Sprüth Magers

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.

Louise Lawler examines the conditions, procedures, presentations and boundaries of art. Her photographs and interventions analyze the contextual production of meaning as well as the infinitude of context. Monika Sprüth and Philomene Magers are pleased to announce GOING THROUGH THE MOTIONS, an exhibition of mostly new works by the artist at the Los Angeles gallery. Presenting pieces from her swiped, adjusted-tofit, and traced series, Lawler investigates art history as well as her own work and questions both institutional and artistic authority.

Monika Sprüth and Philomene Magers are honored to present Insecure Unconcerned, a solo exhibition of works by Boetti, on the occasion of the thirtieth anniversary of the artist’s death. The show at the New York gallery is dedicated to the late Pasquale Leccese, a close friend of Boetti’s and curator of the artist’s previous presentations with the gallery: Early Works, Sprüth Magers, London (2003) and Works 1966-88, Sprüth Magers, Munich (2002). Before he died last year, Leccese was planning to curate Insecure Unconcerned in celebration of Boetti. Comprising artworks from four decades and providing an overview of his seminal oeuvre, the exhibition will include Insicuro Noncurante (1966–75), Tutto (1988) and Mappa (1989), “Biro” drawings (1975–78), selected “Arazzi” (1977–94), and Aerei (1983–89), alongside rich archival material.

The work of Analia Saban, which spans a plethora of media and approaches, has consistently explored the meanings we give to the objects and technologies that inform our everyday lives. Sprüth Magers and Tanya Bonakdar Gallery are pleased to present Synthetic Self, an exhibition of new work by Saban on view concurrently at both Los Angeles galleries. Comprising sculpture, painting, tapestries and other newly reimagined artistic media, the exhibition investigates subjects of paramount importance today at the intersection of environmental concerns, artificial intelligence and human creativity.

The work of Kaari Upson was always profoundly concerned with the body, its interactions with the psyche, as well as its relation to other bodies both real and imagined. Limbs, eyes and other features populate her sculptures, paintings, drawings and videos; even in her abstractions, folds and orifices abound. Monika Sprüth and Philomene Magers are honored to present an exhibition of Upson’s work at the New York gallery that offers an in-depth look at her multilayered, kaleidoscopic drawings, filled with bodily presences and texts rife with psychological exploration; alongside one of her celebrated “mother’s leg” sculptural installations, never-before shown in the US.

Monika Sprüth and Philomene Magers are delighted to announce the representation of Martine Syms and present the artist’s first solo show with the gallery. The exhibition Loser Back Home will premiere her latest works in video, sculpture, painting and photography. Garnering widespread attention for her work that combines conceptual grit, humor and social commentary, Syms has emerged in recent years as one of the defining artists of her generation. Sprüth Magers is pleased to be representing Syms in collaboration with Sadie Coles HQ and Bridget Donahue.

Monika Sprüth and Philomene Magers are honored to present an exhibition by Senga Nengudi at the New York gallery that illuminates in-depth, for the first time, an important body of work created by the artist while working in New York in the early 1970s.

Bringing together a group of outstanding female artists in an innovative and collaborative effort to support the next generation, Sprüth Magers is pleased to announce a benefit exhibition to raise funds for the non-profit organization Artadia. Through grantmaking, community-building and advocacy, Artadia strengthens the invaluable role visual artists play in our society. The exhibition comprises influential contemporary voices across multiple generations, reflecting both the discourse on art, gender and power that is firmly embedded in Sprüth Magers’ history and its enduring support of pioneering female figures. Featured will be works by artists who are all part of the gallery’s dynamic roster, including Thea Djordjadze, Lucy Dodd, Karen Kilimnik, Barbara Kruger, Louise Lawler, Pamela Rosenkranz, Analia Saban and Rosemarie Trockel. All funds raised will go towards the impactful Artadia Awards program.

Monika Sprüth and Philomene Magers are pleased to announce EMO, a solo exhibition by Anne Imhof, the largest presentation of the artist’s work in the United States to date and her first in Los Angeles. Over the past decade, Imhof has developed a deeply moving and varied practice that encompasses sculpture, painting, drawing, installation, video and performance. EMO brings together several new bodies of work across multiple mediums, putting each in dialogue with found objects in ways that implicate visitors’ bodies as they move through the space, at turns exalting and frustrating the viewing experience.

