This artist talk is part of the Group Exhibition Survival Tools for the Age of Ultra Anxiety held at Culture Lab LIC at Plaxall Gallery. Share on Facebook.

Joseph Morris is an artist based in Brooklyn. He is an expert craftsman and coder who believes in the possibilities enabled by integrating technology in the arts. His emotive machines have been exhibited in New York, Chicago, Brazil, New Haven, New Mexico, and Arizona by galleries and organizations such as Chazan Family Gallery, Creative Arts Workshop, Gibney Dance Center, 4heads, ACRE Projects, Oi Futuro, and more. Joseph Morris has been working with electronics in his art since 2006. He began by taking things apart and putting them back together to make sculptural collages with gears, motors, and moving parts. He started experimenting with software and coding in 2007 and has been integrating technology into his craft ever since. Joseph is a self-taught programmer, technologist, and prototyper through the online, open-source community. He is a recipient of the 2021 Downtown Brooklyn Public Art + Placemaking Fund for his upcoming installation, Anchorage | Babel in Reverse, Nov 2021, a 2017 NYFA Fellow in Electronic/Digital Media, 2017 NYSCA Electronic Media grantee, and resident artist at Harvestworks Digital Media Art Center in 2015. He holds an MFA in Art and Technology from The School of The Art Institute of Chicago and a BFA in Sculpture from SUNY Purchase. He is a tenure-track instructor of 3D Design and Sculpture at SUNY Westchester Community College.

Kim Sandra (She/They) is a queer, Laotian/Vietnamese, artist from Northern Virginia  and nowbased in Brooklyn, NY. In 2016, they graduated from the Maryland Institute College of  Art, with a BFA in General Fine Arts. In 2019, the National Museum of Women in the Arts’ gift  shop collaborated with her to create an event “Being” showcasing her work and guiding visitors  to draw music. She has been featured in Visart’s Gen 5 exhibition, the Torpedo Factory’s 2019  Emerging Artists exhibition and the Washington Project for the Arts’ 2019 Auction Gala. In her  Torpedo Factory summer 2019 Post-Grad Residency, she created a stop motion animation  about her parent’s immigration story intersecting her coming out story. She used the studio  space as a shop to fundraise for local and national LGBTQ+ non profits empowering queer  youth. In her 2020 Bresler Residency at VisArts, she focused more on Lao identity work. She’s  currently working on her graphic novel “Origins of Kin and Kang” about her coming out story and  collaborating with Legacies of War to help fund removing the bombs left over from the Secret  and Vietnam Wars from Laos.

Wieteke Heldens (b. 1982, Ottersum, The Netherlands) lives and works in New York and graduated from the Royal Academy of Art, The Hague, in 2007. Heldens’ work has been shown internationally, including the Kunstmuseum Den Haag in the Netherlands, Switzerland, Belgium, Germany, Italy, Great Britain, Ireland, Denmark, South Korea, Japan, and the United States. She has also worked as an artist-in-residence in Chongqing, China and Turin, Italy. In 2013 Heldens won the Royal Award for Modern Painting in the Netherlands. She is a recipient of a Stipend for Established Artists of the Mondriaan Fund. Currently she is an Artist-in-Residence of the Ground Floor Program at ISCP, New York. 

Writing artist Will Kaplan combines different mediums, techniques, and text to probe boundaries. This New Jersey native grew up exploring highway hemmed nature preserves; tensions between the organic and the human-made manifest in his work. His practice incorporates silkscreen and woodcut printmaking, paper and found object collage, watercolor and acrylic painting, and artist’s books and writing.  After graduating Skidmore College in 2017, Kaplan has made a new home in Queens, a rich setting in which to explore these themes.  His work has appeared in Vellum Magazine, on the walls of Local Project, and with ABC No Rio. In addition to organizing shows in alternative spaces, he currently serves as a board member at the Manhattan Graphics Center, and works as a carpenter and art-handler.

Daniel Mantilla is a Colombian-born, New York based artist who approaches pictorial space in  terms of enclosure and accumulation. His practice consists of paintings, printed matter,  drawing/collages, and cut-outs motivated by ideas of transition and instability. His work has  been exhibited in Colombia, Spain, and the US including the Museo de Arte del Tolima and  Bank of the Republic in the city of Ibagué, the United Nations in Bogotá, Auditorio Enrique  Granados in Lleida Spain, The Tampa Museum of Art, USF Contemporary Art Museum, The  School of the Art Institute of Chicago, Hunter College, Instituto Cervantes New York, and was  part of the 2015 AIM Bronx Biennial at the Bronx Museum in NYC. He was the recipient of a  Kossak Travel Grant and Recognition Painting Award Julio Fajardo from Museo del Tolima. He  recently completed a residency at the Clemente Soto Vélez Cultural and Educational Center made possible through Residency Unlimited’s ongoing partnership with Artists Alliance Inc. He  is the first artist to be selected for the Liquitex Cadmium-Free Research Residency at Residency  Unlimited in Brooklyn, NY.