New York’s High Line announces 2026 commissions by Derek Fordjour, Katherine Bernhardt and more. https://ift.tt/hJstbnG

The High Line in New York has unveiled its new slate of art programming for the spring 2026 season. Presented by High Line Art, the elevated public park in lower Manhattan has commissioned new works by Patricia Ayres, Ximena Garrido-Lecca, Derek Fordjour, Katherine Bernhardt, Saba Khan, Marianna Simnett, Filip Kostic, and Ana Hušman.

The new works, which include sculptures, a billboard, and video exhibitions, are organized around the theme of bodies, labor, and infrastructure, and curated by High Line Art’s director and chief curator, Cecilia Alemani.

“With each new commission and each artist’s unique way of interpreting the world we live in and shape, I learn so much, from topics as wide-ranging yet still connected as the human body, agriculture, and cultural expression,” said Alemani.

New York–based artist Patricia Ayres will present her first series of outdoor sculptures, titled 2-18-5-14-4-1-14-3-12-15-14-6-5-18-20, 7-5-18-2018-21-4-5-8-5-9-6-20-1, and 2-15-14-1-16-9-14-1, on the High Line between 19th and 20th streets. First trained in fashion design before moving towards sculpture, Ayres’s fleshy, towering figures challenge the bodily constraints placed on women by the fashion industry, the prison system, and the Catholic church.

At 23rd street, Peruvian sculptor and installation artist Ximena Garrido-Lecca will present Golden Crop, a 9-foot-tall bronze water fountain that takes the form of a corn cob. To illustrate the toxic health and environmental effects brought on by the routine genetic modification of the crop, Garrido-Lecca’s piece will color the fountain’s trickling water a neon yellow hue, in reference to the chemical runoff that pollutes local water sources used by communities for drinking, fishing, and recreation.

American sculptor, installation, and performance artist Derek Fordjour will present three new painted bronze sculptures of Black figures depicting the tension and expectations placed upon various careers that were historically viewed as pathways to upwards mobility in the African American experience. Including depictions of a waiter and a boxer, these works will be presented alongside Backbreaker Double, Fordjour’s High Line commission mural that was installed in December of last year.

Meanwhile, the High Line’s billboard at the intersection of 10th Avenue and West 18th Street will present Spring Cleaning, a vibrant still life centered on domestic cleanliness and ritual by St. Louis–based painter Katherine Bernhardt.

The High Line also announced its forthcoming video program, including three videos by London-based Pakistani artist Saba Khan on the politics of water. In addition, three films on the subject of football (timed with the 2026 World Cup) will be on view, by Marianna Simnett, Filip Kostic, and Ana Hušman.

Previous High Line commissions include Iván Argote’s giant pigeon sculpture, which is on view through spring 2026. Previous artists commissioned for the park’s prestigious sculpture series include Asad Raza, Pilvi Takala, Carlos Reyes, Teresa Solar Abboud, and more. In spring 2026, Vietnamese American artist Andrew Tuan Nguyen will also create a 27-foot-Buddha for the High Line.

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How This London Collector Is Cultivating the Art of Her Generation https://ift.tt/reZlYsE

When Gigi Surel first stood in front of Pablo Picasso’s Guernica (1937)—the artist’s monumental, visceral response to the bombing of a Basque town—at the age of 17, her reaction was physical. “[It] made me think deeply about the aura of a painting, about Stendhal Syndrome, about the body’s reactions to art,” she recalled. “I wanted to understand it.”

That moment at Madrid’s Museo Reina Sofía set the tone for everything that followed. Surel, now a London-based collector, patron, and curator, approaches art as a deeply personal, almost physiological endeavor.

Growing up in Istanbul, she didn’t spend much time in museums until her teens. But once she started, it became an obsession. Today, her London flat reads like a reflection of this. Art books and catalogues are stacked high on the shelves, interrupted by sculptural lights and small works balanced between spines. The space glows with Eva Gold’s golden wall light, Open (2024). Nearby hangs a painting of a Turkish tea glass framed by an oversized rose by Tasneem Sarkez—a quiet nod to Surel’s heritage. On another shelf sit Graham Wiebe’s sliced book sculptures, their collaged titles forming strange poetic phrases.

