MAY PLAYLIST
SP LIST: ART & PHOTOGRAPHY EXHIBITIONS
Wolfgang Tillmans at Museum Haus Cleff, Remscheid
April 13, 2025 – January 4, 2026
Wolfgang Tillmans has returned to his roots, for his latest solo exhibition at the beautiful Rococo Haus Cleff in Remscheid – the city is where the renowned photographer was born and raised in 1968, before moving to Hamburg, London, and then Berlin.
For his ‘Exhibition in Remscheid,’ Tillmans brings together photography and video, offering a new perspective on his work, as well as marking the reopening of the newly restored museum. The works in the exhibition interact with the building and the local industrial history to merge past, present, and future into a new narrative.
The photos include Tillman’s own Mother, shot with her back to the camera, in a surreal ‘domestic scene’ with her head obscured by packaging, and images from the series ‘Freischwimmer,’ which were created without a camera in the darkroom.
Jonathan Lyndon Chase – Downpour at Sadie Coles Gallery London
8 April - 24 May 2025
“Downpour is something that happens, suddenly, fast and very unexpectedly. I see this very much as how the concept of change or transformation behaves in our daily lives.” – Jonathan Lyndon Chase
In this latest body of work, the umbrella serves as prop and metaphor, a refuge from under which bold and vibrant figures emerge, coyly glancing outward while also averting the gaze from their facade of privacy, while other characters invite companions into their guarded space. Chase’s paintings are rich with intimacy and innuendo, allowing for voyeurism of private moments from lust to loneliness – his figures are caught in storms, where the water acts as a destructive and cleansing force, evoking grief, meditation and transformation.
Leigh Bowery! – at Tate Modern
Until 31 August 2025
The most striking standout from the Tate’s Leigh Bowery retrospective, is not the late Australian performance artist’s outlandish style, but his process for self-invention and reinvention, constantly playing with his image, body and clothing, pushing the boundaries to see how far he could go. Whether dressed as a Christmas pudding on legs, a leather-clad dame in a mask or painted in polka dots all over his face, Bowery’s retrospective doesn’t just celebrate his singular vision, but everything else he got up to and who he got up to it with, from Blitz Club Queen Princess Julia, artists Peter Doig and Lucian Freud to dancer and choreographer Michael Clark and the late singer Poly Styrene.
There is evocative pop video footage, catwalk photos, and guest lists to Taboo, the legendary 80s club night known for its defiance of sexual convention, and its embrace of what Bowery called 'polysexual' identities; and holiday snaps and postcards detailing Bowery’s sexual exploits. With his numerous disguises, Bowery as a clotheshorse, dedicated himself and his body as a transformative act, purposefully repurposing it, taking great pride in using it as a style statement, never limited to convention.
George Rouy: The Bleed, Part II at Hauser & Wirth, Downtown Los Angeles
Until 1 June 2025
Following the initial iteration of ‘The Bleed, Part I,’ Rouy’s debut solo exhibition at Hauser & Wirth London, this second chapter builds on his exploration of the figurative and the abstract. Continuing his exploration of human mass, multiplicity and movement, these new works capture Rouy’s dynamic and signature use of the human figure, vexed with desire, alienation and crisis, speaking to the emotional extremities of our time, resulting in explorations of identity in a globalised, technologically driven 21st Century. The exhibition takes its title from Rouy’s concept of ‘the bleed,’ the ways in which figure and void manifest and interact on the surface of his paintings, resulting in a physical seeping, bleeding and merging.
Yorgos Lanthimos – Photographs at Webber Gallery LA, in collaboration with Mack
29 March until 24 May 2025
This is the first public exhibition of still photography by the visionary filmmaker, which features behind-the-scenes stills from productions which were collated into two books – Dear God, the Parthenon is still broken – shot during the filming of Poor Things – and i shall sing these songs beautifully – made alongside Kinds of Kindness.
