Vatican’s Sistine Chapel to close for conclave preparations. https://ift.tt/5ZS6rtz

Last Judgment, Sistine Chapel, 1536-1541
Michelangelo Buonarroti
Art History 101

The Sistine Chapel has been closed as Vatican City prepares for the gathering of cardinals who will vote to elect a new pope following the death of Pope Francis on April 21st. The closure is part of a wider shutdown of the Vatican Museums, which have not announced when they will reopen. The papal election, known as the conclave, is set to begin on May 7th, following informal meetings among cardinals that began shortly after Francis’s funeral on April 26th.

The conclave invites some 135 members of the College of Cardinals—those under the age of 80 are eligible to vote—to the Vatican City. The election has no fixed duration. The last conclave, which elected Pope Francis in 2013, concluded in under 27 hours. The Sistine Chapel has served as the site of the conclave since 1492.

The Sistine Chapel is one of the Vatican’s most visited landmarks, featuring some of Michelangelo’s most renowned frescoes. The ceiling, completed between 1508 and 1512 during the reign of Pope Julius II, depicts scenes from the Old Testament, including The Creation of Adam and The Separation of Light from Darkness. The chapel itself was commissioned by Julius’s uncle, Pope Sixtus IV, who the chapel is named after.

Concurrently, 25 drawings by Michelangelo for the Sistine Chapel are on display in the United States at the Muscarelle Museum of Art at the College of William & Mary. These works are on view until May 28th as part of an exhibition titled “Michelangelo: The Genesis of the Sistine.”

The Vatican Museums, which house a vast collection of classical and Renaissance works, are among the most visited museums in the world. Highlights include works by Raphael, Leonardo da Vinci, and ancient Roman sculptures, among others. The museums are also home to several works by modern artists, such as Paul Gauguin and Pablo Picasso. Their closure coincides with the traditional nine-day mourning period following the death of a pope.

The pope serves as the proprietor of the museums and has ultimate authority over their administration. The closure of the Sistine Chapel and the broader museum complex allows the Vatican to secure the site for the secretive voting process.

Interest in the current conclave process has been amplified by Conclave (2024), a fictional drama starring Ralph Fiennes and Stanley Tucci. The film, which portrays the inner workings of an election of a new pope, has led to widespread interest in the process behind the conclave.

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Why Marina Abramović Is Turning Performance Art into NFTs https://ift.tt/Te1asxR

Listen on Spotify or Apple Podcasts.

Marina Abramović built her career by testing the limits of the body. Now, she’s testing what digital art can do. On this episode of The Artsy Podcast, the groundbreaking performance artist joins us for a conversation about launching her new NFT project, bringing mindfulness to the digital realm, and using her work to reach across generational divides.

Plus, Artsy editors Casey Lesser and Arun Kakar break down everything you need to know about Frieze Week in New York—a period packed with art fairs, gallery openings, and can’t-miss museum shows. Listen now, and read an edited excerpt of the conversation with Abramović below.

This episode was recorded by Alex Kenning, produced by Olivia Horn and Grant Irving, and edited by Grant Irving.

Arun Kakar: You’ve described your NFT project as a way of connecting with the public. How did you first arrive at this idea?

Marina Abramović: First of all, I started as a painter. And the painter is very lonely, because you’re inside the studio, you paint, then the painting leaves the studio, goes to the gallery. You hang the painting in the gallery and then there is not anything to do with the public. The public, for you, doesn’t exist, because people come to see the work hang on the wall.

But the first time I found the medium of performance, that was such a strong moment in my life that I felt electricity through my entire being. I knew that it was so much more intense and interesting. I could not ever go back to the studio and make normal paintings, which I never actually did. And I stopped painting when I was in my early twenties.

The nature of performance is immaterial, you know, you have to be there to experience it. And what you can do with this immateriality is actually reach people’s emotions. One thing that I connect with, from the very early time of my performance, is the young public. My public is 14 years old, 15, 16, 17—extremely young. And when you see this young public, they all have an addiction to technology and to the digital world. But there’s something immaterial, something emotional in my work to attract them.

But I was thinking, how can I even get closer to this audience? How can I create something in their own digital world, to give them a kind of meditative state of mind? I wanted to show them there’s also other ways. I wanted them to know what it means to be silent; what it means to do absolutely nothing; what it means to be present. So that was one really attractive reason for me to get into this world.

A.K.: It’s fascinating, the convergence between your life, the digital realm, and also the spiritual aspect of it. How do you kind of see those forces working together in this project?

M.A.: Absolutely in harmony. I’m so interested in the idea of an avatar. Avatars have kind of supernatural powers, which normal people don’t. And my work really was dealing, all my life, with the limits of the human body—how far it can go without being killed, or how far consciousness can go. Endurance, long durational work, and so on.

But still, me, as a human being—I still can’t fly. I can’t walk on the fire. I can’t levitate. All of this stuff my avatar can do. I have now this kind of super avatar of myself that can do all of this and just also play. Something with the digital world that’s incredibly important is the act of playing.

About our guest

Marina Abramović is perhaps the most famous performance artist working today. Employing duration, pain, danger, exhaustion, and viewer participation, she works at extremes and complicates the relationship between art and audience. Abramović exhibited at Documenta in 1977, 1982, and 1992, and at the Venice Biennale in 1976 and 1997, when she was awarded the Golden Lion. In her famous 2010 Museum of Modern Art retrospective, “The Artist Is Present,” visitors sat across from Abramović in silent communion. More recently, she became the first woman artist to stage a solo exhibition in the Royal Academy’s main galleries in the institution’s 255-year history. Abramović is the founder of the Marina Abramović Institute, which promotes performance art globally.

About The Artsy Podcast

As editors at the world’s largest online art marketplace, we discover and decode art every day. Now, we’re inviting you to join our conversation. Alongside the leading voices in fashion, music, design, and beyond, we’re untangling the art world and its role in our cultural landscape—one episode at a time.

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6 Questions Every New Art Buyer Should Ask a Gallery https://ift.tt/Sjw9vWl

Galleries are a crucial gateway to discovering and purchasing art. They platform new artists and nurture their careers, helping to build their audience and sell their works to buyers.

But to the uninitiated, galleries can appear inaccessible. Galleries are often quiet, sterile spaces. Some art enthusiasts might not realize that galleries have public hours and are free to enter.

These barriers to entry can help perpetuate an air of exclusivity, but speaking with a gallery is important to understand how to make the best choices when it comes to collecting at any level. This information is particularly important for new buyers: The best way to know how and what to buy is to ask questions.

“There are no stupid questions,” said Joseph Clarke, gallery director of Anima Mundi. “Ignorance isn’t about not knowing the answer; it is about not asking the question.”

Ultimately, the more knowledge a buyer gains, the better equipped they are to build a collection that suits their interests and budget.

Here are six questions every new collector should ask a gallery, whether visiting in person or interacting online.

1. How much does this cost?

Gallery Panorama 5, 2017
Rose Blake
Rebecca Hossack Art Gallery

It might sound simple, but asking the price of an artist’s work can be necessary, as it’s well known that many galleries don’t advertise this information.

