“We think that we’re the only ones that are keeping these memories. But the land and different non-human beings in this land can also have the memory,” Abou-Rahme told ARTnews in a recent interview. “We’re not incredibly spiritual people, but these things that happened during the filming left a big impact on us.”

Memory, history, culture and the land lie at the center of that installation, titled Only sounds that tremble through us, and the artists’ new exhibition—of the same name—at the MIT List Visual Arts Center, which represents a major evolution in Abbas and Abou-Rahme’s work.

For nearly 15 years, the duo has dedicated its artistic practice to creating an archive. In 2010, the artists were in Palestine, watching the so-called “Arab Spring” uprisings in Tunisia, Egypt, and elsewhere, like everyone else, through the pinhole lens of social media. As videos and images of protesting, dancing, and singing passed through the slipstream of Twitter, Facebook, and other platforms, Abbas and About-Rahme became determined to counteract the “amnesia” of the online space. That impulse evolved into “May amnesia never kiss us on the mouth,” an ongoing project that has taken many forms: installations, an interactive web project, public performances, and sculptures, among others. Many of those works are on view at MIT, but it is undoubtedly the title work that will linger in audiences’ psyches long after they leave. 

Only sounds consists of a 34-minute, three-channel video projected onto walls fronted by steel and concrete panels. Like many of Abbas and Abou-Rahme’s works, the video collages fragments of text, poetry, and video clips appropriated from a variety of sources. However, in this installation, those elements are interwoven with original footage of the performances by Baransi, Makmakkuk, Haykal, and Julmud, as well as a two-channel sound composition of percussive electronic music that pervades the space.

The three channels respond to each other and sometimes compete for attention, and often change tone in a split-second, jumping from a peaceful performance of a song in an unidentified valley to archival footage of what appears to be an Israeli bulldozer destroying a Palestinian structure. The steel and concrete panels bear a striking resemblance to the West Bank Wall (termed the “Apartheid Wall” by many Palestinians). Here, they serve as both a screen and an obstruction, fracturing the videos projected onto them. The impression is one of “disjuncture” and “disjointment,” which Abou-Rahme said the two artists believe are central to Palestinians’ lived experience.

“It was very important for us to formally translate the disjuncture and disjointment to create a work that wasn’t too smooth,” Abou-Rahme said. “We were afraid of creating a work that was too smooth and too easily digestible or fetishized, because in a way, what we’re talking about is that fragmentation and that destruction—how within the fragmentation, people are creating different possibilities of life.” 

Fragments are a recurring motif in the exhibition beyond the “sampled” gestures, movements, and melodies of Only sounds. Adjacent to the installation lies Where the soil has been disturbed, a 2022 work that consists of a field of free-standing steel panels fronted by concrete bricks from which petrified Syrian thistles grow. (The artists position the plants as symbols of resistance, since they often grow in areas of disturbance and have appeared after Palestinian villages have been bulldozed.) The steel panels serve as canvases for the artists’ fragments, from drawings to screen-grabbed snippets of TextEdit poetry and inverted stills of dancers and protestors. The overlapping fragments call to mind a cluttered computer desktop—a motif in an earlier iteration of “May amnesia”—and allow the artists to connect seemingly disparate fields of Palestinian life. 

There’s an image in this piece that looks like a topographical map of a river valley, which is paired with a drawing of a woman next to a thistle. This woman’s circulatory system visually mimics the riverbed from the map, while another nearby drawing shows a mouth whose tongue becomes a river. In others, computer-generated avatars of Palestinians are paired with negative macro-pictures of thistles. The pieces seem to assert an inseparable link between Palestinians and the land. 

“The land in all its multiplicity is a character and a being in the work,” Abou-Rahme said. “A lot of what we thought about was, what are the inscriptions that are already in the land? And what are the things that the land remembers that we have forgotten? … And what is it that we, in our consciousness, have forgotten, but our body actually remembers?”

The installation also establishes a deep connection between past and present. Abou-Rahme said that she and Abbas were captivated by how songs and protest chants were modified as they moved from Syria to Palestine to Egypt during the Arab uprisings. Watching videos on social media, they observed, in real time, how the revisions formed a digitized call-and-response, echoing a longstanding tradition in oral poetry, song, and dance of the Arab world.

“We were thinking a lot about what it means to take a gesture or a phrase or part of a song from something that was performed in Iraq—that is, speaking about a specific set of conditions—and then seeing how that specific set of conditions of colonial violence and erasure is then echoed in Palestine,” Abou-Rahme said. 

While early versions of “May amnesia” meticulously archived social media posts of cultural practices, with Only sounds, the artists aimed to create new performances rather than merely reproducing elements of their archives. According to Abou-Rahme, the call-and-response format became literalized in the making of the piece. Instead of asking their performers to simply reproduce Palestinian or Arab songs and dance, Abou-Rahme and Abbas encouraged them to “fragment” and “mutate” them in singular gestures, refrains, or rhythms. Before they edited the footage, Abou-Rahme and Abbas wrote the poetry and text that appears in the final video, and then produced the sound composition in relation to this “script.” In the final stage, they edited the footage, text, and archival clips together alongside the sound composition.

“There are multiple calls and responses and echoes in the work,” she explained. “There’s the archive, there’s the new performances, and then there’s us in the studio responding to all that and creating this sound composition. Sometimes we’re also singing with them. So, we re-perform and sing.”

