contemporary art – Page 16

June 24, 2025June 25, 2025, by Emily Wilson

Everyday War at the Asian Museum

In dialogue

Emily Wilson in conversation with Abby Chen curator of contemporary art at San Francisco’s Asian Art Museum

Installation view of Yuan Goang-Ming, Everyday War, 2025, at the Asian Art Museum of San Francisco. Photo by Kevin Candland

Yuan Goang-Ming, known as the ‘father of Taiwanese video art,’ chose Abby Chen, the curator of contemporary art at San Francisco’s Asian Art Museum to curate his presentation at the 2024 Venice Biennale, Everyday War. In the Palazzo Priccioni, a space that once served as a prison, his videos and installations poetically examined the unease of contemporary life, in works such as Dwelling, which presents an explosion in a living room, and Everyday Maneuver, showing the empty streets of Taipei during an air raid drill.

June 23, 2025June 18, 2025, by Eva Zanardi

ARCOlisboa 2025 and Lisbon’s Renaissance

Lisbon in May presents itself as both majestic and enigmatic, its urban landscape punctuated by clusters of jacaranda trees in full bloom, casting cascades of purple blossoms across streets and sky like botanical fireworks. The city’s legendary seven hills form a natural amphitheater overlooking the Tagus River, creating an endless choreography of ascent and descent through Escher-like topographies. Glossy marble cobblestones snake through a labyrinth of narrow streets, flanked by stately yet sometimes weathered palaces and residential buildings adorned with brightly colored azulejo tiles that catch and reflect the city’s crystalline light, making the entire urban fabric shimmer.

June 19, 2025June 15, 2025, by Taylor Bielecki

UNBIND: FIGURING THE LAYERS OF BEING with the New York Studio School

Upon entering the exhibition I was struck at the presence every artist’s work had. While every piece was quite different from one another, they all shared similar conversations and offered viewers the opportunity to question human experience, histories, intimacy versus public viewing, and dealing with what it means to feel human. With nine artists, and diverse mediums, the complexities of being are shown clearly and each artist has their own take on “layers of being”.

June 18, 2025June 15, 2025, by Nicole Michaud

Art Spiel Picks: Philly Exhibitions in June 2025

HIGHLIGHTS

Installation view of *Tea Party* at Locks Gallery, courtesy of Locks Gallery

As we get into the summer months, June exhibition picks for Philadelphia are vibrant, sensuous, and bold. Works currently on display at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Locks Gallery, and Moore College of Art touch on subjects surrounding how we see ourselves and each other, and the transitory nature of existence. All things physical and sensual ultimately act as a foil to death, and these surreal and vivid works offer the viewer insight into how each artist considers what makes us human. Whether created of glitter, paint, ceramic, velvet, or butterflies, the works in these exhibitions remind us that we are stardust, and golden.

June 13, 2025June 9, 2025, by Chunbum Park

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, by Etty Yaniv

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 11, 2025June 11, 2025, by Etty Yaniv

Evidence of the Unexpected at The Crown Gallery in Bridgeport

In dialogue

Panoramic installation view, Crown Gallery, Bridgeport CT

Evidence of the Unexpected at The Crown Gallery in Bridgeport, Connecticut combines the work of four artists who approach figuration and narrative in different ways. This group show considers the role of spontaneity in the studio—how works emerge through instinct, experimentation, and chance. The paintings and sculptures in this exhibition take shape when artists engage deeply with their materials and uncover something unexpected along the way. Curator Jane Dávila tells us about the show.

June 9, 2025June 6, 2025, by Anna Shukeylo

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, by Jan Dickey

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 3, 2025June 2, 2025, by Vita Eruhimovitz

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.