7 minute read
Diary Preview the coming months’ most compelling art and design shows
Agenda
Sights to behold: a calendar of shows and fairs for the coming months
Words / Alice Bucknell
Judy Chicago, Baltic Gateshead Until 19 April 2020
Happy 80th, Judy Chicago! The punchy painter, sculptor and pioneer of feminist art is finally getting her just desserts with her first major UK survey show at Baltic Gateshead. The greatest hits of Chicago’s 50-year practice will be on display alongside lesser-known performance pieces from her younger years. Further highlights include pyrotechnic art from across the decades, such as 1972’s Smoke Bodies (pictured opposite) and A Purple Poem for Miami (pictured above), a 2019 “smoke performance” for the Institute of Contemporary Art in Miami.
Hans Hartung, MAM, Paris Until 1 March 2020
© ADAGP, Paris 2019. Image: François Walch
The Musée d’Art Moderne (MAM) in Paris is celebrating its reopening after a glitzy €10m makeover that strips the art deco building bare and enables universal access for the first time. In addition to the 15,000 modern works that constitute its permanent collection – including murals by Raoul Dufy and Henri Matisse – MAM will showcase a 300-work retrospective of the German-French painter Hans Hartung as part of the opening festivities. Known as a forerunner of abstraction, Hartung’s last retrospective in a French museum was in 1969.
Dror Baldinger
Ruby City, San Antonio Inaugural exhibitions until 2022
When the late hot-sauce heiress and art collector Linda Pace dreamed about a red structure that reminded her of The Wizard of Oz’s Emerald City, she then went on to commission architect David Adjaye to build it, to the tune of $15m. Ruby City is San Antonio’s only contemporary art centre, and it’s free, too. Three inaugural exhibitions will show 50 works from Pace’s collection, including Do Ho Suh, Isaac Julien, Cornelia Parker and Pace herself.
Meryl McMaster: As Immense as the Sky, Ikon, Birmingham 4 December 2019–23 February 2020 Of Plains Cree and European ancestry, Meryl McMaster’s powerful photographs explore the artist’s indigenous background. For her first UK solo show, she reconciles this dual heritage with ecological concerns both within and beyond her native Canada, through a performative proposition soaked in magic. “My aim was to reconnect with those who came before me as a way of introducing myself to the land on which they lived,” she says.
Theaster Gates: Amalgam, Tate Liverpool 13 Dec 2019–3 May 2020 Chicago-based artist Theaster Gates made waves at Palais de Tokyo with Amalgam, which addresses urban cleansing, migration and race relations via sculpture, installation, film and dance. It commemorates a poor, mixed-race community from Malga Island, Maine, expelled – and scrubbed out of history – in 1912 by the state governor. Its meaning will amplify when it hits Liverpool, a city that’s no stranger to the forces of urban renewal.
Ann Veronica Janssens. Image: Pascual Merce Martinez
Ann Veronica Janssens, The Louisiana Museum of Modern Art 23 January–7 May 2020 The Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, located on the Øresund Sound 25 miles north of Copenhagen with a panoramic view out to Sweden, is a sublime modernist palace and sculpture garden with a fantastic permanent collection and a world-class exhibitions programme to boot. This winter, Ann Veronica Janssens, the Belgian master of light and space art, will debut her trippy, experiential installations for the first time in Denmark.
Courtesy of the artist & Piper Keys. Image: Mark Blower
Sung Tieu, Haus der Kunst, Munich 31 January–21 June 2020
Vietnam-born, London-based artist Sung Tieu creates video and sculptural installations that address topics such as global capitalism, transnational movement and diaspora communities, invoking subjects that include architecture, fast food, television and the boredom of the night shift. This solo show is at the Haus der Kunst in Munich, a building infamous for being the first example of Nazi architecture: for anyone keen on incisive new media art that grapples with today’s biggest concerns, it will be a treat to see what she makes of it.
The Grenada-born painter Denzil Forrester moved to London in 1967 and immortalised the underground reggae club scene of 1980s London in his vibrant, expressive canvases. But the large-scale paintings speak a darker tale of police brutality and racial violence – it’s this combination of the joyous and tragic that makes his works so jarring and relevant nearly 40 years on. This show at Nottingham Contemporary is entirely new work.
James Turrell, Pace Gallery, London 10 February–27 March 2020
Pioneer of the Californian light and space art movement – and better recognised as the unknowing harbinger of the art selfie today – James Turrell is bringing his hypnotic installations to Pace’s London outpost (pictured is 2019’s Aquarius, Medium Glass Circle). Whether you’re a perceptual art lover or hankering for some chromatherapy come winter, keep Turrell on your checklist.
Rather than endure the miserable month of February, if you have roots in the art world then there’s always the option of eloping to the sunshine of La La Land. Inaugurated last year, Frieze Los Angeles has garnered a reputation as an intimate, energetic and intelligent fair with its finger on the pulse. UK stalwarts in attendance include Sadie Coles, Thomas Dane and Victoria Miro. Frieze Los Angeles 14–16 February 2020 Diane Simpson, Nottingham Contemporary 8 February–3 May 2020 Midwestern sculptor Diane Simpson imagines strange worlds out of wood, metal and fabric. Work such as 1983’s Samurai 10 (pictured) has an orderly nonchalance, but also a mystic aura that’s difficult to place in time. Now 80, Simpson has produced these works for half a century, and while she was always on the periphery of art movements specific to her home city, such as the Chicago Imagists, her work is experiencing a rightful renewed attention. Courtesy of the artist & Stephen Friedman; Courtesy of the artist and Corbett vs. Dempsey, Chicago/Herald St, London/JTT, New York. Image: Tom Van Eynde; Mark Blower/Frieze
Collectible, Brussels 5–8 March 2020
Established in 2017 by art and design market veterans Clélie Debehault and Liv Vaisberg, Collectible dedicates itself exclusively to 21st-century collectible design and the overlap of art, design, and architecture. It values the experimental and unknown (such as this Objects of Common Interest intallation from 2019, pictured) over the yawn-inducing favourites of mid-century modernism – so if you like placing bets on the new vanguard or have a soft spot for hyperchromatic, oozing, glitzy creations that blur traditional boundaries, consider it unmissable.
Andy Warhol, Tate Modern, London 12 March–6 September 2020
The Doris and Donald Fisher Collection at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. © The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts/ARS New York
Surely we all know the King of Pop Art well enough by now, right? Tate begs to differ. In the era of museum blockbusters, the upcoming Andy Warhol retrospective at Tate Modern promises the newest take possible on the icon’s legacy, offering visitors the opportunity to engage with some of Warhol’s interactive works, such as Silver Clouds, a room full of floating oversized pillow-shaped balloons. There will also be a rare peep at his paintings of the early 1970s – alongside all those soup cans, CocaCola bottles and Marilyn Monroe heads.
Art Basel Hong Kong 19–21 March 2020
Since its inauguration in 2013, Art Basel Hong Kong has become the premier art fair in Asia – and is arguably the best of all three annual Art Basels for catching fresh and upcoming talent from all over the world. That said, ongoing unrest in the region has prompted some international galleries to think twice about their attendance. This year, expect major galleries with a Hong Kong pied à terre – such as Gagosian, White Cube and Edouard Malingue – to make an appearance, as well as the likes of local contemporary art powerhouse Para Site.
