Category: reviews

by Chunbum Park

The Art of Cross-Cultural, Trans-Atlantic Friendship and the Return to Our Magical Mythological Origins, New Paltz, NY

At Villa Isis, a gallery in the woods that also functions as a creative retreat, Lise Ellingsen curates an exhibition of 20+ artists and film directors as a form of cultural exchange and bonding of relations. This cross-cultural event sponsored by the Royal Norwegian Consulate General New York and in collaboration with Oscar Galleri from Norway is a trans-Atlantic gesture of friendship between the Nordic countries and the United States. 

Titled, Villa Isis: A Nordic-New York Immersive Art Experience, the exhibition features the works of Jens Lien, Anja Breien, Eva Davidova, Tatiana Florival, Anki King, Avani Patel, Yasmeen Abdallah, Lisa Saeboe, Shayna Strype, Eliza Lu Doyle, Kristin Jacobsen, Karine Ruud, Lise Ellingsen, Avery Syrig, and additional invited artists.

The scope of the exhibition includes works of painting, sculpture, and immersive VR and video projection, which occupy spaces out in the open amongst the foliages and within the interior of the gallery. The works all communicate with one another and inscribe experiences and new thoughts within the viewers in a complex ecosystem and web of ideas and meanings.

Anki King’s Human Nature is a sculptural installation made with branches and vines over armature that merges seamlessly with its natural surroundings. The work reimagines humanity’s DNA in the vegetal form requiring a magical power to transform into it. The vegetal and natural body representing a young woman is neither a prison nor a limitation; it is a type of liberation as if the person is waking up from a dream into the reality of the natural realm. The lack of arms on the figure is a part of the metaphor that captures the essence of existence for the vegetal forms existing in nature. This is just as flowers and trees lack upper appendages and digital manipulators (aka hands with fingers) and must rely purely on communication via pollens and other chemical signals. In the installation, the sculpture is lit with a red light for nighttime viewing and is surrounded by leaves and branches, the boundary to which is indistinguishable from the sculpture’s idea as the self.

Lise Ellingsen’s Auðumbla (2023) is an ambitious sculptural installation involving lights, resin pieces, and a TV screen that illustrate the Nordic mythology of the primeval cow who fed the primordial frost jötunn Ymir milk. It is also said that Auðumbla, which is pronounced as “eidoombla” in English, also licked and dissolved the salty rime rocks to reveal Búri, the grandfather of the gods. In the work, we see the cow extending a giant tongue to lick away at the rock, surrounded by scattered and glowing mushrooms. The digital screen displays a repeating spiral pattern perhaps to visually represent the process and the sensation of touch and taste by the gigantic corpus linguae. This work along with Anki King’s Human Nature and others positions the exhibition as a space for contemporary reinterpretation of and re-engagement with the magical and mythological origins and perception of humanity. This is the aesthetic and symbolic realm and narrative mode that had existed for tens or hundreds of thousands of human existence before the rise of science and technology in the modern era, which shattered those realms.

Kristin Jacobsen, a photographer and gallerist from Oslo, Norway, installs her signature piece titled, SMASH (2026), from the upper height of a tall tree. The installation is made from twenty A2 photographs mounted on aluminum mesh and crumpled like discarded pieces of paper. The aluminum metal furnishes the piece with a sense of permanency and longevity, which the photographs printed on paper would lack. And the photographs imbue the work with internal raw visual materials that add substance and narrative to the ideation and production process by the artist. The work is very much about the process of creativity. Why did the artist use the metaphor of the act of smushing the photographs? Jacobsen appears to reflect on the fact that the process of creativity involves steps of aesthetic and visual selection, in which additions of the ideal and the subtraction of the unideal take place. What works and what doesn’t in the final image or product? This may be a dangerous habit of artists that, when applied to the sociopolitical realm, results in evil policies of Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan around the time of World War II. The work serves as reversal of this habit and process of selection amongst the artists, in which the artist destroys photographs, whether her own or found, equally and without saving the favorites, as a form of expression and questioning.

