contemporary art – Page 23

January 20, 2025January 10, 2025, by Sophia Ma

Expanding Asian Voices: Alchemyverse Leads the Inaugural Exhibition at Nunu Fine Art’s Project Space

Featured Project

Installation view of *Networks of Kisses*, photo credit Alchemyverse, images courtesy of Nunu Fine Art

The fall 2024 New York art season spotlighted exhibitions by the Asian diaspora, with prominent showcases like NYU 80WSE’s Legacies, featuring 90 artists and collective of Asian descent working between the 1970s and 1990s, and AS/COA New York’s The Appearance, which highlighted 33 Asian artists working in the Americas. Alongside these institutional exhibitions, numerous solo, dual, and group presentations were hosted across commercial galleries, while new spaces like SK Gallery emerged to center Asian artists in their programming. Among these efforts, Nunu Fine Art New York launched “Project Space: Asian Voices,” a platform to elevate experimental artistic expressions from Asia and its diaspora.

January 13, 2025January 11, 2025, by Claire Haik

Art Spiel Picks: Philly Exhibitions in January 2025

HIGHLIGHTS

Naoko Serino’s *Generating 9*, in *Japandi Revisited: shared aesthetics and influences* at Wayne Art Center, photograph courtesy of Wayne Art Center

Out on the Main Line, the world of craft takes center stage at Wayne Art Center in two distinct but complementary shows. CraftForms 2024, 29th International Juried Exhibition of Contemporary Fine Craft and Japandi Revisited: shared aesthetics and influences, together invite viewers to contemplate the power of form, material, and cultural aesthetics. In Old City, at the Museum for Art in Wood, Mark Sfirri explores the many definitions of family through his exquisite woodworking in La Famiglia. Cerulean Arts Gallery and Studio in Center City pairs the dreamy drawings and paintings of two Philadelphia artists, Gary Grissom and Louise Vinueza, in A Day in The Life. Together, these four exhibitions offer a diverse range of artistic viewpoints from the global scope of contemporary craft to the exploration of family and nostalgia.

January 7, 2025January 7, 2025, by Etty Yaniv

PeepSpace: Five Years Later

Featured Project

PeepSpace’s Co-Directors meeting on Zoom

PeepSpace, a contemporary art gallery in Tarrytown, was founded in 2020 by artists Monica Carrier and Jane Kang Lawrence, who set out with a clear idea: artists creating space for other artists. They signed the lease on March 1, just as COVID-19 gripped New York, and by June, they were masked up and hosting their first show PlusOne—pushing forward when most things had come to a halt. Five years and 21 exhibitions later, PeepSpace has held its ground and grown. Now under the co-leadership of Jess Blaustein, Monica Carrier, Ian Etter, Kristen Jordan, Jacquelyn Strycker, and Rachel Sydlowski, the gallery has become a steady fixture for artists and their work.

January 2, 2025December 29, 2024, by Yasmeen Abdallah

Art Spiel Picks for January 2025: The Earthly and Celestial in Manhattan

HIGHLIGHTS

Lorna Simpson, did time elapse, 2024, acrylic and screenprint on gessoes fiberglass @Lorna Simpson

Cecilia Vicuña, Lorna Simpson and Nour Mobarak powerfully and eloquently broach heavy subject matter with diligent research in their attempts to preserve significant stories amidst the burdens of colonialism. Each artist speaks to various experiences as they contend with complicated histories of peoples, lands, and the dynamics between them in an array of circumstances. These exhibitions take on the task of engaging with past and present, depicting resourcefulness and perseverance amid the tangled threads of imperialism that wreak havoc across the globe. Viewers are offered context as they enter works that embody life through organic matter, curious objects, and ethereal modalities.

December 31, 2024January 6, 2025, by Paul D'Agostino

Looking Back, Topping Off: 2024 Books

book review

I had the pleasure of reading quite a few remarkable books this year. I had the additional pleasure of reviewing a number of them for Art Spiel.

I reviewed Rapper’s Deluxe: How Hip Hop Made the World, Dr. Todd Boyd’s sweeping and lushly illustrated account of hip hop history, published by Phaidon, back around its release date in February. You can read my full review here: “Even Greater Days: Rapper’s Deluxe: How Hip Hop Made the World”.

December 30, 2024January 7, 2025, by Riad Miah

Abstraction by Any Other Name at the Milton Resnick and Pat Passlof Foundation

View fullsize — Installation of Abstraction By Any Other Name, Part I. Photo courtesy of Milton Resnick and Pat Passlof Foundation, New York

The exhibition Abstraction by Any Other Name, curated by Dan Cameron at the Milton Resnick and Pat Passlof Foundation, celebrates the diverse approaches to abstract painting among eight contemporary artists: Jane Fine, Matthew Kolodziej, Regina Scully, Lui Shtini, Louise Belcourt, Iva Gueorguieva, Jill Moser, and Frank Owen. The show, running from September 6, 2024, to February 8, 2025, is presented in two parts, each highlighting different artists.

December 23, 2024December 22, 2024, by Etty Yaniv

Heather Cox: Roundels at Hudson Guild

In Dialogue

Artist Heather Cox at Guild Gallery II. Photo by Monika Graff

Heather Cox, a sculptor and photographer, discovered an unexpected medium in snapshots. Years ago, when she had her camera film developed, the 1-hour photo lab often provided double prints. Over time, these duplicates, along with countless other photos, accumulated in boxes. Unable to part with them, they lingered in storage—until the COVID pandemic brought a sudden shift.

December 17, 2024December 16, 2024, by Anna Shukeylo

Art Spiel Picks: Just for Laughs Exhibitions in December 2024

Nancy Elsamanoudi, Donut Dog at Dog House Gallery, courtesy of the the artist

HIGHLIGHTS

From Manhattan to Brooklyn, there is funny business happening in the galleries this holiday season, quite literally. Portraits of humorous creatures in a solo exhibition titled Donut Dog by Nancy Elsamanoudi at Doghouse Gallery are an opening act to the performances at the Brooklyn Comedy Collective. Slightly absurd paintings of “Lost” posters by Jeffrey Morabito crack a joke in a two-person exhibition titled Flat Theater at Space 776 (CLOSING DECEMBER 18th), while a humorous undertone sets the mood in the Paintings and Chairs group exhibition at Zepster Gallery.

December 16, 2024December 15, 2024, by Nicole Michaud

Art Spiel Picks: Philly Exhibitions in December 2024

HIGHLIGHTS

“Shared Vision: Portraits from The CCH Pounder-Koné Collection at The African American Museum in Philadelphia (AAMP). Photo courtesy of The African American Museum in Philadelphia (AAMP)

December is a gift of a month for exhibitions in Philadelphia. Those currently on display at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, African American Museum of Philadelphia, and Fleisher/Ollman Gallery are not to be missed. From macro scale celebrations to quiet personal yearnings in intimate moments, the works in these exhibitions explore the fullness and complexity of artists within and alongside Black contemporary life.

December 10, 2024December 10, 2024, by Anna Shukeylo

Object Relations: Michael Gac Levin at My Pet Ram

A painting of a living room

Description automatically generated — We Had an Agreement, 28”x24”, Acrylic on canvas

As one enters My Pet Ram’s humble gallery space full of moderately-sized Gustonesque paintings, the viewer is transported into the surreal personal nooks and crannies of Michael Gac Levin’s reality. His paintings are heavily influenced by his family life. Familiar landscapes are juxtaposed with foreign characters and shapes. The artist tells a fantastical story in this new body of work through a day in the life of two characters embodied by an apple and a tree-like figure.