The Art We’re Obsessed With in June 2024

“The Art We’re Obsessed With” is a monthly series highlighting the artworks Artsy staff members 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.

Abdus Salaam, And remember the day when we shall roll up the universe like a scroll (21:104), 2024

Among the largest paintings currently available on Artsy, this ink-on-canvas work by emerging South African artist Abdus Salaam ignites awe through its sheer scale. The painting’s radiating, symmetrical forms bring me feelings of tranquility and wonder, and remind me of the blooming lights I “see” with closed eyes while deep in meditation. The monumental work was created over a six-week period partially coinciding with the month-long fast of Ramadan, during which the artist completed a residency at the Nirox Foundation—a nonprofit space in the lush countryside outside of Johannesburg.

—Jordan Huelskamp, Curatorial Lead

Ivana Bašić, I too had thousands of blinking cilia, while my belly, new and made for the ground was being reborn | Position 1 (#3), 2018–21

In her first institutional show, “Metempsychosis,” at the Schinkel Pavillon in Berlin, Serbian artist Ivana Bašić explores trauma and its impact on the body, influenced by her turbulent childhood during the collapse of Yugoslavia. The heart of the show is an alabaster rock, slowly pounded into dust by soft, clinking pneumatic drills in a breath-like rhythm. I was totally mesmerized by the pale, vulnerable sculptures that accompanied this performance: silvery metal, wax, and veiny rock folding into bulbous, alien forms. From a similar series, I too had thousands of blinking cilia… (2018–21), previously on show at Someday Gallery’s group show “SIGNALS,” adds long drips of glass protruding from a mouth-like bronze opening. The result is organic, tender, and raw.

—Josie Thaddeus-Johns, Editor

Sanaa Gateja, Paths, 2020

My ritual for sparking creativity often begins with gathering a selection of artworks, a failsafe cure for headache-inducing writer’s block. One work that recently cut through my brain fog and fueled this routine is Ugandan artist Sanaa Gateja’s hypnotic 2020 polyptych Paths. The 64-year-old artist, whose work is represented in the Ugandan pavilion at the 60th Venice Biennale, creates multimedia textiles with paper beads, often threaded in raffia, banana fiber, bark, and various repurposed man-made materials.

Appropriately nicknamed “the Bead King,” Gateja uses his signature medium to meticulously create swirling patterns across Paths. Moving from tapestry to tapestry, I’m drawn in by the flowing forms that resemble loosely defined figures or crowds. Gateja’s coalescent beadwork inspires me to pull together disparate materials and memories to tell a story.

—Maxwell Rabb, Staff Writer

Sophie-Yen Bretez, Time is the seas’ expanse Time, it is all in one And in its womb - The sun abundance, 2024

Every year around this time, I make myself a summer moodboard, which is really just a jumble of phrases and images in my Notes app (sample entries: “ice cream for dinner,” “the NYC ferry”). Vietnamese-born, Paris-based painter Sophie-Yen Bretez’s Time is the seas’ expanse Time, it is all in one And in its womb - The sun abundance (2024) makes a vibrant addition to my annual assemblage. I love the contrast of soft pastel color gradients with sharp lines; the way the stylish Poul Henningsen lamp in the foreground plays off the sunset behind it; the naked nonchalance and graphicness of Bretez’s figures. Look closely, and the book on the table spills open to a passage from Rainer Maria Rilke, in which he writes of summer as a metaphor for periods of creative fertility—rewarding those who patiently endure the “storms of spring.” This scene evokes the kind of leisure I’m after this season. Now, who’s going to teach me how to play poker?

—Olivia Horn, Associate Managing Editor

Claude Lalanne, Paire de Fauteuils Crocodile, 2015

While I was marauding through art fairs in Basel last week, a visit to DESIGN MIAMI.BASEL at the Messe provided a welcome change of pace from the surrounding hustle and bustle. Presented with an enticing selection of extremely comfortable-looking sofas, this pair of “crocodile chairs” by the late French designer Claude Lalanne at Galerie Mitterrand’s booth was an immediate eye-catcher at the fair. These patinated bronze works—part of a notable series from the Surrealist designer’s extensive oeuvre—trace their origin back to 1972, when Lalanne was given the remains of a recently deceased crocodile. Wonderfully articulated and bizarrely ornate, these chairs gave me cause for pause. My question: Do they provide ample back support?

—Arun Kakar, Art Market Editor

Frida Orupabo, Ada, 2024