Kimyon Huggins is a multi-faceted artist and visionary, who enjoys creative expression in a variety of forms.  His love of music fostered his need to create both musically and artistically.  As a visual artist, Kimyon has curated and shown in several exhibitions featuring fine art, performance art and musical production. Recently, Kimyon and partner Ross Brodar began producing pop up art openings in various Manhattan locations.  He is working with Suzanne Duckworth on the curatorial projects at Verboten.  In addition to fine art paintings, he continues to explore multimedia expression through stop motion video installations plotting the progression of each painting, then accompanying with an original soundtrack.  

Kimyon is responsible for the Tru Skul, Arts Industria and Pockit Rockit event series held in premiere venues throughout New York City and producing pop up music and art openings in various locations across the country since the mid 90s.  His solo work has been displayed at Good Units in The Hudson Hotel and The Yard at The Soho Grand Hotel, as well as taking part in and curating group shows. 

As curator, Kimyon's imprint, No Agenda, has been producing multimedia art and music events under the title THE FUTURE IS NOW.  These events bridge the gap between established and emerging urban contemporary and street artists with premiere music talent in gallery settings, presenting the art and music on equal ground.  THE FUTURE IS NOW has been produced in New York, Miami and Detroit since its inception in 2010.  In 2013, THE FUTURE IS NOW amassed 70+ artists at The Highline Loft in Chelsea to present a 4 day experience featuring visual and musical talent from around the world. 

SEE MORE
www.kimyonhuggins.com

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LISTEN TO KIMYON'S MUSIC
soundcloud.com/kimyon333

ELLE blurs the line between graffiti and street art, incorporating a lexicon of wheatpastes, tags, stickers, rollers, fire extinguishers, spray painted pieces, murals, sculptures and fine art drawings and paintings. She has put up work on streets in cities across the world, including Amsterdam, Berlin, Paris, LA, Chicago, Malaysia, Mexico, Miami, SF, and New Delhi.

ELLE seeks to understand how, why, and with what we as humans choose to adorn our bodies and what those things represent. Her characters, mostly women, slip in and out of tattooed bodies, fur coats, animal suits, feathers, robes, and costumes. Elle's work explores the human ability to metamorphosize one’s identity and transform appearance. In the same way that the wheatpastes change- disintegrating with the weather, being ripped in half by street cleaners, or being added to by other graffiti artist- so too do we change with the ebb and flow of the city’s energy. Through her art ELLE considers reincarnation, regeneration, and the ability we have to brand and rebrand ourselves to fit into these ever-fluxing ideas of who we are, who we want to be, and what brings us to a place of peace.

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www.ellestreetart.com

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ELLE Magazine

Lala Abaddon’s work examines the intricate nature of binary relationships, exploring the parallels to discover their physical manifestation.  She works in various mediums, creating a rich subtext to explore. 

In her woven work, she integrates many components into her process, capturing her images multiple times through a repetitive sequence of digital and traditional photographic methods, then arranging the large format prints into precise and deliberate pairings. She continues on to intricately and painstakingly hand cut and hand-weave the prints with undulating, complicated patterns designed to convey a specific feeling, thus creating images within images and compelling the viewer to experience alternate realities or states of being.

In her painted work, Lala explores the lines between her many experiences of the waking, dream and daydream world by creating detailed accounts of supernatural landscapes.  In this installation she worked closely with fellow visual artist Julio Cesar Williams to bring her love for precise cut paper and bold other-worldly creatures to life.

Lala has used her work to create beauty out of horror and to find strength from the pain of past experiences, each piece sharing a multi-layered story. Much of her work is propelled by OCD and disassociated memories, both of which were once crippling to her.    

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lalaabaddon.com

"I paint because I have to, I do not have a choice in the matter."

Born in Flatbush, Brooklyn, ADAM DARE is influenced by the Halcyon days of the late 70s and 80s, a time of seismic movement in music, art and style. For him NYC is the mecca, the incubator, the genesis... it’s where graffiti and street art were born. ADAM DARE blends the aesthetics of graffiti, hip hop, punk rock and heavy metal and puts his art on the street. 

NYC has been the pedagogic source for ADAM DARE. After leaving school in 9th grade and completing his GED shortly thereafter, he studied Philosophy at a local college for a bit. For the most part, though, he considers himself to be self-taught, gleaning information from books and life experience. The same is true for his approach to painting. He always painted, turning out a couple canvases a year; but it wasn’t until 2009 that he finally succumbed to the calling to be consumed by making art. 

