Gallery News
Fabrice Gygi awarded the Prix de la Société des Arts of Geneva
January 15, 2021
Fabrice Gygi is one of Switzerland’s leading artists of his generation. Marked by nomadism, his career as an artist has made him carry out a constantly renewed formal research. For more than thirty years, he explored the ambivalence of artefacts he made — at the crossroad of practicality and art. This orchestrated ambiguity enabled him to free himself from a normative society obeying logics of power.
Hollis Taggart announces representation of Suchitra Mattai and Alexandros Vasmoulakis
January 14, 2021
Both artists were featured in group exhibitions at Hollis Taggart in 2020. Mattai was included in the two-person exhibition History Reclaimed in March as well as the summer group presentation Look Again, while Vasmoulakis’s work was shown in the exhibitions Perceived Realities in June and Remix in the fall. The gallery is currently scheduling solo shows for both artists for after 2021. It will share representation of Mattai with the Denver-based gallery K Contemporary and grayDUCK Gallery in Austin. Hollis Taggart will represent the Athens and Windsor-based Vasmoulakis in the United States.
Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen in Rotterdam to receive a library of Surrealist works
The gift from the collectors Laurens Vancrevel and his partner Frida de Jong includes monographs, catalogues and literature on Surrealism, ranging from poetry and prose to essays, published in several languages. More than four thousand, mostly unique, titles from the beginnings of Surrealism up to the present day will be transferred to Boijmans, meaning that the museum will have a very extensive Surrealism library in the future. With this in mind, the museum has conceived the idea of opening a study centre to focus on Surrealism, which will be the first in the world.
Brenna Youngblood Now Represented by Roberts Projects
January 12, 2021
Born in Riverside, California in 1979, Brenna Youngblood takes as her subject the distilling and revising of an alternative Americana as seen through a dry art historical lens. Her work incorporates both autobiographical and fictional narratives to explore the iconography of the Black experience, the methods, politics and ethics of representation, and the legacy of abstraction. Youngblood often integrates found objects and materials into her compositions, imbuing her work with a sensual, tactile quality. This strategy is perhaps clearest in her most recent paintings–which explore the formalities of the painted surface–and are similar in certain aspects to the works of Color Field artists of the 1960's and 70’s, yet examine more complex political subject matter in a symbiotic-like network of aesthetic relationships. The artist's debut exhibition with the gallery will be on view March 6 – April 17, 2021.
Alison Jacques Gallery presents a Virtual Talk and Film Screening on The Gee’s Bend Quiltmakers
January 11, 2021
Join the gallery on Tuesday 19 January at 6pm GMT for a live conversation between Gee's Bend artists Loretta Pettway Bennett and Mary Margaret Pettway, and Raina Lampkins-Fielder, curator of the Souls Grown Deep Foundation. To coincide with the talk, the award-winning film 'The Quiltmakers of Gee's Bend' (2005), directed by Celia Carey, will be screened online on the gallery's website in a week-long event from 11-18 January.
Julian Charrière nominated for the Marcel Duchamp Prize 2021
January 8, 2021
Born in 1987, Julian Charrière uses a range of artistic approaches including photography, performance, sculpture and video to address questions relating to the passage of time and the relationship of our contemporary societies to the natural world. His research practice merges art, science and anthropology, highlighting the tensions that mark the relationship between man and his environment.
Created in 2000 by Gilles Fuchs, Founder and president of ADIAF, the Marcel Duchamp Prize aims to highlight the creative abundance of the French scene at the beginning of the 21st century and to support artists in their international career. The four artists nominated for the 2021 Prize are Julian Charrière, Isabelle Cornaro, Julien Creuzet and Lili Reynaud-Dewar. A collective exhibition will open at Centre Pompidou on 6 October, with the international jury announcing the winner on Monday 18 October, 2021.
Yinka Shonibare CBE RA receives Whitechapel Gallery Art Icon 2021 Award
January 6, 2021
Yinka Shonibare CBE RA (b. 1962, UK) is the eighth artist to receive the prestigious annual Art Icon award. On Monday 22 March 2021, the award will be presented during a virtual gala celebration Whitechapel Gallery has announced that Yinka Shonibare CBE RA (b. 1962, UK) is the eighth artist to receive the prestigious annual Art Icon award. On Monday 22 March 2021, the award will be presented during a virtual gala hosted by Iwona Blazwick OBE (Director, Whitechapel Gallery), and feature an exclusive musical performance from four-time Grammy Award winner Angélique Kidjo. To protect the safety and welfare of all attendees, the event will be hosted on a digital platform and will celebrate the Gallery’s continued commitment to youth programmes and educational activities through an evening of live presentations.
