Issue 27 by artmazemag

tion 27, 2022 E di

Featured image: Vilmer Engelbrecht The Abduction of Persephone oil on canvas 150 x 200 cm more on p. 86-88

ArtMaze 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.

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Artists or any art organisations on behalf of artists from all countries are welcome to submit.

ArtMaze Magazine is published five times per year and announces a competition-based curated call for art for each issue every 2-3 months. We invite guest curators from internationally renowned galleries as well as independent art professionals and artists to select works for each issue’s curated section of works.

We accept works to be sent to us for consideration only via our annual competition-based calls for art for print publications. Please visit our website for more details: www.artmazemag.com/call-for-art or see p. 11

ArtMaze print editions offer its readers a continuous art experience which includes interviews with our guest curators and featured artists from recently published issues; as well as our carefully curated selections of artworks which offer an insight to the inspiring progress and success of an extraordinary amount of emerging contemporary artists from all over the world who have been applying to our competition-based curated calls.

HOW TO SUBMIT YOUR WORK Artists are welcome to submit works in any medium: painting, drawing, sculpture, ceramics, printmaking, photography, textile, installation, digital, film, performance, any mixed media etc.

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Each individual submitting work to ArtMaze Magazine opportunities is provided with a fair and equal chance. Incoming submissions are following a very specific and unique process via Submittable platform, therefore each competition-based call for art has a transparent policy.

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FRONT COVER:

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Angel Cotray Growing Pains oil and oil pastels on canvas 36 x 48 inches more on p. 120-121

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online ISSN No. 2399-8938

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Zijun Zhao Erysichthon pencil on paper 27 x 38.5 cm more on p. 130-131

ArtMaze Magazine is printed in London, United Kingdom by Park Communications Ltd.

interviewed

call for art

F ra g me nte d narrat ives : In c onve rs at ion w it h Mon i ka Chlebek ................................................14

Edition 29 ...............................................................................................11

B ene at h t he s u r fac e : T he de eply s ymb olic fig u rat ive p ai nt i ng of Se r p i l M av i Üstün .........26

Contents

curated selection of works

editorial selection of works

Neve na P r ijic ...........................................................................40 Kate Sable .................................................................................42 G e orgia E lrod .......................................................... ................44 Nat alie Be all . ...........................................................................46 M ar k S e ngbu s ch ...................................................... ................48 Melan ie Mc L ai n ....................................................... ................50 Wi lde r A lis on ..........................................................................52 Annalise Neil ............................................................................54 A ndrew Woolb r ight ................................................ ................56 S on i a J ia . . . . . . . ........................................................... ................58 A n n ie Ewa sk io ........................................................ ................60 M ichelle H inebrook .................................................................62 Ye on s u Ju . . . . . . ..........................................................................64 Melis s a Mu r ray .......................................................................66 D ana Old fat he r ....................................................... ................68 Je s sic a A laz raki .......................................................................70 Jordi n A lan i s . ........................................................... ................72 Cat he r ine H a ggar t y .................................................................74 Na st i a Ast ak hova .................................................... ................76 Ab rah m G u t h rie ...................................................... ................78

Megan Nugroho ....................................................... . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 82 Margaret Tho mpso n ................................................ . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 84 Vil mer E ngel brecht ................................................ . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 86 Madel ine No rto n ..................................................... . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 88 Ko sh iro Akiyama ................................................... . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9 0 Kentaro Oku mu ra ................................................. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9 2 Vinna B egin ............................................................ . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9 4 Geo rgia Grinter ...................................................... . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9 6 Lyd ia B aker ............................................................ . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9 8 Oscar Fouz Lopez .................................................. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10 0 Adam Lupto n .......................................................... . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 102 Wo o Jin Jo o ............................................................. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 104 Anastasia Ko mar .................................................... . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 106 Antho ny Pad illa ...................................................... . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 108 S aul Chernick ......................................................... . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 10 Juic Iish ................................................................... . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 1 2 Alessand ro Keegan ................................................. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 14 Oakley Tapola ....................................................... . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 16 Xander Hoffman ..................................................... . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 1 8 Angel Cotray .......................................................... . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 2 0 Madeleine B ialke ................................................... . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 2 2 S imo ne Quiles ......................................................... . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 24 Ch ristina Valenzuela ............................................. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 2 6 Alanna Hernandez .................................................. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 2 8 Zij un Zh ao ............................................................... . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 3 0 Zay n Qahtani .......................................................... . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 3 2 Brad Stu mpf ............................................................................134 Jeff ly Gabriela Mol ina ........................................... . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 3 6 E rnesto Renda ........................................................ . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 3 8 No ah S ch neiderman .............................................. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14 0 Ly n Liu ................................................................... . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14 2 Ch ristian Perd ix .................................................... . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14 4 Flo ris Van Lo ok ...................................................... . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14 6 And rew S chul theis ................................................. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 148 Neel Jassani ............................................................ . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15 0 Matth ias Rich ard Ramsey ....................................... . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15 2 Ray mie Iadevaia ..................................................... . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15 4

Featured image: Alessandro Keegan Light Out Of The Hyperborean oil on wood 11 x 14 inches more on p. 114-115

from the founder Dear Reader, we are pleased to release our 27th Edition! This issue’s Curated selection (p.38-79) was carefully put together from the open call submissions we have received, by our guest curator Karen Hesse Flatow, founder and curator of Hesse Flatow gallery and residency program in New York. We thank Karen for her meticulous work on the submitted materials and for choosing such an outstanding group of twenty artists which reflects her true passion and vision in supporting and nurturing emerging and mid-career voices. We thank everyone who submitted work for our 27th open call and showed such kindness and enthusiasm through their high quality and thoughtful applications. This issue’s Editorial selection, alongside Karen’s choices, is also a vibrant highlight of thirty-seven artists’ works that has captured our attention from the wide range of works submitted for this recent opportunity (p.80-155). The Interviewed section (p.12-37) invites you to explore in depth the developing and flourishing practices of our previously published artists—Monika Chlebek, from Krakow, Poland, and Serpil Mavi Üstün, Turkish born, London based. Monika’s visual language, in her words, is ‘very spare and austere’ where she focuses on working with fragments and close-ups of scenes and motifs, leaving a viewer with an ‘unfinished story’. Her chosen contexts and juxtapositions in paintings often capture dogs as primary subjects as well as fragmented human body parts showcasing us details of the tender link between dogs and humans and the melancholy and humour it comprises which creates the feeling of ambiguity around her work. Serpil’s work is focused primarily on a human figure, with each character often portrayed alone, surrounded by flat surfaces and tones, avoiding too much detail and rules of anatomy, proportions and perspective. The inspiration is often derived from her interest in psychology. Through careful observations of everyday life and sympathy for the things she feels in common with people around her, she focuses on delicate narratives that she uses to create her sensual figurative portrayals. For our upcoming 29th edition we have teamed up with the trio behind Moskowitz Bayse gallery, based in Los Angeles—Adam Moskowitz and Meredith Bayse, co-founders, and Ace Ehrlich, the director of the space. Through their work together, Adam, Meredith and Ace have curated a fantastic line of artists for their gallery shows which made us connect with the vision and passion for supporting and elevating emerging and mid-career talent that they carry forward. We look forward to their future curated selection and all the submitted works! If you are interested in submitting your work to be seen and considered by our guest curators and the Editorial team of ArtMaze, and would like a chance for your work to be published in our print editions and promoted online, please feel free to check out our website for more information www.artmazemag.com and hopefully we’ll be able to work together in the near future. We would love to have you as part of our community!

Yours truly, Founder, curator and publisher Masha Zemtsova

p.38-79 curated selection of works

p.80-155 editorial selection of works

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Edition 29

call for art DEADLINE: July 28, 2022 Guest Curators: Adam Moskowitz and Meredith Bayse, co-founders, and Ace Ehrlich, Director of Moskowitz Bayse, Los Angeles

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

Featured image: Megan Nugroho Growing pains come at night colored pencils on paper 22 x 30 inches more on p. 82-83

inte

erviewed:

Monika Chlebek Serpil Mavi Üstün

www.instagram.com/monikachlebek

Fragmented narratives: In conversation with Monika Chlebek “I am happy when I manage to contain contradictions in my compositions,” Polish painter Monika Chlebek says. Her pared back visual language and careful compositions lend an ambiguous tension to the common place subject matter of her art. Paintings of dogs seem a benign celebration of our furry companions, but also hint at darker desires. Bare skin brings to mind summer days but can’t stave off a vacant emptiness. In some works, Monika brings these two thematic threads together in a coupling that evokes both sensory and carnal pleasures. Monika relishes these uncomfortable juxtapositions that mix the uncanny with a sense of humor. Monika draws inspiration from a wide range of art history movements and popular culture. From Renaissance paintings to film stills, she is always on the look out for interesting compositional references. Her recent work hones in on fragments of the subjects. The compositions feel almost accidental, like a photo taken by mistake. Their awkwardness confronts the viewer with a challenge to convention. Narratives are suggested, but never fully revealed. Monika lives and works in Krakow. In addition to painting, she also works in drawing and paper collage (and soon digital collage). She graduated from the Krakow State General School of Fine Arts, and continued her education at the Faculty of Painting of the Academy of Fine Arts in Krakow. In 2011 Monika obtained a diploma in the studio of Professor Leszek Misiak, who instilled in her an understanding of the importance of making mistakes. In this interview, Monika shares with us her love of the materiality of painting, of noticing rather than explaining, and of meeting the “more human than animal” gaze of a dog.

interview by Layla Leiman

Featured image: Monika Chlebek Untitled oil on canvas 37 x 33 cm

AMM: Hi Monika! To begin, let’s go back to the beginning: can you remember when you first decided that you wanted to be an artist? What inspired this decision and what keeps you interested in making art today?

from dreams. Sometimes they appear out of nowhere. I know that it is all material that I consciously or unconsciously collect, that I forget about, and that later appears in my paintings. Everything records in the mind’s eye.

MC: I first decided to be a painter when I was maybe 20 years old. Actually it wasn’t a very conscious decision, more of a fleeting desire, I intuitively felt that painting was my language. I felt a promise of fulfilment in it. I remember the moment when I got to know the painting of Andrzej Wróblewski, a Polish painter of the post-war period, an artist who is still an inspiration for me. I saw his sensitivity in the use of colour and form. I was shocked to the core by these paintings. I knew this was the medium I wanted to use. I have recently made the decision again, this time very consciously, that I want to devote all my time and energy to painting. I feel that in a sense, every now and then I renew my vows to my vocation in painting. I still feel the need to paint (to a greater or lesser degree), the need for deep visceral and intimate contact with paint and canvas.

AMM: What are some of the main themes you’re interested in and what ideas are you currently exploring in your work?

AMM: Do you reference art history or popular culture in your work? Please tell us a little about the broader context in which you situate your work.

AMM: Skin and fur are subject matters in some of your recent work. How do you respond to the idea of surface in your paintings?

MC: I certainly use the visual patterns of my predecessors, although I usually do not refer to them directly. Everything that I absorb and then forget about appears in some form in my paintings. I often think back to Renaissance painting. I am inspired by both classical and contemporary art. I draw from minimalism, surrealism, I use popular culture, I look at the way the film is framed. I observe my favourite artists, their choices and solutions. I observe close-up frames in the works of Luc Tuymans, I look for colour solutions in Andrzej Wróblewski’s paintings. Recently I have painted a picture inspired by Breughel’s ‘Winter’, I chose the fragment with dogs. AMM: Where do you look for inspiration? MC: I look for it practically everywhere, but I don’t always find it. From literature, to film, to Instagram, to the work of other artists. I like to look through albums of Italian and Flemish paintings of the 15th and 16th century. I am always delighted by the paintings of Robert Campin, Jan van Eyck, Brueghel, Piero della Francesca. I like to watch works of contemporary artists such as Issy Wood, Henni Alftan, Ambera Wellmann, Luc Tuymans, Mamma Andersson, Olafur Eliason, Wilhelm Sasnal, Aleksandra Waliszewska. I look there mainly for some kind of emotion, a spark that will ignite my desire and inspire me to paint. It happens that some insignificant photo or motif on the Internet catches my attention. Visual representation attracts my attention the most. I draw motifs for paintings from everyday life, my surroundings, sometimes

MC: I am interested in different subjects, states, emotions. In my work, you find themes of the body, animals, the motif of emptiness, mismatch, understatement. Recently I have been painting dogs, their portraits and close-ups. At the same time I was constantly preoccupied with bodily motifs (‘Big Ass’ or ‘Back’ painting). I have combined these motifs, resulting in the painting ‘Hand In The Fur’. This juxtaposition of the softness of human skin with soft or rough dog hair illustrates the relationship between dog and human. I have been painting large format paintings for some time now, and I have new challenges to complete them in terms of format.

MC: Flesh and fur appear as a combination of the two threads I mentioned, the carnal with the animal. The combination of the smooth with the rough or soft. Sinking into fur. Sensuality, pleasure, the opposite. The surface is flat, but there is an illusion of space and softness that the hand sinks into. AMM: Please tell us more about the dogs in your recent paintings and what they represent. MC: I began my paintings with dogs by observing my female dog Kola. Adopting her coincided with the onset of the pandemic and my move to a new studio. I spent a lot of time with her at that time. Dogs have always been important in my life, so naturally they also appeared in my paintings. I think these portraits show the tenderness with which I look at dogs. My paintings are a lens for seeing a dog as it is, without anthropomorphising it. Although I honestly feel that their gaze is sometimes more human than animal. It meets human gaze on equal terms. AMM: Speaking more generally about your visual language, what are the important motifs in your work and how have these evolved over the years? MC: My visual language is very spare and austere. I choose fragments, close-ups. I try to clear my paintings of decorations, I reduce unnecessary elements. At the same time I compose my paintings with great care. The colour scheme has changed, earlier I painted in grey tones, now I use intense colour much more often. The surface of my paintings is very often laser-like, with a visible structure of the

portrait by Dawid Czycz

ArtMaze Magazine Issue 27, Interviewed: Monika Chlebek

canvas and brushstrokes, lately I have also introduced flat colour spots. These motifs recur from time to time. Earlier, the whole figure appeared in my paintings, now they are only fragments, and I look at the motifs closely. Although, at the same time, I have the impression that the closer we are the less we see. I have always been interested in leaving things unsaid, in noticing rather than commenting. AMM: Colour plays a large role in establishing a mood and tone in your work. Please tell us more about this and your approach to colour in your painting. MC: Colour is very important to me, although as I mentioned before I use it sparingly. I like to play with colour. I also use a lot of black—the dogs span the picture frame, and the colour makes them seem to fill the picture space even more. In the painting ‘Smile and Anger’ I deliberately used pink, accepted as feminine, to paint smiles in anger. The painting ‘Summer’ is bright and sunny. First of all, I use colours that I like. The colours in my paintings are subtle, subdued and delicate, I find intimacy and silence in the muted colours. AMM: Interesting narratives emerge between your paintings when they are grouped together. Is this intentional? Please tell us more about the idea of collage and storytelling in your work. MC: Yes, it is a conscious process. Composing paintings allows me to build and discover new contexts, juxtapositions that surprise me. While painting I do not think about specific arrangements, they appear later. I am often surprised with the final effect. As if I opened some stream of consciousness, intuition. I put them together like a puzzle. There are many possibilities and it gives me great pleasure. In the composition of many paintings the narration breaks off. One cannot find plot continuity and satisfaction in them. The viewer is left with a sense of an unfinished story. AMM: The awkwardness of your compositions and subject matter suggest a dark sense of humour lurking beneath the surface. Can you tell us more about this? MC: I think it’s an expression of my sensibility. On the one hand it is imbued with melancholy, on the other with a sense of humor. I find the ambiguity interesting. At first glance, some images seem pleasant and neutral, but in the collage they evoke anxiety. The viewer feels that something is wrong, but it is difficult to say exactly what. I am happy when I manage to contain contradictions in my compositions. AMM: Have you always painted, or have you explored other mediums? What originally drew you to painting and what keeps you interested in the medium? MC: The language of painting is the closest to me. I have the most feelings towards it. Most often I paint in oils but I also use gouache. I

