Kristen Sanders' "Protoself" @ Asya Geisberg Gallery

 
Kristen Sanders, One in the Other, 2020. All images courtesy of Asya Geisberg Gallery.

Kristen Sanders, One in the Other, 2020. All images courtesy of Asya Geisberg Gallery.

 

For Protoself, Kristen Sanders asks the question: Where does the self-start or end, and are the traces/fragments left behind a part of self? Bringing together imagery such as marks left in fossils and bodies formed by medical mannequin skins, Sander’s uncanny paintings flatten time and explore the negative space between the physical body and one's environment where the self is formed. 

As the show’s title suggests, Sanders points her inquiry into the crux of what makes us human; imagining a moment of first consciousness of a hypothetical early human ancestor. Since 2015 her work has been circling between the extreme past of hominids millions of years ago – and the increasingly closer future of robots with super-human powers and artificial intelligence. Sanders’ fascination lies within the threshold of self-invention, distinguishing the human from both the animal and the animatronic. In considering the former, her work posits that behavioral aspects such as making a mark, or the first non-utilitarian artwork, should be valorized before corporeal evolution. By considering these defining moments for the pre-human, we can then reframe the post-human, negotiating our current unease with AI and its possible outpacing of the human body – arriving at a post-body consciousness.

Protoself is on view through July 8 at Asya Geisberg Gallery, 537B West 23rd Street, New York, NY 10011

 
 

William Waterworth's Ein Tir Instinctually Captures Beauty @ Pipeline in London

A woman balances a rudimentary aeroplane-like structure on her head in a field. Zissou, 2023, by William Waterworth.

Zissou, 2023

review by Lara Monro
all images courtesy of the artist

Tatiana Cheneviere opened Pipeline in October 2022. The contemporary art gallery has taken a refreshing approach to presenting emerging and mid-career artists. It introduces each forthcoming exhibiting artist by showcasing a single artwork in a separate, enclosed space to the main gallery area. The art work is specifically chosen by the artist to provide relevant context to their practice and upcoming exhibition. As a result of working for over a decade at one of the most established international blue chip galleries, Cheneviere wanted to create a program that encourages a slower experience to understand the evolving parameters of a single creative practice. Cheneviere explains, “Pipeline’s aim is to reinvigorate the conversation between artist and collector and celebrate the subtleties of storytelling through art.” To date, Pipeline has showcased the work of a diverse selection of artists incluidng Tommy Harrison, Johanna Bath and Emmanuel Awuni. 

Ein Tir, which translates to Our Land in Welsh is currently on view at Pipeline. The exhibition chronicles three new series and key works by the photographer William Waterworth. Born in Macclesfield, Waterworth studied art history at Manchester University, where the work of Sally Mann captivated and inspired him to pursue his interest in photography. “I found Mann’s photos very moving. I guess they felt especially so back then because the paintings I had been studying as part of the art history course weren’t moving me in the same way. There was something about photography; its immediacy and realness.” 

Waterworth decided to leave Manchester for Paris where he studied photography for a year and through multiple influences began to adopt a photographic style, “after I left Manchester, and as a result of Sally Mann's work, I bought a book on Jeanloup Sieff. It was his deeply tonal black & whites that inspired mine.” Waterworth was awarded the Prix Picto de la Photographie de Mode and has since established a photographic career, which includes working with Alexander McQueen and Erdem. 

A dramatic black and white portrait of a man in chain armor with a rope crown. Hamlet as Knight, 2022, William Waterworth.

Hamlet as Knight, 2022

Dramatic black and white photograph of a nude male figure kneeling in a concrete circle outdoors. Benjamin Evans, 2023, by William Waterworth.

Benjamin Evans, 2023

Central to Waterworth’s practice is a quest for stories and the places they are formed, “I like stories and adventure very much, but what I like most about photography is how it can force you to be more open to all walks of life.” In 2016, Waterworth’s fascination with hearing other people’s stories led to a pilgramige up the East Coast of England from Grimsby to Lindisfarne. 

