What to See in 48 Hours at the Venice Biennale 2026 https://ift.tt/KmI01oG

I stand by what I wrote in 2024: The best way to enjoy the Venice Biennale is not to try to see it all. Despite this, I did try to see as much of the 2026 edition as possible over a week in early May. I did not see everything—it’s not possible, I’ve decided, between 99 national pavilions and an untold number of exhibitions across museums, palazzi, obscure churches, and even a monastic garden. But I saw enough, and spoke to enough fellow art professionals, to know where to steer anyone visiting Venice this year.

The 2026 Venice Biennale, titled “In Minor Keys,” opened May 9 and runs through November 22. Curated by the late Koyo Kouoh and realized by the team she had assembled, the central exhibition unfolds across the Biennale’s two main venues—the Giardini and the Arsenale—alongside dozens of national pavilions. But the Biennale is never confined to these two sites. It spills into collateral exhibitions all over town, sometimes in obscure places you might otherwise walk right past.

This guide isn’t comprehensive. It’s a 48-hour itinerary for anyone short on time or looking for highlights. Depending on your stamina for walking and your appetite for the vaporetto, follow it closely over two days—or treat it as a menu and pick from what sounds best. Andiamo!

Venice tips for first-time visitors

• Double-check opening days and hours and book ahead anything that requires it (like The Holy See Pavilion and the Fondazione Dries Van Noten—see below). Shows are open through the run of the Biennale, unless specified otherwise.
• Plot your route in advance. Google Maps and the labyrinthine streets can turn a 23-minute walk into an hourlong logic puzzle. Save this Google Maps list to your phone.

• If you’re taking the vaporetto more than a couple of times, buy an unlimited card.
• Most importantly, leave room to take in Venice itself—ideally with a spritz and a few cicchetti. I’ve also folded in drinks and dining picks from Venice locals below.

Day 1: Giardini, Arsenale, Castello, and Cannaregio

Morning: Giardini

Start at the Giardini and (to return to my opening point) resist the urge to see everything. “In Minor Keys,” as the title suggests, rewards a slower pace: it’s somber, emotional, poetic over spectacular. For a deeper look at what’s inside, my colleague Josie Thaddeus-Johns wrote a guide to six defining works.

Among the national pavilions, I’d prioritize a handful.

• Japan, Ei Arakawa-Nash, “Grass Babies, Moon Babies”: You temporarily adopt one of 208 baby dolls—each weighted like a four-month-old, wearing tiny sunglasses—change its diaper, then scan a QR code for a poem matched to its birthday. It may sound absurd, but the longer you carry one through the space, the more tender and delightful it becomes.

• Germany, Sung Tieu and Henrike Naumann, “Ruin”: Tieu wraps the pavilion’s Nazi-era façade in a trompe l’oeil mosaic of more than three million tiles, reconstructing the East Berlin housing complex where she grew up. Inside, Naumann’s The Home Front (2026) transforms the central hall into an ideologically loaded East German interior. Naumann died in February at 41, after finalizing the work, which makes the artwork even more moving.
• Austria, Florentina Holzinger, “SEAWORLD VENICE”: Holzinger has turned the Austrian pavilion into a closed-loop system said to be powered by the audience’s bodily waste. Inside, nude performers endure extreme scenarios: submerged in an aquarium tank, riding a jet ski in a flooded room, ringing a giant bell with the force of their bodies. This is not for the faint of heart.

Lunch in Castello

After the Giardini, head to Via Garibaldi (Castello’s main street of bacari, local taverns) for cicchetti, or stop at Paradiso just inside the park. Then walk about 10 minutes to the Arsenale, ideally through the charming neighborhood of Corte Nova.

Afternoon: Arsenale and the Estonian Pavilion

The Arsenale holds the second half of “In Minor Keys,” plus a full slate of national pavilions on the other side of the main exhibition. Among them, I’d prioritize these:

• India, “Geographies of Distance: remembering home”: India’s first pavilion in seven years gathers five artists and extraordinary installations. These include Sumakshi Singh’s life-sized reconstruction of her demolished New Delhi home in embroidered thread hung from the ceiling, Asim Waqif’s bamboo scaffolding, and Ranjani Shettar’s massive floating garland of floral sculptures.

