2026-06-23 02:23:54
Thousands of handmade ceramic tiles nest together like a puzzle on the facade of the Torre San Luis hotel in Guadalajara, Mexico. Abstract shapes evocative of a lush garden ecosystem burst across the outdoor wall in a collaboration between Alex Proba and the artisans of Cerámica Suro.
Titled “Shape of Movement,” the large-scale public work melds Proba’s organic visual language with a color palette that reflects the local environment. Earthy neutrals, alongside dusty pinks and blues, mimic the sun-drenched landscape, while the dynamic forms appear as if they’re mid-motion.
“The work is about the movement we carry through spaces every day,” Proba shares. “I wanted the mural to feel as if the shapes are interacting with one another and flowing through the architecture itself.”
This is the second collaboration between Proba and Cerámica Suro, following a vibrant swimming pool installation at a Miami home. Find more from both the artist and the studio on Instagram.
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2026-06-23 01:29:33
Whether it’s a large-scale wallpaper reproduction of Sandro Botticelli’s “The Birth of Venus” or pages of deconstructed Artforum magazines, David Daigle’s detailed punch-cut compositions delve into the material and conceptual possibilities of layers, depth, and what is revealed or concealed.
Daigle’s forthcoming exhibition, The Death of Beauty at Track 16, investigates intersections of identity, consumer culture, and desire through a kind of sedimentary approach to commercial imagery, which he excavates with precise holes each revealing tiny tableaux. This method of décollage, which involves building up the surface and then removing elements, literally peels away the meanings and intentions behind contemporary visual culture.
“The Birth of Venus” serves as the foundational composition for Daigle’s “The Death of Venus,” which has been completely overwhelmed by the artist’s hole-punched interventions. Tiny vignettes of people, things, and colorful dots completely erase and replace the titular figure. The masterpiece of 15th-century art has been reduced to an inexpensive, mass-market object for home decor and is further disarticulated by a sea of anonymous eyes and mouths. What could be more symbolic of our era of ultra consumerism?
Daigle digs into a wide array of photographs and printed media, from bus shelter advertisements to a panoramic photograph of Gaza taken around 2020, in which almost all of the buildings have been subsumed under the cratered surface. It’s symbolic of the real devastation the city has experienced since the war began in late 2023. In a broader sense, the artist’s works reveal something akin to a visualization of the media’s often obscured undercurrent.
“I am interested in sublimating technical images designed to generate desire,” the artist says. “Through the subversive act of perforation, I search for the meanings trapped behind them. I want to see past the imagery, through the photograph itself, and ask whether media can become so untruthful that it ultimately consumes both itself and us.”
The Death of Beauty opens on July 18 and continues through September 5 in East Hollywood. In the meantime, explore more on the artist’s Instagram.
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2026-06-22 23:15:47
For Willie Cole, the convergence of material and concept are as important as emotional and even spiritual links to history. Whether repurposing salvaged musical instruments, creating enigmatic visages from stacked stilettos, or arranging hundreds of single-use plastic bottles across a surface, his imaginative sculptural assemblages tap into a range of global traditions, eras, and social and environmental issues.
Cole explores our associations with physical objects by removing them from the context within which we’re accustomed to encountering them. Time-honored African masking traditions and figurative sculptures made of high heels meet modern symbols of labor and culture, such as repeated ironing board motifs or a handful of saxophones that have been reimagined as a bird.
Mind, Body, and Soul, Cole’s current solo exhibition at Sargent’s Daughters, combines new works with pieces made throughout the past couple of decades. The selection emphasizes the artist’s interest in reframing and enriching everyday objects into assemblages of cultural significance.
“His practice transcends specific media or subject matter, moving fluidly across genres and iconographies to explore history, consumerism, and environmentalism,” the gallery says. In the era of fast fashion, the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, and an accelerating climate crisis, consumable and disposable objects contrast how we value our history and customs.
Mind, Body, and Soul continues through July 10 in New York. See more on the artist’s Instagram.
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2026-06-19 00:36:07
Think for a second about what comes to mind when you hear “soda.” Perhaps fizzy, saccharine, and bright? Then consider the connotations of the word “sour.” Maybe it evokes the zing of a lemon, tanginess, or something sharper. This is the relationship that forms the basis of Sour Soda Studio, a project built upon two decades of illustration experience with a playful and slightly unsettling view of some of the most pressing issues of the Anthropocene.
“It didn’t come from a change of direction, or from a manifesto,” says the artist, who prefers to remain unnamed. “It came from something simpler: the need to say different things with a different voice.” In these vibrant, often absurd works with titles like “Plastic Wind” and “The Siren’s Catch,” humans’ control over their surroundings is just a fantasy. Clouds mimic the shapes of trees, tiny figures hold onto botanicals floating inside of bubbles, and totally oblivious festival-goers ignore a polar bear’s plight on a shrinking chunk of ice even as it mauls one of them to death.
Sour Soda Studio’s approach is like a bit of a visual side-eye, nodding with an air of dark humor to the anxieties and societal disconnect around the climate crisis and humanity’s role in the balance of nature. A lumberjack whacks at a tree that’s already on fire. A crocodile disappears into the brush with all but a pool cleaner’s arm. And mermaids are fished from the sea like tuna and later canned in attractive packaging. Aren’t sirens known for enticing humans into the depths?
