David Becker, Last Marigold
Exhibition Review by Carol Diehl

David Becker: Field Notes

David Becker’s small, square Field Notes paintings are like windows looking out into the natural world, the forest, and the fields, except each pane shows us a different time, different view, and different weather – as if nature, that day, couldn’t decide what it wanted to be. Translating his experience of nature into abstract images, Becker isn’t creating idealized landscapes like those of the Hudson River School, but representations of farmland and the human labor that goes into it. While most painters of nature are centered purely on the visual, Becker is actively involved in the entire life cycle of the varieties he plants, tends, and harvests on the arable eight acres of his 40-acre property. From there, he turns its images into energy, and its energy into images.

Does This Taste Funny? Installation image
In Conversation by Etty Yaniv

Does This Taste Funny?

John O’Connor and Melissa Brown were both students at Skowhegan twenty-six years ago. The idea for this collaboration came up over drinks in Chelsea, after Melissa saw The Apex is Nothing, the exhibition John co-curated at Pratt Manhattan Gallery. The two decided to co-curate a show at the nearby colleges where they teach, and humor emerged as the subject that interested them both. Working largely remotely while at separate residencies, they organized Does This Taste Funny?, a group exhibition of 40 contemporary artists at The Gallery at Heimbold Visual Arts Center, Sarah Lawrence College, and Lehman College Art Gallery, CUNY. The exhibition treats humor as a generative method for shifting perception. Six thematic groupings (The Body, Material Absurdity, Politics, Language, Art Humor, and Technology) show how artists use slapstick, satire, wordplay, parody, and deadpan to disarm viewers and expose incongruities in political, personal, and institutional life. In this conversation, John and Melissa discuss how Does This Taste Funny? came together.

Ivana Fischer, The Wild Gene ©Trotoar, photo D. Žižić
In Dialogue by Etty Yaniv

Ivana Fischer: After Belonging

Ivana Fischer’s work often begins with things that already carry a history: found images, old books, dolls, inherited symbols, and memories whose origins are not entirely our own. In The Wild Gene, her solo exhibition at Trotoar Gallery in Zagreb, these materials become a way of thinking through how a sense of self is formed, resisted, and revised. Moving between collage, objects, and stop-motion animation, Fischer returns to childhood, female experience, and the uneasy space between social roles and individual agency. The Wild Gene features her new film After Belonging, which follows a doll through shifting identities and imposed roles. It raises the question of how these structures shape our sense of self, and whether the “wild gene” can permeate them and flourish. The artist discusses the ideas and process behind her work.

In Dialogue by Ella Jackson

In Conversation with Claudia Bitrán: Titanic, Britney Spears, and Her Studio Practice

As a young girl, Claudia Bitrán would patiently wait for Britney Spears to come across the screen, then hurriedly hit Play and Record on the VCR, ready to rewind, rewatch, pause, and then pose, memorizing every nuance, note, mannerism, and movement. Born in Boston, raised in Chile, and now a Brooklyn-based multimedia artist, Bitrán’s work often imitates, recreates, and reimagines iconic artistry, from impersonating, painting, and paying homage to Britney Spears to recreating James Cameron’s 1997 film, Titanic, which Bitrán produced over the span of twelve years. Having first watched Titanic as a young girl, the splendor and sublimity of the ship, both in its triumph and tragedy on the seas, mesmerized her from the get-go, leading to a lifelong dedication to honoring and recreating the film through her own practice. Fascinated by spectacle, inspired by iconic artistry, Bitrán shares a glimpse into her artistic world and practice. 

Installation image, Under the Common Sea | 海的下面还有海
Featured Exhibition by Arete Xu

Under the Common Sea | 海的下面还有海

It is difficult for anyone to tell a story about being Chinese. On the surface, we have consummatory trends like “At A Very Chinese Time of My Life”; otherwise, we often see over-sensationalized narratives about geopolitical maneuverings. Yet, in the undertow, Chinese people work and make in conditions full of positional and situational complexity, and they belong to nuanced communities. Under the Common Sea is a group exhibition where artists and cultural workers came together to showcase the range and diversity of experiences, relationalities, and perspectives on identity among Chinese and Sinophone diasporic peoples in NY and across the United States.

Babs Reingold with Lost Trees, 2022
In Dialogue by Etty Yaniv

Babs Reingold: Forest Bathing at Leepa-Rattner Museum of Art 

For two decades, Babs Reingold has reflected throughout her mixed media work on the intersections of poverty, climate change, and beauty in the environment. In her current solo show, Forest Bathing at Leepa-Rattner Museum of Art, Tarpon Springs, Florida, brings together two ongoing series, Hair Nest and Lost Trees. Both series mark a deliberate shift toward celebrating the beauty and resilience of nature. Whether confronting social inequities, ecological destruction, or the persistence of beauty amid crisis, her work arises from a deep belief that art can create both awareness and change. By transforming unconventional materials—human hair, salvaged wood, silk organza—into immersive environments, Reingold invites visitors to think about their place within larger systems of survival, destruction, and renewal. We discussed this exhibition in the context of her larger body of work.

Meg Hitchcock, Fang (2025)
In Dialogue by Etty Yaniv

Fall Exhibitions at The Hammond Museum

At the Hammond Museum and Japanese Stroll Garden in North Salem, New York, art doesn’t stay inside the galleries. Since 1964, the museum has staged exhibitions that move from its gallery walls to its patio, tea hut, and garden paths, with about fifteen shows a year and the number growing. Contemporary and historical, drawn from many styles and cultural traditions, the exhibitions often aim to build cross-cultural understanding, while those set outdoors open a dialogue between art, nature, and personal reflection. This fall, five shows fill the grounds: Tomoko Amaki Abe’s Heaven Come Down in the Main Gallery, Meg Hitchcock’s Fang in the Hays and Goelet Galleries, Soli Pierce’s Poetry of Place in the Tea Hut, Matthew Weber’s Ground Shift on the Patio, and Kurt Steger’s In the Garden along the Japanese Stroll Garden. In this conversation, the museum team talks about how the Exhibition Committee selects its shows and how each one carries the museum’s mission forward.

Installation view of Vessels: Bodies, Tales & Machines
Exhibition Review by Taylor Bielecki

Vessels: Bodies, Tales & Machines at Westbeth Gallery 

The concept of a vessel offers multiple realities and interpretations that can vary, grow, and expand. In this exhibition titled Vessels: Bodies, Tales & Machines, the idea of a vessel takes the shape of both three-dimensional and two-dimensional works–all of which flow throughout the meandering Westbeth Gallery space. The term vessel itself can be considered a container: its external surroundings, the content, and the internal parts that are often unseen are included with it. These visible aspects of form and material, along with the invisible stories that are nested within the forms, are present throughout the works of the four artists: Jeanne Verdoux, Fanny Allié, and the collaboration between Nicolas Touron and Amy Lemaire. Each artist’s interpretation of a vessel connects the inside to the outside in their own ways and allows viewers to experience each artist’s narrative within their work.