HG Contemporary presents a group exhibition, entitled “Surface(s)” featuring work from emerging and established artists across the globe. Artists Carl McCrow, Stephen Wilson, Alexandra Grounds, Solange Umutoni, Anna Zaia, Jerry McLaughlin and Mehwish Iqbal, will be showing a selection of their latest works. The exhibition will be a collective showing of very unique talents featuring a variety of mediums and styles from portraiture, to conceptual work utilizing guns, to abstract embroidery. “Surface(s)” highlights the diversity of personal narrative through form, material and texture.

McCrow’s stories uncover the tumultuous relationship our society has with firearms and their role in the decay of social affections. McCrow and his work are dedicated to funding weapons and munitions destruction projects in areas suffering from the effects of war and gun violence. The showing of his work will also bring forth his powerful campaign, Gun Neutral, an opportunity for the industry to use their fictional weapons as a means to destroy small arms that could otherwise fall into the wrong hands.

Stephen Wilson is a master level digitizer who has been creating embroidery designs and quilting patterns for over 20 years. “Surface(s)” will feature new abstract pieces, commenting on the history of fashion, the power of material and what luxury can represent in our day and age. Wilson hones in on a traditional craft in contemporary culture, and shares a enigmatic perspective through these new works.

At 19 years old, Grounds is making a name for herself in the art world. Her massive oil paintings depicting cultural icons, her female contemporaries, and the artist herself, comment on a generation of over-sexualization, stereotypes and the power of candor. Grounds’ technical prowess, bold use of color, and familiar subject matter command audiences and facilitate a space for important cultural discourse.

The New York based artist fled her native country Rwanda during the Genocide and found refuge in the US in 1997. Originally discovered in 2008 by art dealer and curator Jeffrey Deitch, she participated in a group show curated by Deitch and continued working on her craft. The experiences during the genocide and the stresses endured afterwards are relieved when working on her mixed media paintings, as the artist’s therapeutic relationship with creating takes hold.

Zaia is a Ukrainian-born artist whose signature paintings merge modern abstract influences with classical depictions of religious iconography. After receiving her MFA, she continued to advance her style, and began taking a more abstract approach. Her highly geometric figures and designs have attracted international attention, and have led Zaia to continue to push herself stylistically, finding her own unique way to convey and translate complex emotions.

Jerry McLaughlin has become known for his innovative take on artistic mediums that reflect his inspiration by gain and loss. His work is informed by the urban world of concrete, asphalt and steel, as well as by the decay, erosion and weathering of that environment. Incorporating ingredients from the earth (such as wax, dirt, ash and sand) throughout his large-scale abstract works, McLaughlin ultimately comments on the fragility of life.

Mehwish Iqbal works across painting, printmaking, textiles, ceramics, sculpture and installation art. Her work provocatively explores notions of womanhood, courage, liberation, and power. She experiments with themes involving migration, influx of refugee and migrant diaspora, monopoly of power-play, commodification of human agency, hybrid identities, unfolding fragile and complex state of individuals.