Artsy has highlighted five emerging and established artists to watch this April, selected based on recent gallery representation, exhibition success, and market data. The list features Peruvian painter Sylvia Fernández, known for her meticulous and majestic depictions of the natural world, alongside four other artists who have made significant impacts through recent art fairs and new bodies of work.
Chicago-based artist Carlos Rolón has unveiled a new body of work at 65Grand titled 'The Division Street Riots,' which explores the 1966 Puerto Rican uprising in Humboldt Park. Moving away from his signature vibrant, crystal-embellished installations, Rolón utilizes graphite, charcoal, and dye sublimation prints to interpret archival imagery of the three-day unrest sparked by a police shooting. The exhibition marks a stylistic shift toward a more somber, documentary-style realism that emphasizes historical witnessing over spectacle.
Chicago-based artist Carlos Rolón has debuted a new solo exhibition titled "The Division Street Riots" at 65Grand gallery. Moving away from his signature high-gloss aesthetic of Swarovski crystals and gold, Rolón presents a series of restrained graphite and charcoal drawings and dye sublimation prints based on archival imagery. The works document the 1966 uprising in Chicago's Humboldt Park, which was sparked by the police shooting of a young Puerto Rican man, Arcelis Cruz, following the city's first Puerto Rican Day Parade.
German artist Thomas Zipp, a prominent figure in the Berlin art scene known for his dark, immersive installations, has died at the age of 60. His longtime representative, Galerie Barbara Thumm, confirmed his passing on April 4th, noting that the artist died far too soon. Zipp gained international recognition for his multidisciplinary approach, blending painting, sculpture, and performance into theatrical environments that often felt like unsettling psychological experiments.
Galerie Buchholz in New York is presenting "Projects for Outside — ISA USA," a solo exhibition by the influential German artist Isa Genzken. Running from March 11 through April 25, 2026, the show focuses on Genzken's outdoor proposals and large-scale sculptural projects, documenting her career-long engagement with public space and urban architecture through a comprehensive selection of works.
Ehrlich Steinberg gallery in Los Angeles is presenting the group exhibition "Nature Morte, 1982–1988," featuring works by a significant roster of artists including Alan Belcher, Gretchen Bender, Sherrie Levine, Louise Lawler, and Laurie Simmons, among others. The show runs from February 24 to April 18, 2026, and focuses on artworks created within that specific six-year period.
Maxwell Graham gallery in New York is presenting a joint exhibition featuring works by artists Hans Haacke and Louise Lawler. The show runs from March 5 to April 18, 2026, and is documented with 18 images on the source website.
The Estate of Barkley L. Hendricks presents "All is Portraiture," a major exhibition of the artist's work at the Marian Goodman Gallery in Paris. The show, running from February 6 to April 4, 2026, features a comprehensive checklist of Hendricks's portraits, offering a focused look at this central aspect of his celebrated practice.
A major group exhibition titled *Pharmakon* has opened at Galerie Chantal Crousel in Paris, featuring works by over twenty international artists. The show includes both historical and contemporary figures, from Marcel Broodthaers and Felix Gonzalez-Torres to emerging artists, exploring the dual nature of substances that can be both remedy and poison. It presents a diverse range of media, including painting, sculpture, and installation, curated around this central, ambiguous theme.
Zimbabwean artist Moffat Takadiwa transforms discarded consumer waste—including computer keys, toothbrush heads, and plastic combs—into intricate, tapestry-like sculptures. His latest solo exhibition, "The Crown!" at Semiose in Paris, features large-scale works foraged from landfills in Harare’s Mbare neighborhood. These meticulously sorted and woven objects create organic patterns that mask their industrial origins, forcing a confrontation with the physical reality of global overconsumption.
Artist Kathleen Ryan creates large-scale sculptures of rotting fruit and food items, meticulously covering them with thousands of semiprecious stones and beads to mimic the textures and colors of mold and decay. Works like "Bad Lemon (Slice of Paradise)" and "Screwdriver" juxtapose luxurious materials like amethyst, turquoise, and serpentine with salvaged metal from vintage cars, creating a dual personality of hidden beauty and grotesque rot.
