Eric N. Mack announced as one of the recipients of the 2021-2022 Rome Prize

May 6, 2021

This year, the gift of ‘time and space to think and work’ was awarded to thirty-five American and five Italian artists and scholars. They will each receive a stipend, workspace, and room and board at the Academy’s eleven-acre campus in Rome, starting in September 2021.

Rome Prize winners are selected annually by independent juries of distinguished artists and scholars through a national competition. The eleven disciplines supported by the Academy include: ancient studies, architecture, design, historic preservation and conservation, landscape architecture, literature, medieval studies, modern Italian studies, music composition, Renaissance and early modern studies, and visual arts.

Along with Eric N. Mack, the prize was also awarded to Firelei Báez, Autumn Knight, Daniel Joseph Martinez, La Nietas de Nonó (Mapenzi Chibale Nonó and Mulowayi Iyaye Nonó) and William Villalongo in the Visual Arts category.

Eric N. Mack (b. 1987, Columbia, MD) refers to himself as a painter, yet his works rarely observe the medium’s traditional canvas-to-stretcher format. Rather, his tactile assemblages, created from a dynamic combination of used textiles, worn clothes, moving blankets and torn rags, alongside photographs and pull outs from books and magazines, extend and transform the notion of painting. The artist is represented by Simon Lee Gallery.

Alison Jacques Gallery to host a virtual talk on Carol Rhodes

May 4, 2021

To coincide with the first exhibition of work by Carol Rhodes at Alison Jacques Gallery in London, artist Sara Barker, editor-at-large at ArtReview Oliver Basciano and editor-at-large at frieze Jennifer Higgie will discuss the artist’s life and work in a virtual talk on Tuesday 18 May at 6pm BST.

Throughout her career, Rhodes produced a highly individual body of paintings describing the encroachment of human activity and occupation upon ‘natural’ landscapes. Primarily adopting aerial viewpoints, Rhodes favoured what she called ‘hidden areas’ or ‘left-over land’: industrial estates, airports, motorways and reservoirs, unpeopled and existing at the margin of more defined (urban or rural) environments.

Carol Rhodes was born in Edinburgh, Scotland, in 1959; she died in Glasgow, Scotland, in 2018.

Almine Rech now represents Alejandro Cardenas

May 3, 2021

The paintings and sculptures realized by Alejandro Cardenas (b. 1977, Santiago, Chile) provide a vision of a post-human world wherein the relationship between human forms and the environment is one of unity and coexistence. Guided by his own imagination and inspired by a wide variety of influences ranging from Surrealism to Sci-Fi to magical realism, Cardenas immerses himself in the creation of surreal, post-human scenes of polished, gridded interiors populated by eerie, angular figures. Cardenas’ unique approach to figuration places his signature humanoids—narrow, wire-frame silhouettes wrapped in colorful patterns of zigzagging lines—calmly reclining, sitting, or standing within minimalist architectural environments. Unlike us, these faceless humanoids appear to lack all sensory organs, yet they are not deprived of their sensorial abilities. Instead, they convey emotion through body language, resulting in a wide variety of suggested emotional expression.

Almine Rech hosted the artist’s inaugural solo exhibition in New York in January 2021. His second solo exhibition, featuring new paintings and works on paper will take place at Almine Rech Paris, Matignon from June 30 to July 31, 2021.

Cardenas’ work is currently featured in a group presentation at Almine Rech New York, Salon de Peinture, on view from April 29 to June 5, 2021.

Sam Falls in conversation with Elizabeth Neilson

April 30, 2021

On the occasion of the Sam Falls’ current exhibition at Galerie Eva Presenhuber in Zürich, join the artist for a virtual conversation with Elizabeth Neilson, Director of the Zabludowicz Collection, on Thursday 6 May at 10am PST / 1pm EST / 6pm BST / 7pm CET.

Falls and Neilson will discuss Falls’ recent cross-country road trip, his commission for the Zabludowicz Collection in Sarvisalo, and his newest works on view in Zurich.

Concerned with the intimacy of time, the illustration of place, and the exploration of mortality, the American artist Sam Falls has created his own formal language by intertwining photography’s core parameters of time and exposure with nature and her elements.

Elizabeth Neilson is a curator based in London with a particular interest and specialism in nurturing emerging artists and their practices. Since 2006 she has been Director of the Zabludowicz Collection. Overseeing the strategy, acquisitions, and commissions for one of the world’s most risk-taking and ground-breaking contemporary art collections.

Female artists triumph at Bonhams Contemporary Art Sale in London

April 28, 2021

Held on Tuesday 27 April, the auction set new world records for works by the emerging young artist Flora Yukhnovich, and the New York-based Suzanne McClelland, best known for abstract work based in language, speech, and sound.

