Exhibitions

Beyond the sensory overload of the national pavilions in the Giardini della Biennale, there’s another trippy garden in Venice.
This enclave nestled inside a 16th-century church is the brainchild of the Belgian artist Arne Quinze and the U.S. producer, musician, and art collector, Swizz Beatz. Their exhibition titled “Are We The Aliens_” showcases Quinze’s bold exploration into glass, ceramics, and bronze alongside A.I.-generated visuals. At its core is a collaborative sonic installation: an immersive aluminum sanctuary, inviting visitors to recline and absorb its dynamic soundscape.
We caught up with the artist and musician to hear more about their collaboration, marrying sound to art, and taking a leap with the next generation of creators.
Arne Quinze and Swizz Beatz, Sonic Levitation. Photo by Dave Bruel for Arne Quinze. Courtesy of Konig Galerie.
Arne Quinze: We finished installing a half hour ago. The experience is fresh—we just came down from sitting in our garden. Even after making this piece, I’m still discovering. I’m still enjoying. I’m still traveling, I’m still in wonder at what we did.
Swizz Beatz: The collaboration came about because we have a brother in between us but we’ve been a fan of each other’s work for many years.
AQ: The first time I came here was two, three years ago, to check the location, because it’s difficult to find the right location in Venice. After I found it, I started to make the molds and I flew to San Diego and I showed him the model, and we were sitting around the model and talking.
SB: His model, it’s still on the table where he left it. It’s a model of the sculpture that I was looking at while I was doing the music, vibing, listening to music in the speakers and just asking: How would the sound look coming out of the sculpture? How would you feel?
AQ: The concept of the exhibition title “Are We The Aliens_” came up because we have the same view on the world, from the discussions that we had. The theme is actually questioning ourselves. We need to learn to approach again our planet with beauty and with our art and to communicate and to embrace and to live in harmony. That’s the message. Because on this planet, there’s just one race, one species as humans, we are all the same.
Photo by Dave Bruel for Arne Quinze. Courtesy of Konig Galerie.
SB: This is my first, I like to call it sonic installation score, to this amazing sculpture masterpiece. I’m usually scoring for a movie or doing music-production for a song. This was different because the medium was different. The energy is different. His vision is different. So, it was a pure collaboration. I went through it, like, three or four times and then a last time because we’re still learning each other. Usually, if I’m producing something I’m taking the lead, but you know, he’s the main producer as the artist for his vision, I had to kind of like walk side-by-side, see if this works, right? And then eventually I was like, “Okay, we can jibe from here and then we got to a masterful place together.”
AQ: I think we are here to bring beauty and I think through beauty we try to communicate and bring us all back together. When you see a white, flower field, you need to embrace that and to learn to see that again and that will bring the music and the art back into our lives—and that will reunite us. I think this is important.
SB: We also want people to be a little uncomfortable. Because when you create intensity, when it smooths out, you can actually feel everything else happening. If we had it just with garden sounds, you wouldn’t really notice the change—it’s a blackout in your mind. So, this is designed to test all your senses.
The hardest thing with scoring this was actually: How do you keep changing the direction, and keep it interesting to keep playing after this period of time? I started with soundscape that would put you to sleep. Then I started to get a little experimental, put the rough ends on it, and then started formatting it so we go, low, high, low, high, high, low, low, high, low—and it’s almost not calculated. Because you think, “Oh, here comes a big sound.” You think it’s that and it just goes into a drum and it’s playing with your senses.
Arne Quinze, Ceramorphia. Photo by Dave Bruel for Arne Quinze. Courtesy of Konig Galerie.
AQ: I think the thing that we did together is not 2D, it’s not 3D. I think it’s beyond 4D. And that is all the layers that you will see. It’s a magic garden when you dive in. I’ve been working in installation for 30 years now, I have a lot of experience. What I really like with this one, I’m always in places, like somewhere in the middle of the jungle or in the desert or far away and making big monumental installations. This is a very intimate garden. You come in our secret garden.
