Gallery News
Solo museum show for Broomberg and Chanarin at Centre Pompidou
Marking the twentieth anniversary of Broomberg and Chanarin’s collaborative practice, the Centre Pompidou hosts a solo exhibition for the duo featuring their Divine Violence installation (21 February – 21 May). In the exhibition, Broomberg and Chanarin create a powerful artistic gesture which focuses on the violence contained in the Holy Bible. Through the installation, inspired by the personally annotated Bible of Bertolt Brecht, the viewer is immersed in a body of text and images from the Archive of Modern Conflict, thereby weaving painful links between wars and the religious scripture.
Breitz’s ‘Profile’ on exhibition in Finland
Having recently been acquired by the Saastamoinen Foundation, Candice Breitz’s Profile is included on an exhibition of the Foundation’s collection, titled Touch / Saastamoinen Foundation Art Collection, at the Espoo Museum of Modern Art in Finland (13 February – 16 September 2018). The exhibition is made up of three different sections – Human, space and encounters; Human, identity and body; and Human and power respectively – with the overarching theme of humanity at its core. As a permanent exhibition at the institution, the works on show will change periodically to feature new acquisitions in the collection.
Solo museum show for Hank Willis Thomas in Virginia
Following their acquisition of photographic works from Thomas’ Branded/Unbranded series, the John and Mable Ringling Museum of Art in Virginia hosts a solo exhibition for the artist (11 February – 10 June). Thomas’ Branded/Unbranded photographs reconsider classic advertisements from the last 100 years – minus their original text. Released from any context, brand, product or messaging, the previously subliminal images are free to speak more directly to what is being sold: the constructed identity and reinforced stereotypes of white women in the U.S. over time.
Alfredo Jaar on a group show in Norway’s National Gallery
Work by Alfredo Jaar is included on the Norwegian National Gallery’s group exhibition, “Faithless Pictures”:
http://www.nasjonalmuseet.no/en/exhibitions_and_events/exhibitions/national_gallery/Faithless+Pictures.b7C_wJfOYm.ips, in Oslo (9 February – 13 May). In the exhibition, the works selected highlight the complex relationship between image and reality – an important theme which contemporary artists continue to address, especially given the ever-increasing number of images we are exposed to daily.
Alfredo Jaar on group exhibition at Stanford University’s Cantor Center for Visual Arts
Jaar’s 1977 artwork Self-portrait features on the Iris & B. Gerald Cantor Center for Visual Arts’ group exhibition, The Matter of Photography in the Americas, at Stanford University (7 February – 30 April). Hosted in the museum’s Pigott Family Gallery, the exhibition showcases works by artists from 12 different countries who are using photography as an artistic medium and a communicative tool uniquely suited to modern media landscapes and globalised economies. The artists in this exhibition resist the impulse to “document” or “photograph anew” the world immediately around them. Instead, they employ a wide range of materials – from prints and drawings to photocopies and audio installations – to highlight the ways in which photography shapes our understanding of history and current events.
Hank Willis Thomas on a museum show in San Antonio
Thomas’ Basketball and Chain is included on the McNay Art Museum’s group exhibition, 30 Americans: Rubell Family Collection, in San Antonio, Texas (8 February – 6 May). 30 Americans presents a selection from the Rubell Family Collection in Miami, Florida and showcases works by many important African American artists of the last three decades. The exhibition focuses on issues of racial, sexual, and historical identity in contemporary culture, while exploring the powerful influence of artistic legacy and community across generations.
Oltmann, Nhlengethwa and Thomas feature on a group exhibition at 21c Museum Hotels
Work by Walter Oltmann, Sam Nhlengethwa (in collaboration with Marguerite Stephens) and Hank Willis Thomas feature on the 21c Museum Hotel’s group exhibition, SEEING NOW, in Nashville, USA (1 February – 31 December). The exhibition, curated by Alice Gray Stites, aims to explore and reveal the visible and hidden forces shaping what the contemporary world looks like.
