ART NEWS: Oct.04

 

The exhibition “Pleasing the Spirits” takes the visitor on a journey through the Barbier-Mueller Collection, an extraordinary set of artefacts from across the world. This project is devised in close dialogue with artist Paul Maheke, whose work, centred on dance and performance, explores the potential of the body as a vector for memory and history. The Barbier-Mueller Collection, numbering several thousand pieces, forms a living, moving organism, a multicultural body within which the nature and meaning of an object shift according to its position within the community of artworks, depending on its proximity and collision with other objects. “Pleasing the Spirits” offers a pathway alongside these objects. Seats embrace us, masks scrutinise us, a dense forest of spears and shields rises before us, while the ceremonial objects embody joy and exaltation. Together, they unfold throughout the rooms, like territories to be explored, like an emerging memory. This memory is the words of the elders, the sound of the dances and rituals, the whisper of entranced objects, rustling between the stone walls of the museum. The spirits of this place—whether ancestors, shamans, artists, creators or collectors—shaped the collection, giving it its soul and its colour. Info: Curators: Séverine Fromaigeat & Paul Maheke, Musée Barbier-Mueller, Rue Jean-Calvin 10, Geneva, Switzerland, Duration: 29/102025-31/5/2026, Days & Hours: Daily 11:00-17:00, www.barbier-mueller.ch/

Alex Katz inspired by Henri Matisse’s “The Red Studio” (1911), presents 11 new paintings. Each work is environmental in scale, using only a single orange on a white ground, and depicts the road in Maine where he has lived and worked every summer for almost 70 years. The view down this road is now so familiar to Katz that it has become embedded in his subconscious. He has rendered this vista numerous times over the decades, yet now, in this exhibition, the paintings seem to be formed from the unconscious memory rather than the eye. The image dematerializes, reduced to its elemental form. The viewer, standing before the orange void, falls into the space and into the years. Also accompanying the exhibition is a “DRAWING RESTRAINT” by Matthew Barney, which explores the then 96-year-old Katz at work on one of these enormous canvases. Info: Gladstone Gallery, 530 West 69st Street, New York, NY, USA, Duration: 30/10-20/12/2025, Days & Hours: Tue-Sat 10:00-18:00, https://gladstonegallery.com/

In his solo exhibition “Gods Shaped of Mud”,  Martyn Cross presents new works that evoke the power of myth to examine the enduring kinship of the Earth and its inhabitants/ Informed by literature, medieval wall painting, and a deep connection to printed books, Cross imagines otherworldly landscapes populated by strange creatures captured amidst vast, fantastical transformations. Throughout “Gods Shaped of Mud”, winged storm clouds cast bolts of lightning into the ground while spectral, mushroom-nosed felines root into the earth and colossal, anthropomorphized bud vases stand tall along the banks of a snaking river. Traces of an ambiguous archaeology appear throughout the work: ghostly silhouettes of walking sticks, hammers, putty knives, screw drivers, wooden spoons, and pliers drifting throughout the landscapes, offering evidence of humanity-defining material culture. In the exhibition, Cross presents, for the first time, a series of pocket drawings: ten two-by-three-inch colored pencil works made throughout the course of Cross’s daily life—on park benches, at the kitchen table, on the bus. Cross carries these drawings—with their colorful flowers and steaming volcanoes and anthropomorphized stone crosses—in his pocket for several months, the paper absorbing the oils from his hands, stains from his pocket snacks, and scratches from his house keys. Over time, the oils and stains and scratches become part of the material composition of the drawings, transforming them into relics. Info: Marianne Boesky Gallery, 509 West 24th Street, New York, NY, USA, Duration: 30/10-20/12/2025, Days & Hours: Tue-Sat 10:00-18:00, https://marianneboeskygallery.com/