We used many things to put it together, and we asked artificial intelligence to be as artificially intelligent as possible. Because I’m questioning, are we the humans and they are the aliens—or are we the aliens and they’re the humans? Because artificial intelligence is maybe the first new species on this planet. And it’s everywhere, it’s in your microphone, it’s in your telephone, and we have to learn to live with it. Still, I think artificial intelligence is far off being able to produce the emotions that we did here.
SB: Well, for me, I’m not bothered by using A.I. in many ways. You can use it for speeding up processes. But the thing is when you don’t have talent and you use it, it’s a disaster. But if you do have talent and you have a plan to enhance something that’s already great but that would have taken you probably like six months, it could take you four hours. My son has been writing this animation movie for eight years and the hardest thing was him finding the designer for his characters. Now, he has almost all of his characters done in one month, when this would have cost hundreds of thousands of dollars. So, in these ways it’s good but I think that it should be in the right hands.
Arne Quinze, Impact Glass. Photo by Dave Bruel for Arne Quinze. Courtesy of Konig Galerie.
AQ: I think artificial intelligence will also challenge us to take the next step. I’m not afraid of that, not afraid. It’s a new generation. I think we need to dive into that, to use that.
SB: The world is a smaller place now because of technology. I think the creators are now getting more confident, of stepping outside and not being afraid, which is going to push the art little further to even like what you have seen from us. And I’m seeing artists, who would have normally tried to put their hands behind their back for the perfect curator or the perfect gallery or the perfect museum to notice them. But now, I’m seeing more of the art world, they’re like, “Listen, if I get in a museum, I’m cool with that. If not, I had fun doing the piece.” And this is how you keep art alive, is by taking the risk. And I love that I see people around the world taking the risk now and I hear all type of stories of people telling me their new ideas. This is good.
AQ: Yeah, and you see also our kids, the next generation, they have possibilities that we never had. They are diving into a new world—I’m so encouraged to see what they will produce.
SB: Yeah. Because you can’t really produce for the hype; you have to produce for the passion. It’s a disaster when I see artists producing for the hype, and getting misled and their market is ran up and then one bad sale and you don’t hear from these people again—and nobody’s helping them get back on their feet. And so, I encourage all artists to take their time and really do the passion and don’t worry about the hype. Worry about the longevity and what you can change in that period. The hype, that’s going to come and go.
I apply that to myself as well, because being in the music industry is a big hype business, so naturally you bring that with you anyway. With art, when I first started, I collected for the wrong reasons. I was collecting for the hype so I was just going for the big names, just to impress people coming to the house. And then I was like, “I don’t need all this.” I need to be able to meet the artists, treat them as family, you know, not be so transactional. Most people are very transactional when they’re talking to the artist. What’s in their mind is “how can I get a piece?” instead of “is this artist at peace?” Emotionally, spiritually, physically, all of these things.
AQ: But you also worked here as an artist. It’s really not just as a composer or as a musician—a musician is an artist but this is different. You are touching material, we are sculpting together. That is how I see it.
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Five digital expressions of legendary late Korean abstractionist Kim Whanki’s iconic paintings are casting a glow over the LG OLED Lounge at Frieze New York.
In the spirit of LG’s initiative at the Guggenheim and its involvement in Britain’s Venice Biennale pavilion, LG OLED has invited a group of Korean multimedia artists to reimagine a select few Kim masterpieces on screens, setting new standards for digital art display.
The showcase, titled “We Meet Again In New York,” coincides with “Whanki in New York,” a new show on view through June 13 at the Korean Cultural Center New York (KCCNY), presented in collaboration with Seoul’s Whanki Museum and LG OLED. Together, they mark Kim’s first extensive posthumous exhibitions in the city.
Installation image of Whanki x LG OLED showcase “We Meet Again In New York” at Frieze New York. Courtesy LG OLED and © Whanki Foundation. Whanki Museum
Stunning Displays
The concurrent showcases highlight Kim’s last decade as a working artist, which he spent in New York. Amidst the rising art capital’s thriving abstract expressionist scene, Kim’s practice of painting Korean cultural icons through international new styles developed into his now-legendary “all-over dots” paintings, which have since sold for millions. Each mark is entirely organic, rather than mechanically perfect, encapsulating the artist’s hand while creating a mesmerizing viewing experience, which is only emphasized by their new translation to LG OLED screens at Frieze.
