A major exhibition at the Centre Pompidou and the Grand Palais focuses on the final, revolutionary period of Henri Matisse's career, from 1941 to 1954. The show charts his artistic reinvention following a life-threatening surgery, beginning with obsessive, reworked paintings from his Nice studio during the war and culminating in the radiant, large-scale cut-outs for which he is widely celebrated.
Artist Gisela Colón is currently the subject of a major retrospective at the Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Puerto Rico (MAC), showcasing her signature "monoliths" and iridescent obelisks. These monumental sculptures, which have appeared in global locations ranging from the Great Pyramids of Giza to the Saudi Arabian desert, utilize advanced aerospace carbon fiber and site-specific minerals to create shifting, phenomenological experiences. The exhibition tracks her evolution from 1996 to the present, highlighting her unique ability to blend high-tech materials with ancient totemic forms.
Artist Leah Ke Yi Zheng's exhibition "Change, I Ching (64 Paintings)" at the Renaissance Society in Chicago presents a series of oil and acrylic paintings on silk, each depicting one of the 64 hexagrams from the ancient Chinese divination text, the I Ching. The artist physically altered the gallery's architecture to control light and create a specific viewing rhythm, synthesizing materials and techniques from Chinese ink painting traditions with Western geometric abstraction and oil painting.
The New York Times examines the enduring power of Felix Gonzalez-Torres's 1991 performance piece "Untitled" (Go-Go Dancing Platform), in which a go-go dancer performs on a pedestal for a brief, scheduled period each day. The work, currently on view at the Art Institute of Chicago, uses the dancer's absence as a central component, creating a poignant metaphor for queer presence and loss.
A critical essay by Ayọ̀ Akínwándé performs a forensic 'autopsy' of the Tate Modern exhibition 'Nigerian Modernism: Art and Independence.' The review dissects the show's structure, arguing it fails in its curatorial framework by isolating Nigerian artists within a regional category, using ethnographic display methods, relying on incomplete research, and excluding key artists and historical context.
A major retrospective of Turner Prize-winning artist Veronica Ryan has opened, showcasing her career-long exploration of organic forms and repurposed materials. The exhibition features new works made from plastic bottles, bandages, and avocado trays, alongside earlier sculptures in bronze and lead that reference seed pods and fruit.
Artist Steve DiBenedetto presents a new body of work in his solo exhibition, "Spiral Architect," at Derek Eller Gallery. The show features 17 paintings ranging from large-scale canvases to intimate works, all characterized by a restless movement between abstraction and figuration. DiBenedetto utilizes a process-heavy technique of adding, scraping, and reworking oil paint to create dense, visionary landscapes filled with octopi, cellular forms, and Rube Goldberg-esque machinery.
Contemporary painter Vanessa Johansson recently debuted her solo exhibition at the Sky Garden Penthouse in Gramercy Park, New York. Curated by Jenny Mushkin Goldman of Agency Esta, the show featured Johansson’s large-scale acrylic on canvas works, which utilize fluid, transparent layers to evoke the spiritual and visual language of mid-20th-century Color Field abstraction. Pieces such as the triptych 'Windows' and the diptych 'Flow State' demonstrate her intuitive approach to motion, buoyancy, and orbital forms.
The Albuquerque Museum is hosting a retrospective of Chicana artist Delilah Montoya, titled "Delilah Montoya: Activating Chicana Resistance." The exhibition's centerpiece is "Detention Nation," an immersive installation created in collaboration with the Sin Huellas Artist Collective that simulates the conditions of ICE detention centers. The work features cyanotype images of detainees on prison cots, chain-link fencing, and displays of meager government-issued personal items alongside the official National Detainee Handbook.
Theresa-Anne Mackintosh’s solo exhibition, "Now is not Forever," recently debuted at the Wits Art Museum (WAM), featuring a provocative blend of older paintings and new sculptures. The show centers on anthropomorphic figures and the erasure of senses, notably in the "hear no evil, see no evil, do no evil" series, where body parts are painted over to symbolize the avoidance of moral decay. These works, alongside vivid sculptures representing the artist's alter egos, challenge viewers to look past aesthetic surfaces to confront the inherent chaos and dysfunction of contemporary society.
Artist Leonardo Madriz presents his solo exhibition 'Do Not Be Afraid' at Parent Company, featuring five totemic sculptures constructed from rope, resin, and found objects. These works, which Madriz calls 'sentinels,' use materials like rebar, barbed wire, a fake Rolex, and a fragment of a US flag made in Vietnam to create anthropomorphic forms that appear weary and burdened.
The Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw has launched "The Woman Question 1550-2025," a massive survey featuring nearly 200 works by 140 women artists spanning five centuries. Curated by Alison M. Gingeras, the exhibition uses the medieval concept of "la querelle des femmes" to explore how women have asserted their status as "citizen artists" against patriarchal structures. The show juxtaposes historical masterpieces by figures like Artemisia Gentileschi and Sofonisba Anguissola with contemporary provocations by Miriam Cahn and Lubaina Himid, focusing heavily on figurative painting and sculpture.
Emerging multidisciplinary artist Isabella Kennedy has unveiled her installation 'Ballast' at Firstdraft in Sydney, a site-specific work that blends paper sculpture, video projection, and sound. The exhibition draws on the unfinished research of her late father, journalist Les Kennedy, regarding the 1941 disappearance of the HMAS Sydney II. Through delicate stitched paper forms and immersive blue light, Kennedy explores themes of familial grief, maritime history, and the meditative acts of remembrance that bridge personal and national narratives.
Don Porcaro (American, b. 1950) presented his second solo exhibition at Westwood Gallery in New York, titled "Lost Stories," featuring two series of stone sculptures: towering polylithic pillars from the Lost Stories series and mysterious artifact-like objects from the Art or Fact series. Curated by gallery co-founder James Cavello, the show highlights Porcaro's lifelong practice of sourcing stones from diverse geographies and reconfiguring them into stacked, architecturally inspired forms that evoke prehistoric megaliths, ancient columns, and funerary urns.