Artists

Patti Smith’s Poetic Voice Mixes the Sounds of the Amazon’s Destruction for an Ongoing Collaboration

Installation view of “Soundwalk Collective & Patti Smith: CORRESPONDENCES,” 2025, at Kurimanzutto, New York. Photo Zach Hyman/Courtesy Kurimanzutto Crickets in Ibiza, traditional Georgian music, sounds of the Amazon River recently filled the cavernous Chelsea outpost of Kurimanzutto. Across sound pieces, eight two-channel films, mixed-media collages, drawings, and sculpture, Patti Smith and Soundwalk Collective contemplated our …

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Mexican Artist Duo ASMA Follow Their Materials into the Unconscious 

ASMA, “Nude and the Staircase, (A Doll),” 2024. Doll (Found objects, wood, metal, epoxy resin, silicone, fabric, synthetic hair, cardboard, acrylic, elastic, plastic, polyurethane, adhesive tape), vintage miniature playing cards, artist-made lamps. Doll: 40 ½ x 11 ¾ x 4 inches (103 x 30 x 10 cm); installation dimensions variable. Commissioned SculptureCenter, New York. Courtesy …

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Artist Young Joon Kwak Invites Audiences to the ‘Resisterhood’ with Glimmering Bejeweled Sculptures and Neon Works

Young Joon Kwak, “Uh, As If! (still),” 2014. HD video (color, sound). © Young Joon Kwak and Commonwealth and Council, Los Angeles. Editor’s Note: This story is part of Newsmakers, an ARTnews series where we interview the movers and shakers who are making change in the art world. Welcome to the resisterhood. That’s the premise of Young Joon …

Artist Young Joon Kwak Invites Audiences to the ‘Resisterhood’ with Glimmering Bejeweled Sculptures and Neon Works Read More »

In a Timely D.C. Exhibition, Artists of Color Use Sculpture to Question Who’s Worth Remembering

Pepón Osorio, Las Twines, 1998. Smithsonian American Art Museum Can a sculpture convey power? Historically, sculpture has been one of the key ways to depict who is in charge and who is worth remembering. That has been the case in the United States where the Lincoln Memorial and Mount Rushmore recall the country’s most revered …

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John Wilson, a Black Figurative Artist Nearly Lost to Time, Gets a Traveling Retrospective

John Wilson, Black Despair, 1945. ©Estate of John Wilson/Museum of Fine Arts, Boston To be Black in America, artist John Woodrow Wilson (1922–2015) once said, was to endure “a kind of slow death.” How best to fight that protracted, demoralizing violence? For Wilson, one solution was to produce art. In his paintings, sculptures, and prints, …

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What Was the Harlem Renaissance?

Photo collage by Daniela Hritcu. The Harlem Renaissance, also known as the New Negro Movement, was a movement of the 1920s and ’30s that sought to redefine Black identity through literature, music, painting, photography, and intellectual thought. It was a direct response to negative stereotypical images that proliferated throughout popular culture in the United States …

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The Best Booths at Frieze LA, from Projects Dedicated to Fire Recovery to Quietly Introspective Sculptures

A view of the entrance of Frieze Los Angeles 2025. Maximilíano Durón/ARTnews The sun was out and shining all day Thursday in Los Angeles. It seems a fortuitous sign for the 2025 edition of Frieze Los Angeles, which opened to VIPs in the morning. From 10am onward, the custom-built tent at the Santa Monica Airport …

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Afrofuturism: Reimagining the Past and Telling a Black Fantastic Future

Photo collage by Daniela Hritcu. There are Black people in the future.” In 2017, contemporary visual artist Alisha B. Wormsley began placing those words on billboards across the country in cities including Pittsburgh, Detroit, Charlotte, New York City, Kansas City, and Houston. According to Wormsley, the phrase started out as a “Black nerd sci-fi joke.” …

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A Rising Generation of Mexican Artists and Dealers Impress During Mexico City Art Week, But Can the Market Respond?

The entrance to the 11th edition of Feria Material in Mexico City on Thursday, February 6. Courtesy of Feria Material Shortly before I left for Mexico City last week, I asked a fellow journalist who has reported on the country’s art for years for any advice for a first-timer. “The young Mexican artists are the …

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Noah Davis: An Innovative Painter Who Also Reimagined Art’s Role in Community

Noah Davis at work, Los Angeles, 2009 Patrick O’Brien-Smith In Painting for My Dad (2011), artist Noah Davis presents a male figure gazing over a rocky landscape beneath a star-strewn, nearly black night sky. With the figure facing away from the viewer, dressed in a worn red shirt and denim trousers and holding a lantern …

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