Her collection—now encompassing works by more than 35 artists—circles themes of sensitivity, memory, and emotion. In recent years, shaped in part by her father’s illness and passing, she’s been drawn to softness and grief. “Lately, I’ve been drawn to vulnerability,” she told Artsy. “Artists exploring vulnerability, grief, softness. It feels important to have that in my home.”

What matters to her most is connecting with art deeply and intuitively. She often buys works by emerging artists, many of whom are unrepresented by galleries. “It makes me feel like I’m contributing, in some small way, to the art of my generation,” she said.

Collecting, for Surel, began as a search for belonging. While studying law in the U.S., she felt isolated during her master’s degree. Museums became a refuge. She bought memberships to MoMA, the Guggenheim, and the Art Institute of Chicago, which introduced her to like-minded people: “I started talking to people and meeting others who loved art,” she said. “It opened up this whole world.”

As the first in her family to attend university, the art world had once seemed distant. Joining acquisitions committees at the Guggenheim and MCA Chicago became her education. “I thought, ‘okay, I can learn how to collect by being in these groups,’” she said. “I treated it almost like a profession at first. I wanted to do it right.”

During the 2020 COVID lockdowns, while preparing to move to London, Surel found herself online constantly, poring over degree shows and works by emerging artists. One of her first significant purchases during that period was Xu Yang’s unicorn painting, Mirrored Rapunzel Tail (2020), which now hangs above her bed. Soon after came Yaya Yajie Liang’s Gregor Samsa (2022). “Seeing them still feels like home,” she says. The works have travelled with her from flat to flat.

Her tastes encompass everything from the diaristic and delicate to the sharp and cerebral: Christelle Oyiri, Tasneem Sarkez, Selma Selman, Nat Faulkner, Daiga Grantina, Hélène Fauquet, and Dada Khanyisa are among the artists in her growing collection. She compares collecting to getting a tattoo. Rolling up her sweater sleeves to show me her tattooed arms, she explains the similarities as “personal, diaristic, and permanent…some abstract, some edgy, and others are more delicate.”

This passion has grown into a profession. Surel writes for Marie Claire Türkiye and the philosophy magazine Perediza. She curates exhibitions, including a recent group show, “Reassemblage,” at the London gallery General Assembly. And last year, she founded Teaspoon Projects, a platform designed to bring new collectors into the fold.

“One of my biggest missions,” she said, “is bringing first-time collectors into the mix, and that’s getting harder. Even people with disposable income don’t prioritize art. They’ll buy a purse before they buy a painting.”

Teaspoon Projects is her counter-strategy: events, conversations, and invitations to see art. “Collecting takes time,” she explained. “I’m trying to offer a soft kind of education, showing potential collectors my art world and slowly building art lovers.”

That world is generous, intimate, and rooted in relationships. She moves artworks around her flat almost weekly. She writes about the artists she falls for. She spends hours researching emerging practices. “I take art very personally,” she said.

Her advice to first-time art buyers and collectors is simple: slow down. Accept that your taste will change. Like a tattoo, you might look back years later and feel differently—but the work will still hold a memory of who you were.

“Art is a way of understanding ourselves and the world,” she said. “Collecting is the same.”

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Klára Hosnedlová’s Massive Woven Sculptures Echo Craft Traditions https://ift.tt/2gTtBfE

It was a cold January afternoon when 35-year-old Czech artist Klára Hosnedlová arrived in London to install “Echo,” her debut solo show at White Cube (on view at the gallery’s Bermondsey branch through March 26th). Technicians with forklifts worked in the background, building the latest of her imagined landscapes: enigmatic mixed-media environments embedded with cultural and historical references. As we walked around, I felt like I’d landed on a strange new planet. Yet Hosnedlová’s work always begins with an assessment of her site’s existing structures. “It’s to feel the space, to feel its architecture and energy, to play with how I can occupy and change the emotion of the space, in a fragile way,” Hosnedlová said. “For me, the artwork always connects with the space.”

