What Every Collector Should Know About Buying Performance Art https://ift.tt/bKsI3Pa

The Hero I, 2001
Marina Abramović
Dallas Collectors Club

You can’t always hang a piece of performance art above your couch. You can’t always photograph it. Sometimes viewers aren’t allowed to document it all.

And yet, performance art has a place in the art market. So, how exactly does one buy it? What changes hands between artists, dealers, and collectors?

Collecting performance art does not usually mean owning the live event itself. More often, it means acquiring one of the forms through which a performance can be preserved, circulated, or reactivated: photographs, video, sound recordings, props, costumes, written scores, instructions, contracts, archival materials, or the rights to stage the work again under specific conditions. In some cases, the collectible work is documentation of the performance; in others, it is an object or set of instructions that emerged from it.

For collectors curious about the medium, here’s Artsy’s guide to buying performance art.

Is performance art collectible?

Hat Trick, 2018-2019
Márcia Beatriz Granero
Darling Pearls & Co

Performance art is defined by its ephemerality. It is charged by the experience of being there, and often disappears as soon as it happens.

From that premise, collectors might assume it cannot be purchased. But that conclusion is too neat.

“Although performance is inherently ephemeral, collectors acquire its material ‘residue’—photographs, videos, objects—which anchor these practices in the art market,” said Alessandro Falbo, founder of London gallery Darling Pearls & Co. “The biggest misconception about performance art is that it cannot be collected; in reality, these traces preserve both its legacy and its value.”

Take Marina Abramović, often described as the “grandmother of performance art.” Collectors regularly buy photographs, prints, and editions related to her performance practice, rather than acquiring the performances themselves.

Painting to Be Stepped On (Bronze, cast of 1966 version), 1988
Yoko Ono
Galerie Lelong

Shoot, F Space, November 19, 1971
Chris Burden
Daniel/Oliver

Collectors can support performance art in several ways. Documentation, scores, props, contracts, and instructions can be part of the work’s collectible form. A collector might also acquire photographs or video that document an action, as with Chris Burden’s performance documentation; or a set of instructions or “event scores,” as in Yoko Ono’s instruction-based practice.

“[Performance art] can engage a multitude of media and is more of a verb (an act of doing) than a noun (a thing),” said New York and Los Angeles–based art advisor Irene Papanestor. “It dismantles static boundaries, is challenging to commodify, and, by extension, can be too slippery for the art world market to metabolize.”

What can you buy with performance artwork?

Trisha Brown's "Roof Piece", NYC, 1973, 1973
Peter Moore
Paula Cooper Gallery

In most cases, a collector buying a performance artwork is acquiring some combination of rights, instructions, documentation, and objects. This might include photographs or videos documenting the original performance.

In more specific cases, however, it may include the right to re-stage or activate the work under specific conditions.

“This field is so diverse that it is difficult to generalize,” said Anthony Allen, director of Paula Cooper Gallery. “The material traces of a performance (photographs, preparatory materials, props, etc.) are sometimes made available to collectors, though this varies widely from artist to artist.”

Tino Sehgal, 2015
Tino Sehgal
Gropius Bau

In this sense, buying performance art can be closer to acquiring a score than an object. A collector may acquire the right to re-present a work, but only under terms set by the artist and outlined through a contract, oral agreement, certificate, or other agreed-upon framework. Those terms might determine who can perform the work, where it can take place, how it should be documented, and what must remain unchanged.

In 2012, for example, Javier Lumbreras acquired Tino Sehgal’s Guards Kissing (2002), a work in which two guards kiss each time a visitor enters the exhibition space. Like much of Sehgal’s practice, the piece resists conventional documentation: According to the Adrastus Collection, there can be no video footage or photographic record of the work, and the sale did not involve an invoice or written proof of purchase. Instead, the acquisition took place as a conversational transfer of rights, with witnesses present to attest to the deal.

What should a first-time buyer of performance art ask?

Hooping Guggenheim 2, 2022
Christian Jankowski
Galerie Crone

Hooping Guggenheim 5, 2022
Christian Jankowski
Galerie Crone

For collectors used to buying paintings, sculptures, or other object-based works, performance art can feel unfamiliar—especially when the acquisition goes beyond related ephemera, prints, or photographs.

That makes due diligence especially important. A collector should ask advisors, gallerists, curators, and, when possible, artists to explain both the conceptual framework and practical requirements of the work.

“At a minimum, a collector should seek to understand both the context of the artist’s practice and the specific conditions of the work itself, including its conceptual framework and its practical requirements—how it is maintained, activated, or presented over time,” said Falbo. “This involves clarifying what exactly is being acquired (whether documentation, objects, instructions, or rights), under what conditions the work can be exhibited or reactivated, what technical, spatial, or human resources are required for its presentation, and how it is to be preserved, particularly when it involves live or time-based elements.”

Before buying, collectors should ask:

• What exactly am I acquiring: an object, documentation, instructions, rights, or some combination of these?
• Can the piece be re-performed or activated? If so, how?
• Who authorizes future performances?
• Who is allowed to perform the work?
• What space, duration, staffing, technology, or budget does the work require?
• What must remain fixed, and what can adapt over time?
• What documentation is allowed?

