At MoMA's sculpture garden, Carmen Herrera and Alexander Calder inspire Michael Kors's Spring 2027 show. https://ift.tt/FbKCQfB

Designer Michael Kors staged his spring/summer 2027 collection Friday morning in the Museum of Modern Art’s sculpture garden, building the show around what he called “the fine art of fashion.”

Kors told Reuters he was drawn to "the tension of something sculptural with something very crisp," citing Carmen Herrera, Alexander Calder, and Ellsworth Kelly as touchstones for the collection.

The collection nodded to these artists through blocks of saturated color, graphic contrasts, and sculptural silhouettes. Asymmetric dresses in primary red, yellow, and black appeared throughout, along with mod,1960s-inflected silhouettes such as a micro skirt suit with a Peter Pan collar in bright green. Kors also embraced thin black-and-white stripes, offering an Op Art . Accessories leaned sculptural, with bags suspended from silver hoops, leather coin purses doubling as layered necklaces, oversize bauble rings, and beehive-style sunglasses.

The palette stayed predominantly black and white, punctuated by moments of red, green, and yellow. "It's New York," Kors said of the Piet Mondrian-like palette. As the show closed, Harry Nilsson's “I Guess the Lord Must Be in New York City” played through the garden. Guests included Gabrielle Union-Wade, Grace Van Patten, and Lea Michele.

In a review for The Impression, critic Mackenzie Richard Zuckerman framed the collection as "not reinvention so much as recomposition," describing how Kors took his most familiar garments—coat, trouser, and blazer—and subjected them to “a subtle but meaningful disturbance” drawn from Herrera, Calder, and Kelly.

Kors has previously staged runway shows at cultural institutions. For instance, his spring 2026 show took place at the Metropolitan Opera House, and marked his brand's 45th anniversary. The designer has also cited early visits to Andy Warhol's Studio 54 as a formative influence.

from Artsy News https://ift.tt/n8MYEWF

Brooklyn Gallerist Tanya Weddemire Brings a Bold New Vision to The Armory Show https://ift.tt/S4J8I0h

After Tanya Weddemire Gallery sold two paintings by Nigerian-born artist Austin Uzor to the esteemed Clark Collection at EXPO Chicago this year, one of the first things the founder Weddemire did was call the artist.

The works, HIBISCUS and LAND DEVOTION V (both 2026), were entering a U.S.-based collection that also owns works by artists including El Anatsui, Zanele Muholi, Amy Sherald, and Kerry James Marshall. For Weddemire, telling Uzor what had sold, for how much, and to whom was fundamental to her view of how a gallery should operate. That meant a lot to Uzor.

“Transparency is something that I stand 10 toes down on,” Weddemire told Artsy. “One of the reasons why I started this gallery was that I heard from many artists that they were never being paid by their galleries. And I said, ‘How could someone take someone else’s work and not pay them for it?’” For her, that transparency is “an extension of stewardship.”

That philosophy—part stewardship, part market strategy—has shaped how Weddemire has built the gallery since opening it four years ago. Her approach combines transparency with a close attention to the cultural contexts of the artists she works with, many of whom explore questions of migration, identity, and the African diaspora.

Next week, the gallery will make its debut at The Armory Show, where this year’s Caribbean focus offers a particularly fitting context. Its booth will feature a duo presentation of Nigerian-born Uzor and Jamaican-born O’Neil Scott, whose works approach migration, identity, and memory from different points within the Black diaspora. For Weddemire, the presentation brings together many of the ideas that have guided the gallery from the beginning: cultural fluency, careful career-building, and an effort to connect artists’ individual histories with broader audiences and collectors.

Building a different gallery model

REVIVAL , 2026
Kaylyn Webster
Tanya Weddemire Gallery

Weddemire founded the gallery in 2022 after spending around 25 years working in luxury retail and wholesale. She had studied art and design at the University of Pennsylvania and remained interested in art throughout her career. But she was increasingly struck by what she saw as the underrepresentation and misunderstanding of artists of color, as well as stories from artists about opaque gallery practices.

“Art has always been something I’m curious about,” she said. “I wanted to make sure that I did something that I knew I had enough knowledge on [and] I could have a solution [for].”

She also wanted to make the strength of the strong collector base within the African diaspora more visible and help preserve stories she believed were culturally significant. She believed her experiences would be useful in the art world, so she left to start her gallery in 2022. Today, the gallery represents Scott, Lamar Bailey, Moses Salihou, Candice Tavares, and Kaylyn Webster, and has a working agreement with Uzor. Across their practices, questions of identity, heritage, and Black narratives recur.

