GALERIE TEMPLON ANNOUNCES FIRST SHOW OF AMERICAN ARTIST MICHAEL RAY CHARLES IN TWO DECADES
Galerie Templon is delighted to announce that American artist Michael Ray Charles joins the gallery roster.
With the valuable collaboration of Hedwig Van Impe, the gallery will unveil for the first time in almost two decades the complex, visually striking and often disturbing oeuvre of one of the most radical African-American artists of his generation. Templon will reveal over time his spectacular series of unseen paintings and sculptures.
Born in 1967 in Lousiana, Michael Ray Charles created a sensation when he first emerged on the artistic scene in the nineties. Along side his contemporaries Kara Walker or Kerry James Marshall, he was a pioneer in exploring the representation of African-American communities within American history and pop culture. By appropriating some of the most disparaging imagery of the 20th century, his practise subverts the common perception of identity and racial discrimination. Sometimes painful but always deeply political, his multi-faceted works question the power of images. As his friend the film maker Spike Lee put it in a 1997 interview “Michael Ray Charles attacks some serious issues and with a deft humor, which is very hard to do. He makes you laugh while he’s killing you. That’s a real artist.”
The success of his shows at Tony Shafrazi gallery in New York, quickly led him to exhibit extensively around Europe, showing with Hans Mayer in Germany and especially Cotthem Gallery in Belgium and Spain. The controversial reception of his work however, combined with a growing sense of inadequacy and frustration with the American art world, led him to question the commodification of his art. In 2004, encouraged, motivated and supported by Hedwig Van Impe, the artist chose to disengage himself from the public sphere to solely focus on his research. Since then, Michael Ray Charles has been sharing his time between the US and Belgium, building in almost complete secrecy a body of work more powerful than ever.
In a context reshaped by the Black Lives Matter movement, Michael Ray Charles will now unveil for the first time at Templon, one of his mysterious series, the result of 20 years of relentless investigations and quest for a new artistic language. The first show at Galerie Templon will open in March 2022. As an advance preview, two paintings, ironically titled “Forever Free” will be exhibited in Art Basel Miami Beach (December 1-4 2021).
In Roping, 2019-2020, Cotton switches treats for a surprising encounter between a triumphant cowboy and his fantastic steed which is none other than a pink unicorn. The mythical animal comes here to challenge the norms of the conquest of territories by men. The latter loses its virility in a wonderful world made of softness in which seems to dive a desacralized cowboy who is not without evoking a Queer update of that created in 1989 by the artist Richard Prince.
Musée des Abattoirs
76 All. Charles de Fitte, Toulouse
From October 30, 2021 to January 16, 2022
The Lambert Collection invites Abdelkader Benchamma to take over the entire first floor of the Hôtel de Montfaucon. Entitled 'Rayon Fossile', the exhibition is organized around an initiatory journey through possible worlds, past, imaginary, future, written or dreamed, assembled in a narrative that unfolds slowly in the rooms of the museum.
Rayon Fossile
Collection Lambert, 5 Rue Violette, 84000 Avignon, France
October 29, 2021 through February 20, 2022
Conceived as a total immersion in the universe of the artist, the exhibition will feature the artist’s latest works of ink on paper. The opportunity for us to admire the gesture of Abdelkader Benchamma and to unveil the mystery on his so-magnetic works.
Rupture et Associés
1 place André Malraux, Paris
From October 23 to November 27, 2021
The exhibition “Expanded Painting in the 1960s and 1970s” presents radical innovations in painting that testify to a pursuit of freedom and expression in the midst of a period marked by social and political unrest in the United States and abroad.
From Alma Thomas’s mosaic-like painting of flowers to Sam Gilliam’s suspended, draped canvas, these works speak to an upending of barriers-be they artistic, ideological, racial, or rooted in gender stereotypes. By rethinking and systematically probing conventions associated with the painted canvas, these works ultimately speak to the desire for a deeper, more fundamental connection to nature, the body, movement, and light.