They portray his paintings with startling clarity and even greater color precision than the 50-year-old artworks themselves. Some of the originals have faded and others aren’t suited to public display, due in part to their fragility or ownership by private collectors in Korea.
Kim Whanki, Duet 22-IV-74 #331 (1974). Digital Expression of Whanki’s painting, 2023. © Whanki Foundation.Whanki Museum
The five works across the presentation were translated by Seoul National University professor Je Baak, media art creator group Verseday, Ahn Graphics CEO Mano Ahnand, and BESIGN CEO Jason Kim. Each artist added touches of their own style to compliment the works.
7-VI-69 #65 (1969), animated by Ahn, radiates while layering the composition’s geometric elements piece by piece, to assemble the whole painting. Kim made the lines of 7-VII-74 (1974) dissipate and reemerge amongst the newly swirling and fading textures surrounding them.
The show’s centerpiece beams on a massive LG OLED screen featuring Kim’s scarlet, sun-themed 14-III-72 #223 (1972). At intervals, Verseday has made its sunspots and brushstrokes shimmer, accenting their textures. The animations emphasize Kim’s interest in creating a time-based viewing experience.
Kim Whanki’s masterpieces digitally expressed by LG Signature OLED M. © Whanki Foundation.Whanki Museum
An International Artist Drawn to New York
Though Kim was born in Korea and helped found the country’s pioneering Dansaekhwa movement, he also carried elements of Korean culture as he moved around the globe.
As an art student in Tokyo during the 1930s, Kim was drawn to Matisse and Picasso and started translating Korean motifs through modern styles. He returned to Korea and co-founded the influential New Realism Group. Decades later in the 1950s, Kim moved to Paris to tackle the canon. Despite his association with Korean lyricism and meditative abstraction, he sought a seamless integration of Eastern and Western aesthetics. He then traveled on to New York in 1963, thanks to a grant from the Asia Society.
Kim immediately fell in with the city’s expanding art scene, where he befriended Mark Rothko and Barnett Newman. He also inspired Nam June Paik. “Many people, even his most devoted fans, might not know that Kim Whanki, despite his achievements and comfortable life in Korea, moved to New York at the age of 50, where he passed away,” noted KCCNY curator Hee Sung Cho.
At the same time, he retained traditional imagery like moon jars in his work, balancing his cultural origins with the eye of an international artist. “By becoming a foreigner in a new city, he turned to his inner voice and created his own new world of art,” observed Park Mee-Jung, director of the Whanki Museum.
Installation view of “Whanki in New York” at the Korean Cultural Center New York (KCCNY), presented in collaboration with the Whanki Museum and LG OLED. Courtesy KCCNY and LG OLED.
Celebrating Kim’s Legacy
KCCNY and LG OLED Art shared the vision of reintroducing Kim Whanki to New York audiences through the Frieze display and the Whanki exhibition currently unfolding across KCCNY’s new seven-story home near Koreatown in Manhattan. “This collaboration was envisioned to create a unique showcase that combined cultural depth with cutting-edge technology,” said Hee Sung Cho, who helped make the partnership possible.
The KCCNY exhibition features loans from private collectors, including the famed sculptor John Pai, as well as numerous works provided by The Whanki Museum. Describing Kim’s legacy, the museum’s director, Park Mee-Jung, said: “​​His work, and the inspiring narrative of his life and artistic evolution across Korea, Brazil, Paris, and New York, has led to an ever-increasing global recognition of his art and impact on the history of Korean art.”
Kate Oh, Vice President of the Brand Communication Division at LG, emphasized the importance of the collaboration: “With this incredible presentation of digital expressions of Whanki’s artworks at Frieze New York, and our partner exhibition at the Korean Cultural Center New York, we hope to contribute to Whanki’s lasting legacy in New York City.”
