As the winter chill settles over the city and we lean into the season, Arch Enemy Arts lights up the gallery with a quartet of solo exhibitions that feel like a dream beginning to wake. We step into the quiet surrender of Hideaway by Kazuhiro Hori, where soft textures and bittersweet aesthetic linger in notes of melancholy. Beside it, we wander into symbolic fields of the natural world as it takes a turn for the surreal in Invasive by Lori Nelson… followed by the sharp resilient beauty and guardian edge of Tooth & Nail by Morgan Booth.
To round out this immersive chapter of storytelling, we invite you to travel further through the mist-covered, folk-heavy lore of Thistlesalt by Nom Kinnear King. Whether you are ringing in the new year with a fresh perspective or seeking one last holiday escape, these collections are steeped in creative possibilities. Cross the poetic bridge and wander into each artistic vision, leaving reality behind for a moment of sanctuary and myth.
Kazuhiro Hori, Lori Nelson,
Morgan Booth, Nom Kinnear King
Exhibition Dates: November 20th, 2025 – January 4th, 2026
Closing Reception: First Friday, January 2nd from 5-9pm
Arch Enemy Arts
109 Arch Street | Philadelphia, PA 19106 USA | (215) 717-7774
For sales or private viewing appointments, please email info@archenemyarts.com
Regular Gallery Hours:
CLOSED MONDAY & TUESDAY
• Wednesday, Thursday, Friday: 10am – 4pm
• Saturdays & Sundays: 11am – 5pm
Arch Enemy Arts presents HIDEAWAY by Tokyo-based artist Kazuhiro Hori, seven paintings set in the artist’s signature adolescent dreamworld. In Hori’s work, gorgeously rendered portraits of teenage girls sit before pale backdrops, surrounded by bizarre ephemera of a child’s nightmare. These young women take poses that are loosely erotic—and deeply sad—as they navigate the cruel complexity of growing up.
“My themes center on the environment faced by young people in contemporary Japan, particularly young girls, and the resulting anxieties, conflicts, and contradictions between ideals and reality. The stuffed toys, sweet confectionery, fresh cream, and strawberries I habitually employ serve as symbols for childishness, evoking an image of escapism from the process of growing into adulthood.” – Kazuhiro Hori
We love Hori’s use of large, elongated 2:1 canvas ratios, which make up the bulk of works in this series. For HIDEAWAY, he’s composed both panoramic and oblong shapes, emphasizing his provocative subjects with dramatic visual impact. These formats look incredible on salon walls breaking up grids, or they can be used to fill narrow spaces between windows or in long hallways. Each piece is an arresting moment, painted in Hori’s captivating style of effortless realism, transporting us to a place that’s at once enticing, terrifying, beautiful, and surreal.
Kazuhiro Hori (b.1969) is based in Tokyo, Japan. An established and internationally recognized artist, he graduated from Kanazawa College of Art in Japan and has received several prestigious awards for his dark and complex work. Hori began showing with Arch Enemy Arts in 2017, and HIDEAWAY is his second solo feature with the gallery.
Arch Enemy Arts presents INVASIVE by Lori Nelson, a collection of monster-humanoid youths rendered with all of the artist’s signature pop-surreal strangeness. But, for this series, Lori’s depicted some of her creepy-cute young adult subjects as symbolic demons, set before paintings of non-native plant species or, in a series of drawings, inundated with tech-talk that consumes our times. As a whole, the collection is a symbolic exploration of superficial ideologies.
