Hauser & Wirth announces worldwide representation of Barbara Chase-Riboud

June 8, 2023

Hauser & Wirth is proud to announce worldwide representation of Philadelphia-born, Paris-based artist and writer Barbara Chase-Riboud. Over the course of her seven-decade career, Chase-Riboud has established herself as one of the most prolific, boundary-breaking artists of her generation. She has created a revolutionary body of work which is defined equally by its inventiveness, technical prowess and fearless engagement with transcultural histories.

‘We are honored that Barbara Chase-Riboud has chosen to join the Hauser & Wirth family of artists,’ says Iwan Wirth. ‘An assured innovator, Barbara’s devotion to the visual expansion of sculpture beyond Western modes of representation has cemented her as a pioneering voice of 20th and 21st-century art. Over the course of a truly incredible life and career, she has fearlessly challenged the traditional hierarchies of sculpture, bringing forth an original artistic language that is wholly her own, and which deftly explores themes of identity, memory, place and power. Her work has never been so relevant, and we look forward to reaffirming her place in art history.’

The gallery will collaborate with curator and advisor, Erin Jenoa Gilbert, who has managed Chase-Riboud’s exhibitions, publications and acquisitions for the last four years.

Hauser & Wirth’s first exhibition of Chase-Riboud will inaugurate the gallery’s new location on Wooster Street in Soho, New York, in the fall.

photo: Barbara Chase-Riboud with ‘Mao’s Organ’ (2007) and ‘Malcolm X #13’ (2008), 2022 © Pulitzer Arts Foundation

Stephen Friedman to represent Woody De Othello

June 1, 2023

Stephen Friedman Gallery announces representation of Woody De Othello, in collaboration with Jessica Silverman Gallery and Karma.

De Othello’s sculptures, paintings and installations imagine a world in which the things that populate our domestic lives metamorphose into syncretic, humanoid objects.  Working primarily in ceramic, wood and bronze, he creates assemblages of everyday artefacts — phones, television remotes, clocks, lamps, calendars, pipes, shoes, and light switches - that he stacks on glazed ceramic stools, chairs, radiators, and step ladders. “The objects mimic actions that humans perform,” says Othello.  “They’re extensions of our own actions. We use phones to speak and to listen, clocks to tell time, vessels to hold things, and our bodies are indicators of all of those.”

A playful sense of humour infuses Othello’s work and manifests in visual puns and cartoonish figuration.  His vessels sometimes sprout ears and lips. They perch precariously on spindly legs. Elongated arms wrap protectively around their bodies, lending them an absurdist pathos that nudges them towards the uncanny. Standing alone or staged on theatrical plinths, his sculptures become actors in a drama of his own making. “I started to think about what would happen if the objects in the space of the figure were affected with the same type of spirit and energy as a figure. It’s become another way for me to have a conversation around psychological and emotional states.”

Othello looks to myriad sources, from jazz music and French Surrealism to California Funk Art of the late 50’s-70’s and the radical, experimental practices of Ron Nagle and Mike Henderson. 

Informed by his own Haitian ancestry, he draws on the nkisi figures of Central Africa, the supernatural objects of Vodou folklore and the animistic face jugs made by enslaved Black potters from Edgefield, South Carolina in the 1860s. 

Woody De Othello was born in 1991 in Miami, Florida.  He received a BFA from Florida Atlantic University in Boca Raton, and a MFA from the California College of Arts in San Francisco in 2017. In 2021–2022, he presented a solo exhibition, ‘Hope Omens’ at the John Michael Kohler Center, and was included in ‘Quiet as It’s Kept’ the 2022 Whitney Biennial. In 2019, San José Museum of Art, San José, California hosted ‘Woody De Othello: Breathing Room.’ He has been featured in group shows including ‘Strange Clay’ at the Hayward Gallery, London, 2022, and ‘Hear Me Now: The Black Potters of Old Edgefield, South Carolina’ at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 2022. 

