5 Artists on Our Radar This July https://ift.tt/9t5kqUj

“Artists on Our Radar” is a monthly series focused on five artists who have our attention. Utilizing our art expertise and Artsy data, we’ve determined which artists made an impact this past month through new gallery representation, exhibitions, auctions, art fairs, or fresh works on Artsy.

Miguel Afa

B. 1987, Rio de Janeiro. Lives and works in Rio de Janeiro.

Silêncios estrondosos, 2025
Miguel Afa
A Gentil Carioca

Miguel Afa came up painting graffiti in Rio de Janeiro’s colorful favelas, where none of his work stayed untouched for long. While he has since traded the street for the canvas, a sense of ephemerality lingers in his paintings today. Using a palette of muted, earthy tones, Afa captures quiet, contemplative moments in time. A shared meal, a pair of figures in a garden, and an unmade bed are among the scenes featured in “Um céu para caber,” a solo show of paintings on view at A Gentil Carioca in São Paulo through August 23rd.

Built from murky brushstrokes, each of these paintings feels like the remnant of a memory. The soft focus of the figures and furnishings gives them a dreamlike quality, and subjects appear lost in thought, their faces expressionless. In Silêncios estrondosos (2025), a couple is seated at opposite ends of a table, the emotional ambiguity of the image underscored by the dense, muted palette. Such subtlety leaves the viewer feeling unmoored, like the scene might slip away.

Quando o concreto enganou a terra, 2023
Miguel Afa
A Gentil Carioca

Espelhos, 2025
Miguel Afa
A Gentil Carioca

Sem título [Untitled], 2025
Miguel Afa
A Gentil Carioca

Sem título [Untitled], 2024
Miguel Afa
A Gentil Carioca

While getting his start in graffiti, Afa studied at the School of Fine Arts at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro. Currently, the artist is presenting his work in another solo exhibition, “O vento continua, todavia,” at Paço Imperial in Rio de Janeiro. His work is part of the Jorge M. Pérez Collection.

—Maxwell Rabb

Cédric Eisenring

B. 1983, Aarau, Switzerland. Lives and works in Zurich and Düsseldorf.

Tailor, 2025
Cédric Eisenring
DREI

Drummer, 2025
Cédric Eisenring
DREI

In the latest works of Swiss artist Cédric Eisenring, velvet evokes the elegance of theater and a fusty, wanton luxury. His square, monochromatic wall pieces are made of large, irregular swatches of the fabric, stitched together and then stamped using a woodcut printmaking technique. Up close, the raised contours of these embossed images—illustrations of people, rendered in a 19th-century style of line drawing—become visible.

Such works stood out in DREI’s presentation at Basel Social Club, the alternative art fair that ran concurrently to Art Basel last month. One of them, Tailor (2025), is a navy and gray patchwork depicting a man sewing, its seams visible and raw. Due to the velvet’s irregular fibers, the image only reveals its meaning from certain angles, suggesting the ways that fiction and truth can be sewn together into a composite narrative.

Puder (ultramarin), 2024
Cédric Eisenring
DREI

Clouds (bleached), 2025
Cédric Eisenring
DREI

Puder (orange), 2024
Cédric Eisenring
DREI

Signal to Noise, 2019
Cédric Eisenring
DREI

In May, Eisenring had his third solo exhibition at DREI in Cologne, “A Velvet Glove Cast in Iron.” While the artist has worked in many different media, from installation to photography, he is most interested in printing. He has exhibited in solo and group shows across Germany and Switzerland and received his BA and MA from Zurich University of the Arts. He also co-founded the publishing house Bleach Books.

—Josie Thaddeus-Johns

Genti Korini

B. 1979, Tirana, Albania. Lives and works in Tirana.

One Shade the More, One Ray the Less, 2024
Genti Korini
Jecza Gallery

Faux Fur, Gentle Skin, 2024
Genti Korini
Jecza Gallery

For the majority of his artistic career, Genti Korini’s practice has centered on geometric abstractions that draw inspiration from the urban architecture of his home country, Albania. But the Tirana-based artist recently made waves with a solo presentation of striking portraits at Basel Social Club. These unsettling paintings represent a new direction in both tonality and subject for Korini, whose oeuvre spans painting, sculpture, photography, and video.