These questions are not just about logistics. They help determine whether the collector can responsibly care for the work after purchase.

What does it mean to care for a performance work?

Chess, ca. 1975
Joseph Sassoon Semah
Léna & Roselli Gallery

Iphigenie / Titus Andronicus, from portfolio: Forty Are Better Than One, 1969/2009
Joseph Beuys
Schellmann Art

The best way to understand how to care for a piece of performance art is to get as close as possible to the source.

“This would involve a conversation with the artist or their representative about how best to honor the work in the future, how to remain faithful to the artist's intent,” said Allen. “Obviously, if the collector remains in touch with the artist, these questions can easily be answered case-by-case, but that isn’t always possible. So I would seek clarity on what constitutes an ‘authentic’ iteration of the work and which elements are fixed versus open to adaptation, so the work can continue to exist independently of the artist's direct involvement.”

For collectors, stewardship may involve preserving more than physical materials. It can also mean protecting the artist’s intellectual property, conceptual intent, and conditions for presentation. A performance work may often depend on relationships with galleries, curators, technicians, archivists, or others who understand the work’s original conditions. Caring for the work involves understanding the network and knowing when to consult it.

“Stewardship involves not only conservation but also the capacity to faithfully rearticulate the work over time—often in collaboration with technicians, curators, or others familiar with its original presentation, so that what is preserved is not merely a set of objects, but a network of relationships, instructions, and contextual conditions that allow the work to persist and be meaningfully reactivated in the future,” explained Falbo. Clear terms also help protect authorship, credit, and the artist’s intent when a work is reactivated.

Why do collectors buy performance art?

Violent Incident (Man/Woman Segment) I, 1986
Bruce Nauman
Carolina Nitsch Contemporary Art

Performance art can offer collectors a different kind of relationship to an artist’s work. It is often less about possession than participation, stewardship, and support. For collectors drawn to process, experimentation, and conceptual practice, that can be part of the appeal.

Allen encourages collectors to begin by seeing as much performance as possible.

“Attend as many performances as possible, develop relationships with artists working in this field and learn about the conditions, opportunities, and challenges they are navigating,” he said. “It’s particularly valuable to understand how each artist approaches translating performance into objects, instructions, or other formats, and how they envision the long-term life of their work. I would also recommend engaging with institutions, curators, and archives specializing in performance for additional context, and, most of all, remain open to how inherently fluid and variable this medium is.”

Collectors are often drawn to performance because they want to understand an artist’s creative process more deeply. Buying a performance-related work can be a way to support that process, preserve a legacy, and participate in the ongoing life of an artwork that resists easy ownership.

VB58.026.TS, 2005
Vanessa Beecroft
Lia Rumma

“My clients with the greatest curiosity about performance art have an inherent interest in both the creative process—how artwork is ‘made’—and an artwork's conceptual DNA,” Papanestor said. “In 2026, resistance is very much a part of the zeitgeist: our examination of the nature of privilege and the power structures it enables, late capitalism and wealth inequality, and the replacement of human labor by AI.”

For collectors, then, buying performance art requires a shift in mindset. The question is not only “what do I own?” but “what am I responsible for carrying forward?”

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Chanel to open major Lina Lapelytė commission at Berlin’s Hamburger Bahnhof. https://ift.tt/lNGxBmk

A new large-scale sonic installation and performance by Lithuanian interdisciplinary artist Lina Lapelytė will open at the Hamburger Bahnhof — Nationalgalerie der Gegenwart in Berlin on May 1st as part of Berlin Gallery Weekend 2026. Selected as the second iteration of the Chanel Commission, performances of the work, We Make Years Out of Hours (2026), will take place on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays through January 10, 2027. A public preview will take place on April 30th.

The work transforms the museum’s vast historic hall into a monumental space for collaboration, construction, and contemplation. Spread across the former train hall are 400,000 small wooden cubes, which are stacked neatly in formations or scattered in piles. Visitors are invited to build and dismantle temporary structures with the blocks, while a libretto centered around community, love, loss, and hope carries through the space. The lyrics are based on lines from poems by writers and artists including Lebanese artist Etel Adnan, Vietnamese American poet Ocean Vuong, and Palestinian writer Maḥmūd Darwīsh. A dozen performances activate the space at given times to construct and sing alongside the public as a meditation on the power of a collective force.

“As Hamburger Bahnhof marks its 30th anniversary, We Make Years Out of Hours embodies our commitment to shaping an institution grounded in community, participation, and inclusion,” said Sam Bardaouil and Till Fellrath, co-directors of the Hamburger Bahnhof, in a press statement. “Lina Lapelytė’s work challenges us to rethink what a museum can be—not simply a site of display, but a space of encounter, shared authorship, and collective imagination.”

