5 Artists on Our Radar in April 2026

Linus Borgo’s paintings are informed by a near-death experience. At 18, Borgo suffered a devastating electrical shock from a generator that discharged 11,000 volts. Though he survived the incident, it necessitated the amputation of his left hand. This event, coupled with his lived experience as a transgender man, fundamentally informs a practice that deals with the pleasures and discomforts of embodied experience. Some of these works are on view in his solo show at New York’s Yossi Milo Gallery, “Into the Blue Again,” through April 25th.

Cavity Sam (2025), for instance, is a self-portrait based on the popular “Operation” board game. It features a shirtless Borgo with dissected sections, labeled with titles such as “funny bone” or “knot in stomach.” The portrait also shows the artist’s “phantom limb,” a disembodied arm beneath his left arm. Not all of Borgo’s works are as direct. Many of his paintings depict quieter scenes, characterized by intentional staging and precise lighting. In The Impossibility of Unlearning (2026), a figure stands over a seated figure who holds his head in his hands, as if receiving difficult news.

Borgo earned a bachelor’s from Rhode Island School of Design in 2018 and a master’s from Columbia University in New York in 2022. Steve Turner, in Los Angeles, mounted his debut solo show, “I’ll Grow Back Like a Starfish,” in 2022.

– Maxwell Rabb