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    Recycled Materials Draw Attention to Ocean Plastics in Ana Brecevic’s Assemblages

    All images courtesy of Ana Brecevic, shared with permission

    Recycled Materials Draw Attention to Ocean Plastics in Ana Brecevic’s Assemblages

    May 14, 2025

    ArtClimateNature

    Kate Mothes

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    As the climate crisis worsens around the globe, its effects are no more apparent than in our oceans and the communities that rely on them. Delicate coral reefs, for example, face stresses from not only rising sea temperatures but the residue of human presence—plastics, castoff fishing equipment, and other waste.

    Warm water is typically the culprit in coral bleaching events, characterized by algae leaving the organisms and turning them a ghostly white. The algae provides a food source and helps to protect the coral from disease, but when it goes, the host is left much more vulnerable. For Ana Brecevic (previously), this phenomenon inspires work that draws attention to this urgent issue.

    Her recent series, Plasticum, reflects on the ever-growing problem of plastic pollution in the earth’s oceans while contrasting the beauty of marine ecosystems with their vulnerability to human impact. The artist meticulously cuts silhouettes of bleached corals and gorgonians—also known as sea fans—and ornaments them with baubles reminiscent of debris.

    “I live along the Atlantic coast, where I collect marine waste that inspires and feeds into this body of work,” Brecevic says. “Everything is made from recycled paper, upcycled fabrics, and natural dyes.”

    The artist describes Plasticum as “a quiet echo of a reality slowly settling in,” where microplastics and waste continually threaten underwater habitats and biodiversity. She says, “Through this work, I hope to spark questions about our connection to living ecosystems and what we choose to see—or overlook.”

    Find more on Brecevic’s website and Instagram.

    Photo by Marion Saupin

    Photo by Marion Saupin

    Photo by Marion Saupin

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

    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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    vanessa german Channels Metaphysical Healing Powers in a Series of Monumental Assemblages

    “the siddhi of the soul” (2025), rose quartz, wood, plaster, plaster gauze, the shine of the full moon on my mother’s face while saving my sister’s life, pyrite, joy, the ecstasy of creativity, marble tile, astroturf, for how it is to know that you are but a splinter of the whole and also entirely whole the same time, a revelation of lapis, citrine, the way that clouds are creative, a loosing against old ways of power, a healing
    song sung just of breath and now-ness, amethyst, 3 quilts and the love of jill and Dev, the hands
    of dev, the hands of jordan, the hands of our collective soul, strawberry quartz, fish key chains, a mammy creamer in the eye, hematite, butterflies made by the artist, a muse against cruelty,
    for how it is to be alive inside of this holy soul, magic., 65 x 36 1/2 x 36 1/2 inches. All images © vanessa german, courtesy of the artist and Kasmin, New York, shared with permission

    vanessa german Channels Metaphysical Healing Powers in a Series of Monumental Assemblages

    April 8, 2025

    ArtSocial Issues

    Kate Mothes

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    Meaning “perfection” or “attainment,” the Sanskrit word siddhi describes a kind of powerful spiritual energy attained through meditation and mindfulness. To be a siddha is to be accomplished—to achieve a level of optimum spiritual wellbeing. For vanessa german (previously), making sculpture is a spiritual practice with the power to confront systemic social issues and conjure a sense of community.

    In GUMBALL—there is absolutely no space between body and soul, german’s solo exhibition at Kasmin, “the siddhi of the soul,” for example, lists rose quartz, wood, plaster, and marble tile along with “…the way that clouds are creative, a loosing against old ways of power, a healing song sung just of breath and now-ness…”

