This visually striking artwork features a captivating interplay of intricate black and white patterns. The central focus is a bold, abstract skull-like form surrounded by a swirling, organic composition of tangled shapes and textures. The artist employs a range of expressive techniques, including intricate line work, dramatic contrasts, and a sense of movement and energy. The overall style evokes a sense of the dark and enigmatic, inviting the viewer to explore the symbolic and emotive qualities of this contemporary piece. The artist's intention may be to create a thought-provoking exploration of themes such as mortality, the subconscious, or the duality of life and death. ...
Antonius-Tín Bui’s work—regardless of medium—emerges from a vision of care, community, and connection, imagining love and pleasure as forces that can be shared equitably and non-violently. Their compositions and titles evoke a sense of poetic anarchism, imbuing portraits and forms with transformative, almost alchemical qualities. Bui’s approach embraces impermanence: materials break down, fall apart, and are reborn into new forms, reflecting a philosophy that the remnants of the past can guide the creation of future possibilities. Working across hand-cut paper, soft sculpture, performance, and community-based projects, Bui explores hybrid identities and histories, foregrounding the experiences of marginalized communities. Their practice blends meticulous craftsmanship with conceptual depth, offering both intimate and expansive reflections on memory, trauma, and resilience. Through these immersive and carefully considered works, Bui invites viewers to consider the ways personal and collective histories shape the present and inform the possibilities of what is yet to come. ...
Various Small Fires (Los Angeles /Dallas /Seoul) began as a series of conversations with artists and curators in Esther Kim Varet’s Venice Beach kitchen while working on her doctoral dissertation. VSF debuted in Hollywood as an official gallery in 2015 with a roster of artists and its current Johnston MarkLee Architects-designed building. The Hollywood gallery contains three exhibition spaces, a unique sound corridor, and an outdoor gallery. VSF’s exhibition program explores several curatorial lines: climate, equality, and an international conversation. The gallery is known for offering artists debut shows, creating intergenerational conversations among the artists on its roster, and solidifying artists’ legacies within art history. In 2019, VSF opened a second location in the Hannam neighbourhood of Seoul, South Korea, followed recently this Spring by VSFs third outpost in Dallas, Texas. While Varet has very personal connections to both locations, they are also superlative art communities. These expansions emphasise the gallery’s commitment to innovation and global dialogue in the twenty-first century. In 2021, VSF became a member of the Art Dealers Association of America (ADAA). ...
