Fall/winter exhibitions 2021/2022

The Walker Art Center announces its roster of fall and winter exhibitions, which includes Walker-organized solo exhibitions of new work by Candice Lin and Shen Xin; the presentation of Julie Mehretu, a major midcareer survey of the artist’s paintings, drawings, and prints; and an exhibition drawn from the Walker’s deep holdings of work by David Hockney.

Candice Lin: Seeping, Rotting, Resting, Weeping
Through January 2, 2022

Los Angeles–based artist Candice Lin investigates the legacies of colonialism, racism, and sexism by mapping the trade routes and material histories of a range of colonial goods. The new exhibition Candice Lin: Seeping, Rotting, Resting, Weeping is composed of a site-specific installation that responds to the space of the gallery at each institution, allowing the shape of the work to evolve over the course of its presentation.

Anchored by a nomadic tent structure—simultaneously a temporary shelter and a quasi-religious temple—the exhibition includes hand-drawn and hand-printed indigo textiles, hand-built ceramic sculptures, plaster and concrete “tactile theaters,” and a video animation that leads visitors through qigong breathing and movement exercises.

Candice Lin: Seeping, Rotting, Resting, Weeping is co-organized by the Walker Art Center and the Carpenter Center for the Visual Arts at Harvard University.

Curators: Victoria Sung, associate curator, Visual Arts, Walker Art Center; and Dan Byers, John R. and Barbara Robinson Family Director, Carpenter Center for the Visual Arts, Harvard University.

Julie Mehretu
October 16, 2021–March 6, 2022

Julie Mehretu is best known for abstract paintings layered with a variety of materials, marks, and meanings. These canvases and works on paper reference the histories of art, architecture, and past civilizations while addressing some of the most immediate conditions of our contemporary moment, including migration, revolution, racial injustice, climate change, global capitalism, and technology.

This midcareer survey features more than 75 drawings, paintings, and prints made from 1996 to the present. It covers a broad arc of Mehretu’s artistic evolution, revealing her early focus on drawing, graphics, and mapping and her more recent introduction of bold gestures, sweeps of saturated color, and figurative elements into her immersive, large-scale works.

Julie Mehretu was organized by the Los Angeles County Museum of Art and the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York.

Curators: Christine Y. Kim, curator of contemporary art at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, with Rujeko Hockley, Arnhold Associate Curator, Whitney Museum of American Art. The Walker’s presentation is coordinated by Siri Engberg, senior curator and director, Visual Arts.

Shen Xin
November 18, 2021–July 3, 2022

For their first US museum solo exhibition, Twin Cities–based artist Shen Xin debuts a new video and sound installation that recently premiered at the 2021 Gwangju Biennale. Titled Brine Lake (A New Body) (2020), the piece meditates on the intersections between extractive economies, migrant populations, statelessness, and transnational identities. Set against a backdrop of a fictional iodine recycling factory, Brine Lake follows both human and nonhuman protagonists as they converse in multiple languages—Korean, Japanese, and Russian—comingling topics such as ecology, technology, economy, and personal memory. The work is projected onto five large-scale screens suspended in the gallery, encouraging viewers to become active participants as they move between overlapping episodes.

Curator: Victoria Sung, associate curator, Visual Arts, Walker Art Center.

David Hockney: People, Places & Things
December 18, 2021–Aug 21, 2022

First gaining attention in the 1960s Pop era with his brightly colored portraits and landscapes, David Hockney has remained a constant presence in contemporary art, revisiting and reinterpreting favorite themes over six decades through experimentation with a range of media, from painting and printmaking to theater set design and, more recently, digital media. Hockney is now considered not only one of the most influential British artists of the 20th century but also a key contributor to the art of Los Angeles, his adopted hometown for many years. Drawn from the Walker’s substantial holding of works by Hockney—including paintings, prints, drawings, and theatrical works—David Hockney: People, Places & Things covers the full arc of the artist’s remarkable career.

Curator: Siri Engberg, senior curator and director, Visual Arts, Walker Art Center.