In an age increasingly defined by the automation of imagination and the erosion of life’s sustaining rituals, subversive art may be one of the last defenses of the human spirit. The idea is not new.

Five years ago, Louisa Gagliardi was still largely unknown in the European art world. That changed overnight in 2022 with the presentation of one of her paintings at Art Basel’s Unlimited.

If ever there were a near-perfect union between an artist’s practice and the soul of an exhibition venue, it would be Daniel Turner’s current installation at the Wallonia-Brussels Federation Museum of Contemporary Arts (MACS) at Grand-Hornu in Belgium.

Picture this: Several quick, delicate taps on a snare drum echo softly in a background. Then a familiar, jazzy melody begins. Cymbals clash. A playful piano counterline enters, teasing with lighter hues. Organ riffs cut in; a darker variation is overlaid upon the initial rhythm. Now allow one of Albert Oehlen’s new paintings in his current exhibition at Max Hetzler’s gallery in Berlin to begin to intone.

Have you heard of the Villa Schöningen in Potsdam, a modest but beautiful exhibiting space, which lies about thirty minutes by car from the nexus of the art-scene in Berlin? Or are you familiar with the name Harald Falckenberg, to whom a remarkable show currently on view there is dedicated?