Featured Artists

Geurra de la Paz

Cuban born American artists Alain Guerra and Neraldo de la Paz are the collabortive duo Guerra de la Paz . Originally sourcing their materials from the waste bins of second-hand goods shipping companies in Miami’s Little Haiti, Guerra De La Paz make their sculptures from the discarded items of daily life. Viewing their practice as a kind of ‘archaeology’, their work engages with the history inherent in common debris and its possibility for recycled usage.

Jodie Carey

London-based Jodie Carey received a BA from Goldsmits College and an MA Sculpture fro the Royal Colleg of Art, London. “Jodie Carey produces works that display a high level of skill, intense focus, obsessive and repetitive craftsmanship. While providing the viewer with an object of beauty, the aesthetics of her pieces function only to serve as an eloquent framework for unsettling and determined dialogues.” – SeventeenGallery.com

Sandow Birk

A graduate of the Otis Art Institute of Parsons School of Design in Los Angeles, Sandow Birk's work often incorporates references to his native West Coast, and his many travels around the nation and abroad. His art has frequently explored social issues such as inner-city violence, graffiti, prisons, the Iraq War and more recently, the Qur’an. Sandow's works have been shown in dozens of museum and gallery exhibitions, and appear in many public and museum collections, including the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, San Jose Museum of Art, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art. He is the recipient of an NEA grant and Guggenheim, Fulbright, Getty, and City of Los Angeles fellowships, among other honors and distinctions.

Jessica Charlesworth

Since graduating in 2007 from the Royal College of Art's Design Interactions program in the UK, Jessica Charlesworth has run her own practice conducting speculative design projects and exploring alternative futures that new technologies and science may hold through an interdisciplinary approach.  One such project, with design collaborator Marei Wollersberger - Citizen Evolution: The Future of Vienna - was exhibited at the MAK Vienna in Austria, and has become part of its permanent collection.  Jessica was also recently exhibited at the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago.  To learn more about Jessica and the emerging field of speculative design, visit her website.

Hugo Crosthwaite

Born in Tijuana, Mexico, Hugo Crosthwaite graduated from San Diego State University with a B.A. in Applied Arts and Sciences. Using only graphite and charcoal, Crosthwaite explores the chaos and beauty of his hometown, as well as the complexities of human expression – everything from alienation to acceptance. Crosthwaite has been the subject of many solo exhibitions, including Brutal Beauty – Drawings by Hugo Crosthwaite at the San Diego Museum of Art where he completed a monumental drawing over a two-week period on site. His work has been shown at galleries throughout the U.S. and Mexico. Crosthwaite was also part of a traveling group exhibition organized by the Museum of Contemporary Art, San Diego entitled TRANSactions: Contemporary Latin American and Latino Art. For more on the artist, please visit his website.  

Crosthwaite’s work, Death March, was specially commissioned for the Morbid Curiosity exhibition. A limited number of posters are available for purchase through his gallery.

Wilson Hand Kidde

Wilson Hand Kidde was born in the United States but grew up in Rio de Janeiro, Paris and London. Wilson attended Princeton University and in the 80's worked in the New York art world for galleries, publishing and related areas. Today he works in his New York City studio in diverse media, including encaustic, acrylic, oil and watercolor painting, sculpture, and photography. He refers to his skull creations as Skulptures. The first, Disco Skull (2000), was begun as a sort of meditation on decades of devastation and loss of friends many suffered owing to the AIDS pandemic. The subsequent Skulptures continued along these lines with variations, ending with the final Skulpture, Katrina, completed on the fifth anniversary of the hurricane that devastated New Orleans.

Ron Pippin

When he was younger, Ron Pippin created figures that were his emissaries in the great battle between Good and Evil. Later the struggle shifted to one of trying to integrate the self and move from egotistical concerns to those of serving and caring for others. Motivated by experiences in his early life, Ron still feels the need to keep digging into the "dark material" that lies within all of us in order to reach a condition of clarity and light. He describes his work as "visual prayers" that aim for healing and "grace." His art draws on religious and mystical impulses without belonging to any church or sect. Ron feels compelled to elaborate the universe he has created by constantly making new figures to populate it.

