Michael Kohn Gallery is excited to share a curated presentation of UK-based painters William Brickel and Shiwen Wang. This showcase of work presents a fluent meditation of human intervention in nature, as seen through Brickel’s human figures painted within industrial landscapes; and explorations of life and its transience as experienced through Wang’s richly painted abstractions of the natural world.

William Brickel’s multi-figured compositions carry an emotional intensity that unfolds on the canvas through anatomically exaggerated, larger-than-life limbs. The subjects, generated from personal experience and memories from the English countryside, roam in environments that pose questions surrounding identity and its relation to people and the individual self. Similarly concerned with humanity’s place in natural life, Shiwen Wang’s intuitive earth-toned and aquatic palettes appropriate ecological symbols, such as fish, decaying leaves, and fossils to visualize the compression of time and organic cycles of decay and rebirth.

Uniting the two practices is a common thread of cryptic connotations; while Brickel captures intimate interactions between anonymous figures, Wang’s subjects evaporate into states of becoming. The artists, both at emerging stages in their careers, demonstrate an exceptional command of their respective figural and abstract painting practices. Together, Brickel and Wang produce a visually enchanting realm within the greater context of The Armory Show and their contemporaries.