ARTISTS
-
Babak Ganjei is a London-based visual artist, poet, musician, comic book writer, and radio host. He captured the minds of the world when his irreverent Film Idea series went viral, with such titles as Chicken Nugget City, Kung-Fu Jesus, and Jurassic Shop.
Inspired by the comedy and music of the 1990s, Ganjei is prolific in his output, creating wildly unpredictable and laugh-out-loud funny art. Speaking of his work, Ganjei states: “The work doesn’t take itself seriously, but I take nonsense very seriously.”
Since graduating with a BA in Fine Art from Central Saint Martins College, Ganjei has written multiple comics, turned books by Donald Trump, Nigel Farage, and Jeremy Clarkson into works of blackout poetry, and tried to sell a painting of his credit card back to Barclays to pay off his debt.
-
Jen Catron and Paul Outlaw met and began collaborating at Cranbrook Academy of Art. After graduating, they moved their art practice to Brooklyn, New York, where they live and collaborate today. Using performance, painting, video, and mechanics, the artists create layered conceptual pieces that oscillate between the tragic and the absurd, employing humor and engaging participatory experiences to guide viewers through a range of emotions. Their absurd, provocative, and weirdly funny artworks have been widely exhibited and written about in places such as The Brooklyn Museum and the New York Times.
-
David Kramer was born in NYC in 1963 and continues to live and work there. His paintings, sculptures, videos, performances, and installations have been widely exhibited across Europe and North America.
His work is in many private and public collections, including the Centre Pompidou (Paris), The Bunker Artspace (West Palm Beach, Florida), and The Museum of London, Ontario.
David’s Instagram
-
Andy Sahlstrom, born on April Fools’ Day, Shampoooty’s sense of humor contains a rich appreciation for the juxtaposition of dark and light-hearted comedy. He combines a background in interactive technology with a keen sense of social commentary.
His works, which often feature childhood toys reimagined to reflect adult realities, have sparked admiration and controversy both online and in the physical spaces they inhabit.
Andy’s Website
-
Dave Zackin is a designer and a fine artist working in New York City. Zackin earned a bachelor’s degree in animation at the Rhode Island School of Design, a Master of Public Health at the Hunter/CUNY School of Public Health, and a Master's in Urban Studies at Queens College.
His short animated film, Tunanooda, was screened in more than eighty film festivals, including New Directors, New Films at Lincoln Center, and the Kodak New Filmmakers' Showcase at Cannes, and won top prizes at the Student Emmys and the Palm Springs International Film Festival. Zackin's work has been featured in Chronicle Books' The Where, They Why, and The How, and in Time Out New York Magazine. He is the designer of the now ubiquitous City of New York Public Space Recycling Bins, recycling how-to stickers, and hundreds of posters, public health info-sheets, and other things for the City of New York.
Dave’s website
-
Michael Buckland lives and sometimes works in Brooklyn, NY. He often claims to have been born in Canada, but this has never been confirmed. His work wallows in the vernacular and the quotidian and has been described by one critic as aphoristic. He has exhibited in North America, Europe, and Asia.. He has revived an old project to halt Earth’s rotation so he can get off. He likes using rubber stamps and taking long walks on the beach
-
Nancy Elsamanoudi is an artist living and working in Brooklyn. She earned her MFA from Pratt Institute and her BA from Miami University. Elsamanoudi has had solo exhibitions at SFA Projects and Amos Eno Gallery, as well as a two-person exhibition at SPRING/BREAK Los Angeles. She has also exhibited at Readymade Gallery, Space 776, Equity Gallery, The Painting Center, Pelham Art Center, and other venues in New York and beyond. She participated in the DNA Residency in Orleans, MA, in 2023 and 2024. Her work has been featured in Harper’s Bazaar, Bomb Magazine, Lohud, Artcritical, Art Spiel, and other publications.
-
Tawanda Gona is a comedian, artist, and writer based out of Bushwick, Brooklyn. His work has been featured in the Boston Globe, on two seasons of Desus and Mero on Showtime, on social media, and in clubs across the country. This is his second solo art exhibition. His first was at the Brick Auxiliary Gallery.
Tawanda’s Website
Instagram
-
Paul Gagner is a painter and sculptor who depicts the humorous and preposterous in otherwise ordinary objects and situations. Gagner frequently employs self-portraiture as a means to explore a deeper understanding of our foibles. His works are absurd self-contained moments that also hint at the limits of the painting and sculpture’s surface.
He holds a B.F.A from the School of Visual Arts and an M.F.A. from the City University of New York at Brooklyn College. Gagner’s works have been exhibited nationally and internationally. He’s been featured in Hyperallergic, Art21 magazine, New American Paintings, and Baltimore City Paper, and has appeared on the cover and been interviewed for the print magazine Art Maze Magazine.
-
Yoshie Sakai is a multidisciplinary artist, working in video, installation, performance, and sculpture. She received her BFA from California State University Long Beach and her MFA from Claremont Graduate University. She attended residencies at Vermont Studio Center, ACRE, and the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture, and received the 2012 California Community Foundation for Visual Artists Emerging Artist Fellowship. She has shown work throughout the United States in film festivals and art exhibitions at institutions such as the John Michael Kohler Arts Center, California State University Dominguez Hills in Carson, California, Verge Center for the Arts Sacramento, Antenna New Orleans, University of Albany University Art Museum, Chinese American Museum Los Angeles, and the Wignall Museum of Contemporary Art, as well as internationally in Cambodia, Canada, Germany, and Japan.
Sakai’s work creates an uneasy environment that embodies her love-hate relationship with pop culture and how it simultaneously perpetuates both ecstasy and extreme anxiety in quotidian life. In her videos, she is a colorful and subtly transgressive undercover cultural agent exposing the absurdities of a manipulative social structure while at the same time humorously struggling and reveling in it as a participant, negotiating contemporary social issues of cultural identity, gender roles, and familial and personal relationships. She induces intimate situations between her created personalities and the audience via her videos and installations that are pushed to exaggerated and imaginative levels. Her work infiltrates the psychological space of the viewer, giving form to a sort of vulnerability—a nervous laughter.
-
Sara Schaefer is a comedian, writer, and miniaturist currently living in Richmond, Virginia. She has performed on Comedy Central, MTV, Netflix, and more. Her new show, “Crafting Through It” is available on YouTube.
-
Charles H. Traub is an American photographer and educator known for his ironic and insightful color photography. He is a pioneer in the use of digital photography and has been a leading figure in photographic education for over 40 years. Traub’s work is characterized by its sharp observation of everyday life and its exploration of the relationship between photography and reality. He is particularly interested in how photography can be used to create a sense of irony and humor.
Traub has exhibited his work extensively in galleries and museums around the world, and his photographs are included in the permanent collections of many major institutions. He has also received numerous awards, including the Guggenheim Fellowship and the National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship. He has authored diverse monographs and books on photography.
Traub is a passionate advocate for photography and continues to inspire and challenge students and photographers alike. From 1987 to the present, Charles has been the chair of the department of Photography, Video and Related Media at the School of Visual Arts, New York.
