Cary Kwok @ Herald St In London

 
 

Cary Kwok presents new works at Herald St, which are currently on view at their Museum St premises. The show features a suite of acrylic and ink paintings encased in artist’s frames, which present quiet moments suffused with tenderness. Still lifes of domestic items, portraits of gazing men, and sublime landscapes are rendered in a soft, dreamlike realism, marking a change in mood while continuing imagined, cinematic narratives which have pervaded Kwok’s practice. Installed among these is a functional light switch by the artist mimicking vintage Bakelite styles, its phallic toggle continuing the humour and eroticism of his earlier work.

The intimate vignettes in the exhibition unfold like scenes in a movie. Storytelling lies at the heart of Kwok’s work, inspired by the period films he watched as a child and his continued passion for the genre. His paintings are akin to film stills and details of sets – even when devoid of characters, the carefully accentuated objects and directed lighting hint at events unravelled and actions to come. In one work, a looming head casts a shadow on a warm burling wood grain near wisps of smoke drifting from a lit cigarette, resting in an ashtray and gently smudged with lipstick. The same pink gloss is found on the rim of a wine glass in another piece, with raking light revealing the gleaming translucence of an opened wine bottle sitting just out of the frame. When conceiving these works, Kwok sets a scene in his head, referencing directors he admires, continuing plotlines from his own previous compositions, and playing out fantasies in his mind.

The object-like paintings in the exhibition above all emanate a mood. A number are bathed in a palpable 1980s quotidian glamour, while others reveal a contemporary romanticism. Loaded with poignancy, the works blend personal musings and imaginative reveries. Through these glowing tableaus, Kwok encapsulates moments of wonder, magnifying emotions and revelling in the magic of details.

New works by Cary Kwok are on view through July 15th at the new Museum St Premises at Herald St, 43 Museum St, London

REALITYBYTES Warps The Virtual World @ panke.gallery in Berlin

REALITYBYTES is a web-browser plugin that substitutes images and photographs on cnn.com, thesun.co.uk and pornhub.com with AI-generated counterparts. 

The plugin blurs the boundary between AI-created and human-created images, delivering results that are both uncanny and humorous. At the same time, it provides a stark insight into the racism and biases deeply ingrained within AI, spotlighting AI's growing influence on image perception and representation. 

Next to this, a broadcast entirely authored by an artificial intelligence will be presented. The presentation not only probes the ethics and reliability of AI-generated content but also challenges us to question the integrity of the content we routinely absorb in this era where AI is omnipresent.

Lotte Louise de Jong is a media artist from the Netherlands with a background in film-making. Her work ranges from physical, digital and online installations to more traditional forms of narrative. Her practice addresses how we, as a society, view and shape our identity through mediated spaces like the digital world. The internet as a space for exploring intimacy has been the main focus of her past projects. She obtained a master’s degree in Fine Art and Design at the Piet Zwart Institute in Rotterdam in 2019. In 2020 she received an emerging artist grant from the Mondriaan Fonds. 

REALITYBYTES is available for download here and will be on view through July 8th at panke.gallery, Hof V, Gerichtstraße 23, 13347 Berlin

Pol Taburet's "OPERA III: ZOO 'The Day of Heaven and Hell'" @ Lafayette Anticipations

“OPERA III: ZOO ‘The Day of Heaven and Hell’” is Pol Taburet’s first solo exhibition in an institution. Born in 1997, the artist is presenting paintings as well exploring new mediums such as sculpture and installation. The works, many of which are new, create an itinerary that unfolds from scene to scene throughout the Fondation.

The exhibition unfolds over two acts around different passages between inside and outside, darkness and light, dreams and awakenings, which all evoke the times of birth and death, central themes in the work of Pol Taburet.

Creatures at the intersection of myths and cartoons, their quasi-human faces are attached to a child’s cart. Their closed eyes invite us into reverie. One room houses Belly (2023), a large fountain which symbolises fertility and immortality in many myths. Its rounded shape evokes the body of Aphrodite, the Greek goddess of love, beauty, and sexuality. Here, the fountain is dried up and rusty, bearing the traces and weight of a time which seems to have caught up with it.

