Rolling with the Homies   

  • Theodore Ereira-Guyer
  • Cătălin Marius Petrișor Hereșanu
  • Marta Jakobovits
  • Abraham Kritzman
  • Antonio Pichillá
  • Alexandra Zarins

3rd February – 18th March 2023 

Elizabeth Xi Bauer announces the Gallery’s first exhibition of 2023. This group exhibition will feature artists represented by the Gallery since its inception along with a selection of artists being shown at Elizabeth Xi Bauer for the first time. Works by Theodore Ereira-Guyer, Cătălin Marius Petrișor Hereșanu, Marta Jakobovits, Abraham Kritzman, Antonio Pichillá and Alexandra Zarins will be exhibited at the Deptford-based Gallery. 

The title of this exhibition derives from Coolio’s 1990s hit Rollin’ With My Homies, immortalised in the film Clueless, a classic from the same decade. In the same way the film focused on an established group welcoming a newcomer, in this upcoming exhibition, artists represented by Elizabeth Xi Bauer are shown alongside Antonio Pichillá and Alexandra Zarins. The former recently exhibited at Elizabeth Xi Bauer, whilst the latter, is making her Gallery debut. This exhibition will showcase and celebrate the artists’ practices, previewing the Gallery’s 2023 programme. 

Theodore Ereira-Guyer‘s work is an ongoing investigation into the subject of memory – what is kept and what is left behind. For example, his process of printmaking, especially the way in which Ereira-Guyer practices it, necessarily involves a loss of information between the plate and the paper. Even if it is a technique aimed at reproducibility, Ereira-Guyer uses single or a few compositions being generated per plate – every time a print is made, different aspects are emphasised whereas others are lost.  

For this upcoming exhibition, a selection of artworks created during Ereira-Guyer’s residency at FONTE, Vila Madalena, São Paulo, Brazil, will be included. The works incorporate seeds collected during his time in São Paulo. The artist works with collage, incorporating bright colours and formations that mimic natural forms and landscapes. The found seeds – that appear as artworks in their own right – bind the works together.  Theodore Ereira-Guyer’s seed paintings evoke his time spent in São Paulo. He fashions landscapes through the lens of his etching process; lines, shapes, marks and gestures interrelate and work together in a layering process to construct an image. This layering process is encapsulated by the addition of seeds – which not only serve as markers of the places he has explored – they also remind the viewers of the ever-present fascination of nature and its charms within the artist’s practice.   

This year, Elizabeth Xi Bauer Gallery and Umbigo Magazine present Theodore Ereira-Guyer and Sam Llewellyn-Jones: Unwinding, an exhibition of works by the artists at Galeria Sá da Costa, Lisbon, (Private View 15th February and runs until 15th March 2023). The exhibition is a dialogue between the two artists and friends. This immersive experience includes large new format etchings by Ereira-Guyer juxtaposed with Llewellyn-Jones’ photographs. Also in 2023, an exhibition of works by Ereira-Guyer and Vanessa da Silva will open at Elizabeth Xi Bauer in March 2023. 

Cătălin Marius Petrișor Hereșanu is a multidisciplinary artist who favours the field of painting. Cătălin Petrișor’s paintings are carriers for his interventions. The surfaces of his paintings are an exploration into deconstructing reality in order to reveal the action of image making. For example, in the solo exhibition The Illusion of Depth at the Mind Set Art Centre in Taipei, Taiwan, the artist explored ways to challenge the Renaissance principle of perspective. Petrișor’s works also examine the notion of space and imagination as the viewer’s guide to exploring the world around us.  

Rolling with the Homies will feature new paintings by Petrișor created recently in his studio in Romania. In 2022, the artist’s work was acquired by MNAC – The National Museum of Contemporary Art, Bucharest, Romania. Now part of the MNAC permanent collection, Petrișor’s work will be exhibited with other artworks recently acquired by the museum in an exhibition in February 2023. 

Marta Jakobovits’ oeuvre is a complex, researched and developed exploration of ceramic techniques. From casting to modeling and firing, using traditional materials and methods, the artist experiments with limitations of processes. Having lived under one of the most brutal and repressive dictators in history, the Romanian Nicolae Ceaușescu (‘The King of Communism’), the Jakobovits family, whose heritage is a mix of Armenian and Hungarian, lived on the border between Hungary and Romania, in the town of Oradea. A sense of displacement and adapting to new surroundings was an early influence on Jakobovits’ practice. At the time of Nicolae Ceaușescu’s regime Marta’s practice became a form of release from the oppressive forces around her. Along with her late husband, the renowned painter Miklós Jakobovits, Marta became part of the inner circle of the important Transylvanian artists who were vigilantly creating art as an act of resistance against the dictator and a regime which did not allow for such freedoms. 

