Born in 1980 in Cleveland Ohio, OH, USA
Lives and works in New York, NY, USA

New York based artist Daniel Arsham work explores the fields of fine art, architecture, performance, design and film. Raised in Miami, Arsham attended the Cooper Union in New York City where he received the Gelman Trust Fellowship Award in 2003.

Soon thereafter Arsham toured worldwide with the Merce Cunningham Dance Company as the company’s stage designer. The experience lead to an ongoing collaborative practice which continues as Arsham works with world renowned artists, musicians, designers, and brands.

Arsham’s uchronic aesthetics revolves around his concept of fictional archaeology. Working in sculpture, architecture, drawing and film, he creates and crystallizes ambiguous in-between spaces or situations, and further stages what he refers to as future relics of the present. Always iconic, most of the objects that he turns into stone refer to the late 20th century or millennial era, when technological obsolescence unprecedentedly accelerated along with the digital dematerialization of our world. While the present, the future and the past poetically collide in his haunted yet playful visions between romanticism and pop art, Daniel Arsham also experiments with the timelessness of certain symbols and gestures across cultures.

In 2008, Arsham co-founded Snarkitecture with architect Alex Mustonen. Snarkitecture is a collaborative design practice established to investigate the boundaries between the disciplines of art and architecture. Snarkitecture focuses on the reinterpretation of everyday materials, structures and programs to new and imaginative effect. The studio’s work includes installations, architectural environments and objects for a diverse range of clients such as Beats by Dre, Calvin Klein, COS, Design Miami, Gufram, Kith, New Museum, and Valextra.

Atelier Van Lieshout is the studio founded by sculptor, painter and visionary Joep van Lieshout. After graduating at the Rotterdam Art Academy Van Lieshout quickly rose to fame with projects that travelled between the world of easy-clean design and the non-functional area of art: sculpture and installations, buildings and furniture, utopias and dystopias.

In 1995, Van Lieshout founded his studio and has been working solely under the studio’s name ever since. The studio moniker exists in Van Lieshout’s practice as a methodology toward undermining the myth of the artistic genius. Over the past three decades, Van Lieshout has established a multidisciplinary practice that produces works on the borders between art, design, and architecture. By investigating the thin line between manufacturing art and mass-producing functional objects, he seeks to find the boundaries between fantasy and function, between fertility and destruction. Van Lieshout dissects systems, be it society as a whole or the human body; he experiments, looks for alternatives, takes exhibitions as experiments for recycling, and has even declared an independent state in the port of Rotterdam AVL-Ville (2001)—a free state in the Rotterdam harbour, with a minimum of rules, a maximum of liberties, and the highest degree of autarky. All of these activities are conducted within Van Lieshout’s signature style of provocation—be it political or material.

Van Lieshout combines an imaginative aesthetic and ethic with a spirit of entrepreneurship; his work has motivated movements in the fields of architecture and ecology, and has been internationally celebrated, exhibited, and published. His works share a number of recurring themes, motives, and obsessions: systems, power, autarky, life, sex, and death—each of these trace the human individual in the face of a greater whole such as his well-known work the Domestikator (2015). This sculpture caused controversy before even being placed at the Louvre in Jardin de Tuilleries, but was adopted by Centre Pompidou where it was shown during FiAC (2017).

Van Lieshout’s works have been included in the Gwangju, Venice, Yokohama, Christchurch, Shanghai and São Paulo biennials. AVL is in part of the permanent collections of public and private institutions such as: Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam; Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam; Centraal Museum, Utrecht; Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven; Bonnefantenmuseum, Maastricht; Museum Kröller-Müller, Otterlo; Museum Voorlinden, Wassenaar; Centre Pompidou, Parijs; Collectie Marta Herford, Herford; Stichting Prada, Milaan; FNAC, Parijs; Ludwig Forum, Aken; Folkwang-museum, Essen; Migros Museum für Gegenwartskunst, Zürich; MoMA, New York, en het Walker Art Center, Minneapolis.

Koen van den Broek was born in 1973 in Bree, Belgium
He lives and works in Antwerp, Belgium

Born in 1973 in the Belgian town of Bree, Koen van den Broek first studied architecture and subsequently painting, initially at the Royal Academy of Antwerp and then at the Academy of Visual Arts of Breda. In his opinion, despite his painting studies, he has always remained an architect at heart. Ever since his student days, van den Broek has travelled constantly: around Europe, to the USA, Mexico and even to Korea. Always with his camera close to hand. He takes photos, a lot of photos, which all depict the same subject: the architectural interventions of man on the landscape.