With My dear (2023), a dining room standing in the centre of the space, is erected like a temple to a deity, hidden under a large tablecloth, like the monster under a child’s bed. For Our Children (2022) deals with the theme of the fall and the opposition between celestial and terrestrial forces, with its female bodies fertilizing the earth, of which only the legs elevated by stilettos are visible. Reinterpreted biblical episodes offer a narrative that opens up new mythologies, anchored in the strangeness of everyday life. The Christian figure is found in Christ’s tongue (2021), a painting of a being spitting out a crucifix in a rejection of an entire belief system.

OPERA III: ZOO “The Day of Heaven and Hell” is on view through September 3 @ Lafayette Anticipations 9 Rue du Plâtre, 75004 Paris.

Werner Büttner's "Malerei 1982-2022" @ Galerie Max Hetzler

Malerei 1981–2022 is a solo exhibition of Werner Büttner’s work at Galerie Max Hetzler, Bleibtreustraße 45 and 15/16 in Berlin. This is the artist's tenth solo exhibition with the gallery.

Absurdity, irony and ambivalence play a central role in Werner Büttner's paintings, which gained recognition in the late 1970s under the term ‘Bad Painting’. Motifs of classical modernism are reworked, sometimes with the help of linguistic elements, and thus become unflinching commentaries on society and the broader condition humaine. ‘The generation before us – the conceptual artists – had declared painting as an outdated, bourgeois medium to be abolished. This prohibition had to be broken by us descendants, out of defiance, for distinction, and because the laws of generation demand it. And so, in juvenile presumption, I took hold of almost all known categories of painting – still lifes, self-portraits, animal pictures, seascapes, history painting, religious subjects, etc.’, the artist explains.

This exhibition comprises works from a creative period of over 40 years, offering an impressive insight into Büttner's practice. The impasto painting, applied in rapid brushstrokes and alla prima (wet- on-wet), lends the works a coarseness that is further emphasised by the typical artist's frames made of wooden slats. Isolated splashes and streaks of paint, created by the explosive movements of the brush, reinforce the dynamism and power of the paintings. In the later works, this fast technique is replaced by a more precise painterly style, yielding images with a greater intellectual and visual subtlety. A block of drawings and a group of sculptures by the artist will also be shown at Bleibtreustraße 15/16.

 
 

Malerei 1981-2022 is on view until August 19th at Galerie Max Hetzler, Bleibtreustraße 45 and 15/16, 10623 Berlin

The Yellow Light at 6pm @ Galerie Max Hetzler

Left to right: Günther Förg, Vivian Suter
Installation view: Galerie Max Hetzler, Berlin, 23 June – 19 August 2023
Courtesy the artists and Galerie Max Hetzler, Berlin | Paris | London, Photo: def image 

Galerie Max Hetzler explodes into colorful, ethereal questioning with a group show featuring work by Darren Almond, Georg Baselitz, Glenn Brown, André Butzer, Sarah Crowner, Carroll Dunham, Hedwig Eberle, Ida Ekblad, Günther Förg, Katharina Grosse, Alex Israel, Melike Kara, Alex Katz, Friedrich Kunath, Beth Letain, Jake Longstreth, Tal R, David Salle, Julian Schnabel, David Schutter, Sean Scully, Ben Sledsens, Mònica Subidé, Vivian Suter, Liliane Tomasko, Tursic & Mille, Rinus Van de Velde, Grace Weaver, Emma Webster, and Toby Ziegler.

Despite Cézanne’s insistence that the world, with all its strangeness, only becomes present, comprehensible and recognizable in images, the onset of modernity initiated a disappearance of nature and landscape in the course of a rational logic of progress. Matisse, Munch or Klee were already only able to preserve them in pictorial form. With 30 individual views on landscape and nature, the group exhibition das gelbe Licht 6 Uhr nachmittags (the yellow light at 6pm) maps out the hazy mosaic of a frail present: whether as a melancholic reminiscence of man-made devastation, a stoic contemplation of the fragile fabric of everyday life or a daring invention of an uncertain future yet to come.

