Best art exhibitions opening May 2023

May 1, 2023

Every month, Berlin Art Link shines a spotlight on international exhibitions and events with our Worldwide Hit List. We want to highlight artists, galleries, museums and new projects touching on a variety of topics, employing multiple media and featuring diverse subjects. Below are some of the stand-outs that we’ve selected for the month of May.

The Broad

Keith Haring: ‘Art Is for Everybody’
Exhibition: May 27–Oct. 8, 2023
thebroad.org
221 S Grand Ave, Los Angeles, United States, click here for map

When Keith Haring began to graffiti in empty advertisement holders in New York subways, he saw his audience as “a cross-section of humanity that cut across all boundaries.” The universality of art—to be experienced by everyone—is at the centre of The Broad’s upcoming and aptly titled exhibition of the artist. ‘Keith Haring: Art Is for Everybody’ will span ten galleries in the Los Angeles-based museum and grant an expansive insight into both Haring’s practice and personal life, with much of the source material having come from his journals. The exhibition charts not only Haring’s work from subway stations and murals to sculptures and commissions, but his fervent activism. A participant in anti-Apartheid and nuclear disarmament movements, Haring directly spoke to issues of the day including drug epidemics and raised awareness of AIDs, complications from which the artist passed away at the age of 31. The colourful and exuberant paintings of Haring, with animated figures and iconic symbols—the radiant baby, the barking dog—will be recognised by many.

Keith Haring: ‘Untitled,’ 1982, enamel and dayglo on metal, 72x90x1 1/2 in // © Keith Haring Foundation

Haus der Kunst

Rirkrit Tiravanija
Exhibition: May 5–29, 2023
hausderkunst.de
Prinzregentenstraße 1, Munich, Germany, click here for map

A de-centralised exhibition of Rirkrit Tiravanija’s work is showing at various sites throughout May at Munich’s Haus der Kunst. Working in collaboration with the Bayerische Staatsoper, the exhibition takes place alongside Toshio Hosokawa’s opera, ‘Hanjo,’ for which Rirkrit Tiravanija designed the stage set. The show aims to break new ground through an inventive exhibition format; “radically transforming ways of displaying” while challenging the opera stage. According to the institution, there is no one more suitable for the task than Rirkrit Tiravanija. Throughout his 30-year career, the Thai artist has maintained an emphasis on social engagement, blurring the boundary between art and life. With a focus on shared rituals and active contemplation, Tiravanija invites viewers to inhabit and participate in his work, which takes the form of installation, printmaking, video, photography, painting, mixed-media and music. The exhibition includes a tea ceremony performance, a T-shirt printing workshop, ping pong tables and an activated bar installation based on the artist’s remake of ‘Angst essen Seele auf,’ all of which encourage and rely on viewer interaction for meaning. Through his use of activation and slogans, Tiravanija explores human relationships and collectivity, while questioning the uncertainty of our future.

Rirkrit Tiravanija: ’Untitled,’ 2017, from ‘Skip the Bruising of the Eskimos’ (stills 6) // Courtesy the artist

University of Toronto Art Centre

‘Tumbling in Harness’
Exhibition: May 3–July 22, 2023
artmuseum.utoronto.ca
University College, 15 King’s College Cir, Toronto, Canada, click here for map

At a time when shared experience is disseminated evermore through online participation,‘Tumbling in Harness’ examines the emerging frameworks and representations of death and grief online. The exhibition, taking place at the University of Toronto Art Centre, brings together a group of artists—Oreet Ashery, Common Accounts, Charlie Engman, Stine Deja, Russell Perkins and Vunkwan Tam—to examine the concept of online death within sociopolitical, practical and emotional contexts. How is grief mediated through online platforms? How are experiences of bereavement edited and refined when shared on social media? As death becomes increasingly ritualised online, how is the concept of a digital afterlife commodified by digital platforms? Curated by Erin Reznick, ‘Tumbling in Harness’ promises to both explore and interrogate the shifting frameworks and boundaries of death, an inevitability that awaits us at the swipe of our fingertips.

Charlie Engman: ‘Owl Gate,’ 2023 (AI generated image) // Courtesy the artist and University of Toronto Art Centre

Kunsthalle Basel

Tiona Nekkia McClodden: ‘The Poetics Of Beauty Will Inevitably Resort To The Most Base Pleadings And Other Wiles In Order To Secure Its Release’
Exhibition: May 26–Aug.13, 2023
kunsthallebasel.ch
Steinenberg 7, Basel, Switzerland, click here for map

At Kunsthalle Basel, Tiona Nekkia McClodden brings together a body of entirely new work that continues an exploration of the intersections of sexuality. This marks the first institutional solo exhibition in Europe of McClodden, a multi-disciplinary US-American artist who will be exhibiting sculpture, paintings, video and performance. Materials include buckles, chains and metal, with taut and loose contortions of leather, that evoke the states of suspension and release, concealment and revealing. Examining the threads between control, threat, desire and pleasure, ’The Poetics of Beauty’ will inevitably invoke an experience for the senses.

