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

    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

    “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

    “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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    Hundreds of Huge Flowers Spring Forth in Carly Glovinski’s Monumental ‘Almanac’

    “Almanac” (2024), installation view, acrylic on Mylar. Photos by Julia Featheringill. All images courtesy of Carly Glovinski, Morgan Lehman Gallery, and MASS MoCA, shared with permission

    Hundreds of Huge Flowers Spring Forth in Carly Glovinski’s Monumental ‘Almanac’

    April 24, 2025

    ArtNature

    Kate Mothes

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    “Gardening gives one back a sense of proportion about everything—except itself,” author May Sarton (1912-1995) wrote in her book Plant Dreaming Deep (1968), a journal about discovering a love of tending to the land. For Carly Glovinski (previously), the sentiment incidentally frames something of a raison d’être for the artist’s remarkable large-scale floral installation at MASS MoCA.

    Glovinski was especially moved by Sarton’s book The House by the Sea (1977), which traces the author’s move from New Hampshire to the seacoast of Maine. The vibrancy of gardens spurred the artist’s fascination with flowers, culminating recently in an expansive work titled “Almanac.”

    Celebrating the diversity and dynamism of blooms, the piece explores ideas around placemaking and the passage of time. “For Glovinski, the garden is a metaphor for collapsed time and perishable memories,” says an exhibition statement. Along with Sarton, the artist also draws on poet Emily Dickinson’s love for plants, channeling literary reflections on connecting with the simple pleasures—and sublime chaos—of nature.

    “Almanac” takes its name from the annual guide that forecasts weather and a provides calendars for astronomical events, tides, and planting. The piece took more than a year to complete and comprises hundreds of pressed flower paintings made with washy acrylic paint applied to both sides of semi-transparent mylar. The gestural brushstrokes on translucent material evoke a sense of lightness and delicacy, like real petals blown up to larger-than-life size. Above the installation, she’s labeled segments with the months the blooms appear.

    Glovinski references pressed blossoms that she has grown, harvested, or collected from friends, nodding to Emily Dickinson’s love of the practice. (The poet created a stunning herbarium containing 424 specimens collected around her home in Amherst, Massachusetts.) “By observing, tending, and preserving flowers, ‘Almanac’ becomes both a visual record of the seasons and a commentary on the labor of care,” the museum says.

    See more on Glovinski’s website and Instagram.

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    Tiff Massey Celebrates Detroit Culture and Style in Monumental Mixed-Media Installations

    “I’ve Got Bundles and I Got Flewed Out (Green)” (2023). All images courtesy of the artist and Detroit Institute of Arts, shared with permission

    Tiff Massey Celebrates Detroit Culture and Style in Monumental Mixed-Media Installations

    April 23, 2025

    Art

    Kate Mothes

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    From larger-than-life double-bobble hair bands to a wall of elaborate braids, Tiff Massey spotlights distinctive Detroit style. Trained as a metalsmith, the artist employs the power of material and scale to highlight the city’s neighborhoods and Black identity and culture.

    7 Mile + Livernois, Massey’s solo exhibition at the Detroit Institute of Arts, takes inspiration from the crossroads at the heart of the city’s Black business and fashion district, where the artist grew up. The area will soon be home to a new arts and community space that Massey is spearheading in an effort to guide and celebrate local kinship.

    “Everyday Arsenal” (2018)

    Personal adornment is central to the artist’s expression, which she channels through jewelry, sculptures, and mixed-media assemblages to underscore Black style with a focus on her hometown. “Whatupdoe” and “Everyday Arsenal,” for example, respectively transform a contemporary chain necklace and silver rings into monumental installations, creating terrains of portal-like tunnels and interlocked angles.

    The “ancestral flyness” of the artist’s parents and previous generations also provides a limitless well of inspiration. “How they adorned themselves has definitely been influential not only to how I adorn myself but also to the ideas that I have within the works,” Massey says in an interview for the DIA exhibition catalogue. “Detroiters, when we step outside, we step outside. We want people to see it. We want people to see us. And that has left a tremendous impression on me.”

    7 Mile + Livernois continues through May 11. Find more on the artist’s website and Instagram.

    “Baby Bling” (2023)

    “Whatupdoe” (2024)

    Detail of “I’ve Got Bundles and I Got Flewed Out (Green)”

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    With 60 Artists, ‘The Golden Thread’ Weaves Together a Survey of Contemporary Fiber Art

    Ana María Hernando, “El intento del agua/The Intent of Water” (2025), tulle, wood, metal lattice, felt, velvet. All images courtesy of BravinLee, shared with permission

    With 60 Artists, ‘The Golden Thread’ Weaves Together a Survey of Contemporary Fiber Art

    April 17, 2025

    ArtCraft

    Grace Ebert

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    The monumental textile exhibition that took over an 18th-century warehouse last spring is back for a second iteration.

