Enter Art Fair

29 August - 1 September 2024
  • THK Gallery is delighted to return to Enter Art Fair for our third presentation in the city.
     
    Enter Art Fair is the most important art fair in the Nordics, held in the iconic Lokomotivværkstedet in the city's gallery-filled Meatpacking District. Open to view from Friday, 29 August, until Sunday 1 September. Find us on booth 46, and online, for a curated selection of works by Abdus Salaam, Duncan Wylie Lulama Wolf, Thomas Wachholz, Driaan Claassen, Samuel Nnorom and Lisanne Hoogerwerf.
     
    We'll present for the first time the work of master painter Duncan Wylie, Thomas Wachholz's new bronze sculptures, and debut Abdus Salaam's sculptures from his residency at Studio Giorgio Angeli Residency in Pietrasanta, Italy.
  • (View more details about this item in a popup).
    (View more details about this item in a popup).
    (View more details about this item in a popup).
  • (View more details about this item in a popup).
    (View more details about this item in a popup).
    (View more details about this item in a popup).
  • (View more details about this item in a popup).
    (View more details about this item in a popup).
    (View more details about this item in a popup).
  • Duncan Wylie

    Duncan Wylie

    Duncan Wylie was born in Harare, Zimbabwe in 1975 into a family focused on art and culture (his mother was the curator at the National Gallery of Zimbabwe). He wsa trained in drawing and painting by the artist Helen Lieros, receiving the National Schools Prize of Zimbabwe in 1992 at the age of seventeen. Wylie currently lives and works in London.

     

    Using gestural mark-making, colour, and composition, Wylie creates multi-layered paintings that convey a sense of chaos, urgency, and resilience. Represented through an exploding matrix – alternating impastos and transparencies, gradations and extremely dense strokes – the use of oil paint in Wylie’s work echos the fragile perception of ‘belonging’, a consequence of the trauma and violence of losing one’s home, while remaining defiant in expressing the courage and conviction of hope and resilience.

     

    Wylie is an award winning painter, represented in private collections, and has exhibited in many institutions and museums, including the Louvre Abu Dhabi, the Museum of Modern Art in Paris, the Palais de Tokyo, the Museum of Grenoble, the Zeitz MOCAA in Cape Town, the Modern Gallery Saarbrücken, the Pinacothèque in Luxembourg, and the National Gallery of Zimbabwe. His works appear notably in the collections of the Louvre Abu Dhabi, Le CNAP, FMAC, et FNAC, MUDAM Luxembourg, the Museum of Grenoble, and in the Pritzker, Guerlain, Colas, Perrier Jouët, et Claudine et Jean Marc Salomon foundations. Duncan Wylie acquired French nationality in 2005 and lives between London and Paris.

  • Abdus Salaam

    Abdus Salaam

    Abdus Salaam (b. 1989) is a visual artist who lives and works in Cape Town, South Africa.

     

    Salaam is a self-taught multi-disciplinary artist inspired by natural beauty, ecology and spirituality. Salaam reveals a sensitivity to three- dimensional spatial expression and the metaphysical connotations inherent in nature, materials, forms and colours. Contemporary in his mystic abstraction, his work is rooted in poetry, calling from a familiar place to a state of peaceful and intensive longing, using materials to explore the immaterial and always working alone to imbue his intention into his work. Moving freely between mediums – from sculpture to painting, video, photographic ‘light paintings’, poetry, augmented reality, and music – he creates poetic worlds, from the intimate to large-scale installation.

     

    His work is a cultural fusion of Western, Eastern and African sensibilities, shaped by his international coming of age and rooted in the dramatic landscapes around Cape Town, where his earliest memories were shaped on a farm, spending time painting and sculpting with natural materials in the mountains of South Africa with his mother.

     

    Salaam is represented in collections locally and abroad, including the Mohammed Afkhami and Robert and Renée Drake Collections. He held two sold out solo presentations in 2022, both at the Investec Cape Town Art Fair and Abu Dhabi Art In 2023 Salaam was finalist in the Art Figura Prize, culminating in an exhibition in Perla Castrum Museum in Schwartzenberg Castle, Germany. In 2023 he was selected as the artist in residence for the prestigious Institute of Public Architecture’s Blockhouse Residency on Governor’s Island, New York. In November 2023 he presented a second sold out presentation at Abu Dhabi Art.

     

    In 2024, Salaam completed a residency at the prestigious Nirox Foundation, followed by a critically acclaimed exhibition. In June 2024, he completed the Giorgio Angeli Residency in Pietrasanta, Italy.

  • Thomas Wachholz

    Thomas Wachholz

    German artist Thomas Wachholz (b.1984) explores meanings and associations in the formal characteristics of mundane objects. Using the visual style and ideological foundations of Pop Art, Wachholz creates paintings that appropriate elements of matchboxes and matchbooks. Gathered over the years in hotels, restaurants, gas stations, cinemas and bars, the matchboxes act as ciphers, shifting the artist’s perception from the object to a specific place and time.

     

    Wachholz’s formal abstractions are imbued with coded meanings. By removing information on the original shape and composition of a matchbox, he frees the imagery from its original context, elevating everyday objects to the realm of symbol. He creates a dense visual net of formal traces and personal memories, structured through opaque colour fields, where iconic symbols like stars or clouds and grids are contoured by geometric outlines. With their bright colours and clean lines, his conceptually playful paintings reveal ironic connections between both form and function, and sign and signified.

