The New York Times profiles American artist Tom Friedman, known for his playful and provocative sculptures and installations that often use everyday materials like toothpicks, aspirin, and cereal boxes. The article highlights his concurrent exhibitions in Seoul and New York, showcasing his career-spanning work that blends humor, meticulous craftsmanship, and conceptual depth.
The Museum of Contemporary Art Arlington presents 'Portals,' an exhibition curated by Donna Honarpisheh featuring three rising female artists—Aryana Minai, Shyama Golden, and Aiza Ahmed—who explore the concept of liminality through dreamscapes and half-seen worlds. Minai’s works use handmade paper, bricks, and skeleton leaves to create tactile portals and altars; Golden’s oil and acrylic paintings depict a surreal journey into a subconscious dream world inspired by 'Alice in Wonderland' and Sri Lankan folklore.
Snoop Dogg has become the subject of a series of artworks by artist Erica Kovitz, made from the roaches (remnants of joints) he smoked. Seven works on canvas, each signed by Snoop, were auctioned on the platform 32auctions through The Joint Venture, which Kovitz co-founded, fetching a total of $148,100. The top lot, 'Snoop Doggy Dogg Genesis Burn,' which incorporates his 1993 LAPD mugshot and marijuana ash, sold for $70,000.
Victor Kossakovsky's new documentary *Architecton*, opening in US theaters on August 1, premiered at the Berlin International Film Festival. The film is a silent, drone-shot meditation on the destruction of the built environment, showing war-ravaged buildings in Ukraine, earthquake ruins in Turkey and Lebanon, and the violent process of stone being blasted for concrete. It contrasts modern structures that collapse within decades with ancient buildings that still stand, and features architect Michele di Lucchi as a quiet voice for thoughtful, enduring design. The film's score is by Russian expatriate composer Evgueni Galperine.
The Virginia Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA) in Virginia Beach is presenting "O'er the Wide and Plastic Sea," an exhibition of multimedia works by Brooklyn artist Duke Riley, running through August 31. The show spans two decades of Riley's practice, with the centerpiece artwork created from beach trash—including lighters, buoy pieces, and syringes—collected largely from Virginia Beach shores. Riley's work explores tensions between individual and collective behavior, institutional power, and nature's struggle with modern problems, blending early American styles, folklore, and sea-craft aesthetics.
Mavis Pusey: Mobile Images, the first major museum survey of the Jamaica-born artist and educator Mavis Pusey (1928–2019), opens at the Institute of Contemporary Art (ICA) Philadelphia on July 12 and runs through December 7. Co-organized with the Studio Museum in Harlem, where it will travel in spring 2027, the exhibition features over 50 years of Pusey’s work in geometric abstraction, including paintings, prints, and works on paper. It highlights her Broken Construction series (1960s–1990s) and incorporates photographs, personal notes, and archival materials to contextualize her practice.
The Seoul Museum of Art (SeMA) has opened the Photography Museum of Seoul (Photo-SeMA) in Dobong-gu district, marking South Korea's first public museum dedicated to photography. Spanning 7,048 square meters, the new venue draws from SeMA's collection of over 20,000 photographs and archival materials from the 1920s to the 1990s. It launches with two exhibitions themed around 'light obsession'—'Storage Story,' featuring commissioned works by six contemporary artists, and 'The Radiance: Beginnings of Korean Art Photography,' showcasing five pioneering Korean art photographers. The museum will eventually become part of an eight-branch network run by SeMA.
Japanese ceramicist Kunimasa Aoki has won the €50,000 Loewe Foundation Craft Prize 2025 for his terracotta work *Realm of Living Things 19*, which the jury praised for its risk-taking firing process. The piece, made from thin coils of clay stacked and compressed, was fired in an electric kiln until it began to smoke, then finished with soil, glue, and pencil marks. Two special mentions were awarded: one to Nifemi Marcus-Bello for a recycled aluminum bench with bowl, and another to an unnamed artist. The prize is part of an exhibition of 30 shortlisted works at the Thyssen-Bornemisza National Museum in Madrid, running until June 30.
Boston University Art Galleries has announced its summer 2025 exhibitions, featuring two shows opening June 5 on BU's Charles River Campus. 'Boston Young Contemporaries 2025' is a cross-institutional exhibition showcasing work from current and recent MFA graduates of BU, Massachusetts College of Art and Design, and the School of the Museum of Fine Arts at Tufts University, juried by curator Selby Nimrod. The second exhibition, 'Nothing Matches Everything Shines,' presents multimedia installations by artist Loretta Park in the 808 Gallery windows, curated by Madeleine Delpha, using found objects and traditional handcraft to challenge conventional notions of beauty and value.
