Foreground: Nadia Belerique, HOLDINGS, 2020–. Background: Cynthia Daignault, As I Lay Dying, 2021. Photo: Dario Lasagni
Soft Water Hard Stone
2021 Triennial
New Museum / Oct 28, 2021 – Jan 23, 2022
New York, USA

Soft Water Hard Stone, the fifth New Museum Triennial, brings together works across mediums by forty artists and collectives from around the world. The title of the 2021 Triennial, Soft Water Hard Stone, is taken from a Brazilian proverb, versions of which are found across cultures: Soft water on hard stone hits until it bores a hole.

In this moment of profound change, where structures that were once thought to be stable are disintegrating or on the edge of collapse, the 2021 Triennial recognizes artists re-envisioning traditional models, materials, and techniques beyond established paradigms. Their works exalt states of transformation, calling attention to the malleability of structures, porous and unstable surfaces, and the fluid and adaptable potential of both technological and organic mediums. Throughout the exhibition, artists address the regenerative potential of the natural world and our inseparable relationship to it, and grapple with entrenched legacies of colonialism, displacement, and violence. Their works look back at overlooked histories and artistic traditions, while at the same time look forward toward the creative potential that might give dysfunctional or discarded remains new life. It is through their reconfigurations and reimaginings that we are reminded of not only our temporality, but also our adaptability – fundamental characteristics we share, and that keep us human.

OTHER ANNOUNCEMENTS & EVENTS
  • Adam Pendleton: To Divide By
    Sep 22, 2023 – Jan 15, 2024
    Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum
    St. Louis, USA

    “What is your name?” “Where are you from?” “How did you end up here?” “Can you feel it?” “Does it hurt?” With these and other questions, the American artist Adam Pendleton’s solo exhibition at the Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum sets up an elaborate call-and-response network that articulates a sense of history as fragmented poetics. The exhibition will showcase a polyvocal assemblage of new and recent paintings, drawings, and video portraits that together reveal Pendleton’s interest in creating a conversation between mediums, as well as his belief in abstraction’s capacity to destabilize and disrupt. (more…)

  • Meaning
    Aug 26 – Dec 3, 2023
    Inside-Out Art Museum
    Beijing, China

    Beijing Inside-Out Art Museum is delighted to open a new exhibition Meaning. Meaning has been inspired by our recent experience. In the past three years, travel almost came to a complete stop. The network of art that emerged in the happy era of globalization has been put to test by physical and ideological barriers, yet it still maintains good faith and conveys news from other parts of art world to us. (more…)