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?
We do rely on art for healing purposes, but art that directly heals often requires a performative component. That is not to say that it delivers results, but there needs to be an interactive element in which the art appears to “give back” to the viewer. I visited the shrine of St. Anthony in Padua, for me, it was mostly to see the Donatello altarpiece and the Antonio and Tullio Lombardo friezes, but it was impossible to ignore the numerous worshippers at the shrine, their foreheads resting against the saint’s sarcophagus, inserting small pieces of paper with requests for St. Anthony. For nine years, Shervone Neckles has wheeled her healing cart — the Creative Wellness Gathering Station throughout the five boroughs and dispensed potions to fascinated and grateful onlookers.
Samuelle Green. By Day: By Night. 2025. (variable size) Installation View — Honesdale, PA. steel, reflective material. photo credit: Samuelle Green Studio
In Samuelle Green’s previous installations such as The Paper Caves and Polypore, viewers encountered forms that were wildly organic in appearance. They were comprised of somewhat amorphous essentialized forms in nature that exist on the micro and macro levels, executed on an immersive human scale, enabling viewers to make a variety of associations with the natural world — pollen grains, clouds, or coral reefs. The new work, By Day: By Night, 2025, is much more specific in its references and seeks to speak a different visual language almost entirely.
The 2025 art fair season has descended upon us, and with it comes a myriad of activities. Amidst the hustle and bustle of moving around the cities to see what’s on view, there were many standouts at this year’s presentations at the Armory and Art on Paper.
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. Cheryl Wing-Zi Wong has been in DUMBO since 2015. Her studio is at 20 Jay Street #M10B (mezzanine level).
CHANNEL by Scope Collective at Biobat Art Space. Photo courtesy of gallery.
The three exhibitions Digital Being: Radio Row, Water Stories, and GUI/GOOEY explore memory, technology, and sustainability across time. In Digital Being: Radio Row, Taezoo Park breathes new life into obsolete machines, reimagining New York’s Radio Row as a digital hub of the past and future. Water Stories at BioBAT Art Space celebrates water’s ecological and cultural roles through multisensory art, urging conservation for future generations. GUI/GOOEY at Plexus Projects blurs boundaries between digital and organic realms, examining how interfaces reshape our perception of the body and nature through digital media.
Outcropping, Erica Stoller’s recent solo show at A.I.R. Gallery, which ran through November 10th, utilized cardboard cuttings, formerly boxes, and packaging, as its exclusive material. When walking through the gallery, one noticed the show has three sections– a corner piece that covers two walls, floor to ceiling, a grid of individual cardboard compositions hung on the wall and a third “sandwiches” station that allowed viewers to pick up layered cardboard batches. Proceeds from the sale of the “sandwiches” go to Feeding America. An interesting survey of installation art—a site-specific installation, painting-like works on a wall, and an interactive piece. Stoller often works with space in curious ways. In Item # 25-033, her 2022 solo show at A.I.R. Gallery, she created a single wall-to-wall installation using Manilla rope and elastic bands. The rope cut through the gallery space, creating framed planes between ceiling pipes, wall hooks, and the floor.
Installation view: Jiwon Rhie: Suddenly, Images Explain Everything at La Mama Galleria. Photo by flaneurshan. studio. @flaneurshan.studio
Jiwon Rhie often explores moments of deep personal depression, social misanthropy, and cultural alienation in her work. You would never know it, though, from first viewing. Walking into La Mama Galleria in the East Village, NY, visitors are greeted by the playful whirring sound of over a dozen mechanical toy dogs, each covered in exploding layers of colorful, fake flowers. The dogs walk across a blue moving pad, bumping into walls, each other, or the artificial boundaries Rhie erected. In the center of the moving pad, two quarter candy vending dispensers shake with the motion of encased and enflowered toys, which act, of course, unperturbed by their enclosures. Viewers are invited to borrow quarters from the gallery to dispense pods filled with custom keychains and temporary tattoos from the candy machines. Though only a corner of a room within a larger exhibition, Rhie’s Flower Dogs make it impossible to enter the gallery without stopping to smile, take a photo or video, and procure ones own custom keychain art.
Tianyi Sun and Fiel Guhit. “Bakery Story,” installed as part of FROM_LISTENERS, 2023. 30 x 18 x 32 inches, Laser cut and engraved acrylic, aluminium, LCD screen, webcam.
“I love it. I am all for kitschy stuff,” Tianyi Sun says, laughing, as she notices the iridescent glitter liquid phone case. In her practice, Sun engages with the cute and zany using these categories as an entry point to embody how we approach technology in our everyday lives—her work takes the form of installations and responsive environments activated by a reading or performance. With much of her work being modular, the audience moving through the space is as important as the work itself—“bridging the digital and the analog,” she explains. “I want to expose the aesthetics, the beauty, the politics without lessening the visceral response.” A central question of her work is: What happens with the human experience as we navigate technology?
Kate Dodd, E. J. McAdams & Jennifer McGregor enjoy haiku installed in the ceiling lamps by E.J. and Jimbo Blachly as part of Kate’s Bay Ridge Tree Collection at the Bay Ridge Branch of the Brooklyn Public Library. Photo courtesy of E. J. McAdams.
Bay Ridge through an Ecological Lens is a multi-faceted public art exhibition hosted by Stand4 Gallery and presented in collaboration with ecoartspace
It consists of nature walks and community interventions in the gallery and various locations throughout the Bay Ridge community from April 15 through June 17, 2023. Art Spiel will feature a series of interviews related to this project throughout its duration, here with curator Jennifer McGregor.
