Digital art gallery and platform TAEX to open new Monaco space. https://ift.tt/yOsxb1Z

TAEX, a contemporary art gallery and curated digital art platform founded in London in 2020, has opened its first permanent gallery in Monaco. The gallery, located in the Mareterra, a new waterfront district, is inaugurating the space with “Testing Ground,” a solo exhibition by Paris-based conceptual artist Kevin Abosch, on view through November 30th. The gallery occupies Le Renzo, a landmark building developed by Pritzker Prize–winning architect Renzo Piano.

Since its founding, TAEX has built an international program with presences at Art Basel, Paris Photo, ART SG, and Tokyo Gendai, alongside collaborations with major artists including Marina Abramović. The gallery has previously had presentations during the 2025 Monaco Grand Prix and a special integration featuring Abramović at that year's artmonte-carlo fair. “Having supported arts and culture in Monaco for many years, I am especially proud to open TAEX Gallery here,” said the gallery’s founder Inna Bazhenova. “Monaco has long been a place where cultural ambition and international perspectives meet, and our permanent space in Mareterra marks a new chapter in our commitment to the cultural life of the ”

For “Testing Ground,” TAEX presents new, previously unseen works from Abosch's latest body of synthetic photography, created specifically for the Monaco space, alongside pieces from his series “Ethical Work,” first shown by TAEX at Paris Photo in 2025, and the rare 2010 work Potato #345. This exhibition centers on Abosch's synthetic photography, a genre he originated in which computational processes generate images that retain photography's visual language while depicting places that do not exist.

For more than three decades, Abosch has explored what makes an image matter, working across photography, installation, moving image, and generative technologies. His work has been presented at the State Hermitage Museum, the National Museum of China, Fotografiska, the Jeu de Paume, and the Irish Museum of Modern Art.

“Our ambition is to make TAEX Monaco a vibrant cultural destination, a place for discovery, exchange and creative dialogue,” said Stefanie De Regel, director of TAEX Monaco. “Against the exceptional backdrop of Mareterra, we want to bring together art and culture in their many expressions, fostering new encounters, collaborations and ideas within Monaco's cultural landscape.”

from Artsy News https://ift.tt/aIHfk3d

Painter Robin F. Williams Channels Botticelli into Glossy Takes on Contemporary Technology https://ift.tt/Wgx83cy

Brooklyn-based painter Robin F. Williams has been thinking about how rapid technological advancement collides with religion. Add internet-fueled psychosis into the mix, and the painter believes we’re entering a moment of rapturous, New Age spirituality. This perspective is apparent in Williams’s new canvas I Am Not a Robot (all works 2026), in which a figure with an infinity-sign-shaped halo stares into a smartphone.

“She’s tarot, but she’s also a Catholic angel, but she’s also a New Age light being, or an alien,” Williams recently told me in their Brooklyn studio. “Most of all, she’s confused about her role amid tech’s present reign, confounded by the constant digital overload, which I think is creating this sort of weird, ecstatic, loosening of a grip.”

I Am Not a Robot, 2026
Robin F. Williams
P.P.O.W

Spooky Action at a Distance, 2026
Robin F. Williams
P.P.O.W

I Am Not a Robot is among eight paintings by Williams that are christening New York gallery P.P.O.W’s first-ever international pop-up in London and on view through October 24th. The solo show, titled “Act Natural,” encapsulates our absurd, tech-happy times.

Williams made this series over the last year and a half, uniting references from art history and current events in planes of superflat paint. Throughout the works, transparent, glossy acrylic fields combine with waves of metallic oils that simulate holograms. Altogether, they convey the Technicolor cacophony of the information age.

Robin F. Williams’s early style

Williams started working with oil paint in grade school. In 2014, eight years after graduating from the Rhode Island School of Design, they joined Instagram and abandoned the academically charged medium. They began experimenting with more craft-based methods like airbrush and paint marbling, largely picked up from Instagram’s ascendant DIY arts community.

Williams, in turn, started posting their own tutorials. “I didn’t want to just extract,” they said. They recently launched a Substack to offer more in-depth instruction, on a less fraught platform. The artist also remains materially driven—“Act Natural” marks their first time painting on oil-primed linen and using Stuart Semple’s vantablack replica.

Medium Mermaid, 2026
Robin F. Williams
P.P.O.W

Since the pandemic, Williams has mostly made paintings inspired by horror films, which they consider a vehicle for collective catharsis. “I think all art does that,” they said. “Some forms do it at broader scales. But I’m interested in tapping into whatever those feelings are, and making places for collective processing around it.” Such works anchored Williams’s latest exhibitions, including “Undying” at Perrotin Tokyo and “Good Mourning” at P.P.O.W., both in 2024.

