In 2019, Ralph Rugoff curated the 58th International Art Exhibition at the Venice Biennale under the title May You Live in Interesting Times.Well, Ralph, you got what you wished for, and then some. Times are so "interesting" now that they've upended the next biennale before it’s even opened.The latest development is the collective resignation of the show's international jury. The jurors haven't given an explicit reason for their decision, but indicated it had something to do with their recent announcement that countries accused of committing crimes against humanity (namely, Israel and Russia) will not be considered for awards. I expect more drama during the press preview next week. Our team...

using choreography to navigate restrictive urban space
 
Silent Embrace is a short film by Luuk Walschot that examines the relationship between the human body and the built environment, focusing on how urban design shapes movement, behavior, and presence in the city. The film is set in Amsterdam, where elements of so-called hostile architecture have become increasingly visible within the public realm.
 
Rather than approaching the subject through explanation, the project uses choreography and physical interaction to explore how bodies respond to restrictive spatial conditions. Benches, barriers, and urban fixtures are presented not as neutral objects, but as elements that guide, limit, and redirect use....

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We live in a time of suppression — by governments, by corporations, by culture. What do we do against it? Let us show you. Below, we take you into a revolutionary photo studio in Mali that chronicled a nation's independence. A document of a city devastated by the AIDS crisis through portraits not just of people but of inanimate objects. A meditation on grief and death, and also a monument to the city's first Arabic-speaking enclave. These are artists who made or are making works from all kinds of places, from an attic during World War II, to the California state psychiatric system, to the very center of the art world. Here is art that is playful, cerebral, feral — art that offers a way...

Kim Dacres gravitates toward renewal and care, transforming worn rubber into expressive sculptural portraits. The New York-based artist twists and braids tired treads into sleek buns and rows typical of Black hairstyles, which she embellishes with gear-like crowns and jewelry made of metal bike chains. Spray painting the material to mask marks, Dacres utilizes what might otherwise be deemed worthless to create bold visages. A new body of work extends a series of celebratory busts the artist made to honor those who’ve inspired and influenced her. On view this month at Charles Moffett, Lost on a Two Way Street follows this trajectory, while adding flatter wall works evocative of Victorian-era cameos. “The...

With widespread boycott campaigns, a crowdfunded United States pavilion exhibition, and the jury's collective resignation before it even starts, the 61st Venice Biennale is moving more like a circus than the “Art Olympics.” In the latest twist, the Golden Lion awards have been shelved altogether this year, and it will now be up to the public to vote on the best national pavilion and best artist in the main exhibition.The Biennale Foundation announced the establishment of the “Visitor Lions” shortly after the Biennale's award jury issued its collective resignation yesterday, April 30. The jury's decision was an escalation of its previous statement of intent to omit “countries whose...

After the ruling, President Donald Trump imposed new rate of up to 15%, although this is also being challenged and is likely to be temporary

kit stacks prefabricated timber volumes for swiss Tower house
 
Located in the Rhine Valley near St. Gallen, Switzerland, the Tower House by kit architects is a three-story detached dwelling that explores vertical living through prefabricated timber construction within a compact footprint. Designed for a family of four, the project occupies a constrained triangular site close to the historic village center, where considerations of scale, orientation, and privacy inform the layout.
 
The building is positioned to maintain distance from neighbouring structures, reduce overlooking, and open views toward the surrounding landscape. The site strategy also anticipates future development, allowing for the potential...

Construction crews building President Trump’s hostile border wall razed a portion of a Native American archeological site in Arizona estimated to be at least 1,000 years old.Approximately 60 to 70 feet of the 272-foot-long Las Playas Intaglio, a design etched into the ground in Southwest Arizona’s Cabeza Prieta National Wildlife Refuge, suffered damage from heavy construction machinery, as first reported by the Washington Post. The intaglio, a type of geometric or figurative drawing etched into arid desert pavements, resembles a fish and likely served as a sacred site for ancestors of the Tohono O’odham Nation, which lies east of the refuge. In a statement to Hyperallergic, a spokesperson for the...

