May 24, 2022

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.

Alexandria Smith Selects, Metrograph, New York, May 20–June 2, 2022

Artwork © Alexandria Smith; video: Pushpin Films

On Surrealism: Glenn Brown & Alexandria Smith

This year marks the centennial of André Breton’s “Surrealist Manifesto.” In its honor, the Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium, Brussels, in close collaboration with the Centre Pompidou, Paris, staged the exhibition IMAGINE! 100 Years of International Surrealism, which will be traveling to the Hamburger Kunsthalle, Germany, and Fundación MAPFRE, Madrid, before closing at the Philadelphia Museum of Art. To mark the occasion and the exhibition, artists Glenn Brown and Alexandria Smith met to discuss the influence of the movement on their own practices.

Languorous undulations (in the temple of my familiar)

Alexandria Smith and Akwaeke Emezi take up themes of queerness, hybridity, and embodied memory in their respective visual and literary works. Here, Emezi responds to Smith’s painting Languorous undulations (in the temple of my familiar) (2022) with an eponymous piece of flash fiction.

Alexandria Smith

The artist speaks with author Nalo Hopkinson about what it means to depict the body, the struggles to embark on new projects, and the contours of space and place in the creation of fiction and art.

Jenny Saville a Ca’ Pesaro

In this video, Jenny Saville sits down inside her first major exhibition in Venice to discuss how the great Venetian artists of the past and the city’s heritage influence her work. The show brings together more than thirty canvases and works on paper from the 1990s to the present, tracing the development of her practice, which is deeply rooted in the history of painting.

Titus Kaphar: The Fire This Time

On the occasion of his exhibition The Fire This Time at Gagosian, Paris, Titus Kaphar discusses themes of history, representation, and collective memory in his recent paintings and hand-carved wood sculptures.

Carol Bove: Nights of Cabiria

Join the artist inside Carol Bove: Nights of Cabiria, her recent exhibition at Gagosian, Beverly Hills, as she considers the power of illusion, the histories of her materials, and the philosophical lessons at the heart of Federico Fellini’s films.

Richard Serra: Steve Reich’s “Music for Pieces of Wood”

In this video, musical ensemble Sō Percussion performs Steve Reich’s “Music for Pieces of Wood” inside the exhibition Richard Serra: Running Arcs (For John Cage), 1992, at Gagosian, New York.

The House on Utopia Parkway: Joseph Cornell’s Studio Re-Created by Wes Anderson

The House on Utopia Parkway: Joseph Cornell’s Studio Re-Created by Wes Anderson is an exhibition conceived by curator Jasper Sharp and the acclaimed American filmmaker. The show brings Cornell’s New York studio to the heart of Paris, transforming Gagosian’s storefront gallery into a meticulously staged tableau—part time capsule, part life-size shadow box—for the first solo presentation of the artist’s work in Paris in more than four decades. In this video, Anderson discusses the genesis of the exhibition and the process by which it came together.

Walter De Maria: The Singular Experience

Join exhibition curator Donna De Salvo as she discusses her selection of the artist’s rarely seen sculptures, drawings, films, and archival materials in Walter De Maria: The Singular Experience at Gagosian, Le Bourget. Chief among these is Truck Trilogy (2011–17), De Maria’s final sculpture and the centerpiece of the exhibition.

Glenn Brown: Time Machine

Join Glenn Brown in his London studio as he discusses his presentation for the Studio section of Frieze Masters 2025, which explores the idea of the artist’s studio as a time machine: a space in which historical memory fuels creativity, manifesting in artworks that look to the future. Brown speaks about the featured works, which range from new paintings, drawings, and a sculpture to historic works on paper from the Brown Collection.

A Sense of Abundance

Péjú Oshin visits Christine Checinska, senior curator of African and diaspora textiles and fashion at the Victoria & Albert Museum. From her London office, Checinska shares her curatorial insights into the international traveling exhibition Africa Fashion, which originated at the V&A, and the Costume Institute’s current show Superfine: Tailoring Black Style at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. The conversation delves into notions of diaspora, memory, homecoming, and the freedoms of being “anti-disciplinary.”

Paul McCartney: Rearview Mirror: Photographs, December 1963–February 1964

Paul McCartney: Rearview Mirror: Photographs, December 1963–February 1964 at Gagosian, Beverly Hills, brings together self-portraits, unguarded snapshots of The Beatles, and vivid depictions of the pandemonium that greeted them at every turn. Ahead of the exhibition, McCartney and Joshua Chuang, director of photography at Gagosian, met up at Griffin Editions in Brooklyn, New York, to reflect on the prints featured in the show.

Gagosian Quarterly