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    Wang Mansheng Turns to Nature to Make His Own Paintbrushes from Organic Materials

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    All images courtesy of the artist and The Huntington

    Wang Mansheng Turns to Nature to Make His Own Paintbrushes from Organic Materials

    July 17, 2025

    ArtCraftNature

    Kate Mothes

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    Have you ever sought out the best variety of paper, highest quality paints, or most-trusted brand of equipment only to find that a cheaper, more readily available version actually worked better? That’s something Chinese painter and calligrapher Wang Mansheng thinks about a lot. Making his own brushes from natural materials, the artist considers how organic imperfections are often ultimately more interesting than anything produced “perfectly” in a factory.

    The artist’s solo exhibition at The Huntington, Without Us, envisions a world literally devoid of us, which he describes as a “pure land without humans, without pollution, without humans’ damage.” Comprising a series of 22 ink paintings on silk scrolls suspended from the ceiling, the body of work highlights the interconnectedness of all living things. Starting with the equipment he uses, nature remains central in his practice.

    A short documentary produced by The Huntington delves into Wang’s process of creating his own brushes from scratch, utilizing stalks of grass and pieces of twine. “Manufactured things have a certain form,” the artist says. “Like a manufactured brush—they are all really fine. The factory is trying to make it as fine as they could. But when you use it, all the lines come out as smooth and beautiful. But sometimes, I think it’s too perfect.”

    To bring out the character of old trees and dramatic cliffs in his paintings, Wang employs brushes that produce a rougher line or texture. In the film, he demonstrates how he transforms the soft, wide bristles of tall reeds into a tool suited to his needs. Through trial and error, he taught himself how to shape and use different sizes and densities to achieve a variety of effects. Overall, the texture mirrors age and exposure to the elements that shape how trees and rocks look over time.

    Wang Mansheng: Without Us continues through August 5 in San Marino, California. Find more on the artist’s website. (via Kottke)

    Installation view of Without Us at The Huntington

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    • 163 Shares12 Views

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      Tender, Cute, and Absurd, Rong Bao’s Inflatable Sculptures Plug Into the ‘Emotional Wobble’

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      “Alien Babe No.2.” All images courtesy of Rong Bao, shared with permission

      Tender, Cute, and Absurd, Rong Bao’s Inflatable Sculptures Plug Into the ‘Emotional Wobble’

      July 17, 2025

      Art

      Kate Mothes

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      From PVC, silicone-coated fabrics, nylon mesh, electronics, and other found or manipulated materials, Rong Bao creates oddly personable inflatable sculptures. “My fascination with inflatable structures began when I realized how absurd, tender, and unstable they could be—all at once,” the artist tells Colossal. “Unlike rigid materials, inflatables breathe, wobble, collapse, and revive. They seem alive, with a sense of humor and vulnerability that deeply resonates with me.”

      Rong’s ongoing series of alien-like creatures tread the boundaries between humor and discomfort, abstraction and representation, and what she describes as “cuteness and existential instability.” The artist takes on a role akin to a playful mad scientist—just imagine Frankenstein’s unpredictable monster as a bouncy, neon pink confection.

      “Alien Babe No.1”

      Rong spends several weeks to months getting each composition just right by sketching, prototyping elements, testing inflation behavior and structural integrity, then fabricating the final piece. “It often involves a lot of trial and error—and a lot of laughter and despair in between,” she says.

      Rong was recently featured in an episode of the BBC’s children’s television program, Go Get Arty, and is currently working on a commission for Harper’s Bazaar China that incorporates a traditional, lightweight silk fabric with deep cultural roots in China.

      “I see my practice as a playground of soft contradictions—between seriousness and silliness, desire and failure, monumentality and deflation,” Rong says. “Many of my pieces are meant to be touched, entered, or even played with. I love it when viewers smile and laugh, and then suddenly feel a little unsettled. That moment of emotional wobble—that’s the space I’m after.”

      Rong’s work was recently on view in Selfridges’ display windows, part of a series titled New Age in which the department store showcased 15 emerging artists. And she also recently completed a large-scale commission titled “Carnivorous Bloom” for Pinacoteca Agnelli in Torino, Italy. Find more on the artist’s website and Instagram.

