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Taiwan may not be the first place to come to mind when you think about street art, but Hawaiian arts organization Pow! Wow! recently made Taipei its second home. For the last week, about 40 international and Taiwanese artists scaled buildings and crossed below highways to bring their fresh paint styles to Taipei. Just a few months ago, the Pow! Wow! team was in Hawaii revamping the walls of Honolulu for the fourth edition of street art festival Pow! Wow! Hawaii. Now, they’ve hopped 5,000 miles across the Pacific for the first ever Pow! Wow! Taiwan.
While the collective mindset at some street art festivals seems to be "go big or go home," at NuArt Festival in Stavanger, Norway, the line-up of artists seemed more concerned with creating deliberately-placed works with an underlying political punch. That's not to say that a few mammoth pieces weren't painted. Polish duo Etam Cru (who are featured in our current issue, Hi-Fructose Vol. 32), true to their form, left behind a storybook-like mural that added color to the overcast landscape. The piece pictured a sleeping boy tucked into his bed with a can of spray paint sticking out from under the covers — a young artist in the making.
For its "15 Years of Thinkspace" show, Thinkspace Projects asked more than 70 artists to craft works on 15"x15" panels. Among the featured artists are several veterans of our print magazine, including Cintal Vidal (Vol. 51), Jeremy Geddes (Vol. 15), Mark Dean Veca (Vol. 23), Yosuke Ueno (Vol.10), Laura Berger (Vol. 44), and several others. (See the complete list of artists below.) The show kicks off on Jan. 11 and runs through Jan. 25.
Artist and animation director Joe Vaux paints what he likes. His personal work is teeming with impish demons. His cheerful hellscapes are populated with lost souls, sharp toothed monstrosities, and swarms of wrong-doers. And yet, there’s an innocence to all of this. Click to read the Hi-Fructose exclusive interview with Joe Vaux.
The work of Philadelphia based artist Yis Goodwin, aka "Nosego" (covered here) is instantly recognizable for his psychedelic portrayal of animals morphing into their surroundings. Nosego's new series leads us through the artist's subconscious in his exhibit at Thinkspace Gallery, "Along Infinite River". The show, which opened last Saturday, features a variety of multimedia pieces including acrylic on panel paintings, drawings and an installation of colorful wall mounted sculptures.
Situated in Richmond, VA, the street art festival Richmond Mural Project was founded with the goal of creating over 100 murals by the world's leading contemporary artists in its first five years. Such an eclectic array of permanent public artworks, according to the project's founders at Art Whino, would propel Richmond as an international street art destination. Now in its third year, this rendition of the event gave 10 contemporary artists two weeks to complete over 20 murals. Chazme 718, Meggs, Onur, Ron English, Sepe, Smitheone, Ekundayo, Proch, David Flores and Wes21 began painting on June 16 and are finishing their works as we speak. Today, we bring you some photos of the works in progress as well as some finished pieces from Ekundayo and Smithe, the latter of whom was working double time on two pieces. Take a look at the progress photos below and stay tuned for coverage of all the finished murals.

Check out videos featuring several of the artists featured in Hi-Fructise vol.14: Van Arno, Lola, Gregory Euclide, and Hi-Fructose favorites Travis Louie (HF vol.5), Nathan Spoor (HF featured writer and artist), Audrey Kawasaki (HF vol.6), Camille Rose Garcia (HF vol.8), and many more.

On January 24th, Gen Art members celebrated the 2010 Grammys at the private Opening Exhibition and Party of artist portraits of Grammy-nominated artists, curated by artist Kris Lewis, with support from will.i.am.

As a follow up to last year's successful "Worlds on Fire" artist exhibition, this year will.i.am, Dipdive, and the Grammy Foundation will present "Who Killed the Music?" art collection that will help kick-off Grammy Week at The Target Terrace on January 24th-27th . The gallery will host 15 pieces from the hottest contemporary surrealist artists, which will present a new and powerful perspective on the state of music today.

A portion of the proceeds for all works sold will be donated to the Grammy Foundation and i.am Scholarship Foundation.


