Close

Curated by Russell Tovey

March 4 - April 6, 2023

2 Bourdon Street, London (UK)

The exhibition brings together a selection of works by Ellen Altfest, Jean Claracq, Lenz Geerk, Nathanaëlle Herbelin, Ulala Imai, Fiza Khatri, Xie Lei, Aubrey Levinthal,

Jean Nipon, Paula Siebra, Hugh Steers, Alexandria Tarver and Salman Toor.

Ellen Altfest always paints from life, drawn towards domestic plants, vegetables and more recently, male models. Altfest immerses herself in an intense analysis and personal engagement with the subject that pushes her vision beyond the real.

Recent solo exhibitions include Green Spot, White Cube, Hong Kong (HK); Ellen Altfest, MK Gallery, Milton Keynes (UK); Head and Plant, New Museum, New York, NY (US); The Bent Leg, White Cube, London (UK); The Leg, Chinati Foundation, Marfa, TX (US); and Paintings, White Cube, London (UK). Her work is included in the collections of the Dallas Art Museum, Dallas, TX (US); Olbricht Collection, Berlin (DE); Saatchi Gallery, London (UK) and Zabludowicz Collection, London (UK).

Jean Claracq uses his work to deal with issues of loneliness in the social media era, depicting scenes of everyday life featuring isolated individuals against broad infrastructures as an evocation of alienation. His subjects often straddle the departure from adolescence and adulthood, filled with both melancholy and an openness to the future that awaits them.

Recent exhibitions include Untitled, Galerie Sultana, Paris (FR); Open Space #7 Jean Claracq, Fondation Louis Vuitton, Paris (FR); Masculinité(s), Le Sept Elzévir, Paris (FR); Boys Don’t Cry, Le Houloc, Aubervilliers, (FR); J’aime, je n’aime pas, Galerie EIGEN + ART, Leipzig (DE); Collection Agnès B, La FAB, Paris (FR); and Le Hurlement du Papillon by Double Séjour, La Maison Moustache, Paris (FR). Claracq's work is included in the collections of the Kadist Collection, Paris (FR) & San Francisco, CA (US) and La Fab, Fonds de Dotation Agnès B, Paris (FR).

Hugh Steers, before his death at 32 from AIDS-related complications, created allegorical images of everyday life that captured the emotional and political tenor of New York in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Embracing representational painting and figuration at a time when such approaches were deemed unfashionable, his intimate compositions are poignant symbols of life under the spectre of AIDS.

Recent solo exhibitions include More Life: Hugh Steers: Blue Towel, Red Tank, David Zwirner, Paris (FR); Hugh Steers: Strange State of Being, Alexander Gray Associates, New York, NY (US); Hugh Steers: The Nullities of Life, Alexander Gray Associates, New York, NY (US); Day Light, Alexander Gray Associates, New York, NY (US); Hugh Steers, Alexander Gray Associates, New York, NY (US); and That Soft Glow of Brutality: The Art of Hugh Steers, Visual AIDS, New York, NY (US). Selected collections include The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY (US); Denver Art Museum, Denver, CO (US); New School for Social Research, New York, NY (US); Racine Art Museum, Racine, WI (US); Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, MN (US); Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY (US); and Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven, CT (US). In 1989, Steers received a Pollock-Krasner Foundation Fellowship. A comprehensive monographic catalogue of Steers’ work was published by Visual AIDS in 2015.

Lenz Geerk’s solemn, stately portraits capture a feeling of longing and foreboding. Deeply psychological, his morose compositions reveal moments of mental gravity through body language and micro-expressions. Geerk manipulates traditional techniques to bring distinct render to acrylic colour, creating psychologically-charged paintings that are removed from any specific time or place. Emphasising his subjects in such a way as to draw out the hidden emotions of the human psyche, Geerk depicts people at the threshold of excitation and in the throes of exploration. With postures and gestures crafted through a fictionalized lens of representation, Geerk imagines how a certain fragile moment can be expressed through atmosphere and gesture. The restrained palettes add to the aura of emotional tension, transporting the viewer into his otherworldly universe.

