Martha Rosler (1943) Brooklyn, New York

Lives in Brooklyn, New York Video, photo-text, installation & performance

Martha Rosler is an artist who works primarily with images and texts. Most of her work concerns social issues, which are manifested at sites as various as the kitchen, the television set, the streets and the transport systems. Rosler works in video, photo-text, installation, and performance, and writes criticism. She has lectured extensively nationally and internationally. Her work in the public sphere ranges from everyday life often with an eye to women's experience and the media to architecture and the built environment. Neufeld, Josh. "martha rosler: an artist...." martha rosler: an artist.... http://www.martharosler.net/ (accessed September 13, 2009).

Jon Rubin () ,
Lives in Pittsburg, PA Drawing, multi-disciplinary, video, installation, public projects

Jon Rubin is a multi-disciplinary artist whose work explores the social dynamics of public places and the idiosyncrasies of individual and group behavior. His solo and collaborative projects include creating a game show for ideas, opening a fake store in an indoor shopping mall, starting a restaurant that secretly runs via take-out from its double across the street, broadcasting an office's telephone conversations through a talking piano, running a neighborhood truck that gives away free homemade goods and services, operating a radio station that only plays the sound of an extinct bird, developing a hypnotized human robot army, producing a cable access variety show at a senior center, and developing a free nomadic art school. He has exhibited video, drawings, installations and public projects internationally including at The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; The Museo Tamayo Arte Contemporaneo, Mexico; The Rooseum, Sweden; Internationale Kurzfilmtage Oberhausen, Germany; Nemo Film Festival, Paris; as well as in backyards, living rooms, and street corners. "JON RUBIN." JON RUBIN. http://www.jonrubin.net/index.php (accessed September 13, 2009).

Alison Saar (1956) Los Angeles, California

Lives in California Sculpture & installation

Her sculptures and installations explore themes of African cultural diaspora and spirituality, and her studies of Latin American, Caribbean and African art and religion have informed her work. Saars fascination with vernacular folk art and ability to build an oasis of beauty from cast-off objects are evident in her sculptures and paintings. Saars highly personal, often life-sized sculptures are marked by their emotional candor, and by contrasting materials and messages that imbue her work with a high degree of cultural subtext. Wikipedia contributors, "Alison Saar," Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Alison_Saar&oldid=291689090 (accessed May 22, 2009).

Betye Saar (1926) Los Angeles, California

Lives in Los Angeles, California Assemblage

She began creating work typically consisting of found objects arranged within boxes or windows, with items drawing on various different cultures reflecting Saar's own mixed heritage (African, Native American, Irish and Creole). In the late 1960s Saar began collecting images of Aunt Jemima, Uncle Tom, Little Black Sambo, and other stereotyped ((African American)) figures from folk culture and advertising. She incorporated them into collages and assemblages, transforming them into provocative statements of political and social protest. In the 1970s Saar shifted focus again, exploring ritual and tribal objects from Africa as well as items from African American folk traditions. In new boxed assemblages, she combined shamanistic tribal fetishes with images and objects evoking the magical and the mystical. Wikipedia contributors, "Betye Saar," Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Betye_Saar&oldid=312211077 (accessed September 6, 2009).

Tom Sachs (1966) New York City, NY

Lives in NYC, NY Sculpture

TOM SACHS is a sculptor, probably best known for his elaborate recreations of various Modern icons, all of them masterpieces of engineering and design of one kind or another. In an early show he made Knoll office furniture out of phone books and duct tape; later, he recreated Le Corbusier's 1952 Unit d'Habitation using only foamcore and a glue gun. Other projects have included his versions of various Cold War masterpieces, like the Apollo 11 Lunar Excursion Module, and the bridge of the battleship USS Enterprise. And because no engineering project is more complex and pervasive than the corporate ecosystem, he's done versions of those, too, including a McDonald's he built using plywood, glue, assorted kitchen appliances. He's also done Hello Kitty and her friends in materials ranging from foamcore to bronze. "JON RUBIN." JON RUBIN. http://www.jonrubin.net/index.php (accessed September 13, 2009).

