Lorin Gallery presents "On the Road to Basel", a group show during the first French Art Basel in Paris, France this fall.The exhibition will open on October 15th from 4pm to 8pm.

 

Twenty-two international gallery artists just as impressive and talented will be featured in the show. The fruitful collaboration between artists that Dimitri Lorin represents with Lorin Gallery, artists that Dimitri likes, and finally, artists that he has collected over the years.Mona Broschar, Christina Allan, Katie Hector, Go Hang, Joseph Munyao Baraka, Jingyi Wang, Pedro Troncoso, Ivan Forcadell, Willem Hoeffnagel, UF0907, Erin Milez, Banja Ian, Larissa De Jesus Negron, Giorgio Ermes Celin, Bianca Walker, Christian Quintin, Pez, Niall Campbell Strachan, Skyler Chen, Deb Koo,Kelani Fatai and SOCKO.

 

This exhibition serves as a foundation for the gallery's multifaceted identity, connecting East and West and fostering dialogue between cultures, perspectives, and artistic expressions. This exhibition aims to examine the energy that emanates from their creative languages. For Lorin Gallery, this exhibition is a turning point. A new artistic selection is presented to our audience, and this is a special occasion to honor the artists who contributed to the gallery's success.

 

About the Artist:

 

Mona Broschár was born in 1985. She is a painter based in Leipzig, Germany. She studied Fine Art at theCamberwell College of Arts, London, and holds a MA in Painting and Printmaking from the Academy of Visual Arts,Leipzig. Through plastic painting, she stylizes banal everyday objects and situations into highly artificial, desirable, and sexualized objects. Harmonious and gloomy come in pairs in the scaled-up images that Broschár develops, as they depict a tipping moment, informed by our dazzling consumer, and pop culture. Her paintings are meant to invite virtual consumption but leave the viewers alone with their desires since touch is only allowed with the imagination. In this way, the artist addresses the interplay of touch and distance – which has always been indissoluble, not only in digital culture but especially in painting.

 

Christina Allan was born in 1995. She is known for her highly expressive and vibrant paintings. Her work fueled is fueled by a curiosity for the unknown and explores profound aspects of the human experience. This stems from her interest in authentic psychological and philosophical struggles that we ultimately face, including the inability of a finite being to comprehend what’s outside of its own existence (the infinite; the universe), and the classic existential struggle. From dramatic mythical scenes to introspective psychological portraits, Allan’s work populates a world of fantastical creatures varying from angels, deities, spirits, sea monsters to the Grim Reaper – a recurring character in her work –often portrayed through a humanistic lens. A blend of abstraction and figuration, her painted narratives mirror contemporary life through motifs of material culture. They take place in a realm that is dreamy yet real, mirroring how existence can feel like a rigged game or fleeting dream. Ambiguous creatures drift in a dreamlike dimension provoking questions surrounding their identity and meaning.Allan’s work is largely informed by philosophical ideas including existentialist writings, and the mythology of ancient civilizations. She views myths as a representation of a complex and unchanged human experience and the expression of universal concerns and passions. Similar to how ancient mythological Gods and Goddesses served as answers tothe mysteries of a meaningless world and universe, Allan’s painted narratives present an in-between space and state– a new world and an escape from an absurd quotidian existence.

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Katie Hector was born in 1992 Lawrenceville, New Jersey. She is an artist, curator, and writer based near Los Angeles,California. Hector’s studio practice revolves around a series of process-based paintings that layer dye and bleach to create portraits - likenesses that symbolize loss, grief, intimacy, and longing. She earned a BFA in painting from the Mason GrossSchool of the Arts at Rutgers University graduating Magna Cum Laude in 2014. Her artwork has been exhibited nationally and internationally garnering her recognition in the form of awards, scholarships some of which include: the 2020 LillianDisney Scholarship, 2019 Arquetopia International Residency, the 2017 Picture Berlin International Residency, the 2016Merit-Based Scholarship at Urban Glass, the 2014 Scott Cagenello Memorial-Prize, and the 2013 Ruth Crockett Award.Katie Hector: "My portraits of friends, people I’ve met, and complete strangers are allegories of longing, intimacy, and grief in response to isolation and dissociation. Layering bleach and dye on canvas I build up and erase sections to create composite likenesses. Painting with bleach and dye instead of, let’s say acrylic or traditional mediums, allows me to have a direct conversation with the canvas itself. Within each painting, I am testing the limits of the fibers and the canvas’s ability to retain or let go of pigment. Thus the memory of the surface produces the final after image; an impression of personhood, an uncanny portrait."

