Travel Guru Erina Pindar on How Visiting South Africa Inspired Her to Collect Art https://ift.tt/4Bw3lRG

For the travel guru Erina Pindar, art, life, and work flow in intertwined streams.

Take a choice example from a few years ago. On a helicopter ride over Lake Empakaai in Tanzania, Pindar found herself listening to Max Richter’s On the Nature of Daylight. It might have been the setting, or simply the unassuming yet defiant melodies, but it had the entrepreneur “obsessed” with the British composer.

It was apt, then, that back in her home city of New York, she came across a series of paintings named after the composition by Eberhard Ross at Amelie, Maison d’Art gallery in SoHo. She immediately “fell in love” with the German abstract painter’s interpretation of her reactions to the same music.

The paintings immediately recalled the “lake’s insane jade green color and the sky which was absolutely bright orange.” Today, two works from the series sit in the corner of her bedroom in her Tribeca apartment. “Those paintings feel like meditation to me,” Pindar told Artsy. “They are what I wake up to every day.”

As the COO and managing partner of the luxury travel agency Smartflyer, Pindar knows a thing or two about how special experiences can permeate the everyday. That’s part of the reason why, just under two years ago, she embarked on a personal journey of collecting art.

Her collection’s smaller-scale works, such as a circular blue-hued polished plaster and resin painting from Letitia Quesenberry’s “BLSH” series, or a 2002 Robert Kipniss copper plate painting, Still life w/ chair & standing lamp, grace the walls of her Tribeca apartment. But the majority of the works in her collection are on display at SmartFlyer’s Chelsea headquarters. “I finally have a space that I can fill with all the art I bookmark in my head,” she quipped.

Pindar, who spent the first 15 years of her life in Jakarta, did not grow up surrounded by art. “An interest was always there, but I never had the chance to formalize it,” she recalled. Still, she developed a keen knack for how the right pieces can transform a space.

At her office, for example, the guests at talks that the company hosts on-site often express their intrigue and the art provides ample conversation starters. The biggest talk of the penthouse office? “Definitely the Chris Soal sculpture!” she answered. Pindar first encountered the South African artist’s compositions of bamboo and birch toothpicks amassed in voluptuous configurations during a walkthrough at Cape Town’s tastemaking gallery WHATIFTHEWORLD. Tricky to the eye, Soal’s sought-after compositions in the disposable material convey an inviting softness at a distance yet reveal their spiky content upon closer inspection. “Chris was there in person and told us about his fascinating process,” said Pindar. “Anyone coming into the office asks about what the material is—we never get bored of talking about it.”

At the core of Pindar’s collection is a deepening engagement with the South African art scene, which began on an art-focused trip that she organized with her art dealer friend Montague Hermann. The trip intended to “bring collectors to where artists are from instead of the other way around, where African artists come to where collectors are,” Pindar recalled.

Planning the trip had already exposed Pindar to many new artists, but it wasn’t until she embarked on the journey that the spark to start collecting art was first ignited. The trip helped her see the familiar aspects of contemporary art through a broader lens. Conversations with collectors about their thinking processes on the trip made her realize she already had a similar urge inside. “I’ve always made sure to bring a piece back home from any trip to anchor the experience,” she said, and collecting emerged as a “natural extension” of this habit.

The commitment seemed to pay off: In a short span of time, she has already amassed a suite of mixed-media works that succinctly reflects her love for the South African art scene while radiating an absorbing energy. She is fascinated by the nation’s burgeoning art community for reasons that are not different from how she operates in her professional life. “I have always invested in companies that are in their early stages,” she explained. “I just am drawn to potential.” This is particularly pertinent in Cape Town, which continues to serve as a source for Pindar’s passion to grow her collection as well as a reminder for more curiosity. “There is so much creativity in Cape Town that I haven’t even scratched the surface,” she noted.

Ever since that formative trip, Pindar has become addicted to buying art. Through annual trips to Cape Town’s own art fair Investec, formal commitments with top institutions, and a pure dedication to learn the ropes, she has tapped into every opportunity to broaden her understanding of a sector that felt foreign a few years ago. From The Great Migration (2022), an oozing aquatic painting by the emerging Sudanese artist Miska Mohmmed, to an arresting portrait by the Brooklyn-based Nigerian photographer Zina Saro-Wiwa, titled Eats Scotch Egg with Fanta (2022), Pindar’s collection reflects a very personal art education, in which travel and curiosity play core roles.

Last year, Pindar became a founding member of the 10x10 initiative run by Zeitz MOCAA, the influential Cape Town contemporary art institution. The initiative brings together ten American friends of the Cape Town museum for fundraising. Pindar, who is also a member of MoMA’s Contemporary Arts Council, considers these involved institutional roles her own “masterclass” on art collecting. Through bicontinental philanthropic involvements with two institutions, she has the opportunity to connect with curators, artists, and other collectors. “I am, in a way, exposed to the proper art education that I didn’t have the chance to receive in my 20s,” she said.

