Instagram story viewer> @superficial_______> Posts

SUPERFICIAL

@superficial_______

3.5K

followers

987

following

An art agency.
Igniting the everyday with a touch of the extraordinary.
Sister of @superficialobjects

POSTS STORIES REELS TAGGED

Fancy eating from a bowl set with a porcelain octopus tentacle? Explore our new FISH! drop on SUPERFICIAL OBJECTS to discover our collection of objects by our five artists from across the world. Dive in! taken in London, United Kingdom by @superficial_______

42

2

4 days ago

Frieze, we love you, but there is much more to see in London this week.

Pack your calendars. taken in London, United Kingdom by @superficial_______

31

1

6 days ago

We’re very excited to experience the new Turbine Hall commission being unveiled next week! Here’s some past favourites - artists who have taken on the challenge of transforming the industrial void through the use of sculpture, sound, light, colour, and movement. taken in Tate Modern by @superficial_______

3k

2

7 days ago

A new commission has found its home in Notting Hill.

For a private home in the neighbourhood, SUPERFICIAL commissioned artist Sophie Weyeneth to create a large-scale painting inspired by the joy, crowds and movement of Notting Hill Carnival.

“The idea for this piece was to convey the joy, the crowd, the movement of the Notting Hill Carnival. At the centre, a palm-like shape holds the composition and sets the party mood. It could be the feathers of a dancer’s headdress or a wave of people funnelled through a crowd.”

The composition forms a continuous figure of eight, allowing the eye to move through the canvas and discover new details over time.

Several artists were proposed, and Sophie’s work selected for its movement in abstraction. From finding the right artist to managing the production and installation, SUPERFICIAL brought the commission into its new home. taken in London, United Kingdom by @superficial_______

106

14

11 days ago

Grand Central Terminal’s celestial ceiling is painted backwards. It is also a copy.

Created for the terminal’s opening in 1913, the original mural was conceived by French artist Paul César Helleu and executed by the Hewlett-Basing Studio. Its turquoise surface contained 2,500 stars, 12 gold-leaf constellations and dozens of illuminated points.

There was one problem: most of the constellations appeared in reverse, with east and west switched.

The explanation repeated by Grand Central is that the ceiling shows the sky from God’s perspective, looking towards Earth from beyond the celestial sphere. Yet Orion faces the correct direction, making that theory difficult to sustain. Another possibility is that the painters copied a plan laid at their feet, reversing the image as they transferred it overhead.

The mistake was noticed within weeks of the terminal opening and has never been corrected.

By the 1940s, water damage, mould and pollution had made the original mural almost impossible to see. Rather than remove it, workers covered the ceiling with cement-and-asbestos boards and painted a second version on top. That 1945 reproduction is the sky visible today.

During the terminal’s major 1990s restoration, conservators cleaned decades of pollution from its surface and left one dark patch untouched as a record of its former condition. Further repairs completed in 2021 addressed water damage and deteriorating plaster around the mural.

The ceiling above Grand Central now preserves several histories together: the original hidden mural, its backwards copy and the traces of every attempt to protect them. taken in New York City by @superficial_______

42

1

20 days ago

Antonio Canova tried to save Raphael’s Vatican Loggia. His solution helped damage it for the next 200 years.

Raphael conceived the 65-metre gallery between 1517 and 1519. Across its 13 vaulted bays, his workshop created biblical scenes surrounded by plants, animals, mythological figures and decorative stucco.

The loggia was originally open to the elements. In 1813, Canova supervised the installation of windows to protect its painted surfaces from the weather.

The glass restricted airflow and trapped heat and moisture inside. Over time, the already fragile paintings and stucco began to flake and deteriorate.

In summer 2026, the Vatican began a five-year restoration with the World Monuments Fund. Conservators are now using handheld lasers to clean the water-sensitive surfaces without damaging them further. The windows will also be replaced with sun-filtering glass.

Two centuries later, preserving Raphael’s Loggia means repairing the consequences of an earlier attempt to save it. taken in Vatican City - Rome, Italy by @superficial_______

41

0

23 days ago

The Vienna State Opera has unveiled its newest Safety Curtain: a posthumous work by Austrian painter Herbert Brandl.

Created for the 2026/27 season, the vast blue image resembles the Pacific seen from space. Brandl had accepted the commission and begun developing the work before his death in 2025. It was realised with his estate, museum in progress and the Vienna State Opera.

Underneath it is Orpheus and Eurydice, painted by Rudolf Hermann Eisenmenger for the opera house’s reopening in 1955. Eisenmenger had joined the Nazi Party, occupied an influential position within Vienna’s cultural establishment and produced propaganda celebrating Austria’s annexation into Nazi Germany.

When the original curtain’s removal was proposed decades later, museum in progress suggested covering it with a new contemporary artwork each season. The images are printed onto a 176-square-metre net and attached with magnets, leaving Eisenmenger’s painting physically intact beneath them.

Kara Walker inaugurated the series in 1998. Cy Twombly, David Hockney, Carrie Mae Weems, Anselm Kiefer and El Anatsui are among the artists who have followed.

Brandl’s work is its 29th layer: history remains underneath as the present changes above it. taken in Vienna, Austria by @superficial_______

1k

6

a month ago

A building in central Lisbon had six months before renovation began. We thought artists could use them.

P-ARTE Studios is Adriparte’s new residency programme, developed by SUPERFICIAL to turn the waiting period in a building’s life into working time for artists.

