Opening Preview: Thursday 11 January (6-8pm)
Exhibition: 12 January – 24 February 2018
Participating Artists: SOFIA DONOVAN, OLI EPP, NICOLA KLOOSTERMAN, IGOR MORITZ, STAMATIS PAPAZOGLOU, CHRISTIAN RUIZBERMAN, NICOLA SASSOON, JACK TOWNDROW & JIYOUNG YOO
Contemporary Visions is our annual group exhibition that seeks to identify and explore current themes, trends, and innovations in contemporary art across all media and disciplines. This year, the jury included Leo Babsky, Chief Curator of Century Club (London); Kurt Beers, Director of Beers and Author of ‘100 Painters of Tomorrow’; Paddy Johnson, Founding Editor of Art F City; Erik Olson, Artist and 2016 CV7 finalist; Richard Stemp, author and Art Historian; Jennifer Winsor, Director of Winsor Gallery, Vancouver (Canada); and Anna Zorina, Director of Anna Zorina Gallery, New York (USA).
Sofia Donovan’s main themes for work focus on the spaces of human coexistence represented by intimate spheres like interpersonal relationships, the domestic space, the sphere of the feminine, and the social space where all other spaces are framed. As an immigrant Donovan marks her personal feelings of strangeness that lead her to constantly thematising her own hybrid identity influenced by different forms and points of view. Interested in understanding life as a formless substance in which we live in without giving it any shape or definition, Donovan navigates through the small moments of meaning and approaches the shores of nothingness by giving thought to supernatural and immeasurable through her experimentation.
SOFIA DONOVAN [b.1972, Argentina]. Solo exhibitions include: Fundacion Sala Gasco, ‘Cero Zen’, Santiago de Chile (2016), Galeria Federico Towphya, ‘Kakemonos’, Buenos Aires (2014), Ch.aco, ‘Poetica Domestica’, Santiago (2014). Selected group exhibition include: Galeria Cecilia Caballero, ‘Otras Partes’, bipersonal con Maria Crimella Buenos Airies (2015), Centro De Extension, P.U.C, ‘Negro Esteka’, Santiago (2015), Fundacion Fobeju, ‘Identidad y Territorio’, Santiago (2015), Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes, ‘La ruta trasnochada’, Santiago (2013). Lives and works in Vitacura, Chile.
Oli Epp’s paintings are influenced by experiences and observations from his everyday life. Epp describes them as autobiographical, sometimes confessional, sometimes irreverent and frequently handled ‘with a humorous sense of pathos.’ Interested in situations he has been involved in and witnessed in public and private life, Epp documents those unreported tragedies and moments he describes as unremarkable through painting.
OLI EPP [b.1994 ] graduated with a BA in Fine Art from the City and Guilds Art School of London. Solo exhibitions include: Degree Show ‘A Desperate State of Affairs’, City & Guilds of London Art School, London (2017), ‘Vanilla/Beige’, City & Guilds of London Art School, London (2017), ‘Can I Wear Fake Tan To The Funeral’, City & Guilds of London Art School, London (2017). Group exhibitions include: ‘The window was open through the door was shut with the window left open’, curated by Lily & Brooke & Elaine Tam, London (2017), ‘We Are The Ones’ curated by Galina Munroe, Jordy Kerwick and Simon Ganshorn, Carlsberg Byens Galleri, Copenhagen, Denmark (2017). Lives and works in London, UK.
Nicola Kloosterman is an analog collage artist who works with found imagery. Her subjects vary from fragmented female figures and faces to landscapes, nature and abstracts made with coloured paper and textiles cut from fashion magazines. Her collages explore concepts of (in)visibility, perception and feminine power. The work submitted explores the line between abstract and figurative, reality and illusion. Taken from their original context, extracts of images are free to become new subjects in an altered reality of shape and colour.
NICOLA KLOOSTERMAN [b.1976, Johannesburg] is a self-taught artist with a Masters Degree in Law from University of Amsterdam. Kloosterman completed a Art Foundation course from Rietveld Academy, Amsterdam and has five years experience of Art Direction at the Junior Academy in Amsterdam. Kloosterman has exhibited a solo show at Atelier Oosterbosch, Amsterdam (2017), and a group exhibition at Collage & Assemblage, Clab Kunstwest, Amsterdam (2017). Kloosterman lives and works in Heiloo, Netherlands.
Igor Moritz explores the relation between the interior and exterior of the human. He dresses the work summoning the desire for tasting the lines, forms and more importantly the colours. While excessively using patterns, and overdosing on colour schemes, Igor guides the viewer into his organised chaos.
IGOR MORITZ [b.1996, Lublin, Poland] self taught painter undergoing a Bachelor in Industrial Design at Bournemouth University. Currently took a gap year in his studies in order to prioritise his development as an artist and is preparing to take part in an artist residency in Japan (Studio Kura, Fukuoka). Group Exhibitions include: group exhibition at the Palace of Fine Arts in Cracow, Poland (2014), “Half of me is in the past “BUMF gallery, Bournemouth, UK (2016). Solo exhibitions include: “the black tulip” in Lublin, Poland (2015) and ”70×100 from G&T” in Salisbury, UK (2015). Lives and works in Poland.
Stamatis Papazoglou works with traditional paints and spray paints to create sometimes spontaneous sometimes planned concepts on paper. Those are then collaged onto a specific surface and reapplied with changed qualities by cutting, tearing and readjusting. Final material layers are then manipulated through flex and sanding machines, high pressure cleaners and knives until the process of construction and deconstruction develops its own momentum in an organic nature allowing Papazoglou’s works to emerge completely free and radical in their own moods and compositions.
STAMATIS PAPAZOGLOU [b.1975, Germany] graduated from Kunstakademie, Dusseldorf and attended University of Applied Arts in Vienna. Selected exhibitions include: ‘Freshtest 3.0’, Kunstverein-Koelnberg e.V, Galerie Ulf Larsson, Koln (2017), ‘Berlin – Klondyke’, UGM Studio, Maribow, Slowenia (2017), ‘Berlin – Klondyke’, SOEHT 7, Berlin (2017), KFS, Mix the Remix, Berlin (2016). Lives and works in Cologne, Germany.
Christian RuizBerman has become accustomed to localising his identity within a juncture of memory, fact and fictions by being forcefully deported from his homeland of Mexico. His works focuses on his childhood memories of migration and adaptation. Interested in contemporary philosophers such as Donna Haraway, he is fascinated by the concept that ‘reality is not a set of discrete realities but rather an endlessly complex web of interactions.’ Collaborating poetry and visual art together, exploring how both can bridge chasms that language and logic cannot span.
CHRISTIAN RUIZBERMAN [b.1982] is currently studying MFA in Painting at the Rhode Island School of Design, holds a Masters Degree from RISD and a Bachelors Degree from Duke University. Solo exhibitions include: ‘Chapultepec Samsara’, Outlet, Brooklyn, NY (2015), ‘Before and After Life’, Ulla Surland Gallery, Fairfirled CT (2013). Group exhibitions include: ‘Pure as a seagull’s belly’, RISD Museum Gelman Gallery, (2015), ‘RISD Painting MFA 1st Year Group Show’, Morgan Lehman Gallery, Chelseam, NYC (2017), ‘Reconsider Abstraction’, Gowanus Ballroom curated by George Sferra (2015), ‘I am What I am Not Yet, A Survey of Brooklyn’s Moment’, Madelyn Jordon Fine Art, Scarsdale, NY (2015). RuizBerman lives and works in Brooklyn, NY.
