Double Volume Issue 32-33

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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.

HOW WE WORK ArtMaze Magazine is published four or five times per year and announces a competition-based curated call for art for each issue every 2-3 months.

We do not outline any specific themes for each of our opportunities—this helps us maintain a broad spectrum of submission material which we find fruitful in order to find as many inspiring works as possible which haven’t had enough spotlight and need exposure.

We accept works to be sent to us for consideration only via our application forms for calls for art for print and online publications. Please visit our website for more details: www.artmazemag.com/call-for-art

ArtMaze print editions offer its readers a continuous art experience without advertisement. Our carefully curated selections of artworks offer an insight to the inspiring progress and success of an extraordinary amount of emerging and mid-career contemporary artists from all over the world who have been applying to our annual competition-based curated calls. Each of our issues contain curated selections of works by our editorial team as well as, on some occasions, by a guest-curator (s), and normally include 30-65 artist features.

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.

HOW TO SUBMIT YOUR WORK

ISSUES

Artists are welcome to submit works in any visual medium which can be showcased in print format:

All issues of ArtMaze Magazine are stored in the UK in the British Library (London), Bodleian Library (Oxford University), Cambridge University Library, National Library of Scotland, National Library of Wales and Trinity College (Dublin).

painting, drawing, sculpture, printmaking, photography, textile, installation, digital, film, performance, any form of mixed media etc.

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

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

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

FRONT COVER:

Business information:

Monika Marchewka Dream oil on canvas 70 x 70 cm more on p. 82-83

© 2023 print ISSN No. 2399-892X online ISSN No. 2399-8938

INNER FRONT COVER:

BACK COVER:

® ArtMaze Magazine is a registered trademark

Sedona Cohen Gold Flower Growing oil on canvas 36 x 48 inches more on p. 84-85

Soru Lee Mornings ― Dear Clau soft pastel on paper 42 x 59.4 cm more on p. 50-51

ArtMaze Magazine is printed in London, United Kingdom

by Park Communications Ltd.

Issue 35

call for art DEADLINE: August 24th 2023 EST Issue 35 is to be curated exclusively by ArtMaze Magazine editorial team

Submit your work for a chance to be published in print and 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: 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: Hyeseung Lee Untitled oil on canvas 100 x 80 cm more on p. 80-81

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10-123 featured artists Willia m Matheson . 1 0 Holden Willard . 1 2 X ia oyi Gao . 1 4 Na poleón Aguil er a . 1 6 Diego Loz a no . 1 8 Cha rity Ba ker . 2 0 Enea To l d o . 2 2 Oleg Tsy b a . 2 4 Da niel Fle ur . 2 6 Ma ssiel Mafes . 2 8 Gra ce Kennis on . 3 0 Gia nluc a Crudel e . 3 2 Zhenlin Zhang . 3 4 Yewon Lee . 3 6 Luke Fra nc is Austi n . 3 8 Joha nna Seid el . 40 Fiz a Ghaur i . 42 Doris Ko l p a . 44 Heidi Y i p . 46 Crysta l Lu p a . 48 Soru Lee . 50 Terez a Nesnida lova . 52 Lucy Bel l . 54 Efrat Mer i n . 56 Mattia Siniga g l i a . 58 A morelle Ja cox . 6 0 Da nielle Wing er . 6 2 Sa ra h Ha rdy . 6 4 Yuqia o Guo . 6 6 Eozeen Lee . 6 8 Gra ce Broml ey . 7 0 Na K i m . 7 2 Agata Trecc ani . 74 Ja mie L. Luoto . 7 6 Sujin Lee . 7 8 H yeseung Lee . 80 Monika Ma rc hew k a . 82 Sedona Cohen . 84 Ca rla Week s . 86 Nina Silverberg . 88 Igor Prz ybyl s k i . 90 Seba stia n M i ttl . 92 Keerim Ki m . 94 Kiwha Lee . 96 Jia lin Ren . 98 Robert va n de Graaf . 1 0 0 Da niela Ra mirez . 1 0 2 Anna Sjöström . 1 0 4 Mia Risberg . 1 0 6 Emily Stroud . 1 0 8 Ma rga ret Ma rc hant . 1 1 0 Eryn Lougheed . 1 1 2 Connie H urley a nd Da nny Leyla n d . 1 1 4 A na Vostruc hova i te . 1 1 6 Shuyi Cao . 1 1 8 A biga il Robinson . 1 2 0 Emese Ká d ár . 1 2 2

FEATURED ARTISTS curated selection by ArtMaze Magazine Featured image: Charity Baker Deer Bed oil on canvas 36 x 24 in more on p. 20-21

W i l l i a m

M a t h e s o n

www.williammatheson.com

Image: Contained Shadow oil on jute 13 x 8 in

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My work is engaged with memory, preservation, and spectrality. My paintings exist as stagesharsh, framed spaces that contain a wide spectrum of images, from the deeply personal to the collective, the mundane to the horrific. They are populated by shadows, reflections, and ghosts, with icons that are both familiar and uncanny. My surfaces of choice are often coarse materials like jute and sheer linen, which have gaps and faults and highlight an earthy, bodily materiality.

I use thin washes of oil paint and a variety of tools like window scrapers and rags to layer and distort my paintings, leaving previous layers faintly visible, straddling the line between the normal and the preternatural.

William Matheson lives and works in Portland, OR. His work has been shown at galleries in New York, South Korea, Japan, Taipei, the Czech Republic and Oregon. Matheson is the recipient of Artist Grants from The Elizabeth Greenshields Foundation in Montreal, Canada, the Regional Arts and Culture Council in Portland, OR and The Puffin Foundation in New Jersey. He has been an artistin-residence at the Örö Residency Programme in Finland, Mass MoCA in North Adams, MA, the Vermont Studio Center and Taipei Artist Village in Taiwan. Matheson Received his MFA from Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond, VA, in 2016 and his BFA from Portland’s Pacific Northwest College of Art in 2013. He is represented by Nationale in Portland.

Image: Dollhouse oil on jute 13 x 22 in

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ArtMaze Magazine Double Volume Issue 32-33: curated selection

H o l d e n

W i l l a r d

www.holdenwillard.com

Image: The Lovers oil on canvas 93 x 61 in

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Holden Willard is a 23 year old recent graduate of Montserrat College of Art: In May of 2021 I received my BFA in Painting, however my interests serve multiple mediums: printmaking, photography, performance, collage and woodworking. I was born and raised in Maine, and currently I am living in Portland ME. My work is concerned with a coming of age narrative in rural Maine. I’m mainly striving towards creating a dialogue between the past, present and future—be it through the lens of family, friends and environment. In my mind, these are essential devices that I utilize to create a coming of age narrative in rural Maine.

Images from home, adventures of youth, fears and anxieties expressed through eyesight and posture—all in an effort of saying the unsaid. My work primarily deals with the figure and its interaction within space; my studies with observation are concerned with how my sight ultimately affects the work. I consider the ebb and flow that comes with every medium’s process, determining the best way to push my understanding of it. When I approach a piece I am mainly looking to understand and re-evaluate choices. The work is always in a flux with no particular attention to certain parts, rather an awareness placed upon the whole picture. The paintings build an attention to the surface; its history and change is analogous to how I perceive people as perception is a consistent struggle.

Whether I approach the figure, or objects—the space in which they inhabit… I treat them with the same respect and attention. I consider how light translates to color. Much like a dream I try to interpret the heat that the body gives off; especially how that color can wash into the surrounding space and say something about the person. Passages of color are broken by line, as drawing is an intrinsic part of painting—and much drawing and erasing happens in the painting.

Ultimately the goal is to create an honest response to whatever I am reacting to.

Image: Memories come to view oil on canvas 58 x 54 in

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ArtMaze Magazine Double Volume Issue 32-33: curated selection

X i a o y i

G a o

www.xiaoyigao.com

Image: What have been left oil on used shirt 24 x 30 cm

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Xiaoyi Gao received an MFA in painting at the University of Washington in 2021, and now lives and works in Chengdu, China: Integrating paintings with used fabrics for clothing and home decorations, my work is a re-imagination and meditation of personal and collective memory. I portray surreal and uncertain feelings to expose potentially undisclosed hints beyond the actual objects and images. In the series called “Ye Ye, for the first time”, I made a series of drawings based on the photos of my grandparents taken when they were young. Since then, I started paying attention to family commemorative photos. In this type of photo, the protagonist wears iconic clothing of the times, thus commemorating a special moment in time. These photos abandoned the need for composition and aesthetics, existing as evidence that even the protagonist is not always centered and comfortable.

Beneath the photo, there awaits a space to revisit and question particularities of personal memories, social customs and cultural traditions. Alongside photographs, my source materials consist of mundane objects such as keepsakes from my childhood, second-hand objects and household items. Through sewing, collaging and the blurring of shapes and contours in a soft manner, my work is a process of doubting, reinterpreting, and adjusting.

Image: From far far away oil on used quilt 24 x 30 cm

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ArtMaze Magazine Double Volume Issue 32-33: curated selection

N a p o l e ó n

A g u i l e r a

www.instagram.com/napoleon_ag

Image: Pinocchio’s boots wood and laquer 60 x 15 x 43 cm (each)

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Napoleón Aguilera’s artistic practice is characterized by a strong influence on materials, regional idiosyncrasy and active collaboration with different crafts. His interest in artisan disciplines leads him to constantly experiment with production methodologies and the way in which he connects with new agents and their codes. The work frequently draws upon strategies such as humor and double meanings to address and introduce speculations on topics such as cockfighting, organized criminal phenomena and rumors that spread on the web. He emphasizes the formal results in forceful and very detailed objects, drawings and actions.