“Lina Lapelytė’s We Make Years Out of Hours exemplifies a form of artistic thinking that brings people together through shared experience, imagination, and care,” added Yana Peel, Chanel’s president of arts, culture, and heritage, in a press statement. “By enabling ambitious works that engage audiences across generations and cultures, the Chanel Culture Fund continues its commitment to fostering creative environments where new ideas can take shape and inspire meaningful dialogue.”

This is the second edition of the Chanel Commission at Hamburger Bahnhof, which provides artists the opportunity to realize ambitious, large-scale projects within the museum’s historic hall for long-term exhibition. The inaugural commission was awarded to Czech artist Klára Hosnedlová for her installation, embrace. The commission is a part of the fashion house’s Chanel culture fund, which supports artists through exhibitions, grants, prizes, and other initiatives.

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10 Must-See Shows During the Venice Biennale 2026 https://ift.tt/jVq4Y5v

This year’s Venice Biennale is awash with controversies: the cancellation and subsequent reinstation of Australia’s representative artist Khaled Sabsabi, ongoing calls to bar Israel from participating, and the Biennale’s highly criticized decision to allow the Russian Federation to participate. More recently, voices have mounted to exclude the U.S. in response to President Donald Trump’s warmongering in Iran.

But art goes on. Some of the city’s most exciting shows will take place away from the Giardini’s politically charged atmosphere. Artists including Lorna Simpson and Marina Abramović are returning to Venice, while others get their debuts in generous solo shows. This year, large spaces across the city will also celebrate a number of Black and Indigenous artists for the first time. Here is our roundup of the best shows to see alongside the 61st Venice Biennale, which opens on May 9th.

Marina Abramović

“Transforming Energy”

Gallerie dell’Accademia

May 6–Oct. 19

Marina Abramović is forever making history. This year, she will be the first living woman artist to have a dedicated exhibition at the Gallerie dell’Accademia, almost 30 years after she became the first woman to win the Golden Lion for Best Artist at the 1997 Venice Biennale.

“Transforming Energy” debuted at Shanghai’s Museum of Modern Art last year. The museum’s artistic director Shai Baitel is curating the Venice iteration in close collaboration with Abramović. It extends across both the museum’s permanent and temporary exhibition spaces (in another first for the institution) and puts her work in dialogue with Renaissance masterpieces. The show’s major pairing juxtaposes her 1983 photograph Pietà (with Ulay) with Titian’s final, unfinished canvas Pietà (ca. 1575–76). Palma Giovane completed the work, which celebrates its 450th anniversary this year.

“Peggy Guggenheim in London: The Making of a Collector”

Peggy Guggenheim Collection

Apr. 25–Oct. 19

Before the Palazzo Venier dei Leoni, there was 30 Cork Street, where a young Peggy Guggenheim opened her first gallery, Guggenheim Jeune, in London in 1938. It was active for a whirlwind 18 months, showing controversial works by Salvador Dalí, Jean Cocteau, and Wassily Kandinsky, as well as a teenage Lucian Freud—artists with whom Guggenheim would forever be associated. Although popular with critics and the public alike, the gallery leaked money and was forced to close at the outbreak of World War II, whereupon Guggenheim whisked her valuable collection overseas, away from the Blitz. But those audacious shows had a considerable impact on the London art world, pushing the limits of what was considered contemporary art at the time. Now her trailblazing taste is finally getting due attention in an exhibition at the Peggy Guggenheim Collection, which will then head to London’s Royal Academy of Arts in the fall and the Guggenheim New York in 2027.

Lorna Simpson

“Third Person”

Punta della Dogana

Mar. 29–Nov. 22

Choosing arguably the biggest event on the global arts calendar to debut a completely new medium in your practice is an audacious—and risky—move. Yet that’s exactly what the American artist Lorna Simpson did at the 2015 Venice Biennale with a series of moody, cloud-hued paintings of ghostly figures. Some of those paintings will return to Venice in this exhibition—the largest she’s ever had in Europe—alongside collages, video, installations and sculptures. This show had its first outing as “Source Notes” at the Metropolitan Museum of Art last year and has since been updated with artworks made especially for the Punta della Dogana’s unique space.

Michael Armitage

“The Promise of Change”

Palazzo Grassi

Mar. 29–Jan. 10, 2027

Kenyan British artist Michael Armitage’s arresting, uncompromising paintings are the subject of a major exhibition at the Pinault Collection’s second site in Venice, Palazzo Grassi. Forty-five paintings and more than 100 studies present a brutally truthful look at conflict, social upheaval, and tragedy, usually in the context of East Africa. Armitage paints with oil on Lubugo bark cloth—a deliberate rejection of the Western tradition of painting on canvas—and creates dense, sensual scenes with a vibrant, sometimes tropical, color palette. His paintings tackle hard subjects: street violence during political rallies, people drowned in migration attempts, or images from the 2020 COVID-19 lockdown. Armitage’s unique pictorial language combines the harsh reality of these daily scenes with dreamlike landscapes and abstract forms.

