Contemporary Art and Culture
The two-person show of luminous abstract wall works at Atlantic Gallery offers viewers a dynamic sensory experience where light, shadow and unexpected materials form a conversation about how we see and engage with the world.
Dance the Distance: Anne Berlit and Michele Foyer at Atlantic Gallery.
Curated by Suzan Shutan. It runs through March 23, 2025
A cavernous cubbyhole with a variety of enigmatic gunmetal stalagmites emerges from the relative monotony of the urban backdrop of St. John’s Place in Crown Heights. Janet Goldner’s collection of sculptures, called Zigzags, populate FiveMyles’ exterior space, and while the viewer can enter this space through the gallery, the initial impression of jagged edges, pent-up energy, and the cold solidity of the welded metal objects makes one relieved there is a metal gate between us, the viewer, and them, the sculptures.
Continue reading “Up: Janet Goldner’s Zigzags at FiveMyles”
At Drawing Rooms in Jersey City, Material Wonder: Jewish Joy and Mysticism in 2025 presents works that engage with Jewish identity, mysticism, and inherited traditions. Curated by Anne Trauben, the exhibition, on view from February 13 to April 5, 2025, features artists Carol Salmanson, Denise Treizman, Rachel Klinghoffer, Pesya Altman, and Trauben herself. Their works—encompassing drawing, painting, fiber, mixed media, and light-based sculpture—explore memory, ritual, and transformation.
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The current exhibition by Jenny Hankwitz and Amanda Church at Steven Harvey, running from February 8 to March 8, explores a subject central to painting since its inception. Independently, their work engages with abstraction and figuration, using color, surface, and shape as primary vehicles. When viewed in person, the exhibition demonstrates how each artist approaches their medium to address their own interest between abstraction and the figure. However, when this exhibition is viewed together in the digital realm, another issue emerges—one that was pivotal in art criticism during the 1980s and 1990s that deals with an issue that pre-occupied Jean Baudrillard and Umberto Eco: the topic of simulation and simulacra or simulacra and hyperreality.
Continue reading “Jenny Hankwitz and Amanda Church at Steven Harvey Fine Art Projects”
February is the depth of winter in Boston, but there are still many ways to stay warm, including seeing some great art that thaws the senses and pleases the soul. Several exhibitions are in full swing at various galleries, museums, and university galleries across the city. These highlights focus on a few of the university gallery shows and a gorgeous new exhibition at the MFA in Boston featuring the late John Wilson, a Boston native whose work celebrates fatherhood and the rich tapestry of Black life in Boston and beyond.
Continue reading “Art Spiel Picks: Boston Exhibitions in February 2025”
Thomas Motley’s first novel, The Art of Farming: Sketches of a Life in the Country, is rooted in stewardship—a shared responsibility for the earth, animals, and one another. This theme has become more central to his paintings over time, though respect for nature has always been part of his work. His non-fiction writing and lectures on organic farming have also reflected this idea.
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The paintings in Margaret Koval’s latest exhibition, The Uncanny Valley of Everyday Life, capture a sense of disorientation—recognizable urban and suburban scenes where something is slightly off. They are rich in color and composition, drawing viewers in with pleasing views, yet an underlying unease lingers. Like waking up to find someone has rearranged your furniture overnight, they create a feeling of estrangement within the familiar.
Continue reading “Margaret Koval: The Uncanny Valley of Everyday Life at ArtWRKD”
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.
Continue reading “Snowed-In: Katerina Lanfranco at Sweet Lorraine”
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.
Continue reading “Jennifer Trask: What is perfect?”
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.
Continue reading “PeepSpace: Five Years Later”