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Takahiro Hirabayashi’s Haunting Mixed-Media Portraits

Takahiro Hirabayashi is trained in traditional Japanese painting, but in his mixed-media work, he applies these age-old techniques to contemporary portraits with a sci-fi element. Hirabayashi's characters seem to inhabit a world in decline. In many of his paintings, they appear with blood-like stains running from their mouths, and their skin often looks cracked to expose ripe, pink flesh. They seem to be disintegrating before our eyes, and the traces of their carnivorous feasts left on the front of their shirts hint at their desperation to survive in a post-apocalyptic world.

Takahiro Hirabayashi is trained in traditional Japanese painting, but in his mixed-media work, he applies these age-old techniques to contemporary portraits with a sci-fi element. Hirabayashi’s characters seem to inhabit a world in decline. In many of his paintings, they appear with blood-like stains running from their mouths, and their skin often looks cracked to expose ripe, pink flesh. They seem to be disintegrating before our eyes, and the traces of their carnivorous feasts left on the front of their shirts hint at their desperation to survive in a post-apocalyptic world.

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painting, Takahiro Hirabayashi

painting, Shozy

January 28, 2020

Shozy's illusionary murals use subtle techniques that enhance the life of a work. For instance, with the pieces above, packing bikes into a “hole” in the structure, uses reflective chrome paint that will change hues with the sky of the day.

Debra Baxter, Rebecca Chaperon Show at Roq La Rue

Debra Baxter, painting, Rebecca Chaperon, sculpture

April 5, 2019

Debra Baxter

Through two concurrent shows, Roq La Rue Gallery shows a pair of artists whose work carries crystalline forms. Debra Baxter's "Ghost Heart" and Rebecca Chaperon's "Incandescence" take over the gallery in April. Baxter’s sculptures, sometimes wearable, integrate natural forms into objects packed with both centuries-old narratives and humor. Chaperon’s surreal paintings share in Baxter’s fascination with the mystical, while also exploring escapism and the light and dark natures of the world.

Julio Reyes’s Oil Paintings of People in Moments of Solitude

Julio Reyes, painting

February 13, 2015

Raised in Los Angeles in a family of immigrants, Julio Reyes says that one of his biggest inspirations is the human ability to overcome adversity. His family's journey to the US and their tumultuous quest for citizenship has always been a guiding light in his work. "I have always been moved by the human capacity to love, dream, and persevere, with great courage and sincerity, in spite of what can often be, a vast and unsympathetic Nature," wrote Reyes in an email to Hi-Fructose. Because of the struggles he has personally faced, Reyes says he has cultivated a keen sense of empathy that he seeks to convey in his oil paintings, which often feature solitary figures in moments of contemplation.

Guillermo Lorca Garcia-Huidobro’s Moody Paintings Tap Into Childhood Nightmares

Guillermo Lorca Garcia-Huidobro, painting

October 22, 2014

Chilean painter Guillermo Lorca Garcia-Huidobro creates monumental works on canvas with compositions that always seem to ascend in an upward spiral. In one piece, the viewer gazes up at a larger-than-life teenage girl while a child, miniature in comparison, clings on to her for safety. In another piece, various creatures scale a barren, crooked tree trunk that looks more like a tree of death than a tree of life, with a little girl attempting to escape the vulture's nest at the top. Lorca Garcia-Hiodobro executes his surrealist vision with loose brush strokes that leave details muddled and backgrounds incomplete, inviting the open-ended images to mingle with the viewers' own childhood nightmares and anxieties.

Takahiro Hirabayashi’s Haunting Mixed-Media Portraits

The Riveting Murals of Shozy

Debra Baxter, Rebecca Chaperon Show at Roq La Rue

Julio Reyes’s Oil Paintings of People in Moments of Solitude

Guillermo Lorca Garcia-Huidobro’s Moody Paintings Tap Into Childhood Nightmares

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