Pace announces representation of Pam Evelyn

July 28, 2023

Pace is pleased to announce A Handful of Dust, its debut exhibition of work by British artist Pam Evelyn, who is now represented by the gallery. On view from September 6 to 30, the exhibition will span two floors of Pace’s London gallery, with a suite of new paintings made over several months between London and Cornwall. Evelyn’s recent exhibitions include The Reason for Painting, Mead Gallery, Warwick Arts Centre, UK and New British Abstraction, Centre for International Contemporary Art, Vancouver, Canada. Evelyn also works with MASSIMODECARLO in Italy.

Working alone, often in periods of intense focus, Evelyn’s process is a relentless cycle of renewal as she articulates her distinctive visual language in countless applications of oil paint, before scraping back and reiterating her gestures once again. She considers the raw linen canvas an unstable surface into which paint sinks and rises in unpredictable ways, leaving her grappling to rebuild and dismantle in equal measure until the composition emerges. The ghostly echo of previous forms reverberates through the finished piece, inviting close and prolonged looking to reveal the painting’s diaphanous intricacy over time.

Evelyn’s approach to paint is akin to a sculptor’s use of clay. She maintains its malleability and fluidity over at least six months in order to intuitively respond to the demands of the viscous material. Indeed, Evelyn considers her role to be more witness than painter, explaining, “Instead of dictating what the painting should be, I place myself in a position where the painting tells me where it’s going and I have to react. For me it’s a very surprising way of making a painting and I like the challenge, I like the unexpected.” In works such as Deluge (2023), a complex web of forms, gestures, and marks surges across the two panels, imbuing the painting with a sense of urgency and precariousness. Evelyn also layers a variety of glazes over the oil paint, harnessing light and shadow to create a luminous quality in the painting’s surface.

Pam Evelyn is a painter, living and working in London. Her expansive, abstract canvases are densely layered, richly textured meditations on nature, the body, and materiality. Evelyn’s intuitive approach to painting translates her experience of the world onto the canvas, creating complex compositions that brim with life.

photo: © Pam Evelyn and Michael Brzezinski

Yooyun Yang Joins Stephen Friedman Gallery

July 27, 2023

Yooyun Yang’s atmospheric paintings are set at nighttime, following her interest in night as a liminal space that offers respite from the repetition of a daily routine. Objects are fundamental to Yang’s work, with motifs of blinds, curtains and railings frequently appearing. By repositioning them through her otherworldly gaze, Yang emphasises how the familiarity of our environment can become uncanny, with objects becoming increasingly unfamiliar the more we pay them attention. A hazy, cinematic quality pervades the work, suggestive of the paintings’ photographic origins.

Cloaked in darkness, the paintings explore the emotional states of Yang’s subjects, conveying feelings of existential anxiety and solitude through the nocturnal ambience of the works. Frequently concealing her subjects’ faces, Yang uses shadow and composition to create distance between the viewer and the subject, articulating the sense of isolation common in what she describes as this ‘age of anxiety’.

Yang paints on hanji paper, traditional Korean handmade paper made from mulberry tree bark, building up layers of diluted acrylic to control the intensity of the colour. Speaking of her paintings, Yang said ‘I want my works to be like a thorn in your mind that pricks from time to time, or like a very gentle fever.’

Yang’s first UK solo exhibition “Passing Time” opened at Stephen Friedman Gallery in June 2023.

Yang lives and works in Seoul, Korea. Born in 1985, Yang studied Oriental Painting at Sungshin Women’s University in Seoul. The artist has had multiple solo exhibitions in Seoul including at Chapter II; Amado Art Space/Lab; Gallerylux; OCI Museum of Art and Ccot+Incubator. She has also had solo exhibitions at Gallery Bundo in Deagu and Gallery SoSo in Paju. In 2023 Yang is included in a group exhibition at Ulsan Art Museum, Ulsan. In 2022 Yang was included in the 58th Carnegie International at the Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh and in 2021 in the 8th Chongkundang Yesuljisang at Sejong Museum of Art, Seoul. The artist has also been included in group exhibitions at the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Cheongju and Arko Art Center, Seoul. She has carried out residencies at Korea National University of Arts, Seoul; Chapter II, Seoul; Studio White Block, Cheonan; Gyeonggi Creation Center, Ansan-si and Incheon Art Platform, Incheon.

