Milton Avery, Two Figures on Beach, 1950

In our ongoing online monthly series, LUX’s editors, contributors, and friends pick their must-see exhibitions from around the globe

Péjú Oshin, Curator

My recommendation is In the Black Fantastic curated by Ekow Eshun. The show is truly a visual delight bringing together eleven artists from across the African diaspora who use myth and fiction to question the world as we know it.

Lina Iris Viktor, Eleventh, 2018. © 2018. Courtesy of the artist

I’m drawn to the materiality of works and so appreciated the chance to take a deeper look at the work of many of my favourite artist including Ellen Gallagher, Hew Locke, Nick Cave and Wangechi Mutu who also created a stunning film in collaboration with Santigold which I was completely enamoured with.

Installation view of Hew Locke worksm, In the Black Fantastic at Hayward Gallery 2022 © Rob Harris

Bonus tip – whether you’re new to exploring the visual arts or an afficiando you’ll want to get there early to spend enough time with the works. My first visit to the show was 1.5 hours before gallery closing and it I quickly realised with every vantage point something new was revealed within the work and I didn’t have nearly enough time. I’ll be back for another visit as well as spending time with the fantastic catalogue which I’d also recommend too.

Cj Hendry, Artist

I would recommend the The Whitney Biennial 2022: Quiet as It’s Kept. An exhibition of 63 intergenerational artists, opened April 6 across two floors of a building in the Meatpacking District.

Jane Dickinson, Save Time, 2020

It’s the 80th edition of the Biennial with works in sculpture, painting and performance, from artists including Veronica Ryan, Yto Barrada and Alfredo Jaar.

Lisa Alvarado, Vibratory Cartography: Nepantla, 2021–2022

Anne-Pierre D’Albis Ganem, founder of Parcours-Saint-Germain-des-Prés and Co-founder of Spirit Now London

The best show in New York is Oscar Murillo at David Zwirner.

Oscar Murillo, Manifestation, 2019-2020

If you then find yourself in the South of France, you must visit Le Muy created by Jean-Gabriel and Edward Mitterand. They asked the designer, India Madhavi to decorate the house. The 15 hectares park was designed by the famous Louis Benech with white oaks and cork parks surrounded by nature.  The pool of the park is signed by the artist, Peter Kogler.

Pool designed by Peter Kolger at Domaine du Muy

The interior of the house is designed by India Madhavi with all her furniture. The palm is by the artist Guy Webb. The tiles were made by India for Bisazza.

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Interior design at Domaine du Muy

Read more: Marina Abramović: The Artist As Survivalist

LUX Editorial Team

Everyone knows the Royal Academy of Arts Summer Show is one of London’s best cultural gem in the summer. This year, alongside it is a retrospective from across the pond: Milton Avery, American Colourist.

Milton Avery, Little Fox River, 1942

Collecting together portraits and landscapes from Maine to Cape Cod, the exhibition tracks the artist’s development over the 1930s-1960s. And what a fascinating period to span: watch Avery’s style develop and move towards expressionism. Avery was truly an artist’s artist, winning everyone’s respect from Mark Rothko to Barnett Newman. Worth visiting.

Abe Odedina, They’re Playing Our Song, 2021. Courtesy of the Artist, Diane Rosenstein Gallery, Los Angeles. Photo by Robert Wedemeyer.

In our ongoing online monthly series, LUX’s editors, contributors, and friends pick their must-see exhibitions from around the globe

Jumoke Sanwo, Artist & Curator, Founder of Revolving Art Incubator & Co-Founder of NFT Africa

Top of my list for this month is Under the Influence, Nigerian-British artist Abe Odedina’s first solo exhibition in Los Angeles. It’s presented as a special project room installation by Diane Rosenstein Gallery and opened during Frieze LA but runs until 12th of March 2022. The show includes a collection of eight still life and portrait paintings on plywood board – the artist’s nod to the street signage found in many African cities, especially on the streets of Ibadan and Lagos, from where he received his earliest influences.

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I am personally drawn to his work because it engages the charged relations between mythological and contemporary Afro experiences, delving into the magic realism of Yoruba mythologies and folk. He has a glossary of symbolisms of the everyday, alongside relatable characters and similar to some of his earlier influences such as the late Nigerian magician Professor Peller, he transports the viewer through bold imagery into a world of magical realism.