Curator and writer Essence Harden has been appointed senior curator at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts (YBCA) in San Francisco. They will take up their new role on May 18. Harden, who is known for their deep interest in cutting-edge art and for bringing artists into the curatorial process, recently curated the 2026 […]

Martha Ortiz, the director of the Museo de Arte Moderno de Bogotá (MAMBO), has left her role amid allegations that she harassed museum employees and created a toxic environment at the institution. The museum in a statement said that Ortiz was retiring and that it would begin a search for a successor. Until one is […]

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On Wednesday, at a ceremony held at La Marmora barracks in Rome, the United States officially returned 337 looted antiquities to Italy in a repatriation ceremony, the New York Times reports.  221 objects were repatriated via collaboration with the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office, while the remaining 116 were recovered on April 10, 2026 as the […]

New Jersey’s Montclair Art Museum has hired Kate Kraczon as chief curator to replace former appointee Gail Stavitsky, Artnews reports. Kraczon was most recently director of exhibitions and chief curator at the David Winton Bell Gallery at Brown University, but she was terminated last December as, amidst austerity measures, the university underwent a rash of […]

There is a moment in many artists’ careers when they realize the art world is far more comfortable protecting objects than protecting the people who make them.It rarely announces itself. There is no singular betrayal. More often, the shift happens quietly, inside a document presented as routine. “Standard agreement.” “Minor revision.” “Just a formality.” The moment arrives when an artist stops skimming and starts reading.Mine came before an exhibition had even opened.I was preparing for a show with a gallery I was working with for the first time when I received the initial consignment agreement. A consignment agreement allows a gallery to take possession of artwork and sell it on the artist’s...

New York–based artist Guadalupe Maravilla had traveled to Venice last weekend to finalize the installation of his work at the 2026 Venice Biennale, a crowning achievement for any artist. But that situation, which he first posted about on Instagram, soured Thursday evening after he had left the Arsenale, one of the Biennale’s main venues, when two police officers approached him. “After completing the installation of my work at the Venice Biennale, I was racially profiled by police in the streets of Venice, who attempted to take me in for questioning,” Maravilla told ARTnews in a written statement. “Two officers initially stopped me and demanded my documents, then called in additional backup and...

A Botticelli painting placed under an export ban in an effort to keep it in the UK was acquired by the Klesch Collection and will stay in England by way of a three-year loan to the Ashmolean Museum at the University of Oxford. As reported by The Art Newspaper, the work—titled The Virgin and Child Enthroned and dated to the 1470s—had been valued last May at £10.2 million (around $13.9 million). Previously it had sold at Sotheby’s in London for £9.7 million ($13.2 million). In a statement, the director of the Ashmolean Museum, Xa Sturgis, said the institution “warmly welcomes this acquisition of a painting by one of the most important artists in the Western tradition, and we’re so pleased that it...

Just two months after becoming a trustee of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Jennifer Rubio, along with her husband, Stewart Butterfield, have pledged $23 million to the New York museum. Rubio is an entrepreneur who founded the ubiquitous travel brand Away, and Butterfield, who is on the boards of the Whitney Museum of American Art and the Dia Art Foundation, is a software executive who co-founded Flickr and Slack. The gift is earmarked for the Met’s internship program and will be used to ensure that all undergraduate and graduate internships are fully paid positions. The pledge, said Met director Max Hollein in a statement, will support “a continuous pipeline for new voices and innovative ideas to...

Powerhouse Parramatta soon to complete in sydney
 
With architecture by Moreau Kusunoki with Genton, Powerhouse Parramatta is taking shape in Western Sydney, Australia. The ambitious project, which is expected to complete in late 2026, will bring a colossal museum to Parramatta, a part of the city that has been growing fast but has had fewer institutions of this scale.
 