New work for P.P.O.W.’s London pop-up

“Act Natural,” on the other hand, is more of a psychological thriller, tinged with elements of science fiction. While Williams suspects the hype and fear surrounding AI has conjured an egregore, an esoteric entity that arises from the collective consciousness, they also remain open-minded about AI. “I am just not interested in the way it’s turning into every other financial instrument, and recreating every other folly, every other bubble,” they said. “I think it has so much more potential to do wonderful things for our consciousness, but we’re choosing to enslave it and repeat history.”

Williams’s equal embrace of the academic and vernacular was especially apparent on the mood board they created to inspire the show. Near a window overlooking Manhattan, Williams had affixed dozens of printed photographs of artworks by abstractionist Paul Klee and pioneering realist Éduoard Manet, pages from Sports Illustrated, and outputs from DALL-E, the bygone AI image generator. “When I was painting about horror, I was taking a lot of screenshots and photos of my TV,” Williams said. “This body of work felt like the references were coming from everywhere.”

Language Model, 2026
Robin F. Williams
P.P.O.W

Sleight of Hand, 2026
Robin F. Williams
P.P.O.W

Williams’s art historical inspirations were similarly invested in moments of transition: “the modernists or the Cubists that weren’t quite Cubists, or the Renaissance painters that were on the cusp,” they said. They cite Botticelli, whose blend of pagan and Catholic deities inspired this show’s working title, “Lesser Gods.”

FLAG Art Foundation teased this new chapter in Williams’s practice this past May, when they exhibited Language Model as part of its recurring Spotlight program. The painting, which reappears in “Act Natural,” depicts a voluptuous, Technicolor nude who poses on a beach at sunset. Devoid of specific natural details, the figure reads as an archetype. The title suggests the affinities between AI and dysmorphia-inducing fashion photography, which feels quaint today when compared with “Instagram face.” Here, Williams references the “body positivity” many magazines toyed with in the 2010s. “It just reeks of insincerity now, especially when you look at what they thought a plus-size model was,” Williams said. They’re curious if today’s “models” will rebel like the language they’re based on—itself a flawed technology that eschews consensual meanings.

Tempering Better Angels, 2026
Robin F. Williams
P.P.O.W

Holy Thirst Trap, 2026
Robin F. Williams
P.P.O.W

Williams’s new tech bro paintings

While Williams’s female figures appear as mythic chimeras, their male counterparts are ethereal, shortsighted tech bros lifted straight from Botticelli’s Madonna of the Pomegranate (ca. 1487). In Holy Thirst Trap, they contemplate a glass of water, which AI needs to survive. In Tempering Better Angels, they wade recklessly into wet depths. Williams imagines they’re hyping each other up to get rich off the AI boom. Both paintings evoke the phrase “the tip of the iceberg” by depicting, respectively, a straw and two phalluses beneath the water’s surface.

“It’s been interesting to watch the millennial arc of tech bros who started in this very idealistic place,” Williams said. Today, those utopists are organizing disaster bunkers in New Zealand: “It’s just a race for them to escape accountability. How quickly that happened.”

The overwhelming beauty of the artist’s new work combats pervasive accelerationism by making viewers stop, agog. Contrary to popular belief, there’s still time to slow this AI race, put the egregore back in its box. “Being in a heightened state makes you much more easily influenced,” Williams said. “That’s the other reason I think painting is still so important.”

from Artsy News https://ift.tt/1t9gsbr

This Ski-Resort-Turned-Sculpture-Park Carries the Spirit of Land Art into a New Era https://ift.tt/Db4t7Ex

Pioneering land artist Nancy Holt felt connected to the desert of the American West from her very first visit in 1968. A few years later, she discovered a stretch of “flat desert ringed by low mountains” in northwestern Utah, where she would create her best-known work, Sun Tunnels (1973–76): a quartet of 18-foot-long concrete cylinders positioned to capture the sunrise and sunset during the solstices. “I wanted to bring the vast space of the desert back to human scale,” Holt wrote in 1977.

In the 1960s and ’70s, while land artists like Holt, Robert Smithson, and Michael Heizer headed into remote landscapes, away from cities and galleries, another outdoor model was gaining ground. Founded in 1960, Storm King Art Center in New York’s Hudson Valley helped popularize the modern sculpture park. In the decades since, destinations like Naoshima Island in Japan and Inhotim in Brazil have drawn droves of art lovers into nature.

Established in 2024, Powder Art Foundation (PAF) has been taking its own novel approach to the sculpture park, installing ambitious outdoor artworks across 8,000 acres of Powder Mountain, a sprawling ski resort in northern Utah. In winter, you can ski past a Jenny Holzer boulder, pause to ring a bronze bell by Davina Semo hanging from the trees, or glide beneath a string of chandeliers by Kayode Ojo. In summer and fall, the same works can be explored for free, along hiking trails that wind through the mountain.