• Argentina, Matías Duville, “Monitor Yin Yang”: Duville’s pavilion centers on a field of bright salt streaked with black charcoal. Visitors stay on white paths while a sound piece from Venetian environmental data deepens the disorientation. This may be the Biennale’s most physically impressive act of drawing.
• Saudi Arabia, Dana Awartani, “May your tears never dry, you who weep over stones”: Visually stunning and devastatingly emotional, the pavilion is filled with more than 29,000 handmade clay bricks forming a raised mosaic floor visitors move alongside, referencing destroyed hammams and mosque floors across Syria, Lebanon, and Palestine.

From the Arsenale’s rear exit, it’s a five-minute walk to Estonia’s off-site pavilion—worth seeking out.

• Estonia, Merike Estna, “The House of Leaking Sky”: Set in a school gymnasium, the off-site pavilion offers both a durational performance and a studio visit. Estna paints throughout the Biennale, working on giant canvases she hangs, then takes down to the floor to pour, swirl, and brush with color. The result vibrates with the energy of an artist who has temporarily uprooted her life for Venice.

Evening: Cannaregio

Hop a vaporetto from Arsenale or Tana to Ferrovia, just in front of Santa Lucia station—about 30 minutes, but worth it.

• The Holy See, “The Ear is the Eye of the Soul.” Book in advance. Just beside the train station, the Holy See pavilion sits in the Mystical Garden of the Discalced Carmelites. Curated by Hans Ulrich Obrist and Ben Vickers, it asks you to put on headphones and stroll through the idyllic garden while an audio experience engulfs you. Commissions by Brian Eno, FKA twigs, Meredith Monk, Patti Smith, and Holly Herndon and Mat Dryhurst, among others, respond to the legacy of 12th-century abbess Saint Hildegard of Bingen. It’s arguably the city’s most transportive contemporary art experience.

From the train station, take a vaporetto to Rialto and walk to Palazzo Soranzo Van Axel (or skip the boat—it’s a 28-minute walk). Your next two stops are close to each other.

• Su Xiaobai, “Alchemical Universe,” at Palazzo Soranzo Van Axel. Set in a 15th-century Gothic palazzo (also the home of Bottega Veneta’s secret, private showroom), the show traces the esteemed Chinese artist’s lush lacquer paintings from 2003 to the present. Curated by LACMA’s Stephen Little and designed by Kulapat Yantrasast of WHY Architecture, it’s both eye-catching and moving.
• “Ethnography of the Body and Material,” at Palazzo Pisani Santa Marina. Presented by the Japanese craft-focused project Go For Kogei, this group show gathers works by 10 Japanese artists with materially rich practices—ceramics, glass, braided rope shoes, and more.

Aperitivi or dinner nearby

From there, it’s a few minutes’ walk to wine bar Ozio in Campo Santa Maria Formosa—a perfect stop before or after dinner. Recommended restaurants 5–6 minutes away include Osteria Giorgione da Masa, Bepi Antico 54, and Promessi Sposi.

Day 2: Dorsoduro, Santa Croce, and San Polo

Morning: Dorsoduro

Begin the day in the neighborhood of Dorsoduro, the site of world-class museums including Gallerie dell’Accademia, the Peggy Guggenheim Collection, and the Pinault Collection’s Punta della Dogana. I highly recommend visits to these three shows, which sit within a short walk of each other.

• Su Yu-Xin, “Afterstone” at Albion Jeune, Lo Studio (Dorsoduro 928): The exciting rising painter Su Yu-Xin presents over a dozen paintings made with pigments she sources from the landscape around the Pacific Rim, and grinds by hand. The L.A.–based Taiwanese artist reflects on the geopolitical meaning that her colors contain, creating works that are visually striking and embedded with issues of extraction, trade, and imperialism. On view through July 18.

• “Still Joy—From Ukraine into the World” at Palazzo Contarini Polignac: The Ukrainian art organizations PinchukArtCentre and the Victor Pinchuk Foundation are known to present ambitious group shows each biennale and this year is no different. The show presents joy as a vital and radical force in times of war and uncertainty, featuring an international cohort of artists including Tacita Dean, Julian Charrière, Simone Post, Gabrielle Goliath, and more. On view through August 1.
• The Bahamas Pavilion, Lavar Munroe and John Beadle, “In Another Man’s Yard,” San Trovaso Art Space: This posthumous tribute pairs the late John Beadle—who died in 2024 and was originally slated to represent the Bahamas in 2015—with fellow Bahamian artist Lavar Munroe. The artists are both connected through Junkanoo, the country’s centuries-old processional festival. Munroe’s impressive “rush out” installation, built on-site in a single month with materials from Beadle’s studio, anchors the show.

