The Art We’re Obsessed with in February 2024

“The Art We’re Obsessed With” is a monthly series in which Artsy staff members share the works we can’t stop thinking about, and why. From little-known artists our editors stumble across at local shows to artworks going viral on our platform, these are the artworks we’re obsessed with this month.

Anico Mostert, Let’s Table It, 2023

Are we sick of bows yet? If 2023 was the year of the girl, then the bow was among its most ubiquitous signifiers. It’s up for appraisal in Let’s Table It (2023)—one of the paintings that South African artist Anico Mostert exhibited with EBONY/CURATED at Investec Cape Town Art Fair last week. In it, a group of figures with Gumbyish proportions and mask-like faces look warily at a surface strewn with the remnants of feminine beauty rituals: makeup, a comb, and, of course, a pink bow. Mostert’s pastel palette is right on the line between sickly and sweet, and the work’s punny title mixes notes of playfulness with unease. Altogether, the painting brings a sense of ambivalence that I appreciate. It’s related to the ambivalence I feel about the dueling possibilities for empowerment and infantilization within our girlish zeitgeist.

—Olivia Horn, Associate Managing Editor

Ana Maria Hernando, Welcoming Birds, 2022

I keep returning to the charming images I’ve seen online of Ana Maria Hernando’s installation in Madison Square Park, To Let the Sky Know/Dejar que el cielo sepa (2024). Featuring sumptuous volumes of tulle netting cascading out of metal poles, her work suggests gigantic, show-offy mushrooms, at times covered in snow. Referencing ballet tutus and bustles that primp the female body for male eyes (and, perhaps, conceal its secrets), the installation also recalls the natural forms of clouds and waterfalls, and will be on my list when I visit New York.

In the meantime, I spotted a smaller, wall-based work by Hernando in a recent show from Gallery Elle Fine Art. Titled Welcoming Birds (2022), it tightly packs layers of netting into a gorgeous mille-feuille panel of contrasting color and explosive texture.

—Josie Thaddeus-Johns, Editor

Alicia Adamerovich, Big and sweet by the light, 2023

I first stumbled upon Alicia Adamerovich’s Big and sweet by the light (2023) in Michael Kohn Gallery’s booth at Art Basel Miami Beach. Immediately, the painting’s tenebrous, enigmatic landscape—its forms illuminated by a small circle of light that spotlights the bottom right corner of the canvas—pulled my attention. Adamerovich has said that her intent is to transcend the material world, instead aiming to probe psychological states. In doing so, she creates convoluted, uncanny forms within the painting that possess an astounding depth. The texture and glow of this canvas is best seen up close.

—Maxwell Rabb, Staff Writer

Bre Andy, Peek, 2023

This month, I’ve been exploring Black-owned galleries and the rising artists that they champion. I recently discovered works by Bre Andy at Cierra Britton Gallery, a space dedicated to women artists of color. Peek (2023) is an alluring work on paper that utilizes a limited palette of oils to create subtle shifts in tone, playing with light and shadow to form folds and creases in its subject’s clothing. With loose curl tendrils and glimpses of bare skin, Andy explores the nuances of Black femininity. What captivates me about this particular work is the enigmatic space beyond the frame’s edge. Andy’s cropped scene hints at an intriguing narrative just out of sight.

—Adeola Gay, Curatorial Manager

Ivan Forde, Moonlight’s Decent. (IFO 006), 2023

I encountered this dazzling mixed-media work by American artist Ivan Forde at Tiwani Contemporary’s new(ish) space in London’s Mayfair, in the gallery’s first show of 2024, “Polymythologies.”

The group exhibition—which also features British artist Leo Robinson and Nigerian artist Richard Ayodeji Ikhide—is unified by the theme of “new mythologies,” which Forde approaches through the literary genre of the epic and its hero protagonists. This painting on kozo paper incorporates gold leaf, acrylic beads, graphite, fabric, and holographic vinyl. Its figures move, pose, and leap from a ship that looks as if it is suspended above the Earth itself, on an ambiguous voyage to who knows where.

—Arun Kakar, Art Market Editor

Corrine Slade, Walking on Sunshine, 2023