Painter Emily Mae Smith's Surreal Visions Embrace the Dark Side https://ift.tt/s49lfgy

Painter Emily Mae Smith believes that in dark times, it’s best to embrace the shadows.

Last week, the artist—best known for her surrealistic paintings of anthropomorphized broomsticks—opened “Transit of Venus” at Petzel Gallery. It’s her first solo exhibition in New York in over four years, on view through October 24, 2026.

The anticipated show brings together 15 new oil paintings and two carved benches made from 2023 to 2026. The works range in scale from the handheld to the monumental and embrace a dizzying range of formal strategies. Smith reprises her saucy broomsticks, revels in hyperrealism, and takes inspiration from French agrarian tableaux.

These varied works are united by Smith’s use of deep shadow and how she sees that shadow in relationship to painting. In the canvas Becoming Neolithic (2026), one of the first works Smith conceptualized while building the show, a towering thicket looms over snowy ground. Hands emerge from its stalks with seeking gestures, reaching toward the sky. The scene is backlit by a setting winter sun. In the foreground, a fox treads over the shadowed snow. It’s one of many paintings in the show that positions the viewer in a place of darkness.

Becoming Neolithic, 2026
Emily Mae Smith
Petzel Gallery

Midnight Assembly, 2023-2026
Emily Mae Smith
Petzel Gallery

“Culturally, we’re in the shadow,” Smith said as she walked through the show ahead of its opening last week. “We’re in a Jungian shadow-reveal sort of space as a society,” where “repressed desires become desperate grabs of power.” She feels a sense of obligation to explore this territory. “Whether or not we want to go there, it’s there. We have to explore it,” she said. “Painting the light from behind is a way of saying: I am the dark side of the image—I’m working from the other side.”

In the years since “Heretic Lace,” Smith’s last exhibition with Petzel in 2022, the artist has relocated from New York City to the Hudson Valley. She now works in a studio in Kingston, New York, where she feels more connected than ever to her natural environment. At the same time, she feels throttled by the pitch of U.S. political upheavals and speed of visual consumption through social media.

In another new painting, Only Human (2026), a bunch of grapes appear in translucent, noxious hues of purple, green, blue, and red. Inside each grape is a human eyeball, sloshing in turbulent water. The grape motif (which reappears in Shadow Land Zeuxis, (2026)) references a classical story about the conflation of reality and illusion. Smith’s painting is simultaneously funny and disturbing and visualizes the pressures of the attention economy, resulting in a frantic, superficial, and distracted mode of existence, with eyes unsure where to turn.

In these times, Smith believes painting can, at the very least, offer a sense of orientation. The exhibition title “Transit of Venus” refers to a rare astronomical event in which the planet Venus passes directly between the Sun and Earth. The planet appears as a small dark spot moving across the face of the solar disk. These transits occur in pairs eight years apart, with more than a century separating each pair. Historically, astronomers used the transit of Venus to calculate the distance between Earth and the Sun. These measurements helped establish the scale of the solar system—and, essentially, our understanding of our place in the universe.

Smith’s paintings formally reflect this idea. “Venus moves across in front of the Sun and becomes a little black dot. That effect connects to the use of backlighting in my work and the way we can know ourselves by seeing something moving in front of us,” she explained.

For the artist, it’s essential to imagine ourselves as bodies in motion, to embrace transformation amid rising authoritarianism in the U.S. “Trying to stay unfixed is a purposeful way to resist the painful transformation we’re having in society right now,” she said. “Being unfixed is dangerous, and people want to eliminate it.” For Smith, the “Venus” of the exhibition title refers equally to the Roman goddess, herself an adaptation of Aphrodite, and a historical embodiment of this embrace of ambiguity and multiplicity. “Venus was used by different people, for different reasons, across time and history,” the artist said.

Smith’s anthropomorphized broomsticks have long served as a nod to the historic position of women in the arts, a winking reference to feminine labor and the male gaze. In this exhibition, Smith’s most iconic motif loosens and morphs, at times, into a Venus-like figure. She sees her painting Becoming Neolithic as an adaptation of the broomstick, as well as The Locust II (2026), which reimagines the 1872 painting The Grasshopper (La Cigale) by French painter Jules Joseph Lefebvre. While Lefebvre renders his nubile young woman as helpless, cowering, naked, and alone, Smith gives her a broomstick and a scythe that serve as a protective weapons. In the painting Venus (Inner Vision) (2026) meanwhile, Smith makes the handle of her torso-like broomstick translucent. The figure’s organs—brain, liver, stomach—and circulatory system are visible, like a version of the “anatomical Venuses” created in 18th-century Florence, wax visions of idealized young women used to teach anatomy. “I wanted to take the idea of a Venus and literally give her interiority,” said the artist.

In these paintings, translucency aids in Smith’s attempt to reenchant people with the magic of painting. “I wish people would consider what it takes to make a painting, and how painting can exist in the world in a complex, fabulous, magical way, and not just as trading cards on the internet, or auction-house commodities,” she said. “So there’s this desire to see inside and make that beautiful.”