    “the emergence, or, on considering the transformative nature of the dragon fly as told by Richard Rudd.” (2025), we dance here don’t we bend out our bones and loose our spirts free in an agreement of birth and suffering, wood, plaster, plaster gauze, lapis, sodalite, blue kyanite, quartz, rose quartz, dyed howlite, turquoise, bottles, blue things at the bottom of the sea, languishing, morganite, blue amber eye bee—for seeing the unseen inside of your own self, the deep grief of it all , the light from the wound, blue pigments, a white snake for transformation, a solid fearlessness, grace, onyx, obsidian, rhinestones, cut glass, a host of possibilities, magic and loving that keeps making itself new, over and over again., 64 x 40 x 38 inches

    german’s monumental new series of sculptural heads are conceived as “cosmic maps, proposing a cartography for a sacred place that embraces the full creative potential of all people,” says an exhibition statement. Drawing inspiration from ancient Mesoamerican Olmec heads, which were carved from basalt and measure, in some cases, more than 11 feet tall, the artist channels heft and gravitas.

    The descriptions of her pieces are a far cry from standardized lists of raw materials; combining lyrical and autobiographical references, the accompanying texts complement each work’s inspiration, process, and inherent energy.

    Beads, glass, ceramics, wood, recycling, astroturf, found objects, and more are complemented by myriad emotions and memories like “joy,” “languishing,” and “the way that black girls—in my youth—could speak their own language by chewing and popping gum.” She incorporates minerals and stones like quartz, onyx, and obsidian, transmitting their metaphysical healing properties.

    The exhibition is organized into two complementary presentations, including the mixed-media heads and a series of fallen figures. The latter strike poses that reflect vogue dancers’ “death drops” in ballroom competitions, in which they fall to the floor as if mimicking death, then use one leg to bounce back up.

    Title TBD (2025), 36 x 24 x 14 inches

    The fallen figures’ heads are replaced with porcelain racist caricatures, “reclaiming power from their white counterparts,” says a statement. Mirroring the voguing technique, each dancer emphatically rebounds from not only the illusion of death but from bigotry, systematic oppression, and violence toward the LGBTQ+ community and those who interrogate social norms.

    GUMBALL—there is absolutely no space between body and soul continues through May 10 across two of Kasmin’s Chelsea locations in New York City. Explore more on german’s Instagram.

    Detail of “the emergence, or, on considering the transformative nature of the dragon fly as told by
    Richard Rudd.”

    “lover, lover, lover boi” (2025), arm trans women, existence cannot be non-existence, get over it, love, love, love, wood, plaster, plaster gauze, bottle cap chain, forgiveness, clear quartz, cut glass, titanium dyed geodes, onyx, obsidian, shungite, Smokey quartz, beaded glass trim, the grief always, the opposite of self loathing, a Native American beaded hat from a trading post near what we now call, “the Grand Canyon.” Heat, starlight, the dance of all ages, kissing and fucking for the peace and joy of it all, anatomical heart model, mammy note pad body with original pencil, cut glass ring holder, quartz points from the land we now call, “Arkansas”, cowboy salt shaker, a snake for the bite and shrugging off of the passage of time., 77 x 31 x 34 inches

    “you own soul is a true magic” (2025), wood, marble tile, love, red glass beads, rose quartz, onyx, obsidian, shungite, Smokey quartz, lapis, agate, candelabras, joy, a found wooden foot, ceramic birds, pyrite, sodalite, emerald with quartz, black beaded text, sitting down in the soul for a made-up song, mirror, amethyst, beaded key chains from guatamala, astroturf, agate, morganite, creativity as antidote, silence, dancing, forgiveness., 70 x 43 x 36 1/4 inches

    Detail of “you own soul is a true magic”

    Title TBD (2025), 26 x 16 x 11 inches

    “GUMBALL, or, Gloriously Underestimated Magical Bounty As Living Love. Or, An Invitation to Contemplation at the pace of One’s own Divine Soul.” (2025), gemstones and minerals: tigers eye, onyx, obsidian, rose quartz, morganite, lapis, aragonite, citrine, agate, dyed jade, titanium heated geode, spirit quartz. Cut glass crystal, fish key chains, a love song to the Soul of it all, a house in which to grow wise in a manner with allows no violation to the being, wood, hand blown glass gumball, ceramic figurine, pink prayer beads, prayers of grace and the intimacy of loneliness giving into the knowing of deep and true wholeness, light, astroturf, joyous angelic presence, the levity of the Buddha—HA HA. Love, memories of my grandmother, plaster, plaster guaze, cardboard, obsidian lucky foot, 3-4 bags of my/the artist’s recycling, a laying on of hands and a release into the grace of being held outside of one’s own mind, joy, ceramic butterflies, the way that black girls—in my youth—could speak their own language by chewing and popping gum, beaded flowers, hope, newness, porcelain tile, slow down, it’s going to be ok., 87 x 47 1/2 x 43 1/2 inches