      Selfridges installation view of “Crown of Perception”

      Detail of “Alien Babe No.1”

      “Enigma”

      “Sanctuary of the Unclaimed”

      “Pink Roundabout”

      “Triple Bills”

      Detail of “Alien Babe No.2”

      “Unnamed Directory”

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      Thijs Biersteker’s Digital Sculptures Translate Climate Data into Urgent Calls to Action

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      “ORIGIN.” All images courtesy of Thijs Biersteker, shared with permission

      Thijs Biersteker’s Digital Sculptures Translate Climate Data into Urgent Calls to Action

      July 16, 2025

      ArtClimateDesignFoodNatureScience

      Kate Mothes

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      An unassuming cacao tree in Indonesia has made a unique connection to a high-tech artwork in China. Thanks to multimedia digital artist Thijs Biersteker, “ORIGIN” is a sculpture — a “digital twin” — that reflects the elemental experiences of the tropical tree through pulses of light.

      “When it rains in Indonesia, you see the sap flow through the sculpture in real time,” the artist says. “When the air quality shifts, the flows respond. During a heatwave, the tree visibly struggles. This real-time installation reveals just how fragile the cacao supply chain has become.”

      A majority of cacao, the primary ingredient in chocolate, is cultivated in places that are also the most vulnerable to the effects of the climate crisis. Extreme weather, habitat destruction, and other issues also mean that global food resiliency is increasingly threatened.

      For Biersteker, data provides unique insights into changes on the ground, and through a recent collaboration with the Indonesian Coffee and Cocoa Research Institute (ICCRI), he devised a way to literally illuminate environmental impacts.

      The artist is particularly interested in the relationship between data and nature, especially our scientific understanding of climate change and how it affects biodiversity, food, and habitats. Hooking up sensors to a specimen at ICCRI’s research site in Java, Bierksteker created a translucent, sculptural mirror of the tree, which is currently installed at Zaishui Art Museum in the city of Rizhao, Shandong Province.

      Another work, “WITHER,” in collaboration with UNICEF, comprises a tropical installation with flickering leaves representing rainforest loss. Each flicker symbolizes 128 square meters of deforestation, based on data from Amazon rainforest watch groups. And “ECONTINUUM,” a collaboration with Stefano Mancuso, invites us into a kind of “conversation” occurring between tree roots in a twinkling digital composition. The work nods to recent scientific discoveries that suggest trees communicate with one another via their intricate subterranean systems to provide or request nutrients or warn others of dangers like disease or infestations.

      “WITHER”

      For “ORIGIN,” the live cacao tree in Java transmits information, its digital copy animating with fluctuating light. “This mirrors the role of the institutions behind it: making the invisible visible and reconnecting people with the systems that feed them,” Biersteker says in a statement. “It is where data begins to speak to the imagination and where data-driven art becomes a new language for change.”

      Explore more on Bierksteker’s website and Instagram. If you enjoy pieces that explore the intersection of data and nature, you’ll also like Marshmallow Laser Feast’s “Of the Oak” installation at Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew.

      Details of cacao tree in Java and “ORIGIN”

      Detail of “ORIGIN”

      Detail of “ECONTINUUM”

      Detail of “ORIGIN”

      Detail of “ORIGIN”

      “WITHER”

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    • 138 Shares36 Views

      in Art

      A New Book Cultivates a Rich Survey of 300 Magnificent Gardens

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      Taylor Cullity Lethlean with Paul Thompson, Australian Garden, Cranbourne Gardens, Victoria, Australia (2006 and 2012). Photo by John Gollings

      A New Book Cultivates a Rich Survey of 300 Magnificent Gardens

      July 15, 2025

      ArtBooksDesignNature

      Grace Ebert

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      From the humble backyard plot to the royal Water Theatre Grove at Versailles, gardens have long been a source of sustenance, beauty, and spiritual communion. A forthcoming book from Phaidon sprouts from this history as it celebrates how these sites of joy and grandeur endure throughout the ages.

      The Contemporary Garden travels to 300 green spaces across 40 countries, surveying the everlasting link between horticulture, nature, and aesthetics. Included in its 300-plus pages are private and public spaces in a wide array of styles, from wild plots in urban centers to impeccably trimmed topiaries to designs that prize water features as much as foliage.

      While the book peers into some gardens only accessible to a few, many of its pages highlight well-trodden areas open to the public, like New York’s elevated Little Island, designed by Heatherwick Studio. Perhaps unsurprisingly, several spaces also double as outdoor galleries—including the High Line in Manhattan—or are artworks themselves. In the latter category is Gabriel Orozco’s The Orozco Garden, which bridges sculpture and horticulture through intricately laid brickwork and overgrown grasses at South London Gallery.

      Bridging natural sciences with art and design, The Contemporary Garden showcases how, even in this increasingly digital age, green spaces continue to be one of humanity’s perennial fascinations.

      Slated for release in late September, The Contemporary Garden is available for pre-order in the Colossal Shop.

