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Born in South Korea, Hyangmok Baik received his MA in Fine Art from Hongik University in 2019. Diving into the artworld by quitting his stable job, Artist Hyangmok Baik shares his celebrative and liberating perspective on life through his painting. Through the flattened screen of doodle-like figures, rough touches and unexpected compositions, on canvas Hyangmok creates his own world of freedom. There’s no such thing as rules or strict standards in the world he creates. Hyangmok’s work provides viewers with space to relax and remain curious with his outstanding toned-down colour palette and absence of projected narrative. Since he graduated, he has exhibited constantly and extensively in South Korea, China and Japan and made his UK debut at the prestigious, cutting-edge contemporary art gallery BEERS London in 2021.

All works in his recent (2023) show at Beers were sold on the first day.

“It seems cloudy and gray, like a dream, but it’s expressed very clearly. All the elements in my work are arranged through my imagination into a single story. In the very middle of it, A person - he or she or it - is me or a portrait of a modern person at the same time. A character. Sometimes we can remember the characters in our dreams, but mostly, we can’t. I try to express the stories that no one can remember but me, as dreams I’ve never experienced, and as uncannily familiar moments someone has maybe experienced before, in the past.”

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Rune Christensen is a Danish artist. Rune’s draws his inspiration from the process of living: the constant movement that results in encounters between individuals, cultures and societies – encounters that affect everyone involved. Driven by incessant wanderlust, Christensen paints as he travels. His unmistakable expression comes from a hotchpotch of impressions from our diverse world. Within Christensen’s works there is an intensely overwhelming, exciting melting pot of scents, colours, gazes and people. Having exhibited in many places including Denmark, Beirut, Sydney, London and Almaty in Kazakhstan, his works cross as many borders as the artist himself has done. Rune Christensen is represented by Galleri Sandberg.

“The feeling of wanderlust has haunted me my whole life. I have a restless desire to move, experience, and learn, and although I’ve spent many years traveling across the globe, I’ve never been able to completely satisfy that hunger… I paint my thoughts, things I’ve seen, read, or listened to, textures and smells, interactions between people.”

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Johanna Dumet graduated in fashion design from La Calade, Marseille, France in 2011. Prior to that, she had studied Applied Arts at the Baccalauréat (STI) in La Souterraine, France. Dumet paints with oil on canvas, but also use other techniques such as gouache-painted paper glued to the canvas. She is known for painting impulsively, with a strong sense of flow and without constraint. The result is a sublime, captivating use of colour and abstract form that continually interplays with figuration. Rather than focusing purely on detail, Dumet creates a minimalist representation of what she sees, yet is able to understand the subject without trying to correct shapes over colours. Dumet lives and works in Berlin. Her works are in great demand globally – the waiting list gets increasingly longer.

“I like to choose timeless and classical themes such as portraits, still life, animals, nature, etc. Things that were always painted. And I also use classical techniques, I paint with oil, prepare my canvases with rabbit skin glue, I use pigments a lot, but I think like every painter, I paint what I see, I paint the now, the moment. I like to work fast… I also always integrate something funny, I love to work on a serious subject such as still life and bring a touch of humour in it, otherwise, I get easily bored.”

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Hannah Hanski is a Canadian neo-folk artist. She explores the relationship between popular culture, personal trauma and the human psyche with her unique blend of textile and digital media. Raised in Nova Scotia by a matriarchal family, Epstein was captivated by the contrast between the vibrant images on television and the reality of her family’s difficult and complex history. This experience led her to develop a lifelong obsession with popular entertainment as a means of coping and escapism. Epstein uses a folkloric lens to examine the cultural negotiation between traditional, community-driven storytelling and the commodification of culture. She draws on traditional textiles and a variety of digital technologies to create pieces that engage with archetypal figures of the collective unconscious. Epstein’s work has been exhibited in prestigious institutions such as the Hammer Museum (Los Angeles) and the Art Gallery of Ontario and features in the collections of celebrities such as Jorge Perez and Demi Lovato. She is currently represented by Steve Turner Gallery, Los Angeles.

“I’m a Canadian conceptual/neo-folk artist and use traditional textiles to define a new global mythology. By crafting both the material and the digital I elevate a myriad of nouveau archetypes into the collective consciousness, positioning them against the uber-rich.”

