Artist Jean-Marc Bustamante to open new foundation in France. https://ift.tt/TIBYUQd

French artist Jean-Marc Bustamante will open Fonds Bustamante, a new independent cultural foundation, in Arles, southern France, on July 9, 2026. Housed in the newly renovated 12th-century Église Sainte-Croix in the heart of the city, the foundation opens with an inaugural exhibition, “En Miroirs,” running until October 30, 2026, timed to coincide with the opening week of the Rencontres d’Arles, the city’s annual summer photography festival.

Born in 1952, Bustamante has been a central figure in French and international contemporary art since the 1970s. He began as a photographer, departing early from documentary convention to produce large-scale color images devoid of human figures. From the 1990s onward, he expanded into sculpture and painting, blending abstraction, language, and transparency.

Bustamante represented France at the Venice Biennale in 2003 and the São Paulo Biennale in 1994, and participated in three editions of Documenta in Kassel, Germany. He also directed the École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts in Paris from 2015 to 2018. The Ludwig Museum Koblenz in Germany is also due to stage a retrospective of his work in November 2026.

Never The Less, 2000
Jean-Marc Bustamante
Thaddaeus Ropac

The renovation of the former church has been carried out by architect Charles Zana, whose design draws on Arles’s history and distinctive light. The building will be divided into two sections—La Nef, housing the main exhibition rooms, and Les Collatéraux, an adjacent extension containing a research center and café. The façade features a frieze by Bustamante composed of enameled lava tiles in yellow, conceived as a tribute to Vincent van Gogh, who once stayed in the city. Spanish artist Cristina Iglesias has been commissioned to create a monumental cast-aluminum and glass sculpture for the first floor, soaring over 4 meters high.

“En Miroirs” presents Bustamante’s own work in dialogue with pieces by artists spanning several generations, including Iglesias, Rodney Graham, Franz West, Thomas Schütte, and René Daniëls, among others. The foundation will present two exhibitions per year, aligned with Arles’s Drawing Festival in April and the Rencontres d’Arles in July, placing it alongside institutions such as Luma Arles, Lee Ufan Arles and Fondation Vincent Van Gogh as a permanent fixture in the city’s cultural scene.

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8 Artists to Follow If You Like Bridget Riley https://ift.tt/JLXIgTK

Straight Curve, 1963
Bridget Riley
El Museo del Barrio

Large Fragment 2, 2009
Bridget Riley
Cristea Roberts Gallery

Widely regarded as a leading figure in post-war abstraction, Bridget Riley transformed geometric painting. Her works generate a remarkable sense of movement from simple forms. Through meticulously structured compositions, her work explores how line, shape, and color can pulse and shift before the eye.

This summer, Dia Beacon will present an exhibition focused on some of Riley’s earliest black-and-white paintings. Spanning works made between 1961 and 1967, the exhibition revisits the period that established Riley as one of Op art’s defining figures.

Characterized by optical effects, Op art emerged during the 1960s as artists increasingly explored perception through abstraction. Riley’s work gained widespread attention through major survey exhibitions of the genre, such as “The Responsive Eye” at the Museum of Modern Art in 1965, which was famously featured on the cover of Time magazine the following year.

September 10, Revision of August 28, 2004, 2004
Bridget Riley
David Zwirner

“Bridget Riley uses deceptively simple, painstakingly intricate geometric motifs to create compositions that seem to compress and expand as the viewer’s eye moves around the canvas,” said Dia curatorial associate Emily Markert. According to her, these early paintings “demonstrate how self-imposed limitations on color palette and formal vocabulary proved generative for the artist, and laid the groundwork for the next six decades of her career.”

Riley has often emphasized the experience of viewing itself. Reflecting on her practice in a 2020 interview with the Morgan Library, she remarked: “I know that my paintings declare absolutely everything. Nothing is hidden whatsoever. At the same time, by looking at it, you find things to look at and you see colors, and so things open out.”

More than half a century later, contemporary artists are still fascinated by the questions Riley helped bring to the forefront of abstraction—about color, perception, structure, and repetition. Here are eight artists who are influenced by Riley’s approach, demonstrating how the optical abstraction she helped pioneer continues to evolve across generations and geographies.

Cristina Ghetti

B. 1969, Buenos Aires. Lives and works in Valencia, Spain.

Mareas (Abstract print), 2024
Cristina Ghetti
IdeelArt

Double Wave Black (Abstract painting), 2017
Cristina Ghetti
IdeelArt

Argentine painter Cristina Ghetti describes Bridget Riley, Lygia Clark, and Sonia Delaunay as her “artistic sisters.” Drawing on the rich tradition of Latin American geometric abstraction, Ghetti creates paintings and prints that use pattern, color, and repetition to complicate seemingly stable geometric structures.

The acrylic-on-wood painting Double Wave Black (2017), composed of black-and-white bands that undulate across the shaped surface, demonstrates Ghetti’s longstanding interest in the relationship between order and variation. Reflecting on Riley's influence, Ghetti told Artsy, “Black-and-white continues to offer me an inexhaustible field of possibilities,” revealing how subtle changes within a limited palette can generate remarkable movement.

