EXHIBITION | JUSTIN CAGUIAT: CHANGE RINGING
At Serpentine South
8 October 2026 –10 January 2027
Press View: Wednesday 7 October 2026, 9am to 12pm
Please RSVP to: [email protected]
Serpentine is delighted to announce the first UK institutional exhibition of new and recent works by Justin Caguiat, on view at Serpentine South from 8 October 2026 to 10 January 2027.
Change Ringing will bring together painting, sculpture, printmaking, sound and film. Justin Caguiat engages with the gallery beyond its interiority, using the architecture and infrastructure of the Serpentine South building to frame and display his artworks.
Through a use of heat-responsive pigment, works on view at Serpentine will constantly change in colour and reveal different shapes as they react to environmental factors such as temperature and light. Though they resist fixed narratives, the paintings are reminiscent of fresco painting.
Alongside canvases, sculptures and prints, Caguiat will also show a series of bronze bells cast in the shapes of various flowers and plant seeds varying in size. A score composed by Lily Pickett riffs on the logic of English change ringing, playing mechanically in a continuous loop as pistons fire in sequential code. Like the concrete acoustic mirrors built along Britain’s coastline to detect warships, or Le Corbusier’s conception of a building as an acoustic receiver, the gallery’s walls gather and amplify the bells’ chimes, transforming architecture into a listening instrument.
An evolution of Zodiac Machine (4 March – 1 April 2026; Madrid), the exhibition organised by Fundación Sandretto Re Rebaudengo Madrid, across the Santa Ana y la Esperanza Church, the nearby Moratalaz Market, and surrounding public spaces, the Serpentine show will continue Caguiat’s longstanding exploration of the architecture, spiritual resonance, and symbolic qualities of sacred spaces, alongside the structures and rhythms of everyday urban infrastructure. Devised as a project in two parts taking place in the two institutions, Caguiat’s new body of works was influenced by the Spanish architect Justo Gallego Martínez, specifically his Catedral de Justo, which he designed and built single-handedly using only recycled and found materials.