SHOWER ME WITH YOUR LOVE, 2026
Candice Tavares
Tanya Weddemire Gallery

Weddemire’s years in luxury also inform the gallery’s behind-the-scenes mechanics. She and her team study pricing, collector behavior, sales data, research, and budgets to understand who is responding to an artist’s work and to make decisions about how that work is positioned in the market.

At the same time, she develops longer-term strategies around each artist’s trajectory, considering their goals, themes, and ambitions when deciding which fairs and other contexts might best serve their work.

Cultural fluency as strategy

Cultural fluency is equally central to that approach. Weddemire was born in Montego Bay, Jamaica, where she lived until moving to New York at age 11. She believes her experience as a Jamaican immigrant gives her another point of connection with artists whose work emerges from migration, diaspora, and Black identity.

This familiarity often crosses boundaries. At EXPO Chicago, Uzor presented CONFLICTING SPACES: LETTERS WITHOUT RETURN ADDRESSES (2026), an installation incorporating a corner of a house with a zinc roof. Although the work emerged from a Nigerian experience, Weddemire recognized something familiar in it: She had grown up seeing the same kind of roofing in Jamaica.

For her, those points of recognition matter when speaking with collectors about an artist’s materials, imagery, and cultural references. “I can translate the information on where their work is coming from to the collector [on] material, composition, color, style, [and] narrative, which is where I feel that I have made that connection,” she said.

Those overlaps between individual histories and broader diasporic experiences are central to the gallery’s Armory Show presentation. Scott explores memory and migration through his experiences of Jamaican and American culture in artworks such as SUNDAY TO SUNDAY (2026). Uzor, meanwhile, approaches migration and displacement through a Nigerian lens, exploring the psychological and physical experience of occupying spaces that may no longer feel like home.

A broader sense of stewardship

I'LL BE ALWAYS WITH YOU, 2025
Moses Salihou
Tanya Weddemire Gallery

TAKE THE SHOT, 2026
Lamar Bailey
Tanya Weddemire Gallery

For Weddemire, these themes are also personal. When Hurricane Melissa brought catastrophic destruction to Jamaica in October 2025, she organized a donation drive and an exhibition in Los Angeles, with proceeds benefiting people affected by the storm.

“I grew up with a grandmother who I saw do everything in the community and share with the people we lived amongst. And so that’s ingrained in my DNA, and also my mom and my family,” she said. “It’s a very high responsibility for not only my personal cultural roots but the cultural roots of every single person within the gallery.”

OUT HERE , 2026
Brooke Fierce Bronner
Tanya Weddemire Gallery

Four years after opening the gallery, Weddemire wants its growth to remain as deliberate as its beginnings. She hopes younger people considering careers in the arts might see in it another model for what a gallery can be.

“What I would like people to pay attention to with the gallery is how intentional we are and where we’re going,” she said. “[I want] young people who are thinking about a career in the art space [to] look at my gallery and say, ‘You know what? This truly inspired me to take art in a different direction [from the norm].’”

from Artsy News https://ift.tt/gDkA0jr

4 Contemporary Artists Inspired by the Bayeux Tapestry https://ift.tt/ctCBm9a

In one of the most anticipated cultural moments of the year, the Bayeux Tapestry went on view at the British Museum this week. The event marks the first time the roughly 950-year-old embroidered linen cloth has been displayed in England. The work will hang at the museum through July 2027.

The tapestry, which was likely commissioned for display at Bayeux Cathedral in Normandy, France, is one of the most significant objects in English visual history; the nearly 230-foot-long work depicts the events leading up to the Norman Conquest of England in 1066. It encompasses 58 detailed and emotive scenes, including galloping horses, burning ships, and the death of King Harold II at Hastings. The tapestry is believed to have been stitched by women embroiderers in Canterbury, England, before heading to France. It typically hangs at the Bayeux Museum in Normandy, and the artwork’s historic loan to England was a years-long collaboration that entailed an over £1.2 million ($1.6 million) transport bill. The public response to the loan has been overwhelming, with the rush for ticket sales even crashing the British Museum’s website.

While the Bayeux Tapestry is inspiring a new generation, artists have long treated it less as a relic to admire than a structure to borrow from and reimagine. Contemporary artists, from David Hockney to Hélène Delprat, have been drawn to the saga, the structure, and the craftsmanship of the tapestry.

Below, here’s a closer look at four contemporary artists who have been inspired by the tapestry.