Ghetti continues to expand her investigations into abstraction through international residencies, most recently in Shanghai and, later this year, in Costa Rica.

Andy Harwood

B. 1983, Brisbane. Lives and works in Ipswich, Queensland, Australia.

Extended Light (Cobalt Violet) (Abstract Painting), 2024
Andy Harwood
IdeelArt

Autosuggestion (Green) (Abstract Painting), 2025
Andy Harwood
IdeelArt

Andy Harwood describes his paintings as “a study of the mechanics of vision.” Influenced by Josef Albers’s theories of color interaction, the Australian artist uses geometry, light, and color to explore perception.

In Light Consideration 16 (2025), nested rectangles of translucent ultramarine blues—ranging from sky blue and cerulean to near navy—fold inward upon one another in successive layers. Repeated geometric forms and semitranslucent gradients create the illusion of receding and advancing planes, while soft transitions of color dissolve the hard edges. The result is a composition that oscillates between movement and stillness.

Harwood credits Riley with bringing a sense of movement and feeling to geometric abstraction. “A lot of Op art painting, I feel, is trying to be too clever or tricky,” he told Artsy. “Riley’s work used movement to make the works feel organic.” Currently based in Ipswich, Harwood is developing a new body of sculptural work, some of which will be included in an upcoming solo exhibition with Jan Manton Gallery in Brisbane.

Myles Bennett

B. 1983, Nashville. Lives and works in New York.

Thousand yards of the sea 24, 2022
Myles Bennett
Brandt Gallery

Broken Prism 2, 2024
Myles Bennett
Brandt Gallery

Trained as an architect at the Rhode Island School of Design, Myles Bennett approaches painting through the lens of material and construction. Using an X-Acto knife, the Brooklyn-based artist deconstructs canvas into its component threads, selectively removing portions of its weave and staining the remaining fibers with colored inks. For Bennett, these acts of cutting, removal, and staining become a way of investigating “the formal and expressive nature of the most ubiquitous substrate in modern painting.”

In Manner of Hanon 9 (2024), for instance, washes of coral, sage green, amber, golden yellow, and pale blue sweep across the remaining canvas fibers, forming layered parallelograms as the material folds back onto itself. By exposing the stretcher bars beneath, Bennett rejects the traditional picture plane, making the canvas itself part of the composition.

Represented by JDJ Gallery in New York since 2023, Bennett is currently preparing his second solo exhibition with the gallery, opening October 1st.

Anoka Faruqee and David Driscoll

Faruqee, B. 1972, Ann Arbor, Michigan. Lives and works in Woodbridge, Connecticut.

Driscoll, B. 1964, Steubenville, Ohio. Lives and works in Woodbridge.

2024P-14, 2024
Anoka Faruqee & David Driscoll
Hosfelt Gallery

2024P-10, 2024
Anoka Faruqee & David Driscoll
Hosfelt Gallery

When two nearly identical patterns overlap, they can produce a third image neither contains on its own. Anoka Faruqee and David Driscoll have spent more than a decade exploring this phenomenon through their collaborative “Moiré” paintings.

Faruqee, a Bangladeshi American artist, draws inspiration from Persian and Indian miniature painting as well as Islamic geometry. Meanwhile, Driscoll’s study of landscape painting and the natural world informs his approach to pattern and structure. Together, they create densely layered compositions that shift as viewers move through space.

In a 2015 essay on Riley’s artwork Cataract 3 (1967), Faruqee praised the artist’s ability to transform observations of light and pattern into “a wholly new perceptual event.” This influence is visible in her “2024P” series, for example, built from subtly misregistered circular patterns layered beneath textured paint. The resulting interference creates what the artists describe as a form of “engineered instability.” Though highly structured, these paintings retain textural evidence of their making. Paint spills over the edges, and small disruptions emerge across the surface, interrupting otherwise precise geometries.

Represented by Hosfelt Gallery in San Francisco since 2006, the duo has exhibited work widely throughout the United States.

Mano Penalva

B. 1987, Salvador, Brazil. Lives and works in São Paulo.

Manglar, 2026
Mano Penalva
Simões de Assis

Drawing on everyday materials and vernacular forms, Mano Penalva creates works that blur the boundaries between sculpture, painting, installation, and architecture. For the Brazilian artist, geometry is inseparable from lived experience. As he told Artsy, “Geometry, for me, is never fully autonomous; it remains connected to labor, hand-making, and everyday life.”

These concerns converge in Manglar (2026), part of Penalva’s ongoing “Ventana” series. Constructed from nylon straps commonly used in market bags and beach chairs, hand-painted wooden slats, enamel paint, and beads, the work layers bands of terra-cotta, ocher, olive green, plum, and cream across a woven framework. Composed of more than 240 individually painted slats, Manglar shifts according to the viewer’s position. Viewed from the side, its rectilinear structure reads as a precise geometric construction; viewed head-on, it gives way to an undulating composition of overlapping forms.

