Gordon Dalton

BIO: Dalton has earned an international reputation for his resplendently coloured paintings. He holds his MA, Fine Art, University of Northumbria, and an honours BA, Fine Art, University of Wales, Cardiff. Select residencies include URRA, Buenos Aires, Argentina, 2016 and the Chapter Art Gallery, Cardiff, 2007. 

Select solo exhibitions: Dead Reckoning, The Auxilliary Warehouse, Middlesborough, 2020; Trade Gallery, Nottingham; Bay Art, Cardiff; Last Gallery, Llangadog; Bank Gallery, Los Angeles; Keith Talent, London; Marksman Gallery, Reading; Castlefield Gallery, Manchester; Moot Gallery, Nottingham. 

ARTIST STATEMENT: The paintings are made up of places I have lived or longingly imagined, ideas and memories; glimpses out of a train window or across a lake. They are about longing for somewhere or wanting to belong. A romantic notion grounded in the act of painting.

Kat Evans

BIO: Kat Evans is an abstract pop expressionist based in the UK, her work is a celebration of the contemporary. With a strong passion for art history, Kat cleverly remixes popular culture and works from the public domain to complete her obsession with ‘What’s Next?’. Utilising works by Picasso, Van Gogh and Di Vinci to name but a few, combining her trademark intuitive mark making and use of colour with digital technology, Kat creates current works that represent art now, and what it means to be an artist in our current climate and generation. 

ARTIST STATEMENT: A random subatomic event that may or may not occur. Am I alive and dead at the same time? According to the theory of Schrödinger’s cat I might be. 

Layers of previously painted pieces of art sometimes incorporating artists from the public domain, creating time travel. By abstracting what is already created and sometimes incorporating famous art works by artist like Picasso and Vang Gogh, I add a layer of familiarity for myself and the viewer, who may or may not know who I am, but will know of the other artists who’s work I use. Digitally edited, abstracted, layered and blended. Travelling from one time zone to another through different mediums and technologies.

The painting becomes a print becomes a painting becomes a print. What’s next? The print becomes a painting becomes a print becomes a painting. And so on forever.

The final piece is not the finished piece, if I am alive and dead at the same time there are many other endings.

Ruby Figueroa

BIO: Ruby Figueroa is a visual artist and writer from Chicago, IL. Her autobiographical essays are mixed with experimental nonfiction seen in her zines, artist books, monoprints, poetry broadsides, and videos. As a whole, the work explores home, and the relationship between humans, loss, time, and heartbreak.

ARTIST STATEMENT: This work is a series of monotypes and letterpress on fabric. The landscapes depicted in this work do not exist outside of the matrix I print on. I use bright color, language, and texture through print to create imagined places where questions about race, gender, and sexuality can safely exist.

Daniel Flood

BIO: Residing in the City of Chicago, Daniel is an artist who enjoys painting in a bold, colorful, geometric and modern abstract style. His paintings are driven by emotion, inspired from architecture, circuitry, machinery and the love of science fiction. The creative process is derived from contemplative thinking which helps create designs, patterns and shapes that form his paintings.

Daniel graduated from the American Academy of Art with his Associate of Arts in Graphic Design. His studies included art history, layout and design, painting and art history along with digital work in Photoshop, Illustrator and InDesign.

ARTIST STATEMENT: Daniel is an abstract geometric artist, focusing on hard-edge techniques. This is brought forth by his Graphic Design background, which has helped immensely in his ventures of painting. Daniel uses acrylic markers and paint and occasionally tape to achieve crisp straight lines. Most of his work starts out with very minimal geometric shapes and complimentary colors, in continuance adding layers of colors and shapes until completion.

Jennifer Chen-su Huang

BIO: Jennifer Chen-su Huang is an artist and writer whose process-driven works interweave elements of craft tradition, language, history, and memoir. She is currently an artist-in-residence at Chicago Artists Coalition’s HATCH program. In 2017-2018, she completed a Fulbright Fellowship in Taiwan, where she was a Research Fellow with the Ethnology Department at National Chengchi University, as well as a Visiting Artist at Tainan National University of the Arts. She graduated with her MFA in Fiber and Material Studies from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and received her BA from the University of California, Berkeley. In 2018, she presented her research at the Textile Society of America’s biennial symposium and was selected for the New Professional Award.

