Olivia Bax is a sculptor who brings things together, creating ensembles of found and made objects, held together by metal armatures, chicken wire, cardboard and paper pulp. Her handling of these materials runs with and departs from established sculptural processes, simultaneously constructing, welding and modelling, and using the metal armature both as an inner supporting structure and as an active component of the final sculpture itself, pushing through and out of the modelled paper pulp. As well as construct and model, Bax also paints, but rather than being applied at the end, her paint is mixed into the pulp from the very start. This means that she works with colour both as a painter and as a sculptor might, modelling colour as one might clay.

Bax has a preference for conduit forms, such as pipes, funnels, tubes, chutes and hoppers, that suggest ideas of passage and transferral while carrying directional energies with them. She also uses forms of containment such as pockets, socks, sacks, sachets, cup and vessel that suggest temporary and tentative ways of holding and enclosing things. Hooks, handles, holding devices and other tool and prop-like objects are also deployed, enabling her to link one thing to another, suggesting relationship and connection, while highlighting difference through juxtaposition. Her sculptural set-pieces read as nesting structures, curious habitats and modes of habitation, personal spatial-material orbits coordinated by techniques of the body, such as sitting, reaching, leaning, kicking, holding, resting and pulling.

-        Jon Wood, extracted from ‘Home Range’ exhibition text, Holtermann Fine Art, London, 2022

OliviaBax (b. 1988, Singapore) lives and works in London. She studied BA Fine Art at Byam Shaw School of Art, London (2007-2010) and MFA Sculpture at Slade School of Fine Art, London (2014-2016). 

Recent solo exhibitions include:Home Range,Holtermann Fine Art, London (2022);Spill,L21, Mallorca (2022);Off Grid,Mark Tanner Sculpture Award Exhibition, Standpoint Gallery London (2020) toured to Cross Lane Projects, Kendal (2020/21) and Tremenheere Sculpture Gardens (2021);pah-d'bah, HS Projects, London (2021) andChute, Ribot Gallery, Milan (2019/20). Recent group exhibitions include:Material Impressions: Artists & Paper, Larsen Warner, Stockholm (2022-23);Reflections: Part 3: Sculpture by Women Artists, Workplace, London (2022);Flock,BoLee and Workman, Somerset, UK (2022);Weeds Won’t Wither, Jari Lager Gallery, Cologne (2022);On the Other Hand, with Brooke Benington at Canary Wharf, London (2021) andGleaners:OliviaBax & HannahHughes, Sid Motion Gallery, London (2020/21). 

Prizes include: The Mark Tanner Sculpture Award (2019/20); Kenneth Armitage Young Sculptor Prize (2016), Additional Award, Exeter Contemporary Open, Exeter Phoenix (2017) and Public Choice Winner, Saatchi Gallery, London (2015). Bax’s work is part of private and public collections including: The Arts Council, The Ingram Collection and Tremenheere Sculpture Park.

Born in Colombia to an Italian family of agronomists and architects, Daniel Brusatin grew up very close to nature and was exposed from a very young age to the arts and design. He trained in The Academy of Fine Art in Florence with an emphasis in sculpture. His love for materials and production techniques took him to Milano to a second degree in design and applied arts. During his studies and at his arrival in London Brusatin worked for Brian Clarke where his love for stained glass, Ceramics and architectural art found mentorship.Always with a strong artistic practice his studio has moved from Florence and Milan to Paris and since 2013 is based in London.

Even though Daniel Brusatin’ work comprises diverse artistic disciplines: Sculpture, drawing, ceramics, stained glass and architecture; he has always kept painting as the central axis of his practice. it is throughout the relationship and conversation between these mediums that his work starts to shape up. Exploring visual language through semiotics, art history, traditional techniques and the act of making, Brusatin attempts to blur the arbitrary lines dividing the arts and encourages questions of fundamental phenomena as the relationship between the perpetual forces of nature and the hand of the artist, the curious case of ‘accidentality’ in a chaotically organized world and the role art plays in civilisation. 

