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The World in Black and White: 6 Photographers Who have Mastered the Monochrome Lens

This article explores some of the most influential masters of black and white photography, artists who have redefined the medium with their unique perspectives. From the sculptural elegance of Robert Mapplethorpe to the haunting portraits of Peter Hujar, the provocative fashion imagery of Helmut Newton, and the dreamlike self-portraits of Francesca Woodman, these photographers each offered a unique view of the world. Hiroshi Sugimoto’s meditative, otherworldly landscapes probe the passage of time in deeply impactful ways, while Carrie Mae Weems harnesses black and white imagery to powerfully examine race, gender, and history.

Before the world was captured in vibrant hues through the lens of colour photography, photographers worked exclusively in black and white, playing on light and shadow. Black and white photography dominated from the mid 19th century until the mid 20th century. While colour photography existed as early as the 19th century, it remained expensive and less common until the development of Kodachrome in the 1930s. 

Even today, in an era dominated by saturated colour, black and white photography remains a powerful choice, stripping away distraction to highlight contrast, texture, and emotion. With this in mind, we wanted to explore some of the most iconic photographers who have embraced this medium as a deliberate and defining style. These artists have used monochrome to capture identity, beauty, and mortality, proving that sometimes, the absence of colour can say the most.

Though their styles and subjects differ, what unites them is their mastery of monochrome, transforming light and shadow into timeless, unforgettable works of art.

Robert Mapplethorpe 

One of the most iconic figures in black and white photography, Robert Mapplethorpe (1946–1989) was born in Queens, New York, and became known for his meticulously composed images. Originally studying painting and sculpture at the Pratt Institute, he transitioned to photography in the early 1970s, using a Polaroid camera before moving on to large-format prints. His work is characterized by a refined, classical aesthetic, whether capturing the raw physicality of the human form, the delicate curves of a flower, or the intensity of New York’s underground BDSM scene.

Mapplethorpe’s portraits are among his most enduring works, featuring celebrities, artists, and cultural icons of his time. His deep friendship and creative partnership with Patti Smith, the legendary musician and poet, was particularly significant. The two met in the late 1960s as struggling artists in New York and remained deeply connected throughout their lives. Mapplethorpe’s famous 1975 portrait of Smith, used for the cover of her album Horses, is one of the most iconic images in rock history.

Beyond portraiture, Mapplethorpe’s exploration of sexuality, gender, and the male form often in highly stylized and provocative compositions sparked both acclaim and controversy. His X Portfolio, which documented the underground gay leather scene, ignited debates on censorship and artistic freedom in the late 1980s. 

Le Stanze della Fotografia in Venice will host the Robert Mapplethorpe exhibition from April 10 to November 23, 2025, curated by Denis Curti.

​Peter Hujar

​Peter Hujar (1934–1987) was also a main figure in New York’s downtown bohemian scene, capturing its essence through his evocative black-and-white photography. Born in Trenton, New Jersey, Hujar immersed himself in Manhattan’s counterculture, forging connections with artists, musicians, and writers who, like him, challenged societal norms. His work intimately documented this vibrant subculture, featuring portraits of luminaries such as William S. Burroughs, and Candy Darling.​

Hujar’s photographs were included at the Barbican Art Gallery’s 2020 exhibition, “Masculinities: Liberation through Photography,” which explored the social constructs of masculinity from the 1960s onward. His inclusion highlighted his nuanced portrayal of gender and identity, reinforcing his status as a pivotal artist in examining these themes. ​Hujar’s work remains a testament to the raw beauty and complexity of the human experience, offering an unfiltered glimpse into the lives of those on society’s fringes.

During the AIDS crisis, Hujar documented the devastating impact of the epidemic on his community, capturing intimate and raw portraits of friends and lovers affected by the disease. One of his most moving photographs is of his partner, artist David Wojnarowicz, taken shortly after Wojnarowicz’s death from AIDS-related complications in 1987. Hujar ultimately passed away from AIDS-related complications later that same year.

The exhibition “Peter Hujar: Eyes Open in the Dark,” held at London’s Raven Row gallery from January 30 to April 6, 2025, provided a thorough exploration of Hujar’s later photography. It highlighted his intimate portraits of prominent figures from New York’s 1970s art scene, such as Susan Sontag and William Burroughs, alongside powerful street scenes and portraits of partners and people closest to him. Hujar had a remarkable ability to capture the raw, unfiltered essence of his subjects, imbuing his work with profound emotional depth.

Helmut Newton

Helmut Newton (1920–2004) was a German-Australian photographer whose bold, provocative high-contrast black-and-white images revolutionized fashion photography. Born in Berlin to a Jewish family, Newton fled Nazi Germany in 1938 and eventually settled in Australia before making his mark on the global fashion scene. His distinctive aesthetic—erotic, glamorous, and frequently provocative—challenged and expanded the portrayal of women in photography.

Newton’s work for Vogue, Harper’s Bazaar, and other fashion magazines redefined the genre, blending haute couture with themes of power, dominance, and voyeurism. His “Big Nudes” series, shot in the 1980s, remains one of his most iconic projects, presenting stark, imposing images of nude women that exuded strength and confidence. His subjects, often draped in leather and high heels, embodied a mix of seduction and authority, challenging traditional notions of femininity.

Beyond fashion, Newton’s portraits captured cultural icons such as Catherine Deneuve, David Bowie, and Charlotte Rampling with his signature cinematic style. His provocative, sometimes controversial approach sparked debates but cemented his status as one of the most influential photographers of the 20th century. His legacy continues to shape contemporary photography, with exhibitions and retrospectives showcasing his unmistakable vision of beauty, power, and desire.

On March 6, 2025, the Helmut Newton Foundation in Berlin opened Polaroids, a group exhibition presented as part of EMOP Berlin 2025, featuring works by Helmut Newton alongside numerous other photographers. The show runs until July 15th.

Francesca Woodman

Francesca Woodman (1958–1981) defied conventional self-portraiture by blurring the line between presence and absence. Her body often fades into peeling wallpaper, vanishes behind door frames, or is captured in fleeting, ethereal motions. Through her work, she delves into themes of identity, femininity, and transience, crafting an atmosphere that is both haunting and profoundly personal.

Born into an artistic family in Denver, Colorado, her father a painter and photographer, her mother a ceramicist and sculptor, Woodman was immersed in art from an early age. She began taking photographs in her early teens while attending boarding school. She would go on to capture over 800 images during her brief but impactful career.

Her artistic vision was influenced by European culture and surrealist art, particularly the works of Man Ray and Claude Cahun. Spending summers at her parents’ farmhouse near Florence, Italy, she absorbed elements that would later permeate her photography. At the Rhode Island School of Design, she refined her distinctive style, using long exposure times, unconventional framing, and dilapidated interiors to craft dreamlike narratives that seem to exist outside of time.

In 1979, Woodman relocated to New York with dreams of pursuing a career in fashion photography. Tragically, in 1981, at the age of 22, she took her own life. Despite her brief career, her powerful and intimate images have left a lasting impact. 

The ALBERTINA Museum in Vienna is currently hosting Austria’s first museum exhibition dedicated to Francesca Woodman, featuring works from the Verbund Collection, on display from April 4th to July 6th.

Hiroshi Sugimoto

Hiroshi Sugimoto, born in 1948 in Tokyo, Japan, is a photographer and contemporary artist whose work explores the themes of time, memory, and the metaphysical. After studying politics and sociology at Rikkyō University in Tokyo, he moved to the United States in 1970, earning a Bachelor of Fine Arts from the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, California.

Sugimoto’s photography is characterized by a meticulous and concept-driven approach, often employing large-format cameras to create images that explore the passage of time and the boundaries between reality and illusion. His notable series include “Dioramas,” where he photographs natural history displays to question perceptions of reality; “Theaters,” capturing entire films in a single exposure to depict the accumulation of time; and “Seascapes,” presenting minimalist images of sea and sky that evoke a sense of timelessness. 

Through his diverse body of work, Sugimoto continues to invite viewers to contemplate the ephemeral nature of reality and the enduring passage of time.​ He had an exhibition earlier this year in January at Lisson gallery Los Angeles.

Carrie Mae Weems

Carrie Mae Weems, born in 1953 in Portland, Oregon, explores themes of power, history, and identity in her work. Her art often delves into themes of race, identity, gender, and history, reflecting both personal and collective experiences. Weems rose to prominence with her 1990 series The Kitchen Table Series, which portrayed intimate narratives and challenged societal norms surrounding family, relationships, and power dynamics. Through her work, she engages with complex cultural issues, using visual storytelling to prompt reflection and conversation.

From January to February 2025, Fraenkel Gallery in San Francisco presented an exhibition featuring new works alongside key pieces from her career. A highlight was the debut of two photographs from her ongoing “Museum Series,” created in fall 2024, where Weems engages with the architecture of San Francisco’s Legion of Honor and its Rodin sculpture, “The Thinker.” The series explores how power is embedded in cultural institutions. Also featured were large-scale colour photographs from “Painting the Town,” capturing boarded-up storefronts in Portland, Oregon, after the George Floyd protests. These abstract images, with paint covering anti-racist graffiti, reflect on the erasure of Black voices and histories. Her 2021 series Painting the Town will be on view at the Rijksmuseum from February 7 to June 9, 2025.

Though varying styles, subjects, and eras differ, these photographers utilize black and white to reveal something deeper, whether it’s the raw intimacy of Francesca Woodman, the cinematic grandeur of Helmut Newton, or the meditative stillness of Hiroshi Sugimoto. From the social commentary of Carrie Mae Weems to the uncanny, Bohemian portraits of Peter Hujar, each artist uses monochrome not as a limitation, but as a means to strip away distraction and heighten emotion. Their works prove that even in a world saturated with colour, black and white photography remains timeless, evocative, and essential.

LVH Art in Conversation with Matthieu Humery, The Pioneering Curator Shaping the Future of Photography

This month, LVH had the pleasure of speaking with renowned photography specialist and curator Matthieu Humery. His multifaceted career—spanning museums, auction houses, and private collections—is rooted in his exceptional expertise in photography, his expert eye, and an unwavering drive to innovate and push the boundaries of curatorial practice. Whether curating an exhibition, spotlighting emerging photographers, or offering fresh perspectives on familiar works, his approach consistently seeks to uncover something new and challenge the viewer’s perception.

Matthieu Humery spoke with us about the landmark exhibitions he has curated, how to start collecting photography, the most meaningful works in his personal collection, the growing momentum of the photography market, and more. His words and work invite you to appreciate photography in a way few others have, offering a compelling case for why it deserves the same recognition and respect as any other art form.

From 2001 to 2005, Humery worked in the photography department at Phillips auction house in Paris and New York, where he revolutionized the sales catalogue format, achieving remarkable success. In 2007, he became head of the photography department at Christie’s in New York. He then joined the LUMA Foundation—founded in 2004 by Maja Hoffmann in Zurich. He currently serves as the director of the Living Archives program at the LUMA Foundation and is also a curator for the Pinault Collection.