David Zwirner now represents Sarah Michelson

July 17, 2023

David Zwirner is pleased to announce the representation of British-born, New York–based choreographer, dancer, and artist Sarah Michelson, who will develop a residency program for dance artists in partnership with the gallery.

Since the late 1990s, Michelson has come to be known for choreographic work that engages notions of process, physicality, immediacy, and impermanence. Drawing from personal and dance history, her formally rigorous, incisive, often humorous performances defy genre in their expansive interrogation of dance, situational context, and the roles of choreographer and dancer; artist and audience.

Michelson’s scrupulously prepared performances are experienced as fleeting, singular events, defying easy legibility or reproducibility. Her work moreover examines the possibilities afforded by questioning, problematizing, and challenging what dance is and can be, while evincing a devotional commitment to dance and the efforts of its performers and the broader dance community.

In October 2021, Michelson performed Oh No Game Over, a new, durational multimedia work at David Zwirner’s 519 West 19th Street location in New York. Presented to the public over the course of five days, the work incorporated painting, digital projections, sound, and radical interventions in the architecture. Oh No Game Over was developed over the course of several months, while Michelson used the gallery as a working studio space in preparation for the performance. She will present new work at the gallery’s Los Angeles location in early 2024.

In addition to elaborating her own dance practice, Michelson will oversee and develop a residency program at David Zwirner, inviting dancers to work in and perform at the gallery’s spaces.

Michelson stated, “I am happy and nervous to announce that I am joining the David Zwirner gallery. The gallery, David, Thor, and the whole team have been so damn kind and supportive about my dance making in this context, and I am on a huge learning curve, but honestly am deeply excited about this next step and honored. One thing that is very important to me as I make this move to work with the gallery—who are so open and responsive—is to help develop a platform in which other dance artists can have access to this structure in the way I have had. More on this soon—here goes y’all.”

Thor Shannon, a director at the gallery who will work with Michelson, has said, “I first saw Sarah Michelson’s work at the 2012 Whitney Biennial, where the beauty and toughness of her work Devotion Study #1—equal parts elegance and anarchy—astounded me. I've followed her legend ever since. Her dances have a mythic 'blink and you miss them' guerilla quality—when they happen, you show up, or else miss them forever. Sarah and her work have together taught me so much about what it means to live in a human body, in its concomitant strength and fragility. Her dances are simultaneously uncompromising and generous in ways that only the best art can be. I am beyond excited to support her work and the work of other dancers in this new paradigm.”

David Zwirner has stated, “Dance has played such a decisive role in the history of twentieth-century art, and continues to inform contemporary art practices. And yet, rarely have choreographers received real-time support from the commercial art world. That support has come from nonprofit spaces, performance venues, and institutions, which have brought the dance world’s radicality to a broader audience, and corrected historical omissions when it comes to the work of dancers and choreographers. The temporal and ephemeral quality of dance stands in stark contrast to our social-media-saturated world, and it has proven to be one of our most vital art forms. Without a doubt, Sarah is one of the most exciting choreographers of her generation, and I am so honored to be working with her and, through her, to be able to support and promote dance artists in this new partnership.”

image: © Sarah Michelson

CHANEL and M+ announce new three-year partnership

July 13, 2023

M+ museum in Hong Kong today announces a three-year partnership with CHANEL, whose first-ever partnership with a cultural institution in Hong Kong signifies their commitment to the support of local cultural institutions with a global impact.