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Bel Fullana was born in Majorca (Spain) and studied Fine Arts in Barcelona’s Sant Jordi University. She has had solo shows at Allouche Benias Gallery (Athens), Freight+Volume (NY), Galería Fran Reus, L21 Gallery and Galería Herrero de Tejada (Spain) etc. In 2017, she received Ciutat de Palma of Visual Arts prize. During the summer of 2018 she was an artist-in-residence at DNA Summer Residency in Provincetown (Massachusetts), and in 2014 she spent a month in the PANAL 361 Art Residence in Buenos Aires. She lives and works in Majorca, and is represented by Galería Fran Reus (Spain) and Freight+Volume (NY).

“My work could be described as a carefree figurative semi-expressionist painting with a strong childlike character. Rude, amorphous, and badly painted but at the same time it can be cute and naive. This contrast between the childlike character and the sexy-disgusting content is most characteristic of my work.”

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Born in Zurich, Switzerland, Gabrielle Graessle has been fascinated by painting and drawing since she was a child. She studied graphic design at Zurich Art School Her first exhibitions took place while she was still a student. During this time, her work consisted mainly of spontaneous black and white charcoal drawings depicting her personal imagery. For 15 years, she was represented by various galleries in Switzerland and many of her charcoal drawings hang in private and public collections. In 2015, after a 15-year absence from the art world, Graessle settled in Andalusia, where she began to express her imaginary world in large-format, colourful, intuitive and figurative paintings. In 2020, she started once again to present her art at art fairs in Barcelona and Madrid, and participated in group shows in Germany and France.

“My topics are varied and not easy to narrow down, I draw everything that goes through my head, without restrictions. Childhood memories, pictures from films, pictures that arise while reading, memories, nature, my garden, pictures from the newspaper, fashion, models, and animals. My paintings are figurative and often very colorful, kitsch…”

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Joachim Lambrechts (b. 1986) is a renowned artist from Antwerp, Belgium. In 2001, he began his studies at an art school in Antwerp. Later he became very involved with the graffiti and street art scene in his home city, and in 2004 distanced himself from his academic education and left art school without graduating. Since 2010, Joachim has concentrated mainly on painting on canvas, while also creating street art across Europe. Unlike his work on murals, Joachim never makes preliminary studies or sketches when he starts working on a canvas. Paradoxically, he feels freer within the four walls of his studio. This is reflected in his paintings, which are the result of a more spontaneous process, and as such, possess a sense of urgency and innocence.

“My vivid figurative works convey a sense of urgency. The subjects of my paintings vary widely – from devils and skulls to animals to portraits of historical figures and musicians - my process is usually consistent, featuring a combination of oil, lacquer, and spray paint. I never make preliminary sketches or studies for my portraits, but rely on intuition and spontaneity to guide me.”

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Born in Melbourne, Australia, the contemporary artist Ces McCully now lives in the south of France. McCully’s text-based work utilises chance in colour relationships through her abstract, geometric paintings. She draws on both autobiographical and societal elements, which are formative in their own way, resulting in minimalist forms and a restrained palette. Her works often express confession and secret thoughts, giving expression to our ‘shadow selves’, challenging the false face of our online personas. Her work is collected and show internationally and she has had solo shows at Breach Miami, Piermarq (Australia), Mars Gallery (Australia), Gallery 42B (France), Rhodes Contemporary Art (London) and Helium Cowboy (Germany).

“I’ve always been driven to create harmony in my environment, working intuitively with colour and form to create what I feel is a perfect balance. The juxtaposition of shapes and the power of negative space in creating a narrative is something I continue to explore in whatever medium I work with. By placing simple forms and soothing tones in harmonious relationships, I aim to reflect the essence of simple beauty found in the everyday and create a sense of calm in the viewers’ subconscious.”

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Based in Norfolk (UK), the French-British artist Galina Munroe has developed a uniquely tactile approach towards painting that incorporates elements of collage and an intuitive treatment of surface and composition. Often indirectly referring to her own introverted social disposition, Munroe conceptualises the bright colour fields and bold simplistic formal vocabulary that characterise much of her work as spatial games that encourage the viewer to direct their attention inwards. When developing new images, she prefers to look for formal cues in the materials she is working with (a pre-existing fold or smudge in the canvas, for instance), instead of coming to each new work with pre-meditated sketches or ideas for a motif. Once identified, Munroe latches onto these surface prompts and develops them into pared down, loosely figurative compositions. Munroe has also developed a language of visual phrases that frequently recur – suggestions of voluminous flowers, fruits and planetary bodies are prevalent and point towards the rich vitality of the rural countryside that has often been the artist’s primary working environment.

