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Metaphysical Portals Emerge Within Forests in Eli McMullen’s Otherworldly Paintings
by Aurelia Butler 30 April 2025, 18:40
“Inner Escape” (2025), acrylic on panel, 16 × 20 inches. All images courtesy of the artist and Thinkspace Projects, shared with permission
Metaphysical Portals Emerge Within Forests in Eli McMullen’s Otherworldly Paintings
April 30, 2025
Art
Kate Mothes
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Roaming the metaphysical spaces between dreams and reality, Eli McMullen draws on the familiarity of suburban and wooded landscapes to bid us into dreamlike worlds. Plumbing the interplay of perception and imagination, his acrylic paintings invite us into moments of wonder and transcendence.
The Richmond, Virginia-based artist’s forthcoming solo exhibition, Sleep Walk at Thinkspace Projects, explores relationships between nostalgia, spirituality, nature, and psychological phenomena. He celebrates “fleeting moments that feel suspended in time, glimmers that quietly urge to be searched,” the gallery says.
“Desire Path Finder” (2025), acrylic on panel, 16 × 20 inches
Sleep Walk welcomes viewers into nighttime forest scenes that glow with geometric light forms, altar-like architecture, and prismatic reflections. Titles like “Desire Path Finder,” “Liminal Bridge,” and “Kismet Gateway” highlight the essence of links, portals, metamorphoses, and in-between spaces.
The show runs May 3 to 24 in Los Angeles. See more on McMullen’s website and Instagram.
“Dream Weaver” (2025), acrylic on panel, 20 × 24 inches
“Embers Rest” (2025), acrylic on panel, 18 × 24 inches
“Draped Shrine” (2025), acrylic on panel, 11 × 14 inches
“Liminal Bridge” (2025), acrylic on panel, 16 × 20 inches
“Fractal Grove” (2025), acrylic on panel, 11 × 14 inches
“Kismet Gateway” (2025), acrylic on panel, 16 × 20 inches
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From Miniature to Massive, Boundless Landscapes Spill Out of Frame in Barry Hazard’s Paintings
by Aurelia Butler 28 April 2025, 16:27
“Whirlwind” (2023), 7 x 9 x 1.5 inches. Images © the artist, shared with permission
From Miniature to Massive, Boundless Landscapes Spill Out of Frame in Barry Hazard’s Paintings
April 28, 2025
Art
Jackie Andres
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Confined within tiny, ornate frames until inevitably spilling over the edge, Barry Hazard’s expansive landscapes are “spaces for reflecting, contemplation, and surrendering to something larger and more timeless than us,” he says.
Inspired by vast notions such as the relationship between humans and nature and ecological conflict, Hazard (previously) translates broad themes into miniature works. The Brooklyn-based artist employs tiny frames, wood panel, and acrylic to depict a multitude of scenes from mudslides and flower farms to glaciers and snowy roads. With so much contained in such small compositions, Hazard describes his process as “a simple way to rapidly engage in an artistic process, with an ultra-manageable scale.”
“Flower Farm” (2024), 6 x 5 x 7 inches
Last year for New York’s Upstate Art Weekend, the artist expanded upon his miniature work, delving into a project on the opposite end of the scale of proportions. “Walk-In Painting” culminates Hazard’s carpentry and muralist experience, uniquely activating his otherwise tiny paintings. Viewers are able to step into a rolling scenery teeming with vibrant blooms, tufts of bushes, and sweeping mountains in the distance, creating an experience that is “both fictional and non-fictional,” the artist explains.
Hazard has also ventured into the realm of batch production through the technique of resin casting. While the artist typically uses more traditional materials for his small works, he has been able to create a sizable amount of gifts for friends and family by creating numerous blank casted bases before painting each by hand.
Find more work on the artist’s website, and take a look into his process on Instagram.
“Mudslide” (2024), 9 x 7 x 2 inches
“Walk-In Painting” (2024), 8 x 10 x 7 feet
“Purple Plain” (2023), 1 x 1.5 inches
“Sunset Glacier” (2023), 9 x 8 x 2 inches
“Flood Zone” (2024), 8 x 7 x 3 inches
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Through Surreal Paintings, Shyama Golden Reincarnates a Mythic Narrative
by Aurelia Butler 26 April 2025, 12:00
“Too Bad, So Sad, Maybe Next Birth” (2025), oil on linen, 42 x 80 inches. All images courtesy of PM/AM, shared with permission