Portions of this work are immediately legible to any reasonably informed viewer, but other parts will be accessible only to Arabic speakers or Palestinians. While much of the text and song is translated, entire stanzas are left in Arabic, and certain oblique references are not explained. And the translation of songs and chants is not one-to-one. The artists wanted the piece to speak to anyone, but it was important to them that certain messages remained coded, due to what Abou-Rahme called the “suffocating” representations of Palestine that are pervasive in the Western media.

“It’s so easy, when you come from somewhere like Palestine, to make work for an English-speaking audience and to let that be your trajectory,” she explained. “For us, we always wanted to make work primarily that other Palestinians were going to get something from. Of course, it can speak to more and more and more people and of course, we don’t see Palestine as a singular or a unique issue. We see it as part of a very long history and present of colonial bullshit that’s been killing the planet.”

The exhibition has one other call-and-response embedded in it. Originally scheduled to open last fall, it was postponed following the October 7 Hamas attack. Nine months of Israeli military operations in Gaza later, the context around the works has shifted. Many locations filmed in Only sounds are no longer accessible to Palestinians due to security restrictions or the threat of settler violence, and a whole new set of songs, chants, and dances have entered the online space as activists and protestors connect US policies to its effects internationally.

“The work becomes a call to think more deeply about the intersections between communities that are dispossessed and how the connection can become a powerful force. That’s what we see with the mobilization around Palestine right now,” Abou-Rahme said. “We understand the intersections. We understand that what happens here is connected to what happens in New York.”

“Basel Abbas and Ruanne Abou-Rahme: Only sounds that tremble through us” is on view at MIT List Visual Arts Center in Boston through July 28, 2024.

Riepenhoff is known for her “camera-less photography” in which she uses cyanotype, one of the oldest photographic processes, to expose photographic paper to water, wind, and sediment. The results capture humans’ relationship with the environment and the elements.

In a press release, Intersect said that the fair decided to honor Riepenhoff due to “her innovative process of using natural elements, her ability to integrate organic materials, sustainable practices, and environmental themes into her work.”

“I had the pleasure of seeing Meghann’s exhibition at Jackson Fine Art in Atlanta last October,” Intersect CEO Tim von Gal told ARTnews in an email. “It was evident that her immersive environmental process shared extraordinary messages and insights about the beauty and complexity of our natural world. Meghann is the perfect recipient of this year’s award as we honor her and Aspen’s dedication to environmental consciousness through her unique and beautiful work.”

The fair, held from July 30 to August 3 at the 16,000 square-foot Aspen Ice Garden, will have special programming related to Riepenhoff and its overall thematic focus this year is on the environment, social consciousness, design, and the “Aspen art journey.” Riepenhoff will receive the award during the fair’s opening day.

On July 31, Riepenhoff will co-host a meditation and yoga program in the morning at the Aspen Center for Environmental Studies, in partnership with Aspen nonprofit Lead with Love. Later that afternoon, Intersect will host a panel discussion on the environment, moderated by landscape architect Ann Mullins. The panel will include Riepenhoff, as well as Guadalupe Laiz, an Aspen-based and Argentine-born photographer and conservationist, and Nathan Kipnis, the principal of Kipnis Architecture + Planning who has specialized in integrating High Design aesthetics with “Low Carbon” concepts.

“I’m honored to receive this award and am grateful that my work can draw attention to the essential questions of how we relate with our environment,” Riepenhoff said in a statement. “It is more essential than ever to realize our interconnectedness, and to find opportunities to prioritize environmental wellbeing.” 

This edition of the fair will have a total of 30 galleries participating, with a dozen first-time exhibitors. Among those participating are Aspen Collective, Axiom Contemporary, bG Gallery, Hilton Contemporary, HOFA, Jackson Fine Art, LEE & BAE, Phillip + Dan, and Winston Wächter Fine Art.

For the first time, Intersect will include contemporary design galleries, like BDDW, as well as a panel discussion on August 2 on the intersection of contemporary art and design with Todd Merrill of Todd Merrill Studio and Fernando Mastrangelo of Mastrangelo.

“We could not be more thrilled with our lineup of extraordinary galleries, programming, cultural and community partnerships,” von Gal said in a statement. “We are ecstatic with the record-setting registration of VIP collectors and art enthusiasts upon announcing our 2024 galleries. This demand and appreciation from our attendees validate our extensive efforts in serving both Aspen and the art community.”

The full exhibitor list follows below.

Art Unified (Venice, California, USA)
Aspen Collective (Aspen, Colorado, USA)
Piero Atchugarry Gallery (Miami, Florida, USA, and Garzón, URUGUAY)
Nicolas Auvray Gallery (New York, New York, USA)
Axiom Contemporary (Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and Phoenix, Arizona, USA)
BDDW (New York, New York, and Los Angeles, California, USA, and London, UNITED KINGDOM) 
bG Gallery (Santa Monica, California, USA)
Boccara (West Palm Beach, Florida, and New York, New York, USA, and Paris, FRANCE)
Bogéna Galerie (Saint-Paul de Vence, FRANCE and Phoenix, Arizona, USA)
Corridor Contemporary (Tel Aviv, ISRAEL)
Fremin Gallery (New York, New York, USA)
GALLERY M (Denver, Colorado, USA)
Hilton Contemporary (Chicago, Illinois, USA)
HOFA (London, UNITED KINGDOM)
Jackson Fine Art (Atlanta, Georgia, USA)
Guadalupe Laiz | Gallery Space (Aspen, Colorado, USA)
LEE & BAE (Busan, SOUTH KOREA)
Madison Gallery (San Diego, California, USA)
Mastrangelo (New York, New York, USA)
Todd Merrill Studio (New York, New York, USA)
MH Contemporary (Los Angeles, California and Sun Valley, Idaho, USA)
Melissa Morgan Fine Art (Palm Desert, California, USA)
Phillip + Dan (New York, New York, and Los Angeles, California, USA)
Slate Gray Gallery (Telluride, Colorado, USA)
SPONDER GALLERY (Boca Raton, Florida, USA)
SPONDER GALLERY/GINO MILES (Boca Raton, Florida, and Sante Fe, New Mexico, USA)
Tambaran 2 Gallery (New York, New York, USA)
Winston Wächter Fine Art (New York, New York, and Seattle, Washington, USA)
Yiwei Gallery (Venice Beach, California, USA)
Yvel (Palm Beach, Florida, USA, and Jerusalem, ISRAEL)

