Issue 29 by artmazemag

29 ion dit

, 2 022

Featured image: Alexandra Rubinstein The Moon Also Rises #4 (sunny side up) oil on canvas 36 x 48 inches more on p. 74-75

ArtMaze Magazine is an independent artist-run and ad-free international print and online publication dedicated to showcasing and promoting experimental and progressive contemporary art, which reflects modern society and its environment, provokes conversation and action; and fosters innovation and diversity of mediums which make today’s art scene so intriguing and versatile.

HOW WE WORK ArtMaze Magazine is published five times per year and announces a competition-based curated call for art for each issue every 2-3 months. We invite guest curators from internationally renowned galleries as well as independent art professionals and artists to help select works for each issue’s guest-curated section of works. We also maintain in each edition an exclusive selection curated by ArtMaze Magazine editorial team. ArtMaze print editions offer its readers a continuous art experience which includes interviews with previously featured artists as well as our carefully curated selections of artworks which offer an insight to the inspiring progress and success of an extraordinary amount of emerging contemporary artists from all over the world who have been applying to our competition-based curated calls.

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Jinhee Kim Finding Someone in Their Dreams 2 acrylic on canvas 40 x 32 cm more on p. 68-69

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Yage Guo Flower Dance oil on panel 30 x 40 cm more on p. 38-39

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8 interviewed O f le ave s and vi ne s and dew drop s : Ma gdale na Kar p ińska’s te nde r lands cap e p ai nt i ng s.......... ......8 “The things I didn’t get right were of extreme importance to my work”: I n c onve rs at ion w it h Mo G ordon......................20

Contents

curated selection of works

guest-curated selection of works

Olivia J i a . . . . . . . . .......................................................... ................34 D an ilo Stoj anov ić ................................................... ................36 Ya ge G uo . . . . . . . . ..........................................................................38 Me gan Re a . . . . ...........................................................................40 S am m i Ly nch ...........................................................................42 Yu nchu n Wang ........................................................................44 H idet aka Su z uk i ......................................................................46 H an s ae m Kim .......................................................... ................48 J i n Je ong . . . . . . . . ..........................................................................50 Na st aran S h ahbaz i ..................................................................52 Reb e c c a Park in .......................................................................54 D an ny L eyland ........................................................ ................56 Kat h r y n G osho r n .................................................... ................58 N ichola s Bie rk ........................................................ ................60 X i ngz i G u . . . . . . ........................................................... ................62 Je s sic a Pale r mo .......................................................................64 M ike O u sley . . .......................................................... ................66 J i nhe e Kim . . . . ........................................................... ................68 J iwon Choi . . . . . .......................................................... ................70

Alexand ra Rubin stein ............................................ . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 74 Ivan Río s-Fetchko ................................................. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7 6 Matthew Gallagher ................................................ . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 78 E rin W right ............................................................. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 80 S h inyoung Park ...................................................... . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 82 Caitl in Teal Price ................................................... . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 84 Franziska Go es ...................................................... . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 86 S h iela Laufer .......................................................... . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 88 To m Wixo ................................................................ . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9 0 Ro ss S Dener ........................................................... . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9 2

inte

erviewed:

Magdalena Karpińska Mo Gordon

www.magdalenakarpinska.com

Of leaves and vines and dew drops: Magdalena Karpińska’s tender landscape paintings Nature is a central motif in Polish painter Magdalena Karpińska’s art. Rendered with deft skill and intricate detail in egg tempera and oil paint on canvas, paper and sometimes silk, the natural world in Magdalena’s paintings is immersive and alluring. Leaves, vines, spider webs and blossoms become vehicles for emotions, symbols and complex themes to play themselves out. In her most recent body of work, The Journey through Shambles, nature is a metaphor through which she muses on impermanence and the passing of time. Light and dark are important features of Magdalena’s visual language, borrowed from Renaissance painting. But in this series these soften into gradients of dawn and twilight, liminal and fleeting zones on the cusp between darkness and light. In these works, people are similarly depicted in a state of transformation, dissolving into nature or already merged with the landscape. The interplay between nature and people conveys a sensual tenderness and sensitivity, so often lost in contemporary urban life. The landscape of these paintings has a vast and limitless quality that seems to extend beyond the borders of the canvas. In fact, Magdalena’s work quite literally often breaks free of the flat canvas to extend into three-dimensional space through installations that play with perception and perspective. “My dream is that a visit to an exhibition will be for the viewer, just like a music concert or a theatre performance—an experience of a specific universe,” Magdalena says. Her solo presentations mirror the immersive quality of her subject matter. Carefully orchestrated with each artwork entering into a dialogue with the others, they take the viewer on a journey through physical and symbolic space. A graduate of the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw, Magdalena has exhibited her work widely in solo and group shows at home in Poland and abroad. She lives and works in Warsaw.

interview by Layla Leiman

Featured image: Magdalena Karpińska Anomaly egg tempera and oil on canvas 125 x 95 cm

Studio portrait by Małgorzata Turczyńska

AMM: Hi Magdalena! Have you always painted or did you find your way to painting via other mediums? What have been some of the defining points that have shaped you as an artist? MK: Hi! Painting flows directly from my way of seeing the world and living life. My perception is, above all, visual. Actually, when asked at the age of two what I want to be when I grow up, I replied: a painter. I have been painting and drawing for as long as I can remember, I didn’t do almost anything else. Teachers at school called on my parents to report the problem that I was not listening to the lessons, but drawing in notebooks. It was absolutely clear to me that I was going to study painting. I got admitted right after graduating from high school—which seemed to be a great achievement at the time. However, with time it turned out that studying art right after high school could be also a disadvantage: I was very young. I could learn painting techniques and art history, but I didn’t know what I wanted to express. I needed two years after graduating from art school to mature and find my own language. It was a time to answer questions about one’s own identity and roots—what’s typical for entering adulthood. During these two years, I had the opportunity to spend a lot of time in the old garden where my grandfather grew up. It was not long after he died, and he was very dear to me. At that time, I felt the need to discuss existential themes—like passing of time and death, I was thinking mainly about them. And then I discovered how much nature inspires me, how much I can tell by observing it and painting it. The series of paintings that I created then was my first mature exhibition. AMM: How does your personal history influence you artistically? Does this come through in your work? MK: My work is closely intertwined with my life, even if sometimes I didn’t want it to be like this. Ideas for paintings come to me naturally, every day. I paint what I see, think and feel. AMM: Your recent bodies of work seem to engage with the physical and emotional uncertainties of life interrupted by the pandemic. Is this chapter closed, or do you foresee carrying these themes forward in your work? MK: The pandemic seemed to be a nightmarish period like a bad dream, but while turning everything upside down it was also a huge space for reflection. For me it was an incredibly interesting experience—to stay in my studio without the possibility of real contacts with other people, surrounded by threats, without any certain plans. It is as if the painting work has crystallized, has been reduced to an essence: no additional stimuli. Unfortunately, I think the uncertainty stays with us for longer. I was born and live in Poland, just beyond our borders there is a war

in Ukraine. As soon as the pandemic started to fade away, we experienced a shock that in 2022 a war could happen again in Europe. We observe now things we heard about from our grandparents—we heard stories of horrible times and we were sure it was the past, that these times would never come back, that mankind would not allow such evil to happen again. There is no way that such a change of perspective does not resonate in art, including mine. AMM: What ideas and themes are you currently exploring in your work? MK: The topic that always accompanies me is coping with anxiety. This is one of the reasons why I paint nature: it is more than ourselves, it was here before us and will be after. This gives one perspective and a kind of grounding. Grounding, the concrete of the physical material—this is also what I am interested in painting itself. Its sensuality is very important to me, the fact that a physical object is created on the basis of specific decisions. In addition to the uncertainty that characterizes our times, there is something else: tremendous social changes are taking place now, in which I see hope. There has been a kind of feminine revolution in the last few years. All these threads intertwine for me in a very organic way—tenderness, sensitivity, senses and touch as a way to stand up to fear and change the perception of strength. AMM: What emerges for you creatively in the blurred space between representation and abstraction? MK: I paint trying to describe what I see as best as possible. Sometimes I go into particulars, refine a detail, and sometimes I generalize and simplify the form to emphasize more clearly what is most important to me in the composition. I try to make the form a tool in the whole spectrum of its possibilities. AMM: In what ways do you use color in your art? What is the dynamic between dark and light in your compositions? MK: I build a painting with layers of color. It is a bit like constructing a building: from the foundations to the upper floors—that’s how I understand the depth of color. Sometimes to achieve the desired effect, I have to put many layers. For example, on the very bottom I put a bright, intense color, on which I put another layer of a different one and finally translucent glazes. It’s the reason why I so often choose the yolk tempera technique—it allows me to implement my constructive way of thinking. My paintings look very different depending on the lighting—they seem to be dark or dimmed, but when you get a closer look or light them up, you can see the stronger colors that are beneath. Ever since I can remember, I have been interested in the transitional lighting— on the border of day and night. Then the dynamics between dark and light is the least

