Issue 14 by artmazemag

Autumn

ue Iss

Edi tio n,

14, 2019

Art Maze Magazine is an independent artist-run and ad-free international print and online publication dedicated to showcasing and promoting experimental and progressive contemporary art, which reflects modern society and its environment, provokes conversation and action; and fosters innovation and diversity of mediums which make today’s art scene so intriguing and versatile.

SUBMIT FOR PRINT AND DIGITAL PUBLICATIONS

SUBMIT FOR ONLINE PUBLICATIONS

We invite guest curators from internationally renowned galleries as well as independent art professionals to select works for each issue. We try to give spotlight to artists and engage with our readers and followers everyday through our social media, website and print and digital issues.

If you wish to submit to our online blog, you are welcome to fill in the application form on our website.

Artists are welcome to submit works in any medium: painting, drawing, sculpture, ceramics, printmaking, photography, textile, installation, mixed media, digital etc. Artists or any art organisations on behalf of artists from all countries are welcome to submit.

WRITERS

Please visit our website for more details on how to apply for print publications: www.artmazemag.com/call-for-art/ or see p. 11 Artists are welcome to submit works to our online blog. This opportunity also provides a chance to be published in print issues.

FIND US ONLINE www.artmazemag.com facebook.com/artmazemag instagram.com/artmazemag

GENERAL ENQUIRIES: info@artmazemag.com ArtMaze Magazine is printed in London, UK, five times a year by Park Communications Ltd. Featured image: Joel Brown Garden Bones oil on canvas 18 x 14 inches more on p. 118-119

For more details on blog submissions please visit our website: artmazemag.com/submit-for-blog-feature/

You are welcome to submit an article, review or interview for consideration for online or print publications. Please send us an email to info@artmazemag.com

ISSUES Please visit our website to find out where to purchase print and digital copies of ArtMaze Mag: www.artmazemag.com/shop

FRONT COVER: Jonathan Lux Girl, Garden & Apple ink on paper 40 x 30 cm more on p. 148-149 BACK COVER: Miles Hendricks Untitled (Rabbit) Mixed media on cotton/rayon 12 x 16 inches more on p. 124-125

Registered office address: ArtMaze Magazine Ltd. G06, Binnacle House 10 Cobblestone Square E1W 3AR, London United Kingdom

® ArtMaze Magazine is a registered trademark

SUBMIT FOR PRINT AND DIGITAL PUBLICATIONS

SUBMIT FOR ONLINE PUBLICATIONS

If you wish to submit to our online blog, you are welcome to fill in the application form on our website.

WRITERS

FIND US ONLINE www.artmazemag.com facebook.com/artmazemag instagram.com/artmazemag

For more details on blog submissions please visit our website: artmazemag.com/submit-for-blog-feature/

You are welcome to submit an article, review or interview for consideration for online or print publications. Please send us an email to info@artmazemag.com

ISSUES Please visit our website to find out where to purchase print and digital copies of ArtMaze Mag: www.artmazemag.com/shop

FRONT COVER: Jonathan Lux Girl, Garden & Apple ink on paper 40 x 30 cm more on p. 148-149 BACK COVER: Miles Hendricks Untitled (Rabbit) Mixed media on cotton/rayon 12 x 16 inches more on p. 124-125

Registered office address: ArtMaze Magazine Ltd. G06, Binnacle House 10 Cobblestone Square E1W 3AR, London United Kingdom

® ArtMaze Magazine is a registered trademark

136

interviewed

call for art

curated selection of works

editorial selection of works

Squiggly lands c a p e s : Ryan Nord Kitche n . . . .......................................................................... 14

Anniversar y E d itio n 15 ............................................... . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 1

Minyoung Choi .........................................................................94 Julie Severino ...........................................................................9 6 John ny I z at t -Lowr y . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9 8 Alyss Estay ..............................................................................10 0 Sc ot t Lau fer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 102 James Owen s . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 103 M ar i sa Adesm an . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 104 M at t hew B ai nb r idge . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 106 D an B renton . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 107 Julia Gil ...................................................................................108 Loren Erd r ich . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 109 Oda I seli n Sønder land . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 10 Ju st i n Sam son . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 1 2 Alessandro Fogo ......................................................................113 Lar ysa Myers ...........................................................................114 A lic e B ra sser . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 16 Joel Brown ...............................................................................118 Jackson Ca sady . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 2 0 Seb a st i an B u rger . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 2 2 M i les Hend r icks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 24 Miko Veldkamp .......................................................................126 Fredd ie G rei s . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 2 8 Robert Zehnder .......................................................................129 Claudia Keep ...........................................................................130 Nic a sio Fer nandez . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 3 2 Soyeon Shi n . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 3 4

Christopher Davison ...............................................................138 A nt hony Pad i lla . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 140 Tom Pr i n sell . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 141 Nichola s Wi lli am John s o n . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 142 Net t le G rellier . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 144 Mar y Laube .. ... .. ... .. ... .. ... .. ... ... .. ... .. ... .. ... ... .. ... .. ... .. ... ... .. ... .. ... .. .145 Ap ar na Sar kar . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 146 Jonath an Lux ...........................................................................148 B r i an Sc ot t Campb ell . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15 0

Pai nte r E m i ly Fe r ret t i o n he r me rging of t he obs e r ve d and t he i m agi ne d........... ................ 30 “ I am my ow n tool” : We av i ng and m ate r i alit y i n A n n Cat h r in Nove mb e r Høi bo’s wor k ............................... ............... 46 “ T h re e - di me n sional d ioram ic obje ct s ”: T he m any- laye re d p ai nt i ng s of Be n Jam ie ........................ ............... 64 En igm at ic arch ite ct u re i n t he p ai nt i ng s of Mat t Kleb e rg . . . . . . . . . . . . . ......................................................................... 76

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interviewed

call for art

curated selection of works

editorial selection of works

Squiggly lands c a p e s : Ryan Nord Kitche n . . . .......................................................................... 14

Anniversar y E d itio n 15 ............................................... . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 1

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from the editor Happy Autumn season, dear friends! We celebrate this stunning golden time with the release of our 14th Edition! We’ve been extremely fortunate to be able to work this time with artist and curator Charlie Roberts who is also a co-founder of 0-0 LA gallery and traveling show Got It For Cheap (GIFC), whose work appeared on the cover of our previous 9th Edition along with an insightful interview (feel free to read it online on our website). Charlie has created a dazzling selection of works of twenty-six artists amongst the many who have submitted their work for consideration (p. 92 -135) including outstanding pieces by Claudia Keep, Freddie Greis, Miko Veldkamp, Miles Hendricks, Sebastian Burger, Minyoung Choi, Joel Brown, Johnny Izatt-Lowry, Matthew Bainbridge, Marisa Adesman amongst others. We thank Charlie for putting a lot of hard work and attention into his selection process and showing so much positive enthusiasm in helping promote young and emerging, and sometimes underrated, artists through everything he does for the art community. We enjoy working on our Editorial selection (p. 136-151) and looking through each submission tirelessly, and we must mention how much we are grateful for your generous kind words towards ArtMaze as well as your trust and respect for this project which permeates each application. This time around a wide variety of marvellous pieces and ideas have caught our attention, such as imagination rendered ‘life drawings’ by Christopher Davison; the bouquet of myth and anecdote in medieval, Renaissance art and architecture in the vivid works of Tom Prinsell; the striking materiality of Nicholas William Johnson’s plant motif paintings; the figurative narratives of Nettle Grellier in which she explores ideas of stereotypical British awkwardness around intimacy and the celebration of human connection and tenderness; the objectivity of Mary Laube’s works which portray human memory as well as at the same time focusing on the absence of human presence in her depictions; and of course, our cover artist—Jonathan Lux’s witty and humorous narratives which depict figures in playful and lively manner portraying themes of relationships, adventure, longing and domesticity. For this edition’s interviewed section (p. 12-91) we’ve selected five international artists whose work is arrestingly beautiful with underlying exceptional skill. Take a closer look at the work of Ryan Nord Kitchen, his landscapes are nothing like you may expect: unconcerned with the physical likeness and specificity of a place, Ryan is interested in the traces and memories of a landscape that remain with him over time; when the post-card picture has faded. The remarkable visual quality of Emily Ferretti’s work blossoms through her depiction of delicate strokes with bold marks, sharp delineation with subtle contouring, illustrative detail with painterly colour-washes, all serving to grasp ideas of landscape genres through biographical memory and imagination. The simplistic and undeniably honest works of weaving and mixed media by Ann Cathrin Høibo are irresistibly attractive in their brilliant materiality and tactility. The coextensive abstract and figurative narratives in Ben Jamie’s work are visually three-dimensional and many layered, these complex compositions are build ups of many elements which embody a myriad of references and significations, from the things around him in his Hackney Wick studio space to philosophy and unnameable, elusive emotions. Matt Kleberg’s lines and shapes in his enigmatic architectural paintings are not executed according to precise mathematical measurements, but by means of the hand and eye alone. In this, his paintings gesture towards some perfect, overarching pattern, but the means of expression remains firmly grounded in the realm of human defection. We are really excited about our upcoming 15th edition, which will mark our anniversary this year. We’ve teamed up with the brilliant Brigitte Mulholland, curator and director of Anton Kern Gallery to help us accomplish another marvellous selection of works. If you are interested to submit your work and appear on ArtMaze’s pages, please feel free to check out our website for more information (www.artmazemag.com) and hopefully we’ll be able to work with you next time! Featured image: Loren Erdrich Me, Myself, Pretending Not To See water, raw pigment, ink and watercolor on canvas 48 x 36 inches more on p. 109

Yours truly, Editor and Founder Maria Zemtsova

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Anniversary Edition: Issue 15

call for art DEADLINE: October 3rd, 2019 Guest Curator: Brigitte Mulholland curator and director of Anton Kern Gallery, NYC

Submit your work for a chance to be published in print and digital issues, as well as online on our website and social media. ELIGIBILITY: The competition is open to all artists, both national and international, working in all visual mediums. Artists are welcome to submit works in any medium: painting, drawing, sculpture, ceramics, printmaking, photography, textile, installation, mixed media, digital, film etc. DISTRIBUTION: ArtMaze Magazine is an independent international publication which is distributed both nationally and internationally via book shops, galleries and museums, art events and via the online store: artmazemag.com/shop HOW TO APPLY: please visit our website for more details and fill in the online form via the following link: artmazemag.com/call-for-art OTHER OPPORTUNITIES: Artists are welcome to submit their works to our online blog. Please visit our website for more information: www.artmazemag.com or contact us at info@artmazemag.com

Featured image: Nettle Grellier I quickly will become (poisson chez moi) oil on canvas 107 x 153 cm more on p. 144

Anniversary Edition: Issue 15

call for art DEADLINE: October 3rd, 2019 Guest Curator: Brigitte Mulholland curator and director of Anton Kern Gallery, NYC

Featured image: Nettle Grellier I quickly will become (poisson chez moi) oil on canvas 107 x 153 cm more on p. 144

interviewed:

Ryan Nord Kitchen Emily Ferretti Ann Cathrin November Høibo Ben Jamie Matt Kleberg

interviewed:

Ryan Nord Kitchen Emily Ferretti Ann Cathrin November Høibo Ben Jamie Matt Kleberg

www.nicellebeauchene.com/artists/ryan-nord-kitchen

Squiggly landscapes: Ryan Nord Kitchen The great French Impressionist master Claude Monet said, “For me, a landscape does not exist in its own right, since its appearance changes at every moment …” Brooklyn-based artist Ryan Nord Kitchen paints landscapes, but is similarly unconcerned with the physical likeness and specificity of a place. Instead, Ryan is interested in the traces and memories of a landscape that remain with him over time; when the post-card picture has faded. Working in a visual language influenced by rhythm and percussion, Ryan punctuates the surface of the linen canvas with loose gestural marks and flat colors. The quality of his linework, sketchy and squiggly, is full of movement, as if the landscape were vibrating. In some works, the landscape seems to dissolve into abstraction completely. Prompted by the titles of the paintings, the lines and colors solidify into markers of the landscape. Ryan is interested in the blurred line between these two modes of expression, and believes that the two are less distinct than often imagined. Working on either 15 x 12 inch or 24 x 21 inch canvases, Ryan offers neither a representational window on the world nor grand painterly gesture. His language of scribbles, lines and dots is distinctly democratic, where depth is flattened and raw linen and ground become negative marks occupying compositional space alongside the brushstrokes. The compositions are characterised by a rhythmic balance between restraint and gusto, which keep the eye dancing around the painting tracing the movement. Born in Minnesota, Ryan lives and works in New York. He received an MFA from the Maryland Institute College of Art and has exhibited his work nationally and internationally in solo and group exhibitions. We spoke with Ryan about finding a place within the canon of landscape painting, making honest work and music.

interview by Layla Leiman

Featured image: Ryan Nord Kitchen South Slope 1 oil on linen 45 x 36 inches

www.nicellebeauchene.com/artists/ryan-nord-kitchen

interview by Layla Leiman

Featured image: Ryan Nord Kitchen South Slope 1 oil on linen 45 x 36 inches

AMM: Hello Ryan! To begin, can you share with us any people or experiences that have influenced you as an artist? In what ways has this shaped the direction of your work? RNK: My formal art education took place in two distinct environments that together have had a lasting effect. The school I attended in the Midwest was nestled in a landscape spared by the glacial drifts of the last ice age. The cold streams, waterfalls, and river valleys that surrounded the small school were directly referenced in my earliest work. Years later the geometry and reality of Baltimore further cemented my interest in the experience of space in painting. AMM: We read in an interview that you started out as a musician. This is really interesting, as there is a distinct rhythm to your mark-making. Please tell us more about how music influences you and your work. RNK: As a kid I took weekly piano lessons, and some dance before focusing on percussion for around 15 years. These studies made me very sensitive to the tactile experience of syncopation and polyrhythm. This sensitivity now informs my approach to visual composition. I’m always tapping along to music. AMM: Your paintings seem to dance between pure abstraction and figuration. What does working between these two modes of expression offer you? RNK: Painting has the ability to draw attention to such distinctions. I believe more of our lives than we sometimes realize walk a similarly thin line. It’s my attempt to make the experience of the paintings resonate deeply. AMM: There’s a looseness and deliberate naivety in your compositions. What informs your approach to linework and brushstroke? RNK: This handling of the medium is an attempt to form a relatable entrance point for the viewer. I want the work to be approachable, and honest. I’m not interested in an experience in which the viewer is distracted by questions of craft. “Wow it looks just like a photograph!” is very boring to me unless the technical skill is in use of something further. AMM: What is your approach to color in your work? RNK: Color is one way I negotiate that balance between abstraction and figuration. In one place a color will match an expectation of what color a recognizable form should be, and in another I can deliberately subvert the immediate reading of a shape by changing what color it reflects. Photo by Lú Wéi Jiā

AMM: The exposed linen draws attention to surface materiality in your painting. Can you tell us more about this? RNK: The decision to size, but not prime the

“The slightly off-square shape lets me play with compositional balance in ways that keep me interested. The relatively small size avoids the problem larger paintings encounter of becoming a spectacle. It connects to the way I want the paintings to be approachable. I hope the small size encourages a closer examination and intimacy.” - Ryan Nord Kitchen surface white or another color has been an attempt to bring attention to the painting’s place within the viewer’s reality. It has been important for me that the work is registered on the wall as a distinct and real object, and not simply as an image to be viewed. AMM: What is the relationship between drawing and painting in your practice? RNK: I find drawing to be more immediate, and it’s been an important part of my life for longer than I’ve been painting. I still spend more time drawing than painting. The paintings all begin with a sketch. AMM: You seem to favour working on square canvases. What appeals to you about this format? RNK: My two favorite sizes are 15 by 12 inches, and 24 by 21 inches. The slightly offsquare shape lets me play with compositional balance in ways that keep me interested. The relatively small size avoids the problem larger paintings encounter of becoming a spectacle. It connects to the way I want the paintings to be approachable. I hope the small size encourages a closer examination and intimacy. AMM: What does a typical day in studio for you look like? RNK: Recently I’ve been working on large groups of paintings at once. Allowing

ArtMaze Magazine Issue 14, Interviewed: Ryan Nord Kitchen

AMM: The exposed linen draws attention to surface materiality in your painting. Can you tell us more about this? RNK: The decision to size, but not prime the

ArtMaze Magazine Issue 14, Interviewed: Ryan Nord Kitchen

permutations within a concept to spread quickly and without self-doubt has been fruitful for me. Working on five at once with the expectation that one or two will be successful allows for greater risks. AMM: What led you to landscape painting, and what keeps you interested? RNK: I find that landscape is one of the most relatable genres. It allows me to offer something to the viewer that they can bring their own experience into. I’m more interested in sharing something than I am in showing something. AMM: As one of the classical genres, where do you see your work positioned within the trajectory of landscape painting? RNK: I was told in school that “there’s nothing left to say with landscape painting”. I disagree. I think it has as much to say as ever. AMM: Do you paint en plein air, or from photographs you’ve taken or sources? Do you sketch and plan paintings before beginning or allow works to proceed more organically? What is your process of working? RNK: It’s been important for me to let preliminary sketches develop from memories of experiences. I’m not concerned with a physically accurate depiction of the place. I’m interested in what remains with me and why.