Fall 2021
Philadelphia Museum of Art, 2600 Benjamin Franklin Parkway, Philadelphia
For his first collaboration with a major UK gallery, The National Gallery, Wiley will depart from portraiture to explore artistic conventions and modes of representation in the European landscape tradition through the media of film and painting. Wiley’s first film installation, Narrenschiff (2017), was a contemporary response to the Ship of Fools theme, popular in European culture from the late 15th century. It featured a group of young Black men at sea, struggling to reach the land – a metaphor for both historical and contemporary histories of migration and social dislocation. Building on these themes at the National Gallery, Wiley will explore European Romanticism and its focus on epic scenes of oceans and mountains, and humankind’s relationship with nature. The film included in this project will feature Black Londoners that Wiley met and cast for the film on the streets around the National Gallery.
Winter 2021
The National Gallery, Trafalgar Square, London
The Musée des Arts Décoratifs is hosting the exhibition conceived, produced and organized by the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts (MMFA). This major shows explores the work of the designer with a singular imagination as he revolutionized fashion, haute couture and perfume. This Parisian step marks the return of a visionary artist, photographer, perfume inventor and director to the City of Lights.
Musée des Arts Décoratifs
107 Rue de Rivoli, 75001 Paris
September 30, 2021 to April 24, 2022
This work attacks the military dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet in Chile, a reign marked by torture, murders and disappearances ordered by the government for over 15 years. The video refers to the poet and singer Victor Jara, who was killed in September 1973 in a stadium in Santiago by Pinochet's armed forces. On September 27, 2021, starting at 7pm, UNESCO will be transformed into a large philosophical agora and will be the scene of twelve hours of multi-performance for the tenth anniversary of the Philosophy Nights events created by Mériam Korichi in 2010.
UNESCO, 7 Pl. de Fontenoy, 75007 Paris, France
September 27, 2021
L'exposition du musée Albertina fait la part belle cette saison au renouveau de l'iconographie américaine après 1945. Les photographes ont fait un road trip et ont créé des séries qui dépeignent la société américaine sous un jour critique. Pour capter la dynamique des grandes villes, la tendance était d'utiliser un langage pictural spontané, proche de l'instantané. En revanche, d'autres travaux impliquent la mise en scène de tableaux élaborés, semblables à des films, qui permettent de s'interroger sur la réalité et l'illusion photographiques, ainsi que sur les évolutions sociétales.
Albertina Museum, Albertinapl. 1, 1010 Wien Vienna
Until November 28, 2021
This project, initiated at the galerie du jour agnès b. in 2016, has taken various forms, from a travelling group exhibition to a laboratory of epistemological experimentation. Through a selection of eclectic works, it highlights the precursory character of this editorial and artistic adventure as well as the ever-present relevance of its favorite themes.
Le Printemps de Septembre
25, rue d'armagnac, Toulouse
September 17 - October 17, 2021
The show examines the “deep blue” from various perspectives: both visually, as a color, but also linguistically, as a phrase describing abstract concepts such as mood, the natural environment, music and even a region’s political landscape. Over 70 paintings, sculptures, photographs, works on paper and videos by 70 artists from the Hall and Hall Art Foundation collections will be presented.
Hall Art Foundation, 544 VT Route 106, Reading, Vermont, USA
Until November 28, 2021
Chiharu Shiota created a site-specific installation for the Planta Project "In the beginning was..." in the industrial complex of La Plana del Corb. The colours, shapes and textures of the environment inspired Shiota to use stone for the first time in one of her installations. She chose it as a material, not only because of the relationship with the landscape of Planta, but also for its link with the origin of the universe.
Planta Project, Complejo industrial La Plana del Corb, Balaguer, Lleida, Spain
The UNAM Biennale gathers around forty artists who illustrate with originality and talent their vision of "Moi, Je" and its present and future challenges in the mutations of an obviously dangerous society and withdrawal into oneself.