Formally and Conceptually his work anchors the contemporary world in tradition, art history and the psychology of engagement creating a dialectic between materials and artistic expressions that serve as a catalyst to this visual poetry; based upon the idea that “beauty is not a characteristic linked to any particular thing but a state of understanding” Brusatin looks for common denominators, triggers, and expressions of primal relatability. Subjects often treated in his work are the relationship between abstract and figurative art, the conception of the work and the creation of an image in an era of careless mass-production and the importance of the artistic experience; the present and emotional engagement between the work and the viewer. 

Turning the subject matter into art itself this lines are dissolved and their effect multiplied. For Brusatin to define is to limit and a practice in constant revision and experimentation becomes the only path to evolve the artistic language

KOMOREBI DB.pdf

Guy Haddon Grant's monochromatic sculptures and drawings lie at the boundary between abstraction and figuration.

Haddon Grant (1986), born in London, started his studies in Camberwell College of Art before moving to Florence, Italy for two years to study the renaissance masters and their techniques. He works in charcoal, candle soot, wax, plaster, steel and wood; creating enigmatic works with a narrative that informs one another.

Haddon Grant has exhibited widely in solo and group exhibitions notably the Bloomberg New Contemporaries at the ICA and the Liverpool Biennial. He has also exhibited at the British Figure at Flowers Gallery and has held two solo shows Apophenia at the Royal College of Art and Dust and Shadows at Karavil Contemporary.

Nicky Hodge lives and works in London. She has exhibited her paintings, drawings and multimedia works widely over the past 25 years. In 2021, Horse Gossip, a solo show, opened at Bobinska Brownlee in London. In the same year, she was selected for several group exhibitions including Notes for a landscape at Kingsgate Project Space and A Tiny Bit of Fire curated by Warbling Collective.  In 2022 she exhibited with Gwenyth Fugard and Dom Gray in Something Tender at Yorkton Workshops in May and Wundertüte, a two person show with the German abstract artist Michael Kaul, opened at Hart’s Lane Gallery in August. In the same year, her collection of ten paintings, Nighttime words leak out, was presented online by Richeldis Fine Art. In 2023 she has a work selected for the group exhibition Champs Noir at Terrace Gallery. Slip Road, a solo show with Francis Gallery in Bath, took place this year May – July 2023.

HÄNSEL + GRETEL RIUNION 2020 Acrylic on Canvas

Manabu Mabe's artistic journey unfolds against the backdrop of his upbringing in Kumamoto, Japan, where he was born on September 14, 1924, to Soichi and Haru Mabe. The family's migration to Brazil in 1934, seeking opportunities in the coffee plantations of Lins, São Paulo, marked the beginning of Mabe's immersion into the rich tapestry of landscapes that would later influence his artistry. It was during his formative years amidst the verdant fields, particularly on rainy days, that Mabe found solace and inspiration in capturing the natural beauty of his surroundings through painting.

As Mabe matured, his passion for art deepened, leading him to embark on a journey of self-discovery through the exploration of art books and magazines in 1941. Guided by the expertise of painter and photographer Teisuke Kumasaka in 1945, Mabe honed his craft, mastering the techniques of canvas preparation and paint dilution. These foundational skills would form the bedrock of his artistic expression, allowing him to translate his unique vision onto the canvas.

The turning point in Mabe's artistic development came in 1951 when he encountered works from the esteemed Paris School at the 1st International Biennial of São Paulo. This encounter ignited a transformative shift in his approach to art, propelling him towards abstraction and away from the geometric forms of his earlier works influenced by cubism. By 1959, Mabe's abstract compositions garnered critical acclaim, earning him the prestigious Leirner Prize for Contemporary Art and catapulting him into the international spotlight, with TIME Magazine dubbing him "The Year of Manabu Mabe." His artistic development continued to flourish, earning him further accolades such as the "Best National Painter Award" at the 5th International Biennial of São Paulo and the "Fiat Prize" at the Venice Biennale in 1960. 

