After a decade-long career as a fashion photographer, Juan Brenner left New York City to return to Guatemala City. In his homecoming, he was moved by the new era of Guatemalans who brought aesthetic traditions and ways of being into a new dawn. For his upcoming book, published by Guest Editions, Brenner presents the vibrant renaissance of youth culture in the Western Highlands in a series of rich and tender scenes.Across 360 pages, Genesis chronicles everyday life in a culmination of over five years’ work. “The more I worked on Genesis, the less it became about me and the more it evolved into an archive of a moment in time,” Brenner notes. “The Highlands are so dense and rich with stimulus that it’s hard to digest everything at once when you’re there.” In the face of great change, the arti...
It's no surprise that Ai Weiwei likes to stir the pot. The Chinese dissident artist is well known for giving the bird to authority figures around the world, as well as questioning artificial intelligence through a monumental public installation he recently showcased with CIRCA at London's Piccadilly Circus. But over the weekend at Weiwei's new exhibition at Palazzo Fava in Bologna, a 57-year-old Czech man flipped the script and caused a stir himself by deliberately smashing one of the artist's sculptures. Per reports, Vaclav Pisvejc was well-known to art insiders for wreaking havoc during exhibitions, smashing a Marina Abramović painting in 2018, amongst other offenses. During the opening night of Weiwei's Who am I? solo show, CCTV captures Pisvejc knocking Porcelain Cube off a plinth and ...
Japanese artist and breakdancer Taku Obata has worked with London creative studio Avant Arte on a new sculptural edition entitled B BOY SEIDOU.Obata's latest release distills his two passions in life into a weighty bronze artwork depicting a breaker in mid dance, as he wears an oversized hat and eyes beaming toward the viewer with his limbs outstretched. The sculpture, much like Obata's two practices, centers around the human body as an instrument for movement. The artist first started to conflate these two worlds several decades ago, stating that he was "convinced that there wasn’t anyone else in the world who was inspired to carve a B-Boy wood sculpture," prompting him to "push the boundaries by doing carving instead of the modeling I am used to."In B BOY SEIDOU, Obata cast his usual chi...
Video games have evolved far beyond mere entertainment—they’re immersive worlds where players lose themselves in sight, sound, and story. The ability to step into another universe, interact with it, and shape its narrative has turned gaming into a powerful art form.Onassis ONX is preparing to unveil Group Hug, an unconventional exhibition of immersive video game installations by Theo Triantafyllidis, Danielle Brathwaite-Shirley, and the duo Tale of Tales (Auriea Harvey and Michaël Samyn). In partnership with Water Street Projects and curated by Julia Kaganskiy, the show brings a unique, multi-sensory experience to New York from September 26 to October 20.Each of the three site-specific works invites players to step into unfamiliar worlds where teamwork is key. Triantafyllidis’ “Feral Metav...
teamLab is set to unveil a new permanent exhibition in Izura, a picturesque coastal spot in Japan’s Ibaraki prefecture. Entitled teamLab: Hidden Traces of Rice Terraces, the immersive exhibition will take place in the unique landscape, transforming the rice terraces tucked away deep in the forest into a beguiling spectacle of light, colors and flora.Visitors will be able to explore the forest area that surrounds the rice terrace, where they’ll also be able to check out another of teamlab’s projects, “Digitized Nature.” As explained by the art collective on their website, the concept examines how “non-material digital technology can turn nature into art without harming it.”In tandem, teamlab has partnered up with Izura Hot Springs to tailor a unique and glamping experience that blends well...
Last year, Nami Oh hoped to build a bigger, more permanent home for her sign painting practice. After a 20-year-long career in the fashion industry, she embarked on the ever-present yet hidden world of sign painting, leaving traces of herself across Los Angeles. When a space opened up a block away from where she was raised, finding what would become OhNami Gallery was kismet.Reflecting on her childhood, Hello Kitty came as a natural source of inspiration during her early sign painting days. The idea for a Sanrio fan art exhibition came to her last year. To her surprise, the show would coincide with Hello Kitty’s 50th birthday. Something about Fanrio felt right.Incorporating tattoo, automotive painting and fan art, OhNami looks to redefine the boundaries of a traditional gallery space. On t...