Huang has exhibited internationally at Haiton Art Center in Taipei and across the United States at Untitled Prints and Editions in Los Angeles, Kearny St. Workshop in San Francisco, and Gallery 400 in Chicago, among others.

ARTIST STATEMENT: During this difficult period, I looked to the text of writers I admired. Their words made their way into my textiles.

 "...when you try to stand up and look the world in the face like you had a right to be here, without knowing that this is the result of it, you have attacked the entire power structure of the Western world." - James Baldwin

"We have to do our best and at the same time give up all hope of fruition... to do everything as if it were the only thing in the world that mattered, while all the time knowing that it doesn't matter at all." - Pema Chödrön

Coco Morris

BIO: Coco Morris, born in London in 1997, is a painter based in London and Lyme Regis. Her work explores colour/form relationships and abstract painting languages. She graduated from City and Guilds of London Art School in 2019 with a BA (Hons) Fine Art Degree and was awarded the Painter-Stainers Scholarship in 2017 and the Chadwyck-Healey Prize for Painting in 2019. Since graduating Coco has continued making work and has been exhibiting in group shows.

ARTIST STATEMENT: These paintings were made in a layered approach; the initial image is abstracted, erased and reworked with an emphasis placed on colour/form relationships, the material properties of paint and the action of painting. The colour/form relationships are at times bold, using opaque and clashing colours, but they can also be very subtle as light and surface come into play. A single colour might be applied in a wash to create different tones and luminosity, or used impasto to give saturation and body.The mark making is free and lively with brush marks, layers and textures creating painterly depth and a sense of weight giving these paintings a luxurious and tactile quality. 

Juan Pizzani Ochoa

BIO:  Juan Pizzani Ochoa (Caracas, 1979) completed a Master's Degree in Spanish Literature at the University of Cincinnati and a PhD Degree in Anthropology at the University of Los Andes - Mérida (Venezuela). He wrote the short novel Visita guiada (2007) and published some of his poems in the compilation Voces Nuevas (2004, CELARG). His doctoral thesis is "Masculinities, Diversity and Homophobia in a Middle Class Family from Caracas". He authored the art books Enciclopedia Ilustrada del Arte (2002), Crayon Picture Books (2003) and Nuevo Abesedario (2020) and made collage, graphic and video art series that can be seen on his Instagram account @juanpizzaniochoa

ARTIST STATEMENT:  Mr. Benesuela 1979 (Special Edition), is a lo-fi video art piece compounding the Mr. Benesuela 1979 series of nine videos. It shows a fake beauty pageant with male contestants that wear nightgowns while flashing their moustaches. Each contestant represents a Venezuelan state. The misspelling of the country's name is making a social commentary and connecting this video to my art book Nuevo Abesedario, in which the same misspelled "Benesuela" country name can be seen. The queer male characters were made with images taken from the Miss Universe 1979 pageant. The winner is a digitally manipulated-turned-male Irene Saez, a public figure known for having won the Miss Venezuela pageant, then running for president against Hugo Chávez and losing. Instead of the classic female beauty pageants Venezuela is famous for, what we see here is an attempt to queer the past of this country where machismo and homophobia are common features. Eluding the more conventional drag queen pageant -known to take place in local gay bars and venues- and instead being a queer men competition, the idea is to destabilize gender standards in Venezuelan culture. Combining these images with songs from the video games I played as a child, I created new memories for myself, an improbable past that I would have cherished.

José Santiago Pérez

BIO: José Santiago Pérez is a Salvadoran-American artist and educator based in Chicago. He is a 2019-2020 HATCH artist resident at the Chicago Artists Coalition. His solo exhibition Palacios (fantasy structures) at Roman Susan Art Foundation was reviewed in Artforum. Solo exhibitions of his craft based sculptures and wall hangings have been presented at Ignition Project Space and Wedge Projects. Duo exhibitions include Repository and Repertoire with Jazmine Harris at Chicago Artists Coalition and Extra::Ordinary with Noelle Garcia at Evanston Art Center. He is the recipient of the SPARK grant from Chicago Artists Coalition and an Individual Artist grant from the Illinois Arts Council Agency. José has participated in group shows in Los Angeles, San Francisco, Chicago, Philadelphia, and Boston and has been featured in reviews and interviews in Artforum, Sixty, Newcity, OtherPeoplesPixels, Archives+Futures Podcast, and Art Intercepts. José holds an MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago where he teaches in the Fiber and Material Studies department.

