In Memory of
Kenneth Anger
1927–2023
Pamela Rosenkranz
Old Tree
High Line, New York
May 2023
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.
Marcel van Eeden
Hans Thoma Prize 2023
August 13, 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.
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.
Thomas Demand
Forms and Patterns of Azzedine Alaïa by Thomas Demand
Fondation Azzedine Alaïa, Paris
Through August 20, 2023
The exhibition of photographs by Thomas Demand of the preparatory patterns of Azzedine Alaïa (part of his Model Studies series) coincides with the unveiling to the public of a place that has been kept secret since the designer's death on 18 November 2017 – Azzedine Alaïa’s studio. Visitors to the exhibition will now be able to discover Azzedine Alaïa’s studio through a window of the gallery space, and imagine the couturier at work.
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.”
Andreas Gursky
Visual Spaces of Today
MAST, Bologna
Through January 7, 2024
Drawing inspiration from the acronym MAST—which stands for Manifattura di Arti, Sperimentazione, Tecnologia (Arts, Experience and Technology)—, the visual spaces in the works selected for the exhibition by Urs Stahel and Andreas Gursky mirror these thematic worlds. The artist’s powerful images disclose new views on work, the economy, and globalization. They reveal concrete visions of production plants, goods handling centres, temples of consumption, transport hubs, energy and food industries, and financial centres across the world.
Included in the exhibition are 40 images by the artist, dating from his early works (Krefeld, Hühner, 1989) to his more recent production (V&R II and V&R III, 2022), travelling great lengths, from Salerno (1990) to Hong Kong (2020), and combining modern tourism industry (Rimini, 2003) with age-old production processes (Salinas, 2021).
Jenny Holzer
Stiftung Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen, Dusseldorf
Through August 6, 2023
Starting March 11, 2023, the Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen will present a sweeping exhibition of the internationally celebrated American artist Jenny Holzer (*1950). Since the 1970s, Holzer has been renowned for her thought-provoking use of text in various media and her pioneering adaptation of new technologies.
Holzer’s Düsseldorf exhibition, spanning K21’s Bel Etage and temporary exhibition galleries, will range from posters to paintings and stone-works, touching on subjects such as war, absurdity, and populism. In keeping with Holzer’s deeply democratic approach and artistic practice, her works challenge viewers to grapple with conflicting perspectives and find their own empathic, open minded positions in complex debates. This makes the exhibition a public forum for discussions of current global challenges.
Karen Kilimnik
Swan Lake
Kunsthaus Glarus, Switzerland
Through June 25, 2023
The exhibition at Kunsthaus Glarus presents two installative settings featuring Kilimnik's works Swan Lake (1992) and Kitri and friends at the garden folly (2004). Flanking these are paintings from different years that depict a “forest clearing as stage” theme but which also engage intrinsically with presence and absence. With these and other works, the exhibition highlights Kilimnik’s artistic ability to continually renegotiate the conditions of established narratives within and beyond her time.
Barbara Kruger
ART WALL 13 – Barbara Kruger
Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston
Through January 21, 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
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.
David Maljković
In the Pictorial Code
Quetzal Art Center, Portugal
Through August 31, 2023
Quetzal Art Center proudly presents a solo exhibition by David Maljković titled In the Pictorial Code. At the core of Maljković’s practice is a regimented exploration of formalist concerns. Whilst narrative is the driving element at the origin of a project, the artist’s varied means of visual implementation consistently and profoundly modifies and compromises its supremacy, whether that is through photography, video, sculpture, installation, collage or painting. In the Pictorial Code presents recent works that play with the idea of painting as a guardian of time and the painter’s position as its witness. The exhibition establishes a marking system that embodies the image’s position within the author’s practice, and also tracks its displacement into other media.
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.
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.
Andreas Schulze
On Stage
The Perimeter, London
Through July 1, 2023
Andreas Schulze’s solo exhibition On Stage features a series of new paintings, in which the grand dazzling world of entertainment meets everyday life. Travelling from Kunsthalle Nuremberg, this second iteration of the exhibition will transform The Perimeter into a stage for Schulze's unique painterly worlds. Through portal-like doors and windows, passing by designer lamps and kitchen cabinets, the viewers catch glimpses of spotlights and smoky dance floors, while slender spider legs slowly stride down a show staircase heading towards them.
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.
Cindy Sherman
Tapestries
ARoS Aarhus Kunstmuseum, Aarhus, Denmark
Through June 5, 2023
Few artists have defined the era of post modernity more than Cindy Sherman. She is renowned for her photographic series, produced over many years, in which she transforms herself as characters. In 2017 a new series emerged on-line. Sherman started posting ‘selfies’. These startling images, commenting on the phenomenon of face altering apps/applications, have been given a new grandeur and permanent status using the fine and revered craft of tapestry, shown in Europe for the first time since their exhibition at Sprüth Magers, Los Angeles in Spring of 2021.
Cindy Sherman
Anti-Fashion
Staatsgalerie Stuttgart
Through September 10, 2023
For almost 50 years, the American artist Cindy Sherman has been making fashion and its depiction a theme of her work. Her interest in the fashion world shows a subversive attitude toward what it represents. Through humor and staging, her pictures become parodies of fashion photography: they show figures that are anything but desirable and thus contradict all conventions of haute couture and the usual ideas of beauty.
Rosemarie Trockel
MMK Museum für Moderne Kunst, Frankfurt am Main
Through June 18, 2023
The brutality and absurdity of normative regimes emerge openly in the work of Rosemarie Trockel. Definitions, restrictions, paternalism, and violence due to gender become visible and transparent. Her advance is a risky, courageous, combative, and humorous one. In all media—drawing and painting, photography, sculpture, installation, and film—Trockel’s sociological gaze is as much directed at social regimes and political structures as it is at nature. Her observations and studies of processionary caterpillars, starlings, chickens, or lice, while scientifically sound and precise, always include her own critical gaze as a vital component. She appropriates the ambivalences in her work, capturing them decidedly.
The comprehensive exhibition displays works from all periods of Rosemarie Trockel’s oeuvre, from the 1970s to the new works created especially for the museum.
Hanne Darboven
Hanne Darboven – Writing Time
Menil Drawing Institute, Houston
October 27, 2023–February 11, 2024
Hanne Darboven—Writing Time explores the intertwining of writing and drawing that formed the core of the artist’s practice for over forty years. Hanne Darboven (1941–2009), a German conceptual artist, is best known for her immersive installations of individually framed sheets filled with text formulations and collaged images. At the heart of her practice is the question of how to picture the unfolding of history, the passing of time, and one’s experience within both.
The exhibition at the Menil explores three defining motifs of the artist’s work on paper—abstract drawings, date calculations, and monumental installations. The display culminates with Inventions that Have Changed Our World, 1996, an enormous set of over 1300 individually framed sheets that incorporates all the hallmarks of her practice and how they reverberated and evolved over the decades of her life.
Hanne Darboven—Writing Time is curated by Kelly Montana, Assistant Curator, Menil Drawing Institute. The show will be accompanied by a fully illustrated catalogue that features essays by Kelly Montana and Dieter Schwarz, independent curator and former Director of the Kunstmuseum Winterthur, Switzerland.
Ed Ruscha
ED RUSCHA / NOW THEN
The Museum of Modern Art – MoMa, New York
September 10, 2023–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.
John Waters
John Waters: Pope of Trash
Academy Museum of Motion Pictures, Los Angeles
August 17, 2023–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.