If there’s an aesthetic theme to Pindar’s collection, it is a loose focus on artists that utilize traditional mediums through introspective means. She finds herself settling on works that somehow reflect their artists’ personal inner journeys or fascinations because they happen to be Pindar’s, too. Ross’s Richter-inspired paintings are a good example, as well as Mongezi Ncaphayi’s nocturnal painting, Lets Say We Did I (2023). Pindar displays the moody print with dense colorations at her office. The abstracted bird’s eye view of a land intrigues the avid traveler for whom a one-night work trip to Europe is not an uncommon feat. “Mongezi is also heavily influenced by music, especially jazz,” added Pindar about the artist whom she eyed for a year before acquiring one of his works.

Despite her incredibly fast-paced life, Pindar takes her time before purchasing an artwork. Upon discovering an artist, she’ll go out of her way to “see more and more” and “learn everything” about their practice, often through her institutional patronage roles and friends in the sector.

This approach was first realized a few years ago when she encountered a William Kentridge triptych at a friend’s house. She later stumbled upon another work by the famed South African artist at a Zeitz MOCAA fundraising auction but resisted raising her paddle. “I didn’t know enough about him yet,” she recalled.

Luckily, she didn’t have to wait too long for what became the very first artwork of her collection: a “baby Kentridge.” The work—from the artist’s “Rubrics” series of striking phrases overlaid on found book pages—is a screenprint that reads “AGAINST ARGUMENT (BUT NOT THIS ONE)” in bold red all caps.

Pindar cherishes the work, which is still displayed proudly in her apartment, for giving her the courage and “push” to continue collecting art.

While she admits to sometimes finding aspects of the art world “opaque,” Pindar gradually realized that most people she encountered there were in reality friendly and more than willing to talk. “I eventually learned you can simply enter a gallery and look at art or start a conversation with the staff,” she said. Today, she considers it an “oxymoron” that the sector looks so “intimidating” from the outside while through the same network, she met some of the “kindest people” some of whom have become her friends.

Her collection’s most recent addition, for example, is a subtle nod to this honed search. A duo of large black and brown vessels, separately titled Lotus I (red) and Tuti Lotus (black) (both 2025), by the Brooklyn-based Sudanese ceramic artist Dina Nur Satti have recently been added to her office’s premises. “Dina’s esoteric interest in the divine and the spiritual is in contrast—or tension if you will—with her earthy material, which is very grounded,” she explained.

While her professional and personal affinity for travel continues to take Pindar around the world, discovering art is now a constant, no matter where she finds herself. Pindar often visits destinations where art may be waiting around the corner, whether in the most unexpected part of Tanzania or on a Cape Town gallery tour. “You can travel as far as you can, but you always want to come back home,” she said. “We created our office like a home, just like my own place, with art that I have picked up near or far and have brought back home.”

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8 Standout Shows during Frieze Seoul 2025 https://ift.tt/ea2rlQG

Cut and Burn , 2025
Hansaem Kim
ThisWeekendRoom

As Frieze Seoul returns for its fourth iteration in 2025, galleries are gearing up to present works in their spaces in the Korean capital. While the international art fair will again find its home at COEX amid the skyscrapers of Gangnam, the events that take place as part of Frieze and its Seoul partner KIAF will spread throughout the city. One can peek at the old Seoul in the serene Samcheong-dong; the glitz and glamor in Chungdam-dong and Hannam-dong; and the grassroots art scene in Eulji-ro, known for being a playground for artists.

Galleries across Seoul are highlighting a mix of international and local artists’ works. Highlights include Antony Gormley’s human-building sculptures at White Cube and Thaddaeus Ropac; the are also featured in Museum SAN, in a space specifically designed by Tadao Ando.

Here are Artsy’s picks of the best shows to see during Frieze Seoul 2025.

Izumi Kato

Perrotin

Through Oct. 25

Untitiled, 2025
Izumi Kato
Perrotin

There are figures with heads that seem out of proportion. Expressionless eyes appear and disappear, with their limbs tapering off into the water. Japanese painter and sculptor Izumi Kato’s dreamlike—at times nightmarish—paintings of faces, with distinct lines around the nose and the mouth, evoke ancient masks or sculptures, while their smooth heads recall extraterrestrial beings. Kato, who grew up in the Shimane prefecture in Japan, is inspired by the region’s legacy of animism, a belief that all things have souls or spiritual essences. He uses ghosts and spirits as motifs to create an eerie and sometimes disturbing feel in his paintings.

The artist, who has worked with major blue-chip gallery Perrotin since 2014, applies paint on canvas with his fingers instead of a brush. He often stitches together two or three different canvases, creating a harsh line separating the body parts in his strange paintings. For his exhibition with Perrotin during Frieze Seoul 2025, Kato will show mainly new works created after 2020, when he revived his childhood passion for assembling plastic model toys, resulting in works like Untitled (2024), a life-size wooden figure with three plastic model planes along the front of its body.

