The Art We’re Obsessed With in May 2024

“The Art We’re Obsessed With” is a monthly series paying homage to 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.

It’s easy to get lost in the surrealistic details, lush textures, and uncanny colors in Sara Nickleson’s entrancing oil paintings. After experiencing a reprieve from her depression symptoms via psychedelic therapy, Nickleson began working with intuitive drawing and digital collage as a form of self-empowerment and advocacy, eventually moving her intricate worldbuilding into oil paintings. She graduated this May from Cranbrook’s MFA program in painting, and I’m looking forward to seeing the trajectory of her career and practice.

—Isabelle Sakelaris, Senior Manager, Growth & Lifecycle Marketing

In this hazy mixed-media piece by Marin Majic, two figures gaze at a gold-framed painting. What I find truly intriguing about The Collection (2023) is its self-awareness. The presence of a painting within the artwork disrupts the boundaries between subject and spectator, playfully breaking the fourth wall. I find myself drawn into the dreamlike scene, imagining the conversation unfolding under the warm glow of the table lamp.

Majic employs colored pencils, marble dust, wax, and oil paint in subdued tones that cast shadows across the room. The details of the composition come alive through the texture of a dog’s thick fur, a window view of a starry night, and the delicate curl of houseplant leaves. The narrative feels intentionally ambiguous, as Majic asks us to consider the very act of looking.

—Adeola Gay, Curatorial Manager

I stumbled on Safdar Ali Qureshi’s hypnotic gouache paintings while perusing the artworks that Artsy users saved most frequently this week. The Pakistani artist and educator—who specialized in miniature painting during his 2005 BFA from the National College of Arts in Lahore—deftly wields a miniscule paintbrush to create mesmerizing circular patterns in Untitled (2024). I’m reminded of Vincent van Gogh’s Post-Impressionist masterpiece Starry Night (1889): The work’s swirling rabbit holes provide a subtle Op Art effect, playing with my visual perception and appearing to twinkle before my eyes.

—Jordan Huelskamp, Curatorial Lead

The marathon of New York art fairs that kicked off in May left little time to explore the barrage of gallery openings in the city. Somehow, during the chaos, I made my way to Kasmin to see Sara Anstis’s “Small Works,” a series of intimately scaled, surreal pieces by the London-based Swedish artist.

There, Anstis’s Fishmonger (2024), measuring just 10 by 6.8 inches, hooked my attention. The painting depicts a portrait of an androgynous figure with red hair and fair skin standing among rows of dead fish, both fantastical and mundane. As elsewhere in her body of work, Fishmonger’s subject stares directly at the viewer: For me, it’s almost impossible to break eye contact.

—Maxwell Rabb, Staff Writer

I’m always interested in artists using unusual materials, and so Agnes Waruguru’s works caught my eye at this year’s Venice Biennale. Huge, pale swathes of canvas-like fabric hung from the ceiling to the floor in the Arsenale, embroidered in places, with elements of beadwork hanging alongside. Sparse, painterly abstractions bloom across the panels in soft pastel as well as organic materials like charcoal and saffron, which the artist uses as a collaboration, of sorts, with the colors of nature. This smaller work, Water Memories (Dew) (2024), evokes a feeling of intimacy with the microbial world. It reminds me of Wolfgang Tillmans, but instead of photography, it’s made using salt and acrylic paints.

—Josie Thaddeus-Johns, Editor