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Blockchain, what? What are NFTs and why all this talk about a ‘revolution’?
If you are interested in contemporary art or perhaps even if you’re not, chances are you have come across the term NFT. For the past year, this seemingly opaque acronym has creeped into any and all art world events, exhibitions, conversations and publications. ArtReview magazine made the timely decision to put NFTs first in their most recent annual “Power 100” ranking, a list that ranks the most influential actors in the contemporary art world. But what are NFTs? Why all this talk about a revolution?
Simply put, NFTs are a technology for digital authentication, which record the ownership and provenance of a digital asset. When you buy an NFT, you acquire what is called a ‘smart contract’, a piece of code that stores all the relevant information about that NFT. In the case of an artwork, your smart contract can include information about the artwork (such as title, year, artist name, the usual…), a link to view the artwork online, proof of ownership, and a full record of the artwork’s provenance.
The real innovation is that this information is stored in a decentralised fashion on the blockchain. No single entity owns that information, and it is accessible to everyone at all times. Confused yet? Think about when you post an image on Instagram. You know that image is stored within Instagram’s centralised servers, and you accept that Instagram can decide to do whatever they want with it, like editing or deleting. A perfect art world example of this is the platform’s control over what counts as art vs nudity, censoring countless artworks and leading artists like painter Lisa Yuskavage to have abandoned the platform altogether in protest. When you publish information on the blockchain, nobody controls that data and therefore nobody can edit or delete it, not even you!
For an industry that has historically been cautious, if not dismissive of new technologies, NFTs have been hard to ignore in today’s art world. So, does it merit the status of ‘revolution’? For me, the short answer is probably yes and here are a few reasons why.
My first argument takes a broad approach. If you believe we are moving towards an increasingly digital world (how much time do you spend online per day? Compared to 10 years ago? 20 years ago?) and you believe human nature will always value ownership (I do…), then you can agree that a technology which facilitates digital ownership is an inevitable revolution for humanity.
More specifically for the art world, this technology could change the power dynamic that exists between artists and collectors, challenging the business model that has prevailed to date. Historically, artists have not really benefitted from the growing interest in their work. When you see an incredible record for an artwork at auction, chances are the artist originally sold the same work at a fraction of the price. The real winners are the sale brokers (the galleries, advisors, auction houses) and the collectors reaping the profits from the artwork resale. Imagine being artist Amoako Boafo back in February 2020, when his artwork The Lemon Bathing Suit sold at auction for over 10 times its estimate and more than 3,000 percent what he had sold it for originally, and not seeing a single cent from the transaction! NFTs allow artists to embed all kinds of rules into the smart contracts for their NFT artworks. To date, this has primarily taken the form of implementing resale royalties which awards the original creator a percentage of any sale of the NFT, forever.
Another area ripe for revolution is the creator economy. Blockchain technology provides the tools for artists, galleries, and public art institutions to create unique economies around their existing communities. Artists today are excited by the idea of using NFTs to interact with their followers and collectors in their own terms. When they release an NFT, they can decide what it looks like, what it is worth, and what it represents. An interesting example of this is artist Tom Sachs’ participatory NFT project titled Rocket Factory from 2021, where users were invited to collect and assemble NFTs representing components of a rocket to then schedule actual rocket launches of physical model counterparts that had also been designed by the artist.
Artists could push the potential for community building further by providing exclusive access to their artistic process or host intimate studio visits to anyone who owns one of their NFTs. A museum could also make use of NFTs to fundraise for a costly public artwork commission. The difference with simply donating money or paying for access to these perks is that the value of the NFT (as an artwork in its own right) could increase over time. It almost feels like a new form of patronage with a speculative value.
In any case, we must not ignore the reality that teenagers today are already completely used to the idea of attributing value to digital assets. We do not need to convince the people that in ten years will be productive members of society, with incomes and spending money, about the value of blockchain technology. Does it therefore not make sense to start riding the wave now of this inevitable conclusion?
I am compelled to conclude this column with one final observation. Though NFTs have been around for a while, they only became mainstream in the past year when they took the art world by storm. The unparalleled momentum NFTs gained beyond the tech world through artistic adoption have demonstrated time and again that not only are NFTs influencing the art world but the opposite is also true: the art world has been and will continue to be a driving force in shaping the future of this revolutionary technology.
Blockchain, what? is a monthly column on the LVH ART JOURNAL by Carlota Dochao Naveira exploring how crypto, NFTs and Web3 may revolutionise the art world.
Blurring Boundaries: 5 Women Artists Oscillating Between Figurative and Abstract Art
For our latest line-up of exceptional artists to watch, let’s cast a light on five women artists whose unique visual language gained critical international acclaim as well as institutional recognition these last two decades. Each artist developed new modes of creative expression, unsusceptible to limited classification, oscillating between the identifiable and indefinable, and all share the desire to convey the complexities of the human experience.
Lynette Yiadom-Boakye
A beguiling sense of intimacy, elegance and subtlety pervades Lynette Yiadom-Boakye’s paintings. Rendered in loose and descriptive brushstrokes, the ambiguous and mysterious characters she depicts stem from her sheer imagination. They never provide an explicit narrative nor abide to a specific storytelling role. Historically transcendent, each possesses open-ended qualities and lure the viewer both mentally and physically. Most common in her paintings are the averted and diverted gazes of her characters who rarely meet the viewer’s, their vague identities leaving space for suggestion and speculation. Lynette Yiadom-Boakye’s works are coupled with poetic and elusive titles that give no indication as to what is taking place on the canvas. The artist has named Yan-Pei Ming as an influence in her approach to portraiture through his elimination of its traditional function as a topological identification, his removal of time and space signs, thus rendering impossible such an identification in the display of elements; and offering instead a clear space for interpretation. The painter and author, who studied at the Royal Academy of Arts, was the first black woman to be nominated for the prestigious Turner Prize in 2013. She showed nine commissioned works at the Venice Biennale in the critically acclaimed Ghana pavilion at the Venice Biennale in 2019, and this month Tate Britain is set to present the first major retrospective of her work, bringing together around 80 paintings and works on paper spanning almost two decades. Lynette Yiadom-Boakye’s artworks are part of numerous institutional collections including the Tate Collection, London; the Victoria and Albert Museum, London; and the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New-York City.