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In time for National Military Appreciation Month in June, EPCOT’s American Adventure Pavilion, at the company’s Walt Disney World Resort in Florida, is mounting an exhibition of former president George W. Bush’s paintings of surviving military veterans. “Portraits of Courage: A Commander in Chief’s Tribute to America’s Warriors” includes more than 60 portraits, each accompanied by “the inspiring story of the veteran depicted” as written by Bush. The exhibition is organized in collaboration with the George W. Bush Institute.
“Celebrating those who give so much to our country has been part of the fabric of The Walt Disney Company throughout our 100-year history,” said Josh D’Amaro, chairman of Disney Experiences. “We’re grateful to the Bush Institute for allowing us to feature this special collection and share it with our guests.”
Bush’s painting hobby first came to light when a Romanian hacker released photos of Dubya’s daubings in February 2013 (later earning a four-year jail sentence for the act). The paintings were also the basis of a 2017 book by the same name, which became a #1 New York Times bestseller. In 2019, he set out to follow up with a book of portraits of immigrants; as Artnet News’s Taylor Dafoe dryly commented when it was published a year later, referring to a notorious press conference at which W. landed on an aircraft carrier and prematurely declared victory in the Iraq War, “Well, mission accomplished.”
George W. Bush, Army Sgt. 1st Class Michael R. Rodriguez. Courtesy of Grant Miller/George W. Bush Presidential Center via Crown Publishing.
The exhibition will stay on view for a year. In addition to displaying the portraits, it will serve as a place for veterans to access information about free, high-quality mental and brain health care via a program called Check-In. Thousands of veterans of the post-9/11 wars are homeless; many suffered traumatic brain injuries as a result of the improvised explosive devices, or IEDs, that were used to attack them as they patrolled Iraqi cities.
Bush’s paintings of veterans were widely derided as hypocritical when they emerged; in the New Yorker, Peter Schjehldahl wrote, “Having obliviously made murderous errors, Bush now obliviously atones for them. What do you do with someone like that?” By the accounts of his painting instructors, Bush takes the activity seriously; he counts Lucian Freud, Wayne Thiebaud, Jamie Wyeth, Ray Turner, Fairfield Porter, and Joaquín Sorolla as influences.
The United States military operation in Iraq began in 2003, in the wake of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, an armed conflict that spanned eight years. About 7,000 U.S. service members died in post-9/11 war operations according to the Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs at Brown University, which also notes more than 30,000 suicides among service members and veterans of the post-9/11 wars. While it’s difficult to know exactly how many Iraqis died, the organization Iraq Body Count records some 113,728 civilian deaths. Brown University’s Costs of War Project estimates that the conflict ran up a bill of $6.4 trillion.
“Portraits of Courage” has been touring the U.S. since 2017, opening at the George W. Bush Presidential Center on the SMU campus in Dallas, Texas, before traveling to venues including Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art in Arkansas, and the Museum of the Southwest in Texas. Speaking to CNN at the launch of the exhibition, Bush said of his painting practice: “It keeps me active, so I’m not on the couch chewing potato chips all the time. It’s one of the great learning experiences.”
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There’s a call atop Ralph Steadman’s X account to “Enter the Steadmanverse.” Click the link and you travel to a Discord server comprised of two dozen or so sleepy channels. It’s a holdover of Steadman’s flirtation with NFTs that came at a time when web3 was seemingly imminent and inevitable.
The move spoke of an octogenarian who remains curious, an artist whose instantly recognizable works of spidery lines and grotesque subjects have remained both relevant and in-demand. Case in point, Harley-Davidson and Supreme recently dropped apparel splashed with Steadman ink. But for enduring popularity, look no further than college campuses where Steadman’s status as the irreverent illustrator-in-chief of ‘70s counter-culture has made his work a dorm wall staple.
Fitting then, that U.S. universities are set to play host to a comprehensive retrospective of Steadman’s varied and long-lasting career. Postponed in 2020, “Ralph Steadman: And Another Thing” makes amends with a marathon tour that begins at American University Museum in Washington, D.C. in September, and will run on-and-off through the fall of 2027.
