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Hendy
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‘Energies’ at Swiss Institute Explores the Power of Community
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“Energies” is an international group exhibition at the Swiss Institute and numerous partner locations in the surrounding East Village community. Photo Daniel Perez At a time when the climate crisis dominates public discourse but concrete solutions remain elusive, a new exhibition, “Energies,” at the Swiss Institute in New York revisits a pivotal history of community-driven sustainability actions that made a real impact in the neighborhood. The exhibition centers on an episode from the 1973 oil crisis when the city’s first equity co-op at 519 W 11th Street installed a two-kilowatt wind turbine paired with solar panels. This setup not only powered the building but also fed electricity back to the grid in a moment of continuous power cuts. Con Edison (ED), seeing this as a challenge to its almost absolute monopoly, threatened legal action, but with support from the Attorney General, the co-op unexpectedly won the case. This victory forced all utility companies to accept decentralized energy production, reshaping the rules for energy generation.
“We felt it was very visionary, not only for the time, but also being in this very urban context of New York, of the Lower East Side, or what is now known as the East Village,” Stefanie Hessler, one of the exhibition’s curators, told Observer. Hessler, alongside the team at the Swiss Institute, found people involved with this history and unearthed extensive documentation, including lawsuit files and letters from Con Edison, which, as she notes, “made concessions, but reluctantly.”
Through archival materials and works by various artists displayed at the Swiss Institute and offsite locations, the exhibition fosters an open dialogue on potential solutions to the current ecological and energy crisis. It also highlights the power of community-driven initiatives. As Hessler recounted, “One person, an architect named Travis Price, was invited to testify before Congress, which helped generate the 1978 Public Utilities Regulatory Policies Act.” She was struck by how this group of activists—comprising recent graduates from Yale and MIT in fields like engineering, architecture, and urban planning—managed to enact meaningful change across the United States.
The exhibition also explores the complex intersections between green energy and social justice, featuring historical works and new commissions that examine the socio-political implications of ecological and energy issues at both local and global levels.
In 1973, during the oil crisis, residents of the sweat equity co-op at 519 E 11th Street installed a groundbreaking two-kilowatt wind turbine, providing electricity and lighting for the community amid widespread power outages. Photo Travis Prince Atop the Swiss Institute, Haroon Mirza’s large solar panel sculpture echoes the 1970s energy experiment by powering other works in the exhibition, including Méret Oppenheim’s semi-permanent audio installation and Ash Arder’s ephemeral butter-based sculpture housed in a refrigerator. The piece alludes to the Dyson sphere, a sci-fi concept from 1937 describing a massive sphere in space that harvests vast amounts of solar energy, reflecting speculative approaches to reimagining not just technology but its application.
“Energies” spans local and global concerns, addressing energy inequalities tied to socio-economic dependencies. Jean Katambayi Mukendi’s Afrolampe (2021) highlights the disparity in energy access, using the example of Lumbashi, a copper-rich city that suffers frequent power outages while its resources are funneled to the Global North for renewable energy production, even as Africa deals with insufficient energy provision. Similarly, Ximena Garrido-Lecca, a vocal advocate for Peru’s Indigenous culture and well-known for her works tracking the impact of natural resource exploitation on different social groups, explores the devastating effects of foreign mining policies in her two-channel video Yacimientos (2013), which documents the long-term environmental degradation and social displacement caused by U.S. extractivist practices.
“It was important for us to look both at a very local history and context, the one that we are in at Swiss Institute and to extend outward and connect to other geographies and locals as well,” Hessler said. The relations between industrialization, global trade and energy consumption and disruption are further explored in Liu Chuang’s single-channel video Untitled (The Festival), which portrays the rapid decline of Dongguan, China’s “world’s factory,” as it shifts from traditional manufacturing to high-tech electronics and A.I., with the artist metaphorically depicting its return to primordial energy sources like fire amid abandoned factories. Vibeke Mascini’s provocative installation Instar (2024) makes the energy generated from burning confiscated cocaine and crystal meth in Rotterdam perceptible, critically examining the links between extractive economies and their geopolitical impacts.
