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Founded in 2015, by Amar A. Zahr and Nathalie Ackawi, the Beirut Art Residency is dedicated to supporting the production and dissemination of contemporary art. The program focuses on three main facets; residencies, local exhibitions and public interventions. BAR provides both emerging and mid-career artists with the time and space to work, encouraging artists to venture beyond their usual practice while laying the groundwork for future projects. BAR’s exhibition and public intervention programs enhance the approachability and dissemination of contemporary art. The work BAR presents is often experimental in nature, allowing artists to take a more conceptual approach with their practice. Ultimately, BAR’s activities strive to provide insight on the culturally rich Lebanese climate whilst creating a global network of meaningfully engaged artists.

Beirut Art Residency

Dan Nguyen is a New York-based physician, entrepreneur, and avid collector of contemporary art with a particular focus on artists of Asian descent and hands-on expertise in NFTs. As the co-founder of The Here and There Collective, his mission is to make space for narratives often overlooked in the Western art canon, through a programming focused on Asian diaspora artists, curators, and collectors.

Dan Nguyen

<div dir="ltr">The founder of renowned Instagram account She Curates (@she_curates_), Mollie E Barnes is an Independent Curator based in the UK, with a particular interest in the works of women and queer artists.</div>
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Mollie E Barnes

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Curator's Picks

$1,000 and under

$1,000-$2,000

$2,000-$5,000

$5,000-$8,000

$8,000-$10,000

Granfiniland

Angry Girl

Untitled

Tangled Up In Blue

Tangled Up in Blue

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Kenneth Montague, Portrait by Wade Hudson 2021 headshot, courtesy of the artist and Dr
Kenneth Montague, Wedge Collection, Toronto

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Our founders at newcube first met Dr. Kenneth Montague and the team behind the Wedge Collection in 2021 as we were working closely with Canadian-Jamaican artist Shantel Miller. A Toronto-based dentist and the founder of the Wedge Curatorial Projects, Dr. Kenneth Montague speaks to newcube about his inspiration to begin collecting, his focus on Black artists and in particular Canadian-African artists, and his legacy as a Black collector looking to provide further public access to art. With a collection that includes works by 
Barkley L. Hendricks, Jordan Casteel, Renee Cox, Hank Willis Thomas, Jamel Shabbazz, Derrick Adams to name a few, The Wedge Collection is one of the most inspiring privately owned art collections in Canada. 
Hi Dr. Montague. A pleasure to be in touch with you. Let&#8217;s start at the beginning of your journey in the art world. How did you you come to enter the contemporary art world? What made you want to start collecting, and what was the first artwork you acquired?
Thanks for having me. My name is Kenneth Montague, I&#8217;m a dentist in Toronto, an art collector and the Director of the non-profit organization Wedge Curatorial Projects<a href="https://www.wedgecuratorialprojects.org/history-mandate" rel="noopener" target="_blank"></a>. I was born in Windsor Ontario, which is the southernmost Canadian city—directly across the border from Detroit, Michigan. My parents were immigrants from Jamaica and had three children. We grew up going to art exhibitions in Windsor and Detroit. The Detroit Institute of Arts is the place where I first saw an artwork that spoke to me on a personal level. This was the photograph Couple in Raccoon Coats by the Harlem Renaissance photographer James Van Der Zee. It was a very sophisticated portrait of an elegant couple in the Harlem Renaissance era in the 1930s. It really spoke to me about the beauty of Black life. I think that the love of that particular work never left me. Many years later when I was a dentist and could finally afford it, I acquired the work. It became part of an exhibition that I held in my home, which was a wedge-shaped space in an old knitting factory in Toronto, a space I then called the Wedge Gallery.

James Van Der Zee, Couple in Raccoon Coats, 1932. Image courtesy of the Metropolitan
Museum of Art, NY and Dr Kenneth Montague, The Wedge Collection, Toronto

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James Van Der Zee, Couple in Raccoon Coats, 1932, Image courtesy of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, NY and Dr Kenneth Montague � The Wedge Collection, Toronto

A few years fast forward, you collection now includes over 400 works and focuses on exploring African Diasporic culture, the Black life and identity, and contemporary art. What is the legacy you want your collection to have?
There was a distinct under-representation of Black subjects in photography and in figurative painting when I started collecting and historically. I remember taking a history of art course at the University of Toronto when I was in dental school. It started with Greek civilization and early Roman artworks. There was nothing about the continent of Africa. It was very important to me, on a personal level, to showcase works that reflected my own family and community. It became a very personal project and a labor of love to acquire these images that would tell stories about my own culture, Black history and Black achievement. In a very organic way, it became a collection of images that spoke to each other. From there it evolved into other media beyond photography; such as painting, sculpture, video art and even design pieces.
The Wedge Collection legacy has always been about public access. Right from the start, the collection has been open to lending work. The idea is to promote the artists that exist in the collection and support their evolution. The Wedge Collection has always been about supporting the artists that exist within it. This is done via lending works to major exhibitions and allowing the collection to be re-examined through various curatorial projects, an example being the current touring exhibition from Aperture, entitled <a href="https://aperture.org/exhibitions/as-we-rise-photography-from-the-black-atlantic/" rel="noopener" target="_blank">As We Rise: Photography from the Black Atlantic</a>. The exhibition includes 108 works including one video and it focuses on Black photography within the collection from the Atlantic region and encourages the viewer to observe these works through the lenses of community, identity and power. The exhibition is currently stopping in Halifax, at the <a href="https://artgallery.dal.ca/sites/default/files/press_release_-_as_we_rise.pdf" rel="noopener" target="_blank">Dalhousie Art Gallery</a>, where it will be showing until early May 2024. 
Along with that touring exhibition is the <a href="https://aperture.org/books/as-we-rise-photography-from-the-black-atlantic/" rel="noopener" target="_blank">Aperture photobook</a> that was its inspiration, as well as a vinyl record in which the music is inspired by the Black Atlantic. 
Another Wedge Collection exhibition recently closed at MOCA Toronto entitled <a href="https://moca.ca/exhibitions/the-wedge-collection-2023/" rel="noopener" target="_blank">Dancing in the Light</a>. That show was co-curated by Kate Wong and Farida Abu-Bakare; some time ago, they both visited my home and recognized the importance of books and music as inspirations for my collection. They included some of my favorite novels and records which were available to the public within the exhibition in the form of a research table. These interventions made this show one of my favorites.

