Art

The Whitney Museum of American Art in New York will offer free entry to visitors aged 25 and under for the next three years, starting mid-December 2024, thanks to a $2 million USD donation from artist and board member Julie Mehretu, with additional support from philanthropist Susan Hess. This initiative follows the museum’s admission price hike last year, where standard fees increased from $25 to $30 USD and student rates from $18 to $24 USD, in line with trends at other institutions facing inflation and lower post-pandemic attendance.Mehretu, reflecting on her own challenges accessing art as a young adult in New York, emphasized the importance of making contemporary art more accessible to the Wall Street Journal. “If you want to evolve the discourse, more people need to participate,” she ...

Tokyo-based gallery NANZUKA has unveiled a new space in China. Located in Shanghai's Pudong New District, the NANZUKA ART INSTITUTE was driven by the desire to strengthen cultural exchange between the two nations, as well as cultivate a growing sector of Chinese youth within the arts.The newly minted 4,593-square-foot space will operate as a museum, rather than just a gallery, enlisting a wide array of artists that go beyond NANZUKA's roster, which includes Hajime Sorayama, Haroshi and James Jarvis. NANZUKA recently provided a teaser to its new location with a reflective robot sculpture that Sorayama specially designed towards the entrance of THE SUMMIT Tower #1, which houses the institution and a suite of office spaces and cultural hotspots.The inaugural exhibition ETERNAL LIFE will featu...

Maurizio Cattelan's duct-taped banana artwork is back like it never left. The subversive piece, entitled Comedian (2019), first bewildered audiences during Art Basel Miami Beach. As an edition of three, the first two sold fairly quickly for an astonishing $120,000 USD via Perrotin, followed by a slight price bump of $150,000 USD to an anonymous buyer linked to the Guggenheim Museum in New York. Comedian has taken quite a few turns since then, being eaten several times, first by a New York-based performance artist named David Datuna, and a South Korean student who alleged to have done the same under the guise of performance art in 2023."To me, Comedian was not a joke," Cattelan previously explained, "it was a sincere commentary and a reflection on what we value. At art fairs, speed and busi...

David Carson's archival book, The Rules of Grafik Design + Creativity, is now available after being "lost" for years. The book, created between 2003 and 2009, is not a polished design manual but a raw collection of thoughts, prompts and approaches from Carson’s practice. It offers insight into his instinctive design process, with unfinished pages, low-resolution images and printer's crop marks left intact.Originally intended as a scrapbook of eight years of work, the book resurfaced in 2022 as a single PDF—the original files are missing. The unfinished nature of the book provides a candid view of Carson's approach, emphasizing creativity through experimentation rather than strict guidelines. Despite the title, Carson notes that the book was never about "rules" but about exploring creativit...

Polaroid and Magnum Photos have unveiled the 10 emerging artists selected from their recent open call for a special showcase at the Paris Photo Fair this November. This marks the first partnership between the iconic photography brands, which received over 2,000 submissions from more than 100 countries. The competition focused on visual storytelling that reflects human experience, with winners creating works that explore themes of identity, connection and the world’s unpredictability.The artists received mentorship from Magnum photographers Enri Canaj, Jim Goldberg, and Newsha Tavakolian to refine their concepts. Highlights include Jakub Stanek’s exploration of fatherhood and masculinity, Aleruchi Kinika’s portraits on the complexities of womanhood, and Mengwen Cao’s tribute to their connec...

Dutch-Iranian artist and 550BC founder Pouria Khojastehpay has unveiled a new solo exhibition at PERMANENT gallery in Paris. The show extracts images from 550BC's catalog of books, each of which presents an unfiltered look at the lifestyles of global crime syndicates, from the Ultras that orbit European football grounds to favela drug lords and their proclivity with flaunting exotic animals. PERMANENT was co-founded by French-Moroccan designer Ramdane Touhami and French creative director Leonard Vernhet, both of which have made a significant impact on the world of contemporary graphic design over the past decade through work with ILL-STUDIO, as well as publications EPOCH REVIEW and USELESS FIGHTERS. The pairing felt "seamless," Khojastehpay tells Hypeart, "evolving naturally from our mutua...

