John Baldessari
The Story Underneath
Published by Sprüth Magers

The Story Underneath documents Sprüth Magers’ homonymous exhibition, curated by Nana Bahlmann, that explores the process behind John Baldessari’s pictorial reinventions. Collecting images and manipulating them in various ways, Baldessari examined their complex and ambiguous narrative potential. Produced as preparatory works and sketches for his celebrated large-scale pieces, the artist’s rarely-shown maquettes – artworks in their own right – from the early 1980s to the 2000s pull back the curtain on how mundane visual signals are re-appropriated and transformed into complex meditations on the construction of meaning within and through images. The catalogue, designed after one of the artist’s notebooks, grants extraordinary insight into his particular way of seeing, thinking and composing, with many of these works on paper revealing the sources – film stills, lobby cards and found photographs – for the vast trove from which he drew inspiration over the course of his influential six-decade-long career.

142 x 162 mm
174 pages
68 removable images with works by John Baldessari
Text by Nana Bahlmann
50 USD (excl. taxes and shipping)

The catalogue will be available in all Sprüth Magers galleries. Please inquire onsite or by email.

George Condo
Humanoids
Nouveau Musée National de Monaco – Villa Paloma
Through October 1, 2023

In George Condo’s own words, “the humanoid is not a science fiction monster, it is a form of representation that uses traditional means to bring out the inner emotions onto the surface of a person”. Over the course of six sections, the exhibition traces the continuity of a profuse body of work that ranges from “space beings” to Who’s Who, from Guido Reni to Bugs Bunny. Featuring too new paintings produced for the show, the exhibition offers a glimpse of the artist’s process of invention – as crazy as it is erudite – of humanoids.

Gilbert & George
THE PARADISICAL PICTURES
The Gilbert & George Centre, London

Opening this spring, The Gilbert & George Centre will provide a permanent home for an unrivalled artistic legacy and will be a place for visitors to convene from across the globe to experience pictures by Gilbert & George. The inaugural exhibition will be THE PARADISICAL PICTURES, exhibited in London for the first time, following their debut presentation Sprüth Magers, Los Angeles, and subsequent presentation at Sprüth Magers, Berlin. Gilbert & George commented: “We will start with THE PARADISICAL PICTURES because we realise that most people think of paradise as ‘the after party’ and we think of this as the pre-cum party.”

Barbara Kruger
ART WALL 13 – Barbara Kruger
Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston
Through January 28, 2024

For more than 40 years, Barbara Kruger has been a consistent, critical observer of contemporary culture. In the early 1980s, Kruger perfected a signature style of words and images extracted from mass media and recomposed into memorable, graphic artworks. Rigorously composed, her works have occupied a range of media and spaces, including walls, billboards, video projections, and an array of consumer products. Since the 1990s, Kruger has also created large-scale installations of her text-based art, transforming lobbies, elevators, and buildings with her signature aesthetic and pointed content. Continuing in this vein, Kruger will create a brand-new work for the ICA that speaks, as her work has done for more than four decades, to contemporary social and political dynamics.

Reinhard Mucha
Schnee von gestern / Snows of Yesteryear
Mucha im Livestream 1964–1975
Edited by Sprüth Magers in cooperation with Galerie Bärbel Grässlin, Luhring Augustine, Lia Rumma
Published by Verlag der Buchhandlung Walther und Franz König, Cologne, March 23, 2023

The artist book comprises in two volumes the 433 individual pages of the work Snows of Yesteryear – Excerpts from the Big Calendar III, [2020] 1964–1975. It is a strongly autobiographical work that – installed as an image frieze – traces in documents, drawings, and photographs Mucha's path from 1964 to 1975 divided into four episodes that preceded his artistic career. Schnee von gestern / Snows of Yesteryear oscillates between image history, frieze of time, archival material, and space-spanning sculpture.

The book contains early texts by Mucha, published for the first time, which impressively document the artist's approach to the world. Included in parallel are three quotations by Philipp Otto Runge about art.

The artist book is published in a limited edition.

Bridget Riley
Bridget Riley Drawings: From the Artist's Studio
The Morgan Library & Museum, New York
Through October 8, 2023

British artist Bridget Riley (b. 1931) is one of the most celebrated abstract painters of her generation. This exhibition—the first dedicated exclusively to her drawings in over fifty years—provides an intimate view of Riley's studio practice, in which the making of works on paper plays a central role. The exhibition includes more than 75 studies from the artist's collection, created between the 1940s and the 2000s. They include early figurative and landscape drawings made during her student years; black-and-white studies for Riley's best known paintings from the 1960s, when she became closely associated with the Op art movement; and a diverse array of color compositions, which have occupied her attention since the late 1960s. Together they demonstrate Riley's unceasing commitment to paper, pencil, ink, and gouache, as tools of exploration and innovation.

Andreas Schulze
On Stage
Cat. Kunsthalle Nuremberg, The Perimeter

The catalog On Stage was published on the occasion of Andreas Schulze's solo exhibition On Stage, currently on view at The Perimeter in London, where it traveled from Kunsthalle Nuremberg. Both institutions jointly published the catalog, which contains texts by Ralph Rugoff and Daniel Schreiber.

John Waters
John Waters: Pope of Trash
Academy Museum of Motion Pictures, Los Angeles
Through August 4, 2024

John Waters: Pope of Trash is the first comprehensive exhibition dedicated to the artist’s contributions to cinema. The exhibition delves into his filmmaking process, key themes, and unmatched style. Works on view include costumes, props, handwritten scripts, correspondence, scrapbooks, photographs, film clips, and more, revealing the nuances of independent filmmaking and the ways in which Waters’s movies have redefined the possibilities of independent cinema.