Recent solo exhibitions include Arrival, Roberts Projects, Los Angeles, CA (US); Moonpaintings, Massimo de Carlo, Milan (IT); Sleepless, Mamoth, London (UK); Mixed Blessings, Roberts Projects, Los Angeles, CA (US); The Table Portraits, Roberts Projects, Los Angeles, CA (US) and Pears & Pearls, Galleria Acappella, Naples (IT).

Nathanaëlle Herbelin creates bridges between the intimate and the political, between the personal and the universal: each painting is the result of an event or a relationship experienced and testifies to the different contexts apprehended.

Recent solo exhibitions include On the surface, the back of the eye, curated by Tom Laurent, French Institut of Tel-Aviv (IL); In-Situ, curated by Philippe Segalot, The Hotel de Guise, Paris (FR); Al Hevel Dak, Monotype Edition, Dilecta, Paris (FR); Perhaps It Was Never So, Umm Al Fahem Art Center, Umm Al Fahem (IL); Yishu 8: Post-residency exhibition, Chez aunt Martine, Paris (FR); And maybe these things never happened, Jousse Entreprises Gallery, Paris (FR) and Becoming Painting, Yishu8 with the George V Art Space, Beijing (CN).

Fiza Khatri paints and draws a catalogue of intimate moments from her immediate environment. Her tender, spirited brushwork courses with affection and pulls us through the spaces in which she operates. Pointing to the social constructions that shape her world, Khatri speaks to the complexities of articulating and, to an extent, performing queerness. Khatri is expected to receive her MFA from Yale School of Art, CT (US) in 2023, and was awarded her BA from Mount Holyoke College, MA (US) in 2015.

Recent exhibitions include Don’t Pretend You Can’t Hear, The Clemente Center, New York, NY (US); a language where yesterday and tomorrow are the same word: Kal, Twelve Gates Arts, Philadelphia, PA (US); Humor Has It, Olympia Gallery, New York, NY (US); Action Required, Green Gallery, New Haven, CT (US); Sailoon and Other Stories, Jhaveri Contemporary, London (UK); Open Studios, Karachi (PK); and Is It Possible to Live Outside of Language?, IVS Gallery, Karachi (PK).

In Xie Lei’s paintings, animals and plants are personified and seem to acquire a personality of their own, while human characters are intimately incorporated in their environment, forming one with nature. While these environments are depicted by conventional signs, Xie Lei often eschews delineating ground from sky, proximity from depth and foreground from background, thereby deliberately confusing the viewer’s sense of time and space and disseminating a sense of ethereality into paintings that look no more like windows into a new world but as symbolist talismans facing the viewer.

Recent solo exhibitions include Victim, Lyles & King, New York, NY (US); Slumbers, Meessen de Clercq Gallery, Brussels (BE); Xie Lei, Z Gallery Arts, Vancouver (CA); Poe’s Garden, Z Gallery Arts, Vancouver BC (CA); Walden II, Yima Gallery, Chengdu (CN); Entre Chien et Loup, Palais des Beaux-Arts, Paris (FR); Sans rivage, Galerie Anne de Villepoix, Paris (FR); and Murmur, Grenier du Chapître, Cahors (FR). Xie Lei has work in the collections of the Musée d’Art Contemporain du Val-de-Marne (MAC VAL), Paris (FR), and Burger COLLECTION, Hong Kong (HK).

Ulala Imai paints scenes drawn from both her familial life and popular culture. She tranforms her children’s toys, quotidian foods, and other household items into mysterious and life-like subjects. A masterful oil painter, she relies on just a few brushstrokes to realize her luminous images. Arranging disparate objects in whimsical combinations, Imai’s subtle associations infuse her paintings with the latent tension of interpersonal dynamics. Imai turns the materials of her specific family life into repositories for the universal human exchanges that surround them.

Recent solo exhibitions include The Scene, Karma, New York, NY (US); Reminiscence, Union Pacific, London (UK); Hola Strangers, Lulu, Mexico City (MX); MELODY, Parco Museum, Tokyo (JP); AMAZING, Nonaka-Hill, Los Angeles, CA (US); and Gathering, Union Pacific, London (UK).

Aubrey Levinthal chronicles her everyday life, friends and family, passing moments she experiences or witnesses in her neighborhood, which happens to be in Philadelphia. Her palette of wan yellows and ochers inflects her domestic paintings with haggard feelings, traces of melancholia, and emotional imbalance.