Antony Gormley

“Inextricable”

Thaddaeus Ropac (Sep. 2–Nov. 8)

White Cube (Sep. 2–Nov. 8)

In his first solo presentation in Seoul, a two-part show at White Cube and Thaddaeus Ropac, British sculptor Antony Gormley will show works from several ongoing series. As with much of his practice, these works interrogate the relationship between humankind and the urban environment. “Does the urban landscape free us or constrain us?” he asks, and “What toll does it have on our body?” As the exhibition title “Inextricable” suggests, Gormley’s work argues that we are intimately entwined with the built world.

In the ongoing series presented at White Cube—from “Bunker” (2022–present) to “Beamer” (2014–present)—stacks of steel, concrete, and iron cubes take the shapes of faceless humans, variously standing, leaning, sitting, and crouching. Elsewhere, in EARTH (2024), part of the “Strapworks” (2018–present) series presented at Thaddaeus Ropac, amber steel frames appear like buildings clumped together in an aerial shot.

If one can afford the time to travel two hours outside of Seoul during the busy fair week, the exhibition “Ground” is also on view at Wonju’s Museum SAN. Seven of Gormley’s “Blockworks” sculptures, in the form of silhouetted human figures, are situated under a 25-meter-wide dome created by Japanese architect Tadao Ando. It opened in June, and it’s the first collaboration between the pair.

Suh Yongsun

“City and People”

PIBI Gallery

Through Sep. 13

뉴욕 지하철, 2023-2025
Suh Yongsun
PIBI Gallery

In a subway carriage, travelers furrow their eyebrows looking into their phones while others hunch over themselves to keep warm. In another carriage, someone pleads for sympathy as a sparse crowd casts their eyes away into the void or stares into their phones. “City and People,” on view at Seoul’s PIBI Gallery, presents works by Korean painter and sculptor Suh Yongsun that he recently created in New York, featuring the metropolis’s streets and subways.

Suh’s interest in urban life began in the 1980s, when he focused on depicting Seoulites and their lives in the city in the most realistic way possible. This approach took a turn when he travelled to New York in 1992, after which his paintings became more expressive, using bold shades of red and blue. Regardless of ethnicity or gender, the city dwellers have nondescript red faces with wide eyes, as well as prominent noses and cheekbones. With their coarse lines, these raw features are reminiscent of Jean-Michel Basquiat’s works, as well as the traditional Korean tal masks. The somber atmosphere that surrounds these figures evokes the cold and quiet nights of Edward Hopper.

Woo Hannah

“POOMSAE”

G Gallery

Through Sep. 27

Tinkerbell Tooth, 2025
Woo Hannah
G Gallery

Things That Always Come at Once, 2025
Woo Hannah
G Gallery

When Woo Hannnah won the 2023 Frieze Seoul Artist Award commission, the Seoul-based sculptor explored aging women’s bodies with voluminous draped fabrics. Two years after the commission and a show at Frieze No.9 Cork Street in London, she strips the meat down to the bone in a new series of sculptures featured in this exhibition titled “POOMSAE.” The biggest work in the show is a towering, 3.8-meter, spine-like pillar sprouting from the floor. Alongside it, she presents a series of colorful yet bizarre abstract sculptures. Woo cleverly juxtaposes stuffing and fabric with rigid materials like 3D-printed plastic and steel to evoke a contrasting vision of typically feminine subjects.

The result is like something out of a twisted fairytale. In Tinkerbell Tooth (2025), the pulled-out “tooth,” with its root visible, stands out more prominently than the helpful fairy, who is only recognizable by the glittery blue lacquer paint and a torn piece of fabric from her dress. And in Chocho (2025), a bunny-like figure stares at the void with its red, bulging eyes, skeletal ears, and tail sprouting out of its small body.

Ann Veronica Janssens

“September in Seoul”

Esther Schipper

Sep. 2–Oct. 25

32 Green Yellow Blocks (805/3), 2025
Ann Veronica Janssens
Esther Schipper

When Ann Veronica Janssens represented Belgium at the Venice Biennale in 1999, she filled the room with fog, disorienting the viewers and leaving only trails of other visitors’ silhouettes for them to see. Since the late 1970s, the Belgium-based British artist has been working with light and materials such as glass, mirrors, aluminum, and artificial fog to play with optical phenomena—the ways we perceive the interactions between light and matter.

In this exhibition, dryly titled “September in Seoul,” minimalist glass sculptures, dark green, green-yellow, pink, and lilac rectangle bricks come together to create another rectangular prism that resembles a jelly-like, luminescent Rubik’s cube. For these sculptures, Janssens used optical glass, which is more transparent than regular glass, so it visibly catches the light for longer periods, creating an effect that can be described as “drinking the light.” This show continues her extensive work using this material, which she incorporated into her monochrome glass monoliths that replaced the stained-glass windows of Chapelle Saint-Vincent de Grignan in the Provence region of France.

