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The New Contemporary Art Magazine
Jonny Green's oil paintings of haphazardly-made sculptures are part portrait, part still life. The UK based painter, who lives and works in London, describes his work as a combination of the "carefree and painstaking", images of crudely built subjects made of a strange selection of items- modelling clay, office tape, flowers, Christmas lights, and whatever else is immediately available to him- which he then renders in incredibly meticulous detail.
Detroit based multimedia artist Andy Krieger is inspired by ordinary subjects from his every life, but when applied to his three-dimensional paintings, something extraordinary happens. "I make art work that straddles a boundary between two and three dimensions," Krieger writes. "Sculptural paintings with an open ended narrative, that also starts a dialogue between the piece and the viewer about perception and perspective." More like dioramas, his art makes us rethink how we look at painting.
Honolulu, Hawaii based photographer and designer Petey Ulatan often creates images that explore the impossible. A recent series, which Ulatan posts to his Instagram page, takes this idea and applies it to infinite scenarios: digital photo-manipulations of his own photographs from his travels, others from Google images, that re-shape the world as if it were folded into a giant cube.
Guillermo del Toro is known as one of the most imaginative filmmakers working today. As the director of some of this generation's most inventive horror and monster genre films, from Hellboy (2004), Pan’s Labyrinth (2006), Pacific Rim (2013), and Crimson Peak (2015), it should come as no surprise that del Toro loves monsters- and he has a creepy art collection to match. His treasured collection has been a work in progress since he was a child in Guadalajara, Mexico, and given its significant impact on del Toro's work and process, is now being brought to the public, courtesy of LACMA.
Bilbo's hobbit hole, a rusty ranch, and a workshop with an old Thunderbird '55 are just a few of the tiny worlds hand-crafted by Raphael Truffi Bortholuzzi. The Sao Paulo based artist and miniaturist began building the dioramas in 2010, an ongoing project that he calls "Grandmondo Miniatures", meaning "big world" miniatures. Though his dioramas are fantastic in their smallness, and sometimes delve into imagined worlds, for the most part, Bortholuzzi says he is interested in imitating real life.
Maria Kreyn is a Russian born, New York based artist often described as a realist, and while she has a command of painting the human figure, her exquisitely rendered oil paintings are more concerned with what we can't see. To borrow a quote from Aristotle, one of her favorite philosophers, "The aim of art is to represent not the outward appearance of things, but their inward significance." Kreyn carries this notion with her as she works, seeking to depict people in a realistic light, while capturing their essence and soul. "I make work that looks to infinity- that’s spiritually driven," she says.
Pacific Northwest based artist Nicole Gustafsson, who also goes by "Nimasprout", has had a lifelong interest in the natural world that continues to be a theme in her artwork. Her colorful gouache and ink illustrations and drawings depict fantastical floating landscapes, dotted with tiny trees, figures, and sparkling rock formations. At her website, she explains that her work explores ideas about adventure and discovery in these imaginative environments.
Andrew Hem has been painting all his life, first as a graffiti artist in his teenage years and now as a full-time exhibiting artist on a worldwide scale. We first featured Hem’s art on the cover of Hi-Fructose Vol. 21 and here on our blog, a culmination of his travels and a haunting view of the world, which he fills with floating and wandering figures over diverse landscapes.
He's been labeled a legendary master of collage and a "Punk Art Surrealist". Bay Area artist Winston Smith has been making his thought-provoking surrealist collages since the 1970s. Smith left the U.S. in 1969 to study art in Italy and experienced "a massive case of culture shock" upon his return. Struck by the profound social changes that had occurred during his absence, he began taking "safe" images from magazines to create politically-charged works of art.
Infused with ecstasy and a dark beauty, Marco Mazzoni's art underlines the connection between the natural world and our own. First featured on the cover of Hi-Fructose Vol. 20, and our blog, the Milan, Italy based artist uses nature as symbolism for his own observations about life, where ghostly figures often emerge in the final stage of drawing. Their eyes are never shown, as Mazzoni sees his work more like a composition of still life of small animals, flowers and leaves, rather than a portrait, rendered only using colored pencil.
