During the Victorian era, innovators made huge leaps with optical technologies. It was the period of the stereoscope and an early projector known as the magic lantern, not to mention one in which eyeglasses became more affordable and entering the mainstream. These advances also influenced scientific inquiry, making microscopes more powerful, and the pursuit of microscopy enabled researchers and enthusiasts to discover creatures invisible to the naked eye. One of these enthusiasts was London-based educator and amateur scientist Charles Thomas Hudson. Along with other scholars and aficionados, he participated in interest groups. “As President of the Royal Microscopical Society and a Fellow of the Royal...

Leon Botstein, who has led Bard College since 1975 and shaped it into one of the art world’s most influential liberal arts institutions, announced Friday that he will retire, after an independent report found he had not been “fully accurate” in his public accounts of his relationship with convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, the New York Times reported. The review, conducted by the law firm WilmerHale and commissioned by Bard’s board of trustees, was released Friday alongside Botstein’s announcement that he will step down as president on June 30. The findings did not identify illegal conduct on Botstein’s part, but concluded that his relationship with Epstein—which included visits, payments,...

derrick adams arrives in venice
 
A new public work by Derrick Adams has appeared in Venice, floating over the city’s network of canals in the heart of the Biennale. Titled Heavy is the head that wears the crown, the piece takes the form of a large-scale portrait of the late curator Koyo Kouoh, installed as a banner on the facade of the Palazzetto dello sport Giobatta Gianquinto in Castello. Facing the Rio della Tana, the image meets visitors as they move between the Arsenale and the surrounding streets.
 
The project, curated by Francesco Bonami, runs from May 4th through September 24th, 2026. Its placement is significant. The facade reads as a flat plane stretched across a busy edge condition, and Adams...

From a Christie's exhibition to a posthumous display Mel Ramos, this year numerous explicitly commercial shows signal a shift in attitude

Artist Amina Agueznay has created a 300 sq m site-specific installation in the Arsenale

Chromatic Symphony of Landscapes by Moriyuki Ochiai Architects
 
Moriyuki Ochiai Architects collaborates with a paint manufacturer specializing in gradational coating techniques, developing Chromatic Symphony of Landscapes. The project translates the colors and material qualities of the Seto Inland Sea and Sensuijima Island into an interior environment and furniture system. The design draws on the visual characteristics of water, stone, and earth to establish a spatial composition informed by natural processes.
 
Furniture elements are defined by layered color gradients and textured surfaces, referencing coastal rock formations and geological strata. These pieces are distributed throughout the space in...

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...

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MAY MARQUEE MASS. The spring auction season is an upon us, and ARTnews has done some sleuthing into who’s selling what. For one, there’s Jean-Michel Basquiat’s monumental panting Museum Security (Broadway Meltdown), from 1983, set for Sotheby’s contemporary art sale on May 14, estimated at $45 million. According to sources, the consignor is Joahn Sayegh-Belchatowski. And if you’re wondering who’s behind the mystery collection dubbed “A Matter of Seeing: Property from a Distinguished Collection” in a Christie’s postwar and contemporary art day sale, that would be none other than Ronald Lauder. Meanwhile, in other auction news, ARTnews reports that Lévy Gorvy Dayan is betting on a new...

dreams as active design tools
 
Following the speculative systems and future frameworks explored in Utopia Then and Now, designboom turns its attention inward toward the subjective, emotional, and often irrational territory of dreams. The Dreams in Motion chapter asks a simple but radical question: what if dreams are not passive fantasies, but active rehearsals for reality?
 
Unlike utopian thinking, which tends to construct structured visions of better societies, this chapter operates in a looser, more fluid space. Dreams are approached as systems already in motion: forces that shape how we perceive, design, and ultimately build the world around us. The projects, interviews and profiles gathered under this...

“The art world runs on informality,” artist Damien Davis writes, “until informality stops serving the institution.” In today’s must-read piece, Davis takes on the many ways so-called “standard” contracts actually undermine artists’ power. The cost of pushing back feels higher than the risk of signing, he writes, and sometimes, you can’t afford to walk away.Speaking of walking away: The latest twist in this year’s Venice Biennale, after the awards jury resigned last week, is that you are now its judge. There will be no Golden Lions, the event’s top prize; instead, ticket holders will vote on “Visitor Lions,” with awards announced when the show closes in November. Conveniently, Israel...

