Tschabalala Self’s distinctive practice combines painting, printmaking, and sewn elements to construct textured depictions of female figures. Her work explores the complexities of identity and Black womanhood, blending traditions from both fine art and craft and using collage as a metaphor for the layered nature of selfhood. Ahead of her presentation at Tokyo Gendai with Galerie Eva Presenhuber this September, Self discusses the evolution of her technique and the intuitive interpretations she hopes viewers will bring to her work.
American artist Chase Hall sits down with Ruby J. Thelot on the occasion of his first solo show in Vienna at Galerie Eva Presenhuber to consider the inner and outer worlds of his paintings.
The Guardian reports that Matias Faldbakken's work 'UPHOLDING‘ has been chosen as the National 22 July Memorial in the new Government Quarter in Oslo, to commemorate the terrorist attacks of 22 July 2011 on the island of Utøya. Faldbakken's work will be based on the re-erection of the steel frame that was custom-made to move and preserve Picasso's mural The Fishermen. The motif in the stone mosaic is taken from Utøya. It is a drawing of a small wading bird and some reeds and branches reflected in the water of the Tyrifjord.
French artist Jean-Marie Appriou uses various materials, such as clay, bronze, and glass, to craft immersive sculptures that evoke mythological and surreal landscapes. Through his process-driven practice, he explores themes of mythology, subconscious realms, and universal narratives. In his sculptures, the artist blends classic influences with contemporary narratives, bridging his respect for ancient artistic traditions with a fascination for science fiction and different states of perception.
Liesl Raff’s exhibition “A Corridor, a Room, and Four Dens” opened in early February in the industrial expanse of Eva Presenhuber’s Zurich-based Maag Areal location. Raff uses a range of dense materials — like metal or sandbags, along with more pliable objects like latex, rope, or jute — to present ten large-scale sculptural works in four thematic groupings. The connotations of hard to soft, and their emotional implications, are immediately evident by their close juxtaposition to one another, but the emphatic slippage of support and framework seems to be the conceptual underpinning of the work.
Through her portraits of the Washington family men—Denzel, John David and Malcolm—responsible for the screen adaptation of The Piano Lesson, artist Tschabalala Self celebrates both real and fictionalized Black America.
"Ultimately, Faldbakken’s exhibition does not just present drawings—it dissects and problematizes the very concept of drawing itself. In doing so, it positions the act of mark-making as an act of refusal to submit to clarity, resolution, or easy categorization. His works demonstrate that its power lies precisely in that refusal to be contemporary, to be readable, to be anything other than what it is: a space of negotiation between presence and absence, assertion and negation, material and idea."
"Last year, more than a decade after settling back in Vienna, Raff represented the Austrian pavilion at the 15th Gwangju Biennale with her work Club Liaison (2024), a club-inspired installation made from deep-purple latex sheets. On the occasion of her debut solo show, A Corridor, a Room, and Four Dens (7 February–21 March 2025), with Galerie Eva Presenhuber in Zurich, Ocula met with Raff to discuss materiality, collective intimacy, and life as an artist in Austria."
Blue holds a vast depth of possibilities: it is linked to contemplation, spirituality, and imagination. American painter Amy Feldman, who is known for her focus on grey, turns her attention to the colour that has captivated so many artists before her in her solo exhibition, Good Fortune (16 January–8 March 2025), at Galerie Eva Presenhuber in Vienna.
Shara Hughes fearlessly combines styles and colors. Whether sunset, nuclear fusion or tree nursery, with her luminous motifs, the artist succeeds to put contemporary painting under a strong current. A visit to her studio in Brooklyn by Lisa Zeitz.
The invisible becomes visible in the visual worlds of Kenyan artist Chemu Ng'ok, which are on view at Galerie Eva Presenhuber, Waldmannstrasse, Zurich, until January 25, 2025. Clara Zimmermann from WELTKUNST met the artist for a conversation about her time after university, the power of community and colorful umbrellas.
Acting as reflections of the artist and viewer, the paintings of Swiss artist Louisa Gagliardi intend to capture internal and emotional worlds while mirroring the rapid developments in technology that shape our visual and social landscapes. Their liminal status—in between digitally crafted and physically constructed—addresses issues of self-curated identities while simultaneously navigating art historical narratives. On the occasion of her solo show Whereabouts at Eva Presenhuber in Vienna, Claire Koron Elat sat down with Gagliardi to discuss why we seem to be more confident when we’re children, cringing over old work, and being forced to be pessimistic.
What becomes progressively clear is that the show does not aim to group, nor unify struggle. Resistance is rather shown in its dynamic and differentiated dimensions, articulating through its multiple sites, landscapes, spaces and infrastructures. The exhibited artworks allow resistance to reverberate and resonate: within silence, noise, music and distant echoes alike.
“I wanted to make something aggressively non-linear, using sound and music to express things that hard language couldn’t,” Doug Aitken said of his latest work Lightscape. The artist’s cinematic and sonic exploration of Southern California’s myths, histories, and potentialities, told through a series of interwoven but disjointed scenes, debuted as an hour-long film last Saturday, November 16, at the Los Angeles Music Center.
"On 16 November, the time has come: as part of the PIN. Benefit Auction, works by contemporary artists, from renowned greats to newcomers, will be auctioned off in the Rotunda of the Pinakothek der Moderne in Munich under the motto ‘Hands up for Art’."
All information about the works can be found here.
Bidding forms and all info about the auction can be found here.
The live auction can also be followed via livestream on Saturday, November 16 from 8:00 pm.
"Artist Chase Hall paints his canvases with coffee, making large-scale works that examine mixed-race identity in America. Now, on the eve of the biggest show of his career, Hall is reconciling his fractured past with his blindingly bright future."