obvious, I like to watch it. AMM: What led you to experiment with painting on silk and other textiles and what do these mediums bring to your work? MK: There was a moment when I started to feel the need for more spontaneous expression than painting tempera and oil on canvasses, also when it comes to the relationship with space. Then I came up with the idea of my first silk installation. The day came that I had a picture in my head, but this time it was threedimensional. I went back to the techniques of painting on fabric—I got to know them once in Art Academy, but I never used them in my practice. The fabric is very sensual, working on it gives me great joy. The process itself is liberating: I spread the material on the floor of the entire studio and work by walking on it. My way of painting is different than on canvas: it resembles a frivolous watercolor, a little like color field painting: I paint with wide brushes, I pour paints. Sometimes in my installations I combine tempera or oil paintings on canvas with silk. It turned out that building an image in three dimensions fulfills my work. AMM: Your paintings depict symbolic and dreamlike scenes that suggest complex narratives. Please tell us about the subject matter in your art and what some of your recurring visual motifs represent. MK: Just as I am interested in the light between day and night, the border between the inner image and the outer one is also interesting to me. In recent works, the theme of a journey, understood as a process, is repeated: for example, the triptych ‘The Traveler’ is about a change that took place in the figure of mythical Penelope. According to Homer’s ‘The Odyssey’, the woman was supposed to faithfully wait for the man until he returned from distant journeys. In my version, Penelope is also going on a journey herself—but an inner one. She discovers her sexuality, gains contact with the body. In one of the paintings, she is holding a vase in her hands, which alludes to the motifs of the home environment and domesticity that women have been generally associated with. The vase glows like a fairy’s crystal ball, and Penelope’s breasts resemble moons suspended by the sea. I like to mix the space: to close the landscape in the body (like the one visible in the mouth in ‘Body in lands’—referring to longing and memories), reflecting my self-portraits in drops of dew on a cobweb, or vice versa: to see parts of the body in the landscape: a face, as if it was watching us, leaves that resemble hands, eyes or buttocks. Sometimes I tell a specific story in my works— for example, I created the installation ‘The Fruit Altar’, imagining a man who survived the apocalypse and hides in a shelter, recollecting the fertile nature he knew. Inspired by the research of various types of altars that people create in their homes, I created an

ArtMaze Magazine Issue 29, Interviewed: Magdalena Karpińska

altar dedicated to fruits. Something between a religious cult and an erotic fetish. An altar constructed of small paintings, drawings and textiles inspired by memories of the summer fruit harvest, making cherry earrings, sensual fruits arranged in beautiful compositions like still lifes. I also keep returning to the theme of taking care of plants—watering, trimming. These activities express concern and, at the same time, may be a manifestation of an attempt to control something small in the face of fear and lack of a sense of agency in a broader sense. AMM: Your solo exhibitions seem to be conceptualised as immersive installations with curation playing an important role linking the narrative threads between artworks. Please tell us more about thinking and creating work that encompasses space, and what you hope people take away from encountering your work. MK: My approach to solo shows is a bit like recording CDs by musicians in the old days: a CD treated as a whole. Full of songs in an order that matters – there is the beginning, an expansion and the ending. I often work on several paintings at once and already at the stage of creation, these works enter into a dialogue. Then, while refining the exhibition, I focus on making these threads legible and I try to arrange the space in such a way as to emphasize it. It is very important for me that the viewer leaving the exhibition feels that it was worth coming—that it was worth making this effort to experience it, instead of just looking at it on the Internet. My dream is that a visit to an exhibition will be for the viewer, just like a music concert or a theater performance—an experience of a specific universe. I like holistic projects myself as a viewer—for example concerts with refined visuals. AMM: How has your work changed and evolved over the years? What are some of the factors that have influenced this evolution and informed your current aesthetic choices? MK: When I look at my earlier works and those I create now—it seems to me that my voice is getting clearer and stronger. Obviously it’s a natural maturation process. At the very beginning of my journey, I used color very subtly, I was also looking for the simplest possible form, I had the need to get to the essence of the topic and shape individual motifs. With time, I began to use color and narrative more boldly. I developed my technical skills, I entered the three-dimensional image with the help of textiles. The passage of time and lessons learned are a salvation. I already know that my best counselor and support is intuition—I mean, maybe I have always known it, but now I am calm in trusting myself. I used to be only an observer in my paintings, but with time I became more and more present in them. I started to include the human figure in the composition, but not as a main character— rather an equal part of nature.

AMM: What is your process of working? Do you make sketches and plan paintings or take a more experimental approach? MK: Until recently, I made only pencil sketches, the so-called ‘ugly sketches’ that described the idea of the painting for me, not to forget it. Since working on much larger formats—twometer canvasses or large textile installations— I started to make sketches in color to resolve some composition problems on a smaller scale. However, I still try not to sketch too carefully so as not to lose the fresh energy I need to work on the particular idea. In line with my constructing nature, I have the painting thought through when I start working, but during the painting process the concepts change and I have to ‘fix’ them. The finished painting must work, I have to feel that it is fully accomplished and finished. Often things imagined in my mind simply do not work on the real surface with paint, so you have to find other ways. And this is probably the most interesting part of painting. AMM: What do you struggle with the most to get ‘right’ in your work? MK: Usually, my work on a painting is divided into stages: First, there is the idea and the delight—I can see the picture in my head and I can’t wait to start painting. At the beginning of painting, enthusiasm persists, then it fades to reach the stage of frustration: usually there is some struggle with a form that does not work as I planned. If I manage to pass through such a struggle successfully, I feel great relief and joy. Winning is intuitive, it is a kind of ‘click’ in the painting. AMM: What are you currently busy with in your studio? What ideas are you exploring? What’s working, what’s not? MK: This summer I tried to spend as much time as possible among nature, looking for inspiration. It turned out great and in the autumn I returned to the studio with new energy and I am happy to dive into new ideas. I am now working on large and medium-sized canvasses. I have the impression that there is a specific atmosphere around, everyone I talk to feels it more or less. A lot of changes are taking place, the pandemic has broken the old system, the climate is changing, so the light is often strange, and at the same time many people find joy in experiencing beautiful days, small phenomena and mutual support. I try to capture it by painting.

neighbours’ gardens. The studio is a separate space with the necessary infrastructure; there is a sink, there are special shelves for paintings and all equipment. I have my world here and I love it, I feel good here and I can really focus on my work. For many years I was renting various premises for studios and I was tired of wandering, here I finally found peace. Before, I used to work in, for example, large postindustrial spaces. With time, I realized that for me, for my mind, simple comfort is very important: to keep me warm and cozy. During the pandemic, the proximity to the studio turned out to be a blessing, I was able to work all the time. AMM: Have you had any important mentors along your journey as an artist? What lessons or advice did they share that had a significant impact for you? MK: I didn’t have a mentor, but I met many people on my way who helped me to grow. I think one of the greatest advantages of studying painting at the Academy was that I got to know other painters and that they became my friends. We call each other daily, sometimes we visit. We discuss difficulties and ask each other’s opinions. This is a very important support, because every day each of us is completely alone in our work. AMM: What are you watching, reading, listening to right now? MK: Sometimes I need complete silence when painting, and sometimes I listen to music, but only music that helps me concentrate—like classical music or Sufjan Stevens’ records. During breaks, I look over and over again my favorite albums, one of my favorites is about Francesco del Cossa’s frescoes in the Schifanoia Palace in Ferrara. I also discovered, during the pandemic, that the work goes well while listening to online lectures. This is how I participated in countless meetings with artists whom I admire and in numerous lectures from all over the world. AMM: Do you have any exciting projects or exhibitions coming up? What’s next for you? MK: In a few weeks I will be taking part in a group exhibition in Thessaloniki and then in Athens and I am very excited because it will be my first presentation in Greece. Then there will be a few group shows in Poland, and next year I am planning a solo exhibition in Warsaw, on which I am already starting to work.

AMM: How does your studio space influence your headspace and by extension the work you produce? MK: My studio is located in the same place where I live in Warsaw, in a tenement house from the 1930s. It is quiet all around, you can forget that you are in a big city, and there are a lot of vines that entwine the buildings. I sometimes paint plants that grow in my

Featured image (p.12): Magdalena Karpińska The traveler (from the series) egg tempera and oil on canvas 100 x 80 cm

ArtMaze Magazine Issue 29, Interviewed: Magdalena Karpińska

Magdalena Karpińska No title egg tempera on canvas 125 x 95 cm

Magdalena Karpińska The traveler (from the series) egg tempera and oil on canvas 125 x 95 cm

Magdalena Karpińska Stones by the river egg tempera and oil on canvas 150 x 120 cm

Magdalena Karpińska Shelter: under the moon egg tempera and oil on canvas 150 x 120 cm

Magdalena Karpińska Watering 3 egg tempera and oil on canvas 200 x 165 cm

Magdalena Karpińska Can’t hear my eyes egg tempera on canvas 200 x 165 cm

www.momogordon.com

“The things I didn’t get right were of extreme importance to my work”: In conversation with Mo Gordon The work of Portland-based artist Mo Gordon is marked by contrasts. It’s simple yet nuanced, delicate but assured, stark and sensual. Mo’s medium of choice is graphite on handmade paper. There’s a nakedness to both their process and subject matter. Each mark is deliberate and careful; erasure isn’t an option on the fragile texture of the surface. The compositions are similarly intentional, restrained and pared back to only the essential elements. Oscillating between organic and built forms and motifs, Mo’s subject matter floats in empty space, disembodied from any fixed context. In this way the banal objects—a chair, a rose, a candelabra or chain-link fence— become subtly anthropomorphic, characters in a larger narrative. Writing has always been a parallel love to drawing for Mo. This is keenly felt in their work, where each drawing seems to represent a frame within a larger story. Mo describes their work as “sequential fine art”, pointing out that this is just a fancy way of saying “comics”. While few drawings actually feature text, Mo’s visual language is built on metaphor. The forms and motifs personifying a range of experiences and emotions. Many of Mo’s drawings engage with a metaworld building process through the depiction of austere architecture and interior spaces that seem hostile to habitation. In contrast to this, the surface materiality of the paper maintains an innate liveness to the work. These sorts of contradictions and opposing forces characterise Mo’s work, giving it a depth belied by its seeming simplicity. In this interview Mo unpacks their process and approach, confesses their deep love of ASMR and shares a current obsession with a recording of a cricket stuck on a ferry ride.

