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García was born in Mexico City in 1960. He grew up in Guadalajara before settling in Puebla City, where he is still based. His work has garnered a rush of press in Mexico, where he is recognized as one of the most important avant-garde expressionist painters of recent years.

His recent oil paintings incorporate patterns and phenomena that recall supernovas, churning waves, and sun flares. Recent works—like Miserere, Reborn, andGaia—portray his figures curled, showing off their delicate musculature. Others, like In the Light of Awakening and Blossom, depict his subjects’ faces emerging from cosmic dust. With the boldness of his palette and the audacity of his forms, he catapults us into a realm where strength and poetry collide.

“We are all artists—those of us who wield the brush, the pencil, gouge, or chisel, and those who contemplate works and see themselves reflected in them in some sense. Because without the spectator, the works have not yet been born,” García says.

García’s work has been recognized all over the Americas, and his accomplishments were formally recognized in 2004 by Pueblas’ then governor, Melquíades Morales Flores, when he hosted the inauguration of García’s own gallery. His work has been shown at the Wyland Galleries of Florida (Orlando), Miranda Galleries (Laguna Beach, Calif.), Madison Gallery (Solana Beach, Calif.), and the Javits Center (New York City). The municipal president of Puebla also honored García when his work was shown at the Galería del Palacio Nacional in 2023. From 2005 to 2015, he was represented by MasterPieces, Inc.

More information and art for sale can be found at fidelgarciagallery.com.

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Compare them to the work Aranda created fifty years ago, and one would think they’re looking at the work of an entirely different artist. Aranda’s work in the 1960s and 1970s was set in desolate grays and earth tones, defined by visceral linework and rugged impasto. Color gradually began to creep back into Aranda’s art in the 1980s, after the Sandinistas overthrew the Somoza family dictatorship, which, for decades, ruled his native Nicaragua with an iron fist. It is as though Aranda has not only found paradise but is painting it. 

Born in Managua in 1945, Aranda showed an early aptitude for art. Between 1957 and 1963, he attended Managua’s School of Fine Arts, where he was mentored by Rodrigo Peñalba, widely considered the father of plastic arts in Nicaragua. Aranda absorbed his mentor’s modernist sensibilities while honing his own distinctive style of still-life painting.

After graduating, Aranda founded the Praxis Gallery Group along with fellow artists Alejandro Aróstequi, César Izquierdo, Genaro Lugo, Leoncio Sáenz, Orlando Sobalvarro, Luis Urbina, and Leonel Vanegas. The artists were bound together by a resistance to the abstractionist and social realist strains dominating Latin American art at the time.  

In 1965, Aranda moved to Washington, D.C., receiving a Ford Scholarship to study at the Corcoran School of Art. Despite leaving Nicaragua, his art continued to confront the brutality of the Somoza regime, the family dictatorship that ruled Nicaragua from 1936 to 1979. During this time, The Washington Post praised his “delicate abstraction” and described a 1992 retrospective of his work at the Fondo del Sol Multicultural Museum as “genius… a powerful show of brooding, semi-abstract images that speak to the human trauma and terror of a nation consumed by revolution for several decades.” 

In the 1980s and 1990s, Aranda continued to incorporate the Indigenous Mesoamerican symbols that had surfaced his earlier work—particularly those of the Maya, his own heritage. He was especially drawn to Quetzalcoatl as a symbol of rebirth and spiritual syncretism, completing three series of paintings on the feathered serpent god between the 1970s and 1990s.

In 1999, Aranda left Washington, D.C., for Southern California. “I was ready for a new direction,” he told ARTnews. In recent decades, his work has moved away from political engagement and towards lush, soft-focus landscapes inspired by his time in California, Arizona, and Florida. Aranda’s work remains in the permanent collections of D.C.-area museums like the National Gallery of Art, the National Museum of American Art, and the Art Museum of the Americas.  