 

Gao Hang is a Houston based Chinese artist, Master of Fine Art degree in Painting/Drawing from University of Houston,Bachelor of Art degree in Oil Painting from the Capital Normal University, and 2020 Houston Artadia fellow. Gao's artworks have been shown in major galleries and art museums in China, America, Netherlands, Spain, Korea, Germany, andEngland. Gao Hang illustrates modern human habits with a sense of humor and absurdity while ironically commenting on the viewer’s need for instant gratification. Gao evokes the postmodernist neo-pop movement by using subject matter and color as a conceptual and structural armature. Deliberately, Gao uses florescent hues which he considers to be the tones of his generation.

 

Gao Hang: "I am sure my art process has something to do with my habits and obsessions. I mostly listen to stand-up comedy while making my work. I enjoy standup comedy that challenges general beliefs, and political correctness, yet at its core is negotiating between the observations, language, and laughter of a given performance. Then you realize that it’s no paradox, but a good conversation between the performer and the audience.At some point, my paintings are like standup comedy, they can only do so much about solving real problems. But brutal honesty, absurdity, and humor are very powerful qualities in any type of conversation. My recent paintings are concerned with image “definition” in digital graphics, especially those from the last 20 years. I understand digital graphics as 21st-century “found objects”. I am interested in objects that are bathing in modern technology’s greatness while exposing a certain rawness, oddity, or awkwardness. When I first encountered 3D modeling and graphic rendering in computer games in the late 20th century, I was totally shocked.Over the last 20 years, I was inspired by the fact that how graphical spectaculars could end up being rawness and ridicule in the digital image evolution. However, it is that rawness and ridicule that triggers the same creative impulse with what the painting process can offer. The effect is actual physical feedback during the process: could be surprised, a shifting attitude, a more extreme emotion – my secretions as a human being. I want my practice to simulate a modern production method, but with high fault tolerance.

 

Deb Koo is an oil painter based in Charlotte, North Carolina. She was born in Seoul, Korea, and spent most of her life inMassachusetts. Her interest in art began during her years at Smith College, where she studied Studio Art. Afterward, she continued her studies at Ewha Woman's University in Seoul, where she received her Master’s in Fine Arts in WesternPainting. Currently, Deb Koo is a member of the Goodyear Arts Collective in Charlotte, NC, as well as an art professor at Rowan-Cabarrus Community College. She has shown in local shows, including Goodyear Arts, LaCa Projects, Sozo Gallery, and The Mint Museum Randolph. Out-of-state and international shows include Wheeling Art Dealing for Miami ArtWeek in 2019 and the Open Call and Four Year Anniversary Shows at Delphian Gallery in London in2021. “I am influenced by what I see in my everyday life. Mundane events, media, human desire, motivation, apathy, and helplessness are just some of the interconnected reasons to paint. The banality of the images depicted, sometimes in bright, saturated colors and other times faded and pale, become surrogate self-portrait and memories and hopeful futures.”

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Ian Banja is a self-taught artist born and raised in Nairobi, Kenya. Motivated by his love of learning and succeeding, he strives to be an outstanding and better version of himself. He is renowned for an upbeat street style that is paired with detailed, technical, and aesthetic considerations. He works with his own technique of painting, his own touch as he calls it, a finesse in creating. I want people to see what I see every day, I want people to see the good times and the bad times I see.Everything that surrounds and interests Banja is automatically processed and filtered into his pieces. He takes the time on the structure of each of his pieces so that he knows when someone uses my artwork they really appreciate the details and the glazing that went into it.

