Nemesis
YveYANG Gallery is pleased to present Nemesis, a group exhibition featuring new and recent works by Ted Gahl, Lexia Hachtmann, Cécile Lempert, Chaeheun Park, Allan Rand, Sof’ya Shpurova, and Augustina Wang, curated by Danielle Wu.
Dupes. Mirror images. Doppelgängers. Sisters. Lovers. Stereotypes. Rivals. These are twofold tropes and foils which implicitly fuel the artist’s process.
"While he was endeavouring to quench his thirst, another thirst grew upon him." –Ovid
A central diptych by Augustina Wang opens into a scene from Ovid's "Metamorphoses," in which the goddess Nemesis curses Narcissus for being too self-absorbed with his own image to reciprocate romantic pursuits from a nymph named Echo. The artist's internal turmoil, like the fable, is to ward off the social isolation of narcissism.
These rivalries, whether petty and covert or ballooned into epic proportion, invigorate artistic practices with substance and purpose. Regardless of whether they might try to disguise these motivations, artists compete with their idealized virtual realities, projections, personas, and even with other artists. Throughout it all, Nemesis is palpable. She seeks to eliminate hubris by striking down mortals who harbor it. Consequently, fixation on unfairness sustains her, and is the very justification for her existence and power; it is her “occupation.”
A through line in Nemesis is the artist’s awareness of self or “superego” and how it interacts with and exerts power over its creations. Allan Rand's landscapes reflect this kind of ressentiment that becomes an all-encompassing, totalizing world–a becoming into "Universe" (2024). His Snake Pits series portrays the internal landscape of a melancholia where menacing cavities in the earth await just below the surface. Cécile Lempert's split-screen watercolors depict uncanny transitions in time; in the artist's words, the figure "becomes an observer of itself." Chaeheun Park describes her paintings as dry, humorous diaries of images encountered on German eBay, an economy of images vying for purchase that reflect the individuated personalities of their sellers and buyers. The painting "This Fish" (2024) is deliberately placed behind reflective glass, in order to incorporate the viewer's own visage. A painting by Sof’ya Shpurova evokes Narcissus's mythologized transformation into a flower as ultimate punishment for his vanity, in its depiction of a human figure that dissolves into abstract gestures.
Nemesis may thrive in contradictions and tensions in between. British-German artist Lexia Hachtmann takes an interest in social hierarchies and missed communication to depict moments of vulnerability, such as the uncomfortable silence after a disagreement. In Ted Gahl's painting "Death Leading Woman to River" (2024), a morbid fate is both a woman's friend and foe–at once a comforting shadow and a killer.
Ted Gahl
Ted Gahl (b. 1983, New Haven, USA) received his BFA from Pratt Institute in 2006 and his MFA from the Rhode Island School of Design in 2010. Gahl has exhibited paintings widely in the United States, Europe, and Asia. Recent exhibitions include MAMOTH, London; Harkawik, Los Angeles and New York; Analog Diary, Beacon; Alexander Berggruen, New York; Matthew Brown, Los Angeles; Halsey McKay, East Hampton. Gahl is a 2022 recipient of a Pollock-Krasner Foundation Grant.
Courtesy of the artist and YveYANG Gallery
Lexia Hachtmann
Lexia Hachtmann (b. 1993, Berlin, Germany) is a British-German artist. She completed her Art & Design Foundation Diploma in 2013 in Brighton and continued to Fine Art Painting at Universität der Künste Berlin. Here, she obtained a Meisterschüler degree in the painting class of Prof. Mark Lammert in 2021. Lexia Hachtmann is an alumna of the 2022 Goldrausch Künstlerinnenprojekt and recently completed a MA in Painting at the Slade School of Fine Art, London for which she received the DAAD Grant.
Courtesy of the artist and YveYANG Gallery
Cécile Lempert
Cécile Lempert (b. 1994, Dortmund, Germany) lives and works in Cologne. She
graduated as a master student from the class of Prof. Peter Piller and Prof. Stefan Kürten at Düsseldorf Art Academy in 2021. In 2019, she completed a residency at Aq Tushetil in Omalo, Georgia. In her works, Cécile Lempert captures psychological states and interpersonal relationships. She explores questions of belonging to places and other people, often referencing herself and her family history.
Courtesy of the artist and YveYANG Gallery
Chaeheun Park
Chaeheun Park (b. 1996, Seoul, South Korea) lives and works in Frankfurt am Main.
She received her BFA from Chung-ang University in Korea in 2021. Park graduated
from Städelschule in the class of Monika Baer in 2024 and received the Städelschule
Rundgang Painting prize in 2023. Park’s paintings are glossing over this moment of alienation and mining it both aesthetically and conceptually. A malleable interface existing between culture and daily life, the work is often diaristic in nature.
Courtesy of the artist and YveYANG Gallery
Allan Rand
Allan Rand (b. 1983, Vejle, Denmark) is a painter based in Mogendoura, Australia. He has lived and worked in Copenhagen, Amsterdam, Düsseldorf, London, Porto, Brussels and Sydney. In chronological order, he has also had studios in West Oakland (California), Haa (Sweden), Lima (Peru), and Los Angeles (California). He has had solo exhibitions and participated in group exhibitions in galleries and institutions in Germany, Australia, Netherlands, Portugal, Israel, Estonia, and Britain.
Courtesy of the artist and YveYANG Gallery
Sof'ya Shpurova
Sof’ya Shpurova (b. 1996, Moscow, Russia) is a New York-based multidisciplinary artist working in painting and sculpture. She received her BFA in painting from Slade School of Fine Art in London and her MFA from Columbia University in New York. In 2019, Shpurova was awarded residency at Troy Town Pottery in London. Her work has been shown in various solo and group exhibitions including Mamoth, London, Shoot the Lobster, New York, Storage, New York, Holden Gallery, Manchester, and others.
Courtesy of the artist and YveYANG Gallery
Augustina Wang
Augustina Wang (b. 1999, New York, USA) is an artist who lives and works in New York City. She received her BFA in Painting from the Rhode Island School of Design, where she was awarded the Florence Leif Award. In 2023, she completed a residency at Moosey Art in England. Wang’s works have been exhibited internationally in cities including New York, Los Angeles, Boston, Lisbon, Hong Kong, Atlanta, Norwich, Providence, and Seoul.
Courtesy of the artist and YveYANG Gallery
