Untalely
Clémentine Bruno, Katarina Caserman, Kristy M Chan, Suyon Huh
04 November - 30 December, 2023
Tabula Rasa, Beijing
Clémentine Bruno, Katarina Caserman, Kristy M Chan, Suyon Huh
04 November - 30 December, 2023
Tabula Rasa, Beijing
Tabula Rasa Gallery is pleased to
announce Untalely, a group exhibition of four female artists to open on
November 4, 2023, at our Beijing space.
Hailing from Hong Kong, the artist Kristy M. Chanimbues her work with a distinctive psychological and visceral lens, akin to the canvas of a personal diary. Chan's creations adeptly traverse the realms of reality and privacy, delivering a captivating journey into the realms of abstraction and universality. By conveying her intimate, tangible experiences, she establishes a resonance with a wider audience. Chan describes her creative process as "absolutely chaotic, and teetering between stress and excitement”. This dynamism is vividly reflected in her art, characterised by its full-bodied, diffuse, transparent, and robust imagery. Her work showcases a remarkable ability to traverse the divide between emotional depth and painterly form with remarkable speed.
In contrast to Kristy's rapid and exuberant approach, Katerina Caserman's art delves into the depths of inner worlds. Caserman's pieces eschew direct references to reality, instead emerging from the unique perspective of specific internal elements. She aptly explains, "My inner world is projected onto the canvas through a special angle of my attention." Her creative process involves diving into her memories, embracing the emotions, sounds, smells, and tactile experiences, and transforming them into evocative visual entities.
Korean artist Suyon Huh draws a parallel between the social ecology of human beings and the ecology of nature. Huh believes that the anxiety and distortion experienced by modern society often remain hidden and inexplicable. To convey this enigmatic reality, she employs the concept of "semi-abstraction," allowing vague realities to surface in her paintings. Her choice of hanji paper and paperpaste as primary materials imparts a unique tactile quality to her art. The hanji paper, primed with watercolors, is carefully layered with paperpaste, blended with gluten as an adhesive, fixing agent, and pigment, resulting in distinctive, textured compositions.
Clémentine Bruno, a French artist, employs traditional techniques to paint on wooden boards with a gesso base. Her paintings radiate an ethereal quality, despite their seemingly lightweight appearance, which paradoxically conceals their substantial physical weight. Drawing inspiration from art history, her works subtly pay tribute to masterpieces such as Pieter Bruegel the Elder's monochromatic paintings and Théodore Géricault's iconic The Raft of the Medusa. However, rather than direct references, her pieces draw from the nuanced interplay of light and shadow found in these masterpieces, creating an alluring Hollywood horror-movie atmosphere. The end results are entirely abstract in form and colour, yet enriched with a compelling sense of profundity.
These talented female artists, originating from diverse cultural backgrounds, share a deep commitment to individual expression, the physicality of their chosen materials, and the ebb and flow of physical and mental energy throughout their creative journeys. Their collective oeuvre stands in stark contrast to the flatness of cartoons, the computational language, and the intangibility of AI art. This juxtaposition of styles and approaches creates a dynamic tension that serves as a driving force for artistic innovation. In an age marked by the ascent of digital art, these artists rekindle an appreciation for the physicality and corporeality of artistic creation, fostering a renewed interest among a new generation of creators.
About the Artists
Clémentine Bruno
Clémentine Bruno (b. 1994, Paris) lives and works in London. Clémentine Bruno’s complex praxis can be condensed into a study of painting’s presets and indexicals, working through its genres and repetitions as a means of questioning the painter as singular genius. If we liken the writer to the painter, as Bruno posits in her work, words as much as images are infinitely interchangeable to produce different narratives and visual compositions.She received her BA in History of Art and Fine Art at Goldsmiths before she went on to obtain her MFA in painting at UCL Slade School of Fine Art, London in 2019.