He is now based in Sedona, Arizona, where he lives with his wife, an immigration lawyer serving asylum seekers and families separated at the U.S.-Mexico border and sells his work at dinoarandaartist.com.  

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Together, with SFER IK’s Creative Director Marcello Dantas, Roth has launched The SFER IK Award, a new award for artists to create a work using artificial intelligence. The winning artist will receive $100,000 USD to develop their AI-integrated artwork, as well as a two-month residency with access to on-site resources at AZULIK Uh May—a sprawling creative campus with several workshops, local artisans, and a suite of new digital facilities called FabLab. Art residencies will also be offered to second- and third-prize winners.   

The award is open to international artists from all disciplines to create an AI-integrated work addressing themes of biodiversity, interspecies collaboration, ancestral knowledge, and the harmonious integration of science, technology, and nature. The purpose of the open call is to create an opportunity for artists to generate new and daring artworks that will expand the boundaries of technology and their artistic practices within the natural environment of the Mayan jungle. The winning artwork will ultimately be showcased at SFER IK’s upcoming open-air museum in Tulum, close to the Jardín de la Esperanza (Garden of Hope), an artistic natural space currently under development by artist Cristina Ochoa that will be a sanctuary of biodiversity and ancestral memory. 

ARTnews spoke with Roth to gain insight into the vision behind the award and his hopes for the winning artists.   

Tell us about the new award. Why AI specifically?  

The winning artist’s work will be presented in a new SFER IK Museum, located in the heart of Tulum on 30 acres of jungle and 200 meters from the sea. The work will use artificial intelligence and be inspired by ancient intelligence and nature. 

AI should be understood as “natural,” as the artworks are being created by human hands and minds. Through AI, we encourage artists to explore and interact with nature, considering ways to coexist symbiotically in the jungle.

What do you hope artists will take away from participating in the residency at SFER IK? 

By inviting artists to create their work in the middle of the jungle, we hope they will be inspired and transformed by the environment and have the chance to intervene in the landscape. The artists will have access to AZULIK’s new FabLab and FabMat facilities in the middle of this natural space, where cutting-edge technologies work alongside the trees.

In the jungle, it is crystal clear that everything affects everything. We are all part of the entirety, and solutions are only found when everyone can participate. The jungle can provide great lessons for artists, as it does for all of us who live here.  

Artists can submit proposals until November 17 by visiting sferik.art/award.  

British artist Phyllida Barlow’s immense sculptures and bold drawings will be on view in “Eleven Columns,” a solo exhibition installed on the museum’s ground floor.

For more than 50 years, Barlow took inspiration from her surroundings to create imposing installations that can be at once menacing and playful. She created anti-monumental sculptures from inexpensive, low-grade materials such as cardboard, fabric, plywood, polystyrene, scrim, and cement. These constructions were often painted in industrial or vibrant colours, the seams of their construction left at times visible, revealing the means of their making.

When Barlow passed away in early 2023, she was working closely with MOCA on a site-specific installation for the show. Having visited the building some years earlier, Barlow was taken by its industrial vigor and, in particular, the impressive columns paced throughout the museum’s ground floor. Co-curated by November Paynter and Rui Mateus Amaral, “Eleven Columns” brings together a selection of works that Barlow chose in discussion with the MOCA team. Acknowledging her enthusiasm for the museum’s distinct architecture, the show includes untitled: eleven columns, standing, fallen, broken (2011) and a collection of works on paper.

Canadian artist Liz Magor has produced one of her most significant commissions to date for “The Separation,” her solo exhibition on view on MOCA’s second floor. Magor folds organic and synthetic source materials into lustrous artworks that evoke the melancholy and the absurd. Attentive to the physicality of an object, she casts and organizes found material so that intense narratives of dependency and desire can emerge. At times sarcastic and sympathetic, Magor’s sculptures spark questions about our belief and emotional investment in the material world.

