Art & Image
how creation takes form — in light, color, and imagination
Each piece becomes a reflection of vision: a still moment that moves, a gesture that becomes story.
Here, art is not observed — it is experienced through presence.
Vian Borchert
Ariadne’s Crest, Horizons, and the Poetics of Abstraction
Vian Borchert’s work occupies a rare space where abstraction, memory, and myth converge. Across continents and exhibition contexts, her paintings function as visual thresholds—portals between the personal and the archetypal, the earthly and the celestial. On MUSE.TV, we spotlight Borchert’s current and upcoming exhibitions, beginning with her newest body of work debuting in New York City.
ARIADNE’S CREST: Ad Astra | To the Stars
Lichtundfire Gallery, New York City
Borchert’s latest abstract paintings are currently on view in ARIADNE’S CREST: Ad Astra | To the Stars, the invitational 10-year anniversary exhibition at Lichtundfire Gallery on the Lower East Side of Manhattan. Conceptualized and curated by Priska Juschka, the exhibition brings together artists whose practices engage myth, time, and transcendence.
Drawing from the Greek myth of Ariadne and Dionysus, Borchert’s paintings revisit the legendary meeting place on the island of Naxos—where abandonment transforms into cosmic devotion. According to myth, Dionysus immortalized Ariadne by casting her jeweled crown into the sky, forming the constellation Corona Borealis. Borchert reinterprets this narrative through abstraction, merging personal memory with cultural mythology.
Her compositions reference the iconic Portara—the monumental gateway of the unfinished Temple of Apollo—rendered through layered blues, aquas, and gestural marks that suggest sea, sky, ruin, and passage. These works do not illustrate myth; they activate it, allowing ancient narrative to surface through contemporary painterly language.
Exhibition Details
Dates: December 5, 2025 – January 3, 2026
Gallery Hours: Wednesday–Saturday, 12–6 PM
Location: Lichtundfire Gallery, 175 Rivington Street, New York, NY 10002
Availability: All works are available through the gallery
Works on View
Threshold (2025)
Acrylic on canvas, 20 × 20 in
Portara (2025)
Acrylic on canvas, 20 × 20 in
Gateway to Sea (2025)
Acrylic on canvas, 20 × 20 in
Columns of the Temple of Apollo (2025)
Acrylic on canvas, 20 × 20 in
IN 9: Detox Gallery — “I Grieve Different” Opens in Chelsea
Detox Gallery is opening a new month-long exhibition in Chelsea that puts grief on the wall — not as a single story, but as many. “I Grieve Different” brings together 18 multidisciplinary artists from the U.S. and abroad to explore loss, memory, identity, and resilience across painting, photography, sculpture, textiles, mixed media, and digital work.
The show opens December 11 at 529 Arts in Chelsea and runs through January 10, 2026. Detox Gallery is also hosting community programming throughout the month — including soundbath meditation, yoga and journaling, and a 2026 vision-boarding session — creating space for reflection and connection around the work.
Opening reception: Dec. 11, 6–9 PM
Exhibition dates: Dec. 11, 2025 – Jan. 10, 2026
Location: 529 Arts, Chelsea, NYC
RSVP + event details: luma.com/detoxgallery
Art Excerpt
“When a new idea arrives, I often begin with painting — it’s how I first externalize a feeling or visual logic. Painting becomes a way of thinking through form, and during the development of a body of work, it grows alongside the film. I think of it almost like set design or scenography in dialogue with narrative: a conversation between pigment and memory, between material and moving image.”
Elly Cho
SHINE 2025 — Year Eleven
November 7–16 | St. Petersburg, Florida
St. Petersburg’s SHINE Mural Festival glows again in pigment and light — a living gallery of movement, story, and imagination.
Now in its eleventh year, SHINE transforms city walls into luminous works of art and community.
MUSE.TV reflects on this moment: where art becomes atmosphere, and cities learn to breathe in color.
✦ MUSE.TV — What the world reveals today.
→ stpeteartsalliance.org/shine-2025
The Sound of Light — SHINE 2025
A city awakens in pigment and motion.
Walls breathe color; light moves like memory.
Each mural becomes a note in the landscape —
a rhythm of reflection, community, and care.
This track echoes the warmth of creation —
the hush before color meets wall,
the slow rise of morning through painted streets.
Vespera — A Study in Poise and Light
The skyline hums with quiet anticipation — the city holding its breath before the scene unfolds.
A visual suite exploring the quiet strength of the modern muse —
composed in line, shadow, and motion.
Each frame becomes a vignette of stillness in motion —
translating timeless grace into cinematic form.
