In Love Letters, Hilary Pecis captures the mundane moments and under-appreciated views of daily life. The Los Angeles-based artist presents a suite of new acrylic paintings in her signature saturated style, focusing on snippets of a backyard pool, the corner of a studio worktop, and a friendly picnic complete with a radiant strawberry cake.

Pecis prefers to work from photos and translates singular moments onto linen. Utilizing a uniform opacity in her paints, she incorporates both comparable and exaggerated colors and affords particular attention to texture and pattern. Frilly fronds on a plant, light radiating off the water’s surface, and the rough texture of a woven tablecloth each evidence the artist’s meticulous process.

Love Letters opens at David Kordansky Gallery in Los Angeles on May 16 and runs through June 20. Until then, explore more of Pecis’ work on Instagram.

Do stories and artists like this matter to you? Become a Colossal Member today and support independent arts publishing for as little as $7 per month. The article Hilary Pecis Paints Saturated Snapshots of West Coast Life appeared first on Colossal.

Despite its name, the Canadian Tuxedo is a distinctly American look. The denim-on-denim getup dates back to the 1950s, when Bing Crosby sported a full Levi’s ensemble while in Vancouver, setting a sartorial trend that continues today.

The national mythology woven into this utilitarian material is also the focus of Brooklyn-based Nick Doyle, who layers denim atop denim into large wall sculptures. From a pair of aviators reflecting puffy clouds to a vast Rocky Mountain landscape framed by brick, the works evoke a sort of nostalgic road trip west, as if chasing a big break, and ultimately, realizing the American dream.

For Doyle, denim is a poignant, loaded metaphor for much of American culture and history. The material has roots in chattel slavery, when people enslaved in the South were dyeing cotton with indigo. There’s also its association with the brusque masculinity of James Dean and cowboy ruggedness, itself an extension of the gold rush and Manifest Destiny. The fabric, in many ways, is a stand-in for the contradictions, hypocrisies, and unreachable desires so bound up in American life.

While researching the visual language of Americana in 2018, Doyle came upon a roll of denim discarded by a fashion designer moving out of his building. “At the time, I had no money, so I was making work out of material I found in the garbage or at my local hardware store,” he shares. “As I was pulling [the roll] out of the trash, I noticed a network of ideas connecting in my brain… I felt the material reflected the historical complexities I was seeing in my research, as well as being reflected in my own familial history.”

This encounter was one of those providential moments that set off an enduring fascination. In his solo exhibition Collective Hallucinations, on view at Perrotin, Doyle presents the latest of his denim sculptures, including stylized cacti, landscapes cordoned off by chainlink fences, and more mystical objects like tarot cards and a life-sized fortune teller’s shop.

The show contains myriad symbols of American exceptionalism and individualism, presented in the heritage fabric of the nation. Doyle shares:

Over the last few years, my conception of American mythology has only become more complex… I think in a lot of ways what we’re experiencing now is a breakdown of these mythologies. They are in direct conflict with the current political reality, yet they are summoned as if it is business as usual. The world’s image of America has changed, but our country’s nostalgia for itself is making us late to the party. There’s tragedy in vanity.

Collective Hallucinations presents these unrealized dreams and confrontations in varying shades of blue, rendering what appears to be individual moments as simply different washes of the same story.

In addition to his practice, Doyle will soon open a kink bar called Human Resources and is working toward a fall exhibition of paper collages and prints at Pace. If you’re in New York, Collective Hallucinations runs through May 30. Otherwise, find more on Instagram.

Do stories and artists like this matter to you? Become a Colossal Member today and support independent arts publishing for as little as $7 per month. The article Collaged Denim Sculptures by Nick Doyle Unravel American Mythology appeared first on Colossal.

Known for his stunning photos of wildlife and landscapes, as well as co-founding SeaLegacy alongside fellow conservationist and photographer Cristina Mittermeier, Paul Nicklen has traveled the globe to not only highlight our planet’s phenomenal biodiversity but also to shed light on its increasing vulnerabilities due to the ongoing climate crisis.

Nicklen’s most ambitious project yet gathers myriad images from a career exploring the corners of the earth for more than three decades. Forthcoming from Hemeria, Reverence marks the most comprehensive collection of his work to date. The book features 160 photographs, including some of Nicklen’s most enduring images alongside others previously unpublished.

From the root-like system of the Colorado River delta to narwhals feeding on cod in the Arctic Bay off Baffin Island, Nicklen’s photos illuminate the vast and resilient beauty of the natural world. “Reverence is what we feel in the silent presence of a whale beneath the ice, in the fierce gaze of a polar bear, in the timeless dance of ocean and light,” says a statement. “It is what the natural world evokes when we stop long enough to truly see it.”

