Interviews – Art Spiel

September 17, 2025September 16, 2025

Magnum O-Pspsps at Cornell

In Dialogue

Curator Michael Morgan with George Boorujy’s *Dredger* (2017) in the Foundry, home to Cornell’s MFA studios. Photo courtesy of Michael Morgan

Curating an exhibition at Cornell doesn’t require waiting until after graduation or climbing a long academic ladder. The Art Department makes the process unusually accessible—for undergraduates, graduates, and faculty alike. Within the department, there are two dedicated galleries, and under the larger umbrella of the AAP College, a third gallery also accepts exhibition proposals. Each semester, a committee comes together to review applications for the following term. It was within this framework that two graduate students took on the challenge of organizing a large group exhibition. Michael Morgan, who co-curated the exhibition with Elina Ansary, tells us about the process behind the show.

August 18, 2025August 13, 2025

Taylor Bielecki: The Essence of a Moment

In Dialogue

*Essence of a Moment, Installation view*

The Essence of a Moment, a group exhibition presenting a collection of artists’ contemplations on the makings of a moment. A moment is by its nature fleeting, and it’s by our nature as people that we seek to extend or preserve them; despite their intangibility. This group show engages with the questions – How can one define something as nebulous as a moment? Is it done retrospectively after it has passed? Is it a confluence of occurrences? Or perhaps it exists with the body’s perception of the present moment? These works offer a variety of insights and perspectives into understanding a moment.

August 11, 2025August 11, 2025

Almond Zigmund: A Dance Between Structure and Disruption

In Dialogue

*Almond Zigmund, figure ground yellow, 2023, acrylic on paper, 36 x 53”*, photo credit: Jenny Gorman

Almond Zigmund’s work occupies the charged space between structure and disruption. Moving fluidly across sculpture, painting, and installation, her practice explores the intersection of geometry, architecture, and lived experience—often in subtle yet powerful ways. I have the pleasure of discussing her work at the end of her recent exhibition at East Hampton’s Guild Hall. In this interview exchange, Zigmund speaks about the formative influences that shaped her, from growing up in a creative household to navigating the distinct geographies of Brooklyn, Las Vegas, and the East End of Long Island. The conversation delves into the improvisational roots of her approach, her ongoing engagement with spatial systems, and how tension—between control and spontaneity, place and perception, the built and the organic—continues to animate her work. With references to theorists, artists, Zigmund offers a thoughtful and richly textured account of how art can be both experiential and critical, formal and deeply human.

August 4, 2025July 27, 2025

Hovey Brock: The Invasive Species with Cornell’s Eco Arts

In DIALOGUE

A person standing in front of a group of people

AI-generated content may be incorrect. — Reception for *Invasive Species* in Cornell University’s Mann Library gallery

Hovey Brock’s show, The Invasive Species, in collaboration with Cornell’s Eco Arts features a series of paintings that focuses on how the climate crisis in general and invasive species in particular threaten the forests of the Northeast—an outgrowth of his Crazy River project that focused on the climate crisis in the Catskills. The paintings have phrases or questions that have been obsessing Brock for some time.

July 23, 2025July 21, 2025

Susan Mastrangelo: The Beat Goes On at Kathryn Markel

In Dialogue

Susan Mastrangelo’s solo show, The Beat Goes On, at The Pocket Gallery of Katherine Markel Fine Arts features work completed from 2022 to 2025, with the majority of the pieces completed in 2025. Mastrangelo creates bold reliefs that transform a variety of materials into bold abstract and biomorphic forms.

July 17, 2025July 11, 2025

Through the Kaleidoscope: Vojislav Radovanović on Dreams, Memory, and Finding Color in California

In Dialogue

*Vojislav Radovanović at the studio*. Photo by Jason Jenn

Vojislav Radovanović’s multidisciplinary practice spans painting, drawing, installation, video, and performance. His work touches upon themes of queerness, memory, the immigrant experience, spirituality, and the complex relationship between humans and the natural world. Influenced by his upbringing in Serbia during a time of war and social upheaval, Radovanović approaches art as a therapeutic space for healing and transformation. His process-driven works often combine recycled materials, vibrant color, and symbolic imagery to create poetic, emotionally resonant narratives. Through layered compositions and dreamlike logic, he invites viewers into a shared space of reflection, imagination, and emotional release.

June 30, 2025June 27, 2025

Cambridge-based Contemporary Landscape Painter Julia S. Powell in Conversation with MFA Boston Curator of Painting Katie Hanson

In Dialogue

Julia S. Powell, Kitchen Morning, 2024. Oil on canvas

MFA Boston Curator of Painting Katie Hanson visited the studio of the landscape painter Julia S. Powell. The resulting interview gives us an insight into Powell’s artistic process and her concept of a “fiction painter,” one that creates work at the intersection of abstraction and realism. Besides references to contemporary Impressionism, the interview addresses creating thickly-layered artworks that inspire introspection and acceptance of previous experiences—especially the unwanted ones. These layers serve as metaphors for embracing past struggles without regret. Powell’s work also provides an emotional refuge as a response to a chaotic and increasingly anxious life.

June 24, 2025June 25, 2025

Everyday War at the Asian Museum

In dialogue

Emily Wilson in conversation with Abby Chen curator of contemporary art at San Francisco’s Asian Art Museum

Installation view of Yuan Goang-Ming, Everyday War, 2025, at the Asian Art Museum of San Francisco. Photo by Kevin Candland

Yuan Goang-Ming, known as the ‘father of Taiwanese video art,’ chose Abby Chen, the curator of contemporary art at San Francisco’s Asian Art Museum to curate his presentation at the 2024 Venice Biennale, Everyday War. In the Palazzo Priccioni, a space that once served as a prison, his videos and installations poetically examined the unease of contemporary life, in works such as Dwelling, which presents an explosion in a living room, and Everyday Maneuver, showing the empty streets of Taipei during an air raid drill.

June 17, 2025June 17, 2025

CITYarts: Murals of Shared Stories

Featured project

Tsipi Ben-Haim started CITYarts because she saw how often young people—especially teens—are left out of important conversations. She believed that if kids had the chance to express themselves through art, they could inspire real change in their communities. The idea was simple: when young people create, they don’t destroy—they build, they imagine, they connect.

June 11, 2025June 11, 2025

Evidence of the Unexpected at The Crown Gallery in Bridgeport

In dialogue

Panoramic installation view, Crown Gallery, Bridgeport CT

Evidence of the Unexpected at The Crown Gallery in Bridgeport, Connecticut combines the work of four artists who approach figuration and narrative in different ways. This group show considers the role of spontaneity in the studio—how works emerge through instinct, experimentation, and chance. The paintings and sculptures in this exhibition take shape when artists engage deeply with their materials and uncover something unexpected along the way. Curator Jane Dávila tells us about the show.