Acclaimed art organization Swiss Institute to open permanent New York location in 2027. https://ift.tt/KpZ6jth

Swiss Institute (SI), one of New York’s leading platforms for experimental contemporary art, has announced the acquisition of the ground floor and lower level of 250 Bowery in Manhattan. The move marks the first time in its 40-year history that the institution has owned its premises. The new location will open to the public in spring 2027 and will remain free of charge.

Founded in 1986 by artists and art patrons, SI has established itself as a distinctive force in the city’s cultural landscape, known for championing emerging and under-recognized artists, fostering cross-cultural exchange between Switzerland and the international art world, and maintaining free public admission throughout its history.

SI has occupied a succession of rented spaces across the city, from a townhouse on West 67th Street to SoHo, Tribeca, and most recently, 38 St. Marks Place in the East Village. It has built a reputation for rigorous, forward-thinking programming and an early platform for artists including Pipilotti Rist, Thomas Hirschhorn, Christian Marclay, Nicolas Party, and Peter Fischli & David Weiss.

The move to 250 Bowery expands the institution’s footprint from approximately 7,000 to 11,000 square feet and places it alongside the New Museum, Giorno Poetry Systems, and Participant Inc. in one of the city’s oldest cultural areas.

The renovation has been entrusted to Los Angeles–based architecture firm Johnston Marklee, whose recent projects include the Whitney Museum of American Art’s Independent Study Program space, the Menil Drawing Institute in Houston, and a renovation of the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago. The firm’s design prioritizes flexibility, modularity, and environmental sustainability, incorporating reclaimed materials, energy-efficient lighting, and reusable exhibition infrastructure. Work begins this fall.

The opening exhibition, “The Environment,” will be an international group show drawing on an artist-led community project initiated by experimental filmmaker Bud Wirtschafter in downtown New York between 1966 and 1968. Artworks will be presented not only within SI but across building façades, community gardens, and other public spaces. While renovations are underway, SI will continue offsite programming, including “Kino East,” a fall 2026 exhibition by Zürich-based Polish artist Rafał Skoczek, who will transform a disused commercial space into an evolving site for gathering and exchange.

In a statement, Stefanie Hessler, director of SI, said the move represented “both a culmination and a beginning,” adding that owning a permanent space for the first time would allow the institution to “put down roots and continue to grow.”

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An Art Lover’s Guide to São Paulo https://ift.tt/2hQaB3P

São Paulo is a cultural powerhouse, and it’s home to the São Paulo Bienal (the second-oldest in the world) as well as Latin America's largest art fair, SP-Arte. Yet for all its scale, the city’s art scene “feels like it grew in secret, slowly, almost by accident,” in the words of Fernanda Brenner, founding artistic director of the nonprofit space Pivô. São Paulo spans more than 1,500 square kilometers and defies easy navigation; what holds it together for art lovers is a network of distinct cultural clusters—gallery districts, modernist landmarks, artist-run spaces—each with its own rhythm.

As the influential gallerist Nara Roesler, whose gallery turns 50 this year, told Artsy, the city “provides an opportunity to experience a cultural ecosystem that is constantly evolving and to discover the richness and diversity of Brazilian and Latin American art through the people who make the city so dynamic.”

This guide offers a bespoke selection of galleries, museums, and favorite places to unwind, selected by those in the city’s art scene. Click the links to see their Google Maps or Artsy pages.

The key neighborhoods for art lovers in São Paulo

“In a city as vast and complex, where mobility remains a challenge, the emergence of vibrant cultural clusters has become increasingly important in fostering connections and shaping meaningful artistic communities,” said Kiki Mazzucchelli, co-founder of the newly inaugurated gallery Mazzucchelli Cardoso and co-curator of ABERTO, an art project occupying landmark buildings.

Four clusters anchor the São Paulo art map.

Jardins

The city’s upscale residential and luxury shopping district, where leafy streets and modernist houses hold most of São Paulo’s most established galleries within walking distance.

