Looking is a three-person exhibition of works by painter, Rainer Andreesen, photographer, Christophe von Hohenberg and sculptor, Oscar Molina. Their different ways of looking and interpreting what they observe. Curated by Lana Jokel.

Lana Jokel, photograph by Christophe von Hohenberg

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Rainer Andreesen

Artist statement

I have been fascinated with portraiture painting for over fifty years now.

Growing up in a small fishing village on the most northern west coast of Canada, I always knew that I wanted to be an artist and explore where that could possibly take me. After four years of art school in Vancouver Canada, I became a graphic designer and illustrator for advertising agencies and design studios until I was scouted to model in Milan, at the age of 26. It was a perfect opportunity to be inspired by traveling around the world, and absorb every artistic culture imaginable.

What motivates my work today, is the human condition and its never ending complexities. It's what I hope to reveal in every portrait. It goes far beyond painting a likeness. My goal is to capture the spirit of each subject, being in the moment, and seeking my truth and the subject's at the same time.

The paintings in this exhibit are a reflection of my personal experiences, filtered through the lens of my life, looking.

About the Work:

Born in 1963, Andreesen was raised on a remote island on the northwest coast of Canada. Drawing since age 5, his obsession with art and the love of old master paintings from Rembrandt to John Singer Sargent led him to further his education in the arts. Like the masters who influenced him Andreesen, now a New Yorker, has long been driven by the desire to not merely draw a likeness of a person but to convey the essence of their spirit.

A series of recent life altering events led Andreesen to contemplate the human condition in all its complexity. In this collection of works, which the artist describes as a meditation on the human condition, he specifically explores and pays homage to pivotal relationships and inspirational friendships.

Each sitter has significantly influenced and touched Andreesen's life journey in some way. Relationships range from the intimate, such as the portrait of his husband Victor, who he portrays on the precipice of a life-threatening illness, to the inspirational. Evident is the important role that music plays in his work, with portraits included of the iconic David Bowie and Irish singer songwriter Mick Flannery. Close friends and colleagues are immortalized as well. Often considered an occasion for introspection, these vanity free autobiographical statements are a fitting inclusion for a visual memoir-meditation.

This is strict portraiture. A master of his craft, Andreesen presents his subjects without fanfare, there is no narrative, no background, no clues, no distraction. The portraits are powerful, unsentimental character studies, for the most part tightly cropped, with the sitter meeting us with a direct gaze. There is a sense of drama at play here, the darkened empty backgrounds provide an enigmatic atmosphere. The absence of distraction forces the viewer to focus purely on human character. Andreesen allows the viewer to create their own story and their own dialogue with the subject. There are actually two relationships presented for consideration in this series of portraits, that between the artist and his subject and that between us (the viewer) and the subject. We are disarmed by the opportunity to engage with another so uncompromisingly. How do we interpret the honest and profound rendering of someone's soul?

Quote by Catherine McCormick MM Fine Art

Christophe von Hohenberg

Artist Statement

For over forty years, I have sought to capture a reality that does not simply document what is seen, but reveals what is felt. Through my lens, most of my figures appear bleached by the sun, isolated against vast expanses of sand, water and sky. In that overwhelming light, forms dissolve, I was blinded by it, and in that blindness, I began to see differently…

I walk the shoreline for hours waiting like a predator with a camera. I wait for the unrepeatable moment - when presence, light, and gesture align. My work is not about the seaside alone, but about the spirit that inhabits it.

Photographing seascapes for me is a form of portraiture. The sea becomes a psychological space. The solitary figure becomes a mirror.

This philosophy extends into my portrait practice. I observe the sitter as one who shifts and adapts - like a chameleon responding to its environment. In these encounters, I move from naturalistic observation towards participant observation. I am both witness and participant. By uniting seascapes and portrait, I bring together two modes of seeing: The external and the internal, distance and intimacy, objectivity and subjectivity. These opposing forces form a syzygy — a union of opposites.