      Kim Wilkie for the 10th Duke of Buccleuch, Orpheus, Boughton House, Kettering, Northamptonshire, England, 2009. Photo by Kim Wilkie

      Louis Benech and Jean-Michel Othoniel, Water Theatre Grove, Château de Versailles, Versailles, France (2015). Photo © EPV/Thomas Garnier

      Dominique and Benoît Delomez, Jardin intérieur à ciel ouvert, Athis-de-l’Orne, Normandy, France, (2000–11). Photo courtesy of Benoît and Dominique Delomez

      Erik Dhont, Bonemhoeve, Damme, West Flanders, Belgium, (2005). Photo © Jean-Pierre Gabriel

      Gabriel Orozco, The Orozco Garden, South London Gallery, London, England, (2016). Photo by Andy Stagg

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    • 125 Shares38 Views

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      Spirituality, Nature, and Performance Converge in Victoria Ruiz’s Vibrant Photographs

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      All images © Victoria Ruiz, shared with permission

      Spirituality, Nature, and Performance Converge in Victoria Ruiz’s Vibrant Photographs

      July 15, 2025

      ArtPhotography

      Kate Mothes

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      “For me, costume has always been part of everything,” says photographer and multidisciplinary artist Victoria Ruiz. “Culturally, I grew up in Venezuela seeing costume not as something separate from daily life but as something deeply embedded in it, especially through the lens of carnival. Carnival is in our blood. It’s not just a festival; it’s a way of expressing history, resistance, joy, and grief. A costume, at the end of the day, is something you wear that tells a story.”

      In striking, saturated images, Ruiz channels a fascination with nature, dance, spirituality, and African diasporic religion. Citing belief systems of the Americas like Santería-Ifá, Candomblé, Umbanda, and Espiritismo, the artist delves into the histories and cultural resonance of religion as modes of resistance and adaptation. These faiths often blend “African spiritual traditions with Indigenous and colonial influences,” she says in a statement.

      Currently based in London, Ruiz draws upon her childhood experiences in Caracas, Venezuela’s capital, where she and her family encountered both nuanced ancestral practices and urgent political violence. “I grew up surrounded by characters, some from folkloric traditions, others from more disturbing scenes like military or police repression,” the artist tells Colossal. She continues:

      I realized early on that uniforms are also costumes. What people wore during those moments of violence or protest created powerful symbols. It was a kind of dark carnival. And I became very curious about what those garments meant and how they could inspire fear, power, or solidarity.

      In her series Para Tú Altar: Las Fuerzas Divinas de la Naturaleza, which translates to For Your Altar: The Divine Forces of Nature, Ruiz draws upon a seminal music album by Cuban salsa artist Celia Cruz, who incorporated ceremonial Santería music into one of her early albums. Para Tú Altar references one of Cruz’s songs about different types of flowers used to honor the divinity of nature.

      At the time, African diasporic religions like Santería, in which Yoruba traditions, Catholicism, and Spiritism converge, were largely hidden from view due to widespread prejudice and marginalization. Ruiz adds, “It could be said that Celia did not truly understand that what she was doing at the time was transcendent for Cuba’s musical culture and the religion itself.”

      Music and performance are central tenets in Ruiz’s work. Since she was young, she studied ballet, flamenco, and contemporary dance, but it was only when she moved to London and began collaborating with dancers that elements of her practice began to truly gel. “Seeing them embody the costumes—activating them with movement and intention—transformed my whole practice,” she says. “It became a way to make the pieces alive and to create immersive, emotional storytelling.”

      Ruiz works with a range of fabrics and materials like faux flowers and other props, depending on the theme of the series. She often reuses the costumes to emphasize sustainability. “Each costume and each image is a portal to the divine; it is a visual offering, a spiritual invocation,” Ruiz says. “They’re my own interpretations of how these forces have shaped and protected me. I’m still on that journey, and this work is a kind of gratitude, a love letter to those unseen powers that have carried me.”

      The artist is currently working on a series of protective masks, drawing on the ingenuity of handmade masks used during protests that Ruiz witnessed while living in Caracas. “At one point, gas masks were actually banned from entering the country, so people responded with creativity and survival instinct creating masks from water bottles, cardboard, even stuffed animals,” she says. “I found it so powerful: this creativity in the face of danger—this need to resist and survive through making.”

      See more on the artist’s website and Instagram.

