Alfie Caine, Houlgate Villa, 2020. New Now London.
Alfie Caine
In many ways, Alfie Caine’s work is a welcome escape from the bustle of contemporary life. His inviting scenes of interiors, architectural structures, and the natural world delight in the little moments of pleasure that too many of us take for granted. There is a compelling interplay in his works between imaginative colors, expert draftsmanship, and masterful handling of space that together present idealized depictions that approach the surreal. In short, the atmosphere of his works is utopian yet tinged with a comforting, dreamlike familiarity. The young artist’s surprising mastery of space, line, and form is perhaps explained by his architectural studies at Cambridge, where he graduated with Honors in 2018.
As an emerging artist, Caine’s paintings have become extremely desirable. A short list of global exhibitions featuring his work includes shows at Union Gallery in London, Jack Siebert in Paris, and JARILAGER Gallery in Seoul. Caine’s work first appeared at auction in January 2023 at the Whitechapel Gallery Art Icon Charity Auction hosted by Phillips. In October of that year, his 2020 work Midday Sun soared past expectations to achieve more than seven times its estimate at Phillips’ 20th Century & Contemporary Art Day Sale in London.
Xie Lei
Xie Lei, Swallow, 2021. New Now London.
Highly characteristic of the Chinese artist’s ability to capture the space between serenity and torment, Xie Lei’s Swallow presents a close-cropped image of a male figure, his face blurred in an expressive swirl of brushstrokes. Set against a background of deep, translucent dark hues, we’re drawn into a mysterious atmosphere devoid of time and space, the figure seeming to exist in a state between life and death. As our eyes scan the canvas for meaning, it strikes us like a scene from an ancient folktale we haven’t yet heard.
It's this soft and poetic ambiguity to Xie’s world-building that sets his works apart and has propelled his reputation to that of a young artist hot on the rise. Born in China in 1983, the artist studied at the Central Academy of Fine Arts in Beijing before moving to Paris for graduate studies, where he lives and works today. Just this year, his work was featured in group and solo shows throughout the world, including at the Fondation Louis Vuitton in Paris, the Kandlhofer in Vienna, and Lyles & King in New York. Additionally, Xie Lei was artist-in-residence at the Boghossian Foundation in Brussels in 2022.
Jenna Gribbon
Jenna Gribbon, Hiding Place Under the Stairs Wrestlers, 2019. New Now London.
Jenna Gribbon expresses her memories and nuanced approaches to art historical sources and contemporary life in alluring paintings that explore the transformative act of looking. “I want people to kind of own their pleasure in looking. And you know, question it, but also recognize that it’s not benign. Looking at a body depicted on a canvas … you are participating in something,” the artist explains. Hiding Place Under the Stairs Wrestlers from 2019 features a frequent subject for the artist, as she reconsiders art historical imagery of (typically male) nude wrestlers through depictions of intertwined women that oscillate between a welcoming intimacy and a glaring voyeurism. The 2019 work comes from a breakthrough year for the artist, when she presented the solo show When I Look At You The Light Changed at Fredricks & Freiser gallery in New York’s Chelsea neighborhood.
Born in Knoxville, Tennessee, and now based in Brooklyn, Gribbon’s alluring works are rapidly capturing the attention both art lovers and institutions worldwide. In 2022 Gribbon was one of just four artists the Frick Museum in New York invited to participate in the Living Histories: Queer Views and Old Masters project, which showcased contemporary and historical works in conversation with each other. Her works have recently been included at solo and group exhibitions in New York, London, Los Angeles, and Berlin and the solo exhibition Jenna Gribbon: The Honeymoon Show! is on view through January 2024 at Lévy Gorvy Dayan in New York. Her work has also been included in exhibitions at the Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw, the Museum of Contemporary Art in Jacksonville, Florida, and the Fort Worth Museum of Art in Texas, among many others.
Wynnie Mynerva
Wynnie Mynerva, Bailo mi ritmo, pero no me detengo, 2022. New Now London.
