Menu
The New Contemporary Art Magazine

New Gripping Watercolors by Dima Rebus

Russia-born, New York-based artist Dima Rebus creates arresting watercolors with visuals that blend surrealism and modernized labeling. Recent works move between quiet scenes and crowd-filled cacophonies, packed with contemporary commentary. He was last featured on HiFructose.com here.

Russia-born, New York-based artist Dima Rebus creates arresting watercolors with visuals that blend surrealism and modernized labeling. Recent works move between quiet scenes and crowd-filled cacophonies, packed with contemporary commentary. He was last featured on HiFructose.com here.

“Every day my personal dealer wakes me up with a gentle kiss watercolor” is an example of how the artist references digital interruptions in his unsettling works, with its “OK” button prompt. Likewise, “Location” uses a “human was here” map marker upon a fallen soldier tribute.



For his 2016 solo project “Good Deal,” the artist transformed the outside of the Artwin Gallery in Russia. “I wrapped up the building for the audience,” Rebus recalls. “This type of styrofoam packaging for prepared food can be found on the shelves of any grocery store. When you walk into the store, you don’t have to hunt for food – it’s already waiting for you in these packages. All you have to do is choose the goods that best suit your needs. The exhibition operates a little like a store, where the display is already pre-packaged, with little space for improvisation. The label of my packaged art object includes a line assuring that the product is “100% extra lean.” This is no accident: in the very beginning, street art arose as a spontaneous creative response to the urban environment. Street art that’s been made-to-order for an art exhibition or biennale is no less real, but we have to admit all the same that it is something of an oxymoron. I am not against natural reserves, but there is a very clear distinction between true wilderness and controlled nature.”

Meta
Share
Facebook
Reddit
Pinterest
Email
Related Articles
Illustrator Chrigel Farner has a knack for chaos. His enormous scenes move between writhing armies of characters or solitary giants. The Berlin artist's practice encompasses editorial illustration, comics, and gallery art. Farner’s style recalls both the wild characters of classical animation and the detailed world-building of Moebius.
Peruvian artist Jade Rivera pays homage to the locals of his native Lima and other cities he visits in his travels with large-scale murals, watercolors, and oil paintings. His work typically starts with a realistically rendered human figure. Rivera adds surreal details by smudging the colors and adding ghostly silhouettes. He is particularly interested in the connection between humans and animals. Depicted in masks or as apparitions, the creatures in his work seem to function as spirit guides for the people he paints.
Franco Fasoli, also known as Jaz, is known for creating work that various wildly in scope, whether it’s his public murals or small bronze sculptures. In his gallery-friendly practice, his surreal examinations of the human condition and culture pack that humor and vibrancy in intimate doses.
Swiss artist Urs Fischer, based in New York, adapts the human face into topographical forms in his paintings. Works like "Landscape," above, are crafted from aluminum panel, reinforced polyurethane foam, epoxy, acrylic ink, primer, paint, and silkscreen, and gesso. These paintings reorganize visages into landscapes, with the artist's own face used in differing ways. The recent show “Mind Moves,” erected at Gagosian Gallery in San Francisco, was accompanied by a quote from the artist: “At its core, art is all about order. When you're an artist, you basically arrange, rearrange, or alter; you play off order.”

Subscribe to the Hi-Fructose Mailing List