Two striking sculptural forms have recently appeared in the public space of Brno, inviting passers-by to stop, look closer and reconsider the relationship between contemporary art, architecture and the city.

Foreign Star I and Foreign Star II, created by Czech sculptor Jan Dostal, have the appearance of monumental three-dimensional stars, yet their visual complexity is rooted in a remarkably precise geometric structure. Installed at Šilingrovo náměstí, in the Galerie Šilingrák space managed by the Brno-střed municipal district and Kávéeska, the two works bring a distinctive sculptural presence to the urban environment.

@VUT_BR_Socha-Hvezdy-Silingrovo-namesti

At first glance, their intricate surfaces may seem almost organic, resembling crystalline structures, intricate webs or fragments of some otherworldly architecture. Yet beneath this visual complexity lies a highly ordered geometric form: the icosahedron, one of the five Platonic solids.

An icosahedron is a three-dimensional shape composed of 12 vertices and 20 triangular faces. Alongside its mathematical precision, the form has acquired a rich symbolic significance throughout history, often associated with concepts such as perfection, harmony and balance.

This intersection between mathematics, philosophy and art is central to the visual power of Foreign Star. The sculptures transform an abstract geometric principle into something monumental and tangible, allowing a form traditionally encountered through mathematics to be experienced physically within the city.

Photo by Cosmina Marcela Oltean

Together, Foreign Star I and Foreign Star II weigh approximately 300 kilograms, giving the works a substantial physical presence despite the apparent intricacy and openness of their structures. Their surfaces are composed of repeated geometric elements, creating an effect that changes depending on the viewer's position. From one angle, the sculptures appear solid and monumental; from another, their complex structures open up, allowing glimpses of the surrounding architecture, trees and sky.

This changing perception is an important part of the experience. The sculptures do not exist independently of their surroundings. Instead, the city becomes part of the work: buildings, light, vegetation, movement and the people passing through the square are constantly reflected, framed or visually incorporated into the geometric structures. The result is a dialogue between order and environment, mathematical precision and organic surroundings.

Photo by Cosmina Marcela Oltean

The use of the icosahedron gives Foreign Star an additional conceptual dimension. The Platonic solids have fascinated mathematicians, philosophers and artists for centuries precisely because of their exceptional symmetry and structural harmony. By choosing one of these forms as the basis for a monumental public sculpture, Jan Dostal brings a mathematical idea into direct contact with everyday urban experience. The sculptures invite viewers to encounter geometry not through formulas or diagrams, but through scale, material, light and space.

There is also something intriguing about the title itself. Calling these geometric forms Foreign Stars introduces a sense of distance and mystery. Their unusual appearance makes them seem almost extraterrestrial — objects that have arrived from another world and found their place among the familiar architecture of Brno. Yet they are built upon one of the most fundamental principles of geometric order.

Photo by Cosmina Marcela Oltean

Public art can alter the way a familiar place is perceived. A square that might otherwise function simply as a passageway or meeting point can become a destination in itself when a striking artistic intervention changes its visual identity. At Šilingrovo náměstí, Foreign Star I and Foreign Star II create precisely such a moment. Their scale encourages viewers to approach them, while their intricate structures reward closer observation. Seen from a distance, they establish a powerful silhouette; experienced up close, they reveal layers of geometry, texture and spatial relationships.

The two sculptures also demonstrate how contemporary art can bring together seemingly distant fields — mathematics, philosophy, sculpture and urban life — in a single visual experience. The icosahedron may symbolize perfection, harmony and balance, but in the public space of Brno it becomes something more immediate: an invitation to look, explore and discover how an abstract form can acquire a new life through art.

Foreign Star I and Foreign Star II are not simply objects placed in the city. They become part of its visual rhythm — two unusual geometric presences encouraging us to pause and see the familiar urban landscape from a different perspective. Inspired by the writings of Plato, this geometric form symbolizes perfection, universal harmony, and balance.

Sun Tunnels - installation by Nancy Holt

• Nancy Holt, Sun Tunnels (1973–1976), Holt/Smithson Foundation: https://holtsmithsonfoundation.org/sun-tunnels

• James Nisbet, Ecologies, Environments, and Energy Systems in Art of the 1960s and 1970s, MIT Press, 2014.

