David Zwirner is pleased to present Vessels, a group exhibition at the gallery’s London location featuring works by artists from both generationally and geographically diverse backgrounds. Working in a variety of media, these artists engage in different ways with the idea that the living body is a vessel – one that contains a life force or a spirit, but one that is also subjected to social, political, and cultural constructs.
Vessels is curated by gallery director Galuh Sukardi, and will include works by Ruth Asawa, Huguette Caland, Seyni Awa Camara, Marlene Dumas, Geumhyung Jeong, Shio Kusaka, Maria Lassnig, Tiona Nekkia McClodden, Mrinalini Mukherjee, Alice Neel, Magdalene Odundo, Berenice Olmedo, Pamela Rosenkranz, Andra Ursuţa, and Portia Zvavahera.
The exhibition is organised around three themes: Earthen Vessels, Cyborg Vessels, and Psychological Vessels. Drawing on a wide range of ideas, from spirituality to folklore, from sexuality to psychology, the works presented explore the limits of the human experience in their depictions of bodies as lived vessels as well as the issues at stake when the body is signified as a vessel. Across all of these categories, there are slippages where the works become sites in which the human experience has taken place but also onto which social and cultural ideas are projected.
Curated by Galuh Sukardi.