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Esaí Alfredo’s Oil Paintings Merge Mysterious Narratives with ‘Miami Vice’ Noir
by Aurelia Butler 15 May 2025, 14:45
“Near the Military Base” (2025), oil on canvas, 72 x 96 feet. All images courtesy of the artist and Spinello Projects, shared with permission
Esaí Alfredo’s Oil Paintings Merge Mysterious Narratives with ‘Miami Vice’ Noir
May 15, 2025
Art
Kate Mothes
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In an iconic 1979 episode of Saturday Night Live, Steve Martin and Bill Murray shuffle onstage dressed like tourists. Peering out beyond the camera—and thus behind us—they repeatedly ask, “What the hell is that?” Stoking our curiosity and never divulging what “that” really is, yet preventing us from ever seeing it either, the answer is left entirely to our imaginations. Beyond the duo’s characteristic absurdity, we’re enticed to consider the endless possibilities of the unknown, just out of frame.
For Miami-based artist Esaí Alfredo, the confines of the cinematic screen and a sense of wonder play central roles in large-scale, enigmatic oil paintings. Male figures stand facing the distant horizon, observing dark plumes of smoke or, in some cases, events only they can see.
“The Wait” (2025), oil on canvas, 50 x 72 inches
Alfredo draws inspiration for his palette from Miami Vice, specifically the rich pastels and glowing contrasts evocative of the show’s stylized, 1980s New Wave aesthetics. Bright pink and teal complement the deep blacks of nighttime.
“I allow myself to play with colors and lighting situations that appear surreal or impossible,” he tells Colossal, sharing that the choice of hues serve as tools for telling stories. He adds, “My biggest influences in terms of color have been old movies, science fiction, theater, and the cinematography of films by Steven Spielberg and Alfred Hitchcock.”
Alfredo also likens his paintings to screenshots or freeze frames, as if plucked from an enigmatic, longer narrative. His sketchbook contains countless renderings, including drawings of settings and characters akin to storyboards for a movie.
Once he translates a basic sketch into a color study, Alfredo translates the idea to photographic compositions involving real people and various objects. “Once I have all my reference photos ready, I compose an image on my iPad to see how the painting will turn out. The rest is painting,” he says, leaving enough room for the inevitable improvisation.
“La Playa Lucia” (2025), oil on canvas, 10 x 20 inches
A suite of new paintings titled STARLESS that Alfredo recently exhibited with Spinello Projects at EXPO CHICAGO are “snapshots of a larger story I’m still uncovering,” he says. Otherworldly magentas and teals envelop figures in a variety of natural landscapes, beneath a sky devoid of celestial objects. Instead, mysterious objects fall from above, and the characters react to the phenomena with wonder, fear, and confusion. “I love capturing those moments when we feel powerless and can only observe for a moment before taking action,” he says.
Find more on Alfredo’s website and Instagram.
“The Theme Park” (2025), oil on canvas, 72 x 96 inches
“Moon” (2025), oil on canvas, 24 x 24 inches
“The Everglades” (2025), oil on canvas, 72 x 96 inches
“Antonio” (2025), oil on canvas, 40 x 60 inches
Detail of “Near the Military Base”
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Floral Quilted Portraits by Maria A. Guzmán Capron Cultivate Care and Love
by Aurelia Butler 14 May 2025, 18:53
Detail of “Otra Vez.” All images courtesy of Lyles & King, shared with permission
Floral Quilted Portraits by Maria A. Guzmán Capron Cultivate Care and Love
May 14, 2025
Art
Grace Ebert
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For thousands of years, flowers have been a rich source of symbolism. Dating back to the Ottomans, floriology, or the language of flowers, blossomed in the Victorian era when a bouquet functioned as a nonverbal code. The delicate sweetpea, for example, might have been given as a thank you to a particularly generous host, while buttercups would tell the recipient that the sender thought them childish and immature.
