ART NEWS: Sept. 02

 

Tyler Mitchell’s solo exhibition “Superfine” in London marks the first public unveiling of works from “Portrait of the Modern Dandy”, a luminous visual essay originally conceived for the catalogue of “Superfine: Tailoring Black Style,” the forthcoming spring 2025 Costume Institute exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. Bringing together history, fashion, and photography, the London presentation expands the conversation around the historical and cultural significance of Black style, tracing its lineage from the eighteenth century to the present day. At its core lies the figure of the dandy—an archetype reimagined through the lens of the African diaspora as a vehicle of self-invention, elegance, and quiet resistance. Within the gallery, exquisitely tailored garments converse with Mitchell’s large-format photographs, forming an immersive narrative of self-fashioning as both personal agency and cultural statement. His portraits echo the compositional gravitas of nineteenth-century studio photography while infusing it with contemporary vitality, underscoring the enduring symbolic power of dress as a language of distinction and autonomy. Mitchell continues his exploration of Black visual sovereignty, crafting tableaux that celebrate kinship, grace, and the poetics of style. The result is an exhibition that not only documents but also actively redefines dandyism as a dynamic space of identity, resistance, and aesthetic brilliance. Info: Gagosian, Burlington Arcade, 28–29 Burlington Arcade, London, United Kingdom, Duration: 15/9-3/10/2025, Days & Hours: Mn-Sat 10:00-18:00, https://gagosian.com/

Continuing his exploration of water as a realm of healing, transformation, and ecological interconnection, Aristeidis Lappas presents “Forever Fish”, following his first solo institutional show, “Gift of the Moon Crab,” held at Kunstverein Ludwigshafen, Germany, in 2024. Works from that earlier exhibition—now shown in Greece for the first time—appear alongside a new series created specifically for The Breeder. The exhibition’s title alludes to “forever chemicals,” synthetic substances that linger indefinitely in aquatic systems, highlighting the ecological and psychological urgency behind Lappas’ practice. Whereas the moon crab in Ludwigshafen guided audiences through the subconscious, here the fish emerges as a symbol of endurance—both fragile and resilient—illuminating our delicate, inseparable bond with aquatic life and the environments we share. Shifting seamlessly among painting, sculpture, sound, and installation, Lappas fuses figuration with abstraction to build immersive settings. His radiant depictions of riverine and oceanic creatures evoke beings suspended between myth and biology, while textiles, sculptural elements, and murals expand these visions into the surrounding space, inviting visitors into multi-sensory encounters where the line between human and more-than-human worlds dissolves. Info: The Breeder Gallery, 45 Iasonos st, Athens, Greece, Duration: 17/9-2/11/2025, Days & Hours: Tue-Fri 11:00-19:00, Sat 11:00-17:00, https://thebreedersystem.com/

The body of work that in on show in Kostas Paniaras solo exhibition “Summer Nostalgia”, can be read as an answer to a recurring question throughout Paniaras’s career: did his deep connection with the landscapes of his homeland define his life and art? Over the decades, Paniaras moved fluidly across painting, sculpture, stage design, and installation, experimenting with a wide range of materials and techniques that positioned him as a pioneering, boundary-breaking figure of his time. Almost three decades after their creation, the works in Summer Nostalgia invite us to project our own memories of summers past—private recollections that echo the universal pull of the sea. In “Kolymvitries” (1997–1998), included in the exhibition, these figures seem to move with the waves in a delicate, almost choreographed balance. At the same time, they transcend the everyday, taking on a mythological aura, becoming princesses like Europa or Leda, or recalling the emerging figure of Aphrodite rising from the sea, so that Paniaras’ bathers, whether kin or unknown passersby, inhabit both memory and myth. Info: The Breeder Feeder Gallery, 45 Iasonos st, Athens, Greece, Duration: 17/9-2/11/2025, Days & Hours: Tue-Fri 11:00-19:00, Sat 11:00-17:00, https://thebreedersystem.com/