Penalva is currently preparing for his exhibition “Moiré Bereguedê” at the Museu Oscar Niemeyer in Curitiba, Brazil.

Verónica Di Toro

B. 1969, Buenos Aires. Lives and works in Buenos Aires.

Nº16, 2011
Verónica Di Toro
Gachi Prieto

Repetition lies at the center of Verónica Di Toro’s practice. Working in geometric abstraction for more than two decades, the Argentine painter builds compositions from simple structures that are repeated, rotated, and reconfigured through subtle variations in color.

This approach is evident in works from her “Grid Series.” In Grid Series #3 (2018), overlapping square modules rotate across the surface, introducing an element of chance within a highly ordered structure. By Grid Series #43 (2022), the composition becomes more condensed, with color arranged in a tighter rhythm of repeating units. Together, the works demonstrate how Di Toro uses repetition and variation to generate new possibilities from a single geometric system.

Represented by Gachi Prieto Contemporary Art since 2018, Di Toro works almost exclusively in series, developing multiple iterations of a single structure before introducing new variations.

Natalia Román

B. 1984, Girona, Spain. Lives and works in Begur, Spain.

Blue Geometric Drift, 2026
Natalia Roman
Paradiso Images

For Natalia Román, abstraction begins with observation. Looking closely at flowers, ripples, and other recurring forms in nature, she studies the ways patterns grow, expand, and transform over time. For Román, “Nature repeats itself, but always in a subtly different way,” as she said in an interview.

That idea is evident in paintings such as Tulip Echo (2026) and Coral Ripples (2024). Arches, crescents, and petal-like forms in varying hues repeat across gridded compositions, creating patterns that seem to expand and transform across the canvas. The resulting paintings recall the curved forms and heightened color relationships that became increasingly important in Riley’s work from the 1990s onward.

Influenced by mid-century design and Bauhaus ideas matching form and function, Román reduces her visual vocabulary to essential shapes while exploring the expressive potential of color. Represented by Barcelona-based gallery Paradiso Images since 2020, she is currently developing a new body of large-scale paintings that incorporate outlines and contours.

Felipe Pantone

B. 1986, Buenos Aires. Lives and works in Valencia.

Subtractive Variability Dimensional 10, 2024
Felipe Pantone
Galeria Raquel Arnaud

“Riley makes the eye move,” Felipe Pantone said of the British artist’s work. “That's huge.” With a background in street art, Pantone has built an international practice around a similar question: how can a static image generate a sense of movement? As he shared with Artsy, “I come from graffiti, so for me abstraction was always physical: speed, scale, color, city, repetition. I’m interested in taking that digital speed and turning it into physical objects.”

In OPTICHROMIE STRUCTURAL INSTABILITY 4 (2026), currently on view at “BEYOND THE STREETS” in Paris, pixelated gradients, optical patterns, and fragmented architectural structures collide in a composition that seems to pull the eye in multiple directions at once. Meanwhile, the acrylic sculptures in his “Subtractive Variability Vitreum” series layer transparent bands of fluorescent color that overlap and refract light, recalling the chromatic rhythms of Riley’s later works such as Elapse (1982).

Pantone has exhibited internationally in cities including New York, London, Paris, Brussels, Hong Kong, Tokyo, and Madrid. Based in Valencia, he is currently expanding Casa Axis, a multidisciplinary space that brings together architecture, sound, design, and artistic production.

Browse a curated collection of works by these artists, available to purchase on Artsy.

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Mayor Mamdani and The Whitney partner on free New York art activity during World Cup 2026. https://ift.tt/v02STMJ

A free, artist-designed activity guide is being distributed across all five boroughs of New York City this summer as part of a partnership between Mayor Zohran Mamdani, the Whitney Museum of American Art, and the FIFA World Cup 2026 New York New Jersey Host Committee.

Designed by Rich Tu, the artist behind the official FIFA World Cup 2026 New York New Jersey Host City Poster, the guide invites participants of all ages to explore themes of community, culture, and team spirit through art and play.

Available in both English and Spanish, it can be picked up at watch parties, Open Streets events, and community partner sites citywide, and downloaded online. New Yorkers and visitors who complete it, or present a photograph of it, are eligible for free admission to the museum through July 31, 2026, while supplies last.

The guide also unlocks a special event on July 12th, when Tu will lead a program at the Whitney in collaboration with Poster House. The event is part of Free Second Sunday and West Side Fest, a free weekend-long cultural celebration involving more than 20 arts organizations across Manhattan’s west side.

The initiative is intended to extend the reach of the World Cup beyond ticketed matches and into the city’s neighborhoods and public spaces. “We want every New Yorker to be part of this moment—not just in the stadium, but in their neighborhoods, their schools, and the public spaces that make New York the greatest city on earth,” said Mayor Mamdani in a statement. He added: “This partnership with the Whitney helps ensure that the excitement of the World Cup belongs to all of us, putting art and access at the heart of this historic summer.”

The guide sits alongside the Whitney’s existing free access programs, which include Free Friday Nights, Free Second Sundays, and free admission for visitors aged 25 and under. FIFA World Cup 2026 matches are being played across the U.S., Canada, and Mexico, with several fixtures also being screened at museums around the U.S.

