Tastemaking South African Gallery SMAC Is Anchoring its Future in Cape Town https://ift.tt/cu4rNeX

The day the South African gallery SMAC welcomed the sculptor Barend De Wet to its roster, its trajectory shifted. This was back in 2009, two years after Baylon Sandri founded the gallery in the picturesque wine-country town of Stellenbosch. At first, the Cape Town–born gallerist intended for SMAC—originally known as Stellenbosch Modern and Contemporary—to be a space for historically underrepresented South African artists. That changed when Sandri met De Wet. “De Wet was undoubtedly one of South Africa’s most avant-garde artists, and this sparked a change in the gallery’s focus,” Sandri told Artsy. From that point on, SMAC has been focused on uplifting contemporary artists of southern Africa.

In the 15 years since that turning point, SMAC has evolved into a cornerstone of the contemporary art scene in South Africa. In 2011, SMAC expanded its reach to Cape Town, opening a space in the City Centre before moving to the Woodstock gallery district. Soon after, in 2016, the gallery launched an outpost in Johannesburg.

Wolkol II, 2010
Barend de Wet
Strauss & Co

With its keen eye for emerging talent, SMAC has helped propel the careers of young and rising artists, such as Simphiwe Buthelezi and Wallen Mapondera, the latter of whom was featured in The Artsy Vanguard 2021. And since participating in its first art fair in 2013, VOLTA9 in Basel, SMAC has become a force on the international stage—evident through its participation in more than 10 major international art fairs last year, including an impressive solo presentation of Buthelezi’s work at Paris+ par Art Basel 2023.

In November 2023, the gallery celebrated a homecoming when it returned to Cape Town’s City Centre, inaugurating a new flagship gallery with an expansive group exhibition titled “Back In Town.” This move, alongside the launch of SMAC + Projects—a project space for more intimate and experimental exhibitions located five minutes from the flagship gallery—marked a “critical refocusing” for the gallery, in Sandri’s words.

Kuzvitsvaga (searching for self), 2022
Wallen Mapondera
SMAC

After 17 years of advocating for southern African artists, SMAC is sharpening its focus on Cape Town, which has become an increasingly influential hub of the international art world. Since the gallery first moved into the city 13 years ago, Cape Town has welcomed various major art institutions and events—including the Investec Cape Town Art Fair, the Zeitz Museum of Contemporary Africa Art, and the Norval Foundation—plus a dynamic cohort of local galleries with increasing international reach, such as 99 Loop Gallery and THK Gallery.

With its freshly reinforced presence in the city, SMAC is poised to elevate its artists at the center of this hotbed.

“These new locations make it possible for us to expand our footprint within the City Centre, an area full of opportunity,” Sandri said. “We are now situated within a growing ecosystem of commercial galleries and a bustling commercial and cultural hub.”

Her Fine Blades, 2023
Kate Gottgens
SMAC

Findings (Group 3), 2023
Ledelle Moe
SMAC

Sandri is particularly excited about the next two years in the new Cape Town locations, which will host a series of solo exhibitions of its represented artists. First up was the South African painter Kate Gottgens’s “Her Fine Blades,” on view through April 6th. The painter first exhibited with SMAC in Cape Town in 2013 and is now one of the gallery’s more established artists—an example of an artist whose career grew hand-in-hand with SMAC.

Meanwhile, SMAC + Projects is a continuation of the gallery’s commitment to emerging and experimental art. The space plans to host an artist residency, which will welcome international artists to create a dialogue between Cape Town and other art communities.

In addition to its focus on emerging artists, SMAC’s program is also characterized by its emphasis on materiality, abstraction, strong representation of women artists (including Michaela Younge, Mary Sibande, and Marlene Steyn), and experimental practices—such as the South African artist Ledelle Moe, who is known for massive concrete and steel sculptures that test the boundaries of conventional commercial gallery spaces.

Clothed in the skin of righteousness, 2022
Mary Sibande
SMAC

“SMAC prides itself on its individuality and non-adherence to trends and short-term shifts in the art market,” Sandri explained. “Similarly, the gallery places artistic production above any other agenda and seeks to work with artists who make unique and high-quality work rather than fitting in a specific discourse. The gallery respects freedom of speech and expression and encourages artists to push themselves beyond what is currently à la mode.”

Above all, the gallery is committed to building recognition for artists of southern Africa. “Our main interest remains in partnering with artists whose work we believe can sustainably grow alongside the gallery,” Sandri said. This approach has positioned SMAC as a nurturing ground for artists at different stages of their careers.

In doubling down on its presence in Cape Town, SMAC reaffirms its commitment to the vibrancy of southern African art, positioning itself at the heart of a global crossroads where its artists, deeply rooted in the local art scene, are primed for international exposure.

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An $18 million Basquiat and Warhol work heads to Sotheby’s. https://ift.tt/BUCxMOk

A collaborative work by Andy Warhol and Jean-Michel Basquiat, measuring an impressive 10-by-13 feet wide, will be auctioned at Sotheby’s Contemporary Evening Auction this May. The untitled artwork last appeared on the market nearly 15 years ago, when it hammered $2.65 million at Sotheby’s in 2010. The auction house currently estimates its value in the region of $18 million, increasing nearly sixfold.

Untitled was produced amid the high-profile collaboration between the two artists spanning 1983 to 1985—which was explored in depth in an exhibition last year at Fondation Louis Vuitton, Paris. The two artists were introduced by Zurich-based gallerist Bruno Bischofberge in 1982. One of approximately 160 paintings created during this time, the work marries Warhol’s signature screenprinting techniques with Basquiats’s expressive figuration. Basquiat said of the collaboration, “Andy would start one and put something very recognizable on it, or a product logo, and I would sort of deface it.”

At first, the collaborative paintings were widely criticized. In 1985, the artists presented the work at New York’s Tony Shafrazi Gallery without any sales. That would lead to the end of the collaboration. This period closely preceded the deaths of both artists, with Warhol passing away in 1987 and Basquiat in 1988.

“When Warhol and Basquiat first revealed the fruits of their collaboration at Tony Shafrazi Gallery in 1985, the critical reception failed to see the true artistic vision of what is undoubtedly the most important artistic collaboration of the 20th century,” said Grégoire Billault, Sotheby’s chairman of contemporary art. “Nearly 40 years later, the collaborative works are now, rightfully, seen as a landmark and an integral part of both artists’ bodies of work, synthesizing their contrasting styles and visions with total iconoclasm.”

Ahead of the May sale, the most valuable painting to sell from the collaboration period is Zenith (1985), which sold for $11.4 million at Phillips in May 2014.

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10 Contemporary Painters Reviving Impressionism https://ift.tt/ud0qrXn

On April 25, 1874, French critic Louis Leroy mocked Claude Monet’s Impression, Sunrise (1872), scathingly comparing the seascape to “wallpaper in its embryonic state.” He was writing in response to an exhibition staged in defiance of the state-sponsored Salon by 31 artists—including Monet, Paul Cézanne, and Edgar Degas. These artists became the target of Leroy’s mockery as painters of unfinished “impressions,” a characterization that would unwittingly christen the Impressionist movement.

