Art Spiel /// Funny Weather at Kunstraum: Upheavals and new assumptions

by Art Spiel, June 9, 2026 read article

In the exhibition Funny Weather, curated by Imogen Aukland, four artists present distinct takes on reconstructions and uncertainty. A timely, unsettled feeling meanders through the space — sculptures that depict typically threatening objects unexpectedly softened, or photos that capture moments that physically change as you walk around them. Both the unexpected and a sense of upheaval are prominent themes throughout, whilst also giving us a “weather forecast” that changes by area, mood, and experience. This grants viewers the opportunity to question what art does: what an art object stirs within us, and how much our assumptions about something can shift when viewed from different perspectives.

Mimi O Chun’s soft sculptures offer a collection of symbols of resistance and collective cultural experience that many know well, but Chun puts a twist on them. Each object is significant in various ways and plays with the expectations that different viewers may bring to it. Chun depicts objects that can be used for self-defense, such as a slingshot or an axe, which greet us at the exhibition entrance. However, upon approaching the works, you realize they are meticulously crafted replicas: detailed soft sculptures made to resemble hard objects. They are no longer weapons; what remains is their resemblance and the idea, created with a gentle hand. In Gather Around the Campfire, Chun has taken care to depict the lines in the wood grain on the handle and the circular grommets on the holder. These pieces are an unexpected contemporary take on trompe-l’oeil, everyday objects replicated to the smallest detail and then softened, making them newly unexpected.

The objects depicted within Chun’s works are reworked through subversion and material illusion. In approaching the pigeons, titled Uberlift XS, or the Walden and Civil Disobedience book, we expect solid objects; we expect what we know to be true from past experiences, but instead, we are given something entirely new. By depicting the book, the messenger pigeons, and the drone, Chun explores messaging, communication, and surveillance. The pieces, especially the pigeons, offer a sense of humor amid the proliferation of tough conversations today. These detailed sculptures pit reality against absurdity, all the while reworking humor and violence into an uneasy coexistence.

Jo Cosme explores the stakes of representation as they relate to the perception of place and what that place means to various people. In Maunabo y Calle Loíza and Gringo Go Home, Jo Cosme uses lenticular printing to expose contradictory depictions of a Puerto Rican landscape in flux. The images change constantly as one moves around the gallery. One image depicts a serene ocean scene that transforms into a spray-painted note in a residential area; In Gringo Go Home, Cosme shows a spray-painted orange mailbox in front of a home, bearing the title’s phrase. And as soon as you shift position, the image shifts to the same home, nearly buried by fallen trees and debris after a hurricane tore through. Moving around the photographs, images are alternately concealed and revealed, and even held midway between the two states if you stop just at the right spot.   

Cosme is tracing how tourism, natural disasters, and local resistance unfold simultaneously within the same terrain. The work portrays how perceptions of imagery change from person to person based on the circumstance: a tourist or a local, a family member who was displaced, or simply someone visiting — the conversations all differ despite everyone looking at the same place. The photographs take an active role in archiving and retelling these layered experiences, showing how a single image in time can hold serenity and upheaval at once, and how that upheaval reverberates differently for everyone it touches.

Kara Beth Rasure’s work considers the overlaps between the human and the mechanical, creating speculative devices that blend anatomy with utility while continuing the thread of human experience and recognition. By using reused Amazon boxes as the basis for molded family members’ or friends’ faces, alongside a plant-derived bioplastic armature, Rasure draws a contrast between capitalist systems and sustainable futures. In doing so, she offers a new take on traditional portraiture, creating wonderfully detailed cardboard faces of friends and loved ones. The light falls beautifully on them, the cast shadows adding more depth and life to the faces. These faces, installed throughout the exhibition, act as watchers, observing both the works and the spectators.

I enjoy seeing the mold Rasure uses as part of the armature; holding the process and the result together in a single piece shows how making and meaning coincide. Rasure is exploring selfhood and the importance of identity in a world in constant motion, changing as people and places do. These molds and the faces themselves become an archive, as do the soft objects they hang next to on the wall, capturing a person in a moment, an identity stilled.

In Yixuan Wu’s work, fragile blown glass is placed in precarious positions. In both works in the exhibition, form is placed under pressure, especially with Algopress II, the glass form seeps out from under stacked chairs. Forms that we assume have weight look to be squishing the glass, yet the orbs are not breaking; they are simply readjusting. These are familiar materials that we know to be either fragile or soft, with the glass and its armatures of either chairs or kitchen sponges (holding the second piece’s glass), yet they appear unstable as they are held precariously in place. Wu dissolves and reconfigures the functions of all of the objects within her work. When we expect a sponge to be soft, Wu has it bear the weight of the glass; when we expect the chairs to crush the glass, the orb instead seeps through the empty spaces between them. The glass orbs seem to swell and expand, fitting within the confines of wherever they may be placed; suspended in flux and compressed between surfaces.

As life can sometimes feel, within modes of instability, Wu offers gestures of support and protection through her works. Her structures do not promise stability, but in viewing the glass, it feels as though the orbs, withstanding pressure, become stable. Their readjusting shapes resemble what many of us do in our daily lives as we face upheaval, flux, or pressures of our own. Watching it, expecting the glass might drip to the floor, it instead holds, the pressure never shatters it; it simply adjusts. 

This exhibition and the works within it are timely and resonate with feelings many may be experiencing in one way or another. Questions of what is seen, what is recorded, or what is assumed swirl around the space. The ways in which pressure is applied to various forms throughout defy conventional expectations. While the works reflect turbulent times, they invite us to stop and think, slow down and look at the details, and, in the case of the glass orbs, learn to adjust and not shatter under pressure.

Kunstraum Gallery, Funny Weather, Yixuan Wu, Kara Beth Rasure, Mimi O Chun, and Jo Cosme, curated by Imogen Aukland, 20 Grand Avenue, Loft 509, Brooklyn, NY 11205. Hours: Thursday-Saturday, 12–6 pm, by appointment only. Please contact us first.

About the Writer: Taylor Bielecki lives in Gowanus, where her studio is, and works at Pratt Institute, where she earned her MFA. She also studied at Penn State, where she earned a BA in English and a BFA in Fine Arts. She finished as a finalist in the Kennedy Center’s VSA National Emerging Young Artist program for 2017, where she earned an award of Excellence. She has shown prints internationally in a print exchange in Australia and exhibitions in Dubai, India, and the Glasgow School of Art. She has also shown paintings internationally in Gallery 24N, PhilaMOCA’s juried exhibitions in Philadelphia, Pa., Perry Lawson Fine Art in Nyack, NY, BWAC in Red Hook, and IW Gallery in Brooklyn. Taylor works for Two Coats of Paint, TUSSLE Magazine, and has joined Art Spiel as a contributing writer. @Taylor.Bielecki