Cremation, 2023
Ni Nyoman Merti
SUN.CONTEMPORARY
In this monthly roundup, we spotlight five stellar exhibitions at small and rising galleries.
“Timeless Remnants”
Grège Gallery, Knokke-Heist, Belgium
Through Aug. 16th
LEAF 1, 2025
Laura Pasquino
Grège Gallery
Construction VII, 2022
Conrad Willems
Grège Gallery
Set in the former stables of a 14th-century Belgian farmhouse, “Timeless Remnants” features work from four artists that explore how memory lives on in materials—whether through the physical marks left by time or the emotional weight we assign to objects. Mounted by local art platform CWART and Grège Gallery, the exhibition echoes these themes in its space, which is filled with exposed beams and weathered brick.
Inside this historic venue, Conrad Willems’s Construction VII (2022) stands 10 feet tall. Made from 977 pieces of Verde Levanto marble—cut, sanded, and stacked without glue—the sculpture references wooden toy blocks, yet feels closer to a ruin. Like many works in his “Construction” series, the piece nods to the act of passing knowledge forward and is accompanied by three hand drawings that serve as assembly instructions for whenever the sculpture is moved.
Other artists highlight the power of memory through the materials used in their works. In LEAF1 (2025), Estonian artist Laura Pasquino presents the base of a broken vase, a compact, cream-colored form made of unglazed stoneware and porcelain. Nearby, Spanish painter Chidy Wayne’s Ego 138 (2025) layers paint into a thick, tactile surface, depicting an opened and malformed hand in midnight blue against a brown background. Up close, it appears that the surface is weathering away. Whether formed in clay or built up in paint, these works feel temporal: The signs of wear, much like the building they occupy, call attention to their existence in the present.
Lucia Pizzani “Tropico Pasado”
Galleria Doris Ghetta, Ortisei, Italy
Through Aug. 22nd
Selva, 2025
Lucía Pizzani
Galleria Doris Ghetta
Tronco Medusa, 2025
Lucía Pizzani
Galleria Doris Ghetta
London-based artist Lucía Pizzani’s first solo exhibition in Italy, “Tropico Pasado” at Galleria Doris Ghetta, is inspired by two vastly different terrains: the Dolomite mountains, which are formed from an ancient seabed, and the tropical landscapes of her native Venezuela. Incorporating the fossil forms found in the Italian mountain range and organic forms from the jungle outside of Caracas, Pizzani draws connections between nature and the human body.
Selva (2025), a large canvas with embedded red stoneware forms, anchors Pizzani’s exhibition. Created by pressing plant fibers and seed pods into raw canvas, the work resembles a fossilized forest floor. It also reflects Pizzani’s ongoing interest in the meaning behind concha, a word that translates to “shell” in Spanish, but also evokes oval seed or the vagina. This shape appears throughout the exhibition as a metaphor for feminine strength. Pizanni noted in her exhibition text that “the shell is the ultimate armor.” In Tronco Ramal (2025), a standing sculpture composed of black ceramic, wood, and a live plant, Pizzani explores the shape of the human body more overtly. Resembling a carved tree trunk, the work recalls ritual totems and protective vessels, highlighting how the body can be a conduit for both ecological and ancestral connection.
Pizzani holds a BA from Universidad Católica Andrés Bello in Caracas, a certificate in biology from the CERC Center at Columbia University, and a master’s in fine art from Chelsea College of Arts. Her work was the subject of a solo exhibition at No. 9 Cork Street earlier this year. Her work is included in the collections of the Tate in London and the Magasin III Museum for Contemporary Art in Stockholm.
“rwa bhineda”
SUN.CONTEMPORARY, Bali, Indonesia
Through Aug. 23rd
Tumpal Loka #01 (Kemben), 2025
Alexander Sebastianus Hartanto
SUN.CONTEMPORARY
Darma dan Adarma, 2017
I Komang Subrata
SUN.CONTEMPORARY
Named after the Balinese concept of rwa bhineda—the coexistence of opposing forces—this group exhibition brings together 17 Indonesian artists who reflect on dualities. The show at SUN.CONTEMPORARY in Bali navigates contrasts of life and death, softness and structure, heritage and reinvention.
