Upon wining this year’s Emdash Award, a prize presented in conjunction with the Frieze Foundation celebrating emerging artists, Pilvi Takala decided to give the majority of the GBP 10,000 prize money …

NICOLAS CECCALDI A friend recently complained about Nicolas Ceccaldi’s exhibition “Wearables” at Real Fine Arts in Brooklyn: “Yeah, you can tell he’s from Berlin. No one who lives in New York would waste that opportunity.” Though Ceccaldi’s exhibition undoubtedly wasn’t a missed opportunity in the opinion of yours truly, it precisely challenged the male-ego-driven sculpture…

JANA EULER Although the Brussels-based German artist Jana Euler could be said to take inspiration from social networks— her practice suggests a cyber-punk aesthetic— she actually works through the decidedly historical genre of painting of Neue Sachlichkeit (New Objectivity). A series of paintings completed largely in 2009, the year after she completed graduate school, takes…

  EMILY WARDILL British artist Emily Wardill revives the genre of the melodrama in her feature-length video works. In Fulll Firearms, 2011, Wardill introduces us to the life of Imelda, a protagonist convinced that the ghosts of people killed by guns produced by her father’s arms manufacturing company will haunt her for life. Inspired by…

JOSH KLINE To the keen eye of a New Yorker, Josh Kline’s work seems very “New York,” but not disdainfully so. Rather, through minimal sculptural works inspired by the aesthetics of the mass-market commodity, Kline highlights and pulls from the idiosyncratic blend of desperation, celebrity, and soul-suckingness that defines what it means to live and…

1. EDDIE PEAKE “Everyone just can’t stop talking about Eddie Peake!” was the slightly obnoxious maxim repeatedly uttered around London this past March. Indeed, the young artist’s work was featured in multiple well-known galleries in the British capital, some only blocks away from each other. In March alone, Peake launched a solo exhibition at Cell…

                  1. KLARA LIDÉN Klara Lidén, a Berlin-based Swede working through installation, architectural interventions, and video, suffuses her practice with both the unbridled energy of a young urban adventurer and the resourcefulness of a hardened street urchin. Her work, resolutely, is “street”: via the reallocation of scavenged…

                  1. NINA BEIER Take Danish artist Nina Beier’s sculpture series, “The Demonstrators”: posters of stock images, such as of a light bulb or rope, are dipped in glue and draped upon various found objects, which sometimes hang from the ceiling. The slick, color-blocked industrialism of the…

1. SARAH BRAMAN At the age of 43, Sarah Braman has finally made her mark on the international contemporary art world. A long-time presence in the downtown Manhattan scene, Braman co-owns the well-respected Lower East Side gallery CANADA with her husband Phil Grauer, in addition to making sculpture. Supporting her two children, artistic practice, and…

            1. TOBIAS MADISON Twenty-five year-old Swiss artist Tobias Madison’s recipe for artmaking combines minimalist sculpture with slick 80’s design and a touch of branding and glitch aesthetics. The artist, who was recently the subject of solo exhibitions at New York’s Swiss Institute and Kunstverein München, has been known to…