On View

This morning, joggers in New York’s Central Park may have come across a curious, rather illustrious sight. A cube composed of 186 kilograms of pure 24-karat gold, conceived by the German artist Niclas Castello who has billed it as a conceptual “socle du monde” (base of the world) sculpture for our time, was wheeled out to the Naumburg Bandshell this morning at around 5 a.m. 
Although the work is not for sale, according to the artist’s team, based on the current price of gold at $1,788 per ounce, its material worth is around $11.7 million. Flanked by a heavy security detail, the 410-pound work is set to be displayed in the park until the day’s end.
In a message sent this morning to Artnet News, Castello called the work “a conceptual work of art in all its facets.” He said the idea was to “create something that is beyond our world—that is intangible.” 
And so, as with all things in 2022, an accompanying cryptocurrency is being launched alongside the physical artwork. The Castello Coin, traded as $CAST, is available for purchase online at an initial price of €0.39 ($0.44) each, with an accompanying NFT auction scheduled for 21 February. 

The Castello Cube being cast in a foundry in Switzerland.
“The cube can be seen as a sort of communiqué between an emerging 21st-century cultural ecosystem based on crypto and the ancient world where gold reigned supreme,” says the Viennese gallerist Lisa Kandlhofer, who was in New York for the artwork’s launch.
According to Castello’s team, golden cube was cast at a foundry in Aarau, Switzerland, requiring a special handmade kiln in order to withstand both the sheer size and volume of gold, as well as the extreme temperatures needed to melt it, reaching up to 1100 degrees Celsius. The cube measures over a foot and a half on all sides and has a wall thickness of about a quarter inch. 
Later tonight, the sculpture will make its way to a private dinner on Wall Street, where numerous celebrities are said to be attending. 
Niclas Castello with his piece The Castello Cube in Central Park, New York. Photo by Sandra Mika.
Born in 1978 in East Germany, Castello currently lives between New York and Switzerland, and is known largely for his sculptures and paintings partly inspired by artists like Jean-Michel Basquiat and Andy Warhol. Castello’s previous works lean heavily on imagery from pop and consumer culture. 
His cube can, in some respects, be compared to Damien Hirst’s infamous diamond encrusted skull, a memento mori that is also a commentary on art’s endless entanglement in money and capital, or Piero Manzoni’s tongue-in-cheek provocation Artist’s Shit (1961), a tin can containing the artist’s feces which he sold for its weight in gold. 
But after its one-day exhibition, where will The Castello CUBE go next? The artist’s team has so far remained tight-lipped about that. One thing is certain, however: Central Park just got a lot more bling. 
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London’s art critics have, almost unanimously, given the KAWS exhibition, which opened recently at the Serpentine Galleries, a thumbs down. But a much younger crowd, which has been viewing the show on the videogame Fortnite, has a very different opinion.
“New Fiction” is the artist’s first major solo show in the UK capital, and in addition to the presentation of paintings and sculptures in London, visitors across the globe can see the exhibition online through the massive multiplayer game Fortnite—an experiment for all the parties involved. There are also virtual versions of the artist’s famous crossed-eye “Companion” sculpture that can be viewed via Acute Art’s augmented reality app.
But the technological twists have apparently failed to please the critics. The Evening Standard’s Ben Luke said the show is “unspeakably awful” and “soul-crushingly boring,” giving it just one star. “I have no idea why the Serpentine has got involved with this,” bemoaned Eddy Frankel, who also gave the show one star in Time Out. “I want to be immersed in KAWS about as much as I want to be immersed in a vat of pus […] It has no concepts, no emotions, no beauty and absolutely no point.” And The Telegraph’s Alastair Smart calls the show a “lost KAWS.”
On the other hand, Fortnite players who choose to roam around the virtual grounds of the Serpentine wearing KAWS-themed skins, appear to be having a great time in the show, jumping around and chasing after each other in the gallery, which wouldn’t be allowed in reality. Some have even said they loved the works, a stark contrast to Smart’s prediction in his review that it would be “hard to see any player having a meaningful experience in the would-be exhibition.”

