Contemporary Art and Culture
The West Chelsea Artists Open Studios presents its 16th annual artists open studios tour on Saturday & Sunday, May 10th and 11th, from 12 p.m. to 6 p.m. The event offers a look inside the art studios at the iconic building at 526 West 26th Street. Art Spiel conducted brief interviews with three artists who will participate in the event.
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When I first heard about the pairing of Jai Hart and Kelly Worman in a two-person show at Freight + Volume, I was puzzled. Their formal vocabularies appeared too distinct, too dissonant. But upon entering the exhibition, my skepticism dissolved. Their differences are not discordant—they are dialectical. Both artists, working through abstraction and form, propose modes of seeing and making that are sensitive, inquisitive, and quietly defiant. While their materials and gestures diverge, Hart and Worman converge in a feminist-postmodern sensibility that challenges the hegemonic logics of painting, and, more subtly, the gendered histories that underpin it.
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As a textile artist, I am drawn to works that uphold the tradition of fibers vis a vis labor, technique, material, craftsmanship and innovation. In this presentation put forth by Bravin Lee Programs, The Golden Thread 2 displays fiber-themed works taking various forms. Filling the old seaport building from floor to ceiling, room after room reveals different interpretations on what constitutes a “textile” work.
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I always love that Earth Day is situated right when the city is exploding with new flowers and life. These spring exhibitions show appreciation for our planet by working with found and repurposed materials, honoring their origins while building something new. At the Museum for Art in Wood, Katie Hudnall constructs delightful and “mechanically improbable” animals and curiosity cabinets of found objects in her show, The Longest Distance between Two Points. Drexel University’s Pearlstein Gallery showcases CONTEMPORARY RUIN future visions, a collection of work that meditates on the realities of decay in our cities, offering both a poetic reflection on our everyday lives and practical approaches toward building a more resilient future. South of the city, Lavett Ballard’s solo show at Rowan University, The People Who Could Fly, features striking mixed-media collages that recast stories of African-American folklore and history using layers of imagery.
Continue reading “Art Spiel Picks: Philly Exhibitions in May 2025”
Willam Carroll’s newest painting series titled Trees has found a nice place to debut in 57w57arts. Each artist has their own room within the gallery space, the other artists include: Michael Voss, Steph Krawchuk, Seth Dembar, and Christopher Boyne. The rooms are also active office spaces where employees and clientele enjoy the work during appointments. Carroll’s series of seven new paintings on wood panels find themselves in the waiting room, stoically standing alongside a wonderful view of the New York Public library right outside of a nearby office window. Seeing the work within this space, especially it being a waiting room, allows viewers an opportunity for quiet contemplation, a foil to the hustle and bustle of what is right outside. You begin to feel as if you are journeying through the forest on a silent winter day.
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The group exhibition Care / Condition / Control, which ends its run at 601Artspace on April 27th, takes its conceptual root, quite literally, in the form of hair. Experienced by different generations, cultures, genders, and identities, one’s relationship to the very follicles that grow from us and upon us is deeply personal and unique to each of us. As each artist mines their own stories from these relationships, Chapman expands upon the inspiration and undertaking of such a complicated and tangled subject. Yasmeen Abdallah interviews curator A.E. Chapman about the ideas behind this show.
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On April 26th and 27th, from 1 to 6 pm, artists in DUMBO will open their doors to the public as part of DUMBO Open Studios, offering a rare look inside the art studios along the Brooklyn waterfront. Since the 1970s, DUMBO has been shaped by its vibrant art community. This interview series highlights a handful of participating artists in 2025. Each response offers a glimpse of what’s waiting behind the studio door. Platform Project Space has been in DUMBO since 2018 at 20 Jay Street #319.
Continue reading “DUMBO Open Studios 2025 with Tessa Greene O’Brien curating at Platform Project Space”
Night Shades, a new exhibition presented by daphne:art Gallery and Advisory in collaboration with ODETTA, brings together three artists—Nancy Baker, Claire Seidl, and Geoffrey Parker—whose paintings and photographs explore the uneasy edge between perception and memory, hinting at alternative realities, and brushing against dystopia.
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On April 26th and 27th, from 1 to 6 pm, artists in DUMBO will open their doors to the public as part of DUMBO Open Studios, offering a rare look inside the art studios along the Brooklyn waterfront. Since the 1970s, DUMBO has been shaped by its vibrant art community. This interview series highlights a handful of participating artists in 2025. Each response offers a glimpse of what’s waiting behind the studio door. Ellie Krakow has been in DUMBO since 2024. Her studio is at the Sharpe-Walentas Studio Program, 20 Jay Street, #720.
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The exhibition Beauty is a Blast, on view at Art Cake in Brooklyn, brings together the work of more than 200 artists in a posthumous examination of the life and influence of Jeremy Gilbert-Rolfe (1945–2024). It documents a network of relationships, of pedagogy, of influence. Conceived by artist and curator Christian Haub in 2021 as a modest acknowledgment of Gilbert-Rolfe’s legacy, the project was paused, then resumed in late 2024 in collaboration with Gilbert-Rolfe’s family and the Art Cake team. As word spread, the exhibition grew, not by design, but by response. The scale—over 250 works—became a measure of the reach of an individual who spent decades thinking through the terms and implications of contemporary abstraction.
Continue reading “Beauty is a Blast: a tribute to Jeremy Gilbert-Rolfe”