Be sure to click the Playlist button on the video below to see more videos from Van Arno, Lola, Gregory Euclide, and Hi-Fructose favorites Travis Louie, Nathan Spoor, Audrey Kawasaki, Camille Rose Garcia, and many more!
French artist Astro takes flat urban surfaces and creates passageways into the void. Using shadows and light, calligraphy-inspired designs and winding curves, the artist’s optical illusions are made for public consumption. And even when they’re not so obvious to some passers-by and cars on a quick route to work, Astro has many of us looking at the big picture.
French artist Tof Vanmarque crafts surreal worlds in his acrylic paintings. These fictional characters exist in a world devoid of physics, muted clothing, and in many cases, body parts. The artist’s work tends to exist against scenic, yet rundown backdrops, possibly victim to the insane characters that inhabit them.
We live in strange times and artists Michael Kerbow and Mike Davis both have something in common: they use surrealism and time travel to address modern and existential issues. Click above to read the Hi-Fructose exclusive interviews with painters Mike Davis and Michael Kerbow about their respective solo showings.
Former illustrator turned full-time painter Gregory Hergert’s work has been described as “urban Surrealism”. He paints non-traditional themes in a traditional manner, yet allows the medium to shine through the often brutal settings depicted in his work.
French artist Nicolas Barrome’s wild, cartoonish scenes play with texture and expectation. He does this both on the canvas and on walls, with each piece tethered by Barrome’s rendering of cutesy characters and objects alongside darker elements. In a statement, the artist’s swirling influences are given some context.
What happens when you give 40 street artists hundreds of cans of spray paint and let them loose in Taipei? As the Pow! Wow! team took over the Taiwanese capital, the cityscape was covered with murals by artists visiting from around the world alongside those based there.
Houston-born artist Shayne Murphy blends realism and the abstract, with his oil paintings featuring explosions of graphite. Using sharpened backdrops and geometric flourishes, the artist tilts perspectives and toys further with reality. Murphy currently has a solo show titled “Fluorescent Gray” at Anya Tish Gallery in Houston, which runs through Nov. 12.
Brooklyn-based, Michigan-raised artist Gary Mellon crafts wood sculptures that are conceived first in his sketchbook. Mellon adds pops of color with acrylic paint, though in much of his work, the natural poplar tones dominate the figures, faces, and totems constructed by the artist. Mellon’s ornate busts seem to blend notes from art history, from Roman influences to contemporary, pop style.
John Horton; photo: @streetartnomad The festival Wide Open Walls returned in Sacramento this month, and with it, came 40 local, national, and international artists who crafted murals across the city. This year's artists included Askew One, Bryan Valenzuela, Jake Castro, Lora Zombie, Maren Conrad, Nosego, Molly-Devlin, Trav, Stephanie Taylor, and others. See some examples of works from this year above and below.
The intimate paintings of London-based artist Emma Hopkins carry both vulnerability and absorbing detail, as rendered in oil in the artist’s visceral style. Each of the works carry a story, often directly depicting a subject Hopkins knows. “When I work with people I develop a body of work based on the individuals themselves and the ideas that come from the experience of working with them,” the artist says. The artist was last featured on HiFructose.com here.
Paola Delfín’s riveting murals, though monochromatic, are teeming with life on walls across the world. The artist’s recent works, adorning structures in Belgium, Cuba, and Cayman Islands, move between eye-level and towering works, such as the The Crystal Ship piece shown above and below. The artist was born in Mexico City.
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.
Swiss artist Urs Fischer, based in New York, adapts the human face into topographical forms in his paintings. Works like "Landscape," above, are crafted from aluminum panel, reinforced polyurethane foam, epoxy, acrylic ink, primer, paint, and silkscreen, and gesso. These paintings reorganize visages into landscapes, with the artist's own face used in differing ways. The recent show “Mind Moves,” erected at Gagosian Gallery in San Francisco, was accompanied by a quote from the artist: “At its core, art is all about order. When you're an artist, you basically arrange, rearrange, or alter; you play off order.”
Kenne Grégoire, a painter often associated with the movement New Dutch Realism, moves between still-life paintings and more surreal scenes that capture a humane sadness and other complex emotions, rendered in acrylics. The artist uses techniques derived from the 17th century, yet he approaches his work in a way that pushes the form, twisting perspective and hues to create ambiguous points of view and situations.
Huang Po Hsun’s vibrant, bombastic paintings move between the familiar and the utterly otherworldly. These works, primarily acrylic on canvas, can feel like underwater carnivals or bubbling abstractions. The artist seems to be retrofitting icons from our world into his own flamboyant dreams.
Shawn Huckins combines Internet culture and 18th- and 19th- century style portraits in his work. He offers a new collection of large acrylic paintings in "Athenaeum (I Can’t Pretend That This Is Poetry," an upcoming show at Seattle's Foster/White Gallery. The artist was featured in Hi-Fructose Vol. 32, and he was last featured on HiFructose.com here.
Ronch, a self-described “punk surrealistic painter,” blends urban and fantastical imagery for hyperdetailed acrylic paintings. The artist cites influences as varied as “Leonardo to The Clash, Brueghel, Dali, from Bosch to the Dead Kennedys.” The artist is currently based in London, and originally hails from Italy.
Venice-based artist Manuel Di Rita, who works under the moniker Peeta, creates illusionary paintings that create new dimensions out of the walls and canvases they inhabit. Whether he’s using spraypaint, oils, or or acrylic latex house paint on wood panels in the jungle, the artist is able to play with the existing architecture and perspectives to create entirely new ones. At times, he works with the geometric art of Joys to create playful collaborations in dynamic dialogue.
Michelle Avery Konczyk's riveting watercolor paintings offer surreal, intimate portraits. With the artist's custom framing for each work, each work functions as a gateway to the artist's explorations. The artist’s new show, "Les Fleurs" at Arch Enemy Arts, offers her most recent work and runs through June 28. The artist was last featured on HiFructose.com.
With "Louise Bourgeois in the Rijksmuseum Gardens," the Amsterdam museum offers the first major exhibition to focus solely on the beloved artist’s outdoor sculptures. More than half a century is represented in these works, which include her famed, enormous spiders and other unsettling metal forms. Works include “The Blind Leading the Blind” and “Crouching Spider,” both existing on opposite ends of her career.
Miami’s Douglas Hoekzema, also known as Hoxxoh, creates murals that do more than absorb the gaze of the viewer. Nearby objects appear as though they can be pulled into the artist’s latest, hyperdimensional works. Hoekzema has long been fascinated with the concept and rendering of time in his art. He was last featured on HiFructose.com here (and check out his Instagram here).

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