Reverence is slated for release on July 28, which is also World Conservation Day, and pre-orders are open now.

Do stories and artists like this matter to you? Become a Colossal Member today and support independent arts publishing for as little as $7 per month. The article In ‘Reverence,’ Three Decades of Paul Nicklen’s Remarkable Photographs Exalt Nature appeared first on Colossal.

Organized by Capture the Atlas, the 2026 Milky Way Photographer of the Year saw a record number of submissions, with more than 6,500 entries representing a wide range of landscapes and perspectives around the world. Just 25 were selected as the top images, representing 12 different regions from the Canary Islands to New Zealand to Argentina.

“Every year, this collection reminds us that photographing the Milky Way is not only about technique or planning. It is about curiosity, patience, and the desire to experience the night sky in places where it still feels wild,” says Dan Zafra, editor of Capture the Atlas and curator of the annual contest. “Many of these skies are becoming increasingly rare, and we hope these images inspire people not only to admire them, but also to value and protect them.”

Do stories and artists like this matter to you? Become a Colossal Member today and support independent arts publishing for as little as $7 per month. The article Explore 25 Incredible Photos of the Milky Way Captured Around the World appeared first on Colossal.

“The world hums with beauty and danger, harmony and discord,” says Jake Messing. “We walk through these shifting currents every day. For as long as I can remember, I have turned toward the natural world—studying its patterns, its relationships, its quiet lessons.”

In highly detailed, hyperrealistic paintings, the Northern California-based artist explores nature as a reflection of our inner lives. Abundance and beauty are sometimes confronted with tension and discomfort, and through nature, “I question the fears and unspoken rules that shape us,” Messing says.

Working in acrylic on canvas, the artist composes otherworldly vignettes of flora and fauna, often uniting creatures and plants in situations we’d be unlikely to encounter in the real world. Yet these dense, maximal clusters of succulents, insects, blossoms, birds, and other creatures summon what Messing describes as both “chaos and grace” in a vibrant meditation on ecosystems, interdependency, and biodiversity.

In an art historical sense, these works certainly nod to the meticulously detailed Dutch Golden Age oil paintings of the likes of Rachel Ruysch and Jan Brueghel the Elder, which were also typically set against deep backgrounds. Employing a bit of memento mori—a reminder of the inevitability of death—these often incorporated wilting petals and other nods to decay.

Messing taps into this tradition, yet he emphasizes full-blooded vivacity. Every floret and frond is bursting with life, while the occasional playful color gradient, bubbles, or shiny fabric place these compositions firmly in our time. “Through my work, I seek to bring the outside in, to honor the wildness that surrounds us, and to reveal the beauty and danger, the decay and renewal, that bind our outer and inner worlds together,” he says.

See more on the artist’s Instagram.

Do stories and artists like this matter to you? Become a Colossal Member today and support independent arts publishing for as little as $7 per month. The article Jake Messing’s Hyperrealistic Paintings Celebrate the Abundance of Nature appeared first on Colossal.

For the better part of two decades, Irina Werning has traveled throughout Latin America searching for a specific trait: incredibly long hair. In her photography series Las Pelilargas—meaning “the long-haired ones” in Spanish—she chronicles a time-honored Indigenous tradition through a visual celebration of patience, joy, and cultural pride.

In a statement, Werning shares that when she asks young women in the many small towns she’s visited why they have long hair, they respond with simple reasons akin to, “Because I like it.” But, Werning adds, “The true reason is invisible and passes from generation to generation. It’s the culture of Latin America, where our ancestors believed that cutting hair was cutting life, that hair is the physical manifestation of our thoughts and our souls and our connection to the land.”

Nearly 90 images are included in Werning’s new book, Las Pelilargas, published by GOST Books. The photos span 18 years, starting with the artist’s first encounter with long-haired women in 2006 in Argentina, when she was photographing members of the Indigenous Kolla community.

“Guided by her intuition, she went on to spend months in remote mountain towns putting up signs in schools, hospitals, and markets, and organising hair competitions in an effort to seek out those with long hair,” GOST says. Werning continued to make the portraits until 2024. “She found that traditions were not just surviving, but evolving with long hair symbolising both continuity and subtle rebellion.”

Find your copy on Bookshop. You might also enjoy Celia D. Luna’s series, Cholitas Bravas.

Do stories and artists like this matter to you? Become a Colossal Member today and support independent arts publishing for as little as $7 per month. The article Irina Werning Chronicles 18 Years of Photographing ‘Las Pelilargas’ in a New Book appeared first on Colossal.

