Components

MIKE PERRY is a Brooklyn-based, multi-dimensional artist. You may know his work on Broad City, which would garner him his first Emmy, for Motion Design. Or, you may know us from his formidable performative relationships with Hermès, mural landscapes with Jameson, rambunctious joints with the likes of Jimmy Fallon, or multi-media experiences with industry leading powerhouses such as Dolby. From beer to clocks to children books, he’s been highlighting the world you live in for over a decade with bright neon, hard-cut curiosities, and images that forever encourage exploration. Whether it’s the take over of Madison Avenue with Hermés for a one night only musical, or doodling for Playboy magazine, he makes with an inquisitive imagination and versatility. Mike make paintings, patterns, animation, sculptures, portraits, books, public art installations, monographs, exhibitions, drawings, silkscreens, and everything else that falls within the dreamscape. He is a topographers of the ever-curious journey and making art for everyone has long been his motto, spreading the love for creativity and the influence of positive thought, as he believes in the transformative power of making things. He continues to invite you into the abstract, into the very much unknowable future with eyes open to wonder and hearts full of boundless opportunities, still working without limits.

Jessica Walsh is one of the most iconic graphic designers of the modern age. As the founder and creative director of world-renowned design agency, &Walsh, she’s had a significant impact on the evolution of visual trends and the graphic design industry. Her designs and illustrations have been featured everywhere, from The New York Times and New York Times Magazine to major celebrity and brand campaigns. When Jessica started coding and designing websites at just 11 years old, she soon realized it was more than a hobby—she wanted to dedicate her life to art and design. After earning a Bachelor of Fine Arts from Rhode Island School of Design in 2008, she moved to New York City, where she turned down a job at Apple to intern under fellow iconic female designer, Paula Scher. She then went on to co-found the prestigious New York design studio Sagmeister & Walsh, where she worked with big-name brands, including Levi’s, Aizone, and Adobe.

Since emerging onto the international art scene in the late 1980s, Damien Hirst has created installations, sculptures, paintings, and drawings that examine the complex relationships between art and beauty, religion and science, and life and death. From serialized paintings of multicolored spots to animal specimens preserved in tanks of formaldehyde, his work challenges contemporary belief systems, tracing the uncertainties that lie at the heart of human experience. In 1988, while studying at Goldsmiths College in London, Hirst curated Freeze, a rolling exhibition in three parts, featuring his work and that of fellow students. This show is considered the debut of the artists who would come to be known as the Young British Artists, or YBAs, whose approach was characterized by a combination of entrepreneurial and oppositional attitudes, the use of found materials, and an interest in shock and spectacle. In the final iteration of Freeze, Hirst included two of his Spot paintings, which he painted directly onto the wall. The Spot paintings (1986–), of which there are now more than one thousand, present multicolored spots on white or near-white grounds and are painted by hand in glossy house paint. With these works, Hirst sought to paint as a machine yet allow for the subtle imperfections of the artist’s hand. In 2012 Gagosian showed more than three hundred Spot paintings at once across all eleven of the gallery’s locations.

Njideka Akunyili was born in 1983 and raised in Enugu, Nigeria. She is of Igbo descent and grew up bilingual in Igbo and English. One of six siblings, Akunyili Crosby's father, Chike Akunyili, was a surgeon and her mother, Dora Akunyili, was a professor of pharmacology at the University of Nigeria, and the former director of the National Agency for Food and Drug Administration. Akunyili Crosby moved to Lagos when she was thirteen years old to attend the secondary school Queen's College (QC) Yaba, Lagos. Her mother won the U.S. green card lottery for the family, enabling Akunyili Crosby and her siblings to move to the United States and to get financial aid to study there.