    Detail of “GUMBALL, or, Gloriously Underestimated Magical Bounty As Living Love. Or, An Invitation to Contemplation at the pace of One’s own Divine Soul.”

    Title TBD (2025), 36 x 22 x 14 inches

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    Delight in Heather Rios’s Delectable Cakes Made from Polymer Clay and Embroidery

    All images courtesy of Heather Rios, shared with permission

    Delight in Heather Rios’s Delectable Cakes Made from Polymer Clay and Embroidery

    March 17, 2025

    ArtCraftFood

    Kate Mothes

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    While Heather Rios’s slices of layer cake look ready to stick a fork into, you may want to think twice. Formed of polymer clay and finished with embroidery, the artist pairs the sweets with a vintage plate—and sometimes a fork—in playful trompe l’oeils.

    Enveloped in realistic frosting and decorated with berries, blossoms, and sprinkles, each work evokes pieces you’d be ready to dig into at a birthday or wedding. Rios meticulously embroiders each sponge element, fashioning patterned layers in thread on a hoop before transferring the finished panel to the sculpture.

    In addition to freestanding forms, Rios embellishes small paintings with shallow reliefs of cakes on canvas, emphasizing vibrant color and the fluffy texture of the exposed interiors.

    Many of Rios’s cakes would be exceedingly difficult to achieve in reality, like detailed floral designs or motifs from blue-and-white porcelain. Lucky for us, we can have our cake and keep it, too. Find more on the artist’s Instagram, and purchase a slice from her Etsy shop.

    A sponge embroidery in progress

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    Rooms and Buildings Have a Life of Their Own in Eamon Monaghan’s Uncanny Dioramas

    “Road Refrigerator” (2025), cardboard, tin foil, aluminum wire, epoxy clay, and watercolor, 33 x 63 x 15 inches. All images courtesy of the artist and Moskowitz Bayse, Los Angeles, shared with permission

    Rooms and Buildings Have a Life of Their Own in Eamon Monaghan’s Uncanny Dioramas

    February 19, 2025

    Art

    Kate Mothes

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    Framed by steel I-beams, aluminum cladding, or floor boards, Eamon Monaghan’s chaotic dioramas appear ready to burst from their own confines. Made from everyday materials like cardboard, tinfoil, wire, and epoxy clay, his sculptures capture harried moments of disarray seemingly frozen in time.

    In the artist’s current solo exhibition, Under the Floorboards at Moskowitz Bayse, the sculptures jump off the wall, angles jutting this way and that. Beams intersect with appliances; floor boards bend; stairways emerge from nowhere and terminate in open space; and radiator steam infiltrates everything in its path.

    “Foggy Pipes” (2025), cardboard, tin foil, aluminum wire, epoxy clay, and watercolor, 34 x 70 x 18 inches

    Monaghan draws on the work of 20th-century underground legends like cartoonist R. Crumb or clay animator Bruce Bickford. In the artist’s three-dimensional scenes, tiny figures sometimes emerge comically half-concealed, sometimes grappling with the situation at hand and sometimes simply swept up in the action.

    He embraces unpredictability and farce, playfully examining the relationships between stability, movement, time, and a sense of control. In “Stages,” for example, a series of platforms and rooms shift around in a puzzle-like arrangement, with one figure apparently taken by surprise by a steel beam, another crawling behind a curtain, and yet another passed out on a sofa while helping to “pull the strings” of the entire uncanny production.

