Gao Xingjian and Robert Wilson at Barcelona's #LoopFestival2024

For the 2024 edition of LOOP Festival Barcelona, Robert Wilson’s Video Portrait of Gao Xingjian (HF Video, 2005), writer and 2000 Nobel Laureate in Literature, enters a visual dialogue with a work by Xingjian himself, “Lumière” (Ink on canvas, 2015). Complemented by Wilson’s “Messiah” drawings (Charcoal on paper, 2020), the exhibition at galeria SENDA invites the viewer to an experience of slow and reflective contemplation. In a world of rapid stimuli and fleeting images, it forces us to stop, to feel each small gesture, to observe and to appreciate the power of subtlety in art.

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Wrestling in Venice

The 2024 edition of “Glasstress” by the Berengo Foundation opened in Venice last weekend. On the island of Murano, the center of Venetian glassmaking since the 13th century, glass exhibitions and installations by various artists, curated by Umberto Croppi, can be viewed (and purchased) until November 24, 2024.

Robert Wilson’s newest glass creation, in collaboration with the glass masters of Berengo Studio, was inspired by a pair of Chinese ceramic figurines from the Han Dynasty (202 BC – 9 AD, 25–220 AD): two acrobats kneeling and balancing pottery jars on their arms. At the same time, with their outstretched arms, they seem on the verge of fighting each other. Indeed, acrobatics in the Han Dynasty included juggling and martial arts, and even some ancient Chinese warriors were trained in both.

In a rare figurative approach, Wilson and the Berengo Studio contemplated on these Han acrobats, and—instead of ceramics, using glass with its fascinating lightness and heaviness at once—created a series of unique pairs of “Wrestlers.” The Wrestlers appear more performative than sculptural in their palpable readiness to move and strike.

“Robert Wilson’s “Wrestlers” seem to be one of the few figurative representations of characters in the artist’s oeuvre, while explicitly corresponding with the performing arts. They seem to express the staggering power of a gesture that is stopped, suspended; if only for a fraction of a second. Between these wrestlers, between the intention and the act, everything is frozen. It is this sublime moment between extreme tension and calm that Wilson reveals to us. These little figurines, as strong and fragile as glass, do not just tell us a random anecdote, but, like votive offerings, lead us to the sensitive heart of Wilson’s universe.”
— Françoise Guichon, museum curator and former director of CIRVA (International Glass and Visual Arts Research Center, Marseille, France), who invited Robert Wilson in 1994 to Marseille as a resident artist, and collaborated with him on several glass creations.
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Glasstress 8 1/2 / Venice (Group Exhibition)

Glasstress is a project by Adriano Berengo to further his mission to promote the use of glass in the world of contemporary art. The first Glasstress exhibition was launched in 2009 to establish a new platform for art made with glass. Founded as a Collateral Event of the Venice Biennale of Arts, although its roots will always remain in Murano it has gone on to tour the world. Coinciding with the 60th International Art Exhibition in Venice, Glasstress returns to its original location—an old furnace on the island of Murano transformed into an exhibition space—together with a special project at the Tesa 99 in the Arsenale Nord. The title of the exhibition is an homage to filmmaker Federico Fellini and his masterpiece of the same name, a film which hinges on the theme of artistic creation. It also emphasises the exhibition's eighth, specially "expanded" edition, with the 1/2 indicating two large never before seen installations that will be exhibited in Tesa 99.

MESSIAH Limited Run and Exhibition in Barcelona

Tonight, Robert Wilson’s celebrated production of The Messiah will open for a limited run at the Liceu Opera House in Barcelona. It is the famous oratorio by G.F. Händel, but in the seldom-performed “classical” arrangement by W.A. Mozart. Performances are from March 16 through 26, 2024.

The run will be complemented by an exclusive exhibition of drawings that Robert Wilson made in Salzburg, while working on the original production. Galeria Senda will present these from March 20 through April 20, 2024 at their wonderful space on Trafalgar Street in Barcelona.

Incidentally, the beautiful Gran Teatre del Liceu was the very first opera house that Robert Wilson ever visited. He was hitchhiking through Europe - his first time on the continent - while he was still a student in Texas. Hear him talk about the experience in this interview with Victor García de Gomar:

Dogon exhibition: Signing today & Exhibition extended through 9/17

The exhibition Black & White - Tribal Art Meets Drawings at Berlin’s Dogon Galerie has been extended through September 17. Several sold works have been replaced with new ones, so do come back even if you have already seen the show.

Today, August 19, at 5 PM, Robert Wilson will be on site to sign his works and mingle, meet & greet. Looking forward to seeing you there!

Click here for event information.