The Silhouette
She enters like a whisper of dusk — poised, composed, and luminous.
The curve of the gown, the stillness of her gaze — an ode to the feminine form as architecture of grace.
Here, fashion becomes language; elegance, a quiet form of defiance.
The Cellist
Music becomes motion, and motion becomes breath.
Every note she draws is a line of light, connecting precision and passion.
In her stillness, creation hums — art not as performance, but as presence.
The Window
Night gathers softly around her reflection.
She stands at the threshold of quiet ambition — the city below, her mirror in motion.
It is the calm between acts, the moment where vision takes form in silence.
The Director
Here, she commands the lens — both muse and maker.
She directs not a scene, but a world — one where light obeys her stillness,
and story bends toward her gaze.
The artist becomes her own mythology.
Exploring the Abstract Flow
Color bends. Light pulses.
In Exploring the Abstract Flow, we enter a space where form dissolves and feeling leads.
A visual meditation on motion, contrast, and the quiet power of what cannot be named.
Light unspools across shadow.
Color pulses, dissolves, returns.
In Exploring the Abstract Flow, we’re invited into a space beyond structure — where feeling leads, and design becomes emotion in motion.
This is a meditation in movement.
A moment where shape and spectrum blur, and meaning is found in sensation, not logic.
It’s not meant to be defined — only felt.
Let the hues wash over you.
Let the contrast hold you.
Let this reveal remind you:
You don’t need to name everything to be moved by it.
A Cinematic Short Story by MUSE.TV
Through the Golden Field
A Cinematic Short Story by MUSE.TV
She does not flee the flame — she carries it.
Through the Golden Field follows a luminous figure in quiet motion, moving not toward a destination but deeper into presence. Wrapped in linen, marked by memory, she walks through warmth and wind, her every step a ritual of return. This is not a tale of escape — but of embodiment.
A visual meditation on becoming.
The fire was behind her now.
Not left behind — carried.
She moved through gold — through grasses warmed by memory and time. Each blade bent with her passage, as if recognizing her. As if remembering something too.
There was no destination. Only presence.
And the warmth of knowing you’re where you’re meant to be.
The field rippled like breath. The sky swelled with light. Her linen robe caught in the wind, rising and falling in rhythm with her heartbeat.
Jewelry glinted at her collarbones — not for ornament, but for remembrance. Every thread in her robe whispered of past ignitions, quiet rebirths.
She paused in the center of the field. The horizon stretched wide — not as a promise, but a mirror. The world didn’t open for her.
She opened to it.
This was not a path of escape.
It was a ritual of return.
Through the golden field she walked — sovereign, soft, whole.
Carrying her fire.
Becoming her light.
✦ EMBLEM OF THE FIRST FLAME
An Ancient Symbol of Sovereignty, Becoming, and Inner Light
Name: The Ember Sigil
Also known as: The Flamebound Mark, The Sovereign Glyph, or simply Her Sign
🜂 MEANING & STRUCTURE
This symbol is said to appear the moment a soul remembers its fire.
Crown-shaped crest: Divine knowing and inner sovereignty — the sacred right to be oneself, fully.
Radiating lines: Illumination, awakening, and inner alchemy.
Central flame or stem: The path of becoming — a slow, steady ignition from within.
Droplet base or pendant: Embodiment — the descent of spirit into form, vision into matter.
Together, these elements mark a being who walks through transformation not to escape the fire — but to become it.
🜁 LORE: THE EMBER SIGIL
There was a time when fire was not feared — but followed.
Not for destruction, but for direction.
In old stories, this mark didn’t appear on banners or scrolls, but on the hearts and garments of those undergoing quiet transformation.
It was not gifted.
It was earned — ignited through presence, ritual, and truth.
Those who bore it were not called warriors or queens.
They were called Flamebound — beings who had chosen the path of conscious becoming.
🜃 IN MUSE.TV
In The Flame, the Ember Sigil appears as a subtle necklace worn by the protagonist.
It is never named. Never explained. Only glimpsed.
An emblem of memory — one the viewer must feel to recognize.
As The Flame series deepens, the Sigil may return as:
A recurring visual signature in future Reveals
A motif on scarves, apparel, candles, or folios
A mystic collectible — offered as a digital artifact, token, or cinematic relic
"She did not wear it for power — but for memory."
✦ MEANING, AT A GLANCE
Crown lines
Symbolize inner sovereignty and awakening
Central flame
Represents the path of transformation
Droplet base
Embodiment — grounded light made visible
Full emblem
The sacred ignition of becoming
✨ This is more than a symbol.
It is a signpost for the soul.
A quiet mark worn only by those who remember who they are.