Exhibitions to See During Frieze London Week 2017

Whitewaller London & Paris is out this week for Frieze London. Outside the fairs, don’t miss these exhibitions on view at London’s museums and galleries.

Tate Britain
Rachel Whiteread
This is the most comprehensive show in Rachel Whiteread’s over-30-year career. In 1993 the British artist, who is known for her sculptures in a range of materials, was the first woman to win the Turner Prize. On view will be works like Untitled (100 Spaces) (1995) and Untitled (Staircase) (2001), as well as new work shown for the first time.

Tate Modern
Soul of a Nation
“Soul of a Nation: Art in the Age of Black Power” focuses on the contributions black artists made during the Civil Rights movement in America. On view are work by artists like Benny Andrews, Carolyn Mims Lawrence, William T. Williams, Betye Saar, and more, including paintings, murals, collage, photography, sculpture, and even clothing design.

Hauser and Wirth
Jack Whitten
This is the gallery’s first show in London of work by the American abstractionist Jack Whitten, who was awarded the 2015 National Medal of Arts. Whitten’s practice mixes the gestural with process. Richard Shiff curates the show, which focuses on paintings from the 1980s that deal with materiality and metaphysics as well as politics.

Pace Gallery
Jean Dubuffet
“Jean Dubuffet: Théâtres de mémoire” features eight monumental works, some on view for the first time. This is the first show dedicated to the artist’s series “Théâtres de mémoire” (1975–79), assemblages made from cutouts of paintings and drawings. Dubuffet described the work as presenting “multiple recollections of places and scenes, which at any given moment, jostle in our memory.”

Royal Academy of Arts
Jasper Johns
“Something Resembling Truth” is a landmark survey of work by Jasper Johns, an Honorary Royal Academician. More than 150 works will be on view, spanning 60 years and including drawings, sculptures, and prints as well as new work. The title references something the artist said in 2006: “One hopes for something resembling truth, some sense of life, even of grace, to flicker, at least, in the work.”

Victoria & Albert Museum
Balenciaga
“Balenciaga: Shaping Fashion” marks the first U.K. exhibition of Cristóbal Balenciaga, as well as the fashion house’s 80th anniversary in Paris. The show looks at the designer’s creative output in the 1950s and ’60s, when he introduced new shapes and silhouettes like the tunic, sack, baby doll, and shift dress. On view are more than a hundred garments and accessories, as well as sketches, photos, patterns, and more, revealing Balenciaga’s continuing influence on modern fashion.

Whitechapel Gallery
Thomas Ruff
This is the first major retrospective of work by the German artist Thomas Ruff in London. Curated by Whitechapel director Iwona Blazwick, the show is organized thematically, showing the artist’s fascination with both the cosmic and the everyday. Visitors are taken from Ruff’s questioning of scale to his series of passport-style portraits, to his study of buildings, and on to his more recent exploration of press photography.

Serpentine Galleries
Wade Guyton
Wade Guyton’s “Das New Yorker Atelier, Abridged” is an exhibition of new work made over the past two years. The American artist is known for using items like iPhones, computers, and printers to make drawings and large-scale paintings. Guyton’s practice looks at the translation of digital information onto surfaces through technological tools.

Serpentine Sackler Gallery
Torbjørn Rødland
Full of allegory, lyricism, and humor, the work in Torbjørn Rødland’s show “The Touch That Made You” keeps viewers engaged. The Los Angeles–based photographer is a master at his craft, moving between landscapes, still lifes, portraits, and seemingly commercial scenes that feel familiar yet unsettling and are at times lovely and at others disquieting.

Skarstedt
De Kooning
Skarstedt will present an exhibition of late paintings by Willem de Kooning. On view are works made in the 1980s, during the last decade of the artist’s 60-year career. There is a sense of wonder and mastery in these paintings, which are bright and full of fluid lines, that marks a departure from the dense painterliness of earlier periods. Recognizing the importance of renewal even at age 75, de Kooning said, “I have to change to stay the same.”

Lévy Gorvy
Gilbert & George
Gilbert & George’s “The General Jungle or Carrying on Sculpting” is made up of 23 monumental and multipanel pieces. Part of the duo’s “Art for All” ethos, the charcoal-on-paper works were first shown at Sonnabend Gallery in New York in 1971. The reunion show includes loans from international institutions and private collections.

Thaddaeus Ropac
Robert Longo
“Let the Frame of Things Disjoint” includes more than 20 new charcoal works by Robert Longo. The title comes from Macbeth’s famous line, and the show is influenced by the current volatile climate. The artist mixes contemporary and historical images of power, protest, and political events sourced from the media. He ominously translates themes of destruction, chaos, and futility.

Gagosian Gallery
Brice Marden
This autumn Gagosian presents the first U.K. exhibition of Brice Marden since 2000. The exhibition at Grosvenor Hill will feature new monochromatic work by the American artist. Marden was born in 1938 in Bronxville, New York, where he currently lives and works.

Sadie Coles HQ
Zhongguo 2185
The title for this exhibition takes its name from the utopian science fiction novel by Liu Cixin, written in 1989. “Zhongguo 2185” features the work of ten young Chinese artists, addressing the shifting cultural contexts of China through the thematics of Liu Cixin’s novel. Curator Victor Wang brings together site-specific commissions and new and old work in the show, from artists born after China’s Cultural Revolution. Running in tandem with “Zhongguo 2185,” Sadie Coles HQ and Victor Wang are also presenting the Shanghai-based artist Xu Zhen’s “XUZHEN Supermarket” this fall.

Lisson Gallery
Allora & Calzadilla
“Foreign in a Domestic Sense” is an exhibition of new work from Allora & Calzadilla. The artists explore implications of speech and language through sculpture, photo, video, and performance. The show is in dialogue with Puerto Rican Light (Cueva Vientos), the pair’s long-term, site-specific commission with Dia Art Foundation located in Guayanilla-Peñuelas, Puerto Rico.

Sprüth Magers Gallery
Gary Hume
Spüth Magers’s London gallery reopens on Grafton Street with an exhibition of new works by Gary Hume. His first solo show in the U.K. since 2013, it will showcase an entirely new painting method for Hume, marking a shift in his practice. His paintings on paper deal with memory, referencing images from things like family photos.

Victoria Miro Mayfair
Hernan Bas
Victoria Miro presents a show of new paintings from Hernan Bas that capture life at the University of Cambridge. In 2016 the Detroit-based artist spent time doing research in residence at Jesus College Cambridge. There, he became interested in the famed Night Climbers of Cambridge, drawing on campus lore and the eponymous 1937 book for this body of work.

 

Zabludowicz Collection
Rebecca Ackroyd
Rebecca Ackroyd’s “The Root” is part of Zabludowicz Collection Invites, an ongoing series of solo exhibitions by U.K.-based artists without commercial representation. Ackroyd responds to the gallery’s architecture through a series of sculptures in the form of window shutters, cast in graphite gray Jesmonite with their surface partially collaged with photographic images. The installation explores the layering of urban space and the architectures of body and memory, both collective and personal.

Newport Street Gallery
Dan Colen
“Sweet Liberty” is Dan Colen’s most signficant exhibition to date in London. The show includes pieces from the past 15 odd years, including his “Gum” and “Trash” series, as well as new work. The artist explores masculinity and the American Dream in his practice, exemplified in four large-scale installations on view. “This show is the first time I’ve been able to present the full range of my work and the wide-ranging ideas, crafts, materials, technologies and processes that I engage with… which has allowed me to consider the transforming power of art when it’s experienced in different moments and contexts