The Strange, Satirical Illustrations of Alex Gamsu Jenkins

London artist Alex Gamsu Jenkins crafts vibrant, satirical illustrations that play on several aspects of the Western experience. His absurd scenes often dismantle and manipulate the human body, with both bleak and humorous results. Much of the artist’s recent work, in particular, seems to tackle our reliance on technology and its eventual implications.

“I would describe my work as exploring satirical and critical subject matter through a distinctive and vivid style,” the artist says. “I try to avoid the pretence but wallow in humour, whilst touching on the absurd and surreal.”

He’s illustrated pieces for The New York Times, VICE, NME, Mother Jones, VANS, and others. Jenkins is a 2015 graduate of the Camberwell College of Arts. On his site, the artist says he is “from (and stuck in) the suburbs of South London.”

Topics

Alex Gamsu Jenkins, illustration

Alexander McQueen, fashion design, illustration, Jacky Tsai, sculpture

July 30, 2014

Chinese-born, London-based artist Jacky Tsai brings his fashion-world experience to his interdisciplinary art projects, which often fuse illustration, printmaking, sewing and sculpture. Tsai says that he is fueled by his contrasting experiences living in both Eastern and Western cultures. With his skull sculptures (or "Skullptures" as Tsai refers to them) and illustrations, the artist combines the morbid with the ornate. These symbols of death and decay become the sites of regeneration as flowers blossom on the skulls like moss — a juxtaposition Tsai uses as an antidote to his native culture's superstitions about death.

Lek Chan’s Painterly Digital Portraits of Unlikely Muses

illustration, Lek Chan

April 21, 2015

Digital artist Lek Chan has a series of soft, ethereal portraits that look like they could have been painted by hand, though they were created with the help of PhotoShop. Chan works as an illustrator and game designer, though her personal work has a textured, painterly quality that is more evocative of traditional portraiture than new media. On her blog, she is transparent about how she creates her works and details the steps of her process for curious viewers to follow.

The Unsettling Illustrations, Murals of Nemo’s

illustration, mural, Nemo's

December 19, 2017

Nemo's crafts illustrations and murals with vague, sometimes grotesque characters often shown in reflection or anguish. When the viewer looks past the unsettling circumstances of these drawings and paintings, they may find something relatable in the emotions evoked in each piece. Just like the name of the artist, the works serve multiple functions.

Carmel Seymour’s Imaginative Watercolors Play with Negative Space

Carmel Seymour, illustration, painting, Watercolor

August 29, 2014

There seems to be a history running through Carmel Seymour’s water colors, but it’s hard to pin down. Somewhere in the hazy but sublime gap between art and illustration, the paintings suspend an alternate reality in the canvas’ mid-air, depicting some hyperreal folklore in a wash of negative space. Seymour’s conceit seems simple enough: she places contemporary figures, such as girls in jeans and sneakers, in some private oasis, perhaps the figures’ dream landscape or perhaps some alien planet. But the landscapes where her figures exist are not so much 'scapes as objects; entities without a before or after. Her water colors are deployed in highly restrained and linear strokes to focus on details, and then exploded to disrupt the hyperrealism and maximize the medium’s atmospheric emphasis. The paintings have no clear beginning or end, but beg the question: what’s the story here?

The Strange, Satirical Illustrations of Alex Gamsu Jenkins

Jacky Tsai Seeks to Dispell Superstitions With Floral “Skullptures”

Lek Chan’s Painterly Digital Portraits of Unlikely Muses

The Unsettling Illustrations, Murals of Nemo’s

Carmel Seymour’s Imaginative Watercolors Play with Negative Space

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