Siri Aurdal, a Norwegian sculptor and painter who elevated industrial materials into sleek expressions of art’s social imperative, died on March 31. She was 88. Galleri Riis, her representative, announced her death on social media, writing that she died in Oslo surrounded by friends and family. Though born in 1937 to two prominent Scandinavian artists—Synnøve Anker Aurdal (1908–2000), a textile artist who represented Norway at the 1982 Venice Biennale, and painter Leon Aurdal (1890–1949)—Siri Aurdal forged a visual identity uniquely her own within the Scandinavian art scene of the late 1960s. A core concern of her practice was the potential for change in people, places, and materials—a...

Encountering Khajistan on Instagram is both amusing and perplexing. That’s by design. The grid is an array of meme-like visuals and found photography: WhatsApp forwards, domestic interiors, feet, half-nude hairy athletes, over-sexualized showgirls, men in shalwar kameez locked in intimate embraces or exchanging lip-to-lip kisses. The entire account is tinged with an air of “if you know, you know.” And if you do indeed know, there’s a cheekiness to these images, imbued with double entendre. Behind this bizarre and enigmatic menagerie is an expansive archive of censored, banned, and overlooked media from South Asia to the Maghreb. The project sets out to “preserve real life that somehow disappears...

Colossal Members have helped us reach fantastic milestone! We’re delighted to share that this month, we’ve officially assisted us in funding 100 projects in classrooms around the nation via DonorsChoose. These include supplies and materials for K-12 students, some of whom are learning about and experiencing art for the first time. A portion of all Membership fees are allocated to this initiative, and so far we’ve been able to contribute more than $13,000, making a substantial difference in numerous learning spaces. And since we’re based in Chicago, we especially like to support classrooms here at home. Here’s what a few recent recipients had to say after their projects were funded: “These supplies...

During China’s Bronze Age (c. 2070 – 771 B.C.), the durable alloy was an indispensable resource, central to the development of early Chinese civilization. Under the Zia, Shang, and Zhou dynasties, China developed advanced metallurgy techniques and, along with them, systems for managing them at scale. The Bronze age in China was thus not only characterized by its bronze tools and weaponry, but by its advanced social and political structures. As reported in the China Daily, excavations over the last two years at the Shenduntou archeological site near the Yangtze River have unearthed around 1,000 artifacts linked to the bronze industry under the Zhou dynasty. While more modest than the ritual bronze vessels...

The John S. and James L. Knight Foundation on April 8 revealed the five recipients of its 2026 Arts + Tech Fellowships. Administered by United States Artists, the annual program supports artists exploring fresh approaches to technology and new media. LIZN’BOW, Miguel Novelo, Rhonda Holbertson, Taeyoon Choi, and Wesley Taylor will each receive an unrestricted […]

Our round-up of the latest art publications

We speak to the author of a new book that looks at how making prints has been vital for many famous artists

hand-traced stone silhouettes build Wenbin Li’s graphic system
 
A collection of 100 stones gathered along a coastline forms the basis of Numerous Difference, a project by Wenbin Li that translates natural forms into a graphic identity system. The stones were collected sequentially along the shoreline without selection or categorisation. Each object was numbered on site, and its exact position along the waterline was recorded.
 
In the studio, the designer hand-traced the outline of each stone, generating a set of 100 unique silhouettes. These forms serve as the foundation for a graphic system applied across multiple formats, including posters, packaging, a billboard, and a tote bag. The shapes, defined by...

The Victoria and Albert Museum's extensive National Art Library provides a rich source for a new angle on the ambitious project in Julius Bryant's latest book

Pete Davidson, the lovable lunk who made his name on Saturday Night Live and went on to star on the silver screen (as well as in the annals of dubious boat-ownership), put his house in suburban Westchester, New York, on the market—while revealing a considerable art collection assembled over the years. The listing with Ginnel Real Estate includes an asking price of $2.28 million for a 2,300-square-foot country house with four bedrooms and three bathrooms on a lot with an idyllic pond and “six spectacular acres with rolling lawns, old stone walls, ornamental trees, and perennial gardens.” The many amenities include a wine cellar, sauna, hot tub, cold plunge tub, and a covered lap pool with “swim jet and...

