Chiaroscuro: A Century of Charcoal
About the exhibition
Chiaroscuro: A Century of Charcoal brings together works by over 30 artists made over the past 100 years. On view in a specially designed gallery on Vortic.art, with selected highlight works at Victoria Miro, London and Venice.
Artists 31
Artists 31
About the exhibition
Presented by
Victoria Miro & Vortic
Dates
01 Feb - 01 Mar 2025


Chiaroscuro: A Century of Charcoal brings together works by over 30 artists made over the past 100 years. On view in a specially designed gallery on Vortic.art, with selected highlight works at Victoria Miro, London and Venice.
Charcoal is elemental. Born from fire, charcoal is made from wood (especially twigs of willow or vine) that has been heated to a high temperature in a low-oxygen environment (a process called pyrolysis). Its history as a medium is as old as human mark-making itself: the earliest artists, crouched in caves, dragged charred sticks across stone to summon animals and ancestors from the walls.
Artists have always prized charcoal for its ability to create soft, dark, velvety marks and subtle shading. Its crumbly nature makes it easily smudged but also easily erased. Drawing with charcoal also involves selectively removing it, creating highlights that allow the white paper to show through. This interplay between light and dark is one of the medium’s most distinctive features, known as chiaroscuro, an Italian word meaning literally ‘light-dark.’
The charcoal drawings presented in this exhibition date from the last 100 years and range from preparatory sketches to fully realised, monumental works. Among the earliest in date is Pierre Bonnard’s Femme dans un Interieur, that despite its ostensibly quotidian nature was likely drawn from memory. Bonnard drew everywhere, on every surface, especially on small pieces of paper such as this which would have fitted easily into the pocket. Working quickly, using a variety of charcoal marks, he captured not only the composition he wanted, but indicated how to break up the surface into areas of light and dark and even colour.
By contrast, David Bomberg’s bold use of charcoal conveys the sublime drama and topography of the Andalucian landscape in The City, Ronda, Spain (1935). Always working directly from life, using a rough, scabrous piece of charcoal, Bomberg’s visits to Spain in 1929, 1934 and 1935 unleashed a new brilliance in the way he worked with the medium. The powerful contrasts of light and dark intensify the depth and drama of the rugged, vertiginous terrain and demonstrate the medium’s power to evoke mood and texture.
Leon Kossoff (whose training included classes with David Bomberg),manipulated charcoal to a similarly intense tonal effect when depicting the human figure in Young Man Seated (1961). The density and smudging of the charcoal evoke both the solidity and vulnerability of the man’s presence. Indeed, the inherent fragility and mutability of the charcoal medium is exploited by many of the artists in this exhibition, for psychological effect, particularly in the figurative works. Celia Paul’s Jane (1999) captures this ephemerality beautifully, presenting a portrait that feels intimate and fleeting, as though drawn from a memory that might disappear. Similarly, Jenny Saville’s Thread (2017–18) transforms the human figure into something monumental yet impermanent. Saville’s rapid, gestural charcoal strokes conjure the sensations of a body in constant motion. Limbs and forms are overlaid one over another, erased and then overlaid again, as though to suggest the multiplicity of the self and eventual dissolution of the body. In the work of one of the youngest artists presented, Jake Grewal’s Me Outside of Myself (2024), figures emerge from the blackness behind, a tender vision that explodes beyond the picture frame, but perhaps only for a moment.
Contemporary artists have continued to value the immediacy and versatility of charcoal as well as pushing the boundaries of its expressive potential. Often, to ensure the adhesion of the charcoal particles to the surface, artists will employ more textured supports. Working on Japanese papers on paper, Maria Berrio’s bold and confident use of charcoal captures a moment of stillness in her two endearing portraits of young dancers, Untitled 11 and 12 (2024). Berrio creates an impression of human presence in charcoal that is every bit as strong as her painted portraits.
There is astonishing technical skill in Alexandre Zhu’s large-scale work, Hadal (16) (2024), the title referring to parts of the ocean that are beneath 6000m in depth. Zhu wields charcoal to create a hyper-realistic image of the ocean as it rolls and swells, dark and impenetrable, yet flecked with sunlight on its surface. The ‘hadal zone’ is named after Hades, god of the underworld in Greek mythology, and Zhu’s compelling image prompts us to contemplate what lies beneath the ocean’s surface, both physically and psychologically.
Further highlights include a previously unseen study by Paula Rego for her 1987 painting Snare, as well as figurative works by Chantal Joffe, Lucian Freud, R.B. Kitaj and Willem de Kooning. The exhibition also includes new works made especially for this exhibition by Sara Anstis, Ali Banisadr, María Berrío, Jake Grewal, Idris Khan, Konstantina Krikzoni, Shahzia Sikander, Olly Williamson, and Alexandre Zhu.
Emblematic of humanity’s first forays into creativity, charcoal is a medium that bridges past and present. The 43 drawings presented here encourage us to re-appreciate the medium, its diversity of uses, its versatility and its expressive power.
London: María Berrío, David Bomberg, Pierre Bonnard, Peppi Bottrop, Emily Miller Coan, Lucian Freud, Scott Hunt, Allan Kaprow, R.B. Kitaj, Leon Kossoff, Celia Paul, and Jenny Saville. Venice: Sara Anstis, Ali Banisadr, María Berrío, Vivian Caccuri, Adrian Ghenie, Jake Grewal, Chantal Joffe, William Kentridge, Idris Khan, Konstantina Krikzoni, Celia Paul, Paula Rego, Shahzia Sikander, Barbara Walker, and Alexandre Zhu.
Vortic: Vivian Caccuri, Willem de Kooning, R.B. Kitaj, Konstantina Krikzoni, Whitfield Lovell, Arieh Lubin, Anna Park, Aurel Schmidt, Olly Williamson.
The exhibition is available to view on Vortic.art with selected highlight works at Victoria Miro, London and Venice.
Idris Khan


About the artist
b. 1978, United Kingdom
Portrait of Idris Khan, 2022 © Idris Khan. Courtesy the artist and Victoria Miro
Works presented in Chiaroscuro: A Century of Charcoal...


Peppi Bottrop


About the artist
b. 1986, Germany
Caption/credit: Peppi Bottrop in his studio, 2024. Portrait by Marten Elder.
Peppi Bottrop (b. 1986 in Bottrop, Germany) lives and works in Los Angeles. He graduated as Meisterschüler from the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf in 2014, where he studied under Albert Oehlen, Andreas Schulze and Jutta Koether. Bottrop, who bears the name of the German town in which he was born, grew up in the industrial districts of the Ruhrgebiet, once the country’s largest and most prosperous coal-mining region. As one mine after another shut down, the expression “industrial nature” was coined to describe the wild vegetation that developed on abandoned production sites, and it is this very dichotomy, or schism, between industry and nature, that Bottrop explores in his practice. Treating the canvas as a privileged site to exorcise his memories of place, Bottrop psychically mines his own past to create frenetically rendered cartographic recollections, which, though profoundly personally, are open-ended enough to allow the viewer to project their own urban reminiscences. His work has been the subject of a number of important solo and group exhibitions including: Together, at the Same Time, de la Cruz Collection, Miami (2022); Different Strokes, Kunstverein Duisburg, Duisburg (2022); Jungle Rapture, Pilar Corrias, London (2021); La vista y el tacto (ca. 1929-30), Centro Federico García Lorca, Granada (2021); Jetzt! Junge Malerei in Deutschland, Kunstmuseum Bonn, Museum Wiesbaden, and Kunstsammlungen Chemnitz (2019); Line Packers (with Albert Oehlen), Marciano Art Foundation, Los Angeles (2018); Hovel, Kunstverein Heppenheim, Heppenheim (2016); Fasi Lunari, Fondazione Carriero, Milan (2016); and You Are Missing A Lot Of Beautiful Shit (with Violet Dennison), Open Forum, Berlin and Museum Quadrat, Bottrop (2014). Recent solo and group exhibitions include Where The Future Grows + Memory Lines, Pilar Corrias, London (2024); Abstraction (re)creation - 20 under 40, Le Consortium, Dijon (2024), and Tropic of Bottrop, Oldenburger Kunstverein, Oldenburg (2024).
Works presented in Chiaroscuro: A Century of Charcoal...