Over the years, Humery has advised some of the world’s leading photography collectors and curated several of the most compelling photography exhibitions of the past decade. In 2021, he co-curated Henri Cartier-Bresson: Le Grand Jeu at Palazzo Grassi, offering a bold new interpretation of the legendary photographer’s work. In 2023, he returned to Palazzo Grassi to curate Chronorama, a major exhibition featuring photographs and illustrations from the Condé Nast archives. Recently, Humery curated Untroubled, the first exhibition of Irving Penn’s work in the Middle East, held at the Mina Image Centre in Beirut.

LVH Art: ⁠How did your passion for photography first begin?

Matthieu Humery: My passion for photography is part of a broader fascination with images in general. From an early age, I was captivated by the way a single image-whether a painting, a photograph, or a film still-could condense time, space, and emotion. I was drawn to composition, to the architecture of an image, how light, form, and framing come together to create meaning. My interest in cinema sparked a fascination with the way images move and unfold over time. Photography, for me, emerged as a bridge between painting and film— as a perfect balance between stillness and narrative. Over time, my interest extended beyond the photographs themselves to include studying how they are collected, preserved, and presented. That’s where my curatorial path began: from a desire to understand how images, and the ways they are collected, influence our perception of the world.

LVH Art: ⁠How do you feel the digital age has impacted the value and appreciation of photography as an art form?

Matthieu Humery: The truth is that photography has always evolved in direct dialogue with technological and technical innovation. I would even say that this is its very nature. And it’s precisely this adaptability that has often led people to question whether photography is truly “art,” or whether it’s losing its artistic status in the face of constant transformation. But to me, it’s quite the opposite. It is the very instability and constant transformation of photography that are what make it so vital and engaging.

From the very beginning, photography was about invention. The first images, like daguerreotypes, were unique, irreproducible objects. Then came the invention of the negative – first on paper, then on glass – which allowed for multiplication, enlargement, manipulation. Every major shift in the medium’s history – from analog to digital, and now to AI-generated imagery – has simply been a new chapter in the same story: photography as a medium constantly at the frontier of change.

Far from diminishing its value, these shifts have continually redefined what photography can be. They force us to ask: What is an image? What is authorship? What is real? In that sense, photography remains one of the most intellectually and artistically challenging forms of expression today – precisely because it never stops evolving.

LVH Art: ⁠What advice would you give to an art collector looking to acquire their first photograph for their collection?

Matthieu Humery: Even though you’re collecting photography, you’re not just collecting an image—you’re acquiring an object. A photograph is a work of art in its own right, and like any artwork, it has qualities such as materiality, history, rarity, condition which one needs to consider. The quality of the photograph- its paper, its tonal depth, its state of preservation, the date of the print – is fundamental. Otherwise, you might as well be collecting images on your phone.

Then there’s the important question of how images relate to one another. A collection is never a series of isolated works. Each photograph becomes a fragment of a larger narrative. In photography, perhaps more than in any other medium, the connections between images – formally, conceptually, historically – are incredibly rich. The way you build your collection can express a vision as coherent and personal as a curatorial project. So, trust your eye – but also think in terms of dialogue, not trophies.

LVH Art: What was the first photograph you ever purchased as part of your collection?

Matthieu Humery: The first photograph I ever bought was a beautiful three-quarter oval portrait of the painter Gustave Doré, taken by Étienne Carjat in the early 1860s. I was immediately drawn to the idea of one artist being portrayed by another – of a photographer capturing a painter. It brings up questions that intrigue me, such as, do a painter or a photographer approach a portrait in similar ways? Also, in the image the codes of the pose were subtly subverted, as the image hovered between homage and invention. That photograph sparked a deeper curiosity about how photography represents artists, and how it borrows – and transforms – the conventions of other mediums. I ended up exploring these themes more thoroughly, particularly through the photographs of Eugène Disdéri, who invented the carte-de-visite portrait format around the same period.

LVH Art: ⁠Is there a particular photograph that holds special significance for you in your collection?

Matthieu Humery: I mostly collect portraits, and the photograph that’s closest to my heart is probably Edward Steichen’s portrait of Gary Cooper from 1928. As a teenager, I had found a poster of a Whitney Museum exhibition on Steichen at a flea market, with that very image on it. I remember being struck by its absolute modernity – both in the pose and in the intensity of the figure. Years later, coming across the original print and being able to acquire it felt almost unreal, like a quiet sign from the past.

What made it even more meaningful is that, much later, I had the opportunity to curate Chronorama at the Palazzo Grassi in Venice, drawn from the Condé Nast archives – exactly where that portrait originated. It was as if the photograph had been following me through time.

LVH Art: How do you go about making decisions when adding new photographs to your collection?

Matthieu Humery: Whether it’s for my own collection or for those I advise, I try to follow the “inner logic” of the collection, which the collector may have formed unconsciously. It always begins with the relationships between images, then between groups of images. Often, the collection ultimately reflects the owner’s story and sensibilities. When I’m not buying for myself, I try to become a kind of chameleon. I step into the mindset of the collector. One dreams in images, and my role is to dream on behalf of someone else. That shift allows me to see photographs from angles I wouldn’t have considered on my own.

Of course, beyond that, I always look at the photograph as an object – the date of the print, its paper, dimensions, condition. The materiality matters. An image must resonate – but it must also hold up, physically and historically.

LVH Art: Who are some contemporary photographers whose work you admire, and what is it about their work that resonates with you?

Matthieu Humery: There are several, but a few stand out. I greatly admire Deana Lawson, whose work I recently had the privilege of presenting in France for the first time at the Bourse de Commerce, as part of a group exhibition titled ‘Body and Soul’. What fascinates me in her practice is its hybridity – she works with a very specific methodology, often using large-format cameras. She also interrogates the various uses of photography – vernacular, sacred, constructed- to build her own language. Her images are both meticulously composed and deeply symbolic.

Wolfgang Tillmans is another key figure for me. He opened the door to a diverse range of photographic language nearly forty years ago, and he remains highly relevant today. Both in his conceptual thinking and in the way he presents images, he exhibits a freedom and bravery that remain inspiring.

I’m also very drawn to Frida Orupabo’s work. Her use of collage works beautifully with many of the themes her work speaks to, such as fragmentation, history, and identity. And, in a different register, I find the work of Anhar Salem – recent winner of the Reiffers Art Initiatives prize – compelling. Unlike Orupabo’s work, Salem crafts images by blending various other images, frequently using AI to build a unique form of visual mythology. It’s fascinating to see how these two artists explore the body and image-making through such different yet equally powerful means.

LVH Art: ⁠Can you discuss how in 2002, you changed the way catalogues were presented at Phillips auction house? What changes did you make, and why did you believe it was the best approach?

Matthieu Humery: When I arrived at Phillips in 2002, I had no prior experience in the auction world. My background was in fashion and runway production. So, I approached the catalogue not from a traditional auction perspective, but from a visual and editorial one. I asked myself: how do we make this object more seductive? How do we stand out from our competitors?

It was clear to me that the look and feel of the catalogue had to change. The catalogue couldn’t just be a neutral sales tool – it had to be an extension of the work itself. So, we changed the format, enlarged it, redesigned the layout, refined the paper stock, gave more space to the images, and introduced short essays. It was about giving the works the editorial dignity they deserved. And it worked. That bold format made us immediately more visible in a crowded market. So much so that the large-format catalogue approach was quickly adopted across other departments at Phillips.

LVH Art: ⁠How has the photography market evolved over the years?

Matthieu Humery: The photography market has changed enormously and developed relatively late. It wasn’t really until the 1970s that auction houses began to structure photography sales in a serious way – thanks in large part to pioneering figures like Philippe Garner or Harry Lunn. Before that, the market was small, almost confidential. Even the major museums were making few purchases, and when they did, it was for relatively small amounts—MoMA, for example, was acquiring works by Lee Friedlander and Diane Arbus for about $200.

Over time, the market gradually organized itself around key names from the 19th and 20th centuries. The great collections were formed – many of which have since entered institutions and remain there. What’s also particular about photography collectors is that they tend to be deeply passionate, often emotionally attached to their works, and they rarely sell individual prints. As a result, the availability of major vintage prints from the 19th and 20th centuries has dramatically decreased. These works now often change hands privately, and increasingly as part of full collections rather than single works.

For contemporary photography, the dynamics are different. Competing with painting on the primary market is difficult—pricing, visibility, and fashion trends all play a role. But photography, like everything in art, moves in cycles. It’s a medium that is uniquely responsive to the present, and that gives it a timeless relevance.

LVH Art: ⁠Are there any photography fairs or photography-related events you would recommend for someone interested in immersing themselves in the world of photography?

Matthieu Humery: I’m not fond of isolating photography from other mediums—I’ve always preferred it as part of the broader art conversation. That’s why I appreciate seeing strong photography presentations at art fairs like Art Basel, TEFAF or Frieze, as it is there where it resonates most through its dialogue with other forms.

That said, there are of course dedicated events that are essential. Paris Photo remains the annual gathering point—it’s the most established and comprehensive fair devoted entirely to photography. And then there’s photo festival Les Rencontres d’Arles, which in my view, is the most intelligent and daring photography festival in the world, which offers a truly comprehensive exploration of the medium. Arles invites you to slow down, to spend time with the image, providing a richer form of engagement and connection.

LVH Art: In 2020, you curated Henri Cartier-Bresson: Le Grand Jeu at Palazzo Grassi, a show that later traveled to the BnF in Paris in 2021. For this exhibition, you invited five leaders from different fields to each select around 50 works from the archive, presenting five distinct visions on the collection. What motivated you to involve such a range of perspectives?

Matthieu Humery: For Le Grand Jeu, I wanted to move away from the format of a traditional monographic exhibition. Two major and beautifully curated retrospectives had already taken place, at the Centre Pompidou in 2014 with Clément Chéroux, and at MoMA in 2010 with Peter Galassi. Rather than offering yet another narrative about Cartier-Bresson’s life and work, I was more interested in exploring how his work is perceived – how it’s understood, interpreted, even projected upon. The idea wasn’t to define his oeuvre, but to open it up, to liberate it from any singular, official reading.

Cartier-Bresson himself had selected a group of 385 prints that he considered representative of his life’s work – the so-called Master Collection. Starting from that selection, I asked five individuals to create their own exhibitions, each choosing around 50 images. In a way, it became a project about perception: Cartier-Bresson shaping his own legacy, and others responding to it in turn.

The five participants each embodied a distinct point of view: François Pinault as the collector, Sylvie Aubenas as the museum curator, Annie Leibovitz as the photographer, Javier Cercas as the writer, and Wim Wenders as the filmmaker. Each brought not only their professional lens, but also something deeply personal. What emerged was a kind of curatorial mirror, an exhibition that reflected just as much about Cartier-Bresson as it did about the people interpreting him.

