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    In ‘Inward,’ Cinta Vidal Folds Time and Space in Perspective-Bending Paintings

    “Den” (2025), oil on wood, 31.5 × 31.5 inches. All images courtesy of the artist and Thinkspace Projects, shared with permission

    In ‘Inward,’ Cinta Vidal Folds Time and Space in Perspective-Bending Paintings

    November 10, 2025

    Art

    Kate Mothes

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    Known for her perplexing compositions of domestic interiors, Cinta Vidal continues to mesmerize with a new body of paintings at Thinkspace Projects. The artist’s solo show, Inward, continues her exploration of what she describes as “un-gravity constructions,” in which space and time appear folded or warped.

    In Vidal’s dizzying compositions, people occupy different areas of invented apartments and homes. Perhaps each tableau represents a different period of time; perhaps they are parallel universes. “For Vidal, depicting macro and micro levels of inverted apartment buildings and city structures illustrates the various ways the world is experienced by a mass population,” the gallery says.

    “Flat” (2025), acrylic on wood, 31.5 x 31.5 inches

    “The word ‘inward’ speaks to both layers of interiority: the shared indoor spaces we inhabit and the private, inward-facing state we enter when we disconnect from what surrounds us,” Vidal says. A sofa, for example, can be a place of togetherness or quiet retreat. “These scenes reflect that subtle coexistence: being together, yet each within their own space,” she adds.

    Inward continues through November 29 in Los Angeles. And as a complement to the exhibition, Vidal painted a new mural on the side of a local frame shop called Sherman Gallery in Marina del Rey. See more on the artist’s website and Instagram.

    “Side by Side” (2025), acrylic on wood, 23.6 x 23.6 inches

    “Meet Up” (2025), oil on wood, 31.5 x 31.5 inches

    “Condominium” (2025), acrylic on wood, 31.5 x 31.5 inches

    “Bond” (2025), oil on wood, 27.5 x 27.5 inches

    “Brerhen” (2025), oil on wood, 27.5 x 27.5 inches

    “Sofascape 1” (2025), acrylic on wood, 35.4 x 35.4 inches

    “Attic” (2025), acrylic on wood, 31.5 x 31.5 inches

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    A Retrospective of Trailblazing Artist Faith Ringgold Centers Narratives of Black Americans

    “Jazz Stories: Mama Can Sing, Papa Can Blow #2: Come On Dance With Me” (2004), acrylic on canvas with pieced fabric border, 81 x 64 inches. Photos by Dan Bradica Studio. All images © Faith Ringgold, courtesy of the Anyone Can Fly Foundation and Jack Shainman Gallery, New York, shared with permission

    A Retrospective of Trailblazing Artist Faith Ringgold Centers Narratives of Black Americans

    November 6, 2025

    ArtSocial Issues

    Kate Mothes

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    Across a wide range of media, from painting to textiles to works on paper, Faith Ringgold (1930-2024) developed a practice that merged history, activism, formal inquiry, and global influences. Born and raised in Harlem, New York, her work evolved from her awareness of politics and social issues in the 1960s and 1970s, which she channeled into “an incisive narrative about the historical sacrifices and achievements of Black Americans,” says Jack Shainman Gallery.

    Opening this month at the gallery, a retrospective spans Ringgold’s explorations of textiles, sculpture, and works on canvas. She is renowned for her story quilts, which combine fabric and embroidery with painted tableaux of Harlem, jazz clubs, portraits—especially of women—and historical references to slavery and the oppression of Black people in America.

    “American People Series #19: US Postage Commemorating the
    Advent of Black Power” (1967), oil on canvas, 72 x 96 inches

    Earlier this year, a documentary called “Paint Me a Road Out of Here” was released that chronicles the artist’s first public art piece, a feminist mural at the Women’s House of Detention on Rikers Island. The mural, “For the Women’s House” contains eight segments—patchwork-like—that contain images of women in predominantly male career roles. Works like “American People Series #19: US Postage Commemorating the Advent of Black Power” and “Black Light #11: US America Black” mirror this motif, redolent of a quilt, which presages her later work.

    At Jack Shainman Gallery, Faith Ringgold highlights the artist’s extraordinary and innovative approach to figuration, perspective, and material. She was acutely aware of the art historical canon as a predominantly white space, so she “sought out forms more suitable to the exploration of gender and racial identity that she so urgently pursued,” the gallery says. In the 1970s, she traveled to Europe and onward to Africa, gathering ideas.

