SaveArtSpace x PARADICE PALASE is proud to present Don’t Ask, Just Manifest, a public art exhibition on billboard ad space in New York City opening August 16, 2024, curated by PARADICE PALASE.

The Don’t Ask, Just Manifest selected artists are Gemma Sattar, Jacob Hicks, and Madjeen Isaac.

What is your dream reality? What supercharges your creative flow every day? PARADICE PALASE is seeking artworks that respond to the theme of “real-topia”. Our platform was founded on a dream for more transparency and clarity for artists in the contemporary art ecosystem. This was our utopia, and we’re growing closer to it every day with our digital membership network. So, we are in turn seeking artworks that hypothesize on, propose, manifest, or proliferate your own profound wishes that you dare ask of the universe. From natural reclamation to daring ecological visions to playful celebrations - what uncanny and incredible future(s) do you seek through your work?

Opening August 16, 2024, SaveArtSpace will launch public art installations for each selected work on billboard ad spaces in Brooklyn, NY. The public art will be on view for at least one month.

Selected Artists

Location: Morgan Ave & Stagg St, Brooklyn, NY

Gemma Sattar is a contemporary artist living and working in New York. Previously resided and worked in Moscow from 1999 to 2020. Born in 1991 in Baku, Azerbaijan.

In 2002-2009 studied architecture at the Moscow Academic Lyceum of Fine Arts at the Russian Academy of Arts. In 2014, after graduating from Kosygin Moscow State Textile University and University of the Arts London - Central Saint Martins, she represented the university with her conceptual artworks at international competitions and conferences. From there, she joined the Moscow Contemporary Art Institute of Joseph Backstein, where she was one of the selected candidates for the summer internship with Goldsmiths University of London.

Since 2010 participates in international exhibitions and biennales.

Works are held in private collections and museums worldwide, such as the Hennessy family, the Luciano Benetton Collection, the Yarat Museum, and more.

Statement

Like rescripting methods in psychology when we go back in time to rewrite our memories to alter our experience in the present, I work with and transform the traditional symbols and motifs of the past.

Societal expectations and norms can contribute to feelings of isolation, particularly for those who do not conform to traditional gender or social roles. This leads to loneliness.

Despite the seemingly constant connectivity of our world, studies show that loneliness is on the rise. My art creates space for reflection and conversation around these issues.

Ultimately, I'm creating a world where we can break free from strict boundaries and view life more openly and expansively.

Connect with Gemma on Instagram at @gemmasattar.

Location: Atlantic Ave & Utica Ave, Brooklyn, NY

Jacob Hicks is an internationally exhibited Brooklyn-based oil painter and art educator with the Queens Museum. He received the W Paul Beckwith Emerging Artist Grant, the Eric Fischl ‘66 Artist-In-Residence Teaching Grant, and the Mary Vernon Painting Prize through the Meadows School of the Arts. He has participated in residencies with the Children’s Museum of the Arts, the Saltonstall Foundation, the Spinnerei in Leipzig, Germany, and the Terra Foundation in Giverny, France. Recent notable exhibitions include Cure/Rated at HOFA Gallery in London, Garden of Earthly Delights and Allegory of Vanity at the Spring/Break Art Show with Kustera Projects in NYC, and Smoke & Mirrors: Magical Thinking in Contemporary Art at the Boca Raton Museum of Art.

Statement

In 2016, I began creating a series of female portraits as a form of resistance to misogyny and racism. To recalibrate the power structure of a religious and masculine hegemony’s image history, I paint empowered and diverse women in a space previously occupied by male idealizations of female subservience. I am currently on Woman 63. The portraits are divided into four categories: art historical, cultural, personal, and artificial. The art historical portraits reference Primitive Flemish, Italian Renaissance, Spanish Baroque, Pre-Raphaelite, and 19th-century European Academic paintings. The cultural portraits depict influential figures like Toni Morrison who make irrefutable the genius of female visionaries. The personal portraits depict women in my immediate life who have helped shape my understanding of strength and heroism. The artificial portraits use AI image generation as an origin and framework from which to reclaim and subvert an algorithmic siphoning and amplification of female stereotypes and confront a future image of evolving objectification. I ornament each portrait in improvised imaginings, creating environments for some characters and color fields or flat patterning for others.

