The pioneering perceptual artist James Turrell marked a career milestone this month with the opening of his 100th Skyscape, a site-specific architectural installation with a simple construction: a domed structure with an oculus pointed toward the sky.

Now permanently on view at ARoS in Aarhus, Denmark, “As Seen Below” is the latest iteration of the iconic series, which has been installed in 26 countries. Spanning more than 50 feet high and 130 feet wide, the enormous dome most often opens up to an unfiltered sky, although various “color shifts” seal the oculus and instead cast brilliant color around the space.

Read more about the project previously on Colossal, and reserve your tickets on the museum’s website.

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Hyundai Motor Group announces the open call for the 7^th VH AWARD, a global award program and platform amplifying creators whose work engages with the context of Asia. The VH AWARD invites individuals and collectives of Asian descent, based in Asia, or members of the Asian diaspora, to submit screen-based audiovisual art, including video art, motion graphics, animation, games, films, or newly explored areas.  

Enhanced Opportunities for Artistic Growth

This edition offers increased production grants for all finalists. Furthermore, a new Honorary Mention category will recognize a broader range of voices, offering global exposure and selective access to the online residency. 

In June 2027, an international jury will select one Grand Prix recipient to receive an additional $30,000. 

An Online Residency Newly Developed with Ars Electronica

In expanded partnership with Ars Electronica, the VH AWARD’s online residency provides 5 finalists opportunities to work closely with an international network of curators, technologists, artists, and experts. Over six months, the program accompanies the finalists as they develop new artistic works.

The residency combines individual curatorial and technical mentoring, peer exchange, and expert feedback. Artists selected for the new Honorary Mention category will also be invited to join selected components of the program.

Highlighted by exclusive masterclasses with Hito Steyerl and Daito Manabe, the residency fosters direct dialogue on contemporary media art practices. This comprehensive support enables the finalists to realize exhibition-ready pieces.

Global Exhibition Platforms

In partnership with leading institutions, finalists’ commissioned works will be presented to international audiences. Starting in 2027, these projects will be showcased across prominent global platforms, including HEK (Basel), the Ars Electronica Festival (Linz), Vision Hall (Yongin), and Singapore Art Week 2028. 

How to Apply

Applications open from May 26 to July 21, 2026. Submit all required materials online through the official VH AWARD website.

To learn more, visit vhaward.com.

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NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope is back with another stunner: a new 223-megapixel composite featuring about 16.5 million stars that have been evolving over several million years. Captured by Webb’s NIRCam (Near-Infrared Camera) across 65 hours, the enormous image features Messier 82, also known as the Cigar galaxy, which is located 12 million light-years away.

“M82 is a mess, but it’s a beautiful mess,” said NASA fellow Adam Smercina. “We don’t fully understand what’s going on, especially concerning its evolutionary history. What could have triggered such an elevated rate of star formation? How long has this galaxy been driving plumes of material away from its center?”

Initial speculation includes a galaxy merger causing rapid star formation 10 times faster than that of the Milky Way and lasting a few hundred million years, which researchers describe as “a short-lived event in astronomical terms.” Although we can see many of these stellar objects as blue granules, there are likely many more invisible to us.

Hubble had previously looked at the galaxy, but the technology was unable to capture the same detail as Webb. As shown in a side-by-side comparison, Hubble captures many of the dust grains and ionized hydrogen gas depicted in red, orange, and yellow, while Webb highlights the staggering density of stars.

“Galaxies are such intricate ecosystems that if you truly want to understand them, you have to pull datasets from different missions together,” said Kristen McQuinn, of the Space Telescope Science Institute. “One mission cannot fully answer all of the questions we have about M82. Combining the data collected by different telescopes, like Webb and Hubble, is powerful. When you marry the datasets, you expand what you can probe, and the questions that you can pose are even more complex.”

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Sure, we all want love, but what lengths would you go to find it? Swedish animator Anna Mantzaris once again captures the gamut of human emotion in a stop-motion film that plunges headfirst into the pitiful and cringy. As its title suggests, “PLEASE” is about wanting and attempting to find love through increasingly unhinged acts of desperation and neediness. Mantzaris’ signature felt characters light fires for marriage proposals, sob in the chip aisle, and hug puppies while waiting for the train.

The writer and director tells Creative Boom that she got the idea for the short film during the early days of the pandemic, when most people were trapped at home. “We became more obsessed with our self-image because we saw ourselves on screens in Zoom calls all day. We spent a lot of time looking at ourselves while feeling disconnected from other people,” she says. “I wanted the characters to try to break out of this bubble, to reach out, to show their longing, but in a not-so-perfect way.”

