10 Emerging Artists to Discover at Foundations

Adam Boyd

B. 1993, Newcastle-under-Lyme, England. Lives and works in London.

Adam Boyd is interested in how video games like “Assassin’s Creed” and “Death Stranding” play with time and space. His large-scale textile works stitch together materials such as taffeta and felt with printed fabrics featuring digital scans made with Lidar, a 3D mapping program. These digital impressions are carefully edited and then transposed onto the fabric. Meanwhile, his “Synchronisation” series, comprising of woven jacquard tapestries, features incomplete renderings of light filtering through sheer curtains.

Recently featured in a two-person exhibition at The Split Gallery in London entitled “Faux,” Boyd’s work River of Brakelights (2024) depicts cars apparently driving down a street made of magazine clippings. Below it, an abstract textile section evokes the beams of car lights, in hand-felted wool, tatteta, cotton, grosgrain ribbon, and reflective vinyl tape.

A 2022 MFA graduate from the Slade School of Fine Art, Boyd once exclusively worked with paint before transitioning to textiles during his studies. His asynchronous textile works made with this 3D mapping have now been the subject of several solo exhibitions in Glasgow, London, and Hafnarfjordur, Iceland.

—Maxwell Rabb

Elli Antoniou

B. 1995, Birmingham, England. Lives and works in London.

A smudge or a scratch on a gleaming pane of stainless steel may never look the same after you see the work of Elli Antoniou. Taking the metal as her substrate, rather than paper or canvas, Antoniou grinds away at the surface with power tools, resulting in singular metallic drawings. Each work is highly choreographed ahead of time—the artist plans out her movements and gestures, knowing that any swish or scrape against the metal cannot be erased.

Light plays a critical role in the works, too, shaping the reflections the steel surfaces emit, and the experience of the viewer. The artist compares her steel creations to screens—equally ever-changing and captivating, impacting what we see and feel. The work is a crisp response to traditional painting or drawing, distilling the composition to light and sleek, fluid forms.

Antoniou’s work is presented in Foundations by London-based gallery Cob, where the artist held a solo show this past June, entitled “passages through the caustics.” Antoniou earned her MA in sculpture from the Royal College of Art in 2020, and prior to that completed a BA in fine art and art history at Goldsmiths University of London. She was awarded the ARTWORKS 2022–23 Fellowship by the Stavros Niarchos Foundation and took part in the Palazzo Monti residency program in 2023. Her works have been shown at various galleries across the U.K. and Europe, including Night Cafe Gallery, Split Gallery, Berntson Bhattacharjee Gallery, and Tabula Rasa Gallery, among others.

—Casey Lesser

Igi Lola Ayedun

B. 1990, São Paulo. Lives and works in São Paulo.

Color is the driving force behind Igi Lola Ayedun’s practice, which spans painting, photography, sculpture, sound, and moving image. The Brazilian artist explores the historical and cultural significance of color, tracing its contemporary applications back to pre-colonial European traditions and beyond. Evoking the rich history of lapis lazuli, indigo acts as the foundational hue in Ayedun’s oeuvre, appearing as a recurring motif throughout her work.

As part of Foundations, Ayedun presents her work with HOA, the São Paulo gallery founded by the artist during the COVID-19 pandemic. In And you know my wishes are sincere (2023), shades of deep blue ripple across the concrete surface, accented by soft gold powder. Infusing her oil paint and gold wax with a unique blend of pigments, Ayedun reimagines common materials in new and unexpected ways.

Ayedun has exhibited in São Paulo and internationally in galleries such as HOA, Mendes Wood DM, Weserhalle, and Gruta, as well as in institutions such as the São Paulo Museum of Image and Sound.

—Adeola Gay

Jodie Fletcher

B. 1976, Ottawa, Canada. Lives and works in Ottawa.

Texture, rhythm, and color find a harmonious balance in Jodie Fletcher’s mixed-media pieces. Between painting and sculpture, her modular abstractions use strips of painted canvas that she weaves across hand-made wooden frames. Fletcher works in an iterative process, constructing and deconstructing the woven components of her geometric works.

In two standout works, Magnolia and Osaka (both 2023), on view with Colorado gallery MiXX projects + atelier as part of Foundations, lines converge and diverge in intricate multilayered grid structures that resemble the complex interlocking pixels of computer graphics. Both pieces feature elongated strips, intertwining to create methodical yet lively compositions.

Fletcher completed her studies at the Carleton University School of Industrial Design, and her works have appeared in presentations in Miami, New York, and Toronto. In her career as a freelance industrial designer, Fletcher has collaborated with Frank Gehry, Swarovski, and Porsche Design.

—Adeola Gay

Lara Davies

B. 1985, Maesteg, Wales. Lives and works in London.

From the intimate details of her London home to the sweeping vistas of the British Highlands, Welsh painter Lara Davies is inspired by the spaces she navigates in her daily life. In her paintings, everyday textures and scenes—like peeling wallpaper or threadbare carpets—are rendered with softness and precision that transcend their mundane origin. For instance, the grid-like pattern of Golden Hour (2023) resembles the sunlit wall of a summer home, turned into a sublime moment. Other works, like the green-washed, mountainous landscape The Pass (2023), render uninhabited landscapes with obscured colors, evocative of fading photographs or memories. Her oil-painted tributes have a sense of nostalgia, symbolic of Davies’s sadness about the fleeting nature of these cherished moments.

