Sound and Vision

Vivien Zhang was born in 1990 in Beijing. She is a London-based artist who grew up in China, Kenya and Thailand. She received her MA in Painting from the Royal College of Art, London in 2014, after completing her undergraduate at the Slade School of Fine Art, UCL, London in 2012. Vivien’s recent solo exhibitions include New Peril, TANK Shanghai, Shanghai (2020); Soft Borders, Lawrie Shabibi, Dubai (2020); Codescape, Long March Space, Beijing (2018); and Uzumaki, House of Egorn, Berlin (2018). Her works have been displayed in numerous group exhibitions, including After Image, Mamoth, London (2020); Echo Chamber, Plus-One Gallery, Antwerp (2019); and Digital Natives (with Thomas van Linge), The RYDER, London (2017). She was named on the 2017 Forbes 30 Under 30 Asia list, and is the recipient of the Abbey Award 2016-17 at the British School at Rome and the Chadwell Award 2014-15. Vivien is represented by Pilar Corrias Gallery (London) and Long March Space (Beijing).

Gianna Commito is an artist who earned a BFA from The New York State College of Ceramics at Alfred University, Alfred, NY and an MFA from the University of Iowa. She has been included in exhibitions at Fleisher/Ollman Gallery, Philadelphia, PA; The Akron Art Museum, Akron, OH; Lehman College Art Department, New York, NY; Webster State University, Ogden, UT; MOCA Cleveland, Cleveland, OH; National Academy, New York, NY; and the Drawing Center, New York, NY; among others. Gianna is the recipient of numerous awards and fellowships, including the Ohio Arts Council Award; the Cleveland Art Prize; Artist in Residence at Yaddo, Saratoga Springs, NY; and the Pollock-Krasner Foundation Grant. In 2018, her work was featured in the inaugural edition of the FRONT International: Cleveland Triennial for Contemporary Art in Cleveland, OH. She lives and works in Kent, OH, where she is a Professor of Painting at Kent State University and is represented by Rachel Uffner Gallery in New York, NY.

Jean Nagai is an artist (b.1979 Seattle, WA)based out of Los Angeles, California. He received a BA from The Evergreen State College in 2004 and his work has been shown at venues like Pt. 2 in Oakland, California, The Hole Gallery in New York, Unit London, Mini Galerie in Amsterdam amongst others.

Anna Park is an artist that lives and works in Brooklyn, New York. Originally from South Korea, she moved to the United States to pursue a formal art education. For eight years she lived in Utah and studied at the Visual Art Institute. She then came to New York to attend Pratt Institute for her undergraduate degree. After attending two years there, she went to the New York Academy of Art to complete the Certificate of Fine Arts Program. She has shown at T293 in Rome, Ross Kramer Gallery in Long Island, The Drawing Center, Blum and Poe in LA, Half Gallery in NYC, Anna Zorina in NYC, The Hole, The Garage in Amsterdam amongst many other venues, Her work has been covered in Juxtapoz and Hi Fructose and others.

Born and raised in New York City, Guy Richards Smit is known for his paintings, video installations, musicals and performances exploring the themes of narcissism, desire, power and failure. Using pop cultural forms such as Stand Up comedy, Pop Music, Comic Books, New York Times’ front pages and even television Sitcoms he has conveyed a sharply observant cultural and political message with philosophical observations and humor. Writing in the New York Times in 2013, Roberta Smith called his work a “ …tour de force that showcases his considerable talents for satire, stand up, endurance art and painting…” His work has been seen at Hallwalls, Buffalo NY (2018), SPRING/BREAK Art Show, NY (2016, 2017), Charlie James Gallery, Los Angeles CA (2016) The Pompidou Center, Paris (2015) and in biennials in Havana, Valencia and at ARCOMadrid in 2008 and Dublin Contemporary in 2011. Solo exhibitions include Pierogi Gallery (2014), Schroeder Romero & Shredder, New York, USA 2011; Fred [London] Ltd., London, UK 2009; Nausea 2, Premier Series, Museum of Modern Art, New York, 2004; QED, Los Angeles, CA in 2006. He has received awards including the Penny McCall Foundation Award in 2004 and the Foundation for Contemporary Art Grant in 2016 In 2016 he completed a 5 episode three camera sitcom called The Grossmalerman! Show with legendary director Joshua White (Max Headroom, Seinfeld etc) and began a suite of paintings on paper called A Mountain of Skulls and Not One I Recognize. A monograph of the project was published this month by Trela and can be purchased at www.amountainofskulls.com or at many bookstores and museums around the city. buy the book at www.amountainofskulls.com

