On View

It’s been 30 years since Ethel Schwabacher had a proper solo show in New York City. But in the 1950s, she was at the forefront of the Abstract Expressionist movement, showing vibrant canvases with bold colors, fluid brushstrokes, and even snippets of poems at the Betty Parsons Gallery in New York.
“Ethel was a poet as well, so she would put lines of her poetry in her paintings—which for the 1950s was way ahead of its time,” Christine Berry, cofounder of New York’s Berry Campbell Gallery, told Artnet News.
Now, the late artist—who has work in the collections of institutions including the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Philadelphia Museum of Art, and the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, Whitney Museum of American Art, and Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York—is having enjoying a well-deserved revival at Berry Campbell.
At the Chelsea gallery, a nearly sold-out exhibition is on view through this weekend. The works, priced at $165,000 to $400,000—far above the artist’s auction record of $56,250, set in 2020, according to the Artnet Price Database—focuses on the artist’s works from the 1950s.
Ethel Schwabacher, Seasons and Days: July (1955). Courtesy of Berry Campbell, New York.
For decades, the Schwabacher estate was represented by Anita Shapolsky Gallery, an elderly dealer on the Upper East Side who stages about three shows a year out of her townhouse.
The past few years have been a moment of rediscovery for many other women of the Ab Ex movement, with the acclaimed Mary Gabriel book Ninth Street Women, and in the landmark 2016 Denver Art Museum show “Women of Abstract Expressionism.” But it seemed as though Schwabacher—one of the 12 artists in the Denver show—might be left behind.
Enter Berry Campbell, which also represents the estates of Judith Godwin and Perle Fine, two of the other women in the Denver show.
When the dealers got in touch with the artist’s son, lawyer Christopher Schwabacher (who for years represented Parsons), they were shocked if delighted to discover hundreds of paintings, not seen for decades, carefully packed away in storage. That included the show’s centerpiece, Prometheus, a 1959 canvas that had to be unrolled and stretched for the occasion.
Ethel Schwabacher, Prometheus (1959). Courtesy of Berry Campbell, New York.
“These all have Betty Parsons labels on the back,” Berry said. “It’s incredible.”
The artist continued painting until her death in 1984, and the dealers hope to build an appreciation of Schwabacher’s oeuvre with a series of shows spanning her entire career.
“Originally, we thought we would have to do a retrospective since no one knew who she was—but the paintings were so strong,” gallery cofounder Martha Campbell added.
When Artnet News visited “Ethel Schwabacher: Woman in Nature (Paintings from the 1950s),” it was a busy afternoon.
Ethel Schwabacher (ca. 1955). Courtesy of Berry Campbell, New York.
Christopher Schwabacher and his wife, Hannelore, had stopped by to visit, and there were repair men in the space—a construction project next door had dropped an anvil on the gallery skylight, causing pane of glass to shatter. Thankfully, no one was hurt, and the paintings were not damaged.
Christopher Schwabacher, now age 81, was unfazed by the incident, and happy to share childhood memories of his mother painting—a widow, she would put on classical music to drown out the noise of him playing with his sister, Brenda Webster, while she worked. The living room was pressed into service as an art studio.
“I’ve never seen so many paint tubes of paint. As kids we were fascinated by them,” Christopher Schwabacher told Artnet News. “When we could sort of let loose and not be so careful was when she would bring her brushes out to the faucet in the pantry to wash them.”
Decades later, the artist’s son is hopeful the time is ripe for a reappraisal of Schwabacher’s career—and he sees the skylight incident as a good omen: “We have a smashing success right here!”
See more paintings from the show below.
Ethel Schwabacher, Origins I (1958). Courtesy Berry Campbell, New York.
Ethel Schwabacher, Pennington: Return and Departure of Birds (1957). Courtesy of Berry Campbell, New York.
Ethel Schwabacher, Return No. 3 (1957). Courtesy of Berry Campbell, New York.
Ethel Schwabacher, Steps of the Sun (1957). Courtesy of Berry Campbell, New York.
Ethel Schwabacher, Return and Departure (1956). Courtesy of Berry Campbell, New York.
“Ethel Schwabacher: Woman in Nature (Paintings from the 1950s)” is on view at Berry Campbell, 524 West 26th Street, New York, New York, April 20–May 26, 2023.
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Commuters on the London Underground passing through Gloucester Road station are in for an unexpected treat. On a disused platform, British performance artist Monster Chetwynd—born Alalia Chetwynd, and formerly known as Spartacus and Marvin Gaye—has installed giant statues of lily pads, toads, and other amphibian creatures.
The exhibition, titled “Pond Life: Albertopolis and the Lily,” is on view until May 2024. It’s inspired by the history of the station as it connects to the Great Exhibition of 1851, staged by Queen Victoria and Prince Albert, held in nearby Hyde Park in the famed Crystal Palace designed by the architect Joseph Paxton.
