Devendra Banhart (Houston, Texas, 1981) is an internationally renowned musician considered a pioneer of the “freak folk” and “New Weird America” movements. His musical work exists symbiotically alongside his visual practice; both manifest as immediate, uncensored notations from his imagination. Banhart’s works on paper are characterized by their intimacy and ephemerality, often made on blank pages torn out of old books, as well as their delicate, oneiric line work.

Cameron (Belle Plaine, Iowa, 1922–1995) was a seminal figure in Los Angeles occult and avant-garde art circles since the 1940s. She produced drawings, paintings, and collages, both mesmeric abstractions and graphic figurations. A mentor to the artists Wallace Berman and George Herms, Cameron was also known for her on-screen collaborations with filmmakers Kenneth Anger and Curtis Harrington.

Jacob El Hanani (Casablanca, Morocco, 1947) constructs abstract pen and ink drawings that involve the artist applying thousands of marks by hand, fusing the preoccupations of minimalism and the ancient art of micrography, the rigorous scribal practice once used to decorate Hebrew Bibles and religious manuscripts. Like the work of those scribes, each of El Hanani’s drawings represent a devotional act, carried out with meditative precision over the course of months or years.

Brion Gysin (Taplow, United Kingdom, 1916–1986) produced pioneering paintings, drawings, collage, sound, literature, music, performance and kinetic art. Best known for his collaborative friendship with author William Burroughs, his ‘discovery’ of the cut-up technique, and his invention of the Dreamachine, Gysin’s hallucinatory calligraphic paintings represent a fundamental, but comparatively overlooked, dimension of his artistic practice. 

Adeline Halot (Brussels, Belgium, 1992) sculpts woven compositions of metallic wires and flax linen yarns to create unique sculptures that symbolize the fusion of nature and technology. Her works draw inspiration from organic and mineral forms. Originally trained as an architect, the interaction of light and shadow is as integral to the artist’s sculptures as their textile identity, embodying a constant observation of the intersections between art and the natural world.

George Herms (Woodland, California, 1935) emerged in the 1960s as a primary figure of the California Assemblage movement. Deemed the ‘Godfather of the spiritual unknown,’ he rejected precious or traditional art-making materials and rigid compositions, instead recycling civilization’s refuse with a fresh eye and a poet’s touch. Herms’ body of work brings the world’s flotsam and jetsam together in elegant opposition, an impulse that continues to drive artists today. As keeper of Cameron’s estate, Herms was instrumental in bringing her work to a wider audience.

Alfred Jensen (Guatemala City, Guatemala, 1903–1981) is recognized as one of the great abstract painters of his generation and a precursor of Conceptual art. A self-described “diagram painter,” Jensen was inspired by his wide-ranging studies of systems and philosophies, extending from theories of color and light, mathematics, and scientific formulations to the Mayan calendar, hieroglyphics, and systems of divination such as the I Ching. Using a bold polychromatic palette and gridded compositions, Jensen structured his paintings and works on paper with overlapping systems of forms, colors, signs, and numbers.

Rashid Johnson (Chicago, Illinois, 1977) works across the disciplines of painting, sculpture, photography, and video. One of the major voices of his generation, Johnson’s practice is defined by its critical evocations and entangling of racial and cultural identity, African American history, and mysticism. “The goal,” Johnson explains, “is for all of the materials to miscegenate into a new language, with me as its author.”

Mika Rottenberg (Buenos Aires, Argentina, 1976) combines film, installation, drawing, and sculpture to explore ideas of labor and production in our contemporary hyper-capitalist world. The artist’s career-spanning emphasis on women’s roles and the psychological implications of physical existence gives rise to an oeuvre in which “candy-colored aesthetics go hand-in-hand with the dominant presence of bodily fluids such as sweat and tears.”

Al Taylor (Springfield, Missouri, 1948–1999) moved fluidly between media, finding inspiration for his lyrical and witty compositions in banal objects and everyday situations. During his short career, he produced more than five thousand drawings, in which he combined technical skills and Old Master virtuosity with conceptual strategies based on chance and graphic systems such as charts and diagrams.

Christopher Wool (Chicago, Illinois, 1955) is widely regarded as one of the preeminent American painters of his generation. Since the 1980s, Wool has developed a practice that interrogates the very process of painting itself, encouraging the viewer to reflect on its essential physical qualities, while honing an awareness of painting procedures and the essential elements of the medium: color, form and line.