interview by Layla Leiman

Featured image: Mo Gordon what you want them to be graphite on handmade paper

AMM: Hi Mo! Let’s start at the beginning: How did you find your way to drawing and what keeps you hooked to this medium? MG: Well it was kind of like dating. I experimented a lot then fell in love. I write in addition to my drawing practice. There’s something romantic in using the same tools, paper and pencil, for both. Drawing is very dear to me, though lately I’ve been wandering towards sculpture and textile as well, I do always find myself coming back to drawing even so. AMM: Has your art changed over the years? What has influenced and inspired your progression as an artist and informed the work you are making today? MG: Thankfully it’s changed for the better. I used to rely heavily on colorful imagery to carry meaning with less emphasis on bringing concepts to the forefront of my process. I feel the inverse is true now, along with understanding the context of my work more as I grow into myself and the spaces my work lives. AMM: You describe your work as “sequential fine art” and “visual poetry”. Please tell us more about this and the relationship between writing and drawing in your practice, and between narrative and symbol in your work. MG: I started referring to my work as sequential fine art when I noticed the stigma people associated with comics. To me they are the same, but calling my work sequential fine art yielded more interest and opportunity, it’s a con in the language to bring more attention to what some would consider niche. I still claim much of my work as comics, it feels more accessible and welcoming which is important to me and how I came into making my current work. To me sequential fine art is a broad term I’ve adopted for my practice, and visual poetry describes the genre of comic I make. In reference to narrative and symbol and how writing lives side by side with drawing, that’s something I’m still working on articulating. In some instances drawings and writing appear on the same page, in others they are isolated. I don’t see a hierarchy in value between the two. AMM: You return to certain motifs like a chainlink fence and doorways, and often juxtapose organic and built motifs. Please tell us more about the subject matter in your work and what informs your visual language. MG: There’s a relationship between the fence and what lies inside. There’s a conversation happening between the two. Interior and exterior spaces can be internal and external thoughts. A door exists to keep something in, while simultaneously keeping something else out. The architectural components don’t exist alone in real space without some form of opposition or function, but what if they did? This is one way I attempt to

anthropomorphize the subject. AMM: What themes and ideas are you currently exploring in your work? MG: For the past few years I focused heavily on hostile architecture. I was consumed

“I started referring to my work as sequential fine art when I noticed the stigma people associated with comics. To me they are the same, but calling my work sequential fine art yielded more interest and opportunity, it’s a con in the language to bring more attention to what some would consider niche. I still claim much of my work as comics, it feels more accessible and welcoming which is important to me and how I came into making my current work. To me sequential fine art is a broad term I’ve adopted for my practice, and visual poetry describes the genre of comic I make. In reference to narrative and symbol and how writing lives side by side with drawing, that’s something I’m still working on articulating. In some instances drawings and writing appear on the same page, in others they are isolated. I don’t see a hierarchy in value between the two.”

AMM: In what ways does your art reflect your personal interior world and experiences? MG: I see my process as a form of world building. Through creating environments I can explore my sense of self, often through objects or interiors. A candle may represent my gender fluidity. A dining room becomes heaven. AMM: The textured quality of the handmade paper you use draws attention to your markmaking and the materiality of the work. Is this a deliberate choice? What appeals to you about using handmade paper? MG: Years ago I came across a large collection of 1920s handmade paper from a gentleman in Japan who had recently passed. The paper wasn’t in perfect condition. It had some foxing, it was so delicate that if you held it up it was completely see through. I wasn’t sure I could draw on it. I bought stacks of it not knowing it would become a staple of my work. I was very intimidated by it at first. I don’t know when the switch happened, maybe around the time I was working on my first published comic with Secret Room Press. I decided to draw the entire book on the handmade paper using a .03 mechanical pencil. I then scanned it directly in the bed of the Riso. The idea being the texture would translate in the printing. The process was unforgiving, you couldn’t erase really. The delicate line work would slice the even more delicate paper. If I wasn’t present in my work or doubted myself I would destroy it. There’s a lot I could say about the style, color, or irony of drawing metallic structural works on the delicate paper but it really comes down to the process and protecting my soul. AMM: Please tell us more about the conceptual interplay between negative and positive in your compositions. MG: I often utilize very dense shaded areas alongside delicate fine line elements as a way to push contrast without relying on vibrancy or using color. The relationship between density and delicacy of the media in my drawings opens up space for conceptual positive/negative themes, though my approach here isn’t always blatant or intentional. AMM: What is your process of working? We’ve read that you write a lot and create 3D digital sketches—take us through your process.

- Mo Gordon by the idea that we were bringing these designs and practice into our home. During the pandemic I watched people buy highly modern chairs that looked beautiful yet

ArtMaze Magazine Issue 29, Interviewed: Mo Gordon

painful. I’m feeling a major shift to focus on the discarded. What makes us, what are we trying to hide? A stack of chairs may be stressful but it also means you must have a lot of loved ones.

MG: Writing goes back to my comic roots. I remember thinking I had to choose writing or art as a child, it wasn’t until high school that I discovered experimental comics.

studio portrait by James Gabriel Folgarelli Fink

It changed my life. I started using free architectural programs shortly after. I will build and draft out any drawing that has an interior or object. As far as process, my reference library is abundant. I’ll take roughly twenty books to my bed or table with an idea in mind. What I want to see is to be seen. By that I mean does my idea for a drawing reflect in someone else’s work or text. Am I alone in this thought? Sometimes the answer is yes and the only thing that will set me off is a color or word. I lean toward the idea that nothing is original but our point of view. Once I start drafting in my program I can move around and find the viewpoint. Drawing is its own process entirely. It requires me to be less logical. I can ruin a piece if I’m trying to get the lines right. AMM: What’s the hardest thing for you to get ‘right’ in your work? MG: The last residency I attended I met with an artist in the programme who told me to never learn how to shade. I realized then that maybe the things I didn’t get right were of extreme importance to my work. I will never forget that conversation and I will never fret over shading. AMM: You seem to enjoy collaborating and trying out different formats and mediums, like textiles and clothing for example. What would a dream collaboration be and why? MG: I’ll let you know when I find out. The first thing that comes to mind is something edible or a customized candle. I know some artists might be uninterested or find it devaluing to make products. For my work it makes sense, and for that I am truly thankful because I do love it. AMM: Give us a peek inside your studio—what does it look, feel and sound like? What’s essential in creative space for you? MG: I’ve just moved out of my 900 square foot shared studio space to work from home. When I tell people this they seem to react either with pity or concern. The truth is I’m a workaholic and being at home allows me to get more done. I have enough space for power tools on the balcony, shipping and sewing behind the odd door in my closet that leads to the attic, a drafting table in the sun room and all of my books hiding in various rooms. It’s been nice to roll out of bed and take over the dining room table too. I remember to eat when I’m home, I have internet, I don’t have to strip down because the studio is so hot I can’t work and wear clothes less I sweat on my work. I can listen to my cassette collection. My favorite right now was a gift from my friend who owns Tone Poem. It’s a recording of a cricket stuck on a ferry ride. The sound of the boat moving through the water and the cricket singing on its travels. If there isn’t sparkling water at my desk I can’t work. Periodically I’ll rearrange the house. If you follow me on Instagram

you’ve probably seen my home and you know it is a direct reflection of my work. Many strange objects, even stranger candles. AMM: What’s the Portland art scene like right now? What do you find exciting and what do you wish you could change? MG: Portland has a wide variety of galleries which is great because personally not coming from an art school experience there is a barrier that can be felt. Now that I’m more confident I try to seek out spaces I feel safe in. I’m happy those spaces are still open and showing. That being said I do wish the more well-known and regularly visited galleries would showcase art without the worry of surviving. For the galleries and artists’ sake. I want to see more showings that aren’t just big paintings that would look good in someone’s apartment.

AMM: Do you have any projects or exhibitions coming up? What’s next for you? MG: I’m excited for people to finally see the zine I did with Nieves Publishing. I’ve designed the publication to transform into a large poster if you’re willing to take it apart. Next year will be my first solo show in Portland. I’ve been showing in galleries overseas or out of the country for a long time now so I’m very emotional about this one. I wish I could say more about future projects, I’m truly terrible at keeping secrets.

