1. Yun BaiThe recent New York transplant paints and collages sweet things out of nasty. Look closely at those flowers.
2. Lecia Dole-RecioIntricate, rhythmic structures as much cobbled together from scraps of cardboard or Scotch tape as painted and drawn.
3. Amir FallahEditor of art-style alternazine Beautiful Decay, Fallah matches the obsessiveness of the ’tooners and taggers his mag features in his own imaginary landscapes.
4. Renee LoteneroExcavating patterned interiors (tile, linoleum) and putting them back together all different, she’s a reconstructivist in a deconstructionist discourse.
5. Ian PatrickTripping out on Japanese manga, he morphs all the limbs and robes and genitalia into blobs and landscapes and sea monsters.
6. Antonio Adriano PuleoElaborately patterned conflations of images stylized from nature, a kind of neo-art nouveau for the Ecstasy set.
7. Analia SabanPays props to painting by unraveling canvases and taking apart modern masterpieces, making templates of “typical” brushstrokes by Miró, Matisse, de Kooning, et al.
8. Holly ToppingUnlikely old-masterish renditions of herself, dressed to the nines, amid jungle animals and Neanderthals. Mel Ramos meets Manet.
9. Robert WechslerThe Santa Barbara–based photographer’s shot of a ring of shopping carts, out in a supermarket parking lot early one morning, was one of the keeper images of the year.
10. Joe GoodeHis art school degree may be almost a half-century old, but this redoubtable para-Pop painter’s first show after a fire consumed his studio was of exquisitely composed photos of the wreckage. Talk about re-emergence.
Reasons There’s No Doug Harvey Art List
1. Flu
(But see his Outsider Music list on page 41.)