What stands out first is how the building handles its size. Two main volumes sit side by side, each wrapped in a deep structural skin. Instead of relying on a flat facade, the architects push the structure outward, turning it into something that can be read immediately from the street. It gives the building a presence without leaning on...

The central attraction at the Venice Biennale is its main exhibition, a curated show meant to pinpoint a dominant theme in art as it stands right now. But all around it are pavilions staged by countries, with each nation selecting one or more artists to mount their own show or installation. These national pavilions have contributed to the common conception of the Biennale as the art world’s Olympics: a place where stars are born and nations flex their might. The national pavilions often tend to remain in flux until the very end. In 2024, the wars in Ukraine and Gaza upended several nations’ plans to exhibit at the Biennale. In 2026, those conflicts have once again roiled this area of the Biennale, with...

The veteran provocateur talks about his return to the enduring motif of Santa Claus, and his ongoing collaboration with the German actress Lilith Stangenberg, as an exhibition of his taboo-busting work opens in Paris

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"I had seen enough of so-called order. I was forced to question everything."

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Blake Masi’s Website
Blake Masi on Instagram

Francesco Faccin gives voice to the invisible support
 
At Francesco Faccin’s Piedistalli, the pedestal steps out from the background and claims its own presence. Presented at Galleria Giustini / Stagetti in Rome, the exhibition, the result of a long-term investigation, traces nearly two decades of research into the cultural, symbolic, and spatial role of the object tasked with supporting art. Rather than functioning as a neutral base, the pedestal emerges here as an active device that shapes perception, directs attention, and mediates the relationship between artwork and viewer.
 
For the Italian designer, the pedestal is never passive. Through height, materiality, proportion, and placement, it shapes the...

Nearly 200 objects will be on view at San Francisco's Legion of Honor in a show exploring the influential civilisation

The Goodwood Art Foundation hosts Britain's first major exhibition by the US artist

The head of the Venice-based publisher and exhibition organising company shares his suggestions for places to eat, shop and explore

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May exhibitions from DESIGNBOOM RADAR
 
May’s exhibition calendar is shaped by a series of large institutional presentations and focused solo shows that revisit key figures while introducing new commissions. Major exhibitions by artists such as Marina Abramović, Katharina Grosse, and Ron Mueck anchor the month, while group surveys and thematic projects — from New York to Venice — consider how artists are working across performance, installation, and image-based practices today.
 
Some of the exhibitions highlighted in earlier radars and listings on our dedicated events guide remain on view, giving designboom readers more time to encounter them around the globe.
 
Iris van Herpen: Sculpting the...

Systems of power, cultural identity and “the fragile boundaries between perception and reality” are the ideas that drive Lucia Shuyu Li, a multidisciplinary artist whose practice spans installation, performance, painting and sound. They’re also some of the most relevant themes of our times, emerging from a contemporary era defined by misinformation, political polarisation and an endless news cycle. Li draws on her Chinese heritage and time spent in the US to create her works, which express her “experiences as an individual navigating the complexities of contemporary society.” The trio of paintings Judge Me, I Am Dead Therefore I Was Alive and Who Cried Walking Home are perhaps her most personal, and...

In recent years, Julianknxx has developed a practice that sits at a compelling intersection of film, poetry and performance – one that resists easy classification while remaining grounded in lived experience. Born in Sierra Leone and now based in London, his work reflects an engagement with questions of identity, displacement and cultural memory. Rather than treating these themes as fixed subjects, he approaches them as evolving conditions, shaped by movement, language and time; unfolding through a logic of association rather than linear narrative, rhythm, voice and atmosphere. This creates a viewing experience that is as much about listening and sensing as it is about interpretation. In this way, Julianknxx...

