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Floral Quilted Portraits by Maria A. Guzmán Capron Cultivate Care and Love

by Aurelia Butler 14 May 2025, 18:53

Detail of “Otra Vez.” All images courtesy of Lyles & King, shared with permission

Floral Quilted Portraits by Maria A. Guzmán Capron Cultivate Care and Love

May 14, 2025

Art

Grace Ebert

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For thousands of years, flowers have been a rich source of symbolism. Dating back to the Ottomans, floriology, or the language of flowers, blossomed in the Victorian era when a bouquet functioned as a nonverbal code. The delicate sweetpea, for example, might have been given as a thank you to a particularly generous host, while buttercups would tell the recipient that the sender thought them childish and immature.

Maria A. Guzmán Capron (previously) references the timeless expressions of flowers for Solo Pienso en Volver a Verte, which opens this week at Lyles & King. Translating to “I only think about seeing you again,” the solo exhibition comprises the artist’s signature textile portraits of opulently patterned fabrics in a layered patchwork. Soft and plump with batting, the quilted characters are each unique, although Capron sometimes uses the same secondhand material on several pieces.

“Déjame Llevarte”

Encircled in hand-dyed fabrics, the figures in this body of work are often doubled or conjoined, as in the embracing women of “Otra Vez” or the two-faced subject of “Echa de Pedacitos.” Love, warmth, and protection feature prominently, as hands grasp for one another or emerge as a three-dimensional gesture. Capron envisions these layered, hybrid forms as a way to visualize the various identities, experiences, and memories within all of us.

The artist also stitches and screenprints a wide array of flowers on faces, garments, and throughout the lush surroundings. Sometimes abstract and often indeterminate, the blooms share stories and messages of desire that might be unspeakable or better communicated through a symbol of affection. Tending to love in all of its forms is the thread that runs through each work, as Capron welcomes us into a world in which compassion and care are the most beautiful gifts.

Solo Pienso en Volver a Verte runs through June 21 in New York. Find more from Capron on Instagram.

“Otra Vez”

“Echa de Pedacitos”

“Para Que Me Mires”

“Te Dejé Quererme”

Detail of “Y Comencé”

“También Allí”

“Algo Escondido”

Detail of “Otra Vez”

“Y Comencé”

Detail of “Te Dejé Quererme”