• Gomide & Co.: known for pristinely curated shows by contemporary Brazilian artists including Hélio Oiticica, Mira Schendel, and Lenora de Barros.
• Luciana Brito: Founded in 1997, the gallery represents the estate of Brazilian artist Waldemar Cordeiro alongside artists such as Alex Katz and Marina Abramović. In 2016, it moved into a modernist Rino Levi house with a garden by Roberto Burle Marx.
• Luisa Strina: Dubbed “the grande dame of Brazilian art,” Strina opened her gallery in 1974. She represents renowned Brazilian and international artists including Anna Maria Maiolino, Alfredo Jaar, and Olafur Eliasson.
• Martins&Montero: emerged in 2024 with locations in São Paulo and Brussels; represents seminal 1970s artists such as Hudinilson Jr., alongside emerging names like Ana Mazzei and Jota Mombaça.
• Mazzucchelli Cardoso: co-founded by Kiki Mazzucchelli and Luciana Cardoso, “committed to research, experimentation, and the development of meaningful artistic trajectories,” Mazzucchelli explains.
• Nara Roesler: With outposts in São Paulo, Rio de Janeiro, and New York, Roesler represents storied names such as Abraham Palatnik—a key figure of Brazilian kinetic and Op art—alongside established and mid-career artists including Lucia Koch and Brígida Baltar.

Center and Higienópolis

The historic downtown that Brenner describes as “left behind by money and somehow more alive for it—a place where art and the thinking it invites seem to gather in the cracks.” Mazzucchelli highlights the modernist icon Galeria Metrópole, “recently occupied by several project spaces: Surplus, run by curator Erica Burini and artist Kauê Garcia; 25M, a former retail space that fosters experimental practices; and pop-ups that take place in different shops.” Adjacent Higienópolis is home to modernist apartment blocks built in the 1940s–50s by architects fleeing war-torn Europe.

• Verve: founded in 2013 by artists Allan Seabra and Ian Duarte Lucas; focused on Brazilian contemporary art.
• A Gentil Carioca: founded in 2003 by artists Márcio Botner, Ernesto Neto, and Laura Lima; has kept a pulse on exciting contemporary Brazilian art ever since.
• Central: founded in 2016 by Fernanda Restom; presents a wide, conceptually rich program.
• Vermelho: founded in 2002; features Latin American and Brazilian contemporary artists including Claudia Andujar and Tania Candiani.

Vila Madalena

The city’s bohemian heart—gallery-dense, café-lined, where artists actually meet after openings.

• Almeida & Dale: founded in 1998; known for exhibitions of internationally renowned artists such as Lygia Clark, while also championing a new generation of Black Brazilian and Indigenous artists.
• Raquel Arnaud: Arnaud has supported Brazilian and Latin American artists since 1973, representing some of the essential Concrete and Neo-Concrete artists.

Barra Funda

A rapidly changing neighborhood, traditionally home to commercial warehouses, which is now home to energetic galleries and art collectives.

• Fortes D’Aloia Gabriel: a trailblazer in São Paulo’s contemporary scene since 2001; shows the 1980s generation—Leda Catunda, Beatriz Milhazes—alongside younger artists in multimedia and performance.
• Mendes Wood DM: Since opening in 2010, the gallery added a second São Paulo location at Rua Iramaia 105—the modernist Casa Iramaia, worth visiting for the architecture alone. It represents a robust roster of contemporary Latin American and international artists.
• GDA Artistas: an artist-run collective dedicated to experimental and conceptual contemporary art practices; founded in 2021.

The museums and private collections to know in São Paulo

“São Paulo is perhaps the city where contemporary art most directly confronts the contradictions of the present,” Amanda Cordeiro, curator at MASP, told Artsy. “What makes it unique is not merely its scale, but the friction between a certain urban utopia born of plural modernisms and the urgent realities of a deeply unequal and diverse city.”