At the start of her career, before galleries were interested in her work, Hosnedlová had to serve as her own location scout. A decade ago, she presented a series of embroidered canvases depicting fragments of women’s bodies inside a home in Pilsen, Czech Republic, which was designed by famed modernist architect Adolf Loos. But in the past few years, her site-specific installations, simultaneously grand in scope and delicate in tone, have sprung up at increasingly high-profile institutions. Since White Cube announced its representation of the artist in 2022, she has presented solo exhibitions at the Kestner Gesellschaft in Hannover, Germany, Kunsthalle Basel, and Hamburger Bahnhof in Berlin. In late March, when New York’s New Museum reopens to the public, her newest commission will anchor the atrium stair.

Hosnedlová, who lives and works in her small hometown of Uherské Hradiště, Czech Republic, is making the most of these international opportunities. In Bermondsey, she has taken over two galleries in the cavernous former warehouse. An enormous tapestry composed of thick strands of woven flax, linen, and hemp hangs from the ceiling of the smaller gallery. These matted tendrils, tinted with natural dyes in earth tones, are a recurring motif for Hosnedlová; she is drawn to materials that bring an organic vitality and meaningful provenance to her often stark venues. The fibers come from the last remaining linen factory in the Czech Republic; the pieces were woven by artisans at a Slovenian textile studio dedicated to preserving the region’s cultural heritage. Hosnedlová invited me to feel one of the faux locks, which was surprisingly soft and airy. The artist loves it when visitors want to touch her work, though institutions rarely allow it.

A resin sculpture, coated in stone and mineral dust, nestles in the center of the tapestry. It resembles an ancient fossil and gestures towards Hosnedlová’s fascination with remaking the past. And in a niche of the sculpture, a small, curved panel of embroidery appears, recalling her own creative beginnings—needle and thread in fact led Hosnedlová to artmaking. “When I was a child, I often made clothes for myself and my family, and I always felt so relaxed,” she said. But when she arrived at the Academy of Fine Arts in Prague, in 2009, she found herself in an extremely “old-fashioned” and male-dominated environment. Craft-based practices weren’t taken seriously. Hosnedlová attempted to conform to the dominant trend for abstract painting but quickly realized that “if I wasn’t enjoying the process, there was no point.” She reverted to her origins, developing her unique strategy for defamiliarizing a centuries-old craft tradition.

Hosnedlová bases her cotton-thread embroideries, which take months to complete, on photographs. Every time she has a show, she privately stages a “performance”—no spectators allowed—in which she directs participants to pose within the space. For Hosnedlová, the shots of these events are akin to drawings in a sketchbook. They’re also, perhaps, a way to connect the embroidered surfaces to her three-dimensional, total environments (or Gesamtkunstwerke, as Hosnedlová puts it): they offer a sense of continuity in her practice. The results are finely detailed, hyperrealistic images featuring fragmented glimpses of human figures frozen mid-action. A pair of hands hold a lit match; a grinning mouth exposes a full set of shiny grillz.

At White Cube, 13 additional embroideries appear in the even more elaborate mise-en-scène of the larger second gallery. Some are again on biomorphically shaped panels embedded in resin sculptures. Here, they’re mounted on a series of rolled steel screens placed like stage curtains in front of the gallery walls. Others are affixed to poles which Hosnedlová has installed in the center of the room, along with a four-sided step platform. The set-up is reminiscent of a futuristic theater in the round. (When I returned for the opening, bits of costume and other remnants from the private performance had been left behind—a leather corset sewn together with strands of textile, markings on the walls, and so on.) “I usually don’t like to arrange things around a center like this,” Hosnedlová said. “But this space has a very strong center, and there are various rectangular shapes: the shape of the room, but also the overhead lights.”

