Martin Wong (1946-1999) During the '70s Wong was active in the San Francisco Bay Area art scene and was involved with the performance art groups The Cockettes and Angels of Light. In 1978 he moved to Manhattan, eventually settling in the Lower East Side, where his attention turned exclusively to painting. Wong set forth to depict urban life on the Lower East Side where he then lived. Through his visual diary he built a landscape of stacked bricks, crumbling tenements, constellations, closed storefronts and hand signals. His narratives were populated by the neighborhood's denizens including firemen, boxers, the incarcerated, graffiti artists, and families. In Wong’s last major body of work he turned his attention to his own heritage and painted scenes from New York and San Francisco’s Chinatowns. Wong's works are charged with a multitude of levels that address the artist's personal, poetic, and social concerns, reflecting a sense of compassion and self-identification within his subjects that still resonates today. Wong died in San Francisco from an AIDS related illness in 1999. His work can be found in museum collections including The Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Museum of Modern Art, The Bronx Museum of The Arts, and The Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; The Cleveland Museum of Art, The Art Institute of Chicago; and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. Wong had a one person show Sweet Oblivion at the New Museum (1998). City as Canvas: New York City Graffiti from the Martin Wong Collection opened at the Museum of the City of New York in 2013 and traveled to the Amsterdam Museum in 2016. Wong's retrospective, Human Instamatic, opened at the Bronx Museum of The Arts in November 2015, the Wexner Center in Columbus, Ohio in May of 2016 and will open at the UC Berkeley Art Museum in San Francisco, California in the fall of 2017.

George Boorujy (b. 1973) explores the division that has emerged between humans and their natural surroundings in strikingly life-like, ink on paper depictions of flora and fauna present in North America, though not necessarily native to the continent. Drawing on the longstanding tradition of naturalists who record biological diversity in highly realistic renderings, Boorujy’s work advances this practice. By imbuing his subjects with human-like expressions Boorujy encourages an emotional connection between the work and the viewer.  His latest works, presented at Art Basel Hong Kong, focus on the peculiar ecology of Florida which, due to rising sea levels, has been referred to as the “new Atlantis”. These large-scale works bear witness to what currently inhabits Florida, and what will soon be lost. Boorujy lives and works in Brooklyn. He attended the University of Miami intending to study marine biology. However, his art courses soon over-took his science concentration earning him a B.F.A in painting in 1996.  After traveling North America, Boorujy studied at the School of Visual Arts in New York City, where he received his M.F.A in 2002. Boorujy has exhibited in the U.S. and abroad and his work is included in numerous private collections.

Jessica Stoller (b. 1981) uses clay as a vehicle to explore the constructed, often idealized world of femininity, gathering imagery across cultural lines and histories, fixating on the subjugation of the female body. Stoller uses a myriad of techniques to create her highly detailed works which embody a powerful sense of oppositions which blur the lines between real and imitated, normal and abnormal, perceived beauty and the bodily abject. Porcelain is her primary media, a historically weighted material that is inevitably linked to desire, mystery and consumption. Stoller’s work is grounded in dual appearances; mobilizing our vision of the grotesque in opposition of contemporary societal controls that still plague the feminine body. Stoller was born in Detroit Michigan and currently lives and works in Brooklyn, NY.  She received her BFA from the College for Creative Studies, and an MFA from Cranbrook Academy of Art. Stoller's work has been reviewed, in such publications as The New York Times, Artforum, Ceramics: Art and Perception, N. Pandora Feminist Journal, and Little Thing Magazine among others. Stoller has been honored to participate in residencies including the Kohler Arts & Industry Program, WI and The Museum of Arts and Design’s Open Studio Program, NY. In 2013 she was a Peter S. Reed grantee and a Louis C. Tiffany Nominee and in 2016 she was awarded the Pollock-Krasner Foundation Grant. Her work is included in numerous private collections. This summer she will be a resident at The Shigaraki Ceramic Cultural Park in Koka City, Japan.