Curated by Rui Mateus Amaral, “The Separation” emphasizes the tensions in Magor’s work, playing rough against refined, flimsy against sturdy, fashionable against passé, and custom-made against mass-produced. Across the museum’s second floor are varying moments of suspense: objects intercepting one another as they slip, tumble, or fall—from physical safety and public favor. Borrowing from the complexity of sculpture, the exhibition invites the viewer to look and relook at their familiar surroundings.

“Dancing in the Light,” on the museum’s third floor, animates the rich tones and textures of contemporary Black life through portraiture. Established by Kenneth Montague in 1997, The Wedge Collection is one of Canada’s largest private collections of visual art that engages with Black identity and African diasporic culture. The exhibitionis part two in MOCA’s ongoing series “The City is a Collection,” which brings some of Toronto’s most engaging private collections to the public.

Featuring the work of 41 artists including Oreka James, Carrie Mae Weems, Jonathan Lyndon Chase, and Lynette Yiadom-Boakye, “Dancing in the Light”examines portraiture across a variety of mediums as a way of entering into a more nuanced consideration of contemporary Black life. Rethinking moments of stillness and vulnerability as instances of strength, the exhibition works against the flattened and commodified image of Blackness so often experienced within art history and popular visual culture. Curated and designed by Farida Abu-Bakare and Kate Wong, “Dancing in the Light”is conceived of as a capacious place for gathering and study, offering visitors comfortable seating and an array of books and music to explore.

MOCA’s site-specific Lightbox commission, located on the museum’s northwest façade, is a work by Isabel Okoro and is part of “Dancing in the Light.”

Visitors can also enjoy artist talks, exhibition tours, Free Friday Nights powered by Scotiabank, children’s workshops on TD Community Sundays, and other public programs.

MOCA Toronto’s fall season exhibitions are on view Sept. 7, 2023, through Feb. 4, 2024. Information is available at moca.ca.

Building on the award winning success of its first art car in 2021, PaykanArtCar, a nonprofit organization, partnered with the renowned Iranian artist Simin Keramati to launch the 2023 edition of its art car in support of the Woman, Life, Freedom Movement.

The Paykan was the first automobile produced in Iran and it is an iconic source of national pride for all Iranians. Despite being no longer in production, the Paykan is a ubiquitous presence to this day on the streets of Tehran and across Iran.

PaykanArtCar enlists talented Iranian artists and the power of art to turn the iconic Paykan into a vehicle in support of human rights in Iran. In 2021, PaykanArtCar partnered with the artist Alireza Shojaian to launch its first art car in support of LGBTQ+ rights in Iran. Shojaian’s gripping depictions of scenes taken from Ferdowsi’s Shahnameh’s epic poem The Book of Kings brought attention to and protested the brutal treatment of the LGBTQ+ community within Iran. The 2021 PaykanArtCar was awarded the Vaclav Havel Prize for Creative Dissent in recognition of its profound effect in support of the LGBTQ+ community.

For PaykanArtCar’s second edition, the organization worked with the renowned multidisciplinary Iranian-Canadian artist, Simin Keramati. Keramati donated her time and talent to create a protest symbol that reflects women around the world cutting their own hair in solidarity with the women of Iran who are forced to cover their hair under a hijab. Keramati’s contribution is visceral and disturbs the conscience. She incorporates cut human hair to fully adorn a 1970 model Paykan for this year’s PaykanArtCar.

Speaking about her work, Keramati remarked that “the presentation of the hair, face, and body of Iranian women has always reflected the patriarchal nature of the government ruling over Iran.”

She added that through her work with PaykanArtCar, which first began in July of 2022, her goal was “to acknowledge the resistance of Iranian women of every background and ethnicity and their fight for their rights.”

The repression of women in Iran is so great that the mere showing of a few strands of hair outside a hijab can result in arrest, imprisonment, torture, and death. Yet, within Iran, there is significant resistance to the government’s imposition of these restrictions. The courageous women of Iran have stood in protest against the theological dictatorship of the Ayatollah.

