LUC TUYMANS, ADRIAN GHENIE OR AMY SHERALD, REFERENCES OF THE INTERNATIONAL ART CREATION SCENE

Looking back, shortly before the COVID-19 era, José Luis had the opportunity to visit in situ different exhibitions in Venice, London or New York, which let him enjoy the great work of excellent artists. Thus, this selection of José Luis Puche’s last year favourite exhibitions was born.

Without a doubt, one of the essential shows was the one from the Belgian artist Luc Tuymans, ‘La Pelle’, at the Palazzo Grassi, owned by the patron of the arts and collector François-Henri Pinault. The exhibition, which put together 80 paintings, was presented at the last Venice Biennale in 2020.

In Puche’s words, “Tuymans has a very personal touch when it comes to formally tackling his pieces and the conceptual intelligence to choose what he is going to paint, whether it is a social, historical or even casual theme, because he has come across with a good contemporary image to study and interpret.”

Adrian Ghenie, “The Battle between Carnaval and Feast’

Following Puche’s favorite exhibitions in Venice in September 2019, the ten-piece exhibition curated by Luca Massimo Barbero at Palazzo Cinni stands out. It is dedicated to the Romanian artist Adrian Ghenie and is called ‘The Battle between Carnival and Feast’.

“We came across some of Ghenie’s unreleased works, some of which were created specifically for this occasion. The water was one of the leitmotivs of the entire exhibition. As itisusual in the work of this artist, the painting runs through the canvas in an organic and even fanciful way, as has rarely been seen before, without losing the margins of figuration,” indicates José Luis.

Amy Sherald, ‘ The heart of the matter…’ 

Crossing the Atlantic Ocean in New York City, the exhibition organized by the artist Amy Sherald called ‘The heart of the matter…’ at the Hauser&Wirth gallery in the Chelsea area was particularly noteworthy.

For Puche, “Sherald is one of those artists whose work must be seen in situ. Its apparent flat surfaces are full of sublime nuances, and his large formats completely embrace those who contemplate it. The characters portrayed are chosen intentionally to establish a narrative link between the viewer and the artist’s daily life. There is no concept in her work that is alien to the discourse of her painting.”

‘Basquiat Defacement: The Untold Story’ in the Guggenheim Museum

The Guggenheim Museum in New York surprised everyone with ‘Basquiat Defacement: The Untold Story’, an insight of the work of the artist Jean-Michel Basquiat. It was a scream on the wall, a racial claim pressed against a wall, which included works by his friends and colleagues Keith Haring and Andy Warhol.

This exhibition takes one of Basquiat’s works as its starting point, ‘The Death of Michael Stewart’, also known as ‘Defacement’, held in 1983. A painting rarely exhibited in public in which Basquiat throws a deep cry on the death of the black artist Michael Stewart at the hands of the New York police when he was doing a painting in an East Village subway station. The piece was originally painted on the wall of Keith Haring’s studio a week after Stewart’s death.

This exhibition highlights the problems that we are still suffering and which are still very much latent in the USAand in the rest of the world. It reminds us that art must always work on these topics, showing the world how little evolution or even involution we have achieved in certain dealings and behaviors, and reminding us that they are still valid today and that we must solve them once and for all to have a fully equal society.