Nearly eighty Mexican cultural figures have signed an open letter decrying the installation of Pedro Reyes’s Tlali in the plaza of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art’s new David Geffen Galleries. The group says that the monolithic 2026 work—described by writer William Poundstone as a “ready-made backdrop for social media posts”—reprises a proposal for […]

The head of the Venice Biennale has a simple defense for one of the most contentious decisions of this year’s exhibition: it’s not a courtroom. Pietrangelo Buttafuoco, the Biennale’s president, made the remark on Wednesday this week as backlash mounted over the return of Russia to the Giardini. The country is reopening its pavilion for the first time since its 2022 invasion of Ukraine, a move that has drawn criticism from European officials and triggered threats to pull roughly $2.3 million in EU funding.  “The Biennale is not a court; it is a garden of peace,” Buttafuoco said, arguing that the exhibition should remain a place for dialogue rather than exclusion. “This whole world born of ​the...

Construction crews building a barrier between the United States and Mexico damaged a 200-foot-long etching of a fish embedded in the land that is thought to be 1,000 years old, according to a report in the Washington Post. As part of President Donald Trump’s contentious $46.5 billion border-wall project, workers destroyed a 60-to-70-foot portion of the artwork known as an intaglio, according to Richard Martynec, a retired archaeologist who currently surveys the area as a volunteer. As the Post report notes, “The construction is not abiding by environmental laws and other protections, alarming advocates, national park staff and Native Americans.” Satellite imagery from April showed a disturbance crossing...

At the German Pavilion, Naumann’s posthumously-completed project is a triumph.

Sung Tieu on turning the German Pavilion's exterior into a graffitied housing complex.

Allen Ginsberg, "Jack Kerouac holding William S. Burroughs’ Cat, Vila Muneria, Tangiers" (1957) (all images courtesy the Jacob Loewentheil Jack Kerouac Collection)Reading Jack Kerouac’s accounts of New York City, one could be convinced he never ventured further north than 14th Street. The Beat Generation icon spent endless nights in West Village haunts like Caffe Reggio and White Horse Tavern, where he reportedly once found the phrase “Go home, Jack” graffitied on a bathroom wall.But with a public exhibition up through May 16 at the Grolier Club, a members’ society for bibliophiles, Kerouac’s prized possessions — first editions of his and his friends’ books, a Buddhist mala, a canister of loose...

“To me, being a visual activist means I only illustrate stories that resonate with me deeply, by giving voice to minorities or social situations that need to be addressed,” says Fatinha Ramos. “It is the only way I can truly connect with others.” Based in Antwerp, the Portuguese artist and illustrator is well-known for blending analog and digital techniques to create rich, emotive compositions. Collaborating with clients like The New York Times, The Washington Post, Tate, and Scientific American, among many others, Ramos has cultivated a keen eye for storytelling through her distinctive visual language. Recent partnerships include the Anne Frank Museum and MoMA, the latter of which commissioned the...

The artist's contribution to In Minor Keys includes a decked out truck driven from London to Venice

From splashing sewage to moments of zen, here is our selection of top national presentations in the Giardini, Arsenale and across town

The Palestinian ambassador to the UK has called on the government to aid in getting the British Museum to reinstate the word “Palestinian” in its wall texts. Husam Zomlot, the ambassador, raised his complaint to the Foreign & Commonwealth Office, a ministry of foreign affairs, according to the Guardian. In that Guardian report, Zomlot called the removal of “Palestinian” from the labels a form of “erasure.” In February, the Telegraph reported that the group UK Lawyers for Israel had lobbied the museum to strip the word from its didactics, claiming that using the word “Palestinian” “erases historical changes and creates a false impression of continuity.” The word had appeared on maps of the...

Based in Mar del Plata on Argentina’s Atlantic coast, Matías Duville refers to the ocean as an invisible force affecting the locals’ every move, a massive presence that drives people’s bodies in ways both known and unknown. This arcane power guides Duville’s relationship to artmaking as well, inspiring the title of his project for Venice: […]

Trail Practice Organizes Ypseli Hybrid Dining Space in Central Paris
 
Ypseli is a combined restaurant and deli located in the 2nd arrondissement of Paris, France. The project occupies the ground floor of a 19th-century Beaux-Arts building, within proximity to the commercial area of Rue Montorgueil. The design introduces a contemporary interior within the existing historic structure, establishing a distinct spatial identity through material, color, and organization.
 
Developed by Trail Practice in collaboration with founders Syméon Kamsizoglou, Delphine Pique, and chef Fragiskos Dandoulakis, the project combines hospitality, retail, and dining functions within a single layout. The existing architectural...