Biennale de l’UNAM (Union Méditerranéenne pour l’Art Moderne)
Château-Musée Grimaldi, Haut-de-Cagnes – Place du Château, Cagnes-sur-Mer
From June 12, 2021 to January 3, 2022
Summer goes with vacation. It is a time for going out, for walking in the middle of nature, for bathing in the sea. It is the period when we pick up fruits, where we cultivate our garden, where we spend time with our family and friends, where we meet people. It is about camping, swimming, tanning on the beach, sailing, surfing, paragliding, discovering new places, traveling. Because of the pandemic we were likely to forget it.
Through their works and installations, the guest artists bring this back to life, and rekindle our emotions.
Abbaye Saint André – Centre d’art contemporain
Place du Bûcher, Meymac
From July 11 to October 17, 2021
The exhibition “Time on my side” presents a selection of masterful works by Berlin-based artist René Wirths that shows some realistically painted patterns from the everyday life, which are larger than life, in front of a neutral white background. In his practice, René Wirths asks himself the most important question, the question of our own existence. Wirths' work alternates between the objectivity of the things depicted and the subjectivity of the artist's or viewer's perception.
In his reproductions, the artist does not use a photographic model or projection technique but paints the objects as he sees them in his studio.
Museum in Kleihues-Bau
Stuttgarter Str. 93, Kornwestheim
From July to January 23, 2022
Mary Magdalen is a woman of extremes and has given rise to a multiplicity of interpretations: a wealth of representations, conspiracy theories and controversies. This special exhibition will introduce the visitor to the rich, paradoxical and constantly evolving imagery surrounding this mysterious biblical figure. From the time of the New Testament to the present day, Mary Magdalen has proved to be an inexhaustible source of inspiration for artists.
Museum Catharijne Convent, Utrecht, Netherlands
From June 24, 2021 to January 9, 2022
« Seeing & Perceiving » is an exhibition that challenges the viewer to question their reality. It encourages them to explore and perceive art in different ways and from different angles. With a critical thinking approach, it highlights the importance of how necessary it is for all of us to reflect, assimilate and take part in a dialogue about what is surrounding us.
Ithra brings an exponential selection of highly recognized artists from the international and regional contemporary art scene to re-imagine the viewer’s perspective and their own perception. Drawn from Ithra’s art collection, this exhibition showcases a series of newly commissioned artwork, as well as site specifics and artworks on loan.
Ithra Museum
8386 Ring Rd, Gharb Al Dhahran, Dhahran, Saudi Arabia
From June 24, 2021 to March 26, 2022
On the occasion of our current Jean-Michel Alberola’s exhibition The King of Nothing, The Queen of England, and the Others, we are pleased to invite you to a meeting with the artist and the signing of the catalog of his exhibition Le Fleuve currently on view at the Institut Mémoires de l’édition contemporaine (Imec) at the Abbaye d’Ardenne in Saint-Germain-la-Blanche-Herbe (Caen) until September 26, 2021.
About the catalog:
WEDNESDAY, JUNE 23, 2021 FROM 5PM TO 8PM
TEMPLON I 30 RUE BEAUBOURG, 75003 PARIS
The exhibition presents painters using the world of appearances as their reference. In a wide variety of theme, style and ambition, all of these painters question reality with this particular medium that plays with the visible with visible materials: pigments, surfaces, the sculptural aspect of the painting. The variety of the painters in the exhibition is reflected in their confidence in the medium that is the painting: this immemorial need to represent the unspeakable of appearances by the presence of a painting.
À cent mètres du centre du monde, contemporary art center
3 avenue de Grande Bretagne, Perpignan
From June 20 to September 12, 2021
Norrtälje Konsthall is presenting simultaneous solo exhibitions by two of India’s most successful artists - Reena Saini Kallat and Jitish Kallat - creating interesting continuity between their practices.
Jitish Kallat’s exhibition titled “Epicycles” reveals his longstanding engagement with the ideas of time, transience, sustenance, the ecological and the cosmological. The exhibition is an assembly of conceptual and sensory propositions through a suite of large format paintings, drawings, sculptures and video.
