Lehmann Maupin returns to West Bund for the seventh time with a presentation that foregrounds artists with recent exhibitions in the Greater Asia region, as well as artists from the region with institutional programming around the world—from Shanghai and Seoul to New York City and Venice. A selection of works by Lari Pittman, Nari Ward, and Erwin Wurm will anchor the booth, on the heels of their exhibitions at the Long Museum, the Fosun Foundation, and Lehmann Maupin Seoul, respectively, while works by Lee Bul and Kim Yun Shin celebrate concurrent institutional moments at the Metropolitan Museum of Art and La Biennale di Venezia.
A selection of significant paintings from the 2010s by Los Angeles-based artist Lari Pittman will be included in the presentation, on the heels of his solo exhibition Magic Realism at the Long Museum in Shanghai, which marked the artist’s first museum survey in Asia. Pittman’s distinct visual language has established him as one of the most significant painters of our generation—his densely-layered painting style includes a lexicon of signs and symbols, a compilation of varied painting techniques, unique color combinations, and a clear homage to the handmade, craft, and the decorative. Following his solo exhibition Dreamwalkers at the Fosun Foundation in Shanghai, two sculptures by Erwin Wurm will be exhibited, one of which will debut at the booth. Best known for his uncannily anthropomorphic sculptures, Wurm has examined the fundamental tenets of the medium for over 25 years. Confronting expectations about what sculpture can or should be, the artist explores intriguing new possibilities through investigations into volume, mass, surface, color, and time. Concurrent to the fair, Wurm has a retrospective on view at The Albertina Museum in Vienna, Austria, through March 9, 2025.
The presentation also includes several new copper panel works by New York-based multimedia artist Nari Ward, following his solo exhibition ongoin’ at Lehmann Maupin Seoul. In Restin’ Break and Still Livin’ Enduring (both 2024), Ward expands his interest in copper as an energetic material. Harnessing the process of oxidation as a tool for mark-making, Ward etches and marks the copper surfaces with everyday materials found around Harlem, his longtime neighborhood. Imprints of liquor bottles and prayer candles adorn the panel surfaces, nodding to makeshift sidewalk memorials constructed in public spaces, where these materials are repurposed to facilitate communal gathering, mourning, remembrance, and celebration.
Works by South Korean artists Lee Bul and Kim Yun Shin explore the tension between the man-made and natural. Lee Bul’s Perdu paintings are composed of both organic and inorganic material, such as mother of pearl and layers of acrylic paint, and depict fragmented, cyborg-like bodies suspended in space at various distances and in differing detail. In Perdu V (2017), on view at the fair, geometric forms rendered on a greyscale emerge from a dark field as if proliferating or expanding, hinting at an unidentified form of life existing somewhere between biology and technology. An early example from the series, the artist’s subsequent Perdu works are rooted in these past iterations where anagrams, like cyborgs, are formed from reconfigurable parts. Concurrent to the fair, Lee Bul’s Genesis Façade Commission at The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, titled Long Tail Halo, is on view through May 25, 2025. In contrast, a selection of sculpture and painting from the 1990s and the 2000s by Kim Yun Shin probes the fundamental qualities of materials and nature, navigating themes of confrontation, introspection, and coexistence. Kim uses solid wood as her primary sculptural medium, visualizing the intersection between nature, time, and history to reconsider the very essence of human existence. Her paintings are marked by distinctive surface fragmentation; across her compositions, large sections gradually divide into smaller shapes. The resulting artworks evoke a primordial energy, at once expansive and concise, concentrated and diffused. Concurrent to the fair, Kim’s work is on view in Foreigners Everywhere, the 60th International Art Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia.
Additional highlights include a painting from the early 2000s by Miami-based artist Hernan Bas, whose work was recently included in the group exhibition Portrait of a Man at the X Museum in Beijing, China; and a new painting by Tammy Nguyen, whose work is currently on view in the solo exhibition Timaeus and the Nations at the Sarasota Art Museum in Sarasota, Florida; as well as new paintings by Loriel Beltrán, McArthur Binion, and David Salle.