Midweek Roundup: 6/26

1. Maurizio Cattelan: Sunday

This is Maurizio Cattelan’s first solo gallery exhibition in more than two decades and his solo debut at Gagosian. Similar to America—a functional solid gold toilet that he installed at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in 2016—Cattelan’s new project, which is on view at the 522 West 21st Street location, once again challenges the contradictions of American society and culture.

Sunday (2024) is a response to economic inequality that is directly addressed in his previous works. Using precious metal to deconstruct the country’s relationship to the accessibility of weapons. Panels of stainless steel, plated in 24-karat gold, have been “modified” by gunfire. The formerly smooth surfaces are left riddled with craters and holes. In front of this monolith is November (2024), a marble fountain that portrays a slouching figure urinating on the ground.

“We are completely immersed in violence every day, and we’ve gotten used to it. The repetition has made us accept violence as inevitable.”

— Maurizio Cattelan

2. Sonia Delaunay: Living Art

Sonia Delaunay (1885–1979) was one of the most influential artists of the 20th century. Her remarkably diverse body of work focused on the primacy of color. Painter, artisan, and designer, she embraced modernity and harnessed the creative power of collaboration in the realms of fashion, textiles, interiors, books, mosaics, and tapestries. The exhibition at Bard Graduate Center, contains nearly 200 objects from across the globe. Delaunay has a kaleidoscopic of output through all periods of her career, from the early Parisian avant-garde to the spirited marketing of the 1970s. Exploring , making the exhibition traces a lifetime of creative expression and presents an innovator who transcended conventional artistic boundaries and devotedly lived her art.

NEW

3. Survival Piece #5: Portable Orchard

Opens June 29

This work marks the first standalone museum presentation of the fully realized indoor citrus grove conceived and designed in 1972 by artists Helen Mayer Harrison (1927–2018) and Newton Harrison (1932–2022). This project explores the need for a productive and sustainable food system in an imagined future where natural farming practices are obsolete and cannot be taken for granted. Stretching across the Whitney’s eighth-floor gallery, this installation of 18 citrus trees rooted in planters reflects a survivalist alternative in the face of environmental decline and disaster.

The Harrisons began their decades-long collaboration in the early 1970s, inspired by emerging environmentalist movements and a growing social awareness of the planet’s vulnerable ecosystems. They brought distinct backgrounds in education and sculpture to their shared creative practice and developed an approach to artmaking that was grounded in cross-disciplinary research and yielded projects that served simultaneously as works of art and calls to action.

4. COAL + ICE

This immersive photography and video exhibition at Asia Society brings to life the environmental and human costs of climate change. It also highlights the innovative solutions that let us bask in hope for a sustainable future. At once intimate and universal,the works capture the human toll of climate change across the globe.

Comprising of work from more than 30 photographers from China and around the world, the exhibition traces an arc from deep within coal mines to the melting glaciers of the greater Himalaya. Through intimate portraits and vast altered landscapes, these photographs document the consequences triggered by our continued reliance on fossil fuels.

5. Adama Delphine Fawundu: Ancestral Whispers

Visit Prospect Park Alliance’s first ever Artist in Residence, Adama Delphine Fawundu’s site-specific work, Ancestral Whispers. The collection is informed by the Alliance’s research into the lives of Africans enslaved by the Lefferts family. To date, the Alliance has identified 25 people enslaved by the Lefferts family at the house between its construction in 1783 and the abolition of slavery in New York in 1827. Fawundu has created 25 fabric banners that transform the house’s Flatbush Avenue facade, inspired by and honoring the heroism of the 25 Africans enslaved by the Lefferts family. Visitors can also watch, Fawundu’s 2020 performance piece, In the Face of History Freedom Cape (pictured to the right), which was filmed in part in Prospect Park and Lefferts Historic House.