Larsen Warner is excited to present the group exhibition Travellers in The Mist featuring Tom Anholt, Katherine Bradford, Freya Douglas - Morris, Rasmus Eckhardt, Omar El Lahib and Leiko Ikemura. The exhibition title takes inspiration from the First Nation Osage tribe in the USA. Within the tribe there were the Moh-sho-tsa-moie or Travellers in the mist, who would take the lead whenever the tribe was undergoing sudden changes or venturing into unfamiliar realms. Travellers in the Mist presents a group of artists that reflect this outlying spirit, offering rich perspectives and meditations on contemporary painting that seems to exist somewhere outside of known time and space. Each of the artists mine a far reaching array of pictorial strategies to conjure enigmatic works that resist easy categorisation; producing seductive painting with sensitivity and radiance. Each artist's perpetual desire to reinvent and reimagine within the surface of the painting establishes multi-layered stories that create a profound and transformative experience.

Tom Anholt (b. 1987 Bath, UK) conjures paintings that often depict expansive and melancholic landscapes, inviting the viewer to immerse themselves in the ambiguity of the poetic world that he has created. In Brother's Keeper, 2024, Anholt’s extraordinary skill in imitating the natural qualities of light is seen in the inky pool of purples, reds and pinks that seem to shimmer in the nocturne light. On a moonlit outcrop sits a single hatted figure under a tree; the dark snaking branches stretching out across the paintings surface, calling to mind the allegorical scenes of Caspar David Friedrich. The figure looks out in contemplation at another mysterious figure in the distance, sat sailing through the night. Anholt manages to convey personal sentiment and experiences and at the same time produce painting that acts as a gateway to another time and place; at once rooted in a sense of realism and yet seemingly free from concerns of the present.

Leiko Ikemura’s (b.Tsu, Japan) art is unique for its abilities to unite otherwise separate worlds; East and West, tradition and contemporary. From sculpture to painting Ikemura’s extraordinary singular vision has created a world that defies classification and where boundaries seem to always be in a state of flow. For Travellers in The Mist Ikemura presents the paintings Pinkscape, 2021 and Pink Sky, 2019 alongside the sculpture Kitsune-Frau, 2012. Ikemura applies thin washes of turquoise, pink and  yellow hues. From these thinly applied veils impressions of landscapes seem to appear through the surface. These marks seem to shift constantly between recognition and illusiveness; as soon as they are grasped they just as quickly slip away back into the surface.  The expertly balanced blurred lines between abstraction and figuration imbue Ikemura’s art with an energy and emotion that address the fluid relationships between people, nature and our cosmic universe.

Lebanese artist Omar El Lahib (b.1986 Sidon, Lebanon) paintings oscillate between figuration and abstraction, with the core of his practice centered on the exploration of nature and humanity. Through lush painting of richly hued landscapes, often with a lone figure depicted exploring the other-worldly scenes and deeply rooted in both theory and process, El Lahib draws inspiration from a myriad of sources, including art historical painting,  photography and his own personal experiences. Well Guarded, 2022 features a single pink hatted figure exploring an architectural and natural landscape. The figure touches a leaf on a large tree that leads the viewers eye vertically up and down the canvas, while their gaze is set to the viewer, as if beckoning us to enter this world and explore alongside them. The painterly tones of pinks, greens, oranges, lilacs and blues, combine with the narrative to create a mythical atmosphere, offering a painterly experience that transcends our thoughts on the ordinary.

Katherine Bradford (b.1942 New York, USA) is considered one of the most important contemporary American painters. Bradford’s unique and wholly individual approach to narrative and figurative painting creates luscious and visually enthralling work.  Bradford has a virtuosic and kaleidoscopic sense for colour and tone. In the painting Lit from Below, 2023, bright stains of neon pinks and deep reds pulsate beside shadowy swathes of dark aubergine purples and grass greens with an intense streak of bright blue cutting across the middle of the canvas.  A single green skirted figure overlooks a pool of swimmers (an iconic and reoccurring subject in Bradford’s work) that are reflected by the constellations in the night sky above. Bradford returns to nocturnal scenes repeatedly within her practice, the artist notes: “Nocturnes appeal to me because there’s a mystery to being out on the open ocean at night and any bit of light, either from stars or phosphorescence provides dramatic contrasts – after all, I’m trying to speak a visual language.”

Freya Douglas-Morris (b.1980 London, UK) is renowned for her vividly coloured landscapes inspired by remembered and imagined places. Through the artists sophisticated and skillfull ability to manipulate paint in all its forms, Douglas-Morris creates paintings that seem to vibrate under the surface, displaying a mesmerising combination of colour with pastel hues morphing with ephemeral fluorescent flashes. Light Rain, 2024 presents an expansive and panoramic landscape. An isolated mountain range exquisitely rendered in a fauvist colour palette of lilacs, burnt oranges, blues and greens sits alongside a snaking river that draws your eye horizontally across the painting, creating a narrative sense of a journey. The vast sky sits uncovered with lightly applied veils of paint depicting downward strokes of rain falling in the distance, uninterrupted and transient. This landscape is punctuated by small blossom trees in the first throws of life after a long winter and offers a continuation on the theme of works that were presented as part of the artist’s recent solo exhibition at Lehmann Maupin, London

The work of Rasmus Eckhardt (b.1982, Copenhagen, Denmark) holds an otherworldy allure. Rooted in the artists own personal experiences, Eckhardt’s softened representations of landscapes and figures are bound to a reality that feels familiar but that we can never completely grasp. Ekhardt applies delicate brushstrokes of soft pastels onto raw, rough board. The surface is then sanded and brushed until each colour fades in and out of saturation and merges together as a whole. The world Eckhardt creates sits somewhere between dream and reality. The artist has stated: “I try not to reproduce reality from our world, but only glimpse. What interests me is the fleeting moment’s magic. A memory that cannot be maintained but slowly fades.”