2026-09-12 02:52:30
Through brilliant oranges and moody shades of blue, Los Angeles-based artist Roberta Gentry renders vivid, balanced compositions that, as she says, take the senses seriously. Gentry has long been interested in the relationship between the constructed and the natural, cultivating abstract, biomorphic forms scaffolded by tall columns.
Gravitating toward symmetry and restricted palettes, Gentry paints rhythmic pieces that adhere to an underlying grid. Every painting is the result of multiple layers of thinned acrylic, which build into subtle gradients that dissipate across the canvas.
The paintings shown here are part of that artist’s upcoming solo exhibition, Blood Orange. Lush with color and texture, Gentry’s pieces reference the 16th-century La Dame à la licorne tapestries, comprised of six fiber works featuring a blond, lavishly dressed noblewoman flanked by a unicorn on one side and a lion on the other. Each piece correlates with one of the five senses, with text on the sixth reading “À Mon Seul Désirm,” or “to my only desire.”
While Blood Orange references the tapestries’ bold color palettes, Gentry also renders various elements they depict. The velvet gown the noblewoman wears, a towering pipe organ, and the orange trees anchoring the backdrop become central forms.
Although scholars interpret the tapestries as directly referencing the sense, others take a broader, more nuanced approached. The latter posit that the fiber works speak to how we gather knowledge and information about the world—particularly through the sixth, more mysterious piece related to emotion—and this is another place where Gentry’s interests align. She often considers “how we construct mythologies to interpret and explain our lived experiences,” that emerges on the canvas through a tension between the order of the grid and the roving, unpredictable nature of organic growth.
Blood Orange runs through October 24 at Track 16’s East Hollywood location. Find more from the artist on Instagram.
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2026-09-12 00:39:10
A figure appears to have been subsumed by a bookcase, and another is swathed in a green sleeping bag beneath a makeshift tent. Whether navigating a bathtub fitted with oars or sleeping in a bed while stacked like pancakes, the figures in Sara Anstis’ atmospheric drawings are immersed in curious activities. Hints of mysterious narratives, nursery rhymes, art historical iconography, and ancient symbolism make their way into enchanting and peculiar tableaux.
Anstis conjures a timeless air in the small-scale works of her solo show Pastels at Olney Gleason. Over the past couple of years, her palette has shifted to more muted, autumnal tones in contrast to her earlier works that featured vibrant, saturated hues and an almost glowing, neon quality. Recently, she’s looked to art history, particularly medieval and early Renaissance works.
The stoic, three-quarter profiles of figure in “The Horse Rider,” for example, reflects expressions seen in the 15th-century work of the likes of Fra Angelico and Hans Memling. “The Painter” ties in the medieval art tradition of placing saints at the foot of a holy figure, this time depicted as women peering reverently not only toward a female artist but the empowering drawn likeness of a woman’s form.
Another recurring animal motif we closely associate with Leonardo da Vinci and his masterpiece “Lady with an Ermine.” For Anstis, these tributes are small in scale but rich in the recognition of women with a variety of talents and interests, not the least of which include motherhood.
The maternal theme emerges in works throughout the exhibition, influenced partly by German artist Paula Modersohn-Becker’s 1906 painting “Self-Portrait at 6th Wedding Anniversary.” Soft pastels are a symbolic and practical medium, building compositions that explore the fuzziness of dreams and the blurred edges of folk stories. “Three heads in a bed,” for example, brings to mind the nursery rhyme “Ten in the Bed,” which is sometimes sung as “Three in the Bed.”
Long interested in mythology and subjectivity, Anstis renders figures and symbolic objects amid surreal settings. Some works adhere more closely to the conventions of portraiture while others reveal an array of enigmatic, narrative elements. Two disembodied arms hold a small dog around a woman’s shoulders in “The Milkman,” for instance, and a pensive woman walks by a display of numerous tiny vials in “Lachrymatories,” which in ancient Greece and Rome were used to hold perfumes but were once thought to collect mourners’ tears, earning them the name “tear bottles.”
Through the use of pastels, Anstis retains “an intimate sense of touch that charges her scenes with introspective intensity,” the gallery says. The women in her works fully embody their surroundings, both emotionally and physically connecting to their activities, be it horseback riding, reading, or painting. Throughout, she evokes an air of veneration, as if to every scene there is some underlying rite or observance of which we’re only seeing a fragment. The artist tips her hat to the absurd, even the slightly cartoonish, tapping into the seductive irrationality of dreams and the imagination.
Pastels is on view through October 24 in New York City. See more on the artist’s Instagram.
