Tala Madani

I first encountered Tala Madani’s paintings in the back room of Lombard Freid Projects in New York. I was there to discuss something important but my eyes kept wandering off to stare at the stuff on the wall. Large or small format, looking a bit cartoonish, Tala’s paintings are strong and fresh. Human motifs are painted over a flat background as repetitive signs or as a one-element composition. It is somehow funny but at the same time heavy. Later I found out that she is from Iran and lives in Rotterdam, and maybe that’s why. *1981 in Tehran, lives in Amsterdam

Ariel Schlesinger

A complicated do-it-yourself machine made up of clamps, gas tanks, air pumping stuff and a zillion other simple devices pops out a soap bubble at the top. The bubble falls slowly and when it hits a barbecue–like surface it bursts into flame. Welcome to the extraordinary and absurd world of Ariel Schlesinger, most recently exhibited at the 2008 Art Focus in Jerusalem, his hometown. Now he lives in Berlin where he constantly exercises his unlimited imagination by finding new purposes for old objects (i.e. old habits). *1980 in Jerusalem, lives in Berlin

Sebastian Modovan

Here you have a very young artist living in the middle of Romania in the city of Sibiu, the 2007 cultural capital of Europe. I first met him at the Bucharest Botanical Garden where we both participated in the 2005 Bucharest Biennial. He erected a traffic sign with the word Paris crossed out as if you had just exited the grand city. Bucharest had been, once upon a time, nicknamed Little Paris and Sebastian hit home with his laconic comment. At the moment I am very interested in a short video he recently show me on his laptop. Sebastian hung a video camera on some doors and then continually opened them. It looks as if the same door opens into new space after new space. *1980 in Baia Mare (Romania), lives in Sibiu

Leopold Kessler

We were together at the Sharjah Biennial in the United Arab Emirates. All artists, curators, gallery owners and other men and women in black all stayed in one big fancy hotel. We had everything but people around us had almost nothing, modern slaves from Pakistan and India doomed to build the Sheik’s version of Las Vegas in the desert. So this is how it went: while all of us got on with our usual business (i.e. art) and our usual obsession (again, art) Leopold stuck a hose in the hotel pool located at a higher floor and emptied the water onto the dusty road six floors below at the base of the hotel. Lately, this kind of clandestine action has become his trademark. He lives in Vienna. Watch out. *1976 in Munich, lives in Vienna

Nevin Aladag

Nevin is a Kurdish/Turkish artist living in Berlin. I saw and then loved her video about a Turkish family living in Berlin and teaching break dancing. After that, I got her white t-shirt with the identity statement for blind people and then I kept an eye on whatever she did. That’s how I got to see the lamps she showed at U-turn, The Copenhagen Quadrennial. A bunch of lamps sacred (and quite expensive, in the vintage sense) to Danish design »grand history« got made over. Nevin dressed them with coloured women’s stockings and radically transformed them into different objects with another kind of history. *1972 in Van (Turkey), lives in Berlin

DAN PERJOVSCHI Born in 1961 in Sibiu, Romania. His recent solo exhibitions include What Happened to US? at MoMA New York, I Am Not Exotic – I Am Exhausted at Kunsthalle Basel in 2007, The Room Drawing at Tate Modern London, On the Other Hand at Portikus Frankfurt in 2006 and Naked Drawings at the Ludwig Museum, Cologne, in 2005. He has participated in numerous group shows including the Sydney Biennial in 2008, The Magelanic Cloud at Centre Georges Pompidou Paris, the 52nd Venice Biennial in 2007. His first retrospective exhibition, States of Mind, was held at the Nasher Museum of Art at Duke University in 2007. He lives in Bucharest.