Art News. Vasari Codex

person people schedule May 29, 2025 visibility 13 link 3 artists, 1 gallery

leah ke yi zheng painting new talent

Leah Ke Yi Zheng, a Chinese-born artist who initially pursued law and business before committing to art, is gaining significant recognition. She opened her second solo exhibition with Mendes Wood DM in New York in January and is preparing upcoming shows in Vienna and at the Renaissance Society in Chicago. Zheng's paintings use Chinese silk on custom wooden stretchers, often irregularly shaped, blending traditional Chinese materials with Western avant-garde formal provocations. Her work explores themes of spirituality and interrupts the data-saturated modern experience, often depicting mechanical devices like fusees from antique clocks or abstract compositions inspired by the I Ching.

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person people schedule Jun 17, 2025 visibility 22 link 1 artist, 2 galleries

rhea dillon sculpture new talent

Rhea Dillon, a 29-year-old artist and writer, is preparing for three exhibitions opening over the summer: a group show at the Whitney Independent Study Program (ISP), a solo exhibition at Heidelberger Kunstverein, and a booth in the Statements section of Art Basel Switzerland. Her work, which draws on Black and Caribbean intellectual traditions, uses everyday objects and symbols to critique postcolonial diasporic identity, as seen in sculptures like *Caribbean Ossuary* (2022) and *Swollen, Whole, Broken...* (2023). Dillon also discusses her linguistic approach, explored in drawings at Paul Soto Gallery, where she repeats and redefines the shape of a spade to transform a racial slur into new forms.

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person people schedule Sep 25, 2025 visibility 22 link 6 artists

lisa phillips steps down new museum

Lisa Phillips, director of New York's New Museum, will retire after more than 25 years in the role, as reported by the New York Times. The museum is currently in the midst of a 62,000-square-foot expansion expected to open this fall, though no date has been set. Phillips, 71, oversaw the museum's relocation to the Bowery in 2007, launched the influential New Museum Triennial in 2010, and added initiatives like New Inc and Rhizome. Her tenure also included controversies, such as criticism over a 2010 show of works owned by a trustee, staff complaints about her $900,000 salary, and tensions around the museum's unionization in 2019.

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person people schedule May 27, 2025 visibility 15 link 1 artist, 2 galleries

jackie amezquita bricks new talent

Jackie Amézquita, a Los Angeles-based artist originally from Guatemala, has developed a unique brick-making process using soil and masa de maíz (corn dough) mixed with organic materials like blue pea flower, cocoa, cochineal, and charcoal to create vibrant, colorful bricks. Her work, including the 2023 installation *El suelo que nos alimenta* commissioned by the Hammer Museum for the Made in L.A. biennial, uses soil from each of LA's neighborhoods to explore themes of migration, memory, and colonial legacies. Amézquita's practice is deeply personal, drawing on her family's migration history—her mother moved from Guatemala in 1987, and her grandmother fled Mexico during the Cristero War—and her own eight-day walk from Tijuana to LA, during which she collected soil samples as an archive of memory.

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person people schedule Jul 2, 2025 visibility 19 link 3 artists, 3 galleries

rafik greisss photo paris new talent

Dublin-born Egyptian artist Rafik Greiss discusses his practice and recent work in an interview conducted at a Paris café. Greiss, who recently presented a solo show titled “The Longest Sleep” at Galerie Balice Hertling in Paris, creates photographs and films that explore themes of loneliness, urban space, and religious experience. His 12-minute film *The Longest Sleep* (2024), shot in Cairo, depicts Sufi rituals and deserted fairgrounds, informed by neurotheology. Greiss prints his black-and-white photographs on thick Japanese paper, emphasizing the tactile signature of his lens-based work. He is currently considering exhibition invitations from institutions around the Mediterranean and plans to travel to Egypt to make new work.

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person people schedule May 19, 2025 visibility 19 link 4 artists, 1 gallery

brooklin soumahoro new talent 2025

Brooklin A. Soumahoro, a self-taught painter based in Los Angeles, is featured in ARTnews' 2025 "New Talent" issue. Born in Paris and working in a Glassell Park studio, he creates oil paintings that blend methodical color theory with intuitive emotion, drawing inspiration from West African textile designs, synesthesia, and the Fauvist palette of Henri Matisse. His recent solo exhibition "The Open Window" at François Ghebaly gallery in Los Angeles presented works inspired by the south of France, directly engaging with Matisse's iconic paintings.

