Contemporary Art and Culture
In MIST, four artists are brought together to take the inspiration of summer, and find a way to break through the heatwaves that have recently hit New York. There is a dialogue between the artists and their various takes on works on paper, bringing forth summer sensibilities, airiness, freshness, and a feeling of being free. Each artist offers a different series of works.
Continue reading “MIST – Fleeting moments and Summer Sensibilities at Helm Contemporary”
Water Way, Mary Heilmann’s newly opened show at Guild Hall in East Hampton and her first large-scale museum show on Long Island’s East End, is a joyous celebration of 40 years of the artist’s career. The water-themed exhibition includes not only paintings and works on paper but also chairs, a small table, and ceramics, the latter either on its own or incorporated into a painting as in the 2020’s red acrylic Barrel and Tube. Heilmann is a longtime resident of Bridgehampton and her reverence for the ocean reverberates throughout, underpinned by an underground, punk rock/new wave, California surf culture ethos.
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The two-person exhibition Earth Suits and Beast Machines at Cove Street Arts in Portland, Maine, orchestrates a compelling conversation between Boston painter Jennifer Amadeo-Holl and Maine sculptor Mike Libby. This thoughtfully curated show rewards careful attention, presenting work that resists easy consumption and demands genuine engagement from viewers willing to slow down and look deeply.
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Jonathan Syme paints like someone coaxing spirit from matter—a phrase that sounds mystical until you’re standing in front of the work, where it becomes simply descriptive. As restless as they seem, his canvases don’t argue or perform; they resonate, like a vibration passed through the soles of your feet. Thick skeins of paint are unearthed, revealing strata in a geologic dig of intuition. There’s a kind of archaeology to the gesture: gouges, stains, and eruptions of impasto build a type of sedimentary record, chronicling attention. The eye slows down, and with it, thought.
Continue reading “Jonathan Syme Coaxes Spirit from Matter at Royale Projects”
Desert Forest: Life with Joshua Trees is a revelatory compendium—part elegy, part manifesto—centered on that spiky, iconic sentinel of the Mojave Desert. Assembled by scientists, historians, and artists, this is no ordinary nature book. It’s a multi-vocal chorus, grappling with ecological fragility and political urgency, yet always rooted in some primary form of awe. The Joshua tree becomes muse and metric, measuring our numerous planetary trespasses. Published by Inlandia Institute—in tangent with the past eponymous art exhibitions at MOAH in Lancaster and Hey There Projects in Joshua Tree—Desert Forest is a dazzling interdisciplinary work, arresting in both imagery and intellect. In many ways, it’s a bittersweet love letter to a disappearing biome—written in science, art, and memory.
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Almond Zigmund’s work occupies the charged space between structure and disruption. Moving fluidly across sculpture, painting, and installation, her practice explores the intersection of geometry, architecture, and lived experience—often in subtle yet powerful ways. I have the pleasure of discussing her work at the end of her recent exhibition at East Hampton’s Guild Hall. In this interview exchange, Zigmund speaks about the formative influences that shaped her, from growing up in a creative household to navigating the distinct geographies of Brooklyn, Las Vegas, and the East End of Long Island. The conversation delves into the improvisational roots of her approach, her ongoing engagement with spatial systems, and how tension—between control and spontaneity, place and perception, the built and the organic—continues to animate her work. With references to theorists, artists, Zigmund offers a thoughtful and richly textured account of how art can be both experiential and critical, formal and deeply human.
This month’s lineup takes us through Brooklyn, Queens, and Jersey City, where intimate thoughts, melded with the political repercussions we grapple with individually and collectively, are presented to the public in moving forms that are explorations in artistic practice as a means of activation against the norms we must confront to maintain our humanity. Through rejections of subjugation and exploitation, be it patriarchal economies or the fallout of colonialism, these selected exhibitions put artists at the forefront who contend with these issues and make space for constructive discourse.
Continue reading “Art Spiel Picks: NYC Exhibitions in August 2025”
Lisbon, once a soft whisper in Europe’s art discourse, has shed its translucent slipper. No longer the Cinderella of the continent’s cultural ball, the city now strides confidently onto the stage—a radiant, artful sovereign commanding attention and acclaim. Its metamorphosis over the past decade borders on the operatic—a triumphant crescendo of resilience, urban reinvention, and creative flair.
Continue reading “Lisbon Art Atlas: Mapping the City’s Artistic Renaissance”
Beverly’s is well-known, amongst artists and locals alike, and has been a main fixture of the art community for years. Found on the Lower East Side, right on Grand Street, artists, gallery owners, writers, and curators come here to spend their time after their day is done. Beverly’s owner and creator, Leah Dixon, wanted to make this gallery space an opportunity to get thousands of eyes on work and thousands of conversations started. With their current exhibition, Sunrise, intertwined with the bar, there are many stories to be had.
Continue reading “Sunrise: the Tale of the Urban Cowboy at Beverly’s”
Seeing John Knuth’s exhibition, The Hot Garden, at Hollis Taggart’s new downtown outpost was wonderful, surreal, energetic, and unexpected. This is Knuth’s first major body of work following the devastating Eaton Fire in January 2025, which destroyed the artist’s home and archive. This exhibition gives us an opportunity to see fragments of the past and the birth or rebirth of something entirely new out of the ashes, embodying the quote in the press release from Octavia Butler’s Parable of the Sower, writer and once Altadena resident, “All that you touch, you change. All that you change, changes you.”
Continue reading “John Knuth: The Hot Garden: Renewal and Regeneration from Catastrophe”