Basel Online

Basel Online

The inaugural edition of Basel Online features new and significant works available exclusively online.

Launching to coincide with Art Basel, Basel Online functions as a parallel fair presentation, offering collectors access to works of the same caliber as those that the gallery will present in its physical booth.

The Online Viewing Room includes twenty works from David Zwirner gallery artists and estates, many of which have never been on public view and come directly from the artists’ studios. This singular selection highlights the gallery’s recent exhibition program across its locations in New York, London, and Hong Kong.

Basel Online premieres new works from such critically acclaimed artists as Harold Ancart, Carol Bove, Chris Ofili, Josh Smith, Jordan Wolfson, and

Lisa Yuskavage. These contemporary artworks are shown alongside notable historical works, such as a delicate tied-wire sculpture by Ruth Asawa, a Dan Flavin sculpture dedicated to Cy Twombly, and a wall-mounted box by Donald Judd.

Also included in this digital-only presentation are a number of artists whose works are exhibited at Art Basel and Unlimited, including Felix Gonzalez-Torres, Kerry James Marshall, and Luc Tuymans, whose retrospective La Pelle runs through January 2020 at the Palazzo Grassi, Venice.

To view additional works that will be on view at Art Basel, and for information about the gallery’s presentation at Unlimited, visit our fair page.

For questions about Basel Online and other works, email inquiries@davidzwirner.com.

A photograph of an installation by Luc Tuymans, titled Schwarzheide, dated 2019
Installation view, Luc Tuymans: La Pelle, Palazzo Grassi, Venice, 2019. © Palazzo Grassi. Photo by Delfino Sisto Legnani and Marco Cappelletti
Installation view, Luc Tuymans: La Pelle, Palazzo Grassi, Venice, 2019. © Palazzo Grassi. Photo by Delfino Sisto Legnani and Marco Cappelletti
A drawing by Luc Tuymans, titled Reuntgen (X-Ray), dated 1998

Luc Tuymans

Reuntgen (X-Ray), 1998
Oil on paper mounted on board
Framed: 20 3/4 x 16 3/8 inches (52.7 x 41.6 cm)
Paper and mount: 15 3/4 x 11 3/4 inches (40 x 29.8 cm)

Luc Tuymans


Belgian artist Luc Tuymans (b. 1958) is known for a distinctive style of painting that demonstrates the power of images to simultaneously communicate and withhold. The present work from 1998 relates to a larger painting on canvas, Lungs, executed the same year, which was first presented at David Zwirner, New York as part of the artist's solo exhibition entitled Security.

Tuymans notes that these works “address the notion of security, a concept I believe will be key in the next century. The paintings all create some sort of interior space—[such as] the inner structure of a human lung.”

 

—Luc Tuymans, cited in Daniel Birnbaum, “A Thousand Words: Luc Tuymans Talks about his ’Security’ Series,” Artforum (October 1998)

A public work by Harold Ancart, titled Subliminal Standard, dated 2019
Harold Ancart, Subliminal Standard at Cadman Plaza Park presented by Public Art Fund, 2019. Photo: Nicholas Knight, Courtesy Public Art Fund, NY
Harold Ancart, Subliminal Standard at Cadman Plaza Park presented by Public Art Fund, 2019. Photo: Nicholas Knight, Courtesy Public Art Fund, NY
A work on paper by Harold Ancart, titled Untitled, dated 2018

Harold Ancart

Untitled, 2018
Oil stick and pencil on paper in artist's frame
30 3/4 x 23 1/4 inches (78.1 x 59.1 cm)

Harold Ancart

 

Harold Ancart (b. 1980) is a Belgian-born, New York-based artist who works in various media including painting, drawing, sculpture, and installation. In his paintings, Ancart often depicts subjects that naturally invite contemplation, such as the horizon, clouds, flowers, mountains, or flames.


The present paintings are part of a group of works by Ancart that depict matchsticks against a diffuse, painterly backdrop. In the past, the artist has painted flames and stark images of fire, but unlike these earlier subjects, Ancart was drawn to the matchstick not for its grandeur, but because it is commonplace.

“Everyone has seen many matches in their lives but few have ever got lost in the contemplation of a match. It is something that people tend to pass over because of its absolute banality but, nevertheless, it has a huge poetic potential.”