A former gardener, Paxton drew on the structure of the water lily and its ribbed veins to come up with his modular design for the groundbreaking building. In Chetwynd’s work, the animals—beetles, lizards, salamanders, dragonfly larvae, tadpoles, and tortoises—are working together to build the Crystal Palace.
“Normally my work is linked to bad taste and disarming humor, but these look oddly delicate, almost like Wedgwood porcelain,” Chetwynd told the Guardian, marveling over the craftsmanship of the original Crystal Palace. “To read that each pane of glass was individually hand blown—I get really genuinely excited about things like that.”
Monster Chetwynd with her exhibition “Pond Life: Albertopolis and the Lily” (2023). Gloucester Road Station. Commissioned by Art on the Underground. Photo by Benedict Johnson.
The first performance artist ever nominated for Britain’s prestigious Turner Prize, in 2012, Chetwynd is known for her offbeat works. She has enlisted both friends and strangers to take part in elaborate costumed parades, built a creepy indoor children’s playground called The Idol in East London, and has an ongoing film project, Hermito’s Children, about a transgender detective investigating a woman who died from orgasming on a dildo seesaw.
For her new Art on the Underground commission, the artist was on hand for the unveiling, clad in a glittery pink body suit and a blonde wig. This was Chetwynd’s costume for the Fact-Hungry Witch, a character in her film Who named the Lily?, currently on view in the station. It presents a history not only of the Amazonian lily and the Crystal Palace, but also of the subway, architecture, industry, and colonialism.
Monster Chetwynd, “Pond Life: Albertopolis and the Lily” (2023). Gloucester Road Station. Commissioned by Art on the Underground. Photo by Benedict Johnson.
“The poetic connection between a Lily from the Amazon (that smells of pineapple and entraps beetles in its pink interior overnight) and the arches and rumbling tunnels of Gloucester Road, this connection needs to be brought forward,” Chetwynd said in a statement. “How history is re-examined and allowed to be accessible is also in need of discussion.”
The installation also includes seven poster artworks in the station, which each hide clues for an interactive detective hunt that the artist hopes will engage local families.
“I’m hoping that when people see the work on the platform that they’re delighted, and they get some joy from it, because it’s quite fun and playful,” Chetwynd told the BBC. “I also hope that are interested and intrigued into the history that I researched.”
See more photos of the installation below.
Monster Chetwynd with her exhibition “Pond Life: Albertopolis and the Lily” (2023). Gloucester Road Station. Commissioned by Art on the Underground. Photo by Benedict Johnson.
Monster Chetwynd, “Pond Life: Albertopolis and the Lily” (2023). Gloucester Road Station. Commissioned by Art on the Underground. Photo by GG Archard.
Monster Chetwynd, “Pond Life: Albertopolis and the Lily” (2023). Gloucester Road Station. Commissioned by Art on the Underground. Photo by GG Archard.
Monster Chetwynd, “Pond Life: Albertopolis and the Lily” (2023). Gloucester Road Station. Commissioned by Art on the Underground. Photo by GG Archard.
Monster Chetwynd with her exhibition “Pond Life: Albertopolis and the Lily” (2023). Gloucester Road Station. Commissioned by Art on the Underground. Photo by Benedict Johnson.
Monster Chetwynd, “Pond Life: Albertopolis and the Lily” (2023). Gloucester Road Station. Commissioned by Art on the Underground. Photo by GG Archard.
Monster Chetwynd, “Pond Life: Albertopolis and the Lily” (2023). Gloucester Road Station. Commissioned by Art on the Underground. Photo by GG Archard.
Monster Chetwynd, “Pond Life: Albertopolis and the Lily” (2023). Gloucester Road Station. Commissioned by Art on the Underground. Photo by Benedict Johnson.
Monster Chetwynd with her exhibition “Pond Life: Albertopolis and the Lily” (2023). Gloucester Road Station. Commissioned by Art on the Underground. Photo by Benedict Johnson.
Monster Chetwynd, “Pond Life: Albertopolis and the Lily” (2023). Gloucester Road Station. Commissioned by Art on the Underground. Photo by GG Archard.
Monster Chetwynd, “Pond Life: Albertopolis and the Lily” (2023). Gloucester Road Station. Commissioned by Art on the Underground. Photo by GG Archard.
Monster Chetwynd with her exhibition “Pond Life: Albertopolis and the Lily” (2023). Gloucester Road Station. Commissioned by Art on the Underground. Photo by Benedict Johnson.
Monster Chetwynd, “Pond Life: Albertopolis and the Lily” (2023). Gloucester Road Station. Commissioned by Art on the Underground. Photo by GG Archard.
Monster Chetwynd, “Pond Life: Albertopolis and the Lily” (2023). Gloucester Road Station. Commissioned by Art on the Underground. Photo by GG Archard.