Napoleón Aguilera (born 1986) is a graduate of the ITESO School of Architecture, lives and works in Guadalajara, Mexico. His most recent projects among many others include in 2023: Colección SS23, Proyecto CAIMÁN, Mexico City, MX; 2022: Bodega ACME 9, General Prim 30, Mexico City; 2020: Dispositivos sonoros para peleas de gallos, Proyecto CAIMÁN, Guadalajara; Sueños rotos; para una arqueología contemporánea, Studio Block M74, Mexico City; El principio es la mitad del todo, Armen Daguer, Guadalajara; 2019: Una piedra rota no es dos piedras, Estudio Hospital, Guadalajara; 2018: Oficio y Materia, MAZ-Museo de Arte de Zapopan, Guadalajara; 2016: DIY Fiction, Careyes Art Foundation, Careyes, MX ; Las ruinas circulares, Artere-A, Guadalajara.

Image: Pointy margielas wood, enamel, condom and cigarettes 43 x 13 x 30 cm (each)

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ArtMaze Magazine Double Volume Issue 32-33: curated selection

D i e g o

L o z a n o

www.instagram.com/yawgo

Image: Flowers in a vase acrylic on canvas 18 x 18 inches

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Diego Lozano (b. 1993) is a Dominican American painter living and based in New Jersey. He presents both realistic and satirical subjects in his work that consists of portraits, figurative scenes and still life. Inspired by painters like Salvador Dali, Francisco de Goya, he aims to change the perceptive of objects and situations in our everyday lives.

Much of his work reflects his own life experiences, as well as the people and places around him. Diego’s overall goal in his art, is to create questions and challenge his viewers.

Image: Grapes acrylic on canvas 16 x 20 inches

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ArtMaze Magazine Double Volume Issue 32-33: curated selection

C h a r i t y

B a k e r

www.charitybakerart.weebly.com

Image: In the Forest with Stars oil on canvas 36 x 24 in

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Charity Baker’s economically rendered figures inhabit a contemporary, vernacular Arcadia, a zone of idyllic landscapes and expanses of water, where people skinny dip or embrace. Some images seem to be dream-like evocations of a highly desirable state of existence, while others become disquieting, the longer we stay with them. The occasional ambiguity complicates and enriches our conception of Baker’s world. Mostly, however, we transport ourselves into her summery vision of camaraderie and pleasure, a present-day version of Charles Baudelaire’s luxe, calme, et volupté, presented in a pared-down modernist idiom inflected by such masters as Henri Matisse and Pierre Bonnard, spoken with an American accent and a highly personal vocabulary.

Formally trained in architecture at Pratt Institute, Charity earned her MFA from the New York Studio School in 2019 where she is currently a faculty member and Working Artist in Residence. She is the recipient of several awards including the Mercedes Matter/Ambassador Middendorf prize, the Hohenberg Travel Grant, summer residency in Chautauqua, NY and she is the first artist to attend the Caernarfon Residency in North Wales this summer 2023 as a guest of Life Full Color.

Since 2018 Baker has been exploring the greatness of night landscape painting in the Northern hemisphere, beginning in Chautauqua at the Canadian border, during the pandemic on the Hudson River, and lately in the more northern terrain in Sweden. These experiences have had an impact on her understanding of light in her paintings and its effects on the psyche which also comes into the narrative of her figuration. Baker’s work has been featured in a variety of group and solo shows and her work resides in collections nationwide.

Image: Archipelago I oil on canvas 27 x 25 in

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ArtMaze Magazine Double Volume Issue 32-33: curated selection

E n e a To l d o www.eneatoldo.com

Image: La grande moria oil on raw earth, brick dust and straw on jute canvas 166 x 222 cm

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I paint on canvas or wooden panels I plaster with a mixture of raw earth, sand and straw, a technique I learned while building an oven for the farmhouse I had escaped to. These natural and low-impact backgrounds respond to precise ecological and environmental reflections. In my paintings, I address issues I feel are extremely urgent, like waste, extinction and rising sea levels. Aiming for balance with the visually strong backgrounds, I leave space between the oil or watercolor brush marks, seeing them as energy particles that relate to their surroundings. Recently I started to work more intrinsically with the territory, using earth, sand and plant parts from the same place I then paint. I depict a landscape, but the landscape is materially part of it.

Enea Toldo (Locarno, 1988) is a Swiss self-taught painter based in Milan, Italy. He moved to strictly painterly research in 2019. Prior to that, he had a decade-long career in graphic design. Recently he had his first solo show at the artist-run space Un Villaggio Differente in Milan, Italy. In 2023 he participated in the group shows 室内景观 (Paysages Intérieurs) at La Rada in Locarno, Switzerland; Play_ACT at Palazzo Gravina in Naples, Italy, and the residency ExtrArtis in Sorrento, Italy. In 2022 he was awarded the ExtrArtis Art Prize, being selected at ReA! Art Fair at Fabbrica del Vapore in Milan, Italy.

Image: Totentanz II watercolor and pigments on raw earth, sand and straw on jute canvas 167 x 235 cm

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ArtMaze Magazine Double Volume Issue 32-33: curated selection

O l e g

Ts y b a

www.olegtsyba.com

Image: Achilles oil and canvas 160 x 185 cm

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Oleg Tsyba’s main profession is a doctor: I successfully practise medicine but I feel myself an Artist every day of my life. I started to create my works four years ago and Art became my main passion. My career has only begun, but three of my works were purchased by the Art Foundation in Spain for the permanent exhibition at the Museum.

In my artwork I explore the form in its primary manifestation. Most often, the subject for my paintings is an ancient mythology. These themes are always relevant to Humanity – they tell us about love, sex, passion and death. They inspire me to create.

Image: Judith oil and canvas 165 x 190 cm

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ArtMaze Magazine Double Volume Issue 32-33: curated selection

D a n i e l

F l e u r

www.danielfleur.com

Image: Healing acrylic on linen 45 x 32 cm

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I experience the world as painting, and how it can be transformed into painting and through painting. Whether it is digitally resolved motifs or detailed realistic everyday motifs, it is all paintings from within. As a classical painter, I am familiar with techniques that build up the paintings layer by layer. The often intimate motifs may come from my everyday life or what is meditated upon in everyday life. But it does not necessarily have to be my everyday life that is portrayed. Sometimes I see an inner image that I work out, sometimes I come across an image and sometimes I search for one. My latest works present a kaleidoscope of themes such as vacation, food, and health. Yet they are kept whimsical and sometimes humorous in their execution.

Daniel Fleur is based in Malmö, Sweden and studied at Malmö Art Academy between 2013 and 2018. Besides solo exhibitions at Wadström Tönnheim Gallery in Malmö and Marbella, recent exhibitions include Stene Projects Gallery in Stockholm, Galleri KANT in Copenhagen, and Krognoshuset in Lund. Daniel has participated in group shows at places such as Ravinen Konsthall in Båstad, Galleri Bo Bjerggaard in Copenhagen, Galleri Arnstedt in Östra Karup, and Galleri Thomas Wallner in Simris.

Image: Cheesus oil and acrylic on linen 35 x 25 cm

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ArtMaze Magazine Double Volume Issue 32-33: curated selection

www.massielmafes.com

M a s s i e l M a f e s Image: El Taller (The Studio) acrylic paint, watercolor pencil, bleach, second-hand clothes, tulle, thread on cotton canvas 161.29 x 219.71 cm

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I am a storyteller. Each surface of my paintings is a stage where I direct, compose and position my characters to play out a narrative. With thread and a sewing needle, I stitch together reality and imagination. My work is a vessel that draws on themes of displacement and migration using references from art history, Latin American literature, poetry, and autobiography. I explore these ideas through painting, drawing, and collage. Treating fabric like paint, I stain, layer, cut, and meticulously hand-stitch small pieces of second-hand clothes until they become images. This material is the foundation of my practice. It is a carrier of stories, memories, and lived experiences of the people who once wore them. I use my family’s discarded clothing, which they ship from Miami to my studio in New York City. It is a tactile connection to my Cuban ancestry. I make this work to honor my community and unite the stories of the people displaced worldwide and the memories of the place they once called home.

Massiel Mafes is a New York City-based artist originally from Miami, Florida. She received her Master of Fine Arts from California College of the Arts in 2018 and her Bachelor of Fine Arts from Miami International University of Art and Design in 2015. Exhibitions include Minnesota Street Project, San Francisco, CA (2018); Hubbel Street Gallery, San Francisco, CA (2018); Standard Projects, Kaukauna, WI (2017); and SOMArts Cultural Center, San Francisco, CA (2017). She received the Barclay Simpson Award and the CCA travel grant. She participated in the Joya: arte + ecología artist residency in Vélez-Rubio, Spain, and her work has been featured in New American Paintings and Studio Visit Magazine.

Image: Silhouette acrylic paint, watercolor pencil, bleach, second-hand clothes, tulle, thread on cotton canvas 179.07 x 147.32 cm

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ArtMaze Magazine Double Volume Issue 32-33: curated selection

G r a c e

K e n n i s o n

www.gracekennison.com

Image: Billy Hell acrylic on canvas 12 x 14 in All images by Brad Trone. Courtesy of the artist and The Valley, Taos.

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My current paintings articulate reflections on settler colonial history and reimagine the symbols and stories that compose our shared understanding of the American West. Through my work, I have come to think of “the west” as a psychological space where ideas about freedom, identity, and land threaten to eliminate or warp real histories, perceptions of self, and our relationship to the world around us. My work asks what it is about this west that we identify with and long for. I wonder to what degree our relationships to the natural world, ourselves, and reality are at stake in wrangling with the legacy of the west.

My work references the surreal as a way to visually relate to the grand illusions the western as a genre has to offer. I’m interested in ways western land and the subjects that relate to it are postured, stretched, and reshaped through the telling and retelling of new and old stories of the west. Equally influential to my work are my real experiences and what I have learned as a white woman living in areas throughout the west—currently on Ute land in the San Luis Valley, belonging to the Tabergauche band. Within this middle ground between fantasies of self/place and my reaching for that which is absolutely real, I find myself with more questions. How do I relate to the land I live on? What happens when I reconfigure the language of the west into visions of something personally meaningful? What am I trying to liberate myself into?