    Under the Floorboards continues through March 29 in Los Angeles. Find more on the artist’s Instagram.

    “Stages” (2025), cardboard, tin foil, aluminum wire, epoxy clay, and watercolor, 44 x 67 x 15 inches

    Detail of “Foggy Pipes”

    “Trap Door” (2025), cardboard, tin foil, aluminum wire, epoxy clay, and watercolor, 25 x 30 x 10 inches

    Side view of “Road Refrigerator”

    “Secure The Spaghetti” (2025), cardboard, tin foil, aluminum wire, epoxy clay, and watercolor, 16 x 35 x 10 inches

    “A Nice Night In” (2025), cardboard, tin foil, aluminum wire, epoxy clay, and watercolor, 28 x 45 x 14 1/2 inches

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    Simon Laveuve’s 1/35-Scale Dwellings Hint at a Post-Apocalyptic Way of Life

    “Temple” (2025), mixed media. All images courtesy of Simon Laveuve, shared with permission

    Simon Laveuve’s 1/35-Scale Dwellings Hint at a Post-Apocalyptic Way of Life

    February 3, 2025

    Art

    Kate Mothes

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    Whether slathered with graffiti, overgrown with moss, or decorated with found knick-knacks, Simon Laveuve’s sculptures hint at anonymous lives. Even though we never see those who inhabit the eclectic miniature dwellings (previously), the artist invites us to examine an alternative way of life.

    Crafted at 1/35 scale, tiny tables, windows, paintings, and other objects fill multi-story rooms and mezzanines. In his most recent works, Laveuve continues his characteristic assemblage-like style, imagining a post-apocalyptic reality where basic belongings provide for a simple life.

    Detail of “D’un bout à l’autre”

    In “D’un bout à l’autre,” for example, which translates to “from one end to the other” the structure appears to have risen from the pier of a long-destroyed bridge. Its swampy base contains old tires and other detritus, while above, a narrow, three-story shack includes basic amenities.

    In this imagined existence, there is presumably no electricity grid or internet, a windmill provides enough power for a fan and a refrigerator, and a tank stores water. Laveuve taps into a kind of “future past,” turning to equipment and methods many of us view as obsolete today, like gramophones and metal milk jugs.

    If you’re in Paris, you can see Laveuve’s solo exhibition Voir Loin at Loo & Lou Gallery through March 1. His work is also included in Small Is Beautiful, which is currently on view in Taipei. Discover more miniature worlds on the artist’s website and Instagram.

    “D’un bout à l’autre” (2025), mixed media, 52 x 40 x 31 centimeters

    Detail of “D’un bout à l’autre”

    “D’un bout à l’autre”

    Detail of “D’un bout à l’autre”

    “La Volière” (2025), mixed media

    Detail of “La Volière”

    “Temple” (2025), mixed media

    Detail of “Temple”

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    Sonya Kelliher-Combs Merges Collective Knowledge and Native Alaskan Heritage in Mixed Media

    “Goodbye” (2018), installation from Anchorage Museum’s Collection. All images courtesy of the artist and Hirmer Verlag, shared with permission

    Sonya Kelliher-Combs Merges Collective Knowledge and Native Alaskan Heritage in Mixed Media

    December 26, 2024

    ArtBooksHistorySocial Issues

    Kate Mothes

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    Raised in the Alaska community of Nome, which sits on the coast of the Bering Sea, Sonya Kelliher-Combs traces her family lineage to the northernmost reaches in Utqiaġvik and the central inland city of Nulato. Now based in Anchorage, her Iñupiaq and Athabascan ancestry, cultural heritage, and relationship to the land constitute the nucleus around which her multidisciplinary work revolves.

    Growing up in a rural community, Kelliher-Combs observed and learned “time-honored traditional women’s and collective labor—skin sewing, beading, and food preparation—that taught her to appreciate the intimacy of intergenerational knowledge and material histories,” says an artist statement in the foreword of the artist’s new monograph, Mark.