German artist Tobias Kroeger, also known by his moniker "Tobe", made his career as a successful street artist, but in 2013 he suddenly stopped and turned his attention towards the canvas. What he created is a series of glitchy portraits inspired by his roots in graffiti and a growing concern for our addiction to technology. "Composed of data fragments and machine parts", his depiction of people is not far from the truth; a portrait of a new generation, living their lives in front of the computer screen.
We can only imagine what early explorers venturing off into the new world must have felt. Medieval maps and encyclopedic bestiaries give us some idea of the strange lands they expected to encounter, inhabited by mysterious figures and loathsome, fictitious beasts. Montreal, Canada based painter Peter Ferguson, previously featured here on our blog, seems to evoke this same combination of wonder, horror, excitement, and intrigue with a unique sense of bizarre humor in his artworks.
In Joel Daniel Phillips' art, featured here, the characters living in his neighborhood are brought to the center stage and become the hero of their own story. The San Francisco based artist's graphite and charcoal drawings feature people on the streets who generally go unnoticed by the public, or are virtually ignored, only to become celebrated in his monumental works. "A true portrait is far more than a rendering of physical form," he says, focusing instead on portraying the vulnerable nature that makes us human.
Nicki Crock is a conceptual artist currently working in Columbus, Ohio, but her head is in the clouds. Her installation series "Dream House" transforms space into an ethereal, geometric floating dreamscape made out of white paper. "A dream house is something to aspire to and long for," she says. "What better form could a daydream take shape in, than with something that we, as humans, already use to fulfill our imaginations: clouds."
Oregon based artist Morgan Rosskopf describes herself as a "visual hunter-gatherer". In other words, her surreal, carnal works are mostly driven by her own intuitions. Her illustrations on paper combine hand-drawn elements and collage to create lush clusters of personal imagery: a messy, knotted assemblage of fragments, from the sweet and savory to bodily and grotesque. "Hunting and gathering images is both subject and method," she explains. "I believe that all my images already exist; I just have to find them and rearrange them."
San Francisco based artist Jeremy Mann captures the exciting air of his hometown in his dynamic oil landscapes. His "Cityscapes" series portrays the city from bustling, bird's-eye views to its more mundane and quiet street corners at night, all flickering with glitchy dabs of paint that makes his art appear digital, though it is a description he rejects. It's a common misconception that perhaps stems from his process, where he references "jumbled up" digital manipulations of his own photographs.
Patti Warashina is a Pacific Northwest based artist known for her imaginative ceramic sculptures that are full of wit and sarcasm. At age 76, she does not stop inventing. Featured here on our blog, her clay figures are usually placed in fantasy environments, where she uses sculpture to explore such themes as the human condition, feminism, car-culture, and political and social topics.
It's a common belief that twins share some sort of unexplained mental, even spiritual connection. Identical twin brothers and artists How and Nosm (Raoul and Davide Perre) were raised together and also sharing the passion for art, have a connection and dynamic that is unique. It certainly explains their highly singular vision: dynamic artworks and massive, global murals that are instantly recognizable for their use of red, black and white based imagery featuring intricate patterns and shapes.
For Toronto based artist Brian Donnelly, featured here, painting is a risky business. At first beautifully rendered in oil, he then sprays his subjects with turpentine and hand sanitizer until their faces are distorted beyond recognition, to a more limited expression. Donnelly's work is all about embracing limitations: "I ask a lot of questions about art and how we define it," he says. "How far away from the original state can we go before we stop calling something art? In the process, I end up drawing a parallel between the fragile nature of artwork and the human condition."
Carole A. Feuerman's hyperrealistic sculptures of graceful human subjects like swimmers, divers, and dancers, featured here, are undeniably lifelike. But they are also magical in their dreamy state. Her sculptures also capture something that isn't real in the tangible sense, and that is the soul and emotion of a living person. Some call it "super-realism", but in Feuerman's words: "My sculptures combine both reality and illusion- I'm idealizing the human form, its not life as it really is."
