5 Artists on Our Radar in April 2022

“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.

Cindy Ji Hye Kim

B. 1990, Anyang, South Korea. Lives and works in New York.

Macabre runs afoul in the prints and draftsmanship of Cindy Ji Hye Kim. The artist’s current solo exhibition, “In Despite of Light” at Casey Kaplan, sets the stage for the artist’s rapturous turn to examining human anatomy. The show, on view through April 30th, features several large-scale drawings made from charcoal, pencil, and pastel on silk. These pieces take center stage as light passes through the translucent substrates, creating an effect that feels simultaneously haunting and holy.

Featuring subjects including a bedframe and a otherworldly figures, Kim’s drawings imagine scenes that feel ripped from a Brothers Grimm fairytale. And while the silk prints hang suspended in the center of Casey Kaplan, they also feature the artist’s custom designed stretchers, which take the form of human anatomy merged with architectural designs. In an interview with BOMB magazine, Kim described that, given her background as a figurative painter, it is only natural that she probe beneath the flesh to represent what is inside.

Kim is represented by both Casey Kaplan and François Ghebaly. She received a BFA from the Rhode Island School of Design and an MFA from Yale University School of Art.

—Ayanna Dozier

Seyni Awa Camara

B. ca. 1945, Bignona, Senegal. Lives and works in Bignona.

Over the past decade, Seyni Awa Camara’s sculptures have gained greater reach among the international art world. Born and based in Senegal, Camara crafts her sculptures in her front yard before casting them in an open-hearth kiln. Deriving inspiration from her Diola cultural heritage, mythology, and nature, Camara’s sculptures use figuration as a way to tap into the unknown or hidden truths of life around us, including ghosts, spirituality, and catastrophe. Camara’s sculptures take on vertical forms as they build up from the earth.

Camara first received international acclaim through her inclusion in the Centre Pompidou’s 1989 exhibition on contemporary art in Africa, “Magiciens de la terre” (“Magicians of the Earth”). For several years following that exhibition, Camara focused on the local art scene and market in Senegal. Since engaging with an international audience more recently, Camara has had work included in numerous art fairs and group exhibitions in Western Europe. She is represented by MAGNIN-A, which is currently featuring her sculptures in the two-person show “Les restes du bruit” with Estevão Mucavele, on view through May 14th.

—Ayanna Dozier

Heidi Norton

B. 1977, West Virginia. Lives and works in New York.

Heidi Norton, the daughter of West Virginia homesteaders, explores her New Age upbringing using photography, painting, and, most impactfully, sculpture. Deeply connected to nature, her work often captures organic materials—bones, mermaid’s purses, a nursery’s worth of plants—within the manmade: resin, glass, wax. Her color palette extends this juxtaposition of the natural and synthetic: Milky corals and matted shales are enlivened with shocks of DayGlo green and magenta.

In her art, one finds both field site and laboratory, in situ-specimen and glass-slide sample. There is a reverence here, the sense of a backwoods altar, a homeopathic cure, the shaman. But there is also a tinge of the ominous, of death and decay.

Her work extends the use of non-traditional materials that has become a cornerstone of contemporary sculpture, and can be seen through April 16th at Sargent’s Daughters in “The Palm-Wine Drinkard,” a three-person show that also includes Johannes Högbom and Alyssa Klauer. Norton’s work is also featured in the group show “The Coral Reef Principle,” organized by SHIM Art Network, through May 12th.

Norton received an MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 2002. She is the founder of Vantage Points, an art education and portfolio development service, and a professor at the International Center of Photography. Her work has been exhibited across the U.S. at venues that include the Museum of Contemporary Art; Chicago; GRIMM, New York; and Transmitter Gallery, Brooklyn.

—Brian P. Kelly

Kour Pour

B. 1987, United Kingdom. Lives and works in Los Angeles.

Kour Pour imbues each of his works with a curiosity and respect for cultural heritage and history. Take, for example, his current solo exhibition “New Homes, New Places” at Gallery 1957 in London. In meticulous and precisely rendered paintings stretched over shaped panels, Pour draws upon a wide range of stylistic techniques including calligraphy, woodblock printing, and arabesque.

With evocative titles such as Shaping Reframing and Stories Told in a Language I Don’t Understand (both works 2022), Pour’s work engages viewers on multiple levels. First, the irregularly shaped panels make a powerful visual impression. Then, the fine linework and often monochromatic color schemes compel a closer look, prompting viewers to spend more time, care, and attention examining the pieces.

Kour Pour received a BFA from Otis College of Art and Design in Los Angeles. He has exhibited in solo and group exhibitions at Gallery 1957, Kavi Gupta, and others.

—Isabelle Sakelaris

Julia de Ruvo

B. Sweden. Lives and works in Stockholm.

Julia de Ruvo’s painted animal portraits are alive with expression and movement. Last month, the Stockholm-based artist opened her debut solo show, “I Promise I Don’t Bite / Jag lovar att jag inte kommer att bita dig,” at Guts Gallery in London. Inspired by French author Michel Houellebecq’s 1991 essay “To Stay Alive,” the exhibition explores the meaning of survival, weaving together themes of community and belonging.

In her latest series of paintings, the self-taught artist examines the connection between people and domestic animals. Applying layers of muted color, de Ruvo communicates life’s uncertainties and draws on notions of shared human experiences. A sense of longing permeates de Ruvo’s canvases, emphasizing a desire for companionship.