Anyone who’s decried the seasonal blip we call autumn knows how rapidly nature can swing from verdant greenery to leafless branches. The same goes for the missed watering of an overlooked houseplant: skip a week and bear witness to browning edges that curl into a crisp. As quickly as these natural changes occur, so do their remedies or downfalls, and soon we’re spotting new buds or depositing the evidence of our negligence in the compost bin.

For Álvaro Urbano, the brief period between blossom and decay is one to be preserved. He sculpts common plants from metal, casting vulnerable life forms into a sturdy material and rendering their colors and textures in paint. It’s an act of making “small monuments of things that normally would disappear or change in a few days, or in minutes,” the artist says.

Drawing on theater and architecture, Urbano is deeply interested in creating not only standalone works but immersive scenes. His sculptures often leave a trail of leaves on the floor or appear to grow directly from the stark gallery wall, their knotted branches jutting out into the space. “The viewer can enter these situations as if they are witnesses (to) a scene that has already started,” the artist adds.

Urbano lives and works between Paris and Berlin and has work on view in the latter at Spore Initiative. Find more on Instagram.

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Before digital fonts and the ability to reproduce graphics on a large scale, there were sign painters. Today, printers can spit out countless posters and ads, but there was a time when hand-painted promotional signage was needed for retail windows, and business names were often rendered just the same. Of course, it’s a trade that virtually died out with the advent of new technologies, which made it cheaper and faster to produce public messaging. In the way of LPs and film cameras, though, just because there were new methods in daily use, it certainly doesn’t mean that the art form doesn’t live on.

A new book published by Letterform Archive, Lettres Décoratives: A Century of French Sign Painters’ Alphabets, celebrates the vivacity and timelessness of French sign painting from the 19th and early 20th centuries. Compiled from lithograph portfolios, which range from 1875 to around 1932, the volume includes more than 150 full-color reproductions of these bold lettering samples. These portfolios once served as catalogue-like albums, providing inspiration for styles and motifs that could be translated onto large billboards and small signage alike.

While decorative painting had been around long before embellished lettering came into vogue, it took a while to catch on. “Only in the nineteenth century did painters make alphabets into primary decorative elements,” writes sign painter Morgane Côme in the introduction. “Indeed even then, many of the letters painted on signboards, canvas awnings, and vehicles remained simple in form, following inherited models of Roman square capitals and modern variants used in printing type. The new demand for eye-catching signs called for significant change in perspective.”

Explore more in your own copy, which you can grab from the Colossal Shop.

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Dakotaraptor, a fossilized skeleton of which was discovered a little more than 20 years ago by paleontologists in South Dakota, was an extremely lethal prehistoric predator. Its feathered body, powerful legs, and huge jaw gave it an advantage as it roamed its territory some 66 million years ago. But it was really its so-called “sickle claw,” a huge, taloned toe that measures 9.5 inches on the outer curve.

For artist Grant Garmezy, the ancient creature presented a unique opportunity to render a life-size sculptural version. Specializing in meticulously detailed, accurate representations of nature in glass, he took on the challenge of recreating the Dakotaraptor’s 14-foot length from snout to tail.

“The fossil record leaves much to interpretation, as details like feathers and posture remain a matter of scientific debate,” says a statement from GRANADA Gallery, which supported the artist in the project. “This uncertainty mirrors the artistry of the project itself, where each form is a choice, a vision, and a reimagining of prehistory.”

Go behind-the-scenes as Garmezy makes the sculpture on Instagram, and explore more of his process on YouTube.

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In the age of the internet, we’re fortunate to have virtual access to museum collections around the world, thanks to objects in the public domain and programs like The Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Open Access Initiative. Through a searchable digital catalogue, visitors to the museum’s website can see hundreds of thousands of objects, many images of which are available for download. And it’s not alone—other institutions like the Art Institute of Chicago, The National Gallery of Art, and The Cleveland Museum of Art, among others, make pieces in their collections accessible to all.

The thing is, digital images don’t always give us the full picture, so to speak. Even two-dimensional paintings and drawings have unique textures, structural details, and materials that we can only really appreciate in person. This won’t ever really change—nothing beats the real thing. But one caveat is that even in person, much of the work remains hidden. We can’t see the backs of oil paintings, for example, and edges are often hidden within frames. Thanks to The Met’s continued emphasis on imaging, we can now experience every detail in three-dimensional renderings of nearly 140 significant objects in its holdings.

The Met is home to a whopping 1.5 million historic objects, which range from the iconic Temple of Dendur and Impressionist paintings to African tribal ceremonial sculptures and medieval pottery. The museum recently published 3D models of some of these, plus numerous other objects, including nine produced in collaboration with NHK (Japan Broadcasting Corporation).

