Petzel Gallery is proud to participate in Galleries Curate: RHE, a collaborative exhibition formed by a new global initiative compiled of 21 galleries from around the world. Designed to express the dynamic dialogue between the participants’ individual programs, Petzel is pleased to present the online exhibition Hydrosphere, organized following the inaugural curatorial subject of water, on view beginning March 22, 2021 – World Water Day.
The word RHE is borrowed from the Heraclitan aphorism panta rhei, meaning “everything flows.” Evoking the characteristics and effects of water: transience and interconnectivity, the new platform brings together galleries online and circulates exhibitions all over the world. Initially held together by the connected theme of physical bodies of water, the works on view in Hydrosphere speak to the nature of play, voyage, marvel, and even threat (of degradation and catastrophe), that the people, creatures, and lives existing in proximity to water embody. Here we see water represented in relation to landscape: the vastness of the sea, the mysteries of the ocean floor, the longevity of an iceberg, and the travels of objects and individuals across the many different bodies of water that we live amongst. Like the natural and near-constant movement and fluctuations of water itself, these disparate works range from poetic, humorous, wry, to lively – the animated sculptures of Cosima von Bonin, monumental seascapes meticulously painted by Sean Landers, and the absorbent cellulose structures of Adam McEwen coming together like tributaries to a larger body.
Hydrosphere features work by Cosima von Bonin, Andrea Bowers, Christian Jankowski, Sean Landers, and Adam McEwen.
About Galleries Curate
Galleries Curate is an informal group of contemporary galleries from around the world, formed as a result of the universally felt global crisis of the COVID-19 pandemic. The coalition focuses on a supportive sense of community and cooperative interactions through collaborative exhibitions designed to express the dynamic dialogue between our individual programs. RHE is the first chapter of this collaboration, an exhibition and website themed around a universal and, we hope, unifying subject: water. Like culture, water is never static but always in flux.
What Can I Write To Truly Move You,
To Reach You With These Words.
I Want You To Recognize Yourself In My Paintings,
For You To See This Fellow Voyager And Say Ahoy
—Sean Landers
"As a kid, I was always a hermit. I think of myself as a hermit crab. We had a monkey, Mr. Nelson, and we had dogs and cats. Once a day I walked alone on the beach. I was three years old, and I wore shorts fastened with elastic, and I stuffed everything I found in them—crabs, jellyfish, everything. Then I put them on the lunch table. I never had anything to do with art, it was always the beach and animals, animals, animals. I love strange animals. I love aardvarks and snails and all creatures. In fact I just freed two lobsters. Lobsters are very intelligent and some grow to 140 years old. I went to the fish shop. A guy in front of me bought five lobsters and I knew how they were going to die. So the next day I went there and got the biggest ones. I paid $200. I said please don’t harm them, because their legs break easily. I couldn’t say I was going to free them. The ocean is ice cold, so I was afraid, maybe they won’t survive. But I looked it up on the Internet, and they will be fine. When they are in the tanks, they hate it. They get over-crowded and eat each other."
— Eleanor Heartney, “In Conversation: Cosima von Bonin with Eleanor Heartney,” The Brooklyn Rail, April 4, 2018.
"We can pull a moral pulse from von Bonin’s gimmicks and diversions, but it’s an ambivalent one—her sculptures, while dressed for a party, also reference the cost of unchecked consumption, reckless pollution, and state violence. Indeed, she often sneaks a political volt among works that are bluntly impassive…like the ocean, a longtime subject of von Bonin’s work, her project is nothing if not elusive."
— Annie Godfrey Larmon, "Cosima von Bonin," Artforum, Summer 2018.
“Together, they suggest the traditional theme of the voyage of life…as we navigate the wide seas of existence. Landers makes this point explicit in a piece subtitled Epilogue 1 by placing a real captain’s wheel in front of the show’s largest painting: a boldly cinematic expanse of empty ocean that invites us to step up and set course.”
— Joseph R. Wolin, “Sean Landers: The Artist Sets sail on Stormy Existential Seas,” Time Out New York, June 2-8, 2011
In the summer of 2012, Christian Jankowski created the installation Review as part of his second exhibition with Petzel, titled Discourse News. For Review, Jankowski invited art journalists and critics from different parts of the world to write a hand-written review on the artwork he would eventually make with their reviews. After finishing with their texts, they were asked to place the pages inside an empty bottle of their choice and deliver them to the gallery. The final installation consisted of approximately 100 bottles, sealed with red wax and spread across the main room of the gallery. With the reviews sealed, they were forever bound from being read, rendering their intended use into ghost-like forms.
