Here Are 8 Of The Best Works We Saw Around The World In 2023
As another turbulent year comes to a close, the Artnet News team took the opportunity to take a look at all the art we've seen since January.
As usual, the art world's busy schedule is filled with a seemingly endless number of exhibitions in galleries, museums, biennials and art fairs. But while we've seen countless photographs and videos of paintings, sculptures, performances, and other works captured over the past year, some have stuck with us, whether for their artistry, meaning, or sheer artistic merit. .
Here are our writers' and editors' picks for the best work of the year.
Delcy Morelos, The Embrace (2023)
Delcy Morelos: Dia Chelsea at the El Abrazo screening in New York City.
(October 5, 2023 – July 2024)
Delcy Morelos, El Abrazo , 2023, Dia Chelsea, New York (detail). Photography by Don Stahl, ©Delcy Morelos.
My number one art show of the year and it's not even close. This giant mass of floating geometric dirt and grass fills a large room at Dia Chelsea and is immediately impressive, but well worth your time. This is a piece of art from 2023 that I will never forget.
It's not just about scale, although it's nice to see an artist doing such thoughtful work on such a large scale. Thanks to its reliability and the tranquility of its elemental symbolism , El Abrazo and its companion Silo Terrenal manage to make you feel as if you are in front of a new sacred piece of architecture.
-Ben Davies
Beatriz Cortés, Ilopango, Extinct Volcano (2023)
Center for Experimental Media and Performing Arts, Troy, New York, exhibits moved.
(November 3-18, 2023)
Beatriz Cortés, Ilopango, Extinct Volcano (2023). With permission of the author, the Federation and the Council. Photo: Michael Valiquette.
My favorite arts experience of the year was the Shifting Center, which took over Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute's Experimental Media and Performing Arts Center (EMPAC) in Troy, New York, this fall. But since it seems like a trap to answer this question throughout the exhibition, to talk about displacement, I will choose the work of art that best exemplifies the didactic forms in which the exhibition explores psychoacoustics: “Ilopango, lost volcano” by Beatriz Cortez . (2023).
The sculpture, a mountainous piece of steel that the artist made in the shape of a drum, was shipped from the Storm Royal Arts Center in Troy to the Hudson River and then placed in the center of EMPAC's Central Concert Hall. Their musical occupation of space in terms of place and sound seems like colonialism. But Cortés, inspired by a sixth-century volcano in his current homeland of El Salvador, has a more poetic and diasporic structure.
"I was fascinated by the idea of Earth particles spreading from the underworld throughout the planet , " he said .
-Taylor Dafoe
Ayana F. Jackson, "Catch the Wave"
From the Depths: In Drexia's Footsteps with Ayana F. Jackson at the Smithsonian National Museum of African Art, Washington, DC.
(April 29, 2023 - April 28, 2024)
Ayanna W. Jackson, Catching the Waves from the Deep : On the Road with Ayanna W. Jackson Smithsonian National Museum of African Art, Washington, DC Photo courtesy of Brad Simbs, Smithsonian National African Museum. Art, Washington, DC
The most memorable art experiences are often unplanned. During my first visit to the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of African Art this year, I came across the book From the Depths: In the Footsteps of Drexia by Ayanna V. Jackson.
Inspired by Afrofuturism, the exhibition is photographer Ayanna W. Jackson's first solo exhibition as part of the Smithsonian Artists Research Society. The artist collaborated with African and Caribbean designers to create stunning costumes for the fictional inhabitants of the kingdom of Drexia.
Underwater World was first created in the 1990s by Detroit techno duo Drexia. His sources include slave ships that passed midway and pregnant African women who were abandoned or thrown overboard during the difficult journey. But Jackson's show imagines an alternate history in which these children are born to African water spirits who live and establish their own magical feminist communities.
The exhibit features dolls dressed in other Drexy outfits and stunning photographs of women showing off all of Jackson's looks. The project also includes videos of the artist, certified as a dive master, swimming 100 feet under the sea in Trinidad, Angola and South Africa.
The show's centerpiece, Catch the Wave , features hand-dyed blue fabrics and fishing nets decorated with oysters and oyster shells. A mannequin floats on sea foam and a dimly lit gallery invites you to dive beneath the towering waves. The whole experience was very exciting, as a tragic story was transformed into a beautiful and inspiring vision that combines art, fashion and mythology.
- Sara Cascone
Cecily Brown Lobster, Oysters, Cherry and Pearl (2020)
In the exhibition "Death and the Maiden" at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.
(April 4 - December 3, 2023)
Cecily Brown Lobster, Oysters, Cherry and Pearl (2020). With permission of the artist.
I visited The Death and Daughter of Cecily Brown twice at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. It is not unusual for me to visit a museum exhibition several times, but these two visits to this particular exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum made my impression of Brown's paintings unforgettable. It was my first visit on my own and I accidentally walked in from the back, which was a blessing. I immediately took on Lobster, Oysters, Cherries and Pearls (2020), a film that first gave me the animalistic satisfaction of contemplating abundance and then gave me a double whammy with the menacing sight of a black cat lurking under the table. - A reminder that it is easy to confuse abundance with excess.
On my second visit, my impression of the exhibition was less about the narrative of each painting and more about the evidence of Brown's artistic mastery. I brought a friend from another city who studied art but does not work as an artist in the gallery. The hidden moments he showed me and his masterful brush strokes gave me a new appreciation for the gallery that I can only get from someone who truly loves to paint. Because of this offer, he left New York, inspired to start training again. Do you think the drawing is dead? Think again!
