Shop the Show: In a New Marbella Exhibition, Five Emerging Artists Tap Into Contemporary Anxieties Through Figuration

Juliet Casella, *Mortal Dinner*(2021). Courtesy of Badr El Jundi.

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What You Need to Know: The Marbella, Spain, gallery Badr El Jundi’s current group exhibition “Vision of Figure” brings together the work of international emerging artists Ella Bril, Juliet Casella, Margaux Henry-Thieullent, Tosin Kalejaye, and Anna Nero. Though figuration is key to each of these artists’ practices, they engage the human body in their own unique ways. Self-taught Nigerian artist Tosin Kalejaye (b. 1992), for instance, focuses on everyday aspects of the Black experience while adding elements of the unreal. His figures appear against monochromatic backgrounds, and sometimes nets strangely spool out across their skin. Meanwhile, French artist Juliet Casella (b. 1993) positions her figures in eerie situations, adding surreal or mystical elements, and strange, exaggerated shadows that are reminiscent of the metaphysical paintings of Giorgio de Chirico. The gallery’s unique space, which moves from a tiled courtyard-like interior to an outdoor garden, adds to the uncanny quality of the show.

Why We Like It: The exhibition brings together an idiosyncratic mix of artists in their 20s and early 30s who explore what figuration means to contemporary art. The common thread between many of these works is that figuration forms a foundation for surrealistic exploration. These figures, be they realistically rendered or abstracted, invariably encounter some element of uncertainty or threat in their environments, creating a sense of anxiety that is very much in keeping with our contemporary moment.

According to the Gallery: “Tosin Kalejaye develops portraits with a particularly personal approach to color in his paintings. The artist often plays with the contrast of naturalistic figures over flat backgrounds where the figures look at the viewer from their positions in such unusual spaces. Similarly, bright backgrounds are taken up by the painter Juliet Casella, but with the added depiction of framing architecture. Ella Bril (b. 1996) is a Dutch contemporary artist who composes figurative scenes with a palette reminiscent of the Fauves. The faces of the characters in her works are worked out emotionless and unreal, creating a mystical atmosphere of distance within the composition. Margaux Henry-Thieullent creates wild figure paintings whose narration is not directly legible. Her art brings to mind the work of Expressionist Max Beckmann, who similarly positioned shadowy figures in oppressive tight spaces. Anna Nero’s paintings are different from the previous positions in their concentration on small details and abstract compositions; Nero starts her paintings with geometrical structures in various colors and breaks the strict compositions with gestural lines. Her bodies emerge from these movements and create an aesthetic contrast to the work’s backgrounds.”

Browse works from the exhibition below.