Gideon Appah is a mixed media artist who draws from personal experiences of life in the capital of Ghana. In this recent body of work, the artist presents flattened, jewel-like compositions that center around important familial figures, luscious landscapes, prevalent architecture, folklore and daily rituals from his upbringing.

Best known for large-scale sculptural installations that employ different materials and mediums, Monica Bonvicini incorporates elements of architecture, performance, photography, video, painting, and collage in her work. Using dry and direct humor, she confronts issues of subjectivity, power, barriers, control, and institutional critique. Bonvicini’s art establishes a critical connection within the space where it is exhibited, the materials that define it, and the roles of spectator and creator.

Sarah Braman, widely recognized for her large-scale sculptures that serve as monuments to everyday life, is interested in the interplay between sensory experience and emotional resonance. In creating her precariously balanced sculptures, Braman combines elements from scrap-yard vehicles, old buildings or antique furniture with translucent volumes of color and light. The artist’s distinctive color palette of rich pinks, blues and purples permeates the space, from spray paint on found objects and hand-dyed fabric to the expansive nature of the glass forms. In their formal construction, her works relate to the legacies of minimalism and color-field painting. Defying a narrow modernist definition, Braman’s works suggest themes of home, family and nature, with their joyful immersion in lived experience and emotional life.

Formed in Toronto in 1969 by AA Bronson, Felix Partz and Jorge Zontal, General Idea is internationally recognized for work that tackled such subjects as the myth of the artist, the role of mass media, the relationship between the body and the identity, issues of gender and sexual repression, and famously HIV/AIDS activism at a time when talking about the disease was a taboo.  The members of General Idea were key figures in the 1970-80s conceptual art scenes and, with equal parts humor and criticality, created work across a variety of mediums and platforms. Performances and fictionalized, self-referential mythologies played a large role in their work – the group staged beauty pageants, boutiques, television talk shows, trade fair pavilions, and more, and their work often took on unconventional forms of media such as prints, magazines, posters, crests, and postcards. 

Interview with AA Bronson

Mary Kelly’s practice spans more than four decades and encompasses ideas about the body, systems of classification and power, memory, and history. Based in Los Angeles, she is best recognized for her large-scale narrative installations, including Post-Partum Document, 1973 – 79.  Kelly’s projects frequently blend personal and political issues of gender, identity, and collective memory, so as to visualize the impact of historical events on the nature of everyday life.  Kelly’s work has been central to discussions of Conceptual art and feminism since the 1970s, and her writings have been requisite to the discourse of postmodernism. Her current project, Circa Trilogy, which continues the exploration of generational and historical themes, has been undertaken with the support of 2015 John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Fellowship.

Brooklyn-based artist Eddie Martinez draws inspiration from a wide-range of sources, spanning from popular urban culture to Abstract Expressionism and Surrealism.  Martinez's work joins together painting and drawing, abstraction and representation in non-traditional ways.  Imbued with a sense of personal iconography, his practice often combines signature figurative elements, such as bug-eyed humans and eclectic headgear with gestural, abstract blocks of color.  Energetic and raw, his paintings employ an aggressive use of color and texture with various combinations of oil, enamel, spray paint and collage elements on canvas.  Martinez also produces large and small-scale abstract sculpture, made mostly from found materials such as rubber hoses, Styrofoam, cardboard, and metal scraps sourced from wherever the artist is working at the time. 

Jacolby Satterwhite is celebrated for a conceptual practice addressing crucial themes of labor, consumption, carnality and fantasy through immersive installation, virtual reality and digital media. He uses a range of software to produce intricately detailed animations and live action film of real and imagined worlds populated by the avatars of artists and friends. These animations serve as the stage on which the artist synthesizes the multiple disciplines that encompass his practice, namely illustration, performance, painting, sculpture, photography and writing. Satterwhite draws from an extensive set of references, guided by queer theory, modernism and video game language to challenge conventions of Western art through a personal and political lens. An equally significant influence is that of his late mother, Patricia Satterwhite, whose ethereal vocals and diagrams for visionary household products and ethereal vocals serve as the source material within a decidedly complex structure of memory and mythology.

Jessica Stockholder’s sprawling constructions have played a crucial role in expanding the dialogue between sculpture and painting and form and space. Within her work, the artist merges seemingly disparate, everyday objects to create holistic, colorful installations. Stockholder employs quotidian goods such as plastic bags and containers, extension cords, lumber, plywood, carpets and furniture, drawing attention to the aesthetic and formal qualities of these often overlooked items while avoiding overt symbolism and narrative storytelling. With deliberate placement and the eye of a master colorist, she maps out a constructed world informed by numerous artistic traditions, including abstract expressionism, color field painting, installation art and minimalism.