Adolph Gottlieb and Kim Whanki @ Pace Gallery, Seoul - 'The Language of Abstraction, The Universe of Emotion' Exhibition

The Language of Abstraction, The Universe of Emotion 

Adolph Gottlieb and Kim Whanki

Pace Gallery, Seoul

October 31, 2025 – January 10, 2026

Kim Whanki 

Untitled, 1967 

Oil on canvas, 177 x 127 cm 

© Whanki Foundation · Whanki Museum

Pace  presents The Language of Abstraction, The Universe of Emotion, a pair of exhibitions of works by American Abstract Expressionist Adolph Gottlieb and pioneering Korean painter Kim Whanki, at its Seoul gallery. On view across two floors of the gallery, these dual presentations—organized in collaboration with the Adolph and Esther Gottlieb Foundation and the Whanki Foundation—offer viewers an opportunity to witness how two 20th century figures with different cultural and philosophical backgrounds visualized their unique perspectives and forged a universal language through abstraction.

Gottlieb’s paintings fuse intuitive shapes with bold color fields to visualize emotion and the unconscious, while Kim’s canvases employ repeated dots and refined chromatic structures to evoke an Eastern sense of meditation and cosmic order. Deeply moved by his first encounter with Gottlieb’s work in the U.S. Pavilion at the São Paulo Biennale in 1963, Kim Whanki subsequently relocated to New York, where he embarked on one of the most intense periods of his career. Immersed in the city’s dynamic art scene, he gradually eliminated figurative references from his work, refining his language into dots, lines, and planes. His restrained compositions and luminous fields of meticulously placed dots evoke skies, seas, and constellations, transforming time and space into poetic abstractions. His celebrated Dot Paintings series, completed during these years, played a key role in the introduction of Korean Modernism to the global stage. Pace’s exhibition of Kim’s work from the late 1960s to the early 1970s focuses on the development of his Dot Paintings from structural compositions using crosses and quadrants (Sibjagudo).

A central figure of the New York School alongside Jackson Pollock and Mark Rothko, Adolph Gottlieb was at the vanguard of American Abstract Expressionism. His Pictographs of the 1940s used an all-over grid structure and invented symbols to give form to the unconscious, and in the 1950s he developed his signature Burst series: paintings that juxtapose a floating orb with explosive brushwork. These compositions dramatize the tensions between order and chaos, color, and form, inviting universal and intuitive responses rather than prescribing narrative meaning. Pace’s presentation in Seoul includes a selection of works produced by Adolph Gottlieb during the 1960s and 1970s, including the large-scale painting Expanding (1962), along with canvases from his Imaginary Landscapes series, which utilize the form of landscape painting to include unlimited perception.

Though their practices were rooted in distinct cultural contexts, Kim and Gottlieb are connected by a shared pursuit of universality—using color, symbol, and structure to explore humanity, the cosmos, and the realm of emotion. The Language of Abstraction, The Universe of Emotion is conceived as a dialogue, where the visual and emotional resonances between their works illuminate the boundless possibilities of abstraction and its enduring significance in art history.

Adolph Gottlieb (b. 1903, New York; d. 1974, New York) is recognized as a key figure of the New York School. Initially informed by Italian Renaissance painting, Impressionism, and the European avant-garde, Gottlieb became an advocate of abstraction from the 1930s onward, notably organizing the protest of an exhibition at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, in 1950, for which he and a group of fellow artists became known as the Irascibles. Producing paintings, drawings, prints, sculpture, and tapestries, Adolph Gottlieb developed an aesthetic vocabulary from Jungian theory, underpinned by aspects of automatism, primitivism, and Surrealism. He continued to refine these stylistic means throughout his career, pursuing images that evoke an immediate and visceral impact on the viewer, through his series of Pictographs, Imaginary Landscapes, and Bursts.

Kim Whanki (b. 1913, Jeollanam-do, Korea; d. 1974, New York) is recognized as one of the pioneers of abstract modernism in South Korea during the twentieth century. The artist studied at Nihon University, Tokyo, from 1933 to 1936, a period during which he began exploring abstraction. From 1946 to 1950, he served as a professor in the Department of Western Painting at Seoul National University, and from 1952 to 1955 as professor and dean of the Department of Western Painting at Hongik University, Seoul. He was appointed as President of the Fine Arts Association in 1963.

PACE SEOUL

267 Itaewon-ro, Yongsan-gu, Seoul

www.pacegallery.com

Kids ! Between Representation and Reality @ Bucerius Kunst Forum, Hamburg

Kids ! Between Representation and Reality

Bucerius Kunst Forum, Hamburg

28 November 2025 - 6 April 2026 

Caspar Netscher 

A Portrait of Two Boys, ca. 1680 - 1683 

Collection Bob Haboldt, Amsterdam

Jens Juel 

Countess Eleonora Sophie Bille Brahe, Née Rantzau, 

with her Eldest Son Henrik, 1799

Private collection

Friedrich Seidenstücker 

In His Father’s Estate, ca. 1950 

Pinakothek der Moderne, Munich, 

Ann and Jürgen Wilde Foundation 

© Friedrich Seidenstücker

The exhibition Kids! Between Representation and Reality at the Bucerius Kunst Forum is dedicated to the representation of children in art from the 16th to the 21st century. Six chapters approach the subject from different perspectives and show not only paintings but also photographs, works on paper, prints, media art and sculptures.

The exhibition includes works by Tizian, Anthonis van Dyck, Oskar Kokoschka, Paula Modersohn-Becker, Nobuyoshi Araki, Thomas Lawrence, Joshua Reynolds, Rineke Dijkstra, Judith Leyster, Christoph Amberger, Gerhard Richter and many more.

The multifaceted nature of the exhibition illuminates the diverse perspectives and functions of children's pictures over the centuries. Whether as a symbol of power and domination, as an expression of compassion or as snapshots of happy and sad childhoods: The depictions bear witness to the changing understanding of childhood over the centuries and at the same time illustrate the significance phase of life.

