Pensive faces, ambiguous light sources, and mysterious spaces characterize the atmospheric drawings of Moonassi, whose solo exhibition Murmures at Vazieux Gallery delves into the surreal world of memory and emotions.

In black-and-white ink and acrylic, the Seoul-based artist cross-hatches figurative scenes onto Korean hanji paper, portraying deep contrasts, dualities, and tensions. Rich, black shadows reveal glowing hands and faces, exploring relationships between light and dark, awareness and the unconscious, presence and absence, and the known and unknown.

Moonassi uses meok, a type of traditional Korean inkstick ground against a stone with water to produce a liquid medium. The meditative process of preparing the ink helps the artist focus on the task at hand and concentrate on each step.

the painting of Dhaka-born, LA and Portland-based painter, Srijon Chowdhury. His last solo show, The Nude, was on view at Ciaccia Levi, Milan in 2023.

Something born out of a rough doodle, redid a more ‘proper’ little sketch out of it before colours.

Fantastic gallery exhibition in photographs: Desert + Coast: Seven Elder Aboriginal Painters.

Cristina Camacho likens canvas stretched across a skeletal frame to skin. Both a protectant and a site for expression, the flesh is one of many layers within the body that the artist peels back to reveal what lies beneath and within. “When I first started cutting the canvas, I was very interested in stopping seeing the canvas as the surface where the paint goes,” she tells Colossal.

Dominic Chambers has focused much of his career on painting places with space. There is always a sense that his characters are thinking about or trying to get themselves into either a physical or spiritual place where there is room to breath. To be free. To have arms outstretched and a place to run.

“I have spent over 40 years bearing witness to the ways in which modern civilization has dramatically transformed our planet,” says the renowned photographer Edward Burtynsky (previously). From the salt ponds of Spain to the eerie tunnels of Russia’s potash mines, Burtynsky has traveled the globe for the last four decades documenting the indelible impacts of industry.

Above, “Thjorsá River #1, Iceland (2012).” Which I think is stunning.

Jacob Kassay: An Adverse Possession of Light

When was the last time you sat in stillness? Turned off your phone? Closed your eyes and allowed your brain to neutralize and excavate an instinct deep inside, opening the senses to risk and exposure? Likely not recently. You’ve probably run far away from that place since 2020 when that was the only thing that we knew. You’ve gone back to work. To your friends. To your life. To music and dancing and laughter. Where the sun warms the skin and a cool breeze brushes softly across the face.    Sarah Lee’s mind has not left that place. It is the essence of her artwork, probing the vulnerability of silence and its echoes across nature, where it is most inherent. She paints scenes of a winter wonderland with no footprints to mark the way. A dark ocean where you could blink your eyes and believe the water is the sky. Twisted trees that contort across an unearthly green forest. Moonlight that mimics a spotlight following across a stage.

Marion Pinaffo and Raphaël Pluvinage, a.k.a. Pinaffo & Pluvinage, have worked together since 2015, fascinated by the physics, mechanics, and even pyrotechnics of our ever-evolving technologies. During 2023, the pair produced three major projects exploring ephemeral interactions and shifting textures. “If we were to find a common thread among the three major projects… it would be soft, blurry, and challenging-to-control materials: smoke, sand, fabric,” the duo tells Colossal. “Each time, there is a play in mastering and manipulating these materials.”

Detail from WASTED, Peggy Chiang, more at link

Ji Zou. They make provocative, often sexual works but with a hint of surrealism and mystery, beautifully rendered in acrylic.