Art in Mind

The Brick Lane Gallery is proud to present our eight Art in Mind exhibition for 2014, featuring an exciting range of talented artists from around the world, from France, Brazil, Sweden, Spain and more. With beautiful abstract ink paintings by Blandine Girerd (from France) to thought provoking manipulated photographs from Catharina Suleiman (from Brazil) along with the evocative child portraits of Elin Erikson (from Sweden). We are also proud to present the fantastic moving image type oils of Francis Vandenbroucke (from France) in compliment to the dripping paint portraits of Rike Schröder (from Germany).

Featured artists:

Blandine Girerd (from France) chose to show three recent creations, realized on Plexiglas for the transparency but also the lightness and thoughtlessness. She looks for the vibrations of the colours, and likes fragile material. Blandine also likes to create a composition with a good visible balance between colors, contrasts and forms. For her the blue is a mysterious colour, so it is perfect for representing the sea or the sky, but yellow is the colour of light and red is for the powerful. She likes contrasts and to inspire a lengthy question process with the viewer.

Catharina Suleiman (from Brazil) is a Brazilian trained photographer, printmaker and mixed media artist. Her work is held in private collections such as the Latin American Art collection of UNESCO, and has been exhibited in galleries nationally and internationally. Working on each layer by hand, she is a visual story teller with a unique poetic narrative.

Elin Erikson (from Sweden) is an oil painter with an MsC in business who started her painting career in 2009 in a studio belonging to a Spanish artist in Madrid. Elin’s storytelling paintings are characterized by a passion for color and thin layering, often combined with unexpected elements. Children are the main characters in her paintings, even though she ironically claims she doesn’t want any of her own. Every painting tells a story, can you guess which ones?

Francis Vandenbroucke (from France) was born in the flat country (Belgium) close to the towers of Brugge and Gand, where he studied the visual and ornamental arts. He arrived in the green countryside of the Cevennes (Montpellier region), where he found the chance to see and catch the essence of life, where everything is a medium, essence and material. He loves to dissolve in this nature, his inspiration is coming from outside. He let’s his feelings catch and subjugate the picture’s space. His sources of inspiration include; Magritte, Delvaux and Pop Art. He shields humans from context, sowing flowers in the concrete, and the streets as wide open mouths, movement expanding as he flies to overcome the subject, to envelop and underline it, returning within the molecules. He translates the emotion of his universe by setting light, the characters becoming immaterial and sink into the hubbub of the city.

Prandi Andrea (from Italy) began his artistic training at the Academy of Fine Arts of Verona Italy by concentrating his studies on anatomy and decoration. Later he attended the studio of Prof. Giorgio Scarato, Illustrator and artist of international renown. "I am convinced that life is much more magical than we are accustomed to think.

Laino Mauro (from Italy) is a self-taught artist living in Bergamo, who has arrived to paint after many years, his style made of lands and minerals, is recognised for its authenticity and simplicity. He has won many awards, including the Honorable mention in the 6th edition of the Trofeo G.B.Moroni.

Mainetti Ugo (from Italy) is an autodidact painter, from Valtellina and is the father of 4 children. He came into the world without whimpering on 5th May 1945 in a little district called Valle in the commune or Tartano / Sondrio / Italy from a peasant family of sound principles. He was the second/born son of 4 children. His bent for painting had revealed itself ever since he was a child, when, what with helping his parents in the field and casting a glance at his first primary school textbook, he realized that a whirl of dreams, emotions and fantasies was originating in himself and expressed it by painting on and with any available material . His first picture Burnt mountains” dates back to 1957.

Rike Schröder (from Germany) is an 26-year-old artist from Cologne. She combines traditional painting with digital photography and digital painting, usually in an abstract way. For Rike, art is the best way to express herself and that is why most of her work is inspired and influenced by her own emotions and feelings. She has developed a method of mixing a variety of different styles to give her work an abstract and "grunge" like-style.

Sahi (from Spain) creates art in the quest for the beauty of an instant, of life, of a melody. One moment, silence. The power of a glance, of an absence. The fire of movement, the mystery of a robbed image. This is what he seeks in his work, which pivots on a series of moments in which he intends to capture power and beauty, strength and gentleness, expressiveness under control, a mix of subtle brushstrokes with energetic strokes of paint without ever neglecting technique or style. His style of composition is based on the classical ideals of figurative painting, combined with an extremely expressive and modern technique which fills his paintings with movement and strength. Sahi wants the viewer to be able to perceive force of impact and gentleness, the combination of wild elements and unique harmony that makes up life and art.

Sedat Girgin (from Turkey) creates worlds within the worlds; colors, seas, clouds, children and animals… And then, there are universes and more universes where the strongest thing is the “dream”, mostly colours! Sedat’s illustrations are all the things we had said before, all the things we can see, all the things we can touch; sometimes it is just an A4 paper, sometimes it is a large and small utopia; as large as fifteen times of everything. If you still like getting yourself lost within the fairy tales of your childhood without considering your size in the mirror, this means that you will feel familiar with Sedat’s illustrations. Sedat currently works as a freelance illustrator in Istanbul for several children’s book publishers and magazines and had his first solo exhibition “Circus of Wonders” in Milk Gallery & Design Store in Istanbul, 2013.