Sound and Vision

Kevin Umaña was born in 1989 and grew up in El Salvador and Los Angeles. He received a BFA from San Francisco State University in 2014 and lives and works in Kansas City.  Umaña is the co-founder of The Ekru Project, an artist-run Kansas City gallery focused on contemporary, emerging and underrepresented artists. In 2017, he created a permanent installation at The United Nations Headquarters in New York City. He has completed residencies at The Center for Book Arts, New York City (2019); Plop Residency, London, England (2018); and SIM Residency, Reykjavik, Iceland (2018). His work was featured in “Pattern Recognition,” curated by Amy Lincoln at Sperone Westwater in 2022. Institutions owning his work include The United Nations Art Collection, Fidelity Mutual Funds Collection, Center for Book Arts Library and The Marin Museum of Contemporary Art.

Madeleine Bialke (b. 1991 in New York) received her BFA in Studio Art from the Plattsburgh State University of New York, and earned an MFA in Painting at the Boston University, Massachusetts. Recent solo exhibitions include Death Motel at Newchild Gallery, Antwerp;  Nine Lives at Steve Turner, Los Angeles; Long Summer at Huxley- Parlour, London. She has exhibited in group shows at Max Hetzler, Alexander Berggruen, Berkshire Botanic Gardens, CICA Vancouver, and Dinner Gallery.  Madeleine Bialke was the Artist-in-Residence at North Western Oklahoma State University in 2018 and was awarded the John Walker MFA Painting and Sculpture Award in 2016. Her work has been included in the Brooklyn Rail, The Boston Globe, and New American Paintings. She lives and works in Brooklyn, New York.

Sophie Treppendahl is a painter currently based in New Orleans, Louisiana. She received her BA from College of Charleston in Charleston, SC in 2013. She currently has a solo exhibition at Philip Martin Gallery in Los Angeles, CA titled "Take Care of Yourself". She has had solo shows at Johannson Projects in Oakland in May 2022, Quirk Gallery in Richmond in November 2020, and Indianapolis Art Center in June 2019. Sophie is represented by Philip Martin Gallery in LA and Jack Hanley Gallery in New York, and has a solo show planned for the fall at Jack Hanley. Treppendahl has been awarded residencies with the Golden Foundation in New Berlin, NY, 100 W Corsicana in Corsicana, TX, and The Wassaic Project in Wassaic, NY.

Ludovic Nkoth is a painter based in New York. Born in Cameroon in 1994, he moved with his family to Spartanburg, North Carolina, when he was 13 years old. After completing his undergraduate studies at UNC, he moved to New York to attend Hunter College's MFA program, which he finished in 2021. Last year, Nkoth was awarded a prestigious residency through the Académie des Beaux-Arts in Paris, where he is currently living. Among the key comparisons for Nkoth’s work are Kerry James Marshall, who similarly taps into art history to enliven present-day subjects; Noah Davis, whose work is also sophisticated and subtle; and Alex Katz, who maintained a long career and a unique sense of artistic vision amid rapidly changing fashions.

Philip Akkerman (Vaassen, The Netherlands, 1957) is a painter of self-portraits. He studied at the Royal Academy of the Arts in The Hague and Ateliers ’63 in Haarlem. In 1981 he began to paint self-portraits. His oeuvre now nears 5,000 self-portraits and is unique in its multiformity. Every self-portrait is unusual and the extraordinary variations appear endless. He lives in The Hague. Philip has had solo shows at Derek Eller Gallery, BravinLee, Galerie Bob van Orsouw, A-M-G5 in Glasgow, Torch in Amsterdam amongst others. He’s had numerous group shows over the years and his work has been covered in numerous publications.

Suzan Shutan is a CT based Artist, Curator, Educator and recipient of multiple grants including an Artslink grant, Art Matters grant, Berkshire Taconic Foundation grant, two NY Foundation for Contemporary Art grants and three CT Commission Artist Fellowships. She has attended artist residencies at Bemis Foundation NE, Yaddo NY, Proyecto Ace, Argentina. Her work has been featured in 23 solo exhibits including Zacheta National Gallery in Warsaw Poland, Aldrich Museum CT, The Painting Center, NY, University of Massachusetts Hampton Gallery, Amherst, Islip Art Museum NY, Kenise Barnes Gallery NY, Garrison Art Center, NY, Housatonic Museum, CT, Five Points Center for the Visual Arts, CT, Arts & Cultural Center of Florida and has had work exhibited in 198 group exhibitions throughout Germany, Poland, Ukraine, France, Holland, Australia, Canada, Argentina, Columbia and USA. Her work has been published in the books Paper Art Installations II, Post Road Literary Books and has been reviewed by Smithsonian Magazine, Sculpture Magazine, NY Times, Art New England Magazine, Artscope, High Performance, and blogs such as Art Spiel & Yale University Radio/Praxis Museum of Non Visible Art. Public commissions include Log-Me-In Headquarters, Boston, MA and Sloan Kettering Hospital, NY and her work can be found in private and museum collections as well as viewed on Artsy, First Dibs, Geoform, Instagram (@sshutan), FB, Pinterest, Linked in and at www.suzanshutan.com. Suzan has worked as a Museum Director & Curator of Education, Director of a Municipal Public Art Program, and has taught at RISD, University of Massachusetts, University of Nebraska, Quinnipiac University, currently teaches in low residency MFA programs including Lesley College at Harvard, MA and has taught Sculpture for fifteen years at Housatonic Community College

