William Kentridge’s ‘Natural History’ opens at Hauser & Wirth

Hauser & Wirth New York will present A Natural History of the Studio, a landmark exhibition by South African artist William Kentridge, on view from May 1st to August 1st, 2025, across the gallery’s 22nd and 18th Street locations. The show will debut Kentridge’s nine-part film series Self-Portrait as a Coffee-Pot in its entirety, accompanied by over seventy works on paper and a selection of sculptures that draw viewers into the artist’s creative universe. The first floor of the 22nd Street space will evoke the atmosphere of Kentridge’s Johannesburg studio, while the second floor will trace the relationship between drawing and sculpture in his practice. Highlights will include the Paper Procession sculptures—vibrant aluminum figures inspired by folded paper works—and cast-bronze glyphs, which form a sculptural vocabulary of memory, language, and politics. The exhibition will also feature Fugitive Words (2024), an animated film in which pages from the artist’s notebooks become a surreal landscape set to Beethoven.

At the gallery’s 18th Street location, a selection of Kentridge’s prints from the past two decades will be on display, showcasing the artist’s enduring engagement with the medium. Among them are a series of works centered on a typewriter motif, linked to his 2012 film The Refusal of Time, and the Portraits for Shostakovich (2022), vivid lithographs depicting key Soviet cultural figures. Also included will be four recent self-portraits created through a layered process of photogravure, hand-painting, and collage, reflecting Kentridge’s evolving exploration of identity. With this upcoming presentation, Kentridge invites viewers into a world where the poetic, political, and deeply personal converge.