Rendered in delicately cross-hatched ink, dozens of figures inhabit towering structures or assemble in crowds in the elaborate scenes of Pittsburgh-based artist Ben Tolman. Evoking the playfulness of Where’s Waldo? and the optical illusions of M.C. Escher, the artist conjures what Galerie LJ calls “a kind of human zoo.”

Opening next month, the gallery presents Tolman’s solo exhibition, Control, the title of which takes its cue from current events. Throughout the last 15 years, the artist has channeled an undercurrent of disconnection and imagined dystopian settings. His forthcoming show acknowledges the uncomfortable notion that some of these elements have become disconcertingly close to reality.

Tolman depicts faceless humans that move in sheeplike herds, “willingly following paths that clearly go against their own interests: technology, invisible barriers, belief systems, trends, politics,” the gallery says. The works in Control ask: how far are they (or we) willing to go? At what cost comes folly—or simply not paying attention?

In works like “Apartment” and “Routine,” anonymous figures mill about in individual, soulless boxes. Some appear to be working, relaxing, or socializing. Others just seem to stand there, staring into their phones. And in the darkly comical “Connected,” people queue to walk up a towering ramp structure, absorbed so much in their screens as they head up the incline that it’s too late before they realize they’ve stepped right off the precipice.

“With a generous dose of cynicism and voyeurism, Tolman portrays the eccentric truths and social failures of Western society,” the gallery says. “That’s what (he) is trying to understand—or to condemn. The future he sketches might seem bleak, were it not infused with a delicious sarcasm.”

Control runs from September 5 to October 4 in Paris. Find more on Tolman’s website and Instagram.

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Kowloon Walled City, considered the densest settlement on the planet, was demolished in the mid-1990s. At its height in the ’80s, it was home to around 33,000 people—a government survey provided some idea of the local population—but estimates are often closer to 50,000. And that’s all within an overall footprint of 2.6 hectares, or just shy of about 6.5 acres. It’s an area smaller than five American football fields or about 2.5 New York City blocks.

A bit of an infrastructural and legal accident, Kowloon Walled City started as a Song Dynasty military outpost, then became a Qing dynasty fort in 1810. It sat within the boundaries of Kowloon City, Hong Kong, which was eventually controlled by the British after 1842’s Treaty of Nanking. But the British never really did much with the location, and for decades, only a few hundred people lived there. In 1940, only a yamen—a central government office—a school, and a single house stood in what would eventually transform into a city of monumental and overbearing proportions.

Kowloon Walled City continues to fascinate us today, as nothing on its scale had existed before and will likely never again. For an architect who goes by Sluda Builds on YouTube, the astounding, densely packed metropolis spurred an elaborate Minecraft project. From the ground up, including a surprising landscape grade that often doesn’t read clearly in photographs, he meticulously reconstructs the city’s skyscrapers, mezzanines, interior passageways, rooftops, and alleys.

Many of the Walled City’s buildings were practically conjoined, with ad hoc doorways and halls interconnected so thoroughly that, supposedly, one could travel from one side of the city to the other without ever stepping outside. And what space did exist outside was limited to narrow passages just large enough for people to get by on foot.

While today’s architects and engineers probably bristle at the myriad contemporary code violations here, the city emerged because it fell into a bit of a legal gray area due to a kind of governance limbo. Restrictions came in the form of limited space.

The British didn’t have much involvement with the walled city, and then the Nationalist Chinese Government began declaring jurisdiction in the mid-20th century. Starting in 1945, refugees of the Chinese Civil War began flooding in, with at least 2,000 settling there by 1947. By 1950, that number had grown exponentially, as a fire in 1950 destroyed the homes of more than 17,000 residents. But the metropolis kept growing from there.

Sluda’s project highlights the structural complexity of Kowloon Walled City through the bright—and very tidy—medium of Minecraft. He was drawn to the idea because not only is the settlement notorious and historically fascinating, it also possesses a strange aesthetic allure that’s difficult to pin down. He wanted to explore why it has this effect.

