You may find Joseph Yaeger celebrating tonight at St JOHN, his favourite London restaurant, after the announcement that the Montana-born painter has joined Stuart Shave's London gallery.
Modern Art is fast becoming one of the leading galleries in the capital, with Yaeger the latest in a run of outstanding painters, including Justin Caguiat, Andrew Cranston, and Mohammed Sami, the gallery has taken on in recent years.
Ocula Director Rory Mitchell was first introduced to Yaeger's work in After Image (2020), a group exhibition at Mamoth in London curated by Robert Spragg.
Since then, his paintings of bulging gesso, swathes of watercolour, and discerningly selected subject matter have been a source of intrigue, joy, and comfort when encountered at exhibitions and art fairs, including the three small paintings we saw at Frieze Seoul.
In 2022, Ocula contributor Will Hine visited Yaeger's studio in East London to discuss his approach to unearthing new subject matter, depicting heightened emotional states, and using watercolour on gesso-primed linen to guide his way of seeing.
'I think there is a kind of method acting involved when I paint,' Yaeger explained. 'I probably do manipulate my own face and try to get into what emotional state the people in the paintings are experiencing and heighten it as much as possible to get that overture, good-cry feeling, which is indistinguishable from happiness or sadness.'
Gesso 'incidents' are the foundation of Yaeger's canvases, to which he applies thin washes of watercolour that seep into every groove and crevice. The artist will spray water onto the drying gesso from a height in a looping motion that permeates the surface creating crater-like forms.
The sides of Yaeger's canvases are masterpieces in themselves, often bulging with gesso or the remnants of a past painting which—like many Old Master paintings—have been replaced with bigger and brighter ideas.
Modern Art's announcement follows a busy run for the London-based artist who has received a great deal of attention since receiving his MA in painting from London's Royal College of Art in 2019.
Last year Yaeger had knock-out shows in London, at both The Perimeter and the East London gallery Project Native Informant. A solo exhibition at Modern Art is yet to be announced.
Terry Winters' paintings suggest an advanced mathematical diagram or plant cells under a microscope.
No matter what comes to mind, they affirm the American artist's brilliance for reimagining existing imagery through abstract painting.
Winters' exhibition, Point Cloud Pictures (1 May–29 June 2024), takes place at Matthew Marks Gallery's 523 West 24th Street location in New York. The show brings together new paintings on linen and paper in time for Frieze New York 2024 (1–5 May 2024).
The paintings take inspiration from three-dimensional modelling and point clouds—sets of data points in space often used to represent a 3D shape or object.
Winters' 'Point Cloud' paintings envision ever-expanding depths, where multifaceted forms morph, expand, overlap, and pulsate. These abstract patterns, which appear as floating grid-like structures, are given zest and depth through vibrant pigment built up over layers of oil, resin, and wax.
In Point Cloud (4) (2023), Winters paints a series of crimson spots against a backdrop of deep blue. The interplay of these dots, varying in size and angle, creates the illusion of three-dimensionality. The amorphous arrangement conjures a flock of birds in murmuration, manoeuvring through a twilight sky.
At 91, New York-born artist Joan Semmel continues to challenge prevailing depictions of women's bodies. Since the 1970s, the American artist has focused on figuration, using her own body as the subject to offer a non-objectifying stance of the female form.
A selection of Semmel's paintings spanning five decades is on view at Xavier Hufkens' Van Eyck location in Brussels. Titled An Other View (25 April–15 June 2024), the exhibition coincides with the 40th edition of Art Brussels and marks Semmel's first solo show in Europe since 1969.
On view are eight of Semmel's larger-than-life oil paintings on canvas along with two works on paper. Spanning 1971 to 2018, the works extend visitors a moment to consider the artist's evolving portrayal of the female nude form, its natural ageing, and its intersection with developing feminist issues.
Vivid and sensual, the paintings depict tightly cropped nudes with abstract colouring.
Semmel's face is intentionally hidden in much of her work. It is behind a camera in Baroque (2002), for instance, and cropped out of frame in Turning (2018) and Yellow Sky (2015).
Semmel's compositions are provocative and tender. She paints close-ups of her breasts, bottom, and belly true to form but in intense colours like lime green or orange-red.
Her representations don't subscribe to the standardised images of women's bodies, rather they speak to the imperfections of the human body with authenticity and originality.
In February 2024, Semmel's painting Hold Tight (1973) sold for just over U.S. $4 million at Fair Warning, a private online auction platform. This sale more than doubled the artist's auction record to date.
Dubbed as 'the 21st-century Basquiat', Oscar Murillo rose from art student to art star in the early 2010s. Now a household name in the contemporary art scene and represented by mega-gallery David Zwirner, the Colombian artist opens an exhibition at Gagosian in Rome.