Through Surreal Paintings, Shyama Golden Reincarnates a Mythic Narrative
April 26, 2025
Art
Grace Ebert
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When Shyama Golden would find herself disappointed as a child, her parents would often respond with “too bad, so sad, maybe next birth.” Invoking reincarnation and the possibilities of an alternative life, this phrase continues to reinvent itself in Golden’s practice.
On view next month at PM/AM, Too Bad, So Sad, Maybe Next Birth presents a collection of lush paintings filled with surreal details, earthly textures, and a recurring blue-faced character. As with earlier series, the artist invents a vast, magical narrative that flows through each of the works, this time as a four-act performance.
“Bevis Bawa Garden, 1936” (2025), oil on linen, 72 x 60 inches
The mythical storyline unfolds with a collection of diptychs comprised of a large-scale scene and a close-up companion offering another perspective. These pairings visualize a sort of alternative past for the artist as she explores the inexorable twining of personal agency and larger forces like fate and collective experiences that shape our identities.
In Too Bad, So Sad, Maybe Next Birth, Golden opens with her blue-faced alter ego named Maya, a rendition of the Sri Lankan folklore tricksters known as yakkas. Dressed in a fur suit, the character lies in the roadway, her chest split open to reveal a bright red wound. A bag of oranges is littered nearby.
The counterpart to this titular work is a self-portrait of the artist barefoot, posed against the rocky roadside. She stands atop cracked pavement while oranges spill blood-red juice on the ground. Introspective yet invoking the universal, the pair grasps at the tension between unexpected violence and death, whether metaphoric or real, and the ability to find resilience in the face of adversity.
Golden’s series continues to unravel as a series of contrasts. She considers fame, erasure, and where freedom resides within the two, along with the notion of sole creative geniuses mistakenly thought to operate outside the whole. And in “Mexican Texas, 1862,” the artist tackles the porous, if not arbitrarily drawn, boundaries that tie us to states and nations and ultimately, change over time.
“Stories of My Death Have Been Greatly Exaggerated” (2025), oil on linen, 72 x 36 inches
In addition to her oil paintings for this exhibition, Golden is collaborating on an animated video project with her husband, the director Paul Trillo, who will build an AI model trained exclusively on Golden’s paintings. Given the hesitation by many artists about the role of artificial intelligence and intellectual property, the pair is interested in confronting the issue from the perspective of influence and the myth of the lone genius. Golden writes:
Many artists who are canonized are actually working in a style that they didn’t invent but that was part of a movement arising out of their time and location. AI is deeply unsettling to artists in the West because we romanticise the artist as a singular figure, who is only influenced by one to three other clearly defined artists, giving them a lineage of artistic inheritance and perceived value.
Golden also ties this idea to “the clout needed to command a price for our work,” which she suggests is simply another narrative device in the act of self-mythologizing.
If you’re in London, Too Bad, So Sad, Maybe Next Birth runs from May 23 to July 1. Find more from Golden on her website and Instagram.
“Mexican Texas, 1862” (2025), oil on linen, 72 x 60 inches
“A Myth of My Own Creation” (2025), oil on linen, 66 x 48 inches
“You Seeing What I’m Seeing” (2025), oil on linen, 48 x 48 inches
“The Sound of One Bird Colliding” (2025), oil on linen, 24 x 30 inches
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Hundreds of Huge Flowers Spring Forth in Carly Glovinski’s Monumental ‘Almanac’
by Aurelia Butler 24 April 2025, 14:56
“Almanac” (2024), installation view, acrylic on Mylar. Photos by Julia Featheringill. All images courtesy of Carly Glovinski, Morgan Lehman Gallery, and MASS MoCA, shared with permission
Hundreds of Huge Flowers Spring Forth in Carly Glovinski’s Monumental ‘Almanac’
April 24, 2025
ArtNature
Kate Mothes
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“Gardening gives one back a sense of proportion about everything—except itself,” author May Sarton (1912-1995) wrote in her book Plant Dreaming Deep (1968), a journal about discovering a love of tending to the land. For Carly Glovinski (previously), the sentiment incidentally frames something of a raison d’être for the artist’s remarkable large-scale floral installation at MASS MoCA.