     

    Wachholz studied under Katharina Grosse and Marcel Odenbach at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf, Germany. He has been the subject of numerous solo exhibitions at institutions and galleries worldwide. His work has further been exhibited at Art Basel Miami Beach (2014, 2015) and Art Basel (2021). 

  • Driaan Claassen

    Driaan Claassen

    Driaan Claassen (b. 1991) in Johannesburg, South Africa is renowned for his deep exploration of the human psyche through intricate and thought-provoking sculptures. His artistic journey began with a fascination for 3D animation, which eventually led to an apprenticeship with the esteemed artist Otto du Plessis at the Bronze Age Foundry. This experience profoundly shaped Claassen’s unique approach, blending traditional craftsmanship with modern technology to create works that are both intellectually engaging and visually compelling.

     

    Working with a diverse range of materials, including wood, wire, and bronze, Claassen’s sculptures seamlessly integrate material innovation with psychological depth. His work reflects a deep fascination with themes of consciousness, order, and chaos, often employing a meticulous combination of ancient techniques and cutting-edge technology. Through this approach, he challenges viewers to contemplate the intricate interplay between the material world and the inner workings of the mind.

  • Lulama Wolf

    Lulama Wolf

    Lulama Wolf (b. 1993) is a visual artist who lives and works in Johannesburg, South Africa.

    At the intersection of Neo-Expressionism and Modern African Art, Wolf interrogates the pre-colonial African experience through the contemporary mind by using smearing, scraping, and deep pigment techniques that were used in vernacular architecture, and the patterns created largely by women to decorate traditional African homes.

    History and the proof of life are the core concepts in her work. Where there has rarely prior been reference of life in black spirituality, she counters that narrative by creating two dimensional paintings to embody the simplicity and deep spiritual power of the native eye. Her motivation is both tender and protective of her imaginary world, and her symbolic view of how her world looks into an alternate universe. She is set on creating both a photographic and graphic experience, that morphs and shapeshifts into a higher dimensional plane.

    "My work carries my spirit, before it carries a message. My intuition plays a vital role in the direction I go and then I compartmentalise with what I prioritise. I represent different parts of my self including abstraction, curiosity, mythology, spirituality and introspection. Blackness is vital in my work because it is created by a black woman despite the medium or language it speaks, it is vital because proof of existence is rare in the black community, information is shared but isn’t sustained in ways that are knowledgeable to us right now. I express my yearning for answers and clarity in ways that make my blackness clear even when the work is abstract. My practice embodies subtlety in a form of texture and expression, a curious mix of ambiguity and curiosity. I experiment with different textures and mold that are formed from the earth."
  • Samuel Nnorom

    Samuel Nnorom

    Samuel Nnorom (b. 1990) is a multi-award-winning artist whose work poetically crosses tapestry-like sculpture and pre-loved Ankara wax fabric. Since early childhood, elements that now shape his contemporary practice have surrounded him: sketching portraits of customers who visited his father’s shoe shop and playing with colourful scraps from his mother’s tailoring workshop crystallised his artistic vocation.

     

    Self-proclaimed “custodian of material culture”, Nnorom draws upon materiality in a unique way, dedicating his art to textile recycling and a sociological reflection on the human condition. Through sewing, tying and cutting, the rising artist creates intricate constellations of fabric-covered foam balls meticulously stitched together, evoking a metaphor for a “fabric of society” composed of closed social structures forming the bubbles in which our daily lives are wrapped in. Using Ankara textiles –whose origins are complex in the history of the continent, Nnorom explores its protean symbolism and reappropriates a contemporary fabric omnipresent in his community.

     

    Currently living and working in Nsukka, Samuel Nnorom holds an MFA in sculpture from the University of Nigeria. He cumulates numerous workshops and residencies in England, South Africa, Burkina Faso, France, Senegal and Nigeria, numerous Solo shows, group shows and art fairs globally, as well as being commissioned several times for public works in his home country. He won the Africa prize 2021: Strauss & Co and Cassirer Welz Award, and a global prize for “Art for Change Award 2022” organised by M&C Saatchi Group, ex aequo the Ettore e Ines Fico Prize at the Artissima fair 2023 and 5 selected finalist for Craft Council and Brookfield Properties award UK 2023

  • Lisanne Hoogewerf

    Lisanne Hoogewerf

    Lisanne Hoogerwerf (b. 1987) lives and works in The Hague, The Netherlands. 

     

    In 2011, she graduated from the Fine Art department of the Royal Academy of Art, following a Bachelor’s degree in Film and Literature from the University of Leiden. She began her career by creating art installations that combined various media, such as painting and performance. Alongside this, she worked as a freelance photographer, art critic, and filmmaker. Over time, she developed a stronger interest in photography, integrating her skills as an artist and painter into lens-based practices. Today, she stages her imagination and the world around her by creating small-scale sets.

     

    Hoogerwerf’s artworks depict places that cannot be found in ordinary reality but are crafted from real materials like wood, sand, glue, and painted canvas. Her art visualizes both inner and outer human landscapes. Her studio floor serves as a stage upon which she builds, captures, and deconstructs these landscapes. In her scenes, she often alludes to global developments, such as the pandemic, the climate crisis, and environmental issues. The scenes are notably devoid of everyday life’s hustle and bustle—no traffic or crowded cityscapes are present. Contrasting elements such as utopia/dystopia, playfulness/seriousness, society/nature, and beauty/drabness are integral to her work.