The project, conceived as a retrospective, aims to analyse and review the complex universe of Majorcan artist Bernardi Roig (Palma, 1965) based on the presentation and decoding of his audiovisual work. The pieces will be installed in an exciting scenic arrangement, emphasising the initiatory journey between appropriation and recreation of his images and visual constructions.These works tell us about an insatiable and nonsensical sisyphic absurd where the solitary figures of each of the videos act, caught in the repetition of gestures, in a sameness spiral. Either carrying a lamp on his back, sewing his mouth forever, spinning with a spotlight on his head without being able to get out of the claustrophobic spaces of rationalism, climbing a mountain constantly to never reach the ruins of the language philosopher’s cottage, or trapped between laughter and the aphonia of mute insults. 

Opening on April 11, 2018 the Japanese-swiss artist Leiko Ikemura will present a selection of recent works in dialogue with photographs and films of her very close friends Wim and Donata Wenders as part of the exhibition series im Atelier Liebermann. In so doing Ikemura reflects on the creation and origin of her works, focusing on the artist's most sacred and private space, the studio.

Courtesy the artist and Stiftung Brandenburger Tor, Berlin

Photograph: Frank Sperling, Berlin

In the 1950s and 60s, a colourful collection of inhabitants of Bamako, capital of Mali, posed for Seydou Keïta (1921-2001, Mali).

People visited Keïta’s studio to have their picture taken at their best: wearing extravagant dresses made from wonderful textiles with splendidly formed headdresses, or posing in a modern Western suit with a bow tie, leaning against a motorcycle, or with a radio tucked under their arm. His oeuvre reflects a portrait of an era that captures Bamako’s transition from a cosmopolitan city in a French colony to the proud capital of independent Mali.

Keïta’s remarkable archive of over 10.000 negatives came to light in 1992 after a discovery by André Magnin, the then-curator of Jean Pigozzi's contemporary African art collection. Modern prints were printed from the negatives with Keïta’s collaboration, allowing his work to be introduced to the art world. International fame quickly followed. The exhibition in Foam consists of signed modern prints, and a large selection of unique vintage prints.

Seydou Keïta – Bamako Portraits is part of an exhibition series about photo studios, presented by Foam in recent years. This series is based on the growing interest in ‘vernacular photography’ and its acknowledgement of social-historical and artistic value.

The exhibition was developed in collaboration with the Contemporary African Art Collection (CAAC) – The Pigozzi Collection.

Foam is supported by the BankGiro Loterij, De Brauw Blackstone Westbroek, the City of Amsterdam, Delta Lloyd, Olympus and the VandenEnde Foundation.

Image: Seydou Keïta, Untitled, 1954  © Seydou Keïta / SKPEAC courtesy CAAC - The Pigozzi Cellection, Geneva

The title of the exhibition, 'Vita Duplex', underscores the intrinsic duality of the artist's work, its continuous vacillation between reason and emotion, past and present, light and darkness, order and chaos — an inspiring creative tension. Born in Europe, Sean Scully moved to the United States in the 1970s and became an American citizen in 1983, so that his work spans the contributions to fine arts originating on both sides of the Atlantic: albeit rooted in the European tradition and history, it also reflects Scully’s keen interest in Abstract Expressionism, Action Painting and Minimalism.

With some 130 paintings, drawings, watercolours, pastels, lithographs and photographs, the exhibition offers a comprehensive panorama of Scully’s output and inner universe, revisiting abstract art through his unconventional approach to colours, shapes, space and light, creating works that mirror his philosophical opinions on art, society, ethics, metaphysics and human nature. The works exhibited at Kunsthalle Karlsruhe were created between the 1960s until today.

Frankfurt’s Liebieghaus Skulpturensammlung will feature a both comprehensive and unusual exhibition project involving one of the internationally most important contemporary artists by staging a solo show paying tribute to William Kentridge (b. 1955) in thirty-two of its rooms in 2018. The South African artist, who is at home in multiple artistic disciplines, has been invited to bring his works into dialogue with the holdings of the house’s sculptural collection that spans five thousand years. The exhibition comprises more than thirty, partly space-filling installations exemplifying the range of Kentridge’s approach.

