Teiji Hayama’s oil paintings, often depicting the celebrities of yesterday, meditate on the idea of celebrity and how it’s evolved in the digital age. In his new show at Unit London, titled “Fame,” the artist offers 17 paintings that feature the likes of Monroe, Taylor, and Bowie. The show runs from Jan. 16 through Feb. 15 at the space.
“FAME is not just about celebrity, it’s about how we interact with fame and what fame is in a contemporary setting,” the gallery says. “With the emergence of wide scale social media interaction, the prophetic Warhol adage that “in the future, everyone will be world-famous for 15 minutes” looks increasingly apt. Hayama’s work is about the exhaustion felt by us all as we carefully curate our digital personas, waiting for our brief twirl on the spotlit dancefloor of FAME.”
See more on the gallery’s page and Hayama’s 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.
Pavel Guliaev describes his paintings as "subject realism," a world that is wholly his yet invites viewers to conjure their own meanings. Shifting planes, along with figures and objects belonging to no specific time or place, are qualities that seem to exist across all of Guliaev’s work. The result is a scene both dreamlike and visceral.
Emile Morel’s mythological scenes have an ancient quality, despite being primarily rendered through digital means. Much of his work offers both whimsy and the fantastical, his hybrid creatures often towering over their child counterparts. Morel was last mentioned on our site 
Four months after it was announced that