TWO x TWO for AIDS and Art is an annual contemporary art auction held at The Rachofsky House in Dallas, benefiting two organizations—the Dallas Museum of Art and amfAR, The Foundation for AIDS Research. TWO x TWO 2022 raised $9.5 Million, bringing the total raised to $113 Million. The 2023 catalogue is online and bidding is open – register at TWOxTWO.org. The painting LES PARISIENNES by Sofia Mitsola is included in the auction.
Find out more about the exhibition here.
The 5th edition of the Chicago Architecture Biennial titled This is a Rehearsal with sculptures by Ugo Rondinone and Tschabalala Self is curated by the interdisciplinary arts collective Floating Museum and takes an expansive view of design as an iterative rehearsal process to explore architecture, cities, and the different social, ecological, economic and political forces that shape them.
Recently, Tschabalala Self has developed an interest for sculpture, theatre and fashion. Central to the exhibition at Cultuurcentrum Strombeek is the work Sounding Board, an experimental video installation showing a recording of Self's first live performance that premiered in 2021 at the Performa Biennial in New York. The title of the exhibition, Feed Me, Kiss Me, Need Me, is taken from the accompanying script. Self is particularly interested in the dual nature of the private environment as an emotionally and socially charged locus. "The house has two realities," she states. "A desired reality — a place of comfort, inwardness and true self-expression." "In reality, it is a place full of expectations, where people are required to assume roles."
The exhibition The Love of Art Comes First. Art & Project at the Kröller-Müller Museum highlights the significance and history of Art & Project based on more than a hundred works from the collection by artists such as Andrew Lord. Art & Project (Amsterdam 1968-1989, Slootdorp 1990-1998) was one of the pioneering galleries of contemporary art in the Netherlands and far beyond. Its founders Geert van Beijeren (1933-2005) and Adriaan van Ravesteijn (1938-2015) presented a programme featuring national and international artists, which was initially closely associated with the rise of conceptual art, but later broadened its focus with an emphasis on sculpture and painting.
Oscar Tuazon and curator Lynn Kost will give an artist talk during Castell Art Weekend at Hotel Castell in Zuoz. Lynn Kost said "Oscar Tuazon, (*1975 in Seattle) creates platforms with his sculptures on which other things are supposed to happen besides the viewing of art. Based on his interest in do-it-yourself architecture, he creates objects that open up interior spaces to the public. These can be entered and are linked to art historical references and socially acute themes such as resource consumption or sustainability. Just as the artist does not complete the structures into functional architecture in order to create space for the audience's imagination, the content references are only offers for discussion, because the common exchange comes before everything else.“
Together with Bergen Kunsthall and Kunst Museum Winterthur, Kunsthalle Bielefeld presents a trio of exhibitions that approach Oscar Tuazon’s work in different ways. The three individual projects form an overarching unity and thus provide a multifaceted overview of Tuazon’s artistic oeuvre. The Kunsthalle will show a cross-section of Tuazon’s work from the last ten years to the present day and thematically address questions about artistic and social existential needs: What is absolutely necessary, indispensable and systemically relevant? What are our essential needs?
At the anniversary exhibition of VFO at Kunsthalle Zürich, a daybed sculpture titled 'Business and Pleasure' by Louisa Gagliardi is on view. The Swiss artist said in an interview in March 2023 about these pieces exhibited at Galerie Eva Presenhuber, Maag Areal: "The sculptures evolve out of the tenor of the domestic environment you see in some of my paintings. […] I placed my daybed on a plexiglass pedestal to give it the status of a sculpture. Like the paintings, I wanted to maintain a certain distance between the object one sees and the viewer’s ability to interact with it. I did not want anyone to sit on them, but nevertheless tempted the viewer to consider that possibility. And so I made them a height that would invite that."
From September 2023, the SCHAUWERK shows a major solo exhibition by Doug Aitken. The sculptures and video installations include Migration from 2008 and his more recent work Wilderness. For the latter, which consists of several screens arranged in a circle, Aitken filmed the beach near his house in Los Angeles during the Covid-19 pandemic as people went about their everyday lives. Scored with a soundtrack generated by AI, the film is based on a rhythm of landscape shots alternating with images of people on the beach, showing a cycle from sunrise to nightfall.
