Keeping track of who's who in the art world is the rough equivalent of trying to keep up with the impossibly huge landscape of indie bands. There are exactly three million names you're expected to know, and you will never learn them all. The good part is that once you get over that then you can dive in and enjoy yourself.

The following list of artists is A) super subjective and B) full of people at very different moments in their careers. Some are already art stars (which, in this hermetically sealed world, means they've sold work to big deal collectors like Charles Saatchi or have a fancy gallery representing them). Some are just getting started. But all are names you should get to know.



Tauba Auerbach



Why: Her grids and patterns and symbols take chaos and turn it orderly. And sometimes back into chaos. Just looking at them can make you dizzy.

Where to see her work: The Whitney Museum, NY (through May 30), The New Museum, NY (through June 6), Neuer Aachener Kunstverein, Aachen, Germany (May 30 – July 25), Galerie Rodolphe Janssen, Brussels, Belgium (June), Western Bridge, Seattle, Washington (July 1 – 10) and back at the Whitney Construction Site Installation from July 3 to August 15.

Website



Rosson Crow

If museum-goers of the future don't look back on Rosson Crow's exuberantly morbid "Buck Owens Trophy Room," its surfaces slathered with zoo animals and redrum, and think, This is a masterpiece of the '00s, then those future folks will be even dumber than people are now.

Where to see her work: She's got nothing coming up this summer. So just cool your heels with the book version of her 2008 show "A Night at The Palomino." Sure, it shrinks 130" long paintings into something you can hold in your hands, but sometimes you take what you can get.

Website



Scott Hug

Why: He slapped a colored circle on a tiger's face and called it "Homosexual Relations," proving that it's possible to simultaneously make no sense and make gayness less boring with one quick move. That's a quality to admire in a homosexual.

Where to see his work: Sometimes galleries, sometimes on his blog. Or you can start with the yearly "magazine" he produces called K48. It's weird.



Titus Kaphar

Why: By patterning his work on historical portraiture that he then mutilates, obliterates, paints over, peels back or shreds, he reverses everything you ever learned about ye olden times helps remind the modern world of its own fragile state.
Where to see his work: No shows happening this summer but his blog is in reasonably updated working order.

Website



Andrew Lewicki

Why: Makes crazy sculpture that looks like a streethole cover that's also a giant Oreo cookie. Cameras that are also accordions. Cement blocks that are also Legos. It sounds way too cute but it's not.

Where to see his work: "The Rise of RAD," a group show taking place in July at the Torrance Art Museum, Torrance, CA.

Website


Jay Nelson

Why: Using the simplest materials -- pencil, paper -- his drawings are like walking into an LSD trip to hazy, symmetrical, dreamlike black metal forest in a Norway that also happens to be on the Moon.

Where to see his work: "Independents Present" at Synchronicity, Los Angeles, through June.

Website


Albert Reyes

Why: Reyes paints and draws on discarded book covers. The salvage project takes the form of illustration-based images of the Iron Maiden skeleton mascot taking a foxy Latina by surprise, Drew Barrymore's terror-phone moment in Scream, or an anonymous self-portrait of Reyes himself standing in front of a giant maze sculpture he built in his own backyard.

Where to see his work: At this second that maze has been uprooted and re-placed at floating gallery Mastodon Mesa, currently living inside Los Angeles' Pacific Design Center. From July 10 – Sept 4, Reyes will show new work at L.A.'s New Image Art Gallery.

Website



Josh Smith

Why: Turns his own name into murky abstraction in a way that would make most taggers weep with humiliated envy.

Where to see his work: Currently at the Museum Dhondt-Dhaenens, Deurie, Belgium (ends June 20). Upcoming at Galleria Massimo de Carlo, Milan, Italy (May 20 to June 26). Also in the latest issue of fancy art mag Parkett.

Website


Peter Sutherland

Why: Sutherland's photographs involve a lot of travel and a lot of willingness to enter brokedown trailer parks, natural areas "enhanced" by spray paint, and the personal space of people who do knife tricks. It's not like swimming next to a great white shark, but it's sometimes just as unnerving. At first glance, some of his subjects are not the kind of thing you can imagine wanting to look at on your wall every day. And then it all starts to turn beautiful. I can't figure that part out either.

Where to see his work: Rocket & Gallery Target (5/21 – 6/1) Tokyo, Japan

Website



Ryan Trecartin

Why: Remember video art? No? That's because the best stuff was done a million years ago and since then it's been a spinning tire in the mud. But along comes this young gay and some nightmarish, hallucinogenic, reality show-inspired YouTube deepness and... well, just look. (Warning: Above video contains some NSFW language.)

Where to see his work: The touring show "Any Ever" is currently at The Power Plant in Toronto, Canada and will move on to MOCA, Los Angeles, Musée d'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris, MoMA PS1 in New York, and the Museum of Contemporary Art in Miami.

Website