Spotted at NADA Miami: 8 Artist Selections
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Spotted at NADA Miami:
8 Artist Selections

Miami, 6 December 2022

Across the bay from the bright lights and big names of Art Basel Miami Beach, sits the smaller, yet equally talent-rich fair, NADA Miami, hosted by The New Art Dealers Alliance.

This year marked the 20th edition of the fair, which was established to cultivate and showcase new voices in the contemporary art world.

Despite the fact that Art Basel has built up a strong 'Positions' section, aimed at spotlighting emerging artists at younger galleries, the buzzing atmosphere at NADA was testimony to its reputation, with a stream of notable collectors and curators on the opening day.

Reflecting back on the fair's presentation of a global range of galleries, art spaces, and non-profit organisations, we identified eight artists who made a lasting impression.


James Prapaithong, Let there be light (2022). Oil on canvas. 120 x 180 cm.

James Prapaithong, Let there be light (2022). Oil on canvas. 120 x 180 cm. Courtesy the artist and WORKPLACE. Photo: Dean Brannagan.

James Prapaithong at WORKPLACE

James Prapaithong's imposing and off-kilter landscape paintings, presented at the Royal College of Art in London earlier this year, as part of the MA graduate show, were exceptional.

The paintings he presented in his first solo show, James Prapaithong: A Year Ago Today at WORKPLACE, London, last year, were no less so. At once candid and mesmerising, his work offers glimpses into moments of everyday life as seen by the artist through photographs.

Discussing his work in 2021 with Ocula, he described his distinctive blurred aesthetic as arising from impatience, 'I do that [blur] because I just can't wait for the oil to dry; It's too long.

He went on to explain, 'So I prime my canvas with rabbit glue, which is really absorbent. I then scrub the paint into the canvas really hard. My paintings are quite soft, but the way that I do it is quite aggressive. I do that to embed the paint into the canvas, which makes the paintings quite flat. Then, when I apply white to create light, I apply it really thickly, so that it glows upon the paint'.


Jiang Cheng, U-104 Michael (2022). Oil on canvas. 120 x 105cm.

Jiang Cheng, U-104 Michael (2022). Oil on canvas. 120 x 105cm. Courtesy the artist and Downs & Ross, New York. Photo: Phoebe d'Huerle.

Jiang Cheng at Downs & Ross

Jiang Cheng has been the poster boy of Downs & Ross' impressive and ever-growing roster this year, having been given pride of place with a solo booth at New York's Independent Art Fair in May.

For Miami, the gallery brought with them four of his cropped kaleidoscopic portraits. Often depicting a single visage, his work is born out of a commitment to explore the psychological and procedural codes of portraiture.

Born in Zhejiang, China, Cheng graduated from the China Academy of Art, Hangzhou, going on to receive his MFA in Painting from Berlin University of Arts.

Over the course of the year, his work has made it into significant private and public collections, including, Long Museum, Shanghai; M Woods, Beijing; and ICA Miami which is currently host to his first solo museum show.

Downs & Ross will host a solo exhibition of his works in their New York gallery in 2023.


Paul Rouphail, Adios (2022). Oil on linen. 27.9 x 40.6 cm.

Paul Rouphail, Adios (2022). Oil on linen. 27.9 x 40.6 cm. Courtesy the artist and Stems Gallery.

Paul Rouphail at Stems Gallery

You only have to scroll down Paul Rouphail's Instagram feed to become obsessed with the Philadelphia-based artist's beguiling oil paintings.

A graduate of the Rhode Island School of Design, his paintings—rendered with exquisite precision—are filled with the objects that populate our everyday lives. Books stacked on top of one another, or food, and often alcoholic drinks, set upon a table.

However, there is a liminality to his paintings, and the objects within them, which make each scene quite disconcerting. Postal letters appear to balance off table edges, while a beer bottle will be precariously placed on a stack of books, as if seconds away from toppling the pile.

His two paintings showing with Stems Gallery in Miami offer a similar story, with Adios (2022) being a particular favourite. On a small 40 x 30 cm canvas, is a butterfly on a hardwood floor that is so true to life you want to reach out and touch it before it inevitably goes on its way (if the title is anything to go by).


Tsai Yun-Ju, July (2022). Oil on canvas. 200 x 150 cm.

Tsai Yun-Ju, July (2022). Oil on canvas. 200 x 150 cm. Courtesy Downs & Ross, New York.

Tsai Yun-Ju at Downs & Ross

Slade graduate, Tsai Yun-Ju, who was taken on by the young New York gallery Downs & Ross, is an artist to watch.

July (2022) was one of two works showing with the gallery in Miami, and is a great introduction for those unfamiliar, beautifully exemplifying the brilliance with which she works the paintbrush around the canvas, in an oscillating, delicate motion.

