Atlanta Art Fair’s Lively Debut Positions the City as a Rising Art Hub https://ift.tt/VszqJ6Q

Long a cornerstone of the music and film industries, Atlanta has often been overlooked when it comes to its place in the art world. But in recent years, its position has been rapidly ascending thanks to a thriving artistic community, as the VIP day of the inaugural Atlanta Art Fair demonstrated on October 3rd.

“Atlanta is arguably the home to the kindest people—I’ve never felt more welcome, and so many folks over the last years have been so willing to sit down with me and talk to me about the goals of the community,” said Kelly Freeman, the fair’s director, who regularly traveled to Atlanta for the past two years in preparation for the fair. “It all just comes together with the ability to create a centralized gathering space for what the city already has going for it.”

Atlanta’s art scene is steeped in history—Radcliffe Bailey, Lauren Quin, and Cosmo Whyte are among the leading artists who have called it home over the years—but the arrival of the city’s first commercial art fair marks a new chapter. And with a buzzy arts ecosystem that spans institutional powerhouses like the High Museum of Art to a robust and fast-growing gallery landscape, it arrives at an apt time.

The aim of the Atlanta Art Fair, then, which takes place at Pullman Yards until October 6th, is to showcase this dynamism to visitors and locals alike while inviting other exhibitors to experience it for themselves.

A welcoming art fair

For the Best, 2024
June Edmonds
Luis De Jesus Los Angeles

Imagined Window 3, 2024
Kevin Yaun
Billis Williams Gallery

The inception of the fair can be traced back to 2019, when New York–based Art Market Productions (AMP)—known for fairs in Seattle and San Francisco—took note of Atlanta’s position as a rising star in the global art market. From the outset, it sought out leading local gallerists and curators, like Karen Comer Lowe and Lauren Jackson Harris, to ensure the fair reflected the community’s welcoming and inclusive spirit.

Atlanta Art Fair features 60 galleries, including more than 20 from around the city. A crucial goal of the fair has been to engage both collectors and galleries from Atlanta and outside the city about the American South. In many ways, it’s a place populated by people who aspire to collect, but don’t know where to start.

In the Presence of Something Rare and Ephemeral, 2024
Justin N Kim
Richard Levy Gallery

Eye on the Sparrow, 2024
Rahn Marion
Sheet Cake Gallery

“Local galleries have really decided to use this platform as a mechanism to engage with their collectors, engage with new collectors, and hopefully to have people from outside of the American South learn about who they are and what they do and the artists that they represent,” said Freeman. “I’m so honored that so many folks have decided to use this as a tool.”

After a champagne toast for happy hour, VIP guests descended on the renovated sugar factory in East Atlanta. Those walking to the bar to grab a glass of wine for the 5 p.m. opening encountered Jeffrey Gibson’s The Many Worlds (2024), a mobile of planetary spheres hovering above the bar, and Pam Longobardi’s environmentally charged installation Anxiety of Appetites (2020), made from ghost nets and ocean plastics.

Atlanta’s leading galleries take the spotlight

Carey in Full Sun, Farmington, GA, 1996
Mark Steinmetz
Jackson Fine Art

Other than the bar, the landing zones for many of the VIP guests were Atlanta’s foremost local galleries.

Jackson Fine Art—the city’s leading photography gallery—is one of them. Director Anna Walker Skillman, who acquired the gallery from Jane Jackson in 2003, said the gallery is now a “mecca for photography.” In line with this, its booth features work from leading photographers, such as Steve Schapiro, Sally Mann, Sheila Pree Bright, Mickalene Thomas, Nan Goldin, Rineke Dijkstra, and Alex Prager, with works ranging from $3,800 to $35,000.

One standout is the body of black-and-white photos from photographer Mark Steinmetz, many of which are taken across Atlanta and are priced at $4,000 each (unframed). “He’s the classical—if you’re a cinematographer or a filmmaker, you’re walking in to see his work,” said Skillman. “It’s the hardcore photographers.” Elsewhere, the gallery features several figurative mixed media paintings on wood panels from Shanequa Gay, priced between $16,500 and $18,500. But above all, Skillman expressed excitement seeing her Atlanta-based colleagues and collectors all together.

A Walk in the Park, 2023
Judy Pfaff
Johnson Lowe Gallery

“Atlanta is a really spread-out city,” said Skillman. “There’s a lot of dealers and galleries that have been working tirelessly for years to build [an] art community, and it’s gone up and down and up and down.…Atlanta has always needed a common place for us all to be and shine, and it was so great that Kelly [Freeman] and the art fair took the risk to do this.”

Nearby, Atlanta’s Johnson Lowe Gallery (previously named Bill Lowe Gallery) attracted a steady crowd from start to finish. On the exterior of the booth, the gallery showed massive wall-based resin sculptures that extend above the booth by British artist Judy Pfaff, priced at $25,000 each. The attention-grabbing works made the booth a pit stop for most visitors. Across the booth, Johnson Lowe Gallery showcased artists across its program, with works by Michael David, Yulia Pinkusevich, Sergio Suárez, and Fahamu Pecou priced between $4,000 and $55,000.

