"Seriously" at Sprüth Magers Review by Dirk Diggler

Meanwhile, in another part of town…

Seriously, Curated by Nana Bahlmann, 21 November 2025 – 31 January 2026

Seventy-one artists have been summoned into the show Seriously, curated by Nana Bahlmann. Sprüth Magers, along with their fellow mega-gallery owners, from time to time host group shows that easily rival those of museums—even if they are sometimes employed to contextualize their primary artists with historical works and test out fresh talent. ### This show is a "banger." One doesn’t need to compare it with a fellow group show around the corner at Pace (which is terrible); this one stands on its own as an utter tour de force—and I mean force, as in: open your eyes and get sucked in and off. There’s too much to really give it credit in the space of this short review.

Perhaps the biggest mention should go to the curator; Nana Bahlmann, each room makes utter sense without having to know why or read the press release. From the first work - —Andreas Gursky’s Desk Attendants, Provinzial, Düsseldorf, 1982, a work that literally welcomes you - —to each wall arrangement, the composition, balance, and juxtaposition are first-rate.

Running through the works on show, the carousel in my mind shutters one image after another: buried artist, large breasts, big tits, acid dissolving, dogs watching porn, dildos, toys, Elvis, Kiss, banana eating, smoking child, water towers…

While the idea of photography, as Barthes put it, was the noeme (the essence) - —which isn’t really correct anymore as AI is dissolving this myth -—it is most often the distillation of people into images, usually posing or caught candidly in front of the photographer. The resulting image is a document of the relationship between photographer and subject, probably best examplified by the upcoming Nan Goldin show, The Ballad of Sexual Dependency, at Gagosian.

This show isn't that. This show is very funny, in part because the artists have really thought about the image they are making. It's not that photographers don't, but what they tend to do when "smudging" their subjects is rely on their personality as perceived by the subject, resulting in an intimate, personal moment that we spectators look on as a third party.

As witnesses giving light to our sense of observing a fellow being, we are caught in a moment of imagining ourselves in the scene -—a desire that almost immediately decays: gone forever, rendered unto death. But these artists, for the most part, are not doing this; instead, they have crafted into images the pause that humor needs to create the moment of confusion and wonder that jokes require in order to trigger the "LOL" response.

It would be impossible not to mention that among the works on show is Ceal Floyer’s work 644 (2025), which sees a photographed field of sheep, each being numbered, as if through a surveillance camera (totalling 644) believed to be one of her final pieces. She passed away a few weeks after the show opened, which brings the show’s reasoning sharply into focus: even someone who was regarded as "super serious" can be very funny.