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Contemporary Art

Emerging Artists Worth Following In 2018

Emerging art is a general category for contemporary artworks created by young artists whose careers are on the rise. In addition to younger artists and newer works, the category also includes artists who are relatively under-recognized but for the most part, considered on the path to critical and/or market acceptance.

While characteristically championed by smaller galleries and art fairs focused on younger artists, larger galleries and institutions regularly focus their energy on so-called emerging artists to define new styles and careers. Their careers are not built in one night or with an exhibition but are asserted step by step, show after show and collection after collection. Exhibitions, museums, art galleries and the internet are a great way to get acquainted with emerging artists and to get in touch with their art step by step, admiring their works and developing a passion for their creativity.

Here are some emerging artists to follow in 2018, in the months and years to come.

RHYS COREN

RHYS COREN: Can Moonshake Make Me
RHYS COREN: Can Moonshake Make Me

An English artist graduated at the Royal Academy School in London, Rhys Coren works with different techniques and creates abstract works with bright colours and sprayed textures. His artwork often includes playful allusions to human figures, whether they are pointed noses or fluttering hands. In 2017 Coren exhibited his works in some galleries in Paris, New York and Rome.

 

IVANA BAŠIĆ

Ivana Bašić is a Serbian artist who works in New York and enjoys experimenting with contemporary sculpture and mixed media. Her works have recently attracted a lot of attention due to their visceral ability to portray and dissect the human body. Wax body sculptures suspended and engraved with a band or supported by steel bars to show the vulnerability and resilience of humankind.

GENEVIEVE GAIGNARD

IVANA BAŠIĆ: Fantasy vanishes in flesh
IVANA BAŠIĆ: Fantasy vanishes in flesh

Originally inspired by Diane Arbus, Genevieve Gaignard is a young emerging artist who works in Los Angeles and loves photographing herself disguised as some of her alter egos, such as a cat-woman or a woman fully dressed in purple. Raised in an industrial town in Massachusetts and born to a black father and a white mother, Gaignard doesn’t exaggerate this mix of identities in her works but creates eccentric and interesting artwork.

MAX HOOPER SCHNEIDER

CUI JIE: Daughter of the Sea
CUI JIE: Daughter of the Sea

This thirty-four-year-old artist has recently been the protagonist of the 15th edition of Art Basel Miami Beach, with the nomination to the BMW Art Journey. After his studies in biology and urban design at New York University and in landscape architecture at Harvard, Max Hooper Schneider has turned to what he calls “Trans- Habitats”, imaginary living ecosystems housed in improbable containers: a vertical Kenmore dishwasher from the 50s, full of glass objects, becomes a black water barrier, a moss-covered VHS recorder plays a tape of concert within an acrylic showcase while a terrarium hosts a landscape combining parts of cars, animal material, plastic plants and bright neon signs.

While characteristically championed by smaller galleries and art fairs focused on younger artists, larger galleries and institutions regularly focus their energy on so-called emerging artists to define new styles and careers

LUIZ ROQUE

MAX HOOPER SCHNEIDER: Installation view of The Plague Wielder
MAX HOOPER SCHNEIDER: Installation view of The Plague Wielder

The movie Haven (2016) by Luiz Roque, commissioned for the 32nd São Paulo Art Biennial, perfectly represented the theme of the exhibition “Live Uncertainty”. His work offered a cause for reflection on how this uncertainty could evolve in the future, as the film imagines the spread of a mysterious virus at the end of the 21st century, which was prematurely attributed to transsexuals by health agencies, in a narrative recalling the anti-AIDS campaigns of the 1980s. As this work demonstrates, the artist often explores delicate topics such as gender or cultural bias, through video, sculpture and photography.

CELIA HEMPTON

LUIZ ROQUE: Ano brancoAn English painter who loves exploring the human body and sensuality in her works, Celia Hempton points bare body parts with unexpected colours, from canary yellow to navy blue. For her series of paintings “Chat Random”, begun in 2014 and still ongoing, Hempton portrays anonymous models found online in video chat. She exhibited her works in London, Paris, New York and Boston

CUI JIE

CELIA HEMPTON: Penumbra
CELIA HEMPTON: Penumbra

Artist Cui Jie has quickly become one of the most exciting new voices of contemporary art in China thanks to her beautiful architectural paintings and sculptures. The works reflect the rise of her country and rapid urbanization, intertwining organic elements, such as birds and human shapes, into futuristic structures. She exhibited her works in Hong Kong and Shanghai, but also in Great Britain, Dublin and Miami Beach.