David Hockney

David Hockney spent years contemplating the Bayeux Tapestry. The British artist settled in Normandy in 2019 and quickly became fascinated by the tapestry’s unfolding scenes. He soon resolved to build a large-scale narrative of his own. Confined to his house during the COVID lockdowns, Hockney spent months painting the arrival of spring on an iPad, eventually assembling the work into A Year in Normandie, a continuous frieze over 300 feet long, first shown at the Musée de l’Orangerie in Paris in the fall of 2021.

Then in 2022, the Bayeux Museum staged a face-à-face, hanging half-scale reproductions of Hockney’s frieze alongside the tapestry itself. As curator Antoine Verney said in a statement, despite their very different techniques, “both freeze-frame a conquest: that of a Norman duke in England in the 11th century for one, and that of nature in Normandy and its constant renewal…for the other.”

Hélène Delprat

The Bayeux Tapestry’s final scenes were unfortunately lost long ago. Scholars believe they likely show William the Conqueror’s coronation, which took place at Westminster Abbey on December 25, 1066. To mark the millennium of William’s birth, the Normandy region ran a competition inviting a contemporary artist to imagine what came next. French artist Hélène Delprat won the commission, and her design is now being woven into a 25-square-meter panel by the Aubusson workshop Atelier Tapisserie Guillot. The French multidisciplinary artist is known for work spanning painting, video, and theater, drawing on burlesque, ancient mythology, and history.

“This is neither a restoration nor a reconstruction,” the artist told Le Figaro in 2024. “I would nevertheless use my vocabulary to maintain a link with Bayeux embroidery. What I am proposing would evoke the coronation scene of William the Conqueror. The Bayeux embroidery itself is never literal: it does not describe, it does not illustrate. It constantly invents. It speaks. It declaims.”

The tapestry will be unveiled in March 2027 before traveling to Westminster Abbey and the Château de Falaise, William the Conqueror’s birthplace.

Hurvin Anderson

In recent years, tapestry has enojoyed a moment of vogue. Last year, the Museum of Modern Art in New York opened “Woven Histories: Textiles and Modern Abstraction,” showcasing nearly 150 modern and contemporary woven works that explored the limits of abstraction. Right now, the Fabric Workshop and Museum in Philadelphia is hosting “You Stretched Diagonally Across It: Contemporary Tapestry,” an exhibition of tapestries by 25 contemporary artists.

But the art form has long had a home at Edinburgh’s Dovecot Studios: Britain’s longest-running tapestry workshop, founded in 1912, often invites contemporary artists to collaborate on large-scale tapestries

This fall, London’s Guildhall Art Gallery will open “Beyond Bayeux: Tapestry Now,” an exhibition of more than 20 tapestries woven at Dovecot over the years. The star of the show is a new Hurvin Anderson tapestry marking the 600th anniversary of Oxford’s Lincoln College, where it will be permanently installed. The nearly 20-foot-long piece depicts the college’s famed dining hall. It took five Dovecot weavers seven months to translate the image from one of the Turner Prize nominee’s paintings. While the subject matter is unique, Anderson’s continuous narrative tapestry takes aspects of its long, processional format from the Bayeux Tapestry.

The exhibition also includes Rachel Maclean’s Goo Gaa (2024), which reworks her Rococo-inflected digital imagery into thread, and Farshid Moussavi’s Garden Carpet, made for V&A Dundee in 2025, which draws on Persian textile heritage to populate a paradise scene with Scottish wildlife.

Mia Hansson

Weaving, embroidery, and other textile traditions have often been considered women’s craft work, completed anonymously by skilled artisans. Today, in that same tradition, one of the artists most inspired by the Bayeux Tapestry is not a blue-chip name but a home embroiderer in Cambridgeshire, England. Mia Hansson, who identifies as a textile artist and illustrator, has spent nearly a decade hand-stitching a full-scale, stitch-by-stitch replica of the Bayeux Tapestry. She began the project in 2016 simply because, she told the BBC in 2025, she “needed a project [she] couldn't finish in a hurry.”

Interestingly, Hansson isn’t the first artist to take up this task. In 1879, embroiderer Elizabeth Wardle founded the Leek Embroidery Society in Staffordshire, England. After visiting Bayeux in 1885, Wardle resolved that England should have a copy of its own, and organized 35 needleworkers to stitch a full-size replica. They completed the work the following year. That Victorian version now hangs at Reading Museum in the U.K., where it’s known as Britain’s Bayeux Tapestry—a fitting testament to just how long this particular tapestry has been inspiring artists and artisans to pick up a needle and start again.

from Artsy News https://ift.tt/x3cwJGe

The Strokes frontman Julian Casablancas to curate soundscapes for art exhibition featuring Picasso and Warhol. https://ift.tt/0CDP8Y6

Julian Casablancas, lead singer of The Strokes and The Voidz, will be the sound curator for “The Singapore Masters Show 2026,” an exhibition at Opera Gallery. The exhibition will bring together 30 works by artists including Pablo Picasso, Andy Warhol, Willem de Kooning, Marc Chagall, and Banksy. The show is on view October 2nd through November 1st at the gallery’s Singapore space.