"It isn’t hard to get Chase Hall talking. Having grown up with a mother in and out of rehab and a father in and out of jail; attended eight schools before the age of 16; and achieved an enviable degree of fame for an untrained 31-year-old artist, Hall has a lot to say."
On the cover of Numéro art 15, now on newsstands, the two artists Ugo Rondinone and Tarek Lakhrissi form a striking duo. Their four-handed work can be seen in the new Reiffers Art Initiatives mentoring program exhibition, from October 16 to December 1.
"Giorno boldly pushed language within visual, musical, and sociopolitical spheres. At Galerie Eva Presenhuber, you'll find text paintings on rainbow or black backgrounds with wry, provocative slogans like 'You got to burn to shine', 'I want to cum in your heart', and 'God is man made'..."
"What’s most striking in John Dilg paintings and drawings is the peculiar, somehow contradictory, mood they evoke. The recurring totemic pine-trees, the panettone mountains, and the waterfalls — of a certain mountain-like stillness — give a playful tone to the landscape they inhabit. They are made of repeating shapes which often transition from being a log to becoming a canyon, from water to mountain, valleys and even islands, and become the vocabulary of Dilg’s artworks."
"They look like cyborg animals carrying a burden as precious as it is mysterious: a phalanx of creatures with long, straight metal legs, on whose pelvises sharp-edged cuboid blocks rest like inorganic bodies. The cubes are transparent or semitransparent and enclose objects whose contours are sometimes clear, sometimes less so."
Ugo Rondinone's diverse art is in demand all over the world. Lisa Zeitz, Editor in Chief of Weltkunst, visited him in his new apartment in Paris and talked to him with him about stones, lightning and Caspar David Friedrich.
Liesl Raff is known for her sculptural works with latex; she works with and alters these materials to create spaces, atmospheres and situations. She studied stage design in Graz and then sculpture at the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna. In 2024, she will design the Austrian pavilion at the Gwangju Biennale and will also produce a new work for the Lyon Biennale. In both exhibitions, Raff will be creating a collective moment, to be shared by the visitors when entering her installations; be it a club or a corridor.
Ugo Rondinone’s triumphant thirty-year retrospective at the Kunstmuseum Luzern is an ode to Switzerland’s majestic overlapping mountains and verdant terrain. “Cry Me a River” ranges from his early to most current work, reflecting themes that have been a consistent inspiration.
Galerie Eva Presenhuber is proud to announce the representation of Vienna-based artist Liesl Raff. Liesl Raff's sculptures explore the nuances of physical and social interactions through a profound appreciation of diverse materials and persistent experimentation. Her work features a semiotics of materials that begins where words fail. Recently, she has used natural rubber to showcase its adaptable and shape-shifting properties. Standing near or within Raff's pieces, you experience a transition into a warm, cozy, and calm state, feeling a sense of dependability and safety. Her sculptures integrate seamlessly with their surroundings, promoting contact and interaction.
Josh Smith is a multi-talented artist: he is not just a painter. Since the pandemic, he has appeared on Instagram as an ambassador for the art world. He also hosts a regular series on YouTube called "Studio News". During the broadcasts, he sometimes talks about his artistic creative process - in some editions, he simply remains silent. Now Smith is presenting a series of 16 new canvases with his first eponymous exhibition in Vienna.
At her pop-up in the Melina Merkouri Art & Concert Hall, sponsored by the Pappas Family Collection and Galerie Eva Presenhuber, the industrious Tschabalala Self drew crowds of tourists and locals to The Bigger Picture. This triple-screen video (until 2 July) revisits, rather than documents, Sounding Board, the play with music (by Boney M) that she contributed to the 2021 Performa Biennial.
Louisa Gagliardi captivates collectors with her unique paintings that explore the tension between online and real-life existence. Her works feature slick, serene yet uneasy scenes with avatars that evoke a sense of ennui. Using a laborious digital process, she prints sketches on glossy PVC surfaces, creating a surreal, sci-fi allure. Gagliardi's background in graphic design influences her industrial technique, and her works reflect themes of hyperconnectivity and isolation. Influenced by artists like Fernand Léger, her art combines reflections and trompe l'oeil effects, aiming to immerse viewers in otherworldly, dream-like realms.
With sixteen new works at Galerie Presenhuber, Vienna, American artist Josh Smith on treating his paintings like puzzles and his Instagram channel as a work of art.
"The plants in Shara Hughes’s mind-bending paintings export the viewer far from reality. The American artist’s forms seem to be plundered from the depths of her imagination. Towering trees are depicted in spidery strokes of yellow, green and orange (Wits End (2024)), or with vibrant, fluffy blue dots embellishing their branches (What Nerve (2024)). Her works are often so loaded with energetic marks and organic forms that the background and foreground converge, leading to a rich tangle of dynamic visual material."
Premiering in Zurich this week at Galerie Eva Presenhuber, Tobias Pils: Happy Days marks the seventh solo show the artist has had with the gallery and presents a new body of work that highlights his signature style. On view June 7–July 20, 2024, the exhibition is comprised of two large-scale triptychs, a suite of eight paintings, and a bronze sculpture.
"Doug Aitken is an American artist known for installations that span a wide spectrum of media and genres; they may include video, print media, photography, sculpture, sound, and performance. Aitken wants to make the traditional definition of art more accessible to a much more comprehensive and connecting meaning. The viewer is invited to move through his large-scale works, either by walking around huge screens, stepping on a train, or even swimming through mirrored sculptures – to name but a few of his immersive projects."
Fresh out of the shower from Vienna, Josh Smith introduces his solo exhibition Studio News (24 May–20 July 2024). Fish, palm trees, and the Grim Reaper ('I mean that was a really bad one') have all graced the New Yorker's gestural and colour-rich canvases over his 20-year career. This time, it's bats: 'They're like birds, just way cooler.'