Njideka Akunyili-Crosby
In her cinematic collage paintings on paper, MacArthur Genius Grant winner Njideka Akunyili-Crosby recreates the quiet pleasures of domestic life and invites the viewer into her deeply personal universe. Akunyili-Crosby was born in 1983 in Nigeria where she lived until she left to study visual arts in America in 1999. Her work is a fusion of references and layers that are profoundly imbued with her experiences which parallel her identity as a Nigerian-American woman. She draws on historical approaches to painting, while still infusing her canvases with her own cultural and traditional background: Her work conflates and overlaps various techniques which metaphorically refer to the manifold layering which constitutes her own identity. The artist uses paint, pencil, collage and Xerox transfer techniques to render interior spaces. The backgrounds in her latest series, ‘The Predecessors’, are concurrently based on Dutch artist Hammershoi’s paintings inspired by his domestic life, the limited palette and rectangular shapes of American artist Josef Albers, and the vibrant colour palette of Peter Halley with whom the artist studied. Equally inspired by writers from Africa, Akunyili-Crosby cites Nigerian authors Chinua Achebe and Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, or Kenyan writer Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o as influential in her approach to painting by their use of writing as a medium to tell and expand on inherited traditions. Njideka Akunyili Crosby is the recipient of several notable awards: The MacArthur Fellowship in 2017 and the Financial Times’ Women of the Year’ in 2016; she also made the ‘Future Generation Art Prize’ 2017 Shortlist. Her work is featured in the major museum collections including The Tate, London, Zeitz MOCAA, Cape Town; LACMA, Los Angeles,; the MOMA,New-York; and the Whitney Museum of American Art.
Jadé Fadojutimi
At just 27, Jadé Fadojutimi is the youngest artist to be ever collected by the Tate. Fadojutimi’s vibrant paintings in oil pastel toe the line between figuration and total abstraction. The artist holds a BA from the Slade School of Fine Art and an MA from the Royal College of Art. Her work is a merging of influences ranging from Japanese anime, berber textiles, fashion, and objects that constitute her everyday life. Jesture, her latest series of paintings exhibited at Pippy Houldsworth Gallery in London, were executed during quarantine. Fadojutimi used this time of seclusion to fully immerse herself into her art and thoroughly imbricate her life, feelings and experiences of isolation into her work. At first glance, her compositions seem abstract, but one soon recognizes the energy of figures, pronounced floral motifs and eclectic swatches of fabric that are recurrent in her paintings. In a conversation with Talkart following her show at Pippy Houldsworth gallery, the artist mentioned how she frequently bought flowers for herself during quarantine in order to cope with the times. The floral arrangements on her table would consequently share the same colour palette as her artworks. Jadé Fadojutimi will be participating in the 2021 Liverpool Biennial, and will present a solo show at the Institute of Contemporary Art, Miami later in the year.
“We are all colours that are constantly fluctuating, we change every day, we change every minute, and it was a wonderful thing to think about in terms of why these paintings feel so different to me all the time, because I am constantly changing, and the colours I am experiencing are constantly changing. I don’t want to use colour literally, but it’s more of a synaesthesia of sorts.”
Jadé Fadojutimi
Julie Mehretu
Mehretu’s celebrated large, gestural and bold monumental abstract geographies are imbued with tension and dynamism. Initially, her works look completely abstract but as you come closer to her paintings, elements of time, place and history start to appear. Julie Mehretu combines architectural structures into her compositions which are deeply informed by the radical shifts in her life. Mehretu’s family left Ethiopia for America in the 1970s after the Derg military regime overthrew Emperor Haile Selassie. She grew up in Michigan then studied at the Université Cheikh Anta Diop in Dakar, Senegal. She went on to earn her MFA in painting from the Rhode Island School of Design in Providence, USA. The artist fuses abstract and figurative elements to break with a singular structure and combines architectural views, street plans into unified compositions. There are various reading levels to Mehretu’s work, of feeling and engaging with the whole picture, rather than one single perspective, her works seem to inhabit multiple dimensions. Looking at the artist’s paintings, one notices a confluence of symbols that appear as a flux, a cartography that mirrors her trajectory in life. She states that her work pertains to an in-between dimension where spatial, geographical and psychological elements informed by her life come together. Julie Mehretu is the recipient of numerous awards including the Whitney’s American Art Award and a MacArthur Foundation Fellowship. Mehretu’s work has been exhibited worldwide, including in solo shows at the Guggenheim Museum, New York (accompanied by an exhibition catalogue); Deutsche Guggenheim Museum, Berlin; and Detroit Institute of Arts, Detroit. Her art is also in the permanent collections of the following institutions: The Museum of Modern Art, New York; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco; Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; and the National Gallery of Art, Washington DC, among others.
Toyin Ojih Odutola
Shortlisted for the Appollo Artist of the Year Award, Toyin Ojih Odutola is best known for her intricate luminous drawings which delve into fascinating visual storytelling. Ojih Odutola was born in Nigeria in 1985 until her family moved to America in 1990, where she now lives and works in New-York City. Through her use of coloured pencil, graphite and ink, she explores the multifarious textures of the scenes and characters she draws. Her critically acclaimed exhibition ‘A Counterveiling Theory’ this summer at the Barbican Centre in London featured forty drawings involving an ancient civilization set in the Plateau state of central Nigeria. Ojih Odutola’s family played a crucial role in her choice of themes as she grew up in a family where oratory and storytelling were an important part of her Nigerian culture. More recently, Toyin Ojih Odutola presented an intimate virtual show ‘Tell Me a Story I don’t Care if it’s True’ at Jack Shainman gallery in New-York, comprised of free-flowing diptych drawings paired with written vignettes that the artist developed during quarantine. The exhibition title echoes the physical state in which the artist found herself, yearning for sense and certainty in a confusing and alarming world state. Despite being associated, these text works and drawings each stand on their own, their meaning taking diverse significations depending on the viewer’s own narrative, imagination or projections. Odutola’s works have been exhibited and can be found in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art, New York; the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; The Studio Museum in Harlem, New York; the Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston; The Art Institute of Chicago; Princeton University Art Museum; and the Smithsonian National Museum of African Art, Washington, D.C., amongst others.
“I’m looking for that in-between state in an individual where the overarching definition is lost”.
Toyin Ojih Odutola
Blurring the Lines: Abstraction and Figuration in Contemporary Art
The human body has always been at the center of how we understand facets of identity such as gender, sexuality, race, and ethnicity. Throughout art history, the female body has been idealized and objectified, most often through the eyes of male artists.
The very first depiction of the female body – a prehistoric figurine called ‘The Venus of Willendorf’ – presented the female body as bulbous and exaggerated, as a symbol of fertility and motherhood. Exaggeration and idealization of the female figure continued throughout Greek and Roman art and sculpture, leading into the Renaissance and Baroque periods where artists like Sandro Botticelli and Diego Velázquez celebrated women for their beauty but dismissed them of compositions that held more complex meanings or true reflections of the female experience.
As in Velázquez’s famous depiction of ‘The Rokeby Venus’, as well as virtually all pictures of women, passivity is the norm, whether manifested as softness, slack musculature, or a deferential pose.
However, in recent decades, female artists made it their mission to actively reclaim the body as a subject in order to open up new dialogs relating to the contemporary female experience. No longer concerned with idealizing the beauty and curves of the female figure, they are using their brush strokes to break down the body and its historic symbolism, presenting it as something which is constantly changing and evolving, a true reflection of our time.
Many of the female painters leading this act of reclaiming the female body and the female narrative in art are also blurring the lines between abstraction and figuration. A curious balance between the two genres of painting allows for these artists to approach ideas surrounding the body and identity without playing into the idealization that female bodies have been subjected to throughout art history.