    In the South Street Seaport area of Manhattan, The Golden Thread 2: A Fiber Art Show returns with more than 100 artworks made by 60 artists from around the globe. As with the first iteration, this reprisal includes eight site-specific installations that respond to the former mercantile space.

    Tomo Mori, “(we) keep going” (2025), donated fabrics, used clothes and linens, acrylic and cotton fillings, and anodized aluminum wires

    Organized by BravinLee, The Golden Thread is a sweeping survey of contemporary fiber art encompassing a vast array of materials, aesthetics, and subject matter. Several artists connect textiles’ historical association with femininity and domesticity, including Ana María Hernando’s pair of cascading tulle works. Frequently working with the gossamer fabric, Hernando sees her sculptures as an act of rebellion in which “softness becomes less a discreet quality and more a function of power, both formally and symbolically.”

    Similarly, Diana Weymar presents “American Sampler,” a collection of embroidered, typographic works made during a five-year period. Created to showcase a woman’s skill and literacy throughout the 18th century, samplers have a long history as sites of feminine expression. Weymar draws on this legacy for this patchwork tapestry, which is part of her ongoing Tiny Pricks Project created in 2018 in response to Donald Trump’s tumultuous first term.

    Colossal readers will recognize several artists in this second exhibition, including Caitlin McCormack, Rima Day, Willie Cole, and Ulla-Stina Wikander. The Golden Thread is on view through May 16.

    Tiny Pricks Project (Diana Weymar), “American Sampler” (2020-2025), vintage textiles and cotton floss

    Detail of Tiny Pricks Project (Diana Weymar), “American Sampler” (2020-2025), vintage textiles and cotton floss

    Caitlin McCormack, “Babylon Rec Room,” vintage wallpaper on salvaged drywall with crochet cotton string and glue embellishment

    Ali Dipp, “Concession No 3 (Trumbull, Capitol)” (2024), manually stitched threads on denim jeans, 79 x 117 inches

    Left: Fran Siegel, “Medicine Wheel” (2020), cyanotype, scrim, embroidery, sewing, string, and mounted on bar, 90 x 60 x 10 inches. Right: Manju Shandler, “The Elephant in the Room” (2024), mixed media soft sculpture, 6 x 6 x 9 feet

    Traci Johnson. Left: “Lil Femme,” yarn on cloth, 12.5 x 22 inches. Right: “Love Me in a Place Where There’s no Space or Time” (2023), yarn on cloth, 7.5 x 7.2 feet

    Sam Dienst, “Clutter Conundrum” (2024), hand-woven tapestry with yarn, beads, paint, and felt, 56 x 57 x .25 inches

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    Five Years in the Making, an MiG-21 Fighter Jet Gets a Glow-Up from Tens of Millions of Glass Beads

    Photo by Mauricio Hoyos. All images courtesy of Ralph Ziman, shared with permission

    Five Years in the Making, an MiG-21 Fighter Jet Gets a Glow-Up from Tens of Millions of Glass Beads

    April 15, 2025

    ArtHistorySocial Issues

    Kate Mothes

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    “We’re going to make stuff out of beads that is going to take people’s breath away,” says Ralph Ziman in the trailer for “The MiG-21 Project,” a military jet that he and a transcontinental team coated nose to tail in millions upon millions of glass beads.

    For the past 12 years, the Los Angeles-based artist has examined the impacts of the Cold War Era and the global arms trade through a trilogy titled Weapons of Mass Production, motivated by his upbringing in Apartheid-era South Africa. More than half a decade in the making, “The MiG-21 Project” completes the series.

    The first installment, “The AK-47 Project,” reimagined the aesthetic of one of the world’s most ubiquitous wartime weapons, the Avtomat Kalashnikova 1947, by coating dozens of the guns in colorful glass beads. The second project revolved around the Casspir, a heavy-duty Mine-Resistant Ambush Protected Vehicle (MRAPV) introduced in the 1970s, which he likewise ornamented in vibrant geometric patterns.

    “The idea was to take these weapons of war and to repurpose them,” Ziman says, flipping the narrative about icons of violence and transforming them instead into symbols of resilience, collaboration, and collectivity. Vehicles and firearms morph into a theater of hope and strength in the face of a terrible 20th-century legacy.

    Apartheid, which in Afrikaans means “separateness,” is the name assigned by the minority white-ruled Nationalist Party of South Africa to a harsh system of racial segregation that began in 1948. The period lasted until 1991 and was closely linked within the context of international relations to the Cold War as tensions erupted between the U.S. and the former U.S.S.R. Spurred by the deterioration of the two countries’ WWII alliance and fears about the spread of Communism into the West, the war began in 1947 and also ended in 1991 when the U.S.S.R. was dissolved.

    During this time, the Russians produced a fighter jet called the Mikoyan-Gurevich MiG-21. The plane is “the most-produced supersonic fighter aircraft of all time,” Ziman says. “The Russians built 12,500 MiG-21s, and they’re still in use today—just like the Casspir and just like the AK-47s. But it’s one thing to say, hey, I want to bead a MiG, and then the next thing, you’ve got a 48-foot MiG sitting in your studio.”