The work is largely without people. Yet, as the exhibition title, a line of poetry by the late Rolf Dieter Brinkmann suggests, we, looking and empathizing, are ourselves the missing human reference. For the question of how we want to fit into the world arises again and again.

the yellow light at 6pm (das gelbe Licht 6 Uhr nachmittags) is on view until August 19th at Galerie Max Hetzler, Bleibtreustraße 45, 10623 Berlin

Read Our Interview of Wynnie Mynerva On the Occasion of Their Inaugural US Solo Exhibition @ The New Museum →

Wynnie Mynerva looks into the camera wearing Heaven by Marc Jacobs

top and earrings: Heaven by Marc Jacobs

The question of original sin has no relevance in Lima-based artist Wynnie Mynerva’s Book of Genesis. For their inaugural American solo exhibition curated by Bernardo Mosqueira, the artist will be presenting The Original Riot, opening tomorrow (June 29) at the New Museum with a site-specific installation that constitutes the largest painting ever to be presented by the institution, as well as a sculptural element that was surgically removed from the artist’s own body. The readaptation of both mythology and anatomy is central to Mynerva’s quintessentially plastic life and practice; one that finds itself in a constant state of radical change. Painting and performance are a fluent oscillation of being as demonstrated in their 2021 exhibition Closing to Open at Ginsberg Gallery in Madrid when the artist had their vagina sutured three quarters of the way shut, allowing only for the flow of their bodily fluids to function as necessary. The corporeal roles of masculine and feminine are constantly being subverted and abstracted in works that bleed, scratch, beguile, and thrust their way through the patriarchal canon with an air of wanton ecstasy. The binary creation myth was recently addressed in Mynerva’s first UK solo exhibition Bone of My Bones Flesh of My Flesh at Gathering London earlier this year, introducing many for the first time to the role of Lilith in Judaic and Mesopotamian folklore as Adam’s first wife who was created from the same clay (equal in nature) as her husband. Her pitiable fate varies from one myth to the next, but the creation of a second wife (Eve) from his rib remains consistent. The artist’s decision to remove Adam’s body from their own for The Original Riot demonstrates the power to readapt our personal realities at will. It is a reflection of the agency that we unwittingly deny ourselves when we allow allegory to shape our internalized perspectives. The following interview was conducted in Spanish and is presented here in its original form, followed by its English translation. Read more.

Drink the Wild Air @ Capitain Petzel

 
A poster showing artists Andrea Bowers and Mary Weatherford running through the desert. The words "Drink the Wild Air" are above them and "Capitain Petzel" below.
 

Mary Weatherford and Andrea Bowers have often talked about making a show together. Bowers suggested that she would make neons while Weatherford would make paintings, a serious joke that neither would strictly hold the other to but subsequently formed the foundation for their two-person show, Drink the Wild Air, at Capitain Petzel. For Bowers, Weatherford is part of her “Beloved Community”, a quote from MLK containing two simple words that embrace the basic human necessity for democracy and love.

Mary and Andrea met in NYC around 1988 where the two were working in galleries in Soho. Mary attended the Whitney ISP in 1985 and Bowers began graduate studies at CalArts in 1990. Perhaps both young artists internalized the benefits and disfunction of the anvil of pedagogical theory dropped on them. Creativity was not a topical issue. The zeitgeist was critical analysis. Mary’s response was to move in a direction that was more personally freeing by committing to a body of work 100 percent based on her own stories. While at CalArts, Bowers was told to stop drawing and focus on content. She found her voice in the histories of community organizing and nonviolent civil disobedience and committed to using aesthetics in service of social justice.

 
Andrea Bowers Courtesy the artist and Capitain Petzel, Berlin Photo by Gunter Lepkowski

Andrea Bowers
Courtesy the artist and Capitain Petzel, Berlin
Photo by Gunter Lepkowski

 

Both practices are part of the tradition of women’s storytelling. While Bowers bears witness to the narratives of activists and political movements, Weatherford focuses on autobiography. In the way that women historically hid familial histories and recipes for holistic medicines in unexpected places like children’s stories and folklore, Weatherford’s stories are clandestine, hidden in liquid paint. Weatherford’s secret narratives simmer beneath the surface while Bowers insists on clarity toward action and citizenry. Both positions are viable and crucial. In a matriarchal model of community, responsibility and care, two seemingly oppositional approaches can flourish simultaneously.

