Alma Allen’s US Pavilion Is One of the Emptiest Shows at the Venice Biennale

Alma Allen represents the United States at the 2026 Venice Biennale with a subdued, apolitical exhibition inside the US Pavilion. The show features roughly 25 sculptures—mostly in bronze, wood, and stone—many titled "Not Yet Titled," and deliberately avoids overt political messaging. This marks a stark departure from the previous two US pavilions, curated by Simone Leigh (2022) and Jeffrey Gibson (2024), which directly confronted colonialism and empire. The Trump administration’s call for proposals explicitly asked for work that "reflects and promotes American values," and Allen’s presentation has been criticized as safe, unremarkable, and lacking the incisive edge of contemporary American art.

Mounting Rene Matić’s snapshots in Perspex isn’t really enough to make them interesting | Charlotte Jansen

Rene Matić, at 29, became the youngest winner of the £30,000 Deutsche Börse Photography Foundation prize, nominated for their solo exhibition "As Opposed to the Truth" at CCA Berlin. A smaller version of that show is now at the Photographers’ Gallery in London. Matić was also the youngest Turner Prize nominee last year. The article critiques Matić's work, praising their 2022 piece "Upon This Rock" for exploring masculinity, fatherhood, and British identity, but dismissing much of their other output—like the snapshot installation "Feelings Wheel"—as immature, mediocre, and reliant on display gimmicks rather than photographic substance.

CUANDO LOS OBJETOS HABLAN. MUSEO HECHIZO, DE JUAN JOSÉ SANTOS

Juan José Santos's book "Museo hechizo" (Metales Pesados, 2025) challenges the perceived neutrality of the Western museum, presenting it as an institution shaped by colonial logics of classification, extraction, and representation. The essay centers on the concept of "lo hechizo"—understood as both artisanal precariousness and disruptive enchantment—and explores small, community-based Latin American museum experiences that operate from precarity, reciprocity, and care. Santos argues that the museum is a space of conflict where voices, narratives, and ways of constructing history are contested, and he proposes thinking of the museum through its minor, situated, and alternative forms in Latin America.

The Christophers review – Ian McKellen and Michaela Coel are the double act of the year

Steven Soderbergh's new film "The Christophers" is a London-set movie about contemporary art, starring Ian McKellen as Julian Sklar, a once-dominant but now outmoded English painter, and Michaela Coel as Lori Butler, a former art student hired as his assistant. The plot revolves around a series of hidden paintings called "The Christophers" that Julian's grasping adult children want to find and potentially forge for profit. The film is described as fast, literate, and funny, with McKellen and Coel delivering a compelling double act.

Arsenale Review: Where Voices Resist Erasure

At the 2026 Venice Biennale's Arsenale, critic Andrew Durbin reviews national pavilions, finding the US presentation vacuous and lacking meaning, while praising the British and German pavilions for their incisive and moving installations that resist erasure. The review highlights a stark contrast in curatorial ambition and political engagement among the participating nations.

Sung Tieu and the Art of Difficulty

Sung Tieu, a Vietnamese-born German artist, is the subject of a critical feature in Frieze that examines her work's engagement with difficulty—both in terms of the complex political and historical themes she tackles and the challenging formal qualities of her installations. The article highlights her recent projects, including works shown at the Venice Biennale, which address issues of surveillance, migration, and Cold War legacies through meticulous research and unconventional materials.

New film about forgers is ‘Miami Vice’ for the art-world crowd

The article reviews 'Forge', a new crime thriller directed by Jing Ai Ng, which follows Chinese American siblings Coco and Raymond Zhang who forge early 20th-century landscape paintings and sell them as authentic works in South Florida. The film features FBI agent Emily (Kelly Marie Tran) investigating the scheme, while the forgers navigate a world of wealthy collectors, a hurricane-destroyed art collection, and a family legacy of deception. The movie is described as 'Miami Vice' for the art-world crowd, with a dusky palette and pulsing soundtrack set against the backdrop of Art Basel Miami Beach's booming art market.

Ghosts in a Postcard Idyll

Geister im Postkartenidyll

Kôji Fukada's film "Nagi Notes" premieres in competition at the Cannes Film Festival, following Yoriko (Takako Matsu), a sculptor and farmer living a quiet, self-sufficient life in the rural Japanese town of Nagi. Her routine is disrupted when her old friend Yuri (Shizuka Ishibashi), an architect, arrives to model for a sculpture, stirring buried emotions and past conflicts. The film explores the slow, delicate process of creating art and the psychological tensions between the two women, set against the backdrop of Nagi's idyllic but symbolically flat landscape.