An enormous, cascading installation of crocheted fabric strips stretches across a cavernous gallery in Ernesto Neto’s newest exhibition. At MAAT in Lisbon, the Brazilian artist (previously) presents Nosso Barco Tambor Terra, which translates to “our boat drum Earth,” a solo exhibition encompassing one of the largest suspended sculptures he has ever made.

Created with a team of assistants in his expansive Rio de Janeiro studio, the new piece draws on images of sails and maritime materials like canvas and rope. Neto nods to the history of transatlantic voyages between Europe and South America, stitching remnants of bright chintz, common in Brazil, into a swathe of fabric punctuated by points of interest like a vessel full of decorated drums or corn kernels,  a symbol of international trade. Historically, the percussive instrument kept a rhythm for the galley rowers, some of whom would have been enslaved people.

Photo by Joana Linda

Suspended from the ceiling, the central work in Nosso Barco Tambor Terra adopts a cell-like structure, with numerous colors and patterns that intertwine, drape, stretch, and overlap. The piece suggests “a ship, a primordial beast, a forest, or even, and more likely, all of those things and infinite others,” writes curator Jacopo Crivelli Visconti in the exhibition text. He emphasizes that Neto portrays the world as a whole, defining the earth as “ancestral, pre-colonial, and even pre-human.”

The artist considers the dark legacies of enforced displacement and slavery during colonial rule, which the Portuguese implemented in Brazil. He situates the work as celebration of the planet’s array of people, cultures, and “worldviews whose strength and beauty one must recognise, reaffirm,” Visconti says. Amid destruction and chaos, Neto’s ark-like vessel envisions a way to propel the whole world forward.

The exhibition opens May 2 and continues through October 7 in Lisbon. Find more from MAAT.

Photo by Joana Linda

Photo by Joana Linda

Photos by Joana Linda

Photo by Joana Linda

Photo by Paulo Schettino

Photos by Joana Linda

Photo by Paulo Schettino

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Through ancient wooded glens and along rugged sea coasts, Max Naylor invites us to wander along shady passageways, squeeze between lichen-cloaked boulders, and inhale the fragrance of wildflowers. His detailed landscapes in ink and oil paint (previously) capture petals, branches, waves, and an array of botanicals in dreamlike scenes that teeter elegantly on the edge of reality.

Time of day is often indeterminate in Naylor’s paintings, where blue may suggest nighttime or just the shade cast below the cover of trees. Sometimes the scenes entice us into misty distances or a hilly horizon beyond. The artist employs atmospheric light and repeating tree trunks or flowers that verge on pure pattern, playing with our perception of presence and depth by drawing attention to all details at once.

If you’re in Bristol, stop by Spike Island Open Studios between May 3 and 5 to see Naylor’s work in person alongside more than 70 other artists. See more on the artist’s website and Instagram.

“Woodland Glade” (2024), ink on paper, 51 x 66 centimeters

“Erratic Boulder (after the deluge)” (2024), oil and ink on linen, 160 x 180 centimeters

“Early Glow” (2024), ink on paper, 51 x 66 centimeters

“Blue Landscape with Snowdrops” (2024), ink on paper, 51 x 66 centimeters

“Nestling” (2024), oil on linen, 75 x 95 centimeters

“Wild Wild Life” (2024), ink on paper, 51 x 66 centimeters

“Under the Gunnera” (2023), ink on paper, 51 x 66 centimeters

“Ragged Coast with Sea Cabbage” (2023), ink on paper, 51 x 66 centimeters

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New Yorkers are known for their unwavering devotion to the city, but would they want to spend eternity inside one of its once-ubiquitous taxis or worse yet, in the body of a wildly resilient subway rat?

In Celestial City at Superhouse, Ghanaian artist Paa Joe presents a sculptural ode to the Big Apple by carving an oversized rendition of the fruit, a Heinz ketchup bottle, a bagel with schmear, and more urban icons. Invoking the charms of all five boroughs, the painted wooden works open up to reveal the soft, padded insides of coffins, and two—the car and condiment—are even fit for humans.