The Third Line  present “The Only Way Out Is Through: The Twentieth Line”, a project  marking the gallery’s 20th anniversary. Taking inspiration from the phrase often invoked in times of hardship—both as a mantra of endurance and a fatalistic admission of reality—the exhibition ooks back on two decades of The Third Line’s story in relation to global cultural, political, and economic shifts through a retrospective exhibition, program of conversations, and “Flash Sales Specials”—a series of 48-hour pop-up sales of thematically grouped, long-unseen works from the gallery’s archive. The exhibition component features every artist currently represented by the gallery, with early and recent works drawn from the gallery’s extensive two-decade archive—much of which has not been shown to the public. Many of the early works reveal how some artists’ practices have evolved over the years, while others show artists whose visual language and concerns emerged fully formed and have remained strikingly consistent. Selected artworks are arranged into four chronological sections—2005 to 2009/ 2010 to 2015/ 2016 to 2020/ 2021 to 2025—each contextualized by a timeline running across the gallery’s floors that delineates key  political,  economic,  and  cultural  moments,  ranging from the  global  financial crisis,  through uprisings across the Arab world and the COVID-19 pandemic, to the present moment shaped by intersecting global crises. Info: Curator: Shumon Basar, The Third Line Gallery, Alserkal Avenue, Warehouse 78, Street 8, Al Quoz 1, Exit 43 off Sheikh Zayed Road, Dubai, UAE, Duration: 18/9-7/11/2025, Days & Hours: Daily 11:00-19:00, https://thethirdline.com/

Isaac “Drift” Wright presents his solo exhibition “COMING HOME”. He is a multidisciplinary artist and a United States Army veteran and is known for climbing and photographing from the highest points of cities across the globe. His work – captured from spires, girders and rooftops – is defined by stillness, scale and solitude. Offering a perspective most people never see, his photographs are grounded in risk and shaped by personal transformation period. After serving his country, he found solace and purpose in urban exploring and photography, illegally and clandestinely capturing cities from unique and unseen perspectives. Through his lens, he found a way to cope with displacement, PTSD, and Bipolar Disorder, finding peace in the presence of the moment. In 2020, Drift’s artistic passion and dedication to documenting the world around him led to his arrest, a heart-wrenching experience that resulted in four months of incarceration without bond. The government weaponized numerous factors including his military background against him, making his story a national headline. Info: FAS44, 4044 Dean Martin Dr, Las Vegas, NV, USA, Duration: 18/9-25/10/2025, https://fas44.com/

Ishita Chakraborty’s work engages with socio-political and geopolitical questions. She is interested in zones of geopolitical and socio-economic tension as well as in the imbalance between the Global North and South. Narratives of displacement—of humans and other forms of life—are a consistent and essential element of her practice. At  the  center  of  her  solo  exhibition “I Recall The Forest Inside Me”, lies  an  engagement  with  land  and  landscape—envisioned simultaneously as a realm of contemplation, beauty, peace, spaciousness, growth, and vitality, and as a site of exploitation of natural resources, of man-made borders, migration, and border violence. The new and newly installed works—ranging from drawings on canvas cutout glued on Indian sari fabric to a wall painting, works on paper, a glass sculpture, and porcelain objects—unfold these dualities within the spaces. In the exhibition the artist invites us to reflect on the entangled relationships between ways of living, environments, and gender in a postcolonial context, with particular attention to the role of women in plantation economies and in agriculture across the Global South. Despite the seriousness of the works on display, the artist maintains a certain lightness through her poetic approach, thereby opening access to their meanings. Info: Galerie Peter Kilchmann, Rämistrasse 33, Zurich, Switzerland, Duration: 19/9-25/10/2025, Days & Hours: Tue-Fri 11:00-18:00, Sat 11:00-17:00, www.peterkilchmann.com/

Entitled “L’aurora viene”, the Thaddaeus Ropac Milan gallery’s inaugural exhibition pairs Georg Baselitz and Lucio Fontana in dialogue in a two-person presentation for the first time, and encompasses paintings and sculptures by Baselitz spanning the past decade, as well as works by Fontana from the 1930s to the 1960s, including the loan of a nucleus of works from the Fondazione Lucio Fontana. Though the two artists never met, Fontana has played an important role in the work of Baselitz. Baselitz has a studio in Italy, and Fontana lived and worked for most of his life in Milan, where the first exhibition of his works was held in 1931. The exhibited works by Baselitz include a new monumental bronze sculpture and recent paintings with empty, unlit centres or suspended figures who seem to surge forth from dark grounds, echoing Fontana’s exploration of what lies beyond the canvas. Demonstrating the development and evolution of this exploration in Fontana’s work, the works on view include ‘Baroque’ sculptures dating from as early as 1937 up to the 1950s, as well as a selection of “Concetti spaziali”, including iconic “Attese” works from the 1960s and key examples from the “Gessi” (1954–58) and Inchiostri (1956–59) series, as well as an exceptionally rare “Fine di Dio” (1963–64). Info: Thaddaeus Ropac Gallery, Palazzo Belgioioso, Piazza Belgioioso, 2, Milan, Italy, Duration: 20/9-21/11/2025, Days & Hours: Tue-Sat 10:00-19:00, https://ropac.net/