This year’s theme for SPRING/BREAK Art Show was Hide and Seek. The fair was within this new and exciting office space that felt like a labyrinth at first, but then it evolved into a wonderful journey- meeting new artists and old friends. Full of amazing works and installations, the booths caught my attention through either a detail, a connection, or a wonderful conversation. The themes varied, from Peter Gynd’s focus on the joys of the everyday to Juan-Manuel Pinzon and Matthew Logsdon’s connections through material, action, and discovery. David Howe and Jesus Benavente’s team brings urgency and humor, showing how decisions from up high affect our everyday lives. My experience of the fair concluded with the works of Noa Charuvi and Shmuel Charuvi, exploring connections to a sense of place and ways of viewing the world, often influenced by the works of family, while Braden Bandel’s paintings and drawings bring us into another world entirely- allowing us a place to rest and contemplate.
Booth C8.B – Peter Gynd:
Gynd’s solo booth is immersive, full of vibrant colors, flowing strokes and everyday objects painted in exciting ways. Paired with walls that are covered in drawings, the paintings stand out as an exploration of the essence of the objects Gynd chooses to paint, painting from life, as he captures hidden moments. The paintings act as snapshots of active moments, slowed just enough on the canvas so that we can experience them. Gynd’s expressive strokes seem to vibrate against each other in the paintings, as they come together long enough to show us the forms he is building.
While the drawings hold hidden details, layered forms and shapes, Gynd allows us the opportunity to explore his process and how he is able to seek out the most interesting parts of the everyday. Installed as a full wall installation, the drawings seem innumerable at first. Gynd continues to study moments as if the seconds of time passing could change the details, as viewers witness the compositions evolve with each moment that he chooses to solidify onto the canvas.
Booth B4 –The Seekers, Curated by Debbi Kenote, Featuring Artists: Matthew Logsdon + Juan-Manuel Pinzon:
The Seekers brings together the work of Juan-Manuel Pinzon and Matthew Logsdon. Through a variety of material exploration, the two artists construct an expanded understanding of the surface in which they work with. Logsdon’s woven works carry with them both process and structure. Woven by the artist’s hands, the forms carry with them intricate details and choices, whether it be color, hue interaction, and thread placement. The pieces also carry with them pieces of the artist, the pieces feel meditative to me. I feel Logsdon brings his thoughts, perspectives and memories into the works as he creates an object that carries them and allows us to meander through them as well.
Pinzon’s sculptures evoke bodies in the process of formation or dissolution, suggesting entities that emerge only temporarily before collapsing back into matter. When I first encountered them, they reminded me of relics or remains. Remains of another creature, or even another time, and as they extend towards Logsdon’s wall works, they carry the energy across the walls and through the space. Same with the larger wall work outside- objects peek through a burial of sorts and Pinzon and Logsdon make us seekers just as much as they are. We look to uncover pieces of their process, pieces of their memories and their choices to bring these pieces to life.
Booth A28- Man Makes Plans:
A curatorial project for artists: David Howe and Jesus Benavente
This booth is both urgent and humorous, it is a boardroom populated with outsiders responding to decisions already made. Artists David Howe and Jesus Benavente use political spectacle, disaster imagery, humor, and social exchange to explore the fragility embedded within power, the strength found in resourcefulness, and how nature can unravel even the most carefully laid plans.
Howe’s paintings depict current natural disasters- painted by an algorithm’s choice of composition. As Howe guides us through these snapshots, as if giving us the Breaking News we may not have seen, due to the ever-changing landscapes of our own algorithms, he blurs the lines between reality and image. The paintings carry a cinematic feel to them as the rain, light blurs, and sunken objects begin to hover over their own actions as if suspended in time. Howe seeks these moments to paint to illuminate what is happening around us, while his large-scale work, which was printed to be installed on the wall, depicts some of the people that have the power to choose the future and how those decisions can either be helpful or helpless in the eyes of the natural world racing around us.
Benavente’s works bring the effect of the everyday and of what these breaking news moments do to us. In the sculptures, which are self-portraits, we are given a humorous depiction of the effect of the now. A brick to the face, laying on the floor, exhausted over the news and constant barrage of social media, the hustle and bustle of life, I feel deeply for those characters strewn across the floor. While around the corner or in the hallway, Benavente pulls us back to the everyday. Selling shirts or giving us a comfortable pillow to rest upon allows some sense of normalcy and respite, while decisions from up high intervene, or sometimes, don’t come soon enough.
Curated by Michele Jaslow, this team of artists seeks to examine what is concealed within systems of power: the fragility hidden beneath authority, the often-unseen effects of judgements made elsewhere, and the resilience and ingenuity of those who seek to rebuild and bring back a sense of normalcy.
Booth A16 – Between Memory And Expression, Curated by Michelle Loh, Featuring Artists: Noa Charuvi & Shmuel Charuvi:
This space allows us to become seekers of memories and connections. Inspired by the work of and in dialogue with her late grandfather’s work, Noa offers us modern day ruins- pulling us from the past into the present.
Her grandfather’s landscapes offer pieces of places and of structures as they place us within a space. In pulling from the details of the landscape, Noa dances alongside these ruins to find her own compositions from construction sites and unbuilt places. From the rubble, Noa brings a connection and open conversation between the work that has inspired her. From these piles or places of discarded materials and scraps of buildings, Noa hides within these spaces a sense of wonder and discovery for us. While both artists’ works seem to be full of a tranquil silence and stillness, devoid of people, we are invited to explore. To explore both the memories of the work that came before Noa’s, and the expression of that work’s inspiration over her own landscapes.
Booth A24 – Braden Bandel
Bandel’s paintings and drawings bring us into another world. The drawings are airy compositions that shimmer in light and settle into shadows, and give us pieces of some fantasy land. Especially from the drawings titled Story Mode, I feel like an explorer who gets to pass through various levels, face quests, and become a seeker of new lands. This sense of wonder carries into the paintings as well.
The paintings offer us spellbound landscapes. Whether it be broken ice over teal- green waters, a torrent of rainfall, or an enormous cloud growing in the night sky, Bandel offers me more moments of wonder. The paintings become atmospheric and encompassing, and in a way, soothing. As layers and shapes fade into the distance, I’m left wondering what is left just beyond what’s on the canvas surface- what other spaces I could explore.
The energy of SPRING/BREAK Art Show and the sense of community revitalized me, bringing energy that inspired me and my own work, and reminded me to keep reaching out to the amazing community around me. While we may just be trying to survive crazy times, it is moments like these that offer a reason to smile.
About the Writer: Taylor Bielecki lives in Gowanus, where her studio is, and works at Pratt Institute, where she earned her MFA, she also studied at Penn State, where she earned a BA in English and a BFA in Fine Arts. She finished as a finalist in the Kennedy Center’s VSA National Emerging Young Artist program for 2017; where she earned an award of Excellence. She has shown prints internationally in a print exchange in Australia and exhibitions in Dubai, India and the Glasgow School of Art. She has also shown paintings internationally in Gallery 24N, PhilaMOCA’s juried exhibitions in Philadelphia, Pa., Perry Lawson Fine Art in Nyack, NY, BWAC in Red Hook, the 2025 Zero Art Fair in Chelsea, and Greenpoint Gallery in Brooklyn. Taylor has joined Art Spiel as a contributing writer.