ART NEWS: Oct-02

 

Eva Helene Pade’s first solo exhibition in the UK “Søgelys”  brings together a significant new group of paintings in which Pade continues to explore the violent and seductive forces that exist between bodies in space. Her monumental and small-scale canvases are suspended on floor-to-ceiling metal posts, set away from the walls to create dynamic spatial configurations. Much like choreography, ‘it forces people to move within them,’ she says, ‘but also to connect the paintings together. I create them together, like an ensemble; they talk together.’ Pade is drawn to the commotion of the ensemble – how, within a crowd, a single figure might begin to lose distinction, morph into another, or distort as it surges and contracts. In her paintings, casts of jewel-toned bodies gather in thrumming, indeterminate spaces that recall nightclubs or theatres. The female body is central to Pade’s practice, making up the majority of the figures in her crowd scenes. Departing from art-historical traditions, it is depicted not as an object of gaze or individual identity, but as a vehicle of collective expression and embodiment. Info: Thaddaeus Ropac Gallery, Ely House, 37 Dover Street, London, United Kingdom, Duration: 14/10-20/12/2025, Days & Hours: Tue-Sat 10:00-18:00, https://ropac.net/

Johanna Karlsson’s exhibition “Anatomy of Nature” features a series of reliefs and sculptures created over the past year. At first glance, Johanna Karlsson’s sculptures appear to be almost exact reproductions of nature. Carefully selected excerpts and passages from inconspicuous but evocative places and details. Compositions taken directly from reality, but placed in a different context. The arrangements are so convincible that, as a viewer, you sometimes forget that you are looking at a constructed world. By lifting nature out of its original setting, she forces us to observation and refection. We sense the presence of the hand, a gentle treatment of the material and the infinite choices in colour and expression that the artist has faced during the process. The muted palette is subdued and consists of earthy tones. Small excursions in color recur as subtle accents. In the new works, the imagery has been sharpened and painting plays a more prominent role. The ground is sometimes steeply sloping, like a stage set. The works oscillate between representation and materiality, between objective realism and dramatic simplification. Karlsson consistently uses simple materials such as copper and silver wire, paper, textiles, pigments and plaster. Info: Galleri Magnus Karlsson, Fredsgatan 12, Stockholm, Sweden, Duration: 16/10-22/11/2025, Days & Hours: Tue-Fri 12:00-17:00, Sat 12:00-16:00, www.gallerimagnuskarlsson.com/

The exhibition “A Protea Is Not a Flower”, features works by Lerato Shadi and Robin Rhode in dialogue with the lives and works of painter Gerard Sekoto, and writers Bessie Head and Don Mattera. The exhibition is a multigenerational conversation that engages with the complexity of the exilic experience. Inspired by Mattera’s poem0” Protea…” (1983), which interrogates colonialism, apartheid, and patriotism through the metaphor of South Africa’s national flower, the exhibition considers exile as both an external displacement and an internal form of isolation. Like the protea—a plant with a resilient root system capable of surviving under harsh conditions—the artists reflect on survival, belonging, and creativity across different geographies and histories. The exhibition draws parallels between the exiles of Sekoto and Head abroad, and the internal confinement Mattera endured in South Africa. It also reflects on the choices made by Shadi and Rhode in establishing their artistic practices in Berlin, Germany. Through archival material, written correspondence, paintings, installations, photography, film, and newly commissioned murals, the exhibition examines exile as a spectrum of personal and political expression, and as a catalyst for connection, memory, and identity. By staging a conceptual and formal dialogue across generations, “A Protea Is Not a Flower” reveals profound connections between these artists and writers—even in the absence of documented encounters—asking audiences to look Beyond the Gate (1946–47), beyond borders, and beyond inherited national identities. Info: Curator: Khanyi Mawhayi, Zeitz Museum of Contemporary Art Africa (Zeitz MOCAA), Silo District, S Arm Road, V&A Waterfront, Cape Town, Western Cape, South Africa, Duration: 16/10/2025-15/11/2026, Days & Hours: Daily 10:00-18:00, https://zeitzmocaa.museum/

