Ocula Report Havana Biennial 2019: Constructing the Possible 17 Apr 2019 : Federica Bueti for Ocula I first visited Havana in November 2016, a few days after Fidel Castro died, and just under a year before Hurricane Irma hit Cuba in September 2017. Since then, much has changed, including the hand-painted signs that punctuate the journey from the airport to the city centre, which today do not celebrate the revolution so much as the 'Unidad y...
Ocula Conversation Andrew Stahl and Guo Xiaohui The exhibition Beyond Boundaries at Somerset House in London (12 March–2 April 2019) marked the historic contributions of the Central Academy of Fine Arts, Beijing (CAFA) and the Slade School of Fine Art, University College London, on the occasion of their 100th and 150th anniversaries, respectively. Spread across several rooms of Somerset House's...
Ocula Report The National 2019: New Australian Art 13 Apr 2019 : Elyse Goldfinch for Ocula The National 2019: New Australian Art features work by 70 contemporary Australia-based artists split across three venues: the Art Gallery of New South Wales (AGNSW), Carriageworks, and the Museum of Contemporary Art Australia (MCA) (29 March–21 July 2019), as curated by Isobel Parker Philip, curator of photographs at AGNSW; Daniel Mudie Cunningham,...
Widely regarded as one of the most influential painters working today, Marlene Dumas has continuously explored the complex range of human emotions, often probing questions of gender, race, sexuality, and economic inequality. Through her focus on the human figure, Dumas merges socio-political themes with personal experience and art-historical antecedents to create a unique perspective on the most salient and controversial issues facing contemporary society. Her work consistently explores constructions of identity and the fluid distinctions between the public and the private.
Born in 1953 in Cape Town, South Africa, Marlene Dumas studied at the University of Cape Town before moving to The Netherlands in the late 1970s to study painting and psychology. She continues to live and work in Amsterdam.
Her latest solo exhibition at Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam is Marlene Dumas: The Image as Burden, a major retrospective of the artist's work that comprises over one hundred drawings and paintings from private and museum collections throughout the world. The show has also travelled to Tate Modern in London, followed by the Fondation Beyeler in Basel.
Ocula Report 4th Kochi-Muziris Biennale: Possibilities for a Non-Alienated Life 15 Feb 2019 : Natalie King for Ocula 'Poems are like sentences that have taken their clothes off.' Marlene Dumas' poetic and sensual refrain accompanies her figurative watercolours on view in Possibilities for a Non-Alienated Life, the fourth edition of the Kochi-Muziris Biennale (KMB) in the southern state of Kerala, India (12 December 2018–29 March 2019).Dumas' new series...
Ocula Report Basel Tov! Art Basel 2015 10 Jul 2015 : Diana d'Arenberg for Ocula Another month, another art fair. With over 200 fairs held every year, I feel like a hamster stuck on an ever-spinning wheel. I just can’t seem to hop off, and after several years of this it has all become a bit of a blur. There isn’t a city to be visited that hasn’t already created its own art fair or biennale; there’s...
Ocula Report The Best Exhibitions to See in Basel 12 Jun 2015 : Stephanie Bailey for Ocula Kunsthalle BaselAnicka Yi7,070,430K of Digital Spit12 June to 16 August, 20157,070,430K of Digital Spit is about forgetting as an aesthetic operation. Framed as a “coda” to Yi’s “last few years of intense artistic production"—specifically, the last five years—this exhibition is as much...
Related Press A Radical Artist Takes a Startling Turn Toward Love The New York Times : 8 May 2018 AMSTERDAM — A painting by Marlene Dumas of her pregnant daughter Helena — her belly wide and full, her hands raised at the elbow, her feet splayed — stood nearly 10 feet tall in the South African artist’s studio here two weeks ago.It was the night before a few dozen of Ms. Dumas’s new paintings would be shipped to New York for her first solo...
Related Press A Mega-Gallery Marks a Quarter Century Hyperallergic : 3 February 2018 With five New York spaces, outposts in London and Hong Kong, 165 employees, more than a half-billion dollars in sales last year alone, and a Renzo Piano-designed flagship slated to open on 20th Street in 2020, it's no wonder that David Zwirner Gallery is routinely, and sometimes derisively, called a mega-gallery, and Zwirner himself a mega-dealer...
Related Press 'The last taboo is the penis': John Cheim on 'The Female Gaze, Part II: Women Looking at Men' at Cheim & Read ARTNews : 10 August 2016 The Female Gaze, Part II: Women Looking at Men, a group show that runs at Cheim & Read through September 2, is as ambitious in scope as it is in ideology, showcasing work by a wide range of artists–including Tracey Emin, Alice Neel, Diane Arbus, and Jenny Holzer–who have applied a nontraditional lens to viewing and depicting...
Related Press What do women see: 'The Female Gaze' Whitewall : 5 August 2016 Currently on display at Cheim & Read is a look at men from the perspective of 32 female artists. The Female Gaze, Part Two: Women Look at Men is the second half of a two-part exhibition at the Chelsea gallery.The first debuted in 2009 titled Women Look At Women. This latest exhibition offers multiple portrayals of men through the...