In Ein Tir, Waterworth has taken over the entire gallery space, the first time a single artist has done so at Pipeline. We observe Waterworth's love for exploring, recreating and capturing stories as well as his love for collaboration. His three new series are shown alongside a selection of collage works and text in the end room where a work presented by the next artist is usually shown. 

Waterworth has used the end space to function in its usual way by drawing back the curtain and contextualizing the other exhibited works. These new images chronicle his pilgrimage to Julia Margaret Cameron’s home on the Isle of Wight, the story of Zissou and the flying machine, and the journey a carpenter makes to the Alps inspired by Thomas Mann’s novel The Magic Mountain (1924). “Everything stems from the book at the front of the gallery. It’s made up of 100 photographs and is inspired by Guy Bourdin’s Untouched work of photographs. Then, there are ten framed pieces varying in size, which leads you to the back room; a wall of collage involving the three specific stories I made in March. We traveled to the Isle of Wight, the Alps, and Dorset. They are narrative-driven and could not have happened without the collaboration of Joel Kerr, who created the accompanying video work and Edie Ashley who designed the costumes.” 

Waterworth's deep interest in capturing inherent beauty stems from an instinct, “one's views on beauty is so subjective, but in my case I guess I respond to instinct and let that lead me. I don't really know what it is, perhaps a sensitivity or awareness. All I know is I can feel a great subject when they walk into a room. There's an unexplainable presence to them.” His ability to capture beauty is further reflected through the curation of his diverse body of work on view in the main room where he has carefully selected images from varying corners of his practice, including The Wrestlers (2021). 

Ein Tir is on view through June 10 at Pipeline, 35 Eastcastle Street London

Dramatic black and white photograph of a somber woman in white frills, facing the camera, as a man in black robes lifts his arms in the background. May and Tennyson, 2023, by William Waterworth.

May and Tennyson, 2023

Destiny Haven Trujillo's "Devoraste" @ DIMIN

 
Destiny Haven Trujillo, Daddy’s Little Girl Ain’t A Girl No More, 2023. All images courtesy of DIMIN.

Destiny Haven Trujillo, Daddy’s Little Girl Ain’t A Girl No More, 2023. All images courtesy of DIMIN.

Devoraste—opening to the public on June 1—is a neon diary of the vivid exploits of Destiny Haven Trujillo. For her first solo exhibition in New York, Trujillo embodies the manic charm of her daily life, offering a voyeuristic glimpse into the contemporary vie boheme. The title of the show, “Devoraste,” is derived from the Spanish aphorism meant to convey the concept of unabashed queer self-expression, with the literal translation “you ate that!” For Trujillo, Devoraste references the celebration of pride she conveys in her paintings—colorful bacchanals teeming with joy.

At its core, the work addresses sexual identity and fluidity. The acceptance she has found in the queer community is tantamount in importance to the artist personally as it is to her artistic concept. Approachability is one of the major goals of Trujillo’s canvases—her goal is to welcome the broadest audience possible.

Devoraste is on view through July 7 at DIMIN, 406 Broadway, Fl. 2, New York,

 

Read Our Interview of Louise Frances Smith on Cultivating a Circular Art Practice →

Louise Frances SmithCollect install Assemblage no1 oyster shells, 2023 (detail)mixed media including clay and crushed oyster shellsphotograph by Yeshen Venema

Louise Frances Smith
Collect install Assemblage no1 oyster shells, 2023 (detail)
mixed media including clay and crushed oyster shells
photograph by Yeshen Venema

In the context of art history, sustainable ways of creating have been around since the birth of conceptual art in the 1960s. Take German artist, Nils-Udo, whose plant creations placed in nature were left to develop and subsequently disappear as a way of commenting on the links between nature and humanity. Today, as we are faced with the sobering realities of humankind’s impact on the planet, environmentally-conscious art forms are becoming increasingly widespread. By working with found objects, natural and upcycled materials, and through processes that intentionally avoid damage to the Earth’s resources, artists are using their creative expression to highlight environmental degradation and the stark reality of climate change. 

