Fumi Aso Architect & Associates builds ‘living kaleidoscope’ home
 
Inspired by the perceptual play of a kaleidoscope, Fumi Aso Architect & Associates has completed a single-story family residence that explores how light and seasonal conditions can continually reshape interior experience. The Kaleidoscape home sits on a flagpole-shaped plot in downtown Tajimi, Gifu Prefecture, Japan, a commercially zoned area now characterized by population decline and underused land. Although the generous site could have supported a far larger structure, the architects honored the client’s wish for a modest, ground-hugging dwelling. The design arranges a cylindrical main volume intersected by a secondary wing, creating...

'Tis the season of over-the-top cookie decorating, and while shaped cookie cutters are normally sold in themed sets, many of them go astray and lose their context entirely. In a Reddit community devoted to figuring out what those unidentified cookie cutters might depict, many of its members are finding that the obscure outlines are the perfect tool to spark their imagination. The subreddit, r/WhatIsMyCookieCutter, carved out its own community during the holiday season in 2022 after years of Reddit users flocking the r/baking forum to get help in figuring out what their rogue cookie cutters are supposed to be. The space started out as a fun guessing game to help solve years-long household mysteries born of...

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Einhuhn Design creates Golden Ei minimal chicken coop
 
The Einhuhn Hühnerstall Golden Ei chicken coop accommodates up to six chickens, presenting a compact, architecturally defined structure rather than a conventional coop. Its form is minimal and geometric, with golden-toned surfaces that interact subtly with the surrounding landscape. The piece by Einhuhn Design incorporates a double facade to provide rear ventilation and diffuse natural light, while circumferential ventilation slats ensure consistent airflow without drafts, supporting a healthy indoor environment for the animals.
all images courtesy of Einhuhn Design
 
 
Golden Ei redefines the chicken coop as a design object
 
Studio Einhuhn Design,...

Bernie Williams and Jonathan Tetelman take over Carnegie Hall for one night. You’ll be fine.

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“All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way,” Leo Tolstoy wrote in the opening of Anna Karenina. The line is so iconic that it gave rise to a principle: for success to occur in any complex endeavor, all key factors must be present and functioning properly, while failure requires only a single missing element. This year, as the art market faltered, many dealers learned that lesson the hard way. It is possible that every such business, like every unhappy family, has its own reasons for calling it quits, and in fact there are varying explanations for the raft of gallery closures this year. But when the numbers overall tell indisputably of a shrinking market, it’s hard to...

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Ahead of a new production opening at the Met on New Year’s Eve, director Charles Edwards and Lisette Oropesa discuss creating an I puritani that is stark and serious — and sings.

In each issue of Aesthetica Magazine, we review three books that are making waves on the scene that month. It’s an exciting opportunity to keep up to date with recent photobooks, read more about the most pressing issue of our time and how creative thinkers in art and design are tackling them. We’ve featured books about the most magnificent buildings of the past century, and how we are looking to a more sustainable and equitable future through our architecture, as well as volumes that bring hidden, neglected or overlooked aspects of art history to light, such as Getty’s Queer Lens. Each one has something important to say, offering a glimpse behind the curtain of some of our favourite artists and...

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montreal’s landmark basilica sees a modern intervention
 
A new pavilion opens on Mount Royal, the highest point in Montreal and home to the landmark basilica Saint Joseph’s Oratory. Designed by architecture practice Lemay, the intervention climbs four stories along the upper slopes of the mountain park. It’s embedded into a wooded landscape and reframes the experience of arrival at one of Quebec’s most visited cultural and religious sites.
 
Saint Joseph’s Oratory stands at the summit as a spiritual destination and viewpoint. Since it was founded in the early twentieth century, it has evolved through a sequence of chapels and gardens with expansive views over the city.
 
Designed as part of a...

La Mécanique de Noël: a 20-meter interactive Christmas table
 
La Mécanique de Noël is a 20-meter interactive installation designed by Hellène Gaulier and Gwénolé Gasnier of Agence GG for the refectory of Fontevraud Abbey, in France. Conceived as a large communal table, the project explores the sensory and mechanical dimensions of festive gatherings through an assemblage of interactive devices, blown glass elements, lighting, sound, and scent.
 
