With his signature “Ohlala” character, Reen Barrera creates both mixed-media paintings and windable toys. The figure moves between cutesy and menacing iterations, appearing both hardened and crudely decorated. In the moving wooden sculptures, the deceptively simple actions show ingenuity from the artist.
“In some artworks, I discreetly take on socio economic classes,” the artist has said. “Some people are born rich, mid class, some are poor. But the common ground is, everybody will have no choice but to deal with it. So I cover all their heads with a canvas cloth to give OhLala a freedom to paint their own symbols on their heads as if they are designing their own fate. And I guess that is what we all have in common, the power to make things happen for ourselves.”
See more of Barrera’s work below.
Bangkok-based artist 
Though viewers may not know the narratives of 
Dutch painter 
For his most recent exhibition, Those Bloody Colours, presented at Galerie Eigen + Art in Berlin, Martin Eder featured lifelike paintings of women in a medieval time warp. Eder's artworks are scaled true to life and rendered in vivid tones, imbuing them with a tactile and emotive quality with which one immediately connects. Gazing at the eyes of the women, cast downward as if in humble contemplation after battle, one desires the warriors to look up and out.