Laylah Ali was born in Buffalo, New York, in 1968 and received a BA from Williams College and an MFA from Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri. The precision with which Ali creates her small, figurative, gouache paintings on paper is such that it takes her many months to complete a single work. She meticulously plots out every aspect of her work in advance, from subject matter to choice of color and the brushes that she will use. In style, her paintings resemble comic-book serials, but they also contain stylistic references to hieroglyphics and American folk art traditions. Ali ...

Arturo Herrera was born in Caracas, Venezuela in 1959, and lives and works in New York and Berlin, Germany. Herrera’s work includes collage, works on paper, sculpture, relief, wall painting, photography, and felt wall hangings. His work taps into the viewer’s unconscious—often intertwining fragments of cartoon characters with abstract shapes and partially obscured images that evoke memory and recollection. Using techniques of fragmentation, splicing, and re-contextualization, Herrera’s work is provocative and open-ended. For his collages, he uses found images from cartoons, coloring books, and fairy tales, combining fragments of Disney-like characters with violent and sexual imagery to make work ...

Nikki S Lee is a Korean American artist and filmmaker based in New York City. Lee is most known for observing particular subcultures and ethnic groups, and adopting their general style and attitude through dress, gesture, and posture. She introduces herself as an artist spending several weeks participating in the group’s routine activities and social events while a friend or member of the group photographs her with an ordinary automatic “snapshot” camera. From schoolgirl to senior citizen, punk to yuppie, rural white American to urban Hispanic, Lee’s personas traverse age, lifestyle, and culture. Part sociologist and part performance artist, ...

Mark Bradford was born in Los Angeles, California, in 1961. He received a BFA (1995) and MFA (1997) from the California Institute of the Arts in Valencia. Bradford transforms materials scavenged from the street into wall-size collages and installations that respond to the impromptu networks—underground economies, migrant communities, or popular appropriation of abandoned public space—that emerge within a city. Drawing from the diverse cultural and geographic makeup of his southern Californian community, Bradford’s work is as informed by his personal background as a third-generation merchant there as it is by the tradition of abstract painting developed worldwide in the ...

William Cordova’s work is tied to an urban ecology of obsolescence, disparity, and displacement. Busted cars, trashed tires, discarded shoes, machetes, speakers, and books yellowed with age provide the material support and iconographic program for his drawings, collages, and installations. For the artist, these material choices reference the reality of lived experience, as opposed to the spectacle of culture, mass-produced for constant consumption. The fluency with which Cordova traverses media and remixes cultural signifiers confirms his visual multilinguism, as barbed as it is lived-in. Cordova has been preoccupied with issues of transformation and interpretation since his youth, owing partly ...

Harry is a Chicano essayist, photographer, director and performance artist. He was a founding member of the influential Chicano performance art collective ASCO. Gamboa's work as a writer, photographer, film-maker, performance artist and multimedia creator of "things" is diverse, but in all his efforts (including those as a member of ASCO) his focus has been to reveal the absurdity of urban life and to confront both the dominant white culture and various perspectives within Chicano culture, pointing to the pain and alienation caused by both. This is often achieved by altering the media of the art itself, as opposed ...

Guy is a self taught English contemporary artist and painter based in France. He is the founder of the Neomodern group, a member of Stuckism International, and part of the urban art scene in Bristol. Denning's early work included an interest in the work of Franz Kline and was characterized by powerful, expressive brushstrokes in mainly abstract paintings. More recently he has combined earlier influences with an increasingly figurative style of painting.

Steven is an English artist. Pippin works with converted or improvised photographic equipment and kinetic sculptures. Pippin's work shows a strong interest in the mechanical, which he has said stems from an early childhood memory of seeing his father surrounded by the wires and tubes of a television set he was repairing. Pippin's early work was based on converting furniture and everyday objects into makeshift pinhole cameras which he then uses to uses to take sympathetic photographs.

Stephen Finer is a London based artist, active since the 1980s. Finer participated in "British Art from the Arts Council Collection 1940-80" at the Hayward Gallery, 'Collazione Inglese ll' at the Venice Biennale and was in the touring exhibition, 'Men on Women', 'The Portrait Now' at the National Portrait Gallery and 'Painting the Century 101 Portrait Masterpieces 1900-2000' held to celebrate the millennium also at the National Portrait Gallery, where his portrait of David Bowie is in the permanent collection. There have been many solo exhibitions. His paintings are in the public collections of the Arts Council, Atkinson Art ...