Organized around four thematic chapters—the Classical Recital Room, Jazz Club, Recording Studio, and The Stage—the exhibition frames the artworks within the broader cultural and sonic environments that shaped their making, rather than presenting them in isolation. Casablancas will produce a series of playlists responding to each chapter. Rather than pairing specific tracks with specific artworks, his selections are intended to evoke the wider creative exchanges and atmospheres of different artistic generations.

“Art has always existed within a larger cultural landscape, and music is an important part of that landscape,” said Stéphane Le Pelletier, director of Opera Gallery Singapore, in a statement. “Julian brings a distinctive perspective to the exhibition, allowing us to explore these connections from another point of view while keeping the artworks at the center.”

Casablancas rose to prominence as frontman of The Strokes, whose 2001 debut album, Is This It, is widely regarded as one of the defining rock records of its era. Beyond the band, he has collaborated with Daft Punk, Charli XCX, and Pharrell, founded the independent label Cult Records, and continues to record with his other band, The Voidz. He has also been active in political organizing and hosted the YouTube program SOS Earth Is a Mess.

Founded in Singapore in 1994, Opera Gallery has grown to 14 locations worldwide, including London, Paris, New York, and Madrid, under the direction of founder Gilles Dyan. The gallery specializes in modern, post-war, and contemporary art, representing artists including Ron Arad, Manolo Valdés, and Anselm Reyle, alongside emerging artists such as Andy Denzler, Anthony James, and Gustavo Nazareno.

from Artsy News https://ift.tt/iXQetl2

The 5 Best Booths at Tokyo Gendai 2026 https://ift.tt/lbrSDim

Despite persistent heavy rain in Tokyo, the preview for Tokyo Gendai 2026 opened yesterday (September 10th) to a robust crowd. Some 69 galleries are taking part in the fourth edition of the fair, which returns to the PACIFICO in Yokohama.

Regional collectors were out in force, particularly from Southeast Asia, including the Philippines and Singapore, as well as Hong Kong and Taiwan. Many international collectors, particularly those traveling from farther afield such as India and the United States, came directly from South Korea following Seoul Art Week and the Gwangju Biennale. Others flew in from Europe specifically for the fair.

Nadine van den Bosch, director of the Collectors’ Club in the Netherlands, told Artsy that the group had organized a delegation of more than 10 European collectors to visit Tokyo, with many arriving with an empty suitcase in anticipation of purchases.

Despite economic turbulence in Japan this year—underscored by joint currency interventions by Japanese and U.S. monetary authorities to stabilize the yen—many exhibitors continue to be drawn to the market by Japan’s formidable institutional ecosystem and the active international footprint of its collector base. “Japanese collectors are always present at the fairs we attend globally, making them an essential component of the international collecting community,” said Alexander Gabriel Pirinoli, private sales representative at TAEX. Pirinoli also pointed to the deep global integration of Japanese institutions, which consistently stage internationally resonant exhibitions across the country.

“Given the broader global economic climate, collectors are naturally being more cautious,” noted Elisa Uematsu, a representative of Taka Ishii Gallery. “However, we’ve found that international collectors remain eager to visit Japan, as many deeply appreciate Japanese culture. Combined with a weak yen, presenting emerging Japanese artists at accessible price points makes investing in younger talent feel like a lower-risk proposition.”

Tokyo Gendai previously shifted its dates from July to September to align with Seoul Art Week in a bid to capture cross-regional collector traffic. While that strategy proved effective, the fair has now announced another major evolution: relocating from Yokohama to central Tokyo’s Ariake GYM-EX and moving its calendar to November next year to coincide directly with Art Week Tokyo. Originally built as a gymnastics arena for the Tokyo 2020 Summer Olympics, Ariake GYM-EX has since been redeveloped by the Tokyo Metropolitan Government into a dedicated exhibition hall.

The fair’s co-founder Magnus Renfrew explained that the team had long been searching for the right venue in central Tokyo: “Once Ariake GYM-EX became available following its renovation, we immediately entered negotiations to secure the dates. This move allows Tokyo Gendai to further anchor a singularly compelling moment for Japan’s cultural scene in a month brimming with local events, as the country’s creative landscape comes alive for domestic and international audiences alike.”

