Igshaan Adams
Verwante, 2023
Cotton twine, polypropylene rope, acrylic yarn, plastic, glass, metal, crystal, semi precious stone, wood and
cowry sea shell beads, tiger tail wire, cotton and polycotton fabrics and fabric dyes
93 x 121" / 236.2 x 307.3cm

Inquire

Igshaan Adams, Verwante, 2023 (Detail)

Igshaan Adams’ (b. 1982, Cape Town, South Africa) multidisciplinary practice combines weaving, performance, and installation in an intersection of generational and personal histories, familial traumas, and tradition.

For Art Basel Miami Beach, Adams presents Verwante (2023), a large-scale tapestry of roses. Verwante (or “related” as translated from Afrikaans to English) continues the artist’s ongoing series of rose weavings based on renderings of flowering roses from his home garden. Adams’ focus on the idea of pathways in previous bodies of work serves here as an expansion from the material, political, and personal into the spiritual realm as a metaphor for life’s journey. Rooted in Adams’ exploration of Sufism, a mystical form of Islam that emphasizes the inward quest for divinity, the imagery of roses is a layered symbol for the cycle of life. The plant’s metamorphosis from seed to flower, pollination, and rebirth mirrors the circular movement of life’s spiritual stages, while the shedding of petals evinces the Sufi concept of kashf (unveiling), or the experience of divine revelation following a spiritual quest or struggle; its uncovering prompts the ongoing aim to open one’s heart to divine truth.

For Adams, the study of Sufism, first introduced by Sufi Master, Ma Rukea, originated as an internal search for self-knowledge and an intimate desire for peace and protection. While earlier works in this series depicted only singular roses, Adams instead weaves a group in Verwante to convey a shared journey, portraying the many roses (and stages) present in life. Within the tapestry's textured surface, ovules and petals of the rose emerge through pink and purples hues, creating veils of weaved stones, shells, glass and wood beads along with threads that hang from the weaving as a structural remnant of its production.

Adams’ work is currently on view at institutions and biennales globally, including: the 35th Bienal de São Paulo; Baltimore Museum of Art, Baltimore, MD; LACMA: Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles, CA; Aargauer Kunsthaus, Aargauer, Switzerland; and Instituto Inhotim, Brumadinho, Mines Gerais, Brazil.

In 2024, Adams will present a site-specific installation at the ICA Boston, MA, along with a solo exhibition at the Hepworth Wakefield, Wakefield, UK.

Igshaan Adams, Verwante, 2023 (Alternate view)

Kevin Beasley
The Brush Flowers, 2023
Polyurethane resin, raw Virginia cotton, Sharpie transfer, fiberglass
74 x 55.5 x 2.5" / 187.96 x 140.97 x 6.35cm

Inquire

Kevin Beasley’s (b. 1985, Lynchburg, VA) practice spans sculpture, photography, sound, and performance, while centering on materials of cultural and personal significance, from raw cotton harvested from his family’s ancestral property in southern Virginia to sounds gathered using contact microphones. Beasley alters, casts, and molds these diverse materials to form a body of works that acknowledge the complex, shared histories of the broader American experience, steeped in generational memories.

For Art Basel Miami Beach 2023, Beasley presents The Brush Flowers (2023), a new ‘slab’ (a sculptural form that draws from millennia-old traditions of relief sculpture) that furthers the artist’s exploration of imagined landscapes. Abstraction gives way to pictorial narrative, combining material and drawing through resin casting and Sharpie transfers. A lush ground of flora and fauna is rendered in Sharpie as dyed resin is painted and poured into a mold with raw cotton. The scenes of Beasley’s travels are rendered in three-dimensions—from New Orleans’ Lower Ninth Ward and the Blue Ridge Mountains of the northern Shenandoah Valley to the backdrop of Ohio skies connecting his road trips from his hometown of Lynchburg, VA to Detroit, MI. Reveries of landscapes, near and far, chart a collective experience that connects us to site.