CHANEL becomes M+’s Major Partner and will support a lead curatorial position - CHANEL Lead Curator, Moving Image - to enhance M+’s programmes. The partnership will also cover selected M+ Cinema programmes including “Rediscoveries”, a recurring series featuring forgotten gems and restored classics, and “Afterimage”, showcasing works by some of today’s most important video artists and experimental filmmakers.

Additionally, the partnership will assist in two new projects - “M+ Restored”, a new film restoration programme to preserve Hong Kong’s cinematic heritage - and the Asian Avant-Garde Film Circulation Library, the first and only research and collection-building initiative of its kind in Asia.

Suhanya Raffel, Museum Director, M+, says: “We are delighted that CHANEL, renowned for its influence over the global spheres of creation and visual culture, shares a united vision with M+ to preserve film culture and nurture moving image practices, and more importantly, support arts and cultural innovators to advance new ideas and greater representation. CHANEL’s generous support is instrumental in pushing the boundaries of M+’s curatorial endeavours in moving image and promoting the vitality of our rich film heritage to the global audience.”

Yana Peel, Global Head of Arts & Culture, CHANEL, said: “We are honoured to partner with M+ on their pioneering curation and preservation of moving image to inspire creativity, foster new ways of thinking, and celebrate Hong Kong Cinema. Through CHANEL’s long-standing cultural commitment and our major new partnership with M+, we hope to create opportunities for an emerging generation of moving image artists from Hong Kong and the region to imagine the next.”

Silke Schmickl, CHANEL Lead Curator, Moving Image, M+, says: “We are immensely grateful for CHANEL’s support towards our multifaceted and pioneering moving image activities. The partnership allows us to kick off two important initiatives to research and preserve the work of some of Asia’s most significant film artists, and present them within pertinent contemporary curatorial frameworks of international moving image culture.”

photo: Kevin Mak

Frieze acquires The Armory Show, New York, and Expo Chicago

Frieze has announced the acquisition of New York’s Armory Show, as well as an agreement to acquire EXPO CHICAGO.

The terms of the deal have not been disclosed, however it is understood that the fairs, two of the longest-running in the US, will continue to operate under their existing brands and with their current teams.

“These are both iconic, historic fairs with deep roots into their communities. It was a wonderful opportunity for us to invest further in the US art scene and play a bigger role,” said Simon Fox, chief executive of Frieze, adding, “Through this deal we’re respecting the existing art fair calendar, and hopefully giving even more compelling reasons for people to visit Chicago in April and New York in September.”

Nicole Berry, the Armory Show’s executive director added: “It affords us in the future opportunity to collaborate, innovate and grow in ways we haven’t been able to in the past … we are an established brand with deep roots in New York City.”

Expo Chicago president and director Tony Karman calls Frieze’s involvement “a significant boost [which] increases our ability to be more impactful and successful on behalf of our visitors”.

Frieze was founded as a magazine in 1991 by Amanda Sharpe and Matthew Slotover, had its first fair in 2003 in London, expanding to New York in 2012, and to Los Angeles in 2019. It is now part of IMG, the sports, fashion, events and media network.

The Armory Show was started in 1994 by the dealers Colin De Land, Pat Hearn, Lisa Spellman, Matthew Marks and Paul Morris, is held every fall and attracts crowds of 65,000.

EXPO CHICAGO, The International Exposition of Contemporary & Modern Art, was founded by Tony Karman in 2012, and in 2023 hosted 170 galleries from 36 countries, attracting over 32,000 visitors.

photo: Justin Barbin

Gathering announces representation of Emanuel de Carvalho

July 7, 2023

Gathering is delighted to announce the representation of Emanuel de Carvalho.

