Our Favorite Emerging Artists: Seven Mediums, Seven Voices for Today’s Zeitgeist

In today’s art landscape, medium is no longer a boundary, it is a lens. Emerging artists are pushing beyond paint, clay, or stone, challenging assumptions about what materials can do, how they interact with space, and how they communicate cultural ideas. They work across disciplines, bending furniture into sculpture, weaving thread into architecture, and turning AI into a tool for imagining alternate realities.

We chose these seven artists who exemplify this spirit, each with a distinct material voice. Collectively, they define a generation that is experimental, hybrid, and deeply in tune with the cultural moment.

Brandon Morris — Resin as Couture and Concept

Brandon Morris is a rising star in mixed-media sculpture, with a practice that defies space. His most talked-about work, the Actress series, transforms resin into wearable sculptures, dresses that glimmer, drape, and hold form in ways that challenge both the fashion and fine art worlds. Each piece is a hybrid: part couture, part sculpture, part performance.

What makes Morris particularly compelling is his interrogation of material perception. Resin is rigid, industrial, and often overlooked as a sculptural medium. Morris elevates it into something both delicate and dramatic, making the viewer question notions of wearability, femininity, and the body as a canvas.

In a zeitgeist obsessed with hybridization and spectacle, Morris embodies the spirit of experimentation. His work resonates with collectors, curators, and fashion-forward audiences alike, signaling a broader cultural shift toward boundaryless creativity.

Notable work: Actress I–IV, a series of resin dresses that play with light, color, and movement, turning the gallery space into an immersive, performative environment.

You can explore more of their work on Instagram at @codeunknown_

Images via europa.nyc

F. Taylor Colantonio — Furniture as Artful Statement

F. Taylor Colantonio occupies a unique space at the intersection of furniture design and conceptual art. His pieces, often constructed from mixed materials, are simultaneously functional objects and sculptural experiments. Tables, chairs, and lamps become narrative artifacts - interrogating memory, material, and form.

Colantonio’s relevance lies in his capacity to reframe everyday objects as carriers of meaning. In an era when interiors are curated for both aesthetic and social signaling, his work elevates furniture into the domain of gallery-worthy art, challenging viewers to consider how everyday spaces shape perception and identity.

You can explore more of his work on Instagram at @ftaylorc

Images via ftaylor.co

David Mahyari — Stone Sculptures for the Contemporary Monument

David Mahyari, founder of SolidNature, is an artist-sculptor redefining our relationship with stone. His work is monumental, yet intimate, transforming raw geological material into forms that communicate both permanence and conceptual elegance. A recent collaboration with Alex Proba in front of the Pyramids demonstrated how stone can dialogue with history, landscape, and contemporary aesthetics.

Mahyari’s approach is about material storytelling: every vein of stone, every surface imperfection, contributes to a narrative of time and place. In a world dominated by digital ephemera, Mahyari’s work reminds us of the physical, enduring power of materiality.

Notable work: Pyramidal Dialogues, a collaboration with Alex Proba that placed sculptural stone forms in conversation with one of the world’s most iconic architectural landscapes, blending memory, mythology, and contemporary artistic vision.

You can explore more of their work on Instagram at @solidnature

Images via Instagram @solidnature

Kaat Lens — Narrative Painting for the Interior World

Belgian painter Kaat Lens uses oil and acrylic on canvas to create scenes that feel both familiar and dreamlike. Her work focuses on interiors, figures, and moments suspended in time, blending observation with imagination.

Her canvases are rich with detail, yet suffused with an almost cinematic atmosphere. She captures the subtleties of emotion, memory, and personal myth, inviting viewers into worlds that feel simultaneously intimate and expansive.

In an age of rapid image consumption, Lens’s paintings ask us to pause, to inhabit space and narrative. Her relevance lies in her ability to humanize and deepen our visual experience, a rare quality in contemporary figurative painting.

You can explore more of her work on Instagram at @kaat_lens

Images via kaatlens.com

Line & String — Weaving an ancient art

Although the artist behind Line & String is unknown, we would still like to highlight their Instagram profile as one of our seven notable artists. For KU-RATED, Line & String transforms thread, textiles, and fabric into three-dimensional, spatial artworks. Their pieces explore tension, gravity, and architectural rhythm, turning humble materials into miniature immersive installations.

The practice of weaving resonates today because it celebrates handcraft and tactility in a moment dominated by digital experiences. Each thread, knot, and suspended line invites viewers to navigate space and perception, highlighting the poetic potential of ordinary materials. You can explore more of their work on Instagram at @lineandstring

Images via Instagram @lineandstring

Pooter Pottery — Ceramics as Narrative Objects

Griet De Pooter, known professionally as Pooter Pottery, elevates ceramics from craft to contemporary art. Her wheel-thrown vessels are enhanced with decals, textures, and surface designs, transforming everyday objects into narrative-rich, visually compelling pieces.

In a culture increasingly dominated by digital and ephemeral experiences, Pooter’s ceramics offer tactile intimacy and poetry. They bridge tradition and innovation, reminding audiences that art can inhabit daily life while retaining conceptual depth.

Her use of decals gives her work a distinctive, personal visual language. Unlike purely functional pottery, her pieces carry a graphic, illustrative quality that makes them visually memorable, infusing playfulness and color into everyday objects and daily life. You can explore more of their work on Instagram at @pooterpottery

Images via Instagram @pooterpottery

Juan Carlos Beltrán — AI Photography and the Post-Digital Imagination

Juan Carlos Beltrán merges photography and AI-generated imagery to explore speculative landscapes, urban environments, and architectural forms. His compositions navigate the tension between real and imagined, nature and human intervention, rural and urban.

Beltrán is especially relevant now because he visualizes the post-digital imagination, showing how technology can extend, rather than replace, artistic vision. His work interrogates environmental, urban, and social narratives, reflecting contemporary anxieties and possibilities with clarity and conceptual rigor. You can explore more of his work on Instagram at @jc____b

Images via Instagram @jc____b

Material Curiosity as the New Avant-Garde

What unites these seven artists is not style, geography, or market position, but an extraordinary curiosity for the possibilities of their chosen medium. Resin, furniture, stone, paint, textiles, ceramics, and AI serve as vessels for ideas, emotion, and cultural commentary. Together, they represent a generation of material alchemists: creators who are unafraid to experiment, hybridize, and challenge conventions. Their work is simultaneously tactile and conceptual, intimate and monumental, personal and universal.

In an era defined by fluidity, hybridity, and constant change, these artists embody the contemporary zeitgeist: fearless, material-conscious, and visionary. They remind us that the future of art lies not in a single medium, but in the courage to imagine, experiment, and redefine what art can be. There is so much more to be said about each individual artist—layers of inspiration, process, and vision that we have only begun to touch upon.

There is so much more to be said about each individual artist and their layers of inspiration, process, and vision that we have only begun to touch upon. Their practices invite deeper exploration, offering endless discoveries as they continue to shape and challenge the ways we see, feel, and interact with art. We are excited to continue witnessing their journeys and the ways their creativity will inspire, surprise, and redefine the contemporary art landscape.