art – Page 6 – greg.org

Lost At Sea Of Buddha

hiroshi sugimoto's photo of 33 statues of buddhas is black and white, mostly black — Hiroshi Sugimoto, Sea of Buddha (008), taken in 1995, gelatin silver print, 47 x 58 3/4 in., ed 5, via Marian Goodman Gallery, which should be a sign of when it was actually produced

Seeing Hiroshi Sugimoto’s show at the Met in 1995 was a life-changer, and then seeing his Time Exposed (Buddha Series) photos and Accelerated Buddha, his 5-minute video, at Sonnabend in 1997 blew my mind.

Sugimoto spent ten days in 1995 photographing the 1,000 12th century kannon Buddha sculptures in the Sanjusangendō in Kyoto, in 48 images. Each identically composed photo shows 33 kannon in eight rows, for 1,584 Buddhas. There are eleven rows of statues, so there’s plenty of room for overlap while still photographing them all.

hiroshi sugimoto's book sea of buddha is a leporello, opened and spread out to reveal the black and white photos of buddhas that seem identical but are not. — Hiroshi Sugimoto, Sea of Buddha, 1997, quarto, ed. 1000, this example via Shapero Rare Books

Like the video, which packs all 48 images in 1,000 times to get to a million Buddhas, Sugimoto published a book, Sea of Buddha, a little leporello that reproduced all 48 images, in an edition of 1,000, for another million Buddhas. [Except, as noted above, it’s technically 1,584 headshots of 1,000 Buddhas.]

The most extensive accounts I’ve found so far of his seven-year process of trying to get permission to photograph the Buddhas were in interviews with Phong Bui and Interview Magazine tied to a 2016 show of large-format prints of the series, retitled as Sea of Buddha, at Pace. Basically, he was a nobody getting nowhere, and either Philippe de Montebello helped, or he didn’t, until a Japanese culture bureaucrat helped him get a deal, and then he just had to pay $10,000, or $15,000. It’s kind of crazy. Sugimoto described his show at the Met as life-changing, but also as his first museum show, which, his own chronology lists fourteen museum shows before that. He said they were shown at the Met, but honestly, I don’t remember them being shown until 1997.

I was at the Sanjusangendō yesterday, and so have been thinking anew about Sugimoto’s work. And besides the shifting explanations, it feels weirdly destabilizing to see how many different formats, editions, and installations there have been over the years, all seemingly with the same date of 1995. Sugimoto’s moved major galleries multiple times, and shown the work in various single and triptych forms, in editions of 5, 15, and 25. Accelerated Buddha was shown on a single monitor in 1997, and as a wraparound three-channel video since, with different soundtracks by Ken Ikeda.

I’m all for artists continuing to make and revisit and rethink and rediscover things about their work. And to continue to push it forward as technology and technique changes. On his own site Sugimoto describes the Sanjusangendō installation as a form of conceptual art, and wonders, a bit disdainfully, “Will today’s conceptual art survive another eight-hundred years?” And I’m like, only if it has an archivist? Because it’s only been 30 years, and things are already confusing af.

[enlightenment update]即是空, 空即是色

This Sardonyx Vase is at Zwirner rn

a monumental photo of a tiny vase carved two thousand years ago from a block of sardonyx that is dark brown like pouring coffee around the mouth and neck, and swirling gold and yellow and cream on the rounded base. a thin looped handle is intact on one side and broken on the other. via galerie kugel — the apparently called ‘Dashkov Vase,’ sardonyx, H9.8 cm, Roman, 1-100 CE, Galerie Kugel/David Zwirner

I didn’t know about the Dashkov Vase until David Zwirner emailed it to me today, and even if its name means it’s connected to Princess Dashkova, who helped in the coup that brought Catherine the Great to power, it still stands on its own.

Zwirner Uptown is showing a selection of classical and antique hardstone objects from Galerie Kugel in Paris alongside works by gallery artists. Some of the pairings are a bit straightforward, but perhaps the main takeaway is the experience of time-spanning beauty. Anyway, this vase carved from a block of sardonyx two thousand years ago is not 10 cm tall. You have not held something this small since the iPhone 6. In the installation view it feels a bit lost, frankly, next to a matching Wolfgang Tillmanns Freischwimmer. But in the online checklist, they glow together as equals.

