Steve Turner is pleased to present Las Soledades, a solo exhibition by London-based Natalia Gonzalez Martin that features recent paintings which depict women in close-up detail. Of the seventeen works on view, there is but one that depicts her female subject from head to toe. The rest focus on various parts of the body–a hand, a foot, a pair of hands, legs, a torso or a face. Some have droplets of water on their skin; some hold fruit that drips juice, and all are draped in cloth or their own long hair. The subjects are demure, yet seductive and appealing. They have an ageless quality, a cross between a 1940s pinup model and an Eve from a Lucas Cranach painting. As Martin paints with luscious oils on wood panels, she depicts skin tones of creamy white with accents of pink and red with just the right satin finish. This makes her figures elegant, smooth and refined. Her compositions are inspired by Christian narratives as well as “Desert Mothers,” women who lived ascetic, solitary and spiritual lives in the fourth and fifth centuries in the region of the holy land. According to Martin, “I wanted to present an updated image of the Desert Mother, to look at their choice of having an unconventional life as wanderers who lived outdoors, and in so doing, to address contemporary isolation.” Natalia Gonzalez Martin (born 1995, Montejo de la Sierra, Spain) earned a BA in Painting at City & Guilds of London Art School (2017). Her work has been featured in a solo and two-person exhibitions at Galerie Sebastien Bertrand, Geneva (2021) and Quench Gallery, Margate (2021) as well as in group exhibitions at Lawrie Shabibi, Dubai (2021); Hannah Barry Gallery, London (2021) and Guts Gallery, London (2021). Las Soledades is Martin’s American debut solo exhibition and her first exhibition with Steve Turner. __ Steve Turner is pleased to present I Gotta Feeling, a solo exhibition by Ibaraki-based Kazuhito Kawai which features new ceramic sculpture. Some monochromatic and others gloriously colorful, the works were inspired by an association that Kawai makes whenever he hears The Black Eyed Peas hit song “I Gotta Feeling.” When it came out in 2009, the world’s economy was in dire straits following the collapase of Lehman Brothers, yet no matter the uncertainty and despair, the song, an anthem of optimism, always played at his favorite club when it closed at 6AM. As he recalls that moment, he senses parallels to the current time, where youthful hope seems to be balancing out fear and calamity. Kawai also sees his works as portraits of his emotions as they enter the kiln after many weeks of preparation, but after the firing, he finds them transformed into someone else. He likens the mix of works as guests at a party, and after years of only packing his works for shipments, he created these works with the hope that he might see them installed. I Gotta Feeling. Born in 1984 in Ibaraki, Japan, Kawai earned a BA in Fine Art at Chelsea College of Art, London (2007) before returning to Japan where he earned a BA at the Ibaraki Prefectural College of Ceramics (2018). His work has been exhibited at Steve Turner (2021) Mitsukoshi Contemporary Art Gallery, Tokyo (2020); SHOP Taka Ishii Gallery, Hong Kong (2019); t.gallery, Tokyo (2019) and House in Kasama, Ibaraki, Japan (2017). It has also been presented by Taka Ishii Gallery at Frieze, Los Angeles (2020), Art Basel, Miami Beach (2019) and by Steve Turner at Untitled, Miami Beach (2021). This is Kawai’s second solo exhibition with Steve Turner. __ Steve Turner is pleased to present Kimbé Rèd Pa Moli, a solo exhibition by Berlin-based Thomias Radin which features paintings that arise from his distinctive practice of melding dance with painting. The resulting canvases feature a fragmented dervish of a figure against colorful backgrounds. The figure is Radin’s and the background is Caribbean. The movements relate to his Guadeloupian homeland and are inspired by the double consciousness he feels as a Black expatriate living in Germany. He uses the musical technique of sampling to depict fragments of memory and experience and aims to convey the fundamental elements of dance – intuition, intimacy and vulnerability. According to Radin: “I paint like I dance. I move and feel with an intuitive freedom of expression, using multiple body languages to be in tune with the music of painting.” Thomias L. Radin (born 1993, Abymes, Guadeloupe) earned an MFA from the University of Rennes (2018) and has had a solo exhibition at Savvy Contemporary, Berlin (2019) where he later became curator and artistic director of dance. Kimbé Rèd Pa Moli is Radin’s first solo exhibition in the United States and his first collaboration with Steve Turner. His work will next be featured by Steve Turner at Expo Chicago (April 2022). Radin wishes to dedicate this exhibition to the people of Guadeloupe. Its title is drawn from a well-known creole adage which means, “Hold on, Do not falter,” and is meant to encourage his countrymen who are suffering from record unemployment, inflation, lack of hospital services and polluted water.