It is a rare art critic who can look at a sculpture made of condensed milk, nod sagely, and remark, “Yes, of course.” Yet that is increasingly the job description. This year, artists have outdone themselves in their pursuit of media that resist permanence, practicality, and sometimes common sense. The only constant is the confidence with which they insist these substances are the future of fine art.
Anaïs Joubert’s Fermenting Palettes
Parisian painter Anaïs Joubert has abandoned pigment altogether, working instead with oxidized honey layered across paper. The results are sticky, shimmering abstractions that continue to darken and mould in real time. Critics have praised the works for their commentary on “the perishability of beauty.” Gallery staff reportedly wear gloves and carry fly traps during installation.
Marco Ellini and the Magnetized Flock
Milan’s Marco Ellini has created an installation of suspended ball bearings held aloft by electromagnets. The spheres shift and clatter as viewers pass, producing what the artist calls “a choreography of anxious atoms.” The piece is visually elegant but blew several circuit breakers mid-opening, which Ellini cleverly recast as “a meditation on collapse.”
Tasha Rudd: The Bureaucratic Sublime
Londoner Tasha Rudd shreds government documents, pulps them into a slurry, and paints with the resulting paste. Her recent series, HMRC in Monsoon, features brooding washes of grey and ochre derived from obsolete tax forms. Rudd insists it’s about the opacity of institutions; critics suspect it’s also about not paying for art supplies.
Jinwoo Park’s Meteorological Stains
In Seoul, Jinwoo Park has been exhibiting canvases stained only with rainwater collected from disparate neighborhoods. From industrial zones come inky, soot-drenched blotches; from suburban gardens, pale mineral veils. His diptych Exhaust and Incense, contrasting rain near an oil refinery with that from a Buddhist monastery, was described by one visitor as “a weather report for the soul.”
Carla Menotti’s Rotten Still Lifes
Buenos Aires performance artist Carla Menotti produced Ephemeral Orchard, a gallery filled with arrangements of fresh fruit that aren’t replaced daily as they decay. Mould, collapse, and fruit flies are central to the piece. Menotti describes it as “Vanitas in real time.” One collector reportedly bought a week’s worth of rotting pears, only to be politely told there was nothing left to ship.
Elias Quade’s Breath of the Public
Brooklyn-based Elias Quade has made oxidation his muse. He frames polished copper sheets and invites viewers to breathe on them, leaving foggy halos and long-term patinas. The pieces accumulate stains of intimacy, disgust, and garlic bread. Quade describes this as “the audience immortalized in atmosphere.” His dealer calls it “interactive rust.”
The lesson from this year’s eccentricities is simple: art is no longer confined to canvas, clay, or stone. It will corrode, curdle, ferment, and buzz until it finds a medium stranger than the world it reflects. And when the critics finally nod and murmur “Of course,” what they really mean is, “Please let this not stain my jacket.”