Minjung Kim

“One after the Other”

Gallery Hyundai

Aug. 27–Oct. 19

Blue Mountain, 2022
Minjung Kim
Gallery Hyundai

For over 30 years, Korean master Minjung Kim has experimented with the traditions of calligraphy and ink painting, inspired by an Eastern philosophy that emphasizes the human connection with nature and meditation of the mind. In Saint Paul de Vence, France, where she is partly based, she “collaborates” (as she puts it) with her chosen media: hanji (traditional mulberry paper local to Korea) and fire. She carefully scorches pieces of paper on a candle, letting the flame determine their final shape. She then layers the pieces on a canvas to create her landscapes.

In this exhibition, Kim’s recent series “Zip” will be on display for the first time in Korea. Zip refers to both the file name designated for digital compression and the Korean word for “house.” Here, layers of scorched hanji are stacked on top of one another to create a herringbone pattern that resembles the roofs of houses in varying pale hues of blue, violet, and black. In other works, such as Encounter (2023) and Predestination (2024), Kim adopts pointillism by overlaying small circles of hanji tinted with ink.

Hansaem Kim

“NOWON”

ThisWeekendRoom

Through Sep. 6

YOU WIN , 2025
Hansaem Kim
ThisWeekendRoom

Emerging Korean artist Hansaem Kim’s solo show title “NOWON” is both a reference to the northeast district of Seoul and a play on the phrase “no one wins.” The exhibition features interactive video art works that recreate pixelated, two-dimensional, platformer-style games (think Donkey Kong, Super Mario Bros) that visitors can play, as well as resin sculptures that combine in-game scenes and characters that will tug at the heartstrings of ’90s kids.

Owing to this subject matter, major themes in Kim’s work are religious iconographies, the occult, fantasy, and European myths. Digitally designed figures like a red devil, a gargoyle, and a “holy knight” are portrayed in acrylic painting and lacquer with an eroded effect, which accentuates the nostalgic feel. They are then transformed into frames that surround significant scenes of the game, such as moments of victory. In his works, Kim uses irony and humor to question the definition of winning in both games and in life.

Teresita Fernández

“Liquid Horizon”

Lehmann Maupin

Through Oct. 25

Nocturnal(Milk Sky) 5, 2025
Teresita Fernández
Lehmann Maupin

Although water takes up 71 percent of Earth’s surface, only 5 percent of our oceans have been explored. In Teresita Fernández’s show titled “Liquid Horizon”—her first solo presentation in Seoul in a decade—the New York–based artist delves beneath the surface to depict what might be there and in other earthly realms. This exhibition at Lehmann Maupin presents her entirely new body of sculptural panels and ceramic installations that explore all three layers of the Earth: the subterranean, the ocean, and the sky.

In the sculptural panel series Liquid Horizon (2025), aluminum sheets covered in blue pigment are stacked on top of slabs made of black charcoal and sand. The exhibition also features nine panels titled Nocturnal(Milky Sky) (2025): here, a solid graphite relief at the bottom could depict either crashing waves of the ocean or molten lava in suspension. Just above this relief, blue water meets the sky at the horizon. Her “stacked landscapes,” with their horizontal color composition, are often compared to works by Mark Rothko.

The exhibition finally soars to the celestial with White Phosphorus/Cobalt (2025). Composed of thousands of miniscule ceramic cubes, the wall installation is a deep blue hue that becomes deeper towards the edges. While the composition resembles clusters of stars in outer space, the title of the work and the materials used (phosphates in clay, cobalt in glaze) point to earthly elements.

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10 Standout Shows to See during Armory Week 2025 https://ift.tt/qtgEceJ

As summer comes to an end and the art world gears up for business, New York’s Armory Week returns to usher in the busy fall season. Named after the heavy-hitting art fair Armory Show, the week will also see the opening of two other art fairs: Independent 20th Century and Art on Paper.

This year, The Armory Show will welcome over 230 galleries from 30 countries to the halls of the Javits Center, including six exhibiting in the new Function section. Curated by Ebony L. Haynes, senior director at David Zwirner and 52 Walker, the section explores how artists engage with design. The presentation will include contemporary and historic quilts by the storied Gee’s Bend Quiltmakers presented by Nicelle Beauchene Gallery, for instance. Along with this new addition to the fair, visitors will find some of the biggest names in contemporary art like White Cube and Victoria Miro, as well as smaller and mid-size dealers like Anat Ebgi and Southern Guild.

With art collectors, curators, and enthusiasts eager to socialize, galleries around the city are staging buzzworthy exhibitions worth a visit outside the fair halls. From a Joel Shapiro tribute show at Paula Cooper Gallery to an intimate look into Nancy Holt’s famous Sun Tunnels (1973–76) earthwork at Sprüth Magers, here are the 10 must-see gallery shows for your Armory Week agenda.

Joel Shapiro

Paula Cooper Gallery

Sep. 4–Oct. 11

In honor of the renowned artist Joel Shapiro, who passed away in June at the age of 83, his long-time dealer Paula Cooper Gallery is exhibiting a selection of his work from the 1970s. Shapiro, a major figure who pushed the boundaries of 20th-century sculpture and the Minimalist genre, was celebrated for his geometric, often colorful compositions that toe the line of abstraction and figuration. In addition to sculpture, Shapiro created public artworks, drawings, and prints that investigate form and color.

