Art

Ghanaian artist Paa Joe has brought some of New York City's most iconic motifs to life. As part of Superhouse NYC's inaugural "Celestial City" exhibition, the multidisciplinary artist served up a handful of lifesize sculptures of the city's signature signage, including pizza boxes, taxi cabs, bagels and, of course, rats."Celestial City" not only marks Paa's solo NYC debut, but it also comes as the first exhibition in Superhouse's new space in downtown Manhattan, just off Canal Street.Paa's structures include those large and small, with the standout pieces being two human-scale coffins in the shapes of a Heinz ketchup bottle and a taxi. In Paa's Ga community, there's a huge emphasis on funerary rights and traditions when paying respects to the dead; Paa also spearheads Paa Joe Coffin Works ...

Bijan Berahimi of Portland-based studio FISK has released the latest capsule collection to celebrate the upcoming Persian New Year. Nowruz or "New Day" in Farsi, takes place at the spring equinox and symbolically represents a release from the troubles of the previous year. Its roots date far back to Ancient Persia as a Zoroastrian religion, which continues to be celebrated as a secular holiday today across Iran and the wider Middle East region, as well as Turkey and the global diaspora. View this post on InstagramA post shared by FISK (@fiskprojects)Going on his third collection, Berahimi who featured in Issue 32 of Hypebeast Magazine, felt there was a lack of representation for fellow Iranians in the creative scene. The Nowruz collection aptly was a way for him to reconnect with his heri...

The annual Art Market Report released by Art Basel and UBS gives us a detailed look at how the art world is doing in 2023, especially with all the economic and political uncertainties going on, as reported by The Art Newspaper. Written by Dr. Clare McAndrew, a cultural economist, this report combines information from different places to help us understand what's happening in the art market. From changes in sales to how people are buying art online, this report tells us a lot about what's going on in the art world right now. Here a couple of important points from the report:Market Contractions: The Art Market report reveals a 4% decrease in total sales, amounting to $65 billion USD in 2023, reflecting a challenging economic and political climate.Online Sales Surge: Despite the overall downt...

Originally published on Hypeart.comAbove corner shops, overlaid against chimneys and nestled under bridges, small (and sometimes massive) mosaic figures of various pop cultural icons are reimagined as retro-inspired artworks reminiscent of Tomohiro Nishikado's Space Invaders (1978) arcade game. This is of course the work of elusive French artist Invader, and over the past 20 years, his imprint has touched down on more than just his home country. There is an estimated 4,000 such invasions all across the world. Over time, Invader's signature mosaics have become almost as synonymous with the city of Paris, as the French capital's Haussmann-style architecture. Per an AP report, there are rumors that Invader is gearing up to add a new series of invasions to coincide with the 2024 Summer Olympic...

Originally published on Hypeart.comPro-Palestine activists have destroyed a century-old painting of former British Prime Minister, Lord Balfour. Housed at the University of Cambridge's Trinity College, a member part of the group Palestine Action was recorded slashing and spray painting the artwork earlier today in a plea to call out “the bloodshed of the Palestinian people since the Balfour Declaration was issued,” according to the group in a statement. Arthur James Balfour was a former politician, who served a brief stint as prime minister of the UK from 1902 to 1905. He is arguably most remembered for expressing British approval of Zionism, particularly of a Jewish homeland within Palestine, which would come to fruition decades later in 1948 through the United Nations Partition Plan for ...

Originally published on Hypeart.comThe Kunstmuseum Basel is being shown in a new light, the light installations of Dan Flavin to be exact. Dedications in Lights presents over 58 unique artworks spanning over three decades of the American artist's career, including 35 light works, 21 works on paper, two paintings and a selection of art that Flavin first presented at the museum in 1975. Flavin is globally recognized for his fluorescent light tube installations he first began in the 1960s. Alongside his contemporaries in Ellsworth Kelly and Donald Judd, Flavin was a pioneer in the Minimalist movement for the ways in which he explored the intersection between light, space and color. The resulting artworks are simple in concept, but hypnotic in effect, entrancing audiences from Los Angeles to T...

Originally published on Hypeart.comThe Hirshhorn Museum in Washington D.C. has announced the acquisition of 141 photographs by 20 Chinese contemporary artists that were gifted by collector and No More Rulers founder, Larry Warsh. The lot of images previously featured in an exhibition entitled “A Window Suddenly Opens: Contemporary Photography in China,” that recently concluded at the institution on January 7.Based in New York, Warsh is noted for owning an extensive collection of pop artworks from Jean-Michel Basquiat and Keith Haring, as well as for his publishing arm, which has released books on Ai Weiwei, Daniel Arsham, Judy Chicago and more. While Warsh has always shown an interest in collecting work from Chinese artists, he began to understand more about the nuances and traditions of d...

Originally published on Hypeart.comThe Hirshhorn Museum in Washington D.C. has announced the acquisition of 141 photographs by 20 Chinese contemporary artists that were gifted by collector and No More Rulers founder, Larry Warsh. The lot of images previously featured in an exhibition entitled “A Window Suddenly Opens: Contemporary Photography in China,” that recently concluded at the institution on January 7.Based in New York, Warsh is noted for owning an extensive collection of pop artworks from Jean-Michel Basquiat and Keith Haring, as well as for his publishing arm, which has released books on Ai Weiwei, Daniel Arsham, Judy Chicago and more. While Warsh has always shown an interest in collecting work from Chinese artists, he began to understand more about the nuances and traditions of d...

Chinese-born, Houston-based artist Gao Hang has released a new limited edition screen print in collaboration with Exhibition A. It's Getting Serious (2024) features a glitchy depiction of a man presumably playing basketball in a neon green top and armband. Hang's comical aesthetic is intended to conjure up the now dated video game graphics of the mid-to-late '90s, having described his practice in the past as a form of "standup comedy." View this post on InstagramA post shared by EXHIBITION A (@exhibitiona)Beneath the humorous veneer of his work, however, the artist explores digital images from the end of the 20th century as found objects, denoting the interplay in technological advancement and the raw oddity of the past with the present. "Gao views his art as a complex dialogue that, much ...