“The ‘smokescreens’ of the art world can create an intimidating environment, the result of which is indignation or a clamming up of the viewer,” said Clarke. Omitting prices is often viewed as a tactic to lend an air of mystery and purported importance to a work.

Still, having to ask for an artwork’s price can present an opportunity to connect with galleries.

“When I first started collecting, all I would see were the lists with no prices and I thought it was some kind of secret, or that it was impolite to inquire about pricing,” said Ellen-Blair Chube, a collector and trustee of the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago. “But you have to understand the market for any artist if you are going to consider it for your collection, and if it fits in your budget, so just ask!”

Even if the particular work isn’t a fit, knowing how it is priced can provide a point of reference when looking at other works by an artist. Understanding pricing is particularly important for buyers considering artworks as investments, as galleries can offer confidence in the long-term value.

It is also useful to ask how a gallery determined the price, and a reputable dealer should be able to provide context and comparables.

2. Where is this artwork from?

Question ?, 1989
Ed Ruscha
Dallas Collectors Club

For secondary market artworks, meaning those with prior ownership, it's important to ask a gallery about provenance. “For buyers considering works on the secondary market, asking about provenance is crucial,” said Madelyn Jordon, founder of Madelyn Jordon Fine Art.

Provenance refers to an artwork’s record of ownership and can be a guide to its authenticity and quality. When asked, a gallery should be able to provide the names and locations of previous owners, as well as when and where they purchased the work, tracing how the piece changed hands over time. “Provenance provides insight into the artwork’s history, which can influence its significance and value,” said Jordon. “Inquire whether the piece has been part of prominent collections, as this can enhance its desirability.”

The amount of information on particular artworks can vary, but a good gallery will ensure as much as possible is available. “A reputable gallery often has a direct relationship with the artist or their estate, which ensures transparency and traceability—aspects that are not always guaranteed when buying at auction, for example,” said Mark Hachem, founder of Mark Hachem Gallery. Knowing the provenance is key to ensuring a piece is being lawfully sold now and has been throughout its history.

3. What condition is the artwork in?

Reporte de condición (Condition Report), 2022
Marco Treviño
Proyecto Paralelo

Art buyers should ask about the condition of a work, another factor that is increasingly important when buying on the secondary market. Dealers can provide condition reports, which include details of any damage or wear documented in writing and sometimes with accompanying photographs. These reports can also include details on how to live with the work itself.

“We recently worked with a first-time collector who was considering acquiring a kinetic sculpture,” said Hachem, referring to sculptures that have moving components, such as a windmill. “They initially fell in love with the aesthetic, but had concerns about the technical upkeep. Our team explained the condition and mechanical elements of the work, and offered long-term support, including future maintenance and potential restoration.”

4. Where has this artwork been shown?

Similar to provenance, the exhibition history of an artwork can enrich its legacy if, for example, an artist or piece has been on view in a major museum.

“I’d ask: What group exhibitions has this artist been in?,” said Peter Bentley Brandt, a collector and arts patron who serves on several boards and committees, including the Education Committee at the Guggenheim Museum. “These shows illustrate who is really paying attention to the artist, which includes other galleries, museums, curators, and collectors.”

Knowing who is exhibiting an artist can also shed light on the longevity of their career. “I’ve seen plenty of artists whose markets took off quickly, only to stall out just as fast,” Brandt explained. “On the other hand, I’ve followed artists who were quietly included in meaningful programs and exhibitions–maybe not in the spotlight right away, but gradually building a foundation. Years later, their work has held up and matured, often with strong backing from collectors and institutions.”

5. Why did the artist make this work?

Study for Colour Mixing, 2022
Anna Freeman Bentley
Frestonian Gallery

While an artwork’s market value is important to understand—and might be the leading factor for some buyers—it’s also beneficial to know the intentions of an artist. Asking questions like why an artist made a work and what message they hope to convey can help buyers learn more about potential acquisitions.

“It is important to us that the collector has a relationship with the work of art that resonates beyond the surface level to reach that deeper human level,” said Clarke. “As a gallery, we are a conduit to establish that relationship. The ability to add clarity, honesty, and an unguarded openness, so that the collector can understand the ‘whys’ that lay beneath the ‘whats’ is a huge part of our role.”

Clarke suggested asking questions that “contemplate the symbolic, psychological, spiritual, or emotional depths” of an artwork.

6. What is the gallery’s mission?

Buyers should form relationships with galleries to ensure that they are reputable and have the best interests of both the artist and the buyer in mind. “It’s important to consider a gallery in the broader ecosystem of the art world,” said Brandt. “Is the gallery engaging with curators, institutions, or international clients and advisors? Active participation and purposeful relationship building beyond a local collector base often point to a program of merit and long-term relevance.”

Asking questions of a gallery also ensures that a dealer is invested in an artist’s career. Chube suggested asking: “How long have you been working with this artist? What about their work spoke to you, and how do they fit into your overall program? What do you see or hope for the trajectory of this artist over the next year, three years, five years, beyond? Understanding the gallery’s approach, motivation, and how they treat or speak about their artists is important.”

Moreover, galleries should want to sell to reputable clients, which can protect artists from unscrupulous resale practices. “Many galleries ‘place’ certain pieces with collectors who they think are serious about the artist and will give the work a good home,” Chube said. “You don't know the answers to these questions just by dropping by a [gallery or] booth once. Spend the time to develop relationships, enjoy the learning process!”

This article is part of Artsy’s Collecting 101 hub, which features resources on everything you need to know about buying art. Explore more of Collecting 101.

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Jeff Koons “Hulk Elvis” sculptures to star in Gagosian’s Frieze New York booth. https://ift.tt/E73RbaV

Three sculptures from Jeff Koons’s “Hulk Elvis” series will make up his solo presentation with Gagosian at Frieze New York this year, the gallery announced on Tuesday. Hulk (Organ) (2004–14), Hulk (Tubas) (2004–18), and Hulk (Dragon and Turtle) (2004–21) will be installed against a vinyl backdrop adapted from the artist’s 2007 painting Triple Hulk Elvis III, which features the superhero alongside cut images of the rock band Led Zeppelin. All three sculptures come from Koons’s personal collection. Frieze New York will run from May 7th to 11th at The Shed in Hudson Yards.

This collaboration comes after Koons’s departure from Gagosian in 2021, when he left two mega-galleries (Gagosian and David Zwirner) to work exclusively with a third, Pace Gallery. (He subsequently split with Pace last year.)

Koons introduced the “Hulk Elvis” series in 2004. These works combine cartoon imagery with religious and mythological references, casting the Hulk as a transcultural symbol of masculine power. The title for the series is inspired by the resemblance of the Incredible Hulk’s pose to Elvis Presley’s in a publicity still for the Western film Flaming Star, which was later immortalized by Andy Warhol in his “Elvis” canvases from 1963.