Drink the Wild Air is on view through August 5th at Capitain Petzel, Karl-Marx-Allee 45, 10178 Berlin

Tolia Astakhishvili's "The First Finger (Chapter II)" @ Haus Am Waldsee

photography by Frank Sperling


Tolia Astakhishvili (*1974 in Tbilisi, Georgia) transforms the Haus am Waldsee with an expansive installation that constitutes her solo exhibition The First Finger (chapter II).

Her works follow the structures and narratives of existing buildings, conjuring up real and imaginary stories through temporary installations and alterations. In her exhibition The First Finger (chapter II), Astakhishvili examines the physical composition of Haus am Waldsee by exploring its architectural layers and peripheral areas. Through architectural interventions, she condenses the spaces of the former home into an arresting and fragile environment in which the domestic sphere is reimagined. Architecture doubles here as both a protective shell and as something that appears to be exceedingly precarious.

In addition to structural interventions, drawings, paintings, text, and videos, the exhibition includes new collaborative works with Zurab Astakhishvili, Dylan Peirce, and James Richards, as well as contributions by Antonin Artaud, Alvin Baltrop, Kirsty Bell, Nat Marcus, Vera Palme, Andreas Rousounelis, Judith Scott, Ser Serpas, and Giorgi Zhorzholiani.

The First Finger is realised in two chapters: chapter I at Bonner Kunstverein, curated by Fatima Hellberg (March 25–July 30, 2023), and chapter II at Haus am Waldsee in Berlin, curated by Beatrice Hilke (June 23–September 24, 2023).

"Are You a Friend of Dorothy?" @ Hashimoto Contemporary

Justin Yoon, At Midnight, 2023. Image courtesy of the artist and Hashimoto Contemporary.

Justin Yoon, At Midnight, 2023. Image courtesy of the artist and Hashimoto Contemporary.

Hashimoto Contemporary presents Are You A Friend of Dorothy? a group exhibition featuring new works by Santiago Galeas, Jean-Paul Mallozzi, Juan Arango Palacios, Carlos Rodriguez, and Justin Yoon. Each artist explores their identity and sexuality in emotive, figurative painting to create depictions of joy, belonging, and queer intimacy.

Rooted in personal narratives and lore, all five artists have created their own visual languages to imagine queer utopias filled with safety, community, tenderness and serenity. As the Cowardly Lion said while making his way through the Land of Oz, “Any friend of Dorothy must be our friend, as well.”

Are You a Friend of Dorothy? is on view through July 8 at Hashimoto Contemporary, 2754 S. La Cienega Blvd. Suite B - Los Angeles, CA

 
 

Kapp Kapp's "Velvet Other World: Bimboteque" Part I

A black painting sits across from neon letters that spell "BIMBOTEQUE" in Kapp Kapp's exhibition.

Velvet Other World ©

Kapp Kapp’s Velvet Other World: Bimboteque is the gallery’s second solo exhibition with the artist-duo and their first solo exhibition in the gallery’s expanded exhibition space in Tribeca. Presented in two parts, with distinct focuses on Velvet Other World’s painting and drawing practices respectively, Bimboteque represents a further investigation of the duo’s ongoing examination of the constructive and protective nature of dress. Through the hyperbolic and highly-aestheticized lens of bimbofication, Velvet Other World’s latest work is both more plastic and more sensitive than ever.

Bimboteque will be on view through August 5 @ Kapp Kapp, 86 Walker St., 4th Fl. New York, NY 10013

 
 

Lanise Howard and Robert Peterson Present "Reflections" @ albertz benda New York

 
Robert Peterson [American, b. 1981]. Soulful, 2023. Oil on canvas. 72 x 54 inches | 183 x 137 cm. Image courtesy the artist and albertz benda, New York | Los Angeles. Photo by Thomas Müller.