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“I would say it’s pretty awesome,” Max Kipiniak, a 17-year-old Brooklyn-based high school student, told Artnet News. Kipiniak said he was familiar with KAWS and owned clothes from the artist’s collaboration with Japanese brand Uniqlo. He also found the partnership between an online video game and an artist impressive and he hoped to see more of it.
“The art itself in the gallery was not extremely impressive to me. I guess I prefer to see art in person rather than online, but it was still cool to see his sculptures and art pieces come to life in a video game,” he continued. “I respect artists like KAWS for being open-minded enough to seek out unique ways to publicize their art to new audiences.”
John Olusetire, a 25-year-old software developer based in Nigeria who does not regularly visit art galleries, said “the creative hub and the art (both paintings and sculptures) were cool.” He added that the Fortnite show “was easy to navigate. There’s a 2D map you can access,” and he pointed to a game-specific feature that particularly won him over: “I loved the maze, figuring it out was fun.”
“Overall [it was] a good experience,” said a 16-year-old gamer from India, who asked to remain anonymous. “It’s good to see art displayed inside a game like Fortnite. I have never been to any actual art museums in person, now with the pandemic situation, I am happy to see it in the form of a creative hub.”

Serpentine has said that the show, curated by Daniel Birnbaum, artistic director of the VR and AR production company Acute Art, could reach some 400 million Fortnite players. Organizers have declined to reveal exactly how many players have checked into the virtual show since it debuted a week ago, but it is certainly discussed online. Some players have written on Reddit saying that the show was cool. On Twitter, @GAMMAVERSE_ said: “I am in awe.” @OgEcomiMemelord replied: “You literally got me into kaws fam!” And @Masa_LJwG said: “I enjoyed the exhibition a lot! Thank you from Japan.”
For those unable to join the game, there is no lack of players’ tour videos streaming on YouTube. “So beautiful,” commented Youtuber ShiKago773, who visited the virtual exhibition in a pink KAWS-themed skin. In the video, ShiKago773’s character is seen standing in front of nearly each single work and examining each of them.
“I have these [sculptures as] keychains. I love them. That’s badass,” ShiKago773 adds. “There are so many of [the artworks], so many feelings. Wow. Oh my gosh, Fortnite, thank you. I love it.”
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At first glance, KAWS’s new show at London’s Serpentine Galleries appears to be a retrospective. It features more than 20 paintings and sculptures, all on loan from private collections. But there’s a twist: “New Fiction” is also a virtual exhibition, viewable in ultra high-definition via the online game Fortnite.
By teaming up with Epic Games’s Fortnite, one of the world’s largest online video games with more than 400 million registered accounts, the artist has transformed the exhibition housed in the Serpentine North Gallery into a creative hub within the game. Players can dress up as pink KAWS “Companion” skeletons (the artist’s trademark figure) and roam around the exhibition, as well as the fantasy grounds outside.
“It feels very natural,” the Brooklyn-based artist told Artnet News, “seeing my character walking around the exhibition in Fortnite. Aesthetically, it seems like it fits right with the work I’ve been making.”
The hub is now live and the Serpentine exhibition is open through February 27.
“This is the first time that we are doing something as ambitious as this,” the show’s curator, Daniel Birnbaum, told media at the exhibition’s preview. “The project will reach bigger audiences, bigger than the Venice Biennale. This is a new kind of local project that has a global reach.”
Birnbaum is artistic director of the VR and AR production company Acute Art, which also created an augmented reality experience for the show. Users of Acute Art’s smartphone app can view KAWS’s virtual sculptures inside and outside of the gallery, and share pictures and videos on social media.
American artist KAWS, real name Brian Donnelly, poses with an artwork titled SEEING. Photo by TOLGA AKMEN/AFP via Getty Images.