Eva Davidova’s AR Dancer with Plants utilizes augmented reality technology on a camera-equipped camera to project a dancing figure of a vegetal humanoid onto a circular grouping of stones. The augmented reality depicts not only a dancer but also the flowers and trees standing by the dancer. Davidova’s piece gives life and agency to the natural surroundings on figurative terms to which humans can relate, serving as a bridge between the human imagination and the natural realm. The work, which is technologically-based, traverses several domains, including the human, the symbolic, the metaphorical, the natural, and the electronic machine. As a result, the installation is a reaction against our word-based thinking and preconceptions that box us into rigid thinking, preset definitions, and binaries of opposition. Davidova’s art turns out to be not just an art or a 3D rendering, but it is a creature and a vegetal life form with a life force that exists within the symbolic and aesthetic realm of not just human but also the imagination of all life in the form of atoms per posthumanist theory and pananimism. 

Villa Isis: A Nordic-New York Immersive Art Experience is a thoughtfully curated exhibition in which the artists’ and curators’ visions interact and engage in a meaningful dialogue for re-imagination and re-examination of our magical and mythological roots. The shifting of boundaries of identity and narratives that cross over multiple realms between the human and nature and the machine allows us to rediscover our potential for spiritual liberation and a means of finding our place in the universe. The exchange between the American and the Nordic artists is an encounter of identities and symbolisms between a locality and a cosmopolitan hybridity (consisting of multicultural origins). 

In this communication and exchange, the Nordic artists who come from a particular region and people in Europe have something to teach to the Americans, who originate from all over the world (because the US is a nation of immigrants). While the progressive arm of the US had been a pioneer of the democratic values of diversity and equality, it is now the Europeans who learned the ideological modes of the Americans and are teaching the Americans in turn about their past morally superior position of democratic values and progressive ideals. This position was prior to the rise of Trumpism and MAGA, which destroyed the American stature as the leader of the free world. While the world is greatly turbulent and changed by the rise of right-wing extremism and strongmen, the exchange across the Atlantic is an important channel for communication between the progressively-minded people. This is because we must engage in this kind of gathering and dialogue in order to reflect on our own purpose and reinvigorate our trajectory… of progress in the pursuit of human rights and dignity, equality, democratic and humanist values… for not only humanity but also Mother Earth.

by Steve Rockwell

The message in Christopher Rouleau’s “12 Brilliant Colors” exhibition is direct. If you don’t get the picture, he spells it out in two languages, each ‘brilliant color’ numbered from one to twelve. The charm of the artist’s work at the Red Head Gallery in Toronto is the absence of ambiguity. Rouleau’s ego never gets in the way of his painted intent. By not wearing his angry, tormented artist tuque, the “Selling of Canada” paintings strike us directly where we live – a “double-double” caffeine-induced sugar rush from a Tim Hortons cup of coffee.

To a Canadian, each meticulously-rendered image is a mental billboard along the highway of Canada’s history. As an immigrant kid on my first day at Golden Avenue Public School in South Porcupine, my own pack of “12 Brilliant Colors” landed on my desk on the first day of school. That’s how I remember it – cellophane-wrapped pencil crayons with a picture of a snow-covered log home below the word “Laurentian,” loosely-lettered in red.

The “Selling of Canada” has continued unabated since its confederation in 1867. In fact, even before there was a Canada there was Rupert’s Land. French fur traders Radison and Groseilliers learned that the best furs were found around the “frozen sea” of Hudson Bay. Since the French governor refused to back their plan to set up a trading post on the Bay, one thing led to another, until the fur trading duo got an audience with England’s Charles II through Prince Rupert, the king’s cousin. And the rest is history: the “Selling of Canada” began in earnest by the Hudson’s Bay Company with an act of government in 1689. “Made Beaver” became not just a brand but a commercial trading standard.

Rouleau’s “12 Brilliant Colors” are rooted in the beauty of the land itself, here specifically the Quebec Laurentians, a crayon for every month of the year. A century ago, the Group of Seven placed a national stamp over the color and texture over Canada’s landscape. Influenced importantly by Tom Thomson, the Group expanded northward through Algoma beyond Lake Superior to the Rockies and the Arctic. To the east Quebec’s Charlevoix and Laurentian regions supplied the drama of shoreline and mountain. Branded into the consciousness these images in oil served as advertisement readymades for Canadian National and Pacific railways to sell travel across “Scenic Canada.” If going by car, vacationers might as well ride on “Canadian Tires.”

While Rouleau’s “Selling Canada” works are admittedly nostalgic, tapping into decades of collective memory, their insinuation casts a deeper, more complex shadow. As hieroglyphs of national identity, by virtue of their visual familiarity, the viewer is rendered essentially defenceless to their impact. Much like the work of Jeff Koons, Rouleau’s paintings here are “critic-proof.” To whatever might be said about his show, an apt response by the artist might simply be, “I intended it.”

