East Meets West in Focus
About the exhibition
This curated selection of works for the Vortic Artist Prize represents the most compelling works submitted by the exhibiting galleries. Each work was chosen for its ability to engage in a meaningful dialogue with the others. Together, they not only reflect the broader theme of the fair, but also offer a more nuanced exploration of this concept.
Curated by Kathy Huang
Kathy Huang is an independent curator and Managing Director, Art Advisory and Special Projects at Jeffrey Deitch, where she curated Wonder Women, an exhibition featuring forty Asian diasporic women and non-binary artists working in figuration.
Artists 12
Artists 12
Works 13
About the exhibition
Presented by
Vortic & Untitled Art
Curator
Kathy Huang
Dates
26 Nov 2024 - 31 Jan 2025
This curated selection of works for the Vortic Artist Prize represents the most compelling works submitted by the exhibiting galleries. Each work was chosen for its ability to engage in a meaningful dialogue with the others. Together, they not only reflect the broader theme of the fair, but also offer a more nuanced exploration of this concept. The digital exhibition allows the works to be experienced beyond physical boundaries, uniting different perspectives in a shared virtual space. I hope this selection inspires visitors to discover new artists and galleries at Untitled.
Kathy Huang
Kathy Huang is an independent curator and Managing Director, Art Advisory and Special Projects at Jeffrey Deitch, where she curated Wonder Women, an exhibition featuring forty Asian diasporic women and non-binary artists working in figuration.
At Deitch, she has also organized exhibitions such as Judy Chicago: Los Angeles (2019), Dominique Fung: It’s Not Polite to Stare (2021), Sasha Gordon: Hands Of Others (2022), and Bony Ramirez: Tropical Apex (2023). Most recently, Huang curated Wild: Women Abstractionists on Nature (2024) at the Metropolitan Museum of Manila. Raised in Philadelphia, Huang earned a B.A. from Duke University and an M.A. in Modern & Contemporary Asian Art from Sotheby’s Institute of Art, London.
Jhonatan Pulido, presented by Alma Pearl
About the artist
Colombian, b. 1988
Online
Social
Works presented in East Meets West in Focus...
Jhonatan Pulido, presented by Alma PearlPapayo, 2024
Carlos Sagrera, presented by Rutger Brandt
About the artist
Spanish, b. 1987
Online
Social
Carlos Sagrera’s work captures the intricacies of memory and the ever-evolving passage of time. The essence of his work lies in the masterful fusion of hyper-realism and abstraction, creating a mesmerizing interplay within his paintings.
Works presented in East Meets West in Focus...
Carlos Sagrera, presented by Rutger BrandtFlower Passage, 2024
Huang Baoying, presented by Mou Projects
About the artist
Chinese, b. 1997
Online
Social
Works presented in East Meets West in Focus...
Huang Baoying, presented by Mou ProjectsProof of a Balcony R, 2024
Huang Baoying, presented by Mou ProjectsProof of a Balcony L, 2024
Auseklis Bauskenieks, presented by Lazy Mike
About the artist
Latvian, 1910-2007
In 1944 Bauskenieks was forced by the German occupiers to join the war efforts. He performed hard manual labor in Germany and Holland, and after the war ended, he was captured by American forces and tasked with clearing rubble in Dieppe, France. It wasn't until 1946 that he could return home, only to discover that his mother and sisters had emigrated to the USA. This experience solidified his beliefs as a convinced pacifist.
His contempt for warfare is vividly expressed in this painting, where a small putti urinates on a massive rocket crashing to the ground. Rather than depicting the horrors of war, the work chooses to ridicule and express disdain for the entire ordeal.
Works presented in East Meets West in Focus...
Auseklis Bauskenieks, presented by Lazy MikeWe Don't Need War, 1990
Shu Okamoto, presented by COHJU
About the artist
Japanese, b. 1995
Shu Okamoto is an emerging Japanese painter exploring the potential of contemporary Nihonga, a traditional Japanese painting, by focusing on its distinctive sense of perspective, composition, use of negative space, and material characteristics such as framing, technique, and texture.
Works presented in East Meets West in Focus...