“‘Hulk Elvis’ represents for me both Western and Eastern cultures, a sense of a guardian, a protector, that at the same time is capable of bringing the house down,” Koons said in a press statement. “I have tried to blend these cultural histories together. The Hulk represents a duality that shifts from a superhero to a divine being.”

Koons’s “Hulk” works have sold at auction for nine-figure sums: In 2019, for example, Hulk (Friends) (2004-2012) fetched $3.38 million. That same year, Koons’s Rabbit (1986) sold for $91.07 million at Christie’s, making him the most expensive living artist at auction.

Coinciding with its presentation at Frieze New York, Gagosian will show a new body of work by Anna Weyant at TEFAF New York at the Park Avenue Armory. The 30-year-old star will present a series of small paintings depicting jewelry, including lustrous pearls and golden chains—some adorned with price tags. The fast-rising Canadian artist joined Gagosian in 2022 and has since staged three solo exhibitions with the gallery. She set a steep auction record when her painting Falling Woman (2020) sold for $1.6 million at Sotheby’s in May 2022.

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8 Must-See Shows at Gallery Weekend Berlin 2025 https://ift.tt/m0OTe4c

Berlin’s seasons are a study in contrast, with the grey drab of winter giving way to lush greenery. As the weather relents and trees bloom, Berliners and visitors alike can expect another year of must-see shows at Gallery Weekend Berlin, which runs May 2nd–4th. This year’s 21st edition is set to officially open just one day after International Workers’ Day on May 1st, a national holiday. This means those days are likely to be even more packed than usual, both in and out of the gallery circuit.

The official program boasts 52 participating galleries presenting over 80 artists’ work across 59 locations. And the city’s rebellious streak lives on with a constellation of off-program exhibitions and performances to catch, including Konzulát Studio’s pop-up group show “Civic Servant,” featuring haunting works by avant-garde artists and designers Hannah Rose Stewart, Finley Jay Stewart, and Collezione Nancy Delroi. Gallery crawlers will have a buffet of options, with a potent mix of blue-chip art superstars like Monica Bonvicini at Capitain Petzel, and radical young talent like Puppies Puppies, whose new show “Degenerate Art (Transsexual)” at Trautwein Herleth references everything from Minimalism and Pop Art to the gay hookup app Grindr.

Below, we’ve selected eight standout shows from this year’s Berlin Gallery Weekend.

Cyprien Gaillard, “Retinal Rivalry”

Sprüth Magers

May 3–July 26

The “white cube” of the gallery space becomes a multisensory experience in French media artist Cyprien Gaillard’s transformative new show. The exhibition will span new film and sculpture works, most notably Retinal Rivalry (2024), a 30-minute-long video shot in 4K at an ultra-smooth 120 frames per second. In this work, the artist draws on the neurological phenomenon called “perceptual oscillation,” caused by conflicting visual input to each eye. The camera switches between scenes of the city and countryside to show the impact of time on Germany. Here, the hiking grounds of Saxony give way to cavernous Roman ruins beneath a 1970s parking area under the Cologne Cathedral—and even a Burger King housed in a former power substation and Nazi rally ground. These tableaus are almost devoid of people, focusing instead on the spaces themselves and the meaning they accrue through the passage of time.

Alongside this hypnotic meditation on past and present, the show includes Penombra (2024), a small-scale wall sculpture of a sun shade found on antique Italian ATMs, and new works made from reclaimed satin acoustic panels salvaged from the Museo Revoltella, a modern art museum in Trieste, Italy. Once touched by thousands of fingertips, the panels are embroidered with mythological “dance of death” imagery that evokes the impermanence of life.

Tony Cragg, “Sculptures and Drawings”

Buchmann Galerie

May 2–June 21

For his 28th solo exhibition at Buchmann Galerie, Turner Prize–winning artist Tony Cragg offers a rare look into the full scope of his creative process. Cragg is known for his lifelong exploration of the tension between organic forms and industrial materials, leading him to craft key pieces like It Is, It Isn’t (2016) and Double Take (2014), two works that mimic the abstraction of the natural world through the use of bronze and wood. This show features a selection of large-scale sculptures from his “Industrial Nature” series alongside more than 250 drawings, tracing his creative process from sketch to sculpture. The accompanying works on paper aren’t merely blueprints, but essential artifacts of the “visual language” that guides him.

His renowned sculptural works, crafted from bronze, wood, and steel, twist like tendrils mid-metamorphosis. These hulking forms are sometimes smooth and polished, sometimes weathered and textured. Taken together, the works reassert the role of the human hand in creating art, offering a timely meditation on originality for an increasingly AI-obsessed world.

“Reverse Alchemy: Dubuffet, Basquiat, Nava”

Pace Gallery with Galerie Judin

May 2–June 14

International mega-gallery Pace recently announced its first permanent space in Berlin at Die Tankstelle, a 1950s-era gas station-turned-gallery in Schöneberg shared with Galerie Judin. It’s a big vote of confidence in Berlin’s art scene from the leading international gallery as it celebrates its 65th anniversary. The space will host shows from both galleries alternately: Pace’s inaugural exhibition during Gallery Weekend brings together works on paper by Jean Dubuffet, Jean-Michel Basquiat, and Robert Nava. Anchored in Dubuffet’s celebration of “art brut”—meaning works created by people outside the established cultural mainstream—the show celebrates raw, crude, and unfiltered explorations of mark-making.

Late drawings by Dubuffet and early works by Basquiat from the 1980s are presented alongside Nava’s recent works on paper, revealing a throughline of irreverence and anti-establishment energy spanning generations. It’s a strong statement for the bold new exhibition space. Meanwhile, visitors will find a decidedly kinkier approach to the medium in Galerie Judin’s series of works on paper by famed erotica artist Tom of Finland.

Leilah Babirye, “Ekimyula Ekijjankunene (The Gorgeous Grotesque / Die prächtige Groteske)”

Galerie Max Hetzler

May 1–June 4

Ugandan artist Leilah Babirye celebrates queer resilience for her debut solo show in Berlin, rendering the personal strikingly political. “Ekimyula Ekijjankunene (The Gorgeous Grotesque)” spans two of Galerie Max Hetzler’s spaces and features works on paper alongside new sculptural pieces. In this dual show, a series of small ceramics are lined up side-by-side on a plinth in Abambowa (Royal Guard Who Protects the King) (2025), in the gallery’s smaller space in Bleibtreustraße 15/16. The work’s title references the highest guard in Buganda, a pre-colonial kingdom of Uganda. Adorned with bicycle chains and rusted found objects, the works turn these discarded materials into ceremonial forms and emblems of queer resistance.

In a set of works on paper shown in Max Hetzler’s space in Goethestraße 2/3, Babirye depicts people from queer and trans communities that she noticed during her travels, sketched from memory. Kuchu Ndagamuntu (Queer Identity Card) (2025) depicts these individuals in vibrant color. Rooted in history and the artist’s lived experience, the exhibition offers a touching tribute to chosen family, survival, and sovereignty.

