Advisory Selections:
Exhibition Highlights of 2022

Thaddeus Mosley at Baltimore Museum of Art, Baltimore (17 Oct 2021–27 March 2022)

Thaddeus Mosley's spectacular chiselled wooden sculptures transform the Baltimore Museum of Art's rotunda in the artist's first solo exhibition in over ten years.

Now aged 95, Mosley's work is defined by 'gorgeously carved and balanced structures that are dense yet delicate and often gravity-defying,' as introduced in Ocula Advisory.

To create them, the artist utilises wood salvaged from felled trees in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, where he lives.

Rana Begum at Mead Gallery, Warwick Arts Centre, Coventry (13 January–13 March 2022)

Rana Begum's vibrant paintings, sculptures, and installations are being spotlighted at Warwick Arts Centre's remodelled Mead Gallery.

Begum's artistic practice is centred on an exploration into the interplay between light, form, and colour. In Ocula Magazine, Begum has explained, 'As my practice was refined and distilled, adopting a language of modularity and repetition, a theme of the infinite revealed itself and continues to take form.'

Louise Bourgeois at Southbank Centre, London (9 February–15 May 2022)

Noted for being the first major retrospective to focus exclusively on Louise Bourgeois' use of textiles, London's Southbank Centre brings together works from the last two decades of the artist's career.

Bourgeois' seven-decade career tackled themes of sexuality, desire, and the unconscious, while her biomorphic fabric forms mined the realms of gender and womanhood—subjects that were heavily influenced by personal traumas experienced in the artist's childhood.

As the artist once expressed in relation to her use of fabric, 'I have always had the fear of being separated and abandoned. The sewing is my attempt to keep things together and make things whole'.

Nicolas Party at Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, Montreal (12 February–16 October 2022)

Nicolas Party's fantastical portraits and candy-coloured landscapes have drawn in crowds at shows and auctions alike.

Following a stream of 2021 institutional shows at Kestner Gesellschaft, Hannover; Le Consortium, Dijon; and MASI Lugano, among others, Party kickstarts Montreal Museum of Fine Arts' 2022 calendar with L'heure mauve (Mauve Twilight).

Showcasing his watercolours, pastels, and sculptures, Party's presentation at Montreal Museum of Arts is unified with a series of large-scale, in situ murals running throughout the exhibition.

Bridget Riley at Yale Center for British Art, New Haven (3 March–24 July 2022)

The Yale Center for British Art opens Riley's first survey in the United States in over 20 years, presenting a visual bibliography of Riley's work, charting the artist's devotion to geometric abstraction.

Complemented by the geometric structural frameworks conceived by the Centre's designer Louis I. Kahn, Bridget Riley: Perceptual Abstraction is set to be a comprehensive presentation of the British artist's trademark style.

Rachel Jones at Chisenhale Gallery, London (12 March–12 June 2022)

Recognition for young artist Rachel Jones and her vibrant, sprawling paintings gained powerful momentum in 2021, which ended with a solo exhibition at the prestigious Thaddeaus Ropac in London.

As remarked in Ocula Advisory on the show's opening, 'it seems increasingly rare for Chisenhale Gallery to show young painters, favouring video, sculpture, and installation instead . . . Jones's show is, therefore, a sure sign of approval from Chisenhale Gallery's director Zoé Whitley'.

Lynda Benglis at Nasher Sculpture Center, Dallas (21 May–18 September 2022)

Lynda Benglis' oozing, biomorphic sculptures are taking over Dallas' prestigious Nasher Sculpture Center in May.

Rooted in the artist's poured latex paintings of the 1960s, three monumental fountains will be located in the grounds of the Center, while a series of bronze free-standing sculptures and her heralded wall-based chicken wire sculptures will be on view inside.

Manuel Mathieu at Longlati Foundation, Shanghai (Summer 2022)

Following a successful show at HdM Gallery in Beijing towards the end of last year, Manuel Mathieu's work will be on view in a major solo exhibition at the non-profit Longlati Foundation in the summer.

The Haitian-born artist's experimental practice spans ceramics, painting, and drawing, with some works coming together to form large-scale installations.

As recently explored in Ocula Magazine, the artist's works have an alchemical quality, shifting between captivating details and pools of colour across different media.

Ugo Rondinone at Schirn Kunsthalle, Frankfurt (24 June–18 September 2022)

In June, Ugo Rondinone's key paintings, sculpture, and video works will take over the walls and floors of one of Europe's most renowned exhibition spaces, Schirn Kunsthalle in Frankfurt.

Life Time is one of the largest presentations to date of Rondinone's multi-disciplinary practice, including a new installation extending along the entire length of the gallery.

Rondinone's work strives to mediate and transform everyday life into a subjective, emotional inner world, through the blurring of reality and fiction.

Maria Lassnig at UCCA, Beijing (20 August–27 November 2022)

Austrian 'body awareness' painter Maria Lassnig will receive her first institutional solo show in China at UCCA, one of the country's most ambitious contemporary art museums.

Known for her introspective self-portraits, Lassnig renders herself in kaleidoscopic tones to reflect on the body's transition in various states of dislocation and disguise.

Opening in August, UCCA's presentation will cover all corners of Lassnig's career, including her early graphic abstract works and later paintings. —[O]