Avery Wheless: Ritual Rotation

Ritual Rotation is an extension of my painting practice - a collaboration with dancer Mackenzie Palmer, designer Kari Fry, and a score by JiJi Sounds. Each element of the series is rooted in the body: its repetition, its endurance, and its capacity to hold tension through rotation. The moving body functions as both subject and surface. The work centers on a dancer engaged in continuous rotation, undulation, and extension. As she spins, she moves in and out of light, producing a shifting economy of visibility: revelation, disappearance, fracture. She wears a chrome, healing-properties top by SUBSURFACE. The garment operates not as a costume but as a reflective apparatus - an armor. Light strikes its surface and disperses, destabilizing the figure and dissolving the body into its surroundings. The surface becomes painterly: unstable, resistant to fixed form. At its core, the work meditates on womanhood as a continual negotiation between exposure and protection. Lately, I have been grappling with the overwhelming pull to dissociate from my own body. Abuse mirrors policy. Control mirrors governance. Nothing feels resolved - no justice, no repair - only exposure followed by exhaustion. I don’t believe in the system; perhaps I never did. But I did not imagine a world so openly cruel, so unmasked in its indifference. The body has become a political battleground. The world exerts pressure - pulling, fragmenting, demanding coherence - yet the body persists through motion. Movement becomes a survival strategy, a method of maintaining wholeness within instability. The score, composed by JIJI Sounds, is built from recordings of my own breath. Breath becomes measure and tempo, echoing its central role in both choreography and painting - the dancer’s internal metronome, the invisible force behind the gestural mark. What begins as private becomes shared: an intimate physiological rhythm made audible, wavering, exposed. The project exists as performance, fashion, and visual art, engaging questions of embodiment, duration, and visibility. It proposes the body not simply as an image, but as a site of negotiation - between light and dark, control and surrender, self and world. Now more than ever, chasing the light feels almost impossible - yet imperative. This piece inhabits that tension: the body as a battleground, and also as a place of innate knowing and strength.

Art

Barbara Kruger: The Supreme Collager

April 30, 2026

Participating in the annual New York Antiquarian Book Fair, Harper's Books will exhibit acclaimed artists, including the legendary collager, Barbara Kruger. The collection of her original paste-ups encapsulates the artist's early transition from editorial design to contemporary art. As such, the collection feel more like an act of construction. Her blocky cut-outs of Futura are carefully assembled, tested, and positioned in order to simplify intense messages. Based on her time as a designer from both Mademoiselle magazine and leftist book publisher Schocken, Kruger masters how to strategically synthesize words and images in a way that is minimalistic yet riveting.

The work foregrounds her artistic methodology that defines her reputable portfolio today. This developmental phase reflects on how images circulate, how authority is established, and how meaning is shaped through the pairing of text and imagery. The pieces are from the 80s, when the voices answering these questions were still forming, meek and fluid. There's something so compelling about artwork from that past that so accurately portrays the present, reminding us that time exists on a spiral rather a linear line.

From April 30th to May 3rd, visit booth C23 at Park Avenue Armory to catch her work on display and for sale.

Art

Paul McCarthy: Power in the Provocative

I do what I want—what I believe in. We’re living in a pretty extreme time, and when people say my work is getting more extreme, I think that just reflects the world around us. I’m simply moving with the current.

Born in Salt Lake City, Utah, McCarthy’s beginning in the art world stems from proximal radicalization. After moving from Salt Lake City to study in San Francisco, McCarthy's work as an artist has always embodied this radicalization. Street-wise, known for being one of the most

“dangerous” artists in Los Angeles, this exhibit encapsulates that at its forefront. The artworks present provocative, scattered drawings and paintings that promote freedom from systematic censorship in the exchange between creator and receiver. His art style is distinctive in its intention of visibility over technicality, as seen in his limited color palette and intentionally imperfect techniques, but radical imagery.

McCarthy speaks about his artistic process as though the outcomes are inevitable and incredibly natural to him, given the current state of the world. Living in times of constant uncertainty has blurred the lines of media censorship; almost everything we consume is shaped by it, raising questions such as: Why was this said? Why was this created? Who is this for? Paul McCarthy’s work deconstructs this. His drive to create authentically and follow what feels natural to him results in art that inhabits the visual extremes of human experience, with the spirit of contestation serving as an added layer to the experience.

Art

The Wedding Written In Stone

April 27, 2026

Sten Studio walks down the aisle to couple with Alcova for Milan Design Week. Set within an abandoned cathedral where vows once echoed, The Wedding is a sculptural installation hosting a symbolic marriage between feminine and masculine, soft and stone, fluidity and structure. Rocks are fossilized fusions of their own ancient surroundings, built from eons of crashing waves or explosive magma. Love is based on divine circumstances, built through trials and tribulations. Love is much like stone in the way it takes form through time and pressure, relying on the invisible higher powers forcing the gravity of unity. The Wedding reflects on this permanence. The space materializes elements that are usually fleeting - light, flowers, ceremonies, romance. Registry gifts include a custom carpet courtesy of Verdi, floral arrangements from Hamish Powell, and scents brewed by Penhaligon’s, all coming together to build the intimate world.

Photos Courtesy of Ramona Balaban

Sten Studio specializes in stones and crystals as decorative interiors, expanding on natural, Earthly beauty in man-made environments. Alcova temporarily transforms raw, abandoned, and unique urban spaces into immersive hubs of design, innovation, and heritage. The featured collection revitalizes the cathedral for a final reception celebrating life and all its momentary yet abundant bursts of joy.