10 Galleries showcase an artist that should be on your radar right now!
As a way of keeping exciting and inspiring art hitting your inboxes during these uncertain times, I asked 10 Galleries to showcase an artist that they think should be on your radar right now. Artists use their expression and imagination to create new realities, so maybe we need to take a page out of their books and embrace our new realities for now too. The below are a mix of new artists the Galleries are working with, alongside artists they have supported for a while but feel you need to know more about. Scroll on to see some incredible art and read more about the artists and their works.
Charles Benefiel, Random Numeric Repeater Series #1, watercolor, ink on paper, 10.5 x 7.5 inches
AMERICAN PRIMITIVE GALLERY - Charles Benefiel
The drawings of Charles Benefiel began as a way for him to control his mind having an obsessive compulsive condition while living in New Mexico. His drawings were often of numbers or the numbers that he felt were taking over our identity and personhood. The drawings were done with dots of ink repeated, sometimes day and night. As an escape from that he began to create his own symbolic code for numbers that he controlled and let loose on paper in random numeric sequences. This is one of 4 of the initial studies for the larger drawings.
To see more work by Charles Benefiel click here
Karla Knight, Double Space (OUM-21), 2019, Oil, flashe, and graphite on ledger paper mounted on linen
41 x 110 inches. Inventory: 10752
ANDREW EDLIN GALLERY - Karla Knight
Karla Knight (b.1958) is a visual artist born in New York City and currently living and working in Connecticut. Her work has been widely exhibited in numerous solo and group exhibitions, and she is represented in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art, the Brooklyn Museum, the Walker Art Center, and Emily Fisher Landau, among others. She has been the recipient of various awards and fellowships including The MacDowell Colony, Yaddo Corporation, and two Connecticut Artist Fellowships. Karla Knight's work consists of imaginary language, objects, diagrams, and symbols. It forms a pictorial language of symbol and writing whose underlying system is not known. Simultaneously ancient and futuristic, the work creates an alternative culture which plays with the mystery of life, and what lies hidden underneath.
To see Karla’s solo exhibition ‘Karla Knight: Notes from the lightship’ currently at Andrew Edlin Gallery in New York, click here
CAVIN MORRIS GALLERY - Solange Knopf
We would like to Spotlight Solange Knopf, with whom we have worked since 2013. Solange has a direct artist’s connection to her inner being. Her work has grown and changed over the years, beginning with her early work painted over the writings of the Symbolists poets, through her Behind the Darkness Series, her Protective Shields, and now to this place of relative peace, arrived at through a personal form of color therapy. Solange Knopf was born in Belgium in 1956. Edward Gomez wrote a feature article on her in Raw Vision called An Art of Healing and Hallucination (Raw Vision #84 , 2013), she is in the permanent collection of The Menil in Houston, TX, and was exhibited at Intuit’s dRAW in 2015.
See more works by Solange Knopf here
Casper Schjødt Nielsen, Untitled, 27x26cm. Courtesy Copenhagen Outsider Art Gallery
COPENHAGEN OUTSIDER ART GALLERY - Casper Schjødt Nielsen
Casper Schjødt Nielsen is a self-taught artist, born in 1967 in Denmark. As the eye falls upon Casper’s works, it is difficult to ascertain exactly what you’re looking at, and herein lies the interesting aspect of his work: as your eyes wander across the amorphous, fragile and meticulous works, so does your mind. This is no coincidence. Casper’s wish is to divert people from his associations with the work and let them shape their own experience of the image. His desire, as an artist, is to distance himself from the audience and work and thereby let it exist without referencing back to its creator. His creation is thus not only the work itself, but also a space around it, open for the onlooker’s interpretation and association, a style and form which is not often seen in other artists.
Casper’s work was due to be a part of the next exhibition “For the love of art” on at the Outsider Art Museum in Amsterdam from this week and he was going to exhibit some work in Kunsthalle München in June - all of which are now delayed and may not happen. To see more of Casper’s work click here
Anthony Romagnano. The Little Street, 2019 Greylead pencil, pencil
19.29 x 15 inches. Courtesy of Dutton and Arts Project Australia
DUTTON GALLERY - Anthony Romagnano
Anthony Romagnano (b.1985) works predominantly in pencil, paint, and digital media, often referencing source material from popular culture or old fairy tale illustrations he finds. He meticulously examines and interprets an image and before drawing outlines and adds blocks of voluminous and irregular shapes of vivid color. Romagnano’s compositions applied in opaque layers of pencil and paint present much like a mosaic or stained glass window, building weighted abstract forms within his imagined scenes.
Romagnano has worked in the Arts Project Australia studio since 2004, and had his first solo exhibition at Arts Project Australia in 2008. He has exhibited in numerous group shows including; The World Around Us, Arts Project Australia, Melbourne, 2019; Petite Pop!, Sofitel Melbourne on Collins, Melbourne, 2019; Wyndham Art Prize Exhibition, Wyndham Art Gallery, Werribee, 2018; and the CCP Salon, Centre for Contemporary Photography, Melbourne; Spring1883.
