Gallery News
today’s Diary
August 2, 2021
don’t miss - exhibitions closing
Ziping Wang: The Other Landscape
Unit, London
Thomas Dane Gallery announces the passing of Phillip King CBE PPRA
July 29, 2021
It is with great sadness that we announce the passing of Phillip King, one of the most ground-breaking British artists of the last 70 years.
Phillip died peacefully with his wife Judy at his side.
We were blessed to have worked with Phillip in the last eight years of his life, during which time he re-taught us that art and sculpture-making should know no rules or limitations. His curiosity, joy, and sparkle were boundless and contagious, and we will miss him dearly.
Phillip was born in Tunis in 1934 to a French mother and English father. In 1945 he moved to London and went on to study modern languages at the University of Cambridge. He eventually enrolled at St Martin’s School of Art where he met Anthony Caro and the New Generation group of artists, who would go on to completely revolutionise sculpture from the 1960s onwards.
A real free-spirit and risk-taker, Phillip worked tirelessly throughout his life experimenting with materials, forms and colours, seldom repeating himself, as he moved from periods of working in steel, ceramic, polyurethane, found objects as well as bronze and stone. He would rarely make preparatory drawings, rather referring to shapes and colours that would appear to him in dreams. He was a modest man, entirely committed to his rigorous exploration, rarely missing a day in the studio right up to the end of his life.
Phillip loved to be surrounded by younger artists and loved to teach, taking up professorships in the UK, Europe and the US. In 1967 he was appointed a trustee of Tate, and from 1999 to 2004 he was President of the Royal Academy of Arts.
His works are installed in public spaces around the world, from Australia and Japan to Scandinavia, China and the US, and are represented in some of the most important museum collections including Tate, Pompidou and MoMA. His final major public project, La Ronde de Rennes, will be unveiled later this year in the French city of Rennes.
Photo: Judy Corbalis King
Asymmetry Art Foundation and Whitechapel Gallery announce Zoe Diao as Curatorial Fellow for 2021-22
July 28, 2021
Zoe Diao, a Chinese scholar and curator currently based in New York, has been awarded the six-month Fellowship, which begins on 20 September 2021. Selected from a high quality shortlist following an Open Call, Zoe Diao will focus on two related projects – conducting research on art dealers in the 1970s who supported the development of artists way beyond any commercial remit and contributing to the delivery of a major exhibition about modern and contemporary artists' studios across the world.
The Asymmetry Curatorial Fellowship at Whitechapel Gallery is offered to one mid-career curator who identifies with Greater Chinese culture and heritage (including Mainland China, Hong Kong, Macau and Taiwan), based in the region or internationally. The programme provides the curator with a unique opportunity to gain training, skills, and experience in the curatorial workings of Whitechapel Gallery, which has a strong track record of providing training for curators, including through its new MA Curating Art and Public Programmes with London South Bank University.
Asymmetry is an independent non-profit foundation dedicated to nurturing curatorial practices and the development of cultural knowledge in and about Asia through global exchange. The Curatorial Fellowships place curators in pioneering European institutions, sharpening their skills and expanding their networks, whilst enabling the institutions to gain from the Fellow’s specific expertise and perspective on Chinese and East Asian contemporary art. By facilitating international opportunities for curators and academics from this region, Asymmetry seeks to integrate Chinese and East Asian contemporary art and curatorial practice into a wider art world discourse.
Kat Lyons joins Pilar Corrias
July 22, 2021
Kat Lyons’ (b. 1991, Louisville, Kentucky) practice explores the complexities of earthly life to question the limitations of human categorisation and understanding. Her compositions aim to transcend anthropocentric realities as a way of welcoming the natural world into our sphere of moral concern. Presenting her subjects across various planes of existence, Lyons challenges normative frameworks of perception. Her theatrical vignettes of animals and insects are wrought with an eeriness that is indicative of the anxiety and grief materialised amongst non-humans living in the Anthropocene.
Lyons is currently focusing on a series which is reflective of her time spent living and working on a small livestock farm, where she explores the ritualism of production and labour of both the human and non-human inhabitants.
“Painting provides time to reflect on the ways I have been conditioned to relate to the non-human subjects of the work. How, instead, do I understand who they are based on my own terms and experiences, outside of the preconceptions I have been taught to hold? How might this reconsidering bring a starker awareness of my own distorted expectations and limitations in understanding? Maintaining a position of unknowing is essential in the work.”