Understanding the materiality of painting, she thinks, might be one way to do that. In Sacred Conversation (2026), Smith brings together the animals and plants whose materials become the tools of painting—from badger and sable hair used in brushes to walnut oil, flax, cotton, and cuttlefish-derived sepia. The imagined ecosystem of creatures that could never coexist in nature becomes a kind of portrait of painting itself and its entanglement with the natural world. The structure of the painting, meanwhile, riffs on paintings by Giovanni Bellini and the Renaissance tradition of the sacra conversazione, the gathering of saints. It is a moment of bright light among shadows.

Smith believes that we are living through a moment of societal transformation whose repercussions are still coming into view. “In my last show, I was really interested in my place in painting as a person, as a woman painter, in my own time—how do I belong, what are the problems of trying to belong inside this thing,” Smith said. “Now, I’m asking, what is a painting to the world right now, when it all feels like it’s on fire?”

One of the final works completed for the show, The Changeling (2026), depicts a foot held aloft against the dark sky. It transforms from flesh to straw, and a hand reaches toward it with a lit match, like an inverse of Michelangelo’s Creation of Adam (ca. 1512) . Flames are imminent. But they also bring much-needed illumination.

from Artsy News https://ift.tt/mynYAs9

MSCHF transforms two Lexus electrified vehicles into surreal sculptures. https://ift.tt/3GWtski

MSCHF, the Brooklyn-based conceptual art collective represented by Perrotin, will debut a pair of surreal new car sculptures in New York this week as part of a collaboration with Lexus.

The works reconfigure two of the automaker's electrified vehicles for the exhibition “Motomorphosis,” which opens this week at Chelsea Industrial during Armory Week. The show pairs each unaltered vehicle with its distorted double. A Lexus RZ450e appears once as itself and again as Circle Car, looped nose-to-tail into an endless, driving circle, while a Lexus RX450h+ is shown alongside Twisted Car, its body pulled into dramatic longitudinal torsion.

MSCHF describes the works as “Form Cars,’ positioned as an inversion of the automotive industry’s "Concept Car" prototypes. Kevin Wiesner, the collective's chief creative officer and a founding member, told Highsnobiety the project drew on the vocabulary of 3D animation, where forms bend and stretch without being fixed, as well as on a lineage of car-as-medium artworks in the United States, such as Pippa Garner's sculpture and performance Backwards Car (1974). “We had the idea of inverting the Concept Car and taking a purely Formalist approach to the object,” Wiesner said.

Despite their seemingly impossible shapes, the sculptures were built using conventional auto-body techniques—a steel armature built up with thousands of individual pieces, then finished with the paint and Bondo overcoat typical of a body shop. Some components, Wiesner said, are actual Lexus parts, "but they're sculptures, not cars."

Lexus has framed the collaboration around what it calls "Electric Made Art," treating electrification itself as an artistic medium rather than a purely functional one. "Most conversations about electrification focus on how a vehicle is powered. ‘Motomorphosis’ asks a different question: what can electricity power in our imagination?" said Lisa McQueen, Lexus's senior manager of marketing. "Working with MSCHF allowed us to take the automobile beyond its familiar form and explore movement, transformation and possibility in an entirely new way."

“Motomorphosis” will have a public opening the evening of Thursday, September 24th, and will be on view Friday, September 25th, and Saturday, September 26th.

from Artsy News https://ift.tt/57Gclpk

9 Artists Who Shaped Korea’s Dansaekhwa Movement https://ift.tt/2i7hgnd

Blue-Umber ‘76, 1976
Yun Hyong-keun
PKM Gallery

In mid-20th-century South Korea, amid the economic hardship and political repression that followed the Korean War, a vanguard of abstract artists forged a radical new visual language. Pushing back against rigid, state-sanctioned academic realism and breaking decisively from centuries of traditional fine-art ink painting, these artists sought an art form untethered from past conventions.

The Korean art critic Lee Yil curated a selection of their works into a groundbreaking group show at Tokyo Gallery in 1975; he coined the term Dansaekhwa in 1980 to define these nonfigurative works executed in understated, neutral hues.

Though the term translates to “monochrome painting,” the label is a misnomer. Dansaekhwa was never about the passive application of a single color. Rather than treating the canvas as a flat window for representation, these artists rejected Western compositional logic altogether, elevating process over final result and prioritizing physical labor as a form of spiritual meditation.

Through disciplined repetition—dragging gouges through wet paint, soaking and tearing traditional Hanji paper, or squeezing pigment through coarse hemp from behind, for example—they rendered the physical surface an arena of endurance and material transformation.