This new body of figurative work is expressive and dramatized. Rendered using gestural brushwork, Korini’s subjects share sharp features and haunting gazes. Their distinctive styling—ranging from a classic suit in Walking (2025) to a distinct ’70s shag haircut in Faux Fur, Gentle Skin (2024)—and the sparse context provided by their minimal backgrounds make them difficult to place in relation to one another. These figures are mysterious; inspired by the proliferation of social media, Korini has chosen to focus not so much on the identity of the individual as on the act of posing.

Echo of an Appearance, 2024
Genti Korini
Jecza Gallery

Illusions, 2024
Genti Korini
Jecza Gallery

Darken Light, 2024
Genti Korini
Jecza Gallery

Walking, 2025
Genti Korini
Jecza Gallery

Korini studied at the University of Arts and Design in Cluj-Napoca, Romania, before completing his MFA at the University of Arts, Tirana. His solo exhibitions include presentations at Jecza Gallery, mygallery, Harabel Contemporary, and Beers London. Additionally, his work has been featured in institutional shows at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Zagreb, Croatia; the Contemporary Art Museum Warsaw; and the National Museum of Contemporary Art in Bucharest, Romania.

—Adeola Gay

Celia Lees

B. 1996, Port Stanley, Canada. Lives and works in Toronto.

I thought it rained last night, 2025
Celia Lees
Bau-Xi Gallery

Freedom is the guiding principle of Celia Lees’s vibrant, gestural paintings: She gravitates to abstraction, she’s said, because it has “no rules.” Her unbounded approach results in canvases bursting with soft washes of color, covered in drips and splotches like Rorschach tests. Guided by intuition and feeling, Lees works at a large scale so that her whole body becomes an implement. The colors she selects for her physically impressive pieces signpost the emotions that she pours onto the canvas. Black and red works like 45 lives (2023) carry a sense of dark interiority, while brighter, airier works like I thought it rained last night (2025) feel unburdened.

Quiet, 2025
Celia Lees
Escat Gallery

What is missing, 2025
Celia Lees
Bau-Xi Gallery

Let it Go, 2025
Celia Lees
Bau-Xi Gallery

45 lives, 2023
Celia Lees
Abbozzo Gallery

These paintings are clearly resonating with audiences: Earlier this year, Lees gained representation with Canadian gallery Bau-Xi, and she has seen a recent uptick in followers on Artsy. A self-taught artist, Lees studied fashion design at Toronto Metropolitan University and worked for Acne Studios before turning to painting full-time during the pandemic. Since then, she has had solo exhibitions at Sugarlift Gallery in New York and Cry Baby Gallery in Toronto.

—Olivia Horn

Christiane Pooley

B. 1983, Temuco, Chile. Lives and works in Paris.

To Fold a Map, 2024
Christiane Pooley
Perrotin

País Imaginario, 2024
Christiane Pooley
Perrotin

In Ursula K. Le Guin’s short story “Sur,” a fictional diarist recounts a secret, all-women expedition to the South Pole that took place years before the famous inaugural journeys of Amundsen and Scott, but was kept deliberately out of the history books. The story offers a stark critique of a historical record shaped by patriarchal narratives.

Chilean artist Christiane Pooley’s landscapes emerge from that same speculative impulse. For “Imaginary Country,” a new solo exhibition at Perrotin in New York, she worked with oil on engraved copper plates and canvas to create shimmering, unplaceable landscapes. Rather than depict real sites, she paints scenes that collapse imagination and memory, and probes how landscapes are remembered and who gets to define them. The violently cascading waterfalls and tremulous violet horizon of To Fold a Map (2024), for example, reference the work of Frederic Edwin Church—the Hudson River School painter who produced famous, idealized paintings of South American landscapes in the 19th century.

Change of plans, 2025
Christiane Pooley
Perrotin

Croquis Paso Fronterizo, 2024
Christiane Pooley
Perrotin

Echo, 2025
Christiane Pooley
Perrotin

“Imaginary History” is Pooley’s first solo exhibition in the United States. Previously, she has presented her work with Kristin Hjellegjerde Gallery in London and Bendana Pinel Art Contemporain in Paris. Her first solo show with Perrotin took place in 2023 at the gallery’s Hong Kong location.

—Maxwell Rabb

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Khaled Sabsabi reselected to represent Australia at 2026 Venice Biennale following controversy. https://ift.tt/PLcvJYB

Khaled Sabsabi has been reinstated as the artist at Australia’s pavilion for the 2026 Venice Biennale.. The move reverses the art organization’s decision to drop Sabsabi and curator Michael Dagostino this February, citing a “divisive debate” about the selection. The months-long controversy triggered resignations, boycotts, and a broader national conversation about artistic freedom and censorship.