Amoako Boafo

Museo di Palazzo Grimani

May 9–Nov. 22

Amoako Boafo’s meteoric career is still on the rise. The Ghanaian painter shot to art world acclaim when Kehinde Wiley discovered his portraits on Instagram in 2018 and tipped off galleries that Boafo was one to watch. By February 2019, his works were selling at Frieze Los Angeles. Before long, mega-dealer Larry Gagosian dubbed him “the future of portraiture,” thanks to his colorful, gestural compositions for which he uses his fingers to paint his subjects’ skin. Boafo subsequently became the first African artist to develop a fashion line with French fashion house Dior.

Now the Museo di Palazzo Grimani will host Boafo’s first solo exhibition in Italy, placing his contemporary portraits of Black subjects in dialogue with the medieval palazzo’s collection of Renaissance portraits. This is the second time that Gagosian has collaborated with the museum: Boafo’s work follows a show by Georg Baselitz that was installed in 2021 and later made permanent. The artist will create a series of new works expressly for this show.

Jenny Saville

Ca’ Pesaro

Mar. 28–Nov. 22

Gagosian also has a hand in painter Jenny Saville’s landmark show at Venice’s Ca’ Pesaro International Gallery of Modern Art, the city’s first major exhibition of her work. It follows her acclaimed retrospective “The Anatomy of Painting,” at London’s National Portrait Gallery last year. Many of the same monumental canvases will be on display, as well as a collection of never-before-seen works made especially for the final room in this show. The exhibition will trace the development of Saville’s painting practice, from the enormous nudes that made her name during the YBA era, to her recent abstract experimentations and borrowings of imagery and names from mythology or literature. Expect big, blowsy, sensual close-ups and visceral representations of the body in all of its grotesquery.

Arthur Jafa and Richard Prince

“Helter Skelter”

Fondazione Prada

May 9–Nov. 23

Arthur Jafa and Richard Prince are an obvious pairing. Both American artists mine images from popular culture and mass media for use in their artworks. Curator Nancy Spector even describes them as “image scavengers” in the show notes—vultures who cherry-pick from society’s relentless flood of images and visual stimulation, transforming their findings into art in the style of Marcel Duchamp’s readymades.

This exhibition is a broad exploration of American culture and what it means to be American, hopping between a variety of media, from photography and film to sculptures and painting. Both artists have created work from opposite sides of a spectrum: Jafa has examined Black American identity throughout his career, notably in his celebrated film Love Is the Message, the Message Is Death (2017), and Prince has explored the unvarnished underbelly of white America. The two men collaborated for this show, sharing images with each other and creating a zine that will be displayed alongside new work by each artist.

Joseph Kosuth

“The-exchange-value-of-language-has-fallen-to-zero”

Berggruen Institute Europe, Casa dei Tre Oci

Mar. 28–Nov. 22

The American conceptual artist Joseph Kosuth has a long-standing relationship with the city of Venice. In fact, he’s participated in eight Biennales (including his 1993 representation at Hungary’s pavilion) and has artworks permanently on display in two Venetian institutions, the Querini Stampalia and Ca’ Foscari University. Now his work is crossing the water to Berggruen Arts & Culture’s outpost on the island of Giudecca, in the grand Casa dei Tre Oci. The exhibition begins with a newly commissioned neon artwork that wraps around the ground floor, before continuing upstairs with a selection of photographs, texts, and installations that examine the process of how we infer meaning from language. Some of Kosuth’s seminal works are on display, including the maddening brain teasers printed on index cards in The Fifth Investigation (1969) and Text/Context, his 1979 work that used billboards as exhibition space.

Repatriates Collective

“Tide of Returns”

Ocean Space

Mar. 28–Oct. 11

Every year, Ocean Space transforms the deconsecrated San Lorenzo church into an alternate landscape, filling the swooping space under its arches with large-scale installations, video art, and performances. This year, mounds of sand snake their way through the first hall of the church, dotted with figures made from painted shells. This is the work of Repatriates Collective, a group of artists who promote the return of cultural objects to Indigenous communities around the world. The Benin bronzes or the Elgin marbles are frequently in the news regarding questions of ownership and belonging, but we forget smaller symbols of ritual; here, the Dadikwakwa-kwa (shell dolls). An accompanying film shows Indigenous women tending these shell dolls on the dark red beaches of the Gulf of Carpentaria. Performances and soundscapes recreate this traditional ritual, in a space that straddles the contemporary and the ancient.

Lee Ufan

SMAC Venice

May 9–Nov.22

Lee Ufan’s retrospective at San Marco Art Centre (SMAC) on St. Mark’s Square, one of 31 official collateral Venice Biennale events, is pegged to the South Korean artist’s 90th birthday and celebrates seven decades of his creative practice.

A new, site-specific commission is at the heart of the show, which is staged across eight galleries and takes the visitor through the arc of Ufan’s career as a leading figure of the Japanese Mono-ha movement. One highlight is his sculpture Relatum (formerly Iron Field) (1969/2019), a bed of iron rods nestled in sand, looking as wispy and delicate as a sea of algae despite its solid materiality. The show ends with new paintings characterized by bold brushstrokes and thick, minerally bands of color.