Lanthimos is celebrated for his ambitious and absurdist explorations of human relationships, and this debut exhibition includes real set locations of New Orleans and Budapest, and recreated cities and interior constructed sets of London, Lisbon, Alexandria and Paris, as they provide a backdrop for Lanthimos’ stills, rich with unsettling atmospheres and eerie tensions. The bodies of his subjects appear at discrete and haunting intervals with an intense physicality, limbs often splayed, and faces turned away.
Untethered from narrative, time, and place, the exhibition offers a new perspective on Lanthimos’ practice and reinforces his position as a unique and singular visionary in contemporary visual culture.
Simon Lehner at Foto Arsenal Wien – Clean thoughts. Clean images
22 March 2025 – 01 June 2025
Simon Lehner’s ‘Clean Thoughts Clean Images’, is the first institutional solo exhibition by the Vienna-based artist, exploring the complexity of human emotions, memory, identity and ideals of masculinity. Using image archives created from his childhood youth and popular culture, the exhibition features images, videos, and sculptures that combine photographs and digital processes. The show takes the construction of identity into a new perspective.
Tilda Swinton – Ongoing at Eye Filmmuseum in Amsterdam
Due to open September 28, 2025
The chameleonic Tilda Swinton is to curate an exhibition at Eye Filmmuseum in Amsterdam, which promises to delve into her personal archive to explore her illustrious history, lifelong approach to her artistry and ongoing creative collaborations with renowned filmmakers and photographers. The show will see the actor present six new works created especially for the exhibition, made with close friends and collaborators Luca Guadagnino, Jim Jarmusch, Joanna Hogg, Olivier Saillard, Tim Walker and Apichatpong Weerasethakul, while also paying homage to the legacy of artist Derek Jarman, including never-seen-before archival material on 8mm.
“In focusing attention on profoundly enriching creative relationships in my life, we share the narratives and atmospheres that inspire us: we offer new work, especially commissioned for the Eye exhibition, as the most recent gestures borne out of various companionable conversations that keep me curious, engaged and nourished. An ongoing – and unbroken – thread of breadcrumbs through the wood, new leaves on long-established trees. The perpetual seedbed. I should be so lucky, in the gift of such an invitation, in such friends and in such a life.” (Tilda Swinton)
SP LIST: BOOKS
Cowboys and Queens: Jane Hilton
A new frontier has emerged, the new modern-day American Dream. A utopian cocktail of Americana celebrating the freedom of the iconic working cowboy, with the flamboyance and inventiveness of the drag queen.
The book represents freedom and endless opportunities, visually immersing us under vast blue skies and western landscapes by day and leading us into the intimate frisson of nightclubs and bars by night.
The limited-edition book Cowboys & Queen by Jane Hilton is available from thelittleblackgallery.com
Dustin Pittman NEW YORK AFTER DARK by Roger Padilha and Mauricio Padilha, RIZZOLI
Between the late 1960s and the early 80s, New York City was a wildly glamourous, untamed and limitless playground. There to capture is all was photographer Dustin Pittman, who amassed an archive of 100,000 photographs chronicling the city after-hours, from shadowy underground haunts to prestigious galleries and clubs.
The golden age of disco in the VIP room at Studio 54 is captured through Pittman’s lens, as is the world of iconic fashion ateliers Halston, Yves Saint Laurent, and Calvin Klein and Andy Warhol’s shapeshifting Factory. Pittman witnessed rising music stars including Blondie, Lou Reed, Iggy Pop and Roxy Music, as well as celebrities such as Raquel Welch, Truman Capote, Diana Ross, Brooke Shields, Jerry Hall, Divine, and Liza Minnelli – all caught in spontaneous, unguarded New York moments.
Co-written by Roger and Mauricio Padilha (founders of MAO Public Relations), with a foreword by David Johansen (US singer, songwriter and actor) and published by Rizzoli, the 270-page coffee table book is complete with anecdotes and recollections from Pittman himself, and many of these photographs have never been published before.
Text by Kate Lawson