Donovan Johnson, who took the reins after founder Bill Lowe’s passing in 2021, sees the Atlanta Art Fair as a chance for galleries to put the vibrant arts community in the city on display for a broader audience. “Atlanta has always been an extremely multicultural and multigenerational arts community,” he said. “It’s just that the rest of the world is now catching up to what’s going on here.”

A nod to the tight-knit community, Johnson pointed to the booth of his neighbor, Hawkins HQ, run by Alexander Hawkins, who is also a gallery assistant at Johnson Lowe. The young gallerist champions a program that balances Canadian and American artists. His booth, adorned with dark curtains around the wall works, features five artists: Toronto’s Yan Wen Chang and Marni Mariott; and Atlanta’s Kole Nichols, Scott Keightley, and Sergio Suarez. Prices for works in the booth range from $2,750 to around $10,000.

At one of the busiest intersections of the fair during its VIP day was the booth of Alan Avery Art Company, the oldest commercial gallery in Atlanta, founded by Alan Avery in 1981. Taking up the space of three booths, it contains some of the fair’s only blue-chip works from heavy-hitters such as Keith Haring and Robert Rauschenberg, including an $80,000 tapestry by Rauschenberg. Alongside these works, Avery is showcasing some emerging talent from artists like Wole Languju and Craig Griffin, both of whom received attention from visitors throughout the night, particularly the artist’s expressive ink drawings.

Visiting galleries find a buzzy Atlanta audience

The Letter, 2024
Evita Tezeno
Luis De Jesus Los Angeles

Deja Vu, 2024
June Edmonds
Luis De Jesus Los Angeles

For the galleries from further afield, the buzz around Atlanta was cited as a key factor for their participation.

West Coast tastemaker Luis De Jesus Los Angeles is among them. Founder Luis De Jesus told Artsy that he felt inspired to join the fair after his Atlanta-based collectors encouraged him to check out the city. He was particularly encouraged to show the work of gallery artists Evita Tezeno, June Edmonds, and Melissa Huddleston. Prices for the works range from about $10,000 to $40,000. In the first few hours of the fair, De Jesus and co-owner Jay Wingate noticed just how eager new collectors were to learn.

“For so many people, this experience is brand new,” said De Jesus. “It is so interesting to see these new collectors, and from our conversations, it’s been very positive. There is something that can be grown existing here in this city—it’ll be good for the city, good for the culture, and once those people become bitten by the bug, that’s a great thing.”

Another Californian exhibitor, Rick Garzon of Residency Art Gallery, shared this optimism. “We’ve been trying to get here for a while because we know that Atlanta is on the verge of being one of the next booming art markets. Atlanta needs to be a hub for artists in the South,” he said.

For the gallery’s Atlanta debut, Residency Art Gallery presented a double exhibition of Atlanta-based painter Kirk Henriques and Los Angeles–based performance artist Autumn Breon. On the right side of the booth, Henriques’s paintings on fiberglass mesh, priced from $8,500 to $14,500, focus on the relationship between Black men and cars. Meanwhile, on the left side of the booth—arguably the most photographable of the fair—Breon creates an immersive experience of a salon designed with pink walls and a bright pink salon chair in the center. Her works include sculptures such as hair product jars for $250 each and inkjet prints of the artist with rollers curling her dyed-pink hair, each for $2,800.

[Five unidentified African American boys who worked as chimney sweeps, covered in soot and holding scrapers and brushes], 2023
Nikesha Breeze
Richard Levy Gallery

Anonymous African American Woman With Basket: 1855, 2020
Nikesha Breeze
Richard Levy Gallery

Similarly, Richard Levy of Richard Levy Gallery—traveling to Atlanta from Albuquerque, New Mexico—felt compelled to see what Atlanta had to offer because he’d “heard it’s a good market.” So, anticipating an eager collector base, the gallery pulled out all the stops, featuring artwork from household names such as Derrick Adams, Elizabeth Chiles, Jeffrey Gibson, Alex Katz, and Jennifer Lynch, among others.

The standout selections at the gallery are two massive works by Nikesha Breeze, priced at $35,000 and $42,000. These figurative works, depicting Black figures in greyscale amid wooden settings, are based on the few early daguerreotypes of Black individuals. “They were expensive to make, and so they hardly exist, but she’s trying to give these people, these anonymous people new life,” said Levy.

A bright future for the Atlanta art scene

Chevalier de Malte, 1958
Jean Cocteau
The Object Space

Psychic Garden (Golden Hour), 2023
Caroline Bullock
Spalding Nix Fine Art

Atlanta Art Fair is the city’s first commercial art fair, and by the mood among dealers and VIPs on its opening day—which reported some 3,500 visitors—it already feels like a welcome fixture in a crowded fall calendar. This is bolstered further by the third edition of Atlanta Art Week, which is running concurrently with a series of initiatives across the city to celebrate local visual art and culture.

As the city’s art scene steps into the spotlight with these events, Atlanta’s burgeoning presence as an art capital is only set to rise further. “Atlanta just shows up,” said Freeman. “When you attend events here, you see collectors and patrons—there’s no event too small for people to want to go to and celebrate their city. I think that that’s something that we could all really use a bit more of in the other places that we work as well.”