The new budget, announced by the Mayor’s office on Thursday, restores $58 million to the New York, Brooklyn, and Queens library systems; $53 million cultural institutions and museums; and adds $15 million to the city’s Parks department for maintenance and cleaning jobs.

The deal was reached ahead of a midnight deadline on June 30, though the complete terms have yet to be released.

In April, the Mayor’s office released a proposed budget of $111.6 billion that reversed numerous cuts to city programs made in November, but which included those to the library system. As a result of the November cuts, the libraries reduced service to five days a week and had to delay the reopening of certain branches.

Last week, during a rally led by City Council Speaker Adrienne Adams and numerous leaders of cultural institutions, Lucy Sexton, executive director of New Yorkers for Culture and Arts, said that this year’s budget cuts to the arts had “a devastating impact” that had led to closings, layoffs, reduced hours, and reduced offerings. Leaders for the Brooklyn Academy of Music, the American Natural History Museum, the Public Theater, and Carnegie Hall were all in attendance, among others.

Despite the acrimony over the budgeting process, Mayor Adams repeatedly said that he and Speaker Adams would “land the plane” on a budget.

“Since day one, our administration has been laser focused on delivering for working-class New Yorkers and by working side-by-side with our partners across the hall, we are proud to announce a full restoration of funds to both our libraries and cultural institutions in the upcoming budget. These institutions are a critical part of New York City’s social fabric, which New Yorkers depend on for their children’s growth and the vibrancy of our city,” the Mayor said in a statement.

“Our arts and cultural institutions and libraries are foundational pillars of our city, and New Yorkers depend on their services every day,” Speaker Adams said in a statement. “The Council has consistently championed funding restorations for these institutions as a top priority, and we’re proud to reach an agreement with Mayor Adams and the administration to successfully secure these critical investments for them in the city budget.”

City Council is set to vote on the new budget on Sunday, the City reported Thursday.

In late July, the Aspen Art Fair will open its inaugural edition at the Hotel Jerome, a historic red brick Victorian building opened in the 1880s. Some exhibitors will take over hotel rooms; others will show in public spaces in the building.

The fair, which will include around 30 exhibitors, comes with a program of talks, performances, screenings, and dinners. It also will coincide with Aspen Art Week (July 29 to August 2) and with Aspen’s existing art fair, the Intersect Aspen Art and Design Fair.

Aspen Art Fair was cofounded by Becca Hoffman, founder of 74tharts and former director of Outsider Art Fair, and Bob Chase, owner of Aspen’s Hexton Gallery. Hoffman was the director of the Intersect fair from 2020 until this past fall, when she left to start 74tharts, which has produced an event in Vienna and has ones planned for later this year and 2025 in Milan, Singapore and Marseille. A full half of the 20 galleries that have committed to the Aspen Art Fair so far are following Hoffman over from Intersect, including blue-chip heavy hitters like Perrotin and Gmurzynska. (The full list is still in formation.)

The new venue was part of the draw. While Intersect is held at the Aspen Ice Garden, a recreation center a few blocks off Main Street, Hotel Jerome is on Main.

“I love Intersect, but it’s just too far out of the town,” Robert Casterline of Casterline/Goodman Gallery, which has locations in Aspen and Santa Fe, told ARTnews. “There’s a lot of events going on [that week] and a lot of people are like, ‘If it’s not easy, I’m not going to do it.'”

Casterline/Goodman is moving over to the new fair, where it will show work by Stanley Mouse, who did original posters for the Grateful Dead, Janis Joplin, and other musical acts beginning in the 1960s.

Other exhibitors making the jump include locals like Chase’s Hexton Gallery and Galerie Maximilian; as well as New York galleries Miles McEnery and Nancy Hoffman. Newcomers exhibiting in Aspen for the first time include Chicago’s PATRON gallery.

For its fourth edition, Intersect has retained galleries like Hilton and Todd Merrill, and has maintained its number of 27 international exhibitors—adding 12 new exhibitors of its own, including Tel Aviv’s Corridor Contemporary. Intersect will have a space curated by local curator and artist D.J. Watkins highlighting local artists who are represented at Watkins’ new downtown Aspen gallery, Aspen Collective. Intersect evolved out of Art Aspen, which ran from 2010 to 2019.

74tharts is trying out a new concept with the Aspen Art Fair, according to Hoffman. “We have conceived a new type of cross-disciplinary art fair that aims to re-think, re-examine, re-engage, and re-invigorate, connecting and convening a dynamic set of international and creative communities in Aspen in a luxurious social setting,” she said in a statement.

