10 July 2026
This September, artist Renée Levi will unveil a new large-scale work activating the façade of the Hayward Gallery in London. Co-commissioned by the Hayward Gallery and Audemars Piguet Contemporary, the work extends Levi’s longstanding exploration of painting into the public realm. The two-panel painting marks Levi’s first large-scale public commission in the United Kingdom and will be on view from 23 September 2026 until 15 November 2026.
Levi approaches painting as an operative practice – one that conceals, reveals, filters and reshapes the surfaces it inhabits. Central to her approach is not the production of a predetermined image, but the temporal unfolding of the gesture itself. Her works emerge through an encounter between body, material and site, foregrounding painting as a performative, situational process.
Drawing is an immediate, bodily act in situ within a site that determines material, scale, and action. Scale is body-based: reach, arm movement, spatial extension. Tools emerge from the situation and define mark-making. Rules arise within the act and exclude correction, overpainting, and composition. There is no return. The work is made in a single continuous passage. Drawing is action. Action produces the image. What becomes visible is time
Renée Levi
Artist
Conceived as a site-responsive intervention, the work engages directly with the Hayward Gallery’s iconic Brutalist architecture. Taking the building’s distinctive protrusions and windows as points of departure, Levi reframes these elements as part of a newly activated exterior surface. Extending across the façade, the work connects surfaces above and below through a continuous painterly gesture, activating the building as both image and field.
The co-commission builds on Levi’s longstanding exploration of painting as a direct, bodily act, as well as her sustained engagement with architectural space, informed by her architectural training at HTL Muttenz/Basel. Emerging from her studio-based drawing practice, her work translates gesture into space, responding to the physical and architectural conditions of each site. At the Hayward Gallery, this approach unfolds at a monumental scale, shaped by the specific constraints and possibilities of the outdoor environment.
Activating the Hayward Gallery’s iconic architecture, Renée Levi’s new work expands the possibilities of painting. Levi approaches the Hayward Gallery not as a backdrop, but as a surface to engage, responding to its rhythm, materiality and scale. Supporting artists to explore new territories in their practice is central to Audemars Piguet Contemporary’s mission. Having followed Levi’s practice for years, this co-commission reflects our commitment creating unexpected encounters between contemporary art and new audiences, collaborating closely with our co-commissioner the Hayward Gallery to realise and present this work.
Audrey Teichmann
Curator, Audemars Piguet Contemporary
Realised using an industrial mesh support, the work introduces new material conditions that both enable and challenge the act of painting. This process requires a preparatory phase that shapes how colour, surface and visibility are articulated. Produced in modular sections and assembled on site, the work exists both as a single composition and an expandable structure, adapting to the geometry of the façade.
This commission marks a new development in Levi’s practice, extending her painterly language into the public realm and introducing new spatial and material conditions. It also represents the first painting commissioned by Audemars Piguet Contemporary, reflecting the programme’s commitment to supporting artists in exploring new territories in their work.
For over thirty years Renée Levi has been questioning the medium of painting. She investigates colour, the application of paint, its body, and its space on various image carriers as well as installations. Levi was born in 1960, in Istanbul and grew up in Aargau. Today, she lives and works in Basel. After studying architecture at the HTL Muttenz/Basel, she studied at the Zurich School of Art and Design. In 1998, she started working together with Marcel Schmid as a studio partner. Recent solo exhibitions include at Öktem Aykut (Instanbul, 2025 & 2022); Palais de Tokyo (Paris, 2024); Galerie Mezzanin (Geneva, 2024); PHILIPPZOLLINGER (Zurich, 2023 & 2021); Villa du Parc (Annemasse, 2021); Musée d’Art, Histoire et Archéologie d’Évreux (2020); Biennale de Lyon (2019); Museum Langmatt (Baden, 2019); Istituto Svizzero Milan (2019) and at Galerie Freymond-Guth (Basel, 2017). In addition, the artist has been included in numerous group exhibitions, such as at Palais de Tokyo (Paris, 2023); Centre d'art Pasquart (Biel, 2022); MAMCO (Geneva, 2021); Istituto Svizzero Rome (2019); Vin Vin (Vienna, 2018) or at Kunstverein Munich (2015). Renée Levi has received several awards, including the Prix de la Société des Arts de Genève, Arts Visuel, in 2019, or the Prix Meret Oppenheim in 2002. Moreover, Levi is the winner of the public art competition of the Parliament Building in Bern, Switzerland.
Audemars Piguet believes that creativity feeds culture, connects people and gives purpose to our lives. Audemars Piguet Contemporary, the brand’s dedicated art programme, embodies this spirit by commissioning international artists to create contemporary artworks.
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