Jazmín Berakha

Jazmín Berakha, a Buenos Aires-based artist, composes delicate embroideries in a simplified style often reserved for drawing. A punch of color and pattern here and there strike the perfect balance with the pencil-thin body outlines. Her subjects are not overwhelmed by pattern, bundling up in one or two distinct articles at a time. Berakha will be exhibiting at Heskin Contemporary in New York City until July 2nd, 2011.

James Jean

James Jean is a Taiwanese-American award winning artist and illustrator living in Los Angeles. He was born in Taiwan but was raised in Parsippany-Troy Hills, New Jersey. He was educated at the School of Visual Arts in New York City. Upon graduating in 2001, he quickly became an acclaimed cover artist for DC Comics. His clients include Time Magazine, The New York Times, Rolling Stone, Spin, ESPN, Atlantic Records, Target, Playboy, Knopf, Prada among others. He has also illustrated covers for the comic book series Fables and The Umbrella Academy.

Rosemarie Fiore

Rosemarie Fiore creates art out of a volatile medium: fireworks. Enveloped by sulfurous clouds, she resembles a latter-day magus casting spells, donning heavy gloves and a gas mask. The idea came to her on the 4th of July, 2001 when she accidently dropped a smoke bomb on the cement floor and it created a perfect line of dots. Her latest works, "Firework Drawings," is a collaboration between herself and the explosives, an unpredictable and violent working relationship.

Ian Davis

Ian Davis creates large scale paintings reminiscent of New Yorker magazine covers. His subject is maleness, whose omnipresence, ineffectiveness and herd instinct he conjures up in small identical figures that he deploys with the marshaled repetitions of a Minimalist. The figures can be businessmen, hundreds of whom sit passively in convention halls or stand on banquet tables with their hands raised, as if enacting some inane ritual. Or they can be British redcoats who march across fields of graduated grays, or strip trees of their branches for no apparent reason. Somewhere in the twentieth century men are gathering . . . waiting and watching.

Jason Miller

The first that I heard of Jason Miller's was his 2006 pieces that came equipped with a previous owner's disregard without ever being previously owned: dusty tables, broken mirrors, duct taped chairs, damaged drinking glasses. These are all accomplished not by damaging, but by deliberately incorporating materials that would mimic this disrepair. The pieces of duct tape on the Duct Tape Chair are actually strips of leather added to the upholstery. The broken mirror that appears Scotch taped is actually done entirely in laminated glass. The dust on the tables is actually layered into the finish.

Though those Brooklyn chic pieces hold appeal for me, I'm pleased to see that 2007 brings new inspiration from the crevices of true life. One in particular caught my attention: ceramic wall tiles inspired by the landscape of shipping containers in Newark. His pieces that are just slightly off give me much more satisfaction. I'm hoping to see more subtlety. I feel like he has that potential to make objects that make you feel a little weird instead of just really dirty.


"Shipping Container Tiles," glazed ceramic, 2007


"Superordinate Antler Lamps," table lamp, 2003