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    Sebas Velasco’s Dreamy Oil Paintings Illuminate Cinematic Urban Landscapes

    “Somewhere in Time,” oil on canvas, 195 x 195 centimeters. All images courtesy of Sebas Velasco and the History Museum of Bosnia and Heregovina, shared with permission

    Sebas Velasco’s Dreamy Oil Paintings Illuminate Cinematic Urban Landscapes

    April 9, 2025

    Art

    Kate Mothes

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    Sebas Velasco (previously) has long been drawn to the landscapes and cultures of the Balkans and former Yugoslavian countries in southeastern Europe, where he has spent the past decade traveling and researching for his large-scale paintings and murals.

    The Morning Will Change Everything at the History Museum of Bosnia and Heregovina marks the Spanish artist’s first institutional exhibition. Inspired by the title of a song by Sarajevo-based band Indexi, the show continues Velasco’s exploration of urban landscapes and themes of relationships and passing time.

    “Wherever I May Roam,” oil on canvas, 195 x 195 centimeters

    Rendered in oil on wood or canvas, Velasco’s paintings depict figures, architecture, and old cars illuminated by street lamps or headlights in a realistic yet dreamlike world. Taking cues from photography through the use of cinematic lighting effects and portraiture, he often juxtaposes contrasting elements like grassy meadows with brutalist high-rises or derelict cars with wildflowers.

    Whether glowing under an orange street light or spotlit against a fuzzy smattering of brake lights and apartment windows, Velasco’s subjects are relaxed, poised, and unhurried. One can imagine the din of car horns, music, and other city noises in the background, yet Velasco emphasizes brief, self-assured interactions as if momentarily, time is at a standstill.

    Nighttime plays a starring role in Velasco’s compositions, which tap into dualities of the known and unknown, revelations and secrets, individuality and anonymity, and the quotidian and the extraordinary. He conjures “gateways to complex socio-economic narratives,” the museum says, emphasizing the power of humanity amid ever-evolving identities and the tumult of globalization.

    Find more on Velasco’s website and Instagram.

    Detail of “Wherever I May Roam”

    “Golf II,” oil on wood, 41 x 27 centimeters

    “The Morning Will Change Everything,” oil on wood, 120 x 120 centimeters

    “Agata,” oil on wood, 81 x 65 centimeters

    Detail of “Agata”

    “Yugo 45 III,” oil on wood, 24 x 35 centimeters

    “Interior Night Sarajevo II,” oil on wood, 46 x 33 centimeters

    Velasco working on a painting in his solo exhibition at the History Museum of Bosnia and Heregovina

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    In Mythic Paintings, Anna Ortiz Conjures the Uncanny of the Borderlands

    “Sayula” (2025), oil on canvas, 30 x 34 inches. All images courtesy of Anna Ortiz, shared with permission

    In Mythic Paintings, Anna Ortiz Conjures the Uncanny of the Borderlands

    April 3, 2025

    Art

    Grace Ebert

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    For Anna Ortiz, the borderlands are a rich source for the uncanny. The Mexican-American artist (previously) was raised in Worcester, Massachusetts, but visited her family in Guadalajara often. There, she was immersed in her ancestral landscape and introduced to her family’s history as artists—her grandfather painted portraits, while her aunt was a professional sculptor.

    These formative experiences offered a contrast to her life in the Northeast and the dichotomous relationship between the two continues to influence her thinking and practice today.

    “Al Otro Lado de Texcoco” (2025), oil on canvas, 48 x 72 inches

    For her upcoming solo exhibition at Mindy Solomon Gallery, Ortiz conjures a surreal borderland that suspends time. Awash in saturated color palettes of pink, blue, and green, the paintings in Prophecy Here and Gone reference Aztec histories and how their influence continues to shape the landscape.

    In the diptych “Al Otro Lado de Texcoco,” for example, a gleaming lake peeks through dense clusters of cacti. Nested at the base of the volcano La Malinche, the body of water greeted the Aztecs when they moved to what’s now known as Mexico City. When the Spanish arrived, they drained the lake in a failed attempt to farm the land.

    Ortiz tells Colossal that she frequently paints pairs as a way to consider unfulfilled destinies and paths not chosen. Twin agaves appear in “Pareja,” while “Tula” depicts a couple of totemic sculptures that appear to be standing guard. Flat butterflies grace their chests, a reference to the statues found at the capital of the Aztecs’ ancestors, the Toltecs. The artist similarly incorporates doubling through reflections, as a majestic jaguar is mirrored in the aquatic foregrounds of several paintings.

