2026-03-31 00:28:32
There are thousands upon thousands of types of mold out there. Some you can eat—think the rind on a wheel of brie or a gray fungus known as “noble rot” that gives certain types of grapes an extra sweet flavor for dessert wines. But there are plenty we shouldn’t eat, and when that loaf of bread in the cupboard begins to turn blue-green, it’s definitely time to chuck it in the bin. For Kathleen Ryan, the myriad colors and textures of mold continue to inspire larger-than-life sculptures of fruit and other foods that, in a way, preserve decay.
Ryan’s oversized works are characterized by their textural finishes, often using salvaged metal and other materials in addition to an array of colored beads and semiprecious stones to achieve the effects of layered fungi and rot. Recent works such as “Bad Lemon (Slice of Paradise)” and “Screwdriver” nod to the realm of cocktails and, by extension, the notion of luxury and even vacations—concepts that somewhat sour within the context of an increasingly vulnerable economy.
Juxtaposing stones ranging from amethyst and azurite to turquoise and tourmaline with salvaged metal from vintage cars, Ryan’s sculptures evoke an array of associations. She has previously likened their over-the-top scale to the roadside attractions tourists might see along Interstate highways, such as giant doughnuts and other foods and animals.
Like a geode that doesn’t look like much from the outside, works like “Bad Lemon (Slice of Paradise)” have two very different personalities, where the metal exterior lets on little about what’s inside. Ryan taps into our appreciation of hidden beauty when opening up an ancient, crystallized stone while simultaneously suggesting the grotesqueness of opening a peach, for example, only to find it rotten inside.
Some of the works seen here were recently on view at Karma in New York, and you can find more on Ryan’s Instagram.
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2026-03-30 18:00:00
The La Napoule Art Foundation is opening its doors more widely than ever before through its new Threshold Art Retreats, a program designed for artists seeking creative exploration in an extraordinary setting at the Château de La Napoule in the south of France. These immersive five-day retreats invite participants of all backgrounds—not just professional artists—to step into a world where art, nature, and personal reflection intersect. With a focus on both artistic practice and inner renewal, the experience offers a rare opportunity to engage deeply with creativity in an ethereal setting shaped by nearly a century of artistic vision.
Each retreat blends hands-on artistic instruction with restorative wellness. Guests might spend their mornings painting in vibrant gardens or working in seaside studios and their afternoons paddleboarding along the Mediterranean or participating in rooftop yoga sessions. Evenings are intentionally reflective, featuring communal meals prepared by the château’s chef and meditative experiences like sound bowl sessions in the intimate Lovers’ Tower. The rhythm of each day is designed to inspire both creative output and personal clarity.
What makes these retreats especially meaningful is access to mentors. Many are led by accomplished artists who were once residents at the château themselves, continuing a powerful cycle of artistic exchange. This structure fosters not just skill-building but also a sense of belonging within a creative lineage. Participants are not simply visitors; they become part of an ongoing artistic community rooted in shared inspiration and dialogue.
Importantly, every retreat directly supports the foundation’s mission. By opening access to a broader audience, the program helps sustain the château and its longstanding artist residency programs. It offers a thoughtful solution to a persistent challenge in the art world: how to make transformative, soul-enriching experiences more accessible while maintaining the historic spaces that make them possible. In this way, participation becomes both personally enriching and purpose-driven.
The setting is also inseparable from the experience. Perched above the Mediterranean, the Château de La Napoule feels like a living artwork. Its sculptural windows and doors filter the region’s luminous light, while hybrid figures—part human, part imagined—adorn its columns and courtyards that once hosted Europe’s elite. Acres of whimsical gardens enchant, and the Mediterranean sparkles just beyond the ancient ramparts. A sacred world, perched over the sea, entirely devoted to the arts.
