environmental art – Art Spiel

December 29, 2025December 29, 2025, by Emma Ahmad

Bonny Leibowitz: Adventures in Plunderland

In 2023, multidisciplinary artist Bonny Leibowitz’s world shifted when she stumbled upon an active demolition site in a shopping center in Richardson, Texas. She described the landscape as “both horrific and beautiful” – a scene of destruction and chaos situated right in the middle of the inner city Dallas suburb. Braving the sweltering Texas heat, Leibowitz made multiple trips to the site, photographing it extensively and collecting pieces of debris from the wreckage that would later comprise her series Adventures in Plunderland.

November 4, 2025November 3, 2025, by Etty Yaniv

Learning with Trees-Artists for Climate and Environmental Solutions

In Dialogue

Installation view. Photo courtesy of Martina Tanga

Curator Martina Tanga had been reflecting on the ideas behind Learning With Trees – Artists for Climate and Environmental Solutions long before the exhibition took shape. In 2022, she read Ben Rawlence’s The Treeline, a book tracing how the Boreal forest is shifting under the impact of climate change. That reading sparked the idea that trees could serve as a highly accessible and disarmingly effective way to approach conversations about climate change.

August 12, 2025August 11, 2025, by Stephen Wozniak

Desert Forest: Life with Joshua Trees

Book Review

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.

August 4, 2025July 27, 2025, by Etty Yaniv

Hovey Brock: The Invasive Species with Cornell’s Eco Arts

In DIALOGUE

A person standing in front of a group of people

AI-generated content may be incorrect. — Reception for *Invasive Species* in Cornell University’s Mann Library gallery

Hovey Brock’s show, The Invasive Species, in collaboration with Cornell’s Eco Arts features a series of paintings that focuses on how the climate crisis in general and invasive species in particular threaten the forests of the Northeast—an outgrowth of his Crazy River project that focused on the climate crisis in the Catskills. The paintings have phrases or questions that have been obsessing Brock for some time.

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.

June 10, 2025June 8, 2025, by Etty Yaniv

Adriane Colburn: Seeing by Mapping

Artist Adriane Colburn lived in San Francisco for over twenty years. That time was formative—personally and creatively. At the same time, she maintained a consistent presence on the East Coast. She’s from Vermont and has always spent summers there, with a lasting connection to that part of New England and its relationship to the land.

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.

June 2, 2025May 27, 2025, by Yasmeen Abdallah

Guy Nelson: Tales from the Understory at The North Dakota Museum of Art

Hot Air

Guy Nelson, *The Road Not Taken,* North Dakota Museum of Art

The North Dakota Museum of Art’s latest exhibition, Guy Nelson: Tales from the Understory, is a multidisciplinary solo show focused on the woodlands and prairies of the upper Midwest. Featuring sculpture, painting and video, the exhibition will be on display through July 20, 2025. This exhibition marks the tenth in the Museum’s Art Makers Series, an annual award for artists with connections to the region, which is underwritten by Dr. William F. Wosick of Fargo.

May 26, 2025May 19, 2025, by Jan Dickey and Terra Keck

Being There, with Weihui Lu

In conversation

Weihui Lu at Wave Hill, March 2025, photograph by Jan Dickey

Terra Keck and Jan Dickey caught up with artist Weihui Lu a couple of weeks after she completed a residency at Wave Hill in the Bronx. At the time, Weihui was reflecting on that experience while also preparing for her current solo show, when there is no longer a danger of frost, at Tempest Gallery in Ridgewood, Queens. An installation artist with roots in Chinese landscape painting, Weihui continues to explore impermanence, a delicate and sparing use of material, and humankind’s relationship to the natural environment. Her installation at Tempest draws its source material from an aging greenhouse she spent time contemplating during her residency at Wave Hill—understood as a physical embodiment of human systems of care, including their inevitable collapse and repair.

May 19, 2025May 3, 2025, by Yasmeen Abdallah

Art Spiel Picks: Manhattan Exhibitions in May 2025

HIGHLIGHTS

This month’s Manhattan highlights focus on artists tapping into the natural world, where these practices converge with the man-made in a clash of stunning reinvention and compelling engagement. These exhibitions channel the experimental through exploratory processes that harness our attention and hold us in their spell.