Robert Peterson [American, b. 1981]. Soulful, 2023. Oil on canvas. 72 x 54 inches | 183 x 137 cm. Image courtesy the artist and albertz benda, New York | Los Angeles. Photo by Thomas Müller.

 

Albertz benda New York is presenting Lanise Howard and Robert Peterson’s Reflections. Both artists are known for their exquisite paintings of people of color. Given the lacuna of positive representations of people of color in the history of art, both artists contribute to remedying this historical erasure, creating works that reveal their sitters as beautiful, strong and complex beings. The American painter Barclay L. Hendricks (1945 – 2017) is acknowledged as an inspiration to both artists and their work may be read in this lineage of figurative painting.

 
 

Howard creates open calls for models to pose for photographs as source material, and often constructs scenarios in which her sitters wear specific garments in staged poses. Her work positions contemporary African American people as protagonists in paintings that can be read as allegorical and that are often set in ethereal landscapes that imagined a world without colonialization. Howard’s backgrounds range from ombre amber or stormy dark skies to verdant green flora, presenting the earth as a magical protagonist.

Peterson is known for his depictions of young men seen in the reality of their daily lives: do-rags, white tanks, and low-slung jeans, which are often described in pejorative terms in popular culture, are elevated in his work. He focuses, as he says, “on the beautiful thing that is black life”. Working from short photo shoots—he keeps them brief so that they feel natural rather than staged—he uses people from his local area as sitters to create poignant and confident portraits of contemporary black life.

Reflections is on view through July 8 at albertz benda, 515 West 26th Street New York, NY 10001

Mitchell Kehe's "The wheel turns" @ Edouard Montassut

Mitchell Kehe's "The wheel turns" @ Edouard Montassut

All images courtesy of Edouard Montassut.

The mechanism of a slow churning wheel is the force at hand in Mitchell Kehe’s first exhibition at Edouard Montassut, The wheel turns.

In its less consciously organized form the wheel is seen here rotating in place, not propelling forward but recycling, mutating, reorganizing. At times it shapeshifts into a porous and metallic organ or entity, having recently been subject to extrusion, or with recognizable shafts, revolving on an anomalous axle bearing.

Queered, muddied, and biomorphic, the wheel quivers, making way for its own unique identity and subjectivity. The wheel then, is not only shaped by its work, but shapes the work that it does.

The wheel turns is on view through July 22 at Edouard Montassut, 61 rue du Faubourg-Poissonnière 75009 Paris

 
 

Richie Culver & Umut Yasat's "The Path of Least Resistance" @ GNYP Gallery

Gallery view Richie Culver & Umut Yasat's "The Path of Least Resistance" @ GNYP Gallery

All images courtesy of GNYP Gallery.

Bringing together Richie Culver and Umut Yasat for the first time, this duo exhibition—The Path of Least Resistance—at GNYP Gallery Berlin seeks to define the concept of time. At first sight, the contrast between the two artists in this show could not be bigger, however, the questions their work surrounds serve to unite them.

The clash of different time registers—public and private, canonical and conventional—coalesces in Culver’s canvases. What comes out of it, though, is anyone else’s guess; the time we need to see these works and the time we need to comprehend them is different. What does that tell us about our economy of attention?

Umut Yasat, in turn, approaches the matter of time and the dynamic between the public and the private via a different set of tactics, which raises other questions and problems as well. Yasat’s outcome instead tells us nothing about his process—specifically, about the time he spends in each individual work. What do we see when we look at his strange sculptures?

The Path of Least Resistance is on view through July 28 @ GNYP Gallery, Knesebeckstraße 96 10623 Berlin

NKSIN Presents REVIVAL @ albertz benda in Los Angeles

NKSIN, S60, 2023. All images courtesy of albertz benda.

NKSIN, S60, 2023. All images courtesy of albertz benda.

In his first solo exhibition, REVIVAL, with albertz benda, Japanese-Filipino artist NKSIN will present a paintings that offer a sardonic examination of the human experience through the lens of the artist’s signature greyscale figures.