Jenny Saville (1970) Cambridge, England

Lives in Silcily Painting

Saville does not meet the usual public perception of the YBAs as she has dedicated her career to traditional figurative oil painting. Her painterly style has been compared to that of Lucian Freud and Rubens. Her paintings are usually much larger than life size. They are strongly pigmented and give a highly sensual impression of the surface of the skin as well as the mass of the body. She sometimes adds marks onto the body, such as white "target" rings. Since her debut in 1992, Saville's focus has remained on the female body, slightly deviating into subjects with "floating or indeterminant gender painting large scale paintings of transsexuals and transvestites. Her published sketches and documents include surgical photographs of liposuction, trauma victims, deformity correction, disease states and transgender patients. Wikipedia contributors, "Jenny Saville," Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Jenny_Saville&oldid=30690297 2 (accessed August 9, 2009).

Julia Scher (1954) Hollywood, California

Lives in Boston, Mass Installation & performance

Julia Scher's work focuses on the subjects surveillance and cyber-sphere. Aiming at the exposure of dangers and ideologies of monitoring systems, Scher creates temporary and transitory web/installation/performance works that explore issues of power, control and seduction. "Media Art Net | Scher, Julia: Biography." Media Art Net | Homepage. http://www.mediaartnet.org/artist/scher/biography/ (accessed September 13, 2009).

Carolee Schneemann (1939) Fox Chase, Pennsylvania

Lives in New York Painting, photography, installation & performance

Carolee Schneemann, multidisciplinary artist. Transformed the definition of art, especially discourse on the body, sexuality, and gender. The history of her work is characterized by research into archaic visual traditions, pleasure wrested from suppressive taboos, the body of the artist in dynamic relationship with the social body.

"Carolee Schneemann." Carolee Schneemann. http://www.caroleeschneemann.com/index.html (accessed September 13, 2009).

Josef Schulz (1966) Bishops Castle, Poland

Lives in Germany Photography

I am extremely fond of the work of Josef Schulz, a German photographer who studied under the likes of Thomas Ruff and Bernd and Hilla Becher. In the same school of photographic thought, Schulz photographs industrial, mass manufactured architecture in all of its utilitarian beauty. His minimal compositions avoid placing qualitative judgement on these structures, instead exploring their form and relationship to their surroundings. Schulz has depicted his subject matter with formal detachment and found beauty in the banality of contemporary industrial construction. In addition, his work raises questions about photography's ability to aesthetically enhance something that is in essence, mundane. The Exposure Project. "The Exposure Project: Josef Schulz." The Exposure Project. http://theexposureproject.blogspot.com/2007/08/josefschulz.html (accessed September 13, 2009). "Josef Schulz - fotografische Arbeiten." Josef Schulz - fotografische Arbeiten. http://www.josefschulz.de (accessed September 13, 2009).

Dana Schutz (1976) Livonia, Michigan

Lives in Brooklyn, New York Painting

In Bomb Magazine[2], critic Mel Chin wrote that, dissection and dismemberment abound in Dana Schutz's work, all offset by sunny colors and a pert sense of humor. Among other things, she has created a race of people who eat themselves; a guy called Frank who is the last man on Earth; a gravity-phobic person who has tied herself to the ground; and a variety of characters that are spliced, for different reasons, on operating tables. Schutz loves to give her characters life and then cut them up. Yet hers is a blithe cruelty, the curiosity of a child playing at being a creator. Even when she hates, she does it with whimsy. Wikipedia contributors, "Dana Schutz," Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Dana_Schutz&oldid=28652149 4 (accessed April 27, 2009).

Beverly Semmes (1952) Washington, DC

Lives in New York City, New York Sculpture, installation

Beverly Semmes first won attention with monumental dresses and other large-scale clothing that powerfully invoked the female bodyQuirky thigh-high pottery vessels in fluorescent red, seemingly of Greek folk ancestry but hand-made by Ms. Semmes, stand around like exclamation points. And in the middle of the gallery's floor is a huge ovoid bathmat, put together entirely of flesh-colored Band-Aids. (Enamored of these skinstickers, Ms. Semmes also constructed two wall pieces of colorful children's Band-Aids that resemble patchwork quilts and presents a video close-up of her Band-Aid clad feet.)What can one say in the face of this largesse, which certainly has charged overtones of feminist meaning along with its undertones of female underwear? Not much, except to note that Ms. Semmes is an engaging fantasist and a clever manipulator of architectural space.
GLUECK, GRACE. "ART IN REVIEW; Beverly Semmes -- 'In the O' - The New York Times." The New York Times - Breaking News, World News & Multimedia. http://www.nytimes.com/2003/04/04/arts/art-in-review-beverly-semmes-in-the-o.html (accessed September 13, 2009).

