Erlin Geffrad is a painter, multimedia visual and musical artist whose work merges fine arts and alternative urban culture. Born in Florida to a Haitian American family of merged religious faiths, Geffrard explores intergenerational, spiritual, and cultural themes around issues of ethnicity, class and community. Based in Philadelphia, Geffrard was a participating artist in Philadelphia Contemporary’s Festival for the People in 2018.
Jen Wink Hays is a painter and sculptor based in Philadelphia, PA. Her oil paintings are characterized by her use of a bold, dissonant color palette that blends subdued earthy tones with aggressive, synthetic neons. Incomplete visual layers also convey struggle and resolution in Hays' work. There is a push/pull between what is shown and what is concealed as if something is at once being covered over and peeled away. Says the artist, "I'm interested in 'the glimpse' and the way that partially obscuring something or keeping it hidden can give it more power - and energize what remains in view. I am also drawn to the way this sets up a truly dynamic, unpredictable visual field where unintentional collisions of color and form can take place." Hays’ work in sculpture encompasses a variety of familiar, user-friendly mediums including paper pulp, paper mache, plaster and clay. The resulting groupings of colorful, eccentric forms—sometimes geometric, sometimes more biomorphic—play off of Hays’ oil paintings.
Jane Irish is a painter currently working with the mediums of distemper and oil. Her sumptuous paintings of rococo-style interiors raise socio-political and economic issues around the legacy of colonialism, orientalism, and especially the Vietnam War. Her paintings often incorporate historical protest text. Also a ceramicist, the text on the surface of some of Irish’s sculptures includes poetry by war veterans. Irish lives and works in Philadelphia.
Pepón Osorio is best known for provocative large-scale, multimedia installations that merge conceptual art and community dynamics. His visual language, explosive and elegant, challenges traditional art canons with richly textured monumental assemblages that travel far beyond accepted notions of beauty and aesthetics. He emphasizes the exhibition space as an intermediary between the social architecture of communities and the mainstream art world and incorporates a multiplicity of objects to recreate fantasy-like quotidian environments—from barbershops to home interiors and taxis—that advance critical discussions. Osorio has worked with well over 25 communities across the U.S. and internationally, creating installations based on the real life experiences of those communities. He has strategically placed his work at the center of daily activity in order to reposition the role of art and the artist in contemporary society. His work draws from his richly varied personal experience, nuanced observations of complicated human relationships, and the exploration of spatial relationships alongside the presence of human physicality and spirituality.