    When she first began working with textiles, Ringgold made what she called “tankas,” which were inspired by sacred Tibetan thangkas—textile images intended for meditation—that she saw on view at the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam. Ringgold’s iterations incorporated sewn fabric borders around paintings made on unstretched canvas.

    “Jazz Stories: Mama Can Sing, Papa Can Blow #8: Don’t Wanna Love You Like I Do” (2007), acrylic on canvas with pieced fabric border, 82 x 67 inches

    Eventually, these works became more abstract, then morphed into soft sculptures and performance pieces inspired by African masking traditions. As her work evolved into the 1980s, the story quilt emerged as a way to render imagery on a larger scale and connect with time-honored textile craft traditions often associated with women. Jack Shainman says:

    The significance of Faith Ringgold’s life continues to be felt and understood in new, urgent and relevant ways…Just as she fought tirelessly against the prevailing sentiments of racial and gendered exclusion of both her time and our own, so too did her inimitable work in textiles provide an example of how life and art—so often presumed to be separate—are in fact deeply and fundamentally intertwined.

    Faith Ringgold opens on November 14 and continues through January 24 in New York City. Explore more of the artist’s work on her estate’s website and Instagram.

    “Love Letter: No Kiss” (1987), intaglio on canvas, pieced canvas, and beads, 65 x 52 inches

    “Feminist Series #4: I Have to Answer For…” (1972), acrylic on canvas with cloth quilted border, 47 x 34 1/2 inches

    “Black Light #11: US America Black” (1969), oil on canvas, 60 x 84 inches

    “Slave Rape #4 of 16, Run” (1973, 1993), acrylic on canvas with cloth quilted border, 52 1/2 x 34 1/2 inches

    “Jazz Stories: Mama Can Sing, Papa Can Blow #5: You Put the Devil in Me” (2004), acrylic on canvas with pieced fabric border, 81 1/2 x 67 1/2 inches

    “Slave Rape #1 of 16, Run” (1973, 1993), acrylic on canvas with cloth quilted border, 49 x 34 inches

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    Moments of Riotous Unrest Converge in Elmer Guevara’s Dramatic Paintings

    “Couple Hours after 3:15pm” (2025), oil and gel transfer on linen, 84 x 72 x 1.25 inches. All photos by Yubo Don, courtesy of the artist and Charlie James Gallery, shared with permission

    Moments of Riotous Unrest Converge in Elmer Guevara’s Dramatic Paintings

    October 27, 2025

    ArtSocial Issues

    Grace Ebert

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    How do we live when crises compound? Yesterday like today / Ayer cómo hoy is a poignant solo exhibition by Elmer Guevara that collapses time and space into dramatic paintings of unrest and upheaval. Layered with raging fires and warm California light, each work captures a tension between danger and mundanity, peering into the ways people cope amid chaos.

    Guevara was born and raised in South Central Los Angeles, the neighborhood where his parents settled after fleeing civil war in El Salvador in the 1980s. When the police officers who beat Rodney King were acquitted in 1992, people took to the streets, and riots spurred looting and arson. These tumultuous and violent events backdropped much of Guevara’s childhood, and in this body of work, they converge into scenes of destruction and quietude.

    “Ghetto Bird View” (2025), oil on linen, 32 x 60 x 1.25 inches

    “Couple Hours after 3:15pm” references the time the officers’ acquittal was announced and depicts a man seated in front of a vintage, white Volkswagen Beetle while a fire rips through the neighborhood. With a pointed finger and relaxed pose, the figure mimics the theatrical subject of Domenico Fetti’s “Portrait of a Man with a Sheet of Music” (1620), a vanitas piece that speaks to the vacuousness of material possessions. Guevara’s re-interpretation includes his signature newsprint, this issue featuring King’s harrowing experience front and center.

    As the artist reflects on the relationship between personal story and collective trauma, he incorporates many of his family members in the series. His mother, for example, appears at her kitchen table with a bottle of Coca-Cola and a newspaper spread out in front of her as she points to the main story of rioters taking over the city. Like others in his paintings, she is both deeply aware of the turmoil that surrounds her and calm in disposition, exemplifying the all-too-relatable need to soldier on amid anxiety and heartbreak.

    Yesterday like today / Ayer cómo hoy is on view through December 6 at Charlie James Gallery in Los Angeles. Find more from Guevara on his website and Instagram.

