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    A Vibrantly Embellished Electric Art Truck in East London Is a ‘Home Away from Home’

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    All images courtesy of Colours of Redbridge, shared with permission

    A Vibrantly Embellished Electric Art Truck in East London Is a ‘Home Away from Home’

    October 6, 2025

    ArtSocial Issues

    Kate Mothes

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    In the northeastern London borough of Redbridge, a community arts program has transformed a simple electric truck into a vibrant, mobile artwork. Clad in richly embellished metal panels, the touring project is titled “Home Away from Home” and is inspired by the vivid, hand-embellished trucks found in South Asia, especially around Pakistan and India.

    “Home Away from Home” is the final installment of a broader series of social art presentations called Other Worlds, organized by Colours of Redbridge. The local charity is part of a broader Arts Council England program called Creative People and Places, which focuses on bringing arts and culture to communities where involvement in mainstream culture and creative expression is low relative to others.

    The ornate truck was “designed by local groups to reflect what home means to them, exploring local heritage and identity in Redbridge, East London,” the organization says. “Bespoke panels reflect different themes such as music, sports, local landmarks, pets, and food—all of which are important to local community members and where they live.”

    Abid Bhai, an accomplished truck artist, created the panels in Pakistan, then shipped them to the U.K., where local blacksmith Felicity Jones affixed the colorful elements to the sides, top, and even the wheels. London-based artists Momtaz Begum-Hossain, Sheyamali Sudesh, and Bailes+Light were also instrumental in the collaborative work. “I’ve especially loved running the community metal workshops, where participants poured their own ideas into custom panel designs,” Jones says.”Seeing people grow in confidence and express themselves creatively through metalwork has been a real highlight.”

    Both Colours and Redbridge and Creative People and Places aim to not only break down barriers to the arts but to listen to residents’ real needs and wants. The overarching goal is to build and sustain healthier and happier communities. Through public engagement, the Colours of Redbridge also adheres to a mission “to reduce the impacts of the key issues residents face, such as the cost of living, health and wellbeing, or gaining skills and employment.”

    The inaugural appearance of “Home Away from Home’s” included dance performances, music, craft workshops with artist Zareena Bano, and more. Follow updates about where the truck is headed next on Colours of Redbridge’s website.

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      Yasuaki Onishi Suspends Thousands of Copper Foil Molds in an Undulating Framework

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      All images courtesy of the artist and the Utah Museum of Fine Arts, shared with permission

      Yasuaki Onishi Suspends Thousands of Copper Foil Molds in an Undulating Framework

      September 4, 2025

      Art

      Kate Mothes

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      Undulating in a Utah Museum of Fine Arts gallery, thousands of glimmering casts seem to float throughout the space. For his large-scale installation “Stone on Boundary,” Japanese artist Yasuaki Onishi has suspended 5,000 copper foils that he molded over river rocks in both Osaka and Salt Lake City.

      Begun in the artist’s studio in Osaka—a city where Japanese copper has been refined for export for around two centuries—the installation then traveled to the museum, which sits less than an hour’s drive from the world’s largest operational open-pit copper mine. Using an element found in both places and mirroring waterways or rippling topography, Onishi connects two seemingly unrelated locations through a common material and industry.

      The artist has long been interested in how objects interact with their surroundings, especially the relationship between “positive” and “negative” space. This spurred a deep dive into molding techniques and unique uses of materials, which allow him to explore themes revolving around margins, voids, boundaries, and volume. For the Salt Lake City installation, he considers the relationship between earth, the landscape, and extraction.

      “The copper foil created by Onishi presents such absence and presence through molding, suggesting that to recognize things, it is essential not only to know the surface but also to richly engage the imagination—and that even with imagination, one cannot see everything,” the museum says.

      For “Stone on Boundary,” the thin metal molds create disc- and cup-like shapes that suspend along a wire framework, which reflects the Wasatch and Oquirrh Mountains around Salt Lake City. The installation also marks the artist’s largest to date, spanning 12 x 22 x 14 meters.

      Find more on Onishi’s website and Instagram.