This year marks the 150th anniversary of that historic insult and the exhibition that introduced Impressionism, as it would eventually be known, to the public. In celebration, the Musée d’Orsay in Paris has curated a massive exhibition entitled “Paris 1874: Inventing Impressionism,” on view until July 14th, which features over 130 works from Impressionists including Monet, Degas, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, and Camille Pissarro. From there, the exhibition will travel to the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., in September.

The exhibition underlines the significance of these artists’ innovations to the course of art history. Impressionism shattered the conventions of its time by favoring the transient, dynamic qualities of light and color in everyday scenes over detailed renderings of academic subjects. Its practitioners used unblended bursts of color, loose brushwork, and plein air techniques to capture the world as they observed it at specific moments in time.

Today, the legacy of Impressionism lives on in contemporary artists who incorporate techniques and themes developed by Monet, Degas, and their contemporaries—as well as the Post-Impressionist generation that followed them—to convey a sense of immediacy.

Here, we explore the work of 10 contemporary artists whose practices are linked to the Impressionists’ legacy.

Beatrice Meoni

B. 1960, Florence, Italy. Lives and works in Italy.

Lo studio, 2024
Beatrice Meoni
Cardelli & Fontana

Lo studio. Pranzo, 2024
Beatrice Meoni
Cardelli & Fontana

In Beatrice Meoni’s cluttered interiors, haphazard strokes of color, rather than clear lines, articulate the forms of furniture, clothing, and scattered belongings. The Florence-born painter’s loose brushstrokes obscure the definition and details of her rooms, instead depicting the space as if seen in a passing glance. Though absent of any figures, her scenes are clearly inhabited, imbued with a sense of lived experience.

Like her Impressionist predecessors, Meoni captures fleeting moments of everyday life, as in her “Lo Studio” series (2024), where the painter explores her own workspace. There is a quality of spontaneity in her paintings, like in Lo studio. Pranzo (2024), which depicts a room piled with discarded belongings alongside a studio table scattered with plates. It feels almost as if Meroni stopped eating in the middle of dinner to capture the moment.

Her “Lo Studio” works were recently featured in an exhibition hosted by Cardelli & Fontana. Another work from the series is currently included in a group exhibition at z2o Galleria in Rome.

Daniel Enkaoua

B. 1962, Meaux, France. Lives and works in Barcelona.

Tomates Montserrat, 2012
Daniel Enkaoua
Litvak Contemporary

The somber portraits of Barcelona-based painter Daniel Enkaoua incorporate elements of Impressionism and Expressionism, imparting a sense of tragedy or malaise through dramatically lit figures rendered in choppy, visceral marks. His subjects often feel removed from reality, placed against a vacuous background. Liel allongé regardant vers le ciel (2020–21), for example, illustrates a figure lying on the ground, expressionless and staring above. Enkaoua’s textured brushstrokes obscure the figure, evoking a dissociative state in which the world feels out of focus.

Natan en capuche violette (2024), a portrait of a hooded boy, bears an eerie resemblance to Monet’s devastating 1879 portrait of his dying wife, Camille Monet on Her Deathbed. Of that work, Monet said, “I was at the deathbed of a lady who had been, and still was, very dear to me.…I found myself staring at [her] tragic countenance, automatically trying to identify things like the proportions of light.” Both paintings make light and shadow, more than the subjects themselves, the focal points.

Other works by Enkaoua, like Trois légumes (2022), recall Impressionist still lifes, laying vibrant colors side by side in short strokes to animate subjects like grapes, melons, or vegetables freshly plucked from the garden. Several such works are included in a current group exhibition, “Wind Words,” at Litvak Contemporary in Tel Aviv.

Paul Verdell

B. 1991, Long Beach, California. Lives and works in Detroit.

Gruesome Waters, 2023
Paul Verdell
Bode

Blinding, 2023
Paul Verdell
Bode

Using pure, bright colors and intuitive brushwork, American painter Paul Verdell pushes the Impressionist pursuit of transient beauty towards abstract expression. This impulse is unmistakable in A Road to Glory (2022), an oil painting of a vivid red, orange, and yellow skyscape above a lush green expanse. In this work, Verdell immerses himself in the natural world, capturing it en plein air, but rendering it as if all the elements are melting together.

A Road to Glory reflects a recent shift in Verdell’s practice away from predominantly figurative works. His earlier portraits, like Najee and a Lemon Tree (2020), employ Impressionist and Fauvist techniques, including quick, gestural markmaking and non-naturalistic color, lending the works vibrance and a sense of immediacy.

Verdell is represented by the Detroit gallery Library Street Collective, where his work is currently on view in a joint exhibition with Allana Clarke. Last year, he participated in Kehinde Wiley’s prestigious Black Rock Senegal residency, and mounted solo shows at Bode in Berlin and Jupiter Contemporary in Miami.

Salman Toor

B. 1983, Lahore, Pakistan. Lives and works in New York.

The Bar on East 13th, 2019
Salman Toor
Luhring Augustine

Within Salman Toor’s tranquil interior scenes is a modern echo of the Impressionists’ attention to café culture. Instead of Parisian cafés, the artist—hailing from Pakistan and now residing in New York—focuses on the metropolitan bars and parties he encounters in everyday life. These paintings, often defined by a stark emerald color field, frame their scenes similarly to the Impressionist café paintings, where the scenes seem to spill beyond what’s immediately visible in the frame.

Toor’s The Bar on East 13th (2019) alludes to Edouard Manet’s famous Un Bar aux Folies-Bergère (1882), which captures a barmaid at a Parisian nightclub, her customer—ostensibly, the viewer—reflected in the mirror behind the bar. Toor replicates Manet’s perspectival trick in a work that uses fluid, unruly forms to capture the liveliness of a fleeting moment of urban life.

During this year’s Mexico City Art Week, Toor was featured in a group exhibition hosted by MASA Galería and Luhring Augustine, the latter of which represents him. His work is currently on view in an exhibition mounted by the Pinault Collection at the Bourse de Commerce in Paris.

Thomas Andréa Barbey

B. 1975, Deauville, France. Lives and works in Paris.

Soleil Couchant sur la Mer de l'Ouest, 2023
Thomas Andréa Barbey
sobering

At first glance, Thomas Andréa Barbey’s paintings most obviously reference the Post-Impressionist Pointillist tradition. He employs a meticulous technique, using dots of tempera paint on paper to illustrate how light moves across both sweeping landscapes and intimate interiors.

Soleil Couchant sur la Mer de l’Ouest (2023), with its myriad pure color dots, captures a luminous seascape where the setting sun dances across the ocean, clouds, and distant mountains. The work recalls Paul Signac’s Entrance to the Grand Canal, Venice (1905), another waterscape with an incandescent skyline heated by a gradient of yellow, orange, and red. Barbey’s use of precise, controlled flecks of color gives the sense that he is distilling his scenes down to their most essential elements.

Barbey’s work is frequently shown with sobering, which represents him in Paris. He hosted his first solo exhibition with the gallery in 2022, and is included in its current group show “Chapter II.”

Soumya Netrabile

B. 1966, Bangalore, India. Lives and works in Chicago.

First Light, 2023
Soumya Netrabile
Anat Ebgi

Houses on the Hill, 2023
Soumya Netrabile
Anat Ebgi

After majoring in engineering at Rutgers University in New Jersey, Soumya Netrabile made a massive career change when she enrolled at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Today, the artist takes daily walks through the forests in the suburbs of Chicago, where she lives and works. These walks inform her paintings: colorful landscapes awash in greens, oranges, browns, and yellows.