Grace Kennison is a painter living and working in the San Luis Valley in southwestern Colorado. After earning her BFA from Colorado State University in 2018, Grace began painting as a way to bring her visions to life. Since 2020, she has exhibited her work in two solo exhibitions and many group shows, most recently in Trick Pony, a two-person show at The Valley, Taos. Grace is currently continuing her practice in painting from her studio in Ridgway, Colorado where she is endlessly inspired by the stories of “the West”.

Image (left):

Image (right):

Star Witness acrylic on canvas 12 x 14 in

Double Take acrylic on canvas 12 x 14 in

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ArtMaze Magazine Double Volume Issue 32-33: curated selection

G i a n l u c a

C r u d e l e

www.gianlucacrudele.com

Image: The Botanist acrylic on linen 95 x 120 cm

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Gianluca Crudele (b. 1989) is an Italian painter and designer based in Hong Kong. He began painting murals on the street walls of his hometown at the age of fifteen and later went on to study design in Milan (BA) and Nottingham (MA) before moving to Hong Kong. Expanding from his large-scale murals, his contemplative canvases draw from the energies of various genres and disciplines, from philosophy to quantum physics and alchemy.

My practice challenges the idea of “belonging” within a certain time and space by exploring the impact that archetypal images play into our perception of reality. Can we feel nostalgic about a place or an instant we never experienced outside of our head? Approaching painting as an alchemical practice, I compose allegorical scenes at the same time sacred and mundane, intimate and universal, presenting the world as a mystery to be participated in.

In the dusk between the clarity of reason and the impenetrable darkness beyond our reach, projections of our fears and hopes work to reduce these hypotheses to something known. Yet entangled with what remains unresolved—they end up creating new mythologies.

Image: Tender Lover acrylic on linen 70 x 85 cm

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ArtMaze Magazine Double Volume Issue 32-33: curated selection

Z h e n l i n

Z h a n g

www.instagram.com/zhen.lin__

Image: In the world of swans, the blackness of crows is original sin oil on canvas 120 x 90 cm

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Zhenlin Zhang has a BA in Fine Art from the University of Reading UK, and is currently a postgraduate student in the Royal College of Art. Experienced in various forms of painting and now emphasizing the creation of oil painting, Zhenlin is keen to become a contemporary artist and to hold a solo exhibition.

Image: Ostrea virginica oil on paper 23 x 31 cm

Image: Snow oil on paper 23 x 31 cm

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ArtMaze Magazine Double Volume Issue 32-33: curated selection

Y e w o n

L e e

www.yewonlee.net

Image: A note for the forgotten ones Hanji Collage, ink and charcoal on canvas 70 x 60 cm

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Yewon Lee (b.1994 in Seoul, Korea) is an artist based in London and Seoul and a current MA Painting student at the Royal College of Art, focusing on painting, sculpture, and installation. After graduating from the Seoul National University (BFA & MFA) where she studied oriental painting, she gradually expanded her art from traditional painting to contemporary art, exploring a variety of materials.

We exist and live with other people in society. Numerous emotions arise in adapting to society’s demands as an individual cannot help but experience feelings of inconsistency and alienation without being fully or completely understood by others. That’s why we learned how to survive by comforting, empathising, and supporting each other rather than being isolated. Still, behind that, anxiety is hidden in our existence as ourselves, which is difficult to describe. However, we only know how easily the contrasting emotions that seem incompatible can change depending on our situation. How unclear the boundaries are once we face the moment.

My work visualises the process of redefining and exploring my identity every moment. We communicate and define our identity with others with the regulations or terms created by the society we belong to. As there is a difference between my identity defined and stipulated in Korea and London, I experienced that my identity defined by myself can change depending on the society. Just as society changes with time and people’s perceptions, I thought that my identity, which I define myself, is shape-shifting either by me or society. I realised that my self defined identity is not an absolute invariant identity, but it can be subjective, relative, and temporary depending on the society. What I want to visualise through my work is not an identity that has settled in one place but a record of my identity that cannot be defined and is being redefined and explored every moment. Through the undefinable creatures in my work, I want to record the image of myself that I portrayed at that moment—to be changed and redefined into another embodiment.

Image: How do I look?

Hanji Collage, ink and charcoal on paper 60 x 90 x 5 cm

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ArtMaze Magazine Double Volume Issue 32-33: curated selection

L u k e F r a n c i s

A u s t i n

www.lukefrancisaustin.com

Image (left): Two entwined charcoal on paper 60 x 38 in

Image (right): Watching the sun set behind me charcoal on paper 52 x 36 in

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Luke Francis Austin is a Brooklyn-based artist who works primarily in painting and drawing. Born in Orange County, CA, Luke went on to study Studio Art at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo. Moving to Brooklyn in 2021 Luke quickly became involved with his contemporaries. This was jumpstarted by his participation in the Black Art Sessions hosted by Cassandra Press. Luke’s work has been featured in prominent group exhibitions like Straight Lick at the Brooklyn Museum. He has worked alongside and in collaboration with artists like Martine Gutierrez and curators like Ebony L. Haynes. Although the work is rooted in the langue of painting, Austin has participated in the Inverse Performance art residency in 2020 and was featured in ShoutOut LA for his large scale collages.

In his current work Luke creates large scale charcoal drawings and intimate oil paintings that propose new forms of interiority and subjecthood. In guarded window cills and shadow boxes Luke depicts acts of violence, intimate moments and self portraits. Still life or observed subjects are formed in compositions that are relative to the picture plane, offering a dialogue between histories illusion and flatness—which mirror the tangibility of these psychological explorations. Through handmade references Luke builds out shallow spaces in which his subjects congregate to be reflected upon.

Using the visual language of iconographic acts of violence, intimacy and barriers to interior exterior spaces, mined from art historical sources and his own life, these works offer modalities of investigating an interior life that are both formal and autobiographical in nature. Tethered to an observed reality these subjects sit in a maquette of contemplation that investigate the complexities of the inner human.

Image: Love Birds charcoal on paper 38 x 60 in

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ArtMaze Magazine Double Volume Issue 32-33: curated selection

J o h a n n a

S e i d e l

www.cargocollective.com/johannaseidel

Image: As we found you oil on canvas 145 x 120 cm

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Johanna Seidel (born 1993) is a figurative painter, based in Dresden, Germany. She studied Fine Arts at the Academy of Fine Arts Dresden and at the École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts Paris and did her diploma in 2021. She had solo exhibitions with Galerie Mellies in Detmold and Artistellar Gallery London and exhibited her paintings in numerous group shows in Dresden, Berlin, London, Budapest, Paris, New York and Beijing.

In my artistic work I deal with the nature of perceived realities. I approach these by means of a poetic visual language, in which symbols from history, mythology and dreams mix with the everyday and the personal. The canvas offers me the space in which I can freely create references and develop narratives, constantly searching for the balance between realistic and naive figuration.

Image: What my Sisters taught me oil on canvas 80 x 80 cm

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ArtMaze Magazine Double Volume Issue 32-33: curated selection

F i z a

G h a u r i

www.fizaghauri.com

Image: Real Roots oil pastel and ochre pigment on MDF board 22.9 x 28.5 cm

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Fiza Ghauri is an artist based in London. She graduated from the Slade School of Fine Art with a BA in 2022. Ghauri’s practice extracts personal and geological narratives of the relationship between anatomy and land. Branching from Pakistan’s stream of cultural discourse and the writings of Etel Adnan, Jesse Murry and Allama Iqbal, Ghauri relates her research to fictioning materiality. Studying materials such as wood in its geographical or formal quality extends as a point of departure. Through mystical thinking and material exploration, landscapes and figures become vehicles of mediation against the surface. The mechanisms of making are part and parcel to carving, painting, and burning.

Making becomes the conduit that widens the gaze to materials and images that represent personal, metaphysical and cultural states for Ghauri. Writing academia and poetry is also a practice that upholds and informs making for Ghauri. Her poetry was published in the VASL Arts Association book, ‘Between Quarantine and Quest’. Ghauri read out her poetry for ALMANAC Poets, ‘companions: LIVE’, which celebrated marginalised voices to share personal and communal experiences. She has exhibited with LAMB Gallery in London for the group show, ‘Geographies of Memory’ in 2022, as well as MATDOT Arts Centre in Bangkok for group shows ‘POST-COVID’ and ‘FRAGILE FIELDS’ in 2021.

Image: Fringe Fruition’ oil pastel and ochre pigment on MDF board 30 x 40 cm

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D o r i s

K o l p a

www.doriskolpa.com

Image: Warning Marmots Smother in the Mist oil on linen 70 x 60 cm

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Doris Kolpa (she/her) Is a Dutch-based interdisciplinary artist who graduated In Fine Arts at the St. Joost Academy: I grew up in the middle of a city, against the background of the endless temptations of consumerism, materialism and social media. Nature I knew as the grass between the pavement tiles. Through daily confrontations with climate change, the question of what it means to be detached from nature emerged in my mind. Through my paintings, poems and performances I explore and deepen my city-bound relationship towards the natural world.

While painting, I let my intuition and subconscious guide me. I play with fog, dark shadows and let colours blend into each other. In this way, I seek a haziness where space is opened up for the unknown. The viewer can only relate to this area through imagination and myth. The paintings portray landscapes and young people. I romanticize the landscape, by depicting fairytale-like and pristine nature, which I disturb with contemporary looking subjects. The subjects rest, play or just muddle along. In this way I emphasize the animal nature of human beings to show that we are also part of the natural world. With the paintings I want to evoke a tension that questions the relationship between humans and nature.

Image: Never Knew the World is Green oil on linen 100 x 120 cm

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H e i d i

Y i p

www.heidiyiphy.com

Image: Absorbing Prana acrylic, mineral paint on canvas 35 x 24 cm

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Heidi Yip was born in Hong Kong in 1978 and grew up in Toronto Canada: After graduating at OCAD in Drawing and Painting, I started to travel to places in Mexico, Tibet, and the Sahara Desert, which inspired me artistically and spiritually. I currently live and work by the Pacific on Taiwan, the island where the Austronesian culture begins. Inspired by the way and beliefs of the indigenous Pangcha and other tribes of the Eastern part of the island, I have spent time in Orchid Island to learn from the Tao people about the philosophy of the Ocean. Like a spiritual journey, my artworks connect myself and my awareness towards nature. Other than paintings, I have learnt ancient ceramic techniques from the Pangcha tribe, and transform these ancient techniques into contemporary installation.