Here are Artsy’s five best booths from the fair.

TAEX

Booth T02

With works by Marina Abramović, Kevin Abosch, Francesco D’Isa, Ryan Koopmans, and Alice Wexell

Digital gallery TAEX makes its Tokyo Gendai debut with a group presentation spanning digital performance, synthetic photography, AI-generated imagery, and computational world-building by artists including Marina Abramović, Kevin Abosch, Francesco D’Isa, and Ryan Koopmans and Alice Wexell.

The centerpieces of the booth include Slow Walking (2026), a limited-edition monumental LED installation by Abramović. The piece forms part of a curated series reimagined by the artist, drawing on her 55-year career as the “godmother of performance art.” In the work, Abramović’s digital avatar moves at a deliberate, unhurried pace across the screen, turning the simple act of walking into a meditative ritual of endurance and heightened awareness.

Feeling Energy #3, 2026
Marina Abramović
TAEX

Slow Walking, 2026
Marina Abramović
TAEX

Oranda, 2026
Kevin Abosch
TAEX

Natural Order, 2025
Ryan Koopmans and Alice Wexell, Alice Wexell
TAEX

Foils 1, 2026
Francesco D'Isa
TAEX

Foils 2, 2026
Francesco D'Isa
TAEX

Pirinoli of TAEX noted that placing Abramović at the center of their Tokyo debut was a natural choice: as a foundational figure in performance art who has visited Japan frequently and received multiple accolades in the country, her work commands deep respect among Japanese audiences. TAEX offers Abramović’s digital works between $10,000 and $65,000, with pieces by other gallery artists priced from $8,000 to $50,000.

Form Gallery

Booth H13

With works by Ksenia Malafeeva

First-time fair participant Form Gallery presents a solo booth featuring Ksenia Malafeeva’s ongoing photographic project, “Ordinary Life.” In this series, Malafeeva turns her camera toward everyday domestic scenes and objects, testing the boundaries of perception. In one series, close-up compositions of ceramic bowls are rendered in hues that match their backgrounds exactly, flattening form and space into near-metaphysical abstraction.

Offered at price points ranging from €2,000 ($2,320) to €16,000 ($18,564), Malafeeva’s work carries a subtle visual language that resonates locally. Gallery director Dimitri Bogachuk noted that during past fair presentations at photo basel and Paris Photo, collectors frequently associated the quiet serenity of Malafeeva’s compositions with Japanese aesthetics, making a Tokyo solo debut an intuitive next step.

Art of Nature Contemporary

Booths S04 and H13

With works by Wu Guanzhen and Qin Feng

Hong Kong–based gallery Art of Nature Contemporary presents dual solo booths featuring the work of Chinese artists Wu Guanzhen and Qin Feng.

A standout is Qin’s practice, which is featured in the fair’s Sato (“Meadow”) sector—a dedicated platform for site-specific installations and live performances. Subverting the traditional, horizontal viewing method of Chinese scroll painting, Qin’s installation features a massive ink scroll suspended overhead, anchored by dozens of calligraphic paper fans arrayed across the floor. Together, they form a sweeping, continuous ink line that moves dynamically through the fair’s architecture.

Pragmatist Philosophy V , 2016
Qin Feng 秦风
Art of Nature Contemporary

慾望風景 0100 Series Desire Scenery 0100, 2011
Qin Feng 秦风
Art of Nature Contemporary

Round Sky and Square Earth Series 0637 天圓地方系列0637, 2021
Qin Feng 秦风
Art of Nature Contemporary

Round Sky and Square Earth Series 0612 天圓地方系列0612, 2021
Qin Feng 秦风
Art of Nature Contemporary

Desire Scenery Series 2-m-3-4 欲望風景系列 2-m-3-4, 2016
Qin Feng 秦风
Art of Nature Contemporary

Violet and Flower-26.08.01 紫色和花-26.08.01, 2026
Wu GuanZhen 吳觀真
Art of Nature Contemporary

Violet and Flower-26.08.02 紫色和花-26.08.01, 2026
Wu GuanZhen 吳觀真
Art of Nature Contemporary

That Water-26.08.02 那水-26.08.02, 2026
Wu GuanZhen 吳觀真
Art of Nature Contemporary

That Water-26.08.01 那水-26.08.01, 2026
Wu GuanZhen 吳觀真
Art of Nature Contemporary

Desire Scenery Series 0417 欲望風景系列0417, 2011
Qin Feng 秦风
Art of Nature Contemporary

Gallery director Horace Lam noted that Qin’s work has garnered a strong following among Japanese collectors encountered during Hong Kong art fairs. At the booth, the individual hand fans are priced at $3,700 each, while Qin’s large-scale ink paintings range from $16,000 to $174,200.

