Marguerite Humeau’s Scintille Is A Cave of Relational Ontologies @ White Cube New York

Scintille by Marguerite Humeau, White Cube New York, 2026.

text and photographs by Isabella Bernabeo

Spread across two floors, Marguerite Humeau’s Scintille is a call to lean into systems of mutual aid in times of darkness and uncertainty. Derived from the Latin word scintilla, meaning a spark or small flash of fire, this body of work is inspired by a cave in West Papua that the artist visited, as well as by John Koenig’s The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows, in which the author attempts to define complex emotions that challenge the English language. Within these two floors, Humeau has created sculptures that make guests feel like they have not only traveled to a cave’s ecosystem but also as if they are a living and breathing part of the fluid exhibition’s environment.

Scintille by Marguerite Humeau, White Cube New York, 2026.

Upon entering, you are immediately immersed in a cave-like domain, where sleek brown floors, low lighting and a ceiling filled with what appear to be leaves create an unfamiliar yet peaceful ambiance. Two large sculptures act as sentinels to the cavern. Standing at twelve feet tall, these stalagmite structures are made from a repeated layering of sediment that loom over the rest of the gallery with a presence that is both menacing and comforting. Softament, also known as, The Guardian of Mineral Memory, and the larger of the two sculptures has an ombre that transmutes from black to a dark brown to a burnt orange to a yellow, almost as if the setting sun is reflecting off the tower. At the top is a line of circular stones that gradually increase in size and in their metallic reflection, they reenact the water that slowly drips off these structures in real life.

Scintille by Marguerite Humeau, White Cube New York, 2026.

Likewise, Stillenary, also known as, The Guardian of the Emergence, has water droplets rising up into the air. However, this thinner stalagmite incorporates a color range of blacks, whites, and greys, and attached to the structure is a light blue feathered cape with a range of holes in it, almost as if this guardian is a wounded hero.

Standing in the center of the gallery is Centurience, a short and stout stalagmite covered in splatters of dark blues, whites, greys, and blacks. However, on top of this youthful guardian is a blown and cast glass formation that appears like two white flowers with various sharp glass icicles stretching out. Centurience, a beautiful weapon, proves that avoiding extinction doesn’t come with size, but with patience.

Scintille by Marguerite Humeau, White Cube New York, 2026.

Humeau’s second floor is dedicated to the classic cave animal: the bat. Along the walls hang seven color-shifting cast glass sculptures, each given a name for the role that it plays within the colony: The Echolocation Maintainer, The Guardian of the Night Roost, The Retriever of the Fallen Pup, The Provider Beyond Bloodlines, The Dancing Bat, The Guardian of the Solution Pocket, and The Grape Transformation.

Each of these sculptures resembles a bat in motion. One dances through the air, redistributing warmth to the rest of the colony, another launches itself towards the ground to save a newcomer’s life, and another stands guard while the others sleep. They each exhibit self-sacrificing behaviors in an effort to care for the colony as a whole.

Scintille by Marguerite Humeau, White Cube New York, 2026.

Along the walls of the upstairs exhibit hang six more pigment and charcoal drawings. These illustrations are devoted to the living organisms that live within caves. Of them, Translucidency outlines the bodies of four flatworms slowly crawling their way through their underground habitation. The pink hue of the drawing presents all the tiny and linear organs that transparently shine through their body; The very darkness of their environment eliminates the need to hide one’s inner self.

Scintille by Marguerite Humeau, White Cube New York, 2026.

Humeau’s Scintille breaks down the barriers of the outside world’s individuality by highlighting the relational ontologies that exist in the world’s darkest corners, where Earth’s formations and living organisms exchange and encounter one another in a pitch-black harmony.

Werner Büttner's "Malerei 1982-2022" @ Galerie Max Hetzler

Malerei 1981–2022 is a solo exhibition of Werner Büttner’s work at Galerie Max Hetzler, Bleibtreustraße 45 and 15/16 in Berlin. This is the artist's tenth solo exhibition with the gallery.

Absurdity, irony and ambivalence play a central role in Werner Büttner's paintings, which gained recognition in the late 1970s under the term ‘Bad Painting’. Motifs of classical modernism are reworked, sometimes with the help of linguistic elements, and thus become unflinching commentaries on society and the broader condition humaine. ‘The generation before us – the conceptual artists – had declared painting as an outdated, bourgeois medium to be abolished. This prohibition had to be broken by us descendants, out of defiance, for distinction, and because the laws of generation demand it. And so, in juvenile presumption, I took hold of almost all known categories of painting – still lifes, self-portraits, animal pictures, seascapes, history painting, religious subjects, etc.’, the artist explains.

This exhibition comprises works from a creative period of over 40 years, offering an impressive insight into Büttner's practice. The impasto painting, applied in rapid brushstrokes and alla prima (wet- on-wet), lends the works a coarseness that is further emphasised by the typical artist's frames made of wooden slats. Isolated splashes and streaks of paint, created by the explosive movements of the brush, reinforce the dynamism and power of the paintings. In the later works, this fast technique is replaced by a more precise painterly style, yielding images with a greater intellectual and visual subtlety. A block of drawings and a group of sculptures by the artist will also be shown at Bleibtreustraße 15/16.

 
 

Malerei 1981-2022 is on view until August 19th at Galerie Max Hetzler, Bleibtreustraße 45 and 15/16, 10623 Berlin

Richard Serra: Forged Rounds @ Gagosian In New York

Photo: Silke von Berswordt. Courtesy the artist and Gagosian.

Four new works from Richard Serra’s Rounds series fills the entire West 24th Street gallery. Each forged steel sculpture is composed of multiple -ton elements of differing diameters and heights. Bisecting the West st Street gallery space will be Reverse Curve, a sculpture measuring feet long and feet high. Originally conceived in for a public project in Reggio Emilia, Italy, Reverse Curve is finally being realized for the first time. In conjunction with these exhibitions, Gagosian and Anthology Film Archives will present a three day retrospective of Serra’s films and videos from October 17 through 19, drawn from the collections of the Museum of Modern Art, Anthology Film Archives, Joan Jonas, and Stiftung Situation Kunst. This is the first time that all of the artist’s film and video work will be shown together. The screening on October will be followed by a panel discussion between curators Søren Grammel, Chrissie Iles, and Jeffrey Weiss, moderated by art historian Benjamin Buchloh. Additional screenings of the full program will take place on October 20 and 23. The exhibition will be accompanied by a fully illustrated catalogue with an essay by Julian Rose. Forged Rounds is on view through December 17 at Gagosian 555 West 24th Street, New York.

The Collection of the Fondation: A Vision for Painting @ Fondation Louis Vuitton in Paris

“The Collection of the Fondation: A Vision for Painting” brings together 72 works by 23 artists representing different horizons across generations. The exhibition showcases how formal modes and expressions of painting have been renewed and reinvented since 1960 to today: figurative or abstract, manufactured or mechanic, inhabited or distant. These works are also displayed in dialogue with a series of sculptures and installations.

“The Collection of the Fondation: A Vision for Painting” is on view through August 26 at Fondation Louis Vuitton 8 avenue du Mahatma Gandhi, Bois de Boulogne, Paris. photographs courtesy of Fondation Louis Vuitton