Interviews by Brainard Carey

Giulio Noccesi by Ethan James Green
Giulio Noccesi (b. 1996, Florence, Italy) is a painter based in Turin, Italy. He has participated in group exhibitions at Minor Gallery, Copenhagen, DK (2025); Monti8, Rome, IT (2024); Candysnake Gallery, Milan, IT (2024); and D Contemporary Gallery, London, UK (2023). He received a degree in Printmaking from Fine Arts Academy, Florence in 2018.

“In Maurilia, the traveler is invited to visit the city and, at the same time, to examine some old postcards that show it as it used to be: the same identical square with a hen in the place of the bus station, a bandstand in place of the overpass, two young ladies with white parasols in the place of the munitions factory. If the traveler does not wish to disappoint the inhabitants, he must praise the postcard city and prefer it to the present one…”

– Italo Calvino

In Italo Calvino’s novel Invisible Cities, Marco Polo recounts his explorations along the Silk Road to the emperor Kublai Khan, each chapter detailing its own city. Calvino’s non-linear, combinatory prose asks us to think beyond the borders that separate cities, presenting metaphysical themes that are specific to each place described, yet which permeate the text as a whole. We are implored to consider the relationship between history and memory; above all, we must consider how ideas take shape across chapters to form a composite aesthetic experience.

The paintings on view in Fermo per sempre make a similar demand of the viewer. Like Calvino’s postmodern cartography, Giulio Noccesi’s paintings construct a subjective map of his native Italy, an intricate network of isolated yet interrelated scenes. Each painting is simultaneously autonomous and contingent, an intimate, self-contained reflection of his life and a reference to the Italian art historical canon that animates his compositions.

Giulio Noccesi, La tua ex con un altro (Your ex with someone else), 2024. Oil on canvas, 19.75 x 19.75 in (50 x 50 cm). © Giulio Noccesi; Courtesy of New York Life Gallery, NY.
Giulio Noccesi, Paesaggio di campagna (Countryside landscape), 2025. Oil on canvas, 15.75 x 11.75 in (40 x 30 cm). © Giulio Noccesi; Courtesy of New York Life Gallery, NY.
Giulio Noccesi, Renault Scenic, 2024. Oil on canvas, 23.5 x 23.5 in (60 x 60 cm). © Giulio Noccesi; Courtesy of New York Life Gallery, NY.

Johanna Calle was born in 1965 in Bogotá, where she lives and works. Following her studies in the visual arts at the Talleres Artísticos of the Universidad de los Andes in Bogotá from 1984 to 1989, Calle received a British Council scholarship in 1992 to earn a master’s degree at the Chelsea College of Art and Design in London. Her work draws on a range of archival and deciphering techniques, often associated with everyday life, to address the violence of recent Colombian history and evoke the victims of forced disappearances.

Johanna Calle has been honored with numerous prestigious awards, including major prizes and honorary recognitions in Colombian art salons (1996–2003), a fellowship at the Cité Internationale des Arts in Paris (2001), and international grants and residencies in Europe and the United States (2008–2013).

She has been included in international biennials such as the Sydney Biennale (2016), the São Paulo Biennial (2014), SITE Santa Fe (2014), and the Istanbul Biennial (2014).

Selected exhibitions include Arquitecturas, Bienvenu Steinberg & C, New York (2026); Museum of Contemporary Art Denver (2024); Hayward Gallery (2020); Josée Bienvenu Gallery, New York (2019); La Maison de l’Amérique latine, Paris (2017); Museum of Modern Art (2017); Silentes 1985–2015, Museo de Arte del Banco de la República, Bogotá, traveled to Museum Amparo, Puebla, Mexico (2015); Fondation Cartier pour l’art contemporain (2013); the Drawing Room, London (2013); Wattis Institute for Contemporary Arts in San Francisco (2012); Museum of Latin American Art in Long Beach, California (2012); Sàn Art in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam (2012); and San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (2011).

Her work is included in institutional collections such as the Museum of Modern Art; Tate Modern; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; Museum of Modern Art, Buenos Aires; Fondation Cartier pour l’art contemporain; Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; Museum of Latin American Art, Long Beach; Museum of Bogotá; National Museum of Colombia, Bogotá; National Bank of the Republic of Colombia, Bogotá; Cisneros Fontanals Art Foundation, Miami; Sur Collection, San Francisco; Comfenalco Antioquia, Medellín; Enersis Collection, Santiago; and Teorética Museum, San José.

Johanna Calle Arquitecturas, 2026 Signed and dated on the back Nail polish on chromogenic print (anonymous photograph) Framed in Optium Museum Acrylic 3.5 x 3.5 in (image)
Johanna Calle Arquitecturas, 2026 Signed and dated on the back Nail polish on chromogenic print (anonymous photograph) Framed in Optium Museum Acrylic 3.5 x 3.5 in (image)
Johanna Calle Abstractas, 2026 Signed and dated on the back Erased found chromogenic print (anonymous photograph) Framed in Optium Museum Acrylic 3.5 x 6 in (image)

Anna Johnson studied English, Australian literature and Fine Arts at the University of Sydney graduating with a bachelor of arts in 1987. The following year she was appointed Art Editor of Interior Design magazine. Since then, Johnson has been a professional art writer and author contributing to Vogue (UK and Aus), Vanity Fair, Conde Nast Traveller, The Sydney Morning Herald and as a senior arts writer for Artist Profile Magazine. She is the author of several monographs and has been a critic for both television and radio.