The decision was made after an independent external review and will allow Sabsabi and Dagostino to begin working on their project for the upcoming Biennale. In a joint statement, the duo announced that they “welcome the opportunity to represent our country on this prestigious international stage.”

Sabsabi and Dagostino were first appointed on February 7th, but this decision was rescinded just five days later following political backlash to some of the artists’ previous works. During an Australian Senate hearing, politicians raised allegations of antisemitism related to Sabsabi’s past works, particularly You (2007), a video installation featuring Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah. Creative Australia’s board withdrew the appointment to avoid what it described at the time as “prolonged and divisive debate,” sparking uproar and debate among the country’s arts community.

Philanthropist Simon Mordant, who has twice served as the Australian commissioner for the Biennale, resigned as a Venice Biennale ambassador and retracted his financial support for the Australian pavilion, and more than 2,000 international artists, academics, and cultural workers signed an open letter urging Sabsabi and Dagostino’s reinstatement. However, Creative Australia initially maintained its decision, suggesting the pavilion could even be kept empty for next year’s Biennale.

The governance advisory firm Blackhall & Pearl was subsequently engaged to conduct an external review of Creative Australia’s processes. Released on July 2nd alongside the reinstatement, the report found that there was “no single or predominant failure of process, governance or decision making that resulted, ultimately, in the decision to rescind the selection.”

The report noted that “the lack of appropriate preparedness for such a major decision as Australian representation at the Venice Biennale has led to a considerably worse outcome for all involved than if prudent, carefully considered risk assessment and crisis management had been put in place.”

In a statement, the acting board chair of Creative Australia, Wesley Enoch, said the board had reflected deeply on the report’s findings and reaffirmed its support for artistic freedom. “A complex series of events created a unique set of circumstances that the board had to address. The board has considered and reflected deeply on all relevant issues to find a path forward. The Board is now of the view that proceeding with the artistic team, Khaled Sabsabi and Michael Dagostino, represents the preferred outcome.”

Mordant has also been appointed global ambassador and advocate for the 2026 Venice Biennale project.

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British Pop artist Peter Phillips dies at 83. https://ift.tt/AdwIVJ4

One Five Times/Sharpshooter, 1960
Peter Phillips
Gazelli Art House

Peter Phillips, a prominent figure in British Pop art, has died at 86. His family confirmed his death in an online statement, saying that the artist passed away on June 23rd. The family also indicated that a celebration of the artist’s life will be held in August at his gallery in Noosa, Australia.

Born in Birmingham, England, in 1939, Phillips studied at the Royal College of Art in London, where his contemporaries included David Hockney, Allen Jones, and R.B. Kitaj. Like their counterparts in the United States, these British pop artists challenged conventions of postwar art by embracing mass culture and commercial aesthetics.

Phillips’s work borrowed imagery from advertising and industrial design to create bright, saturated compositions, characterized by their frenetic forms and collage-like aesthetic. In Spectrocoupling (1972), he approximated the energy of electrical currents through haphazard geometric forms, while works like Glamour Girls (1974) layered bright pin-up imagery into grid-like formations. Other works grappling with Americana and pop culture featured portraits of Marilyn Monroe and Bridgette Bardot, as seen most prominently in For Men Only—Starring MM and BB (1961).

Phillips rose to prominence in the 1960s, and was featured in a BBC documentary titled Pop Goes the Easel alongside Peter Blake and Pauline Boty in 1962. His fame was bolstered by his inclusion in international exhibitions, including the Paris Biennale in 1963 and “Nieuwe Realisten” at the Gemeentemuseum in The Hague the following year. In 1964, Phillips moved to New York, where he exhibited alongside Andy Warhol, Roy Lichtenstein, and James Rosenquist.

A Phillips retrospective was held in 2002 at the Galleria Civica di Modena in Italy. The next year, the artist’s 1961 painting War/Game—a geometric composition featuring a hand holding a gun up to a mirror—was adapted for the cover of Room on Fire, the second album by American rock band the Strokes. In 2015, Phillips relocated to Australia, establishing a studio and gallery in Noosa.

In their statement, the family announced plans to launch the Peter Phillips Foundation, which will offer grants and residencies for emerging artists. A GoFundMe campaign has been established to support the initiative.

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10 Young Collectors Share Their Advice for New Art Buyers https://ift.tt/xhwUQVf

The art world is the ultimate choose-your-own adventure. But for scores of prospective art buyers, it can be difficult to know where to start.