Set in Stone, Galerie Kugel and David Zwirner, 69th st, 12 May -26 June 2026 [davidzwirner]

Danaïdes Are A Girl’s Best Friend

She’s laying down a base of,
“We come to this place… for magic.
We come to Christie’s to laugh, to cry, to care.”

And dusting it with some,
“But square cut or pear-shaped, these rocks don’t lose their shape!”

This Brancusi should sell for a billion dollars.

Nicole Kidman visits Constantin Brancusi’s ‘Danaïde’ | The S.I. Newhouse Collection | New York [h/t Jack]
Previously, related bonkers Christie’s videos: Wade Guyton and anxiety in the age of mechanical reproduction

The Janis Family Fountain

The Brooklyn Rail has a whole smorgasbord of Duchamp-related content tied to MoMA’s show. But my favorite still has to be the October 2022 recollections of art historian Carroll Janis, who was working alone in his family’s gallery one morning in 1950 when Duchamp came to sign the urinal Sidney Janis had procured for exhibition.

For the whole time this has been in my tabs, I’ve been thinking about the elaborate, almost performative way Duchamp approached this signing and designation. But as I was writing this, it occurred to me that Janis got the first [non-bôite] replica of Fountain in 33 years, not in New York, where the original supposedly came from, but in France: “[A]s no suitable replacement could be found in New York, Duchamp suggested that Janis look in Paris on his summer visit there at the Marché aux Puces (flea market). Janis found one and shipped it back to New York.”

He sure did, and it’s now in the Philadelphia Museum. And there’s a great museum photo of the underside, with the signature[s!] and the labels.

But now I think back on a whole thrumming history of Duchamp studies where incredulous scholars scoured the early 20th century porcelain fixture catalogues of the J.L. Mott Iron Works and beyond, failing to identify the exact model of urinal Duchamp said he picked up on Sixth Avenue. Why did Duchamp think or know a suitably identical urinal would be found in les puces? Did he get the first one in France, too?

Three Encounters With Marcel Duchamp [brooklynrail.org]

Twombly & Twombly by Twombly

a black and white photo of a relatively calm flat beach in italy with a long, narrow sand castle of cake pan shaped pedestals with jagged, drizzled sand towers braces itself against the flat, gentle, but inexorably encroaching sea, a work by cy twombly and his four year old son alessandro, the photo by tatiana franchetti twombly — A destroyed Twombly & Twombly sand castle in Sperlonga, as photographed by Tatiana Franchetti Twombly and released by Trust Iris to the NYT on the occasion of Maia Twombly’s book of her grandmother’s photographs.

From the New York Times: “’That’s my first sculpture,’ Alessandro, who became an artist, told Maia. Father and son created this elaborate sand castle in 1963 on the beach in Sperlonga, which has been a resort in southern Italy since the time of the emperor Tiberius.”

News of a previously undocumented sculptural collaboration between Allesandro and Cy Twombly would normally be the lead story. But, of course, it was documented, and it is the documentation that here deserves attention.

Tatiana Franchetti Twombly, Cy’s wife, took thousands of photos over sixty years, including this one, on a beach in Sperlonga in 1963. Alessandro’s daughter Maia found the negatives in the house where Tatiana died in 2010. She is putting on a show in Rome in June, and has published just a hundred in a book, Stella Honey, Cy’s pet name for Tatiana. There are 18 in the Times.

It’s early to tell, but we might want to prepare for another, “Wife of the Master Mural Painter Gleefully Dabbles in Art” situation our art historical future as more photos are released.

Cy Twombly, From Intimate Angles [nyt]
Stella Honey, photos by Tatiana Franchetti Twombly, edited by Maia Twombly, is also available in a slipcased special edition with a numbered print [reference-point.uk]

Man Bartlett, Liberty, Not At Liberty

a green vinyl recording sticks halfway out of a white sleeve with a snapshot portrait of a pale blond child posing with his eyes closed as the statue of liberty, with a hand-drawn tablet, a green crown, and a tiny torch. he is wearing a light blue t-shirt with a similarly green brontosaurus illustration. all this and small blue card with a signature and number on one side and a checklist of things to remember if confronting ICE on the other, an edition of man bartlett produced by consultorio in porto, portugal — Portrait of the Young Artist as a Statue: man bartlett liberty.wav, 2026, 7-in. lathe-cut sound recording in a signed, numbered edition of 25, published by Consultório, Porto

A couple of weeks ago Man Bartlett opened a show at Galeria Ocupa in Porto. Not at Liberty includes sound works that evoke the artist’s ferry ride in front of the Statue of Liberty, and the melting of ice.

