Tristan Hoare Gallery

Esther Mahlangu

16 September - 20 September 2026

Tristan Hoare Gallery is delighted to present an exhibition of tapestries featuring the designs of Esther Mahlangu by Alexandra de Cadaval, celebrating one of the most singular artistic voices to emerge from South Africa in the twentieth century. For more than seven decades, Mahlangu has transformed the visual language of Ndebele painting into a globally recognised contemporary artistic practice while remaining deeply rooted in the cultural heritage from which it originates.

Working freehand without preparatory drawings or measurements, Mahlangu’s striking geometric compositions are distinguished by their bold colour, precision and rhythmic abstraction. Rooted in a visual language traditionally painted by Ndebele women onto the exterior walls of family homes, her work embodies histories of identity, kinship and cultural continuity.

Kensho: Taizo Kuroda & Sousai Inada

1 October - 31 October 2026

Tristan Hoare is delighted to present ‘Kensho’, an exhibition of works by Japanese ceramicist Taizo Kuroda and calligrapher Bokujin Sousai Inada. Through ink and earth, vessel and character, Kuroda and Inada engage in a deeply introspective exploration of how form can emerge through repetition, restraint, and self-reflection.

The title Kensho, a Zen Buddhist term meaning ‘seeing one’s true essence’, provides a conceptual foundation for the connection between Kuroda and Inada. It refers to the pursuit, shared by both artists, of accessing something beyond form and material through sustained repetition and refinement. As Bokujin Sousai Inada has stated, ‘the greatest theme for me is how to move the structure of a script to its utmost’.

Ptolemy Mann: Chromatic Minimalism

6 November - 12 December 2026

Tristan Hoare Gallery is delighted to present Chromatic Minimalism, Ptolemy Mann’s first solo exhibition with the gallery. Partly inspired by a recent visit to Mexico City and the enduring influence of Mexican architect Luis Barragán, this new body of work deepens Mann’s engagement with the emotional, spatial, and compositional possibilities of colour.

Ptolemy Mann has developed a highly distinctive visual language that blurs the boundaries between textile, painting, and architecture. Drawn to the slow, methodical nature of weaving, Mann embraces a process in which time and labour imbue each work with a quiet intensity. Using a tight, plain weave reminiscent of a painter’s canvas, the artist creates smooth, flat surfaces that foreground the gradations of intense colour.

The Exchange: Shahnameh / de Kooning

by Oliver Hoare

In July 1994, on the tarmac of Vienna airport, a clandestine swap saw the government of Iran acquire the most significant part of the 16th century Shahnameh of Shah Tahmasp – the greatest manuscript in the history of Persian painting – in return for Willem de Kooning’s Woman III. This was the culmination of a series of events which had taken place over many years, and which resulted in an extraordinary and ambitious exchange described at the time as the ‘cultural coup of the 1990s’. At the centre of the deal was a charismatic art dealer who dared to pursue the improbable: the late Oliver Hoare (1945-2018).

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