Ralph Steadman, In the Beginning from Animal Farm (1994). Photo: courtesy Ralph Steadman.
As shown by the topical drawings he posts almost daily on social media—recent examples include bat day, scream day, St. George’s Day, world water day—Steadman remains prolific and engaged. The exhibition starts by presenting a young art student with a rather different palate. While studying at London’s East Ham Technical College in the ‘50s, Steadman dabbled with abstraction, creating geometric watercolors that echo the likes of Joan Miró and Wassily Kandinsky. Early sketchbooks and writings tell the tale.
Steadman’s caustic wit and social conscience, however, were not going to be contained by artfully arranged squares and circles. He began as a cartoonist at Kemsley Newspaper and by the early sixties his biting drawings began gracing outsider magazines such as Punch and Private Eye. He critiqued imperialism, class inequity, and political greed. All of British society, in other words.
Ralph Steadman, Fear and Loathing in Elko for Rolling Stone Magazine (1991). Photo courtesy Ralph Steadman.
Still, the going was tough. “I don’t make a lot of money,” he told an interviewer in 1965. This reality, paired with the country’s narrow publishing industry saw Steadman begin traveling back-and-forth to the U.S. in the early ‘70s. There, of course, he was introduced to Hunter S. Thompson and his anarchic vein of reporting, Gonzo journalism.
Naturally, “And Another Thing” traces this most raucous of relationships, one that rumbled on-and-off for 35 years until Thompson’s death in 2005. But it also delivers a fuller picture of Steadman’s prolific output over the past six decades. Yes, there are nearly 150 original works, but personal photographs, notes, and miscellaneous ephemera help out too.
“Steadman’s art challenges us, teaches us, and alters how we see the world,” said Andrea Lee Harris, the exhibition’s co-curator. “He has given us all a great gift and raised the bar for the generations following in his footsteps. The exhibition will delight diehard fans and uninitiated audiences eager to learn more.”
Ralph Steadman, Soldiers in Stripes from Alice Through the Looking Glass (1971). Photo: courtesy Ralph Steadman.
In contrast to the blood and bones drawings for which Steadman is best-known are his charming illustrations for children’s literature. These predate his work with Thompson and bear names such The Big Squirrel and Little Rhinoceros that offer Steadman working at an altogether different temperature.
There’s a cluster of political cartoons—the likes of Bill Clinton, Ronald Regan, and Richard Nixon, all savaged in pen and ink—but a balance between Steadman’s extremes typically comes in his illustrations for literature.
Chief among these is Steadman’s take on Alice in Wonderland in which he lowered characters he had observed around London into Lewis Carroll’s work. White Rabbit is a frazzled commuter, the Cheshire Cat appears looming and leering as though on top of a billboard, the playing cards are burly laborers complete with union numbers. It’s a frazzled world of chaos and corruption. A Steadmanverse, in other words.
“Ralph Steadman: And Another Thing” will be on view at the American University Museum, Katzen Arts Center, 4400 Massachusetts Ave NW, Washington, D.C., September 7–December 8.
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You could say that depicting motherhood has been something of an obsession for Old Masters from medieval times well into the Baroque period—after all, the Virgin and Child must be art history’s most iconic motif, where Mary often appears suitably docile and doting of the miniature adult in her arms. It may be evidence enough that none of these images were actually made by a mother, and it would be centuries before most had the chance to professionally paint, let alone offer a more candid portrayal of motherhood based on real experiences.
The question of how to represent what is, arguably, humanity’s most impressive act of creation, yet one that is consistently maligned, is the subject of “Acts of Creation: On Art and Motherhood” at the Arnolfini in Bristol. The show, curated by critic Hettie Judah, author of the manifesto “How Not to Exclude Artist Parents,” also delves into the history of artist mothers and their struggle to make their voices heard within a male dominated field.
Installation view of “Acts of Creation: On Art and Motherhood” at Arnolfini, Bristol. Photo: Lisa Whiting, courtesy of Arnolfini and Hayward Gallery Touring.
