Polish artist Jacek Yerka's paintings invite us into a world where things are not what they seem. Caves turn into gaping dragons' mouths, houses float above the clouds, and gardens become seemingly infinite puzzles of time and space. The artist blurs the boundaries between the biological and the mechanical, creating strange hybrids of animals, architecture, and geological formations. Yerka began his career making band posters in the 1970s and has been exhibiting his work in Poland for decades.
Polish artist Jacek Yerka’s paintings invite us into a world where things are not what they seem. Caves turn into gaping dragons’ mouths, houses float above the clouds, and gardens become seemingly infinite puzzles of time and space. The artist blurs the boundaries between the biological and the mechanical, creating strange hybrids of animals, architecture, and geological formations. Yerka began his career making band posters in the 1970s and has been exhibiting his work in Poland for decades.
The work of Pakistan-born, Australia-based artist Khadim Ali explores history, traditional art practices, and the artist’s own identity. Much of his work has been influenced by the 10th-century epic poem “Shahnama/The Book of Kings,” and is often expressed in classical miniatures, murals and calligraphy.
One of the most striking features of David Slone's high-definition portraits is his treatment of his subjects' skin. In each larger-than-life oil painting of an anonymous individual, Slone zeroes in on the way light hits the sitter's face. He shows us how a peach tone can fracture into dozens of different, subtle hues. Slone makes pores and hairs visible in the way they are only when we press our face up to someone else's. His works thrust his viewers into an intimate interaction with his subjects.
French illustrator and designer Nicolas Obery works with deep contrasts and haunting imagery for his monochromatic digital art series, "Fantasmagorik." The finely textured, elaborate pieces are sometimes pure imagination and sometimes incorporate photography, but Obery leaves nothing untouched by his digital brush. Even the photographic parts of his work are manipulated and stylized in such a way that they bear great similarity to the expressionistic possibilities of painting. Influenced by the H.R. Geiger, Obery weaves the elements of his work together with a sinewy, tissue-like texture that evokes the biomorphic qualities of the late Swiss artist's work.
LA-based artist John Guy Petruzzi creates detailed watercolor paintings filled with illustrations of the natural world. While his figurative depictions of various bird and plant species are rendered with the precision of scientific drawings, the milieus these characters find themselves in morph into abstract shapes that reveal the cloudy, liquid characteristics of his chosen medium. Petruzzi works on a polypropylene synthetic paper to amplify his work's preoccupation with environmental issues. Lately, he has created entirely abstract works filled with dripping pigments. "My latest series, 'SPILLSTONES,' exploits the materiality of poured pigment to recall ongoing cycles of resource extraction," said the artist.