An exhibition of Lyons’ new body of work will be presented at Pilar Corrias Savile Row from 8 December 2021 - 15 January 2022.
Photo: Adam Reich
Galerie Kandlhofer announces representation of Richie Culver
July 19, 2021
Born in Hull in the North of England into a working-class family, Richie Culver was not exposed to art growing up and left school with no qualifications to work in a factory making caravans. His practice encompasses diverse elements that range from painting, sculpture and photography to digital performance. Within this, Culver’s work is largely biographical wrestling with aspects of contemporary masculinity, the class system and the digital lens through which we live our lives.
A large proportion of Culver’s practice lies in his antagonistic relationship with technology, the ultimate impermanence of social media and the effects upon human interaction, linguistics alongside personal and cultural memory. In this regard, much of the material for Culver’s works are formed from images collected on his phone including mundane mobile photography, google translate and notes apps screenshots containing excerpts of conversations, phrases and information.These screenshots are then blown up and printed on canvas, ultimately forming a visual record of an inner monologue that is fractured and at times disconnected. For example, short phrases translated into different languages and obscured by overpainting creates a visual metaphor for the quick ease at which these digital innovations create a superficial human connection that is ultimately alienated from true apperception.
This tone of alienation also bleeds into other thematic elements in Culver’s practice including the interrogation of masculinity. Motifs including fatherhood, love, sex, rejection and abandonment combine to project a brutal honestly about the vulnerability of male emotions. Although often done with humour, these elements have an unnerving sincerity that forces us to engage in a more nuanced perspective on contemporary masculinity.
Christian Boltanski, French Conceptual artist, has died at 76
July 15, 2021
Born in Paris on September 6, 1944, to a Ukrainian Jewish father and a Corsican mother, Christian Boltanski was a photographer, painter, sculptor, and installation artist whose work dealt with the concepts of loss, memory, childhood, and death, often functioning as memorials or shrines to collective cultural rituals and events.
At the age of twelve, Boltanski began fabricating sculptures from plasticine and creating large-format figurative paintings centering around macabre themes. His earliest works directly referenced his childhood, often featuring idealised families in fantastical settings, blurring the boundaries between truth and fiction. In the 1960s he began to develop a “personal ethnology” marked, among others, by the influence of anthropologist and ethnologist Claude Lévi-Strauss and by curator and art historian Harald Szeemann. At the same time, drawing on museology, Boltanski exhibited inventories of items of anonymous owners. In the 1980s, he began making altarlike works incorporating boxes he had constructed, as well as light and photographs of Jewish schoolchildren taken in the early 1930s.
Boltanski was recognized with several awards over his lifetime, including the Praemium Imperiale Award (2006) and the Kaiser Ring Award (2001). He participated in Documenta (1977 and 1972) and numerous Venice Biennales (2011, 1995, 1993, 1980, and 1975).
Amy Feldman now represented by Galerie Eva Presenhuber
July 14, 2021
Feldman’s first exhibition with the gallery will open in New York on 10 September 2021. Feldman is also creating a new painting for Galerie Eva Presenhuber’s Art Basel presentation this September.
I first saw a painting by Amy Feldman in 2015 when she was part of the exhibition 'New York Painting' at Kunstmuseum Bonn in Germany. The exhibition explored the renaissance painting was experiencing at the time through the works of 11 New York-based artists. Amy’s paintings spoke to me through their curious forms and quiet power, and I began to follow her work. I am thrilled that we are now working together and that we will be able to share her newest paintings with the gallery's audience in New York and Basel in just a few months. — Eva Presenhuber
Amy Feldman (b. 1981) lives and works in New York, NY, US. Feldman is recognized for her iconic painting language and commitment to large-scale gray-on-gray abstractions. Feldman’s investigation in the color gray highlights the significance and potential that can be found in neutrality—how something can appear neutral but is, in fact, charged with great power of expression. Feldman typically works in series, presenting distilled iterations of unique forms, which relate to how images and signs are quickly interpreted, remembered, and misremembered. Her paintings offer a vivid conversation between the physical and formal language of abstraction in their acute reference to the body and the mortal coil within the simplification of said forms.
