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.

Pamela Rosenkranz
Old Tree
High Line, New York
Through September 2024

Sprüth Magers congratulates Pamela Rosenkranz whose monumental sculpture Old Tree was selected for the third High Line Plinth commission in New York, to be unveiled in spring of 2023. The bright red and pink imaginary tree animates a myriad of historical archetypes wherein the tree of life connects heaven and earth while also closely resembling the complex networks of the human circulatory system. Located on the High Line—an urban park built on a relic of industry—and selected from among over 80 international proposals by artists from 40 countries, Old Tree raises questions about the real while simultaneously highlighting a breakdown of the boundary between nature and artifice.

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.

David Lamelas
I Have to Think About It. Part II
Fondazione Antonio Dalle Nogare, Bolzano
Through February 24, 2024

The Fondazione Antonio Dalle Nogare presents I Have to Think About It, the first Italian retrospective exhibition of the Argentinean artist David Lamelas. Since the 1960s, Lamelas’ conceptual practice has ranged from installation to sculpture, drawing, photography, film, video, sound and textual works, addressing the defining contexts and conditions of our perception. This is the second part of the exhibition, the first of which opened in May 2023, and features a new configuration of works.

Reinhard Mucha
Urlaub im All / Holiday in Space
Edited by Sprüth Magers in cooperation with Galerie Bärbel Grässlin, Luhring Augustine, Lia Rumma Gallery
Published by Verlag der Buchhandlung Walther und Franz König, Cologne, March 23, 2023

Urlaub im All / Holiday in Space is an artist book which can be considered as Reinhard Mucha’s personal oeuvre catalogue. It comprises two volumes in a slipcase and is based on Reinhard Mucha's so-called portfolio books that he created for himself over the years, relating his photographically documented works to one another both formally and aesthetically. Nearly 800 reproductions as well as detailed image and work information provide unprecedented, comprehensive insight into both his work and understanding of sculpture. Also published for the first time are 19 letters and texts by Mucha further elucidating his artistic thinking.

Ed Ruscha
ED RUSCHA / NOW THEN
The Museum of Modern Art – MoMa, New York
Through January 13, 2024

“I don’t have any Seine River like Monet,” Ed Ruscha once said. “I’ve just got US 66 between Oklahoma and Los Angeles.” ED RUSCHA / NOW THEN will feature over 250 objects—including paintings, drawings, prints, photographs, artist’s books, films, and installations—that make use of everything from gunpowder to chocolate. Exploring Ruscha’s landmark contributions to postwar American art as well as lesser-known aspects of his six-decade career, the exhibition will offer new perspectives on a body of work that has influenced generations of artists, architects, designers, and writers.

Marcel van Eeden
Hans Thoma Prize 2023
Hans-Thoma-Kunstmuseum, Bernau im Schwarzwald
Through October 15, 2023

Sprüth Magers congratulates Marcel van Eeden on winning the Hans Thoma Prize 2023. Since 1949 The Hans Thoma Prize honours the work of an outstanding artistic personality who has a focus of artistic creation in Baden-Württemberg or was born here. The prize is accompanied by an exhibition at the Hans Thoma Art Museum in Bernau in the Black Forest, organised by the Staatliche Kunsthalle Karlsruhe for the Ministry of Science, Research and the Arts.

For more than 30 years, van Eeden has been inspired by photographs, magazines, advertising material and postcards to create his characteristic deep black charcoal drawings. Initially more like single images, which he published daily on his blog between 2001 and 2007, van Eeden over time developed powerful series with narrative content, which were linked to aesthetic elements of film noir or the graphic novel.