Mabe's legacy transcended borders, with his works featured in solo and group exhibitions across Latin America, Europe, Japan, and the United States, cementing his status as a seminal figure in Brazil's vibrant art scene.

Installation view of 'Inaugural Exhibition'. NISO, London, March 2024. 

Untitled, 1971 Gouche on Cardboard 35,5 x 50,5 cm

Untitled, 1969 Oil on Canvas 100 x 140 cm 

Hitoshi Nakazato (1936-2010) was particularly active in the field of printmaking in the 1960s. He studied at the prestigious Tama University of the Arts in Tokyo in 1960, went to the United States in 1962 to continue his studies at the University of Wisconsin and at the University of Pennsylvania where, under the tutelage of Piero Dorazio, he drew inspiration from printmaking techniques and systems engineering to pursue abstract painting. “Why paint? “What would a painting that rejected conventional concepts of painting look like?”. Nakazato had “a burning desire to paint” but “no interest in pictorial conventions”.

He sought to redefine the act of making by introducing into the painting process elements that were born of Japanese industry and architecture and were essential to them, such as the sumitsubo, a Japanese line marking tool. His characteristic monochromatic works of 1968-1971 are composed entirely of straight lines and were the starting point for the development of his practice. The use of colour “beyond the lines” would make a “comeback” in the mid-1970s.

This brought him international institutional recognition. Edward F. Fry, co-curator of the exhibition Contemporary Japanese Art: 5th Japan Art Festival in 1971 at the Solomon R. Guggenheim, recounted: “I knew immediately that I was in the presence of an extremely gifted artist of unique talent: someone who, with the slightest stroke on the canvas, seemingly without effort, could give birth to a sonorous polyphony of visual intensity and pure feeling”.

Yuki Nara (1989) was born in Kanazawa, Ishikawa Prefecture in Japan. He is the eleventh generation of the Ohi lineage, a respected and well known family of potters specialized in tea ceramics, which dates back to more than 350 years ago. His grandfather, Ohi Chozaemon X, is distinguished with the honor of National Living Treasure, and his father, Ohi Chozaemon XI, with the Order of Cultural Merit from the Emperor of Japan.

Having witnessed the construction of Kanazawa’s 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art when he was younger, he became passionate about architecture and, as the eldest son of the head family, decided not to initially follow in his father’s footsteps. He majored in architecture at the Tokyo Academy of Arts in 2018, and soon after renewing his passion for ceramics, he enrolled in the Tajimi City Pottery Design and Technical Center.  

Nara uses modeling softwares to design each piece which is then sculpted, assembled and fired following his family’s ancestral methods. His series, which he calls “Boneflowers” are contemporary and innovative in their approach, and they stand at the crossroads of architecture and ceramics, balancing tradition and innovation in technology. 

“My aim was to create light and transparent ceramics rather than conventional dignified ceramics, able to absorb its surroundings and retain the special mood of its place, able to be a warm boundary, gently connecting rather than separating, interior and exterior”. Extraordinarily talented and innovative, Yuki Nara has been subject to much attention in Japan and abroad, having exhibited in fairs such as ArtParis, TEFAF, or Design Miami. His works are now in the collections of the Victoria and Albert Museum, and the Nezu Museum in Tokyo. 

"When I think of things, I always think about “boundaries” around them. In other words, searching for the space in “between”. Architecture and Ceramics, Digital and Analog, Inside and Outside, Artifical and Nature, Chaos and Order Hence, it is not something you can clearly differentiate, like 0 and 1 in digital code, like black and white. Rather, an infinity of degrees actually exist between 0 and 1, and an infinite grading of shades exist between black and white. A boundary is not a simple line. Something we could describe as a “fuzzy boundary” can also exist. Once I stop to separate everything by one line, looking through this perspective; arises many silently hidden places. Wondering through the center of the infinite, suffering and struggling - I strive to look for my own place. This open minded adventure much like my own life, is incredibly enjoyable". 