Hauser & Wirth Menorca opens with Mark Bradford exhibition
July 13, 2021
After a two-year conservation project, the gallery’s new art center opens on July 19th with an exhibition of new paintings and sculptures by Mark Bradford.
The 1,500 sqm art center will also feature an outdoor sculpture trail with works by Louise Bourgeois, Eduardo Chillida, Franz West and others, in dialogue with Isla del Rey’s wildlife and the garden designed by influential landscape designer Piet Oudolf.
“Our dream has been to place powerful contemporary art like his within this very special context. Isla del Rey is an extraordinary place of wild nature, beautiful light and sea, with a fascinating history” - Manuela Wirth
Petzel Gallery to relocate to West 25th Street in New York’s Chelsea neighborhood
July 12, 2021
The gallery will be moving from its current 456 West 18th Street location, more than doubling its footprint with a new ground-floor space at 520 West 25th Street in New York.
Friedrich Petzel Gallery, founded in 1994, first opened on Wooster Street in the Soho area of New York City. The gallery has continued to develop its program around a group of contemporary artists who are renowned internationally, including Yael Bartana, Walead Beshty, Ross Bleckner, Simon Denny, Keith Edmier, Thomas Eggerer, Derek Fordjour, Wade Guyton, Stefanie Heinze, Georg Herold, Asger Jorn, Sean Landers, Maria Lassnig, Allan McCollum, Adam McEwen, Rodney McMillian, Sarah Morris, Jorge Pardo, Joyce Pensato, Seth Price, Stephen Prina, Jonathan Pylypchuk, Willem de Rooij, Pieter Schoolwerth, John Stezaker, Nicola Tyson, Corinne Wasmuht, Heimo Zobernig, among others.
Artangel Co-Directors announce decision to step down
July 9, 2021
James Lingwood and Michael Morris, who have been the renowned art commissioning body’s Co-Directors for 30 years have announced that they are to step down in 2022.
The organisation - which has produced over 125 projects including such notable works as Rachel Whiteread’s House, Matthew Barney’s Cremaster 4, Michael Landy’s Breakdown, Jeremy Deller’s The Battle of Orgreave, Gregor Schneider’s Die Familie Schneider, Francis Alÿs’s Seven Walks and Roger Hiorns’s Seizure - will begin the recruitment of a new Director immediately.
Lingwood and Morris said: “It’s been a rollercoaster ride, without always knowing when the track is about to loop. Working like this demands great faith from artists, angels, our staff and board, funders, and friends too. Without their belief, Artangel could not have thrived over the past three decades and our most memorable projects would never have seen the light of day. We’ll be stepping off the rollercoaster at the end of 2022. Artangel will move forward, imagined afresh under new leadership. We’re excited to see what happens next.”
Photograph: Geraint Lewis, 2001
Teresa Margolles awarded Fourth Plinth Commission
July 5, 2021
Congratulations to Teresa Margolles, whose work has been selected for the Mayor of London's Fourth Plinth Commission in Trafalgar Square in 2024.
For the Fourth Plinth, Teresa Margolles will install an ephemeral work in Trafalgar Square entitled 850 Improntas, made with plaster cast molds of the faces of 850 transgender people. The molds will be created in collaboration with trans people living in locations around the world, by applying plaster directly onto each individual's face. The resulting object is both a visual record of their respective features and, imbued with hair and skin cells, a material infusion of their physicality.
The plaster components will be arranged into an array on all four sides of the plinth, taking inspiration from Tzompantli, brutalist early prehispanic reliefs. Due to London’s rainy and humid climate, the work will inevitably deteriorate and fade away, dripping into residual material—an anti-monument—on the plinth and steps below.
Margolles states (translated): “It is necessary to visualize and signal transfemenicide. This year marks the six-year anniversary of the homicide of Karla, a transgender woman who was engaged in prostitution. She was murdered on December 22, 2016 in Ciudad Juárez, Chihuahua, Mexico. This commission is for her, and for all the others who were murdered. But above all, for trans people who are still living.”
Christina Quarles joins MOCA Board of Trustees
July 2, 2021
Pilar Corrias announces that gallery artist Christina Quarles will join the MOCA Board of Trustees.