Shiva Zahed Gallery, which opened in February, will focus on contemporary artists—but war in Iran poses a major obstacle, even after the announcement of a ceasefire

The publication examines the journey from the artist’s early patronage, paid for by plantation money, to his depiction of a massacre in “The Slave Ship”

At year’s end, Madeleine Grynsztejn will leave her post after 18 years as director of the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, which bills itself as one of the world’s largest museums devoted to the art of today. The museum, which launched in 1967 with a Fluxus happening by John Cage, Dick Higgins, and Allison Knowles, soon expanded its mission to collecting, and its holdings have now grown to include over 2,000 pieces. One early claim to fame: It was the first US building to be wrapped by legendary artists Christo and Jeanne-Claude, in 1969. Grynsztejn looks back on a tenure in which she oversaw a doubling of the museum’s operating budget. Major gifts included one from Greek collector Dimitris...

When the Basque regional government made a formal request last week to Spain’s Ministry of Culture to authorize a temporary loan of Pablo Picasso’s Guernica (1937), the region’s head of government, Lehendakari Imanol Pradales, said he expected more robust discussion on the issue after Easter Sunday. According to El País, that discussion came on Tuesday—and the culture minister, Ernest Urtasun, was unequivocal. During a government oversight session in Spain’s Senate, Urtasun told senator Igotz López, of the Basque National Party, that he would not approve the transfer request. “I understand the sensitivity behind this request,” Urtasun said. “We are talking about a work linked to the memory of...

Two board members of the esteemed Djerassi Resident Artists Program in California's Santa Cruz Mountains visited financier Jeffrey Epstein’s Little Saint James island in 2011, two years after Epstein’s first conviction for soliciting prostitution from a minor, the Department of Justice’s recently released files revealed.In an email sent from art collector and Epstein’s reputation manager Al Seckel to redacted recipients, trustees Alexander Maxwell Djerassi and Michael Molesky are listed as guests on an itinerary dated the weekend of January 7, 2011. The itinerary was for the “Mindshift Conference,” a convening of academics in the fields of science and medicine, with events at the Ritz Carlton...

custom portable retro lo-fi player with cassette tape
 
Iulius Curt creates a custom portable retro player with a cassette tape that records lo-fi songs from streaming apps and smartphones. In a nutshell, the user’s smartphone sends music wirelessly to the machine, which then records it onto a moving loop of tape, the same way a cassette worked in the 1980s. Then, a second read head picks the sound back up a moment later and plays it through a speaker. This machine starts its life as a Privileg TC 183, a mid-weight Japanese cassette deck. The designer kept the recording circuitry, from the bias oscillator and erase head to the tape equalisation, because redesigning those from scratch would have taken...

For the first time in more than 50 years, NASA launched a mission to the Moon. A lot has changed since 1972, when we last checked in on the enormous, rocky satellite, but there is much to learn—and revisit—when it comes to traveling through deep space and considering what, as NASA describes it, a “long-term return” to our lunar companion could look like. The Artemis II mission, which is currently underway and scheduled to last a total of 10 days, has also released some remarkable images of our home planet. A striking image of the Earth “setting” behind the cratered Moon takes a truly unique view of our planet and prompts us to consider our perspective. It’s reminiscent of one of the most iconic...

Organizers of the Counterpublic Triennial have announced the forty-seven artists and collectives participating in the Saint Louis event’s third iteration, to take place September 12–December 12. Curated by the five-person team of Jordan Carter, Raphael Fonseca, Stefanie Hessler, Nora N. Khan, and Wanda Nanibush, this year’s edition is titled “Coyote Time” after a commission by […]

American tenor Charles Castronovo performs a bit of Weber's Der Freischütz ahead of the opportunity to hear Berlioz's take on the score at Carnegie Hall next week.

