The New York Times

Art Gallery Shows to See in April

By: Seph Rodney, Andrew Russeth, Jillian Steinhauer and Travis Diehl

April 23, 2026

From the article, by Seph Rodney:

Fire and water, air and gravity meet in the work of two very different artists in this gallery. Pàulla Scàvazzini, a Brazilian artist from São Paulo, makes paintings that dance between the all-consuming insatiability of fire and the fluid give and take of water. Her paintings are lush, lyrical fields of intermingled color schemes, a brood of flames or a wash of waves that morph from one hue to another.

In some ways Scàvazzini dissolves the opposition between the elements, showing that they meet in collision, and also in collusion, because they must both be in motion, in action to exist at all. Her work moves beyond discrete paintings on the wall to encompass the gallery walls and floors. Visitors to the gallery walk into painting that puts them in the eye of its maelstrom.

The other artist in the show is Austin Fields, a Texas native who lives in Los Angeles. Fields is a sculptor who works primarily with blown glass. Her forms here are shiny and reflective and read as softly interpreting the pressures of the elemental forces — the weight of a stone, the grasping desire of fire. In each work there are inward curves where the glass has let itself fold and warp. Thus, they also read as responding in their own bodies to the forces that impel Scàvazzini’s work.

Lately there has been a fad with immersive exhibitions, many of which seem gimmicky. This is immersion done right: not as some back door that supposedly lets us into the artist’s mind, but rather as a chance to feel the heated wind that has already traveled through the work and made it what it is.