Posted on:
Art For Your Oceans is a selling exhibition presented by Sotheby’s in collaboration with WWF and Artwise Curators. Running from 7–15 May 2025, the exhibition features specially commissioned works by 16 international artists, created using OCEAN INK®, a sustainable ink derived from seaweed. This innovative medium underscores the potential of seaweed in ocean conservation and climate change efforts. The exhibition aims to raise awareness and funds for WWF’s pioneering environmental initiatives. This review will be focused on two exhibits, a plump seal and a blind mole.Beauty and futility are equivalent in my book, hence my reservations to write about socially-conscious art. But then again, I have never had a doe-eyed plush seal that sauntered on a victorian fainting couch plead with me before. And that makes all the difference.
Laura Ford, Reclining Seal, sculptural installation (chaise longue and seal), 2025
Animals and Symbolism in Contemporary Exhibitions
The mammal rests on a divan hued in the shade of dirty chamomile. Its gaze is sardonic but its physique suggests a cause that is not sardinic. It is a seal well-fed. The form of an ample mound of butter overflowing its christofle spoon. Despite primary appearances, its flippers are there to remind it could overtake at least a convalescent squid.
And it is true that the last time she saw her analyst, she austriacly slipped and called herself a sale instead, but she did not correct herself, for she knew she was not too far off, and acceptance is less pitiful than striving. Soon she fell into the comfort of complacency that comes with both the knowledge of her value and her dismay at being assigned one. The other seals in the sea have a value as well, and that fact is not effaced only for the fact that they do not know it. And at the end of the day, the other seals are not at Sotheby's.
Now the seal luxuriates in the pellucid loucheness of lucidity, and she does not gaze at you directly when you enter the room, for she has learnt that peripheral sighting tends to catch the sardine in its most tranquil, natural state, and she prefers that taste.
There is a something that invites the hand to tighten into a pet on its belly, but that may elicit an insecurity. In lieu of that locomotory suppression, one might settle for a tender 'psss psss' let out over the shoulder as they leave the room.
Andrew Cranston, A mole for Franz Kafka, 2025
Sustainable Narratives in Ocean and Wildlife Art Exhibitions
The exhibition is on oceans, and this is a mole, and I thought they were for grounds only, but apparently the star-nosed mole is an aquatic mole, a soft swimmer. Nevertheless, it is blind in both cases, which means that it falls in love with its eyes closed and that may be financially sound but hardly ever genetically advantageous.
The grain of the paper is clean ash fluff and the mole with its fine pink beak propels forward swimmingly, its limbs submerged in leaden waters. Its eye is ornamental at best, and blessed be it for it. A limp worm in its mouth and there is no question of retaliation, only whether peristalsis precedes or follows the gumptious bite. The mole is serene. It does not moralise its metabolism.
Animal symbolism in the works of Franz Kafka
This work is inspired by Franz Kafka's short story The Village Schoolmaster or The Giant Mole.
The story is about a giant mole found in a clandestine village.
The mole was found by idle people with too much time on their hands, and had there not been idle people with too much time on their hands, the mole would have pursued its existence in anonymity.
As luck would have it, a professor took interest in the mole and wrote a pamphlet on it. Alas, he was dismissed with the ease of a punchline and the fame of the mole faded. The professor had no gain in pursuing the word of the mole but was very attached to the unsuccess of his labours, which made it all worth it.
One day, a writer came to the professor and said that he will take the story of the mole out into the world. Nor the professor, nor the writer, cared for the mole, but at the time it was their most apt pathway for making a name for themselves. Had there been a very large fish for taking instead, it would have been just as good.
The writer succeeded in making the mole famous among the peasants, but the professor did not care for the hoi polloi. It is not what is said, but the voice that says it.
The writer lost hope in the mole and went to the professor's house to abdicate from the project. He expected the formalities of an ended collaboration admixed with some sort of resistance, but the professor simply agreed and smoked his pipe. Being voided of the predictable finalities that he expected, the writer pursued on writing about the mole.
This is a courageous memento for Sotheby's to leave upon their walls, for without the persistence of moles, we would have no press releases left in the world.
Read also
And We Come Back To The Same Question, Joseph Kosuth at Sprüth Magers
Notes on Joseph Kosuth’s views on art, art-text as art, and tautologies. Through works that contrast objects with their definitions and visual representations, Kosuth plays on the dialectic between language and form.
White Almond Monday, Gio Ponti Pre-Auction Exhibition at Phillips
An examination of Gio Ponti’s design sensibility through selected pieces from the April 2025 Auction at Phillips, speaking on the tension between rationalist clarity and ornamental impulse. It engages Ponti’s objects - lamp, sofa, cabinet, writing - as both aesthetic and noetic structures, framing them in relation to concrete poetry, botanical analogy, and spatial intimacy.
Rose Wylie at David Zwirner, When Found becomes Given (2025)
The works feature thick, textured paint that share the space with text that seems at once excessive and explanatory, functioning as a tautological closure opon the image. This overlap between image and text opens the space for event-like mental curation that allows for the viewers to map their imagined forms upon what is given. There are horses, cats and birds.
Blend of art criticism, note taking and curation
my headings are plain for the sake of seo and it pains me too
© 2025