At once lush and eerie, Sarah Slappey’s oil paintings offer vague limbs and organs against natural environments. Of her distinct visual language, she’s said “I wanted to build a world from the bottom up.” The South Carolina native, now residing in Brooklyn, New York, has recently shown these scenes at venues in New York City and Switzerland.
“Intersecting human and environmental boughs, Slappey’s enigmatic works connect vulnerabilities and affinities of the present through lush fantasy and self-horror,” Hesse Flatow says of the artist, in a piece from curator Alison Karasyk. “Limbs glisten with slime, spotlights reveal tender secrets beneath the darkness of twilight, and nutrients are exchanged between the damp forest and a swelling anthropoid.”
See more of her paintings on her site.
In his current show at Honor Fraser in Los Angeles, Kenny Scharf shares wild new works that include new mixed-media paintings, sculptures, assemblages, and more. “Optimistically Melting!” takes over the space through Nov. 16, and in it, viewers find an veteran artist who maintains his graffiti sensibilities yet constantly pushes his interests into new arenas.
Seattle-based artist 
VILE’s illusionary murals often use the artist’s own moniker as windows into fictional places, whether a continuation of the inhabited space or another dimension. Elsewhere, the artist presents figures that live along the contours of a room or outdoor locale. In recent years, he's participated in projects in Germany, Portugal, London, and beyond.