Tizian Vecellio 

Double Portrait of Guidobaldo II della Rovere, 

Duke of Urbino (1514–1574), and His Son, 

Francesco Maria II (1549–1631), 1555 

Loaned courtesy of The Klesch Collection

Nicolas Maes 

Portrait of a Boy as Adonis, ca. 1670 

© Gemäldegalerie der Akademie der bildenden Künste Wien

Joshua Reynolds 

Master Crewe as Henry VIII, ca. 1775 

Tate Gallery, London, Lent from a Private Collection 2009 

© Photo: Tate Gallery

The topic of images of children reflects the values and norms of a society and their changes in a special way. Images of children can be used to draw conclusions about social structures and power relations. Origin, status, and sometimes gender play an important role here. At the same time, over the centuries, social groups have influenced each other in the staging of their children and adapted their own representations in the process. How children are shown today is therefore linked to the reception of images of children from earlier times.

The exhibition reveals such cross-references and influences from the past to the present day and also identifies recurring patterns. The exhibition thus begins with a presentation of depictions of Madonna, in which the ideas of mother-child relationships and their influence up to the present day become clear. The father, on the other hand, usually fades into the background. Only when it comes to presenting the progenitor of the family do fathers proudly and consciously show themselves at the side of their young offspring. Until modern times, intimate father-child images were a rarity.

Created in aristocratic circles around 1500, the child portrait was intended to underpin the continuity and claim to power. Against this backdrop, portraits were often created showing the successors to the throne in armor as small adults. In this way, they were prepared for the future role of general and ruler. A playful variant is the portrait historié, in which the children were depicted as ancient gods, for example. Daughters were depicted at a very young age for reasons of marriage policy. Through strategic marriage promises and early marriages, it was possible to expand one's own political influence and territorial power. In the course of the 16th century, the upper classes also portrayed their children, albeit less elaborately. In the 17th century, however, the representative and extravagant portrait of a child became increasingly popular in wider society.

Philipp Otto Runge 

Portrait of Luise Perthes, 1805 

Klassik Stiftung Weimar, Museums

Henri Martin 

Young Peasant Girl in the Sunshine, 1890 

© Mulhouse, Musée des Beaux-Arts

John Stanton Ward 

The Newspaper Boys, ca. 1960 

© Tate London

Rineke Dijkstra 

Julia, Amsterdam, 7 March 2022, 2022 

Mauritshuis, Koninklijk Kabinet van Schilderijen, The Hague 

© Rineke Dijkstra / Galerie Max Hetzler

In the 17th century in particular, Dutch and Spanish genre painters took up the motif of poor children, which still lives on today. The artists were not necessarily interested in taking a socially critical stance. It is not uncommon for children in financially disadvantaged, often precarious life situations to have a smile written all over their faces. Child labor was not fundamentally rejected either. It was seen as a positive contribution that children could make to the family income. Photographs illustrate how differently children grow up globally and structurally to this day. For many children, the street and not the nursery is the place where they come together, interact socially and play together. How the depiction of children has changed over the centuries is made particularly clear in the exhibition by the works of deceased adolescents. In the past, portraits of deceased children were the only means of preserving their memory. Today, commemoration takes place in a different way - for example through lifelike photographs that show children in happy life situations.

The most serious change, which testifies to a different conception and definition of childhood, took place at the end of the 17th century and in the 18th century. Children were now allowed their own development - as close to nature as possible and away from the adult world. The children's room also became increasingly important, and toys and special children's literature were regarded as fundamental elements of its furnishings. The theme of “being a child” is still one of the most popular pictorial themes in the visual arts today: Trying things out, pushing oneself to the limits, drawing, playing and togetherness are characteristic of the most important phase of a person's life.

BUCERIUS KUNST FORUM 

Alter Wall 12, 20457 Hamburg

www.buceriuskunstforum.de

Turner and Constable: Rivals and Originals @ Tate Britain, London

Turner and Constable: Rivals and Originals

Tate Britain, London

27 November 2025 – 12 April 2026

J.M.W. Turner

Self Portrait, c. 1799 

Image courtesy of Tate

John Constable 

by Ramsay Richard Reinagle c. 1799 

NPG 1786 

© National Portrait Gallery, London

Tate Britain presents the first major exhibition to explore the intertwined lives and legacies of Britain’s most revered landscape artists: JMW Turner (1775–1851) and John Constable (1776–1837). Radically different painters and personalities, each challenged artistic conventions of the time, developing ways of picturing the world which still resonate today. Staged across the 250th anniversary years of their births, this exhibition will trace the development of their careers in parallel, revealing the ways they were celebrated, criticised and pitted against each other, and how this pushed them to new and original artistic visions. It will feature over 170 paintings and works on paper, from Turner’s momentous 1835 The Burning of the Houses of Lords and Commons, lent by Cleveland Museum of Art and not seen in Britain for over a century, to The White Horse 1819, one of Constable’s greatest artistic achievements, last exhibited in London two decades ago.

JMW Turner 

The Burning of the Houses of Lords 

and Commons, 16 October 1834, 1835 

Cleveland Museum of Art. 

Bequest of John L. Severance 1942.647

John Constable 

The White Horse, 1819 

© The Frick Collection, New York 

Photo: Joseph Coscia Jr

Born only a year apart - JMW Turner in London’s crowded metropolis and John Constable to a prosperous family in the Suffolk village of East Bergholt - their contrasting early lives will begin the exhibition. JMW Turner was a commercially minded, fast-rising young star who first exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1790 aged just 15, and created ambitious oil paintings like recently-discovered The Rising Squall, Hot Wells, from St. Vincent’s Rock, Bristol, before he turned 18. By contrast, largely self-taught John Constable undertook sketching tours to create early watercolours like Bow Fell, Cumberland 1807 and demonstrated a fierce commitment to perfecting artistic techniques, not exhibiting at the Royal Academy until 1802. Having both emerged amid an explosion in popularity of landscape art, the two were united however, in their desire to change it for the better.

