Cool Hunting

Richard Dupont
For our 99th episode, we visit the Manhattan studio of Richard Dupont who makes arresting figurative work. His sculptures initially caught our eye when they made an appearance in our very first video at Art Basel and now Dupont's busy with his large-scale installation due to open at the Lever House next month. In this video he unmolds one of his distorted replicas of his body that he made using military scans, walking us through his process and some of the ideas that inform his work.

Joseph Conforti
Joseph Conforti is a master of repetition. A raku ceramicist based in New York City, he creates hypnotic wall sculptures comprised of individual panels, each of which contains hundreds of ceramic pieces. Raku, for those unversed in ceramic speak, is a traditional form of Japanese pottery dating back to the 16th Century. It involves low temperature kiln firing, followed by a combustible immersion that...

The Lever House Art Collection
For nearly a decade the Lever House in New York City has been home to some of the most daring public exhibits of contemporary art. In this video curator Richard Marshall gives some background on the architectural landmark and explains the ins-and-outs of putting together the biannual commissions that have included the likes of Barnaby Furnace, Sarah Morris and Damien Hirst. In addition to past...

Mika Rottenberg
For our final video taking a closer look at this year's Whitney Biennial, we travel to the Harlem studio of video artist Mika Rottenberg. Known for videos depicting women engaging in elaborate systems of production that often harvest their own body, Mika shows us the set of her latest piece (and Biennial installation), "Cheese" and tells us the backstory of making the video. We...

Whitney Biennial 2008
This time around we chose to cover the Whitney Biennial with help from the museum's exhibition designer, Mark Steigelman. Last week's video on Olaf Breuning included a glimpse of his Biennial installation at the Park Avenue Armory (an off-site component that's new this year) and this episode is a select survey of the works by the 50-odd artists showing at the Whitney. Mark explains the...

Olaf Breuning
In honor of Swiss artist Olaf Breuning's inclusion in the 2008 Whitney Biennial, this video visits his Manhattan studio. In the midst of working on his two-part installation for the show, Olaf takes the time to explain his inspiration and thinking behind his mini army made of readymade objects and a recreation of a 1932 photograph. There's also plenty of examples of his other playfully...