Frank Auerbach, “Frank Auerbach”

Galerie Michael Werner

May 2–June 28

For the first time since fleeing Berlin as a child in the Holocaust, the German-born British painter Frank Auerbach returns to the city as part of a major new retrospective curated by longtime collaborator and former Whitechapel Gallery director Catherine Lampert. The show spans six decades of work, bringing together both paintings and drawings with key loans from public and private collections, including self-portraits from the last decade and works produced in the years before Auerbach’s death in 2024.

In other, earlier works, figures and shapes emerge from thick impasto like unearthed memories. These paintings of London cityscapes and portraits of Auerbach’s wife and son are the result of the artist’s ritualistic process of painting, scraping, and repainting the canvas. Auerbach’s relentless search for emotional and formal truth is on full display here, offering a response to the question that shaped his career: How do you capture a fleeting moment without betraying it?

Sebastian Jefford, “Toy”

Galerie Noah Klink

May 2–May 31

Life cycle of a maggot, 2021
Sebastian Jefford
Galerie Noah Klink

The works of Berlin-based artist Sebastian Jefford always feel a few degrees off balance, as if beamed in from a slightly skewed alternate reality. For his first solo exhibition at Galerie Noah Klink, Jefford presents plasticized wall sculptures and a series of sequential drawings that seem to throw educational imagery into a microwave, warping it beyond recognition.

In one series of looming polyurethane works, the artist portrays comically haggard, moon-like faces. These worn-out expressions are offset by the tiny, boyish faces stuck to their large noses. Accompanying drawings borrow the structure of diagrams and comic strips: slapstick imagery collides with impending dread. For example, in Choo choo, choo choo (2025), a salivating mouth is fed spoonfuls of breakfast cereal from an anonymous hand in a comic strip–style work. Later panels of the drawing reveal that the mouth is attached to a man tied down to a chair and fed by a giant woman. The dire sequence evokes the endless repetitive consumption of media. Across the exhibition, Jefford pokes fun at the contemporary rules and systems that order our lives, in which logic and meaning often seem just out of grasp.

Sun Yitian, “Romantic Room”

Esther Schipper

May 2–May 31

Jingpin, 2024
Sun Yitian
Esther Schipper

For her first Berlin solo show, “Romantic Room,” Sun Yitian presents vibrant new paintings that reconfigure Eastern and Western iconography into elaborate visual puzzles. The exhibition takes the Chinese notion of “Shanzhai”—used to designate creative transformation through appropriation and counterfeit goods—as a touchstone. Her works, drawing on art history, mass production, amusement parks, and religious iconography, critique Western narratives through the lens of Chinese consumer culture. In particular, she’s inspired by the economic boom of her youth in Wenzhou, a manufacturing hub that churned out inexpensive toys and knockoffs.

In her large painting, Jinpin (2024), a pale blue high heel in the shape of a fish stands out amongst the muted brown tree trunks and inky black night sky, while the smaller work, Shelter VI (2024), presents a ghostly white inflatable fortress displaced under a sliver of moon. There’s a dreamlike quality to the Renaissance-inspired compositions and their muted palettes; the objects in her scenes are hyperreal, yet menacing, as if you’ve stumbled across something you shouldn’t see.

Maud Paul, “Triangled Thoughts”

Better Go South

May 2–May 30

Feed yourself, 2025
Maud Paul
Better Go South

Maud Paul aims to bring feeling to furniture. For the French-born, Brussels-based artist and designer, the trick is balancing polished precision—utilizing materials like steel, mesh and textile—with a quiet sensuality. In her first solo show of sculptures and drawings, “Triangled Thoughts,” the 26-year-old artist turns Better Go South’s Berlin gallery into a space of gentle resistance. Curved metal seating wrapped in soft textiles invite the body to rest, while a series of color-pencil drawings evoke quiet domestic moments. The works are united by the alluring geometry of a triangle and its symbolism as a means of stability—something in short supply in our modern world.

Trained at the Gerrit Rietveld Academie and shaped by time in the studios of German artist-designer Valentin Loellmann, Paul brings the precision of furniture design to her art practice, imbuing her work with both craft and care.

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Art Green, Chicago Imagist who co-founded the Hairy Who, dies at 83. https://ift.tt/xUwen26

Chicago artist Art Green, a founding member of the Imagist art group the Hairy Who, died on April 14th at 83. Garth Greenan Gallery, which represents the artist, announced his death on Instagram, writing, “His legacy lives on in his playful and paradoxical paintings, and in the generation of artists shaped by his decades of dedicated teaching.”

Green filled his paintings with unruly, contradictory images, layering motifs such as ice cream cones, flames, or dancing legs, with kaleidoscopic patterns and sharp-edged geometries. In the 1960s, he emerged alongside School of the Art Institute of Chicago peers James Falconer, Gladys Nilsson, Jim Nutt, Suellen Rocca, and Karl Wirsum, helping to form the irreverent collective that became known as the Hairy Who. Unlike New York Pop artists like Andy Warhol, who approached post-war American life with irony, the Hairy Who responded with a more visceral rejection of its hollow optimism.

Born in Frankfort, Indiana in 1941, Green graduated from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 1965. He first enrolled as an industrial design student, moving on to graphic design before finally landing on painting. After graduating, Green and his five collaborators mounted their first exhibition at the Hyde Park Art Center in 1966. The group presented five additional exhibitions between 1966 and 1969—two in Chicago and one each in San Francisco, New York, and Washington, D.C.—helping to draw national attention to the broader Chicago Imagist movement.

In 1969, Green was offered a teaching position at the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design in Halifax, Canada. He married fabric designer Natalie Novotny, whose work inspired the thread and lace imagery seen in many of Green’s paintings. Starting in the 1970s, Green’s work reflected the flat style of the period, animated by a riot of color, but it also absorbed a deeper strain of Surrealist influence than his counterparts, drawing from artists like René Magritte and Giorgio de Chirico.

A prime example of all of his influences is the painting Restricted Entry (1974), which depicts an ice cream cone torn open like wallpaper to reveal flames. The painting also features tight stitches across a wood-paneled and windowed background. With Green’s precise, graphic style, the painting creates a surreal clash between everyday, safe-seeming objects and the violent chaos of his composition.

Green accepted another teaching position at the University of Waterloo in Ontario, Canada where he worked until 2006. Over the last few decades, he was the subject of solo exhibitions at Garth Greenan Gallery, Corbett vs. Dempsey, and Waterloo Art Gallery, among others. His work is held by a number of prestigious collections, including the Art Institute of Chicago, the MCA Chicago, and the Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington, D.C.

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Annie Leibovitz’s inaugural photography prize announces winner. https://ift.tt/orguCmE

French photographer Zélie Hallosserie, whose work documents the urgent realities of immigrant life in Europe, has been named the inaugural winner of the Saltzman-Leibovitz Photography Prize. The 21-year-old artist is currently completing her bachelor’s degree in photography at ESA Saint-Luc Tournai in Belgium.