Because the pandemic made frequent travel between New York and London impossible, KAWS had to work from home using a foam model of the show. The gaming technicians then used pictures of the model, and of the gallery, to imagine how the show and game could come together.
“Once it’s set for the game, they have tons of testing and where they see if they can crash it, just try to see if it is a functional game,” KAWS said. “It’s been a lot to get there. To work with Fortnite, to have something game-ready, you need to be so far in advance.”

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KAWS, it turns out, was already a Fortnite player. After he saw other artists, such as the rapper Travis Scott, stage events in the gaming virtual reality, he saw the potential for his own work. “I understood the scope of games outside gaming. The creative community is pretty incredible, an eye-opener.”
This is not the first time KAWS has ventured into the virtual realm. In 2020, his project “COMPANION (EXPANDED)” brought an augmented-reality version of his figure to 11 cities around the world. Viewers could view the virtual sculpture floating in the air at specific locations via the Acute Art app. And the artist’s 2019-2020 exhibition “Companionship in the Age of Loneliness” at the National Gallery of Victoria in Australia hosted a complete virtual walkthrough of the show, which is still accessible today.
A member of a staff uses the Acute Art app to display an (AR) augmented reality artwork “COMPANION (EXPANDED)” by KAWS. Photo by Tolga Akmen/AFP via Getty Images.
Hans Ulrich Obrist, the artistic director of Serpentine, said “NEW FICTION” is a “unique project that tests how Serpentine can enter the multiverse.” The gallery has been experimenting with technologies in recent years, initiating projects that are bridging the gap between art and pop culture, such as a collaboration with K-pop sensation BTS.
“The idea is to connect the bubbles of different sectors. And in future, artists will be making their own games,” Obrist said.
KAWS has made it a goal to reach as many people as possible. “Even when I was putting work on the streets, I’ve been thinking about communications and how to reach people in new, unexpected ways,” the artist said. “That’s why I’m so interested in doing collaborations with fashion. It’s just a different way of reaching people in a new environment.”
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Standing in front of a painting by Rachel Jones is akin to letting her take you on a journey around her emotional landscape, with her skillful use of color and composition as your guide.
One of the artist’s focuses is Black interiority, accessed somewhat literally through her frequent inclusion of mouths and teeth. Sometimes these elements are visible and sometimes they are submerged: In works like lick your teeth, so they clutch (2021)—currently featured in the Hayward Gallery’s survey of contemporary painting, “Mixing It Up”—the teeth and mouth morph into hills, rocks, valleys, and mountains. Circles and flowers might represent grills, but they could also be trees and waterfalls, such is the ‘magic eye’ effect of Jones’s work. Unique and seductive, her abstractions manage to convey the infinite psychological landscape that exists within a person’s self.
“I love the idea that you can make artwork from a place of feeling, and that’s enough of a reason to make something, because I think that’s the truth of it,” she explained. “Anything that’s produced, it comes from some sort of desire or a need, and all of those things are emotional and physical reactions in our body.”
Jones appeared in an autumn 2020 group show at Thaddaeus Ropac alongside Alvaro Barrington, Mandy El-Sayegh, and Dona Nelson. Ropac signed her shortly thereafter, and institutional and collector attention followed, resulting in an intense demand for her work over the past two years. Another 30-year-old artist might be overwhelmed by so swift a rise, but the Jones has remained focused on forging a life best suited to making work.
Rachel Jones SMIIILLLLEEEE (2021). Photo Eva Herzog Courtesy Thaddeaus Ropac
Her evolving practice is on view in “SMIIILLLLEEEE,” on view at Ropac’s London gallery through February 5, taking over the majority of the large space. The show is a combination of paintings of all sizes, some on stretched canvas and some hung straight onto the wall, ranging from a few inches to meters in size.
The large-scale works for which Jones is known are present, as are some riffs on her practice to break up the formality of the gallery space. Upstairs, there is an intervention on a wall, with the words “Son Shine” written across either side. One work is a sticker on the floor and others are placed at varying heights, some very low on the wall, drawing viewers in, encouraging them to immerse themselves in the work. You are encouraged to bend down, lean back and step up to the paintings, creating a conversation between the work and the viewer.