Women around the world have supported the revolution in Iran. The respected diaspora leader Masih Alinejad, who founded the NGO My Stealthy Freedom in 2014 to fight against the mandatory hijab, has now teamed up with PaykanArtCar to launch its second artwork.

“Following the murder of Mahsa Amini, the Islamic Republic’s systematic and brutal oppression of Iranian women finally began to receive the global attention it deserves. The Iranian women are on the frontlines of fighting the gender apartheid regime in Tehran and global solidarity is very important to support their sacrifice. The global community must act. PaykanArtCar exists to carry the message of resistance to the international community.

PaykanArtCar unveiled Keramati’s work in Oslo, Norway, on June 13, 2023, the first day of the Oslo Freedom Forum.

Céline Assaf-Boustani, President of the Human Rights Foundation, described the PaykanArtCar as a “wonderful and creative way to highlight the Women, Life, Freedom revolution.” Assaf-Boustani noted how “the Iranian people need the support of everyone around the world who have the luxury of living in a democracy.”

Dr. Hiva Feizi, PaykanArtCar’s executive director, was on hand with Keramati and Alinejad to reveal the art car in front of the large crowd. 

Commenting on the project to ARTnews, Feizi said, “Tragically, international attention is increasingly diverted elsewhere, leaving these courageous protestors at the mercy of a regime.” She added that “Through this incredibly impactful new artwork created by Simin Keramati, we want to bring the world’s attention back to where it belongs and play our part in galvanising support for the Woman, Life, Freedom revolution.”

The PaykanArtCar will continue to be featured and exhibited around the world in support of the Woman, Life, Freedom revolution.

Keramati’s work is the latest in a series commissioned by PaykanArtCar LLC, a nonprofit that commissions Iranian artists to use this legendary vehicle as their canvas in support of human rights in Iran.

Former ambassador to the United Nations Mark D. Wallace, the chief executive officer of PaykanArtCar, said: “Regrettably, Simin’s commission and planning foreshadowed the horrific killing of Mahsa Amini and the outrage that ensued over the mandatory hijab laws and repression of Iran’s women. The many strands of hair in Simin’s work mirrors the countless acts of brutality against women in Iran and the women who have cut their hair in solidarity to this oppression. The work is disturbing to the conscience, and it should be. It stands against horrific brutality.”

Visit PaykanArtCar.com for more information.

Follow PaykanArtCar on Instagram.

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The King Abdulaziz Center for World Culture (or Ithra, from the Arabic word for “enrichment”) is accepting proposals for the sixth Ithra Art Prize—titled “Art in the Landscape”—for site-specific outdoor installations and sculptural works which reflect the Arab world’s cultural and natural heritage. Ithra is Saudi Arabia’s premier cultural and creative destination for talent development and cross-cultural experiences. It is a creative and interactive public space for workshops, performances, events and exhibitions.

The winning artist will receive a $100,000 prize and have their work included in the 2024 AlUla Arts Festival. Additionally, Ithra will cover up to $400,000 in production, shipping, insurance, and project management costs to realize the artwork. Artists or collectives are invited to apply if they either hail from or have resided in the following countries for more than 10 years: Algeria, Bahrain, Comoros, Djibouti, Egypt, Iraq, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Libya, Mauritania, Morocco, Oman, Palestine, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, Tunisia, the United Arab Emirates, and Yemen.

This year’s Ithra Art Prize is conferred in partnership with the Royal Commission for AlUla (RCU). The government agency was founded in 2017 to preserve and develop AlUla, a 2,000-year-old archaeological and historical site in northwestern Saudi Arabia renowned for its early Arabic inscriptions. Once at the nexus of major trade and pilgrimage routes, AlUla is fast becoming a hub for culture and the arts, in addition to its designation as a UNESCO world heritage site. Among those attractions is the annual AlUla Arts Festival, which encompasses installations, murals, contemporary art (including a recent Andy Warhol exhibition), workshops, seminars, and more.

