Unit London gets ‘Uncanny’ at ART021 in Shanghai
Unit London will unveil new artworks from a stellar roster of artists including Esther Janssen, Jeremy Olson, Heesoo Kim, Connor Marie Stankard, and Leo Frontini at this year’s ART021 Contemporary Art Fair in Shanghai (Nov 9-12).
In this presentation, each artist skillfully invokes the uncanny to elicit a profound sense of unease and introspection within the viewer. Through their unique perspectives, they reveal the peculiar and surreal elements hidden within our seemingly ordinary daily experiences.
Inspired by Sigmund Freud’s 1919 essay of the same title, the exhibition’s theme, ‘Uncanny,’ is based on the notion that the strange could not exist without the ordinary. Something can be both familiar and yet alien at the same time, according to Freud. This concept had a significant influence on the Surrealist movement of the 20th-century, inspiring artists to explore and bring out something that was hidden and repressed in each one of them through the power of dreams and the unconscious.
Founded in 2013, ART021 Shanghai Contemporary Art Fair is a constituent member of the Shanghai International Arts Festival, which aims to unite leading top galleries, institutions, artists, and their works from around the world.
About the Artists
Esther Janssen (b. 1976) was born into a family of artists in Maastricht, Netherlands. She received a BFA from the Design Academy Eindhoven in 2000. Esther’s design background has informed her distinctive style and artistic approach, sparking her interest in ‘the tension between intended design and lived reality’ within the ideal versus the real. In 2021, Janssen held a solo exhibition with Unit London, titled Silence. Recent group exhibitions include Art Tokyo, Unit London, Tokyo, Japan (2023); Playground of Geometry, Centre of International Contemporary Art Vancouver (CICA), Vancouver, Canada (2022) and The Artsy Vanguard, Miami Art Week, Miami Florida, USA (2021).
Esther Janssen creates familiar suburban scenes and landscapes that enchant and disturb in equal measure, their seductive surfaces infused with a creeping sense of unease. The artist sews artificial leather into elaborate scenes of lush, yet strictly ordered, neighbourhoods and gardens. They are devoid of people, yet human presence is suggested by the careful (over)cultivation of the surroundings, which gives the works their suffocating, intoxicating beauty. Ultimately, this uncanny perfection is revealed as merely an illusion of control over nature, which can never be fully shaped to our will. The viewer is invited into a universe parallel to our own, the experience alternating between the quotidian and the sublime.
The subject matter draws on Esther’s pivotal memories connected to landscape and space, in particular her teenage experience of suburban gardens in Belgium. She also cites the Japanese ukiyo-e artists Hiroshige and Hokusai as important influences, as well as the energy of David Hockney’s paintings and the uncanny filmic worlds of David Lynch and Stanley Kubrick. Her cinematic use of lighting enhances the dramatic mood of scenes in which improbable shadows defy the rules of perspective. She describes this as ‘an illusion that does not disappoint, but reveals itself as an illusion, generating a feeling of possibility in which even banal subjects reveal their sacred essence’.Jeremy Olson (b. 1976) is a Brooklyn-based artist from Ojai, California who works in painting, sculpture, and video. He received his BFA from the University of Arizona (2000) and an MFA from New York University (2009). Olson held a debut solo exhibition with Unit London in 2021, titled ‘The likes of others’, which was followed by a second solo exhibition in 2022, titled ‘This time of monsters’. In 2023 his work was featured in zoognosis, a solo exhibition with Asia Art Centre, Taipei, Taiwan. Recent group exhibitions include An Adventure of Being, Museum of Contemporary Art Arlington, Arlington, USA (2023); Playground of Geometry, Centre of International Contemporary Art Vancouver (CICA), Vancouver, Canada (2022) and Rites of Passage, Unit London, London, UK (2021).
Jeremy Olson’s practice began with a considered exploration of geometric structure and fragmentation within portraiture. While retaining this interest in geometric structures through the presence of fictive architectural features, Olson’s practice has now morphed into an ultra-contemporary exploration of the grotesque.
Olson’s early work was heavily influenced by Cubism: his portraits were deconstructed into fragmentary parts that were then layered back over the face of his subject in kaleidoscopic patterns. These works were incredibly technically skilled and played with the mind’s ability to process and decipher sets of visual information.
Now, Olson’s practice has matured into something deeply exciting. His compositions are haunting visualisations of anxieties that are society-wide: dental imagery takes on a flesh-like appearance while figures resembling knots of hair contort and writhe before the viewer. In this regard, Olson’s current work is not unlike a combination of Nicholas Party’s pastel explorations of architecture and the rather sinister experiments with the grotesque undertaken by Julie Curtis.
