In New York this month, be sure to visit some of these top exhibitions, on view at spaces like The Shed, the new MoMA, Pace Gallery, and Brooklyn Museum.
Agnes Denes: Absolutes and Intermediates On View
The Shed
Now—March 22, 2020
“Absolutes and Intermediates On View” is the most comprehensive retrospective of Agnes Denes to date. Filling both galleries of The Shed, the show presents over 150 of Denes’ works created throughout the artist’s 50-year career, including a range of media like monoprints, etchings, ink drawings, and lithographs. A leading figure in conceptual and environmental art, Denes first came up in the 1960s, creating works related to science, philosophy, linguistics, mathematics, and ecology, with a goal to aid humanity. Highlights include pieces from her “Philosophical Drawings” series, the “Pyramid” series, monumental public works like Wheatfield—A Confrontation, and three new commissioned pieces made especially for The Shed.
Richard Tuttle
basis45
late 1970s
watercolor on paper
9-3/8″ × 6-5/8 inches
© Richard Tuttle
Photo by Christine Ann Jones
Courtesy of Pace Gallery.
Matthew Barney: Embrasure
Gladstone Gallery
October 26—December 21
“Embrasure” is an exhibition of new works by Matthew Barney featuring a selection of drawings, etchings, and sculpture based on the narratives created in his latest project, Redoubt. The film Redoubt (2018) is set in the Sawtooth Mountains of Idaho, adapting the myth of Diana, goddess of the hunt, and Actaeon, a hunter, indulging the artist’s fascination with using landscapes as both setting and subject. Barney used iconography of Redoubt as a starting point for creating a strange, ominous world, in which he illustrates Actaeon and Diana’s story in intricate renderings using materials like charcoal, paper, brass, copper, and a tree from the Sawtooth Mountains. Along with the exhibition, Gladstone’s Film Forum will present showings of the film from October 30—November 12.
Jason Rhoades: Tijuanatanjierchandelier
David Zwirner
Now—December 7
David Zwirner is presenting the late Jason Rhoades’ large-scale installation, Tijuanatanjierchandelier, for the first time in New York City, following its creation in 2006 and a feature at the 52nd Venice Biennale. The installation, named in reference to Tangier, Morocco and Tijuana, Mexico, is a chaotic-yet-entrancing assemblage of chandelier-like dangling neon lights, accompanied by rugs, mattresses, taxidermized animals, sombreros, Moroccan lanterns, ceramic gourds, and a sea of other found objects. Evocative of a bustling marketplace, the work is a nod to the rise of the defining global tourism and consumerism in the two locations, and also acts as a visualization of the tension that comes from cultural appropriation and stereotype, and cultural expression and identity.
Installation view, “Matthew Barney: Embrasure,” at Gladstone 64, 2019
Photo by David Regen
Courtesy of the artist and Gladstone Gallery, New York and Brussels
Hans Haacke: All Connected
New Museum
Now—January 26, 2020
Now on view at the New Museum, “All Connected” brings together over 30 works from Hans Haacke’s career, spanning the 1960s—today. A pioneer in kinetic, environmental, and conceptual art, as well as institutional critique, the retrospective highlights the ways Haacke expanded his practice to include the social, economic, and political constructs in which art is produced, circulated, and displayed. Highlights are works like the Grass Grows (1967—1969), On Social Grease (1975), MetroMobiltan (1985), and the 2014 Gift Horse, which is being shown for the first time in New York. This is the first major US survey of the artist in more than three decades years since New Museum’s 1986 presentation “Hans Haacke: Unfinished Business.”
Betye Saar: The Legends of Black Girl’s Window
MoMA
Now—January 4, 2020
“The Legends of Black Girl’s Window” takes an in-depth look at the connections between Betye Saar’s rare prints from the 1960s and her autobiographical assemblage, Black Girl’s Window. With a focus on themes of history, family, and mysticism—core ideas in Saar’s work since the beginning of her practice—the exhibition is comprised mainly of the Museum of Modern Art’s collection, highlighting some of Saar’s favorite muses (including her three daughters and a series of mystical symbols) and 42 recently-acquired printed works on paper. At the center of the show, visitors at the MoMA will experience the iconic 1969 work, Black Girl’s Window, which acts as a guide to the rest of the exhibition.
Child eyeing Hans Haacke’s Large Water Level,
1964–65
Installation view: “Miscellaneous
Notions of Kinetic Sculpture,” Hayden Gallery,
Massachusetts Institute of Technology,
Cambridge, 1967
© Hans Haacke / Artists Rights
Society (ARS), New York
Courtesy of the artist and
Paula Cooper Gallery, New York.
Richard Tuttle: basis, 70s Drawings
Pace Gallery
Now—December 21
Presented in Pace Gallery’s recently debuted New York City headquarters is an exhibition of Richard Tuttle’s seminal works. Divided into two parts from the early and late 1970s, it presents works of the conceptual and Postminimalism pioneer. At the time, Tuttle’s works defied all categorization and monumental aesthetics other artists were taking on, instead opting for unusual subject matter, modest scale, and humble materials like watercolor, ink, and graphite. Visitors can expect to find an array of the artist’s simplistic basis works, accompanied by a full catalogue, which features poems by Tuttle and an essay by Kent Mitchell Minturn.
JR: Chronicles
Brooklyn Museum
Now—May 3, 2020
The first major exhibition of artist JR in North America, “Chronicles” highlights a wide array of the French-born artist’s work, including murals, videos, films, photographs, and dioramas. Known for public art that honors the voices of everyday people from all over the world, the exhibition follows JR’s career from its early days, when he was a teenager creating graffiti in Paris, up through recent works, like a series of digitally collaged murals. At the center of the show is JR’s The Chronicles of New York City, a mural depicting more than a thousand real New Yorkers, accompanied by audio recordings of each person’s story.
Betye Saar
Lo, The Mystique City
1965
Etching and aquatint with relief-printed found objects
plate (irreg.): 18 1/2 × 19 13/16 inches
sheet: 19 13/16 × 22 15/16 inches
Courtesy of The Museum of Modern Art, New York and The Candace King Weir Endowment for
Women Artists.