Titled Marks and Whispers (12 April–15 June 2024), the exhibition looks at Murillo's use of the colour red over the past decade through paintings, works on paper, and a short film titled WRAPPED (2024).
Bold and multilayered, Murillo's paintings range from small to vast—some span over two metres in length and width. They hang on freestanding walls, commanding the gallery's egg-shaped rotunda.
These abstract paintings are the result of Murillo's meticulous application of oil, graphite, spray paint, oil stick, and even dirt onto canvas and linen. Employing a labour-intensive technique involving repeated scribbling and scraping, Murillo crafts layered surfaces that are richly textured and heavily expressive.
The combination of vivid red backdrops juxtaposed with darker-hued marks in black, blue, and orange offers a striking contrast. Each painting unfolds a rush of intense emotions—passion, anger, excitement, and anguish—perhaps portraying a world torn between extremes.
Murillo will debut his new installation, The flooded garden (2024), at London's Tate Modern from 20 July to 26 August 2024. Inspired by Claude Monet's 'Water Lilies' series (1897–1926), this collaborative installation invites visitors to paint water and waves on a huge wall of canvas in the gallery's Turbine Hall.
Despite painting what he calls 'the ordinariness of my unsubstantial experiences', Chris Huen Sin-kan's paintings are far from ordinary.
The Hong Kong artist employs considered strokes of diluted oil paint in soft tones to capture familiar scenes—from the woods where he walks his dogs, MuiMui and Balltsz, to the gardens he visits with his family.
His paintings are richly detailed and complex, with figurative forms entangled among abstract elements like flecks and flickers of paint, reminiscent of pointillism, or segments of negative space suffusing the work with luminosity. Such elements evoke scenes akin to half-remembered dreams or memories.
Matt Carey-Williams, formerly a senior director at Victoria Miro, showcases Huen's hazy paintings in the exhibition, Forwards and Backwards, Back and Forth (11 April–25 May 2024) at his gallery, Matt Carey-Williams at 12 Porchester Place, London.
In works like Joel (2024) and Balltsz (2024), Huen depicts his son and his dog. These figures occupy carefully decorated spaces that represent moments from Huen's past and present life.
In Joel, the artist situates his son among lilac wisteria and sage green leaves. The familiar shapes of the foliage morph into scrawled outlines in fading colours, indicating Huen's intention to emphasise his subject. By incorporating more detail, brighter colours, and nuanced lighting around his son, he encourages viewers to linger, drawing their gaze towards the focal point with greater intensity. The fading detail evokes a sense of urgency, as if Huen is racing to record a fond memory, urging us to glimpse at it before it fades into ambiguity and is eventually forgotten.
In conversation with Ocula in 2020, Huen explained how his work depicts his process of understanding a scene. 'I work on several paintings at once, allowing time and space to escape from being overly concentrated on a single picture, as what I want to depict is the experience of witnessing an accumulation of scenes from daily life, rather than specific moments.'
Forwards and Backwards, Back and Forth offers viewers space to move between the immediacy of experience and the imagining of memory, highlighting the beauty in both.
Carey-Williams' essay on the paintings adds another layer of poetry to the show. In I. The Poetry of Pose, he writes, 'Huen wants his viewer to knowingly drift between earthly, grounded prose and empyreal, magical poetry as if lifted by a gentle hallucination, yet remain anchored to the reality of his figure and focus.'
Yves Klein's legacy extends far beyond the invention of International Klein Blue; his influence resonated across minimalism, conceptualism, and performance art, radicalising traditional painting beyond the frame.
In New York, Lévy Gorvy Dayan devote a survey show to the late French artist, featuring paintings from his iconic 'Anthropométries' (1958–1960) and 'Peintures de feu' (1961) series, along with two live performances and rare archival materials.
Klein (1928–1962) documented sensuality and physicality through his experimental approach to figuration and abstraction. His 'Anthropométries' paintings, made by nude women smeared in paint pressing their bodies against the canvas, radiate energy. They capture the beauty of bodies in motion, leaving viewers spellbound by Klein's translation of his models' physical form and flow.
Along with rooms dedicated to Klein's paintings, the exhibition will host bi-weekly performances of Sculpture Tactile (1957), which features a nude model inside a box with holes that extend viewers the opportunity to physically engage with them.
Titled Yves Klein And The Tangible World (11 April–25 May 2024), the exhibition is on view at the gallery's 19 East 64th Street location.