In the middle of the poles, scattered autumnal leaves surround a trio of pale, Styrofoam blocks wrapped in hemp. Mycelium and sprouting fungi emerge from their craggy surfaces. For several months, Hosnedlová cultivated reishi, a mushroom used in Eastern medicine, in a rented studio. “Years ago, I studied with a very old man, an expert reishi forager,” she said. She decided to bring fungi into White Cube when she first saw the windowless, overhead-lit space and likened it to an “underground laboratory.” Hosnedlová has incorporated the sounds of the growing mushrooms into an accompanying audio piece made in collaboration with the experimental composer Billy Bultheel.

Each venue presents a new opportunity for Hosnedlová, and she also sees her work as an ongoing process. Aspects of one project always feed into the next: several of the woven works, for example, featured in her Hamburger Bahnhof show, and photographs taken here will reappear in future embroideries. “For me, it’s important in developing myself,” Hosnedlová said of her recursive approach. It’s a way to come back to questions in her practice that remain unresolved. Hence the title of the exhibition: “Echo.” The space is the container for the artist’s voice, which will reverberate in the world beyond.

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Carnegie Museum announces 61 artists and collectives for 2026 Carnegie International. https://ift.tt/fAmDJGl

The Carnegie Museum of Art announced 61 artists and collectives who will take part in the 2026 Carnegie International, the institution’s major survey of contemporary art staged every four years. Curated by Ryan Inouye, Danielle A. Jackson, and Liz Park, the 59th edition of the exhibition will run May 2, 2026 through January 3, 2027, at the Carnegie in Pittsburgh as well as at several partner institutions across the city, where a slate of new commissions will be presented.

Among the participants are internationally acclaimed artists including Dineo Seshee Bopape, Torkwase Dyson, Alia Farid, Beatriz González, Arturo Kameya, Claudia Martínez Garay, Cameron Rowland, and Wu Tsang.

Titled “If the word we,” the exhibition invites visitors to expand how we think about borders and belonging. “Rather than thinking about ‘we’ as a fixed or unified collective, the title proposes it as something much more dynamic—it’s a space for listening,” said Park during a press event in early February in New York. The curators approached the exhibition “by working closely with artists over time, listening to them attentively, and following how their works move across geographies, disciplines, and forms of knowledge,” Park added.

New commissions are a major focus of the 2026 edition. These include Torkwase Dyson’s immersive animation, which will premiere in the planetarium at Kamin Science Center; and a collaborative installation by Arturo Kameya and Claudia Martínez Garay that will be presented at the Mattress Factory, which is co-commissioning the work.

A cornerstone of the museum since 1896, the Carnegie International traces back to founder Andrew Carnegie’s visit to the first Venice Biennale in 1895. Blown away by the international exhibition, he returned home determined to establish something similar in Pittsburgh. “Since that time, it’s become a platform to introduce new artistic ideas, to expand the museum’s collection, and to position Pittsburgh as a place where international art happens,” said Carnegie director Eric Crosby at the same press event. The International is North America’s longest-running exhibition of international art.

Over the decades, the International has helped shape Carnegie Museum of Art’s impressive collection through acquisitions tied to past editions. Major artists who have participated in previous Internationals include Josef Albers, Louise Bourgeois, Mary Cassatt, Nicole Eisenman, Edward Hopper, Agnes Martin, Julie Mehretu, Sigmar Polke, Auguste Rodin, and Lynette Yiadom-Boakye, among many others.

The full list of artists and collectives participating in the 2026 Carnegie International follows:

