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Emilio Villalba’s Vivid, Dissonant Portraits

In the simplest terms, San Francisco-based painter Emilio Villalba creates portraits. Yet, these works are crafted at a crossroads of two influences, as cited by the artist: master works and the human condition. As a traditional portrait can captivate with the subject’s eyes, your own gaze must adjust first to the distorted points of entry in works like “Disorder,” above. In a past artistic statement, Villalba says his work is what happens when “the familiar is fractured and distorted by outside influence.”

In the simplest terms, San Francisco-based painter Emilio Villalba creates portraits. Yet, these works are crafted at a crossroads of two influences, as cited by the artist: master works and the human condition. As a traditional portrait can captivate with the subject’s eyes, your own gaze must adjust first to the distorted points of entry in works like “Disorder,” above. In a past artistic statement, Villalba says his work is what happens when “the familiar is fractured and distorted by outside influence.”

In an April show at Modern Eden Gallery, Villalba’s vivid, engrossing portraits adorn the walls of the San Francisco space. The show is titled “The Next Day” (which isn’t named for the David Bowie record, though Villalba is a fan), and its namesake piece can be seen below.

When last featured on Hi-Fructose, Villalba was on the journey that led to this emotive, liberated style of brushwork, abandoning the geometric structures of the past. The result is a stirring set of visuals, with tongue-in-check titles like “It’s Not Me, It’s You,“ ”No Makeup Today,“ ”I’m Fine, Thanks,“ and ”I Never Did Anything Out of the Blue.“

Villalba’s “The Next Day” at Modern Eden runs through April 30. Check out his Instagram account, where he often shares in-process work and engages with followers.

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Jacek Yerka’s Imaginative Paintings Illustrate a Bizarre Universe

theory_of_strings Polish artist Jacek Yerka's paintings invite us into a world where things are not what they seem. Caves turn into gaping dragons' mouths, houses float above the clouds, and gardens become seemingly infinite puzzles of time and space. The artist blurs the boundaries between the biological and the mechanical, creating strange hybrids of animals, architecture, and geological formations. Yerka began his career making band posters in the 1970s and has been exhibiting his work in Poland for decades.

Lauren Marx Explores Nature’s Beauty and Cruelty in “American Wilderness”

The feelings of horror and rapture collide at high speeds when viewing Lauren Marx's work. The St. Louis-based artist creates beautiful vignettes that speak to the cycle of life. Rather than a cleaned-up, Disneyfied verson of nature, her paintings give us raw depictions of birth and death. Influenced my scientific illustrations and the Baroque period alike, Marx's maximalist mixed-media works present these cyclical phenomena in visually appealing ways, often fusing the chaotic elements of nature into stylized compositions with an emphasis on design. Marx's solo show, "American Wilderness," opens at Roq La Rue Gallery in Seattle on May 7.

Neo-Orientalist Lui Liu Questions Contemporary Chinese Culture

Sexy and subversive, Lui Liu's paintings reveal complex worlds in which women oscillate between positions of power and submission. Lui Liu began his career painting posters during the Chinese Cultural Revolution. Though he has lived in Canada since 1991, Lui Liu's political influences are inseparable from the thematic foci of his artworks, which are largely wrought with political, sexual and social tensions. For example, Cat's Cradle (2006) features two young girls playing the string game of the same name. A brick wall divides them. They nevertheless, reach across to one another through an opening in the shape of China, while a hawk, a symbol for authority, flies overhead.

Lise Stoufflet Draws Connections In and Out of Her Paintings

When Lise Stoufflet creates an artwork, she begins with an intention. Only the titles, such as "Tous" (All) or "Magi" (Magic) offer clues as to the French artist's original motivations to convey a concept, mood or atmosphere. As Stoufflet explains in a French-language interview with Boum Bang Magazine, the artist is often surprised by the resulting images, such as that of "Tous," in which blindfolded men in identical blue uniforms lay on the ground, bound by hand and foot with strings.
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