To some extent, Rouleau even seems not to be “wedded” to the paintings on display. “Selling Canada” may be read as a sample documentation of slices from our environment, mechanically reproduced. As the artist’s “Christopher” business card reads: “lettering, signs, graphic design,” implying that if the viewer were not impressed with the paintings display, he would be happy to provide ones more suitable to their taste.

Selling Canada: Guest Artist Christopher Rouleau, May 27 – June 20, 2026 at the Red Head Gallery, 401 Richmond Street West, Toronto, Ontario, Canada M5V 3A8

by Federico Lynch Ferraris

Nadia Coen, Mahmoud Hamadani, Armita Raafat, Michael David, Andrew Huston, Alyse Rosner, Paul Michael Graves, Bodo Korsig, Steven Salzman, Margaret Weber, Mark Williams
at Bienvenu Steinberg & C in New York City

Across painting, sculpture, and installation, “Time and Materials” highlights the use of unconventional materials – glass, resin, plastic straws, fabrics, and carpets – to create works that are both temporal and tactile. Many of the works lean abstract, inviting the viewer to consider the significance embedded in the use of obscure materials and the progression of time encoded in the art.

The exhibition repeatedly emphasizes material experimentation as an outlet for interdisciplinary expression. Paul Michael Graves’ pieces play with the intersection between art and his previous career as a helicopter pilot. Composed of black dots and lines set across a bronze background, the pieces evoke the visual components of aerial map making. Initially appearing abstract, the artwork deliberately uses the black marks to resemble plotted coordinates and flight paths as seen from above. Graves’ interpretation of time reflects the broader theme of the unique experience of time. The pieces display time and duration through flight paths rather than fixed units.

Mahmoud Hamadani’s geometric compositions similarly gesture towards his mathematical foundations. In his untitled work, Hamadani arranges nine black frames into a square. Within each frame, seven diamonds are uniquely oriented, with each diamond representing a day of the week. The subtle variations within each frame mirror the rhythms and changes of days and weeks. Continuing the larger theme of time interpreted through interdisciplinary practices, Hamadani’s geometric orientations suggest that time is measured, rhythmic, and symmetrical through a mathematical lens.

Andrew Huston continues the use of geometric shapes to portray time. With seven panels, each filled with gold pigment and black dots, the artwork represents the seven days of the week. Although the panels are fixedly aligned to emulate calendar pages, each panel is distinct. The variation among the series of panels emphasises the unpredictability of time despite the expected rhythm of the week.

Armita Raafat’s portrayal of time draws on a more fluid interpretation, by contrast. Raafat draws on traditional Muqarnas while reimagining it with vivid, unconventional materials. Composed of resin, tiles, and fabrics, the work revisits traditional architecture with a modern perspective, suggesting that time, rather than being fixed, can be actively returned to and reconsidered. The piece, being an extension of Raafat’s inquiry into Muqarnas, maintains the ongoing theme of interests and passions altering perception of time found throughout the exhibition.

Bodo Korsig’s “Zerspringen des Zustandes”, which translates from German to “Shattering of the State”, approaches the theme of time through one moment of rupture. The work suggests that time does not only unfold – it snaps. The “shattering” becomes a moment when continuity is lost, and a new state abruptly emerges. This interpretation of time aligns with Korsig’s focus on human behavior under extreme conditions. In moments of fear or violence, mental states often do not erode over time; they shatter instantly. The piece introduces the irreversibility of time and its capacity to collapse into a single moment of change. In contrast to other works in the exhibition, which focus on the cycle and rhythm of time, Korsig centers its immediacy and instantaneity.

Alyse Rosner’s piece, “From Wind or Sky or Myth (shadow)” evokes the visual intensity of fireworks – brief yet expansive bursts that unfold simultaneously – suggesting that time is not a singular passing instant, but a convergence of multiple moments occurring at once.
Some works do not specifically reference time, however. Instead, they fall under the exhibition’s material aspect. Michael David, for example, uses nontraditional materials such as glass, silicone, fabric, and glitter in his work, “The Batman”. Innovative uses of various materials are also present in the works of Nadia Coen, Steven Salzman, Margaret Weber, and Mark Williams.

The title of the exhibition draws on the policy under which clients pay contractors a fixed amount for the time spent and materials used. In the context of the exhibition, time and material are established as intertwined and in constant conversation.