• Georges Adéagbo
• asinnajaq
• Fe Avila
• Maithili Bavkar
• Dineo Seshee Bopape (Raisibe)
• Saloua Raouda Choucair
• Chung Seoyoung
• Dang A Dang Radio
• Torkwase Dyson
• Elle Márjá Eira
• Alia Farid
• Sanchayan Ghosh
• Beatriz González
• Jonathan González
• Abraham González Pacheco
• Kearra Amaya Gopee
• Priyesh Gothwal
• Eric Gyamfi
• d harding with Jordan Upkett
• Jason Hirata
• Hong Lee Hyunsook
• Hyun Nahm
• Firman Ichsan
• G. Peter Jemison, in collaboration with
• Jay Carrier
• Katsitsionni Fox
• Hayden Haynes
• Tom Huff
• Craig Marvin
• Diane Schenandoah
• Randee Spruce
• Liz Johnson Artur
• Arturo Kameya
• Jasleen Kaur
• Li Yi-Fan
• Cinthia Marcelle
• Claudia Martínez Garay
• Hans Ragnar Mathisen
• RJ Messineo
• Shala Miller
• Joar Nango
• Sarah Ndele
• Brooke O’Harra
• Gabriela Pinilla
• Khalil Rabah
• Ana Raylander Mártis dos Anjos
• Miller Robinson
• Donald Rodney
• Cameron Rowland
• Daid Roy
• Walter Scott
• Mohit Shelare
• Silät
• Reina Sugihara
• Ginger Brooks Takahashi
• Camara Taylor
• Sōfū Teshigahara
• Sogetsu Foundation
• Natasha Tontey
• Wu Tsang
• Jonathan Yu
• Zhao Yao

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Austrian performance artist Florentina Holzinger joins Thaddaeus Ropac. https://ift.tt/pjmofrD

Thaddaeus Ropac has added Austrian artist Florentina Holzinger to its artist roster.

The artist, who will represent Austria at the Venice Biennale later this year, is known for her subversive performances that fuse dance, opera, and visual arts. Her art is physically demanding and often includes live piercings, explicit sex, blood, and professional-level stunts.

This is Holzinger’s first gallery representation, and, according to Ropac, her work with the gallery will bring a heightened focus to the visual aspects of her practice.

“Florentina's work has an unmistakable, singular aesthetic. She continually challenges conventions with her genre-defying practice, meticulously layering ideas, narratives, and radical techniques to address the most urgent subjects of our time,” said Thaddaeus Ropac in a statement. “Her practice establishes new ways of working with the body, as subject and medium and as a means of agency. The objects she creates are an extension of the physical possibilities of the body—whether presented to us in her choreography, opera, performance, or visual art.”

At the upcoming Venice Biennale, which opens in May, Holzinger will present a piece titled “Seaworld Venice,” curated by Nora Swantje Almes. The work will investigate water as a resource and a subject, and explore the city of Venice’s precarious relationship with it. “Seaworld Venice” will build upon themes previously interrogated in her work, Ophelia’s Got Talent, which debuted at the Berlin Volksbühne in 2022. This presentation will coincide with the release of her first major publication, a monographic work titled HOLZINGER, by Gropius Bau Berlin and Kunsthalle Wien.

“My work thrives on navigating or surfing between genres,” said Holzinger in a statement. “It looks for different contexts to exist within and explores questions of who belongs in which space, who belongs on which stage, and who belongs in which gallery. These are all things that I'm very playful with.

“What's important for me is that I'm questioning the conventions and conditions of these places. In the theater, usually there’s a fixed spectatorship; in a gallery space, you have a mobile spectatorship where the audience can determine how long they want to engage with the work. To go into a new space means challenging the different habits and conditions of that place, and the different types of expectations. To be in a visual arts context is for me a matter of taking on another space and is a particular inspiration for my work.”

Holzinger’s work has earned her the Nestroy and Faust awards in 2020 and 2023, respectively. A dominant star in contemporary performance, the Guardian heralded her as “Europe’s hottest director” for her productions that routinely sell out. Last summer, tickets for her performance of A Year without Summer at the Volksbühne am Rosa-Luxemburg-Platz in Berlin sold out within minutes of its announcement.

Holzinger is also the creator of Études, an ongoing series of site-specific, singular performances that employ architecture, bodies, and sound. These performances serve as an experimental playground, and have taken place in settings ranging from parking lots, lakes, streets, and public squares.

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Art Basel Hong Kong announces 240 galleries for the 2026 fair. https://ift.tt/hlyjCdL

Art Basel Hong Kong (ABHK) has announced that 240 galleries from across 41 countries and territories will participate in the 2026 edition of the fair. This is the same number of galleries that participated in ABHK 2025. The fair returns to the Hong Kong Convention and Exhibition Centre (HKCEC) from March 27th to 29th with preview days on the 25th and 26th. 32 galleries will present at ABHK for the first time. Over half of the participants have outposts in the Asia-Pacific region, and 29 galleries are based in Hong Kong.

