While the New Year has lots of great exhibitions to look forward to (see the Artlyst guide to exhibitions in 2018) there are also great exhibitions to see that you may have missed and that are closing in January.
Museum Shows
Rachel Whiteread at Tate Britain closes on 21 January 2018.
This is the most comprehensive exhibition to date of one of Britain’s leading contemporary artists. Using industrial materials such as plaster, concrete, resin, rubber and metal to cast the surfaces and volume of everyday objects and architectural space Whiteread creates evocative sculptures that range from the intimate to the monumental.
Read Sue Hubbard’s interview with Rachel Whiteread Here
Soutine’s Portraits: Cooks, Waiters and Bellboys at The Courtauld Gallery closes 21 January 2018
This is the first show on the artist in the United Kingdom in 35 years. Soutine was one of the leading painters in Paris in the 1920s and 1930s, part of the influential ‘School of Paris’ and seen by many as the heir to Van Gogh.
Read Edward Lucie-Smith’s Review Here
Dan Colen: Sweet Liberty at Newport Street Gallery closes 21 January 2018
An exhibition of work by American artist Dan Colen (b.1979). Colen’s first major London solo show spans over fifteen years and features new works, including large-scale installations.
Colen emerged onto the New York art scene in the early 2000s alongside artists such as Dash Snow and Ryan McGinley. Brilliantly witty, shocking, poignant and nihilistic, his art presents a portrait of contemporary America and is, in part, an investigation into the act of producing and looking at art.
Read Edward Lucie-Smith’s Review Here
Thomas Ruff at Whitechapel Gallery closes 21 January 2018
Cosmology, suburbia, nudity, utopianism, catastrophe – these are some of the subjects that Thomas Ruff (b. 1958, Germany) addresses in his photographic series, which for almost four decades have investigated the status of the image in contemporary culture.
Basquiat: Boom For Real at Barbican Art Gallery closes 28 January 2018
This is the first large-scale exhibition in the UK of the work of American artist Jean-Michel Basquiat (1960—1988).
A pioneering prodigy of the downtown New York art scene, Basquiat came to the media’s attention in 1978 when he teamed up with his classmate Al Diaz to graffiti enigmatic statements across the city under the collective pseudonym SAMO©, before swiftly becoming one of the most celebrated artists of his generation.
Read Edward Lucie-Smith’s Review Here
Read Sooz Belnavis Review Here
Ilya and Emilia Kabakov: Not Everyone Will Be Taken Into The Future at Tate Modern closes 28 January 2018
Enter the fantastical world of the Kabakovs in the first major UK museum exhibition dedicated to these pioneers of installation art.
The Kabakovs are amongst the most celebrated artists of their generation, widely known for their large-scale installations and use of fictional personas. Critiquing the conventions of art history and drawing upon the visual culture of the former Soviet Union – from dreary communal apartments to propaganda art and its highly optimistic depictions of Soviet life – their work addresses universal ideas of utopia and fantasy; hope and fear.
Galleries
Arnulf Rainer: Early Work at Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac closes 10 January
Following the exhibition at Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac in Salzburg in the summer of 2016, this presentation provides an impressive insight into the artist’s early work, in which the field of tension between Surrealism, American Minimalism, Abstract Expressionism and European Informel reaches a climax.
Reading de Chirico at Tornabuoni Art closes 12 January
In an unprecedented exhibition, Tornabuoni Art is exhibiting over 25 works spanning the artist’s entire career, alongside original manuscripts that offer unique insight into the pictorial world of Giorgio de Chirico.
Ernst Wilhelm Nay at Almine Rech Gallery closes 13 January
First London solo exhibition of work by the painter Ernst Wilhelm Nay (1902–1968). Nay is one of the most well known postwar German artists of the twentieth century yet rarely seen and little known in the UK.
Gilbert & George: The Beard Pictures And Their Fuckosophy at White Cube Bermondsey Street closes 28 January
Gilbert & George present a major exhibition of new work at White Cube Bermondsey, coinciding with the 50th anniversary of their collaboration.
Kehinde Wiley: In Search of the Miraculous at Stephen Friedman Gallery
Exhibition by internationally renowned American artist Kehinde Wiley entitled, ‘In Search of the Miraculous’. This exhibition marks a crucial moment in Wiley’s career, as he sets out to push both his artistic process and social critique into new territory.
Jewyo Rhii at Amanda Wilkinson Gallery closes 21 January
In this inaugural exhibition at Amanda Wilkinson Gallery, Jewyo Rhii presents a horizontal sculpture that echoes the shape of the vertical fence in a previous installation, ‘Walls to Talk to’, and is here used to display a series of drawings made in response to writer Irene Veenstra’s commentary on the earlier work.
Juergen Teller at Alison Jacques closes 13 January
An exhibition of photographs by German artist Juergen Teller (b.1964, Erlangen). This exhibition comprises selections from three bodies of work – the artist’s iconic series Go-Sees; Enjoy Your Life! Junior, a recent collaboration with Bubenreuth Primary School in the artist’s hometown; and a ‘visual essay’ depicting a modern fairy tale about a boy who became a king.
Aspects of German Art (Part Two) at Ben Brown Fine Arts closes 26 January
Aspects of German Art (part two) spans eight decades of German painting and features work by some of the most important and pioneering artists of the twentieth century.