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Massive Buddha sculpture by Tuan Andrew Nguyen opens on New York’s High Line Plinth. https://ift.tt/J2Xf0qF

Manhattan’s High Line has opened its newest commission by Vietnamese sculptor and visual artist Tuan Andrew Nyugen. The work, a 27-foot-tall sandstone Buddha sculpture entitled The Light That Shines Through the Universe (2026), is now on view at the above-ground park’s intersection of 10th Avenue and 30th Street. It will be installed there for the next year and a half.

Nguyen, who was honored with a MacArthur Fellowship in 2025, recently closed a major presentation at the Art Institute of Chicago. The artist’s practice explores lost or forgotten histories and memories that have been erased by global conflict and violence. His sculptures and films draw upon reparation, and give voices to stories of those who have been overlooked. His monumental sculpture at the High Line, The Light That Shines Through the Universe (2026), takes the form of a Bamiyan Buddha replicating two massive statues carved from cliffs in Afghanistan over a millennium ago. Both were destroyed by the Taliban in 2001. Nguyen uses melted-down artillery shells, which he reshaped into the Buddha’s hands, leaving a gap between the sandstone figure and its glowing appendages to signify that hope remains despite some irreparable damage.

“Tuan Andrew Nguyen’s The Light That Shines Through the Universe is a timely monument for our public space,” said Cecilia Alemani, director & chief curator of High Line Art in a press statement. “It stands today as a powerful and poetic counterpoint to extremism and iconoclasm we continue to witness globally. By resurrecting the memory of the lost Bamiyan Buddhas, The Light That Shines Through the Universe reminds us that cultural treasures—and shared history—can transcend physical destruction.”

Previous High Line Plinth commissions include Iván Argote’s monumental pigeon sculpture, Pamela Rosenkranz’s pink-and-red Old Tree, and Sam Durant’s fiberglass drone. Other works currently on view this season include new works by Katherine Bernhardt, Patricia Ayres, and Derek Fordjour.

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Meet the Psychologist Who Reads People Through the Art They Live With https://ift.tt/ZmINhsg

When Dr. Dimitrios Tsivrikos walks into someone’s home for the first time, he looks at the walls.

“You know how people say that when you start dating someone, you go to their home and look at their bookshelf?” he told Artsy. “I do the same with art, and it doesn’t need to be expensive. It could be a poster. What matters is how someone enriches their environment visually and emotionally.”

Art and psychology are part of the same inquiry for Tsivrikos, an academic psychologist at University College London (UCL), founder and director of London-based gallery and advisory The TAGLI, and an avid art collector. Both fields for him ask the same question: what moves us, and why?

“I have always been fascinated by the relationship between the visual and the emotional, and how those experiences triangulate with who we are, how the information around us influences us, and how those stimuli make us feel,” he explained.

Raised in Thessaloniki, Greece, he was drawn early to the visual world and, eventually, to the question of what aesthetic experience does to us. “I was interested in whether those [artistic] interactions are beneficial to us or simply random,” he said. “Whether something is just aesthetically pleasing, or whether it actually offers emotional enrichment.”

For Tsivrikos, art is more than something to admire or acquire; it is a way of understanding identity, emotion, and the environments people build around themselves. Living with art, for him, can deepen self-knowledge, shape feelings, and widen access to culture.

How psychology led Tsivrikos to art collecting and curation

Tsivrikos came to London to study, eventually earning his PhD and building a career at UCL. Many of his friends were at art school, and he spent his spare time in studios, at openings, and in galleries across the city. “I was not talented enough to be part of that ecosystem [as an artist], but I was always around it,” he recalled.

Collecting became his way of staying close to the creativity he admired. Over time, that exposure became expertise, and expertise became a wider mission: to support artists and widen access to art.

In his home, works by artists across generations commingle. Works by Charlotte Colbert, Pablo Picasso, and Ju Young Kim bring together inquiries into the fractured self and the unconscious. This conversation shifts entirely, though, when presented near paintings by Tristan Pigott, David Hockney, and Tai-Shan Schierenberg, who together make the collection’s more figurative works. Works by Holly Hendry introduce a biological undercurrent wherever they are placed, whilst Vietnam-born artist KV Duong’s latex paintings, meanwhile, introduce a very different kind of surface tension through his exploration of queer identity politics.

Tsivrikos regularly rotates the work on view. “Works speak to each other differently depending on what they are paired with, just like we are slightly different people with different groups of friends. The environment shifts the conversation,” he said.

His curatorial sensibility is informed partly by his master’s degree in curation, but also by a psychologist’s understanding of how environment shapes mood, behavior, and identity. In many respects, curation is a form of applied psychology.

Why living with art can change how we feel

That perspective informs how Tsivrikos thinks about art as a way of understanding ourselves and others. His advice for anyone curious about their own relationship with art—or someone else’s—is straightforward. “Go on a date in a museum,” he advised. “Ask each other about artwork. The way someone describes an artwork, the lenses they use, and the emotions they express. It is such a beautiful entry point into who they are, how they perceive the world, what they dream about.”