I’m drawn to that kind of layered perspective when curating—the goal is to create a space where an artist’s work can breathe, resonate, and generate new meaning, rather than simply be explained.

LVH Art: ⁠⁠In 2023, you curated the Chronorama exhibition at Palazzo Grassi, which showcased photographs and illustrations from the Condé Nast archives, that had been recently acquired by the Pinault Collection. As a curator, how would you define your primary responsibilities in terms of both presenting and preserving such an extensive archive?

Matthieu Humery: When I first began working on the Condé Nast archive, I was struck not only by its scale, but by its extraordinary richness and diversity. The range of genres that makes up the archive is exceptional: portraiture, fashion, architecture, still life, reportage… All the major photographic languages of the 20th century are represented. Then came the historical realisation: nearly every great photographer of the 20th century worked at some point for Condé Nast. The archive is not simply a record of editorial history – it’s a mirror of the century itself. And finally, the great quality of the prints themselves.

I realised this is no ordinary press archive. The Condé Nast collection carries a greater significance—it’s part of our shared cultural heritage and reflected the evolution of the modern gaze. From the moment I began working on the acquisition with the Pinault Collection, I felt strongly that this archive needed to be shared with the public – not just as documentation, but as a living history. That intuition led to Chronorama, which at its core was an exhibition that attempted to reveal the diversity of the archive, as well as to let singular photographs speak for themselves. The aim was to offer viewers an editorial, artistic, and emotional interpretation of the 20th century through the lens of this archive.

From Bauhaus to his ‘Colour Magic’: The Enduring Impact of Josef Albers

Josef Albers, widely regarded as the master of the square, is renowned for his groundbreaking exploration of colour, form, spatial relationships, and perception. Through his use of simple geometric shapes, Albers investigated chromatic interaction—the way colours shift and transform based on their surrounding hues. As he once said, “The aim of art is to reveal and evoke vision. I indicated indirectly that art is not an object, but art is an experience.”

In this article, we explore the groundbreaking career of Josef Albers, a pioneering artist and educator who continually pushed the boundaries of modern art. Notably, he was the first student from the Bauhaus to be invited by its founder, Walter Gropius, to join the faculty—a rare honour that marked the beginning of a distinguished teaching legacy. Decades later, Albers made history again as the first living artist to be honoured with a solo retrospective at The Metropolitan Museum of Art. This article also examines Albers’s iconic Homage to the Square series, analysing the qualities that render these works so powerful, enduring, and significant in the history and evolution of modern art.

Josef Albers was born on March 19, 1888, in Bottrop, Germany, to a father who worked as a
master carpenter, house painter and plumber. His father taught him the materials and techniques of these trades, an experience that proved fundamental to Albers later on in his career. He enrolled in the Bauhaus in Weimar in 1920, just one year after the school was established. Founded by Walter Gropius in 1919, the Bauhaus was a groundbreaking German school that fundamentally reshaped modern art, design, and architecture by uniting form and function, bridging the gap between fine art and industrial design. The Bauhaus believed that well-crafted design had the power to enhance people’s lives, with simplicity and accessibility as its core principles. Studying at the Bauhaus profoundly transformed Albers’ artistic practice and as he noted about joining the school, “I was 32… I threw all the old junk overboard and went right back to the beginning again. It was the best thing that I ever did in my life”. The Bauhaus was a major source of inspiration for Albers’s iconic Homage to the Square series. One especially important influence was Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s Theory of Colours, published in 1810, which explores how colour behaves in relation to shadows, refraction, and chromatic aberration. Widely taught at the Bauhaus, Goethe’s theory became a lasting foundation for Albers’s artistic approach and remained central to his practice throughout his career. Albers became a prominent figure in the Bauhaus movement, joining as a student in 1920 and graduating as a master in 1933, when the Bauhaus forced to close by the Nazi’s.

Today, Albers is best known as a painter, but he also designed furniture for Gropius’s office and created glass objects. Gropius honoured Albers by appointing him as the first Bauhaus student to become a member of the faculty. Albers worked with Paul Klee in the stained-glass workshop and was also the longest-serving faculty member when the school closed. One notable work was His Tea Glass with Saucer and Stirrer (1925), which capture the Bauhaus spirit and aesthetic. Albers extensively explored glass, and starting in 1925, his glass pieces became the first true expressions of his lifelong dedication to colour and geometry. Fabrik (Factory) (1925) is a prime example of this.

In 1933, shortly after he and his wife, artist Anni Albers, immigrated to the United States, they played a pivotal role in founding the art department at Black Mountain College. There, he became a key influence on the next generation of American artists, teaching notable figures such as Ruth Asawa and Robert Rauschenberg, among others. The Albers’ stayed at Black Mountain until 1949, and in 1950, they relocated to New Haven, Connecticut, where Josef led the design department at the Yale University School of Art.

In 1949, he began developing what would become his seminal Homage to the Square series, a body of work he continued until his death in 1976. By this time, he had already been exploring the diverse optical and psychological effects that colours can produce based solely on their placement and proximity to other colours. However, the Homage to the Square series marked the culmination of that exploration. Each work followed the same format: three or four progressively smaller squares nested within one another, each rendered in a distinct colour. Despite the uniform structure, every work was meticulously planned and visually unique from the others. This series was not only the most critically acclaimed of his career but also one of the most pivotal and influential in the history of contemporary art. A crucial element of his Homage to the Square series is his choice to shift the centre of the composition downward. By doing this he activates the squares, deliberately guiding your vision, aiming for the colours to feel dynamic rather than static, as if they’re in motion. Albers aimed to create “colour magic,” where the interaction between colours sparks a “creative act of seeing,” transforming the work from a static object into an experience.

Albers’s technique was distinctive; he favoured a palette knife over a brush, applying pure pigment straight from the tube and only adding white occasionally to adjust the hue. Before starting on his canvas’, he meticulously explored colour combinations through extensive studies on paper. Albers meticulously documented his choices, such as colours and materials, on the backs of his canvas’, helping him track his process and the evolution of his colour experiments. As sources of information, the reverse sides of Josef Albers’ paintings are in a category of their own. His efficiency and prolific output were rooted in his design training. His technique traces back to childhood, when he painted doors for his father’s business. Josef’s father taught him to always start at the centre and work outward to the edges when painting a door, which Josef then applied to his paintings. Art historian Kelly Feeney connects this idea of the door to Albers’s works beautifully noting, “The Homages operate like doors – physically, optically, psychologically, and metaphorically. They are entrances, exits, and thresholds, beginnings and endings. Sometimes it is not clear on which side of the door we are. The door opens both out and in, onto the past, the present, and onto an endless, inescapable hall of doors…. And the possibilities are both limited and limitless, just as Albers conceived of his paintings…” (Kelly Feeney, Josef Albers: Works on Paper, Alexandria, Virginia, 1991, p. 86.)

Josef Albers’ legacy goes beyond his iconic Homage to the Square series — his impact as a teacher, theorist, and writer shaped generations of artists and the art historical cannon. He brought Bauhaus principles to America and revolutionized colour theory. He retired from teaching in 1958, yet his academic journey continued with the publication of his influential book Interaction of Colour, which would become a seminal text. Following a string of successful gallery and museum exhibitions, including a major show at the Museum of Modern Art in 1964 and participation in documenta 1 (1955) and documenta 4 (1968), Albers made history in 1971 as the first living artist to have a solo exhibition at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, with a career-spanning retrospective.

After retiring from teaching Albers spent his remaining years in New Haven, where he continued to paint until his passing on March 25, 1976. His work transcended simple squares, offering profound explorations of colour and the shifting relationships within different environments. As he famously said, “When you really understand that each colour is changed by a changed environment, you eventually find that you have learned about life as well as about colour.”

What Not to Miss in New York City this May

May in New York City brings an almost endless lineup of auctions, fairs, and exhibitions. To help you navigate it all, LVH Art has curated a tailored guide of the must-see galleries, museum exhibitions and art fairs. From solo exhibitions to immersive installations, this list highlights the very best of the city’s art scene!

FAIRS

Frieze New York
May 7–11 | frieze.com
Frieze New York, led by Christine Messineo as director, brings together the world’s leading galleries at The Shed. This year’s Focus section—highlighting solo presentations by emerging galleries—will be curated by Lumi Tan, acclaimed for her work as senior curator at The Kitchen in New York. The fair presents a dynamic opportunity to explore rising talent and engage with influential figures from art history. It’s an expansive experience—and the perfect starting point for inspiration.

TEFAF New York
May 9–13 | tefaf.com
TEFAF New York returns for its tenth edition at the iconic Park Avenue Armory, uniting the world’s premier art dealers to present an extraordinary array of works. While the fair includes a strong focus on modern and contemporary art, it also distinguishes itself with exceptional offerings in jewellery, antiques, and design. TEFAF always offers an exceptional lineup of dealers and galleries specialising in Old Masters and fine antiques. And yes, get ready for an abundance of flower photos.

NADA New York
May 7–11 | newartdealers.org
NADA New York 2025, organised by the New Art Dealers Alliance, will feature 120 galleries, art spaces, and non-profits from across the globe. Renowned for its focus on emerging artists and rising galleries, the fair offers a vibrant, social atmosphere that encourages discovery and dialogue. Highlights include NADA Presents—the organization’s signature series of talks, performances, and events—and the return of the TD Bank Curated Spotlight, which this year will shine a light on artists and galleries from Texas and Mexico.
 
Independent Art Fair
May 8–11 | independenthq.com
The Independent Art Fair stands apart for its more curated approach. It presents two main events—Independent and Independent 20th Century—alongside a range of editorial projects, exhibitions, and programming. Participation in the fair’s show section is by invitation only, with galleries selected to ensure a high level of curatorial excellence. This year’s edition will be held at Spring Studios in Tribeca.

Esther 
May 6–10 | https://esther.ee/
Esther II, the second edition of the alternative art fair founded by Margot Samel and Olga Temnikova, returns to New York’s historic Estonia House. Known for spotlighting galleries with Northern and Eastern European roots, this year’s fair will feature 25 participants and offer a collaborative, community-driven experience with fresh voices, and intimate programming. Unlike traditional art fairs, Esther feels more like an exhibition—the artworks are installed directly onto the venue’s original wood-paneled walls, forgoing high ceilings and temporary structures in favor of warmth and character.

1-54 Contemporary African Art Fair
May 8–11 | 1-54.org
1-54 Contemporary African Art Fair returns to New York, featuring a curated selection of contemporary works by emerging and established artists from Africa and its diaspora, along with tailored programming in collaboration with leading institutions.