“My visual language is very spare and austere. I choose fragments, close-ups. I try to clear my paintings of decorations, I reduce unnecessary elements. At the same time I compose my paintings with great care. The colour scheme has changed, earlier I painted in grey tones, now I use intense colour much more often. The surface of my paintings is very often laser-like, with a visible structure of the canvas and brushstrokes, lately I have also introduced flat colour spots. These motifs recur from time to time. Earlier, the whole figure appeared in my paintings, now they are only fragments, and I look at the motifs closely. Although, at the same time, I have the impression that the closer we are the less we see. I have always been interested in leaving things unsaid, in noticing rather than commenting.” - Monika Chlebek

also paint with oil paints on paper. I really like the physicality of paper painted with oil, its smell, its texture. I used to use egg tempera, which I made myself. It has something to do with cooking, alchemy, I think I will come back to it one day. I like the materiality of paint, I like mixing it. In general I find pleasure in the technical/

physical side of my work. I prepare stretchers myself, and the time of pasting and priming is the time of starting, of preparing myself mentally. Each stage is important. Some time ago I completed a series of collages, but this is also a two-dimensional activity. And now I have signed up for a 5 month graphic design workshop. I intend to learn graphic techniques that will enrich my workshop. I also have ceramic clay in my studio, which I treat more as a way of entertainment and a break from painting. I usually make some very practical, functional forms. AMM: What are the hardest things for you to get “right” in your work? MC: I spend a lot of time thinking, and in the end I do things intuitively anyway. Because I can paint from observation and I use photographs when I paint, it takes me a long time to find or make a proper representation of what I want to paint. Without that it’s hard for me. On the technical side, I just sometimes feel that I don’t know how to paint, and that frustrates me a lot. A solution that worked yesterday doesn’t work today. An idea that seemed interesting to me yesterday is uninteresting today. It happens the other way round. AMM: Are you influenced by the space you work in? Tell us about your studio—is there music playing and do you have company? Is it neat and orderly or more of a mess? What kind of environment and headspace is just right for you to work in? MC: I keep my studio tidy and orderly. I need an organised space so nothing distracts my attention. I try to wash my brushes after I finish my work and not before, although it happens that I leave them in water and only start cleaning them the next day. I work in the company of Kola, my dog, who sleeps on the couch most of the day. I’m almost always listening to music or podcasts, or more recently audiobooks. I started listening to Tolstoy’s ‘War and Peace’ recently, but I couldn’t balance it with painting so I jumped to something less absorbing. Sometimes I sit in silence and the background is the sounds coming from outside the window. I come to the studio every day, usually around 11am. Until 1pm I do organisational work—answer emails, set up the loom, organise the space, check my Instagram. In the afternoon I start creative work, which I continue into the evening. I make sure to take weekends off because it’s a time to relax and take care of other things. AMM: What piece/s are you busy with right now? Are you working through any challenges or exploring new techniques? What’s happening in your studio right now? MC: The challenge will be workshop graphics and I am already looking forward to this moment. Right now there is a dog leaning against the wall and the sun shining next to it. On the easel there is a painting showing a lot

ArtMaze Magazine Issue 27, Interviewed: Monika Chlebek

“I spend a lot of time thinking, and in the end I do things intuitively anyway. Because I can paint from observation and I use photographs when I paint, it takes me a long time to find or make a proper representation of what I want to paint. Without that it’s hard for me. On the technical side, I just sometimes feel that I don’t know how to paint, and that frustrates me a lot. A solution that worked yesterday doesn’t work today. An idea that seemed interesting to me yesterday is uninteresting today. It happens the other way round.” - Monika Chlebek

of hands sunk in fur. Kola is lying on the sofa and water for coffee is boiling in the kettle. AMM: Have you had any significant mentors during your journey as an artist? What insights or lessons did they teach you?

AMM: Are you influenced by artist friendships and relationships? Please tell us about your artistic community. MC: There are a lot of talented people around me and just seeing them working and being in action is inspiring. AMM: What is the Polish art scene like? Is there anything in particular that you’re excited about? MC: The Polish scene is similar to others, I think it’s not much different, it’s a global scene. There are a lot of talented artists in Poland. AMM: What are you watching, reading, listening to right now? MC: I read regularly. Fiction, non-fiction, books about social issues, essays. Recently I’ve read texts by Rebecca Solnit, Virginia Woolf, Annie Ernaux. I look at the female experience. I recently read Thomas Mann’s ‘The Magic Mountain’ for the first time. It drew me long into a world beyond time. I derive great pleasure from reading. I also watch movies and TV series, currently my favourites are ‘Peaky Blinders’, ‘The North Water’, ‘Time’, ‘The Night Of’. All of them rather dark, with a criminal touch and great attention to form. I listen to Joy Division, Mr. Oizo, Arctic Monkeys, Arcade Fire, Nick Cave, Michelle Gurevich, David Bowie, Benjamin Clementine, Fever Ray. In both literature and music, my choices include contemporary artists as well as classics. AMM: Do you have any exciting projects or exhibitions coming up? What’s next for you? MC: I am currently preparing a solo exhibition that will take place in August. I haven’t decided yet what I will show there. The exhibition will take place in ESKAEM gallery in Gdynia. In the meantime, I will have a group exhibition where I will show ‘Breughel’s Dogs’. And in February 2023 you will be able to see some of my dogs at a group exhibition in Leto gallery in Warsaw.

MC: My professor Leszek Misiak and his assistant Rafał Borcz gave me a great sense of freedom in the choice of topics and support in my formal education. Professor always stressed the importance of one’s own sources of inspiration. He often mentioned the importance of having fun in painting, which I understand as searching and agreeing to make mistakes. And these are important lessons for me. Featured image (p.18): Monika Chlebek Hand In The Fur oil on canvas 100 x 130 cm Featured image (p.21): Monika Chlebek I look at you oil on canvas 89 x 100 cm

ArtMaze Magazine Issue 27, Interviewed: Monika Chlebek

Monika Chlebek Half A Dog oil on canvas 115 x 120 cm

Monika Chlebek Goodnight Moon oil on canvas 120 x 110 cm

Monika Chlebek Human look oil on canvas 50 x 60 cm

Monika Chlebek Untitled oil on canvas 30 x 24 cm

www.maviustun.com

Beneath the surface: The deeply symbolic figurative painting of Serpil Mavi Üstün The enigmatic, lone figures that stare back at you from the paintings of Serpil Mavi Üstün don’t seem to register you at all. Their inscrutable gaze rests somewhere in the middle distance; they’re lost in their own world, or more accurately, in the interior world of the artist. The figures in the Turkish born, London based artist’s work are less representations of real people than characters she has imagined into being to depict emotional states and intangible feelings. The figures’ blank, ambiguous expressions hint at emotional turmoil beneath the surface threatening to rupture the serene veneer. This tension seems to reference the ‘brave face’ we feel compelled to put on for society to mask our more complex psychic realities. Serpil’s interest in psychology and the unconscious goes back to her early childhood. Despite a classical art training with life figure study, her interest in the human form has always been symbolic rather than literal. Over the years Serpil has refined the style of her painting to arrive at her current visual language, stripping away superfluous gestures, colors and compositional elements. Characterised by a desaturated palette and imperceptible brushstrokes, her compositions use distorted perspective and large flat areas to heighten the emotional intensity of the subject. Always alone, the figures dominate the centre of the composition and appear detached from the world around them. Specific objects and motifs feature in the compositions, creating complex symbolic narratives. As when recounting a dream, the precise meaning of Serpil’s paintings remains slippery and illusive, resisting easy interpretation.

interview by Layla Leiman

Featured image: Serpil Mavi Üstün Almost Happy oil on canvas 110 x 80 cm

AMM: Hi Serpil! Your art seems to reflect an interior world, shaped perhaps by dreams and memories. To start us off, can you share a significant early memory that has in some way influenced your journey as an artist? SM: I’m originally from Çanakkale in Turkey. Since I was born in a small town, I cannot say that my childhood was full of art. The town did not have any galleries or museums or libraries of noteworthy art books. But my father is a creative person. We used to draw with him and I enjoyed it very much. Sometimes he would give me recycling materials that he found interesting and would like to see what I could do with them. He used to make small ceramic figures as a hobby, and he would let me use his materials whenever I wanted. I remember, when I was just learning to read and write, I tried to illustrate the ‘Sleeping Beauty’ fairy tale. I wish my parents had kept it for me. When I was in primary school, I had a little notebook and I would try to draw portraits of my friends on it. I was praised for it by my friends, family, teachers but I never imagined myself becoming an artist. Art was always seen as just a hobby by the people around me. AMM: Have you had significant mentors that have influenced your development as an artist? What insights or lessons did they teach you? SM: When I was accepted to Mimar Sinan Fine Arts University, which I graduated from, my wish was to work in the studio of Professor Neşe Erdok. This was not left to the student’s choice, but we were randomly placed. Actually I was a fan of her art and it was my dream to work in her studio. She is one of the leading representatives of figure painting in Turkey. I used to think that I didn’t get to learn much from her because she retired before I even graduated. But now looking back, I can see her influence on my development as an artist. The most important of these is my effort to reach the simplest expression by removing all the excess in my work. This includes the limited use of color so that it does not interfere with form and expression. AMM: Your brushstrokes are almost imperceptible, yet there’s a painterliness to your work. Can you tell us more about your style and how it’s evolved over the years? SM: I think this is the biggest change over time. When I was an art student and I was just graduating, I really enjoyed visible brush strokes. I was a fan of Cezanne. I don’t know how well I understood him, but I could spend hours in front of a painting by him. Afterwards, my colors got darker, the brush strokes did not disappear, but decreased. A pessimistic look dominated my paintings. My psychology at that time definitely had an effect on this. Then I moved from Istanbul to London. At the end of the first year, my paintings were slowly starting to take their current form. Although there is

still a restlessness in my figures, my palette has become more pastel and gray tones. More indistinct brush marks and flatter areas formed. While myself and everything around me changed, the change in my painting also took place as part of a natural process. I feel like I’m creating my own language now. I don’t know how it will evolve over time though, which is exciting.

“Since the focus of my work is the figure, I avoid placing it in large spaces. Even if the figure occupies less space on the surface or lags behind, I arrange the composition in such a way that it draws the viewer’s attention. I don’t need a lot of depth, detail, anatomy. I try to create the psychological atmosphere I want with flat surfaces and tones as much as possible. I usually only use the background as a factor that carries the rest of the piece rather than having the focus on the actual scene itself. Depending on the effect I want to create, I can easily ignore the proportions and rules of perspective.”

ten-minute walk to the studio and ordered a hot caramel macchiato. The pandemic bans had just been lifted, Christmas preparations, my favorite time of the year, had begun. Accompanied by street music, people were happily shopping and chatting in cafes. No matter how cold the weather was, just for this atmosphere, I always drank my coffee at a table outside. I will always remember these ten-fifteen-minute coffee breaks with pleasure. Of course, I still continue, but the thing that makes that period special is how everything continues by leaving space for other things. It was as if we were coming back to life after a difficult two-year pandemic period, there was Christmas cheer, and I was my own best friend thanks to the long hours I spent alone in the studio and train journeys. Even though every day was different during this period, this routine did not change. That’s why my exhibition is called ‘Caramel Macchiato’. In the two paintings with the same title, while walking to the workshop with my coffee that I could never finish, besides the joy of being alone, there is my sympathy for the things I feel in common with the people around me. I designed these two pictures together, but they are not a diptych. They are not adjacent, but they are exhibited close to each other. You can see the continuation of the flying hair of the figure in the first picture going to the second picture. And obviously both of them have just bought coffee from Starbucks. Maybe they are both Caramel Macchiato, but one is hot and one is cold. One of those things for me. Just like in real life, any two people in the same crowd, walking almost side by side, maybe they have some common features and it doesn’t matter. What appeals to me is the banality of the things that bind us together. When I start each painting, my starting point is this way, even if I don’t have my own experiences or psychology, I realize that they are definitely included in the painting at some point. I empathize with the character I have created and at some point, it transforms into me and I into it.

AMM: In what ways does your art reflect your personal experiences and psychology?

AMM: Your work reminds me of the films of Greek auteur Yorgos Lanthimos, where an enigmatic symbolic language infiltrates the everyday and banal. Like his films, your paintings resist easy interpretation. What advice would you give to us to decipher their meaning?

SM: I can say that almost all of my work is based on my experiences and psychology. There is no other way of painting for me anyway. For example, the name of my recently finished exhibition is ‘Caramel Macchiato’. For me, this is not just the name of my two paintings with the same title, it’s the name of my busy but very enjoyable three-fourmonth period after the pandemic when I was preparing for the exhibition. Last year, we moved to a house farther from my workshop and I started using the train to come to the studio. What I could do during the journey gave me pleasure. After getting off at the train station, I stopped by the Starbucks on my

SM: Ohh this is an amazing comment! No one had ever linked Lanthimos’ films to my work before. The infiltration of an enigmatic symbolic language into the everyday and ordinary is a phrase I would like to use in my artist statement. The individual who has difficulty getting out of the reality imposed on them may also have a common point. His powerful and disturbing metaphors, sociological implications, dark humor are different in size. I can’t use anything offensive either. I would never show the pain of an animal, even symbolically. In The Lobster, David declares that he would like to become a lobster, because they live 100 years, remain

- Serpil Mavi Üstün

ArtMaze Magazine Issue 27, Interviewed: Serpil Mavi Üstün

photo courtesy of the artist

fertile throughout, and have blue blood like aristocrats. The effect on me is that such an interesting creature is reduced to food by humans and boiled while still alive. Every time I see a lobster, I can’t stop thinking about it. That’s why I’ve never eaten a lobster in my life. The octopus can’t be seen as food either, it’s just a creature I respect. I like to find similarities between the personalities of animals and humans. My recent paintings with crabs, lobsters and fish are related to these thoughts. I wanted to both refer to the character of the figure and to touch on the empathy the figures feel towards them.

fully complete sketch would make my work on the canvas easier but it causes me to lose my excitement. Of course, there are times when I just want to make a drawing, which is usually a portrait in my mind, then I work in detail. When I transfer this sketch to the canvas, I combine the portrait with a new sketch. Even then, I may not be very faithful to the pattern. Everything can change. I once did the opposite. I wanted to see a finished painting as a sketch and I did it with all the details. The paper mache sculptures I made came out in the same way. I wanted to see the figure in my painting in three dimensions. I enjoyed it so much, I want to do it again.

A work always displays a wider range of meanings through the interpretation of the viewer than the artist intended, and these meanings continue to increase. I just want to point out that there are no loud voices and big sentences in my works. I’m really dealing with every day and ordinary feelings and events.

AMM: What ideas and themes are you currently exploring in your work?

