Episode 495 / Jim Gaylord

Jim Gaylord is a New York based artist known for his abstract, sculptural reliefs made from cutout paper. He earned an MFA from the University of California, Berkeley, and a BA from the University of North Carolina, Greensboro. His work has been exhibited internationally and is in the permanent collections of the Berkeley Art Museum, the Mount Holyoke College Art Museum and The Museum of Modern Art in New York. He has received fellowships from the New York Foundation for the Arts, the Joan Mitchell Foundation and the Pollock-Krasner Foundation. He has completed residencies at MacDowell, Yaddo and the Sharpe-Walentas Studio Program. Jim is represented by Sperone Westwater in New York, where his work is currently on view in the group exhibition, "Sperone Westwater: 50 Years." His second solo show with the gallery will open in early 2026. 

Episode 494 / Alexa Kumiko Hatanaka

Alexa Kumiko Hatanaka is a Japanese-Canadian, queer artist that lives with bipolar condition, all of which sculpts her practice. She works primarily with paper, and uses printmaking, ink drawing and natural dying combined with sewing. She engages with historical paper processes and materials that both require and contribute to a clean environment.  Her adaptations of traditions, in the form of sculpture, large-scale print installations and wearable sculptures, address contemporary questions of climate change, mental health, and survival. Recurring motifs related to landscape, fish, and bodies of water together speak about personal and collective experiences of struggle, resilience, connection and radical joy. Hatanaka’s practice includes a decade of community-engaged projects based in the high Arctic, and collaborative performances that integrate and reinterpret kamiko, garments sewn out of washi (Japanese paper). 

Hatanaka has exhibited her work at the National Gallery of Canada (Ottawa, CA), Art Gallery of Ontario (Toronto, CA), The British Museum (London, UK), Toronto Biennial of Art (Toronto, CA), Nikkei National Museum (Burnaby, CA), Ino Cho Paper Museum (Kochi, Japan), Kotaro Nukaga (Tokyo, Japan), NADA Miami and NYC, The Wellin Museum (Clinton, USA) and Harper’s Gallery (New York, USA). Recent acquisitions of her work include: Shiga Prefecture Museum, Japan; Material Art and Design Museum, USA, Dallas Art Museum, USA; Wellin Museum, USA and The British Museum, UK. She was a 2025 Black Rock Senegal artist in residence.

Emily Coan / Episode 493

Emily Coan (b. 1991 St. Petersburg, Florida) is an artist based in the Hudson Valley, NY. In 2013, she received her BFA in Sculpture from the University of Florida, and moved to New York City as a painter in 2015. Her multilayered, glazed oil paintings deal with themes of femininity & women’s labor set in fairytale-esque environments. Her work has been featured in Interview Magazine, T Magazine, Artnet, Whitewall, Juxtapose, and even Playboy. Emily has recently exhibited in group shows with Victoria Miro (London), The Pond Society (Shanghai), and Sargent’s Daughters (Los Angeles). She was recently an artist in residence at Palazzo Monti (Brescia). Her Spider Silk series began with a solo show at DIMIN (New York) in 2024, with additional works from the series exhibited at NADA New York and Miami (both 2024). The latest installment of the series was presented in solo show Nightshades at Long Story Short, Paris this May. She had a solo booth at Armory this September and is represented by DIMIN gallery.

Episode 492 / Maria Kreyn

Maria Kreyn (b.1987) is an American artist known for evocative paintings that merge figuration, abstract geometries, and elemental atmospherics. She studied mathematics and philosophy at the University of Chicago and is self taught in painting. Maria’s work has been featured in Vanity Fair, the Wall Street Journal, The Art Newspaper, The Financial Times, and many others. Maria’s painting ‘Alone Together’ drives the plot of Shonda Rhimes’ ABC television show The Catch; and her Shakespeare Cycle paintings appear on the award-winning show The Crown. Her public works include a collection of 8 monumental paintings based on Shakespeare, commissioned by Andrew Lloyd Webber, now on permanent display in the lobby of London’s historic Theater Royal Drury Lane. Her solo presentation during the 60th International Venice Biennale (2024) was presented by the MoN Art Foundation, staged at St. George’s Church in Venice, Italy. 

