Luis Gispert produces evocative photographs, multimedia installations, and sound sculptures that highlight an investigation of “high culture” notions through hip hop references. Gispert is a graduate of Chicago Art Institute in film (1996), and from the Yale School of Art in sculpture (2001). The following year Gispert exhibited in the Whitney Biennial, and in 2003 the artist had a solo exhibition with the Whitney Museum. This was followed by exhibits in Art Pace, San Antonio and the Hood Museum at Dartmouth College. Gispert is currently represented by Fredric Snitzer Gallery in Miami and by Zach Feuer Gallery in NYC. The artist also directed the film “Stereomongrel” with L.A. based filmmaker Jeffrey Reed.

This April, Peres Projects in L.A. will present Mathew Greene in the artist’s fourth solo exhibition with the gallery since 2003. Green creates large drawings and paintings that contain images of pornography, horticulture, horror films, and overall debauchery in an apocalyptic post 9/11 aesthetic. Greene has seen much success recently with a feature in Artforum (January 2004), and in Vitamin D, a new survey of drawing by Phaidon Books. Greene is featured on the artist collective site sevenseven, with artist John Espinosa, and had a recent interview with The Fanzine. Recent international exhibitions include “We Are the Dead,” Modern Art Inc., London, UK, and “Translation,” Palais de Tokyo, Paris, France.

Best known for her ambitious sculptural installations like Kitchen and Backyard, Liz Lou creates work with luminous patterned surfaces that appear to be a type of painting, but are actually full size rooms completely covered in glass beading. Liza Lou’s work embraces the American visionary tradition simultaneously operating as conceptual and craft. In 2002 Lou had an exhibition titled Testimony at Deitch Projects, New York, and received the MacArthur Foundation Fellowship . That was followed by a solo show at Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac, Paris in 2004, and most recently an exhibition with White Cube in London this past spring. A feature article was written about the exhibition on The Guardian Unlimited.

Helnwein is a painter and conceptual artist, concerned primarily with psychological and sociological anxiety, historical issues, and political topics. As a result of this, his work is often considered provocative and controversial. His early work consists mainly of hyper-realistic watercolors, depicting wounded children, as well as performances, often with children, in public spaces. Most of his new work is oil and acrylic on canvas of physically and emotionally wounded children have been seen as metaphors for larger global issues. Helnwein studied at the University of Visual Art in Vienna, and his works are in the collections of the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and the Denver Art Museum, among many others. His work has recently been cited in an article by the SF Chronicle and the NY Arts Magazine for his participation on a show at 21C Museum in Louisville, Kentucky.

Photorealist painter Damian Loeb just closed an exhibition in his home state of Connecticut at the Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum this August. Loeb creates manipulated digital collages of contemporary sources and then renders the images in oil on linen. At an early age Loeb moved to NYC with his high school friend artist Moby, and in 1999 he had his first solo exhibition in NYC at White Columns. Soon after he began showing with the Mary Boone Gallery (new exhibition opening Feb.2007), and most recently the artist had a solo exhibition with Jablonka Galerie in Germany .

Homostatic Feedback or Natural Body Water is the title of a new piece by Tavares Strachan. In this work the artist collected his own urine, which he then transformed into purified drinking water using a fabricated distillation system. The work will be on exhibit this month at Pierogi in Brooklyn along side three other major works. The Ronald Feldman Gallery has also sponsored projects by Strachen including the Artic Ice Project, where the artist actually cut a block of ice from a frozen river in the Artic and shipped it to the Bahamas where it was kept in a massive freezer powered by only solar energy. Strachan graduated this year from Yale School of Art, and while at school Strachan directed the excavation of a 3000 lb. portion, 56″ x 56″ of Crown Street in New Haven, Connecticut. The work included sidewalk, earth, a parking meter, a street sign and accompanying air. This work was later exhibited at the Luggage Store Galley in San Francisco and was featured in article by Rhizome.

Belgian artist Berlinde De Bruyckere has been working with wool blankets that cover and protect — as the material for her sculptures and installations. Recently she has created a series of horses by covering casts of horse bodies with fabrics. Each figure is malformed and fragmentary, often lacking the fundamental elements of a muzzle, ears or hooves. Bruyckere has been featured with Saatchi Gallery, but this month will mark her first solo exhibition in the UK. Hauser & Wirth in London will exhibit new sculptures, and recently Bruyckere exhibited with Pont Center for Contemporary Art in the Netherlands.