As We Rise: Photography from the Black Atlantic, Cover image, Aperture 2021. Image courtesy
of Dr Kenneth Montague, The Wedge Collection, Toronto

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As We Rise: Sounds from the Black Atlantic, LP cover image, Aperture 2023. Image courtesy of
Dr Kenneth Montague, The Wedge Collection, Toronto

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Your collection originally began as the Wedge Gallery and has grown to include Wedge Curatorial Projects. Can you tell us what you enjoy about private and public art experiences? The recent exhibitions in Canada seem to be really significant in bringing light to artists that may have never been an institutional settings. We&#8217;d love to understand more about those exhibitions. 
Firstly, the gallery in my home was a very intimate place to showcase and see public art. The public viewing of art in a private home is not a very common thing. It wasn&#8217;t sustainable, and after a decade or so I had to move the gallery out of the house because it became popular and there were too many people going through my home. It was definitely a great place to start in terms of thinking about images of family and community in a setting like one&#8217;s own residence. It changed the context and made the works special in a way that would not have been possible in a major gallery or public institution.
The idea was to bring less celebrated artists into the same conversation as established artists. In the world that I lived in as a Black collector of Black artists’ work, there were so many stories that hadn’t been told. It became an important mission to balance these artists who needed exposure with the artists who already were being celebrated. When I started most of the arts community only knew about artists like Jean-Michel Basquiat. There were so few Black artists being celebrated. Today it’s become ubiquitous, particularly with Black figurative painters and portrait photographers. I&#8217;ve seen a lot of change in the thirty years that I&#8217;ve been doing this kind of work. It&#8217;s very gratifying but, also a part of me thinks, what took so long?
We couldn&#8217;t agree more. With a similar goal and hope in mind, newcube was born out of this idea of bringing into light the works of artists who have historically been under-represented, or mis-represented, if represented at all. And we&#8217;re happy that through newcube, we&#8217;ve come to meet like-minded collectors and curators who are working diligently towards making a long lasting change in the art world. You&#8217;re a perfect example of a collector with such a mission. Has your collection or choice of artists changed in the past few years?
I started with photography, in particular portraiture, and that changed as I realized that in painting you could tell the same stories. Also, there was only one of a kind in the world, which gave the work a specialness. Later I realized that there are ways of storytelling that work better in a motion picture format, like video work instead of straight photography.
I started with photography because that was the art form of my era but it really is an evolution. I was born in the 1960s, but really came into my own as a collector in the 1980s and 1990s when photography was the newest form of contemporary art being celebrated. Perhaps if I was coming into the fold today as a younger collector, I might think more about digital processes and performance art and other things that weren&#8217;t really a major part of the story of art when I was coming up. However, the collection has changed and broadened over the years as my vocabulary in the art world expanded. I think it&#8217;s very clear that the Wedge Collection will continue to expand and evolve as my interests and experience in the art world grow.

As We Rise: Photography from the Black Atlantic, Installation view at Dalhousie Art Gallery,
Halifax, 2024. Image courtesy of Dalhousie Art Gallery, Halifax

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On that note, what has been your most recent acquisition, and what is your dream acquisition that you may have not attained just yet? Do you have any artists on your radar at the moment?
The most recent acquisition would be a large-scale photograph from the Accra, Ghana-based photographer Carlos Idun-Tawiah. The work was featured on the cover of Aperture magazine in their ACCRA issue. He is a photographer that fits into the mold of what the curator and writer Antwaun Sargent calls &#8220;The New Black Vanguard&#8221;. Idun-Tawiah does a lot of fashion work, but his photography is informed by his own identity and background. It hints at the things that he as the artist finds particularly important. A sense of community and a kind of dialogue between the photographer and the subject is very evident in the intimacy of his photography.
A dream acquisition might be work by the Afro-Portuguese photographer and installation artist Mónica de Miranda. She is an amazing visual storyteller, and I find her art practice’s evolution to be quite interesting as she creates work from her experience as a second-generation Black artist in Europe. She explores various colonial histories that mirror the stories that I can relate to as a second-generation Black Canadian. There is a parallel of cultural references that I find compelling in her work.
There are many artists on my radar at any given moment. Currently, I&#8217;m concentrating on the dynamic emerging Black art scene here in Canada. I have been following the art collective <a href="https://www.instagram.com/baucollective/" rel="noopener" target="_blank">Black Artists Union</a> (BAU)—including artists such as Aaron Jones, Timothy Yanick Hunter, Oreka James, among many others. They are now inspiring a new generation of Toronto-based Black artists who are doing experimental work that I find very fascinating.