The prize was launched by American artist Annie Leibovitz, known for her bold, posed portraits of celebrities, in partnership with New York–based photographer Lisa Saltzman. The prize totals $20,000, supported by the Saltzman Foundation, with Hallosserie receiving the $10,000 first-place award. Shortlisted artists include Ukrainian artist Elena Kalinichenko, American photographer Ka’Vozia Glynn, Nigerian artist Praise Hassan, Romanian artist Toma Hurduc, and London-based Trâm Nguyễn Quang. Shortlisted artists were selected from a mentorship program run by Leibovitz. Their work will be part of a group presentation at Photo London 2025, which runs from May 15th to 18th.

Hallosserie is currently working on a project titled “The Game,” which captures the stories of migrants passing through Calais, France, on their way to the United Kingdom. Her work has documented people from countries such as Iraq, Iran, Syria, Afghanistan, Sudan, and Eritrea as they prepare to cross the English Channel.

“Zélie's photography stands out for its ability to humanize complex social issues with sincerity and depth,” said Saltzman. “Her sensitive approach not only highlights critical social issues but also connects viewers emotionally to the resilience and humanity of her subjects. Supporting artists like Zélie is precisely why we founded this prize.”

Based in Tournai, Belgium, Hallosserie has regularly visited a local shelter across the French border as part of the project. The artist hopes her work can disrupt the discriminatory depictions of immigrants across Europe. “Photography allows me to defend subjects close to my heart, to create genuine connections, and to constantly challenge my own perspective,” Hallosserie said in a press release. “This recognition was unexpected, but I’m incredibly grateful for the opportunity and visibility it brings to a cause and project that mean so much to me,” she added.

Artists shortlisted for the prize were selected by Whitney Museum of Art curator Drew Sawyer, photo editor Kira Pollack, scholar and curator Isolde Brielmaier, and creative director of Vogue Raul Martinez.

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Sculptor Suki Seokyeong Kang, who reimagined Korean art traditions, has died at 48. https://ift.tt/tsw4vk1

Suki Seokyeong Kang, a Korean sculptor, painter, and video and performance artist known for revisiting traditional Korean art traditions through a contemporary lens, died at 48 on Sunday, April 27th. Her passing was announced by Seoul’s Kukje Gallery on Monday. Tina Kim Gallery, which represents the artist in New York, said she died after a year-long battle with cancer.

In her work, Kang engaged with several traditional Korean art forms. Jeongganbo, a musical notation system originating in the 15th century, influenced the gridded structure of her sculptures.; Joseon Dynasty painting, meanwhile, inspired her to incorporate her own subjectivity in depictions of the landscape. Her most well-known works include hand-shaped metal structures and geometric woven works based on hwamunseok, or traditional Korean flooring mats.

Born in Seoul in 1977, Kang studied painting at Ewha Womans University before receiving a master’s in painting from London’s Royal College of Art in 2012. At Ewha Womans University, Kang primarily studied ink painting. She would later return to the school to teach until her death.

Mountain — autumn #23-02, 2023
Suki Seokyeong Kang
Kukje Gallery

Kang often explored how humanity relates to nature, a theme evident in her “Mountain” series, which she started in 2020. The series draws on si-seo-hwa, a Joseon Dynasty painting style that integrates poetry, calligraphy, and painted landscapes. In her contemporary interpretation, Kang created arched metal forms evoking hilltops, from which strands of chain, thread, or fabric were sometimes suspended..

Kang earned international attention after showing at several biennials, including the Gwangju Biennale in 2016 and 2018. She gained widespread recognition in 2018 when she won Art Basel’s Baloise Art Prize. That year, she also presented solo exhibitions at the ICA Philadelphia and Tina Kim Gallery in New York. Then, in 2019, Kang’s “Grandmother Tower” sculptures were featured at the Venice Biennale.

Kang’s most notable exhibition was perhaps her show at the Leeum Museum of Art in 2023, a mid-career survey titled “Willow Drum Oriole.” This exhibition featured more than 130 works spanning her painting, textile, and sculpture practices. There, she debuted her now-acclaimed “Mountain” series. Her work is currently the subject of “Mountain—Hour—Face,” her largest U.S. show, which runs until May 4th at the Museum of Contemporary Art Denver. Kang’s work is also in the collections of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art in Seoul, and the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, among others.

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In Ayoung Kim’s Futuristic Videos, Women Delivery Drivers Are Action Heroes https://ift.tt/dlMn86t

A courier zooms through the heavy traffic of Seoul on a motorcycle, cold gray-blue streets flashing by. Armored in a shiny helmet and head-to-toe gray, the driver speeds from delivery to delivery, always trying to beat the clock for the latest task flashing on her app.

Such urgency is a defining feature of contemporary urban life, epitomized by the “frictionless” on-demand deliveries made possible by apps. Almost anything we want is at our fingertips, delivered by a vast network of anonymous figures who move through the streets, picking up and dropping off the items we desire. These forgotten couriers are the protagonists for video artist Ayoung Kim, who has received huge acclaim for her fast-paced, tech-influenced video works over the last several years. In the “Delivery Dancer” body of work, Seoul’s women delivery drivers embody the technological anxieties of our time.

In 2023, Kim received the inaugural Asian Cultural Center (ACC) Future Prize at Frieze London, leading to a major show at the institution, located in Gwangju, South Korea. This year has seen her rise to even greater heights. Last month, she received the $100,000 LG Guggenheim Award, which recognizes artists working with technology. In November, she will have a major moment in New York with the debut of a new work for the prestigious performance art festival Performa and a solo show at MoMA PS1. Meanwhile, Kim’s exhibition “Many Worlds Over” is on view at Hamburger Bahnhof in Berlin through July 20th, drawing together video works with sculptures and interactive video games.

Kim showed all the excitement of a curious and thoughtful creator during a walkthrough of her exhibition. She described both highbrow and lowbrow obsessions, speaking about “ethnofuturism” (sci-fi with a non-Western perspective) and the 1990s anime series Aeon Flux with equivalent seriousness.

These inspirations are immediately evident in her work. The earliest piece included in the exhibition, Delivery Dancer’s Sphere (2022), portrays Ernst Mo, a female delivery driver (or “dancer,” in the parlance of her futuristic Uber-style app). Mo races against the rules of time and space, which, in this fictional version of Seoul, can sometimes be broken. Rendered in both CGI and live-action, the character zips through glitchy video game locales as well as high-rises, back alleys, and highways. Again and again, she crosses paths with En Storm, a version of herself from an alternate reality. The characters’ stories become entangled; their passionate relationship switching between romance and rivalry, a bond suggested by their anagrammed names and the single actress who plays both. “It’s tragic because they don’t have time to be together; they just chase each other,” Kim said of this Inception-style narrative of interlocking destinies and collapsing realities.

The artist’s current practice is a turn away from her original career path. Raised in Seoul, she worked as a motion graphics designer until the age of 26, when she moved to the U.K. to study photography. During her time at London College of Communication, Kim said in an interview, she discovered her interest in the philosophy behind image making, and went on to earn her MA in fine art at Chelsea College of Art in 2010.

