Mortal Thoughts

Bernheim Gallery is pleased to present Mortal Thoughts, a group show that brings together the practices of four artists: Nutsa Gogaladze, Ant Łakomsk, Travis MacDonald, and Rico Weber. The exhibition explores the lingering traces of absence and presence that remain as echoes of past experiences or as conjured fragments from the unknown. Working at the intersection of abstraction and figuration, the exhibition continuously hints at a fragment of memory that remains hidden, never fully unveiled. Through abstraction, obscured figures, and the interplay of light and shadow, this theme unfolds literally in the paintings of Łakomsk and MacDonald, where hazy figures emerge through painterly brushstrokes, as well as more conceptually through the works of Gogaladze and Weber, which explore how memory materialises within spatial constructs. Self-taught artist Nutsa Gogaladze employs soft pastels coupled with a fluid, intuitive, yet gentle command of the figure that invokes warm memories of a charmed domestic life. Ant Łakomsk’s work suggests an interplay between void and form where figures simultaneously emerge and reappear on the canvas, while the painterliness of Travis MacDonald’s long, expressive strokes reminds us of the romantic and melancholic resonance of memory’s ghosts. The sculptural interventions found throughout Rico Weber’s oeuvre continue to create dynamic tensions between the seen and unseen, manifesting remnants of experience through the layering of contrasting images against abstract backgrounds. Throughout the exhibition, fragmented memories unfold across media, space, and time as explorations of the ghostly remnants that inhabit our consciousness. Drawing from artistic predecessors such as Peter Doig, Odilon Redon, and Louise Nevelson, the works in Mortal Thoughts waver between recognition and obscurity, capturing the essence of what it means to carry the beauty and weight of our lived experiences.