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Song Burnsoo, pioneering Korean fiber artist, dies at 83. https://ift.tt/btSiumH

Song Burnsoo, whose decades-long investigation into textile, symbolism, and spiritual form made him one of the defining figures of Korean contemporary art, died on June 15th. He was 83. Gallery Baton, which represented him since 2019, announced his passing on June 18th.

Song was born in 1943 in Gongju, South Korea, and studied at Hongik University in Seoul, where he would return as a faculty member from 1980 to 2008 and later held the title of professor emeritus. He also founded the Maga Art Museum in 1998, dedicated to supporting artists working in fiber and textile crafts, and served as director of the Daejeon Museum of Art.

His early career centered on printmaking, with works that engaged directly with the sociopolitical landscape of postwar Korea, such as Consultation of General Rule about Unification of Korea (1972/2001), which addressed the division of the peninsula. Later, he moved to Paris to study lithography, where his works became increasingly religious in tone.

From this point onward he began using the motif of the rose thorn and its shadow, to stand in for the realities of human suffering in the context of religion. These pointed edges were often set against backgrounds of primary red or blue, as in the works for his 2023 show with Gallery Baton, “Know Yourself.” “The thorn has become both a religion and art as my life. After all, it is all about me,” he said in the materials for that exhibition.

Possibility 023-CV, CVI, CVII, 2023
Song Burnsoo
Gallery Baton

Song was included in the major 2024 traveling exhibition, “Only the Young: Experimental Art in Korea, 1960s–1970s,” which toured the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art in Seoul, the Guggenheim Museum in New York, and the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles. He received the Order of National Service Merit in Korea in 2000.

“Song Burnsoo belonged to a generation of artists who fundamentally expanded the language of Korean contemporary art,” Gallery Baton said in a statement. “Through more than five decades of experimentation across media, he developed a singular artistic vocabulary that moved fluidly between material, gesture, and philosophical inquiry. His legacy extends beyond his artworks themselves: it lives on through the generations of artists he taught, the institutions he helped build, and the expanded horizons he opened for Korean art internationally.”

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An Art Lover’s Guide to Philadelphia https://ift.tt/bXY6ORv

Philadelphia’s art scene has sharpened in the last few years into something distinctive: institutionally serious, community-driven, and unusually porous between artists, curators, designers, musicians, and chefs.

Proximity to New York and relative affordability are part of the story—Philly can sustain experimentation in ways many cities increasingly can’t.

New spaces dedicated to contemporary art and design have opened alongside artist-run collectives, while a younger generation of galleries has turned the city into a place to encounter work before it reaches the market machinery of New York or Los Angeles.

“What I love most about the art scene in Philadelphia is its authenticity,” said Katherine Sachs, a collector and founder of ArtPhilly, the nonprofit that launched its inaugural citywide biennial this year. “Artists and institutions can take risks and do things here they can’t do elsewhere.”

Philadelphians love their city, and the art community is quick to embrace outsiders. From arty watering holes to experimental nonprofits, here are the top spots from some of Philly’s creative leaders—click the links to see their Google Maps or Artsy pages.

The key neighborhoods for art lovers in Philadelphia

Old City: Philadelphia’s traditional gallery district revolves around Old City, where cobblestone streets and converted industrial buildings hold commercial galleries from emerging to blue-chip. “I love moving between places like Stickball, Dudd Haus, Paradigm, and other smaller spaces,” said Lindsey Scannapieco, founder of the development firm Scout.

The neighborhood still carries traces of its mercantile past—brick warehouses, iron shutters, narrow streets—but now those buildings house studios, bookstores, and design shops.

Fishtown and Kensington: Where Philadelphia’s younger art scene feels most alive. Former industrial spaces like the historic Crane Company plumbing warehouse have become galleries, music venues, studios, and hybrid creative spaces that blur the line between exhibition and social gathering. Ray Philly, an arts-driven luxury apartment building designed with artists’ needs in mind, sits nearby, as does the famous Johnny Brenda’s restaurant and indie rock venue.

The area feels unmistakably lived-in: murals fading into loading docks, music leaking from bars before sunset, cyclists weaving past old factories painted with fresh signage.

Fairmount and the Parkway: Benjamin Franklin Parkway is Philadelphia’s museum corridor. Beaux-Arts design gives it a European grandeur, connecting the major institutions through wide, tree-lined avenues.

The anchors are the Philadelphia Museum of Art and the Barnes Foundation, which were joined more recently by Calder Gardens, the contemplative space dedicated to Alexander Calder.

The galleries and museums to know in Philadelphia

“We have world-renowned legacy institutions,” said Bill Adair, creative and executive director of ArtPhilly. “We also have organizations enormously respected in the contemporary art world and many scrappy, smaller, neighborhood- and community-based spaces. This mash-up of old, new, large, small, and established is the heart and soul of Philly.”