In 2021, she was included in a two-person exhibition with Adam Gordon at Chapter NY, New York and had a solo presentation at Frieze London. She has had a solo exhibition Ironclad Contract at Project Native Informant, London (2020) and three-person exhibitions Flick Ratio: Degenerative Origins Between the Third Possibility at Space 52, Athens (2019) and at Studio 59, London (2018). Her work is included in group exhibitions such as Untalely, Tabula Rasa Gallery (Beijing, 2023); PNI@10, Project Native Informant (London, 2023); One Kiss is All It Takes, Halle Nord (Geneva, 2023); The Sky Above the Roof, Tabula Rasa Gallery (Beijing, 2022); Not Before It Has Forgotten You, Nicoletti Contemporary (London, 2022); The Sky Above the Roof, Tabula Rasa Gallery (Beijing, 2022); For some bags under the eyes, Sans Titre (Paris, 2021); Storytelling, Stoppenbach & Delestre (London, 2020). Bruno is part of an ongoing collective project, B. W. (BAMBI WOODS), through which she received the NEON Contemporary Art Exhibitions Grant in 2019.
Katarina Caserman
Katarina Caserman (b. 1996, Ljubljana, Slovenia) is a London-based artist. The challenge of representing nonmaterial matter is central to Caserman’s artistic inquiry. The artist sees that for each existing object, it requires a particular type of material to facilitate its growth, and within this process, the artist seeks to give form to the intangible. She recognises that thoughts, memories, and time exist beyond the bounds of our perceptible reality, yet they remain integral components of our lives. Her work aims to materialise these abstract concepts by imbuing them with tangible characteristics such as colour, shape, and movement.
Caserman’s first solo show with Tabula Rasa Gallery is scheduled in 2024 in Beijing. Her recent exhibitions include Untalely, Tabula Rasa Gallery (Beijing, 2023); Tabula Rasa: Unveiled, No.9 Cork Street (London, 2023); Pandora (Sivi), Long Story Short (New York, 2023); Conscious Unconscious, Pippy Houldsworth Gallery (London, 2023); NADA Miami 2022, presented by Tabula Rasa Gallery (Miami, 2022); It is Better to be Cats than be Loved, Tabula Rasa Gallery (London, 2022); just to name a few. Her works can be found in Deji Art Museum, Nanjing, and many important private collections.
Caserman obtained her MA in Painting from the Royal College of Art in 2022 and her BA in Painting from the Academy of Fine Arts and Design in Ljubljana. She was awarded a Ministry of Culture of Slovenia’s Scholarship for Promising Young Artists (2020).
Kristy M Chan
Kristy M Chan (b. 1997, Hong Kong) currently works and lives in London, and creates artworks that traverse figuration and abstraction, resulting in energetic, intuitive, and autobiographical compositions. Departing from surreal and bewildering moments in contemporary life, Chan describes her works as “stolen realities.” Primarily employing densely applied oil and oil stick, her paintings serve as visual archives of intense personal interactions amid the transient dynamism of the city. Living between Hong Kong and London, Chan incorporates subject matters from an outsider’s perspective, contemplating the interplay between her identity influenced by both Eastern and Western cultures. Chan is intrigued by extracting descriptive metaphors from literature and reimagining them in her own unique way.
Chan’s first solo show with Tabula Rasa Gallery is scheduled in 2024 in Beijing. Her recent solo exhibitions include Molehill MountaineerBinge, The Artist Room and Simon Lee Gallery (London, 2022); Strong Cookie, Prior Art Space (Berlin, 2022); Totally Not, The Artist Room (London, 2021). Chan has also undertaken residencies at The Cabin, Los Angeles (2022–3); Del Arco Residency, Berlin (2022); PILOTENKUECHE, Leipzig (2020); and AiR Frosterus, Finland (2019). Her recent group exhibition include Untalely, Tabula Rasa Gallery (Beijing, 2023); Tabula Rasa: Unveiled, No.9 Cork Street (London, 2023). Kristy M Chan completed her BFA at UCL Slade School of Fine Art in 2019 and her MA in Contemporary Art at Sotheby’s Institute of Art.