“I am inspired by the unpredictability of fungi, flora, and fauna. I love the forest and, embedded in nature, I see up-close the interconnectedness of everything; if something changes even slightly, a whole ecosystem can go sideways. [But] witnessing the current ire and violence in our country against those who have transplanted here, often for our own benefit, has me considering the idea of ‘invasivity.’ I’m wondering if indeed humans themselves are the ultimate invasive species. We are often so self-important.” – Lori Nelson
In three haunting portraits, titled and inspired by three ‘invasive’ plants found in the Northeastern United States, Lori sets the stage for her metaphor. “Knotweed,” “Barberry,” and “Thistle” capture evil wrapped in cuteness, perhaps a symbol for the particular type of fear that defines our current moment—hatred masked in good intentions. And whatever your stance on ‘introduced’ plant populations, labels like ‘invasive’ and ‘alien’ overlook the complexities, good and bad, of how organisms interact with their environment. To Lori’s point, the only true natives are the plants of the Earth that will inevitably absorb us all, as in the show’s centerpiece “Back to Nature.” (‘Aliens’ are the ones acting with impunity against their fellow human beings.)
Lori Nelson (b.1968) is based in the Catskill Mountains of New York. Known for her playful monsters and hybrid creatures that capture the strange complexities of life on Earth, Nelson’s work has become a staple in New Contemporary pop surrealism. She began exhibiting with Arch Enemy Arts in 2014 and went on to be featured by such publications as Vice, Hi-Fructose, Juxtapoz, and Beautiful Bizarre. INVASIVE is the artist’s second solo feature with the gallery.
Arch Enemy Arts presents TOOTH & NAIL, a solo exhibition by Morgan Booth. Eight new paintings of powerful women, done in the artist’s signature monochromatic blue, stand before intense and opaque backdrops of fire engine red. Each of these women wears or wields some kind of weapon. From a samurai sword to ninja stars, a flail, arrows, and a barbed-wire bat, they brandish their fierce, feminine bad-assery with symbols of strength that span continents and millennia.
“This collection is a reaction to my own experiences and to the collective experience of being made to feel small or unsafe. We are living in a time that often feels deeply unsafe, so for this collection, I wanted my characters to act as protectors and guardians for those that view them. They are warriors, simmering with feminine rage, poised and ready to defend, unafraid to take up space and stand tall.” – Morgan Booth
It’s not just the figures in TOOTH & NAIL that command the viewer’s attention. With her work, Morgan Booth plays with the perceptual experience and physical response to color, generating the same illusionistic intensity one might find in geometric op art. She achieves exceptionally clean lines and sharp contrasts through a technique of stenciling bold shapes next to beautifully rendered realism figures. Her mash-up of mediums and techniques adds an eye-catching vibration to the work; every painting is as bold and powerful as the women they represent, bringing a vibrant pop to any space they enter.
Morgan Booth (b.1991) is based in Toronto, Canada. With some early formal training, she attributes her current style and mastery of technique to her own personal exploration with mixed media. Booth began showing with Arch Enemy Arts in 2023 after applying through our Spotlight Showcase, and her work quickly became a staple in our group shows, popular with collectors for her consistently clean and grabbing style. TOOTH & NAIL is the artist’s debut solo exhibition with the gallery.
“I like to let people make up their own stories about my work, to feel like they can imagine what happens next in the scene. I often find folks connect my paintings to a memory they have, a place they have been. I get my ideas from everywhere. The beaches in Norfolk, old houses I’ve wandered around in. I like finding magic in the everyday. Two of my favourites to paint are the countryside and the sea, so for this show, I thought THISTLESALT made a beautiful word that brought those themes together.” – Nom Kinnear King
About the Gallery
Seeking to fill the need for a centralized hub focused exclusively on new contemporary genres within Philadelphia’s already vibrant art scene, Arch Enemy Arts was founded in 2012 and quickly became Philly’s freshest new venue dedicated to exhibiting emerging and established artists, both local and international. Located in Philadelphia’s Old City District, and with an emphasis on the lowbrow, pop-surrealism, urban, and macabre in a wide range of mediums, Arch Enemy Arts was chosen as Philadelphia Magazine’s “Best of Philly”™ Best Art Gallery for its 40th Anniversary issue, voted the “Best Art Gallery in Philadelphia” on Philly HotList in 2013, and in 2012.