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    • 175 Shares28 Views

      in Art

      A Multifaceted Book and Exhibition, ‘Black Earth Rising’ Contends with Colonialism, Land, and Climate

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      Precious Okoyoman, “To See The Earth Before the End of the World” (2022). Photo by Clelia Cadamuro, courtesy La Biennale di Venezia. © Precious Okoyomon 2024. All images courtesy of Thames & Hudson, shared with permission

      A Multifaceted Book and Exhibition, ‘Black Earth Rising’ Contends with Colonialism, Land, and Climate

      July 14, 2025

      ArtBooksClimateHistoryNature

      Kate Mothes

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      Between 450 B.C.E. and 950 C.E., a particularly fertile soil known by researchers as terra preta, literally “black earth” in Portuguese, was cultivated by Indigenous farmers in the Amazon Basin. The soil was made with broken pottery, compost, bones, manure, and charcoal—which lends its characteristic dark shade—making it rich in nutrients and minerals.

      The historic, fecund material becomes a symbolic nexus for the exhibition Black Earth Rising, now on view at Baltimore Museum of Art. Curated by journalist and writer Ekow Eshun, the show illuminates several links between the climate crisis, land, presence, colonization, diasporas, and social and environmental justice.

      Raphaël Barontini, “Au Bal des Grands Fonds” (2022), acrylic, ink, glitter, and silkscreen on canvas 70 7/8 x 118 1/8 inches. Image courtesy of the artist and Mariane Ibrahim, Chicago, Paris, and Mexico City

      Accompanying the exhibition is a new anthology published by Thames & Hudson titled Black Earth Rising: Colonialism and Climate Change in Contemporary Art, which highlights works by more than 150 African diasporic, Latin American, and Native American contemporary artists.

      The volume explores intersections between slavery and forced migration, the environmental consequences of colonialism, socio-political injustices experienced by urban Black and Brown communities, and the violent occupation of Native lands—all through the lens of learning from Indigenous knowledge systems and a wide range of cultural practices to consider more carefully how we view and interact with the natural world.

      Black Earth Rising brings together striking works by some of the art world’s most prominent practitioners, from Cannupa Hanska Luger and Precious Okoyoman to Wangechi Mutu and Firelei Báez, among many others. Hanska Luger’s ongoing project, Future Ancestral Technologies, takes a multimedia approach to science fiction as a vehicle for collective thinking. Luger describes the project as a way to imagine “a post-capitalism, post-colonial future where humans restore their bonds with the earth and each other.”

      Carrie Mae Weems’ photograph “A Distant View,” from The Louisiana Project, approaches the history of enslaved women in the South through the perspective of a muse—the artist herself—spectrally inhabiting a seemingly idyllic landscape. Reflecting on the relaxed atmosphere of the image, we’re confronted with the stark reality experienced by Black people who were forced to labor on plantations, these grand houses now symbolic of atrocious violence and inequities.

      Cannupa Hanska Luger, “We Live, Future Ancestral Technologies Entry Log” (2019). Image courtesy of the artist and Garth Greenan Gallery, New York

      “Black Earth Rising presents a discourse on climate change that places the voices of people of color at the active center rather than on the passive periphery,” says a statement from the publisher.

      Through a wide variety of paintings, photography, sculpture, installation, and interdisciplinary pieces, readers—and visitors to the exhibition—are invited to consider how the continuum of history influences the climate crisis today and how we can proceed toward a future that centers unity and deeper relationships with nature.

      The Black Earth Rising exhibition continues through September 21. Find your copy of the anthology on Bookshop, and plan your visit to the show on the Baltimore Museum of Art’s website.

      Carrie Mae Weems, “A Distant View” from ‘The Louisiana Project’ (2003), gelatin silver print, 20 x 20 inches. Image courtesy of the artist and Gladstone Gallery, New York; Fraenkel Gallery, San Francisco; and Galerie Barbara Thumm, Berlin. © Carrie Mae Weems

      Akea Brionne, “Home Grown” (2023), digital woven image on jacquard with rhinestones, poly-fil, and thread, 48 x 60 inches. Image courtesy of the artist and Lyles & King, New York

      Todd Gray, detail of “Atlantic (Tiepolo)” (2022), four archival pigment prints in artist’s frames and UV laminate, 72 5/8 x 49 1/8 x 5 inches. Image courtesy of Todd Gray and David Lewi More

    • 138 Shares63 Views

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      The 16th-Century Artist Who Created the First Compendium of Insect Drawings

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      All images courtesy of the National Gallery of Art

      The 16th-Century Artist Who Created the First Compendium of Insect Drawings

      July 11, 2025

      ArtHistoryIllustrationNature

      Grace Ebert

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      Nearly a century before the invention of the microscope and even longer before entomology became a field of research, Joris Hoefnagel (1542-1600) devoted himself to studying the natural world. The 16th-century polymath created an enormous multi-volume collection called The Four Elements, which contained more than 300 watercolor renderings, each depicted with exceptional detail.