Timothy Yanick Hunter, Untitled (Loop 1), Voile fabric print, 156” x 21.6”, 2021. Image courtesy
of the artist, Cooper Cole Gallery and Dr Kenneth Montague, The Wedge Collection, Toronto

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Timothy Yanick Hunter, Untitled (Loop 1), Voile fabric print, 156” x 21.6”, 2021, Image courtesy of the artist, Cooper Cole Gallery and Dr Kenneth Montague � The Wedge Collection, Toronto

We&#8217;re proud to have contributed to the growth of your collection, when we placed one of Shantel Miller&#8217;s best works in your collection back in 2021. The work entitled <a href="https://www.newcube.art/artwork/khanya" rel="noopener" target="_blank">Khanya</a> was recently included in the MOCA exhibition in Toronto. Both newcube and Shantel were so thrilled to follow the journey of this work, and to see again after all these years. How do you typically find and research the artists that you add to your collection?
Shantel&#8217;s work really appealed to me when I first discovered her, first and foremost because of her technical brilliance. Sometimes I&#8217;m attracted to work that I find challenging in its production. She&#8217;s an exquisite social observer and her ability to translate the finest details about her subjects is a pleasure in aesthetics that is less about concept than realization. I am continually impressed with Shantel’s evolution as a painter and love the fact that she focuses on friends and family as subjects. This gives the work a certain personal touch and palpable intimacy.
I discovered Shantel in a show that was curated by Emilie Croning, a young curator in Toronto who did a group show that featured some of her work about four or five years ago. Following this Shantel gave a talk with Jorian Charlton, another artist in the Wedge Collection. The talk was part of the programming around the Art Gallery of Ontario (AGO) exhibition <a href="https://ago.ca/exhibitions/mickalene-thomas-femmes-noires" rel="noopener" target="_blank">Mickalene Thomas: Femmes Noires</a>. From there she was on my radar and the work from newcube became something that I wanted to spend a longer time with, so it entered the Wedge Collection.
Generally, I find works in art journals that I subscribe to, art fairs and openings that I attend, and most commonly through recommendations by artists that already exist in my collection.

Oreka James, Untitled (detail), Oil paint, oil stick and acrylic gouache on unstretched canvas, 2017. Image courtesy of the artist and Dr Kenneth Montague, The Wedge Collection,
Toronto

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Oreka James, Untitled (detail), 2017

Any future projects you can share with us?
As the Executive Director of Wedge Curatorial Projects, I’m always thinking about how to bring the local and the global together. It&#8217;s been a mantra of the organization and the next logical step. After many years of programming exhibitions and workshops around both Toronto-based and international artists, we have decided to create an annual lecture series entitled The Wedge Lecture. It will feature an international guest in conversation with a local one. These conversations should resonate with our Toronto audiences because they will recognize the connections in art movements happening both here and abroad.
We hope to be back in Toronto soon and to follow more of your journey in the art world, through exhibitions, lectures and other related events. Thank you, Dr. Montague for your time and generosity, it&#8217;s been an honor knowing you and getting to learn more about your dedicated passion for the arts. We wish you and the entire team at the Wedge Collection all the best!

Dancing in the Light from The Wedge Collection, Installation view at Museum Of Contemporary
Art, Toronto, 2023. Image courtesy of Dr Kenneth Montague, The Wedge Collection, Toronto,
Photos By Laura Findlay

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newcube spoke with Dr. Kenneth Montague about the under-representation of Black subjects in modern and contemporary art. Discover more about the Wedge Collection and the Wedge Curatorial Projects, and its legacy in the art world. 

Dr. Kenneth Montague: on Art Collecting & Building Legacy in the Art World

Hiroshi Sugimoto, Enoura Observatory in Odawara, Japan. Issey Miyake seamless knit dress. Photo by Keiichiro Nakajima.