His work is represented in numerous collections including the Institute of Contemporary Art, Miami, Florida; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco, California; MAXXI – National Museum of 21st Century Art, Rome, Italy; San José Museum of Art, San José, California; Baltimore Museum of Art, Baltimore, Maryland; Renwick Gallery, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, D.C.; Seattle Art Museum, Seattle, Washington; Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles, California; the Rennie Collection, Vancouver, British Columbia; Museum of Fine Art, Boston, Massachusetts; Crocker Art Museum, Sacramento, California; Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania; Pérez Art Museum, Miami, Florida; Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, New York; Aishti Foundation, Lebanon; and de Young Museum, San Francisco, California.  He is represented by Jessica Silverman, San Francisco; Karma, New York; and Stephen Friedman Gallery, London. Woody De Othello lives and works in Oakland, California.

photo: Collette Wylie

Thaddaeus Ropac announces the passing of Ilya Kabakov

May 30, 2023

“We are deeply saddened by the passing of Ilya Iosifovich Kabakov. Surrounded by his family, he died peacefully last week at the age of 89.

“A loved and greatly admired artist and philosopher, he was a true pioneer in the field of concept and installation art. In 1983, Kabakov completed his first ‘total installations’ and is considered the creator of the genre.

“Born in Dnipropetrovsk, Ukraine, in the former USSR he emigrated to Austria in 1987 and later settled in the United States. Beginning in 1989, he began to work with Emilia Kanevsky (née Lekach) and they married in 1992. Their works, delving into human fears, insecurities, and dreams, themes of utopia, life under totalitarian suppression, and the history of art, are invariably suggestive of the possibility of a brighter future.

“Together, they are the recipients of numerous awards, including both the Chevalier and the Commandeur des Arts et des Lettres from France (1995 and 2014) and the Oskar Kokoschka Prize from Austria (2002). They have also received honourary degrees from the Bern University, Moscow Art Academy, the Sorbonne, Paris, and the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna.

“Their artistic legacy is housed in public and private collections all over the world and their collaborative art project The Ship of Tolerance was awarded the prestigious Cartier Prize for the Best Art Project of the Year in 2010 and has been shown in venues across the globe, including the Venice Biennale (2007), since its first inception in Siwa, Egypt, in 2005.

“All our heartfelt compassion goes out to Emilia Kabakov and their family.”

Małgorzata Mirga-Tas joins Frith Street Gallery

May 23, 2023

Frith Street Gallery announces representation of the artist, educator and activist Małgorzata Mirga-Tas.

Mirga-Tas’s work addresses anti-Roma stereotypes and engages in building an affirmative iconography of Roma communities. Her work depicts everyday life: relationships, alliances and shared activities. The artist’s vibrant textile collages are created from materials and fabrics collected from family and friends, which imbues them with a life of their own and a corresponding immediacy. Patchworks made of curtains, jewellery, shirts, and sheets are sewn together to form so-called “microcarriers” of history, just as resulting images revise macro perspectives.

Mirga-Tas’s portrayals take the perspective of 'minority feminism', which consciously advocates for women's strength while acknowledging the artist's cultural roots. Mirga-Tas was the official Polish representative at the 59th Venice Biennale in 2022 – the first Roma artist to represent any country. Her vibrant works offer a rare opportunity to see the Roma on their own terms, both as a contemporary community and as a people with a rich heritage.

Mirga-Tas was born in 1972 in Zakopane, Poland and lives and works in Czarna Góra, Poland. Recent solo exhibitions include I Have a Dream / Suno Mangie Dzialas, Göteborgs Konsthall, Gothenburg, Sweden (2023); Re-enchanting the World, Polish Pavilion at the 59th Venice Biennale, Italy (2022); Screen Test, Kahán Art Space Vienna & Budapest, Austria & Hungary (2022); Travelling Images, International Cultural Centre, Kraków, Poland (2022); Re-enchanting the World: Homecoming, Castello Estense, Ferrara, Italy (2022); Out of Egypt, Arsenał Gallery, Białystok, Poland (2021) and The stories we become, Szydłowski Gallery, Warsaw, Poland (2020).

Małgorzata Mirga-Tas’s first UK exhibition will take place at Frith Street Gallery in September 2023. A press release will follow.

photo: Hendrik Zeitler

Tomashi Jackson joins Pilar Corrias

Pilar Corrias announces the representation of Tomashi Jackson.