Monster Chetwynd, “Pond Life: Albertopolis and the Lily” (2023). Gloucester Road Station. Commissioned by Art on the Underground. Photo by GG Archard.
Monster Chetwynd, “Pond Life: Albertopolis and the Lily” (2023). Gloucester Road Station. Commissioned by Art on the Underground. Photo by GG Archard.
Monster Chetwynd’s “Pond Life: Albertopolis and the Lily” is on view at Gloucester Road Station, South Kensington, London, U.K., May 2023–May 2024. 
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The sari debuted in the Indus Valley around 2800 B.C.E. Here in the 21st century, it’s undergoing “conceivably its most rapid reinvention in its 5,000-year history,” according to the Design Museum in London. It’s been reimagined as the gown sari, which is still sparking debates. Other rebels are dressing theirs down with sneakers.
In London, lead curator Priya Khanchandani has spearheaded “The Offbeat Sari,” the first-ever museum show dedicated to the timeless garment, presenting 60 genre-defining specimens from recent history, some for the first time in the U.K. Standouts include a sari woven from steel and another from discarded x-ray film, and the first-ever sari to grace the Met Gala, an iridescent Sabyasachi design that Indian biotech executive Natasha Poonawalla wore last year.
“The Offbeat Sari” unfolds over three sections: “Transformation” explores the recent stylistic innovations filling in new chapters for the sari, “Identity and Resistance” incorporates cultural context and the wearers’ roles in such shifts, and “New Materialities” concludes with a deep dive into the sari as a textile.
Installation view of “The Offbeat Sari” at the Design Museum, London. Photo: © Andy Stagg for the Design Museum.
“The evolution of the contemporary sari returns us to the founding principles of Indian design, devised post-independence and intertwined with post-colonial ideologies,” Khanchandani told Artnet News. “It also reflects a new generation in today’s India who, 76 years on from independence from colonial rule, are freed from the weight of postcolonial baggage, and are bolder in exploring their identity.” The open market, digital culture, and rising confidence in Indian craft has also had an impact, she added.
“The Offbeat Sari” balances the universal and unique. Though one donned by Lady Gaga does appear, Khanchandani questions the impulse to peg the sari’s import to potential global adoption. On a research trip to India, she visited numerous designers featured throughout this show. “It was wonderful to get to know their work,” she said, “but what I didn’t expect was to uncover so many smaller studios whose creativity and ideas are transforming the sari into fresh, radical clothing in ways that I never imagined.”
Surprises abound for viewers, too—including a sari and baton belonging to feminist Gulabi Gang leader Sampat Pal and saris worn by a skateboarder, a mountain climber, and more.
See more images from the show below.
China town sari from Ashdeen’s Chinoi-sari collection, 2017. Photo Hormis Antony Tharakan
Installation view of “The Offbeat Sari” at the Design Museum, London. Photo: © Andy Stagg for the Design Museum.
Installation view of “The Offbeat Sari” at the Design Museum, London. Photo: © Andy Stagg for the Design Museum.
Concept sari by Tarun Tahiliani in foil jersey, 2010. Photo courtesy of the Design Museum, London.
Installation view of “The Offbeat Sari” at the Design Museum, London. Photo: © Andy Stagg for the Design Museum.
Installation view of “The Offbeat Sari” at the Design Museum, London. Photo: © Andy Stagg for the Design Museum.
Installation view of “The Offbeat Sari” at the Design Museum, London. Photo: © Andy Stagg for the Design Museum.
The Quilted Sari from the HUEMN Fall ’17 Collection, 2017. HUEMN. Photo: Pankaj Dahalia. Model Rachi Chitakara.
Installation view of “The Offbeat Sari” at the Design Museum, London. Photo: © Andy Stagg for the Design Museum.
“The Offbeat Sari” is on view at the Design Museum, 224-238 Kensington High Street, London, through September 17.
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Swifties, rejoice! The Museum of the Arts and Design in New York has dedicated an entire floor to exhibiting a hoard of costumes, props, and jewelry worn by Taylor Swift over her decade-plus, Grammy award-winning career.  
Across “Taylor Swift: Storyteller,” fans will find ensembles she donned in music videos for tracks including Shake It Off (2014) and Bejeweled (2022), guitars she wielded in live performances, and concert attire designed by couture houses. These 50-some artifacts are displayed alongside live projections of Swift’s music videos and wall-sized blow-ups of her handwritten lyrics.
As hinted at by its title, the exhibition is intended to showcase Swift’s storytelling prowess, which has grown in scope and ambition throughout her 10-album-strong discography and expanding videography.
“The music is telling you a certain story and she uses costumes and props in order to build upon those stories and characters she’s creating,” Tim Rodgers, MAD’s director, told Artnet News. “Like all artists, she is taking that into other realms—there’s fantasy woven into this, notions of larger archetypes.” 