The exhibition explores how both artists developed distinct artistic identities within the competitive world of landscape art, spotlighting their methods, evolution and overlap. Constable built his reputation on the Suffolk landscapes of his childhood, opting to sketch in oils outside amid the vast views of Dedham Vale and the river Stour, which often recurred in his work. Tate Britain will include his painting box and sketching chair, with visitors able to chart the development of Constable’s skilful draughtsmanship and radical handling of paint to add ‘sparkle’. A group of Constable’s cloud studies will be brought together for the exhibition. Reflective of his belief that the sky was key to the emotional impact of a painting they are now one of the most celebrated aspects of his output and underpinned the powerful skyscapes in the artist’s monumental six-foot canvases. Late works such as Hampstead Heath with a Rainbow 1836 will illustrate his deft interweaving of personal and historic memories.

JMW Turner 

The Passage of Mount St Gothard from the centre 

of Teufels Broch (Devil’s Bridge), 1804 

© Abbot Hall, Kendal (Lakeland Arts Trust)

By contrast, Turner travelled widely across Britain and Europe filling sketchbooks with quick pencil studies. This offered creative inspiration, influencing sublime Alpine scenes such as The Passage of Mount St Gothard from the Centre of Teufels Broch (Devil’s Bridge) 1804, as well as commercial opportunities to have prints made after his watercolours. The exhibition explores how Turner developed original ways to apply paint and depict light, capturing the raw power of nature. Some of Turner’s most celebrated late works will feature, including Ancient Italy – Ovid Banished from Rome, first exhibited in 1838 and not shown in London in over 50 years.

John Constable 

Salisbury Cathedral from the Meadows, c. 1829

Image courtesy of Tate

By the 1830s, both Turner and Constable became recognised for taking landscape painting in bold new directions. The stark differences between their work spurred art critics to pit them against one another and to cast them as rivals. In 1831 Constable himself played into this, placing his and Turner’s work side by side at the Royal Academy exhibition. This showing of Turner’s Caligula’s Palace and Bridge next to Constable’s Salisbury Cathedral from the Meadows, prompted a flurry of comparisons between the sun-drenched heat of Turner’s mythical Italian scene and Constable’s damply atmospheric Britain; they were ‘fire and water’. Now placed head-to-head at Tate Britain, the artists’ most distinctive and impressive paintings will highlight how, despite their differences, they made landscape a genre worthy of grand canvases and prime importance.

Creators of some of the most daring and captivating works in the history of British art, Turner and Constable changed the face of landscape painting with their two competing visions, elevating the genre with their recognition of its endless potential to inspire. The exhibition will end with a new film featuring contemporary artists Frank Bowling, Bridget Riley, George Shaw and Emma Stibbon reflecting on the enduring legacy of Turner and Constable.

TATE BRITAIN

Millbank, London SW1P 4RG

www.tate.org.uk

Koak, Ding Shilun, Cece Philips @ Hauser & Wirth London - "Interior Motives" Exhibition

Interior Motives

Koak, Ding Shilun, Cece Philips

Hauser & Wirth London

22 August – 20 September 2025

Enter interior worlds imagined by contemporary painters Koak, Ding Shilun and Cece Philips at Hauser & Wirth London. The exhibition explores how these artists engage with the interior both as a physical space and a psychological construct. Through distinct painterly vocabularies, each artist interrogates the architectural and domestic environments we inhabit, revealing how these frameworks shape our sense of self, memory and belonging. ‘Interior Motives’ is part of an ongoing initiative at Hauser & Wirth that champions emerging and mid-career artists beyond the gallery’s roster. Produced in collaboration with Union Pacific and Bernheim Gallery, this exhibition reflects a shared commitment to a sustainable arts ecosystem.

Depicting figures in dreamlike domestic interiors, Koak’s painting practice questions the societal expectations and roles of women within the home as well as the traditional portrayal of women by male artists. With a graphic aesthetic that borrows from Japanese and European animations, Koak uses familiar iconography of the home—windows, soft furnishings, flowerpots and vases—to build alternate interiors in which her figures are liberated and given agency. Her contemporary take on art historical depictions of domestic scenes is achieved through a vibrant color palette that blurs the distinction between the imagined and real, between inner and outer worlds, her female gaze highlighting both the emotional and physical experience of her figures.

Inhabiting imaginary worlds, the characters in Ding Shilun’s paintings are often an embodiment of the artist himself, the emotions he feels and the thoughts inside his mind. His worldbuilding relies on everyday objects found in domestic spaces to enable viewers to identify with the characters depicted and emotions evoked. With a style inspired by Japanese manga and traditional Chinese painting, the artist’s interiors include fantastical and mythological elements that question viewer’s perception of reality. Influenced by both global historical events, current affairs and his own experiences, Ding Shilun’s manifestation of his interior realm doubles up as a visual representation of the absurdity of daily life.

The architectural tropes characteristic of household settings, from windows and doorways to hallways and walls, act as visual framing devices in Cece Philips’ paintings. Radiant light is a hallmark of her practice, drawing viewers into the work and leading them through the interiors, yet they are never part of the scene, observing like a flaneur. Like paintings of everyday, domestic life from the Dutch Golden Age and by Félix Vallotton, a narrative is implied—one in which Cece Philips leaves the viewer to fill in the details, encouraged by their imagination and own inner worlds. The use of color adds a layer to the narrative by suggesting a psychological reading, reflecting the figures’ mood and internal realities, as well as that of the viewer. This exploration of interiority is at once about the subject and the viewer, observation and introspection.

ARTIST KOAK

Koak

Courtesy the artist and Union Pacific

Koak (b. 1981 in the US) is known for work that portrays the complex duality of identity and human nature through a mastery of the line which extends across drawing, painting and sculpture. Rendered with exquisite technique, her emotionally charged figures and landscapes are imbued with a profound agency and inner life. Her work challenges historical portrayals of femininity, depicting figures that shift between boldness and vulnerability, resisting fixed definition and embracing emotional depth. Regardless of subject, each piece is approached with the intimacy of portraiture, suggesting a metamorphic state—a dream of becoming something beyond the self: a body becoming a lake, a flower or a landscape. In this way, painting becomes an act of defiance—a feminist gesture that resists enclosure, imagining identity as something fluid.