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Loewe and Studio Voltaire launch editions from Alvaro Barrington, Sheila Hicks, and more artists. https://ift.tt/mKVp67U

Studio Voltaire has collaborated with Loewe to unveil a series of limited-edition artworks by five artists: Alvaro Barrington, Sheila Hicks, Anthea Hamilton, Sanya Kantarovsky, and Ron Nagle. This collaboration commemorates Studio Voltaire’s 30th anniversary. The collection of works is set to be showcased at Casa Loewe London during the Frieze London, from October 9th to 13th, with proceeds supporting the nonprofit arts organization.

Barrington, a painter whose work often incorporates found materials like burlap and postcards, designed a leather-wrapped chain intended to be worn as a charm or jewelry. Barrington previously collaborated with Loewe for Salone del Mobile (2024), a lamp designed for the Loewe Art Collection.

Meanwhile, Hicks—known for her large-scale textile installations—created a leather pouch resembling a bag she herself carried for years. The artist filled the bag with surplus leather and fiber, hoping that people would continue to place new items inside it.

Hamilton’s contribution to the collection is a pleated leather fan imprinted with Italian phrases such as “Che Bello” and “Che Brutto.” Kantarovsky, known for his morose figurative works, made leather and shearling masks based on characters in his paintings. Lastly, Nagle has adapted one of his celebrated small-scale ceramic sculptures into a leather paperweight.

Beyond this collaboration, Loewe and its creative director Jonathan Anderson actively promote the arts in other areas. In May, The Loewe Foundation awarded its annual Craft Prize to Mexican ceramic artist Andrés Anza for his totemic sculpture, I only know what I have seen (2023). Anza received a €50,000 ($53,577) prize. Meanwhile, artists like Richard Hawkins and Lynda Benglis have been highlighted in Loewe runway shows.

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10 Must-See Exhibitions during Frieze London 2024 https://ift.tt/QMAjKb3

Frieze London is once again set to take place in Regent’s Park from October 9th through 13th, and it appears 2024 is a year of change. There is a new floor plan, resetting the balance between blue-chip and smaller galleries within the fair, while this year’s program promises a reorientated focus on curated sections including the artist-selected solo booths. For the upcoming edition, the likes of Hurvin Anderson, Lubaina Himid, Rashid Johnson, and Yinka Shonibare have selected younger artists to platform, including Peter Uka, Magda Stawarska, Rob Davis, and Nengi Omuku. There will also be a new themed presentation, “Smoke,” organized by Hammer Museum curator Pablo José Ramírez, alongside the usual booths from more than 160 galleries.

As collectors, curators, and artists descend on the city from around the world, galleries from the polished streets of Mayfair to the depths of Deptford aim to entice crowds to venture beyond the tent. Some try to tempt attendees by debuting hot rising talents: George Rouy at Hauser & Wirth; Yu Hong at Lisson Gallery; and Pei Wang at WORKPLACE, for example. Others pique public interest with institutional-level shows by world-renowned artists such as Tracey Emin at White Cube, Yayoi Kusama at Victoria Miro, and Olivier Mosset at MASSIMODECARLO.

For those who are done with the fair by 2 p.m. on VIP day, we have curated a selection of 10 must-see exhibitions to catch before heading off to Paris.

George Rouy, “The Bleed, Part I”

Hauser & Wirth

Oct. 5–Dec. 21

Formless being, 2024
George Rouy
Hauser & Wirth

“The Bleed, Part I” will mark George Rouy’s debut exhibition with Hauser & Wirth since the announcement of his co-representation in May 2024, cementing his status as a leading figure of a new generation of British painters. As the youngest artist on the globally renowned blue-chip gallery’s roster, the 30-year-old Kent-born painter has rapidly gained recognition since graduating from London’s Camberwell College of Arts in 2015.

In 2023, Rouy presented solo exhibitions with Nicola Vassell Gallery in New York and Hannah Barry Gallery in London, following a steady stream of impressive presentations with Almine Rech in Paris in 2022, Peres Projects in Berlin in 2021, and Steve Turner Gallery in Los Angeles in 2018. He has also attracted the attention of global institutions: His works are held in the collections of X Museum in Beijing and ICA Miami, and he has featured in group exhibitions with the Green Family Art Foundation in Dallas and the K11 Art Museum in Shanghai.

For “The Bleed, Part I” (the second part will take place at Hauser & Wirth’s downtown Los Angeles location in 2025), Rouy will present a suite of monochrome paintings. This marks a new direction for the artist, alongside his recognizable earth-toned and enveloping canvases. His dynamic figurative paintings blur bodies into congealed and inextricable forms as a route to examine the emotional extremities of our time—namely, notions of identity and embodiment in an increasingly globalized and technology-driven age.

Yayoi Kusama, “EVERY DAY I PRAY FOR LOVE”

Victoria Miro

Through Nov. 2

Taking place 26 years after her first solo presentation with Victoria Miro, “EVERY DAY I PRAY FOR LOVE” is Yayoi Kusama’s 14th solo exhibition with the gallery. Brimming with previously unseen work, the show premieres a new “Infinity Mirrored Room,” titled Beauty Described as a Spherical Heart, alongside a recent series of paintings and sculptures from the world-famous Japanese artist.