Konstantina Krikzoni


About the artist
b. 1987, Greece
Konstantina Krikzoni was born in Chalkidiki, Greece in 1987 and lives and works in London, UK. She is a graduate of the Royal College of Art, London. Recent solo exhibitions include Nymphidia, Victoria Miro Projects, Online (2024) and Chamber, Newchild Gallery, Antwerp, Belgium (2023). Two person exhibitions include Continuum at Frieze No.9 Cork Street, London, UK (2023). Recent group exhibitions include the Malta Biennale, Malta (2024); Afterdark, Newchild Gallery, Antwerp, Belgium (2024); Disrupted Harmony, Public Service Gallery, Stockholm, Sweden (2023); Hot Summer Pt. I, Galerie Julien Cadet, Paris, France (2023); and Hot Summer Pt. 2, Swivel Gallery, New York, USA (2023). She was an artist in residence at the Palazzo Monti in Brescia, Italy in 2023, culminating in the exhibition Shipping Address. In September 2024, Krikzoni participated in the Philippe and Marion Lambert Residency in Crete, Greece.
Krikzoni was shortlisted for the Chadwell Award 2022, London, UK. Other recent awards and scholarships include the Stavros Niarchos Foundation Artist Fellowship by ARTWORKS, Athens, Greece (2021), and NEON Scholarship 2021/22, NEON Organization for Culture and Development, Athens, Greece (2021).
Her work is in the collection of the Yageo Foundation, Taipei, Taiwan, and the Xiao Museum of Contemporary Art, Rizhao, China
Works presented in Chiaroscuro: A Century of Charcoal...




Emily Coan


About the artist
b. 1991, USA
Online
Social
Photo courtesy of Elizabeth Celeste Ibarra
Emily Coan (b. 1991 St. Petersburg, Florida) is an artist based in the Hudson Valley, NY. In 2013, she received her BFA in Sculpture from the University of Florida and moved to New York City as a painter in 2015. Compositionally complex, multilayered oil paintings are the vehicle for Coan’s storytelling, conjuring a world where female protagonists confront femininity, womens’ labor, and power. The work is set in fairytale-esque environments inspired by the Hudson Valley. Coan’s work has been featured in Interview Magazine, T Magazine, Artnet, Whitewall, New American Paintings, and even Playboy. She has recently exhibited in group shows with Nino Mier (New York City), de boer (Los Angeles), Gowen Contemporary (Geneva), Kutlesa Gallery (Goldau), and Palazzo Monti (Brescia). Her fifth solo show, Spider Silk at DIMIN (New York), opened earlier this year. Coan’s work will be included in an exhibition at Pond Society in Shanghai in March 2025.
Works presented in Chiaroscuro: A Century of Charcoal...






Barbara Walker


About the artist
b. 1964, United Kingdom
Barbara Walker MBE, RA (b. 1964, Birmingham, UK) is a British artist described by art historian Eddie Chambers as “one of the most talented, productive and committed artists of her generation.” Walker studied Art and Design at the University of Central England, Birmingham (1993-96) and Wolverhampton University (2003-04).
Her work interrogates past and present issues of racial identity, exclusion and power that affect her life and the lives of those around her. Growing up in Birmingham, her experiences have directly shaped a practice concerned with issues of class and power, gender, race, representation and belonging. Her figurative drawings and paintings tell contemporary stories hinged on historical circumstances, making them universally understood and reflecting a human perspective on the state of affairs in her native Britain and elsewhere.
Walker’s first major survey exhibition is exhibited at The Whitworth, Manchester throughout autumn 2024. She has had regular solo shows throughout her career including Cristea Roberts Gallery, London, UK (2022); Turner Contemporary, Margate (2019-21); Jerwood Gallery, Hastings (2018); Jerwood Gallery, Hastings (2018); and Midlands Arts Centre, Birmingham (2002, 2007, 2016). Her work has been included in over sixty group presentations since 1995, most recently: The Time is Always Now: Artists Reframe the Black Figure, National Portrait Gallery, London (2024);Black Atlantic: Power, People, Resistance, Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge (2023); Sharjah Biennial 15:Thinking Historically in the Present(2023); Life Between Islands, Caribbean - British Art, 50s to Now, Art Gallery Ontario, Canada (2023) and Tate Britain (2021) and Lahore Biennale 02: Between the Sun and the Moon (2020). In 2023 Walker was nominated for the Turner Prize and elected to the Royal Academy of Arts
Her work is held in public collections including Arts Council Collection, UK; British Museum, UK; Government Art Collection, UK; Philadelphia Museum of Art, USA; Sharjah Art Foundation, UAE; Tate, UK; and Yale Center for British Art, USA.
Photo credit: Chris Keenan
Works presented in Chiaroscuro: A Century of Charcoal...


María Berrío


About the artist
b. 1982, Bogotá, Colombia
Portrait of María Berrío, 2024 © Gautier Deblonde. Courtesy the artist and Victoria Miro.
Based in Brooklyn, María Berrío grew up in Colombia. Her large-scale works, which are meticulously crafted from layers of Japanese paper, reflect on cross-cultural connections and global migration seen through the prism of her own history.
Populated predominantly by women, Berrío’s art often appears to propose spaces of refuge or safety, kaleidoscopic utopias which in the past have been inspired in part by South American folklore, where humans and nature coexist in harmony. To these apparently idealised scenes, however, Berrío brings to light the hard realities of present-day politics. For example, Oda a la Esperanza (Ode to Hope), 2019, in which girls appear captive within an institution-like environment, refers to the Trump administration’s family separation policy. Wildflowers, 2017, which depicts numerous women, children and animals has at its centre a railway carriage that might equally refer to the New York City subway or the train known as La Bestia, which transports migrants across Mexico to the US border. Writing in the catalogue for the New Orleans Triennial Prospect. 4: The Lotus in Spite of the Swamp, where the work was shown in 2017–2018, Alexandra Giniger comments that ‘In her canvases, animals, though plentiful, take a secondary role to women, who dominate en masse. The message may be that we, as humans, must task ourselves ever more staunchly with protecting one another through these swampy times.’
Speaking about the women that feature in her work, the artist says 'They are embodied ideals of femininity. The ghostly pallor of their skin suggests an otherworldliness; they appear to be more spirit that flesh. These are the women I want to be: strong, vulnerable, compassionate, courageous, and in harmony with themselves and nature. They combine the elements of women who are typically thought of as powerful – the captains of industry, resolute politicians, fiery activists – with the traits of those who are not usually thought of as such, thereby underlining the common force found in all women. The female soldier fighting on the front lines is of interest, but so too is the mother who finds a way to feed her children and sing them to sleep amid bombing campaigns and in the ruins of cities. To truly ennoble womanhood, we must discover and appreciate the beauty in every action, big or small.' (Georgia Review, Spring 2019).
An enduring interest in the human relationship with nature can be seen in a new series of figures, which the artist calls ‘the bathers’. United by a simple garment – based on one of Berrío’s own dresses – the figures appear in moments of solemnity, acting upon or reacting to the natural world. The surreal environments they occupy offer an unsettling context for their otherwise ordinary activities, provoking viewers to reflect on their own connection to their surroundings and raising questions of resilience and persistence in the face of catastrophic loss. The primal ritual of bathing and the gestures that bracket it offer a moment of communion that reflects on our common experiences as social beings.
About the artist
María Berrío was born in Bogotá, Colombia in 1982, completed her BFA at Parsons School of Design in 2004, and her MFA at the New York School of Visual Arts.
Major solo exhibitions include María Berrío: The Children’s Crusade, ICA Boston, USA (2023); María Berrío: Esperando mientras la noche florece (Waiting for the Night to Bloom), The Norton Museum of Art, West Palm Beach, Florida, USA (2021). Institutional group exhibitions include Spirit in the Land, Nasher Museum of Art at Duke University, Durham, North Carolina, USA (2023), travelling to Pérez Art Museum, Miami, USA (2024) and Cummer Museum of Art & Gardens, Jacksonville, USA (2024–2025); Women Painting Women, The Modern, Fort Worth, Texas, USA (2022); A Natural Turn, The DePaul Art Museum, Chicago, USA (2022); Born in Flames: Feminist Futures, Bronx Museum of the Arts, New York, USA (2021); Labor: Motherhood & Art in 2020, University Art Museum at New Mexico State University, Las Cruces, USA (2020); Present Tense: Recent Gifts of Contemporary Art, Philadelphia Museum of Art, Pennsylvania, USA (2019); People Get Ready at Nasher Museum of Art, Durham, North Carolina, USA (2018); Prospect.4 Triennial, New Orleans, USA (2017–2018), Art on Paper Biennial, Weatherspoon Museum, Greensboro, North Carolina, USA (2017), CUT N MIX, El Museo del Barrio, New York, NY, USA (2015).
Berrío’s work is in permanent collections including the Brooklyn Museum, New York, USA; Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, Bentonville, AR, USA; Dallas Museum of Art, USA; Ford Foundation Center for Social Justice, New York, USA; Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington DC, USA; Institute of Contemporary Art (ICA), Boston and Miami, USA; Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA), USA; The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, USA; Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, USA; Nasher Museum of Art at Duke University, Durham, USA; Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Philadelphia, USA; Pérez Art Museum, Miami, Florida, USA; Philadelphia Museum of Art, Pennsylvania, USA; Speed Art Museum, Louisville, USA; Weatherspoon Museum of Art at the University of North Carolina, Greensboro, USA; Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, USA; Yuz Museum, Shanghai, China.
Additionally, her work can also be seen in the public realm at the N subway stop at Fort Hamilton, Brooklyn, where 14 of the artist’s works have been translated in mosaic using a variety of media including glass, ceramic and enamel.
Works presented in Chiaroscuro: A Century of Charcoal...