From June 19 to September 26, 2021
Norrtälje Konsthall, Galles gränd 7, Norrtälje, Sweden
Kehinde Wiley’s portrait of President Obama and Amy Sherald’s portrait of Mrs. Michelle Obama unveiled at the Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery in February 2018 will travel to five cities across the U.S as part of The Obama Portraits Tour organized by the Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery.
In addition to the artworks themselves, the tour will feature audiovisual elements, educational workshops, curatorial presentations, and a richly illustrated book The Obama Portraits (2020) co-published by the National Portrait Gallery and Princeton University Press and select merchandise will also be available. This special presentation will exchange the conversations surrounding the power of portraiture and its potential to engage communities.
The Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago: from June 18 to August 15, 2021
Brooklyn Museum, New-York: from August 27 to October 24, 2021
Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles: from November 5, 2021 to January 2, 2022
High Museum of Art, Atlanta: from January 14 to March 13, 2022
The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston: from March 27 to May 30, 2022
The IMEC gave carte blanche to the artist Jean-Michel Alberola for the next exhibition at the Ardenne abbey.
Over the weeks, the artist, whose work is nourished with literature, discovered the undergrounds where the archives are kept. He explored the library, and the reserves and little by little his research took shape around the work of Kafka with the animal of his short story “Le Terrier”.
“When Kafka writes “Le Terrier”, he is the animal just for the time of the writing. Not more, not less. It is the story of an underground place, where, isolated, he can finally write : and isolated he could finaly get out.”
The still unknown drawing of this carte blanche will appear in June at the Ardenne abbey.
From June 4 to September 26, 2021
Ardenne abbey, 14280 Saint-Germain-la-Blanche-Herbe, France
Norbert Bisky’s first exhibition in Leipzig, where he was born, combines earlier works from the holdings of the Hildebrang Collection with a new painting cycle and an expansive installation inspired by the altered conditions of communication in the pandemic age.
The title refers to G2 Kunsthalle’s architectural history –it was meant to a host municipal data processing center. The show turns the spotlight on the use of data and information in a world ruled by digital technology. In the recent work “Trollfarmer” (2021), Bisky grapples with “doom-scrolling”, in which people compulsively search the web for fear-inducing images and information, and explores the ways in which such new cultural practices serve the interests of unseen actors.
G2 Kunsthalle, Dittrichring 13, Leipzig, Germany
From June 4 to September 26, 2021
The exhibition "BLOOMING" is opening the new exhibition space of the Domaine de Pommery, the “Cellier Pompadour”, and celebrates the time of rebirth and blossoming of nature and men by bringing together artists from the past and from today.
Dedicated to painting, ceramics, drawing and figurative photography, this majestic Eiffel-type space of over 900 square meters magnificently enriches the 55-hectare estate.
This first exhibition in the ”Cellier Pompadour” gathers 61 artists including Pierre et Gilles and Philippe Cognée, and is curated by Nathalie Vranken, Catherine Delot - Director of the Museum of Fine Arts of Reims, Chief Heritage Curator - and Fabrice Bousteau - Exhibition Curator and Director of the editorial staff of Beaux-Arts magazine.
From June 3 to November 15, 2021
Domaine Pommery, 5 Place du Général Gouraud, Reims
A mysterious passage that inspires surprise, fleeting encounters, "gastronomy for the eye, not a stroll" as Balzac said. Artists are invited to present works without taboos, political ramblings, diversions and rantings.
With works by Pierre et Gilles, Elika Hedayat, Philippe De Gobert, Jacqueline de Jong, Arnaud Labelle-Rojoux, Marie Losier, Javier Mayoral, Clémentine Mélois, Arthur Mirat, Honoré δ'O, Thibault Scemama de Gialluly, Stéphane Thidet, Didier Trenet, Clovis Trouille et une intervention de Mirat-Masson.