“I really wanted to understand how to take something I was looking at and then make it happen with paint,” Netrabile, who was featured in The Artsy Vanguard 2023–2024, said of her choice to focus on painting from life and observation. Her motivation mirrors the Impressionists’ desire to capture their sensory impressions rather than narrative or imagined content.

Now represented by Anat Ebgi, Netrabile creates atmospheric, hazy paintings that offer a glimpse of the world around her without the use of stark lines. 2pm In the Park (2023), depicting two figures seated beneath a tree, is a fluid natural landscape where Netrabile’s gestural brushwork conjures a sense of transience. The work was featured in “Between past and present/Between appearance and memory,” Netrabile’s 2023 solo exhibition at Anat Ebgi. Next month, the artist will open a new solo show at Andrew Rafacz in Chicago.

Sue Collier

B. Boston. Lives and works in New York City.

Monster Tree, 2016
Sue Collier
The Painting Center

A 2020 NYSCA/NYFA artist fellow, Sue Collier has lived and worked in New York for nearly 30 years. During the spring and summer months, she paints small plein air landscapes in Central Park. Collier’s speckled canvases capture the vibrant greens of the park’s foliage in lively, impressionistic portrayals of urban nature. Works like Central Park Road II (2014) often leave the blue sky out of frame, focusing instead on how shifting light touches the earth and alters the landscape’s hues.

“When outdoors, I paint with an imperative and urgency and am driven by the pressure of time dictated by light and energy,” Collier wrote in her artist statement. This approach extends to her figurative pieces: bustling leisure scenes of parkgoers or sunbathers at the beach, rendered with daubs of color. Occasionally, the passing figures seem to merge with the natural landscape.

Mia Chaplin

B. 1990, South Africa. Lives and works in Cape Town.

Red Sea, 2019
Mia Chaplin
No Man's Art Gallery

South African artist Mia Chaplin paints with free and unpredictable brushstrokes, echoing the spontaneity of Impressionist paintings. Her most frequently recurring subjects are female figures, often depicted tangled together without clearly rendered features. Her agitated, impasto brushwork nods to a level of subjectivity and emotionality in her paintings, calling back to Post-Impressionists such as Vincent van Gogh. These works are meant to evoke the tumultuous nature of female existence—specifically referencing intimate partner violence experienced by women in South Africa.

Chaplin’s 2023 triptych The Protected Circle, I, II, III applies these techniques at a monumental scale. The artist evokes a sense of movement and burgeoning change through her expressive marks. The work was featured in a solo presentation with WHATIFTHEWORLD at Untitled Art Miami Beach in December—one of Artsy’s favorite booths at the fair. Chaplin also participated in the prestigious Fountainhead Residency program in Miami last year.

Hannah Brown

B. 1977, Salisbury, England. Lives and works in London.

Hollow Pond Algae 2, 2023
Hannah Brown
Anat Ebgi

Hannah Brown lived in the countryside of western England until she turned 19, when she left to study sculpture at Central Saint Martins in London and later at the Royal College of Art. After a period spent making installation and text-based work, she took up landscape painting. The artist attributes her fascination with the genre—specifically, with vistas that study the psychological connections humans have with nature—to her bucolic upbringing. Her landscape paintings do not capture immense vistas, but rather the shadowy corners of nature; often, the viewer’s perspective is of someone peering out from the brush.

“I can’t imagine painting a view that I haven’t seen firsthand. I just wouldn’t have a connection with it,” Brown said in an interview with Berlin Art Link. While she works from reference images in her studio rather than outdoors, her emphasis on firsthand observation mirrors Impressionist priorities.

In “Hollow Pond,” her solo exhibition on view at Anat Ebgi through April 20th, Brown presents a series of paintings of the titular pond, located near her home in London. The artist returns to the same subjects as the days and the seasons change, like Monet with his haystacks and water lilies. This approach imbues her landscapes with a sense of time and urgency that reflects the ever-changing moods of the natural world.

Kamilla Talbot

B. 1968. Lives and works in New York.

Against the Wind, 2024
Kamilla Talbot
BOOM Contemporary

“I stand in the landscape at my easel looking for an unusual light, structure, or form. The focus is on what I see, not on what I think I see,” Kamilla Talbot, a graduate of the Rhode Island School of Design, has said of her approach to painting landscapes. Splitting her time between New York and the Catskill Mountains, Talbot brings to her soft, bright watercolor paintings a keen focus on the transient nature of her subjects.

Talbot zooms in and out on the natural landscape, applying her quick, vigorous brushstrokes with varying degrees of precision. Against the Wind (2024), with its broad swaths of color and wide horizon, leans towards abstraction. Meanwhile, Cornflower Tangle (2023) uses more controlled marks and a tightly cropped composition to capture its sun-kissed botanical subject. In both, Talbot brings an Impressionist’s fascination with the ephemeral qualities of light and its effects on color.

Next month, Talbot is presenting a new work in “Glimpses of Spring,” an online exhibition presented by BOOM Contemporary, exclusively on Artsy.

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The 10 Best Booths at Art Basel Hong Kong 2024 https://ift.tt/dhGpmZe

Amid the glistening neon of Hong Kong’s iconic skyline this week, the M+ Museum façade was alight with an evocative black-and-white film by Yang Fudong—just one of many signs that Art Basel Hong Kong, and a flurry of other art events, had taken over the city.

“For us, the fair already started a few days ago as lots of collectors flew in to visit galleries earlier, which is typical, but it was more intense this time. There was a lot of excitement,” said Mimi Chun, founder of Blindspot Gallery, located in the industrial Wong Chuk Hang neighborhood.

Ahead of the VIP opening on Tuesday, collectors could be found making the rounds at various locations across the city, including the H Queens building, the Pedder Building, and the new Hauser & Wirth gallery, an impressive space nearby in the Central district. Many younger collectors also crowded inside the Fringe Club, a nonprofit art space, where the inaugural edition of a young, alternative art fair called Supper Club took place.

When the doors of Art Basel Hong Kong finally swung open at the harborside Convention Centre, it was immediately evident that the quality of the fair had improved. Returning to its pre-pandemic scale, the 2024 fair hosts 242 exhibitors, marking a 37 percent increase from last year’s edition. Alongside returning gallerists, there were 25 newcomers. Despite the economic downturn in mainland China, several major sales were reported and gallerists were optimistic.

Artsy trawled the fairgrounds to find this year’s top 10 booths.

Take Ninagawa

Booth 1C13

With works by Yoko Daihara, Kazuko Miyamoto, Tsuruko Yamazaki, Shinro Ohtake, Danh Vo, and Derek Jarman

Japanese galleries like Take Ninagawa had some of the strongest presentations at the fair this year. Upon entering the booth, you are immediately drawn to a cluster of shiny pink paint cans by Tsuruko Yamazaki, a founding member of the Gutai Art Association.

Yamazaki began experimenting with found cans in the mid-1950s, when she stumbled upon food cans used by American troops stationed in Japan, and began glazing them in vibrant varnishes. Also on view are rare enamel paintings from the ’60s by Yamazaki featuring bold geometric patterns inspired by Japanese Pop imagery.