Glovinski was especially moved by Sarton’s book The House by the Sea (1977), which traces the author’s move from New Hampshire to the seacoast of Maine. The vibrancy of gardens spurred the artist’s fascination with flowers, culminating recently in an expansive work titled “Almanac.”
Celebrating the diversity and dynamism of blooms, the piece explores ideas around placemaking and the passage of time. “For Glovinski, the garden is a metaphor for collapsed time and perishable memories,” says an exhibition statement. Along with Sarton, the artist also draws on poet Emily Dickinson’s love for plants, channeling literary reflections on connecting with the simple pleasures—and sublime chaos—of nature.
“Almanac” takes its name from the annual guide that forecasts weather and a provides calendars for astronomical events, tides, and planting. The piece took more than a year to complete and comprises hundreds of pressed flower paintings made with washy acrylic paint applied to both sides of semi-transparent mylar. The gestural brushstrokes on translucent material evoke a sense of lightness and delicacy, like real petals blown up to larger-than-life size. Above the installation, she’s labeled segments with the months the blooms appear.
Glovinski references pressed blossoms that she has grown, harvested, or collected from friends, nodding to Emily Dickinson’s love of the practice. (The poet created a stunning herbarium containing 424 specimens collected around her home in Amherst, Massachusetts.) “By observing, tending, and preserving flowers, ‘Almanac’ becomes both a visual record of the seasons and a commentary on the labor of care,” the museum says.
See more on Glovinski’s website and Instagram.
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In Luminous Portraits, Florence Solis Invokes Feminine Power Amid Constraint
by Aurelia Butler 22 April 2025, 20:09
“Makahiya IX” (2025),
acrylic on canvas, 20 x 16 inches. All photos by Julieta Christy Sarmiento, courtesy of The Mission Projects, shared with permission
In Luminous Portraits, Florence Solis Invokes Feminine Power Amid Constraint
April 22, 2025
Art
Grace Ebert
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When touched, the hypersensitive makahiya plant folds its minuscule leaflets inward, protecting itself from any potential threat.
Florence Solis draws on this defensive response in an ethereal collection of portraits. Beginning with digital collages that meld figures and delicate, organic ornaments, the Filipino-Canadian artist translates the imagined forms to the canvas. Shrouded in dainty, beaded veils or entwined with botanicals, each protagonist appears bound and concealed, their bodies and faces obscured by hair or grass.
“Sirena” (2025), acrylic on canvas, 30 x 24 inches
As Solis sees it, the figures may be restricted, but they’re also able to find strength and transformation. “Filipino women, much like the makahiya, have been taught to yield, to soften, to take up less space,” she says. “And yet, beneath this quietness lies an undeniable force—one that persists, adapts, and reclaims space in its own way.”
Working in saturated, often single-color palettes, Solis renders figures who appear to harness magical powers. She references Filipino folklore and the belief in the power of the everyday to lead to the divine, painting women rooted in tradition and myth, yet determined to see their transformation through.
The vivid portraits shown here will be on view at EXPO CHICAGO this week with The Mission Projects. Find more from Solis on Instagram.
“Sa Lupa (On Ground)” (2025), acrylic on canvas, 30 x 24 inches
“Totem” (2025), acrylic on canvas, 30 x 24 inches
“Makahiya VIII” (2025), acrylic on canvas, 20 x 16 inches
“Makahiya VII” (2025), acrylic on canvas, 48 x 36 inches
“Alay (Offering)” (2025), acrylic on canvas, 48 x 36 inches
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Here’s What We’re Excited to See at EXPO CHICAGO 2025
by Aurelia Butler 21 April 2025, 17:44
Wangari Mathenge, “Re-Membering (Folded In Time)” (2025), oil on canvas, 57.99 x 82.01 inches
Here’s What We’re Excited to See at EXPO CHICAGO 2025
April 21, 2025
ArtColossalPartner
Grace Ebert
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This week marks the beginning of Chicago’s art world Olympics as the largest fair returns to Navy Pier. From April 24 to 27, EXPO CHICAGO will host hundreds of galleries, site-specific projects, talks, and multi-disciplinary programming both downtown and across the city.