The inaugural New Orleans Opera Festival goes big across the Big Easy.

Francisco Gonzalez Camacho  
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
 
Francisco Gonzalez Camacho’s Website
Francisco Gonzalez Camacho on Instagram

Michelangelo Pistoletto rethinks coexistence in ‘Three Mirrors’
 
Michelangelo Pistoletto presents Three Mirrors (2026), a moving image commission created in collaboration with public art platform CIRCA and broadcast daily across nine global city screens at 20:26 local time, running through June 30th, 2026. Filmed at Cittadellarte in Biella, the foundation Pistoletto established as a space for rethinking the role of art in society, the work extends one of the artist’s most enduring ideas, presenting the mirror not as image, but as an opening. Here, at the age of 92, Pistoletto returns to the act of drawing directly onto mirrored steel, transforming it into a time-based and performative sequence that...

When we think of Los Angeles, we often picture seemingly endless sunny skies, postmodern downtown skyscrapers, Hollywood, and beachy enclaves like Venice. But there’s also a mysterious, lurking side of Los Angeles popularized by legendary gangsters like Mickey Cohen and the hardboiled novels of Raymond Chandler, published between the 1930s and 1950s. For Emmy award-winning director and photographer Daniel Sackheim, this gritty, shadowy underbelly lends itself to a series of bold black-and-white photos that highlight the noir valence of this iconic hub. His forthcoming book, The City Unseen, leans into L.A.’s dualities, focusing on historic buildings, trains, and individuals walking through urban spaces....

This spring, Malta Biennale returns for its second edition. Launched in 2024, the event lies at the intersection of contemporary art and cultural heritage, marrying the two together through its exhibitions and historic venues. Across 11 weeks, museums and sites are transformed, adding new layers to the country’s already complex and colourful history, turning the Maltese Islands into a melting pot of international artistic activity. The 2026 theme is Clean | Clear | Cut, with 130 artists from 43 nations presenting work that tackles the topic. Mario Cutajar, Biennale President and Heritage Malta Chairman, says: “The second edition of the Biennale is going to cement the future of this international...

Array

There is a certain kind of clarity that only comes from walking. Moving through the streets of Paris recently, the rhythm of my steps accompanied by a favorite podcast playing in my ears, I found myself captivated by the idea that our reality is inherently unfinished. The world around us is always in a state of becoming, constantly leaning toward what German philosopher Ernst Bloch articulated as the the Not-Yet (Noch-Nicht). It is a concept that perfectly anchors the spirit of our new chapter, and it immediately brought to mind something Rainer Maria Rilke wrote in Letters to a Young Poet: ‘The future enters into us, in order to transform itself in us, long before it happens.’
For so long, we have treated...

JeeYoung Lee transforms blank rooms into physical dream spaces
 
Seoul-based artist JeeYoung Lee has long explored the idea of dreams as spaces that can be entered and examined, making use of the blank room as a backdrop.
 
Working within the confines of her studio, Lee builds each scene by hand before photographing it, with her own body placed amongst the composition. While the scale remains domestic, almost contained, every surface is activated. This approach positions the room as an active field where the mind takes shape as a series of physical spaces, be them vibrant and playful or mystic and ethereal.
Resurrection, 2011
 
 
stage of the mind: environments built from imagination
 
As part of her...

Last week, Josh Kline went viral for an inflammatory essay on the impossibility of making ends meet as an artist in New York City — a truth universally acknowledged yet rarely taken seriously. But as critic Aruna D’Souza opines today, his conclusion that artists should leave the city altogether is not a long-term solution to the affordability crisis. “We’re long past knowing where the problem lies,” she writes. “What we need to do now is figure out what to do about it.”Meanwhile, Claudia Ross probes another open secret in the art world, predatory student-teacher relationships, in critic and former painter Larissa Pham’s new novel on the subject. Staff Writer Rhea Nayyar also reports on Donald...

