2025-08-15 22:08:20
Although it appears that thousands of tons of boulders have been dropped into Prahran Square in Melbourne, the enormous rocks are actually as light as air. Art and technology studio ENESS (previously) has installed its inflatable “Iwagumi Air Scape” in the park, creating an immersive canyon for visitors to wander through.
While the 16 massive stones have a grainy, granite-like texture during the day, at night, they glow in otherworldly pinks and yellows, creating a surreal landscape that illuminates the urban environment. Audio of flora and fauna accompanies the work, so that when viewers squeeze through what would be a treacherous pass between real boulders, the soft inflatables and mountain sounds wrap them in a natural embrace.
The outdoor installation is on view through August 17, when it will travel to additional locations. Keep up with its stops on ENESS’s Instagram.
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2025-08-15 03:14:30
From the air, Iceland’s mountains, lava fields, glacial streams, and arctic vegetation comprise a world of contrasts. For Dani Guindo, the nation’s unique landscapes inspire an ongoing photography practice, and his recent series Orbital sets the distinctive scenery against a recognizable object: a small plane. “I want viewers to feel both a sense of scale and disorientation, inviting them to look twice before recognizing what they see,” he tells Colossal.
Guindo originally hails from southern Spain and has been based in Reykjavík since 2016, lured by the island nation’s raw beauty, dramatic geology, and northern light. “What excites me most about photographing here is how the constant change, light, weather, and seasons transform the same location into entirely new scenes,” he says.
From above, Iceland’s tidal inlets and streams glow turquoise from glacial flour—a fine silt created when glaciers grind against rock—or create oxbows and natural rivulets that appear almost totally abstract when viewed vertically. “My aerial work is mostly captured using drones, which allow me to explore abstract perspectives and patterns invisible from the ground,” Guindo says.
Prints are available for purchase on his website, where you can also book photography tours with his company Arctic Journeys. Explore more on Behance and Instagram.
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2025-08-15 01:18:07
The ever-observant Sho Shibuya is known for his daily meditations blanketing the covers of The New York Times. From trenchant commentary on global happenings to peaceful gradients depicting the sky, the artist’s paintings are a tactile record of contemporary life, considering elements both in our control and not.
Shibuya returns to Unit London this month with Falling From The Sky, a collection of works covered in trompe l’oeil droplets. Although typically despised more than bright sun and cloudless skies, rain offers endless inspiration for the artist as he watches a downpour “dance and drift across the glass, creating shapeshifting patterns, leaving streaks that track the wind,” he says. “I love the way these patterns never repeat, perpetually unique.”
Spanning 30 paintings in acrylic, Shibuya reminds us of the diversity of wet weather. Sometimes we look out and only see haze, while others surprise us with a vivid rainbow of color. The artist is particularly fond of a damp, gray forecast, though. “I met my wife on such a day. It was pouring when we both stepped into a quiet Japanese restaurant, each carrying an umbrella. Our first words, of course, were about the rain,” he says.
While Shibuya reveres the rain, he’s not one to ignore what it means to enjoy darkened clouds. He says:
In other parts of the world, the sky is not gentle. It’s not rain that falls, but bombs. The same grey clouds that comfort me here cast shadows of fear elsewhere. Where I see beauty, others see smoke. Destruction. Silence broken not by soft drops, but by blasts. That contrast stays with me. These paintings are not just invitations to pause and reflect, but reminders of what peace looks like. And how fragile it is.
Falling From The Sky is on view from August 20 to September 21. Explore an archive of Shibuya’s works on Instagram.
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2025-08-14 20:15:57
In a recent series titled Time Suspended, James Kerwin explores the elegant yet fading facades and interiors of grand Caribbean architecture. A four-week journey through Havana, Cienfuegos, and other locations offered the British photographer time to slow down, become acquainted with his surroundings, and revisit some areas to capture them in different light.
Based in Istanbul, a city also renowned for its architecture, Kerwin channels a fascination for history and the built environment, especially the way time makes an indelible mark on structures left exposed to the elements.
Kerwin focuses predominantly on abandoned buildings, historic interiors, and “spaces that tell stories through wear, texture, and the way light moves across them,” he says. “My aim is to preserve the atmosphere of these places before they change, are restored, or disappear entirely.”
Time Suspended emphasizes Cuba’s unique architectural landscape, with buildings balanced in a state between preservation and decay. “Each image reflects both the resilience of the structures and the passing of the eras they’ve witnessed,” Kerwin says. He plans to return to Cuba in February of the next few years, where he will co-lead photography tours.