Meditation 91007, 1991
Chung Chang-Sup
Axel Vervoordt Gallery

Over the past decade, a surge of international retrospectives, such as the 2015 “Dansaekhwa” exhibition at the 56th Venice Biennale (curated by art historian Yongwoo Lee) and major market interest, have cemented Dansaekhwa as one of modern art history’s vital movements. This November, Phaidon will publish Dansaekhwa: Korean Abstract Art and Its Cultural Impact as well.

As the international art world recalibrates following another bustling edition of Frieze Seoul, global attention remains fixed on South Korea’s rich modern art legacy. Driven by landmark gallery retrospectives and major international surveys, from Venice to San Francisco and Seoul, Dansaekhwa continues to stand out as the defining cornerstone of Korean abstraction.

The following nine artists offer essential entry points to the movement.

Kim Whanki

B. 1913, Kijwa-do, Korea. D. 1974.

26-I-70, 1970
Kim Whanki
San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA)

Heaven and Earth 24-IX-73 #320, 1973
Kim Whanki
Leeum, Samsung Museum of Art

Pioneering modernist painter Kim Whanki is revered as the foundational precursor to Dansaekhwa. He was active between Seoul, Paris, and New York throughout his long and transformative career. Kim primarily worked on monumental oil canvases, filling his expansive surfaces with tens of thousands of small blue dots enclosed within tight, hand-drawn square grids. These sweeping abstract compositions, rendered in translucent washes of indigo, navy, and oceanic teal, evoke vast starry night skies or shimmering water as they bridge traditional Korean nature motifs (mountains, moon jars, and sky painting specifically) with Western modernism. The watery, ink-like transparency of his oil pigment creates a deeply atmospheric, meditative depth that immediately sets his work apart from American field painters.

By translating spiritual harmony into systematic markmaking, Kim laid the ideological groundwork for the generation of Korean abstract artists that followed. Today, the artist holds an unrivaled position at the apex of the Korean art market, setting a historic auction record in 2019 when his painting 05-IV-71 #200 (Universe) (1971) sold for over $10 million and became the most expensive artwork ever by a Korean artist. His monumental legacy is preserved at the dedicated Whanki Museum in Seoul, while key works anchor the permanent collections of major institutions such as the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art (MMCA), Korea, and the Leeum, Samsung Museum of Art.

Kwon Young-Woo

B. 1926, Riwon, Korea. D. 2013

Kwon Young-Woo was a Paris- and Seoul-based master who abandoned traditional ink brushes early in his career and worked with paper as a sculptural medium. Kwon used his fingers, fingernails, wooden tools, and scratch awls to tear, puncture, scratch, and layer multiple sheets of white hanji paper. His medium-to-large-scale monochromatic compositions feature rhythmic, torn incisions and subtle three-dimensional relief, occasionally accented by soft blurs of blue or dark ink seeping through from the reverse side. The resulting works resemble delicate, highly tactile topographies; the physical destruction of the paper becomes the generative act of creation.

Kwon forced a radical reevaluation of paper’s role in Korean and broader East Asian art history, bringing it into a modern context. His work was featured in the benchmark survey exhibition “Dansaekhwa” at the 56th Venice Biennale in 2015. Today, his tactile paper compositions are preserved in the permanent collections of major global institutions, including the MMCA in Seoul, the British Museum in London, and the Centre Pompidou in Paris.

Chung Chang-Sup

B. 1927, Cheongju, Korea. D. 2011

Seoul-based painter and longtime academic Chung Chang-Sup spent decades investigating the raw, organic possibilities of tak, the natural mulberry bark fiber used to craft traditional Korean Hanji paper. Foregoing conventional oil paint, Chung soaked raw mulberry fibers in water, kneaded the wet pulp by hand, and pressed it directly onto large canvas stretchers. As the pulp dried, it formed surface cracks, fibrous ridges, and subtle folds that revealed the medium’s organic origins. His finished works present thick, sculptural surfaces in muted, earthy monochromatic tones of ivory, warm tan, charcoal, and slate gray. They often feature squares and rectilinear shapes embedded in their centers.

Chung viewed his labor-intensive process as unifying his own breath and physical effort with the natural material. His tactile approach to material heritage gained global prominence when he was featured in the historic collateral exhibition Dansaekhwa at the Palazzo Contarini-Polignac during the 56th Venice Biennale in 2015. His works are now held in renowned international collections, including the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York, the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art (MMCA) in Korea, the Leeum, Samsung Museum of Art, and M+ in Hong Kong.

Yun Hyoung-Keun

B. 1928, Cheongju, Korea. D. 2007

Yun Hyoung-Keun was a Seoul-based artist who produced some of the most emotionally resonant and understated works of the Dansaekhwa movement. Working on large, unprimed linen and raw cotton canvases, Yun applied wide, vertical bands of dark, heavily diluted oil paint using a signature mixture of burnt umber and ultramarine pigment. These towering dark pillars feature soft, feathery borders where the watery paint bleeds naturally into the untreated fabric, creating deep, gate-like architectural voids of near-black alongside raw cloth.

