Carolyn, 2025
Jack Penny
The Dot Project
In this monthly roundup, we spotlight five stellar exhibitions at small and rising galleries.
Ulrik Abé
“LES MOTS DES MAUX”
Filafriques, Geneva
Through Nov. 7
FAUX PROFIL, 2023
Ulrik Abé
Filafriques
L'INCOMPRIS, 2023
Ulrik Abé
Filafriques
The scent of coffee permeates Ulrik Abé’s paintings. For his solo exhibition “LES MOTS DES MAUX” (“Words on Aches”), the Ivorian artist mixes earth, coffee, and cocoa into his pigments, creating textural portraits of faceless figures. Abé calls this hybrid technique Art’boki, a nod to the Abokis: street vendors who sell hot drinks across the Ivory Coast. It’s a material choice that makes his canvases sensory experiences as much as visual ones.
The portraits in this show, which travels to Europe from Abidjan museum MUCAT, are rendered in gestural swirls that obscure the details of each subject’s face. The figures appear masked or doubled, as if caught between presence and absence. BLACK & WHITE (2023) depicts two golden brown heads colliding into one another, whereas L’INCOMPRIS (2023) is more contemplative, showing a crown of thorns atop an eyeless head. Each of the volatile faces suggests that, over time, identity changes, shaped by our experiences and ideas of perception.
Ewa Partum
“Conceptual Feminism”
Double Q Gallery, Hong Kong
Through Nov. 1
Active Poetry. Poem by Ewa, 1971-1973
Ewa Partum
Double Q Gallery
From naked performances in the streets of 1970s Poland to conceptual works grappling with language and power, octogenarian artist Ewa Partum’s first solo exhibition in Asia traces her radical merging of feminism and conceptual art. Among the highlights of “Conceptual Feminism” at Hong Kong’s Double Q Gallery is Active Poetry. Poem by Ewa (1971–73), a film in which the artist scatters individual letters across public landscapes, letting the environment reorder them into words and poetry. This work represents the artist’s conviction that language can disrupt systems of power.
A trailblazer for feminist art, Partum often uses her own body as the subject of her politically charged art. “I was concerned with the task of creating a feminist symbol,” Partum said, in a statement released by the gallery on Instagram. “The only thing I could represent was my nature that I own. I used my body to create my art.” One example of this is Stupid Woman (1981/2025), a self-portrait displayed on a lightbox showing the artist covered in string lights with a look of distress on her face.
Partum studied painting at the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw in 1965, where she graduated in 1970. The artist currently lives in Berlin, where she moved in 1983. In 2024, she won the Lovis Corinth Prize and presented a retrospective at the Kunstforum Ostdeutsche Galerie Regensburg in Germany. Her work is featured in collections of Tate Modern in London and the Museum of Modern Art in New York.
Alejandro Co
“Viajes de Descubrimiento”
Tönnheim Gallery, Madrid
Through Oct. 18
De la serie Pinturas de archivo abierto, 2025
Alejandro Co
Tönnheim Gallery
Alejandro Co burns books. For years, the Cuban artist has incorporated fire into his collage-like practice, partially burning press clippings and documents before pasting them on canvas or wood. For his solo show “Viajes de Descubrimiento” at Madrid’s Tönnheim Gallery, the artist lit pages from illustrated dictionaries on fire to explore how memory is preserved and rewritten in the material traces of culture.
In De la serie Pinturas de archivo abierto (2025), scorched pages ripple across the surface of a wooden plank, their charred texture revealing fragments of words and images. Images of priests, sculptures, famous architecture, and historical figures are half-visible, obscured by the burn marks. Co’s practice, rooted in engraving and printmaking, investigates how archives and collective memory are manipulated to legitimize some narratives over others. The act of burning is both erasure and revelation, transforming reference material into something unstable and contested.
Colin Knight
“Hero’s Wreck”
Superhouse, New York
Through Oct. 17
Pilot's Chair, 2025
Colin Knight
Superhouse
Survival Raft, 2025
Colin Knight
Superhouse
Virginia-based artist Colin Knight’s show “Hero’s Wreck” takes inspiration from Joseph Beuys’s legendary account of being rescued after a World War II plane crash and a fictional Spitfire pilot who echoes his story. Together, these twin figures serve as narrative anchors for Knight’s sculptural furniture, inspired by British modernism. To explore how war leaves a lasting mark, his furniture designs are adorned with objects linked to the tragedies of World War II.
In Pilot’s Chair (2025), for instance, salvaged wood and paratrooper gear are fashioned into a seat that recalls an empty cockpit. Similarly, Crash Fragment (2025) is a wing-like lamp of rice paper and shellac which suggests the scattered debris of war, and Survival Raft (2025) places stuffed dolls in life jackets on a lounge chair. Leather-based relief Conspirators (2025) depicts warplanes alongside two loving figures, creating tension between trauma and fantasy. Across these works, the exhibition assembles fragments of a heroic epic, foregrounding the lasting effects of war through functional design. Each sculpture circles back to the image of a crash, underscoring how psychological wreckage endures alongside physical debris.
Jack Penny
“Old Country”
The Dot Project at Elveden Hall, Suffolk, England
Oct. 7–25
In spite of ourselves, 2025
Jack Penny
The Dot Project
British painter Jack Penny’s In spite of ourselves (2025) shows six figures locked in a manic ring dance around a bonfire, their faces slipping between glee and menace. It’s an image that expresses themes the artist often focuses on: rituals of belonging that teeter on chaos and exclusion. Across the works of “Old Country,” painted during a residency at Elveden Hall in Suffolk, where the show takes place, characters jostle for place in dramas of status and spectacle.
Penny draws on the theatrical scenes of traditional British social painting but skews toward satire and surrealism. A horse rears in On the hunt (2025), where a pot-bellied rider sounds his trumpet as hounds snap at their prey, while in A very long but short story (2025), a fountain overflows with drunken figures, caught between camaraderie and collapse. Elsewhere, a pair of swans come together in a violent embrace in Dispute (2025). Each work toes the line between play and peril, exposing how civility barely conceals primal instinct.
Born in Chichester, U.K., in 1988, Penny still lives in West Sussex. His solo shows have been mounted by Dan Yoshii in New York and The Dot Project, among others.
from Artsy News https://ift.tt/VEB5c04
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