Welcome to This Week in Culture, a weekly agenda of show openings and events in major cities across the globe. From galleries to institutions and one-of-a-kind happenings, our ongoing survey highlights the best of contemporary culture, for those willing to make the journey.
Paris
“Sculpting the Senses” by Iris van Herpen
Where: Musée des Arts Décoratifs
When: November 29, 2023 - April 28, 2024
Why It’s Worth a Look: In this exhibition, over 100 haute couture pieces by innovative fashion designer Iris van Herpen are put in conversation with works by artists including Wim Delvoye, Kate MccGwire, and Damien Jalet, as well as designers like Neri Oxman, Ferruccio Laviani, and Tomáš Libertíny.
Know Before You Go: Pieces from the natural sciences complement the works on display, as skeletons and fossils are littered throughout the space, mirroring the organic forms that have become a signature of van Herpen’s work.
Barcelona
“108 Days” by Lydia Ourahmane
Where: MACBA Barcelona
When: November 28, 2023 - April 1, 2024
Why It’s Worth a Look: For her latest piece, artist Lydia Ourahmane has produced an empty gallery space. The site-specific project’s title takes its name from the number of days it’s running and amount of artists invited to engage with the work. Each has been selected by Ourahmane herself to come and leave an item they find “urgent and incisive.”
Know Before You Go: The crux of Ourahmane’s exhibit lies in the trust between the participants: the institution’s trust in the artist’s vision, and her trust in the nominees she selected to bring their own touch to the piece, not to mention the trust in the audience to understand and themselves participate in the ongoing installation.
Vienna
“Darker, Lighter, Puffy, Flat”
Where: Kunsthalle Wien
When: November 29, 2023 - April 14, 2024
Why It’s Worth a Look: This group exhibition focuses on a widely appreciated but understudied topic: breasts. Both an eroticized symbol and functional aspect of motherhood, the chest is present throughout the art historical canon. Here, a group of international and local artists share new commissions and archival works depicting a diverse array of nipples and jugs.
Know Before You Go: There is a queer feminist throughline in the show, prompting questions around our cultural understanding of top surgery, breast enhancement, and breast reductions. In this way, the curators position the visibility of the body as an act of resistance.
New York
“Sand” by Diamond Stingily
Where: Greene Naftali
When: Opening November 29, 2023
Why It’s Worth a Look: 2016 CULTURED Young Artist Diamond Stingily—who works across sculpture, video, and installation—is opening her debut solo presentation with Greene Naftali, who announced her representation earlier this year. One silkscreen on display, washed in a monochromatic blue, bears the message “COME TO JESUS,” splashed across the front of a faded brick building.
Know Before You Go: Of the show, Stingily thus far has simply posted, “If you look good, act bad.”
“Little Storms” by Cynthia Lahti
Where: James Fuentes
When: December 1, 2023 - January 13, 2024
Why It’s Worth a Look: “Little Storms” marks the artist’s debut solo exhibition in New York. Straying from her work across metal, glass, plaster, and collage, Lahti here sculpts out of clay, which provides greater opportunity for spontaneity, a theme present throughout the show. Also apparent is the push and pull between perfection and imperfection, intentionality and organic creation.
Know Before You Go: Each clay work is accompanied by a line drawing intermingled with swaths of watercolor. The study offers a brief outline for the three-dimensional figure, offering a bit of insight into the artist’s process.
London
“Pourfendue” by Inès Longevial
Where: Almine Rech
When: November 22 - December 22, 2023
Why It’s Worth a Look: Nos ancêtres, a 1950s trilogy of moral tales by Italian author Italo Calvino, gets a modern adaptation in Inès Longevial’s latest exhibition. Throughout the works, bifurcation is a recurring motif, pulling from a story in the books in which a young boy is split in two by a Turkish cannonball and retreats to the trees for the rest of his days. Elsewhere, the lush foliage described by the author, and dominant themes in his work, seep their way into Longevial’s paintings.
Know Before You Go: Writer Eva Pion notes of the novels’ influences, “All of these contribute to a form of resolution in Inès Longevial's work which reflects both the painter's obsession with slicing and dicing her subject in order to understand it better, as well as her desire for reconciliation.”
“Robert Ryman: Line”
Where: David Zwirner
When: November 29, 2023 - April 28, 2024
Why It’s Worth a Look: “Line,” organized with support from the late artist’s family, is a complimentary exhibit running alongside David Zwirner’s presentation at its 537 West 20th Street location in New York, showcasing paintings by Robert Ryman from the early 1960s. Here, drawings dating from 1961 through the year 2000 catalogue his unorthodox approach to the medium. The works are enacted upon everything from canvas and aluminum to Plexiglas and coffee filter paper.
Know Before You Go: Curator Dieter Schwarz, who oversaw the New York exhibition, said of the artist in a statement, “For Ryman, ‘drawing’ is not about being confined to a single genre or fixated on a conventional picture support. In his practice, a drawing is an object insofar as it does not represent anything.”
“Untitled rencontres”
Where: Opera Gallery
When: November 23, 2023 - January 7, 2024
Why It’s Worth a Look: Opera Gallery inaugurates its new space in London’s Mayfair neighborhood, with a group show featuring a mix of contemporary mainstays and artists pulled from the gallery’s roster. Pieces from Pablo Picasso, Yayoi Kusama, René Magritte, and Joan Miró will be shown alongside new presentations by British-Israeli designer and architect Ron Arad and Swiss painter Andy Denzler.
Know Before You Go: This will be the first permanent location in London for Gilles Dyan’s Opera Gallery, joining 15 other international outposts spanning from Seoul to Madrid to New York.
Milan
“Calculating Empires: A Genealogy of Technology and Power, 1500-2025”
Where: Fondazione Prada Osservatorio
When: November 23, 2023 - January 29, 2024
Why It’s Worth a Look: A.I. has hit society like a tidal wave, and its omnipresence necessitates examination. Kate Crawford and Vladan Joler have taken up the task with their joint Fondazione Prada exhibition, narrating the relationship between technology and power dating back to 1500. As Joler explains, “This is the year when generative artificial intelligence has flooded global culture, and dominated attention spans … But these systems have already shown a capacity to concentrate power, produce ‘hallucinations’ and misinformation at scale, and challenge the perception of a shared reality.”
Know Before You Go: The exhibition, which took nearly four years to complete, is centered around the Calculating Empires Map Room. The dark space holds a diptych of maps, one focused on themes of communication and computation, and the other on control and classification.