Richard Serra (1939) San Francisco, California

Lives in New York & Nova Scotia Sculpture, video

American minimalist sculptor and video artist known for working with large scale assemblies of sheet metal. Serra was involved in the Process Art Movement. Serra's earliest work was abstract and process-based made from molten lead hurled in large splashes against the wall of a studio or exhibition space. Still, he is better known for his minimalist constructions from large rolls and sheets of metal (COR-TEN-Steel). Many of these pieces are selfsupporting and emphasize the weight and nature of the materials. Rolls of lead are designed to sag over time. His exterior steel sculptures go through an initial oxidation process, but after 810 years, the patina of the steel settles to one color that will remain relatively stable over the piece's life. Serra often constructs site-specific installations, frequently on a scale that dwarfs the observer.
Wikipedia contributors, "Richard Serra," Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Richard_Serra&oldid=311569635 (accessed September 3, 2009).

Roger Shimomura (1939) Seattle, Washington

Lives in Lawrence, Kansas Painting, printmaking, performance

Roger Shimomura's paintings, prints, and theatre pieces address sociopolitical issues of Asian America and have often been inspired by diaries kept by his late immigrant grandmother for 56 years of her life. Roger Shimomura's work is an aesthetic and political comparison between contemporary America and traditional Japan. Using images from both cultures, Shimomura creates a complicated layering of pictorial information and social observation. As his paintings and prints are interpreted and decoded by the viewer, Shimomura's tangled intentions are revealed in a subtly political way.
Shimomura, Roger. "Roger Shimomura's Paintings, Performance and Sculpture - Official Web Site." Roger Shimomura's Paintings, Performance and Sculpture - Official Web Site. http://www.rshim.com/index.htm (accessed September 14, 2009). "Roger Shimomura | Greg Kucera Gallery | Seattle." Greg Kucera Gallery | Seattle. http://www.gregkucera.com/shimomura.htm (accessed September 14, 2009).

Roman Signer (1938) Appenzell, Switzerland

Lives in St. Gallen, Switzerland Sculpture, installations photography, and video

Signers "action sculptures" involve setting up, carrying out, and recording "experiments" or events that bear aesthetic results. Following carefully planned and strictly executed and documented procedures, the artist enacts and records such acts as explosions, collisions, and the projection of objects through space. Video works like Stiefel mit Rakete (Boot with Rocket) are integral to Signers performances, capturing the original setup of materials that self-destruct in the process of creating an emotionally and visually compelling event. Signer gives a humorous twist to the concept of cause and effect and to the traditional scientific method of experimentation and discovery, taking on the self-evidence of scientific logic as an artistic challenge
Carnegie Museum of Art. "Roman Signer." Carnegie Museum of Art. http://www.cmoa.org/international/html/art/signer.htm (accessed September 14, 2009).

Ross Sinclair (1966) Glasgow, Scotland

Lives in St. Glasgow, Scotland Sculpture, installations, photography, painting As part of Ross Sinclair's recent show, he ran a stall in one of London's street markets for a day. You could buy T-shirts, mugs, key rings, and pens, all bearing the legend "I ?? Real Life." For Sinclair, "real life" is not something that exists but something dreamed of or longed for, something that exerts itself as an idealized possibility out of the more immediate situation of cultural uncertainty. I came to realise his working process was far closer to that of a musician than that of an artist. I fell into a sort of unplugged session to find Sinclair improvising on a range of influences as likely to include history, MTV, current affairs, counter culture and personal experience as art theory, history and technique. Sinclair has a project, and its not based on a one hit wonder philosophy, its a life mission. What interests Sinclair is to establish an inquiry into the indivisible juncture between mediated experiences and real experiences. He is not seeking to criticise one and champion the other, but rather to measure, research and exhibit the relationship between the two.
Michael Archer "Ross Sinclair". ArtForum. FindArticles.com. 13 Sep, 2009. http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0268/is_1_38/ai_55939366/ Drabble, Barny. "PUBLIC ART IS DEAD, LONG LIVE REAL LIFE." Ross Sinclair. http://www.rosssinclair.co.uk/ (accessed September 14, 2009).