For example, on view is Death of Nerves (2022), a large-scale sculptural installation made from multicolored sewn and stuffed fabric elements, originally commissioned by M+ Museum in Hong Kong. Alongside that installation, a new series of paintings fills the gallery’s first floor, hung in salon style and bursting with bold colors and imagery exemplary of the artist’s oeuvre, such as her dot-covered “Infinity Nets.”

This exhibition coincides with major institutional exhibitions of Kusama’s work at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and the Museu de Arte Contemporânea de Serralves in Porto, Portugal, following her recent three-year long “Infinity Rooms” exhibition at Tate Modern in London. Her tallest bronze pumpkin sculpture to date is also currently on view in London’s Hyde Park, presented by the Serpentine Galleries and the Royal Parks.

Tracey Emin, “I followed you to the end”

White Cube, Bermondsey

Through Nov. 10

Another Place to Live, 2024
Tracey Emin
White Cube

A suite of captivating new figurative paintings, an intensely visceral short film, and one of her largest bronze sculptures to date: Tracey Emin’s solo exhibition at White Cube in Bermondsey continues her lifelong investigation into themes of love, life, and mortality. Drawing on a recent and transformative chapter of Emin’s life, including her experience with a life-threatening illness, the exhibition foregrounds the raw vulnerability the artist has been known for since her 1999 Turner Prize nomination for My Bed (1998).

Born and raised in Margate—a small, coastal town in England—Tracey Emin was appointed Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire in 2024 for her services to art. She has exhibited extensively, including in recent solo exhibitions at the Munch Museum in Oslo in 2021, the Royal Academy of Arts in London in 2020, and the Musée d’Orsay in Paris in 2019.

Pei Wang, “The Enneagram Mask”

WORKPLACE

Oct. 4–Nov. 9

The Vanity Fair, 2024
Pei Wang
WORKPLACE

WORKPLACE, an incubator for diverse young talents with spaces in London and Newcastle, is known for picking the defining names of the next generation. In this trend, the gallery is set to present up-and-coming Chinese painter Pei Wang’s debut London solo exhibition during Frieze London 2024.

Featuring a selection of haunting, closely cropped, hyperrealistic new paintings, the exhibition sees Wang continue his investigations into the relationship between imagery and digital consumption. Rejecting the digestible clarity of clickbait, the works on show are deliberately cryptic and often provoke more questions than they answer. One, a moody rendering of a merry-go-round surrounded by darkness, The Vanity Fair (2024), is akin to a still from a horror film—the viewer is left on edge, wondering what might happen next.

Based in Barcelona, Wang received his MA in oil painting from the China Academy of Art in 2015 and has since presented a solo exhibition at Tara Downs in New York in 2024, following his inclusion in multiple group shows in China.

Ella Walker, “The Romance of the Rose”

Pilar Corrias Gallery

Through Nov. 9

The Loyal Bride, 2024
Ella Walker
Pilar Corrias Gallery

Ella Walker is a name on the rise: She had a recent solo exhibition with Casey Kaplan in New York, and was included in Hauser & Wirth Somerset’s survey of the most exciting emerging artists. In “The Romance of the Rose,” Pilar Corrias Gallery presents its first show with the artist, following its representation announcement in April.

Taking the 13th-century French poem The Romance of a Rose as its starting point, the exhibition unpicks problematic and patriarchal feminine archetypes. It recasts a diverse range of women as characters that have been historically deployed to denigrate women, from the jealous crone to the madwoman. In these large-scale and highly detailed paintings, women are rendered in joyful and humorous revelry as self-defining forces.

Known for her research-driven approach, Walker allows history to direct both the exhibition’s theme and the materials she uses to create the works. Painted with light washes of acrylic dispersion, pigment, chalk, and marble dust upon a textured ground, the whimsical scenes that make up “The Romance of a Rose” see Walker inject a spirit of punk feminism back into the past.

Yu Hong, “Islands of the Mind”

Lisson Gallery, Bell Street

Through Nov. 9

Island of Expectation, 2024
Yu Hong 喻红
Lisson Gallery

For her first solo exhibition in London, 58-year-old Chinese artist Yu Hong presents a new series of large-scale acrylic-on-canvas paintings at Lisson Gallery’s Bell Street location. Expanding on a body of work first unveiled at the SCAD Museum of Art in Savannah, Georgia, in 2023, the paintings on show are inspired by Arnold Böcklin’s painting Island of the Dead (1880). As such, they can be understood as psychological landscapes that each embody a universal experience of emotion, including love, expectation, and oblivion.

In Island of Expectation (2023), for example, a single female figure is balanced precariously upon a ladder above a wide and wild sea, the turbulent, churning waters acting as a metaphor for her innermost feelings. Meanwhile, in Island of Survival (2023), the swirling clouds that envelop the sky mirror the tension between the central figures beneath.

