Markus Akesson is the 1st Prize Winner RAYMAR Traditional Art Award 2023, lives and works in Nybro, Småland, Sweden. He has been participating in a large number of exhibitions at galleries, art fairs and institutions in Paris, Berlin, Brussels, London, Vilnius and Sweden. Åkesson had an early focus on the French art scene and has made several solo exhibitions at Galerie Da-End in Paris (the most recent in the winter of 2022-2023, with the solo exhibition “The Roses of Heliogabalus”) and the French art fairs Galeristes, Art Paris and YIA Art Fair.
Nick Pedersen received his MFA in Digital Arts from Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, NY in 2011. Pedersen’s work combines his own photography, digital collage, and printmaking techniques to create elaborate, photorealistic images focusing on environmental issues. A main theme in his work is “beautiful decay,” creating large-scale pieces that reveal a satirically, post-apocalyptic vision of the not-too-distant future.