Yang Xu (b. 1996, Shandong, CN) received her MA from the Royal College of Art in 2020 and her BA in Fine Art at Wimbledon College of Arts in 2018. Xu trained in Qingdao throughout her teens in the painting techniques of 17th and 18th century Europe. Her process begins with a detailed monochromatic oil drawing, built up with layers of glazed colour. It pays tribute to the methods of Angelica Kauffman, Rachel Ruysch, Artemisia Gentileschi and Caravaggio. For Xu, this slow, labour-intensive approach is a conversation with the old masters and a form of meditation. It becomes a portal connecting mind and world, past and future, present and imagination.

"I love the art historical touchpoints in Yang Xu's work, and how, somehow, they make her paintings feel timeless, or even outside of time. Strange Paradise could just as easily be called Simple Pleasures. Grapes, which we associate with wine and Bacchanalian excess, sit on a sparse shelf. A bubble floats in the darkness, or perhaps it's a moon. There's something almost haiku-like about the brevity of it all. A whole world conjured from so little."

View Xu's work in the Sound & Vision auction

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@_xu.yang_

Anne Rothenstein’s atmospheric paintings subtly blend sophistication with innocence, presenting scenes filtered through memory and imagination, such as people sitting in cafés, women sleeping or lying in bed, and figures dressing. Rothenstein is virtually self-taught apart from a brief period at the Camberwell School of Art in the late 1960s. She hails from an artistic family background which has clearly influenced her work, and grew up in a community of artists in the Essex village of Great Bardfield.

"Anne Rothenstein's palette is instantly recognisable. She's so good at conjuring an atmosphere, often with remarkably little. I love the satisfying yin-and-yang quality of this composition, with its two circles, one light and one dark, holding the whole thing in balance. There's something quietly ominous about it, but also strangely calming. It's a painting that seems to contain both the storm and the stillness that comes after it."

View Anne's work in the Sound & Vision auction

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@annerothenstein

annerothenstein.co.uk

For over a decade - since his days as a student at the Royal Academy Schools - Charlie Billingham has committed himself to making paintings based on prints, drawings and watercolours made in Britain mostly during the latter part of the so-called long 18th century (1688-1815). Billingham’s art is by no means a faithful quotation of the past. It involves constant digression and improvisation as he queries what remains of an image when it is excavated. Having sourced a caricature that speaks to him, he crops it and blows it up, re-delineating it in oil paint on canvas. More often than not, he will be inclined to riff on the original composition, guided by his own painterly spontaneity and the unruliness of paint itself.

"Charlie Billingham's paintings are so moreish. His colours, sense of humour, the sheer pleasure of looking. Rummaging through the bawdy, unruly world of eighteenth-century British caricature, he clips certain fragments and gives them a wonderfully strange second life. Here, a pink flower-like form – a parasol blown inside out? – recalls a comic-strip-style explosion.”

View Charlie's work in the Sound & Vision auction

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@charliebillingham

@travesiacuatro

travesiacuatro.com 

Alvaro Barrington (b. 1983) is primarily a painter, often incorporating yarn, wood and other found or reclaimed materials. An excerpt from his 2024 artist statement reads: 

Art is about learning how to be, Painting is about what's in front of you, it's about learning to see/

LISTEN

You've got to give them something special, you got to give them you, what you do, what you represent

Don't restate what someone has already said when you can say something new and more relevant/ 

Since his first solo exhibition at MoMA PS1 in 2017, Barrington has shown internationally, including at Sadie Coles HQ, Thaddaeus Ropac, Tate, and the South London Gallery. 

"There's something disarmingly direct about Alvaro Barrington's work. An enormous orange sun hangs over a landscape of scratched and scumbled blues. Barrington has always been interested in what materials carry with them, and I love the way the marks made by his chisel interrupt the romance of the sunset. It's both a picture of something fleeting and a physical object that bears the evidence of its making."

View Alvaro's work in the Sound & Vision auction

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@alvarobarrington

@sadiecolesHQ

sadiecoles.com