Contemporary Art and Culture
When my mother was very old, I wanted to tell her what it was like to be in the art world. I said, “It is a little like joining the carnival.” While not affording her much comfort, I tried to convey the disorderly balancing act of the ridiculous and the transcendent, the illusory and the real, the sincere and the piratical. I wanted to suggest a midway of precarious lives, thrill rides, and a dubious game of chance.
Continue reading “Phantom Attractions at Astor Weeks”Algernon Miller’s work bends space, time, and expectations, redefining what abstraction means when history isn’t optional
I met Algernon Miller the way I tend to meet people in the art world: by asking too many earnest questions at a panel. That day, at a Mel Edwards talk at Hauser & Wirth, I caught a smile from the soft-spoken man next to me. We chatted and clicked. Two native New Yorkers—he from Harlem, I from the Lower East Side—drawn together by chance, we followed each other with no particular reason, and what felt like nothing quietly became something.
Continue reading “Why Black Art Is Rarely Just Abstract”HIGHLIGHTS
Pathways of migration, transit, turbulence, and foundational knowledge lead us across the city through three boroughs that speak to time and reflection. Through the slightest gestures cleverly calculated by the selected artists, we can trace symbolic movements as indicative of something greater and inherently profound. This lineup is a reminder to delve into one’s humanity and to mine for empathy and change. These themes are as relevant today as they were long ago, and it’s important to acknowledge the work of artists who are using their talents to envision an equitable world for all. Let us carry forth this mindset so that the present we build is a true path forward towards a more mindful future.
Transmitter Gallery
@transmitternyc @michael_pribich
On view through: July, 2025
Curated by: Eva Mayhabal Davis
Featuring: Michael Pribich
Willoughby Ave, Brooklyn, NY
Michael Pribich’s exhibition at Transmitter is rich in concept, layered and folded with intention and care. Upon entry, the feature wall is painted the color of fire, a commanding presence to contend with. Lowercase text runs across the top of the wall that reads: “We do not inherit the earth from our ancestors, we borrow it from our children.” This frames the other works in the show eloquently. Pribich collects suitcases – some broken, some more traveled than others – and this range is significant to the work. Each piece of luggage holds stories, amassed across countless miles and speaking to the hardship of migration. In one installation, the luggage is aligned like a row of ducks, perfect in posture, and imperfect in how they have weathered over time. Individually, we would likely view them as unremarkable or perhaps even an eyesore, and this is precisely where the artist seizes the opportunity to shine. He extends the handles exaggeratedly, so they surpass average human height, playing up the absurdity of lugging such arduous travel companions.
Pribich is thoughtfully speaking of the mental and physical gymnastics people go through in not just navigating absurd systems, but the physical tolls that come with the realities of the harshness of today’s world. He cleverly connects the hardships of immigration with climate change, fusing together issues that our leaders prefer to address as separate, but that we know all too well are inextricably linked. The impossibility of grasping the handles of the luggage reads like what is happening to people each day. The glass drinking bottles that align along the top of the handles reinforce this notion, as cheap capitalist single-use products serve as obstacles to attaining peace.
In his other sculptures, Pribich adds ribbon to these suitcase structures. Here, the tone shifts from bureaucratic tension to stoic, dignified entities. These two works take on an anthropomorphic quality, reminiscent of sentinels or deities that watch from afar at the state of affairs happening across the way. Pribich is cleverly speaking volumes, should you care to listen. In highlighting the inequities of our society, he is speaking up for countless people caught in the vicious web of bigotry. I wish more artists were as committed and well-read as Pribich, as there is no better time to speak up than the present.
@zurcher_gallery
On view through: July 18, 2025
Featuring: Alice Adams
33 Bleeker St, NY, NY
Alice Adams’ exhibition fills the gallery with organic wall works and totemic sculptural structures that demonstrate power and prowess in quietly muted, understated earth tones. The natural and the organic are felt fully and are compelling on a soulful level. The confidence of the work is smartly matched in step with the beautiful wood flooring and architecture of the gallery it inhabits. Details are ripe, while precision in the markmaking of the drawings and textured surfaces is remarkable. The minimalism is soothing and brings a state of calm. Delicate lines and forms are met with a vigorous grit and strength, the testament of an artist who has many decades of greatness under her belt.