Nick Byrne from King Kong Magazine interviewed Torbjørn Rødland, whose photographic works are a moveable feast for the eyes. The subject matter is caught in the moment, but starts to alter in the imagination. Changing and warping, sneakily shapeshifting, his photographs give the illusion of reality, when in fact the realism of the images are just a shudder away from the surreal.
Matthew Angelo Harrison was interviewed by Nick Byrne for King Kong Magazine on his new show American Ghost. The artist speaks about blending resin, 3D tech, and memorabilia to encapsulate personal and societal memories. He explores the connection between opposing elements in life, drawing from his African American upbringing in Detroit's industrial landscape. His pieces merge Fine Art and Industrial Design, conveying powerful messages about identity and society through carefully chosen objects and innovative techniques.
Ugo Rondinone grew up as a secondo in central Switzerland. As a gay man, he saw his life limited by the Aids crisis. But he became a world artist. NZZ conducted a big interview with the artist about his life, in which he said: "My self-confidence is like a fairy tale. One day you see yourself as a gilded carriage, the next you realize you're just a pumpkin after all"
Ugo Rondinone has created a screen print of The Sun and a series of 27 of his Mountain sculptures exclusively for the NZZ. Reminiscent of geological formations, these are crafted from stacked stone chunks, arranged in pairs to create abstract compositions. Originating with a monumental installation in Nevada in 2016, Rondinone's mountains have found homes in public spaces globally, as well as smaller interiors. Each stone in the series is painted in a vibrant Day-Glo color, adding to the visual impact of the pieces.
"Galerie Eva Presenhuber, Zurich, presents the eighth solo exhibition of the artist: bass+ (re)modification, on display until 18 May. In a large white room, a black horizontal line runs across three walls. Dotted above and below, we see a series of rectangular, monochrome MDF panels. These vary in size and palette – on one end we witness a vibrant neon green, on the other, a quiet, slim blue. There’s a sense of coolness and play at hand, invoked by geometric shapes that are constantly in conversation with each other. We feel an energy bounce off each board, reflecting and reverberating across the gallery in a way that suggests lyricality. You’d be forgiven for thinking that these panels represent bars of sound, as if to emulate a musical software application."
Ocula spoke to Louisa Gagliardi about her unconventional painting methods and her upcoming show at Galerie Eva Presenhuber x Taxa, Seoul. Her work often explores feelings of awkwardness and alienation, earning her the nickname Digital Dali. Oculat states: "Gagliardi is one of very few artists who has found representation at a leading gallery for her digital paintings, which she augments with ink and nail polish."
Brooklyn-based Austin Eddy’s paintings call on the viewer to create their own stories out of the ones he proposes. He might use autobiographical events and abstract them to birds, but never imposes his own interpretation. His birds are more form than animal: they are stand-ins for the very human desire for personal freedom, framed by its equally strong wish for stability and structure. As his work toes the line between figurative and abstract, it recalls the cubist forms of the 20th century, while being firmly anchored in Austin’s present.
"The title of Steven Shearer’s exhibition “Sleep, Death’s Own Brother” reverberates from the almost seven-meter-wide wall piece Sleep II, 2015, a collage of hundreds of small photos depicting slumbering individuals. Some seem to be peacefully resting, while others appear lifeless, resembling corpses. This lurking presence of death pervades the entire exhibition, evident in thirty-seven small drawings and thirteen prominent paintings like The Sickly Fauve, 2014, which shows a pale androgynous figure whose dark under-eye circles suggest they haven’t seen sunlight for weeks."
Madeleine Pollard from Elephant Magazine reported on Sofia Mitsola's recent gallery show: "When it came to her latest body of work, Villa Venus: An Organised Dream, which recently showed at Zurich’s Galerie Eva Presenhuber, her focus expanded from the bodies themselves to their surroundings. “I’d been concentrating on my characters for some years, so then I was trying to imagine a place to put them. Where do they sprout from? Where do they live?” she explains. “In 2022, I was on the Greek island of Paros in the Cyclades and it got me thinking about fantastical places. I wanted to create an island of my own.”"
Artnet portrayed 9 famous artist couples that have spawned creative collaborations, spanning from the the early 20th century to today's art world: "While many artistic couples collaborate on common themes, it is rare to find such a personal working relationship as that between Ugo Rondinone and the late poet and activist John Giorno."
Chloe Stead reviewed Steven Shearer's exhibition at the George Economou Collection, Athens: "I’ve never had insomnia, but Steven Shearer’s paintings are a good indication of what it must feel like. Red-eyed, his protagonists stare pleadingly out at the viewer or hide from their gaze under veils of lank hair, shoulders hunched, cigarette in mouth. Rendered with luminous blue-, yellow- and green-tinged skin, these men – visually coded as artist and musician types through their personal style and twilight activities – are clearly in need of some quality shut-eye."
Jerry Saltz reviewed Tschabalala Self's exhibition Bodega Run at the Swiss Institute in New York: "Were the dusty bodegas of old superior to the anonymous, flattened spaces where many of us now buy our food? Yes and no. Self’s pop-up show was a milestone in a project that testifies that, especially in this city, there’s no such thing as a love that’s uncomplicated."
Among those familiar with Eva Presenhuber's work is Zurich-based artist and curator Mitchell Anderson, who founded the project space Plymouth Rock in 2014 to 'show artists who weren't getting the attention they deserved' in Zurich. In this conversation, Anderson shares his thoughts on the significance of hosting such an exhibition now, the relationship between art and melancholy, and the Swiss city's ever-evolving art scene.
BOMB Magazine asked artist Chase Hall who he would most want to speak with and he selected mentor and visual artist, Henry Taylor. They discuss their memorable first meeting, lucky brushes, and how an athlete-inspired work ethic influences their processes. Chase Hall’s paintings in coffee and acrylic on cotton canvas investigate generational celebrations and traumas encoded throughout American history.