Using oils, acrylics, spraypaint, wheatpaste, markers, and found objects, he creates Urban Contemporary Art and Graffstract Expressionism. Each piece is a reflection of personal thoughts, fashioned from unedited responses to life events. 

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http://adamdare.com/

Born in 1979 to a Finnish mother and a Hungarian father, Reka started painting even before she could walk or talk. This led her to New York to study Painting at SVA at the age on 17. Her love for photography started when she started modeling after graduating from school, and traveling and working in Asia and Europe.

Reka moved back to NYC in 2004 and started her career as a photographer. She works and plays in New York City, creating Fashion Editorials, campaigns, album covers, artistic portraits, and erotic photography. Her work has been exhibited in numerous galleries in the US and Europe. Her commercial client list is extensive and includes Nexxus, Kiki de Montparnasse, RADO Switzerland, AOL, Liz Claiborne, MODO, Caress, DC Comics, Sally Hansen and Ultra Records. Her work has appeared in numerous magazines, including Esquire, Vanity Fair, Tatler, Korean Cosmopolitan, and Twill. In 2010, she won first place on the prestigious International Photography Awards (IPA) in Professional Beauty Category. Her 225 page Monograph titled “Femme Fatale: Female Erotic Photography” is published in 6 languages and sold Worldwide. 

Erin Turner is a travelling installation artist, who has installed her large-scale newspaper sculptures in a variety of locations throughout the United States such as the Grand Canyon, the Cahokia Mounds, Chicago, Kansas City, San Francisco, and New York, to name a few.  Internationally her work has been seen in India, Thailand, France, the Netherlands, and Argentina.  She attended Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, the University of Tulsa, and La USMA (Universidad de Museo Social Argentino), receiving her BFA in Fine Arts.  Born and raised in Oklahoma, her most recent work questions imagery of her native land, situated in the heart of Tornado Alley.

Website: www.neonblackdiamonds.tumblr.com
Instagram: eturnerinstal

Wilson Domingues, a native of Rio de Janeiro, has been skateboarding since he was 12. He has been going to Praça XV since 1997, an iconic skate and artistic gathering spot in downtown Rio. Having always been very active to the point of hyperactivity and constantly filled with ideas, he became a graphic artist, designer and video maker.  Wilson attended the Senai Graphic Art School and in 2001 together with a friend, founded the “zerovinteum” collective, which stands for 021. Rio de Janeiro's area code. Zerovinteum made the first ever street skate video in Rio called “RSRJ” which ran approximately 50 minutes long. Their second video  was released in 2007 and had a more documentarian approach. It is called “Sangue e Suor” (blood and sweat), and lasts 40 minutes.
In 2011, after 4 years of protest, the members of the XV Family (another collective set up to defend the practice of skateboarding at Praça XV), managed to get it approved. Skateboarding had been deemed illegal and had been marginalized since 1999!

Skateboarding is not only a passion, but a lifestyle that inspires all aspects of his existence.  He creates his own graphic work through different techniques he has developed using the skateboard deck as a matrix.  This is how he has become know as WILBOR.

For him, skateboarding is a source of inspiration and a vast field open to experimenting in areas such as aesthetics and self-expression (physical or metaphysical.)  Wilson is also a current creative contributor to productions at OneRPM, NAVI and has been a part of the Audiovisual Nucleus at Circo Voador (a historical music venue in Rio, known predominantly for its promotion of independent bands).

JC brings over 15 years of drawing, painting, and meditative contemplation into his art process.  He specializes in digital design, print making and video installation.  Having simultaneously been an art director by profession, JC brings an introspective and methodical approach to all his creations.  His true passion lies in the preternatural reality and allegoric symmetry that lies within, waiting to be discovered.  The result is a frenetic juxtaposition of overlapping lines, shapes, and scenes which absorb the viewer in emotive energy, transporting him or her to another world.

JC’s works look to explore and intrigue the audience to dig deeper and see more than what is present.  It is very much a journey of discovery, both for viewer and artist.  This installation acts as a portal to a preternatural reality; a surreal and beautiful destination that must be experienced to be understood. 