After residencies in Paris and Berlin, she returned to Seoul as a full-time artist. Over her career, she has focused on speculative, narrative-driven works, like Zepheth, Whale Oil From the Hanging Gardens to You, Shell 3 (2015)—a sound-focused installation shown at the 2015 Venice Biennale that explored the Middle East petroleum industry and its connection to Korea’s prospering economy. Represented by Gallery Hyundai, she now works with five studio managers who help bring her CGI-driven visions to life.

It was the massive boom in delivery app use during COVID that sparked the idea for the “Delivery Dancer” series. “In Korea, during the pandemic, these platforms were really at their height—and I was their most dutiful customer, ordering sometimes twice a day,” Kim said. Realizing that many of those bringing her noodles and pizza were women, she became fascinated by their community of couriers. She organized a ride-along with a skilful biker to inform how she gamed the apps’ incentives and traffic systems. “This experience really opened my mind to write the script,” Kim said. “This algorithm always urges your body to be optimal, to be faster. Optimization is very important on the platform.”

But optimization has a dark side. The speculative world Kim has created is a means to discuss “technoprecarity,” a term coined by a group of scholars at the University of Michigan to describe “the premature exposure to death and debility that working with or being subjected to digital technologies accelerates.” For Kim, Korea is a foremost example of this phenomenon: “Everything is produced under the conditions of extreme competition,” she said. “This ‘survival game mode’ is embedded in all Korean people in all sectors of society…I wanted to call out this competition.”

Meanwhile, Korean culture has seen a surge in international interest in recent years. K-pop has broken through on global music charts, and Korean literature is gaining popularity and attention in the West, while the country’s art market becomes highly watched. Kim herself has benefited from this international interest: “Of course I’m indebted to the ‘K-culture’ industry. It’s enchanted everyone and benefited my artworks—it’s good to be attractive!” she said. “But still I have ambivalent feelings about that.”

Kim’s strategy for discussing the contemporary world is rooted in speculative fiction, inspired by novelists like Octavia Butler. She is also influenced, she said, by the Argentine writer Jorge Luis Borges, who is known for his conception of life as a series of mazes. “I really wanted to make a conceptual labyrinth,” she said. Kim’s characters often weave through narrow, similar-looking passageways and M.C. Escher–esque architecture. The exhibition design of “Many Worlds Over,” too, creates a kind of labyrinth: The bright blue rooms are laid out in intentionally confusing ways, with floor-to-ceiling mirrors creating the illusion of new spaces and paths.

Perhaps the most exciting work in the show is Kim’s most recent, Delivery Dancer's Arc: 0° Receiver (2024), a 30-minute, three-channel video. The film extends the narrative universe of Delivery Dancer’s Sphere, with Ernst Mo and En Storm this time playing spies for a secret cadre of timekeepers. They flit between possible worlds, on the run through ancient architectural ruins and their gloomy, fictionalized Seoul. “It’s getting a little bit confusing,” Kim said, smiling, while explaining the dense plot. “Sometimes my studio manager complains that I’m a maximalist!”

The film’s sharp editing and CGI action sequences are nonetheless dazzling, building on how Kim saw Delivery Dancer’s Sphere being received. “I was fascinated by the European reaction—people thought it was an action movie, and I thought ‘this is amazing,’” she said. “Especially with the female characters [being] so heroic—I wanted to extend that.” Receiver, for example, has several slow-motion martial arts combat scenes, as well as a Mission Impossible–esque motorcycle driving off a cliff.

The artist also uses artificial intelligence to enhance her message. In several scenes, characters shift through different CGI animation styles, as if being sketched in real time. Through the use of cutting-edge AI imaging, their outfits, facial expressions, and hairstyles change in each frame, as if gesturing to the multiple versions of a person that exist across alternative realities—and sometimes even the same one.

“We’re not required to be a single self,” said Kim, noting the impact of social media on how we move through the world: “We’re different people on LinkedIn than on Instagram.” Kim’s films, with their spiralling narratives and looping character arcs, evoke this sense of multiplicity. Through the mundane realities of a delivery driver trying to make it across the city, Kim hopes to place the viewer in a high-stakes metaphysical conundrum, one that we can all relate to: Who would we be, if only we had more time?

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Art Brussels 2025 Is Keeping Up with Its European Art Fair Cousins https://ift.tt/JlIaYqA

Art Brussels returned for its 41st edition from April 24th through 27th, held inside the Brussels Expo Hall on the vast stretch of the Heizel Plateau in Laeken, in the northwest of the Belgian capital. The Art Deco building, originally intended for the Brussels International Exposition in 1935, still retains its sense of officialdom as it looks down at the city’s iconic Atomium structure.

While the fair is often overshadowed by its more ostentatious European art fair cousins, it continues to assert itself as a crucible for contemporary art, thanks to a strong breadth of exhibiting galleries and an emphasis on curation. “Celebrating renowned artists is as essential to us as championing emerging artistic voices,” said the fair’s managing director Nele Verhaeren.

With its 2025 edition, Art Brussels positioned the city not just as a political center but as a cultural capital, bringing 165 galleries from 35 countries (38% of which were debutants), which together encompassed works by more than 800 artists. The fair featured five curated sections: Prime, Solo, Discovery, ’68 Forward, and Invited, which, taken together with a packed program, made an enriching art fair experience. Leading a tour of the fair, Verhaeren explained how she and her team “want the fair to be readable for everyone.”

In an attempt at offering some fluidity to the fair’s formalities, French artist Céline Condorelli’s pleated curtain reimagined the entrance as a stage. Between the established and emerging booths, meanwhile, was a walkthrough archive created by Juan d’Oultremont, where artists and audiences could take stock of a past and present. In a commitment to fostering experimentation, the fair also introduced two major initiatives. First, The Screen, a curated video art section, selected by KANAL-Centre Pompidou's Eliel Jones, together with Brussels-based filmmaker Alex Reynolds. Here, six projects were featured from participating galleries, including Galerie Kandlhofer and Harlan Levey Projects, in a selection of works that the curators said “all play with the documentary and experimental essay form, at times rubbing with the personal and fictional.”

The other new section, Monumental Artworks, mirrored what has become increasingly commonplace in other international fairs: an exhibition of large-scale artworks. Curated by public art expert Carine Fol, the dedicated section features works by the likes of Willem Boel, Hilde Overbergh, and Marisa Ferreira.

Empathy for the Devil (series) 6, 2025
Mircea Suciu
Keteleer Gallery

Study for 'Disintegration' 33, 2024
Mircea Suciu
Keteleer Gallery

At the main fair, highlights abounded across booths. Works of merit included Kai-Chung Chang’s Ces lointaines se répètent no. 37 (2025) at Romero Paprocki; Guy Van Bossche’s Fuck Freedom (2025) and Mircea Suciu’s “Fatigue” series at Keteleer Gallery; and Bendt Eyckermans’s Emblems Lost (2025) at Mendes Wood DM (the artist is also the subject of a solo show at the gallery’s Brussels space). Further standouts included Muller Van Severen’s Frame 23 (2024) at Tim Van Laere Gallery, Markus Ákesson’s Spiritus (2025) at Berg Gallery, Angela de la Cruz’s Standing Box with Small Box (2016) at Wetterling Gallery, and Guillermo Mora's untitled sculptural paintings at Irène Laub Gallery.