“I am very interested in placing my history and my relationship to painting within the work, she said to Artnet News. “It’s really meaningful to have people to interrogate those ideas and to think about them. There have been so many Black intellectual writers and poets who have talked about these things for such a long time, and it’s great to be able to feel as if I’m contributing to that conversation.”
Rachel Jones SMIIILLLLEEEE (2021). Photo Eva Herzog Courtesy Thaddeaus Ropac
Jones graduated from the internationally renowned Glasgow School of Art in 2013 and went on to complete her master’s at the Royal Academy of Arts in London. There she attracted the attention of, among others, Chisenhale director Zoé Whitley, who has tapped Jones for the forthcoming solo show, “Say Cheese,” in March 2022.
“I first saw Rachel working in a different register when she was still a student at the RA schools and was thinking through what a language of her own might be,” Whitley told Artnet News. “It’s been so exciting to see how assured she’s been in finding a visual language that allows her to express so many of the very nuanced themes that she’s interested in. She has this very urgent sense of finding herself within the glare of what it means to be a painter today.”
This evolution is an artist is key for Jones, who starts each new work with the body of painting that came before. “I am really excited to see the way the work develops over the years, because I look at the practice as having longevity,” Jones told Artnet News over Zoom. “And to become clearer over the years, because each body of work relates to one another.”
Rachel Jones SMIIILLLLEEEE (2021). Photo Eva Herzog Courtesy Thaddeaus Ropac
Jones works in oil sticks, and her process both is physical and emotional, tied together with an intuitive sense for composition and balance. “Every painting pretty much involves all of the colors on the spectrum,” Jones explained. “It’s very important that there is a sense of balance and that there are moments where the eye can rest. There have to be periods within the painting where the movement allows you to linger or to pause, so that it’s not constantly like an onslaught.”
Her mark-making, although layered and complex, has a sense of immediacy that makes it highly legible. In some places the strokes are frenetic and in others they are layered and blended, there is sense of experimentation; Jones is getting to know her palette, and seeing the progression is exciting.
“The colors can be forceful, or they can be muted, they can inquire, or they can be seductive, or violent, or harsh,” Jones said. “Using color becomes like a form of communication.” In these moments, Jones is not only communicating with the viewer, but also with herself: “All of those things operating together is something that happens through making the work with a sense of following my nose and listening to my intuition, then waiting for a point to feel like the painting has enough and it holds itself together.”
Rachel Jones SMIIILLLLEEEE (2021). Photo Eva Herzog Courtesy Thaddeaus Ropac
“People are drawn to the way she communicates through color and a visual lexicon that hovers in between the concrete and the enigmatic,” her gallerist, Thaddaeus Ropac, told Artnet News. “There’s an intensity of joy and complexity in her works that instantly captivates and holds you in their thrall long after.” He has placed her paintings in such institutions as the ICA Miami; the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; Tate; Hepworth Wakefield, the Towner Art Gallery; and the U.K. Arts Council collection—“and this was before she painted the works that are now on view in her current exhibition at our London gallery,” he added.
The waiting list for the works on view is long, according to Diane Abela, a director at advisory Gurr Johns, due to the quality of Jones’s work—but also smart management from Ropac.
“Personally, I just thought, wow, this is something completely different, something that you haven’t seen in the art world,” Abela told Artnet News. She cited the institutional interest in her work, coupled with its affordability—prices are high but are not inflatedfigures around €30,000 have been mentioned.
Jones herself is focused on the long game. A passionate gardener, she also makes music and has “only painted in silence once when my batteries ran out.” She plays CDs and takes herself off the grid while listening to whole albums, enjoying making art to a complete body of work, as opposed to a streaming online. She wants a quiet life, but one centered around art, and she is currently completing a teaching qualification, which she sees as a practice to accompany a life of making. This pared-back approach is what allows her to channel herself so completely into these complicated and consuming works.
