Art Spiel – Art Spiel

November 4, 2026November 3, 2026, by Arete Xu

Under the Common Sea | 海的下面还有海

It is difficult for anyone to tell a story about being Chinese. On the surface, we have consummatory trends like “At A Very Chinese Time of My Life”; otherwise, we often see over-sensationalized narratives about geopolitical maneuverings. Yet, in the undertow, Chinese people work and make in conditions full of positional and situational complexity, and they belong to nuanced communities. Under the Common Sea is a group exhibition where artists and cultural workers came together to showcase the range and diversity of experiences, relationalities, and perspectives on identity among Chinese and Sinophone diasporic peoples in NY and across the United States.

November 3, 2026November 4, 2026, by Etty Yaniv

Babs Reingold: Forest Bathing at Leepa-Rattner Museum of Art

For two decades, Babs Reingold has reflected throughout her mixed media work on the intersections of poverty, climate change, and beauty in the environment. In her current solo show, Forest Bathing at Leepa-Rattner Museum of Art, Tarpon Springs, Florida, brings together two ongoing series, Hair Nest and Lost Trees. Both series mark a deliberate shift toward celebrating the beauty and resilience of nature. Whether confronting social inequities, ecological destruction, or the persistence of beauty amid crisis, her work arises from a deep belief that art can create both awareness and change. By transforming unconventional materials—human hair, salvaged wood, silk organza—into immersive environments, Reingold invites visitors to think about their place within larger systems of survival, destruction, and renewal. We discussed this exhibition in the context of her larger body of work.

November 2, 2026October 31, 2026, by Etty Yaniv

Fall Exhibitions at The Hammond Museum

At the Hammond Museum and Japanese Stroll Garden in North Salem, New York, art doesn’t stay inside the galleries. Since 1964, the museum has staged exhibitions that move from its gallery walls to its patio, tea hut, and garden paths, with about fifteen shows a year and the number growing. Contemporary and historical, drawn from many styles and cultural traditions, the exhibitions often aim to build cross-cultural understanding, while those set outdoors open a dialogue between art, nature, and personal reflection. This fall, five shows fill the grounds: Tomoko Amaki Abe’s Heaven Come Down in the Main Gallery, Meg Hitchcock’s Fang in the Hays and Goelet Galleries, Soli Pierce’s Poetry of Place in the Tea Hut, Matthew Weber’s Ground Shift on the Patio, and Kurt Steger’s In the Garden along the Japanese Stroll Garden. In this conversation, the museum team talks about how the Exhibition Committee selects its shows and how each one carries the museum’s mission forward.

October 28, 2026October 28, 2026, by Sara Aparicio

Asher Liftin’s Lines Explored at 125 Newbury Gallery

Looking at Asher Liftin’s work, the viewer might first ask, “Is this a textured surface? Is it purposefully pixelated? How is it pixelated?” As the viewer moves closer to these pictures, Liftin’s unique way of building the picture with lines rather than shapes becomes clear, using crosshatching – lines intersecting in different directions to create form and value. Another thought that follows: “Is it ink? Is it paint?” The uniformity of line makes the viewer think that this must be a drawing; however, the distinct paint drips that break the illusion of perfection suggest it is a painting instead. The short answer is both. Spoiler alert: the smaller works used colored pencils, while the larger works used acrylic ink and paint. But most importantly, why are these images so convincingly realistic?

October 27, 2026October 27, 2026, by Yasmeen Abdallah

Autumn Exhibitions at Wave Hill

An autumnal lineup of exhibitions at Wave Hill delve into the splendor of the landscape through intersections of nature, societal transmission, history, and political climate. These engagements are created through processes involving acts of listening, archival practices, explorations of bodily autonomy and mythologies. The following is an interview with Wave Hill curators Rachel Gugelberger and Gabriel de Guzman, unpacking key takeaways about its most recent projects.

October 26, 2026October 25, 2026, by Natasha Chuk

The Artist, the Loom, and the Microchip: Marilou Schultz’s Replica of a Chip

Installation view from Replica of a Chip: The Weaving Technology of Marilou Schultz

A microchip replicated in hand-spun Churro wool sounds like a conceptual provocation, but the actual object is even more compelling. The title of Marilou Schultz’s exhibition, Replica of a Chip: The Weaving Technology of Marilou Schultz, refers both to the artist’s feat and an unlikely pairing between computer architecture and Diné (Navajo) weaving. In 1994, Schultz was commissioned by Intel to reproduce the company’s Pentium microprocessor as a textile, translating its intricate geometry into interlaced threads. She followed through, replicating a device associated with the precision and abstraction of computing through the material intelligence of the loom. The success of this artistic translation inspired the replication of other chips in wool thread — Nizhóní AMD (2008), Integrated Circuit Chip & AI Diné Weaving (2024), Popular Chip (2025), and Golden Computer Chip Diné Weaving (2026) are included in the exhibition — and to a body of work translating complex systems and new ideas into color and pattern.

October 23, 2026October 23, 2026, by Chloe Alto

“Best by 07/21/2026” at Eli Klein Gallery

For artists Clare Hu, Tianyi Sun, and Shaan Ken Rao, their residency-then-exhibition is already well past its expiration date. Entering the group show Best by 07/21/2026 may feel more like intruding on a gallery’s installation or deinstallation than attending its finished presentation. Moving blankets are spread across the walking path, with splashes of white paint visible on the quilted fabric. Glass tables lean on white walls. Enter the back room, and you may trip over one of many sandbags, or duck your head under the arm of a swinging C-stand.

October 22, 2026October 22, 2026, by Xuezhu Jenny Wang

Meet at the Ferris Wheel: Kathleen Beausoleil’s Plein Air Paintings Combine Psychology and Light

Painter Kathleen Beausoleil is enamored by her backyard, literally. The fair grounds and beaches that are synonymous to her home state, New Jersey, form her primary subjects. Visiting local fairgrounds each summer, she paints plein air, out in the open, and on view in her latest solo show at The Painting Center are works that beautifully capture the light, vibrancy, and togetherness of these places. After speaking with the artist, I understand that Beausoleil’s scenes are not only advanced in their painterly technique, but created through perspectives cleverly scaffolded by sociological terms around gathering and group behaviour.

October 21, 2026October 21, 2026, by Art Spiel

Paul Fägerskiöld’s Expanding Fields

Paul Fägerskiöld, New York. July 1, 3586. View south towards the black hole Gaia BH1 (1,560 light years).

The first painting in Paul Fägerskiöld’s solo exhibition Ergosphere, at Peter Blum Gallery, offers a modest entrance into an immeasurable subject. A small, dark blue field scattered with points of light initially suggests what could be an image taken by NASA of deep space. Its title establishes an improbably precise appointment: New York. July 1, 3586. View south towards the black hole Gaia BH1 (1,560 light-years). We have a location, a direction, and a date. Whether these coordinates help us find our bearings is another matter.

October 20, 2026October 17, 2026, by Matt McBride

No Ideas but in Things: Jim Condron and Dean Kessman at MONO PRACTICE

Jim Condron, It was like daylight under the fluorescent trays of light

Looking at Condron and Kessman’s MONO PRACTICE exhibition, I’m struck by the aura their pieces exude. Both make work using found materials, and both represent/re-present those materials in ways that push them close, but not past, the point of recognizability. The “things” of this exhibition have been abstracted and estranged but not transcended. They exist in a liminal moment, when the subject recedes, and the idea begins to shape itself. However, the objects persist in being objects.