Art

In a departure from his famed land-based works, Alex Chinneck looks toward the water. The surrealist artist presents a new piece on the Sheffield and Tinsley Canal in England. Dubbed The Looping Boat, the structure is fabricated from nine tons of hand-rolled steel and aluminum, standing at six meters tall and 13 meters wide. Co-funded by a British energy company E.O.N, Chinneck’s installation is part of a larger initiative, aiming to bolster development efforts of renewable energy sites in a series of public artworks.Adorned in traditional canal boat colors and a sign painted Tudor Rose, boat is an ode to Sheffield’s industrial heritage and beloved waterways. For this vessel, the artist wanted to explore the material limits of steel in order to create a piece that would dually complement t...

“A ghost is someone who has disappeared, but a spirit is a memory that remains, an energy that has lingering influence,” the late Mike Kelley writes in an early draft of Under a Sheet/Existance Problems (sic). While this performance was never realized, this concept cleanly maps onto his legacy as a provocative and influential figure in contemporary art.In early October, Tate Modern will celebrate the life and career of Mike Kelley in a retrospective exhibition. Presented in collaboration with the Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen, Bourse de Commerce,  and Moderna Museet, Ghost and Spirit marks the first major UK exhibition of the experimental artist.Spanning across sculptures, textile works, and multi-media installations, the artist confronted social order with questions of memory, desire,...

Elephants are parading through New York City. Well, a herd of sculptural elephants that is. In what some are calling the biggest outdoor public art intervention to hit New York since Christo and Jeanne-Claude’s The Gates in 2005, The Great Elephant Migration consists of 100 life-sized artworks meticulously crafted by 200 Indigenous artists over the past five years.The touring exhibition is produced by South India's Nilgiri Biosphere Reserve (NBR) and is on view in the Meatpacking District till next month. British animal rights activist Ruth Ganesh co-founded NBR with Indian elephant researcher Tarsh Thekaekara to solve two problems at once: firstly, utilize an invasive weed called lantana camara, which has threatened a number of ecosystems across India; while simultaneously raising funds f...

The Obama Presidential Center in Chicago, designed by Tod Williams Billie Tsien Architects, began shaping its defining structure—a granite-clad tower housing a monumental art installation. Julie Mehretu’s Uprising of the Sun, an 83-foot-tall glass tower, has been mounted on the north facade of the building. Comprising 35 painted glass panels, the piece reflects Mehretu’s exploration of historical movements like the Civil Rights era and Chicago’s own role in shaping social change. Inspired by figures like Barack Obama and John Lewis, the artwork merges these moments with visual references from Robert S. Duncanson, Jacob Lawrence, and Ethiopian artist Afewerk Tekle.The artist drew from diverse inspirations, including Obama’s 2015 Selma speech and her personal connection to the Midwest and Ch...

Vincent Van Gogh’s Les canots amarrés (Moored Boats) will go under the hammer for the first time in thirty years at Christie’s Hong Kong. The painting is expected to fetch $230 million to $380 million HK (about $30 million to $50 million USD), becoming the most expensive piece from the artist’s time in Paris.For several decades, the painting was held in the collection of the Royal Family of Bourbon-Two Sicilies, descendants of monarchs who ruled over Sicily and southern Italy. According to Artnet, the piece was originally purchased by Italian actress Edy Vessel at Sotheby’s London in 1991, and is currently being sold by Vessel’s daughter, Princess Camilla, who acquired it through a family trust.Les canots amarrés belongs to a triptych of summer scenes in Asnières, created during Van Gogh’s...

Los Angeles-based artist duo FriendsWithYou is presenting a new set of works at Tokyo's Parco Museum in an exhibition titled Ocean: Temple of the Sacred Heart. Taking inspiration from fictional mythology, the show tells the story of heroes and saints who wish to free humanity from their devices and return them to nature.At the heart of the museum atrium, “Memory Wave” takes a coin-operated ride to new heights. The “electric healing ride” takes visitors on a voyage of light, encased in a glossy sheen. Alongside the immersive installation, Ocean features a new body of paintings whose smooth textures, sparkling eyes, and soft tones reflect the importance of hope.Founded by Samuel Albert Borkson and Arturo Sandoval III in 2002, FriendsWithYou explores themes of magic, luck, and friendship acro...

