Rachel Jones, SMIIILLLLEEEE, 2021. Oil pastel, oil stick on canvas. Photo by Eva Herzog. Courtesy Thaddaeus Ropac gallery
In our new online monthly series, LUX’s editors, contributors, and friends pick their must-see exhibitions from around the globe
Sophie Neuendorf, Vice President of artnet
Last year, Saint Laurent started their cultural program, showing a selection of artists at exciting locations, such as at the beach during Art Basel Miami Beach (which you can read more about in my diary from the fair). They also mount exhibitions at their Rive Droite location in Paris, which has been conceived to showcase a selection of products from the Saint Laurent collection alongside works by emerging and established artists. This month, they’re showing Sho Shibuya‘s ethereal solar paintings, following the artist’s debut in Miami.
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Another must-see show is The Magritte machine at Thyssen Museum Madrid (closing on 30 January). As Sotheby’s is betting big on Magritte with a $60 Million consignment for their forthcoming London auction, this exhibition offers visitors the opportunity to discover more about the surrealist Belgian artist.
René Magritte Tentative de l’impossible 1928. Toyota Municipal Museum of Art, Toyota © René Magritte, VEGAP, Madrid, 2021
Then, at the end of this month, Buckingham Palace will reveal seven portraits of Holocaust survivors, which were commissioned by Prince Charles as a gesture of tribute to the ageing generation. The artists participating in the project include the most expensive living female artist Jenny Saville, BP Portrait award-winner Clara Drummond, original member of the Young British Artists Stuart Pearson Wright, and painters Paul Benney, Peter Kuhfeld, Massimiliano Pironti, and Ishbel Myerscough. The paintings will be displayed in the Queen’s Gallery starting January 27 in an exhibition called Seven Portraits: Surviving the Holocaust.
Idris Khan, Artist
Perhaps rather predictably, my recommended exhibition for this month is my wife, Annie Morris’s show When a Happy Thing Falls at the Yorkshire Sculpture Park. It’s her first UK solo museum exhibition and includes her sculptures as well as drawings and a tapestry. The show ends on 6 February so it’s your last chance to see it!
Read more: In the studio with Idris Khan
Annie Morris, Stack 9 Ultramarine Blue, 2021. Photo © Jonty Wilde. Courtesy Yorkshire Sculpture Park
Lawrence Van Hagen, Founder of LVH Art Advisory & Curator of the ‘What’s Up’ exhibitions
Rachel Jones’ solo exhibition SMIIILLLLEEEE at Thaddaeus Ropac, London (on until 5 February) has deservedly received a lot of media attention. The 30-year-old Essex-based artist is already a distinctive voice in the art world (she was one of the youngest artists to participate in the Hayward Gallery’s acclaimed exhibition Mixing It Up) and one of the most exciting emerging artists that I have personally come across, and acquired in recent years.
Rachel Jones in her studio. Photo by Adama Jalloh
As the title suggests, the exhibition references the artist’s ongoing obsession with mouths and specifically, teeth. In the works, she combines figuration and abstraction to reflect on teeth as a form of cultural expression in Black communities. The mouth also seems to be a metaphor for the world within us, our emotional landscape and the gate to our soul as we smile, eat, sing, scream, kiss… The clearest example in this show is a work that’s only 30cm high but more than 2-metres wide. It pictures a set of teeth and the canvas is trimmed at the bottom to follow the uneven shape of the molars and incisors. Rachel also has a solo show coming up at Chisenhale Gallery (opening 12 March) – another date for the diary!
Read more: Shiny Surfaces, Lawsuits & Pink Inflatable Rabbits: Jeff Koons
Millie Walton, LUX’s Art & Digital Editor
A few years ago, I was lucky enough to meet Dutch artist Jacqueline de Jong in the context of her solo exhibition at Pippy Houldsworth Gallery in Mayfair. We chatted at length about her process (which is completely spontaneous in the sense that she never plans her compositions) and her participation in the anti-authoritarian Situationist International (SI) group. Although the group wasn’t an artistic movement, de Jong was greatly inspired by its revolutionary spirit which can be felt in her vibrant colour palette and fluid forms that seem to writhe on the canvas. She has been making work for over six decades, but it isn’t until now that she’s beginning to finally garner international recognition.
Jacqueline de Jong, Untitled (Upstairs-Downstairs), 1986
This month, she has two major solo exhibitions including a museum survey entitled The Ultimate Kiss, which was inaugurated by WIELS, Brussels, in 2021 and is currently on show at MOSTYN, Wales (until 6 February) as well as another solo exhibition at Pippy Houldsworth Gallery (21 January to 12 March 2022) which includes a series of drawings related to her Upstairs-Downstairs paintings from the mid 1980s. I’m hoping I’ll get to see both!
Januario Jano, Untitled (M0010), 2021.
I also recommend stopping by Kristin Hjellegjerde Gallery’s Wandsworth space to see Angolan artist Januario Jano’s vibrant, thoughtful show Imbambas: Unsettled Feelings of Object & Self (on until 5 February). Jano takes the Kimbundu term imbambas (which refers to things such as furniture and luggage that have an intrinsic and uncanny relationship to the body and self) as his departing point through which to explore the role of the object in the construction and reinforcement of cultural identity. The exhibition features a wide range of mixed-media works, incorporating textiles, photography and found objects.