In conjunction with the show, esculápio and/or Consultório has released man bartlett liberty.wav, a 4’04” recording, in a signed edition of 25. The lathe-cut, 7-inch disc is the verdigris color of the Statue of Liberty, and of the brontosaurus on the t-shirt worn by a young Bartlett as he posed in a portrait as the Statue of Liberty, which is reproduced on the recording’s sleeve.

Man Bartlett, Not At Liberty, 30 Apr – 6 Jun 2026 [consultorioprojectroom]
esculápio ediçãoes, man bartlett liberty.wav, 2026, ed.25 [consultorio]

Imi Knoebel Table for Eindhoven

a wood table with an irregular 12-sided top painted pink with sides and five unturned but beveled or mitered legs painted in white blue red yellow and black, a 1987 sculpture edition by imi knoebel — Imi Knoebel, Table, 1982/1987, wood and paint, ed. 11/25, 74,5 × 162 × 157 cm, selling at Grisebach

NGL, I’ve never been as interested as I perhaps empirically should be in Imi Knoebel’s work, and that’s on me. I feel like it requires more understanding or immersion in the context of 80s German painting discourse than I’ve been willing to take on. And so frankly I only end up with an auction’s-eye view of it, which has never thrilled me.

the unpainted underside of imi knoebel's 1987 table with its twelve irregular sides, the supporting frame underneath held in place with keys, and the five legs jutting up, each painted yellow white black blue and red, with a stenciled label in the center, vam for van abbe museum, eindhoven, imi knoebel, 11/25, this table is being sold in june 2026 at grisebach — Imi Knoebel, Table, 1982/1987, verso, via Grisebach

Which is all a setup to still fail to explain how smitten I am by this wack Table from 1987. What even is going on here, table-wise? But the multiple side and underside views at Grisebach show an extraordinary construction, a weird mix of kludgy and precise, where dimensional lumber legs are mitered to the precise, weird angles they’re set into, and the whole thing looks painted by brush, and held together with tensioning keys?

This is not a table, but a table-shaped painting and/or sculpture. And though it was produced as an edition of 25 [?!] for a show at the Van Abbemuseum [?! love those guys], it’s very much a handmade object. What a wild combination of attributes for a glitched out Memphis monster that somehow feels very much of its time?

a vector map of germany in green rotated about 30 degrees counter-clockwise from its normal north orientation to match a picture of an imi knoebel table. original vector map via simplemaps — Germany rotated 30 degrees to the left, vector image via simplemaps

[A few minutes later update] Am I high, or is this table the shape of a then-not-yet-reunited Germany?

[Later in the day update] OK, no. The table is properly from 1982/87. I went lowkey mad searching for a Knoebel solo show at Van Abbemuseum in 1987, but it was in 1982. It included the second installation of Ghent Room, 1980, Knoebel’s pivotal exploration of color and space which, for the purposes of this post, looks like 115 monochrome tabletops of various dimensions. It was shown later that year at Documenta 7, and by 1987, had been installed three more times, including at Dia.

Anyway, Table was an edition from the 1982 show. Tafel ed. 2/25 sold in 2023, in The Hague, with a stamp and a handwritten date from 1983. It was purportedly acquired in 1987, at the artist’s solo show at the Van Abbemuseum which, again, did not happen. The edition number of the Van Abbemuseum’s own example of Table is not known, but it is listed as a 1982 work, produced in 1987.

Perhaps it took the Van Abbemuseum a while to complete production of their edition. Perhaps it took the Van Abbemuseum community a while to collect all 25 tables. But this table comes from 1982, and at least one example was signed and dated by Knoebel himself.

In 2014, Knoebel produced three new tables, which jigsaw together in two or three pieces, which he showed at Galerie Bärbel Grässlin in Frankfurt. With these works, “Knoebel returns to one of his works from 1982, a table that he had produced in an edition of 25 for a solo show at the Stedelijk Van Abbemuseum Eindhoven at the time.” According to the Contemporary Art Library version of the press release the tables are “meant to be used,” and come in editions of 3+2AP, or 15 tables made of 40 smaller tables.