Turkish artist Koray Kasap has opened his first 3D art exhibition in the United States, held at an outdoor gallery in Morristown, New Jersey. The mixed-media show blends painting with everyday objects and features themes from Turkish culture, including works titled "Nefsini Terbiye Eden Derviş" ("The Dervish Who Trains His Soul"), "Ayasofya" ("Hagia Sophia"), and "Filistinli Anne" ("Palestinian Mother"). Kasap, a graduate of Mimar Sinan University of Fine Arts and a former photographer known for album covers in the 1990s, uses charcoal and coffee instead of traditional paints. He has pledged to donate proceeds from the Palestinian Mother painting to Palestinian children.
Winterthur Museum in Delaware has opened a new exhibition titled "Almost Unknown: The Afric-American Picture Gallery," which brings to life a fictional gallery imagined in 1859 by Black writer and schoolteacher William J. Wilson, writing under the pseudonym Ethiop. In a series of columns for the magazine "The Anglo-American," Wilson described an imaginary museum of Black history and art, featuring works like a depiction of a slave ship, a bust of poet Phillis Wheatley, and images of Crispus Attucks and Haitian Revolution heroes. Curator Jonathan Square has transformed Wilson's fantasy into an immersive, haunted-attraction-style exhibition using objects from Winterthur's collection, with dark lighting, sound effects, and false walls that evoke a carnival ride inspired by Jordan Peele films and "The Shining."
A new book titled *From Ted to Tom* collects the illustrated envelopes that Edward Gorey (1925-2000) sent to his friend Tom Fitzharris between 1974 and 1975. The envelopes are adorned with Gorey's trademark surreal drawings, often featuring a pair of dogs wearing clothing with the letter 'T,' representing the two correspondents. The volume includes excerpts from 50 letters, along with witty annotations, tactile design elements, and quotes from writers Gorey admired, offering a glimpse into his personal and artistic life.
West Liberty University (WLU) is hosting its Spring Senior Art Exhibition in the Nutting Gallery, starting April 30 with an opening reception from 5:30-7 p.m. The exhibit, running through May 8, features capstone projects by senior art majors in graphic design, art education, and studio art, including students Olivia Bernola, Allison Diantonio, Lilianna Hardt, Ireland McCafferty, Briston Ramby, Kaylee Savage, Nico Walker, and Nathan Wharton. The work was guided by Professor Brian Fencl, director of the Nutting Gallery, and Professor of Graphic Design Moonjung Kang.
Architect Desmond Williams, known for designing modern Catholic churches, has died at age 93. His work, which includes four listed churches, was celebrated for its innovative integration of liturgical function, architectural ambition, and artistic collaboration, placing him among the leading figures of postwar British architecture.
The Houston Center for Contemporary Craft (HCCC) has opened the exhibition 'Clutch City Craft,' which explores the craft traditions and material cultures that define Houston. The show features a diverse range of making practices, from mosaic street signs and cowboy boot making to fiber artists involved in aerospace design, framing the city's creative density as an extension of its industrial identity.
Milan Design Week has unveiled a series of innovative seating concepts that challenge traditional forms of furniture. Highlighting the intersection of sculpture and utility, the showcase features standout pieces including a crisp, minimalist couch, a monolithic chair, and a playful pouf, all of which demonstrate how contemporary designers are rethinking the ergonomics and aesthetics of reclining.
Pearl Fryar, the visionary self-taught topiary artist who transformed his yard in Bishopville, South Carolina, into a world-renowned botanical masterpiece, has died at age 86. Starting in the 1980s with no formal training, Fryar used a gas-powered hedge trimmer to sculpt salvaged plants into gravity-defying, abstract geometric forms that drew thousands of international visitors to his three-acre property.
The article highlights a trend in contemporary furniture design, focusing on console tables that blend sculptural aesthetics with functional design. These pieces are characterized by their use of mixed materials and artistic lines, positioning them as versatile objects suitable for diverse interior spaces.
A descendant of one of Majorca's oldest families has preserved and now showcases a unique, sprawling collage within her 18th-century family estate. The artwork was created over hundreds of summer holidays by her mother and aunt, who meticulously assembled it using materials like magazine clippings, postcards, and fabric.
The article is a first-person dispatch from Rojava, a Kurdish-majority region in northeastern Syria, where the author meets artists and fighters living and working on the front lines against jihadist groups. It focuses on artist Diyar Hesso, who has exchanged his camera for a rifle, and YPJ fighter Hevi, who articulates the necessity of armed self-defense for women facing a genocidal enemy. Their stories illustrate the impossible choice between artistic creation and survival in a war zone.
The seventh edition of Tuwaiq Sculpture will take place in Riyadh from January 12 to February 22, 2026. The annual public art symposium will bring 25 international artists to Tahlia Street to create large-scale sculptures on-site using local granite and reclaimed metals, with all finished works entering the permanent Riyadh Art collection for installation across the city.