AMM: How has your art changed over time? What directions do you imagine potentially exploring in the future? RNK: I think it’s always been a reflection of my mental state. It grows as I do. Some days I feel I understand it, and others it’s ahead of me. I hold on as best I can. There is no predicting it. AMM: What are you watching, listening to and reading right now? RNK: I’ve been watching people play video games from the mid 1990s online. The early years of digital three dimensional space fascinate me. I like the rhythm of the lowresolution texture mapping. The developers were able to convey space with very limited resources. Lana Del Rey’s “High by the Beach” on repeat. I just finished William Gibson’s “Idoru” on the subway this afternoon. AMM: Do you have any exciting projects coming up? What’s next for you? RNK: An upcoming third solo show with Nicelle Beauchene Gallery, a month-long residency at the Macedonia Institute, and some other tentative opportunities around the corner.

AMM: What ideas are you currently exploring in your work? RNK: I’m looking into ways to be more specific. I want to develop the vocabulary in a way that builds off the previous work without nullifying it. AMM: In your development as an artist, what have been some of the key things you’ve learned, in college or beyond? RNK: To answer to yourself first. It’s not worth the effort otherwise.

Ryan Nord Kitchen Walk oil on linen 15 x 24 inches

ArtMaze Magazine Issue 14, Interviewed: Ryan Nord Kitchen

Ryan Nord Kitchen Walk oil on linen 15 x 24 inches

ArtMaze Magazine Issue 14, Interviewed: Ryan Nord Kitchen

Ryan Nord Kitchen Lake oil on linen 24 x 21 inches

Ryan Nord Kitchen Sky View oil on linen 24 x 21 inches

Ryan Nord Kitchen Lake oil on linen 24 x 21 inches

Ryan Nord Kitchen Sky View oil on linen 24 x 21 inches

Ryan Nord Kitchen Coastline oil on linen 24 x 21 inches

Ryan Nord Kitchen Field in Spring oil on linen 24 x 21 inches

Ryan Nord Kitchen Coastline oil on linen 24 x 21 inches

Ryan Nord Kitchen Field in Spring oil on linen 24 x 21 inches

Ryan Nord Kitchen Dusk oil on linen 24 x 21 inches

Ryan Nord Kitchen Setting oil on linen 48 x 36 inches

Ryan Nord Kitchen Dusk oil on linen 24 x 21 inches

Ryan Nord Kitchen Setting oil on linen 48 x 36 inches

Ryan Nord Kitchen Orchard 1 oil on linen 15 x 12 inches

Ryan Nord Kitchen Garden oil on linen 15 x 12 inches

Ryan Nord Kitchen Orchard 1 oil on linen 15 x 12 inches

Ryan Nord Kitchen Garden oil on linen 15 x 12 inches

Ryan Nord Kitchen Garden 6 oil on linen 15 x 12 inches

Ryan Nord Kitchen Flower Painting 3 oil on linen 12 x 10 inches

Ryan Nord Kitchen Garden 6 oil on linen 15 x 12 inches

Ryan Nord Kitchen Flower Painting 3 oil on linen 12 x 10 inches

www.sophiegannongallery.com.au/artists/emily-ferretti-260

Painter Emily Ferretti on her merging of the observed and the imagined For Australian artist Emily Ferretti, maintaining an open-ended approach to creating is of utmost importance. Her process embraces perpetual flux, often shifting between abstract and figurative forms, between imagined scenes and observed objects. Working primarily in oil on linen, Emily creates still life arrangements, domestic scenes and landscapes drawn partly from direct observation, partly from her memory and imagination. She has an instinct for formal and chromatic composition that allows her to seamlessly merge visual impressions from the world around her with more conceptual elements and fluid artistic expression. Her painterly style combines delicate strokes with bold marks, sharp delineation with subtle contouring, illustrative detail with painterly colour-washes. Gossamer-textured blue leaves overlap with one another to create new shapes and blocks of colour; intricate, repeated patterns and tessellations emerge from landscapes and objects; things arranged on a table, or views observed from windows, become flat, pictorial mosaics or tapestries, with forms picked out among the intersecting lines. An avid collector of visual references, Emily relies on her sketchbooks as a means of observing, a space for experimentation and a source of inspiration. As is clear from the fine, illustrative linework that appears in many of her works, drawing is foundational to Emily’s painterly practice. In a solo show earlier this year at Bus Projects in Collingwood, Melbourne, Emily exhibited a selection of recent drawings from her sketchbooks. These studies in coloured pencil, flitting between the expressionistic and the representational, deliver key insights into the painter’s methodology while standing as total works of art in and of themselves. A graduate of the fine art programme at the Victorian College of the Arts, Emily has been exhibiting regularly with Sophie Gannon Gallery since 2008. Currently working from her studio in an old furniture factory in Melbourne, she explains to us how experimenting with different mediums and modes of creating provides her with a constant impetus towards her continued artistic development.

interview by Maria Zemtsova text by Rebecca Irvin

Featured image: Emily Ferretti Skyward oil on linen 51 x 41 cm

www.sophiegannongallery.com.au/artists/emily-ferretti-260

interview by Maria Zemtsova text by Rebecca Irvin

Featured image: Emily Ferretti Skyward oil on linen 51 x 41 cm

AMM: Hi Emily! You completed a Bachelor of Fine Arts with honours at the Victorian College of the Arts in Melbourne in 2006 and have been exhibiting annually with Sophie Gannon Gallery since 2008. How has your work changed over this time? What have been some of the influences and insights that have shaped its evolution? EF: There have always been themes that I have revisited and a sensibility that is distinct but it’s been important to keep pushing in new directions to keep it exciting for myself in the studio, as well as propel the evolution of the work forward. When I finished art school thirteen years ago my work was more figurative and pared back in colour and mark making. As I have gained a more confident technical ability over the years it’s given me a freedom to push the abstract qualities in the work. My pictures have gotten bolder and brighter and more direct. I understand what I want to achieve with the work and have gotten more playful compositionally because of that. I do think this never ending shifting is one of the most exciting parts about being dedicated to something. AMM: What inspired your interest in creating art? Were you brought up in a creative environment? EF: I grew up on a country hobby farm in Victoria in Australia. I was definitely not a gifted drawer but enjoyed making things and my creativity was always encouraged by my family. I was a sporty kid and in a way thought I would head in that direction but In the middle of my high school years I visited a professional artists studio and was totally excited by the idea of a space to produce work. Soon after I got into art school and dedicated myself to my painting practice. It was definitely seeing a working studio and what it could represent that was the turning point. AMM: You have had a very busy and productive 2019. We’d love to hear more about some of the highlights. Can we start with your most recent exhibition in Sydney Contemporary? What inspired this body of work? EF: Yes I have had a big year of shows. At Sydney Contemporary recently I had a solo presentation with Sophie Gannon Gallery. It consisted of a suite of twenty eight new oil paintings of mostly landscapes and some still life scenes. Another highlight this year was being selected as a finalist in the Ramsay Art Prize at the Art Gallery of South Australia. I showed a suite of twenty six Monotypes that I made with Negative Press, a print studio in Melbourne. I was very proud to be involved. I made the Monotypes before the work at Sydney Contemporary and there is a direct link between the projects. The freedom of the Monotypes directly changed the way I wanted to paint on the canvas. AMM: Do you have a philosophy or motto that you work by? If so what is it? EF: Work hard and believe in your work.

AMM: Your solo exhibition Drawn Together ended on May 4. Here you showed a range of new drawings taken from your ongoing sketch books. Can you take us through your reasons for exhibiting work often seen as a more private part of one’s practice? EF: Yes earlier this year I had the opportunity to show at Bus Projects which is one of the most established artist run spaces in Melbourne. I wanted to show some of my drawings reserved for the studio or the sketch book as a way of exposing a private methodology to an audience. The show highlighted the role of drawing in my primary painting practice and I felt like it was an important part of my process that could be shared.

“There have always been themes that I have revisited and a sensibility that is distinct but it’s been important to keep pushing in new directions to keep it exciting for myself in the studio, as well as propel the evolution of the work forward...As I have gained a more confident technical ability over the years it’s given me a freedom to push the abstract qualities in the work...I understand what I want to achieve with the work and have gotten more playful compositionally because of that. I do think this never ending shifting is one of the most exciting parts about being dedicated to something.” - Emily Ferretti AMM: We’d love to get an insight into your process. For instance, do you work on multiple canvases? What materials do you use? Do you plan your next piece or is it created intuitively? EF: I always have quite a few paintings going all at once. Starting new work is one of my favourite parts of the process so I often have many paintings around me in different states of completion. Once a work is three quarters done I get going on another. This keeps things exciting and creates a flow on effect into the next piece. Lately I am making sure to stop and complete works before I get carried away again. For large paintings I will have a basic plan for the work but for my smaller pieces it’s

ArtMaze Magazine Issue 14, Interviewed: Emily Ferretti

a lot more intuitive. Most work comes from a drawing or reference as a loose starting point and then once I start there is a lot of visual problem solving to get to the result I feel happy with. I primarily use oil paint on oil primed linen. I like to draw with coloured pencils. AMM: Are there overarching themes in your work? EF: There are many motifs within the landscape genre that I continue to work with because I feel like there are endless possibilities to explore through biographical memory, form, and imagination. AMM: How wonderful to have a book of your work published, ‘Walking in both directions’. Can you tell us more? EF: Yes it really was an excellent experience to get a book published by my friends at Perimeter Books in Melbourne. They are a really amazing team to work with and have really changed the landscape for arts publishing in Australia. We made my book in 2017 and it documented work from over the past few years. In an age where images are mostly seen online it feels nice to have something out in the world that’s tangible, an archive. AMM: The images of your studio look amazing.Can you tell us a little about it? It looks like a great space. EF: I’ve been in my studio complex for about 15 years now. It used to be an old furniture factory but has been studios for about 30 years. It’s very run down so only time will tell how long it will last. I live only about 3 mins away so it means I can pop in and out when I need to and can work late at night easily. I have small kids so it makes it ideal to be close. My space itself is a 70 square meters rectangle which is great because I can paint at one end and then use the other side for preparation and a workshop area. It has nice natural light so that’s crucial. AMM: How do you plan your working day? When not in the studio what do you enjoy? EF: This changes but at the moment I am either getting in very early in the morning and leave by the afternoon or a little later and go back at night. I always go get a coffee as it’s a nice way to touch base with other people even if it’s only brief. I usually do some drawing when I first get in and then switch to painting. I work for about three hours at a time before I start to fatigue so I usually take a little break and then do another three to four hours. When I am not in the studio I really like being active, going to thrift stores, and being with my partner and kids in nature, and if I had more time, singing karaoke. AMM: How do you navigate the art scene in Australia where you currently live, and also internationally? What are you excited about in the art world? What worries you? EF: I am very excited by the international painting scene. There seems to be a real buzz around picture making and process and that’s exciting. Australia has a great art scene

Photo by Alicia Taylor

ArtMaze Magazine Issue 14, Interviewed: Emily Ferretti

Photo by Alicia Taylor

especially in Melbourne where I live but I find that its institutions don’t appreciate painting the way I observe overseas. This can be challenging at times. I have a great support network of friends who make images and we encourage each other and create dialogue around work. AMM: How important is social media in your creative process? EF: I really resisted Instagram for such a long time but now I find it very important to my practice. I am not interested in many other forms of social media like Facebook but I find that coming from Australia Instagram is such a great way to connect with other artists on the other side of the world. I really like that it’s so direct in nature and based on what you’re making. It also gives me ideas so I can use it as a tool to gather references as well as keep up with current exhibitions and the international art scene. I feel like it’s a very supportive community and I have gotten opportunities that would otherwise not have happened. AMM: If you happen to experience a creative standstill how would you overcome it? EF: I don’t often experience creative blocks because I try to keep up a momentum in the studio but if I ever feel stuck I usually overcome it by drawing. I am constantly collecting images and printing them out hundreds at a time so usually I go through my references and sketch. I find once I do this for a few hours I get ideas and they lead me back into the next work. I also have a few select artist books that I look at that excite me back into the work. AMM: You have experienced a residency at the Greene Street Studio in New York and one in Paris at the Cite de Arts Internationale. How beneficial were the experiences, and what in particular did you take away from them? Would you enjoy working abroad for longer periods? If so where would you like to create art? EF: I am a home body so it’s always been very beneficial to do residencies to take me out of my comfort zone. My residency experience in NYC was one of the most precious and important times in my life. Having months to explore and research and paint and just look and look was unbelievable. I would love to go back to New York and explore the countryside a bit more. AMM: What ideas or themes are you currently exploring and how do you see your art developing in the future? What projects are on the horizon?

Featured image: Emily Ferretti Shifting Landscape, Installation 2018, monotypes on paper, Negative Press Studios

EF: I have had a very busy few years so I am excited to get back to the drawing board and chip away at a few experimental ideas that have been put to the side for a while. It’s hard to see too far into the future when it comes to further development. I’ll just keep on working and see what happens. Only time will tell. ArtMaze Magazine Issue 14, Interviewed: Emily Ferretti

Featured image: Emily Ferretti Shifting Landscape, Installation 2018, monotypes on paper, Negative Press Studios

Emily Ferretti Fast track oil on linen 51 x 46 cm

Emily Ferretti Shifting shore oil on linen 51 x 46 cm

Emily Ferretti Fast track oil on linen 51 x 46 cm

Emily Ferretti Shifting shore oil on linen 51 x 46 cm

Emily Ferretti Two corns forming oil on linen 51 x 41 cm

Emily Ferretti Bent trunks oil on linen 51 x 41 cm

Emily Ferretti Two corns forming oil on linen 51 x 41 cm

Emily Ferretti Bent trunks oil on linen 51 x 41 cm

Emily Ferretti Trio coloured pencil on paper 42 x 32 cm

Emily Ferretti Two Hammers coloured pencil on paper 42 x 32 cm

Emily Ferretti Trio coloured pencil on paper 42 x 32 cm

Emily Ferretti Two Hammers coloured pencil on paper 42 x 32 cm

Emily Ferretti Bridge at night (small) oil on linen 51 x 41 cm

Emily Ferretti Curvy tree oil on linen 46 x 60 cm

Emily Ferretti Bridge at night (small) oil on linen 51 x 41 cm

Emily Ferretti Curvy tree oil on linen 46 x 60 cm

Emily Ferretti Steering wheel at night and day oil on linen 51 x 41 cm

Emily Ferretti Swirling land oil on linen 60 x 46 cm

Emily Ferretti Steering wheel at night and day oil on linen 51 x 41 cm

Emily Ferretti Swirling land oil on linen 60 x 46 cm

www.carlfreedman.com/artists/ann-cathrin-november-hoibo

“I am my own tool”: Weaving and materiality in Ann Cathrin November Høibo’s work Weaving is central to Ann Cathrin November Høibo’s art. It is the main medium that she works in, but also a spatial metaphor used to create tenuous links between the disparate objects in her installations. Weaving is the anchor, the framework, around and through which the narrative in her work threads. The natural and synthetic sit side-by-side in Ann Cathrin’s work like flotsam and jetsam washed up on the shoreline. The artist seems to make no distinction between the two vastly different kinds of material. Her installations, which include stretched fabric framed works, woven tapestries and loosely sculptural pieces, are studies in materiality and sensory tactility. Yet the subtle contrast between handmade and readymade makes a quiet statement on the ubiquity of synthetic materials today, which have become intertwined with the fibre of contemporary life. Ann Cathrin’s work is neither explicit nor didactic. She makes no bold statement nor asserts any direct message. Rather, between the strands of natural wool, raw ash branches and mass-produced plastic objects, she weaves a subtle protest against speed and convenience that underpin consumer culture. Weaving by its nature offers a counterpoint to this, requiring patience and time; it is slow, laborious, meditative. “Weaving is a workout in being patient”, Ann Cathrin says of this ancient craft that is more than 12,000 years old. Ann Cathrin’s art reflects the pared back aesthetic of her Nordic heritage. The colors in her work echo the northern landscape—whites, sage greens, small flashes of yellow, black, grey and bone—with interruptions of bright artificial colors and synthetic textures. Ann Cathrin studied at the National Academy of Art and Handcraft, Department of Textile in Oslo, Norway. She received her MA from the Department Art Academy before furthering her studies at Städelschule in Frankfurt, Germany.

