Palm Beach Modern + Contemporary 2023

Yuko Nishikawa creates a fantastical environment with her colourful, textural lively forms. With a hands-on, exploratory approach, she makes paintings, lighting, mobiles and sculptures using a variety of mediums including clay, wire, fabrics, as well as repurposed materials such as recycled paper and used eyewear lenses.

Her work reflects her accumulative experiences in architecture, restoration, interior and furniture design, crafts and engineering. Growing up in a small seaside town just south of Tokyo, Japan, Nishikawa received her B.F.A. in Interior Design from New York’s Fashion Institute of Technology in 2002. Since then, she has surveyed courthouses, hospitals and federal buildings; documented the Guggenheim Museum’s facade for the restoration project in 2008; and assisted in hospitality and residential interior design projects for some of NYC’s leading studios such as Clodagh, Bilhuber Inc. and Alexandra Champalimaud.

She currently works in her studio in the industrial area in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, NY, which she built out with friends utilising demolished materials found in the building.

Yuko Nishikawa comments on her ‘Memory Tourist’ installation:

“Memory Tourist combines part of my recent installations with new work, whose wire forms create line drawings in the air and connect colorful and airy repurposed paper “Cookies” which move in response to us when we walk by them and stir the air. To make these Cookies, I collect used photo-background paper from artists and photographers in my Brooklyn studio building. I break it down to pulp, and formulate it with bookbinders' glue into an air-dry clay. The rich colors come directly from the colors of the donated paper; there are no added paints or pigments. I mix pulps the way I would mix paints to make additional colors and effects, by blending blue pulp and red pulp to make a purple clay, for example. Mushy pulps make homogeneous colors, while crumbly pulps have a stippled effect. Finely blended pulps form a smoother surface like macaroons while coarser pulps become bumpier like oatmeal cookies.Over the last year I made mobiles for specific times and places, first for Cape Cod in May, then next for Vermont in November, this Spring for different neighborhoods in my hometown Brooklyn, and then this Summer for San Francisco. Through my traveling for these installations I began to think of the memory of the material - the paper. It retains the colors and the fibers it originally had in these mobiles, whose elements interact with one another as they swing, recreate relationships, and then part ways, like those who visit a place for pleasure.”

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Freya Bramble-Carter is a London-based ceramics artist, known for works that tap into the universal power of nature and the feminine forces of the Earth. Freya’s imagination, life experiences, and personal philosophies all influence her process and the forms she creates. Her work ranges from fine homewares including plates and bowls to large outdoor sculptural pieces, and even water features for interior or outdoor spaces. Applying her talent to artisan glazes and handcrafting unique silhouettes, Freya's limited-edition pieces are designed to elevate the everyday and inspire awe through their textures, colors, and shape.

Before studying fine art at Chelsea College of Arts, Freya grew up with clay covered hands learning from her father and fellow ceramicist Chris Bramble. She compliments her creative practice by teaching classes, but often enjoys ‘unlearning’ the rules when it comes to making her own pieces. She relishes the magic of making and how clay as a medium is full of endless, fluid possibilities. Her connection to the medium is a helpful tool, as clay is a teacher on many levels. Always learning to let go, reimagine, and adjust, Bramble-Carter’s relationship with her medium is ever evolving. Freya allows flow and freedom in her work as well as structure and strength. She believes in creating works that she can ‘impart with a piece of my soul.’ Freya was a beloved contestant on The Great Pottery Throw Down and recently was invited back to judge a challenge on the most recent season.

Crown the Clown Collection by Freya Bramble-Carter was specially crafted for the Meaning Behind Materiality exhibition with Cynthia Corbett Gallery as part of London Craft Week 2021. Last year at Collect, we debuted her series Pearl Parade, which was created during her 2021-22 studio residency with Florence St. George in the Bahamas. This year we are delighted to be showing those works as well as some from her latest collaborative series The Mermaids Purse, which debuted at Art Miami 2022. Both collections were born of Freya and Florence’s mutual love of the Bahamian land and sea. Using clay that they foraged four years ago from East End Grand Bahama, they patiently waited for the clay to mature so that they could work with it. Freya returned to the Islands in 2022 and the two potters worked night and day for two weeks collaborating on this collection also using finer clay to complement their new clam formed vases. Their studio is a space filled with love, fresh thoughts and a buzz of imaginative energy as they create and play with the clay together. These vases reflect the waves that crash on the sandy shores of the Bahamas, the petals and leaves that grow from the inside of the pot’s belly are like tongues, the voices echoing their journey. The pots are delicate, feminine yet strong and proud.