“These are serious high-rise buildings, some of them reaching 14 stories tall, yet constructed from the ground up in a vernacular style that’s more common in human-scale neighborhoods like the ones in Rio, for example,” Sluda says. “The sheer amount of character and personality in just one building is enough to be unique and interesting, but side-by-side visually with 50 others, all unique as well—to me, this is a major part of why this city has become so iconic.”

Check out more Minecraft projects on Sluda Builds’ YouTube channel and Instagram. You might also enjoy photographs of the city captured by Romain Jacquet-Lagrèze or Hitomi Terasawa’s now out-of-print illustrated guide, complete with elaborate cross-sections.

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From bubble-like bulges amid the arches of London’s iconic Old Billingsgate to a 15-meter-tall red droplet frozen in the center of a disused swimming pool in Aberdeen, Steve Messam explores scale, form, and our experiences of the built environment in large-scale installations.

Messam is known for his large-scale inflatable works that reinterpret architecture and explore human influence over the landscape. Often, he fills apertures like arcades or underpasses with forms that balloon and billow, drawing attention to structural forms while considering their fundamental function as places to enter or move through.

In “Accommodation:Occupation,” Messam delves into the history of 19th-century infrastructure in the U.K. through an exploration of what are known as accommodation and occupation bridges—railroad crossings designed for rural areas that provided a tunnel beneath, so that farmers could still access their land on the other side of the tracks. Some of these historic bridges still exist, often on private land, such as two in County Durham along the former route of the Stockton & Darlington Railway.

For “Below,” which Messam situated under a bridge in Tianfu Art Park in Chengdu, China, the site’s use as a thoroughfare is retained by creating two symmetric forms with a gap between them, which people can walk through while immersing themselves in the installation.

Whether popcorn-like, spiked, bubbling, or cascading, Messam’s playful interventions prompt us to view our surroundings with renewed attention. Explore even more on the artist’s website and Instagram.

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In large-scale, elaborate oil paintings of powerful, glowing creatures, Martin Wittfooth explores the timeless cycles and forces of nature in a celebration of the sublime. Known for his enigmatic and atmospheric depictions of wild animals in dystopian settings, the artist blends traditional European painting techniques with critical contemporary concerns surrounding the human impact on the environment.

Wittfooth’s new solo exhibition, Deus Ex Terra at Corey Helford Gallery, features 19 new oil paintings on canvas, linen, or wood panels. Some take the form of tondos 18 to 24 inches in diameter, while others assume vast proportions, like “Duel,” a diptych that spans 12 feet wide. The stallion also appears as a regular embodiment of elemental forces, like in “Aspect of Fire” or “Aspect of Air,” in which silhouettes of powerful horses made of molten rock or clouds of steam rear up into towering positions.

The show’s title, Deux Ex Terra, loosely translates to “god out of the earth.” It’s a nod to the ancient Greek and Roman phrase deux ex machina, which describes a dramatic or literary device in which a character or a “god” is introduced into the plot to solve a seemingly insolvable conflict. During a play, the character would be introduced via a crane, hence the “machine.” Wittfooth flips this notion back to nature and the elemental forces of the earth—weather, orbits, the seasons, life, water—to explore cyclical, self-sustaining rhythms.

“The Hermetic maxim, ‘As above, so below; As within, so without,’ has echoed through centuries of philosophical, mystical, and artistic inquiry,” the gallery says. “In Deus ex Terra, this principle serves as a guiding thread, illuminating the ways nature repeats its patterns across scale and time: in the branching of rivers and the veins of leaves, in the spiral of galaxies and the coiling of shells, in the cyclical turning of seasons and the rhythms of breath and heartbeat.”

In earlier work, Wittfooth concentrated on the strained relationship between humans and nature, with its effects revealed in the form of piles of plastic or shorn tree trunks. In his current work, he reflects on the instinctive and enduring facets of nature—the “ancient rhythms that prevail despite our human tumult,” the gallery says. “In a time of deep cultural and ecological upheaval, these paintings offer an invitation to acknowledge, to remember, and perhaps to heal.”

