RENÉE LEVI TRANSFORMS LONDON’S HAYWARD GALLERY
Renée Levi has taken painting somewhere it is unlikely to behave politely: across the concrete facade of London’s Hayward Gallery. Titled September, the Swiss artist’s first large-scale public installation in the UK unfolds as a two-panel painting above and below the building’s distinctive protruding window. Co-commissioned by the Hayward Gallery and Audemars Piguet Contemporary, the work brings fluorescent greens, pinks, blues and oranges to one of the South Bank’s best-known Brutalist surfaces, where grey concrete suddenly has some rather loud company.
The project also marks a first for Audemars Piguet Contemporary: although the Swiss watchmaker’s art program has commissioned artists across a range of media since 2012, September is its first painting commission. That distinction seems particularly fitting here, as Levi pushes the medium well beyond anything resembling a conventional canvas. Rather than inserting an object in front of the building, she works directly with its architecture, treating the Hayward’s rectangular window — the building’s so-called ‘eye’ — as part of the composition itself.
Renée Levi’s September takes over the facade | all images courtesy of Audemars Piguet
FLUORESCENT PAINTING MEETS HAYWARD GALLERY’S BRUTALIST ARCHITECTURE
Levi’s intervention follows her longstanding approach to painting as an action shaped by body, material and site rather than by a predetermined image. Her gestures expand above and below the window while remaining tied to the physical reach of the painter’s body. The Hayward Gallery, with its exposed concrete, projections and strong geometric language, therefore becomes less a backdrop than another material in the work. The Grade II-listed building already has a sculptural presence of its own; Levi simply gives it a temporary new skin.
That skin is made from industrial mesh, used by Levi as a painting surface for the first time. Typically associated with large-scale advertising and signage, the material allows air to pass through while supporting oversized fluorescent marks — a small subversion of a surface more accustomed to selling things than becoming the artwork itself. The experimentation with material is also where the commission intersects most directly with Audemars Piguet Contemporary’s stated approach, which frames its collaborations around giving artists room to explore new territories in their practice.
he work unfolds across two painted panels
AUDEMARS PIGUET CONTEMPORARY PRESENTS RENÉE LEVI’S SEPTEMBER
Unlike a painting encountered inside a gallery, September refuses a single frontal view. It appears differently according to distance, angle, daylight and shadow, folding itself into the constant circulation of people along the South Bank. Levi links that instability to the title itself: September as a month of shifting light, weather and metropolitan rhythms. For eight weeks, commuters, tourists and accidental spectators become its repeat audience, whether they planned on seeing contemporary art that day or not.
The commission continues Audemars Piguet Contemporary’s wider program of collaborations with artists and cultural institutions, which has included projects with Cao Fei, Adrián Villar Rojas, Ryoji Ikeda, Tomás Saraceno and others. For Levi, it adds another architectural-scale experiment to a practice that has already occupied Palais de Tokyo, Kunstmuseum Basel and the Lyon Biennale. September remains on the Hayward Gallery facade until November 15, 2026; after that, the color disappears and the Brutalism gets its grey back.
Renée Levi at the Hayward Gallery
the materials behind Renée Levi’s magic
Renée Levi sketching in the studio
Estudio EA