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Pari, we have been following your trajectory in the art world through your online presence with your creative and insightful content for a few years now. We are delighted to chat with you and learn more about how you operate in the visual art world. Tell us how you first got involved with the art world? 
I entered the art world through a serendipitous encounter with a Helen Frankenthaler painting. I had spent a day in Chelsea attempting to take a headshot for what I thought at the time would be the website for my new interior design firm. This encounter with a monumental Frankenthaler painting, the juxtaposition of color, texture and feelings marked a miraculous detour from the official path or narrative gained from my education in architecture. The website then transmuted into a visual and sensory universe, where to this day I document and fuse contemporary art, design and fashion that I find special. It has become a platform for discovery. 
This shift is fascinating and seems so natural. Can you best describe yourself in a few words? 
Determined, curious, innately optimistic, intuitive. 
We would add “filled with positivity”! Your background in architecture, fashion and design clearly influenced your current role in the art world. And you have achieved a balanced combination of these elements in your visual world. 
Architecture school instilled in me a rigor for research and analysis. Essentially, it sharpened my ability to dig deep and to be expansive in my approach to understanding the cultural, social, environmental and historical aspects that may inform an artist’s visual language. While my initial work (in interior architecture and furniture design) had an inherent utilitarian function, I found myself drawn to a more open-ended artistic field. Fashion and the potential it gives to assume every guise you desire, the fusion of this with architecture, painting, sculpture into one singular poetic vision is my garden of eden. My hope is that reappropriating art in the context of fashion could provide an alternate way of viewing and engaging with the work, a rewilding in our ways of seeing and interpreting. 
Over the years, you have collaborated with galleries, artists, and also fairs like the Art Collaboration Kyoto (which was breathtakingly beautiful!). Which other projects are dear to your heart? 
My collaboration with the <a href="https://a-c-k.jp/en/" rel="noopener" target="_blank">Art Collaboration Kyoto</a> fair took me to Japan for the first time &#8211; a forever dream of mine. Everything is done with such care and craft in Japanese culture. The ACK fair conveyed the essence of this and prompted the question: what should Art express today? There is value in connecting the most distant cultures and starting a dialogue that goes beyond stereotypes. For me it was an apt moment to reflect on how I can enrich this chapter in our existence through the universal language of art.
My project with Art Collaboration Kyoto brought me to the artist Hiroshi Sugimoto’s life’s work embedded in nature in the Kataura district of Odawara, <a href="https://www.odawara-af.com/en/enoura/" rel="noopener" target="_blank">Enoura Observatory</a>. Perched on the Hakone Mountains, peppered with tangerine trees overlooking the Sagami Bay are Sugimoto’s trove of monuments with structures aligned to frame the sun’s movement throughout the seasons. Set in a place poised to be a future relic, I paired my surroundings with an Issey Miyake<a href="https://www.isseymiyake.com/" rel="noopener" target="_blank"></a> satsuma base hued knit where the front and the back are knitted in different directions giving me a twisted shape with fin-like flaps. Almost as if a fish had evolved to develop deformities. 
These projects, sites and practices grounded in ancient habits were used to predict and imagine the future. A formative (and my first) Pari Dust collaboration was with the <a href="https://www.gold.org/" rel="noopener" target="_blank">World Gold Council</a>. I traveled to India iced in jewels of fairytale beauty for an editorial celebrating artisanal gold craftsmanship enshrined in Indian culture. The richness of sensory experiences and the infusion of natural phenomena into life processes and world views was perception shifting for me. This initial collaboration sparked a series of collaborations with fine jewelry houses such as <a href="https://hemmerle.com/" rel="noopener" target="_blank">Hemmerle</a>, <a href="https://www.cartier.com/" rel="noopener" target="_blank">Cartier</a>, <a href="https://www.vancleefarpels.com/us/en/home.html" rel="noopener" target="_blank">Van Cleef &#038; Arpels</a> and a sustained interest in pairing jewelry as sculpture, alive in its materiality, with contemporary art.
Working directly with artists allows serendipitous magic to occur. My partnership with <a href="https://www.laprairie.com/en-int/" rel="noopener" target="_blank">La Prairie</a> for the launch of their Platinum Rare Night Elixir (the most transformative skincare product I’ve ever used) led me to collaborate with the artist <a href="https://www.instagram.com/seanagavin/" rel="noopener" target="_blank">Seana Gavin</a> whose surrealist hand-cut collage work I felt would be a dream for the project. I shot custom Pari Dust imagery styling myself in a galactic fashion as well as capturing still life product shots which Seana then incorporated into a series of 3 unique collages, Triptych for Reinvention.

Candida Höfer, Neues Museum Berlin, Christian & Yasmin Hemmerle Residence; Hemmerle earrings with woven pearls and
pave set diamonds, Hemmerle Harmony bangle in nut wood, Ottolinger tie dye.

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These projects are so mesmerizing. They are filled with creativity, elegance and spark so much inspiration in each of us. Your love for art is beyond the traditional art canons since it really merges several mediums, almost like a contemporary Gesamtkunstwerk as it was historically referred to. Do you also collect art?
I do, I collect art and design pieces. I am a creature of my environment and being surrounded by what I love enhances every element of my existence. The work I’ve collected thus far is architectural in nature and minimalistic. I love Brazilian modernism, I have a special chair by Sergio Rodrigues, some Eileen Gray pieces. My wishlist is long! 
An extension of my creature environment is the launch of a new installation-based store concept fusing art, fashion and design. A physical space that myself and a dear friend will open in East London this spring! The initial iteration will be curated by Francesca Gavin and the space will be reimagined under a curatorial theme each season. 
Thank you for sharing this news with us! We cannot wait to see it in London! Excited for your project ahead! You also take part in curatorial projects. Can you tell us a little more about those projects? 
The desire and the need to share the beauty of my Iranian heritage, the humanity of its people led to my first independently curated exhibition in December of 2022 with the Iranian multidisciplinary artist <a href="https://www.instagram.com/leila.seyedzadeh/" rel="noopener" target="_blank">Leila Seyedzadeh</a>. Her work conceptualizes imaginary landscapes suspended in a state of placelessness. Under the Same Sky came together in a dire moment which has been ongoing as the Iranian people pursue freedom from an oppressive theocratic regime. Leila’s textile installation, displayed beneath a skylight in Brooklyn and shown alongside a livestream projection of the sky in Tehran, created an opening for viewers to enter a state of connectivity between New York and Tehran. A focus of my curatorial practice is to reimagine approaches to transcultural dynamics that continue to shape our contemporary moment. 
On the horizon is an exhibition between Monir Shahroudy Farmanfarmian and Frank Stella that myself and curator Leyla Fakhr have been developing for some time. It is in many ways the culmination of my work thus far; to create a harmonious connection between two distinct cultures, to highlight the universal language of art and friendship which transcends essentialist binaries. Monir and Frank were dear friends! I’m thrilled to share more on this soon!

Monir Shahroudy Farmanfarmaian, Installation of 9 Elements, 2004, James Cohan. Area braided crystal top, hot short. Photo by Logan Jackson.

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As you know, at newcube, we focus on championing emerging artists globally while offering a more conventional advisory service to global collectors. And your unconventional creativity and strength in digital content is admirable. Would you give any tips to artists who wish to enter the art world in a creative and innovative way like you did? 
Lean into what gives you an emotional reaction. Ask yourself how you can add value in a space that you love and believe in. Support your friends, your community and do it with veracity. Gather with them, make something together, let it catalyze you. Cherish and seek mentors you admire. I believe that the future is in the collective, where the true power lies. 
Thank you so much Pari for your sharing about your passion and these wonderful projects. Literally speaking to you sparks our creativity and this contribution to the creative world is very valuable. See you soon in London!