Lunch in Dorsoduro

For a quick, unfussy lunch, head to Cantine del Vino già Schiavi. Find a place to perch outside, but mind the seagulls. Sit-down options include Antica Locanda Montin or the polished Palazzo Experimental. For gelato, head to Gelateria Nico on the Zattere.

Afternoon: Santa Croce and San Polo

To reach Ca’ Pesaro, hop on Line 1 from Ca’ Rezzonico or Accademia and ride to San Stae—you’ll be at the door.

• Jenny Saville at Ca’ Pesaro: This major show gathers more than 30 paintings and drawings from the 1990s to today by the acclaimed American artist. The final room features new works that were made specifically for the Venetian context, as well as paintings by the Renaissance and Baroque painters that have long inspired Saville.
• Matthew Wong, “Interiors,” at Palazzo Tiepolo Passi: This thoughtful show of the beloved late painter spotlights Wong’s poetic paintings of interior rooms and domestic settings, presented in this striking palazzo. The poignant show features over 30 paintings and works on paper made between 2015 and 2019, some of which have never been exhibited before.

• Fondazione Dries Van Noten, “The Only True Protest is Beauty” at Palazzo Pisani Moretta: Make a booking in advance. The fashion designer’s highly anticipated new Venice nonprofit presents its debut show—a lively showcase of avant-garde fashion, dazzling jewelry, fresh contemporary art, and striking design objects. The sprawling show of more than 200 works takes over 20 rooms of the impressive 15th-century palazzo.

Dinner in San Polo or San Marco

Our locals recommend a few options: There’s Antiche Carampane in San Polo, though you will need a reservation, or over in Santa Croce, you’ll find La Zucca. One of the most sought-after restaurants is also not far, Do Farai—a lauded Venetian-yet-contemporary establishment. If you’d rather head towards San Marco, hop on a vaporetto or a small traghetto boat to cross the Grand Canal and head to Vini da Arturo for classic Venetian fare.

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Julio Le Parc, pioneer of kinetic art, has died at 97. https://ift.tt/FChprlV

Julio Le Parc, the Argentine artist whose explorations of light and movement helped define kinetic and Op art in the 20th century, has died at the age of 97 in Paris.

His son, Yamil Le Parc, confirmed the news to Argentine newspaper La Nación. Le Parc died on May 30th following a period of declining health and a brief hospitalization. A major retrospective of his work is scheduled to open at the Tate Modern in London on June 11th.

Over a career spanning more than seven decades, Le Parc developed a pioneering body of work that reimagined what it means to look at art. Using light, optical effects, and interactive installations, he placed the viewer’s experience at the center of his artworks.

These immersive environments and sculptures established him as one of the most significant artists working in kinetic art. His practice, building on the lessons of Concrete art and Lucio Fontana’s Spazialismo movement, was rooted in systems; his lifelong commitment to collective artistic experimentation shaped generations of artists working with perception and participation.

Born in Mendoza, Argentina, in 1928, Le Parc studied at the Escuela de Bellas Artes in Buenos Aires before moving to Paris in 1958. There, he became part of an experimental postwar artistic community. In the early 1960s, he helped co-found the Groupe de Recherche d’Art Visuel (GRAV), a collective of opto-kinetic artists dedicated to perception, movement, and the democratization of art through audience participation.

Le Parc first gained international recognition in the 1960s through geometric paintings, optical experiments, and light-based kinetic works. Using moving reflective elements, projected light, and viewer interaction, he created dynamic environments that constantly shifted in response to their surroundings. His “Continual Light Mobiles,” first developed in the early 1960s, became among his most celebrated works.

In 1966, Le Parc received the Grand Prize for Painting at the Venice Biennale, an achievement that solidified his international reputation. His work was subsequently exhibited at institutions including the Museum of Modern Art and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, Palais de Tokyo in Paris, MALBA in Buenos Aires, the Serpentine Galleries in London, and the Pérez Art Museum Miami.

Le Parc continued working from Paris into his nineties, producing new paintings, sculptures, and light-based works that revisited ideas first developed in the late 1950s and early 1960s. The Tate Modern retrospective—featuring more than 60 works— will trace his lifelong exploration of perception, including key interactive and immersive installations.