AMM: When you’re not making art, what are some of the things you enjoy doing? MG: When I remind myself it’s ok to rest, I like to be with my objects, bring books to my bed, make pasta from scratch, and see loved ones. On a day off I’ll typically go to shops, galleries, or restaurants owned by friends in town to support. This is very important to me. AMM: What are you watching, reading and listening to right now? Does this influence your art at all? MG: I wish I could do anything without it influencing my work in some way. I’ll see a dog peeing in the park and start thinking about hostile architecture. My partner gave me “Daybook” by Anne Truitt to read after seeing one of her sculptures in New York. I tend to reread Felicia Atkinson over and over so it will be nice to start something new. For research books I return to “Fabricated Landscapes” often; it’s a collection of writings from architects around the world. The sentiment I get from the text is the idea that structures were and are built with objects or furniture in mind rather than social needs or functionality. When it comes to music I think if anyone saw my Spotify they would be seriously concerned about me. Primarily because I will use it to either dance or cry. NTS is my main source of music right now. I have a VPN plugin so I can listen to the Italian library mixes not available in the States. I spend most of my serious viewing pleasure on YouTube. At the end of the day my partner and I will watch something heartwarming or comedic but in my studio time or on my own I watch a lot of film analysis essays. For anyone interested in comics or composition I highly suggest film or screenwriting videos there. Spikima Movies is a nice start. It’s not hard to find people who love YouTube as much as me but it is hard to find people who love ASMR. It’s been ten years now and I can count on one hand the amount of civil conversations I’ve had about it. So I’m coming out now. I love ASMR.

Featured image (p.24): Mo Gordon sapphic grapes graphite on handmade paper

ArtMaze Magazine Issue 29, Interviewed: Mo Gordon

Mo Gordon SE Portland graphite on handmade paper

Mo Gordon a sink for lovers graphite on handmade paper

Mo Gordon not alone graphite on handmade paper

Mo Gordon heaven graphite on handmade paper

Mo Gordon fish bouquet graphite on handmade paper

Mo Gordon i know people can’t be graphite on handmade paper

curated selection by the editorial team of ArtMaze Magazine Featured image: Nicholas Bierk Setting Sun oil on canvas 12 x 9 inches more on p. 60-61

O l i v i a

J i a

www.oliviajia.com

Image: Untitled (moonlight lilies) oil on panel 14 x 11 inches

Ultimately a form of self-portraiture, my work investigates the confluence of images, objects, and cross-cultural ephemera with personal narratives to picture the psychological space that I inhabit. My practice is informed by my personal history as the child of Chinese immigrants to the United States, and my search for a context of my own that has been scattered by migrations, diaspora, and historical and societal trauma. My meticulously painted, unconventional still lifes depict books, manuscripts, and archival spaces as containers of personal narratives and history. The images upon these pages stem from my ongoing archive of photographs, ephemera, and objects. Sources range from family photographs to snapshots I take, from found ephemera to historical artworks. A photograph of my great-uncle’s star-spangled tunic is placed next to a clay pot from an internet search, found while pining for a lost heirloom; a bunch of market lilies is painted while thinking of 19th century botanical illustration; the moon in my childhood bedroom window is juxtaposed with a comb carved with a crane. Olivia Jia (b. 1994) is a Philadelphia-based painter. She received a BFA from the University of the Arts in 2017. Honors include the Ellen Battell Stoeckel Fellowship to attend the Yale Norfolk Summer School of Art in 2015 and the President’s Award for the highest GPA in the School of Art at the University of the Arts. Her first solo exhibition was held at WORKPLACE in London, UK in May of 2022. Her work has been included in group exhibitions at venues including Margot Samel and Nathalie Karg Gallery in New York City; Dongsomun in Seoul, South Korea; Marginal Utility, New Boone, and Space 1026 in Philadelphia, PA.

Image: Night reading (egret and vessel) oil on panel 12 x 16 inches

ArtMaze Magazine Issue 29: curated selection

D a n i l o S t o j a n o v i ć

www.instagram.com/danilo_stojanovic89

Image: A Touch of Metamorphosis oil on linen 30 x 24 cm

Danilo Stojanović (b. 1989, Pula, Croatia) lives and works in Venice, Italy. He graduated in Painting at the Accademia di Belle Arti di Venezia (BFA 2013/ MFA 2018). Recent exhibitions include: SALON PALERMO II, Rizzuto Gallery, IT (2022); Shoreline, James Fuentes Online, NY (2022); I Walk Thru Walls, Mepaintsme, (2022); Carnival Dream, G/ART/EN Gallery, IT (2022); Mourning the Red Cactus, Andrea Festa Fine Art, IT (2021); 07, PM/AM, UK (2021); Les Danses Nocturnes, Eastcontemporary/Spread Museum, FR (2021); Sworm: Balla Balaclavas and the Shithead Baroque, Super Dutchess, NY (2020); and Be careful what you wish for (the fire is in the underbelly), U10 Art Space, RS (2019). Stojanović’s pictorial poetry is rich in dichotomies, rooted in artistic movements with antagonistic values which are translated into images that possess an original, authentic and harmonious identity. The painter, Istrian by birth but Venetian by adoption, encloses in his canvases (generally small or medium-sized) the perpetual—but never obvious—presence of mutation. A presence expressed not only through a cold palette of blues, greens and grays, but also through the creation of an atmosphere that is perceived as fluid and changeable, within which the objects represented appear embedded and fluctuating. It is precisely thanks to these metamorphic elements that the declared influence of Italian Metaphysics, with its mysterious and enigmatic settings, is applied to scenarios that completely lose the need of geometric perspective: perspective rigor, in fact, becomes superfluous within a dimension where spatial composition is based entirely on positioning and relationship between the extraordinary entities that populate it. These figures are alien, alienated and alienating, showing organic and anthropomorphic characteristics but clearly belonging to a distant and unknown dimension that is unrelated to terrestrial naturalism. And yet, they remain vaguely recognizable thanks to scattered remnants of human details and the juxtaposition with everyday objects, such as bottles and candle stands (evocative of 17th-century veritas) which are placed within an imaginary ‘middle ground’, acting as a bridge between the realm of fantasy and the real world of the observer. The viewer is then forced to question the role, meaning and provenance of such entities and becomes a fundamental piece in the construction of the artworks’ narrative. In fact, a visceral connection triggers between the image and the observer and results into a magnetic attraction for that gloomy representation of the unknown; a tormenting curiosity finally awakes, mitigated (or stimulated) by fear of the obscure.

Image: Root and Stem oil on linen 20 x 24 cm

ArtMaze Magazine Issue 29: curated selection

Y a g e

G u o

www.guoyage.com

Image: Knight of Swords oil on panel 27.9 x 35.5 cm

My practice depicts an ambiguous space, engaging with the passing time, myth of reincarnation and a fantasy of androgynous. The subject matters span from a range of influences: flowers, still lifes, animation, nature, novels. While I paint on a variety of painting surfaces and in different scales, as they embrace different painting materiality and methodology: from small wood panel to large canvases. I see the action of gestural scraping on wood panel as a ‘minus’ methodology. Firstly, layering down thin wet paint, then using rubber stick and dry brushes to carve out/wipe off the paint. Everything has to be done at once while the paint is wet. The momentary working process captures a melancholy feeling of the passing time and memories. The flowers’ transition through florescence and degradation is woven with a personal interpretation of the circle of time, vitality, and death. Whilst painting on canvas is different from capturing a moment of time, the layering and repainting explore an internal reflection, unconsciousness and time. It is like an ‘adding’ process. Large size allows me to embrace a sense of ‘world’, while the painting starts, I begin my journey of experiencing accidents, dissatisfactions and unknowns. To make a painting along with these moments feels like a philosophical life reflection. The colour choice in my painting goes along with personal emotions and seasonal impact of the year. A representational example would be my relationship with black and white: two colours represent a formalistic grief and loneliness. In summer 2021, I was curious about how widows were painted in the National Museum. As I looked through each portrait, none of their facial expressions impressed me. Their individuality was buried underneath the luxurious dresses and jewelleries. Then the mourning dress code becomes a representation of the sorrow and loneliness—black as the dark velvet that obtains all the light; white as the white pearl dangles on those dresses, just like wiped shiny tears. Strong emotions are often buried under a subtle colour palette and delicately painted layers. I draw alongside with painting, which is equally important in my creation. Drawing is a direct approach to my instincts and fantasy, which constructs a mythological world. Gender, mythology and melancholy are drawn into the androgynous figures.

Image: Princess under the moon oil on panel 27.9 x 35.5 cm

ArtMaze Magazine Issue 29: curated selection

M e g a n

R e a

www.meganrea.com

Image: Weaving in the Warmth of a Summer Night’s Breeze oil on handmade paper 32 x 43 cm (approx)

My interest in Italian frescoes began during my time in Florence after being awarded the RSA John Kinross scholarship. I initially focused on the exterior of the Renaissance buildings, endlessly wandering the city and visiting every church I came across. After that my interest turned to the frescoes painted on the church walls. My paintings are fragments stripped of human life and focus instead on the uninhabited spaces and artefacts of life once lived. Flumes of water weave and ribbons dance through crenellations to embody the movement of the characters that fill the original pieces. I work on handmade paper created from pulping newsprint with water. The surface of the paper is pocked, allowing previously hidden layers of paint to be exposed and imitate the texture of a weathered plaster wall. Megan Rea (b.1993) graduated from Edinburgh College of Art in 2016 and now lives and works in London. She has exhibited in the UK and internationally. Recent exhibitions include ‘Meet Me By The River’ curated by Charlie Siddick (2022), ‘Cool, Fresh, Sweet Waters’ at The Tub, London (2022), ‘Together/Somewhere’ curated by Visionary Projects and Art City Works (2022), and ‘These Boots Are Made For Walking’ at Studi0, Switzerland (2021).