“Energies” explores global energy-related issues through a lens rooted in local history. Photo Daniel Perez Some artists in the show advocate for a return to Indigenous technologies, seeing them as a more sustainable and symbiotic alternative to current development models. Joar Nango, an architect and artist of Sámi descent, exemplifies this with his installation Skievvar #2 (2024), a structure made of translucent, dried halibut stomachs, a material traditionally used by Sámi communities for its insulating properties in construction. Sharing this belief in ancestral technologies, Cannupa Hanska Luger presents his
water shields, first created for a performance supporting the Standing Rockwater protectors, used as a peaceful form of protest to defend land. According to Hessler, Hanska Luger plans to further explore this project in the exhibition, placing additional shields around Mirza’s solar panel as a speculative way to “amplify” the captured energy. “He proposed using mirror shields to share energy across the neighborhood’s rooftops. This is a speculative project, it wouldn’t work, but I love how artists make us think differently about what might be possible. Cannupa suggests that a more communal approach to energy creation could reshape how we view building ownership and who can generate energy. It’s a very speculative but also very positive approach.” The Lower East Side Art Center is currently working on developing Hanska Luger’s proposal.One of the most inspiring aspects of this exhibition is how it extends beyond the Swiss Institute, potentially engaging public spaces and connecting this rich recent history to present-day communities still fighting for these causes. The show also features seminal works by pioneers of “institutional critique” art, such as Gordon Matta-Clark, including drawings from his Energy Tree project, which eventually led him to plant a rosebush in an enclosure at St. Mark’s Church as a gesture of land regeneration. To commemorate the exhibition, a new rosebush has been replanted at the original site. “We found the enclosure, but the rosebush was gone, so we replanted it in the churchyard, and we’re also exhibiting his original drawings alongside his 1976 proposal for a Resource Center and Environmental Youth he made for the John for the Lower East Side in 1976, to show his involvement and activation of the neighborhood,” Hessler explained.
Otobong Nkanga, Social Consequences I: Segregation – Encroaching Barricade – Entangled – Endangered Species – Rationed Measures – Intertwined. Photo Daniel Perez One of the major large-scale projects involving the neighborhood, and specifically the current residents of the building where the original co-op community at 519 E 11th Street once stood, is a mural conceived by internationally celebrated artist Otobong Nkanga, titled Social Consequences I: Segregation – Encroaching Barricade – Entangled – Endangered Species – Rationed Measures – Intertwined (2009-2024). “We had a lot of conversations with everybody to ensure that what their needs were and what they felt they wanted was being met,” said Hessler. “Eventually, together with the artist, we proposed this mural, and I loved it.” In keeping with Nkanga’s practice, which often reveals complex systems of interdependencies, the mural presents a diagrammatic scheme illustrating the existential links between human systems and nature.
This is just one of many interventions and initiatives in this rich exhibition program, presented in partnership with various local organizations. Another is the Museum of Reclaimed Urban Space in a squat on Avenue C, also known as Lozada Avenue, which organized an exhibition documenting neighborhood activism in terms of environmental justice in the neighborhood. “Then there’s another location, the Loizada Inc, a Puerto Rican community center, and their exhibition Equilibrium is about citizen engagement and activation of environmental knowledge building in the neighborhood,” Hessler added. “I think it’s essential to acknowledge this and the existing community. A whole symposium and public program are happening throughout the fall, and the program is ongoing. It’s all on our website, and there’s a map in the booklet distributed at the exhibition.”
“Energies” is on view at the Swiss Institute through January 5th, 2025. The entire program is also available on the Swiss Institute website.
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Elisa Carollo
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Frieze Returns to London: Here’s Are This Year’s Highlights
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This year’s Frieze Masters offered a beautiful juxtaposition of the natural and mechanic. Photo by Hugo Glendinning. Courtesy of Frieze and Hugo Glendinning. London’s art world has come alive once more for Frieze week. The Big Smoke is glittering with new shows, drinks receptions and VIP dinners and along with thousands, I went to pray at the feet of art and commerce at Frieze London 2024. The habitual hum of excitement bordered on anxiety this year as a depressed art market and an expanded Art Basel Paris (due to start in a few days) invited talk about London’s rivalry with the City of Lights. Is this the beginning of Brexit’s wrestling of the European art crown from London’s hands? Frieze director Eva Langret, showcasing a vibrant and varied London art scene, seemed to successfully make the case for why not.
“Frieze was never just a trade fair,” Langret told The Art Newspaper this week, but also an opportunity for “the many conversations that you can anchor around the galleries and the many ways in which they work for the artists.” Indeed, I found much to enjoy—particularly, as is always the case with art fairs, the opportunity to discover exciting artists and galleries I had never heard of. Of course, I would be remiss not to snark that if Frieze truly wishes to be more than a trade fair, they will need to consider adjusting ticket prices to encourage wider participation.
A redesigned floor plan by A Studio Between prioritized the new and emerging galleries in the Focus section, who, rather than sulking somewhere near the back of the tent, were able to greet visitors immediately. Like last year, they impressed with innovative booths. The Focus section is known for being experimental—the galleries in this section are looking to make a name for themselves. Placed along a central corridor, we were able to interact with them repeatedly whilst navigating the fair. I was particularly excited to see Xxijra Hii steal focus with Hannah Morgan’s alabaster carvings, steelwork, pewter casts, frogged clay and soundscape. I’d previously seen a very small show in Xxijra Hii’s boxy garage-like space in Deptford, their strong showing at Frieze is a testament to the breadth and depth of the London art scene even in a struggling art market and amongst omnipresent funding cuts.
