Every week, Art to Collect by ArtDependence brings together an exceptional curation of works that reflect the pulse of contemporary art today, offering collectors, new and seasoned alike, a window into some of the most compelling creative practices around the world.
Every week, Art to Collect by ArtDependence brings together an exceptional curation of works that reflect the pulse of contemporary art today, offering collectors, new and seasoned alike, a window into some of the most compelling creative practices around the world. Here’s what you need to see this week:
Curator Ivona Raimanová writes about Rafael Smet: "Perfect painting technique, realistic depiction, imagination and fiction represent key anchoring points of Smet's works. These main aspects distance the author's creation from the previous generation of painters. The factually austere conceptional approach gives way to fantasy narration. Abstract conception or an abstracting handwriting transform into a detailed examination of reality."
She continues: "Brushstrokes roughly sketched as if hurried become in Smet's paintings consciously constructed spatial forms. Controversial socially engaged themes were omitted, and the focus becomes an introspective inquiry into the alternative life of the author's ego."
Rafael Smet, Konnurmel, 2025
Daria Startseva has always been drawn to visual storytelling, she studied Graphic Design and Advertising at the University of Applied Arts in Vienna.
A clear idea, emotional depth, and attention to detail drives her to painting. Whether she is designing a digital product, illustrating a book, or painting on canvas, she always aim to create something meaningful and human.
Daria Startseva, Red Rooftops of Lisbon, 2025
As a 3D painter, Foesters combines abstraction with physical depth and fluorescent colors. His work explores beauty in destruction and reveals elegance in apparent chaos. Driven by a constant urge for innovation, the artist sees his art as a dynamic process. Every work is one step further – a search for the unknown and an invitation to the viewer to find beauty where it is not directly visible.
Peter Foesters, Blueprint, 2025
As an artist interested in documenting developments of the contemporary urban, social and political landscape in Ghana, one cannot help but notice the exaggerated influence of urban American pop culture in Ghana’s second largest city Kumasi. On Instagram, twitter feeds and in WhatsApp chats, the term Kumerican is trending.
For some Kumerican reflects Globalization and influence of American culture in particular when many teenagers are seen imitating elements of American lifestyle where they talk, dress and even act like Americans. Kumerica is made up of two words, Kumasi and America – and when fused together becomes “Kumerica”. For others, it is a challenge to Ghanaian culture.
Kumerican Look, This is Me, 2021
Riemer den Ouden: "This painting is about atmosphere and a sense of peace. The painting is painted directly and nonchalantly, in clear direct strokes, and in clear colors, in 1 layer (sometimes the white is still unpainted canvas) which adds a directness and therefore a different atmosphere than you normally see in these subjects.
Riemer den Ouden, Waiting Room, 2023