Suyon Huh
Suyon Huh (b.1993) is an artist who currently lives and works in Seoul, Korea. Her work derives from the belief that there are multiple perspectives both seen and unseen. She focuses on the hidden and invisible parts refer to the pheonomenon which relations between individuals, individuals and society, and even between individuals and nature. Her aspect of the world confesses that there is a irony in the invisible network formed by the process of an individual’s formation with another individual in humans ecology or the numerous phenomena caused by individual's interrelationship with society, and explores the invisible ecosystem by focusing on the reverse parts and the human anxiety which caused by the gap in the network of various structures and relations in society. Particularly noteworthy is the issue of human alienation or dehumanization which caused by numerous possibilities that can be easily connected anywhere due to the development of media, but the resulting impossibility also increases.
Huh majored in Korean Painting at Ewha Woman’s University and held her first solo show Retrieve, Recycle, Revive at G Gallery in Seoul in 2019. Recent solo exhibitions include INSECURE Ms. Kim, Oksang Factory (Seoul, 2022); Houseless, LOG (Seoul, 2022); Follow the Rabbit, FAS (Seoul,2021); HPIX DOSAN ✕ HUH SUYON, Hpix (dual solo, Seoul, 2020). Recent group exhibitions include Untalely, Tabula Rasa Gallery (Beijing, 2023); K90-99 Transcultural Fusion: K-Art as a convergence of East and West, LUPO (Milan, 2023); To be anything, To be nothing, Post Territory Ujeonguk (Seoul, 2023); BGA INDEX : OPEN STORAGE, BGA (Seoul, 2023); This Title Is Not Available In Your Region, Gasp (New York, 2022); Temporary Landing, TINC(This is Not a Chuch) (Seoul, 2022);Instead of an Afterwards, Korean Cultural Center in Hong Kong (Hong Kong, 2022); Navigators, G Gallery (Seoul, 2021); The Long Now, d/p Seoul (Seoul, 2021); CAKEY, A Cake is a Key!, Cakey Studio (Seoul, 2021); WHITE NOISE: PIGEON, White Noise Seoul (Seoul, 2020). In 2022, she was honoured with the Artist Support Program Award provided by the Arts Council Korea (ARKO). Her work has been included in the MMCA Art Bank and a variety of personal collections around the globe.
Hailing from Hong Kong, the artist Kristy M. Chanimbues her work with a distinctive psychological and visceral lens, akin to the canvas of a personal diary. Chan's creations adeptly traverse the realms of reality and privacy, delivering a captivating journey into the realms of abstraction and universality. By conveying her intimate, tangible experiences, she establishes a resonance with a wider audience. Chan describes her creative process as "absolutely chaotic, and teetering between stress and excitement”. This dynamism is vividly reflected in her art, characterised by its full-bodied, diffuse, transparent, and robust imagery. Her work showcases a remarkable ability to traverse the divide between emotional depth and painterly form with remarkable speed.
In contrast to Kristy's rapid and exuberant approach, Katerina Caserman's art delves into the depths of inner worlds. Caserman's pieces eschew direct references to reality, instead emerging from the unique perspective of specific internal elements. She aptly explains, "My inner world is projected onto the canvas through a special angle of my attention." Her creative process involves diving into her memories, embracing the emotions, sounds, smells, and tactile experiences, and transforming them into evocative visual entities.
Korean artist Suyon Huh draws a parallel between the social ecology of human beings and the ecology of nature. Huh believes that the anxiety and distortion experienced by modern society often remain hidden and inexplicable. To convey this enigmatic reality, she employs the concept of "semi-abstraction," allowing vague realities to surface in her paintings. Her choice of hanji paper and paperpaste as primary materials imparts a unique tactile quality to her art. The hanji paper, primed with watercolors, is carefully layered with paperpaste, blended with gluten as an adhesive, fixing agent, and pigment, resulting in distinctive, textured compositions.