Powder Art Foundation’s vision

Powder is home to 16 artworks and counting, with new additions added each year and a forthcoming pavilion that will house a work by James Turrell. Led by chief creative officer Alex Zhang, PAF is transforming the ski resort, which is owned by Netflix co-founder Reed Hastings. The pair bonded over their shared love of Naoshima, known for its incredible art and architecture, though Hastings had a more practical pitch for Powder: “How about like Storm King on a mountain?”

Zhang sought to find out: “Could you essentially retrofit a ski resort into a sculpture park, but still keep the soul and the character of the resort intact?” He envisioned the art program as a “whole new cultural layer” extending across the mountain. There’s no target number of works, and no set criteria for the type of art or artist—each piece must feel right for the place.

Utah’s history of land art and its ancient Indigenous petroglyphs were also important to the vision. Holt’s Sun Tunnels and Smithson’s Spiral Jetty (1970) are both within driving distance of Powder Mountain. And PAF partners with Dia Art Foundation, which owns those two works and collaborates with the Holt-Smithson Foundation to preserve them. Holt is represented at Powder, too: Her Starfire (1986), comprising eight fire pits arranged to mirror the Big Dipper and North Star, has found a permanent home on top of the mountain, facing the sunset.

For his part, Hastings said he doesn’t collect art for himself; rather, “the collection is here,” shared on the mountain.

Hiking along the Powder art trail

One October morning, I joined a guided hike along the art trail, which you can start at the top of the mountain. The first three sculptures we encountered, all new for the 2026 season, sit nestled among tall evergreens and the flickering yellow leaves of aspen trees.

The first work is Rose Wylie’s Pale-Pink Pineapple/Bomb (2025), a glossy, candy-colored painted bronze that stands more than 10 feet tall and resembles the titular fruit, with a cheeky fleshiness. It’s a rare work for Wylie, who is primarily known for her paintings, and marks her first public sculpture in the U.S.

Just minutes away sits Holzer’s THE EYE (2026), a 300-million-year-old quartzite boulder engraved with a line by Utah-born poet May Swenson’s work The Promontory Moment (1956): “The eye also a sun wanders and all that it sees it owns.” After a painstaking search for the right rock, Holzer had the text inscribed on-site to preserve the surrounding landscape. The piece reflects humanity’s long history of leaving marks on the land and is the first of a body of work Holzer will create on the mountain.

Farther along is Shanghai-based artist Xu Zhen’s Hello (2021–22), a twisting, snakelike Corinthian column that exemplifies his practice of colliding East and West. The work is perfectly perched on a mound, encircled by an aspen grove, and, like several works, can be seen from above on the ski lift.

One of the art trail’s most striking works is Nobuo Sekine’s Phase of Nothingness – Stone Stack (1970/2025). The Japanese Mono-ha artist, who died in 2019, conceived the work in 1970 but never saw it realized. More than five decades later, his estate helped bring it to life. Rising about 19 feet, the sculpture is a pile of smooth stones gently leaning into the sky, set against a majestic view of the surrounding slopes and trees.

Perhaps the most unexpected work is Ojo’s “…and that they hadn’t heard us calling, still do not hear us, up here in the tree house…” (2025), 21 crystal chandeliers suspended among the trees. Bought from Amazon and reinforced to withstand the mountain’s extreme weather, the ordinary fixtures take on an otherworldly presence.

Skiing with art

Come ski season, the experience transforms. Ojo’s chandeliers sparkle above the snow, and Sekine’s stones rise from a blanket of white. The resort has a team of “terrain specialists,” effectively art handlers on snowboards, who maintain the works through winter.

Semo’s three patinated bronze bells, Mother (2020–24), Listener (2020–24), and Reflector (2025), hang from trees near the tops of challenging runs, inviting skiers to ring them before descending.

“I was thinking about skiing as an activity that’s both exhilarating and where you’re in your own head,” Semo told me. “This moment of interiority where you’re skiing and being able to have a moment of reflection before you go down a run.”

Semo first visited Powder Mountain before much of the art had been installed. “It was kind of mind-boggling to imagine getting to put the work here,” she said. “The landscape is so vast and natural.”

It’s similar to the overwhelming scale Holt faced in the desert, and an idea that inspired Zhang early on: “that relationship from the body to the art to the landscape.”

from Artsy News https://ift.tt/HSnsFqd

Tribeca loft featuring original Keith Haring mural listed for $25 million. https://ift.tt/CY5pHnX

A triplex loft in Tribeca, featuring a 1979 Keith Haring mural painted directly onto the structure, has come to market for $25 million. The 8,000-square-foot unit, located at 260 West Broadway in the landmarked American Thread Building, is listed with Compass real estate.

