5 Artists on Our Radar in May 2023

“Artists on Our Radar” is a monthly series produced by the Artsy team. Utilizing our art expertise and access to Artsy data, we highlight five artists who have our attention. To make our selections, we’ve determined which artists made an impact this past month through new gallery representation, exhibitions, auctions, art fairs, or fresh works on Artsy.

Katelyn Eichwald

B. 1987, Chicago. Lives and works in Chicago.

Three figures in red traipsing through a barren landscape; a ladleful of dark liquid dripping into a near-transparent glass; the word “betrayal,” barely visible against a dark, mottled background—each of Katelyn Eichwald’s cinematic paintings distills a story into a key detail. Drawing inspiration from her personal archive of screenshotted film stills, the Chicago-based artist renders such scenes on small canvases and often in close crops, creating focused compositions.

Eichwald’s diffuse brushstrokes, unevenly applied to textured substrates, create a hazy effect, which lends the canvases an air of mystery. In Power, on view through May 27th in “In Three Acts,” a group show presented by Huxley-Parlour in London, a figure wears a gold necklace that glows pink against their collarbones. It’s tempting to imagine the pendant endowed with powerful energy emanating from its center—a small object with an inexplicably strong aura, much like Eichwald’s paintings themselves. Like artists working in the vein of magical realism, Eichwald takes the everyday and transforms it into the extraordinary.

Eichwald received her MFA from California College of the Arts in San Francisco in 2012. Since then, she has exhibited internationally, including in a recently closed group show at Montreal’s Pangée, and at EXPO Chicago with Rolando Anselmi, which will mount a solo show with the artist at its Rome location later this year. Eichwald has also had solo shows at Galerie Sultana in Paris and Arles, France, and at New York’s Fortnight Institute.

—Isabelle Sakelaris

Bianca MacCall

B. 1993, Worcester, England. Lives and works in Bristol, England.

British painter Bianca MacCall’s desolate cityscapes—featuring deserted offices, near-empty rail cars, and architecture devoid of people—summon memories of the COVID-19 pandemic. But MacCall was making paintings like this even before 2020, and her work carries a timeless emotional resonance. Taking the oft-romanticized subject of city life and deflating it, she speaks to the hollowness of urban professional existence.

Windows are a unifying motif of MacCall’s solo show “A Closer Look,” on view at London’s Soho Revue through May 6th. A small child peers at a window display, hands pressed to the glass; a dog surveys the world outside, its longing reflection staring back. Often, the viewer becomes the subject, gazing out train windows at passing scenery or into buildings, where signs of life are obscured by curtains. In MacCall’s visual lexicon, windows become barriers, reminding us of what is beyond reach. The artist’s keen attention to surfaces and textures reinforces this dynamic, leaving us feeling stranded on islands of metal, glass, and concrete.

MacCall earned a BA in illustration from Arts University Bournemouth in Poole, England, and went on to study at the Royal Drawing School in London. She has participated in numerous group exhibitions in galleries around the U.K. “A Closer Look” is her first solo show.

—Olivia Horn

Kevin Claiborne

B. 1989, Washington, D.C. Lives and works in New York.

Combining elements of painting, photography, collage, and printmaking, Kevin Claiborne revisits the past in order to restore lost histories. The Harlem-based artist considers the relationship between racial identity, mental health, and memory, examining the nuances of Black American experience.

Following a year-long residency at the Lower East Side Printshop in New York, Claiborne was recently the subject of “Family Business,” a solo exhibition at Sean Horton. In this new body of work, the artist reimagines old photographs from his family archive, creating nostalgic mixed-media works that reference intergenerational trauma and surface both joyous and somber memories.

Pivoting away from earlier text-based works, Claiborne continues to expand his practice, experimenting with color, composition, and markmaking. In Commitment? (2023), hues of blue acrylic and ink engulf a portrait of his parents on their wedding day. Similarly, in Brotherhood? (2023), Claiborne reworks a snapshot from early childhood, this time allowing blue pigment to drip down the wooden panel. Each distorted portrait weaves together past and present moments; the photographic record becomes murkier, sparking questions around history and community.

Claiborne earned an MFA from Columbia University in 2021, after studying mathematics and higher education. In addition to his exhibition at Sean Horton, he has mounted solo shows at OSMOS, sobering, and Thierry Goldberg Gallery. A new solo exhibition, “Landscape of Lost Histories,” will be on view from May 5th through June 2nd at Public Service Gallery in Stockholm.

—Adeola Gay

Paula Turmina

B. 1991, Brazil. Lives and works in London.

Philosophical questions about humanity and time inspire the work of Paula Turmina, a Brazilian artist based in London. Her surrealistic figurative paintings often depict strange, dreamlike scenes of the desert and outer space. Stretched-out, floppy limbs swirl like tentacles around her warm-hued, orange and red canvases. For example, an untitled work from 2022, featured in a recent group show at Kristin Hjellegjerde in London, depicts a human form lying across a barren canyon landscape, their elongated arms stretching far beyond their feet.

In other works, such as those featured in “Membrane,” Turmina’s recent solo show at Hong Kong’s Sens Gallery, the artist combines her otherworldly figures with interplanetary vistas. In Caosmos (2023) and Looking at Earth (2022), our planet is depicted as a tiny blue marble in space, evoking a sense of our smallness in the vast scale of the universe. This reminder of vulnerability, coupled with Turmina’s fiery palette, points to the dangers of our changing climate.

Turmina earned a BA in fine art painting at the Wimbledon College of Fine Arts, and an MA from the Slade School of Fine Art. She has recently exhibited in group shows at Chelsea Space and Berntson Bhattacharjee Gallery, among others.

—Josie Thaddeus-Johns

Santiago Licata

B. 1986, Buenos Aires. Lives and works in Buenos Aires.

In Santiago Licata’s grayscale works on paper and canvas, spectral forms appear to glow with ghostly light. The artist’s deftness with graphite, ferrite, and chalk is evident in drawings that are both soft and sharp, marked by luminous highlights and deep shadows. A selection of these works was featured in Licata’s latest solo show, “Una Moneda”(“A Coin”), at Pasto in Buenos Aires. Alongside them was an unlikely group of onlookers: a flock of concrete pigeon sculptures with human faces on their backs.