Tag: Gerhard Richter

The Art Market Enters 2026 With Renewed Confidence and a Sharper K-Shape Divide

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Experts’ view on the market performance for the different artist segments over the next 12 months. Source: ArtTactic Art Market Expert Survey – January 2026

As Observer predicted would happen in our own end-of-year reporting, the market’s K-shaped divide will only become more acute: the most robust performance and dynamic deal flow are expected either at the top end—above the $1 million mark—or in the more accessible tiers below $50,000, while the middle market remains sluggish, especially for contemporary artists whose prices outpaced their résumés on the way into the five-figure range.

While 51 percent of experts surveyed expressed a positive outlook for the over-$1 million segment, confidence has rebounded even more sharply in the lower tiers, with 61 percent of respondents expecting a stronger year, compared with just 44 percent in 2025. Even on the heels of a stellar fall auction season, most experts—57 percent—agree that the secondary and auction markets will recover more quickly than the primary market, where 46 percent anticipate a flat year of post-bubble stability and only 35 percent foresee a comparable revival.

Across period categories, demand continues to concentrate around a limited number of names. For example, while the $236.4 million record-breaking Klimt sale contributed to the Modern segment’s standout performance—reaching $1.38 billion in 2025, up 19.4 percent year over year—the survey shows that auction sales were largely driven by just three top performers: Pablo Picasso (up 23.8 percent), Mark Rothko (up 122.2 percent) and Alexander Calder (up 108.9 percent). Similarly, on the Postwar and Contemporary side, the strongest gains were recorded by institutionally and market-consolidated artists such as Jean-Michel Basquiat, Gerhard Richter, David Hockney, Ed Ruscha and Yoshitomo Nara, all of whom have been the subject of major museum exhibitions in recent years, reinforcing both buyer interest and market confidence.

Meanwhile, as the ultracontemporary segment continues to cool, all five of the top-selling Young Contemporary artists at auction—Matthew Wong, Nicolas Party, Avery Singer, Shara Hughes and Jadé Fadojutimi—have experienced year-over-year declines in both lot volume and total sales since 2023. Nicolas Party, once a market phenomenon, saw his total auction sales fall from a peak of $20,170,129 in 2023 to $2,497,160 in 2025. It remains unclear whether his current exhibition of 40 pocket-size paintings at Karma New York is intended to reignite market interest or to strategically introduce more accessible price points for new buyers after prices rose too quickly to sustain demand. Only 10 works were actually offered for sale, priced between $165,000 and $205,000, and all sold. The remaining three quarters of the exhibition consist of works from the artist’s archive—replicas of earlier pieces—intended, perhaps, to maintain visibility and keep his “myth” alive.

Installation view: Nicolas Party’s “Dead Fish” at Karma Chelsea. Courtesy Karma

More broadly, compared with the near-impossible waiting lists of the recent past, many of these artists are now considerably more accessible on the primary market, provided buyers are willing to meet revised price expectations. This shift may help explain the increase in unsold, withdrawn or canceled lots at recent auctions, unless estimates were already adjusted to create a sense of “deal.” A vivid 2022 abstraction by record-setting artist Jadé Fadojutimi, for example, failed to sell at Phillips last November, likely due to an overly ambitious $800,000-1,200,000 estimate. At Frieze Seoul in September, Taka Ishii presented an entire booth of her works priced between a more accessible $475,000 and $610,000, all available for sale on preview day.

Holding periods and annual rates of return

Looking at 81 repeat sales in the contemporary segment, the average annual rate of return (CAGR) fell to +2.3 percent (not inflation-adjusted), down from +5.1 percent the previous year. Short-term resales were particularly weak: nine works resold within five years posted an average annual loss of -9.2 percent. While it’s best to avoid framing art purely in financial terms, analysis confirms that, in today’s post-wet-paint-bubble market, historically validated works held for extended periods by the same owner deliver the strongest resale outcomes.

In the Impressionist category, for example, at least 67 percent of resold lots generated positive returns, up slightly from 65 percent in 2024, with an average annual return of +5.4 percent (not inflation-adjusted), compared with +4.3 percent the previous year. The average holding period increased to 27.3 years from 22.9 years in 2024, while the top 10 performing lots achieved an average CAGR of +18.2 percent over an average holding period of 14.6 years. The strongest individual result of 2025 was Tamara de Lempicka’s Femme Assise (1925), which sold for $522,357 (including buyer’s premium) at Christie’s Hong Kong in September 2025 after being acquired in 2015 for $31,283—an annualized return of +30.3 percent over a ten-year holding period.

