Around, Above, Below

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

(New York, NY — October 7th, 2026) — Van Der Plas Gallery is pleased to present Around, Above, Below, a group exhibition bringing together artists selected through the gallery’s recent open call. Located in New York’s Lower East Side, Van Der Plas Gallery continues its commitment to providing a platform for emerging and independent artists and introducing new voices to its program.

Bringing together painting, printmaking, mixed media, sculpture, and other approaches, Around, Above, Below reflects the individuality of each participating artist while finding common ground in a shared curiosity about space and the ways physical surroundings intersect with perception, sensation, memory, and emotion.

Rather than presenting a single point of view, the exhibition embraces contrast. Precise craftsmanship sits alongside loose, dreamlike intuition, while artists push materials and genres in unexpected directions. Across the exhibition, space becomes more than a physical setting: it can be compressed, layered, remembered, imagined, or emotionally charged, shifting alongside the figures and objects that inhabit it.​​

Artist Biographies:

​Constantin Botezat

Based in London, Constantin Botezat works primarily in oil on canvas, exploring the relationship between people, place, memory, and identity. Born in Moldova, he began his formal artistic training at the Igor Vieru Academic Lyceum of Fine Arts in Chișinău before continuing his education in Romania. His expressive paintings, characterized by rich color and atmospheric settings, have been exhibited internationally in London, New York, Los Angeles, Paris, Lisbon, Italy, Romania, and Moldova.

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Carla Caletti

Abstracted and otherworldly figures serve as recurring points of connection in Carla Caletti’s interdisciplinary practice. Working across painting, sculpture, installation, and street art, she explores relationships between people, places, and the physical and spiritual worlds. Originally from California, Caletti has lived and worked across the United States and is now based in New York City.

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Bryant Chitsey

Working across printmaking, paper, and sculpture, Bryant Chitsey examines ideas of home and place through stylized imagery drawn from his upbringing in Oklahoma and the Great Plains. His work considers how place shapes perception and cultural identity. He holds a BFA in Graphic Design from Oklahoma State University and is currently pursuing his MFA in Printmaking at the Rhode Island School of Design.

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Monica Costantino

Drawing connections between art, psychology, spirituality, science, and the natural world, Monica Costantino creates layered mixed-media works that explore relationships between seemingly opposing forces. Organic forms, bodily structures, geometric patterns, and topographic elements overlap within her compositions, creating visual systems where interior and exterior, structure and fluidity, and the visible and unseen begin to dissolve. Costantino is based in New York, where she also works as an integrative psychotherapist.

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Thomas Cox

Thomas Cox is a New York-based artist who earned his BFA from the University of Minnesota and spent seven years collaborating with artists including Jasper Johns, Helen Frankenthaler, and Robert Rauschenberg at Universal Limited Art Editions. His practice combines abstraction with an interest in human rights and political issues, drawing inspiration from his travels throughout the Middle East and North Africa.

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Timothy Crawford Wilson

A painter and poet based in Harpswell, Maine, Timothy Crawford Wilson works across painting, drawing, pastel, watercolor, jewelry, woodworking, and leather craft. He holds a BA from Bowdoin College and an MFA in Painting and Drawing from Parsons School of Design, with additional studies at the New York Studio School, Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture, and the Art Students League of New York. His work draws from a wide range of historical and cultural influences, including Renaissance, Expressionist, Impressionist, Modernist, Korean, and Indigenous traditions.

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Robert Evangelista

After growing up in Italy and returning to the United States for his artistic education, Robert Anthony Evangelista earned his MFA from Yale University. His practice has moved between painting, printmaking, drawing, and silkscreen, with his recent work combining personal drawings, photographs, textural layering, and collage. He is also an art educator in Queens, New York, where his work continues to draw from the everyday realities of urban life.