Installation view of ‘Celestial City’

Since 1960, Paa Joe has been crafting caskets, which are known as abeduu adeka or proverb boxes to the Ga people, a community to which the artist belongs. Coffins are a crucial component to the safe passage of the dead to the afterlife and a family tradition for Paa Joe. A statement says:

In the early 1950s, Paa Joe’s uncle, Kane Kwei pioneered the first figurative coffin, a cocoa pod intended for a chief as a ceremonial palanquin. When the chief passed away during its construction, it was repurposed as his coffin. This innovative art form quickly gained popularity, and Kane Kwei began creating bespoke commissions resembling living and inanimate objects, symbolizing the deceased individual’s identity (an onion for a farmer, an eagle for a community leader, a sardine for a fisherman, etc.).

He continues this legacy today with his Fantasy Coffins series. In addition to the New York tributes, his works include a Campbell’s soup can, an Air Jordan sneaker, fish, and fruit. The sculptures often exaggerate scale, including the diminutive Statue of Liberty and a gigantic hot dog that shift perspectives on the quotidian.

Celestial City is on view through April 27. For a glimpse into Paa Joe’s carving process, visit Instagram.

Detail of “Sabrett” (2023), Emele wood, enamel, cloth, 23. 6 x 16. 5 x 11 inches

“Sabrett” (2023), Emele wood, enamel, cloth, 23. 6 x 16. 5 x 11 inches

Left: “Subway Rat” (2023), Emele wood, enamel, 24. 4 x 12. 6 x 11. 8 inches. Right: “Heinz” (2024), Emele wood, enamel , cloth, 26. 5 x 22. 5 x 94 inches

“Guggenheim” (2024), Emele wood, enamel, cloth, 29 x 22. 5 x 26. 5 inches

Detail of “Guggenheim” (2024), Emele wood, enamel, cloth, 29 x 22. 5 x 26. 5 inches

Detail of “Big Apple” (2024), Emele wood, enamel, artificial leaves, 19. 5 D x 26. 5 inches

Installation view of ‘Celestial City’

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From elaborate hairstyles to hypertrophied mushrooms, an array of unexpected face coverings feature in Ewa Juszkiewicz’s portraits. Drawing on genteel likenesses of women primarily from the 18th and 19th centuries, the artist superimposes fabric, bouquets of fruit, foliage, and more, over the women’s faces.

In a collateral event during the 60th Annual Venice Biennale, presented by the Fundación Almine y Bernard Ruiz-Picasso and Almine Rech, Juszkiewicz presents a suite of works made between 2019 and 2024 that encapsulate her precise reconception of a popular Western genre. Locks with Leaves and Swelling Buds showcases her elaborate, technically accomplished pieces using traditional oil painting and varnishing techniques.

Juszkiewicz’s anonymous subjects are reminders of the systemic omission of women from the histories of art and the past more broadly. Literally in the face of portraits meant to memorialize and celebrate individuals, the artist erases their identities entirely, alluding only to the original artists’ names in the titles. In a seemingly contradictory approach, by drawing our attention to this erasure, Juszkiewicz stokes our curiosity about who they were.

“By covering the face of historical portraits, Juszkiewicz challenges the very essence of this genre: she destroys the portrait as such,” says curator Guillermo Solana. In a recent video, we get a peek inside the artist’s studio, where she describes how elements of another European painting tradition, the still life, proffers a rich well of symbolic objects to conceal each sitter’s face, from botanicals to ribbons to food.

Locks with Leaves and Swilling Buds continues in Venice at Palazzo Cavanis through September 1. Find more on the artist’s website and Instagram.

“Untitled (after François Gérard)” (2023), oil on canvas, 100 x 80 centimeters

“Untitled (after Joseph van Lerius)” (2020), oil on canvas, 70 x 55 centimeters

Left: “Portrait in Venetian Red (after Élisabeth-Louise Vigée Le Brun)” (2024), oil on canvas, 190 x 140 centimeters. Right: “Lady with a Pearl (after François Gérard)” (2024), oil on canvas, 80 x 65 centimeters

“Bird of paradise” (2023) oil on canvas, 200 x 160 centimeters. Photo by Serge Hasenböhler Fotografie

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As the art world descended on Venice for the opening of its prestigious Biennale last week, the talk was of an industry at the peak of its powers. Such global extravaganzas, together with the big-money fairs and auctions, have transformed the art market. What was still a rarefied, slightly niche business at the turn of the millennium has evolved into a juggernaut with estimated total annual sales running to $65bn. Venice’s rich displays of art, old and new, now compete with parties in private palazzi and on billionaires’ boats.