Recent solo exhibitions include: ‘The Window Set,’ Charleston in Lewes, UK (2025); ‘Lake Marghrete,’ Perrotin, Paris, France (2024); ‘Letter to Myself (when the world is on fire),’ Altman Siegel, San Francisco CA (2023); ‘The Driver,’ Perrotin, Hong Kong (2022); ‘Return to Feeling,’ Altman Siegel, San Francisco CA (2020); and ‘Holding Breath,’ Union Pacific, London, UK (2019). Selected group exhibitions include: ‘Infinite Regresse: Mystical Abstraction from the Permanent Collection and Beyond,’ Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art, Kansas City MO (2024); ‘I’ve got a feeling,’ Musées d’Angers, Angers, France (2023); ‘I’m Stepping High, I’m Drifting, and There I Go Leaping,’ XIAO Museum, Rizhao, China (2022); ‘Familiars,’ Et. Al Gallery, San Francisco CA (2022); and ‘New Time: Art and Feminisms in the 21st Century,’ Berkeley Art Museum, Berkeley CA (2021), amongst others.

ARTIST DING SHILUN

Ding Shilun

Courtesy the artist and Bernheim Gallery 

Photo: Will Grundy

Ding Shilun (b. 1998 in Guangzhou, China; lives and works between London and Guangzhou) harnesses his heritage, current events and a global history of art to create large and detailed pictorial works depicting the absurdity of daily life. His unique concurrence of the mythological, the historical and the everyday allow the emergence of an imaginary world with a representation of himself within our seemingly homogenous society. Rooted in pictorial references such as Gustav Klimt or Kai Althoff intertwined with interpretations of Chinese literature—namely a collection of Chinese legends, translated as ‘In Search of the Supernatural,’ written between 220 – 589 AD—Shilun’s characters inhabit imaginary worlds that serve as allegories for human experience and emotion. The precision of the details is used to contrast the different textures found in the paintings, sometimes resembling watercolor, as well as playing on a combination of co-existing perspectives, which question the distinction between real and surreal.

His recent solo shows include ‘Janus’ at ICA Miami, Miami FL (2024); ‘Invites: Ding Shilun,’ Zabludowicz Collection, London, UK (2023); ‘Paradiso,’ Bernheim, Zurich, Switzerland (2022); and ‘Mirage,’ Bernheim, London, UK (2024). Shilun’s work is included in the permanent collections of The Institute of Contemporary Art, Miami FL; The Nancy A. Nasher and David J. Haemisegger Collection of Contemporary Art, Dallas TX; High Museum of Art, Atlanta GA; Rose Art Museum, Waltham MA; Guangdong Museum, Guangzhou, China; Albertina Museum, Vienna, Austria; Museu Inima De Paula, Below Horizonte, Brazil; Asymmetry Art Foundation, London, UK; and Dallas Museum of Art, Dallas TX, among others.

ARTIST CECE PHILIPS

Cece Philips

Courtesy the artist

Photo: Rory Langdon-Down

Cece Philips (b. 1996 in London, UK) is a London-based painter whose luminous compositions explore ideas of spectatorship and voyeurism. Embodying the role and spirit of the flaneur, or flâneuse, her works draw on a multitude of sources, from the archive, film stills, found imagery and memory she weaves together historical and contemporary influences to interrogate ideas of interiority, desire and loneliness. Framing is a recurring device in Philips’ paintings, though windows and doorways, barriers and veils are constructed to challenge an easy reading of her female protagonists. Palette, attention to light and space all lend psychological and narrative depth—details that lead us through and beyond the work and activate the viewer’s own imagination.

Cece Philips held her debut solo exhibition ‘I See in Colour’ at HOME in London, UK, in April 2021. Subsequent solo shows include ‘Between the Dog and the Wolf’ at ADA Contemporary, Accra, Ghana (2022); ‘The Night Has a Thousand Eyes,’ Peres Projects, Berlin, Germany (2022); ‘Walking the In-Between,’ Peres Projects, Seoul, South Korea (2023); and ‘Conversations Between Two,’ Peres Projects, Milan, Italy (2024). Recent group exhibitions include ‘The Painted Room,’ curated by Caroline Walker at GRIMM, Amsterdam, The Netherlands (2023); ‘Digestif,’ a two-person show with Hettie Inniss at Palazzo Monti, Brescia, Italy (2024); and ‘The Shed’ at Berntson and Bhattacharjee, London, UK (2025). Her most recent solo presentation, ‘The Wall: Cece Philips,’ was held at Almine Rech, Brussels, Belgium (2025). Cece Philips completed her MA in Painting at the Royal College of Art in 2023 and was awarded the Fribourg Philanthropies Prize the same year.

HAUSER & WIRTH LONDON

23 Savile Row, London W1S 2ET

www.hauserwirth.com

41 British Artists Exhibition @ Maya Frodeman Gallery, Jackson Hole - "One Thing Touches Another" Curated by Emma Hill and Tom Hammick

One Thing Touches Another 

Maya Frodeman Gallery, Jackson Hole 

July 31 - September 14, 2025 

Ken Kiff 

Untitled - After Domenichino, 1996

Encaustic on paper, 40 1/8 x 59 7/8 inches

© Ken Kiff, courtesy of Maya Frodeman Gallery

Lorna Robertson 

Portrait of a Lazy Woman, 2024 

Oil, linseed oil and varnish on paper, 20 5/8 x 18 ¾ inches

© Lorna Robertson, courtesy of Maya Frodeman Gallery

Prunella Clough 

Black Flower, 1993 

Oil on canvas, 44 x 48 3/4 inches

© Prunella Clough, courtesy of Maya Frodeman Gallery

Maya Frodeman Gallery presents One Thing Touches Another, a group exhibition curated by Emma Hill and Tom Hammick. 

The ideas behind One Thing Touches Another began from a simple premise which was to ask whether the language of painting has agency in an increasingly turbulent world. The exhibition offers a view of painting as an essential language of connection – as the physical manifestation of another’s thoughts. A form of invitation – a reaching towards.