Returns are even more polarized in the Postwar category when holding periods are factored in. According to ArtTactic, among 10 works resold within five years, the average annual loss was -7.6 percent. In contrast, works held for more than two decades delivered significantly stronger results, with average annual returns of +9.6 percent, rising to an average CAGR of +19.1 percent over a 15.3-year holding period.

In today’s post-wet-paint-bubble market, historically validated works held for extended periods by the same owner deliver the strongest resale outcomes. Source: ArtTactic Art Market Expert Survey – January 2026

In the contemporary segment, the holding period proves decisive, as time allows living artists to achieve more meaningful institutional validation—helping justify price levels and fueling both demand and confidence. Longer-held works, particularly those owned for more than 20 years, continued to perform more positively, delivering average annual returns of +8.9 percent. The strongest result was Lynette Yiadom-Boakye’s Womanology (2010), which sold for $573,181 (including buyer’s premium) at Phillips London in March 2025 after having sold for $90,600 at Christie’s London in 2014, yielding an annualized return of +19.4 percent over a 10.4-year holding period.

Political uncertainty and market expectations

One of the most revealing elements of the report is the extent to which art market experts’ sentiment aligns with rapidly shifting global geographic and economic conditions—particularly given how eventful the year’s opening has been. Despite growing political division and rising tension at both national and international levels, the Federal Reserve Bank’s Blue Chip survey of professional forecasters still projects about 1.9-2.0 percent real GDP growth for 2026, with inflation hovering around 2.9 percent and unemployment slightly higher than in 2025. At the 2026 World Economic Forum, U.S. officials suggested even stronger early-year momentum, with Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick forecasting first-quarter GDP growth above 5 percent. Reinforcing this relative resilience, all 33 U.S. banks with assets over $50 billion posted positive total returns last year.

Yet political uncertainty is clearly filtering into market expectations. While art expert sentiment toward the U.S. art market as the primary global center remains broadly positive heading into 2026, more optimistic growth expectations declined from 52 percent in 2025 to 48 percent in 2026. The current political and economic environment has also shaped experts’ perceptions of London and, more broadly, the U.K., which was once the undisputed second global center of the art market. Nearly half of respondents—49 percent—expect the British art market to remain at current levels, reflecting cautious confidence but also an acknowledgment that punitive tax policies targeting high-net-worth individuals—compounded by the longer-term disruptions of Brexit—have increasingly pushed wealth toward other global centers rather than attracting it.

Despite growing political division and rising tension at both national and international levels, the U.S. Federal Reserve Bank’s Blue Chip survey of professional forecasters still projects about 1.9-2.0 percent real GDP growth for 2026. Source: ArtTactic Art Market Expert Survey – January 2026

Despite Europe entering 2026 in a phase of growing fragility—marked by heightened geopolitical tension, economic deceleration and a visible erosion of political leverage on the global stage—expert sentiment toward the continent has nonetheless improved. Positive expectations for Europe’s role in the art market rose from 17 percent to 28 percent, primarily driven by Paris’s renewed positioning as the most dynamic global art hub. Still, with the overall economic growth outlook for 2026 remaining sluggish at around 1.3 percent with slower wealth expansion than in other regions, most experts anticipate a stabilized, largely flat market characterized by incremental improvements rather than a full revival or renewed growth cycle.

Experts increasingly agree that power dynamics—and particularly the financial force shaping the future of the art market—are shifting toward new geographies. Unsurprisingly, with the arrival of Art Basel and Frieze and the success of Sotheby’s early Saudi sales, the Middle East—and the Gulf in particular—stands out as the most bullish region heading into 2026, with 76 percent of experts expecting positive market performance and minimal downside risk. This confidence is driven not only by the growing concentration of wealth but also by robust public investment in cultural infrastructure, an expanding institutional presence and sustained government-backed initiatives, with tourism authorities partnering directly not only with global museum brands but also, increasingly, with fairs and auction houses. Although the Middle East still accounts for a relatively small share of global turnover and activity remains concentrated in a limited number of centers, with regional economic growth projected at around 3.9 percent in 2026, its fairs and institutions are emerging as new magnets for international market activity at a moment when other regions face slower growth and mounting political headwinds.

South Asia and Southeast Asia are the other regions experts expect to sustain growth, driven by rising domestic wealth, increasing international recognition of regional artists and expanding institutional engagement that continue to bolster market confidence. This momentum is further reinforced by a younger, increasingly affluent population drawn to art, design and luxury collecting, with growing spending power. According to Christie’s year-end results, younger and new buyers from the region accounted for 37 percent of global luxury auction spending. Reflecting this shift, 53 percent of respondents now believe the art market in South Asia will continue its ascent, up from 32 percent last year. In comparison, positive expectations for Southeast Asia have climbed to 48 percent, up from 35 percent in 2025. India, in particular, remains the region’s anchor market, supported by strong domestic demand, projected economic growth of around 6.4 percent in 2026 and a rapidly expanding base of high-net-worth and ultra-high-net-worth individuals.

