‘François Morellet. In-Coherent’
26 January – 7 April 2020
Hauser & Wirth New York, 69th Street 

François Morellet (1926 – 2016), a prolific, self-taught painter, sculptor, and installation artist, developed a radical approach to geometric abstraction during a career spanning more than six decades. Incorporating steel, neon tubes, iron, adhesive tape, wire mesh and wood into his work, he strove to dismantle traditional hierarchies and embraced the elements of randomness and chance. Throughout his career, the pioneering French artist committed to a methodology of rigorous objectivity and personal detachment. Morellet’s playfulness and wit are also revealed in the titles of his works, which often include tongue-in-cheek puns, parody, and wordplay. 

The artist’s inaugural exhibition at Hauser & Wirth, ‘François Morellet. In-Coherent', will feature key abstract geometric paintings, neon works and wall drawings dating from 1953 to 2013. The exhibition will explore the artist’s use of light and movement, challenging the viewer’s understanding of perception and the physical picture plane. Organized with Olivier Renaud-Clément, the works on view will underscore the full breadth of Morellet’s career and artistic practice, bringing further awareness to the wide-ranging output and lasting influence of this remarkable artist. 

‘Amy Sherald. Black is not a country but I live there’
13 February – 18 April 2021
Hauser & Wirth Los Angeles 

Amy Sherald is acclaimed for paintings of Black Americans at leisure that achieve the authority of landmarks in the long tradition of social portraiture – a tradition that for too long excluded the Black men, women, and families whose lives have been inextricable from the grand narrative of American experience. Beginning February 2021, Hauser & Wirth Los Angeles will present the artist’s first West Coast solo exhibition, ‘Amy Sherald. Black is not a country but I live there’, debuting all new works made by the artist in the second half of 2020. Taking its title from a work by Pulitzer Prize-winning American poet Jericho Brown, the exhibition will find Sherald expanding upon her distinctive visual language in paintings of individuals and group portraits. The inherent radicality of Sherald’s vision and technique invites viewers to engage her subjects actively in a dialogue that challenges accepted notions of race and representation. 

Sherald was the first woman and first African American ever to receive first prize in the 2016 Outwin Boochever Portrait Competition from the National Portrait Gallery in Washington D.C. She rose to national attention in February 2018 with the unveiling of her official portrait of former First Lady Michelle Obama, commissioned by the National Portrait Gallery in Washington, DC. The artist’s first solo museum exhibition, ‘Amy Sherald,’ was shown at the Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis and Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art in 2018, and opened at Spelman College Museum of Fine Art in January 2019. She received the 2018 David C. Driskell Prize from the High Museum of Art in Atlanta GA. Alongside her painterly practice, Sherald has contributed for almost two decades to socially committed creative initiatives, including teaching art in prisons and art projects with teenagers. 

‘Roni Horn. Recent Work’
Hauser & Wirth New York, 22nd Street
18 February – 10 April 2021 

Continuing her ongoing study of the protean nature of identity, meaning, and perception, American contemporary artist Roni Horn will present ‘LOG (March 22,2019–May 14, 2020),’ a new body of work alongside pieces from her series Wits End Mash and Yet. Throughout her forty-decade career, Horn has engaged in a range of forms to consistently question and generate uncertainty to thwart closure in her work. ‘Roni Horn’ will offer visitors vivid access to the artist’s drawing practice, a method that she has described as a ‘kind of breathing activity on a daily level.’ For Horn, drawing is ‘the form I feel closest to. It may be my true native language.’ Her intricate works on paper examine recurring themes of interpretation, mirroring, and textual play, which coalesce to explore the materiality of color and the sculptural potential of the medium. Horn’s preoccupation with language also permeates these works; her scattered words read as a stream of consciousness spiraling across the paper. The exhibition will feature a large scale installation of new works on paper. 

This exhibition follows the artist’s 2019 drawing survey ‘Roni Horn: When I Breathe, I Draw, Part I’ at the Menil Collection. Her work has been the subject of numerous major exhibitions including ‘Roni Horn’ at the Fondation Beyeler, Basel (2016); ‘Roni Horn a.k.a Roni Horn,’ organized by the Tate Modern, London, which traveled to the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, and the Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston (2009 – 2010). 

‘Paul McCarthy’
Hauser & Wirth New York, 22nd Street
18 February – 10 April 2021 

Celebrated American artist Paul McCarthy continues to mine the depths of contemporary society with an exhibition of new drawings, paintings, and sculpture at Hauser & Wirth New York. Opening 18 February, the works on view confront and interrogate the entrenched psychological and emotional complexities of power and politics. 

Central to the exhibition will be large-scale drawings from McCarthy’s most recent project, ‘A&E’. An acronym for Adolf & Eva, Adam & Eve and Arts & Entertainment, ‘A&E’ evolved out of the artist’s film project ‘NV Night Vader’ (2019 – ). Drawing from Liliana Cavani’s sadomasochistic erotic drama ‘The Night Porter’ (1974), the project continues McCarthy’s exploration of the origins of fascism, Hollywood, the contemporary art world, and the current political climate. 

Created by McCarthy during improvised performances between himself and the German actor Lilith Stangenberg while in character, these drawings serve as documentation of both McCarthy’s incisive critical lens and his career-spanning omnivorous practice including performance, film, and drawing. 

The A&E drawings will be accompanied by multiple audio recordings captured during the performances. McCarthy’s works on paper were recently the subject of a major survey entitled ‘Head Space: Drawings 1963 – 2019’ at the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles, and he has an upcoming exhibition planned at KODE Bergen in Norway in 2021. 

‘Luchita Hurtado’
Introduction and conversation with Hans Ulrich Obrist
Book design by Garrick Gott
Hardcover - $45 

In the final years of her life, Luchita Hurtado engaged in a series of interviews with Hans Ulrich Obrist, Artistic Director at the Serpentine Galleries, that deepened over time into a true friendship. Gathered in this book alongside an extensive collection of never-before-seen archival images, these intimate conversations create an enduring portrait of the artist. Tracing her biography from its beginnings in Venezuela to New York, Mexico, and finally to California and New Mexico, Hurtado’s storytelling is punctuated by images from her visual world; from self-portraits and drawings to photographic chronicles of her passionate engagement with her family and the natural world, they impart the impression of a life vibrantly lived. Hurtado crossed paths with some of the most celebrated artists of the 20th century, such as Leonora Carrington, Marcel Duchamp, Arshile Gorky, Frida Kahlo, Lee Krasner, Agnes Martin, Robert Motherwell, Isamu Noguchi, Man Ray, Mark Rothko, and Rufino Tamayo, all of whom are referenced and remembered in the book. 

The book also includes an afterword by Hauser & Wirth Co-President Manuela Wirth. In a heartfelt tribute addressed to Hurtado, reflecting on their immediate connection when they first met, Wirth writes, ‘As an artist, a woman, a mother, and so much more, your loving dedication to the world around you resonated with our own feelings about art, womanhood, family, and nature.’ 

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