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 The photography of Chicago-based artist Sabrina Raaf often depicts a certain absurdity of science. Images of machines that make art for the artist and automated systems and contraptions that are assembled from industrial materials, together with architectural elements, create installations that embody both the familiarity and stark distance of science fiction. Many works are based on a "what if" scenario, which allows the artist to playfully investigate what would happen if humans evolved and obtained the capabilities of functioning in new ways. The artist received a double MFA from Cornell University (1997) and the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (1999). Currently, Raaf is exhibiting "Meet the New You" at the Des Moines Art Center in Iowa. Last year, the artist exhibited "Grower + ?" at Lunds Konsthall in Sweden, was featured in "This is Gallery" with the Lawrimore Project in Seattle and had a solo exhibition at the Mejan Labs in Stockholm, Sweden. | |||
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 A member of China's new wave of influential artists, Cao Fei has developed an expansive young career featuring works in performance, photography, video, writing, and sound art among other projects. Taking in the mass influence of western culture in the east, the artist reflectively constructs images that offer insight into the current state of this optimistic country. The video still shown above is from a series title "Hip Hop" and exemplifies several Chinese lay individuals' engaging in what seems to be awkward hip-hop stances. Other works such as the "COSplayers" depict young people dressed as Japanese anime characters acting out scenarios in the landscape of Cao Fei's home city, Guangzhou. The artist attended the Guangzhou Academy of Fine Arts (2001), and was a member of the German Federal Cultural Foundation (Kulturstiftung des Bundes) fellowship program (2005). In 2006, Cao Fei exhibited PRD "Anti-Heroes" at the Museum Het Domein, Sittard, Netherlands, and "Hip Hop" with Lombard-Freid Projects in New York City. This year, the artist will be featured in "World Factory: Resistance and Dreams" at the San Francisco Art Institute. Cao Fei has been featured in the NY Times, and was reviewed last year by ArtForum. | |||
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 The inventive sculptures of German artist Birgit Dieker are centered on the body. Thematic considerations are equally placed on the inside and outside of the body and often rely on material to offer extended content. The artist regularly uses materials that commonly interact or make reference to the body, such as textiles, leather, rubber, human hair, life belts, bandages and body suits. Together, the concepts and materials create a playful dialogue that engage the viewer and symbolize the symmetry between the inside and outside of the body. Dieker attended Technischen Universitat and Hochschule der Kunste in Berlin, where she currently lives and works. In 2006, Gallery AMT in Como, Italy, presented "Headhunting," an exhibition featuring several busts made out of layered textiles, and, in 2005, Dieker exhibited "Gluck Auf" with Galerie Volker Diehl in Berlin. Diecker exhibited at the 69th Regiment Armory Feb. 22-25 in the Pulse New York art fair. | |||
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 Israeli artist Yehudit Sasportas creates large drawings and room-sized installations that investigate dreamlike, generic landscapes that are combined with dense, repetitive lines. The images reference intense spaces that are universally familiar, yet non-specific, creating a context that all viewers can recognize. The lines create a space that depicts modernism through a mathematic, systematic method that contrasts the organic qualities of the landscapes. After her graduation from Bezalel Academy of Art and Design in Jerusalem (1999), Sasportas exhibited with Galerie Eigen + Art in Berlin (2004), the Barbara Davis Gallery in Houston (2001), Deitch Projects in New York and the Berkley Museum of Art in San Francisco (2002). Sasportas was featured with the Valencia Biennial in 2001, and her work was reviewed in an article in ArtForum in 2003. | |||
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 The possibilities and pitfalls of language are of constant interest to artist Tauba Auerbach. Her text-based drawings and paintings investigate the origin of language as a system for information and the relationship between meaning and symbol. The question of how a symbol is chosen and what it reveals about the human brain is also of interest. The works are presented as technically rendered typography, singularly familiar, while collectively abstracted. Her new work addresses the technological language of binary code and its inherent limitations. Auerbach is a Bay Area artist who attended Stanford University. She had a solo New York premiere at the Deitch Projects in New York City this fall and was included in The Dreamland Artist Club exhibition in 2005, organized by Creative Time and Steve Powers. The artist was reviewed in Art in America in 2005 and was reviewed in The New York Times in 2006. | |||