"Im Moment ist die Verunsicherung auf dem Kunstmarkt extrem"
Prominent Cologne gallerist Gisela Capitain is celebrating her 40th anniversary amid a period of significant market volatility. In recent interviews, she reflects on her career—defined by long-term artist relationships like that with Martin Kippenberger—while critiquing the current state of the art world. She notes that buyers have become increasingly hesitant and deliberate, describing the current level of uncertainty in the art market as extreme and calling for reforms to institutions like Art Cologne.
"Warum müssen die Frauen nackt sein?"
A series of cultural controversies highlight growing tensions between artistic freedom and political pressure. In Germany, cultural minister Wolfram Weimer faces criticism for opaque funding decisions and alleged interference in jury processes, with critics arguing this undermines artistic freedom and free speech. Simultaneously, the European Media Art Festival in Osnabrück defends filmmaker Basma al-Sharif against accusations of antisemitism, illustrating how cultural funding can become a test of political ideology.
L’Assemblée vote à l’unanimité la loi sur la restitution des œuvres pillées pendant la colonisation, mais avec des restrictions
The French National Assembly has unanimously passed a landmark law establishing a permanent legal framework for the restitution of cultural property looted during the colonial era. Moving away from the previous requirement for case-by-case legislation, the new law allows the government to return artifacts via decree following consultations with scientific and parliamentary commissions. This shift fulfills a long-standing promise to simplify the return of African heritage currently held in French public collections.
Gordon Robichaux in New York is hosting a dual exhibition titled "Forma di Utilità / Shape of Utility," featuring drawings by Sanou Oumar and sculptures alongside functional design by Matt Paweski. This marks the third solo-presentation context for both artists at the gallery, showcasing a dialogue between Oumar’s intricate, geometric pen-on-paper works and Paweski’s meticulously crafted, painted metal forms.
A new exhibition titled 'Conspiracies' has opened at the Warburg Institute in London, featuring works by contemporary artists Hannah Black, Caspar Heinemann, Sam Keogh, and Shenece Oretha, alongside an installation by ceramicist Edmund de Waal and panels from Aby Warburg's Bilderatlas Mnemosyne. The show explores the concept of conspiracy, tracing its history as both a response to power and a contaminating force in contemporary society, through multimedia installations, drawings, and speculative biographies.
A painting in a private UK collection, long considered a workshop copy of Rembrandt's 'Old Man with a Gold Chain' at the Art Institute of Chicago, has been newly attributed to Rembrandt himself by scholar Gary Schwartz. Schwartz argues the quality and lack of corrections suggest Rembrandt, not a pupil, created the canvas replica while the original process was still fresh.
The African Film Institute at e-flux launched its 2026 program with an event titled "Two Thousand Seasons: A Look Into 2026 and Beyond." The evening featured a screening of a curated playlist of film clips and works by artists like Ayesha Hameed, Ousmane Sembène, and John Akomfrah, compiled by Christian Nyampeta, followed by a conversation with Nyampeta, KJ Abudu, and Kaneza Schaal.
Matisse, Soulages, Chagall… Les plus belles églises et chapelles décorées par des artistes dans toute la France
Renowned modern and contemporary artists have transformed various religious sites across France into immersive 'total works of art.' From Pierre Soulages’ translucent stained-glass windows in the Abbey of Sainte-Foy in Conques to Pablo Picasso’s monumental 'War and Peace' murals in Vallauris, these projects demonstrate how secular artists have engaged with sacred architecture. The article highlights ten specific locations where artists like Matisse, Chagall, and Cocteau integrated painting, glasswork, and furniture into historic ecclesiastical settings.
London-based artist Racheal Crowther has transformed the Chisenhale Gallery into a sensory-heavy, paranoid environment for her first institutional solo exhibition. The installation centers on a decommissioned U.S. military mobile health unit, once used during the 2018 Novichok decontamination efforts, set against walls painted in "drunk tank pink." The experience is defined by an aggressive olfactory component—a chemical cocktail of powdered milk scents and hexadecanal, a molecule found on infants' heads known to manipulate human aggression.