      As Evan Puschak of the YouTube channel Nerdwriter1 (previously) explains, Hoefnagel showed unparalleled talent in his field. Compared to one of his predecessors, Albrecht Dürer, Hoefnagel draws with a painstaking commitment to precision and accuracy, even depicting specimens’ shadows with impeccable fidelity. As Kottke writes, “his paintings were so accurate that if he’d lived 200 years later, you would have called him a naturalist.”

      While drawings in three of the books appear to mimic other scientific renderings of the period, Hoefnagel seems to have created his works by studying the insects themselves and sometimes even included parts of their bodies in his compositions. His Fire volume, full of beetles, butterflies, and other arthropods, is thought to be the first of its kind.

      Some of Hoefnagel’s works are on view at the National Gallery of Art in Little Beasts: Art, Wonder, and the Natural World, which ventures back to the 16th and 17th centuries to explore how artists and naturalists have historically been aligned. It’s also worth looking at the museum’s interactive archive that lets viewers zoom in on several of Hoefnagel’s drawings.

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    • 200 Shares71 Views

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      From Vietnam to Nepal, Lee Me Kyeoung Expands the Geographic Bounds of Her Corner Store Drawings

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      Mirissa, Sriranka. All images courtesy of Lee Me Kyeoung, shared with permission

      From Vietnam to Nepal, Lee Me Kyeoung Expands the Geographic Bounds of Her Corner Store Drawings

      July 11, 2025

      ArtIllustration

      Grace Ebert

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      Tucked into mountainsides and among bustling streets, small corner stores are often a central point in a community. For Lee Me Kyeoung (previously), these local shops provide endless inspiration for an ongoing series of drawings. The Korean artist documents the tiny markets she encounters around the world, utilizing pen and acrylic to create exquisite visual odes from Australia to Turkey.

      Me Kyeoung’s drawings were recently collected into a book, and you can follow her work on Instagram.

      Göreme Cappadocia, Türkiye

      Husei, Japan

      Dhampus, Nepal

      Chefchaouen, Morocco

      Hoian, Vietnam

      Arhangai, Mongolia

      Ubud Bali, Indonesia

      Ross on Wye, U.K.

      Sydney, Australia

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    • 138 Shares63 Views

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      A New Book Illuminates Jean-Michel Basquiat’s Prolific Time in Los Angeles

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      All photos © The Estate of Jean-Michel Basquiat, courtesy of Gagosian, shared with permission

      A New Book Illuminates Jean-Michel Basquiat’s Prolific Time in Los Angeles

      July 11, 2025

      ArtBooks

      Grace Ebert

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      Jean-Michel Basquiat (previously) is often associated with the New York art scene of the 1980s, but between November 1982 and May 1984, the artist was wildly prolific on the other side of the country.

      During his first stay in California, Basquiat posted up at Larry Gagosian’s Market Street home in Venice after the two art world titans worked together on the artist’s West Coast debut. He returned to New York before another trip back to Market Street in summer of 1983, when he established his own studio. He remained there until the following spring.

      Although brief, Basquiat’s time in Los Angeles was creatively fruitful. Throughout the year and a half period, he made approximately 100 paintings, as well as works on paper and six silkscreen editions in collaboration with publisher and curator Fred Hoffman.

      This period produced works like “Hollywood Africans,” an acrylic and oil stick composition on bright yellow evocative of the Southern California sunshine. The mixed-media piece features a self-portrait of the artist alongside Toxic and Rammellzee, two fellow graffiti icons seen as the “new Black celebrities,” according to a statement.

      This history is detailed in the forthcoming book Made on Market Street, published by Rizzoli and Gagosian this August. The book—which shares a title with a 2024 exhibition at the eponymous gallery—includes archival documents like reviews of the 1982 and 1983 exhibitions, press releases, invitations to opening receptions, and more. There are also photos of the artist in his studio published for the first time.

      Viewed as a potential companion to the 500-page monograph of Basquiat’s work, Made on Market Street illuminates a lesser-known period of his life and creative practice. The book features conversations with and writings by Hoffman, Larry Gagosian,  filmmaker Tamra Davis, and the artist’s sisters, Lisane Basquiat and Jeanine Heriveaux, all of which offer unique insight into one of the most successful artists of his time. Pre-order your copy on Bookshop.

      Detail of “Hollywood Africans” (1983)

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