Author: Autumn Reese

James Day has now been an artist for twenty-five years, long enough that his own career offers a useful case study in how a practice can change shape without losing its underlying identity. Looking back across that span, from the summer of 2001 to the present, the shifts in his work are considerable, yet something recognisably consistent runs beneath all of them. Colour Gives Way to Precision The paintings Day made at the start of his career were bright and unguarded, full of colour and immediacy. The work he makes now could hardly be more different in technique: photorealistic, carefully…

Lib Mason rarely paints an idea directly. Instead, she builds a cast of stand-ins, devils, cakes, a wooden boy, a lone child in an empty field, and lets those symbols carry the weight her subjects might otherwise deliver too bluntly. Symbolism as Strategy Mason’s artist statement is explicit about this approach: rather than illustrating political, social, and environmental events literally, she reaches for beauty, symbolism, humor, and sometimes absurdity. That choice is technical as well as thematic. Her paintings are built using the Flemish technique, beginning with a grisaille to establish form and light, then developed through layers of transparent…

Some artists build a body of work around a single, well-defined idea. Natalie Angel does something different. She works from feeling outward, letting an emotion, a memory, or an unresolved thought take the lead, and trusting the imagery to arrive on its own terms. Ask her how a painting begins, and the honest answer is: she doesn’t entirely know until it’s underway. That intuitive process sits at the center of everything Angel makes. She describes herself as an avant-garde contemporary artist working through themes of identity, transformation, freedom, and resilience, but the paintings themselves are less concerned with illustrating those…

Long before Indra Persad Milowe picked up a brush with any real seriousness, she was already collecting material for her life’s work, though she wouldn’t have called it that at the time. Growing up in Trinidad and Tobago during the 1950s and 1960s, she was simply living: hearing steelpan drift through the air, watching limbo dancers bend beneath flaming torches, smelling curried chickpeas frying at a roadside stand. These weren’t yet subjects. They were just Tuesday. Decades later, living in Salem, Massachusetts, those ordinary moments became the raw material of an artistic career that would eventually stretch from the Caribbean…

Walk into “‘On the Verge,” Sylvia Snowden’s new show at White Cube, and the first thing you feel is that the paintings have been waiting for you not patiently, not politely, but with the pent-up charge of someone about to tell you something you probably won’t want to hear. This is especially true of the “M Street” figures. The muscular, whiplashed bodies are feel carved out of paint that’s thick enough to bruise if you get too close. They lurch toward you in their reds and ochres as if the polite conventions and hyper sexualized portraiture we see so often today were an…

ICOM’s new award celebrates sustainable practices in museums, inviting global submissions to inspire and promote long-term positive change in the museum sector. The International Council of Museums (ICOM) has announced a call for applications for the inaugural global award recognizing sustainable development practices within the museum community. This award underscores ICOM’s dedication to the UN’s Agenda 2030, aiming to inspire sustainable practices that lead to long term positive changes in the museum sector and beyond. “Accessible and inclusive, museums foster diversity and sustainability. We welcome diverse submissions from all museum types, addressing various sustainable development goals. I am proud to…

Las Vegas Museum of Art by Francis Kéré approved for Symphony Park, set to open by 2027. The project promises to transform the city’s art scene and cultural landscape. The City Council of Las Vegas has officially approved the detailed plans for the Las Vegas Museum of Art (LVMA), an ambitious new cultural institution that will soon grace the vibrant Symphony Park district. Designed by Francis Kéré, the Pritzker Prize-winning architect, the museum is set to occupy 1.5 acres of land, providing a unique space for art, community events, and public engagement. The museum’s development marks a significant step in transforming the city’s art scene…

Adam Pendleton has spent the better part of two decades making art in a language only he can speak fluently, in which mark making, pictographs, and short, all caps texts converge into a form of abstraction that hovers somewhere between early modernism, protest signage, and graffiti. While it’s a language that isn’t wholly discernible at first, it’s worth spending the time to learn how to appreciate it. Pendleton’s project is less about delivering clarity than it is about encouraging close inspection and deep introspection. These efforts are on full view in his sprawling exhibition, “Love Queen,” at the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture…

A new museum dedicated to George Grosz is slated to open in Berlin this coming May. The museum, called Das kleine Grosz Museum (The Little Grosz Museum), was organized and funded by the George Grosz Estate and a number of private citizens, and while it is only expected to be in operation for a limited period, officials involved with the institution are hoping to make it a permanent fixture of the city’s scene. “It is not our intention to compete with other Berlin museums for state funding,” Pay Matthis Karstens, the Museum’s future curator, told the Art Newspaper, which first reported news of the museum.…

Alice Channer: Industrial Processes Meet Art in ‘Heavy Metals / Silk Cut’ Exhibition from July 2 to October 8, 2023 at Kunstmuseum Appenzell. In the world of contemporary art, Alice Channer, a London-based artist, is making waves with her unique approach to sculpture. Born in 1977 in Oxford, UK, Channer’s work is a fascinating exploration of the relationship between materials, bodies, machines, and industrial processes. Her upcoming exhibition, “Heavy Metals / Silk Cut,” is set to be displayed across two buildings of the Kunstmuseum and the Kunsthalle Appenzell from July 2 to October 8, 2023. The exhibition will feature new…