The exhibition will focus on more austere works—wood and metal sculptures, and charcoal and gouache works on paper—as an exploration of his early years. Included in the show are cast bronze and cast iron sculptures that sit directly on the floor, just as they were displayed when Shapiro first made and exhibited them with the gallery decades ago.

Caleb Hahne Quintana

“A Boy That Don’t Bleed”

Anat Ebgi

Sep. 5–Oct. 18

In moody figurative paintings on view in “A Boy That Don’t Bleed,” Brooklyn-based figurative artist Caleb Hahne Quintana depicts a somber adolescent boy in moments of quiet solitude. Using stunning jewel tones of blue and golden brown, Hahne Quintana shows the figure in different settings—lying on a couch, drying himself with a towel on waterside rocks, standing in a nondescript room—following him with a diaristic eye. The portraits evoke a sense of introspection and melancholy, as in Boy’s Portrait (2025), an image of a young child whose head and eyes tilt downward towards an unseen floor. More mysterious is the subject in Reader (2025), who leans against a dark brown wall, his face and half of his body obfuscated in the shadows. Joining these figures is a majestic horse that appears to be running through a pond that is speckled with vibrant blue from the night sky peeking through the forest trees. This is Hahne Quintana’s second solo show with the gallery.

Dana James

“Ink Moon”

Hollis Taggart

Sep. 4–Oct. 11

Stop to Listen, 2025
Dana James
Hollis Taggart

She Made Milk & Honey, 2025
Dana James
Hollis Taggart

Brooklyn-based abstract artist Dana James has honed a distinct style of abstract painting, combining patches of pastel colors with bare areas that reveal raw canvas. To these she adds intuitive, bold brushstrokes that enliven her compositions. James at times uses multiple canvases, visibly stitching them together à la Frankenstein. The works still retain a beautiful charm from the soft, appealing colors, seen, for example, in Neon in a Past Life (2025). Made with encaustic, collage, acrylic, and pigment, the different mediums add subtle texture and variation to the surface.

Contradictions appear throughout the artist’s practice—in the form of contrasting colors and differing paces of her brushwork. This adds tension to her work, making it seem at once slow and fast, soft and hard. As the exhibition title suggests, the paintings contain lunar references, a common motif for James. All nine of the pieces in the show were made during the artist’s pregnancy, with the opening likely coinciding with her daughter’s birth. This period of time has had a significant impact on James’s life and work, as she learned to embrace the unknown future and channel her emotions through bolder, more energetic brushstrokes.

“Fifteen”

Cristin Tierney

Sep. 5–Oct. 4

Grande Jatte Study, 1969
Diane Burko
Cristin Tierney

To celebrate the gallery’s fifteenth anniversary and its move from the Lower East Side to Tribeca, Cristin Tierney is presenting “Fifteen,” an eclectic group show of artists it has shown and worked with over the years. The diverse range of works on view encompasses paintings, video installations, and sculptures by artists including Joan Linder, Dread Scott, and Judy Pfaff. In line with the gallery’s mission of supporting experimentation, collaboration, and community, the works in the show also include performance, an inherently challenging medium for commercial galleries.

One such piece, Tim Youd’s 100 Novels Project (2012–ongoing), will take place over the course of the exhibition. The project sees Youd retype novels in locations central to the stories (he began with Hunter S. Thompson’s Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas). For “Fifteen,” Youd is on his 85th novel, retyping Bright Lights, Big City, Jay McInerney’s ode to the yuppie party scene of New York in the 1980s, typified by the gallery’s new surroundings of Tribeca.

David Alekhuogie

“highlifetime”

Yancey Richardson

Sep. 2–Oct. 18

Featuring works from David Alekhuogie’s series “A Reprise,” “highlifetime” examines how Western frameworks have shaped the presentation and dissemination of African art and aesthetics. Alekhuogie based this series on photographs taken by Walker Evans in 1935 for the Museum of Modern Art. At the time, the museum commissioned Evans to photograph African sculptures in MoMA’s exhibition “African Negro Art.” These photographs were later exhibited in 2000 at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in “Perfect Documents: Walker Evans and African Art, 1935.” Critiquing the tradition of white, Western documentation of African culture, epitomized by Walkers’s perspective, Alekhuogie reimagines these photographs through an involved process: he creates facsimiles of works of African art, like the famous Benin Bronzes, onto paper shapes, which he then photographs, resulting in pieces that combine photography, collage, and sculpture.

Fragmented and fractured, the works question how colonial histories and modernity intersect: Traditional objects are portrayed through supposedly objective photography techniques. Through these acts of rephotographing and reimagining source material, the artist reframes inherited images, opening space for new readings and greater agency for those of African descent to tell their own stories. Alekhuogie, who is based in Los Angeles, has shown at several institutions worldwide, including at the Museum of Modern Art itself.