Philadelphia museums

• Philadelphia Museum of Art: The city’s essential institution remains the PMA, which has a collection stretching from works by Marcel Duchamp and Constantin Brâncuși to contemporary installations and design. “One can truly travel the world by visiting the Philadelphia Museum of Art,” said Sachs.
• Fabric Workshop and Museum: One of the city’s cultural gems, Fabric Workshop and Museum is part residency space, part museum, part laboratory. Known for ambitious commissions that merge visual art, textiles, and performance, the organization has helped some of art history’s biggest names like Louise Bourgeois and Carrie Mae Weems create textiles, multiples, and other artworks.

• The Institute of Contemporary Art, Philadelphia: A space that consistently punches above its weight, with a long history of identifying artists before the broader market catches on. The recent exhibition “A World in the Making: The Shakers” flexed the museum’s design instincts, pairing Shaker objects with contemporary artists inspired by the community’s ideals of equality and collective labor.
• The Barnes Foundation and Calder Gardens: The Barnes Foundation offers a unique, singular encounter with modern art, where masterpieces by the likes of Pierre-Auguste Renoir and Paul Cézanne are displayed in the idiosyncratic ensembles envisioned by collector Albert C. Barnes. Just steps away, the recently opened Calder Gardens reimagines the museum experience through an immersive environment dedicated to Alexander Calder, inviting visitors to experience the artist's kinetic sculptures in dialogue with architecture, landscape, and light.

Commercial galleries

• Locks Gallery: a Philadelphia mainstay since 1968 which presents established artists including Mary Corse, Robert Rauschenberg, Ellen Harvey, and Hanne Friis.
• PENTIMENTI: the destination for material-forward contemporary practices, with exhibitions that foreground experimentation, process, and craft. The gallery’s roster includes artists Anne Buckwalter and Brandon J. Donahue-Shipp.
• Blah Blah Gallery: champion of emerging artists and adventurous contemporary practices, focusing on women and nonbinary artists.
• Fleisher/Ollman Gallery: a local favorite with global reach that’s centered on self-taught and outsider artists—a compelling alternative to mainstream art histories.
• Bertrand Productions: which quickly became a notable presence in Philadelphia’s contemporary art community, with ambitious exhibitions and an artist-centered approach.

Four art spaces off the beaten path

• Brodsky Center at PAFA: Located within the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts—the nation’s first art school and museum—Brodsky Center is a leading workshop for collaborative printmaking and papermaking.
• Cantor Fitzgerald Gallery: Just outside of the city in the picturesque suburbs is Haverford College’s Cantor Fitzgerald Gallery, a space that offers ambitious, thought-provoking exhibitions in an academic setting. Recent programs have ranged from major surveys of feminist and activist artists to exhibitions spotlighting neurodivergent creators.
• InLiquid: InLiquid champions local artists through exhibitions, public programs, and citywide initiatives.
• Woodmere Art Museum: Housed in a grand 19th-century stone mansion in Philadelphia’s leafy Chestnut Hill neighborhood, the Woodmere Art Museum pairs historical depth with a dynamic program of contemporary exhibitions.

Where the Philadelphia art world dines, shops, and stays

The places where Philadelphia’s creative crowd shows up tend to cluster around the city’s theaters, art schools, and converted industrial spaces.

For dinner and drinks

• Frankie’s Summer Club: Located in the courtyard of what used to be the storied University of the Arts (UArts), this quirky bar is named after visionary architect Frank Furness who designed nearby buildings.
• Mish Mish: This cozy, Mediterranean-inspired haunt in South Philly earned a Michelin guide recommendation for elevating simple dishes with bright, refreshing flavors. The charming interior blends Shaker-inspired furniture with contemporary flair, all while championing local businesses, including candles from the Philly brand Dilo.
• Honeysuckle: Scannapieco and ICA director Johanna Burton both recommend Honeysuckle. “It’s much more than a restaurant,” Burton said. “Omar Tate and Cybille St. Aude-Tate have created a space where food, history, storytelling, and culture come together in a way that feels deeply connected to Philadelphia's creative community.”
• Bok Bar: Bok is a bustling hub for artists, designers, nonprofits, and a host of businesses. On the top floor is Bok Bar, a popular outdoor spot with furniture made from old-school desks and chairs that boasts stunning views of the city skyline.

For shopping

• Books: “I love perusing the shelves at BrickBat Books and Giovanni’s Room, the oldest running queer and feminist bookstore in the country,” said Scannapieco. Another local favorite is Harriett’s Bookshop, a Black-owned store named after Harriett Tubman that specializes in Black women authors. Adair recommends Uncle Bobbie’s Cafe and Bookstore in Germantown: “It’s the perfect place to grab a cup of java and listen to an author reading their new book.”
• Design: For unique gifts and small objects like handmade plates and quirky, bulbous oil cruets, Scannapieco recommends the store at Hotel Yowie. She also suggests Quail Store, Moon & Arrow, and Dudd Haus. And for those looking for inspiration, Philly is home to Rarify, the designer-led store that specializes in sourcing unique and coveted furniture and lighting.
• Records: For virtually any record under the sun, Molly’s Books and Records is a true gem. For more of a relaxing, domestic setting, stop by Clubfriends Radio and Records, a pop-up by designer and cultural producer Alexa Colas that includes a replica of her living room.