Image: Breeze of Pacific acrylic, mineral paint on canvas 116 x 91 cm

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C r y s t a l

L u p a

www.crystalupa.com

Image: Elf of Swamp oil on canvas 32 x 22 cm

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Lupa was born in California in 1989. She received her BA degree in fashion design womenswear from Central Saint Martins, University of the Arts London in 2012. She is currently based in Taipei, working in areas including painting, illustration, sculpture, fashion design, and music composition. Regardless of the media, her visual language always exudes an air of Eastern mysticism and fantasy literature.

In the construction of magical and surreal sites, she has created her own context of symbols and forms. She transforms life experiences in reality or dreams into scenes and represents them with primitive, sensuous contours to explore the psychological states of the archetypal figure. She has extended these characteristics to her compositions, giving them an arrangement like the proscenium stage to interpret the interaction between the image and the spectator. The diversity of ethnicity and metaphor of fertility could also be found in her visual approach. She explores self, complex, shadow and collective unconscious by visualizing the inner space through art. She chooses to achieve mutual interaction between her audience and the motif through atmosphere-evoking and immersive images to further state an inner, deeper resistance within people in the social context.

Image: Physical oil on canvas 27 x 41 cm

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www.instagram.com/soruintheair

S o r u

L e e

Image: Coming Home mixed media on paper 17 x 17 cm

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Soru Lee is an illustrator and author of picture books, based in Seoul, South Korea: I am interested in creating metaphorical content that focuses on the relationship between nature and the human psyche. In the way that children themselves experience the world around them, the images that I create are intended to be intuitive. My work is inspired by my deeply personal experiences with nature. Often spending time walking in the woods, these encounters allow me to dig a little deeper into my ego.

I hope my delightful and meaningful encounters are passed on to a person in need. Unexpected encounters are the beginning of a relationship.

I would be grateful if people can, by chance, bump into my work and blossom a long-standing relationship with me. Looking back, I found redemption in the place where I got kind words. These words are lodged safely within me and saved my life. Like an air in motion, encounters come to me with an invitation to explore. I had the fortune to be invited. I hope my artworks visit others with the same fortune that I had.

Image: Stillness mixed media on paper 37.6 x 29.6 cm

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Te r e z a

N e s n i d a l o v a

www.terezanesnidalova.com

Image: Persian nights oil on dyed canvas 30 x 35 cm

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Tereza Nesnidalova Is a visual artist from the Czech Republic, currently based in Iceland, with an experience in many fields from illustration, painting, tattooing to fashion design and set decoration: I love to travel and usually seek for a new experience, techniques and inspiration on my travels. I am always determined to improve my skills, to create new professional relationships and find new opportunities. I have always been inspired by Asian art and culture. I really like to combine art and craft together. I believe there is so much beauty behind an old traditional craft and we must protect it and not let it disappear.

I started using naturally dyed canvases as a background for my paintings. It creates a nice structure and depth. I also started to experiment with a Japanese indigo dye—AIZOME and definitely want to explore more techniques and later implement it into my work. I like to work with second-hand materials, dead-stock canvases, natural pigments collected from nature, as sustainability and the environment are very important for me when it comes to my work. I enjoy Japanese philosophy and aesthetics Wabi-Sabi that embrace the beauty of imperfection. Another huge inspiration for me has always been nature with all its colours and shapes and it’s usually a motif of my paintings.

Image: Past Present oil and pigment on dyed canvas 80 x 95 cm

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L u c y

B e l l

www.llbell.com

Image: Eve’s (front & back) ceramic, oil, apple seeds, mirror 16 x 8.5 x 0.5 in

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Lucy Bell is a queer artist and illustrator based in Northern California. She is primarily a painter, but also utilizes textiles and clay to convey her ideas. These mediums allow for varying degrees of luminosity, softness, and fragility to manifest in each piece. After receiving her BFA from UC San Diego, Bell’s work has been published internationally and throughout the US. She has had work shown along the West Coast, notably San Francisco, Santa Cruz, and San Diego.

Bell’s work is focused on blending folklore and religion with her own memory to create a surreal personal mythology. She is specifically interested in the historical connections between Christianity with tarot cards, other picture cards, and Paganism and how they interact in modern day. Using these historical connections, combined with her own queerness and religious wounds, Bell is able to create an imagined mythological world.

It is important to her to make representational work to be a part of a lineage of religious and folk art.

Image: Moon Dance oil on canvas 36 x 36 in

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E f r a t

M e r i n

www.efratmerin.com

Image: They Walk by Day cold encaustic on board 48.5 x 36.5 cm

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Efrat Merin works across multiple mediums, mainly painting, drawing and filmmaking: My paintings make use of the mythical to contest dominant power structures and celebrate female desire through a queer retelling of mythical narratives.

I am especially fascinated by origin myths—ideas of primordial chaos and narratives of separation and becoming. Among the themes I attend to are the performativity of the queer body, the fusion of science and magic, and environmental crisis as an existential state. I am interested in developing alternative modes of expression, which sometimes takes the shape of experimenting with unexpected techniques. In my recent works I use sgraffito—a technique in which parts of the surface are scratched and removed to expose the underneath layer. Revealing rather than adding, this archaeological-like process endows the paintings with a quality of discovery.

I was born in 1989 in Tel Aviv, and am currently based in London. In 2022 I graduated from Turps Studio Programme in London, was awarded the Darbyshire Award for Emerging Art, took up an artist residency at Frans Masereel Centrum, Belgium, and participated in many group shows across the UK. In April 2023 I had a solo show at Darbyshire Ltd, London and in June am an artist in residence at the Van Gogh AiR, Vincent van Gogh Huis, in Zundert, Netherlands, followed by a solo show there in July 2023.

Image: Loneliness of a Time Traveller cold encaustic on board 110 cm diameter

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M a t t i a

S i n i g a g l i a

www.instagram.com/castom.liri

Image: Aquarium oil on canvas 150 x 110 cm

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Mattia Sinigaglia was born in Italy in 1989 and studied painting at the Academy of Fine Arts in Venice (degree in 2018).

In my research what emerges is the relationship between painting, sculpture and installation. Many works are characterized by small/medium-sized canvases and sculptural frames in which I insert ceramic objects. Each element is created separately to study every particularity of the material that I use (wood, ceramics, oil paint, wax, gold and silver leaves, enamels, copper). Each step influences, both in form and conceptually, what I will create later.

For example the pictorial image will change the processing of the frame and the choice of material, consequently the relationship between the frame and the pictorial image will influence the ceramic or sculptural element. I try to create connections between them, deepening the relationship between the pictorial illusion of three-dimensionality and tangibility of sculptural and installation objects. The different parts of the work support each other in a continuous flow, where no particular subject prevails.

The relationship that is created between the elements is important and is the focus of my most recent work. In the paintings the sources of inspiration derive from symbolic elements present in the history of art, fragments of ancient drawings that I rework by structuring a personal imaginative alphabet (the painted papers Androgynous Program 2001 are an example), or from alchemical figures up to notions of nature scientific. At the same time, on the contrary, I work on the aniconic forms that emerge during the making of the work, focusing on their material aspects, such as wood, gold or silver leaf, copper, wax, clay and fabrics. This approach of mine allows me to deepen both the history of the images and the “physical” dynamics in the creation of the work; gestures, color and the relationship with different materials.

Image: Track 1: Borderlines oil, pigments, wood, silver leaf, copper 60 x 70 cm

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A m o r e l l e

J a c o x

www.amorellejacox.com

Image: Spectral plunge oil on canvas 90 x 76 in

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Amorelle Jacox is an American artist, born in Oklahoma, raised in Ohio, and currently based in Brooklyn, New York. She received her MFA from Hunter College. She has been a recipient of the Marjorie Strider Foundation Grant, and shortlisted for the Hopper Art Prize. Her work recently debuted in a solo show with Lauren Powell Projects in LA. Jacox’s paintings are born out of a profound sense of cosmic free-fall. Tables, figures, and black holes hover in a realm where slippage between figure and object and space probes questions about the limits of body and knowledge. Where metaphor pries open depths of metaphysical inquiry; and amorphous ellipses find their individual natures in relation to each other. That, with a singular brushstroke, the sky’s stomach might fold into a plate, and that plate might slip between the days. In her most recent works ’the diver’ is an evaporating figure that is falling or diving through space with the body severed in one way or another. These severed ends of the body become portals—a proposition of wormholes where the body has been halved. A sort of ambiguity between violence or death and moving through space in a new way.

Image: Whirly whisper sister oil and pastel on canvas 84 x 72 in

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D a n i e l l e

W i n g e r

www.daniellewinger.com

Image: Swimming in stars acrylic and oil on canvas 28 x 20 inches

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In my paintings I honor the landscape as itself and as a metaphor. Mountains become places of ascension, inwardness and grace. Desert as indifference.

Untamed and wild landscape, in all its apathy, elicits a primal pull to enter it, to be joined with it, to know it intimately. Seeking the solace of empty places, I create intensely personal portraits of quiet, meditative spaces that encourage contemplation, reflection and investigation of self, sublimity and the divine.

Danielle Winger was born in Reno, NV and spent her early life moving throughout the United States. She received her Bachelor of Science in Textiles, Merchandising and Apparel Design from Middle Tennessee State University and an MFA in Painting from East Tennessee State University. Winger is an internationally recognized artist, belonging to prominent private collections throughout the US, England, Australia, New Finland, Germany, Canada, Scotland and Austria. She is represented by Red Arrow Gallery in Nashville, TN, Visions West Contemporary in Denver, CO and Bozeman, MT, and Otomys in Melbourne, AU. She recently participated in Spring Break Art Show in NYC and has upcoming exhibitions with Galerie COA in Montreal and Seizan Gallery in Tokyo.

