Exhibitions
Current exhibition

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Galerie Max Hetzler, Berlin
14 June–10 August 2024

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Now open, this exhibition includes both the largest free-standing clay vessels that Edmund de Waal has ever created, and a large-scale pavilion titled there are still songs to sing beyond mankind, 2024.

Now open, this exhibition includes both the largest free-standing clay vessels that Edmund de Waal has ever created, and a large-scale pavilion titled there are still songs to sing beyond mankind, 2024.

Photography: def image

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Current exhibition

Fragments of Memory

Kunsthalle im Lipsiusbau, Dresden

16 March–8 September 2024

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Fragments of Memory. The Treasury of St Vitus Cathedral in Prague in Dialogue with Edmund de Waal, Josef Koudelka and Julian Rosefeld is now open at Kunsthalle im Lipsiusbau, Dresden. The exhibition includes de Waal's 2016 large-scale installation irrkunst.

Fragments of Memory. The Treasury of St Vitus Cathedral in Prague in Dialogue with Edmund de Waal, Josef Koudelka and Julian Rosefeld is now open at Kunsthalle im Lipsiusbau, Dresden. The exhibition includes de Waal's 2016 large-scale installation irrkunst.

Photography: Martin Polák

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Current exhibition

The Shape of Things: Still Life in Britain

Pallant House Gallery, Chichester

11 May–20 October 2024

September Song II 3 Q

The Shape of Things, on view at Pallant House Gallery, questions the idea that still life is a lesser genre, showing how important it is to artists and society.

The Shape of Things, on view at Pallant House Gallery, questions the idea that still life is a lesser genre, showing how important it is to artists and society.

De Waal's 2021 piece September Song, II, is on display alongside works by Hurvin Anderson, Vanessa Bell, Edward Burra, Patrick Caulfield, Lucian Freud, Gluck, Duncan Grant, Richard Hamilton, Mona Hatoum, Jann Haworth, David Hockney, Lee Miller, Paul Nash, Ben Nicholson, William Nicholson, Eric Ravilious, Anwar Jalal Shemza, William Scott, Walter Sickert, Stanley Spencer, Rachel Whiteread and Clare Woods. The exhibition will look at how these artists have used traditional art history to express the complexities of the human condition.

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Current exhibition

5&20

99 Bishopsgate, London
15 May–27 September 2024

36a arcady

5&20, an exhibition co-curated by Brookfield Properties and Crafts Council is now on view in the foyer of 99 Bishopsgate. Edmund de Waal's 2007 piece, Arcady, is included in the exhibition alongside other works from Crafts Council Collection.

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Current exhibition

Playing with Fire: Edmund de Waal and Axel Salto

CLAY Museum of Ceramic Art Denmark

8 October 2023–11 August 2024

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Edmund de Waal has curated an exhibition of acclaimed Danish ceramicist, Axel Salto (1889–1961), considered one of the greatest masters of twentieth-century ceramic art.

Edmund de Waal has curated an exhibition of acclaimed Danish ceramicist, Axel Salto (1889–1961), considered one of the greatest masters of twentieth-century ceramic art.


The exhibition is the result of a collaboration between Edmund de Waal, CLAY Museum of Ceramic Art Denmark and Kunstsilo in Norway. Starting at CLAY in Middelfart, Denmark, it will tour to the Kunstsilo in September 2024 before its final stop at The Hepworth Wakefield, West Yorkshire, in 2025.

This exhibition brings together a significant number of Salto’s ceramic works from the CLAY Museum and The Tangen Collection at Kunstsilo, the world’s largest collection of Nordic modernist art. Salto’s ceramics are being shown alongside his lesser-known and unseen works on paper, illustrations, writings and textiles, and a major new installation by de Waal which reflects on Salto’s enduring influence.

“Axel Salto is one of the greatest artists of the twentieth century. He created a unique body of ceramic work that continues to fascinate me. His sculptures seem to be on the point of change: glazes are caught in flux. Vases swell as if to burst. He cared about the ways that patterns change course, shift energies, how an animal becomes a person, a man metamorphoses into a stag. Ovid ran powerfully through his life. That moment of change, transformation, is the moment when poetry occurs.”

- Edmund de Waal

Photography: Ole Akhøj

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Featured exhibition

All About The Vessel

Kunstquartier Gmunden, Bad Ischl, Austria
4 May – 16 June 2024

Once is as good as never SF edit

Part of the European Capitals of Culture programme, All About The Vessel explored the development of ceramic art from early modernism to the present.