Maria A. Guzmán Capron (previously) references the timeless expressions of flowers for Solo Pienso en Volver a Verte, which opens this week at Lyles & King. Translating to “I only think about seeing you again,” the solo exhibition comprises the artist’s signature textile portraits of opulently patterned fabrics in a layered patchwork. Soft and plump with batting, the quilted characters are each unique, although Capron sometimes uses the same secondhand material on several pieces.
“Déjame Llevarte”
Encircled in hand-dyed fabrics, the figures in this body of work are often doubled or conjoined, as in the embracing women of “Otra Vez” or the two-faced subject of “Echa de Pedacitos.” Love, warmth, and protection feature prominently, as hands grasp for one another or emerge as a three-dimensional gesture. Capron envisions these layered, hybrid forms as a way to visualize the various identities, experiences, and memories within all of us.
The artist also stitches and screenprints a wide array of flowers on faces, garments, and throughout the lush surroundings. Sometimes abstract and often indeterminate, the blooms share stories and messages of desire that might be unspeakable or better communicated through a symbol of affection. Tending to love in all of its forms is the thread that runs through each work, as Capron welcomes us into a world in which compassion and care are the most beautiful gifts.
Solo Pienso en Volver a Verte runs through June 21 in New York. Find more from Capron on Instagram.
“Otra Vez”
“Echa de Pedacitos”
“Para Que Me Mires”
“Te Dejé Quererme”
Detail of “Y Comencé”
“También Allí”
“Algo Escondido”
Detail of “Otra Vez”
“Y Comencé”
Detail of “Te Dejé Quererme”
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Recycled Materials Draw Attention to Ocean Plastics in Ana Brecevic’s Assemblages
by Aurelia Butler 14 May 2025, 16:00
All images courtesy of Ana Brecevic, shared with permission
Recycled Materials Draw Attention to Ocean Plastics in Ana Brecevic’s Assemblages
May 14, 2025
ArtClimateNature
Kate Mothes
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As the climate crisis worsens around the globe, its effects are no more apparent than in our oceans and the communities that rely on them. Delicate coral reefs, for example, face stresses from not only rising sea temperatures but the residue of human presence—plastics, castoff fishing equipment, and other waste.
Warm water is typically the culprit in coral bleaching events, characterized by algae leaving the organisms and turning them a ghostly white. The algae provides a food source and helps to protect the coral from disease, but when it goes, the host is left much more vulnerable. For Ana Brecevic (previously), this phenomenon inspires work that draws attention to this urgent issue.
Her recent series, Plasticum, reflects on the ever-growing problem of plastic pollution in the earth’s oceans while contrasting the beauty of marine ecosystems with their vulnerability to human impact. The artist meticulously cuts silhouettes of bleached corals and gorgonians—also known as sea fans—and ornaments them with baubles reminiscent of debris.
“I live along the Atlantic coast, where I collect marine waste that inspires and feeds into this body of work,” Brecevic says. “Everything is made from recycled paper, upcycled fabrics, and natural dyes.”
The artist describes Plasticum as “a quiet echo of a reality slowly settling in,” where microplastics and waste continually threaten underwater habitats and biodiversity. She says, “Through this work, I hope to spark questions about our connection to living ecosystems and what we choose to see—or overlook.”
Find more on Brecevic’s website and Instagram.
Photo by Marion Saupin
Photo by Marion Saupin
Photo by Marion Saupin
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Paola Grizi Adds New Meaning to ‘Literary Figures’ in Emotive Bronze Sculptures
by Aurelia Butler 14 May 2025, 14:16
“Another Place,” Casart Edition, bronze, 32 x 30 x 35 centimeters
Paola Grizi Adds New Meaning to ‘Literary Figures’ in Emotive Bronze Sculptures
May 14, 2025
Art
Kate Mothes
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In the emotional bronze and terracotta sculptures of Paola Grizi (previously), faces and hands merge with pages of books and manuscripts. Handwriting slides off the leaves onto skin and reliefs of eyes, noses, and mouths peer outward like knowledge and stories personified. Many of her works are scaled to sit on interior surfaces, while others, like “Inner Motion” or “Looking Ahead” take on monumental proportions.