Shahrzad Ghaffari, Artist

While I’m in London working on Oneness, my commissioned artwork for Leighton House, I’m looking forward to seeing Louise Bourgeois: The Woven Child at the Hayward Gallery (open until 15 March). Louise is one of my favourite artists — I love how vulnerable and expressive she is through her art. She works across a variety of mediums, such as painting, sculpture, and drawing. Her work explores traumatic events from her childhood with a beautiful sense of boldness.

Installation view of Louise Bourgeois: The Woven Child at Hayward Gallery, 2022. © The Easton Foundation/DACS, London and VAGA at Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. Photo: Mark Blower/© The Hayward Gallery

Durjoy Rahman, Art Collector & Patron, Founder of Durjoy Bangladesh Foundation

There’s so much great art to see this month, but I’m most excited about Desert X AlUla 2022, a recurring, site-responsive, international free admission art exhibition taking place in AlUla, Saudi Arabia (on until 30 March). The show features newly commissioned works by 15 artists from across the globe.

Read more: All-access rundown of Ozwald Boateng’s return to London Fashion Week

Stand-out pieces include Ghanaian artist Serge Attakwei Clottey’s Gold Falls, a vibrant yellow tapestry-like work made from square parts of yellow water jerry cans found throughout Africa that the artist has long used to discuss issues related to water scarcity and migration in Africa and also AFROGALLONISM, an artistic concept that comments on consumption within modern Africa. Jerrycans, imported to Ghana from Europe and Asia carrying cooking oil, are used to store water pumped from the soil in regions of short water supply. This situation contributes to plastic waste and fails to present a sustainable alternative. Addressing this situation, Clottey creates tapestries out of plastic pieces with the help of his community studio. These sculptural installations poignantly draw attention to the economic and social situation being faced by many people on this planet.

Serge Attukwei Clottey, Gold Falls at Desert X AlUla 2022. Photo by Lance Gerber

Tae Kim, Artist

Korean artist Park Grim’s solo exhibition entitled Horo, Becoming a Tiger is currently on show at Studio Concrete in Seoul (until 27 March 2022) and it’s definitely a must-see. A deep concern with self-image coupled with a lack of confidence has a tight grip on the Korean population, who have grown up in the age of the internet and the queer population, especially, still faces discrimination largely due to lack of understanding. In this latest exhibition, Grim uses his art to overcome the social stigma and self-hatred that he faces as a queer artist. Using the narrative of the shimudo, a story revolving around growth and enlightenment in Buddhist teachings, he illustrates his own journey towards self-confidence (towards, metaphorically, “becoming a tiger”) while diverse symbolism, quotes on contemporary Korean culture and references to the queer scene add a sense of depth and immediacy to the works.

般若虎 반야호 The Tiger of Perfect Wisdom (Interracial), 2022, 비단에 담채

The LUX Editorial Team

This month, we’re spotlighting a few artists and organisations who are raising much need funds for Ukraine through the sale of artist prints, NFTs, and other creative initiatives.

According to artnet, the UkraineDAO (a decentralised autonomous organisation) co-created by Russian Pussy Riot founder and artist Nadya Tolokonnikova, has so far raised more than $4.6 million USD worth of ETH with the funds being donated to Come Back Alive, a crowdfunding organisation that funds members of the Ukrainian military and their families. The group’s NFT – a single edition of the Ukrainian flag –  is being released alongside a PartyBid, a tool that allows people to collectively bid, and, in case they win, own a fractionalised piece of the artwork. Italian sculptor Lorenzo Quinn is also selling 100 NFT called “Support Ukraine, Stop the war” on SuperRare for 0,24 ETH (~$690) with profits going to Ukrainian charities that support civilians.

Image via @jackdavisonphoto

Earlier this week, London-based creative space Have a Butchers launched a charity print sale in association with Hempstead May & May Print. The sale runs until 11th March with all prints sold at £50 and proceeds donated to the British Red Cross, Ukraine Crisis Appeal. New York-based photographer Dom Marker has also put together his own website (accessible here) selling photographic prints for 100USD each, with all profits going to Save the Children’s Ukraine Crisis Relief Fund . Current work includes Marker’s own photographs alongside three images by Jack Davison, available as 8×10 C-prints. Meanwhile, Idris Khan revealed a new artwork on his Instagram that will be available for purchase as a print via the charitable organisation Migrate Art which helps displaced communities (a release date is yet to be announced, but keep an eye on their site for updates).