Janet Baker sings Elgar's Sea Pictures with such honesty and clarity and fervor.

Array

Array

Spring in London brings a wave of artistic innovation, and none more compelling than the archival exhibition of Senga Nengudi at Whitechapel Gallery. Running from 1 April to 14 June, the show offers a glimpse into the work of an artist whose practice spans sculpture, performance and choreography. Nengudi’s work exists at the intersection of the corporeal and the sculptural, exploring the elasticity of materials, the rhythms of movement and the lived experience of the body. Through photographs, films and archival material, the exhibition illuminates the experimentation that defined her most productive period between 1972 and 1982. It is an opportunity to encounter a body of work both historically significant...

Array

Array

Faith Ringgold, “Tar Beach II” (1990), silk screen on silk with pieced fabric (photo Jasmine Weber/Hyperallergic)“The first step towards a cure is admitting you have a problem,” Josh Kline writes in “New York Real Estate and the Ruin of American Art,” which appeared online last week and immediately set the art circles I belong to abuzz. The problem, as Kline sees it, is pretty unarguable: New York City’s deeply inequitable real estate market is having an impact on what art is made, where it is shown, how it is sold. “Meaningful art, relevant for society and our time, may not be sustainable under the current conditions here,” he says.Why bother writing a response to a piece whose basic premise...

It’s been almost eight years since Swedish painter and occultist Hilma af Klint’s retrospective Paintings for the Future at the Guggenheim Museum in New York tore a hole through the canon of abstraction in art history. With its record-breaking attendance, the show catapulted the late mystic from the throes of relative obscurity in North America and established her as a pioneer of the movement who had slipped under the radar in part because of her devotion to spiritualism and Theosophy. Although contentious, the newfound spotlight on af Klint stimulated public interest in the sacred and the supernatural, invoking a new feminist artist collective that both questions and resists the sidelining of alternative...

Visiting Agata Ingarden at Triangle-Astérides, Lucy McKenzie at Crac Occitanie, and Marlie Mul at Mécènes du Sud

South Seas, a resort located on Captiva Island in Florida, has purchased all twenty-two acres of the Robert Rauschenberg property located on the same island, according to reports. South Seas, which reportedly spent $45 million on the deal, announced the sale on March 31, inciting the dismay of many in the local community who wanted to see the artist’s […]

Nothing and nobody is perfect. Imperfections can be found everywhere. From June 18 to 21, experience how these defects and shortcomings, these imperfections and flaws, can lead to fascinating discoveries and beautiful creations at the 2026 Bosch Parade. This edition’s theme, Powered by Defects, pays a contemporary tribute to the large and small wrongdoings in the world.  Dedicated to painter Hieronymus Bosch (1450-1516), the biannual parade honors the artist’s fascination with the fantastical and absurd. Bosch is known for his symbolic paintings, often tying in gruesome representations of the afterlife and human desire and fear. He is also regarded as one of the earliest genre painters, depicting common...

When Moffat Takadiwa sees a pile of rubbish—old technology parts, personal care items, clothing—he doesn’t just see a bunch of junk. The Harare, Zimbabwe-based artist has spent the better part of two decades collecting thousands upon thousands of pieces of plastic and metals foraged from landfills near the city’s Mbare neighborhood, where heaps of electronic equipment waste, also known as e-waste, ends up in illicit dump sites. In his studio, vast collections of colorful objects are meticulously sorted into collections. Takadiwa is known for his elaborate sculptures made from what he describes as “everyday consumer residue”—discarded computer keyboard keys, toothbrush heads, plastic combs,...

Back-to-back casts in the Metropolitan Opera's revivals of Madama Butterfly and La traviata offer ample opportunity for soprano-gazing.

