Feeling Nature According to Nicolas Poussin

Ressentir la nature d’après Nicolas Poussin

An exhibition titled "Le sentiment de la nature. L’art contemporain au miroir de Poussin" has opened at the NMNM – Villa Paloma in Monaco. Curated by Guillaume de Sardes, it places Nicolas Poussin's 1651 painting *L'Orage* in dialogue with works by over twenty contemporary artists, including Sarah Moon, Christo and Jeanne-Claude, Thomas Demand, Pierre Thoretton, Ange Leccia, Marine Wallon, and Claudio Parmiggiani.

In the Gallery: See work by Rogue Valley artists

The article provides a comprehensive listing of art galleries and events in Oregon's Rogue Valley for the month of May. It highlights recurring monthly art walks in Jacksonville and Phoenix, and details exhibitions at ten local galleries including American Trails, Art & Soul Ashland, Art du Jour Gallery, Art on First, Art Presence Art Center, Ashland Art Works, and Collier Gallery. Featured artists include David Mensing, Kelly Anderson, Corbin Brashear, Nancy Darte, Elizabeth Ellingson, John Weston, and Dave Leibowitz, with a variety of media from painting and sculpture to photography and jewelry.

Artist Kasper Eistrup Maps the Human Condition on Canvas

Danish artist Kasper Eistrup (b. 1973) presents his first solo exhibition in Germany, titled "Bridges Over Magma," at Galerie Schimming in Hamburg. The show features a new body of work created during a recent artist-in-residence program in Hamburg, where Eistrup drew inspiration from the city's famous bridges and his ongoing exploration of painting and drawing. The compositions blend meticulously rendered figures with architecture, flora, fauna, handwritten text, and abstract textures, exploring themes of human connection and resilience.

Future Fair Is a Big Artist Party

Future Fair, held at Chelsea Industrial in New York from May 13–16, 2026, brought together 69 exhibitors from nine countries. Unlike traditional art fairs with segmented booths, the fair emphasized interconnectedness and interpersonal connection, featuring artist-run booths and family-led presentations. Notable participants included Nanor Hakimian showing her brother Garo's paintings, Olivia Janna Genereaux exhibiting with her son Hans Silas Jovine, and artists Cloe Galasso, John Vitale, and Miles Ingrassia. The fair also highlighted its profit-sharing model, dedicating 15% of proceeds plus exhibitor donations to subsidize emerging galleries.

The Joy of Discovery at 1-54 Art Fair

The 1-54 Contemporary African Art Fair, now open at the Starrett-Lehigh Building in Manhattan, presents a smaller edition than previous years but continues to offer unexpected, tactile works. Highlights include Rommulo Vieira Conceição's Pop-art-inspired wall installation at Aura gallery, Kendra Frorup's mixed-media piece at the Current: Baha Mar Gallery, and Eymric Moderne's gold-leaf and glass bird painting at TM Arthouse. The fair also features posthumous works by Marcel Gotène at Loeve and Co and Sophia Bounou's enigmatic paintings at Blond Contemporary.

Did Zurbarán Believe What He Painted?

An exhibition of Francisco de Zurbarán's 17th-century religious paintings at London's National Gallery prompts a critic to question whether the artist's personal faith influenced his artistic skill. The show features monumental works from Spanish churches and monasteries, displayed dramatically against black walls, including crucifixion scenes, monks, and saints. The critic notes that no personal records of Zurbarán survive—only contracts—leaving his beliefs unknown, and compares him to Agnolo Bronzino, who painted pious scenes but wrote obscene verses. A small painting of a crucified Christ with a painter, possibly a self-portrait of Bronzino, is presented as ambiguous evidence of faith.

Maria Britton: Second Sleep

Artist Maria Britton presents "Second Sleep," a solo exhibition at the Halsey Institute of Contemporary Art featuring her "Draperies" series. Britton transforms discarded, patterned bedsheets into three-dimensional abstract works that blur the line between painting and sculpture through expert layering and pleating.

Rising Voices: Inside the V&A’s Landmark Exhibition Of Asian, Australian & Pacific Art

A new exhibition, 'Rising Voices: Contemporary Art from Asia, Australia, and the Pacific,' opens this weekend at the Victoria & Albert Museum in London. It features over 70 works by more than 40 artists from 25 Asia Pacific countries, including sculpture, painting, photography, ceramics, and textiles, many never before exhibited outside the region. The show is presented in partnership with the Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art (QAGOMA) in Brisbane and co-curated by Daniel Slater, the V&A's director of exhibitions.