This major solo exhibition spans the past five years Adam Pendleton’s work, with a marked emphasis on abstract composition. Encompassing all of the museum’s special exhibition galleries, To Divide By includes new paintings, drawings and ceramics, as well as two recent film portraits. For Pendleton, abstraction is a means of representation, a logic, and a space for theoretical and visual experimentation. “By working in and through abstraction,” noted Meredith Malone, curator at the Kemper Art Museum, who organized To Divide By in collaboration with the artist, “Pendleton calls for a more capacious, chaotic and fluid space, one capable of producing radically new expectations and outcomes, not only for himself but also for the viewer.”
Horizons is a monumental aluminum sculpture started by Jean-Marie Appriou in 2022 and was first exhibited at Art Basel Unlimited 2023. It is through a large-scale boat carrying two characters "austronauts" traveling through the stars and ages. From September 20 until December 31, 2023, it is on view at Jing'an Sculpture Park in Shanghai.
This group exhibition highlights how the repertoire of circus forms continues to explore current social issues on both micro and macro levels, question political structures, expose stigmatization and illuminate the human-animal relationship. In his piece If There Were Anywhere But Desert. Saturday (2011), Ugo Rondinone skillfully captures the poignant essence of clowns, evoking a sense of melancholy that resonates with viewers. The suspended shoes embody the fragility and transience of human emotions, a theme that has permeated the circus throughout its long history, not only in its moments of joy and celebration, but also in its more sombre and melancholy aspects.
For the exhibition series ReCollect!, Matias Faldbakken and Ida Ekblad are working together for the first time, creating a joint installation where they interpret selected works from the Kunsthaus Collection, as seen through their own hands-on activity. Their gestures will open up new viewpoints on the holdings, with an emphasis on pulling women’s positions to the front.
Ronald Berg at Kunstforum concludes about Martin Boyce recent gallery exhibitions: "Perhaps Martin Boyce's 'fall from grace' into the applied metier is a symptom of the fact that the patterns of autonomy and freedom of purpose are no longer strictly valid today. However, this would then at the same time formulate a condemnation of modernity as such - including its Enlightenment premises of individual freedom and responsibility. Modernity: 'Failed or unfinished?' could thus be the central question of Martin Boyce's work."
Sherry Paik reviewed the Taxa show for Ocula Magazine: "the Seoul exhibition places a strong emphasis on the myriad ways in which contemporary artists engage with the more traditional mediums of painting and sculpture."
The female nude is celebrating its comeback. But instead of catering to the the male gaze, a new generation of female painters is making nude skin as a self-confident declaration of war, and the genre as the a playing field for political debate. Following research in New York studios the author Claudia Bodin also portrayed Tschabalala Self.
Following a studio visit, Shara Hughes told Vogue US: “I can’t live without painting. It’s how I live and breathe. I’m not threatened by other artists if they’re making landscapes, because I’m, well, I’m doing mine. I’m very serious about getting the works into the right places, where more people can see them, so that I can have a place in art history that’s meaningful.”
As guest curator of Sculpture Milwaukee, Ugo Rondinone presents the group show Nature Doesn't Know About Us, which includes works by John Giorno and Oscar Tuazon among others: "There is a world alongside ours—boundless, unhurried, interconnected, resourceful, lavishly inventive, and we are only temporarily in it. Nature Doesn’t Know About Us celebrates the disparate elements of the Earth, while exploring the human connection to nature. The exhibition brings together the works of eighteen artists who combine skeptical clarity and at times humor-tinged desire to locate the intersection of spiritual and physical presence in our daily life. The natural world serves as a doorway into a highly rarefied metaphysical realm where the sea of consciousness surges against the tangible world. A world where all is in flux as distinctions between self and soul, body and spirit, past and present, mortification and bliss, confinement and escape all blur and waver."