Shu Okamoto, presented by COHJUThe Screen with the Sudare, 2022
Cristina Garrido, presented by CURRO
About the artist
Spanish, b. 1986
Online
Her artistic research investigates the value that is culturally assigned to objects; to a large extent, those objects classified as art. Her production, through specific, repetitive and meta-referential gestures, focuses on the circulation of these objects, the study of the exhibition, as well as the curatorial practice. Through these gestures, which take various forms (installations, publications, intervened objects, etcetera), Garrido seeks to expose the mechanisms of promotion and valuation of the art object, proposing a critical reflection about the –physical and digital– exhibition.
Having studied Fine Arts at the Complutense University of Madrid (2004-2009) and Camberwell College of Arts (2007-2008), she obtained an MA Fine Art at Wimbledon College of Art (2010-2011) with a Fundació “la Caixa” Grant for Postgraduate studies in Great Britain. She has been awarded the prize Generación 2015 Proyectos de Arte Fundación Montemadrid (2015), the Fundación Botín Visual Arts Grant (2017-2018) and the ARCO Award for young artists (2018). Her work has been exhibited internationally, including shows at the Centro de Arte Dos de Mayo (Madrid), Centro de Arte Andaluz (CAAC) (Seville), Contemporary Art Museum of Estonia - EKKM (Tallinn), CentroCentro (Madrid), l ?ISELP - institut supérieur pour l’étude du langage plastique (Brussels), Espacio Odeón (Bogotá), Centro de Desarrollo de las Artes Visuales (La Habana), Galerie im Taxispalais, (Innsbruck), SESC Sorocaba (Sorocaba/ Sâo Paulo), La Casa Encendida (Madrid), Banner Repeater (London) and AKV St. Joost (Den Bosch), amongst others.
Works presented in East Meets West in Focus...
Cristina Garrido, presented by CURROLocal Colour is a Foreign Invention Series Local Colour is a Foreign Invention (USA Regions – Midwest), 2022
Ha Jin Lee, presented by Gallery Project K
About the artist
South Korean, b. 1982
Online
Social
Works presented in East Meets West in Focus...
Ha Jin Lee, presented by Gallery Project KMnemosyne B. Le Pli, Fold, 2024
Bo Kim, presented by BHAK
About the artist
Seoul, b. 1994
Online
Social
Bo Kim’s work examines the evolving dynamics of human relationships—both with one another and with nature—through the lens of time.
Reflecting on her parents, Bo writes, "They always seemed as strong as trees, but now I see the wrinkles on their faces. I never imagined my trees would bend; I believed they’d remain lush and green in the forest.” This reflection lies at the heart of her My Tree series, which delves into the finite nature of life. By chronicling her parents’ aging, Bo transforms a deeply personal story into a universal narrative. While time and aging are natural processes, accepting them with grace remains one of life’s greatest challenges.
Bo’s work also touches on the profound, timeless bonds between parents and children, inviting viewers to reflect on the enduring nature of cosmic time, which transcends individual relationships. In From a Pair, September 1993, she uses the image of two intertwined trees to symbolize the interconnected lives of parents and children. Through this visual metaphor, Kim gains insights, observes emotions, and comes to terms with life’s principles—truths that are often difficult to grasp. Her work ultimately reveals that while each person’s destiny is unique, our lives are intrinsically interconnected and interdependent.
Works presented in East Meets West in Focus...
Bo Kim, presented by BHAKFrom September 1993, 2024
Tidawhitney Lek, presented by Victoria Miro Projects
About the artist
Cambodian-American, b. 1992
Online
Social
Works presented in East Meets West in Focus...
Tidawhitney Lek, presented by Victoria Miro ProjectsSolace Sisters, 2024
Ralph Iwamoto, presented by Hollis Taggart
About the artist
Hawaian, 1927- 2013
Born in Hawai in 1927 to Japanese Buddhist parents, Ralph Iwamoto witnessed the bombing of Pearl Harbor as a teenager in 1941. Like many other artists of his generation who grew up in Hawai‘i, Iwamoto served in World War II and afterwards moved to New York City in 1948. There, he enrolled in the Art Students League with the support of the GI Bill and studied with abstract artists Vaclav Vytlacil and Byron Browne, immersing himself in the dynamic milieu of the 1950s art scene. Iwamoto’s early work leaned heavily towards organic forms, muted colors, and techniques found in traditional Japanese art. His first exhibition in New York took place in 1955, alongside Louise Nevelson and Alfred Leslie. Three years later, his work was included in the Whitney Museum of American Art’s annual.