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Cindy Franz

For Cindy Franz, painting becomes a way to work through feeling, memory, and personal experience while investigating how figures and forms occupy space. She studied at Barat College of DePaul University, the New York Studio School, and Greenwich House Pottery. Her work has been exhibited extensively in New York, including at Van Der Plas Gallery, as well as internationally at Gallery Begin in Kyoto.

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Ryan Glovna

Influenced by abstract, primitive, and folk art, Ryan Glovna creates paintings and sculptures that combine intuitive processes with imagery of humans and animals. His work often begins without a fixed plan, allowing the material itself to guide the development of form and narrative. Based in Connecticut, Glovna’s work invites viewers to find their own interpretations within his open-ended compositions.

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Alejandro Guanche

Born in Havana in 1991, Alejandro Guanche is a painter whose practice explores perception, observation, and the relationship between people and their surroundings. He studied at the National Academy of Fine Arts San Alejandro and later worked as a Museology Specialist at the National Museum of Fine Arts in Havana. He currently lives and works between New York and New Jersey.

Christopher Hart Chambers

Born in Manhattan in 1960, Christopher Hart Chambers is a lifelong New York City artist whose practice emerged from the city's early street art scene. He gained recognition for installing original works throughout the streets of New York and later founded the street art collective AVANT and co-established the B.A.D. Museum. Alongside his artistic practice, Chambers has written for numerous art publications, curated approximately fifty exhibitions, and exhibited his work internationally, with pieces held in collections worldwide.​

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Ona Hauert

Photographs of interiors serve as a starting point for Ona Hauert’s paintings, but the finished works move far beyond their original sources. Through flattened planes, bold color, pattern, and intuitive mark-making, she explores the feeling of belonging and the idea of home. Her spaces are simultaneously playful and overwhelming, inviting viewers in while questioning whether these environments could ever truly be inhabited.

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Shaun Haugen

Through painting and drawing, Brooklyn-based artist Shaun Haugen investigates the optical and psychological effects of color, pattern, and geometric structure. His precise compositions are rooted in personal experiences of fleeting visual phenomena, translating flashes of color and light into rhythmic arrangements of lines and forms. Haugen received his BFA from Texas State University and MFA from Pratt Institute, graduating with distinction.

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Gaelle Hintzy-Marcel

Balance, movement, and human connection form the foundation of Gaelle Hintzy-Marcel’s sculptural practice. Working with steel, wood, pewter, resin, plaster, and textiles, she brings contrasting materials together to create tension, dialogue, and unexpected forms. Her experiences living in France, Indonesia, Russia, India, and the United States have informed a practice that moves between figurative and abstract forms, with recent exhibitions in New York and Paris.

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Bryson Iacoboni

With a background in architecture, Bryson Iacoboni approaches painting through an understanding of how people occupy and move through built environments. Working primarily with paint and collage, he constructs layered scenes influenced by architecture, skateboarding, and everyday visual culture. He earned degrees in architecture from the Catholic University of America and Boston Architectural College and currently lives and works in Maryland.

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Kendra Jones

At 18, Brooklyn-based painter Kendra Jones is developing an abstract practice centered on the emotional realities of contemporary life. Her work engages with questions surrounding capitalism, identity, youth, and the uncertainty of navigating the world as a young queer artist.

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Frances Kadushin

Memory, grief, and the spaces associated with home are central to Frances Kadushin’s paintings. Following the death of her grandfather, she began creating works based on the rooms, windows, and familiar spaces connected to him, transforming personal memories into psychological landscapes. Recurring imagery such as yellow daisies, windows, doorways, and distant skies becomes a visual language for loss, remembrance, and peace.

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Myung-Sik Kim

Born in Seoul in 1949, Myung-Sik Kim has maintained an international painting career spanning more than four decades. He served as a professor of Fine Arts at Dong-A University in Busan and has presented more than 50 solo exhibitions throughout Asia, Europe, Australia, and the United States. His work has been shown at major international art fairs and is held in collections including the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art of Korea, Leeum Museum of Art, Samsung, LG, and other major institutions and corporations.

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