mythology – Art Spiel

December 2, 2025December 1, 2025, by Jac Lahav

Maureen McCabe: Feminine Surrealism, Witch Culture and the Original Goth

Tod Gangler (b. 1953), Professor Maureen McCabe, 1975, Hand-altered photograph, 5″ × 4⅜”

I’ve never been to a séance; however, walking into Maureen McCabe’s exhibition Fate and Magic at the William Benton Museum of Art invokes strong séance vibes. Artworks on black slate whisper, engravings of shooting stars, goddesses, brew potions, and long-forgotten stage magicians appear at the Benton like reliquaries of the past. For over six decades, Maureen McCabe has been an overlooked alchemist of memory, transmuting her personal experiences and arcane cultural references into this intimate magical retrospective.

June 18, 2025June 15, 2025, by Nicole Michaud

Art Spiel Picks: Philly Exhibitions in June 2025

HIGHLIGHTS

Installation view of *Tea Party* at Locks Gallery, courtesy of Locks Gallery

As we get into the summer months, June exhibition picks for Philadelphia are vibrant, sensuous, and bold. Works currently on display at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Locks Gallery, and Moore College of Art touch on subjects surrounding how we see ourselves and each other, and the transitory nature of existence. All things physical and sensual ultimately act as a foil to death, and these surreal and vivid works offer the viewer insight into how each artist considers what makes us human. Whether created of glitter, paint, ceramic, velvet, or butterflies, the works in these exhibitions remind us that we are stardust, and golden.

May 28, 2025May 27, 2025, by Andrew Fish

Art Spiel Picks: Boston Exhibitions June 2025

Highlights

*Lucy Kim: Pigment Spells* at Praise Shadows Gallery, Brookline, MA. Photo by Dan Watkins, courtesy of Praise Shadows Gallery

Several wonderful exhibitions are on view in Boston this month and many more are scheduled for the summer, along with artist talks, performances, and events. Boston’s Public Art Triennial kicked off with a ribbon cutting and a party to celebrate the arrival of several new public art installations around the city for art goers to enjoy throughout the summer. The schools are getting ready for summer break but many of their galleries remain open with dynamic shows. Whether you visit the city, the Cape, or the Islands over the next few months, there is always something to see. Here are a few highlights to consider.

May 6, 2025May 4, 2025, by Eva Zanardi

Io Sono LEONOR FINI – Decoding the Sphinx of Surrealism

Installation view, *Io Sono LEONOR FINI* *(I Am LEONOR FINI)*

The grand halls of Milan’s Palazzo Reale currently host a seminal tribute to artistic defiance and fierce individuality. On view from February 26 through June 22, 2025, Io Sono LEONOR FINI (I Am LEONOR FINI) presents one of the most comprehensive retrospectives dedicated to an artist whose untamed, rebellious gaze still challenges and mesmerizes viewers from across the temporal divide.

March 19, 2025March 19, 2025, by Taylor Bielecki

Judi Keeshan – Mixed Magic at Tappeto Volante Projects

Mixed Magic, the first solo exhibition in New York by Judi Keeshan, curated by Jared Deery and JJ Manford at Tappeto Volante. The show runs through April 6th, 2025.

In Judi Keeshan’s first New York Exhibition, titled Mixed Magic, curators Jared Deary and JJ Manford present a wide survey of works from 2017 to 2024. To assemble the show, they selected the works directly from her studio, flipping through a massive collection of works as if browsing a record store. They let the images on canvas guide them—the characters and stories revealed themselves to the curators, just as they now await discovery by new audiences within the gallery.

December 18, 2023December 24, 2023, by Xuezhu Jenny Wang

The Immigrant Artist Biennial, In Dialogue

Thread and Fiber: Jovencio de la Paz, Juna Skënderi, and Lilian Shtereva

Lilian Shtereva. *Samovila*, 2023. Yarn, thread, batting, cochineal, and indigo dye on canvas. 24 x 18 inches. Courtesy of the artist and The Immigrant Artist Biennial.

As noted by Julia Halperin in a September T Magazine article, “[l]ong caught in the liminal space between craft and something more prestigious, works of thread and fabric are reaching newfound institutional recognition.” With the advent of AI spurring a complicated mix of overwhelm, anxiety, and curiosity, an increasing interest in fiber art seems to stem from its tactility and materiality, generating a contrasting tension with what’s available in the virtual world. Fiber art is also welcomed by the art-loving public as a medium supporting marginalized communities and their traditions. As participating artists of The Immigrant Artist Biennial 2023, Jovencio de la Paz, Juna Skënderi, and Lilian Shtereva discuss how their fiber-based practice relates to heritage, empowerment, technology, and dimensionality.

March 31, 2023March 31, 2023, by Hovey Brock

Eva Davidova: Re-coding Our Paradox

HOT AIR

*Garden for Drowning Descendant/*Garden Sequence from “Flying and Drowning Dream,“ interactive mixed reality installation, 2022, with performer Danielle McPhatter.

Eva Davidova makes new media works that focus on ecological disaster, our interdependence as a species, and the political implications of technology which she unpacks with performative works rooted in the absurd. She imagines the paradox that one day our descendants–human or cyborg–will be constructing our reality as a simulation, and asks: “If we are the games our children will program one day, can we influence the code they are writing?”

March 22, 2023March 21, 2023, by Art Spiel

Gabriela Vainsencher: Epic, Heroic, Ordinary at Asya Geisberg

featured artist

Gabriela Vainsencher with “Epic, Heroic, Ordinary” at Asya Geisberg gallery, March 2023

In her solo exhibition at Asya Geisberg Gallery Gabriela Vainsencher exhibits wall hanging porcelain reliefs, referencing the nuts and bolts of motherhood entangled in layers of epic mythological context—Medusa reveals a worried woman with a frying pan and a baby’s pacifier as weapons at hand. The show runs through April 8^th, 2023.

December 12, 2022December 18, 2022, by Etty Yaniv

Myth Catchers: Manju Shandler, Rithika Merchant and Jacqueline Shatz

Manju Shandler, Wonder Whale 1, 2018, mixed media, 23×19 inch

Luckily, or to many art-mavens’ chagrin, our 21^st century art world—in line with the global techno-culture and socio-political processes—seems to have abandoned crusades of “right” or “wrong” related to artistic form (though sometimes that does not apply to content). We are experiencing a dizzying array of aesthetic expressions, where often fast-pace visual trends replace ideologies of form. Unlike some passing trends, visual narratives based on mythological iconography have been central in all art forms since archaic ages, except for the early-mid half of the 20^th century when narrative impetus was largely downplayed in most of what was called the “Avant Garde” art of the time.

October 17, 2022November 2, 2022, by Art Spiel

Residency at Five Points – Flood 2.0

In Conversation with Susan Hoffman Fishman

L to R: Judy McElhone (founder and director of Five Points Arts), Susan Hoffman Fishman, Krisanne Baker and Leslie Sobel (three of the four Water Women) at the Center in June, 2022, amongst components of their upcoming multi-media installation, *Flood 2.0.*

In July of 2021, artist Susan Hoffman Fishman began talking with Canadian photographer, Joan Sullivan about the eerie similarity between future apocalyptic flood predictions and the ancient story of Noah and the world’s first apocalyptic flood. The two artists have known each other through writing, both serving as core writers for the international blog, Artists and Climate Change. Both artists have been working on issues relating to water and the climate crisis and are equally interested in mythical stories related to water that resonate in contemporary culture. That led them to weekly conversations throughout 2021 when they decided to collaborate on a multi-media installation project, which they eventually called Flood 2.0.