In the milieu of heavy hitters who changed the course of history, such as Lucy Lippard, Louise Bourgeois, Eva Hesse, Sheila Hicks, Leonore Tawney, Linda Benglis, and others, her virtuosity in imaginative outcomes, techniques and materiality is magnificent. Repetition and rigor underscore the rhythmic approach to creation that Adams harnessed and made her own. Like many female-identifying artists of her time, Adams continues to push boundaries. She has spent many decades inspiring artists to look to their foremothers as role models and catalysts of change, both in the gallery context and in the public sphere. These works feel like handwritten letters to future generations to continue to carve space and continue to stand for equality through meaningful work, and by paying attention to the details, great and small.
@raluca_anchidin @graciela_cassel
On view through: August 24, 2025
Curated by: Raluca Anchidin
Featuring: Graciela Cassel
50-14 Skillman Ave, Sunnyside, NY
Graciela Cassel’s exhibition takes form in the expanse of whirlpools and rivets of blues, greens, and silvers against the backdrop of earthen-toned paper that illuminates and offers reflective windows into nebulae that simultaneously appear aquatic, celestial, and topographic. The rectilinear frames that line the walls encase mystic divinations that delve into the language of wishing fountains and canals, where the viewer is presented with the opportunity to dream and imagine a world free from the weight it carries. Contemplative brushstrokes lay upon surfaces that are light and amorphous; their expressive gestures a harkening to all that is human, while drawing from the divine. Electrifying blue neon juts across negative space like lightning hitting water in a combustible dance of natural forces.
This is all coupled with playfulness and experimentation that Cassel welcomes within her practice. One can imagine swimming through the depths of the artist’s works and finding a patch of paradise to blissfully get lost in. There is also, of course, the inlaid reference to geography and our dependence upon this precious resource. What should be plentiful for all is, in fact, often at the mercy of who controls it, and that in turn impacts who is allowed access. Indigenous peoples across the globe, in particular, have age-old ties to the waters that are often disrupted and denied by political factions.
In Cassel’s practice, I see a means of using her platform as respect for the water, and all peoples dependent upon it. When we look into the reflective pools, we should remind ourselves that access to water should not be politicized, controlled, or denied in any form to anyone. There is also the plight of the climate, rising sea levels, and the catastrophic impacts on our larger ecosystem. Cassel makes use of the abundance of context without ever spilling a drop. Let us find our dreams within these pools and harness them for sustenance and freedom.
All photos are by the writer.
About the writer: Yasmeen Abdallah is an interdisciplinary artist, writer, curator and educator examining history, contemporary culture, materiality, reuse, memory, and space. She has been a visiting and teaching artist at institutions including New Museum; Pratt Institute; Sarah Lawrence College; Residency Unlimited; BRIC; Kean University; Parsons; Columbia University; Children’s Museum of NYC; El Barrio Artspace; Fairleigh Dickinson; and University of Massachusetts. She holds Bachelor’s degrees in Anthropology (focus in Historical Archaeology) and in Studio Art with honors, with a Minor in Women’s, Gender & Sexuality Studies from University of Massachusetts; and received an MFA in Fine Arts, with distinction, from Pratt Institute. Exhibitions include Art in Odd Places; the Boiler; Bronx Art Space; Clemente Soto Velez Cultural Center; Cornell University; Ed Varie; Elizabeth Foundation; NARS Foundation; Open Source; Pratt Institute; PS122 Gallery; Spring Break Art Show; University of Massachusetts; and Westbeth. Publications include Anthropology of Consciousness; Ante Art; Art Observed; Bust Magazine; Emergency Index; Hyperallergic; Papergirl Brooklyn; Free City Radio; Radio Alhara; Tussle Magazine; the Urban Activist; and Transborder Art. Her work is in public, private, and traveling collections in the U.S. and abroad. @86cherrycherry
At Andrew Rafacz, Jaqueline Cedar’s Slide delivers small paintings with big temporal ambition. In her first Chicago solo show, the artist captures time not as a line but a loop—blurred, fragmented, and thick with atmosphere. Figures flicker in and out of clarity; gestures repeat like memories misfiring. The intimacy of scale invites close-contact peering, while layered forms resist quick comprehension. It’s a slow burn of perceptual dissonance, pitched somewhere between deep dreaming and déjà vu. In many ways, Cedar paints observation itself—its rhythms, glitches, and gaps—inviting us to dwell in the space between glancing and seeing.
