5 to See: This Weekend

5 to See: This Weekend

This weekend’s selection looks at the legacies of iconic artists, photographers and architects whilst positioning the natural world as a metaphor for global change.

Franco Fontana: True Colour, Robert Klein Gallery, Boston

Green trees, yellow grass, blue skies, white clouds. Fontana’s abstract colour works pare down the landscape to its elements. Both natural and urban environments are reduced to a series of forms, lines and bright hues. Until 16 August.

Isaac Julien, Playtime.

Lina Bo Bardi: A Marvellous Entanglement, Victoria Miro, London

Isaac Julien’s nine-screen installation traverses a collection of iconic buildings by Italian-born Brazilian architect Lina Bo Bardi. The film offers a meditation on the iconic work, celebrating the legacy of a visionary modernist. Until 27 July.

Robert Mapplethorpe, Patti Smith 1976. ARTIST ROOMS Tate and National Galleries of Scotland © Robert Mapplethorpe Foundation

Implicit Tensions: Mapplethorpe Now, Guggenheim, New York

The second part of Guggenheim’s major retrospective opens, revealing Mapplethorpe’s enduring influence on contemporary art. His groundbreaking portraits are shown alongside works by Rotimi Fani-Kayode, Zanele Muholi, Catherine Opie and more. Until 5 January.

Rashid Johnson, Antoine’s Organ, 2016. Image by Martin Parsekian. Courtesy of the artist and Hauser & Wirth.

Garden of Earthly Delights, Gropius Bau, Berlin

20 international artists – including Yayoi Kusama, Pipilotti Rist and Rashid Johnson – position the garden as a metaphor for today’s world, using it as a lens to examine the Anthropocene, the legacies of colonialism and historical segregation. Until 1 December.

Miss Butterfly, Shadi Ghadirian (Iranian, born in 1974) 2011 Photograph, digital print. Collection of Azita Bina and Elmar W. Seibel. Reproduced with permission. Courtesy, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.

Make Believe, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

Make Believe invites viewers to enchanted realms, rewriting the language of fairy tales and myth to explore socio-political themes: the role of women in the Middle East, the climate crisis, the passage from childhood to adolescence and fears of loneliness and loss. Until 20 January.

Lead image: Franco Fontana, Puglia, 1987.