Artists
EXQUISITE
Elliot Johnson
Elliot Johnson, a multidisciplinary artist from Queens, NY, has overcome numerous challenges and barriers to his pursuit of art, including his mental illness. A respected graffiti artist with many completed wall murals, his artistic output is rooted in his birthplace of Queens, and in communicating his unique vision. Depicting mainly black subjects, Elliot’s light touch brings his subjects vividly to life. Some illustrations are so complex that the work can take months to achieve the dreamlike, psychedelic effect which Elliot created with his hatching. Intensely original, Johnson luxuriates over the details in his figurative work while committed to communicating his unique vision.
ARTISTIC PROCESS
Jessica Dalrymple
Jessica Dalrymple approaches the natural world around her with deep respect and appreciation. She invests herself in a thoughtful artistic process, in particular by developing intricate techniques that pay homage to nature, to the city in its physicality. Her scrolls inspired by Japanese art are elegant and elaborate, and her mixed media pieces incorporate collage, oil painting, and manipulated photography. This work refers both to century-old representations of nature, when art and science merged to produce beautiful illustrations and to the more exacting representations in modernity. Her paintings have been shown extensively and are part of major collections. Her artistic investment in the environment coincides most aptly with the mission of Gallery Particulier.
RELEVANCE
Ashley Alcime
Ashley Alcime is a Brooklyn based artist who works in a variety of formats and styles. She paints figurative works that explore trauma and recovery, in particular domestic violence, an important issue that affects society widely. These oil paintings are delicate and powerful at the same time, and show a subtle range of earthy tones. She also produces images digitally, playing with identity, stereotypes and self definition. The colors and composition in her digital images have a boldness that is a common streak in Ashley’s work. She also works as an illustrator, and holds a BA from the Fashion Institute of Technology.
MIXED MEDIA
Wennie Huang
Every piece by mixed-media artist Wennie Huang reveals her deep interiority and her exquisite esthetics. She paints delicate watercolors that celebrate the everyday, and draws affecting pastels of landscapes and cityscapes. Her mixed media installations combine paper, wood, print, fabric ,and photography, and explore her identity as a Chinese American. She has had numerous shows, and private and public commissions: some of her work can be seen around the city of New York.
SCULPTOR
Amir Bey
Mixed media sculptor Amir Bey explores with great expressivity the human form in connection with the spiritual world. He represents the face in his clay masks, many of them a homage to the departed. He has also great skill in the use of various metals, including bronze. Some of his pieces work as mobiles, and have also been featured in performances. His work is in numerous collections, and has been shown in the US and internationally, with a sustained following in Japan.
SURREALISM
Grace Nkem
Grace Nkem’s thoughtful and curious pieces are inspired by the surrealist movement, in particular Magritte. Her palette incorporates luminous colors such as oranges, blues, purples. Her work explores her interiority, often by collaging images that interplay, and have references to many currents, whether they’re creatures from various vocabulary, or figures from art history. Nkem’s paintings invite viewers into layered portals and keep them curious. She’s based in New York City and is a graduate of Columbia University where she studied Art History.
ABSTRACT
Phelonise Willie
Phelonise Willie was born and raised in Harlem; but soon found herself born and raised all over again in the East Village. And now Phelonise resides in rural Bedford-Stuyvesant with all its birds and trees and feral cats, who keep reminding her of the necessity for change. So although she thinks of herself as a writer who paints, her greatest desire is to morph into a painter who writes (as in writing being pesky obsession but painting some delicious lover?)
She views her canvases full of abstract color and shape as dialogue between emotion and mood. But since Art is language Phelonise hopes they invite the observer to talk back by smearing them over with their own thought and feeling because every piece of art should have two makers – creator and spectator. But when Phelonise paints human beings the only purpose is to undisguise them. She finds naked bodies more trustworthy and thinks maybe what this crazy world needs most is the intimacy of voluntary nakedness.
ARCHITECTURE
Obinna Elechi
Obinna Elechi is a New York-based designer and artist working on interiors, furniture, art and architecture
projects. Obinna is from Nigeria, grew up in Holland and came to the United States, where he received a Bachelor of
Architecture from Virginia Tech and a Master of Architecture from Parsons School of Design. He has previously worked
on a range of projects for organizations including the Rural Studio, Gensler and Soho House.
EXUBERANT
Lupe Inès Cariño
Lupe Inès Cariño is not going to let anything, nor anyone put a damper on his creativity. They explode with ideas, media experimentations, and explorations of influences and identity. The result is an exuberant array of work using paint, embroidery, clay, watercolor, and more. In all these disciplines, Lupe shows an assured hand in terms of composition, the representation of tridimension, and color study. Lupe, who was born in the USA but feels strongly about his Mexican roots, rides proudly both cultures, as well as that of their LGBTQ identity which adds one more note to their rich range of expression. They’re an emerging artist to pay attention to, and have been getting invitations from curators and galleries, showing his work in the US and abroad.