Le Parc was one of the last surviving pioneers of kinetic art, whose experiments with light and movement forever reshaped the relationship between artwork and viewer.

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Watch a Sneak Peek of the New Georgia O’Keeffe Documentary https://ift.tt/Ut5KAnv

In an exclusive clip from Georgia O’Keeffe: The Brightness of Light, actress Claire Danes plays the role of the iconic American painter. In the clip, Georgia O’Keeffe recalls her earliest memory from when she was less than a year old. It’s an intimate moment, told in the words of O’Keeffe, one of the most significant artists of the 20th century.

The new documentary, directed by Academy Award– and Emmy Award–winning filmmakers Paul Wagner and Ellen Casey Wagner, offers the most comprehensive biographical portrait of O’Keeffe to date. Danes’s husband, actor Hugh Dancy, narrates the film, while Danes inhabits O’Keeffe’s voice throughout, drawing on the artist’s own letters and words. The film is now playing in select theaters and is available digitally today on Apple TV+, Amazon Prime, and Google Play.

From her early years in the Midwest to her rise in New York’s vibrant art world and finally to the remote deserts of New Mexico, The Brightness of Light traces the evolution of an artist whose work blurred the line between abstraction and realism. The film was made across the locations where O’Keeffe lived and worked, including Ghost Ranch and her home in Abiquiú, New Mexico; Lake George in New York; and Palo Duro Canyon in the Texas Panhandle.

It features interviews with leading O’Keeffe scholars, including Sarah Greenough, senior curator at the National Gallery of Art, and Cody Hartley, director of the Georgia O’Keeffe Museum.

Known for her monumental paintings of florals, animal skulls, and Southwestern landscapes, O’Keeffe remains a defining figure in American modernism. This documentary cements her legacy and offers a new generation the chance to hear her story in her own words.

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Inside Centre Pompidou Hanwha: What to Know About Seoul’s Newest Museum https://ift.tt/XfUCAIl

The Centre Pompidou is set to deepen its anchor in East Asia with the grand opening of the Centre Pompidou Hanwha in downtown Seoul on June 4th. The launch marks a pivotal moment in France’s ongoing cultural diplomacy strategy, which has seen the Paris-based institution expand its network across the region.

The Seoul opening follows a string of high-profile partnerships for the Pompidou. Last year, it renewed its five-year collaboration with Shanghai’s West Bund Museum. Earlier this month, it signed a five-year memorandum of understanding with Hong Kong’s M+ museum, where each will co-curate shows for their respective institutions.

Over the past decade, the Korean art scene has experienced explosive growth, underpinned by the country’s chaebols—the large, family-owned conglomerates that dominate the local economy. Corporate giants like Samsung and Amorepacific have long driven the ecosystem through their own world-class private institutions, most notably Samsung’s Leeum Museum of Art.

Still, the Centre Pompidou Hanwha represents the first time a major international museum brand has established a long-term, structural presence in South Korea. Its arrival signals a new chapter of global integration for Seoul’s rapidly ascending cultural capital.

Here’s what you need to know about the new institution.

What is the new Centre Pompidou Hanwha?

Situated on Yeouido Island, Seoul’s financial district, Centre Pompidou Hanwha will operate under a four-year partnership between the Hanwha Foundation of Culture—the philanthropic arm of Hanwha Group, the 7th largest conglomerate in South Korea—and the Centre Pompidou.

It occupies a former aquarium inside the landmark 63 Building, the tallest skyscraper in the city until 2003. The building was originally constructed as a landmark for the 1988 Summer Olympics.

The institution spans 11,000 square meters across four stories. The ground floor houses a large bookstore, while a café and an auditorium are located on the first floor. A rooftop garden crowns the building above, where a restaurant overlooking the Han River is planned for a later phase.

The museum’s core is split across two galleries on the second and third floors, each spanning roughly 1,600 square meters. Gallery 1, on the second floor, is a double-height space with seven-meter ceilings engineered to accommodate large-scale touring exhibitions drawn from the permanent collection of Paris’s Centre Pompidou. Gallery 2, on the floor above, is a split-level space with a mezzanine, reserved for contemporary exhibitions curated by the Hanwha Foundation of Culture.

Who designed the new Centre Pompidou Hanwha?