 

Ian Banja:"It’s not every day we get to smile, challenges keep overpowering the small bundle of joy we got, but that’s not an excuse for being sad and feeling secluded, we got to cherish every moment, and make memories with every opportunity we get. I’m in An environment where people can do whatever they want, it’s like I’m in a lawless surrounding, nobody is available to tell you what you’re doing is wrong, and the land is almost deserted, bare and unproductive. Tussles and everyday challenges increasing, and people living on hand to mouth basis, finding alternative ways of living without scorching the earth's resources, I’m hopeful to see my piece on this project as it will share my story with other people so that they can experience the other side of this life. I come from a community where struggles are like the daily routine. I started portraying the untold stories in my paintings to depict the daily struggles and to also portray and show the people in my community that the struggles don’t define what we are, that the struggles are just a challenge that makes us stronger, in the end, the rainy days always come to an end. I come from a family where I’m the only artist, my Mom is the sole driver that enabled me to be where I am today as she supported me in every way possible."

 

Jingyi Wang is a New York-based visual artist who specializes in oil painting. Her artworks focus on the relationship between nature and culture. Observation and perception is the inspiration source of her artistic creation. She associates the fragile with the acute, the serious with the humorous tones, the poignant with the longing. Cacti-human beings reflect the biological and psychological aspects, approaching humanity's subtle and intimate intersubjectivity. With these elements and colors, Jingyi Wang would like to extend human bodies to the ground and mother nature, creating space for dialogue and collaboration among humans and nature.

 

Jingyi Wang: "My artworks focus on the relationship between nature and culture. Nature is always the overarching context of my paintings. It has been almost five years since I started using cacti as my subject. Cacti symbolize my own feelings and attitude towards life, for me, they signify a helpless state and nervous emotions. "

 

Joseph Munyao, born in 1998is a self taught artist. From a young age, he loved to draw.Inspired by cartoons on tv, pictures in books or magazines, and advertisements although he loved drawing he never saw being an artist as a career option, this never dissuaded him from his passion for creating. He began to take his talent seriously after people started trying to buy work he posted on Facebook. Since then he was exhibited at Art Basel Miami with Superzoom gallery (2021),Superzoom gallery grand opening group exhibition in Paris France (2022), Eligere gallery group exhibition in Seoul Korea(2022), (KIAF PLUS) with Eligere gallery in Seoul Korea (2022).Color is a key part of this artist’s practice, although applied instinctively, there is a delicate balance in his vibrant pallet which includes blues, purples, hot pinks, yellows, reds, and yellows. The brightness in these works feels like an explosion but it is meticulously balanced, as is the composition and the humor carried therein. The color in these works creates a mood that Munyao feels that, although it can be hard to define is key to his practice. Munyao’s work is as surreal as it is figurative presenting the physical aspects of his subjects alongside the imagined and perceived reality of their personalities. This can mean a combination of technique, color, pattern, and objects. These varied aspects unify to communicate the essence of the people he has chosen to photograph and then paint, using the many parts captured in a photoshoot and assimilating them into one work. Drawn to wildness in a person Munyao’s subjects are irreverent and unapologetic, surrounded by ephemera that amplifies their personalities whether that is a handbag, a friendly cat, a smoking dog, evocative text, or a pile of books. The spirit of his subjects is in every part of his paintings as they stare defiantly, sit lost in the music on their headphones, or hang back in a pair of sunglasses.Joseph Munyao: “When I'm painting, I get these crazy ideas and I merge these ideas together with the image of the person I am painting to create a kind of story. At the moment I start painting, I don't what the end result will be, it's something which comes naturally... It creates itself.

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Pedro Troncoso was born in1996, Dominican Republic. His paintings explore how stereotypes, expectations, and social norms affect our identity as adults. He obtained his BFA in Illustration at Parsons School of Design (2018) as a transfer student from Altos de Chavón La Escuela de Diseño (2016), Dominican Republic. His notable participations include the 29Biennial in the Dominican Republic, AXA Art Prize, merit scholarships, and international exhibitions in Los Angeles, NewYork, Hong Kong, Beijing, etc. Troncoso currently graduated with an MFA in Fine Arts from The New York Academy of Art.

 

His painting and sculpture talk to each other and explores how we seem to rely on mirrors until we realize our lack of control over our appearance expectations. The painting shows how we fall into the abysmal-void war between acceptance and self-love. As for the Sculpture called Dina-sour she is experiencing the sweet or sour sensation we feel as we face the mirror and lean closer to it. How close or long can you stare at the mirror?