The group exhibition “Art and Truth-Telling” presents new artworks by artists from diverse generations with connections to southern Sábmie. The themes that traverse their artworks are by no means a prescribed response to the Truth Commission. Rather, they speak to a continuum of engagement by the artists, an ongoing reckoning with histories that have shaped Sámi life and culture. The exhibition gives shape to a living cosmos of Sámi experiences, where testimonies, dreams and resistance meet. While the works bear witness to cultural loss and the invisibility of Sámi presence in official narratives, they also evoke acts of resistance and resilience rooted in land and ancestry. Present-day exploitation and control of natural resources, echoing colonial dynamics, bring forth the question posed by the pan-Sámi and Nordic ensemble Avant Joik: Can we reconcile? Participating Artists: Avant Joik (Matti Aikio, Katarina Barruk and Maja Solveig Kjelstrup Ratkje), Sissel M Bergh, Niklas Blindh, Monica L Edmondson, Mats Jonsson, Johanna Minde, Per Elof Nilsson Ricklund, Lisa Nyberg, Julia Rensberg, Birgitta Ricklund, Risfjells Sameslöjd (Doris Risfjell and Sven-Åke Risfjell), and Elme Ämting. Info: Curators: Anneli Bäckman and Anca Rujoiu, Bildmuseet, Umeå Arts Campus, Östra strandgatan 30 B, Umeå, Sweeden, Duration: 17/10/2025-5/4/2026, Days & Hours: Wed-Sun 12:00-17:00, www.bildmuseet.umu.se/

“Ways of Seeing “is the new permanent exhibition of the Muzeum Sztuki and focuses on the phenomenon of seeing – both as a biological function and as a cultural and political act. Divided into several thematic chapters, it presents art as a tool of inquiry, posing questions about how and why we look. Among the issues explored are: the relationship between vision and memory, the social contexts of looking, perception as a form of knowledge and a tool of resistance, as well as questions of identity, corporeality, and the sensorial experience of reality. The title of the exhibition refers to John Berger’s celebrated series “Ways of Seeing” and Władysław Strzemiński’s “Theory of Seeing”. Both serve as points of reference grounded in the conviction that looking is never neutral – it is always culturally, historically, and emotionally conditioned. An important context for the exhibition is “Gifts of Friendship “– nearly one hundred works donated to the Muzeum Sztuki by artists from around the world. This act of solidarity recalls the avant-garde roots of the institution, which in 1931 initiated the International Collection of Modern Art through artists’ donations. The 2025 contributions include works by Liam Gillick, Sharon Lockhart, Nikita Kadan, Ghislaine Leung, Kateryna Lysovenko, Goshka Macuga, Wilhelm Sasnal, Jasmina Cibic, IRWIN, and Zuzanna Janin. A selection of these will be on view from October as part of the new permanent exhibition. Info: Curators: Jakub Gawkowski, Daniel Muzyczuk, Paweł Polit, Katarzyna Różniak-Szabelska, Franciszek Smoręda, Muzeum Sztuki, ms² , 19  Ogrodowa St, Łódź, Poland, Duration: 17/10/2025-30/12/2030 , Days & Hours: Tue 9:00-16:00, Wed-Sun 12:00-18:30, https://msl.org.pl/

What does freedom mean in a city like Rotterdam, eighty years after the liberation? For the exhibition “Drawn: Rotterdam! My City, Our Freedom”, artists Amber Rahantoknam, Minne Ponsen and Christine Saalfeld have each interpreted the theme of freedom in their own personal way. The city artists ventured into the city to record what freedom means to them — and to Rotterdam. Each of us attaches a unique meaning to freedom and we all experience it in different ways. The year 2025 marks the 80th anniversary of the liberation of the Netherlands and other European countries after the Second World War. Although we often consider freedom of speech, participating in protests, or moving freely through the city to be self-evident rights, in 2025 these liberties are still frequently challenged. Every day, Rotterdammers are looking for ways to experience freedom — in the streets, during protests, or while discussing policies. In a city of migration and transformation, this year the city artists are poignantly highlighting the diversity and vulnerability of freedom. Info: Kunsthal Rotterdam, Museumpark, Westzeedijk 341, Rotterdam, The Netherlands, Duration: 18/10/2025-15/2/2026, Days & Hours: Tue-Sun 10:00-17:00, www.kunsthal.nl/