    World-building and offering an entry point into ancient prophecies is key to this body of work. Interested in the ways civilization and the landscape interact and shape one another, Ortiz shares that “loss is a central theme…I was once very close to my Mexican heritage, and I lost it. I grew up fluent in Spanish but because of family strife, I lost that fluency.”

    “Tula” (2025), oil on canvas, 28 x 22 inches

    Ortiz’s paintings both honor the ancient peoples and cultures that once occupied the land and present an alternative universe in which their myths and prophecies had different outcomes. Vibrant and uncanny, the works portray the “lives we were unable to live but (that) happened without us,” she adds. 

    Prophecy Here and Gone is on view from April 5 to May 10 in Miami. Find more from Ortiz on her website and Instagram.

    “Agaves Bailando” (2024), oil on canvas, 38 x 32 inches

    “Reflejada” (2025), oil on canvas, 40 x 48 inches

    “Sacrificio” (2023), oil on canvas, 48 x 40 inches

    “Pareja” (2025), oil on canvas, 30 x 34 inches

    “Gemelos Amaranto” (2025), oil on canvas, 38 x 32 inches

    “En Orbita” (2025), oil on canvas, 22 x 28 inches

    “Cihuacoatl” (2025), oil on canvas, 28 x 22 inches

    “Nahual” (2025), oil on canvas, 38 x 32 inches

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    Vintage Postcard Paintings by David Opdyke Demonstrate an Ecological Future in Peril

    “Overlook” (2025). gouache, acrylic, ink, and 42 vintage postcards
    on panel, 32 x 40 inches. All images courtesy of the artist and Cristin Tierney Gallery, shared with permission

    Vintage Postcard Paintings by David Opdyke Demonstrate an Ecological Future in Peril

    March 19, 2025

    ArtClimate

    Kate Mothes

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    The first known postcard printed as a souvenir can be traced to Vienna in 1871, followed by commemorative cards for famous events like the completion of the Eiffel Tower in 1889 and the Chicago World’s Fair in 1893. It wasn’t long before a fashion for picture postcards took the U.S. by storm throughout the first half of the 20th century.

    For David Opdyke, the iconic correspondences form the groundwork for an artistic practice examining capitalism, globalization, consumerism, and our fraught and increasingly disconnected relationship with the environment. Occasionally darkly humorous yet steeped in a sense of foreboding, his uncanny scenes suggest what kind of world we might live in we do nothing to stem the mounting climate crisis.

    “Charismatic Megafauna” (2024), gouache and ink on vintage postcard, 4 x 6 inches

    Opdyke summons idyllic coastlines, national parks, government monuments, wildlife, and civic infrastructure to weave “fractured yet cohesive topographies,” says Cristin Tierney Gallery, which is presenting the artist’s current solo exhibition, Waiting for the Future.

    For nearly a decade, Opdyke has invoked the nostalgia of landscape postcards to interrogate the climate emergency within the context of American politics and geographies. “Through these carefully altered compositions, Opdyke merges the past and the future, presenting both urgent and inevitable visions of environmental upheaval,” the gallery says.

    The artist often uses antique cards that he purchases on eBay, painting scenes of environmental disasters or discordances between nature and architecture. Alternating between cartoons and life-like portrayals of trees, animals, fires, and structures, his compositions range from single cards to wall-spanning assemblages, his gouache-painted details spreading from frame to frame.

    In “Overlook,” for example, giant tentacles destroy bridges, rising sea water threatens cities, and huge fires rage in institutional buildings. A dome encloses a metropolis, a rocket named Mars 2 heads for a new home in the solar system, and an airplane banner advertises “Technology Will Save Us” in a bleak yet not unimaginable reality fueled by techno-utopianism.

    “Enough of Nature” (2025), gouache, acrylic, and ink on 500 vintage postcards, 104 x 168 inches

    In his large-scale “Enough of Nature,” Opdyke transforms natural landscapes into encampment sites for those displaced from their homes, and portions of the overall composition appear to dislodge from the main grid as if floating away.

    Caught tenuously between outmoded industrial practices, shifting societal value systems, and a rapidly evolving climate crisis, Opdyke’s pieces point to once-idealized symbols of American progress to stress the dangers of ignoring our own impact on the environment.

    Waiting for the Future underscores the precariousness of complacency, a “cautionary tale,” the gallery says, laying bare the fragility of our constructed environment.

    The show continues through April 26 in New York City. Find more on the artist’s website.

