installation – Art Spiel

July 13, 2026July 12, 2026, by Hayley Ferber

What Remains, What Connects: Tulu Bayar Explores Home Through Material and Memory

In What Remains, What Connects: Stories in Assembly, on view at Amos Eno Gallery, Tulu Bayar brings together two distinct yet deeply connected bodies of work that approach the question of “what is home?” from different perspectives. Together, they reveal home not as a fixed location but as something more amorphous, continually assembled through lived experience, collective memory, and our relationship to place.

July 6, 2026July 6, 2026, by Shuhan Zhang

Growing After the Embers: A Review of Bùi Thanh Tâm’s Solo Exhibition Here on and after

For a long time, when I was young, I felt distant from the idea of “history.” In textbooks, history always appeared through years, wars, reforms, and changes of political power, as if it were made of events already organized and settled. Yet the history that truly remains in the body often appears in more hidden forms. It may be a silence within family narratives, a memory that one generation chooses to avoid, a recurring pattern in festive images, or a color that seems joyful while quietly carrying a wound. Very often, history continues to exist in another form, lingering in images, bodies, and everyday experience.

January 20, 2026January 27, 2026, by Taylor Bielecki

Like Cotyledons Buckled with Loam: Conversations and Inspirations

Walking into the group exhibition, Like Cotyledons Buckled with Loam at Art Cake, curated by David Dixon, you are first greeted with a piece by Thomas Nozkowski. This piece is one of three included in the exhibition, each serving as a foundational anchor point in the show. Within the paintings, Nozkowski abstracts forms or fractions of events, allowing viewers to experience the essence and bring their own associations to the works.

December 15, 2025December 9, 2025, by Stephen Wozniak

Tom LaDuke’s Dream Sets for a Lost Message

*Tom LaDuke, Chain, 2015, Acrylic and canvas over panel, 87” x 153”*

Across trippy, iridescent seas, massive, eerie interiors, and uncanny, translucent forms, Tom LaDuke composes intimate “letters” to the cultural ghosts that shaped him—poetic reflections on perception, memory, and the subtle currents of emotional drift.

Love letters straight from your heart
Keep us so near while apart
I'm not alone in the night
When I can have all the love you write

–  Love Letters by Heyman and Young

December 8, 2025December 21, 2025, by Etty Yaniv

Curatorial visions at Montclair Art Museum

Tom Nussbaum: But Wait, There’s More!, Montclair Art Museum, installation view, photo courtesy of Jason Wyche

During her more than thirty years at the Montclair Art Museum, Dr. Gail Stavitsky, Chief Curator, has shaped the institution’s vision through exhibitions that deepen public understanding of art history while highlighting under-recognized artists. Her work extends beyond the galleries to publications that introduce new scholarly perspectives — including the recent catalogue accompanying Tom Nussbaum: But Wait, There’s More! In this interview, Dr. Stavitsky discusses her curatorial approach and the ideas guiding the Museum’s current exhibitions by Tom Nussbaum and Christine Romanell.

November 10, 2025November 10, 2025, by Melissa Stern

What The House Dreams Of – Two painters at Ruby Dakota Gallery

Athena Parella, Bedtime Story, Charcoal on paper, 17.5 x 22, 2025

“Childhood” has always been a fertile source for artists in all disciplines. We all had a childhood and, for better or worse, we all carry memories that often haunt us throughout our lifetimes. Ruby/Dakota, a scrappy young gallery in the East Village is presenting a two- person show entitled What The House Dreams Of that brings together two young artists with memories to share.

November 5, 2025October 31, 2025, by Amalia Rizos

Myth as Metamorphosis at Freight + Volume

Jorge K. Cruz & Elizabeth Insogna, Divine Myth– Faith and Flesh, installation view, photo courtesy of the gallery

In the quiet hum of Freight + Volume, myth breathes anew — through clay, through oil, through the occulted pulse of memory and transformation. Elizabeth Insogna’s luminous ceramics rise from ionic pedestals like ancient offerings, while Jorge K. Cruz’s visceral canvases create a kaleidoscopic backsplash, drawing viewers into a dialogue between the sacred and the subversive.

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.

October 29, 2025October 30, 2025, by Kate Sherman

Recording is Seeing at Tappeto Volante: Marta Lee 11:11

Installation photograph of *11:11,* at Tappeto Volante

A few weeks ago, Marta Lee visited my studio. A few days after that visit, she texted me:

“Hey, what is the deal with that long wood piece of molding that was kind of to the left of where u were sitting? It’s gorgeous”

Marta was referring to an 8-foot-long piece of molding I’ve used as a mahlstick (also spelled ‘maulstick’) since 2018. I probably found it in the trash in my first studio building on Grand Street in Bushwick, and I’ve never thought of it beyond its use as an object to balance my arm on while painting. But Marta was right – it is sort of gorgeous. It’s got a spiraling geometric pattern carved into it, and paint streaks where I swipe it while lifting brushes. This realization led to another – just how unique Marta’s way of seeing the world really is.

October 22, 2025October 28, 2025, by Jessica Aguilar

Art Spiel Picks: Philadelphia Exhibitions in October 2025

HIGHLIGHTS

Clay as Care Installation view. Photo by The Clay Studio

Just as a solitary action can cause a ripple effect, the sharing of unique ideas can inspire and transform existing systems to include and support different communities. The exhibitions this month demonstrate genuine curiosity and meaningful activation, leading to a trend of revisionist histories in art, institutional displays, or familial archives. Curators Jennifer Zwilling and Nicole Pollard reinvent how gallery exhibitions should be interacted with and ask the question of how clay can assist in caring for mental health at The Clay Studio. Artists Mahsa Attaran, Monica Hamilton, Hanieh Kashani, and Anna Schwartz create a language to describe the power of memory as they mine through personal photographs and materials at Automat Collective. Calero Rodríguez establishes her own History of Art, incorporating Latino, Afro, and Carribean imagery in masterly assembled collages at Taller Puertoriqueño.