“I am so proud and happy to be joining MOCA’s Board at this significant moment, as Los Angeles begins to reopen and we embrace the ever-rising standards of accountability, transparency, and inclusion.” - Quarles
“I look forward to working with Christina in furtherance of the Museum’s mission as we expand our institution’s reach into the artistic and broader community,” - Klaus Biesenbach, MOCA Director
Quarles’ appointment continues MOCA’s commitment to artist representation on its board. “Artist representation on our board is an essential part of MOCA’s history and DNA since its founding over 40 years ago. We are thrilled to warmly welcome Christina as a fellow trustee to our board. Christina brings a wealth of experience and a unique point of view, and we all look forward to working together,” - Maria Seferian, MOCA Board Chair
Quarles’ exhibition at the South London Gallery, London is on until the end of August.
Alex Barlow joins Sélavy by Di Donna as Director
June 29, 2021
A leading expert in 20th century design, with a focus on French Art Deco as well as international design from the turn of the 20th century to the present, Barlow will oversee design for the gallery in Southampton and shoppable online salon of art and design.
“We are delighted to welcome Alex to Sélavy by Di Donna. We founded Sélavy because we saw that our friends and collectors were seeking works of extraordinary design to round out a sophisticated home. I have known Alex for years and look forward to showcasing his impeccable eye in Sélavy’s salons.” – Emmanuel Di Donna
Gagosian announces representation of Jim Shaw
June 28, 2021
Gagosian announces the representation of LA-based artist Jim Shaw.
Since the 1970s, Jim Shaw has mined the dreams and conflicted realities of American culture, finding inspiration in comic books, pulp novels, rock albums, protest posters, and thrift store paintings. Often unfolding in long-term narrative cycles, Shaw’s works frequently place in dialogue images of friends and family with world events, pop culture, and alternate realities, blending the personal, the commonplace, and the uncanny.
Jim Shaw was born in 1952 in Midland, Michigan, and lives and works in Los Angeles. He has had major solo exhibitions at the New Museum, New York (2015–16); Baltic Centre for Contemporary Art, Gateshead, England (2012); and Los Angeles County Museum of Art (2012). Collections include the Museum of Modern Art, New York; Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; and Los Angeles County Museum of Art.
Photo: LeeAnn Nickels
Skarstedt set to open an additional space in Paris this fall
June 24, 2021
Located at 2 Avenue Matignon, the two-level 240 m2 space is the previous Hopkins Gallery, across the street from Christie’s Parisian headquarters. The space will be completely renovated by Jacques Grange.
Skarstedt Paris will open in October coinciding with FIAC. The inaugural show will be dedicated to Eric Fischl’s studies for “Krefeld Paintings”, a series of works from 2001. Future plans for the gallery’s programming include shows featuring Francis Bacon and Martin Kippenberger.
“While keeping a strong commitment to London, I am thrilled to establish our gallery in Paris, a city with outstanding cultural offer that I have always felt close to and wanted to engage with, particularly in this time of artistic thrive and post pandemic awakening. We will present historical and contemporary shows along with new collaborations that will be complementary with the rest of our program.” – Per Skarstedt
Maria Cifuentes joins Skarstedt as Senior Director in Paris, with over a decade of experience in Contemporary Art.
Having led Phillips' 20th Century & Contemporary Art department in France, Maria has developed relationships with seasoned and emerging collectors both in Paris and internationally. Overseeing the launch of their offices and exhibition space in France in 2014, Maria was also responsible for setting the exhibitions and events program, working with renowned single owner collections and curated exhibitions. Prior to that, Maria was associate Director at Galerie Templon and worked closely with its roster of artists.
“I am honored to be part of the global Skarstedt team, whose exhibitions I have always regarded as of outstanding quality. It is exciting for the gallery to engage in this moment of renewal and growth within this historic art capital and its community."
Bartha Contemporary announce the opening of a new space in London’s Notting Hill
June 22, 2021
Returning to their West London roots, Bartha Contemporary are happy to announce the opening of their latest space in London’s Notting Hill. Located at 7 Ledbury Mews North off Ledbury Road, the former photography Studio offers art enthusiasts an unexpected setting to enjoy and purchase art. The street-level space will host displays by artists that share an interest in abstraction in a focused and relaxed setting.
