The group exhibition "Desperate, Scared, But Social" at the UC Irvine Langson Orange County Museum of Art (Langson IMCA) explores the complexities of contemporary social dynamics and collective anxiety. The show brings together diverse artistic perspectives to examine how individuals navigate a landscape defined by political instability, environmental concerns, and the pervasive influence of digital connectivity.
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.
Brian Droitcour curates a guide to navigating the current media landscape through the work of tech-savvy artists and writers, focusing on exhibitions in Brooklyn and Queens. The guide highlights Porpentine's show "Xrafstar World" at Haul Gallery in Gowanus, which features poster-prints of drawings depicting characters from their stories and games, made with different digital brushes. Droitcour contrasts this DIY, performance-driven work with major institutions' engagement with AI, such as Sasha Stiles' "A Living Poem" at MoMA, which he criticizes for echoing technology's promises of polish rather than probing its complications.
The Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive (BAMPFA) is hosting "Theresa Hak Kyung Cha: Multiple Offerings," a comprehensive exhibition that draws from the artist’s complete archives. The show highlights Cha’s multidisciplinary practice, spanning film experiments, performance documentation, and her signature linguistic explorations. By pairing finished artworks with archival materials and personal ephemera, the exhibition reveals a playful, puckish side of the artist that is often obscured by the tragic circumstances of her death and the heavy themes of exile and dislocation in her work.
The film *Moss & Freud*, directed by James Lucas, explores the unlikely friendship between supermodel Kate Moss (played by Ellie Bamber) and painter Lucian Freud (Derek Jacobi) in 2001 London. The story centers on Moss's desire to sit for the reclusive portraitist, culminating in Freud's unflattering *Naked Portrait 2002*. However, the film glosses over Freud's darker reputation—his punishingly long sittings, cruelty, and violent tendencies—portraying him instead as a benign, eccentric old man. It also fails to deeply investigate Moss's character or the exploitation within the fashion industry, relying on weak scripting and forced parallels between Moss and Freud's ex-wife Lady Caroline Blackwood.
Wendy Hitchmough’s new biography, *Vanessa Bell: The Life and Art of a Bloomsbury Radical*, argues that Vanessa Bell (1879–1961) was a central figure in 20th-century visual culture, both as an artist and designer. The book details how Bell navigated sexism through collaboration and anonymity, with works like *Dancing Couple* only attributed to her in 1999. Hitchmough, a former curator of Charleston, presents Bell’s life with a matter-of-fact tone, weaving in the complex personal and professional entanglements of the Bloomsbury Group, including her relationships with Clive Bell, Roger Fry, and Molly MacCarthy.
A major exhibition titled "In Bloom" explores the intertwined history of botanical science, colonialism, and human obsession with flowers. It features works and stories from figures like Mary Somerset, Carl Linnaeus, and Joseph Hooker, tracing how global plant collecting transformed European gardens and culture.
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.
Bernard Williams' solo exhibition "Crossings" is on view across the Elmhurst Art Museum campus, including its parking lot and the Mies van der Rohe house. The show features sculptures, paintings, and installations that reference African American history, such as the "Spirit of Bessie Coleman" works honoring the pioneering aviator, and "Cowboy Dream" with its roosters and cowboy figure. The exhibition's title and layout deliberately avoid linear narratives, instead forcing viewers to navigate a fragmented path that mirrors the complexities of historical memory and racial injustice.
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.