The fair is also notable for its series of prizes, which provided both a measure of the fair’s artistic focus and the quality of works on view. The 75th anniversary of the Belgian Art Prize was marked with a special edition, “Back to the Future,” which featured eight dual presentations between former laureates of the prize and artists who have never participated. Presentations here included Els Dietvorst and Flor Veronica J. Maesen, and Pieter Vermeersch and Le Chauffage.

This year’s Solo Prize of €15,000 ($17,036) went to Mendes Wood DM’s Julien Creuzet. The artist’s installation addresses his French Caribbean heritage with suspended sculptures and textual interventions set against a wallpaper of abstracted imagery, all of which appears to have come from the ocean floor. The work is a testament to centuries of forced and fleeing migration, foregrounding the artist’s own visual emancipation. The Discovery Acquisition Prize, focused on supporting museum collections, was awarded to FRED&FERRY’s Thomas Verstraeten for his video work URBI ET ORBI (2024) and accompanying scaled-up model, which had viewers believe they were in a theatre. This year’s museum of choice was the Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium.

Other prizes included The ’68 Forward Prize booth—awarded to a presentation in the fair’s section dedicated to established and overlooked artists—was given to Ewa Partum and Ewa Opalka Gallery for the Polish artist’s minimal examination of institutional and market structures. And The Invited Prize—awarded to a presentation in the fair’s emerging gallery section—was given to London’s Night Café, for a beautifully curated booth of six contemporary artists whose practices cut bridged themes of memory, nostalgia, and identity across mediums.

Undergirded by a strong domestic collector base and with an increasingly international outlook, Art Brussels this year also appeared to yield strong sales across galleries from initial reports. A snapshot of sales was led by local blue chip gallery Xavier Hufkens, which sold a work by Tracey Emin for £1 million ($1.33 million), as well as “multiple sales” from its solo presentation of Walter Swennen for prices between €25,000 ($28,388) and €110,000 ($124,910). The gallery also sold a work by Cassi Namoda for €60,000 ($68,133), and a sculpture by Thomas Houseago for $58,000. Other notable sales included three works by the American artist Jeff Kowatch for €18,000 ($20,439), €16,000 ($18,168), and €12,000 ($13,626), respectively, at the booth of Galerie La Forest Divonne, which also sold a bronze by Belgian sculptor Catherine François for €30,000 ($34,066) and a painting by Guy de Malherbe for €35,000 ($39,744). Antwerp's Keteleer Gallery sold eight works from Mircea Suciu’s solo stand, and 11 works from their main stand to existing and new collectors in Belgium, with two works for over €30,000 ($34,066) and two for “well over” €50,000 ($56,777).

And in a sign of the collecting composition at the fair, local gallerist Rodolphe Janssen reported selling 20 works on the first day of the fair: some 60% to international clients and 40% to Belgian collectors. As it settles into its fifth decade, Art Brussels is looking forward, and this year’s edition proved that there is plenty to be optimistic about.

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New York subway unveils artist mural inspired by Hilma af Klint. https://ift.tt/Y6JxUPE

A 600-square-foot mural inspired by Swedish artist Hilma af Klint has been installed in the New York subway. The mosaic, commissioned by MTA Arts & Design, is the first public commission by Hilma’s Ghost, a feminist artist collective co-founded by Sharmistha Ray and Dannielle Tegeder. Titled Abstract Futures (2025), the mosaic is located at the 42nd Street/3rd Avenue entrance to Grand Central Station, serving the 7 train on the Flushing line.

Drawing from tarot iconography and the artists’ ongoing interest in spiritual symbolism, the work is presented in three segments, each depicting a stage in a symbolic commuter journey. The piece reflects on transformation and renewal through abstraction and color, connecting everyday urban life with metaphysical themes.

The first segment features “The Fool,” a tarot archetype that represents risk-taking and new beginnings, expressed through a composition of reds, pinks, and oranges. The second segment, depicting “The Wheel of Fortune,” introduces earthy tones meant to convey grounding and change. The final and largest section, located near the fare array gates, includes celestial imagery such as the moon, the star, and the sun, culminating in “The World”—a tarot symbol for integration and renewal.

“This mural represents a new way of seeing the city—a journey that is both physical and spiritual,” Tegeder and Ray said in a joint statement. “It’s about the connection between people, spaces, and time, and intended to provide a powerful reflection of what New York represents to us all. The city is at once a sprawling metropolis with millions of people, but also a dynamic network of interconnectivity. As we make our way through a single day in New York, we connect with so many people from so many walks of life. The density of the mural’s imagery, pattern, and color is a metaphor for the endless diversity of the city that is its heartbeat. It is that diversity that is what makes New York so special.”

The glass mosaic was fabricated by Miotto Mosaic Art Studios and forms part of Grand Central’s broader station rehabilitation effort. According to MTA Arts & Design interim director Juliette Michaelson, the mosaic is designed to engage subway riders in a moment of reflection. In her eyes, the work is “designed to honor the ebb and flow of New York’s diverse population and celebrate the resilience, grit, and ambition of the people who bring the city to life.”

Hilma’s Ghost was founded in 2020 during the COVID-19 pandemic. Inspired by af Klint, a pioneer of spiritual abstraction, the duo critiques gendered power structures and seeks to center underrepresented spiritual practices in contemporary art. Their first collaboration was a tarot deck titled Abstract Futures, now in its third edition with approximately 1,500 copies in circulation.Their work has been featured in exhibitions at the Guggenheim and the Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum, among others.

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At EXPO Chicago 2025, Galleries Take Risks and Find Room to Reflect https://ift.tt/aneIkC0

There was perhaps an unexpected confidence to be observed when the 2025 edition of EXPO Chicago opened its VIP preview on Thursday, April 24th. Despite lingering anxieties over tariffs and broader stock market volatility, the mood at Navy Pier was one of relative buoyancy. “There’s always been a little bit of a fearlessness to Chicago collectors,” said Tony Karman, the long-time president of the fair. “They want to learn, and they’re not afraid to ask questions. They’ll take risks on new work.” In the face of trepidation, Karman invoked the civic mantra: “Chicago is the city that works,” adding that, in this particular case, it is working as “a city for the artists.”

The 12th edition of the fair, on view through April 27th, is the second held under the ownership of art fair conglomerate Frieze, which is largely seen in the changes to EXPO’s programming. Most notable at this year’s edition are the 20 Korean galleries participating in a special collaborative program with the Galleries Association of Korea (GAoK). The initiative draws on the synergy between Frieze’s Seoul fair and its concurrent neighbor KIAF Seoul, adding a global dimension to the fair’s typically regional foundation.