ARTIST STATEMENT: I weave plastics - sheeting, lacing, mylar - into markers of time and containers of intimacy, care, and empathy, using the container forms of basketry to explore the intimate complexities of touch, time, and value. In Testimonios 2, 5, and 6 (2019) mylar emergency blankets and plastic lacing are coiled into open abstract baskets that temporarily hold, transform, but fail to contain the impact of crisis. 

Lancelot Runge

BIO: Lancelot Runge is an antiques restorer, poet and fine artist living in Brooklyn, NY. 

ARTIST STATEMENT: This body of work focuses on queer sex, kink and punk. Lancelot's influences range from horror movies, punk and heavy metal, vintage pornography, traditional tattooing and the queer community in NYC. Each piece is a unique, altered object- acrylic paint and ink on top of repurposed smut. This is a series in which Lancelot has incorporated color more than ever before.

David Rustile

BIO: David Rustile is a queer photographer whose work has been featured in The Advocate, Straight To Hell magazine and currently in the Gerber/Hart Library as part of the Q: Activism at the Margins of Identity exhibit.

ARTIST STATEMENT: These images taken in the early 90’s are the product of sexual experimentation between my then circle of friends and a very liberal and encouraging community college photography instructor. I owe a debt of gratitude to all involved. 

Martin Severinson

BIO: When I was 14 I took my first art class. That was my first real step into the "art-world" in the way we worked with oil colors and nude models. That really taught me to see light and colors. I made my debut at 22 at an art salon and from there I knew art was my thing. At the same time, I started to study philosophy at the university and had aesthetics as my main topic. After two and a half years in that environment, my understanding of art really widened. From there on I felt prepared to move on to art-making in a broader and deeper sense. I´ve been participating in and producing art and exhibitions continuously through the years in different disciplines - painting, graphics, concept, photography and textiles. I´m focused on exploring and telling things in art that concern me the most at the moment. 

ARTIST STATEMENT: The "Facepuzzles" I show at Fluffycrimes is a laboration of possibilities of the face. A part of my work is focused on doing freehand ink drawings of faces. One day after weeks of substantial work (in 2019) I wondered what would happen if I cut down the numerous faces to pieces and start to re-arrange them as puzzles. The exciting experience of building new faces with the bricks and pieces of my own work was an eye-opener in the field of what could be possible in the field of depicting a face. Besides the pure fact that it was fun, the puzzling revealed some new openings in understanding as well as composition concerning the building of a face and the human character. At this stage, I´m basically curious about what other people can create with the pieces and of course what I myself can continuously figure out in the practice of building new compositions.

Gyan Shrosbree

BIO: Gyan Shrosbree received her B.F.A. from the Kansas City Art Institute, and her M.F.A. from Cranbrook Academy of Art. She has had recent solo and two-person exhibitions at Ola Studio, Pound Ridge, NY: nx.ix Gallery, Detroit, MI; Haus Collective, San Antonio, TX; Grapefruits, Portland, OR; Grand View University, Des Moines, IA; Yellow Door Gallery, Des Moines, IA; Ripon College, Ripon, WI; Lovey Town Space, Madison, WI; and The Iowa Arts Council and State Historical Museum, Des Moines, IA. Her work has been included in recent group exhibitions at Western Exhibitions, Chicago, IL; Cleve Carney Art Gallery, Glen Ellyn, IL; Ground Floor Gallery, Nashville, TN; The Woskob Family Gallery, State College, PA; NYSRP, Brooklyn, NY; and Artstart, Rhinelander, WI. Gyan has been an artist-in-residence at MacDowell, Yaddo, The Vermont Studio Center, Two Coats of Paint, and The Maple Terrace. Recent publications featuring her work include The Coastal Post, Inertia Studio Visits, Precog Magazine, and Maake Magazine. Gyan is currently an Associate Professor in the Department of Fine Arts at Maharishi International University. She lives and works in Fairfield, Iowa.

