For Paula Rego, the 1980s was a decade of freedom and exploration. Throughout this period, the Portuguese artist produced paintings in brilliant colours which are intriguing, humorous, and personal.
Letting Loose (22 September–11 November 2023) at Victoria Miro in London traces Rego's return to her childhood devotion to painting as play. The paintings feature crowds of bizarre creatures, animals with human characteristics, and women running, riding, and wrestling.
From pets playing musical instruments in The Musicians – Cat and Guinea Pig (1981), to women cavorting with giant birds in Marathon (Running II) (1983), these paintings represent a dramatic change in Rego's practice, embracing playful ways to express her inner world where previously she had mainly focused on making collage-based works.
In and Out of The Sea AKA The Raft (1985) sees a lone woman sitting at the centre of a whirlpool of mythical creatures. Drawn with stark, black outlines reminiscent of children's book illustrations, Rego's characters evoke the artist's childhood memories, while exploring the desires and discontentments of human relationships.
The brilliant Joseph Yaeger is back in London with his latest solo exhibition, Silent Treatment (20 September–21 October 2023) at Project Native Informant in Bethnal Green, East London.
Since his last show in the capital, Time Weft at The Perimeter earlier this year, it seems Yaeger has taken his gesso experimentation to new heights.
While a number of works bear large circular patterns where Yaeger has worked the gesso round in a motion that almost mimics crop circles, in others, the gesso has been applied with such density that it begins to camouflage the subject itself.
A small work in the corner of the gallery titled Legacy is a dead end (2023) features a cropped profile shot of a man in a cowboy hat. Dimly lit, casting a shadow across his eyes, the identity of the man is further disguised by the thick paint-splat of gesso applied across the man's face.
Move your gaze a few inches up and you're met with a smoother surface, broken up by the odd bump, hair or crevice that is preserved by the thin wash of watercolour across the canvas.
While only six were on display in the gallery (and one hidden in the office), Project Native Informant's owner Stephan Tanbin Sastrawidjaja has a number more kept behind for the show to cater to incredible demand that this superstar artist continues to fetch.
Read our interview with the artist on Ocula here.
Jane Dickson's exhibition Promised Land (9 September–28 October 2023) is one of the top gallery shows to visit in New York this month. It takes place across Karma's 188 and 172 East 2nd Street galleries.
Dickson's first show with the gallery features new paintings and drawings emblazoned with text and signage of New York after hours.
Walking around the city she has called home for 40 years, Dickson photographs strip clubs, suburban homes, late-night bars, and luminescent street signs to form the basis of her paintings.
Cinematic in appearance, the material range of these works—some oil stick on linen, some acrylic on canvas, others acrylic on felt—is the biggest joy. While the fuzziness of the oil stick on linen captures the haziness of nightlife scenes as seen in Universal Unisex (2023), the way the acrylic clags into the felt in works such as Bargain (2023) creates a strong luminosity that shines through the canvas.
'Although Jane came to prominence alongside artists such as David Hammons, Jean-Michel Basquiat, and Jenny Holzer, I would say, at least canonically, her work is more in the lineage of [Edward] Hopper or [George] Bellows,' says Karma founder and publisher Brendan Dugan.
He continues, 'Like them, she's a painter attuned to an ever-present sense of loneliness in modern life.'
Wade Guyton, Untitled (2023). Epson UltraChrome HDX inkjet on linen. 213 × 175 cm. Courtesy Matthew Marks Gallery.
Infatuated by the impact of digital image production, Wade Guyton makes paintings using computers, printers, and scanners.
The American artist brings his recent inkjet paintings to Matthew Marks Gallery in New York for his exhibition, Wade Guyton (15 September–28 October 2023).
After moving into another floor of his studio building in 2021, Guyton discovered many metal hanging clothing racks that had been abandoned by the previous tenant. Instead of disposing of them, Guyton repurposed the racks to store his paintings.
Guyton reimagines the metal racks in his paintings, combining imagery from his studio, screenshots of webpages, and more, juxtaposing them with calm considered elements of abstraction.
In Untitled (2023), the composition is divided between a cropped image of the racks in his studio and a cream, green, and black arrangement of shapes and lines. The abstract section of the painting is unevenly repeated and calls to mind a glowing, glitching mobile phone screen.
São Paulo-based artist Marina Rheingantz has joined White Cube.
Her debut exhibition with the blue-chip gallery, Maré (10 October–11 November 2023) will open at White Cube Mason's Yard, London, coinciding with Frieze London (6 October–9 October 2023) and marking her first solo exhibition in the U.K.
Rheingantz's intensely-hued compositions are alluring to behold. She creates semi-abstract paintings based on places and the experiences she has in them, including everything from smelling aromas to holding conversations.
Deeply process-focused, her landscapes contain these very delicate brush strokes with at times soft pools of colour. Each stroke feels instinctive and uncontrolled, an approach which is often driven by an element of anger and frustration stemming from moments of turbulence in Brazilian politics.
In November 2022, Ocula Director Rory Mitchell spoke to Rheingantz about her upbringing in rural Araraquara, Brazil, and her exploration of embroidery and tapestry.
'When I started painting, my practice was very connected to the landscape I grew up in. I felt bound to the wilderness and the feeling of being free. Now, my paintings are not so connected to that time or place. Rather they are mixed with various references to different places, although vast rural landscapes and horizons still feature in my work.' explains Rheingantz.
Alongside White Cube, Rheingantz is represented by Fortes D'Aloia & Gabriel in Brazil, Bortolami Gallery in New York, and Zeno X Gallery in Belgium.
At first glance, Johanna Pegler's paintings could be plucked straight from a 19th-century nature journal. The Auckland-born artist paints with oil on board in small brushstrokes to render sublime scenes of New Zealand landscapes.