Heesoo Kim (b. 1984) is a Korean artist from Seoul. He received a BFA in Advertising and Design from tKONKUK University. His artistic practice focuses primarily on what it is to be human, isolating universal human experiences through bold portraiture. In 2023 Kim held a solo exhibition with Everyday Mooonday, titled Monologue, Seoul, South Korea. Other recent solo exhibitions include Normal Life, Unit London, London, UK (2022); Normal Life - Lovers, Gallery Kabinett, Seoul, South Korea (2022) and Can Art Ibiza, Gallery Afternoon, Ibiza, Spain.
Exhibiting his work under a main theme of “Normal Life”, Kim brings to the forefront the pure human condition, leaving the viewer to observe the innate human psychology without any overbearing pictorial stylisation. This is achieved by reducing the figures to a minimum expression, depicting them in a casual repose, executed with bold lines and a flat perspective. Characteristic of his practice are highly compact structures, and rich earthy tones that endow his large-scale paintings with a melancholic quality.
Kim’s portraits do not attach themselves to any specific personhood as the artist allows the space for the viewer to place themselves within the work, materialising the idea of self-reflection. Leaving the figures to float within an, often dark, ambiguous background, Kim’s body of work subtly engages with the mild sense of insecurity and anxiety that is so prevalent in today’s hectic world. Having struggled with his own insecurities, Kim’s portraits act as a personal and collective catharsis as the artist chooses to record the feelings and emotions that connect us all.
Connor Marie Stankard (b. 1992) lives and works in New York, New York. She received her BFA from Pace University in 2015 and her MFA from Virginia Commonwealth University in 2021. Recent solo exhibitions include Ava, Chloe, Blair, Nicole, Lubov, New York (2022), reviewed in the October 2022 print issue of ArtForum); Cloaca Palace, The Anderson, Virginia (2021); and A Mosquito’s View, FAB Gallery, Virginia (2020). Her work has been included in group exhibitions at Night Gallery, Nahmad Contemporary, Allen & Eldridge, and Page NYC. Connor will have a solo exhibition at Night Gallery in Los Angeles, California in 2024.
Connor’s artistic process starts with, and is imbued by, fear. The artist explains: “In my work this fear is a starting point, not a goal. I don’t want to scare the viewer, that’s cheap. I want to imbue phobia with philia. Because our ability to be entered and manipulated has as many pleasurable ends as revolting ones … perfume and anthrax come in through the same door.”
Connor refers to the figures in her work as “golems” and “creatures.” She mentions Dr. Frankenstein. The scientist in Mary Shelley’s classic began with experiments, finding divine inspiration studying the decay of living matter. He is then emboldened. Playing God, he sets out to create new life, but his pursuits lead to the birth of a monster. Connor’s implication is that the viewer is the Dr, the ultimate one to blame for these pieces being out roaming the world. However, it’s easy to look at her work and make a comparison between the artist and the mad scientist.
The artist elaborates: “My work is for the hypochondriac who knows she's malingering and the unwashed who suspects she’s ill. Not totally Cronenberg…more like Bataille’s Story of the Eye. Discomfort that draws you in, grosses you out, and turns you on.”
Leo Frontini (b. 2001) is originally from Cleveland, Ohio and now resides in Los Angeles, California. His work is fuelled by all elements of life, history, and his subconscious. He received a BFA in Digital Media from Otis College of Art and Design in May 2023. He has exhibited with the Giant Robot Gallery in Los Angeles. Unit London will be presenting one new work from the artist in Shanghai.
Frontini forges surreal representations where dreams and memories exist on the same plane. Within each of his pieces, one experiences visualisations of idle bliss, tension, and melancholy.
Frontini has found painting to be an escape from reality while also bringing him closer to the world, relationships, and himself. His formative years were spent battling depression and the results of several sports-related head injuries. Nearing the end of high school, Frontini was pushed to pursue the arts by his father, Thomas Frontini, who has been a painter his entire life and is a significant influence and mentor in his son's creative practice. His practice is marked by a sense of admiration and even obsession with the great masters of the past. His recent pictures play with the relationship of figures and distorted architecture.
Frontini has found painting to be an escape from reality while also bringing him closer to the world, relationships, and himself. His practice is marked by a sense of admiration and obsession with the great masters of the past. Exploring colour and graphic abstraction of the figure and a space, his range of influences is revealed, presenting a visual intermingling of the past, present, and unknown.
Sho Shibuya (b.1984) is a Japanese artist, graphic designer, and founder of the creative studio Placeholder, who has lived in New York City since 2011. The Sunrise from a Small Window series is Shibuya’s most characteristic work, which began as a daily meditation on the contrast between the steady morning sky and the increasingly chaotic news. The idea transformed into a visual, emotional interpretation of the political and environmental landscape presented on the front page of the New York Times, hiding the individual details beneath a layer of paint. Taken over time, it creates a visual record of each day, capturing the natural beauty of the sunrise as well as the significant events that punctuate the timeline.
