Suspended between stillness and movement, the paintings in this exhibition capture the moment just before an event unfolds. Moving between the familiar and the surreal, four artists hold time open, inviting us to linger in the uncertain space between what is and what might happen next.
ANTONIN RODET (France, b. 1989)
Based in Marseille, Antonin Rodet is a painter trained in decorative arts, holding a Brevet des Métiers d’Art (BMA). His work explores what remains when the unnecessary is stripped away, seeking to restore presence and significance to the ordinary. Through gradual simplification, he isolates fleeting moments of everyday life, suspending them in time. In his latest series, Ne pas jeter, oil paintings on rough wooden panels extend beyond the image to become objects in their own right. Wrapped in packing tape and marked by traces of handling, their physical construction evokes the act of keeping and preserving. Memory, impermanence and the desire to retain what might otherwise disappear lie at the heart of his practice.
CÉSAR GOCE (Spain, b. 1994)
César Goce is a visual artist whose practice bridges urban muralism and contemporary painting. Emerging from graffiti culture, his work explores the subversion of images and the shifting nature of perception in the digital age. Drawing primarily from nocturnal urban photography, he transforms familiar scenes through distortion, fragmentation and abstraction. Combining expressive oil painting on cut wood with CNC technology, Goce creates a distinctive dialogue between manual gesture and digital precision. His work reflects the restless flow of contemporary life, balancing the figurative and abstract, the organic and technological. Chong Gallery discovered Goce through an open call in 2024, subsequently presenting his solo exhibition Urban Distortion in 2025 and a solo booth at Art Lausanne in 2026.
ELISE VAN DEN BRAND
(Australia / UK-based, b. 1992)
Working primarily in oil, Elise van den Brand creates intimate paintings of tightly cropped fragments of the human body, often focusing on gestures and hands. Through meticulous detail, chiaroscuro and the deliberate concealment of context, her compositions evoke a sense of intimacy and ambiguity. Her work explores the relationship between perception, memory and identity, inviting viewers to question what they see and how they interpret it. Based in London, Brand holds a BFA in Painting from Monash University, Melbourne. Her second collaboration with Chong Gallery follows the solo exhibition L'Objet d'Autrui, presented in the summer of 2026, which marked a transition towards wider, freer compositions while retaining her enduring interest in self-perception.
JOKIN SORTWO (Spain, b. 1988)
Jokin Sortwo is a Basque painter and muralist whose practice moves between urban art and contemporary figurative painting. A member of the San Sebastián-based collective Formato Norte, he combines realism, impressionism and expressionism through fragmentation, cropping and layered imagery. His paintings explore the moment just before an event unfolds, capturing gestures, glances and scenes suspended between stillness and action. Through carefully placed details and unresolved narratives, Sortwo invites viewers to construct their own interpretations, leaving each image open to possibility. Alongside his international mural practice, he works extensively in oil on wood, translating his interest in narrative tension into both intimate and monumental formats. Chong Gallery first presented his work in 2024 as part of Formato Norte, followed by a solo presentation at Urban Art Fair in Paris in 2025 and VOLTA Basel in June 2026.
