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.

Okamoto Studio
Takeo Okamoto, an established sushi chef in his native Japan discovered his calling for ice sculpture and moved to the iciest place he could think of, Alaska. Winner of several international awards, including a Silver Medal in the 1998 Olympics, Takeo now runs Okamoto Studio with his son Shintaro in New York City. We were introduced to them through Jeremy Mangan, an artist whose coffee paintings we admired. When we spoke with Jeremy he mentioned that he also sculpts ice—he's in fact Okamoto's principal carver—the result of Jeremy and Shintaro having met in an art class at Hunter College. We decided right away to make a video of the studio and, after some deliberation, we realized CH mascots Otis and Logan would make the perfect subjects for a video and a great feature at our 50th Episode party. Guests were treated to the breathtaking sculptures of the Sealyham Terriers themselves and to raw footage from the video of them being made.

Brian Dewan
In this, our 50th episode, we visit the Catskill, NY studio of artist Brian Dewan. His sculptures are pre-digital, unpredictable electronic musical instruments. Dewanatron, as he calls the genre, is a family of instruments which hazard unpredictable behaviors and self playing tendencies. They make all previous and future instruments obsolete. We also bring you to Pierogi Gallery where we first learned about Dewan.

Scott Campbell
Brooklyn-based tattooist Scott Campbell has taken the art form to another level—not just by being one of the most sought-after tattoo artists in NY (if not the world) but for using a laser cutter to etch his intricate old-world designs into everything from laptops and books to leather chairs, tables and paintings. In this field trip to Scott's Brooklyn tattoo parlor and studio, he shows...

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...