The gallery, founded in 2000, is run by Daniela & Niklas von Bartha; the German/Swiss couple’s interests in Art, Design, and Architecture continue to inform the gallery’s program. Shows at Bartha Contemporary are often on display for a short time and change regularly. An exhibition of recent large-scale works on paper by London based Italian artist Giulia Ricci starting June 22 will be on display until mid-July. The show, accompanied by a limited edition publication available online for free at gricci.art, was initially planned for the spring of 2020 at the former St James's showroom and postponed due to the pandemic.
An exhibition by London based artist Susan Morris, a two-person presentation with Lucinda Burgess and Frank Gerritz and a showcase of works on paper by Marfa TX-based artist Nick Terry and recent paintings by Cologne-based artist Stephan Baumkötter are some of the presentations planned this year.
Bartha Contemporary is a member of the recently formed Gallery Climate Coalition, Board member of the Foundation for Conceptual Art, Soest, Germany and an advisor to the James Howell Foundation, New York, USA.
New Phyllida Barlow sculpture to be installed in London’s Highgate Cemetery
June 21, 2021
The new large-scale sculpture, titled “Act” and on view in the cemetery in July and August 2021, will be over five metres tall, five metres deep and seven metres wide. Barlow describes it as a stage, that will include a “tower of fabric wrapped poles”. The work responds to the grand setting of the famous cemetery, and the Victorian obsession with honouring the dead.
Highgate Cemetery in North London is one of the capital’s most impressive and includes the graves of many notable people, including George Eliot, Karl Marx, Christina Rossetti, George Michael, Lucien Freud and Patrick Caulfield.
untitled: stack - photograph: Damian Griffiths
galerie frank elbaz announces representation of Kenjiro Okazaki
June 16, 2021
galerie frank elbaz is pleased to announce the representation of Kenjiro Okazaki.
Okazaki’s exhibition “Kenjiro Okazaki: TOPICA PICTUS / Rue de Turenne” was at the gallery in Paris earlier this year.
Okazaki (born in 1955 in Tokyo) is a Japanese visual artist whose works span several genres including painting, sculpture, landscape and architecture. His works have been featured in public collections throughout Japan and in exhibitions internationally. In 2002, Okazaki was selected as the director of the Japanese pavilion of the International Architecture Exhibition in Venice Biennale. His works include a collaborative performance ‘I Love my Robot’ with choreographer Trisha Brown. He received the Smithsonian Artist Research Fellowship at Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden (HMSG) in 2014.
Okazaki is extremely active as a theoretician and critic, and is the author or co-author of several books, including “Renaissance: Condition of Experience” featuring his analysis of Filippo Brunelleschi, and “Abstract Art as Impact: The Concrete Genealogy of Abstract Art”, which received the Minister of Education Award for Fine Arts in 2019.
image courtesy Kenjiro Okazaki
Pilar Corrias to open second London space in July
June 11, 2021
Pilar Corrias has announced the opening of a second London space located at 2 Savile Row.
The 1,200-square foot gallery is being designed by London and Oslo-based architects Hesselbrand and will open on 8 July 2021 with an inaugural exhibition by Tala Madani.
“I am thrilled to be opening a second London gallery in Mayfair this summer. This expansion will present exciting new opportunities for our artists, with the unique character and history of 2 Savile Row complementing the Eastcastle Street gallery and offering its own distinct possibilities. I am proud to reaffirm the gallery’s commitment to London and the city’s vital cultural contribution.” - Corrias
Almine Rech announces representation of Haley Josephs
June 9, 2021
Almine Rech is pleased to announce the representation of Haley Josephs in Europe, the United Kingdom, and China.
The artist’s inaugural solo exhibition featuring new paintings at the gallery’s Brussels space will open in September.
Drawing inspiration from notions of transformation, mortality, and femininity, Haley Josephs paints solitary figures in fantastical yet foreboding environments that transcend time and space. A recurring character within Josephs’ work is the artist’s late sister, who is often evoked in bold, almost daring, portraits that amalgamate intimate and personal narratives of the artist with the universal human condition. Her enigmatic paintings are colorful and whimsical yet also present a dark twist. An underlying sense of power and balance pervades her works, hinting a moment of liberation from one’s ostensibly everlasting psychological conflicts.
Portrait of Haley Josephs, 2021 / © Haley Josephs - Courtesy of the Artist and Almine Rech - Photo: Dan Bradica