The primary gateway to the region remains Hong Kong, where all major auction houses have doubled down over the past year, investing heavily in expansive, experience-driven luxury headquarters. While auction results in 2025 were uneven and buyer behavior at Art Basel Hong Kong was notably more conservative, expert sentiment toward the city has improved sharply. Positive expectations for Hong Kong as the region’s leading art-market hub rose from 19 percent to 48 percent, while negative views fell dramatically from 52 percent in 2025 to just 14 percent heading into 2026.

China’s improving art-market outlook appears increasingly driven by ultra-high-net-worth individuals and internationally mobile capital, particularly as it continues to funnel through Hong Kong’s established financial and cultural infrastructure. Source: ArtTactic Art Market Expert Survey – January 2026

This rebound in confidence has unfolded alongside renewed optimism around mainland China. Despite escalating geopolitical tensions and U.S. tariffs, China posted approximately 5.0 percent economic growth in 2025, meeting the government’s official target and marking a modest rebound amid persistent domestic weakness and external pressures. While domestic consumption remained subdued—with retail sales growing only about 3.7 percent—and private museums continued to close throughout 2025, the improving art-market outlook appears increasingly driven by ultra-high-net-worth individuals and internationally mobile capital, particularly as it continues to funnel through Hong Kong’s established financial and cultural infrastructure.

Looking more broadly across Asia, experts also anticipate renewed energy in the South Korean market following a slow year and sluggish sales at Frieze Seoul, as the initial contemporary boom gave way to more conservative behavior—even among younger buyers. Thirty-four percent of experts expect a positive turn (up from 16 percent in 2025), supported by a broader wealth outlook pointing to moderate economic recovery, with growth projected at around 1.9-2.0 percent in 2026, driven by semiconductors, A.I.-related investment and a rebound in domestic consumption. This recovery is expected to be measured rather than explosive, as the market stabilizes after a speculative phase and becomes increasingly supported by institutional engagement and a more selective, quality-driven collector base.

Stability is also expected to continue to characterize Japan’s steadily evolving art market, in line with its broader economy and political landscape. Neutral sentiment among experts rose to 65 percent (up from 35 percent), reflecting a market historically anchored in mature institutions and seasoned players—largely resistant to speculative excess after having already absorbed its consequences during the 1980s boom.

Looking to the other side of the Americas, despite slowing regional growth and heightened geopolitical tension heading into 2026, confidence in the Latin American art market is strengthening, with positive expectations rising to 41 percent on the back of record-setting Modern sales and increased international visibility.

Experts’ outlook for Africa’s art market also remains stable rather than expansionary, with modestly improving sentiment and declining downside risk supported by selective institutional interest and growing international visibility—even as strong economic growth from a low base continues to be tempered by structural infrastructure constraints.

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Elisa Carollo

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January 27, 2026
In “Faces and Landscapes of Home,” Hauser & Wirth Brings Giacometti Back to Stampa

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Alberto Giacometti, Silsersee (Lake Sils), 1921-1922, Oil on canvas, 50 x 61 cm. / 19 5/8 x 24 in. © Succession Alberto Giacometti / 2025, ProLitteris, Zurich, Bündner Kunstmuseum Chur

“Homecoming shows” might be a phrase more associated with Bruce Springsteen or Adele, but this time it’s the works of 20th-century sculptor and painter Alberto Giacometti returning to an area the artist rejected and inspired in equal measure. We use the expression only quite loosely, however. Giacometti was born in 1901 in Stampa, situated in the Bregaglia Valley, 20 miles from ultra-chic St. Moritz, itself around 35 kilometers from the Italian border. Seeing as “the village” (as it is referred to around these parts) has a Hauser & Wirth, it’s only apposite that it should be the venue for this most evocative of exhibitions.

Indeed, the gallery has made it a tradition to highlight the artists and works that have had a connection with St. Moritz and the local area, the Engadin Valley. In the past, it has shown Gerhard Richter’s overpainted vistas of the nearby Alps and displayed artworks by Jean-Michel Basquiat that he produced when he stayed at the hunting lodge of his agent Bruno Bischofberger.

This exhibition, curated by Giacometti authority Tobia Bezzola, is a neat encapsulation of the artist’s work that foregrounds the dichotomies that punctuated his life. On view is a display that manifests the contrasts and conflicts between the professional and the personal; the style and themes; form and execution; public and private; inspiration and influence; Paris and Stampa; and, most of all for Giacometti, the choice between sculptor and painter.

