2021 Highlights: Featured Artists on ArtConnect
As 2021 draws to a close, we’re taking a look back at some of this year’s featured artists on ArtConnect. Here’s a selection of some of our favorites.
The inaugural year of ArtConnect’s Artist to Watch award is wrapping up, with more than 50 artists from around the world receiving the prize and getting featured in our magazine over the last twelve months. During this time, we’ve also had the pleasure of working with many international guest curators to help us highlight the work of exceptional artists and give them the recognition they deserve. While we’re looking forward to what 2022 will bring, we wanted to revisit some of 2021’s featured artists and the work that excited us this year.
Elke Foltz, Coquelicots
Elke Foltz
Berlin-based artist Elke Foltz is a painter and illustrator who works with bold colors and lively, ecstatic forms. Her abstract, playful works, which mix media and fragments of canvas, grow from loose strokes and soft, curving lines that are never static, but dance and vibrate – each mark unique while integral to the whole. Elke was an Artist of the Month in March, and also participated this year in “Korridoriale'', a decentralized art festival in Berlin. Recent projects include her illustration for the cover of the book, "Un chant écarlate", written by Sengalese writer Mariama Bâ and published by Les Prouesses.
Daniel Hölzl, Rundgang (2019)
Daniel Hölzl
Daniel Hölzl is an installation artist with a focus on site-specific, mutable works. He is represented by Berlin-based gallery DITTRICH & SCHLECHTRIEM, and his first exhibition with the gallery took place within the frame of Gallery Weekend *Discoveries 2021, during Berlin Art Week. There, his project BAIT activated the gallery’s facade with alternately inflating and deflating silk parachutes and continuously bending and stretching carbon fiber poles. Daniel was one of our 2021 Artists to Watch and a recipient of the Mart Stam / Deutschlandstipendium 2020/2021. He is also part of the newly founded association, Sculplobe e.V., which organizes projects in and around the Lobe Block building in Berlin-Wedding.
Sarah Choo Jing, Zoom, click, waltz
Sarah Choo Jing
Singapore-based multidisciplinary artist Sarah Choo Jing works with photography, video and installation to examine the solitary though coexisting narratives that emerge within the fabric of urban society. Sarah was one of our Artists to Watch in April, and also received the 2021 Lumen Prize 3D/Interactive Award for her work Zoom, click, waltz. The multimedia installation comprises 13 LED screens, where the artist’s neighbors are seen enacting different “performances” from within their own living spaces during lockdown – framed and separated by the building facade’s windows. A new work, spotlighting hawker centers in Singapore, will be presented at Yeo Workshop as part of S.E.A. Focus 2022.
Kate McDonnell, Screw up, Repeat, Lockdown Installation (2020)
Kate McDonnell
Through process-based sculpture and installation, Bath-based artist Kate McDonnell examines mental illness, particularly bipolar disorder, to reject representational tropes and expand the field and discussion around the topic within contemporary art. This year, Kate was selected as an Artist to Watch and also received the Gilbert Bayes Award for early career sculptors from the Royal Society of Sculptures, which will present an awards exhibition in 2022. Recent textured, layered, tangled and largely monochromatic works include Screw up, Repeat, Lockdown Installation (2020), which comprises a surplus of crumpled-up black tissue paper – highlighting repetitive motions and sculpting them into a heavy mass that submerges the objects around it.
Yohana Oizumi, Flesh of My Flesh (2020)
Yohana Oizumi
Based in São Paulo, Brazil, Yohana Oizumi is a multidisciplinary artist working with performance, drawing and sculpture to examine the inherent characteristics and transformations of various materialities, including the body. In Flesh of My Flesh (2020), for example, a red- and orange-tinted sweet potato begins to resemble a bloody organ. Yohana was one of our February Artists of the Month and a finalist of the DASartes Award 2021. This year, her work was featured in the Festival Internacional de Videoart de Camaguey in Cuba and the Šiluva Art Biennial ’21 in Lithuania. She is represented by Galeria de Babel, which is based in São Paulo and New York.
Gabriel Ribeiro, Liquid Picture I (2021)
Gabriel Ribeiro
Gabriel Ribeiro works with video, photography and sculpture in material encounters that are constantly changing, evolving or decaying. Through fleshy, skin-like and viscous substances like silicone and wax, Gabriel‘s tactile and enlivened works take on the character of time-based media. Wall-based works like The Nice Phagocytes (2020) and Liquid Picture I (2021), for instance, incorporate liquidity into the image surface, resisting a sense of permanence and stability. He was an October Artist to Watch, and his work was presented at SWAB Art Fair 2021 in Barcelona. In March 2022, he will be featured in a solo exhibition at Duplex Gallery in Lisbon.
Ivonne Thein, him (2021)
Ivonne Thein
Through installation, video, photography and sculpture, Yvonne Thein‘s multidisciplinary practice is concerned with the human body — namely, the implications and possibilities associated with the body in the context of our contemporary social, political and digital landscape. The installation him (2021) melds various media into a stage-like setting, in which a mattress becomes both an object to support the body and the body itself. She was a July Artist to Watch and a recipient of innovative art projects funding from BBK Bundesverband / Neustart Kultur this year. In 2022, her work will be featured in “Networks-worlds” at Centre Pompidou and in a solo exhibition at SOMA Berlin.
Frank WANG Yefeng, The Levitating Perils (2021)
Frank WANG Yefeng
Born in Shanghai and based between New York and Providence, Frank WANG Yefeng is an experimental animator and interdisciplinary artist. He was one of our November Artists to Watch, and his new project, The Levitating Perils (2021), which addresses the recent rise in hate against Asian communities and subverts Eurocentric, colonial representations of Asia, has been awarded a grant by New York Foundation for the Arts and the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs. His work is currently on view as part of the 9th OCAT Biennial in Shenzhen. In 2022, he will be featured in a solo exhibition at E.M. Bannister Gallery, Rhode Island College.
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