Ni Nyoman Merti’s Cremation (2023)—a large, intricately detailed, and densely populated cityscape—evokes the Balinese Hindu funeral ritual of Ngaben. Rather than depicting the celebratory ceremony directly, the painting explores how death is not an end but a return, folding the individual back into the rhythms of life. Meanwhile, Sarita Ibnoe’s Experimentation of Interruption 02 (2024) takes a different approach to tension. Here, yarn is stretched, pushed, and repeatedly manipulated in a process both aggressive and meditative. The title reflects the Bahasa Indonesia word kerajinan, meaning both “craft” and “diligence.”
Other works reflect on ancestral legacy through material and myth. Alexander Sebastianus Hartanto reimagines the traditional kemben breastcloth in Tumpal Loka #01 (Kemben) (2023), using batik-dyed fabric layered with archival photographs. The piece weaves together his ideas about family lineage with cosmological symbolism. Meanwhile, Mangku Muriati’s painting Bharata Yudha Abad 21 (2014) offers a contemporary retelling of a battle from the Sanskrit epic the Mahabharata—an enduring story of ancestral conflict that weighs the forces of greed and justice. These artists render rwa bhineda as a living principle, where conflicting elements exist in productive coexistence.
Kathryn Gohmert “Loculos Timoris”
Ro2 Art, Dallas
Through Aug. 15th
Film 10, 2024
Kathryn Gohmert
Ro2 Art
Film 5, 2024
Kathryn Gohmert
Ro2 Art
After experiencing temporary blindness in 2018, American artist Kathryn Gohmert became interested in how the brain processes perception under stress. Informed by neuroscience and personal experience, her paintings explore how fear distorts vision using symbolic forms to depict the brain’s attempts to make sense of uncertainty and protect itself. Her solo exhibition “Loculos Timoris”—Latin for “pockets of fear”—focuses on the mental detours we take when faced with disorientation and stress through paintings that depict the brain in action.
Gohmert presents a series of 10 paintings that resemble MRI scans of the mind, where brain-like forms are rendered with bright colors. Made with oil, graphite, charcoal, and sewn textiles, these works attempt to make internal thoughts legible. In Film 10 (2024), for instance, a vivid orange brain pulses against a dark, textured background, flanked by stitched white eyes that appear both clinical and cartoonish. This psychological tension plays out in the painting that gives Gohmert’s show its name, Loculos Timoris (OMY) (2024). Here, disjointed brain forms drift across the canvas alongside scattered symbols and fragments of text.
Based in Germany, Gohmert holds a BA from the University of Texas at Austin. Her most recent solo exhibitions were presented at Galerie Eigenheim in Weimar, Germany in 2023 and Galerie HELL in Berlin in 2022.
Daria Dmytrenko “The Dreams I Don’t Remember”
PM/AM, London
Through Aug 29th
The Triumph of the Huntress, 2025
Daria Dmytrenko
PM/AM
Untitled, 2025
Daria Dmytrenko
PM/AM
Ukrainian artist Daria Dmytrenko’s eerie, metamorphic paintings are often inspired by the Slavic folktales that haunted her as a child. These fables now serve as a means to explore the artist’s psyche. “Each of my works is essentially a manifestation of my inner self,” she said in an interview last year. Her color-soaked, fluid paintings imagine that when the unconscious takes over, strange creatures appear without warning. These chimeric forms are the subject of “The Dreams I Don’t Remember” at PM/AM, Dmytrenko’s first solo exhibition in London.
In The Triumph of the Huntress (2025), a central figure rises from a swirl of dense, vegetal color. This nude figure morphs into fins and claws, which flow organically out of the body in a forest-like underworld. Likewise, Untitled (2025) portrays a towering bird-headed figure draped in a luminous green shroud, poised between a tree and a shoreline, as if crossing from one realm to another. The surreal setting evokes the landscapes of the mind that Dmytrenko addresses in her work.
Dmytrenko studied painting at Kyiv’s National Academy of Visual Arts and Architecture, before graduating from the Academy of Fine Arts in Venice, where she now lives and works. Her recent solo exhibitions include “What’s Behind the Gloom” at SETAREH and “Who’s Afraid of the Dark” at Secci, both in 2024.
from Artsy News https://ift.tt/n8lLi1g
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