Our Favorite Exhibitions of 2019
This year our favorites come from across the US and abroad and if you know us well, they quite typically include object-oriented presentations, fully considered environmental installations, pattern, repetition and obvious preoccupations with print media - even if it was not always explicitly cited. This year brought with it some captivating art encounters for us and I hope it did the same for you all!
Bridget Riley at National Galleries of Scotland, Edinburgh, UK
In some ways you know what to expect from a Bridget Riley exhibition but for us it was the room of Riley’s sketches and studies that gave added depth to this impressively comprehensive retrospective.
Photo credit: Feralthings.
Tom Hammick Deep North at Glasgow Print Studio, Glasgow, UK
Woodblock prints that are heavy on the craft but have contemporaneity, a compelling sense of visual splace and satisfyingly large scale. Check, check and check for this fabulous presentation we caught in Glasgow.
Image via us from our tour of Glasgow Print Studio
Dora Maar at Tate Modern, London, UK
The Tate can always be counted on for showcasing work from artists who we have a) never heard of and b) come away completely inspired by. Maar’s diverse output and engagement with photography, painting, collage, performance was introduced to us through this highly enjoyable presentation.
Elsa Sahal Harlequins and Bathers at Nathalie Karg, New York
This exquisite show made it into our Blobs of New York roundup and it was probably the stand-out from that group. To pull a marvelous quote from the exhibition text “Body fragments including legs, breasts, vulvae, phalluses and buttocks emerge from otherwise lumpen forms. Misplaced humanoid features are alternately undermined and accentuated by Sahal’s artful glazing technique—whereby drips, smears and sheens read both as painterly gestures and various bodily secretions.”
Matthew Barney Redoubt at Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven, CT
Attending a screening of Matthew Barney’s Drawing Restraint 9 at SFMoMA back in 2006 had such a lasting impression on me that I jumped at the chance to make it to one of the screenings of Redoubt in New Haven. Visually sumptuous and completely captivating, the print geek deep inside of me particularly loved the plein air cooper plate drawing sequences and repeated close up shots from within the acid bath as plates were etched.
Matthew Barney, Cosmic Hunt: MultiCam Virgin, 2019. ©MATTHEW BARNEY/COURTESY SADIE COLES HQ, LONDON. Via ArtNews
Claudia Wieser Forum at Jessica Silverman, San Francisco, CA
I have taken so much inspiration from Wieser’s installations even just through their photo documentation and so in seeing one of her exhibitions in person for the first time, I could fully appreciate how sophisticated her responses are to the architecture of the gallery and the motion of the viewer. The scale and placement of her structures felt completely on point while the surface treatments and visual reproductions were as seductive as can be.
Walead Beshty Abstract of A Partial Disassembling of an Invention Without a Future: Helter-Skelter and Random Notes in Which the Pulleys and Cogwheels Are Lying Around at Random All Over the Workbench at Petzel, New York
With scales ranging from an enormous floor to ceiling assemblage of cyanotype prints to quieter, geometric interventions on pages from the New York Times, this felt very much like a show that was occupied with the processes and visual processing of print. It also felt like a meditation on time (which cyanotypes are apt to visually capture) or lack of - a couple of the newspaper pieces were dated with days in October 2019 that lead right up to the day of the exhibition opening.
The Bauhaus and Harvard at Harvard Art Museums, Cambridge, MA
Marking the centennial year of the Bauhaus, this show was a masterclass in the Bauhaus influence at Harvard and more broadly art and design education in the US. It shares work from the big name faculty (Arp, Albers…) but also traces the practices of Bauhaus students through into their careers. I particularly enjoyed examples of completed exercises from Bauhaus the art and design courses.
IMAGE: Installation view of “The Bauhaus and Harvard” exhibition at the Harvard Art Museums. Photograph by Karen Philippi; © President and Fellows of Harvard College.
Amoako Boafo at Roberts Projects, Los Angeles, CA
I became emotional at this show, the surface of Baofo’s paintings are so exquisite I was truly moved. Background colors become patterns that make their way across items of clothing. Generous, glossy application of paint makes the skin of his subjects feel luminous and present. Just stunning and so hard to photograph faithfully - a trait which I’m actually coming to appreciate more and more. You have to see art in person.