interview by Layla Leiman

Featured image: Ann Cathrin November Høibo Untitled handwoven wool, tulle, silk, cotton, nylon, cord stop and metal pole 265.0 x 183.0 x 10.0 cm

www.carlfreedman.com/artists/ann-cathrin-november-hoibo

interview by Layla Leiman

Featured image: Ann Cathrin November Høibo Untitled handwoven wool, tulle, silk, cotton, nylon, cord stop and metal pole 265.0 x 183.0 x 10.0 cm

AMM: Hello Ann Cathrin. To begin, can you share your earliest art-related memory? ACNH: Hi! One early one is of my mother leaving me and my older brother at the National Museum of Art in Oslo. It was raining a lot and she had to fix something, so she left us there. I didn’t really get along with my brother as a kid, so I wandered off by myself, it was wonderful. AMM: In your growth as an artist, what have been some of the pivotal learnings or experiences or teachers that have shaped you and your work? ACNH: I think I have learned a lot from the really good teachers and the really bad ones… also lovers and older friends who wanted to become artists. I think also being sick as a child changed the way I see things. Or maybe the time I randomly read an article at the dentist, about Hannah Ryggen. That moment changed my life a bit, I found true love. AMM: Weaving and textiles have historically been associated with the female domain and crafts. In what ways do you engage with and subvert these traditions in your work? ACNH: I have always been really proud of the feminine vibe of weaving and craft. It’s always been empowering to me, not the opposite. I also saw all of that as a good thing for me, that weaving and craft had a lower status in the contemporary art scene, at least in Norway. I saw it as a great opportunity to change that, a purpose. I intentionally only applied to the craft school to learn some weaving skills, the rest I could manage I thought. AMM: Weaving enacts a bringing together of disparate parts into a new whole. How might this metaphor relate to themes in your work? ACNH: I never make sketches and I never unravel what I do. I just continue and try to make the best of what is happening in front of me. It does not always look good close up, and it’s a shitty feeling and I give up, and then do other stuff for a while. But the bad parts or the mistakes often look really good in the end. Also color combinations, colors I do not like so much often end up more interesting than what I am really into. When I weave I think about my life, my current situations and everything that comes to mind and what’s important kind of unfolds in front of me. Mostly the work finds the themes as I go. AMM: Your aesthetic doesn’t try to hide or obscure the structure of an artwork, for example the loom of a tapestry, or soldered brass rods. Instead, these seem to be emphasised as another material and element of the composition, drawing attention to the handmade quality of the artworks. Can you tell us more about this?

Photo by Thyra Dragseth

ACNH: I guess I try to be as honest as possible in my work, so to hide important details like this or try to cover up something feels so wrong to me. I think I try to transfer this honesty into the materials. It’s like I’m trying to be a better person through my work. AMM: In contrast to this, you often incorporate mass-produced found objects in your installations. What is the relationship between the handmade and the mass-produced in your work? ACNH: Balance. It’s the personal meets the impersonal… I don’t know the exact word… I don’t like it when it’s too much of one vibe in my work, it has to be diverse. I want my work to contain as much as possible, but in a light and elegant way. I want lots of references that you can understand, instantly or over time. Or both. Also the

“Weaving is a workout in being patient, it’s been very difficult. I used to say weaving is hardcore boring and splatter romantic...It’s hard to sit still, and weaving takes forever. But it feels a bit like reading or running, the more you do it the faster it goes.” - Ann Cathrin November Høibo

mass-production tells something about the time we live in right now, and the craft for me is more timeless. Or maybe not. I aim for complexity to look easy. AMM: Please tell us about the specific materials you choose to use in your art and about mixing natural and synthetic materials? ACNH: I guess it’s the balance again. They have different qualities. Same color in different materials gives many colors if you know what I mean. I want the materials to change attitude in my work, by saying that I think I mean that I want them to change their personalities and become something new. I’m also a bit curious about how the materials will age in contrast to each other.

AMM: Weavings and the materiality of your work have a strong tactile quality, inviting notions of touch and skin. In what ways do you engage with these ideas in your work? ACNH: I’m so into qualities of the materials, I feel it with my eyes I think. The skin is so sensitive; it’s our biggest sense organ they say. I had really bad allergies as a child; it had its own language of telling me things. So this goes back to your second question. I think this forced me to be very concerned about my clothes, second skin. Then again materials. AMM: What ideas are you currently exploring in your work? ACNH: I just down-scaled my studio from 360m2 to 60m2, from the seaside to the city. So I think that will have some effect. And I just arrived in Berlin to an empty studio. So I think about that, downscaling, in general. Buying less, eating less, pollute less, travelling less, stressing less, spending less time on the internet and all that. We all need to change the way we live. That’s what I really like about weaving. It’s so slow. I only use a fork and scissors and mostly daylight. A longtime dream of mine is to have some sheep and spin my own yarn. I used to say that to people I wanted to impress, as a very young artist. But life has been too hectic, I need to calm down. AMM: How do you conceptualise and incorporate negative space into your compositions and installations? ACNH: Interesting question. It’s more intuitive for me I guess. AMM: In what ways does your art relate to your own emotional or psychological state of being? ACNH: I think I have answered that in every question? I am my own tool. AMM: Weaving is a laborious medium that must perhaps be quite meditative. What is your process of working? ACNH: Weaving is a workout in being patient, it’s been very difficult. I used to say weaving is hardcore boring and splatter romantic. I moved one of my big looms home. I bought a house in a small town on the Norwegian coast. So now the loom is in the library, at least it looks great. It’s hard to sit still, and weaving takes forever. But it feels a bit like reading or running, the more you do it the faster it goes. Some days I can weave for hours, other days it’s impossible. It all depends on the mood and the time pressure. AMM: How does your studio look and feel? ACNH: My studio feels a bit like a girl cave. My private room with my own rules.

ArtMaze Magazine Issue 14, Interviewed: Ann Cathrin November Høibo

Photo by Thyra Dragseth

ArtMaze Magazine Issue 14, Interviewed: Ann Cathrin November Høibo

Clean but messy, kind of cozy but practical. Full of textiles, clothes and yarn. And most important, a daybed. AMM: Do you have any daily habits or rituals that feed you creatively? ACNH: No, but often I change clothes all day long, to inspire myself and feel different. I probably should have more rituals, but I’m not good at following rules. A plan is to walk more. AMM: Do you have any shows or projects coming up? What’s next for you? ACNH: Next is Frieze London in October with Carl Freedman, and a solo show at STANDARD (OSLO) in March, and one in LA which is still in the planning. I’m just starting research for a public project. Stage curtains for a new prison in Norway, which I am very excited about. Oh, and I’m doing a book with a project I curated back in 2017 at Kristiansand Kunsthall together with Linn Pedersen.

Ann Cathrin November Høibo Flukt forover installation view, Kunstnerforbundet, Oslo courtesy of the artist and STANDARD (OSLO), Oslo photography: Thomas Tveter / Kunstnerforbundet, Oslo

ArtMaze Magazine Issue 14, Interviewed: Ann Cathrin November Høibo

Ann Cathrin November Høibo Flukt forover installation view, Kunstnerforbundet, Oslo courtesy of the artist and STANDARD (OSLO), Oslo photography: Thomas Tveter / Kunstnerforbundet, Oslo

ArtMaze Magazine Issue 14, Interviewed: Ann Cathrin November Høibo

Ann Cathrin November Høibo It’s Not the Title Because it Doesn’t Make Sense Anymore Oslo Kunstforening courtesy of the artist and STANDARD (OSLO), Oslo photography: Vegard Kleven / Oslo Kunstforening

Ann Cathrin November Høibo Untitled (Alpelue #04) tapestry made of wool, yarn, nylon threads on nails / 223.5 x 196 x 47 cm courtesy of the artist and STANDARD (OSLO), Oslo photography: Vegard Kleven / Henie Onstad Kunstsenter

Ann Cathrin November Høibo Untitled (Diptych) handwoven wool warp, tulle, cotton, nylon and plastic pole / each panel: 243 x 170 x 6 cm courtesy of the artist and STANDARD (OSLO), Oslo photography: Vegard Kleven / Collection of Kunst i Offentlige Rom, Oslo

Ann Cathrin November Høibo Untitled woven cotton, steel spring 125 x 36 x 1 cm

Ann Cathrin November Høibo Løpere handwoven wool, silk, cotton, jersey, plastic, nylon, and wood / 300 x 150 x 4.5 cm Løpere, Sørlandets Kunstmuseum Kristiansand courtesy of the artist and STANDARD (OSLO), Oslo photography: Christina Leithe Hansen / Sørlandets Kunstmuseum Kristiansand

Ann Cathrin November Høibo Untitled (Informers) handwoven wool, nylon and jersey / 190 x 118.5 x 10 cm courtesy of the artist and STANDARD (OSLO), Oslo photography: Antti Luutonen / SIC, Helsinki

Ann Cathrin November Høibo I know you less everyday handwoven wool, silk, cotton, jersey, plastic, nylon, and wood / 219 x 168 x 4.5 cm courtesy of the artists and STANDARD (OSLO), Oslo photography: Vegard Kleven

Ann Cathrin November Høibo You talk, I listen handwoven fabrics and acrylic pole 227 x 160 cm

Ann Cathrin November Høibo The Truest Sentence Drei Cologne courtesy of the artist and STANDARD (OSLO), Oslo photography: Simon Vogel / Drei, Cologne

Ann Cathrin November Høibo Jif or jiffy installation view, STANDARD (OSLO), Oslo courtesy of the artist and STANDARD (OSLO), Oslo photography: Vegard Kleven

Ann Cathrin November Høibo The Truest Sentence Drei Cologne courtesy of the artist and STANDARD (OSLO), Oslo photography: Simon Vogel / Drei, Cologne

Ann Cathrin November Høibo Jif or jiffy installation view, STANDARD (OSLO), Oslo courtesy of the artist and STANDARD (OSLO), Oslo photography: Vegard Kleven

Ann Cathrin November Høibo My Friends 5 handwoven nylon on ash loom 54 x 42 x 3 cm (loom) full height: 133 cm

Ann Cathrin November Høibo Untitled (Documentation is everything) mixed media collage: sky leather, plastic bags, cardboard, copper, leather, nylon, cotton, hair, wooden frame with glass / 116 x 84 x 9 cm courtesy of the artist and STANDARD (OSLO), Oslo photography: Vegard Kleven / Storebrand Kunstsamling, Oslo

Ann Cathrin November Høibo My Friends 5 handwoven nylon on ash loom 54 x 42 x 3 cm (loom) full height: 133 cm

www.benjamie.co.uk

“Three-dimensional dioramic objects”: The many-layered paintings of Ben Jamie In the works of London-based artist Ben Jamie, the abstract and the figurative are coextensive. The fluid forms expressed in his paintings teeter on the verge of becoming recognisable objects but are pulled back from the brink of reality by Ben’s intuitive process of distortion. As a result, the images attain an almost hallucinatory quality—scenes reflected back at the viewer in funhouse mirrors. Detached from any particular object, time, place or meaning, the compositional elements that make up Ben’s works embody a myriad of references and significations, from the things around him in his Hackney Wick studio space to philosophy and unnameable, elusive emotions. Ultimately, license is granted to the viewer to extract their own interpretations from the paintings and to glean significance from the images based on subjective experience. As such, Ben’s paintings incorporate and involve the viewer in creating meaning. The funhouse mirror that his work holds up is exactly that—a mirror. In an introduction to Ben’s 2018 solo show, ‘Comfortably Dumb’, David Northedge writes that “The works talk to each other behind the painter’s back in a language he is unable to translate fluently, but one that he deciphers in snippets, mark by mark.” Northedge’s emphasis on a steady proliferation of marks highlights how the intentionality of Ben’s art lies not just in the work itself, but in the action of its making. His practice unfolds as a process of experimentation, reworking, distortion and layering. Ben therefore conceives of his work as reflexive, the final product always containing a multitude of previous iterations and evolutions. Never limiting himself to a single medium, Ben incorporates charcoal drawing, watercolour, oil paint, distemper, wax and oil stick. As in the chromatic compositions of post-Impressionist painter Paul Cézanne, depth is achieved in Ben’s paintings via his manipulation of colour. Cool and warm tones, light and dark shades are employed as devices to either create harmony between forms or to imply conflict. Chromatic technique combined with draughtsmanship, the flat surfaces of Ben’s paintings attain an abundant three-dimensionality, as though several different visual perspectives have been concertinaed and superimposed within a single frame of vision. Previously an artist in residence as part of the Turps open studio painting programme between 2014 and 2016, Ben was also the recipient of the 2016 John Moores Painting Prize. His work has been exhibited across the UK and internationally, and was recently shown as part of a group show on contemporary British painting at Space K in Gwacheon, South Korea. He speaks to us here about his current practice in London, his approach to making, and his life and interests beyond the studio.

interview by Maria Zemtsova text by Rebecca Irvin

Featured image: Ben Jamie The Nothing oil, distemper, wax and charcoal on canvas 150 x 130 cm

www.benjamie.co.uk

interview by Maria Zemtsova text by Rebecca Irvin

Featured image: Ben Jamie The Nothing oil, distemper, wax and charcoal on canvas 150 x 130 cm

“My palette is a more ‘processed’, CYMK one than a more primary palette, maybe as a hangover from studying photography. I like to make my paintings quite harmonious, even though some of the colours are quite jarring. I treat colours as if they are in a particular position on the picture plane— warmer colours further forward, and cooler colours further back. I always think of my paintings as being three dimensional dioramic objects.” - Ben Jamie

AMM: Hello Ben, can you talk about your background and how it led you into the arts? When did you begin to realise you wanted a career as an artist? Was it always about painting? BJ: Art was the only thing I ever wanted to do. I used to go to art clubs every Saturday, and drew through most of my lessons at school. I ended up leaving school and going to Art College instead of doing my A levels. I then went on to study photography for two years, before specialising in painting. AMM: You live and work in London, how do you view the current art scene in the city? BJ: I think the art scene in London is great at the moment and there are a lot of strong painting shows happening. There is a lot of

appetite for the arts in London, and most exhibition openings I go to are packed. I also feel like I’m part of a really good peer group, all emerging in the last few years. All this in spite of the fact that it is becoming increasingly difficult to find affordable places to work, as studios are being knocked down all over London to make way for apartment blocks. AMM: Regarding your two years in the Turps Banana Painting Programme you commented that your practice changed beyond recognition. Please talk us through this sea change in your creative approach? BJ: From the first day at Turps, I was encouraged to let everything about my work change and soaked up all the teaching that was available. The open studios environment quickly gets you out of your comfort zone, and encourages a healthy competition with the other painters on the course. AMM: How important is drawing in the construction of your work? BJ: Drawing is extremely important to my practice, and is integral to the creation of the paintings. Most paintings begin with watercolour studies, which are then transposed onto the canvas, then manipulated as the work goes on. Because of the charcoal marks, my work has an almost cloisonnist style—flat forms separated with dark contours from the drawn elements. The paintings change a lot over time, and often two different sketches are used to make the work. AMM: In ‘Comfortably Dumb’, your 2018 exhibition, we enjoyed the introductory text by David Northedge which provides an intriguing insight into a painter’s approach and process. How does it compare to your approach and process? BJ: I didn’t want a traditional text for my show, so I commissioned David to produce a piece of writing. It felt like a window into my studio. It manages to convey the painter’s existence and anxiety, whilst being a fairly abstract, Ballardian text. He also wrote the text for my previous show at Castor Projects, Sense Data. AMM: How would you describe the subject matter of your art and what feeds your inspiration? BJ: The subject matter reflects the human condition, but in a somewhat abstracted form—life, tension, emotion, religion, conflict, aspiration, philosophy all mixed together with some humour thrown in. The paintings look fairly serious, but I am having a lot of fun making them. Everything feeds my inspiration- I don’t have to look very hard for it, how that translates into my paintings is more of a mystery to me. I try to keep things open as much as possible, especially in the planning stage. I try to start paintings just using the right side of my brain, and finish them off with the more logical left side—at least that’s what I’d like to do.