The resulting paintings feel monumental yet remarkably quiet, visually echoing the natural bleeding of traditional ink wash on absorbent paper. Informed by personal trauma during Korea’s post-war political turmoil (he went to prison and was nearly executed for participating in student movements), Yun’s work treated canvas as an acoustic chamber for grief and restraint.

His international stature was solidified by a landmark posthumous solo retrospective at Palazzo Fortuny during the 58th Venice Biennale in 2019. His market momentum continues this September with a solo exhibition at PKM Gallery in Seoul, accompanying the historic restoration and public opening of his longtime residence and studio in the city. New York’s Judd Foundation will also open a solo show of his work on October 8th. Yun’s oeuvre is represented in major permanent collections worldwide, including the MMCA in Korea, Glenstone in Maryland, and Tate Britain.

Park Seo-Bo

B. 1931, Korea. D. 2023

Park Seo-Bo is recognized as the father of Dansaekhwa. He served as the movement’s theorist and organizing force, championing Korean art from his perch in Seoul until his passing. He is most famous for his lifelong “Écriture” series (1972–2023): In the 1980s, Park developed a technique of soaking sheets of traditional Hanji (mulberry paper) for weeks, layering it onto canvas, and pushing the wet pulp with his fingers, sticks, and rulers to build abstract, sculptural ridges, often referred to as Hanji “mountains.”

The artist’s early palette was restricted to unbleached white, inspired by the translucent purity of Korean Joseon porcelain, and deep matte black, recalling the soot lining traditional Korean kitchen hearths. Beginning in the early 2000s, Park introduced luminous hues drawn directly from nature, naming specific shades such as Maple Leaf Red, Canola Yellow, and Sky Gray.

Park saw this relentless, daily repetition as an exercise in self-erasure and spiritual healing for both the artist and the viewer. Seoul’s Kukje Gallery is currently celebrating his legacy with a retrospective that remains on view through October 18th. His footprint continues to expand with the recent opening of the Park Seo-Bo Memorial Museum in Seoul, alongside key acquisitions by prestigious institutions like Tate Modern in London, the Museum of Modern Art in New York, and the Centre Pompidou in Paris.

Chung Sang-Hwa

B. 1932, Korea. D. 2025

Untitled 019-5-2, 2019
Chung Sang Hwa
Gallery Hyundai

Chung Sang-Hwa, who worked between Paris, Japan, and South Korea, was an internationally celebrated artist who approached painting as a labor-intensive ritual of construction and deconstruction. He coated large canvases with a thick mixture of kaolin clay and acrylic paste, let them dry, then methodically folded them into tight, uniform grid patterns. The rigid surfaces cracked, clay peeled away, and the artist refilled the empty geometric voids with oil paint.

Repeating this painstaking cycle dozens of times produced subtle, mosaic-like surfaces of off-whites, grays, or muted blues with intricate textural depth. Up close, Chung’s canvases reveal a complex relief of tile-like fragments that catch ambient room light. In 2021, Seoul’s National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art (MMCA) honored the artist with a sweeping solo retrospective. His works are permanently housed in major institutional collections across the globe, including the Guggenheim Abu Dhabi, the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in Washington, D.C., M+ in Hong Kong, and the MMCA in Korea.

Ha Chong-Hyun

B. 1935, Korea.

Conjunction 23-67, 2023
Ha Chong-hyun
Tina Kim Gallery

Seoul-based master Ha Chong-Hyun has revolutionized the physical mechanics of canvas painting through his long-running “Conjunction” series. The artist eschews traditional front-facing brushwork, instead applying thick, muted oil paint in shades of taupe, dark ocher, rust brown, and charcoal to the back of coarse burlap or hemp fabric. Using significant physical force, he squeezes the viscous pigment forward through the open weave of the fabric until it oozes out the front, where he scrapes, smears, or shapes the paint using trowels and palette knives. The final works feature heavy, sculptural impasto trails protruding from rough, unpainted burlap.

Ha’s unconventional technique turned painting inside out, transforming coarse industrial sacking into a tactile battlefield. His work reached milestone prominence in 2022, when Kukje Art and Culture Foundation organized a solo show at Fondazione Bevilacqua La Masa as an official Collateral Event at the 59th Venice Biennale.

On September 25th, the artist will open a major presentation at the Asian Art Museum in San Francisco: his first-ever North American retrospective. His pieces form an integral part of major permanent collections around the world, including MoMA and the Guggenheim Museum in New York, as well as the Centre Pompidou in Paris.

Lee Ufan

B. 1936, Kyongnam, South Korea.

From Line, 1974
Lee Ufan
Upsilon Gallery

Lee Ufan is an internationally renowned painter, sculptor, and philosopher who splits his practice between Japan, France, and South Korea. Lee occupies a unique position in art history: while recognized as the key theoretical architect of Japan’s Mono-ha (School of Things) movement in the late 1960s, he simultaneously served as a vital international bridge for Dansaekhwa. Though scholars debate the artist’s exact categorization—his “Relatum” series of spare sculptures align with Mono-ha’s prioritization of physical, unmediated interactions between raw industrial materials and natural objects, while his rhythmic paintings share more with Dansaekhwa—Lee’s practice links both movements via a philosophical commitment to restraint and material dialogue.