Artists: Eileen Agar, Remi Ajani, Karolina Albricht, Ned Armstrong, Charles Avery, Basil Beattie, Maria Chevska, Prunella Clough, Denise de Cordova, Andrew Cranston, Martyn Cross, Joseph Dilnot, Peter Doig, James Fisher, Nick Goss, Phil Goss, Susie Hamilton, Tom Hammick, Marcus Harvey, Celia Hempton, Roger Hilton, Paul Housley, Andrzej Jackowski, Merlin James, Ken Kiff, Deborah Lerner, John Maclean, Elizabeth Magill, Kathryn Maple, Scott McCracken, Jeff McMillan, Margaret Mellis, Roy Oxlade, Carol Rhodes, Dan Roach, Lorna Robertson, William Scott, Myra Stimson, Graeme Todd, Phoebe Unwin, and Alice Walter.

Martyn Cross 

Way Yonder Trouble, 2021 

Oil on canvas, 12 x 18 inches

© Martyn Cross, courtesy of Maya Frodeman Gallery

John Maclean 

Swamp Things, 2025 

Watercolor on board, 11 3/4 x 9 1/2 inches

© John Maclean, courtesy of Maya Frodeman Gallery

The exhibition brings together work by 41 British artists, from internationally established figures to emerging young contemporaries. It reveals connections and currents in British art that span 75 years, with work by significant artists of the Modern British era, including Eileen Agar, Prunella Clough, Roger Hilton and William Scott, historic paintings by Ken Kiff and Roy Oxlade (whose influence as teachers travels into the present time), and recent work by artists including Basil Beattie RA, Andrew Cranston, Peter Doig and Marcus Harvey.

Though not bound by any one formal aesthetic, a prevailing aspect of the selection is the exploration of ideas expressed through depictions of landscape, both real and imaginary. The rich diversity of current practice in the UK is reflected in examples by contemporary artists including Charles Avery, Denise de Cordova, James Fisher, Tom Hammick, Nick Goss, John Maclean, Elizabeth Magill, Merlin James and Phoebe Unwin. The show also introduces a number of young painters to the US for the first time, selected by Tom Hammick, who worked for many years as a teacher.

The title of the exhibition is premised upon the words of painter Maria Chevska, writing in 2023:

The common factor—one thing touches another thing

Using the language of small gestures... tenuous, empathic, transforming, 

holding, listening,

and the tensions held between bodies and spaces...

Thematic strands run through One Thing Touches Another that relate to landscape, still life, mythmaking, and folklore, but what connects all the work is a sense of the artist approaching painting as a site of perception. Axiomatically the exhibition also examines the materiality of paint as a medium.

Within the exhibition there are numerous meeting points: historic artists who have influenced, artists who have taught other artists, friends, partners, siblings. Conceived by an artist and a curator who have known and worked together in London since the late 1980s, One Thing Touches Another presents eloquent evidence of the value of painting as a vital language in the contemporary world.

This exhibition is accompanied by a physical catalogue featuring an essay by Emma Hill.

Guest-curator Emma Hill founded Eagle Gallery / EMH Arts in London in 1991. Throughout her career, she has championed emerging artists through innovative exhibitions, artist publications and off-site installations. Renowned as one of London’s pioneering alternative art spaces in the early 1990’s Eagle Gallery has nurtured talents now celebrated globally. Hill is currently a guest curator at Turps Gallery, London and has curated institutional exhibitions including Ken Kiff: The Sequence at the Sainsbury Centre for Visual Art (2018) and Stephen Chambers: The Court of Redonda for the 57th Venice Biennale (2017). Her visionary initiatives have fostered collaborations with esteemed institutions including Aldeburgh Music, Sadler’s Wells Theatre, the Scuola Internazionale di Grafica, Venezia, and now Maya Frodeman Gallery.

Hill’s co-curator Tom Hammick is an artist living and working in London and East Sussex in the UK. He studied art history at the University of Manchester and later fine painting at Camberwell College of Art and NSCAD, Nova Scotia College of Art and Design in Canada. He has an MA in printmaking, also from Camberwell, and until recently taught fine art painting and printmaking for many years at The University of Brighton. Hammick is the proud father of three grown children as well as a lover of music, theater, film, opera and poetry, all of which informs his work in a profound and tangible way. His work is held in various public and private collections worldwide, including the British Museum, London; Victoria and Albert Museum, London; Pallant House Gallery, Chichester, U.K.; Towner Eastbourne, U.K.; Yale Centre for British Art, New Haven, CT; Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.; New York Public Library, NY; Minneapolis Institute of Art, Minneapolis, MN; Bibiothèque National de France, Paris; and The Art Gallery of Nova Scotia. Tom Hammick was selected to join the Josef and Anni Albers Foundation in New Haven, CT as an artist-in-residence in 2023.

MAYA FRODEMAN GALLERY

66 South Glenwood Street, Jackson Hole, Wyoming 83001

www.mayafrodemangallery.com

Master I.S. – The Enigmatic Contemporary of Rembrandt @ Serlachius Museum, Mänttä

Master I.S. – The Enigmatic Contemporary of Rembrandt

Serlachius Museum, Mänttä 

Through 17 August 2025

Master I.S.

Portrait of an Old Woman, 1651

Oil on panel, 41 x 33 cm

Kunsthistorisches Museum Wienna

Photo: © KHMMuseumsverband

Master I.S.

Young Scholar Half-naked, 1638

Oil on panel, 54 x 40 cm 

Private collection 

Photo: David Bassenge

Master I.S.

Old Woman Reading a Letter, 1658

Oil on panel, 50 x 35 cm 

Nationalmuseum Stockholm

Photo: Nationalmuseum, Anna Danielsson

Who was the mysterious artist who signed their works in the 17th century with the monogram I.S.? The research project and exion, hibition by Serlachius and the Dutch Museum De Lakenhal present, for the first time, the works of this contemporary of Rembrandt. 

The artist who signed their works with the monogram I.S. is believed to have resided in the city of Leiden in the Netherlands during the 1620s and 1630s. Their works show significant influences from renowned Dutch artists Jan Lievens and Rembrandt, who lived and worked in the city c. 1625–1630/31.

Jan Lievens 

Old Man, c. 1625/1626 

Oil on panel, 53,5 x 47,2 cm

Kunsthistorisches Museum Wienna 

Photo: © KHMMuseumsverband

Gerrit Dou

Self-portrait of the Painter in His Studio, c. 1632 

Oil on panel, 60,5 x 44 cm 

Museum De Lakenhal, Leiden, 

Purchased with the support of the 

Vereniging van Belangstellenden in Museum De Lakenhal, 

support from the Vereniging Rembrandt 

and a private donation 

Photo: Museum De Lakenhal

The new research project has explored the artist’s works and identity more extensively than ever before. The research began with the Serlachius Seminar held in spring 2022, the topics of which included the Fine Arts Foundation’s old European art.

