LBF Contemporary at Myo Piccadilly

There’s a distinct pleasure (and intimidation) in catching something not from the

beginning; in the midst of things. One has to piece together the events that led up to the point of their arrival. The artworks in this show represent something fundamental - not everything in life follows a narrative structure with a clear beginning, middle, and end. Jake Vanden Berge’s pieces unfold like distant yet related vignettes unfolding simultaneously. Mircea Teleagâ eerie scenes radiate the energy of people recently departed and not too far away. Or Min Woo Nam’s obscured horizons that feel like time passing you by. While Lau Yee Vanessa Fong’s whirlwind of light and colour condense entire narratives into a single, breathless utterance. Look upon these and the other artist’s works; the jigsaw pieces of a narrative are all there. We encourage you to form them into your own image.

Featured artists

Jake Vanden Berge is a LA-Based, self-taught artist who paints striking juxtapositions exploring the hazy threshold between memory and nostalgia. Drawing inspiration from a suburban upbringing in Whittier, California, Vanden Berge’s oil paintings use colour and composition to blur the line between the tangible and the imagined.

Lau Yee Vanessa Fong is a London-based visual artist who has recently completed her MA in Painting from the Royal College of Art. Prior to this, she earned her BFA in Fine Art from the Art Center College of Design in 2021. Her creative work is profoundly influenced by Buddhist and Eastern culture and philosophy, depicting a personal journey of spiritual self-healing after experiencing trauma. She explores the quest for self-identity while reinterpreting Buddhism in a modern visual language.

Through making landscape paintings, Joe Grieve finds himself engaging in reveries and nostalgia from remembered landscapes and experiences. They reference actual places merging poetic rural ideals, sometimes underpinned with fragments and marks from urban angles and the sound of the city. In bringing together these elements, Grieve celebrates the unique qualities of painting, constructing illusory spaces through mark-making and strokes of colour.

Shuang Jiang’s works are mainly inspired by her deep concern for the vulnerability of the individual and the intrinsic connection between nature and the individual. They reflect her different stages of psychological state and introspection. The figures in her works are primarily derived from a series of prints made from sheepskin. She has an affinity for sharp things and eyes that look like wounds. These images are not merely reflections of external forms but manifestations of her innermost struggles and triumphs, each stroke of the brush representing a cathartic journey into self-awareness and understanding. Within these works, she embraces the tension between fragility and resilience, capturing the essence of the human condition as it intertwines with the elemental forces of nature.

Min Woo Nam (b. 1994, South Korea) is a Korean artist based in London. He holds a Master’s degree in Painting from the Royal College of Art and a degree from the London School of Economics. His formative experience serving with the United Nations peacekeeping force in South Sudan deeply informs his ongoing enquiry into consciousness, perception, and moments of meaningful coincidence that shape lived experience and selfhood. By pairing delicate tonal transitions with measured brushwork, Nam’s work probes the spatial limits of abstraction, creating a field of depth that exists between the known and the unknown.

Mircea Teleaga is a contemporary painter recognized for his profound engagement with the materiality of paint and its intrinsic connection to image-making. His practice explores themes of perception, the impact of medium on a work's identity, and a deliberate harking back to historical methods, contrasting with rapid technological advancements.

Xuanru Wang completed an MRes in Arts and Humanities from the Royal College of Art in 2024. Her seeks to express the human experience of love and pathos through her painting practice. She is deeply inspired by Aby Warburg's concept of the "Pathosformel" (Pathos Formula), described as "a paradigm for expressing primitive, irrational, suffering, and passion-related life states." Her creative inspiration stems predominantly from historical films, classical painting, and literary texts. Her painting practice, akin to archaeology within art history, reaffirms humanity's timeless pathos-laden memories.

Xi Liu completed a Master of Fine Arts at The Slade School of Fine Art in 2024. Liu’s artistic practice delves into the intricate dynamics of human relationships, exploring the physical, emotional, and psychological forces that shape our interactions. Her work is a reflection on the tension between the individual and the collective, examining how personal experiences are influenced by broader social contexts. Through her paintings, Liu captures the fleeting nature of moments, using distorted, tilted forms to convey a sense of compression and oscillation, which mirrors the inner and outer conflicts people face in their daily lives.