The fair has announced that Encounters, the sector dedicated to large-scale installations, sculptures, and performances, will feature 11 artworks circling the theme of the five elements—space/ether, water, fire, wind, and earth. This year’s offsite presentation, once again located at Pacific Place Park Court, will feature a new digital work by American artist Christine Sun Kim. Kim, who works across drawing, performance, sound, installation, and video, interrogates the politics of sound using her native American Sign Language (ASL) and written English. ABHK will also present the second edition of Zero 10, Art Basel’s new platform for digital-era art, following its debut at Art Basel Miami Beach 2025 this past December. It will feature 14 participants, including Art of This Millenium (AOTM), Art Blocks, Asprey Studio, bitforms gallery, Botto, Fellowship x ARTXCODE, √K Contemporary, Nguyen Wahed, Office Impart, Onkaos, Plan X, Silk Art House, SOLOS, and TAEX.

This year’s Film Program, titled “In Between Magic and Reality,” will bring together a selection of films that encourage the use of imagination as a means of resistance and survival. Hong Kong-based artist, curator, and researcher Ellen Pau makes her debut as curator of the section. Pau is a pioneering figure in Hong Kong’s art and technology landscape and the co-founder of Videotage, a non-profit platform dedicated to media art in Asia.

This edition of the fair will also mark the launch of Friends of Art Basel Hong Kong, a new initiative intended to strengthen ties with regional museums across Asia. Institutions from mainland China, including the Bai'etan Greater Bay Area Art Center in Guangzhou, China, and the Rockbund Art Museum in Shanghai, China, will participate.

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David Zwirner announces representation of American painter Louis Fratino. https://ift.tt/fmQA4P3

Blue-chip gallery David Zwirner has announced New York-based artist Louis Fratino as the newest member of their roster. His first solo show with Zwirner will take place in London this fall, and new paintings by the fast-rising star will be on view later this month in their Frieze Los Angeles booth. Sikkema Malloy Jenkins will continue to represent the artist in New York, while Galerie Neu will do so in Berlin.

“I am thrilled to welcome Louis Fratino to the gallery. His sensual and erotic paintings are impossible to ignore, they inevitably draw you in and confront you. To my eyes his powerful art is truly of our time—or maybe I should say of his time—challenging us to come embrace an intimacy and a sensuality that has not found its way into the canon yet,” said David Zwirner in a statement.

Born in Annapolis, Maryland in 1993, Fratino is known for his intimate depictions of men, which capture the tenderness of everyday queer life. He works across painting, drawing, and sculpture, using vivid palettes to form lively, curvaceous compositions. His paintings reference the techniques and styles of painters past and present, including Alice Neel, Dana Schutz, and Christopher Wood, among others.

Fratino received his BFA from Maryland Institute College of Art in 2015. The year prior, he was selected to participate in the Ellen Battell Stoeckel Fellowship at Yale’s Summer School of Art and Music, and in 2016, he received a Fulbright Research Fellowship to study painting and printmaking in Berlin. Since then, he has presented solo and two-person exhibitions at galleries including Ciaccia Levi, Cabinet Printemps, and Litografia Bulla. In 2024, a selection of his paintings were included in the Central Pavilion at the 60th Venice Biennale. And next month, an exhibition titled “Fratino and Matisse: To See This Light Again” will open at the Baltimore Museum of Art and place the eponymous artists in dialogue.

“Fratino holds prosaic subjects up to the light to reveal how our loves, our secrets, our senses of self are contained in the little moments of daily life: the weeds in the yard, the seashells lined up on a windowsill, or the dirty dishes in the sink,” said Virginia M. G. Anderson, the Baltimore Museum of Art’s curator of American Art. “As an integral part of this everyday life, sex figures into his oeuvre as simultaneously emotional, erotic, vulnerable, and joyfully mundane.” Anderson also called Fratino “very much an artist of his generation.”

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