Georg Baselitz, a preeminent painter of postwar Germany and an engine of the 1980s Neo-Expressionist movement that rebuked Minimalism, and who would later come under fire for his comments about women artists, has died at 88. His death was announced in a press release by Thaddaeus Ropac, one of the galleries that represented the artist.  Baselitz exploded into the German art consciousness in the 1960s with a formal grit matched by tormented subject matter: his breakout “Heroes” series (1965–66) features bloated, blocky figures balancing on ruined buildings and toppled flags. Through his eyes, postwar German society appeared raw and taut as an exposed muscle. Next came his “Fracture” series, which...

Home might be a mutable concept, but some objects retain the aura of belonging and comfort even outside the walls we reside in. For Monica Rohan, those items are patterned fabrics and bentwood dining chairs, which venture outdoors in her vibrant oil paintings. The Brisbane-based artist has long depicted the supple folds and bright motifs of textiles, which tended to swaddle her characters or hide their faces among natural landscapes. Upholstered loungers and carved wood seats have similarly appeared in unusual spots, precariously holding a figure while nested in a slim hedge or slumping down a small hill. “Draped Clover” (2026), oil on board, 70 x 100 centimeters In recent years, though, Rohan’s...

Earlier this month, dozens of metallic discs suspended from the ceiling of a large industrial space invited viewers to immerse themselves in what SpY describes as “a continuous choreography of movement and reflection.” The artist is known for his large-scale installations, often repurposing objects like traffic cones and metallic rescue blankets to create striking urban interventions. SpY’s most recent room-scale work, titled “Halos,” reimagined the industrial interior of a former railway-related factory in Florence—a place we typically associate with Renaissance elegance as opposed to brutalist design—as part of the city’s Bright Festival. Three stories high, “Halos” interacts with the...

From recognizable scenes around her home in Scotland to delicately rendered snapshots of places she visits, Laura K. Sayers’ meticulously crafted postage stamps nod to connections from afar. The artist, who also illustrates children’s books and is commissioned for special projects like greeting cards, incorporates itty-bitty cuts of colorful paper into tiny tableaux that can fit in the palm of a hand. Much of the work seen here is currently on view solo in Sayers’ solo exhibition of miniatures titled The Wee Small Hours at N. atelier. An array of everyday scenes is chronicled in a format we typically associate with significant events and remembrance, documenting fleeting moments like little treasures....

 
Join us on Sunday 07 June from 1.30pm to celebrate the launch of INTO THE TREES by photographer Jo Stapleton, curated by Karen Harvey and published by Shutter Hub Editions.
INTO THE TREES is an expressionist photographic account of Jo’s interactions with trees and woodland, later remembered and reimagined in the darkroom using a range of alternative processes and techniques.
Drinks and canapés will be served from 1.30pm before the formal launch event at 2pm, including a book signing and interview discussion between Karen and Jo about the making of the book and the role photography has to play in helping to protect our wildlife and green spaces.
To celebrate the launch of the book, Jo has produced a...

In Deborah Turbeville – Photocollage and Ikram Abdulkadir – Soft Focus, presented side by side at Moderna Museet Malmö, the image is not fixed but constantly in negotiation with time, material and gaze. Fashion and portrait photography provide the point of departure, yet both practices quickly exceed their commercial origins. Instead, they unfold into meditations on presence – how a body occupies space, and how that space might be withheld, transformed or dissolved over time. Across both exhibitions, softness becomes a structural principle rather than a purely aesthetic choice. Turbeville’s work establishes a language of atmospheric resistance, where the photograph resists clarity in favour of...

Every month, we share opportunities for artists and designers, including open calls, grants, fellowships, and residencies. Make sure you never miss out by joining our monthly Opportunities Newsletter. Scenerium 2026 Art Award: Exhibition, Publication, Sales, and Global PromotionFeaturedWhere will your art take us? From landscapes and seascapes to cityscapes and imagined worlds, Scenerium 2026 invites artists worldwide to capture the essence of place and turn it into a visual journey. Through natural scenes, urban energy, and visionary environments, this juried opportunity celebrates art that draws viewers in and places them inside the world you create. Selected artists receive a smart online exhibition, Artsy...