Image: Rosy is the West acrylic and oil on canvas 18 x 12 inches

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www.sarahhardyartist.com

S a r a h

H a r d y

Image: Balance acrylic and oil on linen 76 x 51 cm

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Sarah Hardy was born in 1989 in Grimsby UK and is based in Leeds and is a studio holder at Assembly House. She has a BA (Hons) in Fine Art from the University of Leeds, 2007 - 2011.

Sarah’s work has two main drivers: firstly, the need to process and respond to personal and collective experience, and secondly, the never-ending question of how best to do that, usually with paint and surface. Recent themes in her practice include identity, connection, spirituality, religion, memory, and dreams, often in the context of the natural world. Her current exploration builds upon ideas from her last body of work surrounding bathing, cleansing, water-based ritual, religion, and mythologies of women and water. It is now steadily flowing into themes of spirituality, queerness and connection as her own identity evolves, and new questions arise.

Image: Honey acrylic on linen 32 x 25 cm

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Y u q i a o

G u o

www.yuqiaoguo.com

Image: Mother and Child oil on canvas 24 x 18 inches

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Yuqiao is a London-based artist and architectural designer. Born in Beijing, China, Yuqiao studied Studio Art and Environmental Analysis at Pomona College in California, before earning her Master’s Degree in Architecture from Harvard Graduate School of Design in 2019.

Yuqiao works primarily with oil, as she continues to build an interdisciplinary practice of drawing, woodworking, and installation. She has been published and exhibited internationally. Her painting practice is rooted in her fascination with the narrative capacities of the body. Seen through the lens of selfportrait, her figures occupy and dissolve into spaces in manners both surreal and intimate. She also takes interest in re-interpreting depths and layering of space, at the intersection of the landscape and the domestic.

Image: A Serenade oil on wood 12 x 9 inches

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www.instagram.com/aiauhsu

E o z e e n

Image: Too many thoughts oil on canvas 53 x 45.5 cm

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L e e

When you capture the present of everyday life, it becomes the past.

If I add the present to the present, it can become a new space-time.

I capture and combine the things I can face in my daily life to create a space close to my wishes.

Image: Hot springs oil on canvas 119.8 x 72.7 cm

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G r a c e

B r o m l e y

www.graceannbromley.com

Image: Achilles Heel oil on canvas 52 x 60 in

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Grace Bromley (b.1994, USA) is a Richmond, Virginia based artist. Born and raised in Chicago, IL, she attended the School of the Art Institute of Chicago with a BFA and a focus in Painting. Her work explores feminine archetypes, weaving fantastical narratives with a sense of whimsy, surrealism and dark humor. Drawing from the influence of religious iconography, symbolism, fable, as well as folklore, she crafts her own cautionary tales, subverting ideas of what it means to be the hero or the damsel. She is currently pursuing an MFA at Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond, Virginia. Her work has been featured at Thierry Goldberg Gallery, NYC; New Collectors Gallery, NYC; Bloom Galerie, St. Tropez; Natasha Arselan Gallery, London, and Seefood Room, Hong Kong.

My work relies on the notion of entrapment as it relates to the natural world, fantasy, myth, and personal relationships. Through elemental hues, atmospheric grounds, gestural line and modeled figures, I explore cliches and conventions of gender throughout art history and myth, as they relate to desire, valor, consumption, self-destruction. My process is revelatory, I do not begin with a pre-ordained plan but relish the unknown, which I would like to keep apparent. I’ve been continuously exploring ideas of landscape painting, within which the inhabitants melt with their environment.

I want the landscapes to have a dreamlike or surreal sensibility, related to a perception or atmosphere of an encounter.

There are several symbols that I use to contain the idea of the lure, most recently I have been immersed in the mythology of the Siren. In this series of paintings, I reinterpret and retell this familiar story from an alternate perspective, one where the villain and the damsel are not so decided, and the object of desire is in question. In doing so, I synthesize coded imagery that corresponds to my own psychological vices and blind spots, where I question if my sensuality and desire are my own.

Image: Sink or Swim oil on canvas 36 x 36 in

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N a

K i m

www.instagram.com/na_son

Image: Gaze #3 oil on canvas 11 x 14 inches

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Na Kim (b. 1986, Seoul) received her BFA from the Maryland Institute College of Art in 2009. With a multi-disciplinary background in illustration, painting, and design, she currently works as the art director for the Paris Review and the creative director of the publishing house Farrar, Straus and Giroux.

Image: Gaze #1 oil on canvas 11 x 14 inches

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A g a t a Tr e c c a n i

www.agatatreccani.com

Image: Velvet Underground acrylic on canvas 150 x 125 cm

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Agata Treccani (b. 1995, Brescia, Italy) is a multidisciplinary artist. She has an MA degree in visual arts from Venice Academy of Fine Arts 2020 and BA degree from Brescia Academy of Fine Arts in 2017. She currently lives and works between her studio in Brescia and Venice.

Her research theorizes and studies the new contemporary visual language fueled by socio-contemporary dynamics; the social behavior between individuals and groups and the consequent actions, identified in the manifestations of: brand, marketing communication, fashion victimization or viral events on social media, and so on, becomes an element of study and a possible tool of creation. The theory takes shape through paintings, videos, installations and her various works revolve around unconventional methods that exploit the very “contemporary” nature of the research object.

Image: Hug acrylic on canvas 140 x 145 cm

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J a m i e

L .

L u o t o

www.jamieluoto.com

Image: Ourself Behind Ourself, Concealed oil on linen 51 x 39 in

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My current body of work, “I Believe in Ghosts,” is a series of self-portraits that illuminates the aftermath of sexual assault, the lasting psychological impact of repeated trauma on an individual: I explore my psyche and experience with complex post-traumatic stress disorder, blurring the line between external presentation and internal reality to bring to light the unseen injuries of sexual trauma that invade and haunt mind and body.

I draw on psychological horror, witchcraft, mythology, and folklore, as well as art historical influences such as 17th century Dutch masters and 20th century surrealists. I’m interested in exploring the long history of exploitation and appropriation of the female body and making self representations that reflect the complexities of how we, as women, view ourselves, how we’re shown ourselves, and how we’re seen by others. I relate the tradition of being silenced in the face of dismissal, disbelief, and shaming to the historic exclusion of women’s work and themes in western art. I am a conceptual portraitist exploring the ways in which our identity is shaped, both from within ourselves and by society at large. My painting, “We Hunt the Doe,” was a semifinalist in the Smithsonian Institution’s Outwin Boochever Portrait Competition, 2022. My work has been featured in publications such as Friend of the Artist and New American Paintings.

I have exhibited in solo exhibitions at the Napa County Library in Napa, California and the City Hall of Santa Rosa, California. My group exhibitions include “True North” at di Rosa Center for Contemporary Art in Napa, California, “Stories From My Childhood” at the Northern Illinois University Art Museum, “Identity Spectrum” at Susquehanna Art Museum in Pennsylvania, and “Defining the Art of Change in the Age of Trump” at the Center for Contemporary Political Art in Washington, D.C. I live and work in Healdsburg, California, USA.

Image: Minds Pass Minds If They Be Occupied oil on linen 50 x 68 in

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S u j i n

L e e

www.2sujin.myportfolio.com

Image: Sudden Rain oil on linen 37.9 x 45.5 cm

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Sujin Lee (b.1983) works on describing and naming the negative emotions she encounters in reality in her works. She faces anxiety and fear, which have roots in her personal experiences and intensified during the pandemic, in an uncertain and unpredictable reality by choosing images that evoke similar emotions in movies and preserving such emotions on the canvas.

These collected images are, paradoxically, everyday objects and scenes from which the horror narrative or context of the film has been removed. Regardless of the context in which the original image is located, they evoke the artist’s or the viewer’s experience with anxiety.

Scissors with long blades crossing the small screen, brushes in a brush box lit with dramatic lighting, a car stopped in the middle of the night...

It’s just a difference in degree, but the various types of anxiety that everyone lives with are summoned through images that are unfamiliar as if they are familiar or somewhere different as if they are ordinary. However, rather than amplifying these emotions, realistic but restrained expression, a flat and dry screen without a sense of space, toned-down colors, and obsessively depicted details allow the viewer to step back and reflect on the emotions that have arisen. In this way, Sujin Lee’s works simultaneously arouse conflicting emotions such as tension in tranquility and relief through fear, while allowing the viewer to project and empathize with the trivial yet diverse images of anxiety in each individual’s life.

Image: Untitled Book oil on linen 45.5 x 53 cm

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www.oaoagallery.com/36

H y e s e u n g

Image: Untitled oil on canvas 180 x 180 cm

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L e e

Hyeseung Lee takes the seemingly ordinary elements of the world around her, and transforms them into evocative images that bring the everyday to life. The scenes, drawn with quick strokes, depict a staircase or door leading to the unknown, a view outside through a window, the sea with an ambiguous horizon, and are intended to evoke a sense of familiarity rather than illustrate specific locations. Instead of revealing their existence, the scenes on canvas serve as a backdrop where the viewer’s personal narratives and images come to the forefront. This dynamic that allows the viewer to put their own stories on stage is the underlying principle that has driven Lee’s artistic vision for many years.

Her inner landscape is a compilation of moments, experiences, and emotions that come together in a collage of the new and mundane. In her work, the details of time, place, and subject are secondary to the emotional response her paintings evoke in the viewer, allowing them to revisit private places, moments and images from the past. When looking at Lee’s works, one is invited to embark on a contemplative journey into her inner world. Like the sun and the moon that may disappear from view, but continue on their path and eventually reveal themselves, there is a moment when the landscape in our hearts is revealed. By embracing the quiet and introspective moments in our lives, Lee’s artwork has the power to awaken something within us.

Hyeseung Lee (b.1977) has been continuing her artistic journey as a painter over 25 years since she studied at Hongik University in South Korea. In 2006, she expanded her artistic horizons by attending the École des Beaux-Arts. In 2016, she honed her skills and gained a deeper understanding of the realities of being an artist through a residency in the UK.