AMM: In what ways do you use composition to heighten the narrative in your work? SM: Since the focus of my work is the figure, I avoid placing it in large spaces. Even if the figure occupies less space on the surface or lags behind, I arrange the composition in such a way that it draws the viewer’s attention. I don’t need a lot of depth, detail, anatomy. I try to create the psychological atmosphere I want with flat surfaces and tones as much as possible. I usually only use the background as a factor that carries the rest of the piece rather than having the focus on the actual scene itself. Depending on the effect I want to create, I can easily ignore the proportions and rules of perspective. AMM: You return repeatedly to a few key symbols, particularly the rose. What meanings do these hold for you? SM: I find the rose compelling as a flower. I adore every variety, color and scent, regardless of their meaning. It’s a very romantic point of view, but having thorns also adds a warrior spirit to the elegance. I think the rose is a being that deserves its reputation in literature and art with all the universal, mystical, mythological and esoteric meanings attributed to it. I’m in love with The Little Prince’s rose. And the roses of Magritte and Lucian Freud. I like to include things I love as symbols or just as objects in my work. In my paintings, the rose symbolizes hope, joy and a little fragility. Hope also breeds responsibility. You have to work hard and be patient to make it happen. Trying to keep a cut rose alive in a glass of water symbolizes this. Usually there is a single, pink rose. Pink is a cheerful and fresh color, delicious. It contrasts nicely with the gray tones that are close to the monochrome I often use. AMM: How does drawing influence your painting and vice versa? SM: I don’t make detailed sketches. Instead, I like to progress on the canvas, inspired by the randomness and coincidences. It is true that a

SM: Since I have sent all the works for my solo exhibition, my studio is empty right now and I am excited for new beginnings. I’ve been thinking about the relationship between food and our psychology and the role of food in our social life for a while. For example, cakes. I have used cakes in a few of my paintings before. Ornate, inviting, indulgent, but also dramatic. It’s very inspiring for me. I’ve sketched out what’s in my head and am pondering over ideas and waiting for them to mature. AMM: Who are the people in your artworks? Is there a story behind each one? SM: Each one is completely from my imagination. A situation or emotion is happening in my mind. I’m trying to build the character that best reflects this. Of course, these figures also have the effect of some of the people I observed, the movie characters I watch, and someone whose photograph I see in the magazine. But my starting point is never a specific person. I’m not interested in painting a real person. What really excites me is creating that unknown face and bodily expression. That’s why I don’t use models or photos. AMM: Your recent paintings have a specific tonality and muted colour palette. Can you tell us more about this and how it relates to the themes in your work? SM: I don’t want color to get in the way of form and expression. That’s why I’m careful not to use more color than is necessary. Also, even though I think about using colors more generously while designing, I still find myself muting them and graying them out. Otherwise, I can’t feel close to the painting. In my work, it’s the same ‘noise’ I feel when I use too much color, as when my house is messy. To feel comfortable, I have to mute the colors and tidy up the other :) AMM: Part of being an artist is knowing how to look. Where do you look for daily inspiration? SM: Anything can happen. There’s always a rough idea of a new painting at the back of my head, and I collect snippets from everything around me to help the picture evolve. These can be a fleeting feeling, a sentence I read or hear, the music I listen to, a scene or character from a movie or an image I see…

AMM: Take us inside your studio: what characterises the space? Do you have any specific daily routines that feed your creativity? What does a typical day look like for you? What are you busy with right now? SM: I’ve been in my current studio for almost five years. It’s in a building consisting of only artist studios, which means I have the opportunity to socialize with other artists. Even though I moved into a house almost an hour away from my studio this year, I wouldn’t consider changing it. The space is a great loft with high ceilings and ample space for me. Half of the roof is white painted wood, half is glass. It’s bright and spacious and peaceful. I’ve always loved the combination of wood and paint smells. I like to grow houseplants in the studio. They are also happy in this bright environment. Only in very hot weather in summer, we can get a little overwhelmed by the glass ceiling. Fortunately we are in London and it doesn’t last long. Oh, on rainy days, I wouldn’t trade the amazing sound of raindrops on the ceiling for anything. I find rainy days very peaceful. For that reason alone, I can say that I am in the right country. Anyway, back to my studio: It has two large walls opposite each other suitable for hanging paintings. I hang completed works on one of them, and new and ongoing works on the other. This is great for when I’m doing multiple pictures together. Since they are side by side, I can see their progress at the same time. I’m usually at the studio around 11am in the morning. I’m not the type to start the day early if I don’t have to. I don’t tidy up or put away materials I use before I finish a painting. A controlled mess allows me to concentrate better. So, as soon as I arrive at the studio, I can start working. I don’t do my sketches or drawings in my studio anyway. I do those kinds of things when I’m at home or on the road. I always turn on music, a podcast or audiobook. I do not need to search for music for some of my works. I have paintings that have a song or playlist that I listen to while doing it from start to finish. That song or songs are inspiring for that painting and I keep it going. When I feel tired or feel stuck, I take a break for tea or coffee. It’s always good to get away from the work for a bit. If there is no deadline, I will leave the studio at around 6pm. Before I leave, I make sure to photograph the final version. Thus, I can continue to think about it and see how I am progressing. I delete some of these photos later, but I keep the ones that show the basic stages. A good archive for me. AMM: What are the hardest things for you to get ‘right’ in your art? SM: I always know the feelings and impressions that I want to give in the painting at the beginning. The portrait of the figure is also ready as a sketch or drawing, but the composition will always require me to think more. In the end, I always get the result that feels right to me, but it slows my work.

ArtMaze Magazine Issue 27, Interviewed: Serpil Mavi Üstün

AMM: What is your process of working and how do you know when a work is complete? SM: If I already have an idea in mind, I take notes, collect digital images, make simple sketches for days before putting it on the canvas. Since the sketches are not detailed, I write notes around it. If I don’t have a ready-made canvas, I will prepare a canvas of appropriate sizes. I usually stretch my own canvases. I think this helps me to establish a connection with the painting. When I feel ready, I transfer the sketch to the canvas and take it to the studio to start painting. Because I make these at home, this is a nice way for me to continue working outside of my studio hours as I also like to spend time at home. Even though I have roughly determined the tones, colors and details while working on the canvas, everything can go in a completely different direction. My process is open to coincidences and instant inspiration. I can add details I never planned or I can change the whole harmony. I act according to my feelings. If I have achieved the effect I want, if I have completed the details that excite me, I would not want to work on it any more. Sometimes, I may be satisfied with something that I started out thinking I would elaborate on more. But if I like it as it is I stop and leave it alone. I go across the picture and look, if there’s nothing I don’t like, it’s finished. Now I can clean my brushes and palette and rearrange my paints. A new playlist will also be needed :) AMM: Have you always made figurative work? Where did your interest in this come from, and has your understanding of portraying the human form changed over the years? SM: Yes, I have always made figurative work. During the period when I used gestural brush strokes I also sometimes painted landscapes, but I never took a break from figurative painting. From my childhood to university, my dream was to become a psychologist. When I was only 11-12 years old, I loved to read psychology books. I have always loved observing people and trying to understand the real reasons behind their behavior. Also, I was very interested in my own inner world, and still am. I think this interest is also in part why people and human psychology is at the center of my painting. Moreover, this is not something I chose to think about. Before I started my career, I always drew figures and portraits. What still excites me the most is creating a portrait that I find meaningful and that I will love. To see how the figure’s expression changes if I change even a tiny line…transforming it into ‘someone’ through the composition. The university where I studied art and its professors were the best place where I could develop my figurative tendency in Turkey. When I was in school, we spent two years studying nude models in the workshop, five days a week. I knew that this was very important in terms of anatomy knowledge and skill, but I would not be doing it with much pleasure. Because painting a real person and studying human anatomy wasn’t enjoyable for

me. They were just things I needed to learn. In the third year, we were free to choose the subject we wanted, but since I did not feel that way yet, I started to paint portraits of people I knew in my close circle and who inspired me. They were portraits inspired by Cezanne’s paintings. Anyway, everything I read at that time was about Cezanne. In these works, there was an effort to reveal the character of the figure with facial expression and body language, and this was my most successful aspect. Elements such as anatomy and perspective remained in the background. Brush strokes were evident throughout the painting and in the portrait. After a while, what I wanted was to put aside what I learned and play with the skill I had acquired. I knew that my favorite thing was to make characters out of dreams, and I was dealing with subjects that I could not keep apart from my current subjects. I found myself in the subjects I covered, but I still felt the need to simplify and be myself. I was too attached to what I learned. Only when I moved from Istanbul to London and everything around me changed, including my work. AMM: Since 2016 you’ve made London your home. What was your experience moving to the city and finding a sense of ‘home’? Do you think this experience influenced your art in any way? SM: Yes, I am happy about that. We brought our two cats and a dog when we moved to London. We brought all our household and my studio things so that we could feel at home as much as possible from the very beginning. It worked because we love to spend time at home. We lived in Richmond for five years. My studio is in Kingston, twenty minutes from there with wonderful nature, a river, deer, squirrels, foxes… I never saw such animals in Istanbul. The museums that I felt compelled to visit as a tourist when I first got here were now very accessible for me. I would have the opportunity to see many more international art fairs and exhibitions. Moreover, the flight from London to Istanbul took only four hours. Because of this, it was easy for me to adapt here. But I still missed Istanbul. Sometimes I thought of myself as someone who fell in love with two people at the same time :) This made me think more about the concepts of ‘home’ and ‘belonging’. At the same time, since I haven’t entered an art community yet, I felt invisible but more free. I know I was always free but I didn’t feel that way. I started to transfer these questions to the canvas with simplified lines, grays and more pastel tones. Everything was going well and I was happy, but then the pandemic started. Everything I loved about London was suddenly out of reach. Studio visits were over, exhibitions and projects were cancelled. Flights between the UK and Turkey were frequently banned and did not open for a very long time. Even though I missed them so much, I couldn’t go to see my family and friends. I felt both trapped and truly invisible. It was a difficult period for me like everyone else, but interestingly, at the end of this period,

this place has become ‘home’ for me. I may have lectured myself about it, but trust me, it came naturally. I think I was forced to mature during the pandemic period, we can say it aged me a few years! There are still many things I miss in Turkey, but I don’t feel homesick. There are traces and symbols of the process in my paintings, but I keep them to myself for now. AMM: Looking back in art history, which are the artists or artworks that have inspired you in your own work? Looking forward, which contemporary artists’ work excites you? SM: Oh, every time I hear this question, two artworks come to mind first and if I’m asked to choose between the two, I can’t decide! ‘Giovanna Tornabuoni’ by Domenico Ghirlandaio and Lucian Freud ‘Girl with a Kitten’. I adore both. I saw Ghirlandaio’s Giovanna at the Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum about eight years ago and came back over and over again during the few days I was in Madrid. I couldn’t stop myself from visiting it. Then I bought a wonderful poster of it. It’s been hanging in my studio where I can see it best for eight years. I only knew Lucian Freud with his nudes of models. I know these are his masterpieces, his magnificent artworks, but I don’t like them. I don’t like nudes that have a realistic ‘meat’ feel and are worked from a model. That’s why I wasn’t interested in his early works. I saw ‘Girl with a Kitten’ online when I was in Istanbul and I was so impressed that I put it on my phone’s locked screen to see it every day. Since then my phone has changed several times but I have never changed it. The exhibition I’m most looking forward to right now is ‘Lucian Freud: New Perspectives’ at the National Gallery in October. I would love to have the chance to see Domenico Gnoli’s retrospective at Fondazione Prada. I hope it comes to London too. So many contemporary artists’ work that excites me. The first names that come to mind are Lenz Geerk, Jordan Kasey, Genesis Belanger. AMM: Do you have any projects or exhibitions coming up? What’s next for you? SM: I’m having a solo exhibition at the CAM Gallery in Istanbul right now. I will take part in Contemporary Istanbul’s CI Bloom fair in May and in a few group exhibitions in the coming months.

Featured image (p.30): Serpil Mavi Üstün The Lobster oil on canvas 60 x 50 cm Featured image (p.30): Serpil Mavi Üstün Caramel Macchiato I oil on linen 80 x 60 cm

ArtMaze Magazine Issue 27, Interviewed: Serpil Mavi Üstün

Serpil Mavi Üstün Life is All About You oil on linen 76 x 101 cm

Serpil Mavi Üstün Caramel Macchiato II oil on linen 80 x 60 cm

Serpil Mavi Üstün Girl with rose oil on canvas 60 x 60 cm

Serpil Mavi Üstün I Feel You Watching oil on canvas 45 x 55 cm

curated selection of works by guest curator Karen Hesse Flatow, founder and curator of Hesse Flatow gallery and residency program, New York

Featured image: Natalie Beall Untitled (Utility Suite) paper collage 25.5 x 19.5 inches more on p. 46-47

N e v e n a

P r i j i c

www.nevenaprijic.com

Image: Infinite Density acrylic and flashe on canvas 42 x 36 inches

Nevena Prijic (b. 1985, Belgrade, Serbia) earned her BFA and MFA in Painting from the University of Novi Sad, Academy of Fine Arts, Serbia.. Her work has recently been exhibited at M+B gallery (Los Angeles, CA), Richard Heller Gallery (Los Angeles,CA), and many others including in Serbia, Hungary and France. Nevena Prijic lives and works in Los Angeles. Nevena’s compositions lie halfway between figuration and abstraction. Figurines, inspired by Vincha culture, are modified to the point of cyborg-like creatures from the post-human world. They are covered by transparent “drawing” painted using hundreds of needle-thin brushstrokes representing the invisible diagram of our body as a machine and a spiritual energy. Figures are centrally positioned and surrounded by the bright colored geometric shapes depicting a surreal, virtual interior, often clashing with the tranquil wide landscape of the natural environment. This opposition between virtual and real, ancient and futuristic, brings the feeling of eternal time and universality of existence, where everything is connected and not defined by borders, languages or gender.

Image: Homocosmicus V acrylic and flashe on panel 24 x 24 inches

ArtMaze Magazine Issue 27: curated selection

www.katherinesable.com

K a t e

S a b l e

Image: Hold Me in the Sun oil on linen 11 x 14 inches

Kate Sable b. 1984 is an artist based outside of Washington, DC. She holds an MFA from American University and BFA from Virginia Tech. Recent exhibitions include a solo show Could I Have Been Just Anyone at Pazo Fine Art, Dream Journal curated by Alex Ebstein at Goucher College, Invocations at The Silva Gallery (DC), as well as group shows at Equilateral Gallwry (LA), SHOEBOX SPACE (NYC), We Go Fast curated by Ryan Travis Christian at Left Field Gallery (CA), and Be.Long at Dutoit Gallery (OH). Her work has been included in ArtMaze Magazine and Friend of the Artist and she has been interviewed for The American Scholar and Inertia Studio Visits. Sable was featured in Air in Space and the curated drop HOT PAPER X CHARLIE ROBERTS, and was a guest on I Like Your Work Podcast and Baltimore based Podcast Beware the Artist. Reviews include the Washington Post, Washington City Paper, and Two Coats of Paint. My primary practice explores the tension between the angst, comical and tender moments of narrative relationships that dance between analytical and intuitive investment in the material through process led abstraction. I think a lot about personal metaphor along with the idea of touch in my work, especially from a nonverbal place: where the perception of marks on the picture plane recall the experience of touch or movement. It’s that material perspective, working and reworking the way paint responds during a moment of making, falling, folding, overlapping, that motivates me. Idiosyncratic repetition and geometric abstraction have always held my attention, however recently my compositions are decidedly more organic, while the object within my paintings often feels like a container, the material falls through the compositions, and the fretwork of nets both contain and activate the physicality of my work. Painting allows me to illustrate sensations that feel both familiar and peculiar, fleshy and ever growing.

Image: Don’t Touch, Yet oil on linen 50 x 52 inches

ArtMaze Magazine Issue 27: curated selection

www.georgiaelrod.com

G e o r g i a E l r o d

Image: Every 2 Hrs oil and mixed media on canvas 26 x 32 inches

Georgia Elrod’s work has been exhibited in New York and abroad, in solo exhibitions at Peninsula Art Space and John Davis Gallery, as well as in group exhibitions at spaces including Momenta Art, The Painting Center, and RH+ Gallery in Istanbul. Her work has been featured in ArtMaze Magazine, Big Bell Magazine, and New American Paintings. Georgia is currently a co-director of the artist-run gallery Underdonk, and co-curated at Heliopolis Gallery from 2012-2015. She co-founded That Time of the Month, a monthly studio visit group for women and non-binary artists. She received her MFA in Painting from Hunter College. Georgia is based in Hudson and Brooklyn New York. Stemming from observation and memory, the imagery in my work is initially cultivated through many gouache and mixed media works on paper. The forms are cumulative and often unpredictable, their meanings are openended. I make many works on paper and some of these become larger paintings; I am translating subconscious imagery and the work unfolds as I go. They are embedded with autobiographical meaning. My recent work began with a desire to interpret bodily function and experience, to question and understand our ungraspable insides. Positing physical identity as a kind of living abstraction, the imagery can be both known and unidentifiable. I have been exploring what it means to inhabit a body, how we visually interpret our physical selves. By letting go of anatomical rules the figures become more like poetic spaces. I’m interested in suggestive imagery and the simultaneity of forms. Through painting, expectations of functionality and fragility literally become marks, colors, drawing.