To see additional new works please contact sonia@soniadutton.com
Lewis Smith, The Courier Journal, c.1970, 30 x 43 cm. Photo : Pol Lemétais
GALERIE POL LEMETAIS - Lewis Smith
Lewis Smith (1907-1998), an Outsider artist from Ohio, was an eccentric who never showed his art while alive
yet left a treasure trove of pictures and writings of his colorful life. A lifetime railroad pass allowed
him to travel beyond the family farm and towns of Ohio to pursue his many passions and
compulsively document in journals and pictures what he saw. Smith’s travels included following women’s athletic events that he would depict on brown paper from grocery bags. A carnival atmosphere is often pictured with costumes, captions, animals, and odd elements combined with the animated women.
Another series of drawings depicts lunch counters and interiors of diners he visited in his travels. The graphic images drawn on the backs of flattened Saltine cracker boxes emphasize signs, food specials, displays on cups and plates, the stools and local color. His memory of these places is recorded in journals of signs and lists and enhanced by his humor and fantasies.
A different set of drawings recorded his love for trains. Early drawings from the 1920s meticulously depicted specific trains that moved people and freight. These compiled a historical record of the railroads along with photographs he collected from railway workers. Later train drawing became more fanciful and abstracted like his depictions of early tractors drawn from memory. He once wrote, “I want the whole world to be in my head and still wear my own hat.” The pictures and compulsive journals attempted to do just that, and reveal a most unusual artist under the hat.
To read more about Lewis Smith click here
Margot, Untitled, 2020, Coloured ink on card, 85x200cm. Courtesy of Henry Boxer Gallery
HENRY BOXER GALLERY - Margot
Margot (b.1982) was born and grew up in the countryside in France. She studied florist studies, got a job and became a business manager. However she decided that her future was to be different… she changed her route and stopped everything. Margot said, “My subconscious knew that my future was somewhere else.”
When Margot was 32 she started to draw tirelessly. The year was 2014 and a new cycle was beginning. She began to draw all day, everyday: “The energy was like a torrent, indeed it was frenetic and furious.” Over time Margot found her rhythm and gave birth to new forms through her art. She creates a rhythm that is similar to music and emotions. Margot uses her favourite materials to draw: paper, pens and Indian ink. She says that she gives body to her visions through her drawings, creating worlds that are free from power and its attraction.
See more of Margot’s work on Henry’s website here
Pradeep Kumar - Carved toothpicks featuring animals
JENNIFER LAUREN GALLERY - Pradeep Kumar
I want to highlight the incredible carvings by Pradeep Kumar. Born in 1973 in Haryana, India. Deaf and unable to speak he was trapped behind a wall of silence and doctors were quick to diagnose him as mentally disabled. He went to a school with fully able students but there were no special facilities for him, so he sat at the back of the class carving blackboard chalk to fill his school day. One day, he found a matchstick and had the notion to try and carve it, soon realising his exceptional ability. Using just a razor blade he was able to carve intricate birds and figures in the most minute detail before adding colour. He now carves toothpicks as well as matchsticks.
Click here to catch more of his carvings. Each one can be sold individually.
Domingo Guccione. Untitled, ca. 1930-55. Colored pencil and graphite on paper. 25.5" x 19.6"
RICCO MARESCA GALLERY - Domingo Guccione
Domingo Guccione was born in 1898 in Buenos Aires to Italian parents. He was a mystic and a musician with no training in the visual arts and very little knowledge of art history. The oeuvre that he left behind (produced between 1930 and 1955) is a compelling display of geometric abstraction. The artist worked in private and claimed to be channeling a mysterious force that took a hold of him in bouts of creative energy—where his body and mind were not his own. Accordingly, he could (or would) not explain his finished works and in turn asked viewers what they saw in them. Guccione did not sketch his drawings, working quickly and with a minimal range of materials; thick sheets of paper, graphite, colored pencils, and a straight piece of wood, about 4” long, with no measurement markings. His works present us with compact kaleidoscopic arrangements where geometric patterns intertwine with irregular linear shapes. They are both deeply abstract and reminiscent of futuristic architectural landscapes; of buildings and labyrinths that fluctuate between flatness and three-dimensionality, interweaving densely packed color with subtle shading. Ricco/Maresca’s one-person booth at the Independent Art Fair 2020 is Guccione’s debut exhibition.
You can see more Guccione works on Artsy or in Ricco/Maresca's digital exhibitions page fluence+
Billy White, Untitled, 2018, mixed media on canvas, 44” x 34”
SHRINE NYC - Billy White
Billy White gravitates towards a unique set of characters as inspiration. Famous musicians, artists and actors, who have inspired him since childhood, have become the subjects of his artworks. Vincent Van Gogh, whose unsuccessful romantic overtures and missing ear remind Billy of his own past hardships, has been painted over and over again by White, as has Mr. T, Willie Mays and Eddie Murphy. Billy works intuitively, with no hesitation or second guessing, to create incredibly fluid and and energetic imagery, whether he is working with clay, paint or pencils. White is an artist at the NIAD Art Center in Richmond, CA, which is a nonprofit art space for artists with disabilities.
Billy White will be Shrine’s next exhibition when they reopen, but you can see a list of works online here