English artist Simon Henwood has worked through a wide range of artistic media including painting, film, 3D animation, the production of two magazines, and a over a dozen children’s publications. Through this experimentation his work has remained centered on adolescent childhood. Henwood recently created a music video for musician and fine artist Devendra Banhart, and is developing a new animated TV series titled ‘Johnny Pumpkin‘. The artist received a BA Honors Degree in Mixed Arts, Painting, Animation, and Illustration from Exeter College, Oxford University. Simon Henwood has also exhibited with The Hospital, London, The Hammer Museum UCLA, and PS1, NYC.

Chinese artist Wei Dong continues the tradition of the Chinese landscape through oil painting, but interrupts the conventional imagery by using women draped in sexuality in the foreground. This imagery is a metaphor for how “sex, violence, and popular culture dominate traditional morals.” After abandoning ink on paper as his primary medium, Wei Dong found oil painting to facilitate his imagery more clearly. Wei Dong graduated from the Department of Fine Arts, Capital Normal University, and is currently exhibiting with a group of Chinese artists this month at the Stux Gallery in NYC titled “Chinese Relativity: Part I. In 2005 Wei Dong had a solo exhibition titled “I Wanna Fly” at the Chinese Contemporary Art Gallery in Beijing, China. Other Exhibitions include Plum Blossoms Gallery, Hong Kong, and The Armory Show, NYC (2005).

This month at James Harris Gallery in Seattle, artist Roy McMakin is exhibiting new photographs titled “Actual”. This is an appropriate title considering that each object in the exhibition has been photographed, sometimes over 100 times, and then digitally collaged together to offer a true to life scale and perspective. This show is an extension of a body of work that deals with the domestic object. McMakin is an accomplished designer and conceptual artist who often employs a sense of humor in his work. The artist received his MFA from the University of California at San Diego, and has exhibited with the Matthew Marks Gallery, NYC, and with Mark Selwyn Fine Art in L.A. The artist is also currently on view in a new series title “Apex” with the Portland Art Museum.

Ron Mueck had an early career as a model maker and puppeteer for children’s television and films, notably the film Labyrinth for which he also contributed the voice of Ludo. Now his sculptures play heavily with scale, continuing to reference his experience with set design. He became instantly popular after being picked up by collector Charles Saatchi and included in the Sensation show in New York. This is where his sculpture Dead Dad, an astonishingly lifelike 3/4 scale sculpture of his father as a corpse lying on the floor, drew considerable attention and launched his career in fine art. His five meter high sculpture Boy 1999 was a feature in the Millennium Dome and later exhibited in the Venice Biennale. His new work is currently being exhibited with the Brooklyn Museum and was recently noted with the Washington Post.

Roxy Paine’s inventions range from elaborate contraptions to deceptively simple forms. Often employing technical proficiency, trompe l’oeil, and ambiguity, Paine investigates the nature of reality and artificiality. The artist was born in 1966 in New York, where he currently lives and works. He attended the Pratt Institute and recently had solo shows at James Cohan Gallery, New York; Galerie Thomas Schulte, Berlin; and Musee d’Art Americain Giverny, France. The artist exhibited a public sculpture in Central Park titled “Bluff” for the Whitney Biennial (2002). Bluff was a fifty-foot high tree made of reflective stainless steel complete with a two-foot-wide trunk that supported more than 5000 pounds of cantilevered branches. The artist was also featured recently in Art in America (May 2006).

Charlie White is a photographer who constructs images with complex sets and fabricated characters. White is part of the “post-photography” school of hyper constructed photos, where the viewer must ask if the scene is accurate or intentionally falsified. White graduated from the School of the Visual Art in NYC and the Art Center College of Design, Pasadena, CA. He began his career creating photography steeped in special effects and images of pornography. The artist created a body of photos titled “Understanding Joshua” as a metaphor and poster boy for all men who’ve ever suffered rejection and low self-esteem. Joshua is a visual metaphor for male vulnerability. NPR and PBS featured the series, and in 2006 the artist presented a series titled “Everything is American” in Wohnmaschine, Berlin, f a Projects, London, and at Andrea Rosen Gallery, New York.

German artist Florian Sussmayr began his artistic career by exclusively creating portraits. Sussmayr’s new work depicts emotions often excluded from civilized daily life, such as ecstatic excitement, intoxication, and the lack of sexual boundaries. The subjects are taken from puck and rock social scenes, and act as an investigation of the personal attributes of that society. The artist is represented by Gallerie Rudiger Schottle, and the Johnen Galerie in Berlin. In 2007 the artist will be exhibiting with the Modern Institute, Glasgow, GB.