'Emanuel’s refined and piercingly contemporary paintings astutely comment upon the complex world we inhabit, perfectly exemplified by neurosystem I, 2023, currently on view as part of Support Structures. We particularly look forward to Emanuel’s first solo exhibition at the gallery in spring 2024. It's a real pleasure to embark on this journey with such a wonderful artist and person.'
- Alex Flick, Founder & Director, Gathering

Emanuel de Carvalho’s practice reflects on moral and societal codes and how these relate to psychophysical perceptive responses. Drawing from an academic background in visual processing studies and the phenomenological interpretation of imagery and sound, de Carvalho uses painting, sculpture, installation, and sound, to examine our ways of seeing and perceiving in the current zeitgeist. Through his work, he aims to challenge and question the structures of vision, presenting an alternative perspective that extends beyond conventional notions of representation. His compositions incorporate two fundamental elements—flesh and chiasm—derived from the insights of phenomenologist Merleau-Ponty. The intersection (chiasm) of bodies and objects (flesh), prompts individual responses that are a direct reflection of our ideological perceptions.

photo: © Grey Hutton, 2023

Timothy Taylor now represents Alicia Adamerovich

June 29, 2023

Timothy Taylor is pleased to announce representation of American artist Alicia Adamerovich, in collaboration with Michael Kohn Gallery in Los Angeles.

Adamerovich works at the intersection of painting and sculpture, engaging a distinctive visual language of biomorphic abstraction that reflects the landscape of the subconscious. Drawing on the conceptual lineage of the Symbolists and Surrealists, her compositions offer a vision of reality beyond the material realm, inviting metaphysical interpretation.

A solo exhibition of new work by the artist will be presented at Timothy Taylor’s New York space in fall 2024.

photo: Mara Corsino

Hauser & Wirth announces representation of artist Daniel Turner

June 28, 2023

Hauser & Wirth announced today that the gallery now represents artist Daniel Turner, in collaboration with Galerie Allen in Paris.

Based in New York, Turner works with sculpture, painting and installation to transfigure everyday materials, objects and environments into provocative new manifestations. On the surface, the artist’s work suggests the stark lines, industrial fabrication and simple geometric forms associated with minimalism. However, Turner merely employs this aesthetic to challenge the notion that raw materials are fundamentally meaningless, conditional and interchangeable. His practice is driven by the conviction that physical matter inherently carries meaning—that objects are imbued with the emotional, psychological and historical context for which they were made and in which they were used.

Turner has removed and recontextualized objects from such diverse spaces as pharmaceutical labs, medical facilities, civic centers and decommissioned cargo ships. He has cast the contents of a waiting room into a series of solid bars, burnished the remnants of a psychiatric facility onto both walls and specially coated canvases, and even stained a gallery floor with the liquified remains of a cafeteria’s tables and chairs. Using the physical processes of combustion, oxidation and disintegration, he probes the connections between the metallurgical and the metaphysical, investigating the sensory links that exist between materials and their geographical locations, cultural associations and human interactions.

Marc Payot, President, Hauser & Wirth, commented, ‘Given our longstanding dedication to the medium of sculpture, we are especially delighted to welcome Daniel Turner to the gallery. His work, which is rooted in deep material study, unleashes the potential of seemingly familiar everyday objects by refashioning them into something entirely new and uncanny. His art is both conceptually rigorous and profoundly soulful. And the magnetism it exerts makes him a natural peer of modern and contemporary sculptors in our program, from such historical figures as David Smith, John Chamberlain and Eduardo Chillida, to today’s pathbreakers like Monika Sosnowska, Larry Bell, Roni Horn and others. We look forward to sharing Daniel’s work and ideas with new audiences internationally.’

Turner’s first exhibition with Hauser & Wirth will open in 2024.

photo: Aurélien Arbet

Klimt’s last great portrait sets new auction record at Sotheby’s

Ahead of the evening's star lot going under the hammer and setting a new European record for an artwork, the London summer sales opened with The Now Evening Auction, offering both established collectors and new audiences the opportunity to secure works by the art stars of the present and future. Among them, Adrian Ghenie, Mark Bradford and Caroline Walker, whose evocative and serene Red Sky Morning found a new buyer at £457,200. Addressing the outstanding demand for young and emerging artists from the figurative to the abstract, the sale saw auction records for Arthur Jafa and Michel Majerus, in an auction that goes from strength to strength.