“I’m excited to see the narrative develop and the form that that takes visually, how that shifts,” she said, “but I’m also looking forward to being able to work with people in a collaborative manner, because painting is a very solitary practice. I’m really looking forward to having the opportunity to build relationships through making work.”
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Georgia O’Keeffe was surrounded by photography for most of her life, and yet her own efforts in the medium have largely gone unstudied.
But now, the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston (MFAH) is debuting “Georgia O’Keeffe, Photographer,” the first exhibition devoted to the pioneering modernist’s photographic work. Nearly 100 pictures make up the show, most black and white and all culled from a recently rediscovered archive.
Though she was a casual camera lover in her early decades, O’Keeffe’s marriage to photographer and gallerist Alfred Stieglitz in 1924 found her immersed in the medium like never before. She posed in hundreds of Stieglitz’s portraits, helped make and mount his prints, and even assisted in the design of his shows.
But it wasn’t until the mid-1940s, after the death of her husband, that O’Keeffe began seriously making photographs of her own. Studying with photographer Todd Webb, she found herself turning a lens toward her surroundings in northern New Mexico—often capturing chemically the same subjects she painted years before.
Georgia O’Keeffe, Forbidding Canyon, Glen Canyon (September 1964). © Georgia O’KeeffeMuseum.
It’s not hard to tell that O’Keeffe was the eye behind the images—and not just because the majority of them feature the same beloved New Mexican landscapes and flora that populate her paintings. Her signature sense of composition is there, too. You can recognize it in the way she photographs the bodily curves of riverbeds and adobe homes, or in her fascination with the long, graphic shadows that dramatize the desert every morning and afternoon. Her ability to capture nature’s feminine grace remains unparalleled.
After the show’s run in Texas, it will head to the Addison Gallery of American Art in Andover, Massachusetts. There, when the exhibition opens in February of next year, it will do so alongside two other presentations meant to contextualize O’Keeffe’s photographs: “Arthur Wesley Dow: Nearest to the Divine,” which brings together the work of O’Keeffe’s influential mentor in New York; and “’What Next?’: Camera Work and 291 Magazine,” a collection of images from two seminal photography journals compiled to offer a snapshot of the artistic scene surrounding her and Stieglitz.
See more examples of O’Keeffe’s photography below.
Georgia O’Keeffe, Big Sage (Artemisia tridentata) (1957). © Georgia O’Keeffe Museum.
Georgia O’Keeffe, Ladder against Wall (1961). © Georgia O’Keeffe Museum.
Georgia O’Keeffe, Waiʻanapanapa Black Sand Beach (March 1939). © Georgia O’Keeffe Museum.
Georgia O’Keeffe, Road from Abiquiú (1959–66). © Georgia O’Keeffe Museum.
Georgia O’Keeffe, Garage Vigas and Studio Door (July 1956). © 2022 Georgia O’Keeffe Museum / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York.
Georgia O’Keeffe, Chama River (1957–63). © Georgia O’Keeffe Museum.
Georgia O’Keeffe, Ladder against Studio Wall in Snow (1959–60). © Georgia O’Keeffe Museum.
Georgia O’Keeffe, Skull, Ghost Ranch (1961–72). © Georgia O’Keeffe Museum.
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What does it mean to be an “American artist”? There are museums, galleries, and whole programs of study dedicated to the genre, but as with everything that seems black and white at first, it’s not so simple.
For the artist Raúl de Nieves, born in Michoacán, Mexico, the question of what it means to be American came to the fore of his mind in 2017, when he was preparing a major installation for that year’s Whitney Biennial. “Essentially, I’m showing in ‘the museum of American art’ and I’m from Mexican descent, but, you know, what does that mean today?” he asked in a 2017 interview with Art21. 
