‘As If’ by Isabel Waidner, Reviewed

Isabel Waidner’s latest novel, 'As If', follows the surreal intersection of two actors, Lewis and Korine, who share an uncanny resemblance and wives with the same name. After meeting in a Central London sublet, the pair decide to swap lives: the younger Korine takes over a high-stakes audition for the grieving Lewis, while Lewis assumes Korine’s domestic and financial burdens. Set against the brutalist backdrop of London’s Barbican and Golden Lane estate, the narrative uses this identity swap to explore the thin line between performance and reality.

Masha Foya’s Airy Illustrations Embrace the Universality of Emotions

Kyiv-based illustrator Masha Foya has released a new series of dreamlike works that blend human emotion with the natural world. Her illustrations often feature surreal architectural and organic elements, such as foliage tunnels forming into hands or planes flying through bird-shaped apertures, to represent the boundlessness of the human imagination. The collection includes a mix of personal explorations and high-profile commissions for international publications.

Folklore and Nature Converge in Cat Johnston’s Expressive, Eccentric Puppets

London-based artist Cat Johnston creates expressive puppets and sculptures that blend folklore, nature, and childhood memories into eccentric characters like a fashionable bat, a melancholy sun, and gods representing sunburn, hay fever, and insomnia. Her work, which draws on historical costumes and emotive, cartoonish faces, inhabits dreamlike realms where the familiar meets the strange.

"The Argument of the Dream" at Fondation Pernod Ricard, Paris

“L’argument du rêve” at Fondation Pernod Ricard, Paris

The Fondation Pernod Ricard in Paris has opened a new exhibition titled "L'argument du rêve" (The Argument of the Dream). The show is curated around the philosophical and communal power of dreams, using them as a lens to explore how shared narratives and consciousness are formed within society.

Artificial Intelligence as an Uncanny Machine is on Display in a Florence Air-Raid Shelter

L’intelligenza artificiale come macchina perturbante è in mostra in un rifugio antiaereo di Firenze

Artist and philosopher Francesco D’Isa presents "Latent Rooms" at Rifugio Digitale, a gallery located within a former air-raid shelter in Florence. The exhibition features video works created using generative AI models like Midjourney and Seedance 2.0, which D’Isa manipulates to create dreamlike, glitch-heavy sequences. Rather than aiming for cinematic realism, the artist embraces the technical errors and "hallucinations" of the AI, resulting in an aesthetic that blends Renaissance beauty with haunting, domestic melancholy.

Art exhibition Opening Reception | What Dreams May Come

The Detroit Jewish News has announced the opening reception for the art exhibition titled "What Dreams May Come." This community event serves as a showcase for local artistic talent, inviting the public to engage with new works in a social setting.

Dreamlike visions, Southwest scenes set for Newport Beach library exhibits

The Newport Beach City Arts Commission has selected artists Jim Doody and Elena Kealy for upcoming solo exhibitions at the Newport Beach Central Library. Kealy, a self-taught painter and former mechanical engineer, is recognized for her whimsical, dreamlike oil paintings featuring female figures and vibrant atmospheric light, including her award-winning work "Bliss." Doody specializes in emotive depictions of the American Southwest, capturing iconic Route 66 Americana, Spanish Missions, and desert landscapes through a style that emphasizes the play of light on architecture.

Greg Deda Sets £50,000 Auction Benchmark at Tate Ward’s Urban & Contemporary Art Auction

Artist Greg Deda's painting 'Neon Dreams' sold for £50,000 at Tate Ward's Urban & Contemporary Art auction, setting a new auction record for the artist. The sale was the top lot of the event, which saw strong overall performance with 85% of lots sold.