Jackson (b. 1980, Houston, TX) has a research-driven multimedia practice which combines painting, printmaking, sculpture, photography, video, fibrework and performance to explore the influence of social histories and aesthetic theory. Tracing an intersection between 1960s colour theory, histories of abstraction, love songs and archival imagery, Jackson interrogates the ways in which aesthetic and political edicts of colour are fundamentally interwoven.

A painterly approach anchors her practice; from a kaleidoscopic layering of colour and vinyl strips onto her increasingly sculptural surfaces, to projecting colour through her videos and photographs, and a theoretical approach to colour in her fibrework. Jackson fuses historical images with earthen materials that reference sites and subjects of public concern, including: education policy and voting rights in the United States; the implementation of eminent domain in New York City since the razing of Seneca Village in the 19th century, and the history of governments trafficking drugs as a means to fund wars. By using nuanced colour and collage strategies, Jackson invites the viewer to consider material experiences of painting, the ways in which colour perception has influenced the governance of public spaces, and how marginalised communities preserve and empower themselves.

A selection of Jackson's work will be presented at the gallery's booth (R3) this June at Art Basel 2023, coinciding with a mid-career survey of the artist's practice opening at the MCA in Denver, Colorado on 14 June. This autumn Tomashi will participate in a group exhibition at The Guggenheim, New York.

Richard Avedon 100

May 17, 2023

Hamiltons commemorates the centenary of Richard Avedon’s birth with the exhibition AVEDON: GLAMOROUS, on view until 14 July. To mark the momentous occasion, the gallery presents some of Avedon’s most iconic and lesser seen images that centre around the theme of glamour.

Richard Avedon was widely acknowledged as one of the pioneers of modern photography with a career that spanned 60 years.

Throughout his career, Avedon nurtured relationships with some of the most sought-after models of his time such as Twiggy, Ingrid Boulting, Dovima, Jean Shrimpton and Suzy Parker.

His ability to portray his subjects in a way that was both glamorous and authentic was what made his work so legendary. Avedon is synonymous with glamour and his portraits shaped American society that no other has yet to match.

Alongside his fashion photography, Avedon became renowned for his portraits that encompassed all walks of life. His subjects ranged from social activists to figures from high society, from Coco Chanel, Tina Turner, Andy Warhol, and the members of his factory, to congressman Adam Clayton Powell.

Avedon was the first photographer to have two exhibitions at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. His work has also been exhibited at Smithsonian Institution, Minneapolis Institute of Arts, the Amon Carter Museum of American Art, the Whitney Museum of American Art, Centre Pompidou and numerous others worldwide.

Richard Avedon, Sunny Harnett and Alla, evening dresses by Balmain, casino, Le Touquet, August, 1954 © The Richard Avedon Foundation

David Zwirner now represents Joe Bradley

May 16, 2023

David Zwirner is pleased to announce the representation of Joe Bradley. A solo exhibition of new work by the artist will be presented at the gallery’s New York location in spring 2024.

American artist Joe Bradley (b. 1975) is widely recognized for his expansive visual practice that encompasses painting as well as sculpture and drawing. Over the past twenty years, Bradley has constantly reinvented his approach to his art, creating a distinctive body of work that has ranged from modular, minimalist-style paintings and sculptures; to rough-hewn, heavily worked surfaces featuring pictographic and abstract elements; to recent refined and layered compositions that, as critic Roberta Smith notes, “balance gracefully between representation and abstraction.” The artist has consistently explored the possibilities of certain formal elements—such as line and, above all, color— combining references that are art historical, cultural, and personal to create work that is characterized by a vivid interplay between the formally composed and considered, and the spontaneous and instinctive.

David Zwirner states, “I am incredibly excited that Joe Bradley has decided to join the gallery. I’ve been a fan of his work for more than a decade and believe that Joe is one of the most original voices working in American painting today. While his practice is firmly situated in the lineage of great American abstraction, his deep knowledge of European painting and his playful approach to figuration render his work endlessly surprising and unpredictable. We’re thrilled to present our first show with Joe Bradley here in New York in the spring of 2024.”