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 Identical twins Jane and Louise Wilson investigate institutional architectural sites that were once centers of power but have now fallen to abandonment and ruin. These images are often projected as video onto multiple screens that act as independent walls and ceiling. The structure of these connected screens serves and echoes the images of the specific architectural sites projected. The collection of these devastating images conveys a weighted sense of humanism, while also presenting stunning cinematic formalism. The artists are graduates of Goldsmith College in London (1992), and, in 1999, they were nominated for the prestigious Turner Prize, which is organized by the Tate Gallery in London. Other exhibitions include "The New Brutalists" at the Lisson Gallery (2006) and works with the Bergen Art Museum in Norway (2004). The sisters also attended the studio program of the Deutsche Akademische Austauschdienst (DAAD) in Berlin. | |||
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 English-born artist John Isaacs explores contemporary experience though a variety of media. Each work embodies a dark and cynical sense of humor, mixed with the gothic and grotesque. Isaac's sculpture, video, installation, photographs and paintings depict an odd spectacle that, in the artist's words, are: "places we can get lost and the utopias we dream of. The wrong turns we take, directed by ego or fear, and ultimately the way we learn to forget the beauty of the world we live in." Isaacs is a graduate of Slade School of Fine Art and attended Ecole des Beaux Arts in Dijon. The artist is currently exhibiting with Aeroplastics Contemporary in Brussels and, in October, will exhibit with Museum 52 in London. Last year, Isaacs was included in the Murdeme Collection at the Serpentine Gallery in London and, in 2005, was guest lecturer at The Getty Foundation in Los Angeles. Art in America reviewed John Isaacs's exhibition at Feign Contemporary Art in 2003. | |||
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 German artist Janaina Tschape produces video, sculpture, photography and drawings as she works through fragmented narratives that exist somewhere between reality and fiction. Ideas of the female body are explored through wearable sculptures, fabricated to mimic fleshy organic bio-morphic material. The photographs and videos take place in luscious botanical settings that aid to the dreamlike quality of each character. The artist was born in Munich and spent most of her adolescence in San Paulo, Brazil. Tschape is a graduate of the School of the Visual Arts in New York City (1998), and she attended the Museu de Arte Moderna Artist Residency in Salvador, Brazil (1994). Last year, the artist exhibited "Melantropics" at The Museum of Contemporary Art, St. Louis, and had a solo exhibition with Galeria Fortes Vilaca in Sao Paulo, Brazil. In 2007, Tschape will exhibit with Sikkema Jenkins & Co. in New York City and The New Art Gallery in Walsall, U.K. | |||
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 The sculptures of Texan artist Erick Swenson often feature the vulnerability of animals in both nature and in the man-made world. Swenson skillfully creates these installations by casting each element in a polyurethane resin and then meticulously painting them. These surreal works are the result of the artist's obsession with dioramas, stage sets, taxidermy and prosthetics. His sculptural tableaux have the ability to include the viewer in the stillness of a very privileged moment. Swenson has exhibited with Angstrom Gallery in Texas and the UCLA Hammer Museum in Los Angeles. The artist has also shown internationally with Villa Stuck in Munich, Germany, and the Museum of Contemporary Art in Sydney, Australia. In 2004, the artist had a review in Art in America and a review in Artforum for his exhibition with the James Cohan Gallery in New York City. | |||
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 After graduating from the School of the Visual Arts in New York (1993), Inka Essenhigh received unbelievable recognition for her graphically executed paintings. Heralded as a rising star of painting, Essenhigh pervaded as one of the most popular young artists, working with galleries such as Mary Boone Gallery (2000) and the Deitch Projects (1999). The glossy, well-designed colors and undulating figures in her early work have recently given way to intense scenes with subversive content. The graphic language of Essenhigh's paintings allow for her complicated figures to be incorporated into a dramatic landscape, giving way for greater depth in the imagery. Recently, Essenhigh has exhibited with 303 Gallery in New York (2006), Sint-Lukas Galerie in Brussels (2004) and the Victoria Miro Gallery in London (2005). In 2007, Essenhigh will be featured in "The Triumph of Painting Part III" with the Saatchi Gallery in London and "Comic Abstraction" with the Museum of Modern Art in New York, among others. | |||