The work of British artist, Tracey Emin, exemplifies this blurring of genres. Using her own body as her subject, she maps out only the faint outline and curves of her figure, then begins layering explosions of blood red paint, bruises the body with pinks strokes, and washes the canvas over with cool tones to envelop the body in a haze of emotion. For Emin, her work is fiercely personal and intimate, using her paintings as a form of cathartic release in response to the traumatic events she’s endured throughout her life and career. Many of the paintings pull from her experience of abortions, sexual abuse and battling cancer, and by balancing her self-portraiture with layers of abstraction, erasure, and haziness, she is able to open up the dialogue to sensitive or taboo topics without alienating the viewer or playing into traditional notions of femininity.
Some artists have taken a more targeted aim at the traditions in painting and their depictions of the female form. Painter Cecily Brown, draws from the compositions of her predecessors and transforms them into scenes of ecstasy and sexual encounters, with bodies blending and overlapping together, a melting pot of contemporary intimacy and expression. This is most evident in her painting, ‘Body [After Sickert]’ (2022), with which she reconstructs Walter Sickert’s ‘Reclining Nude (Thin Adeline)’ (1906). Brown creates an abstracted version of Sickert’s composition of a naked woman sprawled across the bed. As if in an attempt to remove his male gaze, she removes the woman of any identity and washes her body over with frenetic, rosey strokes. While Sickert’s female body was stationary, cold-skinned and objectified, Brown’s female body is in motion and alive. Blurring the lines between figuration and abstraction, her art invades and destroys the notion that sex should be kept private and behind closed doors. She releases her bodies into a world of passion and unbound intimacy.
Female artists are continuously finding unique ways to merge figuration with abstraction. For American artist, Christina Quarles, she pushes bodies into a space where they bend and contort into mutated, horror-like forms. As the bodies on her canvases twist and dislocate, she creates an approach to the contemporary body that reflects a overarching desire to tap into something that hovers between the masculine and feminine, the grotesque and the beautiful, and that highlights the fluidity and diversity of gender and sexuality in the 21st century. As with Tracey Emin and Cecily Brown, Quarles challenges the dominant narratives surrounding the contemporary body and create a space for diverse expressions of sex, gender and identity.
UNDERSTANDING BRENT WADDEN’S WOVEN PAINTINGS
What’s Up artist Brent Wadden is acclaimed for his dazzling abstract geometric weavings, inspired by the traditional tapestry techniques of folk artists in his native NovaScotia, Bauhaus tapestries, and the quilts of Gee’s Bend, an African American hamlet along the Alabama River. The Berlin-based artist aims to challenge the medium hierarchy in the fine arts, acknowledging that textiles are often not respected as art.
“It’s hard to explain, but I can admire a Picasso just as much as a crusty wooden lawn ornament my uncle made in 1987.” Brent Wadden’s work references and aesthetics are perfectly summarised by this statement, as he combines the millennial tradition of tapestry with modernist compositions.
In order to fully understand Wadden’s archetypes and the tradition in which his art can be included, we have to take few sliding steps backwards. The invention of the practice of weaving is dated back to around 27.000 years ago and, alongside with cave paintings, it is considered to be one of the most ancient vehicle of communications and meaning. Today the word “textile art” encompasses embroideries, tapestries, weavings and many other threads techniques that in the past have been relegated under a general and less flattering label of “crafts”. The reasons behind the dismissal of tapestry from the rank of fine art are many, however one has for sure to do with gender, as this tradition was considered part of the realm of “women’s craft”. Nevertheless, it is thanks to female artists if this tradition underwent to a renaissance in the last century, from Anni Albers, who is considered the godmother of textile art, to the feminist movement in the 1970s, the decade that marks the real turning point for the resurgence of these techniques. Artists of the caliber of Judy Chicago and Miriam Schapiro employed tapestry to explore contemporary issues such as gender, identity and sexuality, pushing the boundaries between crafts and fine art and demonstrating how and why textile can be considered art. During the same years, theItalian artist Alighiero Boetti was starting what would have become a long and prolific collaboration with Afghan craftswomen, to whom he commissioned 150 embroidered world maps and many other textile works.
Brent Wadden originally studied painting, however, after having been introduced to weaving in 2004, it is almost a decade now that he mainly works as a self-taught waiver. Nevertheless, he still considers his works as paintings, due to the fact that he pierces on canvas his handmade woven weavings, creating geometric abstractions that recall well-known Leitmotiv of Abstract Expressionism and Op-art. The reference to the first art movement becomes even clearer in the light of the words used by Steven Naifeh and Gregory White Smith to describe Jackson Pollock’s artistic process in the biography of the artist published in the 1990s: “In his art, he concealed his images with layers of paint, systematically weaving them into an impenetrable web of lines, dribbles, spills and drips”. On the other hand, the Op-art inspiration is evident especially in his early weaved works, such as the series Alignment (2013-2014), where the artist constructs geometric patterns taking advantage of the contrast create by the exclusive use of black and white fibres, which helped in further emphasising his structural determination.
Shortly after, from his series TBT (2014), Wadden starts to experiment with colours as well, giving an increasing importance to a vivid polychrome palette composed by glowing oranges, bright reds, and deep blues. The yarns are a compound of synthetic and natural fibres, such as cotton, wool, acrylic, mostly recycled and obtained from second-hand shops, online sales and other wavers. This miscellany of materials leads to a miscellany of textures that produces a sinuous tactile and visual striping, and it maintains the juxtaposition of light and dark monochromes that builds a disorientating sense of the surfaces.
Nevertheless, the geometric rigour is just apparent. Indeed, Brent Wadden’s works might have flaws in the alignment of the counterparts or inconsistencies of shapes and lines, seldom creating irregular diagonals that are not purposely polished with a loom. This “cultivation of the imperfect” concur in giving a further expressive touch and in making the process more visible. Actually, the artist even changes looms every year so, with the objective of not to completely master his practice and preserve a genuine humility towards his own faux pas. The choice of the technique and materials responds to Wadden’s necessity of addressing the raging consumerism that deeply affects our modern society, inviting to reject the immediacy of the disposable culture: “The weavings retain a kind of energy which I feel partially comes from the laborious process of making, which is both meditative and physically demanding”. Indeed, hand-weaving is a time consuming process that deliberately does not allow Wadden to aspire to an immediate execution and, therefore, to the possibility of a mass production, and this dialogue between traditional art and Modernism remains a constant across all his work.
12 Artists To Watch This Fall
Sophia Loeb
Sophia Loeb (b. 1997 São Paulo, Brazil) lives and works in London, she previously attended Royal College of Art for a Masters in Painting. Sophia’s work touches on a concern for the natural world and conveys harmony between human and nature. Inspired by her early childhood in Brazil, she explores the interconnectedness of living beings, observing humanity’s responsibility over the environment. Natural landscapes and biological forms trickle through in Sophia’s paintings and sculptures. Sophia’s meditative practice influences her creative process. Her works touch on consciousness and the phenomena that everything is fundamentally interconnected. Sophia is represented by Pippy Houldsworth gallery and will have works in the upcoming London Frieze and is currently showing at Aberto Institution in São Paulo.