From 1957 to 1960, Iwamoto worked as a security guard at the Museum of Modern Art, which allowed him the opportunity to spend long periods of time viewing surrealist and other modern paintings. His work from the 1950s reflect a deep interest in surrealist imagery and ideas inspired by the works of Wifredo Lam, Rufino Tamayo, and Pablo Picasso. Trafficking in abstract organic forms of flora and fauna, Iwamoto’s paintings from this period evoke an “invented taxonomy of kingdom hybrids,” as noted by curator Jeffrey Wechsler. The artist’s hybrid animal-vegetation figures nod to the tropical diversity of the artist’s birthplace as well as perhaps his time working with orchids at a florist’s shop. This series of works synthesize the geometric abstraction of Cubism, the surrealist style, and the flat, planar characteristics of traditional Japanese art.
While working as a guard at the Museum of Modern Art, Iwamoto formed close friendships with artists Sol LeWitt, Robert Ryman, and Dan Flavin, who would later go on to become the core group of the Minimalism movement. Influenced by their stylistic and formal innovations, Iwamoto began experimenting with pure color and form and rigorous geometricism in the 1960s. Through Minimalism, Iwamoto saw the potential for a method by which he could explore and express a universal truth and in the early 1970s, he began to work specifically with the octagon as his “shape within a grid.” Inspired by his friend LeWitt’s right angle and left angle compositions, as well as the work of Piet Mondrian and Josef Albers, Iwamoto mined ways to syncopate a grid through seemingly infinite permutations of an octagon and a minimal color palette. He often worked with groups of four (which he terms “QuarOctagons”), eight (“Octagon Concepts”), and sixteen octagons (“Factors”) in grid format and went on to use the octagon in increasingly complex arrangements. In 1989, St. Mary’s College held a retrospective of his octagon paintings. In the later decades of his career, his style shifted to more kaleidoscopic compositions. He died in 2013.
Works presented in East Meets West in Focus...
Ralph Iwamoto, presented by Hollis TaggartOdd, 1965
Tarini Sethi, presented by Rajiv Menon Contemporary
About the artist
Indian, b. 1989
Online
Social
Tarini Sethi's sculptures take us into a world of her own making, challenging the normative standards of form and gender. Tarini’s figures reflect utopian worlds where bodily structures are malleable and fluid. Tarini is interested in the blurring of boundaries--between erotic and abject, human and non human--creating a world that’s ultimately defined by love and acceptance. Her work responds to the culture of sexual repression and gender inequality she encounters in India, creating universes that dare to imagine otherwise. This work marks Tarini's first inclusion of enamel in sculpture, bringing color into conversation with her bold use of stainless steel.
Works presented in East Meets West in Focus...
Tarini Sethi, presented by Rajiv Menon ContemporaryUnder The Sun and Out Of The Blue, 2024
Siegfried Anzinger, presented by GOLESTANI
About the artist
Austrian, b. 1953
Works presented in East Meets West in Focus...
Siegfried Anzinger, presented by GOLESTANIUntitled, 2024
Carlos Sagrera’s work captures the intricacies of memory and the ever-evolving passage of time. The essence of his work lies in the masterful fusion of hyper-realism and abstraction, creating a mesmerizing interplay within his paintings.
Bo Kim’s work examines the evolving dynamics of human relationships—both with one another and with nature—through the lens of time.
Reflecting on her parents, Bo writes, "They always seemed as strong as trees, but now I see the wrinkles on their faces. I never imagined my trees would bend; I believed they’d remain lush and green in the forest.” This reflection lies at the heart of her My Tree series, which delves into the finite nature of life. By chronicling her parents’ aging, Bo transforms a deeply personal story into a universal narrative. While time and aging are natural processes, accepting them with grace remains one of life’s greatest challenges.