Beasley’s work is currently included in several institutional exhibitions including Inheritance, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY (June 28, 2023 - February 2024); A soft place to land, MOCA Cleveland, Cleveland, OH (July 7 - December 31, 2023); and Going Dark: The Contemporary Figure at the Edge of Visibility, Guggenheim Museum, New York, NY (October 20, 2023 - April 7, 2024).

Kevin Beasley, The Brush Flowers, 2023 (Detail)

Inquire

Matthew Brannon
"Mouth-to-Mouth, Set & Setting” - Character Study, Set 04: Foreign Correspondent, Saigon 1972, 2023
Silkscreen on paper with hand-painted elements
59.25 x 79" / 150.5 x 200.66cm
Framed: 63.75 x 83.5 x 2" / 161.93 x 212.09cm

Inquire

Matthew Brannon, "Mouth-to-Mouth, Set & Setting” - Character Study, Set 04: Foreign Correspondent, Saigon 1972, 2023 (Detail)

Matthew Brannon’s (b. 1971, Anchorage, AK) distinctive visual language is imbued with wit and historical expertise. Developed through traditional silkscreen printing techniques as well as hand-painting, hundreds of screens overlap to form an intricate network of boldly colored objects. Image and language intersect in evocations of dual meanings and underlying narrative.

In recent years, Brannon has focused almost exclusively on the period of the Vietnam/American War as a source of inspiration—conducting exhaustive research with this generation-defining trauma. Often focusing on interior scenes that depict, from a first-person perspective, the desks of past presidents or the vanities of first ladies, which make use of subtle environmental clues found in personally significant possessions, Brannon creates visual narratives that speak to the life and psyche of his implied or defined subjects.

“Mouth-to-Mouth, Set & Setting” - Character Study, Set 04: Foreign Correspondent, Saigon 1972 (2023) can be understood as a still in the artist’s imagined neo-noir film about an international romance during global conflict. As in Brannon’s other ‘desk-based’ works, the artist includes artifacts a protagonist would have used or interacted with as a means of signifying their identity. A beer bottle with the South Vietnamese flag on it rests on the table next to an old map of Saigon, a camera, a matchbox from a bar in the United States, and an ashtray from Japan. In the background is an Alexander Calder-designed 1972 campaign poster for then presidential nominee George McGovern, and a press pass for the 1955 Bandung Conference (meeting for non-aligned countries during the Cold War). All of these objects and posters are clues that indicate a character’s location, occupation, travel, and interiority.

A commitment to historical accuracy is stitched with an infusion of personal narrative. The rotary phone with a three-digit number on its face is contextually plausible and is rendered with direct inspiration from the artist’s own travels to Vietnam. Meanwhile, Jean-Paul Sartre’s No Exit (1944) is not only indicative of a character’s interests, but also for Brannon, the title serves as a double entendre for the seeming impossibility of exiting Vietnam. Lastly, the dragon fruit—which grows in Southeast Asia—is also a favorite of Brannon’s. These realities inject new chronicles into the work, and encourage a reconsideration of history through an acknowledgment of storied personas and colliding narratives.

Jordan Casteel
Chimé (Eternal Lamp of Dharma), 2023
Oil on canvas
80 x 94" / 203.2 x 238.76cm

Inquire

Jordan Casteel, Chimé (Eternal Lamp of Dharma), 2023 (Detail)

The sensory influence of a landscape has the capacity to connect or divide us, to inform our movements through space and the manners in which we relate to our surroundings, and to one another. Jordan Casteel (b. 1989, Denver, CO) sources her subject matter from her own photographs of the people of color who share and shape her environment, directly informing her own accessibility to the collective experience.

Chimé (Eternal Lamp of Dharma) (2023) is a monumental oil portrait of Chime Lama in Upstate New York, who is seen kneeling in the prayer room at Kunzang Palchen Ling (KTD) Monastery (founded by her father, the Third Bador Tulku Rinoiche) in Red Hook, New York. Five months pregnant at the time the source image was photographed, Chime alludes to the spiritual presence of three generations, despite her solitary presence. The intricately patterned rug beneath her is rendered with meticulous, meditative brushstrokes, contrasting the swift marks that define her features and the golden Buddhas and Deities that act as backdrop. This concentrated application of paint in the lower portion of the work, coupled with perspective tricks in the carpet’s motif, create an illusion of a figure in levitation. Casteel’s depiction of this phenomenon references Tibetan literary and art historical imagery of Buddhists hovering while in pursuit of Mah?mudr?, the seal of enlightenment.