Caroline Monnet

“Where the Sky Begins”

Nunu Fine Art

Sep. 5–Nov. 8

In “Where the Sky Begins,” Montreal-based artist Caroline Monnet draws on both her Anishinaabe and French heritage in wearable sculptures, works on paper, and wall-based pieces. Often using a minimalist, abstract style with patterns borrowed from traditions like basketry and weaving, Monnet’s compositions at times recall maps and digital codes. She often uses artificial materials associated with construction, such as Tyvek, roof underlay, and polyethylene. By using these house construction products, Monnet aims to critique the systemic inequality in housing for First Nations communities in Canada, reappropriating the toxic materials used in these developments for her artwork.

At the heart of the show are Monnet’s wearable sculptures, also made with materials like floor protector and insulation wool, which incorporate traditional Anishinaabe techniques and patterns. Monnet reclaims these chemically-derived materials to examine post-colonial identity and Indigenous resilience, turning contemporary products of extraction-driven capitalism into traditional Indigenous craftsmanship. Monnet’s work has been shown worldwide, including in the 2019 Whitney Biennial. She is also creating a site-responsive installation for “An Indigenous Present” at the ICA Boston, which will open this fall. In addition to her art practice, Monnet is also an acclaimed filmmaker and has participated in several festivals, including Sundance Film Festival.

Maria Nepomuceno

“Cunhó”

Sikkema Malloy Jenkins

Sep. 2–Oct. 11

“Cunhó” is the nickname given to Brazilian abstract artist Maria Nepomuceno by her mother. It’s also the name of her third solo show at Chelsea gallery Sikkema Malloy Jenkins featuring colorful, mixed-media wall sculptures, made with a range of Brazilian craft techniques, including beading, weaving, and ceramics. Nepomuceno’s multiple media, from fiber art to sculpture result in objects with fantastical, amorphous shapes. Nepomuceno’s visually captivating pieces often incorporate spirals, seen painted and in vibrant beaded patterns and woven serpentine designs.

Though abstract, each work contains hints of biological forms like wombs and cells. Playfully embedded in these sculptures are ceramics, gourds, and vessels, sometimes containing beads, giving the assemblage-like compositions the feeling of a galaxy or cornucopia. The artist is fascinated by the idea of infinity, and based this show around the idea of abundance. Nepomuceno’s work is in major collections worldwide, including the Guggenheim Museum, and it was featured in “Panorama,” a 2024 roving exhibition across four small Italian hilltop towns, organized by ITALICS.

Shara Hughes

“Weather Report”

David Kordansky Gallery

Sep. 4–Oct. 18

Known for vibrant landscape paintings with fantastical flora and fauna, rising American artist Shara Hughes furthers her exploration of this genre in her solo show “Weather Report” at David Kordansky. Each of the nine new large-scale works contains hints of motifs typical of Hughes’s practice—bodies of water, meandering trees, geological elements, and hovering moons–painted with rich, saturated hues and lively brushstrokes. While still incorporating familiar features, the scenes at times verge on otherworldly, often achieved through distorted perspectives. In Rift (2025), a seemingly endless fracture in the ground creates a snake-like canyon. The mountain cliffs surrounding the rift blend into a rainbow sky, blurring any sense of a horizon. Leaving her subject open-ended, Hughes offers viewers space to find their own meaning in these psychologically charged compositions. Hughes’s work was shown in the 2017 Whitney Biennial and is in collections worldwide, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Nancy Holt

“Echoes & Evolutions: Nancy Holt’s Sun Tunnels”

Sprüth Magers

Sep. 5–Oct. 25

Late artist Nancy Holt had an impressive practice in photography and experimental film. Yet the American multidisciplinary artist is best known for ambitious earthworks, outdoor installations, and public sculptures. Among her most famous earthworks is Sun Tunnels (1973–76), four austere concrete cylinders laid in a cross and installed in the remote Great Basin Desert in Utah. The work is a remarkable achievement: The cylindrical tunnels are carefully oriented to perfectly frame the sun rising and setting in the winter and summer solstices. Additionally, the large-scale concrete tubes have smaller holes in the surface through which light from the sun and moon casts the constellations of Capricorn, Columba, Draco, and Perseus. One of the major projects of Holt’s career, Sun Tunnels illustrates how far the artist could push the definition of art, as well as the setting in which it can be viewed.

In “Echoes & Evolutions: Nancy Holt’s Sun Tunnels,” photographs, sculptures, drawings, and collages on view offer insight into Holt’s feat in making Sun Tunnels. The process of arranging and installing the cylinders, which took three years, is documented in remarkable detail, shedding light on Holt’s pioneering experimentation and meticulous process.

