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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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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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Ethereal Weavings Merge Architecture and Nature in Élise Peroi’s ‘For Thirsting Flowers’
by Aurelia Butler 8 May 2025, 14:09
Installation view of ‘For Thirsting Flowers.’ All images courtesy of the artist and CARVALHO PARK, New York, shared with permission
Ethereal Weavings Merge Architecture and Nature in Élise Peroi’s ‘For Thirsting Flowers’
May 8, 2025
Art
Kate Mothes
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Imagine standing at a window at dawn as the pale yellow morning light filters through the trees, slowly illuminating flower petals and setting the scene for birdsong. As you move around, the light dapples and changes, and details emerge or disappear around other forms. For Élise Peroi, this sensation provides a starting point for elegant textile sculptures.
Onto graceful wooden frames, the French artist weaves ethereal, layered screens evocative of dreamy portals to nature. “The luminosity of Peroi’s woven paintings is such that we might feel ourselves carried outside to watch the sky brighten, the air soft against our skin,” says Dr. Rebecca Birrell in an essay accompanying Peroi’s solo exhibition, For Thirsting Flowers, at CARVALHO PARK.
Detail of “Pensée I” (2025), painted silk and linen, 36 x 28 x 3 inches
The artist taps into the long tradition of European tapestries, which were used for both decoration and to help keep homes and churches insulated. Stitched by hand, the works could reach architectonic proportions and contain highly detailed figurative and narrative scenes. Peroi departs from customary associations with tapestries by removing the pieces from the wall and creating standalone, self-supporting structures.
She also emphasizes a kind of opening-up of the textile itself. The interactions between warp and weft are loose, delicate, and irregular. And each piece’s depth is determined by the wooden framework, details of which often jut outward in gentle yet willful angles.
Peroi’s sculptures appear to subtly morph as one walks around, merging internal and external perspectives. The artist explores relationships between emptiness, form, perception, and the built environment, hinting at recognizable shapes like flowers and foliage set against muted diamond-shaped geometric patterns or open spaces in the weave. And the frames serve both as display devices and looms—the process and finished piece merged into one.
For Thirsting Flowers continues in Brooklyn through May 23. See more on the artist’s website.
Installation view of ‘For Thirsting Flowers’ at CARVALHO PARK, New York
“La lune” (2025), silk, silver leaf, gouache, acrylic, and linen, 64 x 55 x 6 inches
“Pensée I” (2025), painted silk and linen, 36 x 28 x 3 inches
Installation view of ‘For Thirsting Flowers’ at CARVALHO PARK, New York
Installation view of ‘For Thirsting Flowers’ at CARVALHO PARK, New York
“Songes II” (2022), painted silk and linen, 55 x 78 x 6 inches
Detail of “Songes II”
Installation view of ‘For Thirsting Flowers’ at CARVALHO PARK, New York
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Discarded Packaging and Labels Find New Life in Kelly Kozma’s Vibrant Patchworks
by Aurelia Butler 2 May 2025, 17:04
“Magma & Reef” (2025). All images courtesy of Kelly Kozma and Paradigm Gallery + Studio, shared with permission
Discarded Packaging and Labels Find New Life in Kelly Kozma’s Vibrant Patchworks
May 2, 2025
Art
Kate Mothes
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From dozens of Chiquita banana labels to toothpaste packaging to color-coded quality control stickers, Kelly Kozma finds beauty in everyday ephemera. “Piece by piece, she saves any colorful or textured box that she encounters, even though most are expected to be discarded after their original use,” says Paradigm Gallery + Studio, which opens the artist’s solo exhibition Watch Me Backflip this weekend.
Kozma takes an archival and interdisciplinary approach to working with numerous found materials, combining a variety of media into two-dimensional wall works, expansive textile-inspired assemblages, and voluminous suspended installations. “Watch Me Backflip embraces ideas of reusing material, interconnectedness, and the significance of the smallest interaction on a much larger environment,” says an exhibition statement.
Installation view of ‘Watch Me Backflip’ at Paradigm Gallery + Studio
“Iguana & Myrrh” and “Magma & Reef” mark the largest compositions Kozma has created. The former spans 22 feet in circumference and comprises more than 30,000 hand-stitched circles cut from a wide variety of greeting cards, found packaging, and other colorful materials. Committed to a minimal-waste practice, the artist incorporates scraps and loose threads into a number of accompanying works in Watch Me Backflip.
“As she stitches these lovingly collected pieces, Kozma creates connections between the people in her life and the objects she interacts with, inspiring mindfulness against overconsumption and emotional apathy,” the gallery says.
Watch Me Backflip opens today and continues through June 1 in Philadelphia. See more on the artist’s Instagram.
“I See Your Beauty” (2025), process control patches and acrylic on panel
Installation view of ‘Watch Me Backflip’ at Paradigm Gallery + Studio
Detail of “Iguana & Myrrh”
Installation view of ‘Watch Me Backflip’ at Paradigm Gallery + Studio