Following the Now sale, The Modern and Contemporary Evening Auction opened to a crowded sale room, abuzz with anticipation and assembled under the watchful eye of Gustav Klimt’s Dame mit Fächer (Lady with a Fan). Appearing on the market for the first time in thirty years, the atmosphere reflected the rarity of the occasion.

Found on the easel in his studio at the time of his death, the captivating depiction of a nude figure reveals Klimt exploring a new approach to colour and form, resulting in a masterpiece by an artist at the height of his powers. After a ten-minute bidding battle between four clients on the phones and in the room, the painting soared to £85.3 million, setting a new auction record for a work of art in Europe, and also for Gustav Klimt. The result is also the second highest price for any portrait ever sold at auction.

Against the backdrop of a city-wide celebration of portraiture, heralded by the reopening of the National Portrait Gallery, the sale included a dedicated sequence of works surveying this genre through the ages, and placing the portrait centre stage. Face to Face presented a journey through more than 100 years of art history, celebrating not only the great masters of the 20th Century, but equally the innovators of the present day.

Tom Eddison, Senior Director of contemporary art, explains: “While the human image has been democratised in our age of iPhones and selfies, the tradition of portraiture runs deep and across many centuries”. Works by Lucian Freud, Kerry James Marshall and Leonor Fini displayed the breadth of creative dynamism in a discipline that has long captivated artists, from Rembrandt to Banksy.

- Mariko Finch

Inge Mahn, 1943-2023

Galerie Max Hetzler announces the death of the German artist Inge Mahn at the age of 79.

Mahn passed away on Monday, 19 June, in the early morning. For over five decades, Inge made sculptural and performative works which placed people, things and spaces in new relations to each other. She based her works on objects of everyday life, which she playfully and poetically transformed into new spatial forms, creating a universe of unimagined possibilities.
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In tiefer Trauer geben wir den Tod der Künstlerin Inge Mahn im Alter von 79 Jahren bekannt. Sie ist am Montag, dem 19. Juni, in den frühen Morgenstunden verstorben.

Mehr als fünf Jahrzehnte lang schuf Inge Mahn skulpturale und performative Arbeiten, die Menschen, Objekte und Räume in neue Zusammenhänge setzten. Ausgangspunkt ihrer Arbeiten waren die Gegenstände des alltäglichen Lebens, die sie spielerisch und poetisch in neue räumliche Formen verwandelte und so einen Kosmos von ungeahnten Möglichkeiten schuf.

photo: Holger Niehaus

Eat like a gallerist during Art Basel,
by Niklas von Bartha

June 14, 2023

Petite FLAMBEUSE@ Erasmuspl. 12, 4057 Basel

For lunch in Kleinbasel, the newly opened Petite Flambeuse, is operated by a team of immigrants who recently made Basel their home; the restaurant is the brainchild of the lovely Laura Meier. The food is excellent, the service outstanding, and the fun venue turns into a football bar at night. A perfect antidote for anyone trying to get a break from all the art in Basel.

Bodega zum Strauss@ Barfüsserpl. 16, 4051 Basel

In the centre of town at Barfüsserplatz - opposite the Barfüsser church, the resting place of 'Anna Catharina Bischoff' who died in 1787 and, according to DNA tests, is a relative of former Prime Minister Boris Johnson - very good beer is served at Bodega zum Strauss along with decent Italian food in this always busy venue, frequented by local artists and politicians alike.

Restaurant Rhyschänzli@ Lichtstrasse 9, 4056 Basel

Another favourite (gallery von Bartha and Vitrine gallery canteen) is Rhyschänzli; the service is excellent, the food is simple but honest and always of a very high standard.

Restaurant Union@ Lichtstrasse 9, 4056 Basel

The team behind Rhyschänzly also run Union, a straightforward burger restaurant.

Astro Fries@ Feldbergstrasse 72, 4057 Basel

Similarly, this new kid on the block (in Switzerland, everything less than 200 years old is brand new) ‘Astro Fries’ will see to it that you get a proper heart attack.