Intimacy is never simple. It is a tension between visibility and concealment, between the everyday and the exceptional, a fragile architecture of perception and emotion. In Under the Sunlight, There is No True Intimacy, No.223 charts this territory with a lens that hovers between observation and empathy, illuminating moments that are at once fleeting and enduring. Desire is the undercurrent of the work, a force that navigates social expectation while asserting private freedom. The exhibition evokes the pulse of life in its subtle rhythms: a glance exchanged in a sunlit corner, the quiet geometry of bodies in motion, the way urban and natural spaces seem to whisper with latent meaning. These photographs do not...

It's not where you start but where you Finnish

Billionaire art dealer David Nahmad, who spent eleven years attempting to prove in court that he was the rightful owner of Amedeo Modigliani’s 1918 painting Seated Man with a Cane, has lost his case. New York Supreme Court judge Joel M. Cohen on April 3 ruled that the canvas in fact belonged to the estate of Jewish antiques dealer Oscar […]

When Frode Bolhuis got his start as a sculptor, he worked classically, with monumental figures made of bronze and metal—the kind of thing you see in a public square or park. But then the Dutch sculptor discovered the simplest of mediums, polymer clay, and his art practice exploded into a technicolor world of hue and […]
The post For Frode Bolhuis, The Figure Contains Life’s Mysteries and Its Multitudes first appeared on Hi-Fructose Magazine.

Pictoplasma Berlin  
   
   
   
   
   
   
 
Pictoplasma Berlin Website
Pictoplasma Berlin on Instagram

Five video works by Angelica Mesiti (b. 1976) are now on view at Museum Tinguely in Basel. It’s the first comprehensive solo show of the Paris-based artist to open in Switzerland. Mesiti has worked at the intersection of performance, sound and video since the early 2000s, creating pieces that explore the ways in which nonverbal communication – like dance, music and movement – can build connections between people. It’s an approach that has led to international recognition, including representing Australia – her home country – at the 58th Venice Biennale in 2019. Museum Tinguely’s exhibition is, fittingly, called Reverb – in reference to both acoustic reverberation, and the way human...

Architecture, memory and the poetics of concrete converge in Brutal Scotland, an exhibition that situates post-war modernism within a broader cultural and emotional terrain. At its core, the show interrogates how built environments embody ideological ambition, social rupture and aesthetic endurance. Photography here becomes not merely documentary but interpretive. The tension between decay and resilience runs throughout, suggesting that these structures are far from static relics. Instead, they operate as living documents of a nation’s evolving identity. In this sense, the exhibition positions Brutalism as a lens through which to reconsider histories of progress, failure and reinvention. Emerging from this...

Limited Edition print by Gerhard Wichler It’s been a distinctly textured start to the year at THE GAZE, with an abundance of invigorating artistic narratives emerging across forms and disciplines, even as the wider climate feels increasingly unsettled. I’m delighted to share the completion and publication of a candid, close‑range interview with abstract artist Gerhard Wichler—an exchange that brought a refreshing clarity to the mayhem of today’s world. You can read the interview here . We...

Britt Lucas Bennett  
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
 
Britt Lucas Bennett’s Website
Britt Lucas Bennett on Instagram

When the Bulls Fest—a raging celebration of the iconic and famed NBA team—first happened at Chicago’s United Center in 2022, Kyle Cobban was one of the contributing artists to The Art of the Game exhibition. It’s a piece that encapsulates Cobban’s aesthetic vision. Working with graphite and paper, the Chicago-based artist makes small, detailed drawings […]
The post Kyle Cobban Draws From The Unknown first appeared on Hi-Fructose Magazine.

