Brian Dettmer (b. 1974) For over fifteen years, Dettmer has made technically proficient sculptural works by altering physical forms of information and shifting preconceived functions. Through meticulous dissection, excavation, and concise alteration Dettmer edits communicative objects such as books, maps, tapes and other media. The medium’s role transforms. Its content is re-contextualized and new meanings or interpretations emerge. Dettmer’s works have been exhibited internationally in institutions including the Museum of Arts and Design (MAD), NY; The Renwick Gallery of the Smithsonian Institute, DC; The Chicago Cultural Center, IL; The High Museum, GA; The Museum of Contemporary Art of Georgia, GA; and the Virginia Museum of Contemporary Art, VA. In 2014, Brian Dettmer was the subject of a ten year retrospective at the Hermann Geiger Foundation in Cecina, Italy. Dettmer’s sculptures can be found in the permanent collection of several notable institutions including: the Smithsonian American Art Museum, DC; The Art Institute of Chicago Ryerson and Burnham Libraries, IL; The High Museum, GA; The Museum of Contemporary Art, GA; and the Yale University Art Gallery, CT. He has recently lectured at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London and The New York Public Library in New York. In 2014, he spoke at the TED Youth conference. Dettmer’s first exhibition at P·P·O·W will be in 2016.

Timothy Wehrle (b. 1978) idealizes and reinvents the world through his work, enriching it to the point of near-fetishism. As the artist claims, “In my work I render everything with sweetness: faces, colors, characters, settings, everything…because this is a world I have created, and to me it is real, and the sweetness in the work is the sweetness that has been missing in the world around me.” Wehrle’s work explores dream narratives that dance between the visionary experience, music, and the politics of resisting marginalization. His drawings poetically unwrap the concept of a Cold War of the soul in a new world, where the artist-citizen is constantly acted upon by encroaching depersonalization, however, Wehrle is able to resist and ultimately strike back utilizing dreams, visions and art-making. Wehrle manages to combine inner and outer worlds in such a way that the viewer is drawn in and able to reveal their own potential to be healed by his work. Wehrle has had solo exhibitions at John Michael Kohler Arts Center, WI; Des Moines Art Center, IA; and Cavin-Morris Gallery, NY. In March 2016, Wehrle will present his first solo exhibition at P·P·O·W.

Martin Wong (1946-1999) was born in Portland, Oregon and raised in San Francisco, California. 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 that still resonates today. He studied ceramics at Humboldt State University, graduating in 1968. During the '70s he 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 and hand signals. His narratives were populated by the neighborhood's denizens including firemen, the incarcerated, graffiti artists, and families, including his friend and poet, Miguel Piñero. Wong died in San Francisco from an AIDS related illness in 1999. Wong's work can be found in museum collections including: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Museum of Modern Art, The Bronx Museum, de Young Museum, The Art Institute of Chicago, Whitney Museum of American Art, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and The Cleveland Museum of Art. He had a one person show Sweet Oblivion at the New Museum in 1998. In 2013 the exhibition City as Canvas: New York City Graffiti from the Martin Wong Collection, organized by Carlo McCormick and Sean Corcoran, opened at the Museum of the City of New York. Wong will have a retrospective, Human Instamatic, which opens at the Bronx Museum of Art in November of 2015.