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      Alicja Kwade Reflects the Warped Nature of Time and Reality in Poetic Installations

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      Installation view of ‘Telos Tales’ (2025). All photos courtesy of Pace Gallery, shared with permission

      Alicja Kwade Reflects the Warped Nature of Time and Reality in Poetic Installations

      June 25, 2025

      Art

      Grace Ebert

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      Square steel bars give way to knotted branches covered with patina in Alicja Kwade’s monumental meditation on time. Anchoring Telos Tales at Pace Gallery in New York is a sculpture in which architecture and nature converge.

      Mirrored cylinders hang among the structures with distorted clock faces on their ends. Warping further as viewers move around the forms, these timepieces reflect the ways we are all bound up with the passing of the days. Time, Kwade suggests, skews our perceptions and realities and is only partially in our control. Whereas the city conforms to human design, nature doesn’t, and neither wholly does time.

      “In Blur” (2022), powder-coated stainless steel, mirror, stones, objects, 410 x 4,700 x 13,300 centimeters. Photo by Lance Gerber

      Born in Poland and now based in Berlin, Kwade (previously) is known for confronting long-held beliefs through sculptures, installations, film, photography, and more. Her preferred materials are minimal, including stainless steel and stone. Mirrors play an important role, too, and in large-scale works like “Duodecuple Be-Hide,” panels slot between granite and marble spheres and lookalikes of patinated bronze.

      Much like Telos Tales, this sculpture utilizes these sleek reflective surfaces to call our perception into question. Altering the images they reveal depending on the viewer’s position, each mirror becomes a sort of portal in which the organic forms and bronze are replicated again and again, creating a seemingly endless array of alternate realities. A similar phenomenon occurs in “In Blur.” Surrounded by trees and stones in a desert, mirrored panels reflect the environment, while simultaneously hiding what lies behind.

      “It’s very much about human nature, (the) nature of reality, how we understand our own world,” Kwade says about her recent work. “It questions what our position is in the structure of this universe we are kind of thrown into.”

      Telos Tales is on view through August 15. Explore more of Kwade’s work on her website and Instagram.

      Installation view of ‘Telos Tales’ (2025)

      Installation view of ‘Telos Tales’ (2025)

      Installation view of ‘Telos Tales’ (2025)

      Installation view of ‘Telos Tales’ (2025)

      “Duodecuple Be-Hide” (2020), granite, patinated bronze, mirror, marble, 110.4 x 225 x 225 centimeters. Photo by Roman März

      “Duodecuple Be-Hide” (2020), granite, patinated bronze, mirror, marble, 110.4 x 225 x 225 centimeters. Photo by Roman März

      “In Blur” (2022), powder-coated stainless steel, mirror, stones, objects, 410 x 4,700 x 13,300 centimeters. Photo by Lance Gerber

      “Trans-For-Men 6” (2019), mirror, Carrara marble, concrete, granite, patinated bronze, bronze polished, stainless steel, 117 x 77 x 574.3 centimeters. Photo by Roman März, courtesy of the artist and KÖNIG Galerie

      Detail of “Trans-For-Men 6” (2019), mirror, Carrara marble, concrete, granite, patinated bronze, bronze polished, stainless steel, 117 x 77 x 574.3 centimeters. Photo by Roman März, courtesy of the artist and KÖNIG Galerie

      ‘Blues Days Dust, Mennour’ (2024). Photo © Alicja Kwade, courtesy of Archives Mennour and the artist

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      Roméo Mivekannin’s Cage-Like Sculptures of Museums Reframe the Colonial Past

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      Photos by Gerret Schultz. All images courtesy of the artist and Galerie Barbara Thumm, shared with permission

      Roméo Mivekannin’s Cage-Like Sculptures of Museums Reframe the Colonial Past

      June 24, 2025

      ArtHistorySocial Issues

      Kate Mothes

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      Known for bold, chiaroscuro paintings that reimagine European art historical masterworks in his own likeness, Roméo Mivekannin is interested in the Western, colonial gaze on Africa and the power of archives to reveal underrepresented or untold stories. Born on the Ivory Coast, Mivekannin splits his time between Toulouse, France, and Cotonou, Benin. His practice interrogates visibility, appropriation, and power dynamics through direct and unflinching pieces spanning acrylic painting, installation, and sculpture.

