picks March 26, 2018

“In the Reading Room of Hell”

“In the Reading Room of Hell,” an exhibition curated by publishing platform NOVEL and loosely inspired by Chilean writer Roberto Bolaño’s 2004 dystopian novel 2666, takes language beyond a mere communicative function to construct a surreal and beautifully confused plot. The project orchestrates twelve different artistic processes, to form a narrative short-circuit that ultimately exceeds the gallery’s two floors, with three large posters installed throughout the lagoon city.

The show opens with Elaine Cameron-Weir’s aerial work wave form walks the earth, 2017, framed by the large, windowed

picks March 05, 2018

Katharina Grosse and Tatiana Trouvé

For the fourth and final event in “UNE,” a series of intergenerational exhibitions promoted by the French Academy, curator Chiara Parisi has constructed a dialogue between the massively scaled pictorial work of Katharina Grosse and the symbolic, graphic production of Tatiana Trouvé. Selected for their generational proximity and a shared approach based on the alteration of material and context, the artists interweave works from the past with new interventions, all installed in four contiguous areas of the Mannerist villa Medici.

The show opens with Trouvé’s sculptures Somewhere in the Solar System

picks February 22, 2018

Erin Shirreff and Elia Cantori

The works of Erin Shirreff and Elia Cantori, shown at separate Banca di Bologna locations for two exhibitions curated by Simone Menegoi, have something in common: an investigation of the cosmos and the darkroom. Two new works by Shirreff are installed at the Palazzo De’ Toschi, where an underlit, sacred atmosphere welcomes viewers and draws their attention to a video projected on a large, double-sided screen, Son, 2018, which reveals a view of nature determined by perceptual disorientation, beginning with the title, a homophone of the word sun. The artist, fascinated by the total solar eclipse

picks December 11, 2017

Vlatka Horvat

For her first exhibition in Italy, Croatian artist Vlatka Horvat has installed eleven works across the gallery’s two floors. “Surroundings” pays homage to the horizon, as both a spatial boundary and a goal to which one can aspire, ideologically and physically. The show’s natural path opens with two wooden tables created in 2016, titled Set Right (Table Leg) and Set Right (Tabletop). Reduced to structural skeletons, they boast delicate additions of ribbonlike cardboard, attached with white adhesive tape, as if to conjure missing parts. At Some Length, 2017, is a straight line at eye level, more

picks November 16, 2017

Nick Mauss

Nick Mauss’s third exhibition with this gallery, arranged throughout both of its Rue de Braque locations, features works that deal with reflection, both literally and metaphorically. In the shadowy arena of Campoli Presti’s ground-floor space is the video installation The Moment (all works 2017). From a projector hung close to the ceiling, an image of a hand drawing an enigmatic sign is cast onto a mirror hanging from a wall. From there, the image is reflected onto the wooden floor, creating a subtle holographic effect while transforming the symbol into a viaticum for artistic creation. We also

picks August 29, 2017

Hiroshi Sugimoto

In the deliberately dim light and cozy ambience of two large contiguous rooms at the Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo, Japanese photographer Hiroshi Sugimoto has installed twenty photographic prints from his “Theaters” series. The exhibition, curated by Filippo Maggia and Irene Calderoli, marks the debut of this new series, created over the past three years, which focuses on the interiors of large Italian theaters chosen for their distinctive architecture. The characteristically black-and-white images are the result of advanced photographic techniques and extended exposure times, which captured

picks August 21, 2017

Karl Holmqvist and Klara Liden

In a large Roman apartment on Via dei Mille, the Indipendenza gallery hosts “Lavoro” (Work), a collaboration between Karl Holmqvist and Klara Liden. This project, originally exhibited in 2016 at the Kunstverein Braunschweig, now includes a new combination of works, some on view for the first time, as well as older installations and videos, such as Nhite Woice, 2015, in which Holmqvist and Liden improvise a synchronized dance. The dialogue underlying the exhibition, activated by twenty-nine works overall, opens with the interaction between Linden’s emblematic Poster Painting, 2012—layered, painted

