Art Spiel

Art Spiel http://artspiel.org. Online publication: Contemporary Art and Culture. Founded by Etty Yaniv

When Naomi Okubo decides to begin working on one of her enthralling paintings, there is a multistep process that far pro...
11/07/2025

When Naomi Okubo decides to begin working on one of her enthralling paintings, there is a multistep process that far proceeds the brush gracing the canvas. The careful preparation of materials, digital and physical, allow Okubo to consolidate her thoughts and produce an organic depiction of her personal experience. The authenticity with which this is depicted is a result of the forethought and boundless introspection that she imposes upon herself. It is important to note that the artworks selected for the exhibition Naomi Okubo: Resonance on a Surface currently on view at Fou Gallery, weave a narrative fabric that chronologizes Okubo’s development as a visual artist.

Special thanks to our writer: Rory Martin
Featured Artists: Naomi Okubo
Featured Venue: Fou Gallery
Curator: Lu Solano

When my mother was very old, I wanted to tell her what it was like to be in the art world. I said, “It is a little like ...
10/07/2025

When my mother was very old, I wanted to tell her what it was like to be in the art world. I said, “It is a little like joining the carnival.” While not affording her much comfort, I tried to convey the disorderly balancing act of the ridiculous and the transcendent, the illusory and the real, the sincere and the piratical. I wanted to suggest a midway of precarious lives, thrill rides, and a dubious game of chance.

As an exhibition, Phantom Attractions is itself both an expression of the art world’s vanity fair, and a meditation on the carnivalesque through the works of five artists. The curator, Marie Catalano, has assembled pieces that deal with the conceptual sleight-of-hand, the spooky, the magic trick, and the stuff of artifice. She seems aligned with Bakhtin’s theory of the carnivalesque (both in social events and as a literary genre), wherein “a kind of eccentricity permits the latent sides of human nature to reveal and express themselves.”

Special thanks to our writer: John Mendelsohn
Featured Show: Phantom Attractions
Featured Artists:
Zoe Beloff
Dorothy F. Foster
Todd Hamel
Megan Mi-Ai Lee .miai
Hanna Rochereau .rochereau
Featured Venue: Astor Weeks

Phantom Attractions is organized by Marie Catalano. It runs through August 1, 2025.
On Thursday July 24 at 7 pm Zoe Beloff will lead a screening and lecture performance on the films of The Coney Island Amateur Psychoanalytic Society at the gallery.

Algernon Miller’s work bends space, time, and expectations, redefining what abstraction means when history isn’t optiona...
08/07/2025

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

Later that evening, I looked him up and learned that his work lives in major museum collections. His legacy was already embedded in the city I’ve written about for decades. I realized I already knew two of his pieces, not from galleries, but from life.

Special thanks to our writer: Laurie Gwen Shapiro
Featured Artist: Algernon Miller
Featured Venue: Ethan Cohen Gallery

Panel Discussion: Afrofuturism
Moderated by Seph Rodney
Panelists: Algernon Miller, Nanette Carter, Renee Cox, and Tyrone Mitchell
Thursday, July 10, 2025 | 6–8 PM
Ethan Cohen Gallery, 225 W 17th Street, NYC

Pathways of migration, transit, turbulence, and foundational knowledge lead us across the city through three boroughs th...
07/07/2025

Pathways of migration, transit, turbulence, and foundational knowledge lead us across the city through three boroughs that speak to time and reflection. Through the slightest gestures cleverly calculated by the selected artists, we can trace symbolic movements as indicative of something greater and inherently profound. This lineup is a reminder to delve into one’s humanity and to mine for empathy and change. These themes are as relevant today as they were long ago, and it’s important to acknowledge the work of artists who are using their talents to envision an equitable world for all. Let us carry forth this mindset so that the present we build is a true path forward towards a more mindful future.

Special thanks to our writer: Yasmeen Abdallah

Featured Galleries:
Transmitter Gallery
Zurcher Gallery
Vital Art Studios

Featured Artists:
Michael Pribich
Alice Adams
Graciela Cassel
Curator: Raluca Anchidin

Nanette Carter: A Question of Balance at the Montclair Art Museum is an extensive survey of 46 works from throughout the...
03/07/2025

Nanette Carter: A Question of Balance at the Montclair Art Museum is an extensive survey of 46 works from throughout the artist’s career curated by Mary Birmingham. Carter is known for her boundless abstractions and innovative works on mylar. This long-awaited show reflects Carter’s long history with the museum, the community, and the town itself. As one enters the show, the first piece is a video titled The Weight from the pandemic days, where Carter films herself balancing various pieces of her two-dimensional painting as more pieces get “stacked” onto the main mass. Setting the mood for the show, it not only introduces Nanette Carter in flesh but also important themes she has been working on throughout her career.

Special thanks to our writer: Anna Shukeylo
Featured Artist: Nanette Carter
Featured Show: A Question of Balance
Featured Venue: Montclair Art Museum
On View through: July 6, 2025
Curator: Mary Birmingham

The exhibition at Field of Play gallery titled Onslaught of the Moment was wonderful, intriguing and timely all in one. ...
02/07/2025

The exhibition at Field of Play gallery titled Onslaught of the Moment was wonderful, intriguing and timely all in one. The gallery’s exhibitions are always deeply considered and engaging, even within a smaller space, the works all shine and carry with them quite the presence. The shows are always curated with care, and this exhibition was no exception. Curated by Kate Sherman, the works of Lauren Clark, Masie Love, and Brian Karlsson each traverse space and show a progression of both time and experience through each artist’s process.

