The 5 Best Up-and-Coming New York Artists, 2012 Edition
Christopher Smith
9flips.com
This Bronx native was recently highlighted by Welcome to Company's television series "Art/Trek NYC" as one of the most promising new artists in New York. With an MFA from the Pratt Institute, Smith has exhibited at a number of smaller gallery spaces throughout the city, but only through "Art/Trek" has he accomplished his first solo exhibition. His work combines multimedia with traditional mediums from video installations, sculpture, drawing and acrylic paints. He says he is interested in "how we interact with space." One of his most well-known works is a video installation that was exhibited at the Bronx Museum, capturing the painting process in multiple colors. His work is shown in galleries throughout New York and California.
Related: The 8 Best Art Galleries In NYC
Angelina Gualdoni
Asya Geisberg Gallery
537B W 23rd St
New York, NY 10011
(212) 675-7525
angelinagualdoni.com
asyageisberggallery.com
Born in San Francisco and now living in Brooklyn, Gualdoni has recently begun showing more of her works in solo exhibitions in galleries throughout the city. Her work focuses on urban landscapes and the abandoned structures we leave behind. Gualdoni's main medium is acrylic and oil on canvas, with images of jumbled-looking shapes and colors that form abstract visions of empty spaces such as a strip mall overgrown with weeds, houses crumbling in on themselves or a parking garage beside a dark abyss. In addition to her work as an artist, Gualdoni is the co-founder of a popular art space in Ridgewood, known as Regina Rex. You may have seen Gualdoni's work at the exhibition, "Queens International 2012" at the Queens Museum of Art. Although this exhibition is no longer on view, her work is sold at Asya Geisberg Gallery here in New York City.
Julie Tremblay
julietremblay.net
While not a beginner artist, Tremblay is fairly new to the New York art scene, having just completed her first solo exhibition here in Chelsea's 571 Projects. Tremblay, who earned her MFA from Pratt Institute, now lives and works in Brooklyn, creating works that focus on the human form in motion. Many of her creations are life-size sculptures made of recycled materials from chicken wire, bottle caps, wax and more. She enjoys utilizing art to experiment with space and the body's form within it - a body suspended mid-backflip, standing erect or kneeling with arms extended as if in prayer are all common poses for Tremblay's sculptures. With her first New York exhibition finished, Tremblay will continue to show her work at galleries across the US and internationally. The only North American galleries that sell her work are currently in Quebec City, Canada, where Tremblay was born; however she is sure to make a splash in the New York galleries again soon.
Loren Berger
lorenberger.com
Loren Berger is a photographer who recently began taking photos only five years ago. Her images focus on the details, disregarding landscapes or panoramas, in favor of close-ups of items. Bright-color contrasts are what draw many viewers to her work, which is refreshingly more traditional and tangible than abstract. Many of her works have found their way into apartment complexes and hotel lobbies around New York and California.
Katherine Daniels
www.katherinedaniels.com/
An artist for less than a decade, Katherine Daniels just recently won the Clare Weiss Emerging Artist Award, for which she will now install an outdoor work along the edges of the Bronx's Joyce Kilmer Park. Daniels works with multiple mediums, from ink and colored pencil to wired-bead sculptures and plastic fence weaves. She writes that her works seek to understand "the human need to create and cultivate beauty as a counter to our acts of destruction." Her works are dynamic when viewed from afar but become even more alive when seen up close.