NKSIN’s monochromatic paintings tackle universal emotions — desire, envy, joy, and grief — in the age of information overload. Bombarded with an overwhelming amount of news through social media and the internet at large, NKSIN and his figures reject the adversarial effects of technology to restore the capacity to reflect and function effectively. Favoring internal reflection and exuding a sense of serenity, these figures plug their ears with headphones and defiantly shut their eyes and mouths. These works offer a message of hope and resilience, countering the despair endemic to our modern moment.

REVIVAL is on view through July 8 at albertz benda, 8260 Marmont Ln. Los Angeles

 
 

Lisa Yuskavage's "Rendez-vous" @ David Zwirner in Paris

© Lisa Yuskavage. Courtesy the artist and David Zwirner.

© Lisa Yuskavage. Courtesy the artist and David Zwirner.

One of the most original and influential artists of the past three decades, Lisa Yuskavage creates works that affirm the singularity of the medium of painting while challenging conventional understandings of genres and viewership.

In Rendez-vous, Yuskavage presents new large-scale paintings, each set within an imagined artist’s studio. Saturated in deep, jewel-like pigments, these works form part of her ongoing exploration of the processes and complexities of art making. The studios become stages where characters from her oeuvre are intertwined, and where time moves backward and forward.

The “rendez-vous” of the show’s title alludes to the unique way in which painting allows for different moments in time to coexist in one space simultaneously. The works establish a dialogue between personal iconography and a tradition of studio portrayals by artists as varied as Gustave Courbet, Henri Matisse, Georges Braque, and more contemporary figures like Philip Guston and Bruce Nauman.

Rendez-vous is on view through July 29 @ David Zwirner, 108 rue Vieille du Temple Paris

Clément Poplineau's Le Bruit & l'Odeur @ Stems Gallery in Brussels

Clement Poplineau, LES FRAUDEURS, 2023. Courtesy of the artist and Stems Gallery.

Clement Poplineau, LES FRAUDEURS, 2023. Courtesy of the artist and Stems Gallery.

Stems Gallery presents Clément Poplineau’s Le Bruit & l’Odeur, where his close friends and family are actually the main subjects of his paintings. Using his provocative and hyper-realistic brushwork, the painter wants to be a witness for this social reality. In 1991, former French president Jacques Chirac spoke out about the smell and the noise (le bruit et l’odeur) as legitimate reasons for French citizens to hate non-white workers. Therefore, the painter appropriates the insult, making for his diverse entourage tailor-made canvases.

Clément Poplineau paints Renaissance-like, realistic portraits of French banlieue youngsters. Clément Poplineau uses historical métier for contemporary tableaus. Centuries and social hierarchies are put on equal footing. And as the origin of portraiture indicates, Clément Poplineau’s paintings think about power, class, and identity—only he sharpens it. By sacralizing the “symbolic activities” that make up the banlieue’s youngster identities—from social exclusion to visual and bodily language—his paintings revaluate (un)ruly habits.

Le Bruit & l’Odeur is on view through July 1 @ Stems Gallery, 4 rue du Prince Albert 1050 Brussels

Clement Poplineau, PLAN B "scène de braquage", 2023. Courtesy of the artist and Stems Gallery.

Seonna Hong Presents MURMURATIONS @ Hashimoto Contemporary in New York

Seonna Hong, Super Position, 2023. All images courtesy of Hashimoto Contemporary.

Seonna Hong, Super Position, 2023. All images courtesy of Hashimoto Contemporary.

On June 10, Hashimoto Gallery is set to present Murmurations, a solo exhibition by Los Angeles-based artist Seonna Hong.

In her latest body of work, Hong revisits larger figurative themes, relational dynamics and human connection. Looking to these themes as a way of understanding how people are emerging from the pandemic, Hong seeks to reconnect with the world around her.

Finding inspiration in murmurations (defined both as the way in which birds flock together, as well as the utterance of low continuous sounds) and its two distinct meanings, the artist is searching to find ways to connect and communicate. Through this journey, Hong came to understand that human connection is needed not only for contentment, but also for mental and physical well-being. The paintings in Murmurations reflect Hong’s attempt to connect with forgotten landscapes, encouraging us to rediscover the world around us.