Her almost highlighter-toned colour palette is the most immediate takeaway. Yet, it is rendered with a subtly that avoids appearing too garish—softened with whites, while blending colour until it disappears into the bare canvas behind.

Her work will be the subject of a solo exhibition in New York with the gallery in February 2023.


Lola Gil, Natural Golden Retriever (2022). Oil and acrylic on linen. 130 x 100 cm.

Lola Gil, Natural Golden Retriever (2022). Oil and acrylic on linen. 130 x 100 cm. Courtesy the artist and Nino Mier Gallery. Photo: Cary Whittier.

Lola Gil at Nino Mier Gallery

It takes a minute to get your head around Lola Gil's somewhat surrealist composition, featuring a glass dog foregrounding a portrait of a woman. While it's hard to catch a glimpse of the woman behind, her portrait is reproduced, warped, and duplicated in various forms, on the smooth, reflective surface of the glass dog.

This experimentation with fragmented images makes for an interesting angle and one that she explores throughout her work.

Lola Gil's practice, which delves into the visual language of suburban nostalgia, draws comparisons to the surrealist style of her contemporaries such as Issy Wood and Nova Jiang, yet with a distinctive and promising originality.

A self-taught artist, Gil boasts an impressive resume having recently had a solo show at AISHONANZUKA, Hong Kong (2022), Roq La Rue Gallery, Seattle (2020), and KP Projects, Los Angeles (2020).

In September 2023, Nino Mier Gallery will host a solo exhibition of the Philadelphia-based artist in their Los Angeles gallery.


Theodora Allen, Shooting Star IV (2022). Oil on linen. 198.12 x 91.44 cm.

Theodora Allen, Shooting Star IV (2022). Oil on linen. 198.12 x 91.44 cm. Courtesy 12.26.

Theodora Allen at 12.26

The specs of linen weave permeating the jewel-toned blues of Theodora Allen's paintings was the initial and lasting takeaway from her solo presentation with Dallas-based gallery 12.26.

Allen's process involves painting thin layers of translucent watercolour and oil paint, she will then remove any residue leaving the white ground of the linen canvas beneath.

For its size, Shooting Star IV (2022) particularly stood out and demonstrated the evocative imagery that Allen employs to investigate and visualise the space between the physical world and the interior mindscape.

Alongside 12.26 in Dallas, and Kasmin in New York, the Los Angeles-based artist has been a regular on Blum & Poe's roster, having recently had her third solo show with the gallery earlier this year.


Livien Yin, House of the Rising Sun (2022). Oil on canvas. 152.4 x 132.1 cm.

Livien Yin, House of the Rising Sun (2022). Oil on canvas. 152.4 x 132.1 cm. Courtesy Friends Indeed Gallery.

Livien Yin at Friends Indeed Gallery

Livien Yin's portraits were a joy to come across at Friends Indeed's Miami booth.

A second-generation Chinese-American artist living in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, Yin's artworks are born from a desire to 'create portraiture from within the Chinese community'.

Hands, and the use of fruit as a prop, were noticeable focal points—imagery employed to reference the manual labour, and cooking traditions that characterised the first major wave of Chinese immigration.

For a gallery that describes itself as 'an absurdly small experimental vitrine', Micki Meng's Friends Indeed boasts a treasure trove of up-and-coming artists—both local and international—who deserve much recognition.

Alongside Livien Yin, you'll find the figurative works of Jiab Prachakul, Pachi Muruchu, Danielle Roberts, and Gabriella Boyd (who we spoke to ahead of her current GRIMM Gallery show in New York), as well as the abstract landscapes of Royal College of Arts graduate, Francesca Mollett.


Miko Veldkamp, The Study (2022). Oil, acrylic, and ink on canvas. 61 x 45.7 cm.

Miko Veldkamp, The Study (2022). Oil, acrylic, and ink on canvas. 61 x 45.7 cm. Courtesy the artist and WORKPLACE.

Miko Veldkamp at WORKPLACE

After graduating from the prolific Hunter College MFA Painting programme in 2021, Miko Veldkamp has carved a painting practice navigating his experiences living across geographies, blending recollections into ambiguous painterly narratives.

The giant, distorted hand resting on the keyboard, and almost acting as extensions of the sharp and flat keys beside, was the ultimate focal point of his Miami debut. It is this distortion and consciousness with which he forges relationships between the figures and their surroundings that is so admirable.

During an interview with Ocula, the artist explained his desire to slow his process down, noting that his employment of glazing was born from an interest in translucency as a way of seeing.

'We are always in an atmosphere that is translucent. If you look through trees or foliage, there's a sort of translucency, or a shadow could be considered as a kind of translucent film. When I started looking at things in that way, it became very harmonious in my work and in real life, too.'

Main image: Paul Rouphail, Adios (2022). Oil on linen. 27.9 x 40.6 cm. Courtesy the artist and Stems Gallery.


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