Grizi currently has work permanently on view at Marciano Contemporary in Paris, Bel Air Fine Art in Luxembourg, and Gallery Van Dun in Oisterwijk, The Netherlands. This summer, pieces will also be included in a presentation at Gallery Maner in Port-Aven, France. See more on the artist’s website.
“Looking Ahead,” Casart Edition, bronze, 120 x 110 x 20 centimeters
“Background,” Casart Edition, bronze, 32 x 12 x 15 centimeters
“Inner Motion,” Casart Edition, bronze
“Kiss,” Casart Edition, bronze, 35 x 37 x 20 centimeters
“Boundless,” terracotta
“Composition,” Casart Edition, bronze, 30 x 35 x 25 centimeters
“Multiple Lectures,” Casart Edition, bronze, 35 x 30 x 20 centimeters
Work in progress in the artist’s outdoor studio
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Metaphysical Interactions Unfold in Moonassi’s Surreal ‘Mind Illustrations’
by Aurelia Butler 12 May 2025, 18:00
“Same difference” (2024), ink and acrylic on Hanji, 72.7 x 60.6 centimeters. All images courtesy of the artist, shared with permission
Metaphysical Interactions Unfold in Moonassi’s Surreal ‘Mind Illustrations’
May 12, 2025
Art
Kate Mothes
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Through ink on hanji paper that juxtaposes deep blacks with delicate cross-hatching, surreal scenes unfold in the drawings of Seoul-based artist Moonassi (previously). Through the dramatic use of chiaroscuro and simple yet elegantly delineated faces, hands, and limbs, the artist constructs dreamlike worlds in which figures commune and explore.
Moonassi’s use of meok, a traditional Korean inkstick ground with water against a stone to produce a liquid, results in a deep black medium achieved through a meditative process. He refers to his work as “mind illustration,” delving into the emotional and psychological bonds between pairs, small groups, and otherworldly surroundings.
“Meme” (2024), ink and acrylic on Hanji, 130.3 x 193.9 centimeters
Recent pieces like “Same difference” explore dualities like opaqueness and transparency, weight and lightness, and unity and individuality. Moonassi’s compositions are often intrinsically introspective, as the figures interact with others that may or may not be versions of themselves or figments of their own imaginations.
Repetition and scale play significant roles in the artist’s work, like in “Meme,” in which a central figure crouches onto the ground and gently cups another tiny figure in their hands, who in turn does the same. At some point, it dawns on us that the main figure is also framed by enormous hands, akin to an otherworldly Matryoshka nesting doll. Moonassi’s scenes challenges our senses of perspective, presence, care, and the spiritual world.
Find more on the artist’s website.
“Mineral Wait” (2024), ink on Hanji, 76 × 145 centimeters
“Acrobat IV” (2024), ink and acrylic on Hanji, 72.7 x 60.6 centimeters
“Becoming Nature” (2024), ink and acrylic on Hanji, 72.7 x 60.6 centimeters
“The feeling aligned for us” (2024), ink and acrylic on Hanji, 130.3 x 190.4 centimeters
“Rippled and sparkled” (2024), ink on Hanji, 130.3 x 193.9 centimeters
“Feeling Kintsugi” (2024), ink and acrylic on Hanji, 72.7 x 60.6 centimeters
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‘Level Up’ by GAFFA Transports Us to an Uncanny Parking Garage
by Aurelia Butler 12 May 2025, 15:30
Installation view of ‘Level Up.’ Photos by Ladina Bischof. All images courtesy of GAFFA and Kunsthalle Arbon, shared with permission
‘Level Up’ by GAFFA Transports Us to an Uncanny Parking Garage
May 12, 2025
Art
Kate Mothes
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When you think of an orange safety cone, you might imagine rows of the small reflective objects placed around temporarily parked vehicles or, say, next to potholes. But a stroll through GAFFA’s recent exhibition, Level Up at Kunsthalle Arbon, and the everyday sight took the form of an unmissably imposing, monumental structure.
GAFFA is a collective founded nine years ago by Wanja Harb, Linus Lutz, Dario Forlin, and Lucian Kunz. Through a signature blend of humor, irony, and an interdisciplinary approach involving zines, collages, photography, sculpture, and installation, the group challenges our perceptions of physical space, history, and society.