Casteel is currently included in various institutional exhibitions nationwide, including the Saint Louis Art Museum, St. Louis, MO and the Memphis Brooks Museum of Art, Memphis, TN. The artist’s work is also on view as part of the permanent collection at the Detroit Institute of Arts, Detroit, MI; the Perez Art Museum, Miami, FL; the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, CA; and the Denver Art Museum, Denver, CO, among others. In February 2024, two of her paintings will be included in The Time is Always Now, National Portrait Gallery, London, UK.

Casteel will present a solo booth with the gallery at Frieze Los Angeles in February of 2024.

Jordan Casteel, Chimé (Eternal Lamp of Dharma), 2023 (Alternate view)

Judith Eisler
Britney 2, 2023
Oil on canvas
15.75 x 11.75" / 40 x 29.8 cm
Framed: 16.25 x 12.25 x 1.75" / 41.3 x 31.1 x 4.4cm

Inquire

Judith Eisler's (b. 1962, Newark, NJ) paintings depict actors, celebrities, animals, and landscapes through a layered and technologically mediated process that offers a view into the psychology of an image.

Eisler photographs her subjects as they appear on a viewing monitor, mid-narrative, embracing the wavy distortions that her camera often produces. The image is then printed onto a 4 x 6” sheet of paper and gridded, distilling a moving image into individual segments where the subject is effectively removed from context. Form breaks down into square studies of color and light as Eisler puts paint to canvas.

For Art Basel Miami Beach 2023, Eisler presents the painting Britney 2 (2023), a depiction lifted from Britney Spears’ 2001 music video “I’m A Slave 4 U.” Within an extremely tight crop, the iconic pop star gazes sideways through pointy shards of blond hair. The image oscillates in and out of focus underlining elements of abstraction in Eisler’s practice, while addressing rebellion and femininity in today's culture.

Left: Judith Eisler, Britney 2, 2023 (Detail)
Right: Judith Eisler, Britney 2, 2023 (Alternate view)

Jonathan Gardner
The Forest Floor, 2023
Oil on linen
62 x 42" / 157.48 x 106.68cm

Inquire

Jonathan Gardner’s (b. 1982, Lexington, KY) paintings are rendered with a surreal approach to form and perspective. His distinct point of view deconstructs the flattened canvas into isolated, cinematic storylines. Architectural devices are utilized to collapse space, creating discrete narratives threaded with mystery and wonder. The illusionary worlds of Jim Nutt, Balthus, Léger, Magritte, and Matisse come to mind, however, Gardner uniquely shows us silent settings dictated from his unconscious.

The Forest Floor (2023) presents a narrow, stage-like interior where a female character, seen in profile, reclines surrounded in still life. Abstract paintings, a potted plant with fallen leaves, vessels, stones, a patterned tablecloth, and a gridded tile floor are depicted within a surreal, shallow space.

The Forest Floor, 2023 (Detail)

David Huffman
Psychic Chitlins, 2023
Acrylic, oil, African cloth, spray paint, photo collage, glitter and crayon on wood panels
96 x 96" / 243.8 x 243.8cm

Inquire

David Huffman, Psychic Chitlins, 2023 (Detail)

David Huffman (b. 1963 Berkeley, CA) explores identity, memory, and the material implications associated with the Black diasporic experience. His densely layered painting practice combines socio-political themes with abstract mark-making as a means to address complex historical legacies.