Yet the market has a problem. For all the thousands of visitors to its sparkling events, traders are struggling to convert the next generation of enthusiasts into committed buyers. The sense that an overhyped market has hit a wall is captured in a crop of new books that illuminate some of the darker sides of the art world.

Persistent opacity around issues such as prices, ownership and condition reveals the limits of a market with no overarching oversight, and which still often relies on handshakes and hidden codes of conduct. Such grey areas have proved a playground for schemes ranging from opportunistic speculation to the downright criminal.

Recent scandals, while at the extreme of the largely legitimate and often mundane market, illustrate the need to question the status quo. In the past year alone, art adviser Lisa Schiff — who counted actor Leonardo DiCaprio among her clients — stands accused of running a Ponzi scheme amid legal claims that she owes other collectors nearly $7mn; art dealer Guy Wildenstein has been found guilty of tax fraud, sentenced to four years in prison and fined €1mn; and British artist Damien Hirst has been revealed to have backdated some recent works to his 1990s heyday. All this against a backdrop of the art world’s blind craze for cryptocurrencies and digital assets, with fortunes rising and falling in a matter of months.

The most sensational story so far has been that of Inigo Philbrick, an art dealer who flew too close to the sun — literally so, absconding to the south Pacific island of Vanuatu to hide from mounting legal claims before his FBI arrest there in 2020. Philbrick pleaded guilty to an audacious $86mn wire fraud scheme that took in collectors, investors and fellow dealers, and was handed a prison sentence of seven years.

Taking on his story is his erstwhile friend and colleague, Orlando Whitfield, with whom Philbrick had originally plotted to collaborate on a magazine feature to put across his side of events. Once Whitfield saw the paper trail documenting his friend’s behaviour, he wisely decided to go it alone. All That Glitters is the result.

Philbrick emerges as tough to turn down. Variously charming, persuasive and hare-brained, this is a portrait of a narcissist, always ready to star in the film of his life. “I don’t think failure ever even occurred to Inigo,” Whitfield notes. In a seemingly unchecked arena, his actions included creating a fake client and managing to sell 220 per cent of one artwork, a 2012 painting based on a photograph of Pablo Picasso by the briefly in-demand Italian conceptual artist Rudolf Stingel. (While it is more usual than many might realise for a hugely expensive painting to have more than one owner, obviously only 100 per cent of it is ever legally available.)

Alongside Philbrick, Whitfield, with a hefty dollop of British self-deprecation — he is described as “a failed art dealer” in the book’s brief blurb — comes through as the willing victim of his friend’s personality disorder. The book records his memories of 15 years of their unbalanced friendship, from meeting in their twenties at London’s Goldsmiths art school in 2006 through to intermittent conversations during Philbrick’s incarceration.

What the mismatched pair share, poignantly, are divorced parents and successful art-world fathers whom they were wired to impress — Philbrick’s was a museum director; Whitfield’s an auctioneer.

Some of these escapades seem barely believable. Whitfield admits he came to doubt many of Philbrick’s stories, including one in which the instinctive dealer buys a watch at one end of London’s Burlington Arcade then immediately resells it at the other end, making £500 in less than an hour.

More worrying for the art market is the potential for scams now that today’s buyers are more speculators than art lovers and don’t even see the works into which they park their millions. Philbrick sold another Stingel — one of his gold paintings in “hushed AmEx tones” — to a client and then, for $2.5mn, on to a joint venture that he himself ran with one of his early mentors, the esteemed White Cube gallery founder Jay Jopling.

Philbrick had originally bought the work for $300,000 because, as he knew, it was damaged to the extent that the artist wanted it destroyed. No one else knew the score and, unable to persuade his usual conservator to restore it, Philbrick found three people to execute a good-enough touch-up in a garage in London’s Mayfair. The work then got a clean bill of health (albeit unknowingly to the wider world) as “now a Philbrick-Stingel”, Whitfield writes. It is still in circulation somewhere.