INSTITUTIONAL EXHIBITIONS

Rashid Johnson: A Poem for Deep Thinkers, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum
April 18 – Jan 18, 2026 | Guggenheim.org

This major solo exhibition features nearly 90 works by artist Rashid Johnson. It spans black-soap paintings, spray-painted text, sculptures, and multimedia pieces. Johnson draws from history, philosophy, literature, and music, positioning himself as both a scholar and a creative force in contemporary art.

Hilma af Klint: What Stands Behind the Flowers, Museum of Modern Art
May 11–Sept. 27, 2025 | MoMA.org
 
The Museum of Modern Art presents a new exhibition featuring MoMA’s recent acquisition of 46 botanical drawings by Swedish artist Hilma af Klint. The works explore her distinctive blend of abstraction and detailed botanical studies, offering a deeper look at how nature can reveal hidden truths about the human condition.

Amy Sherald: American Sublime, Whitney Museum of American Art
April 9 – Aug 10, 2025 | Whitney.org
 
This exhibition features a striking billboard across from the Museum’s entrance on Gansevoort Street, showcasing Amy Sherald’s evocative paintings of everyday Black Americans. Through her carefully crafted portraits, Sherald challenges traditional narratives, celebrating the complexity and individuality of her subjects while highlighting the omission of Black figures from art history, offering a new vision of American Realism.

Ruth Asawa: A Retrospective, MoMA
Oct 19 – Feb 7, 2026 | MoMA.org
 
Ruth Asawa: A Retrospective at MoMA explores over six decades of the artist’s work, featuring approximately 300 pieces across various mediums, including wire sculpture, bronze casts, drawings, and public commissions. This first posthumous survey celebrates Asawa’s innovative approach to materials and forms, highlighting her unique ability to transform simple materials into profound subjects of contemplation, while emphasising her deep commitment to community and arts education.

Sam Moyer: Woman with Holes, Hill art foundation
May 1 – Aug 1, 2025 | Hillartfoundation.org 
 
Woman with Holes, opening May 1, 2025, at the Hill Art Foundation, presents a survey of Sam Moyer’s work alongside pieces from the Hill Collection, exploring abstraction as dream logic through unexpected material pairings and dramatic scale shifts. The exhibition invites viewers to engage with the tension between the familiar and the uncanny, featuring Moyer’s stone paintings, hand-papermaking works, and sculptures, alongside works by artists like Robert Gober, Jasper Johns, and Isamu Noguchi.

Chamberlain Goes Outdoors, in front of The Rockefeller Center
April 16 – May 30, 2025 | Rockerfellercenter.com 
 
Chamberlain Goes Outdoors at Rockefeller Center features three large-scale sculptures by John Chamberlain, including the debut of BALMYWISECRACK (Copper) in the U.S. Presented by Mnuchin Gallery. This installation offers a rare opportunity to experience Chamberlain’s final works in one of New York’s most iconic public spaces, alongside an exhibition of smaller sculptures at Christie’s and a new book release at McNally Jackson.
 

The Genesis Facade Commission: Lee Bul, Long Tail Halo, The MET
Through June 10, 2025 | Metmuseum.org 
 
South Korean artist Lee Bul transformed the iconic niches of The Met’s Fifth Avenue facade with four new sculptures that blend classical and contemporary elements, exploring themes of history, memory, and the ambiguous relationship between the body, machinery, and architecture. This commission marks Lee’s first major U.S. project in over twenty years, continuing The Met’s series of contemporary works that engage in dialogue with the Museum’s collection, architecture, and audience.

The Frick Collection
Reopened April 17, 2025 | Frick.org
 
The Frick Collection reopened on April 17, 2025, after a multi-year renovation that enhanced its historic Fifth Avenue home, adding new galleries, special exhibition spaces, and educational facilities, all while preserving the museum’s iconic charm. This comprehensive upgrade marked the first major transformation since the Frick’s opening in 1935, offering visitors a refreshed experience of its renowned collection and a slate of exciting new programs and exhibitions.
 

Commercial Gallery Exhibitions

Willem de Kooning: Endless Painting at Gagosian
The show delves into the artist’s ongoing engagement with the act of painting as an endless pursuit, highlighting de Kooning’s transformative approach to abstraction and figuration. Featuring a selection of iconic works, the exhibition illuminates his innovative process and his continuous exploration of form, movement, and color.
The show runs from April 15 – June 14, 2025.

Picasso: Tête-à-Tête at Gagosian
Picasso: Tête-à-Tête brings together a selection of works that explore the artist’s intimate relationships and their influence on his creative output. The exhibition delves into Picasso’s personal connections, offering insight into the evolving dynamics of his relationships through his art.
The show runs from April 18 – July 3, 2025.
 
Jim Shaw: Drawings at Gagosian
Jim Shaw: Drawings showcases a series of the artist’s intricate and thought-provoking drawings. The exhibition explores Shaw’s unique approach to surrealism, blending personal narratives with broader cultural references in a distinctive visual language.
The show runs from May 1 – June 14, 2025.

William Kentridge: A Natural History of the Studio at Hauser & Wirth
This exhibition explores the artist’s creative process through a mix of drawings, films, and sculptures. The exhibition highlights the studio as a site of transformation, where personal and historical narratives intertwine.
 The show runs from May 1 – July 25, 2025.

Francis Picabia: Eternal Beginning at Hauser & Wirth
This show explores the artist’s radical approach to abstraction and figuration. The exhibition features key works that reflect Picabia’s ongoing investigation into visual language, identity, and the nature of creativity.
The show runs from May 1 – July 25, 2025.
 
Leiko Ikemura: Talk to the Sky, Seeking Light at Lisson Gallery
This exhibition features a series of works that reflect the artist’s ongoing exploration of the human form and its connection to the natural world. Through painting and sculpture, Ikemura evokes themes of spirituality, transformation, and the search for light.
The show runs from May 1 – August 1, 2025.
 
Sam Moyer: Subject to Change at Sean Kelly Gallery
Sam Moyer: Subject to Change features a collection of works that examine materiality, transformation, and the passage of time. Moyer’s practice blends abstraction with a deep engagement in texture and surface, creating pieces that evolve and adapt in response to their surroundings.
The show runs from May 2 – June 14, 2025.
 
Carmen Herrera: The Paris Years: 1948 – 1953 at Lisson Gallery
Carmen Herrera: The Paris Years: 1948 – 1953 focuses on the artist’s early years in Paris, a formative period that influenced her minimalist approach to abstraction. The exhibition highlights key works from this time, revealing Herrera’s exploration of color, form, and geometry.
The show runs from May 1 – August 1, 2025.
 
Pierre Huyghe: Spirits at Marian Goodman Gallery
This exhibition presents a thought-provoking exploration of life, consciousness, and the intersection of nature and technology. Through a series of immersive works, Huyghe investigates the presence of unseen forces and the fluidity of reality.
The show runs from May 6 – June 21, 2025.
 
Pablo Picasso: Still Life at Almine Rech
Pablo Picasso: Still Life showcases a selection of the artist’s iconic still life paintings, exploring his innovative approach to form, perspective, and abstraction. The exhibition highlights Picasso’s mastery in transforming everyday objects into complex visual compositions.
The show runs from May 1 – July 18, 2025.
 
Yu Nishimura: Clearing Unfolds at David Zwirner
The works in this exhibition explore themes of transformation and space, with Nishimura creating intricate, layered compositions that invite contemplation and engagement.
The show runs from April 24 – June 27, 2025.

Tomma Abts at David Zwirner
This solo show showcases a new series of the artist’s meticulously crafted abstract paintings. Known for her innovative use of color, form, and geometry, Abts continues to push the boundaries of abstraction, creating works that invite close, contemplative engagement.
The show runs from May 1 – June 14, 2025.

Michael Armitage: Crucible at David Zwirner
Michael Armitage: Crucible presents a striking series of paintings that explore the complexities of identity, history, and contemporary life. Armitage’s vibrant works are informed by his Kenyan heritage and delve into issues of politics, social upheaval, and personal reflection.
The show runs from May 8 – June 27, 2025.

Circa 1995: New Figuration in New York at David 
The exhibition features eight generation-defining artists who played a central role in the resurgence and expansion of figurative painting during the 1990s: John Currin, Peter Doig, Marlene Dumas, Chris Ofili, Laura Owens, Elizabeth Peyton, Luc Tuymans, and Lisa Yuskavage.
The show runs from May 7 – July 17, 2025.
 
The Making of Modern Korean Art: The Letters of Kim Tschang-Yeul, Kim Whanki, Lee Ufan, and Park Seo-Bo, 1961–1982 at Tim Kim
This exhibition offers an insightful look into the personal correspondences of these influential Korean artists. Through their letters, the exhibition traces the evolution of modern Korean art, revealing the intellectual and creative exchange that shaped their groundbreaking work.
The show runs from May 5 – June 21, 2025.
 
Louise Giovanelli at Grimm
At Grimm in New York, Louise Giovanelli presents a captivating series of paintings that explore the intersections of abstraction and figuration. Giovanelli’s works blend traditional techniques with contemporary themes, creating pieces that invite viewers to reconsider the boundaries of representation and perception.
The show runs from May 9 – June 21, 2025.
 
Malick Sidibé: Regardez-moi at Jack Shainman
At Jack Shainman in New York, Malick Sidibé: Regardez-moi showcases a selection of the renowned Malian photographer’s iconic portraits. Sidibé’s intimate and vibrant images capture the spirit of youth and life in Bamako, reflecting both personal identity and broader social change in post-independence Mali.
The show runs from April 17 – May 31, 2025.
 
Timothy Lai: Still. Yet. Still. at Jack Barrett, New York
Timothy Lai: Still. Yet. Still. features a series of works that explore the subtle tensions between stasis and movement. Lai’s intricate pieces invite reflection on the passage of time, offering a meditative space where stillness and change coexist.
The show runs from April 4 – May 10, 2025.
 
Alicja Kwade: Telos Tales at Pace
At Pace in New York, Alicja Kwade: Telos Tales presents an exploration of time, perception, and the universe through a series of sculptural works. Kwade’s intricate installations invite viewers to question the nature of reality, as she delves into philosophical and scientific themes with a unique blend of abstraction and symbolism.
The show runs from May 7 – August 15, 2025.
 
Olivia Jia: Mirror Stage at Margot Samel
At Margot Samel’s gallery, an exhibition featuring Olivia Jia’s work, titled Mirror Stage, is on view. The exhibition delves into themes of identity, self-reflection, and the intersection of personal and collective experiences through Jia’s thought-provoking visual language.
The show runs from April 30 – May 31, 2025.

Salman Toor: Wish Maker at Luhring Augustine Gallery
The paintings in this explore themes of desire, intimacy, and cultural identity, with Toor’s vibrant and emotive works offering a reflection on personal and societal narratives.
The show runs from May 2 – June 21, 2025.