“I don’t apply restrictions to my painting. I let it ebb and flow. I embrace weakness and misunderstandings during the process, and I just keep telling myself it’s going to be ok, enjoy the ride and the painting will get where it needs to when I’m ready to get it here. There’s a great deal of change from start to end usually. But it all happens very fast. I become obsessed with working out the next move. Very similar to chess in some ways. Or that guessing game – Battleship.”

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At the heart Okay’s work are nostalgic moments and quotes from his childhood and youth in East Germany in the ‘80s and reunified Germany in the ‘90s. He is fascinated by children’s drawings, the untrained hand, imperfections in presentation and mistakes. He enjoys being rough and unpolished. Geometric shapes, abstracted animals, balls of wool, matchbox cars, toys and bizarre scenarios are recurring motifs, creating a curious miniature world. His works often resemble a messy children’s room. Happy chaos prevails. This ‘childish anarchy’ is in no way offensive. It makes us smile, encouraging our sense of absurdity and our imagination to run wild. He exhibits throughout Germany and has also had solo exhibitions and group exhibitions with the artist collective KLUB7 (of which he is a co-founder) in Aarhus, Copenhagen, Luxembourg, Tel Aviv, Lyon, Madrid and New York.

“I grew up during the 1980s in Halle-Neustadt, a new town in the German Democratic Republic. My image of the part of town where I spent my entire childhood, is shaped by countless concrete blocks, blooming flower beds, full clotheslines and colourful playgrounds and countless childhood memories… All the elements in my pictures are keys or rather emotional triggers for memories. Indeed, many of the objects are actual models that I have collected.”

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Canadian-born Andrew Salgado currently lives and works in London. He received a BFA from University of British Columbia (Vancouver) in 2005 and an MFA from Chelsea College of Arts (London) in 2009. Salgado’s vibrantly saturated paintings depict fantastical settings inhabited by nude figures, dramatically posing alongside symbolic objects and shapes. Inspired by a wide range of literary and art historical references, Salgado constantly experiments with various media—including oil, pastels, spray paint, and collage—and increasingly complex, abstracted compositions. While Salgado’s works are strongly characterised by their playful theatricality, they are also deeply introspective, presenting poetic musings on masculinity, identity and emotional vulnerability. A highly sought-after artist, Andrew Salgado exhibits throughout the world and has to date 14 sold-out exhibitions to his credit.

“I’m very vocal about LGBT and human rights. I’m very vocally anti-Trump. There are big political messages in my art, and I don’t believe you can be partway. I always say, you’re either with us, or you’re against us. That might sound quite harsh, but let’s face it, if you love my work, and are anti-LGBT, then you’ve not been paying attention.”

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Born in San Diego, California, the US contemporary artist Taylor Anton White lives and works in Virginia. His large-scale abstract assemblages combine traditional media with found materials and explore the sculptural possibilities of painting in the digital age. Prior to pursuing painting, White had a nine-year career as a marine in the U.S. military. He studied at the University of Mary Washington in Fredericksburg, Virginia, where he experimented with performance art, painting, and sculpture. He graduated with a BA in studio art in 2017. White has been an artist-in residence at the Cycamore Art Residency in Brooklyn (2018) and the Espositivo 7B Residency in Madrid (2017).

“Play is critical to my artmaking. It’s one of the reasons why I decided not to move to New York to work. I live in Richmond, Virginia. I need to be good and bored, where I have to make art to entertain myself. Play is amplified by not being in an environment where there’s cool shit to go do.”

The paintings of the Swedish artist Heidi Ukkonen depict worldly themes such as relationships, anguish and suffering and images of contemporary society in a playfully distorted, quasi-cartoon style. She uses materials such as acrylic, oil paint and spray paint, which lend rich texture to her works. Her thought process begins towards the end of each day, and her colourful, humorous, irreverent, explosive works are the result of trial and error. Influenced by artists such as Philip Guston, Henri Matisse and Hieronymus Bosch, she aims to engage viewers in a world where the usual becomes unusual, ugly becomes beautiful, and pain becomes humour. Ukkonen has exhibited in Belgium, the Netherlands, the UK, Norway, Dubai, the USA, Singapore and Dubai.

“The inspiration for my art often comes from little everyday things – a cyclist zooming past, a trip to the shops, a TV show or something in fashion. Even in an empty room, there’s always something to work with, and I believe that one's imagination is one's greatest asset in art.”