Tschabalala Self created an online cover of the Queen of Rap, Nicki Minaj, for Vogue.
Jordane de Faÿ reviewed Sofia Mitsola's show Villa Venus: An Organized Dream for Le Quotidien de l'Art.
Aesthetica Magazine reviewed Doug Aitken's show at SCHAUWERK: "It’s a piece that informs a wider exhibition rooted in behaviour and fragmentation. The artist offers up a contemporary portrait of a restless, globalised world — driven by constant information, progress and technology. It speaks to other interdisciplinary installations, such as Julianknxx’s In ReMemory of Flight at The Barbican Centre, London, or John Akomfrah’s Arcadia at The Box, that use media and film as a means of documentation and observation. Overwhelmingly, Aitken tells us to pay attention to our rapidly changing environment. He asks us to look around and come into contact with the world around us, to resist being dictated by an algorithm. He notes, “When we look at art, perhaps we’re looking for a return to the real.'"
"Jean-Marie Appriou’s exhibition unfolds as a poetic journey into a sculptor’s mind, where words take shape, and sculptures emerge as the written pages of a journal. Like the characters of a play, the figures present in the gallery unfold one by one, weaving the plot of a story unique to every viewer, projecting the contemplative realm of Appriou’s sculptural universe into the limitless multitude of simultaneous existence."
Dieter Roelstraete and Skarlet Smatana spoke to Canadian painter Steven Shearer, whose paintings combine motifs from Western art history with personal views of 1970s youth culture and the metal underground.
"The idea of the Phillips Collection’s “One-on-One” series is to pair a contemporary artist’s work with that of an artist from the museum’s holdings. Thus the current duet of Swiss-born New York artist Ugo Rondinone and Louis Michel Eilshemius (1864-1941), a New Jersey native whose mother was Swiss. But this time, there’s a twist: Rondinone owns a lot more Eilshemius paintings than the Phillips does."
Peter Fischli David Weiss, Douglas Gordon, Ugo Rondinone, Doug Aitken, Tschabalala Self and Franz West were selected among this year’s Kunstkompass Top 100 contemporary artists rankings in Capital Magazin! Rondinone additionally ranked 72th in the top 100 of Monopol Magazin. The artists are selected based on a thorough assessment of their recent activities, including participation in major international biennales, institutional exhibitions, public art installations, awards, and reviews in prestigious journals. Fischli Weiss (30th), Gordon (40th), Rondinone (52nd), and Aitken (96th) ranked among the top 100 in the overall ranking. Self ranked 43rd among the top 100 with the highest increase in points (Stars of Tomorrow). West ranked 9th among the top 20 influential posthumous artists (Olymp).
Hanno Hauenstein from Artnet visited Adam Pendleton in his New York studio: "Asked whether it would be fair to say that he is currently moving away from words and more towards abstraction, he said: “A little bit, but it is much more ‘both-and’ instead of ‘either-or.’” His answer not only explains an art practice, but it might also be useful to keep in one’s mind amid the political debates swirling in recent weeks. While he might be reluctant to admit it, the artist’s engagement with politics excels beyond the canvas or his studio."
"Presented in Vienna by Galerie Eva Presenhuber, “Jean-Marie Appriou: Gemini” is the artist’s third exhibition with the gallery and is thematically focused on the celestial twins. The concepts of Gemini, twins, dualities, and dichotomies have long been present in the history of art, but here Appriou looks at ideas around these concepts and forms a new, unique parallel, that of poetry and sculpture."
"For Jean-Marie Appriou and Andrew Lord, sculpture provides a means to explore the material essence of life and, imbued within it, history, personal experiences, myths, and memories. At Galerie Eva Presenhuber, Vienna, two concurrent solo presentations of Jean-Marie Appriou's bronze and casted glass sculptures in Gemini and Andrew Lord's intimate, entangled forms in a sculpture of my left hand and five embraces (9 November–22 December 2023) act as containers to these threads."
"According to the vaguely trustworthy website we all use, Lars von Trier’s apocalyptic film Melancholia (2011) was inspired by a depressive episode he had. Apparently, a therapist told him “Depressive people tend to act more calmly than others under heavy pressure because they already expect bad things to happen.” However the current group show at Galerie Eva Presenhuber has nothing to do with this but rather Albrecht Dürer’s engraving Melencolia 1 (1514), which was the initial reference to the exhibition of the first major group show curated by the gallerist in 1988 at Galerie Grita Insam..."
Matthieu Jacquet reviewed the photograph Barbershop Scene by Torbjørn Rødland, on view at Consortium Museum, Dijon: "Rødland once compared his photographs to tarot cards, representations that are laden with symbols and multiple possible interpretations, none of which can be categorical, verified, or rationalized. The strength of works like Barbershop Scene is that Rødland can turn multiple potential readings into a psychological funhouse mirror, one that is both bewildering and captivating, causing viewers to constantly question their own assumptions."
"Eva Presenhuber opens a group show in Zurich this week, giving equal prominence to the artists she represents and those she describes as having “different positions”, who are mostly lesser-known. The latter include Stanislava Kovalcikova, a Czech artist whose work Presenhuber discovered at Vienna’s Belvedere Museum last year, and Aleksandra Waliszewska, an artist with great success in her home country of Poland but less well known elsewhere. They join gallery stalwarts, including Ugo Rondinone, Franz West and Steven Shearer, in a show of about 80 works by about 26 artists (November 11 to February 24). The title of the exhibition is Melencolia, although Presenhuber says that the art is more “works that are all reflective and thoughtful”. This, she says, is relevant for some of today’s artists under the age of 40 who can get “abused by high prices at auction, when they need more time and energy to think about what they are making. I have a distinct preference for slow burners,” she says."
