Firelei Báez was born in Santiago de los Caballeros and lives and works in Inwood. She makes intricate works on paper and canvas that are intrinsically indebted to a rigorous studio practice as well as large scale sculpture. She has had solo exhibitions at the Utah Museum of Contemporary Art and at Pérez Art Museum Miami. In 2016 and 2017 she will participate in group and solo museum exhibitions including Vessel of Genealogies, Tarble Arts Center, Eastern Illinois University, Chareston, Illinois, Africa Forecast: Fashioning Contemporary Life, Spelman College Museum of Fine Art, Atlanta, Georgia, and Firelei Báez: Bloodlines at The Warhol Museum, Pittsburg.
Derrick Adams is a multidisciplinary New York-based artist working in performance, video, sound and 2D and 3D realms. His practice focuses on the fragmentation and manipulation of structure and surface, exploring self image and forward projection. Adams received his MFA from Columbia University and BFA from Pratt Institute. His exhibitions and performances have been shown at MoMA PS1, Brooklyn Museum of Art, Studio Museum in Harlem; and he is in the permanent collections of The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Studio Museum in Harlem, Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, and the Birmingham Museum of Art.
An LA native working in NYC, Sanford Biggers creates artworks that integrate film, video, installation, sculpture, drawing, original music and performance. He intentionally complicates issues such as hip hop, Buddhism, politics, identity and art history in order to offer new perspectives and associations for established symbols. The significance of Biggers’ work within contemporary society has been celebrated through solo exhibitions both nationally and internationally, most recently at the Brooklyn Museum, Sculpture Center and Mass MoCA. His works are included in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art, Walker Art Center, Whitney Museum, Brooklyn Museum and Bronx Museum.
Asif Tanvir Hoque is a 27 year old Pratt Institute graduate, living and working in Brooklyn, New York. As a Bangladeshi immigrant, who was raised in South Florida, Hoque’s paintings attempts to figuratively and stylistically combine aspects of multicultural identity. His early work highlights his fascination with classical fine arts, but with the progression of his skill and his self-discovery, Hoque challenges his audience to explore aspects of self that are authentic. Hoque hopes to address the unique experience of living in the “in between”.
Henrique Oliveira was born in Ourinhos, Brazil in 1973. He received a BFA in painting in 2004 and a Masters in Visual Poetics in 2007 from the University of São Paulo, Brazil. Oliveira uses tapumes, which in Portuguese can mean “fencing,” “boarding,” or “enclosure,” as a title for many of his large-scale installations. His installations, which he refers to as “tridimensionals,” have evolved into massive, spatial constructions that combine painting, architecture, and sculpture. Oliveira has exhibited in numerous solo and group exhibitions in Brazil and in 2008 participated in Something from Nothing, an invitational exhibition organized by the Contemporary Arts Center, New Orleans, Louisiana. He lives and works in São Paulo and Bushwick.
Camille Hoffman (b. 1987, Chicago, IL) earned an MFA from Yale University (2015), a BFA from California College of the Arts (2009), and was a recipient of the Carol Schlosberg Memorial Prize for excellence in painting from Yale University and the Van Lier Fellowship from the Museum of Arts and Design (MAD). She has exhibited at the Pieceable Kingdom at the Museum of Arts and Design, New York (2018), Lincoln Center, New York (2017), Times Square, New York (2017), Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven (2015), Nuit Blanche arts festival, France (2015), and Espai Cultural Biblioteca Azorín, Spain (2008). Hoffman has been an artist-in-residence in numerous programs including Wave Hill, Bronx, NY (2017). She currently lives and works in New York, NY.
Arjan Zazueta is a multi-disciplinary visual artist based in Brooklyn, NY. In his work, he re-imagines the familiar, everyday objects, materials, and images, taking them apart and piecing them back together to offer an alternate experience. In 2002, he received a BFA in Sculpture from Virginia Commonwealth University and an MFA in Sculpture from Syracuse University in 2009. His exhibitions include DEMO Project, Springfield, IL; Tilton Gallery, New York, NY; Rush Arts, New York, NY; Dog and Pony Projects, Buffalo, NY; Bemis Underground, Omaha, NE; The Lux Center for the Arts, Lincoln, NE; and Munson Williams Proctor Museum of Art, Utica, NY, among others.
Thomas J Price (b. London, UK, 1981) studied at Chelsea College of Art (2001–04) and received an MA at the Royal College of Art, Sculpture School (2004–06). Price lives and works in London. Price’s work across media, encompassing sculpture, film and photography, is engaged with issues of representation and perception, in society and in art. His works all share a fascination with the minutiae of body language, facial expression and external presentation, and in turn, their ability to suggest a state of mind. Selected solo exhibitions have been held at prestigious institutions including the National Portrait Gallery (London), Royal Academy of Arts (London), Mac Birmingham (UK), Royal College of Art (London), Yorkshire Sculpture Park (UK), Harewood House (UK) and Hales Gallery (London).