To make his famous “From Point and From Line” series, Lee holds his breath for up to two minutes, synchronizing his body with his brushwork: His deliberate strokes of mineral pigment fade systematically across bare canvas.

Lee remains the most commercially successful living Korean artist, with benchmark works like East Winds (1984) achieving over 3.1 billion won ($2.7 million) at auction in 2021. His institutional footprint is secured by dedicated foundation spaces in Naoshima, Japan, Arles, France, and Busan, high-profile site-specific commissions at the Château de Versailles and the Hirshhorn Museum, and a retrospective organized by the Dia Art Foundation at SMAC Venice as an official Collateral Event of the 61st Venice Biennale this past year.

Lee Dong-Youb

B. 1946. D. 2013

Interspace, 2008
Lee Dong-Youb
The Columns Gallery

Interspace, 1980
Lee Dong-Youb
The Columns Gallery

Lee Dong-Youb represents the younger wave of artists associated with Dansaekhwa's initial push; he was included in Lee Yil’s seminal 1975 exhibition “Korea: Five Artists, Five Hinsek ‘White’” in Tokyo. The Seoul-based artist studied under Lee Ufan and was celebrated for his radically spare visual language. Lee’s signature “In-Between” series consists of expansive canvases covered in ultra-thin, translucent layers of pale white and soft gray paint. Applied with broad, whisper-light brushstrokes, his quiet gradations of tone leave vast, cloud-like central spaces that evoke open sky, architectural light, and infinite silence. The subtle shifts between pale pigment and bare canvas are so delicate that they require slow, contemplative viewing to register.

By stripping painting down to its most minimal atmospheric presence, Lee pushed monochrome abstraction to its logical extreme. The artist launched into prominence after winning the Grand Prize at the 1972 Seoul National Exhibition, establishing the second-generation trajectory of Korean monochrome abstraction. Today, his understated works are held in premier museum collections, including the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art (MMCA) in Gwacheon, the National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo (MOMAT), and the Seoul Museum of Art (SeMA).

Browse more artworks by Dansaekhwa masters on Artsy.

from Artsy News https://ift.tt/p8JExFd

All the Art You Need to See During Armory Week 2026 https://ift.tt/N3aRBzv

Each September in New York after Labor Day, the art world returns from a much-needed summer break and dives headfirst into a bounty of gallery openings, art fairs, and major museum shows. This year, though, the city’s fall fairs—The Armory Show and Independent 20th Century—have shifted their dates back, gifting us a reprieve. Instead of cramming everything into one whirlwind week, the season’s newness unfolds across the month, with a little more headspace to take in all the art.

That doesn’t mean September has been quiet. The month has already brought several sprints of gallery openings and a few major museum shows, with some of the fall’s biggest exhibitions still on the horizon. Now, with fair week upon us, it’s the perfect moment to catch up: hit the fairs, pop by galleries, and see what’s newly opened across the city. While you’re at it, it’s the perfect time to make a res at one of the city’s new art-forward restaurants, which we rounded up here. Nearly all are close to the venues listed below.

We’ve spent the past few weeks making the rounds. Here’s our 10-stop guide to the art to see during Armory Week 2026.

1. The Armory Show

Sep. 24–27 | Javits Center, 429 11th Ave | Hudson Yards

The Armory Show returns with its usual mix of international galleries, small and large, plus curated sections that keep things interesting (around 230 exhibitors are taking part this year). I suggest starting with Presents, the section for younger galleries, and Solo, with its single-artist presentations ranging from historical 20th-century names to emerging talents. Both Focus, curated by María Elena Ortiz, and Platform, dedicated to large-scale works, spotlight artists of the Caribbean and its diaspora.

The fair is doing plenty of programming, including Armory Live, a multiday series of talks, many featuring artists. And new this year is Armory After Hours, an evening event on Friday, September 25th, from 7 to 9 p.m., where you can explore the fair and experience a processional performance inspired by Caribbean carnival led by DJ and creative producer Adam “Foreigner” Cooper.

2. Independent 20th Century

Sep. 24–27 | The Breuer, 945 Madison Ave | Upper East Side

NYC 1920’s, 1989
Frank Diaz Escalet
Hollis Taggart

Independent 20th Century moves uptown this year to perhaps its most fitting venue yet: the Breuer building, now Sotheby’s headquarters. It’s an apt setting for the fair, which is less concerned with the century’s known quantities than its lesser-known artists and artworks. Several presentations even revisit artists who once showed in the building during its years as the Whitney, the Met Breuer, and the Frick. This edition brings 57 exhibitors, most presenting solo or two-person shows.