SEE ALSO: One Fine Show: ‘Consuelo Kanaga, Catch the Spirit’ at SFMOMA
Other standouts in the Focus section included Eva Gold’s sensitive text-based work at Rose Easton (You were disgusting and that’s why I followed you, 2024), Sands Murray-Wassink’s tongue-in-cheek illustrations at Diez (Culture is not a competition, 2024) and Nils Alix-Tabeling’s camp insectile sculptures at Public Gallery. Further into the fair, the blue-chip galleries presented solid, predictable booths, showing off big names—Georg Baselitz held the fort at the White Cube and Chris Ofili at David Zwirner.
Harlesden High Street’s booth at Frieze London. Photo by Linda Nylind. Courtesy Linda Nylind / Frieze. For all the talk about Paris and London, Mumbai and New Delhi were the cities at the top of my mind this Frieze London. Indian galleries took pride of place at this year’s fair and ran with breathtaking displays. Vadehra Art Gallery from New Delhi showcased an incredible cabinet of curiosity and banality by Atul Dodiya (Cabinet VI and Cabinet VIII), including pipes, photographs and vaguely animist figurines. Jhaveri Contemporary showcased the textile work of Sayan Chanda (Dwarapalika II, 2024) and Gidree Bawlee (Kaal (Pala) 2023), which blended together into a sublimely sensate and textural experience.
Outside the tent, there were great improvements in the sculpture park this year. Arresting, thoughtful pieces responded deftly to their environment, working with organic forms and pagan imagery to transform a jubilantly sunny Regent’s Park into an other-worldly spectacle. Visitors were greeted by Leonora Carrington’s bronze sculpture The Dancer (2011) upon entering, the figure (half-bird, half-man) melted into bucolic surroundings. Carrington‘s Dancer was swiftly followed by two bronze pillars by Theaster Gates, The Duet (2023). The works in the park were so well integrated into the grounds that the trees that littered the lawn felt like sculptures themselves, blurring the line between the natural and the man-made; one work actually hung from a tree. My favorite by far was Albany Hernandez’s Shadow (2024). This was a shadow painted under a tree in the park using
water -based grass paint. The paint marked the tree’s 10:30 a.m. shade; when I arrived around 3 p.m., the tree had two delicate shadows.
Gagosian’s booth at Frieze Masters. Photo by Hugo Glendinning. Courtesy of Frieze and Hugo Glendinning. At the other end of the sculpture park, Frieze Masters opened with a beautiful juxtaposition of the natural and mechanic. Gagosian’s slick booth of metallic sculpture by John Chamberlain and furniture by Marc Newson stood next to a wooden booth with work much softer in feel at Hauser & Wirth, with broad-ranging paintings from the 19th and 20th Centuries, including Philip Guston and Édouard Manet. In typical showman style, David Aaron followed up last year’s towering T-Rex “Chomper” with an enormous Egyptian sarcophagus from the 7th Century BCE. Thaddeus Mosley at Karma in the ‘Studio’ section—which featured solo shows of living artists and considered their studio practice—seemed like an anchor point in the fair. This is due to the booth’s central placement but also its visual impact. The booth was vast and striking; Mosley’s robust wooden towers, pulling from modernist abstraction and African sculpture, made an imposing statement.
One prominent theme with Masters was the rediscovery of important female artists, with lengthy biographies getting ample space in numerous galleries: Eva Švankmajerová was spotlighted by The Gallery of Everything, Feliza Bursztyn at The Mayor Gallery and Alice Baber at Luxembourg + Co.
All in all, the Frieze fairs were good this year—fun, even. Frieze London celebrated the contemporary art scene in London whilst showcasing talents from across the globe, particularly works by Indian stars. Frieze Masters returned to its rightful place as Frieze London’s drab older sister whilst also reintroducing some unsung talents. The sculpture park, for once, held its own and felt like a destination in and of itself. The stark October sun was shining over an overexcited city, and London, it seemed, was well and truly alive.
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Reuben Esien
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10 Directors’ Passion Projects That Almost Didn’t Get Finished
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We’ve become so used to movies made by committee, with multiple writers and sometimes even multiple directors, that sometimes it seems as if the passion project is a lost art in Hollywood. Still, every few years one of the world’s esteemed directors manages to yank a beloved idea out of development hell and show off their virtuosic vision, as wild and unrestrained as it can be.