Among the highlights was a vibrant work by the 105-year-old artist Carmen Herrera, Untitled, completed in 2013, which achieved £187,750. Head of Sale, Cassi Young, commented: "Carmen Herrera is probably the world's oldest working artist, and yet it has taken an unforgivably long time for her to finally receive the recognition she deserves – having only garnered the attention of a male-dominated artworld in her late nineties. I'm absolutely delighted that her work Untitled achieved such an impressive result, especially alongside a number of other wonderful works by top female contemporary artists, including Rebecca Horn, Tschabalala Self, and Genieve Figgis – and record-breaking results for Suzanne McClelland and Flora Yukhnovich."

Gazelli Art House launches NFTuesdays

April 27, 2021

Each Tuesday the digital arm of the gallery, Gazell.io, will drop an NFT by past and present residents and represented artists including Brendan Dawes, Claudia Hart, Tupac Martir, Ben Wheele and Khaleb Brooks, amongst others, as part of the new NFTuesdays series.

To counter the energy used minting these NFTs, Gazell.io will be donating a portion of the profits to environmental bodies. Gibson / Martelli, the new media artist duo working across immersive installation, moving image, object, print, mocap will mint the inaugural NFT, Drawing Levels, on OpenSea on Tuesday 27 April.

Colnaghi to oversee the restoration, authentication and sale of the possible Caravaggio removed from a Madrid auction earlier this month

April 26, 2021

The work, entitled The Crowning of Thorns, was due to be sold at Ansorena auction house in Madrid on 8 April with a guide price of €1,500. Owned by the three children of Antonio Pérez de Castro, founder of Madrid’s IADE design school, and the artist Mercedes Méndez Atard, the painting had been attributed the circle of the 17th-century Spanish artist José de Ribera, before being withdrawn from the sale at the request of José Manuel Rodríguez Uribes, the culture minister in Spain.

Colnaghi, one of the world’s oldest commercial galleries, will now oversee the restoration, authentication and subsequent sale of the painting, which some Old Master specialists say could be by the 16th-century artist Caravaggio.

“I am proud and honoured to have been entrusted by the Pérez de Castro Méndez family to provide the connoisseurship, research and authentication of this great work and to be managing its subsequent sale,” said Jorge Coll, the co-chief executive of Colnaghi, in a statement.

Petzel announces representation of Samson Young

April 21, 2021

Born in 1979, the Hong Kong-based artist Samson Young works in sound, performance, video, and installation. Having first trained formally in Music Composition, Young has subverted and expanded the role of the Composer across a range of mediums throughout his career.

Young will present new works on paper in Petzel’s upcoming group show on the third floor of the gallery’s Upper East Side location, opening May 4, 2021. He will have his first solo presentation at Petzel in 2022 and has a Studio Exhibition opening with Capitain Petzel in Berlin from April 28 – June 5, 2021. He will also participate in the Kochi Biennale this fall in November of 2021.

In addition to Petzel, Young is also represented by Edouard Malingue Gallery in Hong Kong and Galerie Gisela Capitain in Cologne, Germany, and collaborates on projects with Experimenter in India.

Annka Kultys Gallery inaugurates a new London location

April 20, 2021

Opening on 22 April with Gretchen Andrew: Other Forms of Travel, the gallery’s new space is located at Unit 9, 472 Hackney Road, London E2 9EQ.

Annka Kultys Gallery first opened its doors to the public in September 2015, with a programme featuring young international artists interspersed with historically researched exhibitions. Yearly, the gallery also puts on a group exhibition with selected recently graduated artists, enabling them to have a first gallery show shortly after completing their studies. The first edition, Cacotopia, was presented in January 2017.

Dia Chelsea reopens following a two-year renovation and expansion project

April 19, 2021

The inaugural exhibition presents new commissions by Lucy Raven, including Casters X-2 + Casters X-3 (2021), an installation of kinetic light sculptures that belongs to her ongoing Casters series (2016– ); and Ready Mix (2021) an immersive installation featuring a forty-five-minute film shot over two years at a concrete plant in central Idaho. Together, these projects address the formation, depiction, and surveillance of landscapes and civic spaces, proposing abstraction as a tool for (re)perceiving these sites.

Continuing Dia’s history of repurposing and revitalizing existing buildings, the renovation retains the character and vernacular of the Chelsea neighborhood of which Dia has been a part since the 1980s. Designed by Architecture Research Office, the 32,500-square-foot project merges Dia’s three contiguous Chelsea buildings to support a more cohesive visitor experience. The new Dia Chelsea features 20,000-square-feet of integrated street-level galleries for exhibitions, a new flexible space for public and educational programs, and the return of Dia’s bookstore to the city. Dia has also extended Joseph Beuys’s 7000 Eichen (7000 Oaks) along West 22nd Street, bringing the total number of paired basalt columns and trees to thirty-eight.