Holding many detailed artist interviews, provided an immersion in contemporary art three decades deeper than a conventional art school education. Raised in New York in the early 70s, time in her father’s loft studio on the Bowery, as well as the artist enclaves at Max’s Kansas City and Fanelli’s Bar in Soho had a formative impact. Making the gallery rounds each Saturday as a small family, laid the foundations of a lexicon steeped in both Colour Field and Lyrical abstraction. Establishing her own full time studio practice in 2017, three solo shows in Sydney followed, including a museum show at the NERA Museum in Australia. Johnson’s distinct griffe strikes a different chord to the dominant animism of Australian painting. Seven visits to Japan over the last decade, inspired her austere and symbolic use of space. The subtle rituals and expansive space within Heian screens, and calligraphy have been fused to a hyper-sensual use of colour.

Her consuming project ongoing are the ‘Nymphaea Nymphaea’ paintings, works that speak directly to the expansive and progressively minimal paintings of the late and post-Impressionists. As her works grow larger and more complex the scope of creating an entire environment without spatial periphery is approached.

Anna Johnson, Beau Rivage, 2026, Oil stick and acrylic on linen, 78 3/4 x 72 7/8 in | 200 x 185 cm © Anna Johnson. Photo: Morgan Waltz / Off Photography
Anna Johnson, Nuage et Vide, 2026, Acrylic on linen, 78 3/4 x 70 7/8 in | 200 x 180 cm © Anna Johnson Photo: Morgan Waltz / Off Photography
Anna Johnson, Tohji, 2025, Oil stick and acrylic on linen, 60 1/4 x 54 in | 153 x 137 cm © Anna Johnson. Photo: Morgan Waltz / Off Photography
 

Bat-Ami Rivlin is a New York-based sculptor working primarily in found and surplus objects.

Notable exhibitions include Boat, Plastic, Tire, L21, Spain (2023-24); Simple Sabotage, Kunsthal NORD, Denmark (2023-24); The Socrates Annual, Socrates Sculpture Park, NY (2023-24); COLAPSO, Tenerife Espacio de las Artes, Spain (2022); EN-SITIO, Museo de la Ciudad de Querétaro, Mexico (2022); whereabouts, Hessel Museum of Art, CCS Bard, NY (2022); No Can Do, M23, NY (2021); and more.

Rivlin’s work was featured in publications such as Artforum, BOMB, Brooklyn Rail, Flash-Art, Emergent magazine, Artnet, PIN-UP, Office Magazine, The Paris Review, Public Parking, and more. Rivlin holds an MFA from Columbia University. She is the recipient of the Monira Foundation Residency, Sculpture Space Residency, Socrates Sculpture Park Fellowship, A.I.R. Gallery Fellowship, among others.

Bat-Ami Rivlin, Untitled (radiators, zip ties), installation view at Management, New York, 2026. Courtesy of the artist and Management. Photo by Inna Svyatsky.

Bat-Ami Rivlin, Untitled (radiators, zip ties), installation view at Management, New York, 2026. Courtesy of the artist and Management. Photo by Inna Svyatsky.

Bat-Ami Rivlin, Untitled (radiators, zip ties), installation view at Management, New York, 2026. Courtesy of the artist and Management. Photo by Inna Svyatsky.

Jesse Egner is a queer artist and educator based in Brooklyn, New York. Often taking the form of playful and absurd photographic portraiture of himself and other individuals, his work explores themes such as queerness, body image, relationships, collaboration, and humor.

He received his BA from Millersville University of Pennsylvania in 2016 and his MFA from Parsons School of Design in 2020. His work is included in the permanent collection at the Kiyosato Museum of Photographic Arts, and has been exhibited and published globally.

He is a NYSCA/NYFA Artist Fellowship recipient and has participated in residencies at the Santa Fe Art Institute in Santa Fe, New Mexico; Bunnell Street Arts Center in Homer, Alaska; Studio Vortex in Arles, France; Yaddo in Saratoga Springs, New York; the Vermont Studio Center in Johnson, Vermont; TILT Institute in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; and the Saltonstall Foundation in Ithaca, New York.

His solo exhibition, “I Want to See How Things Play Out,” which was previously exhibited at Blue Sky Gallery in Portland, Oregon in June 2025, will be opening at Flow Space Gallery in New York City on June 11th.

Mirrored Hold, 2020, 24 x 30 inches, archival pigment print

Lite Brite, 2021, 37.5 x 30 inches, archival pigment print

OK Hooker (Hooker, Oklahoma), 2022, 30 x 24 inches, archival pigment print