Highlights include the Andy Warhol Foundation’s presentation of the artist’s little-known homoerotic drawings; and several galleries will spotlight women of Abstract Expressionism, including Olney Gleason, Berry Campbell, and Bueno & Co.

3. The Guggenheim

1071 Fifth Ave | Upper East Side

The Guggenheim just opened a major new show: Taryn Simon’s “Father Country I Do Love You,” which takes over the entire rotunda. Nearly a decade in the making, the show spans 42 works, including photography, video, sculpture, and many, many stories, built around the real life of an unnamed federal agent—whose career touched everything from fingerprinting Jodie Foster to 9/11. Simon shares stories from his time on the job and connects them with bigger questions of power and politics. The show is on view through March 14, 2027.

While uptown, I recommend a quick stop at some nearby galleries: Danh Vō at White Cube, Thea Djordjadze at Sprüth Magers, and Bea Scaccia at Gagosian (which opens September 22nd).

4. Chelsea Gallery Shows

Chelsea

Before or after Armory, head south to take in Chelsea’s standout shows. Three I would recommend are:

• Anthony McCall at Sean Kelly: You have to experience McCall’s light installations in person to begin to understand their magic. The show spans his landmark early work, Line Describing a Cone (1973), through to a new installation.
• Sara Anstis at Olney Gleason: Anstis’s tiny, intricate pastels are oh so delectable. She draws on mythology, medieval imagery, folklore, and Old Master painting, but the works are inarguably entirely her own—filled with mysterious ladies, skinny dogs, and dreamlike scenarios.
• Eric N. Mack at Paula Cooper: In “You Red the Shirt Off My Back,” Mack presents fabric-based installations and sculptures that translate the language of painting into three dimensions, while also bringing art and fashion into conversation.

5. Tribeca Gallery Shows

Tribeca

No New York art week is complete without a trip to Tribeca, arguably the city’s most interesting gallery hub. Here are three shows worth stopping by:

• Melissa Joseph at Charles Moffett: “Casserole Culture” brings together 15 new works exemplifying Joseph’s mesmerizing capacity to “paint” with wool. Ranging from small sculptures with found objects to massive needle-felted paintings, the works delve into the artist’s personal experiences, family, and upbringing.
• Edith Dekyndt at Marian Goodman: “Notes on What Is What,” her first show since joining the gallery’s roster, incorporates video, installations, and drawing to explore and surface imperceptible elements of the everyday.
• Emma McIntyre at David Zwirner Tribeca: McIntyre’s new paintings and works on paper combine oil and oxidized iron, displaying her mastery of balancing control and spontaneity.

6. MoMA PS1 + Printed Matter’s New York Art Book Fair

Sep. 24–27 | 22-25 Jackson Ave | Long Island City, Queens

It’s an ideal time to get yourself to MoMA PS1. The museum is opening a new show of Teresa Margolles on September 24th, while Precious Okoyomon’s living installation is still on view in the courtyard. Meanwhile, Printed Matter’s New York Art Book Fair takes place over the weekend. The beloved annual event returns with its plethora of books, zines, and other printed wares from independent publishers and small presses. You can buy tickets for opening night on Thursday, September 24th, from 7 to 10 p.m., or for a visit throughout the weekend (the fair runs through Sunday).

7. New Museum

235 Bowery | Lower East Side

The New Museum kicks off its fall season on September 24th with a full slate of new exhibitions. Leading the lineup is “Arthur Jafa: I Am Tony,” the first U.S. museum survey of the esteemed artist, taking over two floors of the museum with new pieces alongside signature works like Love is the Message, The Message is Death (2016) and The White Album (2019). Alongside it is “Diego Marcon: Arrivederci, Piggies!,” marking the artist’s New York solo museum debut, and the group show “The Bowery: Devil’s Mile” reflecting on four centuries of art and visual culture of the mile-long thoroughfare where the museum is located.

8. Amant

315 Maujer St | East Williamsburg, Brooklyn

If you live in Brooklyn or you’re eager for an adventurous outing in the borough, I recommend a trip to East Williamsburg art foundation Amant. Two exhibitions have just opened: “Sentient Earth” is a group show bringing together artists tapping into the earth as a living, thinking being. Meanwhile, Matthew Lutz-Kinoy takes over another part of the space with “The Mud Room: Itinerant Artists, Folk Spectacles, and Painted Walls,” which presents a wonderfully theatrical ceramic studio.

While there, check out Zoli, Amant’s restaurant next door, which boasts great design, an excitingly unusual menu, and Pierre Huyghe aquariums behind the bar. And a couple of blocks away, pop by Carvalho—the gallery is showing a two-artist show of paintings by Alicja Biała and textile sculptures by Diana Orving.