"As the work rouses and relieves this anxiety of gazing, Sleep, Death’s Own Brother sets forth a vision of rebellion that often turns on itself, its enactment of the anti-hero dandy exerting pressure on the parameters and possibilities of portrait-making. It is also a fascinating study of how an artist can entice the viewer into a poetic scenography of cat and mouse, where existential dread looms and strategies of release do not always ease the pain."
Heinz Schütz interviewed Matthew Angelo Harrison for KUNSTFORUM International, stating: "The encapsulation of traditional African sculptures plays a central role in Matthew Angelo Harrison's work. Transparent, futuristic-looking plastic boxes preserve what has been encapsulated. With their purist minimalist aesthetics, they act like "coolers" that contain and dim down the once cultic-magical and highly expressive in a modernist way. What began as an exploration of Harrison's African-American roots points beyond and becomes a commentary on the present."
Giulia Coletti from CURA Magazine reviewed Valentin Carron's exhibition Haus und Kropf at Galerie Eva Presenhuber, Vienna: "Touching on the relationships between living beings and environmental stimuli – which often entails divergent or abnormal responses – Haus und Kropf is an attempt to expand on interspecies companionship all the while accentuating the silent solitude that often shrouds our existence."
Sam Falls was in conversation with Paul Laster from Ocula about his exhibition at Galerie Eva Presenhuber in Zurich. About his unique technique of imprinting by means of natural elements, Falls says: "The idea of removing my hand has always been important to me . . . With the patina changing, you see time passing—you see nature's take on the work."
Katinka Fischer from Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung concludes about Doug Aitken's new show at SCHAUWERK Sindelfingen: "Even in the spacious Sindelfingen exhibition space, the volume of his works only allows for a limited selection of ten items, which nevertheless provide a representative overview of his work over the past 15 years. The fact that the architecture makes it possible (and that this possibility has been used) to assemble several exhibits in one room demonstrates to the eyes and ears that Aitken's heterogeneous works are more connected than would have been clear from a separate presentation. The fact that images, light and sound effects are superimposed on one another is conducive to the effect of art. One moves through them and feels as if one is in a landscape."
Julia Moritz reviewed Tschabalala Self's exhibition Spaces and Places, which was on view at Galerie Eva Presenhuber, Waldmannstrasse, Zurich, from June 10 through July 22, 2023: "Her paintings and sculpture are expansive, figurative and ornamental. The colours glow. And Self's diverse application of self-dyed and found fabrics onto canvas is well on its way to becoming a trademark. So far so bold. But what place emerges in the interstices of self-representation and ascription to others in the Self's latest works?"
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.”
Olamiju Fajemisin reviewed HOWL by Doug Aitken for Flash Art: “HOWL,” the current exhibition of prophetic multimedia works by Doug Atkins, accelerates through Galerie Eva Presenhuber’s Maag Areal campus with a rapid succession of recurrent and shifting motifs (specifically environmental photography, geometric abstraction, and forms of address) that culminate in a confrontation of moving image and sound.
Mitchell Anderson from Frieze Magazine reviewed HOWL by Doug Aitken: "Far from the often-didactic and predestined narrative of a documentary, Aitken’s judgment-free and non-politicized witnessing softly opens itself to many of the optimisms and resignations of desolate, small town American life – from the people who continue to make a living off the land to the children who have to avoid ‘druggies’ on their way home from school to those who dream of leaving. It’s an affecting work, not least because it centres on a rural segment of the population not traditionally depicted or discussed – past cheap caricatures – in contemporary art and life."
"HOWL makes no explicit reference to Allen Ginsberg’s celebrated 1956 poem of the same name. Other than a distant echo of lines such as ‘Moloch whose love is endless oil and stone!’ But that’s not to say that Aitken doesn’t indulge in a little (concrete) poetry of his own" writes Mark Rappolt in his review of the exhibition HOWL by Doug Aitken.
Kate Brown at artnet wrote about Doug Aitken's HOWL: "In their arid dust-bowl of a town, huge pump jacks dot the horizon, pulsing in and out of a bone dry desert landscape to extract oil, which seems to be the main source of income of the town and also its raison d’etre. The new video, called HOWL, premiered in his solo exhibition at Eva Presenhuber, Zurich last month (it is on view through July 22), and it juxtaposes these rhythmic, unforgiving fracking machines against the voices from the people who coexist among them."
In the interview with Elephant, Louisa Gagliardi speaks about her recent show, A Moment’s Notice, which was on view until May 25, 2025 at Galerie Eva Presenhuber, Maag Areal, Zurich, and discusses the complexities of existence in a post-internet world.
The high-ceilinged halls of Bergen Kunsthall’s 1930s functionalist building recently housed another, quite different take on functional architecture—one conjured by American artist Oscar Tuazon. Having dissected ideological, structural, and philosophical underpinnings of architecture, construction, and Minimalist sculpture throughout his career, Tuazon’s inauguration of his ongoing “Water School” in 2016 marked a turn toward more explicitly incorporating activist themes and strategies.
In short film HOWL, Doug Aitken considers the concept of placelessness, distilling collected interviews and footage captured within the town’s bounds in an eerie non-linear narrative reflecting its state of limbo. Here, residents face a Catch-22 between securing the town’s wealth through a questionable resource, and the inevitable decline and loss of industry associated with distancing itself from fossil fuels.
The George Economou Collection is host to Steven Shearer: Sleep, Death's Own Brother, an exhibition of paintings and printed works held in the Athens-based collection (18 June 2023–30 March 2024). Ahead of the opening, curator Dieter Roelstraete spoke to Ocula Advisory about the Shearer's transgressive perspective of the lifeless body, the decision to spotlight his practice now, and the works on show in Athens.
Doug Aitken’s latest work, HOWL, is a 15-minute, five-channel film about an unnamed town in the American West. It’s filled with epic aerial shots of oil wells and daily life in the town, along with short excerpts from interviews with some of its residents. Those interviews take on an eerie meaning as their words echo and reverberate. It is on view at Galerie Eva Presenhuber, Zurich, Maag Areal through July 22, 2023.
