Art

While ART X Lagos unfolds in Nigeria, London’s Autograph is set to unveil a powerful solo exhibition showcasing the work of Lagos-born photographer Rotimi Fani-Kayode. In a magnetic display of black and white portraits, The Studio – Staging Desire honors the sanctuary of the artist’s Brixton studio, which served as a creative haven for Black queer self-expression.Through a series of archival photographs and never-before-seen works, the exhibition follows Fani-Kayode as he ventured into spiritual worlds of intimacy, pain and fantasy. From 1983 until his death in 1989, the studio became a home for love and freedom amidst the racial and cultural bustle of London. Coded within sharp gestures, poses and a haunting sense of longing, his work captures a language of complex desire and difference.A...

Fredericks & Freiser presents Phosphorescence and Gasoline, a new solo exhibition by Danielle Roberts, now on view through December 7, 2024. Across a suite of acrylic works, Roberts paints the haze of a hyper-digital, post-Pandemic generation, echoing collective struggles in a neo(n) noir sign of the times.At the heart of each uncanny, everyday scene is the hum of artificial light — iridescent halos around car headlights, vibrant disco balls that silently spin and overhead lamps hung above disillusioned, Hopper-like gatherings. Despite roaring radiance, each face is adorned in a set sunken eyes and dull expressions. This dark and resonant irony of each work beckons the viewer and dares to hold them at distance, “like stepping outside a party but still hearing the music inside,” the gal...

At Galerie Eva Presenhuber, Louisa Gagliardi presents her first solo exhibition in Austria, now on view until December 21, 2024. Whereabouts is a digitally-rendered dance of ink, gel medium and nail polish. The show embraces a liminal melodrama, addressing themes of voyeurism and conformity.The exhibition finds home in the in-between, exploring transitional spaces that seem to define our everyday anxieties. Rather than providing concrete answers, the artist questions how identity and collective consciousness come to shape a sense of agency, or lack thereof. These ideas are reinforced by a dialogue of space, where contrasting sensations of claustrophobia and vastness animate the surrounding architecture.Akin to her previous work, Gagliano reflects on contemporary culture with a sense of pla...

In a twist of Stuart Semple’s nearly decade-long feud with Anish Kapoor, the British artist and activist has legally changed his name to, well, “Anish Kapoor.” To celebrate, he’s stamping his new identity on a new limited-edition print, titled “NOT A NICHE MAN.”The name change is Semple’s latest jab at the original Kapoor for acquiring sole rights to Vantablack, an ultra-dark, light-absorbing pigment, as an artistic material. Though it has since lost its title as the “world’s darkest material,” this exclusivity deal remains highly controversial in the art world. Semple’s change, part performance art, part protest, confronts ideas of what he calls “color hoarding” – the commercial monopolization of colors, including Mattel’s Barbie pink, Tiffany blue and Cadbury purple.Semple has fired back...

SCI-Arc Gallery presents Views of Planet City, a group exhibition inspired by artist, architect and curator Liam Young’s ongoing, environmental art project that began in 2021. Planet City proposes a radical rethinking of a sustainable world where humanity agrees to live amongst one another in a single, massive city, surrendering most of the Earth to a grand project of restoration. Alongside Young, Jennifer Chen, John Cooper, Damjan Jovanovic and Angelica Lorenzi construct alternative visions of this shared future. The works are not limited to images and films of the hyperdense megalopolis, displaying artifacts that emerge from it: pixel-perfect satellite images, costumes and masks born out of a fusion of global cultures, ceremonial relics of nature and a video game simulation that probes i...

Best known for her black cut-paper silhouettes, American artist Kara Walker takes a new technological approach in her latest exhibition at SFMOMA. The show, titled Fortune and the Immortality Garden (Machine), continues her explorations of race, power and history, guiding viewers through a surreal landscape of ritual and respite.The exhibition’s eight Black automatons recall medieval symbols of faith and divinity as they rise and fall in shimmering fields of obsidian. Many of Walker’s robotic Gardeners are trapped in eternal cycles of struggle, though the installation’s central figure, Fortuna, acts as an angel of absolution. The seven-foot-tall prophetess commences a choreographed dance as she delivers freshly-printed fortunes from her mouth.The artist draws from antique dolls, Bunraku pu...