This body of work explores the meeting point between external vastness and internal depth, where landscape becomes emotional and portraits become reflection.

About the Work:

Christophe von Hohenberg has made a name for himself as one of the most celebrated photographers of his generation with a body of work exhibiting a distinctive urban sensibility. He is probably best known for his portraits of New York personalities-of artists, writers, fashionistas, and heiresses and men about town. Since the early eighties, he has created a kind of collective portraits of Manhattan's beau monde, his best known book documented the mourners at Andy Warhol's memorial in 1987-a who's who of fashionable New York.

Interest in New York as a subject! The beaches of the Hamptons are the summertime refuge of fashionable New Yorkers-and of generations of artists from William Merritt Chase to Eric Fischl, who have been attracted to the landscape and the marine inflected light Von Hohenberg joins the ranks of those artists with these luminous photographs of the beaches of the Hamptons. The ghostly figures on the sand, silhouetted against the surf and the sky, heir individuating characteristics have been bleached away by the sun and New Yorkers.

The figurative squint of the observer. Although curiously, the dogs seem to have personalities, the humans have become anonymous and diminished against the overwhelming backdrop of the ocean. These images are by turns soothing and haunting and yet somehow familiar. Von Hohenberg has discovered a perspective that was in front of us all along, which we could not quite isolate until he presented it to us.

Jay Mclnerney

Drawing on the classical photographic tradition, CVH creates distilled, meditative images which unite the concrete and abstract, and contain meaningful conceptual underpinnings which seek to materialize the 'invisible realm of the mind' and the unconscious. In his process, CVH seeks to comprehend the nature of perception, exploring duration and temporality through photography, and an understanding of how radical shifts through the past enlighten the present.

Excerpt from review by Xin Fu

Oscar Molina

Artist Statement

Politics, culture and identity — how they intersect and interact with one another is what intrigues me, this is what my art explores. I immigrated to the US from El Salvador yet, for me, a border is nothing more than a concept. So, I paint and sculpt as a way of building bridges across borders, borders that nations create and impose upon us. At the same time, my work opens space for viewers to tap into their own feelings about and interpretations of the work.

I offer my art as a social practice, as an invitation to a much needed conversation amongst diverse cultures. I believe that this exchange is the key to the preservation and evolution of our traditions — and it is this exchange that enriches each one of us and, as a result, our communities as a whole.

About the Work:

Oscar Molina is a distinguished painter and sculptor whose journey from the war-torn landscapes of El Salvador to the art world of Southampton, NY, is both compelling and inspirational. Best known for his “Children of the World” series, Molina’s work reflects his early life experiences and enduring resilience. The series “Children of the World”, is a powerful tribute to displaced and diasporic communities worldwide. Through these works, Oscar explores displacement not only as the act of crossing borders but an enduring condition of identity, memory, and renewal.

He grew up in the Gulf of Fonseca during El Salvador’s civil war, navigating a childhood shaped by violence and uncertainty. These formative experiences profoundly influenced the emotional depth and subject matter of his art. In 1989, at age 16, Molina and his family fled to the United States, settling in Southampton. He began working in landscaping and masonry, eventually founding MOE Masonry, a successful stonework business that enabled him to pursue his passion for art full-time by his early 30s.

His talent and dedication led to exhibitions at the National Museum of Anthropology in El Salvador, the Long Island Museum, Southampton Arts Center, LongHouse Reserve, and international venues in Mexico and Colombia.

Molina’s Children of the World series—a collection of sculptures and paintings—explores the experiences of displaced children, drawing from his own history of migration. These works, installed in both galleries and outdoor spaces, evoke powerful themes of survival, hope, and humanity.

Oscar Molina was selected to represent, for the first time, the Republic of El Salvador, at the 61st International Art Exhibition Venice Biennale, 2026. The title of the exhibition is “Cartographies of the Displaced”, presented at the Palazzo Mora.