Between charting the contemporary art world, learning the protocols for purchasing, and connecting with key players, starting one’s art buying journey can prove quite an intimidating endeavor.

But few things are as rewarding as owning art. Artsy asked ten rising art collectors aged 35 and under from around the globe what advice they’d give a friend interested in buying art. Traditional notions that art collections must be academic and encyclopedic are falling by the wayside: Each of the rising collectors featured here espoused some version of ‘buy from the heart.’

Their stories, however, contained deeper, more varied insights about the many paths available to budding art lovers.

Jack Siebert

Founder, JACK SIEBERT PROJECTS, Los Angeles

Jack Siebert had the world at his fingertips, and chose art—after attending his first Art Basel Miami Beach in 2015.

Abstractions by Cecily Brown and Mary Weatherford struck Siebert and his mother from the walls of Miami’s pioneering Rubell Museum that week. Siebert, ignited, changed his major to art history, helped his mom start collecting female artists, and began his own “more instinctual” collection of punchy young painters like Emma McIntyre. In 2023, Siebert started curating pop-up shows in art capitals like New York and Paris. “They inform each other, in both directions,” he observed of his two complementary roles.

Siebert advises new art buyers to start building their network by meeting artists and galleries. “I think relationships are the most meaningful way to navigate the art world,” he said.

“When a gallery doesn’t know you, there's no level of trust there,” Siebert noted. “Building a relationship is step one, but it’s not always the easiest.” Lack of connections can present a barrier to entry. That’s why there are small art fairs—like Siebert’s favorite, NADA—where galleries “are way more open to meeting new people than someone stepping into their intimidating white box in Chelsea.”

Sandile Xayiya

Business executive, Johannesburg

Sandile Xayiya’s parents started collecting African art after joining the fight against apartheid, and the incipient aficionado grew up surrounded by masterpieces from all over the continent.

In 2019, Xayiya began contributing to his family’s 300-work collection, which includes among the world’s largest caches of legends such as Gerard Sekoto and George Pemba. Xayiya works for one of his family’s companies and increasingly stewards their collection, opening their home to guests from the local RMB Latitudes Art Fair last month.

While he’s always bought from his gut, Xayiya is growing to understand the importance of knowledge and context when it comes to appreciating art. He advises new art buyers to take their time when it comes to learning about the works they’re drawn to. “It's not about rushing yourself,” he said.

Xayiya also advises those interested in buying art to see as much of the stuff as possible. “Every email invitation I get, I’ll always do my best to attend,” he said. Fledgling collectors in particular should keep an open mind. “Go to as many fairs as possible,” Xayiya urged. “Anything that has to do with art, no matter how big or small.”

Delora Xuanqiao Che

Founder, MACA Art Center, Jakarta

In 2014, Delora Xuanqiao Che started interning at her father’s furniture company, Red Star Macalline. Her first project was co-curating an exhibition alongside China’s UCCA Center for Contemporary Art. Che got hooked on viewing art—then, on purchasing it.

She founded Beijing’s Macalline Art Center in 2022 with support from Red Star Macalline. The institution aims to support China’s experimental art scene, showing international artists like Patty Chang alongside homegrown talents like Liao Wen. Che’s since changed the institution’s name to MACA Art Center, and last year, she took over its funding and started a patronage program.

Che herself collects boundary-pushing international artists like Kasia Fudakowski and David Douard. Part of being a wizened buyer, she said, is knowing that “people always want to sell you stuff.” Che’s not immune—she just scooped works by Emma McIntyre and sculptor Thea Djordjadze during Art Basel Hong Kong.

With so much art to consume, her advice for collectors sifting through seas of information is simple: “To be a good collector, you need to become [like] a good artist,” she said, explaining how the approach can help one intuit an artwork’s quality. “Don’t buy things that lower your standards,” she noted.

She’s learned to step into an artist’s shoes by witnessing the creative process firsthand—commissioning new video works by Tao Hui and Chen Tianzhuo for MACA Art Center, and even making her own films.

Gabrielle Levitt

Psychology student, New York

Buying art can make moving to a new city feel like home. After her father’s passing in 2022, Gabrielle Levitt and her mother moved to New York. She bought her first work, Kylie Manning’s A Leavetaking (2024), last December. It hasn’t taken long for Levitt’s new home to fill up with pensive, powerful art exploring memory and materiality by the likes of Amie Dicke and Isabella Ducrot.

For those contemplating their first purchase, like Levitt was mere months ago, she notes that the art world is “not as intimidating as you think.” Emerging art—works by artists at the start of their careers—can prove to be a helpful starting point.