Freya Bramble-Carter is represented by Cynthia Corbett Gallery.

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Klari Reis uses the tools and techniques of science in her creative process, constantly experimenting with new ways to apply materials and methods. She is driven by curiosity and her desire to explore and document the natural and unnatural with a sense of wonder and joy. Formally trained as an architect, the artist from her base in San Francisco (in proximity to one of the largest concentrations of life science/technology companies in the world) collaborates with local biomedical companies and is inspired by the cutting edge of biological techniques and discoveries.

The unifying theme of Klari Reis’s art is her mastery of a new media plastic, epoxy polymer, and the fine control she brings to its reactions with a variety of dyes and pigments. Her compositions display brightly coloured smears, bumps and blobs atop aluminium and wood panels. A skilled technician with a studio for a laboratory, Reis uses science in the service of her art.

Klari Reis's work has been exhibited worldwide and public collections include Microsoft Research in Cambridge, UK; Next World Capital’s offices in San Francisco, Paris, and Brussels; MEG Diagnostic Centre for Autistic Children in Oxford, UK; Great Ormond Street Hospital for Children in London; the Stanford University Medical Center Hoover Pavilion in California; and Elan Pharmaceuticals, Genentech, Acetelion and Cytokinetics in South San Francisco.

Klari Reis is represented internationally by Cynthia Corbett Gallery.

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‘America has Lichtenstein, we have Azzopardi!’ - Estelle Lovatt FRSA

Deborah Azzopardi acquired worldwide fame for her joyous Pop Art images she has created over the past 35 years. Her unique and feminine take on contemporary art is best described by the esteemed art critic Estelle Lovatt: ‘America has Lichtenstein, we have Azzopardi!’ Lovatt goes on to comment: “Sometimes you just want to curl up under a blanket. With a good book. A piece of chocolate. A man. This is what Deborah Azzopardi’s pictures make me feel like doing. They are me. They remind me of the time I had a red convertible sports car. I had two, actually. And yes, they are you, too. You immediately, automatically, engage with the narrative of Azzopardi’s conversational visual humour. Laughter is the best aphrodisiac, as you know. ... There’s plenty of art historical references from... Manet’s suggestive ‘Olympia’; Boucher’s thought-provoking... ‘Louise O’Murphy’ and Fragonard’s frivolous, knickerless, ‘The Swing’.... Unique in approach, you easily recognise an Azzopardi picture. ... Working simple graphics and toned shading (for depth), the Pop Art line that Azzopardi sketches is different to Lichtenstein’s. Hers is more curvaceous. Feminine.”

The world is familiar with Azzopardi’s artworks, as many of them have been published internationally. Her original paintings, such as the Habitat ‘Dating’ series (2004/08), the iconic ...One Lump Or Two? (2014) and Love Is The Answer (2016), created by the artist at the request of Mitch and Janis Winehouse as a tribute to their daughter, are in great demand. This year Azzopardi was commissioned to create two works celebrating the late Queen Elizabeth’s Platinum Jubilee. The first, making use of platinum leaf, silver leaf, and diamond dust, presents an image of the young queen rendered in symbols of her long reign. The second, an image of Her Majesty’s coronation shoe done in silver and gold leaf, celebrates the design by Roger Vivier which allowed her to endure the 3-hour coronation.

Deborah Azzopardi is represented internationally by Cynthia Corbett Gallery.

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In a contemporary art world that condemns beauty as camouflage for conceptual shallowness, championing high aesthetics is nothing short of rebellion. Dutch photographer Isabelle Van Zeijl takes female beauty ideals from the past, and sabotages them in the context of today. As a women she experiences prejudices against women; misogyny in numerous ways including sex discrimination, belittling/violence against women and sexual objectification. Van Zeijl aestheticises these prejudices in her work to visually discuss this troubling dichotomy, presenting a new way of seeing female beauty. An oppressive idealisation of beauty is tackled in her work through unique female character and emotion.

Van Zeijl is invested in her images. By using subjects that intrigue and evoke emotion, she reinvents herself over and over and has created a body of work to illustrate these autobiographical narratives. Her work takes from all she experiences in life - she is both model, creator, object and subject. Going beyond the realm of individual expression, so common in the genre of self-portraiture, she strives to be both universal and timeless, with a

Isabelle Van Zeijl, born and based in the Netherlands is an internationally acclaimed Fine Art Photographer. She was nominated for the Prix De La Photographie Paris, The Fine Art Photography Awards and was one of the winners of The Young Masters 2017 Emerging Woman Art Prize, London. Her work is held in prominent private & public collections in the USA, Europe, UK, Australia and Asia.