In an interview, Hoffman told ARTnews, “What I’m interested in doing is bringing as many people who support the arts to the town of Aspen as possible. So I think it’s great that we have multiple art fairs. It’s all about a rising tide floating all boats.”

The Aspen Art Fair is partnering with Anderson Ranch Arts Center to award a Guest Artist Prize to an artist showcased at the fair, which will include a one-week visit to the ranch to work in its studios.

Tickets for the fair run $30 per day, or $90 for a 4-day pass, and $100 for VIP.

Exhibitors announced so far are:

The protesters, identified as 21-year-old Oxford student Niamh Lynch and 73-year-old Birmingham man Rajan Naidu, were arrested shortly after the action after two bystanders apparently tried to stop them from throwing the paint.

The organization said in a statement that the action was meant as call for the UK’s next government to sign a “legally binding treaty to phase out fossil fuels by 2030.” (The UK is set for its next general election on July 4.)

Prime Minister Rishi Sunak called the action a “disgraceful act of vandalism,” while Keir Starmer, the head of the Labour Party and Sunak’s primary electoral challenger, called Just Stop Oil “pathetic,” as the Associated Press reported Wednesday.

In a statement posted to X, Naidu similarly called for a “Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty” and said that the paint was “orange cornflour.”

“Either we end the fossil fuel era, or the fossil fuel era will end us,” Naidu said. “Just as fifty years ago, when the world used international treaties to defuse the threats posed by nuclear weapons, today the world needs a Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty to phase out fossil fuels and to support dependent economies, workers and communities to move away from oil, gas and coal.”

The statement continued, “The orange cornflour we used to create an eye-catching spectacle will soon wash away with the rain, but the urgent need for effective government action to mitigate the catastrophic consequences of the climate and ecological crisis will not. Sign the treaty!”

English Heritage, the organization that manages the monument, said it was investigating the site for potential damage.

Michael Pitts, an archaeologist and expert on Stonehenge, told BBC that the megaliths “are sensitive and they are completely covered in prehistoric markings which remain to be fully studied and any surface damage to the stones is hugely concerning.”

The action comes one day before the summer solstice, when thousands typically gather at the monument to celebrate the longest day of the year in the Northern hemisphere.

The action is just the latest by Just Stop Oil and other related groups.

If one were to liken the marquee New York auctions in May to the homecoming game between rival high schools, then Art Basel is certainly the art world’s prom. Next week, 287 galleries from around the world, including the four biggest, will jet to Switzerland, closely followed by the traveling circus of collectors, art advisers, and, of course, journalists.

And, while rumors are flying that the newly christened Art Basel Paris may soon overshadow the Swiss flagship fair, plenty of dealers are pushing back. As one dealer told ARTnews, the fair in Basel is still where galleries show their best work, and the collectors—even if they prefer Paris—will follow. That sentiment was echoed by Tornabuoni gallery coordinator Ursula Casamonti, who told ARTnews the gallery saved its best—six works by proto-Surrealist Giorgio de Chirico—for Art Basel.

“I hope all the galleries do the same,” she said. “I’m worried that the people around the world have the idea that Paris+ will be better than Basel.”

ARTnews reached out to art dealers with reputations for bringing the most select, choice, and rare secondary market works and asked: what’s on the menu? Bon appétit. Or perhaps, more appropriately, En Guete.

Hauser & Wirth

The Swiss gallery giant is bringing several big-ticket works to its home art fair, none perhaps more exciting than Philip Guston’s Orders, a defining late-era work completed two years before his death in 1980. Priced at $10 million and depicting a cluster of shoes silhouetted against a pink-and-blue sky that rises above a crimson horizon line, the work was included in Guston’s 1980 retrospective at SFMOMA. It continued to travel for the following year, before being sold at Sotheby’s in 1989 for $528,000 from the collection of art collector and Southern California real estate magnate Edwin Janss Jr. As the gallery told ARTnews in an email, “The forms in Orders are personal symbols of the broader historical and psychological trauma that reverberates powerfully throughout the artist’s late oeuvre.”

The gallery is also bringing the largest charcoal drawing by Arshile Gorky still in a private collection, Untitled (Gray Drawing (Pastoral)), from 1946-47 priced at $16 million. There is also the marble and wood Louise Bourgeois sculpture Woman with Packages (1987–93), consigned by her trust for $3.5 million. Other works include an oil-on-cardboard Francis Picabia painting titled Nu assis listed at $4.85 million, and the David Smith stainless steel and wood sculpture Aggressive Character (1947), being sold from Smith’s estate.

Gagosian

For Gagosian’s booth at Unlimited, the fair’s sector for monumental works, the gallery is bringing a work that may carry some sentimental value: an untitled 1970 masterwork by Minimalist Donald Judd that was first shown by Gagosian’s late mentor, Leo Castelli, in New York. A related work is in the Guggenheim in New York’s permanent collection. The sculpture consists of a band of five-foot-high galvanized iron panels standing end-to-end, eight inches from the surrounding walls. The gallery’s booth presentation will be supplemented by a show of works by Judd at their Basel location consisting of 11 single-unit, wall-mounted works made between 1987 and 1991 at the artist’s home and studio near Lake Lucerne. While the gallery did not provide an exact price for the 1970 work, ARTnews has learned that is priced in the region of $15 million to $20 million.

