We previously featured Australian artist Matthew Quick’s paintings of well known monuments, titled “The Accidental Empires” here on the blog. Inspired by the rise and fall of historical empires, the artist took these symbols of power and made them more personable by portraying them with everyday objects. He continues this concept with his latest series of oil paintings, “Monumental Nobodies”. Here, Quick dresses his monumental subjects in contemporary clothing and items like Mickey Mouse ears, hot pink hair curlers, and rubber kitchen gloves. The crowns of revered rulers are replaced with traffic cones, while goddesses are defaced with lipstick marks and classical nudes scroll through their iTunes, reducing them to “nobodies”. Quick makes a mockery of their original symbolism, constantly questioning their relevance. He calls it a gentle ridicule, by which he plays with their initial statements inorder to encourage us to contemplate their meaning.
With “Le Souffle de Changement," Pierre Matter offers a surreal, contemplative set of sculptures crafted from bronze and recycled objects. The exhibition currently inhabits one of the AFA Gallery-curated spaces at Château Belcastel in France. In the process of creating these works, Matter uses “welders, plasma cutters, laser cutters and grinders to shape and sculpt,” AFA says. The exhibition runs through October.
Oakland-based artist 
Swedish artist 