Part of the European Capitals of Culture programme, All About The Vessel explored the development of ceramic art from early modernism to the present.


Edmund de Waal's 2016 piece, once is as good as never, was exhibited alongside works by Lucie Rie, Betty Woodman, Sterling Ruby, Masaomi Yasunaga and Lindsey Mendick

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Featured exhibition

Essence

New Art Centre, Salisbury

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Works by Edmund de Waal joined those by Barbara Hepworth, John Hubbard and Ian Stephenson in this exhibition at the New Art Centre at Roche Court Sculpture Park, Salisbury.

Works by Edmund de Waal joined those by Barbara Hepworth, John Hubbard and Ian Stephenson in this exhibition at the New Art Centre at Roche Court Sculpture Park, Salisbury.

Photo: courtesy of the New Art Centre

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Past News
Exhibition

IN MARGINE: Frame, Plinth, Vitrine

8smicka gallery, Humpolec, Czech Republic
23 February–19 May 2024

EDW Steles I front for web

stèles, I (2022) was recently on view at 8smicka, an art foundation in the Czech Republic, as part of an exhibition titled IN MARGINE. The show brought together numerous artists, past and present, who have reconceptualized the framework for art display.

stèles, I (2022) was recently on view at 8smicka, an art foundation in the Czech Republic, as part of an exhibition titled IN MARGINE. The show brought together numerous artists, past and present, who have reconceptualized the framework for art display.

From plinth and vitrine to the frame itself, the exhibition considered how artists have brought these elements into the whole artwork in new and surprising ways since the nineteenth century. Until 19 May 2024.

Photo: Alzbeta Jaresova

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Exhibition

Rudolf Levy (1875 – 1944) Magician of Colour

Museum Pfalzgalerie Kaiserslautern

28 August 2023–11 February 2024

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In this major retrospective of the work of Rudolf Levy, co-organised by the MPK and the Uffizi, Levy's last self-portrait was juxtaposed with Edmund de Waal's 2016 piece, Spur.

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Exhibition

this must be the place

Gagosian, New York
13 September–28 October 2023

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this must be the place, a major exhibition of de Waal's vitrines and stone benches, was installed at Gagosian's West 24th Street space.

this must be the place, a major exhibition of de Waal's vitrines and stone benches, was installed at Gagosian's West 24th Street space.

De Waal relates: “For the last two years my studio has been full of silver, steel, marble, and porcelain. This new body of work is about place—where things come from, where they belong, what we remember and pass on. The materials echo places. I use porcelain clay from Limoges but turn it black with oxides and inscribe it with remembered poetry. I use marble from Kilkenny and push folded sheets of silver into crevices like prayers into a wall. The work is full of fragments, scraps of silver on the rims of bowls, poems, music, echoes of people that matter to me and the places where they lived. These sculptures are new places.”

this must be the place was complemented by the presentation of to light, and then return— at Gagosian’s gallery at 976 Madison Avenue, New York, from September 14 to October 28, 2023. This exhibition featured sculptures by de Waal and platinum prints and tintypes by Sally Mann that each artist created in response to the other’s work.

Photography: Alzbeta Jaresova

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Exhibition

to light, and then return—

Gagosian, New York

14 September–28 October 2023

MANN 2022 Platinum Stone 22 CRP

An exhibition of new works by Edmund de Waal and Sally Mann, inspired by each other’s practices, was installed Gagosian's Madison Avenue space. to light, and then return— marked the first time the two artists have shown together in a dedicated exhibition.

An exhibition of new works by Edmund de Waal and Sally Mann, inspired by each other’s practices, was installed Gagosian's Madison Avenue space. to light, and then return— marked the first time the two artists have shown together in a dedicated exhibition.

The result of an ongoing exchange between two artists, who are also celebrated writers, the exhibition was titled after the final line of The spry arms of the wind (c. 1866), a poem written by Emily Dickinson on an envelope scrap. Informed by their mutual fascination with material transformation and themes of elegy and historical reckoning, the works on view included de Waal’s sculptural installations featuring porcelain and other materials, and Mann’s tintypes and platinum prints.

to light, and then return— was complemented by this must be the place, an exhibition of new works by de Waal at 541 West 24th Street, New York, from 13 September until 28 October 2023.

Photography:
De Waal's work: Alzbeta Jaresova
Mann's work: © Sally Mann, Photo: Rob McKeever, Courtesy Gagosian

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