“Peels So Good” (2025), banana stickers and acrylic on panel
Detail of “Iguana & Myrrh”
The artist working on the installation of “Magma & Reef”
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Architectural Textiles by Sarah Zapata Explore Material Culture and Intersecting Identities
by Aurelia Butler 1 May 2025, 21:13
“Part of the tension (from earthen pits) II” (2024), handwoven cloth, natural and synthetic fiber, and hand coiled rope, 50 x 14 x 14 inches. All images © Sarah Zapata, courtesy of the artist, Kasmin, and Sargent’s Daughters, shared with permission
Architectural Textiles by Sarah Zapata Explore Material Culture and Intersecting Identities
May 1, 2025
Art
Kate Mothes
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In vibrant patchworks of woven patterns and fuzzy fiber ends, Sarah Zapata’s sculptures (previously) emerge as wall-hung tapestries, standalone pieces, and forest-like installations. Through the convergence of architectural structures, soft textiles, and myriad patterns and textures, her site-specific works examine the nature of layered identities shaped by her Peruvian heritage, queerness, her Evangelical upbringing in South Texas, and her current home in New York.
Zapata balances time-honored craft practices with contemporary applications, highlighting the significance of Indigenous Peruvian weaving, for example, as a means of communication. Symbols and patterns composed into cloth traditionally provided a means of sharing knowledge and cosmological beliefs.
Installation view of ‘Beneath the Breath of the Sun’ (2024) at ASU Art Museum, Tempe, Arizona. Commissioned by CALA Alliance
In abstract sculptures that often merge with their surroundings, Zapata incorporates unexpected and vibrant color combinations with woven fabrics and tufted textures. Resisting easy categorization, her pieces are neither functional nor purely decorative, although they play with facets of both.
Zapata consciously holds back from creating work that is too “beautiful,” inviting a remarkable, tactile exploration of relationships between craft, lineage, community, and memory.
Some of the works shown here are included in Support Structures at Sargent’s Daughters, which continues through through May 3. Find more on Zapata’s website and Instagram.
“How often they move between the planets” (2022), handwoven cloth, natural and synthetic fiber, 144 x 60 inches
Detail of “How often they move between the planets”
“Part of the tension (from earthen pits) I” (2024), handwoven cloth, natural and synthetic fiber, and hand coiled rope, 49 x 14 x 14 inches
Installation view of ‘To strange ground and high places,’ Galleria Poggiali, Milan. Photo by Michele Alberto Sereni
“Towards and ominous time III” (2022), handwoven cloth, natural and synthetic fiber, 144 x 60 inches
Installation view of ‘To strange ground and high places,’ Galleria Poggiali, Milan. Photo by Michele Alberto Sereni
Detail of “Part of the tension (from earthen pits) II”
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In ‘I’m Listening,’ Barry McGee Celebrates Positivity in Amid Distress and Overwhelm
by Aurelia Butler 30 April 2025, 20:05
Installation view of ‘I’m Listening’ at Perrotin, Paris, 2025. Photos by Claire Dorn. All images © Barry McGee, courtesy of the artist and Perrotin, shared with permission
In ‘I’m Listening,’ Barry McGee Celebrates Positivity in Amid Distress and Overwhelm
April 30, 2025
Art
Kate Mothes
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“Barry McGee lives in San Francisco—he was born there and he lives there,” critic and curator Richard Leydier opens in an essay accompanying the artist’s current solo exhibition, I’m Listening, at Perrotin. “This fact is important because his art would be profoundly different had he chosen to move to another American city.”
McGee draws inspiration from the West Coast subculture he grew up within, surrounded by skaters, surfers, and street artists. He has long been interested in marginalized communities, societal outcasts, and those seen as subversive.
The artist is a key figure of the Mission School, which emerged in the early 1990s through the work of a number of artists who were connected to the now-defunct San Francisco Art Institute. Other influential artists include Margaret Kilgallen (1967-2001), Ruby Neri, Claire Rojas, and more, all of whom explore the intersections between urban realism, graffiti, American folk art, and “lowbrow” aesthetics undergirded by social activism.
McGee adopted monikers like “Twist” and “Lydia Fong” in his own graffiti writing and also explored painting and printmaking, which he still taps into in his expansive, multidisciplinary practice. He explores “dynamic panel assemblages, complex patterns reminiscent of op art, and immersive installations that explore the human condition,” the gallery says.
I’m Listening erupts with color, pattern, and texture through a bounty of sculptures, paintings, prints, and assemblages that reimagine everyday objects. Surfboards are cloaked in optical geometric patterns in acrylic paint, and McGee’s signature grimacing, cartoonish faces appear on collages or in place of labels on glass bottles.
“I focus on everything that is shitty on our little planet right now,” McGee says. Expressions of disgust or surprise are paired with playfulness, though. He adds, “I also celebrate all these incredible things that humans invent to stay positive and healthy.” I’m Listening continues through May 24 in Paris.