With the international research project, c. 25 paintings have been identified that are known or believed to be created by Master I.S. Some of the works have disappeared and are known only from black-and-white photographs. The exhibition is the first in which a significant part of the artist’s work has been gathered in one place. After Serlachius, the exhibition will continue in October at Museum De Lakenhal in Leiden.

The Serlachius exhibition includes eighteen paintings from various collections across Europe and from Canada. Fourteen of these are attributed to Master I.S. Additionally, the exhibition features four other paintings that provide a basis for comparison of the works. These works are by Jan Lievens, Gerrit Dou, and David Bailly.

The exhibition is curated by Tomi Moisio, Curator at Serlachius Museums. The Leiden exhibition is curated by Janneke van Asperen, Curator of Old Masters at Museum De Lakenhal.

Master I.S. 

Old Man with a Fur Hat, 1640s 

Oil on canvas, 42 x 35,5 cm 

Gösta Serlachius Fine Arts Foundation. 

Photo: The Finnish National Gallery, Yehia Eweis

Master I.S.

Old Woman in Three-Quarter Profile, 1640–1645 

Oil on panel, 47 x 38 cm

Private collection 

Photo: Eva Steentjes

The artist’s identity remains a mystery

The Serlachius collection includes a work purchased from London in 1937, Old Man in a Fur Hat (1640s), previously attributed to Jan Lievens (1607–1674). The research project has strengthened the notion that the creator might be Master I.S.

The artist often depicts elderly people in great detail and without embellishment. The models are characterised by a melancholic, sideways gaze. Their works feature costumes, details, and interiors that suggest Eastern European or Scandinavian origins.

“Perhaps they are from that region and came to study in Leiden, for example. Alternatively, they may have travelled in Eastern or Northern Europe”, says Tomi Moisio.

So far, the identity of the artist who signed their works with the pseudonym I.S. has not been discovered. Research continues, and the interest of international art historians has brought new information about their works. At the same time, their value has increased.

The exhibition is accompanied by a publication in which experts in the field explore the mystery of Master I.S. and make comparative research on artist-contemporaries. The articles in the book have been written by curators Tomi Moisio and Janneke van Asperen, as well as the distinguished specialists on old Dutch and Flemish art, professors Volker Manuth and Marieke de Winkel. 

The research group has also included David de Witt, the Chief Curator at Rembrandthuis in Amsterdam. The book is published in English, as it is expected to be of great interest to the international academic community.

SERLACHIUS MUSEUM

Serlachius Manor, Joenniementie 47, Mäntä

serlachius.fi

Master I.S. – The Enigmatic Contemporary of Rembrandt

Serlachius Museum, Mänttä, Finland, 12 April - 17 August 2025

Shifting Horizons @ Peter Blum Gallery, NYC - An exhibition of paintings featuring landscapes by Nancy Diamond, Alex Katz, Eleanor Ray, Nicole Wittenberg, Robert Zandvliet

Shifting Horizons

Nancy Diamond, Alex Katz, Eleanor Ray, Nicole Wittenberg, Robert Zandvliet

Peter Blum Gallery, New York

June 5 – July 25, 2025

Peter Blum Gallery presents Shifting Horizons, an exhibition of paintings and works on paper featuring landscapes by Nancy Diamond, Alex Katz, Eleanor Ray, Nicole Wittenberg, and Robert Zandvliet. 

Shifting Horizons assembles five contemporary artists whose intimately scaled landscapes reflect a shared sensitivity to the nuances of place, perception, and memory. Working at a modest size in these works, Diamond, Katz, Ray, Wittenberg, and Zandvliet approach the natural world not as a fixed subject but as a space for exploration—where observation and emotion converge. These works transcend straightforward representation, instead offering distilled moments that evoke atmosphere, light, and spatial rhythm. Whether rooted in direct experience or shaped by recollection, the landscapes presented here invite a slower way of seeing.

Nancy Diamond’s recent works on paper explore the interplay between natural observation and imaginative transformation. Utilizing watercolor and gouache, she creates layered compositions of clouded skies, often inspired by her time in the Catskills. These images shift between the recognizable and the abstract, reflecting a space between recording and reimagining. Her attention to form and subtle variation invites viewers into a quiet terrain that considers both detail and broader view, where the natural world is shaped by personal perspective. Within this space, a subtle bodily presence emerges, connecting internal and external, inviting contemplation on how perception and memory mediate experience. Diamond’s palette suggests changing weather, fading light, and quiet transitions—moments that feel both observed and remembered. Diamond received a BFA from the Rhode Island School of Design and she received awards from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Marie Walsh Sharpe Foundation. Select recent exhibitions include FLAG Art Foundation, New York, NY (2024); Maya Frodeman Gallery, Jackson Hole, WY (2024); and KARMA, Thomaston, ME (2024).

Alex Katz’s small-scale landscape paintings on board reveal a more immediate and spontaneous side of his iconic practice of larger scale flattened forms. Often painted en plein air or quickly from memory, they emphasize light, seasonal shifts, and spatial rhythm. The landscapes on board are concise yet expansive, balancing on the cusp of abstraction and representation. In these works, Katz revisits familiar locations—Maine woods, waterlines, and fields—with a sense of closeness, reinforcing his enduring fascination with perception, time, and the American landscape. Katz studied at Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture and the Cooper Union, and he received the National Medal of Arts and Lifetime Achievement Award, National Academy Museum. Select recent solo exhibitions include The Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY (2024); The Albertina, Vienna, Austria (2023); and Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, NY (2022-23).