ArtMaze Magazine Issue 14, Interviewed: Ben Jamie

AMM: In what ways do you think your life’s journey is exposed to the viewer through your paintings? BJ: I feel someone else would have to answer that question—I imagine it is difficult not exposing my life’s journey, however hard I try to hide it. AMM: What is the most important thing you would like the viewer to take from your art? BJ: I would like the viewer to get lost in the paintings and feel able to project some of their personalities into them. Seeing them in the flesh is a very different experience than how they look when they’re reproduced. Every mark is intentional—either deliberately made or left. The paintings go on quite a journey whilst being produced, and I like to think of them as containing ‘time’ rather than just being flat images. AMM: What role does colour play in your art? Can you tell us more about your palette? BJ: Colour is crucial in my paintings, it is possibly the most important thing for me. I do a lot of colour experiments within my initial sketches, and the whole atmosphere changes depending on what colours are used. My palette is a more ‘processed’, CYMK one than a more primary palette, maybe as a hangover from studying photography. I like to make my paintings quite harmonious, even though some of the colours are quite jarring. I treat colours as if they are in a particular position on the picture plane—warmer colours further forward, and cooler colours further back. I always think of my paintings as being three dimensional dioramic objects. AMM: ‘Already Not Yet’ was your first exhibition in the US, showcasing a series of new canvases. Can you tell us a little about how you approached the selection of work and how you found the experience? Were there significant differences to exhibiting in the UK? BJ: It was a great experience showing in New York, and Shrine is a fantastic gallery. I took a lot of work out there and we made the selection once I had arrived. The space was quite intimate, so we decided to let large paintings dominate the gallery, in an almost immersive way. There were no real differences to exhibiting in the UK, apart from the people coming to the show were more engaged in a philosophical sense rather than technical. AMM: Very well done on being a winner in the 2016 John Moores Painting Prize. We loved your entry ‘Dissolver’. How important do you think competitions are in the current art scene? BJ: I was lucky to have been selected as one of the five prize winners, and the show itself was great. The painting I showed was definitely the most simple, focussed work I had produced whilst at Turps. Although the experience was great, I am not sure I think all competitions are that important, and I feel that there are a few too many of them.

ArtMaze Magazine Issue 14, Interviewed: Ben Jamie

AMM: Congratulations on your recent group show ‘British Painting 2019’ held in Korea. Can you tell us more about your selection of work and the experience? What challenges did you face when developing the art works and how long did it take you to prepare? Great photo on Instagram as one of your canvases is lowered from a window! Scary moment! BJ: The curator for Space K, Jang-Uk wanted large paintings, so I made the largest piece I could get out of my studio. I had to cut a hole in one of my walls, and then lower it down outside of the building. Most of my work was at Castor Projects, so I made completely new work and they selected from those. It ended up being around 6 months work to make paintings for the show and I tried to do things a bit differently. The figurative elements which are always a bit hidden in my work became more apparent and I tried to give each painting its own personality, rather than produce a set of paintings. They’ve been a great gallery to work with, and all the work is staying in Korea, which is great. AMM: You post your work on Instagram and you are on Twitter. How do you decide what to post, and what, if any, are the limitations and disadvantages, in your experience, to this form of exposure? BJ: I’m more of a casual observer on Twitter, but use Instagram a lot more. For some reason I find posting my pictures in a public way helps me analyse them differently. I quite often post something up, then realise a few months later that it doesn’t quite fit in with the rest so will take them down. The limitations come from everything being a homogeneous size on the screen, so paintings of mine can look quite similar to each other—people are often surprised with my work when the element of scale is introduced. Other negative elements are an increased fear of missing out—although I’m fully aware that my feed is a somewhat curated view into my painting practice, it is difficult not to feel that everyone else is doing more interesting things. On a positive side, it is great knowing what people are up to, and I’ve become friends with a load of people after seeing their work on there.

years ago, which is still up in the studio with “Never, Never, Never Give Up” written on it, I guess that would be a word of wisdom. AMM: Let’s talk a little about your working space. What does your studio look and feel like? Is it your ideal working environment? Do you work from home? BJ: My studio is in Hackney Wick, in an old peanut factory which is about 15 minutes from home. It is a great space, with a huge window with a large London Plane tree outside. It feels really private, even though there are about 50 studios in the building. Much as I loved being in a shared studio at Turps, it is great having my own space. AMM: How do you plan your working day? BJ: My working day is planned around my daughter Arielle at the moment, she is four and has just started school, so I have a set amount of time I can get in the studio each day, so I try to treat it like a 9-5 as much as possible, even though painting doesn’t really conform to those stipulations. These days I find a painting is not necessarily always resolved in the studio, it is in my time away from the work that my thinking is cemented. AMM: What are you listening to and reading at present? How does it inform your art? BJ: I listen to a lot of music in my studio, and I have a fairly broad taste, which is a bit hard to pin down. I’ve been listening to a lot of my old CDs recently, which were mostly bought in the mid to late 90s, so it’s a bit of a nostalgia trip. I always listen again to Marc Riley, and Tom Ravenscroft’s shows on 6 Music, and there are a few podcasts I listen to. I’ve just read The Hero with a Thousand Faces, and I’m always dipping into JG Ballard’s short stories. I regularly read The New Yorker, and have a huge stack of National Geographics from 19771994, which are great to have in the studio. It is hard to gauge how these things specifically influence my painting, although I do steal a lot of song titles when naming paintings.

AMM: Who are the artists that currently interest you, and why?

AMM: What are some of your interests besides making art?

BJ: I love the work of my mentor at Turps, Alastair MacKinven, his new paintings are extraordinary. Michael Bauer and Michael Berryhill are doing very interesting things. Looking further back Andre Masson, Gauguin and El Greco are ones I return to. I try to limit my exposure to paintings when I’m working, but my influences are always there in a latent way.

BJ: All the usual things like travel, films, music, exercise. I’ve just started playing guitar again after a ten year break. I like cooking and growing my own vegetables, and I spend as much time in nature as possible. We’re lucky enough to live next to Wanstead Flats, which is the edge of Epping Forest, so I go running there regularly.

AMM: How do you manage challenging moments in your artistic practice? Any words of wisdom you’d like to share?

AMM: Do you have any projects in the works that you are able to share with us? Where can we see your work next?

BJ: I think most of the challenging moments are in my head—self doubt can be crippling at times, but you just have to work through it and try to ignore some of those nagging voices. My wife gave me a card about ten

BJ: I’m currently producing a limited edition woodblock print for Castor Projects and will have another solo show with them next year. There are a few other things in the pipeline, but I can’t talk about them yet.

ArtMaze Magazine Issue 14, Interviewed: Ben Jamie

Featured image (p.67): Ben Jamie Go Gently Into The Earth oil, distemper, wax and charcoal on canvas 117 x 101.5 cm

Featured image (p.69): Ben Jamie Crawl Out From The Fall Out oil, distemper, wax and charcoal on canvas 150 x 130 cm

AMM: Who are the artists that currently interest you, and why?

AMM: What are some of your interests besides making art?

AMM: How do you manage challenging moments in your artistic practice? Any words of wisdom you’d like to share?

AMM: Do you have any projects in the works that you are able to share with us? Where can we see your work next?

ArtMaze Magazine Issue 14, Interviewed: Ben Jamie

Featured image (p.67): Ben Jamie Go Gently Into The Earth oil, distemper, wax and charcoal on canvas 117 x 101.5 cm

Featured image (p.69): Ben Jamie Crawl Out From The Fall Out oil, distemper, wax and charcoal on canvas 150 x 130 cm

Ben Jamie In And Out Of Weeks oil, distemper, wax and charcoal on canvas 200 x 170 cm

Ben Jamie Reprisal oil, distemper, wax and charcoal on flax 170 x 150 cm

Ben Jamie In And Out Of Weeks oil, distemper, wax and charcoal on canvas 200 x 170 cm

Ben Jamie Reprisal oil, distemper, wax and charcoal on flax 170 x 150 cm

Ben Jamie Already Not Yet oil, distemper, wax and charcoal on flax 170 x 150 cm

Ben Jamie Cataplexy oil, distemper, wax and charcoal on flax 170 x 150 cm

Ben Jamie Already Not Yet oil, distemper, wax and charcoal on flax 170 x 150 cm

Ben Jamie Cataplexy oil, distemper, wax and charcoal on flax 170 x 150 cm

Ben Jamie The End, A Beginning oil, distemper, wax and charcoal on canvas 170 x 150 cm

Ben Jamie The Near Distance oil, distemper, wax and charcoal on canvas 175 x 155 cm

Ben Jamie The End, A Beginning oil, distemper, wax and charcoal on canvas 170 x 150 cm

Ben Jamie The Near Distance oil, distemper, wax and charcoal on canvas 175 x 155 cm

www.mattkleberg.com

Enigmatic architecture in the paintings of Matt Kleberg Texas-born painter Matt Kleberg was, in the early stages of his artistic career, initially drawn to imagery of the American South that figured in his experience of the world around him—cowboys, long-horned cattle, small birds and antlered skulls. Although his colour-palette today remains saturated with the earthy reds and vivid floral hues of the Texan landscape, his compositions have since evolved into undulating, abstracted forms consisting of bars and stripes, archways, multiple frames and radiating shafts of light. The influence of Byzantine architecture, as well as medieval and Renaissance art history, is clearly perceptible in Matt’s repeated visual motif of arches. These curved doors or windows invite the viewer to regard the paintings as thresholds or borders, as though by stepping through them we might experience a new kind of perception. The space beyond these entranceways, however, is left open, the destination ambiguous. It is in this explicit embracing of mystery and paradox—doors that lead nowhere, or else onto an ungraspable endlessness—that Matt articulates his own preoccupation with the inherently contradictory and unfathomable nature of human existence. Having grown up with religion and studied theology at university, Matt discerns in art an appreciation for the tension between the known and the unknown, the subjective experience and the objective truth. His works express this paradox, too, in their occupation of a space between consummate, geometric models of perception and more organic forms. Matt’s lines and shapes are not executed according to precise mathematical measurements, but by means of the hand and eye alone. In this, his paintings gesture towards some perfect, overarching pattern, but the means of expression remains firmly grounded in the realm of human defection. Indeed, it is in the compositional defects—a thickening or deviating of the line, a scratched or scrubbed surface, an asymmetrical alignment of forms—that Matt grasps the wonderfully imperfect nature of embodied human perception. Having exhibited in both his native Texas and across the states, Matt is now based in Brooklyn, New York. Here, he discusses with us his working environment and creative stimuli, his love of artist Frank Stella, and the inspiration behind the intriguing titles of his paintings.

interview by Maria Zemtsova text by Rebecca Irvin

Featured image: Matt Kleberg 37th Hour oil stick on canvas 72 x 58 inches

www.mattkleberg.com

interview by Maria Zemtsova text by Rebecca Irvin

Featured image: Matt Kleberg 37th Hour oil stick on canvas 72 x 58 inches

AMM: Hi Matt! From a family history of ranching in Texas, how did you find your way into a creative life? Have you always been an artist at heart? MK: I was born on the ranch and worked there over the summers growing up, but I also mostly grew up in the city, in Fort Worth. I spent and still spend lots of time on the ranch—it’s my favorite place—but I can’t pretend that I am a bonafide cowboy or anything. I can do all the ranch hand stuff, but the cowboys who have worked the ranch for generations are the real deal. That said, the landscape of South Texas certainly informed my gut aesthetic. Lots of earthy colors—browns, greens, dusty reds—punctuated by really wild bright colors—cadmium scarlet sunsets, fuschia cactus pears, green jays and roseate spoonbills. My parents aren’t especially arty, but there were always art books around the house, mostly Western and Southwestern artists. I loved looking at paintings, poring over Frederic Remington and some of the Texas Modernists like Tom Lea and Otis Dozier. I could always draw, I always took art in school and when I was thirteen I apprenticed under a great painter in Fort Worth named Ron Tomlinson. It also didn’t hurt to grow up a few blocks from three great museums- the Amon Carter, the Kimbell, and the Fort Worth Modern. So right in the neighborhood I could see Frederic Remington’s Dash for the Timber, Caravaggio’s Cardsharps, and monumental stuff from Clyfford Still and Morris Louis. AMM: You gained your first degree at 23 and returned to college some years later. How did you find the move from Virginia to begin studying again in New York and all that it entailed? MK: I did my undergrad at the University of Virginia and stayed in Charlottesville after graduating. That’s where I rented my first studio and began showing. I did portrait commissions to pay the bills- painted people’s grandkids and Springer Spaniels and things like that. I hated the commissions but it allowed me to be in the studio full time. Also, the paintings I was making on my own time were big, iconographic figurative paintings, so the portrait work wasn’t completely unrelated. After a few years I was showing enough to quit the kids and dogs, but eventually I felt the work needed to shift. I saw graduate school as an opportunity to slough off any rules I had given myself in the studio and make tons of crappy paintings. Going to Pratt for my MFA got me to New York where I was surrounded by art and artists. AMM: You have degrees in Art and Theology. At one stage in your life you had thought of entering a seminary. Has the study of Theology influenced your current practice, and if so in what ways?

Photo courtesy of the artist

MK: I grew up in church and was always drawn to big questions. As a kid I assumed there were answers to all the questions and I set about reading as much as I could to sort out all this complicated human condition stuff. The tricky part was trying to deal with all the paradox and contradiction that characterizes all religious traditions. I remember asking big tough questions to my counselors at church camp, and when they

couldn’t answer they would pass me off to the leadership, and when they couldn’t answer they would pass me off to the camp director, and he would tell me not to worry too much about it. I thought studying theology and going to seminary would provide more of those answers. All the while, I was painting and studying art. I found that doubt and contradiction and paradox were like the foundational pillars of art appreciation. Answers aren’t the point. Art is at home with mystery. Paradox, doubt, contradiction, mystery—those are still the animating forces for me in the studio. That tension is necessary for good painting. For what it’s worth, I can better appreciate as an adult how religion makes room for mystery. Communion or the Eucharist, for example, is totally weird and beautiful and mysterious.

“In some ways the paintings are about painting, or at least traffic in old painting tropes. Painting as portal or window versus painting as flat, dead-end surface. Painting as picture versus painting as object. But all those questions can function as metaphors for real life matters.” - Matt Kleberg AMM: Your earlier work was mainly figurative with abstract elements; now the figures have gone. Can you talk to us about the evolutionary phases your work has been through? MK: There were lots of cowboys, birds, bottles, skulls, etc. At a certain point, the figures started to feel interchangeable, just plugged in. When I painted them out, what was left was that space previously occupied by a subject. The paintings became all about framing that space and they started to feel more like stages, sets, facades. More and more architectural elements showed up and my immediate surroundings in New York began to directly influence the compositions. AMM: What are the broad themes you wish to explore in your work?

