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PABLO PICASSO

In 1968, near the end of his life, Picasso made 347 etchings that show his interest in television and film, wrestling, and the female nude. Some of the prints refer to old Celestina, the cunning marriage arranger featured in Fernando de Rojas's play. Others investigate the aging process, voyeurism, the orientalized setting of the harem, and explicit lovemaking as the Pope looks on. When the etchings were exhibited in Paris, and later Chicago, there was heated controversy on their status as pornography. In both cities the works were censored. Nude Acrobat on Horseback, Man with Hat, Spectator Poorly Shaven(above) along with two other important etchings from Suite 156, are from the private collection of an esteemed art collector in Malaga (Picasso's home town) They are now available exclusively through ... Mayson Gallery.

RODGER STEVENS

More than anything else, Stevens work is about thinking. There is something that takes place while he's working that is not simply a feeling of satisfaction, or accomplishment, or being preoccupied, but presents more like a profound sense of organization and understanding. This welcome state is borne out of some kind of focusing of the intellect. The process unfolds like this: An image or a structure appears in his mind - It's usually associated with an event or an emotion or a story and is a sort of visual representation of that thing, like a hieroglyph. These glyphs appear all the time. He chooses the most captivating of the batch and starts realizing it as an actual object, usually by means of wire or wood which for some reason seem to be best suited for materializing his sculptures. The ideogram - and that word, with its Greek origins concerning the graphic representation of an idea, is really useful here - begins to take shape and as it does he makes formal edits until the image is captured. When there is some solid alignment between what is in his hands and what is in his head, it's done. The whole process takes on an importance that elbows out unwelcome intellectual distractions. And then, as with all diligent investigations, revelations are unearthed - often unrelated to the original pursuit. More thoughts are hatched; more glyphs appear; work begins again. For better or worse, such is the process.

This body of work was constructed under the same conditions. For sundry reasons too tedious to detail, Ancient Greece, Imperial Rome, Friedrich Nietzsche, Galileo, and his family are among the themes that make an appearance in these extraordinary pieces.

BENJAMIN CASIANO

Born and raised in New York City, Casiano minimizes the amount of color predominating the variation of form, making his work largely confine to a periphery motif. Using mostly geometric form and gradients in his abstracts while his figurative works are driven by a loose brushstroke technique that creates a form of expressionism. Casiano constantly utilizes and imparts tones with rich textures and intense definition. By doing so he improves and refines his minimalistic approach, executing with a meticulous eye, balancing a dramatic presence beyond its initial appearance. This approach takes an amorphous shape that coalesce a portal becoming a metaphor of his subconscious of love, passion and mystery.