Aline Vidal Paris
Passage véro-dodat
2 rue Bouloi ou 19, rue Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Paris
From June 3 to 19, 2021
(Opening on June 3 from 4pm to 8pm)
With its latest exhibition, the Mart continues comparing artists and art movements spanning different eras, overcoming temporal limits. The undisputed protagonist of “His Time” and “Our Time” is Sandro Botticelli. On display, as part of the exhibition are a series of masterpieces, including Pallade e il Centauro on loan from the Uffizi Gallery, Venere from the Galleria Sabauda in Turin, andCompianto sul Cristo morto from the Poldi Pezzoli Museum in Milan. Botticelli’s influence also echoes the works of contemporary artists, including Giosetta Fioroni, David LaChapelle, Michelangelo Pistoletto and John Currin, and the worlds of film and fashion, comparing the image of Venus with that of Chiara Ferragni.
Mart, Museo di arte moderna e contemporanea di Trento e Rovereto
Corso Bettini 43, Rovereto, Italy
From May 22 to August 29, 2021
“Sur les chemins du paradis” explores the different aspects of heaven through what the three monotheisms - Judaism, Christianity and Islam - have said about it and the work that artists have produced for two thousand years. The inaugural exhibition of the Franciscaines de Deauville, alongside artists from all centuries and from all western and eastern regions, explores the historical and artistic transcription of the founding texts of heaven, from the myth of Enki in Mesopotamia to the figuration of Incarnation by Bill Viola. It is therefore a question of identifying the influences, the exchanges, the interpenetration of iconographic codes from the 3rd millennium BC to the 21st century.
Les Franciscaines, 145 B avenue de la République, Deauville, France
From May 19 to August 22, 2021
The exhibition shows a selection of ancient icons from Europe and Russia – depicting variously Christ, the Mother of God, or individual saints – the striking simplicity of which sets them apart as timeless objects of veneration. A second set of works by 19th and 20th century artists such as Pierre et Gilles, Charles Filiger and Lucien Levy-Dhurmer explores the frontal and depth-less composition of icons. The exhibition also discusses the use that contemporary artists like Yan Pei-Ming and Wim Delvoye make of iconographic language.
Boghossian Foundation
Villa Empain, Brussels
From May 6 to October 24, 2021
It is with great sadness that we announce the passing of Juliao Sarmento, yesterday May 4, in Lisbon.
Born in 1948, Juliao Sarmento was a major figure of Portuguese art from the 1970s onwards. He was among the first of his generation to achieve wide international recognition, exhibiting in numerous prestigious museums (including the Tate Modern in London, the Centro Contemporáneo de Malaga in Spain, the Contemporary Arts Center in Cincinnati and the Fundaçao Serralves in Porto). Throughout his life, he carved a place for himself among the great thinkers and artists of contemporary art. His work explored the terrain of desire and representation in an approach combining painting, video, sound and visual installations. Exploiting a huge variety of combinations, Sarmento created an oeuvre with recurring motifs: the archetypal woman, modernist architectural images, plant-like lines, references to literature and the cinema. A large part of his work addresses issues of fragmentation, the gap between the real and fictional.
Fluent in French and a lover of French culture and cinema, Juliao Sarmento was widely admired in our country, where his work was the subject of many museum exhibitions, including Pompidou, MAMAC in Nice or most recently the Gulbenkian Foundation in Paris.
A passionate artist, Juliao Sarmento radiated with relentless curiosity and fierce energy. Profoundly humane and generous, he we will greatly missed.
Our thoughts are with his family.
Photo: pf.Elle.J
“The Soul Trembles” is the largest exhibition devoted to the internationally active artist Chiharu Shiota. On display are some one hundred works ranging from her 1990s output to her latest pieces. In addition to large-scale installation, there are sculptures, performance videos, photographs, drawings, and materials related to her stage design projects.
Among these works are large-scale installations in which black and red threads run through and envelop the entire space, constituting one of her most representative artwork series. The countless lines traced out in thread allude to various phenomena and a complex array of links and connections, while also beckoning us towards the deepest reaches of existence. At the root of these works lie Shiota’s incessantly-pursued themes of life and death, as well as a fundamental inquiry into what we all pursue in life, and where we are heading.