Since graduating with a MA in painting from the Royal College of Art in 2022, Davies has participated in several group exhibitions at Canopy Collections, Irving Gallery, and Alma Pearl, as well as Contemporary by U Gallery in Taipei. Davies also founded LLE in 2016, a curatorial project that focused on uplifting emerging painters. The project has hosted events with Saatchi Gallery in London and the London Art Fair.

—Maxwell Rabb

Lauren Januhowski

B. 1992, Houston. Lives and works in Paris.

Come for the bright colors—stay for the fine details. Bold graphic treatments and non-naturalistic pops of pink, green, and purple make Lauren Januhowski’s textile portraits of women eye-catching, while closer inspection reveals the delicate touches that make them shine. Beaded fringe drips off of works like Phantom Embrace (2024), and layers of translucent organza add depth to scenes Januhowski renders on monotype-printed fabric. In There’s a snake in my boot (2024), the whisper of fine embroidered detail snakes around the subject’s cowboy boots, a clear reflection of the artist’s care.

Broadly, Januhowski’s work examines themes of intimacy, communication, and female camaraderie—as seen in her master’s thesis at the École des Arts Décoratifs de Paris, a series of patchwork tapestries that visualize intuitively understood but underdiscussed experiences of womanhood. In her works on view in Foundations, Januhowski’s characters navigate scenes of discomfort, sometimes seeking solace in the arms of other women.

Before receiving her master’s degree in Paris, Januhowski earned her BFA from the Cooper Union in New York. She has exhibited in Paris at Bim Bam Gallery and Galerie Christian Berst, among others.

—Olivia Horn

Lisa Liljestrom

B. 1998, Härnösand, Sweden. Lives and works in Oslo.

Lisa Liljestrom’s airbrushed paintings have the aura of photos pulled from a cold-case file—cryptic and slightly unsettling, seemingly full of mysteries yet to be cracked. The Swedish artist sources her reference images from film, YouTube videos, and newspapers, isolating her subjects from their context and forcing fleeting moments into something more permanent. Featuring close-cropped hands, feet, doors, and windows, these paintings often hint at themes of agency and escape. Meanwhile, Liljestrom is a student of color psychology, using monochromatic palettes—sometimes pale, sometimes ultra-saturated—to influence the emotional resonance of the works.

A graduate of the HDK-Valand Academy of Art and Design in Gothenburg, Sweden, Liljestrom has been featured in several institutional and gallery shows since earning her BFA in 2022. These include solos at the Västernorrlands Museum in her hometown of Härnösand and at Sarah Kravitz Gallery in London.

—Olivia Horn

Matthew F. Fisher

B. 1976, Boston. Lives and works in New York.

A preoccupation with the natural world runs throughout the paintings of Matthew F. Fisher, whose works evoke a void between memory and time. The Boston-born artist paints preserved instantaneous moments—a wave at an impossibly perfect crest or a shell on a coast as moments—simplified to the extent that they verge on abstraction. Layered in dense swathes of acrylic and ink, the result is serene, contemplative works in which segments of nature become personal reflections of lived experiences, often drawn from childhood memories spent by the ocean.

Based in New York, Fisher received his BFA from Columbus College of Art and Design and his MFA from Virginia Commonwealth University. He has mounted solo shows at galleries including OCHI, The Hole, and Taymour Grahne Projects, among others. The artist will also have a solo show at PLATO Gallery in October.

—Arun Kakar

Soetkin Verslype

B. 1994, Ieper, Belgium. Lives and works in Antwerp.

Belgian painter Soetkin Verslype turns everyday life into a jigsaw puzzle. Using bright, occasionally tonal shades and flat perspective, elements such as tree branches, crockery, and figures are jumbled together, switching colors as they intersect. In her recent show “Through The Window” at Ballroom Gallery Brussels (a project initiated by Antwerp galleries Base Alpha and DMW), the artist focused on tablescapes—wine bottles, teapots, and mugs—in defined gouache segments that recall mosaic tiles. Wine Glasses (2023), for instance, turns a collection of glassware on a dashboard into a mesmerizing series of lavender, green, and blue circles. Like many emerging artists today, she works in monochromatic figuration as a way to reinvent scenes as originally observed, in her own voice.

Verslype received a BFA and MFA from the University of Antwerp. She has exhibited frequently in Belgium, including a solo show at Schouwburg Noord in Antwerp, as well as a group show at Halle Cultural Center Vondel.

—Josie Thaddeus-Johns

Tiantian Lou

B. 1995, Hangzhou, China. Lives and works in New York.

Building upon her background in architecture, Canadian artist Tiantian Lou now works across a variety of mediums, from traditional oil paintings to innovative soft vessel sculptures created on sewn canvas and linen.

In a selection of works at Foundations with LATITUDE Gallery New York, Tiantian showcases her continued exploration of spatial environments. Light and shadow create a sense of depth in Silver Lake Blvd (2024), and the presence of floating circular forms suggest a dreamlike, cosmic realm. Awash with soothing pastel color, her painted panels juxtapose interior and exterior spaces. The resulting work combines distinct elements into a single image, inviting viewers to question their understanding of architectural forms.

Tiantian received a BFA and a bachelor’s in architecture from the Rhode Island School of Design. She also holds a master’s in architecture from Princeton University. Her work has been featured in a two-person exhibition and a group exhibition at LATITUDE Gallery New York, as well as a group exhibition at Soloway Gallery.

—Adeola Gay