Norberto Spina
Norberto Spina (b. 1995, Milan) lives and works in London. His work explores the hidden tensions in reality through a multi-step process combining various mediums: photography, drawing, and painting. His work really draws on collective memory, using archival images and family photos, and Italian cultural iconography. Norberto’s practice involves layering materials and images, followed by a process of subtraction. In the subtraction process he scratches the canvas with blunt objects to create an excruciating effect. This method of cutting into and scarring the canvas reflects fragmented memories. Norberto is in his final year at Royal Academy of Art.
Salvatore Emblema
Salvatore Emblema (b. 1929- 2006, Terzigno, Naples) Salvatore is from Terzingo, which is located at the base of Mt. Vesuvius and overlooks the historic site of Pompeii. In 1944 he witnessed the eruption of the volcano and observed his hometown’s destruction. This left an impacting impression on the artist. His work emphasizes the interplay of light, texture, and transparency. He used natural material mediums, such as jute, leaves, and volcanic earth. The raw materials reflect back to his surroundings in southern Italy and also New York. He is represented by White Cube and currently has a show at White Cube, Paris until October 5th.
Alia Ahmad
Alia Ahmad (b. 1996, Riyadh) lives and works in Riyadh, previously she attended Royal College of Art for her Masters in Painting . Alia’s work explores movement, place, and belonging through the convergence of landscape and memory. She references the migratory rituals of the Bedouin and the environmental changes of her home city, Riyadh. Her paintings are marked by bold Fauvist colors and gestural brushstrokes. Alia’s works explore the rich cultural heritage of storytelling and weaving particular to the nomadic Bedouin tribes. Her compositions are inspired by Al Sadu weaving and Arabic calligraphy. Alia recently showed with Albion Jeune gallery in London and White Cube spring 2024.
Julie Beaufils
Julie Beaufils (b. 1987, Paris) is a French artist known for capturing fleeting moments of youth culture in her paintings. Julie studied at École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts Paris and later at USC’S Roski School of Art in Los Angeles, she is now based in Paris. Julie is a traveler and drawn to desert landscapes, which she considers a mirror for mental clarity. Her muted palette and hazy brush strokes evoke memory, thoughtfulness, and reference to digital imagery. Julie often draws inspiration from TV shows and music videos from her youth, reimagining them in oil paintings to explore nostalgia and the relevance of digital imagery. Julie is represented by Matthew Brown gallery in 2025 will have solo exhibitions at Matthew Brown New York and Yuz Museum Shanghai.
Orfeo Tagiuri
Orfeo Tagiuri (b.1991 Massachusetts) attended Stanford University to study English and then completed a Masters at Slade School of Fine Art and now lives and paints in London. His practice of painting and drawing explores the intimacy of beginning relationships through emotional symbolism. He blends emotions and memory with his familiar visuals to capture tender moments, such as a holding of hands, exchange of cigarettes, or intimate embraces. He uses a layering process of carving and staining, resembling natural erosion and hinting at nostalgic and gratitude of time. Orfeo uses motifs like flowers, wings and hands to convey love and vulnerability.
Francesco Cima
Francesco Cima (b. 1990) is a Venice based painter who attended Academy of Fine Arts, Venice. Francesco’s work focuses on thoughtful landscapes. Through uses of ephemeral, emotional lighting and delicate brushstrokes, Francesco creates mystic, otherworldly landscapes. Francesco nods to inspiration from northern western Tuscany as he creates his scenes. His forestscapes and treescapes evoke mystery, curiosity, and peacefulness. Francesco is represented by Amanita gallery and has an upcoming show in New York this November.
Oliver Bak
Oliver Bak (b. 1992, Denmark) lives and works in Copenhagen. Oliver’s paintings explore the intersection between past and present, blending chromatic backgrounds with vague landscapes. His landscapes feature human figures, animals, and natural elements. His work blurs the boundaries between figures and their surroundings, hinting at internal emotional and social tensions. Through layered processes, his paintings shift away from source material to create their own reality and otherworldly scene. Bak’s motifs evoke a quiet romanticism, where figures emerge from and blend into their environments, expressing protection, empowerment, and hidden intensity.
Rafal Topolewski
Rafał Topolewski (b. 1983, Poland) explores the tension between abstraction and figuration. Rafal studied architecture and then Fine Art at Royal Academy of Arts. His work features surreal and ambiguous spaces where human figures appear distorted or obscured, reflecting a sense of psychological depth and complexity. These references are digitally spliced, overlaid, and manipulated collages that form the foundation of each painting. Rapfal’s use of layered textures and muted color palettes enhances the emotional ambiguity in his work. Rapfal is represented by Grimm Gallery.
Tomas Leth
Tomas Leth ( b. 1981, Denmark) lives and works in Copenhagen, and he received a Masters in Fine Art from the Royal Danish Academy. His work focuses on layered paintings that explore themes of memory, perception, and ritual. Tomas’s pieces often evoke a dreamy atmosphere, blending natural forms with gestural brushstrokes and dense color fields. Inspired by his nocturnal walks in Copenhagen, Tomas captures the fluid, shifting nature of human perception, depicting them in low-light settings. His paintings reflect a balance between figuration and abstraction, creating surreal landscapes that invite viewers into ambiguous, introspective spaces. Tomas will be showing with ADZ Gallery in Lisbon, Portugal.
Jamiu Agboke
Jamiu Agboke ( b. 1989, Lagos, Nigeria) is a France-based artist who graduated from Royal Drawing School in London. Jamiu’s work explores identity, displacement, and human experience. He uses a combination of painting, drawing, and mixed media to create vivid, emotionally charged pieces. Jamiu is influenced by his personal experiences and sociopolitical themes. He incorporates vibrant, moody colors and abstract forms to express the complexities of memory and belonging. Jamiu has an upcoming show in London opening October 7th at Siegfried Contemporary.
Dustin Emory
Dustin Emory (b. 1999, Atlanta, Georgia) is a self taught artist whose work focuses on memory, identity, and the passage of time. His paintings often feature detailed and surreal scenes, blending realism with abstraction to create dreamlike narratives. Dustin draws from personal experiences and uses symbolism to explore emotional and psychological landscapes, incorporating layers of meaning into his work. His pieces are compelling, marked by a striking use of color and intricate compositions.
10 Berlin Based Artists At The Forefront of Contemporary Culture
New York, London, Hong Kong; the art world’s commercial hubs, with collectors in seemingly every corner.
These cities lure enthusiasts and connoisseurs from all over, flocking to partake in thrilling auctions and seductive art fairs. For breathtaking exhibitions, and state-of-the-art architecture, we travel to Paris, Florence and Vienna. However, the world’s cultural epicentre and creative powerhouse finds its home in Berlin.