Memory and its relationship to visual culture is a coretheme of my work. I am curious about the capacity of pictures to mediate, orshape, lived experience. The images that I source are remarkable because theysignify, through association, biographical details pertinent to my childhood andpast. I am compelled by images of popular culture that cue or trigger memoriesof personal significance.
By connecting imagefragments — through cutting, tearing, layering, collage, and painting — I havedeveloped a method through which to navigate a muddy territory between memoryand imagination.
Leilah Babirye is a contemporary visual artist who specializes in abstract sculpture. She graduated from Makerere University in 2010, having majored in sculpture, and works with wood, scrap metal and found objects. Babirye deals with subjects including human rights and queer issues in Uganda. Using found objects such as metal, plastic, rubber and wood, her working process has been fueled by a need to find a language to respond recent passing of the anti-homosexuality bill in Uganda.
Rwandan artist Duhirwe lives and works in New York, and she has an MA from the The School of the Art Institute of Chicago and an MFA from Rhode Island School of Design. Using sculptures, installations, prints, and paintings, she engages in "complex narratives to discuss issues of displacement, cultural adaptation, and what it means to be an immigrant today." Her work and performances have received numerous awards and have been shown across the country, including at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago and RISD Museum.
Justin Olerud is an American artist living and working in New York. He has received an BFA from California College of Arts and an MFA from Columbia University. His art process often begins with his personal interest in the translation between photo and paint, and his work engages with notions of visual memory and the incoporation of found images from thrift stores, old books and magazines. His work has been shown at Le Roy Neiman Gallery in NY.
Leeza Meksin is a New York-based interdisciplinary artist working in painting, installation, public art and multiples. Born in the former Soviet Union, she immigrated to the United States with her family in 1989. Her work investigates binary systems while her artistic practice highlights parallels between conventions of painting, architecture and our bodies. Meksin received a MFA from The Yale School of Art, a BFA from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago and a joint BA/MA in Comparative Literature and Humanities from The University of Chicago. She currently teaches at Columbia University.
Kajahl Benes is an American artist best known for his oil paintings. In 2008 he received a BFA from San Francisco State University and an MFA from Hunter College in New York City. Re-appropriating African tribal costumes, ancient Roman military attire, and science fiction iconography, Benes references traditional Western portraiture, contemporary technology, and questions both the legitimacy of past records and the direction of future cultures. His work has been shown in numerous group exhibitions, including at the Goodman Gallery in Johannesburg, along with renowned artists Carrie Mae Weems, Kehinde Wiley and Rashid Johnson.
One of the most controversial African-American artists working today, Renee Cox has used her own body, both nude and clothed to deconstruct stereotypes and celebrate black womanhood. Her work shows a deep concern for social issues and employs disturbing religious imagery. With an MFA from School of Visual Arts in New York, Cox has had numerous group and solo exhibitions, most notably at The Whitney, The New Museum, Pace Gallery, and Robert Miller Gallery.
Inspired by his urban surroundings, conceptual artist Raul Mourão marries fragments of the real and imaginary in his mobile sculptures, drawings, videos, and performances. Using meticulous, seemingly architectural drawings as his starting point, Mourão creates minimalist abstract sculptures and assemblages that focus on the tension between the raw chaos of the city and its controlled geometry, incorporating referents such as metal railings, security systems and fences. His work has been shown most recently at Galeria Nara Roesler NY, Arte Contemporanea in Rio, and Plutschow Gallery in Zurich.
His work addresses a broad range of issues, from global politics to personal intimacies. Using mixed media and conceptual painting, David attempts to convey the notions of subjective perception and artistic process.
Hart lives and works in Brooklyn, NY. Her work has been shown nationally, including The Drawing Center, Studio Museum of Harlem, and most recently at the ICA in Philadelphia. She is best known for her rooftop oracle project, which consists of site-specific projects that reflect her concern human displacement and the function of a roof and its metonymy for a home. Her work resonates with the ongoing phenomenon of gentrification, and it challenges the public to question history of spaces people occupy. As she writes, “A rooftop can refer to stability and shelter, but in this context, it is also an action of reclaiming power – of influence, direction and our future.”
Based in New York, graffiti artist Timothy Curtis is self-taught, starting his career at the age of nine in the streets of Philadelphia. His work has been displayed in solo and group exhibitions, most recently at Rush Arts Gallery, Melet Mercantile, Brooklyn Museum, and Joshua Liner Gallery.
Jordan Sullivan is a writer and artist. His photographs, curatorial projects, and prose have appeared in publications such as The Paris Review, The New York Times T Magazine, The New Yorker, Italian Vogue, VICE, and ELLE. He was a finalist for the Third Coast Fiction Award and the Grand Prix de la Découverte/NoFound Prize for experimental photography. His most recent book Remaining Light, was published by Silas Finch (2016). A number of his artist books were displayed in the 2013 Triennial at the International Center for Photography in NYC. He is the co-founder of the publishing project 205-A.
Sweatshop is a design and coffee shop owned by Luke Woodard, Ryan de Remer. Along with Mete Erdogan, they are freelance architectural, graphic and art designers.