Lot 764, 5 June 2026, Imi Knoebel, Table, 1987, est. EUR 8-12,000 [grisebach]
Previously, Van Abbemuseum-related:
Piet Mondrian Stage Sets with 1980s update
Shanzhai Vanabbemuseum by Li Mu
SUPERFLEX free Sol Lewitt sculptures at Van Abbemuseum

Richard Prince’s Ulysses Blue

in a concrete gallery in austria, a diptych of monochrome blue the color of the greek flag in the 1920s and of the cover of the first edition of james joyce's ulysses hangs behind a sculpture made of the stripped down glossed up shell of i think a ford mustang encased in a block of concrete that fills where the engine and wheels would be. a show by richard prince at kunsthaus bregenz in 2014 — Richard Prince, Untitled and Untitled (Ulysses), 2011, at Kunsthaus Bregenz in 2014, photos: Rudolf Sagmeister and Dietrich Gehring, via Contemporary Art Daily

Talking this morning with Matt, our book man in Venice, about the intense passions of collectors of James Joyce’s Ulysses, and he reminded me that Richard Prince’s own bibliophilia covered Ulysses, too.

In Prince’s birdtalk texts from 2014, there’s a bit about yearning for the copy Joyce inscribed to Ezra Pound. And another about going to Dijon to see where Ulysses was first printed, and hunting down the Greek flag blue that appeared on the cover of the 1st edition.

Which was the same moment Prince opened It’s A Free Concert, a show at the Kunsthaus Bregenz, which included a large, book cover lithograph-shaped monochrome diptych, Untitled (Ulysses), in Joyce’s—and Greece’s—blue. It’s dated 2011, so he’d had it on his mind for a while.

The Spiritual American Pavilion

the title on a brochure that says fondazione prada helter skelter arthur jafa and richard prince — The brochure is tall. If there were any plebeians in Venice rn, the show would open for them Saturday

I have read the gallery guide for Helter Skelter Arthur Jafa and Richard Prince, Miuccia Prada’s two-artist show curated by Nancy Spector. I have created a mind palace and walked through it. I’m not sure these artists are operating on the same register.

The exhibition segregates them on the ground floor, and they get together in the fancy rooms upstairs. Spector notes shared ideas, themes, visuals, approaches, without forcing too hard. It feels more like parallel play than direct engagement or dialogue. [Which makes me very interested to see what Jafa and Prince’s collaborative zine ends up like; it could be the song of the summer.]

The image used to promote the show feels like its apotheosis. Prince’s iconic Rasta painting, Graduation (2008) and a Vodoun witch doctor from Jafa’s Mickey Mouse Was A Scorpio (2019) are shown side by side, along with two other Canal Zone paintings, near the end of the show. In the text, Spector focuses on appropriation and juxtaposition, and Jafa’s critique of ownership in the historical context of chattel slavery.

an arthur jafa artwork with a black and white line drawing of mickey mouse next to a mostly black and white photo of a vodoun priest with whiteface resembling a skull, or mickey mouse, and wearing a light suit jacket, is stacked on top of a pairing of the same vodoun priest image and a richard prince painting of a rasta playing a guitar, mostly black and white with blue ovals over his face, in ways that resemble the whiteface next to it. this is the promotional image for the prada foundation's show of these two artists' work in venice in 2026 — [top] Arthur Jafa’s Mickey Mouse Was A Scorpio, 2019, at Museum Brandhorst… cropped and combined [bottom] with Richard Prince’s Graduation, 2008, for the Prada Foundation show.

But the elision of Mickey Mouse feels crucial. Jafa has talked about how placing their images next to each other reveal Mickey and Damballah, the Vodoun spirit represented by the witch doctor, are two iterations of the same entity. Placing a whiteface figure next to Prince’s Rasta says blackface, without the hard “R.” But hanging Mickey next to Graduation brings out the minstrel in both.

