Discover a Talent – A Springboard for New Voices

Created in support of emerging artists, the Discover a Talent program at Discovery Art Fair shines a spotlight on newcomers to the scene whose work stands out for originality, sensitivity, and courage. Established as one of the fair’s most anticipated features, the initiative gives five artists a dedicated booth to present their vision to collectors and the public. Selected by an expert jury: Silke Hohmann, Bernd Kracke, Gérard Goodrow, and Barbara von Stechow, the program provides a platform where innovation meets opportunity.

This year’s awardees represent diverse approaches and materials, from abstract painting and textile art to photography: five distinct artistic voices united by curiosity and depth.

Matthias Jun Wilhelm – Between Precision and Spontaneity (B4, Bengelsträter Galerie)

Leipzig-based painter Matthias Jun Wilhelm explores the fine line between control and chance. His work oscillates between calligraphic precision and gestural immediacy, fusing structure and freedom in equal measure. Having exhibited in Copenhagen, Vilnius, and Tokyo, Wilhelm creates visual spaces where recognizable motifs dissolve into rhythm and motion.

“Painting is a room where thought and gesture overlap,” he says, a process guided less by uniformity than by presence. His compositions capture that pulse: subtle, physical, and alive with the tension of opposing forces. Every brushstroke feels like a tactile trace of movement, translating fleeting sensations into visual memory.

Ahn Ha Jung – Boundaries Within and Beyond (D1, Aria Gallery)

Korean artist Ahn Ha Jung invites viewers into landscapes that hover between fullness and emptiness, figuration and abstraction. Her paintings grow from intuitive gestures, where stains, stones, and traces of nature coexist in delicate imbalance.

Rooted in the traditions of Korean aesthetics yet open to European sensibilities, her canvases become meditative spaces that breathe and listen. At the heart of her practice lies the idea of the “weightless fissure”, a threshold between silence and possibility. Through patient layering and improvisation, Ahn Ha Jung transforms boundaries into doors, leading us toward landscapes of empathy and inner reflection.

Kim Yunyoung – Textiles as Living Surfaces (D3, PS Center)

Trained in Eastern Painting in South Korea and now based in Germany, Kim Yunyoung merges the sensibility of brushwork with the tactile language of textiles and stitching. Using old clothes, delicate fabrics, and threads, she explores themes of identity, memory, and belonging through embroidery: thread as paint, fabric as canvas.

Her works reveal the unseen landscapes within the body, tracing the flow of time, birth, and extinction. Cultural and linguistic dissonances become visible as textures and seams. In Kim’s hands, the physical act of stitching transforms into an intimate meditation on presence, vulnerability, and the quiet strength of transformation.

Erlend Mikael Sæverud – Between Shadow and Light (E3, Ronen Art Gallery)

Norwegian photographer Erlend Mikael Sæverud moves through city streets as a silent observer, capturing fleeting moments where light and darkness collide. His spontaneous compositions unfold as visual poems balancing opposing worlds, past and present, body and spirit, truth and illusion. Influenced by the psychology of Carl Jung, Sæverud sees photography as a form of healing and revelation.

After a life-changing accident led him to pick up the camera, his lens became both mirror and guide, illuminating the beauty hidden in solitude. Each photograph holds tension and tenderness, a quiet dialogue between shadow and self.

Julia Sossinka – Nature Reimagined (E5, Sight Galerie und Kunstberatung)

Berlin-based artist Julia Sossinka, a master student of Markus Lüpertz, transforms color, paper, and material into immersive worlds. Her large-scale installations and mixed-media paintings blur the boundaries between collage, sculpture, and space, translating nature’s vitality into pure abstraction. The works radiate raw energy and physical presence, tangible, fluid, and magnetic.

Using fragments of colored aquarelle paper, she creates organic forms that flicker through her compositions playing with light and motion. In Sossinka’s hands, paper gains a new life, inviting viewers to step inside new visual ecosystems where emotion and material merge into radiant, living form.

Visit the Discovery Art Fair Frankfurt from November 6–9, 2025, to experience these five remarkable talents and their works firsthand.

Featured image: ARIA Gallery booth with Ahn Ha Jung up front, photo by Stefan Maria Rother