At this year's Art Basel, we are pleased to present Ugo Rondinone’s sculpture humanskysix (2022), which is revealed to have been cast from the body of Swiss tennis legend Roger Federer. The sculpture will be on view at our booth P5 in Hall 2.1. The Basel-born Federer collaborated with fellow Swiss Ugo Rondinone on his ambitious installation human clouds, which is the third part of the trilogy burn shine fly – an exhibition celebrating life and its seasons, rhythms, and natural elements.
Watch the documentary Portrait of a Champion here.
Alice Goldwin reviewed Shara Hughes exhibition in Aalborg: "Known for her “invented landscapes,” Hughes’ paintings are not simply fantasy—they linger in the residue of memories and experiences. For this reason, Hughes’ paintings feel innately personal and human, though there are no actual people to be found."
»My work doesn’t have a political agenda, doesn’t propose policy solutions, but it does acknowledge a political reality« says Adam Pendleton in his interview with Alexandra Markl for Collectors Agenda.
"The universe I create with my art may be similar to reality, but it is dominated by distorted figures and perspectives," says Louisa Gagliardi in her feature in the BILANZ Art Basel special. Further positions mentioned in its Swiss artist ranking 2023 are Ugo Rondinone, Jean-Frédéric Schnyder, and Peter Fischli.
Mister Neutral: Martin Herbert investigates what lies behind the constructed guise of the amateur, the craftsman, the style-less dabbler, the cross maker, defining Jean-Frédéric Schnyder as a man of quietly huge ambitions who planned, up front, to outrun all of us while embracing a world full of difference and contradiction, of beauty and banality and brutality, leaving a trail of clues in his wake.
On Schnyderian Art: Originally published in 1990 in the pages of Parkett, this essay by Patrick Frey is an ode to the greatness of Jean-Frédéric Schnyder and his art—a mixture of trueness to life and a profoundly skeptical intelligence.
Galerie Eva Presenhuber is proud to announce the representation of London-based Greek artist Sofia Mitsola, alongside Pilar Corrias, London. Mitsola works primarily with painting to examine the female body. By looking at figures in ancient Egyptian and Greek sculpture, Japanese animation, and pornography, she composes her own mythological characters and places them in geometrical, stage-like compositions. These are painted in vibrant colors and are layered with washes and impasto. Her paintings often feature bare, larger-than-life characters who address the viewer with their direct gaze and invite them to look back. Through this act, Mitsola forms dynamic relationships between the painting and the viewer to establish new hierarchies and play with ideas of voyeurism, power, and control.
Louisiana Channel met Hughes in her New York-studio to talk about drawing inspiration from other painters, and why she feels that a good painting is about “going to the edge and not giving away all the answers.”
“How could I make a painting about one flower that has multiple layers to it?” says American artist Shara Hughes about her painting POP, why the genre of still life was a thing of the past and needed to be updated.
On view at Galerie Eva Presenhuber in Vienna, Bradley's current solo exhibition Rejoice: Drawing and Sculpture (21 April–25 May 2023) combines the old with the new. Joe Bradley told Elliat Albrecht (Ocula): "The idea is to get as much into the work as you can. See what the work can tolerate."
Liam Gillick’s intervention in the permanent collection of Berlin’s Museum of the Ancient Near East, titled Filtered Time, opened to the public in April 2023. Using light, color, shape, projection, sound, and almost no text, his intervention comes at a time when the Pergamon Museum, in which this collection is housed, is projected to close at the end of 2023. Gillick agreed to realize his project amidst difficult debates about how to deal with these buildings and the fraught colonial histories they house, about which he spoke to Jörg Heiser.
Read the full conversation between Liam Gillick and Jörg Heiser here.
Among other things, the Würth Foundation honoured the Swiss-born Ugo Rondinone for his "masterful craftsmanship". This year, the prize is endowed with 50,000 euros. The prize has been awarded every two years since 1993 in memory of the Danish sculptor Robert Jacobsen (1912-1993). Previous winners have included Eva Rothschild, Yngve Holen, Alicja Kwade and Jeppe Hein.
Lucas Blalock was interviewed by King Kong Magazine, for which he also designed the cover page.
Following the opening of ‘The Close of the Day,’ Chase Hall joins Document to discuss the American South, code switching, and how his biracial experience is far from monolithic. He says: “As we get closer to the future, and we talk about equity, and we talk about rights, it’s important for me to navigate in a way that’s honest to myself—even in that core, even in that genetic humility.”
The exhibition title Building at the Kunst Museum Winterthur has a programmatic character: Oscar Tuazon looks back at his architectural sculptures of the last twenty years and shows where he is heading: to his beginnings, water and language. In the house as a living sculpture all paths lead together. By Meret Arnold.
Annabel Downes from Ocula Art Advisory interviewed Louisa Gagliardi in her Zurich studio about her upcoming solo exhibition at Galerie Eva Presenhuber, Maag Areal, Zurich.
Ugo Rondinone was interviewed by Caroline-Micaela Hauger on the occasion of his current exhibition when the sun goes down and the moon comes up at Musée d'art et d'histoire, Geneva. He says: "Artists need to be authentic. I draw my inspiration from within myself."
Yuki Higashino reviewed the exhibition Leaving the New World by the US-American artist John Dilg, which was on view at Galerie Eva Presenhuber, Vienna, from January 14 to February 18, 2023. He says: "Dilg is highly skilled, and his painterly erudition is unmistakable. He gives shape to an idea of a place that might have but did not come into being."
A sale of contemporary art co-curated by artist Adam Pendleton and tennis champion Venus Williams will raise money for the restoration of singer and civil rights activist Nina Simone’s childhood home, years after a group of artists purchased the house in order to protect it and preserve Simone’s legacy.