Click here for the online exhibition catalogue.

"A Boy From Texas" - NY opening today - Bird and Fox still up in Houston

Some of the unique glass sculptures that Robert Wilson designed and developed in 2019 with the Corning Museum of Glass will be on display at Cristina Grajales Gallery in Tribeca, opening today, until September 9. The installation in blown and cast glass reflects on nature, fragility, and rebirth, in memory of Wilson’s childhood in Texas, as well as his early theater works and installations developed in rural America.

A Boy From Texas - Cristina Grajales Gallery - from today through September 9, 2022

In April this year, when Robert Wilson’s Turandot opened at Houston Grand Opera, the Josh Pazda & Hiram Butler Gallery presented a selection of his video portraits - among those the “Hermès by Nature” series that premièred during Here Elsewhere in 2016 -, drawings and other works. This exhibit will be on view until June 25 only.

A Bird and A Fox - JOSH PAZDA HIRAM BUTLER - until June 25, 2022

Detail from: Robert Wilson, Wouter (Cordon Bleu Finch), 2016; video portrait from the series Hermés by Nature

Check out all current and upcoming exhibitions of Robert Wilson’s works here.

EINSTEIN ON THE BEACH iconic Bed Scene minted as a digital artwork

The latest revival of the original production of Philip Glass and Robert Wilson’s opera Einstein on the Beach (1976) was in 2012, and it toured around the world. Now it is making its entrée into the digital realm: the iconic “Bed scene", the slow rise of a horizontal light bar into fully vertical, and its upward float out of the scene, has been minted into the first-ever EOB NFT (non-fungible token).

The 20-minute NFT will be exhibited live at the equally iconic Kraftwerk (“power plant”) in Berlin, every event night at 9:45 PM, presented by the DAO Bright Moments, and auctioned on April 22-23, 2022.

For tickets and schedule click here.

For more information on the EOB NFT click here.

To view Robert Wilson’s profile on Foundation.App and purchase the NFT click here.

Einstein on the Beach (Montpellier, 2012), Act 4, Scene 2 - Photograph © Lucie Jansch

Apollo Magazine: Robert Wilson Video Portraits →

While museums around the world are shuttered due to the Covid-19 pandemic, Apollo’s usual weekly pick of exhibition openings will be replaced by a selection of digital initiatives providing virtual access to art and culture.

Robert Wilson, the artist and theatre director, made his first set of ‘video portraits’ in the 1970s: sitters included the Surrealist writer Louis Aragon, the museum director Pontus Hultén, and Hélène Rochas (of Rochas fashion house). In 2004 he returned to the idea during a residency with the now-defunct VOOM HD Networks. The resulting high-definition ‘VOOM Portraits’ depict celebrities like Brad Pitt and Isabella Rossellini in suitably theatrical mises-en-scènes, along with less familiar figures – such as a black panther and a snowy owl. Broadcasting from isolation in Berlin, Wilson has now made a selection of these portraits available online for the first time (five in April and a further five in May, with more to come). View them on the artist’s website.

Artribune: Robert Wilson lancia sul suo sito una viewing room con i videoritratti di Lady Gaga →

By Desirée Maida

5 maggio 2020

Musei, gallerie, biennali e persino fiere d’arte hanno scelto di affidarsi, in queste settimane di lockdown da Coronavirus, alle piattaforme digitali per portare avanti la propria programmazione e tenere viva l’attenzione di pubblico e addetti ai lavori sulle proprie collezioni e attività – oltre che per tenere in vita il mercato nonostante la chiusura delle gallerie e l’annullamento delle fiere di settore. Una speciale Viewing Room, diversa da quelle per ora presenti sul web, è stata recentemente lanciata da un artista tra i più noti ed eclettici al mondo: si tratta di Robert Wilson (Waco, 1941), regista, drammaturgo, coreografo, pittore, scultore e videoartista in grado di fondere nelle sue opere diversi linguaggi performativi e figurativi. Ai Video Portraits è dedicata la Viewing Room visitabile sul sito web dell’artista, una sorta di mostra virtuale suddivisa in cinque sezioni: Suzushi Hanayagi, A Winter Fable, Winona Ryder: Happy Days, Lady Gaga, Kool: Snowy Owl. Tra i “ritratti in movimento” realizzati da Wilson sono ormai iconici quelli che immortalano Lady Gaga nei panni di personaggi protagonisti di opere conservate al Louvre di Parigi (e qui presentati nel 2013 in occasione della mostra di Wilson Living Rooms): tra tutti, Mademoiselle Caroline Rivière dipinta da Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres e La morte di Marat di Jacques-Louis David. Ecco le immagini della mostra virtuale di Wilson.