    “Updates and Relief” (2025), oil and gel transfer on linen, 42 x 36 x 1.25 inches

    “Clapper 2” (2025), oil on linen, 10 x 8 x 1.5 inches

    Detail of “Couple Hours after 3:15pm” (2025), oil and gel transfer on linen, 84 x 72 x 1.25 inches

    “Playing With Fire” (2025), oil on linen, 72 x 60 x 1.25 inches

    “Clapper 3” (2025), oil on linen, 11 x 8 x 1.5 inches

    “Casualty” (2025), oil on linen, 24 x 19 x 1.25 inches

    “Clapper 1” (2025), oil on linen, 11 x 9 x 1.5 inches

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    Dream Worlds Emerge in Yuichi Hirako’s Larger-than-Life Domestic Spaces

    All images courtesy of Yuichi Hirako and the Okayama Prefectural Museum of Art, shared with permission

    Dream Worlds Emerge in Yuichi Hirako’s Larger-than-Life Domestic Spaces

    October 27, 2025

    Art

    Kate Mothes

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    In the uncanny world of Yuichi Hirako, the relationship between humans, nature, and the built environment plays out in vibrant color and unique proportions. The Tokyo-based artist creates large-scale sculptures, paintings, and installations that explore coexistence, often through compositions that appear crowded with domestic objects, food, cats, and figures whose faces are obscured by cartoonish head coverings shaped like trees or antlers.

    ORIGIN, Hirako’s expansive solo exhibition at the Okayama Prefectural Museum of Art, invites us to enter a surreal, almost Alice in Wonderland-like realm. From salon-style hangings of numerous paintings and sculptures along an undulating plywood surface to a giant quadriptych—a four-part canvas—the artist’s pieces play with perception and urge us toward curiosity.

    Recurring, anonymous characters populate Hirako’s otherworldly settings. In one work, a huge table is laden with a feast, featuring bowls of fruit, bakery items, and possibly still-living sea creatures, along with a number of relaxed cats, stacks of books, and floral arrangements. And a giant bookcase is arranged with potted plants, books, figurines, flowers, and more—objects that in some cases defy the structure of the unit, like a potted tree or shrub that grows up behind the shelves.

    ORIGIN spans the indoor galleries, courtyard, and plaza of the museum and is presented as part of the Setouchi Triennale. The show continues through November 9 in Okayama City. Find more on the artist’s website and Instagram.

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    Through Lush Embellisment, Anne von Freyburg Depicts Monstrous Women Who Revel in Excess

    Detail of “Soft Blush (After Fragonard, The Progress of Love: The Reverie)” (2025), textile wall installation painting: acrylic ink, synthetic fabrics, PVC fabric, tapestry-fabric, sequin fabrics, hand-embroidery, polyester wadding and hand-dyed tassel fringes on canvas, 220 x 200 centimeters. All images courtesy of Anne von Freyburg, shared with permission

    Through Lush Embellisment, Anne von Freyburg Depicts Monstrous Women Who Revel in Excess

    October 21, 2025

    Art

    Grace Ebert

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    In monumental installations teeming with sequins, brocades, fringe, and shiny vinyl, Anne von Freyburg stakes a bold claim about excess and freedom.

    The artist (previously) is known for her “textile paintings,” large-scale tapestries that appear to drip, bleed, and cascade down the wall. Gaudy and yet rooted in elegance, the works draw on Dutch Golden Age and Rococo painting traditions, incoporating lush flowers and dramatic ornamentation.

    “Soft Blush (After Fragonard, The Progress of Love: The Reverie)” (2025), textile wall installation painting: acrylic ink, synthetic fabrics, PVC fabric, tapestry-fabric, sequin fabrics, hand-embroidery, polyester wadding and hand-dyed tassel fringes on canvas, 220 x 200 centimeters

    Von Freyburg continues to explore extravagance as it relates to traditional gender roles, romance, and saccharine expressions of love. She draws on Lauren Elkin’s recent book, Art Monsters, which posits that women who reject the role of wife and mother—and the societal expectations of beauty and kindness—are often seen as villains.

    The tension between the feminine and the monstrous is evident in several of the artist’s works, including “Soft Blush (After Fragonard, The Progress of Love: The Reverie),” as pop culture symbols and text bubbles mar a central figure trapped in a chaotic blur of material. Distorted by the mass of embellishments, the woman appears grotesque and uncontainable as her form bulges and falls in a deluge of pink string. Von Freyburg adds:

    I approached this body of work as a declaration of the love and care necessary for all of us to thrive. It gives us permission to do the things we love doing. It’s about being free and choosing your own path to happiness in relationships. No more fairy tales about men saving women; instead, it’s about women being the heroines in their own life stories.