The series of photographs in Review – Waterproof Test (also 2012) documents the bottles used in the Review installation on a journey down New York’s East River, which enters the Atlantic Ocean. But the bottles will never reach the open water. Jankowski placed them in the river only briefly to test their water resistance. The somewhat anachronistic messages in a bottle – with their sealed, secret contents intended for an unknown recipient – were allowed to bob up and down in the waves. In the end, Jankowski fished them all out: they passed the test. Each of the photographs depicts a single, floating bottle framed in close-up; nothing is shown beyond the bounds of the water. The only points of reference are handwritten on the photograph’s matte: the name of the critic who wrote the review and the name of the publication that he or she most often writes for.
List of Participating Critics:
Emma Allen, The New Yorker
Sandra Antelo-Suarez, Trans Magazine
Bill Arning, Independent writer and curator
R.C. Baker, The Village Voice
Ronald Berg, Zitty Berlin
Nicole Bussing and Heiko Klass, Independent writers
Marina Cashdan, The New York Times, Wallpaper
Valentina Ciarallo, Independent writer and curator, NY Arts Magazine
Stacey Clarkson, Harper’s Magazine
Tyler Coburn, Independent writer
Nikki Columbus, Parkett
Alyssa Coppelman, Harper's Magazine
Gabi Czöppan, Focus Magazin
Monica de la Torre, BOMB Magazine
Giovanna Diappi, Independent writer
Safia Dickersbach, Artfacts.Net
Dr. Mareike Dittmer, Frieze Magazine
Vanesa Fernandez, Celeste Magazine
J.A. Forde, Company Agenda
Manami Fujimori, Bijutsu Techo
Francesca Gavin, Dazed & Confused
Andrew Goldstein, Independent writer
Michelle Grabner, Artforum
Agnieszka Gratza, ArtReview, Flash Art, Artforum.com, Sight & Sound, Metropolis M
Dr. Rose-Marie Gropp, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung
Uta Grosenick, Distanz Verlag
Christine Hamel, Bayerischer Rundfunk
Natalie Hergert, Artslant
Will Heinrich, New York Observer
Claudia Henne, Rundfunk Berlin-Brandenburg
Peter Herbstreuth, Der Tagesspiegel
Thea Herold, Independent writer
Jennifer Higgie, Frieze Magazine
Faye Hirsch, Art in America
Silke Hohmann, Monopol
Meike Jansen, Taz Die Tageszeitung
Paddy Johnson, Art Fag City
Magdalena Kroener, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung
Paul Laster, Flavorpill
Vincenzo Latronico, Frieze Magazine (London), Domus
Cathy Lebowitz, Art in America
Adair Lentini, Frieze Magazine
Holger Liebs, Monopol
Tan Lin, Independent writer and poet
Karsten Lund, Art Papers
Caoimhín Mac Giolla Léith, ARTnews
Barbara MacAdam, ARTnews
Sarah McCrory, Frieze Magazine
Tom McDonough, Independent Writer
Carolina Miranda, ARTnews
Aram Moshayedi, Artforum and Art in America
Cynthia Nadelman, ARTnews
Sina Najafi, Cabinet Magazine
Warren Neidich, Independent writer and artist
Charo Oquest, Edge Zones
Ulf Poschardt, Welt am Sonntag
Gabriella Radujko, Artcards
Simone Reber, Der Tagesspiegel
Alexander Riegel, Independent writer
Walter Robinson, Artnet
Kara Rooney, The Brooklyn Rail
Nicole Rudick, The Paris Review
Peter Schiering, Aspekte
Jakob Schillinger, Flash Art
Collier Schorr, Independent writer and artist
Dr. Susanne Schreiber, Handelsblatt
Manfred Schumacher, Art-Report
Alexander Scrimgeour, Artforum
Hillarie Sheets, ARTnews
Noemi Smolik, Artforum
Thierry Somers, 200% Magazine
Bert Stabler, Proximity Magazine
Raimar Stange, artist, Flash Art, Kunst-Bulletin, Springerin
Andras Szanto, Artforum
Nicola Trezzi, Flash Art
Brigitte Werneburg, Der Tagesspiegel
Michael Wilson, Artforum, Time Out
Carmen Winant, Highlights
Rachel S. Wolff, New York Magazine
Linda Yablonsky, The New York Times
Lisa Zeitz, Die Zeit
Scott Zieher, The Believer Magazine and gallery owner
Todd Zuniga, Opium HQ