An energetic jaunt through the various art fairs over the past week revealed curious findings and trends: Relational aesthetics, atmospheric landscapes, the human psyche, and acts of care are on view in the forms of plants, animals, & organisms. Rendered in splashy colors, text-based media and kitschy coolness, the various moods are quirky and earnestly expressed through painting, sculpture/ceramics, textiles and installations. Here is a roundup of some booths that hit the mark and kept it refreshing.
into the microVerse – Mutualism, 2024. Photo courtesy of the artist.
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.
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.
Mark Dagley and Lauri Bortz of the Abaton Project Room
Mark Dagley is an artist who has exhibited his paintings and sculptures, which explore the intersection of abstraction and materiality, in New York and Europe since the 1980s. Lauri Bortz is a playwright and author whose farcical tragedies have been performed in theaters in New York, and over the past decade, she has created a series of children’s books. Abaton Project Room, or APR, is a temporary exhibition space conceived by Lauri, located at 11 Broadway, in the historic Bowling Green Office Building in Lower Manhattan. Over a one-year period (August 2024-2025), APR is alternating monthly presentations of Mark Dagley’s work—paintings, sculpture, and works on paper—with thematic group exhibitions as well as selections from Mark and Lauri’s personal collection.
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.
Rose Briccetti’s interdisciplinary and intermedia practice combines deep historical, artistic, and scientific research with artmaking to re-present natural and cultural histories to question systems of power. Her work surrealistically weaves together strange truths, biology, museology, cultural myths, internet culture, and personal experience using humor and vivid visuals.
Jai Hart, Finding Harmony from the Neckline to My Right Heel, 2025, Acrylic on canvas and poly-fill, 72h x 41w in
When I first heard about the pairing of Jai Hart and Kelly Worman in a two-person show at Freight + Volume, I was puzzled. Their formal vocabularies appeared too distinct, too dissonant. But upon entering the exhibition, my skepticism dissolved. Their differences are not discordant—they are dialectical. Both artists, working through abstraction and form, propose modes of seeing and making that are sensitive, inquisitive, and quietly defiant. While their materials and gestures diverge, Hart and Worman converge in a feminist-postmodern sensibility that challenges the hegemonic logics of painting, and, more subtly, the gendered histories that underpin it.
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.
FELLOW IMAGINARIES installation (three pieces), Carole d’Inverno and Susan Rostow, (left) Telling Bones, 21 x 19 x 15, paper, metal, bone, plastic, wood, pigments. Rostow, (middle) North-South, 42 x 71, vinyl emulsions, ink pens, inks on canvas, rod, d’Inverno, (right) Under Cover, 24 x 12 x 12, wood, sisal rope, wire. d’Inverno
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.
Katie Hudnall: The Longest Distance between Two Points at the Museum for Art in Wood, installation shot, image courtesy of the gallery
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.