The booth also includes an impressive suite of collages by Shinro Ohtake, who blends Western imagery, found objects, and experiments in photography to capture his experience of life in post-war Japan.

Kosaku Kanechika

Booth 3D26

With works by Junko Oki

Japanese artist Junko Oki became an artist by accident. Her mother was an embroiderer and left behind a trove of materials for her daughter when she died. Oki was reluctant to touch them, until one day when her daughter cut up a valuable piece of cloth and made a bag from it. Oki, who was working as a designer at the time, was taken aback, but then felt inspired to begin her own textile-based art practice. “It was a moment of realization that something beautiful and new can come out of objects with strong emotional significance,” Oki said. “I realized the creative process can be simple, instinctual, and straight from the heart.”

Paying homage to this story, Kosaku Kanechika’s booth has an installation of a messy pile of embroidery threads spilling over a platform, above which hangs a series of Oki’s intricate works stretched taut in frames. Inside the booth, there are works including bulbous spiral forms embroidered onto found fabrics, such as a worn furoshiki wrapping cloth from the Edo period.

Axel Vervoordt Gallery

Booth 3C27

With works by El Anatsui, Sopheap Pich, Kimsooja, Jaffa Lam, Bosco Sodi, and Angel Vergara

Axel Vervoordt Gallery’s tightly curated booth focuses on concepts of community and how artists can act as catalysts for positive change. Taking center stage is a monumental red metallic tapestry by Ghanaian artist El Anatsui. He is known for working with assistants who help comb through recycled liquor bottle tops, then flatten and weave the segments of the work, which he unites into a single piece.

A desire to get away, 2024
El Anatsui
Axel Vervoordt Gallery

David, 2020
Angel Vergara
Axel Vervoordt Gallery

Overhead, in a corner of the booth, veteran Hong Kong–based artist Jaffa Lam’s work Egg flower (2024), made of discarded umbrella fabric, forms a glowing yellow canopy. Lam works with women who are former garment factory workers to create her works, which aim to offer a glimmer of hope to local people in increasingly complex times.

Also on view are Cambodian artist Soheap Pich’s recent experiments in recycled aluminium. Created with an arduous hammering process, his undulating wall reliefs reflect on ideas of resilience and transformation as he grapples with his country’s traumatic past.

Flowers

Booth 3D23

With works by Jantsankhorol Erdenebayar

Deeply rooted in the harsh terrain of Mongolia’s vast steppes, Mongolian artist Jantsankhorol Erdenebayar’s sculptures are at once resilient and fragile. His works are inspired by old Mongolian riddles and beliefs, as well as contemporary concerns. Many of the sculptures on view fuse human body parts with found animal horns.

Hat-Trick, 2023
Jantsankhorol Erdenebayar
Flowers

Pompous or Omnicompetent, 2023
Jantsankhorol Erdenebayar
Flowers

Among the most striking pieces is Vigousse iii (2024), an oversized bronze ear with a cluster of horns emerging erupting from the back. The ear is a cast of a plaster sculpture from the Mongolian Academy of Fine Arts, which has been shaped by Russian academic art principles. “The ear is symbolic of the influence of the Soviet regime on the country and the remnants of that time, while the horns symbolize the spirit of the Mongolian people,” the artist explained. “They imply the passing of time as they grow slowly but also have a protective function.”

WAITINGROOM

Booth IC43

With works by Fuyuhiko Takata

It’s not often that you see people crowd around an art fair booth staring at an artwork, mesmerized, before breaking out into laughter. Yet this was the case with WAITINGROOM’s solo presentation of Fuyuhiko Takata’s work.

The Tokyo-based artist’s video Cut Suits (2023) shows a series of male models dressed in suits like archetypal salarymen, yet each wields a pair of scissors and starts cutting up each other’s clothing to the soundtrack of a ceremonious Tchaikovsky tune. Eventually, they are left nearly naked and unfettered. Their shredded suits form a large pile at the foot of the screen, alluding to the actors’ freedom from the constraints of corporate masculinity.

Alongside this work, the gallery also presents Butterfly Dream (2022), a hypnotic video that shows butterfly-adorned scissors splicing up a sleeping man’s attire. In the background, we hear sensuous sighs and deep breathing as the camera slows and zooms in on his exposed flesh.

Empty Gallery

Booth 3C03

With works byJes Fan, Taro Masushio, Henry Shum, Jacqueline Kiyomi Gork, Doris Guo, and Raha Raissnia

The first thing that catches your eye at Hong Kong–based Empty Gallery’s booth are Jes Fan’s sensuous organic sculptures made of hand-blown glass and carved gypsum. A rising star in the international art scene, Fan is known for taking CT scans of his body and creating printed casts of body parts to create his work.

Another highlight of the booth is Jacqueline Kiyomi Gork’s slick kimono-shaped wall sculpture made of stitched poured silicone, a sound-buffering material. The work functions as a “noise blanket” with the thick textured surface deflecting sound.

Taiwan-based Iranian American artist Raha Raissnia’s monumental oil painting inspired by experimental cinema is also a standout. Painted using the traditional method of grisaille, her ethereal painting appears to almost quiver and vibrate.

Grotto Fine Art

Booth 1C03

With works by Bouie Choi, Bosco Law, Hung Fai, Koon Wai-bong, Lam Yau-sum, Ling Pui-sze Hung Hoi, Wai Pongyu, and Xie Chengxuan

A veteran in the local art scene, Grotto Fine Art is one of Hong Kong’s only galleries devoted solely to local artists. “We are telling a Hong Kong story through the booth, and the works reflect the emotional struggle of the people as we digest new changes in the city,” said gallery founder Henry Au-Yeung.

A moody neighborhood scene by Hong Kong–based artist Bouie Choi, who layers thin washes of color onto wood, hangs on a central blue pillar in the booth. In a corner, Wai Pongyu’s A Rhythm of Landscape 9 (2019) is displayed vertically encased in a box. Wai took a sheet of a now-defunct newspaper and used sandpaper to erase the text before scoring several lines of colored ballpoint pen across the surface. “The quickly drawn lines represent the rapidly transforming social landscape in Hong Kong,” said Wai, adding that the marks are also akin to the experience of being inside a very fast car and seeing the environment rush past in a blur.

Dastan

Booth 3D25

With works by Mohsen Vaziri Moghaddam

Dastan’s minimalist booth offers a glimpse into the vast oeuvre of the late artist Mohsen Vaziri Moghaddam, who was a pioneering figure in Iranian abstraction. All of the works on view were created in 2016, when the artist’s eyesight was waning and he wasn’t able to precisely control tools. “Instead, he used his body to create action paintings on the floor. That’s why the size is so much larger and the movements are more full,” said gallery director Hormoz Hematian of the monumental works on view.

Moghaddam’s spontaneous process begins with layering paint, then applying glue and sand and pulling his fingers across the surface to create gestural marks. “A lot of his inspiration is rhythm and joy,” Hematian added. The pièce de résistance of the booth is a nearly 20-foot-long sand painting in vibrant blue-green and pale pink hues, layered with dramatic black marks.