Alberto Giacometti, Selbstbildnis, 1920. Oil on canvas, 41 x 30 cm. Fondation Beyeler, Riehen/Basel, Sammlung Beyeler. Photo: Robert Bayer © Succession Alberto Giacometti / 2025, ProLitteris, Zurich

Amid such sturm und drang, though, are early paintings such as Silsersee (1921-1922) and Monte del Forno (1923), which instill a calming serenity with their deft post-Impressionist execution and pastoral vistas. These embody the fascination and awe-inspiring power of the natural beauty abundant in the area and have had a lasting impact on creatives over the years, from the historical reflections of Nietzsche (who vacationed in nearby Sils) to the contemporary output of Not Vital. These early pieces still exude a distinctly sculptural quality, and his Self-Portrait (1920) is a subtle signpost to his later fascination—not only with capturing form, but also with the inspiration that Stampa and his home provided throughout his career.

With Giacometti’s move to Paris in 1922 (turning his back on his family and his father’s influence as a former landscape painter), he embraced the panoply of philosophies and movements that were coalescing in the French capital. Here, he was not only speaking another language but also attempting to find his own artistic one, as Bezzola explains. “There, he learned to speak the language of the international avant-garde, and that of Surrealism fluently and eloquently. During his annual returns to his rural homeland, however, he reverted to the Italian dialect of the valley in which he had grown up, and his artistic forms of expression adjusted accordingly.”

One look at Tête de Diego (1947) on show bears this out: the sketch lines of his brother’s head fuse the painterly with the out-of-proportion oval shape of his later sculptural works. It’s what Bezzola terms “an increasing formal and methodological dissolution of this divide” between painter and sculptor. While Giacometti made the sketch in Paris, Diego was clearly still in the artist’s mind from an extended visit back to Stampa to see his family only the year before, which may have renewed his artistic fire. Just a year later, in 1948, came Giacometti’s celebrated solo exhibition in New York featuring his trademark elongated figures.

Alberto Giacometti, Tête au long cou, 1949. Bronze with dark brown patina, 26.1 cm. © Succession Alberto Giacometti / 2025, ProLitteris, Zurich, Photo: Jon Etter

This period marked a particularly fruitful time for Giacometti, which this exhibition captures in paintings such as Bust (1948) and Seated Man (1950), as well as Head with Long Neck (c. 1949, cast 1965). It’s the juxtaposition of these works that, rather than showing division, actually emphasizes the unity in Giacometti’s oeuvre. His figures—whether sketched, painted, or sculpted—continue to intrigue and command attention with their subjects and execution.

Another unique facet of “Faces and Landscapes of Home” that serves to augment the works on show is the lesser-seen photographs of Giacometti by the photographer and trusted friend Ernst Scheidegger. Other photographers captured the artist in his Paris studios, but it was Scheidegger who was able to transgress into the more personal, behind-the-scenes aspects of his home life in Stampa, particularly in the 1950s when Giacometti returned to the valley to escape the Parisian bustle. “In his letters, he often complains that in Stampa he did not relax or recover at all, but was instead completely absorbed in his work the entire time,” Bezzola says of this period.

Scheidegger’s delightfully tender shot, Alberto with his mother Annetta (1959), is trumped only by Alberto Giacometti at his Worktable in Stampa (1965). Here, in the last year of his life, he can be seen sitting at his desk strewn with apples, some half-made miniatures beside him, as he remains immersed in fashioning a sculpture, while a cigarette burns louchely in an ashtray beside him. How rock’n’roll is that?

“Alberto Giacometti: Faces and Landscapes of Home” is on view at Hauser & Wirth, St Moritz, through March 28, 2026.

Alberto Giacometti, Monte del Forno, 1923. Oil on canvas, 60 x 50 cm. Private Collection, Switzerland. © Succession Alberto Giacometti / 2025, ProLitteris, Zurich, Photo: Jon Etter

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Alistair MacQueen

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January 19, 2026
Zoë Buckman’s Intimate Embroideries Claim Space for Memory, Grief and Jewish Identity

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Zoë Buckman’s “Who By Fire” is at Mindy Solomon through January 10, 2026. Photo: Zachary Balber

Brooklyn-based Zoë Buckman has made her name through a bold approach to textile and embroidery—a medium long associated with subordinate female labor—transforming it from a vessel of generational memory into a stage for broader sociopolitical commentary and denunciations. In her work, embroidery moves from the domestic sphere into the political, turning traditionally feminized labor into a mode of testimony while also celebrating and crystallizing intimate moments as representations of broader, universal human states.