    Detail of “Overlook”

    “Main Stage” (2015-2020), gouache on vintage postcard, 6 x 4 inches

    “Unity, Industry, Victory” (2024), gouache and ink on vintage postcard, 6 x 4 inches

    “Insurrection” (2015-2020), gouache on vintage postcard, 4 x 6 inches

    “Fourth Wall” (2015-2020), gouache on vintage postcard, 4 x 6 inches

    “If you can’t say something nice” (2024), gouache and ink on two vintage postcards, 4 x 12 1/2 inches

    “Breaking In” (2015-2020), gouache on vintage postcard, 6 x 4 inches

    Detail of “Enough of Nature”

    “First Contact” (2023), gouache and ink on vintage postcard, 4 x 6 inches

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    Watery Landscapes Set the Stage for Lachlan Turczan’s Ephemeral Light Installations

    “Veil IV” (2024), water, light, silt, 15 x 15 x 3 feet. All images © Lachlan Turczan, shared with permission

    Watery Landscapes Set the Stage for Lachlan Turczan’s Ephemeral Light Installations

    February 14, 2025

    ArtNaturePhotography

    Kate Mothes

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    In the dreamy installations of Lachlan Turczan, natural and perceptual phenomena combine in otherworldly installations merging technology with aquatic landscapes. Water is central to the Los Angeles-based artist’s work and helps shape an ongoing series of immersive projects incorporating light and sonic phenomena.

    Turczan is influenced by the Light and Space movement, which originated in Southern California in the 1960s and is characterized by the work of John McLaughlin, Robert Irwin, James Turrell, Lita Albuquerque, and more. The movement focused on perception, employing materials like glass, neon, resin, acrylic, and fluorescent lights to emphasize light, volume, and scale.

    “Constellation Grid” (2024), water, light, and fog. A swamp in Upstate New York

    Many Light and Space artists created installations and immersive spaces conditioned by naturally occurring elements like Turrell’s ever-changing glimpse of the sky through a ceiling aperture for “Space that Sees.” Not only does the view change as clouds roll by or the weather shifts, but the light continuously transforms the entire room.

    “While my work shares this lineage,” Turczan tells Colossal, “it diverges in several key ways: rather than exploring the ‘nature of experience,’ I create experiences of nature that challenge our understanding of light, water, and space.” He describes his approach as “complicating” these elements, emphasizing the ever-changing fluidity of the environment.

    In Turczan’s ongoing Veil series, light installations unfold organically in locations ranging from Death Valley’s Badwater Basin to a flooded park near the Rhine River. Lasers and beams of light are projected and submerged, capturing the movement of wind, mist, and the water’s surface.

    Additional pieces also merge light and water, like “Aldwa Alsael,” which translates to “liquid light,” and was commissioned for the 2024 Noor Riyadh Light Art Festival.

    “Veil I” (2024), light, water, and salt. Death Valley, California

    “For the most part, these installations unfold organically,” Turczan says. “I may discover a location in nature that seems perfect for a new Veil sculpture, but when I return, the conditions have inevitably changed.” Evolving circumstances require the artist to proceed with an openness to chance encounters that strike a balance between preparation and intuition.

    Find more on Turczan’s website, and follow updates on Instagram. (via This Isn’t Happiness)

    “Death Valley Veil” (2024), water, light, and haze. Lake Manly, a temporary lake that formed in Death Valley’s Badwater Basin after Hurricane Hillary

    “Veil II” (2024), light, water, and steam. Mojave Desert, California

    “Aldwa Alsael” (2024), water, light, and steel tower, 25 x 25 x 50 feet

    “Veil V” (2024), water and light, 15 x 15 x 3 feet

    “Aldwa Alsael”

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    Paradise and Precarity Merge in Jessica Taylor Bellamy’s Paintings of Los Angeles Life

    “American Airlines Passenger Ticket 1 (after Warhol)” (2023), oil on canvas, 32 x 59 inches

    Paradise and Precarity Merge in Jessica Taylor Bellamy’s Paintings of Los Angeles Life

    February 7, 2025

    ArtClimate

    Kate Mothes

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    For Jessica Taylor Bellamy, juxtapositions, transparency, and layers shape a way of working that evokes her family history and notions of home and landscape. Born to an Ashkenazi Jewish mother and an Afro-Cuban Jamaican father, Bellamy was raised in Whittier, just southeast of Los Angeles.