“PLEASE” is the latest addition to Mantzaris’ growing collection of dark comedies, although this film also counts Swedish actor Stellan Skarsgård, who just this year was nominated for an Oscar for his role in Sentimental Value, among its cast. Presented through a series of vignettes, the felted puppets weave in and out of the animation, and we witness their most heated and pathetic moments.

“I’m interested in the difference between what we show the world and what we actually feel,” she adds. “Presenting the ‘ugly’ feelings through the puppets makes us feel seen. They get to do it for us, so we feel we’re not alone.”

The short film is currently making the rounds on the festival circuit, although a wider release is in the works, too. Watch the trailer on YouTube, and find additional clips—including the dating profile of a particularly discouraged 21-year-old—on Instagram.

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Known for his painstakingly intricate mixed-media sculptures, Canadian artist Chris Millar continues to test the bounds of scale and detail. Two recent works epitomize his ongoing explorations: “A Prize Every Time” and “Loom Beneath the Loam,” the latter of which contains eight tiny paintings, two relief sculptures, and numerous sculptural elements attached to a brass frame. Cartoonish pendants, vignettes with faces, branch-like tendrils and more lend the piece an enigmatic contraption-like quality, as if the pull of a hidden lever will send the entire thing into motion.

In a departure from his multimedia pieces, “A Prize Every Time” is a meticulously rendered acrylic painting containing some 90 portraits of notable figures from Alberta who populate a map of the province, where the artist originally hails from. It has the look of a tourism map merged with a look-and-find book.

“To an American audience, a lot of the Alberta-centric easter eggs will go over their heads, but even if they don’t know about Alberta’s history or geography, it’s a pretty fun painting to look at!” Millar says. You may recognize a few famous individuals, such as Michael J. Fox and Joni Mitchell, both of whom were born there.

See more on Millar’s Instagram.

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Across an expansive lawn at Minneapolis’ Boom Island Park earlier this month, Franco-Swiss artist Saype painted a monumental public artwork directly onto the grass. Part of his Beyond Walls series, which has so far seen 22 iterations around the world, the piece marked the first time the project appeared in the U.S.

Minneapolis found itself in the global spotlight earlier this year when ICE descended on the city and spurred several weeks of turmoil, protests, and violence. Especially tragic were the killings of Renée Nicole Good and Alex Pretti during interactions with agents. The city is no stranger to the ripple effects of police brutality, especially in the wake of George Floyd’s murder in 2020 and the subsequent surge in Black Lives Matter protests around the world.

What Minneapolis also has in spades is a deeply felt sense of community. It’s the sort of place where neighbors help to shovel each other’s sidewalks and find innovative ways to support one another. A recent study by State of the Nation ranked Minnesota number one in the U.S. for quality of life.

“I found an incredible humanity in Minneapolis—in the welcome of its people, their stories, their kindness. I’m deeply grateful for that,” Saype says. “And this is the power of art: to bring people together. I hope this work will make people dream—here and far beyond.”

Saype’s 310-by-75-foot ground mural stretches across the entire width of the park. It sits adjacent to the Mississippi River, which the Indigenous Anishinaabe (Ojibwe) people treat as sacred and call Misi-ziibi, or “Giant River.” The painting, created with a biodegradable medium the artist has developed over time, is designed to gradually fade as the elements and occasional mowing run their course.

During the first weekend in June, hundreds of residents turned out to see the work in progress and link together in a human chain to demonstrate solidarity, resilience, and togetherness. An official print edition of the completed work is available for purchase on Saype’s site, and proceeds support additional murals. See more on the artist’s Instagram.

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Alternating between felted wool, crochet, and embroidery, Holly Guertin summons moments of peace and reflection through nature. Lifelike lambs serenely nod off or stand in front of ornate backgrounds, while vignettes of foliage and flourishes incorporate colorful fiber. In her practice, the artist seeks connections between patterns and adornments and flora and fauna. “The brilliant color work in a hummingbird’s feathers, the spots on a pufferfish, even the stripes in a blade of grass are all ordinary moments of spectacular ornament,” she says.

Some of these pieces will be on view in the artist’s solo exhibition Hand in Hand at Waterworks Visual Arts Center in Salisbury, North Carolina, which runs from July 6 to October 10. See more on the artist’s Instagram.

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Albert Einstein once said that “the most beautiful experience we can have is the mysterious. It is the fundamental emotion that stands at the cradle of true art and true science.” For Dr. Elliot McGucken, the sublime enigmas of nature form the basis of his explorations of landscape and light.

