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A message from the Underground at Mana Contemporary

Featured Project: with curator Maria De Los Angeles


Ryan Bonilla. Hope, 2004. Encapsulated Digital C Print, 20 in x 30 in.

The group show, A message from the Underground at Mana Contemporary Jersey City, curated by artist and curator Maria De Los Angeles, featuring 18 artists from Mana Contemporary whose work explores current political climate, love, and sense of place. The exhibition runs through 1/15/2022, 3rd floor, Mana Contemporary in Jersey City

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Linnéa Spransy: Stockpiles of Potential

A picture containing a studio wall with frosted mylar drawing and the artists seated in front of it.

Linnéa Gabriella Spransy in her studio with ‘Chronos’, an ink drawing on frosted mylar, laminated and partially suspended from the wall.

For LA based, multi-disciplinary artist Linnéa Gabriella Spransy, limits are the core subject. Her curiosity about science, philosophy, cultural theory, physics, history, theology and, as she puts it, “a healthy dose of science fiction”, has led her to notice patterns and contradictions in commonplace assumptions. For instance, the belief that unlimited freedom is the optimal state of being, an idea that is flatly contradicted by the fact that no one is absolutely free, as we are all bound by a certain era, language, and people in our lives. Furthermore, Spransy says, some would argue that knowledge itself is a limit, especially knowledge about the future. She is grappling with big questions such as—does knowledge that deals with predicting the behavior of systems prevent freedom? Do we live in a deterministic universe merely garnished with the illusion of autonomy, or do we live in a genuinely open one? Throughout her reading and experience in the studio, she began to suspect that limitations are not barriers to freedom, but rather gateways.

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The Immigrant Artist Biennial (TIAB) 2023

Featured Project: TIAB 2023 with Bianca Abdi-Boragi, Katherine Adams, Anna Mikaela Ekstrand, and Meghana Karnik


From left: Anna Mikaela Ekstrand, Bianca Abdi-Boragi, Katherine Adams, and Meghana Karnik. Photographed by Yann Chashanovski.

The Immigrant Artist Biennial is the first and only biennial to celebrate and amplify the diverse voices of immigrant artists and its second edition will take place in 2023 hosted by institutional partners. A venue for artist-curators, the biennial’s founding artistic director Katya Grokhovsky, who curated the first edition, has appointed artists Bianca Abdi-Boragi and Meghana Karnik alongside curators Katherine Adams and Anna Mikaela Ekstrand to form the core curatorial team. Further pushing the boundaries for curation, the team has chosen to collaboratively curate the biennial and have begun a year of communal research and studio visits aiming to announce their concept in 2022.

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Brie Ruais: Recording with Clay

In Dialogue with Brie Ruais


“Brie Ruais: Movement at the Edge of the Land”, installation of exhibition, courtesy The Moody Center for the Arts and albertz benda gallery. Photo by Nash Baker

Brie Ruais [b. 1982, Southern California] lives and works in Brooklyn, New York. She received her MFA from Columbia University’s School of the Arts in 2011. Ruais’ movement-based practice is legible through the scrapes, gouges, and gestures embedded in the surfaces and forms of the ceramic works. Each sculpture is made with the equivalent of her body weight in clay, resulting in human-scale works that forge an intimacy with the viewer’s body. Through her immersive engagement with clay, Ruais’s work generates a physical and sensorial experience that explores a new dialogue between the body and the earth.

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Juan Hinojosa: Ensemble Iconographies

A person standing in front of a wall with art on it

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Juan Hinojosa in studio during LMCC residency

New York based artist Juan Hinojosa collects found objects from everywhere he passes by. A toy snake, a wooden bird, a Good Luck charm, fragments from advertisements and billboards—find their way into his intricate compositions, creating altogether layered sculptural assemblages and intricate two dimensional collages. In both dimensional and flat formats, Hinojosa’s vocabulary is grounded in Pop aesthetics with a tint of Surrealism. Through super vivid colors and elaborate graphic shapes he depicts imaginary worlds where extravagant shrines and hybrid flowery creatures become a convincing presence. When you get closer, you can most likely trace where they came from.

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Baris Gokturk: Danse Macabre in Public Spaces: Painting Euphoria and Madness in Times of Crisis


Baris Gokturk, working on All Saints at The Boiler@ ELM Foundation

Baris Gokturk’s installations are intricate, layered, and admirably ambitious in both meaning and form. The Turkish born New York based artist asks the big questions – what is his role as an artist, individual, immigrant within the larger context of a world in crisis? In All Saints he exhibited at the Boiler space at the ELM foundation he combined imagery of dance and fire into a monumental installation.

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Theresa Hackett: Flipping the plane

Image from 1977 courtesy of the Artist

The PA based painter Theresa Hackett has been reflecting on landscape and environmental issues throughout her extensive body of work, Her paintings combine elements of drawing as well as different materials such as earth material and plastic. Altogether the process of coalescing all these elements is readily visible on the surface —the marks, bold shapes, vivid colors, texture— create landscapes resonating with vitality but also with an urgent sense of loss.

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Peter Hopkins: The Art World as a Coral Reef

In Dialogue with SHIM Art Network Founder Peter Hopkins


From The Coral Reef Principle, French artist Alexandra Mas (with Kandi Spindler) Vanitas Nostrum II, real and artificial flowers, wax, perfume, candles, sound, and empty cosmetic containers.

SHIM Art Network is an arts exhibition service network that provides resources to artists, curators, galleries and non profit organizations through their Exhibitor Groups. Peter Hopkins, co-founder and Chief Executive of the organization elaborates on its premise, ongoing activities, and future plans..

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Artist As Subject at KuBe Art Space

Featured Project: with curator Ysabel Pinyol Blasi and artist Jac Lahav

A couple of paintings on a wall

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(From Left) Yigal Ozeri, Yayoi Kusama – Image courtesy Monira Foundation and Eileen S. Kaminsky Foundation; Yayoi Kusama, Shoes, Image courtesy Eileen S. Kaminsky Foundation

An epic show of portraiture opened in Beacon NY on October 24th. The artists roster reads as a “who’s who” in contemporary art with works from Gerhard Richter, Cindy Sherman, Ai Wei Wei, Yayoi Kusama, Yigal Ozeri, and Jac Lahav. Curated by Ethan Cohen and Ysabel Pinyol Blasi this epic show of over 50 artists explores the nature of portraiture as a springboard for what art can achieve. We sat down with curator Ysabel Pinyol Blasi and artist Jac Lahav to discuss the exhibit.

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