To help you navigate, we’re sharing the artworks we’re most looking forward to seeing. And, if you haven’t gotten your tickets yet, use the code COLOSSAL25 for $5 off.
1. Wangari Mathenge with Pippy Houldsworth Gallery (London)
The Chicago-based, Kenyan artist will present a collection of vivid new paintings that speak to the immense amount of information generated through her intensive research process. Surrounded by books, plants, and brightly patterned East African Kanga fabrics, Mathenge’s figures lounge among objects that transcend colonial narratives.
Ilhwa Kim, “Calculative Flight” (2024), hand-dyed hanji paper, 132 x 164 x 13 centimeters
2. Ilhwa Kim, Gordon Cheung, and Zheng Lu with HOFA (London)
We’ve long been enamored by Kim’s roving, rolled-paper compositions that delineate dense pathways through broader expanses. Her dynamic works will be on view alongside Cheung’s decadent paintings and Lu’s stainless steel splashes.
Florence Solis, “Makahiya VI” (2025), acrylic on canvas, 48 x 36 inches
3. Florence Solis with The Mission Projects (Chicago)
Beginning with digital collage before moving to acrylic and canvas, Solis renders ethereal portraits of women infused with Filipino folklore. Delicate leaves and flowers entwine with coiled hair, while veils shroud the figures in luminous coverings, binding each with a protective, yet restrictive layer.
Suntai Yoo, “The Words” (2024), acrylic on canvas, 91 x 117 centimeters
4. Suntai Yoo with Galerie Gaia (Seoul)
Fragmented, surrealist landscapes figure prominently in Yoo’s paintings, which frequently pair common objects like books, bicycles, and apples with Korean letters. The artist is particularly interested in metaphor and how distinct items interact to create meaning.
Desmond Beach, “The Guardian of the Small & Sacred” (2025), digital painting, woven Jacquard loom, hand and machine sewn pieceworked fabric, 47″x 47 inches
5. Desmond Beach with Richard Beavers Gallery (Brooklyn)
Mixing digital painting with patchwork quilts, Beach creates bold, forward-looking portraits. The Baltimore-born artist invokes the ways that trauma can be harnessed for resistance and collective solidarity.
Jimmy Beauquesne, “Phase 3. Knight of infinite resignation” (2023-2024), colored pencils on paper, hand-cut metallic frame, 62 x 41 x 2 centimeters
6. Jimmy Beauquesne with Fragment (New York)
Nested inside hand-cut metallic frames, Beauquesne’s colored-pencil works imagine a dreamy, apocalyptic world that drips with fantastic details. The nine pieces form a narrative of humanity’s transformation sparked by phantasmagorical change.
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Monumental Murals by Agostino Iacurci Vibrantly Reimagine Urban Facades
by Aurelia Butler 21 April 2025, 14:35
“Cardi (1571-2021)” (2021), wall painting, dimensions variable. Borgo Universo, Aielli. Photo by Domenico d’Alessandro
Monumental Murals by Agostino Iacurci Vibrantly Reimagine Urban Facades
April 21, 2025
ArtDesign
Kate Mothes
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Murals by Agostino Iacurci bring drab buildings to life in bold jewel tones, playful patterns, color blocks, and symmetry. Whether painting directly onto bricks and plaster or designing immense fabric sheaths to cover construction scaffolding, the artist’s vibrant compositions enliven street corners and urban thoroughfares.
Iacurci often emphasizes geometric patterns, flora, classical vases, and niches that hold symbolic objects or figures. You might enjoy checking out Gingko Press’s Mural Masters, a survey of the next generation of street artists, and see more on Iacurci’s website and Instagram.
“Landscape n.1” (2021), wall painting, 27.7 x 7.1 meters. Las Vegas, Nevada. Commissioned by Life is Beautiful
“Disegno d’esame” (2021), enamel on wall, dimensions variable. Pascucci Elementary School, Santarcangelo di Romagna. Photo by Francesco Marini
“Grüne Oase” (2024). Frankfurt am Main, Germany. Photo by Ivan Murzin
“COINCIDENCES.” Ensorinstituut, Oostende, Belgium. Produced by The Crystal Ship
Detail of “COINCIDENCES”
“Landscape n.2” (2021), print on PVC scaffold sheet, 17 x 14 meters. Pastificio Cerere, Rome. Photo by Carlo Romano
“Landscape n.3” (2021). Pinacoteca Civica, Foggia. Photo by Domenico d’Alessandro
“L’antiporta” (2021), paint on wall, dimensions variable. Biblioteca Ugo Tognazzi, Pomezia. Curated by Marcello Smarrelli and Pastificio Cerere for Sol Indiges. Photo by Lorenzo Palmieri