Biography
1989 Born in Kanazawa

Education

2017 Tokyo University of Arts (Architecture), MA 2016 Tajimi City Pottery Design and Technical Center, Diploma
2013 Tokyo University of Arts (Architecture), BA

Exhibitions

2021 Nisoproject, London
2020 Aki Nagasawa Gallery, Tokyo 
2019 Art Central, HongKong; Asia Contemporary Art Show, Hongkong
2018 Art Taipei (Taipei, Taiwan)
2018 Asia Contemporary Art Show (Hongkong)
2018 Les Promesses du Feu (Paris, France)
2017 ASIA NOW (Paris, France)
2017 Design Miami / Art Basel (Basel, Switzerland)
2017 TEFAF Maastricht (Maastricht, Netherlands)
2017 COLLECT (London, UK)
2016 SOFA (Chicago, USA)

Design

2013 Rokkakudo Pudding cup (Collaboration with Asadaya)
2015 Beer Tumbler ‘Kizuna‘ (Collaboration with Nikko)

Architecture

2018 5 elements tearoom (21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art, Kanazawa)
2018 Shoji Tea Room (Tainan Art Museum, Taiwan)
2020 Node (Kanazawa, Ishikawa)

Collection
Nezu Museum (Tokyo, Japan)

2018 
5 elements tearoom (21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art, Kanazawa)
Shoji Tea Room (Tainan Art Museum, Taiwan)

Sawako Nasu (Tokyo, b. 1998) lives and works in Tokyo, Japan. The artist holds a BFA and MFA from the Tokyo University of Arts. Solo exhibitions include: Sunny, Rainy at Biscuit Gallery, Tokyo, Japan (2023); Slipped Moonlight, Ginza Tsutaya Books, Tokyo, Japan (2022); To the Lighthouse, myheirloom, Tokyo, Japan (2022). Recent group exhibitions include: Biscuit Gallery 3rd Anniversary Exhibition「grid3」, Biscuit Gallery, Tokyo (2024); Inaugural Group Exhibition, NISO, London (2024);「Selection」, KEN NAKAHASHI, Tokyo, Japan (2024); Draw Lines & Shapes in My Maps, Taka Ishii Gallery Maebashi, Maebashi, Japan (2023).

Landscape n.1, 2024   120 x 170 cm   Oil on Canvas

Landscape n.2, 2024   80 x 100 cm   Oil on Canvas

Landscape n.3, 2024   56 x 74 cm   Oil on Canvas

Landscape n.4, 2024   56 x 71 cm   Oil on Canvas

Landscape n.5, 2024   56 x 71 cm   Oil on Canvas

Landscape n.6, 2024   56 x 71 cm   Oil on Canvas

Installation view of Vestige, NISO, London, September 2024.

Portrait of A Man n.1, 2024   50 x 41 cm   Oil on Canvas 

Portrait of A Man n.2, 2024   40 x 31 cm   Oil on Canvas 

Portrait of A Man n.3, 2024   40 x 31 cm   Oil on Canvas 

Portrait of A Man n.4, 2024   40 x 31 cm   Oil on Canvas 

Portrait of A Man n.5, 2024   40 x 31 cm   Oil on Canvas 

Portrait of A Man n.6, 2024   40 x 31 cm   Oil on Canvas 

Portrait of A Man n.7, 2024   40 x 31 cm   Oil on Canvas 

A virtuoso in portraiture and travel painting – Proctor’s mostly autobiographical works freely depict the artist’s surroundings. Delicate renderings in watercolour relate quotidian scenes ranging from the landscapes he encountered on his bohemian wanderings from the Middle East to Asia “Kyoto, Golden Temple, Rain” (1991) to the intimate portraits of friends, lovers and colleagues made from the comfort of in his living room “Portrait of Richard Buckle” (1968), “Peter Hinwood”(1969). A chronicle of daily life as an artist, a dandy, and an integral member of the swinging sixties, Procktor’s honest reflections deeply resonate with the modern-day documentation of life in the digital Age.

