Line of Beauty: Young Masters People’s Choice Award Winners Exhibition

Cristina Schek (b. Transylvania)

Cristina Schek is the photosensitive kind: she thinks in pictures, her imagination always in focus. A Transylvanian Surrealist rooted in London, Schek crafts conceptual digital works that explore identity illusion and the shifting nature of representation. Literature, cinema and art history act as her continual muses, guiding her into layered visual narratives where the self becomes both subject and symbol.

Art critic Estelle Lovatt FRSA describes Schek as “in a league of her own,” creating “incredible visual adventures” that pilot vision between reality and imagination, coining the term “Surreal Neo-Romantic Universalism.” In Lovatt’s reading, Schek “bends Einstein and Newton,” questioning what’s factual by what’s make-believe, and making “new artwork fairytales for grownups.”

Lovatt also locates the work as a departure from the old portrait tradition of the female muse: “Schek inspires us to be the victor, not the victim… creating a unique visual language, assertive, bold, visionary… solid enough to think in images not just of her, but of you and me.”

Diving Upwards Series (2022-2026)
"Everything real begins with the fiction of what could be. Imagination is therefore the most potent force in the Universe. Imagination is 'Diving Upwards'! And you can get better at it. It's the one skill in life that benefits from ignoring what everyone else knows. Over the long term, the future is decided by optimists. To be an optimist you don’t have to ignore the multitude of problems that arise, you just have to 'Dive Upwards' and imagine how much your ability to solve problems improves." Cristina Schek

"In my mind’s eye, I see carefully choreographed women and the sky-high lunar cycle of the Moon being celebrated. For (e)very good reason. The Moon’s gravity stabilises us. This image is an inspirational message; dream big and take chances. More than synchronised swimmers or water ballerinas, it’s Sisyphus rolling with huge stones as big as your troubles. Push giant rocks up the steep incline of life symbolising suffering, heaven forbid heaven bound, because you are strong enough. To wear a Titian-like shade of red swimsuit and bathing cap, a figure hugging skin-tight illusion of being naked, almost. Surely.

Rise up, propel yourself high. Believe. Nothing. Nothing is in the way to stop you. We are all capable of being top flyers, diving upwards and flippin’ hell. Being over the moon… The saying “Over the Moon” is used to describe how it feels when feeling extremely pleased and very, very, happy. Skyrocket, soar, fly. The sky isn’t the limit, since man walks on the moon, right? Right! More than a picture-maker, Schek is a visual influencer." Estelle Lovatt FRSA

'Diving Upwards Miniatures' is a collection of 3 miniature artworks elegantly framed in jewel-like antiques, in celebration of 100 Years of Surrealism. Inspired by André Breton's legendary Surrealist Cabinet of Curiosities, a revolutionary collection that embodied the surrealist passion for unusual, thought-provoking objects - each piece serves as a portal to the blurred boundary between imagination and reality. These miniature reveal their secrets up close; take a moment to peer in, explore, let your mind wander. After all, imagination lives in the tiniest of details

‘Diving Upwards’ Series – Glamour Edit
Glamarine (2025) revisits Schek's earlier divers, but here the figures rise from the sea in a weightless ascent. These glamorous swimmers lift toward the light, suspended between water and sky, pausing for a breath of air; a moment that celebrates beauty and the pure joy of being. "Everything real begins with the fiction of what could be. Imagination is therefore the most potent force in the Universe. Imagination is 'Diving Upwards'! And you can get better at it. It's the one skill in life that benefits from ignoring what everyone else knows. Over the long term, the future is decided by optimists. To be an optimist you don’t have to ignore the multitude of problems that arise, you just have to 'Dive Upwards' and imagine how much your ability to solve problems improves." Cristina Schek

Surreal Codes

Under the umbrella of Surreal Codes, The Dot Society, The Sip Society, and The Art & Sound of the Stiletto read as companion chapters in visual shorthand: small signals carrying big social meaning. The Dot Society follows the grammar of the glance and the mark, where dots become passwords for identity, status and desire. The Sip Society turns ritual into iconography, tracing how a drink, a pause, or a shared glass becomes social choreography, intimacy measured in what’s offered or withheld. The Art of the Stiletto treats fashion as a dialect, where heels are punctuation and luxury becomes a language of recognisable signs recast through surreal portraiture. Together, these series map how we communicate without speaking: codes of belonging, glamour and self-invention.