 

—Harold Ancart, in conversation with the gallery (March 2019)

A work on paper by Harold Ancart, titled Untitled, dated 2018

Harold Ancart

Untitled, 2018
Oil stick and pencil on paper in artist's frame
30 3/4 x 23 1/4 inches (78.1 x 59.1 cm)
An installation view featuring works by Isa Genzken, dated 2019
Installation view, Isa Genzken, Kunsthalle Bern, Switzerland, 2019
Installation view, Isa Genzken, Kunsthalle Bern, Switzerland, 2019

Isa Genzken

 

With a career spanning over four decades, Isa Genzken (b. 1948) has incessantly probed the shifting boundaries between art, design, architecture, media, technology, and the individual. The present work relates to a group of wall-mounted flat works that expand upon the artist's 2002 series Soziale Fassaden (Social Façades). These works are made by layering various industrially produced, commercially available materials and incorporate a diverse range of found and traditional media, mining such wide-ranging points of reference as the façades of corporate towers, disposable packaging, construction barriers, modern interior design, and nightclub aesthetics, among others.

A mixed media work by Isa Genzken, titled Untitled, dated 2017

Isa Genzken

Untitled, 2017
Adhesive tape on aluminum panels in two (2) parts
55 1/8 x 39 3/8 inches (140 x 100 cm)
A detail of a work by Isa Genzken, titled Untitled, dated 2017

“She operates ‘with no safety net of art-world niceties,’ the painter Elizabeth Peyton, who has been a fan for two decades, said . . . ‘Like Baudelaire said of Daumier in The Painter of Modern Life, Isa is the artist of modern life seeing her time and transcending it simultaneously, with no separation.’”

 

—Randy Kennedy, in The New York Times (November 2013)

Installation view, Kerry James Marshall: Mastry, The Met Breuer, New York, 2016
Installation view, Kerry James Marshall: Mastry, The Met Breuer, New York, 2016
Installation view, Kerry James Marshall: Mastry, The Met Breuer, New York, 2016

Kerry James Marshall

 

Through its formal acuity, the work of Kerry James Marshall (b. 1955) reveals and questions the social constructs of beauty, taste, and power. As the artist has written in the foreword to the book Kerry James Marshall, "I gave up on the idea of making Art a long time ago, because I wanted to know how to make paintings; but once I came to know that, reconsidering the question of what Art is returned as a critical issue."

 

The present work is a study for Marshall’s painting The Academy (2012). The drawing depicts the central figure in the painting, a nude, black, afroed man who raises his right fist, a symbol of the Black Power movement and a gesture of solidarity with all oppressed peoples. The inscription at the bottom of the work references Tommie Smith and John Carlos, the African American sprinters at the 1968 Olympics who famously gave the black power salute during their medal ceremony.

A drawing by Kerry James Marshall, titled Study for the Academy, dated 2012

Kerry James Marshall

Study for the Academy, 2012
Ink on paper
23 1/2 x 18 5/8 inches (59.7 x 47.3 cm) Framed: 31 1/8 x 25 1/8 inches (79.1 x 63.8 cm)
A painting by Kerry James Marshall, titled The Academy, dated 2012
Kerry James Marshall, The Academy, 2012 © Kerry James Marshall
Kerry James Marshall, The Academy, 2012 © Kerry James Marshall

”On some level, the goal is to match the brilliance and … the complexity of things that are already  there, [which] caused you to want to be an artist in the first place. It’s less about changing the narrative than it is about participating, being a part of it.“

 

—Kerry James Marshall, in The Financial Times (October 2018)

An untitled sculpture by Donald Judd, dated 1991
An untitled sculpture by Donald Judd, dated 1991.

Donald Judd

Untitled, 1991
Clear anodized aluminum, red acrylic sheet, and turquoise anodized divider
9 7/8 x 39 3/8 x 9 7/8 inches (25 x 100 x 25 cm)

Donald Judd


Donald Judd (1928–1994) eschewed the classical ideals of representational sculpture to create a rigorous visual vocabulary that sought clear and definite objects as its primary mode of articulation. The unaffected, straightforward quality of his work demonstrates Judd’s strong interest in color, form, material, and space, and established him as one of the most significant American artists of the postwar period.