In Conversation with Kingsley Ifill about his captivating show at Hannah Barry Gallery

This month, LVH Art spoke with Kingsley Ifill about his multidisciplinary practice and his current exhibition at Hannah Barry Gallery, on view until May 17th. The show, titled Blue Roan carries a quiet intensity and intimate atmosphere, offering a diaristic quality that invites viewers to imagine fictional narratives— while also connecting the images to personal memory, emotion, and mortality. It’s one of the most compelling gallery shows on in London at the moment.

In the show Kingsley Ifill brings together images of snakes, birds, sleep, movement, and ritual—some screen-printed in acrylic onto raw surfaces, and others platinum palladium prints on handmade Japanese Washi paper, framed in intricately carved wooden frames.

The title, Blue Roan, comes from Romany slang, passed down from Ifill’s grandfather. It speaks to the blending of two distinct things into one. As Ifill puts it: “Non place as place. A name for the nameless. Neither here, nor there, but somewhere.” The exhibition becomes a meditation on that in-between space—a celebration of photography as both image and object, and a test of how far that object can be pushed.

Photography lies at the core of Ifill’s practice. Working primarily in 35mm—a habit that began with a disposable supermarket camera in his teens—he embraces the medium as a way to preserve memory and craft visual poetry

LVH Art: Are there recurring themes that you find yourself exploring in your work?

Kingsley Ifill: If there are, it’s not conscious. I like to imagine that I’m constantly moving and picking up the pieces as I go along, but whether the direction is in a straight line or an endless circle, I’m not sure. My focus is on putting one foot in front of the other and with enough walking, the path will become worn.  

LVH Art: In your current exhibition ‘Blue Roan’ at Hannah Barry Gallery, some recurring subjects are snakes, cropped nudes, and figures on horseback. What draws you to these specific visuals?

Kingsley Ifill: My studio in Kent is right next to the sea. Often when looking out at the landscape from the shore over the vast desert of water, I find myself experiencing a great level of comfort in acknowledging that the sight which I’m witnessing in that moment, is similar to the exact sight other living beings would of seen, for as long as we’ve been here and looking. A timeless beauty. I get the same satisfaction from each subject which you have mentioned. Bare skin, rattling snakes, horses pushing against the current. Each image has a story, or provides a clue and I’m confident that one day it will all add up to make sense.

LVH Art: On the ground floor of your exhibition at Hannah Barry Gallery, you presented a series of silkscreens—acrylic on canvas or linen. Can you talk us through your process for these works?

Kingsley Ifill: There’s a wide variety of processes involved. All of the works on show have existed within several different mediums or formats, before eventually finding their final resting place at this scale, printed with these methods. Through a journey almost purely based on instinct, until the image feels right. Which in some cases has taken over a decade to get from there to here. 

For example, a photo can initially be taken using a 35mm film camera, which I then process, print as a contact, make a silver gelatin print, reprint as silver gelatin using abstraction methods, tea tone, then Xerox the silver print, then risograph the zerox, then scan and crop, print as transparent, expose as a silkscreen. Repeat for several images and print using silkscreen on large stretched linen, combining several images as new “photography”. 

LVH Art: They’re not “perfect prints”—the ink often bleeds or soaks into the canvas. In Blue Roan (2015), for example, there are drips running down the canvas. What draws you to this effect?

Kingsley Ifill: I often feel like I’m a collaborator with the actual image or as if the image will do what it wants to do and my job is to simply keep my mind open to accept inspiration. I try not to rationalise. Or to put it even more clearly, the images and ideas are already there and I’m just a mediator. A bit like when Townes Van Zandt talked about how he wrote a song in his dream, woke up and started playing it. As if it had appeared from thin air. It’s the same with capturing the images in a camera too. All the images are there, you’ve just got to look and click the shutter. 

With Blue Roan, it’s technically a difficult image to print as the head of the horse is a deep back, with the dark river as the back ground. They blend into one. I spent days exposing different large 40×60” silkscreens and then even when they seemed crisp, it was still tough to work out the pressure and angel of the squeegee. I got the point where I’d almost given up. But through the failure and frustration, allowed a gap for chance, where I did certain things that I wouldn’t usually do. The drips came through attempting to thin out the paint from a failed print, which ultimately provided the base which I didn’t know I was searching for, until it appeared. To then built upon using silver paint and yet another silkscreen print. Completing the image. 

LVH Art: The exhibition shifts upstairs to featuring beautifully framed photographs. Can you talk about your selection process for these photographs, and what influenced your decision around the framing?

Kingsley Ifill: They’re photographs which I’ve taken over the last 15 years. Images I feel are strong enough to exist individually, without support from each other. Like single chapters from a book of short stories. 

The frames I carved myself by hand over different points in the last five years. The contrast of time between the two acts interests me. Some of the photographs would be been taken in a 1/1000th of a second, whereas the tree may have taken a couple of hundred years to grow before being cut and dried. And then a week or two of solid work to carve each one. The washi paper was produced using the same process in Japan, with water from the same river, that’s been used for over a thousand years. 

The platinum palladium prints, I made myself too. The process took me a long time to work out. Several years. And the archival properties of the print are 1000+ years, or supposedly forever. So essentially, although the image was brief moment, it could potentially live forever if placed in suitable conditions. 

LVH Art: Your work often plays with omission and the use of empty space. How do you approach composition, and think about absence and fragmentation?

Kingsley Ifill: There’s no right or wrong. And photography is more about what you crop, rather than what you include. I heard someone once say that poetry isn’t in the words, it’s in the space between the lines. Room for the mind and imagination. 

LVH Art: Have there been any artists, from the past or present, who have particularly inspired you or who you are thinking about a lot lately? What is it about their work that speaks to you?

Kingsley Ifill: Always. I’m forever thinking about Bruce Nauman. In particular with this show, I kept going back to his large scale installation, Room With My Soul Left Out. Room That Does Not Care, which was a big inspiration for my piece Chrysalis. Dekoonings early brushstrokes, which I saw in Venice last summer and how they drag themselves dry. Ad Reinhardt’s darker works and the way colours merge, floating into black and need to be experienced in person. Just like the subtle tones of platinum palladium.

LVH Art: Looking back, how has your practice evolved over the years? Are there any new mediums or themes you’re excited to explore in the future, or is there something in particular you’re excited about coming up?

Kingsley Ifill: It’s become more concentrated. For a while I was interested in finding or “taking” images, but now I’m only using my own photographs which I’ve taken using a camera. I’m excited to make the book for this show, which I’ll produce by hand in my studio. I’d like to carve more too, go up in scale. Same with the platinum palladium prints, to see how they translate bigger. No grand plans though. With each new work, I feel like I see more clearly. And that’s my main interest, seeing and feeling more. 

A Design Dialogue: LVH Art speaks with Four Trailblazing Furniture Designers

This month at LVH Art, we had the pleasure of speaking with four exceptional furniture designers whose work we admire. Elliot Barnes, Ransom & Dunn, Nifemi Marcus-Bello and Studioutte each bring a unique perspective to their designs—creating pieces that are not only beautifully made but also rich with intention and artistry. We asked each designer four questions to dive deeper into their creative practices, uncover their inspirations, and explore the ever-evolving dialogue between art and design.

Elliot Barnes is a London-based British furniture designer who blurs the boundaries between industrial design and decorative art. Known for creating captivating pieces, Barnes’ work draws inspiration from the past while forging a bold, unconventional future. The term “usable sculpture” is frequently used to describe his designs and perfectly encapsulates Barnes’ approach—his ethereal pieces contrast the weight of heavy materials, blending striking visual appeal with functional form. While he’s reluctant to define a specific aesthetic—believing that a forward-thinking designer’s work should constantly evolve—his aim with each furniture piece is to uncover a mysterious element in an object that resonates with him, and hopefully with others as well.

Ransom & Dunn is a design brand specializing in lifestyle, interiors, and furniture, founded by American-born Londoners Johanna Dunn and Julia Ransom. Their work is a study in simplicity, texture, and contemporary forms, characterized by bold, modernist designs that are both tactile and refined. The Ransom & Dunn aesthetic blends elevated classics with striking statement pieces, drawing inspiration from their American roots and European sensibilities. Julia is a graduate of the School of Visual Arts in New York and Inchbald School of Design in London. Johanna is a graduate of the University of Pennsylvania and received an MBA from the London Business School. Combined they have over three decades of experience in fashion, retail and finance, honed whilst living in both New York and London. This year, Ransom & Dunn will launch a full lighting collection, alongside new designs including a sofa, coffee table, slipper chair, side table, bed, and bedside table. The duo is also working on two residential projects—one in Milan and one in Miami.

Nifemi Marcus-Bello is the founder of Nmbello Studio, a commercial and artistic design studio guided by a philosophy that emphasises intuition, resourcefulness, and a deep connection to context. Marcus-Bello’s approach is defined by humility and a profound respect for materials and culture. With a strong connection to African design heritage, he engages with global narratives while honouring tradition and place. Rather than dictating outcomes, he facilitates a dynamic dialogue between material, function, and cultural significance. His work is informed by real-world interactions and human-centred insights, ensuring designs that are both authentic and impactful. His work and contributions sit in some of the most prestigious institutions, The Museum of Modern Art, New York, The Brooklyn Museum, New York, The Los Angeles County Museum, The Art Institute of Chicago, The Design Museum London and more, and this year he has also been shortlisted for the Loewe Craft Prize.

Studioutte is a Milan-based multidisciplinary practice founded in 2020 by Guglielmo Giagnotti and Patrizio Gola. Giagnotti, a former architect at Vincent Van Duysen, studied at the Polytechnic of Bari. After moving to Antwerp in 2015, Giagnotti specialized in luxury interiors and small to medium-scale architecture. Gola trained in interior design at the Politecnico di Milano. In 2017, Gola joined Dimorestudio, working on large-scale hospitality, retail, and residential projects. Despite their different backgrounds, the duo shared a common vision and understanding of each other’s aesthetic, leading them to create a studio where architecture, interiors, and furniture are seamlessly integrated into a unified design language. Drawing from Italian and vernacular traditions, their approach embraces warm minimalism, merging form and function into distilled, poetic spaces. Giagnotti and Gola’s design approach is focused on purity and primal essence, with each environment shaped by an emotional connection to its elements.

What sparked your passion for design, and when did it begin?

Elliot Barnes: Whilst I’ve always been interested in what makes a place or an object stand out against others, my introduction to furniture design was through necessity; I moved into a room with no furniture and my new flatmates had tools, scrap wood and an outdoor space to make things. Whilst the resulting pieces weren’t exactly design classics, the process of watching tutorials online and getting stuck in to trying things started me obsessively researching design, drawing and attempting to produce work that I wasn’t completely despairing of.

Julia Ransom & Johanna Dunn: Our passion for design sparked well before the sensation of Pinterest when we began to travel as teenagers and young adults. Travel has an ability to broaden perspectives and inspire creativity. We both are very observant and detail oriented women who are deeply inspired by our surroundings –  the art, architecture,  nature, landscapes, local craft and traditions. Seeing how people live and interact with furniture, art and objects inspired us to create a brand and a design business that is an expression and reflection of our continual refining taste.  