      At Art Basel last weekend, in collaboration with Galerie Barbara Thumm and Cécile Fakhoury, Mivekannin presented a large-scale installation titled Atlas, comprising a series of metal buildings suspended from the ceiling. Modeled after institutional buildings—in this case, museums that house enthographic collections—the artist draws attention to the colonialist practices and ethical gray areas that permeate these spaces and their histories.

      Often founded upon controversial or dubiously-acquired personal collections of European urban elites, larger museums historically emphasized what was seen as “primitive” or “exotic,” exhibiting a skewed view of world cultures framed by a colonialist mindset. The British Museum, for example, was established in 1753 upon the death of Sir Hans Sloane, whose collection of more than 80,000 “natural and artificial rarities” provided the institution’s foundation. His wealth—and his collection—was amassed in part through enslaved labor on his sugar plantations in Jamaica.

      Another well-known example of problematic collections include thousands of Benin Bronzes, housed in European institutions like the British Museum and others. British forces acquired many of these elaborately decorated plaques through pillage and looting in the late 19th century. Today, some museums have agreed to repatriate the bronzes to redress this historical indignity (the British Museum is still in discussions).

      As a student of both art and architecture, Mivekannin taps into the way certain structures and built environments are designed to convey prestige and dominance. He is also currently pursuing a Ph.D. at the National Superior School of Architecture of Montpellier (ENSAM).

      In Atlas, the structures take on the form of bird cages suspended from chains. Both elements symbolize captivity, likening ethnographic collections that often include human remains to what the Atlas exhibition statement describes as “human zoos.” In this context, the cages “serve as a reminder of the historical practices that sought to control and exploit ‘the Other.’”

      Mivekannin bridges past and present in this installation, inviting viewers to walk around the museums within a space that shifts the power dynamic. The work encourages viewers “to confront uncomfortable truths about colonial legacies and their ongoing impact on our contemporary society.”

      The artist scales down the museums’ palatial details to a diminutive size, displayed low, taking into consideration a kind of meta experience of the exhibition itself. In Mivekannin’s portrayal, the structures are both the cages and the caged.

      A show of the artist’s paintings, Black Mirror, is currently on view at Collezione Maramotti in Reggio Emilia, Italy, through July 27. See more on the artist’s Instagram.

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      In ‘Big Bad Wolf,’ Sculptor Kendra Haste Contends with Conservation and Rewilding

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      All images courtesy of Iron Art Casting Museum Büdelsdorf, shared with permission

      In ‘Big Bad Wolf,’ Sculptor Kendra Haste Contends with Conservation and Rewilding

      June 23, 2025

      ArtNature

      Kate Mothes

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      From a simple material, Kendra Haste brings us face-to-face with striking sculptures of wild animals. Known for her use of galvanized wire to create life-size portraits of everything from calm elephants to alert deer to a family of boars, the British artist is fascinated by what she describes as the “essence and character” of each creature.

      The artist’s solo exhibition, Big Bad Wolf at the Iron Art Casting Museum Büdelsdorf, is Haste’s first in Germany and continues her exploration of wildlife through eleven recent works that bridge the animals’ world and ours. Haste says, “I try to capture the living, breathing model in a static 3D form and convey its emotional essence without slipping into sentimentality or anthropomorphism.”

      If you’ve visited the Tower of London in the past fifteen years, you also may have seen Haste’s permanent display of sculptures inspired by the Royal Menagerie, technically the city’s first zoo. The building housed a collection of animals between the 1200s and 1835, many of which were gifted to kings and queens.

      Haste’s life-size animals are installed near where they were kept and nod to real denizens, like an elephant sent by the King of France in 1255 and what was presumably a polar bear shipped from Norway around the same time. The works were initially slated for a 10-year exhibition but now permanently on view in the much-loved historic attraction.