The article profiles artist Davide Hjort Di Fabio, whose work explores the experience of chronic illness and the sick body through sculpture and installation. He uses materials like silicone, resin, and medical paraphernalia to create visceral forms that challenge conventional representations of health and the human form.
Catherine Christer Hennix's exhibition at Malmö Konsthall presents an austere yet expansive body of work that weaves together mathematics, mysticism, and sound. The artist's practice is characterized by a focus on absence, silence, and negative space, creating an immersive environment that challenges conventional sensory engagement.
A growing number of contemporary photographers are shifting their focus from traditional documentary subjects to their own personal and familial archives. This movement, termed the 'familial turn,' sees artists using intimate, domestic materials as primary sources for artistic exploration and narrative construction.
Alla Biennale Arte 2026 la Spagna trasforma il suo Padiglione in museo dell’accumulo con l’artista Oriol Vilanova
Spain has announced its participation in the 61st Venice Biennale Arte 2026, selecting Catalan artist Oriol Vilanova to represent the country in its newly renovated national pavilion. The project, titled "Los restos," transforms the pavilion into a pseudo-museum of accumulation, featuring Vilanova's vast personal archive of postcards collected over twenty years from flea markets and secondhand circuits. The installation presents these ephemeral fragments as an infinite, non-narrative mural, exploring themes of accumulation and loss. Curated by Carles Guerra, the project also includes a performative intervention titled "Il fantasma della libertà" (2026), which will unfold across the Giardini and Arsenale during the Biennale.
Per la Biennale Arte 2026 il duo RojoNegro porta nel Padiglione del Messico un rituale collettivo
The article announces that the RojoNegro collective, formed by María Sosa and Noé Martínez, will represent Mexico at the 61st Venice Biennale in 2026 with a project titled "Actos invisibles para sostener el universo." Curated by Jessica Berlanga Taylor, the installation combines organic materials, sound, video, and performance to create a ritualistic space that invokes invisible presences, memories, and energies. The work draws on decolonial perspectives, centering Indigenous and Afro-descendant cosmogonies as living knowledge systems, and aims to activate a dialogue between situated ritual practices and the global context of the Biennale.
In Casamassella, in the heart of Salento, Red Lab Gallery's residency program has produced "Chiedete al vento, all’onda, alla stella, all’uccello," a project by artists Agata Ferrari Bravo and Thomas Michael Saccuman with an intervention by Flavio Favelli, curated by Leonardo Regano. The centerpiece is a large bird-cart, a hybrid sculpture and performative device made from papier-mâché, fragments of festive lights, and objects collected from the local area, designed to be disassembled and reactivated. Favelli's installation transforms decommissioned luminarie into a suspended environment that amplifies the work's ambiguous, almost ritualistic quality.
Il mito di Sandokan in mostra a Monza tra storia e immaginario. Parola ai curatori
A new exhibition titled "Sandokan. La Tigre ruggisce ancora" has opened at the Reggia di Monza, exploring the enduring myth of the fictional pirate Sandokan, who first appeared in Italian serialized fiction in 1883. Curated by Francesco Aquilanti and Loretta Paderni, the show brings together ethnographic materials, costumes from the 1970s television series, weapons, books, illustrations, and archival items, including the original Dayak collection donated by Sir Charles Brooke to the King of Italy. The exhibition traces Sandokan's evolution across literature, comics, film, and television, presenting him as a layered, ambivalent hero—both ruthless pirate and justice fighter—whose story remains relevant today.
Dal Mar d’Aral a Milano: l’Uzbekistan si racconta tra artigianato e crisi climatica
Uzbekistan made its official debut at the Milan Design Week with the exhibition 'When Apricots Blossom' at Palazzo Citterio. Curated by Kulapat Yantrasast and promoted by the Uzbekistan Art and Culture Development Foundation, the immersive show presents contemporary reinterpretations of Uzbek craft, organized around three pillars of Karakalpak culture: textiles, food, and dwelling. It features installations by international designers like Bethan Laura Wood and a deconstructed yurt by WHY Architecture.
Come si fa maglieria etica? Il fondatore del brand milanese Vitelli ci spiega
Mauro Simionato, founder of the Milanese brand Vitelli, discusses the evolution of his label as it returns from a year-long hiatus. Known for its 'Doomboh' regenerative process, Vitelli utilizes recovered yarns and vintage 1980s machinery to transform knitwear into a medium for aesthetic and cultural experimentation. The brand draws heavy inspiration from the 'Gioventù Cosmica' counterculture scene, blending music, material culture, and inclusive community-building into its production model.