Banksy is back. Not with a mural this time, but with a full-blown sculpture in the heart of London. The provocateur from Bristol confirmed in a video on his Instagram account today that he is indeed the creator of an imposing statue at Waterloo Place in Central London. To remove any doubt, he also scratched his signature on the statue's base. The monument depicts a modern man in a suit walking off a plinth with his face covered by a flag. Installed covertly in the early hours of Wednesday, April 29, the statue is in proximity to a cluster of monuments celebrating the bygone glory of the British Empire: bronzes of King Edward VII, Florence Nightingale, and the Crimean War Memorial. Banksy's left his...

German conceptual artist Timm Ulrichs has died at the age of 86. His death on April 29 in Berlin was announced by the art association Kunstverein Hannover, of which he was the oldest member. Born in Berlin in 1940, Ulrichs studied architecture at the Technical University of Hanover from 1959–1966. In 1961, inspired by the “Merzkunst” (Merz art) of Hanoverian artist Kurt Schwitters, he declared himself a “total artist,” renaming his living space and studio the Werbezentrale für Totalkunst & Banalismus (Advertising agency for total art, banalism, and extemporism). “Total Art,” he once stated, “knows no boundaries as regards to genre and encompasses diverse disciplines that serve to get to the...

During the much-ballyhooed visit of King Charles and Queen Camilla to New York City on Wednesday, Mayor Zohran Mamdani called on the King to use his power to return the Koh-i-Noor Diamond to India. As reported by Reuters, at a press conference before a ceremony to commemorate the victims of ​the September 11 attack, Mamdani said, “If I were to ‌speak to the king separately from that, I would probably encourage him to return the Koh-i-Noor Diamond.” The two leaders did in fact meet later at the ceremony itself, but Buckingham Palace declined to comment and Mamdani’s office did not respond to a request for comment about what was discussed. In 1850, the Koh-i-Noor Diamond was given to Queen Victoria...

The family of 96-year-old Quebecois sculptor Armand Vaillancourt is not giving up the fight to save the 710-ton concrete landmark known as Québec Libre! or the Vaillancourt Fountain. The public artwork has been an iconic, if controversial, part of the landscape of San Francisco’s Embarcadero Plaza since it was constructed in 1971. However, last summer, San Francisco’s arts commission, which owns the work, was asked if would “deaccession” the sculpture in order to accommodate the city’s planned renovation of the plaza. “It’s one of urban America’s truly bizarre works of public art,” John King, a former architecture critic at the San Francisco Chronicle, told the New York Times last fall....

The five-person jury resigned amid an escalating dispute over the participation of Israel and Russia at this year’s Biennale

Portland Oregon’s Converge 45 triennial has shared the participating artists for its upcoming exhibition “Here, To you, Now.” Curated by Lumi Tan, the triennial will draw inspiration from the work of Ursula K. Le Guin, specifically her novel Always Coming Home. In this 1985 novel, Le Guin writes a futuristic ethnography of the fictional Kesh […]

Ever wondered what the life of an artist is really like? The film Peter Hujar's Day is a day in the life of the renowned photographer — specifically December 17, 1974. (Spoiler: he's juggling work, rent, and a social life among the eccentrics of the East Village). For Artillery Magazine, Matthew Chan takes it a level more meta: He talks to writer Linda Rosenkrantz, whose recording of Hujar recounting his day spawned her 2022 book that the film is in turn based on, about what it's like to put together a reconstruction of a reconstruction: An aspect of the book and the film that I find intriguing is how it demystifies the day-to-day life of the artist. Because so much of what you and Peter...

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...

The members of the international jury responsible for awarding the top prizes at the Sixty-First Venice Biennale today announced their resignation en masse. Jury president Solange Oliveira Farkas and members Zoe Butt, Marta Kuzma, Elvira Dyangani Ose, and Giovanna Zapperi had been handpicked by Koyo Kouoh, the Biennale’s artistic director, who died suddenly last summer. […]

The Yerba Buena Center for the Arts (YBCA) in San Francisco has named Essence Harden as senior curator. She will begin in the role on May 18. Harden currently serves as curator of the Expo Chicago art fair. Since 2024, they have also organized the Focus section of Frieze Los Angeles. They will continue in those roles with YBCA’s support. As an independent curator, Harden most recently co-curated the 2025 edition of the Made in L.A. biennial at the Hammer Museum. They previously served as visual arts curator at the California African American Museum in Los Angeles and have also organized exhibitions at the Orange County Museum of Art, Art + Practice in Los Angeles, the Museum of the African Diaspora in San...