Many of these movies are famous simply because of their lengthy production schedules, the hoops everyone involved had to jump through before the making of the projects could even start, and the setbacks that continued to delay things, sometimes almost up to the movie’s release date. Stories like this are somewhat rare, which is what makes them exciting.
The other reason these long-gestating movies are exciting when they finally happen is just that: they’ve finally happened, someone talented has finally managed to do what seemed impossible a year ago, ten years ago, 20 years ago. Regardless of whether or not it’s even good, there’s a certain aura to a much-hyped passion project with a “famously difficult production” that a regular movie made on a regular schedule with no issues that came in under-budget just doesn’t quite have. Something that is important enough to spend years waiting to make is automatically a must-see, even if it’s just to see whether it was worth the wait.
10 Wild Passion Projects from Famous Directors That Were Almost Never Made
If it weren’t for these directors’ sheer determination, we might never have seen these movies at all.
READ MORE: The Worst Movies Made By 20 Great Directors
The Least Likely Sequels That Actually Happened
We cannot believe these sequels exist.
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Emma Stefansky
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Heartache Prevention via Valuable Relationship Lessons (22 GIFs)
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We all want to find our person, but it ain’t easy.
In fact, sometimes it feels damn near impossible.
How do you know you’re with the right partner? If things don’t seem to be working, should you walk away or try harder? What can you live with, and what are your dealbreakers?
One Redditor asked, “What’s the most valuable lesson you’ve learned from a relationship?” and the responses might be just what you need to hear to save yourself some heartache.
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Laura Lee
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Saved From the Slump by Mid-Week Memes (32 Photos)
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It’s an indisputable fact – Wednesdays suck.
It’s hard to avoid the muck of a mid-week slump, but we’re going to make it, damn it.
The only way out is through, so here are some random memes to get you over the hump and bring a smile to your face.
Friday will be here before we know it!
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Laura Lee
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Observer’s Guide to the Must-See Shows Opening During Frieze Week
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“Mire Lee: Open Wound” at Tate Modern. Photo © Tate (Lucy Green) Frieze Art Week has officially kicked off in London with its first openings, as the local community and international visitors gear up for the launch of Frieze London and Frieze Masters tomorrow (October 9). Despite the buzz that some global collectors might skip London in favor of Paris due to the challenge of committing to a full two-week marathon of fairs, the city’s art scene—through its galleries and institutions—has once again curated an impressive lineup that makes a stop in the British capital worthwhile, even if just for a few extra days before heading to the next art week or fair. To help you navigate this year’s Frieze offerings, Observer has compiled a list of the top show openings to check out in London.
Mire Lee’s Hyundai Commission at Tate Modern
Visceral and uncanny, Mire Lee’s art probes the boundaries between the technological and the human. Selected for the prestigious annual Hyundai Commission at Tate Modern, she has transformed the Turbine Hall into a surreal landscape of hanging fabric sculptures and epic mechanical installations, reimagining the space as a living factory populated by alien forms and mysterious processes.
Drawing on the building’s history as a power station, Lee reflects on its monumental scale and how it mirrors humanity’s relentless drive for dominance and control over nature. She has reconfigured the hall into an industrial womb—an environment where human desires and ambitions echo through sprawling mechanical systems. Crafted from industrial materials like silicone, chains, and eerie fluids, her “skin” installations stir a complex interplay of emotions, provoking awe and disgust, desire and repulsion. The work explores horror not merely as fear, but as a gateway to alternative possibilities and future potentialities, as once theorized by Foucault. As Lee expressed in a statement, “Ultimately, I am interested in how behind all human actions there is something soft and vulnerable, such as sincerity, hope, compassion, love and wanting to be loved.”
SEE ALSO: How One Cultural Agency Is Transforming Chicago’s Art Scene
Exploring a non-human concept of the body, the Korean artist’s intricate installations challenge the technological illusion of solidity and permanence, confronting viewers with the inevitable decay and deformation of all subjects over time. By staging this perpetual state of transformation and metamorphosis within a post-apocalyptic setting, the artist engages with a new notion of hybridity—one that blurs the line between the products of the Anthropocene and the unknown entities and processes that will ultimately supersede them.
Mire Lee’s “Open Wound” opens tomorrow (October 9) and is on view at Tate Modern through March 16.
“Hockney and Piero: A Longer Look” at the National Gallery
Detail from David Hockney’s My Parents (1977). Courtesy London’s National Gallery Don’t miss this rare conversation at the National Gallery, which explores the inspiration David Hockney drew from the enigmatic paintings of Renaissance master Piero Della Francesca. This one-room capsule project creates a space for slow contemplation, juxtaposing two of Hockney’s works—one portraying his mother and father, and the other depicting his friend, curator Henry Geldzahler, alongside the thread that connects them: Piero della Francesca’s The Baptism of Christ. Part of the National Gallery’s Bicentenary celebrations, the project illuminates the connections that weave through art history, highlighting how it’s been a continuous journey of confrontations, inspirations and exchanges, where artists revisit and reinterpret recurring themes and archetypes according to the aesthetics and sensibilities of their own era.