Michael Pugh

Michael Pugh's work draws from primitive cultures, images from dreams, and real life experiences. The style inherent in nearly all his sculptures blends a traditional academic approach to formalism with vagaries of a personal nature. Michael's work has been described as 'pop archaic', a term coined by poet/critic Michael Anania to describe artworks that combine images and techniques from popular culture with materials from myth, archeology, prehistory, and tribal iconography. In his imagery, Michael Pugh tries to avoid referencing specific times, places or preconceived narratives, believing instead that the value of art as a provocative and benevolent vice can be better understood when it is detached, otherworldly, fantastic or enigmatic.

Marcos Raya

Marcos Raya counts the works of the Mexican muralists Siquieros, Rivera and Orozco; the absurdist ideas of Dada and Surrealism; American Pop Art; the Chicago Imagist School; and literature and cinematography among the many influences on his artwork. He considers his work to be non-academic, drawing inspiration from the streets, hospitals, factories and life. A resident of Chicago since 1964, Marcos received a full scholarship from the University of Illinois to attend Windsor Mountain, a prestigious private school in Lenox, Massachusetts. In his artist statement, Marcos considers “fragments of a ceremonial circumscribing of space” to be evident in his works through an “extension of his own personal space, breaking boundaries.”

Roger Reutimann

Born in Switzerland in 1961, Roger Reutimann began life as a pianist and pursued music studies  at the Conservatory of Zurich. His musical travels provided artistic influences drawn from the museums and rich cultural heritage of Europe from an early age. He became a professional sculptor in 2007, dedicated to producing creative, original and high-quality artwork in limited editions of 2, 6 or 9 – most of which has a social critical content expressed through the human figure. Among Roger’s other achievements is the design/marketing of his own series of award-winning lamps that have been featured in numerous European art and design magazines. Roger currently lives and works in Boulder, Colorado.

Francois Robert

Born in Switzerland and currently based in the United States, photographer Francois Robert is widely renowned for his commercial work and equally provocative fine art photography that covers a wide range of subjects, from candid street/travel photographs and evocative Polaroid transfers to nudes and still lifes.  His first book, Face to Face (1996), was sold out in Europe and the U.S., and has been followed by Faces (2000), published by Chronicle Books.  Francois’ work has appeared in Graphis, Communication Arts and other notable industry publications.  His clients have included Crate & Barrel, Coca-Cola, the Chicago Board of Trade, BP, Polaroid Corporation, Western Union, just to name a few.

Amy Sarkisian

Sculptor Amy Sarkisian received a BFA from Kent State University in Ohio in 1994 and an MFA from UCLA in 1997.  In 2000, she participated in a group show in Los Angeles called Mysterious Prey, which got reviewed and landed her work on the cover of Artforum.  She was picked up by Atelier Cardenas Bellanger (Paris) and Sister (L.A.) in 2004; invited to the Los Angeles Artists Pension Trust in 2008; and joined the artist collective, WPA, in 2010.  Amy has exhibited throughout the U.S. and Europe, including the Wolverhampton Art Gallery and The London Institute (UK), The New Museum in New York, and LACE and The Mak Center in L.A.

Caleb Weintraub

Caleb Weintraub’s paintings and sculptures are far-flung narratives that examine ritual, memory, and collective fear/fantasies. Caleb combines anachronistic props and improbable settings to present situations both viable and virtual. His works are distinguished by an unlikely use of materials, such as utilizing paint to mimic sculptural marks. Caleb received a BFA from Boston University and an MFA from the University of Pennsylvania, where he studied with John Moore, Alfred Leslie, Jackie Tileston and others. He has had solo exhibitions in Chicago, Philadelphia and Brooklyn, and appeared in art fairs and group shows in London, Zurich, New York, Chicago and Los Angeles. Caleb recently received a Lilly Foundation grant for a large-scale installation debuting in Chicago in 2012.