 

Pedro Troncoso: "My work consists of self-portraits or imagined alter egos inhabiting dark intimate interior spaces. Like my room, where I overthink the external social pressures such as acceptance, gender roles, and self-image. Through the manipulation of the figure, I construct magical ironic, and contradictory scenarios reflecting discomfort and joy in adulthood. Reminding me how our identity is distorted and threatened by societal pressures. By using imagination, the only playable toy remaining in adulthood, I reflect on psychological individuality and the personal-social dilemma: what does it even mean to be our ‘real selves’ in present times?"

 

Influenced by the avant-garde of modern art, Iván Forcadell born 1993, Alcanar, is a multidisciplinary artist who produces authenticity and expressionism to build a body of work that relates to his true being, his roots, and his vision. Forcadell learned a Design degree from EINA University in Barcelona. He has numerous national and international exhibitions. In addition, the artist’s work has been included in renowned press such as Harper’s Bazaar, El País ICON, Vogue Spain, El Mundo, and Architectural Digest Spain and Vanidad. To handle these issues harmoniously and simply, Forcadell blends stories from his childhood in the countryside, folklore, and irony. Forcadell's style is bright and vibrant, and he advocates art's ability to impress.

A call to constantly reinvent the artist for whom the relation to his work is the fundamental pillar of his production. Forcadell finds the basis of his works in the importance of nature and human relationships and how they relate to his own life. For him, honesty in his series is as essential as his originality, constantly investigating new techniques and materials while introducing elements of proximity and found objects into his compositions. His goal is to bring the scenic Mediterranean countryside together with my creative universe to the United States of America. He is able to create new speeches while bringing new unknown areas and communities.

 

Willem Hoeffnagel is a painter from the Netherlands. Born in Arnhem, a city that is filled with emerging artists and lovers of art, he has always been interested in drawing and painting from an early age. After leaving a bachelor's in entrepreneurship in Amsterdam, Willem enrolled in ArtEZ Zwolle to study illustration design. During that time, he focused on his personal style while also experimenting with new techniques and ideas. The recognizable figures that have often been featured in Willem’s work have been close to him for more than a decade. Using the figures as a placeholder for a person, whether himself or someone else, allows him to portray a scene or part of a small story to the viewer without putting too much attention to who it’s meant to be.

 

Willem Hoeffnagel: The painting“Nest”I based it off of my own experience as a kid, i loved making these “nests” to feel safe.There was nothing for me to be afraid of but i was a nervous kid and i really liked having some sort of wall around me when i was in bed or on the couch watching tv. I made this painting after i realized i saw the same exact behavior in my girlfriends cousin, a 6 year old boy named Gian. He also has this urge to create nests to feel safe so we relate in that sense.

 

The second painting is called “Hiding”. this one is more of an experiment for me, playing with the hair of the figure, continuing on the theme of feeling safe or hiding yourself from people when you’re insecure. The figure is hiding their face with the hair.Two pieces i really enjoyed making."

 

With several exhibitions home and abroad showing his works, Kelani Fatai is an emerging Nigerian artist. He was born and bred in Mushin, a commercial area in Lagos, and, at the age of six, he discovered his passion for drawing and has since worked to create a niche for himself. He is currently a graduate with a Higher National Diploma in Painting. Kelani draws his inspiration and creativity from nature and the environment around him, and he doesn’t fail to interpret their meanings in his paintings. He is a versatile impressionist and realist and usually creates his art according to the story conjured in his mind.He is prolific in oil, acrylic, pastel, watercolor, and charcoal mediums. Some of his works have been collected in the UnitedStates and the United Kingdom.

 

Kelani Fatai: “My work revolves around the beauty of elegant, albeit simply-clad, black men and women. Through the insertion of unidentified flowers in my paintings, I highlight the message of love and togetherness. Thus, I express the world as I see it.”

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Erin Milez born in 1994 grew up in Chicago and has split her adult years between Seattle and the New York City area. She earned her BA in Studio Art from Seattle Pacific University and her MFA from the New York Academy of Art in 2021. She currently lives and works in Bayonne, NJ with her husband and daughter.From the claustrophobic discord of quarantine to the overwhelming joy of creating new life, the couples in Milez’s work are living through experiences from her own life and filtered through a language of dance. They are duet partners and day laborers, wrapping around each other with thick limbs and rubberized joints, contorting into and away from each other. Their compressed domestic space brings both clumsiness and humor to the realities of daily life in sharing and creating a home.Their work argues for the significance of everyday life and that the menial tasks required by it are not mundane but a tether to creation.