Marking Kader Attia’s first solo presentation in New York in over five years and the US the exhibition “Shattering and Gathering our Traces” debuts of several new bodies of work. Featuring sculpture, installation, collage, and film, the exhibition bridges Attia’s long-standing engagement with repair, identity, and postcolonial critique with a new body of work centered around shattering and gathering. Across the exhibition, Attia seeks to reconstruct interpersonal connection and understanding by engaging viewers in a collective and poetic space. This exhibition comes on the heels of a string of institutional presentations around the world, including the solo exhibitions “A Descent into Paradise” and “The Lost Paradise”. Attia grew up between Bab el Oued, Algeria and the suburbs of Paris. Drawing from his experience of living within two disparate cultures, he has developed a complex, multi-media practice that examines the intricacies of social, historical, and cultural differences across the globe, demonstrating how individual and cultural identity is constructed within the context of political domination and conflict. Often using artifacts, discarded quotidian objects, and wartime ephemera to create poetic installations, Attia transforms the space of a gallery into one of introspection, allowing the viewer to become aware of the complicated and often inaccurate depiction of our multiple histories. Info: Lehmann Maupin Gallery, 501 West 24th Street, New York, NY, USA, Duration: 30/10-13/12/2025, Days & Hours: Tue-Sat 10:00-18:00, www.lehmannmaupin.com/

“Being a Girl*!?” is a multimedia exhibition that explores how images of girl*hood have evolved across time and culture. It brings together over 150 works by international artists who investigate what motivates girls* today and how inherited role models from the past continue to shape notions of identity, beauty and belonging. From early portraits and depictions of saints to contemporary self-presentations on social media, the figure of the girl* reflects broader social values and conflicts. Themes such as coming of age, self-optimisation, gender fluidity, diversity and inclusion are negotiated in dialogue with historical images that once confined female youth to ideals of innocence, fragility or purity. Structured in nine thematic chapters, the exhibition traces a journey from traditional representations to the digital present. Along this trajectory, it reveals how the image of the girl*—once objectified and idealised—transforms into an agent of self-definition and resistance. The exhibition invites a change of perspective: it shows girls* taking the initiative, claiming space, and showing the world who they really are. In doing so, it not only documents shifts in visual culture but also opens up visions for a more inclusive understanding of identity and growth. Info: Curator: Brigitte Reutner-Doneus, Lentos Kunstmuseum Linz, Ernst-Koref-Promenade 1, Linz, Austria, Duration: 31/10/2025-6/4/2026, Days & Hours: Tue-Wed & Fri-Sun 10:00-18:00, Thu 10:00-20:00, www.lentos.at/

The exhibition “Starmirror” proposes a scenario in which artificial intelligence (AI) models coordinate humans to generate intelligence for collective benefit. Created by Berlin-based artists Holly Herndon and Mat Dryhurst, the work extends their long-standing practice at the intersection of art, music, machine learning, and experimental forms of organization. Their projects often propose new digital infrastructures, approaching protocols themselves as a medium—structures that can rehearse new arrangements between humans and AI. Herndon & Dryhurst have worked with voices and machines for two decades. Since 2016, they have pioneered work with AI choirs an AI vocal model trained through live community sessions to explore collective singing with machine learning. “Starmirror” continues and expands this trajectory, transforming KW Institute for Contemporary Art’s exhibition hall into a training ground for collaborative production between humans and AI. The artists have created an immersive sound installation that draws on recordings from earlier collective singing projects while simultaneously providing a live environment for new work at KW. At its center is a new songbook generated by a model trained on “Ordo Virtutum” (1151)—a morality play in which a soul must choose between good and evil. The play is by Hildegard von Bingen (1098–1179), the German Benedictine abbess and polymath. Info: KW Institute for Contemporary Art, Auguststraße 69, Berlin, Germany, Duration: 31/10/2025-18/1/2026, Days & Hours: Mon & Wed-Sun 11:00-19:00, www.kw-berlin.de/

Alice Neel is one of the great pioneers of the 20th century, a revolutionary painter whose approach to portraiture addressed—well ahead of her time—fundamental human, social, and political issues. Thanks to her unique painterly style, characterized by a spontaneous yet precise way of conveying the nature and deep character of her subjects, Neel’s work continues to influence generations of artists today. Blending realism and surrealism, with a keen eye and emphatic brushstrokes, Neel succeeded in revealing the human soul in its most hidden folds. “I Am the Century” is the first retrospective in Italy dedicated Alice Neel, one of the most significant painters of the 20th century. The exhibition highlights Neel’s pioneering gaze and interest in humanity in all its forms. The exhibition delves into the idea of Neel as a “chronicler of life”, and her paintings as representations of the “human comedy”. Structured into six chapters, chronologically intertwined with the artist’s biography, the exhibition will trace the artist’s style as it evolved over time, while indirectly emphasising how her revolutionary practice confronts the art historical canon and traditionally male perspective of portraiture. Info: Curators:  Cosulich and Pietro Rigolo, Pinacoteca Agnelli, Via Nizza, 262, Turin, Italy, Duration: 31/10/2025-6/4/2026, Days & Hours: Tue-Sun 10:00-18:00, www.pinacoteca-agnelli.it/