Image: Untitled oil on canvas 41 x 32 cm

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M o n i k a

M a r c h e w k a

www.instagram.com/monika_marchewka_art

Image: Dream oil on canvas 70 x 70 cm

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Monika Marchewka was born in 1988 in Chrzanow, Poland. In 2013 she graduated from the Painting Department of the Jan Matejko Academy of Fine Arts in Krakow. After graduation she started working as an animator in the painted film “Loving Vincent”, where she was promoted to supervisor and supervised the work of forty painters from around the world. For the last year, she supervised the work of Polish painters in the production of painting animation for the film “The Peasants”. She is currently painting full time.

Exhibitions: 2023- “The Flesh and the Answer”, AoaP, London (UK); 2022- “In the Dawn” Artistellar Gallery, London; “The Return of the Goddess”, Electra Gallery, Warsaw (PL); “Full Moon”, Water Tower Gallery, Konin (PL); 2021- “Calm down, no one is watching” MCK, Bdygoszcz (PL); 2018- “Ways of combating storms and hail “, Na Miejscu Gallery, Gdansk (PL); 2017- “A little old way all over again”, Sztuka Wyboru Gallery, Gdansk; 2016- “Written off”, Dwie Zmiany Gallery , Sopot (PL); 2015- “Unrest” Zak Gallery, Gdansk; 2013- “Young Polish Art”, POSK Gallery, London.

Image: Petals oil on canvas 100 x 100 cm

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www.instagram.com/seeooaa

S e d o n a

C o h e n

Image: Green Flower Growing oil on canvas 36 x 48 inches

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Sedona Cohen is a painter based in Los Angeles and Costa Rica who will soon graduate from the Rhode Island School of Design. Through a painting process which alternates between calculated meticulousness and intuitive meditation, she creates spaces where self-sustaining ecosystems thrive.

These are evolving systems where energetic and visual information emanate from a mysterious divine source. The information is transformed and transmuted through processes that reflect her own personal alchemy.

I want to investigate how worldbuilding within the art object extends beyond the surface and into lived experience. Just as I devise my outer world through managing my inner state, I devise the world within my painting by inventing my own rules of gravity, nature, and the cycle of creation, maintenance, and destruction. I have created my own set of symbols and forms which are constantly evolving at a pace similar to that of a flower blooming or a seed sprouting. You cannot see the change if you stare closely at the bud or the sprout. But if you leave and return several hours later, you see the change.

Contained within each microscopic seed is the potential of the most elegant blossom, the sweetest fruit, and the most vibrant green vegetable.

I want to explore the spaces where scientific and spiritual inquiry amalgamate, with painting as a tool for seeking answers. The study of electricity, rebirth, healing, the male and female principals of nature, and spiritual systems mapped through dynamic symmetry present in the work of the Transcendental Painting Group is an important source for my practice.

Perhaps a painting can help you find what you didn’t know you were looking for. The relationship between what’s contained within a painting and what it references outside of itself allows the painting to store unlimited information. How can the seen quality of an object explore the unseen? Just like us, paintings can hold and share secrets. A painting can be a parallel world, a meditation, a calculation, a living organism, a system of networks, storage for information, a tool for posing questions and seeking answers, and a time traveler.

Image: Huacas Ecosystem oil on canvas 36 x 48 inches

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C a r l a

W e e k s

www.carlaweeks.com

Image: Arrowsic Window in Warm White oil and colored pencil on panel 34 x 48 in

86

Carla Weeks is a painter and muralist based in Midcoast Maine. In Carla’s work, pattern is used as a vehicle to describe place and articulate the subtleties and nuance of sensory memory.

Her work is informed by her personal interactions with both the natural landscape and built environment.

Weeks reflects on the relationship between architecture and nature from her home in forested coastal Maine. The gridded structure and linework of each piece reveal abstract depictions of trees and plant like forms, as if viewed through panes of glass. The palettes reference the infinite variations of color that can be observed in the forest; from the interplay of light in the tree canopy to the mosses and lichens on the forest floor. Weeks views these paintings as meditative windows, encouraging consideration of our place within the natural world.

Image (left):

Image (right):

Arrowsic Window in Viridian Green oil and colored pencil on panel 34 x 48 in

Arrowsic Window in Prussian Green oil and colored pencil on panel 34 x 48 in

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N i n a

S i l v e r b e r g

www.ninasilverberg.com

Image: Rest oil on linen with wooden frame 30 x 44 cm

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Nina Silverberg is an artist from Rome, Italy (b.1994) currently living and working in London. Her paintings sit on the intersection between abstraction and figuration, governed by a muted palette.

She pays particular attention to the edges of paint where order dissolves and inner and outer meet.

Primarily on a small scale, her practice is characterised by stillness and intimacy. She chooses timeless signifiers of human comfort for her subjects, and through subtle abstraction, undermines their functionality. Her latest work comprises images of simplified solitary bed frames, medieval house structures and gloves.

Recent exhibitions include ‘New Romantics’ at Lee Eugean Gallery in Seoul, South Korea (2022) with The Artist Room Gallery x Phillips Auction House; ‘Noontime Ghosts’ at Eve Leibe Gallery in London, UK (2022); ‘Streams of Consciousness’ with Particle Collection in Miami (2022) and her solo presentation ‘Once I dreamt of a Nest’ at Creekside in London (2020).

Image: Untitled (Gloves I) oil on panel with wooden frame 18 x 24 cm

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www.igorprzybylski.com

I g o r

P r z y b y l s k i

Image: WGM01785 acrylic on canvas 100 x 80 cm

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Igor received a diploma at the Painting Department of the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw in 2002, and runs a drawing studio there today: I’ve participated twice (2013, 2019) in the final exhibition of the painting competition “Bielska Autumn” in BWA Gallery Bielsko-Biała, I’ve received the second prize at the Painting Miniature Competition in Toruń in 2019, and in 2022 participated in the international group exhibition “Streetfight” at the Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw.

I’m working with acrylic painting and photography. At the beginning of my work I take measurements with a ruler for a sketch of the painting, which I make with a thin brush on a primed linen canvas. In later work, I don’t use a ruler, projector or tape. At first look, my paintings are very precise, but up close they are like an electrocardiogram of my hand’s work. I use acrylic paints that dry quickly because I’m using a large amount of delicate layers of colours. I’m mainly interested in the design of public transport and infrastructure from the second half of the 20th century in Eastern Europe because this is the world that is closest to me. I’m travelling a lot, I organize numerous trips in order to document the vehicles that are still in motion, going down in history today. On the basis of photographic documentation, images are created, often they are not made of one, but of several photos, thanks to which the final composition of the work is created. I try to paint from nature, from the nature of technique. I choose the most intriguing or characteristic fragments of vehicles, which we just don’t notice every day. I want to draw attention to the important role of transport in our lives.

Thanks to my paintings, many people have begun to pay attention to the appearance, colours or design of the vehicle they travel in.

Image: Handle acrylic on canvas 50 x 70 cm

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S e b a s t i a n

M i t t l

www.sebastianmittl.com

Image: Astral Pavilion Hub oil on linen 144 x 175 cm

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My artistic working mode is characterized by my need for a certain degree of being overwhelmed, which I try to balance by constantly working on my sense of order (in daily life as well as in a creative sense). This dichotomy also plays an important role in my painterly process; I try not to treat ideas for works too statically, rather they are in constant interaction with the momentum of the materials used and impulsive motor activity or visual perception. As a result, spontaneous painterly gestures become biomorphic structures and collide with art historical references, pictorial topoi of the digital age, and sacred architecture. In part, the canvases consist of various fabrics sewn together, with the seams also influencing the composition of the painting.

Sebastian Mittl was born 1991, since 2017 Painting class (Henning Bohl), University of Applied Arts, Vienna. 2022: -Days of Unearthing, Czech Center Vienna, Vienna (group); -The Each, Angewandte Festival, Vienna (group); -On Community #2, Contemporary Matters, Vienna (group). 2021: -The Great Painting Show, Angewandte Festival, University of Applied Arts Vienna (group); -TEKTONICAKE, Loggia, Vienna (Solo); -Spooky Butt 3: Co-Parasitic/Microbial Regression; Teren, Brno (group). 2020: -While you were out, Cafe Alt Wien, Vienna (group); -Sinkhole Project- The Lorries are speaking, Längenfeldgasse, Vienna (group); Heads or T(A/I)les, Kunstraum Super, Wien (group). 2019: -Crust Flow, STAR 1/2, Vienna (group); -The Swamp of Lerna, Warehouse9, Copenhagen (group). 2018 : -Unknown Symbol, Gallery Wolke, Tokyo (solo); -Harsh Astral- The Radiants 2, Green Tea Gallery at Francesca Pia, Zurich (group); -No Reptiles, JUSTICE, Vienna (group). 2017: -Essence 2017, Vienna (group); -Vienna Contemporary 2017 (group). 2016: -Artist in Residence, Paliano, Italy; -Young Art Auction, 21er Haus, Vienna.

Image: Church Potato oil on linen 90 x 100 cm

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K e e r i m

K i m

www.keerimkim.com

Image: Blooming oil on canvas 23 x 20 inches

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Keerim Kim is a painter from Seoul, South Korea who lives and works in New York City. She earned her BA degree from Hunter College, NY, and her works have been included in solo and group exhibitions in Seoul and New York.

My current paintings are largely inspired by scenes from nature and architecture, which are integrated with the intuitive thought process of seeing and exploring them. I focus on capturing the light, textures and subtle movements within nature. Visual references inspire deeper ideas and emotions in my subconscious, and build connections with intimate memories and experiences. The layers of fragmented scenes both from life and imagination, result in creating spaces that are abstract but also familiar to my surroundings.

Image: Softer Over Time oil on canvas 24 x 27 inches

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K i w h a

L e e

www.kiwhalee.com

Image: Double Sensation oil on canvas 54 x 44 in

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Asking questions about what Painting is in the 21st century, my paintings complicate the viewer’s reading of pictorial hierarchy and the projection of human relations in the world. I de-hierarchize and decentralize the compositional components that make up a painting by using patterns to create spatial depth, not European perspectival conventions. In dialogue with modernists such as Matisse who drew from the visual vocabulary of “The Orient”, my central forms derived from architecture and ornamental fragments come to possess a body-like presence.