McGucken traverses North America’s most beautiful and striking terrain, including Death Valley where he captured a wildflower superbloom earlier this year. He revels in all kinds of natural phenomena, from the vicissitudes of the Rocky Mountains to brown bears fishing in Alaska’s Katmai National Park and Preserve to the ghostly, flood-carved walls of Antelope Canyon. He also happens to be a physicist whose research focuses on an artificial retina prosthesis that can help restore sight to those who are blind.

Although photography and physics may seem at first blush to be a world apart, they intersect in many ways, especially through the use of advanced lenses that manipulate light to create images. In this way, McGucken channels a limitless fascination with perception and seeing in which scientific inquiry drives his photography as much as the aesthetic and technical qualities of the medium. He’s also really into Albert Einstein’s Theory of Relativity and quantum mechanics, and that’s where an ongoing series called Spacetime Light Cone Sculptures dx4/dt=ic comes in.

McGucken delves specifically into the study of the fourth dimension, drawing on Einstein’s 1922 book The Meaning of Relativity, in which the renowned scientist illustrated a “light cone” that represented “the deep, physical relationship between space, time, and the velocity of light,” McGucken says. This almost hourglass-like shape, with two cones that meet at their tips, forms the basis of Spacetime Light Cone Sculptures dx4/dt=ic.

McGucken describes the works as “sculptures upon nature’s exalted easel,” utilizing contemporary technology to illuminate theories of existence and the cosmos. He sends a drone into the air over dramatic and remote Southwest landscapes to capture long exposures of conical spirals of light. Over the years, he’s visited the Trona Pinnacles in the California Desert Conservation Area and the Mobius Arch rock formation in the Alabama Hills, among other places.

See more on the artist’s Instagram and purchase prints on his website. You might also enjoy Rueben Wu’s glowing light paintings.

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To open a new film from Art21, artist Lenka Clayton encapsulates her way of thinking and making: “Looking at things that are supposed to behave a certain way and purposefully misunderstanding how they should be used, it’s really important to me,” she says.

The Cornwall-born artist works across media, creating both meditative animations via typewriter and immersive installations of gathered artifacts. Collecting is central to Clayton’s practice both materially and conceptually, and she often works from her own experiences, particularly those around becoming a parent and her life in Pittsburgh (she even started an open-source residency program for artist mothers).

In the short documentary, we see Clayton’s culinary installation of colorful tongs hung in a grid on her studio wall alongside a project completed when her son was a baby. Each time she retrieved a spool of thread, button, acorn, bottle cap, or myriad other object from her child’s mouth, she documented the tiny finding and created an enormous, photographic grid that speaks to the care required to protect young life.

“There is only connection in life,” she says, “and my work is just looking at those connections, so that we can create a shared experience.”

This segment is part of Art21’s Human Nature episode, alongside Colombian artist Delcy Morelos, and both are available for viewing on Art21’s website. Find more from Clayton on Instagram.

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When we think of traveling circuses, the “big top” tent likely springs to mind with its acrobats, clowns, tightrope walkers, and other entertainers and pageantry. Sometimes the traditions are controversial, such as the use of elephants and lions for performances. But visions of bedazzled animals or the swinging trapeze are nevertheless etched in our collective memory.

In the former U.S.S.R., the tradition took on a whole new meaning. Circuses had been nationalized in 1919, a few years before the Soviet Union was formed. Along with theater, opera, and music, the genre was also co-opted by the socialist government as a propaganda machine, turning family-friendly entertainment into a channel for Communist Party ideological messages. And with its enormous popularity, venues were in demand.

Between the 1950s and 1980s, the U.S.S.R. commissioned dozens of arenas across the nation, conceived as year-round event venues. Their strikingly geometric, brutalist designs are eye-catching and modern, reflecting the government’s fixation on expressing its power and technological progress. In the 1960s, the Space Race exemplified the Soviet Union’s critical role on the world stage. Arena architecture was yet another way to demonstrate the nation’s might, even occasionally resembling flying saucers.

Cirk, a new book from David Navarro and Martyna Sobecka of Zupagrafika, highlights the wide range of permanent circuses still standing around Eastern Europe, Central Asia, and further afield. “These arenas combined socialist modernism, experimental engineering, and choreographed spectacle,” the publisher says, adding: “Together, they reveal a lesser-known chapter of postwar modernist architecture shaped by ideology and mass entertainment.”

One of Cirk‘s more playful features is a series of pop-out paper models of actual buildings including state circus buildings in Bishkek, Chișinău, Dnipro, Moscow, and Tashkent. Find your copy on Zupagrafika’s website.

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