MK: In some ways the paintings are about painting, or at least traffic in old painting tropes. Painting as portal or window versus painting as flat, dead-end surface. Painting as picture versus painting as object. But all those questions can function as metaphors for real life matters. I mentioned doubt and paradox earlier. Lately I’ve also been thinking about how the paintings operate as both invitations into their space and barriers to entry. That contradiction is at the heart of our immigration debates in the US right now. The southern tip of the ranch is less than an hour from the Texas-Mexico border. The border is a very “charged” space at the moment. I try to work towards some sort of “charge” in the paintings too. AMM: Arches are a repeated visual element in your paintings. Can you explain how the viewer might see and experience them, perhaps as portals or doorways opening to other scenes, or possibly as closed niches where the observer can fill the imagined space? MK: I think you nailed it. The arch is an ancient form, it’s a beautiful form and maybe it’s the curve that makes it feel more human shaped and inviting. At the same time, one of the recent paintings is titled Blind Arcade which, in architecture, is a series of arches that don’t lead anywhere, purely ornamental. I’m into both reads. AMM: In your contemporary art works you often seem to portray more traditional architectural forms, some with an almost Byzantine feel. What is the conversation your contemporary work is having with such historic forms? MK: Those forms are all still around us—that multi-paneled painting Blind Arcade is a direct quote of the arched windows on the building next to my studio in the Brooklyn Navy Yard— but I also just like the weird space and forms in some of those historic painting traditions. I love the Byzantine, late Medieval, and early Renaissance painters. AMM: What role does drawing play in your art making process? MK: The paintings come out of the drawings, but the drawings are also their own thing. I draw every day, either recording something I’ve seen or workshopping an idea that has been bouncing around my head. I’ll draw the same motif dozens of times with very minor changes, looking for some combination of elements that just feels right. If something really clicks in a drawing, I’ll give it a go in a painting. Inevitably the painting is never really loyal to the drawing, and that’s a good thing. I want to leave room in the paintings for discovery and revision. One big difference is color—the drawings are mostly black and white, so all the color decisions in the paintings happen on the fly. AMM: You use mostly oil stick on canvas in your larger works. What are the benefits for you of working with this medium? MK: Their touch is closer to drawing than painting with a brush. Lately the sticks have also allowed me to build up these scumbly, static-y

ArtMaze Magazine Issue 14, Interviewed: Matt Kleberg

Photo courtesy of the artist

ArtMaze Magazine Issue 14, Interviewed: Matt Kleberg

textures by dragging each layer of oil stick lightly across the surface. You see flecks of all the previous layers underneath and that really changes how you experience a painting from three feet away versus thirty. AMM: How would you describe the surface of your paintings to a viewer who is not able to see your work in person? Why is the surface texture of the work important to you and why is it best to appreciate and experience your art work up close in person rather than only digitally. MK: Haha, yeah, most people probably see the work online and never in person. In photos they look super graphic and clean, but in reality they are more painterly, wonky, boogery, smoodgey. I rarely measure anything and I don’t use tape, so no line is ever perfectly straight either. I never set out to make geometric abstraction, so it’s important to me that some remnant of the hand is evident. They are physical and they relate to the body in scale but also in surface. Bodies have boogers and so do the paintings. AMM: How do you plan for a new piece? What are the creative phases in its development? MK: Over the last few years I have developed a sort of vocabulary of forms—stripes, arches, niches, fans, beams, etc.—and new forms are always being added. The drawings recombine those forms and also reflect others I encounter out and about. After lots of iterations and reiterations in the drawings, I’ll stretch a canvas and see if the composition can hold up as a painting. (...also see earlier drawing question) AMM: We really enjoy your use of color; it is a very powerful device in your paintings. Please tell us about the way you work with color. MK: I like when the color harmony holds together, but just barely, so sometimes that means putting two colors together that really don’t play nice and letting another part of the painting harmonize more clearly. I work intuitively—no system or theory—but that also means I rework paintings all the time. There are lots of ways for a painting to fail—maybe the colors are too resolved and comfortable, maybe there is zero coherence and logic to help navigate. The ones that work find a place in between. Anything can prompt an idea for color though. I will pause a show that my two year old son is watching to take a screenshot if some color combination seems interesting. I also have twenty pictures on my phone of the same “For Rent” sign painted on a door near my studio. Whoever wrote it first painted this amazing pale sea-foam green blob over a dusty blue-gray garage door, then painted the text in transparent greeny-goldraw-umber over the sea-foam. It’s so good and I keep trying to get that vignette into a painting. Matt Kleberg Falling Temple oil stick on canvas 60 x 48 inches

AMM: It is said that your work pays homage to Frank Stella. Did he or any other particular art movement or artists influence your work? MK: Yeah for sure—I love Stella. I actually wrote my Master’s thesis interpreting Martin Ramirez’s

work through the context of Stella’s collection of essays “Working Space”. There are lots and lots of other artists in my pantheon though Ramirez is there, and so are Marsden Hartley, Fra Angelico, Matisse, Duccio, Eddie Arning, Roger Brown, Kenneth Noland, Diane Simpson, and a hundred others. I’m pretty omnivorous when it comes to influences and heroes. AMM: We love the titles of your paintings. Any favorites? How do you come up with such imaginative names? MK: Haha, thanks! Some titles I borrow from whatever I’m reading or listening to at the time. I read a lot of Barry Hannah short stories and have repurposed some titles like Mother Mouth, Water Liars, and Through Sunset Into the Racoon Night. Others are little word plays like Catapult Catacomb (a catapult ejects things outward, a catacomb is where the bodies are buried inside….get it? Haha). L.L. Bean Boudoir was the title of a painting that came about after seeing a vintage L.L. Bean sweater advertisement in an old magazine. Full Force Gale is a Van Morrison song. Double Bacon Balustrade is a painting that looks like two strips of bacon standing up like columns. My favorite title, Crunch Crunch Slam Slam Dinky Dinky, was borrowed from the closing line of a Parquet Courts album review. I think the critic was trying to describe electric guitar sounds... AMM: Can you name some of your peers whose work has been inspiring for you, and explain briefly why? MK: I love the physicality and structure in Julia Rommel’s paintings. Nathlie Provosty’s work makes you keenly aware of your body and your surroundings—you have to walk around them to take them in, and sometimes it seems like you hear the painting more than you see it. Michael Berryhill makes paintings full of heart and humor, and he’s such a great colorist. Erin O’Keefe creates wild spatial/flat tension in her painterly photographs. They are beautiful but not easy. She and I actually send images of in-progress work back and forth to each other. I love the hyper real but slightly off interiors of Becky Suss and domestic scenes of Nikki Maloof. The architectural textile vibes from Rebecca Morris. I could go on... AMM: Can you tell us about your studio? Do you like to work in peace or do you listen to audio books or music? How do you organise your day? MK: I listen to a zillion podcasts and books on tape. If I’m just starting a painting, I need to zen out or groove a bit more and I’ll listen to music. I tend to work on several things at once but that usually means one piece is the primary focus and several others are to the side, simmering. Those could be nearly done and waiting for one last move, or they could be on the brink of collapse and will soon be reworked. Any wall space that doesn’t have a painting leaning against it is typically covered in drawings. I get to the studio around 9:30am, sit in my chair and stare at the previous day’s work for a bit while listening to news podcasts and drinking

coffee. I will oscillate between tinkering with paintings, checking emails, and drawing in my chair for most of the day. If I’m deliberating about a major move on a painting, it usually takes most of the day for me to build up to it. For some reason, my boldest painting happens post-afternoon coffee, when I know I only have a couple hours left to work. I leave around 6:30pm to cook dinner and hang with the fam. AMM: Is there a part of being an artist that you have ever struggled with? What has been the most enjoyable part of art making for you? MK: The hermit vibes can get hold because I’m definitely a people person and wish I saw other art friends more often than at openings and occasional hangouts. That said, I have to be alone to do the work, and I love the work. My wife has to remind me to eat lunch—otherwise I’ll work straight through the day and forget to eat. Showing work is the greatest joy and worst form of torture. I make these things in my studio and can’t wait to share them, to see if they have the same effect on anyone else that they have on me, but then the show ends and you are left grasping for some sign that it ever happened in the first place—did people like it? Did anyone write about it? Can I pay rent? Does the work matter? Those are the old insecurities bubbling up like heartburn. In the end, I really love to make paintings. AMM: How important are art fairs in getting one’s work out there? MK: I’d like to say they aren’t that important, because they are pretty shitty places to encounter work. That said, it was showing a couple paintings at an art fair after grad school that led to my first New York show, important gallery relationships, early collectors, and some press. None of that was expected, and I don’t know if it would have happened otherwise. Now, of course, Instagram is such a force that the fairs aren’t as necessary. What you really need is for one single person who isn’t you or your mom to really, really believe in the work. AMM: When not creating how do you enjoy spending your time? MK: I grew up hunting, fly fishing, rock climbing...anything outside. Lately I’ve been learning to surf and it’s like a drug. I’ll go out and get punished but can’t wait to get back out for another session. Liz and I love to see art and music together. Our son Waylon is two, so we also spend a lot of time at playgrounds. AMM: What’s next for you on the horizon? MK: I have two shows that started in September. One is in Richmond, Virginia at the Reynolds Gallery, opened September 6. The other is in New York City with Hiram Butler Gallery in collaboration with Gemini at Joni Weyl, opened September 19. After that, Erin O’Keefe and I have a two-person show in Amsterdam in February or March. Oh, and another baby coming in November!

ArtMaze Magazine Issue 14, Interviewed: Matt Kleberg

Matt Kleberg Heatwave (Scaffold Askew) ,oil stick on canvas 72 x 58 inches

Matt Kleberg Cosmicompact oil stick on canvas 44 x 36 inches

Matt Kleberg Heatwave (Scaffold Askew) ,oil stick on canvas 72 x 58 inches

Matt Kleberg Cosmicompact oil stick on canvas 44 x 36 inches

Matt Kleberg Elvis Leg oil stick on canvas 72 x 60 inches

Matt Kleberg Hankering for an Honorable Skull oil stick on canvas 72 x 58 inches

Matt Kleberg Elvis Leg oil stick on canvas 72 x 60 inches

Matt Kleberg Hankering for an Honorable Skull oil stick on canvas 72 x 58 inches

Matt Kleberg Evening of the Yarp oil stick on canvas 58 x 46 inches

Matt Kleberg Flim Flam oil stick on canvas 60 x 48 inches

Matt Kleberg Evening of the Yarp oil stick on canvas 58 x 46 inches

Matt Kleberg Flim Flam oil stick on canvas 60 x 48 inches

Matt Kleberg Fan Tomb Bust oil stick on canvas 20 x 16 inches

Matt Kleberg Stucco Staccato oil stick on canvas 96 x 72 icnhes

Matt Kleberg Fan Tomb Bust oil stick on canvas 20 x 16 inches

Matt Kleberg Stucco Staccato oil stick on canvas 96 x 72 icnhes

Matt Kleberg Adler’s Bird of Paradise oil stick on canvas 60 x 50 inches

Matt Kleberg L.L. Bean Boudoir oil stick on canvas 60 x 48 inches

Matt Kleberg Adler’s Bird of Paradise oil stick on canvas 60 x 50 inches

Matt Kleberg L.L. Bean Boudoir oil stick on canvas 60 x 48 inches

curated selection of works by Charlie Roberts, artist and co-founder of 0-0 LA gallery and traveling show Got It For Cheap (GIFC) Featured image: Alessandro Fogo Small flame at the origin of the Universe oil on linen 50 x 60 cm more on p. 113

Minyoung Choi (b.1989, Seoul, South Korea) is a painter living and working in London. She graduated from the MFA Painting Course at the Slade School of Fine Art in 2017. Her recent solo exhibitions include ‘On Water Under Snow’, Chapter Arts Centre, Cardiff, Wales (2017) and ‘We Go Forward/We Come Back’, Olvera Contemporary Art Centre, Olvera, Spain (2017). She won the Next Generation Art Prize in the WAC Award (2018) and was awarded the Henry Tonks Prize on the occasion of the completion of her degree at the Slade (2017). She was a finalist of the RBA Rising Stars (2019), Gilchrist- Fisher Award (2018) and shortlisted for the Chadwell Award (2017). Recent exhibitions include: ‘Prologue’, Offshoot Gallery, London (2019); ‘One of One’, 163 Gallery, London (2019); ‘The RBA, Rising Stars’, The Royal Over-Seas League, London (2019); ‘Paint: The Seen, The Unseen and The Imagined’, Messums Wiltshire, Wiltshire (2019); ‘Dream of You’, Love Unlimited, Glasgow, Scotland (2018); ‘Young London Painters’, Arthill Gallery, London (2018); and ‘A Field Guide to Getting Lost’, TAF The Art Foundation, Athens, Greece (2018). Minyoung Choi is an artist who focuses on painting. Her work shows a mind which observes its surroundings. It is the quiet voice which has mixed and varied feelings about what it sees around it, almost like a nostalgic or innocent observer. While some of her previous works reveal obviously imagined fairytale-like situations, anthropomorphic animals, symbolic images, primitive instincts and playful figures, recent paintings clearly show her attraction to her more current and real surroundings. The combination of ordinary objects in her paintings—i.e. a laptop, electronic gadgets, ornaments, stationery and so on—she frequently uses, induces a meditative state to the observer. It becomes clear that Choi is evoking elements of her previous works and includes them more subtly in these new daily scenes. This makes for a much more surreal experience as the fantastic is not a dominant presence but more of a subdued feeling.

M i n y o u n g

C h o i

www.minyoungchoi.co.uk

Image:

Night Drive oil on canvas 170 x 160 cm

Fish Tank oil on linen 86 x 105 cm

ArtMaze Magazine Issue 14: curated selection

M i n y o u n g

C h o i

www.minyoungchoi.co.uk

Image:

Night Drive oil on canvas 170 x 160 cm

Fish Tank oil on linen 86 x 105 cm

ArtMaze Magazine Issue 14: curated selection

J u l i e S e v e r i n o

Julie Severino is an artist living and working in New York City; she received her MFA from New York Academy of Art. Severino’s artwork is a collection of visual memories derived from the artist’s personal experiences, while exploring with materials and versatile painting languages.

www.julieseverino.com

Image:

Brushing Hair oil paint, tire rubber and glitter on panel 11 x 14 inches

On the way to White Castle oil paint on panel 18 x 24 inches

ArtMaze Magazine Issue 14: curated selection

J u l i e S e v e r i n o

www.julieseverino.com

Image:

Brushing Hair oil paint, tire rubber and glitter on panel 11 x 14 inches

On the way to White Castle oil paint on panel 18 x 24 inches

ArtMaze Magazine Issue 14: curated selection

J o h n n y I z a t t - L o w r y

My works explore a world that treads a fine line between the everyday and the surreal. Pieced together from Google image searches and stock images, the works explore a view of the world as distanced through both the screen and painted image. Often working with historic themes of painting such as still life, landscape and portraiture, the works feel familiar and yet, in the oddness of both their imagery and their materiality, they become increasingly uncertain and dream-like. Strange perspectives and a sense of the flat layering of disparate elements are also recurring thoughts in my work, often leading to a feeling that what we are looking at is never really what it says it is, but rather something posing as that thing—some sort of simulation. My process involves the rubbing of dry pigments onto stretched crepe fabric in thin layers; as such, the image does not sit on top of its surface but it is ingrained within it. It is an ambitious technique which adds to the uncertainty of the works, they are not quite paintings, but they’re not quite anything else. Often unplaceable in both time and place, they tend to sit somewhere between, and often at odds with, our own physical world, a simulated world we see on the screen and a history of painting. Originally from Durham, UK, I studied my undergraduate degree at Ruskin School of Art, Oxford and recently completed a masters at the Slade. I am currently living and working in London.

www.johnizattlowry.co.uk

Image:

The Bees pigment on crepe 20 x 25 cm

The Smoker pigment on crepe 30 x 40 cm

ArtMaze Magazine Issue 14: curated selection

J o h n n y I z a t t - L o w r y

www.johnizattlowry.co.uk

Image:

The Bees pigment on crepe 20 x 25 cm

The Smoker pigment on crepe 30 x 40 cm

ArtMaze Magazine Issue 14: curated selection

A l y s s

E s t a y

Alyss Estay is an artist born and raised in the greater Los Angeles area. She attended and received her BFA in Printmaking at Academy of Art University in San Francisco. She now resides in Los Angeles and continues to make paintings in her home studio. My work is often a multi layered process in which I use photography and subsequent editing as a medium to inform my paintings. My process of shooting photographs is often happenstance and devoid of conscious thought for what my paintings may become. I choose what becomes my paintings when I sense my subconscious is sharing something my conscious mind can connect with through the photo. I attach relevant emotions and cognition through the subject matter and or compositions; as well I often times heavily edit the photo to produce electric, unnatural colors with heavy grain creating an unrefined atmosphere. In doing so, I seek to convey different states of cognition such as: expressing a sense of detachment from oneself, isolation, shyness, anxiety, musings, frustrations, and mental chatter.

www.alyssestay.com

Image:

No Clear Thoughts acrylic on wood panel 14 x 18 inches

Innie/Outtie acrylic on wood panel 18 x 18 inches

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ArtMaze Magazine Issue 14: curated selection

A l y s s

E s t a y

www.alyssestay.com

Image:

No Clear Thoughts acrylic on wood panel 14 x 18 inches

Innie/Outtie acrylic on wood panel 18 x 18 inches

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ArtMaze Magazine Issue 14: curated selection

S c o t t

L a u f e r

J a m e s

O w e n s

www.thisisnotscott.com

www.instagram.com/jamesowens_

As a self-educated artist, Laufer employs classically informed methods to explore themes of identity, religion and sexuality as they apply to contemporary cultural disillusionment. Drawing on personal history and experience, the works are often autobiographical, if not wholly literal. Laufer lives and works in Los Angeles.