Image:

A Tempting Taste on the Tip of Your Tongue oil on handmade paper 51 x 85 cm (approx)

Carry me up to the place I once lazed oil on handmade paper 85 x 110 cm

ArtMaze Magazine Issue 29: curated selection

S a m m i

L y n c h

www.sammilynch.com

Image: Along the coast pastel on paper 13 x 17 cm

Sammi Lynch (b. 1995) creates works doused in earthy pastel smudges and silky-smooth textures, with the purpose of summoning a sense of place and memory inspired by internal and external landscapes. With oil paint or pastels, the London-based artist creates portals to vibrant, lyrical places. Lynch gives viewers an immersive window into observed or imagined worlds, often inspired by her time growing up in the North West of England. Wandering through burnt orange or mint green skies, heavenly peach pink dunes and swaying grasslands, there is a sense of being set adrift and overwhelmed by nature. Her paintings speak to the sublime and exalt the mundane. Lynch, who recently graduated from a scholarship program at the Royal Drawing School, has exhibited in group shows, including exhibitions at Christie’s and Buckingham Palace, and will have her first solo show with Blue Shop Cottage Gallery.

Image: Totally Lost and Wandering pastel on paper 21 x 26 cm

ArtMaze Magazine Issue 29: curated selection

Y u n c h u n

W a n g

www.instagram.com/yyyetail8

Image: In the garden oil on masonite 39 x 30 cm

Yunchun Wang, b.1999, now studies in Shanghai, China. She enjoys capturing the state between reality and illusion. Memories and dreams are her favorite motifs—the former truly happened in the past , the latter is truly in an imaginary world. Sometimes she mixes them together with a soft and subtle hue, for both of them rely on the participation of intuition so as to half-withdraw from the real word.

Image: Landscape of sense plaster/oil on canvas 100 x 120 cm

ArtMaze Magazine Issue 29: curated selection

H i d e t a k a S u z u k i

www.suzukihidetaka.net

Image: Foreign Substance oil on canvas 116.7 x 91 cm

Born in Hokkaido, Japan in 1986 and currently lives in Tokyo. Graduated from Musashino Art University with a Master’s degree in Oil Painting, Department of Fine Arts, Graduate School of Art and Design. In 2009, he received the Golden Acrylic Award at GEISAI#13 organized by Takashi Murakami, and was selected by Emilia Yin, founder and director of Make Room, for Foundwork’s Guest Curators Program in 2021. He was also selected for ArtConnect’s Artists to Watch ‘21. In recent years, he has been expanding his activities worldwide, participating in an online exhibition at Eve Leibe gallery on Artsy and a group show at Polina Berlin gallery in NYC with artists such as Lisa Yuskavage and Larry Clark. “Many of the objects in Hidetaka Suzuki’s paintings are seemingly obvious depictions at first glance, but they are in fact detached from their original context. By doing so, they take on multiple meanings – and refuse to be pigeonholed, depriving the viewer of certainty. It blurs the boundary between what we experience as reality and what we imagine as fiction, asking us to question the truthfulness of what we see.” by ArtConnect “Hidetaka Suzuki stands out for his technical ability and purposefully minimal compositions. The oil painting medium, known for its hyperrealistic tendencies and its technical difficulties, makes for an interesting contrast to Suzuki’s choice of radically simple subject matter. Whether it’s red peppers, such as in Red Basket, or a half-cut lemon, such as in Bomb, the viewer is left wondering what made these items so special for the artist to dedicate time to paint them. Suzuki doesn’t speak, he suggests.” by Sophie Arni/Curator

Image: True Reality oil on canvas 60.6 x 72.7 cm

ArtMaze Magazine Issue 29: curated selection

H a n s a e m

K i m

www.thisweekendroom.com/hansaem-kim

Image: The Jewels in the Forest acrylic, gold leaf, pigment print, resin 54 x 31 x 16 cm

Hansaem Kim’s works are formed in a place where digital and analog, life and death, reality and imagination, luxury and kitsch are compatible and interconnected. The works feature a mixture of superstitious material and unrealistic icons. Gold, stones, jewels, and glasses are examples of shamanistic symbols, and dragons, monsters, angels, swords, and unicorns are the icons. However, these icons are somewhat distant from dramatic narratives or spectacular scenes of collision that the fantasy genre typically adopts. The virtual beings that are brought into the real world by Kim are not a subject of worship, awe, or fascination; they are rather unnatural and incomplete. The disharmony appears to be derived from specific elements in the making process. He draws every single bitmap image with computer tools in aged-long 2D interface games, and prints them on flat paper, then attaches them to customized structures. He adds gold leaf or glass to finish up each piece. There is no doubt that this process requires considerable time and attention, and its heterogenetic mixture may seem greatly outdated. Nevertheless, from this intended clumsy combination, the aura and energy of his works have been created. In other words, his story starts by refusing an ordinary way of thinking by calling out characteristics of digital data on smooth screens to the world. Contrast to today’s state-of-the-art display technologies which achieve the virtual world that looks more real than the actual one, his mythological images that have never existed were born out of a laborintensive creation process which is close to a ritual.

Image: Dungeon cashew paint, gold leaf, pigment print, resin, stone (Tiger’s Eye) 11.9 x 13 x 3.3 cm

ArtMaze Magazine Issue 29: curated selection

J i n

J e o n g

www.jin-jeong.com

Image: Only for Hot Days in August oil on linen 30 x 24 inches

Jin Jeong (b. 1993, Seoul), received her BFA from the Art Institute of Chicago in 2017 and an MFA from Hunter College in 2022. Recent exhibitions include Harmonious Arrangement curated by Hiejin Yoo, Half Gallery Los Angeles; Luminous Moment, FAS Seoul and Somewhere to Sit, Another Gallery Los Angeles. Jin seeks to deliver some senses of gravity and openness, an ability to breathe through creating a linen painting with an abstract space. The response between the use of paints and linen of grayscale gives a distinct sense of natural color scheme with organic but mysterious, airy, and subtle tones. Jin pays attention to engaging and communicating with the actual reactions from the formal elements in the painting itself. Jin’s paintings show her fundamental purpose, giving breathable moments necessary to deliver immediacy, traces of processes, and natural reactions by portraying a departure. The narrative initiates finding a space where one can feel lived in, rooted from, or in subtle calmness, and some sort of anxiety with the complexities of dual feelings. The abstract landscape has a certain weight and directed one-point intended perspective that conveys serenity, ingrained but suffocated at the same time. The various tones of colors, layers, brushstrokes, broad levels of transparency, and opacity symbolize the diverse abstract languages throughout addressing her stream of consciousness. Jin desires her painting to speak about emotions by painting itself rather than giving a boring lecture of nonsense connotations. Thus, her works can be called ‘emotional landscape’. She creates a space that resonates with the feelings of being rooted, settled but still moving and flexible, not too still like we only see nature. Jin wants to dig deeper into using different paint mediums to materialize various visual elements for creating slow turbulence moments in nature.

Image: Grounded acrylic and oil on linen 48 x 36 inches

ArtMaze Magazine Issue 29: curated selection

www.instagram.com/nastaran_sh_a

N a s t a r a n

S h a h b a z i

Image: One last margarita oil on canvas 73 x 60 cm

The collections I have been working on in the past decade are located in the fields of painting, drawing and printmaking. They primarily deal with the topic of life in movement, continuity and the idea of things that are constantly changing. This opens up to a wider second section that also considers memory by preserving and reinvigorating the past. Anonymous figures, lonely dreamers who chose to emigrate, leaving the world behind them, in search of other spaces in psychedelic atmospheres are key features of my work. I like to put the viewer in a sensual, free flowing and familiar experience. My own journey as an artist has been marked by my mobility – from Tehran to Paris in 2006 and continuing to Hong Kong in 2014 until 2017, when I moved back to France again. After graduating from Gobelins School of Animation and Graphic Design in Paris, from 2009 to 2014, I focused on various methods of printmaking by combining digital and handmade techniques. During these years, etching and monoprint became my favorite techniques and I created different series focusing on mental imagery; sometimes by adopting poetry, cinematic and literary references. Working on printing techniques turned me away from illustrative elements, which led me to express meaning or emotional experiences. This was due to direct and unique experiences I gained through my own emigration which have changed my artistic pathway profoundly. The desire to express deep feelings regarding historical discontinuities, scattering, diaspora and isolation remain the key themes of my work and artistic expression.

Image: The heat wave oil on linen 73 x 93 cm

ArtMaze Magazine Issue 29: curated selection

www.rebeccaparkin.co.uk

R e b e c c a

P a r k i n

Image: Wunderkammer charcoal and pastel on paper 245 x 200 cm

Artist Rebecca Parkin (b. 1973, UK) specialises in drawing and painting. In 2007 she won the Bazil H Alkazzi Foundation Scholarship Award while attending the Royal College of Art, London. She graduated in 2009, concurrently featuring in Bloomberg New Contemporaries, which she appeared in again during 2021/22. Recently, in 2021, Parkin also completed a year at the Turps Painting School and currently has a studio in north London. My work takes the form of narrative cycles exploring multiple fictions within popular culture, art history and mythology. Popular tropes from horror, science fiction and fantasy are reworked, re-animating our anthropological cultural history. The construction of the feminine as a figure of enchantment and subversion is central to my practice, drawing heavily on counter-myth and social fantasy. Subjects often exhibit complex contradictory aspects, for example, arousing disgust or distaste alongside desire. My current theme takes the hybrid and mesmeric ‘merwoman’, centralizing her as the principal figure and agent of nature. Daryl Hannah in the romantic 1984 comedy ‘Splash’ provides pop cultural inspiration as an iconic mermaid figure. In true fairy tale fashion, the frothy blond seeks the love of a human man, but my particular investment in the subject is to draw out the undercurrents of Piscean horror long associated with the fear of the feminine and to explore the connections within this mythology between consumerism and sex. The consumption of exotic flesh operates as a dual reference to the sexual allure of the mermaid and the succulent comestibles of the sea, in particular the eroticism of marine edibles like oysters. I connect the art historical significance of this theme with Dutch and Flemish ‘marinescapes’ and the curiosity cabinets popularised alongside the development of 17th century exotic trade routes. The material potentialities of charcoal drawing are used to stimulate a fetishistic sensuality and activate a plurality of connections between abundance, exuberance and the study of natural and fantastical form. The mermaid’s association with sex, lust and wonder, the commodification of the natural world and simultaneous fear and fantastical ‘othering’ of the feminine are woven together through an investigation into sensuous charcoal drawing.