A Rare Presentation of Leonora Carrington’s Surrealist Sculptures Have Landed in New York

A new exhibition at New York's L'Espace Gallery, titled "Shape of Dreams," presents a rare collection of Leonora Carrington's surrealist bronze sculptures, intricate jewelry, and an interactive tarot booth. Carrington, best known as a painter and novelist, created these sculptures late in life, often with the help of her sons, as her eyesight and arthritis made painting difficult. The show highlights works like "The Palmist" (2011) and other hybrid, mythological figures that extend her imaginative universe into three dimensions.

Hamed Abdalla | Untitled (1972) | For Sale

Hamed Abdalla's 1972 painting "Untitled" is being offered for sale through Mark Hachem Gallery, listed on Artsy. The work is an acrylic on canvas measuring 92 × 65 cm, hand-signed by the artist, and includes a certificate of authenticity. Abdalla (1917–1985) was a pioneering Egyptian modernist who developed the concept of the "Creative Word," blending abstraction with human forms. His career included exhibitions at Cairo's Museum of Modern Art, the Louvre in Paris, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, and his works are held in major institutions such as the Tate Modern, the Barjeel Art Collection, and Mathaf: Arab Museum of Modern Art.

Issy Wood’s first solo exhibition in the Nordics opened at Kistefos

Kistefos presents *Fish, Fish, Duck*, the first solo exhibition in the Nordic region by London-based painter Issy Wood, opened at Nybruket Gallery on 9 May 2026. The show features psychologically charged paintings on velvet and linen, self-portraits, animals, household objects, and a painted chaise longue, organized around the thematic frameworks "Ways of Seeing" and "The Artist as Archivist." Curated by Live Drønen and Kate Smith-Raabe, the exhibition draws on sources from the internet, advertising, and auction catalogues to explore desire, power, vulnerability, and objectification.

Painting the park: Artists blossom at Wegerzyn as they make it their classroom

Sinclair Community College associate professor of art Bridgette Bogle took her mixed-level painting class to Wegerzyn Gardens MetroPark in Dayton, Ohio, for a plein air painting session. Students ranging in age from 18 to 80, including postal worker Don Adams and lifelong artist Aubrey Botts, set up easels throughout the gardens to paint landscapes outdoors, learning the Impressionist-inspired technique of working quickly in natural light.

Marina Abramović’s Historic Venice Biennale Exhibition Is a Full-Circle Moment

Marina Abramović has become the first living woman to be honored with a dedicated exhibition at the Gallerie dell’Accademia di Venezia, titled “Marina Abramović: Transforming Energy.” The show, which coincides with her 80th birthday, features works selected in dialogue with Renaissance masterpieces from the museum’s permanent collection, including pieces such as “The Lovers, Great Wall Walk,” “Balkan Baroque,” and “Pietà (Anima Mundi).” Abramović first visited the Venice Biennale at age 14 and later won the Golden Lion there in 1997; this exhibition marks a full-circle return to the city that inspired her.

Fight Club Denounces the System From Within the System

Cameroonian artist Pascale Marthine Tayou's first major institutional exhibition in Brazil, "Knockout!," has opened at the Pinacoteca de São Paulo's Pina Luz building. The show spans over 25 years of Tayou's career, featuring installations, sculptures, and paintings across seven rooms. Each room is themed around a historical international conference—including the Berlin Conference of 1884, Yalta, San Francisco, Rome, Rio de Janeiro, Bandung, and a fictional Avignon conference—using these as political and historical axes to critique colonial power structures and global inequality.

Wrapped for Travel: On "The American Connection" by Peter Halley and "Black Painter, White Figuration" by Maxwell Alexandre

Two simultaneous exhibitions at Almeida & Dale in São Paulo present contrasting visions: American artist Peter Halley's "The American Connection," curated by Antonio Gonçalves Filho, features his signature geometric abstractions using Roll-A-Tex and Day-Glo colors to critique digital confinement and post-industrial surfaces. Brazilian artist Maxwell Alexandre shows works from his "Clube" series, depicting Black bodies navigating exclusionary leisure spaces. The pairing is deliberate, not for aesthetic dialogue but to juxtapose an established international artist with a rising Brazilian talent, timed to coincide with SP-ARTE.