The building is the work of Jean-Michel Wilmotte, the French architect behind the Grand Palais Éphémère in Paris and the Ullens Center for Contemporary Art in Beijing.

Wilmotte’s ties to Korea run deep: His Korean commissions include the Gana Art Gallery, completed in 1998, and the Seoul Auction Gangnam Center in 2019. A new museum on Jeju Island, also funded by the Gana Foundation, is expected to open this year.

Widely praised for his balanced forms, deft use of natural and artificial light, and ability to integrate contemporary design into existing urban fabric, Wilmotte conceived Centre Pompidou Hanwha as what he calls “a box of light.”

Wrapped in a translucent glass envelope, the building drinks in natural light during the day and glows as an urban lantern after dark. In a subtle gesture toward local tradition, the building’s curved exterior is designed to evoke the silhouettes of traditional Korean roof tiles.

What art will Centre Pompidou Hanwha show?

Centre Pompidou Hanwha will mount two major exhibitions per year over the next four years, drawing from its modern and contemporary collection. This program features a series of eight monographic and thematic exhibitions, which will focus on the artists and movements that defined the 20th century. Running alongside it, a dedicated contemporary program will spotlight Korean artists, weaving the country’s cultural context into the broader narratives of art history.

The inaugural show, “The Cubists: Inventing Modern Vision,” will bring together 112 works by 54 artists—91 works by 43 Cubist figures alongside 21 works by 11 modern and contemporary Korean artists—assembled by a joint French and Korean curatorial team. The exhibition traces Cubism from its emergence around 1907 through the 1920s, charting its evolution into an international artistic movement shaped by intersecting experiments across regions, media, and artistic groups.

Organized into nine sections, the show features key works including The Viaduct at L’Estaque (1908) by Georges Braque—which revisits a landscape in a manner that foreshadows Analytical Cubism—and Pablo Picasso’s The Guitarist (1910), a landmark of the same movement in which the human form and instrument are systematically dismantled into fragmented, overlapping geometric planes.

The exhibition also gives sustained attention to historical currents less familiar to Korean audiences, among them Orphic Cubism and Salon Cubism. A dedicated section, “Korean Focus,” installed in the mezzanine of Gallery 2, examines how Cubism and other Western avant-garde movements entered and transformed Korean modern art, with works by Lee Soo-auck, Ham Dae-jung, and Park Re-hyun.

When does Centre Pompidou Hanwha open?

The museum opens to the public on June 4th. Admission is 28,000 KRW (approximately US$18).

A program of public events accompanies the opening. On June 4th, Youngna Kim, professor emerita at Seoul National University, will deliver a special lecture on Cubism and Korean modern art, followed by a talk from Woo Jung-Ah, professor at POSTECH University, on the expanding legacy of Cubism.

Two curator talks are planned for July—one focused on Cubism within the Centre Pompidou collection, the other on its Korean dimension. The institution says further programming will be announced in the coming weeks.

What Centre Pompidou Hanwha means for Seoul’s cultural scene

From K-pop to contemporary art, South Korea has proven a formidable exporter of cultural influence. Centre Pompidou Hanwha’s emphasis on weaving Korean artistic identity into its curatorial framework could further raise the international profile of Korean artists, situating their work within the broader narratives of art history on a global stage.

The museum, however, arrives amid unresolved questions about its principal backer. Hanwha Group, South Korea’s seventh-largest conglomerate, has faced international scrutiny over its reported ties to the Israel Defense Forces through the arms manufacturer Elbit Systems. The Hanwha Foundation of Culture has previously stated that all of Hanwha’s exports comply with South Korean law and foreign policy and has emphasized that Centre Pompidou Hanwha operates independently of the broader conglomerate. “Hanwha has never been involved in the development of any inhumane weapons,” a statement from the Hanwha Foundation, reported by The Art Newspaper, read. Hanwha, it added, has “no record of exporting weapons to Israel.”

“The Cubists: Inventing Modern Vision” runs from June 4th to October 4th.

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10 Must-See Shows During London Gallery Weekend 2026 https://ift.tt/sjOwDhM

London Gallery Weekend returns for its sixth edition from June 5th to 7th, bringing together more than 120 galleries across the city for a packed weekend of openings, performances, talks, and events. Since launching in 2021, the initiative has become a key moment in the international art calendar, offering a citywide snapshot of London’s gallery ecosystem: from blue-chip Mayfair spaces to younger programs in Fitzrovia and the East End.