“I really started looking with emerging artists,” Levitt said, rather than courting expensive, established names, “building knowledge and awareness—and then bringing in other people.”

Finding the right art advisor is also worthwhile, but it can be as arduous as finding a therapist, and potentially as rewarding. Levitt works with Kate Robinson, who exposes her to new artists without being pushy. Levitt balances “prioritizing your own wants and needs,” she said, “but also pulling in that expert knowledge, because the art world is so vast.”

Geetanjali Joshi

Associate director, Art Mumbai, Mumbai

Geetanjali Joshi had been a dispute resolution lawyer for nine years when COVID’s many Zoom gallery hops and art collective auctions inspired her to start collecting and working in art.

In 2023, she started managing India Art Fair’s Young Collector Programme, providing entertainment and education during the fast-growing art fair. Later that year, Joshi took over exhibitor and VIP relations for Art Mumbai, a new fair launched in 2023. “My exposure is widely different from what it was three years ago,” she said.

In India, the domestic art market is continuing its upward swing. “We’re not seeing as much of a slowdown as there has been in the West,” Joshi observed. She personally favors TARQ gallery in Mumbai and Gallery Espace in New Delhi, and follows their lead on artists to support.

While auctions may seem like a big first step for a new art buyer, Joshi advises collectors to keep an eye on the activity at the houses. Because sales are listed publicly on auction house websites, they can offer a clear view of the artists and themes capturing the art market’s attention. Joshi herself doesn’t bid at auctions yet, but she still attends and advises new collectors to do the same. “See how it works,” she said. “Because eventually, if you continue on this collection journey, you’ll end up there.”

“It’s important to follow those trends,” Joshi said. “It’s also really fun and interesting.”

Lorenzo Perini Natali

President, PROGETTO LUDOVICO, Milan

Lorenzo Perini Natali shares a lineage with Amedeo Modigliani, but only discovered art while visiting his cousin in New York in his early 20s. He’d started working for his family’s companies by then but pivoted, studying visual arts and contemporary markets before joining Sotheby’s Milan.

Some 11 years later, Perini Natali has amassed a collection of 100 artworks and has started PROGETTO LUDOVICO—a nomadic nonprofit facilitating exhibitions, residencies, and research. He’s evolved from collecting young Italian artists like Marco Pariani and Linda Carrara to farther-flung industrial artists like Marie Matusz and David Ostrowski.

Perini Natali is proud to have honed his taste through education and visiting artists in their studios. “You can tell that all the works were bought by the same person,” he observed of his collection. “It’s a bit of an artwork, the collection itself.”

Though he’s cherished direct relationships with artists since starting his studies, Perini Natali makes sure to buy through galleries—and advises new art buyers to do the same.

“That’s what some people do, and it's not right, because you're not supporting the system,” he said. He also resists seeing his collection as a financial asset. “I don’t sell,” he said. “If I do, it’s to buy something else, but it’s very rare.”

Jessica Luciano Cinel

Studio manager, São Paulo

In 2016, while earning her master’s at London’s Sotheby’s Institute, Jessica Luciano Cinel sashayed onto the art scene as a young collector with style.

A decade later, she’s stopped traveling as frequently for art world events. “I don’t like a lot of art fairs,” Luciano Cinel said. She disagrees with the ‘first-look’ FOMO mentality some galleries foster to stoke sales at the events.

Luciano Cinel started advising artists like Tádaskía and Luana Vitra in 2023, after leading São Paulo’s Museu Brasileiro da Escultura e Ecologia for two years. Collecting is a “consequence” of her artistic research now, conducted through dealers like São Paulo’s Mitre Gallery and Yehudi Hollander-Pappi gallery. From Japanese sculptor Kishio Suga to Brazilian painter O Bastardo, Luciano Cinel considers borders and limits her collection’s conceptual centerpiece.

Prioritizing boundaries also constitutes the crux of her advice. When friends ask Luciano Cinel about collecting, she typically says, “just go slow.”

It’s easy to get wrapped up in your emotions and the speed of things, but limits matter in this fast-paced, relationship-driven art world.

Felix Xu

Tech CEO, Singapore

At the end of 2022, Beijing-born blockchain firm founder Felix Xu attended his first art fair and became a poster child for a new generation of NFT collectors engaging in fine art, like Justin Sun, the buyer of Maurizio Cattelan’s Comedian (2019). He’s since visited Frieze Seoul, Frieze London, and Art Basel Hong Kong, and has hosted parties for ART SG in Singapore.

