What starts as an open call and a group text to trusted friends becomes, two years later, an exhibition that feels inevitable. Seven Women Chase Icebergs, on view at The Re Institute in Millerton, NY, brings together seven painters whose friendships span decades and continents: Rome, Skowhegan, Triangle, Braziers. Organized by Brooklyn-based artist Brenda Zlamany — creator of The Itinerant Portraitist and a painter whose practice has long centered on community as both subject and method — the show grew from a month-long residency at Pouch Cove, Newfoundland, where the group painted, hiked, shared meals, and chased icebergs along the edge of the Atlantic. We spoke with Zlamany about friendship as curatorial logic, landscape as psychological mirror, and what it means to build something together at the edge of the world.
Continue reading “Pouch Power Women: with Brenda Zlamany”Funny Weather at Kunstraum: Upheavals and new assumptions
In the exhibition Funny Weather, curated by Imogen Aukland, four artists present distinct takes on reconstructions and uncertainty. A timely, unsettled feeling meanders through the space — sculptures that depict typically threatening objects unexpectedly softened, or photos that capture moments that physically change as you walk around them. Both the unexpected and a sense of upheaval are prominent themes throughout, whilst also giving us a “weather forecast” that changes by area, mood, and experience. This grants viewers the opportunity to question what art does: what an art object stirs within us, and how much our assumptions about something can shift when viewed from different perspectives.
Continue reading “Funny Weather at Kunstraum: Upheavals and new assumptions”After the Rains – How Nature Roots Us Home
When one thinks of nature, the first thing that comes to mind would be a park filled with leafy trees or perhaps a bouquet of vibrant flowers. With EFA Studio’s newest exhibition, After the Rains, artists challenge the idea of how nature can be represented.
Continue reading “After the Rains – How Nature Roots Us Home “Hospitality, Narrative Grace, and the Warm Head
Derrida once pursued the question of hospitality. Can you welcome someone whose name you do not yet know? Can you open the door before knowing who is arriving? If you can, the welcome is sincere; if you cannot, hospitality has already become part of border management. Unconditional hospitality is therefore always impossible: if the host retains sovereignty, they cannot be fully open; if they become fully open, they are no longer the host. The name thus becomes the first step in the subject’s enclosure. This exhibition is built precisely upon this impossibility.
Continue reading “Hospitality, Narrative Grace, and the Warm Head”It Takes a Village at Freight and Volume
The most subtle acts are often the most cathartic. In times of relentless upheaval and injustice, simple moments can feel Herculean by measure. The current exhibition at Freight and Volume, It Takes A Village, focuses on daily ritual as a gate of entry. Artists Andrea Castillo, Nancy Elsamanoudi, and Baran Shafiey blend nuanced elements with doses of surreality, resulting in invitations into spaces that delightfully offer more questions than answers. Each work is a reckoning with the quietude of in-betweenness. Each artist is a painter working in figuration; yet the similarities end there, and the departures are as varied as one can imagine.
Continue reading “It Takes a Village at Freight and Volume”Learning Where There Is No Bottom: On the Thresholds of Swim Lessons
When I first learned how to swim as a child, my instructor told me to hold onto the edge of the pool and practice kicking. He counted the rhythm aloud, occasionally adjusting the angle of my body. Water kept splashing into my face, yet I could not make myself move forward. The actions had been broken down into steps: kicking, stroking, breathing, and I seemed to complete each one, but they never came together as a whole. Then, at some point, I stopped sinking. I still cannot say what exactly happened in that moment.
Continue reading “Learning Where There Is No Bottom: On the Thresholds of Swim Lessons”Magical Thinking of Systems and Beliefs, at Tufts University Art Galleries
Would you have believed the sun revolved around the Earth? Possibly, since that was the ironclad determination of the bureaucracies in the 16th century. Slavery legally existed in the United States for centuries before there was even the slightest abolitionist movement. Which brings to mind, why do we adhere to beliefs today simply because they are propagated by governments and institutions?
Continue reading “Magical Thinking of Systems and Beliefs, at Tufts University Art Galleries”Spirit in the Flesh at Utopia
Spirit in the Flesh is on view at UTOPIA in Kingston, the gallery, bookstore, and studio space founded in 2025 by Lucia Cote. Curated by Saul Chernick, the exhibition brings together sculpture, painting, and works on paper by Courtney Puckett, Ben Pederson, and Chernick. The show treats art as a way of being, shaped by imagery rooted in intuition and dreams and carried into physical form through sustained attention to process. In a climate of constant noise and unrest, the works lean toward beauty, curiosity, and play. Curator and artist Saul Chernick tells us more about the exhibition and the venue.
Continue reading “Spirit in the Flesh at Utopia”Art Spiel Picks: NYC Exhibitions in December 2025
Colorful, mixed-media exhibitions bring vibrancy to the winter season with splashes of exhilaration and discovery.
Continue reading “Art Spiel Picks: NYC Exhibitions in December 2025”Beamsplitter curated by David Shaw at Field of Play

The artwork in Beamsplitter, a six-person show at Field of Play, functions as a series of portals. Named for a scientific device that both transmits and reflects light, Beamsplitter opens up spectrums of material, concept, and time. Using a mix of large and small works from artists across generations, curator David Shaw expands the Gowanus gallery’s 9 x 15-foot footprint into a dynamic array of gateways. The recurrence of circular forms and apertures presents a menu of windows to the artist’s interiority or world-view. Field of Play’s signature astroturf floor provides an idiosyncratic arena to home these loci.
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