Curated by Silvia Karman Cubiñá and Leilani Lynch

Tayou possesses one of the quirkiest and most irreverent artistic sensibilities around: Having abandoned the study of law for art, he revels in contradiction, mysticism, and delphic aphorism, all of which he cloaks in riotous color and sparkly lights. In this show—organized in close collaboration with the artist himself—Tayou will present a range of assemblages from the past decade, including his signature crystal doll sculptures, “Poupées Pascale,” 2007–17, and his chalk mosaics, “Fresques de craies,” 2015–16. He will ruffle the permanent collection and build a wall of neon WELCOME signs in more than seventy languages. They will all be “beautiful,” even as—and because—they participate in Tayou’s genteel efforts to decolonize the museum. Is this “welcome” a nod to the colonial encounter that produced modernism and its museums? And by beautiful does Tayou (following philosopher and critic Elaine Scarry) also mean fair, as in just? You decide, remembering that Tayou’s tongue is happiest in his cheek.

— Leora Maltz-Leca