Heavily influenced by the social and political activism of his mother, Dolores Davis, Huffman first carried a protest sign when he was five years old. Davis’s work for the Black Panther Party included designing the iconic “Free Huey [Newton]” flag in 1968 that became a symbol for an era defined by social upheaval. Davis, who picketed against racism in the streets and created psychedelic pastel drawings at home, not only shaped Huffman’s childhood, but also informed his artistic practice which has been equally inspired by comic books, science fiction, the Apollo moon landings, Star Trek, and Sun Ra’s forays into Afrofuturism.

For Art Basel Miami Beach, Huffman presents a new monumental painting, Psychic Chitlins (2023), as part of the artist’s ongoing “social abstraction” series, which threads hard-edge geometric motifs alongside loose brushstrokes, collaged planetary objects, stamped text (HOMELESS), African fabrics, repeated slinking cat silhouettes (his mother’s stylized iconic design used as the logo for the Black Panther Party), and his innovative “basketball hoop net” spray-painting technique. In 2016, Huffman first employed found basketball nets as a stencil to spray paint lengths of netting into ghostly, lyrical patterns. This material choice is laden with symbolism, alluding to the urban vernacular of Black bodies. The word “homeless” is imprinted across the outer edges of the panel, intimating the continuous struggle of a community to locate the physical idea of home.

Through a personal lens, Huffman titles his new work in relation to his familial experience with metaphysical practices (his mother was a member of a psychic research center); in a reverse, grounding balance, the artist refers to “chitlins," an ancestral soul food, as a further connector to daily communal life. As a bridge between past, present, and future, Huffman positions a “traumanaut” against a metaphysical landscape of cultural and universal symbols. Layered atop a swathe of white paint, this novel illustration of a black astronaut in a space suit can be seen hugging a tree. Originating in paintings from the early 2000s, Huffman's “traumanauts” are shown inhabiting imagined surrealist landscapes, creating an uneasy atmosphere that holds in tension our collective fascination with the future, the complex search for ‘home,' and the painful legacy of slavery and racism.

Huffman’s first solo exhibition with Casey Kaplan, New York will open in April 2024.

David Huffman, Psychic Chitlins, 2023 (Alternate view)

Caroline Kent
Large feelings hidden in mountains/ in the palms of our hands touching, 2023
Acrylic on unstretched canvas
105.25 x 82" / 267.3 x 208.3cm

Inquire

Caroline Kent, Large feelings hidden in mountains/ in the palms of our hands touching, 2023 (Detail)

Caroline Kent (b. 1975, Sterling, IL) engages in a visual language of abstraction through an instinctive approach to color and form. Her multidisciplinary practice encourages a mutual exchange between maker and viewer by way of invented modes of communication. Through painting, drawing, sculpture, text, and performance, Kent stretches the limitations of language to create a meaningful space for both silence and sound, shape, and empty ground.

For Art Basel Miami Beach, Kent presents Large feelings hidden in mountains/ in the palms of our hands touching (2023), a monumental unstretched acrylic painting on canvas. Boldly colored overlapping abstractions, informed by the artist’s ongoing archive of works on paper, add temporal contradictions of the immediacy of hand painted lines with grounding geometries. As suggested in the work’s poetic title, Kent’s composition acknowledges the constraints of language in communicating sentiments that are deep and wide.

This space for correspondence, Kent’s second solo exhibition at Casey Kaplan, New York, is on view through December 22, 2023. A short play about watching shadows move across the room, the artist’s site-specific mural at the Queens Museum, New York, organized by Lauren Haynes, Director of Curatorial Affairs and Programs, opens on December 6, 2023, and will be on view through December 2024.

Caroline Kent, Large feelings hidden in mountains/ in the palms of our hands touching, 2023 (Alternate view)

Cindy Ji Hye Kim
Emperor's Clothes (Blue Painting), 2023
graphite, charcoal, and colored pencil on shaped birch stretcher bars
68 x 52" / 172.7 x 132.1cm

Inquire

Cindy Ji Hye Kim (b. 1990, Incheon, Korea) explores the anatomy of the image and its creation alongside mnemonic ruptures and lineages. Her practice, which includes painting, drawing, and sculpture is motivated by a poetic tension between what is remembered and forgotten, real and imagined, as well as the truths and fictions that exist between conscious and unconscious states.