Pace

While Pace is bringing an extensive presentation anchored by historical 20th-century works from marquee names like Alexander Calder, Louise Nevelson, and Pablo Picasso, the gallery is betting that Jean Dubuffet’s Banc-Salon will be the showstopper. Anchoring the booth, the installation comprises a low swooping bench with three kites that hover above, encouraging tired fairgoers to sit and reflect.

But, for our money, Agnes Martin’s Untitled #20 (1974) will be the real star attraction. The painting last sold at auction in 2012, at Christie’s New York, where it made $2.43 million. But, as we wrote this past November, the artist’s market has been heating up in the intervening years—in November, Sotheby’s sold a 1961 painting by Martin, Grey Stone II , for $18.7 million. While Pace declined to provide current pricing, it is very likely that the Martin will be the gallery’s priciest offering at the fair.

Thaddaeus Ropac

Among the significant works heading to Basel courtesy of Thaddaeus Ropac are Sigmar Polke’s 1994 canvas Lapis Lazuli. The picture, priced at $3.8 million, is a brilliantly blue abstraction from what Polke called his “alchemical” turn, during which the artist moved away from artistic takes on consumer culture and began exploring the use of forgotten pigments like lapis lazuli, a blue shade ground from stone that was prized in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance.

Also notable is Market Altar / ROCI MEXICO (1985), the inaugural work from Robert Rauschenberg’s 1984–91 Overseas Culture Interchange (ROCI) program. Not seen publicly since the final ROCI program exhibition in 1990 and never having been on the market, the work is priced at $3.85 million.

The gallery is also bringing Georg Baselitz’s roughly five-foot-tall sculpture of a female head in cadmium yellow, Dresdner Frauen – Die Elbe (1990/2023). The carving was roughly hewn with a chainsaw, an axe, and a chisel from a single tree trunk in 1990; it was cast in bronze in 2023. There are five “Frauen” in museum permanent collections, including Centre Pompidou in Paris, and the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art in Denmark. It is priced at $2.18 million.

Lévy Gorvy Dayan

An untitled David Hammons sculpture from 1990 anchors Lévy Gorvy Dayan’s Basel presentation. Consisting primarily of a coat rack with hat stand, the five-and-a-half foot sculpture, priced at around $9 million, features rubber, plastic bags, paper bags, a tin can, and a baseball cap, all of which give it a very humanlike aspect. The work’s first appearance at an art fair, it has been exhibited publicly only once, at Tilton Gallery in 2006.

“It’s an incredibly powerful piece that is very political and it’s very much, I feel, a self-portrait of the artist,” Dominique Lévy told ARTnews. “It’s the heart of our presentation.”

The gallery is also bringing Übernagelter Hocker (1963) by German artist Günther Uecker. Basically a wooden stool, the seat and one leg of which are covered in painted nails, the sculpture was created the same year as Stuhl II (Chair II), in the collection of the Museum of Modern Art. It is expected to fetch around $1.5 million.

Landau Fine Art

The Montreal gallery will be bringing Wassily Kandinsky’s Murnau mit Kirche II, 1910, a piece stolen by the Nazis in 1938. Gallery founder Robert Landau purchased it this past March at Sotheby’s London for 37.2 million GBP ($44.8 million), making it the 9th most expensive work sold at auction last year. Landau then promptly exhibited the painting at both TEFAF Maastricht and TEFAF New York. And though the painting may be at Art Basel, it won’t be for sale.

“It does not have a price on it and it’s going to be front and center at Art Basel and I’m sure there will be a lot of people looking at it,” Landau told ARTnews. “Why not? It’s of great interest to people.”

Landau said that he has spent the last year working on a book about Murnau and has invested millions additionally in the work, including a consultation with a museum curator. Landau claimed that an auction house evaluation put the work’s value at more than $100 million.

Edward Tyler Nahem Fine Art

With Jean-Michel Basquiat continuing to run hot with numerous auction sales in May, the Upper East Side gallery will be bringing Cash Crop, a 1984 acrylic-and-oilstick depicting a silhouetted figure in front of a sugar box. The $5 million to $6 million price tag is significantly higher than at its last appearance at auction, when it sold for £713,250, or around $1.11 million, at a 2010 Phillips evening sale in London. The estimate for the work then, when it was consigned by Gagosian, was £600,000 to £900,000.

Gallery director Stacie Khandros told ARTnews that the recent auction sales had prompted more conversations with potential consignors compared to last year. “I think we’re still optimistic that … what we have is still competitive pricing. And I think our works are spectacular. It’s just finding the right price to entice potential buyers,” Khandros said.

Editor’s Note, 6/11/2024: An earlier version of this story stated that the price of the 1970 work by Donald Judd offered by Gagosian was $10 million. It has been updated with a revised figure of $15 to $20 million.

The fair is set to run July 5–7, with a VIP preview day on July 4, at the Pacifico Yokohama. The fair has 72 galleries participating; blue-chip galleries will include Almine Rech, BLUM, Perrotin, Sadie Coles HQ, and—for the first time—Pace Gallery. Just over 50 percent of the exhibitor list comprises galleries with a space in the country.

Art Assembly operates the fair, and is also behind Art SG in Singapore and Taipei Dangdai.