Detail of “L’antiporta”
Detail of “Cardi (1571-2021).” Photo by Domenico d’Alessandro
Detail of “Disegno d’esame.” Photo by Domenico d’Alessandro
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In Elaborate ‘Textile Paintings,’ Anne von Freyburg Reframes Femininity in European Art History
by Aurelia Butler 14 April 2025, 15:53
“Sunny Side Up (After Fragonard, The Lover Crowned)” (2025), textile painting: acrylic ink, synthetic-fabrics, PVC fabric, tapestry-fabric, sequin fabrics, hand-embroidery, polyester wadding, and hand-dyed tassel fringes on canvas, 223 x 280 centimeters. All images courtesy of the artist and Saatchi Gallery, London, shared with permission
In Elaborate ‘Textile Paintings,’ Anne von Freyburg Reframes Femininity in European Art History
April 14, 2025
Art
Kate Mothes
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As if splashed onto the wall with a monumental brush, Anne von Freyburg’s installations visualize fabric and fiber as gestural splotches of paint. Colors bleed into one another and drips extend to the floor in what the London-based Dutch artist describes as “textile paintings.”
Drawing on 17th and 18th-century European painting traditions like the still lifes of the Dutch Golden Age and the stylized exuberance of Rococo, von Freyburg reframes relationships between craft and fine art.
“Fantasia (After Boucher, Venus and Cupid)” (2022), textile painting: acrylic ink, synthetic-fabrics, tapestry-fabric, sequin fabrics, hand-embroidery, polyester wadding, and hand-dyed tassel fringes on canvas, 144 x 195 centimeters
References to Rococo artists like Jean-Honoré Fragonard and François Boucher play prominently in von Freyburg’s solo exhibition, Filthy Cute, at Saatchi Gallery. Tapping into “the clichés of heterosexual romance and societal expectations of women…she explores the pressures women face, particularly the expectations of being ‘caretakers’ and ‘pleasers,’” says a statement. Von Freyburg turns her attention to themes of compassion, freedom, and women as sovereign individuals.
Filthy Cute celebrates sensuality and the feminine while highlighting unexpected associations between materials. The artist’s abstract compositions often reference florals that are blurred, dripping, and verging on complete abstraction. Glossy fabrics in a range of colors swirl without fully mixing, resulting in sensual shapes that are beguiling and strange.
Von Freyburg describes one undergirding theme as “commodity fetishism,” tapping into the 17th-century fashion for Dutch floral still lifes and the infamous economic speculation bubble that characterized Tulip Mania between 1634 and 1637.
The show continues through May 11 in London, running concurrently Flowers: Flora in Contemporary Art and Culture, which also includes work by von Freyburg. Find more on the artist’s website and Instagram.
“Electric Feel (After Fragonard, The Pursuit)” (2025), textile 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 “Electric Feel (After Fragonard, The Pursuit)”
Detail of “Electric Feel (After Fragonard, The Pursuit)”
“Kabloom (After Jan van Huysum, Flower still-life)” (2024), acrylic ink, synthetic-fabrics, PVC fabric, tapestry-fabric, sequin fabrics, hand-embroidery, polyester wadding, and hand-dyed tassel fringes on canvas, 230 x 130 centimeters
“Tuttifrutti (After Jan van Huysum, Flower still-life)” (2024), acrylic ink, synthetic-fabrics, PVC fabric, tapestry-fabric, sequin fabrics, hand-embroidery, polyester wadding, and hand-dyed tassel fringes on canvas, 235 x 135 centimeters
Detail of “Sunny Side Up (After Fragonard, The Lover Crowned)”
Installation view of ‘Filthy Cute’ at Saatchi Gallery, London
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painting

More stories

Metaphysical Portals Emerge Within Forests in Eli McMullen’s Otherworldly Paintings

From Miniature to Massive, Boundless Landscapes Spill Out of Frame in Barry Hazard’s Paintings

Through Surreal Paintings, Shyama Golden Reincarnates a Mythic Narrative

Hundreds of Huge Flowers Spring Forth in Carly Glovinski’s Monumental ‘Almanac’

In Luminous Portraits, Florence Solis Invokes Feminine Power Amid Constraint

Here’s What We’re Excited to See at EXPO CHICAGO 2025

Monumental Murals by Agostino Iacurci Vibrantly Reimagine Urban Facades

In Elaborate ‘Textile Paintings,’ Anne von Freyburg Reframes Femininity in European Art History

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