BANK

Booth 1D31

With works by Maryn Varbanov, Song Huai-Kuei, Shi Hui, Zhang Yibei, Tang Song, Bai Yiyi, Ching Ho Cheng, Liang Hao, Bony Ramirez, Chico da Silva, Sun Yitian, Wenjue, and Lu Yang

Shanghai-based gallery BANK divided its booth into two sections—the past and the future—to encapsulate its multigenerational program. At the heart of its presentation are historic fiber artworks by Bulgarian artist Maryn Varbanov and his wife and collaborator Song Huai-Kuei, better known as Madame Song. A series of brown totemic forms by Varbanov made of felted dyed lamb wool and goat wool are paired with Song’s impressive woven goat wool and sisal wall reliefs from the 1970s.

These works are presented in dialogue with more recent pieces by Varbanov’s student Shi Hui, who was among the first Chinese artists to engage in contemporary fiber art in the 1980s. Alongside her large etching and embroidery drawings is a raw sculpture Shi made by pressing paper pulp onto an armature resembling an ancient pot.

Selma Feriani

Booth 1D28

With works by Catalina Swinburn, Baya and Farid Belkahia, Pascal Hachem, Thameur Mejri, Yann Lacroix, and Nicène Kossentini

Selma Feriani’s striking booth juxtaposes North African modernists such as Farid Belkahia with contemporary artists from the region. Belkahia was known for interrogating Western modern art traditions and working purely with local materials referencing Moroccan craft culture such as natural dyes, metal, pottery, wood, and handmade paper. For Blue Landscape (Deux Seins) (2000), which hangs in the booth, Belkahia used henna on animal hide to paint a lyrical landscape resembling breasts below a spiral sun.

Beside this work are Moroccan artist M’Barek Bouhchichi’s long copper-and-wood rods engraved with Berber poetry by a Black peasant poet called Mbarek Ben Zida in the Tamazight language. The work raises questions of race, indigenous heritage, and what it means to be a Black Moroccan today. Other highlights include emotive mixed-media paintings by Tunisian artist Thameur Mejri and ethereal calligraphic ink paintings by Tunis- and Paris-based artist Nicène Kossentini.

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Ibrahim Mahama wins inaugural Sam Gilliam Award. https://ift.tt/cfH1kYZ

Ghanaian artist Ibrahim Mahama has been awarded the inaugural Sam Gilliam Award, a new honor presented by the Dia Art Foundation and the Sam Gilliam Foundation. The award, which includes a $75,000 gift and a public program at a Dia location in fall 2024, was established in 2023 to support artists who have made a significant contribution in any medium. This partnership follows Dia’s presentation of Sam Gilliam’s work from 2019 to 2022.

Born in 1987 in Tamale, Ghana, Mahama is known for his large-scale textile and found-object installations, repurposing materials to encourage reflection on the social implications of everyday objects. His work also emphasizes the importance of community collaboration.

“I was first introduced to Gilliam’s important work as a student by my mentor Kąrî'kạchä Seid'ou, and it has been greatly influential to me ever since,” said Mahama in a statement. “The most important aspect of any community is to share their many gifts, even if they are born out of precarity, for within that point do we expand freedom to all life forms.”

In recent years, Mahama’s work has been presented in solo exhibitions across Europe, including the Oude Kerk Amsterdam (2022), and the Kunsthalle Osnabrück in Germany. His upcoming commission at the Barbican Centre in London will open in April 2024, followed closely by a solo exhibition at The Fruitmarket Gallery in Edinburgh.

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Chanel Next Prize 2024 awarded to artists Tolia Astakhishvili, Dalton Paula, and Ho Tzu Nyen. https://ift.tt/58SXPF9

Chanel has announced the 10 winners of its biannual Chanel Next Prize, which grants each artist an unconditional award of €100,000 ($108,000). Among the winners, who range from a video game designer to an opera singer, are three visual artists: Georgian artist Tolia Astakhishvili, Brazilian artist Dalton Paula, and Singaporean artist Ho Tzu Nyen. The winners were chosen by a committee of judges, which included Cao Fei, Hans Ulrich Obrist, and Tilda Swinton, among others.

Alongside the prize money, each artist will receive two years of mentorship with the luxury brand’s cultural partners, such as the Royal College of Art in London.

“The Chanel Next Prize was founded to amplify the work of artists who are making a difference and redefining their discipline. Each is a catalyst and a pioneer,” said Yana Peel, global head of arts and culture at Chanel. “Each is disrupting established practice in their field, from art and opera to cinema and game design. Watching their creative journeys will be thrilling.”

Ho Tzu Nyen explores his home country, Singapore, through a post-colonial lens. Working across animation, performance, and installation, the artist addresses the social changes and tensions in the former British colony.

In Brazil, Dalton Paula is similarly focused on the history of his home country. Paula uses portraiture to represent Black figures associated with Brazil’s African diaspora that have been forgotten or overlooked in history. His paintings will be featured in the 60th edition of the Venice Biennale.

Tolia Astakhishvili, who splits her time between Berlin and Tbilisi, works primarily in installation, drawing together mediums such as video, sound, found material, and architecture. Her debut solo exhibition in the United States will open later this year at SculptureCenter in Queens, New York.

The other winners include director Fox Maxy, musician and artist Camae Ayewa (Moor Mother), the choreographer Oona Doherty, opera singer Davóne Tines, game designer Sam Eng, composer Anna S. Thorvaldsdottir, and filmmaker Kantemir Balagov.

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Abstract Weaving Is Having a Moment—Here’s Why https://ift.tt/nGk2IKN

From the earliest days of textile art, believed to be around 10,000 BCE, abstraction has been used to convey meaning. Though the subject matter in an abstract work may not be relayed so obviously, these weavings are embedded in the politics of their time. In ancient Andean communities, for example, colorful geometric patterns in wool were used to communicate messages across linguistic and geographic boundaries. From the 18th century to present day, abstractions woven as blankets, rugs, and clothing have become symbols of cultural resilience and preservation for the Navajo/Diné people. And in modern and contemporary fiber art, an artist’s choice of non-figurative forms is a stance in itself.

This spring, a swath of museum exhibitions across the U.S.—including “Melissa Cody: Webbed Skies” at MoMA PS1 and “Weaving Abstraction in Ancient and Modern Art” at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, both in New York; “Woven Histories: Textiles and Modern Abstraction” at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C.; “Hana Miletić: Soft Services” at the MIT List Visual Arts Center in Cambridge, Massachusetts; and “Anni Albers: In Thread and On Paper” at the Blanton Museum of Art in Austin, Texas—are turning a new lens on the significance of abstraction in weaving, through a range of periods. In an art world where textiles have often been excluded, today, geometries are looming large in curators’ minds. For the talents on display that have worked quietly in weaving for years, it’s a welcome change.

Textile artists and experts say a larger trend is to credit for this rise. Over the last five years, their long-overlooked artistic medium has been experiencing an unprecedented amount of institutional interest. Finally, like photography or ceramics, weaving has shed the often pejoratively used labels of “craft” or “applied art” and is getting its due in the canon of fine art.

“We’ve really had to fight a long, hard battle to be considered fine art,” said fourth-generation Navajo weaver Melissa Cody, who is gearing up for her first major solo exhibition at MoMA PS1 on April 4th, following another at Museu de Arte de São Paulo Assis Chateaubriand and one at New York’s Garth Greenan Gallery at the end of the month. In the last few years, she has also been selected for group shows at the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles, the National Gallery in Washington, D.C., and the North Carolina Museum of Art in Raleigh. For Indigenous artists, there are additional barriers, including a lack of cultural knowledge and representation within the current class of art museum curators.

