Menu
The New Contemporary Art Magazine

Anthony Ausgang’s Trippy Cats Get Trippier in “Catascopes”

Los Angeles based artist Anthony Ausgang, coined a "godfather of Lowbrow," has made a career of depicting his own struggles in his kaleidoscopic cat paintings. Colorful and intensely surreal, his playful images portraying cartoon cats in unusual scenarios are loosely inspired by reality. Ausgang makes no secret of his experimentation with psychedelics, and these experiences have carved their way into his hallucinatory visions and bright palette. In his upcoming solo exhibition "Catascopes", opening May 30th at Copro Gallery, Ausgang's trippy paintings of cats get even trippier.

Los Angeles based artist Anthony Ausgang, coined a “godfather of Lowbrow,” has made a career of depicting his own struggles in his kaleidoscopic cat paintings. Colorful and intensely surreal, his playful images portraying cartoon cats in unusual scenarios are loosely inspired by reality. Ausgang makes no secret of his experimentation with psychedelics, and these experiences have carved their way into his hallucinatory visions and bright palette. In his upcoming solo exhibition “Catascopes”, opening May 30th at Copro Gallery, Ausgang’s trippy paintings of cats get even trippier. Throughout the course of the series, they become completely detached from their already abstract environment. Ausgang plays with the concept of dissolving an image almost beyond recognition, without compromising its impact. His new paintings rely on the visual language of shape, form, color, and line to tell a story, and reproduce an illusion of visible reality. Take a look at our preview of “Catascopes” below.

Meta
Share
Facebook
Reddit
Pinterest
Email
Related Articles
First featured in Hi-Fructose Vol. 15, North Carolina based artist James Marshall aka Dalek was exposed to punk rock, skateboarding and painting graffiti early on. His earlier works feature abstract illustrations of characters, strongly influenced by his time as an assistant to Japanese Pop artist Takashi Murakami, and over the years, have progressed into more geometrical works. Dalek has always liked things that are "super flat" and graphic, and he approaches his art with a mathematical sensibility. His paintings today feature geometric shapes that seem to morph when viewed from different angle.
Belgium based artist Kati Heck paints expressions of the people in her life. Her figurative works undulate between realism and an absurd abstraction of the human form. Her style is considered a modern take on German Expressionism, where emotional reality is more important than the surface. Looking at her paintings feels like looking through the wavy surface of water or broken glass. Proportions are thrown out the window in favor of visual exploration. Heck’s upcoming show “Mann O Mann” at Tim Van Laere Gallery in Antwerp, Belgium consists of a new series of portraits, mostly of herself.
For nearly a decade, Copro Gallery has fused emerging talents with established names in the New contemporary art game in their annual "BLAB!" show. The show is the brainchild of Blab World creator and art director, Monte Beauchamp, representative of his eclectic taste in artists of varying aesthetics and a penchant for the unusual. Many of them have appeared in most, if not all, of the annual shows and developed together with the event. Last Saturday, "BLAB!" celebrated it's ninth year as an exhibition with the announcement of the upcoming BLAB World 3 anthology.
Photos by Mik Luxon On July 25th, Hi-Fructose attended the opening of Peter Gronquist's solo exhibition "All of the Above" at Soze Gallery in Los Angeles. As recently discussed, the artist has embarked on more abstract and conceptual explorations than in previous works. For this exhibit, he chose to expand on multiple recurring themes in his art, and techniques using more varied color, form, depth and stillness - and with surprising results. Gronquist's paintings, for example, are created using sanded plexiglass over hand-painted drop boxes, creating a foggy, luminous effect. This process flattens the image to the surface while simultaneously dropping the image back. Gronquist says, "It's hard to explain without seeing in person, I best describe it as a glowing effect."

Subscribe to the Hi-Fructose Mailing List