Xu’s also tapped researcher and gallerist Echo Yu He to help grow his art collection, titled “Wind,” which bridges celebrated sculptor Huma Bhaba and VR pioneer Rachel Rossin with emergent names like textile artist Akea Brionne and painter Xingzi Gu.

Coming from a business background, Xu called art “the most opaque industry that I have ever encountered.” As a result, he advises new buyers to research as much as possible by consuming as much information about the art they’re interested in as they have an appetite for. This can include everything from reading magazines, to visiting galleries, to keeping a log of what you like. Indeed, he and Yu He have built their own resource—a database of 150 artists and counting, tracking metrics like auction prices, institutional acquisitions, residencies, and more.

Chibundu Onuzo

Author, London

Growing up, Chibundu Onuzo’s parents knew of Nigerian masters like Ben Enwonwu, but they certainly weren’t collectors. Buying art only occurred to her in 2017, after an artist friend started taking her out to shows. Onuzo saw a Marcellina Akpotojor textile that the London and Lagos gallery Rele shared on social media around that time. Smitten, Onuzo approached the gallery about the work and got it.

Since then, Onuzo has learned to identify potential on her own, and comes across new artists by seeing as much as what’s out there and trusting her gut. She acquired a work by the fast-rising abstract painter Pam Evelyn, for instance, before the artist was working with a gallery.

When Onuzo started collecting, she kicked herself for not knowing about certain artists sooner, or before prices for their artworks rocketed upwards.

“I could have bought very established artists for not a lot of money,” she said. Or, she could’ve been bolder, buying more of Akpotojor’s early works. Fortunately, as Onuzo assures the new collectors she actively recruits, “you haven’t missed the boat.” Every year, a new crop of artists emerges onto the scene, ready to be discovered.

Lateefa Bin Hamoodah

Cultural strategist, Abu Dhabi

Lateefa Bin Hamoodah’s passion for art began while traveling with family, and grew at Abu Dhabi’s Sorbonne, where she realized that studying art can teach you about everything.

She started buying photographs and prints around 2016, because they were easy to transport. Now, Bin Hamoodah has filled her family’s home to the point that her mother advised sending some of her holdings to Munich. Alas, Bin Hamoodah has “attachment issues” and likes sharing her art with peers from the Dubai Collection, the city’s first institutional collection, at a moment’s notice.

During COVID-19, Bin Hamoodah mostly collected Emirati artists. But she’s since become enamored with international conceptual artists garnering institutional over commercial acclaim, like Agnes Questionmark. “It’s cool to be able to transcend a painting,” Bin Hamoodah reflected.

Sometimes with buying art, the best reward doesn’t live in the home, but in the heart. If you truly believe in an artist’s work, supporting their practice and building a relationship is priceless, and Bin Hamoodah advises new buyers to think about how buying artworks also helps to support the artists behind them.

“An art collector or patron should really disconnect from their self,” Bin Hamoodah stated, “and think of how to be giving.”

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Veteran gallerist Tim Blum announces closure of his physical spaces. https://ift.tt/ZgYPqsR

After more than three decades in business, the gallerist Tim Blum is shutting down the physical spaces of his eponymous galleries in Los Angeles and Tokyo and transitioning to a “more flexible model.” The spaces will close after their summer exhibitions, and the plans for a New York space, previously slated for this fall, are undetermined.

In an interview with ArtNews, Blum said the decision was less about the current art market and more “about the system.” Blum described the gallery’s participation at Art Basel last month as a “thunderclap—confirmation of everything I’ve been feeling for years,” referring to a growing dissatisfaction with the expanding infrastructure of contemporary gallery life, including constant art fairs, openings, and administrative obligations.

Originally founded as Blum & Poe in Santa Monica in 1994 with co-founder Jeff Poe, the gallery played a crucial role in introducing Japanese and Korean postwar art to a wider American audience. The gallery helped to grow the careers of high-profile artists such as Yoshitomo Nara and Takashi Murakami, and in 2014, it opened a branch in Tokyo. In 2023, the gallery rebranded as BLUM after Poe announced that he would step down from the gallery.

In a statement, Blum outlined the gallery’s next steps. “We’ll begin a new chapter: transitioning away from the traditional gallery format toward a more flexible model,” he said. “Without a permanent public space or formal artist roster, this structure will allow us to engage with artists and ideas in new ways, through collaborations, special projects, and longer-term visions still in development.”