When museums are exhibiting traditional patterns, “there’s been a huge push for institutions to have consultations with individual tribes in order to gain more insights on a lot of historical works that they have, but also on the collecting of contemporary works, which are just as valid,” said Cody. She noted that this is a big change from when she graduated from the museum studies program at the Institute of American Indian Arts in Santa Fe, New Mexico, in 2007. “There’s also been a huge push for them to understand the work and take into consideration tribal histories. For a long time, a lot of our information was discredited because it was never written; for the majority of Native American tribes, histories are verbal.”

Cody’s abstract weavings address both the past and present existences of her Indigenous community. For example, she draws colors and patterns from the Germantown sampler—commercially made wool from Pennsylvania used to make the blankets the U.S. government gave the Navajo people when forcefully expelling them from ancestral lands. Her works touch on themes from her own life as a child growing up on the reservation, learning to weave from her mother at age five and selling those pieces as early as elementary school to afford the latest tech toy. This experience of digital life, too, makes its way into her layered geometric compositions: the “noble pixel,” she called it, referencing the technological developments that became widespread during her childhood.

At the Met, “Weaving Abstraction” curators Iria Candela and Joanne Pillsbury are also exploring artistic links across history. The cross-departmental show presents Andean tapestries from the museum’s collection that range in date from the first millennium BCE to the 16th century alongside modern work by four women fiber artists: Anni Albers, Sheila Hicks, Lenore Tawney, and Olga de Amaral. Aside from the shared exploration of geometry prompted by the warp and weft process, these time-spanning works are also connected through study: The modern practitioners drew deep inspiration from these ancient textiles from Peru, Colombia, Ecuador, Bolivia, Chile, and Argentina.

Albers first saw examples on view in Berlin in the 1920s while she was at the Bauhaus weaving workshop, and in the 1930s, she traveled to Mexico and Cuba with her husband, painter Josef Albers, where they became collectors of pre-Columbian artworks and textile samples. Similarly, Hicks, Tawney, and de Amaral collected fragments during South American travel throughout their careers, building on academic research they each did during the same period in the 1960s.

Though in the ancient Andes, “fiber arts and textiles were the most revered form of signaling status,” explained Candela, “in the 20th century, textiles have been relegated to the world of craft and women’s work,” considered a lesser form of art. Interestingly, Anni Albers was able to move fluidly through the worlds of commercial fabric-making and textile art in her career and command respect for both. In 1949, she had a solo show at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, featuring her functional fabric designs for drapery and room dividers alongside some of her early weavings. For a medium that had long been displaced from the art world, the exhibition “was a real paradigm shift,” said Fritz Horstman, education director at the Josef and Anni Albers Foundation. “This is probably one of her main contributions to textiles,” he continued. “She really elevated the medium to the place where—though we’re still seeing it rise—it could be seen on the same level as painting and sculpture.”

Hicks, Tawney, and de Amaral were members of the 1970s fiber arts movement that aimed to continue bringing the medium to center stage in the art world, drawing on references to non-Western cultures where it was highly respected. They also collaborated with commercial manufacturers to make functional fabrics for the home, but their “aim [was] for pure formal experimentation for art’s sake,” says Candela.

The lack of emphasis on geometric abstraction in textiles is particularly notable given similar styles’ institutional and art market popularity in another medium: painting. A 1962 painting by Frank Stella, for example, recently sold at auction for $18.7 million, while a wool rug from an Anni Albers design went for $39,918. In weaving, abstraction is also an artistic exploration of the construction of the works themselves. The textures created by the vertical and horizontal threads that weave her pieces were a fascination for Albers, who was schooled in the Bauhaus tradition of exploring methods for mass production.

Candela believes the current rise in exhibitions of abstract weaving across history may be tied to the increasing number of contemporary artists who are working across multiple disciplines, including experimenting with textiles. It’s a phenomenon that has “helped a lot in democratizing art mediums in general,” she said. However, what has also stirred up interest is curators’ renewed search for underrepresented art stories, and their institutions’ willingness to finally give these artists of these stories an equal platform.

For Cody, weaving is important as a Navajo tradition for self-sufficiency and spirituality. It’s imperative, she said, because “when we look back in 75 or 100 years, what we’re creating now is the tradition of our time.…It’s said that the spider woman gifted the knowledge of weaving and then the spider man brought the loom and the tools,” she explained. Together, they represent things in the natural world: The spider woman, in particular, weaves the sky and rainbow, protecting the Navajo from above. The abstract traditional textiles Cody and her fellow weavers make as blankets, clothes, and rugs are physical protection on Earth.

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A $9 million Willem de Kooning painting leads early sales at Art Basel Hong Kong. https://ift.tt/FmypYfR

A $9 million Willem de Kooning painting is among the top sales reported from Art Basel Hong Kong’s first day. The painting was sold by Hauser & Wirth, which also sold Philip Guston’s The Desire (1978) for $8.5 million and Mark Bradford’s May the Lord be the first one in the car...and the last out.(2023) for $3.5 million.

On Tuesday morning, the fair kicked off the first of its two VIP Days at the Hong Kong Convention and Exhibition Centre. This edition marks a return to the fair’s pre-pandemic size, hosting more than 240 galleries, a 37% increase in exhibitors from 2023.

More notable six- and seven-figure sales reported by galleries from opening day at Art Basel Hong Kong 2024 include:

• Thaddaeus Ropac sold Tony Cragg’s Incident Solo (2023) for €725,000 ($785,000) and Martha Jungwirth’s Ohne Titel (2023) for €450,000 ($487,000).
• Lehmann Maupin sold Lee Bul’s Perdu CXCIV (2024) for $190,000. Other top sales from the gallery include Marylin Minter’s Red White and Blue (2022–23) for $175,000 and David Salle’s Tree of Life, Split (2024) for between $120,000 and $130,000.
• David Kordansky Gallery sold a painting by Shara Hughes for between $340,000 and $390,000, a Joel Mesler work for $185,000, a Hilary Pecis painting for $165,000, and a Martha Diamond painting for between $140,000 and $190,000.

Stay tuned for our full sales report on Monday.

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Why Figurative Artists Have Turned to Monochromatic Palettes https://ift.tt/hNqZx81

Unrest, 2023
Alayna Coverly
VillageOneArt

With Both Hands, 2023
Elijah Kauffman
Soft Times Gallery

A notable shift has transpired in the painting world of late: A growing cohort of emerging and mid-career artists, many of them figurative painters, are enveloping their subjects in varying shades of high-intensity colors, all taken from the same section of the color wheel. Neon-nearing hues like ghostly teals, laser lemon yellows, and mythical fuchsias are being used in similar shades to depict the world around us from the mundane to the magical. Often depicting the world through monochromatic compositions, these artists have developed a signature palette that they rarely deviate from.

Historically, painting styles have adapted alongside advancements in photography and film. In the age of virtual reality with the contemporary world oversaturated with imagery, it’s only natural for painters to gravitate towards a single-color palette as a way to emphatically differentiate their real or imagined scenes from digital media. One intent feels clear: a shared desire to convey what it feels like to be alive today, a sensation that the true-to-life colors of realism may no longer fully capture.