    The vibrant pieces shown here will be on view in Amour Toujours, which runs from November 8 to December 27 at K Contemporary in Denver. Find more from the artist on Instagram.

    “Something in the Air has Changed (After Fragonard, the Progress of Love: the Meeting)” (2025),textile wall installation painting: acrylic ink, synthetic fabrics, PVC fabric, tapestry-fabric, sequin fabrics, hand-embroidery, polyester wadding and hand-dyed tassel fringes on canvas, 350 x 250 centimeters

    Detail of “Soft Blush (After Fragonard, The Progress of Love: The Reverie)” (2025), textile wall installation painting: acrylic ink, synthetic fabrics, PVC fabric, tapestry-fabric, sequin fabrics, hand-embroidery, polyester wadding and hand-dyed tassel fringes on canvas, 220 x 200 centimeters

    Detail of “Something in the Air has Changed (After Fragonard, the Progress of Love: the Meeting)” (2025), textile wall installation painting: acrylic ink, synthetic fabrics, PVC fabric, tapestry-fabric, sequin fabrics, hand-embroidery, polyester wadding and hand-dyed tassel fringes on canvas, 350 x 250 centimeters

    Detail of “Soft Blush (After Fragonard, The Progress of Love: The Reverie)” (2025), textile wall installation painting: acrylic ink, synthetic fabrics, PVC fabric, tapestry-fabric, sequin fabrics, hand-embroidery, polyester wadding and hand-dyed tassel fringes on canvas, 220 x 200 centimeters

    “Spellbound (After Fragonard, The Progress of Love: Love letters)” (2025), textile wall installation painting: acrylic ink, synthetic fabrics, PVC fabric, tapestry-fabric, sequin fabrics, hand-embroidery, polyester wadding and hand-dyed tassel fringes on canvas, 285 x 150 centimeters

    “Spellbound (After Fragonard, The Progress of Love: Love letters)” (2025), textile wall installation painting: acrylic ink, synthetic fabrics, PVC fabric, tapestry-fabric, sequin fabrics, hand-embroidery, polyester wadding and hand-dyed tassel fringes on canvas, 285 x 150 centimeters

    Detail of “Spellbound (After Fragonard, The Progress of Love: Love letters)” (2025), textile wall installation painting: acrylic ink, synthetic fabrics, PVC fabric, tapestry-fabric, sequin fabrics, hand-embroidery, polyester wadding and hand-dyed tassel fringes on canvas, 285 x 150 centimeters

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    Through Fractured Forms, Kat Kristof Renders the Architecture of the Mind

    “Echo” (2025), oil on canvas, 230 x 230 centimeters. All images courtesy of Beers London, shared with permission

    Through Fractured Forms, Kat Kristof Renders the Architecture of the Mind

    October 20, 2025

    Art

    Grace Ebert

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    As we spend much of our lives online and find ourselves ensnared in an increasingly dystopian reality, glitches and fractures seem all the more apt in rendering the contemporary mind. Kat Kristof (previously) attends to this disjointed—and even duplicitous—feeling in her vivid portraiture. Visible brushstrokes invoke gestures past and the memories that scaffold our lives, while layered patches build upon one another, forming complex structures within each piece.

    “My work explores the architecture of the mind. These are scattered, fragmented, and riotous projections of self,” Kristof says, referring to her latest body of work, Exhale. Co-presented by BEERS London and Saatchi Gallery, the exhibition plumbs the artist’s formal training in architecture, which she undertook in her native Hungary before moving to Folkestone, Kent. Likening the abstract shapes that form a face or torso to a hallway or room, the artist invites viewers into the intimate interiors of her subjects.

    “Doubt I” (2025), oil on canvas, 180 x 180 centimeters

    While each portrait contains some level of psychological distortion, Kristof expands and contracts their surreal qualities. “Echo,” for example, features a mirrored subject looking directly at the viewer, although the figure on the right peers out from a face turned upside down. The gltich in “Alone” is much more jarring, as two faces stare at each other through a central stripe bisecting the work.

    For Kristof, there’s endless space for our minds to break into new territories, although like the walls that protect our homes, there are barriers we have to cross to step outside ourselves. “What we long for remains elusive, not because it doesn’t exist, but because we carry our mindset with us,” she adds.

    Exhale runs from October 23 to November 16 at Saatchi Gallery in London. Find more from Kristof on her website and Instagram.

