Love is in the air/ volume 105

Some seasons arrive quietly, and others seem to alter the very atmosphere. This edition begins with a feeling—diffuse, ungraspable, yet unmistakable. Love, in all its forms, does not simply appear; it circulates. It passes between bodies, across distances, through objects, images, and gestures. It is carried in glances, embedded in rituals, stored in memory, and released without warning. To say “love is in the air” is to acknowledge something both intangible and pervasive: a condition rather than a conclusion.

In Volume 105 of Collect Art, we approach love not as a singular emotion, but as a field of tensions—between intimacy and distance, presence and absence, desire and loss. Love is rarely stable; it shifts, fractures, expands, and returns in unexpected forms. It is at once deeply personal and profoundly collective. It binds, but it also unsettles. It creates spaces of care and vulnerability, while exposing the fragility of connection itself.

Artists have long turned to love as a subject, yet what we encounter in these pages resists cliché and sentimentality. Here, love is not reduced to romance or idealized union. Instead, it is examined as a force that moves through the everyday: in gestures of devotion, in acts of resistance, in the quiet persistence of attachment. A hand resting on a surface. A trace left behind. A repetition that becomes ritual. Love reveals itself in what is held, and in what is let go.

Across this special edition, the works unfold as fragments of a larger emotional landscape. Some are tender, almost weightless; others are charged with longing, rupture, or ambiguity. Some images speak of proximity—of bodies and materials drawn close together—and others that articulate distance, where connection is felt precisely through separation. Love, in this sense, is not always visible. It is often sensed through absence, through what cannot be fully articulated.

Material plays a crucial role in these explorations. Fabrics absorb touch; surfaces carry marks of time; objects become vessels of memory. Artists work with elements that have lived—worn, handled, altered—allowing them to speak of relationships that extend beyond the moment of making. In some works, the material itself seems to hold emotion, as if love could be embedded in texture, weight, or form. In others, the ephemeral takes precedence: light, breath, movement—phenomena that resist containment, much like love itself.

There is also a recurring attention to language and its limits. How do we speak of love without reducing it? How do we represent something that constantly exceeds definition? Many of the artists in this issue turn toward abstraction, symbolism, or gesture, allowing meaning to emerge indirectly. Words dissolve into forms; narratives remain open-ended. The viewer is invited not to decode, but to feel—to enter into a space where interpretation is guided as much by intuition as by recognition.

In a world increasingly mediated by distance—digital, geographic, emotional—the question of connection becomes urgent. What does it mean to be close to someone, or something? How do we maintain intimacy within systems that often fragment attention and experience? The works gathered here do not offer simple answers. Instead, they create conditions for reflection. They hold space for contradiction: for love that is sustaining and love that is difficult, for bonds that endure and those that transform or dissolve.

This edition also acknowledges the political dimensions of love. To care, to nurture, to remain open—these can be radical acts. Love resists isolation; it insists on relation. It challenges structures that seek to divide, categorize, or control. In this sense, love becomes a form of knowledge, a way of understanding the world through connection rather than separation. It asks us to reconsider how we exist with others—human and non-human alike.

Lightness and gravity coexist throughout these pages. There are moments of joy—playful, luminous, expansive—but they are never detached from complexity. Love carries weight: histories, expectations, responsibilities. It can be overwhelming, even disorienting. And yet, it is precisely within this complexity that its depth is revealed. Love is not a fixed state; it is a process, a movement, a continual negotiation.

As you move through this issue, consider how love manifests in your own experience. Not only in grand declarations, but in the subtle, often overlooked gestures that shape daily life. The way light enters a room. The way an object is kept, repaired, or passed on. The way presence is felt, even in absence.

“Love is in the air” suggests something shared—an atmosphere we all inhabit, whether consciously or not. It surrounds us, but it also moves through us, altering how we perceive and relate. This edition invites you to attune to that atmosphere, to notice its shifts, its intensities, its quiet undercurrents.