October Openings: Hantaï, Muffler and a DIY Art Question
Three exhibitions put method, material and artistic responsibility under close scrutiny: a four-decade survey of Simon Hantaï, a double opening at Bundanon centred on Country and migration, and a Lisbon presentation that asks who gets to make art—and for whom.
At Museum Frieder Burda in Baden-Baden, “Unfolding Color. Simon Hantaï” brings together around 40 key works spanning four decades, with support from the Archives Simon Hantaï in Paris and loans from institutions including the Musée d’art moderne de Paris and Fondation Louis Vuitton. The exhibition follows Hantaï’s experiments with “pliage comme méthode,” in which folded canvases were covered with oil or acrylic paint to create luminous accidental patterns. Among the works is Étude (1969), measuring 273.2 by 236.5 centimetres, and Tabula (1980), a 236-by-392-centimetre acrylic painting.
Image: Bundanon, New York
Bundanon Opening Weekend Spotlights Exhibitions by Betty Muffler and Mehwish Iqbal
Bundanon’s opening weekend on 31 October and 1 November brings together Betty Muffler’s “Ngangkaṟi Ngura — Healing Country” and Mehwish Iqbal’s “Bait-al-Nahl — The House of Bees,” both running through 14 February 2027. Muffler’s first major institutional solo exhibition presents new paintings made for Bundanon alongside major loans, tracing her practice since 2020 through monochromatic works of acrylic and oil stick on linen. Iqbal centres the hive as a structure of shared habitation, production and nurture, with five new handwoven silk works developed with artisan communities in India, Thailand and Pakistan. The weekend includes artist talks, live music and free museum entry.
From 10 October, Centro de Arte Moderna Gulbenkian in Lisbon presents “Pintar É Fácil. Faça Você Mesmo!” in the Galeria Principal. Conceived by João Maria Gusmão, the exhibition draws on the Fundação “la Caixa” Contemporary Art Collection to examine the alienation of labour power, the economy of leisure and artistic production. Its starting point is Antoni Muntadas’s 1989 photograph of a building-supply advertisement painted on the façade of the shop it promotes. Works by Gerhard Richter, Sigmar Polke, Doris Salcedo, Franz West, Cristina Iglesias, Ana Jotta and Jorge Queiroz are included. The exhibition runs until 8 February 2027.