picks August 17, 2017

Micol Assaël

Micol Assaël’s solo exhibition “Lettura Di Un’Onda” (Interpretation of a Wave), curated by Bruno Corà and Valentino Catricalà, presents new work across the entire top floor of the Palazzo Belmonte Riso. The Roman artist activates a discrete dialogue with a large permanent installation by Jannis Kounellis composed of old wardrobes suspended from the ceiling. In three adjacent rooms, Assaël has installed four works made from paper and magnets that hang on accordion folding supports which are mounted on horizontal planks built from old windows (typical of working class Sicilian architecture) and

picks June 13, 2017

Yoko Ono and Claire Tabouret

From the entrance of the Villa Medici, throughout its rooms, and even through its outdoor space, an extended juxtaposition of installation works by Yoko Ono and paintings by French artist Claire Tabouret leads viewers along a complex path. The show creates a dialogue between Tabouret’s new paintings of female figures—with watery backgrounds and energetic, gestural strokes—and Ono’s conceptual, participatory works. Ono’s video SKY TV, 1966–2017, consisting of thirty screens showing live transmissions of Rome’s skies—sets the stage for a counterpoint between her Painting to be Stepped On, 1960–2017,

picks February 07, 2017

Pieter Vermeersch

Belgian artist Pieter Vermeersch’s second solo show at this gallery’s Paris location comprises seventeen abstract paintings, all Untitled, 2016, made on canvas and marble. They do not readily blend into the architecture of the space—a strategy the artist has employed before.

The show opens with a series of large chromatic fade-outs on canvas. Each painting has been defaced with scratches: meditative gestures that seem to function as indices of the body. In another room of the gallery, two paintings with more rigid monochromatic gradations, created to mirror each other, have been partially obscured

picks February 06, 2017

Peter Buggenhout

Amid the whiteness of a large room in the Palazzo De’ Toschi an installation by Peter Buggenhout takes on the significance of an imposing archaeological find—a mass of detritus, postatomic in feeling, that has touched down from the sky. For his debut solo show in Italy, curated by Simone Menegoi, the Belgian artist offers one of his largest works to date, The Blind Leading the Blind #65, 2014. The title, taken from a masterpiece by Pieter Brueghel the Elder and a passage from the Gospel of Matthew, is a metaphor for Buggenhout’s poetics, which aims to demonstrate the fragility of human knowledge

picks December 27, 2016

Patrick Tuttofuoco

Patrick Tuttofuoco’s first solo show at this gallery features five new works. The artist has long been interested in the impalpability of reality—the possibility that the past cannot be historicized and the future is the new present—and in this show, titled “Pretty Good Privacy,” he underscores a contemporary existence increasingly split between actual and virtual experience. As soon as visitors cross the gallery threshold, they catch sight of a work on the floor, A Better Place (all works 2016), a scrolling LED screen that both reproduces and parodies the extent to which cutting-edge technology

picks November 28, 2016

Marc Camille Chaimowicz

French artist Marc Camille Chaimowicz, one of the early proponents of a multidisciplinary approach to art that dovetailed performance and installation, now orchestrates a project devoted to the architecture of its venue, La Triennale di Milano. Chaimowicz compares the aesthetic affinities of this space to the oneiric aspects of metaphysics. “Maybe Metafisica,” curated by Eva Fabbris, follows a circular trajectory that—beginning with Giorgio de Chirico’s painting Figliol Prodigo (Prodigal Son), 1973—retraces in stages Chaimowicz’s expressive forms, seen in decorative panels, furniture, and highly

picks October 28, 2016

Betty Woodman and Kiki Smith

Exhibiting together for the first time, Betty Woodman and Kiki Smith initiate an intense dialogue through a selection of their large-scale paintings, tapestries, sculptures, and graphics. Along the long walls of the main gallery, Smith’s atonal and transcendent works interface with Woodman’s colorful and flamboyant vision of domestic interiors, creating a complete visual imbalance that dwells, respectively, on natural landscapes and private imaginative spaces.

