Volery Gallery invites everyone to attend Well Hot, a group exhibition featuring 12 contemporary artists from Moosey Gallery: Imon Boy, Alex Chien, Murray Clarke, Rebecca Foster-Clarke, Ant Hamlyn, Katie Hector, Kpe Innocent, Nathan James, Nanhee Kim, Victoria Nunley, Hiroshima Shinkichi, and Augustina Wang. It will be on view until 2 June 2023.
Apart from being famous for skyscrapers, luxurious shopping malls, and active nightlife, Dubai is well hot, first of all. The heat of the city defines the way people live, work, and play, so the title of the Well Hot exhibition is inspired by this aspect of Dubai.
A common thread running through the exhibition is a sense of engagement with the world around us. The displayed artworks evoke a sense of energy, vitality, and a willingness to push boundaries. They are not passive or inert: thought-provoking, they demand attention and inspire action.
About the participating artists
Imon Boy (b. 1991, Malaga, Spain) is an artist residing in Malaga who eliminates the boundaries between graffiti and fine art in his work. He draws his inspiration not only from graffiti, but also video games, Internet, films, music, and many other things. What is portrayed in Boy’s artworks characterised by cartoon style is usually interwoven with his personal life, reflections, and analyses.
Alex Chien (b. 1994, Athens, Greece) is an illustrator and graffiti artist living and working in Athens. In his humorous surreal cartoons and illustrations, he addresses the absurdity or significance of social issues, current events, and people and objects.
Rebecca Foster-Clarke (b. 1999. Norwich, UK) is a figurative artist who lives and works in Hamburg, Germany. Using bright colours, she creates realistic paintings that often depict women, insects, animals and still life scenes. In her artworks, she reflects the disconcerted nature of being a young woman.
Ant Hamlyn (b. 1993, Northampton, UK) is a sculptor and installation artist who resides in London, UK, and whose art is inspired by flower pressing, optical illusions, and nostalgia. Using such materials as polyurethane, fibre for padding, glossy paint or plywood, his sculptures are crushed still lifes: stylised plants pressed under sheets of acrylic. In his work, Hamlyn explores our relationship and changing enthusiasm towards contemporary life.
Katie Hector (b. 1992, Lawrenceville, NJ, USA) is an artist, curator, and writer based in Los Angeles, CA, USA. Spraying dye and bleach onto canvas with an airbrush gun, she creates glowing, even ghostlike portraits of her friends, people she has met, and complete strangers. Hector says that her art pieces serve as “allegories for longing, intimacy, and grief in response to isolation and dissociation”.
Kpe Innocent (b. 1994, Ghana) is a self-taught visual artist from Accra, Ghana, whose main source of inspiration is Christian faith. Aiming to create artworks which resonate with people all around the world, in his work he explores the themes connected to love, grace, hope, and conditions that affect us as humans. Innocent captures the globalised world by incorporating pop-culture references (for example, the Nike logo) into his art pieces.
Nathan James (b. 1979, Kirkland Lake, Ontario, Canada) resides in London, UK. He is inspired by his childhood in Ontario, cartoons, and the golden age of Hollywood. In his oil paintings, James blends the vintage pinup girls with the features of caricatured cartoon faces and this way creates a visual language both nostalgically familiar and absurd.
Nanhee Kim (b. 1993, South Korea) lives and works in Hamburg, Germany. Kim’s colourful artworks are based on jokes and absurdity from conversations with her friends, movies, and memes that have gone viral on the Internet.
Victoria Nunley (b. 1991. New Jersey, USA) is an artist living in New Jersey. For her, painting is a way to process real-life events and set about on an internal emotional journey. In her cartoonish artworks depicting Wild West, she explores such themes as the difference between being alone and loneliness, perseverance, guilt, shame, pride, and stubbornness.
Hiroshima Shinkichi (b. 1994. Saitama, Japan) resides in Saitama. Using acrylic paints and airbrushes, he creates caricatured paintings full of deprecating humour which depict the everyday actions of humans. In his works, the artist tells stories of what came before and what comes after the freakish moment they show.
Augustina Wang (b. 1991, New York, USA) explores her Asian femme identity through lore and worldbuilding. She also investigates the machinations of power which seems unachievable to her as a Chinese-American woman. Wang’s artworks depict Asian women in a fantasy world where they are powerful protagonists in a battle for justice and retribution.
To learn more about the Well Hot exhibition, please visit its official web page.
You may also be interested in visiting The Storyteller curated by Behrang Samadzadegan.