• Olafur Eliasson, Long Daylight Pavilion, HAM Helsinki Art Museum: https://www.hamhelsinki.fi/en/sculptures/long-daylight-pavilion

• Charles Ross, Star Axis: https://www.staraxis.org

• United States Naval Observatory, “Astronomical Applications: Solstices and Equinoxes”: https://aa.usno.navy.mil

• Encyclopaedia Britannica, “Summer Solstice”: https://www.britannica.com/science/summer-solstice

The Art Museum in Brașov , in collaboration with the Centre for Visual and Digital Anthropology, presents “HAIR! HAIR! HAIR! Contemporary Art & Anthropology”, an exhibition that brings together contemporary art and visual anthropology in a thought-provoking exploration of one of humanity’s most intimate and culturally charged materials: hair.

More than a biological feature, hair functions as a powerful carrier of identity, memory, belief, and social belonging. It grows, falls, is cut, combed, braided, dyed, replaced, rejected, or revered. Embedded within these everyday gestures are cultural practices and symbolic meanings that shape how individuals understand themselves and connect with others.

The exhibition creates a dynamic dialogue between anthropological research and contemporary artistic practice. At its core is the work of anthropologist Emma Tarlo, whose research across India, Myanmar, China, the United States, and Europe investigates the complex social, economic, and cultural lives of human hair. A central point of reference is her influential book Entanglement: The Secret Lives of Hair, which maps the global networks through which hair is collected, traded, transformed, and circulated.

Visitors encounter stories that range from ritual head-shaving ceremonies performed in and around temples in India to the production of sheitel wigs worn by Orthodox Jewish women, and the luxury market for premium remy hair extensions. Through these interconnected narratives, hair emerges as both a deeply personal element of the body and a global commodity shaped by religious traditions, beauty standards, economic forces, and cultural values.

The exhibition further examines the cultural and political significance of head coverings, wrapping practices, and hair-braiding traditions, while also highlighting innovative contemporary applications of hair in areas such as sustainability, ecology, and fashion.

Through multimedia and intermedia works, installations, painting, sculpture, photography, objects, and readymades, the participating artists explore themes including memory, transformation, acceptance, recycling, human-animal relationships, gender, beauty, sensuality, eroticism, ritual, alterity, and mortality. Together, their works reveal hair as a material that carries traces of personal histories while simultaneously connecting individuals to broader social and cultural narratives.

By weaving together artistic perspectives and anthropological inquiry, “HAIR! HAIR! HAIR! Contemporary Art & Anthropology” uncovers a largely unseen history of human connections. The exhibition invites visitors to consider how something as seemingly ordinary as hair can illuminate fundamental questions about identity, belonging, memory, and the ways in which people understand and navigate the world around them.

Curatorial Team

Project Curator: Gabriela Nicolescu (Anthropologist)
Contemporary Art Curator: Nora Cupcencu
Assistant Curator: Marina Aristotel

Scientific Consultant: Emma Tarlo (Anthropologist)

Participating Artists

Alexandru Ranga, Beniamin Popescu, Diana Oană, Dumitru Gorzo, Emma Tarlo, Elena Waldorf, George Soare, Ioana Bălțan, Jenni Dutton, Marina Aristotel, Mihai Zgondoiu, Mircea Modreanu, Misha Diaconu, Nora Cupcencu, Petru Lucaci, Radu Pandele, Răzvan Neagoe, Saint Machine, and Victoria Zidaru.

Photo credits: Brasov Art Museum

There is something almost radical about Edgardo Giménez’s latest exhibition at Torre Macro. At a moment when much contemporary art often gravitates toward critique, anxiety, and social fracture, Giménez insists on another possibility: joy as an aesthetic and existential position. “La alegría es lo que hace girar al mundo” (Joy Is What Makes the World Go Round) is not a nostalgic return to the optimistic spirit that made him a central figure of Argentine Pop Art in the 1960s. Rather, it demonstrates how that spirit can remain surprisingly relevant in the present.