In the hands of a virtuoso who is also an astute conceptualist, painting persists in being the most seductive and attention-holding of all mediums. Cornelius Völker’s solo exhibition “Heart to Heart” is a case in point. In his distinctive, wet-oil-paint-on-wet-oil-paint style, Völker explores the thorny relationships we humans have with nature, time and mortality, while at the same time critiquing the history of European painting. His precedents are 17th century Dutch still lifes, Édouard Manet, Chaïm Soutine, Giorgio Morandi, Gerhard Richter and Wayne Thiebaud, yet his methodology is original, and concerns are contemporary. Many of the subjects of the paintings in this exhibition were acquired from the florist or candy shop; purchased and presented as tokens of affection. In other paintings, burning candle stubs and blossoms past their prime signal the inevitable passage of time, while cellophane-wrapped hard candies and vacuum-packed meat allude to our attempt to evade it. Balloons — among the most impermanent of things — may refer to the transience of the celebration or the brevity of childhood. Info: Hosfelt Gallery, 260 Utah Street, San Francisco, CA, USA, Duration: 18/10-26/11/2025, Days & Hours: Tue-Wed & Fri-Sat 10:00-17:30, Thu 11:00-19:00, https://hosfeltgallery.com/

Mickalene Thomas’s exhibition “je t’adore deux” unveils eleven previously unseen works drawn from series inspired by “JET” and “Nus Exotiques”-publications known for their portrayals of ‘exotic’ nudes. Drawing from archival imagery, Thomas reassembles these sources into spectacular new collages, deploying formal richness to articulate a powerful critical discourse. The “Jet “series-seven works created specifically for this exhibition- reimagines one of the most iconic features from Jet magazine, a cornerstone of Black American popular culture since 1951. A major weekly in the Black American press, it combined political and social news, portraiture, and cultural coverage. “Jet Beauties of the Week”, highlighted a young Black woman in a swimsuit each week, photographed according to codified poses. This recurring feature, later adapted into an annual Jet calendar, played a significant role in shaping collective imaginaries around Black beauty in the United States. The “NUS Exotiques” works extend this reflection to erotic representations of racialized female bodies, transforming them into icons of a renewed gaze, liberated from conventional objectification. Thomas often collaborates with models from her personal circle, grounding her images in relationships of trust and reciprocity. Even when working from archives, her approach aligns with relational aesthetics, foregrounding human connection over staged representation- a perspective resonant with bell hooks’s vision of love as an active ethic: a means of making visible, of honoring the complexity of lived experiences, and of opening a space for autonomy. Info: Galerie Nathalie Obadia, 3 rue du Cloître Saint-Merri, Paris, France, Duration: 19/10/2025-3/1/2026, Days & Hours: Tue-Sat 11:00-19:00, www.nathalieobadia.com/

Taking the theme of the bather as a point of departure, Albert Oehlen’s paintings in “Endless Summer”, shift, in characteristic style, between ostensible figuration and intangible abstraction. In this body of richly painted canvases, Oehlen presents numerous iterations of a dark-haired female nude. She is, at times, portrayed against a searing sky-blue backdrop. At others, sparse areas of canvas are left intentionally blank, or else are filled with a myriad of colors, textures and forms. Drawing on the prominence of the bather as a muse throughout the canon of art history, this recurring motif simultaneously alludes to a small painting by John Graham (1886–1961) which has occupied the artist’s imagination – almost to the point of obsession – for more than three decades. Titled “Tramonto Spaventoso” (Terrifying Sunset), 1940–1949, the painting presents a curious ensemble of characters and forms, most notably including a bespectacled self-portrait of Graham with a curling, Dalí-esque moustache, and a dark-haired mermaid in profile view, whose fluid figure forms the basis of Oehlen’s current cycle of paintings. It has since acted as an infinite catalyst for Oehlen’s cyclical series of ‘John Graham Remixes’, which he first began in 1997. Presenting variations on a theme in the current paintings, Oehlen’s bather motif slips from recognisable form into ‘anamorphic chaos’, to borrow a term earlier coined by Rudolf Schmitz. In a number of compositions, the tussled black hair and profile view of Oehlen’s nude is clearly identifiable. In others, her form unravels into a series of abstract mark-making, heavy brushstrokes and rivulets of spooling colour. and pool into one another. Info: Galerie Max Hetzler, 46 & 57 rue du Temple, Paris, France, Duration: 20/10-20/12/2025, Days & Hours: Tue-Fri 10:00-18:00, www.maxhetzler.com/ & Gagosian, 4 rue de Ponthieu, Paris, France, Duration: 20/10-20/12/2025, Days & Hours: Tue-Sat 10:00-18:30, https://gagosian.com/