Image: Midnight Oils oil and mixed media on canvas 84 x 118 inches

ArtMaze Magazine Issue 27: curated selection

N a t a l i e

B e a l l

www.nataliebeall.com

Image: Niche wood, paint, rope, wire, epoxy clay, thread 43.5 x 12 x 16 inches

Natalie Beall earned her BFA from the University of Georgia in 2004 and her MFA from Columbia University in 2009. Her work has been exhibited at Standard Space (Sharon, CT; solo); the Samuel Dorsky Museum of Art (New Paltz, NY); the Wassaic Project (Wassaic, NY), and Scaramouche Gallery (NYC), among other venues. Residencies include the Lighthouse Works (Fishers Island, NY); the Cooper Union (NYC); Catwalk Institute (Catskill, NY) and the Lower East Side Printshop (NYC). In 2017, she was awarded a New York Foundation for the Arts/New York State Council on the Arts Fellowship in Printmaking/ Drawing/Book Arts. Her work is available through Uprise Art. Beall lives and works in Salt Point, NY. I reimagine the things I encounter everyday—how can objects open up new possibilities? The objects represented in this series of paper collages allude to various functions that can’t quite be named. These forms belong to an interior realm where objects have the capacity to transcend expected roles. They represent prospects for open-ended learning tools, ambiguous storage devices, and implements that hover between utility and fantasy. Objects I have observed in the world—in thrift stores, on the street, and in my home—go through a process of abstraction and reinvention. As I cut paper and layer shapes, I work towards a balance between form, color, specificity and the unknown. Devices such as the weaving and draping of fabric, openings within forms, and suspensions from fixtures offer suggestions to unexplained functions. The use of imagery associated with the domestic domain are markers of traditionally undervalued pursuits that hold dormant potential.

Image: Course wood, acrylic, epoxy clay, and foam clay 12.5 x 7.25 x 2.25 inches

ArtMaze Magazine Issue 27: curated selection

M a r k S e n g b u s c h

www.marksengbusch.com

Image: Fushimi Inari acrylic on baltic birch plywood 10 x 11 x 8.5 inches

My sculptures are a subversion of Brutalist Architecture, they all fit together with no glue or hardware: My mantra is ‘No Fuss’, keep it simple. Japanese wood working, specifically in temples and shrines, was very impactful during two recent trips to Tokyo, Osaka and Kyoto. The jubilant colors in my sculptures evoke simple children’s toys and 70’s/80’s fashion. The architecture of the Middle East—brutalist, sand beaten buildings in the desert, like playthings of giants, have been a huge influence. For the last five years I’ve worked at the Abu Dhabi Louvre 1-2 months per year. Shifting scales . . . I also collect coins, stones and toys. I make zines and watch anime. My love of Science Fiction, city life, and travel all mash together in these objects. In my studio with no windows I listen to WNYC, Hot 97, WBGO The Jazz Source and play Tetris.

Image: Spring acrylic on baltic birch plywood 12 x 7.5 x 14.5 inches

ArtMaze Magazine Issue 27: curated selection

M e l a n i e

M c L a i n

www.melaniemclain.com

Image: Untitled ceramic tile, wood, plaster, high density foam, silicone, acrylic paint, fabric, and zipper 176 x 93 x 67 cm

Inhabiting spaces and moving the body through space and context creates and reinforces behaviors, emotions and social dynamics. This can generate a sense of belonging, acceptance, limitations, or constrictions in the way one unfolds through space and relates to those who occupy it. Structures, patterns of approach, and routines are learned that delimit corporal possibilities and can make them circumstantial rather than experimental. This is reinforced through the design and configuration of the sites and the implicit symbology in the selection of textures, colors and spatial arrangement of the elements that make up a place. These structures and codes fuel certain power structures by creating hierarchies of space and those who inhabit them. It all forms part of a collective unconscious that constructs predetermined sensory experiences and initiates corporal memory in a given spatial context that reinforces current societal norms. Questioning social hierarchies through design and its relationship with one’s body are the main axis in Melanie McLain’s work development. Her sculptures activate the space, asking both performer and viewer to engage, take ownership of it, and construct a space of intimacy and vulnerability to discover while sweeping the exhibition. These sculptures have within themselves the possibility of transformation. This gives them the particular characteristic of integrating not only as pieces that take part of a certain place in relation with architecture and landscape, but also as objects who demand physical interaction to be completed, transforming them into an extension of the body and allowing them to exist through movement. Melanie McLain is an artist based in Mexico City. She has exhibited internationally including at Museo Tamayo in Mexico City, Queens Museum and Socrates Sculpture Park in New York, La Cresta in Monterey, Parallel Vienna in Vienna, and Institute of Contemporary Art in Philadelphia. Her awards include New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowship and Virginia Museum of Fine Arts Fellowship. She has been an artist in residence at Bemis Center for Contemporary Art, Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture, MacDowell, Lower Manhattan Cultural Council’s Workspace Program, Shandaken: Storm King, and Fundación Casa Wabi.

Image: Wall Compressions ceramic tile, wood, high density foam, plaster, silicone, fabric and zippers 134 x 81 x 35 cm

ArtMaze Magazine Issue 27: curated selection

www.wilderalison.com

W i l d e r

A l i s o n

Image: bay: how was your marse/lle m/x? dyed wool and thread 58.2 x 45.5 inches

Wilder Alison is an interdisciplinary artist and Bard MFA Painting program graduate. In recent years, Alison has exhibited work in New York with Thierry Goldberg, Rachel Uffner, CUE Foundation, 247365, and Primetime, and in LA with GordonRobichaux and Artist Curated Projects. Recent solo shows include A Ripe Blackberry Murmurs to the Wall at FIERMAN (New York); thefaucethe drain breach\ a new /ife at Gaa Gallery (Provincetown); and Slit Subjects at White Columns (New York). Alison has participated in residencies at the Fine Arts Work Center, Triangle France-Astérides, Lighthouse Works, Fire Island Artist Residency, and Lower East Side Printshop, among others. My defiance of visual cohesion is motivated by the failure of language and culture to accommodate invisible modes of (dis-)identification with gender binaries and the neurotypical. In my work, there is a slippage between language and form analogous to the slippage that constitutes trans-ness, queerness, and neurodivergence. Applying experiences of dysphoria and dissociation, I seek to set into motion a liberating potential for occupying many possible positions. My work models an aspirational collectivity; a collectivity with potential not only amongst different subjects, but within one. Toward imagining a collective potential, my work is driven by queer theory that expands conventional notions of relationality. Monique Wittig’s The Lesbian Body portrays a violent culture of women via slash marks in the “I”s throughout the text. The graphic sum of these marks throughout the text is a conflation of the slash and the “I,” such that the “I” itself begins to enact a split. I’m interested in the split subjectivity that Wittig proposes, not only vis à vis the confusion of self and other, or interior and exterior selves, but the possibility that by inevitably failing to elucidate selfhood and identity, language itself engenders a split between the mind and the subject’s context in the world. My wool paintings use Wittig’s “I /” as their guiding structure. They are made from off-white wool that I dye, cut, and then sew into reconfigured compositions; the central figure in each composition is a right-slanting diagonal bar: the “I” or the slash.

Image: skyeyeye crush— dyed wool and thread 55 x 60 inches

ArtMaze Magazine Issue 27: curated selection

www.annaliseneil.com

A n n a l i s e N e i l

Image: Recalibration watercolor and cyanotype on mounted Arches Aquarelle paper 24 x 18 x 1 inches

Annalise Neil lives and works in San Diego, CA. In 2006, she received a BFA in Printmaking from the College of Saint Rose in Albany, NY, with a minor in Art History (summa cum laude). She has also studied painting, drawing, sculpture, wood working, photography, ceramics, jewelry, weaving, and basket making. Annalise completed an Artist Residency in Motherhood between 2016-17. She is a member of the Art Alliance at the Oceanside Museum of Art, the San Diego Watercolor Society, and has exhibited her work at juried shows throughout the United States over the last 15 years. Annalise has created largescale civic murals, helped to develop product and packaging campaigns for retail companies, and has mentored and taught students in and out of classrooms. Her work resides in private collections across the US and in Europe. With nature imagery as a visual framework, my work considers ideas such as perception, deep listening, memory, and ecology. Metaphors that come from researching these scientific and philosophical tenets are woven into my pieces. The concepts and the images they lead to can be used to help interpret living as a human in our wildly complex, interconnected and social environments. Immersion in the natural world elevates and enriches our lives, and binds us to the majesty of our prismatic ecosystems. I am keenly interested in creating work that will lead to contemplation and reflection for the viewer, with the hope that empathy and mental elevation are experienced.

Image: Intermission: Permeable, Husked watercolor and cyanotype on mounted Arches Aquarelle paper 12 x 12 x 1.5 inches

ArtMaze Magazine Issue 27: curated selection

A n d r e w W o o l b r i g h t

www.andrewwoolbright.com

Image: The enigmatic Shrinebeast guards the zerotime portal with her hurdy gurdy oil and acrylic on canvas 46 x 62 inches

Andrew Paul Woolbright (American, b. 1986) lives in Brooklyn, NY and is an MFA graduate from the Rhode Island School of Design. Woolbright is currently a resident at the Sharpe Walentas Studio Program and has recently exhibited with The Hole, New York (2021); Galerie Valeria Cetraro, Paris (2021); Zürcher Gallery, New York (2020) and Ada Gallery, Richmond (2020). His work has been reviewed in Artforum, Time Out New York, ArtViewer, Two Coats of Paint, the Boston Globe, and the Chicago Reader, and his work is currently in the collection of the RISD Museum. In addition to exhibiting, he is a critic and contributing writer for the Brooklyn Rail and currently teaches at the School of Visual Arts in New York. I am trying to haruspex the digital sublime by exploring the body as an evolving language of digital grotesque, an idea of bodies as identity-sense that is a reticular, networked cache of history, advertisements, objects, technics, and affects. The future will show us strange, marbled-together bodies that kill each other in ceremonial acts; and we will find the ritualized violence of these unrecognizable figurations to be beautiful, unfamiliar, and terrifying. We will be unable to remember anything we see, only vaguely retaining their affect as thrilling and awful. Untergang is a German word that means a beautiful end; an explosion that makes an impermanent gesture of disappearance forever permanent in our mind. Death like a firework. The figures in these paintings are placed within digital spaces, the landscapes that are found in addictive video games. Aristotle said color is a drug. Derrida said it is a poison. Virtual space has made it both—an addictive, enthralling poison of a disrupted Baroque that we feel unalterably receding away from us IRL and escaping further into the infinite respawn points of virtual space. To neuromance this digital dread, this marbling circulation of images and data that is sublimely integrated with our carved-out desire, I am designing figures that are either sand castles or fight screens—sand castles as a Romantic capture of what slips away, fight screens as an accelerationist gesture that matches virtual speed. Painting can still record heartbreak and gesture within our bodies, acting like an emotional encryption; but also it importantly preserves the when of each painting, attaching moments in time to the swirling affect of the digital sublime, arresting and encasing them in polymers, emulsions, pigments, and earth.

Image: Haruspex of the digital sublime (the shaman Doomer Wojak has a beach day) oil and acrylic on canvas 78 x 62 inches

ArtMaze Magazine Issue 27: curated selection

xibeijia.myportfolio.com

S o n i a J i a

Image: Lotus Eaters oil on canvas 150 x 200 cm

Sonia Jia, a Chinese artist born in 2000 in Odessa, Ukraine. She graduated from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, and recently got accepted by both the MFA Fine Art program in Oxford and the MA Painting program of the Royal College of Art. Her main focuses are film directing, painting and mixed media installations, mostly discussing about the subjects related but not limited to Bataille’s theories, sexual assault prevention, and feminine obstacles. She is obsessed with fabricating the realms of imagination, realism, and mythologies through interdisciplinary approaches. In the imagery she created with paints, she usually positioned figures in floating spaces through utilizing abstract geometries, colors in a wide range of transparency, and fluid brushstrokes. Paintings initiate her thought processes and are usually modified into installations or developed into films to better communicate with the audience. These paintings were created as visual comprehensions to Georges Bataille’s seminal book Eroticism, in which Bataille emphasizes the importance of eroticism in creating continuity between isolated individuals. Inspired by Bataille’s urge to the pursuit of non-utile situations, in this project, she explored those “unproductive instants” of life, such as dreaming, sexual activities, or staring blankly. Through depicting the scenes of hedonism—people dancing, indulging, hallucinating, she attempts to construct the realm where beings are ceaselessly sharing their satisfaction in a continuity, breaking the gulf between each individual.

Image: Porcelain and Girls oil on canvas 120 x 150 cm

ArtMaze Magazine Issue 27: curated selection

A n n i e E w a s k i o

www.annieewaskio.com

Image: Gjoa Haven/Spectres oil and cold wax on canvas 20 x 22 inches

Annie Ewaskio has participated in solo and group shows at spaces including Elijah Wheat Showroom, NADA FAIR, Orgy Park, Underdonk, GP Presents, AIR Gallery, and Temporary Agency (New York), Zolla/Lieberman (Chicago), Boehm Gallery (San Diego), Current Space, Metro Gallery (Baltimore), The Institute Library (New Haven), Miami University (Oxford), Texas Christian University (Fort Worth), Moncton University (Canada), and Salamanca Arts Centre (Australia). Her work has appeared in publications including The New Yorker, The Brooklyn Rail, and New American Paintings. She is a recipient of the William and Dorothy Yeck award from Miami University, and was awarded grants from the Kossak Painting Program and the Jerome Foundation. She was a resident with the Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts and The Arctic Circle residency. She has an MFA from Hunter College (CUNY). These paintings explore northern regions as “Thule”—the locationless, mythical, hyperborean land, which remains so in popular imagination even as indigenous communities have settled it for thousands of years, explorers mapped it, and contemporary researchers, corporations, and tourists traverse it. I consider the true last frontier: some say it is outer space, some say it is indeed the Arctic, with its literally uncharted frozen waters blasted apart by icebreaker ships seeking new shipping routes and untapped resources, not to mention the haunting era of the European-led search for the Northwest Passage, in which entire fleets of men disappeared in their hubristic ways of travelling through alien conditions. Medieval landscape, map, and screen spaces inform my compositions. I reach for an out-of-body understanding of time over documentation or representation. The settings are reachable only in our imaginations—supernatural spaces, spanning thousands of years from the past to the unknown future. They contain visions of secrets, bodies, vehicles, precious natural materials, abandoned industries, and ghosts. I draw from my own travels alongside the journeys of oil tankers, Viking explorers, early saints, turn-of-the-century North Pole-seekers, underwater archeologists, and other visitors who function as outsiders or aliens. Past, present and future collapse to distort fixed perceptions of time and place.

Image: Cold Coast oil and cold wax on canvas 12 x 12 inches

ArtMaze Magazine Issue 27: curated selection

M i c h e l l e H i n e b r o o k

www.michellehinebrook.com

Image: Blue Depths oil on canvas 60 x 44 x 2.5 inches

Michelle is interested in visual perception and parapsychology; her work focuses on knowledge sourced from dreams and intuition. Her visual vocabulary is inspired by symbolist principles, esoteric beliefs, sacred geometry, astronomy, alchemy, visions, mythology, and nature. Hinebrook uses meditation practices to clarify intentions and channel creative ideas within her practice. The current body of work is based on her life experiences, dreams, and intuition. Her process integrates techniques to produce chance effects and unpredictable results, then skillfully rendered in oil paint. The random patterns of stains and marks become compositional elements, and divinatory practices are used to interpret symbolic associations creating meaning from these results. Her images exist with liminal space, at the sublime point where material and spiritual worlds collide, between the physical and psychical where everything in the Universe affects and resonates with everything else. Her paintings are visual mantras that, when contemplated, release and absorb energies that vibrate with emotional resonance, providing a transcendent experience for the viewer. Hinebrook’s paintings have been featured in more than eighteen solo shows and fifty group exhibitions. She has served as a visiting artist/critic/lecturer at various organizations and institutions such as the College Art Association, Parsons School of Design, Artist Space, and Western Carolina University. Hinebrook received her BFA from the College of Creative Studies (2001) and MFA from the Cranbook Academy of Art (2005). She is a resident artist at XO Projects in Brooklyn, an adjunct professor at Pratt Institute, and a visiting instructor at Urban Glass.

