EDITION 03
The Long Exhale
The quiet after the noise. A shoulder finally dropping. The first long breath after holding it in. The space that opens once tension leaves.
Winner – Edition 03
★ Curator’s Choice
Olga Kotlamina
Oil on canvas, 80×100 · 2026 – Cyprus
This work is part of The Little Prince series, inspired by a funny dachshund named Toto. Sometimes we simply want to escape reality, believe in miracles again, and enter a world where we can ride a whale, speak to the sea, and follow the magic wind. This series is about freedom, friendship, imagination, and the touch of magic that adults sometimes miss.
The Little Prince
Oil on canvas, 80×100 · 2026
Olga Kotlamina – Cyprus
This work is part of The Little Prince series, inspired by a funny dachshund named Toto. Sometimes we simply want to escape reality, believe in miracles again, and enter a world where we can ride a whale, speak to the sea, and follow the magic wind. This series is about freedom, friendship, imagination, and the touch of magic that adults sometimes miss.
A Place to Pause
Acrylic Paint Skins and Acrylic on Canvas, 18×14 · 2025
Jaden Zen – Taiwan
Dried paint scraps turned into three small trees. Surrounded by bright color, they sit still and take a quiet breath.
Breathe
Acrylic on stretched canvas, 61×61cm · 2024
Kateryna Vistyzenko – Croatia
I am Kateryna Vistyzenko, also known as NeoRina. I work mainly with acrylic paint, exploring emotions, perception, and the subtle language of form and colour.
Breathe belongs to my Closer series, which explores the process of coming closer to oneself and becoming more attentive to one’s inner feelings and emotional states. It is not just about what you see; it is about how it makes you feel. The painting evokes the feeling of an exhale after worries and tension, inviting the viewer to simply be present in the moment – to pause, take a deep breath, and appreciate the simple beauty of being alive. The painting has previously been exhibited in the United States.
Haven
Oil on canvas, 150×120×4cm · 2026
Julia Kornelsen – Germany
My practice is concerned with the unstable terrain between memory, identity, and emotional experience. I approach painting as a space in which inner states can take form without becoming fully fixed or explained. Rather than illustrating specific narratives, I am interested in constructing images that remain psychologically open, suspended between presence and withdrawal, revelation and concealment.
In the series A Time to Gather Stones, I reflect on lived experience as something that accumulates within the self, shaping identity through what is endured, remembered, and carried forward. I do not treat experience in binary terms such as positive or negative; instead, I see it as material that becomes inseparable from one’s inner formation.
Figures, birds, fabric, and spatial emptiness recur throughout the work as shifting presences rather than stable symbols. Their meaning is intentionally left unresolved, allowing the paintings to function as sites of projection, recognition, and quiet confrontation. Through this ambiguity, I seek to evoke states of transformation, grief, tenderness, anticipation, and acceptance, experiences that resist direct language yet remain deeply familiar.
Transmutation
Photography – 45.2×30.1cm – 2026
Tais Yáñez – Mexico/ UK
‘Transmutation’ is a reflection of a Kraków gone by, yet ever present, viewed through my perspective as an outsider and visitor.
The old Steelworks in Nowa Huta, built during the Cold War in Communist days, shines through a hummingbird-shaped puddle, transforming a trace of the built past into an unstable, almost dreamlike landscape or a parallel world.
The uncanny shape of the puddle adds an unlikely layer of personal connection. In my Nahua/Mexica culture, as in other Indigenous cultures of Mexico, hummingbirds represent ancestors returning to watch over their loved ones, bringing good fortune.
This accidental encounter with a strikingly shaped puddle on Steelworks grounds, and my interpretation of it, brought my own cultural memory into dialogue with someone else’s history I had travelled there to discover. Thus, the image suggests that stories remaining beneath the surface can breathe a fresh way of seeing for both the place and those privileged to be welcomed to learn them.
Transmutation is a connector of water and memory, human creation, history and spirituality, escape and grounding, disappearance and resurfacing, suffocation and release, the local and foreign. It is a visual long exhale: leaving, travelling, reflecting, connecting, and finding enough space to break free, breathe and create again.
