The future of art

Rasim Babayev was an iconic figure in post-Soviet art and a pioneer of the Azerbaijani Avant-Garde movement. Although predominantly focused on painting, Babayev expressed his vision in sculpture, on monumental murals and mosaic panels, on painted ceramics, and work in papier-mâché. Using the language of metaphor to create symbolism—reality knotted with fiction—the ancient Persian false god Div, or Daeva, was a significant muse, depicted in a large portion of his works. As a fictional creature from folklore, he considered it to be a personification of human nature.

Learn more

Born in Mexico, Duarte’s work is rooted in history both collective and personal, his own, he intertwines experiences of modern life with collective ones rooted in myth and history through the lens of his own Mexican culture. Despite the seemingly cultural specific themes he touches on, the experiences he brings are universal because he sees Mexican history, no different than Roman or Japanese - it belongs to all of us and within each story, each culturally specific narrative, we find the collective experience that binds us all. The narratives we tell ourselves across the world, whether it’s...

Born in Chile, P.X. Miranda has lived in Italy since 1999. She was awarded a scholarship to Davidson College and graduated from the Pontifical Catholic University of Chile, where she won several prizes for her highly regarded oil paintings. Fascinated by history and its notable figures, she uses literature, poetry, and music as inspiration for her paintings.

Medieval tapestry, Renaissance portraiture, the Arts and Crafts Movement, and William Morris designs also underpin her works. She combines these elements in her pieces to create images that have a timeless quality resembling a sort of puzzle. P. X. Miranda paintings unapologetically embrace nature...

Johan Wahlstrom is one of today's most vocal artists, known for his unencumbered critiques of the current social and political landscapes. 

In 1998, Wahlstrom moved to a small village in France where he immersed himself in his painting for seven years, part of the time under the tutelage of the Swedish artist Lennart Nystrom. Wahlstrom's dark narrative centers around the depiction of heads and torsos inspired by handwritten critiques in cryptic prose on scraps of paper that scatter his studio....

David Mellen (b. 1970, Chicago, IL, USA) attended the American Academy of Art and exhibited his work in his hometown of Chicago until 1994, when he moved to Europe. Over the next five years, he exhibited work in Paris, Brussels and London while working at studios in Germany and Brussels.

After returning to the States and living for a time on the West Coast, he moved across the country and now lives with...