Celia Paul


About the artist
b. 1959, India
Portrait of Celia Paul in her London studio, 2022 © Gautier Deblonde. Courtesy the artist and Victoria Miro.
Celia Paul’s art stems from a deep connection to subject matter and is quiet, contemplative and ultimately moving in its profound attention to detail and deeply-felt spirituality. She makes intimate depictions of people and places she knows well. From 1977 to 2007 Paul worked on a series of paintings of her mother, and since then she has concentrated on painting her four sisters, especially her sister Kate, as well as a number of portraits of close friends. She has also produced a large number of evocative self-portraits over the course of her career. Paul’s self-portraits open up a painterly and conceptual dialogue between the dual role of subject and artist – caught between self-possession and self-scrutiny – as well as offering an extended consideration of the essential dualities of the medium – its ability to capture qualities of form, light and atmosphere, and its material presence.
In addition to her portraits, Paul has made detailed studies of landscapes and interiors, again focusing on the environment she knows best. She has made numerous studies of her studio, and has also painted the central London landmarks visible from its windows, including the British Museum and the BT Tower (previously known as the Post Office Tower). Her seascapes similarly focus on a subject she knows well. During the 1970s, Paul’s father was head of the Lee Abbey religious community in north Devon. Paul returned to this stretch of coastline to make studies for paintings that highlight the painter’s challenge not only to capture specific states of matter – water and air – but to attempt to capture the moment. These paintings are suffused with echoes and resonances of passing time, which in turn points to the poignancy and essential melancholy of the medium. Yet, for Paul, solace can be found in the consoling beauty of nature and in the flow of time that connects us all.
About the artist
Celia Paul was born in 1959 in Trivandrum, India. She lives and works in London.
Major solo exhibitions include Celia Paul, curated by Hilton Als, at Yale Center for British Art, New Haven, Connecticut, USA (2018) touring to The Huntington, San Marino, California, USA (2019); Desdemona for Celia by Hilton, Gallery Met, New York, USA (2015–16); Gwen John and Celia Paul: Painters in Parallel, Pallant House Gallery, Chichester, UK (2012–13); The Grave’s Art Gallery, Sheffield, UK (2005) and Abbot Hall, Kendal, UK (2004).
The artist’s work has been featured in group exhibitions including Joan Didion: What She Means, curated by Hilton Als, Hammer Museum, Los Angeles, USA (2022–2023); Pictus Porrectus; Reconsidering the Full-Length Portrait, Bell House, Newport, Rhode Island, USA (2022); Me, Myself, I – Artists’ Self-Portraits, Royal West of England Academy, Bristol, UK (2022); Works on Paper, Galleri Bo Bjerggaard, Copenhagen, Denmark (2019); All Too Human: Bacon, Freud and a Century of Painting Life, Tate Britain, London, UK (2018); La Diablesse, Tramps, London, UK (2016); NO MAN’S LAND: Women Artists from the Rubell Family Collection, Rubell Family Collection, Miami, USA (2015–2016); Forces in Nature curated by Hilton Als at Victoria Miro, London, UK (2015); Recent acquisitions: Arcimboldo to Kitaj, British Museum, London, UK (2013); Self-Consciousness, curated by Peter Doig and Hilton Als, VeneKlasen/Werner gallery, Berlin, Germany (2010); The School of London: Bacon to Bevan, Musée Maillol, Paris, France (1998) and British Figurative Painting of the 20th Century, The Israel Museum, Jerusalem, Israel (1992).
Her work is in collections including Abbot Hall, Kendal, UK; British Museum, London, UK; Carlsberg Foundation, Copenhagen, Denmark; Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge, UK; Frissiras Museum, Athens, Greece; Herzog Ulrich Gallery, Brunswick, Germany; Metropolitan Museum, New York, USA; Morgan Library and Museum, New York, USA; National Portrait Gallery, London, UK; New Hall Art Collection, Murray Edwards College, Cambridge, UK; Rubell Family Collection, Miami, USA; Ruth Borchard Collection, London, UK; Saatchi Collection, London, UK; Victoria and Albert Museum, London, UK; and the Yale Center for British Art, Connecticut, USA.
In 2022, a solo exhibition of new works – Memory and Desire – was held at Victoria Miro, London, UK to coincide with the publication of Letters to Gwen John, a Jonathan Cape book by the artist which centres on a series of letters addressed to the painter Gwen John (1876–1939), who has long been a tutelary spirit for Paul. The artist’s first book, Self-Portrait, was published in 2019. Also in 2019, Celia Paul was awarded Harper’s Bazaar Artist of the Year.
Works presented in Chiaroscuro: A Century of Charcoal...




Scott Hunt


About the artist
b. 1958, United States
Education: 1981, BFA, Parsons School of Design
As a fine artist whose primary discipline is drawing, Scott Hunt produces charcoal and pastel works on paper that are narrative and/or allegorical in nature. Hunt has had seven solo shows in the U.S. and Europe and has been included in many group exhibitions including “Really?” at Wilding Cran Gallery (Los Angeles), curated by the esteemed American collector, Beth Rudin deWoody. As an illustrator, Hunt’s work has appeared in such publications as The New York Times, The New Yorker, Harpers, The Atlantic Monthly, Esquire, The Boston Globe, and GQ Magazine. Hunt has been awarded grants and fellowships from The Pollock-Krasner Foundation, the New York Foundation for the Arts, the New York State Council on the Arts, the FID Prize for Drawing, Yaddo Corporation, and the Bogliasco Center Foundation. His work is included in many international private and public collections, including Colecção Madeira Corporate Services Drawing Collection in Portugal. His drawings are part of the permanent collection of contemporary art at The Israel Museum, Jerusalem and The Lucas Museum of Narrative Art, Los Angeles.
"[The works have] Intensely enigmatic and mysterious subject matter. The viewer encounters a vision of America that is at once sympathetic, humorous, and apocalyptic.” —Robert Goff, Senior Director, David Zwirner, LA.
“The intense, exquisite realism of Hunt’s technique is in dynamic contrast to the surrealism of the scenes he depicts, and this disjunction contributes to their arresting, dreamlike atmosphere. Each tells a story, but we are not told what story it tells. The result is a mystifying intimacy, the feeling that we have interrupted the scene and are now indelibly a part of it.” —Andrew Solomon, Author, Winner of the National Book Award.
“For Hunt, drawing has become a way to bring the real world and the unconscious and imaginary seamlessly together. These images, are at once familiar and disconcerting. We know what we are seeing but we are not sure why these things go together or if they should go together." —Brett Littman, Former Executive Director, The Drawing Center, NYC.
Works presented in Chiaroscuro: A Century of Charcoal...