 

American artist UFO907 found himself attracted to the subcultural world of graffiti and vandalism after leaving art school disillusioned. He traded paint brushes for spray cans and viewed the back lots and streets of New York City as his studio and gallery. UFO907's street work assisted in honing his style and artistic development. His work stems from a fine art background utilizing unconventional painting techniques and highly expressive line work. UFO907's character-based graffiti and playful imagery have helped to propel his work from the streets to the mainstream gallery world. His transition to studio work still boasts a connection to his graffiti roots encompassing the use of spray paint and markers through his UFO iconography. UFO907's work exhibits a passion and deep understanding of artistic materials and limitless application methods. This year UFO907 participated in the 2022 Art Central, Hong Kong, SAR Hong Kong and had a very successful solo show with Allouche Gallery in New York, NY titled "“How do you spell New York?”.

 

Larissa De Jesús Negrón is a multidisciplinary artist who yearns for introspection and finds self-evaluation through her intimate and often otherworldly spaces and portraits. Her stylistically varied neo-surreal imagery is linked to the artist’s curiosity about the subconscious and Neuroticism. Larissa was born and raised in Puerto Rico. She lived in several municipalities such as Guaynabo, Trujillo Alto, and Caguas for twenty years. Her commitment to art-making began as early as she was nine years old when she excelled in the drawing classes her mother signed her up for. Larissa went on to study middle school and high school at Central High, the most well-regarded specialized art school in Puerto Rico. Graduating with the school's highest honor, Larissa continued her education at The School of Plastic Arts in Old San Juan, where she began majoring in Drawing and Painting. After two years, she transferred to Hunter College in NYC, where she got her BFA.

 

Larissa De Jesús Negrón: “I have a profound interest in healing and addressing my childhood and adult trauma through my work. For all of us, the expression of emotion is essential to overcoming trauma. These mundane moments of despair, fear, and excitement are brought to the eyes of the viewer as a cathartic way to connect. “Atadura” means when you’re tied to something, in this case, the habit of drinking. It’s a way to talk about becoming aware when you’re tempted by something that’s seductive. Having a tie or an “Atadura” to something or someone can make it very difficult to see what’s truly good for you.

 

Giorgio Celin Colombian, was born in 1986. He is known for his dazzling figurative paintings which explore themes including migration, belonging, relationships, and nostalgia. Celin’s work is influenced by his experience as a Colombian migrant who has lived in several European cities. Through his paintings, he examines issues surrounding displacement and what it means to feel as though you don’t belong in any one geographical location. Celin’s work also aims to represent queer bodies in a non-objectified way and frequently depicts diverse couples sharing intimate moments. He employs vivid shades of purple, red, and blue to create his figures, which are characterized by bold contours, precise brushstrokes, and curvilinear limbs.

 

Bianca Walker is a 24-year-old, nonbinary, painter from the Bay Area, California. They were raised surrounded by vibrant street art until gentrification began to ravage the place they once called home, leaving colored walls bare. Walker migrated to Louisiana and began their studies at rambling State University where they were submerged in painting and black history.As their education continued, they quickly grew tired of traditional art methods and began to use a drip painting technique that reflects their street art roots. Now developing an MFA thesis at the University of New Orleans Walker uses these drips as an integral part of their visual language while incorporating archival imagery of the African Diaspora activating a history they can see being erased.

 

Bianca Walker: "In my current work, I explore the history of colonization by embracing simple methods of crafting the environment in a way that emphasizes the primitive qualities of the materials, such as the fluidity of house paint by dripping the work or the absorbency and malleability of drop cloth by leaving it bare and wrinkled. Abstracting images of the AfricanDiaspora allows me to present blackness in a vulnerable and primitive state; a state that often isn't allowed to exist. My reverence for material mirrors the reverence for the subject matter; the archival images I work from compose their own paintings with little to no manipulation due to the absence of a brush; creating moments where black people are free."