A panel composed of Ithra and RCU representatives—as well as artists, curators, academics, and art historians from around the globe—will review proposals and select a winner. To be considered, proposals must include a detailed artwork concept, including information about its medium, dimensions, and structural considerations; a budget; and a production timeline. Eligible projects must fit in the allotted 25-by-30-meter plot provided by the AlUla Arts Festival and cannot exceed a height of five meters or a weight of 500 kilograms per square meter. The artwork must be easily transportable, demonstrate a commitment to prioritizing local industry (across considerations like material, design development, and fabrication), and be able to withstand climatological effects with minimal maintenance (e.g. high temperatures, rain, wind, and erosion). Only new works will be considered; projects with minimal carbon footprints are encouraged.

Launched in 2017, the Ithra Art Prize was initially awarded only to Saudi and Saudi-based contemporary artists. In its fourth year, the prize expanded to include artists from or based in one of the 22 eligible Arab countries.

The winner of the last Ithra Art Prize was the Helsinki-based Iraqi-Finnish artist Adel Abidin, whose winning work, ON, will be unveiled at Ithra on Sept. 13. The wall installation was inspired by varied oral accounts of the Zanj Rebellion, an uprising against the Abbasid Caliphate from 869 to 883. Exploring myriad perspectives about this watershed historical event, ON probes the complex intersection of history, memory, and identity.

The winning project of the sixth annual Ithra Art Prize will debut on Feb. 8, 2024, and be on view for six weeks at the AlUla Arts Festival. Afterwards, the work will join Ithra’s permanent collection.

The submission window closes on Sept. 30, with a winner to be announced on Oct. 19. There is no fee to apply. The application portal, answers to frequently asked questions, and further details can be found here.

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Then again, most artists were not Rita Asfour. The late painter, sculptor, and gallerist blew up the walls separating highbrow and lowbrow, then danced on the rubble.

Born Markrit Thomassian in 1933, Asfour was the child of refugees who had settled in Egypt after the Armenian Genocide. When she was only eight years, Hitler bombed Egypt; to negate the unpleasant images in her mind, Asfour used crayons to paint flowers. This formative traumatic experience inspired her to spend her life creating beautiful art. Asfour received her early art education at the Leonardo da Vinci Italian International School in Cairo, then worked as a commercial illustrator in Beirut for five years. After emigrating to the U.S. in 1965, she found work as a sketch artist for tourists at Universal Studios in Hollywood. Those inverted professional experiences—rendering photorealistic portrayals of glamorous women in everyday settings, then capturing everyday people in a glamorous setting—informed the keen observational eye Asfour would bring to her later impressionist-style work.

Asfour settled in Malibu, where she lived for 30 years. That period was her most prolific, painting seascapes and experimenting with various artistic mediums. Here, she developed her style and became embedded in the Los Angeles art community, opening her own gallery, Galerie Camille, in Beverly Hills in 1970. She attracted a number of celebrity clients who commissioned her to paint portraits of then-President Richard Nixon’s daughter Tricia, singer Ella Fitzgerald, and Los Angeles Times publisher Otis Chandler.

It was in Malibu, too, that Asfour pursued one of the major throughlines of her career: painting ballet students in motion. She was inspired to focus on dancers after seeing Pepperdine University students perform, observing the corps backstage on multiple occasions. Asfour also shadowed toddler-age dancers at Ballet Studio By The Sea, a private dance studio. She was intrigued by the age groups’ divergent approaches to dance: The Pepperdine dancers approached their craft with rigor and acute self-imposed expectations, while the toddlers were genial and unself-conscious. “It was a joy to watch the little marvels give it all they had in a show that sometimes lasted only a few minutes,” Asfour recalled in the exhibition brochure of a 2016 retrospective at the University of Nevada Las Vegas’s College of Fine Arts.