This extraordinary place was brought to life by Henry Clews Jr. and Marie Clews, who, nearly 100 years ago, transformed the ruins of an 11th-century fortress into an artistic sanctuary. Henry used the château as his canvas, creating sculptures that critiqued ego and vanity with mythic intensity, while Marie designed its ornamental ironwork and geometric gardens. After Henry’s early death, Marie carried their shared vision forward, founding the La Napoule Art Foundation in 1950. Their motto—“Mirth, Myth, Mystery”—remains etched into the stone, a lasting invitation for others to step inside and be transformed.
The Château de La Napoule has always been a place where boundaries dissolve, and lives are rewritten. From Henry’s artistic revolution and Marie’s preservation efforts, to countless artists finding new directions there, inspirational change seems to be written into its very walls.
Now, that transformation is available to anyone curious enough to seek it.
La Napoule Art Foundation offers multiple artist residency opportunities throughout the year and operates as a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization in the U.S. Threshold Art Retreats hosts immersive programs each summer from June through September. These retreats feature a rotating calendar of specialized creative experiences, including Foraged Books: The Art of Place (artist bookmaking and storytelling), The Human Form in Oil Paints (figure painting from a live model), and Color as Matter: Exploring Pigment Through Surface and Form (discover the physical and symbolic power of color).
Learn more about residencies and upcoming retreats at lnaf.org and thresholdartretreats.com.
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2026-03-30 17:13:00
Censorship and book bans are on the rise worldwide, prompting growing concerns about access to information and free expression. Although this trajectory is increasingly worrisome, it isn’t new, as artist Xiaoze Xie reflects on his exhibition In the Name of the Book.
Comprising paintings and life-sized porcelain sculptures, the show encompasses works made in the early 1990s through the present day, all of which reflect on the vital role books play in cultural, political, and social life. Xie’s practice is largely informed by his upbringing in China—he was born in Guangdong the same year as the Cultural Revolution— and in 1989, he witnessed the deadly Tiananmen Square protests. After moving to the U.S. in 1993, he began to incorporate this history and concerns about such restrictions into his works as a form of protest.
Book banning, particularly in the U.S., can sometimes be framed as a novel issue, and part of Xie’s effectiveness is that he connects the rise in modern-day censorship to what occurred centuries before. The Forbidden Books Series interprets classic novels, plays, and more that were prohibited largely throughout the Qing Dynasty (1636-1912). Fiction like The Golden Lotus and Water Margin, for example, were charged with being sexually explicit and obscene, while the Chinese government barred the theatrical production The Peony Pavilion from leaving Shanghai for a New York performance in 1998 because of its “feudal, superstitious, and pornographic” qualities.
While these works are well-known cases of censorship, Xie points out that they’re just a sampling of a much larger problem. He writes:
Over the last 2,000 years, the books that have disappeared in China because of prohibition are countless. There is no trace of them anymore; all I have found is a small fraction. All of these old paper stacks, these silent books, consist of thoughts and discourses. These invisible and shapeless things and the stories behind them—the complicated contexts of philosophical, religious, political, historical, social, ethical, and racial issues—are gone. The history of banning books is a process of challenging repeated oppression and control, and challenging it again. It is alongside this back-and-forth repetition, I think, that history slowly marches on.
Preserving their likeness in porcelain with pages splayed out flat is an act of defiance for the artist, as he presents these otherwise concealed texts as permanently open for public consumption.
In the Name of the Book is on view through April 17 at Sapar Contemporary. Find more from the artist on Instagram.
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2026-03-28 03:28:52
David Morrison continues his hyperrealistic explorations of flowers, seeds, and plants, capturing the intricacies and alluring textures found throughout nature in lush colored pencil. Delicate, fine lines and smooth gradients prevail in the artist’s drawings, which present the organic subject matter as if it were bathed in light. Rendered in a soft haze, shadows of individual fronds and nodes add a deceptive sense of depth to the two-dimensional works.
The pieces shown here are some of Morrison’s latest, and you can find more on his Instagram and via Garvey | Simon, where he’s represented.