Visual historian and author Lucy Sante has opened two simultaneous exhibitions of her collage artwork in New York. The shows, at Karma gallery and the Center for Book Arts, feature work created from a vast personal archive of materials she has collected over decades, which she meticulously cuts and reassembles.
The Complex, a major multi-artform venue in Dublin, was evicted from its warehouse building in January 2026 after its lease expired. A public campaign to save it, supported by politicians and cultural officials, failed due to a lack of legal mechanisms to protect grassroots cultural organizations. This closure follows a pattern of similar artist-led spaces folding in Ireland, most recently Ormond Studios.
The Hole, a prominent contemporary art gallery founded by Kathy Grayson, has shuttered its West Hollywood location amid a wave of legal and financial troubles. Court filings reveal that the gallery faces multiple lawsuits for unpaid rent and real estate taxes across its Los Angeles and Manhattan outposts, with debts totaling over $180,000. Beyond real estate disputes, the gallery has been dogged by allegations of financial instability and delinquent payments to artists, including a 2019 lawsuit from artist Dan Lam regarding unpaid sales and damaged works.
Texas-based artist Virginia L. Montgomery's solo exhibition 'Blue Moon Cocoon' opened at the Abroms-Engel Institute for the Visual Arts at the University of Alabama at Birmingham. The show features a multi-channel video installation and sculptural works centered on the artist's bond with luna moths, which she began raising during the 2020 pandemic, exploring themes of interspecies connection and cosmic curiosity through a distinctive visual aesthetic.
John Middleton, the billionaire owner of the Philadelphia Phillies, is channeling his competitive drive into the acquisition of 19th-century American masterpieces. His private collection, which features prominent works by Andrew Wyeth, Winslow Homer, and Thomas Eakins, has quietly become one of the most significant of its kind in the United States. Middleton’s approach to collecting mirrors his sports management style, focusing on "blue-chip" historical significance and technical mastery.
The Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) has officially opened the David Geffen Galleries, a massive glass-and-concrete structure designed by Pritzker Prize-winning architect Peter Zumthor. Elevated nine meters above the ground and spanning Wilshire Boulevard, the 275-meter-long building replaces several older structures to house the museum’s permanent collection. The inaugural installation, developed by a team of 45 curators, abandons traditional chronological displays in favor of a geographic framework organized around four major bodies of water: the Pacific, Indian, and Atlantic Oceans and the Mediterranean Sea.
The National Art Museum of China in Beijing has launched "Wood and World," an exhibition that juxtaposes Pablo Picasso’s 1970 painting "Man and Woman with a Vase of Flowers" with dozens of traditional African wooden sculptures. By placing these works side-by-side, the show highlights how the exaggerated and deconstructed forms of African art served as a foundational influence for Picasso’s African period and the eventual birth of Cubism.
Melissa Chiu has been appointed as the new director of the Guggenheim Museum in New York, departing her long-standing role at the Smithsonian's Hirshhorn Museum. Additionally, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) has announced that its highly anticipated, $724 million David Geffen Galleries will finally open to the public on May 4, while the Vatican revealed plans for a sound-based pavilion at the Venice Biennale dedicated to Saint Hildegard of Bingen.
LA카운티미술관(LACMA) 뉴 데이빗게펜 갤러리 4/19 오픈...서도호 작 '경복중 자경전' 설치
The Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) has announced the official opening of the David Geffen Galleries on April 19, 2026. Designed by Pritzker Prize-winning architect Peter Zumthor, the 900-foot-long horizontal structure spans Wilshire Boulevard and features a single elevated exhibition level for the museum’s permanent collection. The inaugural installation, curated by a collaborative team of 45 specialists, rejects traditional chronological or geographical hierarchies in favor of a thematic approach centered around global oceanic frameworks.
The National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., has launched "Dear America," a major exhibition commemorating the United States' 250th anniversary. Featuring over 100 prints, drawings, and photographs from the museum’s permanent collection, the show spans from the late 18th century to the present day. The exhibition is organized into three thematic sections—"Land," "Community," and "Freedom"—showcasing works by iconic artists such as Andy Warhol, Ansel Adams, and Richard Avedon alongside contemporary voices like Tom Jones of the Ho-Chunk Nation.