• Museum of Art of São Paulo Assis Chateaubriand (MASP): the city’s most important museum, housed in Lina Bo Bardi’s monolithic concrete-and-glass building from 1968—and, since 2025, also in the 14-story monolithic Annex across the street. The collection spans canonical European modernism and contemporary art from the Global South. Cordeiro singles out MASP’s vão livre, the vast open space beneath the building, as “the museum’s most defining image—suspended, yet open to a space that belongs to the city.”
• Pinacoteca Luz and PINA Contemporânea: an essential historical span of Brazilian art. As chief curator Ana Maria Maia told Artsy, “the museum’s mission is to consider Brazilian art in dialogue with cultures from around the world, which stems from São Paulo’s cosmopolitan identity.”
• Andrea & José Olympio Pereira Collection at Galpão da Lapa: Opened to the public in 2026, this private collection—displayed in a vast warehouse in Lapa—is a treasure trove of Brazilian modern and contemporary art. The Olympio Pereiras holds more than 2,400 works shown in rotating displays. Book in advance on the Galpão da Lapa website.

• Pivô: the nonprofit exhibition space and art research residency, delivering stellar shows since Brenner founded it in 2012. It sits inside Copan, the S-shaped mega-block designed by Oscar Niemeyer. “What stays with me is how art here slips out from behind glass and into the everyday,” Brenner said of the area. “On the ground floors of the building it all runs together—the Megafauna bookshop, Bel Coelho’s Cuia with its natural wine and food that tastes like memory, and a few steps down Fel, pouring some of the best cocktails in town, where you can most definitely find me when I am around.”
• Instituto Moreira Salles (IMS): Brazil’s preeminent photography institution, “whose archives and program are among the finest in Brazil” Brenner said. IMS opened in Rio de Janeiro in 1992 and in São Paulo in 2017. A site-specific large-scale installation by Richard Serra graces the back garden.
• Tomie Ohtake Institute: Designed by Ruy Ohtake and opened in 2001, the institute has staged some of Brazil’s most ambitious recent exhibitions—including 2018’s “Afro-Atlantic Histories,” co-hosted with MASP.

Where the art world in São Paulo eats, drinks, and shops

The places where artists, gallerists, and curators actually gather are easy to miss without a local steer.

For drinks

Bar Balcão, Carneiro’s top pick with its single curving bar, has been a meeting point for the city’s critics, actors, artists, and curators for decades. In Vila Madalena, São Cristóvão is where artists gather after openings, according to Hena Lee, partner-director of Almeida & Dale; it’s also excellent for a traditional feijoada on a Saturday. The Punch, an intimate Japanese-style cocktail bar, is strictly by reservation and turns out innovative drinks with unusual ingredients; Guarita is more mixology-forward, with bartenders happy to build drinks to your palate. SubAstor is the classic Caipirinha stop—try something with seasonal fruits like tangerine or cajú. Beverino is a much-loved wine bar with a curated stock of biodynamic bottles you can pick off the shelves yourself.

For dinner

A Figueira Rubaiyat sets the city’s most photographed table around a centuries-old fig tree—it’s the high-end pick. In Centro, Bar da Dona Onça and Casa do Porco are inseparable from Pivô’s neighborhood; both are helmed by chef Janaína Rueda. “Janaína Rueda, a genius who laid the first stone of Copan’s new life right when we got there almost 15 years ago, turned home cooking into something communal,” said Brenner, “and with Casa do Porco, she keeps reshaping what the city can taste.” Chou offers an intimate garden and a menu built around seasonal ingredients. Le Freak is “a lively spot with a crowd that often includes artists, curators, and other people from São Paulo’s cultural community,” per Mazzucchelli. Metzi does ambitious Brazilian Mexican fusion; Hirá Ramen Izakaya is Lee’s pick for ramen. Piselli Jardins is the go-to for fresh pasta and a stellar wine list, and Shoshana, a tiny and much-cherished Jewish restaurant a few steps from Centro’s community arts center Casa do Povo, is a local staple.

For lunch

A Baianeira—Carneiro’s pick—inside MASP and led by chef Manuelle Ferraz, serves traditional Bahian and Mineiro cuisine. Cuia, on the ground floor of the Copan building, is Mazzucchelli’s pick: “a relaxed spot with excellent Brazilian-inspired cuisine, popular among people from the local creative scene.” In Jardins, Le Jazz is the reliable French bistro that draws an arty crowd (equally good for a casual dinner), while Botanikafé is the young-crowd go-to for sandwiches, vegetarian fare, and a fortifying espresso before dashing back to the galleries.