With careful attention to technical precision and color, these animated renderings are research-grade tools, allowing us to see the objects at any angle. View van Gogh’s brushstrokes closer than you’re allowed to in a museum, zoom in on a Babylonian cuneiform tablet, and turn an 18th-century Turkish tile over to see its reverse side.

The Met plans to continue adding 3D scans to its online library. Explore more on the museum’s website.

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The construction of Grundtvigs Kirke in Copenhagen took nearly two decades, beginning in fall of 1921 and finally reaching completion in 1940. Designed by Peder Vilhelm Jensen-Klint, it transforms the humble brick into a masterpiece of Expressionist architecture. Its pointed interior arches and vaulted ceiling, stepped crenellations, and hulking exterior nod to medieval Gothic and Romanesque styles while also exhibiting a profoundly modern sensibility.

David Altrath, a Hamburg-based photographer whose work emphasizes urban and architectural elements, captures Grundtvigs’ details in an atmospheric cumulative portrait. Bathed in mellow, golden light, the church’s pale yellow bricks appear to glow, complemented by minimal interior decor beyond some simple wooden furniture and altars.

“The building feels both austere and atmospheric, especially in the way light moves through the interior spaces and emphasizes the geometry of the structure,” Altrath tells Colossal. He’s always seeking unique relationships between form, light, and atmosphere.

The church’s tall vertical lines and symmetry required careful attention to composition in order to capture the building’s architectural geometry, and the interior lighting conditions can vary depending on the weather or time of day. “I enjoyed working with these constraints and trying to capture both the structure of the building and the quiet atmosphere of the space,” he says.

Altrath is currently photographing modernist and contemporary architecture across Europe. See more on Instagram.

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Americans are uniquely disconnected from our food. More than 10 percent of the working population is employed in agricultural sectors, but it’s rare for the average person to grapple with—let alone witness—the number of people involved in growing, harvesting, packaging, and ultimately getting dinner onto their plate. Given that many farms, restaurants, and other food-related businesses employ those who are undocumented, these sectors have also been targeted for deportation, further pushing the people who keep them running into the shadows.

For Narsiso Martinez, this essential labor has long been the central point of his practice. The Oaxaca-born artist is known for painting tender portraits on produce boxes, utilizing the discarded packaging as a metaphor for how we assign value. Often working from photos, Martinez depicts people he knows and even worked alongside in the fields when he first migrated to the U.S.

For a recent presentation with Charlie James Gallery in Los Angeles, Martinez stacked a collection of strawberry boxes to create a towering, double-sided totem. One features a masked person clutching a fistful of asparagus, while the other portrays a mechanical picker. Both crops grow low to the ground and require a significant amount of labor to harvest. By including the wheeled device, Martinez draws attention once again to the ways farm labor is often disregarded and the additional depersonalization of the agricultural process when machines replace people.

Other works include an enormous wall-based installation featuring a single worker with a bandana covering his face, the stars and stripes of the American flag distorted as they wrap around his neck. The lenses of his sunglasses reflect a group of people gathered around a full spread, many holding their drinks as if to toast. “In a style informed by 1930s-era Social Realism and heightened through use of found materials, Martinez makes visible the difficult labor and onerous conditions of the ‘American farmworker,’ itself a compromised piece of language owing to the industry’s conspicuous use of undocumented workers,” says a statement from the gallery.

Martinez’s work is on view in Los Encuentros at Ballroom Marfa, which has been extended through March 29. Find more from him on Instagram.

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Among African elephants, “Big Tuskers” refers to bulls that grow tusks so long they sometimes scrape the ground. Each one can weigh well over 100 pounds. These giant, ivory incisors continually grow throughout an elephant’s life, and males typically have much larger tusks than females.

The bigger the tusks, however, the more vulnerable these gentle giants are to poachers who harvest and traffic the ivory for trade. There are only a couple dozen left in nature preserves like Kenya’s Tsavo East National Park and Amboseli National Park.

For wilderness photographer Johan Siggesson, a fascination with animals and their habitats led to a series of striking black-and-white photographs of elephants and their herds in Kenya. From charming juveniles to big tuskers like Craig (1972-2026) and emerging contenders like the 35-year-old Michael, Siggesson captures the incredible anatomy, habitat, and behavior of these endangered megafauna.

Prints are available for purchase on Siggesson’s website. Explore more of his work on Instagram.

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In 1898, Amsterdam’s Stedelijk Museum staged an exhibition of paintings by renowned Dutch Golden Age artist Rembrandt (1606-1669). Included in this show was a 23-by-19-inch oil painting titled “Vision of Zacharias in the Temple,” which was completed in 1633, relatively early in the artist’s career. Fast-forward to 1960, and the work was deemed to have not actually been made by Rembrandt. Despite that in the past it had been catalogued as part of his oeuvre, that was no longer the case. So, a private collector purchased it in 1961, from which point on, it remained out of sight—until now.

