Art Reviews | Week of 3.24.2025
We've Crossed State Lines
Hello everyone,
I hope you all enjoyed the day of Fool’s Spring we experienced last weekend! Fingers crossed we actually get spring soon. It’s official, I’ve crossed state lines in the pursuit of art journalism. This week our recap includes, New York, and New Jersey. I’ve visited a handful of galleries, and an art fair.
Here’s a list of the galleries that caught my attention since our last recap:
And as a bonus, I was able to attend an art fair:
From these different art events, the three which stood out to me are: Daphne Arthur’s “Fragile Intangibilities” at Project for Empty Space, Carolyn Oberst & Eden Seifu’s “A New Sacred” at Storage Gallery, and Brooklyn Fine Art Print fair hosted at Powerhouse Arts.
Daphne Arthur’s “Fragile Intangibilities” - Newark
I’ve been looking forward to this show for a while now; Daphne Arthur was the professor for my Figure Drawing class in Fall 2023. Near the end of the course, she invited students to her studio in Newark. A handful of students and I made the trek from NYC and got an in-depth look into the space of a working artist. Within her studio, I could see the beginnings of “Fragile Intangibilities”. Her space was littered with different tools, from calligraphy brushes to oil paints and pigments. Silk tents also populated the studio, and she walked us through her experimentation with the uncommon and finicky surface.
The show is a collection of stories from first-generation immigrants and migrants from New York City and Connecticut. Through her interviews with these individuals, she distills their stories into visual symbolism and portrays their diasporic journey. Their present experiences and histories are mangled into emblems that bring viewers into a storybook with no clearly legible narrative to make us privy to the biography being showcased.
These biographies are portrayed on hand-sewn silk organza camping tents; there are eleven in total. The tents, which are transportable, reinforce the mobility of the home, as depicted in the stories. Professor Daphne herself is a Venezuelan-born immigrant and understands the complexity around identity, home, and a shifting family dynamic. Visually, the tales are portrayed finely, and the images are legible yet appear faint. Whether this is due to the material or an intentional choice from the artists is unclear to me. But, I interpreted the faint images as the fragility of the intersection where family and location reside; bonds and stories can disappear without proper care. The stories of those disjointed from their place of origin due to financial, political, or reasons too personal for the audience to be privy to are recorded and exalted in this exhibition and, as a result, remembered and shared. The formation of a new community is the outcome of Arthur’s practice.
The show will be on view from February 15th through April 27th
Carolyn Oberst & Eden Seifu’s “A New Sacred” - Tribeca
This exhibition was such a pleasant surprise for me. I have been following Eden Seifu’s (b.1997) work since she presented with Deli Gallery in her solo exhibition “Pilgrimage to My Room” in 2023. Similarly, Carolyn Oberst (b.1946) caught my eye in her two-person show with her partner, Jeff Way, “Cycle VI,” housed at Storage Gallery in 2023. So, I was pleased to discover two artists whose styles I deeply appreciate appearing side-by-side in an exhibition. “A New Sacred” draws on the spiritual elements presented in Oberst and Seifu’s work.
Oberst’s work comes from the collection “The Crosses We Bear.” This body of work was created from 1990 to 1994 in reaction to the alarm she felt towards environmental degradation. The content of the work showcases several devasting environmental situations, ranging from endangered plant life to oil spills. Its spiritual ties are also echoed by the shape of the work; in a famous iconographic shape, the cross alludes to the suffering of Christ; here, Oberst layers its meaning. As she stated in the press release:
“I felt that separate from the religious association, the cross shape would connote both a sign of pain and suffering as well as a call to action.”
Seifu’s work similarly pulls from iconic religious symbolism; Ethiopian Christian symbols are regularly implemented within her work. To recall a conversation we had in 2023 at her opening with Deli Gallery, forgive the paraphrasing, the core of the memory is there, but its details are hazy. The subjects of her work often appear to her in divine spontaneity during her moments of quiet focus in activities like rock climbing and hiking. An image appears in her mind, and she honors it by bringing it into realization through her canvas. I’m unsure of how much the conversation centered around a religious figure and even hazier on which one, if the conversation did, in fact, lead there. Seifu depicts her subjects in a loose painterly style; colors are often layered, and the expressions of her figures are full of emotion.
These two artists join together to express the transcendental and environmental in a spiritually inspired and intergenerational dialog.
The show will be on view from March 14th through May 3rd, 2025.
Brooklyn Fine Art Print Fair
I had the opportunity to attend the Brooklyn Fine Arts Print Fair twice: once on its opening night and again on Saturday. The fair contained 41 print-focused art galleries, 28 self-representing artists and book arts makers, and seven academic print departments. The booths were housed on two floors.
I found the event really enjoyable; I ran across unexpected old faces and reconnected with an artist I previously covered in a Mana Contemporary feature with Whitehot magazine, Nicholas D'Ornellas. Besides the social aspects, I was pleasantly surprised at the talent housed at the college booths. The overall price point of the fair ranged from single digits to thousands, though the majority of work was priced on the higher end. This caused most visitors to flock to the lower-cost booths, which were student-run. During my visit, Parsons' booth attracted the most attention. The allure ran further than the price point as the prints showcased the budding talent housed at the school. I bought from them both because the prints were too cute to resist. See my haul below.
Overall, the fair was an interesting peek further into the world of prints. The fair also had many events, ranging from artists' talks and workshops, and some of the booths had an interactive element that accompanied their displays. Poster House taught guests the guerilla marketing tactic of wheat-pasting and allowed visitors to walk through the process with a faux 'Post No Bill' wall erected for the fair.
The fair ran from March 27th to 30th , 2025.
!Bonus!: Zach Harris’ “Studio Visit” at Perrotin Gallery - Nolita