The Anti-Pop Art of Domenico Gnoli

The article reviews "The Adventure of Domenico Gnoli," a retrospective at Lévy Gorvy Dayan in New York, focusing on the Italian artist's 1967 painting *L'inverno (Couple au lit)* and other works featuring intimate, fabric-rich domestic scenes. Gnoli (1933–1970), born into an art-world family, is often associated with Pop Art, but the author argues his work depicts a private, almost childlike world of memory and longing, contrasting with Pop's mass-produced commodities.

New group exhibition at Art of Contemporary Africa SF

Art of Contemporary Africa (AOCA), the first Pan-African contemporary gallery in San Francisco, will open a major group exhibition titled *Memory in Motion: Identities, Materials and Resonances* on 2 May 2026. Curated by Gilles Yoro (Felin Light), the show brings together contemporary African artists including Gerald Chukwuma, Mederic Turay, Mwass Githinji, Ayanda Mabulu, Opa Bathily, Kebe Ibrahim Bemba, Ndabuko Ntuli, Kenof Franck Kemkeng Noah, Ange Arthur Koua, Alexis Daniel Onguene Tassi, and Dieudonne Djiela Kamgang. Their works in painting, sculpture, assemblage, and mixed media explore memory as an active, evolving force shaping identity across time, geography, and materiality.

Exhibition | Daniel Crews-Chubb, 'The Belt of Venus' at Patricia Low Contemporary, Venezia, Venice, Italy

Daniel Crews-Chubb presents 'The Belt of Venus,' an exhibition of six new monumental paintings at Patricia Low Contemporary in Venice. The works draw inspiration from the atmospheric phenomenon of the same name, using its ethereal pinkish glow as a color palette. Crews-Chubb explores pareidolia—the brain's tendency to see faces in abstract forms—pushing his long-standing interrogation of the human figure into increasingly abstract territory. The paintings reference classical mythology, including the Roman goddess Venus, and incorporate fragmented forms reminiscent of ancient statuary, serving as memento mori.

Exhibition | Kang Cheol Gyu, 'KANG Cheolgyu: Discarded Host' at Arario Gallery, Seoul, South Korea

Arario Gallery Seoul presents 'Discarded Host', a solo exhibition by South Korean artist Kang Cheolgyu (b. 1990), running from May 1 to June 20, 2026. The show features new paintings that transform personal emotions and psychological sensations into visual narratives, exploring themes of anxiety, tension, identity, and transformation through fictional environments and indirect self-confrontation.

GaHee Park: The Exhaustion of Distance

GaHee Park's solo exhibition "Half-Looking, Half-Seen" is on view at Perrotin New York from April 24 to May 30, 2026. The show presents paintings that destabilize perception, using light and shadow to fragment figures and objects, with works like "Seafood Heaven," "Wetland at Dusk," and "Creeping Shadow" exploring themes of visibility, identity, and temporal collapse. The exhibition marks a trajectory toward Park's institutional debut at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts.

"She's Like the Wind"

The article reviews "She's Like the Wind," an annual all-female group exhibition at Deep Space gallery in Jersey City, featuring works by artists Delilah Ray Miske, Leigh Cunningham, and SarahGrace. Miske's painting "Lemon Lime Toe of God" shows only a woman's leg and foot, while Cunningham's oil paintings present figures as blurred forms seen through a translucent curtain, and SarahGrace's textile works depict headless female nudes with suggestive titles like "Provoke" and "Dominate." The show marks a departure from the gallery's typically family-friendly, sex-averse programming.

Exhibition | Shota Nakamura, 'Apple' at Karma, Los Angeles

Shota Nakamura's exhibition 'Apple' at Karma in Los Angeles presents a series of new paintings that explore familiar subjects—fruit, shells, sailboats, landscapes—through a dreamlike, tonally nuanced lens. The Berlin-based Japanese artist focuses on the tonality of light, using closely-valued hues to investigate relationships between color, luminosity, and illusion. Works such as 'Landscape with Apples' (2026), 'A Black Dog', and 'Violin Player' demonstrate his method of combining personal photographs, memory, and art historical references into compositions that balance representation with formal abstraction, often referencing modern Japanese painters like Zenzaburo Kojima and Morikazu Kumagai as well as Mark Rothko.

Marianne Vitale exhibition and performance in Pittsburgh

The Pittsburgh Cultural Trust presents "Marianne Vitale: On Liberty: A Summoning," an exhibition and performance project at SPACE gallery in downtown Pittsburgh, running from May 1 to October 11, 2026. Guest curated by Benjamin Tischer of New Discretions, the project explores the layered social and cultural history of the 818 Liberty Avenue building, a former hub of nightlife, performance, and queer gathering. Vitale's work incorporates sculpture, painting, film, and live activations, using decommissioned locomotive parts and industrial debris to engage with post-industrial America. The exhibition transforms into a functioning club during select Final Fridays, drawing on the site's history as home to venues like Pegasus Lounge, a key LGBTQ+ space during the AIDS crisis.