Early in his career, Koen van den Broek developed a fascination for desolate landscapes in which man rarely appears, but always makes his presence felt. He depicts the traces left behind on roads, streets and houses that have been abandoned. The artist’s perception of roads and borders in barren lands has provided the painter with impulses that enable him to make his specific statement on landscape painting. Van den Broek operates by turning his face downwards and zooming in on the irregularities of the pavement, on curb stones and shadows. It is this very search for a subject of representation that led the artist on a journey closer to abstraction.

Works by Koen van den Broek are part of major public collections, including the LACMA, Los Angeles; SMAK, Ghent; M HKA, Antwerp; Busan Museum of Art, Busan; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, and Museum Dhondt-Dhaenens, Deurle. His work has been presented at the Venice Biennial (2015 & 2017); White Cube, London; Kunstmuseum, Bonn; Royal Museum of Fine Arts of Antwerp and Brussels; Seoul Arts Centre, Seoul; Kunsthalle, Mannheim; Royal Academy, London; MAS, Antwerp, and Kunsthal, Rotterdam; His work can also be found in numerous public spaces in Belgium, such as the Hofkamer, Antwerp; ‘t Zilte, MAS, Antwerp; AZSM Hospital, Mechelen, and the Provinciehuis, Hasselt.

Brigitte Kowanz (1957-2022) is known for her evocative sculptures, installations, and environments with a decidedly non-physical medium: light. Since the early 1980s, she has been exploring both the utilitarian and conceptual resonances of light with neon tubing, LED bulbs, aluminum, mirrors, and text. She draws upon such multidisciplinary sources as advertising, architecture, film, music, and the history of painting for inspiration. Through her use of mirrors, Kowanz aims to break down the boundaries between art and life, drawing viewers into her illuminated visions. Kowanz studied from 1975 to 1980 at the University of Applied Arts Vienna. She has been Professor of Transmedial Art there since 1997.

Renato Nicolodi was born in 1980, in Anderlecht, Belgium
He lives and works close to Brussels, Belgium.

The architectural work of Nicolodi is clearly monumental. The artist is inspired by classical architecture, which he uniquely processes. It is only when the viewer steps onto the work and inspects it from close range, that he can obtain a clearer understanding of the work, as if he is invited to take part in a visual and physical search within the architectonic forms he has created. Different vantage points and views reveal subtle games of light gradations with the constantly recurring subjective black space, that remains inaccessible for the viewer, coaxing one into reflection. Pure formalistic language is given an almost sacred priority.

Renato Nicolodi studied Audiovisual and Fine Arts at Sint-Lukas in Brussels, and is a laureate at the Higher Institute for Fine Arts (HISK) in Gent. His work can be found in the SFMOMA, San Francisco; Beelden aan Zee, Scheveningen; the collection of the province of Oost-Vlaanderen, Belgium; the province of Vlaams-Brabant, Belgium; the city of Genk, Genk; The city of Lokeren, Lokeren; Ekard Collection, Wassenaar; Achmea collection, Zeist; Houthoff Buruma, Amsterdam; Cobra to Contemporary/The Brown Family Collection, and many other international private collections.

Troika is a collaborative contemporary art practice formed by Eva Rucki (b. 1976, Germany), Conny Freyer (b. 1976, Germany) and Sebastien Noel (b. 1977, France) in 2003.

With a particular interest in perception and spatial experience, their collective works manipulate our experience and understanding of the world. They challenge our assumptions and ask the question why we know what we know, and whether this knowledge is certain.

As Troika experiments with new ideas and processes, the artists work across media including light, soot, water, dice and electricity. Their work often presents a double, deceptive nature, at once deliberate and spontaneous, calculated and random, allowing Troika to explore ideas around man made structures, control, repetitive actions and systems and how these coincide, conflict, or unite with the unpredictable, the unknowable, and irrational.

Troika’s work is part of the permanent collections of Centre Pompidou, Paris; M+, Hong Kong; The Victoria & Albert Museum, London; The Art Institute of Chicago, MoMA, New York; Jumex Collection, Mexico City; and the Israel Museum. In 2010, Troika was commissioned by the Foreign and Commonwealth Office to produce three site-specific installations for the UK Pavilion, designed by Heatherwick Studio, at the Shanghai Expo. In 2014 Troika was selected to present their work ‘Dark Matter’ at Unlimited, Art Basel.

Eva Rucki, Conny Freyer and Sebastien Noel live and work in London.

Levi van Veluw was born in the city of Hoevelaken in 1985. He lives and works near Amsterdam, The Netherlands.