Nifemi Marcus-Bello: My passion for design started through making. I started making at a very young age and did not find path design as a profession till a later age. Making started at 14 and my interest in becoming a designer started at 20. I studied Product design at the University of Leeds for both undergrad and masters and after graduating realised I was on the right path on doing this profession for the rest of my adult life. 

Guglielmo Giagnotti & Patrizio Gola: An accurate and constant observation: a sort of obsession with everything aesthetically valuable that surrounds us, architecture and design are everywhere: from a good movie to a casual object, from a pair of trousers to a window frame in the street. It’s a matter of intuitive sensibility that has always been in both of us in a spontaneous way, a sort of animistic devotion for any scale of “objects – pieces”.

In what ways has art played a role in shaping your designs or design approach, and how do you think art and design might influence each other?

Elliot Barnes: My work references design history a lot, and a large part of that will come from iconic interiors, where design and art play a similar role in being largely decorative elements in a scheme. Donald Judd’s non design works could often be shelving or lighting, and there is a great story of Peggy Guggenheim using Giacometti works as coat racks during parties. It is this sort of object that I would like to make; functional objects which have their own contextual presence, like an artwork might, and I often reference iconic artworks to convey this. Both art and design rely on a strange sort of poetry to be worthwhile in their own right. In my mind that poetry tends to arise from a combination of execution, context and beauty, each being subtly specific to each artist and each beholder. You know it when you see it, I rarely do.

Julia Ransom & Johanna Dunn: Art and design are deeply intertwined and both play a role in shaping and responding to the world around us. The use of colour, forms and textures is often a starting point to thinking about an object should look, feel or perform. Contemporary artists and designers often have shared references from historical art or design movements, and there are cultural trends and movements that inspire both practices. We personally reference the shapes of Imi Knoebel, the texture of Pierre Soulages and the palette of Rothko. 

Nifemi Marcus-Bello: Even though I grew up making, I spent most of my spare time indoors drawing and painting. Infact I painted so much that my mother kept pushing me to study art. So before studying design, I studied a foundation course in Art History in the hopes of majoring in History of Art, becoming an artist or a curator. Fast forward to studying design at a technical design school (School of Mechanical Engineering, University of Leeds). I don’t think I ever got rid of my artistic precedence and do think I ever will. In my own humble opinion, good design has an element of art to it, this is what takes care of the emotional side to the experience of the product. 

Guglielmo Giagnotti & Patrizio Gola: Art has a crucial part in our first approach to design and spatial composition, it sensibly influences the phase of brainstorming and concept. In many aspects some names are radically architectural: Tapiès, Oteiza, Heizer, Ungers, Vandenhove and many others.. It’s a mutual influence with different aims. Design is often softening art, diluting its freedom into function. Art sometimes radicalizes design. It demolishes, digests and splits it back with a new sense.

In your opinion, what are the factors that makes an object stand out as a well-designed piece?

Elliot Barnes: Beauty is a difficult thing to define with design as it’s meant to be practical so often the beauty aspect come through the line of thinking that solves a problem in an intelligent or resourceful way, in combination with the final ‘look’ of the piece. Execution is variable also, some of the best design works have the ‘my toddler could have made that’ factor, but that is what makes them interesting contextually and their casual or primitive production is exactly what makes them beautiful. 

Julia Ransom & Johanna Dunn: The key elements we look for are in a great piece are – proportion and scale, use of materials, practicality and quality.  

Nifemi Marcus-Bello: This is a tricky question as everything has and needs a bit of context to be experienced and understood. But in another humble opinion design stands out when it is considerate through its inception and completion. 

Guglielmo Giagnotti & Patrizio Gola: When it is difficult to get from which period it is from. When you can still read the sense of archetype in it, when you can reed a process of refinement and deduction in it. When is timeless, when is absolute.

Is there a specific material that excites you the most to work with, and what about it resonates with you right now?

Elliot Barnes: I had the chance to work with cast glass recently, which was a revelation. It does magical things with light, almost like freezing the reflections across water in a useable surface. It is also a hugely difficult material to produce, which makes it quite rare and special to see in domestic settings. I work a lot with stainless steel as it is simultaneously quite industrial and somehow refined. With the right polish it can emulate silvered surfaces, and takes on the colour surrounding it which is an interesting tension. 

Julia Ransom & Johanna Dunn: Currently we are captivated by the use of glass and exploring ways to make it feel modern.  

Nifemi Marcus-Bello: I love metal and the process of sand casting because of the intimacy between the material, the human hand and the earth. Sand Casting preserves the marks of making—the textures, the flaws, the traces of touch—which makes each piece feel alive and human. It’s a reminder that creation isn’t just about precision or polish, but about presence. Right now, as the boundary between digital and physical narrows, I think these kinds of tactile, earth-rooted practices are more important than ever.

Guglielmo Giagnotti & Patrizio Gola: Since our goal is being focused on the sense of primal essence of forms, using natural material is the only way to reach a controlled expressivity. Natural materials, with their imperfections and patina change and transform with time. Sometimes we like to play with the duality of a material, for example a very plain wood that looks like paper/parchment, a very aged and oxidized copper that looks like marble and so on.. 

In Conversation with Max Boyla on the Importance of Experimentation

This month, LVH Art spoke with Max Boyla, a Scottish-Turkish artist based in London, to learn about his affinity to using satin, his experimental approach, and the inspirations that drive his work.

Boyla’s work is currently featured in Hauser & Wirth’s Somerset exhibition, An Uncommon Thread, running until April 21, 2025. He also has a work in New Contemporaries at the Institute of Contemporary Arts (ICA), which closes on March 23, 2025. He is part of a group exhibition opening at Sim Smith on March 20th, running until April 19th, 2025. LVH Art also showcased Max’s work There is no key, you have to sing in our last exhibition, “Double Take,” which ran from May 30 to July 22, 2024.

Boyla’s creative process is highly physical, often involving twisting and wrapping fabric on the floor. He speaks of his practice as if he’s engaging with living, breathing matter. While each of his works is unique, they share common themes: the exploration of illusion, the fleeting nature of existence, and the complexities of consumerism. His canvas’ conjure abstract cosmologies—surreal landscapes that seem to shift before the viewer’s eyes, transforming with changing light or as one moves around them.

LVH Art: What attracts you to working with satin?

Max Boyla: I guess I’m a bit of a magpie, I like to collect things that I’m drawn to. I was in my second year of studying at the RA, and was playing around with different materials that I had accumulated. Exploring synthetics at the time, I came across this satin; then, all of a sudden, it became a core element of my practice. The unique quality of the material highlighted certain conceptual aspects that I was thinking about. I love the lustrous sheen of this particular satin. I think in part, it has to do with wanting to achieve a physical interaction with the person viewing it, in that I wanted the work’s presence to shift, as one moves around and the light changes; to make something that you can’t really capture in a photograph, that comes alive when you stand in front of it.

I also often think of satin as a ready-made, with its own history; a mass-produced synthetic material made of petroleum that’s closely tied to consumerism. Something about the satin just has a touch of kitsch to it in the best way that other materials don’t possess.

LVH Art: How important is experimentation to your practice? Just looking around the studio I can see lots of buckets of ink and chemical mixtures. 

Max Boyla: I’m always trying something new or trying to figure something out. I feel that experimentation is really at the core of my practice. In terms of all the buckets, this is tied to a kind of alchemy in a way. I see my work as this sort of semi-self-aware spiritual endeavour. This idea to will something into existence through these kinds of mixtures, feels slightly spiritual and alchemical to me at times. 

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LVH Art: I’ve read that you’ve referred to your paintings as an illusion—could you elaborate on this? 

Max Boyla: I guess what I mean with illusion is that I’m very removed from the paintings in a way. My works are mostly all folded, twisted, soaked and sprayed. They go through all these various very physical hands-on processes, yet there’s no gesture of the hand in it. Instead of painting on a surface, the surface is moving around the paint. 

My work also revolves around exploring different dimensions. Much like how the Cubists tried to capture the fourth dimension to explore time and space, I aim to subtly convey these different dimensional qualities in my works. When I shape and mold the forms, I’m working in the third-dimension, as it’s very physical and on the floor and it takes up a physical space. Then once it’s dried and stretched it becomes flat and technically two-dimensional. So you see this three-dimensional reality in a two-dimensional way, hypothetically giving you a fourth-dimensional vantage point. So when a viewer is present and moves around it, the work transforms and activates in relation to their movement. I’m exploring how things change and evolve over time, so the concept of perception and illusion plays a central role in my work in that way. 

LVH Art: Could you walk us through your process? Do you begin with a plan, or is it more spontaneous? 

Max Boyla: In my studio, there’s a large sheet of canvas spread out on the floor, which serves as my painting environment or “zone.” I usually work directly on the floor, and sometimes hang the fabric in various positions. Afterwards I might crop it and stretch it over a canvas or on the wall to see how it’s developing. Sometimes I work with a loose plan, but some of the best works I have made are the ones that I’m very surprised by – the ones that emerge. If I know what a painting will look like before I make it, then it can feel like it has this dead quality to it that I’m not as interested in. I also try never to repeat works directly. Repetition and duplicity already have an important role to play.   

LVH ART: How long does it usually take you to create your works? 

Max Boyla: It’s hard to say as every work is different. I kind of work in these bursts of energy and liveliness. I often question my work for a long time, like is this the direction I want to take it in, or is this the right palette or size.. I sometimes take one thing, such as a colour or size and use that as a springboard to action. Then the actual making is often quite quick and can be somewhat chaotic, even though it feels direct and specific at the same time. For example, sometimes I will be in the studio most of the day thinking through work, and then I will realise that I need to get a certain train and leave in 20 minutes. I then get this pressurized moment and burst of energy where I have to make decisive actions and trust my intuition. Then the next day I will unfold what I have done, and sometimes if it’s still wet I will alter its course if I can see a work is not doing something well or becoming too obvious in a way.

LVH Art: It sounds like you’re working with another living entity in a way. 

Max Boyla: For sure, when I work the satin feels like it’s very much alive. Sometimes when a piece simply doesn’t work I’ll redye it, scrub it, crop parts of it, or have to just entirely give up on it, for a while at least. Sometimes it’s these works that I am wrestling with for a while that turn into quite interesting things. In my studio I have a whole pile of satin works that I have put to the side that are “in the balance.” 

LVH Art: Is there a specific reason why you gravitate towards a larger scale in your practice? 

Max Boyla: I do make smaller works, but right now making larger works interests me more because they feel more all-enveloping. They are able to achieve this idea of presence, when a person stands and moves in front of the work. In a way I feel like my works are as close to installation as they are to painting, because they’re so reactive to an environment, while also having the ability to produce or emanate one. They feel like they can exist in different conditions than a normal painting. I also quite like the idea of paintings in the way that they’re only alive when you’re there, and right now I am able to achieve that better through a larger scale.