KEWENIG is delighted to announce the final instalment of SEAN SCULLY | FACING EAST, the artist's solo exhibition, curated by Olga Sviblova, which was first presented at the MAMM - Multimedia Art Museum, Moscow from 03 November 2017 until 11 February, 2018 and will now open at The Marble Palace, at the State Russian Museum on 3 March until 9 May 2018. There will be an offical inauguration of the exhibition in the presence of the artist on 21 March. It is the first exhibition of his work to be presented in Russia and showcases 30 paintings and works on paper spanning his 50 year career. A catalogue has been published by Palace Editions on the occasion of the exhibitions.

Zone of Nowhere will be the first Australian solo exhibition by internationally acclaimed, South Korean-born multimedia artist Kimsooja.

For more than 30 years Kimsooja has dedicated her site-specific works to cultural and political issues facing our world. Kimsooja is perhaps best-known for her use of bottari – the traditional Korean bedcover used to wrap and protect personal belongings – as a symbol of structure and connection.

Heavily influenced by Buddhism, Zen, Confucianism and the age-old role of the artist as shaman, she creates lyrical installations that draw inspiration from everyday activities. The result is a practice that brings together the physical and the metaphysical. The exhibition will feature a new large-scale installation created especially for PICA’s vast central gallery space as well as an associated public art project on the streets of Perth.

Presented in association with Perth Festival

A major retrospective presented across the Hatton Gallery and the Laing Art Gallery. This major retrospective exhibition revisits two seminal sites in Scully's career: Newcastle and Liverpool, and demonstrates the remarkable confidence of Scully’s earlier works and his continued fascination with stripes and the spaces in between.

The world premiere of this major new work is performed against the dramatic backdrop of Tate Modern’s Turbine Hall. William Kentridge's most ambitious project to date combines music, dance, film projections, mechanised sculptures and shadow play to create an imaginative landscape on an epic scale. It tells the untold story of the hundreds of thousands of African porters and carriers who served in British, French and German forces during the First World War.

The Daniel and Florence Guerlain Drawing Prize, which has already showcased over thirty artists since its creation, this year pays tribute to three artists living in Europe. Their work will be on view at the Parisian Salon du Dessin, where the winner will be announced on the 22 March.

Curated by Giovanni Iovane this site-specific installation by Kimsooja highlights an original dialogue with the architecture and pictorial decorations of the history of art. 

To Breathe / Breathe reflects the external sunlight of seven windows and oculi of the Chapels and creates, through the refraction of the rays and the spectrum of colors filtered by special films, an environment in which the body of the spectator is a participant of a revelation experience. The light of day, from south east to northwest, moves slowly through the variations of the visible color spectrum, creating a space, a sort of "third heaven" for the viewer of these consecrated and spiritual places.

The exhibition presents new works on paper by renowned South African artist William Kentridge (b. 1955), inspired during the writing of his Norton Lectures, which he delivered at Harvard University in 2012. In more than 75 linocut prints based on ink sketches and printed on dictionary and encyclopedia pages, Kentridge revisits a familiar personal iconography, including coffee pots, typewriters, cats, trees, nudes and other imagery, exploring a thematic repertoire that has appeared in art and stage productions throughout his long career. The prints, which shift from identifiable subject matter to deconstructed images of abstract marks, form juxtapositions with the underlying text that suggest skepticism about the creative process and knowledge construction. 

Blending art and science to produce a spectacularly immersive experience, William Kentridge’s The Refusal of Time is a five-screen, room-sized installation using animation, live action, and music to question conventional notions of time and history. The Wex is proud to be the first cultural institution in the Midwest to present this work.

Debuting to international acclaim at Germany’s documenta 13 in 2012, The Refusal of Timeoriginated from Kentridge’s ongoing conversation with Peter L. Galison, a professor of the history of science at Harvard University, whose research into the work of Albert Einstein and 19th century French mathematicians informed Galison of the concept that lived time is relative rather than universally fixed. From this, Kentridge developed a work that draws on the propulsive theatricality of his grand opera productions to address a running theme in his fine art practice: the impulse of Western countries to colonize the bodies and souls of non-Western cultures, with special reference to his native South Africa, where Kentridge still lives and works.