The exhibition brings together recent works, previously unseen pieces, and new productions created specifically for the space. What emerges is not a retrospective in the conventional sense but a living ecosystem of images, objects, and visual ideas that have accompanied the artist for more than six decades.

What ultimately distinguishes this exhibition is its refusal to separate pleasure from seriousness. Giménez’s work has often been described as optimistic, but optimism here should not be mistaken for superficiality. His visual language proposes that imagination, humor, and beauty are not escapes from reality but ways of inhabiting it. In that sense, “La alegría es lo que hace girar al mundo” becomes more than an exhibition title; it functions as a manifesto.

The result is a rare exhibition that feels generous. Rather than confronting viewers with despair, it offers an invitation to look, to smile, and perhaps to reconsider the cultural value of happiness itself.

 

“La alegría es lo que hace girar al mundo”

Location: Torre Macro, Av. Madero 1172, CABA, Buenos Aires (Argentina)

Opening Date: 12th April 2026

End Date: June 2026

Working hours: Monday- Friday 10am-6pm

Official website: 

www.instagram.com/fundacionmacro

Artists: 

Edgardo Giménez

At a time when commercial spaces increasingly attempt to reinvent themselves as cultural meeting points, Marina Aristotel’s recent project Book of Delights, presented at AFI Brașov, emerged as a subtle yet deeply atmospheric artistic intervention. The exhibition introduced audiences to a mature visual language built around the relationship between painting, resin, transparency, and emotional memory.

According to the curatorial text written by independent curator Irina Ungureanu, the series represents “a stage of maturity” in the artist’s evolving practice. The curatorial statement frames the conceptual direction of the project:

“The Book of Delights series marks a stage of maturity in Marina Aristotel’s practice, where painting and resin meet in a coherent and balanced visual language.”

The text further explains how the artist’s recent years of material and formal experimentation — ranging from fragmentation and reassembly to plexiglass interventions and layered constructions — gradually evolved into a calmer and more contemplative visual synthesis.

Ungureanu describes the works as “cartographies of happy spaces,” shaped by memory, emotional fragments, and delicate geometries:

“The works propose a cartography of ‘happy spaces’ — real or imagined — born from luminous memories and moments of joy.”

This idea of emotional mapping is also reflected in the way the compositions are constructed. Often viewed from an aerial perspective, the works resemble imaginary territories, mental landscapes, or abstract urban plans. At the same time, resin — a material that has become central to Aristotel’s artistic vocabulary — introduces depth, translucency, and subtle light refractions.

In another statement displayed within the exhibition, the artist reflects on her understanding of art itself:

“For me, art is a living space of encounter, a place where memory and emotion become visible, and where each viewer can discover their own story.”

This participatory dimension transforms Book of Delights into more than a visual presentation; it becomes an invitation to slow contemplation — a rare pause within a space otherwise dominated by speed, consumption, and commercial imagery.

Published materials related to the project describe the exhibition as a dialogue between two major directions in Marina Aristotel’s practice: painting and resin-based works. The curator refers to “a space of transparencies and doubles,” where the two mediums “observe and complete one another.” (empowerartists.org)

Texts dedicated to the exhibition also emphasize a constant movement between macro and micro scales: some pieces function like aerial surveys of imaginary cities or territories, while others resemble microscopic observations of matter, texture, and light. 

Born in Bucharest in 1985, Marina Aristotel graduated from the National University of Arts in Bucharest, Department of Painting. Her practice spans painting, resin, plexiglass, collage, and assemblage. Since 2019, she has increasingly focused on layered sculptural works and translucent structures that explore the relationship between light, transparency, and chromatic fragmentation. 

The presentation of the project at AFI Brașov reflects a broader tendency among commercial venues to integrate contemporary art and cultural programming into public urban life.  

Yet the strength of Book of Delights lies less in spectacle and more in atmosphere. Rather than overwhelming the viewer, the exhibition constructs a fragile emotional architecture — one rooted in memory, intimacy, and sensory resonance. The result is a visual environment that functions simultaneously as exhibition, mental landscape, and poetic archive: a collection of luminous fragments transformed into surfaces that preserve the traces of lived experience.