The autobiography of desire echoes throughout the show, with each artist exploring the yearning of being someone else, an other. Prince made his Girlfriends photos because he “wanted to be a girlfriend.” And Jafa’s Man-Monster self-portrait embodies transformation in ways that resonate with his 2024 race-switching re-edit of Taxi Driver, BG, which in Venice is titled Ben Gazarra [is the misspelling intentional?].

the poorly lit gallery in a venetian palazzo has an arthur jafa work with a large black and white photo of a vodoun priest in a suit with whiteface printed on aluminum next to an ornate doorway, where a video of a black gospel choir is projected on the far wall, and to the right of the doorway is a richard prince painting of four dark ovals on a painterly white ground, in such a way that it looks like the cartoon face of mickey mouse. — installation view of Helter Skelter so that Mickey’s cropped out again, but that surprised Mickey face-like group of ovals isn’t. image: Fond. Prada via hypebeast, which I only read for the google images

What’s less clear, perhaps, in the show is that Prince testified that painting Rastas was an act of love, of desire, of substitution like the Girlfriends: he wanted to look like them, to be them. For all the real talk of the Black experience, white supremacy, and American masculinity, I feel like both of these artists are mapping the psychosexual contours of a violent, white, imperialist, colonialist elephant, while Spector and Prada are maybe saying, keep the blindfolds on.

Frameless Hammershøis at SMK

I understand the important protection and handling convenience frames provide. And I get why it’s cringe to call it rawdawging, but I have stayed wanting more art without frames.

A couple of months back, after that frameless Da Messina situation, Claudio Santambrogio sent along a link to a fascinating semi-frameless show I’d completely missed at SMK in Copenhagen. There I Belong. Hammershøi by Elmgreen & Dragset was a group show of Vilhelm Hammershøi paintings along contemporary artists curated by Michael Elmgreen and Ingar Dragset in 2019. The duo highlighted the ominous feelings of Hammershøi’s interiors and the sense of foreboding they could engender.

on the grey wall of the royal art museum in copenhagen, a small framed photo of an open door in a german house hangs equidistant from a small frameless painting of a 19th century danish interior, also with an open door, and the gallery's own doorway. taken in 2019 by inge pollet — Three doorways: Installation shot of Hammershøi and Ruff in There I Belong, 2019, at SMK, photo: Inge Pollet

One particular pairing jumped out—actually, that’s too energetic, maybe it bubbled over: a 1980 Thomas Ruff Interieur photo of a door and Hammershøi’s 1888 painting, Interior, The Old Stove. Albertinelyst, which is also largely about a door. Hammershøi gets called serene and austere, but Elmgreen & Dragset’s sense of an unwelcoming stillness is also correct. When I think about hygge, it is now not this.

a brightly lit photo of an empty open doorway in a traditional european home, that happens to be the artist thomas ruff's house in dusseldorf. the door and frame are white, the wall cream, the floor very dark stained wood. a wide matte and thin maple wood frame surround the photo, via david zwirner — Thomas Ruff, Interieur 8C, 1980, C-print, 10 7/8 x 8 1/8 in., Framed: 18 1/2 x 22 1/2 in., Ed. 20, 5 AP, via David Zwirner

an 1888 painting in a range of naturally lit whites on the walls and open doorway, and dark browns on the wood floor, and even darker paint on the tiered porcelain stove in the corner of this austere empty danish room painted by vilhelm hammershoi — Wilhelm Hammershøi, Interior, The Old Stove. Albertinelyst, 1888, oil on canvas, 61.6 cm x 51.5 cm, collection SMK, image: creative commons

I have to think that showing the paintings naked, without frames, only heightened the unease. Except the image above, also frameless, came from SMK’s incredible Wilhelm Hammershøi Digital Archive. The VIHDA is the culmination of a five-year research initiative into the methods, materials, and construction of over 130 Hammershøi works. Every painting is photographed frameless, naked as the day it was made. And then, in addition to digital scans, there’s a whole range of technical images for each work, too; the dawgs have never been so raw.

There I Belong. Hammershøi by Elmgreen & Dragset, 27 April – 1 September 2019 [smk.dk]
The Vilhelm Hammershøi Digital Archive [smk.dk]
[Thanks to the SMK press office for their kind assistance with details about the exhibition.]

Marty Margulies’ Olafur Grid

an eight-row grid of photos, perhaps even portraits, of individual islands in iceland by olafur eliasson. though they're all the same width, the photos on the top rows are shorter, more horizontal in their orientation, hugging the more horizontal island profiles, while the lower rows, for the chunky boys, are squarer. via lempertz — Olafur Eliasson, The Island Series, 1997, 56-part c-print grid, ed. 3, this one from Marty Margulies’ bathroom is the AP, selling at Lempertz in Cologne

The first place I saw Olafur Eliasson’s Islands Series photogrid was in MoMA’s New Photography show. The second place I saw it was in Marty Margulies’ master bathroom in Miami. That’s Marty’s above, which is now for sale in Germany, perhaps destined for less humid climes.

