Jan Dickey, installation view, Compression at D. D. D. D.
Exhibition Review by Zoe Zheng

Jan Dickey: Compression at D. D. D. D.

In the basement of 79 Leonard Street, Jan Dickey’s paintings arrive as an eruption of color, as luminous and insistent as stars against a night sky. For Dickey, who grew up on a U.S. military base in Germany, the star was never a neutral emblem; it was a reminder of home. Dickey writes, in his artist statement, that he resists fixing the star to a single metaphor and chose it for its “open-endedness” and ability to “spark a highly specific range of symbolism and feelings.” In Compression, his current solo exhibition at D.D.D.D., Dickey subjects the star’s familiar geometry to processes of fragmentation, displacement, and recombination, testing how a single form can evoke disparate meanings as its material and pictorial contexts shift. His paintings thus become a kind of map, charting nostalgia, geography, and history across their tactile surfaces.

In Dialogue by Etty Yaniv

Gravity of Light at BMoCA

The Gravity of Light, on view at the Boulder Museum of Contemporary Art (BMoCA), features seven artists who use light as a key element in their work: Sami Al Karim, Bill Armstrong, Alyson Denny, Chuck Kelton, Anne Lindberg, Elizabeth Mead, and Gelah Penn. The media include photography, cameraless chemograms, video, drawing, and site-responsive installation, and several works were created specifically for the show. New York-based artist Kate Petley curated the exhibition; her own work combines photography and painting, which shaped her interest in light. Here, Petley discusses how the exhibition came together, the idea behind it, how the works sit together across the museum’s three spaces, and what she hopes light can offer viewers right now.

Does This Taste Funny? Installation image
In Conversation by Etty Yaniv

Does This Taste Funny?

John O’Connor and Melissa Brown were both students at Skowhegan twenty-six years ago. The idea for this collaboration came up over drinks in Chelsea, after Melissa saw The Apex is Nothing, the exhibition John co-curated at Pratt Manhattan Gallery. The two decided to co-curate a show at the nearby colleges where they teach, and humor emerged as the subject that interested them both. Working largely remotely while at separate residencies, they organized Does This Taste Funny?, a group exhibition of 40 contemporary artists at The Gallery at Heimbold Visual Arts Center, Sarah Lawrence College, and Lehman College Art Gallery, CUNY. The exhibition treats humor as a generative method for shifting perception. Six thematic groupings (The Body, Material Absurdity, Politics, Language, Art Humor, and Technology) show how artists use slapstick, satire, wordplay, parody, and deadpan to disarm viewers and expose incongruities in political, personal, and institutional life. In this conversation, John and Melissa discuss how Does This Taste Funny? came together.

Ivana Fischer, The Wild Gene ©Trotoar, photo D. Žižić
In Dialogue by Etty Yaniv

Ivana Fischer: After Belonging

Ivana Fischer’s work often begins with things that already carry a history: found images, old books, dolls, inherited symbols, and memories whose origins are not entirely our own. In The Wild Gene, her solo exhibition at Trotoar Gallery in Zagreb, these materials become a way of thinking through how a sense of self is formed, resisted, and revised. Moving between collage, objects, and stop-motion animation, Fischer returns to childhood, female experience, and the uneasy space between social roles and individual agency. The Wild Gene features her new film After Belonging, which follows a doll through shifting identities and imposed roles. It raises the question of how these structures shape our sense of self, and whether the “wild gene” can permeate them and flourish. The artist discusses the ideas and process behind her work.

In Dialogue by Ella Jackson

In Conversation with Claudia Bitrán: Titanic, Britney Spears, and Her Studio Practice

As a young girl, Claudia Bitrán would patiently wait for Britney Spears to come across the screen, then hurriedly hit Play and Record on the VCR, ready to rewind, rewatch, pause, and then pose, memorizing every nuance, note, mannerism, and movement. Born in Boston, raised in Chile, and now a Brooklyn-based multimedia artist, Bitrán’s work often imitates, recreates, and reimagines iconic artistry, from impersonating, painting, and paying homage to Britney Spears to recreating James Cameron’s 1997 film, Titanic, which Bitrán produced over the span of twelve years. Having first watched Titanic as a young girl, the splendor and sublimity of the ship, both in its triumph and tragedy on the seas, mesmerized her from the get-go, leading to a lifelong dedication to honoring and recreating the film through her own practice. Fascinated by spectacle, inspired by iconic artistry, Bitrán shares a glimpse into her artistic world and practice. 

Installation image, Under the Common Sea | 海的下面还有海
Featured Exhibition by Arete Xu

Under the Common Sea | 海的下面还有海

It is difficult for anyone to tell a story about being Chinese. On the surface, we have consummatory trends like “At A Very Chinese Time of My Life”; otherwise, we often see over-sensationalized narratives about geopolitical maneuverings. Yet, in the undertow, Chinese people work and make in conditions full of positional and situational complexity, and they belong to nuanced communities. Under the Common Sea is a group exhibition where artists and cultural workers came together to showcase the range and diversity of experiences, relationalities, and perspectives on identity among Chinese and Sinophone diasporic peoples in NY and across the United States.

Babs Reingold with Lost Trees, 2022
In Dialogue by Etty Yaniv

Babs Reingold: Forest Bathing at Leepa-Rattner Museum of Art 

For two decades, Babs Reingold has reflected throughout her mixed media work on the intersections of poverty, climate change, and beauty in the environment. In her current solo show, Forest Bathing at Leepa-Rattner Museum of Art, Tarpon Springs, Florida, brings together two ongoing series, Hair Nest and Lost Trees. Both series mark a deliberate shift toward celebrating the beauty and resilience of nature. Whether confronting social inequities, ecological destruction, or the persistence of beauty amid crisis, her work arises from a deep belief that art can create both awareness and change. By transforming unconventional materials—human hair, salvaged wood, silk organza—into immersive environments, Reingold invites visitors to think about their place within larger systems of survival, destruction, and renewal. We discussed this exhibition in the context of her larger body of work.

Meg Hitchcock, Fang (2025)
In Dialogue by Etty Yaniv

Fall Exhibitions at The Hammond Museum

At the Hammond Museum and Japanese Stroll Garden in North Salem, New York, art doesn’t stay inside the galleries. Since 1964, the museum has staged exhibitions that move from its gallery walls to its patio, tea hut, and garden paths, with about fifteen shows a year and the number growing. Contemporary and historical, drawn from many styles and cultural traditions, the exhibitions often aim to build cross-cultural understanding, while those set outdoors open a dialogue between art, nature, and personal reflection. This fall, five shows fill the grounds: Tomoko Amaki Abe’s Heaven Come Down in the Main Gallery, Meg Hitchcock’s Fang in the Hays and Goelet Galleries, Soli Pierce’s Poetry of Place in the Tea Hut, Matthew Weber’s Ground Shift on the Patio, and Kurt Steger’s In the Garden along the Japanese Stroll Garden. In this conversation, the museum team talks about how the Exhibition Committee selects its shows and how each one carries the museum’s mission forward.