The LA BIBI Gallery

Booth: H05

With works by Fátima de Juan and Daniel Ferstl

The visual vocabulary of kawaii and playful pop iconography remains a dominant thread across Japanese culture. At Spain- and Mexico-based LA BIBI Gallery’s booth, this aesthetic is explored through a dialogue between Fátima de Juan and Daniel Ferstl.

In de Juan’s paintings, familiar motifs—animals, vibrant flora, and stylized female figures—are reimagined through the lens of female empowerment. Raised in a conservative family in Mallorca, Spain, she first established her artistic voice through street art, carving out a space in a predominantly male graffiti scene before transitioning her practice to canvas.

Austrian artist Daniel Ferstl utilizes intricate embroidery to reference pop cultural iconography, pulling from 1970s cult cinema, contemporary video games, and internet memes. Ferstl uses these childhood visual anchors to explore the philosophical concept of “cruel optimism”—the lingering nostalgia for childhood imagery that promises comfort from an unrecoverable past. Works at the booth are priced between €2,000 ($2,320) and €15,000 ($17,405).

W-Galería

Booth: H16

With works by Max Gómez Canle

Participating in Tokyo Gendai for the first time, W-Galería dedicated its entire booth to a solo presentation by Argentine artist Max Gómez Canle, featuring a selection of recent works ranging from a monumental three-meter painting to several installations executed directly on stone and granite.

“We decided to go big in terms of exposure for our first time,” said Arístides González-Vigil, international director of the gallery. Although based in Buenos Aires, Gómez Canle has visited Japan on multiple occasions and maintains a strong artistic connection with Asia. González-Vigil noted that Japan’s deep appreciation for artisan craftsmanship naturally resonated with the artist’s technique. Built up through countless meticulous layers of pigment and incorporating raw materials like granite, each surface carries a tangible depth of texture and time.

Gómez Canle’s compositions draw on canonical Latin American geometric abstraction and European pictorial traditions while integrating references to contemporary visual culture, including video games and emojis. Suspended between the familiar and the fantastic, his landscapes on display create worlds where disparate historical periods and geographies coexist—offering a singular visual language rooted in a sensibility that challenges conventional notions of time and space. Works at the booth are priced between $9,800 and $52,000.

from Artsy News https://ift.tt/YvuZiG5

7 Must-See Shows at Madrid Gallery Weekend 2026 https://ift.tt/aQLShPi

Sin titulo (De la serie: Marrón Barroco), 2026
La Chola Poblete
Travesia Cuatro

In early September, Madrid’s gallerists and collectors come back to life after a scorching summer lull. Apertura (September 10th to 13th), the city’s gallery weekend, marks the start of the new season as approximately 60 participants collectively launch their autumn shows.

Apertura opens during a time of transition for Madrid’s gallery scene. Long-standing players like Juana de Aizpuru, Helga de Alvear, and Marlborough recently closed, while a new generation including Río y Meñaka, Bowman Hal, Enhorabuena, and Gaby Vera Fine Arts have arrived.

Descending Soaring Infinite Bliss Soul Glyph - Mesmerizing Mesh #170, 2023
Haegue Yang
Prats Nogueras Blanchard

Mini Monumento del Heredero, 2026
Simon Vega
Albarrán Bourdais

“Madrid has been receiving new types of inhabitants, which has also made galleries grow,” says Pablo Flórez, president of the gallery association Arte Madrid and director of Galería Ehrhardt Flórez. Most significantly, Latin American collectors from countries like Venezuela and Mexico have brought “a high level of acquisition” and generated “a new kind of collecting.”

Madrid galleries have also confronted significant challenges: This year, many protested and took strike action over Spain’s 21 percent VAT on art sales (introduced under the conservative Partido Popular in 2012), which puts them at a disadvantage against counterparts in EU countries with lower art taxes. In a current political climate that Flórez describes as “polarized and tense,” Spanish gallerists may hope that whoever wins next year’s election will also offer additional support for the arts.

After all, galleries are critical to Madrid’s cultural growth. “Audiences have realized that galleries are no longer just places to buy art,” says Flórez, “but are part of the cultural fabric of the city.”