The book proves as much about Whitfield as his anti-hero, but it is Philbrick who brings the pages alive. Such magnetism perhaps explains Whitfield’s enduring sympathy with Philbrick’s plight — a generosity that is hard to share. Philbrick seems anything but sorry, especially given what’s transpired since Whitfield wrote All That Glitters. At the start of this year, three years earlier than expected, Philbrick left prison on two years of supervised release. He marked this freedom on Instagram in a shared post with his girlfriend Victoria Baker-Harber, star of reality TV show Made In Chelsea; the pair were snapped on a picnic blanket with their toddler.

This happy family portrait was taken to accompany an article in Vanity Fair that gives Philbrick’s shame-free version of events. He was, he says, a novice rogue in an unregulated market of willing participants: “By no means am I blameless, but the people I was partnered with were all seeking an edge.” Perhaps this is the feature that Whitfield resisted writing.

Philbrick’s high-stakes deals were fostered within the art market’s increasingly financialised environment, with its promise of great returns despite flimsy data. During the Covid-19 pandemic, when in-person art events were nearly all cancelled, such promises morphed into a craze for digital, cryptocurrency-based, non-fungible tokens (NFTs). In Token Supremacy, journalist Zachary Small ably turns his forensic skills to the NFTs’ swift boom and bust.

Art comes across as offering a suitably shady environment. Small finds it was ripe for crypto-based speculation, partly because “it is one of the last major unregulated markets in the world”, offering “tactics that would be off-limits in traditional finance”, a recurring refrain and an environment that Philbrick says supported his schemes.

Token Supremacy tackles a jargon-heavy episode of art market history with welcome clarity and arch humour. The book is hooked on key characters, including the graphic designer turned artist Mike Winkelmann, aka Beeple, whose NFT of 5,000 daily digital images made since 2007, many of a puerile and cartoonish bent, sold for an eye-watering $69.3mn through Christie’s in 2021.

Small’s other crypto-hungry characters include Seth Goldstein, founder of New York’s Bright Moments Gallery — proof that even in a virtual world, people mostly prefer to congregate in a physical space. It opened in 2021 with mantras on the wall such as “you can’t spell culture without cult”.

Small skilfully characterises the fine line between discretion and duplicity at the highest echelons of the art world, and has little love for the complicity of the auction houses in a frothy market. Their influence in this century is analysed further in Art Auctions by the academic Kathryn Brown, who offers a gentler look at the “theatre” of the salerooms in her slim tome. Her research into the psychology of buyers characterises the milieu that the likes of Inigo Philbrick could exploit.

A more grassroots perspective on the market’s machinations comes courtesy of another skilled journalist, Bianca Bosker, in Get the Picture, a page-turning romp around New York’s art world. Her quest, to determine what separates “good” from “bad” art, prompts her to find junior roles at art galleries, then with the artist Julie Curtiss and for the Solomon R Guggenheim Museum, all while recording her findings. These reveal many of the baffling codes around intangible value, served up through genuine laugh-out-loud moments, not least her experience of having a social media “ass influencer” sit on her face in the name of art.

It’s not all funny, however. Emerging artists and gallerists are illustrated juggling several jobs at the same time to make ends meet, all while helping “billionaires hang their second Rothko in their third home”. The sometimes cruel treatment of employers towards their junior gallerists is also exposed. Bosker finds behaviour “that was at best morally dubious, very frequently discriminatory, and at worst potentially criminal”.

As in Whitfield’s and Small’s books, she illustrates a world of accepted white-collar crimes. In one instance, a museum trustee buys two editions of a photograph — one to go in the museum, one for her home. “A little philanthropy, a little polite corruption,” Bosker writes, noting that the museum’s stamp of approval will increase the value of the personally owned picture. A fellow gallerist sympathises with her discomfort at the situation, soon after admitting that he has never paid any sales tax.

The stories might be extreme, but there is an uncomfortable familiarity to them. The industry’s integrity seems questionable at best when it is presented as a world in which someone like Philbrick can thrive, suffer disgrace and then set the stage for a sensational comeback. Brown notes the lack of any overarching responsibility. Auction houses, for example, “have no particular commitment to the sustainable functioning of art world of their markets,” she writes. Their remit is to sell art for the highest price for their consignors.

