reflective surfaces

July 8, 2025July 7, 2025, by Laurie Gwen Shapiro

Why Black Art Is Rarely Just Abstract

Algernon Miller’s work bends space, time, and expectations, redefining what abstraction means when history isn’t optional

*Algernon Miller Afrofuturism and Beyond*, Installation view, courtesy of Ethan Cohen Gallery

I met Algernon Miller the way I tend to meet people in the art world: by asking too many earnest questions at a panel. That day, at a Mel Edwards talk at Hauser & Wirth, I caught a smile from the soft-spoken man next to me. We chatted and clicked. Two native New Yorkers—he from Harlem, I from the Lower East Side—drawn together by chance, we followed each other with no particular reason, and what felt like nothing quietly became something.

December 20, 2022December 20, 2022, by Art Spiel

Saba Farhoudnia: Reflection at Jamaica Center for Arts & Learning

In conversation with Adèle Eisenstein and Saba Farhoudnia

A picture containing text, scene, gallery, room

Description automatically generated — *No Signal,* 2022, acrylic on acrylic mirror sheet, 7 panels, 48×16” ea., 48×112”. Photo: Farzan Ghasemi

Reflection, the solo show of Saba Farhoudnia in Jamaica Center for Art & Learning, highlights the cruel and tragic practice of so-called “honor” killing, by way of individual stories which give the victims their voice back, and shed a light on this reality for far too many women, girls and LGBTQ+ (taking at least 5000 lives annually per the United Nations Population Fund). The ensemble of individual panels and stories welcomes the visitor into a colorful and intriguing landscapes. Adèle Eisenstein, the curator of the show, says that the layers of paint reveal a reflective surface, which delivers a direct message to the observer—this might have been you. While dishonor killing is the most extreme end of the spectrum, the subject addressed also touches upon and exposes stratified layers of gender-based violence.

June 5, 2020July 10, 2020, by Etty Yaniv

Anne Peabody: Sunspike

In dialogue with Anne Peabody

A close up of a tree

Description automatically generated — Anne Peabody, Love Letter, 2020, Antique silver leaf, gold sparkle, and japan paint on glass, 24” x 18” Photo courtesy Blake McGrew – Moremen Gallery

A few weeks before the Corona pandemic assumed an overpowering presence in our daily lives throughout the whole country, Art Spiel has scheduled an interview with Anne Peabody on her upcoming solo exhibition at Moremen Gallery in Louiseville Kentucky, where she was born and raised. In that interview the artist discussed her unique technique and the thought process behind her landscapes that are filled with a subtle spirit of longing, memory and loss. Anne Peabody’s images are fine tuned to our Zeitgeist, the ghost of our time. She will participate in the Virtual Dumbo Open Studios 2020, that was scheduled for this weekend, June 4-7 and postponed in solidarity with the Movement for Black Lives matter (TBD).