De Nieves came to the U.S. at nine years old with no warning and no suitcase. Today, his artwork—which encompasses densely adorned sculpture, installation, and performance—melds the two worlds in which he was raised. Many of his materials, colors, and forms fuse the aesthetics of traditional Mexican craft, queer club culture, and religious iconography.
Sculptures and stained-glass window by Raúl de Nieves. Photo: Henri Neuendorf.
For the Whitney Biennial, de Nieves created a room-engulfing stained-glass mural that traces an individual’s evolution from struggle and self-doubt to celebration. “The mural talks about this experience—this journey,” the artist said. “I feel really happy that I could put so much emphasis on this idea of ‘a better tomorrow’ in my artwork.”
De Nieves’s latest exhibition, on view at the Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston (through June 24, 2022), is in many ways an extension of the themes he explored in the Whitney Biennial project. “The Treasure House of Memory” includes a collage of tarot-inspired drawings, a painting of the legend of Saint George and the Dragon, and a series of beaded sculptures that trace the evolution of a human figure into a horse.
“Growing up in Mexico was really magical because I got to see a lot of forms of celebration,” the artist, whose father died at the young age of 33, told Art21. “I got to experience death as a really young child. That’s what my work is about: it’s like seeing the facets of happiness and sadness all in one place.”
This is an installment of “Art on Video,” a collaboration between Artnet News and Art21 that brings you clips of newsmaking artists. A new series of the nonprofit Art21’s flagship series Art in the Twenty-First Century is available now on PBS. Catch all episodes of other series like New York Close Up and Extended Play and learn about the organization’s educational programs at Art21.org. More

A forthcoming film starring Benedict Cumberbatch, The Electrical Life of Louis Wain, is reviving the reputation of a popular illustrator known for depictions of cats that captivated Victorian England—and the psychiatric hospital in southeast England where he spent his later days has mounted an exhibition of his work to coincide with the film’s release.
The eccentric artist’s feline fascinations are on view in “Animal Therapy: The Cats of Louis Wain” at Bethlem Museum of the Mind, which is housed within Bethlem Royal Hospital, the world’s oldest psychiatric hospital, in southeast England. The institution was a pioneer in recognizing the potential of animal therapy for its patients’ well-being.
Wain’s drawings were immensely popular a century ago, appearing in newspapers and children’s books as well as on greeting cards. When his mental health declined in old age, he was admitted to Springfield Hospital; so loyal was his following that when the public learned about his situation, he was moved to the “more salubrious” surroundings of Bethlem (as the hospital describes them), where he continued to draw and paint. The exhibition draws works from the museum’s holdings, as well as loans from a private collector.
“Animals have always been known for their affinity to man,” said Kate McCormack, the hospital’s senior dramatherapist, in the press release (which, uncharacteristic of announcements of museum shows, pronounces it “a gleeful new exhibition”). “At the Bethlem Royal Hospital, the Pets as Therapy program has helped forge relationships between service-users and dogs, notably a Siberian husky named Tess. From offering unconditional affection to aiding in confronting fears and phobias, pets can be a big part of a person’s recovery and journey to improved mental health. Animals can offer a very pure and unconditional relationship without demands or expectations.”

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The film treatment of the artist’s life, The Electrical Life of Louis Wain, directed by Will Sharpe, co-starring Claire Foy as Wain’s wife, Emily Richardson, and with voiceover by Olivia Colman, opens on New Year’s Day. The New York Times dubs the film “the cat’s meow,” describing Cumberbatch as “irresistible” and the script as “garrulous [and] lightly funny,” concluding that the film draws “a deeply human self-portrait.”
See Wain’s work and a film still here.
Louis Wain, Cats’ Christmas (ca. 1935). Courtesy Bethlem Museum of the Mind.
Louis Wain, Carol Singing Cats (ca. 1930). Courtesy Bethlem Museum of the Mind.
Louis Wain, I Am Happy Because Everybody Loves Me (ca. 1928). Courtesy Bethlem Museum of the Mind.
