figurative art – Art Spiel

November 25, 2025November 25, 2025, by Taylor Bielecki

Frank Lind: Time and Tide, Homage and Seascapes at Georges Berges

*MLK, 2000, Seascapes and Studies, Oil on canvas. 60 x 50 in. Photo courtesy of Georges Berges Gallery*

Getting to see the works of Frank Lind in person gives you an experience of a moment, the capture of a motion, and the building up of an atmosphere. Lind works “en plein air” within nature. Capturing immediate impressions and moments that captivate him, he then carries sketches to canvas. Stemming from the on-site sketches, the larger studio works take on a glow. Using traditional oil painting processes and many old master methods, both of Lind’s series displayed in this exhibition show the end result of a painter’s process.

September 29, 2025September 20, 2025, by Art Spiel

Jeffrey Morabito: The Caged Bird Sings

In Dialogue

Lan Shi, Curator, photo courtesy of Helen Chen

In 2019, an art acquisition trip brought curator Lan Shi from Beijing to New York. When the pandemic extended her stay, she shifted her focus and began working as a full-time freelance curator and art agent. Since then, she has organized more than a dozen exhibitions of varying scale, including her current project with artist Jeffrey Morabito.

September 23, 2025September 22, 2025, by Claire Haik

Art Spiel Picks: Philly Exhibitions in September 2025

Highlights

Maren Less, The Black Goat, Acrylic On Linen, image courtesy of Gross McCleaf Gallery

This autumn in the Philadelphia area, we are spotlighting three painting exhibitions which explore intricate connections between people, places, memories, and dreams. In Passing Through. at Gross McCleaf Gallery, Maren Less creates vibrant paintings that blend human and animal forms into unexpected, symbolic narratives. At Arcadia University, Hiro Sakaguchi’s Landscapes of a Restless Mind is a collection of muted neon paintings with intricate line work in which daydreams and global issues swirl together. Finally, in Los De Aqui, Henry Morales’ solo show at Tiger Strikes Asteroid Philadelphia, offers a tender look at everyday life, using unified colors, collected soil, and newspaper clippings to emphasize the deep bond between people and their places. Check out these lively shows exploring empathy and the human experience through three distinctive styles and voices.

August 6, 2025August 6, 2025, by Yasmeen Abdallah

Art Spiel Picks: NYC Exhibitions in August 2025

The Gatherers images courtesy of Yasmeen Abdallah

This month’s lineup takes us through Brooklyn, Queens, and Jersey City, where intimate thoughts, melded with the political repercussions we grapple with individually and collectively, are presented to the public in moving forms that are explorations in artistic practice as a means of activation against the norms we must confront to maintain our humanity. Through rejections of subjugation and exploitation, be it patriarchal economies or the fallout of colonialism, these selected exhibitions put artists at the forefront who contend with these issues and make space for constructive discourse.

July 3, 2025July 1, 2025, by Stephen Wozniak

The Time It Takes to Look: Jaqueline Cedar’s Art of the Almost Seen

Jaqueline Cedar, *Dusk*, 2024, acrylic on panel, 10”x8”

At Andrew Rafacz, Jaqueline Cedar’s Slide delivers small paintings with big temporal ambition. In her first Chicago solo show, the artist captures time not as a line but a loop—blurred, fragmented, and thick with atmosphere. Figures flicker in and out of clarity; gestures repeat like memories misfiring. The intimacy of scale invites close-contact peering, while layered forms resist quick comprehension. It’s a slow burn of perceptual dissonance, pitched somewhere between deep dreaming and déjà vu. In many ways, Cedar paints observation itself—its rhythms, glitches, and gaps—inviting us to dwell in the space between glancing and seeing.

June 19, 2025June 15, 2025, by Taylor Bielecki

UNBIND: FIGURING THE LAYERS OF BEING with the New York Studio School

Upon entering the exhibition I was struck at the presence every artist’s work had. While every piece was quite different from one another, they all shared similar conversations and offered viewers the opportunity to question human experience, histories, intimacy versus public viewing, and dealing with what it means to feel human. With nine artists, and diverse mediums, the complexities of being are shown clearly and each artist has their own take on “layers of being”.

June 13, 2025June 9, 2025, by Chunbum Park

Those Who Fulfill the Infinite Labor of Love

Photo Story

Anya Kotler – “Never Alone IV” (2024) . Graphite on paper and paper mache, 13 × 9 in

The group exhibition titled Those Who Tend at the Warnes Contemporary in Brooklyn is an occasion in which 22 artists come together to celebrate their shared philosophy towards work and life. The title refers to the fact that all the artists here care for others in one form or another, whether they are parents of young children, grownups caring for their elderly parents, or supporting staff for people with disabilities.

June 4, 2025June 4, 2025, by Taylor Bielecki

Salman Toor and Intimate Histories at Luhring Augustine

Salman Toor - Wish Maker - Exhibitions - Luhring Augustine — Salman Toor at Luhring Augustine

This exhibition of Salman Toor’s paintings acts like snapshots in a story or a movie, each depicting a separate experience. Every piece draws you in and carries a true push and pull within the composition. The push and pull that drew me in was the idea of public versus private that emanates from within the work, the dream and reality, and just how much intimacy Toor decides to share with us. The feelings of intimacy and vulnerability come from witnessing the lives of the figures Toor presents, leaving us to wonder if we are allowed to bear witness to these moments, or if we’ve just “walked into” something meant to be entirely private.

April 21, 2025April 20, 2025, by Etty Yaniv

DUMBO Open Studios 2025 with Peter Drake

A person holding a picture frame

Description automatically generated — Peter Drake in his Dumbo studio. Photo courtesy of Janice Faber

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. Peter Drake has been in DUMBO since January 2016. Peter Drake’s studio is at 55 Washington Street, #254.

April 2, 2025April 1, 2025, by Etty Yaniv

A Longing at Kaliner: Fanny Allié

Fanny Allié, Pairs, 2023, mixed media on textile, 33.5×31.5 in

Fanny Allié’s exhibition A Longing at Kaliner presents a series of works made from the materials of daily life. Using worn clothing, domestic linens, and fabric remnants from her own surroundings, Allié constructs layered compositions that speak to human connection, memory, and what remains after use. Her figures, built from these fragments, feel both familiar and distant—suspended in stillness, shaped by lived experience.