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 Artist Michael Wetzel will open an exhibition Saturday evening with John Connelly Presents in New York City. The artist has departed from his previous works, which focused on icons of the American class system through images of bourgeois interiors and fabric patterns used by Jackie Kennedy and Nancy Reagan, for a new series of landscapes. The concept continues, however, as Wetzel creates a metaphor for the conquest and commodification of foreign and exotic lands. Paintings of Mount Vesuvius and the burning of Rome are included as a reference for the imperialism of the Roman Empire and the eventual colonization and imperialism of the area by Great Britain. Last year, the artist exhibited with Galleri Christina Wilson in Copenhagen, Denmark, and was one of six to be awarded a fellowship by the Deutsche Bank, Deutsche Bank Americas Foundation and the NYFA. Michael Wetzel has exhibited with Judy Ann Goldman Fine Art in Boston and Clementine Gallery in New York City. | |||
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 Creator of the Space Monkey, artist Dalek has made a name for himself in both the street art and gallery worlds for his unique style and character invention. Little information is given about these graphic creatures that greet us with one eye open and mouths agape. The characters are expressed with black humor, often engaging in mischief, while occupying a flat abstracted ground composed on only one or two colors. Dalek is a graduate of the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and Virginia Commonwealth University. The artist has created limited-edition toys for Kid Robot, and, in 2005, he exhibited "The Way That I Want You To Die" with the Jonathan Le Vine Gallery in New York City and "Blood Bath" with Merry Karnowski Gallery in Los Angeles. Dalek has been featured on the popular graffiti Web site Art Crimes and has appeared in numerous magazines, such as Mass Appeal and Juxtapoz. | |||
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 This Saturday, James Cohan Gallery in New York City will present "Flavio and Palermo" by Sicilian artist Manfredi Beninati. The exhibition is dedicated to the artist's brother Flavio and will contain paintings, sculpture and installation. Beninati creates work that investigates nostalgia and memory through popular fairy tales and a collective unconscious imagination. The artist began his career as a professor of law at Palermo University, and, in 1990, he began studying film at Centro Sperimentale di Cinematografia Roma. He later moved to London and began a successful painting career, exhibiting with Galleria Lorcan O'Neill in Rome and the Venice Biennale in 2005. Later this year, the artist will present "Dentro-Fuori (a Flavio Beninati)" at the Museo Laboratorio in Sant'Angelo and will attend an artist residency at the American Academy in Rome. | |||
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 Cuban artist Liset Castillo photographs small intricate sculptural landscapes that imitate large architectural environments. Each image mimics suburban terrains in desolate conditions. Her photos are illusionistic in scale, allowing each model to become a full size, dramatic landscape that is seemingly vast and all encompassing. Castillo finished her education with de Ateliers in Amsterdam, and, since then, she has had exhibitions with the Black and White Gallery in Chelsea, Luis Adelantado Gallery in Miami and Volitant Gallery in Austin, Texas. In 2003, Castillo was featured with the 8th-annual Havana Biennial and received the Guggenheim Fellowship in 2004. That same year, ArtForum published an article discussing Castillo's work in relation to the Havana Biennial. | |||
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 Los Angeles-based photographer Melanie Pullen has created a series of more than 100 photographs that describe crime scenes prior to the mid-1950s. Pullen is a self-taught artist who has come from a family of photojournalists, publishers and artists. She began the series after viewing Luc Sante's 1992 book "Evidence" (1914-1919), which depicts crime-scene photos from the NYPD. From that point, Pullen began extensive research in the LAPD crime-scene archives and was able to secure a wealth of photos and information about real crimes. The artist has infused the photos with high-fashion to distract the viewer from the gruesome scenes, while also commenting on the glamorization of violence and crime. Her sets often employ up to 60 individuals, and the cloths in many of her photographs come from prominent fashion houses. Melanie Pullen is currently represented by Ace Gallery in Los Angeles and has been featured in many prominent magazines, including Flaunt, Vogue and ArtWeek. | |||
