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Category Archives: Shows & Events

Streets: Unmute Gaza

Emerging as a creative response in support of Palestinian photojournalists, Unmute Gaza has brought together an array of artists highlighting the unimaginable suffering currently being experienced by the people of Gaza. The project features interpretations of photographs captured on the ground in the exclave which can be easily downloaded and pasted up around the world; so far interventions have been seen across 83 cities in 30 different countries. These images both make visible the suffering which is all too absent from much of the media’s […]

Showing: Aryz – ‘Vanitas’ @ National Pantheon (Lisboa)

Housed within the central rotunda of Lisboa’s National Pantheon, Aryz’s latest installation takes full advantage of its emblematic surroundings to re-frame the centuries-old conversation about our own mortality. The two works reference the vanitas paintings of the 16th and 17th centuries which sought to emphasize the transience of life. An archetypal example by an unknown artists hangs elsewhere within the former Church of Santa Engrácia and this still life is populated with an assortment of memento mori: a recently-extinguished candle, an hour-glass through which the […]

Recap: Bartek Świątecki AKA Pener – ‘Chasing The Wind’ @ Chenus Longhi

Last weekend saw the conclusion of Bartek Świątecki’s Chasing The Wind exhibition at Chenus Longhi in Paris. It seems that Poland has produced a disproportionately large number of artists who started out writing graffiti and have then stretched the movement’s foundational principles to oblivion in their own unique ways, creating new languages of expression in the process. Świątecki, also known as Pener, was part of the Spectrum crew alongside the likes of Proembrion and later painted walls in Bydgoszcz with Sainer and Bezt before increasingly […]

Showing: Invader – ‘Invader Space Station’

For three months, visitors are invited to step aboard Invader Space Station to experience the Parisian artist’s most artistically and physically expansive exhibition to date. The show is being held in the modernist edifice which was once home to Libération, the newspaper whose pages the artist invaded in 2011. Upon entering, visitors are met with a barrage of sound and light emanating from an installation which occupies the entirety of the first of nine floors; the classic Space Invaders arcade game has been reimagined in […]

Opening: Sickboy – ‘Optical Delusions’ @ Harvey Nichols (Bristol)

Mixing art and fine dining, Sickboy (interviewed) is kicking off his latest show at the high-end department store Harvey Nichols tonight with a launch dinner and artist’s talk. Optical Delusions is presented by Fluorescent Smogg and builds upon his ever-expanding use of semiotics to create a dream-like world that glows and radiates light. The Bristol-based artist has long experimented with an array of unorthodox mediums: from painting on bell-jars in the early 2000s, to creating tapestries a decade later and onwards to the lightboxes which […]

Showing: José Parlá – ‘Phosphene’ @ Ben Brown (London)

Closing today after a four week run, Phosphene is José Parlá’s second show at Ben Brown Fine Art’s London location. The title references the phenomenon of seeing light without any external stimulus and the exhibition features 11 large scale canvases infused with kinetic and sensory energy. For many, graffiti is a means to exist beyond the corporeal and social confinement of our current circumstances and the now Brooklyn-based artist’s Ease tag was like a visual mantra repeated across south Miami in search of personal perfection. […]

Openings: Jeff Soto – “Sadlands” @ KP Projects

Earlier this month, Jeff Soto’s (interviewed) new exhibition Sadlands opened up in West Hollywood at KP Projects. Showing though the end of the month, the striking new body of work featured almost 20 medium to large sized paintings inspired by a post-apocalyptic Southern Californian landscape. Each piece, rendered in vibrant colors, correlates loosely with a location that the Riverside native denoted on a map (displayed in the gallery) with the sides of the frames painted to color coordinate with each pinned location. This conceptual thread nicely […]

Showing: Alistair Canvin – ‘Do Not Over Inflate’ @ Plan X

Earlier this week, Alistair Canvin presented his debut solo exhibition at Plan X Gallery in Milan. The show, entitled Do Not Over Inflate, presents a series of photorealistic paintings depicting deflated flamingoes, crocodiles and beach balls set against a backdrop of water-refracted pool tiles. The partial use of an airbrush captures the tactile, plasticky feel of those objects and evokes memories of holidays in the sun. At first glance, the work’s aesthetic appears to reference youthful simplicity and the carefree optimism of childhood. But, this […]

Preview/Art Focus: Futura – ‘Breaking Out’ @ University of Buffalo

Retrospectives are rarely as overdue as the one opening on Saturday at the University of Buffalo Art Galleries. Breaking Out spans both of the university’s locations – UB Center for the Arts and the UB Anderson Gallery – and provides a comprehensive survey of the five decade-long career of Futura. So, it seems like a timely opportunity for us to take a look back at the life and works of one of the most innovative and influential artists of our time.  Leonard Hilton McGurr was […]

Showing: Banksy – ‘Cut and Run’ @ GOMA

After a sold-out 10 week run at Glasgow’s Gallery of Modern Art, Banksy’s first solo show in almost 14 years comes to a close next week. The exhibition, entitled Cut and Run, gives the public the opportunity to rediscover paintings which have appeared around the world over the last 25 years; many of these can no longer be found on the street and, in some cases, the streets themselves no longer even exist. The exhibition displays the original stencils used to create many of his […]