A brand-new project called “The Wing” occupies the first floor of the Consortium Museum. This space is usually reserved for temporary exhibitions of the collection. The Consortium Museum's directors have given this "wing" of the structure to two artists, Tobias Pils (b. 1971, Austria) and Joe Bradley (b. 1975, USA), who have strong ties to the art center and have previously exhibited there. The "Paysage" exhibition was the result of these two painters becoming curators. It pulls together pieces from their own collections by artists whose discreet careers have been characterized as "folkart," "outsider," and other vague terms. Hans Kruckenhauser, an Austrian painter who lived from 1940 until 2017, is the subject of Tobias Pils's current project. Joe Bradley has given prominence to the prosperous landscapes painted by Alyne Harris (1943, USA) from her rural home in Florida.
The third International Biennial of Saint-Paul de Vence has chosen to draw its inspiration from the universe and symbolism of birds. The title of the exhibition recalls that the poet Jacques Prévert was a resident of the village and a "considerable" passer-by. His words, "Au hasard des oiseaux", invite us to discover, feel and meet twenty works by twelve artists, among which Jean-Marie Appriou, who are messengers reminding us, more than ever, that it is profitable for man to live with the light and beauty of the flight of birds. The artist take over public spaces in the village of Saint-Paul de Vence, each developing, in their own way, a unique relationship with birds.
Austin Eddy, Shara Hughes, and Karen Kilimnik are taking part in a group show Games, Gamblers, and Cartomancers: The New Cardsharps at Vernon House, Newport, Rhode Island, curated by Dodie Kazanjian & Alison Gingeras. Built around 1708 and restored in 1760, the house is one of Newport's most historically significant buildings.
Over the past ten years, Kahn has examined the spatial relationship between painting and sculpture to construct a visual vocabulary of representational and abstract forms that integrate formal concerns with materials from everyday life. His new works are playful narrative compositions with oversized figurative icons taken from domestic life. The deep, rusted red tone of the sculptures is a result of the natural weathering process of Cor-Ten steel, contrasting with the lush green foliage the LongHouse garden. The series was previously on view at City Hall Park, New York. In June 2023, two sculptures are shown at Art Basel Parcours 2023.
For his group of works Sunrise. East, Rondinone assigned a head with characteristic, highly reduced facial features to represent each calendar month. Larger than life and cast in shiny silver aluminium, the massive sculptural heads are reduced to their facial expressions: With mouths agape, they gaze from small eyes, from friendly and naïve to sceptical, from surprised to eerie. They trigger the most diverse associations, evoking ritual masks and ghosts, as well as the visual language of comics, emoticons, and memes. Visitors to the Städel Garden are invited to come face-to-face with all twelve creatures – and thus every month of the year – and experience the various joys, adversities, and emotions of an entire year in fast forward.
Storm King Art Center presents the sun and the moon, twin sculptures, which are both over sixteen feet tall, and are formed with delicate circles fashioned from cast-bronze tree branches, one silver-leafed and the other gilded. Installed parallel to one another, the sun and the moon are aligned along an east-west axis, like portals or apertures with views of Schunnemunk and Storm King Mountains.
Titled after a line from Hesiod’s eighth-century BC epic poem Theogony (“Harmful Night, veiled in dusky fog, carries in her arms Sleep, Death’s own brother”), this new exhibition by Steven Shearer revolves around this uneasy proximity (“brotherhood”) between death and sleep, a recurring trope in Shearer’s art. Built around the George Economou Collection’s substantial holdings of Steven Shearer’s work in painting and printed matter, Sleep, Death’s Own Brother proposes an in-depth look at the oeuvre of this Vancouver-based artist from the transgressive thematic perspective of the lifeless body, which is sometimes truly, sometimes only seemingly dead.
In a historical first, the Vorderasiatisches Museum and the Hamburger Bahnhof – Nationalgalerie der Gegenwart join forces on a trans-historical, site-specific presentation by British artist Liam Gillick throughout the halls of the Pergamonmuseum. From Babylon’s iconic Ishtar Gate to the monumental sculptures of Tell Halaf, Gillick adds layers of sound, light and colour – creating an overlay to evoke connections across periods of the Pergamonmuseum.