Over in the US, the producers behind Immersive Van Gogh and Immersive Frida Kahlo are bringing a new art show to Chicago that pays tribute to the Ukrainian artist, writer and political activist Taras Shevchenko. Entitled Immersive Shevchenko: Soul of Ukraine, the exhibition will debut in select cities throughout the United States and Canada on March 15 with 100 percent of the proceeds from ticket sales to the event being donated to the Red Cross and National Bank of Ukraine Fund.

Installation view of Jasper Johns: Mind/Mirror (Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, September 29, 2021-February 13, 2022). From left to right: Savarin, 1982; Savarin, 1982; Savarin, 1982; Savarin, 1982; Studio II, 1966. Photograph by Ron Amstutz

In our ongoing online monthly series, LUX’s editors, contributors, and friends pick their must-see exhibitions from around the globe

Sophie Neuendorf, Vice President of artnet & LUX Contributing Editor

This month, Hauser & Wirth presents glimpse, British artist Phyllida Barlow’s first solo exhibition in Los Angeles, opening on 17 February (until 8 May 2022) to coincide with Frieze LA. The show will include new large-scale works assembled on site and made in response to the gallery’s physical adaptation of the historic Globe Mills, a collection of late 19th and early 20th century buildings. It’s sure to be a knock-out and as an added bonus, the gallery has an excellent on-site restaurant named after one of its founders: Manuela.

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Phyllida Barlow, Undercover 2, 2020. Installation view, ‘Another Energy: Power to Continue Challenging – 16 Women Artists from around the World,’ Mori Art Museum, Tokyo, 2021. © Phyllida Barlow. Courtesy the artist and Mori Art Museum, Tokyo Photo: Furukawa Yuya

While you’re in LA, I also recommend stopping by Esther Kim Varet’s gallery Various Small Fires. The gallery launched in 2012 with the aim of fighting back against the traditional gallery system that allowed for already-big Western names to get even bigger. As a gallerist and dealer, Varet likes to keep it small: she only represents around 20 artists, fostering their growth right from the early-stages of their careers. As such, the shows here are always a great place to discover new talent before they take off. The current group show, for example, includes eleven artists curated by Todd Bockley of Bockley Gallery (on until 20 February 2022).

Julie Buffalohead, The Nourished, 2019. Courtesy of the Artist, Various Small Fires, Los Angeles/Dallas/Seoul and Bockley Gallery

Sutapa Biswas, Artist

Three powerful, beautiful and moving exhibitions which are ‘must sees’ over this next month (in addition to my own solo show at the BALTIC Centre for Contemporary Art, Gateshead of course) are Lubaina Himid’s exhibition at Tate Modern in London (on until 3 July 2022), Shigeko Kubota Liquid Realities at MoMA, New York (on until 13 February 2022) and Jennifer Packer’s The Eye Is Not Satisfied With Seeing at The Whitney, New York (on until 17 April 2022). I had the good fortune of seeing Lubaina’s exhibition, and the Serpentine’s iteration of Packer’s show, but I was devastated that the recent outbreak of the omicron Covid variant resulted in my having to cancel a scheduled visit to Kubota’s exhibition – I’m still dreaming of seeing it and hope this exhibition travels!

Shigeko Kubota, Video Haiku–Hanging Piece, 1981. Courtesy Shigeko Kubota Video Art Foundation. Artwork © 2021 Estate of Shigeko Kubota / Licensed by VAGA at Artists Rights Society (ARS), NY. Digital image © 2021 The Museum of Modern Art, New York. Photo by Denis Doorly

All three exhibitions bring together something vitally important in terms of our engagement with the subjects of their works in relation to the context, to form (the aesthetic) and to the nuances of meaning. I’m drawn to how each of these artists explore the intersections between art, history, form and our everyday realties and hopes. I love the confidence with which each of these artist’s works speaks through their works and what I learn as a viewer through my experience / encounter with their works. Moreover, I love how these artists’ works are haunting, opening thought in unexpected ways. Though the medium within which each of these artists work are so different, there is a language that connects them which relates to ‘the seeing’ and ‘the being’. Perhaps, for me, this ghosting of sorts is in part articulated through Kubota work titled Video Haiku – Hanging Piece, 1981. Prior to MoMA’s show I had not seen this work previously, but even on encountering it as a reproduction, I did a double-take. As a piece, it resonates deeply both formally and conceptually in terms of my own work as an artist. Such is the power and beauty of these women’s art.

