ARTLAWS

KIKI SMITH is one of the most influential visual artists in the contemporary world. Since the 1980s, Smith has created a prolific and provocative body of work that explores embodiment and the natural world. Utilizing a broad variety of materials and mediums – including sculpture, printmaking, photography, drawing and textiles – Smith’s unique style draws on mythology, folklore, fairytales and religious iconography, while also exploring the human form in all of its frailty and myst...

GABRIEL GONZALEZ is a Grammy Award winning singer-songwriter and leader of a new break-out collective of world class musicians embodying the truth of the Los Angeles Latin experience – La Verdad. Since 2015 Gonzalez has also been a lead singer for Boogaloo Assassins, the famed 12-piece Latin Boogaloo, Salsa, and Latin Soul band with whom Gonzalez is about to release a new album. Since the beginning of his career as a child performer in Mexican films, Gonzalez (also known as...

ISABEL VINCENT is an award-winning writer and investigative journalist and the author of the new book "Overture of Hope: Two Sisters' Daring Plan That Saved Opera's Jewish Stars from the Third Reich." The book uncovers the amazingly true story of Ida and Louise Cook -- two British opera fans who masterminded their own plan to rescue dozens of German and Austrian Jews from a terrible fate. Vincent began her career in the 1990's as a foreign correspondent for the Globe and Ma...

Susan Davis is the Founder & President of DESERT X, a site-specific, contemporary art exhibition that is held in the Coachella Valley of Southern California every two years. Since 2017, DESERT X has pushed the boundaries of art beyond the gallery walls to present work that engages with the public in desert environments, through unique installations created by acclaimed artists from around the world. While responding to and amplifying the dramatic range of land and seascapes ...

Vera Mulyani is considered the world’s first Marschitect. She is the Founder and CEO of Mars City Design, a global innovation platform whose purpose is to research, conceptualize, and design eco-sustainable cities for life on Mars. Mulyani’s concept of urbanism on Mars also advocates a self-sustaining lifestyle on Earth. Growing up in the polluted slums of Jakarta with the trauma of civil war as her brutal reality, Vera relied on her imagination as a means of survival ...

Kathleen Turner is an award-winning American actress and director, celebrated for her acclaimed work in film, television and theater. With an over forty year career, Kathleen's bold and brave choices as an artist has led to a groundbreaking body of work that has changed cultural perceptions of how women are portrayed on the screen and stage. Always insisting on playing by her own rules, the two time Golden Globe winner and Academy Award nominee has created some of the most iconic...

David Levinthal is a New York–based photographer whose work explores the relationship between photographic imagery and the fantasies, myths, events and characters that shape the collective American consciousness. Refining a personal photographic style and vision, Levinthal utilizes toy figures and structures as subject matter for the creation of a surrogate reality. Levinthal has endeavored to create a 'fictional world' that simultaneously calls into question our sense of t...

Eric Fischl is one of the most influential painters of the late 20th and early 21st centuries. Inspired by his own middle-class upbringing on Long Island, Fischl’s provocative paintings expose the underbelly of American suburban life while piercing through its veil. Through startling scenes of grief, adolescent sexuality and political malaise, Fischl is committed to expressing what often remains hidden and unspoken behind society’s mores. During his meteoric rise in the 1980s, in...

April Gornik is an American Artist known for her dynamic and powerful landscape paintings. Gornik’s large scale luminous paintings evoke moments of transience and calm, as well as volatility and eruption. Yet, her vivid canvases are never literal, but rather imagined and emotional spaces. While Gornik focuses on the light and colors of the landscape, her evocative use of contrasts brings a sense of aliveness and psychological drama to her work. Gornik’s fascinati...

In the late 90’s, JT LeRoy – a male teen sex worker turned-novelist – became an overnight literary sensation. Publishing three bestselling books, LeRoy’s electrifying work revealed a subversive American culture that had never before been explored. Immediately, LeRoy was celebrated by Hollywood and the Literati. The only problem was... JT didn't actually exist. In 2005, a 39 year old woman by the name of Laura Albert was outed as being the real author. Albert had ...