Leila Seyedzadeh, Under the Same Sky, 2022;
Pairi Daeza ghalamkar top & skirt. Photo by Matin Zad.

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Pari Ehsan's world is filled with positivity. An architecture and furniture design graduate with a passion for art and fashion, Pari Ehsan is now an influential content creator and creative director. Bibi and Claire, the founders of newcube, chatted with Pari and learned more about the many projects she's involved with. 

Where Art, Design And Fashion Meet: The Curious Universe of Pari Ehsan

Collector and art patron Pamela Hornik with San Francisco's Institute Of Contemporary Art's Executive Director Ali Gass

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The art world feels somewhat small, and when we see a collector who is truly passionate, dedicated and generous, we recognize them. It wouldn’t take long for anyone in conversation with Pamela Hornik to feel that she is a truly passionate collector who truly cares about artists and who truly wishes to support those making it work in the art world. After a virtual meet and greet with Pamela, our founders Bibi and Claire spent some IRL time with her in London, during the busy Frieze week. We didn’t make it to tea time &#8211; Pamela doesn’t drink tea &#8211; but we had a sunny morning coffee meetup during which we chatted about art, dogs and the state of the (art) world. It was a fun and inspiring meet up, at a time where the world seems to be going mad! 
Pamela, tell us a little bit about yourself and how you came to enter the art world?
My art journey started when my fourth of four kids finally headed off to elementary school. I had been a stay at home mom before that, but I was ready for something to engage my mind outside of the home. This led me to start volunteering at <a href="https://museum.stanford.edu/" rel="noopener" target="_blank">Stanford’s Cantor Arts Center</a>. I would spend a day or two a week volunteering at the Cantor. My husband David, my kids, and I had always spent a lot of our time in museums, but the Cantor gave me the opportunity to really fall in love with art. As I spent more time there, I also began spending more time at museums and galleries and meeting artists at open studios. I couldn’t get enough art. And that remains the case to this day.
What made you want to start collecting and what was the first artwork you acquired?
My husband David and I just sort of fell into it. We loved art and spent a huge amount of time looking at it. One day it struck us that you could actually buy it and put it on your own walls. The idea of surrounding ourselves with art seemed exciting and inevitable. The more art we put on our walls, the more our empty walls felt … well, empty. The first art that my husband and I bought together was the work of a fantastic Stanford professor named Kevin Bean. My kids took lessons at a wonderful space called the Community School of Music and Art where they would have periodic art shows. They showed Kevin Bean’s work and my husband and I simply fell in love with it. We ended up buying a couple of artworks in that show and we’ve never looked back since.
What was the last artwork you acquired and what would your dream acquisition be?
Like all dreams, it varies by the night. There are so many amazing artists whose work I would love to add to our collection. My husband and I were just discussing the Chinese artist Chen Fei at Perrotin, whose work we saw several years ago, but we were unable to acquire then. We continue to think about how fantastic that work is. We have a similar reaction every time we see a work by Oscar Yi Hou. Or Salman Toor. Or Sasha Gordon. And I will always wish I had more paintings by Chantal Joffe, who I got to finally meet this summer in Venice, but I forgot to even take a selfie with her!
And then, one of our last acquisitions was a work by Chase Hall, with a whale in it. I would have preferred a dog, obviously.

Is there a specific focus that leads to your selection of artists and artworks in your collection?
No. And yes. But mostly no.
My husband and I acquire work that inspires us. We fall in love with work and think how amazing it would be to live with it… And if we can afford it… And if the gallery will sell it to us&#8230; Then we happily buy the work and marvel at it. We tend to acquire contemporary figurative art that reflects the wonderful, diverse world in which we live. As a result, we have artworks by and of an incredibly diverse group of people. We tend to be a little impetuous about how we collect. We see a work. We look at each other and say “wow.” And then we buy it. We are driven by emotion and joy really. We love work that makes us feel something. And we really love work that makes us feel joy above all. 
Ok, now to the yes part. A part of our collection does have a focus. I am perhaps even more obsessed with my dogs than I am with my art! And when dogs and art come together, I definitely feel joy. As a result, I have many paintings that include dogs in it. I don’t have a lot of works that only depict dogs. Some. But not a lot. But, I do have many artworks of people with dogs. And it makes me so happy! A selection of that crazy dog art will be in a show at the <a href="https://www.greenff.org/" rel="noopener" target="_blank">Green Family Foundation</a> in Dallas in February 2024. It should be such a fun show.
How do you find and research the artists that you add to your collection?
Because I am obsessed with art and artists, I spend all day, every day looking at art. Some days it is in art museums. Other days it is in galleries. But every day it is on Instagram. I have built an incredible community of artists, gallerists, curators, and collectors on Instagram. I guess to see what they are creating, what they are showing, what they are curating, and what they are collecting. I look at a crazy amount of art every day. And it honestly never gets boring.