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2026-09-11 20:08:02
Have you ever imagined a pear or an apple with a personality? If the fruit suddenly had two eyes and a stem-like nose, it might look a little like PÉPET, the palm-size “paper friend” produced by TAKEO Co., Ltd. Originally designed by Masae Nagao, the colorful characters come with names like “Dandel,” “Fuji,” and “Sky.” They’re each composed of more than 400 of layers of colorful paper, and they adorably wobble and ruffle when handled.
Inspired by the saturated red and green of apples and their leaves, TAKEO will release a new edition named “Pomme” on October 14. Follow updates on the company’s Instagram.
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2026-09-11 00:26:00
In Mesoamerican folklore, the jaguar is a prominent nagual, a being with the power to morph into an animal. Moving from one realm into another allows this hybrid creature to act as a spiritual guide through unknown territories. For Anna Ortiz, the jaguar is also a fitting metaphor for entering into a mythic borderland.
Drawing on her Mexican-American heritage, the artist renders remote landscapes through limited, yet vibrant palettes. Ortiz favors subtle shifts in tone and saturation, painting jungle terrain in shades of blues, greens, and pinks. The focused palette emphasizes the fantastic world we’ve entered into, one that appears variable and as a manifestation of myth.
In her new body of work, Shapeshifter, Ortiz expands upon her interest in the borderlands and what happens when time and space collapse. Recurring motifs of an explosive volcano, double moon, and reflective pools of water position this uncanny realm as one in which multiple realities coexist and change is inevitable.
Ortiz’s pieces feel like visual pairings to the work of feminist writer Gloria Anzaldúa, whose conceptions of mixed heritage, the borderland, and the nagual the artist echoes in paint. Anzaldúa’s 1992 essay “The New Mestiza Nation” is a fitting companion to Ortiz’s practice, particularly the following passage:
Certain aspects of identity don’t disappear, aren’t assimilated or repressed when they are not in the foreground. Identity is a changing cluster of components and a shape-shifting activity. To refer to a person who is changing identity I use the Náhuatl term nagual… We shift around to do the work we have to do, to creative the identities we need to live up to our potential.
Ortiz’s Shapeshifter is on view through October 31 at Chart Gallery in Tribeca. Explore more of the artist’s work on her website and Instagram.
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2026-09-10 21:50:03
A decade ago or so, parents were finding loom bands in the couch cushions and underfoot during a craze for the analog toys. Kids made bracelets and other items, and in the vein of LEGO and other build-your-own entertainment, YouTube creators provided tutorials for elaborate projects. The toy fad may have waned, but for artist Hannah Buechler, the small, colorful rubber bands proved an accessible material for an inventive application.
At a glance, Buechler’s works appear like expressionist paintings, with gestural brushstrokes and carefully chosen colors. But our senses are piqued by the unusual texture, and upon closer inspection, we observe thousands of loom bands in vibrant relief.
Buechler draws upon her interest in fabrics and mark-making techniques of the Impressionists. She’s interested in pushing the boundaries of textiles by using found and recycled materials, and her works often plumb the relationship between natural and synthetic media.
Utilizing a felt template, which also serves as the substrate, Buechler loops the bands onto small tufts of colorful wool roving. Soft and malleable, these segments can be curved and nestled in among one another to create any shape, assembled almost like a puzzle. The finished work retains its textile-like pliability, but when framed and installed on the wall, it assumes the character of a painting.
See more on Buechler’s work on Instagram.
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2026-09-10 03:21:27
As deep swells from an offshore hurricane were further empowered by king tides in Southern California over the past several days, residents experienced firsthand the impacts of human-generated climate change. Erosion is an innate process along coastlines, where waves and wind constantly shift the sand and gnaw away at bluffs. Infrastructure projects and residential development over the last several decades have also meant changes to the natural coastline, and beaches are regularly refilled with tons upon tons of sand. Even so, in just a couple of days, some of the region’s beaches virtually disappeared.
This example is just one in an increasing array of low-lying places where our oceans, which continue to warm and rise, demonstrate their impressive authority. That’s where Oceanographic magazine and Blancpain’s annual Ocean Photographer of the Year competition aims to highlight some of the most beloved, impressive, and little-seen aspects of our planet’s most expansive waters.
The annual contest announced its winners of 2026 this week, awarding top honors to Julien Anton for his black-and-white portrait of a seahorse accompanied by two very tiny juveniles. British photographer Jenny Stock received the Female Fifty Fathoms Award, which recognizes an overall practice that pushes the boundaries of women in ocean photography.
Peruse more images below, plus others from this year’s contest, and see all the winners in the online gallery.
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