For Art Basel Miami Beach 2023, Kim presents Emperor's Clothes (Blue Painting), a silk painting that contemplates rituals of passing. The skeletal structure of a pelvis and spine overlays a Bangsangsi-tal, a many-eyed mask. Traditionally worn in Korea by town priests during funerary processions to ward off malevolent spirits, these masks, post-ceremony, are either burned or buried, becoming unseen relics of memories and individuals.

The perimeter of the artwork is defined by interwoven threads serving as a framing device. Here, and more subtly across the face of the painting, Kim introduces a chromatic dimension by applying blue-colored pencil. This element marks an evolution from Kim's grisaille paintings and her commitment to the omission of color.

The back of Kim’s silk paintings explore another dimension to her practice where decorative stretcher bars, inspired by a motif from the Wiener Werkstätte (The Vienna Workshop 1903 - 1932) are visible. The architectural element results in a geographic collapse of time and space as Kim combines Korean tradition with Austrian design.

In February 2024, Kim’s solo exhibition Silhouettes in Lune will open at The Savannah College of Art and Design Museum of Art, Savannah, GA.

Left: Cindy Ji Hye Kim, Emperor's Clothes (Blue Painting), 2023 (Detail)
Right: Cindy Ji Hye Kim, Emperor's Clothes (Blue Painting), 2023 (Verso)

Hannah Levy
Untitled, 2023
Silicone, stainless steel
5.5 x 59.5 x 15" / 14 x 151.1 x 38.1cm

Inquire

Hannah Levy, Untitled, 2023 (Detail)

With spare gestures and skilled execution, Hannah Levy (b. 1991, New York, NY) manipulates texturally incongruous materials, such as silicone, glass, and polished metal, to create tactile sculptures that provoke sensory experience. The artist appropriates commonplace objects and defamiliarizes them by using unexpected materials and warping their formal properties.

Untitled (2023) is composed of two hand-carved stainless steel claws fixed to the wall, evoking curtain rod hooks or handrail brackets, supporting a hazy pink asparagus made of silicone. The honed fingers clutch the ends of the fleshy vegetable, their points on the verge of piercing its surface. Enlarged several times over, the asparagus flexes and droops, appearing limply phallic. Rife with competing dualities—erotic and sterile, seductive and repulsive, humorous and disconcerting—Untitled subverts notions of “taste-making” perpetuated by contemporary interior design.

Levy’s work is currently on view in Moveables at the Institute of Contemporary Art Philadelphia, Philadelphia, PA through December 17, 2023. In conjunction with the exhibition, Levy presented Heel, a performance choreographed by Sigrid Lauren and performed by Sigrid Lauren and Aliza Russell.

Hannah Levy, Untitled, 2023 (Alternate view)

Mateo López
Mascara Granero (Shovel Mask), 2023
Shovel, enamel paint, wood, fabric, seeds
Without stand: 12 x 5.5 x 8.5" / 30.5 x 14 x 21.6cm
With stand: 27 x 7.75 x 8.25" / 68.6 x 19.7 x 21cm

Inquire

Mateo López’s (b. 1978, Bogotá, Colombia) works across drawing, sculpture, painting and performance utilizing and adapting each medium to explore tridimensional modes of drawing to examine intercontinental histories. At the center of López’s practice is the ‘line’ and how the line bleeds off the page, from paper to constructed object. López expands the scope of drawing to consider the medium in time and space as it relates to his own body.

For Art Basel Miami Beach 2023, López presents three masks that further his complex relationship between sculpture, drawing, and figuration. The artworks, which are functional and can be worn, are comprised of both mass-produced commercial products and indigenous materials from Central and South America. Roboto Huitoto (Huitoto Robot)(2023), presents a cartoonish robot face with a helmet made from a gourd, topped with a trio of colorful wire brushes. In Hevea (2023) a chain of river pearls cascades from round empty eye sockets, while in Mascara Granero (Shovel Mask) (2023) a masked caricature is rendered onto a stable shovel. López’s employment of medium in these quizzical masks is an homage to the traditional practices of his home country, Colombia, and a reflection on contemporary materials and the impact of global trade. A temperament of coalescing geographies and materials bind these three works together.

