5 Reviews: Rule-Breaking Processes and Unusual Mediums

If you read my last essay, I mentioned I was sitting on a “treasure trove” of reviews for a number of shows, some of which are recent and others not as recent. Rather than write one review at a time, it was better to “curate” them under a header themed around art made with unconventional processes or created through a subversion of how a particular medium or space is traditionally treated. 3 out of the 5 short (shortish) reviews here are art exhibitions, 1 can be classified as art & design, and another is a play:

Note: Some more already passed reviews to come — too much art to see / have seen, too little time!

1. Richard Humann: Tomorrow I’ll Miss You - Curated by Elga Wimmer at Leonovich Gallery, Chelsea (November 6 - December 20, 2025)

   

   Richard Humann with one of his bone discs during the opening reception at Leonovich Gallery, Chelsea on November 6, 2025.

   Greenpoint-based Neo-Conceptualist Richard Humann tapped into the visual and auditory senses with a new series quite unlike anything one expects to find in a gallery: fully functioning music discs imprinted onto x-rays. Humann’s series was inspired by a practice adopted during the 1950s and early-1960s in the Soviet Union when Western music was smuggled across the Iron Curtain via recycled x-ray films converted into music records; this practice has been referred to as bone music, music on bones, and jazz on bones because of the visual presence of x-ray scans along the surface of the record - I imagine a somewhat surreal encounter given the juxtaposition of eerie skeletal muscles while the feel-good tunes of Elvis Presley or any other early rock n’ roll musician is played.

   

   Richard Humann, Dead Horse Bay, Original music pressed into polycarbonate flexi discs, ink on paper, steel, 7.5 x 7.5 in each, 2025.

   Working within this lineage of underground music distribution, Humann sourced one hundred x-rays containing the skeletal images of legs, mouths, necks, arms, and heads. Like your average x-ray, the anatomical structures of these parts of the body are captured as a ghostly white transparency caught in a sea of pitch black. These were subsequently transferred onto archival film that was then mounted onto the backs of polycarbonate flex discs. Humann wrote lyrics for six original songs that were then pressed onto the completed x-ray discs.

   Taking on the combined artist-composer role, Humann drafted elaborate music prompts into an AI system that went into rigorous detail on the precise sound, mood, vibe, instruments, and so forth that needed to comport with the genre of the given song; altogether, 66 variations were produced for the 6 songs. When it comes to AI, I am usually on the offensive, but then again, it is a tool that is here to stay and the ways in which creatives harness and domesticate it will ultimately determine how closely the humanness (no pun intended) is retained. In Humann’s case, his authorship feels completely intact given his concentrated focus in specifying each and every nuance required for the songs to fulfill his purpose instead of slavish generational prompts plugged into AI.

   

   Richard Humann, Turntable, Video with sound, Variable dimension, 2025.

   Seeing these disembodied x-rays arranged in linear fashion along the spacious walls of Leonovich Gallery along with the printed lyrics of their songs triggered a profound truth that is sometimes taken for granted about music (and the arts more broadly): human expression is a profoundly physical phenomenon. X-rays are visual representations of the inner mechanisms of the body - to show what is working and what is not working. A healthy throat and mouth is what enables the breath and voice of a singer to come forth, the passageway for sound to go from idea to execution. Or take a perfectly formed arm that can be used to play an instrument, write music, or dance to a beat.

   

   Richard Humann, Life Ain’t Funny (When You Wake Up Dead), Original music pressed into polycarbonate flexi discs, ink on paper, steel, 7.5 x 7.5 in each, 2025.

   Humann’s bone discs call attention to the body as an arbiter for how music expression manifests. Thinking about it more politically, agency over one’s own body is a declaratory statement for the opportunity to pursue just about anything. Returning for a moment to the original bone music of last century, this clandestine effort to smuggle music was to make accessible what was deemed illegal. Living in what I call “The United States of No Free Lunches”, our country has been no different from any other totalitarian country of yesteryear and has only worsened. Humann’s x-rays and custom-made music is an intellectually sophisticated and highly effective pondering of how creative expression and access can be achieved when living under oppressive conditions. It goes to show that seemingly banal objects like an x-ray taken from a routine, bi-annual visit to the dentist can become a vehicle for subversive creativity if one knows how to think economically and resourcefully.

Note: Here is a link to Richard’s website about this show, which includes hyperlinks to the individual songs:

https://www.richardhumann.com/works/tomorrow-ill-miss-you

2. Leslie Smith III: Gentle Thoughts at Chart Gallery, Tribeca (October 31 - December 20, 2025)

   

   Leslie Smith III, Ancestral Meeting, 2025, oil on shaped canvas and sewn upholstery fabric. 36 x 45 1/2 inches / 91.4 x 115.6 cm. Image courtesy of the gallery.