29 July 1900: Umberto I of Savoy was assassinated by the anarchist Gaetano Bresci during a public ceremony. The lifeless body of the king, riddled with bullets, was taken to Villa Reale in Monza. In order to honour his memory, an Atonement Chapel to be erected near to the residence was commissioned by the king’s son Vittorio Emanuele III, who after this tragic event decided never again to stay in Villa Reale.

Starting from this event, Bernardí Roig has planned his show in the Serra della Villa Reale, a delicious place that hides a crime (of the past and present). Taking its inspiration from this regicide, the whole show turns around the hiding of a body, half-hidden in the vegetation. However, expert film-lovers will recognise this body as the corpse in the film Blow-Up, Michelangelo Antonioni’s masterpiece from 1966. The artist’s aim is an “anatomy of the crime” that corresponds to the very anatomy of the show and the figures that populate it.

For this occasion, the sculptures by Bernardi Roig will confront and dialogue with the naturalistic landscape, hidden among the vegetation and shrubs, forcing the viewers to follow an itinerary of research and discovery. Just as happens to the protagonist of Blow-Up, the visitors’ eyes will be invited to follow the clues of a story that has been thought of as a film/thriller, one in which the heroic act of looking dips into the memory and tries to disentangle itself among the twists and turns of the psyche.

Chateau de Chaumont will be hosting France’s first major exhibition devoted to Elger Esser, one of the Düsseldorf School’s prominent photographers.

The show will present a selection of works that the German artist made during his travels in the area of Chaumont-sur-Loire in the past years. Opening on November 18, this exhibition is an invitation to take motionless journeys to unexpected inner landscapes.

The exhibition, curated by the internationally curator and art historian Dr. Lorand Hegyi, features 34 contemporary artists from various countries and across different generations. These works suggest a strong belief in the ethical character and powerful mission of contemporary art to convey visual metaphors about human existence, through strong expressive language which reinforces and highlights the emotional, passionate and human character of contemporary art.

This exhibition focuses on the capacity and competence of contemporary art to transfer essential messages and existential revelations about life, truth, historical visions, ethical values, and anthropological constellations. In a historical period dominated by a sense of crisis, disillusionment, instability and disorientation, the artist has the power and the responsibility to send their messages about human perspectives, creating new connections between different fields and experiences and providing multiple systems of interpreting the complexity of contemporary reality. The exhibition included art works by artists like Marina Abramović, Arnulf Rainer, Gilbert & George, Bill Viola, Hermann Nitsch, Michelangelo Pistoletto, Liu Xiaodong, Bernardi Roig, Jannis Kounellis, Jan Fabre, Muntean/Rosemblum, Günter Brus, Wang Luyan, Gloria Friedmann, Luigi Ontani, Dennis Oppenheim and Urs Lüthi among others.

KEWENIG is delighted to announce SEAN SCULLY | FACING EAST, the artist's solo exhibition, curated by Olga Sviblova, which will be presented at MAMM - Multimedia Art Museum, Moscow from 3 November 2017 until 11 February 2018. It is the first exhibition of his work to be presented in Russia and showcases 30 paintings and works on paper spanning his 50 year career. The exhibition will travel to the State Russian Museum, St. Petersburg from 3 March until 9 May, 2018. A catalogue will be published by Palace Editions on the occasion of the exhibitions.

William Kentridge. Enough and more than enough focuses on his stage work, including theatre, opera and performance, and takes this perspective to approach his sculptural projects. The cornerstone of the show is cemented by Woyzeck on the Highveld (1992), Faustus in Africa! (1995) and Ubu and the Truth Commission (1997), and the operas Il ritorno d’Ulisse (The Return of Ulysses, 1998), The Nose (2010), Lulu (2015) and Wozzeck (2017). The selection constitutes an opportunity to put in place a transversal survey which brings into focus certain constants throughout Kentridge’s work — stories with one leading character interweaving different situations and engendering more complex realities; dramas where the absurd often becomes an ally to effectively strip back and straighten out specific circumstances and contexts. The characters of Woyzeck, Ubu, Lulu, Ulysses, Faustus, and even the Nose, are either victims or tormentors of restrictive structures which punctuate, in the public and private sphere, the blight of tyranny, authoritarianism, maliciousness and corruption.

