Takeaways: Artscapism (London Edition)

Traveling to London for art fairs and galleries while processing overwhelming social media content raises a difficult question. The intent here is not to endorse perceived art world ignorance, but rather to explore why beauty in art is important during troubling times.

Azadeh Elmizadeh @ Franz Kaka

Oil on linen works. A Canadian artist showing at Frieze, Elmizadeh presents a visually breathtaking range in scale that explores the complexities of person and place. Personal history and mythology are rendered as translucent layers, inviting the viewer to look closer and sit with the work.

Marina Rheingantz @ White Cube

Dense but fleeting paint application. Rheingantz creates unknown landscapes that allow the viewer to build their own narrative. A Brazilian artist, she conveys aerial perspective and wasteland imagery with increasing abstraction, evoking a sense of loss regarding the natural world.

Nicholas Pope and Tyra Tingleff @ The Sunday Painter

Pope's melancholy ceramics paired with Tingleff's bright, restless super large-scale paintings create doorways into an alternate reality. The exhibition evokes solitude and restlessness through verticality.

Kentaro Kawabata @ High Art Paris

Experimental ceramics. Biomorphic shapes appearing spontaneously, the result of a dedicated practice and balance of process and material. The ceramic cycle mirrors environmental regeneration.

These artists and galleries avoid prescriptive definitions of "great art." Rather than dictating required political commentary or excluding beauty and collectibility, they create visceral responses through a range of materials, make space for the complexity of the human experience.

"A work of art is one means of resetting the boundaries that separate us. The question is: how are we changed by the experience of another's world?"