Continue reading “The Time It Takes to Look: Jaqueline Cedar’s Art of the Almost Seen”
Nanette Carter: A Question of Balance at the Montclair Art Museum is an extensive survey of 46 works from throughout the artist’s career curated by Mary Birmingham. Carter is known for her boundless abstractions and innovative works on mylar. This long-awaited show reflects Carter’s long history with the museum, the community, and the town itself. As one enters the show, the first piece is a video titled The Weight from the pandemic days, where Carter films herself balancing various pieces of her two-dimensional painting as more pieces get “stacked” onto the main mass. Setting the mood for the show, it not only introduces Nanette Carter in flesh but also important themes she has been working on throughout her career.
Continue reading “Nanette Carter: A Question of Balance at Montclair Art Museum”
The exhibition at Field of Play gallery titled Onslaught of the Moment was wonderful, intriguing and timely all in one. The gallery’s exhibitions are always deeply considered and engaging, even within a smaller space, the works all shine and carry with them quite the presence. The shows are always curated with care, and this exhibition was no exception. Curated by Kate Sherman, the works of Lauren Clark, Masie Love, and Brian Karlsson each traverse space and show a progression of both time and experience through each artist’s process.
Continue reading “Feeling the Onslaught of the Moment at Field of Play”
Lisbon in May presents itself as both majestic and enigmatic, its urban landscape punctuated by clusters of jacaranda trees in full bloom, casting cascades of purple blossoms across streets and sky like botanical fireworks. The city’s legendary seven hills form a natural amphitheater overlooking the Tagus River, creating an endless choreography of ascent and descent through Escher-like topographies. Glossy marble cobblestones snake through a labyrinth of narrow streets, flanked by stately yet sometimes weathered palaces and residential buildings adorned with brightly colored azulejo tiles that catch and reflect the city’s crystalline light, making the entire urban fabric shimmer.
Continue reading “ARCOlisboa 2025 and Lisbon’s Renaissance”
Upon entering the exhibition I was struck at the presence every artist’s work had. While every piece was quite different from one another, they all shared similar conversations and offered viewers the opportunity to question human experience, histories, intimacy versus public viewing, and dealing with what it means to feel human. With nine artists, and diverse mediums, the complexities of being are shown clearly and each artist has their own take on “layers of being”.
Continue reading “UNBIND: FIGURING THE LAYERS OF BEING with the New York Studio School”
As we get into the summer months, June exhibition picks for Philadelphia are vibrant, sensuous, and bold. Works currently on display at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Locks Gallery, and Moore College of Art touch on subjects surrounding how we see ourselves and each other, and the transitory nature of existence. All things physical and sensual ultimately act as a foil to death, and these surreal and vivid works offer the viewer insight into how each artist considers what makes us human. Whether created of glitter, paint, ceramic, velvet, or butterflies, the works in these exhibitions remind us that we are stardust, and golden.
Continue reading “Art Spiel Picks: Philly Exhibitions in June 2025”
Where Air Turns to Fog at Below Grand, curated by Ray Hwang, gathers Sammy Bennett, Anna Gregor, and Jesse Ng in a sometimes cheeky, but overall multivalent and sincere, investigation of visual perception and the machinery of capital-F/capital-A Fine Art presentation. With his characteristic casual abandon, Hwang exploits the gallery’s awkward architecture to its full potential, letting Bennett install an upside-down trompe-l’œil “group show” in the street-facing walk-in window display while reserving the closet-sized back room for a collection of Gregor and Ng’s paintings.
Continue reading “The Treasure Below Grand”