Paul Fägerskiöld, New York. July 1, 3586. View south towards the black hole Gaia BH1 (1,560 light years).
Exhibition Review by Art Spiel

Paul Fägerskiöld’s Expanding Fields

The first painting in Paul Fägerskiöld’s solo exhibition Ergosphere, at Peter Blum Gallery, offers a modest entrance into an immeasurable subject. A small, dark blue field scattered with points of light initially suggests what could be an image taken by NASA of deep space. Its title establishes an improbably precise appointment: New York. July 1, 3586. View south towards the black hole Gaia BH1 (1,560 light-years). We have a location, a direction, and a date. Whether these coordinates help us find our bearings is another matter.

Tatyana Kazakova and Anna Shukeylo
In Dialogue by Claire Haik

Two Shows in Dialogue: A Conversation with Tatyana Kazakova and Anna Shukeylo

New Jersey’s Watchung Arts Center brings together two distinct solo exhibitions: Entropic Flora by Anna Shukeylo and Symphony for the Unnoticed by Tatyana Kazakova. Both artists weave between abstraction and realism to create intimate portraits of nature, but their styles and vantage points diverge in dynamic ways. Kazakova fills the sprawling upstairs gallery with large drawings and paintings that pack the space with thickets, foliage, and tangled old growth, inviting viewers to contemplate the boundaries between wild spaces. In the lower gallery, Shukeylo’s compositions erupt with vibrant gestural brushmarks that capture fleeting moments of blooming flowers at their peak splendor. In this conversation, Kazakova and Shukeylo discuss their work, studio practices, and thematic vantage points, revealing the very different paths they take to create their images of nature.

Olive Ayhens and Ezra Johnson, installation view at Bookstein Projects
Exhibition Review by Etty Yaniv

Call Mom: Olive Ayhens and Ezra Johnson at Bookstein Projects

Pairing artists with assorted bodies of work spanning over a decade is not an easy task. In the current two-person exhibition at Bookstein Projects, it helps that each artist, regardless of subject matter, has a distinct approach to color and composition. And then, there is a story. Call Mom features paintings on canvas and paper by mother and son Olive Ayhens and Ezra Johnson. The family tie is a good cue for the curator and for us. Yet it may be more interesting to set aside the biography for a moment and, as you enter, experience the vibrant visual dialogue unfolding between two painters.

Installation view of After Throwing, featuring works by Yuqian He.
Featured Exhibition by Yueliu Huang

Beautifully Fall Apart

Women constantly fall, from rule, from discourse, from childbirth, from ecstasy, from sacrifice, from love, from anguish. We are still in the place of repeatedly coalescing to regain voice and visibility across political, economic, pedagogical, and creative fields. Comprehending it through cultural theorist and sociologist Angela McRobbie, we see that women are made to bear greater precarity, conditioned by institutions, by discourse, by an economy that asks for passion in place of pay; entering the creative fields comes with a demand to be self-managing, enterprising and unquestioningly cheerful about it. Women might be naturally leading the creative sector but meanwhile, fall heavily onto body, conditions and time, carrying its costs behind the facade of the neoliberal art industry.

Kate McQuillen, Installation View, Echo Resounds
Exhibition Review by Amanda Nedham

Some Other Way: Mythmaking Made Irresistible

Let me tell you about a complicated woman.

Echo is a shrewd mountain nymph in Ovid’s Metamorphoses. She acts in the service of a god and out of loyalty to her fellow nymphs, but also takes pride in the cleverness she employs to outwit Juno, so Jove can do what he pleases with the forest creatures. She is punished for her cleverness by being condemned to never speak for herself, only to repeat the last words spoken to her. Despite her limitations, she still makes herself clear. Later, when Narcissus declares that he will die before the lovesick Echo possesses his body, she smolders, “…you can possess my body.” A body that will ultimately wither away in a cavern, leaving only a voice that seeks communication and relation; a voice that endures, because these desires endure.

Ziyi Zhang, Installation view of PIXEL//FLESH
Featured Exhibition by Shuhan Zhang

When Pixels Grow Skin

Our generation’s idea of “skin” is increasingly formed on screens. Smartphone cameras automatically brighten skin tones, filters smooth pores, and editing software erases wrinkles while manufacturing new forms of gloss and texture. At first, these technologies seemed merely to modify images of the body: skin existed first in the physical world and was then captured and processed by the camera. Gradually, however, this sequence has been reversed. Technologically processed skin has begun to function as a new visual standard, while unedited skin can appear rough, incomplete, or somehow insufficient. It is a subtle shift: the body once entered the image, but now the image increasingly seems to redefine the body.

Paul Higham, Installation view of Data Sculpture
Exhibition Review by William Corwin

Searching for the Philosopher’s Stone: Paul Higham’s Data Sculpture

In the gallery at Eberle Studios in Homestead, Pittsburgh, we find ourselves transported to the workshop of a modern-day alchemist, Paul Higham, who has been experimenting with the digital creation and manipulation of form for almost fifty years. This is a space in which D’Arcy Wentworth Thompson (author of On Growth and Form) would be ecstatic, for everything flows teleologically through space and time: the flight pattern of a fly (Descartes Fly) intersects with the growth of a tobacco plant virus, and the Nike of Samothrace overlaps with segments of the program code for the video game Call of Duty.

Exhibition Review by Melissa Stern

Hew Locke at P.P.O.W Gallery

It’s hard to describe the magic of entering PPOW Gallery and seeing the flotilla of ships that Hew Locke has hung in the front room of the gallery. Gently moving in the air in response to the gesture of a visitor, these ships- all manner of sailing vessels- move through time, space, and history.