Here are the seven must-see shows of Apertura Madrid Gallery Weekend:

José Bedia

“Diálogos en el desierto”

El Apartamento

Through Oct.31

Havana-born José Bedia emerged among a revolutionary generation of Cuban artists whose 1981 exhibition “Volumen Uno” at the Centro de Arte Internacional de La Habana broke the mold by showing politically charged work. Since then, anthropological research has driven Bedia, whose practice involves fieldwork into artistic and spiritual traditions of Indigenous cultures in the Caribbean, Latin America, and Africa. El Apartamento’s Madrid space is showing Bedia’s latest series, which explores the violence, mysticism, love, heritage, and nature which gallerist Luis Sicre says can be read as “representative” of Latin America.

Bedia is exhibiting over 30 paintings of mythic, richly colored landscapes with black silhouettes. Manifestación de Olokúm (2026) depicts a Yoruba deity of the ocean, while in Quema de Teocalis (2026), figures on horseback are dwarfed by giant Mesoamerican pyramids engulfed in flames. In Diálogos en el desierto (2026), a man and lion appear in dialogue.

Bedia created another series of paintings on blue cloth and jute from Mali, exemplifying the artist’s exploration of Afro-Cuban traditions: Aquella señal (2026) and Pide un deseo (2026) show mermaid-like beings emerging from water, while Toda esperanza (2026) depicts a human figure following a bird in flight.

Joël Andrianomearisoa

“I Have No Regret For The Past And This Is Not The End Of The World”

Sabrina Amrani

Through Nov. 7

Joël Andrianomearisoa, one of the leading artistic voices of Madagascar, explores language and the collective memories embedded in craft traditions. He represented his native island at the 2019 Venice Biennale and co-founded Hakanto Contemporary in Antananarivo, Madagascar, the following year.

This extensive survey traces three decades of the multidisciplinary artist’s practice, which earned him a place on this year’s Prix Marcel Duchamp shortlist (the award is for an artist working in France; Andrianomearisoa divides his time between there and Madagascar). The earliest, untitled pieces from 1996, as well as the most recent, are ink works on paper showing either the Latin-script alphabet or abstract patterns.

The color black pervades Andrianomearisoa’s work in all media. The wall piece La Guerre des Boutons I (2009) features black buttons sewn onto black fabric, After Time Desires (2017) comprises strips of torn black cloth, and the Labyrinth of Passions sculptures (2013)—inspired by Oscar Wilde’s 1902 prison letter De Profundis—is made of black silk paper and resembles pages of a book. Striking exceptions include Les Horizons Complexes (de l’Amour et d’une romance) II (2018), a wall piece made of dyed fabric that resembles a sunset. Gallerist Sabrina Amrani says a trip to India, where the artist viewed vibrant textiles, inspired him to work with color and to contemplate Madagascar’s complex historic links with South Asia.

Miguel Benlloch

“Todavía”

The Ryder

Through Oct. 31

The late Granada, Spain-born artist and activist Miguel Benlloch has earned late-breaking appreciation following a recent retrospective at the Andalusian Centre for Contemporary Art (CAAC) in Seville, Spain; his work questions the gender binary and other hegemonic social structures in a way that feels strikingly contemporary. From his involvement in the Andalusian Homosexual Liberation Front to his opposition to Spain’s NATO membership, Benlloch—who died in 2018—addressed the pressing issues of his time through performance, text-based work, and conceptual art.

The Ryder is displaying video and photography that captured some of Benlloch’s most striking performance pieces. They include Tengo Tiempo (1994), in which the artist sheds clothing to symbolically slip away from the precarious identities that culture inscribes on us, and DERERUMNATURA (2017), which links bodily illness with capitalism, neoliberalism, and globalization.

Text-based works that further attest to Benlloch’s politically dissident voice. They include Canario (1993), a poem protesting the imminent U.S. invasion of Haiti (which took place the following year), and the pink-and-blue fabric flag Bandera Transexual (2010). Piedra Palestina (1993) is a silkscreen and wallpaper piece inspired by Palestine’s first Intifada (Uprising) against Israeli military occupation in 1987 to 1993.

Simón Vega

“Tiempos Cíclicos / Futuros Pasados”

Albarrán Bourdais

Through Oct. 17

Pre-Hispanic monoliths meet contemporary forms of power and propaganda in the work of Salvadoran artist Simón Vega. The artist uses junkyard debris in his new sculptures and installations, which reinterpret ancient monuments as they interrogate imperialism, corporate greed, digital surveillance, and other present-day phenomena in Central America.