VENICE — On the first day of the Venice Biennale preview, May 6, hundreds of pro-Palestine activists rallied in front of the Israeli pavilion, demanding it be shut down immediately. And for about half an hour until 1pm, that's exactly what happened. The international group of protesters, led by Art Not Genocide Alliance (ANGA), blocked the entrance to Belu-Simion Fainaru's exhibition Rose of Nothingness while waving Palestine flags and banners that read "No Artwashing Genocide” and "No Genocide Pavilion at Biennale." "Israel, you can't hide. We charge you with genocide," they chanted while flinging flyers into the air and handing out mock Biennale booklets titled, "A Guide to Complicity and...

More than 200 people attended a protest outside the Israeli pavilion, while the activists groups Pussy Riot and FEMEN led a demonstration at Russia’s

Louis K. Meisel Gallery is pleased to present the work of sculptor Larry Kagan,  known for his innovative use of steel, light, and shadow. Through intricately fabricated assemblages and strategic light distribution, Kagan creates works that extend beyond physical form, challenging and redefining the boundaries of traditional sculpture.Departing from known sculptural conventions, Larry Kagan’s work invites viewers to reconsider the nature of form and perception. What initially appears as a raw aggregation of disordered steel resolves into carefully orchestrated compositions. With the introduction of light, these structures cast remarkably detailed shadow images that emerge with striking clarity. The steel...

The Art Not Genocide Alliance (ANGA) has escalated its ongoing opposition to the Israel Pavilion, announcing a 24-hour strike and rally on May 8, the day before the much-hyped and highly contentious 2026 Venice Biennale opens to the public on Saturday. ANGA was formed in objection to Israel’s inclusion in the 2024 Biennale, and began referring to this year’s presentation, which features an exhibition by Haifa-based artist Belu-Simion Fainaru, as the “Genocide Pavilion” as soon as Israel was officially announced as a participant in January. In March, ANGA released an open letter demanding that the Venice Biennale organizers exclude Israel from the event, which runs through November 2026. That letter has...

When it comes to photo drops, NASA has upped the ante. The organization has added thousands of snapshots from the Artemis II mission to the Gateway to Astronaut Photography of Earth archive. The album now holds 12,217 images by cosmic travelers Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover, Christina Koch, and Jeremy Hansen during their more than 250,000-mile, 10-day flyby mission around the moon. According to PetaPixel, a couple of Nikons and an iPhone 17 were the cameras of choice for the journey. And even though many of the thousands of recently uploaded images are very similar—some are even quite blurry—scrolling through them gives the impression of being seated right next to the “Moonfarers” as they marvel at Earth...

After nearly three decades of showing with Gagosian, the Robert Therrien estate has left the mega-gallery and joined the roster of David Zwirner, one of Gagosian’s competitors. The move came shortly after an acclaimed survey of Therrien’s work closed at the Broad museum in Los Angeles. With 120 works included, the exhibition was billed as the biggest one to date for the sculptor, who died in 2019. Therrien is most famous for his sculptures that raise domestic items to monumental proportions, most notably Under the Table (1994), his installation composed of a gigantic wood table and chairs that loom high over their viewers. He’s also well-known for his towering columns composed of oversized plates, which...

a laser over the lagoon
 
Above the lagoon surrounding Venice, a green ring now hangs in the night sky as British artist Chris Levine unveils Higher Power, a week-long laser installation during the opening days of the 2026 Venice Art Biennale. Projected from San Clemente Island and visible across the city until midnight each evening from May 4th — 11th, the public artwork turns the Venetian skyline into an active canvas for light and collective attention.
 
The project uses a modified military-grade laser system developed with engineers and physicists in Germany. At certain moments, the beam appears as a single vertical line extending into the atmosphere. At others, the light resolves into a sharply...

The Pennsylvania museum and land trust plans an ambitious overhaul of its campus, which will connect gallery buildings to the original studios of N.C. Wyeth and Andrew Wyeth

VENICE — Thick plumes of pink smoke billowed outside Russia’s pavilion at the Venice Biennale this morning, May 6, alongside blue and yellow flares evoking the Ukrainian flag. Approximately 50 activists from the art collective Pussy Riot and FEMEN, a Ukrainian feminist movement, protested Russia’s participation for the first time since its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. The action targeted what organizers described as the Biennale’s willingness to lend legitimacy to artists and officials aligned with the Russian government.Around 11 am, as Pussy Riot members wearing pink balaclavas chanted slogans and sang the “Disobey” song, five FEMEN activists wearing black leather jackets...

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Orpheus Acosta’s Website
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A joint Beethoven-Adams program conducted by Dima Slobodeniouk suggests a way forward for the embattled Boston Symphony Orchestra.