That perspective comes through most clearly when he speaks about the works he lives with. Asked which piece resonates most, he points to a small painting titled Resurrection by the Scottish artist Ken Currie. Roughly the size of his torso, it shows two blue, disembodied gloves gravitating downwards, entering into the pictorial field. The gloves could belong to a surgeon or a fisherman; he likes the ambiguity. “It is almost like deus ex machina,” he said. “Two arms coming through to save someone.”

He added: “For me, as a psychologist, human relationships often function like that—someone stepping in to help, to resolve a situation.” The work resonates not just visually but psychologically. There is no gender, no face, no context in the Currie painting. “These two hands are agents of action, of change,” he said.

Tsivrikos compares the painting to Lucio Fontana’s notion of tagli—cuts that open new dimensions, often on canvas. His gallery takes its name from that gesture, and is built around a similar idea: that art should cut through, create depth, and shift perspective.

What Tsivrikos looks for as a collector and advisor

Tsivrikos is less interested in the value of art than in the response it elicits. “I’ve always felt that art is an asset,” he said, “but primarily a cultural and emotional asset rather than a financial one.”

That conviction shapes how he collects. First, the work must resonate. He is drawn to materiality and to Arte Povera, for instance, with its integration of raw surfaces and political charge. Second, he wants to know the artist. “I do not believe artists are responsible for defining the narrative of their own work,” he said. “But I enjoy hearing their perspective. They have done the hard job of creating something. The work then lives in the hands of the public, institutions, and collectors. We each bring our own meaning.”

Third, the work must make him feel something. “That feeling does not have to be positive,” he told Artsy. “It can be anger, discomfort, curiosity, joy. I am not looking for a pseudo-euphoria of constant happiness. I am looking for emotional engagement…There needs to be some emotional friction, something that presses a button.”

His recent acquisitions reflect this range of emotional registers, including sculpture by German artist Alexandra Bircken, valued for “the lightness and symbolism in her sculpture,” which sits alongside a vibrantly colored painting by Tommy Harrison from a recent show at GRIMM Gallery. “His work is full of color and vibrancy. The whole show, curatorially, moved me.”

Why Tsivrikos believes art belongs in everyday life

For all his enthusiasm, Tsivrikos is realistic about the barriers to art. “It would be a lie to claim the art world is accessible. It is not, but we’re improving,” he said. “The idea that art should only live in institutions or museums is extremely elitist. Art grows through interactions, conversations, and the everyday presence of people encountering it.”

For Tsivrikos, the choices we make about what surrounds us shape who we become. Art is a form of self-knowledge: “I see collecting art as assembling a kind of puzzle of who we are at particular moments, as reflected by the works we bring into our lives,” he said. “Art helps us live better.”

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Nairy Baghramian and Ibrahim Mahama to create major new commissions for Art Basel 2026. https://ift.tt/D0CtBlm

Art Basel has revealed further details about site specific sculptures by Nairy Baghramian and Ibrahim Mahama that will appear at the flagship fair in Switzerland this June. The artists are part of Art Basel’s inaugural class of Gold Awardees, and Art Basel announced the commissions this past February.

On the Messeplatz, Iranian-born, German sculptor Nairy Baghramian will present Modèle vivant (S’empilant) (2026), an elaborate installation conceived for the square’s fountain. The work is composed of four lavender, large-scale biomorphic forms that perch on geometric steel supports built around the fountain’s waterfalls. A bench-like pedestal to the side is covered in tiles and surrounded by photographic imprints of flies.

Elsewhere on the Münsterplatz, Ghanaian installation artist Ibrahim Mahama will unveil an installation entitled The God of Small Things (2026). The piece is composed of multiple sculptural elements that are suspended to create a large-scale immersive environment. It takes its title from the Arundhati Roy novel of the same name, and uses rubber castoffs from a factory that was established in Ghana following the country’s independence.

The fair also announced details about its various sectors. Unlimited, Art Basel’s platform for large-scale projects, will be curated for the first time by Ruba Katrib, MoMA PS1 chief curator and director of curatorial affairs. It will bring together 59 projects by 66 galleries, showcasing artists whose practices urgently engage with the current political, social, and ecological climate. Highlights include Isa Genzken’s Untitled (2018), presented by Galerie Buchholz, Hauser & Wirth, and David Zwirner; Tracey Emin’s Knowing my Enemy (2002), presented by White Cube; and Oskar Schlemmer’s Homo, Composition in Metal (1930–31), presented by Leandro Navarro and Thaddaeus Ropac.