Margate-based artist Louise Frances Smith worked mainly with clay until she became increasingly concerned and frustrated with the unsustainable plastic packaging used to store her medium of choice. After conducting considerable research, it became clear to her that it was not possible to naturally source clay from her local area, so she decided to get creative and utilize what was available, better yet, she used what was in abundance: seaweed and oyster shells. Smith has spent the last two years collecting and experimenting with both as part of her newly adopted approach to creating sustainable work. 

This year, as part of Somerset House’s 2023 Collect, Smith exhibited Sargassum Tide, a new body of work that examines wireweed seaweed and Pacific oysters, two non-native species thriving on the UK coastlines due to climate change. She subsequently presented the series in a solo show at The Margate School where she facilitated workshops on how to work with sustainable materials in collaboration with community groups, families, and creative practitioners. 

In the following interview, Smith shares her journey with adopting a sustainable art practice, discusses the scientists, artists, and experts that have inspired her, and where she hopes to take her sustainable practice in the future. Read more.

Matthew Hansel's "My Inner Demon Never Sleeps Alone" @ The Hole in Los Angeles

 
Matthew Hansel, Selfie, 2023. All images courtesy of The Hole and Matthew Hansel.

Matthew Hansel, Selfie, 2023. All images courtesy of The Hole and Matthew Hansel.

 

The Hole presents Matthew Hansel’s My Inner Demon Never Sleeps Alone, which is a body of work that has been developing over the course of the last three years.

The main gallery features a bestiary of demons, pixies, and nude men and women in all kinds of entanglements, poses and rituals. The human figures are painted from clippings of 1960s and ‘70s brochures for West Coast nudist colonies, while their demons, with scaly bodies, attenuated snouts and poulaine-toed feet, recall the morality paintings of Hieronymus Bosch. Hansel’s allegorical twist: instead of admonishing the viewer, he aims to enchant them, conjuring a universe in which, he says, “people are able to live beside and enjoy their demons in a way that they can’t in the real world.”

My Inner Demon Never Sleeps Alone is on view through June 24 at The Hole, 844 N La Brea Avenue Los Angeles

Read Our Interview of Mattea Perrotta on the Occasion of Her Solo Opening @ Praz Delavallade in Los Angeles →

Mattea Perrotta, Perdòno, 2023 oil on canvas57 x 77 in195.6 x 144.8 cm

Mattea Perrotta
Perdòno, 2023
oil on canvas
57 x 77 in
195.6 x 144.8 cm

Our primary means of conveying meaning is through spoken and written forms, as well as sign language. But what do we do when faced with language barriers, unable to verbally communicate with another/others? Google translate is one option, but what happens when we use our imagination? Or when we explore the imagination of others through our own unique lens?

The earliest civilizations used cave walls as canvases to share their knowledge, beliefs, and stories. For visual artist, Mattea Perrotta, art has become a way of conveying her secrets and vulnerabilities. It has also become a lexicon to connect with others, often from different countries and communities. During her time in Morocco, challenged with learning Arabic but keen to connect with her hosts, she started using drawings to engage with her companions. It was a familiar and natural way of interpreting the world around her. 

A diagnosis of synesthesia at an early age was the catalyst for Perrotta’s need to develop an individual language; mathematical formulas made sense when color coded, as did phone numbers. This subsequently translated into her art form, which began with abstract shapes, defining her earlier career. Perrotta’s practice evolved organically, and in recent years a figurative approach has occupied her canvases as she investigates, questions and challenges the canon of art history referencing the work of Pablo Picasso and Leonardo da Vinci.

This May, Perrotta is exhibiting in her hometown, Los Angeles, for the first time since moving to Europe five years ago. Her solo show, In A Forgotten Tongue, at Praz Delavallade, signifies a turning point for the artist, harking back to an abstract style whilst continuing her investigation into art historical movements; Baroque, Renaissance and Cubism. Each shape within a canvas, or tapestry work, takes on its own vocabulary, distinguished by color and size. As this is Perrotta’s secret language, we are left with subtle signals and our imaginations to interpret the work.  

In the following interview, the artist explains why she describes her paintings as being similar to lasagna and what she will be researching during her residency this summer at the American Academy Rome. Read more.

