Menu
The New Contemporary Art Magazine

Jordan West Paints a Colorful and Stark View of Familiar Places

Hailing from Santa Fe, New Mexico, Jordan West is a self taught artist whose paintings depict everyday places- rows of food in eerily empty supermarkets, bathroom stalls, gas stations, and airport terminals- often with a sense of unease and loneliness despite their bright and cheerful palette. In his "Attention All Shoppers" series, painted with gouache on paper, West offers a new perception of a commonplace grocery store, flattening it into a stark world of simple greens, oranges, blues, and yellows, and shapes that borderline abstract.

Hailing from Santa Fe, New Mexico, Jordan West is a self taught artist whose paintings depict everyday places- rows of food in eerily empty supermarkets, bathroom stalls, gas stations, and airport terminals- often with a sense of unease and loneliness despite their bright and cheerful palette. In his “Attention All Shoppers” series, painted with gouache on paper, West offers a new perception of a commonplace grocery store, flattening it into a stark world of simple greens, oranges, blues, and yellows, and shapes that borderline abstract. Looking at West’s work immediately calls to mind other Pop artists like Ed Ruscha, who combined elements of graphic design, cinema and an interest in architecture in his barren America-scapes, and figurative artist Alex Katz, who employed bold simplicity and heightened colors. At his website, West explains that his images are a reflection of how we each encounter our otherwise ordinary surroundings: “The work is a chronicle of the experience of the individual in public spaces. The environments are initially experienced and captured photographically, then edited and realized by paint. The pattern and color, although deviating from the original image, simplify and reduce description of the space, which endures as a record of human experience; emphasizing notions of fate, the sublime, isolation, dream, memory, vision and history.”

Meta
Share
Facebook
Reddit
Pinterest
Email
Related Articles
Jos. A Smith’s dreamlike paintings move between elegance and cacophony. His horse-riders, specifically, carry a quality have a surreal, yet granular quality that invites close inspection. Part of the artist's work his rooted in his practice of "of trance techniques learned from the Nyngmapa sect of Tibetan Buddhism, research psychologists, anthropologists, and shamans with my own dream records to make that membrane between my waking state and my unconscious more permeable."
The lush, dreamlike illustrations of Helena Pérez García often pair female subjects and an iteration of nature that is cerebral, rather than just a backdrop. The artist, born in Spain, is currently based in London, where she works on both personal and commercial work. She's published two illustrated books while working for clients like Buzzfeed, Tate Publishing, Penguin Random House, BBC Proms, and several others.
Mernet Larsen's paintings shift perspectives and reimagine our world in a manner that recalls early computer-generated modeling. Offering both corporate and domestic environments, the acrylic and mixed-media works both convey the humanity of these scenes and remixes their contents. Larsen was last mentioned on HiFructose.com here.
The paintings of Brett Ferry, created using acrylics and oil on board, defy in both materials used and the components depicted. The blending of vibrant abstractions and natural forms feel like clashes of realities. The Australian artist’s works may deceive and appear as digital paintings, yet this simply part of the author’s charge.

Subscribe to the Hi-Fructose Mailing List