An offsite, one-night-only performance of Klein's symphonie 'Monotone-Silence' (1947–1961) is set for 1 May at St. James' Church. The original work was performed only once in Klein's lifetime in 1960 in Paris, and showcased three nude models, smothered in International Klein Blue body paint, imprinting their forms onto canvas.
The 1 May performance boasts a 60-person orchestra and choir producing a single note for 20 minutes. Previously recreated only once in New York, this iteration will be the most ambitious yet.
Staged across Serpentine Galleries' south location, Yinka Shonibare's solo exhibition, Suspended States (12 April–1 September 2024), lands in London.
Featuring two never-before-seen installations, fibreglass sculptures, textile works, and woodcut prints, the exhibition is held inside the former tea pavilion, now transformed into a space filled with theatre, insight, and political concern.
Suspended States marks the British Nigerian artist's first solo institutional exhibition in London in over two decades. It's about colonial legacies, structural racism, migration, and the growing need for sites of refuge and shelter.
Works on view stress the impact of inherited influences, teaching us to probe and prod how colonialism has shaped our present. Decolonised Structures (2022–2023) comprise a series of sculptures that reimagine public statues of British imperialists, stripped of bronze and marble and cloaked with vibrant Dutch wax patterns, a reference to colonial trading.
Another highlight from the exhibition is Sanctuary City (2024), a new installation featuring miniature models of buildings painted black with illuminated interiors adorned with colourful Dutch wax prints. Each model represents a sanctuary for persecuted and vulnerable groups throughout history. The work sets a solemn tone to reflect on the shelter crisis around the world and underscores the urgent need for refuge or safety architecture.
Discussing the exhibition, Shonibare said, 'My work has always been about the crossing of boundaries; geographically, visually, historically, and conceptually. This is an exhibition in which Western iconography is reimagined and interrogated, at a moment in history when nationalism, protectionism, and hostility towards foreigners is on the rise.'
The show feels like a full circle moment for Shonibare, who first exhibited at Serpentine South in 1992 as a finalist in the Barclays Young Artist Award.
The exhibition coincides with the artist's presentation at the 60th Venice Biennale, where he will exhibit work in the Nigerian Pavilion alongside artists Tunji Adeniyi-Jones, Ndidi Dike, Onyeka Igwe, Toyin Ojih Odutola, Abraham Oghobase, Precious Okoyomon, and Fatimah Tuggar.
With the Venice Biennale around the corner, we found ourselves reminiscing about the artists, artworks, and exhibitions from the previous edition that linger in our minds.
Anselm Kiefer's takeover of Sala dello Scrutinio in Palazzo Ducale got the resounding vote. Even the hour-queue snaking around the Gothic building didn't taint the memory.
Stepping into the resplendent chamber that once held elections in the Venetian republic, visitors were greeted with the German artist's gargantuan floor-to-ceiling canvases. Standing there, faced with Kiefer's imposing, gold-gilded facades, you felt yourself go into a silent reverence.
The memories of this show will long live in the minds of those lucky enough to have visited Venice that summer. But for those who didn't, there's another chance—this time, in nearby Florence.
Palazzo Strozzi presents Anselm Kiefer. Fallen Angels (22 March–21 July 2024), an exhibition of 25 new and historical works, encompassing painting, sculpture, installation, and photography across the Renaissance courtyard and rooms of the Piano Nobile.
'In Venice, I transformed the Sala della Scrutinio, imbuing it with my artistic vision,' Kiefer told the Fondazione Palazzo Strozzi's Director General, Arturo Galasino. 'In contrast, at Palazzo Strozzi, I intended to work with each room specifically, in accordance with the selected themes.'
In the courtyard of Palazzo Strozzi, visitors are met with the seven-metre-tall painting Engelssturz (Fall of the Angel) (2022–2023), depicting a passage from the biblical Book of Revelation that describes the battle between archangel Michael and rebel angels, a metaphor for the struggle between good and evil.
Kiefer's painting—adorned with gold leaf reminiscent of Gothic polyptychs and a central angel inspired by Luca Giordiano's Expulsion of the Rebel Angels or St. Michael (1689–1702)—fuses tradition and contemporaneity. This tension is reinforced by the austere Renaissance architecture within which it is placed.
In another room, glass vitrines house predominantly lead sculptures inspired by Scandinavian literature or kabbalistic thought. While paintings of sunflowers and snakes—common motifs in Kiefer's work—refer to the triumph of light over darkness and regeneration.
But for me, like with his Venice show, it's the scale that he works with that continues to astound and Verstrahlte Bilder (Irradiated Paintings) (1983–2023)—a staggering immersive jigsaw of 60 canvases in one of the largest rooms in Palazzo Strozzi—will do just that.