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Sylvia Trotter Ewens’s Website
Sylvia Trotter Ewens on Instagram

In Kashmir, India, there are three stages of winter: Chillai Kalan, Chillai Khurd and Chillai Bache. The first is The Great Cold, occupying mid-December to the end of January, when the weather is at its harshest and temperatures drop below freezing. Snowfall is a common occurrence. The second is the Small Cold, when things warm up slightly but the weather can still be biting, followed finally by The Baby Cold, characterised by intermittent sunshine and melting ice. This annual progression towards spring is the focus of a new book from Magnum photographer Sohrab Hura (b. 1981). Snow documents the artist’s repeated visits to the Indian-administered region over a five-year period, recording its passage...

The opening of V&A East Storehouse signals a recalibration in how institutions might live with their collections, not as static reservoirs of heritage but as permeable, operational spaces of encounter. Set within the wider emergence of V&A East, the Storehouse reframes access as a continuous condition rather than an occasional event, dissolving the distance between storage, study and display. It arrives at a moment when museums are increasingly asked to perform not authority but to open their infrastructures to forms of public legibility that were once hidden. Its arrival also invites comparison with the Depot Boijmans Van Beuningen in Rotterdam, where transparency and verticality have already recast the...

By Nancy Spiller Alec Egan's painting "Dawn House," in his show "Groundskeeper" at Vielmetter Los Angeles, is tender, serene, and calm — a lavender and peach sky sheltering the triangular top of a house flanked by two palm trees and the tip of a cypress. In its companion painting, "Night House," the sky takes a sinister turn with layers of dark blue, sunset orange, and a roiling strip indicative of flames mixed with what might be smoke. It hints at something of what Egan, his wife, and two...

Matthew Walton is an emerging artist based in Toronto. He holds a B.A.A. (Hons.) in Animation from Sheridan College. His mixed-media practice combines drawing and painting, often merging the human form with a distinct graphic sensibility. The result is figurative compositions that strike a distinct textural contrast between softness and hardness. Embracing gestures and mannerisms once repressed, his work is also a celebration of authentic self-expression.
Froot Loops features Matthew’s mixed-media-work-on-paper series highlighting the quiet charm of everyday queerness. Each piece reimagines a separate mundane moment, transformed by Matthew’s bold, graphic approach to figuration and his vibrant technicolor...

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Kelsey Shwetz’s Website
Kelsey Shwetz on Instagram

“What I am advocating for is a type of grace,” says Matthew Hansel. “Both in the way we see ourselves and in the way we see others. I am celebrating the impossible mix of contradictory things that make us human, including the parts of ourselves we hide from the world.” Hansel’s tour of our hidden […]
The post Matthew Hansel’s Hidden Demons first appeared on Hi-Fructose Magazine.

By Jorge Rodriguez-Jimenez Gustavo Rimada is showing his third solo show and largest to date at Thinkspace Projects. The show, titled “Rhythmic Sequence,” brings together his masterfully vivid acrylic paintings and his newly found love for ceramics. Offering mugs with faces that both haunt and delight, Rimada, who was born in Mexico and raised in California, is blending his Mexican heritage and his California lifestyle to create bold and culturally stunning works of art. Rimada’s ceramic work...

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Dorian Tocker’s Website
Dorian Tocker on Instagram

To celebrate the cult movie director’s 80th birthday, we bring you our interview with John Waters from Hi-Fructose Isssue 69. You can still get a copy in print of this issue here. Happy Birthday to The King of Puke! ABOVE: Portrait of John Waters, photo by Greg Gorman, © Academy Museum Foundation Early on in the […]
The post Happy 80th Birthday to The Pope of Trash: An Interview With John Waters first appeared on Hi-Fructose Magazine.