“All Too Well” outfit, designed by Marina Toybina. Photo: Bruce M White.
The show was masterminded by Swift’s management company, 13 Management, which approached MAD specifically after seeing images of its Machine Dazzle retrospective. The showcase was put together in the short span of two months—a “speedy” sprint, in Rodgers’s words, to coincide with Swift’s current The Eras Tour, which rounds the tri-state area at the end of May. 
There is every likelihood at the exhibition will be inundated by ardent Swift devotees (hence the timed entries and a gift shop stocked with Taylor Swift merch), but Rodgers is adamant that you don’t have to be a deep-dyed Swiftie to get sucked in. 
“Yes, this is about Taylor Swift, but this is about something bigger than Taylor Swift,” he said. “This is really about our own culture and how it is that women are being presented, thought about, and written about. These are the ideas that we wanted to explore.” 
Below, we’ve picked five highlights from the show ahead of your own inevitable visit.

1. The cheerleader and ballerina ensembles from “Shake It Off”
The cheerleader and ballerina outfits from the “Shake It Off” video (2014). Photo: Bruce M White.
Swift’s video for “Shake It Off” made her the only female artist to hit a three-billion view count on YouTube, but also illustrates her wont of playing to and against archetypes. The four-minute clip sees her don personas from an inept break dancer to an inept performance artist, aided by vibrant costuming. Two of the most iconic, the ballerina (bearing hints of The Black Swan) and cheerleader (“You Belong to Me” callback, anyone?), are included here, encapsulating Swift’s inquiry into “notions of what women are supposed to be, can be, or should be,” per Rodgers. 

2. One spangly guitar
GS6 sparkle guitar #3 by Taylor Guitars. Photo: Min Chen.
Quite likely Swift’s most recognizable instrument, this GS6 acoustic guitar, bejeweled with Swarovski crystals, is manufactured by Taylor Guitars (no relation) and harks back to the musician’s Speak Now era (c. 2010–12). It is not the only model out there though: the one on view is labeled guitar #3 and yet another one is now accompanying Swift on her The Eras tour. 

3. This cat-themed outfit from “Look What You Made Me Do”
An ensemble, featuring a sweatshirt by Gucci, boots by Christian Louboutin, and cat mask, from the “Look What You Made Me Do” video (2017). Photo: Min Chen.
Will Taylor Swift ever run out of archetypes? Don’t bet on it. Her 2017 video presented us with a whole new slew of characters, including one dressed in an oversized Gucci hoodie sequined with a tiger’s face and wearing a cat mask. It’s in this costume that Swift is filmed amid a rifled bank vault, dollar bills at her Louboutin boots, practically inviting all manner of cat burglar puns.

4. The flamingo lawn ornaments from “You Need to Calm Down”
From left: Agent Provocateur robe from the “You Need to Calm Down” video (2019); a Versace ensemble worn by Swift to the 2019 MTV Video Music Awards; and an ensemble with a shirt by Marina Hoermanseder, shorts by Yves Saint Laurent, brassiere by Fleur de Mal, boots by Irregular Choice, and yard ornaments by Ohuhu from the “You Need to Calm Down” video (2019). Photo: Bruce M White.
The video for Swift’s 2019 single is less a music video than a series of random celeb cameos (RuPaul! Katy Perry! The guys from Queer Eye!). But the real star turn comes from, of course, the flamingo ornaments that generously bedeck Laverne Cox’s trailer park lawn. Produced by art supplies company Ohuhu, the objects are here paired with the spiffy costume Swift wore in the video, an ensemble of designs by Saint Laurent, Marina Hoermanseder, and Irregular Choice. 

5. A painting of Taylor Swift’s cat, Benjamin Button
Painting of Benjamin Button, set against wallpaper by Rebecca Graves, from the “Lover” video (2019). Photo: Min Chen.
Did you know Taylor Swift loves cats? She has three of them, christened with names like Meredith Grey, Olivia Benson, and Benjamin Button. The last, who she adopted after he appeared in her “ME!” video, is immortalized here in a painting, artist unknown, peering out endearingly from a misty blue backdrop. If you can’t view it in person, the work can also be glimpsed in (where else) another video, 2019’s “Lover.”  
“Taylor Swift: Storyteller” is on view at the Museum of Arts and Design, 2 Columbus Circle, New York, through September 4.
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Entering Sarah Meyohas’s new show at Marianne Boesky Gallery, you might be forgiven for thinking the artist has simply installed a number of pitch-black glass panes across the gallery. Step in front of these mirrored panels, though, and they reveal mesmeric three-dimensional images—a cluster of plants here, a fragment of a naked female form there—all tinged with iridescent hues. No, it’s not digital trickery, but the result of Meyohas’s continued adventures into holographic technology.