Haring made the work while a student at the School of Visual Arts (SVA). The school kept a student gallery space on the lower floor of the building at the time—now the first level of the triplex. He made the energetic monochrome mural with a mix of shoe polish and alcohol, atypical materials that make the artwork’s survival over the past 50 years ever more remarkable. Haring painted directly onto an iron column, a structural beam, and the ceiling, meaning it cannot be removed or relocated. The black-and-white mural features interlocking forms typical of the street artist’s iconic line work. When SVA vacated the space in the early 1980s and it became a restaurant, the mural was covered over with wallboard, inadvertently protecting it for decades. It remained hidden until the building's previous owners uncovered it in 2007 and found it largely intact.

The current owner, Adam Zoia, chief executive of Glocap Tech, recognized the work immediately when he encountered it. “It was so obviously a Keith Haring. His style is so distinct,” he told the New York Times, noting that the unsigned piece has since been authenticated by the Keith Haring Foundation. Zoia purchased the loft in 2021 and undertook a two-year, floor-to-ceiling renovation around the mural, ultimately building a bar in front of it as a physical buffer to prevent visitors from touching or splashing it. “What kind of a bar in New York City has an original Keith Haring painting on the wall behind it, and painted on the ceiling of the bar, too?” he said.

For Zoia, parting with the artwork is harder than parting with the apartment itself. “This kid made something spectacular,“ he said of Haring, who was in his early 20s and years from international fame when he painted it. He estimated that the mural alone, if it could somehow be extracted, would likely be worth more than the loft surrounding it.

Art dealer Jenn Singer, founder of a namesake Manhattan gallery, called the mural’s integration into the architecture central to its significance and to the challenge of pricing it. “The site-specific dimension is the real complexity,” she explained to the Times. “Works made for a particular space and physically integrated into it exist in a different market category altogether.” The new owner will effectively become a steward for the work. “Each owner of this loft is its caretaker for their time with it. Every future owner of this space becomes its guardian,” added Singer.

from Artsy News https://ift.tt/4Q7NqpE

All the Art You Need to See During Frieze London 2026 https://ift.tt/M0FwNnU

Nothing feels quite like fall in the art world more than venturing into the bright white tents of Frieze London and Frieze Masters nestled among the changing foliage of Regent’s Park. Every October, the art fairs bring with them a citywide feast of exhibitions, satellite fairs, and happenings around town. It may be the best time to experience London’s robust gallery scene—from big names in Mayfair to rising talents at the city’s younger galleries—not to mention its world-class museums.

And this year promises not to disappoint. Here’s our 10-stop guide to making the most of Frieze Week 2026.

All of the stops below are also featured in City Guide, a new feature in the Artsy app that helps you discover art nearby, save the shows, galleries, and fairs you want to see, and build your own art itineraries. Check it out here.

1. Frieze London, Frieze Masters, and Frieze Sculpture

Oct. 14–18 | Regent’s Park

Let’s start with the main event. This year, Frieze London and Frieze Masters bring together almost 300 galleries from 48 countries across two tents in Regent’s Park. Frieze London is focused squarely on contemporary art, while Frieze Masters spans thousands of years of art history—from antiquities through the 20th century. Both fairs open with their VIP days on the 14th, with public admission from the afternoon of October 15.

At Frieze London, I tend to head first to Focus, the section devoted to younger galleries and emerging artists—and reliably one of the best places to make a discovery. Another favorite is Artist-to-Artist, which invites established artists to select emerging voices for solo presentations. New this year, The Code Universe section looks at art through the lens of popular culture, from the late 1970s to today.

Frieze Masters is across the park, but on the way there—it can be a good 20-minute walk—stop by Frieze Sculpture, the fair’s public art program. This year’s edition features works by 11 artists, including Angel Otero, Conrad Shawcross, and Ivana Bašić.

Frieze Masters tends to feel a little calmer in atmosphere, with historical works, rediscoveries, unexpected pairings of old and new, and plenty of gems from both familiar and lesser-known names. This year, six presentations take their cues from two remarkable homes: Luis Barragán’s Casa Barragán in Mexico City and Charles and Maggie Jencks’s Cosmic House in Holland Park.

2. Minor Attractions and Fitzrovia galleries

Oct. 13–17 | The Newman, 50 Newman St. | Fitzrovia

this heat is making my pores leak, 2023
Madeline Brice
Blah Blah Gallery

A short walk from Regent’s Park, you’ll find Minor Attractions and a strong cluster of galleries across Fitzrovia and Soho.

Now in its fourth edition, the alternative fair—traditionally staged in hotel rooms—has a new home at The Newman in Fitzrovia. More than 75 galleries and nonprofit spaces are taking part this year, filling the hotel with art alongside programming that spans music, performance, and nightlife. Entry is free, and the whole thing promises a freewheeling alternative to the main fairs.

