“The world is flat” is perhaps humans’ most primitive sense of physical surroundings. It was also a cosmological conclusion drawn from honest bodily perception, because the land beneath our feet is indeed still and level, and the universe unfolds as an infinitely extending plane. This perceptual honesty is where Jong Oh begins.
Entering the fourth floor of the Guggenheim, you are met with fields, mountains, lakes of the Bavarian Alps, daily objects, and people—bright, saturated colors held together by dark edges. The exhibition brings together landscapes, portraits, and still lifes, with a focus on Münter’s early Expressionist years alongside later paintings.
Floating names a state of suspension, between sinking and surviving, between grief and the body’s refusal to stop. In Keren Anavy’s landmark solo exhibition, Floating in Three Acts, this condition is both subject and structure. The exhibition is built the way floating feels: without firm ground, without clear direction, with the question of outcome left open.
Upon entering the exhibition at Latitude Gallery, you are greeted with a poem as a silent welcome, the cadence of the poem setting both the scene and the pace of the exhibition, titled A Room Rehearses its Own. In this exhibition, the paintings of Xiangjie Rebecca Wu piece together place, memory, and silence, with an impactful portrayal through both presence and absence.
Kuu Moments of Circularity On View Through: April 30, 2026 Featuring Jinn Yagi and Mabo Curated by Vida Sabbaghi Empire Stores’ Gallery 55, Brooklyn, NY @cope_nyc @jinnjinny @mabo.works @iwgallery @empirestoresdumbo
Kuu Moments of Circularity brings together artists Jinn Yagi and Mabo from Japan to the US for the first time in a two-person exhibition curated by Vida Sabbaghi. Transforming the popular high-traffic area into a space of contemplation, Sabbaghi embraces the materially rich and expressive works of Mabo and Yagi in an installation that speaks to the richness of the structural beams, slick concrete, and industrial feel of the environment.
Artwork by Jinn Yagi; image courtesy of Luckey Cruz
Artwork by Mabo; image courtesy of Manonce
The images we see in the final presentation result from countless layers of reexamining prior photographs taken by Yagi, from the micro to the macro, delving into philosophical explorations of depth, time, space, and existence. As the textures of paint are built up, a Rorschach aesthetic emerges, inviting the viewer to find meanings through these abstract revelations. With breathtaking views of the river mere steps away, one is apt to remember how exceptional this particular geographical point is, and an opportunity to engage in the multilayered concepts presented by the artists is offered through these works.
The building up in Yagi’s process feels like a seamless dance with Mabo’s scraping away of the metallic surfaces to reveal discoveries beyond its gleaming facade. This push-pull of tension is an alchemical dialogue that opens up lines of inquiry between the viewer and artists. As abstracted images meld and sway, parallels with the woodgrain and metal fixtures they share space with emerge. Similarly to how nature is extracted and transformed into interior landscapes, so too are the materials that the artists incorporate and draw inspiration from. Yagi’s work combines photography and painting onto Juraku-shi, an eco-friendly paper derived from limestone. This dialogue between Mabo and Yagi that Sabbaghi brings together is seamless, sophisticated, and still very accessible to the wide audiences they serve within the bustling environment in which they commune. With Dumbo Open Studios approaching, it’s a welcome stop to weave into the weekend festivities.
One Blue Bead Sargent’s Daughters 370 Broadway, New York, NY Closes April 18, 2026 Featuring: Wendy Red Star @sargentsdaughters
Wendy Red Star’s One Blue Bead took shape as a powerful exhibition at Sargent’s Daughters. Centering stories, archives, ancestral knowledge, and lived experiences of tribal members of the Apsáalooke Nation, the artist retraced the colonized language, white-washed histories, and manipulative valuations used by the Dutch when the land was “purchased” from members of the Munsee tribe in exchange for beads in 1626. With no real record of said transaction, Red Star set out to explore the historical exchanges of beads through many forms, including trade routes, markets and values, production, and the aesthetics of beads as objects.
This thoughtful investigation included enlarged, scaled-up versions of beads on the floor, as well as walls lined with stunning watercolor studies of beads. Upon entering the gallery, visitors were welcome to take the interactive newspaper that contained important historical context and information, such as the valuations of beads and routes they would have been traded along. This exhibition contemplated and challenged institutionalized colonization in an engaging way, while reflecting on place and the many aspects of Manhattan that remain at the center of it all.