Joe Bradley, 2023. Photo by Jason Schmidt. Courtesy David Zwirner

Alison Jacques announces representation of Monica Sjöö

May 5, 2023

Alison Jacques today announced the representation of Monica Sjöö (b.1938, Härnösand, Sweden; d.2005, Bristol) - ahead of the artist’s first major museum retrospective “The Great Cosmic Mother” at Moderna Museet, Stockholm (13 May – 15 October 2023) and Modern Art Oxford, UK (18 November 2023 – 25 February 2024) curated by Jo Widoff and Amy Budd.

In her own words, Monica Sjöö dedicated her life and practice “to creating paintings that speak of women’s lives, our history and sacredness”. Self-described as a “radical anarcho/eco-feminist and Goddess artist, writer and thinker involved in Earth spirituality”. As Jennifer Higgie writes, “her legacy is one characterized by her visualization of women as powerful and life-giving; as goddesses whose ancient wisdom can nourish contemporary life. When Sjöö made her pictures, she believed that the spirits of the ancient sisterhood were communicating with her, from matriarchal cultures, which had been erased. Artmaking, for Sjöö, was an act of joy and possibility; a means not only of expressing something about the present, but of communicating with the past and moving into a more positive future”. During her lifetime Sjöö participated in numerous happenings and protests, as well as exhibitions; she wrote and published extensively, including her seminal book The Great Cosmic Mother (1987).

Monica Sjöö’s inaugural solo show at the gallery will open in 2024 following the publication of Sjöö’s first major monograph featuring essays and texts by Amy Tobin, Annika Öhrner, Jennie Klein, as well as contributions by artists Lucy Stein, Jill Smith and Olivia Plender, published by Moderna Museet, Stockholm and Modern Art Oxford.

Maia Ruth Lee joins Tina Kim

May 4, 2023

Tina Kim Gallery has announced its representation of Maia Ruth Lee (b. 1983). The Busan-born, Colorado-based artist will now be jointly represented by both Tina Kim Gallery in New York and François Ghebaly in Los Angeles.

“Maia is an artist who thinks deeply about the human condition, especially as concerns of migration have resonance in all of our lives. We are thrilled to welcome Maia to our roster of internationally renowned contemporary artists and important historical masters” - Tina Kim.

Maia Ruth Lee’s first exhibition at the gallery, The skin of the earth is seamless, closes May 6th.

Comprising paintings, sculptures, and video works, the exhibition presents an expanded look at her Bondage Baggage series (2018-ongoing). The works in the exhibition were born out of the artist’s longstanding concerns surrounding the physical, psychological, and emotional experiences of a diasporic migratory life. Born in Busan, South Korea, then growing up between Kathmandu and Seoul, Lee spent over a decade in New York City, recently relocating to Salida, Colorado. Her lived experience of migrating as well as an awareness and empathy for the life of migrants in Kathmandu serve as continual source of inspiration and investigation for Lee. Language as a mechanism in its ability and failure to shape and give account to experiences, memories, and emotions has been a major thread in Lee’s work, as for those whose lives are precarious and unrooted— maps, atlases, and banners become a device that calls to mind their life of movement, and often, loss. Lee’s use of india ink, with its reference to calligraphy, point to human compulsion for storytelling, mark making, and archiving. Rather than lingering in futility and loss, Lee’s work opens up a passageway, forging new lexicons that give form to lives of transience, their stories, beyond immediate and accepted forms of legibility and comprehension.

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Maia Ruth Lee has held solo exhibitions at the Museum of Contemporary Art Denver (CO), Francois Ghebaly Gallery (LA), and Jack Hanley Gallery (NY). Lee has participated in numerous group exhibitions including the Aspen Art Museum (CO), 2019 Whitney Biennial, Hammer Museum, Helena Anrather Gallery, CANADA gallery, Studio Museum 127 in Harlem, amongst others. Lee attended Hongik University in Seoul, and the Emily Carr Institute of Art and Design in Vancouver, Canada. In addition, Lee was the recipient of the Gold Art Prize in 2021 and the Rema Hort Mann grant in 2017. Her work is held in the public collection at the Whitney Museum of American Art.

Photo: Hyunjung Rhee

Galerie Chantal Crousel now represents Yuki Kimura

April 27, 2023

Galerie Chantal Crousel has announced the representation of Yuki Kimura.

The gallery will present Yuki Kimura's work as part of Art Basel's 2023 edition of Unlimited, in collaboration with Taka Ishii Gallery, and her solo exhibition will open at the gallery in Paris in 2024.