LUPO (Lorenzelli Projects) is a new gallery founded by a team of under-30s in Milan, showcasing a range of artists who hail from the 1990s. The burgeoning gallery is currently presenting Giuseppe Mulas’ thought-provoking project “S'areste” (Sardinian for ‘wild, untamed’), which was made in collaboration with psychiatric patients from the Anteo Social Cooperative in Turin. Each gestural artwork appears like abstracted color fields from a distance, revealing fluid shapes and forms, from Martini bottles to animals — paying homage to the 1973 sculpture, Marco Cavallo, which was created by patients and artists — leading to the Italian movement for psychiatric reform.Previously, Mulas' biggest show to date, Sleep Well Childhood, held at Galleria Alberto Peola in Turin, probed into themes of iden...

South Arts has launched a relief and recovery fund to aid artists impacted by Hurricanes Helene and Milton that ravaged communities across the American Southeast, taking the lives of 229 people across seven states and causing a combined $97.5b USD in damage.The initiative will directly support media, artists, writers and filmmakers — both in the short-term, as well as mid-to-long-term recovery across Florida, Georgia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee and Virginia. “This is a pivotal moment for our region’s cultural landscape,” said South Arts president and CEO, Susie Surkamer, in a statement. “While we are providing immediate relief through this program, we recognize there is still much work ahead.”Nonprofits across the region have joined in the efforts, including Alternate Roots,...

This December, SCOPE Art Show returns to Miami Beach with an exploration of interdependence and the power of collaboration, transforming the fair into a vibrant hub for artists, collectors, and enthusiasts. Running from December 3-8, SCOPE promises a week of art, innovation and immersive experiences by a gamut of contemporary artists from across the globe.As first-ever Director, Hayley River Smith has been working closely with Founder, Alexis Hubshman to sharpen SCOPE’s focus on global creative exchange. SCOPE will feature 87 galleries from 15 countries and introduce 43 new exhibitors from cities like Warsaw, Lagos, and Portland. Known for its Ocean Drive pavilion during Miami Art Week, the fair draws over 100,000 visitors with its forward-looking blend of emerging art and boundary-crossin...

Meriem Bennani’s new solo exhibition has just opened at Fondazione Prada’s Milan outpost. Taking cues from YouTube videos, reality TV and high-production aesthetics, the multi-sensory world of For My Best Family marks the artist’s most ambitious work to date.The exhibition unfolds across two levels of the Podium, featuring a massive, kinetic installation and an animated film. The first piece, titled “Sole Crushing,” figures 192 flip-flops and slippers flapping in a “ballet-symphony-riot” of traditional Moroccan rhythms composed by producer Reda Senhaji, better known as Cheb Runner. Elsewhere, “For Aicha,” co-directed with Orian Barki, explores the intimate relationship between a mother and daughter, told through animated jackals. Through complementary languages of realism, autobiography an...

British musician and artist Brian Eno has just announced the release of an exciting new book. Created in collaboration with Dutch artist Bette A., What Art Does draws on unconventional approaches and insights from Eno’s five-decade-long career. In a new theory on art the artists address why we create it and how it holds us together.As contemporary art grapples with shifting tides and an ecosystem of digital images, the book emerges out of a crisis of creativity. Eno, however, remains true to coloring outside the lines. In song with this year’s release of his generative documentary Eno and HARD ART’s portrait publication, What Art Does ventures across unexpected mediums to examine “the function of fictional worlds” in “pop songs, detective novels, soap operas, shoe tassels and the hidden la...

Sotheby's will bring to auction the esteemed collection of No More Rulers founder Larry Warsh. Included as part of the Contemporary Art Day Auction in New York will be a series of Subway Drawings created by legendary Pop artist Keith Haring. As the title implies, Art in Transit: 31 Keith Haring Subway Drawings from the Collection of Larry Warsh comprises of a group of works created by the American artist between 1980-85, appearing at auction for the first time and coming in with a combined estimate of $6.3 to 9m USD.Accessibility was a hallmark to Haring's practice, favoring the surfaces found in the city streets, as opposed to the confines of a canvas. In the 1980s, the American artist quickly transformed New York's subways, adding his vibrant lexicon over advertisements as a way to enliv...