Cherub-like children with school girl bobs enter infernal abysses and haunted-looking forests in Akino Kondoh's drawings and paintings. The Japanese artist says she is interested in exploring the eerie feeling of deja vu that childhood memories can sometimes trigger. With their dark mood and enigmatic symbolism, her characters' surreal adventures evoke the ways our childhood fears and anxieties were once magnified in our nightmares, and perhaps still are.
Cherub-like children with school girl bobs enter infernal abysses and haunted-looking forests in Akino Kondoh’s drawings and paintings. The Japanese artist says she is interested in exploring the eerie feeling of deja vu that childhood memories can sometimes trigger. With their dark mood and enigmatic symbolism, her characters’ surreal adventures evoke the ways our childhood fears and anxieties were once magnified in our nightmares, and perhaps still are.
James Guppy’s recent acrylic paintings on fabric, juxtaposing floral arrangements and contemporary businessmen, play with “the history of paint and value.” The artist showed his recent body of work in a run at Jan Murphy Gallery, titled "The Venal Garden." Though absurdist initially in appearance, the works have a specific historical consideration.
Daniel Nevins creates acrylic paintings on wood with a sense of movement. Voluminous abstract forms billow like fabrics in the wind or appear to float as if submerged in water. Nevins's color choices are bright and triumphant. In some paintings, rods of color emerge like streamers or confetti, adding to the celebratory ambiance. Nevins explained that he is inspired by the natural world. His work appropriates the organic forms he observes in nature to create this floating, psychedelic universe. The Asheville, NC-based artist will have a piece in the upcoming juried exhibition, "Contemporary South," opening at Visual Art Exchange in Raleigh, NC on January 2.
French artist Antoine Cordet’s ghostly acrylic and oil paintings appear as portraits that have been tampered with, whether out of disdain or abstractions arising from memory. Despite the seemingly despondent expressions of its subjects, the paintings are given an unexpected energy from these touches. Adding to the mystique is the attire of the youth in the images, which ranges from contemporary to vague costumes. The artist was last featured on HiFructose.com here.
Dominik Schmitt’s oil and acrylic paintings carry flashes of dark surrealism, clinical diagrams, and a provocative, humorous sensibility. The German painter’s use of text, often paired with specific elements of a work or buried under abstraction, add another layer of intrigue to each strange narrative. The artist’s work has been shown across Europe.