For decades, artists have chosen this German city as their place to live and work, channeling its whimsical and hedonistic atmosphere into their creative spirit.“Berlin is the most liberal, artist-friendly place I have ever been to”, says Mr. Klaus Biesenbach, MoMA’s director and chief curator, who lived in Berlin for 15 years.
“Berlin is the most liberal, artist-friendly place I have ever been to”
Klaus BiesenbachHaving a plethora of world-class galleries, exceptional museums and spacious studios would be tantalising enough, but it’s the city’s ability to embrace intellectual curiosity, and foster creativity, that has attracted artists since the 1920s.
Indeed, Berlin has been a cultural epicentre since the Weimar Era, with the birth and flowering of the Bauhaus movement and the avant-garde paintings of George Grosz and Ernst Ludwig Kirchner. “It was such a vibrant cultural place in the 1920s. The early days of Modernism were lived there”- says of Berlin Monica Sprüth, co-owner of the gallery Sprüth Magers.
“It was such a vibrant cultural place in the 1920s. The early days of Modernism were lived there”
Monica SprüthOnly shortly after this creative burst, the Nazis labeled such cultural innovations as “degenerate art” leading many artefacts to be confiscated, and eventually lost forever. What’s more, during World War II, Berlin was heavily destroyed; and the following years of Cold War gave the city the famous Berlin Wall, which divided the capital between East and West for the 28 years between 1961 and 1989.
Both in spite of, and because of such adversity, Berlin has fascinatingly managed to retain its charm and alluring character, combining a dense sense of history with trailblazing contemporaneity; and since the fall of the wall, the city has been nourishing an ever growing community of artists pioneering both commitment to their craft and a wider cultural awareness. What we find nowadays in Berlin is a creative melting pot, rivalling that of the legendary 1920s.
Here is our list of favourite Berlin based artists at the forefront of contemporary culture:
Donna Huanca
Born 1980, Chicago, IL
The interdisciplinary practice of Donna Huanca evolves across painting, sculpture, performance, choreography, video and sound, crafting a unique visual language based in collaboration and innovation. At the very heart of her oeuvre is an exploration of the human body and its relationship to space and identity. Her live sculptural pieces, or in the artist’s words, ‘original paintings’, work primarily with the nude female body, drawing particular attention to the skin as a complex surface via which we experience the world around us.
Wolfgang Tillmans
Born 1968, Remscheid, West Germany
Few artists have shaped the scope of contemporary art and influenced a younger generation more than Wolfgang Tillmans. Emerging in the 1990s with his snapshot documentations of youths, clubs, and LGBTQ culture, his works have epitomized a new kind of subjectivity in photography, pairing intimacy and playfulness with social critique and the persistent questioning of existing values and hierarchies. Through his seamless integration of genres, subjects, techniques, and exhibition strategies, he has expanded conventional ways of approaching the medium and his practice continues to address the fundamental question of what it means to create pictures in an increasingly image- saturated world.
Jorinde Voigt
Born 1977, Frankfurt, Germany
Jorinde Voigt channels external pulse and physical movements into complex drawn notations, featuring webs of interconnected thoughts, forms and words. Her desire to translate, transcribe and record essentially incommunicable phenomena – including musical dynamism, philosophical notions, personal emotions or her own interior monologue – leads, not to chaos, but rather to a collision between the bygone idealism of compartmentalised modernism and the realisations of a post-modern, universal condition in which everything is interdependent ultimately.
Richard Kennedy
Born 1985, Long Beach, California
A lifelong opera fan, the artist and performer Richard Kennedy translates the elements of theatrical performance into his paintings, reflecting on his personal queer black experience. Upon first look, the lyrical, wildly colourful pictures appear abstract, but there are words carved into the works. Some phrases, like “black unicorn” and “street prophecy,” recur throughout. Kennedy’s approach sees words as an active, transitive force capable of adapting to a variety of contexts, whether it be the street, the club, or the gallery.
Katharina Grosse
Born 1961, Freiburg/Breisgau, Germany.
Widely known for her in situ paintings, in which explosive color is sprayed directly onto architecture, interiors, and landscapes, Katharina Grosse embraces the events and incidents that arise as she works, opening up surfaces and spaces to the countless perceptual possibilities of the medium. Approaching painting as an experience in immersive subjectivity, she uses a spray gun, distancing the artistic act from the hand, and stylizing gesture as a propulsive mark.
Rirkrit Tiravanija
Born 1961, Buenos Aires, Argentina
Using human interaction as his primary material, Rirkrit Tiravanija goes beyond performance to create socially-engaged conceptual works that blur the boundaries of art and bridge the division between public and private. Whether by offering visitors free curry or inviting strangers to drop by and drink tea together in a replica of the artist’s home, Tiravanija initiates ways to enable the public to be a part of the art-making process, what has been called relational aesthetics.
Claudia Comte
Born 1983, Lausanne, Switzerland
Claudia Comte’s oeuvre is a suspension bridge connecting the natural world and the technological advancements of the present. Her sculptures are made of natural materials and smooth and delicate in texture, an intriguing play at the expectation of the materials and the possibilities. Incorporating wall murals, installation, sculpture, and film, Comte’s practice encourages collectors to think critically about the fate of our natural environment. Last year, Comte partnered with TBA21–Academy, an interdisciplinary arts and science organization, to create an underwater sculpture at Jamaica’s East Portland Fish Sanctuary, hoping to encourage ecotourism and coral growth.
Tomás Saraceno
Born 1973, San Miguel de Tucumán, Argentina
Tomás Saraceno’s practice is informed by concepts linking art, life science, and the social sciences. Enmeshed in the junction of these worlds, his floating sculptures, community projects, and immersive installations propose sensory solidarity with the planet through a social, mental, and environmental ecology of practice. In an unorthodox collaboration with cosmic webs, the air, spider/webs and indigenous communities, energies converge in a new practice of solidarity. In our era of climate emergency Saraceno’s work deepens our understanding of environmental justice and interspecies cohabitation through the artist’s initiated projects Aerocene and Arachnophilia.
Alicja Kwade
Born 1970, Katowice, Poland
Alicja Kwade’s work investigates and questions the structures of our reality and society and reflects on the perception of time in our everyday life. Her diverse practice is based around concepts of space, time, science and philosophy and takes shape in sculptural objects, video and even photography. Her work has been exhibited in multiple solo shows in institutions such as The Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Palais de Tokyo in Paris and most recently, The Langen Foundation in Germany.
Olafur Eliasson
Born 1967, Copenhagen, Denmark
Olafur Eliasson’s art is driven by his interests in perception, movement, embodied experience, and feelings of self. He strives to make the concerns of art relevant to society at large. Art, for him, is a crucial means for turning thinking into doing in the world. Eliasson’s works span sculpture, painting, photography, film, and installation. Not limited to the confines of the museum and gallery, his practice engages the broader public sphere through architectural projects, interventions in civic space, arts education, policy- making, and issues of sustainability and climate change.