López is included in Drawing as Practice at the National Academy of Design, New York, NY (September 14, 2023 - December 16, 2023).

Left: Mateo López
Hevea, 2023
Wood carving, vinyl paint, river pearls, leather straps
Without stand: 23.2 x 7.9 x 3.4” / 59 x 20 x 6cm
With stand: 24.8 x 7.9 x 7.9”/ 64 x 20 x 20cm
Right: Mateo López, Hevea, 2023 (Alternate view)

Inquire

Mateo López
Roboto Huitoto (Huitoto Robot), 2023
Gourd, enamel paint, brushes, wood, leather
Without stand: 21.5 x 8 x 8" / 54.6 x 20.3 x 20.3cm
With stand: 31 x 9 x 9" / 78.7 x 22.9 x 22.9cm

Inquire

Kaveri Raina
shuffled away quietly; yet resisting, 2023
Acrylic, graphite, oil pastel, burlap
65 x 85" / 165.1 x 215.9cm

Inquire

Kaveri Raina, shuffled away quietly; yet resisting, 2023 (Detail)

Kaveri Raina (b. 1990, New Delhi, India) lives and works in New York. Raina’s paintings on burlap suggest the corporality of a memory, both witnessed and imagined. Abstracted forms rendered from personal experience and inherited histories reveal generations of dislocation. Bodies at rest or in motion oscillate across textured surfaces, interrupted and reimagined mid-story.

For Art Basel Miami Beach 2023, Raina presents shuffled away quietly; yet resisting (2023), a new painting on burlap that continues the artist’s narrative progression of displaced bodies within gritty fields of acrylic, oil pastel and graphite. Burlap of varying color and rigidity are sewn together, stretched, and painted from both sides by pouring acrylic through its permeable weave. The suggestion of two figures, one standing while the other is levitating, are portrayed in direct contrast with densely painted shapes and vigorous swirls of graphite and oil pastel. Influenced by Leon Golub’s (1922 - 2004) figurative series of paintings illustrating the aftermath of war, Raina began incorporating coffin-like structures within her works. A hammer extends across the top of the composition, inspired by the 1960s tool drawings of Lee Lozano (1930 - 1999).

Raina will present a solo booth with Casey Kaplan at Frieze New York in May 2024, followed by her first solo exhibition at the gallery in November 2024.

Kaveri Raina, shuffled away quietly; yet resisting, 2023 (Alternate view)

Matthew Ronay
Senatrix, 2023
Basswood, dye, plastic, steel, shellac-based primer, primer
47 x 22 x 9" / 119.4 x 55.9 x 22.9cm

Inquire

Matthew Ronay’s (b. 1976, Louisville, KY) practice is the embodiment of a masterful handling of materials through a fetishistic pursuit of form. Working primarily with basswood, his sculptures are all made by hand; each component carved, whittled, sanded, pierced, dyed, and jointed together into colorful configurations that visually defy their wooden medium and conjure traditions of non-western art making and American folk art.

For Art Basel Miami Beach 2023, Ronay presents Senatrix (2023), a vibrant, vertical basswood sculpture titled after the Latin feminine form of ‘senator.’ The work features eight spindly legs forming its base, influenced by the practical and repetitive design found in furniture crafted by the Shakers—a restorationist Christian sect formed in the 1780s. From a stone-like base, a deconstructed female figure is revealed in shards of features including an eye and limbs. On the right side, a branch (or leg), structurally reinforces the connection between the base and the sculpture without compromising imagery—a centuries old technique utilized by figurative sculptors such as Michelangelo with tree stumps—linking Ronay’s abstraction to the tradition of classical statuary.

The artist will be included in an exhibition The Life of Forms at the Hayward Gallery, London, UK, (February 7 - May 6, 2024). Ronay’s third solo exhibition at Casey Kaplan, New York opens in March 2024.