The installation draws reference from both lived and imagined Christmas meals, translating familiar rituals into a spatial and mechanical composition. Rather than focusing solely on food, the table incorporates the broader environment of a festive dinner,...

The end-of-year list you've been waiting for is here: The 20 Most Powerless People in the Art World, 2025 edition.The list celebrates the strength and resilience of the people and communities on the margins of power structures. It's our annual antidote to the foolish lists of wealthy collectors, royals, and so-called tastemakers that pervade the market-driven art media. And as per tradition, we've peppered some entries with humor and satire, two important instruments of resistance. Dating back to the earliest days of this publication, the Powerless 20 is one of many things that make Hyperallergic a unique voice in the field. Please support our work by becoming a paid member. Any contribution...

An Australian Christmas where the paddocks are brown, the gullies are green, and the singing is, frankly, better behaved than most of us will be by lunchtime.

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Explore our Top 10 motorcycles of 2025
 
From high-tech hoverbikes to solar-powered two-wheelers, our TOP 10 Motorcycles of 2025 show an updated in personal mobility, where form, systems, and user experience drives the new designs. Engineers and designers are rethinking vehicles not just as machines, but as transport experience, similar to James Bruton’s omnidirectional bike with circus balls as rotating wheels as well as Jake Carlini’s wearable electric motorcycle transforms the rider into part of the vehicle, with a rear-wheel motor strapped to his leg. Energy independence and thinking of environmental impact are also recurring themes on this list, with MASK Architects’ SOLARIS that uses retractable...

Micaiah Carter (b. 1995) is one of the most exciting photographic voices of recent times. At 30-years-old, he has quickly risen to prominence, making portraits of the likes of Pharrell, Spike Lee and Zendaya alongside being featured in prestigious publications such as Vogue, The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times and Vanity Fair. His commercial clients include Nike, Apple, Ralph Lauren, and Valentino. Across high-profile collaborations and personal work, Carter blends youth culture, fine art and street style, with the aim of building “a quality platform for representation of people of colour that hasn’t been seen before.” It’s an approach that has not gone unnoticed. In 2019, Carter’s work was...

Public murals, sculptures and reliefs from the 1950s that adorned an earthquake-damaged building are now in storage

Auction house powers ahead with blue-chip lots in the Middle East but luxury items fall out of favour

Centro Botin presentation also taps into community concerns about dredging and port expansion

Patriarch of the French-US dealing dynasty, who helped shape countless collections, insists legal issues played no part in the decision

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La Street Levels Gallery di Firenze presenta “Ecce Homo, Ecce Eva (Quelli che si ricordano)”, la prima mostra personale di Ache77, tra le voci più intense e riconoscibili dell’arte urbana italiana.  Fino all’11 gennaio 2026, gli spazi di via Melegnano 4R accolgono oltre cinquanta opere inedite, create appositamente per l’occasione: un insieme di quarantaquattro archetipi che danno corpo a un rito collettivo, una celebrazione della memoria, del volto e della presenza. L’artista, nato nel 1991 in Romania e cresciuto a Firenze, ha deciso di raccontare quanto di più profondo e autentico ci sia all’interno di una società in cui il confine tra reale e falso appare ormai labile. In questa...

“I don't aim for my art to be political, but because I have my own perspective and worldview, that inevitably comes through in the art,” says Shyama Golden. Read Silke Tudor's full article on the artist by clicking above.
The post The Nature of Life: Shyama Golden on Art, identity, & The Not So Elusive Catsquatch first appeared on Hi-Fructose Magazine.

Max Seckel's paintings are all about the details. His landscapes come alive with the messy signs of humanity: a traffic cone standing in a puddle surrounded by a weedy yard; a utility pole teetering behind a dumpster; streams of yellow tape banding around trees. Read more about the article by clicking above!
The post Cracks In the Levee: The Paintings of Max Seckel first appeared on Hi-Fructose Magazine.