Brasserie Volkshaus@ Rebgasse 12-14, 4058 Basel

On a sunny warm evening, YARD at Brasserie Volkshaus is great. You can and should stumble into IMI Bar (designed by Imi Knoebel) at the front of the restaurant for a drink or check out the changing installations in the lobby of the adjacent Volkshaus Hotel (designed by Herzog & de Meuron) - the installations are part of the von Bartha Gallery Programming… yes I’m shamelessly plugging my family here.

Chez Donati@ St. Johanns-Vorstadt 48, 4056 Basel

More upmarket, Chez Donati is an institution, the best Vitello Tonnato outside Italy; getting a table here during the Basel Artfair is next to impossible, and getting one of the six or so tables on their terrace is completely impossible.

Hotel Kraft@ Rheingasse 12, 4058 Basel

Rumour has it that the restaurant at Hotel Kraft has returned to its former glory…

Brasserie Les Trois Rois@ Blumenrain 8, 4051 Basel

Brasserie at Les Trois Rois is also impossible to get a table at; the terrace is lovely, and it’s next door to the three stared Michelin joint Le Cheval Blanc by Peter Knogl - if you are so inclined, it must be excellent.

Restaurant Stucki@ Bruderholzallee 42, 4059 Basel

On the subject of Michelin stared Restaurants, friends tell me Stucki has reached new heights under Tanja Grandits regime.

Kunsthalle@ Steinenberg 7, 4051 Basel

No Basel Restaurant list would be complete without the Kunsthalle; disclaimer: I worked in the kitchen 32 years ago. This place couldn't be more Basel if it tried; it's the epicentre of the art world during Art Basel, and the epicentre of Basel society the 51 weeks of the year when the fair circus is not in town.

Kunsthalle is also the venue of the Campari Bar, a perfect place to drink your fair sorrows away. Other bars are available...

Kronenhalle@ Rämistrasse 4, 8001 Zürich

Finally if you find yourself in Zürich - Kronnenhalle is Kronnenhalle, and Schnitzel in the company of Master Paintings is definitely an experience.

Emma Webster joins Perrotin

Perrotin is pleased to announce its official representation of the British-American artist Emma Webster. After collaboration with the gallery on two successful solo exhibitions in Seoul and Tokyo, as well as a presentation of a monumental painting at the inaugural edition of Paris+ in 2022, Webster prepares to unveil a special presentation with Perrotin during Art Basel Miami Beach in December 2023. The gallery will be representing Emma Webster in France and in Hong Kong, Seoul, Tokyo, and Shanghai.

Emma Webster draws inspirations from a myriad of sources, collaging both visually and semiotically to devise her imagined sceneries. Her debut with the gallery inaugurating Perrotin Dosan Park in Seoul, Illuminarium, derived its title from the latin words of il (bad), lumen (light), and arium (place to observe, such as luminarium and planetarium), encapsulating the artist’s fascination with theatrical illumination that she projects onto her imaginary worlds. The worlds are conceived through Webster’s musings and sketches that function as a background to her sculptural process in virtual reality.

The worlds that she creates in VR serve as a vantage point, encircling the sole viewer with access to the cosmos, Emma Webster. She then translates this space into two dimensions onto the canvas, providing a glimpse into the space from a selected angle. The Dolmens, Webster’s second solo exhibition with Perrotin put a twist on this perspective, evoking trompe l’oeil paintings as she introduces framing as a part of an integral aesthetic device in her work through compositions in which the frames recede seamlessly from the viewer’s space into the picture plane. Complementing this illusory image, the series of works manifest the theme of confined and underground spaces, like the dolmens.

Webster has presented solo exhibitions in Carl Kostyàl, London, Alexander Berggruen, New York, and Stems Gallery, Brussels, followed by Perrotin Seoul (Dosan Park) and Tokyo. Her work is included in the collection of: Columbus Museum of Art, Yuz Museum (Shanghai), Xiao Museum (Suzhou), X Museum (Beijing), Groeninghe Art Collection (Bruges), and Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego, and Institute of Contemporary Art Miami, and Perez Museum (Miami) and more.