Deus Ex Terra opens tomorrow and continues through October 4 in Los Angeles. Explore more on the artist’s website and Instagram.

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Through the lens of Tim Flach, exotic bird species, farm animals, and our canine companions brim with personality. Through books like Dogs, Endangered, and Birds, he highlights familiar animals alongside wildlife we don’t often get the chance to meet face-to-face (thankfully, in some cases). Flach’s vibrant bird portraits and projects centered around the human relationship with animals give us the chance to admire feathered and furry creatures up-close in striking compositions.

Forthcoming from Abrams later next month, Flach’s new book, Feline, celebrates our unending love for cats of all varieties. From domestic shorthairs to sleek purebreds to regal big cats, these beloved animals are captured in vibrant detail to illustrate their expansive range of textures, colors, sizes, and behaviors—and don’t forget the toe beans.

Feline contains more than 170 photographs, including information about different breeds, their evolution, and why they’ve captured our hearts and imaginations for millennia. “Flach explores this deep, sometimes one-sided but always enduring bond, revealing the many identities of cats—from their sacred status in ancient cultures to their viral superstardom in the digital age,” the publisher says.

Slated for release on October 21, you can pre-order Feline on Bookshop. See more of Flach’s work on his website, and follow updates on Instagram.

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In 1903, on a farm in southeastern Norway, a once-in-a-lifetime discovery emerged from within a large yet unassuming mound in a field. When the spot was excavated in 1904, the mound revealed an entire Viking longship that had been interred in its entirety as a burial containing the remains of two women, several animals, and a wide array of elaborately decorated objects.

Known as the Oseberg Viking Ship after the name of the farm where it was discovered, the vessel is thought to have been built around 820 and buried around 834. Reconstructions over the past several decades have suggested that the ship was indeed built to sail, rather than having been designed specifically as a burial—a practice reserved for high-status individuals, for whom the ship provided passage into the afterlife. Nestled deep in the wet earth, the wood was remarkably preserved for more than 1,000 years, although much of it was crushed and degraded.

Initial restoration efforts of the Oseberg took more than 20 years, and experts tried to preserve as much of the structure as possible through the use of oils and resin to prevent the wood from crumbling. Today, around 90 percent of the ship’s composition is original, making it the best-preserved example in the world.

A feat of engineering and careful planning recently moved the Oseberg Viking Ship to a new permanent home, with the same relocation planned for two additional longships, the Gokstad and the Tune. For more than two years, the Oseberg has been encased in a steel framework that weighs more than 50 tons, allowing it to stay on site during construction of a new museum.

The ship has been on display at the Viking Ship Museum at the University of Oslo for almost a century. Over time, the combination of unstable restoration methods, lack of humidity control, and weakening supports began causing stress on the vessel, making it vulnerable to more damage if left in place.

In 2014, the government-backed Saving Oseberg project kicked off a 10-plus-year mission to not only further protect one of the most important Viking discoveries in the world, but make sure it could be enjoyed and studied for generations to come. In early 2023, construction commenced on a new space connected to the Viking Ship Museum’s original building, now renamed the Museum of the Viking Age. The expanded campus is slated to open in 2027.

On September 10, the 71-foot-long Oseberg ship, contained in its vibration-resistant steel crate, was lifted onto a steel track that conveyed it through a long hall and into its new exhibition space. The process took about 10 hours to move the ship 350 feet, with a maximum speed of around 10 inches per minute.

Director Aud V. Tønnessen celebrated the historic move, saying, “It is a ship that has been part of so much and has an afterlife that gives me chills to think about.” Tønnessen also told Norwegian news agency NTB, “I actually find it quite moving to think that it is now going on its final voyage.”

Learn more, and follow the progress of the Gokstad and the Tune, on the museum’s website and YouTube.

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