Top tips for art lovers visiting São Paulo

How to plan: São Paulo sprawls. Trying to cross gallery districts on a whim doesn’t work. Build the day by cluster—Jardins in the morning, Centro after lunch, Vila Madalena for early evening openings and dinner. Galleries are walkable within their cluster, but Uber is the standard way to move between them. The metro doesn’t reach most gallery areas, and rush-hour traffic across the city is unforgiving.

What locals know: Most galleries close Sundays and Mondays, with shorter Saturday hours; many of the strongest project spaces operate by appointment only—email ahead. Opening nights rarely start before 7 p.m. and often run late, spilling into dinner. As Brenner puts it: “Nobody is ever in a hurry to go home.”

Bringing work home: Exporting art from Brazil requires more paperwork than from European or U.S. galleries. Most São Paulo galleries handle international shipping routinely, but build in lead time. Speaking Portuguese helps; English is widely spoken in commercial galleries.

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René Magritte–inspired jersey worn by Belgian soccer team during World Cup 2026 knockout match. https://ift.tt/EyTBZUq

Belgium’s Red Devils advanced to the Round of 16 of the 2026 World Cup with a dramatic 3–2 extra-time victory over Senegal in Seattle on July 1st, wearing a jersey designed as an explicit homage to Belgian Surrealist artist René Magritte.

Created in partnership with Adidas, the shirt features a robin’s egg blue base color and a pattern of repeated pink and blue soccer balls, evoking Magritte’s recurring motif of round shapes such as apples, moons, and suns, which feature in his most celebrated works. Small horizontal lines throughout the print are a further nod to the game itself, representing the lines of a soccer pitch. The most direct reference to Magritte appears at the collar, where subtle script reads Ceci n’est pas un maillot (“This is not a jersey”), a direct homage to his 1928–29 painting The Treachery of Images, in which a painted pipe sits beneath the words Ceci n’est pas une pipe.

Magritte, who was born in 1898 and died in 1967, spent much of his career in Brussels, producing works that subverted the relationship between image, language, and reality. His preoccupation with the afternoon and evening sky—a signature blue featured in many of his canvases—is widely seen as the source of the jersey’s dominant tone.

This is the fourth time Belgium has used its away kit to celebrate an element of national culture. Previous editions honored the country’s cycling heritage at the 2016 European Championship, the Belgian music festival Tomorrowland at the 2022 World Cup, and the cartoonist Hergé’s Tintin at Euro 2024.

The Royal Belgian Football Association described the design as one that “sparks the imagination and invites conversation.” Authentic versions are available through Adidas for $150. Belgium will play the U.S. in the Round of 16 on Tuesday, July 7th.

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Five Footballers Who Love Contemporary Art https://ift.tt/RMAJN3a

Soccer, 1983
Robert Peak
RoGallery

Whether they call it soccer, football, or the beautiful game, soccer and art share points of intersection beyond aesthetics. Both are primarily visual experiences that viewers feel passionate about. Some stadiums have been compared to cathedrals or museums for the sport, and a direct crossover between soccer and art has deep roots.

Many artists have made works about soccer. Zinedine Zidane, for instance, who won the World Cup with France in 1998, has been the subject of at least two artworks: Philippe Parreno and Douglas Gordon’s film Zidane: A 21st Century Portrait (2006), in which 17 cameras followed the player in real time for one game, and Adel Abdessemed’s sculpture of the player in his last World Cup appearance (Headbutt, 2012).

Still, the art-and-soccer discourse tends to focus on representations of the game. But several players have themselves expressed an interest in and engaged with contemporary art as painters, curators, collectors and hobbyists.

Here, we spotlight five names engaged in art.

David Beckham

The consummate collector

One of the most famous players ever to kick a soccer ball, the English former midfielder (and current A-lister) started collecting art with his wife, fashion designer Victoria Beckham, in the early 2000s.