Midway through All That Glitters, Whitfield recalls a banker-collector who neatly sums up a world in which the dictum caveat emptor has rarely been more relevant: “‘The best thing about the art market,’ he told me, ‘is that it’s completely unregulated. However,’ he continued, ‘the worst thing about the art market is that it’s unregulated.’”

The reality, though, is that if the art market wants to grow, it can’t have it both ways. Before taking money from the next generation of buyers, some of their needs will have to be met. This means embracing the increased transparency and accountability that digital natives have come to expect. Regulation might not appeal to a world of freethinking creatives, but surely its time has come.

All That Glitters: A Story of Friendship, Fraud and Fine Art by Orlando Whitfield Profile £17.99/Knopf $29, 336 pages

Token Supremacy: The Art of Finance, the Finance of Art and the Great Crypto Crash of 2022 by Zachary Small Knopf £27/$32, 368 pages

Art Auctions: Spectacle and Value in the 21st Century by Kathryn Brown Lund Humphries £19.99, 104 pages

Get The Picture: A Mind-Bending Journey Among the Inspired Artists and Obsessive Art Fiends Who Taught Me How to See by Bianca Bosker Viking $29/Atlantic £20, 384 pages

Melanie Gerlis is the FT’s art market correspondent

Join our online book group on Facebook at FT Books Café and subscribe to our podcast Life & Art wherever you listen

Get ready for an art event unlike any other. The Other Art Fair presented by Saatchi Art returns to ZeroSpace in Brooklyn from May 16 to 19. With each new fair comes new experiences, and this edition is no different as it unveils a vibrant roster of fresh artwork, new talents, and unexpected delights.

This May installment promises an array of exciting features, including 120+ independent artists set to showcase their collections, the 10th edition of Mike Perry and Josh Cochran’s “Get Nude, Get Drawn” portrait experience, complimentary hand-crafted whisky cocktails (exclusively for those aged 21+) on Thursday’s Opening Night, and live performances on both Opening Night and the highly anticipated Friday Late soirée.

Ahead of the main event, we’re highlighting five categories of artists based on shared themes, offering a look at the diverse range of artistic practices at this year’s fair.

Still life

Bella Wattles fuses colorful objects, ceramics, and thrifted treasures into whimsical paintings that echo societal harmony and celebrate women and LGBTQ+ creators.

Still lifes by self-taught artist Dawn Beckles bridge the energies of London and the Caribbean. Her bold strokes celebrate the beauty of everyday moments, inviting viewers to reconnect with their own stories.

Bryane Broadie, “Mind Growth”

Celebrating Black Portraiture

Bryane Broadie, a graphic artist from Prince George’s County, Maryland, discovered his passion for art in elementary school. His digital and mixed media works reflect Black history and culture.

Inspired by childhood resourcefulness and Brooklyn’s cultural tapestry, Sean Qualls crafts evocative illustrations and paintings. His work investigates identity, history, the human spirit, and universal human experiences.

Carrie Lipscomb, “Blocks (small)” (2024), thread on fine art paper

Embossed and Embroidered

Guided by pure geometries, Brooklyn-based mixed-media artist Carrie Lipscomb explores space and texture, urging viewers to engage with the subtleties in found materials.

Sophie Reid is a visual storyteller who blends geometric shapes across multimedia. She honed her craft as a graphic designer and in her art, she uses illustrations and stitch works to echo her love for design and travel.

Isabella Bejarano, “Silver Water” (2015), fine art photography print in a custom aqua plexi shadowbox frame, limited edition of 25

New Mediums

Mounts in colored acrylic boxes: NYC-based Venezuelan-born photographer Isabella Bejarano champions environmental causes through her sustainable fine art prints, donating proceeds to combat climate change.

Film lightboxes: Montreal-based artist and film aficionado Hugo Cantin creates patterned collages on vintage film stock. Housed in light boxes, his illuminated creations fuse sophisticated design with historical narratives.

Patrick Skals, “THE WRITING IS ON THE WALL” (2023), acrylic, ink, and watercolor on canvas

Text

Toronto artist Patrick Skals escaped the corporate world in 2019 to pursue his unique vision. His collection, In Other Words, aims to disrupt norms with abstract commentary, challenging viewers to be introspective.

