Gallery Visit: Sophie Von Hellermann
Sophie von Hellermann’s Moonage at Pilar Corrias is a vibrant, immersive experience that blurs the lines between dream and reality. Inspired by David Bowie’s Moonage Daydream, the exhibition transforms the gallery space into a fantastical world filled with emotion, myth, and cosmic storytelling. What struck me immediately was the scale—the towering wall paintings are taller than the average viewer, stretching all the way up to the ceiling. Some brushstrokes even extend beyond the canvas, leaping onto the architectural surfaces and making the paintings feel alive and atmospheric.
Von Hellermann’s use of unprimed canvas is particularly compelling. By letting the oils soak directly into the raw surface, she creates a soft, almost ghostly effect where the color feels like it’s emerging from within the material itself. This technique adds a sense of intimacy and dreaminess, which I found incredibly moving. I’m inspired by how this material approach changes the feeling of the work—it's not just what is painted, but how it physically exists that matters.
The subjects in the exhibition—fleeting female figures, tender gestures, flowers, and dreamlike scenes—deeply resonated with me. Romantic relationships and quiet emotional moments are themes I already explore in my own practice, and seeing how von Hellermann handles these themes with lightness and ambiguity made me think about how I might do the same. Her paintings don’t explain too much—they invite you to feel, imagine, and wander. What I learned most from this show is the power of creating a world through paint. The exhibition doesn’t just show images—it creates an environment, a mood, a place you enter. The blend of narrative and abstraction, of figuration and suggestion, is something I want to bring into my own work. Especially the fantasy element—how to make a painting feel like a dream you just woke from, one that stays with you.
Gallery Visit: Do Ho Suh
Do Ho Suh’s Walk the House at Tate Modern is a quiet but powerful journey through the emotional landscape of home, memory, and identity. I’ve always been drawn to Suh’s practice—not only because his themes resonate deeply with my own work around intimacy and domestic spaces, but also because of his ability to turn architectural structures into vessels of personal narrative. Seeing this show in person was a long-anticipated experience, and it exceeded every expectation.The exhibition opens with his iconic fabric installations: life-sized replicas of spaces he once lived in, sewn in translucent material. I had seen photos of these before visiting, so I was prepared for how impressive the scale would be. Still, walking through them was another experience entirely—weightless, quiet, and hauntingly emotional. What moved me most, though, was the intimacy built through the details: door handles, light switches, every hinge lovingly recreated in fabric. These are not just buildings; they’re lived memories.
The most unforgettable work for me was the Rubbing/Loving Project. Suh rubs graphite over paper pressed against the surfaces of his childhood home, preserving the physical trace of the space. The process is obsessive and delicate, and it made me reflect on how memory can be held in surfaces and materials. It reminded me of how I use collage or life drawing to hold onto moments in my own practice.
What truly surprised me, though, was an entire wall covered in Suh’s line drawings—repetitions of home, rendered over and over in just a few lines. Each version slightly different, yet all returning to the same idea. It felt like a visual diary: quiet, honest, and persistent. I hadn’t expected to be so struck by this part of the show, but it’s what stayed with me the most.
Exhibition Visit: Ed Atkins
Ed Atkins’s exhibition at Tate Britain left me feeling emotionally raw and artistically charged. As someone whose work revolves around intimacy, memory, and the fragility of relationships—especially within the home—encountering Atkins’s practice was both confronting and strangely comforting. I’ve always thought about how to capture feelings that are hard to say aloud, and this show reminded me that emotional honesty doesn’t always have to look tender—it can also be fractured, uncomfortable, and digitally warped.
The show spans fifteen years of his work, but it feels cohesive in its emotional tone: grief, confusion, love, and absence. I was especially drawn to the new film Nurses Come and Go, But None for Me. Watching actor Toby Jones read from Atkins’s late father’s cancer diary while slipping in and out of surreal role-play felt incredibly vulnerable. It made me think of how I sometimes document personal life with my partner or family in paintings—trying to hold on to a moment that’s already disappearing. Atkins, however, doesn’t try to preserve memories as they are. He lets them fall apart, lets them glitch and get strange. There’s honesty in that.I’ve never worked with digital media, but I found myself unexpectedly moved by his computer-generated avatars. They’re almost human, but not quite. Their stiffness, their emotional overload—it mirrored how hard it can be to articulate intimacy or grief.
One part that stayed with me was a self-portrait where his head is on a spider’s body. It was grotesque, but it also made sense—being overwhelmed, sensitive, exposed. In my own work, I’ve been looking at vulnerability in everyday life. Atkins pushes that further into the psychological and bodily realm, and I left wondering how I might explore discomfort more openly in my painting.
