There are so many reasons to be “On the Road” this summer, not least of which are the exciting solo art exhibitions happening around the globe. Here are a few of our favorites.
CATHERINE OPIE: THE PORTRAIT GENRE
Museu de Arte
São Paulo, Brazil
July 5 – October 27, 2024
CATHERINE OPIE, Vaginal Davis, 1994. Courtesy Regen Projects, Los Angeles and Lehmann Maupin, New York, Seoul, and London.
Contemporary photographer Catherine Opie is internationally renowned for her portraits of California’s queer scene since the late 1980s. But her production extends beyond this genre to landscapes and everyday scenes exploring various groups and communities.
One of the fundamental elements of Opie’s work is recording different gender performances through a critical review of the portrait genre. Hence the title of the exhibition, O GÊNERO DO RETRATO, which is based on the double meaning of the word “gender” in Portuguese. Opie dialogues with the tradition of portraiture producing an archive of different expressions of genders and sexualities of subjects and collectives of her time. While her work highlights that every portrait has a gender, through her photographs, conventional and binary sexual categories are made explicit, but can also be deconstructed.
The show at MASP is Opie’s first solo show in Brazil. Curated by artistic director Adriano Pedrosa, and assistant curator Guilherme Giufrida, around 60 photographs from many of her most iconic series will be presented, spanning more than four decades of production. A catalog will be published on the occasion of the exhibition.
ERWIN WURM: DREAMWALKERS
Fosun Foundation
Shanghai, China
June 18 – August 25, 2024
Erwin Wurm, Desire, 2024. Aluminum and paint.
Featured on the cover of PALMER On The Road last summer, Erwin Wurm came to prominence with his One Minute Sculptures, a project that he began in 1996/1997. In these works, Wurm gives written or drawn instructions to participants that indicate actions or poses to perform with everyday objects such as chairs, buckets, fruit, or knit sweaters. These sculptures are by nature ephemeral, and by incorporating photography and performance into the process Wurm challenges the formal qualities of the medium as well as the boundaries between performance and daily life and spectator and participant.
While in this series he explores the idea of the human body as sculpture, in some of his more recent work he anthropomorphizes everyday objects in unsettling ways, like contorting sausage-like forms into bronze sculptures in Abstract Sculptures, or distorting and bloating the volume and shape of a car in Fat Car. He considers the physical act of gaining and losing weight a sculptural gesture, and often creates the illusion of bodily growth or shrinkage in his work. While Wurm considers humor an important tool, there is always an underlying social critique of contemporary culture, particularly in response to the capitalist influences and resulting societal pressures that the artist sees as contrary to our internal ideals.
KADER ATTIA: DESCENT INTO PARADISE
MO.CO
Montpellier, France
June 22 – September, 2024
Kader Attia, On Silence, 2020. Photo by Markus Elbaus.
In conjunction with the exhibition “Being Mediterranean,” an exploration of contemporary art from around the Mediterranean to be held this season, Panacée, the MO.CO. is devoting a monographic exhibition to Kader Attia, one of the most prominent French artists on the international scene. A graduate of the École Supérieure des Arts Décoratifs in Paris, winner of the Marcel Duchamp Prize in 2016, and curator of the 12th Berlin Biennale in 2022, he has forged a body of work that cannot be confined to a single medium. It has its own distinctive visual vocabulary that includes drawing, photography, video, sculpture, and installation.
For his exhibition, “Descent into Paradise,” Attia drew inspiration from the geography of the MO.CO., its journey from top to bottom, from the sky to the earth and its depths, offering a reflection on reparation and transcendence that questions the notion of verticality as a vital and spiritual movement. While Attia’s works have strong philosophical and political implications, “Descent into Paradise,” will also bear witness to the poetic and aesthetic concerns of an artist whose research and thinking are rooted in a practice where form and content merge into a language of their own.
Alongside some of the artist’s major pieces, the exhibition, curated by Numa Hambursin, will feature a number of new artworks, including a brand-new immersive installation consisting of a film shot in northern Thailand, and a rainstick installation created for MO.CO.
NARI WARD: GROUND BREAK
Pirelli HangarBicocca
Milan, Italy
On now through July 28, 2024
An installation view of “Nari Ward: Ground Break” at Pirelli HangarBicocca. Photo by Agostino Osio, courtesy the artist and Pirelli HangarBicocca, Milan. © Nari Ward Studio.
Nari Ward is an internationally acclaimed artist, known for his installations combining familiar and humble materials into a layering of socio-historical references. By repurposing a wide range of found objects, each with its own unique history, his art engages with memory and transformation. Ward’s interweaving and juxtaposition of discarded elements alludes to various social and political aspects and addresses notions of identity, race, social justice, and consumer culture. His intentional use of everyday materials, remnants of past practices, places, communities, and epochs, allows the viewer to connect directly with the works while keeping the narrative open to contemporary, urgent themes.
The retrospective at Pirelli HangarBicocca presents, for the first time, a combination of works that interweaves Ward’s exploration of performativity and collaborative projects. With a focus on time-based media works—including video, sound, performative sculptures, and installations—the exhibition spans over 30 years of practice. The narrative unfolds through the seminal large-scale installations, originally realized between 1996 and 2000 for Ralph Lemon’s choreography “Geography Trilogy,” presented here in an exhibition setting for the first time since then. The three works will create a new choreography together with other sculptures, videos, installations, and the bodies of the visitors.
The exhibition will also produce a monograph of the most recent studies on Ward’s practice, exploring aspects that have emerged from collaborative exchanges in the artist’s work. The book will include essays and thematic contributions by international scholars and critics, including Naomi Beckwith, Jessica Bell Brown, Adrienne Edwards, Dieter Roelstraete, and Christina Sharpe.
CALIDA RAWLES: AWAY WITH THE TIDES
Pérez Art Museum Miami
Miami, Florida
Opening June 27
Calida Rawles, Impact, 2024. Acrylic on canvas. Photo by Marten Elder.
The Pérez Art Museum Miami (PAMM) will present the first solo exhibition of Calida Rawles, featuring all new works reflecting aspects of Miami’s diverse communities, natural environments, and rich history.
For the exhibition, Rawles bridges the past and the present. Delving into the experience of Black people in America, she partnered with members of the historically Black community of Overtown in Miami. Akin to Tremé in New Orleans, the Historic West End in Charlotte, and countless other neighborhoods in the United States, Overtown transformed from a thriving cultural and commercial hub for Black people to a town subjected to gentrification, systemic racism, and mass displacement. The new paintings seek to illuminate and celebrate the history, resilience, and beauty of the historically Black Miami neighborhood, giving shape to an American experience that is often overlooked.
Rawles’s forthcoming exhibition at PAMM comes on the heels of “A Certain Oblivion,” a solo exhibition of new paintings at Lehmann Maupin New York which opened last November.