Berlin Now
It has been over thirty years since the fall of the Berlin Wall. In 1989, the German metropolis that was left divided after WW2 was finally redeemed from its imposed division and entered a path of transformation. Following the fall and the consequent union of the West and Communist cultures, the city burst into creativity and liveliness, creating a fertile environment for creative expression.
At the time, numerous buildings in the Eastern part of the city that once were embassies or factories, were left abandoned and unused, providing a tabula rasa for the city to gather together in uneasy symbiosis and reinvent itself culturally. This new sense of freedom generated an explosion of creativity, energy and culture. Nineties Berlin soon became a loud, colourful and unique playground for art and nightlife. The empty breweries, warehouses and basements became the home of artists and musicians, hyping the city with their hedonistic ideas and artistic production.
“Poor but sexy” was the perfect description for reunited Berlin, but, as predictable, that definition no longer applies. Soon, this wild concentration of artists and culture caught international attention, resulting in a dramatic rise in real estate prices in the city centre. It was at that moment that many artists started migrating southeast towards the outskirts of the city, in the historically industrial neighbourhood of Oberschöneweide. Perhaps it is the flow of the Spree River that is bringing the artists in, or maybe it is just the more accessible prices, but the Oberschöneweide is growing to become the new art epicentre of Berlin.
Internationally acclaimed artists like Tomas Saraceno or Anselm Reyle have moved their studios to the area, reviving industrial buildings along the river in which to let their imaginations run wild. Such is the excitement, that last year the Oberschöneweide caught also the attention of the journalist Gisela Willams, who went to visit the neighbourhood for The New York Times to witness first hand how the artist community is growing in the area.
It is there too, that the renowned gallerist Johann König has announced plans of transforming an old cable factory into a space that will host artists’ studios and residencies. König’s interest came as a natural reaction after Jorinde Voigt and Alicja Kwade, two of his represented artists, moved to the neighbourhood to acquire their homes and studios. But what is the influence that these spaces are having on their art?
Jorinde Voigt
It was in 2017 that Jorinde Voigt took a former warehouse and transformed it into her 10,000-square-foot studio. With the help of the architect Daniel Verhülsdonk, she created what she describes as a ‘huge hall which at first one feels swallowed up by.’ As Verhülsdonk and Voigt came up with the idea of building ‘houses within houses,’ the space also contains a series of multifunctional and distinct areas in the same room. From there, an imponent staircase leads up to a second floor where two separate routes lead to the office, library and privates paces.
Voigt tells Williams that in the design of the studio, colour was also of key importance. Black was used consistently for the floors and walls, while windows varied from different tones of blue and green. As the waters of the Spree River move, colours reflect through the windows onto the walls, and the studio becomes a relaxing and inspiring environment for the creation of Voigt’s celebrated conceptual drawings and collages, resembling sound waves and scientific diagrams.
Alicja Kwade
Not far away from Voigt’s studio is Alicja Kwade’s. Indeed, it was Voigt who convinced Kwade to move into the area, where she now lives and works. Her 9,500-square-foot studio is composed by three large warehouses of metal siding, brick and glass that she connected overtime. The wideness of the space not only allows the artist to store her large-scale installations, but it also has an impact on her artistic process. Indeed, in her interview with Williams, Kwade explained that having such a big space allows for “more professional machinery, more experiments and more communal areas that add to the overall atmosphere on the studio”.
In the first warehouse, looking like a large loft-like space with a little kitchen, Kwade showcases works in different stages of completion. In the middle of the atelier, strings of abacus beads stream down like a waterfall from the ceiling 20 feet above. The last warehouse hosts her office across three floors: ground floor for communal eating and meetings, second floor for the exposition of scaled-up models of her installation and third for her bedroom.
Voigt and Kwade are only two examples of the many incredible artists that occupy the banks of the Spree River. Oberschöneweidein is now this new land yet to be discovered by the mainstream, where the many empty buildings represent endless possibilities.
Beyond the Clock: How Artists Capture the Essence of Time
As the year is coming to a close, our thoughts naturally reflect on the passage of time: how it shapes us, eludes us, and defines our existence. For centuries, artists have grappled with this fleeting concept, turning it into a central theme in their works.
From ancient memento mori paintings, which remind us of life’s fleeting nature, to contemporary explorations of time’s tangible and emotional facets, the subject has inspired countless creative interpretations. Let’s take a look into how some iconic artists have explored and captured the essence of time.
Calder’s Hourglass Motif
Alexander Calder is often celebrated for his kinetic sculptures, but his recurring use of the hourglass motif is less explored and equally fascinating. The hourglass, a traditional and quintessential symbol of time’s passage, appears in his works as a gentle reminder of the delicate balance between permanence and transience. Calder’s hourglasses don’t merely measure time; they embody its fragility, each grain of sand representing a moment slipping irrevocably into the past.
Félix González-Torres, Intimacy and Time
In Untitled (Perfect Lovers), 1991 Félix González-Torres presents two identical battery-operated clocks placed side by side. Over time, the clocks fall out of sync, reflecting the inevitable imperfections of relationships and the quiet tragedy of time’s relentless forward momentum. This work invites diverse interpretations, and highlights the profound beauty of this conceptual masterpiece. It is often interpreted as a double portrait of the artist and his lover, Ross Laycock—who died from AIDS-related complications in 1991, five years before Gonzalez-Torres himself would succumb to the same disease—it carries a deeply personal and poignant significance. The work may appear deceptively simple, yet it speaks volumes about love, loss, and the passage of time, inviting viewers to reflect on the fleeting nature of life and the intimate moments that imbue it with meaning.
“Don’t be afraid of the clocks, they are our time, the time has been so generous to us. We imprinted time with the sweet taste of victory. We conquered fate by meeting at a certain TIME in a certain space. We are a product of the time, therefore we give back credit where it is due: time. We are synchronized, now forever. I love you.”
Felix Gonzalez.
Louise Bourgeois, Time Through a Feminist Lens
Louise Bourgeois’s Woman and Clock from 1994 addresses the pressures of time on the female body and identity. The clock looms large in the work, representing the societal constraints placed on women, particularly around aging and productivity. Viewed through a feminist lens, Bourgeois’s work questions the rigid structures that define women’s lives while embracing the fluidity and emotional complexity of time as a lived experience. This image of a woman winding a clock, trying to control time, is a motif that Bourgeois often returns to in her work. When asked in a 2004 interview why winding clocks was so important to her, Bourgeois explained, “Because to rewind is to make a spiral. And the action demonstrates that even though time is unlimited, there is a limit to how much you can put on it. As you are tightening the spiral you must take care. If you tighten too much you risk breaking it.”
Christian Marclay, The Collective Rhythm of Time
In The Clock, Christian Marclay stitches together thousands of film clips that depict clocks or references to time, such as when James Bond checks his watch at 12:20 a.m.; Meryl Streep turns off an alarm clock at 6:30 a.m.; a pocket watch ticks at 11:53 a.m. as the Titanic departs. He creates a 24-hour montage synchronized to real-world time. The work is both a cinematic masterpiece and a fully functional timepiece.