Fondazione Prada will unveil a new solo exhibition by the Ohio-based artist duo Lizzie Fitch and Ryan Trecartin. Housed at its Prada Aoyama location in Tokyo, It Waves Back comprises of new sculptures and video installations that critique consumerism and the hyper-commodification of self in the digital age. The exhibition marks the first time Fitch and Trecartin have shown in Japan, as they populate the Herzog & de Meuron-designed space with a large-scale installation, two movies and a series of assemblage sculptures. Central to the show are two films that revisit Whether Line (2017), the first commission Fitch and Trecartin worked on with Prada. Both are on view in a wooden structure and smaller darkened space that conflates conflicting aesthetic styles, such as exposed wooden beams w...

Sotheby's is used to making headlines, having been amongst the top auction houses to sell rare works of art since its founding in 1744. On Halloween, the London-founded company will tick another milestone off as it auctions the first ever artwork made by a robot.A.I. God. Portrait of Alan Turing (2024) was created by Ai-Da, a humanoid robot built by British gallery owner Aidan Meller. Clad in a black bob, navy top and black denim overalls, Ai-Da utilizes human inputs and artificial intelligence to do a variety of daily functions — from drawing and writing to even giving a TED talk. "Extraordinarily complex," wrote Meller, "our online worlds are pushed and pulled by forces and personalities that are sometimes apparent but largely oblique. Ai-Da, the machine with AI capacities, highlights th...

Like the tournament itself, the logo and poster designs for each FIFA World Cup has a unique place in the hearts of football fans. For the next World Cup in North America, organizers are offering local artists the chance to design the LA-specific poster, along with a $20,000 USD prize. The winning submission will be displayed across Southern California, including at SoFi Stadium, one of the most technologically-advanced arenas in the world, which will host eight fixtures during the 2026 FIFA World Cup. Produced in collaboration with the Annenberg Foundation, the contest is only open to LA County residents who are 18 and older, with each of three finalists receiving $2,500 USD and $500 USD going to the remaining 12 on the shortlist. Submissions must be sent by November 17, 2024, which will ...

In Le Soleil n'existe pas at Stems Gallery's Brussels outpost, Leo Luccioni probes the existence of the sun and reality itself through a critique of consumer culture. His vivid paintings depict monarch butterflies drawn to bright, sugary packaging, highlighting the tension between nature and industrialized products. Luccioni’s use of airbrush, a technique popularized by 1970s advertising, emphasizes the hyperrealism of these everyday items, blurring the line between art and commodity.Key pieces like "Coucher de soleil" challenge the viewer to question the source of light in abstract landscapes, while leather punching bags invite physical interaction, provoking thoughts on the value of packaging. Luccioni’s work critiques overconsumption and explores the artificiality in modern life, forcin...

Oasis fever is hitting Tokyo in a new forthcoming exhibition that features work from the band's longtime photographer Jill Furmanovsky, as well as collages from Japanese artist and graphic designer Kosuke Kawamura. British photographer Jill Furmanovsky has documented some of the biggest names to hit rock and roll, including Pink Floyd, Paul McCartney and The Who. Earlier this year, she won the prestigious ICON Award at the Abbey Road Music Photography Awards, with Noel Gallagher himself presenting the honor, calling Furmanovsky "one of my best friends." On view will be a selection of photographs she took while traveling with the band from their early beginnings in Manchester to global domination in 2009. Also on view will be bespoke collage artworks and t-shirts designed by Kosuke Kawamura...

The fourth edition of Forever Is Now returns to the Giza Pyramids from October 24 to November 16, 2024, turning the iconic site into an open-air gallery that merges ancient history with contemporary art. Curated by Nadine Abdel Ghaffar, the exhibition features 12 international artists who use the Pyramids as a backdrop to explore the connections between past and present through various artistic mediums.This year's theme highlights how art acts as a tool for discovery, much like archaeology, by reinterpreting history through modern creativity. Participatory light installations, sculptures, and digital works invite viewers to engage with themes ranging from sacred geometry to modern abstraction. For the first time, artists from Asia, including South Korean artist Ik-Joong Kang, will particip...