These new works are the “Rolls Royce version” of holograms, as Meyohas put it, technically known as diffraction gratings, devices with multi-lined or grooved surfaces that split light into its different wavelengths or colors. The resulting vibrant tones seen by the human eye are known as structural color, an occurrence that Meyohas has lately found “religiously appealing.” 
“Essentially, any color that changes based on your angle of viewing is structural color,” she told Artnet News. “The idea that a regular shape or form at nanoscale can refract and create light and color on the visible spectrum, and the fact that light is dependent on your position just felt so beautiful to me.”
Sarah Meyohas, Interference #17 (2023) . Photo: Lance Brewer. © Sarah Meyohas. Courtesy of the artist and Marianne Boesky Gallery, New York and Aspen.
Her diffraction gratings, making up her ongoing “Interferences” series (2021–present), have been created by machine-etching millions of microscopic lines onto glass at a depth of 600 nanometers. So meticulous is this operation—emerging from “our desire to encode more and more information in smaller and smaller spots,” Meyohas said—that in effect, “we can create structural color that is more precise than what nature creates.” 
It is fitting, then, that the artist’s gratings have been etched from her film photographs of unearthly flora, offering a head-on collision between nature and technology. (Meyohas also considered water droplets and spiderwebs as subjects, except the former was difficult to execute and she did not want to raise spiders for the latter.) 
Sarah Meyohas, Interference #19 (2023). Photo: Lance Brewer. © Sarah Meyohas. Courtesy of the artist and Marianne Boesky Gallery, New York and Aspen.
“I didn’t want to put in a pattern. I didn’t want to put in something that could be repeated,” she explained. “It’s more about seeing the texture of life and living matter, and focusing on that up close.” 
The centerpiece of the exhibition is a 14-foot long, multi-panel diffraction grating, titled Interference #18 (2023). The 30 trapezoid glass panes variously carry visuals of plant matter and snatches of a naked female body, with the entanglement between the biotic and technologic taking an abstract, sensual turn. 
Sarah Meyohas, Interference #18 (2023). Photo: Lance Brewer. © Sarah Meyohas. Courtesy of the artist and Marianne Boesky Gallery, New York and Aspen.
Meyohas’s newfound interest in anatomy is also captured in Diffraction #1 (2023), a sculptural form that’s part of a new series. Across the work’s conjoined glass windows can be glimpsed three-breasted female torsos—a surreal vision that emerges from Meyohas’s observation that “you really don’t see nude forms anymore,” whether in galleries or Hollywood movies. “I like putting bodies in spaces they’re not supposed to be,” she added. 
These new pieces trail Meyohas’s other experiments with high-end tech, whether with the blockchain or A.I. But hers have never been idle pursuits of technology; instead, they are attempts to lift the lid on the true nature and ramifications of such innovations—what it might mean to financialize art (as in 2015’s Bitchcoin), or algorithmize beauty (as in 2017’s “Cloud of Petals“). This has entailed turning to “a different type of engagement with technology,” she said. 
Sarah Meyohas, detail of Interference #18 (2023). Photo: Lance Brewer. © Sarah Meyohas. Courtesy of the artist and Marianne Boesky Gallery, New York and Aspen.
With her latest diffraction gratings, she sought to create “pieces that are fundamentally optical, requiring your physical presence,” she noted, as opposed to work that could be “absorbed” by trending discussions of virtuality or generative A.I. 
And Meyohas’s own engagement with holographic tech runs far deeper than those finely etched surfaces. While discussing the works, she excitedly detailed the technique of turning every pixel of her photographs into a value for the machine gratings, and the dilemma of whether or not to laminate the glass panes. “I get off on that,” she said of the rather nerdy process. 
“I hope people will see the difference, but I’m not entirely sure that they will,” she added of her upscale holograms. “They’ll be like, ‘oh, it changes color, fun,’ you know? But it’s okay if they don’t because I just had to make it.”  
“Sarah Meyohas” is on view at Marianne Boesky, 509 West 24th Street, New York, through June 30. 
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Remember “the dress” from 2015? For a few weeks that year, a low-res image of a random frock fomented a seemingly inescapable internet debate over whether its colors were blue and black or white and gold.  
It all seemed like a bit of fun. Taylor Swift weighed in; so did every uncle with a Facebook account. Studies and peer-reviewed papers eventually got to the bottom of the science behind the split in interpretations, but by that point, most people were tired of talking about it. In the end, we were left with a simple fact: people can look at the same object and see different things. 
But what if this basic physiological phenomenon could be weaponized against us in the name of spycraft or commerce? (The dress debate proved to be good business for social media platforms and media outlets—Buzzfeed even based its editorial strategy around it.)  
For Trevor Paglen, an artist who has made a career of looking at the sly ways in which technology has shaped our view of the world around us, this is a question of when, not if.  
“In the extremely near future,” the artist said, “you and I will watch what is ostensibly the same show on Netflix, but we will each see a different movie.” The streaming platform, he explained, “will be generating a different movie for us based on, one, the things we want to see; and two, what it thinks will be the most effective way to extract some kind of value from us.”   