“Hockney and Piero: A Longer Look” is on view through October 27 at the National Gallery in London.
Lygia Clark and Sonia Boyce at Whitechapel Gallery
(l.) Lygia Clark, Revista Manchete, Rio de Janeiro. (r.) Sonia Boyce, Braided Wallpaper, 2023; Digital repeat pattern on tan wallpaper. Courtesy Associação Cultural O mundo de Lygia Clark. / © Sonia Boyce.All Rights Reserved, DACS/Artimage 2024Courtesy of the artist, APALAZZOGALLERYand Hauser & Wirth Gallery. “Lygia Clark: The I and the You” and “Sonia Boyce: An Awkward Relation” are concurrently on view at Whitechapel London through January 12.
George Rouy at Hauser & Wirth
George Rouy’s debut solo exhibition at Hauser & Wirth London, “The Bleed, Part I.” Courtesy the artist and Hauser & Wirth Following the announcement of his representation just a few months ago, the highly sought-after George Rouy is making his debut with Hauser & Wirth in London. The painter’s meteoric rise stems from his ability to resonate with a new generation of collectors, offering a visual language that captures the tensions and contradictions of the body and psyche as they navigate the physical and digital realms.
“The Bleed, Part I” showcases Rouy’s latest body of work, where he delves further into themes of collective mass, multiplicities, and human movement across different modes of existence. Playing between the “void,” where the psyche expands and projects itself, and the “surrounding,” where the physical body is in constant negotiation with external forces, Rouy’s paintings depict the push-and-pull between these realms, producing figures that are simultaneously fragmented and whole. This tension suggests the potential for a new hybrid human experience, oscillating between the linear constraints of the body and the quantum possibilities it can access.
The exhibition will continue with “Part II” at Hauser & Wirth Los Angeles, launching during Frieze L.A. and underscoring the gallery’s commitment to positioning Rouy as “a leading figure of the new generation of painters.”
George Rouy’s “The Bleed, Part 1” is on view at Hauser & Wirth London through December 21.Dominic Chambers at Lehmann Maupin
Dominic Chambers “Meraki” at Lehmann Maupin, London. Photo © Lucy Dawkins / Courtesy the artist and Lehmann Maupin, New York, Seoul, and London Suspended between a dreamlike world, a sentimental dimension, and a poetic space of literary references, Dominic Chambers’s paintings capture moments of joy, leisure, love, and life. His vibrant canvases are defined by intentionally surreal palettes that heighten the emotions and atmosphere of each scene. Since graduating from Yale, the young artist has swiftly risen to prominence, making his debut at Lehmann Maupin in New York soon after. Now, for his first solo show at the gallery’s London location—his U.K. debut—Chambers presents an expansive new body of work, including paintings, works on paper and color studies. His visual language has already evolved into something more allegorical, shifting from human-centered scenes to lyrical or oneiric landscapes where figures often float, yet the mood and feeling remain the true protagonists.Drawing its title from the Greek word meraki, meaning “to pour one’s soul into one’s work,” the exhibition takes this notion as a springboard to explore how the concept of the soul—or one’s interiority—intersects with devotion and creativity. Rich in both art historical and religious references, the works tap into a more spiritual dimension, expanding beyond the sentimental intimacy that defined his earlier pieces. Deeply influenced by Magic Realism, Chambers’s paintings detach themselves from material reality, moving fluidly between inner, outer and otherworldly realms, exploring symbols, signals and intermediaries that guide us in navigating the layers of human experience.
Dominic Chambers’s “Meraki” is on view at Lehmann Maupin through November 9.
Rirkrit Tiravanija at Pilar Corrias
“A MILLION RABBIT HOLES” marks Rirkrit Tiravanija’s fourth solo exhibition with the gallery. Courtesy of the artist and Pilar Corrias As a pioneer of Relational Art, Rirkrit Tiravanija’s work carries an inherently political charge, as demonstrated by his latest show at Pilar Corrias London. In “A MILLION RABBIT HOLES,” Tiravanija explores the deepening polarization and disillusionment surrounding the U.S. election, touching on globally pervasive sentiments as the world’s balance grows increasingly fragile. Transforming the gallery walls with forest-like wallpaper, he creates an immersive environment reflecting the charged atmosphere of American politics in the lead-up to the election, inspired by his experiences in Upstate New York.