What feels particularly striking this year is the atmosphere running through many of the strongest exhibitions. Across different media, artists are engaging with themes of instability, mythology, memory, and transformation. Visitors will encounter immersive environments and materially rich works that resist the speed and slickness of digital culture in favor of slower, more embodied forms of looking.

At Sprüth Magers, for example, Anne Imhof stages a theatrical realm of cinematic unease, crisscrossed by site-specific crowd-control barriers and populated with large-scale “Wave” paintings, a four-channel film, and intensely rendered drawings. At Lisson Gallery, meanwhile, Lubaina Himid and Magda Stawarska’s collaborative installation “Zanzibar” layers abstract paintings with an eight-channel sound composition that encourages simultaneous looking and listening. Elsewhere, Christo’s groundbreaking exhibition at Gagosian centers on the first-ever realization of Air Package on a Ceiling, a monumental suspended installation conceived in 1968 but never previously produced.

Below, Artsy selects the 10 can’t-miss shows of London Gallery Weekend.

Christo and Jeanne Claude

“Air”

Gagosian, Grosvenor Hill

Through Aug. 21

Together with Jeanne-Claude, Christo transformed the possibilities of public art through monumental temporary interventions that wrapped buildings, coastlines, bridges, and parks in fabric, rope, and industrial materials. From Wrapped Coast (1968–69) in Sydney to The Gates (2005) in New York and the posthumously realized L’Arc de Triomphe, Wrapped (2021) in Paris, the duo’s projects reimagined familiar environments as sites of collective wonder and perceptual disorientation. Yet “Air” at Gagosian turns away from spectacle and toward the conceptual origins of their practice, foregrounding intimate early works alongside the first-ever realization of Air Package on a Ceiling, conceived in 1968 but never previously produced.

Organized around the invisible yet essential presence of air, the exhibition centers on the vast suspended artwork, an internally illuminated polyethylene form that hovers just above visitors’ heads. Wrapped objects and archival materials trace the evolution of Christo and Jeanne-Claude’s language of concealment, while Wrapped Automobile—Volvo, Model PV-544 (1981), shown publicly for the first time in three decades, transforms a sentimental everyday object into something theatrical, tender, and strangely unknowable.

Shao Fan

“Refrain / 复沓”

White Cube, Mason’s Yard

Through June 27

Rabbit Portrait 1025, 2025
Shao Fan
White Cube

Beijing-based artist Shao Fan has long occupied a singular position within contemporary Chinese art, creating meditative works that bridge centuries of visual culture. Though his work is held in major collections including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Centre Pompidou, and the Victoria and Albert Museum, “Refrain / 复沓” marks his first exhibition in the U.K.

The exhibition centers on meticulously rendered large- and small-scale ink-on-rice-paper paintings, each depicting a singular central subject such as a rabbit, apple, cabbage, or other organic form. Imbued with cultural memory and spiritual reflection, these highly detailed monochromatic depictions are informed by Song dynasty painting traditions. The subjects within appear ghostly, like apparitions, memories, or impressions rather than solid objects or beings.

Particularly striking are the recurring depictions of apples in works such as Fruit 2125 (2025), which subtly collapse Eastern and Western art histories, invoking Dutch still-life painting alongside the sensual organicism of Georgia O’Keeffe. Elsewhere, spectral rabbits recall Albrecht Dürer’s Young Hare (1502), while Chinese Cabbage 1425 (2025) transforms an everyday vegetable into an object of quiet contemplation.

Anne Imhof

“Citizen”

Sprüth Magers

June 5–Aug. 1

Over the past decade, Anne Imhof has become one of the defining artists of her generation, creating immersive works that collapse the boundaries between performance, painting, music, sculpture, and film. Since winning the Golden Lion at the 2017 Venice Biennale for Faust (2017), Imhof has become synonymous with performances that create atmospheres of alienation and desire. In her works, bodies drift through vast architectural environments, suspended between intimacy and detachment, exhaustion and spectacle. “Citizen,” her latest exhibition at Sprüth Magers, extends ideas explored in her recent projects “DOOM: House of Hope” and “Fun ist ein Stahlbad” at Serralves Museum of Contemporary Art, Portugal (both 2025).