Jordan Nassar (b.1985, New York, NY) earned his BA at Middlebury College in 2007. His work has been featured in solo and group exhibitions globally at institutions including the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY; BRIC, Brooklyn, NY; Museum of Arts and Design, New York, NY; Abrons Art Center, New York, NY;  Katonah Museum of Art, Katonah, NY; Anat Ebgi, Los Angeles, CA; Evelyn Yard, London, UK; Exile Gallery, Berlin, Germany, and The Third Line, Dubai, UAE. Nassar was the subject of two institutional solo presentations in 2019: Jordan Nassar: Between Sky and Earth at Art@Bainbridge at Princeton University Art Museum and The Sea Beneath Our Eyes at the Center for Contemporary Art (CCA) Tel Aviv. Nassar’s work is currently on view in the exhibition Making Knowing: Craft in Art, 1950 - 2019 at the Whitney Museum of American Art. Upcoming exhibitions include the Asia Society Triennial: We Do Not Dream Alone in New York, opening on October 27, 2020, I Cut The Sky In Two, on view from October 23 through November 21 at James Cohan's Lower East Side space, and a solo exhibition at KMAC Museum in Louisville, Kentucky opening this winter. Sound & Vision is sponsored by Golden Artist Colors.

Caleb Hahne is a Denver based artist who’s paintings address themes of memory, vulnerability, intimacy and boyhood. He received a BFA in Fine Arts from Rocky Mountain College of Art and Design in 2014 and currently lives and works in CO. He was an artist in residence at ShowPen from September 2013 to August 2014 and is currently in residency at RedLine Contemporary Art Center, both located in Denver. He recently completed a traveling artist residency with Southwest American Bullet (SWAB). His art has been included in multiple solo and group exhibitions in Denver, New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Oakland, Portland, Montreal, Berlin, and the United Kingdom and recently at MCA Denver as well as the New Museum, NY in collaboration with Adidas. Hahne has been featured in Juxtapoz, Hi-Fructose, and Booooooom.com. Denver Westword named Hahne one of the 100 Colorado Creatives of 2014 and one of the Top 10 Artists to watch in 2015. He is listed as one of the top 10 contemporary artists under 40 by Wide Walls. He’s represented by 1969 gallery in NYC and recently had an exhibition at The Cabin in LA and has exhibited in Antwerp, Belgium at NewChild Gallery. This episode is sponsored by the New York Studio School and Golden Artist Colors.

Krista Kim is a contemporary artist and founder of the Techism movement since 2014, promoting the confluence of art and technology, and technological innovation as a medium to further the development of digital humanism. Krista gathers digital images of LED lights to digitally paint and manipulate them using multiple softwares to create her artwork, a technique that she has developed since 2012. Krista is interested in the disruptive interpersonal and social effects of digital technology, as a force of distraction and segregation of people based on similar interests and likes though algorithms on social media. She seeks to communicate a transcendent, meditative experience for the viewer in digital visual language, which she describes as digital consciousness. Krista was the chosen artist by Creative Director Olivier Lapidus of Lanvin for the fall-winter 2018 collection. Five of her artworks were selected as the inspiration of the color cards and digitally printed fabrics and leather goods for the collection. Krista has lived in Seoul, Tokyo, and Singapore. She has exhibited in New York, Paris, and worldwide art fairs. She earned her Masters of Arts Fine Arts from LASALLE College of the Arts / Goldsmiths, University of London in 2014. She completed her undergraduate studies in Political Science at the University of Toronto. This episode of Sound & Vision is sponsored by the New York Studio School and Golden Artist Colors.