Chantal Joffe


About the artist
b. 1969, Vermont, USA
Portrait of Chantal Joffe © Chantal Joffe. Courtesy the artist and Victoria Miro. Photo: Isabelle Young
?Born in 1969, Chantal Joffe lives and works in London. She holds an MA from the Royal College of Art and was awarded the Royal Academy Wollaston Prize in 2006. Joffe has exhibited nationally and internationally at venues including The Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge, UK (2023–2024); The Modern, Fort Worth, Texas, USA (2022); Koohouse Museum, Yangpyong, Korea (2022); The Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin (2021); The Foundling Museum, London, UK (2020); Arnolfini, Bristol, UK (2020); Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, Edinburgh, Scotland (2019); Whitechapel Gallery, London, UK (2018); The Lowry, Salford, UK (2018); Royal Academy of Arts, London, UK (2018 and 2017); National Museum of Iceland, Reykjavík, Iceland (2016); National Portrait Gallery, London, UK (2015); Jewish Museum, New York, USA (2015); Jerwood Gallery, Hastings, UK (2015); Collezione Maramotti, Reggio Emilia, Italy (2014–2015); Saatchi Gallery, London, UK (2013–2014); MODEM, Hungary (2012); Turner Contemporary, Margate, UK (2011); Neuberger Museum of Art, Purchase, New York, USA (2009); MIMA Middlesbrough Institute of Modern Art, UK (2007); Galleri KB, Oslo, Norway (2005) and Bloomberg Space, London, UK (2004). Joffe has exhibited nationally and internationally at venues including The Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge, UK (2023-2024); The Modern, Fort Worth, Texas, USA (2022);
Her work is in numerous institutional and private collections, including the Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston, USA; Detroit Institute of Arts, USA; National Portrait Gallery, London, UK; and The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, USA, among others.
Joffe has created a major public work for the Elizabeth line in London titled A Sunday Afternoon in Whitechapel, on view at Whitechapel Elizabeth line station.
Works presented in Chiaroscuro: A Century of Charcoal...


Anna Park


About the artist
b. 1996, South Korea
Portrait of Anna Park by Luis Corzo
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Works presented in Chiaroscuro: A Century of Charcoal...


Shahzia Sikander


About the artist
b. 1969, Pakistan
Shahzia Sikander is widely celebrated for subverting Central and South-Asian manuscript painting traditions and launching the form known today as neo-miniature. Born in Lahore, Pakistan, Sikander earned a B.F.A. in 1991 from the National College of Arts (NCA) in Lahore. Sikander’s breakthrough work, The Scroll, 1989–90, received national critical acclaim in Pakistan and brought international recognition to this medium within contemporary art practices in the 1990s. Sikander received her M.F.A. at the Rhode Island School of Design in 1995. Over the subsequent twenty plus years, Sikander’s practice - which has expanded to include paintings, media work and most recently, sculpture, has been pivotal in showcasing art of the South Asian diaspora as a contemporary American tradition.
Sikander’s Solo exhibitions include the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston in Texas; the Morgan Library and Museum in New York; the RISD Museum in Providence, Rhode Island; Jesus College in Cambridge, United Kingdom; the MAXXI National Museum of 21st Century Art in Rome; the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain; the Museum of Contemporary Art in Sydney; the Hirshhorn Museum in Washington, D.C.; and the Whitney Museum of American Art, among many others. Sikander has also been featured in group exhibitions, most recently at the Royal Academy of Arts in London, and other international venues, including the Sharjah Biennial 11; the 8th and 13th Istanbul Biennials; the National Portrait Gallery in Washington DC; the Museum of Modern Art in New York; the Museum of Contemporary Art in Tokyo; the 54th Venice Biennale in Italy; and the Whitney Biennale in 1997, among others. Sikander has been the recipient of many notable awards, including most recently the Pollock Prize for Creativity in 2023, the Fukuoka Arts and Culture Prize in 2022, the Asia Society Award for Significant Contribution to Contemporary Art in 2015, a medal of Art by the U.S. Department of State in 2012, and a MacArthur Fellowship in 2006. Sikander’s work is in the collections of all major national and international museums, and permanent site-specific public artworks include the University of Houston, Princeton University, the Cincinnati Art Museum and Johns Hopkins University. Sikander serves on the boards of Art21, the Rhode Island School of Design, and the Institute of Fine Arts, New York University, and is a member of the Asian American Arts Alliance’s artist council. In Spring of 2023, Sikander served as an adjunct professor at Columbia University's Institute for Comparative Literature and Society, and more recently in Spring of 2024, as an adjunct professor at Brown University’s Department of the History of Art & Architecture. She is currently an adjunct professor for Fall of 2024 at Columbia University, and the Alan Kanzer Artist-in-Residence at Columbia's Zuckerman Institute of Mind, Brain and Behavior. In conjunction with her traveling exhibition, an extensive monograph examining Sikander’s work entitled Extraordinary Realities was published in 2021 by Hirmer Publishers and The University of Chicago Press.
Sikander's major outdoor project, NOW, an 8-foot bronze female sculpture, is permanently installed on the roof of the Appellate Courthouse in Manhattan. An accompanying 18-foot female sculpture, Witness, was exhibited in Madison Square Park in 2023, and has since travelled to the University of Houston. The second edition of NOW was acquired by The Newark Museum of Art in 2023. Sikander’s animation Reckoning, her second display as part of Times Square’s Midnight Moment, and Singing Suns, displayed across screens in Moynihan Train Hall from November 2023 to January 2024, have been a part of two recent major public art programs. A survey exhibition, Shahzia Sikander: Collective Behavior, co-organized by the Cleveland Museum of Art and Cincinnati Art Museum as a Collateral Event of the 60th International Art Exhibition - La Biennale di Venezia, was on view until October 20th, 2024, before complementary iterations will be presented in parallel at both Ohio institutions in Spring 2025.
Photo: Matin
Works presented in Chiaroscuro: A Century of Charcoal...


Jake Grewal


About the artist
b. 1994, UK
Jake Grewal (b. 1994, London) lives and works in London. In Grewal’s paintings and drawings, figures merge with their surrounding landscapes, seemingly unmoored from time and space. Often nude and based on the artist’s own image, the figures are situated against dramatic sunsets or gazing into verdant green pools. Time and its transition play a central role with the same figure often repeated within a scene. Narratives are left open-ended and the viewer is encouraged to project their own conclusions onto the dramatic tableaus. Informed by photographs that Grewal has taken of himself outdoors, there is an underlying desire for ambiguity and abstraction within his figures. Drawing is central to Grewal’s practice and it usually the departure point from which his larger paintings emerge. Using predominantly charcoal, Grewal insistently repeats figures and scenes, often in different mediums and scales until his narratives are realised. Landscape and figure merge together and become one. Figures and trees dissolve and reappear on a journey together, sometimes cohabitating, sometimes being consumed, but always investigating the artist’s fascination with the passing of time.
Solo exhibitions include: Under The Same Sky, Studio Voltaire, London, England (2025); Some days I feel more alive, Pallant House Gallery, Chichester, England (2023); Now I Know You I Am Older, Thomas Dane Gallery, London, England (2022). Selected group exhibitions include: Swimming, GRIMM, Amsterdam (2024); Voyage, Maureen Paley, Hove, England (2024); Drawing Biennial 2024, Drawing Room, London, England (2024); Interior, Michael Werner Gallery, London, England (2022); Shifting Waters, Jhaveri Contemporary, Mumbai, India (2022); Drawing Attention: Emerging British Artists, The British Museum, London, England (2022); Dissolving Realms, curated by Katy Hessel, Kasmin Gallery, New York NY (2022); Drawing Biennial 2021, Drawing Room, London, England (2021); On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous, Jhaveri Contemporary, Mumbai, India (2021); Deity, Arusha Gallery, Edinburgh, Scotland (2020); Everyday is Sunday, UTA Artists Space, Los Angeles CA (2020); No Time Like The Present, Public Gallery, London, England (2020).
Photo by Annie Tobin
Works presented in Chiaroscuro: A Century of Charcoal...