Emma Webster (b. 1989) is a graduate of Stanford University (BA, 2011) and Yale University, where she received an MFA in Painting in 2018. In 2021, Webster published Lonescape: Green, Painting, & Mourning Reality, a book which collects, among other things, her musings on landscape and image-making in an increasingly digital world.

photo: Seannie Bryan

Gagosian to represent the work of Francesca Woodman

June 8, 2023

Gagosian announces its partnership with the Woodman Family Foundation to represent the work of Francesca Woodman (1958–1981). The Foundation, established by the artist’s parents Betty and George Woodman during their lifetimes, has been active since 2020. Its extensive collection includes lifetime prints and artist’s books as well as Francesca Woodman’s archive of notebooks, journals, correspondence, and related materials, much previously unknown.

The extraordinary body of work that Woodman produced from her first mature photograph taken at age thirteen through her death at age twenty-two has exercised a unique influence on contemporary photography. Born into an artistic family, she grew up in Colorado and Antella, near Florence, Italy. Much of Woodman’s work dates from her years as a student at the Rhode Island School of Design, which she attended from 1975 to 1978, spending time over 1977–78 in Rome through RISD’s honors program. She lived principally in New York from January 1979 through January 1981.

In her photographs, Woodman explored self-revelation and theatricality, questioning the medium’s capacity to invest representation with narrative and allegorical elements. Frequently incorporating her own image, she also pictured other models, both female and male. She was particularly drawn to both the symbolic aspects of the female nude and the timeless and entropic qualities of dilapidated interiors, though she also employed natural settings. Woodman placed mirrors, vitrines, and other objects within her tableaux, positioning figures in relation to them to suggest metamorphosis and paradox.

Her oeuvre was animated by exceptional creativity and abiding interests in mythology, literature, and Gothic and Victorian aesthetics; she was also fascinated by the Surrealists and later artists who had extended their inquiries and subversions in both Europe and the United States. In addition, her work emerged in an era of feminism and Post-Minimalism, with Ana Mendieta, Cindy Sherman, and Deborah Turbeville among her predecessors and contemporaries.

Woodman often worked serially, exploring themes in sequence and inscribing her prints with diaristic and poetic phrases. In her final year, she began experimenting with new methods, including large-scale blue and sepia diazotypes, a technique conventionally used to create architectural blueprints. She also made artist’s books, transforming nineteenth- and twentieth-century journals and notebooks with sequences of prints, transparencies, and inscriptions. One of these, Some Disordered Interior Geometries, was produced during her lifetime and published by Synapse Press in 1981. In June 2023, MACK, London, will publish Francesca Woodman: The Artist’s Books, reproducing her eight extant artist’s books, including two that have never been seen before.

Francesca Woodman was born in 1958 in Denver, and died in New York in 1981. Collections include Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Museum of Modern Art, New York; Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York; Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; International Center of Photography, New York; RISD Museum, Providence, RI; Denver Art Museum; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; Centre Pompidou, Paris; Fondation Cartier pour l’art contemporain, Paris; Moderna Museet, Stockholm; National Galleries of Scotland, Edinburgh; and Tate, London. Exhibitions include Francesca Woodman: Photographic Work, Hunter College Art Gallery, New York (1986, traveled through 1988); Francesca Woodman: Photographic Arbeiten, Shedhalle, Zurich, (1992, traveled through 1993); Fondation Cartier pour l’art contemporain, Paris (1998, traveled through 2002); San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (2011–12, traveled to Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, 2012); and On Being an Angel, Moderna Museet, Stockholm (2015, traveled through 2020).

The gallery will present photographs by Woodman at Art Basel this June and is planning an exhibition dedicated to her work in New York in spring 2024.

photo © Woodman Family Foundation/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York

Hauser & Wirth announces worldwide representation of Barbara Chase-Riboud

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.”