5 offseen Exhibitions You Need to See in June

by Rachel Cecília de Oliveira

17.06.2026

The five exhibitions this month each begin from different questions, but they all share a sense of unease: what happens when form tries to hold itself, even as it can no longer fully depend on its own stability? In Agent of Birth, the body is assembled at the boundary between generation and fabrication. Moments of Grace shows serenity that relies on a balance always near collapse. Similarly, in Systema non Tenet, order keeps taking shape, even as it remains necessarily incomplete. In contrast, in Figure, not Figure, the figure emerges as it becomes less clear. Finally, in And Here I Bloom, For a Short Hour Unseen, matter appears on the threshold between life and object.

Agent of Birth

Artist: Deng Shiqing
Curator: Charles Moore
C+N Gallery CANEPANERI, Milan, Italy
On view until June 24, 2026

What does it mean to bring life into the world today? This question runs through Deng Shiqing’s Agent of Birth. In these paintings, reproduction appears as a field of tension and contradiction. That contradiction is inscribed in the very composition of the bodies; they are built from dismembered fragments, reconnected in images of striking technical precision. Through this pictorial strategy, the dispute surrounding birth moves to the core of the work’s visual construction, so that the figures seem to have been assembled through a process that is both calculated and unsettling. Deng’s realistic painting style brings the images close to the tangible world, making their familiarity appear uncanny. Estrangement thus becomes a tool for the metaphorical recreation of reality. The resulting irony comes from this friction: the artist dismantles the romantic idea of bringing life into the world, turning it into a visual operation in which generating and manufacturing begin to share the same space. In doing so, she exposes the contradiction of a world that administers reproduction while still holding on to the language of miracle.

Agent of Birth exhibition views, ph Mattia Mognetti, courtesy the artist and the gallery

Moments of Grace

Artist: Yelena Popova
osnova gallery, Valencia, Spain
On view until July 16, 2026

In Yelena Popova’s Moments of Grace, grace is not a state, but a temporary condition of balance. It appears when something finds a stable form, even though nothing guarantees that this stability will last. In the painting installations, grace comes from a finely calibrated balance. Each component assumes an awkward yet essential position within an unstable architecture. The smallest shift could expose serenity as a fleeting accomplishment poised on the verge of collapse. This dynamic is particularly evident in the Evaporating Paintings and Post-Petrochemical Paintings series, where the “moment of grace” relies on unpredictable outcomes of extended material processes, turning painting into an event. The surface keeps the memory of a negotiation between method and unpredictability. Grace emerges when matter arrives at a seemingly serene form, despite the instability from which it arose. The tapestries, however, mark a clear turning point. They suggest a desire to open matter onto a wider order of correspondences, as if grace could be found in another world. The tapestries seem to search for it in a spiritual and symbolic register. Yet they also carry a certain excess of explicitness, as though they try to resolve analytically what the paintings leave suspended. In this exhibition, Popova shows that a “moment of grace” is not a point outside history. Instead, it is the rare instant when unequal forces find a temporary composition.

Moments of Grace exhibition views, ph Enrique Pascual, courtesy the artist and the gallery

Systema non Tenet

Artist: Juanjo Barreda
Litostudio, Milan, Italy
On view until June 11, 2026

In Juanjo Barreda’s Systema non Tenet, order emerges as an unattainable goal. The exhibition is structured around a visual system that pursues cohesion through repetition, modularity, and the proximity of similar elements. Yet the more this order asserts itself, the more clearly it reveals its own impossibility. Each work reiterates a common logic while maintaining its distinct deviation. Thus, cohesion functions as an illusion that gives continuity to the viewer’s experience while simultaneously underscoring the underlying chaos. Within this dynamic, the suspended structures of the images form unstable constellations. Repetition produces an expectation of regularity that soon unravels in the face of each work’s internal differences. The exhibition is built around this contradiction. Order is necessary because it connects the works; chaos is inevitable because it prevents that connection from becoming a closed system. From this tension, Barreda constructs a pendular experience: the eye seeks patterns, but each attempt uncovers new inconsistencies.

Juanjo Barreda – Systema non Tenet exhibition views, courtesy the artist and the gallery

Figure, not Figure

Artists: Emmanuelle Castellan, Scott McCracken, Mirela Moscu, Luca Zarattini
RIBOT, Milan, Italy
On view until July 17, 2026

Figure, not Figure, can be read as a series of visual questions about what allows a figure to appear without stabilizing as representation. The title’s ambiguity creates tension. To figure may mean making something recognizable or producing a presence that resists immediate identification. To figure is not necessarily to fix, and to disfigure is not always to destroy. The exhibition opens an unstable zone in which the figure survives precisely by losing definition. Each artist explores when a form begins to take shape without becoming fully legible. In Scott McCracken’s work, the image is formed through the tension between improvisation and structure. Mirela Moscu’s practice investigates the figure’s progression toward metamorphosis. Luca Zarattini’s pieces appear to emerge from burial, from accumulated matter. Across the exhibition, the gaze is made to work where the image fails as evidence. Figuration becomes a problem rather than a solution.

Figure, not Figure exhibiton views, courtesy the artist and the gallery

And Here I Bloom, For a Short Hour Unseen

Artists: Chryssa Kotoula & Katerina Moschou
Curator: Lida Koutromanou
The Paddocks Gallery, Volos, Greece
On view until July 4, 2026

In And Here I Bloom, For a Short Hour Unseen, materiality serves as the exhibition’s guiding thread. The show brings together two investigations by different artists, each exploring the body through unstable states: in one, matter seems to come alive; in the other, the body moves closer to the inanimate. Both artists are connected by their construction of an imaginary rooted in the specific properties of their chosen materials. In Chryssa Kotoula’s work, ceramics arise from residues and processes of reuse. The clay retains within its final form the memory of previous cycles of use and transformation. The animate arises from matter’s own becoming, from a material that bears the marks of time, decomposition, and recomposition. In Katerina Moschou’s work, the focus shifts to the body in contact with everyday technologies; the inanimate becomes a force that reorganizes the body. The exhibition unfolds through this contrast: Kotoula animates matter itself, while Moschou shows the body losing autonomy as it adheres to things. In both practices, materiality is where forms of life and memory become entangled.

And Here I Bloom, For a Short Hour Unseen, ph Andrew Anetopoulos, courtesy the artist and the gallery

Edited by Dobroslawa Nowak

Copyrights: the authors, offseen and partnering platforms;

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