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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.