Eleanor Ray’s intimately scaled landscape paintings distill complex spatial and emotional experiences into panels, often no larger than a notebook page. Working primarily in oil on panel, she captures the essence of places—ranging from the American West to the Caribbean—through a synthesis of memory, observation, and abstraction. Her compositions are informed by drawings, photographs, and recollections, allowing her to reconstruct scenes with a focus on light, atmosphere, and architectural framing. This approach results in works that are both specific and universal, inviting viewers into a contemplative space that transcends the depicted locale. Ray’s restrained palette and subtle brushwork evoke a sense of quietude and introspection, demonstrating how modestly scaled works can convey resonance. Ray received an MFA from the New York Studio School and received awards from The Edward F. Albee Foundation and NYFA Fellowship in Painting. Select recent exhibitions include Nicelle Beauchene Gallery, New York, NY (2024); Venus Over Manhattan, New York, NY (2022); and Night Gallery, Los Angeles, CA (2022).

Nicole Wittenberg’s works are expressively rich. Beyond rendering naturalistic topography or scenery, living entities emerge in her images as through sensation or perception: a torrent of water, the twist of a leaf, the glare of afternoon light on the bark of a tree, all suggestive of fleeting moments and a subjective view. In a textural play of color and movement, they convey her affective relationship to the natural world, as well as nature’s evanescent traits. While Wittenberg captures the physical reality of Maine’s coastal forests, wetlands, and meadows, she more closely works with light, with the transit of the sun through the sky, as well as her own positioning within the dense and verdant landscape. Wittenberg received a BFA from the San Francisco Art Institute and received the American Academy of Arts and Letters’ John Koch Award. Select recent solo exhibitions include Ogunquit Museum of American Art, Ogunquit, ME (2025); Center for Maine Contemporary Art, Rockland, ME (2025); and Maison la Roche, Paris, France (2025).

Robert Zandvliet’s works on paper—each horizontal and measuring 9 x 12 inches—demonstrate an intuitive and meditative engagement with landscape and mark-making. Using egg tempera, oil, or a combination, Zandvliet treats each paper surface as a space for distilled experimentation, balancing gesture, color, and form. They operate like visual thoughts: rhythmic, atmospheric, and charged with a sense of immediacy. Despite their uniform size, the works vary in tone, yet all reflect his ongoing investigation into the essence of painting itself. Zandvliet’s process reveals a careful calibration between control and spontaneity, echoing the structure of historical Dutch landscape painting while pushing toward abstraction. Robert Zandvliet received an MFA from De Ateliers, Amsterdam, Netherlands and received a Prix de Rome and the Wolvekamp Prize. Select recent exhibitions include Kunstmuseum Den Haag, The Hague, Netherlands (2022); Kunstmuseum Solothurn, Solothurn, Switzerland (2022); and Dordrechts Museum, Dordrechts, Netherlands (2020, 2019).

PETER BLUM GALLERY

176 Grand Street, New York, NY 10013

www.peterblumgallery.com 

Marcia Marcus, Alice Neel, Sylvia Sleigh @ Lévy Gorvy Dayan, New York - "The Human Situation" Exhibition

The Human Situation: Marcia Marcus, Alice Neel, Sylvia Sleigh 

Lévy Gorvy Dayan, New York

April 10 – June 21, 2025

Sylvia Sleigh 

The Blue Dress, 1970

Oil on canvas, 66½ × 34½ inches (168.9 × 87.6 cm) 

Collection of Audrey and Joseph Anastasi 

© Estate of Sylvia Sleigh, 

courtesy of the Estate of Sylvia Sleigh and Lévy Gorvy Dayan

Alice Neel 

Pregnant Nude, 1967

Oil on canvas, 36½ × 57¼ inches (92.7 × 145.4 cm)

Private Collection, New York, courtesy of AWG Art Advisory

© Estate of Alice Neel, 

courtesy of the Estate of Alice Neel and David Zwirner

Lévy Gorvy Dayan presents The Human Situation: Marcia Marcus, Alice Neel, Sylvia Sleigh. The exhibition, conceived by Saara Pritchard, marks the first focused presentation of Marcia Marcus (b. 1928), Alice Neel (1900–1984), and Sylvia Sleigh (1916–2010), who each worked in New York City and shared in its artistic circles in the dynamic decades of the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s. During this period, they portrayed mutual sitters, exhibited together, and participated in public discussions. Their representations of loved ones, friends, and acquaintances are distinctive in form and style, yet share in their evocation of the human spirit, capturing Sylvia Sleigh’s reflection “The human situation adds a certain poignancy to portraits...”

In 1973, paintings by the three figurative artists were on view in the unprecedented exhibition Women Choose Women, organized by Women in the Arts and presented at the New York Cultural Center. The three painters would exhibit together again in the following years, notably in Women’s Work: American Art 1974, Philadelphia Civic Center and In Her Own Image, Samuel S. Fleischer Art Memorial, administered by the Philadelphia Museum of Art (both part of Focus on Women in the Visual Arts, 1974)—as well as Sons and Others: Women Artists See Men, Queens Museum (1975). Marcia Marcus, Alice Neel, and Sylvia Sleigh too were early participants in the collaborative installation The Sister Chapel, PS1, New York (1978)—from which Marcia Marcus eventually withdrew due to teaching and other exhibition commitments—with Alice Neel and Sylvia Sleigh unveiling large-scale paintings.

In their works, each artist differentiated herself from prevailing modes of Abstract Expressionism, Pop, and Minimalism—capturing Neel’s predecessor Robert Henri’s principle “Paint what you feel. Paint what you see. Paint what is real to you.” Their distinguished images depicted many of the same artistic and critical figures, including David Bourdon, Sari Dienes, Red Grooms and Mimi Gross, and John Perreault, among others, as well as self-portraits. They also each painted or collaborated with writers and curators such as Lucy Lippard, Cindy Nemser, Linda Nochlin, Barbara Rose, Marcia Tucker, and Sleigh’s husband Lawrence Alloway.

While working at different phases of maturity in their practices during the 1960s and 1970s, they experienced the period’s socio-political movements, including for civil and women’s rights. This historical environment is described by Lucy Lippard in her exhibition catalogue introduction for Women Choose Women: 

“A largescale exhibition of women’s art in New York is necessary at this time for a variety of reasons: because so few women have up until now been taken seriously enough to be considered for, still less included in, museum group shows; because there are so few women in the major commercial galleries; because young women artists are lucky if they can find ten successful older women artists to whom to look as role models; because although seventy-five percent of the undergraduate art students are female, only two percent of their teachers are female. And above all—because the New York museums have been particularly discriminatory, usually under the guise of being discriminating.” 

