Menu
The New Contemporary Art Magazine

Hope Gangloff’s Expressive and Visually Striking Portraits

New York based artist Hope Gangloff paints expressive and visually striking portraits with emotional depth. First covered here, her portraits primarily depict family, friends and other artists in intimate, vaguely erotic and melancholy scenes. Gangloff has described her paintings as caricatures- rather than capturing her subjects' likeness, she focuses on their details separately and intensely, and exaggerates their features like hands and feet.

New York based artist Hope Gangloff paints expressive and visually striking portraits with emotional depth. First covered here, her portraits primarily depict family, friends and other artists in intimate, vaguely erotic and melancholy scenes. Gangloff has described her paintings as caricatures- rather than capturing her subjects’ likeness, she focuses on their details separately and intensely, and exaggerates their features like hands and feet. There is usually a detailed pattern in the piece, a “randomness”, which she says keeps her interested and engaged during the painting process. Some portraits feel staged, even cinematic, as in her portrait of a modern day “Salome”. At the same time, her gestural qualities bring an immediacy to the scene, enhanced by her working in acrylic paints and sometimes ink. Her expressionistic use of line and bold colors are reminiscent of the early modernist German Expressionists, and recall the works of other figurative artists like Egon Schiele or Alice Neel. Those artists valued expression and emotional effect over portraying realism. Gangloff takes her subjects as they are- naked, hairy, voluptuous, confident, anxious, and brings out their vulnerabilities in their most private moments.

Meta
Share
Facebook
Reddit
Pinterest
Email
Related Articles
Canadian-born artist Andrew Salgado borrows a variety of influences from art history and popular culture, to paint portraits of deconstructed identities. The people Salgado chooses to portray are complex personalities. Salgado acknowledges this, but does not strive to paint the person's whole identity. Instead, Salgado uses a variety of abstract elements to underline the now-ness during which his subjects were painted.
This Saturday, Merry Karnowsky gallery will present three side by side solo shows by Los Angeles based artists Mercedes Helnwein, Kim Kimbro, and Vonn Sumner. Together, their new works are elaborate and psychologically intense, depicting dream like moments. Read more about their respective shows, "Mama Said Amen", "The Queen of Calvary", and "Gravity and Other Lies" after the jump.
Originally hailing from Australia, now based in Los Angeles, David "Meggs" Hooke creates explosive figurative works and murals using bright colors and raw textures. For his upcoming solo at Beyond Eden Art Fair in Los Angeles, Meggs looked beyond his usual comic book and mythological influences and turned to his natural environment. Titled "Paving Paradise", his exhibit looks at the duality of our relationship between nature and that which is man-made. "It questions our effect on the planet's rapidly diminishing natural resources, and where our values lie as living beings on this planet," he told Hi-Fructose in a recent studio visit.
They are "the girls behind the lace." This is how Okinawa based painter Mao Hamaguchi describes the young subjects of her romantic paintings. Her Gothic Art inspired images are painted in a soft and delicate style, where we find Contemporary aristocratic girls peeking through veils or shrouds and lace curtains. The symbol of lace is used throughout Hamaguchi's art. Lace is a sensual fabric, often associated with intimacy and pleasure, as well as wealth, once among a household's most prized possessions. Hamaguchi embraces all of its nuances, using them to emphasize the qualities of womanhood.

Subscribe to the Hi-Fructose Mailing List