    “Alone” (2025), oil on canvas, 125 x 145 centimeters

    “Drift” (2025), oil on canvas, 220 x 175 centimeters

    “Blur” (2025), oil on board, 80 x 60 centimeters

    “Breathe” (2025), oil on canvas, 220 x 115 centimeters

    “Crave” (2025), oil on canvas, 150 x 100 centimeters

    “Exhale” (2025), oil on canvas, 170 x 145 centimeters

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    Alison Friend Packs a Lot of Personality into Witty Dog Portraits

    All images courtesy of Artisan, shared with permission

    Alison Friend Packs a Lot of Personality into Witty Dog Portraits

    October 17, 2025

    ArtBooks

    Grace Ebert

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    Dogs, they’re just like us! Perpetually anxious pizza lovers.

    The pups taking center stage in Alison Friend’s beloved paintings sport a range of personalities that feel all too familiar: several hungrily snack on pastries, sip cocktails, and even present their self-portraits on everyone’s favorite toy, the Etch A Sketch.

    Friend is known for her witty pieces that portray our domestic pals in the style of the Old Masters, lending a sense of reverence to her furry subjects. The artist’s first monograph, Dog Only Knows, is available this month from Artisan and collects 125 of her canine works, a small fraction of which are shown here.

    Pre-order your copy in the Colossal Shop, and find more from Friend on Instagram.

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    Stan Squirewell’s Mixed-Media Collages Imbue Anonymous Historical Photos with Panache

    “She Saw Far and Wide” (2023), mixed media, photo collage, acrylic paint, and glitter mounted on canvas in a hand-carved frame, 90 x 76 inches. All images courtesy of the artist, Claire Oliver Gallery, and Plattsburgh State Art Museum, shared with permission

    Stan Squirewell’s Mixed-Media Collages Imbue Anonymous Historical Photos with Panache

    October 16, 2025

    ArtPhotography

    Kate Mothes

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    Nothing sparks the imagination quite like coming across a trove of old photographs. We look for writing on the reverse and scan the anonymous faces to read a range of expressions. Where exactly they were at that moment, what brought them together that day, and who took the picture? For Stan Squirewell, the allure of historical portraits is a central tenet of his multimedia practice.

    In large-scale, mixed-media collages, the artist begins with black-and-white photographs, typically taken a century ago or longer. He especially emphasizes portraits of Black individuals, whether gathered together as a group or posing independently. Some of these compositions start with a formal portrait in a studio, while others have more of a snapshot quality. On their clothing, Squirewell collages fabric patterns, paint, and glitter, inviting the past into the present.

    “Awinita” (2022), mixed-media collage, paint, and hand-carved shou sugi ban frame, 59 x 45 inches

    Squirewell’s current solo exhibition, Robitussin, Hotcombs & Grease at Plattsburgh State Art Museum, delves into Black identity and daily experience. The title nods to ubiquitous items as “hallmarks of domesticity and comfort in Black homes,” the museum says, focusing on “the reclamation of identity from historical anonymity.”

    Squirewell sources photographs from the Smithsonian Institution’s anonymous photo collections and from family and friends. Through the intimate medium of the portrait, anonymous individuals emerge from the archives and are imbued with vivacious textile patterns, and recognizable luxury brands like Louis Vuitton and Gucci suggest elevated style and status. Scale also plays a role, too, as Squirewell prints the photos quite large, blurring features in the process yet representing the figures closer to life-size so that their presence is palpable.

    Robitussin, Hotcombs & Grease continues through December 5. Plan your visit on the museum’s website, and find more of the artist’s work on Instagram.

    “Uncle O,” cut photograph collage mounted on canvas, oil, and glitter in hand-carved shou sugi ban frame, 62.5 x 32.5 inches

    “Colorful Joseph II” (2024), cut and collaged archival photography, glitter, and paint, 15.5 x 12.5 inches

    “Chico & Charles 3” (2025), manipulated photo-collage, 42 x 26 inches

    “Almaz & Lil Symphony”, mixed media collage, paint, and hand-carved shou sugi ban frame, 57 x 40 inches

    “Dai Dai” (2022), mixed-media collage, paint, and hand-carved shou sugi van frame, 47 x 39 inches

    “Benny & Al,” mixed media, photo collage, acrylic paint, and glitter in a hand-carved frame, 88 x 58 inches

    “He’s Home” (2024), artist-printed photos collaged with paint and glitter in a hand-carved shou sugi ban frame, 20 x 12 inches

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