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LVH Art: How do you go about titling your works? 

Max Boyla: Quite a lot of my titles come from songs actually, lyrics or titles. Or sometimes someone will just say something and it is kind of strangely poetic, so I’ll write it down and then recall it as a title later. For example the work that was in the LVH show, There is no key, you have to sing, was from a random moment. It came from when I was visiting my partner’s grandmother and went to use the bathroom, and when I was in there she shouted through “there is no key, you have to sing,” as in sing so no one comes in accidentally because there isn’t a lock. I wrote it down somewhere just because I thought it was interesting on its own. Then also, with that work the pattern turned out slightly similar to the crochet blankets my partner’s grandmother crochets, so there was also that connection to her, so it felt even more “right” to title the work that way. Sometimes these things feel like they’re aligning and falling together in a very serendipitous way.

LVH Art: Does the work Fire of Love have to do with the documentary by any chance? 

Max Boyla: Yes, it ties into the film. It was such a good film about love, as well as volcanoes, destructive forces, fire and light, and some of those themes are really relevant to my work. When I watched that film I was starting to see my current partner, which I think in hindsight also contributed to the work. I also remember seeing a Patrick Heron exhibition and thinking I was really seeing colour for the first time in a way. I really wanted to capture a sense of vibrancy within that painting, so I used more red and orange tones, which is more of my partner’s favourite palette. At the time I was mainly using lilac, so having the red tones really contrasted and broke, and expanded what I was doing in a way. But I could not have told you any of this while I was making the work. It was just instinctual at the time, and now looking back I can tell you all of this in hindsight.

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LVH Art: Some of your works have this feeling of close-up shots, almost as if you’re observing something under a microscope, particularly A Chance to Bond, 2024 that is currently being shown at Hauser and Wirth Sommerset. Yet, they also have an expansive quality to them as well. Is this something you’ve thought about in your work?

Max Boyla: That’s definitely something I think about a lot. I want my works to have both a micro and macro quality, so they feel vast and celestial, almost like they’re tapping into that fourth-dimensional space. There’s this sci-fi element to them, something otherworldly. But at the same time, they also feel like they have a micro existence, almost like atoms or molecules. I kind of want all these possibilities to exist in my work. Not necessarily all in one work, but for my works to have this openness to them where people can bring their own thoughts. Like for Fire of Love, someone told me it looks like DNA, and I hadn’t even thought of that.

LVH Art: I noticed you created the SOS sign in the telephone booth next to the Royal Academy. I was quite surprised to learn that, as it’s not the medium I would typically associate with your work.

Max Boyla: I like this John Cage quote, “if all music is sound, then all sound can be music.” So I was kind of thinking about that in terms of materiality – if all paint is material, then all material can be used as paint. In that way I’m also quite interested in neon – it feels like you’re drawing or painting with almost pure light. It sort of touches on these ideas of consumerism and the history of advertising, that I also find intriguing. 

For the SOS sign the RA purchased those boxes from the phone company, and they wanted to do a rotation of students’ work in them, but I wrote this proposal that used all three phone boxes for one installation, which they really liked. It was installed during the time of COVID, and being stuck in a confined space, like the neon is on those phone boxes, felt highly relevant to that moment. It is also about communication, lapses, and dead technology. As phone boxes are becoming more and more obsolete, I found it interesting that they were designed by Sir Giles Gilbert Scott and read that the design was inspired by the tombstone of his wife. The title of the work “The Sound of Silence” is also a reference to a Simon Garfunkel song, though I’m more into The Chromatics cover.  

LVH Art: Have there been any artists, from the past or present, who have particularly inspired you or who you are thinking about a lot lately? 

Max Boyla: Yeah there’s loads. I think when I started getting into art I was fascinated by Rene Magritte and Marcel Broodthaers. I am also a big fan of Philip Guston and Louise Bourgeois. Then there is Bernard Piffaretti. I really like his work, also because he often works in a diptych format, which I often work with. I was amazed when I saw his work, and was surprised by how someone was doing diptychs as their “whole thing”.

Streets as Galleries: How Sculptures Are Shaping Our Cities

Public art has been a part of our cities for centuries. Public art fulfills a range of roles: it can provide educational insights, commemorate individuals and moments, convey social messages, and embody the spirit and values of a community. Public artworks today breathe new life and meaning into everyday ordinary spaces, inviting us to challenge the way we perceive our surroundings.

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There has been a notable shift from static monuments, which often represent outdated ideals or honor controversial figures, to dynamic, rotating public art programs that reflect the present community and address themes relevant today. The transformative impact of new public art programs, which often include trails or routes to follow, has fostered new connections and increased the public’s engagement with art, sparking conversations and strengthening a sense of community. Around the globe, cities are increasingly acknowledging the importance of public art, with many now embracing rotating art programs to keep their urban spaces exciting. One of the most notable public sculpture trails is the High Line in New York City, which is built on a historic freight rail line elevated above the streets on Manhattan’s West Side. Opened in 2009, the High Line is a 0.5-mile-long public park that features not only lush plants and greenery but also rotating artworks, transforming this unique park into an outdoor gallery. A more recent example of a city launching a public art initiative is Abu Dhabi, which unveiled its first-ever Public Art Abu Dhabi Biennale, titled “Public Matter,” last year. This public sculpture park delves into how the environment, community, and urban development shape the city’s unique identity. Beautifully curated, The Abu Dhabi Art Biennale balanced a selection of established and emerging artists, mostly from and working in the region, alongside a few select international artists.

 

In exploring the topic of public art and monumental sculptures, LVH Art spoke with Stella Ioannou, the Artistic Director of Sculpture in the City (London) and Founding Director of LACUNA, a studio renowned for executing large-scale public art, to gain deeper insight into this area. As the driving force behind Sculpture in the City since 2010, she has been a pioneer in bringing monumental sculptures into London’s urban environment. Sculpture in the City brings contemporary sculptures into the heart of London’s financial district, one of the most architecturally dense places in the city. We spoke with Stella about the crucial role that scale plays in such a tightly packed urban environment, where large, bold works must interact thoughtfully with towering buildings and busy public spaces. As Stella remarked, “When I first started working on the project back in 2010 the galleries thought I was crazy when I was calling and saying, ‘I need big pieces, and I need them in color’. And they said, ‘Well, what do you mean Stella?’ And I said, ‘Well, come and stand next to the Gherkin with me, and then let’s have a conversation about scale.’ In the intervening 14 years, we’ve got a lot more tall buildings in that particular vicinity of the city, which has created a really dynamic urban environment. So the consideration of scale is about being able to place works which will not get lost, and which will sometimes even challenge those kinds of really monumental buildings.”

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In a district where people are often rushing to work, many in professions unrelated to art, public art offers a unique opportunity to engage with a new audience. While Sculpture in the City has become a highly anticipated event in the London art community, with art enthusiasts following the trail set out by the organisation and voyaging to see specific works, most people encounter the sculptures unexpectedly, often while going about their daily routines. This unplanned interaction eliminates any barriers of entry that exist in the artworld. Even though many museums in London offer free admission, the physical structure and formal nature of the art world is still a barrier for many. For many, being unexpectedly stopped on their way to work by a sculpture may be their first step into the art world. As Stella told us, “Public art really brings joy, life, humanity, inspiration, and is something that welcomes people into public spaces that they’re not always necessarily comfortable in doing. Can we call it a gateway drug to more art? I mean, the threshold isn’t there. We’ve removed the threshold completely so it’s fully accessible. And people then get to experience art naturally and familiarize themselves with contemporary art, which can be quite a difficult subject for a lot of people.”

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This shift in one’s environment, created for example by placing a public artwork along their daily commute route, is stimulating and prompts people to react in different ways. More on this, Stella discusses how effective public art often elicits a strong response, and that the response isn’t always a positive one. She shares the story of someone who initially disliked a work, only to develop an appreciation for it over time, demonstrating how public art has the power to evolve in people’s minds, transforming from something uncomfortable to something beloved. Stella noted that perhaps the most controversial work they featured in the past was Martin Creed’s “Work No. 2814,” which consisted of plastic bags attached to a tree. As Stella shared with us, “We faced so much criticism at so many different levels and by people from all walks of life. Some didn’t like it because the artwork didn’t show the artist’s hand. But it was really interesting, because when I dug into it with people, it turned out that the piece reminded a lot of them of either themselves, a partner, or their parents hoarding plastic bags. Interestingly, Martin used the bags because he hoarded them. The strong reaction from these people stemmed from the anxiety they were carrying. Actually, someone I know quite well came on a tour of this work with me, and they were extremely vocal about how they despised it. We had a long dialogue about it. Then that same person, eight months later, came to me and said, ‘You know what I told you about Martin’s work all those months ago? Well, I’ve completely changed my mind now. I really love it, and I’m going to be really upset when it goes.’ That goes to show how people often react to something slightly foreign and different that they have no familiarity with. But then they normalize it through seeing it everyday. This person worked in the area where the work was located, so they would have walked past it often. Eight months later, the artwork had become a familiar part of their daily routine, allowing them to sit with the emotions that had initially made them so uncomfortable.”

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A crucial aspect of successful public art is ensuring it fits with its environment and context. While Sculpture in the City showcases preexisting sculptures, the team collaborates with the artist to select a location that enhances the artwork and its surroundings. In our conversation Stella stressed the importance of collaborating with the artist and remaining flexible to new ideas: “When I met the artist Alice Channer, I remember her explicitly saying, ‘I really want to cite this work in an urban space’. And I said, ‘great, let’s go look at all the urban spaces together and see what we can do’. And we found a few spaces, but none of them sang to her or worked particularly well with the work. I told her I knew of one other space that I can think would work really well, but that it’s not urban. I took her to the churchyard at St Botolph-without-Bishopsgate. She’d literally caught a glimpse of the churchyard, and she was like, ‘That’s it. That’s where I want it to be.’ And what was lovely is that the piece is called Burial, and we cited it on an ancient burial ground. There are all these connections that you can find if you are open to it and trust the process.”

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Public art undoubtedly presents more challenges than displaying monumental pieces in a museum setting or on museum grounds. First, you’re working with a much larger group of stakeholders. Second, the artwork is often placed in bustling areas where art hasn’t been installed before. Stella walked us through both of these points. When discussing the challenges of working with various stakeholders, Stella explained to us, “You become a diplomat. And you speak lots of different languages. You speak artist language, you speak landowner language, you speak partner language, you speak engineer language, and so on. We have to go through a whole legislative process from the City of London side, which includes compliance, health and safety, everything that brings fear to everybody. There are so many steps a public sculpture must go through that people don’t see. But when I feel as though nothing is progressing, I remind myself to trust the process, and that with determination, things always fall into place.”