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Paola Grizi Adds New Meaning to ‘Literary Figures’ in Emotive Bronze Sculptures
by Aurelia Butler 14 May 2025, 14:16
“Another Place,” Casart Edition, bronze, 32 x 30 x 35 centimeters
Paola Grizi Adds New Meaning to ‘Literary Figures’ in Emotive Bronze Sculptures
May 14, 2025
Art
Kate Mothes
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In the emotional bronze and terracotta sculptures of Paola Grizi (previously), faces and hands merge with pages of books and manuscripts. Handwriting slides off the leaves onto skin and reliefs of eyes, noses, and mouths peer outward like knowledge and stories personified. Many of her works are scaled to sit on interior surfaces, while others, like “Inner Motion” or “Looking Ahead” take on monumental proportions.
Grizi currently has work permanently on view at Marciano Contemporary in Paris, Bel Air Fine Art in Luxembourg, and Gallery Van Dun in Oisterwijk, The Netherlands. This summer, pieces will also be included in a presentation at Gallery Maner in Port-Aven, France. See more on the artist’s website.
“Looking Ahead,” Casart Edition, bronze, 120 x 110 x 20 centimeters
“Background,” Casart Edition, bronze, 32 x 12 x 15 centimeters
“Inner Motion,” Casart Edition, bronze
“Kiss,” Casart Edition, bronze, 35 x 37 x 20 centimeters
“Boundless,” terracotta
“Composition,” Casart Edition, bronze, 30 x 35 x 25 centimeters
“Multiple Lectures,” Casart Edition, bronze, 35 x 30 x 20 centimeters
Work in progress in the artist’s outdoor studio
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‘Level Up’ by GAFFA Transports Us to an Uncanny Parking Garage
by Aurelia Butler 12 May 2025, 15:30
Installation view of ‘Level Up.’ Photos by Ladina Bischof. All images courtesy of GAFFA and Kunsthalle Arbon, shared with permission
‘Level Up’ by GAFFA Transports Us to an Uncanny Parking Garage
May 12, 2025
Art
Kate Mothes
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When you think of an orange safety cone, you might imagine rows of the small reflective objects placed around temporarily parked vehicles or, say, next to potholes. But a stroll through GAFFA’s recent exhibition, Level Up at Kunsthalle Arbon, and the everyday sight took the form of an unmissably imposing, monumental structure.
GAFFA is a collective founded nine years ago by Wanja Harb, Linus Lutz, Dario Forlin, and Lucian Kunz. Through a signature blend of humor, irony, and an interdisciplinary approach involving zines, collages, photography, sculpture, and installation, the group challenges our perceptions of physical space, history, and society.
In their sometimes absurd installations, GAFFA often brings the outdoors in, like importing a beach chair and umbrella into a concrete room or constructing an enormous brown slug that slid across a gallery floor. In Level Up, traffic serves as the primary focus—both its symbols and the fine line between regulation and chaos.
GAFFA transformed the Swiss art gallery into a parking garage containing an extra-long stretch limo, an entry ticket, orange cone, and double-arrow directional sign. We don’t know to whom the car belongs or where they are.
Viewers are transported into a kind of Alice in Wonderland experience where the scale of everything feels befuddling and incongruent. The car, though life-size, is made of cardboard, and the yellow sign is an oil painting.
“Underground garages and parking garages are places we usually only notice in passing,” the gallery says in a statement. “They are purpose-built ‘non-places’ to which hardly anyone pays attention, yet they have their own aesthetics: the strict geometry of the parking spaces, the rhythmic movement of the barriers, the seemingly random arrangement of the holes on a parking ticket.”
Anyone who has driven into a large garage knows the anxieties of a gate not opening when it’s supposed to or the ticket machine not working. Within the large yet controlled space of the Kunsthalle Arbon, Level Up begged the question: how does one get out of here? Explore more on the collective’s website.
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Caio Marcolini Weaves Delicate Metal Mesh into Spawning Cellular Sculptures
by Aurelia Butler 9 May 2025, 14:59
All images courtesy of Caio Marcolini, shared with permission
Caio Marcolini Weaves Delicate Metal Mesh into Spawning Cellular Sculptures
May 9, 2025
Art
Grace Ebert
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Caio Marcolini’s fascination with organic systems began simply enough. It was “the trail left by the sea on the sand, the intertwined roots of trees within the forest, (and) the flowers falling from trees” that he found enchanting. But then, when his first child was born in 2021, he began investigating how these same winding, looping, knotted patterns appeared inside the body.
What resulted is a series of roving sculptures woven with thin strips of brass, copper, and iron wire. Hollow tubes emerge from delicate bell-like forms secured to a wall, while occasional, long drips drop from the upper area and dangle mid-air.