Recent solo exhibitions include Neighbors, Strangers, Gazers, Bathers, Monya Rowe, New York, NY (US); House Weary, Haverkampf Leistenschneider, Berlin (DE); The Breakers, M+B Gallery, Los Angeles, CA (US); Nightstand Paintings, Taymour Grahne Projects (online exhibition), London; Vacancy, Monya Rowe Gallery, New York, NY (US); Recent Paintings, Nancy Margolis Gallery, New York, NY (US); and Volta NY, Representing Nancy Margolis Gallery, Pier 90, New York, NY (US). Her work is included in the collections of Woodmere Art Museum, Philadelphia, PA (US), and Ballinglen Museum of Art, County Mayo (IE).

Jean Nipon has been influenced by masters of classical painting such as Piero della Francesca, Nicolas Poussin, Georges De La Tour or Ingres, and portrays contemporary characters using rare coloured pencils found around the world. Nipon approaches the masters and reuses their codes, but he does so with such respect that the coloured pencil as a medium is akin to a choice of humility in the face of the intangible greatness of the great masters' paintings.

Recent exhibitions include Souvenir d’une aura, PACT, Paris (FR); EMBRACE YOUR WEIRDNESS, curated by Marion Guillet with Hugo Avigo and Mathias Pol, CONFORT MENTAL, Paris (FR); Jean Nipon - Dessins, Galerie Hubert Duchemin, Paris (FR); and LIVE, curated by Jérôme Sans, Palais de Tokyo, Paris (FR).

Paula Siebra's practice focuses on images related to everyday life and scenes of intimacy using Brazilian northeastern culture as her starting point. These motifs acquire a peculiar aspect: a certain simplification in the contours, added to a reduction in the contrast between chromatic tones, polarising reality and reverie – as if the artist were daydreaming about ordinary life.

Recent solo exhibitions include Noites de cetim, Mendes Wood DM, São Paulo (BR); Lembrança de algum lugar, Sobrado Dr. José Lourenço, Fortaleza (BR); O Soar das Horas, Nieuwe Gentweg 21, Bruges (BE); Arrebol, Mendes Wood DM, New York, NY (US); Arrebalde, Mendes Wood DM, São Paulo (BR); and Ternura, Fábrica Bhering, Rio de Janeiro (BR).

Alexandria Tarver's still life paintings generally concentrate on just a couple of subjects at a time such as flowers and drum kits. Her process involves sketching and photographing her subjects, and then using them as references for her paintings.

Recent solo exhibitions include New Paintings - nights, Deli Gallery, New York, NY (US); New Works on Paper, Cooler Gallery, New York, NY (US); and New Paintings, Deli Gallery, New York, NY (US). Selected group exhibitions include Now I am a Lake, Public Gallery, London (UK); Still Going, Taymour Grahne Projects, London (UK); Apple Tree, Union Pacific, London (UK); Deli Gallery at Collaborations, Collaborations, Copenhagen (DK); and The Fool, The 8th House Projects, Mexico City (MX).

Salman Toor conjures lush, atmospheric interiors, realms occupied by queer, worldly urban men who dance, drink cocktails and gaze into the glow of their smart phones. Toor’s scenes simultaneously convey a feeling of warmth, nostalgia, and alienation. The works explore representations of gay male identity and reveal the tension between the private and public spheres.

Recent solo exhibitions include Salman Toor: New Paintings and Drawings, M Woods, Beijing (CN); Salman Toor: No Ordinary Love, Baltimore Museum of Art, Baltimore, MD (US); Salman Toor, Hayward Gallery Billboard, Hayward Gallery, London (UK); How Will I Know, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY (US); Salman Toor: New Works on Paper, Luhring Augustine (online exhibition); I Know a Place, Nature Morte Gallery, New Delhi (IN); New Paintings, O Art Space, Lahore (PK) and Time After Time, Aicon Gallery, New York, NY (US). Selected collections include Tate, London (UK); Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY (US); Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, Chicago, IL (US); Aïshti Foundation, Jal El Dib (LB); Baltimore Museum of Art, Baltimore, MD (US); M Woods, Beijing (CN); PHI Foundation for Contemporary Art, Montréal (CA); RISD Museum, Providence, RI (US); and Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, MN (US)

For enquiries regarding the featured works or for more information, please

email enquiry@grimmgallery.com