Art Spiel Picks: Manhattan Exhibition in February 2025
Exhibition Highlights by Yasmeen Abdallah

Art Spiel Picks: Manhattan Exhibition in February 2025

HIGHLIGHTS

Alternative worlds abound, collide, and gravitate in a transfixing lineup that is circumspect of the new year and ruminations of what lies ahead. Unique in presentation, yet united in exploring the vulnerabilities of coexistence amidst a delicate balance, their clandestine orbits intersect and align around the precarity of humanity. Shape-shifting, portals, relics, and worlds collide and mystify in alchemical formulations. As our planet spins on an axis beyond human capacity, one can find solace and pleasure in the mystery and adventure that awaits through these masterful and delightful odysseys of discovery. Michael Brennan and Matthew Deleget create pathways of knowledge through otherworldly means. David Dixon melds stories seamlessly that serve as portals into realms that might exist in such a world.

Exhibition Review by Terra Keck

The Art of Kimbap: A Reflection on Trust and Vulnerability

Kun Kyung Sok’s latest performance, “My Right Hand and Your Left Hand,” held at Space 776, invites audiences into an intimate and aromatic exploration of collaboration, creativity, and trust. The performance centers on Kun and her co-performer (a rolling cast of artists and non-artists) working together to prepare kimbap, a traditional Korean dish, using only her right hand and the other participant’s left hand. On opening night, while the salted streets of the Lower East Side froze, Kun’s audience huddled in close to witness a warm scene of clumsy vulnerability and palpable humor. “Armed” with a single knife, the two performers navigated the challenges of mutual control, toppling salt shakers and spilling rice, all the while the hypnotic scent of freshly prepared food permeated the space.

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In Dialogue by Anna Shukeylo

Snowed-In: Katerina Lanfranco at Sweet Lorraine

In Dialogue

Katerina Lanfranco is a painter most known for her magical and fantastical colorful paintings. She recently embarked on a new challenge in her solo show Snowed-In, which is one of her most ambitious projects yet, as she let her viewers in on the process.

A sculpture of a building AI-generated content may be incorrect.
Sponsored by Art Spiel

Beijing Stories at the Liu Shiming Art Gallery

In 2021, a group of friends, family members, and former colleagues of the renowned Chinese artist Liu Shiming (1926-2010) banded together to form the Liu Shiming Art Foundation, an organization dedicated to both preserving the artist’s legacy and furthering his dedication to the power of the arts. The Foundation has undertaken an ambitious program of granting scholarships to university students around the world with a goal of funding 100 scholarships per year. They also have opened a gallery space on 15 East 40th Street in Manhattan to showcase Mr. Liu’s work and eventually to showcase the work of pan-Asian artists.

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Artist Interview by Etty Yaniv

Jennifer Trask: What is perfect?

Jennifer Trask’s materials—whether bone, wood, metal, or antique fragments—function as collaborators in her sculpting process. Their physical properties and embedded histories guide her decisions, shaping how she responds to their density, grain, and structural limits.

Prayer / Pattern / Prayer at Morgan Lehman
Uncategorized by Will Kaplan

Prayer / Pattern / Prayer at Morgan Lehman

Installation view of Prayer / Pattern / Prayer

Prayer / Pattern / Prayer at Morgan Lehman offers a mesmerizing view of patterns as a deeply seated human instinct. Fittingly, a radial symmetry unfolds from the vertex of the L-shaped room. Yet curator Jan Dickey balances this evenness with a syncopated rhythm of paired artworks and bold standalone pieces. In creating a pattern of patterns, this show offers a metonymic view of artists running with different strands from the fabric of a species-wide impulse toward order and adornment.

Expanding Asian Voices: Alchemyverse Leads the Inaugural Exhibition at Nunu Fine Art’s Project Space
Exhibitions by Sophia Ma

Expanding Asian Voices: Alchemyverse Leads the Inaugural Exhibition at Nunu Fine Art’s Project Space

Featured Project

The fall 2024 New York art season spotlighted exhibitions by the Asian diaspora, with prominent showcases like NYU 80WSE’s Legacies, featuring 90 artists and collective of Asian descent working between the 1970s and 1990s, and AS/COA New York’s The Appearance, which highlighted 33 Asian artists working in the Americas. Alongside these institutional exhibitions, numerous solo, dual, and group presentations were hosted across commercial galleries, while new spaces like SK Gallery emerged to center Asian artists in their programming. Among these efforts, Nunu Fine Art New York launched “Project Space: Asian Voices,” a platform to elevate experimental artistic expressions from Asia and its diaspora.

Eileen Ferara at Guttenberg Arts
In Dialogue by Etty Yaniv

Eileen Ferara at Guttenberg Arts

In dialogue

During her time at Guttenberg Arts Residency (STAR), Eileen Ferara spent much time in the Gutten Garden, an urban community garden maintained by the organization. The plants—fruits we eat and companion plants we call weeds—became the focus of her drawings. She collected soil, seeds, and leaves, bringing bits of the garden into the studio to keep that connection alive. The Guttenberg Residency offers three months of access to professional workspaces for printmaking and ceramics. Eileen used goldenrod and indigo plants to dye paper for her prints. In the print shop, she worked through the process of stone lithography, gaining a hands-on understanding of the medium.

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Exhibition Highlights by Claire Haik

Art Spiel Picks: Philly Exhibitions in January 2025

HIGHLIGHTS

Out on the Main Line, the world of craft takes center stage at Wayne Art Center in two distinct but complementary shows. CraftForms 2024, 29th International Juried Exhibition of Contemporary Fine Craft and Japandi Revisited: shared aesthetics and influences, together invite viewers to contemplate the power of form, material, and cultural aesthetics. In Old City, at the Museum for Art in Wood, Mark Sfirri explores the many definitions of family through his exquisite woodworking in La Famiglia. Cerulean Arts Gallery and Studio in Center City pairs the dreamy drawings and paintings of two Philadelphia artists, Gary Grissom and Louise Vinueza, in A Day in The Life. Together, these four exhibitions offer a diverse range of artistic viewpoints from the global scope of contemporary craft to the exploration of family and nostalgia.

Featured Project by Etty Yaniv

PeepSpace: Five Years Later

Featured Project

PeepSpace, a contemporary art gallery in Tarrytown, was founded in 2020 by artists Monica Carrier and Jane Kang Lawrence, who set out with a clear idea: artists creating space for other artists. They signed the lease on March 1, just as COVID-19 gripped New York, and by June, they were masked up and hosting their first show PlusOne—pushing forward when most things had come to a halt. Five years and 21 exhibitions later, PeepSpace has held its ground and grown. Now under the co-leadership of Jess Blaustein, Monica Carrier, Ian Etter, Kristen Jordan, Jacquelyn Strycker, and Rachel Sydlowski, the gallery has become a steady fixture for artists and their work.