In Parcours, curated by Stefanie Hessler, 22 projects presented by 31 galleries will take place in public spaces and historic locations around Basel, including outdoor venues, empty apartments, and shops. “Public space—from the commons to architectures of civic life—is central to conversations around how we live together,” said Hessler in a press statement. “This year’s presentation explores the promise and complexity of ‘conviviality’ through artistic interventions that extend into the fabric of the city of Basel. Bringing together a majority of new and recent works with key historic positions, the sector addresses ecology and labor, artistic community and intergenerational transmission, mythologies and systems of valuation underpinning economic and political formations through a multifaceted urban choreography.” Highlights include new posters by Sarah Crowner distributed across the tram and presented by Galerie Max Hetzler and Galerie Nordenhake in collaboration with Luhring Augustine, and Haegue Yang’s installations from her ongoing Intermediates series, which will be draped across the Mittlere Brücke as well as equipment from an artisanal distillery, and presented by Kukje Gallery and neugerriemschnieder.

Meanwhile, new information surrounding the main sector was announced, as was information for Kabinett, Features, Premiere, Statements, and Edition.

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8 Must-See Shows during Gallery Weekend Berlin 2026 https://ift.tt/9k5fx2E

Malte, 2026
Sophie von Hellermann
Wentrup

“Painting is dead, long live painting!” could be the motto of the 2026 Gallery Weekend Berlin. The event was founded in 2005 by a cooperative of local gallerists as an alternative to traditional art fairs that typically favor painting, yet the strong presence of the medium this year confirms its lasting power.

Following on its founders’ original idea to draw collectors to Berlin in a single coordinated art smorgasbord, the weekend kicks off with over 50 galleries spread across the city. In parallel, there are other major draws like the American digital artist Beeple (Mike Winkelman) presenting robotic dogs with human heads (from Andy Warhol to tech tycoon Elon Musk) in “Beeple. Regular Animals,” at Neue Nationalgalerie. Elsewhere, Gropius Bau has a major show by the renowned performance artist Marina Abramović, “Balkan Erotic Epic,” a multiscreen video installation exploring mythic rituals and sexual energies.

Another big moment for Berlin’s art scene is the reopening of the Boros Collection’s vast bunker of contemporary art from the ’90s to the present, starting May 3rd. Plus, the luxury department store KaDeWe dresses its windows with a 24/7 pop-up show of multimedia and kinetic art by eleven artists, including Talking Heads musician and artist David Byrne, conceptual artist Hanne Darboven (1941–2009), and New York–based multimedia and performance artist Kayode Ojo.

Here are 8 of the most anticipated gallery shows during Gallery Weekend Berlin.

Tauba Auerbach

“Easy Assembly”

Esther Schipper

May 1–June 20

American artist Tauba Auerbach, who works in diverse media spanning painting, weaving, and sculpture, investigates sight and the limits of perception in their piercingly bright paintings. For instance, the New York–based artist’s first exhibition at Esther Schipper in 2013, “Tetrachromat,” centered on works inspired by colors outside the standard RGB spectrum. These colors are only seen by people—usually women—possessing four (rather than the normal three) retinal cones: a condition known as tetrachromacy.

Guided by a similar curiosity around the science of perception, Auerbach presents a series of Pointillist acrylic paintings in their second show with the gallery. These depict foam textures and investigate the role that chance plays in how foam particles interact with surfaces as they merge, collide, and break apart.

Vivien Zhang

“Field Conditions”

Galerie Max Hetzler (Goethestr.)

Apr. 30–June 27

Chance also informs the highly textured, rhythmic acrylic-and-oil paintings by rising artist Vivien Zhang, who has her debut solo show at Galerie Max Hetzler. Inspired by diverse biological sources, from flower patterns and nearly extinct plants to butterflies, the London-based artist ties perception to geopolitical considerations.

For instance, the geometric background in the painting slip between (Ithomia) (2026) refers to the 1909 “Butterfly” World Map. This projection was designed to translate the globe into two dimensions in a more proportionate way to viewers, which results in less bias in the size (and significance) of Western nations.

Robert Elfgen

“utopisch”

Sprüth Magers

May 2–Aug. 1

Acclaimed artist Robert Elfgen studied at Kunstakademie Düsseldorf in the early 2000s under the renowned conceptual artist Rosemarie Trockel. Since then, he’s become known for his Romantic-inspired paintings which draw from the natural world and have been shown at major galleries such as Marian Boesky and reside in collections like the Rubells’. His presentation at Sprüth Magers consists of sculptural and mixed-media works, including floor pieces and glass panes. His photocollages, sprayed with metallic paint and with added concrete and brass, are partially sanded down, giving them a grainy texture. The industrial landscapes they depict—liminal spaces with barren countryside and chimneys and rigs—feel equally scuffed and “collaged.” Elfgen paints a warm yellow-and-orange haze into these scenes, bathing the manmade deserts in ethereal light, hauntingly still and devoid of activity. Here and there, a lonely dachshund bears shadowy witness to industrial waste.

A utopia of progress? Doubtful: Elfgen’s wistfully post-Romantic vision suggests that the show’s title is rather darkly ironic. Perhaps there’s a hint of latent longing here, as Germany’s bustling towns turn to ghosts following the decline of industry.

Rodney McMillian

“In Other Realms”

Capitain Petzel

Apr. 29–June 13.

Los Angeles–based artist Rodney McMillian is known for incorporating everyday objects, such as blankets, chairs, and architectural debris, into his abstract paintings and sculptures with rugged textures that allude to the bodily experience of racial and social inequality in America.