Various artists on a traveling group exhibition in Albuquerque
Five Goodman Gallery artists – Kudzanai Chiurai, Haroon Gunn-Salie, Yinka Shonibare MBE, Mikhael Subotzky (in collaboration with Patrick Waterhouse) and Hank Willis Thomas – feature on Making Africa: A Continent of Contemporary Design, a group exhibition hosted by Albuquerque Museum in the United States (3 February – 6 May). The exhibition offers a vision of Africa in the twenty-first century as a place of unbounded optimism, rapid growth, and massive cultural transformation and presents the continent as a hub of experimentation that generates innovative design approaches and solutions with worldwide relevance.
Sam Nhlengethwa on a group show at the Clément Foundation
Work by Sam Nhlengethwa is showcased on the Clément Foundation’s latest group exhibition, AFRIQUES, Artistes d’hier et d’aujourd’hui, in Martinique (21 January – 6 May). Alongside artworks from the Dapper collection, the exhibition brings together works by fifteen contemporary African artists – working in various media – to offer new perspectives on a shared history; one that acknowledges a global history marked by diversity.
Yinka Shonibare MBE receives a grant from the prestigious VIA Art Fund
Yinka Shonibare MBE is one of three artists, alongside Tacita Dean and Zanele Muholi, to be awarded a grant from the Boston-based cultural project organisation, VIA Art Fund. The monies obtained from the award will be used to help realise Shonibare MBE‘s The American Library, a room-sized installation containing over 6 000 batik covered books at the Cleveland Public Library for FRONT International which opens in July 2018.
Hank Willis Thomas on public art exhibition at the Museum of the City of New York
Work by Thomas forms part of the Museum of the City of New York’s latest exhibition focusing on the city’s public art sculptures, titled Art in the Open: Fifty Years of Public Art in New York (1 January – 13 May). Presented to mark the 40th anniversary of the Public Art Fund, the exhibition highlights artworks that have transformed both the public spaces of New York as well as public expectation of the role and potential of art that exists outside of the traditional confines of museums and galleries. Additionally, the exhibition features renderings, models, photographs, and video footage tracing the creation of public artworks by various international artists who ‘have used the city as their canvas’.
Nolan Oswald Dennis and Haroon Gunn-Salie at Kunsthalle kAde
Dennis and Gunn-Salie are two of fifteen South African artists selected to exhibit work on the Kunsthalle kAde’s group exhibition, titled Tell Freedom. 15 South African artists, in Amersfoort, the Netherlands (27 January – 6 May). Curated by Nkule Mabaso and Manon Braat, the exhibition features a range of commissioned works wherein the exhibiting artists address issues of inequality still inherent within the South African vernacular. Actively engaging with the present social discourses that inform South Africa, the exhibition’s curatorial premise asks both the artists and viewers to reflect on the future: is it possible to envisage a future based on principles of humanity and equality, rather than on exclusion and division?
Alfredo Jaar at the Imperial War Museum in London
May 1, 2011 by Jaar features on Age of Terror, a group exhibition, at the Imperial War Museum in London (12 October – 28 May). Looking at issues of security, secrecy, representation and legality, the exhibition focuses on the measures taken by nation states to protect their citizens from the threat of terrorism, and the far-reaching effects of such methods of control.
William Kentridge on group exhibition at Harn Museum of Art in Florida
Work by Kentridge is included on the Harn Museum of Art’s group exhibition, Poetic and Political, at the University of Florida in Gainesville, Florida (15 August – 8 July). Poetic and Political explores two realms of perception often considered oppositional but more likely to work in tandem to make a rich, provocative and compelling visual impact. The exhibition juxtaposes the work of Josef Albers, a single artist focused on the psychic and emotive qualities of colour, with African and African American artists who confront the historic and contemporary traces of colonialism as they contribute to the power of healing and renewal.