issue 010: on ephemera, intimacy, place, and queerness

We made it to the 10th issue of tld-art! Read on for 20 standout pieces covering openings, interviews, and reviews in the art world last week.

I can’t believe tld-art has made it to double digits. Last week was a surprisingly busy one for art news:

• Yet another gallery closed up shop in search of a more fulfilling art collection practice

• The original Birkin bag sold for over $10M at auction (not quite art news, but crazy nonetheless)

• The Bayeux Tapestry finally made its way back home to the UK after nearly 1000 years

• Two more celebrities made news with their art practices: the Prince of Darkness with a chimpanzee collab and Ed Sheeran (I have no idea what his nickname is if he has one) with some $1,200 Pollock rip-offs.

But beyond the news, there was tons of coverage on the work itself. (You can see all 113 art articles I saved here.) These are my top 20 picks:

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Capturing the Ephemeral

In this luminous essay, Rebecca Solnit considers how Misrach’s Cargo series renders the vastness of global trade both surreal and sublime.

Celmins is one of my favorite artists—her technical work and subtle subject matter—and this review doubles as a great outline of her career.

Georges Mathieu’s explosive gestures and calligraphic strokes are revisited as ephemeral acts—intensely present, yet fleeting.

“That tension between holding on and letting go is at the heart of what I make.”

Wakoa’s process is fascinating. She never sketched, instead setting out with a very clear memory in mind, stating, “Usually this memory is something ephemeral and something that quite possibly rejects imagery.”

It’s been great seeing all the press for Aboriginal artist Emily Kam Kngwarray amidst her with concurrent exhibitions at Tate Modern and Pace Gallery. This Ocula piece honors her legacy within and beyond the context of the art world.

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Uncovering the Intimate

“If we continue to speak in this sameness—speak as men have spoken for centuries, we will fail each other.”

In this East London show, Clutching at Ornaments, three photographers. Finnegan Travers, Jesse Glazzard, and Celia Croft share their most personal photos.

I knew nothing of this artist and can’t stop thinking about these paintings that seem to be both decomposing and emerging from a desert oasis mist.

As always, TCOP with a vivid review of “The Good Life,” Barskaya’s current exhibition at Harkawik, made up of snug, womb-like depictions of domestic life.

The photographer shares the importance of being open to capture personal moments.

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Understanding Our Sense of Place

Shaw’s Paradise Lost traces memory and displacement through a mythic landscape.

“I can’t say what I think people find my work to be, but I hope that people find that when they see it, they can go somewhere without moving.”

Mehdi Dakhli’s Intrecciata Venezia at Lo Studio offers a contemporary reflection on Venice as a centuries-old crossroads of East and West—where architecture, art, and movement intertwine in a layered vision of cultural exchange.

Here the placement matters. Weyant’s works echo the moods and gestures of centuries-old paintings they’re shown alongside.

Drawing on Celtic mythology, jazz improvisation, glider piloting, and postwar existentialism, Davie’s paintings from 1959–1971 channel a deeply personal cosmology.

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Celebrating and Questioning Queerness in Art

Armillaria explores queer ecology through the ancient, entangled life of a 10,000-year-old fungus and its psychic, symbiotic roots.

A new look at Robert Rauschenberg, Jasper Johns, Merce Cunningham, John Cage, and Cy Twombly.

A gay Black son of a preacher from Knoxville, Delaney brought tenderness and reverence to his portraits, yearning not just to depict his subjects, but to exalt them in color and line.

Here’s the context.

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If you enjoyed this issue of tld-art (too long, do art), I’d really appreciate a like and a share! This is just a passion project, but knowing it’s finding an audience keeps me going.

‘til next time,

tld-art