Artists to follow in 2024

A’Driane Nieves

Based in USA

A U.S. Air Force veteran, multi-disciplinary abstract artist, activist, and speaker with a heart for serving others and social good.  

Initially using painting as art therapy while recovering from postpartum depression and bipolar disorder, A’Driane Nieves turned to Abstract Expressionism to help her overcome the effects of childhood abuse. Inspired by a wide range of artists, her paintings create a space for quiet reflection and provide her with a powerful outlet for her emotions and an opportunity for others to do the same.

Klara Kristalova

Based in Czech Republic

Klara Kristalova, a graduate of the Royal University College of Fine Art in Stockholm, Sweden, is a skilled storyteller whose figurative sculptures combine the human form with elements of nature, reflecting the innocence and horror of childhood fantasies. Her ceramic sculptures, infused with uncanny details of everyday life, explore transitional states essential to human and ecological existence. Kristalova’s art creates a fantastical world bridging humanity, ecology and fantasy, embodying the profound effects of constant change on different life forms, offering a familiar yet otherworldly presence with raw emotional depth.

Grace Carney

Based in USA
Grace Carney explores the intersection of anger and love, aggression and submission, movement and confinement in her gestural oil paintings. The artist embraces the ambiguity and messiness of paint, reflecting a fascination with liminal spaces. Within the intricately worked surfaces, Carney hides traces of her emotional experiences, weaving distinct personal narratives and relationships into the layers of paint.

Suchita Mattai 

Based in Guyana

Suchitra Mattai explores the unravelling of historical narratives through memory and myth, focusing on amplifying silenced voices by emphasizing oral histories and family archives. Inspired by her family’s maritime migrations and research into 19th-century colonial indentured labor, she rewrites colonial narratives to highlight the struggles and resilience of those who lived through this period, with a particular focus on women’s labor. Using practices associated with the domestic sphere and repurposing vintage materials, she engages in a dialogue with the original makers, connecting the South Asian diaspora globally through vintage saris and fostering discussions on contemporary issues of gender and labor.

WangShui 

Based in USA

Artist WangShui constructs and enacts a personalized interpretation of our reliance on technology, offering a critical perspective on contemporary media consumption. Through intricate installations, WangShui blends elements of queer youth culture, science fiction, corporate structures, planetary dimensions and A.I. dysmorphia. The result is a dazzling fusion of techno-sensory experiences that move seamlessly between the realms of screen and sculpture.

George Rouy

Based in UK

George Rouy, who lives and works in London, approaches the body and painting with a dynamic blend of contradiction, harmony and constant transformation, transcending gender norms and artistic forms. His art presents a surreal exploration of 21st-century desire, embodying fluidity, mystery, ecstasy and dissonance. Freed from traditional conventions, Rouy’s work explores the psychological impact of encounters, drawing inspiration from contemporary digital culture, industrial advances and primal expression. In the current resurgence of interest in figurative painting, Rouy uses the human figure as a multifaceted lens to examine contemporary intersections of gender, fiction and technology.

Jake Grewal

Based in UK

Based and working in London, Jake Grewal engages in an ongoing conversation between humanity and the natural world, seamlessly blending portraiture and landscape. His compositions depict figures in surreal natural settings, creating an enigmatic atmosphere. To create a fluid interaction between the two, Grewal employs a queer perspective to portray both the male nude and the surrounding environment with equal significance. With autobiographical elements interspersed throughout the paintings, Grewal explores universal themes that evoke emotional resonance and provide the viewer with an intimate connection to his art.

Rachel Jones

Based in UK

Rachel Jones, who lives and works in London, is inspired by her research into the representation of black people in art from the eighteenth century to the present day. Through the use of painting and abstraction, she transforms historical representations in order to question their reinforcement of dominant power dynamics.

Her art resonates with the idea that a work of art can be born out of an emotion, and that this is a good enough reason to create something. In her view, everything that is created comes from desire or necessity, and all of these aspects are emotional and physical reactions in our bodies.

Michaela Yearwood-Dan

Based in UK

Michaela Yearwood-Dan creates immersive art experiences through paintings, ceramics and installations. She endeavors to create spaces of queer community, abundance and joy, drawing inspiration from phenomena as diverse as femininity, healing rituals and carnival culture. Godwood-Dun’s work spans a variety of media and incorporates botanical motifs, diary reflections and vibrant color palettes. From large-scale paintings to intimate ceramics, she creates a welcoming domesticity that resists fixed definitions of identity and explores limitless ways of being in the physical, pastoral and metaphorical realms. Her lush and politically charged art combines symbolic colors and materials, interweaving shades of lesbian and bisexual pride flags, histories of botanical elements and intertwining language with painted plant life. 

Doron Langberg

Based in USA

With his sumptuous paintings depicting romantic and intimate relationships between quirks, artist Doron Langberg is causing a stir among collectors. He uses colour and materiality to explore the meaning and emotional depth of his everyday experiences, from scenes of socialising with friends to more sexual images. The idea for a canvas is born in a moment of encounter with acquaintances or friends, or in the course of an everyday routine, and then becomes the colour image or structure from which the work is formed. 

Brian Rochefort

Based in USA

Brian Rochefort shapes clay into voluptuous vessels, creating an explosion of vibrant shapes and colours. A 2007 graduate of the Rhode Island School of Design, he will have his first solo exhibition in the United States at the Santa Barbara Museum of Contemporary Art in 2019. Rochefort’s work often explores themes of volcanoes, craters and diverse natural environments such as rainforests and barrier reefs. Using pottery, stoneware and glass, he meticulously hand-crafts each piece, depicting distinctive ecosystems that appear alive and dynamic, yet suspended in a timeless state.

Gabriel Massan 

Based in Brazil

Gabriel Massan is a digital artist who uses a variety of media including 3D animation, digital sculpture, single player games, NFT and virtual/augmented reality to explore the concepts of unfamiliarity and oblivion associated with Third World imagery. Masan uses a combination of narrative and world-building techniques to create virtual worlds that model the differences between the narratives of black people and indigenous Latin Americans. This approach challenges the entrenched colonial systems of Brazilian history and explores the concept of otherness.