Building on his background as a musician in Boston and New York’s underground scenes of the late 1970s and 1980s, Marclay has spent five decades merging visual and sonic fragments to explore the intricate interplay between image and sound. This ambitious project captures time as a collective experience, blending personal and universal narratives. The Clock speaks to cinema’s rich history as both a mirror of and escape from reality, a paradox that is ever more central to daily life in today’s era of instant broadcast, streaming services, and artificial intelligence. By watching The Clock, viewers are drawn into a heightened awareness of time’s presence, both in their lives and as a construct we share.
On Kawara, Dates as Markers of Existence and Daily Rituals
On Kawara’s works, particularly his Date Paintings series, transform dates into meditative markers of time’s progression. He began his Today series, or Date Paintings on January 4, 1966, and worked on the series for nearly five decades. The date is written in the language and format of the location where Kawara created the painting. Each piece was crafted with great precision over many hours, following a series of steps that never varied. If a painting was not completed by midnight, he would destroy it. The mechanical and disciplined nature of his routine transforms the creation of each painting into an exercise in meditation. Kawara’s works serve as reminders of life’s relentless rhythm while challenging us to find meaning in the simplest record of time: a date.
Salvador Dalí, Melting Clocks and Surrealist Time
Few images are as iconic as the melting clocks in Salvador Dalí’s The Persistence of Memory from 1931. These surreal, distorted timepieces question our rigid perceptions of time, bending and warping it into an abstract, dreamlike state. Dalí’s clocks remind us that time is not merely mechanical but deeply psychological, capable of stretching and compressing depending on our experiences and psychological state.
In The Persistence of Memory, Dalí captures the quintessential Surrealist vision, yet incorporates elements of tangible reality as well. The distant golden cliffs depict the Catalonian coast, Dalí’s birthplace. The melting watches, soft as overripe cheese—what Dalí described as “the camembert of time”—suggest a collapse of time’s structure. The ants, often a symbol of decay in Dalí’s work, swarm over a gold watch, their presence underscoring the theme of deterioration and emphasizing the unsettling, almost organic quality of the scene. The year prior to creating this painting, Dalí started his “paranoiac-critical method,” a process where he intentionally put himself into states of hallucinations to create his art.
Olafur Eliasson, Ice as a Timekeeper and Symbol of Climate Change
Olafur Eliasson’s Ice Watch takes time into the realm of the natural world. By placing massive chunks of melting glacial ice in urban settings, Eliasson transforms these blocks into natural sundials, marking the passage of time in the form of melting water. This work is not only a reflection on time’s physicality, but also a reminder of its connection to ecological urgency. The slow melting of the ice reflects both the natural rhythms of the Earth and the accelerating effects of climate change. In Ice Watch, time is both a personal experience and a planetary measure, linking human perception with environmental transformation. Like memento mori art, which reminds us of life’s impermanence, Eliasson’s melting ice carries the dual message of inevitable change and the urgency to act before it’s too late.
Edvard Munch: Confronting Mortality in His Self-Portrait
In many of his self-portraits, Edvard Munch portrays himself as desolate and solitary. He confronts his life with unflinching honesty, refusing to mask its hardships. The self-portraits from Munch’s final decade often allude to the inevitability of death. In Self-Portrait between the Clock and the Bed, Munch depicts himself as an aging man, positioned between the clock, a symbol of time’s relentless march, and the bed is a metaphor for death, kind of referring to the final rest. Behind him, a sunlit room filled with his artworks represents the life and legacy he has created, and in front of him a shadow cast on the floor is the shape of a cross, evoking the inevitability of mortality.
Memento Mori and Vanitas: Reflecting on Time’s Fleeting Nature in Art
Historically, memento mori and vanitas art served to remind viewers of life’s impermanence and the inevitability of death. From skulls and decaying flowers to extinguished candles, these symbols encourage reflection on what can be so fleeting in life. Contemporary works continue to explore this fleeting nature and the fascination of time, anchoring us to the universal truth, time waits for no one. As we transition into another new year, these artworks invite us to pause and consider the complexities of time.
Art in the Digital Age: Guyton, Wool, Humphries
Andy Warhol once proclaimed “the reason I’m painting this way is that I want to be a machine”. Although it may have not been apparent at the time, his statement anticipated a major thematic focus for artists of generations to come. Today, more than ever, painters are gripped by the possibilities (and potential risks) of our increasingly digital world. Many of the leading artists today employ machinery to assist in the creative process — from the silkscreen press to inkjet printers — and it speaks to a larger merging of the artist’s hand and the machine’s hand. Ahead of our upcoming exhibition, ‘Double Take’ (which will explore the tensions between painting, technology and machinery), we take a deeper dive at three of the artists who have been at the forefront of this thematic trend.
One of the leading contemporary artists, Christopher Wool, has been to this exploration (and blurring) of the lines between painting and machinery. His practice involves a sophisticated integration of traditional painting techniques fused together with modern technology. He frequently employs digital tools and printing processes to manipulate and transfer images onto canvas. The works often features stencilled or silkscreened letters and patterns, emphasising a mechanical aesthetic that reflects his overarching engagement with mass production and reproduction. His utilisation of technology extends beyond mere tool usage; it becomes a thematic element in his exploration of the intersection between art, technology, and contemporary culture. Wool’s artworks continue to challenge traditional notions of painting by fully embracing the industrial and digital processes that have become integral to artistic creation in the 21st century.
Similarly, Wade Guyton‘s artistic practice revolves around the transformation of digital technologies into tools for creating art. Guyton is renowned for his use of large-format inkjet printers, which he manipulates to produce abstract and expressive compositions. He intentionally exploits the glitches, smudges, and imperfections inherent in the printing process, blurring the line between intention and accident. This approach not only challenges the conventions of painting and printmaking but also raises questions about authorship and the role of machines in art production. Guyton’s artworks reflect a deep engagement with the capabilities and limitations of technology, highlighting the evolving relationship between humans, machines, and artistic expression in the contemporary era. Through their respective practices, both Wool and Guyton exemplify how artists can embrace technology and machinery as integral aspects of their creative processes, pushing the boundaries of artistic innovation and conceptual inquiry.
Two notable female artists who are also working at the intersection between painting and machinery/technology are Jacqueline Humphries and Avery Singer, both developing their own unique visual languages.
For Humphries, she manipulates paint through unconventional means, using tools like squeegees, stencils, and spray guns to create dynamic compositions that evoke the frenetic energy of the digital age. Humphries’ work reflects an engagement with technology not only in its execution but also in its conceptual underpinnings, addressing themes of digitisation and the virtual realm.
Singer, on the other hand, employs 3D modelling software and digital technology as integral parts of her artistic process. She creates complex, hyperrealistic paintings that challenge traditional notions of representation and space. Singer’s work blurs the boundaries between digital and physical realms, exploring the aesthetic possibilities afforded by computer-generated imagery. By embracing technology, Singer reimagines the potential of painting in the contemporary era, highlighting the transformative impact of digital tools on artistic expression.
