Doug Aitken, Station to Station. Courtesy Regen Projects.

1. Since graduating from ArtCenter nearly 25 years ago, Doug Aitken (BFA 91 Illustration) has blazed a luminous trajectory. From his breakout Electric Earth video installation at the 1999 Whitney Biennial, to the nomadic Station to Station (2013), the Southern California native creates multimedia works at once monumental and ephemeral.

Jen Rosenstein, Rocco, from the series Transformational Project. Courtesy of the artist.

2. Long before Caitlyn Jenner’s media moment, Jen Rosenstein (BFA 08 Photography and Imaging) trained her empathic eye on the transgender community. Over the past seven years she’s set up impromptu studios offering free portraits to transgender individuals, capturing them how they want to be seen.

Mark Ryden, Meat Dress. Courtesy Kohn Gallery.

3. Pop surrealist master Mark Ryden (BFA 87 Illustration) blurs traditional boundaries between high and low art to often disquieting effect, taking cute or kitschy clichés to darkly enigmatic places. Works like his edgy yet elegant porcelain sculpture Meat Dress have made him a star among serious art collectors in the music and film industry and beyond.

Lawrence Carroll, Nothing Gold Can Stay. Courtesy Galerie Karsten Greve, Galerie Buchmann, Galerie LA Louvre.

4. Australian-born painter Lawrence Carroll (BFA 80 Illustration) was commissioned to create a body of work on the theme of “Re-Creation” for the 2013 Venice Biennale’s Vatican City Pavilion. His five large paintings exert a commanding yet fragile presence, strung with re-used materials like electrical wires and lightbulb sockets—a move inspired by seeing rosaries hung on statues in an Italian chapel.

Read more in the 4×4 Gallery in the 85th anniversary edition of Dot magazine, showcasing work by these four ArtCenter alumni whose passionate engagement with recent projects expands artistic boundaries.