What’s Happening: Decades after Holzer’s Truisms spiraled up the rotunda, she again transforms the museum into a potent canvas for words to resonate.

The Download: Almost 35 years ago, Jenny Holzer created a spiraling LED display that snaked up three levels of the Guggenheim Museum’s Frank Lloyd Wright–designed rotunda. Blinking while changing colors, fonts, and effects, the display was the world’s longest at the time and projected the aphorisms that, beginning in the late ‘70s, would propel Holzer to fame. The Surface cover star reached her biggest audience when, in 1982, an LED billboard told Times Square that “abuse of power comes as no surprise” and “private property created crime.” The closest comparison to her signboards might be “the crawl”—the scrolling tickers that ran along the bottom of the screen during cable news coverage of the 9/11 attacks and would soon become fixtures of those networks.

Our political climate may have shape-shifted since 1989, but there’s still an abundance of dark realities that Holzer’s text-based artworks can plumb in the search for truth and hope. She recently collaborated with the Guggenheim on “Light Line,” an exhibition that reimagines her landmark artwork for today. This time around, she treats the entire museum as an installation. Her signature Truisms and Inflammatory Essays remain intact—an expanded LED sign scrolls up all six levels of the ramp and runs for more than six hours without repeating. According to curator Lauren Hinkson, the slower pace appears “as if you’re drinking the words.”

Elsewhere, words turn the stomach. In a recent work, Holzer overlays former U.S. President Donald Trump’s inflammatory tweets on wall-mounted metal plates, some made of toxic materials, that gather in a festering mound on the floor. She also makes space for words that nourish the spirit. The most public element of “Light Line” is a nocturnal projection on the Guggenheim’s facade of poetry by some of her favorite writers, like Anne Carson, Henri Cole, and Wislawa Szymborska. Others’ words come into play again within the Guggenheim Galleries, where Holzer recreates floor-to-ceiling walls of the neon-colored Inflammatory Essays she originally wheat-pasted on Manhattan storefronts but with testimony written by longtime friend Lee Quiñones scrawled over.

In Their Own Words: “It is not Holzer’s job to offer guidance or even hope,” art historian Nancy Princenthal writes in the New York Times. “But she can be relied on to turn the high beams up on the dark road we’re traveling.”

Surface Says: Though some are questioning whether Holzer’s art hits as hard in an age when one can simply log onto X or TikTok to find everyday people speaking truth to power, her punchy, eye-opening witticisms—and the truth they illuminate—still feel like a gift, even as she explores different mediums.

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Italian outdoor furniture specialist Ethimo is bringing a distinctly resort perspective to the world of fitness through its latest collaboration. While Ethimo is based between Milan and the outskirts of Rome, an affinity for the leisure culture of the Mediterranean informs its array of yachting, sport, and outdoor furniture. And for its summer collection, it’s heading to the splendor of Comporta—a destination dubbed “the Hamptons of Portugal”—that’s complete with sweeping views of Parque Natural da Serra da Arrábida.

Blue skies, sand dunes, cork forests, and a prevailing vision where nature is king informs the brand’s latest collaboration. Studio Adolini is known for everything from quietly intense, fortress-like headquarters for Italy’s most distinguished furniture and interiors brands to historically sensitive renovations of grandiose architecture like Museo di Palazzo Doebbing. They’ve lent Ethimo its architectural know-how to craft Out-Fit, an open-air gym setup guaranteed to pass the vibe check for even the most opinionated aesthetes.

Cutting-edge biotech, the Garden of Eden, and profound meditations on the future of civilization coalesce in a can’t-look-away triptych from Independent.

Here, we ask an artist about the essential details behind a recent work.

Bio: Anastasia Komar, 37, New York.

Title of work: EDEn I, II, and III.

Where to see it: In my studio at Silver Art Projects. The piece was also recently on view at Management’s booth at Independent New York.

Three words to describe it: Biotechnology, electromagnetic field, evolution.

An interesting feature that’s not immediately noticeable: The more you look at the work, the more you see the 3D-printed sculptures don’t just sit on top of the painted surface. They have a symbiotic relationship, coalescing into a single object where the parts are not independent from one another. The painted surface reveals the full, wide palette of colors only if you look up close. You might experience a perceptual phenomenon where the tiny brushstrokes feel like they are in motion.

Earlier this month, Mercedes-Benz teamed up with The Concours Club to toast Mercedes-Benz Places, a 67-story tower in Brickell with residences by Woods Bagot. Select guests were treated to a first look at the brand’s inaugural North American residences before being whisked away to the members-only driving circuit at The Concours Club. There, they got a taste of F1’s Grand Prix weekend with racetrack test drives of Mercedes-AMG GT R sportscars.

When was it? May 1

Where was it? The Concours Club, Miami

Who was there? Gregg Pasquarelli, Krista Ninivaggi, GianLuca Vacchi, Sharon Fonseca, Daymond John, Toto Wolff, Michael Stern, and Ryan Serhant.

Phillip Jividen’s works are about creating timeless pieces that feel familiar yet unexpected. Using intuitive forms that are a balance between practicality and playfulness, his design process is an exploration of material and composition as a means to create objects that instill a sense of permanence.

Surface Says: Jividen achieves the unlikely by bringing texture, warmth, and personality to stone, wood, glass, and aluminum through his explorations of form and composition.

Scientists may have solved the mystery of how Egypt’s pyramids were built.

Everyone in the new Apple TV+ series Palm Royale should be chain smoking.

Germans Ermičs creates shoelace-inspired medals for the Riga Marathon.

New York City introduces pizza box recycling to step up its war against rats.