This week's art calendar brings together surrealism's enduring puzzles, urgent environmental responses and sculptural reinvention across London's galleries. Major exhibitions opening in late September showcase both historical masters and their contemporary interpreters, while installations and retrospectives offer fresh perspectives on art's role in addressing global challenges.
What defines this week's standout shows?
The surrealist tradition remains as enigmatic as ever through a major retrospective examining René Magritte's influence on modern and contemporary practice. This Is Still Not a Pipe: The Afterlife of Magritte opens at Gagosian on 24 September 2026 and runs until 12 December 2026, bringing together paintings, works on paper and sculpture spanning Magritte's entire career alongside responses from more than forty contemporary artists including Sarah Lucas and Matthew Barney. Curated by Jasper Sharp and Bernard Lagrange in collaboration with the Fondation Magritte, the exhibition explores how the Belgian master's paradoxical vision continues to shape artistic practice today.
Elsewhere, Rachel Kneebone's Metamorphoses: Porcelain Sculpture opens at the Wallace Collection on 23 September 2026 and continues through 25 April 2027. Kneebone's porcelain works engage in dialogue with the museum's historic Rococo holdings, presenting fractured and reimagined versions of the decorative traditions that surround them. The display spans multiple galleries, positioning contemporary sculptural practice within the context of centuries-old craftsmanship.
Which retrospective spans continents and decades?
Gabriel Orozco: Chronotopic at White Cube Bermondsey, running from 16 September to 8 November 2026, presents over 100 works spanning sculpture, painting, photography, assemblage and works on paper. Curated by Briony Fer, the retrospective traces Orozco's career from early investigations through his most recent conceptual puzzles. The exhibition is perhaps best known for the artist's radical intervention with a Citroën DS, which he cut open and reconstructed to challenge assumptions about form and function. This comprehensive survey demonstrates how Orozco's practice has consistently questioned the boundaries between everyday objects and artistic transformation.
What other exhibitions address urgent themes?
Environmental consciousness shapes several concurrent presentations. Extinction: Renewal, Art of a Living Planet brings together responses from David Nash, Cristina Mittermeier and other artists who engage directly with the natural world's vulnerability and regenerative potential. The exhibition positions artistic practice as a form of witness and intervention in the face of ecological crisis.
Amar Kanwar's films and video installations span the modern histories of India, Pakistan and Bangladesh, offering temporal and geographical perspectives on how art documents and interprets regional transformations across decades.
What installation offers a pollinator's perspective?
A striking new work by Bristol-based artist Luke Jerram is arriving on the Thames in east London, inviting visitors to experience the world from an insect's vantage point. The Pollenarium's exterior mimics a grain of pollen while its interior represents a compound eye, creating an immersive environment designed to shift perception. Jerram's installation responds to a critical ecological concern: pollinator populations have declined by 60 per cent over the past two decades, threatening food systems and biodiversity globally. By positioning human visitors within an insect's sensory world, the work encourages reflection on humanity's dependence on these vulnerable species.
What does a 17th-century Dutch painting reveal about social transgression?
Gabriel Metsu's Two Men With a Sleeping Woman, created around 1655–60, uses pipes and drinking vessels as markers of moral ambiguity and social disorder. The painting depicts a woman who has collapsed into sleep, a white clay pipe still in her hand, surrounded by the apparatus of indulgence: a decorated cup for spirits, fanned playing cards, a mirror, another pipe and a jug of alcohol. The men in the composition loom and gesture mockingly, with one directing his pipe toward the unconscious figure. The mirror introduces a layer of symbolic meaning—in 17th-century Dutch art, mirrors often signified vanity, and in this context may allude to loose morals or even sex work. The arrangement of objects creates a still life within the narrative, suggesting that the woman's intoxication results from prolonged drinking, smoking and gambling. Metsu's composition uses spatial relationships and object placement to construct a commentary on female vulnerability and male predation.
What opens in the coming weeks?
The Magritte exhibition at Gagosian opens to the public on 24 September 2026, with a press preview on 23 September and a public opening reception on 24 September. Rachel Kneebone's Wallace Collection presentation also opens on 23 September 2026. Gabriel Orozco's Chronotopic continues at White Cube Bermondsey until 8 November 2026.
Key Facts
- René Magritte's influence on contemporary art is explored through paintings, works on paper and sculpture from all periods of his career, organised with the Fondation Magritte and opening 24 September 2026
- Rachel Kneebone's porcelain sculptures engage directly with the Wallace Collection's historic Rococo decorative arts across multiple galleries from 23 September 2026
- Gabriel Orozco's retrospective at White Cube Bermondsey includes over 100 works spanning multiple media and runs until 8 November 2026
- Luke Jerram's Pollenarium installation responds to a 60 per cent decline in pollinator populations over two decades by inviting visitors to experience an insect's sensory perspective
- Environmental and historical themes dominate the week's programming, with exhibitions addressing ecological crisis, regional modernities and the enduring legacy of surrealism