Insomnia, 2024
Jesse Zuo
sobering

Artists have always focused on specific hues to influence a viewer’s mood: The warm oranges and earthy pinks synonymous with Picasso’s Rose Period, for instance, evoke feelings of serenity, even joy. Similarly, contemporary painters are using a finessed color scheme to allure viewers into their own intimate way of seeing the world. Like the late French artist Yves Klein once said, working in his signature blue was an “open window to freedom,” granting him “the possibility of being immersed in the immeasurable existence of color.”

Here are 11 contemporary artists who share Klein’s passion for color, showing that a single hue can define a whole canvas, even birth an entire body of work. Whether working in varying shades of the same color or one dominant shade, these artists are all creating worlds shaped by the infinite possibilities of color.

Yamuna Forzani

B. 1993, England. Lives and works in Amsterdam.

The Adoration of Mystique, 2023
Yamuna Forzani
Rademakers Gallery

Embodied , 2023
Yamuna Forzani
Rademakers Gallery

To make her euphoric, mostly monochromatic tapestries, Yamuna Forzani uses a circular knitting machine—a computerized tool that limits the number of yarns she can work with. Even so, her use of eye-catching, phosphorescent hues is a deliberate choice. “I like to take up space and scream for attention,” Forzani said. A textile artist, designer, and queer activist, Forzani creates immersive performances or queer “utopias,” using her knitted tapestries and kaleidoscopic line of streetwear to bring these free-spirited productions to life.

Energized by her love of dressing drag queens, performers, and dancers within the underground queer ballroom community in the Netherlands, Forzani approaches her ascendant career in textile-making with a sense of verve and veneration for queer life. Marrying Renaissance-inspired lighting and composition with lambent colors, each tapestry is a celebration of the queer body. Her subjects’ bodies are contoured with recycled neon yarn, enhancing their 3D effect—as seen in The Adoration of Mystique (2023)—signifying “we’re here, and we’re not going to be ignored,” she said.

Although Forzani’s background is in textiles and fashion—she won the Dutch Design Awards for her artistic direction of a ballroom fashion show—she has gained notoriety as a fine artist. Her work is in the Stedelijk Museum’s permanent collection and is currently part of “She Knows,” a group exhibition open through April 27th at Rademakers Gallery in Amsterdam.

Jesse Zuo

B. 2000, Beijing. Lives and works in New York.

Blues, 2023
Jesse Zuo
Soft Times Gallery

Orchids, 2023
Jesse Zuo
Soft Times Gallery

An MFA candidate at the School of Visual Arts, Jesse Zuo credits Lisa Yuskavage as the source of inspiration for her painterly voice. After discovering the pioneering painter at a David Zwirner show in 2021, she made an “impulsive attempt” to move beyond traditional realism in pursuit of a style that would better showcase her innate attraction to color. “They were the best-received pieces that I’d done up until that point,” Zuo said.

Whether depicting the moment of anticipation before a painful pimple bursts or capturing a woman’s waist as she struggles to squeeze herself into too-tight jeans, Zuo’s paintings monumentalize the mundane. Colors that appear pulled from thermal heat-map imaging inflate the underlying mood behind each moment. Interested in viewers’ subjective, emotional response to tints like warm yellows and sticky oranges (as in her 2023 painting Rain), Zuo sees colors as “suggestions,” never the “right answer,” she said. The emerging painter was included in Soft Times Gallery’s presentation in the winter 2024 edition of Artsy’s online art fair Foundations, and currently has three paintings in “Chapter II,” a group show at sobering galerie in Paris open through April 4th.

Elijah Kauffman

B. 1998, Salt Lake City. Lives and works in Providence, Rhode Island.

But I'm a Cheerleader, 2022
Elijah Kauffman
Soft Times Gallery

Growing up queer in the world capital of Mormon culture might present its challenges, but artist Elijah Kauffman credits Salt Lake City’s strong counterculture and “DIY” community for giving them the tools to launch their painting career. Action-filled coming-of-age scenes meet magical realism and mythology in the young figure painter’s dynamic works, which teem with the tumult of adolescence. Limiting each work to a single, monochromatic hue not only dramatizes each scene, making the works feel “larger than life,” but helps “convey a lot about the emotions and experiences of the figures in the paintings,” Kauffman told Testudo.

In moody blues, teenagers gaze longingly through car windows. Elsewhere, ablaze in the orange glow of birthday candles, friends celebrate another year gone by. Or, spotlit by traffic-light green, an adolescent duo plays twister in tall, swaying grass. Inspired by film stills from teen drama series like Skins and My So-Called Life, Kauffman told Testudo that they are “not necessarily condoning” or critiquing their subjects’ behavior, but “recognizing some of the moments in these scenes that feel kind of divine or ethereal and bringing those to the foreground.” Since graduating from the Rhode Island School of Design in 2022 with a BFA in painting, they have had solo exhibitions in London, Salt Lake City, and Providence, Rhode Island.

Alayna Coverly

B. 1994, Bloomington, Indiana. Lives and works in New York.

Turning, 2023
Alayna Coverly
VillageOneArt

Indefinite, 2023
Alayna Coverly
VillageOneArt

With the precision of a hyperrealist, Alayna Coverly captures silhouetted bodies swathed in the shining, undulating folds of fabric. Faceless women pose defiantly, their faces wholly obscured by opulently patterned head scarves that seem to entrap their thoughts. In newer works from her inaugural solo exhibition “Find Me” presented by VillageOneArt earlier this year, women appear in small groups, tussling between tangled silken sheets enveloping them. A grandeur arises not only from the seductive and voyeuristic mystery of Coverly’s subjects but also from the painter’s masterful use of color.

Keeping her colors saturated and bright is a way of offsetting the “suffocation and anxiety of people wrapped in fabric,” Coverly said. Tired of “seeing traumatic things shown aggressively” in the media, particularly instances of abuse towards women, she adopts a gentler, more tender approach to depicting the hardships of womanhood. Coverly graduated from the New York Academy of Art in 2023 with an MFA in painting and was included in “The Quiet Moment,” an all-female group exhibition at FORMah, on view in New York last August.

Dominic Chambers

B. 1993, St. Louis, Missouri. Lives and works in New Haven, Connecticut.

Her Softness in Red (Grace Lynee Haynes), 2020
Dominic Chambers
Unit

The interiority of Dominic Chambers’s Black subjects takes center stage in the mid-career artist and writer’s introspective paintings—his subjects rest, read, contemplate, and wonder in idleness and repose. “Our normative understanding of the Black body is a hyperactive one,” Chambers told Artsy when he was named a member of The Artsy Vanguard 2022, deliberately dispelling this racist misconception.

Drawing influence from writers like James Baldwin, Zora Neale Hurston, and Fred Moten, Chambers incorporates elements of Surrealism and magical realism into his paintings as a way of capturing the full spectrum of the Black experience. In Chambers’s works, color is a character in itself, a way to draw a direct line between his subjects’ inner worlds and the dreamlike spheres that surround them. Squares of translucent color and patterned, tear-like ovals appear regularly in his paintings, evoking transcendence.