Four large canvases by Woodman (Summer Tea Party, 2015; Reversal, 2016; Betty’s Room, 2011; Table and Rug, 2016) are characterized by the

picks October 07, 2016

Giovanni Kronenberg

Giovanni Kronenberg’s debut exhibition at this gallery opens with a large rock crystal in which a black baroque pearl is embedded. With a selection of new works, the artist delinates a path, lit by theatrical spotlights, through the gallery’s three rooms. The pieces are made with objects Kronenberg has collected over time, curios from his personal archive. Recognizing their polysemous qualities, he brings them into the present tense, prudently enriching or in some cases detaching them from their meanings.

In the second gallery, an untitled graphite drawing takes on a sculptural look. Created

picks September 19, 2016

Ivan Seal

The memory of a childhood event—a car accident Ivan Seal survived with his family, riding in a yellow Chevette—is the genesis for his third solo show here. The gallery, located in a former garage, is an ideal stage for the revival of this memory. These oil paintings, on display for the first time, are complex constructions whose point of departure is the dismembering of cars with vibrantly colored, crystal-shaped excrescences that provide a visual balance. Six large pieces in a first room seem to suggest they are a body, with two works in the second room making up its heart and brain. The

picks August 25, 2016

Salvatore Arancio

In this solo exhibition curated by Luca Cerizza, Salvatore Arancio’s sublime and psychedelic site intervention—full of both actual and imaginary references—functions as an homage to his native Sicily and its volcanoes, with their mystically and erotically tinged aesthetic elements. The show opens with eight caprices of sorts: black-and-white photo etchings (dating from 2006 to ’14), which the artist generated by digitally cutting out and recomposing landscapes from Victorian texts, manipulating them to efface both their dated aspects and their human touch. In the room where they are installed,

picks June 16, 2016

Anish Kapoor

Anish Kapoor’s first solo show at this gallery’s Milan location features a group of fourteen sculptures in mirrored steel. Vertical extrusions of flat geometric figures and symbols, from waxing moons to hourglasses, are typical of the artist’s work. Twisting along axes at up to ninety degrees, they represent smaller versions of his monumental “nonobjects,” fluid and reflective sculptural elements that seem to flout our understandings of coordinate geometry and include and dissolve the surrounding space.

The installation is severe, with a grouping of twelve reflective pieces on glazed bases in

picks June 10, 2016

Francesco Simeti

For this solo show, Francesco Simeti has stepped away from his usual wallpaper-like creations of kaleidoscopic bucolic fantasies to deliver an installation that focuses almost exclusively on ceramic and bronze sculptures. “Armed, Barbed and Halberd-Shaped,” curated by Nicola Ricciardi, reflects on nature’s impetuous states, ignoring flowery and sedate idylls in favor of wild meadows inspired by the emotional landscapes painted by Charles Burchfield in the early twentieth century. The exhibition begins in the gallery’s main room with three ceramic works, on Leoncillo-inspired plinths, that resemble

picks May 05, 2016

Sturtevant

In April 2015, Gavin Brown opened a new location, in the deconsecrated church of Sant’Andrea de Scaphis. It was in this evocative setting (the building dates to the year 820), deliberately left unaltered since the seventeenth century, that Sturtevant, who died in 2014, had decided to exhibit Gober Partially Buried Sinks, 1997. Sturtevant became famous for re-creating works of well-known contemporary artists, in meticulous adherence to technical process. Here, in a perfect copy of Robert Gober’s Two Partially Buried Sinks, 1986–87, that Sturtevant created in Paris, the titular objects—sculptural

Maria Chiara Valacchi