Borogroves
Digital Photography, 43×28cm · 2026
Andrea Lhotka – USA
In my early darkroom days studying black and white photography, my classmates and I shot with a classic Pentax K1000 camera. We processed our own film and made contact sheets before deciding which images deserved time in the enlarger. In the low amber light, it was amazing to watch images slowly emerge in the development bath.
Those early experiences taught me that meaningful images reveal themselves through patience and mindful presence. Exploring art is an essential part of self-exploration and healing. I create artwork to get to know myself and the world around me. When I take photographs, I am not simply searching for an interesting composition. I am looking for meaning and connection. This process is influenced by a mindfulness meditation practice; creativity and spiritual development are inseparable on the path.
I enjoy taking photographs throughout the Verde Valley, but the real conversation with an image occurs in the editing process, where inspiration and creativity take full shape.moored from the hours they were made to measure.
Where Are We Going
Oil on canvas, 60×90cm · 2023
Jang Guin Lim – South Korea
There are two implications for my work internally. These implications document social issues or feelings of the human heart on the basis of its essence.
The first are those who have the most influence on Cubism, which transforms 3D into 2D. If Cubism’s method is to show various viewpoints of 3D objects at once, unfolded 3D objects do not have various viewpoints. There is no need for time and space here, there is no past, there is no future, there is only the present.
Second, everything that exists in this world is there and we express it in a variety of ways. I use the point of my work on a kind of skin and skin itself to express my feeling of short touch. With interest in social issues or problems, I am trying to send a message about racism, violence, religion and power
Nest
Digital print, 30×30cm · 2026
David Bisson – UK
I work almost exclusively with found objects and mixed media which I juxtapose to create interesting connections in ways that evoke nostalgic feelings. All my work is either created in the studio or else made from photographs captured whilst out and about.
Tiefe
Mixed media on canvas, 70×50 · 2026 ·
Michaela Ravelle (Auravia Art) – Slovakia/ Switzerland
Within the silence of the surface lies a hidden depth that cannot be seen at first glance.
Sunset at Presque Isle 1
Photography – 2025
Miller Warren – USA
Artist statement: n/a
TƏMİR (Repair)
Digital collage, 60×80cm · 2026
Liliana Kovalenko – Azerbaijan
These works explore the tension between being held and the desire to let go. I build my digital collages through layering, fragmentation and distortion, using the human body as a space where inner states become visible. TƏMİR (Repair) suggests a body caught within structures that can be read as both restriction and reconstruction. Their connection to The Long Exhale lies in that fragile moment when accumulated tension begins to give way – not as a sudden escape, but as a gradual release.
Low Tide
Digital photo, 90×60 · 2019
Nikola Glavan – Quatar
Low Tide is an image of stillness, suspension, and quiet retreat. The boat suggests movement, yet nothing in the image moves. The exposed rocks emerge quietly from the water, marking the shoreline as something that has receded, leaving behind a space of pause. The photograph is an invitation to slow down, to remain for a moment in the space between what has left and what has not yet begun. Like a long exhale, it holds the feeling of release: the world becoming quieter, the body becoming lighter, and time briefly suspended.
Holding Still
Digital collage, photography and hand drawing, 30×30cm
Monika Smyczek-Wietrzykowska – Poland
After Holding My Breath and Holding Still explore moments of withdrawal, tension and release. In both works, the human figure becomes partially hidden or transformed, as if turning away from the outside world.
I combine photography, archival imagery and hand-drawn elements to fragment and reconstruct the body. I am interested in the point at which familiar human forms become slightly strange, creating a space between what is visible and what remains internal.
I interpret The Long Exhale as a quiet transition rather than complete relief — the moment when tension begins to loosen and attention turns inward.
Wheel and Sticks 2
Acrylic on canvas, 150×150cm · 2026
Niall Dooley – Germany
My figurative paintings explore moments of tension, suspension and release. In Wheel and Sticks 2, figures are bound into a circular structure of opposing forces – part of a broader interest in the point at which tension begins to loosen: the pause, ambiguity and strange stillness that can follow an intense action or encounter.
Catalogue – Video – People’s Choice
What’s next?
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