ARTISTS, art lovers, members and friends recently gathered for the opening of the exhibits of two young London-based artists at the Finale Art File in Makati.

Nicole Coson’s “Process of Elimination” and Kristian Kragelund’s “Reactive Painting” highlight two very different approaches to contemporary art.

A combination of printmaking and painting, Coson’s second solo exhibit at the Finale Art File’s Tall Gallery recomposes a rock arrangement through a breakdown of its elements. Here, stone against sand are like clouds against sky, where the instinct to make sense of such formation is a generative but ultimately misleading exercise. The stones rebuild their size and mass upon the canvas and, at the center, lengths of blue velvet catch the invisible plane of arrangement.

Nicole Coson completed Fine Art at Central Saint Martins in 2014 and is currently based in London.

Danish artist Kristian Kragelund, on the other hand, shares a series of works from a larger and ongoing research project on process-based painting and sculpture at Finale’s Upstairs Gallery.

Combining the processes of control and randomness, the resulting compositional arrangements are examples of what Kragelund terms as “staged expressionism.” Connecting the physical process of painting to the broader issue of multicultural formations and intersecting identities, Kragelund seeks to draw out and explore qualities inherent to the material itself, rather than dwell on surface appearances.

Kragelund is based in London and is an alumnus of Central Saint Martins. He works across a variety of media, focusing on exploring the potentials of painting and sculpture. He has been short-listed for several awards, including the 2012 The Neo Art Prize, the 2013 Sixth Annual Digital Graffiti Award and the 2015 Bloomberg New Contemporaries Award.

Also in the exhibit in Finale’s Video Room is Filipino-Japanese artist Taichi Kondo’s “What’s My Name?” Here, he explores the idea of dualities as perceived by the senses and as part of imagining a new “provisional world.”

All exhibits are ongoing at the Finale Art File in Makati until April 30.