Art Movements, published every Thursday afternoon, is a roundup of must-know news, appointments, awards, and other happenings in today’s chaotic art world.La Trienal Curators AnnouncedEl Museo del Barrio has announced the curatorial team for the 2027 edition of La Trienal, the East Harlem institution's landmark survey of Latine contemporary art. The show will be organized by Susanna V. Temkin, interim chief Curator at El Museo; Zuna Maza, assistant curator; and guest curator Kaitlin Garcia-Maestas, previously curator and director of exhibitions at Socrates Sculpture Park. As in past iterations, La Trienal will feature works by artists of Latin American and Caribbean descent living in the United...

The Montclair Art Museum has a new chief curator. The New Jersey institution hired Kate Kraczon, who lost her job as director of exhibitions and chief curator at the David Winton Bell Gallery at Brown University, in Providence, Rhode Island, late last year amid a wave of layoffs; she had served in that office since 2019. Kraczon takes over the role from Gail Stavitsky, who had held the post since 1994, and takes up her new position June 15. Before the Bell, Kraczon was associate curator at the Institute of Contemporary Art at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia from 2008–19. The museum also appointed Todd Caissie, an enrolled member of the Osage Nation and previously director of Canada’s New...

Baselitz’s death comes on the eve of a major exhibition of his latest paintings at the Fondazione Giorgio Cini concurrent with the Venice Biennale

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...

The Venice Biennale's international jury announced its collective resignation today, April 30 — eight days after issuing a statement outlining its intent to omit Russia and Israel from awards consideration. The Biennale Foundation has confirmed receipt of the jury's decision.The short and straightforward notice was published on e-flux today as the lead-up to the 61st Biennale descends into chaos over Russia's and Israel's participation in the national pavilion exhibitions. In its April 22 statement, the jury, whose members had been selected by the Biennale's late Art Director Koyo Kuouh, asserted their “commitment to the defense of human rights” in the collective decision to...

The Caral civilisation used the structure thousands of years ago to track the sun, moon and stars to determine conditions for fishing and gathering shellfish

remembering georg baselitz
 
The art world mourns the passing of Georg Baselitz (1938–2026), a defining force in postwar painting whose work reshaped the trajectory of contemporary art. Over a career spanning more than six decades, Baselitz forged a language that confronted history, identity, and representation with unrelenting intensity, leaving a body of work that continues to resonate across generations.
 
‘We are deeply saddened to announce the passing of Georg Baselitz, a titan of contemporary painting, sculpture, drawing and printmaking,‘ reads a statement shared following his death, which was announced Thursday, April 30th, 2026. ‘A canonical innovator and one of the most important artists of...

Amidst a storm of controversy that’s seeing many call for the exclusion of the United States, Russia, and Israel from the Venice Biennale, the American Arts Conservancy (AAC)—an organization that was founded just last year by the Trump administration—has begun crowdfunding on its website to support this year’s United States Pavilion, Hyperallergic reports.  “This is […]

George Lucas is curating 18 thematic exhibitions that will fill 100,000 sq. ft of the $1bn museum he and his wife Mellody Hobson are building in Los Angeles

a classic jeep becomes a rugged restomod
 
The Vigilante 4×4 Scrambler takes the long, open profile of the original Jeep CJ-8 and brings it into the present through a complete reworking of its structure and performance. The car is immediately recognizable. Flat body panels, exposed hardware, and an open cabin continue to define its appearance. Beneath that familiar profile, it has been rebuilt from the ground up.
 
A new chassis replaces the original frame, supporting updated suspension and a modern V8 engine. These changes shift how the vehicle behaves on the road and across uneven terrain. Acceleration, stability, and braking all move into a different range than the historic model. The team’s intention...

IN 2013, the UK-based art collective Otolith Group (Kodwo Eshun and Anjelika Sagar) opened an exhibition at the Gallery at REDCAT in Los Angeles. At the time, I was a budding curator and film programmer with an insatiable curiosity, buzzing about town, attending openings and meeting artists. During this time I had also discovered Kodwo’s […]

WHEN I FIRST met Ulysses Jenkins—or UJ, as his friends affectionately called him—we hit it off immediately. He was jovial, cheeky, and somehow both open and shy at once. Inside jokes came instantaneously as we had lunch on the campus of the University of California, Irvine, where he taught—lunching was a constant for us, and […]

In June 1776, the provincial congress of New Jersey sent five replacement delegates to Philadelphia.  In a letter, John Adams confidently referred to them as “independent souls.” Five Independent Souls: The Signers from New Jersey at Morven Museum & Garden examines the lives of these lesser-known signers — Abraham Clark, John Hart, Francis Hopkinson, Richard Stockton, and John Witherspoon — and confronts a confounding actuality: while risking their lives for liberty, freedom, and equality, they denied these rights to the people they enslaved. Visitors can learn about these subjugated men, women, and children, as well as the impact of American independence on NJ’s indigenous population.On display...