Some highlights of conversations about music with artists interviewed in 2022. A year end look back at some music talk with Alice Tippet, Jose Lerma, Karen Krifka, Andrew Ross, Delphine Hennelly, Jean Pierre Roy and Evan Mast.

Cynthia Daignault received a BA in Art and Art History from Stanford University. She has presented solo exhibitions and projects at many major museums and galleries, including the New Museum of Contemporary art, Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, MASS MoCA, the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, the Brooklyn Museum of Art, and White Columns. Her work is in numerous public collections, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Dallas Museum of Art, the Walker Art Center, and the Baltimore Museum of Art. Daignault is a regularly published author, and editor of numerous publications. The first major monograph on her work, Light Atlas, was published in 2019, and a new paperback edition will be released in early 2023. She is the recipient of numerous awards, including a 2019 Pollock-Krasner Foundation Grant, a 2016 Foundation for the Contemporary Arts Award, a 2011 Rema Hort Foundation Award, and a 2010 MacDowell Artist Fellowship. She lives and works in Baltimore, Maryland.

Anthony Cudahy (b. 1989 Ft. Myers, FL, US) completed an MFA at Hunter College, New York, NY (US) in 2020. He has had solo exhibitions with Hales Gallery, New York, NY (US) in 2021; Semiose Gallery, Paris (FR) in 2021 and 1969 Gallery, New York, NY (US) in 2018. He has been shown in various international group exhibitions and was included in GRIMM’s Equal Affections exhibition in Amsterdam (NL) in 2021.  His work can be found in collections of The Hort Family Collection, New York, NY (US), Institute of Contemporary Art, Miami, FL (US), Xiao Museum of Contemporary Art, Rizhao (CN), and Les Arts au Mur Arthothèque de Pessac, Pessac (FR). He has a current show at GRIMM a pearl caught between my teeth, an exhibition of new paintings and works on paper on view at its Amsterdam gallery space through December 22, 2022

Kamrooz Aram was born in Shiraz, Iran and lives and works in Brooklyn, NY, USA. Recent exhibitions include: Elusive Ornament at Peter Blum Gallery in New York, Privacy, An Exhibition at The Arts Club of Chicago, Un Objet, Un Geste at Galerie Mitterrand in Paris, Lives of Forms: Kamrooz Aram and Iman Issa, Z33 House for Contemporary Art, Design and Architecture, Hasselt, Belgium; The New Arabesque, Nature Morte Gallery, New Delhi, India; An Object, A Gesture, A Décor, FLAG Art Foundation, New York; In Memory of the Arabesque, Green Art Gallery, Dubai, UAE; Focus: Kamrooz Aram, The Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth; Ancient Blue Ornament, The Atlanta Contemporary; Ornament for Indifferent Architecture, Museum Dhondt-Dhaenens, Deurle, Belgium. His work has been reviewed in the NY Times, The New Yorker, ArtNews, ArtForum and many other publications. Kamrooz Aram was born in Shiraz, Iran and lives and works in Brooklyn, NY, USA. Recent exhibitions include: Elusive Ornament at Peter Blum Gallery in New York, Privacy, An Exhibition at The Arts Club of Chicago, Un Objet, Un Geste at Galerie Mitterrand in Paris, Lives of Forms: Kamrooz Aram and Iman Issa, Z33 House for Contemporary Art, Design and Architecture, Hasselt, Belgium; The New Arabesque, Nature Morte Gallery, New Delhi, India; An Object, A Gesture, A Décor, FLAG Art Foundation, New York; In Memory of the Arabesque, Green Art Gallery, Dubai, UAE; Focus: Kamrooz Aram, The Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth; Ancient Blue Ornament, The Atlanta Contemporary; Ornament for Indifferent Architecture, Museum Dhondt-Dhaenens, Deurle, Belgium. His work has been reviewed in the NY Times, The New Yorker, ArtNews, ArtForum and many other publications.