serially and their shared taste for experimentation and ever-changing forms.
Pablo Picasso, Le Baiser, 1969, Musée national Picasso–Paris © Succession Picasso 2021
On View
Hey! Did you know that art does not exist
Through January 7, 2022
Tel Aviv Museum of Art, Israel
www.tamuseum.org.il
This exhibition presents more than one hundred works from Sylvio Perlstein’s intensely personal collection, which traces artists and trends that have defined the avant-garde, complex, and experimental nature of twentieth-century art. Work by Jean-Michel Basquiat, Duane Hanson, Roy Lichtenstein, Man Ray, Brice Marden, Ed Ruscha, Rudolf Stingel, Cy Twombly, and Andy Warhol is included.
Rudolf Stingel, Untitled, 2002 © Rudolf Stingel. Photo: Alessandro Zambianchi