Aliza grew up in Mexico City, the child of a Scandinavian-American mother and a Russian Jewish father. (Her name, pronounced “Aleeza,” means “happiness” in Hebrew.) For the last four years, the artist has been painting portraits of undocumented immigrants (mostly from Mexico and Central America) in New York City, giving recognition and dignity to individuals who are often obliged to live in the shadows. Her work, in which sensitively rendered figures appear in brightly patterned, semiabstract settings, was exhibited in the 2017 Whitney Biennial. She teaches undergraduate painting and drawing at Columbia — she is also the director of graduate studies in the visual-arts program there — and works and lives in Harlem.
Maria Agureeva was born in 1985. Graduated from the St. Petersburg State University of Technology and Design (Department of Graphic Design, 2003 - 2009). Lives and works at Moscow. Since 2007 Maria is a member of the Union of Artists IFA. Artist works with installations, objects, videos, performances and photography where she examines the embodiment and interactions with the social environment. A recent solo exhibitions include: "Binary promises", Pechersky Gallery (Moscow, 2015); "Those females that spoil us infinite», Pechersky Gallery (Moscow, 2013); «Citius, altius, fortius! Commodification», together with CTI Factory GridchinHall (Moscow, 2012). She is a participant of IX international film festival Andrey Tarkovsky "The Mirror", Ivanovo (2015) and a nominee of Kandinsky Prize (2013).
The work of Gustavo Prado employs sculpture, drawing, performance, photography and video to explore the manifold aspects of space. In the Perceptible series (2002-2011) the phenomenological experience becomes the crux of an investigation pursued within environments constructed with fluorescent lamps, fabric, metal structures and motion sensors, together forming a system which invites multiple responses to the encounter between body and place. Gustavo Prado was born in São Paulo in 1981. He studied Philosophy and Industrial Design, and received his artistic training at the School of Visual Arts of Parque Lage in Rio de Janeiro. His work has been shown at "The Year of Brazil in France" at the Le Carreau du Temple, Paris; the “Rumos Visual Arts Program” at São Paulo’s Itaú Cultural Foundation; the Museum of Modern Art, Rio de Janeiro (MAM-Rio); the Paço Imperial Cultural Institute, Rio de Janeiro; and the Sergio Porto Cultural Space, Rio de Janeiro. Gustavo works and lives in Brooklyn.
Originally from Houston, Texas, VIZIE began pursuing art at an early age, quickly becoming focused primarily on graffiti. Along with his brother NEKST, VIZIE helped the Houston graffiti scene to come to prominence during the late 90’s and 2000's. Beyond Texas, his inspired and innovative work in both the arts and graffiti has taken him to many U.S. and international cities. He made his mark with long stops in cities like Kansas City, San Francisco, Oakland, and Chicago, eventually landing in New York where he has lived and worked for the past 10 years.
In addition to his graffiti career, VIZIE explored a fine art practice. Through printmaking, photography, illustration and painting, he honed his skills in both the conceptual and the practical application of his work. His vision has found its expression in a wide range of projects from zines, to large-scale mural projects, as well as commercial work.
Jackson's work includes installations, performance, video, sculpture, and painting and explores the social inter-relationships of "blackness" within the broader context of contemporary culture, focusing on social and political histories in relation to incarceration, criminality, and surveillance in the United States.
In addition to being the Creative Director at ARTnews magazine, McMahon is photographer, painter and illustrator. Her work has been exhibited both locally in New York City and globally in Budapest. Consistent throughout her body of work is McMahon's focus on portraits of notable artists, actors, and musicians from Derrick Adams to Woody Allen to The Rolling Stones.
The work of Nigerian-American activist and visual artist Adejoke Tugbiyele spans several media, including film, sculpture and works on paper. Known primarily for the handcrafted figures she assembles from repurposed materials, Tugbiyele’s art evokes themes of sexual identity and spirituality with respect to performative aspects of traditional Yoruba culture. Her work can be found in the public collections of the Brooklyn Museum, The Newark Museum, the corporate collection of Credit Suisse Bank, and in significant private collections within the United States, The United Kingdom, South Africa and Hong Kong.
Marcus Jahmal is an artist based in Brooklyn, New York. His paintings depict domestic scenes and landscapes built from memory and imagination. In his images, which are both theatrical and quietly intimate, Jahmal showcases exuberant brushwork and his particular strengths as a colorist. As the art critic Roberta Smith wrote in the New York Times, Jahmal's "main love is color, which he uses stunningly, but he exploits everything – space, surface, color, image – to create various incongruities." The reds, oranges and other vibrant hues featured in his compositions create a symbolist language connected to the artist's subconscious and dreams. Jahmal collects his ideas through a practice of automatic drawing, moving intuitively through images he pulls from life or art history. From these drawings, he assembles a cast of objects, mixing his everyday experience with the modern and the myth. Read together, these motifs form a surreal environment with recognizable figures that suggest the complexities invisible relationships within prosaic life. Jahmal's work has been exhibited in New York, Chicago, Miami, Tokyo, Japan, and throughout Europe.
