Chilli - Aubrey Higgin

Thanks to @chriserikthomas for featuring us in his article for @artsy titled ‘Meet the Gallerists Trading White Cubes for Unconventional Architecture’. Read more about us and the other galleries opting for non-conventional spaces in the full article.

A big thanks to all of our collectors for their support - highlighted in Artsy’s Gallery Report. It’s great to see so many of you taking an interest in what we are doing here at Chilli Art Projects. It’s even better to be able to work with some amazing artists to help place their works in to great homes. @artsy #art #chilliartprojects

Aubrey Higgin is the visionary behind Chilli Art Projects, an artist-run space reshaping London’s gallery scene. Seeing a lack of diverse, accessible art in overlooked spaces, Higgin and his team transform unconventional venues, from a chicken shop to a Japanese restaurant, into dynamic environments. Their mix of raw walls and eclectic settings sparks fresh dialogues between local and international artists, prioritizing experimentation and community over the traditional white cube. At Chilli, curated exhibitions nurture collaboration and growth. Higgin shares how duo shows often spark unexpected artistic evolutions, allowing ideas to develop through shared conversations. Above all, he values building relationships that make artists feel seen and supported. Driven to push boundaries, the gallery brings complex dialogues to unexpected places and is expanding globally with a growing presence at Miami Art Week, continuing to redefine what a contemporary gallery can be: bold, collaborative, and inventive. Read the full dialogue now. Link in bio. @chilli_gallery 📸: 1. Aubrey Higgin. Photo by Max Rumbol. 2. Installation view: Eric Rannestad, Gradient Collapse, Chilli, 2025. Photo by Max Rumbol. 3. Installation view: Juan Manuel Salas Valdivia, Jackson Owen, Material history, Chilli, 2025. Photo by Max Rumbol. 4. Installation view: Morgane Ely, Cry, Baby, Chilli, 2025. Photo by Max Rumbol. 5. Installation view: Aj Kahn, Morgane ELy, Asher Liftin, It looks a lot less bleak through a filter, Chilli, 2025. 6. Installation view: Daniel Santangelo, Visioni, Chilli, 2025. Photo by Max Rumbol. 7. Aubrey Higgin. Artwork: Reeha Lim, Home, Acrylic, pigment, coloured pencil, oil on silk, 84x74, 2024. Photo by Max Rumbol.

Enigma of Spring {2026} Oil on linen mounted on board 11.8x18” / 47x30cm Now showing at NADA New York with @chilli_gallery until May 17th. Last day tmr i’ll be there come thru!

Day 3 of NADA New York. Eric Rannestad’s paintings and sculptural systems engage with the design of the architectures, technologies, and ecologies of the built environment. Understood as a form of modelmaking, these watercolour paintings and sculptural works reference the metabolic flows, and rifts, of a world churning. Pigments bleed, liquids corrode, and circulatory systems connect his visual components. Loops and armatures oscillate between function and flourish, all while the system folds inward on itself. Western models of landscape, both material and virtual erode within their own logics, logics now pointed at meeting the resource demands of expanding digital infrastructures. In doing so, he reveals the paradox of our urge to impose order, while the order-making systems inevitably come undone. Tailings - Accumulator 05 copper, cement copper, steel, acetic acid, acrylic, polyurethane tube 41 x 5 x 4 inches & Model-15 (Berkeley Pit), 2025 Copper and cobalt derived pigments on watercolor on paper, mounted on wood panel 7.5 x 30 inches Booth: E5 NADA New York May 13-17, 2026 The Starrett-Lehigh Building 601 W 26th Street, 3rd Floor New York, NY 10001 @newartdealers Ghost in the Machine Leon Zhan and Eric Rannestad let the visible world dissolve into what hums beneath. Exploring the cultural and material debris of contemporary systems and structures, together they share a dialogue around how cultural, ecological and social systems soften and corrode over time. Image courtesy @_yosukekojima @procrastinarting_ For all information: [email protected]

Day 2 of NADA New York, presenting a duo booth by Leon Zhan and Eric Rannestad. Eric Rannestad’s paintings and sculptural systems engage with the design of the architectures, technologies, and ecologies of the built environment. Understood as a form of modelmaking, these watercolour paintings and sculptural works reference the metabolic flows, and rifts, of a world churning. Pigments bleed, liquids corrode, and circulatory systems connect his visual components. Loops and armatures oscillate between function and flourish, all while the system folds inward on itself. Western models of landscape, both material and virtual erode within their own logics, logics now pointed at meeting the resource demands of expanding digital infrastructures. In doing so, he reveals the paradox of our urge to impose order, while the order-making systems inevitably come undone. Tailings - Accumulator 05 copper, cement copper, steel, acetic acid, acrylic, polyurethane tube 41 x 5 x 4 inches Booth: E5 Thursday, May 14, 11am–7pm NADA New York May 13-17, 2026 The Starrett-Lehigh Building 601 W 26th Street, 3rd Floor New York, NY 10001 @newartdealers Ghost in the Machine Leon Zhan and Eric Rannestad let the visible world dissolve into what hums beneath. Exploring the cultural and material debris of contemporary systems and structures, together they share a dialogue around how cultural, ecological and social systems soften and corrode over time. Image courtesy @_yosukekojima For all information: [email protected]

