Gallery highlights
Alison Wilding: Mesmer, Again 12 April–20 May
Karsten Schubert, London
The British sculptor’s imposing and – yes, mesmerising – assemblage of wood and magnets, Mesmer ( ), is at the heart of this exhibition in Karsten Schubert’s th-century Soho townhouse, displayed alongside smallerscale works completed during lockdown last year. Among the latter are moody collages made with scraped and poured black rubber paint on paper, and sculptures made of materials ranging from alabaster to fibreglass.
Rachid Koraïchi:
Tears that Taste of the Sea 13 April–12 June
October Gallery, London
In , the Algerian artist Rachid Koraïchi began work on his Garden of Africa – a cemetery in south-east Tunisia for migrants who have died in the attempt to cross the Atlantic. This display brings together a group of related paintings, etchings and sculptures – including a series of seven ceramic Lachrymatory Vases (Fig. ) – to reveal Koraïchi both at his most experimental and his most elegiac.
Robert Rauschenberg:
Night Shades and Phantoms Opening 13 April
Thaddaeus Ropac, London
These two series of reveal Robert Rauschenberg at his most spectral and elusive. Composites of snapshots from the artist’s travels – depicting sites including the Berlin Wall and a temple in Malaysia alongside images of the natural world – are silkscreen-printed on to aluminium, overlaid with gestural marks that complicate and at times almost obscure the images beneath.
Markus Lüpertz: Recent Paintings 13 April–15 May
Michael Werner, London
Continuing his magpie approach to art history, for this new series of paintings Markus Lüpertz has plucked figures from both the Italian Renaissance and the Dutch Golden Age, relocating them in pastoral Arcadias reminiscent of the landscape around his studio in Märkisch Wilmersdorf in Brandenburg. Fractured depictions of Adam and Eve underscore the German artist’s attempts to recover a lost paradise in paint.
Jems Koko Bi: Patrimoine Until 5 June
Galerie Cécile Fakhoury, Abidjan
The sculptor Jems Koko Bi (b. ) is among the most innovative artists of his generation to have emerged from Côte d’Ivoire. He is best known for his monumental wood carvings, a selection of which will be on display here; also on show are his lesser-known but confident, colourful woodcut engravings, which present mythical vignettes and form part of the German-based artist’s long exploration of the pull of home from afar.
Carol Rhodes 30 April–29 May
Alison Jacques Gallery, London
This is the first exhibition of work by the late Scottish painter ( – ) at Alison Jacques, which began representing her estate at the end of last year. It includes a number of Rhodes’ eerie paintings of industrial scenes, rendered as though lunar landscapes seen from high above (Fig. ); she spoke of these depictions of ‘left-over land’ as a kind of self-portrait. Also on view are a number of rarely seen drawings from the last two decades of her career.