Recent Works

Multitalented Artist Bjorn Amelan presents his newest intricately mysterious and vibrational Sumi and acrylic ink paintings in the New York Live Arts Ford Foundation Live Gallery, kicking off the New York Live Arts 2025-2026 season. Following the opening reception on September 25th, the seven paintings will remain on display through March 2026. The opening reception is free with RSVP and the Ford Foundation Live Gallery is free and open to the public daily from 10:00am to 10:00pm. 

Following a focus on bronze and stone sculptures, Bjorn Amelan made his first large-scale Sumi ink and colored ink paintings in 2008. In 2023, Amelan introduced acrylic paint to his hemp bedsheet canvases, handwoven on farms in France, that he and his husband Bill T. Jones sleep on to this day. In addition to the texture lending itself well to ink, the unstretched, foldable surfaces allow him to work with the large-scale format while in the studio and on tour as Creative Director of New York Live Arts. When hung as vertical or horizontal tapestries, the weight, density, and texture of the uncoated works create scrolls, or quilts, of a sort of abstract calligraphy.

“Bjorn Amelan’s art is to make one sonnet after another… They are luxuriant gardens of imagery yet also maps, as in mapping, as in mapping of the mind.”

– Brad Gooch

Read the full statement here!