Surreal Objects of Desire
In the spirit of Surrealism’s objects, these works step out of the rectangle and into the room. A print becomes a relic, a portal, a small theatre prop that holds its own charge. Found forms are repurposed as frames and containers, shifting the image from something you look at to something you encounter , a lantern that carries a picture like a flame, shutters that open onto a private sky, an applied jewel that turns a portrait into a talisman. Each object is an invitation to cross a threshold: between the domestic and the mythical, the collectible and the uncanny.

Cristina Schek's work has gained international recognition, including the Young Masters Focus on the Female Art Created During Lockdown Award (2021) for 'Florence Lightingale', BFAMI Art Exhibition at Phillips Auction House (2022), and the 2023 W4th Plinth Award, where her 4×4m public artwork 'The Ceiling In The Sky' was unveiled as the winning piece by Dame Siân Phillips, succeeding Sir Peter Blake’s inaugural display in the rolling public art programme curated by Abundance London. In 2025 she received First Prize in the Young Masters People’s Choice Award and a Highly Commended recognition from the Rudolph Blume Foundation Acquisition Award. Schek’s work has been exhibited internationally at major art fairs including British Art Fair, London Art Fair, Art Miami, Palm Beach Modern + Contemporary, NY Art Fair, LA Art Show, as well as in museum exhibitions at Elmbridge Museum and Kingston Museum in London. Her work is held in prestigious private collections in the UK, Europe and the United States.

Cristina Schek is the First Prize Winner of the Young Masters People's Choice Award 2025 and has been Highly Commended for the Young Masters Rudolph Blume Foundation Acquisition Award 2025.

Alexandra Baraitser (b. Cape Town, South Africa)

Based between Cambridge and London, Alexandra Baraitser is a painter whose work elevates the quiet dramaturgy of everyday objects. Her subjects, chairs, lamps, living-room furniture, bridges, office buildings and train-station seating, are contemporary still lifes of intensely designed forms. Through saturated colour and elegantly flattened space, Baraitser frees these objects from their functional constraints, transporting them into states of subtle unreality.

Though she works from closely observed photographs, her paintings reside on the edge of abstraction. Their atmosphere is liminal, suggestive of memory, emotion and the thresholds of lived experience. Figures occasionally appear, loose and ambiguous, slipping into this heightened domestic or architectural stage.

Baraitser has exhibited widely, including at Flowers Gallery (Small Is Beautiful), the Soho Open at GPS Gallery (2025), and the Royal Academy of Arts Summer Exhibition (2024–2025). She won the People’s Choice Award and was Highly Commended for the Young Masters Women’s Art Award (2025). Earlier recognition includes The Cambridge Show at Kettle’s Yard (2019), a British Council Award for a residency at Design Tasmania (2005), and the prestigious Abbey Scholarship in Painting at The British School at Rome (1996–97). She has also been shortlisted for The Mostyn Open and The Momart Fellowship (1999), exhibited at the Barbican Centre Galleries (1996), and was a finalist in the NatWest Art Prize (1998) and John Moores Painting Prize (1996). Additional honours include the Ray Finnis Trust Art Funding Award, the Florence Trust Studio Award, a Commissions East Award for mentoring with Rachel Thomas (Hayward Gallery), and a COVID-19 Emergency Funding Award (2020).

Her work has been featured in Bouyant Art, The Independent on Sunday, The Observer, The Arts Desk, and resides in collections including Clare Hall (University of Cambridge), Design Tasmania, J Sainsbury PLC, and several private collections.

Alexandra Baraitser is the Second Prize Winner for the Young Masters People's Choice Award 2025 and has been highly commended for the Young Masters Woman Artist Award 2025.

PRESS

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