'Soulages-Hartung : Affinités électives' at Perrotin, Paris Marais, France on 25 Apr–30 May 2026

Perrotin in Paris Marais is presenting 'Soulages-Hartung: Affinités électives,' an exhibition exploring the friendship and artistic dialogue between Pierre Soulages (1919–2022) and Hans Hartung (1904–1989). The show features a never-before-screened filmed interview from the Fondation Hartung-Bergman, along with archival documents and rarely seen studio tools. It highlights their shared concerns as postwar abstract painters, their mutual support and gift exchanges—such as Soulages's walnut stain piece given to Hartung in 1948—and their contrasting approaches, with Hartung's explosive gestures versus Soulages's measured structures. The exhibition also reveals their lesser-known use of blue in the 1980s.

Exhibition | GaHee PARK, 'Half-Looking, Half-Seen' at Perrotin, New York, United States

Perrotin New York presents 'Half-Looking, Half-Seen', a special exhibition of new paintings by GaHee Park, featuring still lifes and portraits set within seascapes and landscapes that explore psychological dynamics of perception and coexistence. The show precedes Park's first institutional solo exhibition in the United States, opening in August 2026 at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco. Works such as 'Seafood Heaven', 'Wetland at Dusk', and 'Creeping Shadow' depict ambiguous scenes where figures, animals, and natural elements blur boundaries between perceiving and being perceived, with influences including Joan Jonas's performance art.

This Figurative Painter Captures the Intricacies of Detroit Through a Local Tattoo Artist

Chinese figurative painter Liu Xiaodong has opened a solo exhibition titled "Host" at Lisson Gallery in Los Angeles, focusing exclusively on a single subject: John Mcintyre, a Detroit-based tattoo artist and member of a medieval reenactment club called Knyaz USA. The show features large-scale oil paintings that follow Mcintyre through his daily life—participating in armored historical battles in snowy forests, working in his tattoo studio, and relaxing at home—offering an intimate portrait of Detroit's subcultural communities.

Flowers, Figures & Fantastical Frames at the 2026 Dallas Art Fair

Jessica Fuentes and Brandon Zech, returning to the 2026 Dallas Art Fair, found the event familiar rather than surprising. Fuentes noted that after attending major fairs like Frieze, NADA, and the Armory Show, many works by Texas galleries felt recognizable. Zech observed an overarching theme of flora and fauna, with flower paintings dominating both the art and attendees' fashion. Fuentes, however, was drawn to figurative pieces, influenced by her recent visit to Mexico City Art Week. Standout works included Jessica Vollrath's painting "A thousand hills" at Erin Cluley Gallery, which marked a stylistic shift in color and composition.

‘Studio Iron’ to Launch at Saatchi Yates, Blurring the Boundaries Between Art and Design

Saatchi Yates is partnering with creative director and makeup artist Isamaya Ffrench to launch Studio Iron, a new design gallery whose inaugural exhibition opens April 30 and runs through June 7, 2026. The show presents a dense, post-industrial landscape dominated by steel and iron, featuring works by artists including Jannis Kounellis, Paul McCarthy, Jordan Wolfson, Anne Imhof, Marina Abramovic, Nico Vascellari, and others. Furniture, sculpture, installation, and painting collide in a space that resists categorization, hovering between function and non-function, utility and image.

At the Galleries for April 23, 2026

A series of new gallery and community art exhibitions are opening across the Hamptons and Montauk. Highlights include Timothy Tibus's solo painting show "Live Forever" at The Lucore Art in Montauk, the group exhibition "Echoes of Matisse" at The Drawing Room in East Hampton, Ann Pibal's solo show at Halsey McKay Gallery, and a one-week solo exhibition for Marcie Honerkamp at the Springs Community Library.

Flávia Ventura joins Nara Roesler and Mariana Rocha signs with A Gentil Carioca

Two Brazilian artists have secured new gallery representation. Flávia Ventura, whose work explores the body, sexuality, and power through painting, has joined São Paulo's Nara Roesler gallery. Meanwhile, Rio de Janeiro-based A Gentil Carioca gallery is now representing Mariana Rocha, an artist whose practice investigates the body, memory, and the feminine through drawing, painting, and photography.