williamsburg – Art Spiel

September 2, 2025September 2, 2025, by Art Spiel

Reclamation: Holland Tunnel Revisited in Newburgh

previewing

*Holland Tunnel Newburgh opens its sculpture garden. Julie Lindell, Everything, 2025, 144x144x144 in. Mixed media, found objects. Photo courtesy of Julie Lindell*

When artist Alexandra Limpert invited Janet Rutkowski to co-curate Reclamation in honor of her longtime friend and Holland Tunnel founder Paulien Lethen, Rutkowski accepted without hesitation. Although she had just finished curating and exhibiting in several projects, she embraced the challenge with what she describes as her “devil-may-care” approach. The exhibition’s title emerged quickly, reflecting her interest in the idea of recovery and renewal.

May 20, 2025May 21, 2025, by Laurie Gwen Shapiro

Sensuously Severe: Why Artists Call Don Voisine the Real Deal

*Lift Off,* 2024, Oil on wood panel, 24 x 20 inches

Don Voisine doesn’t do studio visits for Instagram. He doesn’t paint to please an algorithm. And he definitely doesn’t care if you call his new show “timely.” For over forty years, he’s explored the same visual territory—taut geometric abstraction with a personal twist—and somehow, he’s still finding fresh ground.

July 11, 2024July 13, 2024, by Art Spiel

Tom Fitzgibbon: Icebox4

In Dialogue

Installation view, *Pull~Push*, Kylie Heidenheimer, Matt Blackwell, Dorothy Robinson, Jackie Shatz, Louise P. Sloane (left to right)

The rise of larger mega galleries and art fairs in NYC marks the end of the intimate, clubby world of established gallerists. Tom Fitzgibbon, artist and co-founder of the art hub Icebox4 in Brooklyn, reflects on this shift: “Back in the day, I could walk into OK Harris and watch Ivan Karp playing poker in a smoke-filled back room or meet Robert Miller’s family at their Manhattan residence. Now it’s big money all the time, except for some smaller galleries like Karma, Steven Harvey, James Fuentes, and others keeping it grounded.”

February 19, 2024February 19, 2024, by Art Spiel

Grotto: Shrine @ Soloway

In conversation with Hannah Barrett and Saul Chernick

Saul Chrnick and Hannah Barrett in front of the gallery

The Grotto: Shrine group exhibition at Soloway Gallery, curated by Hannah Barrett and Saul Chernick, featuring works by Orli Swergold, Laurel Sparks, Ben Pederson, and Saul Chernick, merges the physical with the mystical. It showcases sculptures and installations that draw on the use of scale and a diverse range of materials—obsolete electronics, dried grains, paper pulp, and glitter. These elements serve to connect viewers to celestial, underworld, ritualistic, and imaginative realms, referencing the reflective and immersive qualities of shrines and grottos.

April 24, 2023April 18, 2023, by Melissa Stern

Out of Character at Pierogi in Brooklyn

James Eber.jpg — *James Esber- Ladybug. 2016. Acrylic on panel. 40 x 40 inches.*

A droll and aptly named group exhibition opened at Pierogi in Williamsburg in early April. Entitled Out of Character, the exhibition has been curated from local artists all working in and around the figure and focused on a humorous take on the human condition.

February 22, 2023February 22, 2023, by Art Spiel

A Grain of Salt | Un Grano de Sal at ELM

Featured Artist

*Styrofoam Cristalizador de Sal | Styrofoam Salt Crystalizer*, 2023. © Fernando Ruíz Lorenzo / Artist Rights Society, 2023

A Grain of Salt | Un Grano de Sal, the new exhibition at the Boiler in ELM Foundation features Fernando Ruíz Lorenzo’s new body of work—a series of paintings and installations with solar salt, styrofoam, acrylic, and aerosol paint. Ruíz Lorenzo’s work merges the history and political narratives of Puerto Rico’s colonial relationships to Spain and the United States.

January 4, 2023December 25, 2022, by Art Spiel

Smashworks Dance – CITY STORIES at Center for Performance Research

DANCE

Though I saw Smashworks Dance’s CITY STORIES over a month ago, it still lingers in the back of my mind. As a New Yorker, how could it not? The images from the show are the images of my daily life. Flashes of scenes and movements weave their way through my commute and my coffee run, popping up like absurdist smash-cuts in early-2000s sitcoms. That’s where Artistic Director Ashley McQueen’s magic lies: the source material is everyday, the execution is something else entirely.

May 23, 2022December 30, 2022, by Art Spiel

Fragile Rainbow: Traversing Habitats by ecoartspace

Featured Project: with curator Sue Spaid

A picture containing floor, indoor, ceiling, people

Description automatically generated — Tessa Grundon, *Invasive Species*, 2018-2021/2022, Asiatic Bittersweet root systems and border fencing, dimensions variable.

The group show Fragile Rainbow: Traversing Habitats at the Williamsburg Art and Historical Center in Brooklyn includes paintings, sculptures, videos, and installations addressing environmental issues by more than fifty artists from the New York City region who are members of ecoartspace. The title is based on Claire McConaughy’s oil painting, Fragile Rainbow, referencing both hope and loss. The show runs from May 7^th through June 4^th, 2022. Curator Sue Spaid elaborates on this large-scale group show.

October 22, 2021November 2, 2022, by Art Spiel

Hand Work and wear we are at ELM

Featured Project: with John Morton and Rahul Saggar

Installation in-process, Hand Work and wear we are. Photo by Yumiko Yamazaki

Composer John Morton and Artist/Engineer Rahul Saggar created an audience-activated environment at the boiler space in the ELM Foundation in Williamsburg, inviting visitors to experience a new appreciation of their sonic and spatial surroundings. Visitor’s movements activate a sensor that produces sounds, while their steps simultaneously wear away a walking path on a painted floor surface. The two inter-related installations explore both physical and sonic pathways, uncovering and revealing multiple layers of sound and color, mirroring our everyday meanderings and encounters.

September 19, 2021November 2, 2022, by Art Spiel

Remade in Brooklyn by the Birdhouse Gallery

Art Spiel Photo Story

Back in about 2009 friends invited artist Sunny Chapman to a gallery opening in their apartment, a gallery of tiny art in an about 1 x 2 foot rectangular inset in one of their apartment walls. Sunny Chapman loved the idea and wanted to do one in her own apartment too but since they lived close by she thought it would be disrespectful. Yet, the idea of making a tiny gallery was always nagging at her.