Setsuko Klossowska de Rola
/Kingdom of Cats
How do we, as humans, balance our biological necessities and the inorganic industry we have created? How do we reckon with our animal natures and our intricate consciousnesses?
Play
/A Conversation with Artist DELPHINE LEBOURGEOIS
Nature was very much part of my upbringing. I spent most of my teenage years exploring the surroundings of my grand-paren’s house in rural Auvergne. A few years ago, I did an installation where I placed large cardboard cutouts of my Amazonians in a remote forest in France. The installation was hidden, away from touristic trails and not signed posted. I wanted passers by to see it by chance rather than people searching for it. The cut outs were made from recycled cardboard so extremely fragile and prone to quick degradation. The project had to be ecological and ephemeral.
Art about nature or in nature holds a particular place for me. I remember loving “My Back to Nature” the exhibition by George Shaw at the National Gallery in London, and more recently got the same awe whilst visiting “Light into Life” by Mark Quinn at Kew Gardens.
Sustainability is important but paradoxically beauty is everywhere… in decay, in a plastic bag stuck in a tree, even in garbage. This is why I liked George Shaw’s exhibition so much. He painted woodlands with traces that humans have left behind. Dirty mattresses, soiled duvets hanging from branches. His mastery as a painter made the objects nearly sacred. I don’t think art should be sanitised.
Time, Memory & the Search for the Sublime
/A Conversation with Artist ISCA GREENFIELD-SANDERS
Traditionally, landscape painting has played up man’s insignificance as it compares to nature. Today, the extraordinary effect humans have had on climate and the landscape has swapped that dynamic, casting us as the danger. That is a massive shift. When I started to learn art history, I connected deeply with the notion of the sublime. I was especially moved by Turner’s landscapes. When I was 11, my family got caught in a lightning storm on the beach in Miami. It was scary but incredibly beautiful, like being inside a painting by Constable, Turner, or Homer.
Colony of Ghosts
/CELIA PAUL at Victoria Miro Gallery, London
March 14th to April 17, 2025
My young self and I— we are the same person. I can stretch out my old hand— with its age spots— and hold my young unblemished hand.
Pierre Huyghe: Variants
/Pierre Huyghe’s Variants (2021—) does not occupy space; it perpetuates it. The work takes as its foundation a complete 3D scan and model of a small island at the bend of the Randselva River in Norway. Biologists and surveyors then furnished this model with quantitative and qualitative measurements of the island’s organic and inorganic elements, such as the types of species, the water levels, the trash, and the sounds and smells. Biochemical and physical sensors are installed around the island to track the shifts in the island’s environment and funnel them into an artificial neural network, which generates from all collected data a continuously evolving and mutating simulation of the island, unfolding in real time on the large LED screen at the far end of the island.
Adrian Ghenie: Shadow Paintings
/“Once you leave the traditional constraints of anatomy behind, the way you deform can become a portrait of character or the inner psyche on a deeper level. This play with the human form marked the beginning of something new.” Renowned Romanian artist Adrian Ghenie is currently presenting two exhibitions at the Albertina and the Dresden Kupferstich-Kabinett. Working with a variety of materials and subjects, Ghenie explores the personal, the political, and the art historical, fusing these discourses into expressive abstract and figurative works of art across multiple mediums.