Alexandre Zhu


About the artist
b. 1993
Photo: Courtesy of the Artist and Gallery Vacancy, Shanghai
Alexandre Zhu (1993), of Chinese origin, spent his childhood between Shanghai and Paris. He graduated from ENSAD in 2018 with an exchange at the School of Visual Art in New York.
His work draws its ideas from personal history, as part of the Chinese diaspora, and from the ever-changing environment he grew up in. Focusing on charcoal drawing, the different series navigate between observation of our standardized landscape and nostalgia feelings, questioning both personal and universal themes.
Laureate of the Pierre David-Weill drawing prize in 2021 and Prix Dauphine Contemporary in 2022, he was selected for the Artpress Biennale the same year. In 2024, he was nominated as a finalist for the K11 Art Foundation Prize, and participated in Paris Internationale with Gallery Vacancy. His work has been shown in several exhibitions in France and abroad (Zhi Art Museum, SWAB, MO.CO Panacée, Paris Internationale, NADA...), and pursues his work as a resident in the POUSH studios in Aubervilliers.
Works presented in Chiaroscuro: A Century of Charcoal...


Sara Anstis


About the artist
b. 1991, Sweden
Portrait of Sara Anstis by Benjamin McMahon. Courtesy Kasmin, New York.
Sara Anstis (b. 1991 Stockholm, lives and works in London) uses sensuous soft pastels and oil paint to build worlds that set the stage for explorations of subjectivity, mythology, and ecology. Utilizing the visual language of folklore and dream, Anstis’s paintings and site-specific installations weave together surreal landscapes, deftly lit figures, anthropomorphic flora, and symbolic objects that vibrate both materially and narratively.
The indeterminate beings in Anstis’s landscapes are resolutely assertive of their autonomy even as they exist peripatetically and close to the margins of survival. As they hunt, swim, play, and rest, their interdependence with nature implies an order beyond comparisons with nineteenth-century European ideals of ‘civilization.’ Appropriately, Anstis’s works both celebrate and challenge the history of the nude. Rather than lacking in modesty, the artist describes her figures, whose bodies are shaped by smooth gradients of color, as ‘wearing the clothes of nakedness.’ At times ambiguous in gender, their exaggerated biomorphic features drift occasionally into the realm of the aquatic or amphibian, speaking to the artist’s interest in the traditions of storytelling and the organic hybridity commonly used allegorically from Greek and Roman to Nordic myth. Working her surfaces with both softness and vigor, she renders their skin and hair as a material delight, entirely contributory to the complexity of reading a figure.
Anstis begins her process by drawing the figures and later removes all but the most necessary formal elements. Using close cropping to evoke a productive claustrophobia, the gestures and expressions of her figures come into prominence, generating a potent atmospheric and psychological tension. It is during this conjuring process that her smaller symbolic objects begin to populate the paintings, curiously repeated by Anstis within her bodies of work—clues left like breadcrumbs in the dark.
In recent years, Anstis has moved fluently from working primarily with pastel on paper to realizing large-scale oil on canvas. The touch necessitated by pastel and the soft surface quality generated by the unmediated connection with the artist’s skin is translated into paint while retaining the sense of immediacy that is so integral to the artist’s surfaces. Linking the intimacy of the subject with that of the medium itself, Anstis further toys with the senses by depicting tender moments of touch between her figures, who are oftentimes depicted accompanied by furred animals, bristling with tactility.
Throughout Anstis’s works, markers of nature and human form are disassembled and entwined. Fragments of highly pigmented landscapes are framed by the bodies within them, seen through the crook of an arm or beyond an arched back. The forest—a site of transformation, resonant with the metaphor of unconscious thought—reappears as processed or carved wood in many forms, and the enigmatic presence of water is ever-present, acting as a container or a shifting border to activities that play out within the picture plane. While these elements evoke a pastoral beauty that abounds with art historical references, there is an unmistakable wildness at play calling upon the darker truths of the natural world: the brutality of the elements, latent violence, and the presence of power differentials underscoring even the most affectionate of interactions between animals and humans alike.
Sara Anstis (b. 1991) is a Stockholm-born and Salt Spring Island raised artist. She received a BFA in Studio Art and Sociology at Concordia University (Montreal, CA) in 2013 and an MFA in Fine Art from Valand Academy (Gothenburg, SE) in 2016. In 2018, she completed the Drawing Year Postgraduate Programme at the Royal Drawing School (London, UK). Anstis has had solo shows at Various Small Fires, Seoul; Bradley Ertaskiran, Montreal; and Fabian Lang, Zurich. Recent group exhibitions include those held at Kunsternerforbundet, Oslo; Kasmin Gallery, New York; Galerie Derouillon, Paris; Lyles & King, New York; and Palazzo Monti, Brescia. She has received grants from the Elizabeth Greenshields Foundation, Jerwood Arts Bursary, and the Anna-Lisa Thomson Foundation amongst others.
Works presented in Chiaroscuro: A Century of Charcoal...


Whitfield Lovell


About the artist
b. 1959, United States
Portrait of Whitfield Lovell by Sandra Paci
Works presented in Chiaroscuro: A Century of Charcoal...




Adrian Ghenie


About the artist
b. 1977, Romania
Adrian Ghenie (b. 1977, Baia Mare, Romania) adopts elements from the tradition of history painting while subverting its conventions by representing provocative subjects and undermining norms of realism. A formally trained painter, he synthesizes his technical abilities with conceptual tendencies from Dada, merging representational and abstract imagery. His practice conflates and extends painting techniques of the past, displaying both a Baroque mastery of chiaroscuro and a gestural handling of paint indebted to Abstract Expressionism. With pronounced brushwork that introduces distortions of depicted space and his subjects’ features, Ghenie’s art unearths feelings of vulnerability, frustration, and desire, invoking human experience and themes of the collective unconscious.
Ghenie received his first one-artist museum exhibition at the National Museum of Contemporary Art, Bucharest in 2009. Since then, he has been the subject of numerous solo exhibitions at museums and art centers including the Stedelijk Museum voor Actuele Kuns, Ghent (2010); Museum of Contemporary Art Denver (2012); Centro de Arte Contemporáneo de Málaga (2014); The Metropolitan Arts Centre, Belfast (2015); The State Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg (2019); and Palazzo Cini in Venice (2019), among others. Ghenie represented Romania at the Venice Biennale in 2015 with Darwin’s Room, curated by Mihai Pop. Ghenie has been represented by Pace since 2011. Major exhibitions of his work at the gallery include New Paintings (2013); Golems (2014); Recent Paintings (2017); The Hooligans (2020); Adrian Ghenie (2022); and The Brave New World (2023).
Ghenie’s work is held in a number of public collections, including the Centre Pompidou, Paris; Hammer Museum, Los Angeles; Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; Museum van Hedendaagse Kunst, Antwerp; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; and Stedelijk Museum voor Actuele Kunst, Ghent.
Works presented in Chiaroscuro: A Century of Charcoal...


Olly Williamson


About the artist
b.1994, United Kingdom
Olly Williamson (b.1994) is an artist from Preston, now based in London. He has studied at the Royal Drawing School, and Manchester School of art. Exhibiting in London and around the UK, Olly’s work is in several private collections and he has been awarded several prizes for his work, including the Hesketh Hubbard Bursary for Drawing, ACS Drawing Prize, ACS studio Prize (Shortlist) and the Paragon Print prize. Alongside his studio practice, Olly is a drawing tutor on the Royal Drawing School Young Artist program.
Works presented in Chiaroscuro: A Century of Charcoal...