    The MiG-21 cockpit

    “The MiG-21 Project” combines photography and costume design with historical research and time-honored Indigenous craft. The project encompasses not only the jet but a series of cinematic photographs and elaborate Afrofuturist regalia inspired by military flight suits, African tribal textiles, and space travel.

    Ziman’s team comprises numerous skilled artisans from Zimbabwe and Indigenous Ndebele women from South Africa’s Mpumalanga Province, who are renowned for their beadwork. For the Ndebele, beadwork is a means of expressing cultural identity and rites of passage, taking on powerful political connotations in the 20th century as it became associated with pre-colonial African traditions and identity.

    Tapping into the lessons of our not-so-distant past, Ziman addresses current conflicts like war and the global arms race, modern colonialism, systemic racism, and white supremacy through the lens of Apartheid. Funds raised throughout the process, part of the mission of the Weapons of Mass Production trilogy as a whole, are being donated to the people of Ukraine in support of the country’s ongoing conflict with Russia.

    You’ll be able to see the “The MiG-21 Project” later this year in Seattle, where it will be on view from June 21 to January 26, 2026, at the Museum of Flight. Explore more on Ziman’s website.

    Photo by Mauricio Hoyos

    Photo by Mauricio Hoyos

    “Hero Of Cuito Cuanavale,” Inkjet on Moab Entrada paper, 43 x 56 inches

    Photo by Mauricio Hoyos

    Detail of the MiG-21 cockpit

    Photo by Mauricio Hoyos

    “The Raider and Her MiG-21,” Inkjet on Moab Entrada paper, 43 x 56 inches

    Photo by Mauricio Hoyos

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    An Ikebana Artist and His Student Sow an Unconventional Approach to Flower Arranging

    Kosen Ohtsubo, “Linga München” (2025), 300 Basket willow branches, candle, metal frame, plastic and metal ties, scrap metal, soil, various flowers and leaves. All photos by Maximilian Geuter, courtesy the artists and Kunstverein München, shared with permission

    An Ikebana Artist and His Student Sow an Unconventional Approach to Flower Arranging

    April 12, 2025

    ArtNature

    Grace Ebert

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    “I want to explode the idea of beautiful ikebana,” says Kosen Ohtsubo, one of the foremost conceptual artists working in the Japanese tradition.

    Since the 1970s, Ohtsubo has been unsettling the ancient art of flower arranging. Incorporating atypical botanicals like cabbage leaves or weaving in unconventional materials like bathtubs and scrap metal, the artist approaches making with the mindset of a jazz musician, a genre he frequently listens to while working. Improvisation and experimentation are at the core, along with an unquenchable desire for the unexpected.

    Detail of Kosen Ohtsubo, “Linga München” (2025), 300 Basket willow branches, candle, metal frame, plastic and metal ties, scrap metal, soil, various flowers and leaves

    An exhibition at Kunstverein München in Munich pairs Ohtsubo with Christian Kōun Alborz Oldham who, after discovering the ikebana icon’s work in a book in 2013, became his student. Titled Flower Planet—which references a sign that hangs outside Ohtsubo’s Tokorozawa home and studio—the show presents various sculptures and installations that invite viewers to consider fragility, decay, and the elusive qualities of beauty and control.

    Given the ephemeral nature of the materials, photography plays an important role in most ikebana practices as it preserves an arrangement long after it has wilted. This exhibition, therefore, pairs images of earlier works with new commissions, including Ohtsubo’s standout orb titled “Linga München.” Nested in a bed of soil and leaves, the large-scale sculpture wraps willow with metal structures and positions a small candle within its center.

    Similarly immersive is “Willow Rain,” which suspends thin branches from the ceiling. Subverting the way we typically encounter fields of growth, the work is one of many in the exhibition that seeds questions about our relationship to the natural world and the limits of human control.

    Flower Planet is on view through April 21. Explore Ohstubo’s vast archive on Instagram.

    Detail of Kosen Ohtsubo, “Linga München” (2025), 300 Basket willow branches, candle, metal frame, plastic and metal ties, scrap metal, soil, various flowers and leaves

    Kosen Ohtsubo, “Willow Rain” (2025), 800 basket willow branches, metal frame

    Christian Kōun Alborz Oldham, “Corruption”

    Christian Kōun Alborz Oldham, “Penny Waking up from a Dream” (2025), carrot, Chinese long bean,reflecting sphere, Japanese woven bamboo basket

    Detail of Christian Kōun Alborz Oldham, “Penny Waking up from a Dream” (2025), carrot, Chinese long bean, reflecting sphere, Japanese woven bamboo basket

    Detail of Kosen Ohtsubo, “Linga München” (2025), 300 Basket willow branches, candle, metal frame, plastic and metal ties, scrap metal, soil, various flowers and leaves

    Kosen Ohtsubo, “怪芋III / Strange Callas III” (2025), Calla lily, willow, custom-designed iron box

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