Trained as a goldsmith, Marcolini incorporates jewelry-making techniques and industrial design principles into his painstaking, entirely hand-powered process. Using a mallet, dowels, and various manual tools, the Brazilian artist creates a perfectly uniform mesh that he then shapes into supple, rounded forms. “I rarely draw—just small sketches—and most of the time, I imagine a shape using initial parameters,” he says. “The compositions are made in an exploratory way, fluid and organic, as I weave the structure and experiment on the studio wall. I can say it’s a very intuitive process.”
As the artist sees it, these individual, linked metal pieces are like single cells or DNA that repeat again and again, spawning new forms. While distinct in shape, the sculptures are still malleable, transparent, and abstract. The works resemble the circuitous systems found in the human body, but also the creatures found in forests and oceans, and occupy a sort of ambiguous, hybrid space.
Marcolini titles his collections with words like colony, system, captured, and bilateral. Referencing the relationship between single components and the larger whole, each body of work becomes a sort of community of organisms that seem to take on a life of their own. Rather than impose a particular interpretation, the artist leaves the exact form of the works open-ended, as if they might morph into new life at any moment.
Not Every Repetition is a Return, Marcolini’s solo exhibition, is on view through May 23 at Galeria Lica Pedrosa in São Paulo. Find more of his work on his website and Instagram.
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Ethereal Weavings Merge Architecture and Nature in Élise Peroi’s ‘For Thirsting Flowers’
by Aurelia Butler 8 May 2025, 14:09
Installation view of ‘For Thirsting Flowers.’ All images courtesy of the artist and CARVALHO PARK, New York, shared with permission
Ethereal Weavings Merge Architecture and Nature in Élise Peroi’s ‘For Thirsting Flowers’
May 8, 2025
Art
Kate Mothes
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Imagine standing at a window at dawn as the pale yellow morning light filters through the trees, slowly illuminating flower petals and setting the scene for birdsong. As you move around, the light dapples and changes, and details emerge or disappear around other forms. For Élise Peroi, this sensation provides a starting point for elegant textile sculptures.
Onto graceful wooden frames, the French artist weaves ethereal, layered screens evocative of dreamy portals to nature. “The luminosity of Peroi’s woven paintings is such that we might feel ourselves carried outside to watch the sky brighten, the air soft against our skin,” says Dr. Rebecca Birrell in an essay accompanying Peroi’s solo exhibition, For Thirsting Flowers, at CARVALHO PARK.
Detail of “Pensée I” (2025), painted silk and linen, 36 x 28 x 3 inches
The artist taps into the long tradition of European tapestries, which were used for both decoration and to help keep homes and churches insulated. Stitched by hand, the works could reach architectonic proportions and contain highly detailed figurative and narrative scenes. Peroi departs from customary associations with tapestries by removing the pieces from the wall and creating standalone, self-supporting structures.
She also emphasizes a kind of opening-up of the textile itself. The interactions between warp and weft are loose, delicate, and irregular. And each piece’s depth is determined by the wooden framework, details of which often jut outward in gentle yet willful angles.
Peroi’s sculptures appear to subtly morph as one walks around, merging internal and external perspectives. The artist explores relationships between emptiness, form, perception, and the built environment, hinting at recognizable shapes like flowers and foliage set against muted diamond-shaped geometric patterns or open spaces in the weave. And the frames serve both as display devices and looms—the process and finished piece merged into one.
For Thirsting Flowers continues in Brooklyn through May 23. See more on the artist’s website.
Installation view of ‘For Thirsting Flowers’ at CARVALHO PARK, New York
“La lune” (2025), silk, silver leaf, gouache, acrylic, and linen, 64 x 55 x 6 inches
“Pensée I” (2025), painted silk and linen, 36 x 28 x 3 inches
Installation view of ‘For Thirsting Flowers’ at CARVALHO PARK, New York
Installation view of ‘For Thirsting Flowers’ at CARVALHO PARK, New York
“Songes II” (2022), painted silk and linen, 55 x 78 x 6 inches
Detail of “Songes II”
Installation view of ‘For Thirsting Flowers’ at CARVALHO PARK, New York
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Isabelle D’s Lush Crocheted Landscapes Intertwine Pain and Pleasure
by Aurelia Butler 6 May 2025, 17:30
From the ‘Bruise’ series. All images courtesy of Gallery Nosco, shared with permission
Isabelle D’s Lush Crocheted Landscapes Intertwine Pain and Pleasure
May 6, 2025
ArtCraft
Grace Ebert