We are very excited to welcome you today to NADA New York, presenting a duo booth by Leon Zhan and Eric Rannestad. Please find us at Booth: E5 NADA New York May 13-17, 2026 The Starrett-Lehigh Building 601 W 26th Street, 3rd Floor New York, NY 10001 @newartdealers @leonzhan @erannestad Ghost in the Machine Leon Zhan and Eric Rannestad let the visible world dissolve into what hums beneath. Exploring the cultural and material debris of contemporary systems and structures, together they share a dialogue around how cultural, ecological and social systems soften and corrode over time. For all information: [email protected]

Chilli is pleased to return to NADA New York next week, presenting a duo booth by Leon Zhan and Eric Rannestad. Booth: E5 NADA New York May 13-17, 2026 The Starrett-Lehigh Building 601 W 26th Street, 3rd Floor New York, NY 10001 @newartdealers Leon Zhan Enigma of Spring, 2026 Oil on Linen 47x30cm @leonzhan Eric Rannestad Model 14 (april study) 2025 watercolor on paper, mounted on wood panel 102x76cm @erannestad For all information: [email protected]

Final weekend to see the group exhibition Skrud. Naresh Kumar’s practice addresses the social, economic and human conflicts of our time using deeply personal and performative gestures. Kumar draws upon his own experience as a migrant, to explore the politics and experience of migration. Having moved extensively, from Bihar to Delhi, Seoul and Paris, Kumar reflects on the slippery, shifty nature of identity as well as the emotions that often accompany the act itself. In his paintings, this history of movement and displacement manifests via richly layered surfaces that feel delicate and reworked. As such, they feel complex and worn, carrying the presence of movement and memory. Titled- Etched in blood- carved in memory (Mother tongue- series) Year-2025-26 Mica powder, water colour pencil, Indigo and Marble dust on s korea sticker and Japanese ink gel on yellow pages magazine/book - published-1999 Bombay. 263 cm x  171 cm Skrud, a group exhibition featuring Dustin Emory, Naresh Kumar, Elise Lafontaine and Reeha Lim. The works in Skrud treat the canvas as a middle ground where material and personal history meet fictional and dreamt realities. The exhibition takes its name from the root of the word shroud, originally meaning to cut or shred, a duality which is reflected in the works. Surfaces are cut, layered and veiled in a constant rhythm of revealing and concealing. Reflecting both personal and political histories, these richly layered works disrupt the idea of linear narrative with a slipperiness that rewards prolonged viewing. The longer we look, the more the porous nature of perception and memory reveals itself. For more information: [email protected]

Dustin Emory’s meticulous paintings explore isolation, memory and the recursive patterns of contemporary life. Working with a strict grayscale palette and coarse, varied texture, Emory paints recursive figures in domestic, everyday settings. By inhabiting a space between reality and dream the familiarity of these domestic snapshots is destabilised by an atmospheric, cinematic noir. There’s an enjoyable tension at the heart of Emory’s work. His figures, though intimate and vulnerable, are coarsely rendered and fundamentally estranged. Captured in moments of charged stillness, they evoke both devotional iconography and the suspense of a film still. The repetition of these forms functions asa ritualistic exploration of the loops we ourselves inhabit. In doing so, Emory suggests that our private gestures are often echoes of larger, inherited social cycles. Ultimately, Dustin Emory’s practice navigates the intersection of the personal and the systemic. His paintings go deeper than their domestic veneer, mapping the internal landscapes of grief,desire and agency. By withholding colour and narrative resolution, Emory’s coarse, diverse textures encourage slow, speculative viewing. In doing so, Emory highlights the invisible forces that govern our movements and the selective but persistent nature of memory. Interruption, 2026 Oil, acrylic, gouache and pumice stone on canvas, 122 x 91cm Dustin Emory (b. 1999, Atlanta) lives and works in Atlanta, Georgia. He has previously exhibited with Margot Samuel, NewY ork; Fredericks and Freiser, New York; Primary, Miami; Ojiri Gallery, London; Long Story Short, Paris and at Marquez Art Projects, Miami. Emory’s work is in the collections of the High Museum, Atlanta; X Museum, Beijing and Marquez Art Projects, Miami. For all information: [email protected]

detail of my new winter scene for @newartdealers with @chilli_gallery opening next wednesday :)

More installs from Skrud, a group exhibition featuring Dustin Emory, Naresh Kumar, Elise Lafontaine and Reeha Lim. The works in Skrud treat the canvas as a middle ground where material and personal history meet fictional and dreamt realities. The exhibition takes its name from the root of the word shroud, originally meaning to cut or shred, a duality which is reflected in the works. Surfaces are cut, layered and veiled in a constant rhythm of revealing and concealing. Reflecting both personal and political histories, these richly layered works disrupt the idea of linear narrative with a slipperiness that rewards prolonged viewing. The longer we look, the more the porous nature of perception and memory reveals itself. For more information: [email protected]