Following on from her first major exhibition in Europe at the Chiesetta della Misericordia in Venice, presented by the Guggenheim’s Asian Art Initiative during the Venice Biennale 2024, “Islands of the Mind” affords Hong long-awaited international acclaim. Often heralded as a leader of Chinese contemporary art, the artist has presented work at the Long Museum in Shanghai and the CAFA Art Museum in Beijing, but has only recently drawn equivalent attention overseas.

Anna Weyant, “Who’s Afraid of the Big Bad Wolves?”

Gagosian, Davies Street

Oct. 8–Dec. 20

Girl In Window, 2024
Anna Weyant
Gagosian

Taking place at Gagosian’s Davies Street space, “Who’s Afraid of the Big Bad Wolves?” will feature six new paintings from much-discussed New York–based figurative painter Anna Weyant. The series continues the artist’s exploration of femininity through a tragicomic lens.

Delicate and sensitive, her renderings of female figures are known for combining autobiographical details from the artist’s life with a symbolic wit akin to Surrealist masterpieces by the likes of René Magritte. In Girl in Window (2024), for example, a single fig leaf conceals the flattened figure’s left nipple as a playful gesture that speaks to the societal expectation of women as objects of observation.

Her third solo show with Gagosian, this exhibition follows Weyant’s recent inclusion in institutional group exhibitions at the Plains Art Museum in Fargo, North Dakota, in 2024; the Femmes Artistes du Musée de Mougins in Mougins, France, in 2024; the FLAG Art Foundation in New York in 2023; the Los Angeles County Museum of Art in 2022; and the Green Family Art Foundation in Dallas in 2022.

Lorena Torres, “El Milagro es la Pereza de Díos”

Huxley-Parlour, Maddox Street

Through Oct. 26

La mirada de Dios o el milagro es la pereza de Dios (The look of God or the miracle is the idleness of God), 2024, 2024
Lorena Torres
Huxley-Parlour

Founded in 2010 and spanning two spaces in Central London, Huxley-Parlour is known for creating dialogues between noteworthy established artists and emerging talents worthy of further recognition. An example of the latter, 33-year-old artist Lorena Torres, opened her debut solo exhibition with the gallery, “El Milagro es la Pereza de Díos,” in mid-September.

Raised in Colombia and of Caribbean descent, Torres roots her practice in her upbringing and the culture of Colombia’s Caribbean coast. Featuring 11 new paintings created in 2024, the exhibition, which draws its title from a quotation found in Portuguese author Fernando Pessoa’s The Book of Disquiet, speaks to the spiritual significance of quotidian experiences. Each painting sees a jubilant cast of humans and animals, drawn from Torres’s observations of the community that surrounds her, enacting fantastical scenes.

Sarah Slappey, “Bloodline”

Bernheim

Oct. 8–Nov. 14

American artist Sarah Slappey is known for her unsettling, disjointed, and hyperreal depictions of naked female figures, which have made their way into some of the most significant collections in the world, including the Hirshhorn Museum and ICA Miami.

For her debut London solo exhibition at Swiss gallery Bernheim’s recently opened Mayfair outpost, the 40-year-old painter explores the specific and often unnatural presentations of the female body that have permeated art history. Echoing the contorted marble torsos of Gian Lorenzo Bernini’s sculptures or the bulbous flesh in Hans Bellmer’s photographs of dolls, the artist combines a photorealistic figurative mastery with impossible bodily arrangements. In this way, she draws attention to the imagery that has impacted visual conceptions of femininity and womanhood in our collective imaginations across time.

This presentation in London follows on from Slappey’s recent solo exhibitions at Bernheim’s Zürich space and Sargent’s Daughters in New York (the two galleries co-represent her). Over the past year, her work has also featured in group exhibitions at institutions across Europe and the U.S., including the Kunsthalle Recklinghausen in Germany; the Albertina Modern in Vienna, Austria; the Plains Art Museum in Fargo, North Dakota; and the Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen in Rotterdam, Netherlands.

Olivier Mosset, “On the Lost Highway”

MASSIMODECARLO

Oct. 7–Nov. 9

TBT, 2023
Olivier Mosset
MASSIMODECARLO

MASSIMODECARLO’s first Milan exhibition, in 1987, was a show of minimalist painter Olivier Mosset. Now, for Frieze Week 2024 in London, the gallery returns to its roots with a solo exhibition of the 80-year-old Swiss artist’s work.

A pivotal figure in post-war abstraction, Mosset began his career in 1960s Paris. As a response to the spectacular and self-conscious nature of the new avant-garde of the period, the artist orchestrated groundbreaking artistic interventions alongside BMPT Collective members Daniel Buren, Michel Parmentier, and Niele Toroni. Often thought of as the acme of BMPT’s experimental approaches to painting, the 200 or more identical oil paintings of a small black circle at the center of a square white canvas that Mosset produced between 1966 and 1974 are exemplary of his ongoing approach to painting. He seeks to challenge established modes of artmaking, forgoing figuration, subjectivity, and symbolism in place of a focus on pure color and shape.

