Last week, between the Art Basel madness, we found time to go and check out this year’s graduating class from the Fine Art MA course at the Slade School of Fine Art, London. It’s a maze in there! But after working our way around four floors of student’s work, today we’re highlighting five artists whose work stood out. Selected artists and works below: 1. Michael RaphaelFirst up, Michael Raphael’s presentation of three works, which sat together like a triptych, felt particularly considered and showed a confident sense of artistic identity. Le concert (left), Fèis Tir a’ Mhurain (centre) and Pour (right) bring together imagery from pop culture, archives, cartoons, and typography as well as folklore from Raphael’s South Uist heritage. The resulting juxtaposition of high/low references creates what Raphael calls a “painterly mixtape”. 2. Yoona KwonYoona Kwon’s paintings were ethereal and warm, with a softness that shifted as you moved around it. Using layers of organza over linen, Kwon treats painting as a way of questioning what it really means to see, creating compositions that change with the light and the viewer’s position. 3. Lakshya BhargavaLakshya Bhargava’s paintings stopped us in our tracks. His figurative scenes have a brilliant sentimental feeling to them, elevating intimate, everyday moments with the glow of a long afternoon. A man shaving, skin scattered with tiny hairs, is a universally understood image and felt so visceral that it made us itchy just looking at it. |