      In Big Bad Wolf, Haste’s first solo museum exhibition, she delves into conservation, sustainability, and the controversial concept of rewilding. That animals that wander through the museum, including wolves, a stag, a hind, a white-tailed eagle, lynx, and wild boars, are all native to Northern Germany. While some are endangered, others are bouncing back, and Haste taps into a regional yet universal comprehension of our delicate relationship with nature and how our actions affect it.

      “This is about how we see the natural world—how we’ve tried to shape it, and what it might mean to let it return,” Haste says. “Wire, like cast iron, holds a tension between strength and fragility. That balance runs through every piece in this exhibition.”

      Big Bad Wolf continues through November 2 in Büdelsdorf. See more of Haste’s work on Instagram.

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      in Art

      Candy-Colored Sculptures by Poh Sin Studio Ornament Aquatic Life

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      Detail of “Lacebud.” All images courtesy of Poh Sin Studio, shared with permission

      Candy-Colored Sculptures by Poh Sin Studio Ornament Aquatic Life

      June 17, 2025

      ArtDesignNature

      Grace Ebert

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      In Specimen Garden, Pamela Poh Sin Tan translates the ambiguous ecologies of her large-scale public works into freestanding sculptures. Tan, who works under Poh Sin Studio, frequently fuses principles of art and design, and for this series of coral-inspired forms, she embellishes sand-coated laser-cut steel with small chalcedony stone beads.

      “Inspired by the ethereal elegance of natural systems—coral, roots, jellyfish, diatoms—these works reflect my fascination with the subtle, intelligent structures of the natural world,” she says.

      “Fanora”

      Drawing on the ornamentation traditions of her Chinese-Malaysian heritage, the artist fuses contemporary techniques with timeless themes of fragility, strength, and beauty. “Each piece feels like a living fragment of a surreal coral garden—plant-like in posture, reef-like in texture, and jewel-like in detail,” she says. “Together, they form a quiet ecosystem of imagined species suspended between nature and artifice.”

      Keep up with Poh Sin Studio on its website and Instagram.

      “Melona”

      “Lacebud”

      Detail of “Melona”

      Detail of “Fanora”

      “Aurelia”

      Detail of “Aurelia”

      Detail of “Fanora”

      “Ploomp”

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      Caio Marcolini Weaves Delicate Metal Mesh into Spawning Cellular Sculptures

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      All images courtesy of Caio Marcolini, shared with permission

      Caio Marcolini Weaves Delicate Metal Mesh into Spawning Cellular Sculptures

      May 9, 2025

      Art

      Grace Ebert

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      Caio Marcolini’s fascination with organic systems began simply enough. It was “the trail left by the sea on the sand, the intertwined roots of trees within the forest, (and) the flowers falling from trees” that he found enchanting. But then, when his first child was born in 2021, he began investigating how these same winding, looping, knotted patterns appeared inside the body.

      What resulted is a series of roving sculptures woven with thin strips of brass, copper, and iron wire. Hollow tubes emerge from delicate bell-like forms secured to a wall, while occasional, long drips drop from the upper area and dangle mid-air.

      Trained as a goldsmith, Marcolini incorporates jewelry-making techniques and industrial design principles into his painstaking, entirely hand-powered process. Using a mallet, dowels, and various manual tools, the Brazilian artist creates a perfectly uniform mesh that he then shapes into supple, rounded forms. “I rarely draw—just small sketches—and most of the time, I imagine a shape using initial parameters,” he says. “The compositions are made in an exploratory way, fluid and organic, as I weave the structure and experiment on the studio wall. I can say it’s a very intuitive process.”

      As the artist sees it, these individual, linked metal pieces are like single cells or DNA that repeat again and again, spawning new forms. While distinct in shape, the sculptures are still malleable, transparent, and abstract. The works resemble the circuitous systems found in the human body, but also the creatures found in forests and oceans, and occupy a sort of ambiguous, hybrid space.

