\u201cI\u2019m currently working on a bunch of hellish paintings,\u201d says the US-born artist Sedrick Chisom from his east London studio. One in particular, destined for the Paris Basel booth of gallery Pilar Corrias, features a Babel-esque \u201cziggurat tower structure that doubles as an active volcano\u201d. In an earlier work, an axe-wielding \u201cchaotic villain\u201d is drawn with carnivalesque panache. \u201cHe\u2019s got all the hallmarks,\u201d says Chisom. \u201cA really morose dying horse, his horns, and he\u2019s just having a delightful time.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The artist is interested, he says, in \u201cthe social dimension of designating something heaven or hell. It\u2019s truly an intersubjective. What might be perceived as heaven by one person might be hell for another.\u201d Chisom is one of a number of contemporary artists bringing the hellish and the heavenly to the canvas as a way of exploring personal and societal unrest, looming ecological crisis and utopian visions of possible transcendence. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
At Hauser & Wirth in New York, Canadian painter Ambera Wellman\u2019s current show Darkling (until 25 October) emits a sense of impending doom: her blurry, mutating figures seem to wrestle with a world in breakdown. German artist Florian Krewer sees his exhibition cold tears released at Michael Werner gallery (until 1 November) as a response to \u201cthe world feeling more heavy, more depressing and politically more conservative\u201d, he says. By contrast, Greek-born Sofia Mitsola\u2019s vibrant mythology offers a glimpse of paradise (albeit laced with a deadly siren call), and a sense of the sublime emanates from the Rococo interpretations of Flora Yukhnovich (seen in a new mural at The Frick in New York this autumn). Alabama-born artist Verne Dawson, meanwhile, paints a realistic kind of Eden.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Read it all<\/a>.<\/p> What does the afterlife look like? https:\/\/t.co\/sbYrnVccNK<\/a><\/p>— HTSI (@htsi) September 25, 2025<\/a><\/blockquote>