Isabelle Van Zeijl is represented internationally by Cynthia Corbett Gallery.

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Cristina Schek is the photosensitive kind. She thinks in pictures; her imagination is always in focus. A Transylvanian living in London, she creates worlds she calls "myth places”; they exist, each in their own ways.

Far removed from traditional or documentary photography, the camera is merely a tool for Cristina. She enjoys the freedom of layering and manipulating her photographs into creative montages, trusting her instinct for matching the raw material with the suggestive imaginings of her subconscious. Often whimsical and a touch romantic, her photographs are given subtle alterations in a digital process that often takes months, resulting in carefully constructed compositions, which reveal the influence of the great Surrealists and Old Masters.

“Inspired by my love of nature, ‘Fern Gil’ is a construct of my imagination, a divine embodiment of vegetation, a Forest Goddess, an emblem of the birth-death-rebirth cycle of the natural year. She is made of prehistoric ferns from the time dinosaurs roamed the Earth, and she has survived several mass extinctions. She speaks to us profoundly and serves as a powerful voice in today's ecological upheaval. It's our duty to protect this miraculous entity, as if she were a child in our care." Cristina Schek

Press: 'Fern Girl' featured in Widewalls Magazine. | Cristina Schek Winner of W4 Fourth Plinth Unveiled by Dame Siân Phillips

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Christina Benz's works are visual statements on today's society. The most recent works focus on media culture in particular. Benz touches upon issues of identity linked to consumerism, branding, celebrity obsession and self promotion through reality media programs. Previous works deal with the fragility of being and contain minimal scenarios with dark but humorous undertones. Many of the protagonists are constrained in prolonged repetitive situations, however undeterred they continually strive to change their situation.

Christina comments on her relationship to the medium of paper:

“Lorem ipsum is the title for a new series of my drawings in ink and gouache on paper. The drawings are inspired by the aesthetics of ancient botanical illustrations. Instead of fieldwork and precise observations, however, the drawing process is exactly the opposite. The starting point is a colourful spot of colour. Once this is set, a black ink pencil takes over; it reacts to the colourful initial action and forms associative structures around the colour in great detail, which seem organic but defy clear classification.

The title pretends to be Latin. In graphic design, lorem ipsum is used as a placeholder for a text that has yet to be written.”

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Tuëma Pattie (b. 1938) was born in Dublin and studied at the Belfast College of Art, the Central School of Art and Design and Morley College, London, Piers Ottey and Christopher Baker in Sussex and Robin Child in Devon.

In her days in Belfast and London, she took advantage of urban scenes as her subject matter. She then had a long period in which she took time out to have two children and to support her husband in his career. This meant it was difficult to find the time for her beloved painting, as was the case for many women in that era.

With the move out of London in 1989, she did have the subsequent benefit of much foreign travel. Subject matter was carefully gathered with the resultant explosion of energy into her canvases, with paintings from the Galapagos, Antarctica, Spain, Italy and Uzbekistan as well as her beautiful West Sussex. It is from this period that she was able to develop into the world of experimental landscapes.

Tuëma Pattie has exhibited at the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition; the Royal Hibernian Summer Exhibition; the Cork Street Gallery; Art for Youth at the Mall Gallery London; London Art Fair; the Chichester Open; the Moncrief Bray Gallery, the Kevis House Gallery and the Rowntree Tryon Gallery all in Petworth; APPART; the East Hampshire Art Fair; the Jorgensen Gallery in Dublin and at Glyndebourne.

“To me, painting has always been an opportunity to interpret imaginatively what I see in front of me. The facts are there – it is how one brings them to life that is the magic”, – Pattie says.

ArtNet News : Irish Artist Tuëma Pattie Disappeared From Public View for Decades. Now, a London Gallery Is Spotlighting Her Comeback and Artistic Transformation

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Kgole’s work is typified by his use of Anaglyphs. Two versions of his composite photographic images are printed in different colours (typically blue and red) onto canvas then collage and paint are applied to the printed work. The viewer is then asked to view the work through glasses with red and blue filter lenses, creating a dramatic 3D effect. The glasses play the role of enhancing the viewer’s experience and relationship to the work, interacting with the work on a more intimate level. His works range from collage, ceramics, prints, oil paintings, digital, and sculpture. A Kgole piece is a merge of cultural, interpersonal, artistic, aesthetic, and psychological influence; all drawn through experiences of nomadic travelling and values in upbringing.

