8 Must-See Summer Exhibitions
in Europe 2023

1. The Casablanca Art School at Tate St Ives, Cornwall (27 May 2023–14 January 2024)

This summer, the coastal town of St Ives in Cornwall sees Tate host the first U.K. exhibition dedicated to the radical teachings of Morocco's Casablanca Art School (CAS).

In 1962, six years after Morocco gained independence from French rule, artist Farid Belkahia was appointed school director. He devoted himself to restructuring CAS's curriculum to embrace traditional crafts with a modern approach. He famously said, 'tradition is the future of Man'.

Alongside his compatriots Mohammed Chabâa and Mohamed Melehi, Belkahia revolutionised the school by employing Arab and Berber influences. Teachers and students rejected the school's previously colonial convention, instead championing local heritage and creating a platform for avant-garde artistic expression.

The Casablanca Art School delivers a striking display of work by 22 'new wave' artists, whose candy-coloured abstract paintings, urban murals, typography, and interior design embody the distinctive aesthetic CAS became celebrated for.

2. Tracey Emin at The National Portrait Gallery, London

Following a three-year makeover, London's National Portrait Gallery has at last reopened its doors.

The institution has been subject to a rehang, increasing its permanent collection by a third, with 48 percent of portraits in the 20th and 21st-century galleries now created by women artists. These include Rachel Jones' lick your teeth, they so clutch (2021), Everlyn Nicodemus' 1982 self portrait, and of course, Tracey Emin's bronze doors for the new Trafalgar Square-facing entrance.

'The addition of the 45 female faces counterbalances the original 18 sculptural roundels on the gallery's portland stone exterior, which exclusively depict male figures such as Horace Walpole, Anthony van Dyck, and Joshua Reynolds,' reported Ocula Magazine on 20 June.

Inaugurating the temporary exhibition halls are two photography exhibitions: Yevonde: Life and Colour, and Paul McCartney Photographs 1963-64: Eyes of the Storm, which captures the start of 'Beatlemania' through the lens of McCartney himself.

3. Cao Fei at Sprüth Magers, Berlin (29 April–19 August 2023)

Cao Fei's trippy series of new video works and installations delve into the different possibilities of the metaverse and envision what a post-human future might look like.

Duotopia (29 April–19 August 2023) sees Sprüth Magers transform its Berlin gallery into a stage for the Guangzhou-born artist's futuristic props and decor.

Featuring foam mats, hanging banners, faux greenery, and downward facing screens that invite viewers to experience her videos from below, the exhibition radiates Fei's penchant for blurring the lines between physical and virtual worlds.

The purple-hued lighting and orange-tinted windows seep colour into the white-washed space, extending the palette of Fei's videos into the surrounding environs.

Her latest avatar, 'Oz', appears on screens reminiscent of mobile phones and in large-scale prints. The androgynous figure with bionic tentacles floats through a violet sky, calmly observing the world below, her peaceful aura signalling hope for a richer future.

4. Yayoi Kusama at Guggenheim Museum Bilbao, Bilbao (27 June–8 October 2023)

The obsessive universe of Yayoi Kusama has arrived at another building designed by Frank Gehry, the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao.

Taking a chronological and thematic look at Kusama's creative explorations, the in-depth survey traces Kusama's first drawings as a teenager in the 1940s to her highly celebrated mirror installations that we see and love today.

The show is narrated by six key themes which have recurred throughout Kusama's life: Infinity, Accumulation, Radical Connectivity, Biocosmic, Death, and Force of Life.

The exhibition's titular work, Self-Obliteration (1966–74), can be found in the Radical Connectivity section.

While the world was struggling for civil rights in the wake of the Vietnam War, Kusama forged her battle through public action and performance. One such public happening included covering nude bodies with polka dots in an act of 'self obliteration'.

'I wanted to start a revolution, using art to build the sort of society I myself envisioned'.

5. Diane Arbus at LUMA Arles, Arles (26 May–24 September 2023)

Photographer Diane Arbus dared to document the unfamiliar. Her visually striking portraits of misfits and outsiders expose a world where conventional beliefs are void.

For their summer season, LUMA Arles in the south of France presents Constellation (26 May–24 September 2023), an exhibition devoted to the power of Arbus' portraits.

Bringing together some 454 prints made by Neil Selkirk (the only person authorised to make posthumous prints of Arbus' photographs) the arts centre displays Arbus' oeuvre in an immersive installation that resembles a spider web.

The exhibition is housed in the gallery's 56-metre-high glittering arts tower—an unusual yet mesmerising building designed by Canadian-American architect Frank Gehry that opened to the public in 2021.

6. Francesca Mollett at GRIMM, Amsterdam (2 June–22 July 2023)

In the wake of the Rijksmuseum's famously sold-out Vermeer exhibition, Amsterdam continues to boast an array of enriching displays of art over the summer, including Keith Haring's monumental mural at the Stedelijk Museum.

At GRIMM, Francesca Mollett enjoys her first solo exhibition with the gallery since joining their roster of artists in 2022. Halves (2 June—22 July 2023) captures Mollet's familiar entanglement of iridescent colour and expressive layers of impasto.

Interested in the complexities of liminal space, the Bristol-born artist spoke to Ocula Advisory about her most recent work occuring from her curiosity for site-specific elements of Amsterdam's architecture and natural surroundings.

Paintings in the exhibition incarnate the movement and energy of the Dutch capital. Mollett sees the glistening dark paint found on the doors of Amsterdam townhouses seep into the ripples of water along the canals. She captures the light, movement, and fluidity of such reflective surfaces and embeds them in her canvases.

7. Ragnar Kjartansson at Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, Humlebæk (9 June–22 October 2023)

Epic Waste of Love and Understanding (9 June–22 October 2023) is Icelandic contemporary art superstar Ragnar Kjartansson's first retrospective in Scandinavia.

Hosted by Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, the show celebrates the extensive array of mediums Kjartansson has adopted, covering video art, paintings, sculptures, and drawings, among others.

Brought up in the theatre by actor parents, the practice of repetition and rehearsal has become a crucial concept behind the artist's practice.

In the early work, Mercy (2004), visitors watch Kjartansson perform as an Elvis-like character, singing a single line repeatedly. While one of the newer performances made for the show sees Kjartansson perform with actress and comedian Saga Garðarsdóttir, drinking whisky and listening to a song by Danish pop star Elsa Sigfúsdóttir for 11 hours.

8. Steven Shearer at George Economou Collection, Athens (18 June 2023–30 March 2024)

In the Greek capital, the George Economou Collection is host to Steven Shearer: Sleep, Death's Own Brother.

The presentation of paintings and printed works held in the collection offers an in-depth look into Shearer's perspective on the lifeless body.

The proximity between death and sleep has been the recurring trope in Shearer's art since his career took off in the early 2000s with the help of Galerie Eva Presenhuber.

Taking Sleep II (2015), a sprawling mosaic of models in various somnolent states, as its point of departure, viewers are met with both Shearer's early works and his more recent oil paintings.

Speaking to Ocula Advisory, curator Dieter Roelstraete explained that Shearer 'is one of the most accomplished and imaginative artists working in the field of figurative painting at present, and some of the topics that his work touches upon, such as the aesthetics of androgyny and the conundrum of privacy in our scopophilic [or voyeuristic] world, are at the heart of current cultural debates'.