Sean Norvet has long been described as a Renaissance-inspired satirist, a mish-masher of photorealism and cartoons into goofy–gruesome critiques of consumer culture or social media habits or other twenty-first-century concerns. Read the full article by clicking above..
The post Tropical Flavored Nightmare: Sean Norvet’s Paintings Are Reflective Mountains of Disgusting Excess first appeared on Hi-Fructose Magazine.

Some art publications worship the powerful. Here at Hyperallergic, we stand by the powerless. Welcome to the 2025 edition of the 20 Most Powerless People in the Art World, our annual antidote to the asinine lists of wealthy collectors, royals, and so-called tastemakers that pervade the market-driven art media. To be clear, the people and entities on this list are by no means weak or pitiable. Quite the opposite: They are the most resilient, unbreakable individuals and communities we can think of. This list celebrates their strength and the inspiration they give to all of us. Per tradition, we’ve peppered some of the entries with a bit of humor, another important means of resistance. Here’s to hoping for a...

The Ruth Foundation for the Arts has revealed the five winners of its Ruth Award: Yuji Agematsu, Ranu Mukherjee, Will Rawls, Ellen Sebastian Chang, and Anna Martine Whitehead. The prize was inaugurated in 2024 and is given in recognition of North American artists who “are accelerating the field forward, building deeper relationships and connections across […]

Faith Ringgold’s words have rhythm. They jaunt through her stories, printed on pages and quilts, their bright, succinct language as engaging as their visual counterparts. The late artist was a storyteller and visual artist in equal measure — her knack for prose and her herculean visual skills go hand in hand. She utilized craft to experiment with form, medium, and message, challenging the parameters of fine art, demanding equal attention for her textiles and her striking canvases. I was first introduced to Ringgold as a girl, through her children’s books. Cozied into library nooks, I read Tar Beach (1991), her tale of a Harlem girl dreaming of flight. Years later, her work can conjure in me similar...

Even without any formal art background, Joseph Cornell was an expert collector and curator of found materials and curiosities. His influential shadow boxes, lovingly composed from mementos, curios, images clipped from their literature, and ordinary or ephemeral objects that he came across, became dimensional worlds of wonder that laid the foundations for assemblage and installation art.The source material of those worlds, squirreled away in storage boxes or stacked on nearly every surface in Cornell's basement studio at his home along Utopia Parkway in Queens, is reconvened in a new devotional exhibition that recreates the late artist's workspace. Gagosian curator Jasper Sharp and filmmaker Wes...

Reflecting growing pressure by New York prosecutors on museums and private collectors, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, and an American collector have returned dozens of looted antiquities to Turkey. As reported by the New York Times, a repatriation ceremony was held in New York on December 8. The repatriations are connected to a years-long investigation into antiquities trafficking networks by the Manhattan District Attorney’s office’s Antiquities Trafficking Unit. The items returned on December 8 were all linked to plundered archeological sites in Turkey; according to the DA’s office, the items were stolen from those sites and then exhibited and sold by dealers using...

Chinese officials have opened multiple investigations into allegations that staff at the state-run Nanjing Museum secretly removed cultural treasures from the collection and sold them on the open market—claims that have gone viral on social media and drawn comparisons to the recent Louvre heist. According to the South China Morning Post, the scandal surfaced after a 16th-century Ming dynasty painting, Spring in Jiangnan by Qiu Ying, appeared in a Beijing auction catalog this year with an estimate of 88 million yuan ($12.5 million). The work was part of a 137-piece donation made in 1959 by the family of renowned collector Pang Laichen but was discovered missing during a 2023 court-ordered inventory check....

The Trump administration, which this past August announced that it would review current and forthcoming Smithsonian exhibitions “to assess tone, historical framing and alignment with American ideals,” has reiterated its threat to pull funding if the Smithsonian does not comply. Although the Smithsonian provided the White House with documentation in September, Domestic Policy Council director […]

Arnulf Rainer, whose work provided crucial inspiration to the Viennese Actionists, died on December 18 at the age of ninety-six. His death was confirmed by gallery Thaddaeus Ropac, which represents him. Though best known for his psychologically intense “Übermahlungen,” or overpaintings, Rainer’s experiments touched on Surrealism, minimalism, and Abstract Expressionism, among other genres; throughout, he […]

