5 Artists on Our Radar in August 2024

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

J. Carino

B. 1988, Littleton, Colorado. Lives and works in Riverside, California.

J. Carino’s enchanting landscapes embrace queer identity. In his fantastical, fluid paintings, peaceful meadows and towering peaks offer a sanctuary for the human form, providing alternatives to heteronormative narratives surrounding desire and intimacy. Carino’s current solo exhibition, “56,” presents a new series of paintings created during his residency at PM/AM in London, continuing his exploration of queer expression.

One standout work from the show, The Last Raven (2024), depicts male nude figures amid lush grass and wildflowers. Their bodies appear in a state of serene relaxation, highlighted with bright pops of orange and purple that echo the flora surrounding them. Drawing inspiration from both personal and idealized representations of the body, Carino’s paintings present queerness in a natural context, as an organic part of the human experience.

Carino holds a BFA from Parsons School of Design. He has mounted solo shows across the U.S. and Europe at PM/AM, Monya Rowe Gallery, Sow & Tailor, Monti8, A BLVE ROSE, and Auxier/Kline. His works have also recently appeared in group shows at James Cohan and Yossi Milo Gallery.

—Adeola Gay

Claudia Keep

B. 1993, Low Moor, Virginia. Lives and works in New York.

Whether it’s zoning out on a long flight or losing hours to social media, these days, distraction reigns. In such conditions, it’s easy to let the quotidian details slip by unnoticed, but American painter Claudia Keep grasps onto them masterfully.

In small-scale oil-on-panel paintings built up from loose, chunky brushstrokes, Keep captures the ephemera of daily life, making them precious through close attention. “Somehow, Somewhere, Someway,” her upcoming show at Galerie Marguo in Paris, features works that are titled with timestamps, amounting to a diaristic record of her existence. July 24th at 10:01 a.m.: a cozy scene in a wallpapered bedroom, where the rumpled white sheets seemed to beckon her back to bed. July 30th at 6:43 p.m.: sunlight glinting like sequins on the surface of a vast expanse of water.

Keep earned her BA in fine arts from Bryn Mawr College in the suburbs of Philadelphia. She has maintained a brisk exhibition schedule in 2024, including a solo show at 12.26 in Dallas and a group show at Pangée in Montreal (co-presented with New York’s Margot Samel).

—Olivia Horn

Suleman Khilji

B. 1985, Quetta, Pakistan. Lives and works in London.

When Suleman Khilji first visited Paris in 2009, a teacher encouraged him to take a close look at a Mark Rothko painting to figure out how it was made. It was a fateful interaction, as Khilji ended up taking inspiration from Rothko’s carefully layered oil paint color fields to create his hazy, figurative paintings on linen. The Pakistani artist depicts his subjects head-on in earthy pigments that recall the arid landscapes of Balochistan, where he grew up.

Now based in London, Khilji portrays people from TikTok, photos, or real-life encounters, superimposing them against imagined or remembered backgrounds. In paintings featured in “Parallel,” a recent online show with Jhaveri Contemporary, a man in sunglasses crouches with a gun, a woman looks out at the viewer from a rocky outcrop, and another sways against an undefined background. Each painting turns its subject into a mysterious character, the gravitational center of their own world.

In London, Khilji is studying at the Royal Academy of Arts, having received his BFA from the National College of Art in Lahore in 2011. His work was featured by Jhaveri Contemporary in a group booth at Art Dubai in March and in a group show at No.9 Frieze Cork Street in London in 2023. He has also exhibited at several galleries in Karachi, as well as the universities Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris and SOAS in London.

—Josie Thaddeus-Johns

Nellie Jonsson

B. 1992, Umeå, Sweden. Lives and works in Oslo.

A princess cake, a pack of cigarettes, a television airing a scene from Twin Peaks—ceramist Nellie Jonsson transforms these everyday mementos into petite clay sculptures. Each ceramic is molded imperfectly and painted with bright glazes, evoking a sense of wonder and whimsy, as if Jonsson plucked the items from a childhood memory. The 32-year-old artist is represented by Oslo’s QB Gallery, which is currently exhibiting her work at Foundations, Artsy’s online fair for emerging art.

In an interview with Vogue Scandinavia, Jonsson described her practice as unpredictable and exciting, emphasizing the role that chance and instinct play in her work. “With ceramics, it’s much like developing photos. Take an analogue photo, for instance: You don’t know what it will look like until you develop the film,” she said. “I feel like it’s the same with ceramics; sometimes it’s going to be a surprise.”

An MFA graduate of the Oslo National Academy of the Arts, Jonsson is a rising star in the Scandinavian contemporary art scene. Her work has been the subject of solo shows at QB Gallery and SKOG Art Space in Oslo. She has also exhibited at Norwegian institutions including the National Museum in Oslo and the Trondheim Art Museum.

—Maxwell Rabb

Demetrius Wilson

B.1996, Boston. Lives and works in New York.

A recent graduate of Hunter College’s MFA program in painting, American artist Demetrius Wilson tackles big ideas in abstract gestures. His practice investigates intertwined concepts of truth, beauty, and violence, and whether they exist independently from humankind. In “BAM!,” his current solo show at Half Gallery, Wilson’s layered abstractions evoke forces of nature, like a roaring fire in Eternity of Dust or a surging tidal wave in Never Be the Same Again (both 2024).

Wilson’s abstractions represent a departure from his earlier figurative mode. “I felt like I was giving away too much,” he has said of his previous work, which he described as “a bit didactic.” Through his use of abstraction, the artist symbolically distances himself from the canvases, opening them up as laboratories for ideas and interpretation.