Experts and conservators at the Rijksmuseum, which was recently granted the opportunity to reassess the painting by its owner, spent two years investigating the pigments, structural materials, Rembrandt’s signature and date, the overall style, and the choice of subject matter. Techniques included X-raying the paint and conducting dendrochronology tests on the wooden panels to get a sense of age.

Macro scans also revealed insights into the artist’s creative and technical choices as he worked. “An important piece of evidence that the painting is by Rembrandt lies in the changes he made during the painting process,” the museum says. “For example, the censer [an incense burner] on the altar was originally larger. Such adjustments are characteristic of an artist who is experimenting and refining his work. A copyist, by contrast, would have reproduced the model exactly, without making alterations.”

The scene depicts the high priest Zacharias at the moment just before the archangel Gabriel arrives to tell him that he and his wife will have a son, John the Baptist. Though dim in photographs, a light in the upper right corner of the canvas indicates Gabriel’s imminent arrival. In this charged moment, Rembrandt uses a narrative device known in Dutch as “staetveranderinge,” which translates to “changes of state.” It’s an element Rembrandt often incorporated in his paintings around this time.

The Rijksmuseum also recently spent five years thoroughly researching and restoring “The Night Watch.” If you’re in Amsterdam, “Vision of Zacharias in the Temple” goes on view today at the Rijksmuseum, where it will remain on long-term loan. Find more on the museum’s website.

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“Warriorhood is an act of living an awakened life,” says Rupy C. Tut, referencing the continual battles that emerge from being a person in the world. Tut has long invoked her family’s history of migration and Punjabi heritage to consider kinship, a theme that has more recently evolved into a recurring warrior character. “The privilege of belonging and being seen as a part of a place, without needing explanations, is not available to my characters, who are finding ways to navigate and battle that out-of-place-ness,” she adds.

Depicting suited figures floating amid translucent jellyfish, the dream-like “Battle Ready” is one such work. The creatures’ tentacles trail across the composition, shrouding both the blue expanse and the subjects’ limbs in their wispy lines. These patterns also offer insight into the emotional register of the piece. “If the environment is meant to assuage, then the character’s bodysuit is chaotic distress,” the artist tells Colossal. “Similarly, if the bodysuit is meant to pacify the narrative of the character’s purpose, then the environment is lurking with dangers and chaotic, unsafe possibilities nearby.”

Tut is drawn to these kinds of metaphorical pairings, and her handmade pigments are another example. The artist assigns emotion and themes to each color that recur throughout her practice. “Yellow lead oxide predominantly signals a place or moment of struggle for my characters, whereas Cinnabar red deepens the earthiness of the conversation in the painting by rooting the story in blood and earth,” she says.

By limiting her palette, the artist has further constructed a world in which ideas evolve over time yet have a clear lineage to their forebears, adding, “This meaning-making is a way of indexing my thinking and making as well, where paintings from different times are placed in dialogue through this growing symbolism of color.”

For Tut, painting in this way is both therapeutic and devotional, particularly as she navigates life as a woman, mother, and artist continually struggling against stereotypes and convention. The slow act of creating pigments and working in the studio tethers her to something larger and excavates the voids she feels.

It could be a significant childhood building you felt small and safe in, or a home that allowed you to dream freely, or a road trip lined by trees you no longer see, or values of slowing down, of being present, of being happy in nothingness yet striving for excellence, of history books that didn’t cover your grandparents’ trauma, or politics that don’t notice nor praise the immigrant Indian girl wearing an American flag scarf in her senior pictures to prove her identity in a post 9/11 world; these are all examples of voids I hope to fill through my work and in my practice of making paintings. 

This is also where the warrior returns. Tut sees this strong, fearless figure as representing “responsibility, honesty, justice, and a commitment to humility as an act of bravery,” values that emerge in both her life and work. Whether rendering the swirling pattern of a figure’s bodysuit or patiently waiting for a pigment to dry only to find the formula is wrong, the artist creates as both an homage to her ancestors and as a way to connect with people amid their own turmoil.

Tut’s work is currently on view at the Crocker Art Museum in Sacramento and the National Portrait Gallery. Later this week, she will also be included in a group exhibition opening at the Horton Art Gallery at San Joaquin Delta College. Explore more of her practice on Instagram.

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For Masayoshi Matsumoto, also known as Isopresso Balloon, a simple dog-shaped balloon animal is utter child’s play. His elaborate constructions combine a range of colors and can take on virtually any shape. From meticulously textured squids to demure gophers to stout tropical birds, the artist conjures playful and expressive animals from stretchy rubber and air. Lately, he’s been particularly interested in birds, expertly twisting beaks and tail feathers into recognizable species like mallards, swans, and a bright kingfisher.

See more on Instagram, and try your hand at balloon art of your own with a range of tutorials on YouTube. He’s currently working on a few new videos geared specifically toward beginner balloon sculptors.

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