contemporary art – Page 5

August 5, 2025July 28, 2025, by Eva Zanardi

Lisbon Art Atlas: Mapping the City’s Artistic Renaissance

Curated for Art Spiel by Eva Zanardi

Praça do Comércio (Commerce Square), is one of Lisbon’s most iconic landmarks

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.

July 30, 2025July 28, 2025, by Taylor Bielecki

Sunrise: the Tale of the Urban Cowboy at Beverly’s

*Installation View with Ryan Oskin and Lamar Robillard Installation Shot*

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.

July 28, 2025July 27, 2025, by Taylor Bielecki

John Knuth: The Hot Garden: Renewal and Regeneration from Catastrophe

*Sculptural Garden, Installation Shot, photo courtesy of Hollis Taggart*

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.”

July 23, 2025July 21, 2025, by Etty Yaniv

Susan Mastrangelo: The Beat Goes On at Kathryn Markel

In Dialogue

Susan Mastrangelo’s solo show, The Beat Goes On, at The Pocket Gallery of Katherine Markel Fine Arts features work completed from 2022 to 2025, with the majority of the pieces completed in 2025. Mastrangelo creates bold reliefs that transform a variety of materials into bold abstract and biomorphic forms.

July 22, 2025July 21, 2025, by Peter Schroth

Emily Sundblad: The Adolescent Ocean at Bortolami

*Emily Sundblad, The Adolescent Ocean, installation view, Bortolami, New York, 2025*

A person who can sit through a Survey of Art lecture set to a Leonard Cohen soundtrack while reading The Waves may be well equipped to navigate Emily Sundblad’s Adolescent Ocean. Personal history intermingles with cultural and art iconography, forming a tide of debris that floats to the surface in this show of collage-like, collective memory-dreams.

July 21, 2025July 21, 2025, by Anna Shukeylo

Open Books at Mana Contemporary

Installation view. Photo credit Mike O’Shea

There is a hidden gem on view at Mana Contemporary in Jersey City—an art book group show of 15 artists carefully curated by the directors and curators of Monira Foundation and Mana Contemporary. The exhibition unfolds across two rooms. In the first space, the viewer encounters a dimly lit room of suspended tables uniquely designed by Kele McComsey. On each table, there is a carefully curated display of artist books—a rare opportunity to view this uniquely expressive form of art. During the run of the show, the curators periodically shift some books, while others are welcome to be handled. This is an incredible opportunity to see artist books and experience their magic. Blurring the lines between book and sculpture, these magnetic art objects have always been a curatorial challenge. They are meant to be experienced, unlike most other art pieces.

July 16, 2025July 11, 2025, by Adria Arch

A Gathering: Gardens, Portals, Protests

Why do we need art in this moment? What art sustains both practitioners and audience in difficult times? These urgent questions pulse at the heart of curator and artist Olivia Baldwin’s extraordinary exhibition at the Kniznick Gallery, part of Brandeis University’s Women’s Studies Center—and the answers she’s assembled are luminous.

July 14, 2025July 3, 2025, by Taylor Bielecki

Lineage and Latitude – Divergent views sparking newfound conversations at IW Gallery

This group exhibition at the IW Gallery brings together a wide array of artists, visions, and mediums. Each of the eighteen artists in the show is connected in some way, whether it be from Pratt Institute, they are former international students who have decided to stay and continue making work, all the way to friends and former classmates. This grouping is an eclectic amalgam of stories and inspirations that diverge in their own ways and reconverge to create new conversations. Many of the artists in this exhibition use their work to embody their stories, memories, and histories. Pieces of their lineages, carrying across various places to join together in one location starting an ever expanding dialogue with each other.

July 10, 2025July 10, 2025, by Rory Martin

Naomi Okubo: Resonance on a Surface at Fou Gallery

A painting on a wall

AI-generated content may be incorrect. — Installation image of Naomi Okubo: Resonance on a Surface, 2025. Photograph by Ken Lee

When Naomi Okubo decides to begin working on one of her enthralling paintings, there is a multistep process that far proceeds the brush gracing the canvas. The careful preparation of materials, digital and physical, allow Okubo to consolidate her thoughts and produce an organic depiction of her personal experience. The authenticity with which this is depicted is a result of the forethought and boundless introspection that she imposes upon herself. It is important to note that the artworks selected for the exhibition Naomi Okubo: Resonance on a Surface currently on view at Fou Gallery, weave a narrative fabric that chronologizes Okubo’s development as a visual artist.

July 7, 2025July 11, 2025, by Yasmeen Abdallah

Art Spiel Picks: NYC Exhibitions in July 2025

HIGHLIGHTS

Installation view, Michael Pribich at Transmitter

Pathways of migration, transit, turbulence, and foundational knowledge lead us across the city through three boroughs that speak to time and reflection. Through the slightest gestures cleverly calculated by the selected artists, we can trace symbolic movements as indicative of something greater and inherently profound. This lineup is a reminder to delve into one’s humanity and to mine for empathy and change. These themes are as relevant today as they were long ago, and it’s important to acknowledge the work of artists who are using their talents to envision an equitable world for all. Let us carry forth this mindset so that the present we build is a true path forward towards a more mindful future.