By Annie Lee | October 2025 Official Press Release
There are exhibitions that soothe, and there are exhibitions that confront. Fractured Beauty: The Elegance of Imperfection, curated by Veronica de Oliveira Castro at Bushwick Gallery, belongs firmly to the latter. It does not disguise the splintered edges of human experience — it leans into them, treating fracture not as wound but as language.
Eighteen artists converge here in a tightly orchestrated, material-forward exhibition that unfolds like a quiet chorus. Their mediums differ — mirror, bronze, paper, paint, fire, Polaroid emulsion, textile, glass — but their collective pulse is unmistakable: imperfection has power.
Beauty in the Break
The exhibition orbits around five anchoring visions. Anton Solodkii’s etched mirror work stands like a pressure chamber for perception. Light bends, collapses, and reassembles itself with an eerie precision, forcing the viewer to question the reliability of what is seen. Magdalena Kluth counterbalances that precision with luminous, organic surfaces. Working with pigments, marble powder, and water, she turns fragility into something quietly seismic. Her paintings seem to breathe.
Nearby, Katherine Keeble’s bronze sculptures capture hearts — both literal and metaphorical — with a physical gravity that belies their emotional delicacy. Vedica Bhasin uses abstraction to map the volatile territory between chaos and calm.
And then there is Gina Keatley, whose Oyster Sheen stands as a kind of quiet fulcrum. With its muted whites and soft grays, the painting has the hush of something elemental. Keatley’s delicate craquelure reads like the fault lines of a coastline, the gentle fractures of a shell. It’s a painting that doesn’t demand attention. It earns it.
A Constellation of Irregular Voices
Around these central works, the exhibition expands like a constellation, each artist holding a point of tension. Alphonse Avila builds spiritual narratives out of torn paper and layered collage, while Carolina Castro examines absence and presence through bookbinding and printmaking. Greg Soviak and Sasha Kerbel turn the lens toward forgotten corners of the city, locating poetry in what others might overlook.
Roberto Schloesser offers rhythmic ink lines that hover between structure and imperfection. Nass Reda Fathmi burns and draws in the same breath, letting sensation dictate form. Anna Keis bends metal until it looks alive. James Vining captures psychological fault lines through film-based photography. Tracy von Ahsen cuts identity into surreal fragments. Emy Ori suspends fleeting moments in fragile Polaroid membranes. Celina Paiz translates digital language into human touch. Arom Ju paints with the precision of a dream. Agi Kasapi gives shape to women who refuse containment.
The Quiet Power of Refusal
What makes Fractured Beauty remarkable is not spectacle but restraint. The gallery has opted for careful pacing rather than oversaturation, giving each fracture its own weight. This is not an exhibition that resolves itself. It lingers, unsettled, asking the viewer to stay with discomfort long enough to see its shape.
Keatley’s Oyster Sheen, like Solodkii’s fractured mirror and Kluth’s luminous surfaces, doesn’t offer easy resolution. Instead, it suggests the elegant persistence of things shaped over time — like an oyster shell slowly forming through pressure and filtering. In an art world often obsessed with smooth perfection, these works insist on the textured truth of imperfection.
The beauty, as the title promises, is fractured. And it is all the more elegant for it.
Exhibition Information
Title: Fractured Beauty: The Elegance of Imperfection
Location: Bushwick Gallery, 22 Fayette Street, Brooklyn, NY
Dates: October 23 – October 30, 2025
Opening Reception: Thursday, October 23 | 6:00 – 8:00 PM
Curated by: Veronica de Oliveira Castro
Participating Artists: Anton Solodkii, Magdalena Kluth, Katherine Keeble, Gina Keatley, Vedica Bhasin, Alphonse Avila, Carolina Castro, Greg Soviak, Sasha Kerbel, Roberto Schloesser, Nass Reda Fathmi, Anna Keis, James Vining, Tracy von Ahsen, Emy Ori, Celina Paiz, Arom Ju, Agi Kasapi.
Featured Artists – Fractured Beauty: The Elegance of Imperfection
Anton Solodkii — Etched mirror and gilding reveal the instability of perception, where clarity fractures into luminous uncertainty.
Magdalena Kluth — Pigment and lime become vessels of memory, breathing life into surfaces that hum with quiet transformation.
Katherine Keeble — Bronze hearts hold strength and fragility in equal measure, rendering emotion as weight and form.
Gina Keatley — In Oyster Sheen, soft craquelure and rainfall drips turn imperfection into a quiet, elemental language.
Vedica Bhasin — Knife-cut oil painting maps the volatile space between inner chaos and external calm.
Alphonse Avila — Tactile collage uncovers spiritual narratives in the jagged edges we try to smooth away.
Carolina Castro — Bookbinding and printmaking examine faith, distance, and the weight of inherited symbols.
Greg Soviak — Black-and-white photography finds eloquence in decay, where urban surfaces remember.
Sasha Kerbel — A lens trained on overlooked spaces transforms the unremarkable into luminous abstraction.
Roberto Schloesser — Ink lines march and falter, tracing the beauty in rhythmic imperfection.
Nass Reda Fathmi — Burn marks and charcoal gestures turn pain into a visceral, visual pulse.
Anna Keis — Aluminum bends into organic, breathing forms, challenging the rigidity of material.
James Vining — Double-exposed film peels back the psychological terrain of desire and dread.
Tracy von Ahsen — Analog collage splices myth and identity, lingering in the space between memory and invention.
Emy Ori — Delicate Polaroid transfers capture the fleeting, tactile fragility of personal history.
Celina Paiz — AI-generated images, broken down and rebuilt by hand, wrestle the machine into something human.
Arom Ju — Vivid gradients and geometric repetition build dreamscapes that teeter between escape and stillness.
Agi Kasapi — Portraiture defies containment, honoring the power and vulnerability of women who resist being framed.