Marz, 2023
Sheida Soleimani
Harlan Levey Projects
Deathly Silence, 2016
Nicolas Vionnet
Al-Tiba9 Gallery
In this monthly roundup, we spotlight five stellar exhibitions at small and rising galleries.
K. T. Kobel
“Hand, Body, Object, Sin”
Kutlesa, Goldau, Switzerland
Through May 29
Practice Makes Permanent, 2026
K.T. Kobel
Kutlesa
An Exit Without Leaving, 2026
K.T. Kobel
Kutlesa
Since 2022, British-born, Amsterdam-based painter K. T. Kobel has staged shows from Los Angeles to Milan. This month, the artist mounts his first major Swiss exhibition, filled with cinematic paintings that embrace fragmentation and loose ends. His compositions, which are reminiscent of storyboards, offer disjointed images that the viewer must piece together.
Each of Kobel’s new works features four painted scenes, vertically stacked within a singular wooden frame. An alluring, eerie haze ensconces these three-foot-tall arrangements, created using pigment transfer, acrylic, and encaustic. Their contents blend taboo and tension: Practice Makes Permanent (all works 2026) features a hissing black cat, while the screaming mouth and black latex bodysuit in An Exit Without Leaving suggest both horror and kink. The images recall the Spaghetti Slashers Kobel holds dear, though they are not, in fact, from real films.
The human mind naturally detests ambiguity. Here, however, Kobel reminds us of all the imagination can conjure when given a few mysterious, compelling frames. As the artist himself says, “repetition becomes ritual.”
“Terra Incognita (Unknown Land) – Part II”
Al-Tiba9 Gallery, Barcelona
May 14–July 25
Floating Court Reflections, 2026
ChingKe Lin
Al-Tiba9 Gallery
Hybrid Cluster, 2025
Dongbay
Al-Tiba9 Gallery
Last spring, the chic Al-Tiba9 Gallery, located in Barcelona’s picturesque El Born neighborhood, unveiled “Terra Incognita.” The group show featured five international artists who tested the boundaries between nature and humanity. Its sequel arrives this month, presenting work by a new crop of five artists who explore how humanity situates itself within Earth’s diverse environments.
Swiss photographer Andy Storchenegger will present a three-channel film, Nobody is Okay (2022). This collaboration with Zambian poet Marita Banda explores the psychology of masquerades. Self-proclaimed Chinese “eco-warrior” Dongbay suspends decorated animal pelts and textiles made of recycled Carhartt clothes within metal scaffolding. These spatial experiments bring the artist’s illegal urban art practice into the white cube. Swiss painter and sculptor Nicolas Vionnet—the only participant to feature in both editions of the exhibition—alternately calms and frustrates viewers with canvases that feature melancholy landscapes and a sculpture of an impractical skateboard equipped with crutches. Taiwanese artist Ching-ke Lin’s signature whirls of bamboo render an ancient, natural material futuristic. Meanwhile, Milan-based duo Dan Molin & Milani contribute a motorized fitting room titled Muletto (2022), which transforms an intimate space into something industrial. Together, these works ask: What does it take to make a home?
Sheida Soleimani
“Flyways”
Harlan Levey Projects, Brussels
Through June 27
Iranian-born, American-based photographer and filmmaker Sheida Soleimani integrates activism into her art and life. When she’s not producing political imagery that protests the powers that necessitated her parents’ exile from Iran, the artist cares for injured migratory birds. She’s all too aware that their plight—and gorgeous resilience—parallels her family’s.
Soleimani’s third exhibition in six years with Harlan Levey Projects unites two of her ongoing, interconnected series—both of which figured in her 2025 New York institutional debut, “Panjereh,” at the International Center of Photography. That presentation introduced audiences to Soleimani’s maximalist “Ghostwriter” series of magical realist scenes shot with overwhelming clarity. These works are collaborative: Soleimani’s mother created drawings which appear throughout the compositions, while her father provided graphics and slogans that oppose Iran’s authoritarian leadership—and any ruler, really, who abuses power.
The exhibition pairs “Ghostwriter” specimens like Marz (2023) and Safehouse (2024) with additional shots like Misunderstanding (2024) and Exodus (2024), drawn from Soleimani’s more recent “Flyways” series inspired by her avian rescue. Especially exciting is the debut of the artist’s new film, Wave (2025), which unites the distinct series throughout her latest show. Here, the Soleimanis care for insects and deer in a desert landscape, intermittently reciting mantras that honor the resolve of all intrepid species: “We are alive because we refuse to rest.”
Patrick Puckett
“Daze of Our Lives”
Wally Workman Gallery, Austin
May 9–May 31
U.S.A., 2026
Patrick Puckett
Wally Workman Gallery
Watermelon, 2026
Patrick Puckett
Wally Workman Gallery
Mississippi-born and -based painter Patrick Puckett has already had eleven solo shows since 2013 with Wally Workman Gallery, a 46-year-old Austin art stronghold situated in a historic home. With each successive year, Puckett’s self-professed “Hillbilly Baroque” compositions have grown tighter, bolder, more dynamic, and ever-brighter.
“Daze of Our Lives,” Puckett’s twelfth presentation at the gallery, offers yet another body of life-sized portraits depicting blissed-out figures. They’re rendered in Puckett’s signature high-contrast, electric palettes. 7 of the 12 new works are oil paintings on canvas. The rest are mixed media on paper. Motifs repeat, like a ping pong table, echoed by the racket that another figure brandishes, legs splayed, in U.S.A. (all works 2026).
Yet these “Daze of Our Lives” aren’t all fun and games. Puckett immortalizes his recurrent ping pong player in the pensive lulls between volleys. There are many moments of ambrosial seduction here too, from the reclining goddess in Watermelon to the female figure lazing in a lawn chair with a bouquet between her legs in Garden. Indeed, while Puckett’s figures are alluring, they’re never fully idealized. His electric hues underscore their more serious sides, the people they might be after closing the bathroom door to catch their breath during a party.
John Vitale
“TIME ISN'T AFTER US”
Court Tree Collective, New York City
May 2–June 6
Spirit Portal #2, 2026
John Vitale
Court Tree Collective
Spirit portal #3, 2026
John Vitale
Court Tree Collective
“TIME ISN'T AFTER US” seems to take its name from “Once in a Lifetime,” the Talking Heads’ most famous song. It’s a fitting callout, considering critics have already likened Brooklyn-based John Vitale’s gentle geometric abstractions to music, with all its rhythms and rests.
Vitale’s latest paintings present additional contradictions. Black voids underscore pastel forms in compositions that balance groundedness and buoyancy. Vitale’s energetic hand remains palpable in these works of acrylic, house paint, pencils, aerosol, and china markers on raw canvas, despite their easygoing overtones. Adding a touch of bawdy humor are flaccid, phallic forms that accumulate around circular portals—a new visual element in the artist’s work.
After years of teaching himself how to paint (and a short stint at New York’s storied School of the Visual Arts in 2008), Vitale is hitting his stride. “These paintings led me in an interesting direction,” he wrote on Instagram alongside Spirit Guide (2026). “This piece in particular may have cracked something open for me and my practice moving forward.” The work is awfully playful, considering the guru status he’s imbued it with.