The present work is a wall-mounted box, a form that Judd would return to in various proportions, materials, and configurations over the course of his career. Executed in anodized aluminum, with a red acrylic sheet, and a turquoise anodized divider, it explores the primary preoccupations of the artist's body of work, including the relationships between surface and volume and interior and exterior space.

A view of Donald Judd's Art Studio in Marfa, Texas
Art Studio, Marfa, Texas. Photo by Elizabeth Felicella © Judd Foundation; Donald Judd Art © Judd Foundation / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York
Art Studio, Marfa, Texas. Photo by Elizabeth Felicella © Judd Foundation; Donald Judd Art © Judd Foundation / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York
A sculpture by Yayoi Kusama, titled PUMPKIN, dated 2015.

Yayoi Kusama

PUMPKIN, 2015
Stainless steel and urethane paint
46 1/2 x 45 3/4 x 46 3/4 inches (118.1 x 116.2 x 118.7 cm)

Yayoi Kusama


Yayoi Kusama’s (b. 1929) work transcended two of the most important art movements of the second half of the twentieth century: Pop art and Minimalism. Her highly influential career spans paintings, performances, room-size presentations, outdoor sculptural installations, literary works, films, fashion, design, and interventions within existing architectural structures, which allude at once to microscopic and macroscopic universes.

“Pumpkins have been a great comfort to me since my childhood; they speak to me of the joy of living. They are humble and amusing at the same time, and I have and always will celebrate them in my art.”

 

—Yayoi Kusama, in Yayoi Kusama (Victoria Miro, 2016)

While pumpkin shapes have appeared in Kusama's work since her early art studies in Japan in the 1950s, this organic form gained a central importance in her oeuvre from the late 1980s onwards. Its prominence was cemented by one of the artist's first open-air sculptures, titled Pumpkin (1994), which she created as a large-scale public commission for the Benesse Art Site on Naoshima Island in Japan, where it is positioned at the end of a pier stretching into the ocean.

Yayoi Kusama, Pumpkin, 1994. Installation at Benesse Art Site Naoshima, Kagawa. Courtesy of Ota Fine Arts, Tokyo/Singapore; Victoria Miro, London; David Zwirner, New York. © Yayoi Kusama
Yayoi Kusama, Pumpkin, 1994. Installation at Benesse Art Site Naoshima, Kagawa. Courtesy of Ota Fine Arts, Tokyo/Singapore; Victoria Miro, London; David Zwirner, New York. © Yayoi Kusama
Installation view, Yayoi Kusama: Give Me Love, David Zwirner, New York, 2015
Installation view, Yayoi Kusama: Give Me Love, David Zwirner, New York, 2015
Installation view, Yayoi Kusama: Give Me Love, David Zwirner, New York, 2015
Installation view, Dan Flavin: in daylight or cool white, David Zwirner, New York, 2018
Installation view, Dan Flavin: in daylight or cool white, David Zwirner, New York, 2018
Installation view, Dan Flavin: in daylight or cool white, David Zwirner, New York, 2018
A sculpture by Dan Flavin, titled untitled (to Cy Twombly) 3, dated 1972

Dan Flavin

untitled (to Cy Twombly) 3, 1972
cool white and daylight fluorescent light
2 ft. (61 cm) wide across a corner

Dan Flavin


Dan Flavin (1933–1996) produced a singularly consistent and prodigious body of work that utilized commercially available fluorescent lamps to create installations (or ”situations,“ as he preferred to call them) of light and color. Through these light constructions, Flavin established and redefined space. This is one of three works that he dedicated to the artist Cy Twombly.

”What has art been for me? In the past, I have known it (basically) as a sequence of implicit decisions to combine traditions of painting and sculpture in architecture with acts of electric light defining space...“

— Dan Flavin, as quoted in ”’… in daylight or cool white.‘ an autobiographical sketch,“ first published in Artforum (December 1965); reprinted in Dan Flavin: The Complete Lights 1961–1996, 2004

A drawing by Cy Twombly, titled Untitled, dated 1972

Cy Twombly, Untitled, 1972 © Cy Twombly Foundation

“[Flavin] ultimately went beyond the idea of specific objects to implicate the entirety of the architecture that contained his work in a three-dimensional environment.”

