Ocula Conversation Sunjung Kim’s Real DMZ Project Interrogates the North and South Korea Divide Ongoing since 2012, the Real DMZ Project interrogates the demilitarised zone (DMZ) between North and South Korea through annual, research-based exhibitions that bring together the works of Korean and international artists. Sunjung Kim, the independent curator behind the project, conceived the idea of exploring the DMZ while curating Japanese artist...
Ocula Report Frieze Week Lowdown: London Shows to See 20 Sep 2019 : Tessa Moldan for Ocula London's galleries and museums are gearing up for a lively October, with Frieze London and Frieze Masters running between 3 and 6 October 2019 at Regent's Park, along with 1-54 Contemporary African Art Fair, taking place across the same dates at Somerset House; and the tenth anniversary of the Sunday Art Fair, showcasing new and emerging artists...
Ocula Insight | Video Mark Bradford’s Call for Unity at Shanghai’s Long Museum 16 August 2019 Mark Bradford walks through Mark Bradford: Los Angeles Mark Bradford: Los Angeles at the Long Museum West Bund in Shanghai (27 July–13 October 2019) is the artist's largest solo exhibition to date in China. In this video for Ocula, Bradford and Diana Nawi, curator of the show, walk through selected works that convey the artist's concerns with...
Sprüth Magers has expanded from its roots in the Rhineland to become an international gallery dedicated to exhibiting the very best in groundbreaking modern and contemporary art. With galleries located in Berlin Mitte, London’s Mayfair and the Miracle Mile in Los Angeles–as well as an office in Cologne and an outpost in Hong Kong–Sprüth Magers retains close ties with the studios and communities of the German and American artists who form the core of its roster.
The gallery emerged amid an extraordinary outburst in contemporary art that took place in Cologne in the early 1980s. Its first iteration as Monika Sprüth Gallery opened in 1983 with an exhibition of paintings by Andreas Schulze and was soon followed by exhibitions of Rosemarie Trockel and Peter Fischli David Weiss. Over the next few years George Condo, Jenny Holzer, Barbara Kruger, Louise Lawler and Cindy Sherman all showed at the gallery and have continued to do so for the last thirty years. In 1992 a second gallery opened in Cologne under the name of Philomene Magers. Early exhibitions included Ad Reinhardt’s Black Paintings, Robert Morris’s felt pieces and John Baldessari’s photographs and text paintings from the 1960s. The two galleries merged into a single entity in 1998 and in 2000 the Munich space opened with Ed Ruscha’s exhibition Gunpowder and Stains.
In 2003 Sprüth Magers Lee opened in London with an exhibition of works by Donald Judd. In 2007 Sprüth Magers relocated to Grafton Street, Mayfair; on show was a selection of new photographs by Andreas Gursky. In 2008 the gallery established its flagship space in a former dancehall in Berlin Mitte–not far from the city’s Museum Island. The gallery debuted with Thomas Scheibitz and George Condo.
The latest chapter in the gallery’s history came to fruition in February 2016, with the launch of its space in Los Angeles. Located on Wilshire Boulevard, just across the road from LACMA, it is housed in a two-storey building designed in the late 1960s by legendary West Coast architects William L. Pereira & Associates. It was originally created as part of a complex completed in 1971 that includes the tallest building of the Miracle Mile district, a plaza and reflection pool. The 14,000 square foot space was remodeled as a gallery by the London-based architect Andreas Lechthaler and Berlin-based architect Botho von Senger und Etterlin. The interior features vintage furniture by female California-based designers.
Known for its rigorously curatorial approach to its program and for a deep and enduring devotion to the artists it represents, the gallery has, over the past three decades, fostered close and collaborative relationships with museums and curators worldwide. Meanwhile it continues its tradition of commissioning new scholarship and creating innovative books and publications.
Sprüth Magers now works with over 60 artists and estates. While continuing to work with mid-career artists such as Thomas Demand and Sterling Ruby, the gallery regularly broadens its program with up-and-coming younger artists such as Cyprien Gaillard, David Ostrowski, Michail Pirgelis, Analia Saban, Alexandre Singh and Ryan Trecartin and Lizzie Fitch. The program is rounded off with important and influential senior artists such as Reinhard Mucha, Frank Stella, the late Richard Artschwager, Hanne Darboven, Bernd & Hilla Becher and the Estates of Keith Arnatt and Craig Kauffman.