   Painting about painting is one of the most beautiful sub-themes in art. This is the painter’s love letter to their work, a self-referential expression that explains why they paint (or even, “Why painting?”). Leslie Smith III’s latest works were exhibited in his second solo exhibition with Chart Gallery. Compositionally, they are amorphously shaped canvases marked with painterly gestures enlivening the surface in partnership with - for some of the works - cut sections fitted with fabrics, textiles, and other sewn materials recalling the creative possibilities one can achieve through the color and texture of paint.

   

   FOR REFERENCE: Henri Matisse (French, 1869 - 1954), Dance, 1910, oil on canvas. 102.4 x 153.9 inches. The Hermitage, St. Petersburg, Russia.

   A first impression of these paintings may suggest they are purely abstract, perhaps for some, but not uniformly. The more horizontal paintings are described in the press release as channeling landscapes or other natural formations, but what seems even more explicit here is their formal similarity to the painter’s palette. Ancestral Meetings (2025) is a great example of this image association seen in the five-sections filled with jigsaw-like fragments of either painted or sewn-covered canvas parts that conjure up the splotches of paint an artist dips their brush into as they work. Additionally, the nocturnal blues and hot oranges arranged in an implied circular fashion is such a clever nod to one of the greatest artists who exemplifies the notion of a painter’s painter: Henri Matisse, specifically the Fauvist exuberance of his Dance (1910), seen above for reference.

   

   Leslie Smith III, Too Many Moons, 2025, oil on shaped canvas. 45 1/2 x 36 inches / 115.6 x 91.4 cm. Image courtesy of the gallery.

   Too Many Moons (2025) is vertical, yet still maintains that painter’s palette shapeliness seen in the four islands of blue that mark the canvas. Focused looking yields another moment of possible artistic decoding: Pablo Picasso’s The Old Guitarist (1903 - 1904), seen below for reference. The arched pale blue on the top mimics the crooked turn of Picasso’s street musician while the matching shades of darker sea blue could be the hands and the bottom dark patch is the crease of his pants that fold into a darkened, nearly black shade. The empty space in between these parts is a somber blue that continues onto the rest of the canvas, a potential recollection of Picasso’s Blue Period.

   

   FOR REFERENCE: Pablo Picasso (Spanish, 1881 - 1973), The Old Guitarist, 1903 - 1904, oil on panel. 48.4 x 32.5 inches. Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, Illinois.

   Smith’s paintings may or may not all necessarily be allusions to other paintings or styles, but what is definitive is that they exhibit an inherent passion for painting and its unlimited potential. He vies for the gestural thrusts of the more maximalists of the AbEx painters while still being just as respectful of and open to the possibilities of the void or negative space as its own actor. The fabric elements are integrated so wondrously that they - until seen closely - echo the expressiveness of paint but also coexist harmoniously with it, neither competes for the other’s viability, they simply just are there together waiting for the eyes of viewers to lay upon them.

   

   Leslie Smith III, Under the Skin of Light, 2025, oil on shaped canvas. 45 1/2 x 36 inches / 115.6 x 91.4 cm. Image courtesy of the gallery.

   Slightly more personal note: I write this review both in praise of the show and in celebration of recently finding out that a painter whose work I admire, Lauren Krasnoff, will soon be relocating from Jersey City, New Jersey to pursue graduate studies in the University of Wisconsin, Madison where Leslie Smith III teaches!

3. Matt Byrd: Found Time at Zarolat, DUMBO, Brooklyn (October 24, 2025 - February 28, 2026)

   

   Installation view of Matt Byrd: Found Time at Zarolat, DUMBO, Brooklyn. Image courtesy of Zarolat.

   Stone masonry is one of the oldest forms of sculptural craftsmanship extending back thousands of years. What distinguishes this type of sculpture from other processes is that it entails a methodical design of shaping, fitting, and arranging stones together. The end results could be artistic in intent, but they could just as easily be toward architectural and design functions. Zarolat is an architecture studio and design collective in DUMBO who regularly collaborate with designers and artists in their year-round programming, which clearly demonstrates that the fields of Art and Architecture are afforded an equal level of recognition. Found Time was a solo exhibition of 13 freestanding and wall-mounted sculptures made from stone, wood, and clay by Matt Byrd, a sculptor based in Raleigh, North Carolina.