Anchored by monumental new “Wave” paintings, the exhibition combines sculpture, film, drawing, and installation in a meditation on embodiment and surveillance. Site-specific crowd-control barriers slice through the gallery space, while a four-channel film and weighty bronze reliefs heighten the atmosphere of disquiet. A monumental diptych depicting a human head pushes Imhof’s figurative language into new territory, filtering references to the medieval danse macabre through the visual language of contemporary subcultures and digital spectatorship.

“You’re only happy when you can see something die!”

NEVEN

Through July 18

Mine Fire, 2022
Oliver Elphick
NEVEN

East London gallery NEVEN has quickly established itself as one of the city’s most compelling young spaces, championing emerging and cult figures whose practices orbit subculture, performance, fashion, and queer histories. Curated by artist Leo Costelloe, “You’re only happy when you can see something die!” brings together works by Greer Lankton, J.C. McCormack, Ki Yoong, Oliver Elphick, and Tiina Vanhatupa in an exhibition steeped in theatricality, artifice, and decay. Taking its title from a line spoken by Marilyn Monroe in The Misfits (1961), the show creates a kind of melancholic fever dream populated by dolls, beauty queens, artificial flowers, and cinematic afterimages.

The exhibition evokes the unstable boundary between animate and inanimate objects. In particular, many of the works trace how identities and desires become staged, mythologized, and preserved through images and objects.

Particularly poignant are photographs by Greer Lankton, the legendary East Village artist whose handmade dolls navigated glamour, grotesquery, and transfeminine self-fashioning in 1980s New York. Nearby, J.C. McCormack’s uncanny installation of plastic-wrapped silk flowers and Venetian blinds transforms domestic decoration into something ghostly and emotionally sealed-off, while Finnish doll artist Tiina Vanhatupa’s meticulously customized Blythe dolls hover between fetish object and sculptural portrait. Elsewhere, Ki Yoong’s miniature portrait of Monroe condenses one of the most endlessly reproduced faces of the twentieth century into an image of startling intimacy, and Oliver Elphick’s drawing of beauty queens dancing in a burning Arctic coal mine collapses camp spectacle into ecological apocalypse. Across the exhibition, images and objects appear suspended in states of preservation and performance—beautiful, uncanny, and already half-dead.

Roni Horn

“Seizure of Hope”

Hauser & Wirth

Through Aug. 1

For nearly four decades, Roni Horn has produced work preoccupied with instability: of language, perception, identity, and form. “Seizure of Hope,” her first solo exhibition in London in a decade, brings together a new body of drawings alongside one of her luminous cast-glass sculptures.

At the center of the exhibition is a single repeated phrase: “I am paralyzed with hope.” Borrowed from a performance by comedian Maria Bamford, the words are obsessively handwritten and rewritten across more than 45 works on paper, accumulating into dense fields of text that feel simultaneously diaristic and universal. Rendered in wax crayon, the letters blur as though submerged underwater, echoing Horn’s longstanding fascination with water as both material and metaphor. Nearby, the cast-glass sculpture Untitled (“What happens to the hole when the cheese is gone?”) (2022) shifts subtly according to light and weather, hovering between solidity and dissolution.

Shaniqwa Jarvis

“Only Love Will Break Your Heart”

Public Gallery

Through June 7

again and again and again., 2026
Shaniqwa Jarvis
Public Gallery

only love can break your heart, 2026
Shaniqwa Jarvis
Public Gallery

Flowers bloom, bruise, wilt, and reappear throughout Shaniqwa Jarvis’s first U.K. solo exhibition. Here, the artist uses photography less as a tool for documentation than as a fragile container for memory and bodily presence. Across 15 new works at Public Gallery, Jarvis pushes against the slickness and instant legibility typically associated with photographic images, layering acrylic washes, mirrored surfaces, silk, and blurred textures that force viewers to look at them more closely.

Purple gerbera daisies drift in and out of focus behind net-like veils; ruby dahlias bleed into marguerites as though seasons are collapsing into one another. Elsewhere, mirrored surfaces produce shifting double exposures that fold viewers directly into the works themselves.

Downstairs, an installation reconstructing fragments of the artist’s childhood bedroom combines archival footage and voice recordings reflecting on ambition, labor, and artistic survival in New York. Jarvis’s photographs insist on creating a physical encounter, resisting our daily passive consumption of images.