 

—Michael Govan, “Irony and Light,” in Dan Flavin: The Complete Lights 1961–1996, 2004

An installation view of works by Ruth Asawa, dated 2019
Installation view, Ruth Asawa: Life’s Work, Pulitzer Arts Foundation, St. Louis, 2018
Installation view, Ruth Asawa: Life’s Work, Pulitzer Arts Foundation, St. Louis, 2018
A sculpture by Ruth Asawa, titled Untitled (S.371, Hanging, Tied-Wire, Closed-Center, Multi-Branched Form Based on Nature), dated 1965

Ruth Asawa

Untitled (S.371, Hanging, Tied-Wire, Closed-Center, Multi-Branched Form Based on Nature), 1965
Hanging sculpture—bronze wire
11 3/4 x 11 1/4 x 9 1/2 inches (29.8 x 28.6 x 24.1 cm)

Ruth Asawa


American sculptor, educator, and arts activist Ruth Asawa (1926–2013) is known for her extensive body of wire sculptures that challenge conventional notions of material and form. The present work is an example of Asawa’s tied-wire sculptures, a series begun in 1962, which—like many of the artist’s constructions—explore organic forms and processes.

 

“Asawa felt that her explorations of form, especially through wire, seemed ‘to express the time in which I live […] with a material and method indicative of a technology which has so recently made this possible.’”

 

—Ann Reynolds, “Ruth Asawa's Shadow Play,” Frieze Magazine (May 2018)

“Assembled from various kinds of metal wire that have been fashioned into biomorphic forms, they appear to be simple but on closer inspection reveal their intricacy.”

 

—Daniell Cornell, “The Art of Space: Ruth Asawa’s Sculptural Installations,” in The Sculpture of Ruth Asawa: Contours in the Air, 2006

After having been gifted a desert plant whose branches split exponentially as they grew, Asawa quickly became frustrated by her attempts to replicate its structure in two dimensions. Instead, she utilized industrial wire as a means of sculpting it and, in doing so, studying its shape.

A portrait of Ruth Asawa
Photo by Paul Hassel Art © Estate of Ruth Asawa
Photo by Paul Hassel Art © Estate of Ruth Asawa

William Eggleston

 

Over the course of nearly six decades, William Eggleston (b. 1939) has established a singular pictorial style that deftly combines vernacular subject matter with an innate and sophisticated understanding of color, form, and composition. His photographs transform the ordinary into distinctive, poetic images that eschew fixed meaning. 

The present photograph belongs to The Democratic Forest, one of Eggleston’s most ambitious projects and a prime example of his uniquely recognizable aesthetic. Likened to an epic journey or an enduring narrative, it comprises a careful selection of works from over ten thousand negatives he took in the mid-1980s across the southern and eastern parts of America and in several European countries.

An untitled photograph by William Eggleston, dated circa 1983 to 1986.

William Eggleston

Untitled, c. 1983-1986
Dye transfer print
Print: 20 x 23 3/4 inches (50.8 x 60.3 cm)
Framed: 23 5/8 x 31 inches (60.0 x 78.7 cm)
An installation view of the exhibition, Democratic Forest, at David Zwirner in New York, dated 2016.
Installation view, William Eggleston: The Democratic Forest, David Zwirner, New York, 2016
Installation view, William Eggleston: The Democratic Forest, David Zwirner, New York, 2016
A work on paper by Chris Ofili, titled Kiss (Violet), dated 2019
A work on paper by Chris Ofili, titled Kiss (Violet), dated 2019

Chris Ofili

Kiss (Violet), 2019
Watercolor, pastel, gold leaf, and charcoal on paper
10 1/4 x 15 1/2 inches (26 x 39.4 cm)
Framed: 17 1/4 x 22 3/8 inches (43.8 x 56.8 cm)

Chris Ofili

 

Chris Ofili (b. 1968) creates intricate, kaleidoscopic paintings and works on paper that deftly merge abstraction and figuration. The present drawing is from a group of works that explore figures and themes from Homer’s Odyssey. It features Odysseus, the central figure of the epic, and Calypso, traditionally cast as a deceptive femme fatale who attempts to keep Odysseus on the island of Ogygia. Ofili depicts the two mythical figures kissing, visually evoking the couple’s passion through strong graphic lines mixed with incidents of bright color across a background of gold leaf.