This year’s edition will include the exhibition “ALL THINGS ARE DELICATELY INTERCONNECTED,” featuring four women artists of different identities reflecting on the relationship between civilization and the natural world. Having done a similar version of the exhibition last year, it is a presentation of the art collective Spectrum, cocurated by Spectrum cofounder Marina Amada and Soonjung Yi, a curator at the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art in Korea. The artists in the exhibition are Mika Tajima, Miya Ando, Jenny Holzer—who currently has an installation at the Guggenheim Museum in New York—and Sareena Sattapon.

There will also be the Sato “Meadow,” featuring four large-scale installations around the fair, including two specially created for the event. The commissions include The Cowboys on the Grass, a performance work by Yuichiro E. Tamura in which three bandana-wearing cowboys sit on a huge green bandana-patterned carpet (based on Édouard Manet’s Luncheon on the Grass), and LINES by Kengo Kito.

An expansive Art Talks will feature discussions on major topics in the art world with Pace CEO Marc Glimcher, Calder Foundation president Alexander S.C. Rower, Mori Museum director Mami Kataoka, Taguchi Art Collection cofounder Miwa Taguchi, Hirosaki Museum of Contemporary Art director Eriko Kimura, among others participating.

The fair has also arranged numerous satellite events, including an opening party at the Yokohama Museum of Art on July 4 and numerous museum exhibition openings. The Mori, considered one of Japan’s leading art museums, will open “Theaster Gates: Afro-Mingei,” the artist’s first solo exhibition, featuring ceramics, architecture, and music.

Below is the full exhibitor list:
A Lighthouse called Kanata (Tokyo)
Almine Rech (Paris, Brussels, London, New York, Shanghai, Monaco)
Art Front Gallery (Tokyo)
BLUM (Los Angeles, New York, Tokyo)
Ceysson & Bénétière (Saint-Étienne, Paris, Lyon, Luxembourg, Geneva, New York, Panéry, Tokyo)
Chalk Horse (Sydney)
Each Modern (Taipei)
Galerie EIGEN + ART (Leipzig, Berlin)
Galerie frank elbaz (Paris)
Gallery EXIT (Hong Kong)
gallery rosenfeld (London)
GALLERY SIDE 2 (Tokyo)
imura art gallery (Kyoto)
Kaikai Kiki Gallery (Tokyo)
Kamakura Gallery (Kamakura)
KOSAKU KANECHIKA (Tokyo)
KOTARO NUKAGA (Tokyo)
Kwai Fung Hin Art Gallery (Hong Kong)
MAHO KUBOTA GALLERY (Tokyo)
MAKI Gallery (Tokyo)
MISA SHIN GALLERY (Tokyo)
Mizuma Art Gallery (Tokyo, Singapore)
NANZUKA (Tokyo)
nca | nichido contemporary art (Tokyo, Nagoya, Fukuoka, Paris)
Over the Influence (Hong Kong, Los Angeles, Bangkok)
Pace Gallery (New York, London, Seoul, Geneva, Hong Kong, Los Angeles, Tokyo)
Perrotin (Tokyo, Paris, Hong Kong, New York, Seoul, Shanghai, Los Angeles)
Polígrafa Obra Gràfica (Barcelona)
Sadie Coles HQ (London)
SCAI THE BATHHOUSE (Tokyo)
ShugoArts (Tokyo)
SPURS Gallery (Beijing)
Sundaram Tagore Gallery (New York)
Taka Ishii Gallery (Tokyo, Kyoto, Maebashi)
Takuro Someya Contemporary Art (Tokyo)
Tang Contemporary Art (Hong Kong, Beijing, Seoul, Bangkok)
TARO NASU (Tokyo)
Wada Fine Arts Y++ (Tokyo)

Hana ‘Flower’

Alison Jacques (London)
ANOMALY (Tokyo)
BLANKgallery (Shanghai, Tokyo)
Gallery 38 (Tokyo)
Gallery Nosco (Brussels)
GALLERY TARGET (Tokyo)
HARUKAITO by ISLAND (Tokyo, Atami)
Hillside Gallery (Tokyo)
MISAKO&ROSEN (Tokyo)
MOU PROJECTS (Hong Kong)
MtK Contemporary Art (Kyoto)
Nan Ke (Shanghai)
PARCEL (Tokyo)
Phillida Reid (London)
Retro Africa (Abuja)
rin art association (Takasaki)
SAC Gallery (Bangkok)
Sapar Contemporary Gallery + Incubator (New York)
The Drawing Room (Makati City)
The Green Gallery (Milwaukee)
The Pill (Istanbul, Paris)
Tomio Koyama Gallery (Tokyo)
Unit 17 (Vancouver)
VIN VIN Vienna / Naples (Vienna, Naples)
Yutaka Kikutake Gallery (Tokyo)

Eda ‘Branch’

Althuis Hofland Fine Arts (Amsterdam)
Hunsand Space (Beijing, Shijiazhuang, Hangzhou)
LEE&BAE (Busan)
Keteleer Gallery (Antwerp)
PYO Gallery (Seoul)
The Columns Gallery (Seongnamsi)
The Page Gallery (Seoul) VETA by Fer Francés (Madrid)
193 Gallery (Paris)

In the post, Awuah-Darko claimed that, on June 9, 2021, Wiley sexually assaulted him twice during a dinner held in his honor by Ghana’s Creative Art Council at the Noldor Artist Residency.

“On 9th June 2021 – I was sexually assaulted by @kehindewiley. It almost destroyed me,” Awuah-Darko wrote. “I hope my words and opennness about my painful experience empower others to come forward. I hope all that unravels creates a path towards not only accountability but recompense and collective healing for other victims.”

