IONE & MANN is thrilled to present Could You Come to Me, an exhibition that brings together the work of Isabel Muñoz-Newsome, Sara Rossberg and Valentino Vannini.

Through image, form, gesture and texture, the artists share a yearning for connection and intimacy, boldly demanding meaningful real-life encounters from a place of raw vulnerability, tenderness and truth.

From the anticipation of a first touch to the lingering physical and emotional residue of shared presence, the exhibition navigates the subtle shifting of boundaries and the profound energetic exchange that comes with human proximity and connection.

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JOIN US

for the

Opening Reception:

Thursday 9 April

6-8 pm

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ABOUT THE ARTISTS_

Isabel Muñoz-Newsome, Sara Rossberg and Valentino Vannini are three artists whose practices are rooted in humanity and lived experience. They approach, process and express their observations differently but always with intention, tenderness and compassion. They capture moments of urgency, stillness, hope, despair, anticipation, longing, euphoria and oblivion but they seem to meet in the moments ‘in-between’, of simply ‘being’, where intimacy is both felt and negotiated.   

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Isabel Muñoz-Newsome (b. London, UK) is a  British-Chilean painter and performer living and working in London.

Her paintings test the boundary between image and sensation, gesture and imagination. Bodies dissolve into undulating piles of colour, wading between figuration and abstraction.

In her compositions, bodily forms are encountered in various states - from intimate moments of fall and recovery - to somewhere more exuberant and pastoral, a desire-fuelled place. Lost in ecstasy or poised on the cusp of dissolution, forms float in the luminous, dazed aftermath of abandon.

The brushwork is fluid and continuous, inseparable from the performance of the hand, with gesture almost competing with form; often, Muñoz-Newsome’s brush moves sinuously, like muscle contractions, sending flesh rippling in surges of alizarin, ochre and violet, confronting simultaneously the muck of the body and the euphoria of embodiment.

Paintings become radiant portals, totemic and charged, as boundaries are breached; at times, an interior light appears to pulse, beckoning the gaze inward and signalling another, secluded place.

Here, the act of painting is a form of world-building, as Muñoz-Newsome consumes and inhabits her subjects, leaping beyond form and over the edge.

Isabel Muñoz-Newsome is a graduate of the Royal College of Art (MA Painting, 2025, awarded with the Zsuzi Roboz scholarship) and Wimbledon School of Art (BA in Theatre Design).

Recent exhibitions include: Over the Edge (solo), curated by Kira Streletzki, Berlin (2025), b-sides at calcio, London, curated by Hannah Perry, (2026), One Enters A Room, The Dot Project (2026), In the Company of at Sid Motion Gallery London (2025), Woke Up Feeling Better, Staffordshire Street Gallery, London (2023) which she also curated.

She has also worked extensively in theatre design working on shows in London’s West End, on Broadway NYC and across Europe.

Alongside painting Isabel is also a musician. She is co-creator of the band Pumarosa and currently working on solo projects. The exhibition title, Could You Come to Me, comes from a line from one of her songs.

Sara Rossberg (b. 1952, Recklinghausen, Germany) lives and works in London. She describes her work as an introverted exploration of experienced life and observations expressed through painting. She creates ‘paint-objects’ that possess their own reality and physical presence and are intended to be experienced rather than read like a book.

“While my paintings may superficially appear descriptive, they do not tell stories. They are about the impression they leave with the viewer, combined with a meditative stillness, even when my colours are at their most challenging. They take a great deal of time to make and equally take time to explore”.

Although Rossberg uses the figure as the foundation for her work, it is never about an individual person or situation but simply about their being, the humanness they represent; vulnerability, resilience and those deeply felt emotions which are simultaneously universal yet intensely personal and extraordinary.

The complexity of the human experience is reflected in the way she works, with materiality and colour an integral part of her painting syntax. Her method, inspired by old master techniques, involves building up countless layers of pure colour pigments mixed with various mediums to form a mostly translucent body of paint which sits object-like on the canvas. Thickness can range from nothing to 15mm, smooth or textured, at times aggressively rough, creating intense colour sensations and tonal ranges acting as layers of perception. Rossberg prefers that viewers experience the work up close, as if stepping into it and becoming absorbed by it so that, in the end, what remains is the feeling that emanates from the painting.