“‘Dangerous Liaisons,’ is dominated by a tail. Its scales are sometimes blue and purple, sometimes rainbow-hued, and frequently rendered in gold leaf, and it belongs to Calypso, seducer of Odysseus, whom Mr. Ofili, a resident of Trinidad, has reimagined as a mermaid.”

 

—Will Heinrich, in The New York Times (May 2019)

A work on paper by Chris Ofili, titled Nymph Dive (Turquoise), dated 2019

Chris Ofili

Nymph Dive (Turquoise), 2019
Watercolor, pastel, gold leaf, and charcoal on paper
15 1/2 x 10 1/4 inches (39.4 x 26 cm)
Framed: 22 1/2 x 17 inches (57.2 x 43.2 cm)
A detail from a work on paper by Chris Ofili, titled Nymph Dive (Turquoise), dated 2019
Installation view, Chris Ofili: Dangerous Liaisons, David Zwirner, New York, 2019
Installation view, Chris Ofili: Dangerous Liaisons, David Zwirner, New York, 2019
Installation view, Chris Ofili: Dangerous Liaisons, David Zwirner, New York, 2019
A detail from a painting by Lisa Yuksavage. titled Little Department of Painting Drawing and Sculpture, dated 2019
A painting by Lisa Yuskavage, titled Little Department of Painting Drawing and Sculpture, dated 2019.

Lisa Yuskavage

Little Department of Painting Drawing and Sculpture, 2019
Oil on linen
10 x 8 1/8 inches (25.4 x 20.6 cm)

Lisa Yuskavage

 

Lisa Yuskavage (b. 1962) has long challenged conventional understanding of figurative painting. Her simultaneously bold, eccentric, exhibitionist, and introspective characters assume dual roles of subject and object, complicating the position of viewership. Her small-scale paintings play a remarkably dynamic and protean role within her overall practice. These works act as sites for experimenting with color, form, and characters as well as with a variety of supports, including both stretched and unstretched linen, canvas boards, wood, and paper.

 

The present work is an example of what Yuskavage terms her “symbiotic” portraits: dual depictions of interdependent figures begun in the 2000s with paintings featuring two women, and continued from 2015 including both sexes. Here, the male figure, who is shrouded in shadow—an effect achieved through Yuskavage’s use of grisaille—kneels in front of a female figure whom he seems to be in the process of drawing.

“The couple is an entity. It’s not about one or the other, it’s about how they are together…. When I got into couples, I began to play with all of it.”


—Lisa Yuskavage, in The Wall Street Journal Magazine (November 2018)
A detail from a print by Lisa Yuskavage, titled Art Students, dated 2018
Lisa Yuskavage, Art Students, 2018 (detail)
Lisa Yuskavage, Art Students, 2018 (detail)
Installation view, Lisa Yuskavage, Babie Brood: Small Paintings 1985–2018, David Zwirner, New York, 2018
Installation view, Lisa Yuskavage, Babie Brood: Small Paintings 1985–2018, David Zwirner, New York, 2018
Installation view, Lisa Yuskavage, Babie Brood: Small Paintings 1985–2018, David Zwirner, New York, 2018
A detail from a painting by Francis Alÿs, titled Untitled, dated 2011-12
A painting by Francis Alÿs, titled Untitled, dated 2011-12

Francis Alÿs

Untitled, 2011-2012
Painting 1: Oil and encaustic on canvas on wood; Painting 2: Oil and collage on canvas on wood
Diptych; Painting 1: 9 1/4 x 16 x 3/4 inches (23.5 x 40.6 x 1.9 cm); Painting 2: 5 x 7 x 1/2 inches (12.6 x 17.8 x 1.2 cm)

Francis Alÿs

 

Belgian-born Francis Alÿs (b. 1959) is known for his in-depth projects in a wide range of media, including documentary film, painting, photography, performance, and video. In his practice, Alÿs consistently directs his distinct poetic and imaginative sensibility toward anthropological and geopolitical concerns centered around observations of, and engagement with everyday life. The artist has described his work as “a sort of discursive argument composed of episodes, metaphors, or parables.”

