NADA Miami 2025: Katie Butler, Lizzie Gill, Katherine Vetne, and Xiao Wang

For this year’s iteration of NADA Miami, HESSE FLATOW is pleased to present a selection of works by Lizzie Gill, Xiao Wang, Katie Butler, and Katherine Vetne. The artists on view look at interiority, exuberance, and domestic and political dynamics through the lens of the tablescape and still life.

Lizzie Gill (b. 1989, New York, NY) explores themes of domesticity through elegant tablescapes which feature a menagerie of porcelain animals and antique ceramic wares. For Gill, these conversation pieces are the anchor point for a larger discourse about the continuity of history, generational knowledge, and allegorical symbolisms. Formally, Gill’s paintings are textured—using cake piping techniques to render the surface—exuberant and densely packed with symbolism. Gill has been exhibited recently at Ryan Lee, New York, NY; Aicon Gallery, New York, NY; Carol Corey Fine Art, Kent, CT; Geary Contemporary, Millerton, NY, among others. Her recent residencies include the Wassaic Project and the Vermont Studio Center. Her work is held in noted private and public collections including The Bunker Artspace, Palm Beach, Johnson & Johnson and Fidelity. She lives and works in Sharon, CT.

Xiao Wang (b. 1990, Beijing, China) paints hyperrealistic tableaus of social gatherings, sumptuous still lifes, and joyful immersive dream-like scenes. Featuring lush foliage, overflowing fruit plates and carefully rendered personal objects, Wang extends an intimate, if a bit voyeuristic, access into the artist’s private universe. The historical format of the vanitas painting also serves as a key reference point for Wang, who is keenly aware of the still life’s ability to communicate wealth and abundance and their impermanence. The content of Wang’s work is rooted in his observation of everyday life, and is heightened by atmospheres, emotions, and symbolisms. He studied at the Glasgow School of Art where he received his BFA degree in Painting and Printmaking. He continued his study at San Francisco Art Institute and earned his MFA degree in Painting. Wang has shown internationally in Europe and The United States. He has been featured in publications including Journal of Contemporary Chinese Art, Elephant Magazine, Booooooom, Hyperallergic, Juxtapoz Magazine, and New American Paintings. Wang’s work is included in public collections such as X museum (China) and HSBC Collection (UK). Wang lives and works in New York, NY.

Katie Butler’s (b. 1995, Akron, OH) allegorical still life paintings provide critical commentary on the financial disparities in American society. Butler’s paintings are rich with humor and tongue-in-cheek social commentary. Weaving recognizable elements of American visual culture–such as the picnic and the familiar checkered floors of a classic diner–surrounding her tables piled high with food. Butler creates tableaus that seem celebratory at first but, upon closer inspection, reveal themselves to be riddled with flies, rats, mold, and other clues pointing towards corruption. Recent exhibitions include the Krasl Art Center, St. Joseph, MI; Tchotchke Gallery, New York, NY; Steven Zevita Gallery, Boston, MA; Hashimoto Contemporary, Los Angeles, CA; Abattoir Gallery, Cleveland, OH. Butler received her BFA from the University of Akron in 2017 and her MFA from Kent State University in 2021. She lives and works in Akron, Ohio.

Katherine Vetne’s (b. 1987, MA) works, which span from paintings and drawings to sculpture, explore the relationship between ‘tasteful’ aesthetics and social power, morality, and death. Using an eclectic mix of high craft materials and methods, Vetne makes still lifes in two and three dimensions. Metalpoint drawings and sculptures using found antique objects like glass vases and tables come together in service of a worldbuilding project where mangled distortions and eerie undertones become secondary subjects to vases, flowers, and silks. Vetne's still life-based practice merges themes of high craft, art history, consumerism, and gender. She received a BFA from Boston University and an MFA from the San Francisco Art Institute (SFAI). She is the recipient of SFAI’s Graduate Fellowship in Painting, the Allan B. Stone Award, and an Individual Artist Commission grant from the San Francisco Arts Commission. Vetne has exhibited her work at CB1 Gallery in Los Angeles; Samson Projects and 808 Gallery in Boston, MA; Catharine Clark Gallery, CCA Hubbell Street Galleries, and 2nd floor projects, in San Francisco, CA. In 2021 her work was included in Crafting America, a major craft survey exhibition at the Crystal Bridges Museum in Arkansas, curated by Glenn Adamson and Jen Padgett. Her work is in the collection of the National Museum of Women in the Arts. Vetne lives and works in Brooklyn, New York.