Image: Cosmic Flower oil on canvas 48 x 36 x 2.5 inches

ArtMaze Magazine Issue 27: curated selection

www.yeonsuju.cargo.site

Y e o n s u J u

Image: Baby, you get to have your cake and eat it when it rains oil on linen 80 x 100 cm

Yeonsu Ju (b. 1995) is a Korean artist based in London, UK. She is currently doing an MFA in Painting at Slade School of Fine Art, UCL. Yeonsu’s painting captures fantastic scenes associated with the relation of feelings. Her canvas explores imaginative narrative which comes from intense drive, that is to incorporate others. She was a winner of RGI New Graduate Award 2021. Her work has been shortlisted for RBA Rome scholarship awards 2022, Bloomberg New Contemporaries 2021 and others. She is currently preparing upcoming shows ‘RGI Graduate Award Exhibition’, ‘RBA Rising stars 2022’ and others. My painting starts with imaginative narratives coming from intensive feelings at intimate moments. Particularly, I am interested in the act of eating; something not mine gets split into pieces, then swallowed, digested, and becomes a part of me. I set up situations with the act of eating or being eaten, that is, eating or sex, and portray the numerous variations of emotions that occur while executing these acts. I see feelings as edible and represent physical activities such as sports, dinner or tea parties with connotations related to affection which is a subject matter in my painting. I link and mix the act of feeling and eating together so that they can be experienced and ingested both psychologically and physically. My work depicts a moment of somewhat daily-ritual hallucinating. Many layered colours and brush marks give subtle sways to painting, which evoke uncanniness. It aims to show the rich dynamics and capricious changes of feelings with flowing, slick and lively lines. Image: She brings the rain oil on canvas 120 x 150 cm

ArtMaze Magazine Issue 27: curated selection

M e l i s s a

M u r r a y

www.melissamurraynyc.com

Image: So Much to Lose acrylic, gouache and ink on paper 60 x 40 inches

Melissa Murray has exhibited in the US and internationally, including Galerie SAS in Montreal, A.I.R. Gallery, Causey Contemporary, Lesley Heller Workspace, Transmitter Gallery, The Children’s Museum of the Arts, Wassaic Project, ArtPort Kingston in NY and Howe Gallery at Kean University in New Jersey, Heaven Gallery in Chicago, Every Woman Biennial, Spring Break and Pulse Art Fairs in New York. Murray is included in 50 Contemporary Women Artists, foreword by Elizabeth Sackler. Notable press and reviews by Architectural Digest, Thalia Magazine, The Village Voice, Montreal Gazette, L Magazine, Wild Magazine, Blouin Artinfo, Studio Visit Magazine, Art Fag City, Hyperallergic, Time Out, Vellum Magazine Mother Maker Podcast, ArtKill and Juxtapoz Magazine. Murray’s work was recently included in a collaboration with the Orchestra of St Luke’s in a virtual release of her paintings alongside the orchestral works of Eleanor Alberga, as well as a group exhibition with the London Art Fair. She has also recently concluded her solo show We Breathe In, We Breathe Out at Hawk and Hive Gallery in Andes NY and looked forward to presenting at Volta in May 2022. Midnight’s Last Stand is a new series of paintings that are created in response to my extended time spent in the forests of upstate NY. The work explores my relationship with nature, domesticity and loss, both physical and manifested. They are about making new spaces where there is no room, facing death while creating life, losing oneself through transformation. The work is about fear and the unknown. Midnight’s Last Stand presents deeply personal, metaphorical environments that represent moments in my life. Domestic interiors and exteriors coupled with natural scenes create an imagined space that anthropomorphizes its content. In this way, I produce narratives that are more self-portrait than still life. Pulling narratives from the practice of collecting, the work expresses my gratitude for the richness time affords us and to the placeholders that are reminders of moments gone by. Midnight’s Last Stand portrays an homage to the symbolism of Vanitas, they are a collection of coded observations and a tribute to bonded relationships.

Image: Fodder acrylic and gouache on paper mounted on canvas 18 x 14 inches

ArtMaze Magazine Issue 27: curated selection

D a n a O l d f a t h e r

www.danaoldfather.com

Image: Slip oil on linen 30 x 30 inches

Dana Oldfather is a painter who has exhibited internationally and nationally in galleries and museums including Library Street Collective, Detroit; Zg Gallery, Chicago; Kathryn Markel Fine Art, New York; Red Arrow Gallery, Nashville; The Bonfoey Gallery, Cleveland; moCa Cleveland; the McDonough Museum of Art, Youngstown; the Carnegie Center for Art and History, New Albany, and the University of Southern Queensland, in Australia. She was awarded the William and Dorothy Yeck Award for Young Painters, two Ohio Arts Council Individual Excellence Awards, and a Satellite Fund Emergency Relief Grant from SPACES Gallery, the Warhol Foundation, and the Cleveland Foundation. Her work is privately and publicly collected internationally. Dana Oldfather works and lives just outside Cleveland, Ohio with her husband Randall and young son Arlo. I’ve always felt a little off-balance and untethered, like the ground is falling beneath my feet or a breeze could blow me away; like there is something ridiculous at my core that I skein over with composure. I struggle to attend to the externalities that vie for my attention, but I am overwhelmed, jumpy. The world is moving faster than I am. Perhaps we should give more weight to each of our actions, no matter how small? The whole of our lives is built of innumerable events, one succeeding another, obtusely influencing the next. In a world full of unknowns, change and impermanence are our only certainties. If I could come to terms with this, would my fear subside? Women in this work play, conquer, and fall. They tumble down hills, climb walls, and swing from streetlamps. They get it done and become undone. Their movements are metaphors for the way it feels to try and fail to balance work, home, health, and family. I portray feminine challenge to give prominence and dignity to the often invisible work that nourishes the lives of others. I implore those who do this work to ask for help when it is needed. These paintings underscore the inherent emotional conflict of parenting young children and the fragility of comfort and happiness in America today.

Image: Hang in There, Baby oil on linen 52 x 60 inches

ArtMaze Magazine Issue 27: curated selection

J e s s i c a A l a z r a k i

www.jessicaalazrakiart.com

Image: Secrets & Legos oil on canvas 60 x 72 inches

Jessica Alazraki was born and raised in Mexico City, where she earned a bachelor’s degree in communication from Universidad Anáhuac. Since 1998, she’s been based in New York City. She also holds a diploma in graphic design from Parsons School of Design and a certificate in drawing and painting from the New York Academy of Art. Jessica has exhibited her work in four solo exhibitions in the United States and in over 50 group exhibitions in both Mexico and the US. In 2018, she received the Award of Excellence from the Huntington Arts Council and an Honorable Mention Award from the Barrett Art Center. In 2019, she participated in the ARTWorks Fellowship at the Jamaica Center for Arts and Learning (JCAL) and was selected into the Creative Capital NYC “El Taller” in collaboration with the Hemispheric Institute. In 2020, Jessica completed the Trestle Art Space Residency Program, was awarded the New Work Grant by the Queens Art Fund, and won the Diane Etienne Founders Award from the Stamford Art Association. In 2021, she was shortlisted for the Hopper Price Award and was a finalist for the Alexander Rutsch Award. More recently, Jessica was named the 2021 MvVo AdArt Show winner and The Jackson Painting Prize Emerging Artist Award 2021. Her work is featured in several publications including New American Paintings, No. 152, Northeast Issue. Her works are in important collections like the Hort Family Collection, the Rubell Family Collection, the Pérez Art Museum Collection, the Lipson Collection, the Hornik Collection, the Whitley Collection, the 5M Collection, the Vascovitz Collection, the Gautereaux Collection and more. Young Collectors include Leah Glimcher and Yasmin Gee among others.

Image: Sisters oil on canvas 60 x 72 inches

ArtMaze Magazine Issue 27: curated selection

J o r d i n A l a n i s

www.jordinalanis.com

Image: The wholeness of one’s inner self oil on canvas 14 x 16 inches

Jordin Alanis is a painter born in Acámbaro, Mex based in Brooklyn, NY. She received her Bachelor’s of Fine Arts at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee in 2019. Using inspiration from dreamlike parallel worlds, she depicts compositions with sister species; rendering a world where this world and the other meet and coexist. Creating themes of metamorphosis, she fabricates these otherworldly representations with the use of vivid colors and personal symbolism. She finds inspiration from her natural surroundings, Mexican mythology and folk stories.

Image: Comet goes into earth eyes open oil on canvas 16 x 20 inches

ArtMaze Magazine Issue 27: curated selection

C a t h e r i n e

H a g g a r t y

www.catherinehaggarty.com

Image: For Sofonisba acrylic and wax crayon on canvas 16 x 20 inches

Catherine Haggarty is an artist based in Brooklyn, New York. Haggarty’s paintings and curatorial work have been reviewed by and featured in Bomb Magazine, Hyperallergic, Artnet, Two Coats of Paint, Brooklyn Magazine, The New York Times, Maake Magazine, ArtMaze Magazine, The Observer and Sound and Vision Podcast. Solo exhibitions include: Geary Contemporary, Massey Klein Gallery, This Friday or Next Friday, Bloomsburg University, One River School of Art and Design, Proto Gallery, and Look and Listen in Marseille France. Select group shows include: The Pit (LA), Mindy Solomon (Miami), Morgan Lehman, Markel Fine Art and Hesse Flatow (NYC). Catherine has been a visiting artist and lecturer at Boston University MFA, University of Oregon, Pratt University, MICA, Hunter MFA, Denison University, MICA MFA, UCONN MFA, Cornell BFA, Purchase MFA, Brooklyn College MFA and Penn State University. Haggarty earned her MFA from Mason Gross, Rutgers University in 2011. Currently, Haggarty is an adjunct professor at The School of Visual Arts (SVA). Haggarty is the co-founder and current Director of The NYC Crit Club. Right now the work is close to me. It reflects, and mirrors my life—where I sleep, where I walk and my dreams. These paintings and drawings depart from specific objects and ideas but also act as manual thinking. The paintings are always reacting to the hand and the inadequacies that it and the materials bring. Specific light sources and multiple perspectives conflate and confuse space—this is intentional. Using diverging perspectives as a tool to narrate and confuse a painting space is important to me. The paintings reflecting multiple perspectives show there is not one truth. They remain open. I finally have floors I can walk on without socks. I both dream and worry about art worry and reoccurring dreams keep me up at night. I believe making paintings and drawings is a commitment to attention and to collaboration.

Image: Egypt Drawings at Night acrylic and wax crayon / oil stick on canvas 16 x 20 inches

ArtMaze Magazine Issue 27: curated selection

N a s t i a

A s t a k h o v a

www.fanichenal.com

Image: Afternoon oil on canvas 24 x 30 cm

Nastia Astakhova is an emergent artist, currently lives and works in Moscow: In 2019, even before all these things with the pandemic, on 9 May (Victory Day), we rode out of town with my husband. We had a talk about minor things that appear to be the most valuable in wartime and so often are unnoticed in the ordinary—in peacetime. Here are private moments of silence and staying right now and right here, of feeling yourself most alive. The moments of midday heat and languid calm. The moments when you had a long, very full day and feel good exhausted. The bonding moments, when you hold each other. Here is the very value of life. I used to pay attention to this kind of experience. And try to capture it in my recent paintings.

Image: On the road oil on canvas 24 x 30 cm

ArtMaze Magazine Issue 27: curated selection

A b r a h m G u t h r i e

www.abrahmguthrie.com

Image: Grandmas Jade oil on board 8 x 10 inches

Abrahm Guthrie grew up in a small barn that the family before his had turned into a temporary house. His dad cut firewood on the weekends and taught every one of his children the importance of having two winters’ worth of wood carefully stacked to dry in the woodshed. His mom taught him the potential of crystals and divined his future from a deck of animal-themed tarot cards. As a child he spent his life by a creek, eating dry ramen noodles and building spaceships to leave the planet. When his parents fought he and his sister were sent to their grandmother’s house. Their grandmother kept them busy feeding and grooming her varied collection of animals, which included, a fox, a doe, a family of opossum, a monkey, three or four rabbits, and a multitude of cats, dogs and chickens, to name a few. Nights there were spent listening to endless hours of dice roll across the tablecloth and watching alien documentaries that his uncle put on to help piece together the story of his abduction.

Image: Objects In Your House oil on board 12 x 12 inches

ArtMaze Magazine Issue 27: curated selection

editorial selection of works Featured image: Noah Schneiderman Lake Memory oil, flashe, and acrylic ink on wood panel 14 x 11 inches more on p. 140-141

M e g a n N u g r o h o

www.nugrohomegan.com

Image: Testing The Waters colored pencils on paper 22.5 x 22.5 inches

Megan Nugroho was born in 1998 and raised in Jakarta, Indonesia and is currently based in New York. She makes works using printmaking and drawing. Her recent works consider the supernatural, individually and culturally, as a tool to try to understand the unknown and to reconcile the past with the present. Her drawings use the idea of animism to create narratives of previous ownership and history in a way that is both childlike and mysterious. She aims to confront the unknown without fear, but with curiosity and a little of naiveté. Her use of colored pencils brings that childlike perspective to the ideas of the supernatural and questions what we perceive as real or imagined.

Image: The lives of shadows colored pencils and soft pastels on paper 20 x 15 inches

ArtMaze Magazine Issue 27: editorial selection

www.margaret-thompson.com

M a r g a r e t

T h o m p s o n Image:

Seven Sisters oil, raw pigment, gel medium on canvas 55 x 55 inches

Margaret R. Thompson is a multidisciplinary artist living and working in Santa Fe, New Mexico. She earned her Bachelors of Arts in International Studies and Visual Arts at Eckerd College with a concentration in Latin American studies and socio-cultural anthropology. Filtering reality through her own mythology, she weaves narrative oil paintings, ritual performance films, and sculptural artifacts into fantastical worlds where the spirit reigns. Margaret’s work possesses an expressionist quality, documenting life through emotion, color, wonder, and complete freedom. Inspired by elements of the symbolist movement and magical realism, she channels dreams, visions, and the associative powers of the imagination into her practice. Margaret’s work explores both the artist’s and viewer’s perception of the soul, the heart, resilience, and the mysteries beyond our physical realm. Since I was very young, I have been fascinated by the concept of the Soul and the mysteries that exist beyond our physical realm. My art practice aims to capture qualities of this ‘unseen world’ that express the sense of wonder I feel in my daily existence. I utilize painting, performance, sculpture and film to build metaphysical worlds that explore concepts of death, rebirth, and the practice of ritual. I find inspiration in anything that conjures this wonder—a dark line from a poem, a recurring dream, a road-side grave, a found shrine in the forest. My paintings are gestural in form, and usually depict narratives made up of mythological beings, hybrid creatures, and fantastical landscapes. My practice in performance art, as new as it is to me, has become a necessary part of life. Wilderness, wildness, and transcendence are common themes in my performance films. I often embrace experimental elements in the video editing process to render the pieces dream-like and luminous. The work combined as a whole is my worldview, my constant project. It strengthens my connection to the world. My practice is aspirational, rejecting basic conventional modes of living for a more utopian existence where art, ideas, nature, and spirit coexist as our highest values.

