art diary

berghain as art venue is not new but pierre huyghe using it to explore quantum uncertainty feels genuinely unexpected. this is his first institutional solo show in berlin and it's massive—commissioned by LAS Art Foundation as part of their "Sensing Quantum" program.

huyghe is known for environments that blend biological organisms with tech and this project apparently engages directly with quantum physics concepts. which could be pretentious but knowing his work it'll probably be genuinely fascinating. the industrial space of berghain's halls (not the actual club) provides this raw backdrop that his interventions tend to need.

"uncertainty as material, space as variable—huyghe making us reconsider what we think we're seeing"

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the richter retrospective at fondation louis vuitton is still up and it's genuinely overwhelming. over 270 works spanning six decades. abstraction, photo-paintings, the squeegee pieces, early figurative work—everything.

what's striking is how the show reveals richter's refusal to commit to a single approach. he moves between photorealism and pure abstraction with this almost aggressive inconsistency. some artists this would feel scattered but with richter it reads as intellectual rigor. he's genuinely questioning what painting can do in every single work.

"richter makes doubt look like mastery"

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veronica ryan's "Multiple Conversations" opens in april and it's being billed as her most extensive presentation to date. over 100 works spanning four decades. turner prize winner, montserrat-born, making sculpture that refuses easy categorization.

what makes this particularly exciting is the inclusion of recently rediscovered work from the 1980s—large-scale sculptures in plaster and beaten lead that apparently haven't been seen in decades. the press materials show vivid drawings and these tower-like works made from stacked plastic bottles cast in white clay and plaster.

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kunstmuseum basel is presenting the largest european exhibition of helen frankenthaler's work this spring. around 60 paintings and works on paper, first institutional solo show in switzerland, and apparently it explores her engagement with western art history from renaissance to modernism.

frankenthaler changed abstract painting at 23 with her soak-stain technique—diluted paint on unprimed canvas laid on the floor. the pigments absorb into the fabric so color and surface become one thing. it sounds simple described like that but the results are luminous and massive and genuinely revolutionary for abstract expressionism.

"she let chance in but maintained total control over balance and structure—that tension is what makes the work sing"

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"All About Love" at the grand palais is still up until early april and it's everything you want a mickalene thomas show to be. bold, colorful, celebratory, political without being preachy. she's working with photography, painting, collage—all blended into these striking compositions that center black beauty and rewrite art historical narratives.

the grand palais's nave is this massive beaux-arts space and thomas's work holds its own completely. her visual language is so confident and the scale matches the ambition. she's taking on love, desire, representation, the male gaze, art history—but it never feels heavy because the work is genuinely gorgeous to look at.

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i finally made it to berlin to see the davis show and it's one of those exhibitions that makes you understand why you love looking at art in the first place. "Fabelhaftes Produkt" is 20 years of her work in one building and it's overwhelming in the best way possible.

what struck me immediately was how the work refuses to be categorized. paintings next to zines next to video installations next to performance documentation. it all feels necessary together. davis is pulling from punk, from queer nightlife, from black counterculture, from her own family history, and somehow it coheres. it doesn't feel like a mess even though it could easily be one.

the large-scale installations in the main hall are stunning (and i mean that without irony). there's something about seeing work made from genuine aesthetic and political urgency that just hits different. this isn't art for the market. this is someone making work because they have to.

"you can feel the stakes in every piece. nothing here is decorative."

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ok so i haven't been to bregenz yet (train prices are insane rn) but i've been looking at images from the mirga-tas show and i need to talk about it anyway.

if you saw the venice biennale 2022 you already know about her hand-sewn textile collages. they're intricate and heartbreaking—made with her family, addressing romani and sinti marginalization. but this new show adds life-size wax sculptures to the conversation, and apparently it's this whole expanded meditation on community and erasure.

"textiles as a form of resistance is not a new idea, but mirga-tas is doing it with such formal sophistication that it stops being didactic"

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massive retrospective about kandinsky and abstract art history. over 100 works. the museum is banking on you caring about abstraction's foundational moment. and like... some of it is genuinely beautiful but also i had museum fatigue by room three lol

the show traces kandinsky's spiritual use of color and geometry and then brings in albers, riley, stella, etc to show his influence. it's smart curation. it's just also *a lot*. my brain was officially done after 90 minutes.

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the new fondation cartier opens next month on place du palais-royal and honestly i've been obsessed with this building for years. jean nouvel completely reworked the interior of the old louvre des antiquaires and apparently there are these moving platforms that adjust for different exhibitions??

which is cool and innovative and also sounds kind of unnecessarily complicated? like why does a gallery need to move. but i'm also extremely here for it. the location is impossible (directly opposite the louvre), the architecture sounds stunning, and hopefully they'll program work that justifies the hype.

the timeline is ambitious: opening in october with an inaugural show. i'll probably be there on opening night standing awkwardly drinking bad white wine. if you're in paris let me know and we can go together and feel uncomfortable about it.

finland's first major sarah lucas retrospective opens in october and it's spanning 40 years of work. which seems insane because she doesn't look 40 years old but also yes she definitely has been making art for that long.

her sculptures and photographs have this quality where they're immediately funny and then you keep laughing and then suddenly you're not laughing anymore because she's dismantled your assumptions about bodies and desire and gender.

"lucas refuses sentimentality in a way most artists can't manage"

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the rego + varejão show in lisbon is still up until september and i'm kicking myself for not writing about it sooner. "Between Your Teeth" brings together two portuguese artists separated by generation but connected by refusal to make comfortable work.

rego's paintings are violent and visceral and funny in this dark way. varejão's work is more formally experimental—collages that deconstruct the surface of the canvas itself. together they create this dialogue about what it means to make art in and from portugal, carrying history, resisting easy narrative.

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