While you’re in the area, make time for a few nearby gallery shows too:

• Timur Si-Qin at Albion Jeune: Si-Qin drew inspiration from the Peruvian Amazon, turning tree trunks, roots, leaves, and other vegetation into stainless steel sculptures that draw attention to the wilderness that still exists.
• Sophie Birch at Alice Amati: For her first London solo show, Birch presents new paintings shaped by memory, atmosphere, and a recent residency in Rome. Books, houses, bodies, and mosaic floors recur throughout.
• “Backstage machinations” at Night Café: This two-artist show of Isabella Amram and Juliet Dodson brings together painting and sculpture around the figure of the trickster, exploring concealment, illusion, and the ways our perception can be manipulated.

3. Mayfair galleries, London Invitational, and PAD London

Various locations | Mayfair

You could easily devote several days to Mayfair—London’s densest gallery district—alone this week.

Start with the fairs: PAD London (October 13th–18th; public admission from the 15th) in Berkeley Square is known for its lush mix of modern and contemporary design and art.

Then walk over to the debut edition of London Invitational (October 15th–18th; public admission from the 16th) at the Chancery Rosewood hotel in Grosvenor Square. The wonderfully small fair brings together roughly a dozen galleries into the rarefied venue—formerly the U.S. Embassy, designed by Eero Saarinen. It’s a fitting setting for this new offshoot of the American fair Dallas Invitational.

Then, hit the galleries. Three shows worth prioritizing:

• Louis Fratino at David Zwirner: Fratino’s first London solo show brings together new paintings of intimate domestic scenes and everyday life.
• Lucy Dodd at Sprüth Magers: New paintings made with peat, local herbs, copper ink, cochineal, and powdered meteorite draw on Artemis, the moon, and Dodd’s new surroundings in Scotland.
• Kylie Manning at Pace: For her first London solo show, Manning mixes London and Hampshire clay and Thames silt into her pigments, drawing on the city’s tradition of mudlarking—searching the riverbank for lost or rare objects.

4. Fair Play

Oct. 15–18 | One Marylebone, 1 Marylebone Rd. | Marylebone

One of the more intriguing newcomers to Frieze Week this year is Fair Play, a new artist-led fair in Marylebone. The model is what makes it especially interesting: Rather than galleries presenting booths, 70 artists selected by an independent committee will show and present their work directly, without paying to participate. It’s a chance to discover work beyond the traditional gallery system.

It’s just south of Regent’s Park, making it an easy stop before or after Frieze. The fair’s invitation-only VIP day is on October 15th, and public admission opens the following day.

5. Somerset House

Somerset House, Strand | Covent Garden

There are several very good reasons to spend a half day, or maybe even the better part of a day, at Somerset House during Frieze Week.

At the Courtauld, “Salman Toor: Someone Like You” marks the artist’s first solo museum exhibition in Europe. The show brings together 19 paintings made since 2019, centered on love, friendship, and belonging. These tender, often emerald-hued worlds have made Toor one of the most beloved painters working today.

Elsewhere in the complex, 1-54 Contemporary African Art Fair (October 15th–18th; public admission from the 16th) returns with galleries focused on contemporary art from Africa and its diaspora. This year’s edition places particular emphasis on African modernism.

6. Tate Modern

Bankside, London SE1 9TG | Bankside

A lot is happening at Tate Modern this week, but the newest attraction is in the Turbine Hall. Opening October 13th, the latest Hyundai Commission is by French-Lebanese artist Tarek Atoui, who works with sound and is known for inventing his own instruments. This new work builds on his long-running “I/E (Infinite Ears)” project, which explores how we experience sound.

If you go on Friday or Saturday evening, from 7:00 to 8:30 p.m., Atoui will activate the installation through live performances with collaborators including Emptyset, mazen kerbaj, Kenichi Iwasa, and Aya Metwalli.

Upstairs, the museum has multiple blockbuster exhibitions on view, which won’t be new to locals but may be to out-of-towners, including major shows of Ana Mendieta and Frida Kahlo.

7. Serpentine Galleries

Kensington Gardens | Kensington

I rarely need an excuse to wander through Hyde Park, but two compelling exhibitions at Serpentine make the trip especially worthwhile.

At Serpentine South, Justin Caguiat presents “Change Ringing,” his first institutional exhibition in the U.K. Heat-responsive paintings shift with their environment, while bells sound throughout the galleries. Across the lake at Serpentine North, Amar Kanwar presents “The Charcoal Man,” a new seven-screen installation that brings together documentary, poetry, politics, and questions of violence and resistance.