Sara Rossberg completed Postgraduate studies at the Camberwell College of Art, London (1978) and is a graduate of the Staedelschule, Academy of Fine Art, Frankfurt am Main (1976).

Solo exhibitions have taken place at: Galerie Lattemann, Darmstadt- Muehltal, Germany (2015); Albemarle Gallery, London (2007); The Women’s Art Collection, New Hall College, Cambridge (2004); Galerie Vieille du Temple, Paris (2002); Julian Hartnoll Gallery, London (1997); Turnpike Gallery, Leigh (1996); Stiebel Modern, New York (1993); Warrington Museum & Art Gallery, Warrington (1992); Stiebel Modern, New York (1992); Jill George Gallery, London (1991); Louis Newman Gallery, Los Angeles (1990); Rosenberg & Stiebel, New York (1990); Retrospective touring show ‘Don’t I Know You?’: Museum & Art Gallery Newport, Oriel Gallery, Cardiff, D.L.I. Museum & Art Gallery Durham (1989); Thumb Gallery, London (1988); Denne Hill, Treadwell Gallery (1987); Kunstkeller, Bern, Switzerland (1987); International Art Fair, Basel (1986), Staedek Academy of Fine Art, Frankfurt am Main (1973).

Recent group shows include: Repose, curated by Matthew Holman, William Hine Gallery (2025-2026); Jackson’s Art Prize 2025 Finalist Exhibition [winner of the Judges Choice Award; Advanced Contemporaries, curated by Paul Carey-Kent, Emma Cousin and Theo Ellison (2024).

Rossberg’s works are held in the public collections of The National Portrait Gallery, London; The Women’s Art Collection, Cambridge; The Louth Museum, Lincolnshire; The Newport Museum & Art Gallery, Newport and K&B Corp Collection, New Orleans, US.

Valentino Vannini (b. 1976, Florence, Italy) is a London-based multidisciplinary artist. Through sculpture, drawing and print, his practice invites viewers to encounter plasticity within a sensual landscape of forms. Materiality becomes a way to challenge authority and probe confinement, fragility and collapse, generating tensions between interior and exterior boundaries.

He works with a raw palette of reinforced concrete, petroleum jelly, wax, resin, bitumen, fibres, and glass, often sourced from overlooked margins. These materials embody tensions: viscous and dry, rigid and soft, enduring and fragile. Cast, woven, or plaited, they echo and parody architectural language—skeletal frameworks, fencing, scaffolding, columns in search of moments where structure resists its own certainty.

He also turns to marginal wastelands and vacant plots that slip beneath the social landscape. In particular, he draws on the spatial logic of gay cruising to understand the dynamics of such places. Here, queerness becomes a method of defiance, a way of reimagining systems, materials, and spatial codes. Following the entanglement of a blade of grass or the precarious loop of a found rubber band, the work translates the sensual charge of human encounters within these landscapes. Like sudden arousal or the prickle of goosebumps, anticipation and desire are carried through sculptural processes into abstract form, not as fixed objects, but as sites of transformation and resistance.

Valentino Vannini holds an MA in Fine Art from City & Guilds of London Art School (2023), where he recently completed a two-year fellowship in Glass and Cast, and is a graduate of Alma Mater Studiorum, University of Bologna (BA Art, Drama and Music Studies.

He is one of the winners of NEW CONTEMPORARIES 2024 and he received the Sculpture Award from Studio West, London (2023). Recent exhibitions include: (2026) Mai Così Vicini – Never So Close (solo) Tuscany curated by Alberto Ancilotti; Almost Held with Damaris Athene, Stavanger; To Lure, To Hunt, To Catch curated by Sophie Nowakowska; Terence Higgins Trust 2026 Auction, Christie's, London. (2025-2024) NEW CONTEMPORARIES (ICA, London, 2025 - KARST, Plymouth 2024), Penetrable Boundaries (solo), Standpoint Gallery; The Lamb of Tartary, London, The Hide, Stroud; Acting Out, Ex Voto Gallery; Terence Higgins Trust 2025 Auction, Christie's, London; The Phoenix Garden; Uncarved Block, Unbleached Silk, Meeting Point Projects; Dawn is now once again, Greenfield Project Space; an eXhibition of SMALL things with BIG ideas, White Conduit Projects; Unknown Territory, SET Lewisham; and Surprise, Somers Gallery (2023).

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