The exhibition, Angiosperm Whale (19 August–14 September 2023) at Anna Miles Gallery in Tāmaki Makaurau Auckland, features paintings of forests, shores, and grasslands augmented by the radiant spirit of nature.
In Planktonic (2023), Pegler's intricate brushwork depicts flowering trees dappled in golden sunlight. Sections of shrubs, tree trunks, and detritus are illuminated by ripples of light that suggest movement as though they are undersea—flowers and leaves shimmer like shoals of fish.
Through Pegler's framing, Planktonic positions viewers to step into the scene, the path ahead enticing us to explore the depths and mysteries of nature.
In Sea Senõrita (1999), Pegler approaches an entirely different terrain—a shore of water surrounded by lush green ferns and wild grass. Thin trees stretch over the body of water to create an unusual perspective, and without an obvious horizon, the lake and sky appear to melt into one infinite expanse.
Rachel Eulena Williams is a big believer in the freedom of play. Her practice plays with the boundaries of mediums, the materials themselves, and the negative space surrounding us.
This month, the American artist invites us to see her new body of work at her first major solo exhibition at a British institution.
Hair and Body (26 August–19 November 2023) at Dundee Contemporary Arts in Scotland features Williams' exuberantly coloured assemblages in all their tactile glory. With their paint-soaked strips of rope and canvas cascading from the ceiling, there's a sense of in-betweenness to these works, with the tangle of texture and colour existing somewhere between painting and sculpture.
Williams critiques the feminine beauty ideal. The exhibition title, 'Hair and Body' is a reference to two things that women are continuously judged on. In Swing in Protective Style (2022), Williams invites us to sit on a swing made from braided ropes, which references a common way of caring for Black hair.
The exhibition offers us a chance to see Williams' savvy use of space, as her large-scale installations dramatically disrupt the gallery's skylit expanse.
Champ Lacombe is located in the French seaside town of Biarritz. The gallery was started in 2021 by Lucy Chadwick, former Senior Director of Gavin Brown's enterprise in New York. It is dedicated to bringing an eclectic roster of artists to the Basque coast—somewhere that, until recently, had little in the way of a contemporary art scene.
This summer, Chadwick has teamed up with curator Taylor Trabulus to deliver a group show titled BAROQUE (29 July–29 September 2023) that features works by over 50 artists, including Matthew Barney, Andy Warhol, John Waters, and Farah Al Qasimi.
Chadwick and Trabulus use the term baroque, which refers to lavish style, to explore contemporary excess, including mass consumerism, globalisation, and technological advancement.
Among the highlights is Lily van der Stokker's Yelling older women (2022), a cartoonish pink-on-pink sign with the phrase 'only yelling older women in here / Nothing to Sell'—teasing the fact that angry art by angry, older female artists has no market.
Dressed up in bubblegum pinks and rounded shapes, the Dutch artist's installation is a commentary on the illusion of equality—the euphoric aesthetic is merely a decadent disguise to distract from the continued excess of inequality.
Paintings in Imogen Taylor's latest exhibition convey a sense of urgency that is only partially understood, like a softly spoken phrase misheard as a death threat or a declaration of love.
Her solo exhibition, Murmurs (18 August–7 October 2023) takes place at Michael Lett's East Street headquarters, just off Karangahape Road.
Taylor, who was born in Whangārei, New Zealand, and now lives in Tāmaki Makaurau Auckland, is known for sensuous paintings that flaunt her intriguing interplay of smooth and rough surfaces, and bold and muted colours.
Her paintings often conjure a sense of pleasure and eroticism. With ambiguous forms and curved lines, Taylor plays with the legacies of modernism in a bid to eliminate the masculine self-seriousness that permeated throughout art history.
Murmurs, which features all-new work, whispers about familiar things. We see a cat quietly drinking from her bowl, the curves of two lovers entwined, and the outline of a female figure melting into a thicket of small trees.
Each composition is masterfully put together, with Taylor communicating form between flat planes of dark colour in thickly applied layers of contrasting hues.
Taylor's work is aesthetically rewarding—it feeds you a sense of something slowly dawning, something romantic, sensuous, and joyous.
The Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo holds over 150 works by David Hockney in their collection, but they haven't presented a major exhibition of his work since 1996.
Making up for lost time, the British artist is the subject of the museum's blockbuster exhibition this summer, titled simply David Hockney, which continues through 5 November 2023.
The exhibition features more than 120 works, which generously cover the three threads of his oeuvre—pools, plants, and portraits—along with some fabulous outliers and curiosities.
The Hypnotist (1963) is a wicked etching of a professional mind flayer waving dark magic into the eyes of a girl whose ponytail is scared straight out behind her.
Another highlight is 'The Weather Series' (1973), lithograph and screenprint works on paper that depicts rays of sunlight and bolts of lightning with the impact and efficiency of a comic book artist. The series wonderfully foreshadows another work in the exhibition, the video installation The Four Seasons, Woldgate Woods (Spring 2011, Summer 2010, Autumn 2010, Winter 2010), which depicts the same scene in Yorkshire in sun and snow, with leaves lush and dry.
Hockney is at his best when he matches subject and medium. His swimming pools get their depth and complexity from the straight lines etched in lithographs, while his digital paintings are marvellous simplifications of complex interactions of light and colour.
A major section of the exhibition is devoted to Hockney's portraits, which are tremendously popular, if not the artist's strongest suit. The internet was certainly excited this month to see Hockney's portrait of pop star Harry Styles, one of 33 new works being added to the National Portrait Gallery's David Hockney exhibition, David Hockney: Drawing from Life, when it reopens at the London museum from 2 November 2023 to 21 January 2024.
(No unauthorised copying and replication of the images on this page—Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo.)
