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Cubist sculptures to underwater furniture: must-visit exhibitions this Jan and Feb
Exhibitions to not miss in 2023
Image: Courtesy of Method, Kala Ghoda, Cecilia Díaz Betz, @SideGallery, Carpenters Workshop Gallery
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Cubist sculptures to underwater furniture: must-visit exhibitions this Jan and Feb

STIR handpicks exhibitions from across the world that are must-visits for design professionals, connoisseurs, and the curious alike. 

by Anushka Sharma
Published on : Jan 04, 2023

The world welcomed the new year with excitement that failed to run dry—with eyes glimmering with hope, hearts full of gusto and a list of (mostly transient) resolutions. The celebrations are accompanied by a rekindled buzz in the spheres of art and design. The creative community continues to take passionate strides towards new ideas and embark on courageous expeditions into uncharted waters. 2023 brings with it numerous exhibitions and initiatives traversing sculptural art, furniture design, lighting design, and retrospective presentations that make for great additions to this year’s ‘not to miss’ list.

If you approach 2023 with a renewed curiosity for the artistic and imaginative, STIR your creative cognition with exhibitions from across the globe that are must-visits in the months of January and February—catch them before the curtains drop.

Zizipho Poswa: Ubuhle Bokhokho at Southern Guild

South African gallery Southern Guild is currently presenting uBuhle boKhokho (Beauty of Our Ancestors), a solo exhibition by Zizipho Poswa. Taking stage from November 17, 2022, to February 2, 2023, this ensemble of ceramic and bronze sculptures is informed by the elaborate art of hairstyling practised by Black women across the African continent. uBuhle boKhokho marks the beginning of another ambitious chapter for the artist as Poswa embarks on an exploration of her own cultural story as a Xhosa woman through the making of her sculptural works. Hair, with its profound symbolic relationship to the community, emerges as a relevant origin of inspiration and dialogue within contemporary cultural discourse.

Marc Newson's solo exhibition at the Gagosian Gallery

Whitewashed dome houses dotting the Aegean Sea coast certainly make for a breathtaking view, but the Greek islands have also inspired many designers with their rich waterscapes, Greek architecture, and cultural heritage. London-based industrial designer Marc Newson, too, accumulates different elements with references from Greek history to birth a new collection. "As a designer, I create objects as real, physical applications of creative processes," says Newson. For his first solo exhibition in Athens, Greece, the product designer pays his respects to the nation’s traditional colours with furniture enclothed in shades of blue and white. He also dabbles in craftsmanship by using pieces made of marble combined with classical materials using ancient and advanced technologies. The exhibition will be on display until January 7, 2023, at the Gagosian Gallery’s Athens outpost.

Handle With Care at Method gallery

YaazD Contractor’s exhibition at the Method, an art gallery in Kala Ghoda, Mumbai, bears a stark resemblance to a science fiction film set. The show, titled Handle With Care, underlines the use of technology and factory-made mechanical elements—an approach that conforms to the Indian artist's past art exhibitions. Contractor is often referred to as a light artist, as his art installations involve light design and illuminate spaces. Each of the objects on display features a contrast in the materials used including cinder and glass, and mass-produced and prefabricated steel parts. Harbouring cold cathode neons and quickly withering flowers, Handle With Care is on view at Method Gallery till January 3, 2023.

Infinito Viviente at Side Gallery

Realising an artistic representation of the magical underwater ecosystem, French designer Elissa Lacoste’s creations—lamp designs, table designs, stool designs, benches, chandeliers, and racks—donning the shapes and textures of corals, sea flowers, fossils, and other natural and geological elements, lie interspersed in the exhibition space of Side Gallery in Girona, Spain. On view from November 9, 2022 to February 14, 2023, the design exhibition titled Infinito Viviente marks the designer’s first solo exhibition with the Spanish gallery. The name of the showcase, the objects displayed across Side Gallery’s Casavells location, and the exhibition design allude to 19th-century poet and novelist Jules Gabriel Verne’s science-fiction novel Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea.