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ELISAVA REWRITES THE CULTURAL CODE THROUGH INTELLIGENT SYSTEMS
 
Elisava’s Master in Applied AI for Arts and Design (MAIAD) is a program on technological intervention for thinkers, designers, and creators. Under the conviction that those who understand artificial intelligence are the ones who will shape the future of culture, the master – offered in Barcelona (in English) and Madrid (in Spanish) – frames the algorithm as a raw material for artistic innovation and critical reflection. It is a curriculum designed to train a new kind of creative – one who dissects, builds, and provokes with intelligent systems to rewrite how culture is produced, distributed, and believed. 
Zeynep Atik’s project...

brick and zinc redefine a 1970s house in seoul’s myeongnyun-dong
 
Located in Myeongnyun-dong, Jongno-gu, an area in Seoul characterized by dense clusters of red brick buildings, this structure was originally constructed in 1974. The renovation by sukchulmok and BRBB reworks the existing building into a hybrid space that accommodates both studio and residential functions, while maintaining continuity with its historical context.
 
The intervention retains much of the original exterior, introducing limited contemporary additions that allow the building’s existing form, material irregularities, and relationship to the surrounding fabric to remain legible. New materials, including clay bricks that reference...

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Last month, Faustin Linyekula stood at the edge of the lagoon beside the Arsenale, looking out over the water. He bent down and ran his hand along the moss that clings to the concrete docks, then began to sing. His voice carried across the basin, past the bell towers and into the empty military warehouses, the sound echoing through spaces that, in a matter of weeks, would be filled with art and people. For now, though, Venice was quiet. Three weeks before the Venice Biennale opens to press and invited guests on May 5, much of the city’s exhibition infrastructure remained off-limits or unfinished. The Giardini, the public gardens that houses many of the national pavilions, was closed. Access to parts of the...

The untimely passing of curator Koyo Kouoh, the artistic director of the 2026 Venice Biennale, has been deeply felt throughout the art world for the past year. Now, artist Derrick Adams will pay tribute to Kouoh via a monumental installation in Venice this week. A banner version of his collage Heavy is the head that wears the crown (2026) will be installed on the facade of the Palazzetto dello sport Giobatta Gianquinto, facing the Rio della Tana, near the Arsenale, one of the Biennale’s main venues. Done in his signature style, this newly realized work features a portrait of Kouoh, whose face and arms are rendered as different geometrical shapes; above her head is the word “JOY,” from which golden rays...

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Renature, presented at Bildhalle Zürich, explores the shifting relationship between nature, perception and materiality in contemporary lens-based art. Bringing together the work of Adam Jeppesen, Douglas Mandry, Inka & Niclas and Joost Vandebrug, the exhibition questions how the organic world is framed through technology and visual culture, whilst foregrounding the physical materials that shape photography. Together, these artists open a dialogue around nature as something seen, shaped and felt. They are not merely documented, but transformed. Their works reject permanence and perfection, instead embracing fragility, artifice and transformation as essential elements of a contemporary visual language. ...

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...

This May, exhibitions on display around the world harness photography and installation to interrogate pressing themes, from the importance of proper representation to the future of our natural spaces. They ask questions like: what happens after sea levels rise? What does the world look like 50 years from now? How do we preserve our cultures, traditions and communities in the face of massive uncertainty? They’re some of the most important issues facing our current moment. Each exhibition, hosted at the National Portrait Gallery, VB Photographic Center, ARKEN, Biennale of Sydney and Kunstmuseum Wolfsburg, explores them with depth and nuance. They do not provide easy solutions, but ask the audiences to hold...

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...

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

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 […]

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 […]

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...

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

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

Blake Masi  
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
 
Blake Masi’s Website
Blake Masi on Instagram

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

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...

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...

Sylvia Trotter Ewens  
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
 
Sylvia Trotter Ewens’s Website
Sylvia Trotter Ewens on Instagram

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...

Kelsey Shwetz  
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
 
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...

Dorian Tocker  
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
 
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.

 
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...