Lubaina Himid
, Ball on Shipboard, 2018. 
Courtesy of Rennie Collection, Vancouver 
© Lubaina Himid

Darius Sanai, LUX Editor-in-Chief

The two shows I want to see most in February are shows I know I am not going to get to. First there is Mind/Mirror, the Whitney’s retrospective of Jasper Johns, in association with the Philadelphia Museum of Art (on until 13 February 2022). It’s the most comprehensive retrospective of Johns’ work ever staged and likely to be a once-in-a-lifetime experience for most of us. He has long fascinated me for his reflections of the dramatic ructions in American society immediately after WW2, when within a few years, women in the western world gained arguably their biggest single step change in emancipation, segregation was officially abolished, and teenagers were invented. Along with Kurt Schwitters and Roy Lichtenstein, I think he is an artist whose importance will increase dramatically over time. If you’re lucky enough to be on the East Coast – go!

Read more: Sophie Neuendorf on Koons, Kitsch & the Evolving Art Market

Anton Corbijn, David Bowie, Chicago, 1980. Copyright Anton Corbijn

The other show is at the other end of the scale in terms of size, but not interest. Anton Corbijn first caught my eye when I was a child and my sisters worked for NME, the pre-eminent post punk newspaper. I didn’t have much interest in the bands featured in the paper at that stage, but Corbijn’s photography, artful, moody, powerful, and always monochrome, was memorable. As an outsider, I was also always fascinated by the idea of this Dutch guy being a mover and shaker on the British 1980s music scene. He moved onto photograph movie stars, supermodels and designers, including David Bowie, Naomi Campbell and Virgil Abloh. Now uber-curator and LUX contributor Simon de Pury has curated a show, viewed by appointment at The Hague, Amsterdam (which I’m not going to make) and online at de-pury.com. Speaking to Simon last week, I told him his next move in the pop world should include the works of Pennie Smith, who created the black-and-white imagery in the book The Clash: Before And After, a kind of epic, humorous Canterbury Tales of the punk band’s first US tour. Watch this space.

Read more: Legendary photographer Iran Issa-Khan on ‘The Forces of Nature’

Tarka Russell, Director Timothy Taylor Gallery

When in Los Angeles, I never miss a visit to David Kordansky Gallery. During Frieze LA, he has Jonas Wood showing a collection of new paintings and works on paper (on until 5 March 2022). Another unforgettable trip is the The Getty museum where you are immersed in treasures.

Jonas Wood, Future Zoo, 2021. Photo by Marten Elder, courtesy of the artist and David Kordansky Gallery

Loulou Siem, Artist

This month, Pal Project, Pierre and Alexandre Lorquin’s art space in Paris, is showing Paragone by Mateo Revillo (on until 12 March 2022). I had a preview just before the opening and it is electric. Revillo has painted lines in beeswax and pigment on tile shaped plaster boards and hung them like diamonds – lines that run away and towards each other, going somewhere and nowhere and wrapping the space in unseen tape that asks: what happens outside of the edge? Live snails crawl up the walls, creating yellowish, unconfident loops on the once pristine gallery surface. Meanwhile, the wonky lines in the paintings feel fast, like static, and seem to challenge the somnolent snails. Snails that tease the limits of the paintings: awkwardly sexy?

Installation view of Paragone by Mateo Revillo. Courtesy of Pal Project, Paris

I normally think of tiles as existing in multiples, made up for architecture, but here each is given jewel-like space, and do not need a collective to communicate. In fact, the materials in the show are industrial, not typically decorative. The plaster board is part of the wall itself, the bench that has been burned has doodled soot down the wall at its fall and the relatively small church of wedged coal bricks is solid and uncomplicated. The paintings feel monumental to me in their abstraction. In some moments, paint has flaked off the edges of the plaster, reminiscent of some Mediterranean antiquity, except these tiles were always meant to be perfectly imperfect. If you’re in Paris this month or at any point the future, I highly recommend stopping by: I think there could be a lot of exciting things coming out of this space.