Image: Scallops charcoal and pastel on paper 70 x 100 cm

ArtMaze Magazine Issue 29: curated selection

D a n n y

L e y l a n d

www.dannyleyland.com

Image: Between Two Worlds oil on board 70 x 40 cm

The starting point for these paintings is the archaeological concept of the prehistoric burial in Britain; to examine the way in which we can be intoxicated by narratives of the ancient past, which give us meaning in the present. Danny Leyland (b. 1994) makes work with a visual language informed by a reading of comparative mythology, folklore, mediaeval romance, and archaeology. Sometimes narrative-led, at other times process led, his work moves cross discipline between painting, printmaking, sculpture, performance and writing. Since graduating from Edinburgh College of Art in 2016 (BA Painting), Danny has exhibited internationally in London, Oxford, Edinburgh, and Thiruvananthapuram, India, with highlights including RSA New Contemporaries (2017), Hospitalfield’s Graduate Residency (2017), an EMBASSY off-site project Digging (2018), a solo exhibition Debris Dance with Arusha Gallery (2020), and group exhibition Cruel Intentions also with Arusha (2021). Alongside producing his own work, Danny directed Vine Box Poetry, a poetry-led event platform in Edinburgh, with funding from the Hope Scott Trust and Scottish Book Trust. Danny now lives and works on Gadigal land in Sydney, Australia.

Image: Reclining Figure (Pentre Ifan) oil on board 54 x 52 cm

ArtMaze Magazine Issue 29: curated selection

www.kathryngoshorn.com

K a t h r y n G o s h o r n

Image: Cigar and Seashell: 16 egg tempera on paper mounted to panel 13 3/8 in x 13 1/4 in

Kathryn Goshorn (b. 1991) was raised in Atlanta, GA and lives and works in Brooklyn, NY. She received her MFA from the New York Academy of Art and her BFA from the University of Georgia. My work explores family narrative and lore. Fascinated by what is passed down through generations, my art practice often filters familial trauma through a first person lens. Employing techniques and materials inspired by my family’s crafts, I consider the permeable boundary between their experiences and my own. Most recently, I painted still lifes of handmade sculptures and inherited objects. The small and secretive paintings of a cigar and seashell ashtray revealed a dialogue about gender dynamics and duty as I processed a new layer of family tragedy.

Image: Cigar and Seashell: 25 egg tempera on paper mounted to panel 13 3/8” x 13 1/4”

ArtMaze Magazine Issue 29: curated selection

N i c h o l a s

B i e r k

www.artsy.net/partner/pangee/artists/nicholas-bierk

Image: Through the Spaces in the Dark oil on canvas 12 x 9 inches

Nicholas Bierk (b. 1985 Peterborough, ON) paints transitional moments, everyday scenes, and ethereal landscapes, creating psychologically charged and emotive works. Bierk studied painting at the Rhode Island School of Design. Bierk lives and works in Toronto and has exhibited work in Canada, the United States, and Europe, including exhibitions at Katharine Mulherin Gallery, Cassandra Cassandra, Patel Brown and Projet Pangée. Nicholas Bierk is good at finding the light in the distance. Sometimes that’s a neighbor’s bedroom illuminated from across a yard, a warm honeyed glow cut into the inky blue-black; or the low winter sun setting over the river, a golden aura grafted onto the water’s surface. Other times it’s an oncoming train, its lights the perfect combination of panic and relief; or a blazing sun looked at straight on, the way your parents told you not to and so of course you do it anyway, a searing orb imprinting itself on your field of vision long after you’ve looked away. Nick’s paintings are small but no less potent for it. They’re like portals, intimacy and mundanity mixing into the slurry of memory and finding their way back to the present. Maybe that accounts for their softness, all the edges fuzzing out a bit, eased by time. They pull in a wide view: a porcelain milk jug, stolid and still; a portrait of his partner, asleep, tender. Landscapes draped in dusky silence, a shotgun house caked in snow—these are pictures more of mood than representation of any place visitable. Nick is interested in these intermediary zones, the threshold spaces between outside and in, the moment when the last gasp of the night becomes the breach of the next morning. The shaky promise contained in that moment. This is Nick working fast, producing an image within a single sitting, maybe two. Snatches of memory, committed to the canvas before they flit away again—the freedom of the small and quick. He allows the failure to come: a lot of them didn’t work out. But a lot of them do. Together they form a kind of openended narrative, an accumulative effect, which is, after all, how life works. Text by Max Lakin.

Image: Sleeping Dog oil on canvas 12 x 9 inches

ArtMaze Magazine Issue 29: curated selection

X i n g z i

G u

www.xingzigu.com

Image: Orifice oil and acrylic on unstretched canvas installed with eyelets, wire, chain, turnbuckle eye/hooks and meat hooks 67 x 40 inches

A light mist and dense clouds shroud a long day in melancholy, The fragrance of an exquisite essence scatters from the gilded beast-shaped burner. Come again has the season of the Double Ninth, Through the silk drapes and the embroidered pillow Chilliness begins to penetrate in the middle of the night. - Lyrics to the Melody in the Shade of Blossoms, Li Qingzhao, 1103 My work seeks to find expressions for the foreign melancholic subjects that reside in fluctuating states and poetic stories. Esoteric bodies are rendered in a state of flux, inhabiting psychic and cosmic landscapes. The figure and ground both eliminate and produce each other, suggesting fluid ways of perceiving the unfamiliar other. Initially trained in the tradition of Western oil painting, I sought aesthetics in traditional Chinese ink and meticulous painting. I explore the overlay of Eastern and Western cultural and artistic perceptions. In hoping to achieve a lively interplay of disparities while offering surrealistic/ poetic narratives, I mediate the gap between the familiar and the foreign, tradition and novelty, the esoteric and the mundane. Xingzi Gu is a New York based artist who works primarily with painting, installation, and writing. They earned a BFA from the School of the Art Institute Chicago in 2018. Currently, they are pursuing an MFA at New York University. They have exhibited at Gallery LVS and Craft, Seoul, Korea; Zhou B Art Center, Chicago, US; 80 WSE Gallery, New York, US; Keyi Art Museum, Nanjing, China; George Fraser Gallery, Auckland, New Zealand and more. They previously have also participated in residencies at Chicago Artists Coalition, Dark Study (online), Saas-Fee Summer Institute of Art.

Image: Titrate oil and acrylic on perforated canvas, ornamented with talisman, arrowheads, pendulum, and red string 48 x 60 inches

ArtMaze Magazine Issue 29: curated selection

J e s s i c a

P a l e r m o

www.jessicapalermo.com

Image: Delilah acrylic and oil on canvas 20 x 16 inches

Working largely in acrylic and oils, Palermo’s work explores feelings attached to defining life events and their inevitable transience. Motherhood, womanhood, and sexuality are some of the themes represented through abstract figurations, that suggest the fundamental human process of erasure and reinvention. The combination of Palermo’s gestural brushstrokes and rhythmic layers of color result in a deliberate union between both the ephemeral and abiding aspects of memory. Self-described as “Scenic Intimism,” her paintings evoke both mood and movement that reference the collision of both static moments in time and the passage of time. Jessica was born in Henderson, NV and currently resides in Los Angeles, CA with her partner and three children. After studying Art History and Gender Studies at the University of California, Berkeley she went on to spend the next fifteen years in the fashion world; initially in trend forecasting and ultimately as a footwear designer. Parenthood, priorities, and a pandemic incited the long overdue transition to art making full time. She has been included in exhibitions curated by Emma Gray and Judith Ann Braun, and her work has been included in group exhibitions at Field Projects Gallery, Art City Works, The Other Art Fair, and most recently Collar Works in conjunction with the Artist/Mother Podcast.

Image: Dying Star acrylic & oil on canvas 48 x 36 inches

ArtMaze Magazine Issue 29: curated selection

M i k e O u s l e y

www.mikeousleyfineart.com

Image: Super Moon acrylic on panel 24 x 24 inches

Mike Ousley (American, b. 1976) paints a direct commentary on Appalachian life and folk traditions, though their simplicity belies their depth. Ousley has painted since childhood, and though trained (MFA, University of Cincinnati), he foils Western European traditions with the folk style of his youth. Having grown up in a small coal town in Southeastern Kentucky listening to stories told by friends and family, he credits the visionary artists and rich heritage of the region as his primary influence. Recent exhibitions include Nine Lives at Fortnight Institute, NY; From These Hills at the William King Museum of Art, VA, curated by Michael Rooks; and, Something on the Wind at Morehead State University, Morehead, KY. His work was featured in ArtMaze Magazine Issue 22, selected by Fabiola Alondra and Jane Harmon. Ousley has been a resident at the Huntington Museum of Art, studying with Alfred Leslie; Arc of Appalachia; and, North Mountain. His work can be found in numerous private collections, as well as the public collections of Ashland Community College, Highlands Regional Medical Center, Morehead State University, and Ohio State University.