The gallery is currently showing three solo exhibitions by Tomoo Gokita, Sarah Rosalen, and Wilhelm Sasnal in Los Angeles, each of which will close on August 16th. In Tokyo, the gallery’s group exhibition, “Surface and Signal,” will close on August 2nd.

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Italy reduces VAT on art sales to 5%. https://ift.tt/mNjPvpn

Italy will reduce value-added tax (VAT) on art sales from 22% to 5%, following approval of the change in a cabinet meeting on June 20th. The amended VAT rate went into effect last week; however, it still must be ratified by the Italian parliament within 60 days.

The adjusted rate was announced by the culture minister, Alessandro Giuli, after the Italian government faced consistent pressure from Italian galleries, artists, auction houses, and other art market players. Italy’s previous VAT rate, in effect since 2013, was the highest in the European Union. Its new rate is the lowest in the E.U.

Italy’s VAT on art has long been a point of contention. The 22% rate was notably higher than Germany’s 7% rate or France’s 5.5% rate, placing Italian galleries at a competitive disadvantage. According to a study by Nomisma, a market consulting firm, the cut could generate €1.5 billion ($1.76 billion) in art market turnover and boost Italy’s economy by as much as €4.2 billion ($4.94 billion) within three years.

At April’s miart fair in Milan, dealers circulated an open letter to Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni warning that the high tax risked turning Italy into a “cultural desert.” The Apollo Group, an association of Italian art organizations, also called on the government to lower VAT for the sale of art. The group warned that if the country didn’t address the high VAT, then “any collector who wanted to import or buy work in the European Union would certainly not do so in Italy,” a letter from the Apollo Group read.

Until recently, Meloni’s government had rejected calls for reform, saying it would not respond to pressure from wealthy collectors.

"It’s a momentous turning point," Sirio Ortolani, the president of ANGAMC (National Association of Modern and Contemporary Art Galleries) and vice president of the Apollo Group, told The Art Newspaper. “Italy can finally become a great international hub, attracting galleries from all over Europe and major fairs."

The tax change comes as the global art market continues to contract. According to the 2025 Art Basel and UBS Art Market Report, global art sales fell by 12% in 2024 to an estimated $57.5 billion. Italy experienced a 10% decline in the same period.

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Artist Inbox: Anna Weyant and Marisa Adesman on Femininity, Fantasy, and Control https://ift.tt/S8D2BrN

Marisa Adesman’s paintings are both crystal clear and inscrutable—rendered in dazzlingly fine detail, but filled with cryptic imagery. In her sensuous, surreal canvases, the Chicago-based artist turns domestic space into a stage for psychosexual tension. Here, vases of flowers spill and erupt; women turn into water; curtains alternately conceal and reveal violence. For Adesman, these scenes speak to how femininity is performed and contained.

Similar themes run through the work of Anna Weyant, the young market star whose precipitous rise has made her one of the most-discussed painters in the art world today. Weyant brings an old-world aesthetic to portraits of girls and women, often depicted in uncomfortable or exaggerated positions. Her work, like Adesman’s, stands out for its technical rigor. In fact, Adesman may have something to do with that: The two artists first met at the Rhode Island School of Design. Adesman, then an MFA student, was a teaching assistant for Weyant, an undergraduate. “I remember gravitating toward her immediately,” said Weyant. “She was cool, kind, and thoughtful, with an already incredible mastery of paint.”

Now Adesman, too, is gaining momentum in her career. “Under the Rose,” her debut solo exhibition in New York, is on view at Anat Ebgi through August 8th. As Adesman prepared for the show, the two artists connected for an email conversation about their shared preoccupations with performance, control, beauty, and ambiguity. —Olivia Horn

Anna Weyant: Your work is so exciting. I love it. It’s hard to choose a favorite from this new show, but I’m particularly captivated by Tug of War (2025).

Can you tell me a bit about it? It’s a figure—sort of—composed of traditional still life elements. I see so many historical references—both compositionally and in the subject matter—but it seems to slip through the cracks of anything familiar. Every time I look at it, I notice something in it that I hadn’t before.

Marisa Adesman: First, thank you so much for doing this with me! I have been the biggest fan of yours since RISD. It’s been such a delight to watch your work evolve and to see the incredible places your practice has taken you. It’s really an honor to chat with you here.