This upcoming exhibition will show a range of new works Jakobovits has created from studio in Romania, including sculpted ceramics with personal glazes. The pieces convey the direction of her current practice and the sheer mastery of the medium in a career that spans decades. 

Abraham Kritzman’s practice spans painting, printmaking, sculpture, and installation art. The artist’s multidisciplinary work molds the space and time of symbols and objects. Often influenced by mythical narratives and timeless human imagery, Kritzman’s technique removes the original references from his creations, forming unexpected trajectories and offering new meanings. 

The artist works with techniques such as duplication, zooming, abstraction, flattening, layering, veiling and obscuring, as well as manipulating methods of display in order to transform the viewer’s experience. For Kritzman, the relationships between his works – the “negative space” – are important.  

In 2022 and continuing in 2023, Kritzman has been working in London, in Elizabeth Xi Bauer’s artist studio. Supported by the Gallery, it has been a fruitful and successful period for the artist as he creates his most ambitious and largest works to date. Following on from Kritzman’s solo exhibition Land’s End (at Elizabeth Xi Bauer until 25th January, 2023), Rolling with the Homies will exhibit more fresh works straight from the Gallery’s artist studio, showcasing the direction of his current practice. In December 2023, Elizabeth Xi Bauer will present a solo show of new works by Abraham Kritzman.  

Antonio Pichillá focuses on the ever-developing connections between western contemporary art and the vernacular tradition of craft. Using natural materials Pichillá draws from Mayan epistemology to: “…restlessly look for a bond that integrate(s) with the environment as something inexact, uncodified. I struggle to give form to transitory states,” as he explains. Examining the ancient culture of his native Tz’utujil heritage and the postcolonial notion of a homogenous national identity, Pichillá’s works are an act of resistance to otherness and binary constructions of identity. Instead, his work celebrates the heterogeneity of everyday contemporary Tz’utujil life. From his studio at Lake Atitlán the artist’s practice is driven by anthropological research into Guatemala’s urban and rural regions. 

Fabric and textile works created by Antonio Pichillá in his studio in Guatemala will be exhibited in Rolling with the Homies. Elizabeth Xi Bauer will present further works by the artist in an upcoming exhibition scheduled for October 2023. 

Alexandra Zarins predominantly works with oil paints. Zarins is fascinated by the human figure and the psychology of portraiture. The artist draws inspiration from the Old Masters to reflect and respond to the figure in the context of our contemporary world.

Leaning into the language of caricature and satire, Zarins explores imagined alternate paradigms of people and creatures revelling and rioting in debauched arenas like playgrounds of hell. These worlds propose that by night—which functions as the alien influence—our recognisable identities are changed. Disrupting the fun: the untamed ferocity and celebration of visceral impulses offered here, gives way to hedonism and turns salacious and sinister, haunted by an undercurrent of existential dread. Her paintings satisfy a perverse desire to indulge in the grotesque and obscene, confronting us with uncomfortable reflections of society. 

This is the first time that Zarins will exhibit at Elizabeth Xi Bauer. In May 2023, Zarins’ work will be included in an exhibition with works by Gokula Stoffel at Elizabeth Xi Bauer.  

 

Notes to Editors  

Theodore Ereira-Guyer (born 1990, London, U.K.) lives and works between London and Lisbon, Portugal. 

Cătălin Marius Petrișor Hereșanu (born, 1978, Craiova, Romania) lives and works in Segarcea, Romania. 

Marta Jakobovits (born 1944, Satu Mare county, Romania) lives and works in Oradea, Romania.   

Abraham Kritzman (born 1983, in Rehovot, Israel) lives and works between Israel and London. 

Antonio Pichillá (born 1982 in San Pedro La Laguna, Guatemala) lives and works in San Pedro La Laguna. 

Alexandra Zarins (born 1993, London, UK) lives and works in London.  

Elizabeth Xi Bauer presents Rolling with the Homies which will run from 3rd February – 18th March 2023, open Wednesday through to Saturday, 12 – 6 pm or by appointment. A Private View will be held on 2nd February 2023, 6 – 8 pm in the presence of artists.  Artists will be available for interviews.