painting – Page 4

June 9, 2025June 6, 2025, by Anna Shukeylo

Judith Simonian: The Human Element Huddled and Still

Installation View. Courtesy of JJMurphy Gallery

Judith Simonian’s solo show at JJ Murphy Gallery, poignantly titled The Human Element, Huddled and Still, features her latest paintings from the past few years. At first glance, there is familiarity in each piece – a living room, a still life, part of a ship – but as one starts to look closer, something starts to happen. Within each painting, there is a portal into another world; there are clashing planes and changing scenes that are so seamlessly blended together the viewer’s brain needs some time to catch up. What is particularly astounding about Simonian’s work is that her subject matter is a humble amalgamation of scenes, spaces, and objects one would encounter in everyday life.

June 2, 2025May 27, 2025, by Yasmeen Abdallah

Guy Nelson: Tales from the Understory at The North Dakota Museum of Art

Hot Air

Guy Nelson, *The Road Not Taken,* North Dakota Museum of Art

The North Dakota Museum of Art’s latest exhibition, Guy Nelson: Tales from the Understory, is a multidisciplinary solo show focused on the woodlands and prairies of the upper Midwest. Featuring sculpture, painting and video, the exhibition will be on display through July 20, 2025. This exhibition marks the tenth in the Museum’s Art Makers Series, an annual award for artists with connections to the region, which is underwritten by Dr. William F. Wosick of Fargo.

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 21, 2025May 18, 2025, by Elizabeth Johnson

Lance Rautzhan and Cabin Contemporary

In conversation

Lance Rautzhan standing in front of Cabin Contemporary. Photo courtesy of Cabin Contemporary

Established in June 2022, Cabin Contemporary culls local, urban, and international artists for solo and group exhibitions, hosting contemporary art concepts and dialogue in a rural context, from April through October. Multidisciplinary artist and educator Lance Rautzhan curates exhibits of installation, new media, painting, and outsider art in an outbuilding on his family farm near the Appalachian Trail, Hawk Mountain Sanctuary, and Pennsylvania State Game Lands.

May 19, 2025May 22, 2025, by Taylor Bielecki

Ghada Amer: New Directions and Disobedient Thoughts at Marianne Boesky Gallery

Upon entering this exhibition, I was taken to the wall pieces immediately, especially the use of vibrantly colored embroidery string mimicking paint strokes on the canvas. Art historical references and connections are very prevalent in the works of this exhibit. It was refreshing to see this conversation of the painting canon being brought up in a contemporary light by the use of this novel medium. Amer’s love and interest in the history of painting is apparent, and her works show art historical influences intertwined with intuition and a strong painterly hand that is present despite there being no paint in the show.

May 15, 2025May 14, 2025, by Yasmeen Abdallah

Art Spiel Picks: Manhattan Art Fair Week

HIGHLIGHTS

Image courtesy of Michele Jaslow/Radar Curatorial

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.

May 14, 2025May 12, 2025, by William Corwin

Into the woods – Immi C. Storrs at The Century Association

Immi C. Storrs is obsessed with depth: she manipulates it, refusing to render it as-is. Instead, her adventures in depth-perception range from steeply sloping forests—her favorite subject— to thickly layered glass light-box dioramas, and to truncated and oddly meshed animal forms in bronze. While the animals merge together into multi-legged seemingly mythological beasts, or emerge pseudo-two dimensionally from a bronze cube, it’s less about the creatures themselves—horses, sheep, and oxen, but more of a slow-down lugubrious space in which forms melt together and time becomes unpredictable.

May 13, 2025May 11, 2025, by Etty Yaniv

Naomi Lev and the Art of Process Curating

In Dialogue

Installation view with Naomi Lev at *The Space Between Knowing* exhibition at The TL Studio. Photographed by Argenis Apolinario. Left (top to bottom): Shony Rivnay, *The Loss of Innocence Squared,* 2022, Acrylic on canvas, 43.3 x 43.3 inch; Shony Rivnay, *Keep Movin’,* 2023, Acrylic on canvas, 43.3 x 43.3 inch. Right: Shony Rivnay, *Initiation of Movement No.1*, 2022, Acrylic on canvas, 61 x 77 inch.

Naomi Lev is a curator, cultural program director, and arts writer based in New York City. She works closely with living artists and calls her approach “Process Curating”—a method that follows a project from its earliest stages through final installation. It’s about long-term exchange and staying present as ideas shift.

May 9, 2025May 8, 2025, by John Mendelsohn

Mark Dagley at Abaton Project Space

In Conversation

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.

May 8, 2025May 7, 2025, by Etty Yaniv

West Chelsea Artists Open Studios 2025

© 2025, West Chelsea Artists Open Studios

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.