Listening All Night to the Rain On View Through: April 25, 2026 Lisson Featuring John Akomfrah 508 W 24th St. New York, NY @lisson_gallery
Listening All Night to the Rain, featuring a multi-channel installation by John Akomfrah,is a captivating experience, drawing together powerful footage of social uprisings across the globe, highlighting freedom and independence movements, including the Mau Mau rebellion in Kenya; Nigeria’s fight for nationhood;the Congo’s fight for independence from Belgium; and the 1947 Partition of India.The United States is also centered on an examination of action around civil rights, women’s liberation, and non-violent protest, particularly through the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC).The culling together of this footage is interwoven with natural habitats, lush and green, stormy and watery, dynamic and meditative. Voices narrate, and a range of vibrant sounds craft elevated ways of connecting to the content in visceral ways that expand beyond the visual and auditory, into an elevated state of consciousness. The lived experiences on screen are heartened, and in a sense, prescient. The experience is just as much about listening as it is about watching. More importantly, it is about feeling. In the dark environment, the expansive projections envelop visitors on all walls of the viewing room. Through this capsule, we are transported, transfixed, and hopefully, transformed. It is a melding of archival footage, set in a cinematic setting that resonates deeply with its audience through the audio and visual components that depict the many emotions and experiences that have been defined and forever changed through human actions and interactions. Liberation and devastation are connected through geopolitical decisions that can feel distant, yet so immediate. With the title inspired by Su Dongpo’s poetry, a millennium later, we are asked to reckon with how and what has changed in all these years since. As we continue to fight back against the age-old war machine and colonial limbs of the wicked empire, we must study past movements to organize, exercise rights, and continue to build upon the hard and brave work started by our predecessors. This is a must-see that should be on everyone’s list.
About the writer: Yasmeen Abdallah is an interdisciplinary artist, writer, curator, and educator examining history, contemporary culture, materiality, allegory, and space. She has been an artist/lecturer 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 the 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
Yuko Oda’s recent exhibit, Decaying into Bloom, currently on view at the Brodigan Gallery at the Groton School, located west of Boston, seduces with beauty and delivers a gut-punch from the moment you enter. It is the best kind of artistic experience: being pulled in by the sensuality of the materials, then hit hard with the poignancy of the message. Living things have always had to adapt to new conditions, and Oda imagines for us some ingenious possibilities.
In Andrius Alvarez-Backus’s solo exhibition, I Want to Know, I Need to Know, at Eli Klein Gallery, the work Are You Still Strong Enough? (2025) emerges as the visual center of the show’s underlying tension. A My Little Pony toy hangs vertically, the surface covered in bronze patina, while the incision along its abdomen is carefully stitched closed. What was once a lighthearted and slightly absurd object becomes, through this treatment, both fragile and solemn. Its form evokes a body after surgery, yet also resembles a preserved specimen. However, the meticulous stitching does not suggest that the wound has truly healed. Instead, the seam runs along the body, leaving the incision exposed and gradually becoming part of the sculpture’s structure. The suturing does not erase the rupture; it keeps the rupture visible. The wound is no longer simply a trace of intervention, but the structural element through which the work sustains its tension.
Nestled on the 3rd floor of 209 Canal Street, off a particularly bustling block in Chinatown, is a show of Elisa Jensen’s paintings titled Invitation politely, at Astor Weeks Gallery. These works echo Bonnard’s complex compositions with windows and the depth of space in Vuillard’s work. The paintings are various memories of places close to the artist’s heart: her home in Brooklyn, the house of her late parents that no longer stands, and her aunt and uncle’s home in Denmark. Jensen knows how to whisper through paint and tell a quiet poem in scumbles, with a profound feeling of color. Her playful use of iridescent paint leaves the paintings to be experienced as they change drastically with subtle shifts in lighting. It is as if each painting carries many versions of itself throughout the course of the day, as the light changes.
Eric Wolf’s works at Abri Mars take us through misty, expansive landscapes. Their ethereality and tranquility pull viewers into new places to explore and settle into. Within Two Waters, Wolf recreates the landscapes he observes directly, using a limited ink palette to bring the pieces to life. Through a combination of controlled and reactive strokes, Wolf uses hard and soft edges to render his figures of nature. While the figures are more abstract- mountains, bodies of water, trees, etc, these works are expanding on the process of plein air, bringing the environment into the works directly. With the gallery’s natural light from the front windows, the darkness of the ink becomes velvety, drawing you in, while the light of the paper glows beneath, pushing outward. This push and pull makes the work feel dynamic and lively.
Would you have believed the sun revolved around the Earth? Possibly, since that was the ironclad determination of the bureaucracies in the 16th century. Slavery legally existed in the United States for centuries before there was even the slightest abolitionist movement. Which brings to mind, why do we adhere to beliefs today simply because they are propagated by governments and institutions?