Bo’s work also touches on the profound, timeless bonds between parents and children, inviting viewers to reflect on the enduring nature of cosmic time, which transcends individual relationships. In From a Pair, September 1993, she uses the image of two intertwined trees to symbolize the interconnected lives of parents and children. Through this visual metaphor, Kim gains insights, observes emotions, and comes to terms with life’s principles—truths that are often difficult to grasp. Her work ultimately reveals that while each person’s destiny is unique, our lives are intrinsically interconnected and interdependent.
Ed. 1/3 + 2AP
Painting and geography. In this series, I depart from the well-known phrase of the writer Jorge Luis Borges Local colour is a foreign invention to question whether it is possible to find out the local colour of certain specific geographical areas.
For this, I have looked at how Western artists from different eras have depicted the sky in painting, from XVIIth century to the present. These fragments of painted skies, collected from museums’ websites, are treated as colour samples that are, then, organised chromatically following the Pantone scale in the form of a grid. The information of the name of the author of the painting, the date of its execution and the title are also indicated, generating jumps in time that connect the experience of artists from different origins and generations in front of a landscape.
Addressing themes like identity, colonialism, trade, nationalism, globalisation and climate change, I seek to transcend political boundaries and highlight similarities in the human experience connected to specific landscapes and climates.
Dimensions:
100X180 cm, eight of each 35X40cm
Signed, titled, and dated verso
Born in Hawai‘i in 1927 to Japanese Buddhist parents, Ralph Iwamoto witnessed the bombing of Pearl Harbor as a teenager in 1941. Like many other artists of his generation who grew up in Hawai‘i, Iwamoto served in World War II and afterwards moved to New York City in 1948. There, he enrolled in the Art Students League with the support of the GI Bill and studied with abstract artists Vaclav Vytlacil and Byron Browne, immersing himself in the dynamic milieu of the 1950s art scene. Iwamoto’s early work leaned heavily towards organic forms, muted colors, and techniques found in traditional Japanese art. His first exhibition in New York took place in 1955, alongside Louise Nevelson and Alfred Leslie. Three years later, his work was included in the Whitney Museum of American Art’s annual.
From 1957 to 1960, Iwamoto worked as a security guard at the Museum of Modern Art, which allowed him the opportunity to spend long periods of time viewing surrealist and other modern paintings. His work from the 1950s reflect a deep interest in surrealist imagery and ideas inspired by the works of Wifredo Lam, Rufino Tamayo, and Pablo Picasso. Trafficking in abstract organic forms of flora and fauna, Iwamoto’s paintings from this period evoke an “invented taxonomy of kingdom hybrids,” as noted by curator Jeffrey Wechsler. The artist’s hybrid animal-vegetation figures nod to the tropical diversity of the artist’s birthplace as well as perhaps his time working with orchids at a florist’s shop. This series of works synthesize the geometric abstraction of Cubism, the surrealist style, and the flat, planar characteristics of traditional Japanese art.
While working as a guard at the Museum of Modern Art, Iwamoto formed close friendships with artists Sol LeWitt, Robert Ryman, and Dan Flavin, who would later go on to become the core group of the Minimalism movement. Influenced by their stylistic and formal innovations, Iwamoto began experimenting with pure color and form and rigorous geometricism in the 1960s. Through Minimalism, Iwamoto saw the potential for a method by which he could explore and express a universal truth and in the early 1970s, he began to work specifically with the octagon as his “shape within a grid.” Inspired by his friend LeWitt’s right angle and left angle compositions, as well as the work of Piet Mondrian and Josef Albers, Iwamoto mined ways to syncopate a grid through seemingly infinite permutations of an octagon and a minimal color palette. He often worked with groups of four (which he terms “QuarOctagons”), eight (“Octagon Concepts”), and sixteen octagons (“Factors”) in grid format and went on to use the octagon in increasingly complex arrangements. In 1989, St. Mary’s College held a retrospective of his octagon paintings. In the later decades of his career, his style shifted to more kaleidoscopic compositions. He died in 2013.
This work is titled Papayo, which is a colloquial way to refer to the papaya tree in Colombia. This work constitutes Jhonatan’s tribute to the flora and architecture of his native country. His work often references the trauma left in the wake of Colombian Civil War while also exploring the beauty that surrounds.