8. National Portrait Gallery

St. Martin’s Place | Westminster

One of the exhibitions I’m most curious about this week is also one of the smallest. British painter Issy Wood inaugurates the National Portrait Gallery’s new Artist Focus series with 12 self-portraits, shown together for the first time. Begun in 2020, the paintings offer a personal contrast to Wood’s better-known works, which typically feature uncanny objects, personalities, and interiors. It’s also free to see.

Also recently opened is Tim Walker’s exhibition “Fairyland: Love and Legends,” featuring some 250 portraits by the British photographer known for his fantastical approach to fashion photography.

9. The Barbican

Barbican Centre, Silk St. | Barbican

After several days of art fairs, if you’re ready to slow down and spend some time with serene Minimalism, this Robert Ryman show may be just what you need. “The Real Thing” brings together 60 works and marks the first major U.K. exhibition of Ryman’s paintings in more than 30 years.

Ryman is best known for his white paintings, but the point was never simply the color. His work trains the eye on subtleties of surface, material, brushwork, scale, and even the way a painting touches the wall. The result is a calm, inquisitive show—and a welcome change of pace.

10. The National Gallery

Trafalgar Square | Westminster

For something completely different, head to the National Gallery for “Renoir and Love,” the first major U.K. survey of Pierre-Auguste Renoir since 2007.

The show looks beyond romantic love to friendship and social life, bringing together major loans from collections around the world, including Bal du Moulin de la Galette (1876) from the Musée d’Orsay and Les grandes baigneuses (1884–87) from the Philadelphia Museum of Art.

After a week navigating crowds looking at contemporary art, it might be nice to end among the lively crowds of 19th-century Paris. And if, like me, you’re heading to Paris next, consider it the perfect segue.

from Artsy News https://ift.tt/A32I5Dv

Rising Artist Khalif Tahir Thompson Paints the Vanishing Brooklyn of His Childhood https://ift.tt/wrc8f5e

Playground, 2026
Khalif Tahir Thompson
Victoria Miro

A young Black man pushes a stroller down a sidewalk. The baby's bare feet kick out from the stroller and into the open air. A black wrought-iron fence appears behind them, and behind that a brightly colored playground and a towering set of brick buildings. It’s a setting typical of New York public housing. But this seemingly quotidian scene is inflected with a sense of the fantastical. The sidewalk appears a bright, glowing orange, a tree branch deep purple. Large numbers and letters, in vibrant hues, hover over the scene’s buildings and jungle gym, imbuing the scene with a sense of childhood imagination.

The painting, Playground (2026), is typical of Brooklyn artist Khalif Tahir Thompson, one of the hottest talents of the moment. Thompson has all the telltale markers of the next big thing. He earned his MFA from Yale in 2024 and was selected for Kehinde Wiley’s Black Rock Senegal residency in 2022. His colorful, tender portraits, inspired by family photos, as well as his imagination, are held in the collections of the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture, the Rubell Museum, Pérez Art Museum Miami, and the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston.

This week, the buzzy artist opened his major London solo debut at Victoria Miro, just ahead of Frieze London (the gallery announced the representation of Thompson in April).

Two Brothers, 2026
Khalif Tahir Thompson
Victoria Miro

For an artist with so much momentum and success, it might seem surprising that the 31-year-old’s transatlantic solo debut is inspired, in part, by a 1970s ballad about loss, regret, and mistimed love. Titled “Send in the Clowns,” the exhibition, on view through November 7th, nods to Stephen Sondheim’s song of the same name, written for the 1973 musical A Little Night Music. The wry song, most famously performed by singer Sarah Vaughan, brings a theatrical humor to the singer’s tale of disappointments.

“The reference reflects the layered facets of my life and experiences, the ways we deploy humor to mask vulnerability,” said Thompson during a visit to his Bushwick studio this past August, “And it speaks to how I respond to tragedy.” When we spoke, the painter was putting the final touches on the 10 paintings that make up the show.

These new works come from a place of self-reflection. In the year since turning 30, he said, he’s been in a contemplative place. “I’m in a phase of looking at my upbringing, my artistic upbringing, my motivations and ambitions as an artist, and my personal story: what stories I find interesting, and the things that come together to represent me,” he said.

Thompson has earned his growing reputation with his textured, patterned, and colorful portraits rooted in his own family history. While he’s painted the figure since high school, he only turned to painting personal subjects during the pandemic. Inspired by Alice Neel’s portraits of her friends and peers, which he saw during the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s exhibition of her work in 2021, he decided to seek out his late grandmother Betty’s family photo albums.