The present diptych belongs to a series of paintings accompanying the artist's video REEL-UNREEL, which was made in Kabul, Afghanistan, in 2011. Produced for documenta 13, and created in collaboration with Ajmal Maiwandi and Julien Devaux, REEL-UNREEL takes its point of departure from the classic street game in which children keep a hoop in continuous motion with the help of a stick.

A film still from Francis Alÿs, titled REEL-UNREEL, dated 2011
Film Still, Francis Alÿs, REEL-UNREEL, 2011
Film Still, Francis Alÿs, REEL-UNREEL, 2011
A photograph by Philip-Lorca diCorcia, titled Marilyn, 28 years old, Las Vegas, Nevada, $30, dated 1990-1992

Philip-Lorca diCorcia

 

American photographer Philip-Lorca diCorcia (b. 1959) is known for images that are at once documentary and theatrically staged, operating in the interstices of fact and fiction.

Marilyn, 28 years old, Las Vegas, Nevada, $30 belongs to the artist’s early Hustlers series (1990–1992) composed of photographs of male and trans prostitutes taken in the vicinity of Santa Monica Boulevard in Los Angeles, posed in motel rooms, on street corners and parking lots, and in the backseats of cars, among other places. The resulting photographs are carefully constructed, as with many of diCorcia’s compositions.

A photograph by Philip-Lorca diCorcia, titled Marilyn, 28 years old, Las Vegas, Nevada, $30, dated 1990-1992

Philip-Lorca diCorcia

Marilyn, 28 years old, Las Vegas, Nevada, $30, 1990-1992
Chromogenic print
Framed: 22 5/8 x 29 7/8 inches (57.5 x 75.9 cm)
MoMA installation

Installation view, Philip-Lorca diCorca: Strangers, The Museum of Modern Art, 1993

A detail from a work by Jordan Wolfson, titled Untitled, dated 2019
A mixed media work by Jordan Wolfson, titled Untitled, dated 2019

Jordan Wolfson

Untitled, 2019
Adhesive print with gloss coat, enamel, adhesive media, two (2) acrylic panels, and steel bolts on two (2) aluminum panels
84 3/8 x 73 x 4 3/8 inches (214.3 x 185.4 x 11.1cm)

Jordan Wolfson

 

Jordan Wolfson (b. 1980) is known for his thought-provoking works in a wide range of media, including video, sculpture, installation, photography, and performance. Pulling intuitively from the world of advertising, the internet, and the technology industry, he produces ambitious and enigmatic narratives that frequently revolve around a series of invented, animated characters.

The present work relates to the artist's ongoing series of sculptural objects mounted to the wall that feature large digital inkjet prints on industrial supports (in this case aluminum). The central imagery in the work depicts the late John F. Kennedy Jr. with his soon-to-be wife, Carolyn Bessette, engaged in a heated fight while walking their dog in Washington Square Park, New York, in February 1996.

The dispute between the couple was widely reported on in the news media and tabloids at the time, leading to speculation over the state of their relationship. Wolfson further complicates the image by repeating the depiction of the visibly upset Carolyn several times and cryptically embedding the visual in a panel shaped like the Star of David, a form the artist utilizes in several of his panel works.

Gonzalez-Torres install
Installation view, works by Felix Gonzalez-Torres, David Zwirner, 2019
Installation view, works by Felix Gonzalez-Torres, David Zwirner, 2019

Felix Gonzalez-Torres

 

Photography is perhaps the most consistent thread throughout Gonzalez-Torres’s work, and in many ways he considered himself principally a photographer, having received (among other degrees) his BFA from the Pratt Institute, and his MFA from the International Center of Photography. 
 

The present work is one of fifty-five individual photographs that the artist produced as editioned jigsaw puzzles. Created between 1987 and 1992, the puzzles represent Gonzalez-Torres's longest engagement with any one body of work. He produced the puzzles using commercial, quick-access photo labs, transforming imagery into souvenirs. They speak to the artist’s interest in commercial and readily available production methods, as well as questions about how to imbue emotionality and intention within the absence of the artist’s hand. Along with his use of candy and stacks of paper, the puzzles exemplify Gonzalez-Torres's interest in the fragment and the whole, presence and absence.