Recognizing significant contributions in contemporary African art and philanthropy on the continent, this second annual event will honor the artistic achievements and generosity of individuals who are influencing the way the global community experiences the dynamic and diverse arts of Africa.

The theme of this year’s dinner is "honor, Inspire and Include." It will feature artists, speakers and honorees as part of the museum’s larger women’s initiative—a commitment begun in in 2012 and launched in 2017 to emphasize the creative voices of African women artists through the National Museum of African Art’s collections, research, publications and exhibitions. The 2017 artist honorees are Ghada Amer and Mary Sibande.

Since his international debut at dOCUMENTA X in 1997, South African artist William Kentridge has achieved worldwide renown. Most recognized for his ten animated films titled Drawings for Projection (1989-2011), Kentridge’s astonishingly diverse corpus includes masterful drawings, prints, tapestries, sculpture, lectures, and opera productions. This major exhibition presents a unique selection of Kentridge’s work curated for Sint-Janshospitaal in Bruges—at 850 years one of Europe’s oldest surviving hospital buildings. Organized around the themes of trauma and healing, the show takes as its centerpiece Kentridge’s 2015 video installation More Sweetly Play the Dance, a contemporary interpretation of the medieval Dance of Death. Through a dialogue between the displayed artworks and the remarkable hospital setting, the exhibition presents art as a powerful means of ‘working through’ layers of history.

The weather is all around us and inescapable. Nobody can say: ‘I don’t like it and therefore I opt out of it.’ To what extent do climate and weather events influence nature, human civilization and culture? Scientific and statistical climate research as well as our daily dealings with the weather are the subject of this exhibition and its accompanying programme of events. Visitors of the exhibition will encounter weather and climate in a wide range of forms, among them weather forecasts, documents about natural disasters, solar and wind energy, aerodynamics, weather phenomena as theatrical effects, country sayings, floods, colds and the pharmaceutical industry, human and animal clothing, divine anger and ball lightning.

In addition to looking at the weather through the lens of cultural and artistic reception, the exhibition also focuses on the scientific exploration and the history of meteorology as well as on current aspects of global climate change. Despite scientific research and political efforts, the problem remains far from being solved. The exhibition and the accompanying programme of events in Bonn will not only endeavour to shed light on different assumptions of the climate debate through scientific and artistic means, it also sets out to heighten sensitivity and direct attention to the complex and vital system that is our atmosphere.

Numerous questions have been posed around our opening exhibition, the most evocative of these being, “How will I be represented in the museum?” See for yourself. All things being equal…

Zeitz MOCAA, located in Cape Town, South Africa, is the first public institution to be devoted solely to contemporary African art (and art of the Diaspora) on the entire, 54-country continent.

Sitting on Cape Town’s V&A Waterfront, the Thomas Heatherwick-designed museum is a symbol of South Africa’s historical place within the global context. The 11-story building, which features a hotel at the top, was converted from Cape Town’s grain silo complex, completed in 1924. The tallest tower in sub-Saharan Africa for nearly half a century, the 42-silo building played a pivotal role in driving the movement of the country’s goods, ideas, and people around the world.

Every year since 1989, the Praemium Imperiale is awarded in five different disciplines - music, painting, sculpture, architecture and theatre/film and aims to celebrate artistic fields not covered by the Nobel Prize. El Anatsui, who is based in Nigeria, is the first Ghanaian to win the prize. The winners of this year’s Praemium Imperiale international art prize, awarded by the imperial family of Japan on behalf of the Japan Art Association, were announced September 12.

The Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden will present “Ilya and Emilia Kabakov: Utopian Projects,” a survey exhibition featuring the work of the acclaimed Russian artists Sept. 7–March 4, 2018. The exhibition, spanning 1985 through present day, will comprise more than 20 of the Kabakovs’ maquettes, whimsical models, for projects realized and unrealized, including monuments, allegorical narratives, architectural structures and commissioned outdoor works. Opening nearly 30 years after the Hirshhorn hosted Ilya Kabakov’s first major U.S. exhibition, these intricate creations invite the viewer into their surreal world in miniature and offer a rare glimpse into the duo’s artistic process.