5 artists we’re following in January 2024

“Artists We Observe” is a month-to-month sequence specializing in 5 artists we comply with. Leveraging our artwork experience and Artsy information, we determine which artists have made an affect prior to now month by new gallery showings, exhibitions, auctions, artwork gala’s, or contemporary work on Artsy.

Born 1996 in New Orleans. Lives and works in Detroit and Kansas Metropolis.

Akea Brionne’s layered works mix lens-based media, collage, and vibrant tapestries to create dreamlike Afro-surrealist visuals. Briony’s follow delves into the colonial historical past of america and the Caribbean, inspecting the lasting penalties of immigration and displacement and their affect on up to date black experiences of identification and belonging. Brionne’s affect is simple: she was just lately appointed Forbes2024 30 Beneath 30 Record within the Artwork & Type Class.

The popularity coincides with Detroit’s Library Road Collective’s solo exhibition “Making an attempt to Bear in mind.”The works on show embody Eve’s Paradox (2023), a surreal portrait into which Briony incorporates biblical references. The forbidden apple held by the titular character turns into a lens by which the artist examines advanced problems with morality and feminine self-discovery which might be rooted in her expertise rising up in a strict spiritual household.

Private historical past can also be dynamic Rattling Mississippi (2022), a movie that mixes archival and up to date footage and is about in Briony’s dwelling in Columbus, Mississippi. The artist’s work tells untold tales of the American South, preserving recollections that reverberate in marginalized communities at the moment.

Brionne acquired her BA from the Maryland Institute Faculty of Artwork and her MA from Cranbrook Academy of Artwork, the place she was a Gilbert Scholar. Her work has been exhibited on the Brooklyn Museum and is within the collections of the Baltimore Museum of Artwork and the Cranbrook Museum of Artwork, amongst others.

——Adeola Homosexual

Born 1973 in Forres, Scotland. Lives and works in London.

Joe Dennis’s present exhibition at Newchild Gallery in Antwerp, Metropolis Corridor Disco, is undoubtedly a shocking exhibition of summary work and sculptures, however it’s far more than that. After all, the monumental canvases and three-dimensional textile works resonate with Summary Expressionism and Sam Gilliam’s draperies; but Denise’s follow is fully her personal—and extends far past portray. Her work is steeped in reminiscence, formed by her cellular upbringing in a navy household and a deep curiosity in recollections embedded in forgotten locations and supplies.

“Metropolis Corridor Disco,” which is able to run till January 25, is filled with vitality and hope. Work and sculptures created from leftover navy tent cloth and located wooden and steel are lined in traces and swaths of crimson, periwinkle, lilac and burnt orange, imbued with the vitality of teenage dance. This vitality exemplifies one other of Denis’s strengths – capturing the area between management and chaos. Previous work has centered round images and installations that poetically revive and protect the previous lifetime of derelict buildings in London and overseas.

Though Denise’s work is contemporary, she just isn’t new to the artwork world. A graduate of Goldsmiths and the Royal Faculty of Artwork, Dennis additionally co-founded London artist-led areas Asylum and AMP Gallery, curatorial mission Pigeon Park and images competition Peckham 24. Along with her present exhibition at Newchild, her work has just lately been proven in exhibitions at Sid Movement Gallery, Alma Pearl and Cromwell Place.

——Kathy Lesser

B. Honolulu, Hawaii. Lives and works in New York.

Artist and educator Rachelle Dang is understood for her conceptual work that delves into the environmental affect of colonialism, intertwined botanical research, private and generational histories, and visible allegories imbued with poetic symbolism.

Among the many eight artists who confirmed on the curatorial portion of the Miami version of the New Artwork Sellers Alliance (NADA) honest final month, Dang drew crowds of holiday makers along with his moody, site-specific flooring installations Botany is ancestral (2017-23), exhibited by Sometime Gallery, New York. In an association of rusted copper and spray-painted cinder blocks—an inexpensive constructing materials generally utilized in colleges, prisons, industrial services, and concrete housing initiatives—Dang mimicked the architectural blueprints of her childhood bed room in Honolulu, Hawaii.

Scattered all through the set up are ceramic sculptures formed to resemble breadfruit, a tree fruit discovered all through the Hawaiian Islands. Representing completely different states of decay, some works are plump and pitted, as if freshly plucked from a department; others are withering inward, suggesting imminent collapse and destined to be rewrapped again to the earth. Some are glazed with flowers in turquoise, ocher and indigo, whereas others are left naked to spotlight the earthy texture of their wealthy chocolate-brown clay.

Collectively, cinder blocks and breadfruit turned highly effective symbols of the social gathering’s overarching themes of ecological degradation, financial hierarchy, and disenfranchisement.

Dang acquired his grasp’s diploma from Hunter Faculty, CUNY. Within the years since, she has exhibited extensively in america. She was awarded the Museum of Arts and Design Artist Fellowship in 2022 and at the moment works as a critic on the Yale College of Artwork. Later this yr, she can be included in a bunch exhibition on the Aldrich Museum of Up to date Artwork.

——Jordan Wellskamp

Born 1979 in Hartlepool, UK. Lives and works in Newcastle upon Tyne, UK.

Rachel Lancaster’s work seize the elusive and sometimes ignored moments of on a regular basis life. With a eager eye for element and a penchant for the mundane, Lancaster elevates mundane scenes into compelling, memory-like narratives. Her method entails extracting and reinterpreting “stillness” from a wide range of shifting photos and private images. The clips vary from home interiors to close-ups of inanimate objects and folks, rendered in ethereal gentle focus.

Her approach entails fastidiously layering skinny layers of oil paint to create converging textures that produce blurred edges. This pull of figuration over abstraction is a trademark of her work, exemplified by her first solo exhibition at WORKPLACE, In The Wake, on view in Newcastle till January 24. The artist additionally made a long-lasting impression final month when he spoke to the WORKPLACE group at NADA in Miami.

Lancaster acquired an MA in High-quality Artwork from Newcastle College in 2011. She has since exhibited in group exhibitions at WORKPLACE, which represents her, in addition to Elysium Gallery and Newcastle Up to date Artwork Centre.

——Maxwell Raab

Born 1982 in Portland, Oregon. Lives and works in New York.

The work of Chris Oh could look acquainted, as his follow entails painstakingly reproducing particulars from the good Northern Renaissance work onto a variety of acceptable objects. Whereas early works centered on repurposing up to date objects in distinction to Wu’s Renaissance-style brushwork—corresponding to packages rapidly sealed with Division of Homeland Safety-branded tape—the artist has just lately begun working with pure supplies.

“I wish to use supplies that develop over time,” the artist writes of his present exhibition “Passage,” which can be on show at Capsule Shanghai by January 13. The exhibition options scenes from Pieter Bruegel the Elder’s “Month Sequence,” painted on burl board, in addition to different works of seashells and vintage sculptures. Collectively, these combined media objects carry collectively historic theories of pure and man-made magnificence.