Sprüth Magers

Andreas Gursky stands out as one of the most important photographers of his generation. His monumentally scaled works have redefined the medium in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, capturing the condition of modern-day life in condensed form. Interested in the workings of globalization, consumerism, and social phenomena as they relate to contemporary society, Gursky examines the realities of our changing planet. Monika Sprüth and Philomene Magers are pleased to present a solo show of Gursky’s new and recent works as well as a selection of his well-known photographs set in an intertextual dialogue with Old Masters at the New York gallery. Engaging with the images inscribed into our collective memories by the history of painting – from Pieter Bruegel the Elder to J.M.W. Turner and Carl Gustav Carus – the show examines how contemporary images relate to ones of the past, prompting viewers to consider their function as a silent foundation of the way we see.

Monika Sprüth and Philomene Magers are pleased to present Proof of Concept, Jon Rafman’s latest exhibition at the Los Angeles gallery, which features a groundbreaking installation that reimagines television for the AI age. Building on the artist’s long-standing exploration of digital culture and virtual worlds, Rafman has created a living, mutable stream of music videos, animations and experimental content – a hypnotic mirror of our digital era. Blending the collective viewing experience of MTV’s golden age with new technologies, Proof of Concept investigates our evolving relationship with artificial intelligence, nostalgia and media consumption.

George Condo’s forthcoming two-part exhibition – opening at Sprüth Magers and Hauser & Wirth in New York City – exclusively offers a glimpse into the artist’s creative process and limitless inventive drive in the medium of pastel on paper. Both galleries will present new works in which Condo pushes the limits of improvisation – spontaneously employing gesso, fields of color, and gestural pastel without any preparatory sketches – to delve deep into the challenges of expressing various states of the human psyche. Condo relies upon abstraction to reflect the fragmented, elusive nature of thought and feeling.

Across three decades, Jafa has developed a dynamic practice comprising films, artefacts and happenings that reference and question the universal and specific articulations of Black being. Monika Sprüth and Philomene Magers are honored to present the LA-based artist’s first solo gallery exhibition in Los Angeles, featuring recent wall works, sculptures and moving images, including Jafa’s latest film, *****, his deft remix of Martin Scorsese’s Taxi Driver, in which Jafa performs an exorcism on the film (and by extension the American unconsciousness) to foreground the Spook that Haunts the American Psyche.

Monika Sprüth and Philomene Magers are pleased to present a solo exhibition focused on Jenny Holzer’s works on paper, the artist’s first show at Sprüth Magers’ New York gallery. Holzer’s stonework drawings, which were used to set the text for her benches and sarcophagi, offer a glimpse into the artist’s process, in part through her handwritten notations. Also on view will be tracings of documents from federal agency reports, investigations, military and intelligence operations, and other sources. While these tracings began as process drawings for Holzer’s Redaction Paintings, some have become artworks, with gestural marks in graphite and charcoal adding layers of interest to the artist’s use of material and language. Here are fingerprints.

Monika Sprüth and Philomene Magers are pleased to present ”Parliament,” Ostrowski’s first exhibition at the New York gallery, which furthers the artist’s relentless questioning of the medium of painting and its constitutive elements via the recurring figure of the owl.

Gretchen Bender emerged in the early 1980s in New York as a contemporary of the Pictures Generation. A commentator on the age of television, her work continues its relevancy in today’s privatized and multi-screened cultural landscape—in many ways, even predicting its development. Monika Sprüth and Philomene Magers are pleased to present The Perversion of the Visual, Bender’s second exhibition with the gallery and her first in Los Angeles since 1989. The show focuses on her efforts to break into mass media’s attempt to gloss over the severity of cultural events and depictions of violence

Otto Piene (1928–2014), cofounder of the ZERO group and longtime director of MIT’s influential Center for Advanced Visual Studies, combined art and technology in works that comprised light rooms, inflatable sculptures, ceramics, drawings, paintings and performances. Colorful and dynamic, they consistently engage the viewer’s perception and participation. Monika Sprüth and Philomene Magers are pleased to present Piene’s monumental, immersive installation The Proliferation of the Sun (1967/2014) at the Los Angeles gallery, marking the artist’s first solo presentation on the West Coast. Featuring seven digital projections of hand-painted slides and a soundtrack of the artist’s voice directing them, the work envelops visitors and the gallery in shifting prismatic tones that generate, in Piene’s words, a “poetic journey through space.”

it’s not true!!! stop lying! is Nora Turato’s first solo show with the Los Angeles gallery. The exhibition extends across both gallery floors and showcases pool 6, the artist’s latest body of work that comprises a performance and the premiere of a video work alongside new enamel panels and site-specific wall paintings. Anchoring the works and released on the occasion of the show is Turato’s sixth pool publication—the current installment of anthologies of colloquial speech and found text she compiles from a myriad of sources.