Asfour married aerospace engineer Jeffrey Asfour in Las Vegas in 1965, and had one child, her daughter Amber, in 1973. That first trip to Las Vegas proved hugely formative: Asfour returned to the city on multiple occasions, taking in shows on the strip. Just as she had the ballet dancers in Malibu, Asfour was struck by Vegas showgirls—their physicality, the intricacy and vibrancy of their costumes. This, too, would prove to be a lasting obsession. When she moved to Las Vegas in 2012, Asfour planned to retire from painting. But Jubilee!, a long-running revue at Bally’s Casino—as well as her friendship with a former showgirl who had fallen on hard times after her performing career ended—inspired Asfour to dedicate the final decade of her career to painting showgirls.

Until her death in 2021, Asfour brought the same keen eye and fanciful imagination to her showgirl paintings as she did her ballet series. Though society labeled the former tradition entertainment and the latter art, Asfour recognized that showgirls cultivated a comparable degree of craft, skill, and commitment as ballerinas, all while navigating brazenly voyeuristic and sexist settings. “Their stride and poise defined the word ‘dignity,’” she later wrote. As did Asfour.

This fall, Asfour’s work will be on view—and for sale— at the Reno Tahoe International Art Show (Sept. 14-17).

View more of the collection at RitaAsfour.com.

The biennial Bennett Prize is granted exclusively to women painters, addressing a stark institutional disparity in the field. Per the terms set by the Prize’s co-founders, husband-and-wife art collectors Steven Alan Bennett and Dr. Elaine Melotti Schmidt, any woman artist who paints in a figurative realist style and is pursuing a career as an artist is eligible to apply.

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Of a record number of entrants, ten finalists were selected for the third biennial Bennett Prize: Ruth Dealy, Shiqing Deng, Ronna S. Harris, Haley Hasler, Sara Lee Hughes, Monica Ikegwu, Laura Karetzky, Linda Infante Lyons, Mayumi Nakao, and Kyla Zoe Rafert. “Rising Voices 3,” which runs May 18 – Sept. 10 at the Muskegon Museum of Art in Muskegon, Mich., will exhibit 30 works by these finalists. Concurrently on view will be “The Lessons I Leave You,” the solo show of 2021 Bennett Prize winner Ayana Ross of McDonough, Ga. The work, according to Ross, “will depict the divine in everyday moments.” Following the Muskegon Museum of Art, “Rising Voices 3” will have subsequent tour stops at: the Bo Bartlett Center in Columbus, Ga.; the Arnot Art Museum in Elmira, N.Y.; Studio Incamminati in Philadelphia; the Customs House Museum in greater Nashville, Tenn.; and the Pittsburgh Cultural Trust.

This third cycle is the strongest yet. “It’s been exciting to see the artists in this show working at the boundaries of what representation can be: paintings that hover on the edge of abstraction, that engage with the modern world, and that tell stories from inside communities that have often been excluded from the history of Western painting,” says artist and 2023 Bennett Prize juror Zoey Frank.

Also announced, for the first time ever, was The Dr. Elaine Melotti Schmidt Prize for Achievement in Figurative Realism, which includes $10,000, and was awarded to Ruth Dealy, of Providence, Rhode Island.

Creating an art prize, along with a traveling exhibition featuring women artists, is not an endeavor for the faint of heart. It requires an ability to accept rejection. Though the Prize is backed by a multimillion-dollar endowment at the Pittsburgh Foundation, Bennett recalls that “pretty much nobody was interested in getting behind an art prize for women figurative painters” at the time they first started conceptualizing The Bennett Prize in 2016.

“When we started introducing the concept to museum directors, curators, and other leaders of the art world, the response was yawning indifference. Women hadn’t caught fire yet and figurative realism was still considered square while abstraction, installation art, and video were hip,” he says. “Everyone assumes that figurative realism is the equivalent of photographic realism with figures, but nothing could be further from the truth. We take the view that if it is a figure and a viewer can discern that it’s a figure, that’s sufficiently real to be considered.”