Parterre Box features the Met's current Eugene Onegin, Iurii Samoilov, in a performance of Rossini ahead of a return to Pesaro this summer.

Mauron Musy and Arturo Tedeschi Extend the ARCHITECT Series
 
Coinciding with Watches and Wonders, the premier event in watchmaking, Mauron Musy and Arturo Tedeschi continue the trajectory initiated with the MU05-106 ARCHITECT, presenting two refined evolutions of the original timepiece. While the concept progresses, its core principles remain unchanged: the ambition to create a no-compromise technical watch that is both radically innovative and truly outstanding.
 
To achieve this, the project once again integrates generative modeling, generative AI, and advanced manufacturing. This new chapter introduces an additional layer of complexity through exceptional materials, gold and meteorite, giving rise to...

From Jannis Kounellis to Anselm Kiefer, a very personal art collection, asssembled by the De Santis family, is now on view in the 1930s villa

In 1945, WWII was in its waning months. Allied forces entered Nazi occupied territories, liberating concentration camps and revealing the true extent of the horrors of the war for the first time. Adolf Hitler committed suicide on 30 April, and Victory in Europe Day was officially celebrated on 8 May. At the same time, John Baer was serving with the 644th Tank Destroyer Battalion, a unit of the US military. Here, he got a Leica camera from a captured German soldier. His earliest photographs were taken of his fellow soldiers in France and Germany, weary from war. Baer’s collection is a moving portrait of Europe and New York City in the decade after WWII. Now, almost a century on, a debut book demonstrates his...

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fragments become vessels again in jean shin’s installation
 
At The Green-Wood Cemetery’s newly opened Green-House in New York, artist Jean Shin presents Celadon Landscape, an installation assembled from nearly two tons of broken Korean ceramic shards once discarded by artisans and kilns across Icheon, South Korea. On view until January 17th, 2027, the work transforms fractured remnants into monumental mosaic vessels, approaching repair as an ongoing collective act of care.
 
‘When cultures wrongly prize perfection over all else, we lose so much of what is truly beautiful — yet flawed — in the lived experience,’ Shin tells designboom. ‘In Celadon Landscape, broken Korean ceramic shards become a...

VENICE ART BIENNALE RETURNS FOR ITS 61st EDITION
 
The Venice Art Biennale returns for its 61st edition from May 9th to November 22nd, 2026, and designboom is here to guide you through this year’s main exhibition, national participations, collateral events, and everything unfolding across the city during the six-month event. Titled In Minor Keys, the 2026 International Art Exhibition was conceived by curator Koyo Kouoh, who developed the project before her passing in May 2025. The exhibition will be realized by the curatorial team she assembled, carrying forward the framework, artists, and exhibition architecture she had already defined. Conceived as an invitation to tune into quieter frequencies of...

As the Venice Biennale opens for previews this week, cultural workers and organizers opposing Israel’s inclusion in the event are planning what they say is “the first ever organized strike to occur within the Biennale.” This Friday, May 8, labor unions, event participants, and other individuals plan to withhold their labor in an action organized by the Art Not Genocide Alliance and other groups. Look out for Hyperallergic’s coverage.Also today, our list of exhibitions to see around Los Angeles this month; a round-up of the best memes about the out-of-touch, Bezos-funded Met Gala; and a profile of nonagenarian artist and master printmaker Mohammad Omer Khalil, whose work is currently on view in...

When I was a fledgling opera enthusiast, professors at a small-town Wisconsin college routinely travelled to Chicago for Lyric Opera performances.

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Portrait(s), the annual photography festival in Vichy, returns as a curatorial proposition that treats portraiture less as a genre than as a system for understanding how images construct identity, power and attention. The programme brings together David LaChapelle, Paul Graham, Yohanne Lamoulère, Julia Gat and Patrick Tournebœuf, each working through different models of portraiture: staged spectacle, documentary observation, social space and architectural trace. It positions photography as a field where historical memory, institutional frameworks and contemporary image saturation intersect. At its centre, LaChapelle anchors a major solo exhibition that sits alongside documentary, archival and pedagogical...

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At some point, I realized I didn’t want to choose between the past and the present. I was interested in allowing them to coexist,” says baroque-style painter Nieves González, who distorts trappings of traditional portraiture to exalt modern day women. Her recent portrait of British pop star Lily Allen, for example, places contemporary attitude—and fashion—within […]
The post Baroque-style Painter Nieves González distorts trappings of traditional portraiture to exalt modern-day women first appeared on Hi-Fructose Magazine.