Marked by a unique and understated painterly language that blends traditional and contemporary influences – Procktor’s portraits reveal a subdued and pasty palette and lingering atmosphere redolent of the pre-pop ‘Euston Road’ artistic movement, combined with an audacious use of white space that parallels the aesthetic modernity of the time. Marked by a non-hierarchical way of seeing, extraneous detail is opted out, figures carefully poised within the white space of the paper - some with mannerist distortions – coming together in a gentle and elegant quality that is muted in its transparency and deliberate areas of unpainted surface.

Balanced with an equal measure of finesse and flair – the subjects of Procktor’s portraits unveil a colourful melee of artists, musicians, designers, photographers and socialites that relay to the audience a generational snapshot of the milieu of art, theatre, fashion and rock music the artist inhabits.

Among them, some of the greatest figures of the era as well as many queer icons such as his friend the artist David Hockney and fashion designer Ossie Clark, interior designer Christopher Gibbs, Richard Beer, Peter Schlesinger, Mo McDermott, David Gwinnett, Francis Bacon, Mick Jagger, Jimi Hendrix, and Cecil Beaton; making up an almost complete cast of the ‘swinging’ London of the 60s and 70s.

Seemingly unguarded, Procktor’s portraits and renderings show a recurring - almost voyeuristic - depiction of the male figure – as carefree bodies recline half- naked “Brittas Bay” (1968), baking in the summer heat in parks “Lawn” (1975), or on the decks of boats “Tropic of Cancer”(1974). Conjuring airs of queer eros and nonchalance, these epitomise much of the liberal revolution of the time, where accepted norms of behaviour, sexual and otherwise, were being jettisoned for a new age of social freedoms.

A charismatic dandy renowned for his Wildean theatricality and wit, Procktor was one of the UK’s most controversial and enigmatic figures. Spanning several decades, his work compassed diverse styles and mediums, subject to significant acclaim as well as controversy over his lifetime. First gaining recognition the year after his graduation, his first show at the Redfern was a sell-out before it opened. The following year, Bryan Robertson selected him for the seminal 1963 exhibition “New Generation” at the Whitechapel, exhibiting his early paintings – dynamic, abstract depictions of the male nude – alongside those of the most promising artists of his time Patrick Caulfield, John Hoyland, Bridget Riley and David Hockney. With subsequent tendencies that included the out-of-vogue medium of watercolour, paired with the thematic monotony of his 1968 ‘One Boy Show’ fiasco - Procktor’s acclaim would never reach that of his close friend and muse David Hockney. By the mid-90s, doomed by alcoholism and a series of personal disasters that included a fire that destroyed his home and much of his art, brief spells of incarceration and homelessness quickly ensued, blighting the later years of his life.

Today, his prints, watercolours, and oil and acrylic paintings sit in private and public institutions including the British Museum, the Tate, the National Portrait Gallery, The Los Angeles County Museum, the Metropolitan Museum (NY), and the MoMA (NY), subject to a particular resurgence since the publishing of Ian Massey’s major monograph “Patrick Procktor: Art and Life” in 2010. Spotlights include Tate Britain's survey show of watercolourists in 2011 and Queer British Art exhibition in 2017, as well as his acclaimed retrospective at Huddersfield Art Gallery in 2012, and the eponymous exhibition at Palazzo Bentivoglio (Bologna) “A View From A Window” in 2022.

"The letter, constantly transformed and deconstructed, resists, revealing itself as indestructible... I thus associate what will be forever ignored with that which will remain indelible."

Born in 1925 in Berlin to a Jewish family, Max Wechsler was sent to Paris in January 1939. At the end of the war, having lost his family, he chose to remain in Paris, where he worked in various jobs before starting at Vaillant newspaper as an illustrator and graphic designer, a profession he practiced part-time until the early 1990s.

Starting in the 1950s, he began painting intensely—landscapes, portraits, compositions inspired by frequenting museums, where he drew influence from artists such as Paul Klee and Jean Dubuffet.

His first exhibition of these small-format works took place in 1959.