Pamela Hornik at the Some Dogs exhibition, Four One Nine, San Francisco

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As you know, at newcube, our mission is to support and champion up and coming artists in a way that allows them to grow while protecting them from the dangers of the art industry. We’d love to hear your thoughts on the “ultra-contemporary” artists and how the market has shaped around them in recent years. How do you feel one can best support up and coming artists?
I love supporting up and coming artists. New artists create such exciting work. And there are always fresh perspectives — there are always amazingly talented new artists appearing on the art scene. I think the best way you can support ultra-contemporary artists is to actually… support them. Buy their work. Share their work. Introduce them to your fanatical art friends. Introduce them to your gallerist friends and your curator friends. And be sure to tell them how much you love their work. Being an artist is so hard! I’m not sure how much one person loving their work will empower them to keep going. But you should know that you are having an impact on someone’s life.
As an art collector who supports emerging and mid-career artists with such generosity and genuine passion, you are also actively engaged in supporting institutions such as the <a href="https://www.icasf.org/" rel="noopener" target="_blank">Institute of Contemporary Art</a> in San Francisco of which you are a founding member. Can you tell us more about your ways of selecting and supporting institutions and perhaps the challenges you may have faced in that process.
I really fell into the Cantor at Stanford. It was my backyard. And that’s how I started to volunteer there as you now know. I have sat at the front desk of the Cantor for fifteen years now. The Cantor is a free museum, so student groups come to the Cantor at all times. Nothing makes me happier than seeing a group of students having their first experience at an art museum and really coming alive. And the Anderson Collection next door is the same. There is this unimaginably beautiful art just sitting there waiting to be seen and all you have to do is to show up and walk in.
I guess I just love free museums. I want people to be able to come in and enjoy art no matter who they are. And I want to support institutions that have art that reflects the lived experiences of whoever comes into the museum. That’s how I got involved with the <a href="https://www.icasf.org/" rel="noopener" target="_blank">Institute of Contemporary Art</a>, San Francisco. The founding and executive director, Ali Gass, shared my passion for free museums full of art that connected with the broader community in which they were located. So I sat down with Ali and asked how I could help to get the ICA off the ground. And ever since, it has been so much fun to see San Franciscans of all ages, races, orientations, and identities, come in to see themselves reflected in the incredible art we show on the walls.
newcube works closely with a new generation of collectors looking to support artists as well as institutions. What would your advice be to them as they engage with the art world?
Don’t let the art world intimidate you. It is just art. And art is amazing. Love what you love. Love who you love. And help them create the work that gets you excited. Above all else, spend time with the people and institutions that bring you energy.

Pamela Hornik and daughter Darrow Hornik attend Some Dogs, at Four One Nine, San Francisco, April 2023. Photo credit Jessica Monroy for Drew Altizer Photography.  

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dog and daughter pamela

You mentioned that the exhibition “Some Dogs&#8221; will be traveling to the Green Family Foundation in February 2024. We can’t wait to see it. We’d love to hear more about this passion project of yours and any other projects you have going on or perhaps dream projects you’d love to get involved with.
The “Some Dogs” exhibition has certainly been a passion project. It started out as a birthday present to myself — I rented a gallery space in San Francisco, the <a href="https://www.fouronenine.com/" rel="noopener" target="_blank">Four One Nine</a>, and showed 65 works of “dog art.” The Four One Nine is a creative oasis for gathering and creating in the SoMa district. We had nearly a thousand people come see the exhibition and it was so much fun to see the joy on the faces of these art &#8211; or dog &#8211; lovers of all ages. I could not be more excited to take “Some Dogs” to Dallas. And this show will have several newly added artworks that were not shown in San Francisco, which will be great.
I may or may not be working on a book about artists’ studio dogs. It’s maybe a little early to be talking about that, but I guess I’m excited about projects at the intersection of art and dogs. If we could wrap in my kids, it would be a combination of my three favorite things.
Reflecting back and looking ahead, any thoughts or predictions for the art world in the next 5 years? 
I don’t think I’m much of an art prognosticator. I am quite certain that there will be a lot of amazing art created. And there will be a bunch of amazing new artists emerging. And me? I will still be sitting at the front desk of the Cantor Arts Center at Stanford.
Last question for you, from newcube’s artists, who would be your few favorite ones? And are there particular artworks you’d pick for your personal collection? 
I’m not one to pick favorites, but I really enjoy Baoying Huang, Reihaneh Hosseini (in particular <a href="https://www.newcube.art/artwork/three-women" rel="noopener" target="_blank">Three Women</a>) and Katayoun Vaziri&#8217;s works (I really liked <a href="https://www.newcube.art/artwork/memories-of-a-bourgeoisie-friend-tribute-to-kiki-smith" rel="noopener" target="_blank">Tribute to Kiki Smith</a>). If any of your amazing artists create art with dogs, I’ll always be excited to see it!
Thank you so much for your time Pamela, for sharing with us more about your fun and inspiring journey and for allowing us to enter your wonderful world filled with art, dogs and passion! See you in Dallas in February, if not before!

Otis Kwame Kye Quaicoe's portrait of Pamela Hornik and her dog Teddy

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The founders of newcube, Bibi and Claire, had the pleasure to chat with art patron and collector extraordinaire, Pamela Hornik. They talked about art, dogs and the current state of the (art) world. 

The Wonderful World of Art Patron and Collector Pamela Hornik 

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Born in 1992 in Seoul, South Korea, Arang Choi lives and works in Vienna, Austria.

Born in 1992 in Seoul, South Korea, Arang Choi lives and works in Vienna, Austria. A recent graduate of Vienna’s Academy of Fine Arts under famed professors such as Daniel Richter, Choi’s body of work interrogates our understanding of existence. Her signature anthropomorphic and mythical creature, called Emulb (meaning "Flower" in reverse German) appears in a variety of forms throughout Choi’s work. This hybrid alter ego invokes a metaphysical notion of animism that positions humans, animals and nature on equal planes. Otherworldly and fantastical, Choi’s compositions bring together the definable and undefinable in a narrative of mystical fiction inspired by her infinite dream stage. Choi's works are featured in collections internationally, and were recently acquired by the permanent collection of a leading art institution in Vienna, Austria.

Arang Choi

Born in 2001 in Ulaan Ude, Buriad-Mongolia, Yuma Radne lives and works in London, UK.

