Episode No. 744 of The Modern Art Notes Podcast features artist Blas Isasi and curators Larissa Grollemond and Elizabeth Morrison, and artist Harmonia Rosales.
Tomorrow, February 6, the Saint Louis Art Museum opens “Currents 125: Blas Isasi.” The exhibition presents sculptures informed by ancient Andean cosmology and the Peruvian desert landscape, as well as the violent collision between Indigenous Andeans and colonizing Europeans. The exhibition was curated by Simon Kelly, and is on view through August 9. SLAM’s exhibition brochure is available here.
Isasi is a Peruvian sculptor who lives in the United States. He has previously shown in Prospect 6 in New Orleans (parts of that exhibition traveled to the MCA Denver), at SHED Projects, Cleveland, and at The Front, New Orleans.
Grollemond and Morrison are the curators of “Beginnings: The Story of Creation in the Middle Ages” at the J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles. The exhibition, which is on view through April 19, looks at how creation stories have been advanced in manuscript painting. The exhibition also includes works by Harmonia Rosales, whose work often engages Christian creation stories, how they were presented in the middle ages, and how they might be offered today.
Rosales, whose work centers Black women in reconsiderations of Western art, has been included in group shows at Wadsworth Atheneum, Hartford, Art + Practice, Los Angeles, the Museum of the African Diaspora, San Francisco, and the Brooklyn Museum.
Instagram: Blas Isasi, Larissa Grollemond, Harmonia Rosales, Tyler Green.
Air date: February 5, 2026.
Installation view of Blas Isasi, 1,001,532 CE (detail), Prospect.6, New Orleans, 2024-25.
Installation view of Blas Isasi, “New Nature,” 2015, Jan Van Eyck Academie, Maastricht.
Installation view of Blas Isasi, “New Nature,” 2015, Jan Van Eyck Academie, Maastricht.
Blas Isasi, Corrections, 2017.
Blas Isasi, The darkness, 2017.
Installation view of Blas Isasi, “Entre la ficcion y el gesto,” Galería ICPNA de Miraflores, 2016.
Installation view of Blas Isasi, “It’s like talking to a wall,” 2020, Carroll Gallery, Tulane University.
Installation view of Blas Isasi, “An idea is just the shape of a flower,” The Front, New Orleans, 2022.
Installation view of Blas Isasi, “1,001,532 CE,” 2024, Prospect.6, New Orleans.
Installation view of Blas Isasi, “1,001,532 CE,” 2024, Prospect.6, New Orleans.
Installation view of Blas Isasi, “1,001,532 CE,” 2024, Prospect.6, New Orleans.
Unknown maker, German, Rudolf von Ems, Jansen Enikel, Brother Philipp, Weltchronik, about 1400-10, with addition in 1487.
No longer known maker, Stammheim Missal, probably 1170s.
No longer known maker, Illustrated Vita Christi, ca. 1190-1200 and ca. 1480-90.
No longer known maker and Joel ben Simeon, Elijah ben Meshallum, Elijah ben Jehiel, Rothschild Pentateuch, 1296.
No longer known maker, Northumberland Bestiary, about 1250-1260.
William Vrelant, Adam and Eve Eating the Forbidden Fruit, early 1460s.
Qazwīnī, Zakarīyā ibn Muḥammad, Kitāb al-ʻajāʾib wa al-gharāʼib, Book of Wonders and Oddities, ca. 1203-83.
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