Kentridge’s ‘Natural History of the Studio’: Chaos Meets Genius

Born in 1955 in Johannesburg—where he still lives and works today—William Kentridge came of age under apartheid’s shadow, a reality that permeates his interrogation of history’s grip on the present. A master of multidisciplinary alchemy, Kentridge crafts universes within his art that both mirror and distort society’s inequities and absurdities. 

Through charcoal sketches, film, sculpture, and theater, he stitches meaning from historical fragments: maps yellowed by time, language layered with irony, and vernacular visuals repurposed as protest. Yet his work resists tidy conclusions, embracing contradiction like an old friend and leaving space for the unresolved questions that haunt our collective memory.

"Kentridge will open an exhibition at our New York gallery in 2025. It is a true honor that William Kentridge has decided to join our gallery," says Iwan Wirth, President. "William’s virtuosity as an artist, thinker, polymath, and mentor of others sets him apart as a creative luminary of our time. Through the diversity, courage, and sheer power of his work, he interweaves themes that are both universal and personal to lead us through the mazes of politics, mythology, literature and art history. In this way, William has created something simultaneously epic and ephemeral with his art, always finding new approaches to expressing the most challenging ideas."

In a world where algorithms churn out “perfect” digital art, South African polymath William Kentridge doubles down on glorious human messiness in A Natural History of the Studio. Spanning both of Hauser & Wirth’s Chelsea galleries, this exhibition is a tour of creative delirium—think charcoal dust, half-burnt coffee cups, and a nine-part film series (Self-Portrait as a Coffee-Pot) that dissects the absurdity of making art. For luxury collectors and analog loyalists alike, it’s a visceral rebuttal to the sterile ease of AI.

Hauser & Wirth’s 22nd Street Location

Nestled in Manhattan’s historic West Chelsea Arts District, Hauser & Wirth’s 22nd Street gallery is a 36,000-square-foot architectural marvel designed by Annabelle Selldorf of Selldorf Architects. Opened in 2020 as the gallery’s first purpose-built space, it prioritizes art-centric experiences with five floors of flexible, light-filled galleries that blend modernist rigor with industrial elegance.

The installation, curated by Sabine Theunissen, transforms the first floor into a reimagined studio, complete with charcoal-smeared walls and a soundscape echoing Kentridge’s Johannesburg workspace.  

The Works:

• Film Series Premiere: Self-Portrait as a Coffee-Pot screens in full—a surreal odyssey where Kentridge dons a coffee-pot mask, wrestles with blank canvases, and parodies the creative process. “It’s Beckett meets Buster Keaton, with a side of existential Java,” joked The New Yorker.

• Never-Before-Seen Drawings: 45+ works from the film’s universe, including storyboards where coffee stains morph into galaxies.  

• Sculptures: Bronze pieces that shift from figurative to abstract, like "a mind mid-thought, per ARTnews).  

18th Street Location: A Printmaker’s Palimpsest

To step into Hauser & Wirth’s 18th Street gallery is to find yourself inside William Kentridge’s paper-and-ink brain. This 20-year retrospective of his prints—etchings, lithographs, and carborundum works—is less a tidy survey than a riot of memory and dissent. Think of it as a DJ set composed of history’s static: apartheid-era maps colliding with absurdist self-portraits, fragmented text dissolving into visual punchlines.

The Works: 

• Etchings: Razor-sharp lines dissect power structures. See "Porter Series" (2004), where suited bureaucrats morph into marionettes, their strings pulled by invisible hands.

• Lithographs: Moody, theatrical scenes like "Learning the Flute" (2003)—a tongue-in-cheek ode to futility, where a figure struggles to play an instrument made of scrap metal

• Carborundum Grit: Kentridge’s signature texture—a tactile rebellion against digital smoothness. In "Universal Archive" (2012), coffee pots and typewriters emerge from granular shadows, as if dredged from a collective subconscious.

These prints are time capsules with a resale edge. Limited-edition carborundums fetch 50K–150K, prized by collectors who crave art that sweats.

As Sotheby’s puts it:

Why It Resonates:

In an era of AI-generated gloss, Kentridge’s hands-on process—scraping, inking, revising—feels like a manifesto. Each piece is a palimpsest, layers of meaning buried like strata in rock. “The mistake is the gift,” he once said, nodding to a coffee stain left intact on a 2008 litho.

Kentridge’s work thrives in the gray zone between high art and existential slapstick. For collectors, it’s a tangible asset (his large-scale drawings fetch $500K+ at auction), but the real value lies in its humanity.

“William Kentridge's Self-Portrait as a Coffee Pot series, including related artworks, are attractive for resale, particularly after his 2024 MoMA retrospective which boosted prices by 30%. This is because the retrospective brought significant attention to Kentridge's work, and the Coffee Pot series specifically offers a unique and visually captivating experience.” - Google AI Search Lab

1. First Dibs: Arrive early—the 360° soundscape (typewriter clatter, espresso hisses) is best absorbed pre-crowd.

2. Double Venue Strategy: Start at 22nd Street for the films, then walk to 18th Street—the prints contextualize Kentridge’s “beautifully unresolved” process (Financial Times).

3. Watch the Market: Kentridge’s Coffee-Pot series is ripe for resale; his 2024 MoMA retrospective spiked prices by 30%.

In an age of ChatGPT and AI galleries, A Natural History of the Studio is a rallying cry for human idiosyncrasy.

As Kentridge quips in the film:  

Final Thought: “Luxury isn’t flawlessness—it’s the courage to leave the stain.”