‘Reverse Alchemy: Dubuffet, Basquiat, Nava’
Pace Gallery, Berlin
From May 2 to June 14, 2025

In a converted 1950s gas station in Berlin’s Schöneberg district, Pace Gallery launches ‘Die Tankstelle’, its new European outpost, shared with Galerie Judin. Opening just in time for Gallery Weekend Berlin, the inaugural exhibition, ‘Reverse Alchemy’, offers a dialogue across time through works on paper by three iconoclastic artists: Jean Dubuffet, Jean-Michel Basquiat, and Robert Nava. The show examines how Dubuffet’s revolutionary ‘art brut’ has reverberated across generations. His late-career works appear alongside drawings Basquiat created during the same period (late 1970s–80s), while Nava’s contemporary pieces extend this lineage of artistic disruption through to the present. All three reject the formalities of ‘high art’, instead creating works driven by impulse, playfulness, and the powers of the deep psyche. A.R.

Hudinilson Jr.
‘Exercícios de me ver’
KOW, Berlin
From May 2 to July 26, 2025

One rarely thinks of photocopies as sensual. But looking at the work of Hudinilson Jr. (1957–2013), you may be convinced otherwise. The Brazilian artist used a xerox printer as his primary tool, capturing fragments of male bodies, photographs, and magazine pages which he then assembled into grids vibrating with brainy eroticism. In doing so, Hudinilson Jr. mapped out a poignant topography of Queer desire that feels both confrontational and hushed – perhaps a reflection of the turbulent early 1980s (a period marked by the AIDS pandemic and Brazil’s transition from dictatorship to democracy) during which the artist was particularly productive. The exhibition at KOW also showcases Hudinilson Jr.’s work beyond his xerox grids, including sculptures, photographs, and readymades, which help to contextualize his singular practice. K.C.

Yoko Ono
‘Music of the Mind’
Gropius Bau, Berlin
Until August 31, 2025

Irreverent, provocative, visionary, and often lighthearted: For decades, the works of Yoko Ono have touched nerves but also deeply inspired viewers. Gropius Bau’s iteration of a traveling exhibition that began its run last year at Tate Modern in London includes more than 200 of the nonagenarian’s works across all mediums, ranging from musical scores and the cheeky Film No. 4 (‘BOTTOMS’) (1966-1967) to a Wish Tree for Berlin (1996/2025) in the museum’s free-to-the-public atrium. Make a wish, and remember, peace is power. K.B.

Lalitha Lajmi
Galerie anne barrault, Paris
From April 29 to June 14, 2025

There seems to be a face everywhere in Lalitha Lajmi’s paintings: its features are strong and soft, at once slightly worried and at peace. This woman with braided hair and a textured sari is the painter herself. In the late 1940s, in a newly independent India that needed to reaffirm its own identity through its artists, the Bombay Progressive Artists’ Group – a collection of young stars – were making their mark on the city’s walls and institutions. While they focused on stylized nudes or women engaged in domesticity, Lajmi turned inward, painting herself, enlivened by the depth of her inner world.

Lajmi was passionate about dreams and psychoanalysis, and these interests infused her art, making her a worthy heir to the Surrealists. With soft colors and oneiric elements – birds, parasols, bikes, mirrors, and slowly fading bodies – Lajmi found freedom in her canvases, in a place and time where the interiority and solitude of womanhood remained a secret that was strictly personal. J.A.

Wes Anderson
La Cinémathèque française, Paris
Until July 27, 2025

The Cinémathèque presents a retrospective dedicated to film director Wes Anderson’s whimsical universe. This treasure trove spans his autodidactic beginnings to his most lauded and recent works, revealing the tactile dimension behind his cinematic illusions. Visitors can marvel at the painstaking hand-painted miniature of the train from The Darjeeling Limited (2007) and stand before the Renaissance forgery that sparked an intercontinental chase in The Grand Budapest Hotel (2014). Rather than merely displaying props, the exhibition sheds light on Anderson’s creative process through original sketches and production blueprints. The director’s bittersweet signature style has certainly enriched contemporary filmmaking, and here we glimpse the architectural precision of his poetic imagination. P.S.

Kenjiro Okazaki
‘而今而後 Time Unfolding Here’
Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo
From April 29 to July 21, 2025

‘Time Unfolding Here’, the first large-scale survey of Kenjiro Okazaki in Tokyo, celebrates the artist’s diverse practice spanning painting, sculpture, performance, landscape design, architecture, and robotics. At the roots of Okazaki’s work is his conception of zōkei (the act of shaping or creating forms) as a force that reconnects our perception and the world, allowing us to explore familiar social institutions. The exhibition provides a comprehensive presentation of earlier works, including the ‘Akasakamitsuke’ sculpture series from the 1980s, as well as 100 new and recent works, following a major shift in his work in 2021, in response to personal experiences and changes within society. P.L.