Top tips for art lovers visiting Philadelphia

When to go: Philadelphia is a year-round city, but spring and fall offer highlights: “the city comes alive with exhibition openings, performances, and public programs,” said Burton. June welcomed a new art fair called Elsewhere in the rooms of Hotel Yowie. The event coincided with the inaugural ArtPhilly festival, a biennial that transformed the city into a stage for art and events. October is the strongest month. DesignPhiladelphia brings the city’s architecture, design, and creative communities into focus. September is also strong: the Fringe Festival and the Making Time sound festival at Fort Mifflin.

How to navigate: Philadelphia is geographically manageable with three core districts within reach of one another. Rideshares and public transportation are easy, but walking between galleries within each district, stopping by shops, cafes, and restaurants along the way, remains part of the experience. Build the day by neighborhood rather than crisscrossing.

What locals know: The collaborative ethos is the real local insight. “Artists, curators, writers, musicians, chefs, and organizers often move through the same spaces and conversations," said Burton. “There is a tangible spirit of collaboration and experimentation here that feels both ambitious and accessible.”

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The 5 Best Booths at CAN Ibiza 2026 https://ift.tt/FiqmWjZ

CAN Art Fair Ibiza turns five this year, and the anniversary fits its age. Running June 25th to 28th at the FECOEV exhibition center on the outskirts of Ibiza Town, the fair has expanded to match its rising visibility on the crowded fair circuit. A record 32 international exhibitors made the trip to the Spanish island this year, with a strong showing of local Spanish galleries settling in next to spaces from as far afield as Bucharest, Romania; Los Angeles; and Shanghai.

As a surprisingly thick throng of people filtered in for VIP day on Thursday, the mood matched the locale: There was a relaxed atmosphere almost as soon as the doors opened, with the colorfully dressed mix of collectors, locals, and visitors blending with booths that often leaned fully into the Ibiza vibe, with a far more vibrant, cheeky selection of works than you’d often see cruising other, more buttoned-up art fairs.

“You can't overlook that CAN is a cultural intermezzo in people's holidays, which is an element that shapes the relaxed atmosphere we experience year after year and has truly become our trademark,” the fair’s curator, Saša Bogojev, told Artsy.

Sales began within hours, with Madrid’s VETA by Fer Francés reporting that over half of the works in its solo booth of works by Javier Ruiz, made specifically for the fair, had sold out. And though there were some higher-priced works for sale (like those at IOMO Gallery)—most pieces fell into the four- and five-figure range, making for an accessible selection.

It was a packed house this year, even though it’s an island more known for parties than contemporary art (one gallerist told us they had changed their evening plans, abandoning an art dinner to go see 50 Cent perform). For collector Domenico Positano, CAN’s modest size was a welcome relief after a week spent at the supersized Art Basel in Switzerland.

More of a laid-back side quest than an overstimulating art-world obligation, CAN proved its worth as a place to buy into a new discovery—or simply enjoy the Spanish club music played at a reasonable volume next to the free champagne bar.

Here, we share our five best booths.

VETA by Fer Francés

Booth B2

With works by Javier Ruiz

Las flores de tu atardecer III, 2026
Javier Ruíz Pérez
VETA by Fer Francés

With walls painted in a deep terra-cotta and in pole position right at the fair’s entrance, VETA’s booth is impossible to miss. The solo presentation of works by Javier Ruiz, a Spain-born, Amsterdam-based painter, felt immediately at home against the warm walls; his canvases, populated with vivid floral arrangements, ceramic-filled shelving units, and parrots set against burnt-orange Mediterranean horizons, were elevated by the booth’s reddish hue.

“We felt his paintings would fit in very well with the Ibiza ambiance and feeling of the island,” explained the gallery’s founder, Fer Francés. Two standout large-scale works, Compleja naturaleza (2026) and Dejé mi cabeza al amparo de la nada (2026), provide anchor points, while smaller floral compositions radiate outward. Ruiz painted the new series with the terra-cotta booth in mind—he’d originally envisioned a fuller floor installation—and the effect gives the presentation a warmth befitting the Balearic island atmosphere.

VETA, founded in 2021 by Francés in a converted 1,200-square-meter Carabanchel, Madrid, space, has put its full weight behind the rapidly rising painter: Ruiz’s previous solo there in March sold out entirely. At CAN, all the smaller landscape works had sold within hours, while the larger painting, Compleja naturaleza (2026), was purchased by “an important collector in NYC,” according to the gallery.