As I carefully looked after my plants, I began to recognize my role as a caregiver and realized that the relationship between a creator and their work is also one of nurturing and being nurtured. This year marked my first spring with a balcony and my first attempt at growing flowers. Before the frost, I planted over 100 tulip and daffodil bulbs, and when spring arrived, I added lilies, violets, jasmine vines, geraniums, clematis, begonias, and hydrangeas.
Reflecting on the variety of flowers on my balcony, I noticed that the plants I had unconsciously chosen closely mirrored those found in New York’s street flowerbeds. It was the first time I felt a deep sense of synchronicity in tending to plants, as though a tropical soul, through the act of gardening, was slowly becoming part of this temperate city.
As I carefully looked after my plants, I began to recognize my role as a caregiver and realized that the relationship between a creator and their work is also one of nurturing and being nurtured. This year marked my first spring with a balcony and my first attempt at growing flowers. Before the frost, I planted over 100 tulip and daffodil bulbs, and when spring arrived, I added lilies, violets, jasmine vines, geraniums, clematis, begonias, and hydrangeas.
Reflecting on the variety of flowers on my balcony, I noticed that the plants I had unconsciously chosen closely mirrored those found in New York’s street flowerbeds. It was the first time I felt a deep sense of synchronicity in tending to plants, as though a tropical soul, through the act of gardening, was slowly becoming part of this temperate city.
I was thinking about how much I still need my mom to hold me and how important that is to me. I will never let that go. This care between one woman and another. I mean, yeah, I am her baby daughter, but I'm a grown-ass woman. When I’m at my lowest, overwhelmed by uncontrollable
feelings, my mother’s lap and arms are among the few places that can calm me down. Then I thought about my sisters. I have three (older) Bong Srey. I thought it would be nice for them to hold each other, like how my mom does for me. To note, my mother rarely gave her loving affection to all of us. Her struggles kept her from spending that kind of time with us. There was a lot of miscommunication growing up, but we all understood she was our caring mother. So with that said, between us sisters, showing affection was also rare.
I had asked my sisters and my mom to pose for my work, that I would like to paint a composition in relation to mom, but in the end what I captured was the relationship between my sisters. I had them wear the Khmer garment that our mother had gotten tailored for us and used my parent’s backyard as the setting. I had each sister, one at a time, lie and rest her head on our mother’s lap, sitting on the straw mat while mother sat upright on a bench. Each one exhaled in comfort, eyes closing, and energy humming as I took all the photo references I needed. One sister even said, “This feels so nice.” Once that was done, I had them do the same with each other. My sisters used to be so close, but as we got older, it became harder for some reason. I blame miscommunication. No doubt that these two love each other, the ones in the painting. They’ve never left each other's side for their entire lives. And what I painted was how it was, the relationship still between the two. Bong Vann, in the blue, is the elder, and she is very much like my mom, while Bong Dah sits in consolation, a need we all share. I have another Bong Srey I would have loved to capture with the others, but the tension between them remains, and I could not convince her to join this experience of solace.
Shu Okamoto is an emerging Japanese painter exploring the potential of contemporary Nihonga, a traditional Japanese painting, by focusing on its distinctive sense of perspective, composition, use of negative space, and material characteristics such as framing, technique, and texture.
Tarini Sethi's sculptures take us into a world of her own making, challenging the normative standards of form and gender. Tarini’s figures reflect utopian worlds where bodily structures are malleable and fluid. Tarini is interested in the blurring of boundaries--between erotic and abject, human and non human--creating a world that’s ultimately defined by love and acceptance. Her work responds to the culture of sexual repression and gender inequality she encounters in India, creating universes that dare to imagine otherwise. This work marks Tarini's first inclusion of enamel in sculpture, bringing color into conversation with her bold use of stainless steel.
In 1944 Baušķenieks was forced by the German occupiers to join the war efforts. He performed hard manual labor in Germany and Holland, and after the war ended, he was captured by American forces and tasked with clearing rubble in Dieppe, France. It wasn't until 1946 that he could return home, only to discover that his mother and sisters had emigrated to the USA. This experience solidified his beliefs as a convinced pacifist.
His contempt for warfare is vividly expressed in this painting, where a small putti urinates on a massive rocket crashing to the ground. Rather than depicting the horrors of war, the work chooses to ridicule and express disdain for the entire ordeal.