Highlights from Frieze New York Celebrate Politically & Historically Centered Artworks

NAN GOLDIN Gold, 2016 Archival pigment print, in frame60 1/4 x 116 1/4 x 2 1/2 inches (153 x 295.3 x 6.4 cm)Ed. 1/3© Nan Goldin Courtesy the artist and Gagosian

NAN GOLDIN
Gold, 2016
Archival pigment print, in frame
60 1/4 x 116 1/4 x 2 1/2 inches (153 x 295.3 x 6.4 cm)
Ed. 1/3
© Nan Goldin
Courtesy the artist and Gagosian

text by Jennifer Pjieko

“It’s a lot of work, but I’m free now. I’m free!” Artist ektor garcia gestures to the logo on the T-shirt he’s wearing—a black staffer shirt with FRIEZE spelled out in white letters across the middle. garcia had taken some artistic liberty with the art fair-and magazine-branded top, blacking out the letters I and Z with marker, leaving only FREE legible. 

 
ektor garcia, cadenas perpetuas, 2023 (detail)Welded steel, hand bent, handmade steel hooks, found metal, glazed ceramic with copper wire, horseshoe nails, and crochet leather. Dimensions variable.

ektor garcia, cadenas perpetuas, 2023 (detail)
Welded steel, hand bent, handmade steel hooks, found metal, glazed ceramic with copper wire, horseshoe nails, and crochet leather.
Dimensions variable.

 

We were standing around inside Cedric’s, the top-floor café of Frieze New York, underneath garcia’s installation la llorona, a hanging mobile of mixed-metal woven teardrops that illustrated the indigenous Mexican mythical figure of La Llorona: The “weeping woman” drowned her hungry children after their father, a wealthy Spanish man, abandoned the family, and she sheds tears of mourning for them for eternity. Here, as part of Frieze’s curated program, her shimmering, coppery chains gathered into teardrops evade the heavy, matte black net that is there to catch them and float over us as we get together for cocktail hour (we’re not sure which one we are part of at that moment; the restaurant, like Day 1 of any VIP preview day of an art fair, hosts a cluster of many overlapping celebrations at once, bringing cheers and the pop of champagne bottles to crowds from opening to closing hours. 

garcia’s literal self-expressive wardrobe let everyone know his state of mind: After opening three concurrent presentations across New York City (here at Frieze; at the nearby NADA art fair, at the San Francisco gallery Rebecca Camacho Presents’s booth, and at Artists Space in Tribeca, as part of the group exhibition Clocking Out: Time Beyond Management in addition to the recently closed solo exhibition esfuerzo at James Fuentes on the Lower East Side, the artist was finally free to rest for a little bit. la llorona also comes into the fair along with a wave of other politically and historically centered artworks featured—and celebrated—in the commercial context of having lots of very expensive work on offer (or, even more likely, no longer available). While the past several years of global art fairs have been characterized by glossy abstraction and mirrorlike installations, the booths on view inside The Shed on the West Side’s High Line made space for more nuanced, sensitive forms of art. Company Gallery presented a trio of abstract paintings by Tosh Basco, which could have been an element of the artist’s poetic, fragile movement performance at the new Water Street Projects, a curatorial initiative in the Financial District, a few nights earlier; Michael Rosenfeld dedicated his gallery’s entire booth to works made in 1973, the seminal year when Roe v. Wade made its way through the U.S. Supreme Court; we are now living through the devastating consequences of its reversal. At Alexander Gray’s booth, Bethany Collins’s Antigone: 1998 / 2015 (2023), is a diptych of works on paper, which looks at race and language through handwritten parts of Sophocles’s ancient play. Tehran’s Dastan Gallery presents a survey of the past century of Iranian women artists, across a variety of challenging mediums and forms; Gagosian devotes its entire booth to Nan Goldin, who recently signed with the mega gallery; her heartbreaking images recall pain and loss as much as the golden sunlight that bathes her figures. Playful works, such as Jean-Michel Othoniel’s lustrous strands of pearls of every color at Perrotin offer moments of flirtation and light. 