Lot 50 05.06.2026 Olafur Eliasson, The Island Series, 1997, est. EUR30-40,000 [lempertz]

David Hammons Walkthrough

I did not see David Hammons’ sprawling 2019 exhibition at Hauser & Wirth Los Angeles in person, and I only flipped through the catalogue/artist book when it came out last year. But I had to move it recently from its loadbearing position at the bottom of its stack, and give it the full attention it demands. Honestly, it’s a stunning retrospective feast I’m not sure any of us actually deserve. Along with Michael Crichton’s 1977 Jasper Johns catalogue and the Smithsonian’s Felix Gonzalez-Torres (Always To Return), it’s now only the third exhibition catalogue I’ve read straight through, cover-to-cover. And there aren’t even any words.

a page from a david hammons exhibition catalogue has a photo of a gnarly black woven plastic tarp tucked and swagged, presumably, over an abstract paintng, and on the white wall next to it is written in pencil, all caps, how many of these did you make? an installation view from hauser and wirth los angeles 2019 — “How many of these did you make?” A wall text next to a David Hammons abstract painting covered by a street tarp at Hauser & Wirth in 2019, as published in the book at the exact moment I wondered.

Well, that’s not entirely true. The H&W installation photos that fill most of the second half of the 404-page book pick up the handwritten labels and instructions that punctuated the show.

a skeewampus photo of a spread in a david hammons catalogue with an angled photo of an open book bound in black leather on a white pedestal. the book is open to the last page, where the label for the holy bible old testament and the 2002 edition information is affixed, and david hammons's signature is at the bottom. below that, written on the pedestal in pencil in all caps, is the instruction, yes you can turn the page. an installation view from hauser and wirth los angeles 2019 — “Yes you may turn the page” of the artist’s proof of *The Holy Bible: Old Testament*, Hammons’s epic 2002 artist book that rebound the Duchamp catalogue raisonné to look like scripture

And when I hit this spread about 80% of the way through, I felt like the book was literally reading my mind, or, less supernaturally, that I was being taken through the show—and decades of work—by the artist himself.

Not that I’d expect Hammons to just say how many abstract paintings he’s covered with how many street tarps. And when I went back through to count, I had to decide whether to include paintings with metal panels affixed. And what about other things draped or covered with tarps or metal plates? And what about the Kool-aid paintings, where the covers feel less found? Anyway, I’d say there were at least thirty in the book, but it also sinks in that they’re in almost every installation shot, somewhere.

As for The Holy Bible: Old Testament, I’d wondered, since the times I’ve seen it exhibited it was on a lectern or a prie dieu and practically commanded personal devotion. But in LA it was naked on a pedestal.

Anyway, at this point, if you hear someone calling Hammons elusive or mysterious, it just means they haven’t put in the time to look at the bounty the artist has laid before us.

Previously, directly related [apparently I have been blogging about this show for seven years]:
Free as in Jazz and Books, TK Smith’s May 2025 review of the catalogue
Critiquing modernism and capitalism, one Hauser & Wirth show at a time
DH H&W LA: the oral history
David Hammons Lights
&c., &c.

Sturtevant Duchamp Fountains at Ropac

a tiny, imperfectly formed urinal shaped like duchamp's fountain but modeled out of plasticine and painted an old chalky white against a stark white ground, a work by sturtevant at thaddeus ropac milano — Sturtevant, Fountain, no date, painted plasticine, 7 x 5 x 4 cm, at Thaddeus Ropac Milan

Sturtevant was using the work of Marcel Duchamp from almost the beginning of her public career in the 1960s, so this kawaii, undated, Bôite-en-Valise-size [but Stieglitz photo-shaped] plasticine Fountain could have been from anytime, really. Or anytime before 1997, when it appears in a collage of Stieglitz-style photos and distorted photocopies.

twelve identical black and white passport-size photos in a four-row grid, all depicting a plasticine model of duchamp's fountain, a white porcelain urinal laid on its back, with several of the urinals in the photos collaged over with identically sized photocopies of the urinal, at various degrees of repetition or degradation, a 1997 work by sturtevant at thaddeus ropac milano — Sturtevant, Duchamp Untitled, 1997, photo and lasercopy collage on paper, 33.5 x 29 cm, via Thaddeus Ropac Milan