James Owens (B. 1995) is a painter based in south-east London. Since graduating from Camberwell College of Arts with first-class honours in 2018 his work has been shown at the National Gallery through the Evening Standard Art Prize and his prints have been sold in Liberty, London.

Image: Stag Painting 1 oil on canvas 48 x 56 inches

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Owens’ work gathers past, present and imagined scenes to form new narratives which operate in moments of liminality. In these works, Owens actively avoids being a puppet master pulling the strings, rather he sits alongside the viewer and watches the performance unfold. These cliffhanger scenes allow the narrative to extend into future works. For Owens painting can be a means for catharsis, a way to explore the fabric of memory and heritage through largely figurative works. Hugely influenced by his childhood spent in the Cotswolds and a fisherman’s village in the north-east of England, Owens’ source material varies from memories, archive photographs, sketches and objects. Film, animation and children’s books and their devilish undertones also play a part in his construction of narratives—for example in his use of dark silhouettes which roam through the scenes as burglars, strangers and the subconscious. His process is vast. Painting from multiple crude sketches from source material, layers build up over days until a more refined image appears where the tempo slows down as the detail is then applied. Improvised brush strokes leak through the layers, dry and dense marks are juxtaposed in the background. The image can be left with a cold but ambient aura, where all the tones align to convey a certain sensibility. Image: Fortune’s Kippers oil on canvas 100 x 150cm

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ArtMaze Magazine Issue 14: curated selection

S c o t t

L a u f e r

J a m e s

O w e n s

www.thisisnotscott.com

www.instagram.com/jamesowens_

Image: Stag Painting 1 oil on canvas 48 x 56 inches

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ArtMaze Magazine Issue 14: curated selection

M a r i s a

A d e s m a n

Marisa Adesman is a visual artist who uses painting, performance, and video to examine the ways that femininity and modern culture interact. She is interested in exploring gender politics, as well as means of awakening female selfhood. The idea of femininity provides artists with access to a large visual vocabulary, and thus provides opportunities to blur the lines between formal stereotypes. Adesman’s work extends to themes of the body as spectacle, performativity in personal and social relationships, and the tension between agency and expectation within contexts of intimacy and love. Adesman explores various ways in which the grotesque body conflicts with our visual glossary for beauty and health, as promulgated through pop culture and commercial media— especially by confronting experiences of consumption (of media, food, and even one’s own image). Focusing on the kitchen and the dining room, Adesman questions how visual disorientation of the domestic space works to unmoor and destabilize ingrained assumptions that have been historically limiting or debilitating for women. Recently, she has begun to explore the politics of the so-called “domestic goddess”—using her work to negotiate a form of feminine identity that lies between the often-polarized figures of “the feminist” and “the housewife”. Adesman works to reunite her female characters with their goddess power while staying grounded in the familiarity of the domestic scene. Adesman received her Masters of Fine Arts degree in Painting from the Rhode Island School of Design in 2018. In 2013, she earned her Bachelors of Fine Arts degree from the Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts at Washington University in St. Louis, where she majored in painting and psychology. She attended Yale University’s Summer School of Art in Norfolk, Connecticut in 2012 and Columbia University’s Advanced Painting Intensive in 2013, as well as many other residencies across the country, including Marble House Project, Jentel Artist Residency, and PLOP residency in London. Adesman has shown her work in galleries and museums across the country, including Abigail Ogilvy Gallery in Boston, MA, Asya Geisberg Gallery in NYC, and Morgan Lehman Gallery in NYC; she presented her collaborative film, “The Ballad of Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow”, at Elephant West Gallery in London in September 2019.

www.marisaadesman.com

Image:

The Eye of Tine gouache and colored pencil on paper 9 x 12 inches

Snake Eyes gouache and colored pencil on paper 14 x 11 inches

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ArtMaze Magazine Issue 14: curated selection

M a r i s a

A d e s m a n

www.marisaadesman.com

Image:

The Eye of Tine gouache and colored pencil on paper 9 x 12 inches

Snake Eyes gouache and colored pencil on paper 14 x 11 inches

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ArtMaze Magazine Issue 14: curated selection

M a t t h e w

D a n

B a i n b r i d g e

B r e n t o n

www.matthewbainbridge.com

Matthew Bainbridge (b. 1992, Jarrow, UK) graduated from the Glasgow School of Art in 2014 with a first class BA(Hons) in painting and printmaking. In 2018 he received funding from the Hope Scott Trust towards the creation of ‘A Shallow Thing’ at the Number Shop Gallery in Edinburgh, with Summerhall Visual Arts Centre and Patriothall Gallery also recently exhibiting his work. He is currently based in Montréal, Canada. Bainbridge’s practice draws upon imagined worlds to create fantastical environments that pander to the joy of artifice and lurid colour. Ideas of aspiration, boredom, idleness and perceived intellectual fecundity manifest themselves in visuals that are at once as erudite as they are dumb; non-narrative images designed to elucidate the inherent parallels of depth and superficiality within the drawn surface.

ArtMaze Magazine Issue 14: curated selection

www.danbrenton.com

Dan Brenton was born and raised outside the city of Boston, Massachusetts. He spent his childhood playing in the streets of his quiet suburban neighborhood and along the shores of Cape Ann near his family’s beach house. Dan graduated from Salem State University in 2012 with a Bachelor of Arts with a concentration in printmaking. His prints have been featured in solo and group exhibitions, locally and nationally. After graduation, Dan spent less time in the studio as he focused on his family and his job but felt directionless and unfulfilled without the element of art in his life. In an attempt to find something he knew was out in the world and in himself, Dan left home on a bicycle ride that lasted 7 months and covered 14 states. His journey allowed him to reconnect with the artist within by documenting life on the road through writing and photography. Faced with the decision to keep riding or fly home, Dan chose the latter with the excitement of processing his experiences through painting. In my paintings you’ll always find a sense of space to get lost in and a couple of wanderers that will entice you to join them on their journey into the brilliance of nature. They roam across the land where they experience a presence that seems to share a universal pulse with them, posing the question, do we experience the environment from the outside looking in, or are we innately part of this infinite system? As they travel further and further the truth becomes clear: something that once seemed separate from us has always been deeply connected. From describing form and light with small strokes to creating ambiguous spaces with broad and untamed washes, I explore a variety of mark-making techniques to create scenes that attribute a consciousness to nature and allude to a harmony between the wanderers and their environment. The titles reinforce this personification of nature and the interaction between creature and landscape, encouraging the viewers to consider their own relationship with the outside world.

Image:

Stork (Mushroom Mire) coloured pencil on Arches 100% cotton paper 16 x 12 inches

A Little Man Stopped to Watch the World Change Colors with Us gouache on paper 16 x 20 inches

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M a t t h e w

D a n

B a i n b r i d g e

B r e n t o n

www.matthewbainbridge.com

ArtMaze Magazine Issue 14: curated selection

www.danbrenton.com

Image:

Stork (Mushroom Mire) coloured pencil on Arches 100% cotton paper 16 x 12 inches

A Little Man Stopped to Watch the World Change Colors with Us gouache on paper 16 x 20 inches

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J u l i a

G i l

L o r e n E r d r i c h

www.juliagil.portfoliobox.net www.okloren.com

Julia Gil is a Brazilian artist from Sao Paulo, currently residing and creating in Los Angeles. She grew up in a temporary autonomous zone and later received her BFA from Sao Paulo State University (UNESP). Julia’s work transits in the field of drawing, painting and installation, having a particular interest in images that are in between figuration and abstraction. In the last year she has experimented using unusual materials such as beeswax and fire. Julia’s recent work is a result of a very particular process, recalling memories of her childhood through old family photos. The photo first communicates and represents a memory, but in the act of painting it becomes something else. It becomes a tool to access significance and affection, and as it’s being painted, the image gains other information and meaning. This process sometimes ends up removing what was built there before. Creating the image is deconstructing it, adding sometimes is removing. The work doesn’t show intention to be anything, the intention is the journey of making the work. The beeswax color can be perceived as the artist’s skin color, spread all over the painting. The work doesn’t try to deliver beauty, but some kind of truth that can resonate with anyone.

ArtMaze Magazine Issue 14: curated selection

Water takes a primary material role in my process—synthetic and organic pigments and dyes are applied unbound, mixed solely with water, to paper, canvas and other fabrics. Forms return to the third dimension through air dried ceramic works painted with water based media. The rigidity of the pigments and ground is destroyed by the water and amidst these destabilized boundaries forms emerge, all the while appearing to move towards dissolution. I savor the push/pull between deliberate and unintentional movements. Responding directly to the medium through which they are created, both figure and environment appear to be straddling control and mayhem. In this liquidity my relationship to and physical use of medium becomes content: water lends itself to a world where mutability and vulnerability are celebrated as forms of pride and power. Hybrid figures (female/animal/environmental/other) reside comfortably within this world. Each piece resides on a threshold—a merging point of intimacy and menace, of person and place, of the here and the hereafter, of desire solicited and desire articulated, of interiority and intersubjectivity.

Image:

Untitled II beeswax, oil pastels and oil on paper 33 x 46.8 inches

The Gatherer watercolor and acrylic on ceramic 4.5 x 3 x 3.75 inches

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J u l i a

G i l

L o r e n E r d r i c h

www.juliagil.portfoliobox.net www.okloren.com

ArtMaze Magazine Issue 14: curated selection

Image:

Untitled II beeswax, oil pastels and oil on paper 33 x 46.8 inches

The Gatherer watercolor and acrylic on ceramic 4.5 x 3 x 3.75 inches

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O d a

I s e l i n

S ø n d e r l a n d

In my early teenage years I was looking for safety in knowing who I was, and that I was good enough. When I discovered Japanese anime, manga and games, I found a world that, at the time, made more sense. The stories were filled with strong friendships, goodness and fighting evil. An archetype in the different series was a sweet, innocent and kind girl, whom everyone loved. She became my obsession, as I decided I had to become her. In my recent exhibition «Magical Girl»I reflect around the anime girl archetype, the striving towards an endless goal and the struggle of being in control. The watercolor paintings show different characters in an imaginative universe. The recurring mirrors and reflections give an insight to the character’s psyche and a feeling of being watched. Placing them in Norwegian forests and the city of Oslo, I connect a fantasy world with the grounded reality. The pastel color palette balanced with darker tones give my paintings an immediately playful and harmonic tone, contrasted with an underlying anxious feeling within the motive. Figurative painting mimics reality, which allows me to play with the representation of it. I stretch, distort and create unnatural reflections, to alter how we see the motive. Watercolors allow for transparent layers of color, and a fading effect to create light and shadow. By using these techniques, I build up the painting’s depth and mimic certain surfaces. The ideal smoothness of the reflective objects is contrasted by the rougher texture of the medium to create a special look. I’m currently interested in working with the narrative potential in painting. I take inspiration from the graphic structures in certain comics and fairytale illustrations, allowing for several images in one to create a narrative. Lately I have found an interest in ornamental interior architectural or furniture work decorated with images of biblical scenes or icons. The storytelling through this imagery fascinates me – it’s an immediate, yet ambiguous, way of communicating.

www.odaiselin.com

Image: Melk watercolor painting 50 x 39 cm

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Image (left): Marka watercolor painting 85 x 66 cm

Image (right): Dospeil watercolor painting 50 x 39 cm

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ArtMaze Magazine Issue 14: curated selection

O d a

I s e l i n

S ø n d e r l a n d

www.odaiselin.com

Image: Melk watercolor painting 50 x 39 cm

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Image (left): Marka watercolor painting 85 x 66 cm

Image (right): Dospeil watercolor painting 50 x 39 cm

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ArtMaze Magazine Issue 14: curated selection

J u s t i n

A l e s s a n d r o

S a m s o n

F o g o

w w w. n e u m a n n w o l f s o n a r t . c o m /J u s t i n - S a m s o n

Justin Samson gained a BFA from the School of Visual Arts, NY in 2003. He lives and works in New York. In a shifting, often impacted ratio of psychedelic, Op Art, wall-to-wall collage, thrift-store finds, craft, pop, counterculture and sci-fi references, Samson tempers the tendency toward visual overload with an interest in making sly points about display and cultural otherness. He utilizes found images as source material for his collages and paintings, creating a collage-oriented strangely familiar world. Born in 1979, surrounded by the varied influences of pop culture and underground art, Samson’s work employs an aesthetic that recycles the random consumer debris that fills our culture, leaving the viewer mesmerized by the eclectic American artistic experience. Not unrelated to 1980’s Pattern and Decoration, Samson’s layering of decorative materials adds up to something quite more than what he started with: they read like icons of a long record of past styles, transfigured and filtered through his personal memory. Previously represented by John Connelly Presents, and Kravets Wehby Gallery. Samson has had several solo exhibitions in New York, and is currently represented by Neumann Wolfson Art. He has exhibited internationally, including Loyal Gallery, Stockholm, Sweden; Hiromiyoshi Gallery, Tokyo, Japan; Christina Wilson Art Gallery, Copenhagen, Denmark; Mucciaccia Gallery, Rome, Italy. His work has been collected by the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, Minnesota; the Neumann Family collection, New York; de la Cruz Collection, Miami. Samson has exhibited at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, San Francisco; Deitch Projects, New York; Peres Projects, LA, Metro Pictures, New York; the Nassau County Museum, Roslyn, NY; Deste Foundation for Contemporary Art, and the Museum of Modern Art, NY. His exhibitions have been reviewed in the New York Times, and his work has been included in various publications.

ArtMaze Magazine Issue 14: curated selection

www.alessandrofogo.tumblr.com

Born in Thiene (Italy) in 1992, in 2017 Fogo achieved an MA at Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Antwerp (Belgium) after a BA in Visual Arts at IUAV in Venice. In 2018 he won the first prize in the Painting section of the Arte Laguna Prize and in 2019 won the first prize in the Painting section of the Combat Prize. He lives and works in S. Benedetto del Tronto, Italy. Canvases are presented as photograms of rituals and gestures of a timeless spirit, and recount the genesis and history of ideas and objects that are able to survive the progression of eras, settling as current fragments of a not so distant past. These objects are placed in an undefined painted space, where their function becomes ambiguous; they are traces of man’s attempt to communicate with a reality that is superior to him, instruments of traditions, faith, and different cultures whose minimum common denominator is the capacity for synthesis, creations of a spiritual world that are the result of a collective unconscious. The painted scenes are intimate and private moments that break apart at first glance: in the instant in which we try to recognise features and presence, they become empty, losing the specific nature of their narration, to then fill in and return with new signs, new tracks that become universal, abandoning the precise coordinates of time and space. My interest in anthropological nature follows an omnivorous acquisition process of images, forms and figures, defined as a pathway of creation and the manipulation of symbols and images set to disappear, only leaving traces of itself behind.