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At seven years old, Isabelle D learned to crochet as a means of supporting her family. Taking lessons from her grandmother, the young artist crafted various items to sell at local markets and set herself on a path she continues to follow today.
From silk, cotton, viscose, and other fibers, Isabelle D crochets innumerable forms evocative of coral, sea sponges, anemones, flowers, molds, spores, and more. Each work comprises a diverse array of sculptural pieces, which nest together in broad landscapes brimming with myriad colors and textures.
“A Officinalis”
The artist’s childhood ingenuity has instilled a commitment to care and resilience that appears both materially and metaphorically in her practice. In her new A Officinalis series, the medicinal, anti-inflammatory properties of the marshmallow plant become a symbol for healing and regeneration. Soft, supple forms in pale pinks and blues are met by fuzzy structures in creamy white yarn, creating a quiet, meditative garden for recovery.
Composed of vibrant reds and purples, the Bruise series takes a converse approach. Color is always critical to Isabelle D’s practice, and these works rely on vibrant, saturated reds, purples, and blues to mimic a damaged body. While the pieces evoke injury, they’re markedly beautiful and a sort of homage to the strength that emerges from trauma.
In the way that crochet requires an even tension to achieve stitches that aren’t too loose or too tight, Isabelle D strives for a similar balance in her practice and rejects the fast pace at which today’s world moves. Instead, she crafts each piece by hand without the help of assistants, immersing herself in the slow, methodical process of inserting the hook and looping it through the yarn.
If you’re in Brussels, stop by Gallery Nosco to see the artist’s solo exhibition, Hanging by a Thread, which runs through May 24.
From the ‘Bruise’ series
From the ‘Bruise’ series
Detail of “A Officinalis”
Detail of “A Officinalis”
Detail of “Mensonge et Vérité”
Detail of “Mensonge et Vérité”
“Mould”
From the ‘Bruise’ series
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Adrian Landon Brooks and Jaime Molina Assemble Enigmatic Narratives in ‘No Man’s Land’
by Aurelia Butler 6 May 2025, 15:30
Adrian Landon Brooks. All images courtesy of the artists and Preacher, shared with permission
Adrian Landon Brooks and Jaime Molina Assemble Enigmatic Narratives in ‘No Man’s Land’
May 6, 2025
Art
Kate Mothes
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Within the compartments of reimagined wooden crates or carved sculptures that open on to reveal inner forms, Adrian Landon Brooks and Jaime Molina explore the possibilities of found materials in mixed-media sculptures and paintings. The artists’ duo exhibition No Man’s Land at Preacher Gallery highlights their kindred yet unique approaches.
Brooks brings found materials to life through collaging and layering, using bold lines, color, and pattern to suggest sacred symbols and merge a sense of newness with age. Molina carves his “cuttys” from hunks of timber, pounding swaths of nails to suggest the hair and beards of solemn male figures.
Jaime Molina
An enigmatic narrative undercurrent runs through No Man’s Land, as both artists draw on folk art and craft to explore geometry and assemblage techniques. Cloaked figures and animal-human hybrids nod to the metaphysical in Brooks’ pieces, while Molina’s pensive figures tap into the mysterious of consciousness.
The show highlights how Brooks and Molina have created “a shared world that feels both ancient and brand new—a thoughtful mix of mysticism, memory, and hand-hewn craft,” the gallery says.
No Man’s Land opens on May 8 and continues through May 29 in Austin. Find more on the gallery’s website.
Adrian Landon Brooks
Jaime Molina
Adrian Landon Brooks
Jaime Molina
Adrian Landon Brooks
Jaime Molina
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Discarded Packaging and Labels Find New Life in Kelly Kozma’s Vibrant Patchworks
by Aurelia Butler 2 May 2025, 17:04
“Magma & Reef” (2025). All images courtesy of Kelly Kozma and Paradigm Gallery + Studio, shared with permission
Discarded Packaging and Labels Find New Life in Kelly Kozma’s Vibrant Patchworks
May 2, 2025
Art
Kate Mothes
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From dozens of Chiquita banana labels to toothpaste packaging to color-coded quality control stickers, Kelly Kozma finds beauty in everyday ephemera. “Piece by piece, she saves any colorful or textured box that she encounters, even though most are expected to be discarded after their original use,” says Paradigm Gallery + Studio, which opens the artist’s solo exhibition Watch Me Backflip this weekend.
Kozma takes an archival and interdisciplinary approach to working with numerous found materials, combining a variety of media into two-dimensional wall works, expansive textile-inspired assemblages, and voluminous suspended installations. “Watch Me Backflip embraces ideas of reusing material, interconnectedness, and the significance of the smallest interaction on a much larger environment,” says an exhibition statement.