A sculpture by Felix Gonzalez-Torres, titled "Untitled" (Cold Blue Snow), dated 1988.

Felix Gonzalez-Torres

"Untitled" (Cold Blue Snow), 1988
C-print jigsaw puzzle in plastic bag
7 1/2 x 9 1/2 inches
Gonzalez-Torres detail

Despite the resolute abstraction of much of his oeuvre, many of the artist’s works directly implicate the body itself, including a number of images of imprints or traces of an absent subject. Here, the image depicts footprints left in the snow.

 

Another edition of the present work is currently being featured at Art Basel Unlimited as part of a complete presentation of the artist's puzzles, the first time all fifty-five have been exhibited together.

Carol Bove Venice Biennale Installation
Installation view, Carol Bove, May You Live in Interesting Times, the 58th International Art Exhibition La Biennale di Venezia, 2019.
Installation view, Carol Bove, May You Live in Interesting Times, the 58th International Art Exhibition La Biennale di Venezia, 2019.
Carol Bove Venice Biennale Installation
Installation view, Carol Bove, May You Live in Interesting Times, the 58th International Art Exhibition La Biennale di Venezia, 2019.
Installation view, Carol Bove, May You Live in Interesting Times, the 58th International Art Exhibition La Biennale di Venezia, 2019.
A sculpture by Carol Bove, titled Anima, dated 2018

Carol Bove

Anima, 2018
Stainless steel and urethane paint
16 x 21 x 15 inches (40.6 x 53.3 x 38.1 cm)

Carol Bove

 

Carol Bove (b. 1971) has become known for her steel sculptures that combine found and made elements and incorporate a variety of techniques and processes. Her works are characterized by distinctive, smooth surfaces or intricate folds that belie their material construction. Ranging from multiple welded pieces to single units, Bove’s multifaceted sculptures advance and explore steel’s formal and poetic possibilities.

“One of the things I experience with steel is that it’s very expressive, but it’s not emotional. There are all these kinds of feelings that it can express without necessarily being about emotions like angst or happiness or joy; I think they’re about the urgency of survival, or the power of illusion.”


—Carol Bove, in “Q & A: Carol Bove on showing in the Swiss Pavilion,” Apollo (April 2017)

“There’s a story of movement and pressure, force and softness.”

 

—Carol Bove, in Wallpaper (May 2018)

Installation view, Josh Smith: Emo Jungle, David Zwirner, New York, 2019.
Installation view, Josh Smith: Emo Jungle, David Zwirner, New York, 2019
Installation view, Josh Smith: Emo Jungle, David Zwirner, New York, 2019

Josh Smith

 

Since the early 2000s, Josh Smith (b.1976) has developed a prolific and expansive body of painting that employs specific visual motifs as a means of exploring the potentiality of the painted surface. These visual forms, which include his name, fish, skeletons, leaves, and palm trees, among others, serve as unassuming structures through which Smith pursues his investigation of the medium, resulting in works that forthrightly present themselves to the viewer. Though fully realized as individual artworks, each painting serves as a stage in an ongoing, interrelated, and heterogeneous process of image production and experimentation, in which motifs, colors, and visuals are recycled, refined, and reimagined.

The present painting is part of an ongoing series that depicts the figure of death. Rendered in lush ribbons and fields of color, the blank, empty faces and shapeless cloaks of the reapers serve as genderless, formless ciphers for the viewer.

A painting by Josh Smith, titled Here and There, dated 2019

Josh Smith

Here and There, 2019
Oil on wood panel
48 1/8 x 36 inches (122.2 x 91.4 cm)
A painting by Josh Smith, titled In High Spirits, dated 2019

Josh Smith

In High Spirits, 2019
Oil on wood panel
48 x 35 3/4 inches (121.9 x 90.8 cm)

“Josh Smith is a passionate cynic, an artist who degrades and celebrates his medium through the relentless yet fervent repetition of a selected motif...The best are the large Reaper paintings (too colorful to be called grim), which repeat faceless, genderless figures in hooded cloaks and landscapes of many vibrant colors.”

 

—Roberta Smith, in The New York Times (May 2019)

Josh Smith detail view
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