Art-o-rama 2022: Advisory Selections

With an emphasis on emerging contemporary artists, Marseille-based art fair art-o-rama (25–28 August 2022) offers an exciting platform to discover new art. We’ve brought together a preview of some of the works that caught our attention.

Paula Kamps at Sans Titre (2016)

Using a wet-on-wet technique of ink upon the canvas, Paula Kamps creates fluid, dreamlike scenes. Allowing the ink to seep across the canvas, there is a degree of unpredictability to Kamps’ paintings.

Having grown up in Germany, the artist recently moved to Chicago, which prompted a series of paintings detailing her new surroundings and experiences.

Paula Kamps graduated from the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf in 2016, and has since been the subject of a number of solo shows at Mine Project, Hong Kong (2022); M. LeBlanc, Chicago (2021); and Sans Titre (2016), Paris in 2021, among others.

Li Hei Di at Public Gallery

Li Hei Di’s effervescent paintings are abstract portraits of longing and desire. Repressed, animalistic feelings are translated into ephemeral scenes.

Born in Shenyang, China, in 1997, the artist attended Maryland Institute College of Art followed by Chelsea College of Art. Li Hei Di is now finishing her MA at the Royal College of Art.

Speaking alongside Sangram Majumdar on the occasion of her inclusion in MAMOTH‘s group exhibition The Glass Bead Game in London earlier this year, Li Hei Di explained, ‘I paint in the way that I experience life. Life is inconsistent, fragmented; dreams and memories are often meshed together, it is hard to tell what has actually happened, what was experienced in a dream, and what was a made-up story. I have learnt to accept the blurred dimensions of realities, the possibility of everything.’

Kristina Õllek at Estonian Union of Photography Artists

Based in Tallinn, Estonia, Kristina Õllek—who was awarded the Estonian Academy of Arts Young Artist Prize in 2013 and 2016—captures the tension between natural and synthetic environments and matter, reflecting humanity’s relationship to the planet.

A solo booth of photographs by Õllek is being presented by the Estonian Union of Photography Artists—an artist-led group that has organised the biennial Tallinn Photomonth since 2011.

Õllek, who also works in video and installation, is the co-founder of another artist-run space in Tallinn called Rundum, and her works have been included in solo and group exhibitions internationally including ISSP Gallery and Zuzeum Art Centre in Riga (2022), and the Art Museum of Estonia in 2020.

Manal Kara at M. LeBlanc

Manal Kara is a self-taught interdisciplinary artist who creates multimedia sculptures with a diaristic quality. Fusing ceramic, fabric, and other elements, these hybrid pieces often contain imagery of plants, animals, and insects.

Kara’s sculptures remove the categorisation used to situate different life forms in relation to humanity. Instead, the natural and manmade is shown as being interconnected.

Their work has been shown in a number of solo and group exhibitions, including Shulamit Nazarian in Los Angeles and Ryan Lee Gallery in New York earlier this year, M. LeBlanc in Chicago in 2021, and Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago in 2020.

Marlon Kroll at Public Gallery

Public Gallery will be presenting works by Marlon Kroll alongside Li Hei Di’s paintings, bringing an immersive display to Marseille.

Organic elements come together with more rigid structures in Kroll’s paintings, which abstract and confuse viewers’ understanding of interior space.

In addition to a group show at Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal, Kroll’s work has been featured in numerous solo shows at Canadian galleries including Afternoon Projects, Vancouver (2021); Parisian Laundry (2019), and Soon.TW in Montreal (2017).

Habima Fuchs at SVIT Praha

Habima Fuchs’ presentation with SVIT Praha showcases a selection of the artist’s sculptures alongside ink and coloured stencil on paper works.

This ceramic and copper sculpture is an elegant example of Fuchs’ work, crystallising her exploration of various cultures and religions.

Born in Ostrov, Czechoslovakia [now Czech Republic], Fuchs lives and works between Prague and Čáslav where she has worked on a number of solo and group exhibitions at SVIT Praha (2019), Rudolfinum Prague (2020), and Galerie Martina Kubíka, Litomyšl (2019), among others.

Main image: Marlon Kroll, As Is (2021). Coloured pencil and acrylic on muslin over record sleeve. 30 x 30 cm. Courtesy the artist and Public Gallery.