If you love art and you’re planning a visit to New York, there are a number of exhibitions to be seen in the city that should not be missed. As a follow-up to my previous article on exhibitions in Madrid, here is a selection of my recommendations for the ten most interesting exhibitions currently running in New York. And even if you’re not planning a trip in the near future, you can bookmark this page for future reference as I’ll be updating it regularly.
Alibis: Sigmar Polke 1963-2010. Until August 3, 2014
The MoMA’s retrospective of Sigmar Polke, one of the 20th century’s most influential German artists and, together with Richter, one of the founders of capitalist realism, is the largest and most comprehensive to date. The exhibition spans 50 years in the artist’s artistic career and includes a wide variety of media, from sculpture, painting, photography, film, performance to stained glass windows. Alibis is already one of this year’s best exhibitions.
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Brooklyn Museum
Ai Weiwei: According to What?
From April 18 to August 10, 2014
This exhibition includes works of photography, sculpture and architecture, through which the artist has explored and studied cultural, historical, political as well as traditional themes for the past twenty years. Ali Weiwei is one of China’s most internationally recognized artists and dissidents, mainly due to his outspoken defense of freedom and human rights and his opposition to China’s abuses of power, a position which led to his imprisonment. The show explores his vision through his artwork.
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Whitney Museum of American Art
Jeff Koons: A Retrospective. Until October 19, 2014.
Jeff Koons, one of the most popular and controversial artists of the post-War period, is currently exhibiting a retrospective of his work at the Whitney Museum, his first show at a major museum in New York. The exhibition includes over 150 items dating back to 1978 right up to the present day, as well as being the largest retrospective of his work held so far.
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Yves Klein and Andy Warhol. Fire Paintings and Oxidation Paintings. From May 8 to June 21, 2014.
The inaugural exhibition at the Chelsea gallery will present the pairing of Fire Paintings by Yves Klein and Oxidation Paintings by Andy Warhol, two major bodies of work by canonical 20th Century artists and fundamental to the history of abstraction, never before exhibited together. The exhibition will be on view from May 8 through June 21, 2014.
In the spring of 1961, access to a destructive testing laboratory in France, led Klein to one of his most innovative and, quite literally, explosive, bodies of work, the Fire Paintings. Klein used a blowtorch to “burn” abstracted forms onto receiving paper. Klein’s technique bears striking similarity to the photographic technique of a heliograph, but Klein used flame, rather than light, to create shapes and forms. Intensely haunting and ethereal, the Fire Paintings exemplify what Klein referred to as “dangerous paintings,” that which jeopardized him in the process of his art making.
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Dominique Lévy Gallery
Hypothesis for an Exhibition. Until August 16, 2014.
This collaborative exhibition is inspired by the work of Giulio Paolini and consists of two distinct parts - the exhibition, and an extensive publication dedicated to the participating artists: Richard Aldrich, Harold Ancart, Sebastian Black, Kerstin Brätsch, Guyton\Walker, KAYA, Charles Mayton, Giulio Paolini, Seth Price, Josh Smith, R. H. Quaytman, Antek Walczak and Viola Yeşiltaç.
www.dominique-levy.com
The Metropolitan Museum of Art
Goya and The Altamira Family. From April 22 to August 3, 2014
This exhibition consists of four portraits of the Altamira family by Spanish artist Francisco de Goya, and a fifth portrait by Agustín Esteve — the first time the five works have been displayed together. With support from the Fundación Plácido Arango.
Dubuffet | Barceló.
Until September 19, 2014.
The current exhibition at New York's Acquavella gallery bring together two different sets work from two European painters, French post-war artist Jean Dubuffet and renowned Spanish artist Miquel Barceló. Dubuffet's work on display includes some of his recent white and bleached paintings, whereas Barceló's work consists of landscapes and portraits. Through the juxtaposition of landscapes and paintings of the two artists, the gallery attempts to highlight the thematic and material affinities between them. Ever since his teenage years, Barceló has found himself drawn to Dubuffet's poeting writings and unconventional aethetic.
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Hauser & Wirth Gallery
Sterling Ruby. Sunrise Sunset.
Until July 25, 2014.
Los Angeles-based contemporary artist Sterling Ruby presents his new exhibition Sunrise Sunset at the West Chelsea gallery space with a range of new works, including paintings, cardboard and fabric collages, tapestries, ceramics, as well as metal, fabric and urethane sculptures. Ruby's art has always shown a profund material sensibility, his thematic and conceptual references coming from sub-culture phenomena such as graffiti, urban gangs and prison systems.
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Guggenheim Museum
Italian Futurism, 1909-1944: Reconstructing the Universe.
From February 21 to September 1, 2014
Futurism is the Italian avant-garde movement born in 1909 with the publication of the Manifeste du Futurisme in Parisian newspaper Le Figaro by Italian intellectual Filippo Tommaso Marinetti. The exhibition consists of 360 works in a variety of media: sculpture, painting, furniture, architecture, fashion, design and performance, in what is undoubtedly one of the most comprehensive exhibitions of Italian Futurism held in New York.
http://www.guggenheim.org/futurism
Georg Baselitz, Anselm Kiefer, Harmony Korine, Robert Rauschenberg, Julian Schnabel, Rudolf Stingel, Franz West.
Hasta el 18 de julio de 2014.
The international gallery Gagosian is in fact a network of 11 exhibition spaces across eight cities, four of the 11 spaces being located in the US (New York and Beverly Hills). The renowned American art dealer Larry Gagosian opened the gallery in Los Angeles in 1979 and has since then extended and consolidated its contemporary art offering to the general public. The current exhibition consists of a wide range of works from seven very different artists from disciplines as diverse as oil painting, film and metal sculpture.