Galerie Barbara Thumm now represents El Hadji Sy

April 16, 2021

El Hadji Sy (also known as El Sy) was born 1954 in Dakar where he lives and works. As a painter, performer, curator and activist, Sy has shaped Senegalese art and culture significantly for several decades. Since the mid-1980s, he has used jute rice bags as a surface on which to paint with mixed media including oil, acrylic, tar and wax. Paintings are hung across ceilings, placed on floors, as well as on walls. Sometimes he produces stand-alone paintings on frames, such as could be seen in his installation “Disso-Concertation” for documenta 14. With a swirling script of signs and figures, Sy’s visual language reflects a decidedly performative style. Committed to crossing the boundaries of class and education, he has repeatedly exhibited his work in the streets of Dakar, choosing working class neighbourhoods with their hustle and bustle of daily life.

His work has been shown at the IFAN Museum of African Arts Dakar, the 31st Sao Paolo Biennale (2015), Ujzdowski Castle Centre for Contemporary Art, Warsaw (2016), documenta 14 (2017), and the Whitechapel Gallery. He has collaborated with many artists and curators including Clémentine Deliss, who has followed his work for 30 years, Hans-Ulrich Obrist, Alison Gingerich, and Peter Pakesch.

The gallery is planning a solo exhibition for the artist in the fall of 2021. Recent works by El Hadji Sy will be featured as part of "DELIRIUM", curated by Clémentine Deliss for NEW VIEWINGS at Galerie Barbara Thumm.

Richard Saltoun announces representation of Everlyn Nicodemus

April 13, 2021

One of the strongest feminist voices to emerge from Africa over the past 30 years, Everlyn Nicodemus’ life has been marked by movement: herself part of a moving diaspora which she both writes and paints about. Moving across Europe – to Sweden, France and Belgium before finally settling in the U.K. – her experience of racism and cultural trauma has prompted the creation of a unique body of work encompassing paintings, collaged ‘books’ and mixed-media assemblages as well as poems. Throughout her travels, she has taken an active involvement in community life, giving voice especially to marginalised women throughout history. In 2004, she completed one of her most ambitious works: Reference Scroll on Genocide, Massacres and Ethnic Cleansing, a 16-metre-long scroll documenting some of the most atrocious genocides and ethnic cleansings known throughout history.

Her response to her own ordeal with PTSD and personal grief is a major factor in her work, as is her research investigating art from Africa in relation to human suffering and societal responsibility, on which she completed a PhD African Modern Art and Black Cultural Trauma from Middlesex University in 2012.

Born in Kilimanjaro, Tanzania in 1954, Nicodemus lives and works in Edinburgh. She was included in the 18th Biennale of Sydney in 2012, curated by Catherine de Zegher, amongst other major shows and presentations. Significant works by Nicodemus from the 1980s will be included in the upcoming group exhibition 'On Hannah Arendt: What is Authority?', opening on 26 April.

Michelle Grabner Awarded 2021 Guggenheim Fellowship

April 9, 2021

The Wisconsin-born and based artist Michelle Grabner is known for her broad perspective developed as teacher, writer and critic over the past 30 years. Her artmaking - which encompasses a variety of mediums including drawing, painting, video and sculpture - is driven by a distinctive value in the productivity of work and takes place outside of dominant systems. Grabner instead finds a creative center in operating across platforms and towards community. Grabner is in a cohort that includes artists Tourmaline, Cauleen Smith, and Dread Scott, among others. These exceptional candidates were chosen through a rigorous peer-review process from almost 3,000 applicants.

“I am thrilled to announce this new group of Guggenheim Fellows,” said Edward Hirsch, President of the Foundation, “especially since this has been a devastating year in so many ways. A Guggenheim Fellowship has always been meaningful, but this year we know it will be a lifeline for many of the new Fellows at a time of great hardship, a survival tool as well as a creative one. The work supported by the Fellowship will help us understand more deeply what we are enduring individually and collectively, and it is an honor for the Foundation to help the Fellows do what they were meant to do.”

Allen Ruppersberg joins Mai 36 Galerie

April 8, 2021

Allen Ruppersberg moved to Los Angeles in the mid-1960s with the goal of becoming an illustrator, but soon became active in an emerging scene led by artists such as John Baldessari, Ed Ruscha, William Leavitt and others who explored the intersection of language and image through the lens of mass culture. His early projects, included environments made from found objects, ironic narrative photographic works, and a hand-copied novel-launched a career-long practice of creating works that encourage both reading and viewing, weaving fact with fiction. Since those early years, Ruppersberg has worked actively between Los Angeles, New York, and Europe. His wide-ranging approach is unified by his regular use of everyday American culture, including books, posters, newspapers and magazines, records, old films, and other vintage objects drawn from his extensive collections of source material.