Image: Sail Away Ladies acrylic on panel in a hand-painted oak artist frame 24 x 36 inches

ArtMaze Magazine Issue 29: curated selection

J i n h e e

K i m

www.thisweekendroom.com/jinhee-kim

Image: Consolation acrylic on canvas 30 x 25 cm

Shinyoung Park translates the cultural and social characteristics of various environments encountered into a subjective visual language. For her recent works, travel has been a driving force of life that continues to meet new places and people. Park steadily records her personal experiences during a particular time and develops particles of memory into a series of images composing unreal narratives. Animals, pedestrians, unknown objects, colors of forest and sky, or the light of the alleyway give Park new stimulations to imagine exotic images to create. Her representation which crosses the boundaries between reality and virtual, conscious and unconscious, deviates from the objective description and builds mysterious and marvelous scenes. In addition, the specific ways of using the medium she uses to enhance the dreamlike energy of her work: such as drawing images ink with wine, silkscreen on the wood plate and carving the surface, or achieving unexpected effects from monotype print. Each material creates bursting layers of textures and colors according to the time and gesture Park puts in. Therefore, audiences may infer the meaning and narrative of the images she creates like a mystery while floating around the rhythm of the strokes and bursting colors with their senses.

Image: How to Make a Dog acrylic on canvas 100 x 110 cm

ArtMaze Magazine Issue 29: curated selection

J i w o n C h o i

www.thisweekendroom.com/jiwon-choi

Image: Melancholia oil and acrylic on canvas 162.2 x 130.3 cm

Jiwon Choi collects images of old ceramic dolls and actively adheres them to various artificial/ natural elements to form screens. The surface of Choi’s paintings looks exceptionally smooth and sparkles on the surface, dazzling the viewer’s first view. Other motifs appear along with the dolls’ faces, such as orchids, velvet curtains, the figure’s dress, and exotic patterns of textiles that enhance the decorative effect of the surface of the work itself. One of her work’s key points is that most objects in her paintings are artificial or something has lost its own life. Also, her paintings are not based on observing real objects but on researching and collecting images in the digital area. Therefore, the work is not an opaque documentary but a symbolic representation of life and the world she lives in. The contrast between its fascinating appearance and the devoid of life delivers the sense of emptiness that all human beings may feel in their own life, which is the vital point of Choi’s work. In other words, the concept that Jiwon Choi drives from her works is quite ambivalent apart from its glamorous appearance. On the one hand, the soft gloss of ceramics reflects the desire to reveal her colorful and bright side. It may refer to the culture of this generation who modify and edit their daily life in the digital space to dramatize their own identity. On the other hand, however, this smoothness penetrates the fragile properties of ceramics, easily cracked even by minor impacts. The pieces with empty desires are not free from external gaze or inherent danger, so they are always expressed above anxious emotions. As such, the icons Choi selects produce insensitivity, isolation, anxiety, and tensions that permeate the life of contemporary individuals and convey empathy to us.

Image: Standing Flat oil on canvas 72.7 x 116.8 cm

ArtMaze Magazine Issue 29: curated selection

guest-curated selection of works by Moscowitz Bayse gallery, LA Featured image: Shinyoung Park The Snowman with an Octopus monotype on paper (somerset satin 300gsm) 64.6 x 46.6 cm more on p. 82-83

A l e x a n d r a

R u b i n s t e i n

www.alexandrarubinstein.com

Image: The Moon Also Rises #2 (boop) oil on canvas 36 x 46 inches

Alexandra Rubinstein is a Russian-born, Brooklyn-based conceptual artist working in painting, drawing and mixed media. She immigrated to the United States in 1997, earned her BFA from Carnegie Mellon University in 2010, and has been working in New York ever since. Alexandra has exhibited at the Mother Gallery, The Hewitt Gallery of Art, Spring Break Art Fair, NADA, Established Gallery, The Untitled Space, Proto Gallery, and the Fort Wayne Museum of Art. Her work has been featured on Huffington Post, Paper Mag, Cosmopolitan, Juxtapoz, Hyperallergic, Forbes, GQ, Playboy, Broad City, Desus and Nero, and Real Time with Bill Maher. Inspired by her adolescent (and ongoing) trauma, her work explores the relationships between culture, gender, consumption and power. By combining mundane and familiar images with the explicit, rendered precisely in rich strokes of color, she creates a new narrative that challenges long-standing social constructs. Though rarely depicting women, her work is filled with cis heterosexual female presence and consumption, often expressed through men’s bodies, leaving them passive and subject to scrutiny. She sometimes even minimizes men to their genitals, typically used to intimidate and oppress others, to further explore the role masculinity has played in shaping today’s social and political landscape.

Image: The Moon Also Rises #5 (fall) oil on canvas 26 x 30 inches

ArtMaze Magazine Issue 29: guest-curated selection

www.ivanriosfetchko.com

I v a n

R í o s - F e t c h k o

Image: When the Flood Makes Itself Known, It Will Be As a Trickle oil and wax on paper, mounted to panel, in steel frame 30.5 x 22.5 inches

Ivan Ríos-Fetchko’s work is focused on the American landscape and how it acts as a lens through which to look at histories, both national and personal. Painting from found tourist slides and photographs as source material, he overlays his own encounters with the American landscape on top of others’ images, making paintings dense with history. Approximating the striated layers of rock and sediment that underpin the most iconic American vistas, his paintings approach the land as a place that can be ‘read’. In his landscapes, narratives reveal themselves through the layers of wax and paint that are built up and scraped away in repeated passes. Through this building and carving of layers and colors, recognizable sites are transformed, degraded and confused. The paintings end up creating transfigured spaces and moments of imperfect recognition. This dissonance prods a viewer to ask, first, “what has happened here?” and then, “what have we done?” Ivan Ríos-Fetchko (b. 1994) was born in Los Angeles, California, where he grew up. He graduated from the Brown/RISD Dual-Degree program in 2018, with degrees in Painting and Comparative Literature. He is now back in Los Angeles, where he lives and works. Recent shows include ‘Surprise!’ at Tilton Gallery, New York, and ‘Killer Cute: In Two Parts’ at de boer Gallery, Los Angeles.

Image: Perfume oil and wax on paper, mounted to panel, in steel frame 44.5 x 30.5 inches

ArtMaze Magazine Issue 29: guest-curated selection

M a t t h e w

G a l l a g h e r

www.instagram.com/joehaeyo

Image: After Zurbarán 8 graphite, wax, drafting film 16.5 x 9.75 inches (object) 5.75 x 3.25 inches (drawing)

I create objects with wax, using a meticulous and unpredictable process of my own invention. Earnestly rendered drawings are carefully transferred to a molten wax surface and slowly cooled. The resulting wax surface creates a luminous and seductive ground for the drawn image. Despite the precarious nature of the image transfer to wax, and the risk of numerous mishaps that may destroy the entire piece, I am committed to resolving each work no matter how many restarts are needed. There is an absurdity to the process that makes the successes euphoric and mystifying. The resulting objects are extremely fragile and all the more precious to have made it through. A recent series, using graphite, drafting film, and wax, investigates my love of art history. ‘After Zurbarán’ calls attention to one small Spanish masterwork with sincere reverence. I strive to exemplify the brilliance of the past and the inspiration it gives me to make work. The wax objects document my response to the almost sacred presence of the masterwork in person and aim to achieve a similar presence through my own unique process. This series is a tribute to artistic legacy, an expression of art about loving art. Matthew Gallagher is an artist and arts educator based in Inglewood, California. He holds a BFA degree in Painting from Rhode Island School of Design. He is Director of California State Summer School for the Arts and a museum docent at the J. Paul Getty Museum.

Image: After Zurbarán 6 graphite, wax, drafting film 12 x 13.5 inches (object) 4.5 x 5 inches (drawing)

ArtMaze Magazine Issue 29: guest-curated selection

E r i n

W r i g h t

www.erinkwright.com

Image: Bonsai acrylic on canvas 38 x 28 inches

Wright’s work is an exercise in technique: the paintings mimic the machine-made quality of an architectural rendering through isometric posturing and seamless textures. The paintings, colored through the classic still life genre, depict intimate and ruinous relationships between the objects themselves and the characters not present. Through these compositions, the artist explores connections between the past and present. Erin’s work merges ideas of early domestication in 18th century architectural history and in religious narrative, aiming to blur the boundaries between the divine, the secular and the natural. Wright uses ‘On Adam’s House in Paradise’ (1967) as a narrative base, but removes the masculine and relies on the perspective of the unseen feminine. The paintings focus on the idea of the ‘first house’, and of its dweller. The objects that make up the composition of each painting depict a narrative of ritual, seasonality, control and pleasure. The paintings, which appear as digitally produced, latently support Wright’s agenda around indifference and presentation. Every detail is examined equivocally. Groupings and relationships between objects are rendered non-hierarchically—they become blatantly arbitrary with uncanny relationships with their surroundings and contexts. Erin Wright is a painter living in Los Angeles, California. They received a BFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and an M Arch from the University of California, Los Angeles. In addition to their painting practice, Erin is currently an adjunct professor of Architecture at Woodbury University.

