Part retrospective, part group show, the comprehensive display at Bonniers Konsthall sets out both to trace Peter Weiss’s work – from early surrealist reclusion, to filmic montage, to its resolution in “The Aesthetics of Resistance” – and to ask what form resistance to fascism can assume today in theory and praxis. Flanked by a public discourse program and a collected volume, the exhibition does justice to the informational density of its subject yet also succeeds in creating convincing visual frames in space, as Steph Holl-Trieu and Nikhil Vettukattil argue. The absence of a unified voice of anti-fascism today, time-stamped in the composite exhibition title, neither seeks nor finds resolution here, but is posed as a palpable, pressing question.

While this year’s Paris Art Week draws to a premature close, we’re turning our gaze to New York’s gallery scene. The sheer number of noteworthy exhibitions that opened there last month has led us to introduce a new online format: The Gallery Tour. Setting the tone is Jonathan Odden, delivering crisp, concise reviews of four essential gallery shows. He begins in Chelsea, with Hanna Hur’s compositions combining rational grids with religious iconography at Greene Naftali, Nate Lowman’s custom-shaped canvases parked at David Zwirner’s former garage space, and Lynda Benglis’s material-rich exhibition at Pace, which highlights the artist’s versatility in terms of process. The tour then takes us south to lower Manhattan – not to Alphabet City, but to “The Chemical Alphabet,” Hauser & Wirth’s SoHo presentation of Rita Ackermann’s new series of chalkboard paintings.

When Warren Sonbert began making films as a teenager, Andy Warhol’s early filmic works were a major source of inspiration for him. Like many other New York based filmmakers of his generation – such as David Brooks, Robert Beavers, and Tom Chomont – Sonbert developed an experimental style early on that was also strongly influenced by Gregory Markopoulos, who became his mentor. Sonbert’s characteristic montage technique is often considered diaristically motivated – an illusion that Arindam Sen effectively refutes in the review of a recent touring retrospective in Spain. As Sen elucidates, the filmmaker’s kaleidoscopic compositions are, in fact, more conceptually crafted – guided by grand themes and very specific formal decisions – than an initial impression suggests.

To take the centenary of Michel Foucault’s birth in 1926 as an occasion to revisit his reflections on authorship is replete with contradiction. A birthdate, serving as a common tool for identification, marks individuality and subjective development and is thus one part of the author function Foucault situated in its historical stratum in his 1969 lecture “What Is an Author?” On the example of graffiti artist Banksy, Harmon Siegel demonstrates that anonymity doesn’t undo authorship; neither does it resolve the critic’s task of considering the concept’s historicity and ethical implications.

Als Ende der 1990er Yayoi Kusumas frühe Werke wiederentdeckt wurden, erkannte die Kunstgeschichte insbesondere in ihren „Infinity Nets“ und „Accumulation“-Skulpturen eine andere Spielart des Modernismus als die ihrer männlichen Kollegen im New York der 1960er – auch hinsichtlich Geschlecht und Herkunft der Künstlerin. Die jedoch zunehmend auch auf das Psychobiographische reduzierte Interpretation ihres Werkes wurde gleichzeitig Gegenstand feministischer Kritik. Diese Episode in Kusamas sieben Jahrzehnte umfassender Karriere scheint vergessen, seit ihre immersiven „Infinity Rooms“ zuletzt zu einem Social Media Phänomen wurden. Stephan Diedrich erinnert sich in seinem Nachruf an das Werk einer facettenreichen Person und an die Zusammenarbeit mit Kusama, die stets nach Unendlichkeit strebte.

Der Blick auf Christa Nähers Oeuvre zeigt, wie sich Brüche in einem Werk herstellen lassen, die später als logische Entwicklung erscheinen. Diese Qualität lässt sich als gestalterisches Prinzip in ihren frühen Fotocollagen nachvollziehen. In Malerei und Grafik wiederkehrende Motive wie Tiere, vor allem Pferde und Hunde, tauchen auch in diesen Arbeiten in atmosphärisch aufgeladenen Szenerien auf. Ann-Kathrin Eickhoff nutzt eine der Collagen aus den frühen 1990er Jahren als Einstieg für ihre Rezension von Nähers jüngster Ausstellung „Exzess“ in der Galerie Kirchgasse. Laut Eickhoff wird das Motiv einer geliehenen Körperlichkeit im medienübergreifenden Werk der Künstlerin als bildnerisches Problem durchdekliniert, das die Schau am Bodensee schlaglichthaft auffächert.

Following her survey exhibition “Motherscape” at Albertina Modern earlier this year, Leiko Ikemura’s conception of motherhood as an act of creation outside the confines of patriarchal hierarchies and biological realities takes a new dimension in her current display at CFA in Berlin. Referencing the circular movement of the course of a day, spatially manifested in a colorful exhibition design, the sensual perception of the artist’s cross-disciplinary and cross-cultural practice is centered here. As Ruri Kawanami argues, the idiosyncrasy of her painterly style with a multitude of influences, as well as her specific understanding of motherhood, are conveyed through the work’s materiality – instead of through a fixation on essentialist terms or market-oriented tags.

In his previous letter to Annette Weisser, Bruce Hainley offered insights into the work of Wim T. Schippers, whose puckish pieces are perfect for lifting spirits. Now, Weisser brings Hainley – and us, as readers of their correspondence – back to today’s less-than-rosy political reality. Alarmed by the AfD’s election results in Saxony-Anhalt, she wonders how to cultivate moral courage, solidarity, and a sense of community in times when right-wing forces are gaining influence at a disturbing rate. She currently finds stronger impulses for this in poetry than in contemporary art – and specifically recommends a poem by Ariana Reines.