In collaboration with Ed Tang and Jonathan Cheung
May 19 – May 26, 2021

In collaboration with Ed Tang and Jonathan Cheung
May 19 – May 26, 2021
Henni Alftan (*1979) is a Paris-based painter who creates pictures based on a complex process of observation and deduction. Working in figuration but rejecting a narrative dimension, Alftan’s compositions use the tight framing of close range photography to explore the similarities between painting and image-making. “I paint pictures,” Alftan says, and “painting and picture often imitate each other.” Inviting viewers to consider the history, materiality, and objecthood of painting, Alftan’s vignettes represent a fragmented vision of the real and address pictorial issues such as color, surface, flatness, depth, pattern, texture, and framing devices.
— Henni Alftan is represented by Karma, New York.
Detroit-based Matthew Angelo Harrison (*1989) creates enigmatic sculptures that are in conversation with anthropology, industrial design, science fiction and the realities of 21st century capitalism. His work combines found objects made from organic materials such indigenous African wood and bone with synthetic ingredients like acrylic resin, Plexiglas and industrial modeling clay, which he then molds, cuts, prints, and sculpts with state-of-the-art machinery. The resulting forms — whether they are 3D ceramic heads, 3D abstractions, plexi “enclosures” or resin “encapsulations” — investigate the subtle politics of mass production, authenticity, metamorphosis, and what the artist calls “abstract ancestries.”
— Matthew Angelo Harrison is represented by Jessica Silverman Gallery, San Francisco.
Diane Dal-Pra (*1991) questions the nature of our relationships we maintain with the inanimate objects we collect over the course of our lives. Dal-Pra coats her figures in an armour of these commodities, and in doing so underlines a dual purpose of our possessions which have the capacity to erase or engulf us, and yet so strongly define our identities. The sculptural treatment of her figures, part classical monument, part monolith and part totem sees Dal-Pra transforming the body in objects and, likewise, objects into flesh. Everything seems to take form in an unchanging block, frozen forever.
— Diana Dal-Pra is represented by Galerie Derouillon, Paris.
Lenz Geerk (*1988) creates psychologically charged paintings that are removed from any specific time or place. Emphasising his subjects in such a way as to draw out the hidden emotions of the human psyche, Geerk depicts people at the threshold of excitation and in the throes of exploration. With postures and gestures a fiction of representation, Geerk imagines how a certain fragile moment, derived from neither model nor photograph, can instead be expressed through atmosphere and body language. The nearly monochromatic palettes, only occasionally warmed by other colours, adds to the aura of emotional tension.
— Lenz Geerk is represented by Roberts Projects, Los Angeles.
New York-based artist Elizabeth Glaessner (*1984) creates brightly hued paintings that teem with life. Her paintings are drawn on personal history, memory and ritual. The works depict a utopian and surreal universe that blur the line between myth and reality. Glaessner’s figures often reflect an unrestricted freedom of identity and in wild states of ecstasy and hysteria – the result is one that celebrates the purity of emotional expression that most are too afraid to confront.
— Elizabeth Glaessner is represented by P.P.O.W Gallery, New York.
Alex Foxton’s (*1980) painting takes traditional images of masculinity, deconstructs their archetypes and reveals their complexity and ambiguity. Foxton explores the personal history and humanity of the heroes or mythical figures that inhabit western culture, painting a new narrative in the hollow of the history known to all. The figures depicted are stretched, torn between a calm face and an expressive body, tortuous or ecstatic, underlining the tension of each character.
— Alex Foxton is represented by Galerie Derouillon, Paris.
Clementine Keith-Roach (*1984) currently working and living in Dorset. Clementine Keith-Roach is an artist who creates terracotta vessels featuring limbs, breasts, and other human body parts. The artist’s practice is an exploration of labour, domesticity and the body. Often inspired by ancient Cycladic objects, Keith-Roach’s works seem to breathe life out of clay and inanimate everyday objects.
— Clementine Keith-Roach is represented by Ben Hunter, London and P.P.O.W Gallery, New York.
Jo Messer (*1991) is a New York-based artist working in a highly gestural style. Messer’s paintings depict the female form in radiant colours and are imbued with an almost hallucinatory aura. Her merging of abstraction and representation is lively, spirited and full of tension. The resulting images offer stimulating comments about sexual identity and the human body, as well as the history of painting over the last hundred years.
— Jo Messer is represented by 56 Henry, New York.
Oscar yi Hou (*1998) was born and raised in Liverpool, before moving to New York City where he now resides. His work explores identity and subjecthood through intimate and enigmatic portraits. Drawing from life and images accumulated in his archive – old posters, photographs and saved internet images – yi Hou inserts various signifiers and symbols open for interpretation. Essentially, his work invites the viewer to dive into questions.