Jeffrey Ian Rosen

Jeffrey Ian Rosen is co-founder, together with his wife, Misako, of MISAKO & ROSEN, a contemporary art gallery located in Tokyo, Japan. The gallery is also one of three spaces that contribute to the collaborative gallery project LA MAISON DE RENDEZ-VOUS in Brussels, Belgium. Rosen is co-president of the board of NADA (New Art Dealers Alliance) and a member of the IGA (International Galleries Alliance). Together with Tokyo-based artist run space, XYZ Collective, MISAKO & ROSEN are co-founders of Onsen Confidential, a gallery-share and hot spring retreat set to launch its first (covid-delayed) edition in September 2022. Following the motto, “art is not a competition,” Rosen believes in the need to develop alternative, commercially viable models to counter a profit-driven approach to contemporary art.

Dirk Knibbe

Born 1980 in Grand Rapids, MI. Lives and works in Los Angeles, CA. 2019 MFA, Art Center College of Design, Pasadena, CA. 2003 BFA, School of the Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, IL.

"Dirk Knibbe is a quintessential contemporary Los Angeles sculptor. An unexpected, design-surreal combination of materials and an implied logic or language characterizes his lecterns. Comedically abundant, Knibbe’s sculptures suggest play—playgrounds, absurd architecture and, even, imaginary torture devices. Fetishistic and distant yet metaphysical, the works are academic in the best sense: accessible to those for whom materials prove an intellectual stimulant. Despite the apparently cold care with which the sculptures seem to have been assembled, there is more than a faint suggestion of the body that took pleasure in putting them together."

Artwork Image: The Pegboard Lectern, 2019. 38 x 32 x 96 in.

Tania Alvarez

Born 1983. Lives and works in Catskill, New York. 2017 MFA, New York Academy of Art, New York, NY. 2005 BFA, Pratt Institute, Brooklyn, NY.

"The paintings of Tania Alvarez demonstrate a deft use of contradictory elements—both unsettling and inviting, and/or inviting because unsettling, the work, certainly as presented digitally, prompts a closer look. Floating or free-standing curtains, jarring geometries, and interior depths served on panels muted in palette yet highly textured (and, somehow, logically small), all of these elements suggest a properly contemporary approach to metaphysical painting. Appropriately unpeopled, Alvarez’s paintings feign to picture—what they more likely achieve is to reflect."

Artwork Image: Thistle, 2022. Acrylic on panel. 12 x 12 x 1 1/2 in.

Umico Niwa

Born 1991 in Nagoya, Japan. 2020 MFA, Virginia Commonwealth University, Richmond, VA. 2015 BFA, Maryland Institute College of Art, Baltimore, MD.

"Umico Niwa’s work is touching; it invites touch yet evades this via context, and a presence that evokes at once the fragile and the gnarly. Her artist statement provides a backstory that, contrary to most, does not feel obtrusive but instead necessary. It offers an invitation to an intimate conversation with and about her and, via a natural extension, you and your place in a contemporary ecosystem of engaged identity. Hers is not a process of anthropomorphoses, but rather of experimentation and openness, allowing rather than alchemic and (her voice) a strong if gentle (example) of expanded reason and an organic, materialized psychedelic."

Artwork Image: Baby Shoe Series: Puffer Rattle, 2021. Foraged organic materials, copper and oil paint. 4 x 3 x 6 in.