Buckman’s practice has long centered on gender disparities, challenging representations of women by asserting—through her authorship—not only control over the historically masculine gaze but also the autonomy of expression and self-definition that emerges through an inverted dynamic empowering her subjects in both their physical and emotional realities. With her latest show, which opened during Art Basel Miami Beach at Mindy Solomon Gallery, the artist shifts toward a wider lens, seeking to claim the dignity of—and elevate—the Jewish community she belongs to, moving beyond stereotyped portrayals and addressing the discrimination and isolation it has faced amid the ongoing backlash to the war in Gaza.

Buckman’s background was initially in photography, she explains to Observer as we walk through the show. Photography remains the starting point for these embroideries, allowing her to capture the humanity of her subjects as it manifests in the moment.

Zoë Buckman in her studio. Photo: Abbey Drucker

“I started in photography. That was where I got my art education,” she explains, noting how she still goes everywhere with her little film point-and-shoot camera. “I’m always looking for that genuine, authentic expression beyond any kind of structure—the moment: these authentic moments between people in my life,” Buckman adds. “Sometimes it’s between me and someone close to me, or sometimes it’s just a moment when humanity happens to manifest.”

Drawing its title from Leonard Cohen’s haunting reinterpretation of the Jewish prayer Unetaneh Tokef, the exhibition’s themes of mortality, judgment and spiritual reckoning and reawakening echo through Jewish ritual and lived experience. Each subject is depicted in a moment of inner reawakening—confronting emotional fragility and vulnerability while also embracing the expansive potential of their inner life. They share this richness deliberately, even when such imaginative and psychological responses run counter to the rational systems of productivity and functionality that dominate contemporary life—a society that, in doing so, appears to have lost one of its most profound values: empathy and the awareness that we are all interconnected in a network of vital interdependencies beyond racial, religious or social categories shaping today’s divisions and deepening polarization.

Based on photographs of family and community members in intimate, domestic settings, these works invite us to recognize shared humanity beyond classification. In the process, the artist undertakes a deeply personal exploration of Jewish identity through cultural and material rituals that preserve intergenerational memory and embody collective resilience—while also probing the universality of these private moments and emotional states.

Drawing its title from Leonard Cohen’s haunting reinterpretation of the Jewish Unetaneh Tokef prayer, the exhibition invokes themes of mortality, judgment and spiritual reckoning. Photo: Zachary Balber

Throughout her practice, Buckman employs an original visual lexicon that combines ink and acrylic painting on vintage domestic textiles, which she then hand-embroiders. Sewing and stitching these threads around the images to help those moments materialize with emotional warmth is a time-intensive process—one that inherently reflects the dedication and care required by all genuine and meaningful human encounters.

Combining introspection, tenderness and radical presence, the raw sensual symbolism and materiality of these works operate as both mirror and balm. “When I first started, I was celebrating the tradition itself—the craftsmanship, the legacy of women, the history behind embroidery and appliqué,” Buckman explains. Sewing becomes a way to retrace that thread, reconnect with that legacy and keep it alive, as the textile work regains its ancestral function as an archive—a repository of personal and collective memory and storytelling. The textile and embroidery medium absorbs experience like skin: soft enough to bear wounds, yet strong enough to endure handling, mending and reconfiguration. Still, the way threads come loose or begin to fall away gestures toward a different reading, as Buckman notes. “It’s a question of what exists beyond the tradition. Are these figures emerging, or are they disappearing?”

Thread holds time; becoming presence and figure, each stitch marks a moment, a choice, a return—an accumulative record of presence that resists erasure. Yet Buckman also makes room for disintegration. The undone quality that defines her work allows for imperfection and visible labor, acknowledging and honoring the fragile humility of human history in all its ephemeral, transient nature.

Zoë Buckman, knock on my consiousness, 2025. Courtesy the artist and Mindy Solomon

“There’s this tension in the thread: it looks like it’s holding everything together, but it’s also coming apart,” Buckman observes. “I’m playing with that moment where the image feels like it’s either dissolving or coming together—precisely that space.”

Much of Buckman’s recent work, as she admits, has centered on grief, spirit, and connection, with her artistic practice becoming a means of maintaining bonds with those she has lost. She sews her trauma directly into fabric, as the slower tempo imposed by sewing, stitching, and embroidery allows her to pause and interrogate deeply personal experiences and transitions. Only by entering that space of introspection and meditation—stepping outside the relentless flow of modern life—can one begin to process emotional change and, ideally, find a space for healing. Here, memory becomes something physically and emotionally metabolized through the hands.

For the first time, Buckman includes a work in this show that also depicts a man. “My work about my relationships with men has usually focused on the difficult experiences I’ve had—things that were said or done to me,” she notes, acknowledging the piece as a possible step toward a more tender place of reconciliation, healing her conflict and painful resentment with the masculine. The man in before they became an outline (2025) is actually a gay friend, she explains. The image distills a moment of genuine admiration and affection between two friends, where the feminine side nonetheless remains the center of emotional and psychological attention and tension.