Left: Matthew Ronay, Senatrix, 2023 (Detail)
Right: Matthew Ronay, Senatrix, 2023 (Alternate view)

Johanna Unzueta
October 2020 / February 2021 Berlin, 2021
Watercolor, pastel pencil, oil stick, needle holes on watercolor paper tinted with wild snowberries, plexiglass, wood, bronze screws
58.75 x 37 x 9" / 149.2 x 94 x 22.9 cm
Paper size: 42.9 x 32.7”/ 108.96 x 83.05cm

Inquire

Johanna Unzueta’s (b. 1974, Santiago, Chile) interdisciplinary practice pays homage to her Chilean upbringing through an engagement in the surrounding communities, landscape, and histories of Latin America. Unzueta utilizes common materials such as felt, cotton, recycled wood, paper, thread, and natural pigments to describe a belabored economy impacted by the hierarchy of people and resources. The history of how objects are grown and circulated is central to Unzueta’s work that spans installation, sculpture, drawing, film, and mural-making.

For Art Basel Miami Beach 2023, Unzueta presents October 2020 / February 2021 Berlin (2021), an intricate work on paper, exhibited as free-standing and considered by the artist as a non-bidimensional object. Unzueta’s rich oeuvre is manifested with intuitive expression, influenced by her cultural roots and in constant dialogue with the social and biological qualities of nature. Hand-drawn with watercolor, pastel pencil, and oil stick, the work’s circular and elliptic forms are created from paper templates and embroidery hoops, and inscribed with traces of indigenous craft practices cultivated from her apprenticeship with Mapuche women in rural Chile. Constellations of finely punctured needle holes are rendered against a geometric background laboriously tinted with wild snowberry dye. Titled within its place and time of creation, each drawing in this ongoing series ultimately serves as a kind of cartography of place and a bridge between maker and community. The work’s free-standing structure, informed by Italian-Brazilian modernist architect Lina Bo Bardi (1914 - 1992), is supported by a reclaimed wood block. Unzueta braces the work on paper between two sheets of Plexiglass and inserts the drawing into the wood base, echoing Bo Bardi’s intentions of lightness, transparency, and suspension. This architectural intervention invites the viewer to experience the work in the round, offering multiple perspectives while maintaining a close relationship to the body.

Unzueta’s first solo exhibition at Casey Kaplan, New York opens in January 2024.

Left: Johanna Unzueta, October 2020 / February 2021 Berlin, 2021 (Alternate view)
Right: Johanna Unzueta, October 2020 / February 2021 Berlin, 2021 (Detail)

Ella Walker
Chorus I, 2023
Acrylic dispersion, pigment, chalk and pencil, on stretched linen
82.7 x 47.2" / 210 x 120cm

Inquire

Ella Walker's (b. 1993, Manchester, UK) painting practice transforms art historical iconography and modern-day references into contemporary, theatrical scenes of love, tragedy, and mystery. Taking as a starting point the tradition of medieval and Renaissance painting, Walker combines age-old techniques of painting, drawing, and fresco to render shallow “stage-like” depths of field that disturb the viewer’s sense of structure, composition, and time. For the artist, the ritual of painting and the act of dreaming are inextricably bound—merging to create, in Walker’s own words, a “magic realism.”

For Art Basel Miami Beach, Walker presents the painting Chorus I (2023), first exhibited in the artist’s solo exhibition of the same name at Kestner Gesellschaft in Hannover, Germany (July 8 - October 1, 2023). As the title suggests, a “chorus”—referencing an ancient group of actors in Greek theater who sang, danced, and provided commentary for an unfolding play—is represented in a dream-like composition. Incorporating a vast array of mediums including natural pigments, acrylic, tempura, gesso, pastel, and ink on stretched linen, Walker depicts a group of women in various states of repose and dress. Four larger-than-life figures emerge from a dark background on a floating plane—their bodies cross and overlap in an intersection of styles, expressions, and patterns, weaving references from classical ballets and operas, Italian manuscripts, Commedia dell’arte, costume design, and film noir.