“We probably would have never been able to manifest anything close to a 20 gallery special section, and that happened because of discussions that took place because of the relationships with Frieze,” said Karman. “There’s this history of Korean galleries that have done a Chicago fair, not just EXPO Chicago, but past iterations of fairs in Chicago. So, it wasn’t odd for the Korean Gallery Association to return to a city that for decades has hosted and allowed Korean galleries to be successful.”

At the VIP preview, a local-leaning crowd of collectors, curators, artists, and students packed the aisles, giving the opening hours a tone that felt both buzzy and informal. The fair features more than 170 leading galleries from 36 countries, and this year’s edition includes over 50 first-time exhibitors, furthering a sense of renewal in the familiar architecture of the Navy Pier. This was reflected across booths at the fair, where several exhibitors took an emboldened approach to their presentations. “Galleries [are being] true to their program and not afraid to bring work that’s challenging, provocative, and equally as beautiful,” Karman said.

Feelings, 2023
Jeffly Gabriela Molina
SECRIST | BEACH

Polite Poultry Fight Swayed by Wendy's Windstorm, 2024
Chelsea Culprit
SECRIST | BEACH

Indeed, this approach was exemplified at the booth of SECRIST | BEACH, the Chicago gallery co-founded by ex-financier Bill Beach and art dealer Carrie Secrist. One half of the booth was devoted to “Master Class: Inside the Last American Museum School,” a presentation tied to their current exhibition in the city’s West Town, featuring work by painting and drawing alumni from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC) spanning 2000 to 2025. This includes works such as Jeffly Gabriela Molina’s intimate portrait of two naked women, Feelings (2023), priced at $16,000. For Beach, this type of institutional-oriented presentation is “a litmus test for the market,” noting that several works had already sold during the preview. “I feel there's a break the other way,” he added.

That same sense of optimism was particularly prevalent across the visiting Korean galleries, and several embraced emotional resonance as a counterweight to economic tensions in their presentations. Seoul’s EVERYDAY MOONDAY, for example, presented a solo exhibition of 45-year-old Korean artist Moonassi, featuring a selection of ink and acrylic paintings on Korean hanji paper, priced from $7,000 to $18,000. The gallery chose to bring the artist’s introspective drawings to the fair with the sense that collectors “tend to prioritize emotional and conceptual value,” according to director Diny Lee. In times of tension and uncertainty, Lee added, “Art that offers reflection and emotional clarity often becomes priceless.”

For many of the international galleries in attendance, it wasn’t a completely stress-free journey to Chicago. Ashley Kim, assistant manager of Seoul-based Suppoment, acknowledged the complications posed by tariffs (art, it should be noted, is broadly understood to be exempt from tariffs) and broader uncertainty, particularly as the gallery made its EXPO debut. Still, the decision to participate felt like a natural one: The gallery previously maintained an office in Chicago and saw value in returning to the city with a focused presentation. The booth featured works by three Korean artists associated with the 1970s Dansaekhwa movement: Lee In Seob, Yoo Mi Seon, and Lee Soo Hong.

“[These artists] want to highlight that not everything you experience has to be good,” Kim said. “It’s like how light and dark work—because there are dark moments, you come to appreciate the light, and vice versa.” That sensibility was especially present in Lee In Seob’s Untamed; grains of time (20250212) (2025), the most expensive piece in the booth, priced at $65,450, which layers gestural strokes of cobalt blue and taupe over a textured white ground, evoking a meditative tension between contrast and calm.

Untamed; grains of time (20250212), 2025
Lee In Seob
Suppoment Gallery

Les poupées russes , 2024-2025
Magali Cazo
Wishbone

Other exhibitors, meanwhile, approached the fair with a touch of trepidation towards the Trump Administration, but found their worries quelled in the first few hours of the fair. Michael Lewin of Montreal-based gallery Wishbone told Artsy, “Obviously, we had a lot of concern going into an American fair from a Canadian perspective, but the reception we’ve received has just been warm and lovely.”

Everything on view at the gallery’s booth is priced under $10,000, including work by French artist Magali Cazo—large-scale ink-on-paper landscapes and nudes—and Chicago-born, L.A.-based artist Mia Weiner, whose silk and cotton tapestries explore themes of femininity and sensuality with quiet intensity. Lewin said he wanted to bring works to Chicago “without the sort of bravado that one would find in the Miami market or in the New York market.” To him, EXPO is “a lot more down to earth.”

This preference for emotionally resonant work carried over to San Francisco–based re.riddle, which made its EXPO debut with a presentation by Paris-based Mongolian artist Odonchimeg Davaadorj. With prices ranging from $800 to just over $6,000, the booth included red watercolor works on paper and a commanding installation: five large-scale, red-toned figurative cutouts depicting a nude woman, flanked by two owls and two shorter figures, set above a mound of red-streaked dirt. The result was raw, symbolic, and a refreshing approach to a booth presentation.

“We decided to bring this body of work because it is conceptually robust,” said the gallery’s founder, Candace Huey. “We were informed that Chicago appreciates and understands conceptual rigor and intellectual challenges. Our programming is always thinking about contemporary art discourse, and Chicago plays a heavy role in that and in shaping those narratives.”

Other galleries are approaching EXPO with a slower, more meditative rhythm. Los Angeles’s Megan Mulrooney, also making its debut at this year’s fair, is presenting a two-person ceramics booth from Maddy Inez and Josh Cloud, rooted in themes of healing. Inez—the granddaughter of Betye Saar and daughter of Alison Saar—presented glazed ceramic works inspired by the matilija flower, a species of poppy that only germinates in the presence of smoke. Created in response to the California wildfires, her compositions reflected the idea of beauty emerging from devastation. Cloud’s works—ceramic structures that appear to be collaged together—reflect on queerness and identity, complementing the emotional register of the booth.

“There’s something beautiful about talking about plants and healing…in the face of such devastation and aggression,” said Mulrooney. “People understand that given the tumultuous world, it’s really nice to speak about art and talk about art, to give voices or shed light on voices that are misrepresented or not heard.”

Untitled Prop Archive (THE PORTFOLIO), 2024
Amanda Ross-Ho
ILY2

The appetite for experimentation from galleries across the fair found its sharpest edge at Portland-based ILY2’s booth. The presentation was anchored by Amanda Ross Ho’s Untitled Prop Archive (THE PORTFOLIO) (2024): a sculpture composed of dozens of objects inspired by items—from licence plates to lemons—found in the photo archive of her father, Ruyell Ho. These items were arranged on an enlarged replica of the wooden table from her childhood home, standing in front of a water-damaged portrait of Ruyell.

The presentation originated from director Jeanine Jablonski, who, while scouting the fair last year, was struck by feedback that photography—and photography-based work—was noticeably underrepresented. Alongside Ho’s work, the gallery decided to bring photography and photo-based works by Morgan Buck, Melanie Flood, and Timothy Yanick Hunter—some hung in pink frames around the booth, priced from $2,200 to $65,000.

“Right now is the time where if you can take risks, it’s time to take a risk,” Jablonski told Artsy, summing up the mood shared by many at EXPO. “When things are unstable, it’s the time to do the weirdest shit.”

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