Zoë Buckman, before they became an outline, 2025. Courtesy the artist and Mindy Solomon

The male figure is looking down toward a blonde woman in his arms, the threads flowing around her body. “That’s Katie. She’s the woman who has appeared most often in my work,” Buckman explains, expressing deep admiration for someone who defies stereotypes: a nurse and two-time cancer survivor who has endured countless challenges yet still holds a powerfully seductive and magnetic presence. “She lost her mum when she was 18, so we share that grief of not having our mothers around. She’s been through similar experiences to mine when it comes to power, to assault,” Buckman explains. “She’s the most audacious, so sexy. When you meet her, when she walks into a room, she commands the space. She’s really a muse for me: she’s endured so much, and yet she’s radically attractive.”

The subject of a woman with red hair in trace your ridges (2025) similarly claims, fearlessly and unapologetically, all the attention her energy and beauty demand. One of the very few self-portraits Buckman has made, the piece is based on a photograph taken by her boyfriend, she explains. She had never previously allowed that kind of dynamic into her work. But by doing so now, she reclaims the image, folds her own perspective back into it and reconciles with the memories it carries. The female figure remains at the center, now asserting full ownership of the sensuality that once drew the potentially abusive masculine gaze. She is still the axis everything revolves around.

At the same time, with this show, Buckman appears to shift her focus more toward a broader, collective experience of intergenerational trauma—still unprocessed and once again denied the space for reflection and recognition that true healing requires.

Zoë Buckman, trace your ridges, 2025. Courtesy the artist and Mindy Solomon

“I think it’s also important to note that when I started this series, there were works that were taken off the wall or sent to an art fair and then not exhibited because of the apparently hostile climate in the art world, in the aftermath of the Gaza war,” she notes. “These are my Jewish family and I, and these works were somehow censored just as there was a piece with a little gold Star of David. This raises new questions about who is represented in art today and how entire communities are still erased.”

This question of representation is also what brought Buckman to engage directly with art history in some of her subjects. smells like light (2025), for instance, was inspired by a painting she saw at the Henry Taylor retrospective at the Whitney, which had itself been inspired by a work by Richter and could be linked further back to Vermeer. “That was his interpretation—his version—of a Richter painting and I loved how Henry Taylor was appropriating it to speak about his own community, about who gets left out of the canon of art history,” Buckman notes. Her version shows a woman in profile, her body turned away from the viewer, her head wrapped in a striking golden-yellow headscarf rendered with soft folds and highlights that echo the sinuous movement of her robe, covered in dense, vivid red floral embroidery that creates tactile depth and vital motion. “I wanted to create something that looks at a Mizrahi, modern Orthodox Jewish woman, because I also feel that these are also people and identities that are left out of the canon of art history.”

This is also why all the works are made on repurposed textiles using traditional techniques; her canvases are bed sheets and tablecloths that have often been passed down through generations. “They all already hold stories, carry memories; they revive the legacy of other women for me,” she reflects.

Zoë Buckman, smells like light, 2025. Courtesy the artist and Mindy Solomon

Already embedded in these materials are stories of intergenerational trauma, resilience and resistance. These textiles function as a site of repair, where Buckman tries to pull the threads together again—mending memory without concealing what is broken, allowing the chaos and hardship revealed by the falling strands to remain visible. “I get to build upon the stories that were already there, the ones we don’t know about. Were these textiles treasured? Were they discarded? We don’t know,” she says. “We don’t know who the women were who handled them. Discarded or cherished, they still carry something forward.”

The only text-only work in the show underscores the connection between thread and text, as these textile pieces become vessels for preserving both individual and collective memory. “& still women will tell a woman or what remains of her bones that they are lying,” reads the blue embroidery in crows on the tracks (2025)—a cryptic, poetic allusion not only to the historical tragedy of the Holocaust but also to the ongoing erasure of domestic violence, both past and present. While Buckman has long addressed this denial in her work and public presence, she created this piece during a period of reckoning with how deeply Holocaust denial and the gaslighting of antisemitic experience continue. “One of the most heartbreaking and disappointing things I’ve witnessed in the last two years has been seeing women—feminist women, highly educated women, activist women—denying the rape and sexual assault that happened to people in my community. Immediately, even now, it gets rejected. Jewish women are told they’re making it up.”

In the threads of Zoë Buckman’s dense emotional storytelling, trauma—both individual and intergenerational—is not erased but held. It is rematerialized as witnessed emotion and reconfigured into powerfully dramatic images that affirm the profound humanity within each scene. Through the visible labor of sewing itself, the gesture of repair becomes more than a metaphor—it becomes a vital part of the story.

