In June 2025, David Claerbout's latest work “The Woodcarver and the Forest”, premieres at Kasteel van Gaasbeek as an intimate, meditative portrait of a solitary woodcarver whose craft quietly echoes deeper ecological concerns. While the act of carving soothes and mesmerizes, it subtly exposes the environmental cost of deforestation and overconsumption. Presented alongside other works within the castle’s historic interiors, the exhibition encourages visitors to slow down and reflect on time, nature, and craftsmanship.
Typologien is a comprehensive exhibition on 20th-century German photography, curated by Susanne Pfeffer (director, MUSEUM MMK FÜR MODERNE KUNST, Frankfurt). On view in the Podium of Triennale Milano, the show brings together over 600 works by 25 artists – including Candida Höfer, Thomas Ruff, and Thomas Struth – exploring the concept of typology as both method and artistic strategy. Rather than following chronology, the exhibition organizes images by visual or conceptual parallels. Typology here serves to highlight both commonalities and subtle differences, questioning hierarchies and affirming the equal value of subjects. As Pfeffer notes, in an age of digital image overload, typologies offer a way to slow down, observe, and rethink how we see the world.
With List Projects 32, MIT List Visual Arts Center presents a solo-show of Elif Saydam who uses painting as a space for fantasy rooted in everyday life. Layering urban sites like gas stations and convenience stores with gold and ornament, Saydam explores desire and survival in gentrified cities. Referencing miniature painting, illuminated manuscripts, and texts from Persian poetry to queer literature, their work also appears on unconventional surfaces like stall doors and mirrors. The exhibition is organized by Zach Ngin with Natalie Bell.
The Shirley Fiterman Art Center is presents “Susan Weil: About Time”. A solo show of more than 50 works by artist Susan Weil, this survey spans her career from 1949 to the present, and is the first institutional solo presentation of her work in New York City. Time, both literally and metaphorically, is a central theme that threads its way through her more than 70-year practice. Weil cultivated a unique vision that moved back and forth between paper and canvas, traditional materials and experimental techniques, figuration and abstraction, exploring throughout the ever-shifting elements of time, movement, and language.
"Expanding Landscapes: Painting After Land Art" explores the connection between land and art, featuring both historic and contemporary works. Tracing themes of earth, sea, and sky from Romanticism to today, the exhibition includes pieces using natural materials like site-specific earth pigments. This is precisely what determines Helene Appel’s illusionistic paintings on raw, untreated linen: they transport the viewer into familiar, often accidental situations involving touch, smell or taste, thus evoking immediate associations. Helene Appel’s work will be featured next to artists like Hannah Brown, Sam Douglas, Ingrid Pollard, and Robert Smithson.
Saving Nine begins with a rust-dyed imprint of Kunsthal Thy’s roof on canvas. It is the basis of Elif Saydam’s invitation for collective labor. The exhibition will undergo several transformations and result in a collaborative artwork: Under the artist's guidance visitors will stitch, dye and cut together; banners will be transformed into quilts during communal sessions. The final artwork will remain at the institution. Saydam embraces shared craft practices as a politics rooted in care and restoration.
"Stephan Balkenhol: Something is Happening", features over 35 works by the German sculptor. Known for his unique craftsmanship, Balkenhol carves each sculpture by hand. Figures and plinths emerge from single blocks of wood, emphasizing a raw yet refined aesthetic. His sculptures – often everyday people, animals, or hybrids – are marked by simplicity and expressive form. The artist blends traditional craftsmanship with contemporary themes. Highlights of the exhibition include his Zodiac relief series and works that subtly merge pop culture with introspective depth.
Hessisches Landesmuseum Darmstadt presents “Candida Höfer. Photographs,” a comprehensive exhibition showcasing the acclaimed German photographer’s five-decade career. A key figure of the Düsseldorf School and a former student of Bernd and Hilla Becher, Höfer is renowned for her large-format images of empty public interiors—libraries, theaters, museums, and zoos—capturing their cultural significance and silent grandeur.
Albertina Modern presents key works from the renowned Viehof Collection in dialogue with its own holdings. The focus is on German art after 1960 – from Beuys, Polke, and Richter to Grosse, Isa Genzken, and Neo Rauch. Featuring 24 artistic positions, the exhibition offers a multi-layered view of painting, sculpture, and conceptual art. Contrasts, ruptures, and connections between generations and styles unfold in dynamic interplay. The collection itself becomes a “remix” – reassembled, reinterpreted, and viewed through a contemporary lens. A dedicated space highlights Karin Kneffel’s masterfully figurative paintings.