Paola Pivi

“A girl loved pearls so much she left engineering, strung them off the wall, and made art”

MASSIMODECARLO

Through June 6

Untitled (pearls), 2008
Paola Pivi
MASSIMODECARLO

Senza titolo (perle), 2005
Paola Pivi
MASSIMODECARLO

Few artists working today embrace absurdity, transformation, and spectacle with as much conviction as Paola Pivi. Since the late 1990s, the Italian-born, Alaska-based artist has built an unmistakable practice out of impossible gestures and disorienting material encounters: upside-down fighter jets, rotating airplanes, polar bears covered in brightly colored feathers, and immersive sculptural environments that push familiar objects toward states of surreal excess. Her latest exhibition at MASSIMODECARLO, however, turns toward one of the most persistent threads running through her work: pearls.

The first exhibition dedicated entirely to Pivi’s pearl series, this presentation brings together works spanning nearly three decades. Constructed from thousands of individual plastic and plexiglass pearls suspended on strings and densely layered across canvas, the works hover somewhere between painting, sculpture, and textile. Some compositions recall the chromatic geometry of Josef Albers, while others appear almost biological or coral-like, shaped as much by gravity and chance as by control.

The exhibition also includes Stop By (2021), a large-scale carpet made from recycled ocean plastics featuring the image of a monumental ladder—an ongoing motif in Pivi’s practice.

Wang Pei

“Sertraline”

Workplace

Through July 4

A shoulder disappearing into darkness, the back of a neck above a crisp cotton collar, lips caught just before speech: throughout Wang Pei’s quietly unsettling paintings, emotion is registered through fragments, surfaces, and withheld gestures rather than direct expression.

Borrowing its title from the widely prescribed antidepressant, “Sertraline” considers what happens to feeling in a culture increasingly shaped by emotional management and psychological self-regulation.

Working between figuration and cinematic abstraction, Wang constructs his paintings through layered scraping, overpainting, and delicate modulation. In La chair (2026), an extreme close-up of a face appears doubled and unstable, as though caught across multiple moments simultaneously. Elsewhere, silk fabrics and carefully composed postures suggest attempts at containment that never fully succeed. The exhibition’s rhythm feels almost filmic, with recurring textures and bodily fragments operating like visual echoes across unstable spaces and interrupted timelines.

Lubaina Himid and Magda Stawarska

“Zanzibar”

Lisson Gallery, 67 Lisson Street

June 4–Aug. 22

Sound drifts through the space before the paintings fully come into view: fragments of Taraab music, snippets of opera, radio broadcasts, and remembered voices weave around a suite of suspended canvases by Lubaina Himid. Created in 1999 and revisited here through a new sonic collaboration with her partner Magda Stawarska, “Zanzibar” transforms Lisson Gallery into an immersive landscape of memory, displacement, and return.

Unlike the narrative figurative paintings for which Himid is best known (that are currently on view in the British Pavilion at the 2026 Venice Biennale), the nine diptychs that comprise “Zanzibar” are strikingly abstract. These are floating geometric forms, zigzagging patterns, translucent washes, and tessellated boxes that evoke fragments of architecture, textiles, fishing nets, and ocean crossings.

The works draw on Himid’s memories of Zanzibar, where she was born in 1954, alongside reflections on migration and familial loss. Stawarska’s layered eight-channel sound composition guides viewers through overlapping temporalities and geographies, creating an installation suspended between personal recollection and collective history.

Serena Korda

“The Golem Rises”

Cooke Latham Gallery

June 5–July 3

Am I a Monster, 2026
Serena Korda
Cooke Latham Gallery

Motherhood, folklore, and feminist world-building collide in Serena Korda’s new exhibition at Cooke Latham. Working primarily in clay, Korda has built a practice that embraces the decorative and domestic histories of ceramics while channeling darker undercurrents drawn from pagan ritual, medieval symbolism, and speculative fiction. “The Golem Rises” continues this mythology-heavy approach through a body of work that reframes motherhood not as passive nurture, but as something unruly, protective, and politically charged.

At the center of the exhibition is a sprawling ceramic frieze inspired by the legend of the Golem, the clay figure from Jewish folklore brought to life as both protector and potential threat. Korda entwines this story with the medieval figure of the woodwose—a wild humanoid traditionally cast as monstrous or uncivilized. Across the gallery, ceramic lamps shaped like primal maternal figures flash the word “Mother” in Morse code, oscillating between beacon, warning signal, and absurdist joke. The medium of clay fits with Korda’s themes: unstable, bodily, and alive with transformative possibility.

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