Over the past 15 years, Van Veluw has produced a diverse and evolving oeuvre that is exhibited all around the world. He is known for installations, sculptures, drawings, and autobiographical films that draw from his childhood memories. From the depths of his memory, the artist unearths images that provoke universal emotions and question our human logic. Van Veluw plays with elements of order and chaos, posing to the viewer questions about our obsessive pursuit of control.

Van Veluw creates his works with extreme care and craftsmanship; his sculptures of clay and wood are made entirely by hand, giving them an authentic, coarse, and organic character. His intricately built-up charcoal drawings show great symmetry and harmony, whilst his remarkable use of light evokes a strong, meditative mood. The installations by Van Veluw offer intense and immersive experiences. In the past, he has built complete, though fictional cathedrals – amongst other dark and sensory spaces built of obscure forms and materials. Visitors that enter Van Veluw’s alternate realities become disassociated from their existing spatial interpretations. They experience a disruptive environment where both order and chaos live one amongst the other.

The work of Van Veluw has been exhibited internationally in leading museums and institutions worldwide, such as the Museum of Arts and Design, New York; the Bass Museum of Art, Miami; Ars Electronica, Linz; Centro Nacional de las Artes, Mexico City; Design Museum, London; Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal, and Marres House for Contemporary Culture, Maastricht, amongst others. His work is included in both public and private collections, such as the Borusan Collection, Istanbul; Museum Voorlinden, Wassenaar; Museum MORE, Gorssel; the KPMG Art Collection, Amstelveen; the Ekard Collection, Wassenaar; the Lakeside Collection, Rotterdam, and Cobra to Contemporary/The Brown Family Collection.

Additionally, Van Veluw has worked on commissions for private clients. Within these commissions he has undertaken many collaborations. In 2012, Van Veluw worked alongside curator Marc Coetzee on the film “Family”, produced as part of the “Films4peace” project. In 2014, working alongside Hermès, Van Veluw created a life-sized site-specific installation for one of their main windows in Shanghai. Van Veluw has also participated in international film festivals, including Addis Foto Fest, Addis Ababa; Afrika Film festival, Leuven; Trinidad and Tobago Film Festival, Port of Spain, and West Midlands Human Rights Film Festival, Birmingham.

The arduous drawing process of Renie Spoelstra always begins with a journey. For close to a decade, she has travelled to coasts, lakes and beaches throughout North America and Europe. Recently she visited the volcanic islands of La Palma and Iceland, looking for landscapes that evoke overwhelming existential feelings. Once she has found these locations, she films the scenes, and by using the stills from the footage, she is able to move on to the next phase of conveying a personal representation of a geographic location. Her work is never about the locations she depicts – no matter how beautiful they are. They are always about triggering emotions and associations that sharpen our senses.

Renie Spoelstra uses film footage as a starting point for her charcoal drawings. The suede like and velvety texture is achieved by the many layers of charcoal, which are skillfully positioned on top of each other to re-create an almost cinematographic scene. The balance between darkness and soft beams of light is rendered through the many shades of black and grey, creating a notion that something may be lurking below the surface.

Renie Spoelstra looks for an atmosphere, and it is this atmosphere that she tries to re-create in her drawings. The dark hues, empty landscapes and sheer size of the works evoke an existential, melancholic sentiment, and allows for the viewer to lose oneself in each piece. Although these works are reproductions of real places, and are not imagined sceneries, the soulful nature of the drawings, and dark depths, reveal a personal interpretation of the artist’s emotion.

Themes of intensity, secrecy and mystery are reoccurring in Spoelstra’s works. There is an alluring and mythical feel of a place. The series ‘Stretching Universe’ refers to the scientific fact that our universe is expanding, while here on earth it feels as though it is shrinking with the rise of xenophobia, narrow-mindedness and the continuous threats of climate change. Fleeing, or escaping to nature is not as easy as it may seem.

Renie Spoelstra studied at St. Joost, Breda and at the Academie Minerva, Groningen. She has exhibited in the Netherlands and abroad, notably at institutions like the Albertina, Vienna; Museum Boijmans van Beuningen, Rotterdam, and Stedelijk Museum Schiedam. Her work is included in renowned collections such as the Centre Pompidou, Paris; MACBA Barcelona; Stedelijk Museum Schiedam; Centraal Museum, Utrecht; Cobra Museum voor Moderne Kunst, Amstelveen; Museum Voorlinden, Wassenaar; the Guerlain Fondation, Paris, and many other (private) collections.