Shahzia Skander (1969) Lahore, Pakistan

Lives in New York & Texas Miniature painting, painting, installations, performance, drawing, mixed media

Sikander specializes in Indian and Persian miniature painting, a traditional style that is both highly stylized and disciplined. While becoming an expert in this technique-driven, often impersonal art form, she imbued it with a personal context and history, blending the Eastern focus on precision and methodology with a Western emphasis on creative, subjective expression. In doing so, Sikander transported miniature painting into the realm of contemporary art. Reared as a Muslim, Sikander is also interested in exploring both sides of the Hindu and Muslim border, often combining imagery from bothsuch as the Muslim veil and the Hindu multi-armed goddessin a single painting. Sikander has written: Such juxtaposing and mixing of Hindu and Muslim iconography is a parallel to the entanglement of histories of India and Pakistan.
"Art:21 . Shahzia Sikander . Biography . Documentary Film | PBS." PBS. http://www.pbs.org/art21/artists/sikander/index.html (accessed September 14, 2009).

Charles Simonds (1945) New York

Lives in New York & Texas Sculpture, installation

he made miniature dwellings out of tiny unfired clay bricksSimonds saw these dwellings as the habitation of a mythic race of Little People, which he divided into three sorts according to the design of dwelling they lived in: circular, spiral or linear. These people were described in his text Three Peoples (1975). The dwellings were often constructed as if partially ruined, and this suggestion of the life and death of a community was further emphasized by the fragility of the constructions. Simonds made much of his work in random sites in cities, intending them to be focal points for the local community rather than outdoor museum displays.
"artnet.com: Resource Library: Simonds, Charles." artnet - The Art World Online. http://www.artnet.com/library/07/0788/T078840.asp (accessed September 14, 2009).

SIMPARCH (1996) Las Cruces, New Mexico

Operates out of New Mexico Sculpture, installation, mixed media

SIMPARCH is an American artist collective that was founded in Las Cruces, New Mexico in 1996. Presently this group is organized and maintained by Matthew Lynch and Steve Badgett. Their practice involves large-scale, usually interactive installations and works that, as the group's name suggests, examine simple architecture, building practices, site specificity and materials that may be salvaged, recycled or generally brought together with a kind of d.i.y. attitude. Often collaborating with other artists, builders, art critics, graffiti artists, filmmakers, and skate boarders, and musicians, SIMPARCH works at providing sites which allow for social interaction and experimentation with design and materials.
Wikipedia contributors, "Simparch," Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Simparch&oldid=282049670 (accessed April 6, 2009).

Alexis Smith (1949) Los Angeles, CA

Lives in Los Angeles, CA Installation, Collage, mixed media

Selection is key to the success of any collage artist and Smiths esthetic remains specifically pre-internet. She has always incorporated bits and pieces reminiscent of the Southern California of her childhood, then redolent of orange groves and rife with movie stars. Yet, what used to be swap-meet kitsch has taken on an aura of rarity with passing time.
Drohojowska-Philp, Hunter. "AN ALEXIS SMITH REVIVAL." artnet - The Art World Online. http://www.artnet.com/magazineus/reviews/smith/smith5-19-09.asp (accessed September 14, 2009).

Kiki Smith (1954) Nuremberg, Germany

Lives in New York City, NY Sculpture, mixed media

an American artist classified as a feminist artist, a movement with beginnings in the twentieth century. Her Body Art is imbued with political significance, undermining the traditional erotic representations of women by male artists, and often exposes the inner biological systems of females as a metaphor for hidden social issues. Her work also often includes the theme of birth and regeneration, sustenance, and frequently has Catholic allusions. Smith has also been active in debate over controversies such as AIDS, gender, race, and battered women.
Wikipedia contributors, "Kiki Smith," Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Kiki_Smith&oldid=294478456 (accessed June 4, 2009).