Tiona Nekkia McClodden

“PURE GAZE”

White Cube

Sep. 2–Oct. 18

Working in film, sculpture, and installation, multidisciplinary artist Tiona Nekkia McClodden explores identity, queer politics, Black selfhood, and African spirituality. In “PURE GAZE,” McClodden uses kinbaku-bi, a traditional Japanese bondage practice as a way to examine power, air flow, and the concept of relinquishing control. Part of her “NEVER LET ME GO” series (2023–ongoing), the sculptural paintings on view consist of leather canvases bound with ropes arranged in kinbaku-bi techniques. McClodden hand-dyed the canvases to mimic bruising, each one bearing scars and marks of pressure. In this presentation, McClodden approached the series with a detached perspective, prioritizing aesthetics and the beauty of kinbaku-bi binding, while nudging at the boundaries of physical containment.

McClodden’s work has been exhibited widely, including at the Kunsthalle Basel and the New Museum, and in 2019 she received the Whitney Biennial’s Bucksbaum prize for her video and sculpture installation I prayed to the wrong god for you (2019) that shows her personal ritual to the Afro-Cuban deity Shango.

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How to Talk About Art Without Feeling Dumb, According to 5 Young Gallerists https://ift.tt/X6Lqpb8

Musée du Louvre Paris I, 2005
Candida Höfer
OMR

Few places carry loftier stereotypes than the art world. Whether it’s insider chatter or hidden jargon, fears abound among new and experienced visitors when it comes to saying something “wrong” or being judged in art spaces.

This can be particularly pronounced when talking about the art itself, a discipline that carries popular perceptions of confusing terminology and dense theory. Even those who walk into galleries with confidence may quickly start second-guessing themselves, wondering if they’re asking the right questions or missing some crucial piece of context.

But, contrary to these popular perceptions, talking about art shouldn’t feel like a test or require a secret vocabulary. The vast majority of those working in the art world are there because they love their discipline and want to share that love with other people.

In fact, you’re unlikely to score points for name-dropping theorists or memorizing market trends. What is encouraged is curiosity, or the willingness to ask questions—even basic ones—and to admit when you’re lost. Ironically, pretending you know about art is the fastest way to sound like you don’t.

Many young gallerists, with fresh perspectives, are actively working to change the art world’s appearance of exclusivity. Artsy asked five of them about how anyone can feel confident when talking about art.

Helen Neven

Founder of NEVEN, London

Helen Neven is part of an exciting new generation of London gallerists pushing the city’s art scene forward. An alum of the Royal College of Art and the Courtauld Institute of Art, Neven started her career at the Blenheim Art Foundation. In 2023, she launched her eponymous gallery, NEVEN, in the East London neighborhood of Bethnal Green near longstanding names such as Hales and The Approach. For the gallery’s inaugural exhibition, she staged a solo presentation for British artist Woodsy Bransfield.

When it comes to visiting museums, Neven first notes that these “are public spaces and should feel inclusive. There shouldn't be an expectation to perform engagement in a certain way.” One easy way to approach engaging with art in these spaces is to “read the text provided, look at the work, and stay for as long or as short a time as you like.”

You And Me on a Tuesday, 2025
Katie Shannon
NEVEN

If you feel unsure about what you’re looking at in a gallery, Neven advises that “a simple ‘can you tell me more about this work?’ will do…I like it when visitors draw comparisons or relate a work to something they’ve read, seen, or personally experienced. It shows that they have grasped something essential in the piece and metabolized it in some way,” she explained.

“Often, the best conversations I’ve had go on winding tangents that were catalyzed by a work and come from people speaking about how it makes them feel, or something it reminds them of,” Neven added. “That emotional response is just as valid as any theoretical one.”

Queenie Rosita Law

Founder of Double Q Gallery, Hong Kong

Red City, 2025
Natalia Zaluska
Double Q Gallery

Hong Kong–based collector and gallerist Queenie Rosita Law founded the Q Art Group in 2014. The group comprises Q Contemporary, a nonprofit art center in the heart of Budapest; Q Studio, an art space dedicated to commissioning custom works; and Double Q Gallery, a contemporary art venue she started in 2022. This space represents artists, particularly a cohort of Eastern European artists, including Hungarian painter József Csató and Ukrainian sculptor Maria Kulikovska. Similarly, as a collector, she focuses on Central and Eastern European artists.

The first time Law stepped into a gallery, she was studying at the University of the Arts in London. “It was an overwhelming experience. I can’t put my finger on why exactly, but I think it doesn’t help when the space is white, empty, and silent.” For her, there’s only one way to get past that initial intimidation factor: “Unfortunately, you will have to go more! Make visiting galleries a part of your routine whenever you go to a new city or when something new opens in your own hometown,” she said.

Preen, 2024
Nadia Ayari
Double Q Gallery

Law suggests that before visiting a gallery, you should “tease your brain a little with what you’re going to experience in the real world soon.” This can include previewing an exhibition online or looking up an artist’s Instagram page. In many cases, it’s better to “prepare you for what you’re going to see, rather than simply memorizing facts about their biography or style.”

When it comes to discussing art, Law warns against “starting off by getting too deep into art history or mentioning other artists.” Instead, she suggests “talking about the artist’s techniques. How did they create the paintings? How did they make each part? Pointing at things directly in the work—that’s an easy way to build a discussion.”