    In glowing oil paintings, she draws from personal mementos like photographs, sales receipts, and newspaper clippings to explore the relationships between utopia and dystopia, humans and nature, image and text, and fantasy and reality.

    “Did She Nail It?” (2025), oil on canvas, 26 x 20 inches

    Bellamy portrays sunsets, landscapes, trees, urban streets, flora, animals, and cloud formations in a kind of dreamy washiness, adding patterns like chainlink fences, gates, and lace curtains suggestive of boundaries. Horizontal landscapes overlaid with American Airlines tickets echo Andy Warhol’s 1960s silkscreen prints of SAS airline tickets merged with floral motifs.

    “Bellamy’s observations are rooted in her experiences of the sprawling urban landscape of Los Angeles—a meeting of nature and civilization at the edge of a precarious paradise, formed by fire, drought, flood, and wind,” says a statement from Anat Ebgi, which represents the artist and opens her new solo exhibition, Temperature Check.

    A few works shown here, like “Did She Nail It?,” appear in the show, which merges landscapes and atmospheric lighting effects with references to DIY culture, what’s gendered as “men’s work,” and car and motorcycle culture. The Home Depot receipt, which typically uses the slogan “Did we nail it?,” is combined with an image of a rear-view mirror depicted so close that it initially appears abstract.

    Bellamy examines the dualities and precarity of life in Southern California—a seeming paradise we’ve witnessed can be swiftly devastated by fire and drought. The title Temperature Change is also a double entendre, suggesting meteorological readings and a figurative expression used when measuring a group mood or opinion. Through surreal imagery and echoes of mass production and consumerism, the artist invokes a noir reverie.

    Temperature Check runs from February 8 to March 22 in Los Angeles. Find more on the artist’s website and Instagram.

    “Box Fan (AM)” (2025), oil on canvas, 57 1/2 x 32 inches

    “American Airlines Passenger Ticket 2 (after Warhol)” (2023), oil on canvas, 32 x 60 inches

    “Playa Larga (Coquina Combination Pill Pack)” (2023), oil on canvas, 23 3/4 x 42 1/2 inches

    “A Subspecies of Journalism” (2023), oil on canvas, 59 x 43 1/2 inches

    “A Splendid Paradox” (2022), oil on canvas, 70 x 52 inches

    “Curtain of Sky” (2024), oil on canvas, 57 1/2 x 48 inches

    “Horizontal Thrust I (Blue graffiti highway)” (2025), oil on canvas, 26 x 70 inches

    “Driveway Moment” (2025), oil on canvas, 57 1/2 x 47 inches

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    Time and Geography Dissolve in Otherworldly Landscapes by Sholto Blissett

    “The White Heat of Cold Water” (2024), oil on canvas, 78 3/4 x 118 inches. All images courtesy of the artist and Hannah Barry Gallery, shared with permission

    Time and Geography Dissolve in Otherworldly Landscapes by Sholto Blissett

    January 10, 2025

    Art

    Kate Mothes

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    Encircled by light, water, or stone, the central subjects of Sholto Blissett’s oil paintings simultaneously highlight and defy our aesthetic understanding of “nature.” Drawing on the rich history of landscapes, from the Dutch Golden Age to 19th-century British paintings to the Hudson River School, the artist illuminates spiritual associations and the universality of the sun, moon, the elements, and the earth.

    In his solo exhibition, Life in Deep Time, at Hannah Barry Gallery, Blissett’s large-scale works explore “the tenderness between natural architecture, ecological thought, human fantasy, and celestial forms of light and visibility,” says a statement.

    “Creatures of the Flame I” (2024), oil on canvas, 78 3/4 x 118 inches

    Blissett often employs classical architecture or historical references that create a kind of gulf or divide between the scene and the viewer, separating us from the scene by time, geography, and a sense of the unknown.

    In his most recent works, architectural facades like grand palazzos or towering obelisks have been subtly replaced by the more organic forms of trees, caves, or boulders. We’re ushered into subterranean realms flooded with moonlight, suggesting a continuum of prehistory through to the future.

    Blissett is fascinated by the scale of human existence. Think of the way you might feel peering out the window of an airplane and comprehending the magnitude of the world beneath you—how small you feel, and yet, how connected. Compared to millions-year-old caves, tectonic shifts, or dried sea beds, the time span of human existence reads as merely a speck within that timespan.

    Almost portrait-like, Blissett centers trees, monuments, and natural phenomena in each composition, silhouetted in the light and framed by rock walls or foliage as if the landscape has transformed into a boundless stage.

