Issy Wood — Born 1993, Durham, North Carolina. Lives and works in London, UK. Represented by Carlos/Ishikawa, London; and JTT, New York.

Issy Wood’s universe of images suggests a stream of consciousness hiding something foreboding, a medieval current creeping into the millennial. Merging material and immaterial, object and belief, her work empties the contemporary of clarity and releases spirits presumed to belong to the past with an incisive binge of symbols: sphinx-like women with bodies embedded in high-end decorative objects, faceless 19th-century maidens with buttery skin, false nails, silver tableware and fussy necklaces, leather trenches and lux car interiors, Judith Leiber minaudières, and various portraits of Joan Rivers. Personal but not diaristic, Wood’s practice oscillates between disclosure and concealment. Proxies abound in both her painting and writing, evoking a world in which objects are substitutes for emotional connection and security. 

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Wood graduated from the Royal Academy Schools in 2018. Recent exhibitions include: Good Clean Fun, curated by Michael Xufu Huang and Edel Yuqing Yang, X Museum, Beijing; Daughterproof, JTT, New York; All The Rage, Goldsmiths CCA, London; and When You I Feel, Carlos/Ishikawa, London.