Mona is a video artist and installation artist who lives in London. On her influences: “I was completely taken in by Minimal and Conceptual Art when I was on my first degree course. Going to University afterwards, which was my first encounter with a large bureaucratic institution, I became involved in analyzing power structures, first in relation to feminism, and then in wider terms as in the relationship between the Third World and the West. This led me to making confrontational issue-based performance works which were fueled by anger and a sense of urgency. Later, when I got into ...

Marlies is a Dutch fashion designer known for her lingerie line Undressed. The Marlies Dekkers brand (stylized in print as "marlies|dekkers") has established 1000 points of sale worldwide - Marlies Dekkers stores are located in cities such as Amsterdam, Rotterdam, Antwerp, Paris, Bangkok, Berlin and Cologne. Some awards she's won: Dutch Bodyfashion Award (1994) ELLE's Innovator of the Year Award (2004) Grand Seigneur (2005) Marie Claire Prix de la Mode (2008)

Kris is a Belgian fashion designer. He studied at the Antwerp Royal Academy of Fine Arts, in Antwerp from 1994 to 1998. After graduating he moved to Paris in 1998. He was immediately appointed at Yves Saint Laurent as Hedi Slimane’s first assistant for the Rive Gauche Homme line. The collaboration with Mr. Slimane continued at Christian Dior for the launching and development of the hugely successful Dior Homme collection until September 2004. In January 2005, Kris finally presented his own men’s collection for the first time in Paris during Men’s Fashion Week. Today he heads his own label, ...

Christopher was an Australian costumer and designer whose client list included Tina Turner, Phyllis Diller and Dionne Warwick. Essex was born in England but grew up in Australia. He began his career by designing displays at Mark Foys, Sydney's leading department store at that time. In the 1960s he opened his first salon, "Camille", in Hong Kong. Camille's customers included Nancy Kwan and Bruce Lee.

Miriam was an Irish fashion designer. In 1990, Mone won the Grolsch "Question of Style Award" which as a prize placed her in the Irish Design Centre, a retail outlet for top-end Irish design talent. Very quickly her reputation spread and other Irish retail outlets began to stock the label to meet the growing demand. She won the Coat Designer award at the Late Late Show Fashion Awards in 1993, and went on to win the Designer of the Year in 1995. When Irish president Mary McAleese was elected in 1997, she selected Miriam to design her inauguration outfit.

Malcolm Hall is a British fashion designer. He's known for his flamboyant, tailored suits in velvets, satins, silks and brocades. Hall studied at the London College of Fashion and Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design, before refining his skills at the Tailor and Cutter Academy. After graduating in 1969, he became design assistant to fashion designer Ossie Clark. Malcolm Hall suits were worn by ABBA, according to Simon Sheridan's The Complete ABBA. He's also dressed Brian Eno & Paul McCartney.

Ronald is a Paris-trained Scottish fashion designer. In 1936, he left Scotland to go to London to study at the Piccadilly Institute of Design. In 1947, he opened his own couture house and had much success. He had many important clients such as the family of Castle Howard. In 1966 he won the Sunday Times Award. He also worked as a fashion consultant The Spy Who Loved Me (1977) and The Adventurers. His archives are at the Victoria & Albert Museum in London.

Lars Nilsson is a fashion designer and fully integrated member of the Council of Fashion Designers of America who has worked with several major fashion houses, including Christian Dior, Bill Blass, Nina Ricci and an own menswear line Mr. Nils. Over the past two years he has also been heavily involved in bringing his long-held ambition of a furniture and textiles collection to fruition

Rei is a Japanese fashion designer and the founder of Comme des Garçons. Comme des Garçons specializes in anti-fashion, austere, sometimes deconstructed garments. During the 1980s, her garments were primarily in black, dark gray or white. The materials were often draped around the body and featured frayed, unfinished edges along with holes and a general asymmetrical shape. Kawakubo created the 2008 autumn "guest designer" collection at H&M, designing men's and women's clothing along with some children's and a unisex perfume.

Angelo Litrico (1927 – 1986) was an Italian fashion designer. He dressed many world leaders on both sides of the Cold War, and is credited with introducing fashion shows for men's clothing. The company he founded continues to this day, under the control of his nephews. He dressed many world leaders of the era, such as John F. Kennedy, Juan Perón, Tito, Dwight D. Eisenhower, and King Hussein of Jordan.