Almine Rech announces the passing of Kim Tschang-Yeul (1929-2021)
Considered one of the pre-eminent figures in the establishment of contemporary Korean art on the international scene, Kim Tschang-Yeul‘s work has been shown around the world for more than fifty years. Born in 1929 in the north of the then unified Korea, he migrated to the south to escape the communist regime. He subsequently left for New York to pursue his artistic dreams before finally settling in Paris in 1969. There, he began to nurture, over a period of forty years, a unique motif: the drop of water. The waterdrop was the starting point for a singular and iconic body of work, which stands at the confluence of lyrical abstraction, Pop art and Chinese calligraphy. This simple and limpid œuvre subtly fused Taoist wisdom, modern conceptual irony and the tragedy of war.
Christopher Le Brun Knighted in the 2021 Queen’s Honours List
January 5, 2021
Le Brun has been a celebrated British painter, printmaker and sculptor since the early 1980s, and was a prizewinner at the John Moores Liverpool exhibitions in 1978 and 1980. He was elected to the Royal Academy in London in 1996, where he became its first-ever Professor of Drawing, and has also been an instrumental public figure in his role from 2011–2019 as the RA's President.
Patti Smith presents a public art installation in London’s Piccadilly Circus
Taking over the Piccadilly Lights advertising screen for two and half minutes every day at 20:21 GMT (8:21pm) from January 1 - 31 2021, Smith’s A New Year combines musical performance and poetry, transforming the 4k screen into a digital canvas. The presentation will feature two live pre-recorded events at midnight on New Year’s Eve and January 20, the date of the US presidential inauguration. The project is presented by Circa, a new platform presenting digital art in the public space established in 2020.
Art Düsseldorf announces postponement of the fair’s fourth edition
Originally expected to take place in November 2020 and then rescheduled to this April due to ongoing uncertainties surrounding the Covid-19 pandemic, the new dates are now expected to be announced in early 2021. The fair’s committee will be examining alternatives for next year together with exhibitors and partners.
Sotheby’s announces the sale of Christo and Jeanne-Claude’s private collection
December 18, 2020
Scheduled to be held in Paris on 17 February 2021, the auction of nearly 400 lots invites the world to step into the private sphere of the famed artistic couple, showcasing the range of their artistic inspirations, friendships with leading 20th century artists, and the studio where Christo and Jeanne-Claude projected their artistic vision to the world. Additionally, the collection includes several works by Christo and Jeanne-Claude spanning their multi-decade practice, featuring many of their most well-known public projects, such as The Pont Neuf Wrapped, Project for Paris, and The Umbrellas, Joint Project for Japan and USA, as well as their famed Package and Store Front series from the 1960s.
Petzel announces representation of the Joyce Pensato Estate and dual exhibitions for January 2021
December 16, 2020
Born and raised in Brooklyn, New York, Joyce Pensato (1941–2019) lived and worked in Brooklyn her entire career except for a few months’ long stints in Europe in the late 1980s and early 1990s, particularly in Paris and in Verteuil. The artist credited her father, a Sicilian immigrant, as a great influence on her love of Pop culture, America and the arts, often times taking her and her brother Benedict to 42nd Street, the Statue of Liberty and other famous New York tourist sites to soak up the vibrancy of his adopted city. Pensato’s critical recognition came in the early 1990s, and her charcoal drawings were the first to gain attention. From January 15 through February 27, 2021, Petzel will present two solo exhibitions of the artist’s works at its Chelsea and Upper East Side galleries, which will include paintings, drawings, sculptures, and installation, some of which have never been exhibited before.
Fondation Cartier hosts The Tunis Diaries, a live-streamed concert by Emel
December 15, 2020
Presented within the context of the exhibition "Sarah Sze, Night into Day" on Friday 18 December at 9pm CET / 3pm EST on the Fondation‘s Facebook and Instagram channels, this concert is a unique opportunity to listen to this activist with a remarkable voice, perform for the first time in France, her latest album, at once highly personal and touching. In 2011, Emel‘s song "Kelmti Horra" [My word is free] became the anthem of the Tunisian revolution and later the Arab Spring. In 2015, she was invited to sing the song at the Nobel Peace Prize award ceremony.