The subtitle of this exhibition, “The Soul Trembles,” refers to the emotional stirrings of the heart that cannot be put into words, in addition to being a manifestation of thoughts the artist hopes to convey to others.
Taipei Fine Arts Museum
No. 181, Sec. 3, Zhongshan N. Rd., Zongschan Dist., Taipei City, Taiwan
From May 1st to August 29, 2021
It is the first stained glass artwork designed by Kehinde Wiley to enter a public art collection in the world. The title and pose of Saint Adelaide derives from an original 19th century stained glass window depicting the 10th century saint and consort of the Holy Roman Emperor Otto I in the Royal Chapel of St Ferdinand, Paris. In Wiley’s stained glass artwork, the figure of the female saint is substituted for Brooklyn model Mark Shavers - a young black man wearing pale jeans, a stripy jumper and gold trainers, with a fur around his neck.
It is one of three stained glass artworks (Saint Adelaide, Saint Remi and Saint Amelie) inspired by historic stained glass in this chapel designed by French painter Jean Auguste-Dominque-Ingres and made at Sèvres.
The Stained Glass Museum
South Triforium, Ely, Cambridgeshire (UK)
Lokame Tharavadu (The World Is One Family) is a large-scale curated contemporary art exhibition of Malayali artists, organized by the Kochi Biennale Foundation. Over 260 artists will be exhibiting a collection of their works, to foreground each of their practices.
Jitish Kallat presents in this exhibition “Epilogue” (2011) in which the artist memorialises the life-time of his late father by picturing the approximately 22 000 moons that he saw during his lifetime. Strructured in monthly slots for each year, the moons are represented by "rotis breads", the edges of which grow or crumble away as the moon waxes and wanes.
The "roti moons", a recurring pattern in the artist's work, distill lived time into its essential components—the daily bread, the recurring routine—even as they connect it to a shared, eternally recurring celestial phenomenon. At the end of the path, the viewer is invited to walk with Kallat as he retraces his father's life, a poignant frame with a lone moon, representing the night before 2nd December 1998, when the artist's father died.
Kochi Biennale Foundation, Alappuzha, Kerala, Inde
From April 5 to June 30, 2021
Chiharu Shiota presents her first solo exhibition at Chaumont-sur-Loire. She has created spaces that are bereft of any human presence, of any physical presence but where threads of memory, symbols of time are woven into a web that links inert objects to the past, to moments, to presences that now only exist in memory.
Domaine de Chaumont-sur-Loire, France
From April 2 to November 1, 2021
For the 10th anniversary of the prohect “Arts Towada” that transforms the city into a museum of art, the Towada Art Center is replacing his permanent artwork and displaying the deposited works for the first time since its opening.
On this occasion, Chiharu Shiota will unveil the work “Memory of Water” on April 1st, 2021. This is part of a series of work using boat and threads that has been presented in other exhibitions in Japan and around abroad. It is Chiharu Shiota’s first permanent work in a public museum of art in Japan.
April 1st, 2021
Towada Art Center, Aomori, Japan
The Fondation Thalie presents “Spring”, a new display of her collection in Brussels with new acquisitions from Jitish Kallat, as well as Davide Balula, Le Corbusier, Francis Picabia, Jean Dubuffet, Hiroshi Sugimoto, Risaku Suzuki, Tatiana Trouvé, and Pieter Vermeersch, among others.
“Rebirth, buds and flowers, with this new display there is a desire to share the poetry and beauty of artwork that is usually shown in our homes.
This collection was started in 2008 and evokes “le sensible” around the question of know-how and gesture with regard to textile creations, which is a tribute to the legacy of Anni Albers, the worthy successor of the Bauhaus, who spent her entire career experimenting with weaving techniques as graphic paintings. (…).” – Nathalie Guiot, President of the Fondation Thalie.