Bodegón con estampa antigua, 2026
Javier Ruíz Pérez
VETA by Fer Francés

Las flores de tu atardecer II, 2026
Javier Ruíz Pérez
VETA by Fer Francés

Dejé mi cabeza al amparo de la nada, 2026
Javier Ruíz Pérez
VETA by Fer Francés

Compleja naturaleza, 2026
Javier Ruíz Pérez
VETA by Fer Francés

Albert Contemporary

Booth C6

With works by Juan de la Rica and Luca Bjørnsten

Albert Contemporary director Jonathan Kvium curates one of the fair’s most cleverly installed booths, turning a structural pillar sideways to segment the space and installing a pair of cheeky works by Luca Bjørnsten at its base: a crayon drawing of a sailboat, its crayons affixed over top, hangs on the narrow strip. If you look up, you’ll find a ceramic seagull clutching the stolen keys to a Ferrari higher up—sold for €1,200 ($1,370) by the end of the preview day. The humor feels almost childlike—until you notice the two nude female works in the foreground flanking the pillar, one by Bjørnsten and one by Juan de la Rica, which reframes the whole thing as something more mischievous.

The walls are hung salon-style, one side per artist, with both artists showing oil on canvas works and works on paper, priced from €1,200 to €9,000 ($1,367 to $10,256). On Bjørnsten’s side, thick, pastel-frosted oil paintings and colored-pencil-on-paper works map the consumer landscape with the candy-crush cheerfulness of 1950s American diner graphics, framed in pink. On the other wall, de la Rica’s flat, saturated portraits and mythological scenes are all framed in cobalt blue.

Based on a true story, 2026
Luca Bjørnsten
Albert Contemporary

Sketch for "Mujer con Cisne", 2026
Juan de La Rica
Albert Contemporary

Flores Rosas, 2026
Juan de La Rica
Albert Contemporary

Sketch for "Naturaleza Muerta con Botella y Jarra", 2026
Juan de La Rica
Albert Contemporary

Sketch for "Mujer de Espaldas", 2026
Juan de La Rica
Albert Contemporary

Bañista con bikini verde, 2025
Juan de La Rica
Albert Contemporary

Andrómeda encadenada, 2025
Juan de La Rica
Albert Contemporary

Echoes of a Sunset, 2026
Luca Bjørnsten
Albert Contemporary

Blurred Intimacy, 2026
Luca Bjørnsten
Albert Contemporary

As If, ALF!, 2026
Luca Bjørnsten
Albert Contemporary

♫ (suspiciously seductive melody) ♫, 2026
Luca Bjørnsten
Albert Contemporary

Two de la Rica works sold first: Mujer con Cisne (2026), a reimagining of the Greek myth of Leda and the Swan, and the small surrealistic sketch Nocturnidad (2026). The cohesive blending helped make the case to buyers that the works of both artists would pair effortlessly. “The languages are very different, but there are similarities,” Kvium told Artsy. “This percussive, colorful explosion of both nostalgia and humor.”

Galeria Mayoral

Booth B4

With works by Oriol Enguany

In Oriol Enguany’s 777 (2026), a yellow, wide-eyed figure assembled from rough timber and painted boards leans against its own easel, transplanted into the far wall of Galeria Mayoral’s booth. The 31-year-old artist’s works can also be found on the FECOEV grounds outside, his wild forms bringing a raw energy to the fair’s geography. A self-taught sculptor and painter from Reus, Catalonia, he works outdoors on an olive farm where wind, light, and temperature directly shape the pieces.

Another standout is La mà del mag (2026), a large-scale mixed-media work priced at €25,000 ($28,491) that incorporates found objects, its central figure seemingly frozen in the process of coming off the canvas. Paintings and sculptures come from the same physical process, made in the same open air, and the booth reads accordingly: rough, physical, and coherent.

777, 2026
Oriol Enguany
Galeria Mayoral

Compost, 2026
Oriol Enguany
Galeria Mayoral

A Ple Sol (In Full Light), 2026
Oriol Enguany
Galeria Mayoral

Baix Camp, 2026
Oriol Enguany
Galeria Mayoral

El pes de les paraules (The Weight of Words), 2026
Oriol Enguany
Galeria Mayoral

Es cert (It's True), 2026
Oriol Enguany
Galeria Mayoral

Flors (Flowers), 2026
Oriol Enguany
Galeria Mayoral

Guàrdia del Can (Guardian of Can), 2026
Oriol Enguany
Galeria Mayoral

La mà del mag (The Magician's Hand), 2026
Oriol Enguany
Galeria Mayoral

Mollerussa (1), 2026
Oriol Enguany
Galeria Mayoral

Mollerussa (2), 2026
Oriol Enguany
Galeria Mayoral

Petropaisatge, 2026
Oriol Enguany
Galeria Mayoral

Enguany’s Paris debut, “Transmission de pouvoirs,” at Mayoral earlier this year, was his first solo internationally, and CAN provides a clear look at why the gallery, founded in 1989 and best known for its post-war Spanish canon, has bet big on a 31-year-old newcomer. One mixed-media painting, Petropaisatge (2026), featuring two vibrant yellow flowers, was on hold after preview day for €17,000 ($19,374).