In a multi-year market slowdown, numerous galleries large and small have either gone out of business or retrenched. Galerie 1900-2000, founded in Paris, opened a New York branch on Madison Avenue on the Upper East Side in February 2023 as a joint venture with Galerie Georges-Philippe & Nathalie Vallois, but the Manhattan outpost is going dark. Its last exhibition closed in September. “We decided to close the gallery mainly because the business was quite slow even though we made some fantastic contacts with great public and private collectors but even better with institutions,” said David Fleiss, one of the gallery’s principals, in an email. Fleiss noted sales such as a Francis Picabia painting that went...

Rome has unveiled its latest tactic to curb over-tourism: a €2 ($2.35) entrance fee for close-up access to the Trevi Fountain. The measure will take effect on February 1 and be enforced daily from 9 a.m. to 9 p.m., Rome Mayor Roberto Gualtieri announced on Friday. The iconic fountain will remain visible from a distance free of charge, but visitors seeking a closer view will be required to purchase a ticket. The Italian capital previously implemented restrictions around the 18th-century Baroque monument to mitigate crowding, including a 400-person capacity limit at a time.  According to Gualtieri,  an average of 30,000 people visited the Trevi Fountain each day in 2025, amounting to roughly 9 million...

What is the value of knowledge? A coffee shop latte easily costs six dollars or more these days, but peruse any used book sale and you’ll find classics of literature and science for mere cents—published works that have had an indelible impact on culture. In many cases, mass production has rendered the value of books—as objects—at pennies. Used bookstores with buy-back policies often play a vital role in simply being able to properly recycle or dispose of volumes that are no longer salable. Hundreds of millions of books are tossed each year, whether due to overstock, age, or damage, which is an ongoing problem for the publishing industry. “The New American” (2021), hardcover book, acrylic varnish,...

Global warming meets the cool factor in The Seasons.

Vlad Hrynko merges a background in computer science with fine art. His Foundation series, shortlisted for the 2025 Aesthetica Art Prize, experiments with traditional still-life forms and projected light, challenging how we see ordinary objects. The work combines physical installations made of found materials – such as used cardboard – with carefully orchestrated lighting. Projected patterns, inspired by abstract painters and personal emotion, alter each scene without physical change. This approach questions how technology and mood influence perception. Hrynko minimises post-production, focusing instead on precision during creation. Foundation continues as an ongoing investigation into light, structure...

Though there are a number of fine recording of holiday music by opera singers (Eileen Farrell!), this great performance of Jessye Norman was captured on video as well.

Gihanga Institute of Contemporary Art, a first for the East African country, houses residency spaces along with a reference library

La consapevolezza, assieme alla necessità di risvegliare nella scultura la possibilità di intraprendere nuove forme d’espressione sfuggendo alle normali convenzioni di linguaggio, hanno condotto Valentina Palazzari (Terni, 1975) a ideare Fiammetta, un progetto espositivo curato da Davide Sarchioni e ospitato al Palazzo Pretorio di Certaldo fino al 26 gennaio 2026. In questa occasione i sei ambienti, già sedi dei Vicari fiorentini dal Quattrocento, oltre a essere uno stimolo rispetto alla storica figura e musa ispiratrice boccaccesca Fiammetta, sono motivo di reinterpretazione degli assetti sociali, delle impronte culturali e persino delle implicazioni economiche e politiche del luogo. Tuttavia, Palazzari...

Humour is often dismissed as trivial, a fleeting moment of pleasure, a pause between more serious encounters with life. Yet, within the realm of contemporary art, it functions as much more than amusement; it is a lens, a critical instrument through which we examine the absurd, the illogical, and the unexpected dimensions of human experience. Seriously., the latest exhibition at Sprüth Magers, London, situates humour at the centre of its enquiry, inviting audiences not merely to laugh, but to interrogate the cultural and political frameworks that humour illuminates. It is an exhibition that asks us to consider what it means to be funny, and why some things resonate while others remain opaque. Humour is...