9. ICP

84 Ludlow St | Lower East Side

If you need a break from fairs and galleries, head downtown to the photography institution ICP to catch the final weeks of two distinct and intriguing shows. “Yves Saint Laurent and Photography” traces the four-decade relationship between the designer and the camera, with works by Richard Avedon, Irving Penn, and many more illustrious names. “Photobooks USA 2000–25” gathers more than 50 photo books from the last 25 years that trace salient themes and issues of American life, including race, migration, and labor.

On Thursdays, the museum hosts ICP Late Night and stays open until 8 p.m. with $5 admission. This week, on September 24th, photographer Landon Nordeman will be shooting Instax portraits outside on Ludlow and Broome Streets.

10. SPRING/BREAK Art Show

Sep. 24–28 | 555 West 57th Street | Hell’s Kitchen

The free-wheeling art fair SPRING/BREAK is taking place this year in midtown at the former offices of CBS News, with more than 120 presentations organized by independent curators and artists. Revolving around the theme of “Hide n Seek,” early highlights include a show inspired by making art with kids, curated by Todd Bienvenu and featuring works by artists like Julie Curtiss and Katherine Bradford, a video work by Half Gallery founder Bill Powers, a presentation of sculptures by Stuart Lantry curated by Shona McAndrew, and a presentation exploring the perils of AI on writing, co-curated by novelist Jennifer Egan.

from Artsy News https://ift.tt/B5eSdI3

These Collectors Turned Family Tragedy into a Legacy of Supporting Artists and Cancer Patients https://ift.tt/JgyfDzB

Susan and Michael Hort are among New York’s most prolific collectors of emerging art. Over the decades, they’ve taken risks on countless artists, Marlene Dumas and Cindy Sherman among them. In the New York art world, the couple is synonymous with their Tribeca home, filled with wall-to-wall art by blue-chip names and little-known artists alike.

But before the Horts were fixtures of the city’s gallery circuit, they were the parents of an art-loving daughter, Rema Hort Mann. On Saturdays, Rema would regularly pull her parents around the city to exhibitions, an entourage of young artist friends in tow. “I remember saying to Michael, ‘Do you think we could have dinner alone on a Saturday night without Rema and her five friends?’” Susan Hort said with a laugh during a recent conversation.

Rema died of stomach cancer in 1995 at 30. In the wake of her death, her parents resolved to honor her life and founded the Rema Hort Mann Fund, a nonprofit organization with a two-pronged mission of supporting both cancer patients and the emerging artists Rema so championed in life. “It was very important that Rema’s name stay alive,” Susan said, “and let something good come out of her death.”

The fund quickly became a family affair. Their son Peter, one of the couple’s three surviving children, had become closely involved with the fund’s quality-of-life grants for cancer patients. Tragically, Peter, who was a lawyer and judge, died suddenly in 2022, at 51, of bile duct cancer. His wife, Jamie Cohen, stepped into his role.

This year, the Rema Hort Mann Fund is marking its 30th anniversary with a gala on October 28, 2026. In this milestone year, the Horts have added a new, third grant to the fund: the Artists Living with Cancer Grant. The grant, which merges the fund’s two longstanding missions into one, was inspired by this year’s gala honoree, celebrated contemporary artist Jacolby Satterwhite, who has lived with cancer and its complications since he was 11 years old. The artist is the recipient of inaugural Artists Living with Cancer Grant for $25,000, jointly funded by Rema Hort Mann Fund and the Robert Rauschenberg Foundation.

A memory-fueled mission

The Rema Hort Mann Fund has centered its mission around two grants, the Peter Hort Quality of Life Grant and the Emerging Artist Grant.

The Quality of Life Grant supports people in cancer treatment, covering things like childcare, phone bills, travel, and housing. Its primary mission is to ensure that cancer patients are not alone during treatments and to strengthen their emotional support networks and financial resources.

The inspiration for this grant came from a friend of Rema’s who was battling brain cancer. The friend met the Horts for dinner and told them she was going to stop treatment.

“Her boyfriend had just left her. Her parents lived in the Northwest. She wanted one last good summer,” recalled Susan. “That’s where the idea for the grants came in. Maybe if her parents had been able to visit her and she had this connection, she would have fought. It’s very hard to fight when you’re alone.”

The grant, which has long been overseen by family friend and board member Dr. David Biro, offers unrestricted grants of up to $10,000 and has supported over 2,400 people battling cancer (recipients must be nominated by their hospital social worker). For this grant, it’s been important to the family for the fund to be fast-acting and responsive to immediate needs. “So people don’t have to wait,” said Susan.

The fund’s other grant, the Emerging Artist Grant, offers no-strings grants to burgeoning talents. Each year, over 100 artists receive a nomination-only invitation from dozens of accomplished arts professionals. Following a competitive selection process, an independent jury awards 10 recipients $12,500 each. One artist receives an additional $2,500 in honor of Peter Hort. Last year’s recipients include Taína Cruz, Daniel Castro, and Aiza Ahmed, among others.

For Susan and Michael Hort, the Emerging Artist Grants pay the greatest homage to Rema’s irrepressible passion for artists and her bohemian worldview.