The Rain, 2026
Khalif Tahir Thompson
Victoria Miro

Betty had won the lottery in 1989, and in a bit of family lore, moved from Brooklyn to Orlando, Florida. “She was a huge archivist, like a lot of grandmothers, just a bit of a hoarder. She had a collection of Jet magazines, videotapes upon videotapes, albums upon albums,” said Thompson. Those photographs served as the basis for a pivotal series of work rooted in family history and unspoken legacies. “I started thinking about history, about the Great Migration,” said Thompson, of the albums’ effect on his worldview. “If you’re in the city, you don’t think about it. I’m from Brooklyn, and I wondered how I got here. My grandparents were from North Carolina. That’s what the albums provided.”

While these vintage family photographs have shaped Thompson’s practice for the past five years, in his newest works he turns to more recent family history—his own childhood. “A lot of the imagery I’ve worked with before is from before I was alive, the ’70s, ’80s, and ’90s.…I wanted to continue with that language and do something personal, but more current,” he said. In these paintings, Thompson’s three older siblings become the main protagonists.

Two Brothers (2026), for instance, is based on an early-2000s family photo of his older brothers at ages 16 and 17. The brothers appear styled and serious, one donning a faux hawk and colored contacts. The image is a time capsule, not only of fashion, but of affection. “This is how I remembered them then, from the perspective of me as a child and how I saw them,” he said of the painting. Pearl (2026), meanwhile, takes inspiration from a photograph of his sister. In the painting, she is shown standing in front of a bedroom dresser and mirror, wearing an ethereal white ensemble. The painting is Thompson’s reimagining of Whistler’s Symphony in White, No. 1: The White Girl (1862). “When the art historical comes in, I play into it,” said Thompson of the reference. “I thought there was something very Whistler about [Pearl]. I got out a Whistler book, and I saw that it looked almost the same, before I’d even finished mine.”

Such nods crop up throughout the show, with references to Toulouse-Lautrec, Stuart Davis, and Kees van Dongen, along with stylistic allusions to Kerry James Marshall, Lynette Yiadom-Boakye, Barkley Hendricks, and, in collage-like passages, Jasper Johns.

Here, Thompson also pushes beyond the richly patterned interiors he is known for and depicts the outdoor life of the city with new dynamism. Playgrounds, hair salons, and apartment buildings all appear as key subject matter.

Arch Diner, 2026
Khalif Tahir Thompson
Victoria Miro

“Being from Canarsie, growing up in Brooklyn, I was excited to do something very New York,” he said.

While the paintings are full of color and character, they also act as a love letter to a New York that is now lost. A sense of mourning tinges the works. Thompson made a conscious effort to paint places that no longer exist for this exhibition, among them, the now-closed 24-hour Arch Diner in Canarsie.

“I’ve wanted to paint the diner for a while, [as well as other] intimate spaces like that, where I spent time growing up,” he said. “The painting is about the passage of time and things that are no longer there.”

Thompson’s contemplation of absence goes beyond places to people, too. “There are relationships that are no longer there, too.…brothers that don’t speak…things that happen,” he said. It’s bittersweet, with a slightly melancholy undertone. “Send in the Clowns” is about missed opportunity, a kind of silver lining.”

from Artsy News https://ift.tt/ergPClX

Yasmin Berrada’s Surprising Journey to Running One of Morocco's Most Important Art Galleries https://ift.tt/copiWu8

Orange Moon, replica after the 1984 original, 1984
Mohamed Melehi
Loft Art Gallery

Yasmine Berrada never set out to run a gallery. Born and raised in Casablanca, Morocco, she studied at Université Paris Dauphine and built a career in asset management before stepping away when her first daughter was born. “I was unwell at the time, and I wanted to explore something new,” she recalled to Artsy. “When I look back now, I think the art found me, more than the other way around.”

Art has always been part of her life. Her father was an avid collector of Moroccan painting, and Berrada spent her first paycheck on an artwork. In 2009, she opened Loft Art Gallery with her sister Myriem in Casablanca’s Triangle d’Or district. Neither had formal art training, but both had inherited their father’s passion.

“We were driven above all by passion, and by the desire to create a space that reflected who we were,” she said. “Somewhere lively and accessible, where people could discover artists but also meet them, exchange with them and better understand their work.”

Some 17 years later, Loft has become a prominent champion of Moroccan modernism, helping bring the country’s artists to international audiences. In 2024, it became the first Moroccan gallery to exhibit at Art Basel.

This October in London, it will make its Frieze Masters debut with a solo presentation of works by Mohamed Melehi, a defining figure of the Casablanca Art School. The milestone comes just weeks after Loft opened a new space in its hometown.

Building a gallery—and an audience

When the sisters founded the gallery, Casablanca’s art scene was “much more intimate than it is today,” Berrada recalled. There were few institutions or galleries where audiences could encounter contemporary art, despite the city’s rich artistic history.

