NEW YORK, NY.- The New Museum today announced that Klára Hosnedlová will create a site-specific commission for the Museum’s new Atrium Stair as part of the New Museum’s reopening exhibition program. The presentation, which will be the celebrated young artist’s first museum project in the United States, will be on long-term view beginning in fall 2025. This project continues a collaborative initiative with Danish textile company Kvadrat launched in 2017 to premiere ambitious new productions by emerging artists.

Drawing on Eastern Bloc architecture, science fiction aesthetics, and centuries-old craft techniques, Hosnedlová creates complex sculptural installations in which the juxtapositions of materials are mirrored by intersecting questions around labor, gender, and historical memory. For her New Museum commission, Hosnedlová will wind a spine-like metal structure draped in flax-based textiles through the center of the Atrium Stair. The pelt-like form protects a suspended sandstone and glass sculpture at its core inset with the artist’s signature intricate embroideries. The work will gradually reveal itself to visitors as they ascend or descend the Atrium Stair and offer glimpses of itself to the world outside through the glass facade of the OMA building. As is typical of Hosnedlová’s work, the installation will also serve as a stage set for a private performance to take place before the exhibition opens to the public, with images of this performance living on as photographs and films that will become reference materials for future works.

“We are thrilled to provide a platform for Klára Hosnedlová’s first US museum project, and deeply grateful for the support of our longtime partners at Kvadrat,” said Lisa Phillips, Toby Devan Lewis Director of the New Museum. “We look forward to unveiling this commission alongside many other ambitious projects enabled by the New Museum’s OMA-designed expansion.”

Enabling a dramatic improvement in vertical circulation for museum visitors while also offering spectacular views of the surrounding neighborhood, the Atrium Stair is a central element of the New Museum’s expanded building designed by OMA / Shohei Shigematsu and Rem Koolhaas with Cooper Robertson, Executive Architect. Installations such as Hosnedlová’s will be viewable from the Atrium Stair and surrounding landings from the New Museum’s Lobby to the Fourth Floor. With its combination of futuristic atmospheres and archaic details, Hosnedlová’s layered work offers a meditation on ephemerality and permanence.

Additional site-specific commissions to be unveiled with the reopening of the expanded New Museum include a sculpture by Sarah Lucas created for the new outdoor plaza at the terminus of Bowery and Prince St.

Klára Hosnedlová (b. 1990, Uherské Hradiště, Czech Republic) lives and works in Berlin. Her work is the subject of a major presentation at Hamburger Bahnhof – Nationalgalerie der Gegenwart opening in May 2025. Notable recent solo and group exhibitions include Kunsthalle Basel, Switzerland (2024); Kestner Gesellschaft, Hanover, Germany (2023); the 16th Lyon Biennale, France (2022); X Museum, Beijing (2022); Baltic Triennial 14, Contemporary Art Centre, Vilnius (2021); 54th October Salon Belgrade Biennial (2021); 7th Athens Biennial (2021); Fondation Cartier, Paris (2019); Vila Tugendhat, Brno (2017); and Prague National Gallery (2015).