Kelli Kikcio, an artist from Toronto now based in Brooklyn, takes a hands-on approach in her work, which reflects her commitment to social justice and community engagement.

See work by all these artists and more at The Other Art Fair’s Brooklyn edition, on view from May 16 to 19.

Grab your tickets for an unforgettable weekend at theotherartfair.com.

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As John Koening writes in The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows, the term sonder refers to “the realization that each random passerby is living a life as vivid and complex as your own—an epic story that continues invisibly around you.” This profound feeling reveals itself in Tony Van Le’s street photography, circling around the meaningful coincidences that he captures instantaneously.

Le is fueled by serendipity and strangeness. Having originally explored these grounds through music production, the artist has since moved toward manifesting a similar ethos through photography. Impassioned by the transient work of Vivian Maier, Le has spent years cultivating this calling, becoming more confident with focusing his lens on strangers over time. Purely candid and wondrously ephemeral, the artist approaches each street scene with a clear mind.

He explains, “When I’m out on the street, my mindset combines looking for the out-of-the-ordinary with trying to be a blank slate. By being fully attuned to the moment, I’m more open to the photographic potential of what I encounter.” Although fleeting, each snapshot is a reminder of the wonder that comes from being fully present and deeply sensitive toward life’s mundane charm.

Le has a number of ongoing projects, which you can find on his website. He will also be exhibiting at Gallery-O-Rama in July, so follow along on Instagram for updates.

“Into the Unknown”

“Man and Iguana”

“Metacognition”

“Woman with Mannequin on Motorbike”

“Diverse Pathways”

“Bicyclist and Steam”

“Among Us”

“Police Officer, Red-Tailed Hawk, and Rodent”

“Nature’s Crown”

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Anyone who’s tried to untangle a ball of yarn understands that fibers have a habit of knotting in ways that can seem impossible to unwind. These twisting, interlaced qualities ground much of Tali Weinberg’s fiber-based work as she pulls at the individual threads of our changing climate, using abstract weavings and textile sculptures to explore the inextricable nature of the crisis and the necessity for human intervention.

The Illinois-based artist begins with data from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration that she translates into visual works using organic and synthetic materials. “These weavings and coiled sculptures are not data visualizations,” Weinberg notes. “Rather, I use the data as a scaffold, choosing materials, patterns, and colors to evoke places and add the social-political dimensions of the climate crisis back into the story the data tells.”

Installation view of “Heat Waves/Water Falls” (2023)

“Heat Waves/Water Falls,” for example, wraps naturally dyed cotton threads around plastic medical tubing, which dangles from a horizontal pole. Made during 2023, the hottest year on record, the sculpture incorporates the annual average temperatures for 18 major river basins in the continental U.S., data that corresponds to the thread colors. It also tethers environmental health to that of people. The artist elaborates:

As the pollution from human life on land runs downstream, watersheds become one window into the interdependence of ecological and human health. While the plastic medical tubing is an expression of the buildup of toxic plastics in our bodies and waterways, wrapping and bundling these tubes by hand becomes an expression of care for our interconnected lives.

“Heat Waves/Water Falls” is one of about 30 works on view at Denver Botanic Gardens for Weinberg’s solo show, The Space Between Threads. The exhibition focuses on the ongoing Climate Datascapes series, which she began in 2015 to better understand the climate crisis and to add an emotional, embodied tenor to sterile, even abstract science. Today, Weinberg considers the series a way of “seeking out and re-weaving otherwise obscured relationships—relationships between climate change, water, extractive industry, illness, and displacement; between disparate places; between personal and communal loss; between corporeal and ecological bodies; and between art, science, and social change.”

If you’re in Denver, you can see The Space Between Threads through June 9. Find more from Weinberg on Instagram. You might also enjoy The Tempestry Project.

“Heat Waves/Water Falls” (2023)

“Heat Waves” (2023)

“Silt Study: Lower Mississippi River Basin” (2021)

Detail of “Silt Study: Arkansas White River Basin” (2021)

Installation view at Denver Botanic Gardens. Left wall: “Silt Studies” (2021). Back wall: “Fissures” (2018). Pedestal: “Bound (1.6)” (2017-2024)

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