Image:

Big in Japan acrylic, canvas, wood 51 x 75 inches

Only a big stone oil on canvas 200 x 250 cm

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J u s t i n

A l e s s a n d r o

S a m s o n

F o g o

w w w. n e u m a n n w o l f s o n a r t . c o m /J u s t i n - S a m s o n

ArtMaze Magazine Issue 14: curated selection

www.alessandrofogo.tumblr.com

Image:

Big in Japan acrylic, canvas, wood 51 x 75 inches

Only a big stone oil on canvas 200 x 250 cm

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L a r y s a

M y e r s

I think of my work as picture writing. Using pencil and paper, I make records of my personal history woven into the universal and the cyclical, the mythological and the contemporary. Since becoming a mother of three, my work often reflects upon the ideals of motherhood and its dualities of self-denial and self-fulfillment. I work from imagination influenced by memory, feelings and nature. Repetitive patterns and lines in mark making work to dispel anxiety and lead me to a slower, more reflective state. The settings in my pictures are domestic, wild, mundane and fantastical, each opening into different parts of the psyche and the identity. Larysa currently lives in Beacon, a small town a little over an hour north of New York City, with her three young daughters and husband. She is from the Midwest and upon graduation from college she worked in banking, then moved to New York City and left the financial world to study art. Primarily self taught, she took night classes in academic drawing and painting at Grand Central Academy, and pattern and textile design at Fashion Institute of Technology and School of the Visual Arts. Before moving to Beacon in 2015, she worked in graphic design, textile design and art production and participated in residencies at the Wassaic Project and Chashama. She currently has drawings in the show ‘Soft Temple’ at Mother Gallery and is in the current issue (Issue 9) of Maake Magazine curated by Hein Koh.

www.instagram.com/larysamyers

Image:

Hydra graphite on japanese paper 8.25 x 11.75 inches

A Saint graphite on japanese paper 8.25 x 11.75 inches

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ArtMaze Magazine Issue 14: curated selection

L a r y s a

M y e r s

www.instagram.com/larysamyers

Image:

Hydra graphite on japanese paper 8.25 x 11.75 inches

A Saint graphite on japanese paper 8.25 x 11.75 inches

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ArtMaze Magazine Issue 14: curated selection

A l i c e B r a s s e r

Alice Brasser (1965) lives and works in Haarlem. She was educated at the Amsterdam Academy of Fine Art. Brasser’s work has been included in corporate collections and in many private collections both in The Netherlands and abroad. In September 2017 a book was published about her work entitled ‘Dreamscapes’. This publication shows an overview of paintings and drawings from the last ten years. The main theme in her work is the landscape. Trees, grasses, fields and flowers are recurring motifs in her drawings and paintings, in which night and dusk, light and shadow, reflections in water and especially the intensity of colour evoke an atmosphere of mystery. Her work often features human beings or traces of human presence. “In the painting world of Alice Brasser we experience the boredom of young people hanging around, lush bushes on an old concrete slab, white flower meadows, shadowy entertainments in a forest, a black couch with a view of a dark city and a sweltering scene at a riverbank. (..) Much can be said about the art of Alice Brasser. In her paintings, nature takes back what is due to her and manifests itself in shining and in wondrous hues. (..) The works leave a stunning impression. The word beauty alone is not sufficient to characterize them.” Haarlems Dagblad, ‘Tidy land is the end of fantasy’, 16 September 2017, by Jaap Timmers.

www.alicebrasser.com

In addition to painting I have always continued to draw. I like the directness of drawing. It is a quick way to capture ideas with just a pencil or piece of charcoal. If I have little time to paint and think in layers or when I am restless, I start drawing. In 2017, the need arose, as a counterpart to my landscape paintings, to make drawings where the focus is directed indoors. The setting in these works is a space inside, although in all drawings the contact with the outside is not lost because there are windows. It is a series that only grows slowly. Every drawing is a story in itself. They are based on book excerpts, loose associations, fragments of previously seen images, old saved photos and household items from the artist. All this combined into spaces that appeal to the imagination. If the content is already a hodgepodge, so is the technique of drawing. Because the large sheets of paper are stretched, it is possible to work with a combination of diluted acrylic paint, ink, charcoal and pastel chalk.

ArtMaze Magazine Issue 14: curated selection

Image:

Collection mixed media on paper 98 x 146 cm

Keep Out mixed media on paper 110 x 150 cm

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A l i c e B r a s s e r

www.alicebrasser.com

ArtMaze Magazine Issue 14: curated selection

Image:

Collection mixed media on paper 98 x 146 cm

Keep Out mixed media on paper 110 x 150 cm

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J o e l B r o w n

www.joelmbrown.com

Failing to gain residency to a tiny medieval hill town in Italy, Joel returned to the States soon after the US economic crisis and attended school, again. After leaving Boston he moved to Brooklyn, NY where he continues to paint his visions.

ArtMaze Magazine Issue 14: curated selection

Image:

Psalm 23 gouache on paper 8 x 11.5 inches

Jesus Jiu Jitsu gouache on paper 17 x 9 inches

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J o e l B r o w n

www.joelmbrown.com

ArtMaze Magazine Issue 14: curated selection

Image:

Psalm 23 gouache on paper 8 x 11.5 inches

Jesus Jiu Jitsu gouache on paper 17 x 9 inches

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J a c k s o n C a s a d y

Jackson Casady lives and works in Los Angeles. His current paintings explore ideas around entertainers, storytelling, and celebrity culture. His experience working at film studios and for award shows like the Oscars inform the narrative. The scenes reflect an interest in performance, theater and the cinematic, often referencing iconic images and colorful settings associated with Hollywood and its complicated glamorous-yet-grotesque nature. The surreal, magical, and absurd rendering of figures, space, and perspective reflect the strange state of our modern world. A love of comedians and late night TV give a space for humor and jokes in the work. Like a comedy routine, the paintings turn tragedy into comedy with images instead of words. The cast of hubristic characters are performing, acting out a distorted reality, exaggerating, and embellishing life. The frequently romanticized and psychedelic narratives address themes of identity, masculinity, media consumption, and dreams which are emblematic of Hollywood’s influence and our culture.

ArtMaze Magazine Issue 14: curated selection

www.jacksoncasady.com

Image:

Big Iron oil and acrylic on canvas 48 x 48 inches

Tuned In and Out oil and acrylic on canvas 48 x 48 inches

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J a c k s o n C a s a d y

ArtMaze Magazine Issue 14: curated selection

www.jacksoncasady.com

Image:

Big Iron oil and acrylic on canvas 48 x 48 inches

Tuned In and Out oil and acrylic on canvas 48 x 48 inches

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S e b a s t i a n

B u r g e r

I’m a visual artist from Germany working mainly in painting. I attended art schools in Vienna and Leipzig where I studied under Neo Rauch for six years. Upon completing my studies as a master student (‘Meisterschueler’) in 2012 I worked as an administrative assistant for Neo Rauch for two years. I have since established a studio practice in Leipzig and was invited to participate in numerous national and international exhibition projects in both commercial and institutional contexts. This includes solo and group exhibitions in New York, Milan, Naples, Turin, London, Copenhagen, Stockholm, Paris, Brest, Berlin, Hamburg, Leipzig, and other cities. At the moment I am working on an institutional solo presentation at the Museum für Moderne Kunst in Frankfurt/Oder scheduled for early 2020 after realizing two solo exhibitions in Leipzig and Prague in 2018 and 2019. In 2013 I received a year long scholarship from the Konrad-Adenauer-Foundation in Berlin. In 2018 I was shortlisted for a fully funded residency at the Thomas Mann House in Los Angeles. In 2014 I spent six months in Rome working on a series of paintings in which the new and unfamiliar city substantially influenced and changed my work. In June 2019 I moved to New York to start a new body of work before I’ll most likely be returning to Leipzig by the end of the year. In my painting practice, I explore themes like the integrity of the human body, its physicalness and the construction of identity through materiality, textures, and surfaces. Furthermore, there are references and hints towards high and low brow art, art history, fashion as well as sexuality and violence. I am trying to create works that look back at their observers, draw them in with delicate textures and gradients but at some point may almost repulse them through the harshness of shapes, forms, and colours. I see my paintings as sediments of meaning derived from a multitude of references which may not seem logical at first but start to make sense through an intuitive approach. I think this ambivalence is what can hopefully keep a work of art interesting over a long period of time. A few years ago I started to use aluminum panels as the main support for my oil painting which gives the work a very clean almost industrial look and feel which augments the aforementioned themes.

www.sebastianburger.de

Image:

1524 oil on aluminum 120 × 90 cm

1515 oil on aluminum 80 × 60 cm

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S e b a s t i a n

B u r g e r

www.sebastianburger.de

Image:

1524 oil on aluminum 120 × 90 cm

1515 oil on aluminum 80 × 60 cm

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ArtMaze Magazine Issue 14: curated selection

My name is Miles, I am 22 years old and live and work in New Zealand. I am 5’9” and have curly hair. I’m inspired by cartoon physics and the playfully fluid ontological status of animated cartoon characters. In cartoon-space, semiotics and ontology are one and the same. In cartoons these tensions are often extended into visual gags. Almost none of my paintings are real paintings. I experiment with tricks that give drawing media funny effects, these often involve solvents and other chemicals. Because they respond differently to everything I throw at them, I work on a variety of different fabrics. I like working with technical uncertainties because it allows me to play with something that has a mind of its own.

M i l e s

H e n d r i c k s

www.instagram.com/miles_pictures

Image:

Untitled (Elixir) mixed media on bull denim 12 x 16 inches

Untitled (Cats) mixed media on bull denim 12 x 16 inches

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M i l e s

H e n d r i c k s

www.instagram.com/miles_pictures

Image:

Untitled (Elixir) mixed media on bull denim 12 x 16 inches

Untitled (Cats) mixed media on bull denim 12 x 16 inches

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ArtMaze Magazine Issue 14: curated selection

M i k o V e l d k a m p

Across the world, national belonging seems to be more and more defined by exclusion of other identities. I personally embrace all three of my national identities: Surinamese, Dutch and American. In my work a collapse of time and place happens. Figure and ground become detached and complicated in one place. Yet it is not a “better” alternative in any way. Globalization flattens. The exotic, the cultural novelty and the technological novelty become mundane instantly. My figures mostly pose and are aware of being viewed, interrupting their very own moment, making truly lived moments of unawareness all the more precious and scarce. I believe our cultural richness must be embraced, digested and embodied, not consumed and harvested as cold data, and my paintings must speak through the material, with the touch of the brush, the scale of the mark and sensuality of surface and color to a point of fluency that resonates viscerally and cannot be simulated.

www.mikoveldkamp.com

Miko Veldkamp was born in Surinam, grew up in The Netherlands and has been painting mostly in the United States. His work has been shown internationally in places such as Galerie Rianne Groen in Rotterdam, Poppostions in Brussels, Museum van Bommel van Dam in Venlo, The Lewis Center for the Arts in Princeton, Off-White Columns in New York. He was a resident at the Rijksakademie van Beeldende Kunsten in Amsterdam, CCA Andratx in Mallorca, and a Hodder Fellow at Princeton University. He is currently in the CUNY Hunter College MFA program, in New York, projected to graduate in the Spring of 2021.

Image:

Spring Runner oil on cardboard 10.75 x 12 inches

Two Fishermen oil on canvas 36 x 24 inches

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M i k o V e l d k a m p

www.mikoveldkamp.com

Image:

Spring Runner oil on cardboard 10.75 x 12 inches

Two Fishermen oil on canvas 36 x 24 inches

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F r e d d i e

G r e i s

R o b e r t

Z e h n d e r

www.robert-zehnder.com www.freddiegreis.com

Freddie Greis was born in 1990, grew up in Madison NJ, and currently lives in New York City. He received his BFA from Cornell University in 2012. He recently completed the MFA program at Hunter College this past spring. He has shown work in New York and New Jersey. What better feeling is there than seeing your greatest fears turn from stone to vapor? When your all-imprisoning thoughts turn to driftwood in a vast ocean? And wouldn’t you laugh if it happened because of the way the light cascaded off of a puddle, or because of the peculiar shape of a fallen leaf? I am inspired by the enduring desire to seek relief, solace, and meaning in nature. Painting provides a place of freedom to explore feelings not present or lacking in everyday life: stillness, optimism, emotional vulnerability, and equanimity. It also provides a space to explore intellectually dubious or odd ideas: animal consciousness, mystical experiences, dream recall, and more. I am interested in exploring all of these things in order to reveal an underlying union between oneself and the natural environment. To experience that identity is to be unburdened from the perpetual churn of interiority and anxiety. In short, I want to elicit an experience of deep relief, of bewilderment, and wonder.

ArtMaze Magazine Issue 14: curated selection

My name is Robert Zehnder, I am an artist living and working in Brooklyn, New York. I was born and raised in New Jersey and received my Bachelor of Fine Arts degree from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Currently, I am making paintings, pastel drawings, and sculpture. In addition, I have been curating as well as collaborating with other artists. My work primarily focuses on symbolism and figuration, and how the two bend towards one another; motifs of devils and their oddly human ruminations, and repetitions of animal and vegetal imagery. I am interested in exploring the inner sensibilities of an archetypical character, by accompanying them with existential while simplistic sceneries. The invention of visual paradoxes in my work is meant to reflect how easy it is to reach sensorial and cognitive confusion. The figure is typically complacent, even welcoming—each character offers the viewer a generous gaze into its headspace or landscape. I tend to embed these figures in an expressionist blanket of color and form while using simple surrealist methods to offer different pictorial spaces in one image. Navigating the informational landscape in present-day is progressively changing how one deals with imagery, symbols, and scenarios. My concern is in the potential of dubious environments and false-truths that come with that access, as well as the proximity between severity and mildness. The feeling I gather from that is anxiety or rather a deep inward leap while experiencing something vapid and satisfactory. I aim for a tonality in my work that can softly capture that. This body of work underlines the absurdity of our reality. Colorful saturation and none alarming confusion.

Image:

Last Remembered Thing oil on shaped canvas 38 x 35 inches

Brick Incinerator oil on canvas 38 x 40 Inches

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F r e d d i e

G r e i s

R o b e r t

Z e h n d e r

www.robert-zehnder.com www.freddiegreis.com

ArtMaze Magazine Issue 14: curated selection

Image:

Last Remembered Thing oil on shaped canvas 38 x 35 inches

Brick Incinerator oil on canvas 38 x 40 Inches

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Claudia Keep received a BA in Fine Arts from Bryn Mawr College. Keep’s work has been displayed at The Painting Center in NYC; the Studio School in NYC; Artemis Gallery in Northeast Harbor, ME; Star Gallery in Northeast Harbor, ME; Able Baker Contemporary in Portland, ME, and at Galerie Ulysses in Vienna, Austria. Keep currently lives and works year-round on Mount Desert Island, Maine. Working from life, and personal photographs, my work is an attempt to capture the exceptional within a simple, seemingly, ordinary moment. An investigation into the “every-day” reveals a paradoxical and fascinating complexity. My use of brush strokes, color, and texture of paint are an effort to arrive at an intimate and heightened sense of a moment or an object. The variations of whites in a painted wall, the color of a discarded can, the shape of a shadow beneath a car, or the variety of textures at the meeting of nature and man-made object are what, to me, make life rich and exciting. By capturing the specificity of detail in the everyday things that surround us, I hope to communicate something universally true.

C l a u d i a

Image: Doobie Painting oil on masonite 11.5 x 12 inches

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K e e p

www.claudiakeep.com

Image (left): 3:02 pm oil on canvas 20 x 24 inches

Image (right): Animal hospital oil on masonite 14 x 15 inches

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ArtMaze Magazine Issue 14: curated selection

C l a u d i a

Image: Doobie Painting oil on masonite 11.5 x 12 inches

130

K e e p

www.claudiakeep.com

Image (left): 3:02 pm oil on canvas 20 x 24 inches

Image (right): Animal hospital oil on masonite 14 x 15 inches

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N i c a s i o F e r n a n d e z

Nicasio Fernandez’s vivid oil paintings unravel from his imagination pushing everyday life into absurdity, creating a world that is relatable, yet outlandish. Within his otherworldly paintings there is a cast of highly expressive figures who appear delicately grotesque with their overexaggerated limbs, phallic snouts and unnatural hues of flesh. Some of these figures are questioning the damage occurring, but it’s clear most are on the verge of snapping or far past it. Fernandez’s work pictorially relates to Peter Saul, Judith Linhares, German Expressionists, Chicago Imagists and cartoons from Chuck Jones. Fernandez’s paintings are occupied with ideas of slapstick and dark humor, parody of masculinity, and questionable emotional/physical endurance of life. Utilizing these elements in a surrealistic tone, results in psychological images that are both pleasurable and discomforting.

www.nicasiofernandez.com

Nicasio Fernandez was born in Yonkers, New York in 1993 and currently lives and works in Mahopac, New York. He received his BFA from the School of Visual Arts in New York. Fernandez has participated in multiple group shows and has held solo exhibitions in New York, NY; Paris, France; San Juan, Puerto Rico; and Brooklyn, NY.