-Annie Armstrong
“Name Them” art project (2022-present)
At the Count Your Names exhibition in Walpole Park, London.
(September 2023)
Anya Tomashevskaya-Nelson's portrait of 23-year-old medical student Ilara Hagan is one of dozens featured in the group art project "Say Your Name." Photo: Vivian Chow.
Visiting Walpole Park on a sunny afternoon in west London, my eye was caught by dozens of postcards and a tree trunk with roses outside the Pitzinger Estate and Gallery. These images were part of a group art project by London-based Iranian artist Anahita Rezvani Rad to commemorate the hundreds of Iranians killed in protests following the death of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini. The women are accused of violating the strict dress code.
But due to political pressure, their names could not be mentioned locally and their deaths were not honored. I have studied each one of them. Presented in a wide range of artistic styles and created in a variety of media, these images (paintings, drawings or illustrations) serve as a memorial and an opportunity to explore the aesthetics, representation and meaning of contemporary portraiture.
I tried to hold back tears as I reimagined the struggles these people went through. You don't need a fancy white cube and millions of dollars to create a powerful and influential art gallery. As the late Czech-French writer Milan Kundera wrote: "Man's struggle with power is the struggle of memory against oblivion." Our memory is our greatest weapon and art helps us remember what we should never forget.”
-Vivian Chow
Kim Bum is filming the movie Yellow Scream
How to Be Stone (July 27 to December 3, 2023) at Leeum Art Museum, Seoul
“Yellow Scream”, 2012, single-channel video, color, sound, 31 minutes, 6 seconds.
This year's standout exhibition for me was “How to Rock” at Seoul's Liu Art Museum, a solo exhibition by Kim Bum, one of Korea's most popular contemporary artists. The comprehensive study includes more than 70 works from the early 1990s to the mid-2000s, including previously unpublished works on Korea. Despite the simple explanatory text on the walls, my post-visit research highlighted the fascinating nature of the exhibition.
The exhibition's title, "How to Quarantine," is taken from Kim's 1997 book, "The Art of Transformation," which reflects a key aspect of Kim's artistic approach. His work is deeply rooted in spiritual thought and includes a belief in the existence of life and spirit in all things. For example, Kim's first work, "Hammer Bearing," combines different interpretations of the Korean word nata, which means "to create" (with a hammer) and "to give birth." A particularly memorable moment for viewers is the "Yellow Scream" art tutorial, an instructional clip that guides viewers through creating a work of art to the sound of a master screaming. This act of vocal expression while painting symbolizes the artist's challenging concepts and search for meaning, and metaphorically represents the existential nuances of contemporary art through the eyes of Kim Bum. But in the world of modern art, who can look at this work without smiling?
-Katie Fan
Ed Ruscha, Place the Cube (2014)
In the exhibition “Ed Roush: / Now and Then” at the Museum of Modern Art in New York.
Edouard Rocha, Place Paquette (2014) Pinault Collection.
There are several reasons why I chose Ed Ruscha's The Bucket of Happiness (2014) from the excellent retrospective Now Then (until January 13, 2024) at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA).
First of all, it was completely unexpected, and I say this as a big fan of powerful "acoustic" palettes like OOF. This painting from the Pinault Collection is perhaps the most beautiful abandoned mattress ever found and is done in stunning shades of blue and gray.
Instead of evoking a feeling of despair and decay, I was interested in seeing it beautiful and desolate, as well as the lighting and the horizontal arrangement of the musical notes playing over the supposedly desolate scene. Look at the poster on the wall with the voiceover and ask, “What hope is there in this picture?” I thought I was wrong to find this quiet and cozy place until I told you. With contradictory discussions about “Bliss” and “Aquarius”.
-Eileen Kinsella
Freelnisa Zed, My Hell (1951)
Istanbul Modern Exhibition
Freelnisa Zed, Jahimi (1951). Istanbul Modern Art Collection.
In September this year I went to Istanbul for the first time to see the Istanbul Contemporary Art Fair , and this time On this trip, I had the opportunity to visit Istanbul Modern , a beautiful museum filled with modernist views by many Turkish artists , offering a different and more global view on the development of 20th century art .
The main decoration of the museum was , without a doubt, almost luminous landscapes. My Inferno (1951 ) are fragmentary images by the late Turkish artist Fakhrlanisa Zeid in black, white, yellow and red of continuous geometric abstraction. Zeid was born into the family of a particularly useful Ottoman artist and lived a life full of fascination and tragedy . It was given great freedom to a woman of her time and was one of the first art schools in Istanbul. Throughout his life he spent time abroad, lived in Berlin and Paris and married several times. But the specter of violence always loomed over him; When he was a child, his beloved brother was convicted of murdering their father. Her second marriage , to Prince Zeid bin Al Hussein of Iraq , made him a royal , but after the Hashemite monarchy, the couple were soon saved from assassination. He was overthrown in 1958 ( Prince The entire family was murdered ) . When I saw the painting “My Hell” on the museum wall , I stopped dead: the painting represented a world on fire. Perhaps a curse or a fine , the flame of war through dance is reminiscent of great Islamic and Byzantine monuments, which I think is powerful and unexpected.
- Cathy White
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