Richard Pousette-Dart: Poetry of Light, organized by the Museum Frieder Burda in Baden-Baden with the artist’s foundation in Suffern, New York, explores all facets of a sorely underappreciated painter, sculptor, and photographer. His work—full of astral imagery, shimmering colors, and totemic forms—represents an ever-evolving vision of abstraction guided by humanist principles. 

As he recounts in this interview, self-taught, Turin-born artist Paolo Colombo began working as a painter and drawer and writer in the early 1970s, but stopped in 1986 to begin a twenty-one-year career as a curator of contemporary art in the United States, Europe, and Turkey. Today, his intricate, intimate images and word-image hybrids bridge worlds and times. They are sparked both by the formal and philosophical innovations of the modernist avant-garde and by the wonders of history, especially of literature and the ancient world.

Rirkrit Tiravanija’s survey of work from 1987 to 2024, DAS GLÜCK IST NICHT IMMER LUSTIG (Happiness is not always fun) at Gropius Bau, puts its audience at center stage. As you would expect from the leading light of relational aesthetics, the exhibition, focused largely on the Thai artist’s longstanding engagement with Germany, makes the everyday dynamics of community and culture its subject matter.

Beninese artist Georges Adéagbo’s new installation at the Hamburger Kunsthalle presents a wildly kaleidoscopic vision of the search for understanding—of history, culture, and self. Inspired by maverick German art historian Aby Warburg’s investigations of how tragedies and triumphs resonate in art and popular culture from antiquity to the modern era, it considers a multitude of complex, still-unfolding stories.