Tiona Nekkia McClodden: ‘Hold on, let me take the safety off,’ 2019, Rennie Collection, Vancouver, CA, exhibition view, COMPANY Gallery, New York, US // Courtesy the artist

Tate St Ives

‘Casablanca Art School’
Exhibition: May 27, 2023–Jan. 14, 2024
tate.org.uk
Porthmeor Beach, Saint Ives, UK, click here for map

After Morocco regained independence in 1956, a radical shift took place amongst artists and intellectuals as they reassessed their own roles and the potential of art as a shared experience. Crucial to this artistic rebirth was Casablanca Art School which, throughout the 1960s and 1970s, pioneered a new generation of artists and contributed to the Moroccan ‘New Wave.’ In a major exhibition of the renowned school, Tate St Ives will bring together the work of 22 artists. With mediums ranging from interior design and typography to abstract painting and murals, the exhibition encompasses the diverse spectrum of Casablanca Art School. Led by Farid Belkahia, Mohammed Chabâa, Mohamed Melehi and others, the school played an integral role not only in artistic practice and experimentation but also in educational reform and community building. With the inclusion of rarely-seen archives, film footage and photography, this exhibition will grant comprehensive insight into the legacy of Casablanca Art School.

Mohamed Melehi, Untitled, 1983, Cellulosic paint on wood, 150 x 200 cm // courtesy of Mohamed Melehi Estate

Kunsthalle/Dessau

Kubra Khademi: ‘Let us believe in the beginning of the hot season’
Exhibition: May 18–July 8, 2023
anhaltischer-kunstverein.de
Hobuschgasse 5, 06844 Dessau-Roßlau, Germany, click here for map

Multidisciplinary artist Kubra Khademi explores the patriarchal and oppressive politics of Afghanistan through the medium of performance and large-scale gouache drawings. Her work addresses female identity in male-dominated Afghan society through various media, expressing her own personal experiences in her home country and as a refugee. Khademi fled Afghanistan in 2015 after a street performance in Kabul led to her receiving death threats. ‘Let us believe in the beginning of the hot season’ contains 14 gouache drawings, 12 photographs and a film made in collaboration with American artist Daniel Pettrow. The exhibition, curated by Esenija Bannan, tells the story of a romantic relationship that develops between an American man and a Taliban leader; an allegory of the relationship between the U.S. and Afghanistan. Coinciding with the exhibition, ‘18kg Performance’ will be shown across the road at Bauhaus Museum on May 18th at 4:30pm. Khademi now lives in Paris and helps other Afghan artists at risk to flee and find refuge.

Kubra Khademi: ‘The wine purifies our souls As our glass continually weeps’, 2020, Photo collage, 67 x 100 cm // Courtesy the artist

MAXXI

Mario Cresci: ‘An Exorcism in Time’
Exhibition: May 31–Oct. 1, 2023
maxxi.art
Via Guido Reni, 4a, Rome, Italy, click here for map

With a body of work spanning decades, Mario Cresci is considered a pioneer in Italian photography. Over 350 of his photographs will be displayed at MAXXI in ‘An Exorcism in Time,’ taken specifically from the photographer’s research into the Basilicata region during the mid-1960s through to the mid-1980s. In the series, interiors and architecture, people, urban spaces and objects of Lucanian tradition build a narrative of the region, with which Cresci had a deep relationship. Through an anthological approach, the work speaks both to the legacy and heritage of a place and present interpretation. Cresci himself considers his work “as a circular path where change is from time to time not a past that has been overcome, but the possibility of a future reinterpretation.”

Mario Cresci: ‘Interni Mossi, Barbarano Romano,’ 1978, silver salts print, cm 30,5 x 40,5 // Courtesy of MAXXI National Museum of XXI century arts, Photographic Collection

Berlinische Galerie

Julius von Bismarck: ‘When Platitudes Become Form’
Exhibition: May 26–Aug. 14, 2023
berlinischegalerie.de
Alte Jakobstraße 124–128, Berlin, Germany, click here for map

Berlin artist Julius von Bismarck’s first show with a biographical approach opens at Berlinische Galerie on May 26th. His work, which takes the form of installations, happenings, sculptures and land art, adopts themes from the natural sciences. Exploring modern society’s evolving relationship with nature, Bismarck uses deconstruction to question our place within the natural environment. How do we understand nature and do we hold the right to interpret it? Referencing his family history for the first time, ‘When Platitudes Become Form’ shows a more personal side to von Bismarck’s work that we haven’t seen before.

Julius von Bismarck: ‘Landscape-Paintings, Bismarck Sea,’ 2022 // Courtesy Berlinische Galerie

Pace Gallery

Trevor Paglen
Exhibition: May 12–July 1, 2023
pacegallery.com
540 W 25th St, New York City, United States, click here for map

Paglen’s first solo exhibition with Pace Gallery in New York brings together five new bodies of work, spanning sculpture, video and photography. Known for his multi-disciplinary work into artificial intelligence and surveillance and data collection, Paglen examines the military and CIA influence operations on American culture. The exhibition includes a photographic series of ‘unids’—objects “unidentified” which travel in orbit and are monitored by American surveillance. Paglen captures the images through infrared telescopes in remote areas, which result in mysterious sky-scapes dashed by the light trail of the object’s path. A new film installation takes disinformation operative Richard Doty, who worked in military disinformation operations during the 1980s, as its unreliable subject. Examining surveillance technologies and disinformation, Paglen puts a spotlight to the otherwise shrouded and covert.