And figurative realism—increasingly deployed by artists to grapple with harrowing events of recent years, from police brutality to the pandemic—has since come roaring back. Schmidt and Bennett, who are among the country’s top collectors of figurative realist art, have found their instincts fully ratified. They have already notched remarkable achievements in the four years since the initiative launched. The 20 artist alums from cycles 1 and 2 have exhibited in 24 solo and 67 group shows, and collectively, they have been the subject of over 50 features in industry publications. Over half have gained gallery representation. The market, too, has validated these artist’s achievements, selling over 100 paintings between them at sales prices which have increased by nearly half.

“We’ve been lucky enough to watch a whole new group of women artists become known and appreciated by a larger art-world audience,” said Bennett.

The Bennett Prize’s “Rising Voices” exhibition will be on view at the Muskegon Museum of Art, May 18–Sept. 10, and will travel the country. Details about The Bennett Prize can be found at thebennettprize.org, and you can learn more about the exhibition at muskegonartmuseum.org.

Interested in becoming a host venue? Visit muskegonartmuseum.org/bennett-prize-prospectus.

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With a vast array of over 100 museums, grand palaces, and fabled cultural institutions, Vienna—the cultural capital of Europe, long famed for its historic beauty—has been at the forefront of progressive out-of-the-box thinking.

In an effort to inspire the next generation of travelers to visit Austria’s beguiling cultural capital, the Vienna Tourist Board has launched a cheeky new marketing campaign called UnArtificial Art and is asking viewers to dig a bit deeper and rediscover some of the city’s most iconic masterpieces. Using artificial intelligence (AI), some of the country’s most celebrated pieces of art have been re-created to include the internet’s beloved domestic pet—cats—in an effort to remind viewers to have a little fun, while also taking a moment to see and appreciate the “art behind the art.”

“The campaign aims to show that AI art is only possible because an algorithm references real works made by real humans, and these originals can often only be seen in Vienna,” Norbert Kettner, CEO of the Vienna Tourist Board, told ARTnews.

In the short film that accompanies the UnArtificial Art campaign, art historian Markus Hübl takes viewers on an existential journey through some of Vienna’s most iconic masterpieces—including Gustav Klimt’s The Kiss and Pieter Bruegel’s The Tower of Babel—all of which have been enhanced using AI technology to encourage viewers to look deeper into the work of some of Austria’s most celebrated painters.

“The Viennese Modernism movement that revolutionized the art world over a century ago continues to live on and affect today’s art through the algorithms that guide AI creations,” Kettner added.

It’s unclear how Klimt—who was famously known for surrounding himself with anywhere from eight to ten pet cats at any given time—would feel about the enhancements to one of his most illustrious and frequently reproduced paintings. But the campaign, which encourages travelers to “see the art behind AI art,” will surely open itself up to interpretation by all who bear witness.

“With so much artificial intelligence invading out lives—particularly with programs like DALL-E or Midjourney, that allow anyone to create ‘works of art’ —Vienna wants to remind visitors who made that all possible in the first place,” Kettner said.

It was thanks to the help of AI technology that Vienna was able to reconstruct some of Klimt’s famous paintings that were burned by Nazis almost 75 years ago, using black-and-white photos to re-create the images from scratch.

Today, the Belvedere Museum continues to not only serve as one of Vienna’s most popular attractions, but has also partnered with Google Arts & Culture to bring some of the world’s most important classical paintings back to life in full color through the use of artificial intelligence. This year, visitors can also celebrate the 300th anniversary of the Belvedere, which houses the world’s largest Klimt collection, including one of his most famous paintings, The Kiss.

Learn more at unartificial.vienna.info.