In his inaugural solo show at Capitain Petzel, Rodney McMillian deploys acrylic paint and mixed media in a Postminimalist fashion to blur the line between abstraction and representation. The show follows his 2024 exhibition, “The Land: Not Without a Politic,” at the Marta Herford Museum in Herford, Germany (which was his first in the country).

Accordingly, the show at Capitain Petzel includes heavily layered acrylic-and-latex paintings from the “Black Painting” series, as well as misshapen sculptures, such as Untitled (Knoll’s Chair) (2023–26), a combined sculpture made of a chair, fabric, wire, and acrylic. Also included is a film work, based on a text by early American civil rights leader Ida B. Wells-Barnett, who fought to end lynchings of Black Americans.

Bernd Koberling

“Rooted in Time, Rooted in the Sky, Paintings 1992-2026”

Buchmann Galerie

May 1–June 20

Duft der Steine, 2019
Bernd Koberling
Buchmann Galerie

Momentane Vision 11, 2025
Bernd Koberling
Buchmann Galerie

At 88, Bernd Koberling is one of the most renowned living post-war German painters. And the works from his mid-to-late career, shown at Buchmann Galerie, evidence his continued reinvention. He was part of the 1980s Cologne-based Neo-Expressionist art movement Junge Wilde, the members of which opposed the cool rationalism of minimalist art with a messier, gestural approach. At Buchmann Galerie, this style is highlighted in paintings like the oil Erdstelle (1992), notable for its darkly brooding palette and agitated strokes.

By contrast, his more recent works presented in the show—for example, the oil-on-wood work Echo (2024), with rhythmic flickers of bright colors (mostly parakeet green)—are much airier. Elsewhere, in the “Aquarelle” series, Momentane Vision (2025) conveys a keen interest in color, inspired by the Arctic region—he’s frequently visited Iceland, Scotland, and Lapland—particularly its rugged landscapes and diaphanous light.

“Hyperacuity”

Bode

Apr. 30–June 21.

From Abundance, He Took Abundance, 2026
Alteronce Gumby
Bode

Sitting on the moving box, 2025
Teresa Murta
Bode

Though diverse in their approaches and supports, the artists in “Hyperacuity,” a group show at Bode Gallery, all experiment with the means of “polluting” painting, expanding its pictorial possibilities.

For instance, the Bronx, New York–based abstract painter Alteronce Gumby—a 2016 graduate of the Yale School of Art—is fascinated equally by chromatic painting and astrophysics. He combines glass, blue quartz, and acrylic in his densely patterned works. Another Yale MFA graduate, Gabriel Mills, who was 2021’s resident artist at MASS MoCA, shows his panels oscillating between heavy impasto and smudgy blurs. Meanwhile the young Portuguese Berlin-based artist Teresa Murta creates paintings with nervously blobby lines that produce a visual confusion.

Together, the show suggests that “hyperacuity” is a kind of oversaturation.

Sophie von Hellerman

“Letters to a young painter”

Wentrup

May 1–June 12

Paula Modersohn Becker malt Rilke in Paris, 2026
Sophie von Hellermann
Wentrup

The German mid-career painter Sophie von Hellermann revives the country’s legacies of Romantic and Expressionist art in her fluid acrylic works. In her works, which are shown by galleries such as Pilar Corrias and Greene Naftali, she often turns to dream and fantasy, with supple and agile lines, pulsing with energy. Recently, she has also portrayed art history, as in her vibrant 2024 mural for the Brücke Museum, Berlin, depicting Jewish art collectors tied to the museum’s history who were persecuted by the Nazis.

Her fourth solo show at Wentrup takes its title from poet Rainer Maria Rilke’s 1929 book, Letters to a Young Poet. Here the England-based artist’s febrile landscapes in pure pigment convey Romanticism’s fascination with nature. Other works, for example, Paula Modersohn Becker paints Rilke in Paris (2026) (referring to the pioneering German Expressionist woman painter and Rilke’s close friend) reimagine scenes from the poet’s life.

James Turrell

“sensing fields”

Max Goelitz

May 1–July 4.

Consumed by the desire to capture light’s full effects on the mind since the 1960s, James Turrell has become famous for large site-specific installations in far-flung locations. For decades, he’s been involved with constructing an enormous sky observatory at the Roden Crater, in the Arizona desert, for example.

As part of his highly anticipated show, “sensing fields,” at Max Goelitz, the American artist brings to Berlin for the first time a work from his acclaimed “Glass” series (2001–present), Small Elliptical Glass First Cause (2024), in which visitors can see a glass plane, embedded in a wall, radiating a purple computer-programmed light.

“My work is not so much about my seeing as about your seeing.... You are looking at you looking,” he once said in an interview. His works, which at Max Goelitz also include aquatint etchings (Turrell thinks of them as afterimages of light’s glow) and a skyscape sculpture, highlight the subjectivity of vision as a space of self-awareness and contemplation, bypassing conscious thought.

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