Exhibition Review – Art Spiel

December 10, 2025December 10, 2025

Spectral Evidence: A deeper introspection on Color, Light, and Energy

Installation view, photo courtesy of the Shirley Project Space

Walking into this show on a cold, blustery night, you are greeted by large windows illuminated out by gallery light. Inside, you are met with a collection of color, light, and energy. Each piece in the exhibition Spectral Evidence uses mainly acrylic to illuminate new spaces by dissolving edges, blending colors, and allowing gradients to calmly and smoothly envelope the space within the works. While each artist in the show has their own take on creating their own spaces, they use many conventions of painting and abstraction to create new forms and environments to experience, and each piece seems to flow well into the next. The gallery layout lends itself to a meandering space.

December 3, 2025December 6, 2025

Tom McGlynn: This Here at Rick Wester Fine Art

Tom McGlynn, *This Here*, installation view, Rick Wester Fine Art, New York

Tom McGlynn continues to grow a decade-long train of thought with a new selection of paintings in This Here at Rick Wester Fine Art. Consistent with his oeuvre, he arrays a selection of color rectangles suspended within various fields of color. An acquaintanceship with the origin of this direction, accompanied by a fresh pair of eyes, will enable a viewer to put aside the parallels with Mondrian, Albers, or even Hans Hoffmann, and see these works anew.

December 2, 2025December 1, 2025

Maureen McCabe: Feminine Surrealism, Witch Culture and the Original Goth

Tod Gangler (b. 1953), Professor Maureen McCabe, 1975, Hand-altered photograph, 5″ × 4⅜”

I’ve never been to a séance; however, walking into Maureen McCabe’s exhibition Fate and Magic at the William Benton Museum of Art invokes strong séance vibes. Artworks on black slate whisper, engravings of shooting stars, goddesses, brew potions, and long-forgotten stage magicians appear at the Benton like reliquaries of the past. For over six decades, Maureen McCabe has been an overlooked alchemist of memory, transmuting her personal experiences and arcane cultural references into this intimate magical retrospective.

December 1, 2025December 1, 2025

Beamsplitter curated by David Shaw at Field of Play

Installation view of *Beamsplitter* featuring *Unnamed, Stable and True Penetrates Being with Sight in Hand*. (Gavin Wilson) and *Bleap* (Lauren Anaïs Hussey)

The artwork in Beamsplitter, a six-person show at Field of Play, functions as a series of portals. Named for a scientific device that both transmits and reflects light, Beamsplitter opens up spectrums of material, concept, and time. Using a mix of large and small works from artists across generations, curator David Shaw expands the Gowanus gallery’s 9 x 15-foot footprint into a dynamic array of gateways. The recurrence of circular forms and apertures presents a menu of windows to the artist’s interiority or world-view. Field of Play’s signature astroturf floor provides an idiosyncratic arena to home these loci.

November 26, 2025November 22, 2025

Yi Hsuan Lai: The Ontology of the Body at SoMad

Yi Hsuan Lai, *Rubber, Rubber*. Installation view in SoMad, 2025. Imagery courtesy of SoMad and the artist

Yi Hsuan Lai exhibits her works in a solo show at SoMad, a femme- and queer-led art space that serves as a platform for emerging artists to experiment, collaborate, and challenge conventions. SoMad comprises a combined gallery and artist residency program, a production house, and an event space. The name “SoMad” reflects both the physical location — south of Madison Square Park — and the collective’s frustration with the current landscape of resources and support structures available for emerging artists, particularly artists from marginalized communities.

November 25, 2025November 25, 2025

Frank Lind: Time and Tide, Homage and Seascapes at Georges Berges

*MLK, 2000, Seascapes and Studies, Oil on canvas. 60 x 50 in. Photo courtesy of Georges Berges Gallery*

Getting to see the works of Frank Lind in person gives you an experience of a moment, the capture of a motion, and the building up of an atmosphere. Lind works “en plein air” within nature. Capturing immediate impressions and moments that captivate him, he then carries sketches to canvas. Stemming from the on-site sketches, the larger studio works take on a glow. Using traditional oil painting processes and many old master methods, both of Lind’s series displayed in this exhibition show the end result of a painter’s process.

November 21, 2025December 1, 2025

Shervone Neckles: Steeping Memory

We do rely on art for healing purposes, but art that directly heals often requires a performative component. That is not to say that it delivers results, but there needs to be an interactive element in which the art appears to “give back” to the viewer. I visited the shrine of St. Anthony in Padua, for me, it was mostly to see the Donatello altarpiece and the Antonio and Tullio Lombardo friezes, but it was impossible to ignore the numerous worshippers at the shrine, their foreheads resting against the saint’s sarcophagus, inserting small pieces of paper with requests for St. Anthony. For nine years, Shervone Neckles has wheeled her healing cart — the Creative Wellness Gathering Station throughout the five boroughs and dispensed potions to fascinated and grateful onlookers.

November 18, 2025November 18, 2025

Singing in Unison, Part 12: Painting in Space

Judy Pfaff, *Barcelona*, 1990, steel, plastic, glass, table and chairs, 168 x 168 x 168 inches

It began, as many enduring ideas do, over wine and conversation. Michael David, painter, curator, and gallerist of M. David & Co., was speaking at a dinner with Judy Pfaff about her close friend and early champion Al Held. The talk drifted to another dear friend, Elizabeth Murray, and then to her admiration for Frank Stella. From that exchange evolved the idea for Singing in Unison, Part 12: Painting in Space, curated by Michael David, and now on view at Art Cake in cooperation with The Brooklyn Rail.

November 17, 2025December 1, 2025

Fran Shalom: Everyday Improvisations at Kathryn Markel

Fran Shalom’s paintings reduce form to its essentials while preserving the marks of revision and doubt. The surface becomes a record of both decision and hesitation, clarity and its undoing. Her compositions are direct yet ambivalent. Airy lines float within vivid color fields, their edges both firm and uncertain, altogether suggesting a state of being through color, motion, and gesture rather than representation. They obstinately remain abstract, teasing recognition without granting it.

November 10, 2025November 10, 2025

What The House Dreams Of – Two painters at Ruby Dakota Gallery

Athena Parella, Bedtime Story, Charcoal on paper, 17.5 x 22, 2025

“Childhood” has always been a fertile source for artists in all disciplines. We all had a childhood and, for better or worse, we all carry memories that often haunt us throughout our lifetimes. Ruby/Dakota, a scrappy young gallery in the East Village is presenting a two- person show entitled What The House Dreams Of that brings together two young artists with memories to share.