    “Credible Small Secrets” (2021-present), sculpture, printed fabric, human hair, nylon thread, glass beed, and steel pen, variable dimensions. Photo by Chris Arend

    Published by Hirmer Verlag, the volume explores the breadth of Kelliher-Combs’s practice, from paintings, sculptures, and installations to her curatorial and community advocacy work.

    Drawing on the materials and symbolism of ancestral, Indigenous knowledge, Kelliher-Combs addresses what she describes as “the ongoing struggle for self-definition and identity in the Alaskan context,” delving into history, culture, family, and long-held customs.

    The works “also speak of abuse, marginalization, and the historical and contemporary struggles of Indigenous peoples in the North and worldwide,” her statement continues. In “Goodbye,” for example, 52 gloves and mittens are gathered together as if waving a collective farewell.

    The poignant installation aimed to open the dialogue about the sensitive subject of suicide, the rate of which at the time Kelliher-Combs made the piece was nearly 52 Native Alaskans per 100,000—more than triple the age-adjusted rate among Americans in general. The mitts were all handmade and lent by local community members.

    “A Million Tears” (2021), painting and mixed media, variable dimensions. Photo by Chris Arend

    Through delicate, tactile sculptures and atmospheric paintings, the artist venerates ancient ancestral practices, like animal hide preparation, while exploring the way contemporary materials like plastic and fossil fuels are transforming the landscape. She often incorporates maps, thread, beads, hair, and fabric.

    Kelliher-Combs also combines organic and synthetic materials, merging the traditional with the new; the local with the imported. She describes how she pushes “beyond the binary divisions of Western and Indigenous cultures, self and other, and man and nature, to examine the interrelationships and interdependence of these concepts.”

    See more of the artist’s work on her website, and find your copy of Mark on Bookshop.

    “Credible II” (2022), painting installation, mixed media. Photo by Chris Arend

    “Credible, Fairbanks” (2019), painting, mixed media, 16 x 16 inches. Photo by Minus Space, courtesy of the Denver Art Museum, Denver, Colorado

    “Credible Small Secrets”

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    A Changing Community and Lived Experiences Converge in Leroy Johnson’s Mixed-Media Houses

    All images courtesy of Margot Samel, shared with permission

    A Changing Community and Lived Experiences Converge in Leroy Johnson’s Mixed-Media Houses

    December 23, 2024

    Art

    Kate Mothes

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    From collaged and painted found materials merged with elements of photography and ceramics, Leroy Johnson (1937-2022) created an eclectic vision of life in his hometown of Philadelphia. Through layered, multi-dimensional portraits of houses, the artist represents loci of family life and community in conceptual assemblages that also confront racism, poverty, and gentrification.

    In the first exhibition of his work in New York City, Margot Samel presents Leroy Johnson, a collection of the artist’s house sculptures made “with a documentarian’s eye but a poet’s gaze,” says a gallery statement. His pieces capture a city in transition, peering into its past to underscore the myriad experiences of its present.

    “Spirit House” (c. 2005–2010) mixed media, found object, and collage, 19 1/4 x 20 x 13 1/2 inches

    Through his occupations as a social worker, teacher of disabled youth, rehab counselor, and school administrator, Johnson “surveyed the pleasures, hardships, and contradictions within the Philadelphia neighborhoods where he spent his life,” Margot Samel says, and he “pierced the fabric of collective human experience more deeply than most.”

    Johnson’s abstract, mixed-media houses often feature photographs of people and gatherings, graffiti and text, and swishes of paint or residual imagery from found objects. The gallery adds, “As an African American artist who witnessed the civil rights movement and the impact of racist policies on communities he loved, Johnson took particular pleasure in depicting the richness of Black life.”

    Leroy Johnson runs from January 10 to February 9 in New York. Learn more and plan your visit on the gallery’s website.

    “You Been Had” (c. 2000–2005), mixed media, found object, and collage, 17 x 16 1/2 x 8 inches

    “Heart of Darkness” (c. 1995–2000), mixed media, found object, and collage, 13 x 11 x 6 inches

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