'It seemed early on like my work was less problematic in Asia,' Rødland said ahead of his exhibition in Seoul, presented by Galerie Eva Presenhuber in collaboration with Taxa. The show will open on March 17, 5 pm, and is on view until April 28, 2023.
Discover the limited edition of 20 belts numbered and signed by Mark Handforth created for J. Hopenstand. Borrowing from ready-mades, pop art and minimalism, he uses elements of the urban landscape to create structural masterpieces. Lampposts, street signs and neons are distorted, bent, twisted and full of symbolism, confounding our vision of urban infrastructures.
Josh Smith is among the artists who showcase their art at the new 8,500-square-foot flagship store of Supreme New York in West Hollywood, Los Angeles.
Torbjørn Rødland’s exhibition Old Shep at Galerie Eva Presenhuber, Zurich, Maag Areal, was reviewed by Gallery Talk.
Gareth Harris reviews when the sun goes down and the moon comes up, an exhibtion by Ugo Rondinone at the Musée d'art et d'histoire de Genève. The artist draws extensively from the institution’s rich holdings of Swiss art's giants Ferdinand Hodler and Félix Vallotton.
Sam Falls’ exhibition We are Dust and Shadow at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Cleveland was reviewed by Artnet. Sam Falls on making art out of nature to capture the nature of time: ‘I’m after something more sublime.’
Ugo Rondinone and Roger Federer announce their collaboration 'Portrait of a Champion'. In Rondinone’s 'burn shine fly', the athlete agrees to be known as 'Cloud Six'. He takes a leap from simply admiring the art to becoming a part of it.
Tschabalala Self's exhibition "Make Room" at Le Consortium/Dijon was featured in Flash Art. Self’s desire is to “create a cultural vacuum in which bodies can exist for their own pleasure and self-realization. Their role is not to show, explain, or perform but rather ‘to be.'”
Anthony Huberman was appointed Executive Director of the John Giorno Foundation and Artistic Director of The Bunker.
purple Magazine published an interview with the artist Doug Aitken. Aitken says: "The continent stops, and you find yourself looking out at the infinite horizon, and there’s nothing there — you’re looking out at the idea of the future, at what could be."
Max Henry from SPIKE Magazine reviewed Sam Falls' exhibition at Galerie Eva Presenhuber, Vienna. Henry writes: "Taking cover on a raw, blustery winter afternoon, I step inside the warm confines of Galerie Eva Presenhuber, Vienna, to enter the world of Sam Falls and his botanical memento mori."
Muse Magazine dedicates a photo feature on Torbjørn Rødland's exhibition Old Shep at Galerie Eva Presenhuber, Maag Areal. The editorial team writes: "Rødland appeals to our general visual memory, but not without disrupting it in an almost surrealist manner."
Artspace dedicated an article on Ugo Rondinone's great year. They write: "That’s quite a win for the artist, and next year looks just as promising. Look out for a huge outdoor show in Germany in 2023 at the Städel Garden Halls in Frankfurt."
Karen Kilimnik's recent solo exhibition at Galerie Eva Presenhuber, Vienna, is reviewed by Sabrina Tarasoff for Mousse Magazine. Tarasoff writes: "Like teasing meaning from whatever’s intercalated between the forever-equivocal face of Kirsten Stewart as immersed in elusive Alpine cumulus, Kilimnik floats ideas in the midst of her chosen motifs, allowing the recherché referent to become impressionistic and subject to its own un-resolve, or unmooring."
Carole Kittner from Tribune Des Arts dedicated a major article on the artist Louisa Gagliardi. In the article and interview, the artist is talking about the beginnings of her career, her influences, and future exhibitions.
At last month’s Paris Fashion Week, Akris’s 100th anniversary Spring 2023 show was staged on the outdoor square between the Palais de Tokyo and the Musee d’Art Moderne—a fitting location for a brand that prides itself on being at art’s intersection. The outdoor fountains were appropriately festive for the occasion, adorned with a large Ugo Rondinone rainbow that read “We Are Poems.”
Listen to Dior Talks podcast series, themed around the seventh edition of Dior Lady Art and hosted by Paris-based journalist Katya Foremanas, where artist Shara Hughes shares her vision for the Lady Dior bag. Evocative of escape, the two creations establish an outsider’s perspective peering into another universe. The scenic painting serves as portals as a parallel to the bag itself being an object that stores mysteries inside. With sleek paintings and textural embossments, the bags fulfill this enchanting concept.
On the occasion of Shara Hughes’ exhibition Time Lapsed at Kunstmusem Luzern, an accompanying catalogue is published with DCV Books. Shara Hughes describes her pictures and drawings as psychological or invented landscapes. Her cliff coasts, river valleys, sunsets, and lush gardens, often framed by abstract patterns, might be the settings of fairy tales or scenes from paradise.
Artflyer recently published a major article and interview with the artist Jean-Marie Appriou. In the interview, Appriou says, “What interests me is to go beyond this imaginary surface that the mirage, or the world, is. This Alice in Wonderland or William Blake trick of the passage. The door to another state. When we are in front of a work of art, we don’t know what happens, it is indescribable, but we pass through a door to a state of superior consciousness.”
Shara Hughes’ exhibition Time Lapsed at Kunstmuseum Luzern, Lucerne is reviewed by Ramona Heinlein for Texte zur Kunst.
Kunstforum International recently dedicated a major interview for Ugo Rondinone. Heinz-Norbert Jocks talks to the artist about the beginnings of his career, his influences, and the artists' different exhibitions over the past year.
Ugo Rondinone is one of six contemporary creators to reimagine an iconic handbag by Louis Vuitton. William Van Meter from Artnet News writes: "A handbag becomes a blank (and luxurious) canvas for the esteemed, high-profile cadre tasked with crafting the latest Artycapucines.”
