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A detail from a painting by 	Yayoi Kusama, titled I WHO SLEEP IN A ILLUSION WORLD, dated 2020.

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Artists in the News

Yayoi Kusama to Present New Work this Summer

PROGRAM  Friday, November 5, 2021

A new global livestreaming event

Announcing Program

We won’t die secret deaths anymore. The world only spins forward.
We will be citizens. The time has come.
Bye now.
You are fabulous creatures, each and every one.
And I bless you: More Life.
The Great Work Begins.

—Tony Kushner, 

, a focused series of curated solo exhibitions held at the gallery’s locations in New York and London this summer and fall, beginning on June 24.

In June 1981, the US Centers for Disease Control first reported what would eventually be known as AIDS.1 Marking the fortieth anniversary of the CDC’s report, acknowledged as the beginning of the HIV/AIDS crisis, this series of exhibitions will highlight a selection of artists whose lives were cut short by HIV/AIDS-related complications during approximately the first twenty years of the epidemic. This series explores the affective, aesthetic, personal, and political responses to the crisis through the lens of the gay male perspective—from artists who were part of communities that were disproportionately affected by the virus, although certainly not the only demographic to experience its devastation. While some of the artists presented have had recent visibility in the art world, many other artists remain largely unknown to the broader public. As new HIV infections continue to impact nearly 1.7 million individuals annually around the world,2 this exhibition is a focused look at some of the artists who were affected at the beginning of the ongoing crisis, and who are often neglected in broader art-historical and cultural narratives.

The series will open on June 24 with four exhibitions at David Zwirner’s locations in New York. These exhibitions will be on view through August 6.

Presented at the gallery’s 19th Street location will be:


Marlon Riggs’s (1957–1994) experimental film 

Derek Jarman’s (1942–1994) seminal film 

 (1993), accompanied by paintings by Jarman;

a focused presentation about the Silence=Death Collective, which created some of the most iconic images of political art in US history, including their Silence=Death poster, alongside other early AIDS activist imagery and agitprop. A limited-edition 

 print will be available, with proceeds benefiting Visual AIDS.


At the gallery’s East 69th Street location will be a selection of Mark Morrisroe’s (1959–1989) photographs, curated by Ryan McGinley.

 series will continue in September with three exhibitions at David Zwirner’s New York galleries:


Ching Ho Cheng (1946–1989), curated by Simon Wu;

Frank Moore (1953–2002), curated by Hilton Als

Jesse Murry (1948–1993), cocurated by Jarrett Earnest and Lisa Yuskavage.

David Zwirner’s London gallery will present an exhibition of works by Hugh Steers (1962–1995), curated by the actor, writer, and 

To accompany this group of exhibitions, the gallery will present a series of conversations and videos with Gregg Bordowitz, Avram Finkelstein, Ted Kerr, Sarah Schulman, Pamela Sneed, Tilda Swinton, and Wolfgang Tillmans, among others.



 is organized by David Zwirner Senior Director Robert Goff, Director Thor Shannon, and Associate Director Alec Smyth.

Image: ACT UP Demo Federal Plaza NYC June 30, 1987 (detail). From left: Steve Gendon, Mark Aurigemma, Douglas Montgomery, Charles Stinson, Frank O’Dowd, Avram Finkelstein. Photo by Donna Binder

1 CDC, “Pneumocystis Pneumonia—Los Angeles,” 

MMWR (Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report)

 30, no. 21 (June 5, 1981), pp. 250–252.

2 “The Global HIV/AIDS Epidemic,” HIV.gov, November 25, 2020, https://www.hiv.gov/hiv-basics/overview/data-and-trends/global-statistics.

To Stay up to Date about New Exhibitions, Available Works, and Artist News

A series of exhibitions marking the fortieth anniversary of the AIDS epidemic

More Life

In 2020

A MESSAGE FROM YAYOI KUSAMA TO THE WHOLE WORLD

To receive updates about Yayoi Kusama

At the New York Botanical Garden

KUSAMA: COSMIC NATURE

Yayoi Kusama: Every Day I Pray for Love

The artist's most personal book to date

Yayoi Kusama: Every Day I Pray For Love

 are pleased to announce that they will jointly present new 

 in London, Tokyo, and New York this summer. A dynamic installation of canvases will be unveiled at Victoria Miro in London on 4 June as part of a major exhibition of new paintings and sculptures. Later in June, exhibitions of 

paintings will be presented at David Zwirner, New York, on 17 June and Ota Fine Arts, Tokyo, on 19 June.