Until December, Ânia Pais, João Francisco Correia and Tomás Toste each have their own studio on Rua Barata Salgueiro, free of charge, with the space to make, test and change direction without having to arrive at a finished answer.

SUPERFICIAL developed the programme from concept and artist selection to its public programme and documentation.

A building between two lives. Three artists making use of the time in between.

P-ARTE Studios
Adriparte × SUPERFICIAL
Lisbon, June–December 2026

📷: @maravilhosajenniffer taken in Lisbon, Portugal by @superficial_______

447

15

a month ago

Some of Almada Negreiros’s greatest works spent decades hidden inside two buildings on Lisbon’s waterfront.

The Alcântara and Rocha do Conde de Óbidos maritime stations were designed by architect Porfírio Pardal Monteiro in the 1940s to receive passengers arriving in Portugal by ship. Under the Estado Novo, they were also an opportunity to present visitors with the version of the country the regime wanted them to see.

Almada Negreiros filled their walls with 14 murals. The eight panels at Alcântara, completed in 1945, move between popular mythology and everyday life beside the river. At Rocha do Conde de Óbidos, completed in 1949, his figures became flatter and more geometric.

Across both stations, he painted dockworkers carrying heavy loads, fishwives sorting the catch, emigrants boarding ships and the families left behind. Poverty, labour and departure occupied walls built to receive the world.

The murals caused immediate controversy. Public Works Minister Duarte Pacheco called the Alcântara paintings an “eyesore,” while the later Rocha do Conde de Óbidos murals came close to being destroyed. Their survival depended on support from influential figures within Salazar’s own circle.

They are now recognised as the largest collection of 20th-century mural painting in Portugal. An interpretation centre opened at Alcântara in 2025, finally allowing the public into a part of Lisbon’s history that had remained out of sight.

The regime built the stations to project power. Almada left the people on the walls.

Murals: José de Almada Negreiros, 1943–49.
Architecture: Porfírio Pardal Monteiro.
Gares Marítimas de Alcântara e da Rocha do Conde de Óbidos, Lisbon.

The Alcântara murals and interpretation centre are currently open to visitors. The Rocha do Conde de Óbidos murals are temporarily inaccessible due to building works. taken in Lisbon, Portugal by @superficial_______

560

3

a month ago

The smallest sculpture park in the world?

One plinth. Four corners. And more than 20 years of arguments about what belongs on it.

The Fourth Plinth in Trafalgar Square was originally intended for a statue of King William IV. Designed in 1841, the plinth was built — but the statue never was. They simply ran out of money.
And so the empty pedestal sat there for over 150 years, becoming one of London’s most conspicuous architectural loose ends.

Then, in 1998, the @royalsocietyofarts suggested a different solution: instead of filling it with another permanent monument, why not use it to showcase contemporary art?

@mark_wallinger_mark Ecce Homo became the first artwork to take its place in 1999. Since then, the plinth has hosted everything from a giant rocking horse to a golden skeleton, a thumbs-up, a swarm of drones and, most recently, @tschabalalaself Lady in Blue.

What started as a statue that never happened became one of the most famous platforms for contemporary sculpture in the world. taken in Trafalgar Square, London, UK by @superficial_______

33

0

a month ago

For twelve summers, The Met saved one of its best exhibition spaces for a single artist: the roof.

The Roof Garden Commission began in New York in 2013 with Imran Qureshi, whose red-painted terrace appeared violent from a distance and revealed small flowers as visitors moved closer.

After that came a mirrored pavilion by Dan Graham, Pierre Huyghe’s excavated ecosystem, Cornelia Parker’s PsychoBarn and Adrián Villar Rojas’s banquet of figures, food and objects borrowed from 5,000 years of art history.

Huma Bhabha placed two monumental figures against the skyline. Héctor Zamora built a wall of terracotta bricks. Alex Da Corte balanced Big Bird at the end of a crescent moon. Lauren Halsey transported the visual language of South Central Los Angeles to Fifth Avenue, while Petrit Halilaj drew enormous birds, flowers and messages in steel above Central Park.

Jennie C. Jones completed the series’ first chapter in 2025 with Ensemble, three sculptures based on stringed instruments, including a harp designed to be played by the wind.

The roof is now closed while The Met builds its new modern and contemporary wing. When it reopens in 2030, the next artist will inherit a different surface.

The Roof Garden Commission, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 2013–2025. taken in New York City by @superficial_______

37

0

a month ago

David Hockney painted Los Angeles swimming pools for decades. At the Hollywood Roosevelt, he finally painted one directly.

In 1988, Hockney stepped into the hotel’s empty Tropicana Pool with several cans of blue paint and a brush reportedly attached to a broom handle. In around four hours, he covered the bottom with an interlocking pattern of commas, parentheses and loops.

Once the pool was refilled, the surface of the water did the rest. Every dive made the marks bend, shimmer and move.

Then California officials ordered them removed. State safety regulations required pool floors to be free from decoration, so a bill was written to exempt the Roosevelt pool. It passed, the governor signed it, and the Hockney stayed.

Chlorine and swimmers gradually wear away the paint, meaning the mural has to be restored periodically. Its latest recorded restoration took place in 2024.

California changed the law to keep the squiggles.

David Hockney, Tropicana Pool mural, 1988. The Hollywood Roosevelt, Los Angeles. by @superficial_______

527

4

a month ago