In the post, Awuah-Darko claimed that Wiley “inappropriately groped” him first, grabbing his buttocks. He then alluded to a “much more severe and violent” assault later in the night, though he did not provide details for that alleged incident. Awuah-Darko instead noted that he had difficulty confronting the alleged assault due to Wiley’s status as a gay man and because of prevalent anti-LGBTQIA+ sentiment in Ghana.

“I am actively seeking legal action and hope that speaking about my abuse will empower other victims to do the same,” Awuah-Darko told ARTnews in a direct message on Instagram Sunday.

Not long after Awuah-Darko’s post went live, Wiley responded with a post of his own calling the relationship “consensual.” In a longer emailed statement to ARTnews, Wiley said the claims were “deeply hurtful” and that he would “pursue all legal options to bring the truth to light.”

“Someone I had a brief, consensual relationship with is now making false, disturbing, and defamatory accusations about our time together,” Wiley said. “These claims are deeply hurtful to me, and I will pursue all legal options to bring the truth to light and clear my name. These claims are also a slap in the face for all victims of sexual abuse. I have no idea why this individual has decided to target me this way, particularly since he has been trying to be part of my life ever since we met – flying to Nigeria to attend my birthday party, attempting to visit my home in upstate in New York, sending me warm and cordial text messages, and almost a year-ago to the day attending my exhibition at the de Young Museum in San Francisco and posting to Instagram that the show by his ‘dear friend’ was ‘breathtaking.’ He has posted extensively on Instagram about his struggles with mental illness and I hope he gets help with whatever he is going through. I will vigorously defend my name and reputation.”

On Sunday afternoon, Awuah-Darko responded to Wiley’s statement in a direct message to ARTnews, asserting the artist’s characterization of their relationship was not contradictory to claims of sexual assault.

“Reconciling with the painful reality of Kehinde’s assault against me was something that I only accepted in late October 2023, when I confided in one of my best friends, who is a gallerist. That is how recent my acceptance of my assault was and after years of therapy over time,” Awuah-Darko wrote. “My relationship with Kehinde in months and moments prior to my epiphany of the abuse I experienced under his hand, would have been friendly and even cordial; whether it was the birthday party he invited me to or discussions about the possibility of meeting. Much like his OTHER VICTIMS. I think it is important to constantly challenge the misconception that a sexual predator is a complete stranger. There is evidence to show that almost over 90% of sexual abuse cases reported are those where victims know the predator intimately or as family or a friend. I am of sound mind and stand by the integrity of statement today.” (RAINN, a nonprofit focused on fighting sexual assault, has estimated that figure at 80 percent.)

In March, Awuah-Darko referenced an experience with sexual assault by “someone who outranks me” in a post on Instagram, though he did not name Wiley at the time. In the post, Awuah-Darko asked for contributions for “projected legal fees,” with a target of $200,000.

The Noldor Artist Residency’s Instagram page includes a post from June 9, 2021 noting the dinner referenced in Awuah-Darko’s post.

The residency program, the first of its kind in Ghana, was founded by Awuah-Darko in November 2020 to provide emerging African artists with a dedicated studio space and a four-week retreat in Accra. The residency has since evolved into a museum, the Institute Museum of Ghana.

Awuah-Darko is an artist, musician, and curator, as well as a collector of contemporary African and diaspora art, much of which he has donated to the Institute Museum to jumpstart its collection. He has shown work with Gallery 1957 and curated a non-selling exhibition last year in partnership with Sotheby’s and the Olym Collection in Tel Aviv, Israel.

The Awuah-Darkos are one of the wealthiest families in Ghana, according to GhanaWeb, with a reputed net worth of $650 million.

Wiley, who was born in Los Angeles and is now based in New York, is well-known for his portraits of Black men and women done in the style of Old Masters paintings. He famously painted the official portrait of Barack Obama, and has received many institutional surveys.

Sean Kelly and Roberts Projects, who both represent Wiley, did not respond to a request for comment. Black Rock Senegal, the organization that he founded, declined to comment.

Update, 5/19/24, 1:55 p.m.: This article has been updated to include a longer statement from Awuah-Darko responding to Wiley’s comments.

Update, 5/19/2024, 1 p.m.: This article has been updated with a longer statement by Wiley provided directly to ARTnews.

The museum announced in February an initial number of around 350 objects recovered, from the over 1,500 identified as lost or stolen last summer. That brings the total figure to 626 recovered. On Friday, the museum said it was currently pursuing new leads for around 100 other objects, and that pieces had been found in Europe and North America.

The British Museum scandal broke last August when the institution announced that a staff member, later identified as senior curator Peter Higgs, had been fired after thousands of items were discovered to be missing or stolen. The thefts allegedly occurred over the course of 30 years, with many items sold for a fraction of their worth on the ecommerce website eBay.

As ARTnews‘ Karen K. Ho detailed in December, as a result of the extent of the thefts, director Hartwig Fischer immediately stepped down instead of departing early in 2024 as previously announced. Deputy director Jonathan Williams also left following the recent conclusion of an independent review, which had 36 recommendations for the museum’s security, governance, and record-keeping operations. There are plans for a complete documentation of the museum’s collection in five years at a cost of $12.1 million. There have also been renewed calls for the repatriation of items such as the Benin Bronzes and the Parthenon Marbles from Nigerian and Greek officials.