Trevor Paglen, UNKNOWN #85237 (Unclassified object near The Eastern Veil) (2023). © Trevor Paglen. Courtesy of Pace Gallery.
The dress anecdote may seem like an odd place to start an article about Paglen’s new show at Pace Gallery, which has nothing to do with clothes or Netflix and is instead about a wide range of heady political topics like electronic warfare and the effects of military influence operations on American culture. But we begin here because, if there’s one central theme that ties this otherwise disparate exhibition together, it is, in Paglen’s words, that “perception is malleable.” 
“You’ve Just Been F*cked by PSYOPS” is the name of the show. Its title is taken from a phrase frequently found on challenge coins, which are small tokens made to commemorate special military and police units who use unconventional tactics of persuasion to achieve a particular objective—also known as psychological operations, or psy-ops. (Taking the form of currency, these mementos also make eerie metaphors for the military-industrial complex writ large.)
If you’ve heard about psy-ops, chances are it was in the context of science fiction or conspiracy theory. But the phrase is about to become much more common in our collective lexicon, Paglen said. If the last decade was defined by “surveillance capitalism”—a term coined by scholar Shoshana Zuboff to connote the practice of corporations harvesting and selling our personal data—then we’re about to enter what Paglen calls the era of “psy-ops capitalism.” 
Trevor Paglen, (PALLADIUM Variation #4) 2023. © Trevor Paglen. Courtesy of Pace Gallery.
Sure enough, a scary character features prominently in Paglen’s own version of a challenge coin, which is a centerpiece of the show. The sculpture, which is roughly 50 times the size of a coin, is made from steel, bullets, and resin; in the middle is a menacing skull with glowing red features. (Real challenge coins are inscribed with their units’ insignia—typically symbols of patriotism or violence. Skeletons and dragons are popular choices, Paglen pointed out.)
Elsewhere in the show are several large-scale photographs of “unids,” or unidentified objects floating in orbit around the earth, which the artist imaged using infrared telescopes in remote locations. It can be hard to spot these unids, though. Paglen’s prints are also packed with stellar remnants, stars, and gaseous clouds. So much so, in fact, that the pictures could just as easily be read as musings on the vast mysteries of outer space.
To Paglen, they kind of are. “I think that space itself as a concept is kind of a psy-op,” he said, only half joking. Because of its radical unknowability, space becomes a backdrop onto which we project our fantasies, he said.
Trevor Paglen, UNKNOWN #90007 (Classified object near Dreyer’s Nebula) (2023). © Trevor Paglen. Courtesy of Pace Gallery.
Think about this idea in the gallery and you’ll begin to wonder: Can I trust anything on view, or is the artist employing the same techniques that he’s exploring? Am I seeing deception or am I being deceived?
This question gets even knottier with the one video piece, Doty (2023). The 66-minute film features interviews with Richard Doty, a former member of the Air Force Office of Special Investigations, who discusses his work recruiting spies, running surveillance operations, and spreading false information within UFO communities to cover up secret work conducted at New Mexico’s Kirtland Air Force base, where he was stationed.  
Whether or not Doty is a reliable narrator is never quite clear; nor is his agenda. For every moment when it feels like he’s whispering state secrets into our ears, there are others that feel like he’s spinning yarns that are just a little too neat to be true—a magician’s assistant distracting from the trick.
Trevor Paglen, Doty (2023). © Trevor Paglen. Courtesy of Pace Gallery.
Suspended above the gallery is the artist’s other sculpture in the show, the kite-like PALLADIUM Variation #4 (2023). It’s based on satellites designed by military and intelligence agencies to confuse enemy radars, but unlike those objects, which are ultra-sophisticated pieces of deception technology, Paglen’s imitation is primitive—just steel and foil. More than a weapon, it invokes the work of the mid-century minimalists, say, or Light and Space artists like Larry Bell. 
The sculpture’s inutility leaves its meaning unclear. That’s the case with many of the artworks on view in the exhibition. Straightforward and spare—a printed photograph, a single-channel video—they exude none of the complexities of the systems they invoke. How they all fit together remains a mystery. The whole thing is fraught with ambiguity. 
This, according to the artist, is intentional. The show asks viewers: “What is this ambiguity? How are we susceptible to being taken advantage of in these moments?”
“Our impulse is to try to resolve that ambiguity, to make sense of it,” he went on. But for Paglen, the show is meant to remind us that our “inability to live with ambiguity might be a means by which we can be manipulated.” 
“Trevor Paglen: You’ve Just Been F*cked by PSYOPS” is on view now through July 22 at Pace in New York. 
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On the makeshift dance floor inside Chase Contemporary gallery, the ’80s are in full swing. Gloria Gaynor is blasting out of the DJ booth, producing hip gyrations reminiscent of a time when a Soho party meant something altogether different. Someone is draped in a boa, to what degree of irony it’s hard to tell.