Joep Beving is a Dutch composer and 21st-century music phenomenon, known worldwide for his gorgeous and haunting compositions which he often refers to as "simple music for complex emotions.” Joep has reenergized the world of modern classical music and proven that it’s never too late to embrace one’s creative passion. His first album "Solipsism", which he humbly wrote and recorded at age 38 in his kitchen, was self-released with the hope of a few listens. Instead, it be...

Today in Paris marks the unveiling of the infamous Christo and Jeanne-Claude's posthumous dream project -- "L‘Arc de Triomphe, Wrapped”. Artlaws is thrilled to present a special event interview with celebrated artist and photographer Simon Chaput who knew Christo and Jeanne-Claude intimately, as both friend and colleague. After meeting the artist couple in New York in 1983, Simon quickly became an integral part of their life and their work. Christo and Jeanne-Claude we...

Moisés Kaufman is a Tony and Emmy nominated playwright and director, best known for his revolutionizing plays that sensitively probe questions of culture and sexuality. As co-founder and Artistic Director of Tectonic Theater Project, Kaufman has been one of the most important voices in American theater over the past three decades. Born in Venezuela to Orthodox Jewish parents, Kaufman came to New York in 1987 to study experimental theatre at NYU's Tisch School of the Arts.&...

Zack James is the founder of Animeme Studios and creator of one of YouTubes' most successful and longest running animated series YO MAMA -- a channel that's garnered over 8 million subscribers across all platforms and over 2 billion views. Considering the longstanding success of the franchise, many people are unaware that the show's creator is an autistic man who was born with non-verbal autism. He was never supposed to speak -- let alone, pioneer such phenomenal new media succe...

Many people know the multi-talented Martin Mull as a celebrated TV and film actor and comedian, as well as a musician and writer. But what some people don’t know is that, first and foremost, he is an artist -- a respected accomplished American painter, whose work is embraced and lauded by the artworld, and resides in museums and private collections worldwide including, The Whitney, The MET and LACMA. Renowned artists from Richard Prince to Eric Fischl to David Sa...

Hailed as the “Punk Ballerina” by Vanity Fair, legendary dancer and choreographer Karole Armitage is the Artistic Director of the New York-based Armitage Gone! Dance Company. After rigorous training in classical ballet, Armitage began her professional career as a member of Balanchine’s Grand Theatre de Geneve. Soon thereafter she started exploring modern dance when she joined Merce Cunningham's company, performing leading roles in his landmark works. In the mid-80’s, she establi...

For over 20 years, Casey Spooner has pushed boundaries at the intersection of art, spectacle, and entertainment. When he first joined forces with his art school friend Warren Fischer in 1998, little did they know their multimedia project FISCHERSPOONER would capture the attention of the world. Making their debut at an East Village Starbucks, this outsized-glam duo soon found themselves topping the charts and accepting invitations to world renowned galleries and museums like the Gu...

Los Angeles based photographer and visual artist Melanie Pullen is best known for her breathtaking and startling series High Fashion Crime Scenes. In this extensive photo series which has evolved over fifteen years, Pullen recreates grisly true historical-crime scenes, while outfitting her "victims" in haute couture -- 13 million dollars worth. Melanie takes a forensic approach to her work with extensive research, that for this series included visits to the LA Coroner’s office. By...

Brooklyn based performance artist Narcissister is infamous around the world for her shocking and transgressive performances, which the New York Times dubbed "avant porn". Growing up as a mixed-race child in La Jolla, the artist experienced hate crimes and discrimination first hand. Feeling like the ultimate outsider, she began to look inward and recontextualize the world around her. With her identity shrouded behind a plastic mask, Narcissister currently creates work that co...

When singer-songwriter Esthero (Jenny-Bea Englishman) released her trip-hop masterpiece Breath From Another in 1998, she was only eighteen years old. Leaving behind her idyllic countryside home in Ontario to pursue the burgeoning music scene in Toronto, Esthero penned an album that would change the face of music. With two acclaimed solo albums to follow and a number of high-profile collaborations with artists like Kanye West, Andre 3000, Black Eyed Peas, Mos Def and Sean Lennon, E...