“Yuki Kimura’s work exists both as an elegant, static, physical form with a calmly assertive presence in space, and as an immaterial, wandering, and vibrating force reflective of all that exists around and throughout it—in the negative, so to speak. It initiates processes of transformation and is transformative itself, which may at first appear counterintuitive to its static appearance. The passive, mute, and durable world of objects and physical matter that one encounters in her work becomes a place of dynamic processes and shapeshifting, where the stable appearance and order of things are profoundly transformed. Kimura’s work operates beyond language, occupying an entirely visual sphere, but communicates at a highly visceral and embodied level of perception.” - Kathrin Bentele

Photo: Jiayun Deng - Galerie Chantal Crousel

Tai Shani joins Gathering

Gathering is delighted to announce representation of Tai Shani (b. 1976, London), following the artist’s inaugural exhibition with the gallery in 2022.

“We’re thrilled to share this wonderful news. Tai is a remarkable artist and she has been an integral part of Gathering’s vision – her unique, courageous and powerful voice epitomises the gallery’s desire to showcase the most compelling contemporary and historical artists. We couldn’t be more excited to continue our journey together.“
– Alex Flick, Founder & Director, Gathering

Tai Shani’s artistic practice, comprising performance, film, photography, and installation, uses experimental writing as a guiding method. Oscillating between theoretical concepts and visceral details, Shani’s texts attempt to create poetic coordinates in order to cultivate fragmentary cosmologies of marginalised nonsovereignty. Taking cues from both mournful and undead histories of reproductive labour, illness and solidarity, her work is invested in recovering feminised aesthetic modes – such as the floral, the trippy or the gothic – in a register of utopian militancy. In this vein, the epic, in both its literary long-form and excessive affect, often shapes Shani’s approach: Her long-term projects work through historical and mythical narratives, such as Christine de Pizan’s allegorical city of women or the social history of psychedelic ergot poisoning, extending into divergent formats and collaborations. Shani’s projects examine desire in its (infra-)structural dimension, exploring a realism that materially fantasises against the patriarchal racial capitalist present. Tai Shani is the joint 2019 Turner Prize winner together with Lawrence Abu Hamdan, Helen Cammock and Oscar Murillo. Her work has been shown extensively in Britain and internationally.

Shani’s work will be featured in upcoming exhibitions at Reina Sofia, Madrid; Kunsthall Trondheim, Trondheim; Mécènes Du Sud, Montpellier; and the Contemporary Arts Center, Cincinnati.

Turner Prize 2023 shortlist announced

Tate Britain has announced that Jesse Darling, Ghislaine Leung, Rory Pilgrim and Barbara Walker have been shortlisted for the Turner Prize 2023.

Coinciding with the gallery’s centenary celebrations, an exhibition will be at Towner Eastbourne, East Sussex, UK, from 28 September 2023 to 14 April 2024 and the winner will be announced on 5 December 2023 at an award ceremony in the town’s Winter Gardens.

Jesse Darling is nominated for the solo exhibitions “No Medals, No Ribbons” at Modern Art Oxford and “Enclosures” at Camden Art Centre (virtual visit available here).

Ghislaine Leung is nominated for her solo exhibition Fountains at Simian, Copenhagen.

Rory Pilgrim is nominated for the commission RAFTS in the exhibition “Radio Ballads” at Serpentine, and a live performance of the work at Cadogan Hall, London.

Rory Pilgrim is nominated for the commission RAFTS at Serpentine (part of the exhibition “Radio Ballads” see here) and Barking Town Hall, and a live performance of the work at Cadogan Hall, London.

Barbara Walker is nominated for her presentation entitled Burden of Proof at Sharjah Biennial 15.

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One of the world’s best-known prizes for the visual arts, the Turner Prize aims to promote public debate around new developments in contemporary British art. Established in 1984, the prize is named after the radical painter JMW Turner and is awarded each year to a British artist for an outstanding exhibition or other presentation of their work. The winner receives £25,000 with £10,000 awarded to the other shortlisted artists.

Turner Prize 2023 is part of Towner 100, a year-long centenary celebration of arts and culture across Eastbourne.