A product of their time coming up in 1990s Britain, the couple bought works by several Young British Artists, including Damien Hirst, Jake & Dinos Chapman, Sam Taylor-Johnson, and Tracey Emin. To their collection, they have since added pieces by the likes of Nan Goldin, Banksy, Yayoi Kusama, and Yoshitomo Nara, as well as some older works by Edgar Degas and Claude Monet.

Beckham, ubiquitous in Qatar during the first edition of Art Basel Qatar earlier this year, has often professed an interest in art and design, and has stated before that had he not become a soccer player, he would have wanted to be an artist.

Victoria hosted an exhibition of Old Master works at her store in Mayfair in association with Sotheby’s in 2018, and last year curated an exhibition with the auction house of works by 10 artists, including George Condo, Richard Prince, and Yves Klein. Some works were also shown at her fashion boutique on Dover Street in West London.

Victoria hosted an exhibition of Old Master works at her store in Mayfair in association with Sotheby’s in 2018, and last year curated an exhibition with the auction house of works by 10 artists, including George Condo, Richard Prince, and Yves Klein. Some works were also shown at her fashion boutique on Dover Street in West London.

Beckham shares his interest in art collecting with his former England manager Fabio Capello, who has a collection that includes several works by Wassily Kandinsky. Another prominent former soccer player and collector is German midfielder Michael Ballack, who won the World Cup with his country in 2014 and has recently been spotted at art fairs, including Art Basel Paris and Frieze.

Juan Mata

The keen curator

When Juan Mata played for Manchester United, he regularly visited the local Whitworth Gallery. In a 2015 blog post, he wrote of finding inspiration for his playing in an exhibition by Cai Guo-Qiang.

When Mata met curator Hans-Ulrich Obrist, his long-standing interest in art and Obrist’s matched interest in soccer led them to collaborate (along with writer, filmmaker, and curator Josh Willdigg) on the exhibition “Football City, Art United” as part of the 2025 Manchester International Festival. They paired a team of 11 soccer players—including Ella Toone, who plays for the Manchester United women’s team, and their former United star Eric Cantona—with a “starting eleven” of artists.

Cantona, for instance, was paired with conceptual artist Ryan Gander, and they created three artworks together; Toone was matched with art collective Keiken, who created a massive sculpture of a mask-portrait, The Divine Puppeteer (2025), based on Toone’s spirit animal.

David James

The practicing painter

The day after Spain beat Saudi Arabia 4–0 in the 2026 World Cup, former England and Liverpool goalkeeper David James posted a manga-style drawing of Spain’s young star attacker Lamine Yamal in his national team kit, posture mid-jump, seen from behind, head (including very recognizable bleached-blond hair) turned back.

It wasn’t just a doodle: James has been painting since his playing days to relax and has garnered a reputation for portraying soccer-related subjects. These have included a portrait of trailblazing female soccer player Gill Sayell and a painting of Bobby Moore, who captained England on their only World Cup title win (thus far), shaking hands with Queen Elizabeth II (he painted it for a charity auction for the Bobby Moore Fund for Cancer Research U.K.).

But James’s art goes beyond soccer subjects. He also paints his cats, landscapes, interior scenes, and a copy of the Notting Hill movie poster, replacing Hugh Grant with himself (citing the lack of ethnic diversity in the movie; it was also made for a charity auction).

Lotte Wubben-Moy

The cerebral subject

English defender Lotte Wubben-Moy has been the subject of a couple of paintings by soccer-loving artist Rose Wylie. The collaboration entailed Wiley transforming snapshots from daily life—training, match days, behind-the-scenes photographs—that Wubben-Moy sent her into a series of paintings and drawings, playful in their own right. Wubben-Moy was a perfect choice for the project, as she was already interested in art. “Football is art. I really believe that. It’s a space where you can create, express yourself and be free,” she wrote in a piece for The Players’ Tribune.

The origin of these ideas, she explained, traces back to her upbringing in East London, an area rich in young creatives, artists’ studios, music venues, and soccer cages that she played in as a kid. Wubben-Moy draws inspiration from both, looking back at her childhood in this creative part of town and describing her life and community in these terms—how the color of the grass was like paint, “the pitch was our big rectangular canvas.”

