Bloomberg New Contemporaries

What makes a young artist good? The number of exhibitions and prizes dedicated to identifying the elusive promise of youth are numerous and wildly variable. Bloomberg New Contemporaries, in its third year at the Institute of Contemporary Arts, specializes in supporting emergent art practice from British art schools. Selected by Cullinan Richards, Nairy Baghramian, and Rosalind Nashashibi from more than twelve hundred submissions, this year’s selection of twenty-nine young artists presents a surprisingly cohesive aesthetic. There is a freshness to this edition, an overall sense that the works were selected for their simplicity, their lack of artifice.

For instance, the naïve paintings and collages of Freya Douglas-Morris might hint at a post-colonial comment, but it’s their childish aesthetic that dominates. Jan May’s naïve paintings eschew the commentary altogether in favour of pleasing shapes on solid backgrounds. Max Ruf’s large-scale abstract paintings are highly saturated with acetone on Xerox and toner pigment, yet Tyra Tingleff achieves as great an impact on a smaller scale with her thickly layered oil paintings. Emanuel Röhss’ work presents a lighter approach as he opted to partially cover his canvas with strategically placed smudges of watercolour, letting the weave of raw linen feature prominently.