Image: Groundbreaking, Two As One oil, wax, raw pigment on canvas 60 x 60 inches

ArtMaze Magazine Issue 27: editorial selection

V i l m e r

E n g e l b r e c h t

www.instagram.com/vilmere

Image: Emerging figures oil on canvas 140 x 170 cm

Vilmer Engelbrecht (b. 2000) studies at the Academy of Fine Arts in Bergen/KMD as a first year student. He has recently exhibited at Grand Teatret in Copenhagen as well as Arden Asbæk Gallery, Formation Gallery and showed two paintings at The Danish Artists´ Autumn Exhibition 2021. Together with references from art history and the world of mythology his works perform on the fine line between dream and the common understanding of reality.

Image: The Road to Eleusis oil on canvas 150 x 200 cm

ArtMaze Magazine Issue 27: editorial selection

M a d e l i n e

N o r t o n

www.madelinenortonpainting.com

Image: Bonfire Bore oil and mixed media on panel 48 x 36 inches

Madeline Norton is a figurative painter from Southeast Louisiana currently pursuing an MFA from Boston University: My work examines the complexity of sex and relationships through a lens of ambivalence. Through expressive mark making and sensuous color, I invite viewers to join in my recollection of intimate and re-imagined memories. My paintings are a physical manifestation of lust and longing, painted with grit and vulnerability. I am speaking to the transition from youth to adult, and the voyeurism that comes with being a young woman.

Image: Molly at the Lake oil and mixed media on panel 48 x 48 inches

ArtMaze Magazine Issue 27: editorial selection

K o s h i r o

A k i y a m a

www.kakiyama0320201.wixsite.com

Image: Golden Sky acrylic and ink on wood panel 51 x 61 cm

Koshiro was born in Tokyo, Japan: I studied at Camberwell College of Arts for an MA in Fine Art, Painting (2020-2021). I’m based in London now. Before that, I got a BA and MA in Japanese-style Painting over six years at Tokyo University of the Arts. Japanesestyle painting uses mineral pigments and animal glue which are mixed to create paint. The sense of Japanese-style painting affects my acrylic and printmaking techniques like making use of the colour and the impasto of paints beneath the top layer, and making use of the complicated texture on a surface. In my painting I create an idealistic landscape that reflects on a psychological condition that deals not only with utopian ideals but also morbidity. In the mind there is a constant shift between tension and relaxation, which weaves its intimate narratives and a sense of ambiguity into the work. Using a phenomenological and simple process I depict deeply private and intimate spaces, with a sense of compassion. Influenced by the writings of Simone Weil (called by Susan Sontag “one of the most… troubling witnesses to the modern travail of the spirit”, (McRobie, 2021)) my work is grounded upon a melancholy rumination originating from the moment of my mother’s death. This event gave rise to both my melancholy and an impulse for escape from the inevitable fact of death. My works are based on photos and memories. The mediums I use, especially acrylic, ink and watercolour, are chosen to build up multiple transparent layers with fluid brushstrokes. Having absorbed the expressive, disturbing potential of Edvard Munch’s work, I use vibrant, even lurid, colours and with these I construct illusionistic and dream-like worlds. The locations are often in an outdoor setting, such as the seaside, a ski resort or a park. I employ a direct, intuitive process to use these settings to create psychologically probing paintings. Another significant factor in the aftermath of a period of depression is the moment of huge consolation: ‘catharsis’. This moment comes close to freeing you from anxiety or despair. In my work I attempt to express the feeling of it. It’s a meditative practice. Although the figures in my paintings are presented as vulnerable, I also try to show the resilience of the human mind that is a symbol of power and beauty.

Image: Way to Westminster acrylic and ink on board 40 x 30 cm

ArtMaze Magazine Issue 27: editorial selection

K e n t a r o

O k u m u r a

www.kentarookumura.com

Image: Tamagawa oil on canvas 42 x 28 cm

The complementary colors walk a thin line between the beautiful and the grotesque; the erratic, visceral layers of translucent and opaque paint flows and bleeds onto the canvas. There is a feeling of fluctuation and uncertainty, whilst holding onto the familiarity of a specific time and place in the world. Okumura’s paintings explore themes of duality; a paradox and a never-ending pursuit of a nonexistent harmony between opposing ideas. Chaos and Order, Violence and Serenity, Masculinity and Femininity. He is intrigued by the idea that everything is in constant flux, from the inner emotional world that shapes our identity to the physical state of the world around us. His intuitive approach to painting is a result of controlled coincidences and improvisation, capturing a string of thoughts in response to photographs and collected images. Kentaro Okumura is a Japanese artist currently studying at Camberwell College of Arts, London. Born in 2002 in Hong Kong, he was raised in Shanghai, Singapore, and Tokyo.

Image: Childhood oil on canvas 53 x 38 cm

ArtMaze Magazine Issue 27: editorial selection

V i n n a B e g i n

www.vinnabegin.com

Image: Untitled 6 oil on paper 5.8 x 5.8 inches

Vinna Begin (b. West Java, Indonesia) is a multi-disciplinary artist based in Montreal, Canada. Vinna’s work delicately balances shape, colour and light amid structures one encounters in nature. Portraits of lucid experience, rendered as soft, hazy marriages of organic form, mirror her interest in the universal, contemplative and transcendental.

Image: Untitled 8 oil on paper 5.8 x 5.8 inches

ArtMaze Magazine Issue 27: editorial selection

www.georgiagrinter.com

G e o r g i a G r i n t e r

Image: soft miles oil and mixed media on linen 45.5 x 40.5 cm

“This intentional lack of processing towards life around her is a site of interest for Grinter. She’s attentive to the fact that our minds will never cease to make sense of what we see. With contexts dissolved from their physical origin of entity, what’s left is a blend of hot and cold primary colours (oils and waxes), singeing the canvas’s surfaces and creating a euphoric haze of colour that expands to its corners: The visceral and loud beauty in her paintings all lie in the making and being of them. There is an incomprehensible immediacy in Grinter’s work, with multiple entry points interpretable from the chaotic layering of colour. She says her impulse to look externally for discovery is dependent on ‘manipulating my surroundings to reflect back my own thoughts/feelings...the selfish way of surviving my surroundings is by bouncing my own energy off them’. She plays with these perspectives, playfully prevalent across her series and personifying titles, ‘Knitting Neon Clouds On The Bus’ and ‘Double Yellow Lines Dancing’. ‘Treelings’ reflect Grinter’s testing journey with being bound to an unwell body, presented through colour that cites a ‘punkness in death’ scored by trees’ cyclical seasons. The nestle of leaves embody a particular halo of intense colour surrounding green silhouettes, capturing the melodic change of seasons, of trees dying and regrowing and the flickers of orange that are caught in-between. Memories of old and memories of new, if fleeting, are what stir Grinter to paint. She interacts more with the meaningless of these memories. Their natures are inconclusive and insignificant. She dines with them in order to unwind from the clutter of thoughts sabotaged by ill health. These thoughts become tangible and real and so suddenly private, and vulnerable as they hang still—misunderstood. A protocol of procedure evolves, pushing Grinter to entrust the urges within her to nurture the methodical and ritualistic application of paint onto canvas. Painting is a form Georgia Grinter feels she is unstopped by.”—Excerpt from text written by Emily Seagrove for Grinter’s solo exhibition ‘Traffic Light’ showing work featured.

Image: bus ride blinder oil and mixed media on linen 96.5 x 101.5 cm

ArtMaze Magazine Issue 27: editorial selection

L y d i a

B a k e r

www.lydiakbaker.com

Image: Waiting In Between colored pencil on paper 34 1/4 x 26 inches

These colored pencil drawings are part of a new body of work exploring the passing of time, in an environment halfway between a material and spiritual world. In my work, the color balance is harmonious yet melancholic, delicately restrained by a limited value structure. The first and last appearance of light within a day has always held personal significance in my dreams and memories, guiding the visualization of my work. Filled with tiny figures taking part in unlikely and curious happenings, the imagined landscapes delve into the surreal, embracing a nonlinear concept of time. The female anatomy is woven into each composition, and iconography evocative of the menstrual cycle acts as a calendar, signifying hold and release, and the beginning and end of a process. Lydia Baker (b. 1990, Virginia) lives and works in Brooklyn, New York. She received an MFA from the New York Academy of Art in 2020 and a BFA from Virginia Commonwealth University in 2013. She is a recipient of the New York Academy of Art’s Post-Graduate Chubb Fellowship, NYFA’s City Artist Corps Grant, and has been an artist in residence in New York at the Saltonstall Foundation, and with Sugarlift Gallery at the High Line Nine. Her drawings have been featured by numerous print publications including New American Paintings No. 158, ArtMaze Magazine Issue 22, Friend of the Artist Vol. 14, and Artsin Square Issue 1. Baker’s work has been exhibited throughout the United States, recently at Art Basel Miami, Fortnight Institute and Sugarlift Gallery in NYC. Baker’s first solo exhibition opened in NYC at Massey Klein Gallery in April 2022.

Image: Halfway Point colored pencil on paper 25 x 30.5 inches

ArtMaze Magazine Issue 27: editorial selection

O s c a r

F o u z

L o p e z

www.oscarfouzlopez.com

Image: Firebreather oil on canvas 61 x 46 cm

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Oscar Fouz Lopez is a Spanish-born artist who lives and works in Dublin. His work has featured in group exhibitions such as Everything is in Everything (2019) in the Sirius Arts Centre, Cobh, and Dubliners (2021) part of the Biennial of Painting in Zagreb, Croatia. Recent solo shows include, Pickled Chimp Ears held at Pallas Projects as part of its 2018 programme, and Don’t Look Back, Baby (2020), and Light Catchers (2022) in the Molesworth Gallery, Dublin. He graduated with a BA in Fine Art from DIT in 2010 and was shortlisted for the Most Promising Graduate Award at the Talbot Gallery the same year. Lopez also holds an MFA in painting from NCAD (2016) and was the Tony O’Malley artist in residence for 2018/19. His work is held in public and private collections, including those of the OPW and Trinity College in Dublin. The work of Oscar Fouz Lopez is informed by mythological stories and their synthesis of history, metaphor and philosophical teachings. His latest paintings feature a cast of characters, the Light Catchers, absorbed in their own thoughts, travelling through surreal landscapes, engaged in activities at once mundane and metaphysical. He posits the idea of a group of people living and thriving in a campsite at the heart of a forest. In doing so, he’s not reaching for a utopian idyll, but rather for a way of living that’s achievable, as well as being desirable. His subjects live together in nature, enjoying the simple pleasures of dancing and telling stories. His purpose is deliberately reductive—to strip life back to a pure, uncomplicated, and joyful essence. By accentuating the positive in our collective psyche and presenting goodness as the strongest driving force, he implicitly rejects the allegory for human nature William Golding constructs in The Lord of the Flies. His work merges the real with the imaginary, allowing for new realities to open up and invite the viewer to enter the world of the Light Catchers, who dwell in luxuriant nature.

Image (left):

Image (right):

Punks have feelings too oil on canvas 100 x 80 cm

Storytelling oil on canvas 70 x 50 cm

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ArtMaze Magazine Issue 27: editorial selection

A d a m

L u p t o n

www.alupton.com

Image: Levee oil and acrylic on canvas 100 x 120 cm

102

Adam Lupton (born 1987, Vancouver, Canada) currently lives and works in Brooklyn. His work grows out of his OCD, where his every day is filled with performing mental and physical rituals (checking multiple times to see if the door is locked), endlessly seeking assurance (constantly Googling to see if his emotions are ‘correct’), and repeating mantras and projections (what if this happens in the future, then what? then what? then what?)—thoughts that mediate between him and the exterior world. Using variations or alternative versions of himself to express in some familiar-but-off landscape the unfolding emotions and actions of his OCD, Lupton works with non-traditional methods of paint application: using stamps, printmaking, and craft applications to express the varied, repetitive, and frantic emotions of intrusive thoughts. These applications mediate between him and the painting, much like OCD mediates between him and his world. Through this lens, the work weaves together individual and societal rituals, spiritual tension, and self-defining myth, thereby illuminating the various attempts at and desires for clarity. These overlaps create narratives that play out on the canvas—borrowing their basis from Greek myths, religious rituals, rock lyrics, modern dating plights, domestic routines, history, introspection, sexuality, and compulsions—as Lupton casts a contemporary world of anxiety though questions of identity, masculinity, ego, modern-day loneliness, domesticity, and mental health.

Image: Human Entropy oil on canvas 220 x 180 cm

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ArtMaze Magazine Issue 27: editorial selection

W o o

J i n

J o o

www.woojinstudio.com

Image: I Dream of You embroidery on an old sock 29 x 30 x 7 cm

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Woo Jin is a mixed media artist, with a specialty in textiles and embroidery art. Originally from Seoul, Korea, she moved to London in 2014 for further education in BA Textiles at Central Saint Martins, and continuing her studies in MA Textiles at Royal College of Art. Woo Jin is an awardwinning, multi-disciplinary artist, recently winning the Janome Fine Art Textiles Prize, and exhibiting widely including London Craft Central and Dutch Design Week. Influenced by Asian philosophies, traditions, and culture, Woo Jin’s work investigates the relationship we have to the ordinary objects in our daily lives. As Freya Mathews wrote in Post-Materialism, “In pre-materialist societies, there was a depth of meaning and a feeling for the profound mystery and poetry of human existence that tends to be lacking in materialist societies.” Exploring how we perceive value in our consumerist society, her practice seeks to re-enchant and to recover a lost poetry in the everyday objects that are overlooked, unnoticed, replaceable or disposable. Transforming these items by working directly into and onto them, Woo Jin brings these ordinary objects to life, gives them their own character and voice, and in doing so, encourages us to reassess their value in our day-to-day lives. Her recent ‘Dokkaebi’ series are inspired by Korean mythological creatures, also known as ‘Korean Goblins’, which are told to have formed from a spiritual possession of an inanimate object. By animating found objects in an unexpected way, Woo Jin suggests alternative views on our relationship with objects, contrasting from our current consumeristic material culture.

Image: Glove Ddokaebi embroidery on a found glove 21 x 11 x 13 cm

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ArtMaze Magazine Issue 27: editorial selection

A n a s t a s i a

K o m a r

www.anastasiakomar.com

Image: Raia acrylic and glass polymer on board 12 x 16 inches

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Komar’s current practice is based on deconstructivist philosophies such as the fragmentation and manipulation of structure and surface, and the interconnection of complex and improbable forms: My body of work ranges from installations and wall murals to pigment and acrylic paintings, to sculpture, and I focus on creating a bridge between these mediums. During the lockdown in the spring of 2020, I started a new direction in my practice: a series of sculptures and paintings that examine the notion of spatial tension. It was a breakout moment for me personally, and it released me from some of the restraints I had been struggling with in the past. The ambiguity of the situation led to ambiguity in spatial relations, between the body and the space, between the body and the objects (mainly from the domestic environment), between the body and the observer (the encounters/intruders via Zoom and alike). This work is a sensory reflection of my individual experience and its engagement with the physical and digital environment. This body of work explores the feeling of isolation and loneliness and its representation in the domestic environment and on social media. The inverted situation where freedom of movement was possible only online, created a controlled and restrained physical environment. Spatial tension is an escape through exploration of the pathways that are not necessarily physically present.

Image: Lamellae acrylic and glass polymer on board 12 x 16 inches

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A n t h o n y

P a d i l l a

www.instagram.com/anthonyzpadilla

Image: Genesis vessel oil on canvas 14 x 11 inches

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Anthony Padilla is a Native American oil painter based in Brooklyn NY. His work uses elements found in nature and also images found strictly in the realm of imagination. A mix of nature, humor and surrealism, Anthony’s paintings reflect his appreciation for the natural world as well as a curiosity for life and the potential worlds beyond our own.