Now represented by Lehmann Maupin, Chambers graduated from Yale with an MFA and has work in the collections of international institutions including the Centre Pompidou, the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, and the Institute of Contemporary Art, Miami. He was featured in a solo museum exhibition at the Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis earlier this year.

Cathy Tabbakh

B. 1989, Lyon, France. Lives and works in London.

Les Couleurs de la Nuit, 2023
Cathy Tabbakh
JD Malat Gallery

The Shadow of Life, 2023
Cathy Tabbakh
JD Malat Gallery

Cathy Tabbakh grew up in the lush countryside of France’s Beaujolais region, born into a family with green thumbs. Her father tended to a flourishing garden surrounding their house while her mother amassed copious amounts of houseplants. Enraptured by the way plants “seem to be constantly dancing, in movement” as Tabbakh told Court Tree Collective, her color-rich still lifes feature sumptuously shaped vases housing elegant plants. Crisp shadows enunciate each leaf’s vitality while highlighting the singularity of its silhouette.

In opposition to the darkly lit still lifes of the early modern era, Tabbakh’s work utilizes elements of abstraction. Influenced by architecture, she juxtaposes stark colors in similar shades using angular lines, creating high-tension points that seem to pop off the flat picture plane. Egyptian blues, forest greens, and plum purples appear frequently in her work—vibrant, contemporary colors that underscore the artist’s buoyant approach to art making. In September 2023, Rhodes in London inaugurated their new exhibition space with “La Vie en Couleurs,” Tabbakh’s debut solo show.

Ashley Marie

B. 1985, Michigan. Lives and works in Detroit.

Reaching Through, 2022
Ashley Marie
M Contemporary Art

Parabola, 2022
Ashley Marie
M Contemporary Art

Detroit-based artist Ashley Marie paints translucent figures floating through thick foliage in the dark of night. Some fix their gaze directly upon the viewer, while others appear fleeting, reminiscent of occult whispers or the elusive touch of the divine. “There is something greater than us,” Marie said in an interview with Artsy, “something beyond this life that we can’t even possibly imagine.” After her sister passed away, the artist asked the universe for a sign that her sibling was still there, and okay. Her request was precise: a purple flower. Within a matter of weeks, a purple pansy had sprouted from between the brick lining on her front porch steps.

Evoking the viridescent glow of the heart chakra, Marie’s use of fluorescent, night-vision green conveys a deep spirituality and offers room for “healing and growth.” Delving into the realm of the supernatural, Marie offers affirmation to her viewers that humans are more than just physical beings. “I want to give that gift [that my sister gave me] to the audience,” she said. Largely self-taught, Marie has work in the Imago Mundi collection and has participated in group shows across the U.S. A solo exhibition of new paintings will open at M Contemporary Art in Ferndale, Michigan, on April 26th.

Katia Lifshin

B. 1993, Ukraine. Lives and works in Tel Aviv.

Light Twist, 2022
Katia Lifshin
Moosey

Tightrope, 2023
Katia Lifshin
Woaw

M.C. Escher meets Alice in Wonderland in the phantasmagorical blue-green world of Katia Lifshin’s oil paintings. Drawn to the cosmic wonders of the night, Lifshin sought a female character who could fit neatly within a nocturnal world, existing as an extension of it. The mutable “shapeshifters” she depicts in her work represent an inner child of sorts, persistently chasing a distant goal.

In Light Twist (2022), a radiance seems to emanate from the subject herself, while in other works, the light source is external—a distant beam coming from the horizon. Working in grass green, Katia takes elements of the natural world and exaggerates them, pulling inspiration from the “spirit” of life. Her curious little girls are “not just humans,” Lifshin said, “they’re trying to connect to something bigger.” The emerging painter will present her first solo show in the U.S., “Light Journeys,” opening at Long Story Short in New York on April 5th.

Xiao Wang

B. 1990, Beijing. Lives and works in New York.

Spaced In, Spaced Out #2, 2023
Xiao Wang
PM/AM

Growing up in Beijing, Xiao Wang and his peers were taught to master Socialist Realism, the Soviet-inspired painting style typically using an earthy, naturalistic palette. Eager to distinguish his style from the influences of his early studies, Wang began “distorting” colors as a way to elevate his works to “a different space, a parallel dimension almost,” he said.

Drawing on the visual and narrative language of cinematography, Wang approaches his paintings in the same way as a set designer does a stage. Beams of light illuminate his subjects who ponder, reflect, and agonize in luxuriant foliage and under lavender, cloud-filled skies. His subjects are frozen in these shades “not just to create a sense of drama and mood, but almost as a way [for each canvas] to tell a story on its own,” he said. Wang’s work has been included in group shows in Germany, the U.K., Italy, and Denmark. In 2023, he was the subject of a solo exhibition at PM/AM in London.

Thebe Phetogo

B. 1993, Serowe, Botswana. Lives and works in Gaborone, Botswana.

Proposition 2 - Material Need and Practical Effects, Painting 2, 2022
Thebe Phetogo
kó

The Disparate Man, 2022
Thebe Phetogo
Eclectica Contemporary

The eye-blinding, neon shade of Thebe Phetogo’s phantasmic paintings has been described as “puke green” and likened to nuclear waste and acid rain. For the artist, however, the reference is simple: Evocative of a green screen, it’s an “artificial backdrop” as he describes it, upon which “modern myths are told.” Using shoe polish to cast a black sheen over his ghostly figures as seen in Proposition 2 - Material Need and Practical Effects, Painting 2 (2022), Phetogo cleverly—but subtly—weaves the history of minstrel performances into his work.

Interested in the idea of the Black body as both a social construct and as an analog to a “blackbody,” a hypothetical object in physics that absorbs electromagnetic radiation, Phetogo uses jarring, contrived colors in an act of satire. Societal expectations of Blackness are mocked and exaggerated to the point where the humor turns back on the viewer. In his 2024 series of “Lowe” landscapes, the Motswana artist paints a regional creation story as an infographic, once again using outlandish colors to explore the theme of misconstrued information. With recent solo exhibitions at kó in Lagos (“7 Propositions for the Origin of a blackbody,” 2023) and at Von Ammon Co. in Washington, D.C. (“8 Propositions for the Origin of a blackbody,” 2024), Phetogo is beginning to gain more mainstream acclaim.

Siji Krishnan

B. 1983, Kerala, India. Lives and works in Kochi, India.

Against the wind, 2022
Siji Krishnan
Michael Kohn Gallery

There is a calm elegance and understated beauty to Siji Krishnan’s works that is perhaps born from the “weightlessness” the painter says she feels when creating. Often painting in watercolor on rice paper, she is intentional about her gentle use of color. Earth tones like amber, sand, and oatmeal characterize her palette, which she sees as an extension of herself. To make a difficult emotion feel lighter, she might introduce pastel yellows, as seen in Against the wind (2022). In other moments, however, an ominous soil-colored cloud might encroach upon a scene as in Circus Family (2020). “Everything I’m feeling comes through [my work],” the artist said.

Krishnan’s work was included in Michael Kohn Gallery’s booth at Art Basel Miami Beach 2023, and will be the subject of a show at the gallery in Los Angeles, opening on April 27th—her first solo exhibition in the U.S. Her paintings are held in international institutions including the National Gallery of Victoria in Melbourne, the Dallas Museum of Art, and the Kiran Nadar Museum of Art in New Delhi.

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