The artist began by tinkering with ideas on paper, then rendering vectors on an iPad. Over time, what he describes as a “visual alphabet” began to emerge that consisted of simple forms and colors and a world of transitional landscapes and suspended figures, animals, and plants. They’re all “images that can be poetic, decorative, narrative, or something harder to name,” he says. “Many of them touch on nature, ecosystems, consumption, and the relationship between people and the world they live in.”
See more on Behance.
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2026-06-18 22:11:34
Raised in a wealthy, well-connected family in England, the young Leonora Carrington (1917-2011) glommed onto stories her mother and grandmother told of Celtic folk tales about mythical beings in Ireland. Her imagination ran rampant as a child, and a rebellious spirit earned her expulsion from more than one convent school for antics like writing backwards and even trying to levitate. Later, her father insisted she be presented to the court of King George V at a debutante ball and was expected to “marry well.”
Art and fantasy continued to call to Carrington, though, and not to be sallied by social convention, she attended the Chelsea School of Art, discovered Surrealism at the 1936 International Surrealist Exhibition, and developed a close relationship with artist Max Ernst. Over time, through Ernst’s connections, she got to know veritable art historical titans like André Breton, Salvador Dalí, Joan Miró, Pablo Picasso, and more.
The prolific artist may be known foremost for her otherworldly paintings, but the artist’s oeuvre extends far beyond the two-dimensional surface. Shape of Dreams at L’SPACE Gallery highlights Carrington’s imaginative approach to sculpture and wearable art, particularly through large-scale lost-wax bronze sculptures and gold-plated jewelry. The vast majority of the sculptures were cast toward the end of Carrington’s lifetime, with just a few made posthumously.
Dreamy surrealist fictions seeped into every aspect of Carrington’s work. She was profoundly influenced by traumatic experiences during World War II, which led to a months-long stay in a psychiatric institution. Once she was discharged, she eventually settled in Mexico, where she lived in a kind of exile and made surreal work that investigates the nature of transience and uncertainty, especially through motifs like floating creatures and shifting landscapes. “There are exhibitions that begin with scholarship, and there are exhibitions that begin with intuition,” the gallery says. “Shape of Dreams began with a simple but persistent question: what happens when the fantastical beings that inhabit Leonora Carrington’s paintings step out of the canvas and into our world?”
Indeed, the mythical, pagan character of the artist’s three-dimensional works are drawn directly from the figures in her paintings. Cloaked figures, strange masks, and human-animal hybrids populate a fantastical, magical world. “The sculptures appear almost in procession, as though Carrington’s creatures, priestesses, hybrid animals, and dream-beings have stepped out of the pictorial plane and entered the gallery space,” says a statement.
Shape of Dreams continues through July 25 in New York. You may also be interested in a new biopic titled Leonora in the Morning Light, plus the exhibition Leonora Carrington: Portrait of a Singular Artist, which continues through July 19 at the Musée du Luxembourg.
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2026-06-18 00:00:00
One of the most enduring traditions in the U.S. is undoubtedly the state fair. The very first was held in Syracuse, New York, in 1841, and throughout the mid-19th century, states launched their own unique takes. Some of the largest and busiest, such as those in Minnesota, Iowa, and Wisconsin, have been running just about as long as the states have existed. And it’s no coincidence that some of the most well known and beloved events, which usually take place in the late summer or early autumn, represent the nation’s agricultural heartlands.
The exhibition State Fairs: Growing American Craft at the Smithsonian American Art Museum’s Renwick Gallery celebrates the unique crafts and customs of these annual festivals. From cows sculpted out of butter and 4-H contests to seed art and crazy foods, ingenuity is as much a part of the tradition as showcasing time-honored farming practices, rural culture, industry, and of course, arts and crafts.
The Minnesota State Fair is particularly well known for its seed art, which consists of tableaux made entirely of grains and seeds that are cultivated in the state. Artists often translate famous artworks using a variety of crops, and portraits of celebrities are another popular subject. When submitted for consideration, artists must supply a “legend card” that demonstrates which seeds they used.
The Renwick Gallery show highlights more than 240 objects and artworks, from elaborate contemporary jewelry pieces to historic quilts to a rhinestone rodeo outfit. A contemporary mixed-media resin necklace by artist and jewelry designer Morgan Hill celebrates treats and pastimes, while a geometric weaving by Agueda Martínez (1898-2000) highlights the extraordinary craft of Southwest tapestry blanket weaving.
Growing American Craft is the first large-scale survey of state fair creativity of its kind, representing 43 states and Tribal Nations. “Ribbon-winning artworks and engaging craft demonstrations illuminate the lives of the artists—their families, memories, honors, and struggles,” the museum says.
Part of the show’s aim is to highlight the pride, resilience, and inventiveness of rural communities, dashing stereotypes in the process and illuminating how fairgrounds are woven into the social fabric of the U.S. Visitors encounter a wide range of unique interpretations of state fair events, such as a pyramid of more than 700 glass jars of preserved fruits and vegetables by canner extraordinaire Rod Zeitler.
Crops themselves take center stage in many of the works, including an elaborate sweetgrass basket by South Carolinian artist Corey Alston, who draws on the Gullah Geechee basket traditions to weave remarkably imaginative designs. And Justin Favela has also reimagined the palatial Rubenstein Grand Salon into an immersive space titled “Capilla de Maiz (Maize Chapel).” The walls are fringed with gold and piñata corncobs, tapping into the role of maize in America throughout several millennia.
State Fairs: Growing American Craft continues through September 7 in Washington, D.C. The Smithsonian has also produced a beautiful catalogue to accompany the show, which you can find on Bookshop.
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