15 must-see exhibitions that are closing soon

Gelitin need no introduction, known worldwide for their transgressive and humorous approach, they are relentless advocates of the playful impulse in art. In the exhibition at the Neubauer Collegium for Culture and Society, curated by Dieter Roelstraete, they present the enormous sculpture of a classic American “slice of pizza,” titled Democratic Sculpture 7, part of a series of performances made from early 2023 with O’Flaherty’s gallery in New York. Visitors are invited to activate the work by sticking their heads into the various holes that run through it, in an action that raises a range of artistic and social issues, where food becomes a topic of conversation. 

“Michael Snow: A Life Survey (1955-2020)” is the major retrospective that New York’s Jack Shainman Gallery is dedicating to the Canadian artist who passed away earlier this year. Staged in the nearly 3,000 square meters of The School, the gallery’s out-of-town venue carved out of the conversion of an American high school, the exhibition is a true portrait of Michael Snow. With his distinctive humor, he has experimented with all possible media in his career, rebelling against traditional categories: film, painting, performance, installation, photography. An opportunity to celebrate this kaleidoscopic artist, who has made multiplicity of visions the essential tool of his research. 

Sarah Lucas’ provocative and humorous imagery takes center stage in the exhibition at London’s Tate Britain, “Sarah Lucas: Happy Gas,” which opened last October. Everyday objects are used by the British artist to explore the human condition and to ask with disarming directness and playfulness a series of universal questions about life, sexuality, society, and happiness. The artist’s voice emerges sharply in the dialogue of works spanning decades from one another, tracing more than 30 years of her career. 

A short walk from the United Nations headquarters in Midtown Manhattan is the Japan Society of New York, housed in a building designed by architect Junzo Yoshimura and opened to the public in 1971. Here, through Jan. 21, 2024, is the ongoing exhibition “Out of Bounds: Japanese Women Artists in Fluxus,” the first to explore thoroughly the role of Japanese women in the Fluxus movement. The focus is on the works of four women artists, Shigeko Kubota (1937-2015), Yoko Ono (1933-), Takako Saito (1929-) and Mieko Shiomi (1938), which allow us to contextualize their presence within Fluxus and in the art scene of the 1960s and beyond.

The Mantuan years at the Gonzaga court, and more generally the time spent in Italy in the early 17th century, were of extreme value for the experience and development of the style of the master of Flemish painting, Pieter Paul Rubens. Until January 7, 2024, Palazzo Te is dedicating an exhibition to the talented court painter that highlights the relationship between the artist and the mythological culture he encountered in Italy. The dialogue with Giulio Romano is at the center of the exhibition, which extends beyond the 16th century palace’s walls with two other initiatives: the exhibition focus on the Holy Trinity Altarpiece at the Palazzo Ducale in Mantua, and the exhibition at the Galleria Borghese in Rome, “The Touch of Pygmalion. Rubens and Sculpture in Rome”.

Palermo hosts William Kentridge’s exhibition, “You Whom I Could Not Save,” which takes its title from the new site-specific sound work created by the South African artist. The installation, which finds its place in the heart of the Piranesian-style architecture of the Santa Rosalia Pawnshop in Palazzo Branciforte, runs through a pathway that includes other works: sixteen unpublished drawings, the video “Sibyl” (2020), bronze sculptures, and a sequence of tapestries. For the artist, the starting point of the exhibition is the desire to create a total sound work, in which echoes and fragments spread and move through space, guiding visitors as they explore the labyrinthine path.

European Capital of Culture for 2023, Timișoara is hosting a rich retrospective dedicated to Romanian-born artist Constantin Brâncuși. The exhibition, curated by Doina Lemny, aims to portray the special nature of the work of this master of 20th-century sculpture, who focused his research on the identification of pure forms and dialogue with matter. The hundred works on display show that Brâncuși’s art transcends geographical, historical, formal and genre boundaries, securing him a special place in the history of contemporary art.

The Gallery n. 2 of the Bourse de Commerce in Paris is hosting the exhibition “Lee Lozano. Strike,” presented in spring 2023 at the Pinacoteca Agnelli in Turin. Curators Sarah Cosulich and Lucrezia Calabrò Visconti adjusted the exhibition itinerary to the Parisian spaces to tell the story of the radical and anti-systemic attitude of the American artist, who stood out in the artistic scenario that was dominated by pop art, minimalism and conceptual art at the time. The exhibition presents a wide selection of works made by Lozano during her intense and prolific although short career, which spanned from 1960 to 1972.