As the sun started to give a little bit in the late afternoon-to-early evening hours, the multi-floored crowd began to contract up and down inside The Shed; soon it would be time for happy hour everywhere. ektor took a couple of Dobel-stamped poker chips (clever objects to be “cashed” as free-drink tickets) for his friends and collaborators outside the party. It was time to celebrate together. 

FRIEZE NEW YORK 2023, installation view Artwork © Nan GoldinPhoto: Sebastiano Pellion di Persano Courtesy Gagosian

FRIEZE NEW YORK
2023, installation view
Artwork © Nan Goldin
Photo: Sebastiano Pellion di Persano
Courtesy Gagosian

Tom Wesselmann's "Intimate Spaces" Opens @ Gagosian in Los Angeles

A large painting of lips smoking a cigarette. Smoker #8, 1973 © The Estate of Tom Wesselmann/Licensed by ARS/VAGA, New York, Photo: Jeffrey Sturges, Courtesy the Estate and Gagosian

Smoker #8, 1973 © The Estate of Tom Wesselmann/Licensed by ARS/VAGA, New York, Photo: Jeffrey Sturges, Courtesy the Estate and Gagosian

A defining artist of American Pop Art, Tom Wesselmann produced innovative mixed-media paintings that brought the energy of commercial culture to still lifes, interiors, landscapes, and nudes. The exhibition—Intimate Spaces—concentrates on the artist’s primary subject, the female nude, with key works from Great American Nudes (1961–73) and subsequent series. With a nod to both the great American novel and the American dream, Great American Nudes also refers to Wesselmann’s affinity for the scale of Abstract Expressionist paintings, billboards, and movie screens. Inspired by Henri Matisse’s odalisques, Wesselmann employed a saturated palette, clearly defined contours, and interlocking positive and negative shapes. The paintings are set in domestic interiors and often incorporate collage and assemblage elements, appearing highly contemporary in their provocative discontinuities of style.

Wesselmann’s nudes became icons of the 1960s sexual revolution. Wishing to avoid portraiture, the artist frequently deemphasized facial features, foregrounding both abstraction and overt eroticism. “The figures dealt primarily with their presence,” he wrote (as his pseudonym, Slim Stealingworth). “Personality would interfere with the bluntness of the fact of the nude. When body features were included, they were those important to erotic simplification, like lips and nipples. There was no modeling, no hint at dimension.”

Intimate Spaces is on view through June 16 @ Gagosian 456 North Camden Drive
Beverly Hills

Tim Brawner Presents "Glad Tidings" @ Management in New York

 
A close-up portrait of a blue, blurry face, panicked behind a steering wheel. Tim Brawner, The Escape III, 2023 © Management, New York City

Tim Brawner, The Escape III, 2023 © Management, New York City

Tim Brawner’s Glad Tidings —featured at Management— is equally motivated by a documentarian impulse and the submission to the fantastic and weird, where saturated psychedelia defamiliarizes the compositional playing field.

Brawner’s extreme interest in portraiture yields exaggerated, almost humorous depictions of faces and objects alike, through which affect is pushed to the point of alienation.

When discussing the content of his paintings, Brawner refers to concepts of “the weird” and “the eerie,” specifically in the way Mark Fisher invokes Lacanian jouissance in his discussion of H.P. Lovecraft’s brand of weirdness, where the sublimation of negativity is accomplished through the transformation of “an ordinary object [which causes] displeasure into a Thing which is both terrible and alluring, which can no longer be libidinally classified as either positive or negative.” This serves as a basis for Brawner’s subjects as he pursues content with ongoing consideration for the failure of empathy. 

These images pulsate, stirring a bizarre drama where the audience confronts painted subjects that almost become real. There are passages where Brawner selectively pushes maximalist details, overexplaining the formal aspects so that they become hypnotic.