Special thanks to our writer: Taylor Bielecki .bielecki
Featured Artists:
Lauren Clark
Masie Love .art
Brian Karlsson
Featured Show: Onslaught of the Moment
Featured Venue: Field of Play gallery
Curator: Kate Sherman

MFA Boston Curator of Painting Katie Hanson visited the studio of the landscape painter Julia S. Powell . The resulting...
30/06/2025

MFA Boston Curator of Painting Katie Hanson visited the studio of the landscape painter Julia S. Powell . The resulting interview gives us an insight into Powell’s artistic process and her concept of a “fiction painter,” one that creates work at the intersection of abstraction and realism. Besides references to contemporary Impressionism, the interview addresses creating thickly-layered artworks that inspire introspection and acceptance of previous experiences—especially the unwanted ones. These layers serve as metaphors for embracing past struggles without regret. Powell’s work also provides an emotional refuge as a response to a chaotic and increasingly anxious life.

Special thanks to our writer Katie Hanson
Artist in Dialogue: Julia S. Powell

I am meeting Natalia at Kaliner gallery on a steamy day in June. The artist, who arrived here for this milestone exhibit...
25/06/2025

I am meeting Natalia at Kaliner gallery on a steamy day in June. The artist, who arrived here for this milestone exhibition, her first solo in New York, is uncertain when and how she will be able to return home to Israel. The war in Iran was launched just a week after the opening. Stranded away from her family, she remains determined and optimistic. This toughness in the face of chaos is also evident in her artwork. The paintings in Nightlight are vibrant, large, and striking.

Branching out from her collective of four painters, New Barbizon, which had its New York debut at Kaliner Gallery a year ago, Zourabova presents an individual vision that is less concerned with plein air painting or realism. Like Matisse or Bonnard, she paints her living space and family members with a bold and intuitive palette. The act of painting offers a refuge from a devastating reality without compromising a clear vision of it. This group of paintings offers hope, suggesting that what truly matters is love and life: family, pets, fresh flowers, a simple meal, and a dip in the pool.

Special thanks to our writer Noa Charuvi
Featured Artist: Natalia Zourabova
Featured Show: Nightlight
Featured Venue: Kaliner Gallery

Yuan Goang-Ming, known as the ‘father of Taiwanese video art,’ chose Abby Chen, the curator of contemporary art at San F...
24/06/2025

Yuan Goang-Ming, known as the ‘father of Taiwanese video art,’ chose Abby Chen, the curator of contemporary art at San Francisco’s Asian Art Museum to curate his presentation at the 2024 Venice Biennale, Everyday War. In the Palazzo Priccioni, a space that once served as a prison, his videos and installations poetically examined the unease of contemporary life, in works such as Dwelling, which presents an explosion in a living room, and Everyday Maneuver, showing the empty streets of Taipei during an air raid drill.

Special thanks to our writer Emily Wilson
Featured Artist: Yuan Goang-Ming
Curator in Dialogue: Abby Chen
Featured Venue: San Francisco’s Asian Art Museum

Lisbon in May presents itself as both majestic and enigmatic, its urban landscape punctuated by clusters of jacaranda tr...
23/06/2025

Lisbon in May presents itself as both majestic and enigmatic, its urban landscape punctuated by clusters of jacaranda trees in full bloom, casting cascades of purple blossoms across streets and sky like botanical fireworks. The city’s legendary seven hills form a natural amphitheater overlooking the Tagus River, creating an endless choreography of ascent and descent through Escher-like topographies. Glossy marble cobblestones snake through a labyrinth of narrow streets, flanked by stately yet sometimes weathered palaces and residential buildings adorned with brightly colored azulejo tiles that catch and reflect the city’s crystalline light, making the entire urban fabric shimmer.

Special thanks to our writer: Eva Zanardi

Yael Dresdner is fascinated by dualities of form & formlessness, energy & matter, creation & destruction, and explores ...
20/06/2025

Yael Dresdner is fascinated by dualities of form & formlessness, energy & matter, creation & destruction, and explores them through the landscape theme. Curated by Connie Lee founder of Art Lives Here , this solo show features three series of abstract landscape paintings, exhibited in contrast to the contemporary urban design of the Soho gallery space at Margalit Startup City . The 24 oil and pastel paintings were created by the artist over a span of 35 years.

Based on photographs the artist took in three locales – Provence, France; Galapagos Islands, Ecuador and Lake Sebago, NY – the work is both evocative of these places, and abstract. Landscape painting conventions are subverted by the intentional lack of a horizon line, creating a subtle tension between the surface of the canvas and the depth of field. Descriptive perspective is replaced by vertical depiction. Complete scenes are ignored in favor of focus on sections of the whole, suggesting you’re seeing just a part of a much larger place. The typical horizontal format of landscape painting is (mostly) cast aside. The color expressions differ from the local color. The source of light seems to come from within.

Images shown in the post:
Galapagos Memory: The Uncertainty of Form #5 2015-2016, Oil on canvas, 20 x 20 in.
Float #2, 2021, Oil on canvas, 36 x 24 in.
Travels in the South of France #22, 1991, Pastel on paper, 16 1/4 x 17 in.
In My Mind, In the Wild installation view

Upon entering the exhibition I was struck at the presence every artist’s work had. While every piece was quite different...
19/06/2025

Upon entering the exhibition I was struck at the presence every artist’s work had. While every piece was quite different from one another, they all shared similar conversations and offered viewers the opportunity to question human experience, histories, intimacy versus public viewing, and dealing with what it means to feel human. With nine artists, and diverse mediums, the complexities of being are shown clearly and each artist has their own take on “layers of being”.

Special thanks to our writer: Taylor Bielecki .bielecki
Featured Venue: New York Studio School
Curator: Narelle Sissons

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Art Spiel - Reflections on the work of contemporary artists.