#artspiel – Page 7

June 16, 2025June 15, 2025

The Treasure Below Grand

ISammy Bennett, *Above Grand (Echoes of Language as Code),* 2025, photo courtesy of Flaneurshan Studio

Where Air Turns to Fog at Below Grand, curated by Ray Hwang, gathers Sammy Bennett, Anna Gregor, and Jesse Ng in a sometimes cheeky, but overall multivalent and sincere, investigation of visual perception and the machinery of capital-F/capital-A Fine Art presentation. With his characteristic casual abandon, Hwang exploits the gallery’s awkward architecture to its full potential, letting Bennett install an upside-down trompe-l’œil “group show” in the street-facing walk-in window display while reserving the closet-sized back room for a collection of Gregor and Ng’s paintings.

June 13, 2025June 9, 2025

Those Who Fulfill the Infinite Labor of Love

Photo Story

Anya Kotler – “Never Alone IV” (2024) . Graphite on paper and paper mache, 13 × 9 in

The group exhibition titled Those Who Tend at the Warnes Contemporary in Brooklyn is an occasion in which 22 artists come together to celebrate their shared philosophy towards work and life. The title refers to the fact that all the artists here care for others in one form or another, whether they are parents of young children, grownups caring for their elderly parents, or supporting staff for people with disabilities.

June 12, 2025June 9, 2025

Matthew Wong – Vincent van Gogh: Painting as a Last Resort at Albertina

Matthew Wong: The Space Between Trees, 2019, 60 × 50 cm, Oil on canvas (Collection of Judith and Danny Tobey © 2025 Matthew Wong Foundation / Bildrecht Vienna, 2025)ץ Photo: Matthew Wong Foundation

Matthew Wong and Vincent van Gogh shared more than a self-taught path into painting. Both began relatively late, worked in compressed time spans, and turned to painting as a lifeline. The superb exhibition Painting as a Last Resort, now on view at the Albertina Museum in Vienna, brings their work into intimate and revealing dialogue. The exhibition presents approximately 44 paintings and 12 works on paper by Wong alongside a smaller selection by van Gogh. Organized in collaboration with the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam, Kunsthaus Zürich, and the Matthew Wong Foundation, the exhibition gives Wong space to be seen on his own terms. His paintings feel jittery, open, and emotionally charged.

June 10, 2025June 8, 2025

Adriane Colburn: Seeing by Mapping

Artist Adriane Colburn lived in San Francisco for over twenty years. That time was formative—personally and creatively. At the same time, she maintained a consistent presence on the East Coast. She’s from Vermont and has always spent summers there, with a lasting connection to that part of New England and its relationship to the land.

June 9, 2025June 6, 2025

Judith Simonian: The Human Element Huddled and Still

Installation View. Courtesy of JJMurphy Gallery

Judith Simonian’s solo show at JJ Murphy Gallery, poignantly titled The Human Element, Huddled and Still, features her latest paintings from the past few years. At first glance, there is familiarity in each piece – a living room, a still life, part of a ship – but as one starts to look closer, something starts to happen. Within each painting, there is a portal into another world; there are clashing planes and changing scenes that are so seamlessly blended together the viewer’s brain needs some time to catch up. What is particularly astounding about Simonian’s work is that her subject matter is a humble amalgamation of scenes, spaces, and objects one would encounter in everyday life.

June 5, 2025June 6, 2025

The Bone and Muscle: A Conversation with Dona Nelson

In Dialogue

For decades, Dona Nelson has dissolved the formal boundaries of painting: refusing to apply pigment to just one side of the canvas, mounting the stretchers of her double-sided paintings on freestanding metal stands, and letting them occupy gallery floors like sculptural interlopers. In her current two-person show with Andrew Ross at Thomas Erben Gallery, however, the painter has ceded the floor space entirely, anchoring her three new works squarely to the wall.

June 4, 2025June 4, 2025

Salman Toor and Intimate Histories at Luhring Augustine

Salman Toor - Wish Maker - Exhibitions - Luhring Augustine — Salman Toor at Luhring Augustine

This exhibition of Salman Toor’s paintings acts like snapshots in a story or a movie, each depicting a separate experience. Every piece draws you in and carries a true push and pull within the composition. The push and pull that drew me in was the idea of public versus private that emanates from within the work, the dream and reality, and just how much intimacy Toor decides to share with us. The feelings of intimacy and vulnerability come from witnessing the lives of the figures Toor presents, leaving us to wonder if we are allowed to bear witness to these moments, or if we’ve just “walked into” something meant to be entirely private.

June 3, 2025June 2, 2025

Art Spiel Picks NYC: Decentering the Human—Or at Least Trying To

Highlights

Installation view: Alicja Kwade: Telos Tales, Pace Gallery, New York, 2025. Photo courtesy of the gallery

It’s a rare joy to encounter immersive installations that truly activate space and affect the viewer both intellectually and viscerally. This spring, three standout New York exhibitions— Alicja Kwade at Pace, Anastasia Komar at Management, and Pierre Huyghe at Marian Goodman—do just that. Each exhibition envelops visitors in an environment that challenges the senses and pushes the boundaries of perception, while decentering the human’s place within it: Komar contemplates the primordial origins of life and the interconnectedness of all living things; Huyghe imagines a collaborative ecology where humans, animals, machines, and artificial intelligence co-create new realities; and Kwade abstracts away the human almost entirely, leaving behind only our systems for measuring and making as the scaffolding for a parallel, perhaps post-human world.

May 28, 2025May 27, 2025

Art Spiel Picks: Boston Exhibitions June 2025

Highlights

*Lucy Kim: Pigment Spells* at Praise Shadows Gallery, Brookline, MA. Photo by Dan Watkins, courtesy of Praise Shadows Gallery

Several wonderful exhibitions are on view in Boston this month and many more are scheduled for the summer, along with artist talks, performances, and events. Boston’s Public Art Triennial kicked off with a ribbon cutting and a party to celebrate the arrival of several new public art installations around the city for art goers to enjoy throughout the summer. The schools are getting ready for summer break but many of their galleries remain open with dynamic shows. Whether you visit the city, the Cape, or the Islands over the next few months, there is always something to see. Here are a few highlights to consider.

May 27, 2025May 28, 2025

Wherever I Lay My Head at the Jamaica Center for Arts and Learning

In Dialogue

Group picture(Members in picture from left to right): Euijin V. Ra (artist), Julia D. Shaw (artist), Courteny Symone Staton (artist), Laura OsCam (artist), Sherwin Banfield (Program Manager), TEDF (artist), Marleen Moise (artist).

Wherever I Lay My Head, now on view at The Jamaica Center for Arts and Learning , began with an invitation to Indira A. Abiskaroon to curate the culminating ARTWorks exhibition. The offer came from Program Manager Sherwin Banfield and was formalized in conversation with Director of Program Operations Wendy Arimah Berot. Abiskaroon’s first priority was to spend time with the ARTWorks Fellows—to learn how their practices had developed over the course of the program and to hear what ideas had been resonating in their weekly sessions.