In a statement, George Osborne, the chairman of the museum trustees, said, “Few expected to see this day, and even I had my doubts. When we announced the devastating news that objects had been stolen from our collection, people understandably assumed that was it – we were unlikely to ever see more than a handful of them again.

“That’s usually the history with thefts like this. But the team at the British Museum refused to give up. Through clever detective work and a network of well-wishers, we’ve achieved a remarkable result: more than 600 of the objects are back with us, and a further 100 have been identified – in total almost half the stolen items that we could recover.

“It’s a great result but we’re not resting here – the hunt goes on for the remaining missing objects. I urge anyone with any information to follow the example of all who’ve helped us and get in touch.”

Like everything with this “enfant terrible,” it’s never clear how much, if any, of this is ironic or a troll. The overwhelming feeling I was left with upon leaving Elsewhere last month, however, was boredom. 

When I read last September that there was a wave of walkouts from the film’s premiere at the Venice International Film Festival, I had assumed it was because the material was objectionable. After all, Korine has delighted in shocking and disturbing audiences since his earliest films, regularly offering graphic—and in some cases unsimulated—sex, typically with a side of distasteful violence. Now, having seen Aggro Dr1ft, which tomorrow finishes out a theatrical run, I can assure you that isn’t the case. There is nothing that might inspire that reaction, or frankly any reaction at all, besides irritation.

The film follows the story of Bo (Jordi Mollà), the self-described “world’s greatest assassin” as he takes on a job to kill a demon-horned crime lord in Miami. Bo is also a family man, balancing his violent work with time with his kids and wife (Chanya Middleton), who goes unnamed. Most of the time, Bo’s spouse is depicted either writhing on their bed or twerking for the camera.

To the extent there is a plot, that is it, aside from a meeting with the man who hires (and pays him) for the job and a short interlude on a boat with his protégé Zion (Travis Scott). The film is filled with underwritten monologue by Bo, who speaks endlessly about being the world’s greatest assassin, and repetitive dialogue from each character, as if they each contained just one trait.

There is possibly a kernel of a good idea here. If one were to read the filmmaker’s intentions generously, I might say that Korine, known for exploring America’s id, has made a power fantasy staged using the language of video games. His film contains the same stilted dialogue, the same emphasis on sex and violence, and the same flat female characters as, say, the Grand Theft Auto series. Plus, Aggro Dr1ft has its own stylized aesthetic, with everything shot using thermal imaging. 

A less generous reading (and one that, in my opinion, would be more accurate) would suggest that Korine hasn’t even thought through his intentions. That much is made clear by the fact that the same half-formed ideas repeat over and over, making the film’s 80-minute runtime feel like three hours. The film consists primarily of loops of swinging machetes, a Ferrari driving down highways, and close-ups of the characters’ faces. Bo, and the other characters repeat their underwritten dialogue over and over in a robotic monotone. The repetition might be the point, but it’s also pretty dull.

Women, when they do appear in this film, are often shown supine or twerking. Bo’s wife repeats how lonely she is; in the climax, as the demon crime lord prepares to fight Bo and humps the air, a woman cries while tied to a bed in what appears to be rope bondage. It’s all so tedious. 

One might say that Korine reduces filmmaking in Aggro Dr1ft to its violent core: we watch Scarface because, on some level, we want to be Al Pacino, if only for a moment. But, even in that generous reading, who in the American filmgoing public doesn’t know that? It’s an idea that’s been explored so much that, to do so in 2024, is just a roundabout way of letting your audience have their cake and eat it too. Ironic misogyny, like ironic racism, is still misogyny, as if that hadn’t been made clear over the last decade of the internet. 

The thermal imaging filter, which has been colored over with animation and digital paint, can at times create striking visuals. There are rare moments of beauty, as when Bo looks out over a sunset from his balcony and the colors briefly flip to reveal a towering demon. At times, an overlay of wires or tattoos seem to crawl up characters’ skin as they move. But more often, the hues muddy and stick together, and the neons quickly lose their shine. One is left with the unmistakable impression that, were Korine to remove the gimmicky filter, we’d be left with some of the ugliest, most try-hard footage ever put to film.

Aggro Dr1ft’s long and much-hyped tour feels like pageantry built up to disguise this film’s vacuousness. And that pageantry continued on well after the Elsewhere screening ended, too. Rows of chairs were cleared from the dancefloor, and AraabMuzik began his set, surrounded by his entourage and several bikini-clad women pole-dancing. In the back, EDGLRD employees sold merchandise for the collective—skateboard decks, T-shirts, hoodies, wearable masks, and so on. The audience swayed laconically, barely dancing, or ignored the set entirely to talk with friends. 

I can’t speak for the Los Angeles screening, or the EDGLRD Boiler Room set during Art Basel Miami Beach in December, which seemed to have a who’s who of attendees. But the crowd at Elsewhere was almost comically dead for the tenor and volume of dance music being played.  This did not seem like some new form of entertainment, bringing the Miamified aesthetic of Korine’s more recent feature films into the real world. Or if it was, the new world of entertainment is decidedly manufactured and safe in addition to being incredibly lame.

The entire night felt simultaneously like a 50-year-old and a 12-year-old’s idea of cool, which makes sense given that the 51-year-old told Art in America last year that his sensibility is that of “12-year-old moron.” Korine said at the time,  “I’m just like a child. It’s arrested development.” I guessed as much.