The members of the Turner Prize 2023 jury are Martin Clark, Director, Camden Art Centre; Cédric Fauq, Chief Curator, Capc musée d’art contemporain de Bordeaux; Melanie Keen, Director of Wellcome Collection; and Helen Nisbet, Artistic Director, Art Night. The jury is chaired by Alex Farquharson, Director, Tate Britain.

Photos: Danko Stjepanovic; Ben Westoby c. Modern Art Oxford; GRAYSC; andriesse-eyck galerie

Lullin + Ferrari announces representation of Mirjam Blanka Inauen

April 26, 2023

Mirjam Blanka Inauen presented her first project with the gallery in spring 2022 and had her first solo show in 2023.

Inauen is an artist and musician who lives and works in Zurich. She studied sociology, anthropology and gender studies in Colombia, Mexico and Lausanne and worked as a sociologist before devoting herself entirely to visual arts and music. Her visual work is inspired by music and features rhythmic patterns, bright colours and textile surfaces that convey a sense of presence, closeness and intimacy.

Inauen's art possesses a startling directness. Her approach is both conceptually driven and intuitive. With the simplest means, multicoloured color surfaces on paper and a vocabulary of forms that follows from the colours, she creates moods and feelings.

“It is this feeling of presence/transcendence that I want to create as an artist. So I place straight lines and simple forms on a grid, repeat, mirror, rotate and superimpose them so to create patterns — rhythms. The fluidity of the paint and the indefiniteness of colour are snapped in a formation, only to flow once more with the material of their supporting paper or fabric.” - Mirjam Blanka Inauen

Galleria Continua announces its representation of Eva Jospin

Eva Jospin (1975, Paris), who graduated from the École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts de Paris, has been composing forest and architectural landscapes for the past fifteen years, which she develops in various media. Winner of the Prix de l'Académie des Beaux-Arts in 2015 and resident at the Villa Medici in Rome in 2017, she has had numerous exhibitions of international importance, notably at the Palais de Tokyo (Inside, 2014) and at the Palazzo Dei Diamanti in Ferrara in 2018, at the Museum Pfalzgalerie in Kaiserslautern in 2019, at the Hayward Gallery in 2020, at the Het Noordbrabants Museum in Den Bosch (Paper Tales, 2021) and more recently at the Musée de la Chasse et de la Nature in Paris (Galleria, 2021).

The artist also unveiled several monumental and immersive installations as part of specific commissions, for example in the center of the Cour Carrée du Louvre (Panorama, 2016), or at the Abbey of Montmajour (Cenotaph, 2020) ; signed the creation of an incredible set of embroidered panels for the Dior Haute Couture fashion show 2021-2022 (Chambre de Soie, 2021) and realized the monumental décor of the Dior spring-summer 2023 fashion show (Nymphées, 2022).

Eva Jospin also created permanent works such as the installation Folie, at the Domaine de Chaumont-sur-Loire, inaugurated in 2015, La Traversée at Beaupassage in 2018, Paris and Le Passage in Nantes in 2019. In 2022, Eva Jospin inaugurated Microclima, a new permanent installation conceived as a winter garden in the Max Mara Piazza del Liberty shop in Milan.

Throughout 2023, more than twenty of the artist's works will be presented at contemporary art fairs around the world as part of the carte blanche given to the artist by the house Ruinart. This series of works will be connected with Eva Jospin's solo exhibition at the Fondation Thalie in Brussels in spring 2023 (Panorama), and with the exhibition planned starting from the summer 2023 at the Palais des Papes in Avignon (Palazzo).

Eva Jospin’s first exhibition at Galleria Continua will be a solo show in San Gimignano, opening 27 May.

photo: Lorenzo Fiaschi

Shaqúelle Whyte joins Pippy Houldsworth Gallery

April 19, 2023

Pippy Houldsworth Gallery announces the representation of British artist Shaqúelle Whyte.

Whyte’s first solo exhibition with the gallery will open in April 2024 - “there’s an incredible canon of artists making work right now. To be among those few given the platform to express themselves freely is a privilege” - Whyte.

In his paintings, Whyte presents imagined spaces imbued with a sense of ambiguity that interrogate the human condition, all the while exploring the material qualities of the medium. Loosely rendered, energetic brushwork and an expansive approach to composition are hallmarks of the artist’s practice.

