William Kentridge, The Refusal of Time (2012), all images courtesy the artist via White Chapel Gallery.

Now through January 15th, Whitechapel Gallery in London is presenting a new exhibition of work by William Kentridge, one of South Africa’s pre-eminent artists. William Kentridge: Thick Time features six large-scale works created between 2003 and 2016, spanning a range of mediums and thematics that reflect Kentridge’s intense engagement with theories of time and relativity, the history of colonialism, and revolutionary politics. (more…)

The Guardian has posted a video interview with French artist Laure Prouvost, discussing her winning of the Max Mara Award for Women, and her immersive video work Swallow, exploring the raw emotion of sensation, now on view at Whitechapel Gallery.  “It’s this idea of what’s real and what’s not, expressed in video and bricolage.”  She says.
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Magnus af Petersens will take the post of chief curator of Whitechapel Gallery. Petersens has served as head of exhibitions at the Moderna Museet in Stockholm for the past 6 years. He also notably curated the Nordic Pavilion at the 2011 Venice Biennale. Petersens will replace Achim Borchardt-Hume, who will take on the role of head of exhibitions at the Tate Modern. (more…)

‪‬Rachel Whiteread, the first female Turner Prize winner, designs bronze and gold-leaf frieze for London’s Whitechapel Gallery facade in time for Olympic games this June, based on the building’s Tree of Life motif with donated funds exceeding £200,000 [AO Newslink]

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Fred Sandback, Broadway Boogie Woogie (Sculptural Study, Twenty-part Vertical Construction), 1991/2011. Courtesy of Abstract Critical.

Whitechapel Gallery is exhibiting work of the late artist Fred Sandback, who passed away in 2003. Departing from the somewhat mystical notions of the unreality of objects and the malleability of empty spaces, Sandback’s yarn sculptures slice the gallery’s spatial emptiness with straight angles, mimicking geometrical shapes, which, to the observer’s eye, appear and disappear into thin air.

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Thomas Struth, Pantheon, Rome (1990), via Whitechapel Gallery.

London’s Whitechapel Gallery is showing a survey of German photographer Thomas Struth’s photographs, spanning over thirty years – 1978-2010.  The exhibition consists of early black and white photos to more recent, large-scale photos, over seventy in total.  Struth is undoubtedly one the most important photographers of the past forty years, and this exhibition shows the artist’s talent for highlighting our global interconnectedness through themes like technology, religion, and art itself.

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Mona Hatoum, Current Disturbance (2010) via www.aliraqi.org

Current Disturbance is a singular installation that fills a room at the Whitechapel Gallery in London, the third in a series of four displays from the Daskalopoulos Collection in Greece. Using Marcel Duchamp’s infamous “Fountain” as a starting point, “Keeping It Real: An Exhibition in 4 Acts” seeks to explore the line between art and reality and the relationship between the artist and the tactile world.  British – Palestinian artist Mona Hatoum‘s light-filled creation was first shown in 1996 at the Capp Street Project, San Francisco and is now being shown through March as a part of Whitechapel Gallery’s initiative to open private collections for public viewing. The installation is comprised of stacked wire cages, a multiplicity of light bulbs and the amplified sound of the electric currents coursing through the enclosed system. The interminable low buzz emitting from the structure, combined with the arbitrary flickering of light bulbs conveys a certain sense of discomfort and oppression that provides an open-ended commentary much in keeping with Hatoum’s widely political body of work.

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Alice Neel, Andy Warhol, 1970. Image via Whitechapel Gallery.

Currently on view at Whitechapel Gallery is “Painted Truths,” the first major European exhibition of work by American artist Alice Neel (1900-1984).  Featuring more than sixty paintings produced over the course of her artistic career, the show focuses upon the psychologically insightful and expressive portraits for which she is best known. Also included are a number of Neel’s cityscapes, in which the anonymity and exteriority of New York City are shown alongside the artist’s intimate depictions of its inhabitants.

Alice Neel, Ninth Avenue El, 1935. Image credited as above.

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Alice Neel, photographed by Sam Brody courtesy of Victoria Miro Gallery

“In The Company of Alice” is currently on view at Victoria Miro Gallery. This is a group exhibition of paintings honoring the life and work of Alice Neel. Each of the painters participating in the show drew inspiration from their admiration for Neel’s work. Some of the artists in the show often create portraits–but for others this is a new endeavor, and their very first portraits are being shown in this exhibition. “In the Company of Alice” coincides with a retrospective of Neel’s work at Whitechapel Gallery, opening on July 8^th. Studying Alice Neel’s work as a point of departure for modern and contemporary portraiture, “In the Company of Alice” aims to broaden the viewer’s perspective of figuration and portraiture. The exhibition also brings forth the importance of  these modes of practice in relation to contemporary art.

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Alice Neel, Richard, 1973, courtesy of Victoria Miro Gallery

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