Image: Blossom oil on canvas 60 x 48 inches

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S a u l C h e r n i c k

www.saulchernick.com

Image: 001: untitled homemade sculpting compound, plastic vessels, dyed grains, armature 33.75 x 22.2 x 4.5 inches

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Saul Chernick (BFA, RISD & MFA, Rutgers) has exhibited in numerous galleries, museums, and cultural institutions including the Aldrich Museum of Contemporary Art, the Bronx Museum of Art, the Jewish Museum, the Lower East Side Printshop, Max Protetch Gallery, Rush Arts Gallery, Senior & Shopmaker Gallery. He has had solo exhibitions at Soloway Gallery, Max Protetch Gallery, Franklin Art Works, La Montagne Gallery, and NURTUREart. He lives and works in Brooklyn, New York. Objects that are capable of signaling both the ancient and the futuristic, possess a disorienting power. At their best, they invite us into the unconstrained headspace of sci-fi and fantasy. I want to see sculptures that remind us that the spirit world is all around us and that curiosity and play are essential to living. An intuitive voice calls me to make objects to serve this purpose. It directs me to fashion materials to exacting, sometimes beguiling specifications—this is also a form of play. Some pieces begin with a utilitarian object, either found or purchased, and adorned with intricate patterns until it becomes purely ceremonial. Other pieces are invented deities that assume zoomorphic and abstracted forms. All the pieces are made with a homemade sculpting compound that acts like a skin. Its stone-like surface, with colors baked in, shares affinities with several age-old crafting traditions including ceramics, masonry, tilework, and inlay. I make work that responds to the sensibilities of children because in childhood, play and learning are one and the same. Play is a mode of communication, a medium for social connection, a means to explore, release and envision possibilities.

Image (left):

Image (right):

Worrier/Warrior homemade sculpting compound, glass vessels, dyed grains armature 26.25 x 22.5 x 7.5 inches

What we don’t know about the universe homemade sculpting compound, glass vessels, dyed grains, armature 20.75 x 19 x 8 inches

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J u i c i i s h ( T w e e t y

S h i w e n

W a n g )

www.instagram.com/juiciishi

Image: Stage #2 oil on canvas 80 x 100 cm

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Juic Iish was born in Shanghai, China in 1995, and is currently living and working in London: Prior to the RCA, I received my BA at the School of Art Institute of Chicago in 2018, after a BA in Set Design at Shanghai Institute of Visual Art in 2017. I got my inspirations from a series of history and a rich source of contemporary cultures, such as Drama Stage, armors and weapons, gothic aesthetics, and contemporary fetish style. In modern days, weapons from previous wars transform into decorations, glistening underneath the warm spotlights in various museums and private collections. This peculiar combination of a weapon’s destructiveness per se and its ornamental value echoes with our body’s socio-political function operating in different societies throughout history, in which it could not only be seen as a subjective agent but also more as a passive object bound to be gazed. Therefore, I am intrigued to employ this seductive yet terrifying duality to self direct and act a grotesque and gaudy world with multifaceted images. Sorely drawn by the twilight, I am eager to open up a space through the medium of lights. Before nightfall, there is widespread sedimentation sweeping the dusk, whose energy eliminates meanings of all matter. As the light dims bit by bit, everything, faded, with no more significance and meaning, lurks into the realm of shadows. In these shadows now flows the endless imagination, awakening the hidden hints, indescribable inwardness, and among which the atmosphere is filled with mystery. Through the strong force of this mystery, we are dissolving, time after time, in the day-to-day blankness and nothingness, in the gap between dusk and night, where human and ‘non-human’, life and death at that moment secretly blend with each other. Enlightenment is filled with bright lights and rationality anti-mystical. Yet, ‘dusk’ is more like their redundancy, an undercurrent of modern culture.

Image: Stage #3 oil on canvas 80 x 120 cm

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A l e s s a n d r o

K e e g a n

www.alessandrokeegan.com

Image: Under the Psychic Moon oil on canvas 60 x 57 inches

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Alessandro Keegan (b. 1980) is a visual artist, writer and adjunct professor with an MFA in painting and drawing from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and an MA in art history from Brooklyn College. His paintings and drawings, which depict forms that straddle the lines between science, nature, technology and mysticism, have been exhibited in New York, Chicago, Philadelphia, London and The Hague. Writings about his work have appeared in Artforum, Elephant Magazine, Masthead Magazine and Ephemera NYC as well as journals such as Helvete (Punctum Books, Brooklyn) and J’ai Froid (Castillo/ Corrales, Paris). Keegan’s art practice and ideas are the subject of a short documentary film called ‘The Matter of Mind’, released in 2020 by Full Moon Films. He lives and works in the Hudson Valley, NY. The forms in my work emanate a kind of disassociated consciousness, a bodiless sentience that hovers in a space both natural and artificial. These things are not unlike the current, nonlocalized human mind in the world of the emerging information technology, though the disembodied mind and altered states of consciousness associated with it are much older than human technology, dating back to our most primordial beginnings. Every painting I make takes a different approach with color and composition, but repetition is at the heart of the iconography that I work from. Crystalline orbs, tear drop shapes, schematic lines, and multifaceted geometric forms are just a few of the recurring characters in my work. Though the tone of the paintings may change from one work to the next, by seeing these familiar forms reimagined differently each time, a sense of implicit meaning is built up. The philosophical meanings I invest in the works may remain esoteric but there is an intuitive message being transferred through the repeating of my visual language in paint. I choose to work in oil paint, my primary medium, because it is deeply ancient and at one with the eternal persistence of time. Paint, a substance that is both enduring and ephemeral, links past and future together in endless cycles of return. My works, belonging outside of time, outside of past or future, find their best form in this ancient medium of paint.

Image: Psychoid Visitation oil on wood panel 12 x 9 inches

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O a k l e y

Ta p o l a

www.oakleytapola.com

Image: Jessica gouache on paper and resin clay 15 x 15 inches

116

Oakley Tapola is a painter working at the intersection of water-based media, portraiture and sculpture: I am presently adjunct faculty at MCAD and the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities Campus. I graduated from NYU with my MFA in 2019. I have been the recipient of a Visual Art’s Fund grant through the Andy Warhol Foundation. My work has been shown at Hair and Nails (Minneapolis, MN); 80WSE (NYC, NY); A. D. Gallery (NYC, NY); Titanik Gallery (Turku, Finland) and Oped Exhibitions (Tokyo, Japan). I live in St. Paul, MN and work in Glenwood City, WI. The work I make is very much about intimacy and the relationship we have with things that are small: we have to have a different kind of physical relationship with them. We have to get close to them in order to truly examine them. There is a vulnerability in that action that I find really powerful. In ‘Gathering Moss’ by Robin Wall Kimmerer, Kimmerer talks about bryophytes and other small plants existing in the ‘boundary layer’. I consider the subjects of my paintings inhabiting this space. It is a place of becoming where we find the things that aren’t initially noticed, that we subsist on. The subjects of my work are in transition and navigating just beneath the perimeter of our visible reality, only available upon deeper inspection. I take photographs of the people in my life and physical surroundings and integrate those images as source material into my paintings. The fact that I have personal relationships with each one of my subjects or source material is an integral part of the meaning behind the process and the outcome of each piece. The paintings are odes to life in all its myriad forms: the confusion, joy, sorrow and humor that are complexly intertwined. The motifs represented draw similarities between the macro and the micro. The sculptural forms used are inspired by sci-fi narratives, ecology and craft. Their construction and final shape is guided by the respective portrait they incapsulate. They are versions of all that is organic, forming and inescapably otherworldly.

Image: Lidija gouache on paper and resin clay 16 x 13 inches

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X a n d e r H o f f m a n

www.instagram.com/xanderhoffman

Image: The light you give oil on aluminium 66 x 88 cm

118

Xander Hoffman (b. 1993) is based in Manchester, and studied Painting and Printmaking at the Glasgow School of Art, graduating in 2019. His work is an exploration into screen-based imagery through the medium of painting, working primarily in oil paint but occasionally using other materials such as retroreflective paints and pigments. He seeks to record impermanent data-based images through paint so as to give these weightless moments a physical presence. Hoffman’s approach to painting has varied widely from impasto, pixel oriented works that seek to give a weightless image tangibility to the point of tactility, to more traditional oil paintings focussed on the subtle quirks of interaction with a screen, concerned with creating a physical memory for a data-based image through the action of painting. I see my work as an exploration into screen-oriented and data-based imagery, I am creating physical records for intangible moments experienced through technology—I believe it is entirely possible that paintings may outlast digital media. The moments vary from interactions with computer programmes or devices, to observed moments in film. I find the moiré pattern through screens to be like a conversation between two machines, in my paintings I try to transcribe this interaction, as though I am attempting to decipher a foreign language. The transient nature of light-based imagery is of particular interest to me; both in terms of constant technological advancement, and the fluid nature of light as a medium. I intend to give these impermanent images a physicality, so that they are no longer of the screen. I believe a fleeting digital moment inherits a physical ‘past’ through the action of painting, evolving as it is painted. I choose to illustrate the weightlessness of digital imagery by painting on thin sheets of aluminium or steel, attached to concealed mounts, as though the pieces are floating jpeg files.

Image: Broken rest oil on aluminum 50 x 70 cm

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A n g e l C o t r a y

www.cotray.com

Image: Power Couple oil on canvas 18 x 24 inches

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New York based artist Angel Cotray has primarily worked with oil paint since 2017, as a self-taught artist. Her figurative works focus on body composition and shed light on the internal dialogue of the figure by using dramatic proportions, skin colors, and body scars to reveal the narrative.

Image: Baptism oil, spray paint, and color pencils on canvas 36 x 48 inches

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M a d e l e i n e

B i a l k e

www.mbialke.com

Image: Charmed Life oil on canvas 30 x 26 inches

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Madeleine Bialke (b. 1991; Elmira, NY) lives and works in Brooklyn, NY. Solo exhibitions include ‘Nine Lives’ at Steve Turner Gallery in Los Angeles, CA; ’Long Summer,’ at Huxley-Parlour Gallery, London, UK in November, 2021; ‘Significant Other,’ at Taymour Grahne Projects, London, UK (online) 2021; ‘Murder in the Adirondacks,’ at Deanna Evans Projects, New York, NY, 2019; and ‘Vital Signs,’ at Harper’s Books, East Hampton, 2019. Group exhibitions include Alexander Berggruen, New York, NY, 2022; Dinner Gallery, New York, NY, 2022; Newchild Gallery, Antwerp, BE, 2021; and Asya Geisberg Gallery, New York, NY, 2019. Her work has been featured in the Brooklyn Rail, Artsy, New American Paintings, The Boston Globe, The Washington Square Review, and n+1. She received her MFA from Boston University in 2016 and BFA from Plattsburgh State University of New York in 2013. Most of my work is inspired by the white pines that live in an old growth forest in the Adirondack Mountains of New York. My paintings posit trees as foreign bodies with curious, self-sustaining lives and ecosystems. They can become as expansive and extra-terrestrial as celestial bodies, bridging some gap between earthly ground and the otherworldly. The settings are stitched together with a color palette designed to read more as emotion than description. Light comes from mysterious sources, prioritizing symboling meaning and emotional resonance over realistic interpretations. The atmosphere is thick with a dreamy, romantic haze of industry, indicative of a changing climate and unusual weather.

Image: Castaway oil on canvas 22 x 18 inches

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S i m o n e

Q u i l e s

www.simonequiles.com

Image: Soaking in Wrath (after the Romantics) oil and color pencil on canvas 48 x 60 inches

124

Born in the United States but raised by grandparents from the island, I experienced varying perspectives of what it means to be Caribbean. As a person of the Puerto Rican diaspora, I reference magical realism in order to explore a place I only hold in familial memory. I’ve been confronted by the gaze and linked histories of US imperialism, colonialism, and capitalism since childhood. I am now interested in unearthing the impact these histories have on my diasporic home, current community, and overall our environment. My process begins with research either through dreams, cultural rituals, or books often relating to environmental studies and sociology. Recent texts that inspire my work are ‘How to Blow up a Pipeline’ by Andreas Malm and ‘Postcolonial Love Poem’ by Natalie Diaz. Both of these texts tackle topics of climate change and indigenous politics but the first is written as a nonfiction manifesto and the second as a poetic identity piece. In my own work, I tend to interweave scientific facts with personal fantasies. Simone Quiles is an artist and curator residing in Los Angeles, CA. She has exhibited at Ice House Gallery Chicago, Woman Made Gallery, Gene Siskel Film Center, and multiple School of the Art Institute of Chicago galleries. Her most recent endeavors include co-curating and organizing the art series, 863 Gallery in East Hollywood.

Image: I’m just resting my eyes (ignorance is bliss) oil on canvas 20 x 20 inches

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C h r i s t i n a V a l e n z u e l a

www.christinavalenzuela.com

Image: Burning from within (she would lay in fire) oil and acrylic on panel 32 x 36 inches

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Christina Valenzuela is an MFA candidate in the University of Washington Painting + Drawing program. She creates work that investigates the tension between internal and external states of the mind and body, and how these two things come together to define the human condition. She questions how psychological makeup and psychosis affect our emotions, perception, actions, relationships, belief systems, and identity, and how the multiplicity of a being resists interpretation. In her most recent work, she emphasizes emotional states as exhibited by the body and by action as well as considering religion, mental illness, and the role of pain and suffering in life. She pulls from the narrative of Saint Christina the Astonishing, the Catholic patron saint of the mentally ill, as a way to consider the ideas of embodiment, religion, psychosis, and the fluidity of being. Her story is unusual—she performed bodily mortification as penance, torturing herself in a number of grotesque ways, and was thought to be possessed and viewed as insane. Christina the Astonishing’s story is one of contradiction and coexistence, blurring boundaries: demonic and divine, saint and sinner, heavenly and earthly, mind and body, hysteria and exhaustion, suffering and rapture. The artist uses herself as a model for the saint’s figure and infuses her own experiences into the story, considering her tortures through virtual embodiment as an empathetic gesture. Ultimately, questions about mental and physical existence in the world and their connection to that beyond reality drive her creative practice.

Image: To think that I would die this time (she saw heaven, hell, and purgatory, still choosing to return to earth) oil and acrylic on panel 16 x 20 inches

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A l a n n a H e r n a n d e z

www.alannakh.com

Image: Breakdown/Collapse colored pencil on wood 24 x 18 inches

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Alanna is an artist and educator living in Midcoast Maine. She creates abstract work about trauma and human relationships; and how the effects of these are felt in our bodies. She uses abstract ribbon forms that are interrupted, or intruded upon, by external objects to explore bodily feelings like hurt, tenderness, and protection. Her work also explores how we adjust to, or conceal the wounds we receive from trauma. How do we make space in our bodies for these wounds, and our strong emotions? Her process of drawing with colored pencils on wood is disciplined and meditative. It invites the viewer to similarly slow down, and notice. Alanna grew up on Cape Cod, and graduated from the University of Massachusetts Amherst in 2010, where she earned a BA in Middle East Studies. During this time she gained some formal art training, as well as education in art history, history, and language. After graduating, she continued her art practice while training in yoga and meditation. Her work is a culmination of this combination of formal education in the arts and humanities, training in yoga and meditation, and self-taught art skills. She moved to Midcoast Maine in 2018 and currently resides in Union, Maine. Now she works as an artist creating abstract works, and an educator in various in-school and extracurricular settings.

Image: Animus colored pencil on wood 24 x 18 inches

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Z i j u n

Z h a o

www.instagram.com/mosaz_zj

Image: My Addiction 1 ink, color pencil and pastel on paper 7.5 x 7.5 cm

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Zijun Zhao graduated from Central Academy of Fine Arts in China, and currently is a senior student at School of Visual Arts in New York City: Almost all my drawings are based on the recognition and prideof my Asian identity. Also conflict between real life and illusional world. Including my point of views on life and death, value and self cognition, losing my self and finding it back. Every drawing is a process of quarreling with myself that I am creating a world without logic but with order, where I have an opportunity to feel safe for facing up to myself.