Episode 491 / Peter Funch

Born 1974 in Denmark Peter Funch currently lives and works in Paris, France. He lived in New York for 13 years as a photographer. 
Funch graduated as a Photojournalist from the Danish School of Journalism in 1999 and combines the social commentary with a cinematic style. His still and motion work often combines storytelling with a perceptive social commentary in a cinematic visual language. He is working internationally with exhibitions, books, editorial and advertising clients alike, combining his technical perfection with a touch of his Nordic calmness and dry humour. 
Worked with international clients like IKEA, Sony, HSBC, Whitney museum. 

He has published seven monographs, where Babel Tales and 42nd and Vanderbilt, picturing routines and rituals in the public sphere in New York City. 

Recent exhibitions include Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow, DAC, Cph, DK (2025), The Imperfect Atlas, Fotografisk Center, Cph (2024), DK, 42nd And Vanderbilt, Vevey, Swiss (2020),  A History of Photography: Daguerreotype to Digital, Victoria & Albert Museum, London, United Kingdom (2018), 

In 2018, Funch received The Art, Design and Architecture Award of the Year, Dir. Einar Hansen and wife Vera Hansen Foundation for 42nd and Vanderbilt. 

Episode 490 / David Huffman

David Huffman is a painter who explores identity, memory, and the material implications associated with the Black diasporic experience.(b. 1963, Berkeley, CA) has work in the collections of SFMOMA, San Francisco; LACMA, Los Angeles; Berkeley Art Museum, CA; Studio Museum, Harlem; Minneapolis Institute of Art, MN; Oakland Museum of California; Crocker Art Museum, Sacramento, CA; San José Museum of Art, CA; Denver Art Museum, CO; and the Embassy of the United States of America, Dakar, Senegal, among others. Huffman was the subject of a 2022 solo exhibition at the Museum of the African Diaspora, San Francisco and has been included in recent group exhibitions at the de Young Museum, San Francisco; Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive, CA; Everson Museum of Art, Syracuse, NY; and Birmingham Museum of Art, AL. He is the recipient of numerous awards and residencies including the Eureka Fellowship, ARTADIA San Francisco, Palo Alto Public Arts Commission, and the Barclay Simpson Award. He studied at the New York Studio School and received his MFA at California College of the Arts & Crafts, San Francisco. Huffman lives and works in Oakland, CA and teaches at California College of the Arts. David just had a show A Brilliant Blackout at Jessica Silverman in San Francisco, CA that closed September 3rd. 

Episode 489 / Alexis Rockman

Born in 1962 in New York, Alexis Rockman has depicted a darkly surreal vision of the collision between civilization and nature – often apocalyptic scenarios on a monumental scale – for over three decades. Notable solo museum exhibitions include “Alexis Rockman: Manifest Destiny” at the Brooklyn Museum (2004), which traveled to several institutions including the Wexner Center for the Arts (2004) and the Rhode Island School of Design (2005). In 2010, the Smithsonian American Art Museum organized “Alexis Rockman: A Fable for Tomorrow,” a major touring survey of his paintings and works on paper. Concurrent with Rockman’s 2013 exhibition at Sperone Westwater, the Drawing Center mounted “Drawings from Life of Pi,” featuring the artist’s collaboration with Ang Lee on the award-winning film Life of Pi. His series of 76 New Mexico Field Drawings was included in “Future Shock” at SITE Santa Fe (2017-18). 