Although the three artists aligned with and participated in feminist causes to varying degrees, the energies of the movement created a focus on women’s art, resulting in exhibitions, galleries such as AIR Gallery and Soho 20 Gallery, grassroots publications, organizations including Women’s Interart Center and Women’s Caucus for Art, and panel discussions, in which they each featured. The portraits by Marcia Marcus, Alice Neel, and Sylvia Sleigh gesture towards this critical art-historical moment, while illuminating for viewers each artist’s distinctive point of view. 

As a testament to their legacies, the exhibition features works by contemporary figurative painters Jenna Gribbon, Karolina Jabłońska, Chantal Joffe, Nikki Maloof, Wangari Mathenge, and Claire Tabouret, who carry forward the tradition of rendering lived images of self, family, friends, and the home. Presenting recent and new canvases created on the occasion of the exhibition, the contemporary artists share in the history and atmosphere of community, and expand upon the themes of womanhood, intimate portraiture, the nude, and the still life that underlie The Human Situation. 

LEVY GORVY DAYAN, NEW YORK

19 East 64th Street, New York City

www.levygorvydayan.com

Related Posts:

Marcia Marcus, Role Play: Paintings 1958-1973 @ Eric Firestone Gallery, New York, October 12 - December 2, 2017

Alice Neel: The Early Years @ David Zwirner, New York, September 9 - October 16, 2021

Alice Neel: Freedom @ David Zwirner, New York, February 26 - April 13, 2019

Alice Neel @ Philadelphia Museum of Art, February 18 - April 15, 2001

Sylvia Sleigh: Every leaf is precious @ Ortuzar, New York, February 12 – April 5, 2025

Inherent Nature @ Maya Frodeman Gallery, Jackson Hole - A group exhibition of paintings and works on paper, curated by artist Kathryn Lynch

Inherent Nature 

Curated by Kathryn Lynch

Maya Frodeman Gallery, Jackson Hole

April 4 - May 18, 2025

Will Gabaldón 

Trees and Cloud, 2024 

Oil on panel, 12 x 12 inches, 

Framed dimensions 16 3/4 x 16 3/4 inches

© Will Gabaldón, courtesy of Maya Frodeman Gallery

Aubrey Levinthal 

I-76 Underpass, 2024 

Oil on panel, 18 x 14 inches

© Aubrey Levinthal, courtesy of Maya Frodeman Gallery

Lisa Sanditz 

Hudson River/Devil Pods/Barge, 2024 

Acrylic on canvas, 30 x 40 inches

© Lisa Sanditz, courtesy of Maya Frodeman Gallery

Elizabeth Hazan 

Some Trees, 2025 

Oil on linen, 66 x 55 inches

© Elizabeth Hazan, courtesy of Maya Frodeman Gallery

MAYA FRODEMAN GALLERY presents Inherent Nature, an invitational group exhibition of paintings and works on paper, curated by artist Kathryn Lynch. The first of its kind at the gallery, Inherent Nature brings together seventeen landscape painters working today whose work addresses and interprets the natural and manmade world. 

Featuring artists beyond the gallery roster, this exhibition invokes the words of Emily Dickinson’s poem The Outer—from the Inner and invites the exploration of human nature and our place in the world from a variety of vantage points. Tania Alvarez, Olive Ayhens, Deborah Brown, JoAnne Carson, Nancy Diamond, Jonathan Edelhuber, Will Gabaldón, Elliott Green, Elizabeth Hazan, Melora Kuhn, Aubrey Levinthal, Kathryn Lynch, Lizbeth Mitty, Donna Moylan, Mason Saltarrelli, Lisa Sanditz, and Suzy Spence each approach paint and the painted landscape as individual entities with a unique story to tell; their Inner painting their perceived Outer.

The Inner—paints the Outer—

The Brush without the Hand—

Its Picture publishes—precise—

As is the inner Brand—

 

On fine—Arterial Canvas—

A Cheek—perchance a Brow—

The Star's whole Secret—in the Lake—

Eyes were not meant to know.

Emily Dickinson, The Outer—from the Inner 

At first glance, this grouping feels replete with unlikely bedfellows. From Tania Alvarez’ small-scale, sculptural mixed media works of manmade environs to the poppy, art historical fever dream of Jonathan Edelhuber and exquisitely rendered forests of Will Gabaldón, one wonders how they could possibly relate. However, given the opportunity, Mason Saltarrelli’s abstracted forms speak directly to the heady bouquet of cosmic flora of JoAnne Carson and Lisa Sanditz’ deep tonal color fields. Lizbeth Mitty’s impasto-heavy dreamscape atmospherically sets a precedent to view both Nancy Diamond’s pseudo-surrealist articulated clouds and Donna Moylan’s figures, set like constellations in a field of stars. In Dickinson’s words, perhaps, “eyes were not meant to know.” Here, however, eyes rejoice.

Artist and guest-curator KATHRYN LYNCH was born and raised in Philadelphia. She received her undergraduate degree from William Smith College in Geneva, NY, and an MA at the University of Pennsylvania in 1990. She was awarded the NYSCA/NYFA artist Fellow in Painting in 2018. She has been invited to Skowhegan, Yaddo, The Marie Walsh Foundation and The Vermont Studio Center. Since earning her MFA, Lynch has held solo exhibitions and participated in well over thirty group shows both and internationally. Her work is in the permanent collections of the University of California Berkeley Art Museum, Berkeley, CA and Fort Wayne Museum of Art, Fort Wayne, IN, as well as many corporate collections, including Microsoft, Johnson & Johnson, Pfizer, and the Millennium Art Collection in the Ritz Carlton, Battery Park, in NYC. The artist lives in Catskill, NY, and works in a curated artist campus called Foreland.

The exhibition is accompanied by a digital catalogue featuring an essay by Grant Wahlquist.

MAYA FRODEMAN GALLERY

66 South Glenwood Street, Jackson Hole, Wyoming 83001

www.mayafrodemangallery.com