Kate Brown from Artnet News recently visited American artist Amy Feldman in her Brooklyn studio to talk about her studio practice and work routine.
Ugo Rondinone’s exhibition the water is a poem unwritten by the air no. the earth is a poem unwritten by the fire at Petit Palais, Paris is reviewed by Devid Gulandris for Ignant Magazine. Goulandris writes, “Ugo Rondinone is an expert in evoking emotion, leaving one entranced and visually awakened.”
For the podcast Cerebral Women, host Phyllis Hollis talks to Tschabalala Self about her work, her inspiration and passion.
Doug Aitken’s solo exhibition, Flags and Debris, at The Israel Museum in Jerusalem is the subject of a feature by Barry Davis in The Jerusalem Post. The feature discusses how Aitken’s current show at Israel Museum is a reflection of the woeful social distancing, self-incarceration state of affairs in 2020.
Shara Hughes suspends time with dazzling, otherworldly landscapes in her new exhibition Time Lapsed at Kunstmuseum Luzern.
For The Art Newspaper’s podcast A brush with… Ben Luke talks to Adam Pendleton about the artist’s influences in the worlds of literature, music and art, as well as the cultural experiences that have shaped his life and work.
For Vogue’s August issue, Chase Hall was profiled by Dodie Kazanjian. The article discusses Hall’s fiercely independent and deeply inspired artistic practice which is informed by questions of identity and belonging. Kazanjian writes, "A self-taught artist with boundless energy and a lot to say, he has emerged virtually overnight as a strong and highly original new voice."
Wyatt Kahn discusses his Public Art Fund exhibition, Life in the Abstract, with Roger Clark for NY1. Life in the Abstract is Kahn's first public art exhibition, comprising seven new monumental sculptures fabricated in Cor-Ten steel. Each sculpture juxtaposes components adapted from Kahn’s abstract canvas paintings with “readymade” items from his domestic life.
Karen Kilimnik's exhibition, Early Drawings 1976 – 1998, is reviewed by Johanna Fateman for Goings On About Town in The New Yorker. Fateman writes, "The diverse works on view are unified by the artist’s inimitable hand and wry humor—and by their lustrous gilt frames, which strike the perfect note of irony, fantasy, and understated camp."
Artist Louisa Gagliardi recently spoke to Louisa Elderton about her large-scale painting for the 2022 edition of Art Basel Unlimited. Gagliardi describes the work in reference to an atmosphere of “opening random doors and observing whatever scenes hide behind them. That’s what I want the work to feel like. Sometimes you open a door to an empty room that has a peaceful stillness, but it’s still eerie because of the potential for activation...”
Ugo Rondinone's solo exhibition, burn shine fly, at Scuola Grande di San Giovanni Evangelista in Venice is the subject of a feature by Stephanie Bailey on Ocula Magazine. The feature discusses how Rondinone's artworks reflect on common experiences of love and loss, particularly in relation to works by the late John Giorno.
At seventy-two, Carroll Dunham is one of the most successful and well-respected American painters of his generation. The artist recently sat down with the writer Naomi Fry for a conversation about painting, the body, repression, and family.
Eva Presenhuber discusses her return to her home country of Austria and why she has decided to open a gallery in Vienna after years of operating out of Zurich and New York. Tobias Pils introduces his inaugural exhibition, Between Us Space, featuring Gerwald Rockenshaub, and reveals how the collaboration came about.
Chase Hall discusses his debut solo show in Europe—a collection of paintings and portraiture titled Clouds in My Coffee on view at Galerie Eva Presenhuber in Zurich. Despite exhibiting internationally, many of the ideas he’s currently working through are rooted in American history.
At the Performa Biennial last October, artist Tschabalala Self presented her first-ever live performance. Besides writing the script and directing the actors, Self also painted the backdrop and designed the costumes, produced in a special collaboration with UGG. The first seven pieces from UGG x TS will be available online and in selected stores on March 1.
Doug Aitken’s awe-inspiring work comments on the aesthetics of the future and the conflict between modernity and nature. Now, he is pushing his eye-popping sensibility even further with a new exhibition that spans four galleries in different cities and exists mainly in the form of virtual reality. Learn more about booking your VR experience in Zurich here.
Galerie Eva Presenhuber, which maintains locations in Zurich and New York, and is set to open another in Vienna, will now represent Chase Hall, whose work is currently on view at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art in a show of Black portraiture. Hall’s first solo exhibition with the gallery will open at Galerie Eva Presenhuber, Waldmannstrasse, Zurich, on March 4.
Eva Presenhuber will open her second gallery since the beginning of the pandemic, this time in Vienna. The gallery will open on April 2 with an exhibition of Austrian native Tobias Pils, featuring an intervention by fellow Austrian Gerwald Rockenschaub.
At Performa 2021, Tschabalala Self will bring to life characters from her paintings in a performance entitled Sounding Board. Understanding this commission as an invitation to experiment with the medium of performance, Self has written and designed an intimate work of theatre.
Amy Feldman’s paintings have been gray for over a decade, a commitment which would be bold were it not so seemingly innate. In the Brooklyn-based artist’s alluringly abstract works, shapes float amidst gray-washed cosmoses layered with coats of gesso, paint, and more paint.
Much recent figurative painting has sought, admirably but with some obviousness, to invert and destroy the genre’s entrenched hierarchies. More subtle is Steven Shearer’s examination of portraiture through the lens of those who construct and consume it.
Adam Pendleton is rethinking the museum. Who Is Queen? at MoMA is the artist’s most personal and ambitious show yet, exploring how we might live beyond labels in American society. “I want to overwhelm the museum,” he said.
It’s not easy to catch up with Sam Falls, an artist who is almost always on the move. From the remote woodlands surrounding New York City to the Mojave desert in super bloom, Falls travels the country in his camper van making unusual portraits of nature.