Born in Lima, Peru in 1993, Wynnie Mynerva was surrounded from a young age by a culture that normalized violence based on gender, sexuality, race, and social class. Today, Mynerva powerfully owns their own desires and reacts to their early trauma by creating striking images of retribution and liberation that function as a form of release. In deeply physical large-scale paintings, they depict bodies at the very edge of abstraction that defy categorization, refusing to be controlled by external actors or consumed by the male gaze. Exploring themes including religion, iconography, the body, and sexuality, Mynerva reassigns power in the archetypally binary gender dynamic. “My path is forged from the memory of being a girl of disobedience: dissatisfied, hysterical, and incorrigible. Society wanted to tame me and marked my body with fear,” Mynerva has declared of their path.
Their captivating images are impossible to ignore, and the art world has taken note. In 2023, their work was shown in solo exhibitions at The New Museum (The Original Riot) in New York and Gathering in London (Bone of My Bones, Flesh of My Flesh). They have been featured internationally in numerous further solo and group exhibitions.
Studio Lenca
Studio Lenca, Antonio, 2021. New Now London.
Jose Campos produces autobiographical work under the name Studio Lenca. His works depict regally attired, dignified figures who assert their ownership over space which contrasts with the artist’s early experience of oppressive immigration policies. Born in 1986 in El Salvador, the artist and his mother fled the violence of the country’s civil war. Settling in the United States, Studio Lenca was raised undocumented, cleaning houses with his mother as the pair lived with no permanent address. By presenting confident figures in colorful clothing and hats, their gazes directly meeting our own, his works reject the assimilation and secrecy forced on his family by the United States immigration system.
The artist’s name at once refers to a constantly shifting space for experimentation and the ‘Lenca’ people — the artist’s Mesoamerican indigenous ancestors. Now based at Tracey Emin’s TKE Studios in Margate, England, Studio Lenca’s work is rapidly gaining the interest of the art world. In 2023 alone, the artist presented three solo exhibitions in London and New York and was in residence at Adhesivo in Mexico City. His work is included in institutional collections including the Parrish Art Museum in New York, the Pérez Art Museum in Miami, and many others. Studio Lenca received an MA from Goldsmiths University of London.
Lise Stoufflet
Lise Stoufflet, Dialogue Nocturne, 2020. New Now London.
French artist Lise Stoufflet’s Dialogue Nocturne presents an obscured narrative that has become a signature of her practice, which borders on the surreal. Viewing the work, we are invited to stand just behind the figure, who we see from the rear. Together we gaze at two small, enticingly bright lights in the distance that cast a blue glow across the edges of the trees and the figure. These distant lights seem as though they could be the eyes of another creature gazing back at us. Stoufflet’s painterly skill is demonstrated here in the magnificent homogeneity between the figure and her setting. Reminiscent of camouflage, the color and pattern of her hooded fur coat echo the colors and textures of the tree bark and her long blue fingernails mirror the color of the night sky. It’s an enigmatic image that carefully guards its secrets but holds us rapt in discovery.
Born in 1989, Stoufflet graduated from the Beaux-arts de Paris in 2014 and continues to work in a Paris suburb. She has presented solo exhibitions at galleries throughout France and Italy and has featured in group shows in Europe, the U.K., and the United States. Dialogue Nocturne is the first of her works to appear at auction outside of France.
Sarah Cunningham
Sarah Cunningham, Banana Plant, 2020. New Now London.
Concentrating on an engagement with the natural world and the subconscious, British artist Sarah Cunningham’s virtuosic and expressive canvases have rapidly caught the attention of the global art world. Painted in 2020 while the artist was still an M.A. student at London’s Royal College of Art, Banana Plant showcases what has drawn so many people into her work: broad, bold brush strokes, an imaginative use of color, and softly glowing light. These elements combine in this work to explore the oscillation of order and chaos inherent to the natural world, as the artist executes an inspired rendering that embraces abstraction.
Cunningham’s practice is nocturnal and rooted in dreamlike states of consciousness, which she first explored in depth in 2018 at the La Wayaka Current Artist Residency in Armila, Panama. There, she attended dream ceremonies with the indigenous community, which have continued to heighten her awareness in painting. She has explained, “I don’t have a dream then make a painting based on that, but I’ve noticed there is a dream somewhere in the painting, often halfway through or towards the end of my process.” Cunningham’s work was first featured at auction this past May at Phillips New York, where her 2020 work Moonlight Reflecting Petals sold for more than six times its low estimate.
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