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To ‘Walk the House,’ Do Ho Suh Traverses Memory and Perceptions of Home
by Aurelia Butler 30 April 2025, 14:54
“Rubbing/Loving Project: Seoul Home” (2013-2022), installation view of ‘The Genesis Exhibition: Do Ho Suh: Walk the House.’
All images © Do Ho Suh, courtesy of the artist, Lehmann Maupin
New York, Seoul, and London, and Victoria
Miro. Photo by Jai Monaghan/Tate, shared with permission
To ‘Walk the House,’ Do Ho Suh Traverses Memory and Perceptions of Home
April 30, 2025
Art
Kate Mothes
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“Is home a place, a feeling, or an idea?” That’s the lofty yet immanently relatable question at the heart of Do Ho Suh’s major survey open now at Tate Modern. The London-based Korean artist (previously) explores notions of belonging, connection, comfort, security, and familiarity in large-scale installations that replicate his own homes in Seoul, London, and New York, among a range of vibrant multimedia works.
Suh is known for his use of gossamer fabric to create immersive, monumental installations. In The Genesis Exhibition: Do Ho Suh: Walk the House, the artist “examines the intricate relationship between architecture, space, the body, and the memories and moments that make us who we are,” the museum says.
“Nest/s” (2024), installation view of ‘The Genesis Exhibition: Do Ho Suh: Walk the House’
Visitors are invited to walk through “Nest/s,” for example, an expansive assemblage of colorful, sheer textile structures that link together to form a passageway or conduit. As the boundaries between interior and exterior are blurred, we’re invited to experience architecture from the perspective of movement and perception, highlighting how all of our interactions with other homes or places are inherently linked.
Issues around shelter, safety, and community are inextricably tied to how we perceive home, especially when for many around the world, those basic needs are in constant peril or upended without warning. “Suh asks timely questions about the enigma of home, identity, and how we move through and inhabit the world around us,” a statement says.
The Genesis Exhibition: Do Ho Suh: Walk the House continues in London through October 19. Plan your visit on the museum’s website, and follow updates on Suh’s Instagram.
Detail of “Nest/s.” Photo by Jeon Taeg Su
“Perfect Home: London, Horsham, New York, Berlin, Providence, Seoul” (2024), installation view of ‘The Genesis Exhibition: Do Ho Suh: Walk the House’
Still from “Robin Hood Gardens, Woolmore Street, London E14 0HG” (2018), commissioned by the Victoria and Albert Museum, London
“Nest/s” (2024), polyester and stainless steel, 410.1 x 375.4 x 2148.7 centimeters. Photo by Jeon Taeg Su
Detail of “Rubbing/Loving Project: Seoul Home” (2013-2022), installation view at Museum of Contemporary Art Australia, Sydney, Australia. Photo by Sebastian Mrugalski
“Home Within Home (1/9 Scale)” (2025), installation view of ‘The Genesis Exhibition: Do Ho Suh: Walk the House’
“Nest/s” (2024), installation view of ‘The Genesis Exhibition: Do Ho Suh: Walk the House’
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Get ‘H.A.P.P.Y’ with Liz West’s Immersive Installation Made of More Than 700 Colorful Discs
by Aurelia Butler 24 April 2025, 17:00
“H.A.P.P.Y.” All images courtesy of Liz West and Mercer Art Gallery, shared with permission
Get ‘H.A.P.P.Y’ with Liz West’s Immersive Installation Made of More Than 700 Colorful Discs
April 24, 2025
Art
Kate Mothes
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Spanning nearly the entire floor of the main space of Mercer Art Gallery in Harrogate, Liz West’s expansive new installation invites viewers to revel in color and brightness. The artist has reimagined the historic early-19th-century spa promenade room as a vibrant, sensory immersion.
West’s solo exhibition, H.A.P.P.Y, takes inspiration from a common malady known as seasonal affective disorder, or S.A.D., which is a form of depression that often manifests in the fall or winter when the days are shorter and the temperatures drop. It typically recedes in the summer and spring.
Continuing her interest in the effects of light, reflections, and chromatic relationships (previously), the artist created “Our Colour Reflection,” the centerpiece of H.A.P.P.Y, to highlight the emotional, psychological, and physical power of vibrancy and hue.
Composed of 765 multi-colored discs layered in low relief across the floor, the piece transforms the environment into a luminous experience that interacts with natural and artificial light and evolves throughout the day.
H.A.P.P.Y also includes a selection of paintings, drawings, and models for “Our Colour Reflection,” and the exhibition continues through October 5. See more on the artist’s website and Instagram.
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installation

More stories

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

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

Ethereal Weavings Merge Architecture and Nature in Élise Peroi’s ‘For Thirsting Flowers’

Discarded Packaging and Labels Find New Life in Kelly Kozma’s Vibrant Patchworks

Architectural Textiles by Sarah Zapata Explore Material Culture and Intersecting Identities

In ‘I’m Listening,’ Barry McGee Celebrates Positivity in Amid Distress and Overwhelm

To ‘Walk the House,’ Do Ho Suh Traverses Memory and Perceptions of Home

Get ‘H.A.P.P.Y’ with Liz West’s Immersive Installation Made of More Than 700 Colorful Discs

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