JEAN-MARIE APPRIOU, DANIEL ARSHAM, LEE BAE, ROMAN COCHET, JEAN-PHILIPPE DELHOMME, CAIRO DWEK, JULIA VON EICHEL, MICHAEL FLOMEN, CHARLES HASCOËT, THILO HEINZMANN, SOREN HOPE, ALEXANDER JAMES, RASHID JOHNSON, IZUMI KATO, CLAIRE LEHMANN, SHIM MOON-SEUP, KEISHO OKAYAMA, JEAN-MICHEL OTHONIEL, ANNA PLESSET, HAYAL POZANTI, YOUSSRA RAOUCHI, GABRIEL RICO, PARK SEO-BO, KULDEEP SINGH, JAKE TROYLI, VICKIE VAINIONPÄÄ, XAVIER VEILHAN, BAO VUONG, XIYAO WANG, CHRIS WATTS, CHARISSE PEARLINA WESTON, LEON XU, DUSTIN YELLIN

Light of Winter brings together international, established and emerging artists that shed light on societal constructs of self, offering new interpretations. Through exploration into our relationship with the natural world, cultural histories, and processes of introspection, the artworks on view invite us to contemplate our own place within an ever-changing ecosystem. Art can be seen as the conduit not only to reflect on our current times but to offer hope for the future.

Entering the exhibition, Jean-Philippe Delhomme’s series of three paintings follow the pensive reading of a book by Henri Matisse. Each work is derived from keen observation over a one-time painting session, capturing the fleeting moment of a still life or temporary presence of his model. Nearby, the paintings of Xavier Veilhan reduce natural landscapes to their most essential vocabularies of shape and color. In their abstraction, the artist’s gradient landscapes illustrate endless interpretations of earth and space in hues of blue, grey, yellow, and pink. In another translation of landscape, Anna Plesset’s trompe l’oeil painting is part of a larger series of works that reframe the history of the Hudson River School to give value and visibility to the many women who were affiliated with this iconic 19th-century movement but who have been largely omitted from the canon. Plesset, who is known for work that interrogates the processes that create historical narratives, creates a to-scale reproduction of an 1854 painting by the American landscapist Abigail Tyler Oakes. However, in Plesset’s hands, the “copy” is in-progress and being painted from what appears to be a printed screenshot of a Google search result for the original work. Rendered in a staggering trompe l’oeil technique, this “source material,” framed within the larger unfinished copy, makes visible the ongoing work of historical recovery.

In the main space of the exhibition, Jean-Marie Appriou’s sculpted figure is caught between human and animal bodies. The walking thunderbolt shaman pulls inspiration from a Faroe Island folktale which states that seals were former human beings who voluntarily sought death in the ocean, and, once per year are allowed to come on land. Appriou’s work often draws from mythology and science fiction to imagine worlds inhabited by human, animal and vegetal figures. In contrast to Appriou’s fantastical depiction, Izumi Kato’s sculpture, nearby, resembles ancient stone. Inhabiting a liminal space between physical and spiritual realms, Kato’s boldly colored embryonic figure possesses a unique strangeness that embodies a universal, primal form of humanity.

Melding abstraction and figuration, Alexander James’ paintings utilize a complex visual language that pulls together seemingly disparate context, and is transcended into an imagined, ethereal space. In a similar collaging of stories, with vastly different application, Claire Lehmann’s paintings result from an inquiry into the contents of the image world’s unconscious. Pulling from various technical, vernacular, and art-historical source materials, the artist creates images that invoke the spells of technology and the transience of flesh. Her paintings possess an uncanny realism that is both melancholic and optimistic, urging reflection on the distorted mirrors of our current reality.

Central to the exhibition is Park Seo-Bo’s Écriture painting, a series he began in the 1960s which encapsulates a deeply spiritual, introspective methodology. One of the founding members of the Dansaekhwa monochrome movement, Park’s work is undoubtedly linked to notions of time, space, and materiality. Écriture begins with a series of pencil lines, which are made with Korean paper and minimal color. Through a process of reduction and repetition, sustained over time, the artist’s precise mark-making becomes a meditative practice. In another process of thoughtful reduction, Korean artist Lee Bae pursues a formal study on the color black and materiality in the search for a pure expression of form. Over the last four decades, he has mastered the use of charcoal as a medium. The work on view, Issu du feu-26cd, at first appears as a flat surface, however, upon closer inspection, the work’s depth is revealed as light shimmers off the distinct grooves of each charcoal fragment. Lee Bae’s artistic practice is deeply committed to the cyclical transformation of charcoal—from wood to fire to carbon to ash—as a physical representation of the cycle of life and renewal.

Hanging in the center of the room, Jean-Michel Othoniel's signature strands of glass and steel beads ornament the space. His enchanting sculptures, monumental yet delicate, use refraction and reflection to evoke the complexity of human nature. The work is part of his series titled Noeuds Sauvages, a collaboration spanning more than 10 years with mathematician Aubin Arroyo, who introduced him to his theories of knots and reflections.

Charisse Pearlina Weston utilizes glass, photography, text and other materials to interrogate the intersections of Black interior life, resistance, and the ideological apparatuses of surveillance. Glass has an inherently dual nature, as extremely malleable, able to bend and fold into new forms, while also exceedingly fragile, susceptible to shattering at any act of violence. Enclosed in the surface of Weston’s works are fragments of semi-autobiographical poetic text, which are obstructed by purposeful folds and complex layerings of material. Utilizing concealment and curvilinear lines, Weston investigates interiority and space.

In the final room of the exhibition, Soren Hope's paintings investigate the legibility of the body and belonging in oneself. In Keyhole, Hope delineates a surreal understanding of human topography, with disparate limbs and torsos melting into each other. The alienation of the physical body can be a form of escapism, which Moroccan artist Youssra Raouchi elucidates in her work. In her surreal scenes, figures melt into their surroundings. Playing with both human and ecological forms, she rejects binaries and blurs the boundaries between internal and external, animal and human, domestic and wild.

Hayal Pozanti’s paintings act as abstract representations of nature and the subconscious. Reflecting on humankind’s growing reliance on technology, her work investigates how concern for our environment is often omitted from contemporary lifestyle. Inspired by nature’s beauty, Pozanti’s soft forms are reminiscent of biological life which carry the most earnest truths about reality.

Bridging the gap between past and present self, multi-disciplinary artist Kuldeep Singh deconstructs and rebuilds cultural narratives across painting and performance. In his canvases, Singh reinterprets the traditional ragamala paintings of 16th – 18th century Central India through a queer, ecological lens. Singh’s work often explores how cultural past informs present identity. In The Barren Wish-fulfilling Tree, his figures anchor each other tenderly in peace, despite the surrounding darkened tendrils of a dead “wish-fulfilling” tree. In his performances, Singh combines his two decades long training in the classical Indian dance form of Odissi with sensuality and a decolonial sensibility.