David Altmejd explores the constitution and disintegration of the self, producing sculptures that expand the range of figurative representation. Beginning with the human form, Altmejd uses a vast array of materials and processes to excavate and fragment the body, making material the intangible forces of mind, imagination, and soul. Much like the earth’s regenerative cycle, Altmejd creates moments of growth from destruction; where a figure is wounded or cracked open, crystals, prisms, and fruiting bodies breed. The synthesis of decay and regeneration is at the core of the artist’s practice and follows a belief aligned with Confucian, Ayurvedic, and Tibetan notions that within each body, the universe is contained. Like a living thing, the works appear as if in a constant state of evolution, buzzing with life force and reflecting the mysteries of consciousness. Says Altmejd, “I like the idea that figures can contain the infinite within themselves – there is infinity outwards and also inwards.”

A pioneer in the fiber arts, Olga de Amaral is renowned for a technique that incorporates fiber, paint, gesso and precious metals, infusing two-dimensional textile structures with a sculptural presence that seamlessly blends art, craft, and design. During the 1950s, she trained in architectural drafting in her hometown of Bogotá, Colombia where she spent much of her life working, although European and American influences were also strong. She went on to study textiles at Cranbrook Academy of Art in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan by the encouragement of friend and architect Hans Drew, who she recalls telling her that the school was “more than a place to study design and crafts… it was a place that valued freedom.” It would take a decade of focusing on functional textile design—furniture upholstery and clothing—before Amaral would wholly embrace the idea of freedom within her practice as she began approaching the art of fiber in an unparalleled manner. Driving her practice are precious commodities such as gold and gesso, threaded into Amaral’s works to demonstrate her prioritization of conceptual aesthetics over utility. Like Yamasaki, Amaral sought to make her work approachable and welcoming, and succeeded in this intention by rebelling against preconceived notions of what defines luxury; when her works are displayed, a moment of grandeur and opulence is offered to all.

Radcliffe Bailey is a painter, sculptor, and mixed media artist who utilizes the layering of imagery, culturally resonant materials and text to explore themes of ancestry, race, migration and collective memory. Through individual experience and recounted histories, Bailey finds his point of departure, using a collection of found objects to honor the magnitude of sacrifice across generations of the African diaspora. Poetic and reverent, Bailey’s sculptures and installations seem to create a unified past, present, and future. With Untitled, the artist presents a bust created from a death mask mold he obtained in Belgium from an antiques dealer, the original likely taken from the Congo during Belgian colonization. The bust subverts Western formalism to address social and historical concerns, and mirrors the documentation in European museums of abuses in the Belgian-ruled Congo. A mixture of black paint and white sand evokes constellations of stars and was inspired by the beaches of Jamaica, an important location in the history of the slave trade.

Judy Bowman is a Detroit-based artist who reframes narratives around the Black experience, rooted in scenes that have nurtured her upbringing in Detroit’s Eastside community and Black Bottom neighborhood. Bowman’s emotionally charged mixed-media collages represent everyday life, with vibrant portraits that reflect human relationships, love, faith and moments in time and place. Inspired by the work of Romare Bearden, Kerry James Marshall, and Elizabeth Catlett, Bowman’s collages serve as archives of Black life and resilience; style and pride; music and spirituality. Part of a series of works about her mother, I Kiss a Boy and His Name was Fred came about during a new phase in their relationship. A retired mother of ten, the artist now spends her days making art and caring for her mother, who she has gotten to know in an entirely new light. The work was inspired by an afternoon conversation on their porch, when Bowman asked her mother about her first kiss and she lit up: “She was so emotional and nostalgic. She went there, went back. It was the look in her eyes.” Bowman has work in the permanent collection of the Detroit Institute of Arts, is a 2021 Kresge Fellow, and a 2021 Alain Locke Recognition Art Awardee.

Artist duo Elmgreen & Dragset integrate art, architecture, installation, public art and performance in their expansive practice, embracing the ability to shift aesthetics, styles, and mediums across unique works. The concepts that inform their practice are pulled from countless sources: childhood experiences, middle-brow aesthetics, and queer theory to name a few. Connecting the abundance of concepts across various bodies of work is a common foundation built on skepticism of conventional ideologies and power constructs, exploring the discourse that can arise when local environments or familiar objects are wildly recontextualized. The duo’s conceptualized phrase ‘Powerless Structures’ captures the glorious futility of their oversized bronze telescope A Greater Perspective, which was commissioned by New York’s High Line in 2015. The grand scale of the sculpture deems it completely inaccessible to the viewer, and its production in heavy bronze disallows the telescope’s prescribed use. By exploiting this observational instrument of discovery, the artists propose that the perspectives of the great explorers who shaped history and inform today’s culture are outdated, narrow, and have failed to cater to the diverse world around us. Involving the public environment is a crucial component of their work, as the relationship between space and object stages a unique strangeness in a familiar world, inviting art lovers and passersby alike to engage in a whimsical encounter that celebrates our communities’ shared spaces.

