THE CURATORS

Oneil Edwards (Jamaican) George Philip (Indian): We are both currently working on passing the Bar and finishing Med School. We support ourselves by selling fake DMX CDs, Pink Tims and Coogi sweaters in front of Jimmy Jaz in the South Boogie down on 3rd Ave. In our spare time we play beer pong and discuss Deconstructivism vs Radical Feminist perspectives at Max Fish.

Max Ruback: I live in West Palm Beach, Florida. I am in the finishing stages of a collection of short fiction, titled, Us Escaping Something, which Monsters is included in. I have had fiction and nonfiction published in several journals, OysterBoy Review, Main Street Rag, Crab Creek Review, and Thought, most recently.

Siri Kuptamethee: The idea for this special project started with a desire to transform images from the Indigo People Fall 2003 look book- apr�s-ski and outdoorsy, with a touch of Southwestern-wear, and a lot of urban flair-into something more surreal but classic. I was inspired by �The Blood of A Poet,� a film by Jean Cocteau, and decided to do a fashion-photo story based on the film. The result is, to me, a mysterious love story.

Christian Schumann has forsaken listening to actual records in preference to the experience that only non-existent vinyl LPs can give.

Giasco Bertoli: An image from childhood: you're on a tennis court, you're raising a racket, Fleetwod Mac's Rumors plays on an eight-track somewhere and it's the beginning of summer and your mother is still alive but you know there are darker times ahead.

Lawrence Seward: These drawings were plucked out of a couple of sketch books in an attempt to get a job doing a wall mural. Some of them are drawings for sculptures and others are simply illustrations of ideas. The selection process resembled roulette with the result looking like a BINGO card partially filled. Still, I hope these drawings elicit a pleasurable uncomplex response much like eating a good doughnut or swatting a pesky fly with a rolled up news paper.

Wim Delvoye (1965) lives and works in Belgium. In his work opposites attract: divine merges with secular, past meets present, ornament overcomes functionality. "Gothic" is a catalyst, juxtaposing industrial design and medieval iconography. "Gothic" is a mind-teaser and an eye-pleaser.

Jay Stuckey: I began making mummy and airplane drawings in August of 2000. The characters and events portrayed in the work are fictitious. Any resemblance to real people living or dead is wholly coincidental and unintended.

Rainer Ganahl is an artist living in NYC. He has shown internationally, including “Kwangju Biennial”, 1997, “Venice Biennial”, 1999 and at “Tirana Biennial”, 2003. www.ganahl.info

Harrison Haynes: I'm writing to you from Woodinville, Washington where my band is recording some music. The studio is a renovated horse-barn and it's reminding me of where I grew up: the rural outskirts of the North Carolina Piedmont, somewhere between the suburbs and the country. My parents' friends, and my friends as well since my folks took me everywhere with them, were DIY redneck-hippies: welders and carpenters that listened to ZZ Top and burned big vanilla scented candles in their outhouses. They hosted demolition derbies, volleyball parties, big oyster roasts every fall, and homemade fireworks on the fourth of July. (The fireworks were made by a lunatic blacksmith, so the finale was the detonation of a homemade bomb underneath an anvil, and the resulting spectacle of a 300 pound block of steel soaring upwards into the night sky.) Harrison Haynes

Karin Davie born in Toronto, Canada Live and works in NYC Represented by Mary Boone Gallery New York. All paintings are from the series Pushed, Pulled, Depleted & Duplicated

Andrew Kuo: My interest in Yankee Stadium lies in fields of color. I see the specific color combination of the blue of the sky and the green of the grass as a 'trigger'. This 'trigger' is relaxing to the eye, as if the stadium were an escape in its surroundings next to the subways, streets, buildings, etc. Yankee stadium becomes it's own microcosmic landscape within the Bronx, with narratives that begin and end within the playing field. Also, the primary things that attach time to the stadium are the billboard ads, which change from week to week, year to year.

James Fuentes is an Internationally recognized Curator having overseen exhibitions in the US, Switzerland, Norway, Japan & most recently Paris. Upcoming projects include “Open Space II” an exhibition with rapidly rotating solo shows, and a role in a forthcoming feature length film by Tony Stone opposite Marika Dominczyk. He is a proud member of NADA (New Art Dealers Alliance) and wishes to thank the AFA gang for all their cooperation.

Marisa Aragona, 27, has wildly curly hair and always eats cherries on her birthday. Originally hailing from the Washington DC area she recently relocated to San Francisco after a seven year stint in NYC where she received her BFA from the School of Visual Arts. She is now studying at the San Francisco Art Institute for her MFA and "getting back to nature" in beautiful California. Marisa's favorite photographic subjects include birthday cakes and girls in their panties. Look for Marisa's work in this Fall's current Photo Review. Look for Marisa with her camera and\or sipping a Shirley Temple. Recent exhibition include NYC's PS122, The Independent Artists Organization and Seattle's Photographic Center Northwest. You can reach Marisa at marisaaragona@hotmail.com

Gerardo Mosquera (Havana, 1945) is a Freelance Curator and art critic based in Havana, Adjunct Curator at the New Museum of Contemporary Art, New York, advisor at the Rijksakademie van Beeldenden Kunsten, Amsterdam, and member of the advisory board of several art journals. He was a founder of the “Havana Biennials”, and has curated many exhibitions, including “It's Not What You See. Perverting Minimalism” (Madrid, 2000), “Cildo Meireles” (New York, 1999), “Important & Exportant” (2nd. Johannesburg Biennale,1997), and “Ante America” (Bogota, Caracas, New York, San Francisco, San Diego . . . , 1992-1994). Author of numerous texts on Contemporary Art and Art Theory, Mosquera recently edited Over Here. International Perspectives on Art and Culture (coming out in New York in 2004) and Beyond the Fantastic: Contemporary Art Criticism from Latin America (London, 1995).

Adrienne Samos is an art critic and Curator who lives and works in Panama City, and is the co-founder and Editor-in-Chief of Talingo Cultural Magazine, which won the Prince Claus Award in 2000. She also directs Arpa, a non-profit organization created to investigate and promote artistic and cultural manifestations in and out of Panama, and has organized several solo and group exhibitions of Contemporary Art.

Kenny Schachter has four kids, three galleries and what some might consider a fledgling art career.
Marc-Olivier Wahler: Going through nearly 2000 drawings in Olav Westphalen's Brooklyn studio, Marc-Olivier Wahler picked out about 100. The selection represents the finest, smartest, and most elegant of his work. You can imagine the rest! Olav Westphalen who will be inlcuded in this year's Whitney Biennal is famous for his comedy routine performance entitled Bruhaha, and works with the gallery Maccarone Inc, New York. Marc-Olivier Wahler was former director of the CAN Centre d'art Neuchâtel and TRANSFERT Biel (Switzerland). He has been Artistic Director of the Swiss Institute-Contemporary Art in New York since 2001. For more than 15 years he has been trying to escape the art world, but obviously he has failed badly.