Fondation Thalie, 15 rue Buchholtz 1050 Brussels, Belgium
From April 1st to May 9, 2021
Chiharu Shiota’s inspiration often emerges from a personal experience or emotion, which she expands into universal human concerns such as life, death, and relationships.
The installation “Connected to life” consists of more than 50 hanging beds that cascade from the ceiling to the floor. The flow of life, which suddenly came to an end for so many because of the Corona virus with its many deaths, is present in the installation through the blood flowing through the tubes just as blood flows through the human body. Reminding us metaphorically that “the world today is a hospital” (Peter Weibel), the installation conveys a lightness that veils the weight of the subject.
Zentrum für Kunst und Medium (ZKM), Lorenzstrasse 19, Karlsruhe (Germany)
From March 17 to July 11, 2021
The exhibition “On everyone’s lips. From Pieter Bruegel to Cindy Sherman” is dedicated to the theme of the oral cavity, from the mouse to the lips, the tongue and the teeth. Science and medicine have always been involved in the exploration of the specific part of the body, so as art and cultural history, from antiquity to present. The exhibition presents over 250 works of art by among others, David Lachapelle, Albrecht Dürer, Pablo Picasso, Max Klinger, Marina Abramović, Andy Warhol, and Louise Bourgeois comprising paintings, sculptures, installations, photographs, drawings, prints and video art, juxtaposed with individual exhibits from ethnological and scientific collections, film and advertising, music and literature.
Kunstmuseum, Wolfsburg, Germany
Until June 6, 2021
“I want the viewer to reflect on their inner self, on their life – past, present, and future…” – Chiharu Shiota
In “The web of time”, countless intertwined strands connect numbers across time and space. The installation which is part of the Te Papa museum’s permanent collection creates the vision of a night sky studded with constellations of numbers. These numbers – scattered like stars in the night sky – represent meaningful dates in history, both collective and personal. As Chiharu Shiota says, “Numbers confort us. We share dates that are important to us, and they help us understand ourselves.”
permanent displays
Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa, 55 Cable Street, Wellington
For the new Janela edition, “Taffimai” invited artist Julião Sarmento to intervene with the neon installation Strip Club, which occupies most of the Janela’s area.
Strip Club ironically promises to transform the plant store Limbo Shop into a striptease club, inviting whoever passes by the Janela to come inside. As the store is closed by law, the artist’s invitation reveals itself as a provocation, the ultimate game of seduction. This edition of Janela is not just one more game we came to get used to in Julião Sarmento’s work, but it is mostly a reminder that we, in fact cannot come in, cannot enjoy, cannot participate in all of what Lisbon’s streets have to offer.
From February 26 to May 31, 2021
Janela “Taffimai”, Calçada Castelo Picao, 32, Lisboa
Julião Sarmento presents his solo exhibition “Japanese Traffic Yellow Tide” at the Center for Contemporary Art in Kitakyushu, Japan :
“Standing alone in the exact center of the room, the one defined by the crossing of both diagonals on the floor, I imagine a colour. Not just any colour but one which can transport me to unknown pleasures and places of delight. A colour connected to freedom and self-improvement. A colour I particularly fancy and often use in my work. A colour that sets my good mood in. A colour like the colour of New York City cabs. Traffic Yellow. RAL 1023.
I then imagine how many gallons of paint would it be necessary to fill up the room I’m standing in, up to the tip of my head, shy only of my scalp, with me inside, in the center, completely still. To fill up the room with paint up to 186 cm which is my height, shy only of the hairs on top of my head. Like an immense yellow tide. I imagine a room as a sink, with a hole in the bottom through which the paint disappears once the room is filled the way I imagined. And then the result. A yellow room completely covered in yellow paint up to a quota of 186 cm. A simple equation. A simpler gesture ? ”- Julião Sarmento
From February 15 to April 23, 2021
CCA Gallery, 2-5 Hibikino, Wakamatsu-ku, Kitakyushu, Japan
In an unprecedented visual dialogue, the Ex Africa exhibition brings together more than 150 works by contemporary artists of all generations and origins to decipher the relationships that unite the current scene and ancient African arts since the end of the 20th century.