Sprüth Magers is pleased to participate in Master Drawings New York with The Kingdom of the Renaissance, an exhibition of works by Karen Kilimnik and her old master predecessors, curated by Mireille Mosler. Inspired by a variety of sources, from old masters to present day, Kilimnik conjoins components while constructing her own universe. From depictions of royal menageries of the Renaissance through public figures' pooches, the artist filters her inner imaginary world through source material procured from books and museum exhibitions. Early works on paper from the 1980s and more recent paintings are paired with Renaissance sculptures, paintings and drawings from the seventeenth through nineteenth centuries. Although Kilimnik is fluent in a multitude of mediums—including Nymphenburg porcelain—the mini-survey The Kingdom of the Renaissance focuses on drawings and paintings inhabited by animals. Void of humans and localities, the artist’s imaginary world becomes even more elusive, lacking any reference to her usual protagonists. Animals in Kilimnik’s world are actors in their own universe, substituting princesses and movie stars. Sometimes appropriating old master paintings, Kilimnik’s titles, however, add another layer to this magical world rather than paying abject homage to her precursors. Kilimnik’s dinner in the alley, a small canvas from 2010, shows a dog guarding his meal from a vigilant cat, while following Jan Baptist Weenix’s (1621–1660) much larger composition. Other paintings, such as friends in the woods and the witche's familiars in the woods (both 2010) reveal Kilimnik’s inspiration and witty interaction with an oil sketch by Jan Fyt (1611–1661). There is no contiguity in Kilimnik’s encounters with old masters: it is her fictitious fantasy that jumps the narrative and makes us believe you can be in any existence of your own choosing. Kilimnik’s Christmas reindeer meets The Highland Nurses by Sir Edwin Landseer (1802–1873), while her sea horses encounter a Renaissance bronze of a sea monster, and Napoleon + favorite camel, Hector at the pyramids of Giza, Egypt, a pastel from 1987, is shown alongside a cavalryman by French academician Jean-Louis-Ernest Meissonier (1815–1891) providing us a construed narrative as we enter Kilimnik’s kingdom.

Nancy Holt’s work addresses the consistent examination of how we attempt to understand our place in the world. The artist is one of the most important figures of earth, land, and conceptual art movements. An innovator of site-specific installation and the moving image, she recalibrated the limits of art, expanding the places where art could be found and embracing the new media of her time. Across five decades she investigated perception, systems and place.

Sprüth Magers is pleased to announce the inaugural exhibition at its New York space, a presentation of over seventy-five of John Baldessari's maquettes dating from the early 1980s to the 2000s, curated by Nana Bahlmann. Monika Sprüth and Philomene Magers are the global representatives of the Estate of John Baldessari. Created as preparatory works and sketches for his celebrated large-scale pieces, these dynamic works on paper contain and reveal the artist's original source materials from his vast image archive, from which he freely extracted, combined and thus re-contextualized elements to create his works. Together, the maquettes grant extraordinary insight into Baldessari's inspiring way of seeing and distinct image-making process.

The gallery is honored to present the first solo show in Los Angeles by Kaari Upson in over a decade, and the first in the United States since her death in 2021. Titled by the artist, the exhibition debuts a remarkable series of sculptures and works on canvas created between 2020 and 2021, in which Upson's stirring characters, symbols and marks materialize through an array of painterly gestures; as well as examples from other recent series and installations that will receive their US premiere. Together, the works demonstrate the artist's unwavering urge to interpret the psyches and psychoses of our complex contemporary lives.

Monika Sprüth and Philomene Magers are pleased to present an exhibition of new and historical works by Barbara Kruger at the Los Angeles gallery, timed with her major exhibition, Thinking of You. I Mean Me. I Mean You., on view across Wilshire Boulevard at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (March 20–July 17, 2022).

Widely acknowledged as one of conceptual art's founding artists, and a rare woman amid that canon, Hanne Darboven offered a unique and fascinating voice in the turn to structural systems in the art of the late 1960s onward. At the Los Angeles gallery, Monika Sprüth and Philomene Magers are pleased to present the West Coast premiere of the artist's first film work, Six Books on 1968 (1969), a groundbreaking installation that is key to grasping Darboven's overall process and artistic ethos