On Bearing Witness and Embracing Beauty

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Unprecedented, 8 ft. x 15 ft., mixed media on canvas, 2021. Photo by Joseph Hu

For over fifty years, Philadelphia-based painter, photographer, and activist Diane Burko has translated her love for large open spaces and monumental geological sites into powerful and alluring landscapes. Her exhibition at the American University in Washington, D.C. (August 28 – December 12, 2021), titled Diane Burko: Seeing Climate Change 2002 – 2021, contained 103 paintings, photographs, and time-based media depicting mountains, oceans, snow and ice, glaciers, volcanos, and fires that address the growing impact of the climate crisis.

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A message from the Underground at Mana Contemporary

Featured Project: with curator Maria De Los Angeles


Ryan Bonilla. Hope, 2004. Encapsulated Digital C Print, 20 in x 30 in.

The group show, A message from the Underground at Mana Contemporary Jersey City, curated by artist and curator Maria De Los Angeles, featuring 18 artists from Mana Contemporary whose work explores current political climate, love, and sense of place. The exhibition runs through 1/15/2022, 3rd floor, Mana Contemporary in Jersey City

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Linnéa Spransy: Stockpiles of Potential

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Linnéa Gabriella Spransy in her studio with ‘Chronos’, an ink drawing on frosted mylar, laminated and partially suspended from the wall.

For LA based, multi-disciplinary artist Linnéa Gabriella Spransy, limits are the core subject. Her curiosity about science, philosophy, cultural theory, physics, history, theology and, as she puts it, “a healthy dose of science fiction”, has led her to notice patterns and contradictions in commonplace assumptions. For instance, the belief that unlimited freedom is the optimal state of being, an idea that is flatly contradicted by the fact that no one is absolutely free, as we are all bound by a certain era, language, and people in our lives. Furthermore, Spransy says, some would argue that knowledge itself is a limit, especially knowledge about the future. She is grappling with big questions such as—does knowledge that deals with predicting the behavior of systems prevent freedom? Do we live in a deterministic universe merely garnished with the illusion of autonomy, or do we live in a genuinely open one? Throughout her reading and experience in the studio, she began to suspect that limitations are not barriers to freedom, but rather gateways.

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Black Moves First at GAVLAK Palm Beach

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Photo by Alex Berliner

In Black Moves First, NYC-based artist Kim Dacres brings together eight new sculptures where all chess-like pieces depict solely black female figures, based on characters from the artist’s own life – mother, grandmother, sisters, aunts. The show is on view through January 2, 2022 at GAVLAK Palm Beach.

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Drawing a Line at Five Myles

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Installation view

A line drawing is a dot that went for a walk,

-Paul Klee, Pedagogical Sketchbook

From line drawings and cutouts to wall reliefs and sculptures, lines shift forms throughout the group exhibition Drawing a Line at Five Myles. Curator Klaudia Ofwona Draber says she was inspired by the gallery founder Hanne Tierney’s vision to organize a drawing exhibition. Ofwona Draber’s interest in social justice and post-colonialism guided her choice of artists as well as the theme of the exhibition – drawing a line as an action of drawing boundaries, whether to protect personal boundaries in the quietude of one’s own home, or at the heart of a political conflict. “By drawing a line, we protect ourselves, our families and our communities from the violence and inequalities that are happening around us,” says Ofwona Draber.

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Paul Loughney – Consequences of Competing Narratives at Vorderzimmer

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Paul Loughney and Halona Hilbertz. Photo credit: Renée Ricarrdo

Paul Loughney’s collages resemble daydreams where seemingly unrelated elements coalesce into a fantastic mindscape where body parts, typography, geometric shapes, and hints of architectural elements scramble into unique environments that are oddly believable despite their quirky nature.

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Deborah Kruger – Plumas at PRPG in Mexico City

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Deborak Kruger in front of Accidentals, 2020, screen-printing on recycled plastic bags, sewing, wrapping, waxed linen thread, 92 x 167 x 6″

Plumas, featuring Deborah Kruger’s recent work, is PRPG.mx’s premiere show in their newly expanded exhibition and residency space in Mexico City. In this sculptural installation, curated by Micheal Swank, Kruger focuses on the extinction of Mexican bird species, the death of Mexican indigenous languages, and the impacts of climate change on migration.

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In the Beginning There Was Only Water

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In the Beginning There Was Only Water: Panels 19-22, each panel 30″ x 15″, acrylic, oil pigment stick and mixed media on paper, 2021

While some of us taught ourselves to bake sourdough bread or to mend socks during the pandemic, the American painter and arts writer Susan Hoffman Fishman plunged herself into her studio and emerged, a year later, with a revised creation story. The result: a magnificent, nearly 50-foot (15 meters) opus entitled In The Beginning There Was Only Water. Currently on exhibit at the Five Points Gallery in Torrington, Connecticut through December 19, 2021, In The Beginning There Was Only Water reframes the biblical creation myth – in which “man” was granted “dominion” over all the Earth’s plants and animals – into a new, non-human-centric story.

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Juan Hinojosa: Ensemble Iconographies

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Juan Hinojosa in studio during LMCC residency

New York based artist Juan Hinojosa collects found objects from everywhere he passes by. A toy snake, a wooden bird, a Good Luck charm, fragments from advertisements and billboards—find their way into his intricate compositions, creating altogether layered sculptural assemblages and intricate two dimensional collages. In both dimensional and flat formats, Hinojosa’s vocabulary is grounded in Pop aesthetics with a tint of Surrealism. Through super vivid colors and elaborate graphic shapes he depicts imaginary worlds where extravagant shrines and hybrid flowery creatures become a convincing presence. When you get closer, you can most likely trace where they came from.

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Baris Gokturk: Danse Macabre in Public Spaces: Painting Euphoria and Madness in Times of Crisis


Baris Gokturk, working on All Saints at The Boiler@ ELM Foundation

Baris Gokturk’s installations are intricate, layered, and admirably ambitious in both meaning and form. The Turkish born New York based artist asks the big questions – what is his role as an artist, individual, immigrant within the larger context of a world in crisis? In All Saints he exhibited at the Boiler space at the ELM foundation he combined imagery of dance and fire into a monumental installation.

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