Louis Wain, Sweetness Coyed Love Into its Smile (ca. 1935). Courtesy Bethlem Museum of the Mind.
Louis Wain, Kaleidoscope Cats VI (undated). Courtesy Bethlem Museum of the Mind.
Still from The Electrical Life of Louis Wain, starring Benedict Cumberbatch and Claire Foy. Courtesy Studio Canal.
“Animal Therapy: The Cats of Louis Wain” is on view at Bethlem Museum of the Mind through April 13, 2022.
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The Midwest, like all geographic regions, is both a place and an idea. The phrase might conjure a set of symbols as much as it does a description of physical boundaries: a casserole, a cornfield, a chicken coop. 
In organizing “The Regional,” the first multi-museum survey of contemporary Midwestern artists now on view through March 20, 2022, at the Contemporary Arts Center (CAC) in Cincinnati, curators Amara Antilla and Jade Powers avoided all these and any other preconceived notions about the region or its artists. “We made a point not to go into this with a curatorial thesis or an overarching idea or set of themes in mind,” said Antilla, a senior curator at the CAC. 
Instead, they decided, the shape of the show would rest entirely in the hands of its 23 artists, including Matthew Angelo Harrison, Devan Shimoyama, and Nikki Woods, among others. (Altogether, 14 different cities and 10 states are represented.)
Hellen Ascoli, Touch Over Fear (2020). Courtesy of the artist and Proyectos Ultravioleta, Guatemala City.
Early on in the process, the artists, along with the curators, all got together over Zoom for a group discussion. “It was an opportunity to talk about your practice, to think through how your work is related to someone else’s work who might be several states over,” said Powers, assistant curator at the Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art in Kansas City, where the exhibition will travel in June of next year. She called the conversations “potent and generative.”
Sure enough, it was there that the identity of “The Regional” really took hold, as the artists, who were initially bound together only by location, identified myriad common concerns. 
Margo Wolowiec, Breaking News (2018). Courtesy of the artist and Jessica Silverman, San Francisco.
Land use, geographical borders, and the environment are major interests among the group, particularly for artists like Detroit’s Margo Wolowiec, who here turns both original and found photographs of contaminated waters into woven collages both dense and fragile; and Hellen Ascoli, a Guatemalan artist previously based in Madison, Wis., whose own patchwork textiles refer to the immigration crisis. 
Ascoli’s efforts speak to another key theme as well: the immigrant experience. It’s overt in the work of Minnesota-based photographer Pao Houa Her, for instance, whose series Coming Off the Metal Bird (2006–09) comprises pictures of her Hmong community adjusting to life in America. “Instead of a narrative, [the project] was more about my own opinions and answering questions about life in America and what America is,” the artist explains in the exhibition’s digital catalogue.
Meanwhile, for his part, the ceramist Jonathan Christensen Caballero, based in Lawrence, Kan., offers up an allegorical sculpture. Spanning more than 13 feet, it depicts two relatives on either side of a river sailing small boats toward one another, as if communicating across borders of both time and place.
Pao Houa Her, Aunty Mai’s 3 daughters (2006–09). Courtesy of the artist and Bockley Gallery, Minneapolis.
Antilla and Powers may have approached “The Regional” without a thematic conceit, but they weren’t without goals. In their joint essay for the catalogue, their aims were framed in the form of questions: “How might we support a regional conversation and prop up local artists?” they wrote. “How might we foster conversations between our cities and the many other vibrant hubs throughout the Midwest? What are the values of living and working outside of conventional ‘art hubs,’ financial and otherwise?” 
In each case, the answers came back to a sense of community—something in which artists throughout the Midwest are particularly invested, the curators explained.
“It was exciting to hear how interested these artists were in making those connections and getting to know other artists throughout the region,” said Antilla. 
“Even though they are not on either coast, there is still a strong sense of community and artistic conversation,” Powers added. “There’s a real vibrancy in the Midwest art scene that maybe isn’t always recognized.”
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