Menu
The New Contemporary Art Magazine

Aof Smith’s Candy-Colored, Pop-Surrealist Scenes

Bangkok-based artist Aof Smith is known for his candy-colored, Pop-Surrealist scenes, cacophonies of his distinct cutesy characters and unsettling action. Smith’s massive paintings contain even stranger details upon inspection. His figures often stand in contrast, with humans offering an odd point of entry in these wild narratives.


Bangkok-based artist Aof Smith is known for his candy-colored, Pop-Surrealist scenes, cacophonies of his distinct cutesy characters and unsettling action. Smith’s massive paintings contain even stranger details upon inspection. His figures often stand in contrast, with humans offering an odd point of entry in these wild narratives.



“Aof Smith maintains the dream-scape of the surrealists and the celebration of the shallow world often associated to pop art,” a statement says. “Having developed his own style, Aof Smith personal sense of colours brings forward vivid and full-flavoured visuals that add dimensions and volume to the layers of characters in his works. In this exhibition, not only does Aof Smith spare no techniques, he also uses special colours to add further depths to his fantasy world.”

See more of Smith’s work below.

Meta
Share
Facebook
Reddit
Pinterest
Email
Related Articles
Japanese artist Akika Kurata crafts intimate, absorbing portraits of mostly female subjects. Using acrylic gouache, she creates works with both depth and tender, faded aspects that appear ghostly in nature. At the center of each portrait is an attempt to capture humanity.
Bright flora bursts in Kent Williams's paintings (featured in HF Vol. 21). Thick brushstrokes of hot pink, mint and navy hint at an arrangement of organic growths. Williams frequently positions his subjects in the outdoors, where they inhabit areas that seem wild and overgrown yet feel contained like miniature Edens. His characters fervently move as if enacting a frenetic dance performance, their motion captured by his expressive use of paint. While Williams has been widely recognized for his figurative work over the past 20 years, his first solo show with 101/Exhibit in Los Angeles, "How Human of You," marks a shift into abstraction. Figures are still present in many of the works, but Williams removes the idea of time and place, instead suspending them in an imaginary space where his flamboyant color choices elicit a visceral, emotional response.
In what the artist himself calls "homespun faerie tales", Jon Rappleye blends imagery found in art history, literature, biology, and folklore to portray the cyclical nature of life and death. Ranging from surreal paintings to mixed media sculptures, his works draw from the detailed illustrations of James John Audubon and hallucinatory worlds of Salvador Dalí. And while his subject matter can be grim at times, the artist renders it in such a way that it becomes beautiful and enchanting.
Zin Lim paints sculpted bodies and faces with twinkling eyes before wiping them away with textured paint strokes. While the San Francisco-based artist began his career painting classical nude figures, his work has grown increasingly abstract over the years. Lim leaves just enough figurative details in each piece to give viewers a relatable entry point into the image. The human characters' presence guides us through the expressionistic markings the dominate the rest of the canvas.

Subscribe to the Hi-Fructose Mailing List