Text by Reilly Davidson

Glad Tidings is on view through June 18 at Management 39 E Broadway, 404

 

Sara Suppan's "Sweet Potato" Exhibition with Micki Meng

 
An oil painting of a foot wearing a brown loafer show and yellow floral socks, arched and raised from the ground. Pop’s Socks, 2023 © Sara Suppan and Micki Meng, San Francisco

Pop’s Socks, 2023 © Sara Suppan and Micki Meng, San Francisco

In the artist’s debut solo presentation with Micki Meng, Sara Suppan’s Sweet Potato (April 27 - June 9, 2023) collection of new paintings brings sincere attention to commonplace absurdities. Generating a good-humored tension between formal and casual modes of picture-making, scenes that seem spontaneously captured by a phone camera are painted with diligent precision. The paintings’ lush and tenacious realism, executed in the slower medium of oil on panel, gives a strange gravity to passing moments of levity.

Selected subjects display themselves like proof that novelty can be found laced throughout slices of daily life. Finding joy in boredom and delight in simple pleasures, the works encourage us to notice the small miracles that show up if we’re looking for them, defusing the humdrum austerity of chore and routine.

 

Pacific Standard Time "Art & Science Collide" Exhibition Program Revealed

A person in a futuristic suit of coils and metals is in profile in front of a wall of TVs with blue, empty screens.

Katherine E. Fleming, president and CEO of the J. Paul Getty Trust, today joined more than 50 partner organizations to reveal the mind-expanding exhibitions they will present in the next Pacific Standard Time, Art & Science Collide, opening in September 2024. Grants from Getty for the latest edition now total $17 million, with more organizations to be added as the collaboration grows. Getty also announced plans to make the landmark regional collaboration a regularly scheduled series on a five-year cycle under a new name, PST Art. See all programming here.

Brian Belott and Ross Simonini: A Cross Country Simultaneous Performance

Last year, Brian Belott and Ross Simonini performed across the country simultaneously, as part of their ongoing collaboration in painting, text, and music. Simonini performed in Los Angeles, on the ruins of Cobb Estate, the former property of the Marx Brothers, which is now a wilderness area believed to haunted. Belott performed at anonymous gallery, at the closing of Simonini's exhibition in New York, where Simonini's performance was live streamed. The release of this video is in celebration of Sound Scribbles, a collection of Belott's vocal improvisations, compiled by Simonini. The album releases on RVNG Intl. on April 14th and is presented in two limited versions, with essays from Belott and Simonini.

Read Our Interview Of Charlotte Edey on the Occasion of Her Solo Exhibition @ Ginny on Frederick in London →

Charlotte Edey is a London-based visual artist who adopts a multidisciplinary practice as a form of personal and political expression. Drawing on a multitude of themes, her work addresses notions of femininity, gender, body politic, and mythology. Edey’s tapestry, embroidery and sculptural pieces are extensions of her drawing practice, and her distinct artistic language focuses heavily on symbolism and the investigation of space. Recognized for their surreal dreamscapes and pastel palette, she employs a recurring water motif that takes inspiration from Ovid’s “Metamorphoses,” which serves as an investigation of ‘hydrofemininity,’ and the belief that our bodies are fundamentally part of the natural world.  

Edey’s newest body of work, Framework, is currently on view at Ginny on Frederick. In this exhibition, a dialogue between each piece has been created by the artist as she examines various ways to blur the boundary between the real and the represented through the motif of the window and frame. Using these as a point of departure, she explores the notion of transparency to identify and differentiate between interior and exterior, public and private. Her intricately detailed—hand sewn and beaded—tapestry works and larger mirrored pieces are symbolic gateways that gently interrogate interior space, identity, and observation. We spoke on the occasion of Framework’s opening to discuss her development in recent years, as well as her interest in the symbolic interplay between windows, frames, and eyes. Read more.

Cultural Fabric: A 3-day Event @ Fotografiska Berlin On View March 23rd to 25th

young boy wearing a yellow colonial-type wig and adidas clothing with flowers in his hands. Words are splayed across the screen on top with various artists and the title, "Cultural Fabric Fotografiska Days"

Mous Lamrabat
Brozart, 2023

Before opening its flagship museum space, slated for the second half of 2023, Fotografiska Berlin is focusing on an inclusive pre-opening program, the goal of which is to cross-connect the city’s various creative industries. Cultural Fabric is a 3-day exhibition of photography hosted by that is dedicated to a rereading of the relationship between art and fashion practices.

