Private View: Friday, 29th of May 2026, 6-8pm
West Palm Beach (Florida, USA)
‘The briefest and slipperiest of the seasons, the one that won't be held to account - because summer won't be held at all, except in bits, fragments, moments, flashes of memory of so-called or imagined perfect summers, summers that never existed.’ – from Summer by Ali Smith.
Kristin Hjellegjerde Gallery, West Palm Beach is delighted to present Summer Delight, a group exhibition bringing together artists from within the gallery family and beyond. Taking place within the gallery’s monumental space, just steps from the ocean, the exhibition draws on Florida’s luminous light, lush climate, vivid colours and the energy of early summer to explore desire, connectedness, ephemerality and longing.
Ghanaian artist Rufai Zakari’s vibrant portraits are stitched together from flattened, upcycled plastics to create bold, textured surfaces that bear a deep relationship to the land and local culture as well as to craft traditions. His most recent works capture quiet, intimate moments where subtle gestures and expressions are used to convey emotional states and points of connection.
Oslo-based artist Nikolai Torgersen’s paintings depict dreamlike landscapes that draw on autobiographical details. Sometimes featuring people and animals, these environments convey an eerie, melancholic atmosphere, revealing how our perception is shaped as much by memory as by reality. Pedro Montilla also uses the medium of painting to explore the experience of being alive, weaving together fragments of memory and fantasy to create uncanny spaces filled with shadows and reflections. Working on fique, a coarse Andean fibre used to transport grains across the fibre, the works bear a unique tactile quality, with raw, fraying edges.
Kyle Meyer’s works weave together photography, textiles and performance to explore how the essence of people, spaces and histories can be held before they shift, fade or are forgotten. Through site-specific interventions, his materials absorb the imprints of bodies and environments, creating layered surfaces that blur boundaries between memory, material and place.
Paintings by Lee Simmonds explore relationships between the organic and inorganic in which natural forms take on synthetic appearances and vice versa. Channelled through the genre of magical realism, his compositions occupy an uneasy space between the familiar and the surreal. Tewodros Hagos similarly explores our relationship with the natural world. In his new series of portraits, titled Sunlight Reverie, women appear immersed within light-filled botanical environments that function not as decorative backdrops but as spaces of healing and transformation.
Martine Poppe also takes interest in the impact of light on mood as well as perception. In her latest landscape paintings, light is both a source of seduction and distortion. Glistening on the surface of bodies of water, it invites us to enter into a meditative state while also disorientating our sense of place and time.
Grown from porcelain clay by Bouke de Vries depicts a rose seemingly emerging from a pile of broken fragments of 18th and 19th-century Chinese porcelain plates. Constructed from shards, the flower appears both fragile and resilient, while the bronze-coloured stem and leaves seem caught in a state of decay. The work is a meditation on rupture and renewal, where destruction gives way to unexpected forms of beauty.
A highly-detailed painting by Andrew Leventis from his series What We Take With Us explores the idea of keepsakes, using the suitcase as what he terms a ‘memory vehicle’. Within it, he places objects he wants to remember, evoking a specific time, place and human presence. Contrasting classically feminine colours with markers of masculinity – such as a bowtie or black leather shoes – he explores identity as fluid and unsettled, infusing each work with a sense of longing for moments that can no longer be inhabited. Pablo Benzo’s work is also concerned with the instability of memory. His compositions are constructed from fragments of images, borrowed, half-remembered or imagined, creating surreal spaces and encounters that feel as if they are flickering in and out of focus.
Janet Vollebregt’s practice is rooted in architecture and eastern and western philosophies, with a particular focus on Jin Shin Jyutsu, an energetic healing art from Japan. She works with subtle energy to harmonise both the user of space and space itself, approaching buildings as living entities that require care and balance. For this exhibition, she presents pendant sculptures inspired by the protective and decorative histories of talismans and jewellery, extending these traditions to architecture by imagining adornment as a means of protection, identity and energetic alignment.
Amy Morken’s large-scale layered compositions draw on the people and fleeting moments of daily life, spanning childhood memories of watching travellers in transit at the airport to small mundane absurdities. Filled with colour and movement, each work begins on a piece of large scale paper already marked with the washes and stains from her studio table.
Marta Leyva’s Gloves series also takes inspiration from everyday moments, elevating the pleasure of drinking a glass of wine or eating a piece of fruit into a ritualistic or even heavenly event. The yellow washing up gloves set against idyllic skyscapes add a touch of humour to her work, invoking spontaneity and a playful tension between the mundane and the indulgent. Drawing on ‘synesthetic impressions’, Takako Suzuki’s paintings also capture the joys of daily experiences – from the textures of nature to the flavours of food. The world she paints is one of peace and harmony, populated by fantastical hybrid creatures and elongated figures.
Falk Gernegroß’s paintings sit in a haze between fantasy and memory. His works capture tantalising glimpses of exposed skin – a man stretching open his shirt to reveal his chest, a line of pubic hair above white cotton briefs, droplets of moisture on a naked woman’s back – playing on the sensuality of the body and heat to suggest sexual awakening and desire.
Together, the works in Summer Delight draw us into moments and spaces that shimmer and dissolve, where fleeting impressions give way to a heightened sense of pleasure and presence.
