Menu
The New Contemporary Art Magazine

Bordalo II Creates Lively Animal Portraits Using Trash and Found Objects

Based in Lisbon, Portugal, Bordalo II creates resourceful assemblages out of the junk he collects in his city's streets. Using a bit of spray paint, the artist configures the found objects into playful animal portraits. His street art work hybridizes muralism and sculpture. A portrait of an owl conceals layers of scrap metal; a painting of an apple contains bent bicycle tires, cans, wood and cardboard. Bordalo II's art brings whimsical visions to Lisbon's streets and invites viewers to imagine creative ways to reuse their discarded items.

Based in Lisbon, Portugal, Bordalo II creates resourceful assemblages out of the junk he collects in his city’s streets. Using a bit of spray paint, the artist configures the found objects into playful animal portraits. His street art work hybridizes muralism and sculpture. A portrait of an owl conceals layers of scrap metal; a painting of an apple contains bent bicycle tires, cans, wood and cardboard. Bordalo II’s art brings whimsical visions to Lisbon’s streets and invites viewers to imagine creative ways to reuse their discarded items.

Meta
Share
Facebook
Reddit
Pinterest
Email
Related Articles
After painting mostly around his homeland and some cities in Europe, Barcelona-based artist Pejac (covered here) recently took off on a tour around the Far East. During his trip, he stopped in Hong Kong, Seoul and Tokyo, leaving his mark in every city. From introducing new images and concepts to recreating some familiar ones, Pejac demonstrates his ability to work in different environments or mediums. Covering various subjects, mostly referring to the places he's visiting, the new works Pejac has created range from effective window-drawings to sculptural pieces.
Italian artist Alessandro Gallo (featured in HF Vol. 24) presents a disorienting series of sculptures for his upcoming solo show at Jonathan LeVine Gallery, "Strani Incontri." The show's title translates to "strange encounters," which is an apt summary of the experience of coming upon one of Gallo's large-scale clay figures. Expertly reproducing human and animal anatomy, Gallo blends the two to create convincing hybrids of man and beast. The works produce an almost eerie sense of unheimliche, as Freud put it: when the familiar becomes uncomfortably strange.
Obesity was once synonymous with wealth in China. That idea has evolved into a more Western equation of excessive weight gain to the unhealthy and the undesirable. Sculptor/painter Mu Boyan places a different lens on this with his series of obese figures in varying situations. His so-called “Fatty” series appears to comment on this complicated standard. At once vulnerable and exhibitionist, full of absurdity and full of humanity, these sculptures place characters in several unlikely situations, mostly in the nude.
Japanese artist Hirotoshi Ito, also known as Jiyuseki, creates unlikely sculptures out of stones and rocks, injecting humor and surprise into a seemingly stubborn material. In some works, life is bursting out of the stone, like his popular pieces revealing a human mouth smiling behind a metal zipper. In another, the source is hidden inside what appears to be a melting ice cream bar.

Subscribe to the Hi-Fructose Mailing List