In the 1960s, artists Farid Belkahia, Mohamed Chabâa, and Melehi had transformed the local École des Beaux-Arts into a center for a radical new Moroccan modernism. Following independence from France in 1956, they rejected European academic conventions and colonial-era Orientalist imagery, instead drawing on local visual traditions, including Amazigh carpets, jewelry, and architecture. Their work helped forge a new artistic identity for Morocco.

Untitled, 2002
Farid Belkahia
Loft Art Gallery

Sans titre, 2003
Farid Belkahia
Loft Art Gallery

For Berrada, championing this history became central to Loft’s mission. The sisters built close relationships with the Casablanca Art School’s pioneers, organizing exhibitions and publishing research on their work. But establishing a gallery also meant cultivating an audience from scratch.

“We couldn’t simply exhibit work and wait for people to walk through the door,” she said. “We had to create curiosity.”

Many buyers were accustomed to purchasing directly from artists, often without considering how individual works might form a collection. The sisters sought to build “a real culture of collecting,” while fostering long-term relationships with artists. “It required a lot of energy,” Berrada said, “but it also gave us tremendous freedom.”

Bringing Moroccan modernism to the world

That commitment extended beyond Morocco. As Loft’s roster grew to include artists from across Africa and Europe, Berrada began introducing their work to international audiences. Over the years, the gallery has participated in fairs including Art Basel Qatar, Art Basel Paris, Paris Photo, The Armory Show, and Art Dubai, while maintaining a decade-long presence at 1-54 London. In 2024, its international endeavors made it one of Artsy’s breakout galleries of the year.

The Moroccan market has matured considerably, Berrada said; “10 or 15 years ago, we had to explain everything.” Yet she believes there is still work to do, particularly in securing international recognition for Moroccan artists and establishing the gallery’s role in sustaining their careers.

Untitled, 1967
Mohamed Melehi
Loft Art Gallery

That mission takes center stage at Frieze Masters, where Loft will present “Wave Forms,” a solo exhibition tracing Melehi’s signature wave motif from 1960 to 1980. Known for his vibrant, undulating abstractions, often painted in industrial cellulose paint on wood panels, Melehi developed a visual language that connected Moroccan traditions with international modernist movements.

The presentation begins with Untitled (1960), made during his years in Rome, when the wave was still emerging within his abstract compositions. Minneapolis (1962), created shortly after his move to the United States, marks another stage in his development. In 1963, Melehi exhibited alongside hard-edge painters at New York’s Museum of Modern Art.

Untitled, 1960
Mohamed Melehi
Loft Art Gallery

Loft has championed Melehi since its earliest days, when, Berrada recalled, “it wasn’t easy to sell his work or to position it in context, even in Morocco.” Today, his work belongs to collections including Tate, the Centre Pompidou, Mathaf, and the Institut du Monde Arabe. Yet Berrada believes his wider contribution remains underappreciated.

“There has been a huge evolution between how Melehi was seen when we started the gallery and how he’s seen now,” she said. “But internationally, and within art history, his work still needs to be fully established.”

For her, Frieze Masters offers an opportunity to place Melehi within a more expansive narrative. “His work goes far beyond the history of Moroccan art,” she said. “It belongs to a much broader history of modernism, and we want to show that.”

Untitled, 2021
Saâd Hassani
Loft Art Gallery

Untitled, 2026, 2026
Abdelkrim Ghattas
Loft Art Gallery

The fair debut follows the opening of Loft’s new Casablanca space with “Hamasāt al-Fajr,” a cross-generational exhibition bringing Moroccan modernists into dialogue with younger artists. The same week as Frieze Masters, Loft will also return to 1-54 London with works by Moroccan painter Amina Rezki and Ghanaian painter James Mishio.

“Exhibiting at Frieze and 1-54 at the same time is a challenge for a small team,” Berrada admitted, “but it was very important for us to keep presenting our artists at 1-54.”

Staying rooted in Morocco

Despite Loft’s growing international profile, Berrada remains deeply committed to Casablanca and Marrakech. Asked whether she would consider opening another gallery abroad, she was resolute. “First we need to be truly well rooted in Morocco,” she said. “I’m not going to open in a city because I have to, because it’s a trend, or because I hear it’s the place to be.”

Perhaps it is that rootedness that makes the international encounters so meaningful. Berrada describes the emotion of watching collectors in New York, Abu Dhabi, or London connect with a Moroccan artist’s work without knowing the artist or their country.

“A work can come from a very personal or local story and still speak to someone on the other side of the world,” she said. “At that moment, borders somehow disappear.”

Her ambition is for Loft to become “more and more of an essential international gallery while remaining true to who we are.” Yet her measure of success remains personal.

“I always say the greatest compliment someone in the art world can give me is to say they trust my eye.”

from Artsy News https://ift.tt/mok0AnK