Image: Maternity ink, color pencil and pastel on paper 27 x 38.5 cm

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Z a y n

Q a h t a n i

www.zaynalqahtani.art

Image: In The Beginning earth pigments, watercolour, coloured pencil, hand carved recycled cotton paper, oak, preserved moss, mdf, antique bells, acrylic beads, brass 76 x 30 x 3 cm

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Zayn Qahtani (b.1997) is a painter, drawer and sculptor based between London and Bahrain. Her work is a dance between what is seen and what is felt, compiling a personal mythology along the way. Drawing on ancient cultures and nature’s diverse ecosystems, Zayn forms visual stories which seem to exist in the twilight zone—too distorted to be real, too familiar to be a dream. Her figures seem to be suspended in a space of no-time, navigating a world which harkens to the posthuman society of today. In this altered state, a sense of safety is offered, allowing the creatures within the walls of her works to explore life’s more tender, nostalgic, and often painful feelings. Working on recycled materials, and hand making her own paints and tools from plants and minerals, Zayn allows the works to take on a life of their own, vibrating with the energy of the land itself. Recent exhibitions include ‘Chorus’, Arusha Gallery (2022); ‘She Curates x CloverMill Residency Exhibition’, Wilder Gallery (2021); ‘From the form of spirit to the spirit of form’, ATHR Gallery (2021). Zayn has been published by Vogue Arabia, JDEED, and Postscript Magazine, among others.

Image: I Bathed My Hair In The Night River earth pigments, watercolour, coloured pencil, ink on recycled cotton paper 21 x 30 cm

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B r a d S t u m p f

www.bradstumpf.com

Image: My Chosen Eater Covered in Juice oil on panel 16 x 20 inches

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My paintings are acknowledgements of real and imaginary moments in my life that make me want to hold my breath. They are attempts to capture the purity and stillness of an idle moment spent alongside my wife. The beauty of giving a rose is watching her smile as she carefully reaches for its thorned neck. It’s seeing her trim its stem to better accommodate her short vase. It’s talking about her day as she fills the vase with water. These paintings function like miniature stage sets. They are painted from observation and depict handmade objects, oftentimes organized atop my bedside table. The images are like an open door to a quiet room for which you can peek into, or a still photo of a play halfway through.

Image: Apart We Drip oil on panel 16 x 20 inches

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J e f f l y

G a b r i e l a www.jefflyart.com

Image: Swimmers oil on linen 64 x 48 x 2 inches

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M o l i n a

Jeffly Gabriela Molina is a Chicago-based interdisciplinary artist from Táchira, Venezuela. In 2016, she graduated with a Master of Fine Arts at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. She has participated in multiple group and solo exhibitions and has been commissioned for several public sculptures. Her most recent projects include a solo exhibition titled ‘De Madera y Aire’ at Galería Enrique Guerrero, CDMX. In 2019, she co-founded, with artist Brad Stumpf, an online platform titled: Bird & Tale. My paintings are inspired by memory, sourced images, and contemporary life in places I have lived, both in Venezuela and the United States. Some of the images I create are of a Venezuela of yesterday that today nostalgia transfigures into a colorful past of good things. Images of family, ancestors, and ghosts accompany a present that honors and wants to learn. The fading of memories and the desire to cling to them, and to those who belong to them. Those mixed feelings when we realize that things are not as they were, and that perhaps they were not as they are presented to us today. Perceptions toward life rituals such as marriage, patriarchy, and religion, which have changed over time with the pursuit of equality, and an infinite desire to create a prosperous present and future for the individual and the family. These themes that traffic in the everyday and magical realism have inspired a body of work that speaks of what life is made of—memories, day dreams, work and hope, love and loss, family and loneliness, of what is tangible and intangible.

Image: Two Women Boxing oil on linen 58.5 x 54 x 2 inches

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www.ernestomrenda.com

E r n e s t o R e n d a

Image: In the Bathtub (After The Sopranos (1999)) wax pastel on canvas, glue relief and acrylic on board 40 x 60 x 2.5 inches

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My work explores the idea of film as a social object and philosophical project. I feel especially called by the moments when the spectator becomes aware of themself as a subject. Around two years ago, I began developing a technique that allows me to do ‘close readings’ of moving images and editing, drawing on my background and interest in film criticism. My works also run parallel to the cultural practice of the decontextualization and re-deployment of screen captured images born out of the internet. I begin by looking at a sequence and narrowing it down to two distinctive stills. I then create a relief with hot glue gun on board, which is an extrusion of a line drawing. I follow this by wrapping and upholstering canvas to the surface, and finish by drawing with pastel. The friction of pastel on such textured surfaces make ‘rubbings’ as a by-product. Rubbings contain a material poetic of erasure, haunting, and memory. I have recently been working with shots that explore the director’s procession from the human subject to the non-human. In narrative film, these cutaways, establishing shots, and close-ups have an impersonality to them that guides the viewer back to thinking about themselves. In my work, the human is rendered in three-dimensional linear language, and the non-human is ‘projected’ onto that black surface as a flat impressionistic pastel drawing, giving the effect of an image projected in a dark room. Ernesto Renda (b. 1995, USA) lives and works in New York and New Jersey. In 2018, he graduated from the Brown-RISD Dual-Degree program with a BFA in Painting from RISD and BA in Modern Culture and Media Studies from Brown University. He has had solo and two person exhibitions at The National Arts Club (NYC), Moskowitz Bayse Gallery (LA), The Empty Circle (NYC), and In Lieu Gallery (LA) among others. His work has been included in group exhibitions at James Fuentes (NYC), 1969 Gallery (NYC), Shin Gallery (NYC), Grove Collective (London), The Bell Gallery at Brown (Providence, RI), among others. He was a 2021 recipient of the Silver Art Projects residency in NYC. Images courtesy of In Lieu Gallery, Los Angeles. Image: Backstabbing (after Cruising (1980)) wax pastel on canvas, glue relief and acrylic on board 36 x 72 x 3 inches

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N o a h S c h n e i d e r m a n

www.noahschneiderman.com

Image: Night Movement oil and wax on canvas 24 x 30 inches

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Noah Schneiderman is a multi-disciplinary artist born in 1996 in rural Illinois. The primary focus of Noah’s practice are his paintings which function as mirrors to his inner life and cultivate an understanding of self and an understanding of the world. Informed by nature, memory, and the mystical, these works seek to brush against that which lies just beneath the surface of everyday life. Noah lives and works in Denver, CO.

Image: Eigengrau oil and wax on canvas 96 x 72 inches

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L y n

L i u

www.lynliu.com

Image: Searching oil on linen 40 x 40 in

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Lyn Liu was born in 1993 in Beijing, China and is now a New York based artist working primarily in painting, printmaking and independent publication. She received her BFA from School of Visual Arts, NY in 2016, and attended École nationale supérieure des Beaux-Arts, Paris from 2017 to 2020, and is currently a 2nd year MFA Candidate in Visual Arts, Columbia University, NY. Lyn Liu’s work addresses the psychological aspects of the absurdness and uncertainness from a disordered reality. By extracting and enlarging the interdependent relationship between individuals, she has created an uncanny cinematic sequence to symbolize her confusion about the contemporary alienation as an outlander. The psychological perspective from which she views sociability and dis-sociability is closely linked to her biography.

Image: Untitled oil on wood 12 x 12 inches

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C h r i s t i a n

P e r d i x

www.instagram.com/christianperdix

Image: Glue won’t do oil and acrylic on cotton 110 x 75 cm

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Christian Perdix was born in 1985 in Jena, Germany. He studied painting at the University of Applied Arts Vienna (MFA 2013), the Academy of Visual Arts Leipzig, and the University of Art and Design Linz. In 2013, he was awarded the Franc-Vila-Prize and held a studio scholarship at das weisse haus in Vienna, Austria. With a grant from the Austrian Federal Chancellery, he realized his first institutional exhibition at FAIT Gallery, Brno (CZ) in 2016. Christian Perdix was Artist-in-Residence at the Center for Contemporary Arts in Andratx, Spain (2014) and the Teton Artlab in Jackson, WY, USA (2018). Most recent exhibitions include Y2K Group, NYC (US); Artual Gallery, Beirut (LBN); ZAK-Zentrum für Aktuelle Kunst and Galerie Kornfeld, Berlin (DE); Kunstraum Potsdam (DE); Kunstverein Tiergarten and Centrum Berlin (DE) and Haus Wittgenstein, Vienna (AT). He lives and works in New York City. My motivation for the paintings I make stems from the artist’s obligation to reflect on the time they live in, without being about themselves (entitled) or finger-wagging (moralistic). I create paintings that deal with the aftermath of 9/11 and its ripple effects, as well as systemic thoughts and future threats like climate. Two mistakes must be avoided during that process: illustration and didactics. My aim is to lure the viewer into liking to look at the painting through visual stimulation and get them through the back door with its content, which at times can be very heavy. In the best case, I can make the viewer curious e.g. about Waterboarding, and pass on knowledge about it. The painting leads to a conversation. Post- 9/11 torture in Guantanamo or mass surveillance—broken democratic principles—are known, but far from being fully processed, let alone anyone was ever held accountable. Meaning, people need to be reminded or made aware of it. These topics need to be documented beyond bureaucratic file cabinets, preserved for future generations. Imperialistic systems paired with capitalistic motifs are the root causes of global damage. Shedding light on evil changes the way we see evil and we are more likely to think, hence act differently when coming across it.

Image: Turmoil oil and acrylic on cotton 95 x 100 cm

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F l o r i s V a n

L o o k

keteleer.com/artists/floris-van-look

Image: The fire oil on canvas 90 x 90 cm

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After receiving his bachelor’s degree in psychology from Ghent University in 2012, Floris Van Look (b 1990. Wilrijk, BE) lives and works in Antwerp, BE and wanted to explore alternative directions. He tried his hand at architecture but eventually decided to go and study painting at the Academy of Fine Arts, Antwerp. Floris quickly felt at home in the academy which offered a somewhat traditional education. Since graduating in 2018 Floris focuses on figurative painting and developed a certain visual language of his own. Built up of very thick layers, bordering sculptures, his works offer the viewer a very tactile, non-virtual, 3D experience evoking memories of old fashioned, phased out ways of storytelling. The artist prefers to stick to old techniques and classical references but still tries to inspire our ‘hypermodern’ minds to fantasy. With A Short Trip, Floris Van Look introduces his newest character: a living, though melting, ice cube. An at first sight playful cartoon may stir up a stream of associations, recognition and existential issues. In his new oil paintings, Floris took sociological themes such as (social) identity and the search for meaning and distilled them into a simplified symbolic figure: man as a transparent, empty block of ice, lacking a face or any other distinguishing features. Floris’ choice to use ice cubes is the result of those spontaneously generated musings that precede the creation of every work of art: what do I actually have to say? And so, inevitably: who am I and what do I identify myself with? Floris eventually ended up with the idea of a sort of man without qualities, after that famous book by Robert Musil, but then his own, light-hearted interpretation of it. The ice cubes are surrounded by detailed landscapes and although they are placed in the centre of the image, as the lead characters, they’re actually only visible, only given substance, because of the nature that surrounds them and literally colours them. They are ‘merely’ the product and the reflection of their environment. Floris offers a mildly relativistic answer to the philosophical questions surrounding the issues of freedom and self-determination: the conviction that it is mainly your environment that shapes who you are and that you shouldn’t be too concerned with searching for or showcasing your ‘highly unique’ personal characteristics.

Image: The road oil on canvas 90 x 90 cm

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A n d r e w

S c h u l t h e i s

www.andrewschultheis.com

Image: The Nightmare oil pastel on paper 20 x 14 inches

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Andrew Schultheis (b. 1973, Taipei, Taiwan) lives and works in Brooklyn, NY. His vibrantly colored, dizzying compositions depict dreamscape narratives and apocalyptic phantasmagorias. His drawings are fragmented, collage-like and exuberant. Exploring liminal spaces and fractured realities, his work often blurs the lines between figure, ground and abstraction. His work often references books and films drawing inspiration from a variety of writers and directors including Michael Cisco, Jane de la Vaudère, Ken Russell and others. He is also influenced by painters such as James Ensor and Bob Thompson. He has exhibited in group shows at Asterisk in Brooklyn and Monya Rowe in Manhattan.

Image: The Cipher oil pastel on paper 19 x 26 inches

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N e e l J a s s a n i

www.neeljassani.com

Image: The Playground acrylic on canvas 120 x 90 cm

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Neel Jassani initiates this collection of works by reciting a passage from the novella Notes from the Underground written by Fyodor Dostoevsky “I believe in it, I answer for it, for the whole work of man really seems to consist in nothing but proving to himself every minute that he is a man and not a piano-key!” In this series, I have explored archetypal biblical stories and mythical narratives within a psychedelic headspace, probing questions on mortality and pious implications. It acts as a thought experiment exploring alternate timelines and possible variations of reality. I spent six months in Iraq, paving away in the mountains of Sulaymaniyah. It was a time of pure introspection in a perfectly still sanctuary. Almost like time ceased there. That’s what spiked the birth of this collection.

Image: The Journey of Unnatural Things acrylic 150 x 200 cm

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M a t t h i a s

R i c h a r d

www.matthiasramsey.at

Image: Overflowing and Condensing oil on canvas 100 x 110 cm

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R a m s e y

Matthias Richard Ramsey is an Austrian/Australian artist living and working in Vienna, Austria. He studied Painting at the University of Applied Arts and Zoology at the University of Vienna, where he is currently teaching animal anatomy. Matthias Ramsey recently exhibited at Mauve, Vienna; Obolo, Vienna and Kunstraum Grünspann, Feffernitz and was awarded the Media Scholarship for Literature of the National Parks Austria. His work is characterized by playfully evolving motifs and symbols. These are often drawn from Biology but are used to illustrate a wide range of very personal and political themes. This system works like the lens of an optical instrument. Like a microscope or a pair of binoculars it can be used to zoom in and examine the world. The variation in motifs is reflected in the choice of medium. Very often he works on oil paintings, frescoes, watercolors and ceramics concurrently.

Image: Radar Angel watercolor on paper 29.7 x 42 cm

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R a y m i e I a d e v a i a

www.raymieiadevaia.com

Image: Belle oil on wood panel 9 x 12 inches

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Raymie Iadevaia (b. 1984, Newport Beach, CA) is an artist based in Los Angeles, CA. He received a BFA from the California College of Arts and Crafts and an MFA from Art Center College of Design. In 2021, his first New York solo exhibition, The Intangible Forest, was shown at Halsey McKay Gallery, NY. Recent group exhibitions include, Run with the Wolves at The Pit, Los Angeles, and Office Group Show at Bozomag, Los Angeles. His second solo exhibition at Halsey McKay Gallery was in April 2022. Like a cat brushing its head on people and places, I paint to get closer to the textures of the world. My paintings are chromatic mixtures of domestic spaces and imagined landscapes: house cats, coffee cups, flowers and plants, looking out windows, meandering hiking trails, staircases, strange architectures, woodland creatures, and distant cities. I start the day through a diaristic drawing practice, sometimes to anticipate a painting, other times when the painting has already begun. The accumulation of pen and ink cross-hatching is used to solidify form, build density, and indent the page with a rattled field of traveled directions. As a translation from the drawn meditations, I layer oil paint from thin to thick passages, scumbling the surface with a multiplicity of marks and brushstrokes. Sometimes using a single brush for the entire painting. The arm forms the initial gesture, activating and toning the surface with color, a vague mood, and sense of motion. Then, the paintings are made from the wrist and fingers: frenetic, nervous, anxious, jerking, jittery movements to expel and move the energy from my body to the surface. I want to keep the eye moving inside the paintings forever. Becoming endlessly surprised, seeing something new with each passing glance. Wouldn’t it be amazing if a painting can nourish like food, photosynthesizing the design of pigments on a surface, keeping one alive just through the act of looking? Like a great cauldron, swirling continuously, stewing and steeping flavors, transforming ingredients, extracting more and more intensity from the coalescing bowl of substances: the mass of paint.

Image: Wildflowers oil on wood panel 18 x 24 inches

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We are looking to discover more emerging artists and to publish and help further 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. For any questions, please feel free to get in touch with us at info@artmazemag.com