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Are peptides inherently safe because they mimic naturally occurring hormones? Are they risky because most peptides remain only partially characterized... Read More

Held in the Grimaldi Forum, the boutique fair was bought last year by trade fair company Informa Prestige

banksy’s faceless marcher lands in london’s monument corridor
 
A new sculpture by Banksy has appeared overnight in London’s St. James’s district, inserting a stark contemporary figure into one of the capital’s most historically charged public spaces. Installed on Waterloo Place among memorials to imperial and military history, the work depicts a suited man striding forward while holding a large flag that folds over and obscures his face entirely. The blackened figure stands atop a stone plinth marked simply with the artist’s name.
all images courtesy of Banksy
 
 
between protest and monument
 
Positioned near statues of Edward VII, Florence Nightingale, and the Crimean War Memorial, the...

Victoria Miro has announced the representation of Shahzia Sikander in partnership with Sean Kelly Gallery.

Art of Manga at Brooklyn Museum will spotlight more than 600 original works by legendary Japanese manga artists in a landmark exhibition.

Daisy Desrosiers joins Tate as Britton Family Curator at Large, North America, bringing major curatorial experience and a strong artist-centred approach to the role.

Radial geometry by zU-studio organizes La Bretxa Public Space
 
La Bretxa Public Space, designed by zU-studio, is located adjacent to the traditional market in the old town of San Sebastián, Spain. The project reconfigures an existing urban plaza positioned at a key junction connecting the Gros district, the city center, and the Boulevard, reinforcing its role as a point of access to the historic core.
 
The design is structured around geometric principles derived from Basque cultural references. A central motif is the ‘Eguzki-Lore,’ a traditional sunflower symbol historically placed at entrances for protection. This element is reinterpreted at an urban scale, organizing the plaza through a radial...

Klaus Mäkelä unexpectedly joins the foray for The Cleveland Orchestra's performances of Benjamin Britten’s War Requiem.

Bluebeard's Castle and Erwartung at Canadian Opera Company deliver on fine performances even if Robert Lepage's production skimps on horror.

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....

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Few symbols have traveled quite as far as the skull and crossbones. It started life as a grim shorthand on... Read More

Milan Design Week was once a straightforward proposition: a trade fair built on the exchange of finished objects. Today, that original utility has dissolved into the city itself. The boundaries of the Salone have expanded to take over historic palazzos and industrial peripheries, turning Milan into a sprawling stage where commerce, culture, and digital spectacle inevitably collide. For over a decade now, I have returned to Milan, the city where my journey with designboom began. I still love its energy, the chance encounters, and the fresh ideas that emerge with every edition. Yet, I have also watched the city’s design week shift from a space of spontaneous discovery into a frantic marathon of must-sees and...

"You're your own boss."

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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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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...

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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...

In the richly detailed linocuts of Eduardo Robledo, festive ceremonies, spiritual motifs, and dream-like interactions unfurl. The Mexico City-based artist was born and raised in the southern borough of Xochimilco, which is famous for its canals—vestiges of a huge Aztec water transport system still used today for bringing goods into the city. This area and its time-honored customs provide a bounty of inspiration for Robledo. Community and celebration are at the heart of his work, as creatures and figures converge in enigmatic, sometimes ritualistic choreographies. Traditional motifs like skulls and skeletons, which represent remembrance, joy, and an acceptance of the cycle of life and death, interact with...

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

Nostalgic for bass month, Parterre Box offers excerpts from two young basses to watch: Giorgi Manoshvili and Patrick Guetti.

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...

Hans Hotter masterfully captures the poignancy of this sublime Brahms Lied.

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...

Classical sculptures meet traditional studio portraiture in the work of Åsa Johannesson. The artist’s long-term project The Queering of Photography, turns both traditional genres on their head. The experimental work investigates the complex relationship between queer identity and photographic representation. The artist creates formal, yet playfully subversive images of human figures, Roman statues and studio props to challenge and reimagine how identity and desire are represented. The project evolved from a series of interconnected works – Looking Out, Looking In; Frame; Figural, Figurative; Turn; and Skin – spanning performative black-and-white studio portraits, studies of Roman statues and studio...

In Diana Markosian’s latest body of work, intimacy is framed as an unstable condition, continually reconstructed through absence, repetition and emotional residue, where love persists beyond its apparent ending in altered, shifting forms. Relationships appear less as fixed narratives than as structures in motion, shaped as much by what has disappeared as by what remains visible. Replaced, now on at Gallerie d’Italia, organises emotional experience through cycles of return in which memory functions less as retrieval than ongoing re-authorship. Photography and film work together to stage this instability, allowing scenes to reappear in subtly altered emotional registers, as if slightly out of alignment with...

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.

Nahanni McKay  
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
 
Nahanni McKay’s Website
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