A visit to Lincoln Park or the Garfield Park Conservatory is one of the outings Chicagoans rarely pass up, particularly when we need some reprieve from all the concrete and steel. Two beloved green spaces in the city, these spots boast oases blanketed in verdant foliage even in the depths of winter and house an array of specimens not native to the Midwest.

For artists Merryn Omotayo Alaka and Sam Frésquez, the immersive nature of a conservancy, with plants above and below and all around, became a central point for a collaborative project. Your Birth is My Birth presents the duo’s synthetic hair sculptures, which suspend from the ceiling of Jane Lombard Gallery and splay across the wooden floor like organic growths. Alaka and Frésquez describe the exhibition as a sort of “Kanekalon forest,” referring to the brand behind the luscious material.

Five different “species” emerge in the space, including Listening Roots, Hearing Bells, Mother & Child, Stacking Pearls, and Umbra Pods. Dark, dyed locks and domed shapes are throughlines, although each takes on a distinctive form. The series are influenced by epiphytes, non-parasitic plants that make their homes on a host specimen. Think orchids, cacti, moss, and kelp.

Surging upward from lily pad-shaped discs suctioned to the floorboards, the largest sculpture is part of Listening Roots, which tethers singular shoots to a central form. This connection between smaller pieces—like the feather-duster-shaped Stacking Pearls—and more comprehensive structures recurs throughout the exhibition, gesturing toward an intimate and intentional symbiosis.

Several works also reference genetics and what’s passed down through generations, as mirrored forms emerge within the same vertical tendril. “Similar to an epiphyte and its host tree, these sculptural works have their own life cycles evoking systems of dependence and exchange, where one form sustains from another,” says a statement.

Your Birth is My Birth is on view through June 13. Explore more from Alaka and Frésquez on Instagram.

Do stories and artists like this matter to you? Become a Colossal Member today and support independent arts publishing for as little as $7 per month. The article Luscious Hair Sculptures Sprout Like Branches in a Symbiotic Exhibition appeared first on Colossal.

“To me, being a visual activist means I only illustrate stories that resonate with me deeply, by giving voice to minorities or social situations that need to be addressed,” says Fatinha Ramos. “It is the only way I can truly connect with others.”

Based in Antwerp, the Portuguese artist and illustrator is well-known for blending analog and digital techniques to create rich, emotive compositions. Collaborating with clients like The New York Times, The Washington Post, Tate, and Scientific American, among many others, Ramos has cultivated a keen eye for storytelling through her distinctive visual language.

Recent partnerships include the Anne Frank Museum and MoMA, the latter of which commissioned the artist to illustrate an essay on her experience being compared to Frida Kahlo. Ramos was born with osteogenesis imperfecta, commonly called brittle bone disease, which spurred a childhood spent in and out of hospitals. Drawing and art-making quickly became a preferred pastime, allowing her to transport herself from such clinical settings.

This adolescent hobby stuck, and Ramos worked as an art director in advertising and publishing for 12 years before venturing out on her own. Boasting an impressive list of clients and collaborators, she considers her practice to be an antidote to stereotypical narratives, whether related to the climate crisis, sexism, racism, or the dire lack of empathy that seems rampant in today’s world.

“I want to move away from the narrative that turns artists with disabilities into symbols of resilience,” she tells MoMA. “Creativity does not happen despite limitations but through them. Art should broaden how we see the world—and that includes how we see bodies, too.”

At the moment, Ramos is only accepting select illustration clients as she focuses on her fine art practice, including a series of anatomical glass sculptures based on brittle bone disease. You can explore more of her practice on her website and Instagram.

Do stories and artists like this matter to you? Become a Colossal Member today and support independent arts publishing for as little as $7 per month. The article How Fatinha Ramos Channels ‘Visual Activism’ in Her Richly Layered Illustrations appeared first on Colossal.

When it comes to photo dumps, NASA has upped the ante. The organization has added thousands of snapshots from the Artemis II mission to the Gateway to Astronaut Photography of Earth archive. The album now holds 12,217 images by cosmic travelers Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover, Christina Koch, and Jeremy Hansen during their more than 250,000-mile, 10-day flyby mission around the moon.

According to PetaPixel, a couple of Nikons and an iPhone 17 were the cameras of choice for the journey. And even though many of the thousands of recently uploaded images are very similar—some are even quite blurry—scrolling through them gives the impression of being seated right next to the “Moonfarers” as they marvel at Earth and its satellite and simply can’t put the camera down—just like we tend to snap way too many photos of a beautiful sunset.

Some of the most impactful photos include the reflections of the astronauts’ hands and faces in the window of their vehicle, the Orion module. Juxtaposed with meticulously engineered equipment, the earth and moon seem somehow less abstracted from this unique vantage point, in which these orbs appear somehow more resonant and precious—and vulnerable.

