Everything was beautiful and (almost) nothing hurt | 2012-2020 | Jurek Wajdowicz
EWS-Gallery brings together works by five artists and photographers: Asafe Ghalib, Claudia Jares, Manuel Rio Branco, Saul Steinberg, and Jurek Wajdowicz. Different in generation, background, and approach, they offer distinct ways of seeing and making. The selection moves freely between their individual voices, with unexpected connections and contrasts along the way.
Claudia Jares is an Argentinian photographer whose work explores the intersections of culture, identity, memory, and sexuality. Her photographs are in the collections of the V&A Museum in London. She lives and works in Buenos Aires.
Brazilian-born, acclaimed fine-art photographer and filmmaker Miguel Rio Branco creates images that are often lush and tactile, evoking the pulse of Latin American life. His photographs are held in major international collections, including the Centre Pompidou (Paris), The Museum of Modern Art (New York), The Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York), and the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam, among others. Rio Branco lives in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.
Saul Steinberg (1914–1999) had one of the most remarkable careers in American art. While best known for the covers he created for The New Yorker over nearly six decades, he was equally celebrated for his drawings, paintings, prints, collages, and sculptures, which were exhibited internationally in galleries and museums. His work is held in the permanent collections of the Whitney Museum of American Art, Moderna Museet, The Museum of Modern Art, the Centre Pompidou, and the Art Institute of Chicago, among others.
Asafe Ghalib is a Brazilian artist based in London since 2013. Working primarily with photography and in collaboration with the LGBTQIA+ community, their work has appeared in The Guardian, Vogue, Dazed, and Gay Times. Asafe’s first photobook, “Shine: Portraits in Queer Resilience, Embracing New Dimensions,” was recently published by The New Press in New York.
Polish-born American visual artist Jurek Wajdowicz creates images through the lens, moving beyond the literal as color, light, and form are carefully shaped into near or absolute abstraction. Wajdowicz’s work can be found in the collections of the Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe, Hamburg; the Lodz Modern Art Museum; the Museum of Modern Art in Munich; and the U.S. Library of Congress, among others. He lives and works in New York. His new monograph, “Solace and Light,” will be published by Kehrer Verlag in Heidelberg, Germany, at the end of 2026.