Zoë Buckman, crows on the tracks, 2025. Courtesy the artist and Mindy Solomon

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Elisa Carollo

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December 25, 2025
Philippe Parreno’s Largest Exhibition in Japan Is Worth the Trek

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Designed by Japanese architects Nikken and nestled in the forest, Pola Museum of Art achieves a full symbiosis between Hakone’s natural beauty and art. Pola Museum of Art

The Pola Museum of Art might not yet be as well-known an art destination in Japan as the art islands Naoshima and Teshima but nevertheless, this private museum up in the mountains—just a two-hour train ride from Tokyo—offers the perfect combination of art and nature. All it takes to get there is the Romancecar limited express train up to Hakone-Yumoto Station. From there, you’ll transfer to a little old-style train that will take you on a 40-minute ride through rustically beautiful scenery, all the way up to the town of Hakone, where a shuttle (or the regular bus) can transport you to the museum. It’s a bit of a hike, but I can assure you it’s worth the trek.

Designed by Japanese architecture firm Nikken Sekkei, the Pola Museum of Art’s stunning glass and concrete architecture perfectly integrates with the surrounding landscape of Fuji-Hakone-Izu National Park. A large installation by Welsh artist and sculptor Cerith Wyn Evans occupies the extensive transitional space between exterior and interior, where bronze sculptures welcome you, including some by Henry Moore. Inside, the museum is a treasure chest of some of the most iconic masterpieces of Impressionist art.

The museum’s collection of approximately 10,000 items was assembled over some 40 years by the late Tsuneshi Suzuki, the second-generation head of the Pola Corporation, who established the museum and opened it to the public in 2002. The current show, “From Impressionism to Richter,” pairs the work of German contemporary artists with Monet’s Nyphees and Moules, as well as some of the finest works by Renoir, Cézanne and Picasso plus two enigmatic portraits by Amedeo Modigliani.

A view of the museum’s striking architecture in conversation with Cerith Wyn Evans’s neon sculpture. Photo by Elisa Carollo

In this unique setting, the museum is currently presenting the largest survey of Philippe Parreno’s work in Japan in the thought-provoking exhibition, “Places and Spaces,” making the trip even more of a must.

Since the ’90s, the acclaimed French artist has been challenging and investigating cinema as a medium of narration, blurring the lines between fiction and reality, artificial and natural, and unveiling its mechanisms and dynamics. His works, as well as his exhibitions, often consist of an ever-changing open field, which exposes the viewer to different technological simulations aimed at suspending the sense and perception of reality.

At Pola Museum of Art, Parreno has created a large-scale theatrical set divided into distinctive chapters or rooms, where mysterious presences, voices, lights, darkness and hidden messages come together in a dramatic sequence. Transforming the museum space into a labyrinth of symbols, the exhibition immerses the visitor in experiences of both wonder and confusion, not knowing what will be next or if one is already involved as a performer.

The journey starts in one of his aquarium rooms, where the sense of reality and materiality is subverted by a series of mylar floating fish that make you feel like you are inside water. Slowly drifting, these colorful fishes evoke a sense of familiarity, a hint of melancholy and nostalgia for a childhood left behind. Notably, in this latest work from Parreno’s fish balloon series, the artist meticulously crafted each of the fish eyes that convey irrepressible curiosity and joy, as they seem to be lost in contemplation in an imaginary ocean of the outdoor forest.

Philippe Parreno, My Room Is Another Fish Bowl. Photo by Elisa Carollo

In the next room, in his well-known installation Marilyn (2012), the actress’s deep loneliness resonates in her voice (here is generated by an algorithm) and in her writing (here recreated by a robot). Meanwhile, the camera pans silently around her hotel suite at New York’s opulent Waldorf Astoria Hotel, recording personal effects the diva left behind while trying to give her point of view. In this complex choreography and continuous interplay between fiction and reality, between artificial and automatic, the actress is continuously embodied and disembodied, resulting in what the artist has described as “a portrait of a ghost embodied in an image.” Questioning the power of the camera’s eye to shape our sense of reality while obscuring or emphasizing specific aspects in relation to what is shown or not shown, Parreno unveils the other side of the celebrity: there’s insecurity, fragility and deep discomfort lurking under the glamor and perfection shown on the screen.

The artifice behind this complex installation, and also the genius of the artist’s mind, is revealed downstairs in another room showcasing a series of rarely shown drawings created for three films: Marilyn, C.H.Z. and those currently in production (100 Questions, 50 Lies) along with a standalone drawing series, Lucioles.