I reinvent ancient Asian printmaking processes with oil paint and simultaneously propose a new condition for seeing—an alternative to “painting as window”—the Indo-Islamic decorative screen or jali through which the world enters the space of the viewer. Observing the tenets of Chinese/ Korean landscape painting and the notion of “emptiness”, I explore a simultaneous inside and outside without conforming to Western ideas about an “inside” or “outside”. Referencing fetishized objects from the regions of Central, South and East Asia as well as North Africa as depicted in Dutch Still Life, pictorial languages of power are brought to light. Braiding a reimagined narrative of abstraction, my practice breaks down hierarchical distinctions between fine art and “world arts” (a.k.a. craft). I recall spaces I have experienced, the stories of unseen material cultures and a wider interest in semiotics.

Kiwha Lee is a Korean-born artist based in New York. She has taken part in residencies at Chautauqua Institution (New York), NPE (Singapore) and completed her MFA (Painting) from Hunter College in Spring 2022. She previously attended Columbia University’s School of Art for advanced painting, University of New South Wales College of Fine Art and the University of Technology Sydney (B. Design in Visual Communications, Hons).

Image: Kn23 oil on canvas 54 x 40 in

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J i a l i n

R e n

www.instagram.com/lorraineren

Image: Nightfall oil on linen 45 x 60 inches

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Jialin Ren was born 1993, lives and works in Vancouver, Canada, and finished her BFA and MFA at School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 2016 and 2022.

Ren’s paintings reveal complex emotions, between familiarity and strangeness, between the quotidian and the fantastical, and between representation and abstraction. These schisms also evoke the interrelationship between self-doubt and confidence. She entwines these opposing sentiments by depicting and exaggerating the ordinary and the overlooked, employing plants to engender familiarity and imaginary spaces. The limited description of the space and the distorted scale of common objects engage the viewer psychologically, questioning the authenticity of conventional time and space.

Image: Autumn Water oil on canvas 60 x 75 inches

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R o b e r t

v a n

d e

G r a a f

www.robertvandegraaf.com

Image: The Self Clouding the Soul oil on linen 215 x 160 x 2.5 cm

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Robert van de Graaf (1983, born in The Hague, the Netherlands) is a Dutch visual artist living and working in The Hague. Van de Graaf received a Master of Science (MSc) degree in Architecture (Technical University Delft) in 2009. In 2005 and 2006, he worked as an intern in architecture in New York City. At Steven Learner Studio he worked on several art-related projects. Since 2012 he has devoted himself entirely to his career as a visual artist. He has since produced a large body of work, consisting of a theme-based series of artworks which are exhibited in numerous online and physical exhibitions, like his major exhibition in Europol Headquarters, The Hague in 2019. His art is held in private collections through the Netherlands, the United States and France. Robert has been selected for the ‘Emerging Artist Programme 2023’ by Contemporary Art Collectors as one of the 20 internationally chosen artists. He also enjoyed an intense private painting and drawing training at an early age (1996 - 2001) by the Dutch artist Erica Meyster (1949 - 2006). This period remains of great importance to his development as an artist.

Van de Graaf is interested in the connections and relations between the mystical in this world, the sense and the dimension of the spiritual world and our soul. The works express a complex interplay of visual impressions combined with emotional and spiritual reflection. He draws his inspiration from religious and spiritual stories, mythology, mystical places and the philosophy of life. Though primarily working on his oil paintings, he is also using drawings and watercolours during the creation process. The works are layered, densely merging his diverse range of mark making, the expressive use of colour and studied compositions.

The paintings are often large in scale and balance between the figurative and the abstract, giving a certain freedom to the viewer.

Image: Road of Persistence Leading to the World of a Dream oil on linen 180 x 220 x 2.5 cm

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D a n i e l a

R a m i r e z

www.instagram.com/sinamigues

Image: La isla donde todo enverdecía oil on linen 170 x 120 cm

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Daniela Ramirez (Guadalajara, 1991) is a visual artist with a Bachelor in Fine Arts from the University of Guanajuato. She currently codirects Interior 2.1, an artist-run space in Guadalajara, Jalisco, Mexico. In 2014 she completed an academic stay at the Fluminense Federal University in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Daniela Ramirez’s work is an analysis of the nature that surrounds her; it seeks to highlight conflicts that underlie the daily life of the landscape to generate tensions in memory. She uses different media such as painting and sculpture to reconfigure stories imposed on the species she works with, mainly plants that have undergone domestication processes and other so-called invasive species.

Her work has been exhibited individually at Enrique Guerrero Gallery (Mexico City); Guadalajara 90210, Lateral Espacio (Guadalajara), and the Paschoal Carlos Magno Municipal Center (Rio de Janeiro). And collectively at Oklahoma Contemporary (Oklahoma City), Visa Projects @ Beverlys (New York); Cabañas Museum (Guadalajara), Guadalajara 9210 (Mexico City and Monterrey), Sala GAM, Salón Acme, Rivera Gallery (Mexico City), Obra Negra Espacio (Guanajuato), UFF Art Center (Rio de Janeiro), among others. Her work is part of collections such as the Briseño Collection and Patricia Phelps de Cisneros Collection.

Image: De día el silencio, de no ver el temor oil on linen 69 x 58 cm

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A n n a

S j ö s t r ö m

www.instagram.com/anna.sj0st0rm

Image: Tre systrar oil on canvas 180 x 150 cm

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Anna Sjöström is a painter who graduated from the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts in 2015. She is also a writer with a bachelor in creative writing from Lunds författarskola 2019. Anna has been part of various exhibitions in Sweden and Denmark, as well as some written publications and anthologies.

Regarding my recent practice I have often come to think of the Talking Heads song “(Nothing But) Flowers”. It engages with the sorrow of a landscape changing from a city to a natural or agricultural landscape. For some reason this has been something I’ve been mirroring myself in since I some years back moved to the countryside and became a mother. My paintings deal with the ambiguities of motherness, more specifically subjects relating to my self experienced post partum depression. I engage with the feeling of being displaced, of failing to be happy at the time when it is expected the most.

Failing my own and others’ expectations. My paintings deal with the feeling of disappearing deep into the wallpaper, and at the same time all those small things that might get us through the day. The comfort of holding on to a hand, the smell of a pet’s fur, watching plants grow, listening to the breath of your baby. Giving and receiving care is a central theme in my work, a theme that for me offers a wider political potential as it opposes the capitalist, patriarchal structures that increase the global violence and our ecological crisis. Still my work sticks to the close surroundings, to the pets, my child, my plants.

There somewhere I am finding my new language as a mother artist.

Image: Nothing but flowers oil on canvas 190 x 177 cm

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M i a

R i s b e r g

www.miarisberg.com

Image: Breath 2 acrylic and colored pencil on paper 19 x 23 in

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Mia Risberg is a visual artist based in Michigan, US. Born in Sweden, she spent her childhood living in various countries before immigrating to the US as a young adult. She attended Pratt Institute and Hunter College in NYC, graduating from the latter with a BA in Fine Arts. She has exhibited at various US venues, contributed work to the 2021 Art on a Postcard Summer Auction, as well as the Ukraine Art Sale, in London, UK. Mia has curated contemporary art exhibits for the multidisciplinary Rasa Festival, and attended a residency at the Virginia Center for Creative Arts.

Her solo exhibits include Glimpses, an Interactive Exhibit at the Aquarium Gallery (Ann Arbor, MI) and Breathing Spaces at Soft Projects (Ypsilanti, MI). Recent group venues include Scene Metrospace (Lansing, MI), the Scarab Club (Detroit, MI), and Peep Space (Tarrytown, NY). Her work has been featured in several publications such as Create Magazine, and Friend of the Artist, and is included in the Flat Files of Peep Space, New York. Mia is the founder of 813 Microgallery, a minute space where she shares art with her community and showcases, on a small scale, the work of diverse artists.

My paintings and drawings depict places and people that appear to hold secrets. Informed by personal memories, photographs, and imagination, I render fleeting moments, contemplative landscapes, and partially revealed or enigmatic figures. In my drawings on paper, I render plays of light and shadows, or quiet places. I capture the stillness in moments I perceive through soft colors and minimized compositions. This simplification process allows me to distill what I see into something that is not only new, but also calmer and more orderly. The meditative act of drawing offers a respite from our chaotic external world and serves as a pause button.

Image: Summer Walkers colored pencil on paper 10 x 8 in

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E m i l y S t r o u d

www.emilyjstroud.com

Image: Perfect weather oil on canvas 20 x 26 inches

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Emily Stroud is a painter from Birmingham, Alabama, but currently working out of Baltimore, Maryland: Mundane moments of everyday life capture my attention and collide with my memories. The instability of my turbulent upbringing in the constraint of the American South seeps into my current reality. Waves of fear invade my otherwise comfortable domestic space and create an unspeakable feeling. I aim to capture that disposition through painting, using the volatility of oil paint to further guide me into these non-tangible moments. When the paintings form in my mind they are horrific, but by the time they are realized on the canvas they challenge me not to laugh at them. A metamorphosis happens through my mind to my body to the canvas, the same way a laugh comes out when a man says something incredibly unsettling. A diffusion of tension. Telling the joke, being the joke, trying to soften the air in the room before it turns sour.

The colors in my paintings exist in only the way memories can. Heightened versions of themselves, luring and off-putting. Colors provoke each other, in argument on the canvas. Fighting for attention, but no single color ever seems to completely gain it alone. Through dense brushstrokes, oil sticks, and quick marks in oil pastels, I build up the surface of the paintings and eventually find myself in an unfamiliar space. In this space, I can investigate the intricacies of my history that are interwoven with the immense history painting carries. My practice is in a constant state of discovery, both of myself and the rich environment of painting.