JC has shown work at Gallery Bar LES, WIP’s DJ booth + video installation, and on the Bowery in a large-scale outdoor installation.  His street art can be found all over Brooklyn.  He has also been part of group shows, THE FUTURE IS NOW - Chelsea, Welling Court Mural Project and the 2nd Annual Tarpit mural project in Williamsburg.  He was the recipient and winner of 3 Telly Awards + 2 Webby Awards for Digital work, and Winner Curate NYC 2013’s Top 150.  JC was featured in Sheba Legend’s documentary “15 Minutes Project” and Mandeep Bathya’s documentary about Image Appropriation and the Creator of Bravo Public Arts Project in Brooklyn, as well as apparel designer with Hip Hop USA and About Time Boutique.  JC is a true creative, finding inspiration in the everyday intersections and applying it in a multitude of artistic endeavors. 

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www.JCinNYC.com

Belonging to the generation of artists shaped by the proliferation and rapid adoption of the internet, Julio César Williams explores identity in a world of over saturation and ubiquitous commercial imagery. Using traditional photography as a starting point, he appropriates images from many sources. He photographs photos from his own childhood, freezes moments from internet videos, or manually cuts fragments from magazines; the exploration for the right image can itself take months of practiced discipline. 

Having come to photography from a background in figure drawing, he frequently manipulates these raw images with pigment and line after having printed them at sizes that will displace the images from contextualized ideation. By assembling these images in new configurations and contexts, he seeks to create a piece that can become the basis for fresh thoughts and new questions from which to build identities. In his own search for meaning and identity, he creates an artistic expression about these potent fragments of reality that become the basis of identity.

For this piece, Julio César Williams worked closely with fellow artist Lala Abaddon. Using male eros as inspiration his desire was to create a piece that explored the beauty of the male form while utilizing the nature of the silhouette as a trope for the limited nature of binary sexual constructions. 

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http://www.juliocesarwilliams.com/

Art has been the one constant in John’s life. He finds it a thrill to sit on the subway and capture a quick candid portrait between stops. Drawing the figure is pure and satisfying. Painting has become a meditation. Sculpture is raw energy. He crafts images from life and from imagination.  John’s work is noted for its use of color and engaging people often in very fantastical settings.

John also leads guided group painting nights as well as an intensive discovery project called, “Shedding the Masks.” Here multiple facets of life are examined via weekly self- portraits and shared, not critiqued, virtually through Google Hangout. Art is not reserved for only those with polished skills. Creative expression is an intrinsic element of human expression. It lives in all of us. 

WEBSITE: www.jdegiorgio.com
INSTAGRAM: _jdegiorgio_

"Like many artists, I initially began painting figuratively, but I'm rarely interested in literal depictions of the world around me. Fantasy elements immediately appeared in my work.In recent years the physical characteristics of my environment has become a major influence. The right-angles and verticality of Manhattan's landscape have lead to the abstract paintings that figure prominently in my portfolio and point to the direction I've taken in two related series of paintings - Biological Architecture, begun in 2002 and Pluto is Not a Planet, begun in 2006. My interest in vintage snapshots and memory inspired my newest works in the Shipwrecked Series, begun in 2012." - Marilyn Cvitanic

WhIsBe is an artist who was born in one of the greatest and most influential cities in the world - New York. With a vibrant energy and enthusiasm for life and creativity, it was nearly impossible to keep his feet in one place.  Putting a pen, pencil, or camera in his hands was about the only thing you could give this young man to keep his imaginative mind still. Thus an outlet was discovered to portray his passion for expressing the world as he saw it. Advanced placement in public education was not stimulating his drive to grow, so from early on he sought to expand his limits by traveling to art specific programs. As time went on, he developed his style in many mediums including drawing, painting, photography, glass blowing, sculpture, and silk screening.

In 2007, WhIsBe took what would turn out to be a 5-year detour devoted to personally reinvesting in himself. After some time away from the arts he began to naturally gravitate towards creative expression again. This summer, he enrolled in the School of Visual Arts to rekindle his lost relationship with the arts.  Almost immediately following this move forward, WhIsBe was asked to donate some of his works to the ArtWorks Charity Foundation, landed a feature on the cover of Wallpaper Magazine, participate in the Red BullCanvas Cooler Project and was commissioned to build multiple sculptures for Hangout Music Festival. This spark of inspiration has ignited his passion once again and has led to full time devotion to the arts.

WhIsBe wishes to remain anonymous so he can continue to allow his artwork to be seen without the attachment of any stigmas or judgments by his viewers. It is a personal request from the artist that allows the art to stay in its purest form and lets the audience see it for what it is. For in this day and age, it is most important to the artist that individuals stay close to the expression "To Thine Own Self Be True"