The Shock of the Now - Issue #161
Afternoon All - Welcome to Issue 161 of The Shock of the Now! I hope you’re having an enjoyable week.
This week, the full issue includes fourteen Recommended Exhibitions, as well as twelve fresh Artist Opportunities.
I hope you enjoy Issue 161, and if so do forward it along! As always, questions and comments are welcome, so feel free to get in touch, H x
Recommended Exhibitions Opening This Week :
Sophia Rosenthal - ‘Golden Hour’ Solo Exhibition - Standpoint, Hoxton (21st February - 9th March, opening Thursday 20th February, 6-8pm)
Standpoint presents Sophia Rosenthal’s debut London solo exhibition ‘Golden Hour’.
“Produced during a ten-week residency at Standpoint, this new body of work explores the interplay between painting and memory, drawing inspiration from personal photographs and using painting as a site of experimentation. Influenced by post-impressionism, cinema, and the materiality of New Figuration painters, Sophia’s poetic paintings reimagine snapshots of childhood, family, and place. Golden Hour marks a pivotal moment in Sophia’s practice, as she delves into the reciprocity between photography and painting, creating works that are at once tender, contemplative, and evocative.” - Standpoint
Angela Maasalu - ‘Taking Courage’ Solo Exhibition - Des Bains & Lungley, Fitzrovia (20th February - 20th March, opening Thursday 20th February, 6-8pm)
Des Bains and Lungley present Angela Maasalu’s solo exhibition ‘Taking Courage’ across both spaces, marking the beginning of a collaboration between the galleries.
“Angela Maasalu’s paintings feel like the quiet, half-remembered fragments occupying a world where time folds in on itself. Her figures, often hazy and spectral, seem to exist in a space where stories from childhood, folklore, and the deep recesses of personal experience merge into one another. It’s not about clarity, but about the way certain images stick to one's memory, refusing to leave, and is difficult to pin down why. Always out of search.” - Des Bains & Lungley
Mario Martinez - ‘Yaqui & Brooklyn Conversations’ Solo Exhibition - Pippy Houldsworth, Mayfair (21st February - 22nd March, opening Thursday 20th February, 6-8pm)
Pippy Houldsworth presents Mario Martinez’ debut UK solo exhibition ‘Yaqui & Brooklyn Conversations’. Alongside, they present ‘Muta’, two new sculptures by Rosie Gibbens, in the gallery's micro-project space The Box.
“In paintings dating from the 1990s to 2024, the artist honours his Yaqui identity, bringing pre-colonial tradition into dialogue with canonical figures from the landscape of modernist art. Martinez’s painting style bears formal parallels to highly charged, gestural works by Arshile Gorky and Willem de Kooning, both of whom have been touchstones on his journey towards abstraction. While figuration is more commonly associated with indigenous practices, Martinez’s visual language is free from strict representation, conjuring instead a range of associative images that honour the earth’s bounty, from the branches of trees to expansive sky.” - Pippy Houldsworth
H M Baker - ‘MAXINE’ Solo Exhibition - Rathbone Institute, Fitzrovia (21st February - 23rd April, opening Thursday 20th February, 6-8pm)
Rathbone Institute presents H M Baker’s solo exhibition ‘MAXINE’, the artist’s first solo exhibition in London since returning from the Jan Van Eyck Academie (2023-24).
“H M Baker’s questioning tone, palpitates from systematic structures to technological evolutions and gendered stereotypes, through a penetrating sociological lens. Reminiscent of an ethnographer, H M Baker questions the frameworks that dictate human behaviour, examining the dynamics of leadership and control played out in performative displays of global power. One of Baker’s recent long-term projects involves the fictional character Maxine. A revenue operations analyst working in a cutthroat environment at an investment banking firm, attempting to navigate the realms of corporate performance. However, Maxine’s sentiments are challenged in a financial industry complicit in capitalising on the earth’s economic frailties.” - Rathbone Institute
David Burrows - ‘Spooky Affects At A Distance’ Solo Exhibition - IMT Gallery, Bethnal Green (21st February - 30th March, opening Thursday 20th February, 7-10pm)
IMT Gallery presents David Burrows’ solo exhibition ‘Spooky Affects At A Distance’.
“Through fictional means, the exhibition engages with contemporary politics and cultures and their aesthetics of appearance, proposing a cosmopolitics modelled on the mysterious nature of black holes, and derived from dreams, mythology, and Black Hole Ontology (being not as things appear). The exhibition draws on the concept of singularities and their abstractive and transformative dynamics, and their durations ruled by collapse and rejuvenation.” - IMT Gallery