Image: in for the night oil on canvas 20 x 16 inches

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M a r g a r e t

M a r c h a n t

www.instagram.com/margaretm.art

Image: New Moon oil on primed canvas

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Margaret Marchant is from Ontario, Canada, currently lives in Toronto and is a student at OCAD University: Art has always interested me, and from a young age I was encouraged to express and have freedom with my imagination.

Having grown up in an artistic family, and attending many arts based community projects, as well as attending an arts based high school, art has been a high point of involvement in my life.

I find inspiration from nature, from having lived in Northern Ontario to seeing rural life and urban living and the cityscape, my ideas have synchronized into observing the artificial, man-made world with the organic and eternal force of nature. I am interested in psychological and mythological themes, ideas of the soul, the many suits and aspects within ourselves, skins that we shed, ghosts we leave behind as well as the animal interpretations of ourselves and the ones of consciousness. I make work from a variety of different materials such as clay, found objects, organic material, watercolour and predominantly oil paint.

Image (left): Soul oil on primed canvas

Image (right): Warm oil on primed canvas

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E r y n

L o u g h e e d

www.erynlougheed.com

Image: New Warmth oil on canvas 24 x 30 in

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Eryn Lougheed is an artist from Vancouver Island, Canada, with a Bachelor of Design in Illustration from OCAD University. Working in painting and sculpture, she seeks to build dioramic worlds of abstract narratives, exploring themes of friendship, grief, memory, and desire. Her work draws on a variety of reference material, including found imagery, histories of textiles, histories of theatre, mythologies, Renaissance and Mannerist painting, music and literature.

Image: My Meniscus oil on canvas 18 x 24 in

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www.instagram.com/beautifulwaternymph www.dannyleyland.com

C o n n i e D a n n y

H u r l e y

a n d

L e y l a n d Image:

Star of the Sea and other stories canvas, denim, jacquard, and oil on board 71 x 61 x 5 cm

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These collaborative quilt-paintings began in an exchange of gift, knowledge and skill between two friends. Based on different continents, Hurley sent Leyland stitched fabric designs, and Leyland sent Hurley paintings on different surfaces. Each then worked back into the objects made by the other, and from this system emerged a rich visual world—blending fact and fiction, drawing material from the bubbling cauldron of metamorphoses, phantasms of change, folktales, mythologies, mediaeval romances, bestiaries, and visual cultures to illustrate and celebrate the watery, world-turned-upsidedown, aquatic sphere of the real historical embodiment of the mermaid, seawoman and siren: the Fishwife. Central to these works are Hurley’s hand-stitched quilts, characteristically made with both her DIY sensibility, and playful tactility. A quilt is like a collage. Different fabrics are collected over a period of time, gathered like memories, anecdotes, recipes, or songs, and, through a new design, they are brought into a new thing, something enduring.

Connie Hurley (b.1994) studied at University of Falmouth (2013), Edinburgh College of Art (2016, BA Sculpture), Royal College of Art (2020, short course) and Goldsmiths, University of London (2022, short course). Based in London, UK, Hurley works between London, Edinburgh, and Bruton as Assistant Curator at Arusha Gallery, producing projects across Europe, USA and UK. Recent exhibitions of her own work include 2023: Star of the Sea, Perth, Australia; and 2022: When We See You, Bergen, Norway; Folk Flaw, Edinburgh, Scotland; and Memory into Landscape, Swansea, Wales.

Danny Leyland (b.1994) graduated from Edinburgh College of Art in 2016 (BA Painting). Leyland has exhibited internationally with highlights including duo exhibition Star of the Sea in Perth Australia (2023), RSA New Contemporaries (2017), Hospitalfields Graduate Residency (2017), EMBASSY gallery off-site project Digging (2018), and Debris Dance, Edinburgh (2020). Alongside producing his own work, Danny directed Vine Box Poetry, a poetry-led event platform in Edinburgh, with funding from the Hope Scott Trust and Scottish Book Trust. Most recently Danny was awarded the Elizabeth Greenshields Grant ahead of his relocation to Sydney, Australia.

Image: Cult of the head canvas, cotton, thread, gouache on paper, oil on board 32 x 30 x 5 cm

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A n a V o s t r u c h o v a i t e

www.vostruchovaite.com

Image (left):

Image (right):

Luczynki (Weeds) plaster, acrylic 90 x 28 cm

Florescence plaster, acrylic 90 x2 8 cm

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Ana Vostruchovaite comes from Vilnius but lives and works in Warsaw: My works consist mostly of objects and canvases, which tell the story of a human confrontation with the world.

Anxieties and fantasies about its future have always been with us. Today’s events and crises bring us uncertainty and even fear. Such tensions stimulate me in searching for a new dimension of reality with a special focus on flora, which is currently extremely endangered like every living being. Three objects from the Plants series and two other “cosmic” creatures look rather like fantastic fiction than reality. Objects are made from plaster and usually come from a very spontaneous idea. Such immediacy lets me treat the whole process as daily interaction between the real and the imaginary. Based on my observation as well as intuition the works reflect my archeology of the future, its phenomena, and the quest for spirituality.

Image (left):

Image (right):

Fertile flower plaster, concrete, acrylic 50 x 24 cm

Embodiment plaster, acrylic 157 x 55 cm

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S h u y i

C a o

www.shuyicao.com

Image: Pabulite (wet flame) glazed stoneware 39 x 28 x 3 inches

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Shuyi Cao is a New York-based artist whose practice explores alchemical approaches to object making and knowledge osmosis. Through archeological speculation and ecological fiction, she contemplates the plurality of relations between technoscience, mythology, and cosmology.

Her hand-blown glass and ceramic sculptures render bodies-in-flux that perplexed the boundaries across animal, vegetal, fungal, and mineral, indicating an erratic climate and manifold evolutionary path. They resemble fungi, slime mold, soil bacteria, algae, and marine invertebrates, as well as residues of amphibian scales, tendrils, gills, limbs, and the indeterminate. The hybrid forms indicate a monstrous intimacy as the queer progeny of taxonomic breach. The configurations also allude to a mysticism of the unhuman, with its focus on the planetary metabolic systems and unimaginable ancestral liaisons extending to first life forms.

Her work has been internationally exhibited in China, the United States, and Canada, including Today Art Museum, Ming Contemporary Art Museum, Contemporary Gallery Kunming, Chronus Art Center, Banff Centre for the Arts, New York UrbanGlass, Chambers Fine Art, Fou Gallery, Shin Gallery, A.I.R. 13th Biennale, among others. She is the recipient of the Today Art Museum Wang Shikuo Nomination Award, The New School Tishman Environment and Design Center Research Grant, MASS MoCA’s Assets for Artists Grant. She is an assistant professor at Pratt Institute and adjunct faculty at Parsons School of Design and has presented at Pioneer Works, NEW INC, Power Station of Art, the University of Applied Arts Vienna, and the City University of Hong Kong. She received a Bachelor of Laws, an MA in Public Administration from Fudan University, and an MFA from Parsons School of Design, New York (2018).

Image: As they folded in and breached out (turquoise mouth flowering) glazed stoneware 20 x 9 x 9 inches

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A b i g a i l

R o b i n s o n

www.abbyrobinsonstudio.com

Image: Audubon acrylic, paper, and image transfer on canvas 48 x 48 in

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Abby Robinson is a visual artist living and working in New York City. She makes paintings, drawings and sculptures that operate as experimental sites to explore the formal range of visual experience. Space, color, scale, and form converse through abstraction and play. Material improvisations reveal moments of alignment, tension and/or divergence. Metal, plaster, foil, fabric, tape, clay, wood, textiles, oil and acrylic paints, and found objects all come into the fold. Focused, intensive working of these materials builds a deep intimacy with each, generating honest questions about visual perception. Visual experience is understood both through the seen and unseen: architecture and light as much as memory and time. Casually bounded with nets, webs or sparse gridding, many compositions create space for multiple ways of being. Joy, beauty and vibrancy are as possible as grit, absence and profundity. She received an MFA from Columbia University in 2022 and was recently selected for New American Paintings MFA Annual Issue No. 159 as a Noteworthy Artist.

Image: Rock Grid (Aluminium) flashe paint, crayon and rocks on wood panel 12 x 12 in

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E m e s e K á d á r

www.instagram.com/kadaremese

Image: Digital Apparition II digital drawing on gypsum 80 x 100 cm

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Emese lives and creates in Budapest, Hungary and studied painting at the University of Fine Arts in Hungary from 2013 to 2019: In 2017 I spent a semester at Warsaw where I became interested in weaving due to its materiality, its link with spatial arts and traditional painting. I base my tapestries on digital designs, and since 2022 I started transferring these drawings on gypsum plates to create a digital-fresco look. I took part in several group shows in the last 10 years. Most of the exhibitions took place in Hungary, but I also exhibited in Slovakia, Poland, Austria and the Czech Republic. I had two solo exhibitions in Budapest—one in 2017 at LABOR, the other in 2019 at PINCE. I had a duo show in 2022 at the RESET art space in Budapest. I got the American Tapestry Alliance Student Award in 2019, and got selected to the shortlist of the Esterházy Art Award 2021. I have exhibited in museums such as the MODEM in Debrecen, the Duna Museum in Esztergom, the Ludwig Museum and the Postal Museum in Budapest. I am a member of the Studio of Young Artists Association since 2022.

Tools that help us expand our thinking and increase our knowledge can also mislead us if they fail. With the appearance of electricity the range of possibilities for misunderstandings expanded. Glitches, bugs, pixel errors, and other distortions in the digital data stream can be interpreted both as missing information and as a source of new meanings. Various media devices can be believed as a gateway to mysterious apparitions, as a channel to communicate with the beyond.

But is the virtually stored data more vulnerable than the physical objects around us? If virtuality were to be forgotten in its now generally known form, the traces it leaves behind would become a monument to themselves. They would continue to exist as symbolic objects, transforming the existence of a reality trapped in the afterlife into only a form of faith.

Image: Fragmentation II handwoven tapestry 53 x 57 cm

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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 (p.5).

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