Flora was a Auckland, New Zealand based dress designer. After starting a career in nursing, she discovered that she had a flair for dressmaking, and opened Ninettes in Vulcan Lane, Auckland. Her shop became highly successful, attracting a prosperous clientele from Auckland's more affluent suburbs. She is highly revered and considered an idol to countless NZ and Aussie based designers.

Au Revoir Simone is an electronic dream pop band from Williamsburg, Brooklyn, New York, formed in late 2003. The group is composed of Erika Forster (vocals/keyboard), Annie Hart (vocals/keyboard), and Heather D'Angelo (vocals/drum machine/keyboard). The band's name comes from a line Pee-wee Herman says to a minor character (named Simone) in Tim Burton's 1985 film, Pee-wee's Big Adventure. Visit their official site.

Teeth & Tongue is Jess Cornelius, plus long time collaborator Marc Regueiro-Mckelvie and Damian Sullivan. With a combination of hypnotic 505 drum-machine beats and slow, bent-out-of-shape guitar lines, the songs weave themselves throughout heartbreak and simmering discontent. Visit Teeth & Tongue on MySpace.

With a plethora of emotive dark pop songs, and backed by a growing army of top producers and worldwide fans, Charli is not like your run-of-the-mill musician. Last year, Charli released ‘Stay Away’. Co-written and produced by Ariel Rechtshaid (Glasser, Diplo), it is as knock-you-to-the-floor as first introductions come. A massive anthem that combines all the majestic bluster of the 80s with distinct post-millennial production, it’s an epic and heart-wrenching addition to pop’s cannon about “unrequited love and being tainted by someone so you can’t be around them any more”. For fans of: Siouxsie.

Matthew Dear is an American music producer, DJ and electronic avant-pop artist. Matthew Dear has listed Talking Heads, David Bowie, Adonis, Nitzer Ebb, and Roman Flügel as inspirations. Matthew Dear's latest album, Black City, was released on August 17, 2010. It conceptualizes a futuristic metropolis that never sleeps. Dear describes 'Black City': "Well, there's a kind of timelessness to it in the sense that I don't want things to run on a 24-hour clock. It seems like a city that's always awake, maybe always dialed in electronically, and cannot be turned off. It's this imaginary weird never-sleeping town. But ...

Spring-boarding his musical career during his 10 years living in New York City with early musical roots in the East Village, Lieb took the NYC songwriting scene by storm. After a year or so exploring the big-labels, Eli put on the brakes and retreated to his hometown of Fairfield, Iowa. It was in this rural refuge where Eli was able to write one of this year’s most exciting albums from his own musical instincts. Eli is also a YouTube sensation thanks to his incredible range of cover songs. He's currently gathered over a million views.

Abel Tesfaye, better known by his stage name The Weeknd, is a Canadian recording artist and record producer of Ethiopian descent. Songs recorded under The Weeknd name first leaked in late 2010, though the identity of the individual behind the project was initially unknown. The Weeknd along with Doc McKinney and Illangelo were recently commissioned by Florence & The Machine to remix their single "Shake It Out". His style is commonly referred to as modern, sultry R&B.

Chairlift is an American electronic pop Duo. Based in Brooklyn, New York, Chairlift consists of members Caroline Polachek (songwriting, vocals, tambourine, synthesizer) and Patrick Wimberly (drums, bass guitar, keyboard, production). Their song "Bruises" was featured in the 2008 commercial that launched the 4th generation iPod Nano. Polachek was featured on Washed Out's "You And I" (2010), in Acrylics' "Sparrow Song", in Flosstradamus' single "Big Bills", and Holy Ghost!'s "I Know, I Hear". Their sophomore album, Something, is out later this month.

Javelin is a New York based electro duo comprised of Tom Van Buskirk and George Langford. Their debut album, No Mas was released via David Byrne's Luaka Bop record label. They recently soundtracked a short western (ironically?) entitled Canyon Candy. Visit Javelin at their official site.

Justice is a French electronic music duo consisting of Gaspard Augé and Xavier de Rosnay. The duo is one of the most successful groups on Ed Banger Records and is managed by the label's head, Pedro Winter. Justice is known for incorporating a strong rock and indie influence into their music and image. Their debut album † was released in June 2007 to critical acclaim. The band released their second album, Audio, Video, Disco on 24 October 2011.

Fast Years are a brand new punk and garage inspired act based out of NYC. Their debut EP is due out this spring. For fans of: The Ramones, The Stooges, NY Dolls. Visit Fast Years on Bandcamp. Catch Fast Years on 1/20 @ Brooklyn's Cameo (opening for Howler).