Known for his groundbreaking installations centered around cooking and communal sharing, Tiravanija’s practice emphasizes human connections over traditional notions of art as static objects. His works often subvert societal hierarchies and behavioral norms, inviting audiences to participate actively—whether through interactions with others or through the artist’s facilitation. In his London exhibition, visitors are plunged into a world of paradoxical propaganda, surrounded by an intentionally illusory, pastoral setting that underscores the fiction of contemporary politics and the false promises of a better future.
Rirkrit Tiravanija’s “A MILLION RABBIT HOLES” is on view at Pilar Corrias, London, through November 9.
Tracey Emin at White Cube
Tracey Emin’s “I followed you to the end” at White Cube, London. Courtesy of teh Artist and White Cube. Since her rise to fame as the queen of the Young British Artists with her unforgettable My Bed (1998), Tracey Emin has captivated international audiences with her provocatively raw yet deeply human art, addressing the peaks and valleys of existence—love, desire, grief and loss—with an unflinching honesty. Her autobiographical approach has laid bare the intensely personal yet universal experience of being a woman, capturing everything from the awakening of sexual desire and the claiming of one’s pleasure to the visceral trials of violence, shame, illness, abortion and menopause. This turbulent inner world of emotions, passions, and sensations is instinctively translated onto Emin’s canvases through bold, unplanned strokes that channel her emotional energy directly onto the surface.
Emin has never hesitated to confront the most profound physical and psychological challenges, chronicling the unique struggles of the female condition in today’s world. Her latest show in London continues the journey she began with her recent exhibition at White Cube New York last year, presenting a powerful new series of paintings and sculptures that delve into themes of love and loss, mortality and rebirth.
Tracey Emin’s “I followed you to the end” is on view at White Cube London through November 10.
Anna Weyant at Gagosian
Anna Weyant’s “Who’s Afraid of the Big Bad Wolves?” at Gagosian London. Artwork © Anna Weyant Photo: Prudence Cuming Associates Ltd Courtesy Gagosian Every time Anna Weyant stages an exhibition, it becomes evident that beneath the buzz surrounding her private life, there’s an undeniable technical mastery that continues to evolve while remaining deeply engaged in a dialogue with art history. Drawing as much from the refined elegance of Flemish portraiture as from the dramatic chiaroscuro of Caravaggio, Weyant’s paintings are not only visually captivating but also deeply intriguing. They meticulously uphold the Western canons of beauty and “good painting”—executed with precision—but simultaneously disrupt this perfection with uncanny elements that provoke the viewer to question these very ideals.
Rendered in somber tones and pale hues, her figures often play tragicomic roles, suspended in a dreamlike, timeless space. These doll-like girls move through her canvases with a fierce presence, yet subtly reveal a concealed inner struggle—suggesting a fragile, unspoken vulnerability. They project an image of strength, wielding their allure with confidence, but betray an underlying trauma or insecurity that compels them to seek validation and admiration externally. This tension resonates perfectly with the exhibition’s title, “Who’s Afraid of the Big Bad Wolf?” Marking her London debut, the show makes these dynamics of concealment and performance even more apparent. The feminine attributes of her meticulously rendered classical bodies are only glimpsed through small windows, partially obscured by a fabric blind or a newspaper—introducing a fresh psychological layer to her latest body of work.
Anna Weyant’s “Who’s Afraid of the Big Bad Wolves?” is on view through December 20.
Alexander Calder at Ben Brown Fine Arts
“Calder: Extreme Cantilever” at Ben Brown London. Courtesy of Ben Brown. Opening on Frieze Masters Night at Ben Brown Fine Arts, this exhibition reunites Alexander Calder’s three unique cantilever sculptures for the first time, presented alongside a curated selection of oil paintings, works on paper and historically significant artifacts. The centerpiece sculptures—Extreme Cantilever, More Extreme Cantilever and Extrême porte à faux III—are on loan from the Calder Foundation and distinguished private collections, showcasing the artist’s boundless imagination and intuitive genius that firmly position him as one of the 20th Century’s leading innovators. More importantly, this grouping captures a pivotal evolution in Calder’s formal and conceptual approach to spatial abstraction, shaped by the seismic impact of the Second World War. Confronted with a world grappling with collective trauma, Calder responded with sculptures that became strikingly evocative, featuring increasingly complex forms that seem to encapsulate the anxieties of an era—a resonance that remains poignant amid today’s renewed geopolitical uncertainties.
“Calder: Extreme Cantilever” opens tomorrow (October 9) and runs on November 22 at Ben Brown Fine Arts in London.
