Berlin-based illustrator Olaf Hajek creates dense, uncanny compositions that blend nature, culture, and magic, drawing inspiration from Surrealist icons like Leonora Carrington and Remedios Varo. His work emphasizes ambiguity, using superimposed florals and figures, dramatic scale shifts, and a tension between decay and renewal to develop a universal visual language from diverse cultural influences.
A View From the Easel
Artist Lusmerlin, who works between studios in Maryland and Philadelphia, describes a creative process that begins with physical and mental alignment through activities like stretching and singing before painting. Their flexible studio spaces, which open onto a garden, directly influence ambitious projects, including a 28-foot painting titled "The Big Rip" that investigates the theoretical collapse of the universe.
The Longmont Museum in Colorado has successfully raised $10.2 million for a 7,000-square-foot expansion, surpassing its original funding goal. The project, largely funded by a $6 million gift from the Stewart Family Foundation, will introduce a dedicated children's gallery, a permanent history gallery, and a larger 4,000-square-foot space for major art exhibitions. Construction is set to begin in July 2025, with the first major art show, a photographic portrait of Frida Kahlo, scheduled for October 2026.
Brett Goodroad at Crèvecoeur, rive gauche
San Francisco-based artist Brett Goodroad presents a solo exhibition titled "Bells" at Crèvecoeur’s Rive Gauche location in Paris. The exhibition features a series of new paintings that showcase Goodroad’s signature style of fluid, gestural abstraction and figurative ambiguity, documented through an extensive digital archive of installation views and individual work shots.
Trautwein Herleth in Berlin is hosting a solo exhibition of works by the late Belgian painter Raoul de Keyser. The presentation features a selection of the artist’s signature abstract compositions, characterized by their tactile surfaces, muted palettes, and the subtle tension between formalist geometry and organic forms.
Artist Anna Clegg has opened a new solo exhibition titled "Hustlenomics" at the Schiefe Zähne gallery in Berlin. The show presents a new body of her paintings that engage with the life cycle of images in contemporary culture.
Global auction totals saw a significant rebound in 2025, rising 13.3 percent compared to the previous year after a prolonged period of decline. The latest Artnet Intelligence Report highlights this recovery while shifting focus toward the increasingly influential world of private auctions, where high-value masterpieces are traded in invitation-only, clandestine settings away from the public eye.
Whitestone Gallery Seoul is hosting "A Swimming Soul," a group exhibition featuring emerging artists Lee Juyoung, Kisho Kakutani, and Yudai Takeuchi. Running from April 18 to May 24, 2026, the show utilizes the metaphor of a swimming fish to explore themes of youth, uncertainty, and the drifting nature of modern existence. Each artist presents a unique visual language to address the ambiguity of reality, from Lee’s blurred urban reflections and Kakutani’s obstructive "noise" layers to Takeuchi’s exploration of the liminal space between consciousness and sleep.
The In Between Art Film Foundation has announced "Canicula," the final installment of its "Trilogy of Uncertainties," set to open at the Ospedaletto Complex during the 2026 Venice Biennale. Curated by Alessandro Rabottini and Leonardo Bigazzi, the exhibition features eight international artists, including Peruvian video artist Maya Watanabe, whose work investigates memory and the politics of representation. The show utilizes the unique architecture of the Ospedaletto’s church and music hall to create immersive environments exploring themes of environmental and political pressure.
Curator Yasmin Sarnefors challenges the traditional boundaries of portraiture in the exhibition 'What Faces Do Not Say,' which features artists from Africa and its diaspora. Moving away from the expectation of physical resemblance, the show explores identity through ambiguity, memory, and the use of archives, landscapes, and abstract gestures. By presenting works that obscure or transform the human face, the exhibition highlights the psychological and political dimensions of how individuals are perceived and represented.
Texas's art landscape is increasingly defined by its robust circuit of annual juried exhibitions, which serve as vital entry points for emerging artists. These recurring events, such as Lawndale’s The Big Show and Craighead Green Gallery’s New Texas Talent, provide a platform for artists to have their work reviewed by guest curators, museum professionals, and gallerists, often leading to formal representation or solo exhibition opportunities.
Glasgow-based painter Michael Fullerton is presenting a two-part exhibition that critically examines the politics of portraiture. The first section features 11 oil portraits of male asylum seekers he lived alongside while working as live-in staff at the Hilltop Hotel in Carlisle. These works, painted in a traditional style, depict the men with care against ambiguous landscapes, deliberately restricting personal information to names and origins, highlighting their status within systems of power.
Tillies Art & Provisions is set to open on May 1 at 512 Commercial Street in Provincetown’s East End. Located in a historic 19th-century grocery store building, the new gallery and community space will debut with a group exhibition curated by Barbara Cohen featuring 17 established local artists. The venue plans to host a diverse seasonal program including art exhibitions, readings, and musical performances.
La vulnerabilità vista dallo sguardo di due artiste in mostra in Romagna
The Galleria d’Arte Contemporanea Vero Stoppioni in Santa Sofia is hosting "Corpi invisibili, fuori controllo" (Invisible Bodies, Out of Control), a dual exhibition featuring artists Claudia Amatruda and Carla Giaccio Darias. Part of the broader "Un Problema del Genere" festival, the show explores the concept of vulnerability through contrasting artistic methods. Amatruda utilizes photography, sculpture, and video to depict bodies in risky, natural environments that highlight relational dependency, while Giaccio Darias uses archival imagery and painting to present fragmented, anatomical forms that challenge the viewer's gaze.