In their sometimes absurd installations, GAFFA often brings the outdoors in, like importing a beach chair and umbrella into a concrete room or constructing an enormous brown slug that slid across a gallery floor. In Level Up, traffic serves as the primary focus—both its symbols and the fine line between regulation and chaos.
GAFFA transformed the Swiss art gallery into a parking garage containing an extra-long stretch limo, an entry ticket, orange cone, and double-arrow directional sign. We don’t know to whom the car belongs or where they are.
Viewers are transported into a kind of Alice in Wonderland experience where the scale of everything feels befuddling and incongruent. The car, though life-size, is made of cardboard, and the yellow sign is an oil painting.
“Underground garages and parking garages are places we usually only notice in passing,” the gallery says in a statement. “They are purpose-built ‘non-places’ to which hardly anyone pays attention, yet they have their own aesthetics: the strict geometry of the parking spaces, the rhythmic movement of the barriers, the seemingly random arrangement of the holes on a parking ticket.”
Anyone who has driven into a large garage knows the anxieties of a gate not opening when it’s supposed to or the ticket machine not working. Within the large yet controlled space of the Kunsthalle Arbon, Level Up begged the question: how does one get out of here? Explore more on the collective’s website.
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Gregory Euclide Explores the Anthropocene in Verdant Mixed-Media Collages
by Aurelia Butler 12 May 2025, 13:34
“Torn Spin” (2025). All images courtesy of the artist and Hashimoto Contemporary, shared with permission
Gregory Euclide Explores the Anthropocene in Verdant Mixed-Media Collages
May 12, 2025
ArtNature
Kate Mothes
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Smeared, flattened, and rough around the edges, Gregory Euclide’s mixed-media collages explore nature through the lens of human experience. Organically meandering outlines suggest shallow reliefs; foraged prairie botanicals complement human-made materials; and abstracted landscapes emerge from drawings, photographs, ripped paper, paint, and more.
“The artist tears and layers these elements to build a new pictorial space which more accurately resembles the way he takes in the land,” says a gallery statement for Assembled Lands, Euclide’s solo exhibition opening later this week with Hashimoto Contemporary.
“Torn: Double Sun” (2025)
Breaking down his observations of nature into its fundamental parts, Euclide merges overviews of trees, shrubs, meadows, and the horizon with the intimate details of leaves or branches. One might approach his subject matter through the lens of the Anthropocene, which describes our present era of accelerating changes to the environment due to humans’ unrelenting impact.
Each collage (previously) merges recognizable forms and terrain with abstract shapes and compositional spirals or whorls. The effect toys with perception and our understanding of relationships between flatness and depth, land and sky, and nature and ourselves.
Assembled Lands runs from May 17 to June 14 in New York City. See more on the artist’s website.
“Washed Up On The Beach 2” (2025)
“Plat Map” (2025)
“Torn: Silhouette” (2025)
“Random Invader Memory” (2025)
“Torn Landscape Spun” (2025)
“Torn: Forest Silhouette” (2025)
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Celeste’s Immersive Textile Installations Embrace the Warm Intimacy of Home
by Aurelia Butler 9 May 2025, 21:18
“Contra el miedo y la oscuridad, la fiesta colorida y feliz” (2024), pigments and acrylic base on dyed cotton canvas, 4.5 x 7.5 meters, installation view at Escuela Primaria Maestra Antonio Caso, Mexico City. Photo by Israel Esparza. All images courtesy of Celeste, shared with permission
Celeste’s Immersive Textile Installations Embrace the Warm Intimacy of Home
May 9, 2025
Art
Grace Ebert
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When María Fernanda Camarena and Gabriel Rosas Alemán aren’t in their Mexico City studio, you might find them pulling weeds or chopping vegetables. “We love cooking and gardening—practices rooted in care, and ones we’d love to weave into our work someday,” they say. “There’s a quiet mindfulness in both that aligns perfectly with what we aim to express.”