Clémentine Bruno, a French artist, employs traditional techniques to paint on wooden boards with a gesso base. Her paintings radiate an ethereal quality, despite their seemingly lightweight appearance, which paradoxically conceals their substantial physical weight. Drawing inspiration from art history, her works subtly pay tribute to masterpieces such as Pieter Bruegel the Elder's monochromatic paintings and Théodore Géricault's iconic The Raft of the Medusa. However, rather than direct references, her pieces draw from the nuanced interplay of light and shadow found in these masterpieces, creating an alluring Hollywood horror-movie atmosphere. The end results are entirely abstract in form and colour, yet enriched with a compelling sense of profundity.
These talented female artists, originating from diverse cultural backgrounds, share a deep commitment to individual expression, the physicality of their chosen materials, and the ebb and flow of physical and mental energy throughout their creative journeys. Their collective oeuvre stands in stark contrast to the flatness of cartoons, the computational language, and the intangibility of AI art. This juxtaposition of styles and approaches creates a dynamic tension that serves as a driving force for artistic innovation. In an age marked by the ascent of digital art, these artists rekindle an appreciation for the physicality and corporeality of artistic creation, fostering a renewed interest among a new generation of creators.
About the Artists
Clémentine Bruno
Clémentine Bruno (b. 1994, Paris) lives and works in London. Clémentine Bruno’s complex praxis can be condensed into a study of painting’s presets and indexicals, working through its genres and repetitions as a means of questioning the painter as singular genius. If we liken the writer to the painter, as Bruno posits in her work, words as much as images are infinitely interchangeable to produce different narratives and visual compositions.She received her BA in History of Art and Fine Art at Goldsmiths before she went on to obtain her MFA in painting at UCL Slade School of Fine Art, London in 2019.
In 2021, she was included in a two-person exhibition with Adam Gordon at Chapter NY, New York and had a solo presentation at Frieze London. She has had a solo exhibition Ironclad Contract at Project Native Informant, London (2020) and three-person exhibitions Flick Ratio: Degenerative Origins Between the Third Possibility at Space 52, Athens (2019) and at Studio 59, London (2018). Her work is included in group exhibitions such as Untalely, Tabula Rasa Gallery (Beijing, 2023); PNI@10, Project Native Informant (London, 2023); One Kiss is All It Takes, Halle Nord (Geneva, 2023); The Sky Above the Roof, Tabula Rasa Gallery (Beijing, 2022); Not Before It Has Forgotten You, Nicoletti Contemporary (London, 2022); The Sky Above the Roof, Tabula Rasa Gallery (Beijing, 2022); For some bags under the eyes, Sans Titre (Paris, 2021); Storytelling, Stoppenbach & Delestre (London, 2020). Bruno is part of an ongoing collective project, B. W. (BAMBI WOODS), through which she received the NEON Contemporary Art Exhibitions Grant in 2019.
Katarina Caserman
Katarina Caserman (b. 1996, Ljubljana, Slovenia) is a London-based artist. The challenge of representing nonmaterial matter is central to Caserman’s artistic inquiry. The artist sees that for each existing object, it requires a particular type of material to facilitate its growth, and within this process, the artist seeks to give form to the intangible. She recognises that thoughts, memories, and time exist beyond the bounds of our perceptible reality, yet they remain integral components of our lives. Her work aims to materialise these abstract concepts by imbuing them with tangible characteristics such as colour, shape, and movement.
Caserman’s first solo show with Tabula Rasa Gallery is scheduled in 2024 in Beijing. Her recent exhibitions include Untalely, Tabula Rasa Gallery (Beijing, 2023); Tabula Rasa: Unveiled, No.9 Cork Street (London, 2023); Pandora (Sivi), Long Story Short (New York, 2023); Conscious Unconscious, Pippy Houldsworth Gallery (London, 2023); NADA Miami 2022, presented by Tabula Rasa Gallery (Miami, 2022); It is Better to be Cats than be Loved, Tabula Rasa Gallery (London, 2022); just to name a few. Her works can be found in Deji Art Museum, Nanjing, and many important private collections.
Caserman obtained her MA in Painting from the Royal College of Art in 2022 and her BA in Painting from the Academy of Fine Arts and Design in Ljubljana. She was awarded a Ministry of Culture of Slovenia’s Scholarship for Promising Young Artists (2020).
