At the Artnet Gallery Network, our goal is to discover new artists each and every month. We sift through the thousands of talented artists on our site to select a few we find particularly intriguing right now.
This month, we’ve chosen five artists whose work we think you should know about, available at spaces from Oslo to Istanbul. Check them out below.
Apichaya Wanthiang at Galleri Brandstrup, Olso
Apichaya Wanthiang, Breaking (2021). Couresy of Galleri Brandstrup.
Thai artist Apichaya Wanthiang recently closed her first solo painting exhibition, “When the First Thought is Touch,” at Oslo’s Galleri Brandstrup. The stirring show was partly inspired by the book The Body Keeps The Score by Bessel Van der Kolk, which explores ideas of bodily memory. The paintings featured in the exhibition are based on enlarged images of mass cremations of Covid-19 victims in India. The artist has translated these grainy images into emotionally charged and deeply tactile painted surfaces that contemplate the lifecycle of the body and the stories it records.
“My childhood experiences of performing rituals at the village temple instilled in me a bodily connection with others. I felt a connection with them when walking together to donate food to the spirits, when chanting mantras I could not understand, or when awkwardly forcing my body to sit still in a certain position for meditation. As I grow older, I understand that these gestures tie us together—the people performing it right then and there—but it also binds us to those who have performed those same gestures in the times before us,” wrote the artist.
Alfredo Sarabia Jr. at Noir Blanche, Dusseldorf
Alfredo Sarabia Jr., Untitled (2020). Courtesy of Noir Blanche.
Alfredo Sarabia Jr. (b. 1986) is the son of Cuban photographer Alfredo Sarabia (1951–1992) and has been defining his own potent style of photography since his teenage years. (The artist had his first solo exhibition at the Fototeca de Cuba in 2009.) Sarabia’s work captures a sense of anxious, youthful energy that prevades our uncertain times. A recent series of black-and-white photographs from 2020 primarily focus on children playing on and in cars; the image, which are startlingly exuberant, call to mind Helen Levitt’s mid-century street photography of children playing in New York City.
Sanda Amadou at Open Art Exchange, Schiedam
Sanda Amadou, Resilience I (2021). Courtesy of Open Art Exchange.
Benin-based artist Sanda Amadou (b. 1978) creates dynamic semi-abstracted works inspired by the nomadic Fulani people that live in many regions of Africa. He often includes ropes, vines, leaf branches, and cattle in his compositions—symbols replete with meaning in the daily lives of the Fulani. The works are made primarily in blacks and whites, with pops of color adding a potent dream-like sensibility to his work.
Ramazan Can at Anna Laudel, Istanbul
Ramazan Can, Otoportre (2021). Courtesy of Anna Laudel.
Artist Ramazan Can’s encompassing solo exhibition, titled “I am Neither on the Earth Nor in the Sky,” currently on view at Anna Laudel in Istanbul, brings together works made across seven years. These range from expressionist self-portraiture that reference art-historical masterpieces to neon sculptures of carpets. In many of these works, the artist examines the histories of nomadic cultures that have existed for millennia, and to this very day, as well as the ways in which international policies on migration and resettlement have impacted these communities.
Luis Olaso at JD Malat Gallery, London
Luis Olaso, Composition for Monstera and a Circle (2021). Courtesy of JD Malat.
Spanish artist Luis Olaso, known for his colorful and abstract depictions of plants and organic shapes, is having his first solo exhibition in the U.K. “Physis” at London’s JD Malat Gallery comprises 11 new mixed-media paintings and offers a window into the expressive possibilities of contemporary still life. The exhibition title comes from the Greek philosophical and scientific word meaning growth or change in nature; this idea is influential to the artist who allows his paintings to develop from a subconscious process.
“I consider all my work as a kind of continuous process of evolution, the elements, colors, and shapes mutate spontaneously, and I don’t know where they will go in the future,” Olaso said.