Dino Valls is highly influenced by the Spanish masters and their studies of the human form. As a representative of the Spanish vanguard of figurative art, Valls’s portraits are precise, sensual, mysterious and surreal. He expands the methods of 17th-century Spanish and Italian masters by employing formal figurative techniques as the medium through which to explore the human mind in a framework filled with symbolism.
Valls recent body of work entails a variety of diptychs, triptychs and polyptychs that, for the most part, feature androgynous bodies in antiquated attire. Many of the details seem to come from a bygone time. However, Valls’s strange juxtapositions of details makes the work decidedly contemporary. For instance, in his 2013 polyptych, RESTAURATIO, Valls inserts bits and pieces of a female’s face onto the middle portrait of a older male figure, presenting scraps and sketches all delicately painted in a collage-like way. Valls began studying the use of egg tempera on wood early on in his career shortly after leaving medical school in 1982. Since then, he has been adapting and customizing it in order to bring a new perspective to this time-honored way of painting.
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Photographer Aida Muluneh has lived all over the world, but it was in returning to Ethiopia that she found inspiration for her latest body of work. Muluneh's first solo exhibition for David Kruts Projects in New York City was titled “The World is 9,” and it featured new images from the artist. The title comes from something the artist’s grandmother used to say: “The world is 9. It is never complete and never perfect.”
Japanese artist 
There's a palpable darkness that permeates the surreal oil paintings of Philippine artist Leslie De Chavez. Rendered on large, black canvases, the shadowy landscapes are home to ghoulish, distorted figures and act as settings to various scenes of violence, corruption and suffering. Born in Manila, De Chavez uses his art to reflect upon current socio-political issues that affect his homeland. Through use of powerful text and imagery, his works explore religion, national identity, global capitalism, power struggle, and corruption within modern government. While the works appear dismal and often sinister, De Chavez is driven by the hope that his art can create awareness and inspire positive, progressive change within his community.