Curated by New York–based critic, curator, and friend of the artist Bob Nickas, Mosset’s exhibition “On the Lost Highway” promises to be intense, meditative, and characteristically bold, celebrating the legacy of one of the great U.S.-based painters of the 20th century.

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10 Standout Works from the Artists for Kamala Sale https://ift.tt/SmCgOuJ

The Artists for Kamala benefit sale supporting the Harris Victory Fund, open on Artsy through October 8th, features an impressive array of works donated by leading contemporary artists. Below, we highlight some of the standout pieces and share insights from the artists.

Reggie Burrows Hodges, Seated Listener: Nebuliss, 2022

Seated Listener: Nebuliss, 2022
Reggie Burrows Hodges
Artists for Kamala Benefit Auction

This acrylic-on-canvas work is a part of Reggie Burrows Hodges’s “Seated Listener” series—a body of paintings that revel in serenity and contemplation, picturing people in moments of attentive listening. At the core of the works, Hodges has said, is “the presence of a human being offering you its full attention.” In Seated Listener: Nebuliss, a tiny white butterfly hovers before the sinuous figure of a woman, capturing a moment of quiet grace. The poetic imagery is built up from a black background, a signature style for which the California-born, Maine-based artist is acclaimed.

Catherine Opie, Untitled #12 (Windows), 2023

Untitled #12 (Windows), 2023
Catherine Opie
Artists for Kamala Benefit Auction

This work by Catherine Opie is part of a series of photographs she created in 2021 while she was the Robert Mapplethorpe Resident in Photography at the American Academy in Rome. Taken at the Vatican during the pandemic, the images reflect the remarkable freedom she had to explore the iconic site while it was uncharacteristically empty. Opie endeavored to photograph every window in the Vatican, producing works that consider transparency and authority, and the politics of seeing and being seen. The vacant Vatican becomes a poignant metaphor, inviting viewers to question structures of power.

Fred Tomaselli, February 25, 2024, 2024

February 25, 2024, 2024
Fred Tomaselli
Artists for Kamala Benefit Auction

Fred Tomaselli has often reflected on tumultuous news cycles by transforming the front page of the New York Times with gouache and collage. “I think that maybe the Times collages are quietly political, in that I can riff on anything I want, while the horrors of the world become the background buzz. Maybe I’m saying that the world may be going to hell, but I still keep painting,” Tomaselli has said.

This particular work memorializes Flaco the owl, who captured New Yorkers’ attention when he escaped from the Central Park Zoo in 2023 and roamed the city as a free bird for a year before his unfortunate death. Despite the outpouring of grief, Flaco’s story paled in comparison to other headlines at the time, snippets of which are seen in this work. The owl’s celebrity was emblematic of the small bright spots that the public gravitates towards in dark times.

Yvonne Wells, Vote Rally, 2024

Untitled, 2024
Yvonne Wells
Artists for Kamala Benefit Auction

Yvonne Wells’s narrative quilts often reflect on American history and politics. This joyful piece, Vote Rally, shows citizens eager to participate in the democratic process. The artist has said of her practice, “The materials I use have their own stories and histories…the quilts talk to me, and I listen.” Wells’s intuitive, hand-sewn textiles capture the spirit of community and activism, in this case celebrating the power of civic engagement, through dynamic, playful compositions.

Kay WalkingStick, Athabasca Glacier I, 2018

Athabasca Glacier I, 2018
Kay WalkingStick
Artists for Kamala: Select Works

Kay WalkingStick’s landscapes reflect the enduring connection between Native American heritage and the Earth. She has described the act of painting the landscape as “a dialogue with the mythic, the spiritual, with that with which transcends our bittersweet daily lives.” In Athabasca Glacier I, she has imbued a majestic landscape of snow-dusted mountains and valleys with abstract designs that come from the Native American people of that land. The resulting scene carries the weight of both personal and geological history.

Hank Willis Thomas, Fragile, Democracy, Handle with Care, 2024

Fragile, Democracy, Handle with Care, 2024
Hank Willis Thomas
Artists for Kamala Benefit Auction

Hank Willis Thomas’s new screenprint, from an edition of 50 unique variations, is a stark, cobalt-blue reminder of the precarious state of democracy. Riffing on familiar “handle with care” packing stickers, the work highlights the need for vigilance in protecting human rights, and urges viewers to reflect on the fragility of democracy and the care required to preserve it. Thomas is known for text-based works that similarly expose urgent, salient truths.

Jenny Holzer, Selection from Truisms: There are too few…, 2023

Selection from Truisms: There are too few..., 2023
Jenny Holzer
Artists for Kamala Benefit Auction

Jenny Holzer’s enduring series of “Truisms” is known to distill complex social issues into concise statements. Though these bitingly candid proclamations have taken various forms—appearing on garments, electronic signs, and floors—the benches and footstools, such as this one, are some of the most beloved. In this work, a blue-hued granite footstool is engraved with the message “There are too few immutable truths today.” Holzer’s benches have recently been shown in her retrospective at the Guggenheim Museum and at Art Basel’s Unlimited sector in June.