Playing as a professional for Arsenal Women, she also started Lots to Explore, a community project encouraging creative pursuits like art and writing that offers free sessions for young girls in North London, blending soccer and creativity.

Héctor Bellerin

The game’s aesthete

In an interview with the Guardian, Real Betis player Héctor Bellerin recalled a conversation with an artist friend about art helping him through a period of struggling with mental health. “I used to pass by and say I liked things, but then I started to analyse the meanings more,” he said.

Bellerin, a defender who played for Spain and spent 10 years at London club Arsenal, is well-recognized for the diversity of his interests beyond sport. He is an avid reader who posts the books he reads on Instagram, and he once commissioned a portrait of himself from London street artist ENDLESS. He met the British street artist alongside his then Arsenal teammate Alex Iwobi at a solo exhibition of the artist’s work in 2017. The following year, the artist gifted Bellerin a print of himself.

Bellerin is also an amateur photographer as well. In 2021, Bellerin also co-curated a photography exhibition of photos taken by Syrian children refugees who were given cameras by the charity Coaching for Life.

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10 Must-See Museum Shows To See This Summer https://ift.tt/pZyYVvr

As the art world gears up for summer 2026, you can bet on women artists drawing crowds at museums across the world. These include a Frida Kahlo exhibition in London (which has already smashed records with its ticket presales) and the Japanese video artist Mako Idemitsu, who will have a broad survey in Japan.

It’s also a busy season for new museum openings. Paris’s Centre Pompidou, currently closed for renovations, inaugurates a new outpost in Asia after previously launching a space in Shanghai in 2019. Its new venture in Seoul is in partnership with Hanwha Foundation of Culture, and its two shows a year will be drawn from the museum’s collections, with a nod each time to contemporary Korean artists.

Another theme on everyone’s lips is, unsurprisingly, artificial intelligence. Long gone are the days when an immersive Vincent van Gogh experience was a novelty. AI exhibitions are kicking up a notch: Now, artists are using generative technology to create unsettling video artworks and a new museum on the U.S.’s West Coast will even incorporate visitors’ personal data to produce personalized exhibition experiences in real time.

From museums deploying innovative tech to bold new surveys, here are 10 shows to see around the world this summer.

Mrinalini Mukherjee

“Unbound Forms - Women Sculptors of India and Bangladesh”

Hepworth Wakefield, Wakefield, England

Through Nov. 1

A major retrospective celebrating the Indian artist Mrinalini Mukherjee is a big draw for the U.K.’s northern town of Wakefield this summer. Her 40-year career is on display here in all of its variety and experimentation: from her monumental fiber works to drawings, watercolors, and bronze and ceramic sculptures. Her sensuous and semi-figural forms made out of billowing folds and draping knots of traditional materials like hemp, jute, and cotton are influenced by Hindu spirituality and mythical folklore. These symbols are also found in her mother Leela Mukherjee’s work, also shown here.

Mrinalini Mukherjee’s astonishing career is situated within what independent curator Tarini Malik calls the “matrilineages” of South Asian women sculptors working in the years after independence. To that end, the exhibition also includes works by Meera Mukherjee (no relation), the Bangladeshi artist Novera Ahmed, and pioneering Indian sculptor Pilloo Pochkhanawala. The show paints a picture of a diverse group of women each using vernacular crafts—weaving, casting, and reuse—to redefine what sculpture could be during a period of radical change for the region.

Frida Kahlo

“Frida: The Making of an Icon”

Tate Modern, London

Through Jan. 3, 2027

Frida Kahlo has become so much more than an artist. This sprawling show, which comes to Tate Modern after a first run at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, traces her transformation from Diego Rivera’s artist wife into a cultural icon in her own right. Her artworks here are only part of the story, shown alongside her jewelry, clothes, and photographs as well as more than 200 works by other artists inspired by her. The show serves to prove that her colorful biography—and the adoration around her persona that she inspired—has just as significant a legacy as her work.