The pandemic was the spark that started this series, but it has grown beyond any single theme. It is not about the news or about the sunrise. The series is united by practice, by routine, and by personal experience. He describes it as meditative: it is a method of reflecting on his feelings and sharing them with the world. It is his visual diary, my reaction to the day, captured in colour rather than language.
Shibuya wakes up every day at around 5 or 6am, doing so naturally and without an alarm. He reads the newspaper and takes a photo of the sunrise from his window or rooftop. Each morning he goes for a run before cropping the newspaper, taking a cold shower and having breakfast with his wife. He then paints the morning’s sunrise on the cover of that day’s New York Times. In this sense, Shibuya’s artworks have become a part of his morning routine. Using everyday objects, the artist transforms the newspaper into his canvas. He uses acrylic paint to render the sunrise before finishing the piece with a deacidification spray to prevent the paper from yellowing. Often, Shibuya covers the whole front page in gradations of colour. Sometimes, for significant events such as the election results or the invasion of the Ukraine, he leaves the New York Times’ one-line headline uncovered. Relinquishing his own choice in the matter, Shibuya keeps the headline exposed every time the editors of the newspaper choose to use this layout.
Henry Hudson (b.1982) is a British artist living and working in London. Hudson’s critical practice is expressed through the exploration of various techniques and materials, including ceramics, plasticine, scagliola, oil painting, 3D printing, wax, sand and textiles. His practice is inspired by a multitude of sources, new and old, in which British art plays a formative role, including work by Leon Kossoff, Frank Auerbach and William Hogarth. After graduating from Central Saint Martins in 2005, Hudson has presented internationally in numerous solo and group exhibitions in London, Beijing, Hong Kong, Singapore, Paris, New York, Miami and Milan. The artist has recently had solo exhibitions with Simon de Pury in London, Galerie Kandlhofer in Vienna and Galerie Isa in Mumbai.
Hudson works create a heightened world of colour, form and texture through performative and expressive movement. The artist was initially inspired by School of London artists such as Leon Kossoff and Frank Auerbach who were known for their works rendered in thick impasto oil paint. Hudson began to manipulate Plasticine to achieve a similar effect to the densely layered paint.
Hudson’s works therefore seem to lie between painting and sculpture, becoming vibrant reliefs. The unusual use of Plasticine as a medium is particularly effective in Hudson’s jungle artworks. The thickness of the material seems to convey the weight of humid tropical climates and dense vegetation. The artist even mixes the Plasticine with luminous paint in order to produce these richly fluorescent jungle scenes. The luminescent colouring emphasises the dream-like qualities of these works that imagine the otherworldly wondrousness of natural spaces untouched by humans.
Teiji Hayama (b. 1975) grew up in Kumamoto Japan, before studying at Central Saint Martin’s in London, UK. Now living and working in Switzerland, Hayama is renowned for his ominous interpretations of Hollywood’s most iconic faces, including Elvis and Marilyn Monroe, with their droopy-eyes, exhausted expressions and long amorphous rubber-like bodies providing the viewer with a new perspective on modern-day fatigue. Hayama has works in major collections around the world including the Contemporary Japanese Art Collection and the Taittinger Collection. His solo exhibition FAME took place in January 2020 at Unit London.
Tapping into the collective consciousness, Teiji Hayama’s practice is rooted in popular imagery, employing his distinct technique of blending iconic images to create distorted kaleidoscopic portraits. Having grown up in Kumamoto, Japan; studied at Saint Martin’s College in London, UK; and now living and working in Switzerland, Hayama skillfully employs imagery that can be traced across diverse cultural contexts. Populated by elongated and amorphous figures of the world’s most iconic stars, Hayama’s works are characterised by an unsettling quality, achieved by distorting the likeness of these stars, reimagining Hollywood glamour. Imagery of icons such as Marilyn Monroe, Frida Kahlo, Salvador Dali and Albert Einstein are portrayed with either bored or caricatured expressions filled with mockery, as though overburdened by social media fatigue.
By employing a Warhol-esque use of vibrant blocks of colour, Hayama further emphasises the disconnect and tension between a visibly disintegrated appearance and a hopeless attempt at maintaining a pretence of glamour. A consumer item to be mass produced, these celebrity portraits demonstrate society’s obsession with the two-dimensional image. In a world run by social media influencers and defined by curated online identities, Hayama’s portraits echo feelings of loneliness and alienation, inviting us to re-examine our own anxieties feeding the perfectionism of our public image.