As Judah points out, for centuries it was up to male artists to present their most idealized visions of motherhood. “It’s not often that you see art featuring mothers who are bone-tired from night feeds, picking a chaos world of toys off the floor, or negotiating with opinionated toddlers,” she commented. “Our great museums seldom show mothers desperately juggling work and childcare, struggling with postnatal depression, or worrying about their kid getting picked up for a police ‘stop and search’. Real motherhood, in other words, in all of its diversity.”
Tabitha Soren, My Great American Novel (2007) installed at “Acts of Creation: On Art and Motherhood” at Arnolfini, Bristol. Photo: Lisa Whiting, courtesy of Arnolfini and Hayward Gallery Touring.
“In the 20th century, women were led to believe that they couldn’t be both an artist and a mother—motherhood was seen as a culturally unserious state, evidence that the woman in question was not fully committed to being an artist,” said Judah. “Until very recently, it was common for art students to be told that lived experience of motherhood was not an appropriate subject for art.”
Claudette Johnson, Afterbirth (1990). Photo: © Claudette Johnson.
One of the most fraught topics for expectant mothers living under the rigid strictures of patriarchy is the question of how their body will change after bearing new life. Stretch marks, scars, and folds are worn with pride by artist Claudette Johnson in a startlingly intimate self-portrait from 1990 that shows the artist in a powerful stance that defies stigma.
Caroline Walker, Bottles and Pumps (2022). Photo courtesy the artist.
The practical realities of caring for a baby was the subject of several 2022 paintings by Caroline Walker, who helped her sister-in-law through the first few anxious days after birth. In one work, the cleaning of equipment for bottle feeding becomes a painterly still life. The collection of plastic objects has unexpected beauty, despite their bright artificial tones of purple and yellow.
Billie Zangewa, Temporary Reprieve (2017) installed at “Acts of Creation: On Art and Motherhood” at Arnolfini, Bristol. Photo: Lisa Whiting, photo courtesy of Arnolfini and Hayward Gallery Touring.
Among the works Judah was particularly excited to include the intimate drawings of labor and delivery by Canadian-born artist Heather Spears, who stayed with a woman for several days to create the series.
“I have never encountered such a powerful account of the process of labor,” said Judah, “the long duration with its peaks and dips of activity, imagery of women getting up and walking around, napping, embracing their partner, having their cervix measured. It is an extraordinary body of work, and one that has not been seen.”
Jessa Fairbrother, Role Play (Woman with Cushion) (2017) installed at “Acts of Creation: On Art and Motherhood” at Arnolfini, Bristol. Photo: Lisa Whiting, courtesy of Arnolfini and Hayward Gallery Touring.
Judah is also particularly fond of a small 2011 self-portrait by Celia Paul called Frank and Me, in which her son lies on a sofa in the foreground and she can be seen smiling in the mirror behind.
“My sons are in their 20s, and I am so enjoying this new phase of the mother-child relationship now that they are adult men,” the curator said. “This work of Paul’s moves me so much.”
Paula Rego, Untitled 6 (1999). Photo courtesy Cristea Roberts Gallery.
The exhibition also features the work of women who have more complicated relationships to motherhood. One example is Paula Rego’s moving “Abortion” series based on her own experiences in the 1950s. It was made in the late 1990s to protest a referendum in Portugal that failed to legalize the vital medical procedure. (It was later legalized in 2007.) These works ruminate on the physical dangers and psychological toll of women being forced to visit back street clinics in secrecy.
Installation view of “Acts of Creation: On Art and Motherhood” at Arnolfini, Bristol. Photo: Lisa Whiting, courtesy of Arnolfini and Hayward Gallery Touring.
“Addressing the historic gender gap isn’t just a matter of fitting women into the story of art as it has been told,” said Judah. “It is also crucial that we start asking which stories and which experiences have been excluded, and which lives have been less visible.”
“Acts of Creation: On Art and Motherhood” is on view at the Arnolfini in Bristol through May 26, 2024. 
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Spring has sprung in New York—and so has the art world’s busy fair season. Whether you’re a local or in town to visit the more than half dozen fairs alighting in the city this May—including Frieze, NADA New York, and TEFAF, as well as newcomer Esther—you’ll also want to make room on your calendar (and take advantage of the spring weather) to also visit some of the gallery shows debuting this month.