Giggs Kgonamotse Kgole, professionally known as Kgole, was born April 15 1997 in Kutupu Village, Limpopo-raised in Tembisa, Johannesburg. From a pool of 3000 applicants, he was one of 25 who earned a full scholarship to attended St John’s College, a prestigious, selective, and rigorous secondary institution. He completed high-school at St John’s with art honours, sports accolades, and leadership positions. Being the first person in his family to attend a private high-school and the first to reach and pass matric, Kgole considers St Johns as a unique achievement for himself as well as his family.

In 2017, a year after his first Solo exhibition he received a Prestigious Presidential Scholarship to study in Rome at John Cabot University, where he had his first solo showcase in Europe titled ‘Before the High Walls’. 2018 marked a new feat for him as he became one of Africa’s youngest gallery owners at the age of 21. GasLamp Gallery, located Johannesburg, South Africa was a contemporary art space for creatives who needed an opportunity to tell their stories in a commercial gallery.

In 2019, he spent six months in France, in a residency organized by Undiscovered Canvas and Mekanova Gallery in Cannes. He was named as the Mail and Guardian’s Top 200 young South Africans, he has also won the People’s choice awards for his masterpiece, “God Ke Mama”, which was the catalogue cover of the 10th Anniversary Young Masters Art Prize in London. Passionate about life, inspiring others and marking his name in history, Kgole continues to make enormous strides and take on the art world, one masterpiece at a time.

In 2020, he was part of 13 visual artists selected by American Academy Award nominated and winner filmmaker Ava DuVernay and Signature African Art gallery owner Khalil Akar to exhibit in the #SAYMYNAME artist-activist show in London. DuVernay aiming to bring traction to the Black Lives Matter Movement to international communities, Akar placing a magnifying to the movement through London’s art world. The show brings humanity to the lives of Breonna Taylor and George Floyd among other’s who lost their lives to systematic racism and police brutality. Kgole’s work, “Stop Killing Our Mothers” visualizes the torment and heaviness of loss coupled with the helplessness of fighting against a system that is built to erase you.

In 2021, he was part of 6 artists selected by English rugby player Maro Itoje in collaboration with Signature African Art (Khalil Akar) to unveil British black history untold in the school curriculum, “A History Untold.” The artists, a mix of continental African and African Diaspora, focused on the hidden and unrecognised nuances of black contribution to civilisation and society, rectifying the perspective, attitudes, and socio-cultural trajectory of what is defined as black history alongside society’s understanding of it and black people’s integrity and identity within it.

Yearn is as a dreamscape of Kgole’s 16 year old self yearning to be a world exhibiting contemporary visual artist, how a teenage dream never died despite the harsh realities of life after leaving the schooling environment and trying to send a message of hope from Africa to the world. Growing up in South Africa, Kgole found himself in environments that discouraged prospects of a child making artworks and playing with paints. When environments that are against our dreams push down hard on one’s growth, all a child could continue to do is live their futures in their dreams. With time comes a moment when those dreams stop becoming dreams as you realise that you do not need any one’s permission to be. ‘I didn’t ask for your Permission to be Kgole’ is what the dreamscapes message was for him, however, questions the viewer on what they shouldn’t ask for permission for in their own lives

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Lauded by Annabel Sampson, Deputy Editor of Tatler as “the next David Hockney” painter Andy Burgess, who hails from London but lives in Arizona, continues to expand upon his fascination with contemporary architecture. A new series of paintings on panel and canvas colourfully re-imagines iconic modernist and contemporary houses. Burgess selects the subjects for his paintings with the discernment of the portrait painter. Buildings are chosen for their clean lines, bold geometric design, and dynamic forms. Burgess approaches his subjects with a fresh eye, simplifying and abstracting forms even further and inventing, somewhat irreverently, new colour schemes that expand the modernist lexicon beyond the minimalist white palette and rigid use of primary colours. Real places are sometimes re-invented, the architecture and design altered and modified, with new furniture and landscaping and a theatrical lighting that invests the painted scene with a dream-like quality and a peaceful and seductive allure.

Burgess explores in depth the genesis of modern architecture in Europe and the US and its relationship to modern art, avant-garde design, and abstract painting. Burgess explains his fascination with modernist architecture thusly:

‘Despite the huge impact of early modern architecture, the innovative and subtle minimalist buildings that I am researching, with their concrete and steel frames, flat roofs, and glass walls, never became the dominant mode of twentieth century building. We have continued to build the vast majority of houses in a traditional and conservative idiom, so that these great examples of modern architecture, designed by the likes of Gropius, Loos and Breuer to name but a few, are still shocking and surprising today in their boldness and modernity, almost a hundred years after they were built.’