Amir H. Fallah received his BFA in Fine Art & Painting at the Maryland Institute College of Art and his MFA in painting at the University of California, Los Angeles. He has exhibited extensively in solo and group exhibitions across the United States and abroad. Selected solo exhibitions include the Museum of Contemporary Art in Tucson; San Diego Art Museum, Brookings SD; Schneider Museum of Art, Ashland OR; San Diego Art Institute; and the Nerman Museum of Contemporary Art, Overland KS. He’s in the permanent collection of the Pérez Art Museum Miami (PAMM), Miami; McEvoy Foundation For The Arts, San Francisco; Nerman Museum, Kansas City; SMART Museum of Art at the University of Chicago; Davis Museum, Massachusetts; The Microsoft Collection, Washington; Plattsburg State Art Museum, NY; Cerritos College Public Art Collection, CA; and Salsali Private Museum, Dubai, UAE. Public art commission awards include the Los Angeles Arts Comission; the Baik Art Mural Project, Los Angeles; Pow Wow Antelope Valley, Museum of Art and History, Lancaster, CA; the MOCA Mural Program, Museum of Contemporary Art, Tucson; and the Cerritos College Public Commission, Lancaster, CA. In 2009, he was chosen to participate in the 9th Sharjah Biennial. In 2015, Amir received the Joan Mitchell Foundation Painters and Sculptors Grant. In 2019, his painting Calling On The Past received the Northern Trust Purchase Prize at EXPO Chicago. In 2020, he was awarded the COLA Individual Artist Fellowship and the Artadia grant. He has a current show at Shulamit Nazarian, Los Angeles that’s up through October.

Muzae Sesay is an artist born in Long Beach, California who is based out of Oakland, California. His artistic focus derives from a lifelong commitment to understanding our collective relationship to space, memory, community, and the perceived truths within them. From that foundation, his artistic practice has thematically revolved around the merging of these relationships to form paintings that provoke social reasoning and induce the viewer’s agency in the navigation and narration of imagery. Current work connects with the feelings that arise from testing the absoluteness of the strict and rigid aspects of physics and realism found in architecture, design, and our built environment. Utilizing skewed perspectives of space and shape collapsed into flat two-dimensional planes, he creates surreal geometric interiors, exteriors, landscapes, and structures—presenting a situation in which to be experienced and explored. Inspired by ideas of cultural reflection and developed by questioning the validity of remembrance, his work often depicts worlds created in response to a social introspection and a continual challenge of perceived reality. This process involves taking imagery from the physical world and reducing them to rudimental forms that then populate fragmented universes compiled by perspectival fallacies and tied together by harmonious color composition. The viewer is compelled to understand the space, question its dimensionality, dive inside and walk around. Muzae has had shows at Pt. 2 Gallery in Oakland, I.M.A. in San Francisco, Guerrero Gallery in San Francisco, Pt. 2 Gallery in LA, SFMOMA, Fisk Gallery in Portland, V1 Gallery in Copenhagen, Spaceship in New York amongst many others. His work has been covered in Juxtapoz, ArtMaze, Vice, Create! Magazine, and SF Weekly just to name a few. Sound and Vision is supported by the New York Studio School. The legendary New York Studio School Marathons are immersive courses that emphasize experiential learning and expand the boundaries of what drawing, painting, and sculpture can be. Fall 2020 Virtual Intersession Marathons take place November 5th – 9th.  Artists from anywhere in the world are invited to participate in a five-day Virtual Marathons. Each course is designed to expand upon essential themes and working methodologies in art-making. Apply online today at nyss.org and follow us on Instagram @ny_studioschool.”