   

   Matt Byrd, Dark Stone Experiment 02, 2025, salvaged stone. 18 x 13 x 15 inches. Image courtesy of Zarolat.

   Collectively, Byrd’s 13 sculptures exude personality with their delightfully eccentric configurations. Dark Stone Experiment 02 (2025) is a great contrast between rugged texturality and cool-to-the-touch smoothness, a surface contrast evident respectively on the sides and tops of the salvaged stone. Within this predominantly rectilinear work, a perfectly rounded black sphere has been carved from the rock and rests along one of its layers. The sphere may look as though it could roll off, but rest assured, it is permanently attached to the sculpture - the part connected to its whole.

   

   Matt Byrd, Nasher Floor, 2025, bluestone, walnut. 25.5 x 3 x 38.5 inches. Image courtesy of Zarolat.

   Similar to that spherical detail, one of the awe-inspiring characteristics of Byrd’s sculptures that makes them so visually appealing is the gravity defying element he infuses into their designs. The wall-mounted sculptures are basically individual stone parts that have been strategically fitted into their wooden boxed frames that hang along the wall like a painting. One could compare this technique to the way a jigsaw puzzle is put together with its interlocking pieces. An even more appropriate connection to make here is that Byrd’s system is very much in line with how Ancient Romans constructed arches and vaults in buildings with voussoirs, wedge-shaped stones whose bevelled edges enabled each part to structurally support one another when properly aligned. Byrd, too, succeeds in this regard which has allowed his weighty stones to stay perfectly in place with minimal intervention by any manmade, artificial supports.

   

   Matt Byrd, Jughead, 2025, Japanese clay. 5 x 7 x 7 inches. Image courtesy of Zarolat.

   Humor also has its place in the more figurative works that contain representations of the human face. Jughead (2025) is a charming Japanese clay-designed vase whose body features a genderless face with its cheeks puffed up and prepared to blow air. Seeing this jug with its buttery yellow body and a few flowers displayed would most certainly be at home in a beautifully landscaped garden or tessellated grotto.

   Stonemasonry has not yet been given widespread recognition on the institutional level. However, a space like Zarolat makes for an effective mediator in its unifying mission of showcasing the inherent synchronicities that exist between the fields of Art and Architecture & Design rather than treating them as separate entities. Matt Byrd’s sculptures are an extremely potent example of how one can really level the playing field between Art and Design by creating works that can appeal to audiences of each camp.

4. An Ark at The Shed, Hudson Yards (January 9 - April 4, 2026)

   

   An Ark, presented by The Shed and Tin Drum, January 9 – April 4, 2026, The Shed, New York. Photo: Marc J. Franklin.

   Technology continues to weave its way into the arts sector, which has been a proving ground (or battleground for some) in how different forms of creativity adapt to new and transforming media. Theater is no exception to these sea changes. The Shed in Hudson Yards is a leading space for expanded cultural experiences with much of that success derived from its active performing arts programs that fulfill the institution’s commitment to “leave you speechless, make you feel what you weren’t expecting, and inspire discussion.” An Ark was a theatrical performance that deliberately and unapologetically broke the rules of the theater - the actors were not present and there was no stage.

   

   The cast of An Ark in rehearsal: from left, Rosie Sheehy, Arinzé Kene, Ian McKellen, and Golda Rosheuvel. Photo: Tin Drum

   Instead of the front-facing seating arrangement of theatergoers before a traditional proscenium stage, individuals were seated in a circular arrangement before an empty center topped by a planetary light whilst wearing headsets. The headsets then revealed four characters seated directly in front of the viewer in holographic form. The actors - Sir Ian McKellen, Golda Rosheuvel, Arinzé Kene, and Rosie Sheehy - were not literally in the space, but it sure felt like they were based on the crispness of their bodies, the intimate distance from which they sat, and their frequent eye contact and verbal acknowledgement of the viewer. The entire performance is a conversational rumination on the journey of life and the human condition from the moment of birth all the way through natural death. Touching anecdotes, humorous foibles, and tragic events punctuate at varying intervals, unpredictable as to where these will lead or when they will occur, but aptly commensurate with the non-formulaic progression of how life unfolds. The roughly 45-minute run of the performance felt timeless given how absorbed one finds themselves in the realistic and relatable performances of its accomplished thespians.