A year-end post highlighting our favourite pieces from every art feature this year. This compilations represents the wide array of talent and perspectives that have come to make Booooooom the community that it is.
We want to thank everyone who took the time to share their work with us this year! Whether you’ve been following us for a while or participated in your first open call with us, you’re presence here means a lot to us.
You can also check out our year-end posts of photography/photographers here, if you haven’t already!
Which artwork was your favourite discovery this year?

From inexpensive, ubiquitous, and utilitarian materials, virtually endless forms and narratives can be created with a bit of imagination. That’s exactly what the show Cardboard: Infinite Possibilities, opening next month at Wönzimer Gallery, aims to highlight. The group exhibition is curated by Ann Weber, whose work Colossal readers may recognize, along with that of Narsiso Martinez and Shigeru Ban. The show also highlights an iconic chair design by Frank Gehry, who died this month at the age of 96, plus contributions from Jodi Hays, Edgar Ramirez, Leonie Weber, Samuelle Richardson, Jabila Okongwu, and more. Frank Gehry, “Easy Edges Wiggle Chair” (1972), corrugated cardboard and hardboard, 34 x 24 x 17...

“I never imagined being a ceramic artist when I was a kid,” Iwamura admits. “I had no interest.” But today, he is a ceramicist living and working in Shigaraki—a small town east of Kyoto and home to one of Japan’s Six Ancient Kilns. Read the full article on the artist by clicking above.
The post Using Ancient Kilns En Iwamura Builds His Ceramics One Coil At a Time first appeared on Hi-Fructose Magazine.

In São Paolo, a midcentury interior is reimagined into a “hybrid habitat” by architect Guto Requena. The project, called “Apartamento Varanda,” reimagines a modernist residence, originally constructed in 1962, with contemporary details that nod to its decades-old spirit while incorporating a particularly organic element in the form of lots and lots of plants. Draped from rafters or bespoke frameworks, Brazilian botanicals create a green oasis indoors. What Requena describes as a “true urban forest” is then complemented by a range of iconic furnishings from both modernist and contemporary eras. See more on the studio’s website. Do stories and artists like this matter to you? Become a Colossal...

Le opere di Marina Rheingantz, esposte in occasione della mostra Rodamoinho curata da Alberto Salvadori, sono panorami viscosi, opalescenti e impalpabili. I quadri alludono a una figuratività estremamente sintetica, frutto di una personale elaborazione della pittura di paesaggio. Nei suoi lavori la natura risulta parzialmente celata all’occhio. I luoghi dell’infanzia e gli spazi pianeggianti di Araraquara, regione natale di Rheingantz, sono sottoposti a un processo di decantazione nella retina e nella memoria dell’artista.
Marina Rheingantz, “Afresco”, 2025, oil on canvas, 210 x 300 cm, courtesy the artist and ICA Milano
Nel contrasto tra velature atmosferiche e isole dense di materia sono rivelate...

Welcome to our annual year-end photography post highlighting our favourites! Going back through every feature from the past year we’ve compiled our top picks of this year’s roundup. As in previous years this collection represents a wide range of talent and approaches.
We want to thank everyone who took the time to share their work with us and participate in our open calls this year. Whether you’ve been following us for a while or are brand new to our membership, you’re an integral part of what makes the Booooooom community what it is.
If you haven’t seen our previous A Year in Photos posts you can check them all out here: 2023, 2022, 2021, 2020, 2019, 2018, 2017, 2016, 2015, 2014, 2013, 2012, 2011,...

Surveying the final round of 2025 shows in New York

This year, Aesthetica Magazine has interviewed some of the world’s leading artists, photographers and architects. These conversations reveal insights into how, and why, contemporary art is made, raising awareness about today’s most pressing socio-political issues. Here are some of our favourite quotes:   Kazuaki Koseki, on photographing fireflies in Japanese landscapes: “After a while, my eyes became accustomed to the darkness and countless lights started to glow. it was light a starry sky. The forest, which had seemed so terrifying, spread out before my eyes and became the most beautiful I had ever seen – thanks to the Himebotaru [fireflies].” Gleeson Paulino, on capturing the decisive moment:...