Zéh Palito is making his Perrotin debut with a new solo exhibition entitled Cars, Pools & Melanin. Based between São Paulo and Maryland, the Brazilian artist creates fantastical portrait and landscape paintings that provide a glimpse into the Afro-diasporic experience, while also touching on universal themes of identity and an advocation for social equity and environmental protection. As a bridge between the U.S. and Brazil, Palito's latest show examines the socio-political discrimination that Black and Brown citizens face in both countries. Emblematic of the title, the exhibition thematically centers around cars and swimming pools, ubiquitous aspects of daily life that, according to curator Rodrigo Moura, "allude to an important aspect of the struggle for racial equality: the right to...

Japanese artist En Iwamura has worked with The-Art-Form on a new limited edition print. As the first two-dimensional work that he's has created, Knots features one of Iwamura's signature totemic busts intricately laid on paper with gold foil emboss and a clear foil deboss. The philosophy of Ma, which emphasizes emptiness and the space between places, people and objects, serves as the foundation to Iwamura's minimalist practice. Over the past decade, the Kyoto-born, Montana-based artist has created playful sculptures of heads, drawing from Japanese folklore and tradition, such as zen gardens and ceramics, to create contemplative settings that inspire introspection. "I hope to make a sculpture the same scale as Knots one day," Iwamura said in a statement. "An unfamiliar object that suddenl...

For his third exhibition at Everyday Mooonday Gallery, moonassi takes a step into the unknown. The array of large-scale works is characterized by a return to ambiguous expressions and atmospheric landscapes. As the artist builds a cross-hatched cosmos, the simplicity of 찰랑 (Smooth) Our mind rippled and sparkled makes room for introspection.The exhibition tells the story of two characters who must search for balance amidst the tensions growing between them. The contrasting strokes of black ink on white hanji paper portray the distance of the figures’ inner worlds in spite of their physical intimacy.The title borrows from the phrase “찰랑 찰랑 (challangchallang)”, often used to describe the smooth surface of rippling water. Vast lakes add to the surreal scenery and internal worlds echo in gentle...

New York-based creative Neal Santos is paying tribute to the big city he calls home, releasing a new photography book honoring New York City's cultural history. Titled La Ultimate Bodega En Soho, the book takes a closer look at the lost communities of NYC, capturing moments lost in time. La Ultimate Bodega En Soho sees Santos photograph the diverse immigrant communities that have embraced him since childhood, from young kids strolling to bodegas to local workmen and streetside coffee drinkers. "We are all photographers as we live with phones in hand, what seems like every moment. I am no different. Nokia, blackberry, and numerous iPhones were used to capture these photos. That they survived till now amazes me, I don't collect sh*t, not even Jpgs. They were taken in the moment, which was as...

The creatures of L'or mord l'os (gold bites bone) stand on the border between beautiful and grotesque. Staged at cadet capela in Paris, the duet exhibition spotlights the works of Christian Rex van Minnen and Ken Sortais, bound by their interests in the unsightly. Through their respective practices, the artists reintroduce classical techniques into the arc of contemporary art in a magnetic display of (in)human bodies.Inspired by techniques of the Dutch Golden Age, van Minnen’s paintings render its characters with “disturbingly plastic precision." Through glossy sheens and swollen bulbs of flesh, the American artist pushes past boundaries of bodily transformation. The photographic clarity of his work embraces the uncanny, provoking full-body shivers.Meanwhile, Sortais marries flesh with the...

André Heller's 36-year dream is set to come true as Luna Luna begins its multi-city tour. This November, New Yorkers will get the chance to witness a ferris wheel designed by Jean-Michel Basquiat, a carousel by Keith Haring and more. What could have easily been the basis of a Netflix documentary, Heller, an artist himself, had the grand vision to bring together the creative masters of his time in what transpired as the first and only Luna Luna art carnival back Hamburg in the summer of 1987. Due to various legal and financial hurdles, the project folded in on itself and the artworks created were stored in a shed thousands of miles away, until Drake emerged as an unlikely patron to resurrect the the carnival for a new generation. Housed at The Shed in Manhattan and opening on November 20, ...