ARTIST STATEMENT: I do not work from direct references, but mostly the memory of looking and examining. Memories spark other memories, and the feelings that come up create new events in paint. Sometimes I draw to find images, and use the drawings as points of reference. I tend to reduce the image to an iconic, flat shape that can be infinitely generated. Something recognizable repeats itself, moving into abstraction or representing something that it is not, such as a part of the architecture, the environment or landscape.

The accumulation of the many paintings begins to create new patterns, shapes, rhythms, stories, places.  Depending on how close or far away they are hung from each other, the visual relationships become lively.  

Many paintings of similar shapes when hung together become a pattern and are at once single paintings and one large work. Close together or far apart—talking to each other with the variety in their voices that is magnified and amplified, softened or made complete through the visual connections with their community. The accumulation of the paintings emphasizes itself into one louder voice but can, at any time, reconfigure or break off on its own for some privacy.

I think of the wall as a stage where all the players can live, and like the stage things shift around and can take many configurations.  Those players come and go, and you get to know them. Similar to a closet or a clothing store—you are given outfit ideas, but you can switch things around.  You can make choices that might be unlikely. You can go home and combine the new thing with the old.  

Bernard Tano

BIO: Born in 1989 Côte d’Ivoire. Bernard Tano is a visual artist who lives and works permanently in Côte d’Ivoire. He studied at the Art School of Abidjan where he obtained an artistic Baccalaureate HI series degree, and he will shortly begin his studies at the Institute National Superior of Arts and Cultural Action where he intends to pursue a Master II diploma. Bernard mainly works in painting, but remains sensitive and open to other materials.

ARTIST STATEMENT: Art represents for Tano a flexible means of action or reaction in the face of evils that undermine our societies in their entirety. Painting for him is a system of escape, exteriorization of one's inner self, of sharing but also and above all awareness of being. His work in his globality is a cultural exchange combining texture, collage and color to items like news clippings that inspires him. In a mixed technique, the artist makes appear and disappear expressive faces of the characters to tell and mark a history. It is mostly intended for children and adults who have babysat a child's soul because, according to him, maturity also means keeping a part childhood in itself. His paintings are revealed to the public in a setting minimalist and invites them to enter it for a journey into its chromatic universe.

Dominic Terlizzi

BIO: Dominic Terlizzi currently lives and works in Brooklyn, NY. Recent exhibitions include See Someone Say Someone at One River Hartsdale, NY; Preserving a Find at Tiger Strikes Asteroid Philadelphia, PA; A Minimal Relief at NEVVEN Gallery Gothenburg, Sweden; and, A Spirit Knows A Shadow Shows at Craig Krull Gallery Santa Monica, CA. His work has been exhibited in Baltimore, NYC, LA, Philadelphia, Washington, Delaware, Sweden, London, and Mars. He has completed three monumental public sculptures for the City of Baltimore. He received the Maryland Artist Equity Grant, Hoffberger School of Painting Award, Triangle Workshop Fellowship, PNC Transformative Art Project Grant, Belle Foundation Grant, and received a Rema Hort Mann Foundation Nomination. He has lectured in Cebu City Philippines, Seoul South Korea, Incheon South Korea, Jeju Island South Korea, Hanzhou China, Shanghai China, Fuzhou China, and Beijing China. He received an MFA from the Hoffberger School of Painting MICA 2008 and a BFA from The Cooper Union NYC 2003.  He has taught at MICA, University of Tennessee Knoxville, and Towson University. He is currently the Academic Director of P.I. Art Center NYC and Director of St. Charles Projects Baltimore.

ARTIST STATEMENT: Dominic Terlizzi’s drawings are created with a collection of rubber stamps and ink. These drawings have a strong connection to his cast acrylic relief paintings and explorations with sculpted breads. In his work mosaic architecture, domestic objects, and scavenged textures converge. In the stamp drawings, constellations of meaning are present through relations of geometric forms buttressed with mosaic patterns. There are seashells, arrows, leaves, snowflakes, moons, flowers, envelopes, spoons, stars and many other symbols in the forms of stamps. By using stamps in a mosaic drawing style, the parts question their own contents by way of origin, labor, and domesticity against grand gestures. Tone is used as a coded language where monochromatic and gradient environments merge with figures.