Art Spiel – Page 49 – Contemporary Art and Culture

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Photo Story by Melissa Stern

The Golden Thread – BravinLee Offsite at The Seaport

Photo Story

BravinLee Projects has just launched an audacious, big, and bold exhibition of 60 contemporary artists working in textile or textile-related mediums. It’s a massive show in an unlikely pop-up space. A five-story historic brick warehouse building in the Seaport that is anything but the cool, clean white box gallery that we are used to. The walk-up gallery space has vintage wide planked flooring, old fireplaces, and deeply aged brick walls. Though it must have been a challenge to curate in the space and even more of a challenge to install, the result is a fascinating presentation of artists working in a wide range of materials and styles.

Exhibition Review by Xuezhu Jenny Wang

Yi Hsuan Lai: Objects, Bodies, Things at Gallery 456

I was scrolling through Instagram recently when I saw a post that read: “What’s your artspeak ick?” The word “anthropomorphism” immediately came to mind. It’s nothing personal. It’s just that a friend of mine had an art history professor who once (in)famously tweeted: “I will scream into a pillow if I see another student write the word ‘anthropomorphic’ in their paper.” Therefore, I paused before ascribing “anthropomorphic” qualities to the work of Taiwanese artist Yi Hsuan Lai.

Whisperings from the Wormhole with @talluts by Amy Talluto

Whisperings from the Wormhole with @talluts

Dear Grete Stern

Today, I’m sending out a Valentine – a non-valentine’s Day Valentine, a good-for-eternity Valentine – to the feminist photo montage artist, Grete Stern. Because who else slyly slid their radical societal critiques into photomontages that they made for a light and airy 1950s women’s magazine (chock full of romance serials, crosswords, and lipstick ads)? Grete Stern, that who.

Exhibition Review by Riad Miah

Farrell Brickhouse Looking Back at Tomorrow at JJ Murphy Gallery

Farrell Brickhouse’s exhibition at JJ Murphy Gallery in the Lower East Side marks a significant milestone in Brickhouse’s artistic journey. It is his first solo exhibition at the gallery and his first one-person show in over a decade. The works on display, all created between 2020 and 2024 at his new home and studio in Hudson, NY, provide an insight into the artist’s evolution in painting and picture-making over this period.

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Opinion by Saul Ostrow

Accommodating the Object: Elizabeth Yamin and Bosiljka Raditsa at The Milton Resnick and Pat Passlof Foundation

Opinion

The exhibition Accommodating the Object of paintings by Elizabeth Yamin and Bosiljka Raditsa is presented by The Milton Resnick and Pat Passlof Foundation in New York and was curated by William Corwin, who describes this exhibition as an intimate survey that offers the viewer an opportunity to compare the works of these two artists, who were active during the latter part of the twentieth century without attaining prominent careers.

Photo Story by Etty Yaniv

This Bitter Earth: Deborah Wasserman at Kuma Lisa

Photo Story

Rubble, mutated crop fields, floods, scorched earth, and occasional female figures floating or submerged unfold throughout the sixteen landscape paintings in Deborah Wasserman’s current solo show, The Bitter Earth at Kuma Lisa. Though the paintings differ in scale and media—from small acrylic and oil on panels to larger acrylic, oil, and stained clothes on canvas to medium-sized works on paper—they all share the sense of a world where multiple perspectives from different vantage points co-exist. Wasserman’s energetic strokes and searching lines create a rhythmic movement upward, downward, and sideways—reminiscent of the fluidity in Chinese and Japanese calligraphic scroll paintings and the clear, directional lines of a hand-drawn map. These linear dynamos intertwine with a palette of earthy tones, greens, yellows, oranges, blues, reds, and pure blacks, creating multiple vignettes within a layered landscape.

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Photo Story by Etty Yaniv

Eccentric Abstraction at MoCA L.I.

Photo story

John Cino, curator of Eccentric Abstraction at MoCA L.I, first encountered the works of Eva Hesse, Jackie Winsor, and Linda Benglis during his undergraduate years, an experience that deeply influenced him. He draws a throughline from their pioneering works to the current exhibition, “For each of the artists in the show—Stephanie Beck, Sky Kim, Christina Massey, and Sui Park—the process of making is a visible element of the work, and the forms they create are evocative with minimal narrative, Cino explains.

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HOT AIR by Etty Yaniv

Judy Hoffman: Evolvers and Wildtypes at Sculpture Space

Hot Air

Ten years ago, Judy Hoffman became enthralled with clay and hand-building. The current exhibition Evolvers and Wildtypes at the Long Island City Sculpture Space is her first solo show of these ceramic sculptures. Hoffman’s ceramics’ imagery and forms tap into a previous installation work made from sculpted paper pulp, natural materials, and man-made debris. Paper clay techniques permit the bonding of wet clay to fired forms, enabling the construction of diverse configurations. These components are conjoined to initiate a dialogue between organic and mechanical elements, yielding imagery that defies expectation. The artwork evolves through a rhythm of construction and deconstruction, encapsulating cycles of creation, deterioration, and renewal. Viewers are meant to encounter an elemental rawness, surprise, and a touch of humor.

Featured Exhibition by Etty Yaniv

Anne Sherwood Pundyk: Beauty Out of Bounds at East End Arts

Featured Exhibition

Anne Sherwood Pundyk’s solo exhibition, Beauty Out of Bounds, features a vibrant selection of her color-intensive works, many on public display for the first time. Her large, unstretched paintings reveal layers of stained drop cloth canvas interspersed with geometric shapes, cascades of color, bold stitching, sharp lines, and imprinted grids of paint. Her smaller pieces on stitched paper reflect the experimental approach of her larger works. A series of photographs that obscure handwritten journal entries bridge visual art and literature, underscoring the artist’s dual identity as a painter and writer. At the heart of the exhibition is Pundyk’s artist’s book, The Garden, which integrates printed pages and narratives prominently along the gallery walls. Her artworks collectively navigate themes of trauma and forgiveness. “By setting aside received wisdom, I make room for curiosity, investigation, and especially vulnerability”, Pundyk asserts. The exhibition spans both locations of East End Arts Galleries in the Arts District on Main St., Riverhead, NY, and includes various events designed to expand the dialogue.

Photo Story by Art Spiel

Simona Prives: towards the noise of dark waters at PRACTICE

Photo Story

Simona Prives’s latest installation at Philadelphia’s PRACTICE Gallery, towards the noise of dark waters, combines projection and collage to explore themes of renewal and decay. This site-specific installation by the Brooklyn-based multi-disciplinary artist features life-sized projections of collages built upon densely packed drawings, ink paintings, and various printmaking techniques. These collages suggest maps, geological patterns, and industrial imagery, creating abstract yet recognizable worlds.