Secteur Privé

Booth C13

With works by Ana Monsó, Leila Bartell, Anna Lugovska, Soojin Choi, and Fiona von Fürstenberg

Among passing shadows, 2025
Anna Lugovska
Secteur Privé

For its third appearance at CAN—after one previous Ibiza trip and one Madrid showing—the woman-owned Secteur Privé arrived with a booth that had one of the fair’s clearest points of view: five emerging female artists, one presentation united by intentionally accessible prices, ranging from €2,000 ($2,279) for Anna Lugovska’s “Spaces” series of oil paintings up to the €12,500 ($14,245) ceramic piece What This Could Be (2024) by Soojin Choi.

One of the most hypnotizing additions to the range of works is actually the gallery’s last-minute addition From the Inside Out, the Center Blooms (2026), a kaleidoscopic swirl of color (priced at a reasonable €6,500, or $7,407) by Fiona von Fürstenberg that pulls the eye from across the floor. It’s offset by works from Leila Bartell’s 2025 “Memory Fields” series, priced from €3,600 to €7,200 ($4,102 to $8,205). Rounding out the booth is Ana Monsó’s 2026 “Un silencio en particular” series, adding a further register of deliberate restraint, priced between €6,800 and €9,000 ($7,749 and $10,256).

Spaces 3, 2026
Anna Lugovska
Secteur Privé

De dentro para fora, o centro se aflora (From the Inside Out, the Center Blooms), 2026
Fiona Von Furstenberg
Secteur Privé

What This Could Be, 2024
Soojin Choi
Secteur Privé

You Never Knew, 2022
Soojin Choi
Secteur Privé

Un silencio en particular 1, 2026
Ana Monsó
Secteur Privé

Un silencio en particular 9, 2026
Ana Monsó
Secteur Privé

Un silencio en particular 5, 2026
Ana Monsó
Secteur Privé

Amber air, 2025
Anna Lugovska
Secteur Privé

Spaces 1, 2026
Anna Lugovska
Secteur Privé

Spaces 2, 2026
Anna Lugovska
Secteur Privé

Da bruta rocha; a gruta desbrocha (From the brute rock; the grotto emerges), 2025
Fiona Von Furstenberg
Secteur Privé

A flor há secar-se para reflorescer (the Flower Must Dry in order to Bloom Again), 2026
Fiona Von Furstenberg
Secteur Privé

Shadows 1, 2025
Anna Lugovska
Secteur Privé

Shadows 2, 2025
Anna Lugovska
Secteur Privé

Shadows 3, 2025
Anna Lugovska
Secteur Privé

Morning Light, 2026
Anna Lugovska
Secteur Privé

Endless Maybe, 2025
Leila Bartell
Secteur Privé

Memory Fields 8, 2025
Leila Bartell
Secteur Privé

Memory Fields 13, 2025
Leila Bartell
Secteur Privé

Memory Fields 11, 2025
Leila Bartell
Secteur Privé

The London and L.A. gallery—whose home base is a converted private residence, a concept they carry into every fair—dressed the booth with tropical plants, a woven rattan bench, and a reed diffuser tucked beside a bird of paradise, giving it a more living-room than white-cube feel. It works immediately, disarming the sometimes sterile booth structure, and speaks to Secteur Privé founder Colette Gibson’s confidence in CAN. “I said this last year, but I think this is going to be a really important fair,” she told Artsy. “It’s new, but it’s already shifted the culture in Ibiza, which is fantastic.”

IOMO Gallery

Booth A8

With works by Billy Gibney, Graham Silveria Martin, Mircea Roman, Nathan Ritterpusch, and Zoe Schweiger

IOMO made its CAN debut with one of the fair’s most quietly confident bets. Anchoring the booth are three monumental wood sculptures by Mircea Roman—the reclining two-figure tableau Pieta (2013) on the floor, a standing sphinx-like figure Doamna mâță (2004), and a third with a red-framed television, Coajă de om (2013). Ranging from €60,000–€150,000 ($68,378–$170,946), they give the booth a weight that makes the Bucharest-based gallery stand out.

Roman is 67, a grand prize winner at the Osaka Triennale and a Venice Biennale veteran, but remains largely unknown outside Romania. Framing his works are those by four younger international painters—Billy Gibney, Graham Silveria Martin, Nathan Ritterpusch, and Zoe Schweiger. Ritterpusch’s paintings stand out, with faces rendered in deliberately low-quality haze reminiscent of faded newspaper or television ads.

Pieta, 2013
Mircea Roman
IOMO Gallery

Sunny Afternoon, 2025
Zoe Schweiger
IOMO Gallery

Try Asking Someone Who Cares #14, 2026
Nathan Ritterpusch
IOMO Gallery

Try Asking Someone Who Cares #9, 2025
Nathan Ritterpusch
IOMO Gallery

Cabin II, 2025
Graham Silveria Martin
IOMO Gallery

Private Eye, 2026
Billy Gibney
IOMO Gallery

Home Body, 2026
Billy Gibney
IOMO Gallery

“Mircea Roman is established in Romania but not known internationally,” said gallery director Elena Chirila, “and the opposite is true too—we’re introducing fresh voices from outside to Romanian audiences.” Judging by the foot traffic filtering into the busy booth, the dialogue is landing.

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