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Christian Quintin was born in the town of Saint Brieuc, on the northern coast of Brittany, France. He studied at the BeauxArts Academy in Paris before moving to the United States in 1981. His pen and ink drawings, oils, and pastel paintings have been exhibited in many solo and group shows, in galleries and museums the Crocker Art Museum in Sacramento. Christian was represented by the famed Vorpal Gallery in San Francisco and New York, which gave its first U.S. show to M.C. Escher.He has also been the recipient of numerous public and private commissions. Christian lives in Northern California and recently published his first book of Poems. He creates oils and pastel paintings as well as pen and ink and graphite drawings, alternating between mediums. His work addresses consciousness, what he sees or feels, has seen or felt. As in a kaleidoscope, each plane is omnipresent with ever-changing boundaries. He also paints or draws oneness, love, and romantic landscapes.

 

Les Amants (The Lovers): A lover’s kiss between two loving trees. The frame that I painted is an integral part of the art.

 

PEZ, was born in 1981, NANTES, FRANCE. PEZ is an Illustrator, painter, and graphic designer. The prodigious street artist was influenced at a young age by graffiti and hip hop culture and later a whole host of artists such as Klimpt, Magritte, Escher and Dali, Banksy, Kaws, Bua, Proch, Etam Cru, and many more. Pez works to a rather unconventional process, the majority of the time Pez works 100% from his imagination, and sometimes the process serves the idea and not the contrary. As a child, Pez used to hold his pencil incorrectly and his teacher would often punish him, he is still doing so and this isn’t going to change. His smaller sketches, with graphite crayons, take 6 to 10 hours and larger works can take anywhere from40 – 60 hours, sometimes much more depending on the piece. Pez adds a deliberate element of imperfection into his works to ensure that the works aren’t just aesthetic. In the nineties, he was doing throw ups, later he worked as a professional illustrator and continued to take inspiration from graffiti as well as contemporary artists when he started out as a professional artist. Today, he is renowned internationally for his precise drawing skills, humorous subject matter, and detailed content.His works have become highly collectible worldwide.

 

Niall Campbell Strachan is a Scottish visual artist based in the village of Fortrose in the Highlands of Scotland. Self-taught and working intuitively he blends the language of street art with a joyful approach to paint application. Working on primed and raw canvas, on the studio floor, and stretched on the wall, Strachan likes to constantly mix -up his approach to making a painting. Strachan's works have an emotional resonance as we witness creatures pulled from his imagination, childhood daydreams, and wry comments on humanity.Strachan has works in collections worldwide and is part of the permanent collection of Fundación Maria Cristina Massaveu Peterson in Madrid.

Taken from the Greek for ‘living together,’ Strachan explores the relationships and tensions in the natural world where animals are king and humanity is parasitic. Works are energetically brought to life with impassioned mark-making in acrylic and bursts of spray paint.

 

Skyler Chen was born in 1982 Taiwan. He is a multidisciplinary artist now based in Rotterdam, Netherlands. Chen’s work ranges from large oil on canvas, to prints, sculptures, video installations, and children’s book illustrations. As a child, he struggled with undiagnosed dyslexia, and he turned to drawing and painting as a means of communicating with the world.An ex-Mormon, he grappled with his queerness throughout his late teens and 20s, eventually finding a safe space to explore his Asian queer identity in his art practice later in Europe.

 

Socko was born in Seoul, Korea, in 1993. Socko studied at The School of Visual Arts in New York. As of today, Socko is an independent artist based in New York. Socko’s new work explores imagination through the character Dough. Inspired by 90s cartoons and toys, Socko takes viewers to his imaginary world filled with vibrant colors and raw textures. Socko hoped to create something that everyone can resonate with, hence the creation of the imaginary character, ‘Dough' - with dolly eyes and childlike expressions, Dough encapsulates a profound sense of innocence and nostalgia that is much-needed in this world. The bright color's pastel impression stands in constant strong contrast to the even brighter artificial hair color. This contrast is pleasing in many ways. Using pastel hues, Socko can produce a stunningly rich, delicate texture. He demonstrates how the deep, rich hues may shine brilliantly and are easy to mix when used properly. He has more creative freedom while using acrylic to choose the texture and consistency. His creations may appear three-dimensional due to the fact that he only uses two media.

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