Contemporary Art and Culture
As one enters the space, the air changes first.
Nag champa. Sage. The faint illusion of burning wax.
The scent settles low and heavy, as if the room itself is breathing. The atmosphere feels dense and slow, yet charged. Fixed and fluid at once. Calm and alert. Sacred and unsettled.
This is not simply an exhibition to be viewed. It is a room to be entered with the whole body.
Continue reading “Against Erasure, Toward Presence: Anastacia-Reneé and the Labor of Care”
I walked into the PPOW gallery the morning my friend Riki died. The 182-panel illustrated small drawings by New York artist John Kelly, which extend as an open graphic memoir around the gallery, captured me instantly, letting me in on a personal journey of mortality, pain, and beauty. There was something generous in the way Kelly handed his notebook and shared the manuscript of his injury. It resonated with my thoughts of investigating and dwelling on mourning and mortality.
Continue reading “John Kelly: A FRIEND GAVE ME A BOOK at PPOW “
The exhibition titled Grit of the Hearth Beyond the Brambles creates a sense of place, wonder, and belonging. The title itself invites introspection, especially after reading the poem in the press release. It offers an exhale to the stressed, a release from tension, and a bright light to those who may be unsure.
Continue reading “Community and Belonging: Grit of the Hearth Beyond the Brambles at Field of Play”
To the Studio, a three-person exhibition at JJ Murphy Gallery in LES brings together paintings by Elisa Jensen, John Lees, and Liam Murphy-Torres, whose works collectively explore shared traditions of observation, light, and painterly practice. The title is inspired by a series of paintings by Frank Auerbach depicting a view of three artists’ studios, but also alludes to the New York Studio as an institution, tying them together. Both Jensen and Lees have been professors of Murphy-Torres at this historic institution.
Continue reading “Tradition Goes On: To The Studio at JJ Murphy Gallery “
Downtown in Tribeca, beneath the Derek Eller Gallery, the George Adams Gallery sits like a quiet afterthought. Easy to pass by. Down a short flight of stairs, away from the street glare, Elisa D’Arrigo’s recent sculptures gather in a small white room and hold their ground. The scale is modest. The presence is not.
Continue reading “Elisa D’Arrigo: Slouching Sculpture Forward at George Adams”
For many years now, John Avelluto has used trompe-l’œil and sculptural hyperrealism to unsettle the stereotypical trappings of Italian American identity, particularly its relationship to food. As in many other migrant communities, food functions as a vessel of memory and belonging, often bearing a disproportionate symbolic charge. Avelluto’s lifelike slices of acrylic mortadella and mounds of rainbow cookies confront this issue directly: they turn the charged history of foodways and their role in shaping communal narratives into something at once seductive and ridiculous. Viewers are forced to contend with the absurdity of articulating an entire national identity through piles of candies, pastries, and cold cuts elevated to the status of icons.
Continue reading “John Avelluto: AI, Synthetic Memory, and the Fabrication of Identity”
When I enter Nunu Fine Art in SoHo, New York, my body registers Mia Westerlund Roosen’s work before my mind does. Two tall forms, Heat (1981) and Conical (1981), lean into the room with a quiet insistence, their weight felt rather than announced. They rise from the floor with muscular arcs, tapering upward, commanding space without spectacle. I slow down instinctively, adjusting my path. These are not sculptures to be glanced at; they ask to be circled, negotiated, endured.
Stepping into Rachel MacFarlane’s exhibition, Afterlight, you enter an atmosphere of radiant, sweltering landscapes and venture towards an unknown future. The unpredictable future of a natural world that is vibrant, strong, and resilient, continuing to grow despite the climate changes and ecological effects that have threatened it. MacFarlane expertly situates the viewer amid a vibrantly colored atmosphere, positioning them as an active participant in the environments the paintings create.
Continue reading “Rachel MacFarlane’s Mystical Spaces: Afterlight at Hollis Taggart Downtown”
A clamor of murmurs without end. Several ghostly strands twisted strangely yet remained formless, wispy, and clinging, yet never settling into anything definite. Moving, then halting; halting, then moving again. Soft as if boneless, without body heat, yet inducing a tremor from within: a sudden burn, gooseflesh blooming in patches, sticky, viscous—caught and entangled by a reckless surge of ghostly energy. One slips from the ordinary into a hollow. A Lure, A Lament offers, at first encounter, precisely such a sensation. And yet its murmuring voice continues to drift, recounting wave after wave of fragrant air.
Continue reading “A Lure, A Lament at Gallery 456”
In Tirtzah Bassel’s vibrant and challenging exhibition, I Put A Spell, the viewer is immediately confronted with the question: Can the power of witchcraft—rooted in both ancient wisdom and intuition—serve as a potent metaphor for reclaiming women’s agency in art and beyond?
Continue reading “Tirtzah Bassel: I Put A Spell at A.I.R Gallery”