Seven artists, both Berlin-based and international, will explore the main theme in a group exhibition, showcasing their work at Atelier Gardens. The multidisciplinary show is curated by Marina Paulenka (Director of Exhibitions at Fotografiska Berlin and former Artistic Director of Organ Vida and Unseen) and Thomas Schäfer (Exhibition Manager at Fotografiska Berlin). With their practices operating at the intersection of fashion and photography, the following artists will be presented: Julie Poly, Carlota Guerrero, and Mous Lamrabat, with more to be announced soon.

Cultural Fabric is on view March 23-25 @ Berlin’s Atelier Gardens (formerly BUFA) Oberlandstraße 26 – 35, 12099 Berlin

 
 

Giuseppe Penone's Universal Gestures Opens @ Galleria Borghese in Rome with the Participation of Fendi

On March 13th, over thirty works by the Master of Arte Povera, Giuseppe Penone, were revealed at the Galleria Borghese in Rome in participation with Fendi, weaving a new dialogue between nature and history. Created between the 1970s and the early 2000s, this body of work curated by Francesco Stocchi demonstrates the immutable vitality of sculpture, and in attendance were some of Italy’s most prominent figures in art, fashion, and entertainment. 

The exhibition stems from the search for something that is not present in the splendid spaces of the Galleria, offering a new reading of the relationship between landscape and sculpture that the ancient statuary present in the museum’s collection embodies according to classical canons. A path that is in perfect continuity with the research on the relationship between Art and Nature that characterizes the direction of Francesca Cappelletti. 

Giuseppe Penone. Universal Gestures does not propose any comparison but presents works chosen as a “reflection” with respect to the environment, offering a “completion” of elements: in the rooms characterised by a triumph of marbles, sculptures and decorations — magnificent representations of the mineral world — Penone adds an organic graft of leaves, leather, wood that connects and defines the two universes. In the Gardens, on the other hand, the integration looks to the world of metals, with bronze sculptures that dialogue with the rich surrounding vegetation, enriched by around forty new potted plants to support some of the works. 

The exhibition itinerary includes nuclei of lesser-known works that are less associated iconographically with Penone’s work, such as Vegetal Gaze, and others exhibited for the first time in thematic groups – Breath of leaves and To breathe the shadow — inserted into the space as autonomous and original presences. In the absence of mythology in Penone’s work, the narrative shifts its axis, and the relationship between natural time and historical past gives rise to a new, uncertain present. 

Distancing itself from any possible formal or symbolic comparison with the Galleria, Penone’s work observes matter by revealing the forms it conceals, with the intention of reactivating the natural osmotic exchange between the museum and the surrounding park, which inspired many of the works composing the museum’s collection. 

The artist’s interventions do not disrupt the unique balance between form and architecture that characterizes the Galleria, but renew that entirely Baroque game that intertwined landscape, nature and sculpture, activating a new dialogue, presenting a question on sculpture, revealing its historical and contemporary evolution.

Giuseppe Penone. Universal Gestures is on view through May 28th @ Galleria Borghese, Piazzale Scipione Borghese, 5 00197 Roma.

 
 

Nicodim Gallery Presents DISEMBODIED Group Show in New York

DISEMBODIED, curated by Ben Lee Ritchie Handler, builds and continues conversations around the violence, ecstasy, and epiphany within out-out-body experiences as-seen from the perspective of those on the ground—the leaps of faith we take to believe those who say their souls depart while their bodies remain. The works in the exhibition cover a wide swath of allegorical and tangible disembodied states, including the spiritual, the telegraphic, the psychedelic, the dissociative-induced, artificial intelligences, and alien encounters. The exhibition includes works by Jeanine Brito, Joshua Hagler, Ho Jae Kim, Rae Klein, Yoora Lee, Laurens Legiers, Tali Lennox, Jorge Peris, Mosie Romney, Nicola Samori, Krista-Louise Smith, and Nadia Waheed.