The gathering is here to celebrate the latest installment of Angel Ortiz’s comeback, “Ode 2 NYC,” a collection of new works on show through June 18. And in case any young stragglers are unaware of whose party they’re crashing, it’s proclaimed in a giant black-and-white photo that hangs over the champagne bar: Ortiz (aka LA II) stood alongside Jean-Michel Basquiat, Keith Haring, and Kenny Scharf. “You’re in the presence of New York street art royalty,” goes the message.
Angel Ortiz, Shazbot (2023). Photo courtesy Chase Contemporary.
Ortiz is hunched over a folding table by the door, tagging posters, t-shirts, hats, and quite frankly anything he can work a fat marker into. He shoulders a tattered backpack the almost entire time, as though at any moment he might scurry off and find something more interesting to do. This appears unlikely. He’s surrounded by longtime friends and fans, seemingly enjoying his reemergence into the spotlight. But then again, it wouldn’t be entirely out of character given Ortiz’s line of work.
Ortiz was barely a teenager when he broke onto the city’s street art scene in a much-worked over legend that goes something like this: the Lower East Side native and his graffiti crew, the Non Stoppers, had been spray-painting the area for years when Ortiz’s densely packed lines caught the attention of Keith Haring, then a School of Visual Arts student. Haring was relentless in his search of the LA II tag creator, eventually finding “Little Angel” and beginning a long-lasting collaborative partnership. It was mutually beneficial, with Haring granted local street access and acceptability, and Ortiz thrust into an international art market that was developing a sudden taste for street art.
Keith Haring and Angel Ortiz standing in front of a work they collaborated on. Photo courtesy of the artist.
The narrative of Ortiz’s success is so entwined with Haring that it would be understandable if, 40 years on, the Puerto Rican felt frustrated by the tie, as though it diminishes the merits of his own art. Not so. Ortiz remains glowing about his relationship with Haring. He’s also clear-eyed that it was Haring who approached him and asked for help (and, it seems, took inspiration from LA II’s bold line work).
“My relationship with Keith has always been about friendship first and the artistic aspect was and will always be secondary,” Ortiz told Artnet News. “Keith sought my guidance on how to accentuate his isolated figures and make them have a more complex environment to come to life visually. The collaborations artistically were magical and will never be duplicated.”
Angel Ortiz, Hudson (2023). Photo courtesy Chase Contemporary.
Ortiz’s latest collection follows a sold-out show at London’s D’Stassi Gallery in 2022 and sees him continue to transfer his distinctive tags, symbols, and icons from the city’s surface onto canvas. To view Ortiz’s current work is to enter a maze of arrows, lines to nowhere, half-formed letters, calligraphic flourishes, bold outlines, and negative spaces. Oftentimes, Ortiz orients his works around his formative motifs: the heart, the crown, the cat, the taxi cab (a nod, perhaps, to Ortiz’s first collaboration with Haring on a taxi hood), and the spray can, which, onsite in Soho, grows arm and legs that extend onto the gallery wall.
In “Ode 2 NYC,” as in London, Ortiz also reaches more often for the paintbrush than the spray can. “I feel differently depending on which medium I use and feel most artistically free when I have a spray can in my hand,” Ortiz said. “When I use a paintbrush on canvas, it is artistically the most unforgiving of all my weapons of choice.”
Ortiz’s expertise with a marker compensates for any lingering uncertainty he may have with more traditional artistic tools. In works like Big Apple (2023) and Gotham (2023), the movement of thick and thin lines create the context in which painted symbols sits.
Angel Ortiz at the opening of “Ode 2 NYC”. Photo: courtesy Chase Contemporary.
But there’s a contradiction at play here. Although Ortiz’s lines and motifs echo the era in which they were born, such is the intricacy, polish, and arrangement of his works that are conveniently presented on canvas that they lose urgency, that connection with the surface of the city. And this is fine: artists are forever evolving, retooling, reframing. It just feels more jarring in the context of graffiti.
It’s a shift Ortiz himself acknowledges. “The 1980s graffiti was free of social media and the thought of building a brand,” he said. “Today’s graffiti is not bad; it is just different. It is like comparing professional sports in the 80’s to now. Same sport fundamentally, just a completely different game.”
See more images of the show below.
Angel Ortiz at opening of “Ode 2 NYC.” Photo courtesy Chase Contemporary.
Installation view of “Ode 2 NYC.” Photo courtesy Chase Contemporary.
Angel Ortiz, Walter (2023). Photo courtesy Chase Contemporary.
Angel Ortiz, Untitled (2023). Photo courtesy Chase Contemporary.
Installation view of “Ode 2 NYC.” Photo courtesy Chase Contemporary.
