Contemporary Art and Culture
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.
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Naomi Lev is a curator, cultural program director, and arts writer based in New York City. She works closely with living artists and calls her approach “Process Curating”—a method that follows a project from its earliest stages through final installation. It’s about long-term exchange and staying present as ideas shift.
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Inspired by scientist and illustrator Robert Hooke’s seminal book, Micrographia, published in 1665, into the microVerse – Micrographia invites viewers into an immersive interdisciplinary installation where projected and printed microscopy act as a vehicle to witness the beauty of nature and our environment through magnified images of plant cells, microorganisms, and organic structures to transform our perspective of the familiar. Through this microscopic and material journey, the exhibition encourages a renewed perspective on our role as stewards of Earth’s delicate ecosystems and biodiversity, asking us to reimagine how we might preserve and protect these intricate natural systems for generations to come.
Continue reading “Into the microVerse – Micrographia with Shae Nadine|| SubtleFlux”
The group show Duae Lingua at The Brâncuși Gallery in the Romanian Cultural Institute began as a personal reflection on curator Daniela Holaban’s migration journey from Romania to the United States and gradually evolved into a broader curatorial inquiry into dual identity and cultural translation through the lens of Eastern European women artists. “Initially, I was interested in the dissonance between linguistic and cultural fluency—how even after mastering a language, true belonging can remain elusive,” says Holban. In this interview with Art Spiel, Daniela Holban elaborates on how that concept became the foundation for the exhibition, using language as both metaphor and framework to explore themes of identity, memory, and assimilation.
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The West Chelsea Artists Open Studios presents its 16th annual artists open studios tour on Saturday & Sunday, May 10th and 11th, from 12 p.m. to 6 p.m. The event offers a look inside the art studios at the iconic building at 526 West 26th Street. Art Spiel conducted brief interviews with three artists who will participate in the event.
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As a textile artist, I am drawn to works that uphold the tradition of fibers vis a vis labor, technique, material, craftsmanship and innovation. In this presentation put forth by Bravin Lee Programs, The Golden Thread 2 displays fiber-themed works taking various forms. Filling the old seaport building from floor to ceiling, room after room reveals different interpretations on what constitutes a “textile” work.
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Carole d’Inverno and Susan Rostow live a block apart. Over the past year, they passed sculptures between studios, texted images and material references, built paper maquettes, and revised their work without fixed goals. Fellow Imaginaries, now on view at Atlantic Gallery, result from this sustained exchange. The exhibition includes fully collaborative hybrid sculptures made jointly by d’Inverno and Rostow, alongside individual works by each artist: sculptures by Rostow and both sculptures and paintings by d’Inverno. Though distinct in authorship, all the works were developed in close dialogue. They respond to one another in form and material and in how they occupy space. Walking into the show feels like entering a toy store—joyous, playful, a place of invention. The visitor becomes a child again, wondering how things were made and how they might move.
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I always love that Earth Day is situated right when the city is exploding with new flowers and life. These spring exhibitions show appreciation for our planet by working with found and repurposed materials, honoring their origins while building something new. At the Museum for Art in Wood, Katie Hudnall constructs delightful and “mechanically improbable” animals and curiosity cabinets of found objects in her show, The Longest Distance between Two Points. Drexel University’s Pearlstein Gallery showcases CONTEMPORARY RUIN future visions, a collection of work that meditates on the realities of decay in our cities, offering both a poetic reflection on our everyday lives and practical approaches toward building a more resilient future. South of the city, Lavett Ballard’s solo show at Rowan University, The People Who Could Fly, features striking mixed-media collages that recast stories of African-American folklore and history using layers of imagery.
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The group exhibition Care / Condition / Control, which ends its run at 601Artspace on April 27th, takes its conceptual root, quite literally, in the form of hair. Experienced by different generations, cultures, genders, and identities, one’s relationship to the very follicles that grow from us and upon us is deeply personal and unique to each of us. As each artist mines their own stories from these relationships, Chapman expands upon the inspiration and undertaking of such a complicated and tangled subject. Yasmeen Abdallah interviews curator A.E. Chapman about the ideas behind this show.
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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. Jenny Polak has been based in DUMBO since February 2025, previously participated in the BRIC residency in 2022, and returned this year to 20 Jay Street—now working from Studio #310B—through the Cultural Space Subsidy Program.
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