By Katherine Kesey In the last few years, Los Angeles's Melrose Hill neighborhood has quickly become one of the city's most walkable arts districts. This past Saturday night, there were nearly ten coordinated openings, and I attended almost all of them. Taken individually, the shows were equally captivating. Together, they were a warm and exciting medley of passionate color, lighthearted mystery, and wry humor. Hannah Tishkoff, Beyond Love There is No Belief. 2026. Acrylic, oil, and pennies...

In the forest nothing stands still. Time layered through thoughts and feelings, leaves kicked and crunched as we walk. The trees talk to each other, sending mycelium messages, carbon gifts, and warnings of drought or illness. From ancient wisdom to popular culture, it’s all here.
If a tree falls in the forest and there’s nobody there to hear it, did it make a sound? Of course it did. And if Jo Stapleton was there to capture the moment, there would be a visual symphony of light, shape and form to follow.
Published by Shutter Hub Editions, this beautiful collection of 100 images by Jo Stapleton is an expressionist photographic account of her interactions with trees, forest and woodland, later remembered and...

In a world not so unlike our own, during a time not that long ago, a mother wolf sits comfortably upon an abandoned tree stump in a clearing in the woods. Surrounded by carefully rendered flora and fauna, the creature is positioned upright with impeccable posture and human-like mannerisms. Her hind legs are crossed at […]
The post The Drawings of Femke Hiemestra Depict Fairy Tales with Looming Consequences first appeared on Hi-Fructose Magazine.

By Kristine Schomaker The work hits immediately. Not one piece — all of it, simultaneously. Large sculptural assemblages covering the walls, a freestanding sculpture in the middle of the room, a piece suspended from the ceiling. The whole gallery feeling like its own solar system, each work a satellite orbiting something enormous and unspoken. Last night, four humans splashed down in the Pacific Ocean after flying around the Moon for the first time in more than fifty years. Artemis II...

ABOVE: “Spatial Awareness”, 54″ x 250″, hand-knit with wool, 2025, photo by Chris Rettman From her dining room table in Oklahoma City, Kendall Ross knits brightly colored, intricately patterned sweaters and vests—some so large that referring to them as wearables is a bit misleading. Her textile pieces are often emblazoned with diary-like messages that speak […]
The post Kendall Ross Comments Directly on the Craft Vs. Art Debate first appeared on Hi-Fructose Magazine.

In 2019, Kayla Mahaffey reached a turning point with her art. The Chicago-based artist had a solo show at Line Dot Editions in April of that year. Titled Off to the Races, the series of paintings centered around children ready to hit the road. Some sat with their growing legs crouched in tiny cars or […]
The post Child’s Play: The Paintings of Kayla Mahaffey first appeared on Hi-Fructose Magazine.

San Juan Capistrano Library #1 Amir Zaki No Dust to Settle Diane Rosenstein Gallery April 4 - May 9, 2026 by Jody Zellen The saying "waiting for the dust to settle" might refer to when things will calm down and return to normal. It could be said that "the dust never settles" and there is no state of definitive calmness because everything is in flux, both in life and in art. This might be taking the personal into account by reading too much into the title of Amir Zaki's current exhibition, his...

 
There’s just two weeks left to submit your work for The City Series: Cambridge!
An ongoing series of publications, The City Series sets out to explore the people, places, and cultures that shape cities around the world, showcasing images that respond to a place not as a fixed subject, but as an idea shaped by experience, observation, and interpretation.
The inaugural volume explores a city that has welcomed us, and been home to nearly a dozen Shutter Hub exhibitions – Cambridge.
Rather than defining Cambridge by landmarks or narratives, we invite photographers to approach the city openly, perhaps through people, atmosphere, details, routines, abstractions, or moments that feel personal or unexpected....

Limited Edition print by Gerhard Wichler It’s been a distinctly textured start to the year at THE GAZE, where invigorating artistic narratives emerge across forms and disciplines, threading their way through an unsettled climate. 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 amid the mayhem of today’s world. You can read our fascinating interview here. We also mark an...

 
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...