Jonathan Carver Moore

Founder of Jonathan Carver Moore, San Francisco

Jonathan Carver Moore founded his eponymous gallery in the heart of San Francisco’s Tenderloin neighborhood in 2023. His program specializes in working with BIPOC, LGBTQ+, and women artists, and in the two years since opening, Moore has quickly made a mark. He is a regular presence on the art fair circuit, with appearances at EXPO Chicago, Untitled Miami, 1-54 New York, and Investec Cape Town. And, perhaps most notably, his gallery hosts an artist-in-residence program, which has supported artists including Aplerh-Doku Borlabi and Anoushka Mirchandani. In the fall, he will host New Orleans–based artist Auudi Dorsey.

Feeling out of place in the art world is a common experience that Moore says he has felt in the past. “I see that as part of the reality of working within a system that wasn’t originally designed for everyone,” he said.

Over time, the young gallerist has learned that people walking into the gallery “don’t need to know everything.” Instead, he recommends that “they come open, come curious, and let the work speak to them.”

PLAYBALL, 2024
Auudi Dorsey
Jonathan Carver Moore

Try not to overthink things, he advises. “I love it when someone just simply says, ‘Tell me about this artist or these artists’ if it is a group show. Whether or not they are familiar with them, this is a great way to just begin a dialogue, and it puts everyone at ease,” he said.

“Art should not be intimidating; it should encourage us to engage in dialogue and challenge our perspectives…I love when visitors ask questions that come from genuine curiosity, for example, ‘What drew you to this artist?’ or ‘What inspired this exhibition?’”

“This idea that a person needs the ‘right’ words or some special vocabulary to talk about art. They don’t,” said Moore. “Art is for everyone, and their personal reaction—whether it’s joy, confusion, or even discomfort—is valid. I really see art being about connection, and the way people see and feel it matters just as much as a critic’s interpretation. Letting go of that pressure opens up space for real dialogue.”

Storm Ascher

Founder of Superposition, Nomadic

Influenced by the Kapok Tree, 2009
Timothy Washington
Superposition

Storm Ascher launched her nomadic gallery Superposition in 2018, when she was just 24. Since then, the gallery, which focuses on emerging artists, staged shows at borrowed spaces from New York to Miami. Ascher is also a mainstay at art fairs, including NADA New York and Untitled Miami. Next month, she will make her Armory Show debut with artists Ryan Cosbert and Marcus Leslie Singleton. A 2022 alum of Forbes 30 Under 30: Art & Style, Ascher also started the Hamptons Black Arts Council, a nonprofit supporting public programming for Black artists in the region.

When it comes to talking about art, one thing stands out to Ascher above all: Do not be afraid of not knowing something. “We [gallerists] actually get excited to explain things to people who have never heard of them—that’s part of the joy,” she told Artsy, emphasizing that curious visitors should “not pretend you already know, because you might be cutting yourself off from a deeper conversation you could be having.”

The hummingbird hovered within the hour, 2023
Ambrose Rhapsody Murray
Superposition

To talk about an artist, she says, start with anything that strikes you about their work. “Start with what you think the artist is trying to tell you at that very moment,” she continued.

She advises asking simple questions that “show you’re engaging, not performing. The truth is, dealers and artists can always sense the difference.”

Questions to ask can be anything from “Why do you think they used this material?” or “What part of the world does this remind you of?” What is less advisable, in her eyes, is playing an “unhelpful game of ‘who does this remind you of?’”

Instead, she wants to know what this particular artist sparks in your mind: “That’s where the conversation becomes alive,” she said.

Cedric Bardawil

Founder of Cedric Bardawil, London

Curator, journalist, and DJ Cedric Bardawil embarked on a new journey in June 2022 when he established his eponymous gallery in London’s Soho. The gallery quickly earned the attention of the London art community for its experimental focus, which often pairs exhibitions with audio installations as part of its curatorial focus. Recent shows have included psychedelic painting by Eddie Ruscha and color-soaked photographs by Lebanon-born artist Raed Yassin. Bardawil’s program is filled with a vibrant schedule of exhibitions, performances, and live events, buoyed by Bardawil’s own research and writing.

Despite this, the gallerist admits that he often still feels out of place in art spaces. “Certain art spaces can also be overwhelming for people in the industry; it’s important to remind yourself why you chose to be there and what in particular you came to see,” he told Artsy. “In a more social setting like an art fair or an opening, I find that speaking with people and breaking the ice is a good way to get past it.” Notably, Bardawil says that an icebreaker “doesn’t have to be about art.”

Twin Flames, 2023
Eddie Ruscha
Cedric Bardawil

But once you are talking about art, he advises someone to take a “straightforward approach” to the conversation, suggesting that you can ask simply: “What am I looking at here?”

One common misconception he notices is that people think speaking about art “has to be complicated,” when often the opposite can be the case.

“The best writers and speakers have a way of bringing art to life and capturing the imagination. Read someone like [American art critic] Dave Hickey, who so brilliantly uses everyday language and accessible references to explain complex ideas.”

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

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