Ocula Report Frieze Week Lowdown: London Shows to See 20 Sep 2019 : Tessa Moldan for Ocula London's galleries and museums are gearing up for a lively October, with Frieze London and Frieze Masters running between 3 and 6 October 2019 at Regent's Park, along with 1-54 Contemporary African Art Fair, taking place across the same dates at Somerset House; and the tenth anniversary of the Sunday Art Fair, showcasing new and emerging artists...
Ocula Photolog TEFAF New York Spring 2019 6 May 2019 'The Fair's timing in early May is intended to coincide with auctions, exhibitions, and other fairs in New York dedicated to modern and contemporary art and design. The historic Park Avenue Armory provides the prime Manhattan location and setting for the world's leading art dealers to meet with curators and collectors.' –TEFAF New York Spring,...
Ocula Photolog Art Basel in Hong Kong 2019 31 March 2019 'Art Basel reinforces its ongoing commitment to showcasing exceptional art from Asia and the Asia Pacific, with over half of the participating galleries having exhibition spaces in the region. The main sector of the show features 196 of the world's leading galleries presenting the highest quality of painting, sculpture, drawings, installation,...
Ocula Photolog Frieze Los Angeles 15 February 2019 'Frieze Los Angeles largely focuses on contemporary art and celebrates the exceptionally dynamic culture of Los Angeles and its global contributions to the visual arts. Frieze Los Angeles joins Frieze New York, Frieze London and Frieze Masters at the forefront of the international art fair calendar, celebrating Los Angeles' position as a global...
Related Press Bridget Riley’s Razzle-Dazzle Career Hyperallergic : 14 September 2019 Even for those familiar with modernism's history in the latter half of the 20th century, the story of the life of the British painter Bridget Riley and the development of her work is not very well known. Now, though, Paul Moorhouse's well-researched, lucid new biography, Bridget Riley: A Very Very Person (Ridinghouse, 2019) may help reveal to a...
Related Press Sterling Ruby’s Mixed Media The New Yorker : 2 September 2019 Vernon, California, is a small city near Los Angeles with a population of a hundred and twelve. Every day, fifty thousand people commute to work there, in its eighteen hundred factories, warehouses, and small businesses. Light fixtures, Farmer John hot dogs, industrial chemicals, Tapatío hot sauce, and stuffed toys are made in Vernon. One of the...
Related Press The Making of An Artist: How Bridget Riley Became the Queen of Op Art Elephant : 1 September 2019 Bridget Riley is a name so familiar that it seems baffling nobody has previously written in-depth about her early years, and how she rose to such a stellar place in our cultural lexicon. A new book from publisher Ridinghouse explores her journey from British wartime beginnings to her rise as darling of the New York art world—and one of the...
Related Press Jenny Holzer Hits Her Mark in a Major, Largely Unnoticed Retrospective Hyperallergic : 29 August 2019 BILBAO, Spain — One of the strangest things about this exhibition is how invisible it is beyond Bilbao. How does it happen that a major artist like Jenny Holzer gets a major retrospective — the largest survey of her work to date — at a major museum like the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao but no catalogue is produced, and there is almost...
Related Video & Audio Reinhard Mucha: Showing the show SF MOMA : 23 August 2018 Reinhard Mucha: Showing the show As a young artist in the 1970s, German sculptor Reinhard Mucha was skeptical of showing his work in museums. Since then, many of his large installations have directly addressed the simple idea of being in a museum, encouraging visitors to be aware of the gallery itself as a way to look more closely at the art.
Related Video & Audio George Condo The Artist at Work Louisiana Channel : 14 December 2017 The mind of American artist George Condo has been referred to as a place where 'Picasso meets Looney Tunes.' Watch him at work in his New York-studio where he draws and paints his take on a 19th-century painting by Manet.
Related Video & Audio George Condo Interview: The Way I Think Louisiana Channel : 2 November 2017 'I kind of draw like you’re walking through the forest, where you don’t really know where you’re going, and you just start from some point and randomly travel through the paper until you get to a place where you finally reach your destination.' Condo studied music theory at college, but soon realised that it was too formal and rigid for him, and...
Related Video & Audio Getting there: Ed Ruscha Juxtapoz Magazine : 24 July 2016 First published on Nowness: Ed Ruscha took Matthew Donaldson on a Los Angeles ride through memory lane, from the artist’s Culver City studio—that started life as one of Howard Hughes’ aircraft parts factories—to Silverlake and around Echo Park where the filmmaker lived as a child. “Almost more than...
