exhibition review – Art Spiel

October 23, 2026October 23, 2026, by Chloe Alto

“Best by 07/21/2026” at Eli Klein Gallery

For artists Clare Hu, Tianyi Sun, and Shaan Ken Rao, their residency-then-exhibition is already well past its expiration date. Entering the group show Best by 07/21/2026 may feel more like intruding on a gallery’s installation or deinstallation than attending its finished presentation. Moving blankets are spread across the walking path, with splashes of white paint visible on the quilted fabric. Glass tables lean on white walls. Enter the back room, and you may trip over one of many sandbags, or duck your head under the arm of a swinging C-stand.

October 21, 2026October 21, 2026, by Art Spiel

Paul Fägerskiöld’s Expanding Fields

Paul Fägerskiöld, New York. July 1, 3586. View south towards the black hole Gaia BH1 (1,560 light years).

The first painting in Paul Fägerskiöld’s solo exhibition Ergosphere, at Peter Blum Gallery, offers a modest entrance into an immeasurable subject. A small, dark blue field scattered with points of light initially suggests what could be an image taken by NASA of deep space. Its title establishes an improbably precise appointment: New York. July 1, 3586. View south towards the black hole Gaia BH1 (1,560 light-years). We have a location, a direction, and a date. Whether these coordinates help us find our bearings is another matter.

October 20, 2026October 17, 2026, by Matt McBride

No Ideas but in Things: Jim Condron and Dean Kessman at MONO PRACTICE

Jim Condron, It was like daylight under the fluorescent trays of light

Looking at Condron and Kessman’s MONO PRACTICE exhibition, I’m struck by the aura their pieces exude. Both make work using found materials, and both represent/re-present those materials in ways that push them close, but not past, the point of recognizability. The “things” of this exhibition have been abstracted and estranged but not transcended. They exist in a liminal moment, when the subject recedes, and the idea begins to shape itself. However, the objects persist in being objects.

October 19, 2026October 19, 2026, by Peter Schroth

James Esber’s, My Thing, Your Thing, and the Thing Itself

James Esber’s paintings are inherently punchy, with a bold, fluoro-pop palette and active surfaces. In My Thing, Your Thing, and the Thing Itself at Satchel Projects, it is compounded by the intimate quarters as well as the scale of the works, most roughly the size of the average viewer. One can pivot in place and take in the entire exhibit with a quick rotation that may trigger a rush of associations, from Hairy Who Chicago to Ed Roth “Weirdo,” et al. It can take a moment to pause, regard each work in turn, and register the artist’s point of view.

October 14, 2026October 13, 2026, by Etty Yaniv

Call Mom: Olive Ayhens and Ezra Johnson at Bookstein Projects

Olive Ayhens and Ezra Johnson, installation view at Bookstein Projects

Pairing artists with assorted bodies of work spanning over a decade is not an easy task. In the current two-person exhibition at Bookstein Projects, it helps that each artist, regardless of subject matter, has a distinct approach to color and composition. And then, there is a story. Call Mom features paintings on canvas and paper by mother and son Olive Ayhens and Ezra Johnson. The family tie is a good cue for the curator and for us. Yet it may be more interesting to set aside the biography for a moment and, as you enter, experience the vibrant visual dialogue unfolding between two painters.

October 14, 2026October 13, 2026, by Yueliu Huang

Beautifully Fall Apart

Installation view of After Throwing, featuring works by Yuqian He.

Women constantly fall, from rule, from discourse, from childbirth, from ecstasy, from sacrifice, from love, from anguish. We are still in the place of repeatedly coalescing to regain voice and visibility across political, economic, pedagogical, and creative fields. Comprehending it through cultural theorist and sociologist Angela McRobbie, we see that women are made to bear greater precarity, conditioned by institutions, by discourse, by an economy that asks for passion in place of pay; entering the creative fields comes with a demand to be self-managing, enterprising and unquestioningly cheerful about it. Women might be naturally leading the creative sector but meanwhile, fall heavily onto body, conditions and time, carrying its costs behind the facade of the neoliberal art industry.

October 13, 2026October 19, 2026, by Amanda Nedham

Some Other Way: Mythmaking Made Irresistible

Kate McQuillen, Installation View, Echo Resounds

Let me tell you about a complicated woman.

Echo is a shrewd mountain nymph in Ovid’s Metamorphoses. She acts in the service of a god and out of loyalty to her fellow nymphs, but also takes pride in the cleverness she employs to outwit Juno, so Jove can do what he pleases with the forest creatures. She is punished for her cleverness by being condemned to never speak for herself, only to repeat the last words spoken to her. Despite her limitations, she still makes herself clear. Later, when Narcissus declares that he will die before the lovesick Echo possesses his body, she smolders, “…you can possess my body.” A body that will ultimately wither away in a cavern, leaving only a voice that seeks communication and relation; a voice that endures, because these desires endure.

October 13, 2026October 12, 2026, by Shuhan Zhang

When Pixels Grow Skin

Ziyi Zhang, Installation view of PIXEL//FLESH

Our generation’s idea of “skin” is increasingly formed on screens. Smartphone cameras automatically brighten skin tones, filters smooth pores, and editing software erases wrinkles while manufacturing new forms of gloss and texture. At first, these technologies seemed merely to modify images of the body: skin existed first in the physical world and was then captured and processed by the camera. Gradually, however, this sequence has been reversed. Technologically processed skin has begun to function as a new visual standard, while unedited skin can appear rough, incomplete, or somehow insufficient. It is a subtle shift: the body once entered the image, but now the image increasingly seems to redefine the body.

October 12, 2026October 11, 2026, by William Corwin

Searching for the Philosopher’s Stone: Paul Higham’s Data Sculpture

Paul Higham, Installation view of Data Sculpture

In the gallery at Eberle Studios in Homestead, Pittsburgh, we find ourselves transported to the workshop of a modern-day alchemist, Paul Higham, who has been experimenting with the digital creation and manipulation of form for almost fifty years. This is a space in which D’Arcy Wentworth Thompson (author of On Growth and Form) would be ecstatic, for everything flows teleologically through space and time: the flight pattern of a fly (Descartes Fly) intersects with the growth of a tobacco plant virus, and the Nike of Samothrace overlaps with segments of the program code for the video game Call of Duty.

October 12, 2026October 11, 2026, by Melissa Stern

Hew Locke at P.P.O.W Gallery

It’s hard to describe the magic of entering PPOW Gallery and seeing the flotilla of ships that Hew Locke has hung in the front room of the gallery. Gently moving in the air in response to the gesture of a visitor, these ships- all manner of sailing vessels- move through time, space, and history.