5 Artists on Our Radar in February 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.

Delia Hamer

B. 1992, Cologne. Lives and works in Amsterdam.

Symbolism is everywhere in Delia Hamer’s canvases, which star entangled, predominantly female forms in flattened, sometimes surreal spaces. Working in a range of media, from colored pencil to acrylic to collage, Hamer often includes Classical or mythical elements, like the Greek key motif and floating swans in El Viento Vino Soplando (2023). This painting is included in Maāt Gallery’s presentation in Foundations, Artsy’s online art fair. The French gallery is also presenting Hamer’s solo show “Fluye sin Cesar” in Paris through February 25th.

The inhabitants of Hamer’s canvases are boldly outlined, recalling the traditional form of caryatids, as well as Matisse’s expressive figures. They appear vulnerable but secluded in their own mental space: Harvest (2024), for instance, shows a woman standing in a field looking stonily ahead, oranges hanging gracefully above her head.

After studying at the Brera Academy in Milan, Hamer completed her MFA at the University of the Arts of London. She has had solo exhibitions at Eritage Gallery in Lisbon and Hangtough Gallery in Dublin; and been featured in group shows at Rhodes in London and Le Reservoir Gallery in Paris.

—Josie Thaddeus-Johns

Alexa Kumiko Hatanaka

B. 1988, Toronto. Lives and works in Toronto.

If works on paper are sometimes seen as the less sophisticated younger siblings of painting and sculpture, Alexa Kumiko Hatanaka explodes that limited understanding of what the genre can be. Last year, the Japanese Canadian artist completed a residency at a washi paper mill in Japan’s Kōchi Prefecture, where she studied papermaking traditions that date to the seventh century. Now, she’s presenting washi-based works in “susceptibility to gravity,” a solo show on view at Patel Brown in Montreal through February 24th.

The exhibition ties craft traditions together, embedding Japanese mythology, personal history, and ecology in lyrical works that draw on printmaking, sculpture, and textile techniques. Among them are linocuts on handmade paper, stitched together like quilt squares and hung from the wall like gossamer tapestries. Nearby, sculptural koinobori—fish-shaped windsocks—made from patchworks of washi are elegantly suspended midair.

For Hatanaka, the fish takes on particular significance in this body of work: A recurring motif in Japanese folklore, it also represents the artist’s connection to her great-grandfather, a fisherman; and evokes contemporary environmental crises that have driven the artist to center sustainable techniques in her practice.

Hatanaka studied printmaking at OCAD University in Toronto, where she is based. She has exhibited at Harper’s, Trotter&Sholer, and Toronto’s Museum of Contemporary Art, and has also shown in numerous other venues through PA System, her now-retired artist duo with Patrick Thompson.

—Olivia Horn

Molly Metz

B. 1992, Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. Lives and works in Philadelphia.

Philadelphia-based artist Molly Metz’s abstract paintings, wall sculptures, and ceramic vessels teem with movement loosely inspired by organic forms. It’s easy to see, in the artist’s intricate linework, echoes of tangled roots, networks of streams, or branching nerve cells. Metz has described her body of work as akin to a biological lineage, in which an image or idea from one artwork can segue into the next.

For example, Metz’s painting practice has springboarded a series of wall-based ceramic sculptures, which she is showing for the first time in her current solo exhibition, “Vernal Pool,” at Philadelphia’s Fleisher/Ollman. In these works, she creates textured topographies—scoring the clay, molding it into peaks and depressions, and sometimes adding layers of paint and shredded paper. “Vernal Pool,” on view through March 9th, coincides with re(FOCUS), an arts initiative recognizing women artists in Philadelphia.

Metz received her MFA from the Tyler School of Art and Architecture in 2016. She has held solo exhibitions at Fleisher/Ollman and Day Space in Philadelphia, and at Friends Indeed (now Micki Meng) in San Francisco. Her works have also appeared in group exhibitions at the Woodmere Museum in Philadelphia and YUI Gallery in New York.

—Isabelle Sakelaris

Darby Milbrath

B. 1985, Vancouver Island, Canada. Lives and works in Toronto.

Darby Milbrath’s fantastical paintings are in full bloom. In canvases infused with soft renderings of butterflies, flora, and misty fog, the self-taught painter harnesses nature’s elements, drawing viewers into the wilderness. Milbrath was recently the subject of a solo exhibition, “Marne Repulse,” at Pangée, which represents her. Often using muted tones, the artist evokes childhood memories through depictions of girls amid thickets of flowers—the paintings’ sense of nostalgia amplified by their hazy compositions.

Milbrath’s background as a professional dancer is evident in her practice. Employing loose lines and lyrical brushwork, she fills her canvases with movement. Two figures embrace amid a swirling sea of plants and ripe fruit in The Lovers (2022), which recalls the visual style of Marc Chagall—an artist who was himself heavily influenced by music and dance. The artist also maintains a writing practice, which informs her work. “My paintings have always been like diary entries in that they intimately express how I’m feeling or what I am experiencing in a symbolic way,” she shared in a 2021 interview with super!.

In 2007, Milbrath graduated from the School of Contemporary Dancers in affiliation with the University of Winnipeg. She has mounted solo exhibitions at Night Gallery and PM/AM, and a selection of her work is currently on view in group exhibitions in New York at James Cohan and 1969 Gallery.

—Adeola Gay

Gonçalo Preto

B. 1991, Lisbon. Lives and works in Providence, Rhode Island.

Gonçalo Preto works predominantly with paint, but his large oil canvases gesture to a wide variety of image-making techniques. In his current solo show, “A Cadência de uma Chama”—on view at Madragoa in Lisbon through March 9th—Preto employs bluish fields of dim light and soft, dark shadows to produce works that suggest cyanotypes, scans, photographs, or telescopic imagery.

Some depict human figures, like the spectral, skeletal form in Os Três Ws (Outrora) (all works 2023), or the stark silhouette lurking before a dental X-ray in Córtex. Others, like Os Três Ws (Dúplice), border on abstraction, with milky geometric planes suggesting light through a window on overexposed film. All evoke a certain atmosphere: not quite sinister, yet not entirely serene. There is a dark beauty to these works that touches on the sublime.