Installation view of ‘Watch Me Backflip’ at Paradigm Gallery + Studio
“Iguana & Myrrh” and “Magma & Reef” mark the largest compositions Kozma has created. The former spans 22 feet in circumference and comprises more than 30,000 hand-stitched circles cut from a wide variety of greeting cards, found packaging, and other colorful materials. Committed to a minimal-waste practice, the artist incorporates scraps and loose threads into a number of accompanying works in Watch Me Backflip.
“As she stitches these lovingly collected pieces, Kozma creates connections between the people in her life and the objects she interacts with, inspiring mindfulness against overconsumption and emotional apathy,” the gallery says.
Watch Me Backflip opens today and continues through June 1 in Philadelphia. See more on the artist’s Instagram.
“I See Your Beauty” (2025), process control patches and acrylic on panel
Installation view of ‘Watch Me Backflip’ at Paradigm Gallery + Studio
Detail of “Iguana & Myrrh”
Installation view of ‘Watch Me Backflip’ at Paradigm Gallery + Studio
“Peels So Good” (2025), banana stickers and acrylic on panel
Detail of “Iguana & Myrrh”
The artist working on the installation of “Magma & Reef”
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Architectural Textiles by Sarah Zapata Explore Material Culture and Intersecting Identities
by Aurelia Butler 1 May 2025, 21:13
“Part of the tension (from earthen pits) II” (2024), handwoven cloth, natural and synthetic fiber, and hand coiled rope, 50 x 14 x 14 inches. All images © Sarah Zapata, courtesy of the artist, Kasmin, and Sargent’s Daughters, shared with permission
Architectural Textiles by Sarah Zapata Explore Material Culture and Intersecting Identities
May 1, 2025
Art
Kate Mothes
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In vibrant patchworks of woven patterns and fuzzy fiber ends, Sarah Zapata’s sculptures (previously) emerge as wall-hung tapestries, standalone pieces, and forest-like installations. Through the convergence of architectural structures, soft textiles, and myriad patterns and textures, her site-specific works examine the nature of layered identities shaped by her Peruvian heritage, queerness, her Evangelical upbringing in South Texas, and her current home in New York.
Zapata balances time-honored craft practices with contemporary applications, highlighting the significance of Indigenous Peruvian weaving, for example, as a means of communication. Symbols and patterns composed into cloth traditionally provided a means of sharing knowledge and cosmological beliefs.
Installation view of ‘Beneath the Breath of the Sun’ (2024) at ASU Art Museum, Tempe, Arizona. Commissioned by CALA Alliance
In abstract sculptures that often merge with their surroundings, Zapata incorporates unexpected and vibrant color combinations with woven fabrics and tufted textures. Resisting easy categorization, her pieces are neither functional nor purely decorative, although they play with facets of both.
Zapata consciously holds back from creating work that is too “beautiful,” inviting a remarkable, tactile exploration of relationships between craft, lineage, community, and memory.
Some of the works shown here are included in Support Structures at Sargent’s Daughters, which continues through through May 3. Find more on Zapata’s website and Instagram.
“How often they move between the planets” (2022), handwoven cloth, natural and synthetic fiber, 144 x 60 inches
Detail of “How often they move between the planets”
“Part of the tension (from earthen pits) I” (2024), handwoven cloth, natural and synthetic fiber, and hand coiled rope, 49 x 14 x 14 inches
Installation view of ‘To strange ground and high places,’ Galleria Poggiali, Milan. Photo by Michele Alberto Sereni
“Towards and ominous time III” (2022), handwoven cloth, natural and synthetic fiber, 144 x 60 inches
Installation view of ‘To strange ground and high places,’ Galleria Poggiali, Milan. Photo by Michele Alberto Sereni
Detail of “Part of the tension (from earthen pits) II”
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Next article More

sculpture

Latest story

Floral Quilted Portraits by Maria A. Guzmán Capron Cultivate Care and Love

More stories

Paola Grizi Adds New Meaning to ‘Literary Figures’ in Emotive Bronze Sculptures

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

Caio Marcolini Weaves Delicate Metal Mesh into Spawning Cellular Sculptures

Ethereal Weavings Merge Architecture and Nature in Élise Peroi’s ‘For Thirsting Flowers’

Isabelle D’s Lush Crocheted Landscapes Intertwine Pain and Pleasure

Adrian Landon Brooks and Jaime Molina Assemble Enigmatic Narratives in ‘No Man’s Land’

Discarded Packaging and Labels Find New Life in Kelly Kozma’s Vibrant Patchworks

Architectural Textiles by Sarah Zapata Explore Material Culture and Intersecting Identities

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