“She was amazing,” said Michael simply. “She loved artists. She was always hanging out with them. She was also brilliant,” added Susan. Nicole Eisenman, for instance, attended Rema’s wedding to her husband Billy Mann, taking photographs of the couple as a gift.

Rema was a high-powered professional. She worked at a major accounting firm as a management consultant, then earned her master’s at The Wharton School—but she always maintained an independent streak.

“She was definitely more of a hippie than they wanted,” Susan recalled of Rema’s corporate job. “At one point they said to her, ‘If you want to be taken seriously as a woman, you have to cut your hair.’ She came to me and said, ‘What do I do?’ I said, ‘You want to cut your hair?’ So she left, and she went and worked for HBO in its infancy.”

These memories have fueled the couple’s drive to keep the fund a strong presence over the decades, sustaining it through auctions, year-end donations, and personal money during leaner years. “When we didn’t have quite enough money, my husband and I put in money to make sure the grants would be paid,” Susan noted.

Meeting the moment

This year’s new grant, the Artists Living with Cancer grant, merges the two longstanding pillars of the Rema Hort Mann Fund. The goal is to support artists so they can continue their practice while seeking treatment. The grant provides a one-time grant for selected visual artists suffering with cancer and living in the New York metropolitan area.

As with much of the Horts’ charitable work, the inspiration came through personal connection.

Susan had met Satterwhite years ago, at one of her own birthday parties, where he performed. “He had so much fun, he refused to charge me,” she recalled.

Satterwhite is best known for sprawling, maximalist video and performance works that blend 3D animation, personal family ephemera, and live movement. His practice has been shown at institutions including the Museum of Modern Art and the Whitney, and he was named to The Artsy Vanguard in 2019.

Soon after the birthday party, Carole Server, a board member of the fund, who knew Satterwhite personally, told Susan Hort about the artist’s battle with cancer and envisioned a way for the fund to support artists in similar positions.

“When she came to me, and I heard it, I said, ‘That’s perfect,’” Susan said. The grant “is more needed now than there ever was.”

The Horts have a history of supporting art world figures amid health struggles, particularly those who are uninsured. When their friend, the iconic New York dealer Pat Hearn, was diagnosed with liver cancer in 1997, she was denied treatment coverage. The Horts participated in the memorable “Emergency Sale” of artworks donated by artist friends, dealers, and collectors alike. In the New York Times, critic Roberta Smith detailed Hearn’s insurance struggles and the sale, an article that led her insurer, Oxford, to reconsider the claims. Sadly, Hearn passed away in 2000, at the age of 45.

The Horts believe artists’ need for health care support has only grown in the years since. “It’s more needed now than it ever was,” said Michael. “Health care is much more expensive and not only that, artists aren’t making as much.”

Since the grant was announced, the couple has heard from countless artists. “Everybody’s struggling right now. I have artists who are very successful and say to me, ‘This is the first time this show didn’t sell out,’” said Susan. “So if the very successful artists are having that experience, you can imagine what’s happening to the younger, not-quite-as-established artists.”

“I hope this grant creates a shift in the art world,” Satterwhite told the Art Newspaper earlier this year. “The art world can be very fickle and fleeting, but artists give their whole lives to their work. When serious illness interrupts that, there should be more space for care, dignity, and support."

An art world legacy and its future

Room for Demoiselle Two, 2019-2025
Jacolby Satterwhite
Kadel Willborn

Today, Susan and Michael’s art collection exceeds 5,000 works, spread across their Tribeca triplex and their New Jersey home.

For decades, the couple has collected by a mantra of buying early and buying deep. They were collectors of blue-chip artists like Peter Doig long before the market caught on. They hold sometimes over a dozen works by a single artist. “If I have one piece by an artist, I’m not really collecting that artist,” Susan said of their approach.

Now the couple is focusing on a new horizon—the future of the collection and the fund. “We realized we're getting older,” Susan said. The couple has begun handing day-to-day control to a new executive director, Elysia Borowy. Meanwhile, their daughter now sits on the board, and a growing bench of grandchildren have expressed interest in collecting art.

The next chapter of the collection is already under construction. The Horts are opening a pavilion with the nonprofit arts space Art Omi in upstate New York in 2027. The family is committing to two rotating shows a year, in a space that Art Omi will fund and staff, sparing their children the financial costs of a private museum.

In a full-circle moment, many of the artists the Horts collected in the early years of their careers are now donating work to this year’s gala benefit. Among them are Cristina BanBan, discovered in a small London gallery years before her market took off, Nicole Eisenman, whom the Horts began collecting in 1992, and Marlene Dumas.

Every dollar raised by the gala will go directly to supporting artists and patients. The board covers the fund’s operating costs out of pocket. For the Horts, the continuation of the fund for another 30 years is self-evident in its purpose. “We see it continuing, because there’s still a need,” said Susan.

from Artsy News https://ift.tt/W8rBKtU