Galerie Chantal Crousel releases Swear That You’ll Play, a book to celebrate the gallery‘s 40th anniversary
Published by Is-Land Édition and designed by Dune Lunel studio, Swear That You’ll Play, an extensive publication of over seven hundred pages, looks back at the history of the gallery, considered as a major actor in the contemporary art scene, both in France and abroad. The book opens with a double interview conducted by Philippe Vergne, director of the Serralves Foundation in Porto, first with Chantal Crousel, then with Niklas Svennung. Both talk about their conception of a gallerist’s work, their critical commitments, and their admiration for the artists they work with. These discussions are followed by a vast collection of images which features a very large part of the exhibitions that have taken place at Galerie Chantal Crousel.
Hauser & Wirth present a special online screening of ‘Philip Guston: A Life Lived’ (1981) to celebrate the artist‘s upcoming exhibition in St. Moritz
December 14, 2020
Filmed in 1971 at his Woodstock studio and during his 1980 retrospective at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, this iconic documentary provides an intimate look at the visionary American painter Philip Guston (1913-1980) as he speaks candidly about his philosophy of painting and the psychological motivation for his work. The film will be free to stream from Friday 18 to Sunday 20 December, 2020.
Alison Jacques Gallery now represents Carol Rhodes (1959–2018)
December 11, 2020
Carol Rhodes’s intense landscape paintings and drawings explore conceptions of ‘natural’ and ‘man-made’ environments and subtly redefine ideas of beauty and expression. The first project will be an exhibition of paintings and drawings from across Rhodes’s career and is scheduled to open in February 2021. Born in Edinburgh in 1959, Rhodes grew up in Serampore, India, where her father worked as a medic and a theology professor. In her teens, she relocated to the UK to complete her education, but continued to visit India into her twenties. This early experience of travel, and the complex feeling of belonging and displacement it provoked, would later prove formative in Rhodes’s art.
Fergus McCaffrey announces the death of Tatsuo Ikeda (1928–2020)
The acclaimed Japanese artist, whose career-long engagement with universal themes of conflict, nationalism, genesis, and transformation, inspired and emboldened an entire generation of Japanese artists, passed away last month at the age of ninety-two. Born in Saga Prefecture, Japan, in 1928, the course of Ikeda’s early life was dramatically altered by the ongoing intensity of World War II, culminating in his service as a kamikaze pilot at the age of fifteen. Spared by the ending of World War II, in 1948, Ikeda moved to Tokyo and attended Tama Art University where he became engaged in Taro Okamoto and Kiyoteru Hanada’s Avant-garde Art Study Group.
An exhibition of the artist’s work is currently on view, by appointment, in Tatsuo Ikeda & Philippe Parreno: Field Phase at Fergus McCaffrey in New York.
Pace Gallery launches an online charity exhibition in support of Nevelson Chapel
December 10, 2020
In 1977, Louise Nevelson was commissioned to design a chapel for Saint Peter’s Church in Midtown Manhattan. Nevelson herself called this space “an oasis of silence” from the hustle and bustle of New York. Over the past two years, the Chapel has been undergoing extensive renovations to ensure the safekeeping of this peerless sculpture for future generations. As the "Renewing a Masterwork" fundraising campaign reaches its first major milestone with a foundational gift from Pace Gallery, Nevelson Chapel is embarking on a public drive to source donations from individual contributors to reach their $5.75 million goal. The gallery's online exhibition features three seminal collage works by Nevelson from the 1970s, on view until 30 December.
Tiwani Contemporary now represents Umar Rashid (Frohawk Two Feathers)
December 9, 2020
For the past seventeen years, artist Umar Rashid (Frohawk Two Feathers) has documented the complex, historical and episodic saga of a fictional world superpower – the Frenglish Empire. Across portraits, maps, flags, artefacts, vignettes and drawings and other visual remnants of an imagined empire and its multiple interactions, Rashid reveals pivotal events and the ever-changing fortunes of a lively array of protagonists, both elite and quotidian, all peculiar to a highly novel parallel universe. The artist was born in 1976 in Chicago, Illinois, and currently lives and works in Los Angeles, California.