In the 1960s, he painted extensively in a surrealist vein, creating Fantastic Compositions made of "organic expansions [...] spirals, bulges, cracks..." according to Pierre Gaudibert, or "symbolic figures bearing witness to a work of suffering," in the words of Alfred Paquement. These works were exhibited at the Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris during the ARC's first event in 1968.

He voluntarily stopped painting from 1973 to 1977.

After this break, he permanently abandoned figuration in favor of abstraction, which he would never leave. He produced series of works on canvas where he explored material: projections, striated surfaces, lacerating gestures, a new gestural approach.

In 1984, there was a new rupture. He abandoned the canvas stretcher for large works on canvas incorporating collages of various materials—papers, newspapers—creating a dense and thick material, which he titled Recouvrements papiers (Paper Coverings). These large formats were inspired by the space of the studio he acquired in 1985 in the Bastille district in Paris, where he would work until the end of his life.

Starting in 1990, his creative process focused on a single material: print. Through reductions, enlargements, and extreme distortions of typographic characters, he transformed all kinds of writings to create a universe where only the memory of the letter remained. The question of the series was posed by the process of infinite reproduction.

Expansion of illegibility, without edges or center, from deep black to white, luminous spaces where the material generates color in variations that open to light —the other light, "the one that emanates from the work," according to Max Wechsler—where only the sign testifies to the permanence of the letter and its impossible disappearance. These are the Papiers marouflés (pasted papers) in very large and very small formats, "coverings and successive layers (that) form an archeology of memory," according to Dominique Dendrael.

Max Wechsler says: "The letter, constantly transformed, deconstructed, resists, revealing itself as indestructible... I thus associate what will be forever ignored with that which will remain indelible."

In the 2000s, Berlin welcomed the artist back to his hometown and held several major exhibitions in his honor: at the Jüdisches Museum Berlin, the Villa Oppenheim, the Galerie KunstbüroBerlin, and the Berlinische Galerie, to which he made a significant donation in 2010.

In Paris, he regularly exhibited at the Musée d'Art et d'Histoire du Judaïsme, where his donation was presented in 2017, at the Guislain-Etats d'Art Gallery, the ETC Gallery, the Dutko Gallery, and in Paray-le-Monial at the Musée du Hiéron, to which he also made a donation.

He created his last works in 2019 and passed away in Paris on May 12, 2020."

96-EMT-4, 1996 Collaged Paper on Wood 77 x 74 cm

Untitled, 1998 Collaged paper on Wood 182 x 160 cm 

My work explores themes of human embodiment; seeing the body as Itself and seeing the body as Other, through the physical act of painting. More specifically, I am interested in the times we encounter our body Itself as the Other. Moments where we become abruptly and inescapably aware of how our physical self is not something we possess or control but rather something we inhabit. 

Bruising, bloating, blushing; sagging, swelling, stretching. The burning pinks and pulsing blues, sallow greens and fading greys. 

In becoming aware of our physical misgivings and limitations, we establish our position in the world and what we can make of it. The canvas edge serves as a metaphor for these contingencies. Figures devoid of any discernible identity or gender, squeeze into the boundaries of the picture plain, ultimately dictated by and succumbing to their existence. 

By allowing the work to evolve through the unpredictable nature or mark-making, these beings exist on a sliding scale of figuration and abstraction. What appears as a result is neither friend nor foe. Like catching a glimpse of yourself in the bath taps, they straddle the line between the familiar and the absurd; the joyous and the grotesque. Teetering on the edge of plausibility. 

NISO

NISO

Artists

Olivia Bax

Olivia Bax

Daniel Brusatin

Daniel Brusatin

Guy Haddon Grant

Guy Haddon Grant

Nicky Hodge

Nicky Hodge

Michael Kaul

Michael Kaul

Manabu Mabe

Manabu Mabe

Hitoshi Nakazato

Hitoshi Nakazato

Yuki Nara

Yuki Nara

Sawako Nasu

Sawako Nasu

Patrick Procktor

Patrick Procktor

Max Wechsler

Max Wechsler

C. Lucy R. Whitehead

C. Lucy R. Whitehead