This desire to care roots much of the artists’ practice, which they present together under the name Celeste. Thinking of themselves as hosts, Celeste transforms galleries and museums with large-scale textile installations. In warm shades of pinks, oranges, and reds, the translucent cotton often allows light to filter through and cast tinted shadows around the space. Each work becomes a sort of mise-en-scène as viewers are invited to lounge with friends, enjoy a meal, or perform among the textiles.
Installation view of “Melons Covered in Willow Leaves” at the artists’ studio. Photo by Anna Pla Narbona
The earthy color palette—originally inspired by natural dyeing materials like avocado pit and turmeric root—began after the onset of COVID-19, when the artists wanted to create “an atmosphere that felt like an embrace, a much-needed warmth after the isolation of 2020,” they say. “This concept of solace stayed with us, and today, the palette has come to symbolize safe spaces, with the womb as a recurring motif: a protected, intimate interior.”
Projects include “Contra el miedo y la oscuridad, la fiesta colorida y feliz,” or “Against fear and darkness, the colorful and happy party,” made in collaboration with a 4th-grade class from Mexico City’s Granada neighborhood. After adding their own drawings to the cotton panels, the students used the vivid installation as the backdrop for a school festival.
The monumental “Melons Covered in Willow Leaves” is even more immersive, as viewers were invited to wander underneath a tent of draped fabric. And in their most recent exhibition at Rebecca Camacho Presents in San Francisco, the artists have installed a trio of suspended works that bisect the gallery, with arched openings that allow visitors to pass through. Referencing Diego Rivera’s “Agua, el origen de la vida” mural, the triad explores the connections between water and the impact of Mexico City’s colonial history on its landscape.
Later this month at The Bentway in Toronto, the pair will also present “Casting a Net, Casting a Spell,” a quilted canopy of 100 individual panels created as both a suncatcher and a necessary repreieve from the summer rays. It’s their largest project to date.
Installation view of Hacer brotar / To sprout at Rebecca Camacho Presents, San Francisco. Photo by Robert Divers Herrick
With each work, Celeste hopes to “invite the spectator not only in the sense of contemplation but rather in the involvement with the ceremonial… In this setting, the sensorial and emotional realms are recognized as legitimate sources of knowledge and an experience of hospitality and acknowledgment can take place without restrictions.”
Celeste’s Hacer brotar / To sprout is on view through June 14 in San Francisco. Explore much more of the duo’s practice and process on their website and Instagram.
Detail of “¡Qué llueva, qué llueva!” (2025), pigments and acrylic base on dyed cotton canvas, 66 x 109 inches
Installation view of Hacer brotar / To sprout at Rebecca Camacho Presents, San Francisco. Photo by Robert Divers Herrick
“Contra el miedo y la oscuridad, la fiesta colorida y feliz” (2024), pigments and acrylic base on dyed cotton canvas, 4.5 x 7.5 meters, installation view at Escuela Primaria Maestra Antonio Caso, Mexico City. Photo by Israel Esparza
“Hacer olas” (2023), pigments and acrylic base on dyed cotton canvas, 2.7 x .25 x 12 meters, installation view at The Contemporary Austin, Austin, Texas. Photo by Alex Boeschenstein
“Mellons Covered in Willow Leaves” 2024), scale model of the project in the artists’ studio
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Art

More stories

Esaí Alfredo’s Oil Paintings Merge Mysterious Narratives with ‘Miami Vice’ Noir

Floral Quilted Portraits by Maria A. Guzmán Capron Cultivate Care and Love

Recycled Materials Draw Attention to Ocean Plastics in Ana Brecevic’s Assemblages

Paola Grizi Adds New Meaning to ‘Literary Figures’ in Emotive Bronze Sculptures

Metaphysical Interactions Unfold in Moonassi’s Surreal ‘Mind Illustrations’

‘Level Up’ by GAFFA Transports Us to an Uncanny Parking Garage

Gregory Euclide Explores the Anthropocene in Verdant Mixed-Media Collages

Celeste’s Immersive Textile Installations Embrace the Warm Intimacy of Home

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