ALCHEMY – SYNOPSIS
Alchemy brings together five distinctive New York artists—Michael Katz, Elena Seroff, S.L. Fuller, Anthony Haden-Guest, and Catherine M. Zadeh—each chosen for a singular ability to reimagine material, perception, and experience through a unique visual language. At its heart, Alchemy is about transformation: Michael Katz reveals the unexpected within the everyday through line, form, color, and observation; Elena Seroff translates emotion, memory, and human experience through abstraction and gesture; S.L. Fuller merges fashion, movement, material, and narrative with rhythm and sensuality; Anthony Haden-Guest distills the contradictions and absurdities of contemporary culture into visual commentary and wit; and Catherine M. Zadeh elevates elemental and unconventional materials into sculptural forms exploring strength, identity, and resilience. Together, these artists express the spirit of Alchemy—where material becomes meaning, experience becomes expression, and the familiar is transmuted into the extraordinary.
MICHAEL KATZ
Michael Katz is a New York–based artist, author, psychologist, and meditation teacher whose abstract paintings explore transformation, inner energy, and the dynamic relationship between chaos and order. Working through vibrant color, fluid gesture, and expanses of open space, Katz creates compositions that move between spontaneity and control. His paintings suggest inner landscapes—layered, energetic, and often transcendent—where fragments, symbols, and intuitive forms come together to create unexpected harmony. Katz describes the artist as an alchemist, transforming the mundane into the transcendent. This philosophy makes his work particularly resonant within ALCHEMY, where material, perception, and experience are transformed into new visual possibilities. His abstract paintings have been exhibited in New York and internationally, including a solo exhibition at Tibet House US in New York. Katz holds a Psy.D. from New York University, and his lifelong study of consciousness, meditation, and dreams continues to inform the freedom, energy, and sense of possibility within his visual practice.
ELENA SEROFF
Born in 1975, Elena Iosilevich (aka Seroff) is a Russian-born American artist whose abstract paintings, drawings, and works on paper explore the emotional architecture of human experience. Grounded in realism and academic art, her visual language evolved after immigrating to New York in 1996, where she was drawn toward Cubism, Abstraction, and Symbolism. Working intuitively in oil, watercolor, ink, and pencil, Seroff explores love, truth, memory, and the beauty of everyday life. Inspired by Juan Gris, Kazimir Malevich, Lyubov Popova, and Pavel Filonov, she translates structure, color, and gesture into a deeply personal vocabulary. She lives and works in New York City.
S.L. FULLER
Stephanie “S.L.” Fuller is a New York–based artist whose work moves between fashion, music, travel, and the sea. Formerly a lead singer with Kid Creole and the Coconuts, Fuller brings rhythm, gesture, and theatricality to her visual practice. Her Off the Coast of Me series was commissioned for World Water Day in New York in support of Water.org. Working in India ink, mixed media, acrylic, glass, gold leaf, and sand, Fuller creates a world that is glamorous, fluid, and instinctive. Her Les Demoiselles series presents privileged women through a distinctive Art Deco-inflected language of line and attitude. A graduate of Virginia Commonwealth University, Fuller’s work has been collected internationally, extending the language of fashion into abstraction and narrative.
ANTHONY HADEN-GUEST
Anthony Haden-Guest is a writer, reporter, cartoonist, and sporadic performer drawn to the sharp-eyed traditions of George Herriman, Aubrey Beardsley, Max Beerbohm, Caran d’Ache, James Thurber, and Pete Arno. His cartoonery finds rich material in contemporary life—collapsing structures, evolving behaviors, cultural absurdities, and uncertain futures. Born in Paris, raised in London, and long settled in New York, Haden-Guest won a New York Emmy for writing and narrating a program on the arrival of Eurotrash in Manhattan. His books include True Colours: The Real Life of the Art World and The Last Party: Studio 54, Disco and the Culture of the Night, while his cartoons and rhymes appear in The Chronicles of Now and In The Meantime. Haden-Guest turns an irreverent eye on the peculiar theater of contemporary life.
CATHERINE M. ZADEH
Catherine M. Zadeh is a New York–based jewelry designer and artist who turns unconventional materials into powerful, wearable forms. Born in Tehran, raised in Paris, and rooted in New York, Zadeh brings an interntional sensibility to an aesthetic defined by strength, restraint, and sculptural simplicity. Working with sustainably sourced water buffalo horn, parachute cord, leather, precious metals, and diamonds, she explores the tension between refinement and rawness. After designing exclusively for men for two decades, Zadeh expanded her practice to women while preserving the bold, genderless character of her work. Carried by Bergdorf Goodman and crafted largely by New York artisans, her designs blur the boundaries between jewelry, sculpture, fashion, and art—expressing identity, resilience, and the beauty of materials shaped by time.
Cover Art : Michael Katz – Abstract I – Acrylic on Canvas – 30” x 30” – 2026