Ali Banisadr


About the artist
b. 1976 in Tehran, Iran
Photo: Kyle Dorosz
A painter of epic vistas and dazzling intricacies, Ali Banisadr creates complex, turbulent worlds whose syncopated rhythms corral a multitude of references from art history as well as allusions to our own turbulent times. In any single, expansive canvas one might sense the crystalline detail of the Persian miniature tradition, the muscular brushwork of Abstract Expressionism, the narrative dexterity of the early Dutch masters, the bravura technique of the Venetian Renaissance, or the libidinous glyphs of Surrealism, among others.
These references reveal themselves not as static, sedimentary layers but as successive waves or currents, series of abstract and semi-abstract forms that flow together, intermingle or collide, submerging and resurfacing, recast and transformed through an often-lengthy process of subtraction and addition. While up-close, elements of the artist’s compositions may recall Bosch-ian hybrid figures, from afar Banisadr’s paintings, with their legions of strafing lines, arcs, blurs and smears of colour evoke, for example, grand world landscapes or the fractured and shimmering surfaces of our digital world.
Their narratives – earthly, celestial, pacific or war-like – unfold in grand, ranging dramas that are informed, though far from defined, by the artist’s own life story. Born in Tehran in 1976, Banisadr left Iran with his family in 1988 at the end of the eight-year Iran-Iraq war, moving briefly to Turkey, then to the US. Living in California for twelve years, first in San Diego then San Francisco, the artist was exposed to graffiti culture at an early age. He participated in the Mission School of graffiti in San Francisco, before attending SVA (School of Visual Arts) for his BFA, later earning an MFA from New York Academy of Art.
Like artists before him, most famously Wassily Kandinsky, Banisadr is a synaesthete who perceives visions in sound. He has spoken of how he first became aware of his synaesthesia, with one sense triggering another, during his childhood in Iran when he would draw ‘to create a visual understanding of the sounds I was hearing – the vibrations, explosions and air raids.’
Sound continues to guide his brushstrokes – their tempo and pressure – as well as the process of bringing together often contradictory elements, which he describes as reaching ‘a certain type of harmony that I find in organising chaotic fragments into a unified symphony.’ While a sense of flux underpins his works, their complex melodies sound notes of optimism. As the artist has said,‘We are in a state of emergency and live in apocalyptic times – man-made and natural disasters, violence and conflict. I think we can heal, but we have to have the vision to see what lies beyond all the confusion and I think artists can play a part in this.’
Born in 1976 in Tehran, Iran, Ali Banisadr lives and works in Brooklyn, NY. Recent solo institutional exhibitions include Return to Mother, Princeton University Art Museum, Princeton, USA (2024); Ali Banisadr: Beautiful Lies at Museo Bardini and Palazzo Vecchio, both in Florence, Italy (2021); Ali Banisadr/Matrix 185, Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art, Hartford, CT, USA (2020), and Ultramarinus – Beyond the Sea, Benaki Museum, Athens, Greece (2020). His work has been included in recent institutional group exhibitions including Summer Exhibition, Royal Academy of Arts, London (2023); Daphne without Apollo: Metamorphoses from Richter to Lassnig, The Opelvillen Foundation, Rüsselsheim, Germany, (2022); Epic Iran, V&A, London, UK (2021); A Boundless Drop to a Boundless Ocean, Orlando Museum of Art, Florida, USA (2021); Rebel, Jester, Mystic, Poet: Contemporary Persians, Asia Society, New York, NY, USA (2021); Love Me / Love Me Not, Contemporary Art from Azerbaijan and its Neighbours, Venice Biennale, Italy (2013).
Work by the artist is included in major institutional collections including: Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, NY, USA; Akademie der Bildenden Künste, Vienna, Austria; British Museum, London, UK; Centre Pompidou, Paris, France; Het Noordbrabants Museum, Den Bosch, Netherlands; Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, DC, USA; K11 Art Foundation, Hong Kong; Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles, CA, USA; The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, USA; Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, CA, USA; The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, USA; Museum der Moderne, Salzburg, Austria; Miniature Museum, The Hague, Netherlands; Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadelphia, PA, USA; Francois Pinault Foundation, Palazzo Grassi, Venice, Italy; Victoria & Albert Museum, London, UK; Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art, Hartford, CT, USA; among others. The first major monograph on the artist was published by Rizzoli in 2021.
Works presented in Chiaroscuro: A Century of Charcoal...


Vivian Caccuri


About the artist
b. 1986, Brazil
Lives and works in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
Vivian Caccuri investigates musical cultures and sound productions in a broad sense, proposing experiments with sound that go further than the auditory field and encompass the visual, the corporeal and the technological. Through objects, installations, performances, and original music, Caccuri creates situations that disorient the everyday experience and, consequently, interrupt perceptions sedimented in culture and ingrained in cognitive structures. The artist sheds light on historical and cultural conditionings that establish distinctions between noise, music, natural sounds, and silence. The constructions of Soundsystems in various materials and contexts highlights the collective meaning and, so often, the censorship of certain musical expressions. Thus, her work assumes a strong political sense. In recent years, mixing scientific data and fiction, Vivian Caccuri has investigated mythologies involving the mosquito and other insects. Narrated in embroidery and drawings, these works retell and update stories that describe the human aversion to these animals, both as epidemic agents and for their sound emissions.
Graduated in Fine Arts in 2007, she has held solos shows at Millan in 2024 and 2022, and at Galeria Municipal do Porto, Portugal; Museum Folkwang, Essen, Germany, both in 2024; HUA International, Beijing, China, in 2023; Kunsthal 44Møen, Møen, Denmark, and at the New Museum, New York, USA, in 2022.
Caccuri has also been featured in shows such as Siluetas sobre maleza, Museo Jumex, Mexico City; The Disagreeement: A Theather of Statements, Neue Kunstverein, Vienna, Austria, and Crossings, Kasmin Gallery, in Nova York, EUA, in 2024; Attention After Technology, Kunsthall, Trondheim, Norway, 2023; And, in 2022, Brazilian Histories, at the MASP, and the 13th Bienal do Mercosul, Porto Alegre; The Musical Brain, High Line Art, New York, USA, in 2020. In the previous year, Serpentine Galleries, London, UK, presented a commissioned work by the artist. Other noteworthy shows Caccuri has been in are the 32nd Bienal de São Paulo, 2016; People's Biennale - Kochi- Muziris Biennale, Kochi & Kerala, India, 2018; 11th Bienal do Mercosul, 2018; 33rd Panorama da Arte Brasileira, MAM, São Paulo, 2013.
Caccuri has also collaborated with various musicians, such as Arto Lindsay, Gilberto Gil, Fausto Fawcett and Wanlov. The artist wrote and published the book O que Faço é Música, investigating the first vinyl records made by visual artists in Brazil, in 2013, which won the Funarte Prize for Critical Production in Music. She also participated in the book Making it Heard: A History of Brazilian Sound Art, a compilation of texts about sound in Brazilian art, published by Bloomsbury NYC. The artist won the awards: Sergio Motta Art and Technology Award, in 2011; Rumos Itaú Cultural, in 2008; and was nominated for the Future Generation Art Prize, 2017 and was a finalist for the PIPA Prize 2018.
Vivian Caccuri's work is featured in the collections of the Museu de Arte do Rio, Rio de Janeiro; Pinacoteca do Estado de São Paulo, São Paulo and the Institute of Contemporary Art, Miami Beach, USA.
Works presented in Chiaroscuro: A Century of Charcoal...




Aurel Schmidt


About the artist
b. 1982, Canada
Social
Aurel Schmidt is a New York artist known both for the technically adept execution and autobiographical frankness of her drawings. Precious and personal, the work is exacting, highly detailed and teeming with overt intimacy. Pieced together using individual parts of the physical and emotional detritus of our world, Schmidt painstakingly constructs an intricate tableau that serves as a memento mori to our own vulnerability and mortality.
Aurel Schmidt (1982) was born in Kamloops, British Columbia and lives and works in New York. Schmidt has work currently on view at the MACBA Barcelona and in 'Selections from the KAWS Collection' at the Drawing Center, New York. Schmidt's work is in the Whitney Museum's permanent collection and included in Phaidon Vitamin D2. Solo exhibitions include Gathering, London; The Hole, New York; P.P.O.W, New York; Deitch Projects, New York; and has contributed to group exhibitions at the Museum Moderner Kunst, Vienna, MACRO Museum, Rome; Saatchi Gallery, London & Deste Foundation, Greece.
Works presented in Chiaroscuro: A Century of Charcoal...