Connect with Jacob on Instagram at @jacob.hicks.studio.

Madjeen Isaac Foraging During Golden Hour, 2023, oil on canvas, 30 x 40 inches / Mad Men, Labor of Love, 2024, oil on canvas, 38 x 55 inches

Location: Atlantic Ave & Classon Ave, Brooklyn, NY

Madjeen Isaac is a first generation Haitian-American artist whose practice is rooted in home, communality and belonging. Isaac reimagines and hybridizes landscapes to center boundless Black and Caribbean existences that depict joy, leisure, and liberation. Ultimately, she challenges ideas around liminal spaces and the constraints of reality. By reimagining and suggesting ideal worlds of access and autonomy, she inspires viewers to internalize and claim their right to a better reality.

Isaac received a BFA in Fine Art from the Fashion Institute of Technology and an MA in Art + Edu & Community Practice from New York University. She has had residencies/fellowships including Smack Mellon’s Artist Studio Program, BRIClab: Contemporary Artist Residency Program, the Laundromat Project Fellowship and Lakou NOU Artist Residency Program at Haiti Cultural Exchange. She has exhibited at the Caribbean Cultural Center African Diaspora Institute, Swivel Gallery, Jenkins Johnson Projects Gallery, The Frost Art Museum, The Art and Design Gallery at FIT among others. Isaac has collaborated with KITH to create an Artist Series Capsule Collection in Honor of Black History Month in 2023. She is the recipient of the 2024 NYSCA/NYFA Artist Fellowship for Painting and the 2022 Women of Distinction Award for Arts and Entertainment from NY Assembly Member Rodneyse Bichotte Hermelyn.

Statement

My works are a tender offering of home, communality and belonging. I reimagine and hybridize landscapes that center boundless Black and Caribbean existences taking up space and experiencing the buoyancy of daily life. Pulling from elements of my hometown Brooklyn and ancestral homeland Haiti, I ultimately question, how does the diaspora continue to place their trust in reimagining new realities of belonging? How does one reinvent home away from home?

I am inspired by “lakou” which in Haitian-kreyòl translates to “communal yard” or “small village”. Lakous are usually built upon and passed down through multiple generations who live, engage and work cooperatively. I utilize this framework to dissect how the diaspora leans into ancestral knowledge and ways of being while forging new pathways of cultural identities within the landscape.

My process emerged as an investigation of liminal spaces, unpacking feelings of being in one place while simultaneously thinking about or longing for another. As I am world building, my hope is to mitigate the erasure of self and diasporic truths through depicting abundant communities of joy, leisure and liberation.

Connect with Madjeen on Instagram at @madjeenisaac.

Curators

PARADICE PALASE is a digital membership for emerging artists to develop their practices, and an online place for collectors to view and buy ultra-contemporary art. Their membership provides a plethora of tools, resources, and peer networking - and a digital site for incubating it all - to facilitate goal achievement & career growth for emerging artists. They also present curated artworks from members with a simplified and transparent way to buy, on their public website. PARADICE PALASE was founded and is currently run by Lauren Hirshfield - curator, dealer, event producer- and Kat Ryals - artist, curator, photographer - who connected after each recognizing barriers to entry in the primary sector. They have a combined 20 years of experience working professionally with artists, curators, dealers, collectors, and industry leaders.

Connect with PARADICE PALASE on Instagram at @paradicepalase.

SaveArtSpace

Founded in 2015, SaveArtSpace is a non-profit organization that works to create an urban gallery experience, launching exhibitions that address intersectional themes and foster a progressive message of social change. By placing culture over commercialism, SaveArtSpace aims to empower artists from all walks of life and inspire a new generation of young creatives and activists.