Angel Ortiz, Subway (2023). Photo courtesy Chase Contemporary.
“Ode 2 NYC” is on view at Chase Contemporary, 413-415 West Broadway, New York, through June 18.
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Step into Alexandra Daisy Ginsberg’s new installation at the Toledo Museum of Art and you’ll be greeted by a chorus of bird calls: trills, chirps, and warbles, ebbing and flowing into each other. The hitch? Not every tweet is real; rather, a good portion of that birdsong is the product of artificial intelligence. 
The work, titled Machine Auguries: Toledo, marks Ginsberg’s U.S. debut and represents her continued exploration into how the dawn chorus, the daily call and response performed by birds in the spring and summer, has been impacted by modern civilization.  
Over decades, bird populations have greatly dwindled, not just due to habitat loss, but the effects of human-made noise and light pollution. So much so that birds have had to sing louder and at a higher pitch, if they even know when to sing. 
Installation view of “Alexandra Daisy Ginsberg – Machine Auguries: Toledo” at Toledo Museum of Art, 2023. © the artist. Photo: Madhouse.
“I wanted to consider the effects of our behaviors on other species, and as a human I can’t help but ask how their adaptation, or lack of it, then affects us,” Ginsberg told Artnet News. “What will there be without birds?” 
To that end, Ginsberg gamed out an immersive sound installation wherein a natural dawn chorus gradually gives way to one filled with A.I.-generated calls, set against a backdrop of an artificial sky. The first iteration of Machine Auguries was installed at the Somerset House in London in 2019, with the latest edition, presented in partnership with Superblue, offering what Ginsberg considers a fuller realization of the work.  
Where the natural chorus in the first installation was populated with British birds, the Toledo version has been aptly localized to feature 25 species, from the northern cardinal to the black-capped chickadee. These were selected by the artist with help from birding experts and locals such as the Black Swamp Bird Observatory.  
“We chose the most iconic species to the local chorus—the birds that define the soundscape of the local dawn,” explained Ginsberg. 
Alexandra Daisy Ginsberg, Northern Cardinal (2023), one of several digital paintings generated by the artist using DALL-E 2 and included in a field guide accompanying the exhibition. Photo courtesy of the artist and Toledo Museum of Art.
The generative adversarial network that powers the artificial chorus has also had a significant upgrade, having been built on a fresh dataset of some 100,000 field recordings from the Macaulay Library at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology. Ginsberg recalled that the technology in 2019 could only make one-second clips; now, though, it can make complete four-second passages.
And all that in such a way that “we can no longer tell what is real or not,” according to Ginsberg, who tested out the artificial calls on the bird I.D. app, Merlin, and with local birding expert, Kenn Kaufman. The feedback from both was that the machine-generated calls were “indiscernible” from the real ones.  
“That’s the highest praise imaginable for a technological project,” said Ginsberg, “but also the saddest outcome of creating an imperfect copy of an un-replicable, complex world.” 
Alexandra Daisy Ginsberg. Photo: © Nathalie Théry.
Which gets to the heart of Ginsberg’s practice, which has long probed “the conflicted relationship we have with nature and with technology, depleting one to prioritize the other.” In her pieces—such as 2018’s The Substitute, which virtualized the last male northern white rhinoceros, and Pollinator Pathmaker (2022), an algorithmic tool that explores the impact of human-designed gardens on insects—the tension between nature and technology is evident in both medium and message. 
In Toledo Museum’s vast Canaday Gallery, Ginsberg has thus installed a lighting array that mimics the colors of a sunrise. As the hues shift from a grayish blue to a warm orange, an American robin sings, only to receive an A.I.-generated response. More birds join in as the day artificially dawns and the bird orchestra builds with deep machine calls emitted by 24 speakers.  
In the end, under the bright light of the gallery, the viewer is left “in the absence of nature,” said Ginsberg, “taking time to listen to an unnatural reconstruction of the life outside.”  
Installation view of “Alexandra Daisy Ginsberg – Machine Auguries: Toledo” at Toledo Museum of Art, 2023. © the artist. Photo: Madhouse.
To the artist, this growing overlap between the real and unreal gets to the matter of A.I. at large. The advances in the technology, even during the six months it took to build out this project, have shifted the conversation between the first Machine Auguries and this latest iteration, surfacing, for Ginsberg, questions of authorship and what we choose to value. 
But more so, it has sharpened her augury of losing the real to the unreal. 
“Why are we in an A.I. arms race as we increasingly shut out the world around us that allows us to exist? The artificial robin may sound like a robin to even the keenest human—and A.I.—ears. But does it sound like a robin to a robin?” she said. “The A.I. has learned from what already exists; imagination still has a role in finding new questions. 
“Alexandra Daisy Ginsberg – Machine Auguries: Toledo” is on view at the Toledo Museum of Art, 2445 Monroe Street, Toledo, Ohio, through November 26. 
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