      Marcolini titles his collections with words like colony, system, captured, and bilateral. Referencing the relationship between single components and the larger whole, each body of work becomes a sort of community of organisms that seem to take on a life of their own. Rather than impose a particular interpretation, the artist leaves the exact form of the works open-ended, as if they might morph into new life at any moment.

      Not Every Repetition is a Return, Marcolini’s solo exhibition, is on view through May 23 at Galeria Lica Pedrosa in São Paulo. Find more of his work on his website and Instagram.

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      More Than 200,000 Rivets Secure the Ultra-Thin Aluminum Facets of ‘The Orb’ by Marc Fornes

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      Photos by © Younes Bounhar / Doublespace Photography. All images © Marc Fornes / THEVERYMANY, shared with permission

      More Than 200,000 Rivets Secure the Ultra-Thin Aluminum Facets of ‘The Orb’ by Marc Fornes

      April 2, 2025

      ArtDesign

      Kate Mothes

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      From geometric, white panels riveted together into an undulating sphere, Marc Fornes / THEVERYMANY’s newest public installation invites visitors to immerse themselves in a luminous experience on Google’s Charleston East Campus in California.

      Designed as a physical embodiment of innovation and creativity, “The Orb” invites us into a 10-meter-tall, 26-meter-wide labyrinthine form made of ultra-thin aluminum. “Edged yet edgeless, surfaces curve, branch, split, rejoin, and split again,” the studio (previously) says. “This extreme curvature—achieved through cutting-edge computational design—enables the surfaces to be entirely self-supporting despite being just three millimeters thick.”

      “The Orb” comprises 6,441 individual components connected with more than 217,000 rivets. During the day, a pattern of holes speckles sunlight across the pavilion and onto the ground. At night, the structure is illuminated, casting deep shadows that contrast the bright details.

      Fornes’ mission, hybridizing elements of art and architecture, is to spark “the joy wandering, the joy of marveling.”

      Find more on THEVERYMANY website.

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    • 150 Shares189 Views

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      Splashes of Stainless Steel by Zheng Lu Embrace Philosophy, History, and Technology

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      “Undercurrent” (2023), stainless steel, 340 x 410 x 630 centimeters. All images courtesy of Zheng Lu and Galerie Sept, shared with permission

      Splashes of Stainless Steel by Zheng Lu Embrace Philosophy, History, and Technology

      February 20, 2025

      ArtNature

      Kate Mothes

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      Composed of highly polished stainless steel, the sculptures of Zheng Lu (previously) appear suspended in space and time. Whether secured atop a pedestal, installed in a public park, or hanging in midair, each piece strikes a fine balance between motion and stillness and fluidity and fixedness.

      The Beijing-based artist is deeply influenced by traditional Chinese philosophy and calligraphy. The energy, or qi, that courses through the universe shapes his work and is known to facilitate health, stability, and harmony in all aspects of life. Thousands of Chinese characters borrowed from historic texts additionally coat many of his sculptures, calling upon the past as a way to interface with the present.

      “Undercurrent,” stainless steel

      Lu is also increasingly interested in the burgeoning relationship between human artistry and artificial intelligence. “The advancement of technology will inevitably blur the boundaries between tools and creators, but the essence of creation remains rooted in human nature,” the artist tells Colossal. Viewed as a tool rather than a stand-in for human creativity, he is interested in how machine learning prompts us to more carefully consider authorship.

      Through a creative approach that alternates between human and machine, Lu likens his process to “a relay race, with the artwork itself as the baton.” He continues:

      I pass the baton to the computer, and it passes it back to me, each of us shaping the piece in turn. The final outcome is not entirely predictable. The existence of the world is defined by balance, and none of us can escape this principle. Hence, I embrace this method both in my life and work, where the process of creation is akin to the growth of life.

      Lu is represented by Galerie Sept, and you can find more on the artist’s website.

      Installation view of “Undercurrent”

      “Water in Dripping Vortex,” stainless steel

      “Whatever Journey it Takes” (2024), stainless steel, 560 x 540 x 240 centimeters

      “Water in Dripping Circulation,” stainless steel

      “Colosseum Fantasy” (2024), stainless steel, 120 x 100 x 242 centimeters

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