DISEMBODIED is on view through March 9 @ Nicodim Gallery 15 Greene Street New York

Autre Hosts The Fourth Annual Frieze LA Week Kickoff With Jeffrey Deitch Gallery at Desert 5 Spot in Hollywood

Autre Magazine and Jeffrey Deitch host their annual Frieze Week kickoff to celebrate one of the busiest cultural weeks in Los Angeles. Guests sipped on Grey Goose vodka coladas and enjoyed a slideshow by artist Nadia Lee Cohen high on the rooftop of western themed bar Desert 5 Spot within the Tommie Hotel in Hollywood. photographs by Oliver Kupper

Pussy Riot Presents Putin's Ashes @ Jeffrey Deitch Gallery in Los Angeles

photographs by Morgan Rindengan

On January 27, Pussy Riot brought its radical performance art to Jeffrey Deitch's Los Angeles gallery, inviting everyone to join their protest against the authoritarian leader of Russia who started the biggest war in Europe since World War II. This was the first presentation of Pussy Riot’s political performance art at a gallery in Los Angeles.

Putin's Ashes was initiated in August 2022 when Pussy Riot burned a 10 x 10 foot portrait of the Russian president, performed rituals, and cast spells aimed to chase Putin away. Twelve women participated in the performance. In order to join, women were required to experience acute hatred and resentment toward the Russian president. Most of the participants were either Ukrainian, Belarusian or Russian.

Pussy Riot's founding member Nadya Tolokonnikova bottled the ashes of the burnt portrait and incorporated them into her objects that were being presented alongside her short art film, Putin's Ashes, directed, edited, and scored by Tolokonnikova.

"While working with artifacts, bottling ashes and manufacturing the faux furry frames for the bottles, I used skills that I learned in the sweatshops of my penal colony. I was forced to sew police and army uniforms in a Russian jail. I turned what I learned in my labor camp against those who locked me up. Putin is a danger to the whole world and he has to be stopped immediately," says Tolokonnikova.

In 2012, Tolokonnikova was sentenced to two years imprisonment following an anti-Putin performance. She went through a hunger strike protesting savage prison conditions and ended up being sent far away to a Siberian penal colony, where she managed to maintain her artistic activity and with her prison punk band made toured around Siberian labor camps. Tolokonnikova published a book Read and riot: Pussy Riot's guide to activism in 2018.

Pussy Riot stands for gender fluidity, inclusivity, matriarchy, love, laughter, decentralization, anarchy and anti-authoritarianism.

 
 

Read Our Interview of Heather Agyepong on the Eve of the Centre for British Photography's Inaugural Exhibition →

 
Photograph by Heather Agyepong depicting woman in dress.

The Body Remembers, Le Cake-Walk, Wish You Were Here, 2020 © Heather Agyepong

 

On Thursday 26 January The Centre for British Photography will open for the first time. Founded by the gallerist and philanthropist, James Hyman, the charitable organization will present free, self-generated exhibitions as well as those led by independent curators and organizations championing the work of British photographers. 

Hyman explains: “We hope that through this initial showcase to make a home for British photography we can, in the long run, develop an independent centre that is self-sustaining with a dedicated National Collection and public program.”

There will be two leading exhibitions, organized in partnership with Fast Forward Photography. Headstrong: Women and Empowerment celebrates photographers based in Britain who have made work concerned with how they are represented, what they are dealing with in their everyday lives and what it means to embrace diversities that challenge the conservative order of a patriarchal society. And, Images of the English at Home takes the viewer on a journey from the street, up the front steps, and into the private spaces of the living room, kitchen and bedroom before sending them out into the back garden. 

Alongside the exhibitions, The Centre will spotlight five British photographers as part of an In Focus display; Natasha Caruana, Jo Spence, Andrew Bruce, Anna Fox and Heather Agyepong. 

Autre’s London editor-at-large, Lara Monro, spoke with the multidisciplinary artist, Heather Agyepong, to discuss her body of work, Wish You Were Here. Commissioned by The Hyman Collection in 2019, the series explores the work of Aida Overton Walker, the celebrated African American vaudeville performer who challenged the rigid and problematic narratives of Black performers. Read more.