Presented inside vitrines, these images dramatically appear and disappear with the interplay of light and darkness as some sudden epiphanies emerge from the subconscious. Parreno’s drawings are more like prophetic dreams. Made in preparation for the movies more than mental maps or storyboards, they appear as free annotations of symbols, situations and feelings. As precious witnesses to the inner workings of Parreno’s creative process, these seemingly random constellations of images envision sporadic moments then coming together in the flow of the cinematic life.

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The following room is occupied by orange and uncannily shaped balloons floating but also hanging as parasites. They’re part of Speech Bubbles, a series that Philippe Parreno conceived around the end of the ‘90s as a mass of cartoonish 3D speech bubbles of different colors, trapped against and suspended in their noise, without a way to convey their messages. The first batch of Speech Bubbles was produced in 1997 for a labor union demonstration—participants were meant to write messages on them. Today, with their playful but somehow disturbing and invasive presence, they stand as a critique of the transient culture of online chatting and of the futility of a public debate becoming increasingly empty of solid arguments and positions, but they can also represent the suppressed, silent protestations of countless voiceless individuals

Parreno’s Balloons are accompanied here by an article published in 1975 by Italian writer Pier Paolo Pasolini, “Disappearance of the Fireflies,” in which he mourned the vanishing of fireflies due to rapidly worsening environmental pollution, drawing parallels to the decline in postwar Italy’s culture and inner wealth as a result of insensible consumerism and authoritarianism. Inspired by this famous text and the powerful poetic metaphors made by the writer, in 1993, Parreno created an installation featuring electric lights that imitated fireflies: turned on only at night and so never encountered by visitors during museum hours, they powerfully evoked this idea of rebirth and loss, of renewal and the fragility of the flame of hope, to stay alive also in dark and discouraging geopolitical times.

Philippe Parreno, Speech Bubbles (Transparent Orange). Photo by Elisa Carollo

This experience of suspension between light and darkness, hope and despair, deception and simulation, continues in the next room, where a haunting robotic creature made of light bulbs stands, illuminating only intermittently. As an epiphanic presence emerging from the black void, it could be an angel from the hyper-technological age or a mermaid trapped in the relics of the electronic industry. A bench in the darkness invites you to sit in front of an LCD display that intricately replicates a future landscape imagined by generative A.I., the direction of light changing in alignment with the real-time position of the sun. On the other side, another luminous machine connected to numerous cables blinks in an organic yet irregular rhythm, as an alien creature that has been captured and imprisoned into a machine to study it.

All these tech-animated creatures in the room appear to have lives of their own, out of any functionality humans could have created them for. Still, everything in this sci-fi or post-human imaginative-yet-real space is carefully choreographed and manipulated by Parreno to deliver an uncannily nonsensical yet cohesive organic experience as if everything was in a code, in a language and rationale that goes beyond human comprehension.

Oscillating between chaos and order, between playful and unsettling and disorientating experiences, Parreno suspends any ordinary sense of reality, triggering a more conscious interrogation of what reality is once this is constantly integrated, shaped and manipulated by new everyday technologies, even beyond cinematic fiction.

In a moment when A.I. is supposed to “Ignite the Consciousness Revolution,” Philippe Parreno once again created an open field for a critical investigation of the complex interplay between technology, human experience, human cognition and the nature of reality itself. Repeatedly forcing the visitor into a series of experiences where boundaries between the virtual and physical world continuously blur, the artist proves to us how differentiating between “real” and “authentic” becomes more challenging if we don’t start to question what we perceive and what produced the data and input we absorbed.

Welcome to Reality Park echos eerily in the darkness of the last room, inviting us into an ambiguous unreality or possibly a portal to another reality. Parreno’s work appears as a “reality check,” unraveling the various potential levels of reality, many of which already seem to escape common understanding due to the intricate interplay between digital manipulation, A.I. and emerging technologies that have already infiltrated our daily lives.

As one exits Pola Museum of Art, out of this technological hyper-exposure, a nature trail leads one into the woods, where stunning works of contemporary art and sound art coexist with the very real landscape. In the forest’s silence, you can contemplate the gentle ripples in the water caused by the wind on Roni Horn’s cast glass Air Burial, listen to a music piece echoing softly across the trees and concentrate on your breath as you walk through the world and its beauty. Here, in this serene setting, perhaps, there’s still a chance to achieve a moment of higher consciousness out of our primordial human perception of the reality surrounding us.

Roni Horn, Air Burial (Hakone, Japan), 2017-2018; Cast glass. Photo: Koroda Takeru © Roni Horn

“Places and Spaces” is at Pola Museum of Art through December 1.

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Elisa Carollo

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July 24, 2024