Notably, and in contrast to the male dominated theaters of centuries past, the artist’s figures (who are often recurring) are grounded in the contemporary through attire, sequence, and cinematic reference. A woman wearing a violet unitard holds a wooden stick while a reoccurring character from a still in Federico Fellini’s Satyricon (1970) bears a mischievous grin and extends a pinched hand towards her breast. In a strictly female protagonist group, two members of the chorus wear flapper-inspired shorts with opaque tassels that reveal the artist’s many washes of paint. The compression of ground and improper illusion of space underscores each character’s role as heroine and echoes the flat plane of religious, medieval paintings. The expressions of Walker’s figures range from pleasure and resignation to malevolence and apathy. In this tangled scene, Walker embraces contradiction and the bridging of the sacred and the profane.

Walker’s second solo exhibition with Casey Kaplan, New York opens in March 2024.

Ella Walker, Chorus I, 2023 (Detail)

Ella Walker, Chorus I, 2023 (Alternate view)

Amanda Williams
What black is this you say?— "A west side imma snatch-yo-edges-back-with-a-hand-gesture black"—black (08.27.2020), v1, 2023
Oil, mixed media on wood panel
60 x 60 x 2.5" / 152.4 x 152.4 x 6.3cm

Inquire

Amanda Williams (b. 1974, Evanston, IL) deconstructs the physical and psychological systems of inequity associated with race. Informed by her architectural background, Williams’ command of space shapes her meditations on race, color and value. Drawing from an array of source material and using color as an operative logic to interpret the elusive meaning of ‘blackness,’ Williams complicates readings of our spatial surroundings. With a multidisciplinary practice that spans painting, works on paper, photography, sculpture and installation, Williams communicates through a chromatic language of abstract and material means.

For Williams’ first presentation with Casey Kaplan at Art Basel Miami Beach 2023, the artist presents a new painting, What black is this you say?– “A west side imma snatch-yo-edges-back-with-a-hand-gesture black” –black (08.27.2020), v1 (2023). Williams’ studio-based works consider the implications of the simultaneity of color as a chromatic and social signifier of Black identity. Often engaging with linguistic whimsy and spatio-chromatic wordplay, Williams’ projects represent a turn around the color wheel—red, gold, indigo and black.

Amanda Williams, What black is this you say?— "A west side imma snatch-yo-edges-back-with-a-hand-gesture black"—black (08.27.2020), v1, 2023 (Detail)

In June of 2020, the artist produced a series of digital quips in response to the Instagram movement of #blackouttuesday, the call to post a solid black square in protest of police brutality. For Williams, this rush to solidarity brought to light questions around the subjectivity of the color black. Challenging a monolithic square as representation of a nuanced and complex range of ‘blackness,’ Williams posted over 120 captions chronicling types of blackness, and accompanying abstracted images saturated with subtle shades, impressions of textures, and obscured contours. In 2021, Williams translated the elusive digital series, titled What Black Is This You Say?, to paint on panel in a public installation at the Storefront for Art and Architecture in New York City.

Williams continues this exploration in a series of oil on panel paintings in the same square format as the social media grid, reinterpreting her original Instagram images in pours, scrapes, and build-ups of paint. The series, which was exhibited in the group exhibition, The Long Dream at the MCA Chicago (2020) and featured at Rhona Hoffman Gallery, Chicago (2020), marks an evolving painting practice that recently developed into the CANDYLADYBLACK series (2022–), which celebrates the local “candy lady,” a fixture of urban neighborhoods in the U.S. The interplay of ultra-matte and syrup-like surfaces attributed to the What Black is This You Say? series create subtle texture and illusions of pictorial depth. Color combinations of deep reds, greens and blues connote both the color black and ‘blackness’ in all its brilliance.

Williams will present her inaugural solo exhibition with Casey Kaplan, New York in March 2025.

Amanda Williams, What black is this you say?— "A west side imma snatch-yo-edges-back-with-a-hand-gesture black"—black (08.27.2020), v1, 2023 (Alternate view)

INQUIRE

TOP