From a New York-native artist taking over a gallery space with site-specific installations to a painter bringing the culture of Aboriginal Australia to a wider audience, these five artists starring in solo shows across the city are not to be missed.
1. Daniel Walbidi, “Yurlupirti: Forever Without End (eternal)”D’Lan Contemporary, through May 31
Daniel Walbidi, Winpa (2023). Courtesy of the artist and D’Lan Contemporary.
Hailing from the Northwestern coast of Australia, Daniel Walbidi (b. 1983) is a Mangala/Yulparitja artist whose practice is centered around learning about and expressing both his culture as well as the natural landscape of his community’s ancestral homeland. A rising star within Australian First Nations artists, the exhibition features 10 recent works by Walbidi that are larger in scale than his previous (and sold out) exhibition with D’Lan Contemporary in May 2023. Employing his signature, meticulous brushwork and vivid color palettes, Walbidi’s paintings illustrate his own deep connection with the coastal desert environment and convey it to a broader international audience.

2. Rachel Eulena Williams, “Dream Speak”Canada, through June 1
Rachel Eulena Williams, Soul on Ice (2024). Courtesy of the artist and Canada.
Marking her second solo exhibition with the gallery, “Dream Speak” sees Rachel Eulena Williams (b. 1991) continue her pursuit of “making painting literal.” Breaking down painting to the essentials, Williams reconstructs these elements (like color, light, texture, and perspective) by using diverse—and sometimes surprising—materials. Colorful fabrics, canvas, rope, fiberboard, hooks, and wire all symphonize, and let viewers explore her distinct artistic vernacular; this includes symbols and iconography that tap the pictographic language of the Bono People, Andinkra, recognized for its ability to concisely express concepts and maxims, as well as pagan symbology.

3. Ronny Quevedo, “Composite Portals”Alexander Gray Associates, through June 15
Ronny Quevedo, El valle de la periferia (The Valley of the Periphery) (2023). Courtesy of the artist and Alexander Gray Associates.
Ronny Quevedo (b. 1981) maintains a practice that consistently draws sharp focus on the intersections and dichotomies between personal and collective histories, dominant and marginalized cultures, and how ideas around identity are shaped. In his newest body of work, Quevedo uses Andean textiles as a starting point to examine pre and postcolonial realities, and in his work literally weaves materials such as paper sewing patterns, metallic leaf on muslin, and carbon copy paper into geometric patterns. The result are works that are deceptively straight forward, full of clues and references that promise to reveal their origins with close and careful looking.
4. Sahara Longe, “Sugar”Timothy Taylor, May 2–June 15
Sahara Longe, Good Times / Bad Times (2024). Courtesy of the artist and Timothy Taylor.
In “Sugar,” Sahara Longe (b. 1994) reconsiders art history and its canonic perspectives to generate new compositional and figurative possibilities. Tapping traditional allegorical motifs—such as Adam and Eve or the reclining Venus—Longe creates entirely new visual interpretations and arrangements, resulting in works that are haunting and timeless. Across all 12 works on canvas in the show, Longe’s deft handling of line and color are brought to the fore, and her use of raw pigments and thick-grain linen make these new works appear from a time gone by, recalling historic modes such as Symbolism or the Bauhaus.

5. Hugh Hayden, “Hughmans”Lisson, May 2–August 2
Hugh Hayden, American Gothic (2024). Courtesy of the artist and Lisson Gallery.
For his second solo exhibition with Lisson this year, Hugh Hayden (b. 1983) creates a site-specific installation for the gallery’s New York space. Employing recognizable materials and motifs in his work, Hayden engages with widely relatable personal themes such as intimacy and desire within a physically explorable context. The show is timed with his 10-year survey exhibition at the Laumeier Sculpture Park, Saint Louis, Missouri, and precedes another major solo exhibition opening this fall at the Rose Museum of Art at Brandeis University, together denoting an important moment in the artist’s career.
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