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 Last fall, artist Kendell Geers exhibited new works with the Stephan Friedman Gallery in London. Geers is known for exhibiting works that disrupt and confront the viewer's commonly held values, morals and principles. The artist works through a variety of media, including painting, ready-mades, neon sculpture and video, most of which contain some element of text. Geers often uses objects with loaded content such as urinals, disco balls and human skulls and covers the surface with barely discernable, but aggressive, profanity. The artist also uses pornography in much of his work to juxtapose ideas of sex with artificially constructed morals. This year, Kendell Geers will exhibit with Stedelijk Museum voor Aktuele Kunst (S.M.A.K.) in Gent, Belgium, and B.P.S.22 in Charleroi, Belgium. The artist was featured in the 2006 Art Basel in Miami Beach, and, in 2005, Geers exhibited "Satyr:Ikon" with Galleria Continua in San Gimigano, Italy, and "Hung, Drawn and Quartered" with the Contemporary Arts Center in Cincinnati. | |||
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 Mark Ryden creates surrealist-inspired paintings of corrupted children in provocative relationships. Each image is delicately handled with painstaking technique, referencing a culture of destruction through elements of classical painting. The color is masterfully rendered in pale pastels, with a playful child-like quality, while the imagery demonstrates harsh and graphic events and addresses issues of pop culture. In recent years, Ryden has shown with the Earl McGrath Gallery and the Michael Kohn Gallery in Los Angeles and New York, as well as with Mondo Bizzarro Gallery in Rome. Ryden had a retrospective with the Frye Museum of Art (2004) in Seattle and with the Pasadena Museum of California Art (2005). The New York Times published an article about his work in 2001. | |||
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 One of Brazil's most famous artists, Ernesto Neto creates room-sized environments for the viewer to navigate through and interact with. By using light, stretchable fabrics and organic shapes, filled occasionally with scented spices, Neto's work allows the viewer to experience the work through all senses, creating a spatial labyrinth for the journey through the passages in the room. Currently, Neto is collaborating with Merce Cunnigham on an exhibition called "Dancing on the Cutting Edge," where his sculptures become sets and costumes for the choreographer at the Museum of Contemporary Art in North Miami. He exhibited with the Fabric Workshop in Philadelphia (2004) and worked with Carnegie International (1999). Neto was the Brazilian artist for both the Biennale of Sydney (1998) and the Venice Biennale (2001). ArtForum has reviewed his work several times, including his exhibition with Galerie Max Hetzler in 2004. | |||
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 Havana-based artist collective Los Carpinteros creates work that investigates the intersection of art and society and often takes the form of architecture, design, sculpture and drawing. Los Carpinteros consisted of artists Marco Castillo, Dagoberto Rodriguez and, until 2003, Alexandre Arrechea. The group first adopted the name Los Carpinteros ("The Carpenters") in 1991, choosing the collective name as a way of abandoning an individual artist persona for a more traditional collective laborer and artisan guild name. In recent years, the group has reached international success with exhibitions in countless countries. Last year, the artists exhibited with Galerie IN SITU in Paris, Unosunove in Rome and the USF Contemporary Art Center at South Florida University in 2005. Los Carpinteros has received awards from the Ministerio de Cultura and the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), both in Havana. In 2004, the group's exhibition with Anthony Grant Inc. in New York City was reviewed by Art in America magazine. Both current members of Los Carpinteros are graduates of the Superior Art Institute of Havana (ISA) (1994 and 1995) and continue to live and work in Havana, Cuba. | |||
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 The fantastical worlds of Swiss artist Leopold Rabus are loaded with cliches and symbols, as his satirical characters engage in a variety of dualities. Rabus' characters investigate morals, ethics, religion and sexuality through absurd and ambiguous narratives. The surrealistic imagery is rooted in Christian iconography and art history and is explored through a variety of media, including wax, real hair and miscellaneous particles. Rabus attended Cite des Arts de Paris (2000) and has exhibited with Galerie Une in Neuchatel, Switzerland, and Galerie Adler in Frankfurt, Germany. In 2005, the artist was featured in the Scope Miami art fair, and, last year, Rabus exhibited in the Collections de Saint-Cyprien in Saint-Cyprien, France. | |||