Double Take, our upcoming exhibition, which explores the intersection between painting, technology and machinery in contemporary art, opens at the end of May in London. Details coming soon.
ART OUTSIDE OF THE BEDROOM: ROBERT MAPPLETHORPE AND FÉLIX GONZÁLEZ-TORRES
Robert Mapplethorpe and Félix González-Torres represent two key figures in the development of contemporary art for making society question the way in which we understand human relationships by taking their private live outside of the bedroom and placing it at the centre of the public eye. Throughout their careers both artists got involved in social and political causes as openly gay men, addressing the beauty, but also the challenges that the gay community experienced during two very eventful decades, between the 1970s and the 1980s. By making their private live and sexual inclinations the main subject of their work, they played a central role in legitimising homosexuality and inspiring cultural activism.
As for their personae, Robert Mapplethorpe was pretty much a good boy harbouring bad boy fantasies and his sophisticated black and white photographs are intentionally provocative; while, González-Torres seemed to be the perfect model for the culture wars of sex and diversity, as he continuously referred to his partner in his works in a more naïve manner than Mapplethorpe. Despite the differences, both artists’ work claimed its place among the art resistance of its time, expressing the urgency of acceptance and inclusivity of their community amongst society.
Although their work doesn’t relate in form, both artists added an essential layer of physicality to their art, touching on common themes natural to all human beings, such as desire and love. Through his photographs, Robert Mapplethorpe caught on camera his urge and fascination with the physical form of the male body. On the other hand, González-Torres conceptual project remained interested in engaging the viewer in a physical as well as in an intellectual manner in order to establish meaning in his pieces, which reflected on the theme of love.
Gay or straight, desire and love are two fundamental feelings that we all are bound to experience in live through our physicality. By touching on these themes, Mapplethorpe and González-Torres generated a much-needed empathy from their audience and successfully brought society closer to the gay community through their bold and brave artistic projects.
Robert Mapplethorpe
Mapplethorpe became famous in the 1970s for his male nudes and sexually explicit imagery. Because his photos tested the boundaries of creative freedom, his work now withholds a significant place in the history of artistic struggle to truthfully portray the world.
As Mapplethorpe used to photograph his friends, who were influential figures, his pictures were often described as the documentary portrayals of the cultures of the time, exposing its free-spirited nature, known for its sexual mores. In the 1970s, Mapplethorpe became interested in documenting his friends in the New York’s homoerotic and S&M underground scene, often portraying his sitters nude and involved in sexual acts. Although his photographs were considered quite socially challenging at the time, the photographer did not think of his art as political, but rather as a research for beauty.
Mapplethorpe saw perfection in the physical form, while also posing questions around identity, representation of gender and individuality. Often, his work is associated with Greek sculptures as he followed the same symmetry and geometry used by the ancient masters. In fact, in 2009, his photographs were shown alongside Renaissance masterpieces at the Galleria dell ’Accademia in Florence.
As subjects, the artist preferred the male figure, more specifically athletic and black men, including models, dancers and bodybuilders; some of his sitters included, Ken Moddy and Derrick Cross. In 1986, Mapplethorpe published the Black Book which included pictures of fragmented bodies, such as an arm or the torso. Describing his technique, Mapplethorpe said ‘I zero in on the body part that I consider the most perfect in that particular model.’
Although form was the main artistic concern of the artist, he was a master in creating daring images. Mapplethorpe’s ability in generating a dialogue between his photographs and an era of sexual liberation lied in the aesthetics and politics of framing.
For example, in Brian Ridley and Lyle Heeter (1979), a homosexual couple is depicted in leather outfits and bondage equipment while sitting in a living room, which seemed to belong to a very conservative setting. The contrast created between these two elements generated a provocative image, through which Mapplethorpe unveiled the truth that extreme desires are often part of the everyday.
Mapplethorpe usage of strong imagery, such as male nudes and sadomasochism, placed his work in the centre of the debate around self-expression and censorship in the arts. For Mapplethorpe, it was about being able to express one’s true self and the many layers of an individual’s personality. Coming from a Catholic family, Mapplethorpe used photography as a way to deal with his sense of guilt for being homosexual, but also as a way to question the authority of the Church. In his Self Portrait (1983), Mapplethorpe addressed his ‘sinful’ behaviour by posing as a rebellious soldier in front of a black star, symbol of the devil.
Mapplethorpe’s shocking imagery and homosexual subjects granted him a place in the culture wars, which took place between the1980s and the 1990s. During this time, members of the conservative religious group criticised artists for their blasphemous work, while other prominent figures in the arts and popular culture defended freedom of expression. Members of the latter group included Martin Scorsese, Madonna and Andres Serrano.
Félix González-Torres
When Félix González-Torres started getting recognition in the art world, he was already openly gay, and his homosexuality was seen as an influential aspect in his artistic work. In 1987, the Cuban-American artist joined the Group material, a New York-based group whose intentions were to work collaboratively towards cultural activism and community education.
Treating similar topics to Mapplethorpe, González-Torres became known for his minimal often-interactive installations. Although his art presents itself in a more playful manner compared to Mapplethorpe’s, it deals with darker themes. In fact, while Mapplethorpe’s photography was much more concerned with portraying the homosexual community, and bringing to light the underground life of the New York scene, González-Torres was more interested in discussing themes of love and loss, and the obstacles that his community had to overcome.
The artist created various works that touched on the AIDS pandemic of the 1980s, which involved himself personally as well as people who were incredibly closed to him. In 1991, after his partner Ross Laycock passed away, González-Torres created the work “Untitled”, a series of billboards showing black and white pictures of the artist’s empty bed, trying to raise consciousness on the illness that at the beginning was thought to affect only homosexuals. Another important work by the artist, which helped him draw the attention to the then unknown history of the gay community, is a series of billboards produced in 1989 showing a black page with white typing tracing a non-linear chronology of significant events in the history of the gay-rights movement.
In his installations, González-Torres used extremely curious materials; lightbulbs fade away, candles burn out and dispersed candies are eaten by the public. These materials enabled González-Torres to address the topic of existentialism. On one hand the material’s dispersion represents the passing of time and the process of dying. On the other, they represent a possibility of regeneration.
Creating works with multiple meanings was a common practice for this artist. For example, one reading for the work “Untitled” (portrait of Ross in L.A), represented the attention the artist drew to the senses, involving sight, touching and taste, evoking the earthly pleasures the audience experience in their normal life. While, another reading, referred to the dissolution of the gay community as a result of the AIDS pandemic; a person eating a candy and throwing it away criticised society for ignoring the existence of the illness.
Even if in extremely different ways, these two artists successfully pushed the barriers of their time and successfully told the story of their community, which eventually resulted in the gradual acceptance of homosexual relationships within society. On that light, both Robert Mapplethrope and Félix González-Torres created two of the boldest and bravest artistic projects of the 20th-century. Their messages were heard and a continuity of sorts was found, the moral universe gaped open and inclusivity followed.