Who will be the next big thing? We asked some of the art world’s leading curators, writers, art advisors, and gallery directors about which artists are on their radars for 2022 and why. Some of their picks have already established formidable art-world profiles, but are poised to reach the next level of their careers; others are just coming onto the scene. Get to know them all below.
Alisa Sikelianos-Carter
I first met Alisa when she was doing the prestigious Fountainhead Residency in Miami and was impressed by both the artist and the work. She was then included in a NXTHVN Studio Fellowship exhibition at James Cohan gallery in New York, followed by a great group show at Kavi Gupta in Chicago. All of her work sold quickly, and she will be having her first solo show at Kavi Gupta in April, opening during EXPO Chicago.
—Karen Boyer, Miami-based art advisor, founder of Elements In Play
Manuel Mathieu
Manuel Mathieu is a prolific painter, and since his graduation from Goldsmiths College, he has been acceleratingly his artistic practice and outreach. Born in Haiti and currently based in Montreal, Mathieu has taken on internationally renowned artist residencies (most recently Schloss Solitude, Stuttgart) and received multiple national awards including the Sobey Art Award in 2020 and works with a handful of international gallerists and dealers. His paintings, informed by the art historical canon of figurative abstraction, emerge as an amalgamation of the torrid history of violence—in Haiti specifically—and the fraught calling of existentialism that his personal experiences precipitate. Mathieu also cares for his generation and under-represented artists, with the Marie Solange-Apollon fund he initiated with the Museum of Fine Arts in Montreal supporting diversification of the collection.
—Fatoş Üstek, London-based curator and writer