The paintings that will be on view are new examples drawn from the artist’s highly celebrated, ongoing 

series, which she commenced in 2009 and has worked on in a more intimate format since 2019. At once bold and intensely detailed and conveying extraordinary vitality, these works are joyfully improvisatory, fluid and highly instinctual. They abound with imagery including eyes, faces in profile, and other more indeterminate forms, including the dots with which the artist is synonymous, to offer impressions of worlds both abstract and figurative, microscopic and macroscopic. Their use of minute details and repetition—in terms of both shapes and brushwork—reflects the history of the obsessive gesture within Kusama’s practice, positioning this body of work as an important link between her past and present.

In April 2020, Kusama released 

 in the form of a poem of resilience and hope. It included the words, ‘In the midst of this historic menace, a brief burst of light points to the future. Let us joyfully sing this song of a splendid future. Let’s go …’ A full year later and Kusama wishes to share with the world these personal and poignant paintings that she has created throughout this most historic of times.



 is currently on view at The New York Botanical Garden, Bronx, New York, until 31 October 2021. 

 opens at the Gropius Bau in Berlin on 23 April 2021 and will be presented until 15 August 2021. 

 opens this spring at Tate Modern in London.

Image: Yayoi Kusama. Photo by Yusuke Miyazaki

 has announced, on June 10, David Zwirner will launch the first edition of 

, a new global livestreaming event that will transport viewers directly into David Zwirner’s galleries in New York, London, Paris, and Hong Kong. Featuring curated installations of artworks from gallery artists in each space, this series of live video walkthroughs and interactive discussions with artists, curators, and art-world enthusiasts will translate the energy of an in-person event or art-fair experience into the online space. Broadcast from David Zwirner’s galleries, visitors will be able to hear about the artworks presented and ask questions in real time. The full schedule for June 10 will be released in the upcoming weeks, and a private preview day of 

 will be held on June 9.

Program will present new and never-before-seen artworks, in addition to historic works. In New York, new works will be on view by Harold Ancart, Carol Bove, Stan Douglas, Toba Khedoori, Yayoi Kusama, Neo Rauch, Dana Schutz, Jordan Wolfson, and Lisa Yuskavage, with additional works by Josef Albers, Francis Alÿs, Ruth Asawa, Raoul De Keyser, Roy DeCarava, Marlene Dumas, Barbara Kruger, Sherrie Levine, Joan Mitchell, Alice Neel, and Franz West. In London, works will be shown by Nate Lowman, Kerry James Marshall, Chris Ofili, Josh Smith, and Franz West, and in Paris, works by Diane Arbus, Isa Genzken, Juan Muñoz, Oscar Murillo, Jason Rhoades, Thomas Ruff, and Christopher Williams. In Hong Kong, works will be presented by Mamma Andersson, Raoul De Keyser, Yayoi Kusama, Wolfgang Tillmans, and Luc Tuymans.

Among the new and notable works to be unveiled in Program will be a new painting by Kerry James Marshall that belongs to the artist’s ongoing series Black and part Black Birds in America (pictured above). This painting will be on view at David Zwirner’s London gallery. The first two paintings from this series debuted on David Zwirner’s website in July 2020 in 

.

In parallel to the live programming, the online presentation will include narrative elements to contextualize each artwork on view. Audiences will also be able to make appointments to view the works in person at David Zwirner’s brick-and-mortar galleries via davidzwirner.com.

The unique graphic identity of 

has been specially designed in close collaboration with David Zwirner artist Christopher Williams, whose work builds on layers of circumstances, references, and connotations and has explored art-market structures in the past.

Black and part Black Birds in America (Red wing Blackbirds, Yellow Bellied Sapsucker, Scarlet...

Felix Gonzalez-Torres: The Politics of Relation

’s work within the postcolonial discourse and the connected histories between Spain and the Americas, especially as these impact present-day questions around memory, authority, freedom and national identity. A particular emphasis is placed on reading Gonzalez-Torres’s work in relation to Spanish, Latin American and Caribbean culture, not as a simple, singular biographical narrative, but rather as a way of complicating any essentialist reading of his work through any single idea, theme or identity. The show proposes various interpretations stemming from this line of investigation and also highlights the work’s formative influence on queer aesthetics.

A major solo exhibition situates Gonzalez-Torres’s work within the postcolonial discourse

Felix Gonzalez-Torres The Politics of Relation

David Zwirner is an art gallery with locations in New York, Los Angeles, London, Paris and Hong Kong. We present physical and online exhibitions, podcasts, books, and more.