Although non-linear, narrative plays a central role in Whyte’s work, which sees him carry certain motifs over from one painting to the next. These recurring details contribute to the sense of theatre that pervades his work; Whyte directs his subjects as though they are actors and his canvas a stage.

Despite excluding himself from the work representationally, the stories he crafts reflect his everyday life and innermost thoughts. The figures in Whyte’s paintings act as conduits for his subconscious. Giving form to thought through paint, he generates a sense of introspection through his characters’ often averted or guarded faces. At once enigmatic and familiar, Whyte’s paintings evoke the surreal and shape the ephemeral, ultimately leaving his world open to the viewer’s own interpretation.

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Shaqúelle Whyte (b. 2000, Wolverhampton) lives and works in London. He received a BA in Fine Art from the Slade School of Fine Art in 2022 and is currently studying an MA at the Royal College of Art. He will have his first solo exhibition at Pippy Houldsworth Gallery in April 2024. Other upcoming projects include a solo online presentation with White Cube early next year. Recent group shows include Buffer, Guts Gallery, London (2022) and Seasons in the City, curated by Artuner, Palazzo Capris, Turin (2022).

Image courtesy the artist and Pippy Houldsworth Gallery, London

In Memory Of Irma Blank

April 17, 2023

Mai 36 Gallery announces the death of Irma Blank

“I think we are inside our doing, through our body, in time. Time accompanies us, but we also accompany time, and as we proceed every occurrence, including errors, finds its balance, until life coincides with a path of signs, a road that goes from the beginning to the end” - Blank

“We have lost a graceful, radical artist and wonderful person” - Victor Gisler, Mai 36

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Irma Blank was a passionate reader and lover of language.

Born in 1934 in Northern Germany, she met her Italian husband in 1955 and moved to Sicily. The gap between the two countries and the two languages was immense - it led her to question the adequacy or rather the inadequacy of any language. She then realized “that there’s no such thing as the right word” - even in one’s mother tongue - to really convey meaning/feeling.

Blank’s entire body of work is based on language and therefore literature - whether emptying books from their meaning or creating a new form of nonverbal, asemantic writing, for instance by creating drawings that mimick the layout of existing books/newspapers or using a utopian alphabet.

Her work was the result of a matured conceptuality, asserting itself in the corporality of production and engaging with a utopic community of hypothetical readers, while also in its nature, a soliloquy.

photo: Maria Mulas

Gagosian announces representation of Cy Gavin

April 13, 2023

Gagosian announces the global representation of American artist Cy Gavin.

In his recent work, Gavin paints metaphorical interpretations of sites that have been shaped over time by human intervention and geological or cosmic phenomena. Composed with fluid, gestural brushstrokes in striking colors, they are at times monumental in scale.

Gavin was born in Pittsburgh in 1985 and raised in Donora, Pennsylvania. He graduated from Carnegie Mellon University in 2007 and earned his MFA in 2016 from Columbia University. Following the death of his father in 2015 he traveled to his ancestral homeland of Bermuda to research his family’s genealogy and the island’s history. The paintings he made during this period include depictions of Gibbet Island and Tucker’s Town - the site of an enclave of Black Bermudians that was destroyed in 1920 to create an exclusive golf resort. The works are marked by the legacies of enslavement, colonialism, and resistance, visualizing the creation and maintenance of similar power structures in the United States.

In 2016, Gavin relocated from New York City to New York’s Hudson Valley, where he currently lives and works. He began painting the area’s landscape, ranging from the environment around his studio to dramatic features of the region. Spanning approximately thirty feet in length, Bash Bish Falls (2019) features a panoramic view of the waterfall, frozen in winter, and a clove, or gorge. The cascade in southwestern Massachusetts is set in one of the few remaining old-growth eastern hemlock forests and is pictured on the night of a full lunar eclipse.

In 2021, Gavin’s first solo museum exhibition was organized by the Aspen Art Museum, Colorado, he was also included in the 2022 Whitney Biennial, and had his debut exhibition with Gagosian in New York in 2023.

Gavin’s debut solo exhibition at Gagosian opened in Feb 2023 in New York, and will be followed by an exhibition of new paintings this fall in Rome.