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2026-03-27 22:07:16
“My process is a constant negotiation with gravity,” says Soojin Choi. The artist creates intimate ceramic sculptures depicting a pair entwined in an unknottable embrace, their limbs a seemingly endless tangle. With pockets of negative space peeking through, the characters pose in a precarious balance. “I intentionally minimize ground contact to prioritize the specific gestures and the psychological tension between the two figures, giving the work a sense of lightness and emotional presence,” the artist adds.
A long-time resident artist at The Clay Studio in Philadelphia, Choi is formally trained as a painter, a background that informs the sweeping, gestural marks of her pieces. The figures are depicted as three-dimensional line drawings with the quick outlines in a darker hue, while visible brushstrokes and drips layer atop a coat of white slip. “I prefer surface finishes that feel active and tactile, allowing the traces of my hand and the movement of the material to remain visible on the final sculpture,” she says.
Choi begins with an idea of how the two figures will interact and what ambiguous moment they might create. As she carves their forms from stoneware slabs and strengthens them with nylon strands, the initial plan often veers in another direction. “What I find most exciting is that the figures’ gestures often evolve and shift during the construction process,” she says, adding that the “gray area” of human emotion is where she strives to end up.
Currently, Choi is exploring the unpredictability of glazes and how they can offer a dynamic quality. “What fascinates me about glaze—unlike the more direct application of paint—is how subtle shifts in chemical ratios and kiln heat produce radically different, often unpredictable outcomes,” she says.
Johansson Projects will present the artist’s work in a duo show next month, and she has another group show slated for September at Mesa Contemporary Art Museum. Head to Instagram to see more of her process.
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2026-03-27 06:49:05
When photographer Frank Relle was nine years old, he remembers sneaking out of the house he grew up in in New Orleans just before daybreak to catch the sunrise—an event he found frustratingly difficult to explain to others, as much as he wished to share the experience. It was only years later that he discovered the camera, and he reflects on this time now through the lens of an excerpt from the essay “Between Yes and No” by Albert Camus: “A man’s work is nothing but this slow trek to rediscover, through the detours of art, those two or three great and simple images in whose presence his heart first opened.”
Relle adds, “The swamp was that opening for me. I do not fully understand how. I went in once, and something happened; I changed, and then I kept going back.” The New Orleans-based photographer still returns to the swamps of Louisiana, watched over by bald cypress trees draped in ethereal swathes of Spanish moss. He canoes onto the calm waters, capturing the transition between day and night amid the sounds of birds and other creatures that make their homes there.
“I work in the swamp because it returns me to a way of being that feels older, quieter, and more true,” Relle tells Colossal, continuing:
Out there, surrounded by trees, insects, birds, reflections, and dark water, I stop living inside the noise of my own mind. The swamp pulls me out of the island of myself and places me back inside a larger living world. In that state, I feel wonder, connection, and a kind of freedom. Photography became my way of sharing that feeling—not by explaining it but by inviting others into it.
Relle’s series Until the Water explores Louisiana’s otherworldly bayous through a lens of serene reverence. He places lights beneath boughs and trunks, illuminating trees against darkening horizons to emphasize their billowing shapes amid expansive wetlands distinctive to the Gulf Coast region of North America.
Time is both evident and seemingly suspended in Relle’s photos, as within the context of a single day ending or beginning, we observe mature cypresses that may have weathered hundreds of years. (The oldest known living tree in eastern North America is a bald cypress in North Carolina that’s more than 2,600 years old.) Some of the trees are abundantly leafy and full, while others are bare, struggling, or cracked open.
“The swamp at two in the morning is not quiet; it is one of the loudest places I have ever been,” Relle says. “But a photograph of it is silent. And in that silence, there is an opening. A threshold….That is what I wanted when I was small, watching the sky change. Not to describe it. To bring someone else to the edge of it. To share it without words.”
Find more on Relle’s Instagram, and purchase prints in his online shop. And if you’re in New Orleans, visit his brick-and-mortar gallery on Royal Street.
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