Uprooting, re-rooting: Matter and Construction of the self at Galerie Revel

Spanish ceramic artist Bisila Noha adorns the interiors of Galerie Revel with her first solo exhibition in France—and with the French gallery. Dubbed 'Uprooting, re-rooting: Matter and Construction of the self,' the exhibition will be on view from October 20, 2022, to January 8, 2023, in the gallery's Bordeaux space. The exhibit brings together the largest body of work by Bisila Noha to date, presented as a whole under one roof—encompassing creations from the past, present, and future. Ranging from cubist and futurist sculpture to plaster and bronze pieces, Bisila Noha's work is conceptual in its substance. Broaching complex notions of time, artistic legacy, transmission, identity and growth, the Spanish artist questions ideas of separation by time and proposes a sense of belonging to a community of artists who came before her.

“Before The Fantastic...” at Charles Burnand Gallery

UK-based Charles Burnand Gallery hosts “Before the Fantastic…” the debut solo show by Puerto Rican artist and designer Reynold Rodriguez. Running from October 24, 2022, until January 13, 2023, the design exhibition spotlights a collection that is realised over the past two years—a conglomerate of ‘moments’ created through emotion and form. Rodriguez’s work is sculpted by a very particular moment of creation, the instance when the nebula in our mind lights up and the synapses connect, crystallising an emotion or idea into a form. “Prior to every storm there is a moment of clarity and quiet space, the pre-cursor to the dutiful chaos that will ensue, a moment where procedural development begins; it is this nexus that is “Before the Fantastic…”,“ says Rodriguez.

On Earth at Carpenters Workshop Gallery

Carpenters Workshop Gallery presents On Earth, a dive into the contrasting and poetic universe of Korean artist and designer Wonmin Park. Through this new exhibition, the artist expresses a turning point in his creative process. For the first time, resin and volcanic rock, two materials that have shaped Wonmin Park’s art, are in dialogue. This new exhibition epitomises Park’s work which resides at the crossroads of contradictory phenomena opposing rationalised human forms and natural forces of disorganisation. On view from October 20, 2022, to January 7, 2023, On Earth unearths the relationship between man and nature—combining volcanic rock, the product of a geological process as old as time, with resin, which is entirely man-made. A total of 17 pieces are on display, including a series of tables, chairs, benches and a desk.

Dirty Clothes are Washed at Home at National Gallery of Victoria

Fragments of clothes sewn together hanging on steel racks, a zigzag wash basin, and walls featuring sketched vignettes representing scenes of communal life associated with traditional washing areas; this is the scenography of the exhibition conceived by Mexican architect Tatiana Bilbao. Hosted at the National Gallery of Victoria (NGV) in Melbourne, Australia La ropa sucia se lava en casa—translating to Dirty Clothes are Washed at Home—uses clothes as a medium of collective discussion, questioning the acts of our bodily care, and inequalities associated with domestic labour. Clothes symbolising protection of our body, the work questions ‘how are clothes washed?’ and ‘who washes them for us?’

Willy Guhl- Thinking with Your Hands at Museum für Gestaltung

Museum für Gestaltung, Zurich is hosting a retrospective design exhibition featuring the works of the seminal Swiss industrial designer Willy Guhl (1915-2004). Guhl enjoys a special position in Swiss design history, owing to his well-known design icons, including the Garden chair for Eternit or even Europe’s first plastic shell chair design. The retrospective exhibition titled Willy Guhl- Thinking with Your Hands celebrates the designer's legacy while offering a glimpse into his holistic and practice-oriented work. The exhibition, curated by Renate Menzi, will be on display from December 9, 2022, till March 26, 2023, and will use photographs, prototypes, films, and design processes to outline the product designer's life and works.

Green Modernism: The New View of Plants at Museum Ludwig

Do plants feel? Do they grow tired, ecstatic, sleepy, wounded, or depressed? Green Modernism: The New View of Plants is an exhibition that traces the anthropogenic history of plants. It commenced on September 17, 2022, and is open to the public until January 22, 2023, at the Museum Ludwig in Cologne, Germany. Around 130 exhibits and three broadly categorised chapters—The Plant as the Other, The Adopted Plant, The Plant as Relative—analyse presumptions of Modernist society, starting in the early 20th century—a time when the world was obsessed with floral motifs (The Flower Euphoria of Weimar Republic, the 1920s), and the gender binary.

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