For our fourth annual Photo Awards, supported by Format, we selected 5 winners for the following categories: Colour, Nature, Portrait, Street, and Student. It is our pleasure to introduce the winner of the Portrait category: Sima Choubdarzadeh.
Originally from Iran and now based in Berlin, Sima is an award-winning documentary photographer with a background in philosophy. For the past decade, her work has focused on migration, identity, and resistance, often centering people living through tension and change.
This year’s awards were sponsored once again by Format, an online portfolio builder specializing in the needs of photographers, artists, and designers. With nearly 100 professionally designed website...

 
FEELING SEEN is guest curated by Jenna Eady as part of our Curate for the Community series.
Our sense of feeling goes beyond the physical – it’s emotional, atmospheric, and relational. It’s through these feelings that we connect with one another on a deeper level.
FEELING SEEN is about exploring how photography can express both internal and external sensations – whether it’s the rush of anticipation, the dis/comfort of the body, nostalgia of memory or tension of conflict. This project believes in photography’s power to evoke real emotional resonance. Its about creating the space for others to feel something.
The project aims to amplify diverse voices and create opportunities for new perspectives...

Greta Kresse  
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
 
Greta Kresse’s Website
Greta Kresse on Instagram

In the process of painting someone, artist Jenny Morgan reveals not only what shows, but what doesn’t show. Her vibrant and emotional oil paintings of figures hover in a place that is between realism and abstraction, where many of her subjects confront their viewer with an electric stare that braves against the vulnerable moment in […]
The post Very Strange Days: The Paintings of Jenny Morgan first appeared on Hi-Fructose Magazine.

Growing up as a queer kid in the ‘80s, I was well aware from an early age that I was different, and that different was not okay, especially living in Missouri,” says New Mexico artist Anthony Hurd, who recently shifted away from abstracts, to delve into what may be deemed “controversial” figurative work. Not only […]
The post Boy Howdy! Anthony Hurd Embraces the Personal first appeared on Hi-Fructose Magazine.

The 78th Issue of Hi-Fructose includes a cover a feature on Nieves Gonzalez, the art of Grip Face, The landscapes of Jennifer Nehrbass, the soft sculptures of Ela Fidalgo, the stitched urban landscapes of Laura Ortiz Vega, the art Jeffrey Gibson, Yu Jin Young’s once transparent figures, and the paintings of Fatima De Juan.  Plus […]
The post Hi-Fructose issue 78 is Coming! first appeared on Hi-Fructose Magazine.

We are pleased to announce that DO YOU LIKE LOVE? is now available to order!
Do you like love? The question came from a conversation, recalled by a friend. Her elderly neighbour used to cry for ‘elp!’ and Jane’s husband Pip would rush to her aide. Sometimes she’d fallen, but rarely; although she was blind she had lived in that house for 60 years, she knew every inch of it. A house filled with memories of her husband, their life together, and her aloneness after his death. On this one day that she called out, she was found sitting with the television on, a black and white film playing out a romantic scene from the 1950s.
‘Do you like love, Pippy?’ she said, ‘I like love.’
Quiet gestures,...

Studio Loan wants to connect LA artists with the space they need — for free By Kristine Schomaker 60% of artists in Los Angeles don't have a studio outside their home. Or one at all. I think about that number a lot. Because space — or the lack of it — shapes everything. What you can make. How you can show it. Whether you can even invite someone in to see the work. Studio visits matter. Not in some abstract networking way, but in the real, tangible way where someone comes to your space, stands...

 
Who doesn’t love a good photo book? To flick through the pages, be enlightened, educated, distracted and absorbed into another world through another’s eyes? Totally fantastic!
We’re here to share our Photobook Favourites – a selection of our favourite photography books recommended by the Shutter Hub community, an archive of titles we’ve enjoyed, and a reference point for you to explore. Las Pelilargas, Irina Werning, GOST
For 18 years photographer Irina Werning travelled across Latin America to seek out those with long hair to uncover and understand its cultural significance. Her book Las Pelilargas (the long-haired ones) brings together this body of work in an exploration and celebration of...