Toyin Ojih Odutola


About the artist
b. 1985, Nigeria
Born in Ife, Nigeria in 1985, Toyin Ojih Odutola is a contemporary visual artist known for her vivid multimedia drawings and works on paper. Her unique style of complex mark-making and lavish compositions rethink the category and traditions of portraiture and storytelling. Ojih Odutola’s artwork often investigates a variety of themes from socio-economic inequality, the legacy of colonialism, queer and gender theory, notions of blackness as a visual and social symbol, as well as experiences of migration and dislocation. In 1990, she immigrated with her family to Berkeley, California, and would then move to Huntsville, Alabama in 1994.
Ojih Odutola received her MFA in painting and drawing from California College of the Arts. While studying in San Francisco, she co-curated her first solo show in New York, “(MAPS)” at Jack Shainman Gallery in 2011. It was composed of a collection of individual black figures in de-contextualized white backgrounds drawn in layers with a ballpoint pen. The ideas behind this series of skin as geography introduced her as a pioneering voice in the visual representation of black skin through art. The artist has since gone on to exhibit in London, Cape Town, San Francisco, Paris, and Chicago. Her work is currently in the collections of several major art institutions, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Museum of Modern Art, and the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York, and the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of African Art in Washington. Odutola currently lives and works in New York.
Works presented in Chiaroscuro: A Century of Charcoal...


Willem De Kooning


About the artist
(1904-1997)
Works presented in Chiaroscuro: A Century of Charcoal...


Willam Kentridge


About the artist
b. 1955, South Africa
William Kentridge (Johannesburg, South Africa, 1955) is internationally recognized for his drawings, films, theatre productions, and operas. His method combines drawing, writing, cinema, performance, music, theatre, and collaborative practices to create works of art grounded in politics, science, literature, and history, while still leaving space for contradiction and uncertainty.
Since 1990, Kentridge's works have been exhibited in museums and galleries around the world, including Museum of Modern Art in New York, Albertina Museum in Vienna, Musée du Louvre in Paris, Whitechapel Gallery in London, Louisiana Museum in Copenhagen, Museo Reina Sofia in Madrid, Kunstmuseum in Basel, Zeitz MOCAA and Norval Foundation in Cape Town, and Royal Academy of Arts in London. He has participated multiple times in Documenta, Kassel (2012, 2002, 1997) and in the Venice Biennale (2015, 2013, 2005, 1999, and 1993).
His operatic productions include Mozart's The Magic Flute, Shostakovich's The Nose, and Alban Berg’s works Lulu and Wozzeck, performed in world renowned opera houses, including the Metropolitan Opera in New York, La Scala in Milan, the English National Opera in London, the Opéra de Lyon, the Opera of Amsterdam, the Sydney Opera House, and the Salzburg Festival.
Kentridge’s theatre productions, staged in theaters and festivals around the world, include Refuse the Hour, Winterreise, Paper Music, The Head & the Load, Ursonate, Sibyl, The Great Yes, The Great No, and, in collaboration with the Handspring Puppet Company, Ubu & the Truth Commission, Faustus in Africa!, The Return of Ulysses, and Woyzeck on the Highveld.
In 2016, Kentridge founded the Centre for Less Good Idea in Johannesburg: a space dedicated to reflective thinking and creative work through experimental, collaborative, and interdisciplinary artistic practices. The centre hosts an ongoing program of workshops, public performances, and mentoring activities.
Kentridge has received honorary doctorates from numerous universities, including Yale, the University of London, and Columbia University. In 2010, he was awarded the Kyoto Prize. In 2012, he was made a Commandeur in the Order of Arts and Letters in France, and delivered the Charles Eliot Norton Lectures at Harvard University. In 2015, he was named an Honorary Academician of the Royal Academy of London. In 2017, he received the Princess of Asturias Award for the Arts, and in 2018 the Antonio Feltrinelli International Prize. In 2019, he was awarded the Praemium Imperiale for painting in Tokyo. In 2021, he was appointed Foreign Associate Member of the Académie des Beaux-Arts in Paris. In 2022, he received the Honor of the Order of the Star of Italy and, in 2023, the Olivier Award for Excellence in Opera for Sibyl in London.
Kentridge’s works are part of the collections of numerous museums such as Art Gallery of Western Australia (Perth), Art Institute of Chicago, Carnegie Museum of Art (New York), San Diego Museum of Art, Fondation Cartier (Paris), Zeitz MOCAA (Cape Town), Norval Foundation (Cape Town), LACMA (Los Angeles), Haus der Kunst (Munich), Sharjah Art Foundation, Mudam (Luxembourg), Musée d'Art Contemporain de Montréal, MoMA (New York), SF MoMA (San Francisco), Castello di Rivoli (Turin), Moderna Museet (Stockholm), MoCA (Los Angeles), Stedelijk Museum (Amsterdam), National Gallery of Victoria (Melbourne), Johannesburg Art Gallery, MAXXI (Rome), Louisiana Museum (Humlebaek, Denmark), National Gallery of Canada (Ottawa), National Museum of Modern Art (Kyoto), Israel Museum (Jerusalem), Inhotim Museum (Brumadinho, Brazil), Broad Art Foundation (Los Angeles), Centre Pompidou (Paris), Fondation Louis Vuitton (Paris), National Gallery of Australia (Canberra), Tate Modern (London), Sifang Art Museum (Nanjing), Kunsthalle Mannheim, Vehbi Koç Foundation (Istanbul), Luma Foundation (Arles), Museum of Fine Arts (Budapest), Fundació Sorigué (Lleida, Spain), Guggenheim (Abu Dhabi), Kunsthalle Praha (Prague), and Amorepacific Museum of Art (Seoul), as well as numerous private collections worldwide.
Photo (headshot): Marc Shoul
Works presented in Chiaroscuro: A Century of Charcoal...


R. B. Kitaj


About the artist
(1932-2007)
Works presented in Chiaroscuro: A Century of Charcoal...