Born in 2001 in Ulaan Ude, Buriad-Mongolia, Yuma Radne currently lives and works in London, UK where she is completing her degree at Slade School of Art. Radne previously studied in Saint Petersburg and Vienna. Her work explores the relationship between humans and nature, and narrates the connection between the two. Mythological, fantastical, energetic and incredibly unique, Radne creates her own myths to explore, and operates with the idea that nothing is supposed to have an answer and anything can be any color you want it to be.

Yuma Radne

Born in 1997 in Shenzhen, China Baoying Huang lives and works in Long Island City, NY.

Born in 1997 in Shenzhen, China, Baoying Huang lives and works in Long Island City, NY. Huang uses art as a portal to tell her story of living between two cultures: being a citizen of China, and a resident of the U.S. Living in the ongoing pandemic and the antagonism between the two nations, Huang’s paintings depict the compartmentalized environments that she lives in, and her emotional connection with domestic themes as she raises questions about the meaning of home.

Huang considers her paintings as containers of “nomad” thoughts. The aspiration of wanting to express herself through language and conversation is compromised and compressed into painting materials and visual forms. Colors in these paintings are filtered and dimmed, which points to a sense of coldness she observes in her repetitive living patterns during the pandemic– being trapped in a humanless land and only able to see the traces she left in a space. The distinction between the air-tight surface and scratchy brush marks represents the paradox between hyperrealism and a gauzy, blurred romanticism. Huang believes in the power of painting because of its open-endedness communication. She is pointing at the mundane which all human beings can perceive, and hopes the spark in the dark can eventually make a good blaze. Painting is a practice to process the melancholy that comes from the present disconnect and allergy to the past; painting is Huang’s reconciliation to the outside world and the reflection of the internal mind.

Baoying Huang

Born in 1988 in Tehran, Iran, Reihaneh Hosseini lives and works in Vienna, Austria.

Born in 1988 in Tehran, Iran, Reihaneh Hosseini lives and works in Vienna.

Born and raised in Tehran, Hosseini studied philosophy before emigrating to Vienna in 2014, where she currently resides. Trained under Austrian abstract artists including Christian Schwarzwald and Gunter Damisch, Reihaneh soon returned to figurative painting, her favored style for reflecting on the world that surrounds her. As a storyteller, she is inspired by her friends and her everyday life experiences, yet she portrays them with a dysmorphic rendition, exaggerated proportions, grotesque, and distorted features, and an incongruous palette. Her strong sense of corporeality coupled with the absurdity of the scenes that she depicts reveal a psycho-emotional approach to life and painting. The figures that populate her works oscillate between beauty and ugliness, they have a cartoonish appearance that adds a glimpse of humor and playfulness to her compositions, yet they are imbued with philosophical subtleties. Hosseini’s paintings take us to a dreamlike world where each of her characters evokes our unconscious thoughts, our inner child, as well as our mental and social imagery.

Reihaneh Hosseini

Born in 1993 in Lisbon, Portugal, Pedro Ruxa lives and works in Brussels, Belgium.

Born in 1993 in Lisbon, Portugal, Pedro Ruxa lives and works in Brussels, Belgium.

Ruxa is enamored with painting and inspired by words. It is through painting, but also through objects and bits and pieces of poems that Ruxa attempts to communicate with his senses and sensibility. His works create an intimate dialogue, be it actually between himself and the paint, or us and the words. Through a reconstructed language that is his own, shapes, colors, letters, and sentences become his subject matter. Ruxa constantly creates ever-changing clouds of words and imagery and sticks them on his studio walls, making them the starting point to his oeuvre. Yet, he simultaneously explores the restraints of this same language: what is happening before or after what we see? The more Ruxa tends to take control over his words, his sight, and his emotions, the more he is unable to contain it within the realm of comprehension. But all this is exactly at the core of his aesthetic language and it is undeniably touching, both visually and emotionally.

Pedro Ruxa

Born in 1992 in Seattle, Washington, Brandon Elijah Johnson lives and works in Brooklyn, New York.

Born in 1992 in Seattle, Washington, Brandon Elijah Johnson lives and works in Brooklyn, New York.

As we step into Johnson's world, somewhere between imagination and reality, we become a part of his visual diary. A collector of images, from photographs found on the internet to snapshots taken with his phone, Johnson reinterprets familiar ordinary scenes in his paintings and drawings, perhaps in an attempt to freeze a moment in time. He takes reference images from his direct environment and intentionally - or not - offers a representative picture of today’s world. His vivid compositions draw from pop culture, embrace pastiche, and remain attached to the here and now. As part of a generation willingly returning to figurative painting, Johnson moves away from pure representation, at times infusing a touch of playfulness, and distancing himself from painterly conventions. Between fiction and documentary reality, Johnson’s works reveal a part of our collective memory.

Brandon Elijah Johnson

Born in 1977 in Helsinki, Finland, Elina Salminen lives and works in Brussels, Belgium.

Born in 1977 in Helsinki, Finland, Elina Salminen lives and works in Brussels, Belgium.

Salminen’s works are hybrid. They are both paintings and objects, sculptures and installations, light and shadow, floating and barely palpable, yet we are drawn to unveil what lies behind them or else, within the color itself. Salminen surprises us as viewers and we question what we see. Her works play with space and time, they move beyond the surface and reflect on her fascination with color as an intangible source of light. With her paintings, Salminen delicately applies monochromatic hues on edges and corners, then covers the emptiness with translucent materials such as cloth or glass. There is no paint on the surface of the painting, only a reflection of the color that hides behind. Utterly romantic, her works engage us in a conversation about protection and warmth. They are abstracted minimalist compositions that entail infinite meanings, each altered with time and space.

Elina Salminen

Born in 1987, Nick Farhi lives and works in New York, NY.