The show’s final room is an explosion of “Fridamania,” a collection of tote bags, shoes, mugs, and prints all emblazoned with her monobrowed face and cool gaze, testament to the commodification of the Frida myth. As her works continue to be some of the most sought-after in the market, her selling power for museums, too, is rock-solid: this is the highest pre-selling show in Tate’s history.

Mako Idemitsu

“What a Woman Made”

Tokyo Photographic Art Museum, Tokyo

Through Sep. 21

The Tokyo Photographic Art Museum has been gearing up for this exhibition for a long time. The museum acquired the complete film and video works of Mako Idemitsu along with her major installation pieces a decade ago and is finally bringing them together in a comprehensive retrospective. Some of them are being shown to the public for the first time since their acquisition.

Idemitsu became an artist relatively late in life. She’d moved to the United States for college, where she met and married the painter Sam Francis, with whom she had two sons. But the constrictions of life as a mother and housewife grated on her, and she bought a camera and taught herself how to film. She went on to build a body of work that was sharply feminist. Her videos critique the role of women in both Japanese and American society and shine a light on the difficulty for women of managing the simultaneous roles of mother and artist. The show takes its title from the seminal 1973 video that brought her to prominence, which explores the treatment of Japanese women in society.

Carsten Höller

“Two”

UCCA, Beijing

July 4–Jan. 31, 2027

Fresh from installations of his work at the 2026 Venice Biennale, Carsten Höller heads this summer to Beijing, where UCCA will exhibit a number of his signature pieces as well as new works designed especially for the space. Höller likes his art to play with the senses, from olfactory installations to optical illusions using goggles that flip the viewer’s vision. Visitors can expect interactive works that plunge them into different perceptual states like slides, carousels, or giant dice to crawl in and out of. This focus could be linked to Höller’s penchant for creepy-crawlies: He’s a trained scientist and worked for many years in Germany as an entomologist before becoming an artist full-time. Höller’s works can feel like a mix between a school science trip and a day at the funfair—both silly and head-scratching. When it comes to a Höller show, visitors are part of the experiment.

“The Cubists: Inventing Modern Vision”

Centre Pompidou Hanwha, Seoul

Through Oct. 4

Although the Centre Pompidou in the French capital is currently closed, Paris’s loss is Seoul’s gain. Around 90 paintings and sculptures from the Centre Pompidou’s Cubism collection are on view in South Korea for the inaugural exhibition of this new outpost. A former annex of the city’s 63 Building has been redesigned by Jean-Michel Wilmotte, who added a translucent sheath over the building, turning it into a glowing lightbox in the heart of the city’s financial district.

This marks the first major exhibition dedicated to Cubism in Asia in 50 years and covers the span of time between the movement’s emergence in Paris in 1907 to its changes in the post-war years up to 1927. It features all of the names you might expect: Pablo Picasso, Georges Braque, Fernand Léger, and Robert and Sonia Delaunay, as well as less well-known historical names like Amédée Ozenfant and Natalia Goncharova. A final section, Korea Focus, hauls the movement into the present day, highlighting the work of contemporary Korean artists whose work has been influenced by early modern Cubism.

“The Aldrich Decennial: I am what is around me”

The Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum, Connecticut

Through Jan. 10, 2027

It’s an ambitious wager, launching a decennial. The Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum has decided to focus its recurring survey on artists living and working in Connecticut, celebrating a state that has hosted and inspired a number of notable artists such as Alexander Calder, Sol LeWitt, and Louise Bourgeois. The title for the inaugural edition, “I am what is around me,” comes from a 1917 poem by Wallace Stevens, a longtime resident of the state, and summarizes the institution’s commitment to fostering artistic practices from the surrounding areas.

After conducting hundreds of studio visits, Aldrich curators have whittled down the list to only 40 participating artists who represent the state’s varied art landscape, with the oldest participating artist born in 1937 and the youngest in 1995. None of the artists has ever had a solo museum exhibition in Connecticut. Spanning the museum’s 8,000-square-foot gallery space, recently renovated three-acre campus, and sculpture garden, this bold event is proof that exciting, experimental art is being made outside of major art centers. Among the names to look out for are Tammy Nguyen, a multidisciplinary artist who moved to the state from New York City in 2021 and whose works on show reflect her closer relationship with the environment. Elsewhere, Kristy Hughes is exhibiting outdoor sculptures at the decennial for the first time.