    “Vertigo” (2024), oil on canvas, 78 3/4 x 118 inches

    The light itself—what it reveals or conceals—is a character unto itself, reminding us of the limitations of sight, and that outside of the two-dimensional format of the painting, we are always enveloped by our surroundings. Blissett suggests that the darkness continues around and behind us, too, reiterating our focus toward the light, toward comfort and knowledge.

    Often more than six feet wide or nearly as tall, Blissett’s expansive scenes approach immersion. He “calls attention to our manufactured and shifting relationship between social constructions of ‘nature’ and ‘culture’—their cosmically entwined, spectral, and thorny coexistence,” the gallery says.

    Life in Deep Time continues through February 8 in London, and a book published by Foolscap Editions to accompany the exhibition will be launched on January 25 with a reception from 2 to 4 p.m. The artist’s work is also on view in The Silver Cord at Huxley Parlour, which continues through January 18. Find more on Blissett’s website and Instagram.

    “Borrowed Light” (2024), oil on canvas, 78 3/4 x 118 inches

    “Ship of Fools II” (2022), oil and acrylic on canvas, 94 1/2 x 78 3/4 inches

    “Creatures of the Flame II” (2024), oil on canvas, 78 3/4 x 118 inches

    “World Maker II” (2024), oil on canvas, 78 3/4 x 118 inches

    “Feral” (2023), oil and acrylic on canvas, 78 3/4 x 118 inches

    “World Maker I” (2024), oil on canvas, 78 3/4 x 118 inches

    “Ship of Fools XII” (20220, oil and acrylic on canvas on board, 43 3/8 x 39 3/8 inches

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    Through Gestural Oil Paintings, Maria Calandra Guides Her Stream of Consciousness Onto Canvas

    Images courtesy of Courtesy of Fredericks & Freiser, NY, shared with permission

    Through Gestural Oil Paintings, Maria Calandra Guides Her Stream of Consciousness Onto Canvas

    December 21, 2024

    ArtNature

    Jackie Andres

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    While traditional plein air painters capture their surroundings while outdoors, artist Maria Calandra takes a different approach. By roaming the coastal headlands of Maine, exploring the waters of Florida, and venturing out to the rolling fields of Southern France, Calandra finds inspiration in nature for her dynamic oil landscapes.

    The artist’s Brooklyn studio is laden with energy after she returns from such invigorating excursions. “I paint while reflecting on that moment during a hike when you start to feel Earth’s vibrations pulse through your feet and up your spine, letting memory, intuition, and those leftover vibrations take the reins,” she describes.

    Calandra’s painting style mimics this intensity as she translates a stream of consciousness through fluid brushstrokes and oscillating organic forms. Instinct guides the artist, who describes the act as “automatic painting.”

    This January, the artist will be in a group show at Half Gallery in New York followed by a solo show in June at the gallery’s Los Angeles location. Find more on Calandra’s website and follow along on Instagram.

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    Psychedelic Distortions and Glitches Streak Across Alexis Mata’s Bold Paintings

    All images courtesy of Alexis Mata and The Hole, shared with permission

    Psychedelic Distortions and Glitches Streak Across Alexis Mata’s Bold Paintings

    December 20, 2024

    Art

    Grace Ebert

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    From digital glitches to mind-bending distortions, Mexico City-based artist Alexis Mata is interested in how visual information gets lost or skewed as it shifts from one context to another. In his oil paintings, bouquets and vast desert landscapes spread across the canvas as if melting or stretching into unrecognizable forms. “When your eyes look too long at the same thing, your mind makes the change,” he shares.

    Mata excavates the relationship between analog and digital realms, and his process incorporates both modes of artmaking. Preliminary sketches fill notebooks that travel everywhere the artist does, while he continually snaps photos and records video as references.

    AI experiments help Mata better translate the strange, disorienting outcomes that these rapidly evolving tools can produce. But his research isn’t just visual. “I enjoy experimenting by writing poems or haikus in AI and seeing what emerges. It’s an exploratory process,” he notes.

    Rendered in bold color palettes, the trippy paintings draw connections between digital mishaps and the ways our brains warp an image, whether in moments of intense focus, dream states, or with the help of hallucinatory substances. “I like to think that entire worlds are created within dreams, and these worlds ask to be brought into the light,” he says.

    Many of the paintings shown here are on view in Fata Morgana through January 25 at The Hole in Tribeca. Explore more of Mata’s work, which spans stained glass and textiles to drawing and sculpture, on his website and Instagram.

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