Katie White

Japanese artist Kohei Nawa has spent over two decades trying to understand the ways the virtual world is reshaping the way people see and understand reality. In 2002, he made his first “PixCell” sculptures, which encase taxidermied animals and found objects beneath thousands of transparent spheres. These sculptures, his most famous series, can be uncanny, beautiful, and hard to forget.

For the past few months, the young Danish painter has been working in a borrowed studio in London. Her paintings—monumental nocturnal scenes, brimming with writhing, dancing bodies—stretched to the ceiling of her temporary studio, barely able to fit into the space. “It’s becoming a bit cramped in here,” said Pade, with characteristic frankness, during a video call a few weeks ago, her canvases visible behind her. Pade welcomes the chance to paint on a grand scale.

Alchemy—the quest to transform base metals into gold—is an age-old fascination and one that has beguiled countless artists over the generations. Latin American artists, in particular, have harnessed alchemical themes as a conduit to express the region’s fusion of cultures, histories, and myths.