Image: Ouroborosian Loop acrylic on canvas 7 x 7 inches

ArtMaze Magazine Issue 29: guest-curated selection

S h i n y o u n g

P a r k

www.thisweekendroom.com/shinyoung-park

Image: Weaving a Cloud ink and wine on paper 75.7 x 57 cm

Image: Hold Your Hobbyhorse screenprint, woodburning, woodcut, and oil paint on birchwood 180 x 120 cm

ArtMaze Magazine Issue 29: guest-curated selection

C a i t l i n

Te a l

P r i c e

www.caitlintealprice.com

Image: Untitled (Orbit) x-acto blade etching and colored pencil on photographic pigment print 22.5 x 30 inches

My work draws upon the quotidian to investigate spiritual themes that exist within the context of domesticity, daily life, routine, ritual, and play. Using an x-acto blade to scrape away colored pigment, I etch deliberate and delicate abstractions into the surface of my photographs. The photographs are images of sunlight as it filters through the windows of my home and shines onto colored paper. The etched abstractions are based on found photographs. My history as a photographer and my deep appreciation for the medium informs this work. By using images of light as the base of these works, I pay homage to photography as The Medium of Light. In addition, I use found photographs with strong compositions as inspiration for the etched abstractions in each piece. I am motivated to explore the intersection between what is concrete and what is magical in the everyday. I see the beams of light as a visual manifestation of the magic inherent in the everyday and the etched shapes, laboriously drawn, as tangible abstractions of concrete scenes found in daily life. Caitlin Teal Price was born in Chicago, IL and grew up in Washington, DC. She earned her BFA from Parsons School of Design and her MFA from Yale School of Art. Her work is represented in the permanent collections of the Philadelphia Museum of Art and the American University Katzen Art Museum and promised to the Phillips Collection and the National Museum of Women in the Arts. Notably, her work has been exhibited at Fotografiska Museum in Stockholm Sweden, The Sarasota Art Museum and the National Portrait Gallery in Washington, DC. Her most recent solo exhibitions include “Scratch Drawings” at Candela Gallery in Richmond Virginia (2021), and “Green is the Secret Color to Make Gold” at Tephra, Institute of Contemporary Art (2018). Her work has been published in periodicals such as The New Yorker, The New York Times, and TIME magazine.

Image: Untitled (waiting for) x-acto blade etching and colored pencil on photographic pigment print 30 x 40 inches

ArtMaze Magazine Issue 29: guest-curated selection

www.franziskagoes.de

F r a n z i s k a G o e s

Image: Am Kap - At the Cape acrylic on canvas 67 x 71 x 1 1/4 inches

Our lives are full of abstraction. I am interested in finding out how abstract processes can be used to create images of the real world while simultaneously being pure form. My work is always about describing nature in a broader sense, that is, to develop a new visual appearance of what nature could be. In principle this integrates all things that surround us, and is thus an extensive notion of nature. I work with abstract forms and colour planes, a kind of reservoir from which information is channelled into the system of painting. This also includes elements as well as aesthetics of architecture, design, painting, landscape, poetry, music and technology. Organicartificial colours are the basis of the pictures, an expansive chromatic spectrum that leads into specific atmospheres or zones and generates pictorial contrasts. The process is both calculated and extremely open. It encompasses various facets of the painterly in order to let a wide range of surface and textural qualities interact with one another. In the picture they collide, run in parallel or nestle against each other, enabling the painting to release energy from the tension field between visual and bodily aspects, in a highly immediate correspondence with the viewer. Contradictions, contrasts and dissonances create balanced harmonies. Clarity, generous expression and craftsmanship are of interest to me. Spatiality arises through the juxtaposition, layering, shifting of colours, planes and windows in the pictorial space. The paintings are neither secure nor stable, there is a constant balancing act of forces and weights in search of significance and correspondence. Franziska Goes (b. 1971, Berlin, Germany) received a master’s degree in painting from the UdK Berlin in 1998. Recently her works have been the subject of exhibitions at Moskowitz Bayse, Los Angeles (2022) , Bode Projects, Berlin (2021), Knust Kunz Gallery Editions, Munich (2021), Kunstquartier Bethanien, Berlin (2019) among others. In 2013 she was nominated for the Berlin Art Prize. Since 2017, she has taught at Berlin School of Design and Communication, SRH University. Her works are held in private and public collections in Germany, Switzerland, Denmark, Sweden and the United States. Her upcoming exhibitions include a solo show at Knust Kunz Gallery Munich in spring 2023.

Image: Gefühl für Poesie/Purpurblau - Feeling for Poetry/Purple Blue acrylic on canvas 71 x 67 x 1 1/4 inches

ArtMaze Magazine Issue 29: guest-curated selection

S h i e l a

L a u f e r

www.shielalaufer.com

Image: Untitled (Red and Green) oil on panel 16 x 12 inches

As my painting practice has developed, I’ve become increasingly interested in the subtle, anxious feeling when you become disoriented. The paintings themselves, explorations in markmaking and color, are somewhere between the interior and exterior of a maze. Repetitive loops suggest the movement of a tree canopy in a breeze or hedges growing tightly together. With these paintings, I’m creating a secret garden. Something overgrown, drawing one into a space where the path becomes confused and it’s unclear how to get out again. My work is influenced by North Eastern folk art and the woods of Pennsylvania where I grew up.

Image (left):

Image (right):

Snail oil on canvas 30 x 22 inches

Two Wheels oil on linen 40 x 30 inches

ArtMaze Magazine Issue 29: guest-curated selection

To m

W i x o

www.tomwixo.com

Image: Soft Stock oil on linen 16 x 14 inches

Tom Wixo (b.1991) was born in northwest Minnesota and is currently based in Los Angeles, CA. He holds an MFA in Painting & Drawing from the University of Tennessee—Knoxville and received his BFA in Studio Art from Saint Cloud State University. Wixo also attended the Yale Norfolk Summer School of Music and Art in 2014. He is the recipient of an Ellen Battell Stoeckel Fellowship, a full fellowship to the Vermont Studio Center, a Joseph Delaney Fellowship, and an artist residency at The Soap Factory. National solo and group exhibitions include Ortega y Gasset (Brooklyn), H Space (Cleveland), The Soap Factory (Minneapolis), SooVAC (Minneapolis), Vox Populi (Philadelphia), Mild Climate (Nashville), Crosstown Arts (Memphis), and Fluorescent Gallery (Knoxville). Situated between the existential endeavor of looking for meaning in the hopeless, and the heroic effort of generating substance from the mundane, each work serves as a surface for repeating, regenerating, and obfuscating symbols of skeptical masculinity. Pulling figures from sports and pop culture that served as a stand in for a ‘universal masculinity’ throughout the last decade of the 20th Century, I attempt to understand the visual tools used in the construction of these fictions to invert them for the 21st. Ideally, the paintings arrive at uncertain meanings cradled by the surface of the painting rather than definitive conclusions projected onto the viewer. As images and icons collide over being serious pursuits of understanding and constant distractions from the everyday, the motifs contained in the work are unable to escape the chaos of their own conflicted origins—knowing all the while that the planes that obfuscate, also construct their parameters of definition. The repeated symbols and techniques of camouflage become both metaphor for, and distraction from, one’s own struggle for meaning in an age of... distraction.

Image: Looking Both Ways oil on linen 48 x 36 inches

ArtMaze Magazine Issue 29: guest-curated selection

R o s s

D e n e r

www.cargocollective.com/rossdener

Image: Great Glass etching with aquatint 26 x 17 inches

Ross Dener, (b 1995, Westport Connecticut,) is a writer and printmaker. In 2019, he received his BFA in printmaking from The State University of New York, Purchase College. He has shown work in New York City, Kentucky, Maine, and Hiroshima Japan. He currently lives in Maine. My work illustrates and elaborates upon a personal mythology in the realm of cliche, magic, street racing, and storytelling. The relationship between the written word, and the image is both reflexive and reflective. In this societal moment of extreme nostalgia, I seek to create timelessness in my work. This is related to, but distinct from nostalgia. It is closer to, but not quite memory. Nostalgia is sentimentality for a specific time or place in time. Timelessness is something that refers to no particular time and that which is of an eternal quality. Timelessness is seen in the designs and structures of my artwork and my writing, as influenced by Darger, Blake, and Beuys. In these works, representation, prioritizing detail and clarity, yet subdued by the subtle softness of the dream invites the viewer into the environment of the narrative. As a child I was an avid reader, yet the vast changes of the childhood landscape often left me awash, and as an adult I remain fascinated by the feeling. When I first read ‘The Pigman’ by Paul Zindel, I was confused upon reading how a character stuck glue into a lock on his father’s phone, so that it could no longer dial. I didn’t understand how that was possible. Much later I realized that the story was referring the physical dial mechanism on a rotary phone. It was then I felt for the first time in my life that I was out of time, the same timelessness I seek to recreate.

Image: The Slush Pupieessss: Where have all the big dogs gone? ((“Get out of here, you’re rolling with the big dogs now, dawg” I Hate New York City [Dream of The Park Slope Dog Walker’s Wife]) monotype with solvent transfer 13 x 14 inches

ArtMaze Magazine Issue 29: guest-curated selection

We are looking to discover more emerging artists and to publish and help further promote their work If you would like your work to be featured in our upcoming issues, please find out more details on how to apply to be considered. Visit our website: www.artmazemag.com We have an open call for art for the next print issue which provides publishing opportunities. For any questions, please feel free to get in touch with us at info@artmazemag.com