Mercer Labs is set to unveil a new immersive exhibition just in time for Halloween. Conceptualized by co-founder and multidisciplinary artist Roy Nachum, Dark Matter invites audiences into nightmarish dreamscapes, fusing together elements of psychic darkness with paranormal expression.Housed at Mercer Labs’ 36,000 square foot base in downtown Manhattan, the exhibition will feature a series of 15 unique rooms. In a maelstrom of robots, 4D soundscapes, dynamic projections and infinity rooms, Dark Matter creates an experience that is just as entrancing as it is eerie.“Dark Matter examines the role of darkness in art history,” says Nachum in an exhibition statement. “Revealing how the subconscious uncertainty and the unknown has shaped artistic movements across time. The exhibition is a mirror...
After only one day of opening, Cj Hendry’s massive floral installation was quickly shut down due to overcrowding, finding home in an Industry City warehouse for its final viewing day.Two years in the making, Flower Market was originally installed at FDR Four Freedoms State Park on Roosevelt Island, presented in collaboration with Clé de Peau Beauté and the Four Freedoms Park Conservancy. Slated to stay from September 13 through 15, the immersive exhibition was shut down by the New York Police Department in the first hour of opening on September 14 after the park reached capacity. The artist took to social media, apologizing to visitors that weren’t able to make it in, promising to “build a new exhibit overnight” via Instagram later that day.With quick feet, Hendry and her team found an ope...
Europa presents a solo exhibition by Thomas McDonell featuring a new suite of paintings and sculptures. For Figueroa St. Paintings, the actor-turned-artist widens a curious eye toward an ever-changing Los Angeles, finding creative life in utilitarian materials.For McDonell, the pleasure is in the pragmatic. Traces of scratching fingernails on the surface of the canvas suggest a clash between the artist and his work, as confident gestures and handprints are held together in thick layers of discarded industrial house paint.Painting and sculpture bleed into one another through the artist’s textural approach. In the center of the gallery lay ceramic pieces, adorned in calligraphic grooves and a rich inky glaze. The supporting pedestals are crafted out of newspaper rolls, sourced from the Los A...
Perrotin New York presents Between, an immersive dive into the world of Lee Bae, a South Korean artist known for pushing the boundaries of minimalism. Bae’s work has recently been seen on a colossal scale at Rockefeller Center and in the Venice Biennale. This time, at Perrotin, he showcases a site-specific installation featuring paper painted with charcoal ink and bronze sculptures. The pieces explore the intersection of cultural history and the present moment, with bold shapes capturing fragments of time.For over four decades, Bae has honed his craft around the color black, primarily using charcoal. To him, charcoal represents the cycle of life, renewal, and history. He’s evolved from raw charcoal sculptures to experimenting with charcoal ink and bronze in recent years. His "Brushstroke" ...
Ahead of their annual residency program, THE SHOPHOUSE has announced a duet exhibition by artists Jinbin Chen and Yu Shuk Pui Bobby. The two will come together to showcase a series of original on-site works following the open studio period.Since its inauguration in 2021, the DOOR TO DOOR program has exercised art as a point of entry. Through an exchange of creative environments between Hong Kong and the UK, the program brings the role of place and space into full focus as each artist creates work that responds to their new surroundings.This year's special DØR TO DOOR program visualizes the cultural and knowledge exchange between Hong Kong and Oslo. In search of an in-betweenness, Chen romanticizes the gap between the ideal and the past in soft and fragmented figures. His work examines enco...
At Nunu Fine Art New York, six Taiwanese artists look for stability in an endless sea of information in a new group show. In the Moment filters through an aperture of life online as each artist interrogates the cold clutch of digital ephemera.Born and raised in the 1990s, the artists are united by technological advancement and political activity during their coming of age. Bearing witness to the generation of artists that came before them, their work hones in on themes of introspection and individuality—capturing the moment as it comes.With respect to form and focus, the works of In the Moment don’t hold back. Chiao-Han Chueh conjures movement and fantasy in eccentric forms. Fu Ning brings life to doomscrolling through an iridescent imagination. Guan-Hong Lu advantages absurdity and humor ...