Both these works, a 1969 drawing of Fountain by Sturtevant similar a 1964 Duchamp etching, and many more works by both artists are in a show at Thaddeus Ropac Milan, Marcel Duchamp & Sturtevant: Dialogues are mostly fried snowballs, until 23 July 2026. [ropac.net]

SoiL Thornton Putting The PR in Praxis

People were talking about Josh Kline’s essay on artists crushed by the economics of the art world in New York. A review of the Whitney Biennial lamented the children of Cameron Rowland. But the press release for SoiL Thornton’s show at Swiss Institute feels like the most visceral and vital documentation of the state of the art at this dire, resilient but, again, dire moment:

Upon entering the gallery, viewers encounter realization suppression / Rihanna_work.mp3 (2026), a large-scale video installation composed of digital rips from YouTube recordings of 79 artist lectures and interviews, excerpted at the moment when the speaker says the word “work.” Each instance corresponds to an utterance of the word in Rihanna’s 2016 hit single Work, with every clip slowed by the same percentage. “Work” hovers between effort and object, verb and noun, insistence and refrain. Through its rhythmic accumulation, the cadence of the pop anthem becomes legible even as the meaning of the references to labor or the art it manifests dissolves. The video is projected onto an existing film setup left in place from the previous exhibition, an “assist.” These remains are used as is. Support is neither neutral nor hidden.

Adjacent to the projection, a framed wall piece assembles documents from the artist’s recent eviction proceedings, including the initial notice and records of its resolution. It also includes email correspondence with the exhibition’s curator, a signed agreement with Swiss Institute, and a kitchen dish towel acquired when Thornton moved into their apartment ten years ago. Production funds for the exhibition were, in part, directed toward eviction relief, collapsing distinctions between the work and the conditions that sustain it.

Dried lavender, associated with relaxation and calming, spreads across the gallery floor in a quantity indexed to the curator’s weight. Its scent lingers as the form is broken down; soiled, tracked and redistributed underfoot by visitors. Nearby, a transparent inflatable structure contains the artist’s mattress and bedding. The bed is both protected and displaced, evoking temporary shelter while staging rest as something deferred.

“Sensory warning: this installation contains a strong lavender fragrance that may be overwhelming or trigger sensitivities.”

You know what else overwhelms and triggers sensitivities? Realizing that diverting exhibition budget by reusing the previous show’s setup to thwart an artist’s eviction, and exhibiting the documentation, in a gallery amply funded by the arts program of another nation is truly the kind of art experience that can only happen in New York.

SoiL Thornton: Metabolizing eviction try, work_mp3 and other games of topping, 29 Apr – 5 Jul 2026 [swissinstitute.net]

Vindicatrix, The Refusal of Beauty, The Disfiguring Myth

I’ll let Horace D. Ballard’s positively vibrating review of MONUMENTS and his description of filmmaker Cauleen Smith’s installation, The Warden (2025) speak for itself. Just google him and Vindicatrix.

Vindicatrix, which slipped right by me when I read Carolina Miranda’s earlier piece in the NY Review of Books, maybe because my brain was overloaded by her take on Kara Walker’s “aberrant chimera” of a de-reconstructed Stonewall Jackson sculpture at The Brick. Miranda’s description of the Lost Cause, though, it sticks with me as I think about Smith, and about Vindicatrix: “Walker’s surgical reimagination of the Jackson statue instead dismantles the pleasing aesthetics of white supremacy to reveal the ugliness within: the disfiguring myth of the Lost Cause, which has papered over the racist cornerstones of the Confederacy with romanticized stories about sacrifice and bravery.”

I can’t find a video of her whole conversation, but the student paper at Occidental gives an account of Smith’s explanation of The Warden, made with and around Vindicatrix, a decommissioned idealized female allegorical statue from Richmond symbolizing confederate vengeance: “I really had problems with the way her beauty was always discussed in the description of the statue…and I thought that we should be denied some kind of access to her, or that she should be denied the power to project that beauty.”

From both Miranda and Ballard’s accounts, I think The Warden succeeds most fully as an in-person experience—I haven’t seen the show irl. But it’s Smith’s attunement to the weaponization of beauty and how it resonates with the disfiguring myth that haunts me right now.