In his upcoming solo exhibition at Mai 36 Galerie, Ruppersberg will present his most recent collage works.

Whitechapel Gallery announces new online event series for summer 2021

April 7, 2021

From 8 April to 29 July 2021, the gallery will present Ways of Knowing, a thematic programme of art and ideas that explores alternative ways of thinking about the world. The live events series centres around the theme of Water/Fluidity, in reference to the subjects explored in the major exhibition Eileen Agar: Angel of Anarchy, and more conceptually to the fluid connections between art, theory, history and place.

At its core Ways of Knowing looks to peripheral knowledge systems – the indigenous, self-taught and the non-human – taking an expansive, non-linear approach to what we can know and how we can come to know it. The artist-focussed programme features lectures, film screenings and workshops with Astrida Neimanis, Zadie Xa (b. 1983, Canada), Umama Hamido (b. 1987, Lebanon), Joshua Bonnetta (b. 1979, Canada), Huw Wahl (b. 1985, UK), Cristina Iglesias (b. 1956, Spain) and more.

London galleries to reopen from 12 April

April 6, 2021

In line with the latest government guidelines, commercial galleries in London will be reopening from Monday 12 April, with museums and public institutions due to welcome back visitors from 17 May 2021. To find out what’s on, visit our London page, with new information added daily.

Gagosian’s Artist Spotlight to reveal a never-before-seen painting by Albert Oehlen

April 1, 2021

Launching online on 9 April for forty-eight hours only, the painting embodies Oehlen’s contrarian stance in its conscious rejection of compositional harmony and stable meaning. Oehlen’s improvisations on outwardly disparate methods and modes have made him a touchstone for a new generation of artists. Since his early espousal of self-consciously “bad” painting, he has continued to investigate the tensions between aesthetic order and chaos, deliberately sidestepping unified form in favor of a seemingly raw, yet highly considered painterly energy.

The gallery will present Tramonto Spaventoso, an exhibition of recent paintings by Oehlen, including four new paintings from an eight-part work of the same title, in Beverly Hills from 22 April to 5 June 2021. The first four paintings in the cycle were shown at the Serpentine Galleries, London, in 2019–20.

Jean-Michel Basquiat’s 1982 masterwork “Versus Medici” to be auctioned for the first time at Sotheby’s New York in May

March 31, 2021

An extraordinary work executed in 1982, when the artist was just 22 years old, Jean-Michel Basquiat’s Versus Medici will star in the Contemporary Art Evening Auction in New York on 12 May, where it will be offered with an estimate of $35–50 million. Versus Medici is among Basquiat’s most forceful visual challenges to the Western art establishment, in which the young artist boldly crowns himself successor to the artistic throne as established by the masters of the Italian Renaissance. The artwork has remained in the same distinguished private collection since 1990; it was previously in the collection of Stephane Janssen, an early champion of Basquiat who acquired it from Larry Gagosian on a visit to Basquiat’s studio in 1982.

Versus Medici is an early, prime masterwork from the artist. Basquiat completed the work in 1982, the same year as the record-breaking Untitled, which sold at Sotheby’s in 2018 for $110.5 million, and shortly after his breakthrough inclusions in the Times Square Show in 1980 and New York New Wave at PS1 in 1981.

Dominic Chambers is now represented by Roberts Projects

March 30, 2021

Drawing loosely upon a tradition of contemporary mystical realism, Dominic Chambers creates paintings that immediately reference literary narratives cited in books, various mythologies and Black history, both in its oral tradition and written account. His current practice is invested in exploring Black introspection, the Black body, and the construction of lived Black experiences, as seen through moments of quiet contemplation and meditation, reading, leisure, and the camaraderie between friends. An avid reader since childhood, literature and the dialectics of language continue to play a major role in both his life and work.

In his psychological figurative paintings, Chambers builds a relationship between history, painting, and the imagination to center his respective ideas of where and how to find joy through respite, one that is both real and longed for.

Born in St. Louis, Missouri in 1993, Dominic Chambers currently lives and works in New Haven, Connecticut. A comprehensive survey with the artist is planned for 2022, and a catalogue will be published by Roberts Projects in conjunction with the exhibition. In association with Luce Gallery, Turin, Italy.

galerie frank elbaz now represents Anne Le Troter

March 29, 2021

Through her acoustic and deliberately polyphonic installations, Anne Le Troter explores the mechanisms of language. Nurtured by everyday experiences, and poets such as Christophe Tarkos, Charles Pennequin and Nathalie Quintane, her praxis has developed out of the recording and editing of collected words. The orality and role-playing which she introduces become the vehicles for an observation of the world which is tending more and more to take the form of a total work conveying her fascination for theatrical representation. Somewhere between décor and set, she constructs territories for these bodyless voices which are developed in space.

The gallery will present her first solo exhibition in Fall 2021.