About
Gagosian is pleased to present an exhibition of new works by Anselm Kiefer. Merkaba, the third exhibition of Kiefer’s work to be presented by the gallery, consists of eight large-scale paintings and two monumental sculptures made of concrete and steel. The works are inspired by Kabbalist literature dealing primarily with the afterlife.
The Merkaba and Hechaloth literature, as discussed in the Kabbalah texts, deal specifically with the ascent up to seven heavenly palaces or temples, which represent the seven attainments of divine spirituality. For Kiefer, the Merkaba, or mystical chariot used for this passage, is not the vehicle toward a single apocalyptic Judgment Day but rather a means to proceed with the ongoing process of working at art.
Kiefer’s spiritual architecture of the heavenly palaces brings the seas and land, the heavens and earth back together. His poetry of images unites NASA’s cosmological ordering of the stars with the mystical order of ascent to the Palaces of Heaven.
A fully illustrated catalogue including an essay by Harold Bloom will accompany the exhibition.
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In Conversation
Jerome Rothenberg and Charles Bernstein
Gagosian and Beyond Baroque Literary | Arts Center hosted a conversation between poets Jerome Rothenberg and Charles Bernstein inside Anselm Kiefer’s exhibition Exodus at Gagosian at Marciano Art Foundation, Los Angeles. Rothenberg and Bernstein explored some of the themes that occupy Kiefer—Jewish mysticism, the poetry of Paul Celan, and the formulation of a global poetics in response to the Holocaust—in a discussion and readings of their poetry.
In Conversation
Anselm Kiefer and Michael Govan
On the occasion of his exhibition Anselm Kiefer: Exodus at Gagosian at Marciano Art Foundation in Los Angeles, the artist spoke with Michael Govan about his works that elaborate on themes of loss, history, and redemption.
Now available
Gagosian Quarterly Winter 2022
The Winter 2022 issue of Gagosian Quarterly is now available, featuring Anna Weyant’s Two Eileens (2022) on its cover.
Hans Ulrich Obrist’s Questionnaire: Anselm Kiefer
In this ongoing series, curator Hans Ulrich Obrist has devised a set of thirty-seven questions that invite artists, authors, musicians, and other visionaries to address key elements of their lives and creative practices. Respondents make a selection from the larger questionnaire and reply in as many or as few words as they desire. For the fourth installment, we are honored to present the artist Anselm Kiefer.
Anselm Kiefer: Architect of Landscape and Cosmology
Jérôme Sans visits La Ribaute in Barjac, France, the vast studio-estate transformed by Anselm Kiefer over the course of decades. The labyrinthine site, now open to the public, stands as a total work of art, reflecting through its grounds, pavilions, and passageways major themes in Kiefer’s oeuvre: regeneration, mythology, memory, and more.
La Ribaute: Transitive, It Transforms
Camille Morineau writes of the triumph of the feminine at Anselm Kiefer’s former studio-estate in Barjac, France, describing the site and its installations as a demonstration of women’s power, a meditation on inversion and permeability, and a reversal of the long invisibility of women in history and myth.