Art
Art is at the heart of Manuela. Guests will find dramatic site-specific commissioned works of art – many of them functional elements of the restaurant and bar – created by eight internationally renowned New York artists. Working over a period of eighteen months, Mika Rottenberg, Mary Heilmann, Rashid Johnson, Rita Ackermann, Lorna Simpson, Pat Steir, and Uman brought forth a variety of mediums into the mix in order to endow Manuela with its unique atmosphere. And celebrated London-based artist and designer Duro Olowu added an echo of Artfarm’s UK roots with a new custom textile for the New York restaurant’s interior.
Louise Bourgeois’ fantastical bronze Spider II (1995) and new and recent paintings and works on paper by artists who have lived, worked or been inspired by SoHo are also on view, including contributions by George Condo, Gordon Matta Clark, Philip Guston, Nicolas Party, and Cindy Sherman, among others.
Mary Heilmann
FLOATING TILE TABLES, (2024)
Mary Heilmann (b.1940, United States) is a contemporary Abstract artist renowned for her joyful, often unorthodox take on Minimalist painting. Raised in San Francisco and Los Angeles, Heilmann completed a degree in literature, before studying ceramics at Berkeley. After moving to New York in 1968, she began to paint. Her career, which spans over five decades, draws inspiration from eccentric counter-cultures; from the Beat poets to California’s surfers,1960s pop music and the hippie movement. ‘Everyday life and art history all join together in my work,’ she says, of the unpretentious style and nuanced color combinations for which she is best known. Heilmann’s work has been exhibited both nationally and internationally.
Mika Rottenberg
CHANDELIER FOR MANUELA, (2024)
Mika Rottenberg (b.1976, Argentina) is a New York based artist whose practice combines film, architectural installation and sculpture to explore ideas of commerce, labor, and waste and examine the absurdity of our rampant production, distribution, and consumption of objects and energies.
Rashid Johnson
BROKEN MEN TABLE, (2024)
Rashid Johnson (b.1977) is a multi-disciplinary New York based artist whose kaleidoscopic practice encompasses painting, sculpture, installation, film, photography and mosaics. His work explores questions of cultural identity, individualism and diasporic culture; weaving rich symbolism with art historical tradition to relay existential themes such as personal and collective anxiety, interiority and liminal space. Johnson’s large-scale mosaics are installed at New York’s Metropolitan Opera, and the new Delta Terminal at the LaGuardia airport. In 2021, his work was added to the permanent collection of the Museum of Modern Art. Johnson’s work has been exhibited both nationally and internationally.
Pat Steir
SONG, (2024)
Pat Steir (b. 1938) first came to prominence in the late 1970s and early 1980s for her iconographic canvases and immersive wall drawings. By the late 1980s, her inventive approach to painting—the rigorous pouring technique seen in her Waterfall series, in which she harnessed the forces of gravity and gesture to achieve works of astonishing lyricism—attracted substantial critical acclaim. Informed by a deep engagement with art history and Eastern philosophy, and a passion for artistic advocacy in both the visual and literary realms, Steir’s storied five-decade career continues to reach new heights through an intrepid commitment to material exploration and experimentation.
Uman
MANUELA NO.1 (2024)
Uman (b.1980, Somalia) is a multidisciplinary artist based in Upstate New York. Her technicolor large-scale paintings draw from a rich and multicultural childhood, as well as vivid dreamscapes and the Islamic calligraphy she learned as a child. Born to Somali parents and raised in Kenya, Uman emigrated to Denmark as a teenager, and later to New York as a young adult. She is renowned for creating joyous and intricate compositions that are comprised of abstract, geometric and symbolic motifs. Uman’s work has been exhibited both nationally and internationally.
Cindy Sherman
UNTITLED #92 (1981)
Chromogenic color print
61 x 121.9 cm / 24 x 48 inches
Cindy Sherman (b.1954) is an American artist known for her role in the contemporary revival of directed, or staged photography. For over four decades, her ground-breaking photographs have interrogated themes around the construction and projection of individual identity in mass-media.
GEORGE CONDO
THE INNER TEMPLE (2021)
Acrylic and oil stick on canvas
132.1 x 119.4 cm / 52 x 47 inches
George Condo (b.1957) is an American painter, sculptor, printmaker and draftsman. Born in Concord, New Hampshire he moved to New York in his early twenties, where he soon became a central figure in the East Village art scene, and witnessed firsthand the cultural collision of New Wave music, graffiti and visual appropriation tactics in art.
LOUISE BOURGEOIS
SPIDER II (1995)
Bronze, wall piece
AP; Edition of 6 + 1 AP
185.4 x 185.4 x 57.2 cm / 73 x 73 x 22 1/2 inches
French-American artist Louise Bourgeois (1911 – 2010) is best known for her large-scale sculpture and installation art. She also made drawings, paintings, and prints over the course of her prolific, seven-decade long career, and consistently explored the most intimate and complex aspects of the human psyche.
PHILIP GUSTON
CRESCENT (1976)
Oil on canvas
198.1 x 294.6 x 3 cm / 78 x 116 x 1 1/8 inches
Philip Guston (1913 – 1980) is one of the great luminaries of twentieth-century art. His commitment to producing work from genuine emotion and lived experience ensures its enduring impact.
NICOLAS PARTY
LANDSCAPE (2023)
Soft pastel on linen
149.9 x 127 cm / 59 x 50 inches
Nicolas Party (b. 1980) is a contemporary Swiss painter and sculptor who lives and works in New York. Known for his bright and fantastical images, Party uses color to explore the dreamlike and uncanny aspects of the world around us; from his signature pastel hues to pigmented neons, alpine greens and deep ultramarines, his work creates a throughline from twentieth century Expressionism and Fauvism to modern day computer-generated imagery.
DURO OLOWU
Manuela Matta, (2023) & New – Tide, (2024)
Collage printed fabrics
Duro Olowu (b. 1965, Nigeria) is a British-Nigerian fashion designer and curator, whose innovative combinations of pattern and texture draw from his international background. Nigerian-British Olowu is noted for his fluency in combining diverse aesthetics and mediums and was named ‘New Designer of the Year’ at the British Fashion Awards in 2005, just one year after launching his eponymous womenswear label. He continues to show his bi-annual womenswear collections at London Fashion Week and his designs have been acquired by the Rhode Island School of Art and the FIT Museum.