Take a look behind the making of some of these images on YouTube, and find more on the photographer’s website and Instagram. You might also enjoy turning back the clock a few decades with Andrew Moore’s photographs that capture Cuba at the turn of the 21st century.
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2025-08-14 02:00:00
Since time immemorial, humans have been both awed and guided by the power of the unknown. A basis of spiritual beliefs the world over is the abiding question, why?—a probing wonderment often followed closely by, what happens when we die?
Human belief systems provide structure that help us to make sense of the world, and yet the nature of our existence—and how we fit into the context of the cosmos—comprises some of the most beguiling mysteries of all. It’s no surprise that across cultures and throughout millennia, our search for meaning and connection with other worlds has inspired incredible creativity.
Spirit Worlds, forthcoming from TASCHEN on September 15, celebrates art’s relationship to other realms. More than 400 works spanning thousands of years, paired with essays and interviews with scholars and practitioners, illustrate our fascination with the supernatural, from angels and celestial beings to darker forces like ghosts and demons.
The title marks the sixth installment in The Library of Esoterica series, which also includes titles like Plant Magick and Sacred Sites. Spirit Worlds clocks in at more than 500 pages, surveying death rites, altars, sacred temples, the messages of prophets, links mediums make with the other side, symbolic statuary, and more.
“In this expansive volume, we board the ferry across the storied river and enter the gloomy passages between lands, stepping across the threshold—to part the most sacred of veils,” the publisher says.
Pre-order your copy in the Colossal Shop.
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2025-08-14 00:09:00
“The objects I use often serve as memory keepers,” says Adrián Viajero Román. “Sometimes they find me—objects with history, decay, or presence—and I build a piece around them. Other times, I begin with a story I want to tell and seek materials that can hold that narrative.”
Román finds an intuitive balance between object and idea, allowing each to influence the other as he melds two-dimensional portraiture with three-dimensional forms like wooden frames, religious iconography, frayed chicken wire, and even an empty can of Goya black beans. These found—and seemingly mundane—items hold stories that reflect the artist’s ongoing interests: memory, migration, and the genealogies we can trace through the objects that accompany us or that we leave behind.
Based between Brooklyn, New Jersey, and Puerto Rico, Román frequently reflects on the experience of the Puerto Rican diaspora and the bifurcated way of living that can emerge when people leave their homelands. He’s deeply interested in the correlations between belonging and displacement and how preserving the past is essential to telling honest stories about ourselves and communities.
The artist’s works often feature children, who appear as both innocent and supremely knowing. Staring at the viewer with serious eyes, these youthful protagonists might be steadfastly engaged in a game or otherwise posed in a way that suggests impermanence. The child in “Picking Up The Pieces,” for example, grasps a white terrycloth towel in her pudgy hand while sitting atop crunched plastic bottles, a precarious seat that will only hold for so long. Román shares:
The children become physical, dimensional presences, symbols of possibility and resilience that inhabit our space as reminders of hope and imagination… I often depict children because they carry both the innocence of potential and the clarity of truth. In these works, the children aren’t passive. They’re dreaming, resisting, surviving. They become living monuments, carrying the weight of history while pointing us toward the future.
In his solo exhibition titled Archivos Vivos at The National Puerto Rican Museum in Chicago, the artist presents his mixed-media sculptures and installations as a sort of journey through Puerto Rican identity. As its name suggests, archival imagery and objects appear frequently to illustrate the various influences on this collective experience.
As part of this exhibition, Román facilitated a pair of workshops that invited community members to reflect on their own experiences and encounters with Immigration and Customs Enforcement and then create either a paper airplane or boat. Participants also responded to a more profound, enduring question: “What does citizenship mean—especially for Puerto Ricans, whose U.S. citizenship was imposed, not chosen?”
“This workshop came at a time of heightened urgency,” Román says, noting that just days before the gatherings, federal agents visited the museum unannounced. “It was a chilling reminder that our communities are still being surveilled, targeted, and threatened. This is why we must keep telling our stories—why we gather in these spaces to remember, create, and resist.”
Archivos Vivos is on view through January 17, 2026. A new installation in his Caja De Memoria Viva series will open this October at the National Portrait Gallery, with a replica to follow for Puro Ritmo at the Smithsonian Latino American Museum in April. Until then, keep up with the artist’s work on his website and Instagram.
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