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person people schedule May 27, 2025 visibility 12 link 2 artists

jen deluna blurred paintings bite dogs pinup

Artist Jen DeLuna creates blurred paintings based on vintage found photographs, primarily of 1970s pin-up girls and aggressive dogs. Working at PLOP residency in East London, she uses a large brush to blur wet paint, creating a hazy, memory-like effect. Her works include portraits like *Rallying Sigh* (2024) and canine pieces like *Hounding* (2024), which she hangs together to create a dialogue between femininity and animal aggression.

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person people schedule Jun 23, 2025 visibility 15 link 2 artists, 2 galleries

faye wei wei musicality paint new talent 2025

Faye Wei Wei, a figurative painter known for her ethereal and romantic style, is profiled following her enrollment in Yale's MFA program. The article highlights her recent works, including "Calcium Stars (severed romanesque ears)" (2024) and "A Telescope Made of Champagne Glass" (2024), which blend motifs of hearts, lovers, and architectural forms with musical energy. Wei Wei, who graduated from the Slade School of Fine Art in 2016 and has shown at Situations in New York and Galerie Kandlhofer in Vienna, discusses her improvisational studio practice and the influence of music on her painting.

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person people schedule May 11, 2026 visibility 18 link 7 artists

Marisol Mendez wins 2026 Saltzman-Leibovitz Photography Prize

Bolivian artist Marisol Mendez has won the 2026 Saltzman-Leibovitz Photography Prize for her work *MADRE*. The award includes a $15,000 cash prize, and Mendez's winning piece will be exhibited alongside works by other nominees at Photo London from May 13 to 17. The prize was founded in 2025 by photographers Lisa Saltzman and Annie Leibovitz. Miranda Barnes took second place, with Cole Ndelu, Lindeka Qampi, and Bettina Pittaluga also nominated.

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person people schedule Jun 24, 2025 visibility 11 link 1 artist

aislan pankararu brazil new talent 2025

Aislan Pankararu, an Indigenous Brazilian artist and licensed physician, maintains a studio in São Paulo where he creates works that draw from his Pankararu heritage, medical training, and the Caatinga biome of northeastern Brazil. His practice includes clay-pigmented paintings, abstract forms evoking cellular structures and ritual designs, and series such as "Soil" (2024) and "Touch" (2024). After returning to drawing during his medical residency in 2019, Pankararu quickly gained recognition, participating in exhibitions at the Museu Nacional da República and Museu de Arte de São Paulo, and winning the prestigious PIPA Prize in 2024.

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person people schedule May 19, 2025 visibility 13 link 1 artist

sculptor biohack agnes questionmark tentacular trans

Agnes Questionmark, a multimedia performance artist based in Brooklyn, creates work exploring the trans body—encompassing transgender, transhuman, and trans-species identity—often with an aquatic, tentacular aesthetic. During a studio visit at the Brooklyn Navy Yard, she showed recent fabric works overpainted with acrylic and silicone, depicting organs in vivid reds and oranges. Her performances include TRANSGENESIS (2021), a 23-day endurance piece at Harlesden Highstreet in London, and CHM13hTERT (2023), a 16-day installation in a Milan subway station where she was suspended in a mermaid-like tail. She also produced an artist's edition, QuestionGen (2024), containing a capsule of her own DNA, made with biohacker Josie Zayner and publisher Nero.

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person people schedule Jun 13, 2025 visibility 13 link 2 artists

video ai alison nguyen historys strange

Alison Nguyen, a Vietnamese American artist based in New York’s Chinatown, discusses her multidisciplinary practice spanning video, installation, performance, and sculpture. Her works explore American mythologies, visual culture, and digital labor, drawing from low and high culture. Notable pieces include *History as Hypnosis* (2023), which follows three Vietnamese women through a desert and downtown Los Angeles, and *My Favorite Software Is Being Here* (2021), featuring an AI assistant named Andra8. Nguyen’s upcoming works *Change Order* (2024) and *Aisle 9* are inspired by her family’s Taiwanese hosiery business archives. She is featured in ARTnews’ 2025 “New Talent” issue.

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