It seems implausible that the curatorial team even entertained the idea of attaching his hefty, and often delicate, canvases onto the ceiling of this room. However, with the inclusion of the table-like mirror below amplifying this dizzying arrangement, it was worth the struggle.
Back in December, we spoke with Galansino who, since he was appointed as director general in 2015, has headed a new contemporary art programme, alongside the foundation's Old Masters shows. Under Galansino, Fondazione Palazzo Strozzi has exhibited Tomás Saraceno, Ai Weiwei, Bill Viola, Marina Abramović, Jeff Koons, Anish Kapoor, and now Kiefer.
'This isn't your typical white cube or traditional museum. It's a place for genuine dialogue with our history and identity, aiming to connect the past and the present, making both relevant,' Galansino told Ocula.
'It's becoming more common to place contemporary art somewhere spectacular, in a historical setting. We believe that inviting artists to create within the unique contexts of institutions like this one, specifically thinking about Florence, is one of the key elements of our success.'
Images: Exhibition view: Anselm Kiefer, Fallen Angels, Palazzo Strozzi, Florence (22 March–21 July 2024). © Anselm Kiefer. Courtesy Fondazione Palazzo Strozzi. Photo Ela Bialkowska, OKNO Studio.
Coinciding with the 20th edition of Brazil's premiere art fair, SP–Arte (3–7 April 2024) is the first solo exhibition devoted to the work of the formidable Francis Bacon in Brazil, on view at Museu de Arte de São Paulo (MASP).
Francis Bacon: The Beauty of Meat (22 March–28 July 2024) presents 23 paintings produced from 1947 through to 1988, focused primarily on his queer identity and lifestyle.
Bacon was open about his sexuality well before same-sex sexual acts were legalised in 1967. For over six decades, the painter portrayed friends from London's bohemian and cultural life, anonymous figures he met in bars, and his lovers, notably Peter Lacy and George Dyer, with whom he maintained intense and often turbulent relationships.
One such early example—on view at MASP—is Man at a Washbasin (c.1954) from Bacon's great 'blue' period of the mid-1950s. The work pictures a nude male figure, thought to be based on Peter Lacy, Bacon's lover at the time, leaning over a basin.
Mark Stevens, author of Francis Bacon: Revelations published in 2021, has said of their relationship that 'it was the most important relationship in each man's life.'
It is Bacon's unique ability to bring vigour to carnality through painting that the São Paulo show aims to bring to the fore. The enigmatic dark figure in Man at a Washbasin remains faceless, shuttered behind glinting white rays, providing a harrowing, tortured image of a man whom Bacon loved, yet endured a famously mercurial connection with.
An example of Bacon's later work in São Paulo is Two Figures with a Monkey (1973). Featuring Bacon and his lover George Dyer in an embrace, foregrounded by a monkey jumping off the table, the painting seeks to confront the bestiality of the human form.
'This key notion in Bacon's art, that man is an animal, was explored in numerous paintings throughout the 1950s in which humans and monkeys are depicted as interchangeable if not almost indistinguishable: both imprisoned in dark cages with their mouths opened in screams,' explains art historian Michael Peppiatt who met Bacon in Soho's French House in 1963.
Museu de Arte de São Paulo's artistic director Adriano Pedrosa curated the show ahead of arguably his biggest appointment yet as the curator of the 60th Venice Biennale (20 April–24 November 2024).
Pedrosa is not only the first Latin American curator to oversee the event, but its first curator from the Southern Hemisphere.
Taking inspiration from the night sky, Maggi Hambling's dense paintings are entanglements of expressive brushwork bathed in dramatic and dark hues.
In Hong Kong, the British artist's latest exhibition The Night (26 March–16 May 2024) opens at Pearl Lam Galleries. Hambling last presented a solo show in Asia in 2019, at Central Academy of Fine Arts Museum in Beijing, and Guangdong Museum of Art in Guangzhou, China.
At Pearl Lam, Hambling imagines a space where shifting clouds, turbulent storms, and eerie shadows converge with luminous moonlight trails. These night skies are captured across a number of canvases, built up with thick impasto in hues of black, grey-blue, pink, and orange.
The night sky has long captivated Hambling, who was a teenager when she first painted it from her bedroom window. To her, it represents a multifaceted subject where dreams stir, seduction and desire unfold, and fear lurks.
Hambling's fascination for eruptions of energy extends throughout her oeuvre. In her 'Walls of Water' series (2010–ongoing), she portrays the violence of crashing waves in the sea on huge canvases.
Coinciding with The Night, the latest addition to Hambling's 'Walls of Water' series is on view at Art Basel Hong Kong (28–30 March 2024), with Pearl Lam Galleries.