Surreal Salon, the annual international exhibition celebrating the Pop-surrealism/Lowbrow movement, is returning to Baton Rouge Gallery – center for contemporary art (BRG) for its 18th year. Held in partnership with Louisiana State University (LSU)’s School of Art, the show will be open to all at no cost from January 2 to 25, 2026, in Louisiana’s capital city.  This year’s multimedia edition features more than 60 artists from the U.S. and abroad, with pieces hand-picked by the show’s Special Guest Juror, Swoon, from a pool of nearly 800 works via a blind jurying process.  Every year, Surreal Salon celebrates the ever-evolving Pop-surrealist/Lowbrow art movement by inviting artists across the globe...

Da qualche tempo, a Venezia, si accende (letteralmente) un evento interessante: Murano illumina il mondo, che quest’anno ritorna per la sua terza edizione, e la città finge sorpresa, come fa sempre, ma in realtà sembra sapere da tempo che quando dodici artisti e designer internazionali decidono di unirsi alle fornaci più celebri dell’isola, qualcosa di irrimediabile succede. È il vetro, materia antica e capricciosa, che torna a parlare con voce nuova sotto le Procuratie Vecchie: non più lampadari, o non solo, ma creature sospese che trasformano l’aria stessa. Il Comitato Scientifico ha selezionato dodici artisti per prendere l’idea di lampadario, stringerla fino a farla scricchiolare e portarla a...

Ivan Pili è tornato alla pittura dopo un quarto di secolo dedicato alla musica. La svolta è arrivata nel 2014, quasi per caso, durante un concerto in Germania. Da allora, in appena un decennio, si è fatto notare nel panorama dell’arte contemporanea internazionale, esponendo in prestigiose sedi istituzionali, come Palazzo Zenobio a Venezia, Palazzo Sant’Agostino a Salerno e la Reggia di Caserta, oltre a importanti fiere internazionali, tra cui Art Basel Miami, Artexpo New York, Carrousel du Louvre, Frieze Los Angeles, Art Dubai. Il suo lavoro si colloca nell’ambito del genere figurativo iperrealista, ma l’artista sardo rifiuta l’idea che la sua pittura sia un’asettica imitazione del reale. Nei...

The US Senate on December 19 confirmed Mary Anne Carter as chair of the National Endowment for the Arts. Carter occupied the role during the first Trump presidency. During her first term, she expanded Creative Forces (a creative arts therapy program for US service members and veterans recovering from psychological health conditions) and elevated initiatives […]

When considering Miguel Arzabe’s bold, woven works, it’s unsurprising that he begins by painting two abstract pieces. Vibrant fields of acrylic spread across his canvases before they’re sliced into long strips and reconfigured. Resulting are dynamic compositions that meld art historical traditions with Arzabe’s Bolivian heritage, drawing on longstanding Andean imagery and weaving practices. Next month at Johansson Projects, the Oakland-based artist presents a collection of new wall works and suspended sculptures in Sin Contar Cincuenta. Arzabe refers to his practice as offering a “productive confrontation” of distinct cultures, approaches, and periods, and these new compositions continue his...

A photographic collaboration between photographer Samuel Pasquie and artist Olivier Charland. It began as an observation of a particular pattern or “quiet repetition” amongst their respective archives. Despite the photographs being taken independently, they nonetheless shared a kind of visual logic. In exploring how individual acts of image-making could converge so often, they look beyond their close, fifteen-year friendship and shared home base, to reflect on “emergence” and the ways in which large-scale patterns can arise from small interactions. As their friend, Samuel Bonneau, writes in the intro text for the book:
“If a resemblance appears, what does it mean? The human mind, primed to detect...

"I have a hunch that any successful painting creates work for the viewer,” says the painter Ben Spiers. “I think that's part of the reason why it can be hard to begin the process of looking at paintings seriously..." read the full article on Benjamin Spiers by clicking above!
The post Benjamin Spiers Paints Disconcerting Surrealism For the Modern Age first appeared on Hi-Fructose Magazine.

Mapping decolonial futures through material memory, political imagination, and the art of world-making Installation view of Gondwana la fabrique du futur , by Mansour Ciss Kanakassy, during the 36th Bienal de São Paulo © Natt Fejfar / […]