I love that you said that! I’m continually drawn to the slipperiness of a work, that resistance to being pinned down. It’s often what keeps me engaged throughout the process. With this piece in particular, I was interested in exploring the tension between the domestic and the erotic—that simultaneous pull toward safety and stability, while craving adventure and thrill. For me, these depictions of domestic life, historically dismissed as decorative or passive, now serve as a stage where intimacy, power, and resistance, or whatever else we’re thirsty for, can play out.

“I’m continually drawn to the slipperiness of a work, that resistance to being pinned down.”

It also speaks to the expectations placed on women—this pressure to neatly inhabit conflicting roles. In the foreground, we see a unicorn—a symbol of purity and chastity—turn away from stained-glass figures, tangled in a scene of erotic fantasy. Knowingly or unknowingly, we are constantly asked to navigate these tensions—a kind of tug of war between restraint and release, between what is expected and what is desired.

Your work also feels deeply rooted in the traditions of Golden Age Dutch still life painting and Surrealism. I’m curious how you think about these historical references in relation to the more contemporary ideas you’re exploring—particularly around gender and the performance of femininity. When I look at your work, I’m always struck by how it balances a twisted wit with unease; it’s playful, but also razor-sharp.

A.W.: Thank you, that means a lot.

I think about historical references similarly—something to pull apart. Truthfully, I’ve started to wince at the mention of Dutch still lifes in relation to my work—even though I’ve cited them as early inspiration. I think because I’m afraid of getting stuck in a box, having that be a tagline, or of setting myself up for aesthetic failure when the paintings inevitably diverge. My relationship to the genre has evolved greatly since I first discovered it, but what continues to resonate is the control. Those paintings are incredibly controlled, and I’m interested in that uncomfortably tight grip. The subjects, objects—obsessively composed, contained (even in collapse), beautiful, and on display feel like both a performance and a pressure.

What pressures do you feel when making your work?

June Drop, 2024
Marisa Adesman
Anat Ebgi

M.A.: That’s so beautifully put, and I can definitely relate to that allure of control. That near-obsessive, tight grip, which I am so drawn to, can feel as seductive as it is suffocating. I often wonder where, or even if, that grip should loosen within my practice. Maybe it’s because I’m still working to finish the last painting days before the show opens, but I constantly feel the pressure of time. Does my devotion to craft and precision come at the expense of something else?

Every time I start a piece, I find myself negotiating between the looseness of early experimentation and the reality of how demanding the actual painting process is. I want to linger in those initial, playful stages—but often feel limited by the urgency to get going. Maybe it’s the desire to regard play seriously from start to finish. And yet, these constraints—whether time, genres, or labels—have their own power. They give us something to push against, providing greater clarity and sharper focus in ways that might be impossible without them.

How do you preserve that sense of play and discovery within your practice? Is that where humor becomes important for you—a release valve to break the tightness of control?

Predicament Escape, 2024
Marisa Adesman
Anat Ebgi

“These constraints—whether time, genres, or labels—have their own power. They give us something to push against.”

A.W.: I wonder about that too—where I can or maybe should loosen my grip. But it’s hard for me. I’m definitely the kind of painter who squeezes the rabbit too tight. But sometimes there are moments when I slip and let go, and then the work begins to surprise me and the surface kind of starts to talk back. Not so much in the figures or compositions, but in the marks and textures.

I think humor is a good way to puncture the pressure. And maybe as a way to approach the work from a new angle when it starts to fall into routine. That said, I don’t think my work is humorous. If it ever feels funny, it’s probably because it’s stiff or a little awkward.

Anyway, how do you feel about this new show? Do you ever get nervous?

The Turn, 2025
Marisa Adesman
Anat Ebgi

M.A.: Sure, maybe a little nervous. But mostly just excited. This is my first solo show in New York, and having grown up just outside of the city, it feels especially meaningful. There’s definitely a sense of anticipation too—it’s the culmination of two years of work. And of course, there’s always a hint of vulnerability when the paintings leave the studio and take on a life of their own.

I’m really proud of the work for “Under the Rose.” This show is a continuation of my ongoing interest in stage magic and illusions—more specifically, in carefully directing attention, conjuring the unexpected, and embracing a world where things are not always as they seem. Across the show, I return to this idea of care and violence as deeply entwined—how acts of tenderness can carry their own sharpness, and how destruction can be a necessary creative force. The rose became an important symbol in this context: cultivated and beautiful, but always with thorns.

A.W.: I love how you think and speak about the rose!

Marisa, thank you for such a thoughtful conversation. I’ve loved talking through these overlaps and tensions with you, and I can’t wait to see “Under the Rose” in person.

from Artsy News https://ift.tt/ayrpnJL