Murmurations is on view through July 1 @ Hashimoto Contemporary, 54 Ludlow Street New York

 
 

Geoffrey Chadsey's "Sly glancer, Angry dancer" @ Michael Benevento in Los Angeles

 
Geoffrey Chadsey, Fibro Flay, 2023. All images courtesy of Michael Benevento.

Geoffrey Chadsey, Fibro Flay, 2023. All images courtesy of Michael Benevento.

 

Opening June 10, Michael Benevento will present New York-based artist Geoffrey Chadsey’s first solo exhibition in Los Angeles, Sly glancer, Angry dancer.

In striking psychological and virtuosic renderings, Chadsey deepens his longstanding interest in fraught masculinity and queer subject-hood. Chadsey’s approach to composition is distinct—reminiscent of the Surrealists’ exquisite corpse based surprising juxtapositions, Chadsey’s figures stand before you in all their complexity—ostentatious, anxious, eager, abject or aloof. These figures present themselves in various states of peacockery, wanting to be marveled at, or regarded with admiring disgust.

Sly glancer, Angry dancer is on view through July 29 @ Michael Benevento, 3712 Beverly Blvd. Los Angeles

 
 

Read Our Interview of Fawn Rogers on Her Series "The World is Your Oyster" →

Fawn Rogers, Jestope, 2022. a delicately rendered painting of an oyster with vaginal imagery.

Fawn Rogers
Jestope, 2022

MILLEN BROWN-EWENS: Could you start by telling me a little bit about the paintings in your upcoming solo exhibition Burn, Gleam, Shine in Beijing with Galerie Marguo in July. 

FAWN ROGERS: The work is from a series called The World is Your Oyster. The paintings are larger-than-life representations of sea personalities, which invite the viewer to dwell on the unbuilt world, death, and sex. Photorealistic from afar, at a closer view they are composed of painterly shapes and forms. They are seductive, erotic paintings that celebrate female sexuality. But I hope people will consider their wider resonances too. Human intervention in their cultivation has changed the primary process of their creation and relationships. Eroticism in this time is fraught with scary implications. We are so atomized as a species and removed from our origins that placing sexuality alongside environmental destruction almost feels forbidden, but I like things that feel forbidden. Read more.

Read Our Interview of Edoardo Monti on His Utopian Artist Residency in Italy →

sunlight streams through the windows of Palazzo Monti, which is full of radiant paintings and art.

Edoardo Monti is the force of nature behind the Artist Residency, Palazzo Monti. You will find the historical 13th-century Palazzo in the Northern Lombardy Region of Italy, in the city of Brescica, halfway between Milan and Verona. Adorned with frescoes from 1750, the Palazzo is a unique, utopian space that was purchased by Edoardo’s grandfather in the 1960s. It brings to mind a real life master’s painting, emulating Baroque grandeur paired with a splash of contemporary design and artistic influence. 

Monti’s penchant for collecting art began at the ripe age of fourteen. With a modest budget and keen eye, he began making connections in the Italian art world, initially with local galleries and artists. This passion has continued to evolve, as has his taste. In 2017, after a decade of working in fashion for Stella McCartney, Monti turned his dream vision into a reality: an artist residency, which captures the imagination of a new generation of artists and champions a dialogue between the past, present, and future. 

Every year, Monti invites three international artists to stay for 4 - 6 weeks at a time. Since 2017, over 200 artists, including Cristina BanBan, Somaya Critchlow, Charlotte Edey, and Henry Hussey have attended Palazzo Monti. 

As the residency’s reputation continues to grow within the international contemporary art world, so does the fierce competition for places, with over 400 applications per month; not to mention the impressive board members and honorary directors, which includes the founder of Great Women Artists Katy Hessel. 

The palazzo’s aesthetic, its connection to Italy’s Renaissance and the desirable location are enough to convince us that it is the preeminent utopia when it comes to artist residencies. I spoke with Edoardo to learn more about his journey with the Palazzo and to understand in more detail his personal definition of utopia, and how he connects this to the Palazzo Monti Artist Residency. Read more.