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To give us a better understanding of just how complicated it can be to install a public work of art, Stella walked us through the entire process of realising Bridging Home, London by Do Hu Shu. “We started off with Do Hu Shu wanting to make the artwork out of fabric. The question of, ‘How do you install a fabric work on a walkway that doubles as afire escape, located above a busy road?’, became all we thought about. We spent two months working on that, which included countless tests to  determine if we could make the fabric fire-resistant in any way. In the end, we agreed that fabric was not the suitable material, and Do Hu Shu reverted to using polystyrene. The artwork isa replica of the house he grew up in, but it needed to be designed so that if people needed to escape the building on fire, there was a wide enough opening for them to run through. The installation itself was difficult as well.Normally if we need to close roads for an intal we can, but because this was a bus route, we weren’t able to close it. We ended up doing single lane closures, so the traffic was still running whilst the artwork was being installed. I can go on and on about how challenging it was, but that just gives you a little taster of what it can take to realize a public work of art.”

Art & Apres: Ultimate Winter Scene

For decades, the mountains have been more than just a winter escape for skiers; they have served as sanctuaries for artists, collectors, and cultural visionaries.

Artists have long turned to the peaks for inspiration, Gerhard Richter’s Mountain series captures their grandeur with his signature blurred abstraction, while Basquiat’s Engadin valley mountain paintings transform the raw into poetic symbols of struggle. Few have depicted the quiet beauty of snow-covered landscapes as evocatively as Peter Doig, his dreamlike winter scenes feel both otherworldly and familiar. Nowhere is this interplay between art and the alpine more evident than in St. Moritz, where the legendary Gunter Sachs, an icon of the jet set, once installed a Roy Lichtenstein bathtub in his penthouse at Badrutt’s Palace, a bold statement that art and the alpine were meant to coexist. This seamless blending of high culture and high altitude continues today, as ski destinations around the world evolve into vibrant cultural scenes. From design fairs and exhibitions in St. Moritz and Gstaad, to meditative Turrell skyspaces in Austria, we take a look at this winter’s most compelling art experiences.

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St. Moritz has long been a refuge for the artists and collectors. This winter, Hauser & Wirth presented a significant exhibition, “Jean-Michel Basquiat. Engadin,” on view until March 29, 2025. The exhibition explores Basquiat’s connection to the Engadin region, showcasing works inspired by his visits to Switzerland and exploring motifs that intertwine the natural and cultural landscapes of the area with the urban energy of New York.

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This year marked the 15th edition of the NOMAD fair, blending design, art, and craft as it took over Klinik Gut, a former construction site in St Moritz. NOMAD brought together 40 galleries presenting an eclectic mix and special projects like a Nilufar’s installation with glass designer Christian Pellizzari and a special room created by Lebanese duo david/nicolas for the Italian maison Buccellati. While NOMAD was happening, MAZE Arts also launched the first edition of the Maze Art Fair in St. Moritz, bringing together contemporary galleries for an exhibition of photography and sculpture.

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Beyond the galleries, Muzeum Susch, founded by Grazyna Kulczyk, offers an experience unlike any other. Housed in a renovated medieval monastery dating back to 1157, the original buildings were restored, and underground passageways were added, connecting the site according to designs by architects Chasper Schmidlin and Lukas Voellmy.

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Nearby The Stable Gallery, a unique minimalist transformed stable by Klainguti + Rainalater SA, is presenting a winter exhibition of Sophie von Hellermann. Her dreamlike whimsical paintings are inspired by her visit in the Engadin valley. The exhibition runs until 12 April 2025.

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Local Swiss artist Not Vital, a native of the Engadin Valley, has also shaped the landscape itself into art. His Snow Castle, a sculptural structure built from ice and snow, is a fleeting work that blurs the line between architecture and nature. More permanently, he has transformed the 12th-century Tarasp Castle, which he acquired in 2016, into a space where contemporary interventions meet medieval architecture. Within its historic walls, visitors encounter works that merge sculpture, conceptual design, and the surrounding alpine environment, including the “House to Watch the Sunset,” a 13-meter-high tower designed for quiet contemplation of the valley below.

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Villa Flor, a charming bed and breakfast in S-chanf, is hosting an exhibition dedicated to the friendship between Swiss photographer Ernst Scheidegger and sculptor Alberto Giacometti. This intimate setting allows visitors to experience the profound connection between the two artists, offering a unique glimpse into the electrically curated hotel scattered with works by Gio Ponti and Julian Schnabel.

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In Zuoz, the Hotel Castell features an extensive art collection, that includes works by Nicolas Party, Lawrence Weiner, and Tadashi Kawamata. The collection also includes a permanent installation by James Turrell called The Skyspace Piz Uter, a walk-in sculpture that offers visitors an immersive experience of light and space, blending art seamlessly with the surrounding alpine environment.

Gstaad, long known for its luxury, is embracing contemporary art with increasing enthusiasm. Gstaad Art Week has become a highlight of the season, with installations and exhibitions appearing throughout the village. Maze fair had its second year in Gstaad, bringing 25 well known galleries to the mountains. Gagosian is leading the charge, presenting exhibitions of Urs Fischer and Rick Lowe, reinforcing the town’s emergence as a serious art destination.

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Aspen has long held a dual identity: an elite ski destination and a flair for good taste. The Aspen Art Museum remains at the heart of its creative pulse, with a major winter exhibition by Ugo Rondinone, whose minimalist, poetic installations echo the surrounding landscape. Baldwin Gallery is presenting a show by Erwin Wurm, known for his humor-infused, thought-provoking sculptures. Galerie Maximillian is featuring works by Charles Gaines, McArthur Binion, Stanley Whitney, and Idris Khan. There is also Valley Fine Arts which specializes in Edward Curtis, an American photographer.

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In Jackson Hole, Wyoming, where the rugged beauty of the Tetons dominates every view, art takes on a distinctly regional identity. The National Museum of Wildlife Art, built into the mountainside, holds an extraordinary collection that bridges the past and present, celebrating both the mythology and contemporary interpretations of the American West. Beyond the museum, the town’s galleries continue to bring fresh perspectives to Western themes, blending traditional forms with modern abstraction.

In Lech, Austria nestled in the landscape is Skyspace Lech, a permanent James Turrell installation set high in the mountains. This walk-in light sculpture invites visitors to experience the interplay between sky and colour, shifting with the natural light at sunrise and sunset. The Skyspace, accessed through a tunnel carved into the mountainside, is an extraordinary fusion of art and environment, creating a meditative space where the vastness of the sky feels intimately connected to the land.

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While these storied destinations continue to lead the way in merging art and winter culture, the future of ski resorts as creative spaces is being reimagined. A new, highly anticipated ski park in Powder Mountain Utah, backed by Netflix co-founder Reed Hastings, is set to become an artistic and architectural landmark, featuring site-specific works by James Turrell and Jenny Holzer. With Turrell’s immersive light installations and Holzer’s conceptual text-based works, this project signals a bold new era where contemporary art and alpine landscapes are seamlessly integrated.

For centuries, the mountains have inspired artists, writers, and collectors, serving as both sanctuary and stage for creative expression. From the Snow Castle of Not Vital to the Lichtenstein bathtub of Gunter Sachs, art in the mountains is embedded within it.

Understanding Andy Warhol’s Shadow Paintings

In 1978, at age 50, the irreverent Pop Art icon, and chronicler of an era, Andy Warhol embarked upon the production of a monumental body of work titled Shadows with the assistance of his entourage at the Factory.

That same year, he also created a smaller version of this body of work, using the same name and following the exact same process and aesthetics.

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Nine of these paintings are on view at our exhibition What’s Up / Twenty Twenty. An ambitious reunion of Warhol’s small Shadows, this viewing experience is unique, as most of Warhol’s series have been split up and sold to lots of individual buyers, making it nearly impossible to reunite them. The monumental Shadows were purchased as a single group by Dia Art Foundation in 1979.

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Like the artist’s famed Marilyn or Mao silkscreens, Shadows is an exercise in obsessive repetition: Two photographs of shadowy forms are printed over and over again in vibrant shades of aqua, violet, coral, and yellow.

Conceived as one painting in multiple parts, with the final number of canvases being determined by the dimensions of an exhibition space, these 102 silkscreened canvas panels formalized the artist’s earlier explorations of abstraction seen the previous year in the Oxidation, Rorschach, and Camouflage paintings. In contrast to the Oxidation or Piss paintings, achieved through a process of staining in which a canvas coated in copper reacted to the acidity of urine spilled or dripped on it, the Shadows panels are silkscreened canvases.

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To understand the radical implications of Warhol’s Shadows, one must begin with the work’s form: the Shadows series was conceived as one painting in multiple parts, the final number of canvases determined by the dimensions of an exhibition space. In its first public presentation, only 83 canvases were shown. They were installed edge to edge, a foot from the floor, in the order that Warhol’s assistants, Ronnie Cutrone and Stephen Mueller, hung them.

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The canvases, which were primed and coated with acrylic paint prior to the printing of the image, show Warhol’s signature palette of bright hues with cheerful excess. While the color palette used for the grounds of the Shadows includes more than a dozen different hues, certain colors that are characteristic of his larger body of work—the translucent violet of Lavender Disaster, 1963, or the aqua green of Turquoise Marilyn, 1964—are present. Unlike the surfaces of earlier paintings, in which thin layers of rolled acrylic paint constituted the backgrounds onto which black pixelated images were silkscreened, the backgrounds of the Shadows canvases were painted with a sponge mop, whose streaks and trails add “gesture” to the picture plane. Seven or eight different screens were used to create Shadows, as evidenced in the slight shifts in scales of dark areas as well as the arbitrary presence of spots of light.

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The “shadows” alternate between positive and negative as they march along the walls of the gallery. Despite the apparent embrace of repetition, Warhol’s “machine method” is nothing but handmade. A significant and intriguing fact about Shadows is the irreproducibility of its assumed reproduction, a point that problematizes his aesthetic of “plagiarism” and positions Warhol’s project as one that is primordially pictorial. This revelation, previously inferred by curator Donna De Salvo in the catalogue for Tate’s 2001 retrospective of Warhol’s work, is crucial to our absorbing this series 39 years after it was created. As De Salvo observed,

“Each of the visual strategies operative in these paintings is the same as those used some 17 years before. As with the earlier silkscreen paintings, although we at first believe each canvas to be the same—a belief emphasized here by the repeated patterns of the shadow—they are not.” Far from replicas, each Shadow corresponds to a form that reveals its space with precision and self-awareness, directing the spectator’s gaze to light, the central subject of the series. By focusing on the shadow to devise light as sparks of color, Warhol returns to the quintessential problem of art: perception. As he asserted, “when I look at things, I always see the space they occupy. I always want the space to reappear, to make a comeback, because it’s lost space when there’s something in it.”
Donna De Salvo, Dia Art Foundation’s senior adjunct curator of special projects.

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