“Enchanted Alchemies: Magic, Mysticism, and the Occult in Art” at Lévy Gorvy Dayan
Geltrude Abercrombie, Lady with Black Braid; Oil on Masonite, 8 × 10 inches (20.3 × 25.4 cm). Courtesy of Lévi Gorvy Dayan As interest in Surrealism, now 100 years old, continues to rise, Lévy Gorvy Dayan’s latest exhibition in London delves into themes of magic, mysticism, and the occult through a collection of masterpieces primarily by Surrealist women artists such as Gertrude Abercrombie, Eileen Agar, Leonora Carrington, Elda Cerrato, Ithell Colquhoun, Leonor Fini and Monica Sjöö, placed in dialogue with contemporary figures like Francesco Clemente, Chitra Ganesh, Alejandro Jodorowsky, Bharti Kher, Linder and Goshka Macuga. Blurring the boundaries between spirituality, mysticism, and hallucination, the show provides a sweeping exploration of the human imagination across cultures and eras.
Organized into three thematic chapters—“Occultism and Dreams,” “Magic and Mysticism” and “Alchemy: Enchantment and Transformations”—the exhibition examines how artists over the past century have engaged with occult and esoteric traditions to shape and reshape their personal, cultural and historical narratives. The timing feels particularly relevant as society experiences a renewed fascination with alternative knowledge and spirituality in an era that has “killed its idols” yet still searches for new belief systems amid a pervasive sense of irrationality and uncertainty.
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Elisa Carollo
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‘Never meet your heroes’: Fans share their rudest celebrity encounters (18 GIFs)
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It’s hard to find a bigger gut-punch than finding out one of your heroes is not actually a good person. And listen, I’m all about giving celebs the benefit of the doubt when it comes to these kinds of lists. But when it’s multiple people who have had the same type of encounters with a certain celeb, you start to lose faith.
In that light, we’ve compiled fan stories about some of the rudest celebrities in the business.
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Zach
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Genesis Belanger Is Staging the Ordinary Surreal in her Debut at Pace London
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Genesis Belanger’s work is coming to Pace London. Fine art documentation for Perrotin, photographed and edited by Claire Dorn New York-based artist Genesis Belanger has made a name for herself exploring the uncanny and unconscious meanings of everyday objects, crafting mysterious handmade tableaux vivants that blend mass-production aesthetics with exquisite craftsmanship across a range of materials, from wood to porcelain. She’s currently preparing for her upcoming show, “In the Right Conditions We are Indistinguishable” at Pace Gallery’s Hanover Square location, which opens on October 9 to coincide with London Art Week, but hit pause to speak with Observer about the themes shaping her new body of work.
Belanger describes the exhibition as a series of vignettes that challenge our relationships with material objects and the desires, needs and emotions we project onto them. “This idea that something or someone could all be the same, except for the context that makes one different. The context is what changes the person,” she explains. In our conversation, Belanger reflects on America’s polarized state and suggests that many of these perceived differences are actually shaped by external circumstances. In her work, she captures the tension between the homogenization of cultural habits driven by global mass production and the deeply personal stories we attach to the objects that surround us.
Underlying Belanger’s practice is a fascination with how advertising and popular culture shape our perceptions and the value we assign to material goods. Her meticulously crafted replicas of ordinary objects serve as eerie anthropological artifacts of mass consumption, revealing the layered associations and emotional weight we impart onto inanimate items. By inviting us to examine these items as symbols of our collective desires and anxieties, not to mention our deepest fears, Belanger’s installations offer a commentary on the complex interplay between consumerism and personal identity.
Genesis Belanger, Self-awareness, 2024; Veneered plywood, cork, stoneware, porcelain, patinaed brass, oil painted manicure, wooden vanity, 28″ × 61″ × 20″ (71.1 cm × 154.9 cm × 50.8 cm). © Genesis Belanger Photography by Pauline Shapiro , courtesy the artist and Pace Gallery The surreal quality of Belanger’s art is intrinsically linked to her interest in human psychology, a fascination that both Surrealism and advertising share. “I feel like the surreal character in my work is because Surrealism is interested in human psychology and the subconscious, and so is advertising,” the artist told us. “I came to the surreal or uncanny elements through an interest in the tools advertisement uses to manipulate.” At the heart of her research lies a deep focus on psychology, which then intersects with sociology and semiotics. She’s not necessarily intentionally making work thinking about Surrealism, but she very much is thinking about human psychology.
Belanger’s practice stages scenes that hover between dreamscapes and studio sets, where miniature versions of human daily dramas are enacted through the objects that define those interactions. She examines how these items transform into symbols, becoming part of more intricate narratives. Yet, her characters (the objects) appear transient, embodying a sense of impermanence—as if they are worn-out replicas of a once-meaningful original, shadows of the objective referent drained of value and meaning through repeated remediation.