Nick Farhi (b. 1987, New York) is an artist, poet, and theorist. 

Developing a wonky and uniquely a-skewed visual grammar through the labor of painting, Farhi's works are often large scale representational oil paintings that depict everyday objects and reflect on the rhythm of life. Through an interplay between visual research, spanning from found imagery and autobiographical photography, to an internal intuition for cinematic figuration, Farhi makes his painterly mark by elevating ordinary objects to the status of memento mori. A piano, a glass or a coffee machine become symbolic tropes that act as a reminder of the inevitability of nostalgia.

 

Nick Farhi

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Oil on canvas 
2023
A pseudo-self portrait, Radne depicts her inner emotions as she’s on the cusp of exciting life changes and challenges whilst feeling exhausted from waiting for the future.

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Ceramic and glaze in artist frame 
2022

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Born in 1994 in St. Louis, Missouri where she currently lives and works, Palestinian-American artist Saj Issa explores vital topics, including cultural erasure, dispute, displacement, capitalism and climate change. The regional transition between Palestine, Los Angeles and St. Louis, Missouri where she is currently based, has had a significant influence on her practice, fueling her exploration of the current social context and the contrasting realities between these places. A standout of Issa’s works are the incorporation of Western languages, brands and logos – each a highly commercial aspect – layered before ornate ceramic tiles that have traditionally been tools to represent less atheist concepts. Saj Issa's commitment to documenting the social context and her surroundings remains steadfast, creating art that resonates with audiences worldwide.

Saj Issa

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Bleachscape #4

Oil on Canvas 
2021
Baoying Huang is a citizen of China who has been living in the US for over 7 years. Through painting, she tells her story as a young woman living between two cultures. Her paintings depict the compartmentalized environments she lives in, and they reveal her emotional connection to domestic themes as she asks herself what the meaning of home is. With a play on reflection, on inside/outside and a depiction of the normal objects that surround her, Huang builds herself an aesthetic universe that has become her home.

6 P.M.

Oil on linen mounted on panel 
2022
In found midcentury photographs, clichés like suburban cowboys appear as American kitsch, almost comforting in their familiarity. Artist Meghan Murray examines these motifs, parsing out Kodachrome color cast, pouring over the 35 mm slide memories of a stranger with both nostalgia and a cold disaffection. Murray finds herself complicit in a history written by the figures in these photos. In this work, Murray reimagines the humor and warmth of the Christmas season, and the obsession with the western television genre, especially during the 1960s and 1970s. In elevating a discarded snapshot to the historical context of painting and by engaging with the snapshot as both archival object and image, Murray encourages critical viewing of emblematic themes. The titles Murray uses for her works are found in the New York Times archives, from the same year that the original photo was printed, in a way to challenge the temporality - or lack thereof - in the image.

With a certificate of authenticity signed by the Artist.

Born in 1994 in Massachussets, Waltham-based Meghan Murray received her BS in Studio Art from Skidmore College in 2016 and her MFA in Painting from Boston University in 2022. Her representational painting practice embodies and simultaneously intervenes upon historical tradition. Murray’s oeuvre is a continued investigation into intergenerational American ideals and clichés as viewed in the mid-century family photo album. Her paintings examine her preoccupation with nostalgia as she finds inspiration in midcentury photographs that she collects. She is a recipient of the 2022 Blanche E. Colman award for New England artists and was awarded second place in the 2023 Miami University Young Painters competition by juror John Yau. Murray currently lives and works in Waltham, MA.



Meghan Murray

President and Family Spend Quiet Christmas in Capital (December 26, 1968)

Oil on canvas 
2022
A collector of images, from photographs found on the internet to snapshots taken with his phone, Brandon Elijah Johnson typically reinterprets a familiar or an ordinary scene, perhaps in an attempt to freeze a moment in time.

Claire's Knee

Oil on canvas 
2022
In Three Women, Reihaneh Hosseini once again pushes boundaries forward, tainted with humor and cynicism. A selfportrait, Hosseini stands proud alongside two of her closest friends from the LBGTQ community back in her native Iran. Their somewhat deranged and melancholic appearance is a reflection of how the conservative society in which they live - or rather survive - perceives them. There's something purposefully disturbing, yet a peaceful and tender affection between the figures seems obvious. These figures are not erotic objects, rather Hosseini speaks against genderism, and in favor of humanity. A contemporary take on The Three Graces, the artist and her friends - like Euphrosyne, Aglaia and Thalia - each bestow a particular gift on humanity, but with a twist. They become a metaphor for a complex approach to gender identity: the artist herself is heterosexual, yet still on a journey exploring her sexual identity, while her friends are respectively lesbian and transexual. How do they fit - as human beings - in their contemporary society, and in particular within the restrained and overly restricted Iranian community?

Three Women

Acrylic on wood and Cotton cloth 
2020
In Finnish, Kangastus means 'mirage' or 'illusion' and Kangas refers to the 'cloth'. The title of the painting, therefore, brings together two defining aspects of Salminen’s work, the illusion and perception of color with the delicate cloth that reflects light. As part of an intimate series created by Salminen, this work epitomises how the artist plays around with both the visible and the invisible.

Arang Choi

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Bleachscape #4

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Our Artists

Arang Choi

Artist from Vienna, Austria

Yuma Radne

Artist from London, UK

Baoying Huang

Artist from Long Island City, New York

Reihaneh Hosseini

Artist from Vienna, Austria

Pedro Ruxa

Artist from Brussels, Belgium

Brandon Elijah Johnson

Artist from Brooklyn, NY

Elina Salminen

Artist from Brussels, Belgium

Nick Farhi

Artist from New York, NY

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