VOLTA New York launched in March 2008 as a satellite fair of the long-running Armory Show. This year, VOLTA will once again be in alignment with Frieze art fair, presenting galleries from over 18 countries. VOLTA’s focus on cutting-edge contemporary art encompasses several themes—among them, science and nature—from galleries with a wide-ranging international perspective.

Barcelona-based Out of Africa (OOA) Gallery champions work by contemporary African artists. Their presentation will highlight work by Oluwole Omofemi, Matthew Eguavoen, Médéric Turay, and Moses Zibor. These artists, part of a young, dynamic generation of global African diasporans, showcase African pride, tradition, and culture in their practice.

At SEIZAN Gallery (New York/Tokyo), Japanese artist Motohide Takami revisits cultural legacy and collective trauma. The Great Earthquake of 2011 occurred during the artist’s time as a graduate student at Tohoku University of Art in Yamagata. The disaster and its aftermath became a signature trope in his oil paintings. A recurring image of flames by the riverside refers to the Japanese expression “fire on the other side of the river,” meaning something is someone else’s business. This motif underscores human disinterest in tragic events that do not directly impact you, ever pertinent in today’s world.

Venezuelan artist Starsky Brines, presented by the Frankfurt-based Galerie Heike Strelow, explores identity through personal biographical iconography. His anthropomorphic characters are influenced by his

domestic life with his mother, who crafted colorful puppets for Caribbean carnivals. He pairs this visual language with an art historical knowledge of Latin American figurative art, German Neo-Expressionism, the Italian Transavantgarde, and the CoBrA group to create paintings that oscillate between abstract and figurative.

Korean artist Vlad Ogay is inspired by his time spent studying theater in Russia. His “readymade” practice involves collaging together objects and artifacts from everyday life. His works will be presented at VOLTA by the Latvian gallery CUT ART.  A multi-disciplinary artist, Ogay has received prestigious awards in Venice and Cannes for his film projects and is preparing for his first solo show, to be curated by Gianluca Marziani (a consulting curator of the 2011 Venice Biennale and Banksy’s biographer).

Meanwhile, LAMINAProject present a series of collage-based works by New York artist Jody Rasch that explore radio astronomy, a sub-genre of astronomy specializing in celestial objects at radio frequencies.

Artist Natalie Collette Wood has a different take on the organic in her elusive assemblages and layered paintings of fantastical forms. The artist’s work will be presented by Vellum Projects. Among works by five artists exploring topics of mythology, popular culture, environmental activism, and conservation, Wood’s pieces are a particular highlight.

The origin of the name of VOLTA denotes a turn of thought or an inflection point. The fair distinguishes itself in the marketplace with its commitment to creating an environment of discovery for art collectors, with this intention precisely guiding its curation. VOLTA serves as the platform for ambitious international galleries to enter the global art markets of New York and Basel. In turn, the fair offers both burgeoning and established collectors a place to discover the art of now, to grow their collection, and ultimately to connect with and support new talent.

Beyond stand-out group presentations, 14 galleries will feature solo exhibitions at the fair. Among these highlights are: the South Korean Gallery Bhak presenting work by artist Yissho, (AV17) Gallery presenting sculptures by Lithuanian artist Mindaugas Junčys, Catalysta Gallery presenting artworks by Dominican artist Manuel Mera, and Stone Step Gallery presenting Irish artist Paul Hughes.

United by the healing power of creativity, VOLTA New York will collaborate with non-profit partner Fashion Fights Cancer to host an art auction and fashion fundraising event on Thursday, May 18, from 6 to 9 PM, co-hosted by New York Fashion Week’s Fern Mallis and Gary Wassner, CEO of Hilldun Corporation.

The full exhibitor list is available at this link. VOLTA New York is on view May 17-21 at the Metropolitan Pavilion in Chelsea.

VOLTA New York is followed by VOLTA Basel (June 12-18) at Klybeck 610, Basel, Switzerland.

Follow @voltaartfairs for updates.