In the first days of the COVID-19 pandemic, an informal group of contemporary galleries from around the world came together to discuss how to navigate through the new challenges of the global crisis as it affected our artists, staff and businesses. The relationships among us over weeks of exchange became close and essential and we discovered that while the pandemic had broken many things apart, it had also brought us together. A supportive sense of community ignited positivity and cooperative interactions, and the initial group of twelve grew to twenty-one. As an expression of this unity we initiated GALLERIES CURATE, a collaborative exhibition designed to express the dynamic dialogue between our individual programs.
GALLERIES CURATE: RHE is the first chapter of this collaboration, an exhibition and website themed around a universal and, we hope, unifying subject: water. Like culture, water is never static but always in flux. Following the inaugural exhibition RHE, GALLERIES CURATE plan to invite new participants and add further curated chapters to a global conversation of thematic relationships between galleries, artists, and their audiences.
Blum & Poe Los Angeles will present an exhibition as part of this new initiative, to be announced in early 2021.
RHE
RHE (from Greek for that which flows) is a platform for exhibitions, performances, and public interventions that loosely address the theme of water—geographically, politically, economically or metaphorically. Involving projects with twenty-one galleries, both online and on-site, RHE was conceived to span regions, markets, cultures, and audiences around the world, circulating both within and outside of traditional white-box exhibition spaces.
RHE’s first project will launch on January 4th, 2021, with an online presentation of works by Francis Alÿs, Giovanni Anselmo, and Latifa Echakhch, extending the exhibition A buoy if not a beacon, currently on view at Jan Mot in Brussels. Conceived during the spring lockdown, RHE’s inaugural project explores the politics and poetics of water in relation to the perception of time. Continuing in stages through May 2021, additional projects will be added by participating galleries each month.
Participating artists (list in formation)
água de beber, Michele Abeles, Francis Alÿs, Giovanni Anselmo, Alvaro Barrington, Lothar Baumgarten, Pavel Büchler, Monster Chetwynd, Lai Chih Sheng, Petah Coyne, Abraham Cruzvillegas, Jan Dibbets, Jason Dodge, Latifa Echakhch, Ficre Ghebreyesus, Andy Goldsworthy, Sky Hopinka, Alfredo Jaar, Gabriel Kuri, Sean Landers, Oliver Laric, Charles Lim, Robert Longo, Robert Mapplethorpe, Arjan Martin, Adam McEwen, Cildo Meireles, Helen Mirra, Sarah Morris, Melvin Moti, Jean-Luc Moulène, Sahil Naik, Melik Ohanian, Pat O'Neill, Jaume Plensa, Pope.L, Aki Sasamoto, Jacolby Satterwhite, Carolee Schneemann, Kate Shepherd, Kwan Sheung Chi, Ko Sin Tung, Simon Starling, Fiona Tan, Michelle Stuart, Cosima Von Bonin, Wang Wei, Richard Wentworth.
Participating Galleries
A Gentil Carioca (Rio de Janeiro)
Blum & Poe (Los Angeles, Tokyo, New York)
Sadie Coles HQ (London)
Chantal Crousel (Paris)
Experimenter (Kolkata)
Peter Freeman, Inc. (New York, Paris)
Goodman Gallery (Johannesburg, Cape Town, London)
Galerie Lelong & Co (New York)
kurimanzutto (Mexico City, New York)
Take Ninagawa (Tokyo)
Tanya Leighton (Berlin)
Edouard Malingue (Hong Kong, Shanghai)
Marfa’ (Beirut)
Meyer Riegger (Berlin, Karlsruhe)
Mitchell-Innes & Nash (New York)
Jan Mot (Brussels)
Galleria Franco Noero (Turin)
Petzel (New York)
ROH Projects (Jakarta)
Stevenson (Cape Town, Johannesburg, Amsterdam)
STPI (Singapore)
Why RHE?
RHE is evocative of unity and impermanence, both central concepts in Heraclitean philosophy, expressed most famously by his saying, panta rhei [everything flows]. Through water, we are all connected, physically as well as metaphorically.
www.rhe.online
In addition to hosting online exhibitions, RHE’s digital platform will be a living archive of materials related to the works on view, offering a growing variety of texts and reference materials for each of the projects. As new materials are added, past and present projects will intermix—informing, counterbalancing, and recontextualizing each other and making a virtue of the broad dimension of the GALLERIES CURATE collaboration.
RHE is coordinated by Clément Delépine, independent curator, writer, and co-director of Paris Internationale. For more information on the initiative and upcoming projects, please contact clement@rhe.online.