This week’s exhibitions have one thing in common – disruption. Whether as a viewer experiencing these works or learning about the artists who created through disorder and interruptions, the result is the same. The works educate, engage, and alter our path.
Kusama Pop
Yayoi Kusama Musuem, Tokyo
Bold colours, clean compositions, stunning clarity, Yayoi Kusama’s work is always a joy to experience. The very much iconic Japanese contemporary artist’s solo exhibition focuses on her very personal interpretation of pop art, documenting the incredible breadth of her output over the years.
To say it’s immersive is an understatement. Kusama’s exploration of a mass-consumption society, concepts of repetition, her powerful large-scale paintings and sculptures, her unique use of colour and line is something that should be experienced in person.
On view until August 30.
Same Air
Tabari Artspace, Dubai
There is nothing like a well curated group exhibition and this particular one feels apt in theme and thoughtful in approach. Featuring fourteen artists connected or rooted to the Gulf region, Same Air includes works ranging in style and mediums connected through the idea of creation in response to a moment of disruption.
From Lebanese British artist Aya Hairder’s needle work over photographs to Emirati artist Maitha Abdalla’s surreal and expressive landscape and Palestinian artist Hazem Harb’s delicate and horrifying drawings of drowning and dismembered bodies, this exhibition is a must see.
On view until September 1.
Anselm Kiefer: The Women Alchemists
Sala delle Cariatidi at Palazzo Reale, Milano
Any chance to see an Anselm Kiefer exhibition is a chance that must be taken. The pioneering contemporary German painter and sculptor continuous to awe. His incredible exhibition The Women Alchemists features more than forty large-scale canvases depicting powerful symbolic imagery inspired by and giving voice to female alchemists – a group that is in definite need of more archiving, understanding, and exploring.
From the well-known alchemists such as Caterina Sforza, Isabella Cortese and Mary the Jewess, to the more unrecognised trailblazers such as Marie Meudrac, Rebecca Vaughan, and Mary Anne Atwood, Kiefer’s exhibition is an experience in art, history, and storytelling.
On view until September 27.
Schiaparelli: Fashion Becomes Art
Victoria Albert Museum, London
Shocking that this is the first exhibition on Elsa Schiaparelli body of work in UK. Spanning from the 1920s until today, the exhibition is a celebration of the unique, pioneering, and enduringly influential Italian fashion designer. It’s impossible not to see anything by her hand, a design influenced by her aesthetic and not do a double take, if not gaze upon it with wonder.
It is a fashion house with an approach to art that has always transcended the runway and danced into the realm of art making. The exhibition covers the groundbreaking origins of Schiaparelli through to its evolution and its wildly regarded presence in the contemporary art and fashion landscape under its current creative director Daniel Roseberry.
On view until 8 November.