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 San Francisco new media artist Deborah Oropallo continues to surprise the art world by reinventing her work with consistent quality. Oropallo allows her images to evolve with the change in technology, and her mediums range from oil on canvas, to digital photos and permanent pigment prints. Most of her work focuses on mundane objects, but Oropallo transforms them into elegant images through formal concerns like scale and color. In recent years, Oropallo has focused on digital imagery to create large-scale, vibrant images, but the artist always allows her style and approach to change dramatically from one body of work to another. In 2007, Oropallo will show with San Jose Art Museum, Scott White Contemporary Art in San Diego and De Young Museum in San Francisco. She has won many awards, including the Eureka Fellowship Award from the Fleishhacker Foundation, and received her M.F.A. from University of California, Berkeley. Her work is currently carried by the Stephen Wirtz Gallery in San Francisco and the Gail Severn Gallery in Ketchum, Idaho. | |||
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 Los Angeles artist Tim Hawkinson has been called one of America's most singular and inventive sculptors today. He is renowned for creating both monumental and microscopic works made of complex kinetic and sound producing elements, which are operated through low-tech programmed systems. Hawkinson's work is seemingly scientific, and the necessities of his inventions often lead to new tools, widely imaginative approaches and diverse mediums. Hawkinson has created major works in drawing, painting, sculpture, photography, video, installation and sound. In February 2005, the Whitney Museum of American Art and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art presented 20 years of the artist's work in his first major museum survey. The PBS series Art:21 interviewed Hawkinson about his practice and concepts, and he was also featured on NPR's "All Things Considered" (2005). Hawkinson is a graduate of UCLA and is currently represented by the Ace Gallery in Los Angeles. | |||
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 Raqib Shaw is a London-based Kashmiri artist whose work is influenced by decorative objects of the East. The artist uses Japanese screens, Asian textiles and antique carpets, along with paint, to create a rich and layered surface where an erotic world of hybrid creatures inhabits an underwater enviornment. Shaw incorporates a catalogue of flora and fauna into each piece, mixing aquatic with animal and human qualities into creatures that engage in sexual acts. The artist is a graduate from Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design in London (2002) and began to exhibit with LCF and The London Institute Gallery that same year. In 2005, he had a solo exhibition with Deitch Projects in New York City, which was followed by an exhibition with Tate Britain the next year. The Tate exhibition was featured in the Evening Standard (London). | |||
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 Ellen Altfest is a hyper-realist painter whose work contains an illusionistic material quality. Each painting is created from still-life observation, focusing on the individual object's inherent complexities. Altfest's painted objects blend into their surroundings. Engulfed by the environment, these paintings focus on the physicality and the patterns found in images of nature. The artist received an MFA from Yale University School of Art and attended the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture in 2002. Later that year, Altfest exhibited with Bellwether Gallery in New York. She exhibited again with the gallery in 2005 and had a review in the The New York Times. This year, Altfest will be featured in The Triumph of Painting at the Saatchi Gallery in London. | |||
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 Artist Terence Koh works in a variety of media, including performance, sculpture, books, zines, Web sites and photography. Throughout the artist's career, references to punk culture, homosexuality and adolescence have been offered through a very personal vocabulary. The artist often focuses on ephemeral materials, employing tactile and sensuous qualities to many appropriated images and objects. For the sculpture called "These Decades that We never Sleep, black drums," Koh covers a drum kit with paint, ropes, insect parts and his own bodily fluid. Similar materials were used to create a full boudoir chandelier. Terence Koh graduated from Emily Carr Institute of Art in Vancouver. Since 2003, he has exhibited with Peres Projects in Los Angeles and Berlin four times, and, in 2006, he exhibited at the Kunsthalle Zurich in Zurich, Switzerland. Koh is currently exhibiting with the Whitney Museum in New York City through May, which is his first major U.S. solo museum exhibition. | |||
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