DAVID ALTMEJD

New York artist David Altmejd (born 1975) graduated from the Columbia University MFA program and has exhibited recently at the 2004 Whitney Biennial, New York; the 8th International Istanbul Biennial, Istanbul, Turkey (2003); and at LFL Gallery and Anton Kern Gallery in New York.

The critic Brian Sholis writes in the March-April issue of Flash Art: "New York artist David Altmejd's grotesque sculptures, usually comprised of heads or other fragments of monster bodies, directly engage the repressed underside of our imagination and incongruously mix the things we dare not consciously consider with a certain sense of cheap glamour. His recent works, accumulations of small, sparkling found elements surrounding an incomplete werewolf body, spring from an intuitive process that serves as metaphor for peering into this realm of the unspoken...his bringing together of opposite worlds—the horrific and the glamorous—suggests that the distance between them may reside in our perceptions alone."

MATTHEW BRANNON

New York artist Matthew Brannon (born 1971) graduated from the Columbia University MFA program. He presented a solo exhibition titled "Exhausted Blood & Imitation Salt" at John Connelly Presents this spring, and has recently exhibited at Kevin Bruk Gallery, Miami; PS1, New York; Museum Morsbroich, Leverkusen, Germany; and the MAK, Vienna. This autumn he will present a solo show, in conjunction with Sarah Morris, at Galeria Javier Lopez in Madrid.

AMY GLOBUS

New York artist Amy Globus (born 1976) graduated from the Columbia University MFA program in 2000. She recently participated in the "Future Noir" exhibition at Gorney Bravin + Lee, New York, and is slated to appear in the 2004 Liverpool Biennial, opening September, and in a forthcoming exhibition at the San Jose Museum of Art, San Jose, California.

The critic Roberta Smith, writing in the New York Times, states: "...weightlessness and transparency...are freshest and most overt in Electric Sheep, a video projection from 2001-2 by a young artist named Amy Globus. It shows two octopuses shot from different angles as they ooze their way around several tanks and through narrow glass tubes. Full of sweet longing...the words and music meld perfectly with the pink, accommodating flesh and silken flutterings of the octopuses. The combination forms a haunting expression of desire: abstract, pansexual and filled with the enchanting power of love."

MATT GREENE

Los Angeles artist Matt Greene (born 1972) graduated from the Atlanta College of Art and Design. He will hold a solo exhibition at Peres Projects in Los Angeles in October 2004 and recently was in a two-person show at that gallery and in the group exhibition "Scream" at Anton Kern Gallery, New York.

He was chosen by Artforum magazine as one of their twelve artists to watch in 2004, where Dennis Cooper writes: "His busy, carefully executed pictures portray a world in which nature has run amok, corrupting normative social behavior and effectively reducing humans to sex-crazed, warring playmates. Each drawing and painting organizes one chaotic scene into a distinct, eye-popping pattern, at once impressively precise, unwieldy in its design, and ruptured by the visceral effect of its sensational subject matter."

HANNA LIDEN

New York artist Hanna Liden (born 1976) graduated from Parsons School of Design in 2002. That autumn she co-curated You're Just a Summer Love at Priska Juschka Fine Art in Brooklyn, and has exhibited frequently in New York since that time. In 2004, she presented And Her Shadow Death, her first solo exhibition, at Rivington Arms in New York.

The critic Holland Cotter, writing in the New York Times, states: "Each picture is a panoramic shot of a desolate landscape—a mist-filled swamp, a snow-shrouded forest, a bleakly unpicturesque lake—populated by a few demonic-looking figures engaged in what could be esoteric rites.... Ms. Liden's witches and devils are contemporary figures.... They might even represent a new countercultural ideal, absurdist but scary. In her strange, beautiful photographs, Ms. Liden makes their world, fictional though it may be, feel very real."

CHLOE PIENE

New York artist Chloe Piene (born 1972) is included in the 2004 Whitney Biennial. She has recently presented solo exhibitions at the Kunsthalle Bern, Switzerland, and at Klemens Gasser + Tanja Grunert, New York.

The critic Nancy Princenthal writes in Art in America: "Treating the beast that lurks in the human heart with casual familiarity, Chloe Piene's half a dozen charcoal drawings and two video installations showed sexual pleasure to be mortifying, decadent and recklessly silly, in equal measure and indiscriminately. In both [videos], too (and in the drawings as well), the ferocious intimacy of Eros and Thanatos—or, the simpler proximity of danger and fun—are treated with amiable interest and a keen eye for where pockets of real emotion can be found within all the callow grandstanding."

BANKS VIOLETTE

New York artist Banks Violette (born 1974), who graduated from the Columbia University MFA program, is included in the 2004 Whitney Biennial. He has recently presented a two-person exhibition at Peres Projects, Los Angeles, with Matt Greene and this autumn will be included in the Liverpool Biennial and present his second solo exhibition at TEAM Gallery in New York.

Shamim Momin, co-curator of the 2004 Whitney Biennial, writes in that exhibition's catalogue: "Banks Violette probes the fluid border in the American cultural psyche where fictional worlds—the private, personal fantasies engendered by adolescent subcultures and obsessive music fandom—pierce the fabric of reality. Intrigued by the idea of amoral (opposed to immoral) action and commitment, Violette poses questions about the seductive appeal of nihilism that entirely lack an assumption of righteousness. The aestheticized imagery and luscious materialism of his sculptural installations and drawings play on the alluring artifices of dark desire."

MICHAEL WETZEL

New York artist Michael Wetzel (born 1966), who studied at the State University of New York at Purchase, will present his second New York solo exhibition this fall at John Connelly Presents. He has recently been included in exhibitions at that gallery, Artemis Greenberg Van Doren Gallery, New York, Anton Kern Gallery, New York, and at Deitch Projects, New York.

The critic Meghan Dailey has written: "In Wetzel's paintings the gothic seeps willfully into the pastoral....Always, there is the sense that a trespasser or stalker stands lurking at the edge of the property. But [he] leaves everything purposefully vague, like a hair-raising establishing shot in a movie, manipulating you into delicious anticipation of the coming terror."