The group show "VERTIGO" at Villa Carmignac on the Île de Porquerolles explores the perception of landscape and motion between disorientation, suspension, and light. Divided into five thematic chapters – aquatic, cosmogonic, aerial, infinite, and terrestrial – it brings together around fifty works by international artists such as Olafur Eliasson, Helen Frankenthaler, and Gerhard Richter. The works, some created specifically for the exhibition, move beyond figurative representation to question our sensory relationship with the natural world.
The exhibition presents works from the collection of Gemma De Angelis Testa, recently donated to the Galleria d’Arte Moderna di Ca' Pesaro in Venice. It marks the beginning of a series of presentations of significant private collections at Villa Panza in Varese. De Angelis Testa’s collection includes works by artists such as Goshka Macuga, Shirin Neshat, Marina Abramović, Candida Höfer, Michelangelo Pistoletto, Anselm Kiefer, Francesco Clemente, and Tony Cragg. These works complement the existing Villa Panza collection, renowned for its modern and contemporary art. The exhibition creates a dialogue between the two collections.
"(Un)real" at Kunsten Museum of Modern Art Aalborg presents works from the collection of the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, exploring the fragile boundary between reality and imagination. In a polyphonic constellation, artists such as Thomas Struth, Yayoi Kusama, Wolfgang Tillmans, and Ai Weiwei open up new perspectives on what we perceive as real through painting, photography, sculpture, and installation. Their works reflect collective memory, cultural constructions, and the shifting nature of societal truths – sensual, critical, and poetic. (Un)real invites us to understand reality as a mutable state – situated between imagination, memory, and the present.
Based on the Francès Collection, this exhibition explores the artistic power that emerges from pain, imperfection, and turmoil. Balancing between figuration and suggestion, the works create a dramatic tension, shifting between reality and dream. Through painting, photography, and sculpture, international artists give form to the unspeakable and reflect the fractures of our time—social, historical, or personal. La vie est une plaie... invites viewers to experience art as an expression of inner conflict and relentless creativity.
Candida Höfer is one of the most renowned German photographers of today. The Hessisches Landesmuseum Darmstadt presents a comprehensive insight into her work, showcasing both iconic pieces and new photo series. Höfer is known for her large-format, unoccupied photographs of public interiors—museums, theaters, libraries—which serve as portraits of these spaces. Her work, spanning over five decades, has been exhibited internationally, including in Düsseldorf, Sydney, and Cologne. In 2024, she was awarded the Käthe Kollwitz Prize.
The Pinault Collection presents Thomas Schütte’s first major exhibition in Italy at Punta della Dogana, curated by Camille Morineau and Jean-Marie Gallais. Featuring around 50 sculptures, along with drawings and prints, the exhibition highlights his multifaceted work. Schütte’s figures – crafted from clay, wax, glass, steel, or bronze – blend irony and gravity to explore the human condition, cementing his role in contemporary art.
Thu-Van Tran will take up a one-year residency at Villa Medici from September 2025 to deepen her artistic research and experimentation. Throughout the year, the 2025-2026 fellows will present their work in multidisciplinary artistic events open to the public, including performances, exhibitions and lectures at Villa Medici.
Claerbout is invited to exhibit his work at the Musée de l’Orangerie as part of the "Contemporary Counterpoints" program. Since the 1990s, Claerbout has been developing a body of work centred on the passage of time, largely consisting of videos and related drawings, studies, storyboards and dissertations on various projects. Claerbout invites the viewer to explore the plurality of the experience of duration through perception of often miniscule changes.
What does Concrete Art mean today? How do contemporary female artists associated with this art movement approach their work? And would they even describe themselves as “concrete”? The Kunstmuseum Ahlen explores these questions with an exhibition featuring 20 international female artists connected to Concrete Art. The works on display span painting, drawing, sculpture, and installations, all emphasizing spatial qualities in innovative ways. Among the highlights is the work of Hassani, whose fascination with science and its relentless pursuit of understanding the universe, from the smallest particles to the vast cosmos, informs her artistic practice. Her works showcase both meticulous precision and a profound engagement with experimental processes – testing material, color, paper, and form.