Explore more of our favorites below, and learn about the Artemis II mission on NASA’s site.

Do stories and artists like this matter to you? Become a Colossal Member today and support independent arts publishing for as little as $7 per month. The article NASA Just Dropped More Than 12,000 Photos from the Artemis II Mission appeared first on Colossal.

Humor and happenstance take the front seat in Polish photographer Janusz Jurek’s wry images. Working as a graphic designer and commercial photographer by day, he finds the greatest creative freedom in the candid and incidental—the things he notices as he moves about town, travels, and attends festivals and other events. These are the places where he observes some of the most unique individuals and the quirkiest coincidences. “The less commercial and more bizarre, the better—people are more authentic then, less in control of what they’re doing,” he tells Colossal.

Jurek is drawn to situations that happen outside of the mainstream, often turning his back on whatever the present attraction is in order to observe what’s happening all around him. He focuses on “the people, their reactions, small gestures, and strange coincidences. This is where moments that are truly surprising often appear,” he says.

As Jurek has learned over time, some of the best images happen right at home. The crux of the process is all about noticing what’s going on, not where it happens. And beauty is never the objective. “I don’t care about the photos being pretty,” he says. “Quite the opposite—for me, street photography is the antithesis of all the technical perfection and imperfection that’s everywhere on the internet these days.” Instead, he’s fascinated by the ability to raise questions and provoke reactions in the viewer, from curiosity to amusement to slight discomfort.

Jurek is working toward the release of a collection of photos titled Look, Before It’s Gone, chronicling his street photography over a period of five years. See more on Behance, and follow updates on Instagram. You might also enjoy the work of Eric Kogan and perusing top images in the Pure Street Photography Awards.

Do stories and artists like this matter to you? Become a Colossal Member today and support independent arts publishing for as little as $7 per month. The article Janusz Jurek Embraces the Weirdness of Everyday Life in Captivating Street Photographs appeared first on Colossal.

When Adrienna Matzeg embarked on a trip to Kyoto, Tokyo, and Seoul in July 2025, she encountered intense midsummer heat and humidity, which led her to exploring some of the cities’ nooks and crannies in the dark, when it was cooler.

Illuminated storefronts and signage characterize the artist’s late-night runs to convenience stores, markets, and other features of these hubs’ sprawling urban fabric. “In her textile embroidery work, however, the energy of the city falls away,” says a statement from Abbozzo Gallery, which presents her forthcoming solo exhibition, After Hours. “What remains are quiet scenes that left an imprint, tactile snapshots as a record of those summer nights.”

After Hours represents an evolution of Matzeg’s travel-related works, centered around embroidered vignettes of snacks and roadside attractions that have a snapshot-like, diaristic quality. Brightly lit facades and bold displays seem to float on the surface of black linen, with the addition of a small plate of hanami dango—the distinctive pink, white, and green rice dumpling snack on a stick—drawing us close to the artist’s experience.

After Hours runs from May 8 to 30 in Toronto. See more on the artist’s Instagram.

Do stories and artists like this matter to you? Become a Colossal Member today and support independent arts publishing for as little as $7 per month. The article Wander through Adrienna Matzeg’s Embroidered, Late-Night City Explorations appeared first on Colossal.

The shapes of Maxwell Mustardo’s ceramic works evoke ancient amphorae, kraters, and, most recently, kylix—a wide Greek cup with handles—although their surfaces feel distinctly organic. Textured growths cloak the vessels with fungal or lichen-esque forms, albeit in color palettes that are bold and otherworldly. Fluorescent oranges, pinks, and greens appear to glow in even the most mundane settings, firmly planting the pieces at the intersection of historic craft, nature, and the uncanny.

“I am always tweaking chemistry and application methods to push certain surface effects that I like, that feel organic and grown,” Mustardo tells Colossal. “More recent series of work have tried to blur the boundaries of cultural and natural forms (the amphora becomes anthropomorphic, gadrooning reduced to its fruity lineage, and so forth).”

An ornamental design with curved bands, gadrooning is typically relegated to surface decoration. As the artist mentions, though, he prefers to cast these tapered adornments as the central focus, “promptly pushing classical ornament back into their origins in the natural world, from the kingdom of fruits and vegetables.”

Mustardo is based in New Jersey, where he’s the studio manager of the former residence of artist Toshiko Takaezu (1922-2011). Find more of his work on Instagram.

Do stories and artists like this matter to you? Become a Colossal Member today and support independent arts publishing for as little as $7 per month. The article Maxwell Mustardo Sculpts Ancient Ornamentation in Brilliant Glazed Forms appeared first on Colossal.