Works like Estela del Gobernante S (2026) and Mini Monumento del Heredero (2026) consist of disused household and industrial materials—including kitchen utensils and fragments from washing and ventilation machines—piled into phallic structures that reimagine stelae from ancient Mayan civilizations. Zoomorfo (2026) is an immersive installation made of stacks of wooden pallets. Its structure is inspired by zoomorphs, massive granite sculptures found primarily in present-day Guatemala, which combine human and animal features. Another textile sculpture references the Mayan serpent deity Kukulkán with its long, fabric body and a head made of discarded rubber from shoes and slippers. The artist also draws from the ceremonial combat and ball games of ancient Mesoamerican civilizations with works like Altar Solar (2026) and Marcador de pelota (2026), through which he considers wider notions of spectacle, rivalry, and hierarchy.

Iman Issa

“A Game, or So You May Think”

carlier | gebauer

Through Nov. 14

Animal Masks for Tribunal Scene, 2022
Iman Issa
carlier | gebauer

Berlin-born carlier | gebauer, which has represented Iman Issa for over a decade, now presents the artist’s first Madrid show. It features key pieces from ongoing bodies of work that manipulate viewers’ relationship to history and meaning.

Self Portrait (Self as Hannah Arendt) (2020) and Self Portrait (Self as Georges Henein) (2021) are wall-mounted sculptures that resemble faceless heads. Their titles and wall texts (which form part of the artwork) blur the artist’s own identity with those of historical figures. These clinical-looking, white oblongs contrast with the bold colors of Animal Masks for Tribunal Scene (2022), an installation of 3D-printed masks that might evoke various beasts with their suggestions of horns and ears but are otherwise abstract and minimalistic.

Other works are inspired by historical artifacts. Heritage Studies #49 (2025), for example, is a long, pointed copper pin on a slanting white plinth, which the artist made for a solo show that ran at Lenbachhaus in Munich until April. The accompanying text for Heritage Studies #46 (2023)—which appeared in Issa’s Art Institute of Chicago exhibition last year—says the lacquered aluminum structure is inspired by a shrine in the Palestinian village of Deir Ghassaneh.

Agnieszka Kurant, Hito Steyerl, Haegue Yang

“Feral Agency”

Prats Nogueras Blanchard

Through Nov. 14

Nonorganic Life 6, 2025
Agnieszka Kurant
Prats Nogueras Blanchard

A new group show in Prats Nogueras Blanchard’s Madrid space explores how humans’ sense of agency is subject to wider systems of knowledge and control. German filmmaker Hito Steyerl explores how digital environments impact our future; her video installation Power Plants (2019)—originally created for a 2019 solo exhibition at London’s Serpentine Galleries—features images of flora generated by an AI model often used to forecast future trends and behavior. New York–based Agnieszka Kurant, who often collaborates with scientists to produce speculative works about non-human intelligence, presents her recent piece Unthoughtforms (2026), a crystalline sculpture crafted by passing electric currents and sound waves through copper sulfate solution. Also on view is her colorful painting Nonorganic Life 6 (2025), made of metal salt crystals on aluminum plates. Haegue Yang, living between Seoul and Berlin, imbues industrially manufactured objects with sensory life: Her futuristic, wood-and-stainless-steel chandelier Mesmerizing Pagoda Lantern - Carbonous Convulsion Ultramundane Flowers (2024) is animated by an arrangement of flowers made of hanji paper, a frequent material in Korean Buddhist rituals.

La Chola Poblete

“Marrón Barroco”

Travesía Cuatro

Through Nov. 7

Sin título, 2026
La Chola Poblete
Travesia Cuatro

Sin título, 2026
La Chola Poblete
Travesia Cuatro

La Chola Poblete, who received special mention from the Venice Biennale’s awards jury in 2024, is known for vivid paintings, photographs, and drawings. Her work critiques contemporary culture, identity, and political discourse through a queer, decolonial lens. The trans Argentine artist often deliberately overcrowds her compositions, which feature busy arrangements of Andean iconography and pop culture references.

Poblete’s latest paintings partly draw from the Latin American baroque, in which European colonial aesthetics blended with Indigenous and African traditions in the 17th and 18th centuries. Figures with braided hair also often appear in Poblete’s work to denounce the stereotyping and exoticization of Indigenous people: one such figure lies naked in Sin título (2026) surrounded by Che Guevara’s face, the Palestinian flag, and the Grindr logo, among other faces, figures, and patterns. Two new, untitled paintings depict a pair of collage-like figures in confrontation: one is a spectral, gender-ambiguous creature while the other is part of Poblete’s ongoing study of “cholas” (women of mixed European and Indigenous heritage). The gallery show coincides with Poblete’s exhibition at Madrid’s La Casa Encendida, “Continentes como semillas,” which she shares with flamenco artist Niño de Elche and Pedro G. Romero to explore ideas of appropriation and erasure across continents.

from Artsy News https://ift.tt/XNQHJ21