As for contrasts, Belanger’s ghostly, malleable cartoonist avatars of the real subjects have hilarious yet poetic titles, which transport them into another symbolic universe, already detached from the materialism that characterizes the capitalistic mass production and consumption from which they originate—and by which they would otherwise be condemned to rapid obsolescence. Occasionally, these objects become so malleable that they metamorphose entirely, adopting human-like features and transforming into eerie fantasies or unsettling creatures, evoking a blend of attraction and repulsion. Through synesthetic play, her sculptural creations evoke psychological responses that blur the boundaries between senses, unlocking a surreal, nonsensical realm of expression beyond any conventional linguistic code.
It’s no wonder that some of her pieces are reminiscent of characters from animation, such as those in Disney’s Fantasia. They tap into similar Surrealist imaginings, unveiling hidden aspects of the collective unconscious and conjuring a vibrant symbolic universe that resists the rigid societal frameworks of productivity and rationality.
Genesis Belanger, Sentimental Attachment, 2024; Stoneware with oil-painted manicure 25″ × 13″ × 2″ (63.5 cm × 33 cm × 5.1 cm). © Genesis Belanger Photography by Pauline Shapiro, courtesy the artist and Pace Gallery “I’m always interested in the element of time and how, if you create a scene or an image that alludes to the presence of a person who’s no longer there, it’s like all the objects left behind are just evidence,” Belanger explains. “The viewer can access and then enter a narrative.” In this way, her works become relics—remnants that evoke human presence and their stories without depicting the actual subjects. By blending beauty, nostalgia and humor with motifs of capitalist consumerism, Belanger provokes specific psychological responses, allowing us to connect with the objects’ narratives and emotional associations. In this sense, they also serve as reminders after the loss and absence, contrasting the restless circle of consumption and destruction by freezing in time and eternalizing the emotional values associated with the original products.
The artist acknowledges that it’s impossible to escape the consumer-driven reality surrounding us. Thus, her primary source of inspiration is the overwhelming flood of products and images she encounters daily. “I live in New York, and I travel mostly by bike,” she says. “I feel like I’m just moving through this center of capitalism and seeing so much all the time. I don’t think you could exist today and not be inundated with a type of delicious image or images made to touch our desires. I’m a visual sponge; I’m absorbing every single thing that interests me.”
During this appropriation, Belanger creates critical friction between the readily available and reproducible mass-produced objects and the laborious craftsmanship behind her version of those objects. Using ceramics, wood and other natural and traditional materials, she highlights the handmade, tactile nature of her sculptures, imbuing them with a distinct material presence that transforms them into “artifacts” and cultural records of contemporary society and of the state of our civilization. This focus on craft interrupts the ceaseless flow of products and advertising, giving these objects a new weight and individuality, allowing them to stand apart from the homogenized world of consumer goods and acquire unique identities.
Genesis Belanger, Husband Material, 2024; Porcelain, stoneware, plywood, raincoat fabric, rubber-coated linen, 18 -1/4″ × 21″ × 16 – 5/8″ (46.4 cm × 53.3 cm × 42.2 cm). © Genesis Belanger Photography by Pauline Shapiro , courtesy the artist and Pace Gallery. These layers of interpretation add depth to Belanger’s practice, especially considering how, in photographs, her art often resembles digital images created by A.I. based on inputs about our human needs. “I think it’s exciting to make an object that exists in the world, but when it’s photographed, it could just be like the imagination of an artificial intelligence,” says Belanger.
This concept complicates the relationship between her creations and the real-life objects that inspire them, highlighting how Belanger’s artistic process absorbs and transforms these influences into new material forms—similar to how A.I. processes and reinterprets data on human consumer behavior. Thus, her work reflects on the meaning and significance of objects and products, a dialogue that gains further relevance as data itself becomes more valuable than the physical items it represents. Despite these complexities, Belanger’s art ultimately encourages us to appreciate the tangible materiality of the objects we create, interact with, and integrate into our lives.
Genesis Belanger’s “In the Right Conditions We are Indistinguishable” opens at Pace London on October 9 and will remain on view through November 9.
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Elisa Carollo
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Pete Rose left behind some batshit crazy signatures (13 Photos)
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As you’ve probably heard by now the ‘Hit King’, Pete Rose passed away this week. Charlie Hustle as he was lovingly nicknamed, was a three-time World Series champion. His 23-year playing career took him from the Reds to the Phillies to the Expos and back to the Reds.
Perhaps most known for his gambling addiction, Rose was placed on the baseball ineligible list permanently in August of ’89. In layman’s terms? He was banned for life.
I don’t pretend to know what that would do to a baseball player, let alone a professional who was the greatest hitter of all time. The irony being that since Rose has passed, is he now eligible for the Hall of Fame?
For now we’ll just take a look back at some of the interesting signatures that Rose left behind. Here’s hoping he can now rest in peace.
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Zach
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