Paula Rego


About the artist
(1935 - 2022)
Portrait of Paula Rego © Nick Willing. Courtesy Estate of Paula Rego and Victoria Miro
An artist of uncompromising vision and a peerless storyteller, Paula Rego (1935–2022) brought immense psychological insight and imaginative power to the genre of figurative art. Drawing upon details of her own extraordinary life, on politics and art history, on literature, folk legends, myths and fairytales, Rego’s work at its heart is an exploration of human relationships, her piercing eye trained on the established order and the codes, structures and dynamics of power that embolden or repress the characters she depicts. Often turning hierarchies on their heads, her tableaux, whether tender or tragic, consider the complexities of human experience and the experience of women in particular. She is especially celebrated for works that forcibly address aspects of female agency and resolve, suffering and survival, such as the Dog Women series, begun in 1994, the Abortion series, 1998–99, which is considered to have influenced Portugal’s successful second referendum on the legalisation of abortion in 2007, and the recent series Female Genital Mutilation, 2008–09.
Rego’s art transcends the art world. She is heralded as a feminist icon and is a household name. In her native Portugal the government commissioned the celebrated architect Eduardo Souto de Moura to design and build a museum dedicated exclusively to her work – Paula Rego’s House of Stories, situated in Cascais, which opened to the public in 2009. In the UK, where she attended the Slade School of Fine Art from 1952–56, her first major solo exhibition in London was held at AIR Gallery in 1981, followed in 1988 by an exhibition at the Serpentine Gallery. She was appointed the first National Gallery Associate Artist in 1989–90. She has been the subject of numerous books and TV programmes, including Paula Rego, Secrets & Stories, a BBC documentary directed by the artist’s son Nick Willing, which won the Royal Television Award for Best Arts Program in 2018, and The Southbank Show in 1992 and 2007. Her art continues to have an enduring influence upon younger generations, who are introduced to her work through the GCSE syllabus. In 2010 she was made a Dame of The British Empire by Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II.
About the artist
Dame Paula Rego RA was born in 1935 in Lisbon, Portugal. She died in London on 8 June 2022.
The largest and most comprehensive retrospective of Rego’s work to date was held at Tate Britain in 2021 (7 July–24 October 2021) and travelled to Kunstmuseum Den Haag, The Netherlands (27 November 2021–20 March 2022), and Museo Picasso Málaga, Spain (26 April–21 August 2022). Works by the artist featured in the 59th International Art Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia, The Milk of Dreams, curated by Cecilia Alemani (23 April–27 November 2022).
Other current and recent major solo exhibitions include Paula Rego: Power Games, Kunstmuseum, Basel, Switzerland (28 September 2024–2 February 2025); Paula Rego: Visions of English Literature, Lakeside Arts, Nottingham, UK (21 September 2024–5 January 2025); Paula Rego: Manifesto, Casa das Histórias Paula Rego, Cascais, Portugal (18 April–6 October 2024); Paula Rego: Crivelli's Garden, The National Gallery, London, UK (20 July–29 October 2023); Paula Rego: The Story of Stories, Pera Museum, Istanbul, Turkey (23 December 2022–30 April 2023 ); Paula Rego: Subversive Stories, featuring prints from across her career, at Arnolfini, Bristol, UK (5 February–29 May 2022); Paula Rego: Literary Inspirations at Petersfield Museum, Hampshire, UK (23 March–9 July 2022); Power Games, Museum De Reede, Antwerp, Belgium (30 July–25 October 2021), and Paula Rego: Obedience and Defiance, curated by Catherine Lampert, which travelled from MK Gallery, Milton Keynes to the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, Edinburgh in 2019–2020 and was on view at the Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin from September 2020–May 2021.
Paula Rego – The Scream of Imagination | In Keys, organised by the Serralves Foundation, was recently on view at MACNA – Museu de Arte Contemporânea Nadir Afonso, Chaves, Portugal. Other recent solo exhibitions include: Giving Fear a Face, CEART: Centro de Arte Tomás y Valiente, Madrid, Spain (2019); The Cruel Stories of Paula Rego, Musée de l’Orangerie, Paris, France (2018–2019) and Folktales and Fairy Tales, Casa das Histórias Paula Rego, Cascais, Portugal (2018). Exhibitions of her work have been held previously at venues including: Museo de Arte Contemporáneo, Gas Natural Fenosa, La Coruña, Spain (2014); the Museum of Contemporary Art, Monterrey, Mexico; Pinacoteca de São Paulo, Brazil (2010-2011); École supérieure des beaux-arts, Nîmes, France (2008); Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Madrid, Spain; National Museum of Women in the Arts, Washington D.C., USA (2007–2008); Fundação das Descobertas, Centro Cultural de Belém, Lisbon, Portugal (1997) Tate Liverpool, UK (1996–1997); AIR Gallery, London, UK (1981).Recent international group exhibitions include All Too Human: Bacon Freud and a Century of Painting, Tate Britain, London, UK (2018); travelled to Museum of Fine Arts, Budapest, Hungary; Post-Pop, Outside the Commonplace, Gulbenkian Museum, Lisbon, Portugal (2018); Macau Biennial, Macau Museum of Art, Macau, China (2018); Bacon, Freud and the School of London, Museo Picasso, Malaga, Spain; travelled to ARoS, Aarhus, Denmark (2017–2018). Her work is in the collections of numerous museums including the British Museum, Tate, National Gallery and National Portrait Gallery, London, UK; The Metropolitan Museum of Art, MoMA, The Morgan Library & Museum, New York, USA; The Art Institute of Chicago, USA and the Yale Center for British Art, New Haven, USA.
In 2010, she was made a Dame of the British Empire for services to the Arts in the Queen’s Birthday Honours and was awarded the prestigious Grã-Cruz da Ordem de Sant’Iago da Espada from the President of Portugal in 2004. Rego has received several Honorary Doctorates from universities including the University of St. Andrews (1999), University of East Anglia (1999), Rhode Island School of Design (2000), The London Institute (2002), Oxford University (2005), Roehampton University (2005), Faculdade de Belas-Artes at the University of Lisbon (2011), and the University of Cambridge (2015).
She was the recipient of many awards such as the Honors Medal of the city of Lisbon, Portugal (2016), the Maria Isabel Barreno prize (2017), Portuguese Government’s Medal of Cultural Merit (2019) and the Lifetime Achievement Award from Harper’s Bazaar (2019).
Works presented in Chiaroscuro: A Century of Charcoal...


Lucian Freud


About the artist
(1922-2011)
Works presented in Chiaroscuro: A Century of Charcoal...


Pierre Bonnard


About the artist
(1867-1947)
Works presented in Chiaroscuro: A Century of Charcoal...


Allan Kaprow


About the artist
(1927-2006)
Portrait of Allan Kaprow. Courtesy Allan Kaprow Estate and Hauser & Wirth
Works presented in Chiaroscuro: A Century of Charcoal...




Arieh Lubin


About the artist
(1897-1980)
Works presented in Chiaroscuro: A Century of Charcoal...




David Bomberg


About the artist
(1890-1957)
Works presented in Chiaroscuro: A Century of Charcoal...


Leon Kossof


About the artist
(1926-2019)
Works presented in Chiaroscuro: A Century of Charcoal...








Unframed: 52 × 76.8 x 0.5 cm
Framed: 62.5 × 87 × 5 cm


































"I make large drawings and paintings about everyday life, focusing on people, animals, and nature to create deeply personal allegories. Increasingly, I’m drawn to presenting these images on a gigantic scale, often with life size figures—referencing the grandeur of full-length oil portraits, frescoes, and tapestries once reserved for aristocrats and stately homes. This creates a dialogue between the grand and the accessible, which relates to my use of affordable materials like charcoal and paper, a financial necessity.
The high contrast in tone, movement, and noise reflects my cyclical and fluctuating mood patterns, as I aim to capture the rhythms of people and the world, striving for tenderness, specificity, and sincerity. I want to make the everyday feel melodic and monumental.
I’m gradually developing larger works using traditional methods involving extensive preparation and multiple studies from life. My surroundings serve directly as settings for my figurative work, ensuring a strong connection to real places I’ve experienced."


Unframed dimensions: 77.8 x 57.2 cm
Framed dimensions: 10.5 x 78.5




Signed on reverse


Framed dimensions: 67.6 x 85.4 x 4.5 cm
Signed and dated recto






© Barbara Walker. All rights reserved, DACS 2025. Photo: Tiwani Contemporary
From the “Show and Tell (2008-2015)” series. For further information, see here.
Unframed Dimensions: 88 x 60 cm
Framed Dimensions: 107 x 84 cm




From the I ROT BEFORE I RIPEN series.








Diptych, each Sheet: 55.8 x 38.5 cm (unframed)
Idris Khan’s diptych, created on handmade Korean Hanji paper, showcases the artist's mastery of layering and mark-making.
The intricate texture of Hanji—renowned for its durability and preservation qualities—serves as the ideal foundation for Khan's meticulous process. Each sheet is an individual expression, painstakingly crafted over months to achieve the perfect surface. This traditional Korean paper, derived from mulberry trees, brings its own history and materiality into conversation with Khan’s marks.
The drawings evoke the gestural energy and poetic rhythm reminiscent of Cy Twombly, with handwriting-like strokes that build organically across the surface. Each mark, carefully considered, contributes to an overarching sense of tension and dynamism. The interplay between the paper's natural texture and Khan’s layered charcoal gestures creates a palpable depth, drawing the viewer into a meditative space.
The making process reflects an intimate exchange: the handmade quality of Hanji, shaped by a Korean master craftsman, interacts with the artist's deliberate yet intuitive strokes. The heightened sensitivity to each laid mark imbues the diptych with a subtle magic, as if the paper and drawing are in constant conversation. Through this process, the diptych captures both the fragility and resilience of materials and emotions, offering a contemporary reflection on tradition, time, and the transformative power of art.




In these works, I’m exploring the breaking down of traditional boundaries and the idea of agency. They reflect how societal expectations placed on women can be unraveled, challenging old norms and offering new perspectives on freedom and identity.


In these works, I’m exploring the breaking down of traditional boundaries and the idea of agency. They reflect how societal expectations placed on women can be unraveled, challenging old norms and offering new perspectives on freedom and identity.













