Urban Pulse/ volume 85

Cities do not simply exist; they beat. They thrum with the layered rhythm of footsteps, machines, human voices, disappearing histories, and futures being built in real time. They hold contradictions—fragility and force, chaos and order, solitude and proximity—all compressed into concrete, light, metal, memory, and motion. The 85th release and a special exploration of the theme Urban Pulse bring together international artists whose works illuminate the living, breathing complexity of urban life.

Across continents and cultures, artists respond to the city as both muse and mirror. In these pages, the city becomes a stage where identity is negotiated, bodies move through systems of power and possibility, and everyday moments become sites of meaning. Here, the urban landscape is not background—it's the protagonist.

This issue celebrates that vibrancy through a diverse collection of mediums: painting, photography, drawing, digital experimentation, and cross-media practices. Each artist contributes a unique frequency to the shared pulse of this edition, offering an intimate look into both the metropolis and the inner worlds shaped by it.

For some artists featured here, the city is a field of sensations—a choreography of colours, forms, and rhythms. Other featured artists turn toward the architecture and systems that organise urban life—its infrastructures, its rules, its invisible and visible boundaries. Some artists expose the psychological residues of city living: alienation, overstimulation, hypervigilance, the negotiation of public and private space, or the way social inequalities are etched into physical structures. Others explore ideas of community, collective resilience, and the informal networks that sustain daily life.

At the core of this issue are the artists themselves—their voices, stories, and creative journeys. Each biography and artist statement offers insight into the personal relationships they hold with the cities that shape their lives. Many have migrated, crossed borders, or built artistic identities within foreign urban landscapes. Others examine the city of their birth, tracing how it has changed, what it remembers, and what it has forgotten.

The personalised interviews included throughout this edition deepen these perspectives. Artists speak candidly about what draws them to urban themes, how their creative languages have evolved, and what they hope viewers will sense within their work. They discuss the emotional temperature of contemporary city life, the urgency of documenting what feels intangible, and the role of art as a form of urban reflection and resistance.

Together, these interviews form a collective archive of lived experience—one that reveals the universality of the city as both a challenge and an inspiration.

Urban Pulse is not only a theme—it is an action.

To feel the pulse of a city is to understand that it is always moving, always changing, always shaped by those who inhabit it. The artists in this issue capture that dynamism, but they also transform it. Their works suggest new ways of seeing and sensing the spaces we occupy. They propose alternative narratives, reimagined architectures, speculative futures, and visual languages that offer clarity, disruption, or wonder.

Some transform the city into dreamscape; others expose its raw edges. Some render the metropolis as a symphony; others as a question. Whether through abstraction, figuration, documentary realism, or experimental form, each artist contributes to a broader conversation about what it means to live—emotionally, politically, creatively—within the built world.

As with every Collect Art edition, this volume brings together voices from across the world. Their differences are striking—but their shared concerns reveal how deeply interconnected global urban experience has become. The pulse of a city in Seoul may echo the pulse of a city in São Paulo; the atmosphere of London may resonate with that of Lagos; the light of New York may reflect the shadows of Berlin.

And yet, each artist captures something unmistakably specific: the street they walk, the buildings they touch, the sounds that fill their every day. These pages celebrate that duality—the universal and the personal, the global rhythm and the intimate beat.

The 85th Special Edition of Collect Art Magazine, Urban Pulse, invites you to listen closely—to hear the whispers, the static, the harmonies, and the dissonances that define contemporary urban existence. It invites you to recognise that the city’s pulse is also our own: shaped by memory, movement, identity, resilience, fragility, and imagination.

We hope this edition offers not only a window into the diverse practices of the artists within it, but also a renewed appreciation for the vibrant, shifting worlds we create and inhabit together.