Kristy M Chan
Kristy M Chan (b. 1997, Hong Kong) currently works and lives in London, and creates artworks that traverse figuration and abstraction, resulting in energetic, intuitive, and autobiographical compositions. Departing from surreal and bewildering moments in contemporary life, Chan describes her works as “stolen realities.” Primarily employing densely applied oil and oil stick, her paintings serve as visual archives of intense personal interactions amid the transient dynamism of the city. Living between Hong Kong and London, Chan incorporates subject matters from an outsider’s perspective, contemplating the interplay between her identity influenced by both Eastern and Western cultures. Chan is intrigued by extracting descriptive metaphors from literature and reimagining them in her own unique way.
Chan’s first solo show with Tabula Rasa Gallery is scheduled in 2024 in Beijing. Her recent solo exhibitions include Molehill MountaineerBinge, The Artist Room and Simon Lee Gallery (London, 2022); Strong Cookie, Prior Art Space (Berlin, 2022); Totally Not, The Artist Room (London, 2021). Chan has also undertaken residencies at The Cabin, Los Angeles (2022–3); Del Arco Residency, Berlin (2022); PILOTENKUECHE, Leipzig (2020); and AiR Frosterus, Finland (2019). Her recent group exhibition include Untalely, Tabula Rasa Gallery (Beijing, 2023); Tabula Rasa: Unveiled, No.9 Cork Street (London, 2023). Kristy M Chan completed her BFA at UCL Slade School of Fine Art in 2019 and her MA in Contemporary Art at Sotheby’s Institute of Art.
Suyon Huh
Suyon Huh (b.1993) is an artist who currently lives and works in Seoul, Korea. Her work derives from the belief that there are multiple perspectives both seen and unseen. She focuses on the hidden and invisible parts refer to the pheonomenon which relations between individuals, individuals and society, and even between individuals and nature. Her aspect of the world confesses that there is a irony in the invisible network formed by the process of an individual’s formation with another individual in humans ecology or the numerous phenomena caused by individual's interrelationship with society, and explores the invisible ecosystem by focusing on the reverse parts and the human anxiety which caused by the gap in the network of various structures and relations in society. Particularly noteworthy is the issue of human alienation or dehumanization which caused by numerous possibilities that can be easily connected anywhere due to the development of media, but the resulting impossibility also increases.
Huh majored in Korean Painting at Ewha Woman’s University and held her first solo show Retrieve, Recycle, Revive at G Gallery in Seoul in 2019. Recent solo exhibitions include INSECURE Ms. Kim, Oksang Factory (Seoul, 2022); Houseless, LOG (Seoul, 2022); Follow the Rabbit, FAS (Seoul,2021); HPIX DOSAN ✕ HUH SUYON, Hpix (dual solo, Seoul, 2020). Recent group exhibitions include Untalely, Tabula Rasa Gallery (Beijing, 2023); K90-99 Transcultural Fusion: K-Art as a convergence of East and West, LUPO (Milan, 2023); To be anything, To be nothing, Post Territory Ujeonguk (Seoul, 2023); BGA INDEX : OPEN STORAGE, BGA (Seoul, 2023); This Title Is Not Available In Your Region, Gasp (New York, 2022); Temporary Landing, TINC(This is Not a Chuch) (Seoul, 2022);Instead of an Afterwards, Korean Cultural Center in Hong Kong (Hong Kong, 2022); Navigators, G Gallery (Seoul, 2021); The Long Now, d/p Seoul (Seoul, 2021); CAKEY, A Cake is a Key!, Cakey Studio (Seoul, 2021); WHITE NOISE: PIGEON, White Noise Seoul (Seoul, 2020). In 2022, she was honoured with the Artist Support Program Award provided by the Arts Council Korea (ARKO). Her work has been included in the MMCA Art Bank and a variety of personal collections around the globe.
Tabula Rasa Gallery (London)
Unit One, 99 East Road,
Hoxton, London
N1 6AQ
Unit One, 99 East Road,
Hoxton, London
N1 6AQ
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