Alongside the large-scale paintings, Burgess creates collages which reflect his love of vintage graphics, particularly those from the 1930s–50s, a “golden age” in American graphic design and advertising. Burgess has been collecting vintage American ephemera for many years; this ephemera is then unapologetically deconstructed, cut up into tiny pieces and reconstructed into visual and verbal poems, dazzling multi-coloured pop art pieces, and constructed cityscapes.

Burgess has completed many important commissions for public and private institutions including Crossrail (London’s largest ever engineering project), Cunard, APL shipping, Mandarin Oriental Hotels, a new medical centre in San Jose, California and most recently, Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU) at Chelsea and Westminster Hospital in London.

In 2021 Andy Burgess started creating a series of site-specific artworks for the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU) at Chelsea and Westminster Hospital in London. The project, initiated by CW+ – the official charity of the Chelsea and Westminster Hospital NHS Foundation Trust – and facilitated by Cynthia Corbett Gallery, which represents Burgess internationally, aims to improve and enhance the NICU environment for patients, relatives and staff.

Working together with the NICU team, Burgess was reminiscing on the hospital’s neighbourhoods and its iconic views, sights and buildings in collaboration with hospital staff. Known for his unique, abstract and colourful style, Andy has transformed selected London scenes into incredible artworks to create a warm and welcoming environment for both parents and staff to enjoy. The display, installed on the 16th June 2022, includes a panorama of London, an image of Albert Bridge and another of a London Underground station. Additionally, Andy produced two smaller scale abstract pieces developed from the colour palettes of his larger works, which were gifted as part of the commission. CW+ also acquired two existing works by Andy for the unit through Cynthia Corbett Gallery.

Burgess’s collectors include the Booker prize-winning author Kazuo Ishiguro, actor and writer Emma Thompson, the Tisch family in New York, Beth De Woody, Board Member of The Whitney Museum and Richard and Ellen Sandor in Chicago, who have one of the top 100 art collections in America.

Andy Burgess has been represented internationally by Cynthia Corbett Gallery since 2004.

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Fabiano Parisi was born in 1977 in Rome, Italy. After his Psychology degree, he chose to make photography his career. Parisi partecipated in the 54th Venice Biennale, Italian Pavilion and in Fotografia Festival Internazionale di Roma in 2012 at the Macro Museum. In 2022 he was awarded first prize and Architecture Photographer of the Year at PX3 Prix de la Photographie Paris. In 2020 and 2021 at the IPA, International Photo Awards he was awarded Honorable Mention in Architecture for the winning entry Daydreaming, and in 2017 for the winning entry Il mondo che non vedo. In 2015 he was shortlisted at the Pulse Prize in New York, in 2014 and 2012 he was selected at the Young Masters Art Prize in London, and at Fotografia – Call for Entry Prize in Rome in 2012. He won a special prize at the Arte Laguna Prize 2012 in Venice. In 2010 he was the winner of the Celeste Prize International in New York, and shortlisted in 2009 in Berlin.

Parisi’s work is conceptually driven yet beautiful, documentary yet also poetic. His photographs form important records of the contemporary ruins which are the repositories for so much human activity and memory. His work preserves these otherworldly locations, freezing them in a moment, to be enjoyed forever.

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Elaine Woo MacGregor is a Scottish-born Chinese artist trained in the Glasgow School of Art. She graduated with a Bachelors Degree with honours, acquired a studio and began working as a full-time artist. MacGregor began to be noticed as a serious and thoughtful painter and her first solo exhibition was 'Portraits' in Glasgow.

Elaine Woo MacGregor's work encapsulates the world seen through the eyes of a cross cultural artist. She uses eclectic mark making and imagery to create atmospheric and theatrical scenes. Although her painted stories are often fictitious, elements of the picture are based on real people, places and things.

She has exhibited in galleries in Edinburgh, Glasgow, London, Cambridge and abroad. One of her works - 'Hotel No.4' - is in the public galleries collection, the Atkinson Art Gallery, Southport. MacGregor's work has been shown in the U.K, U.S.A, Australia and Thailand and critically recognised by virtue of the Dewar Arts Award, the James Torrance Memorial Award, the Hope Scott Trust Award and the Cross Trust Fund. In 2022, she was a finalist in the Jackson's Painting Prize, received Art Paisley Prize for outstanding work, and Velvet Easel Award from Paisley Art Institute.