Klaus Enrique is a New York based photographer whose work parallels Italian painter Giuseppe Arcimboldo and has come to adopt the term "Arcimboldist" for his expression. His creepy, amusing, nevertheless stunning portraits capture subjects made from real objects, fruits, and vegetables that realize Arcimboldo's paintings in real life. At first glance, it might appear as though Enrique's work is created digitally, but they are actually photographs of sculptures made out of real organic elements, also making Enrique a sculptor.
Melbourne, Australia based artist Alex Sanson began sculpting in the early 90s with a series of small, toy-like sculptures greatly inspired by Alexander Calder's circus, a pioneer of moving sculpture. Since then, Sanson's repertoire has developed to include both small scale and gigantic kinetic works, some interactive and activated by touch, others hand-operated. His wildly imaginative works have taken Calder's original output and brought to it a new sense of play and movement.
"I believe that artists should speak about the most desperate and desirable issues for humanity," says Korean painter Kwon Kyung-Yup. Though known for her realistic portraits of melancholy subjects, first featured in Hi-Fructose Vol. 24, Kwon describes herself as a happy person whose paintings are about recalling memories. Her works find an emotional balance between her artistic inspirations, citing the beauty in Klimt's paintings which she pairs with tragedy, as found in the works of Caravaggio.
He teaches digital media at Los Angeles Harbor College, but that doesn't deter sculptor Joshua Abarbanel from appreciating a strong tie to nature. His incredible wood sculptures are a reflection of his dual interests in technology and the natural world. Using mix of digital, mechanical tools and handiwork, he first designs his dynamic pieces on the computer, then crafts them by hand in way that feels organic. Recent works combine influences from Romantic landscape, environmental art, and wabi-sabi.
Though Iva Troj's paintings share the sensibility and feminine grace present in Renaissance era art, her work is informed by her modern point of view. Growing up in the outskirts of Plovdiv, Bulgaria, the now UK-based artist was faced early on with male dominance in a communist country. She often expresses admiration for women artists like Italian Baroque painter Artemisia Gentileschi, whose mere existence was seen as problematic, while men at the time were painting women to look like dolls. "I so wanted to just go in there and change them all," she says.
Brazilian twin artists Os Gemeos, Gustavo and Otavio Pandolfo, were recently in Milan, Italy, working on a large mural installation for Pirelli HangarBicocca's new public art project, Outside the Cube. Their mural, titled "Efemero" (ephemeral) features one of their signature, colorful characters climbing up the hangar-shaped building, painted to look like a subway car. The site-specific piece also incorporates logos from international metro systems and personal messages.
Laura Keeble is a London based artist whose works often use unconventional materials, many with references to consumerism and the contemporary art market. Her recent sculpture series interprets familiar, commonly seen objects and global brand logos using reclaimed church stained glass: Starbucks cups, McDonalds happy meals and CCTV cameras are just a few of the objects that she has cut from original antique church windows, made fantastic and divine with this stunning, discarded material.
"I never imagined some of my pictures would be in Moscow," says 82 year old artist Peter Saul. The San Francisco based painter's early use of pop-culture cartoon references in the late 1950s and early 1960s has earned him the title of a Pop Art founding father, and to date, he has realized over 800 paintings throughout his career. A colorful selection of them made their debut on Friday at Gary Tatintsian Gallery in Moscow, Russia in Saul's new exhibit, "You better call Saul!"
For San Francisco based artist Erika Sanada, animals have long represented a sort of escapism from reality. Featured here on our blog and in Hi-Fructose Vol. 31, her creepy-cute sculptural incarnations of "zombified" baby creatures are analogies to her own demons. Over the years, we've seen her sculptures evolve into more dynamic pieces of art; playful, narrative scenes colored in a spectrum of somber hues. She explores a bolder, darker palette and decoration in her upcoming solo, "Cope."
Photography as a medium has a dual character. Since its introduction, artists have used it to produce both art as well as document the world around them. For Chicago artist Newbold Bohemia, photography is a little bit of both: his photo series have documented real life issues, presented in staged, then manipulated images from his imagination. In his playful yet devious new series, "In an Ideal World," Bohemia visualizes the story of a rebellious 1950s woman in the domestic world.