At the National Portrait Gallery in London through Jan. 21, 2024, the exhibition “David Hockney: Drawing from Life” is on view, which returns after its unfortunate forced closure due to Covid in 2020. The British artist’s work is explored through intimate portraits of five people-his mother, Celia Birtwell, Gregory Evans, Maurice Payne and the artist himself. These are joined by a series of new portraits of friends and acquaintances who visited his studio in Normandy between 2021 and 2022. More than sixty years of a career in which portraiture is, on the one hand, experimentation with a wide range of mediums and styles, and on the other a celebration of passion and enthusiasm for life and love.

Pope Leo X in 1513 commissioned Raphael to make a series of ten tapestries for the Sistine Chapel. The Urbinate and his workshop made ten full-scale cartoons on the lives of St. Peter and St. Paul, which were used as models by artisans in Pieter van Aelst’s workshop in Brussels, who transformed them into large-scale tapestries woven with silk and wool yarns in gold and silver. The exhibition running through Jan. 14 at the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna examines the profound influence that Raphael’s last project, shortly after his death, had on the art of Flemish tapestries.

The Miraculous Draught of Fishes with Crowd of People in Foreground
Raffaello Sanzio da Urbino, known as Raphael (1483–1520)
c.1515
Pen and brown ink over black pencil drawing, brown wash, white heightening
Albertina, Vienna
© ALBERTINA, Wien

The search for expressiveness is at the center of the current exhibition through Jan. 21 at the Royal Museum of Fine Arts in Antwerp, titled “Turning Heads. Bruegel, Rubens and Rembrandt.” Devoted to the genre of “tronies,” an ancient Dutch word meaning “face,” the exhibition features more than seventy portraits of anonymous models chosen by the artists to carry out creative experiments of their own. Paintings, drawings, and engravings from Belgian and international collections are collected for the first time, with the aim of chronicling this genre in which the ordinary nature of the human becomes extraordinary.

Thao Nguyen Phan’s artistic practice combines painting, video and sculpture, creating poetic narratives close to the dreamlike that trace the history of his country, Vietnam, in relation to contemporary environmental and social changes. Pirelli HangarBicocca is hosting until Jan. 14 the exhibition “Thao Nguyen Phan. Reincarnations of Shadows,” the first solo exhibition in an Italian institution by the Vietnamese artist, in which visual, tactile and sonic elements are interwoven with video works, sculptures, watercolors and paintings that highlight a journey that intertwines historical events and popular traditions of Vietnam and the wider Mekong region.

The monumental hall space of the Hamburger Bahnhof in Berlin welcomes the colorful and voluminous biomorphic sculptures of Spanish artist Eva Fàbregas in the largest exhibition dedicated to her to date, “Devouring Lovers.” Fàbregas’ work expands into the iconic architecture of the former Berlin station, blurring the boundary between the human and nonhuman, organic and industrial worlds, engaging visitors and visitors in a collective experience of sensory relationships. 

Mary Ellen Mark has made people from the fringes of society the protagonists of her photographs, giving their existence indelible recognition. Since the 1960s, the American photographer, guided by humanist ideals, has traveled the world and documented moments and scenes in contemporary history, from student movements and homosexual liberation to the streets of Mumbai, always creating an intense dialogue with her subjects. “Encounters” is C/O Berlin’s exhibition dedicated to Mark, presenting five iconic projects made by the photographer in the 1970s and 1980s, later published in a series of photo books that played a crucial role in cementing his reputation. 

Using analog media and digital technologies, Diego Marcon investigates the complexity of the relationship between reality and representation. For his first solo exhibition in Switzerland at the Kunsthalle Basel, new and recent sculpture and video works are presented, allowing visitors to enter the restlessness of his world without much preamble. Five rooms dedicated to the protagonists of the Lombard artist’s works, which in an endless loop invite us to explore the darkest and strangest corners of the human condition. 

The theme of restitution within the cultural institutions and museum system is the chosen subject for the interdisciplinary art and performance festival BLACK LAND, RED LAND – RESTITUTE, taking place in Berlin from December 21 to 28 at Kunstquartier Bethanien, silent green, Palais am Festungsgraben. Through discursive processes and artistic practices, participants and the audience will engage with artifacts and narratives from the collections of the Egyptian Museum and state museums in Berlin, as well as the Egyptian Museum in Turin, from a new perspective.