Through his dreamlike compositions achieved by a distinct use of line, pattern, and radiant color, Friedman seeks the state of mind he encounters within nature. Though his works have elemental and naturalistic qualities, they are built not by reference to the physical aspects of the outdoors, but by the flow and movement within nature to address questions about the practice of painting itself. Like the New York Abstract Expressionists of the 1950s, he explores abstraction in order to touch on concepts that are more existential in nature - life and death, love, spirituality, and a range of universal human emotions that allow the viewer to manifest their own pure and innate response. Friedman’s “Beach Paintings” demonstrate his ability to move between representation and abstraction with seeming ease and spontaneity. Assembling ethereal scenes of sunset and sunrise, the imbued colors are not a reflection of reality, but rather a consideration of the emotions felt when immersed in such a sublime environment. From afar, the paintings are pictorial, however, upon close examination, Friedman’s tenacity and presence of mind becomes evident. By aid of a long-haired brush, Friedman intentionally avoids the complete elimination of visible paint strokes in a heightened effort to radiate a meditative energy that transcends the canvas, and carries through to the viewer’s experience of the piece.

Matt Kleberg's compositions are stationed in the realm of abstraction as expressed through the artist’s regular use of forms such as bars, stripes, archways, and radiating beams of light. Pulling from architectural and ornamental references, his works suggest an interest in spaces that welcome entrance or action; They encompass an extensive reservoir of historical precedents: ancient Roman paintings and mosaics, early renaissance images, and Baroque architectural details, as well as modernist industrial design, post-war Pop, and Color Field paintings. Through the lens of color and geometry, Kleberg builds on traditional methods of abstraction to forge a contemporary visual language reliant on formal theory and defined by an embrace of intuition. Clear references to Frank Stella can be detected in Kleberg’s work, yet unlike Stella—stark and precise in his mark-making—, Kleberg disregards the use of rigid mathematical measurements when painting, relying solely on means of the hand and eye. The compositional defects that result humanize his work, and celebrate the flawed nature of reality. Kleberg approaches his art with a unique and progressive flare that grounds his audience in the beauty of embodied human perception.

Paul Kremer is a Houston-based painter who creates distinctly organic minimalist abstractions. Kremer uses traditional methods, working with fluid acrylics on raw canvas to achieve heavily formal compositions that are softened by organic curves and the permeability of their support. Like Yamasaki, Kremer draws from a tradition of geometric formalism but aims to bring life to his abstractions by infusing instinct and humanism. Continuously evolving, the artist retains links in palette, formal cues and essentialist virtues across series. What stands out in Kremer’s work is the manner in which his flat fields of color embody a liveliness rarely seen in such precise works, as they are rooted in the immediacy and primacy of the everyday. Titles give cues to the work’s inspiration and insight into their real-life allusion; what results is an enjoyable connection to the abstraction’s referential qualities. Kremer gives life to a visual vocabulary that “communicates directly with its audience via bodily association rather than linguistic convention".

Alicja Kwade is a multimedia artist who works within the space where nature, science, philosophy and perception meet, challenging our most basic assumptions about the structures that seem to govern our very existence. The artist is renowned for her ability to succinctly question and sublimate natural phenomena, using nature as a tool to investigate our senses and awareness. ParaPivot (Solidsky) is a continuance of the ideas explored during the creation of ParaPivot I and II for the Roof Garden at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in 2019. The sculpture consists of powder-coated steel frames that intersect at oblique angles, supporting four spheres made of Azul Macaubas, a unique Brazilian quartzite that is veined with auburn and blue. Kwade admires the patterns of sediment in the material: “[The spheres] look like planets because they are stones that are millions of years old - like compressed time.” The ParaPivot series of sculptures seem to hold within them the possibility of movement, and are inspired by an astrolabe - an ancient astronomical computer that was designed to explore the nature of time and how it relates to the position of the sun and stars in the sky.

Austrian artist Erwin Wurm is best known for his sustained explorations of the material and conceptual boundaries of sculptural form. Reimagining reality, Wurm takes a satirical approach to Formalism, using humor as a tool to capture the immediate attention of the viewer and provoke self-reflection through the absurd presentation of recognizable, mundane objects. For Wurm, all forms—including our own bodies—can be considered and activated as sculpture, as with his One Minute Sculptures that invite the viewer to become a work of art for a moment through a performance guided by the artist’s instruction. Wurm’s sculptural concerns as they relate to the human body often transcend the physical participation of the viewer; the artist commonly attributes human traits to inanimate objects—such as in his Tall Bags series where human appendages are given to luxury handbags—to demonstrate the socially reinforced implications that these objects hold through anthropomorphic forms. A part of this distinguished series, Wait (Taschenskulpturen) reflects the artist’s belief that objects are an extension of their owner, used to define and communicate personal identity. The work serves as a mirror of sorts, intending to highlight the power we have allowed material objects to hold over an individual’s value or worthiness in capitalist society.