“Alexis Rockman and Mark Dion: A Journey to Nature’s Underworld” was presented at the Bruce Museum, Greenwich, CT (2023) and traveled to the Virginia Museum of Contemporary Art (2024). It will be on view at the Tang Teaching Museum at Skidmore College, Saratoga Springs, NY until 5 January 2025, and at the Palmer Museum of Art at Penn State from August 30th through December 7th. His work is represented in many museum collections, including the Baltimore Museum of Art; Brooklyn Museum; Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art; Grand Rapids Art Museum; Los Angeles County Museum of Art; Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; New Orleans Museum of Art; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; Smithsonian American Art Museum; Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum; and Whitney Museum of American Art. Rockman’s first solo exhibition with Sperone Westwater, “Evolution,” was presented in 1992. He has had subsequent solo exhibitions at the gallery in 2013, 2018, 2020-21 and 2023. He lives and works in Warren, Connecticut.

Episode 488 / Shu Hua Xiong 

Shu Hua Xiong (b.1994) born in Shanghai, China, currently lives and works in New York. She holds both BFA and MFA from School of Visual Arts in NYC. Her first solo in NY opens on Sep.4, with Island Gallery.

Episode 487 / Logan T. Sibrel 

Logan T. Sibrel (b. 1986; Jasper, Indiana) is a Brooklyn-based painter. He received his BFA from Indiana University in 2009 and his MFA from Parsons the New School for Design in 2011. He has exhibited at Kornfeld Gallery in Berlin, Beers London, Vardan Gallery in Los Angeles, Monti8 in Rome, Eleftheria Tseliou Gallery in Athens, 1969 Gallery and Auxier Kline in New York, and is represented by Galerie Thomas Fuchs in Stuttgart. He has participated in the Palazzo Ventidue Artist Residency in Nardò, Italy, The Palazzo Monti Artist residency in Brescia, and the inaugural Wildfjords  Artist Residency in Ísafjörður, Iceland. One of his paintings was used for the cover of Brandon Taylor's The Late Americans, and he illustrated Meg Remy's book Begin by Telling. Aside from visual art, he is 1/2 of the Brooklyn-based band, Sister Pact.

upcoming shows:

1. Armory with Galerie Thomas Fuchs; September 5-7

2. Thought Cage (solo) at Auxier Kline in NYC opening September 13th

3. Art Athina (fair) with Eleftheria Tseliou Gallery; September 18-22

4. Intimität: Queere Kunst der Gegenwart (group show) at Kunstmuseum Albstadt in Germany; November 7th - April 12, 2026

Episode 486 / Mathew Zefeldt 

Mathew Zefeldt (b. 1987, California) is Associate Professor of Painting and Drawing at the University of Minnesota. He received his MFA in studio art from UC Davis in 2011 and received his BA in Art at UC Santa Cruz in 2009. He has had solo exhibitions at The Hole, NY; Celaya Brothers, Mexico City; Hair + Nails, Minneapolis; Big Pictures, Los Angeles; 5-50 Gallery, Long Island City; The Soap Factory, Minneapolis; Circuit 12, Dallas; Verge Center for the Arts, Sacramento; Minneapolis Institute of Art, Minneapolis; Hap Gallery, Portland; and Santa Monica Museum of Art, Santa Monica. He has exhibited in group exhibitions at Lisa Cooley, NY; The Hole, Los Angeles; Better Go South, Berlin; Night Club, Minneapolis; MOHS Exhibit, Copenhagen; Galerie Fran Reus, Palma de Mallorca; Dreamsong, Minneapolis; Joshua Liner Gallery, NY; Left Field, San Luis Obispo; The Minnesota Museum of American Art, Saint Paul; Akron Art Museum, Ohio; Currier Art Museum, New Hampshire, and The Oklahoma Contemporary, Oklahoma City. In 2022, Zefeldt was an international resident at the Cob x Plop Residency in London, UK, and in 2023 was an artists in residence at the Moosey Residency in Norwich, UK. Mathew has a forthcoming book titled Mathew Zefeldt: Painting Constructed Virtual Worlds, and currently has a solo exhibition titled Reflections at The Hole in New York City.