Binta Diaw’s solo exhibition title “Where the lianas intertwine. Resistances, alliances, lands”, draws inspiration from the liana, a climbing plant known for its ability to adapt and endure, symbolizing vital alliances and collective resilience. Through environmental installations, organic materials, and historical references, the artist explores themes of Afro- diasporic memory, ecological survival, and female resistance. At the heart of the exhibition are two key works: “Dïà s p o r a” (2021), an installation presented at the 2022 Berlin Biennale, composed of a suspended web-like structure made from braided hair. The piece evokes the silent resistance of enslaved women who hid seeds and maps in their hair, transforming the body into a living archive and a site of clandestine survival. Chorus of Soil (2019) is an installation that reproduces the layout of the slave ship Brooks, created with soil and seeds. The outlines of the slaves, symbols of oppression, also become vegetal germinations, turning the ship into a garden of memory and rebirth. The series “Paysage Corporel” and “Nature” centers on the artist’s own body, transformed and reinterpreted as a landscape.  Completing the exhibition path is the video work “Essere corpo”, which synthesizes the connections between memory, body, and nature, transforming the exhibition space into a place of passage and relationship with the living. Info: Parco Arte Vivente (PAV), Via Giordano Bruno 31, Turin, Italy, Duration: 31/10/2025-8/3/2026, Days & Hours: Fri 15:00-18:00, Sat-Sun 12:00-19:00, https://parcoartevivente.it/

“String Constructions” is the first institutional solo presentation in Germany devoted to the work of Kazuko Miyamoto, a leading figure in the Post–Minimal and feminist movements in New York, where she has lived since 1964. In her sculptures, installations, performances, and works on paper, Miyamoto explores the body’s relationship to space, material, and the politics of labor and display. The exhibition focuses on Miyamoto’s seminal string construction series from the 1970s and 1980s, and is the largest collective display of these sculptures to date. Comprised of two- and threey–dimensional waves of string, nails, and drawn lines, the installations interlace the notion of the collective, the performative, and the ephemeral in their conceptual framework. Spread across the first, second, and third floors of KW, as well as its courtyard, String Constructions traces the shifts in Miyamoto’s approach to space, the body, and performance. Guided by the temporal dimension in the artist’s work, a number of her influential sculptural arrangements are recreated and on view here for the first time since their debut. The exhibition brings together string constructions the artist created in dialogue with the key sites of her career on Manhattan’s Lower East Side, reuniting them in their original constellations to form pockets of time and space. Info: KW Institute for Contemporary Art, Auguststraße 69, Berlin, Germany, Duration: 31/10/2025-18/1/2026, Days & Hours: Mon & Wed-Sun 11:00-19:00, www.kw-berlin.de/

For his solo exhibition “(the intellects take leave)”, Rirkrit Tiravanija presents seven new paintings on newspapers that reflect on global crises and American political upheaval. Inspired by the practice of the late Canadian-American artist Philip Guston, the new works build upon Tiravanija’s ongoing, multidisciplinary exploration of civil unrest and social issues. In these new works, Tiravanija inhabits the extremity of Guston’s figurative vocabulary and explores political unrest in America. Whereas in the initial series, the artist borrowed and remixed the iconic imagery from Guston— shoes, walls, bottles, piles of limbs, burning cigarettes—here, some of the compositions are only evocative of Guston’s trollish style. What he does invoke, however, is Guston’s deep lamentation over the state of the world, distraught as he was with the corruption and social injustices of the LSVKs filtered through his own early critiques of fascism and racism as a muralist during the LSWKs.  In seven paintings, Tiravanija depicts figures from behind, various archetypes grasping the tools of their trade, as if fleeing their surroundings in a hurry, taking as much as possible of their particular paraphernalia. We see an architect, engineer, scientist, doctor, teacher, judge, and artist in retreat, seeking escape from the assault on independent, progressive thought in the United States under the Trump Administration and its enactment of the ultra-conservative agenda known as Project JKJH. Info: Gladstone Gallery, Grote Hertstraat 12 Rue du Grand Cerf, Brussels, Belgium, Duration: 5/11-20/12/2025, Days & Hours: Tue-Fri 10:00-18:00, Sat 12:00-18:00, https://gladstonegallery.com/