Katherine Bernhardt, Man in the Mirror, 2024

Man in the Mirror, 2024
Katherine Bernhardt
Artists for Kamala Benefit Auction

Katherine Bernhardt’s vibrant and improvisational painting Man in the Mirror features the familiar Pink Panther, a recurring character in her work over the years. “I am excited to participate in Artists for Kamala and contribute a work to benefit the Harris Victory Fund,” Bernhardt said. “So many important issues are at stake in this election, including health care, reproductive rights, and our democracy itself.”

George Condo, Women Are Beautiful, 2024

Women Are Beautiful, 2024
George Condo
Artists for Kamala Benefit Auction

“I took the title of this piece from Garry Winogrand’s seminal series ‘Women are Beautiful,’” George Condo said of this crayon-and-wash work on paper. “I am hoping that Kamala Harris will restore the faith that we put in women in our society.” The work incorporates Condo’s typical, playful approach to deconstructing and reconfiguring human heads.

Jeff Koons, American Flagpole (Gazing Balls), 2024

American Flagpole (Gazing Balls), 2024
Jeff Koons
Artists for Kamala Benefit Auction

Jeff Koons’s American Flagpole (Gazing Balls) is just what its title suggests—a 25-foot-tall flagpole bearing the American flag, alongside a trio of the artist’s famed gazing balls, in red, white, and blue. “The gazing ball, for me, has always represented generosity,” Koons said, “so I incorporated them into [this work] to celebrate the generosity of the American people.” The piece is an edition of one, plus one artist proof, making it an exceptionally rare example of the American emblem.

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Hauser & Wirth announces representation of Jeffrey Gibson. https://ift.tt/SriPeU0

Hauser & Wirth has announced its global representation of Indigenous American artist Jeffrey Gibson in collaboration with New York gallery Sikkema Jenkins & Co.

The mega-gallery will present a new work by Gibson, which I will continue to change (2024) as part of its presentation at Art Basel Paris later this month. Additionally, the artist’s first solo exhibition with the gallery will take place in Paris next October. The announcement comes in a year when Gibson became the first Indigenous American artist to represent the United States in a solo presentation at the Venice Biennale with a show titled “the space in which to place me.”

Born in 1972, Gibson earned a Bachelor's degree from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 1995, after which he furthered his studies at the Royal College of Art in London, obtaining an MFA in painting in 1998.

Over the last three decades, Gibson has become known for his abstract work, characterized by its dynamic, bright colors and geometric patterns. A member of the Mississippi Band of Choctaw Indians and of Cherokee descent, his work incorporates histories from American, Indigenous, and queer histories.

“Jeffrey occupies a unique position in the sweep of contemporary art, as both an astute cultural critic and a virtuosic handler of form, color, and the synthesis of many art historical languages in a range of mediums,” said Marc Payot, president of Hauser & Wirth. “Through his paintings, sculpture, public installations, performances, and collaborations to advance learning, Jeffrey illuminates the most challenging and profound issues with wit and joy. He uses his art to generate an ongoing critique of American culture that is simultaneously fierce and loving, forceful and radiant—and ultimately incredibly generous in the way it includes us all.”

According to ARTnews, the new partnership means that Gibson will cease to work with Stephen Friedman Gallery in London, Roberts Projects in Los Angeles, and Jessica Silverman in San Francisco. He had previously left Chicago’s Kavi Gupta in 2023.

Living and working in Hudson, New York, Gibson is currently an artist-in-residence at Bard College. An upcoming solo exhibition of the artist, “POWER FULL BECAUSE WE’RE DIFFERENT,” will launch at MASS MoCA in North Adams, Massachusetts in November 2024. Furthermore, in September 2025, Gibson will be the sixth artist commissioned to create outdoor works for the facade of New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Hauser & Wirth’s representation of Gibson follows several major artist announcements for the gallery. In the last year, the mega gallery has added artists, such as Artsy Vanguard 2022 alum Michaela Yearwood-Dan in September, British painter George Rouy in May, and South African artist William Kentridge in March.

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Fast-Growing Australian Gallery Sullivan+Strumpf on Supporting Asia-Pacific Artists https://ift.tt/Gz1eE3Z

In 2017, the Australian gallerists Ursula Sullivan and Joanna Strumpf gambled everything on Sullivan+Strumpf’s presentation at Art Basel Hong Kong. After putting every cent into their booth, they came face-to-face with the stakes when their credit card was declined while booking accommodations.

Yet the risk proved a savvy one. “It was a real turning point,” Sullivan said, recalling how their gamble paid off by the end of the fair, where they sold some “incredible” works by gallery artists Lindy Lee and Sam Leach. “It was just really a super successful fair, so we went from: ‘Oh my god, our credit card declined’ to: ‘Oh my god, we’re kings of the world’—we weren’t really kings of the world, but in our small Australian bubble, we were,” Sullivan said.

Rapture, 2021
Lindy Lee
Sullivan+Strumpf

Landscape with Relaxing Woman and Jetty, 2021
Sam Leach
Sullivan+Strumpf

The moment illustrates the occasionally daring ambition that has characterized the gallery, originally founded in Sydney in 2005. Since their nerve-wracking success in Hong Kong, Sullivan and Strumpf have not slowed down, and their gallery has blossomed into an influential name in the Asia-Pacific region.

