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Featured Artist by Art Spiel

Peter Cvik at Zoya Museum Modra in Slovakia

Featured Artist


 For the last few years the Slovak painter Peter Cvik has been layering different experiences and stories out of sheer visual memory. Without using photos or any other found imagery, Cvik builds new positions of “synthetic” reality that reminds us of something real or experienced within a flux of time where memories float. His landscapes evoke a sense of collision between opposing worlds without evoking the sense of a specific place. Peter Cvik equates his paintings to a sentence that ends with three dots which viewers can complete on their own.

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Exhibition Review by Melissa Stern

RADIANCE: THEY DREAM IN COLOR. THE UGANDA PAVILION AT THE VENICE BIENNALE

The Venice Biennale, a sprawling art Universe, takes over the city every other year alternating its focus between art and architecture. Due to Covid, 2020 was cancelled, and the 2022 festival attracted an unprecedented number of visitors. The 2022 exhibition has received almost unparalleled praise for its inclusiveness, its artistry and its cohesion as a statement of the art Zeitgeist. It hasn’t hurt that the principle exhibition, The Milk of Dreams was curated by women, celebrates women and under-represented artists, and is for the most part simply superb.

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Photo Story by Art Spiel

Light and Matter: 2022 South Korea Sculpture Biennale

Art Spiel Photo Story

The Changwon Biennale is the largest recurring sculpture show in South Korea. During the fall of 2022 it showcased 69 artists under the title, Channel: Particle Wave Duality. Curated by Director Cho Kwan Yong, Chief Curator Lee Tahe Hoon and Curator Hyojin Nam, the show considered the broad sense of how light and matter interact at the intersection of art and science. Alongside three-dimensional works, it included sound art, video screenings and installations. The small group of international artists who were invited this fall to South Korea to create their work onsite in the biennale exhibition halls worked for three weeks with support from the Korean government and the care of the local team.

Exhibition Review by Sara Farrell Okamura

Magic Mirror: Susan Carr at LABspace

Tired of phrases such as best kept secret, finally receiving her due, and delayed recognition it is time to recognize artists, particularly women artists who are in their prime, evolving both in facility and content. Susan Carr is a quintessential example, an accomplished artist who, over decades, has fearlessly mined the history of her own existence. Her latest exhibit, Magic Mirror at LABspace in Hillsdale New York is a tribute to her dedication, talent and courage.

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Exhibition Review by Meg Hitchcock

The Interaction of Light and Shadow: Susan English at Kathryn Markel

To confront a person with their own shadow is to show them their own light.

– Carl Jung

In her current exhibition at Kathryn Markel Fine Arts, Light to Light, Susan English explores the vagaries of light as it penetrates layers of polymer and pigment. Subtle gradations in color are infused with radiant light, recalling the sfumato in Van Eyck’s translucent skies or Cimabue’s blushing Virgins. The seamless transitions are achieved through the artist’s unorthodox technique of pouring thin layers of tinted polymer onto panels, then tilting the panels while the pigments settle and dry. The multiple layers interact with light to create varying effects – sometimes luminous, sometimes opaque – which are punctuated by cracks and blemishes in the medium as it dries. These accidents are essential to the piece, as they provide a counterbalance to the exquisite surfaces and tight control of their execution. Indeed, English manipulates the panel in such a way that crackling is anticipated, and she views the result as a simulation of the fissures and fractures found in nature.

In Conversation by Christine Sullivan and Marianne Gagnier

Birds, Maps, Migrations

A Conversation Between Christine Sullivan and Marianne Gagnier

This conversational exchange between artists Christine Sullivan and Marianne Gagnier was catalyzed by artist and writer Paul D’Agostino. He encouraged them to engage in dialogue with one another upon noting that they had both produced new bodies of work, right around the same time, featuring bird imagery. Taking this as impetus for a fertile discussion, Marianne and Christine decided to interview one another regarding themes of journeys and migration, and they discovered a number of surprising points of connection in their lives.  

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Photo Story by Art Spiel

Woolpunk®: Sunflowers & Graffiti’d Sky in the Garden State at Montclair Art Museum

Photo Story

Sunflowers & Grafitti’d Sky in the Garden State is a large-scale wall-based work by artist Woolpunk® in the Laurie Stairwell exhibition space at the Montclair Art Museum. It consists of a photo highlighting inspirational communal land use and dietary wellness, juxtaposed by a spray-painted sky-blue mural that is visible from behind the sunflowers. The use of the graffitied wall in the photo reminds us of the air-polluted sunsets, which are so beautiful that they make us almost forget what causes them. “The sunflowers are treated as mutating militants filled with patterns and iconic images multiplying throughout the community garden,” the artist says.

Brooklyn Arts Council by Art Spiel

Linda Kuo & Dancers Unlimited

Grantee of Brooklyn Arts Fund

Project Profile: Edible Tales

Dancers Unlimited members at Waikalua fishpond in Hawai’i. Photo credit: Jordan Medeiros

Brooklyn Arts Council announced in March 2022 an allocation of over $1.3 million to 238 Brooklyn-based artists and cultural organizations. This year marks the highest number of grantees and awardees as well as the largest amount of funding BAC has ever distributed. Art Spiel in collaboration with Brooklyn Arts Council features some artists who received a Brooklyn Arts Fund, Local Arts Support, and/or Creative Equations Fund grant in 2022.

Sponsored Content by Alicia Puig

Love Letters to Paris: Ekaterina Popova at Cohle Gallery

For the past several years, Philadelphia-based painter Ekaterina Popova has been exploring the theme of interiors in her work. The interest in this subject began as a way for her to reflect on her upbringing in Russia, but eventually evolved into a deeper investigation of the overall idea of “home” and what it means to her now. Her paintings highlight the warmth and beauty of lived-in domestic spaces, including items and objects that refer to a human presence without including the figure.