From February 9 to July 11, 2021
Galerie Jardin, musée du quai Branly – Jacques Chirac, 37 quai Branly, 75007 Paris
As part of the Saison Africa2020, Suzana Sousa, independent curator based in Luanda, Angola and Odile Burluraux, curator at the au Musée d’Art Moderne de Paris, bring together at MAM a set of works by sixteen female artists from several English-speaking African countries, and Portuguese speakers, or from the diaspora, offering a glimpse of a contemporary African art scene little presented in France. The Power of My Hands, through the creations presented - painting, pottery, photography, video, performance, embroidery etc. - takes into account the capacity of the artists to approach, starting from their personal histories, the social questions which determine the female condition.
From January 22 to May 30, 2021
Musée d’Art Moderne, 11 Avenue du Président Wilson, 75116 Paris
The Centro Cultural Banco do Brasil - Rio de Janeiro is the last location of the touring exhibition of Chiharu Shiota "Linhas da Vida", that has been traveling since beginning of 2020 through Brazil. It is the first extensive solo exhibition presented in the country, showing works spanning over 25 years of artistic career. The exhibition includes the site-specific installations "Beyond Memory", "Two Boats, One Direction" and "Internal Line".
From January 13rd to April 19th, 2021
Centro Cultural Banco do Brasil Rio de Janeiro, R. Primeiro de Março, 66 - Centro, Rio de Janeiro, Brasil
“Río de sangre” is an installation created by Ivan Navarro, located on the banks of the Mapocho river in Chile. Made up of an iron tower connected to one of the river’s pathways through a bridge, it creates a peaceful place for meditation in the midst of the urban jungle. Visitors can walk it up, one at a time, and are given a map of Santiago with the streets renamed after various parts of the human body. The installation is an homage to the Desaparecidos, the victims of the dictatorship thrown in the river before and after the Pinochet era.
Santiago, Chile
From 12 january 2021
With this new solo exhibition, Planetarium, displayed at Centquatre, Iván Navarro created an immersive journey through constellation of videos, sculptures, and other luminous and sonorous objects. Celestial bodies and terrestrials ones are confounded for a better understanding of power, at a time of metaphysics obsessions, such as identity and memory.
From January 9, 2021 to February 28, 2021
Le 104, 5 Rue Curial, 75019 Paris
In January and February 2021, Prune Nourry invests the vast spaces of the Bon Marché Rive Gauche with a set of works created specifically for this carte blanche and thought in relation to the unique architecture of the place. The installation L'Amazone Érogène extends the Catharsis series in which the figure of the Amazon appeared by allowing the artist to experiment an unprecedented scale, thanks in particular to the vast volumes offered by the department store.
From January 9 to February 21, 2021
Le Bon Marché , 24 rue de Sèvres, 75007 Paris
The new Moynihan train hall (New York, USA) features three ambitious site-specific permanent installations by artists Kehinde Wiley, Stan Douglas and Elmgreen & Dragset. On view on the 33rd Street mid-block entryway ceiling, Wiley’s site-specific installation Go (2020), covers the ceiling of the train hall’s with a backlit, hand-painted, stained-glass triptych that recalls the grandeur of decorative Renaissance and Baroque painting.
The Moynihan Train Hall, Penn Station, New York
From January 1, 2021
The exhibition “Thierry Mugler: Couturissime” presents 150 haute-couture and prêt-à-porter outfits by a visionary couturier, director, photographer, perfumer and dancer – almost none of which have ever been exhibited – in addition to accessories, stage costumes, videos, rarely seen sketches, and archival material. Numerous art prints by leading fashion photographers, from Helmut Newton to David LaChapelle, round out the show.
Until April 18, 2021
Kunsthalle der Hypo-Kulturstiftung, Theatinerstrasse 8, Munich, Germany