   I had the great privilege of meeting An Ark’s producer, Todd Eckert, a name which immediately struck me as familiar as he was the same person who co-produced Anton Corbijn’s 2007 film Control, a biopic on Ian Curtis of the late-1970s / very early-1980s English New Wave, Post-Punk band Joy Division (one of my all-time favorites). Our first meeting, which occurred immediately after my viewing of the performance, became a conversation dominated by our shared music tastes and behind the scenes details about the making of the Ian Curtis biopic. A few weeks later, we spoke over the phone where I learned about Eckert’s interest in pursuing an alternative theatrical production reflective of the “relatively nebulous” nature behind what “theater” conveys and how he and his collaborators hoped to produce an original form of experiential storytelling and receivership that is not replacing traditional theater, but is simply adding a new branch to how it can be appreciated. This form of storytelling is known as “mixed reality” with its simulated, pre-recorded performances that are summoned into the space in such a way as to not only hook in the viewer, but to render their role from passive observer to a silent yet active role in the performance.

   In addition to Eckert’s production role, An Ark was directed by Sarah Frankcom and written by Simon Stephens and is slated for future performances in other cities, to which New York was the site of its worldwide debut.

5. Studio Visit: A Project by Josh Kline and Anicka Yi at Hauser & Wirth, SoHo (February 27 - April 11, 2026)

   

   Installation view, Studio Visit at Hauser & Wirth New York, Wooster Street 27 February– 11 April 2026. Courtesy Hauser & Wirth. Photo: Sarah Muehlbauer

   Surprise is always a rewarding reaction to a high-quality exhibition, and one of the ways this can manifest is if the show is something that seems counter to the space’s usual lineup of programming. If I had been shanghaied off the street, blindfolded, and then dropped off in this exhibition, I would be in total disbelief that it was Hauser & Wirth’s SoHo location, or really any blue-chip gallery for that matter. Studio Visit was an artist-driven curatorial project spearheaded by the artists Anicka Yi and Josh Kline (much buzz on the latter for his recent essay “New York Real Estate and the Ruin of American Art” published in October journal) who devised an expansive, labyrinthine network of simulated artist studios interconnected across the gallery as inspired by those of later Modernists and recent Contemporary artists, which include Jean-Michel Basquiat, Huma Bhabha, Wolfgang Tillmans, Monira Al Qadiri, Paul McCarthy, Carolyn Lazard, American Artist (who was recently awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship), et al.

   

   Installation view, Studio Visit, at Hauser & Wirth New York, Wooster Street, 27 February - 11 April 2026. Courtesy Hauser & Wirth. Photo: Sarah Muehlbauer.

   Viewers have the freedom to perambulate the space at their own leisure and in whichever direction they so choose for these “studios” are interwoven in a maze-like configuration. Blown-up, true-to-scale photographic images of the studio spaces adorn the walls - the grittiness of a painter-squatter’s loft; the illusory perspectival view down a row of cubicle studios redolent of the facilities at School of Visual Arts BFA or MFA programs; or the white-walled, faux-white cube space of the studio-bedroom dynamic, among other examples. The actual artworks by the artists connected to each of these spaces are displayed along the surface of the simulated studio spaces or on plinths edged closely to the walls.

   I regret reading the press release because one aspect of the show that now feels demystified is the reality that those simulated views or “photos” of the studio spaces are AI-generated products based on written accounts by the participating artists who described what their work environments looked like during the early phases of their careers. I get that a number of the artists in this show are conceptualists who may not be the best choices for producing a two-dimensional recreation of their former studio spaces, but Yi and Kline seriously could not get a painter or photographer to conjure up an image of a studio? A meticulously staged photograph would be a more authentic and artful image than that of AI-generated content. The thought of an artistic representation of a studio exhibited alongside artworks made in that space would have been such a brilliant meta-commentary, but alas, that was a sorely missed opportunity.

   

   Alicia Riccio, Hard Copy (Cruise, no. 54, ch. 3), 2025, double sided inkjet prints, pen, marker on rice paper. 24.1 x 33 cm / 9 1/2 x 13 inches. Image courtesy of the gallery. © Alicia Riccio

   Pretending for a moment that AI had no presence in this exhibition, the timing of this show felt appropriate considering cost of living is a huge issue for so many artists who are scraping away, trying to make a living while maintaining an active practice, all the while paying for the equivalent of two types of rent for both their apartment AND studio (if the two are separate). But looking at it from a more optimistic perspective, Studio Visit calls to attention the integral role the artist studio occupies within the arts ecosystem. As Yi and Kline make explicitly clear in their curation of Studio Visit, the artist studio is the site where curators discover a viable candidate for a future exhibition, where gallerists and collectors spot rising talent, where arts writers discover what change is afoot in Contemporary Art, and where the art lover forges meaningful connections with works by artists that stir their emotions.