When Amy Sherald hit the red carpet at the Costume Institute’s Met Gala on May 4, she appeared to have stepped directly out of her iconic 2013 painting Miss Everything (Unsuppressed Deliverance). Wearing a red hat and a black-and-white dress created by designer Thom Browne, Sherald channeled the work’s youthful subject, who stares coolly out […]

Humor and happenstance take the front seat in Polish photographer Janusz Jurek’s wry images. Working as a graphic designer and commercial photographer by day, he finds the greatest creative freedom in the candid and incidental—the things he notices as he moves about town, travels, and attends festivals and other events. These are the places where he observes some of the most unique individuals and the quirkiest coincidences. “The less commercial and more bizarre, the better—people are more authentic then, less in control of what they’re doing,” he tells Colossal. Jurek is drawn to situations that happen outside of the mainstream, often turning his back on whatever the present attraction is in order...

When Adrienna Matzeg embarked on a trip to Kyoto, Tokyo, and Seoul in July 2025, she encountered intense midsummer heat and humidity, which led her to exploring some of the cities’ nooks and crannies in the dark, when it was cooler. Illuminated storefronts and signage characterize the artist’s late-night runs to convenience stores, markets, and other features of these hubs’ sprawling urban fabric. “In her textile embroidery work, however, the energy of the city falls away,” says a statement from Abbozzo Gallery, which presents her forthcoming solo exhibition, After Hours. “What remains are quiet scenes that left an imprint, tactile snapshots as a record of those summer nights.” “Late Night...

By Lorraine Heitzman Erik Otsea's show, Clever Animals & Static at Alto Beta is a menagerie of a different sort. His tabletop ceramic sculptures are quirky but solemn hand-built industrial shapes that suggest machine parts found in abandoned factories or as models for obscure patent applications. They conjure Soviet-style brutalist architecture and futuristic inventions, all simple geometric forms that hint at a bygone time when we believed that life could be improved through industry. So...

The shapes of Maxwell Mustardo’s ceramic works evoke ancient amphorae, kraters, and, most recently, kylix—a wide Greek cup with handles—although their surfaces feel distinctly organic. Textured growths cloak the vessels with fungal or lichen-esque forms, albeit in color palettes that are bold and otherworldly. Fluorescent oranges, pinks, and greens appear to glow in even the most mundane settings, firmly planting the pieces at the intersection of historic craft, nature, and the uncanny. “I am always tweaking chemistry and application methods to push certain surface effects that I like, that feel organic and grown,” Mustardo tells Colossal. “More recent series of work have tried to blur the...

Curtis Opera and a charming cast of young singers cast a spell with their beguiling production of Britten's A Midsummer Night's Dream. 

“Young people aren’t interesting these days.” It was this sentiment, heard over again from older groups, that artist Pieter Henket cites as the inspiration for his latest project. Birds of Mexico City is a collection of portraits focusing on young Mexicans who are redefining contemporary expressions of gender, identity, tradition and spirituality. The book is a love letter to the next generation – their fearlessness, self-expression and refusal to compromise. As Henket writes in the introduction: “I thought: how incredible that these kids love and respect themselves enough to step into the world exactly as they are, without worrying what anyone might say. It brought me back to my own youth. I was a...

Anna Tomowa-Sintow, "Ernani Involami," from the MET Centenial Gala, 1983.

A restaurant meal on a road trip. A billboard off a highway. A dusty side street in a Texas town. Stephen Shore (b. 1947) captures the seemingly banal moments of life. His photographs of small-town North America captured a society in transition. The mid-20th century works are emblematic of the rapid transformation of the era, both for culture and politics, and photography as an artform. His shots, according to 303 Gallery, “became a bible for young photographers seeking to work in colour, because, along with that of William Eggleston, his work exemplified that the medium could be considered art.” Most celebrated is Uncommon Places (1973 – 1981) series, which were taken over the course of a decade and...

There are few figures in the canon of 20th century image-making who require less introduction than Cecil Beaton. A polymath of rare fluency, Beaton moved effortlessly between photography, costume design and stagecraft, shaping the visual language of modern celebrity with a precision that still reverberates today. His lens did not simply capture – it constructed, elevating its subjects into carefully composed myths of glamour and identity. His work defined an era in which appearance became inseparable from performance, and portraiture from spectacle. To encounter Beaton is to encounter the architecture of fame itself. Beaton’s accolades are well rehearsed, yet no less striking for their familiarity. A...

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By William Moreno The painter constructs, the photographer discloses. Susan Sontag, “On Photography” William Camargo’s current exhibit of twenty-four plus works, dated 2019 through 2025, reads as a mini survey, with photographic images and installations thematically placed throughout the modest gallery. It’s his largest showing of works to date. Early in his career, the Anaheim native considered fashion and product photography, photojournalism and conflict reportage, finding the latter...

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Blake Masi’s Website
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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...

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Sylvia Trotter Ewens’s Website
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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...

“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...

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...