Photo: Marco Giannavola

Igshaan Adams joins Thomas Dane Gallery

Thomas Dane Gallery announces the representation of Igshaan Adams, in collaboration with blank projects in Cape Town and Casey Kaplan in New York.

Adams’ cross-disciplinary practice combines aspects of weaving, sculpture and installation, drawing on his background to contest racial, sexual and religious boundaries. This intersectional topography remains visible throughout his practice and serves as a palimpsest in which traces of personal histories are inscribed and reinscribed. He explains: “I’m interested in the personal stories recorded on the surface. What is recorded is not necessarily always a factual account but can be what is imagined - a combination of myth-making and meaning-making”.

Adams approaches materiality through his own subjectivity; cultural and religious references are used in conjunction with surfaces that have always been present throughout his life: thread, beads, wire, linoleum, cotton twine, fabric. His interest in the material oscillates between the intuitive process of handling different substances, and a formal inquiry into how various materials behave in different contexts and how they transfigure or evolve.

The gallery will present a solo exhibition of new work by Adams in London, opening in October 2023, to coincide with Frieze London.

Igshaan Adams (b. 1982, Cape Town) lives and works in Cape Town, South Africa.

Photo: Mario Todeschini

Whitford Fine Art announces the death of Georges Bernède

Whitford Fine Art today announces the passing of their represented artist and friend Georges Bernède on the 10th April 2023, aged 96.

Bernède began his career in the 1940s as a figurative painter under the tutelage of the established female artist Mildred Bendall (1891-1977). The 1960s found him turning to Lyrical Abstraction, and his unique artistic style eventually grew into a more instinctive, gestural form of deceptively subtle yet dramatic abstract painting. A tireless innovator and promoter of Abstract art, Georges continuously sought to express the essence of life, to establish an analogy to musical rhythm and to touch the viewer deep in their subconscious.

The Gallery remains committed to continuing Georges’s legacy.

Alison Jacques to expand with new gallery space on Cork Street, Mayfair

Alison Jacques today announced plans to expand the business’s presence in London with a new 6000 sq. ft location at 22 Cork Street, Mayfair.

The new space will open in Autumn 2023, following a significant renovation by architect Mike Rundell who also designed the existing Alison Jacques gallery at 16-18 Berners Street. 22 Cork Street was a vacant concrete shell which Rundell has transformed into a three floor gallery HQ comprising four exhibition spaces, private viewing rooms, ample offices and on-site storage.

Alison Jacques first opened in London on Clifford Street in 2004 before moving to its current home on Berners Street in 2007. 22 Cork Street represents a significant new chapter. The gallery looks forward to building on its reputation for discovering under-acknowledged artists and being a platform for artists who are making history.

Alison Jacques comments: “In 1993, in my previous life as a journalist, I was lucky enough to interview legendary art dealer Leslie Waddington who offered me a job at his gallery on Cork Street. I remember sitting at the reception desk and dreaming that one day, I would have my own gallery on Cork Street.

Serendipitously, our new space is opposite Waddington; my only regret being that Leslie is not alive to offer his sage advice. He is very much part of the history of Cork Street, along with pioneering dealers Victoria Miro, John Kasmin, James Mayor and Bernard Jacobson. Victoria’s original gallery was once next door to our new space. As the first female gallerist to inspire me, she continues to lead with an astute eye and admirable integrity.

These are very big shoes to fill, particularly with neighbouring 21 Cork Street being the former home of ground-breaking gallerist Robert Fraser aka ‘Groovy Bob’. I believe this legacy of the dealer as a true connoisseur and the spirit of Cork Street as cultural hub of the London art world, can happen again”.

The gallery opens with a solo show of new work by Sheila Hicks. The legendary 88-year-old USA born artist, who has resided in Paris for several decades, was the subject of a recent major retrospective at The Hepworth Wakefield, UK. Jacques will conclude the year with an exhibition of iconic 20th century American artist Robert Mapplethorpe, including work never previously exhibited. “I have been lucky enough to represent Robert Mapplethorpe in the UK since 1999 and it is fitting that our second show on Cork Street should be dedicated to his work, ahead of next year marking 25 years of collaboration with the Robert Mapplethorpe Foundation, New York”.

photo: © Hannah Starkey