YOUNG TALENT
Sophia Gibbins
Sophia Gibbins has astonishing skills for a 17-year-old student. But she has more than just skills: she has a lot to say. Her work expresses her emotions around women’s rights, her chronic illness- Crohn’s disease, the pandemic, and more. Her painting Reach received the much coveted Scholastic Gold Award, and will be showing at the Metropolitan Museum of Arts. Of Brazilian and English heritage, she is also passionate about fashion. Edward R Murrow High School will soon be her alma mater where, incidentally, Jean-Michel Basquiat studied.
Major art schools are vying for her talent, and she will soon embark on an undergraduate program in the Arts
IDENTITY
Samara Chalumeau
Samara is a Haitian American artist based in Brooklyn. who creates powerful portraits using oil paint, water color, and pen. Her art communicates a deep appreciation for the beauty of humanity. Each work is intense and emotional, reflecting a rich mix of joy, pain, and pride. It is her way of honoring her heritage, and celebrating the gift of life. Through each brush stroke and every swirl of pen, she leaves a mark, a lasting memory of the intensity of the human experience. Drawing on her life and experience, Samara is dedicated to celebrating the importance of embracing identity, and honoring community.
ENVIRONMENT
Laziza Rakhimova
Laziza Rakhimova is a New York-based visual artist born in Tashkent (Uzbekistan). Her commitment to the environment is evident both in her work as a professional environmental consultant and in her art. She also volunteers for environmental organizations.
Laziza’s artistic approach addresses environmental issues such as water contamination, environmental justice, and climate resilience. Working at the intersection of photography and painting, Laziza uses light-sensitive paper and infrared light in her practice. She creates cameraless textural three-dimensional immersive prints of New York waterways and environments that have a transcendental quality relationship to nature.
Her work is held in private collections and she has been exhibited in group and solo exhibitions, including Soho Photo, Salmagundi Club in New York, Chashama, Foley Gallery, Upstream Gallery and BWAC.
BODY
Ali Dachis
Ali Rose Dachis is both a self taught visual artist and actor. She has spent most of her life in the theatre and has a B.F.A in Acting from The University of Minnesota / Guthrie Actor Training Program, and uses her body to explore the human experience on the stage as well as on paper. Ali has performed around the country, on Broadway, and off-broadway, and her artwork has been shown in spaces in Manhattan, Brooklyn, Queens, and Minneapolis. Her most recent work was showcased in the “Foot In the Door” exhibit at The Minneapolis Institute of Art. She works mostly in watercolor and ink Her saturated, rhythmic use of color to paint women’s bodies and faces, and exploring femininity by capturing moments of rage, torture, complacency, joy, nostalgia, and desire. She has a leaning toward expressionism, and creates mostly figurative works with some joyful adventures in abstraction.
FILMMAKER
Corrine Jasmin
Corrine Jasmin is a multi-disciplinary artist and writer working with music, film, installation, and visual media. She is known for her unique lens-based work, commanding performances, and thoughtful writing. In her work, she expresses various aspects of being black in America, she explores gender identity, and her experience in general as a young person from an immigrant family from Haiti. Jasmin is currently based in New York City.
FINE ART
Lungisa Matubatuba
Gallery Particulier is delighted to introduce emerging artist Lungisa Matubatuba, an Eastern Capean who graduated in Fine Arts from Walter Sisulu University in 2015. Lungisa explores primarily figuration in various media, including oil, watercolor, and collage. A member of the Sotho people, his experience of both the veld and townships is expressed in a poetic, nostalgic even, style, whether he uses a blurred vision or science plate like images. His deep affection for the struggling people of South Africa, and children, in particular, is evident in all his work.
VISIONARY
Torild Stray
Torild Stray’s vision, commitment and work as a painter have brought critical acclaim as well as a strong international following of collectors. She is involved with a fellowship with The Lower Manhattan Cultural Council World Views Artist in a Residence Program where she had a studio high up in the north towers formerly known as One World Trade Center. Her works leans towards a meloncholy palette where her recent works have been dedicated to the 9/11 memorial.Stray currently resides and has an active studio in an old factory in Bergen and divides her time between Norway and New York.
FIGURE
A. Shawn McKinney
Shawn McKinney is a Bahamian-born visual artist who is primarily self taught. His paintings explore the people of Africa, the Caribbean, and African-Americans from slavery to the present. Thanks to his fertile imagination and artistic talent, he has developed several lines of expression which all exhibit boldness and originality. Some works are invested in the exuberant colors and images of the Caribbean and the African diaspora. Others, inspired by the look of old photographs, explore Black History. A bodybuilding champion, he represents some subjects in the nude, as human beings stripped from clues to identity who face symbolic situations. His Cuban Cigar Ladies series was selected for the “Black Light” exhibition at The Living Gallery in August 2020.
HUMAN FIGURE
Matthew Perez
Matthew Perez’s paintings feel larger than life. He creates striking human figures, including self portraits, and intricate, alluring imagery. His paintings explore surrealism and expressionism with often grotesque touches, but he does not limit himself to any style. He ventures in the abstract when the mood takes him, and draws inspiration sometimes from his Mexican roots, and other times from arts from around the world and across the centuries. He will not let himself be boxed in by any definition. Perez is based in New York City and is a recent graduate of the School of Visual arts where he received a BFA.