Image:

My Hot Wiener oil and towel on canvas 54 x 44 inches

A Little Off the Top oil on linen 36 x 28 inches

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N i c a s i o F e r n a n d e z

www.nicasiofernandez.com

Image:

My Hot Wiener oil and towel on canvas 54 x 44 inches

A Little Off the Top oil on linen 36 x 28 inches

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S o y e o n S h i n

Soyeon Shin (Soyeon S Abeles) is a visual artist from Seoul, South Korea. She received her MFA at the Pratt Institute, Brooklyn, NY in February 2013, and her BFA at the Seoul National University, Seoul, Korea in 2007. She lives and works in Brooklyn, New York. Shin’s work has been exhibited at Alessandro Berni Gallery, New York; Select Art Fair, New York; Fountain Art Fair, New York; New York Art Residency and Studios Foundation, Brooklyn, NY; Gallery Giotta (Seoul, Korea). Her work has been featured in Internationale Kunst Heute 2015 (IKH-Publishing, 2015); The Artist Catalogue, Volume 3 Issue 2, (2014); and The New Criterion, The Other Fairs by Brian P. Kelly (2014).

www.soyeonshin.com

Currently, I focus on painting landscapes (cityscapes) in Brooklyn, New York. I want to call them “mindscapes”. I get inspired by urban nature and animals in streets and parks in New York, such as different kinds of trees, plants, and squirrels along with different types of buildings, facilities, and urban objects. I enjoy seeing how nature is wise to get along well with the human-made things. My paintings imply the human mind and relationship, but they are just landscapes as they are. They look very surrealistic, but they seem just real for me on a spiritual level. When I see certain moments of these urban creatures and objects combined together I feel those are like certain types of mind. To get closer to shapes of mind, I season a little of my imagination in these landscapes. In another way, I see unrealistic moments of animals and trees in the city. I rearrange them on the canvas and depict them realistically, but they look very unreal on canvas. I enjoy switching from what I see to what I feel using visual elements, and vice versa. This process gives me a time of healing by reorganizing my thoughts, releasing my dark feelings and getting space for better moves. I hope my paintings can represent the viewer’s mind as well. These works become a surrealistic version of mindscape through which the viewers can see a particular moment in their own lives. In my work, what I feel is not exactly what you see. But what you feel is exactly what I made.

Image:

Dekalb Avenue acrylic on canvas 20 x 24 inches

Humboldt Street acrylic on canvas 30 x 40 inches

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S o y e o n S h i n

www.soyeonshin.com

Image:

Dekalb Avenue acrylic on canvas 20 x 24 inches

Humboldt Street acrylic on canvas 30 x 40 inches

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editorial selection of works Featured image: Mary Laube Shadow Box acrylic on panel 14 x 11 inches more on p. 145

C h r i s t o p h e r D a v i s o n

Christopher Davison is a New York-based painter with an MFA from the Tyler School of Art. His first solo exhibition in New York was in 2009 at Nicelle Beauchene Gallery and his most recent two-person exhibitions were at Horton Gallery, NYC and Harpy Gallery, New Jersey. He has been included in exhibitions in New York, Miami, Copenhagen, Philadelphia, Boston, Rome, Los Angeles and Brussels. His work can be seen in the public collections of the Rose Art Museum (MA), University of Alabama (AL) and Museum of the Hague (Netherlands). In addition to creating works of art, Christopher is a parttime professor of art in Philadelphia at the University of the Arts, and Moore College of Art. I see the creative act as a vital and intuitive means to make sense of myself, my environment and the relationship between the two. The process I use is rooted in an ability to draw from life but the images I render are found completely in the imagination. Rather than trying to draw or paint one particular moment in time, I want to take all of my observations, combine them and allow their form to shift and change under the influence of the unconscious. I believe that only through the workings of the unconscious can I transform the specific experience of my day-to-day life into something more universal. The resultant images often utilize the human figure as a medium for exploring nature’s cycle of death and resurrection.

www.christopherdavison.com

Image: Right Of Spring (I) pencil, ink on paper 13 x 10 inches

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Image (left): Night Light pencil, ink on paper 13 x 10 inches

Image (right): Garçon Avec Chat ink on paper 11.5 x 8.75 inches

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C h r i s t o p h e r D a v i s o n

www.christopherdavison.com

Image: Right Of Spring (I) pencil, ink on paper 13 x 10 inches

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Image (left): Night Light pencil, ink on paper 13 x 10 inches

Image (right): Garçon Avec Chat ink on paper 11.5 x 8.75 inches

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A n t h o n y

P a d i l l a

www.anthonyzpadilla.com

ArtMaze Magazine Issue 14: editorial selection

To m

P r i n s e l l

www.tomprinsell.com

My goal is to highlight the beauty and abstractions found in nature. Focusing primarily on plants and the densely packed forests and jungles of the tropics.

My practice is inspired by the myth and anecdote in medieval and Renaissance art and architecture. Carrying a similar atmosphere, my paintings utilize multiple picture planes and precarious perspectives. The composition varies, ranging from film-still, landscape, to a frameinside—a frame format where the painting has an awareness of its own boundaries. Beyond the relationship between light, shapes, and color, my paintings aim to distort physical and psychological space.

Image:

Full bloom oil on canvas 48 x 60 inches

Contact acrylic on panel 30 x 24 inches

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141

A n t h o n y

P a d i l l a

www.anthonyzpadilla.com

ArtMaze Magazine Issue 14: editorial selection

To m

P r i n s e l l

www.tomprinsell.com

My goal is to highlight the beauty and abstractions found in nature. Focusing primarily on plants and the densely packed forests and jungles of the tropics.

Image:

Full bloom oil on canvas 48 x 60 inches

Contact acrylic on panel 30 x 24 inches

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141

N i c h o l a s

W i l l i a m

J o h n s o n

Nicholas William Johnson (b.1982, Honolulu, Hawaii) is a painter who studies the emerging science of plant sentience and the nonhuman turn in contemporary critical discourse in connection with ethnobotanical accounts of ancient indigenous knowledge and use of plants and mythologies about plant entities. His recent canvases are composed of intensely hued palettes and floating arrays of vegetation that suggest altered states of consciousness, that last green ray that casts everything in acute spectral colours, atop a mossy textural materiality like some fungal network or organism on the forest floor. Johnson studied philosophy before completing an MA in painting at the Royal College of Art, London. Recent exhibitions include: ‘Sticky’, House of Egorn, Berlin, DE (2019); ‘The John Moores Painting Prize’, Liverpool Museums, UK (2018); ‘Plant Communication Network’, Peter von Kant, London, UK (2018); ‘Inns of Molten Blue’, Plus-One, Antwerp, BE (2017); ‘Dewdrinker’, Montoro 12, Rome, IT (2016); ‘The Averard Hotel’, London, UK (2016); ‘Secrets in the Carbon Atom’, PODIUM, Oslo, NO (2016); ‘The Catlin Prize’, London, UK (2016); ‘New Sensations’, selected by Saatchi Gallery, UK (2015). His work has been covered by Artsy, Elephant Magazine, Nero, Studio International, Apollo Magazine, Dazed, Harper’s Bazaar, The Financial Times, and The Times.

www.nicholasjohnson.ca

Image:

Antennae acrylic, pigment, fabric on canvas. 80 x 65 cm

Another Angel’s Trumpet acrylic, pigment, fabric on canvas. 80 x 65 cm

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N i c h o l a s

W i l l i a m

J o h n s o n

www.nicholasjohnson.ca

Image:

Antennae acrylic, pigment, fabric on canvas. 80 x 65 cm

Another Angel’s Trumpet acrylic, pigment, fabric on canvas. 80 x 65 cm

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N e t t l e

G r e l l i e r

www.nettlegrellier.com

After graduating from University of Brighton, UK, in 2015, Nettle has exhibited in Barcelona and had solo exhibitions in London and Bristol. Whilst living in Spain, Nettle co-ran Los Artistas del Cortijo, a residency for early career artists with an emphasis on community and affordability. Nettle was one of the winners of the Delphian Prize Open Call 2019, with her painting Daybed receiving judges pick. She has recently been shortlisted for the ACS collecting prize and is enrolled on the Turps Banana correspondence course 2019-20. I think a lot about stereotypical British awkwardness around intimacy and I make paintings that are a celebration of human connection and tenderness. Starting with one figure, I will make them connect and fit around one another until they have filled the space. I like to find the point at which it could easily tip over into discomfort, too cramped or too difficult a pose to be natural, and make a point of the tenderness and comfort between the subjects. Often setting them into imaginary landscapes influenced by my time spent living in Southern Spain, I aim to create a juxtaposition between empathy for each other and an ignorance for what is happening behind their backs. Behind the figures there’s a hot, dry and empty landscape, a hostile environment. I want the viewer to imagine the future with this landscape and turn around in time to face the problems we have created.

ArtMaze Magazine Issue 14: editorial selection

M a r y

L a u b e

www.marylaube.com

Mary Laube was born in Seoul, South Korea. She received an MFA from the University of Iowa in 2012. Her paintings have been exhibited recently at the SPRING/BREAK Art Show (NYC); Monaco (St. Louis); Tiger Strikes Asteroid (NYC), and Coop Gallery (Nashville). Her work has been supported by several artist residencies including the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, and Stiwdeo Maelor in Wales. In 2015 she was the Fanoon Visiting Artist at the Virginia Commonwealth University, Qatar. She is the recent recipient of a Sustainable Arts Foundation Award and an AHL Foundation Visual Art Award. Laube has upcoming exhibitions at Trestle Gallery (NYC) and Whittier College (LA). In the fall she will be in residence at the Wassaic Project and Yaddo. Laube is currently an Assistant Professor at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. Painting is a vehicle for contemplating the experience of memory by representing the relationship between material culture and memory making. Clothing, boxes, braids of hair, textiles, and tables are treated as portraits—vessels for the inscription of memory or surrogates for absent bodies. The objects I paint come from various sources including museum collections, personal artifacts, and other objects related to the broader act of memorialization. Things that are worn or touched have an irreplaceable potency. Physically inert, they become animated: performing as stand-ins for the human figure, uncannily hovering between the living and the non-living world. Shadow-like, these portraits point to the liminal space between memory and its origin.

Image:

Spend some time oil on canvas 166 x 120 cm

Queen Min’s Hair acrylic on panel 9 x 12 inches

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N e t t l e

G r e l l i e r

www.nettlegrellier.com

ArtMaze Magazine Issue 14: editorial selection

M a r y

L a u b e

www.marylaube.com

Image:

Spend some time oil on canvas 166 x 120 cm

Queen Min’s Hair acrylic on panel 9 x 12 inches

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A p a r n a S a r k a r

Aparna graduated from Pomona College in 2014 as a Mathematics major and a Studio Art minor. Since then, she has lived in Brooklyn, NY, teaching math and developing her painting practice. Aparna’s work has been shown and collected in California, New York, and Washington, DC. She has completed residencies with SVA, Trestle Gallery, Obracadobra, and Woodstock Byrdcliffe Guild, for which she received the Meredith Morabito and Henrietta Mantooth Full Fellowship. This spring, Aparna studied printmaking as a scholarship student at the Manhattan Graphics Center. She began a Painting MFA at the Rhode Island School of Design in September 2019. I paint the brown femme body in shifting, mythological spaces. I am influenced by a conflux of South Asian artistic traditions, including the flatness of Persian miniatures and the rolling, abstracted spaces of Tibetan deity paintings. The vine-like designs on my mother’s dupattas and the clashing colors of vendors’ saris in Mumbai drive my color and pattern choices. I mesh these cultural and art-historical markers with my own queer, Western, atheist sensibility to make work that celebrates self-care, intimacy between friends, and indulgence. Characters sit like deities in abstract interiors, where body parts and plant forms move fluidly around the picture plane. My recent clay tiles combine woodcut carving with painting to create windows into intimate worlds. They are daily reminders of power, talismans for celebration and worship. Figures emerge from ground playful, wobbling, and proud, their bodies filled with organic pattern. The frames are populated with ciphers that suggest the ubiquity of the body in our landscape and reference the classic plant forms of Indian tile work.

www.aparnasarkar.us

Image: Tile IX (Home Alone) ceramic 10.25 x 5.5 x .25 inches

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Image (left): Tile III (Feeling Big and Small at the Same Time) ceramic 10.5 x 7 x .25 inches

Image (right): Tile V (Smoke Break) ceramic 10 x 8 x .25 inches

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ArtMaze Magazine Issue 14: editorial selection

A p a r n a S a r k a r

www.aparnasarkar.us

Image: Tile IX (Home Alone) ceramic 10.25 x 5.5 x .25 inches

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Image (left): Tile III (Feeling Big and Small at the Same Time) ceramic 10.5 x 7 x .25 inches

Image (right): Tile V (Smoke Break) ceramic 10 x 8 x .25 inches

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ArtMaze Magazine Issue 14: editorial selection

J o n a t h a n

L u x

Lux gained an MA in Painting from Royal College of Art in 2014, and a BA from Jacksonville University. Born in Bluefield West Virginia, he lives and works in London. The paintings I make are based on literature and autobiography. I paint about people, about relationships, adventure, longing, and domesticity. I find it very satisfying to explore subjects which I feel strongly about, but engage them in a way whereby they are rendered opaque and convey a broader and ultimately unknowable resonance. Having said that, painting can be mysterious and I don’t always know where things come from. Sometimes I only understand what’s happening after a painting is finished. I walk forward with one hand, while the other one is covering my tracks. I don’t really know how I got there, but there I am. Memories and nostalgia can be a guiding force in spite of how untrustworthy they can be. I’m ok with that because within that lack of certainty there exists a marvellous latitude for spontaneity and discovery, which to me seems naturally suited to painting.

www.jonathanlux.com

Image:

Image (left):

Midnight Girl ink on cotton over plywood 70 x 60 cm

Denim & Silk ink on paper 40 x 30 cm

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Image (right): Who Needs Twitter oil on canvas 120 x 90 cm

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ArtMaze Magazine Issue 14: editorial selection

J o n a t h a n

L u x

www.jonathanlux.com

Image:

Image (left):

Midnight Girl ink on cotton over plywood 70 x 60 cm

Denim & Silk ink on paper 40 x 30 cm

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Image (right): Who Needs Twitter oil on canvas 120 x 90 cm

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ArtMaze Magazine Issue 14: editorial selection

B r i a n

S c o t t

C a m p b e l l

www.brianscottcampbell.com

Brian Scott Campbell (b. 1983, Columbus, OH) received a BFA from Columbus College of Art and Design, OH, and an MFA from Mason Gross School of the Arts, Rutgers University, NJ. Campbell has exhibited widely including shows at Dutton, New York; Fredericks & Freiser, New York; Asya Geisberg Gallery, New York; Jeff Bailey Gallery, New York; Metropolitan Art Society, Beirut (Curated by Suzanne Geiss Co. New York); Zevitas Marcus, Los Angeles; Ms Barbers, Los Angeles; 9800 S Sepulveda, Los Angeles (Curated by Shanaynay, Paris); David Shelton Gallery, Houston; Circuit 12, Dallas, TX; David Risley Gallery, Copenhagen; NADA New York and Untitled Miami Beach Art Fairs among others. Awards and residencies include Atlantic Center for the Arts Residency with artist Dana Schutz; a McColl Center for Visual Art Full Fellowship; a Vermont Studio Center Fellowship; the Artist in the Marketplace Program, Bronx Museum, New York. Campbell’s work has been reviewed in Modern Painters /Blouin ArtInfo; Whitehot Magazine; Los Angeles Times; Contemporary Art Review LA; The Huffington Post; Hyperallergic; Two Coats of Paint; It’s Nice That (London); and i-D Magazine-Vice, amongst others. Campbell lives in Denton, Texas and is Assistant Professor in Drawing and Painting at the College of Visual Arts and Design at the University of North Texas. These flashe on canvas works depict abstracted landscapes populated by trees, mountains, rolling farmland, and bodies of water. The works are primarily in grayscale and punctuated by small amounts of flat color. The thinly textured paint and loose chalky black outlines create a sense of play and movement to an otherwise motionless scene. The paintings revive familiar motifs, remaining rooted in conventions of foreground and background space, yet they are distinguished by personal iconography and bold child-like abstraction, whereby gravity, scale, and reality are provoked. Campbell pushes form, line, and now color to create collision-like exchanges of symbols and shapes within an unhinged, wobbly landscape.

Image:

Ducks flashe on canvas 46 x 36 inches

Sun Downer flashe on canvas 46 x 36 inches

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B r i a n

S c o t t

C a m p b e l l

www.brianscottcampbell.com

Image:

Ducks flashe on canvas 46 x 36 inches

Sun Downer flashe on canvas 46 x 36 inches

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We are looking to help more young and emerging artists to publish and promote their work If you would like your work to be featured in our upcoming issues, please find out more details on how to apply to be considered. See p. 11 or visit our website: www.artmazemag.com We have an open call for art for the next print issue which provides publishing opportunities, as well as the ongoing open call for online blog. For any questions, please feel free get in touch with us at info@artmazemag.com

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