It’s a new year which means it’s time to fill your calendar with the most exciting art exhibitions that 2020 has to offer. There’s Kusama in Berlin, disco in Brooklyn and poignant flower sculptures in Denmark—everything you need to broaden your horizons this year.
1. Masculinities: Liberation through Photography at Barbican Art Gallery, London
Catherine Opie, Rusty, 2008. Courtesy of Barbican.
In a post #MeToo era, the concept of masculinity exists in fragile disarray. It is therefore timely that the Barbican takes the concept as its theme for a major exhibition opening next month. Masculinities will explore the complexity of the subject through a broad range of photographic practitioners, including Peter Hujar and David Wojnarowiz, Jeremy Deller, Paul Mpagi Sepuya, Robert Mapplethorpe, Catherine Opie, Collier Schorr, and Rineke Dijkstra.
2. Harun Farocki and Hito Steyerl: Life Captured Still at Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac, London
Harun Farocki. Zur Bauweise des Films bei Griffith/On Construction of Griffiths' Films, 2006. Courtesy of Thaddaeus Ropac.
Opening in early February, Life Captured Still is the first major exhibition of the late new media artist and filmmaker’s work in the UK in over a decade. Putting Farocki’s work in dialogue with Hito Steyerl’s consciousness-raising and boundary-pushing video installations, new and important critiques on the tenuous state of our late capitalist society are set to emerge.
3. Studio 54: Night Magic at the Brooklyn Museum, New York
Guy Marineau (French, born 1947). Pat Cleveland on the dance floor during Halston's disco bash at Studio 54, 1977. (Photo: Guy Marineau / WWD / Shutterstock).
In March, the Brooklyn Museum will be taking a bold look into the artistic and sociopolitical merits of the famous New York nightclub. Through photography, fashion, drawing and film, the dazzling history of the iconic hotspot will be unravelled, set against a turbulent backdrop of the aftermath of the Vietnam War, the Civil Rights Movement and growing fights for LGBTQ+ and women’s rights. Studio 54: Night Magic is likely to be not just an entertaining documentation of disco and nightlife, but a moving and original portrait of modern America.
4. Deana Lawson at Kunsthalle Basel, Basel
Deana Lawson, Nikki's Kitchenn, 2015. Courtesy of Kunsthalle Basel.
Who can forget American photographer Deana Lawson’s incredible portraits of Rihanna for Garage magazine, or her stirring portrait Binky and Tony in Love that was used as the cover of Blood Orange’s 2016 album Freetown Sounds? Lawson’s highly staged portraits of black intimacy and interior details specific to the African diaspora will be presented at the Kunsthalle Basel in March.
5. Tetsumi Kudo at Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, Humlebaek, Denmark
Tetsumi Kudo, Portrait Ionesco – Your Portrait, 1971, Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, © Adagp, Paris 2020 / Visda.
The work of the late Japanese artist seems highly relevant in an era quickly showing the devastating effects of climate change. His delightfully weird floral and bric-a-brac sculptures may resemble Ikebana (Japanese flower arrangements), or the contemporary, less pretty take ‘Freakabana’, but they also make a poetic comment on the state of an increasingly polluted world. Opening in April, we’ll be hotfooting it to Denmark for this one.
6. About Time: Fashion and Duration at Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
Surreal, David Bailey (British, born 1938), 1980Image courtesy of The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Photo © David Bailey.
The pinnacle of the fashion calendar—the Met Gala—will be based around the exhibition, About Time: Fashion and Duration, in May. In celebration of the Met’s 150th anniversary this year, the Costume Institute’s annual exhibition will be exploring the multiplicity of time in relation to French philosopher Henri Bergson’s concept of temporality—la durée (duration). In this sense, timelines will run in a linear and non-linear direction at once, combining styles and fashions across generations.
7. Ad Minoliti at Baltic Centre for Contemporary Art, Newcastle
Ad Minoliti. Courtesy of Baltic Centre for Contemporary Art.
In the autumn, we are eagerly awaiting Argentian artist Ad Minoliti’s solo exhibition at Newcastle’s Baltic. Known for her luminnously coloured and fantastically surreal paintings, Minoliti’s canvases are not just playful renderings, but put forward a far-ranging set of ideas on the nature of queer theory, post-humanism, femininism, the body and sexuality. This is painting for a new decade in its brightest, most radical form.
8. Yayoi Kusama at Gropius Bau, Berlin
Yayoi Kusama, Infinity Mirror Room – Phalli’s Field, 1965© Yayoi Kusama, courtesy: Ota Fine Arts, Victoria Miro & David Zwirner
We can hardly contain our excitement about this one as Berlin’s Gropius Bau is set to open Germany’s first major retrospective of the beloved Japanese artist’s work. Known for her zany and spectacular use of dots, Kusama’s ouvre spans painting, drawing, sculpture and installation. Perhaps most excitingly the exhibition will include a new Infinity Mirror Room, so expect a million magical selfies on your feed.
9. Marina Abramović: After Life at the Royal Academy, London
Marina Abramović, Rhythm 0, 1974. Courtesy of Royal Academy of Arts.
Say what you like about Marina Abramović but you can’t deny that the performance artist isn’t one of the most important artists of the last half a century. Spanning her 50-year career, this exhibition will be a mindblowing mix of re-enactments of iconic performances as well as new works, with a focus on the transition between life and death.
10. Pauline Curnier Jardin at Hamburger Bahnhof, Berlin
Pauline Curnier Jardin. Courtesy of Hamburger Bahnhof .
Awarded the prestigious National Gallery Prize 2019 in Germany, French artist Pauline Curnier Jardin will have a hotly anticipated solo show at Hamburger Bahnhof in November. Due to showcase her mystical and strange cinematic installations that often make reference to carnivalesque themes, we are excited to see what magic will unfold.