Art
Maxwell Rabb
In this monthly roundup, we spotlight five stellar exhibitions at small and rising galleries.
Red Arrow Gallery, Nashville
Through Jan. 18
Margaret R. Thompson often paints directly under the expansive New Mexican skies. Originally from Washington, D.C., she draws inspiration from the Southwest’s mountainous skylines and vast desert vistas in her surreal and uncanny landscapes populated by goddess-like figures. As she paints outside, she incorporates organic materials like wax, sand, and soil, adding rich, natural textures to her work. These paintings comprise her first solo show, “Sky Mirror,” which is being mounted by Red Arrow Gallery.
One standout painting in the exhibition is Somatic Mirage (2024), depicting a woman braiding another’s hair in front of a floating mirror set against a stylized, mystical landscape with a black sun glowing over the horizon. Other paintings—including Shrine by the Sea (2024), which portrays an ethereal coastal temple surrounded by alternating landscapes depicting both daylight and night—draw inspiration from her travels across the Balearic Islands in Spain.
In 2024, the 34-year-old painter’s work was featured in several international group exhibitions at galleries including smoke the moon, LAMB, and Arusha Gallery. In February 2024, Red Arrow Gallery presented Thompson’s paintings in a solo booth at Zona Maco.
Herrero de Tejada, Madrid
Through Feb. 1
Natalia López de la Oliva sees her explosive, brightly colored abstract paintings as introspective tools. In a recent conversation with Overstandard, she described her approach: “I use painting as a protest, a destabilizer of tradition, a magnifying power. It is powerful because it creates a space dedicated to the inner world.” Her diptych No quería despertar a los que están durmiendo (2024) captures this intent with its dynamic swirls of fiery oranges and yellows, disrupting conventional forms. This standout work anchors her solo exhibition “Lo divino es el impulso de la lengua” at Herrero de Tejada in Madrid.
López de la Oliva’s paintings share a fluorescent palette of neon green and yellow oil paints. Many of these works are titled with irreverent phrases. For instance, Pffffffwrs no voy a abrir la boca (2024), a frenetic bright green painting, translates to “Pffffffwrs I’m not going to open my mouth,” and No vas a impresionar a nadie (2024), which appears to depict a figure engulfed in flames, translates to “You’re not going to impress anyone.”
Born in 1998 in Ciudad Real, Spain, López de la Oliva has also had recent solo exhibitions at Galería Arniches and Galería Cutto in Madrid.
Newchild Gallery, Antwerp
Through Jan. 30
Danish sculptor Sonja Ferlov Mancoba rubbed shoulders with some of the most prominent figures in Paris’s avant-garde from the late 1930s onward, even taking a studio next to Swiss sculptor Alberto Giacometti. While working in the French capital, Ferlov Mancoba began creating her mask-like and biomorphic sculptures, influenced by Surrealism and African imagery. A rare selection of these sculptures is on view in “The Small Things / From The Lowest Land” at Newchild Gallery, alongside works by contemporary London-based sculptor and painter Anousha Payne.
Ferlov Mancoba’s roughly finished bronze sculptures, such as Mask and Figure (1977), draw on the aesthetics of African masks and totems, showcasing the profound impact of African iconography on European modernism. Meanwhile, Payne’s glazed stoneware sculptures, inspired by Indian folklore, address themes of transformation and animism through similarly biomorphic shapes.
Among Payne’s notable works, Toward Hibernation(2024) features a bird-like face turned skyward, a recurring motif in the exhibit. Elsewhere, Payne’s Crushing Eggs (up the hill) (2021–24) incorporates found materials to create an object reminiscent of a high-heel shoe, echoing the objet trouvé concept associated with the same Dadaist and Surrealist traditions that influenced Ferlov Mancoba.
Qerndu, Reykjavík
Through Jan. 26
Ragnar Axelsson spent over four decades as a photojournalist for Iceland’s leading newspaper, Morgunblaðið—though he rarely stayed put in Reykjavik. Instead, he frequently ventured into the Arctic Circle, capturing the increasingly climate-change-threatened people, animals, and places across this remote region. Even after leaving the paper in 2020, he has remained committed to documenting the landscape and the tenacious spirit of its communities. A selection of these photos is the subject of his solo exhibition “At the Edge of the World” at Qerndu in Reykjavik.
The photos are sourced from across Axelsson’s four-decade career. Featured works include Arctic Hunters, Scoresbysund, Greenland (2019), which captures a herd of hunting dogs leading two silhouetted men. Elsewhere, Glacier Rivers N° 5 (2004) frames a distant glacial landscape, but in Axelsson’s black-and-white portrayal, the writhing forms appear otherworldly, typical of the stunning natural scenery of Iceland.
The 66-year-old photographer was the subject of an exhibition titled “Where the World is Melting,” which debuted at the Reykjavík Art Museum in 2021. It subsequently traveled to Versicherungskammer Kulturstiftung in Munich in 2022 and Deichtorhallen Hamburg in 2023.
Ainori Contemporary Art Gallery, Lisbon
Through Jan. 18
While artist NEVRO remains pseudonymous, his CV claims that he has a PhD in neurosurgery. This fascination with the human brain makes its way into his artworks, painted on unconventional canvases such as old doors, skateboards, and toys. The artist, whose name seems to cryptically reference Nevro Corp., a global medical device company that specializes in therapies for chronic pain management, adds graffiti-like tags featuring brains and provocative phrases. He carves into the wood with tools from the neurosurgical theater—scalpel blades, rongeurs, and drills—before painting his provocative images of brains or medical equipment.
These pieces constitute his solo show “Brain Your Mind” at Ainori Contemporary Art Gallery in Lisbon. The titular piece depicts a brain, which is painted and carved on an old wooden door. Elsewhere, the artist adopts a more playful approach with Just Clip It (2020), riffing on the Nike slogan to depict a close-up of a clipped artery. Across his work, he also references the practice of lobotomy, particularly in Holy Brain(2020), which features an X-ray profile of a head with a needle piercing through the eye.
MR
Maxwell Rabb
Maxwell Rabb is Artsy’s Staff Writer.
Thumbnail: Margaret R. Thompson, Sea Constellation, 2024. Courtesy of Red Arrow Gallery.