Sonia Boyce

“Demonstrate”

Queens Museum, New York

June 27, 2026–Jan. 31, 2027

Sonia Boyce’s art has always been driven by collaboration and community, and her new show at the Queens Museum in New York is no exception. Boyce organized two days of events at the museum, bringing together locals, artists, educators, and the American activist group and choir Resistance Revival Chorus to interact through movement and song. She documented those encounters with photographs, film, and interviews, turning it into an immersive installation that places the visitor in the heart of a powerful, celebratory experience. You can catch echoes of her Golden Lion–winning work made for the British pavilion at the 2022 Venice Biennale, including her signature tessellating wallpaper and video works centering Black female musicians. It’s her first museum show in the U.S., after Hauser & Wirth gave her a solo exhibition at the gallery’s Chelsea location in September 2025. Catch her in the States while you can; next year she’ll be back in the U.K. as Tate Britain honors her 40-year career with a major survey.

Pierre Huyghe

“Uumwelt”

The Museum of Modern Art, New York City

Through Nov. 29

Pierre Huyghe’s works have been described as “speculative fiction,” but as we all know, the use of AI has stepped well past speculation and into everyday life—including the art world. For his “Uumwelt” series, he first asked participants to imagine a set of images, before using a neural network—a machine learning model—to collect data from these participants’ fMRI brain scans. That data could then generate pictures based on their brain activity, a kind of imagined reconstruction of their thoughts.

It’s not just the people behind the artworks who are being tracked: In the exhibition itself, a sensor picks up on museum visitors’ gazes, which then activates the work. Huyghe has called it “a collective production of imagination between two kinds of intelligences.” It echoes another major opening happening on the other side of the U.S.: the vast, 25,000-square-foot, immersive and multisensory AI arts museum—a world first—DATALAND in Los Angeles. Founded by artist Refik Anadol, the museum makes an even more conspicuous use of visitor data, via wearable tech that tracks their biometrics. It truly is a brave, uncanny new world, and we’re just at the beginning of it.

Camille Henrot

“Paper Planes”

Copenhagen Contemporary, Copenhagen

Through Dec. 31

The French artist Camille Henrot gets her biggest exhibition in Scandinavia to date at Copenhagen Contemporary this summer. The show brings together a variety of her works spanning film, sculpture, and drawing, including her 2026 film In The Veins, which is being shown for the first time in the region. It explores notions of care and grief in interweaving images of wildlife rehabilitation with those of looking after children. How do you raise children in a world that is losing biodiversity at such an alarming rate that those children will not grow up to see the same natural world as you?

This mingling of issues that are both personal and global also comes through in interactive installation Interphones (2015), where phones equipped with agony aunt–style automated responses gradually become more and more intrusive. Elsewhere, a series of drawings comment on our relationship with animals. This is a deservedly large and thoughtful exhibition for one of the most compelling artists working right now.

“Video Killed the Radio Star”

Mudam Contemporary Art Museum, Luxembourg

Through Oct. 11

The 1980s gifted us more than just shoulder pads and big hair. It was a pivotal period for culture, too. The 1970s’ nascent queer, feminist, and postcolonial movements only gathered steam over the next few years to dominate cultural thought. As part of the Contemporary Art Museum of Luxembourg’s 20th- anniversary celebrations, this exhibition digs into the museum’s archives to make a case for how the art, music and technology of the era is still echoing in our culture today. Expect Nan Goldin’s luminous photographs capturing the alternative nightlife spaces of the era, like Jimmy Paulette and Tabboo! Undressing (1991), as well as some of Lorna Simpson’s earliest works depicting unidentified Black figures accompanied by arcane text. Meanwhile newer works by contemporary artists like Angharad Williams riff on ’80s pop culture (the Teletubby Tinky Winky presented as Iggy Pop, anyone?).

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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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