in the exhibition; Rashid Johnson: A Poem for Deep Thinkers curated by Naomi Beckwith at the Guggenheim Museum, New York on View April 18, 2025–January 18, 2026

Summer 2025

​

Dear Readers,

​

The summer issue of The Art Section features articles about Painter Gerhard Richter, Composer and Media Artist Ryoji Ikeda, and a dialogue with Curator Naomi Beckwith. On the surface, the question of what could possibly tie these individuals together seems like a quandary. However, one does not have to look very deep to realize they all have pursued new ways of thinking about their work and processes.

​​

Sara Buoso is an art writer based in Rome, Italy. For The Art Section, she has written about Gerhard Richter’s exhibition Moving Picture (946-3) Kyoto Version (2019–24), which was on view December 6, 2024–February 28, 2025, at Gagosian Gallery in Rome. The exhibition is comprised of a film Richter made in collaboration with Corinna Belz, a documentary filmmaker. Previously, she made the film Gerhard Richter Painting (2012) in Richter’s studio, following his artistic process for three years. But Moving Picture (946-3) Kyoto Version is an artwork rather than a documentary. This video utilizes Richter’s Strips that he discovered as he “digitally fractured the photographic image of a canvas into progressively smaller divisions which he then doubled, or mirrored.” In a further layer of collaboration, Kyoto Version is accompanied by a score for a double-bell trumpet solo and acoustically manipulated sound composed by Rebecca Saunders, and recorded by Marco Blaauw and Sebastian Schottke. The sculptural and spatial properties of the sound in this artwork were created in close collaboration with Richter and Belz. This transformation of painting into film continues Richter’s exploration of the relationship between painting and photography.

                                                                            

Philip Auslander writes about Ryoji Ikeda: data-verse, on view at the High Museum in Atlanta, Georgia from March 7–August 10, 2025. Data-verse is a large-scale exhibition of work Ikeda created with programmer Tomonaga Tokuyama, a Japanese artist residing in Paris. I wonder about the conversations these two artists have while creating a work and how they communicate – is it through algorithms, drawings, diagrams, animations, or in code? How and when does sound come into the work? I do know from my own forays into video collaboration that communication is essential and an openness to process is what enables the artwork to come to fruition. Auslander discusses Ikeda’s use of data and his path from sound to moving image.

​​

Curator Naomi Beckwith, winner of the 2024 David C. Driskell Prize, is the Deputy Director and Chief Curator of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York City, as well as the curator for documenta 16 in 2027. Beckwith was recently in Atlanta to join a discussion at the High Museum of Art on the “future of museum work.” Our conversation touched on Beckwith’s early beginnings growing up in Hyde Park in Chicago and how this cultural hub influenced and shaped her thinking. At her public talk that same evening Beckwith said, “I think the question always for every artist is, how do you take what you've inherited and then use your singular voice and vision onto the world and create something new?”

​

All of us at The Art Section send you our best for a wonderful summer,

Deanna

​

Deanna Sirlin

Editor-in-Chief

The Art Section

​

​