In 2022, they launched a new space in Melbourne, and earlier this year, they launched a studio space in Singapore. Looking ahead, the duo is gearing up for their inaugural appearance in the main galleries section at Frieze London this October, where they will present works by Lee, Gregory Hodge, and Naminapu Maymuru-White.

A bastion of Australia’s art market

Sullivan and Strumpf landed in Sydney independently, each arriving from Brisbane in 1996. They crossed paths for the first time when they both began working for the late Australian secondary-market dealer Eva Breuer. There, the two became fast friends—and collaborators. At first, the gallerists began purchasing contemporary art together and began to “develop trust, which is so incredibly important—on money and taste and your eye and talking about art,” according to Sullivan.

“We just loved contemporary art more than the other work that we were dealing in—and the secondary-market attitude is very different from the primary representing gallery attitude,” added Sullivan. In 2004, Sullivan and Strumpf made the leap to open their own gallery, named Sullivan+Strumpf, which kicked off its programming in 2005 with solo shows from some of Australia’s leading contemporary artists: Sydney Ball, Gemma Smith, and eX de Medici.

Thrown open, 2022
Gemma Smith
Sullivan+Strumpf

Mowing the Grass at the Camp of Widows, 2024
eX de Medici
Sullivan+Strumpf

From the outset, the gallery has been a firm champion of contemporary art from Australia and the Asia-Pacific region. Over the two decades since the gallery was founded, the domestic market has changed dramatically, Sullivan and Strumpf say. When they first started, the market was marked by a “cultural cringe,” according to the gallerists, defined as a reluctance for local collectors to be interested in local artists. This attitude, noted Sullivan, has since changed: “When we first started, [there was] this feeling of ‘I need to be collecting international art as a prestigious thing,’ and that cultural cringe about what we’re making as a country has certainly diminished,” she said.

The gallerists have never strayed from their belief in the art coming out of the country. “We see work all over the world, and Australian artists are definitely punching above their weight,” said Sullivan. And, according to Sullivan, this is currently being bolstered by a surging gallery scene.

“The actual support of contemporary galleries like us is beautiful and strong, and there’s real care and passion for artists,” Sullivan said.

An incubator for underrecognized talent

Sullivan+Strumpf built its reputation by actively believing in the artists from Australia and its region. The gallery has developed a reputation for nurturing underrecognized talent from both seasoned and mid-career artists alike. A prime example is the gallerists’ collaboration with Lee, a 70-year-old artist whose work explores her Australian upbringing and Chinese heritage.

After a period of stagnation in Lee’s career in the 2000s, Sullivan+Strumpf played a pivotal role in growing her presence in the art world. Alongside several solo shows and fair presentations, Lee was also the subject of a retrospective at the Museum of Contemporary Art Australia in 2020, and will unveil a $14 million sculptural commission at the National Gallery of Australia in October. “We were able to really reinvigorate her career and elevate her to the stature she deserves, which was truly wonderful,” the gallerists noted.

Figure with Gold Horn, 2024
Ramesh Mario Nithiyendran
Sullivan+Strumpf

Seated Figure with many Masks, 2024
Ramesh Mario Nithiyendran
Sullivan+Strumpf

This commitment to artist support is also evident in the gallery’s promotion of ultra-contemporary artists like Ramesh Mario Nithiyendran. Born in Sri Lanka and based in Australia, Nithiyendran is known for his brightly painted, rough-edged sculptures that reimagine idolatry with a raw aesthetic. The gallery is currently mounting the artist’s solo exhibition in Sydney, titled “The Self Portrait and the Masks,” which will be on view until October 12th.

A new perspective

On June 2nd, Sullivan+Strumpf opened an intimate exhibition space in the heart of Singapore’s Kallang district—best known for its massive sporting event venues. This strategic move is part of the gallery’s effort to build connections with Southeast Asia. For instance, the venue’s first presentation featured a one-day showcase of works by Singapore-based artist Kanchana Gupta ahead of her solo exhibition at Sullivan+Strumpf in Sydney.

“It was about opening up our own perspective as a gallery because you can fall into that trap of becoming very isolated and looking at yourself all the time, rather than looking at yourself in the context of the whole world,” explained Sullivan. Having a presence in Singapore, noted the gallerists, “brings together a lot of disparate audiences into one place.”

We Cannot Live in the Past but the Past Lives in Us, 2023
Tony Albert
Sullivan+Strumpf

As for what’s ahead, Sullivan and Strumpf alluded to several major projects—museum exhibitions and commissions across their roster—but kept most under wraps. One thing is clear: The gallery is entering a new era, where its mission of championing Australian artists will take place on the global stage. Its ascension will be demonstrated next week when it presents three Australian artists—Lee, Gregory Hodge, and Naminapu Maymuru White—in the main galleries section at Frieze London. This milestone comes shortly after yet another global undertaking: a solo booth for Australian Indigenous artist Tony Albert at The Armory Show in New York in September.

Sullivan summed up the gallery’s approach heading forward: “We don’t want to just talk about our little bubble. We need to talk about the world.”

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