The major retrospective ‘Out of Place’ at ART AFRICA showcases over 200 images by South African photographer Jo Ractliff, spanning four decades of her career. The exhibition traces Ractliff’s evolution from her early 1980s street photography to her mature, atmospheric landscapes that examine the scars of colonialism, apartheid, and regional conflicts in Southern Africa. By focusing on the 'afterlife' of violence rather than the events themselves, the collection highlights her unique ability to capture how history sediments within the physical terrain.
Resonancias Desde El Abismo Artistas Uruguayos
The exhibition 'Resonancias desde el abismo. Prácticas artísticas entre presiones y frecuencias extrañas' (Resonances from the Abyss. Artistic Practices Between Pressures and Strange Frequencies), curated by Fabiana Puentes, opened at the Centro Cultural de España in Montevideo. It features works by eight Uruguayan artists—including Guadalupe Ayala, Karina Flores, and Sofía Córdoba—working across sculpture, video, sound, and installation. The show uses the extreme, dark, and high-pressure ecosystem of the ocean abyss as a conceptual framework to explore artistic practices that resist immediate interpretation and conventional systems of reference.
Contemporary painter Elizabeth Schnura is set to debut her first solo exhibition, "Big Helpers: Mutualism Magnified," at the Hidden Oaks Nature Center in Bolingbrook. Running from April 15 through July 19, the showcase features large-scale, vibrant oil paintings that document the symbiotic relationships between plants and animals found within the Will County forest preserves. Schnura’s work utilizes contemporary realism to transform her own nature photography into detailed compositions that highlight often-overlooked creatures like spiders and insects.
Artists Charlie Kirkham and Robert Walker are set to debut a joint exhibition titled "The Cost of Love" at the Rugby Art Gallery and Museum this May. The showcase features contemporary paintings that reimagine classical mythological figures—such as Narcissus, Apollo, and Adonis—to explore psychological themes of desire, transformation, and vulnerability. While both artists maintain a focus on technical rigor and the human figure, the works shift away from traditional storytelling to focus on the emotional tensions of modern life.
Renowned Belarusian musician and writer Liavon Volski has debuted his first solo painting exhibition, titled "The Forest Hears, the Field Sees," at the Museum of Free Belarus in Warsaw. The exhibition features 11 conceptual works characterized by misty landscapes and surrealist elements, each inspired by traditional Belarusian proverbs. The opening event was a multi-sensory experience, incorporating fog machines and a musical performance by Volski to complement the atmospheric nature of the canvases.
The Azrieli Foundation, a major Canadian philanthropic organization with ties to Israel's largest real-estate company, has ended its funding agreement with the Toronto Arts Foundation. The decision follows a sustained two-year protest campaign by the group Artists Against Artwashing, which included disruptions at a major Toronto arts event and an open letter signed by over 450 artists and cultural workers.
The BBC is launching a new six-part reality TV series called 'The Big Deal,' which follows amateur art dealers competing for a prize of £50,000 worth of British art. Hosted by Steph McGovern, the show tasks contestants with navigating the art market, from discovering artists to securing sales, under the guidance of a panel of industry judges.
The Sullivan Area Art Guild is celebrating its 50th anniversary, marking five decades of supporting local creativity in Sullivan, Indiana. Founded in April 1976, the organization maintains a gallery on the town square where it hosts monthly meetings and year-round community projects. To commemorate the milestone, the guild is currently featuring a themed exhibition titled "Past, Present and Future."
Artist Jax Foster has launched Bowling Green’s Tiny Gallery, a miniature exhibition space located outside the Grounds for Thought cafe in downtown Bowling Green. The gallery officially opened on April 5 and features hand-crafted miniature works created by local artists, with the display rotating on a monthly basis to ensure a wide variety of community members can showcase their talent.
Conduit Gallery in Dallas is hosting "Dynamatic," a solo exhibition by Brooklyn-based artist Kendall Glover featuring sculptures and textiles produced within the last year. The show highlights three distinct series: large-scale tubular steel sculptures, experimental bronzes cast from rattan and thread, and a collection of silver-leafed crocheted works known as "Quasars."
Ceramic artist Soojin Choi creates intricate sculptures of entangled pairs, using stoneware slabs and nylon strands to achieve a precarious balance that minimizes contact with the ground. Her painterly background is evident in the gestural marks, visible brushstrokes, and drips on the white-slipped surfaces, with the artist describing her process as a "constant negotiation with gravity."
Marianna Simnett has opened a new multimedia exhibition titled "Circus" at the Secession in Vienna. The show features a combination of light, sound, and sculptural works that delve into her Yugoslav heritage, weaving together personal family history with folklore.
Stanislava Kovalčíková has opened her first institutional solo exhibition in Germany, titled "Rubigo," at Kunstverein Freiburg. The exhibition features a large-scale installation constructed from red plasticine, which forms an immersive environment housing a series of paintings executed on discarded clock dials salvaged from Prussian church towers.
The article 'Photography Is...' from Glasstire is a conceptual piece that presents the title as a prompt, leaving the definition of photography open-ended. The text consists solely of the title and source, functioning as a minimalist statement or an invitation for reader interpretation.